30

After Gro Harlem Brundtland had gotten herself a seat and a glass of water, her headache subsided but she was still faced with a set of circumstances that whacked her over the head repeatedly with a two-by-four of cognitive dissonance. Her puggy, nostrilly nose flared forward as it always did in times of stress.

One of my best features, she thought, getting distracted.

"Ah!" she cried out loud to the empty room. "Stop!"

She held her head in anxiety over the lure of sidetracks, trivialities at a time like this.

Ohh! J., trusted servant, what's BECOME of you? Her stomach rumbled and she realized she was hungry. She considered eating the saltines, then decided to hang on to them in case she did indeed have trouble on her airplane ride.

But the idea of the crackers sparked a small realization, that even with horrible gold eyes, J. seemed to have her best interests at heart.

Or did he? She yanked the plastic-wrapped crackers from her pocket violently, contemplating them! Could they be poisoned? Would J. do such a thing? She examined the plastic and found no evidence of a breach.

She remembered it wasn't for several days. She had been planning to finally experience Norway in a leisurely frame of mind.

It struck her as absurd, but she had been so busy for her four-year term of office she never visited the GRANDE! water slide park, the crowd jewel of Norwegian engineering. She silently, prayed that the weirdness might pass uneventfully and she might still get her chance to visit the GRANDE! before she was due in Geneva.

Could it all have been a joke? Could J. have been wearing a set of those hideously tacky colored contacts? She had seen them advertised. She didn't know anyone who actually used them, even on Halloween. You could get contact lenses pre-printed with a feline ellipse or with awful red and orange sunbursts. Or for the fanatical fans of American football, with the logo of the NFL. But, she realized it really wasn't J.'s style to do a thing like that, especially as a practical joke.

In four years working for her, had J. ever pulled a practical joke? She thought about it and decided he hadn't. Oh! He had - only once - and that had been a disastrous experience!

"Stop! Stop!" she jumped up out of her seat and her stomach growled again. Layer piled upon layer! It was almost too much to bear, the cascade of digressions, and the desperately quick turnaround time between each new development.

She flew to the kitchen and tore open the door of the refrigerator with an almost belligerent force.

"Oh no!" she cried, as she saw that four shelves' worth of food plus a crisper were covered with an ominous coat of shiny gold!

Marcia's reaction to the living metal was similar to Zamfir's. The two had never met, though sharp-eyed readers may recognize the six degrees of separation between them. Zamfir had climbed up on a nearby Poorboy as Jim Bombarde looked on detachedly. Marcia had no such Poorboy but her presidential palace was quite an opulent affair and the chair nearest to the infested fridge was actually a rare Louis XIV.

So she can't have been too shocked when she tried to hoist her substantial body up upon the delicate fabric, and the whole thing ripped, clattered and collapsed in a mess of wooden bones. She fell upon the floor, hoping never again to have to come face to face with the sickly slow rhythm of moving gold.

Zamfir had been able to get away, probably because the gold just decided not to pursue him. Marcia wasn't so lucky -- the blob containing J.'s consciousness was becoming more curious about the source of the rattling commotion.

Does it eat fillings? she wondered.

Although Marcia had no way of knowing it, the various gold creatures could communicate between them in spite of the fact that they were on different parts of the planet. And while Marcia had been busy wringing her hands and falling off of antique chairs, J. and Derf and the cop from the seaside had all been having a little chat:

"Hi!" said Derf.

"Hello," said J.

"What's going on?" said Derf.

"I don't know," said J.

"I don't know either," said Angela.

"Thank you for telling us that," said J.

"Where are we?" said Derf.

"I have no idea," said J.

"I can't feel my toes," said Angela.

"Hello," said a voice. "I am Bat."

"Hi, Bat," said Derf.

"Hmph," said J.