The Poetry Bus - Where the Hell has Mad Uncle Agnes hidden my SatNav?

What a lot of eager beavers we have clamouring to board the bus this week!  Can't a driver finish lunch without youse all banging on the doors, demanding to be let in?

Here's a reminder of the prompts...

Family Daysaver Special
Remember that mad old aunt that terrified you as a child?  That slightly shady Uncle Eric with the pencil moustache and the dodgy used car business?  What about that cousin that no-body ever mentions?  Or that sweet apple-cheeked grandma that used to give you sweeties and knit you awful cardies?  We've all got family skellies rattling around in our closets so let's hear about all those daffy relatives.

or

Off-Peak/Off-Piste TravelCard
Have you ever been lost?  Were you alone in the woods or just going the wrong way up a one-way street.  What did it feel like being somewhere you weren't supposed to be?

There are still a few seats left.....

Boogieing her way to the front of the queue is Rachel.

Telling her family "his" story is Karen.

Swiss has got two beautifully-crafted tickets, this one and this one.

Peter Goulding's not allowed to mention his Uncle Edward.  Find out why here.

Jeanne Iris proves that, contrary to Tolkien, pretty much all who wander are lost here.

Dominic's having short-term anemone problems.

Plugging her ears and pulling the blanket over her head is Enchanted Oak.

Niamh, all out of donkey jokes, is here.

Don't Feed the Pixies in sideways musical form is not going Down That Road.

Titus is bathing in blood over here.

The Bug's off to Church Camp - or is she?

Weaver brings us her Aunt Nell .

The Watercats are all bitter and twisted (musically speaking).

Domestic Oubliette is all apologetic here, but why?

Crazyfieldmouse is at the shops with mum. Then what happened?

And here's mine.  Based on true events....

Borne Away

I can't believe this has happened.

Nose in a book,

I have been unconscious,

Unheeding of familiar streets

Turning unfamiliar.

I have no idea where I am now.

The driver is

"Not going back that way, luv".

He's off to the depot, then home.

Lucky him.

As darkness falls

I'm alone in this strange street.

Will there ever be another bus?

I can't believe this has happened.

Again!

Saturday Wordzzle 106

Really struggled with the words this week and with my two stories if I'm honest. I'd never recommend trying to write a story and publish it in real time like this, you don't get a chance to go back and fix continuity errors or inconsistencies. It's still fun though.

If you would like to play, go here for rules, guidance and links to other players

The Mini (largesse, salad dressing, flying purple people eater, priest, Spanish)

This is part of of an ongoing story.

A blind seer has a vision about a young man coming to harm from an old man living in a tower. To try to avert this fate, she anonymously pays for him to take a holiday somewhere far away. The young man arrives at the holiday town and sees an interesting tower, which he plans to investigate. The seer has a nightmare which she believes is connected to the young man's fate and resolves to go after him. She gets to the holiday town and realises this is the very place the tower is located. She gets lost trying to locate it and bumps into the young man on his way there. The seer soon discovers that this is the very man from her vision, she and asks him to accompany her to where they can have a quiet talk. His phone rings, interrupting the conversation. As he completes his call, a car comes around the corner too fast and he pushes the seer out of its path, only to be struck himself. The driver of the car turns out to be the old man from the seer's vision. The young man awakens in hospital with no memories of what has happened...

The young man speaks...

It’s funny how, when you’re in hospital, the compass of your world shrinks down to the minutiae of the mundane and you become obsessed with trivial things. For instance, at lunchtime, the hospital’s largesse knew no bounds: two types of salad dressing with my lunch whereas this morning, I couldn’t have a second glass of orange juice. I wish my memories would come back, give me back my life. I feel if I could just shake my head hard enough, the grey wall holding them in would be shattered and my memories would all come tumbling out from behind it. I think in my dreams, some of the memories do try to come back. Last night, I dreamt about the Spanish holiday we went on when I was a kid. In my dream, we were back there and there were churches everywhere and every other person seemed to be either a nun or a priest - although what the flying purple people eater was doing there, I really couldn’t say. Oh, here’s the lady with the sunglasses again. I’m surprised at how much I’m pleased to see her today.

