Wonderment Pilot - Porcelain Gotcha

An invigorating morning . . .

A bugle blared crisply at 5:00 AM. Ignatius Wonderment blinked his crusty eyes, rolled out of silk sheets, and stared in utter bemusement at the beautiful Puerto Rican woman who had been lying next to him. As she slept, her long black hair lay in a dark halo on the bed; beneath it, on the side of her neck, a minimalist tattoo of a wild boar was just visible.

“Coffee,” her lips, which still clung to last night’s smudged rouge, begged inaudibly.

“Indeed,” Wonderment replied. He stomped out of the bedroom, grumbling.

The coffee maker was clearly expensive. Chromed to excess. The sacrifice of functionality for atmospheric effect, a sacrifice shared by most furnishings in his suite on the resort’s west side. The kind of device a true bon vivant would admire from a distance while calling room service to deliver coffee. Wonderment slotted one of those plastic coffee pods into its holster and brought down the latch, imagining himself loading a WWI-era artillery cannon. Oily brew dribbled disappointingly into his cup.

While he sipped from his bitter chalice, Wonderment donned a light blue suit of Italian wool, perfect for summer. It had cost him €930, but since Wonderment didn’t believe in fiat currencies, it had cost him nothing.

As he left his suite, he ran smack into a bellhop in a red uniform, delivering the last 15 crates of his luggage on a series of carts lashed together with bungee cords.

“What’s the deal, lad?” Wonderment asked him. “Why the 5:00 AM wakeup call?”

The boy stammered, “Well, back in 1953, the resort’s founder, that would be Dr. Cornelius Anglewood, who I might add was remarkably fond of physical fitness, believed that morning air had invigorating properties that could loosen the humors and sharpen the teeth . . . if you catch my drift.”

“I’m not sure I do,” replied Wonderment. His thoughts drifted back to the woman asleep in his room. He couldn’t remember anything about her or how she had gotten there.

“Well, my drift is as follows,” the boy in the red uniform continued, “historically, in the morning, the men would engage in lively activities to improve their stoutness. Hikes through the forest, water polo, or the good old medicine ball toss.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” answered Wonderment, “but why the bugle?”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” the bellhop replied. “You wouldn’t be man enough for a 5:00 AM medicine ball sesh anyway. Let me explain the bugle. In 1953, Dr. Cornelius Anglewood set about the purchase of a plot of land for the invigoration of . . .”

“Never mind. I don’t care.” Wonderment interrupted. “Did you just question my masculinity?”

“Not intentionally, sir!” The bellhop continued, “Unless you consider my assertion that you wouldn’t be willing or able to engage in a bit of morning aerobics an affront to your self-image?”

“Are you kidding?” Wonderment asked. He towered above the boy, six foot three, 240lbs of impeccably dressed lean muscle.

“Not kidding, sir!” The boy replied, growing slightly flush. “I’m just speaking in terms of probabilities. Most male guests don’t complete Sergeant Drafus’s morning activities.”

“But you said,” Wonderment retorted, “oh, forget it.”

“He’s in the courtyard if you’d like to test your mettle,” the annoying boy chided.

Wonderment flipped him the bird and started walking off.

“Oh, you didn’t tip!” The boy called after him.

“The woman in my room,” Wonderment shouted over his shoulder, “she’s got it.”

Wonderment squared his shoulders and marched in whatever direction seemed most promising. His general life philosophy was simple: he never walked away from a challenge, and he did whatever the hell he wanted. As usual, his directional assumption was correct. The corridor led him directly into the courtyard.

A short, burly man in military fatigues waited there. The space was in an Arabesque style, with pillars surrounding an interior open to the sky, with an iwam on one side. Small, perfectly spherical, luminous white stones covered the ground around a central pool. A knee-high wall, emblazoned with mosaics matching those of the central pool, connected the pillars and defined the courtyard interior. Not a single tessera was missing. As Wonderment inspected the beautiful designs, a cross between a ball and a sack, dull-white and obviously heavy, came hurtling toward him. He caught the thing and had to take a step back because of its momentum.

“Oof,” he coughed.

“You’ll give me six hundred squat-presses,” the short man screamed to Wonderment.

“And if I don’t?” Wonderment asked in a groggy, increasingly annoyed tone as he carried the medicine ball into the courtyard.

The man, whom Wonderment correctly assumed was Sergeant Drafus, narrowed his eyes and marched straight toward Wonderment. When their chests were touching, Drafus whispered, “You are a man, aren’t you?”

Immediately, Wonderment squatted, touched the ball to the ground, and then stood, lifting it overhead. He repeated this motion five times and realized the activity required tremendous effort. He slipped off his suit jacket and hung it over the low wall before continuing the exercise. After twenty repetitions, he was breathing heavily. During another pause, Wonderment unbuttoned his collar.

“Pop that top off, maggot!” Sergeant Drafus bellowed.

The sun was rising, and the courtyard was growing hot. Wonderment assumed the heat was of his own making, but in fact it was due to the region’s warm climate.

Just as he was complying with Drafus’s order, he heard a second voice with a thick Irish accent.

“What in St. Bernard’s blasphemous boudoir are ya doing, Wonderment?” It cried. Wonderment turned.

“Conor Rafferty,” Wonderment exclaimed, “Chum! How have you been?”

In their younger days, the pair had led several arctic expeditions in search of the mythical Pan-Arctic Misplaced Inventory & Petty Cash Reserves. These endeavors did not bear fruit, but the biting hyperborean gales and days of inky night had forged a lasting friendship.

“I’ve been involved in a minor coup,” Rafferty announced with pride, “I’ll explain it later.”

They negotiated with Sergeant Drafus until the 600 squat-presses were distributed evenly between them and then polished off their strange exercise session in just over an hour. Still panting like midsummer hounds, they were led to a table near a terraced swimming pool. Two familiar men were waiting for them under a cabana, sipping mimosas.

Charles Benedict wore a gray cotton suitcoat over a silk shirt in royal purple. He stood urgently as the two approached.

“Wonderment,” his words tripped over themselves, “are you alright?”

“Yes,” Wonderment answered as he collapsed into an open seat, “I’m . . . invigorated.”

Rafferty gave the second man, Arjun Mehra, a COVID-era elbow bump.

“No, seriously,” Charles continued, “you’re unharmed? I wasn’t sure I’d reach you in time. They’ve just . . .”

As a waiter arrived, the woman who had slept in Wonderment’s bed, who had refused to tip the bellhop, and who had taken up a position on a poolside lounge chair, then delivered a silent dart into Charles’s neck using a blowgun. No one noticed. They proceeded with their breakfast order.

“Good morning,” Arjun began cheerfully, his tone as polished as the gleaming cutlery, “I’ll have the lobster-and-gruyère omelette, a tin of Beluga caviar on buckwheat blinis with crème fraîche, half a pink grapefruit brûlée, and a small basket of viennoiserie if your baker is feeling confident. Fresh-squeezed orange juice, a bottle of the house champagne, then a cappuccino with a single leaf of gold because it’s Tuesday.”

“Very good,” the waiter replied.

Rafferty launched gruffly, “Steel-cut oats with almond butter, blueberries, and a pinch of flaky salt. Six soft-scrambled egg whites, one whole egg for dignity. Whole-grain toast, a lot, no butter. A cup, nay, a carafe of black coffee. Oh, and if you have some pickle juice, bring that.”

“I’ll have the same,” Wonderment added nonchalantly.

The waiter, annoyance gliding across his face faster than his pen across the guest check, turned to Charles. Charles’s head bobbed slightly, but he spoke, “I shall take the Grand Continental, no no, the Imper . . . the, the one with the little jars. Jam. All the jams. Eggs Benedict but, with, the hats. No, the caps? Capers! Yes. And . . . and . . . a side of . . . napkins, heated.”

The waiter did not ask for clarification.

“So, what were you saying?” Wonderment asked Charles, but Charles was staring into the sky with a look of strained, feverish concentration. Wonderment thought it best not to interrupt him. He was just about to ask Rafferty about the minor coup when Arjun nudged his shoulder.

“Say chap,” Arjun whispered to Wonderment, “that wouldn’t be Dr. Murray at the table behind you?”

Wonderment’s blood iced over.

“Be discreet,” Arjun advised.

Wonderment stretched one way in his chair, wringing sweat from his soaked shirt, and then twisted in the other direction and glanced. A man with shoulder-length silver hair clad in a tobacco suit sat with another man and two women. One of the women bore a striking resemblance to the Puerto Rican who had invaded his suite, and Wonderment would have sworn it was her, except she had a line tattoo depicting a chariot drawn by two cats. Wonderment’s glance evolved steadily into a stare, but it seemed as if the group was hellbent on ignoring them.

“Shit,” exhaled Wonderment as he whipped back around.

“You know that wasn’t stealthy, right?” Asked Arjun.

Dr. Murray, a famed anatomist and art collector, had become something of a perennial nemesis. He’d bested their expeditions and claimed the Pan-Arctic Misplaced Inventory & Petty Cash Reserves for his own. He’d also written a deliberately misleading volume on the history of the Mongolian Steppe that had caused Wonderment no small amount of distress. With the petty cash reserves and royalties, he’d opened an international chain of restaurants specializing in Italian-Okinawan fusion cuisine that also served as a complex crypto-laundering pool. His presence sent Wonderment into a suppressed panic.

Wonderment and his friends ate in silence, except Rafferty, who growled as he gulped an entire jar of pickle juice. The napkins were warm but soggy. They must have been steamed.

The waiter returned.

“Gentlemen,” he said, casting a disgusted look at Charles, who was busy squishing a boiled egg, “having completed Sergeant Drafus’s stoutness training, your reward is . . . as follows.”

The waiter paused for a very long time.

“You stroke out, bud?” Rafferty asked, breaking an awkward silence during which the only sound was an amazed gasp from Charles as the egg crumbled in his hand.

“No,” the waiter replied, “you have been awarded a complimentary visit to the resort’s spa.”

“As have you,” he said, turning to Wonderment.

“As have you,” Charles repeated back, “you beautiful gazelle.”

“Ignore him,” Rafferty said, casting a judgmental eye in Charles’s direction.

“I’m not off for several hours anyway,” the waiter answered, a confused smile lighting his countenance. “I will mention that each of your tickets includes one guest,” the waiter continued, “so it would be alright for your entire party to go together - free of charge.”

