Eta, developing an interesting idea for what to serve her friend, proposes that she find something to do while good stuff happens.
"Hmm.. I have an idea. But cooking this might take a while. You might want to do something else while I cook, like trying some magic. Or maybe eat some pineapple to sate your appetite if you're really hungry. Just warn me if you're going to try shooting something. Maybe you could prop up the mattress and use it as a target? You know, since we won't be sleeping here. At least not for the near future," she says, and Lois shrugs, wandering off to another corner of the apartment and lighting a match.
Now that Lois is appropriately distracted, Eta gets to work, preparing a variety of dishes all at once. The fish and peas she starts with, though she finds that she'd probably have an easier time of this if she had soaked the peas beforehand, but what can you do. As it is, it's pretty slow going, so Eta immediately begins preparing a salad, mixing roughly equal proportions of greens, tomatoes, peppers, canned tuna, vinegar and cooking oil and working the result over with an egg beater to what may or may not be perfection, given the materials.
While the peas are still not boiling, she adds some interesting types of bread and cheese, both of which she happens to have stocked plenty of for exactly this sort of occasion, and lets the cheese warm up for serving. Meanwhile, she returns to the fish, a rather large sort of herring, and quickly gets the good bits out with a knife and plops them on a well-oiled frying pan, achieving a result of some well-done fish bits in no time at all. Loading all of them on a plate, she notices that the peas still don't seem to be boiling, though this probably isn't all that much of a problem, right?
* * * * *
John is alarmed, but intrigued by this sound! Could it lead to good things, mayhap?
"Whoa Nelly, that sounds like the sound that sounds when something important happens!" he says sensibly, and looks at Bernski's - looks like they've got a broken window, by the way, looks kind of nasty - John wanders up to it and looks inside, and finds that he can see inside quite well! And indeed, somebody now appears to be inside - a man of about his age, with messy blond hair and a gray windbreaker, sitting around in a booth a little nervously. John hollers at him to check if that's who he might be looking for.
"Hey, you James?" he shouts through the hole in the window, trying most intently to say it clearly and trip over his own words. The man looks at him dully for a second, then nods.
"Yeah... I'm James, yes," he says.
"Great! Fantastic!" John replies, and stumbles into the diner, shuffling along until he's reached the man, at which point he nearly collapses into the seat opposite him and leans forward like a less drunk man would on a date.
"So... uh... yeah," he says, and James doesn't seem quite sure what to make of this.
"Uhm... do you know what's going on around here?" he asks after a moment, looking around the place.
* * * * *
Larry, in his time, has seen TV documentaries about giant bird things with disemboweling claws, and has plenty of personal experience with potato vortexes, all of it either bad or at least something he wouldn't care much to repeat. So he has but one word for all of this.
"NOPE," he says firmly, and returns to the mortal world entirely. Oddly, just as he does so, the portal closes. Larry wonders if he didn't just narrowly avoid being cut in half, or whether the portal was just feeling polite today. Though he is not willing to ponder this for very long, as he has more pertinent metaphysical quandaries to actually get good answers to.
"So uh... how would one get to these heavens?" he asks of his blessing hand, which immediately answers despite not even being in heaven anymore.
"Well, to be honest, you're well on your way already. Don't let people tell you what to do, do what seems right after a bit of thinking, make choices on your own, think twice about following your heart when there's cooler impulses to take advantage of, don't be a slave, think and spread knowledge and general awesomeness! Those are the key ideas at work, pretty much. You usually need to die before you go to one of these heavens, but there's also alternatives. Ascension! Exaltation! Apotheosis! That kind of thing, pretty much."
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Topic: The Forgotten Art: Approaching the Nexus (Read 256967 times)