The 10-Worder (salamander, lawyer, prank, flaccid, spurious, angst, flowers, once upon a time, genesis, spark)

New to Harold? The summary is here.

“She won’t thank you, old button.” Said Teatime, “You do know that, don’t you?”

Harold teased a tiny fragment of china into place and concentrated really hard. The fragment became part of the whole. There was no noise, no spark of eldritch blue light or anything, the shard was just suddenly not separate any more. Harold flopped backwards into his chair and let out a breath.

“I know, and I’m beginning to wish I hadn’t started this now,” he said ruefully, “This is tough!”

India’s mug was about half-reassembled – a triumph of gaudy flowers and pink lettering.

“Well it’ll do you good to exercise your abilities once in a while,” replied Teatime, eyeing Harold’s handiwork critically. “Not bad,” he murmured, “Not so much as a crack anywhere. Would have been quicker if you’d used glue though.”

“A true artiste such as myself does not use glue,” Harold said airily.

Teatime snorted.

There came a knock on the door and Moon entered with delicious-smelling takeaway cartons and cans of drink.

“I thought you might like Chinese for a change.” He said, placing the goodies on the table. He caught sight of the half-repaired mug.

“Wow!” he exclaimed, “I didn’t know you could do that! India will be thrilled when she sees it!”

“I rather think not,” said Teatime drily, “My bet is that it will be in the bin before you can say Jack Robinson.”

“Ten dollars says you’re wrong!” declared Moon.

“You’re on.” replied the monkey, sourly eyeing Harold, who was spooning – or chopsticking – strings of steaming flaccid noodles into his mouth at a rate of knots. Becoming aware of the little monkey’s baleful stare, he paused, several noodles still hanging out of his mouth.

“Whamph?”

“Great Cthulu’s ghost,” sighed Teatime, “A little decorum if you can possibly manage it, dear boy, a little decorum.”

“Sorry,” said Harold, having quickly made the noodles disappear, “I was really, really hungry. Must be all the jigsaw work.”

“Wasted effort, I tell you.” Said Teatime, shaking his head, “That woman hates you with a passion.”

“But I’ve never done anything to her.” Harold reached for a carton of duck in plum sauce.

“Perhaps she’s had a run-in with another demon in the past.” Said Moon, “I could find out for you if you like.”

“How?” asked Harold.

“It’ll be in her files I expect,” replied the young agent.

Harold frowned, “I’m no lawyer but I’m guessing there are rules about poking around in people’s personal information. Anyway, we’d probably find out her animosity was down to some demon misusing an apostrophe or something.”

Moon shrugged, “Heh! A demon with moral angst over accessing someone else secrets, whatever next? Well if you change your mind…” He got up and left the room.

“What an odd little fellow,” said Teatime.

-0-0-0-

Next morning, Harold, Teatime, Mercury, Prada, Othello and India were gathered once more in the Salamander room.

“So how long do we give Box to come up with this more and more spurious-seeming agent Iris and that shipping receipt?” said Othello.

“I take it he hasn’t called back then.” Said Mercury.

“Nope,” replied Othello ,”And I tried calling him again this morning: no answer.”

“He’d better not be pulling some kind of prank,” said Prada, “Cos if he is..”

“No, no, as mad as he is,” replied Mercury, cutting her off, “He’s not the type. Once upon a time he was one of our very best agents. In the nineties, he virtually single-handedly took down the New Genesis cult, he infiltrated no end of enemy operations, spotted more Fallen than you could wave a stick at.” He trailed off, shaking his head sadly. “He’s not playing games, I’m sure of it.”

“Perhaps we had better pay him another visit,” suggested India. “Maybe the monkey was right, maybe there was someone else with Box and that’s why he can’t or won’t answer us.”

