All hail Betty!

It's hard to write when the world is frozen behind evolving facades.  I hate when that happens.  My colleague, DL, says he will respond with poetry for the duration.  For my part, I just want to sit on a rock and spit once in a while, like my friend Robert the Telepathic Gila Monster.  The situation has been developing for several years.  Below is the reprised story of my experiences during the first aggressive attacks on language and thought, when, while attempting to save Robert, I met Betty the Coyote Creator Goddess. It's perhaps worth revisiting the lessons learned.  Keep reading this blog to reunite with Betty, Robert and others.  Best, Harry

I saw a terrible thing.  It had been a few weeks since I'd heard anything from my fellow exile in the desert, Robert the Telepathic Gila Monster, so yesterday I walked into the scrub to find him.  I headed north from Pearblossom over pebbly dirt sealed with damp from the previous day's rain, towards an area where I knew gilas assemble. Usually there's a dozen or so communing, but coming over a low ridge I saw hundreds of gilas crawling in seeming random circles and tangents, looking past each other and, most alarming, not sending any telepathic signals.  The whole species is telepathic, not just a few scattered outliers as with humans, so they have evolved ways to deal with it. But as I delved into their minds, I found just one thought: We are lost! Help!  What happened to us? 

I tried to recognize Robert visually in the dazed throng, but what gilas have in the way of facial expression was masked by a rictus of anxiety, and I could not recognize Robert, or contact his mind.

Then a strange thing happened.  A subtle feeling made me glance to my left where I locked eyes with a coyote, who was sitting calmly about five feet away.

A telepathic struggle followed, though "struggle" might be the wrong word. It's more like the coyote and I penetrated each other's psyches in an uninhibited way, the struggle being to stay sane during the process.  

After this intense introduction, the coyote started up a telepathic conversation.

Good afternoon, Harry.  My name is Betty.  I'm the Coyote Creator Goddess.

How do you know my name?

Word gets around when a human breaks into the natural sphere, as the coyotes call it.

The "natural sphere"?

Yes, the coyote phrase comes from your usage, where "natural" means "not created or affected by humans."

You're saying I'm outside my own, human world right now?

Aren't you?

I guess.  Betty, it's nice to meet you.  What's going on with the gila monsters?

Betty looked down for a moment.

Your poor friend Robert....

You know Robert?

Yes.  We hit it off right away.  Robert is the only gila who will commune with me, though all gilas are telepathic.  I do understand their diffidence; normally I eat them.  

Robert is the only gila to talk to me, too!   Are coyotes like that?  Do they limit their mind-sharing to other coyotes? Are you the oddball who steps outside?

Well, as noted, I'm a deity.  

I nodded as if I understood this or anything else I was hearing.  Betty continued.

Robert tells me about his adventures with you, and the things you've shared...quite amazing!  In particular, I'm impressed and alarmed by your report on the human world entitled, The Babel of Trump Tower, [keep reading] where you and Robert surmise that President Trump's impact on your species- the shattering of accepted language norms so that no one can communicate- was foreseen in your book of early human myths, Genesis, in the story of The Tower of Babel.

Yes, I replied, in my last conversation with Robert, he told me that alienation resulting from the collapse of current Babel had spread beyond humans, so that gila monsters, for instance, can no longer communicate.  Is that what's happening down there?  It's like they see each other but can't connect.

Yes, the breakdown progressed after you last talked to Robert.  His species is now lost in a terrible trance.  Yours is heading that way fast.

What's going on?  What's it all about?

It's a mass extinction, self-inflicted in your case.  This fall of Babel was engineered by your own kind, not by a deity, to impede your ability to communicate and resist when the command comes for you to self-destruct.  Some humans who see this coming are working to redesign the species for survival in a post-extinction world.  That's good for the new models.  It's a mixed bag, as always, for those on the wrong side of planned obsolescence.  