Roughly 20 minutes later, the stuffed men were sitting nude in a bubbling hot tub set at a comfy 40 °C. Charles was barely conscious, but his erratic wavering in and out of lucidity had become something of a fixture on their vacations, so the other three thought nothing of it.

“Wonderment,” Charles babbled, “they’ve activated the protocol for . . . ooo . . . these . . . bubbles.”

“Jesus, man,” Wonderment replied, “it’s more difficult to understand you than it is to catch a greased-up hog.”

“Chaps,” Arjun interjected, “your mention of hogs has just given me an idea.”

Wonderment and Rafferty turned to him. Charles sank deeper into the froth.

“Dr. Murray is in fact here, at this resort, with us,” Arjun continued, “no doubt here for the annual Integra Art Auction and Social Mixer.” Wonderment and Rafferty looked at him quizzically.

“Didn’t you read the brochure?” he asked. They said nothing.

“Wait, why did you even bother to book this trip?” Arjun remarked. Their silence persisted.

“Well, anyway, remember that ceramic pig you’re always talking about?” he asked. A hush fell over the group. Even Charles sat upright.

“You refer to Swine in Repose XIV?” Wonderment asked sternly. The artwork in question was legendary. The lengths Dr. Murray had taken to acquire that piece were the subject of mysterious rumor, but the hearsay was enough to make any sensible person’s skin crawl. A truly priceless work fallen into the hands of a corrupt devil. Undeniably the finest of the Porcine Repose series.

“Yes, that’s the one,” Arjun chirped.

“Shhhh,” Charles murmured, “not so loud.”

Arjun, now whispering, “Well, I’m just saying that, were I a billionaire art collector, particularly one in need of liquidity, I may decide to bring a costly piece to an event where there are potential buyers.”

“Wait, dude, no way,” Rafferty interrupted, “this totally ties in with that coup I was telling you about.”

“Go on,” Wonderment said as though he were growing entirely bored of the conversation and needed it to come to a head.

“Yeah, man,” Rafferty answered, “so look, Dr. Murray was like super involved in the dissolution of Yugoslavia. He owned a ton of energy infrastructure and thought he could jack up prices by simulating competition amongst his existing holdings when the country dissolved into smaller states. They say he disappeared a journalist over a footnote about the wrong oil pipeline.”

“Okay, yes, this is ringing a bell,” Wonderment said.

“But he underestimated the magnitude of conflict between the resulting states,” Rafferty continued, “and so the price fixing fell apart, and he lost ownership of some of his assets.”

“That’s a rather simplistic way of putting it,” Arjun cut in, “but yes, his price fixing scheme did fall apart due to a complex array of social, political, and regulatory factors.”

“And,” Charles said in a thoroughly disinterested and drawn-out sigh.

“Dr. Murray may very well need liquidity.” Arjun finished.

“Are you saying the pig may be in the sty?” Asked Wonderment slowly.

“I’m simply suggesting the porcine may have made its way to the butcher,” replied Rafferty.

Charles joined in with astounding effulgence given his state, “So it’s dawning on us then, the swine may have trotted willingly into the abattoir, lacquered and luminous and entirely unaware.”

“Gentlemen,” Arjun pronounced, “We now seem to have arrived at the belief that this singular pig, this glazed Arcadian sow of rare and delicate pedigree, has been stashed like contraband ham beneath a minibar stocked with tonic water and travel-size Snickers.”

There was a pause.

“Would be a shame if someone stole it . . .” Wonderment hissed, his eyes glinting dangerously.

Just then, an obnoxious cackling laugh erupted from a man sharing their pool who they hadn’t noticed. He was much older than they, in his 70s, and had a long gray beard.

“You boys are a hoot,” he gasped between his tittering.

It wasn’t long before all five of them were roaring with laughter and were asked to leave by the staff. While showering and changing, they learned that this elderly gentleman was a retired schoolteacher who was actively auditioning for the role of wizard in several major motion pictures.

The gang kept dinner light, except for Charles, who ordered two heaping plates of spaghetti. While the group watched Charles eat, they discussed their plan. The pre-auction gala would begin soon. They would attend, ensure that Dr. Murray and his entourage were present, and then peel off to go poking around in his room. They would rely entirely on luck and their own natural prowess, though this wasn’t as silly a plan as it sounded to Gary, the wannabe wizard whom they’d invited to dinner.

The four had met in college in an improv comedy troupe. After matriculating, each had taken on positions at the highest levels of government, economic policy, museum curation, and pachinko, respectively. Wonderment, of course, was the pachinko world champion. Still, he also possessed an uncanny ability to stay one step ahead of virtually everyone else, burdened as they were by their childish need for planning, moralizing, and thinking. Naturally, this made him an ideal comrade for several prominent world leaders. Rafferty was government. He was deadly. I’d rather share a tent with a porcupine fed amphetamines than him on a bad day. Arjun, the economist, Yale-educated, wealthy, incredibly secretive, and dastardly on any networked device. Then Charles: he’s the guy museums call in when previously colonized nations demand their stolen artifacts back. An incredible negotiator, also a gymnastics prodigy. Quite mad as of late. This is why relying on their unique skills and a bit of luck wasn’t such an outlandish plan.

“Uh, guys,” Charles burped suddenly, “I’ve gotta take Porky to the vault.”

“What the hell does that mean?” Arjun asked.

“You don’t want to know,” Rafferty replied, giving Charles a wink and a knowing smile.

“See you at the Gala,” Charles called as he stumbled away without paying. He immediately bumped into a woman in a flowing green gown, who exclaimed loudly and looked offended. Charles’s work-smile cut across his face, his charm activated visibly, and within two minutes, the woman was offering to buy him a drink.

Rooftop gala . . .

Wonderment, Rafferty, and Arjun took the single elevator to the roof. Alone in the box, Wonderment spoke rapidly, with manufactured assurance, “Here’s the plan. When we get to the gala, we part ways. Spread out and try to learn something useful. The auction order. Where they’re keeping the artwork. Where security is tight, and where the gaps are. If you can find a way to access Dr. Murray’s suite, or his suite number, all the better.”

“When will we regroup?” Rafferty asked.

“We’ll need about an hour,” Wonderment answered.

Arjun produced a folded pamphlet from his pocket. “It’s about six now,” he said as he scanned the evening’s program, “it looks like the band will attempt a minor key rendition of The Girl from Ipanema at about seven.”

“Excellent,” Wonderment declared before asking, “Does everyone know the tune?”

For the rest of the elevator ride, the three took turns attempting to hum what a minor key rendition of the bossa nova classic might sound like – disastrous.

Ding. The elevator arrived. Rafferty shot out of the elevator like a bullet. He disappeared into the crowd as Wonderment and Arjun stood blinking.

“Later,” Arjun said as he sauntered off toward a makeshift bar set up under a purple parasol.

Wonderment exited last, slowly. The rooftop was already thick with men and women in formal evening wear. On the far side of the roof, a four-piece string quartet featuring a massive harp had set up under another parasol. An attendant in all black approached him and offered a champagne flute to Wonderment. He gulped the bubbling liquid and burped profoundly. His burp visibly startled a woman standing next to him.

“Don’t be childish,” he scolded before slipping closer to the musicians.

He stood in rapt amazement before the giant harp. Its strings seemed to melt the air with their soothing vibrations. An evening breeze tickled his neck, and he felt totally relaxed. His calm was so deep that he almost failed to overhear a conversation taking place behind him. Almost.

“Did you hear,” one attendee queried another, “there’s a famed collector in attendance? He’s rumored to possess not only one, but two of the Porcine Repose collection.”

“Impossible,” the other scoffed.

“Nay, it’s true,” urged the first, “He arrived with an armed escort this morning.”

“I highly doubt it,” answered the second, “are you aware of the rarity of the pieces about which you speak?”

“Of course,” replied the first, “they’re Cedric Bartholomew Englebrandt’s finest works. The last series he finished before his untimely death.”

“Quite,” said the second, “who would have thought that a modest career in ceramics would blossom so fruitfully as he descended into madness?”

“They say,” continued the second, “that in his final years he became fixated on pigs. Rumor has it that he acquired a prion disease from swine, and that he came to view the animals as a perfect symbol of consumption, futility, and death.”

The first chuckled, “Well, I heard that his work symbolizes the struggles of the farming class during the industrialization of Europe.”

“So, the pig is here,” Wonderment thought. He took another sip of champagne and wondered how his glass had refilled itself. After a brief period listening to the musicians play a bluesy arrangement of the theme from Charlotte’s Web, he moved to the hors d’oeuvres table. After finishing a disrespectful number of cocktail shrimps, he began to arrange their tails into a geometric spiral, staining the white tablecloth with cocktail sauce as he did.

“Wonderment,” slid a cold voice in from behind. He didn’t need to look.

“Ah,” Wonderment said, “I see even the uncooked can enjoy the Integra Art Auction and Social Mixer. A wonderful nightcap to the summer, is it not?”

“Indeed,” replied Dr. Murray, who came to stand beside him.

“What are you doing?” Dr. Murray asked, looking down at Wonderment’s shrimp spiral.

“Let’s call it an artwork of my own,” Wonderment replied, trying to keep his cool, “I don’t suppose it will come up for bidding.”

“Probably not,” Dr. Murray blurted harshly.

“Are you here to buy?” Wonderment asked. “I’ll sign over the rights to . . . Torsion of the Crustacea . . . at a steep discount for you, my dear doctor.”

“Selling, actually,” Dr. Murray sniffed, disinterested.

“You simply must give me your slot number,” Wonderment pried, his tone lilting with feigned refinement, “I’ll put in a good bid.”

“Listen, Wonderment,” Dr. Murray said, changing the subject, “we really should put the past behind us. We need to have a serious discussion about the timeline.” He sounded like a surgeon talking about complications.

“Can’t,” chimed Wonderment, “Oh dear, I’ve spotted my oldest friend, I must be off.”

Wonderment darted away into the crowd.

An attendant approached Dr. Murray, looked at the spiral of shrimp tails, and said, “Sir, it would be best if you disposed of those in the proper receptacle.”

“Oh, do it yourself,” Dr. Murray fumed before stomping off.

Wonderment hid behind a large Romanesque statue of a woman holding a spear in one hand and restraining a boar with the other. As he edged further behind the statue, out of sight, he bumped into someone. He turned around and found himself looking at Gary, who had donned flowing gray robes and a large, pointed hat.

