“Thanks for coming over from Wendy to meet with me, Wheeler. I know you’re mighty busy over there.”
“I am (!).”
“Anyway, I see you brought your bodyguards.”
Wheeler looks at one Eighty-eight at the table in front of her, and then glances over her shoulder at the second one sitting at the table behind. “They’re still needed,” she summarizes. “176,” she totals up.
“Fascinating,” says Baker Bloch, still in sarcasm mode. They have important business to discuss tonight and better get down to it. Baker has been waiting for over 30 minutes now while Wheeler lounges about the castle library. I thought we were done with all that. He condenses these observations and says them aloud for her.
“Yeah, not quite (about the library). We have more issues to work through.” She looks around again, quicker this time. “But good we are in Ontario. I sent Dickie Doom over. He is my (original) burger.”
“You… as Wendy.”
“Yeah.”
Baker looks down at his hands through the grated table. “Center Point,” he blurts out.
“Yeah?” Wheeler waits for more, hands still in lap. Her food and drink are getting cold.
“It doesn’t come up in the Oracle. The one in Kentucky, probably the most important one. It brings to question…”
“… the Oracle itself, its veracity,” she finishes for Baker Bloch. Because they are one beneath it all as well. Just like Baker Blinker and Baker Bloch. Just like *all* the cores. There is no real separation from The One. In the end.
He produces the tic tac toe board from his inventory; is kind of irritated that Wheeler doesn’t move her dinner tray so it can be positioned more in the center of the table itself.
“So this is the game, Wheeler. Who moves first, what moves second? We don’t know. But *whoever* it is, they win.”
Wheeler takes a sip of her coffee, takes a bite of her plumeria sandwich, getting under Baker’s skin again. He doesn’t like people eating when he’s explaining something and Wheeler knows it. “This is,” she says with mouth full and muffled speech, “Collagesity.”
(to be continued)