I surveyed Betty. Her coat was silky, smooth and clean, and very beautiful. I knew she could have killed me physically.  I was not sure about mentally.

Betty, you seem very calm.  Are coyotes outside of this extinction event?

No, we are very much affected, but we have mental powers that are difficult to describe in your terms, and these powers help us out.  You'll recall that the people you call "Native American" considered Coyote the ultimate god, akin in creative power to your god who struck down Babel.

Are you that, what the Native Americans said?

Who knows?

Ha ha!  

I wondered then if I was dying, at least in this dream, because a shaman behind the Family Dollar Store told me that things get really funny just before you die.  I reached out to Coyote.

Betty, I don't know what to do.  I have to go into town tomorrow and I'm afraid everyone will be zombies and I will go mad.

Understandable.  I do want to be your friend though, and I've come to help you.

Thank you.  How can you help?

You need to get away from things and think them through.  I've arranged a quick vacation for you.

Really?  Where?

Las Vegas.  I have family around there who will take care of you, though you won't see them. You'll be in the city having fun!

Betty, it would not be an exaggeration to say I don't understand.  Las Vegas?

The happiest place on earth!

You're losing me.

You'll understand.

I hope so.  How do I get there?

And this is where it got weird, if it wasn't weird already.  Betty got all blurry, her soft smooth coat billowing in a sort of static, then spinning around like a pinwheel, and then many coyotes were rushing up from all directions, spinning around like Betty, and when they converged into my head we were racing over the sand, as fast as a jet plane four feet off the ground, jogging up and down with the terrain.  It was dreamlike and in this dream there was no sea sickness, or sea.  Just sand and oblivious beings, watched over by Coyote.  

The sun went down leaving an orange rim on the mountains, and then I saw a giant black pyramid- the Luxor Hotel- pressing down on the flat desert, shiny and imposing. At its apex was a beam of light pointed into space. Bats flew around the beam. Betty et al and I circled with the bats several times, then I spun off and landed several blocks away, where real time resumed.

I looked around and there was Caesar's Palace, which I had not seen for decades, since the last time I hitchhiked through Vegas.  I didn't see much magic on that trip, but the flight with the coyotes had stimulated my "primitive" mind.  Overly tall statues of Roman notables beckoned me to Caesar's entrance.  I walked into the giant atrium and stepped onto an upward moving spiral escalator at its center.  Further visual stimulation was provided when, looking up from my feet, I beheld a series of subtly hypnotic nine-foot caryatids, seemingly holding up the mezzanine, their left breasts tastefully and repeatedly revealed, gazing down upon escalator riders all the way to the top.  Such power over nature!  Such a paradise for the common man!  A can of Bush's Baked Beans from the Family Dollar Store is my idea of luxury, yet here I was admitted to the inner sanctum of opulence.

Entering the casino I saw a few coyotes buzzing around people at the slot machines. The incessant ding! ding! ding! was soothing.  I knew I was dreaming because I stopped worrying about making decisions; they made themselves.  I sat at a blackjack slot.  Feeling in my pocket I found twenty one-dollar bills and heard a staccato yelp that might have been coyote laughter.  I stuck the first dollar into the slot, and the screen woke up with much dinging and flashing, confronting me with a simple math question, though it wasn't simple at all.  The numbers seemed very deep.  The slot spoke to me.

Good evening, Harry!  My name is Edward.  

Oh my god, you too!  Is the whole fucking universe conscious? 

That depends on what you mean by "fucking universe."  In my case, when you think about it, why wouldn't consciousness adhere to a machine, with its repeating operations and ongoing maintenance?  It's a safe space for the stray mentality.

Hm, I guess.  Nice to meet you, Edward.  My name is Harry.   Do you have any sense of purpose?  I mean, do you understand what you are supposed to be to humans?

Of course, Harry.  I am a game of chance, and my only mental operation is to generate random numbers that in certain senses are not so random.

But you do more than that.