“You really do stay in character,” Wonderment mused, “don’t you?”

“Dress for the job you want,” Gary replied, “or something.”

Wonderment blinked at the wizard for a full, awkward minute, Gary meeting his gaze with wide eyes, then felt as though he should make conversation. He finished yet another glass of champagne, again wondering when his empty glass could have been filled.

“We’re on vacation,” Wonderment offered.

“Vacation, wonderful!” Said Gary in a kindly voice, but one that resembled Wonderment’s grandfather a bit too closely for comfort.

“My late wife, Gloria, we had been planning to purchase an Akiya for summer vacations before . . .” Gary continued. He cleared his throat, “But tell me, have you ever thought very deeply about the Japanese real estate market?”

“I can’t say I have,” Wonderment confessed.

Gary launched into a lengthy explanation of the do’s and don’ts of buying a Japanese vacation property, sparing no detail in describing the difficulties posed by a rapidly declining population and the increasing distance from infrastructure. He also mentioned the spiders.

Rafferty was considerably more on task. From the moment he set off, he was scanning. “Tango,” Rafferty thought when he spied a bearded attendant, mid-forties, holding a tray of champagne flutes. He tracked the attendant as the man meandered about the gala, his drink reserve steadily declining. Rafferty watched as Wonderment happened upon this attendant and greedily stole three flutes.

“Thanks, Wonderment,” Rafferty muttered.

It wasn’t long before the attendant broke away from the mingling crowd and headed toward a discreet exit on the far side of the roof. Rafferty followed at a distance. When they were away from prying eyes, walking along a service corridor, Rafferty closed the gap silently. Just as they were passing a utility closet, Rafferty swiftly opened the door, then lunged. One arm around the attendant’s throat, another on the back of his head. The attendant, totally befuddled, was practically limp in his arms. Rafferty steered him, barely struggling, into the closet as he applied pressure.

“Shhhh,” he whispered into the man’s ear.

Thud. Unconscious. Rafferty removed the man’s clothes.

At dinner, Rafferty had pocketed several cloth napkins in preparation for, well, he hadn’t known what at the time, but their role became clear. He wound and knotted them, then used them to restrain the attendant’s arms and legs. He struggled to put on the uniform, which was smaller than he expected. The garments cinched tightly around Rafferty’s torso and legs. He couldn’t close all the buttons, and the over-tight clothes made him look like a retired wrestler auditioning for the role of ‘concierge #3’ in a French arthouse film. In one pocket, he found an access keycard. His adrenaline surged.

An image from years ago flitted before his eyes. A Balkan consulate; winding roads taken too quickly in a tiny car with failing suspension. A race against time. Mission critical. This wasn’t war, but it would have to do.

“Oscar Charlie,” he hissed to no one.

When Rafferty exited the utility closet, he turned back the way he had come but found himself face-to-face with a woman in an unassuming pant suit holding her clipboard. Her attire radiated polite authority.

“Why aren’t you at the gala?” she asked sharply, “And why are you so . . . why are your sleeves rolled up?”

Rafferty thought she must be a staff supervisor. His hand shot to his nose.

“Nosebleed,” he blurted, too fast and too loud. He turned on his heel and bolted down the hallway, rambling about “dry air!”

Rafferty didn’t look back. He kept moving until the tile turned to carpet. When he was sure he was back in a guest area, Rafferty began searching for a way back to the roof. He tried one corridor. It led to vending machines. He tried a second. Two young girls wearing matching dresses blocked his progress, holding hands. Their stare drilled into the core of Rafferty’s being. It really creeped him out, and he tried a different route.

Meanwhile, Charles carried his pig case, heavy with guilt. Unbeknownst to Wonderment and the others, Charles had purchased an early work from the Porcine Repose series. His was considerably less refined than the later pieces, falling short of a masterpiece, yet within its cold features Charles detected a biting truth. Its repose was one of exertion, submission – a direct corollary of the artist’s inability to survive in a culture with such misplaced values. Just thinking of its contours made his eyes mist. Because the acquisition was recent, he found it difficult to part with, though of course that made no sense. The strange fog that had clouded his mind all day was slowly lifting.

He found himself at a concierge desk. He explained to the young woman behind the counter that he’d brought a valuable work of art with him and would like to have it stored in the vault. Given the upcoming auction, this behavior was expected. She accepted the case, struggling a bit under its weight, and issued Charles a receipt. He watched as the woman carried his case into a room behind the desk, where, through a doorway, he was able to see a section of a massive vault door. The woman badged in, and the monstrous door swung open effortlessly. Charles couldn’t glimpse what took place in the following moments, but soon the woman returned and asked, “Is there anything else I can help you with?”

“Which suites are the best?” he asked.

“I’m thinking of booking my honeymoon here, and I’d like to impress my fiancé,” he explained.

“Well, we pride ourselves in our accommodations,” she answered, “and we hope you’ll find all of our suites more than satisfactory.”

Charles nodded.

Then, with the tonal patina of an experienced saleswoman, she continued, “But if you’re looking for something truly exceptional, I would recommend The Garibaldi Suite, The Chancellor’s Overlook, or The Consul’s Rest in the west wing.”

“And in the east,” Charles asked, “my wife loves to watch the sun rise.”

“In the east, the most luxurious options are probably The Shaka Zulu Grand or The Laureled Bastion,” she concluded.

Charles thanked her and excused himself.

“Did you want to book a stay?” The woman called after him.

“Tomorrow!” he called back.

“No time to waste!” she replied, now shouting, “There’s no time like the present!”

Charles giggled stupidly back at her as he slipped out of the lobby, down a short hall, and toward an elevator. He remembered something about meeting on the rooftop. Then, like a bolt, a memory of the dart hitting the back of his neck. Freyja. He had to tell Wonderment. Charles whisked his phone from his pocket and began typing. At this exact moment, the elevator in front of him opened, and a woman in a full kimono stepped out. Her eyes narrowed, and in a flash, she spritzed Charles with a device that resembled a perfume atomizer. Charles swung at her, but she was already gone like the mists of Kōya slipping between the cedars. He turned, ready to pursue, but the hallway was now living, resembling the esophagus of some giant carnivore. The carpet slithered like a tongue, and Charles was sure he had been devoured. He pushed send on the unfinished message to Wonderment and then took a seat near an ornamental potted tree in a corner. It seemed to dance in its pot with leaves like green glass fangs. “Dangerous,” whispered Charles, “dangerous.”

At the bar, Arjun joined a group standing around a tall circular table. Immediately, he was mistaken for Samrat Basra, a famous Indian wine producer and art collector, by an ugly man with several curly red hairs. Arjun forced down his anger until it was safely confined in his belly. He liked to think it made his abs tighter.

“Why yes,” he replied graciously.

“We’re so honored you could leave your vineyard in Umbria,” a woman whose blue hair was shaped into an enormous Fawcett flip praised. They clinked their glasses to many profitable additions to their respective collections.

“I wouldn’t miss the Integra,” he replied, careful so that some of the spit released in his feigned enthusiasm misted the ugly man’s face.

“I’ve heard rumors that a work from the infamous Porcine Repose may come up tonight,” the woman continued.

“As have I,” barked the ugly man. The two others around the table listened with expressions that made it clear they felt awkward, out of their depth, and that they wouldn’t contribute.

“Tell me, Mr. Basra, what do you think of the Porcine Repose?” she asked.

Arjun cleared his throat before speaking. “Well, it’s not about the pigs, obviously,” he replied, “it’s about what the pigs refuse to be.”

The man nodded knowingly, and he grunted, “Agreed. A true work of genius.” He gestured for Arjun to continue.

“Porcine Repose is less of a series,” Arjun ventured, “than a slow unspooling of appetite. No. 7, especially, confronts you with its silence. I had to sit with that silence for almost a week.”

“Indeed,” the woman said. She leaned forward onto the table and gazed into Arjun’s eyes.

“If I might be so bold . . . do you plan to make a serious bid?” she asked with a sigh that made Arjun feel very uncomfortable.

“Perhaps,” Arjun replied, “perhaps.”

“Oh dear, where is your paddle?” The man asked abruptly.

“Paddle?” Arjun questioned. Then he remembered how bidding worked. “Oh, I don’t seem to have been given one.”

The entire table looked shocked. The man grabbed a passing attendant by the arm, hard, almost spilling the dish of hors d’oeuvres he carried.

“Get this man a bidding number,” he thundered, “do you have any idea who he is?”

The attendant was clearly frightened. He scurried away and returned a moment later with a woman in a pantsuit that screamed middle-management menace in calming neutrals.

“My deepest apologies, sir,” she said.

“Mr. Samrat Basra,” the blue-haired woman corrected.

She handed him a paddle emblazoned with the number “208.”

Arjun tucked the paddle under his arm and continued regaling the group with his opinions on works he had never actually seen. He was enjoying himself so much that he lost track of time. Only the shuffling rhythm of The Girl from Ipanema roused him from his trance. Arjun thanked the table for their hospitality and excused himself, wishing them all good fortune in the evening ahead. He went back toward the elevator. On his way, he spotted Dr. Murray standing with three women and a man clad in matching silver finery. They seemed to be speaking intently. Dr. Murray was gesturing frantically at the hors d’oeuvres table. Arjun made a mental note of their presence and continued on his way.

The Laureled Bastion . . .

Wonderment, Rafferty, and Arjun arrived in the foyer where a set of sliding doors barred their progress toward the east wing. Together, they gave the impression that a group of teens smoking outside a 7-11 might: decisively out of place, agitated, and certainly not to be disturbed. Charles stumbled up to them a moment later, with an odd, jerky gait, like a deep-space traveler jolting awake from a multi-year cryosleep.

“My Rafferty . . . when did you grow that mane?” Charles asked.

“Hmm?” Rafferty replied, thinking that Charles had noticed his 5 o’clock shadow. To Charles, Rafferty appeared to be a literal lion stuffed into an undersized concierge uniform. Deciding that he would elicit no helpful information from the beast that had transmogrified from his old friend Rafferty, Charles turned to Wonderment. Wonderment’s head had been swapped with that of a gecko. Charles realized it was best not to speak at all.

“The pig is here,” Wonderment said, “Murray all but confirmed it.”

“I heard the same, from another source,” Arjun explained, “Oh, and they gave me a paddle. We’re bidding, apparently.”