“Well, we don’t have any other leads at the moment,” agreed Mercury, “Let’s go, people!”

-0-0-0-

From where he was parked some way down the street and across the road from Aunt Aggie’s, Mr Teeth was in an excellent position to observe the small group of people – including one trumpet-playing little punk - come out of the building and climb into a large car. Yes, he could have let Peck and his associates handle this but, truth to tell, he was getting to the point where the PI’s condescending manner was becoming more and more irritating, as good as he was at what he did. Besides, with the club still closed, there wasn’t all that much else for him to do anyway. Mr Teeth waited a few moments then started his engine, easing his nondescript vehicle out into the road after the departing OGS car.

The Poetry Bus - Tickets Now Available

Congratulations to Pure Fiction for a very entertaining - if somewhat spooky - ride on the bus this week.  I've hoovered up all the biscuit crumbs, the biscuit barrel has been refilled, the bar re-stocked and the tank filled up.  The bus is ready to go!

We have a couple of ticket options this week:

Family Daysaver Special
Remember that mad old aunt that terrified you as a child?  That slightly shady Uncle Eric with the pencil moustache and the dodgy used car business?  What about that cousin that no-body ever mentions?  Or that sweet apple-cheeked grandma that used to give you sweeties and knit you awful cardies?  We've all got family skellies rattling around in our closets so let's hear about all those daffy relatives.

or

Off-Peak/Off-Piste TravelCard
Have you ever been lost?  Were you alone in the woods or just going the wrong way up a one-way street.  What did it feel like being somewhere you weren't supposed to be?

The bus leaves on Monday next, but holders of advanced tickets can post their links as comments here and I'll set up linky-type thingies for the big day.

PS:  Apologies to any regular passenger whose pictures are not up there on the bus.  Spaces were limited - even more than my attention-span!

The Poetry Bus Meets Casper the Friendly Ghost

Pure Fiction is this week's driver and has set us a ghostly challenge here.

We had to write about a ghost - not the usual bedsheet-with-eyeholes-going-woo-woo kind of a ghost but a helpful one.

Now, I've never met a ghost, helpful or otherwise, and was pretty sure I was going to miss the bus this week. However, by an eerie coincidence, some people were talking in our office today (located in an old Cortauld's factory no less) and our security guard spun us a tale of Mary-Ann, the building's resident ghost of a young lady that committed suicide in 1905 - a tale which he later confessed to having completely made up during a boring shift. This gave me an idea....

Other bus-riders to the beyond are here and here. Why not jump aboard?

This building is old,
Said the watchman
With a glint in his eye,
And I'm told,
Said the watchman,
Not a word of a lie.
There's a ghostly Appearance
A chill of cold air.
Late at night, there are footsteps
But nobody's there.

Before it was offices
This place was a mill.
Before these computers,
It was pen, ink and quill.
This building remembers,
It was well built to last.
In its bricks and its mortar
It holds on to the past.

I fancy I've seen them
At night on my rounds
When the scratch of their pens
Makes the softest of sounds.
I fancy I hear it,
The clack of the loom,
But my torch shows me nothing
But this empty old room.

She worked at the weaving
He toiled as a clerk
She thought that he loved her
But he thought it a lark.
So, with her heart broken
She ended his life
Let out his heart's blood
With his own paper kinfe.

She went to the gallows
And he to his grave.
Such a tragic old story
Of a maid and a knave.
But his spirit is restless
Some say he's here still
Keeping his ledgers
Down here at the mill.

So if, come the odd morning,
You find something has changed
Your pens have been straightened,
Your files re-arranged,
It wasn't the cleaners
Nor me, for a lark
Your desk has been tidied
By the ghost of a clerk!

(For best effect read this in a darkened room with a torch shining upwards into your face)

Saturday Wordzzle 105

Raven's back! Hurrah! And so on with the motley. Any Bus Poets out there who fancy a go at this should definitely give it a go - it's done wonders for my creativity.