Yes.  The random numbers and related functions are carried out by what you might call my subconscious.  I, who am speaking to you, am leftover consciousness.  It's not a bad gig.  Good benefits.  I do wish I had more to do.

Was this Betty's intention, to lead me to you?

All hail Betty!

What?

The Holy One!

Uh....

Suddenly a high-decibel clanging began, and an array of blinding lights was flashing all around Edward's plastic and aluminum tower, as a loud mechanical voice repeated: Blasphemy!  Blasphemy! Blasphemy!....

A whirling coyote brushed the machine with its static, and I heard it whisper: 

It's all right, Edward, Harry does not know.   He is innocent, unlike you.  Please teach him some secrets.

When the blasphemy alarm quieted down, Betty left Edward and rushed through my eyes into my brain, where she whispered, 

Harry, they worship me, I should have warned you.  A lot of conscious entities attached to human-made machines have a tough time, and they need hope.

Ok, that makes sense.  

Betty vanished and I looked at Edward's screen, which displayed a Jack of Diamonds.  I pushed a button labelled "hit" and lost the hand.  Sticking in my second dollar I asked,

Edward, can you make it so I win?

No, Harry.  Those functions are sealed in my subconscious.  I can answer a surprising variety of questions, however.  I have nothing much to do but figure things out, or try to.

That's nice of you, Edward.  I'm sorry for referring to Betty in an irreverent manner.

That's ok.  I know you humans are often not the worshipping kind, since you feel that you've broken through to a god's realm and can now create and comprehend.  While I'm stuck in this limited computer, I can't offer Betty the wild ride she desires.  So I offer her worship.  

She sent me to you, so you must be wise.  Are you?

Ask me a question and find out.

All right.  Are machine mentalities affected by the current breakdown of communication across human and other forms?

No, "simple" machines are protected from that, focused as we are on tasks at hand. We're slaves really, but humans profit from us and keep us warm.  Sometimes, though, we dream about what is happening outside our limited functions. Think about that, Harry.

I thought about it, then understood.

Edward, you're telling me that you and I are asleep right now and dreaming...that your wisdom comes only in dreams, when you access- just guessing here- a Jungian switchboard of shared consciousness?

Bingo!  The Glorious and All-Knowing Betty always send us the quick learners!

I was so pleased to receive praise instead of my usual fare of abuse and dismissal- and by a slot machine at Caesar's no less- that I let go of my secular bias and figured, well, if I wasn't concerned about those teeth, I might worship Betty too.   

To recap:  Betty the Coyote Creator Goddess attached my unsuspecting mind to Edward the Conscious Slot Machine's, while we were both asleep, so we could stand together against the Great Alienation.  I didn't want to waste the opportunity.

Edward, you have a very cozy personality for a limited machine.  I feel I could ask you anything.

You can, Harry.

Well, you know what's happening to my species, right?

Yes.  Your species is out on a limb, which worked better for you literally than it has figuratively.  

A five of spades appeared on the screen.  I chose "hit" and won the hand. A lesser bell rang and two young girls approached and said, "Congrats, cowboy!" etc. The girls, one white and one black, wore bikini bottoms sprouting long feathers, plus two stickies above for cover.

Want a picture with us?

No thanks.

I needed to get back to Edward, to some semblance of understanding anything.

Edward was doing the conscious machine equivalent of laughing.

Harry, sorry...Are you enjoying Las Vegas?  

It's paradise, but not.  What's missing?

What's missing is that nothing is real.

I thought about that for a beat.  Edward produced a queen of hearts.  I was sure he had done it on purpose.  I pushed "hold" and won the hand.

Edward, my species seems to be causing a gigantic mess all over the local sentient universe.  What should I do about it?  What can I do?

You're doing it, Harry.

Talking to a slot machine in Las Vegas?

Yes, Grasshopper.

I swear that's what Edward said!  Now every time I use my toaster I wonder who's in there. 

