My schedule went up in smoke..

Meanwhile at the Gorey House in Babbage..

"If this were my library, your brain would be on a steam-driven Radio Flyer chasing your skeleton down the street. Don't doubt that for a moment!"



"Look, we've been through this before! I can't reanimate Maude, Quentin, Rhoda, Titus, Una, Vicky, Xerxes or Yorick. Now hand over the REST of them!"

"Curses! You've RUINED my quota!"

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Tuesday at the last Steelhead town meeting, I convinced Miss Laval to set up shop across from the Town Hall. Steelhead is now a destination for all well-dressed Colonial men!

I was ready to host the Masquerade at Baroness Amber's pavillion, but to my dismay the DJ was nowhere to be found. While we waited, we tried to convince a would-be Vampyre huntress that in Caledon one must ask Vampyres politely if they consent to be hunted. We misdirected the huntress towards a mainlander polluting the Moors on a bicycle with one of those combustion engines.

While we sat over tea instead of dancing I made arrangements with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle to restock the Babbage Clinic after the terraforming.

Also my younger daughter Kohine called me, she was returning from her travels in dire need of yet another overhaul. I'll have to rename her as well. How I long for when she was still ARI and her brother ALAN made the lovely pair! Children are such high maintenance!

Then I received an urgent call from Sheriff Rau. There was a hotel fire in Deadwood. I packed my bag and folded space to get there.

Deadwood is a Sleeper zone, so neither my Spark inventions nor my Magick would work there. I was told there was an arsonist on the loose. This was there third fire in two days..immediately followed by a fourth.

Would that Qli were there to organize the bucket brigades faster! But being made of magick and Spark, she simply cannot exist in that realm.

There was an infant trapped in that cabin. No one else could reach her, so I took a risk that my protection amulet would work there, which it did. I emerged from the flames unscathed, but pretended to collapse after I returned the child to her mother's arms. While I "recovered" a precocious little girl slipped into the cabin and rescued a second child! I suspect Paradox may have rewritten the event as it occurred.

As I sat examining the smoke stains on my new hat, I spoke with the schoolmarm, Miss Vita. She is more than what she seems, but as a native of that realm she may not realize it...yet.