anthonystclair
He was smiling as he did it, she thought, anger and disgust flooding her. Through the camera she looked, twisting a dial to change the aperture.
"Bet you never thought anyone would see you doing this," she said softly, then snapped the picture.
"But who is he?"
"He's just himself."
"Come on, a man like that, he must have known command, leadership. Colonel, general, admiral, boss, mayor, king, come on, what?"
"He has no title. None who he leads know that he leads. That is why he is so effective."
"You may have to improv," she said, trying not to look down.
"Surely it's not that strange a situation," he replied.
"I'll grant you that you're probably not the first person to try to cross a border while not wearing pants," she said. "But completely naked? I'm pretty sure that's a new one."
"You don't think they'll give me a visa?"
"I don't think you'll like where they stamp you."
The little hollow cube shouldn't have been so heavy. There was no mechanism to open it, no crack or seam to suggest that it had been assembled. The cube was as natural as the sun, not made but there. It was hollow, but something was inside.
And it wanted out.
The motorcycle stood at the edge of the cliff.
Meanwhile, the guru looked up from his desk in his high tower in London.
The woman took off her helmet and stared north.
The guru shuddered.
The woman started the engine. It's a long way from Tibet to England, she thought, but I'm coming for you.
She stood on the peaty ground, staring out over the dim, misty morning. It should have been silent. It should have been a peaceful morning, full of tea and a crossword puzzle.
But she stared harder, waited, and at last, she saw it. Plumes rose from the worn dirt track leading to the hostel. The motorcycle sped up.
Great, she thought. So much for peaceful.
There was no sense to it, at least, not after ten pints of black, black stout. The geometric gentleness of the lacy foam fell, clinging to the insides of the glass, but it never went away.
The foam slid down the glass, and across the glass, even up the glass, and finally, at last, it made sense.
The foam had formed letters, and he realized there was a message in his beer. "Help me," it said.
The shape always baffled her. Cut yet pure, the edges both precise yet so organic they only could have happened over millions of years. The light shone through the blue-green stone, and geometric patterns twinkled on her hand.
"Do you know what it is?" she asked.
He smiled. "Imagine compressing the sun into something so small you could hold it in your hand." He closed her fingers around the stone. "This is a million times more powerful."
"I'll have a typhoon," she said.
He looked up from the glasses and bottles, and smiled.
"What could a woman like you possibly want with a drink like that?"
"It has nothing to do with the drink. It has everything to do with the effect."
"You know you have to sign a waiver first, right?"
She smiled back. "You may want to sign one too."
It wasn't a kitchen. It was the aftermath of a typhoon. Milk pooled on the floor from beneath the toppled fridge. The kettle was stuck on a blade of the ceiling fan. A slice of bread had broken the window.
She shook her head. "No more free kegs," she said.
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