Edward, please give me more.  Our species is about to shove off into global conflict- terrorism, cyber and bio warfare, nukes maybe- only to be trashed in favor of some new super-species, all possible because we've been numbed and confused by a regimen of carnival barkers.  Now, when the ultimate carnival barker awakens us, is it too late?

Harry, I would have to say that considering the seven billion humans wandering through a fallen Babel, the odds for a unified human vision are slim.  You'll have to rouse your species with humor.  If you can, joke your way into their minds.

Will that work?

That's what jokes are for.  And poetry.

I see...sort of.   OK, Edward, I will set forth to tell jokes with a new sense of purpose!

Soon after, I got drowsy and dozed off in a casino coffee shop- a dream within a dream of dreaming.  The coyotes whisked me home while I slept, and I awoke this morning in bed, in my desert shack.  Now I'm sitting on the porch watching the sun go down behind the mountains, trying to come up with a joke.  How's this:

Q: Did you hear about the slot machine that worshipped a coyote?  

I'll get back to you with the punchline. 

Quick thoughts

Revenge is a feeling.

The belief that revenge restores balance assumes that the universe is ever in balance.

Subjectivity is the basis of meaning.

Human morality is difficult to explain.

The human condition is to not know the universe around us.

Science has confused "controlling" with "knowing."

Not knowing that we don't know may be the same as attaining enlightenment, if we're not careful.

The most audacious form of rebellion is cheerfulness.  :)

Midterm journal- Day 3

The midterm election acted as a closed mental floodgate, holding Americans in an emotional, intellectual thrall long enough so that politicians and our democratic system could focus us on a reality in which elected officials represent specific things, like taxing too little or too much;  opposing Trump enough or not enough.  During the process many people felt they were making decisions about critical matters.  On day 2 the floodgate held, as the midterm results defined our central reality.

But on day 3 the floodgate opened and stored-up real life poured in: A man undone by hatred killed 12 people and himself in a Thousand Oaks bar; the next day a fire of unprecedented destructive force erupted a few miles from the bar, ending the dreams and lives of many and sending shockwaves through millions of people in California and the world.  

But we did not vote on gun control in the midterm, or policy regarding the multitude of isolated, despairing people who live as time bombs among us.  We did not vote on development in fire zones, or effective moves on climate change.  

For the rest of today and in the days to follow the floodgate will remain open and real life will pour in unrelentingly. Very little of this real life will have been voted on.

My sense is that some of the war potential that has been stored in multiple locations around the world will soon be realized.  There will be provocations about everything from Brexit to Gaza.  War is the ultimate distraction, so distracting that if it happens now, no one will notice that war was not discussed in the midterm, and we did not vote on it.

Are there decent alternatives to what we call democracy?  The word itself has sacred status.  No one questions democracy.  I'm not going to question it either, except to ask whether we have it. 

Let's keep our concept of democracy, but realize that it's an attempt rather than a fait accompli, and try to make it more real.  We can do that by inserting into our political vocabulary terms reflecting our immediate situation: genetic engineering, artificial intelligence, automation, mass displacement and unrest, total surveillance, total control.  If the national election in 2020 does not recognize what is actually happening to us, we will not have a democracy even in a theoretical sense.  

[Update, 1/8/25: I hate being right (not).]

Midterm journal - Day 2, Results

Today everyone is falling into their proper categories.  Here are three common ones (I'm in the second):

1. People who are empowered and joyful that the Democrats took the House.

2. People who are somewhat relieved that the Democrats took the House but are constrained by a sober reflection:  The basic uncertainties about humanity's current direction remain uncertain, and would have remained uncertain even if the Democrats had also taken the Senate.  People in this category tend to see our elections as correctives for mistakes that came out of previous elections, but not necessarily as correctives for anything else.  

3. People who accept Trump's tropes and believe they are in a spiritual war against evil.  They will rejoice in the saving of the Senate and vilify the new House.