“Excellent,” replied Rafferty, casually swiping the stolen access card and opening the sliding doors.

“Nifty trick,” Arjun commented.

The hallway ahead was painted crème with red patterned carpeting. Doors of mahogany, or faux mahogany, Wonderment couldn’t tell which, were spaced at regular intervals along the hall. Decorative tables of the same woody material stood midway between the doors, each holding a small bonsai in a white dish.

“Which of these is Murray’s?” Rafferty asked.

“According to my re . . . re . . . renaissance . . . my con . . . my reconnaissance,” Charles answered with slurred consonants and a halting cadence, “the best suites in the east are the Shaka Shaka or Lauren’s Bathroom.”

“That can’t be right?” Asked Rafferty, annoyed. They walked further. The spacing between the doors grew longer.

“It’s this one,” Wonderment said abruptly.

“How do you know?” Asked Arjun as Rafferty threw his body weight against the door without hesitation.

“Murray was wearing an odious cologne,” he answered, “It lingers.”

After repeatedly assaulting the door, Rafferty decided to try the stolen access card. It worked. Wonderment’s earlier statement proved accurate. The cologne did linger. The parlor was permeated by a musky aroma with all the subtlety of the 1812 Overture, performed with cannonade in a bathroom stall. It made Charles gag and caused his hallucinations to intensify.

The suite was filled with heavy, ornate furniture that radiated a reddish glow in the low light. Glass shelving laden with a staggering array of sculpture, pottery, and jewelry lined the walls. Rays of light entered the room through venetian blinds, creating an atmosphere that Wonderment found terribly moody and a bit menacing. It was the sort of space in which one expects a Bond villain to turn around in a swiveling armchair; cat in one hand, pistol in the other, with a lit cigar that bobs dangerously close to falling as they say, “I’ve been expecting you.” But that didn’t happen.

Charles perceived the scene in an entirely different manner. He was exploring a dense jungle beset on all sides by strange and foul trees. He wandered ahead of the others and began to fondle the artwork.

“Charles,” Arjun scolded as sharply as he could muster, though it still came across as polite, “stop that!”

“Such strange fauna,” Charles whispered, as he drifted forward like a brittle vessel on a stormy sea.

“What fauna?” Arjun demanded, effectively adopting the tone of a waiter subtly urging a patron to decide what to have for dinner.

Charles’s face grew serious. He turned to the others. “Did I mention I was darted this morning?” he said.

“You were darted?” Wonderment asked.

“Oh my,” Charles roared suddenly, “what do we have here?”

He rounded the threshold of a room that adjoined the parlor and passed out of sight. The others rushed after him. They found him, bent over, staring into the cold ceramic eyes of a porcelain swine lying atop a velvet-covered pedestal. Charles extended a finger toward the snout.

Wonderment sprang into action.

“Rafferty, restrain Charles,” Wonderment ordered, “Arjun, make sure the porker isn’t rigged.”

Rafferty caught Charles in a full nelson and pulled him away from the priceless relic. Arjun inspected the pedestal. Charles began babbling about lions hiding in the trees.

“Looks like a simple pressure sensor,” said Arjun after a moment. He continued, “I can fry it, but only temporarily. If the power cycles once the pig is removed, it’ll alarm.”

“Do it,” Wonderment said, “I hope that’ll buy us an hour or two to bank the piggy somewhere safe.”

Arjun held his smartphone next to a black box at the foot of the pedestal, and there was a high-pitched whine.

“Should be set,” Arjun said.

“Okay, Rafferty, release Charles and put the swine in the sack,” Wonderment commanded.

“What sack?” Asked Rafferty.

“What do you mean, what sack?” Wonderment asked, genuinely surprised. He looked at them each in turn before continuing, “Are you telling me not a single one of you brought a sack on a heist?” The group stood in dumb silence. Charles pawed at the air in front of him.

“Blow dryer!” Arjun blurted.

“Huh?” Wondered Wonderment.

“Hotels always have those annoying drawstring bags that they keep the hairdryers in,” Arjun explained.

“Of course you blow-dry your hair,” muttered Rafferty.

“What desert oasis is this?” Charles asked as Rafferty forcefully guided him into the bathroom. Wonderment and Arjun followed. Sure enough, there was a black drawstring bag containing a fancy hair styling unit in a small alcove beneath the sink.

“Oh, blessed basin,” Charles called while gazing into the sink whose drain had been sealed, and which still contained the frothy residue left from someone’s hasty shave.

“Rafferty, dunk Charles’s head in cold water,” Wonderment instructed, “I think someone tranquilized him. Try to sober him up!”

He continued, “Arjun, take the bag and pocket the pig.”

Midway through speaking, Wonderment spied a large bottle of cologne on the countertop and said, “I have another task that demands my attention.”

While Rafferty waterboarded Charles, and Arjun stole Swine in Repose XIV, Wonderment sniffed the bottle of cologne, gagged, and carried the bottle to the kitchenette. Amidst gurgling sounds from the bathroom, Wonderment searched the refrigerator. It was mostly empty, but he found all that he needed. From a small jar of pickles, Wonderment carefully spooned a generous amount of juice into the cologne bottle. Next, he deposited a conservative squirt of ketchup, unshaken, to prioritize the watery bits. He wiped the outside of the cologne bottle to remove any residual evidence and carefully returned the concoction to its original location. Moments later, the squad exited the Laureled Bastion.

They were considerably more disheveled than when they’d arrived. Wonderment now possessed a boyish grin and a spattering of ketchup juice on the front of his jacket. Both Charles and Rafferty were noticeably soaked. Arjun wore the hairdryer bag, too small for the sculpture, like a purse from which a porcine head protruded. An unspoken acknowledgement of their sloppy state passed between them. No one questioned Rafferty when he led them through a door labeled “staff only,” leading to a service corridor illuminated by depressing fluorescent lights. The section they had entered ran parallel to the hallway along which the suites were located, and the group started toward the lobby.

“Where should we hide this thing?” Asked Arjun. The statue’s surprising weight made the thin drawstrings bite into his shoulder.

“Honestly, I only half-expected us to find it,” Wonderment replied, “and I should have given that more thought.”

He continued, “I think we can just stash it with my luggage. I brought quite a bit, even by my standards, and I don’t suppose they’d ever find it even if we were searched.”

Arjun shrugged, realizing the staggering uncertainty of their plan. He had no idea how they could profit from their endeavor. It wasn’t likely they’d be able to find a fence for such a famous artwork. As the extent of their disorganization dawned on him, Arjun began to question whether this entire affair might be some sort of elaborate joke Wonderment was playing on Dr. Murray. It was entirely possible that Wonderment had no profit motive, just a gremlin’s need for revenge. The clang of an elevator arriving somewhere nearby made Arjun look up. The silver-clad entourage Arjun had observed conversing with Dr. Murray spilled out.

“Wonderment,” Arjun’s voice a hush, “those are Murray’s goons.”

Arjun tucked the hairdryer bag behind his back so the snout climbing from its depths wasn’t visible from the front. Rafferty cracked his knuckles, and Wonderment stopped where he stood. At least Murray wasn’t with them. The nearest man was unwrapping a granola bar when he noticed the group.

“This is a staff hallway, Wonderment,” the man said, clearly Russian, “you shouldn’t be here.”

“Well, you’re not staff either,” Charles shot back, clearly surprised by the hypocrisy.

“We are better at pretending,” the woman in the silver dress replied, “and we certainly aren’t soaked like you fools!”

“There’s a reasonable explanation for that,” Charles exclaimed.

“Shut it, Charles,” Rafferty barked.

“Kindly stand aside, gentlemen,” Wonderment said, demonstrating surprising restraint.

“That’s right,” the opposing man said. Murray’s goons muscled their way past Wonderment and the others, shoulder-checking Rafferty as they did. Wonderment stared Rafferty in the face. He knew that it wouldn’t take much to send Rafferty into demolition mode, and discretion was far more valuable. Wonderment’s party edged along the wall as the group passed them and shimmied toward the elevator. The man who seemed to lead the goons watched them for a time, apparently grew bored, and returned to his granola bar. Rafferty, then Charles backed into the elevator. Wonderment followed. Arjun, most careful of the bunch, was last.

Two things happened at once. First, the group found that a good portion of the elevator’s interior was taken up by a service cart laden with dirty dishes from the gala above and a yellow wheeled bucket from which the shaft of a mop erupted. This meant they each had to stand in precise positions so that they would all fit. At the same time, the woman from the opposing group cried, “The little one has a pig!”

With coordination and intensity that genuinely surprised Wonderment, given their buffoonish demeanors, the goons leapt into action and began an all-out assault on the elevator. Met with a flurry of kicks and fists, Wonderment and his friends barely managed to defend themselves. Rafferty, of course, was the most prepared. He slid the mop from its bucket with a solemnity rivaling Arthur pulling Excalibur from its stone, and he brandished it as a lance, soaking the face of the other team’s leader. Charles, bravely, assumed a blocking position with his arms so that the closest woman couldn’t enter the elevator. The doors began to slide shut. Moments before closing, another man grabbed the doors and forced them back open, triggering a chime. Wonderment launched a high, arcing kick, catching the man’s arms and causing him to stagger backward. Rafferty spun the mop in a wide arc, flinging soapy water over everyone involved. He slapped the woman in the ribs with the shaggy end and then jousted the leader’s shoulder with the handle, causing both to recoil. The elevator doors tried again, successfully. A ding followed by tremendous pounding from the other side ensued. Arjun breathed a sigh of relief. They all panted for a moment.

Wonderment recovered first.

“Rafferty,” he said, unbothered.

“Yes, Wonderment?” Rafferty answered.

“Would you be so kind as to lower the mop?” Wonderment asked.

Rafferty still held the mop like a drooping willow, raining droplets down on them.

“Oh, yeah,” Rafferty said, sliding the mop back into its bucket.

Then they all noticed that, before leaving the elevator, one of their rivals had pushed every single button on the elevator’s panel – a perfectly childish prank. Rather than delivering them upward to any useful location, the elevator began to descend.

“Basement it is,” commented Wonderment, annoyed.

The basement . . .

