“So here we are again. Water. Mask. But you hear me clear as a belle.”
“So pretty here,” Baker Bloch deflects, emphasizing the so so much he shows up. “Oh… hello.”
“Hello,” Peter Soso says cheerfully to his side, just glad to be a part of the action again.
“Always someone between us, Baker Bloch,” she says in response to the manifestation. “And look. Now Prissy has arrived. Just because I said *that*.”
“Hello,” Prissy says daintily in her octave higher register. Both arrivals merpeople, both in love. Unlike Baker and Wheeler who are faking it at best. Instead (for them), a Prime Minister-Queen relationship, with no King involved. Unless Axis-Tropp counts. And I suppose he does, at least up to two.
“We’re back to square one,” Wheeler who is not a mermaid exudes, joined feet a false narrative. Likewise for the male Baker. “257.”
“We’re just off the coast of Alien Island and that is something to hold onto,” he says. “We’re on another lead. We’re still in the Wild–”
“Don’t say it,” she requests, thinking of Adam. And his own Eve. She postulates: Baker took over. About 2016 or 2017. About the time of the first third photo-novel. Passed the baton. That’s perhaps the only reason why we’re *here*, at this far point in The Pattern. On the Shoulders of Giants, she also ponders. Time to give something back.
“Someone else approaches,” topmost Prissy says, her head strangely merged with the surrounding kelp, weed in sea talk.
Just later:
“It looks like, sir,” Peter proclaims, “that you are still trapped in black, at least a byte.”
He took my hat! Baker thinks instead of correcting him with “bit.”
Sunklands 