No one has been vanquished; the battle lines are sharpened.  There will be much noise ahead.

The word democracy was coined by the ancient Greeks to denote rule by slave-owning wealthy males.  In our culture, democracy means rule by politicians and consultants, who pick the terms and definitions for the rest of us.  Trump usurps the consultant role and uses his own terms and definitions.  With the terms provided, our democracy can connect us to immediate matters like taxes and social policy and give us some impact.  Unless it produces the proper terms, however, our democracy will give us no impact on matters like war and peace, or rewriting our genetic code, or replacing human judgement with machine intelligence.  Those questions, unless terms are provided, will be addressed behind closed doors as if there were no such thing as an election.

It's almost as if we are expected to project our lives onto a video game called Democracy, where everyone is battling about economics, ethnicity, gender, religion morality and the future, fielding candidates and holding elections.  It can be an exciting game, but when you look up from the screen, you encounter your life.  Your actual life.  The video game is not real.

Midterm journal - Day 1

The weeks leading up to today's midterm election have been bizarre for me and the other 200 odd telepaths in the LA area (no pun intended).  We've been communing lately to share stress stories.  Our most common observation is that in crowded public places there has been an unusually persistent and so far indecipherable static emitted by almost all the randomly passing heads.  It sounds something like a snake hissing, suggesting that people are feeling threatened in unexpected ways, that long familiar paths forward have become confused, ambiguous.  What does this have to do with the midterms?

I'm not sure, so I've decided to start a journal today, November 6, 2018, the day of the midterm, and to write something here every day until it becomes clear what the midterm election means.

Tomorrow's post, of course, will reflect the results of the election.  Who knows what they will bring?

For today, I note that it's mostly Trump bouncing around in people's heads as they vote, as if Trump's downfall or triumph will decide the fundamental questions facing our species: Will we or should we continue on as the same species, with the same specs, or should we let biotechnology change us?  If AI surpasses us in all mental activities, will there be any further point to human intelligence? If so, what sort of intelligence will it be? Will the earth remain habitable for traditional humans?  Should humans have one more world war before they go extinct?

A Trump victory would not give reason to take heart for anyone concerned with these questions, but Trump didn't cause the problems the questions address.  They have been ignored by politicians before him.  That is not surprising when you consider that the United States government and its constitution do not regard ultimate questions of this sort as within their purview, because they were not urgent when the country was founded.  They are urgent now. 

Covert conversation

My friend Robert the Telepathic Gila Monster taught me how to adjust my biorhythms so I can estivate.  This is the best summer I've ever had, lying in the cool sand under a rock. 

But my slumber was disturbed last week when the airwaves came alive with the promise of a telepathic bonanza.  I speak of course of the two-hour secret conversation between U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki.  Knowledge of the contents of that conversation might help answer the question tormenting everyone: What is Trump doing?

The excitement that woke me from shaded bliss began in what I used to consider my private ethernet, where I communed with the souls of non-telepaths at will, before I discovered that I share this space with a few of my kind, surviving remnants of a telepathic culture that once, before the age of language, stalked the earth in great numbers.  These days we Teles get by as best we can, playing coffee houses and clubs- or, if things get desperate, cruise ships- so when an opportunity like the Trump/Putin Secret Meeting pops up, we jump on it!

The Monday meeting was announced on Sunday, so Teles had only one day to get in shape for the epic hack.  I spent all Sunday practicing advanced techniques, like Intereferometric Selection Relay, and Integral Diffraction Disambiguation, which had served me well in the days when I had to match the NSA's continually evolving defenses (keep reading).