The sliding doors revealed a darkened area where details were indiscernible. Wonderment ventured forth, motioning for his colleagues to follow. A strange sound followed: a click, then the roaring of a stormy sea. A disembodied voice boomed, “Captain Barticus, famed whaler of the 18th century, set out on his most ambitious voyage yet!” There was an electric crackle, and a set of lights hidden in the floor cast bluish beams upward. The beams illuminated a three-dimensional replica of a whale set before a painted backdrop of rolling ocean waves and stormy clouds. Next to the whale was a replica of a whaling ship’s fore, including the bow and upper deck. Atop the upper deck were several animatronic men holding harpoons. There was a whine from small electric motors, and the constituents of the robotic exhibition began hoisting their harpoons rhythmically. The voice continued, “When Baritcus and his crew set out, morale was high!” A recording of a sea shanty began to play.

Oh, the captain married the motel floor and swore it was the sea!

With a shoe for a ship and a lamp for an oar, he went down in history!

Despite the disorienting display, Wonderment stayed cool, “They know where the elevator was heading. We need to find a way out.”

The team fanned out and began searching. While Rafferty assessed the perimeter, Wonderment took a closer look at the exhibition. To his surprise, he found that one of the animatronic men was seriously out of place. It wore a gray robe instead of the authentic seafaring garb of the others. Instead of a harpoon, it hoisted a staff in unison with the others. Recognition dawned.

“Gary, is that you?” he asked loudly.

The only reply was a cackling laugh.

“What are you doing down here, mate?” Wonderment asked.

The wizard hopped off the ship’s deck and approached them.

“I come down here to practice,” Gary replied.

“Practice what?” Charles asked.

“Oh, you know,” Gary replied, “staff hoisting, sea shanties, other wizardly activities.”

Then he glanced at Arjun and added, “I see you’ve managed to snatch that porcelain pig!”

There was a ding, and then a mechanical rumble from the elevator as it began to ascend once more. Rafferty returned to the group, “There’s only the elevator and a fire exit that will trigger an alarm.”

“Rats,” Wonderment sighed.

“Rats?” Gary asked, “Where?”

“Behind us,” Wonderment replied, “Following us.”

“Ah, I see,” Gary said, “well then, I suppose you’d better hide.”

“Agreed,” Rafferty grumbled reluctantly. He hated running from a fight, but he told himself this might be a chance to practice his stealth takedowns. He had a nasty flying armbar he was working on. Wonderment and the others ducked behind the whale replica.

“I’ll provide a distraction,” Gary offered, twirling his staff dramatically, “and give you boys a chance to steal that lift.”

Another ding. The elevator returned. Gary assumed an outlandish pose next to the animatronic captain, Barticus. Wonderment inched discreetly from behind the cutout whale as the doors opened and the three in silver, now reinforced by two additional men, stepped out. They scattered and began searching. The booming voice from the speakers called, “Whale oil became an important economic driver of the American project!”

Gary stopped posing and approached the entrants with staff raised.

“That wily bastard,” Rafferty hissed to Wonderment.

Meanwhile, Arjun found that one of the bag’s drawstrings had caught on the joint of a joist supporting the whale from behind. He tried to pry it free. No luck.

“Get ready to move to the elevator, quiet like,” Wonderment whispered.

Arjun began to apply more pressure, struggling to free his valuable satchel. It only tangled further.

“Who enters my domain?” Gary bellowed.

The silver group moved to form a semi-circle in front of the Wizard, confusion wiping the slovenly grins from their faces.

“Did you see a bunch of ruffians come this way?” the man who Rafferty had jabbed in the shoulder inquired.

“Now,” mouthed Wonderment. They began to creep from behind the whale diorama. Arjun panicked; his bag still caught in place. He slipped the porcelain pig from its container and cradled it like a precious newborn.

“You will not address the Grand Vizier from the court of Gray in such terms,” Gary cried at the man.

“Listen, you old fart,” the lead goon said menacingly.

Gary hoisted his staff and jabbed it vaguely in the man’s direction while chanting loudly in a language that sounded a bit like Latin.

Wonderment and the others crowded into the elevator. The doors slid shut. The floor was slick from the earlier deluge, and Charles thudded heavily onto his bottom.

“Where to?” Rafferty asked, staring at the buttons as if they were a terribly complex puzzle.

“Not the lobby,” Wonderment mused, “probably covered. Not the rooftop either. Too many witnesses.”

“Let’s try floor two or three,” he finished.

Rafferty jabbed the “3” button, and the lift began to rise.

“Gary,” Arjun panted, “what a class act.”

Honestly, a very nice buffet . . .

Earlier that day, and for reasons that will shortly become a nuisance, the resort hosted an impressive lunch buffet, which Wonderment and the others missed after an exceptionally long visit to the spa. There was grilled Nile perch with a smoked tamarind glaze, Kashgar lamb manti with black garlic yogurt, and a delicate lotus-root and sea-grape ceviche with yuzu-ponzu pearls. Nearby, tiny stainless-steel overflowed with shaved daikon. Each table had been outfitted with imitations of famous artworks, some even slated for bidding that evening, and the buffet counter featured laurels, elaborate sconces, busts, and statuettes in imitation bronze, porcelain, ceramic, and plaster. It was truly a sight to behold, though the resort’s decorative coordinators had made one crucial miscalculation: human behavior.

Ten minutes after lunch began, the first bust toppled to the floor, cracking large chunks from the distinguished gentleman’s forehead. Moments later, a woman’s scarf snagged the bayonet tip of a brass statuette and dragged it to the floor, bending the rifle at a crooked angle and tilting the soldier’s head askew. By 12:30, a porcelain pig had somehow been shoved into a tray of au jus beside the roast beef. Unprepared for this escalating chaos, the staff collected the decorations and moved them into the kitchen. There, they assembled a deranged little cemetery of damaged imitations.

And for our next act . . .

The cadre found themselves in yet another darkened space in which the only illumination originated from somewhere around a bend in the wall. A faint reddish light crept along the floor, and there were voices. It sounded as though a large crowd had gathered somewhere nearby, but they were muffled, as though their voices filtered through a thin layer of water.

“Where are we?” Wonderment asked.

“No i-de-a,” said Arjun.

They explored the space. There were numerous heavy boxes, a scaffold, and a hand wagon. All were painted a uniform matte black. Around the corner, they entered a large chamber with a pedestal at its center. On the pedestal sat a red cushion with something shiny nestled at its center. Curious, they approached.

Simultaneously, a shrill voice cried, “You shouldn’t be here!” and the theatre’s masking curtains lifted. The colorful proscenium curtain was now visible, a band of bright light radiated from beneath it, and the voices grew more intense.

“Run,” Wonderment said as he dashed headlong into the mid-stage traveler curtain and became enveloped in dark fabric.

A jovial voice boomed over hidden speakers, “Ladies and Gentlemen, our fifteen-minute recess is over! We will resume bidding with lot 34!”

A group of attendants in non-descript black shirts, black pants, and black gloves flooded the stage. They were clearly as confused as Wonderment and the others about what they should be doing. The proscenium curtain lifted slowly, throwing a blinding glare onto the stage. Rafferty darted back toward the wings. Charles and Arjun stood together by the pedestal. Wonderment fought against the curtain that ensnared him as bravely as Don Quixote against his giants. The attendants formed a bewildered, wavering line next to the pedestal, unsure if they should attempt to restrain the interlopers or direct them to center stage. The announcer, observing the chaos, spoke hesitantly through the loudspeakers, “It appears, folks, that we’ve had a bit of a mix-up. I believe this is lot 38. Rescheduled. A performance piece entitled Transference Schema (Preliminary Drift). Terribly sorry.”

Charles, though still addled from his dosing earlier, was nevertheless able to comprehend their situation more quickly than the others. He strode confidently toward the crowd, who watched him in a hush, and took a deep bow – genuflecting as though he’d been thrown two centuries in reverse.

“Ladies and gentlemen!” Charles cried.

At this moment, Rafferty, still under the impression that a quick escape would be ideal, tackled him. The crowd let out a gasp. Wonderment, besting his foe at last, ripped the curtain free. The stage curtain fluttered down as Wonderment rushed to Rafferty’s side, and they were all enveloped in semi-transparent black fabric.

“What is going on?” Rafferty hissed to the others from under the canopy.

“We’d better play along,” Charles offered.

“That’s insane,” Wonderment said, “but insane usually works. Okay.”

The audience’s hush persisted, and all eyes turned to Arjun, who was now the only member of the group not enveloped by the curtain. A moment passed. Then another, considerably more tense. Wonderment, Rafferty, and Charles crawled on their bellies in his direction. Wonderment lifted the curtain and called, “Do something!”

Terrified, Arjun, hoisted the porcelain pig in his arms and began to spin.

A woman in the crowd raised her paddle. “Ten thousand,” she cried.

“Ten thousand,” the announcer echoed, “we’ll start the bidding at ten thousand. Do I hear twenty?”

Wonderment and the others stood so that, to the audience, it appeared as though three ghostly shapes had emerged from the stage floor. With great effort, Rafferty dragged the curtain toward Arjun so that it continued to shelter them as they moved.

“Hey, Arjun,” Wonderment called when they were nearer, “stop spinning.”

“Uhhhhh,” Arjun groaned as he stopped spinning and staggered under the curtain to join them.

“Twenty,” boomed the loudspeaker, “Twenty going once, do I hear forty?”

“We need to exit now,” said Rafferty.

“How?” asked Wonderment.

“We need a distraction,” continued Rafferty, “Charles, you improvise a speech, Arjun, you hide the pig in one of those delivery carts the servers are using. Once we stow the sow, Wonderment and I will make sure everyone has a clear path to the exit.”

“That’s exactly what I was doing before you tackled me,” Charles whined.

“Oh,” said Rafferty, “yeah, it’s a good plan, mate. Really solid. Sorry about that.”

“Forty,” the announcer cried, “eighty! Eighty going once!”

Charles abandoned the curtain’s cover first and turned to the crowd with a flourish. Rafferty followed, edging toward the side of the stage. Wonderment turned to go next, but he stopped. “Arjun,” he asked, “do you still have that paddle from earlier?”

“Sure,” Arjun acknowledged. He slipped it from his back pocket and handed it to Wonderment. Wonderment showed far less discretion in leaving the stage than Rafferty. He simply hopped down, found an open seat, and sat down with a group of strangers. Arjun crawled under the curtain to where it was nearest the stage’s lip. He quietly slipped down. Of course, nearby people saw, but they assumed it was part of the act.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” Charles began, “I want to talk to you about personal sovereignty, and how our culture, through various means, robs us of that dignity.”