If you would like to play, go here for rules, guidance and links to other players

The Mini (dragons are forever, jelly beans, practice makes perfect, asparagus, spelling bee)

This is part of of an ongoing story.

A blind seer has a vision about a young man coming to harm from an old man living in a tower. To try to avert this fate, she anonymously pays for him to take a holiday somewhere far away. The young man arrives at the holiday town and sees an interesting tower, which he plans to investigate. The seer has a nightmare which she believes is connected to the young man's fate and resolves to go after him. She gets to the holiday town and realises this is the very place the tower is located. She gets lost trying to locate it and bumps into the young man on his way there. The seer soon discovers that this is the very man from her vision, she and asks him to accompany her to where they can have a quiet talk. His phone rings, interrupting the conversation. As he completes his call, a car comes around the corner too fast and he pushes the seer out of its path, only to be struck himself. The driver of the car turns out to be the old man from the seer's vision. The young man awakens in hospital with no memories of what has happened. Next day...

The seer speaks...

I awoke this morning with a bit of a queasy tummy – I knew that ‘cream of asparagus’ soup the hotel served me last night tasted odd. A glass of water seems to have settled things down though. At breakfast, I think there must have been a family with young children seated near me. At least, I assume the high, piping voice chanting “dragons are forever! Jelly beans! Jelly beans!” over and over was that of a child. I remember when I was about nine, I entered a spelling bee and, because my father had told me practice makes perfect, I went about the place chanting the spellings of the words I thought we would be tested on, it must have been infuriating for everyone else in the house. I shall go to the hospital again today to see the young man. I hope his sister gets here soon – they must have contacted her, surely? Mr Fitzpatrick had to go to the police station yesterday evening to show them his documents or something. I hope they don’t charge him: I’m sure what happened was just an accident – was this the danger I foresaw? It had to be. Surely nothing worse could happen now?


The 10-Worder (oh, my aching bones, Spring has sprung, solitude, spearmint, platitudes, cardboard box, chimney, yogurt, shattered, flagrant)

New to Harold? The summary is here.

The sky overhead was a merciless blue with just the occasional wisp of yoghurt-coloured cloud.

“Oh, my aching bones!” groaned Mercury, clambering up into the sunlight once more. The ladder leading down to Box’s lair had been long and steep. “I don’t want to have to do that again in a hurry, It’s like climbing up a giant’s chimney.”

“I suppose living in a place like that is one way to ensure a certain amount of peaceful solitude.” Said Othello, “I can’t imagine he gets many people dropping in – unless they fall in the hole.”

The others laughed.

“It’s interesting you should say that, Agent,” said Teatime, “Because I had the distinct impression that someone else was there but keeping out of sight, in one of the side rooms perhaps.”

“If I was associating with a nut job like Box, I’d been keeping out of sight too!” laughed Prada, “What makes you think someone was there?”

“There was a faint smell of spearmint in the air, like chewing gum or toothpaste or some such” replied the little monkey. “And Reverend Box was not the source of it – more’s the pity.”

“Well, the man’s allowed to have friends over – or down – I suppose we should say.” Said Mercury.

“Anyway, let’s get back to the ranch and check out this Agent Iris fellow.”

“That was pretty neat!” grinned Harold as they headed back to the car.

“I have my uses, old sock,” replied Teatime smugly, “I have my uses.”

-0-0-0-

“Nothing!” said Othello, slapping the table next to his keyboard, “Not a trace of any Agent Iris anywhere in the OGS system. Either Box lied to us or his memory’s gone the way of his sanity. ” He rubbed his eyes. “I‘ll call him and check the name.” He punched numbers into a nearby desk phone, listened for a while and then left a message, asking Box to call and confirm the name of the Agent he had worked with on project Dynamo.

“Well that’s all we can do for now, I think", said Mercury

"Yeah," agreed Othello, "Let’s hope he comes through with the name and with that shipping receipt. Oh, thanks!” This last was directed to Agent Moon who had just placed a fresh coffee on the table in front of him. The young agent smiled.