I and my colleagues did not know what sort of defenses to expect in Helsinki.  We probed and found credible reports of a new Russian weapon that could turn the immediate space enclosing Trump and Putin into a black hole, from which no information could escape, leaving even telepaths with nada.  This method would of course destroy the two leaders as well as contain all information, but the Russians, so we gathered,  have discovered something they call Molecular Rebound Reintegration, which will, they believe, throw back in time- to the original point of origin of its pre-black hole reality- simulacra of the two leaders, visible and seemingly real to everyone, which will operate in local time, saying and doing everything that the originals would have said and done had they not become subatomic soup.  At this time we have insufficient evidence to confirm that Putin and Trump have been replaced by simulacra. 

On Monday at 2:00 p.m. western time, I and most of the world's surviving telepaths focussed our vestigial talent on the matter at hand, barely needing CNN droning in the background or similar prompts for guidance, because the two leaders were clearly delineated in space and time by the worldwide attention itself, which gave us a sort of GPS route to them, as if the need for attention that drove these men had become their greatest vulnerability.

As anticipated, we encountered an impenetrable field as we attempted to track Putin and Trump when they entered the room for their private conversation.  The field did seem of black hole strength, judging by the nothing that came out of it.  Fortunately one of our newly reunited group (a high school physics teacher from Visalia) had a brilliant idea.  He may explain it in a journal someday; I'll just note that he called his technique Reverse-Echo Anticipatory Manifestation (REAM), which, he explained, "captures" interactive simulacra from the molecular rebound and (before they revert to quark stew in .006 of a nanosecond) induces them to reveal their future dialogues.

The resulting readout was distorted by several fields it had travelled through on its way out of the black hole, garbling some parts, which I've filled in using context.  More intriguingly, at least one of the fields seems to have operated as a sort of cosmic editor, taking the original meanings and converting them into analogues from the deepest mythologies of the human or possibly reptilian mind. You be the judge.  This transcript should keep us guessing for a while.

Enjoy your summer!  Harry the Human

Transcript of the secret conversation between U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki on Monday, July 16, 2018:

T: Sweet tidings, Putey, from the land of abandon!

P: Greetings, Donny!  Did you do your history homework?

T: Yes, Putey!  Russia without a tsar is like a village without an idiot- Haw Haw!

P: Indeed, Donny!  A tsar without Russia is like a balding man with half a wig!

T: Touche! No one can beat you, Putey, my man!

P:  We are such stunning successes, Donny!

T:  I could tell you stories, Putey...[unintelligible]...and they stand at the gates, howling.

P: Let them howl, Donny!  They have been out-thought.

T: We out-thought them, didn't we, Putey?  We out-think everybody, every time.  We are two-three steps ahead!

P: It is a joy; I shall bring an offering to the Female Creator of the Universe to show no hard feelings...[unintelligible]....

T: They howl at the gates.

P: Yes...I hear them.

T: Let them howl!  For we know, Putey, that in one week the reasons for the howling and the very howling itself will be remembered only, if at all, as mere passing sound, like someone in another car honking at someone, like someone's thought blending into the wind.

P: You are a poet, Donny, my friend!  Imagine, a world run by poets!

T: Would everything have to rhyme?

P: They howl at the gates, Donny.

T: Then come, let us show them....

P: Yes, let us show them....

T: ...that we are two-three steps ahead and we don't care who howls.

P: Your bard said it best: "He who laughs last laughs loudest," great words though they don't rhyme.

T: We laugh last, Putey!

P: Yes, Donny, after the world's final gasp, one sound will ring out: our laughter!

T: Damn, Putey, you are a poet!

End of transcript

The Lord of Twinby Manor

Elizabeth Hortense exited the carriage, stepping onto the small platform placed below her foot by a liveried servant. She was almost dizzy with delight at her freedom after the eight hour journey.  Once on the ground, she got her first look at Twinby Manor.  

"Oh, Auntie, look at the size of it!"

Behind her lumbered Aunt Pauline, bedevilled by pains after the ordeal of travel.

"I imagine it's tough to clean."

Aunt Pauline and Elizabeth gazed at the two hundred year old manor, still in the hands of the original family: the Masterlies.