There was silence. Even the auctioneer permitted a pause in bidding.

“Imagine yourself, in your right mind, living normally,” Charles cried, “but one day, you learn a secret, the wrong secret.”

“And from that moment you are beset on all sides,” Charles called, “darted and dosed, spritzed and poisoned, until life itself becomes kaleidoscopic.”

By this point, Wonderment had located his target. Dr. Murray sat uncomfortably at a table with his goon squad. One of them was nursing a nosebleed, and another’s cheek had swollen to the size of a grapefruit. Gary must have really done a number on them. Wonderment gazed at Dr. Murray with aggressive, passionate intensity. When Wonderment’s irises practically radiated laserine focus, Dr. Murray noticed a slight smoldering sensation on his neck. Murray glanced over. He locked eyes with Wonderment, then looked away. A moment later, he looked back, matching Wonderment’s gaze. With slow and deliberate movements, Wonderment raised the bidding paddle.

“160,000!” The auctioneer cried.

His eyes dared Dr. Murray to respond.

With motions that seemed polite and disinterested, Murray raised his paddle.

“320,000!”

Wonderment again flipped his paddle up.

“640,000!”

Dr. Murray rolled his eyes and again hoisted his paddle.

“1,280,000!”

“Idiot,” Wonderment mouthed. At the same time, he felt someone jostling his shoulder. Rafferty. Time to go.

Wonderment stood, motioned to Charles, and joined Arjun, who was now pushing a chrome serving cart draped in a white cloth.

Charles, still on stage, stumbled a bit, “Erm, kaleidoscope, uh, now, for my next trick, I need a member of the audience!”

Several hands shot up. By accident, Charles selected the woman with blue hair whom Arjun had pumped for information earlier. She hurried on stage, exhaled heavily, and straightened her dress – ready. Charles walked behind her, placed his hands on her shoulders, and guided her toward a position front and center. Then, with exaggerated gestures, he told her to stay in place and wait. Next, Charles hopped off the stage and walked briskly toward Wonderment and the others. The group then left while the audience waited.

Kitchen pinball . . .

Dr. Murray leaned over to the man next to him and asked, “Nelson. What was it that the man on stage held aloft?”

“It appeared to be a small statue,” Nelson replied, “porcine in nature. They had it when we ran into them earlier.”

Dr. Murray sat back in his chair as if deep in thought.

“Have Selene verify that Swine in Repose XIV is safe.” Dr. Murray ordered Nelson, who then whispered a few words into a cellphone.

“I have a bad feeling,” Dr. Murray murmured, “let’s follow them and see what they’re up to.”

Dr. Murray and the four others at his table exited the theatre carefully so as not to disturb other patrons. Unfortunately for Wonderment and the others, the serving trolley they had stolen was listing to one side. The wheel’s sleeve bearing had worn down, increasing static friction and causing a classic stick–slip effect. The hub would seize momentarily near the apex of each rotation for a fraction of a second, build up torque, then glide free. The trolley’s frame transmitted these micro‑vibrations, acting as a resonant cavity, and producing a screeching “Wheeeeeee-eeee‑eee‑eee!” The sound made them very easy to track. Dr. Murray and his entourage hurried down the hallway in the direction of the screech. It led them toward a set of swinging double doors with square windows through which an industrial refrigerator and the antiseptic white of the resort’s kitchen were visible. A face with frizzy red hair and mutton chops gazed at them through one of these windows.

Though Murray’s crew couldn’t hear it, Rafferty shouted, “We’ve got incoming!”

Seconds later, their pursuers burst through the double doors into an eerily deserted kitchen. A strange, briny tang hung in the air, which Dr. Murray assumed was some Scandinavian reduction. Cookware hung in neat rows from wall-mounted brackets; an excessive number of dirty pans were piled in a double-basin sink along the far wall, and someone had thrown open every freezer lid in the long row. Fog billowed up from the freezers and wafted across the floor. Dr. Murray noticed a surprising amount of artwork adorning this space, which he would have expected to be completely utilitarian. Nelson crept forward at the front, scanning various alcoves. He threw open the door to a walk-in refrigerator. That’s when a frying pan hurtled into view from somewhere to his left and landed with a dull thud against his head. With that, Wonderment and the others leapt from hiding and attacked.

Charles, who had raided the pantry, hurled a massive bag of flour at the opposing group. The bag, already ripped, exploded in a puff of white powder. It did nothing but coat them in a layer of fine particles. Rafferty, closest, leapt at a man behind Nelson and caught him in an aerial armbar. The two tumbled onto the ground, and there was a loud moan. Two women rushed in Arjun’s direction, both with matching green eyes and identical silver dresses. Both threw head-high roundhouse kicks at Arjun, which he expertly deflected, though the impact on his arms stung badly. He winced, retreating a step. One assailant threw a hook, which he intercepted, gripped, and wheeled around so that the woman’s momentum sent her sprawling to the floor. Before he could recover, the other assailant caught him in the gut with a flying sidekick. He staggered backwards, only dimly aware that he had left the pig on the trolley, now encircled by their enemies.

Dr. Murray took a step away from the fight and drew a silenced Walther PPK from a holster inside his jacket. He aimed and fired. There was a psst, and one of the fluorescent bulbs on the ceiling burst. Then another. And another. Darkness shrouded the room. Wonderment, several yards away and on his belly, snaked a hand up the side of one of the counters. He fumbled around at an odd angle, his shoulder beginning to twitch. His fingers contacted wood. He raised himself slightly and continued probing until he found a handle. A satisfying zing rang out as a knife came free from its block. Another psst followed by a ding as a bullet ricocheted against the metal countertop where Wonderment’s hand had been an instant before. Wonderment, knife in hand, crawled on his belly in Murray’s direction.

Nelson came to, staggered to his feet, and cast a bewildered look at Dr. Murray. Dr. Murray inclined his head in the direction of Wonderment’s team. Nelson, feeling very dazed but also knowing a moment where he could prove his heroism had arisen, enacted a half-baked plan. He kicked the serving trolley with all his might. The trolley lurched into the darkness with a squeal. One of its wheels clipped the knife Wonderment was holding, sending it spiraling across the tile floor, where it clattered to a stop, narrowly avoiding Charles. The porcelain pig was launched from the cart into a heap of dirty dishrags and aprons by the sink. Murray unloaded the PPK toward the clatter. A round clipped Charles, sketching a thin line of red along his shoulder. Charles yelped.

“We’ve gotta evac,” Rafferty told Wonderment. The two began to snake backwards along the floor. Arjun, regaining his composure, assumed the role of culinary trebuchet and hurled anything he could lay his hands on in their rival’s general direction. In the darkness, the cacophony of mixing bowls, cutting boards, and serving ware exploding against tile floors and hard countertops was quite disorienting.

“Wonderment, the pig isn’t here,” hissed Rafferty when he probed the upturned serving trolley.

“Damn it,” Wonderment whispered. All this for naught.

“I’m hit,” Charles moaned. Rafferty grabbed him by the pant leg and pulled.

“Be a pal, Arjun - cover our escape,” Rafferty ordered, no longer bothering with a whisper. A high heel came whizzing in their direction and struck Rafferty on the cheek.

“Ow,” he said nonchalantly.

Arjun located an eight-foot-tall rolling rack piled high with cooling dinner rolls and pushed this into the path of their assailants. There was an audible click as Dr. Murray reloaded. Another heel sliced through the air in Rafferty’s direction but thudded harmlessly beside the laundry pile.

“Look,” Charles gasped, wrestling free from Rafferty’s grip. He pointed to a shelf above the counter. A porcelain pig in repose gazed down at them like Minos upon his marble throne, passing judgment on the souls of the dead. Arjun reached for a restaurant-sized drum of olive oil and pulled the heavy container to the countertop. He ripped open the lid and poured golden liquid onto the floor. Dr. Murray began firing indiscriminately. Arjun yanked the pig from its perch and exclaimed, “Gotcha!” Wonderment and Charles clamored to their feet. Rafferty threw an arm around Charles and helped hoist him. As they made for the exit, Rafferty snatched a bottle of ethanol sitting next to some cleaning supplies. Behind them, there was the sound of someone charging headlong into the baking rack, then slipping on the oil.

Once outside, back in the light, Rafferty dropped Charles and tore a strip from his already tattered shirt. He opened the bottle, sniffed, then poured a small amount of ethanol onto the fabric. As he was cramming the strip into the mouth of the bottle, Wonderment stopped him. “Is that really necessary, Rafferty?”

Rafferty, who had already produced a lighter from his coat pocket, shrugged. Wonderment and Rafferty stared at each other for several seconds.

“Fine,” Wonderment said at last. Rafferty lit the fabric and hurled the ethanol bottle back into the kitchen. The team sprinted, or as near to sprinting as could be managed with Charles not cooperating, back to the west wing.

Magnus Bellamy-Drake, a rather nice young man with an unfortunate upbringing, happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time . . .

Magnus Bellamy-Drake stood trembling in a lobby bathroom stall, one loafer submerged in a suspicious puddle beside the bidet. He was flushed and perspiring. His mother’s voice from their call that morning, pure menace beneath a veil of civility, replaying in his mind for the seventeenth time.

“Darling, do not deviate. You are to bid on Assumptions in Bronze No. 2.” Her commands were as clear as the crystal chalices in the family’s dining room hutch. She had explained it all to him, “The piece resonates with my migraines,” she had insisted. “I swear to God, Magnus, if you bring shame to this family again, you will not be invited to the foundation’s winter salon. Do you understand?”

And he had understood her, at the time. She reminded him, “You are a Bellamy-Drake,” for all the good it ever did.

But in the moment – after the wine tasting and after being stupefied by an immersive piece of performance art, with the auctioneer’s gavel poised and the woman beside him whispering about “emotional weight” and “monastic linen,” he had reacted. Magnus had somehow become the proud owner of Arrangement in Berry and Pod, which appeared to be a sort of table setting composed in wax. He’d excused himself from the theatre in a polite panic and fled to the downstairs lavatory.

Ignoring the “no smoking” sign, Magnus lit a Lucky Strike with trembling hands and questioned the entirety of his Andover education. An alarm sounded almost immediately. A whooshing sound followed, and moments later, the sprinklers activated.

Gift shop doppelgänger . . .