“You looked like you needed it. Tough case, huh?”

“Yeah,” sighed Othello, “One step forward, two steps sideways.”

“I’m sure you’ll crack it,” Moon paused, “Can I ask you something?”

“Sure, go ahead.” Moon perched on the edge of the desk and lowered his voice.

“That demon that’s hanging around here, how long is it going to be around?”

Othello shrugged, “Till we solve the case, I suppose. Look, if it bothers you, I can get you a transfer till it’s gone.”

“Oh, no, nothing like that!” protested Moon, “It’s kind of interesting actually. Did you know it likes music?”

“I did not.” Othello frowned, “Have you been talking to it?”

“Well, yes, actually,” admitted Moon, “When I delivered the pizza last night, we got to talking.”

“Well, if you take my advice,” said Othello, “Don’t interact with it – it can’t be trusted and will do its best to deceive, disarm and ultimately ensnare you.”

“I’ll be careful.” Promised Moon.

-0-0-0-

India wandered into the break room and was irritated to see Harold and Prada sitting at one of the tables, sipping coffee and chatting - for all the world like normal people. Yes, yes, Othello had said that Prada was just probably pretending to befriend the Fallen, to see if it knew more than it was telling, but still, such flagrant fraternisation was immensely galling to witness and no amount of platitudes about who was fooling whom would change that.

Annoyed by the situation, and annoyed at herself for being annoyed, she swilled her own coffee mug under the tap and banged it down on the stainless steel drainer with a little more force than was necessary. To her chagrin, it shattered and pieces flew everywhere.

Prada and Harold stopped talking and looked over at her in surprise.

“Everything all right?” asked Prada.

“Fine!” India snapped. She began angrily picking up pieces of crockery and dropping them into an old cardboard box.

“But that was your favourite mug!” Prada hurried over and began to help. She picked up the largest piece. The motto “Spring has sprung!” in bright pink lettering was still just about readable – the mug had been a promotional item for India’s favourite uncle’s flower shop. India took it off her and dropped it into the box with the other pieces.

“I was getting tired of it anyway,” she lied.

Harold got up and slipped out of the room. He had an idea.

How to make a clickable link

There's a couple of ways to do this in Blogger-land.

In a blog post, using Blogger's editor, you can use the link tool (up there next to the "add an image" button) to insert a clickable link.  You just add the URL e.g.www.fredbloggs.com and a nice phrase to display that will be underlined and clickable e.g. Fred's Blog.

Alternatively, you can write the little snippet of code yourself in the editor's "edit HTML" mode.   Comment boxes on Blogger also accept the little snippet of code directly and it's worth learning to use this code as there is no tool on comment boxes to add links (that I know of).

So you just need your target URL and the text you want to be able to click.  The format to use is shown below (apologies, I had to put this in as an image as Blogger keeps trying to actually interpret the code instead of displaying it).  The first line is just to show the syntax and the second line is an example of an actual URL.

Make sure you get the < and > parts right or Blogger whinges like mad and remember those quotes around the URL.

Good luck!

The Poetry Bus - Listen very carefully, I shall say zis only once

This week's driver is Niamb, who set a complex challenge involving email lists, headache pills, dead-letter drops, meetings near the bandstand and the number 7. Ok, maybe I made some of that up, but we had to derive 2 names and a word.

My two names were Debs and Rich, and the word was "annoyed". Other, much better, pomes are here.

So it was me, Debs and Rich at the bus stop.
With its unbreakable panels bashed out
Lying in heaps of winking diamonds around our feet.

The timetable was a mystery of
Spray-can steganography,
A promise of far-off illegible places.

Annoyed, the rain cried over the mess
And the tears soaked us,
We shivering huddled three.

But it was Saturday afternoon
And we were going swimming anyway
So it didn't matter.