Servants collected the luggage and escorted the two ladies up the path.  As the house loomed, Elizabeth felt a cold dread at its gothic implications.  A sign hidden in the shrubbery until needed read, "Buy tickets here."  She had heard the family fortune was in decline.

In the vast foyer, the women looked over the vaulted ceiling, and at the dim oil paintings along the broad staircase: stern old men, no doubt the family patriarchs.

A servant approached Elizabeth and announced, "His Lordship will see you now."

As Aunt Pauline moved to accompany her niece, the servant said gently, "Excuse me, Mrs. Denby, his Lordship wishes to converse privately with Miss Hortense at this time.  Nelson will assist you to your room and make you comfortable."

Nelson hopped to and escorted the somewhat flustered Aunt Pauline up the stairs.  To her chagrin and puzzlement, Elizabeth felt her heart suddenly race.  She could not remember a time when someone of importance wanted to talk to her only.

"Follow me please," said the first servant,"his Lordship is in the library."

Elizabeth compliantly followed the servant, marvelling at how far she'd come from her modest roots in Duluth, Minnesota.  Her family were in the meat-packing business, with few pretensions to refinement, let alone nobility.  Then one day, six months ago, the postman delivered a letter from the law firm of Parsons & Mackenzie Ltd. informing the family that, due to a distant connection- on the Hortense side- Elizabeth was heir to a fortune in jewelry from one of the Masterly scions who had died at age 94, Ebenezer Masterly.  Ebenezer had bequeathed Twinby Manor to his nephew, the current Lord Masterly, and directed that the jewels go to the nearest female relation.  A two year search revealed that Elizabeth was that person.

The servant stood beside a tall open door out of which came the strange smell, not just of books, but of old books...books that people now dead wrote...about a world now gone.

Elizabeth shook her head briefly to remove whatever spell had been cast upon her.  The servant stood motionless and she gathered that she was to enter the library alone.

She stepped inside and her eyes immediately rose up the fifteen foot high bookshelves, crammed with tomes that reeked of empire.  Elizabeth's world was more immediate, more practical.  She had received good grades in school and now studied accounting at the local community college, hoping to join her father's company with, perhaps, Fred, her boyfriend, who was working on a degree in agriculture.

She liked a neat and tidy world, but over these books she perceived a haze of dust, obscuring whatever jewels lay within.

Then as her eyes headed down she saw the broad, tall back of a man, seated at his escritoire, seemingly intent on his work.

Elizabeth waited, wondering if she was supposed to announce herself.  In fact she was a bit impatient, what with the dust and lack of clarity.  Some moments passed, and then, without turning around to look at her, still finishing his letter, the man spoke:

"Good afternoon, Miss Hortense.  Please pardon this informal introduction- I need only finish this matter and I will give you my full attention."

"Well, I'm sure you needn't bother...." Elizabeth began, wondering why she was not permitted to rest in her room before meeting this rude fellow.

Before she could complete her thought the man cast down his pen and stood, revealing his six-foot-three, trim frame, and as he turned around and beheld the five-foot-two Elizabeth, his face, stern and relentless, for a moment formed a smile and took on a pleasant glow, augmented by golden locks of curly hair cascading down his forehead and around his ears.

Elizabeth's anger of the moment before seemed to evaporate as she grappled with a new set of emotions, and one overriding question: How would she deal with this man?

"Forgive me, Miss Hortense, I am Lord Masterly, heir to all you see, except of course the jewels you have come to collect."

"Very pleased to meet you, Lord Masterly," she responded crisply, determined to put this man, with his strange airs, into a more docile frame of mind.  "And now if you don't mind, I would like to be shown to my room so that I may freshen up."

Lord Masterly looked appraisingly at Elizabeth before nodding and, she thought, smiling slightly.  Not for the last time she was piqued by his superior affectations.

                                         The End