Wonderment was staying in the Chancellor’s Overlook, not quite as lovely as Dr. Murray’s suite. The four men collapsed onto the couch in unison, like marionettes discarded by a bored child, and their weight snapped the couch’s backbone. They all panted heavily, except Rafferty, who forced himself to maintain a rigid box breath pattern. Four in, hold four; four out, hold four. Arjun began to recover, “Fellas,” he said, “the pig is sticky, . . . and it weighs less.”

Wonderment grabbed it from him. Arjun was correct. A slimy patina that smelled faintly of beef coated the pig. He turned the swine over and inspected it. A tiny orange sticker on the bottom of the statuette, emblazoned with the resort’s insignia, read “$23.99.”

Wonderment sat silently for a time. He found himself unexpectedly speechless. At last, quietly, “Lads, I think we heisted the wrong pig.” He passed the pig around so they could all see the sticker.

“It looks like Dr. Murray got the better of us,” Rafferty growled, “again.”

“No, wait,” Arjun said, “we must have had the real pig at some point tonight. This one is lighter and stickier.”

“You could be right.” Wonderment was deflated. Then he asked, “Where did you last have the real pig?”

“Impossible to say, really,” Arjun continued, “we could try retracing our steps.”

“The kitchen is going to be a bit hot right now,” Rafferty grumbled, “I may have accidentally fire-bombed it.”

“Probably swarming with staff,” Wonderment mused, rubbing his temple, “Murray won’t be there.”

“What about the gift shop?” Arjun asked.

“Yes, I’m getting a bit pekish,” Charles interjected, “they have some vending machines at the gift shop.”

“Shut it,” Rafferty barked, “but he’s right, I’m due for a protein bar.”

“There might be something there, I guess,” Wonderment answered, “they might know who bought this imitation, or have security footage, or something.”

Arjun slid the now-soaked information pamphlet from his shirt pocket and delicately opened it. “Gift shop closes in ten minutes,” he said, shaking water from the booklet.

“Okay, gift shop, and if that fails, kitchen,” Wonderment said, “keep your eyes peeled for Murray’s goons.”

It felt as if a great river beneath the resort had burst its banks and deposited a curious assemblage: yellow folding signs advising caution, patrons strutting miserably like peacocks caught in a downpour, and several studious young men with floor squeegees who swerved between the patrons like WWII pilots weaving through a dogfight. Wonderment stepped from the elevator and almost fell as his shoe skittered along the glistening tile floor. Rafferty’s large hand steadied him. They moved carefully across the lobby to avoid sliding, tiptoeing as if they were cartoon villains up to no good, and found the gift shop was not only open but bustling. After all, a surprising proportion of the World’s population finds retail therapy effective, and so keeping shops open following an evening-ruining incident is a savvy business tactic. Simply getting inside forced them shoulder-to-shoulder with other customers, so Rafferty elected to wait outside.

Wonderment and Arjun cut through the throngs. They passed an eclectic array of souvenirs and memorabilia from the famed Integra Art Auction and Social Mixer, including numerous replicas of famous works featured in the evening’s program. A good deal of polite jostling was required simply to speak with a gift shop attendant.

“Do you sell these?” Wonderment asked, holding up the sticky pig for inspection.

“Oh, yeah, the Porcine Repose knockoffs,” he said. Then correcting himself, “Yes, we have a selection of fine replicas. That one in your hand is our mid-range collectible. Would you like a gift box?”

Wonderment’s fear was confirmed. At some point in the evening, Dr. Murray’s minions must have swapped their stolen pig with a gift shop copy. He looked at Arjun, who was already frowning deeply. Wonderment had explained details of his run-in with Dr. Murray on his quest for the Pan-Arctic Misplaced Inventory & Petty Cash Reserves to Arjun before, but that was years ago. The shame of being bested again, on vacation no less, was almost too much.

Meanwhile, Charles had wandered to the actual display of Porcine Repose replicas in the gift shop. An entire corner stand had been converted into a veritable sty where numerous pigs lay in a riot of colors, poses, and textures. Yet one pig called to Charles. His vision narrowed, fixating on the snout of a particular swine. He blinked several times, unable to figure out why the object commanded such authority. It seemed familiar. It was familiar. It was different than the others. Though of similar pose and coloration, this pig had weight to its glaze. The glaze had run and gathered as it melted, darkening in the hollows – especially under the belly, where it settled into a warm, tea-colored crescent. The others were evenly sprayed, the same tone everywhere. No gravity at all. Charles turned the pig over in his hand. There, on the flat space underneath, was a missing chip, just as there was on his pig. This was unmistakably his pig.

“You gonna buy that?” A woman next to him asked, eyebrow raised. Charles found a price tag on a spandex cord looped around the pig’s neck.

“$23.99.”

“Yes,” he said and drifted back toward the front of the shop. There, he found Wonderment and Arjun staring at each other, both on the brink of tears.

“Hey, I’m going to buy this, and then I’ll be ready to go,” Charles said.

“I don’t think we need another decoy,” Wonderment replied slowly.

“No matter,” replied Charles, “no matter.”

He continued with his purchase, which confused the cashier, seeing as he wouldn’t allow the pig to leave his hands.

“If I could just,” the cashier said as he reached for the piece.

“No,” Charles said as he delicately removed the price tag and handed it to the clerk. The cashier shrugged and rang up the pig. He paid silently, ponderously, like a monk waking from a meditative trance.

“Charles,” Wonderment called. Charles glanced over lazily. Rafferty was motioning frantically from outside the shop. The three angled their way to him. Both Charles and Arjun carried their pigs like footballs. Arjun looked at the pig Charles was holding in apparent bafflement while a serene smile crept along Charles’s face.

“What is it, Rafferty?” Wonderment asked.

“I just spotted Murray,” Rafferty barked. “He has the pig with him.”

“What? Where?” Wonderment continued.

“He just crossed the lobby with several of the others,” Rafferty replied, “he had a package with him. The right size.”

“Where did they get off?” Wonderment asked, urgency rising.

“It looks like they went back to the rooftop.”

Maria Maria . . .

Eloise Morales had expected to be busy; the night of the auction always was, but she hadn’t expected how unforgivably vexatious the patrons would prove to be. They ordered her around with the grace one affords a jammed vending machine. Put this in the vault! Get this out of the vault! Why hasn’t my son Tobias arrived yet? Where is the nearest jet ski rental? Why doesn’t my room have the lilac-scented pillowcases I ordered? Anything, everything, and always with a smile, Eloise’s responsibility for the next 8 hours. When a middle-aged man in a purple silk shirt and gray suit approached her, refusing to make eye contact; nothing about him struck her as unusual.

“I have a request,” he said.

“Yes? I’m happy to help, sir.” Her practiced reply, delivered without thinking.

He paused, staring past her as seconds stretched uncomfortably. Then he lost his balance and almost fell over.

“Yes?” she asked again.

“What was I doing?” he asked her.

“You had a request, sir,” she reminded him.

His eyes widened, and he’d given her a heavy case with a red sticker that read “high-value porcelain.”

“Vault!” he said sharply, but not rudely. It was as though each word was costing him dearly and emerged from his lips to his own, almost frightened, surprise.

That’s why Eloise filled out only the essentials on the intake form and receipt. Enough information so that he could reclaim his high-value porcelain, but not so much as to require the gentleman to expend a single extra iota of thought, which was clearly in dwindling supply. She brought the case to the vault, which was already over-stuffed with the belongings of other guests. The lockers were full, and a folding table had been brought in for overflow. It didn’t help that the manager of the resort’s gift shop had badly overestimated the demand for cheap imitations of famous artworks. Overflow gift shop inventory had spilled into the vault. That didn’t make sense to Eloise, but it was a reality she had to work around, nonetheless.

When she’d returned to the desk, the man began peppering her with questions. At first, they were simple.

“What’s the best room in the house?” he asked.

Easy enough.

But the questions became more obscure.

“Why was such and such suite named a certain way?”

“Where was the tile used to create the courtyard mosaic produced?”

These she fielded as best she could, offering polite non-answers. Eventually, the man seemed to be satisfied.

“Have a good evening,” she said. The man laughed far too loudly, then marched away in a daze. He wasn’t even close to the most difficult guest of the evening, and Eloise counted herself as lucky. A line had formed behind him, and she was kept busy.

Sometime just before nine, the sprinkler system activated. This inexplicably triggered a sudden boom in gift shop visitors. Maria, a cheerful but overworked clerk from the gift shop, arrived to collect yet more inventory from the overcrowded vault.

“E-lo-ise,” Maria sang as she passed.

“Maria, Maria,” Eloise sang back, “you remind me of a West Side Story.”

Maria filled several plastic crates with giftshop inventory and grabbed another case labeled “high value porcelain.” She wheeled these past Eloise on a cart and had Eloise sign the manifest.

Drones . . .

“Charles,” Arjun asked, “why are you carrying that pig statue?”

“It’s mine,” Charles said.

“Well, yes,” Arjun continued, “I wasn’t questioning your claim to the thing. Just asking why it’s with us here, in this elevator.”

Charles gave them the abridged version of an otherwise intricate series of events that had brought a work from the Porcine Repose series into his possession, and the strange emotional fixation that now led him to bring the thing everywhere he went. He described how the pig seemed to reappear in his path, how he could scarcely remember life before it. Wonderment thought for a moment. He couldn’t remember a time before Charles had his prized pig either.

“Right,” Arjun said, as though remembering something he never knew.

They turned to other matters, but a faint strangeness pulsed just beyond the edge of Wonderment’s thoughts.

“Step one, locate Murray and the pig,” Wonderment said, “step two, figure out how to lure him away from the other guests.”

“It’s going to be a confrontation this time,” Rafferty said, “best if we get the pig quickly and get out.”

“Agreed,” said Wonderment.

Arjun rolled his shoulders and bounced on his toes like a novice boxer mimicking confidence.

“Steady now, champ,” Rafferty rumbled.

“Arjun, I want you to patch into the resort’s security feed, if you can manage. Give us routes, exits, eyes.” Wonderment continued.

Arjun replied, “I can manage.”

They arrived at the gala and crept outward, their eyes darting back and forth across the people still gathered there. The quartet featuring the massive harp was once again playing their rendition of The Girl from Ipanema. It wasn’t clear whether the quartet had looped its entire set and happened to arrive at that song again, or if it was just an extremely long rendition. It gave their whole escapade the quality of being out of time, as though the rules of cause and effect had become more circular. Wonderment didn’t have time to think much about these revelations, because Rafferty was tugging on his shirt sleeve. He had spotted Murray. They took a position at a table on the far side of the rooftop, a reasonable distance away, where they could glimpse their rivals only occasionally, when the crowd arranged itself just so, creating a channel through which they could glimpse him and his silvery companions, one of whom was smoldering slightly.