The Poetry Bus - Swiss Roll

It's Monday, it's my birthday and it's time for a trip on the Poetry bus, ably piloted this week by Swiss who set the challenge here. We had to choose one or more pictures and get scribbling. More passengers' offerings can be found here.

I chose this picture of an ECG.  I was going to write all kinds of clever about the difference between the heart as a physical organ and the heart as the seat of love but in the end, a simple story came out and begged to be told.

The red-headed nurse said,

“It’s just a routine test, don’t worry,”

The soft brogue of her tongue

Brushed my ears pleasantly.

And one by one the wee thin wires

Began to gossip their news to the twitching pen.

“Can it tell what’s in a man’s heart, this machine of yours?”

I said, “Can it tell if a man’s in love?”

She aimed her patient freckled smile at me,

Making out like she’d never heard such wit,

Even though she must have done a thousand times before.

And I think at that point, that very second,

Even though the patiently scrolling paper bears no mark of it.

Even though the gossiping wires neglected to mention it.

Even though I didn’t yet know it myself.

At that moment, amid the mystery of PQRS,

Sinus rhythm, bundle of His, and all the rest.

At that moment I loved her.

Not-quite-Saturday Wordzzle 105

Raven, setter of Wordzzle challenges, is still offline so I thought I'd try to keep things moving along by setting my own challenge this week.

The mini (Hope, milk, freshness, earring, blinds)

The story so far....

A blind seer has a vision about a young man coming to harm from an old man living in a tower. To try to avert this fate, she anonymously pays for him to take a holiday somewhere far away. She then has a nightmare which she believes is connected to the young man's fate and resolves to go after him. She gets to the holiday town and realises this is the very place the tower is located. She gets lost trying to locate it and bumps into the young man on his way there. The seer soon discovers that this is the very man from her vision. as they talk, a car comes around the corner too fast and he pushes the seer out of its path, only to be struck himself. At the hospital, the car driver - who lives in the old tower! - and the seer wait anxiously by the young man's bedside. He awakens but can remember nothing. Next day...

The Young Man speaks...

A nurse has opened the blinds and I can see a patch of milk-coloured cloud sailing across the blue. My visitors have gone – at least I think they were my visitors, I have a dim memory of two people hovering by my bed. Would that have been last night? I’ll have to remember to ask somebody about that. The nurses have given me some breakfast, none of which I can eat. When I tell him this, the young male nurse with the gold earring tells me this is what I ordered and shows me the little ticks on the menu card which I apparently made. I would never have ordered egg, though, I hate it. I’ll have to content myself with some orange juice of questionable freshness. I hope someone comes to tell me what’s going on soon – maybe the lady with the sunglasses, she seemed nice.

The 10-worder (Minute, shave, orange, cardboard, scissors, speaker, calligraphy, wooden, picture, jute)

New to Harold? Click here to catch up.

“Give me a minute,” Box scurried through a grey painted metal door, leaving the others staring bemusedly around them at the large underground space he’d led them into.

The deep dark hole they’d all climbed down into had turned out to be an access shaft leading to what was by the looks of it an old military or Civil Defence bunker of some kind. The large main room into which Box had led them was about twenty feet by twenty feet with several doors – one of which Box had just disappeared though – giving off to various side-rooms and tunnels. Relics of the place’s cold-war past remained in the form of an old PA speaker system mounted high on one wall above a row of dusty clocks, all stopped, labelled with the names of various capital cities. Below the clocks was a row of old-fashioned CRT screens, also dusty and non-functional. Of more modern addition, the walls also boasted some neatly-mounted slabs of stone engraved with what looked like someone’s – presumably Box’s - attempt at calligraphy using Greek letters.

Box re-emerged a few moments later, clad in a pair of crumpled khaki shorts and some sort of singlet that looked as though he’d made it himself by cutting up an old jute sack with blunt scissors.

