The Universe's Mixer

A new round of posters and fliers came out days prior to the event, if just to serve as a friendly reminder or perhaps another purpose entirely.

Mrs. Coulter paced about the room with folded arms, wearing a capped sleeve forest green pencil dress. Time and time she would turn away and try to look at the venue with fresh eyes.

A carpeted meeting room good for 50 persons, rented from the The City Convention Center. Inside the room were curved rows of wooden cushioned chairs. A microphone stand situated at the middle. The arrangement was too functional than aesthetic. It seemed to promise hours of boredom, she herself would step out of it if she would. But she liked to believe that people would come, not because they had nothing else to do or for the free food. They would come because they would be curious. They would come because they needed to know once and for all, she told herself. Anyhow, the lights were bright, the air was cool and the chairs seemed comfortable enough to be sat on for a long period of time should it come to that.

The thought of losing her first venue still disappointed her. She still preferred it, a more calming and familiar space, one that would be conducive to discussions. Yet she had expected to be prevented of its use. By who and what, it was plainly obvious. Nothing else would outgrow that pitiful garden with such speed and only weeks before her convention. Mrs. Coulter shrugged it off, she was prepared with her fall back plans no matter how regretful they'd end up to be. She would have her society come together, even in a broom closet. Her organization, one that she named in the true spirit of her world: the Society for Metropolitan Studies.

Meanwhile, the golden monkey was more interested with the long table behind the room, which contained what the invitation promised: tea cups, tea pitchers, and layers of cakes, biscuits, among other pastry snacks. It had caught Eames’s attention, too. As he nudged the biscuits back into neat circles with the bourbon cream he’d pilfered, he flashed the monkey a quick and cheeky smile.

“Mr. Eames,” Mrs. Coulter’s silky voice echoed across the room, a reflective hand upon her chin, “I honestly do not feel like talking to a voice transmitter device. Do you think my voice is loud enough? I’d rather speak without aid.” She mused while her daemon growled at Eames.

"A microphone," corrected Eames. "And if you can fill this many seats-- well, I'll be surprised."

“Whatever,” Mrs. Coulter waved off. It was not the time for Eames’ vocabulary wars. Those things never end. “If it's only Chiba or whoever she thinks of parading around, so be it. I’m simply not used to settling for anything less.”

(Backdated before the Spring Masquerade and after this)

She had barely slept the night before, and had hardly taken a bite of food, but none of this slowed Mrs. Coulter down.

But if weariness she can shrug off, her uneasiness she could not. She would not be still, her speech would quicken and rise, until she would catch herself and attempt to be calm.

The golden monkey was another story altogether, he was a dark cloud in the midst of a thunderstorm. He wore an ugly grimace and was quite unsettled, easy to bare his sharp teeth and glower.

They arrived at the site where there was once a massive compound. A Church-funded experimental station that Mrs. Coulter herself had built in her world’s far North so its important work will be concealed. Mrs. Coulter should already be seeing an avenue of lights, at the end of which should be a high metal fence, leading to a row of connected low buildings.

But there was only a wide, flat, open space.

The golden monkey not gently leapt from his human's clutch to venture forth, and explore the second time around.

"I've walked this whole stretch of this land, and I found nothing." Mrs. Coulter said bitterly, facing her companion, "It's just gone, like a sand castle swept by the waves." Her eyes stared past the horizon, as far as her gaze could take her for an outline, a little sign, or a little interruption of that vacantness. "Not an evidence of debris, or a show of force, it was siphoned like a small thing. Like it never existed!"

He had his hands in his pockets, where he ran the flat of his thumb over the grooves of a poker chip, a habit of his which kicked up when the City was up to its tricks. He looked at Mrs Coulter from the corner of his eye.

Eames had the style of one of her own world's gentlemen explorers-- the tailored tweeds, the Cathay linens and the fine wool sporting coats, even the blue-blooded Jordianian swagger-- and like them, he tended toward the metaphysical, although his was the language of the mind, not the divine. And like those learned gentlemen before him... Eames appeared to have no good advice for Mrs Coulter.

( “It might have moved,” he said, doubtfully. )