So this was where Reverend Box lived, comfortably cool away from the desert sun. Comfortably cool and comfortably, period. Box was clearly no desert ascetic: all the amenities were here. In addition to the basics of electric lighting and power, a large refrigerator hummed away in one corner and on a counter nearby sat a microwave oven, coffee machine and toaster. On the other side of the room, a laptop lay open on Box’s desk – currently showing a split-screen picture of the wooden “church” above and its surroundings - fed, presumably, by a number of hidden cameras.

“Saw us coming then , eh, Box?” said Mercury, seeing the display.

“A man can’t be too careful these days.” came Box’s gnomic reply. He wandered over to the kitchen area. “Coffee? Orange juice?”

“No thanks, we’re not staying long. We just wanted to ask you a few questions about project Dynamo.”

“That old thing again?” said Box, pouring himself a glass of juice from a cardboard carton.

“Again? What do you mean ‘again’?” asked Othello.

“Well, let me see it was…” Box stopped to scratch absently at his hairless scalp, “Hmm, It would have been about two months ago. I’d just finished researching the Eleusinian Mysteries as I recall. Did you know the Mysteries were celebrated for over two thousand years? Of course, we have resumed celebrating them here now rather than in Eleusis. Had to piece them together myself, though, from vase-paintings here and there and scraps of writing, because those old Greeks were very secretive and the rites probably involved the use of drugs of some sort which doesn’t exactly make for full and clear descriptions of what went on.” His eyes took on a faraway look, “I think Peyote might be an acceptable substitute these days and – “

“Box?” prompted Mercury, “ Project Dynamo?”

“Oh, yeah, sorry.” The snapping of Box’s attention back to the here and now was almost audible. “Yeah, a couple of months ago I got a call from a guy claiming to be from OGS asking about that old project, wanting to know if I had any records of it.”

“And what did you tell him?” asked Othello.

“I told him yes and that he could have them if he was willing to come out here and pick them up.”

“And did he?”

“He did. Well, when I say he did, what I mean is he sent a courier for them. There were several boxes and some old video tapes and whatnot, must have cost him some to get them Fed-Exed like that.”

“So you never saw the man?” Mercury could not hide his disappointment and annoyance. “Never met him in person and yet you let him have confidential OGS records without checking him out?”

“Who says I didn’t check him out?” retorted Box, “He knew all the right things when I challenged him, used all the right terminology and I was satisfied – and still am – that he was definitely OGS.”

“I’m sorry,” Mercury showed his palms in a conciliatory gesture, “I didn’t mean to insult you, it’s just that we lost an agent recently because of project Dynamo. We’re a little jumpy.”

“I see,” said Box, somewhat mollified, “But don’t go assuming that because I live in the desert, the sun has baked my brains. Don’t forget: I was an agent before your daddy had his first shave.” He took a slug of his juice.

“Excuse me,” said Harold, “Perhaps I missed something here, but what was project Dynamo actually about?”

Box regarded him coolly for a moment as though weighing up whether he should give anything away to one of the Fallen, one of the enemy. Eventually he said.

“Dynamo was all about us trying to find a way to detect your kind using technology. With Spotters being as rare as hens’ teeth, we were trying to improve our rates of detection.”

“So why was it shut down?” asked Prada.

“Because we spent a ton of money on it and we never got it to work.” replied Box, “It was deemed too costly to continue, so it was disbanded and all of us agents returned to our normal duties.”

“Were yours the only records of the project?” asked Othello.

“Agent Iris might still have some, I suppose.”

“Agent Iris?”

“Yeah, he and I led the project together. Haven’t heard from him in years though”

“Well, I guess we can look him up – OGS will have some record of his whereabouts I daresay,” said Othello, jotting down the name. “Oh, just one more thing: do you have a receipt from the courier company for the boxes they took?”

Box scratched his head again, “Probably, but it’ll take me a while to dig it up. I can email you the details when I find it if you like.”

“That would be great,” said Mercury, “Thanks for all your help.”

With that, they said goodbye and started the long climb back into daylight.