A loose swarm of security drones whirred overhead, activated sometime after the fire alarm, the lights on their undersides glowing as luminous cherries, slightly too distant for the plucking. Wonderment had an idea at the same time as Arjun, which they communicated via subtle expressions, and so neither of them said anything. Arjun slipped his cellphone from his pocket and began working. Charles set his pig on the table and stared at it, transfixed. After a minute he stood, shoved his chair toward the table, and said, “I need a drink.”

“Charles,” Rafferty wheezed, aiming for authority and landing squarely on exhaustion. But Charles was gone, slipped away with his prized possession between a wall of artistic tuxedos and sinuous gowns.

“Let him go,” said Wonderment.

“Got it,” said Arjun. He positioned himself close to Wonderment, and Rafferty watched over their shoulders. His phone screen, visible to all three, showed one of the drone’s perspectives. The feed was dark, silhouettes below wobbling without clear features.

“Are you in control?” Wonderment asked.

Arjun typed something on the phone, and the camera began racing in a different direction.

“Whoa,” Arjun said, then typed something to slow the drone. “I’m in control, but it’s not easy.” He continued.

With considerable difficulty, he maneuvered the drone toward Dr. Murray’s table, careful to maintain distance. Once the drone was in position, Arjun used the camera to zoom in on the table. A parcel covered in plastic bubble wrap sat in front of Dr. Murray.

“He’s got it,” Arjun said.

“Keep eyes on it. Alert us if it moves,” Wonderment commanded.

“Oh, cool,” Arjun said, “it has object tracking.”

He traced a small circle on the screen around the parcel, and where his fingertip had moved, a pulsing orange outline appeared. The drone began to swing in a wide arc through the air while keeping the camera trained on the package.

“Rafferty,” Arjun said, “watch that drone. Let me know if it leaves that orbit. I’m going to switch to one of the others to see if I can get eyes on Charles.”

“Got it,” Rafferty answered.

Arjun began pecking at his screen. His eyes narrowed, and his mouth set in a grimace of determination. A second drone peeled off from the swarm and began moving toward the bar area. The first drone continued to circle Murray’s table, far and wide enough not to attract attention. Just as the second drone reached the bar’s airspace, Arjun exhaled sharply and urgently spat, “No, shit, shit.”

“What?” Demanded Wonderment.

“The object mask transferred,” Arjun said hoarsely, “No. No. Cancel.”

The three remaining drones in the swarm suddenly darted in different directions. One drone seemed as though it had locked onto the scroll of a cello. It began circling the top of the instrument, narrowing into concentric circles. Wonderment watched Arjun frantically switch his control to the circling drone and tried to pull it in a different direction, only succeeding in panning the camera.

“These controls are impossible,” Arjun whined nervously.

“Concentrate,” Wonderment said cooly.

A yelp rose from the bar area, and Wonderment looked over just in time to see a drone slam into the backbar and ricochet horizontally, dragging bottles off their shelf onto the floor. Shattering glass and screams. Arjun, sweat stains now visible around his armpits, switched to that drone’s camera. The drone nearest the musicians resumed its hunt, and soon sheet music was cast into the air by the turbulence of four small propellers. The musicians halted mid-phrase. A few guests applauded, uncertainly.

“Drone’s moving,” Rafferty remarked.

Wonderment turned and saw the drone, trained on the pig package, moving in circles that drifted lazily across the crowd.

“Pig’s on the move,” Wonderment said. “Move!”

“What about Charles?” Arjun demanded.

“We don’t have time,” Wonderment said, “he’s a good lad. He’ll find us.”

Arjun continued to wrestle with the drone controls as they made their way back to the elevator. His efforts were not effective. One of the drones continued to antagonize the musicians, and soon they had fled the stage. At last, Arjun decided it would be best to send the drones as far away from the resort as possible. There, a safe distance from the gala, Arjun set the object tracking to follow a very unfortunate squirrel.

“Where are they headed?” Asked Arjun, looking up from his phone.

Wonderment and Rafferty stared at him.

“Arjun,” Wonderment said seriously.

“Yes?” Arjun answered.

“You really bungled that one, lad.” Wonderment scolded.

“Not a good showing,” confirmed Rafferty.

“Sorry,” apologized Arjun sheepishly.

“Anyways,” continued Wonderment, watching the digital display atop the elevator doors, “they’re headed to the basement.”

Several other patrons pushed into the elevator with them. Despite the contortion of Rafferty’s face into some feral, enraged thing, he was graciously asked if he could push the buttons for floors four, two, and one. Fearing Rafferty might actually sprout fangs and lunge, Arjun obliged. The ride down was tense, and a standoffish attitude permeated the space, surely unnerving the other passengers. A man who resembled a toothpick in an Anarkali suit noticed they were headed to the basement.

“Ah, the whaling exhibit! What a wonderful idea.”

When this was met with silence, he continued, “Might I join you?”

“No,” replied Rafferty flatly. The man looked genuinely disappointed but remained silent and exited at the lobby. On the final jog down to the basement, the silence persisted.

The doors slid open, and once again they stepped into the odd space. The whirr of animatronic motors pierced the sounds of ocean waves and repetitive sea shanties. A projector had activated, casting the silhouette of rolling waves against the whale and the 3-dimensional ship’s prow. The robotic captain lay kicked over, spasming rhythmically on the ground. Dr. Murray, who had clearly stolen the captain’s harpoon, stood at the center of the room flanked by ten scowling individuals. The package they had spied earlier was tucked under his left arm.

“Wonderment,” Dr. Murray shouted over a crash of thunder, “this ends here.”

“Save it, Murray,” Wonderment called back, “I’ve heard it all before!”

“The pig is mine, Wonderment, give it up!” was the reply.

A mixture of hatred and deep longing flooded through Wonderment. The disinterested heist had evolved into something other – something profound. It promised retribution for the past slights, an absolute end in-and-of itself. It was as though all the years of Wonderment’s life had been leading inevitably to this moment. Wonderment startled himself with the force of his own intensity.

“Square up, lads,” Wonderment said factually, as though he were suggesting a museum they might visit while in town. Rafferty grunted, and Arjun began to fold his shirt sleeves.

“Come now, there’s no need for that!” Murray shouted.

When he saw that Wonderment, Rafferty, and Arjun would not be persuaded, he spoke again, “Well then, Wonderment, what do you say to a friendly wager: my pig against yours?”

Wonderment paused. It felt like the kind of cinematic moment that demanded a pause.

“We don’t have a pig,” Wonderment said at last.

“Well, not you, but that friend of yours back at the roof,” Murray continued, “my pig against his pig, wagered on your behalf or whatever.”

“Okay, fine, I get it,” Wonderment said, “what exactly are you proposing?”

“That you and I settle this like gentlemen,” yelled Murray over another sea shanty that had just begun.

Oh, the captain saw a maid so fair and mistook her for the sea,

His eyes shot red and his belly round, she denied his company!

“Fisticuffs?” Asked Wonderment.

“Indeed,” Murray replied.

Rafferty patted Wonderment on the back. Murray handed the pig and the harpoon to Nelson, then met Wonderment midway between the two groups.

“Let’s be sure . . .” Wonderment was beginning to say as an aggressive jab from Murray caught his chin.

“Oh, you . . .” Wonderment yelled as he staggered back, regained his balance, and dove headlong at Murray.

Murray was ready and caught Wonderment on the side of the head with a spinning roundhouse kick. Wonderment was knocked sideways. He crumpled to his hands and knees for a moment, then stood. He raised his guard and began to approach. Murray circled him. Wonderment forced himself to take slow breaths. Murray threw a haymaker, but Wonderment was ready. He danced sideways, out of the blow’s path, and allowed his right hand to skim along Murray’s right arm. When he felt the fist, he clenched. Wonderment stepped in front of Murray’s body with his left foot, raised his left arm, and twisted backwards. This sent Murray to the floor, but he recovered with a backward somersault, though the action couldn’t have been pleasant against the concrete floor. Murray roared. He turned to Nelson, motioned, and Nelson tossed him the harpoon.

“Scoundrel,” Wonderment yelled. Rafferty was already moving. He pried an oar from the wax fist of one of the animatronic whalers and tossed it to Wonderment. Wonderment had trained kobudō for years in the Shuri-ryū style, and an oar was an ideal weapon. He spun it around his back in a graceful arc and approached Murray. Murray lunged with the harpoon tip forward, but Wonderment expertly deflected the stab and then proceeded to whack Murray on the shin with the wide section of the oar. Wonderment then threw him backward with the handle to his stomach. Murray landed on his rump, cowering before Wonderment like a defeated schoolyard bully.

“Enough,” Wonderment said, but Murray was already on his feet.

He hobbled back to Nelson and barked, “Shoot them.”

In unison, the ten now-even-more-serious-looking individuals each drew silenced firearms from belts and purses. Wonderment, Rafferty, and Arjun looked at each other desperately. No one moved.

Ding. The elevator arrived. Charles strode out toward the room’s center. He appeared to be glowing.

“Having a standoff, are we?” he asked.

As he approached, a nimbus around his head became visible, radiating golden light into the gloomy space. He stopped next to Wonderment and whispered something in his ear.

Sage advice . . .

When they had arrived at the rooftop, Charles was still plagued by an uncertainty of near existential magnitude that erupted forth like a caldera when he first located his own pig in the gift shop. At once, he had realized the depth of his affection for a miniature porcelain swine and the undeniable strangeness of this obsession. It didn’t feel right that he, a globe-trotting member of the most elite echelon, should be so consumed by a work that, though artistically flawless, embodied a timid and vacuous intellect. These thoughts rankled Charles as he sat staring at his pig while the others searched for a way of prying away Murray’s own relic. The only remedy, he suspected, was a whiskey sour, or perhaps an aviation. So, he made his way to the bar and ordered the latter.

He settled onto a leather-padded stool. A man in a tan trenchcoat was seated next to him. They spoke simultaneously.

“That coat seems far too warm for this weather,” Charles had said.

“That’s a fine piece, Charles. A Porcine Repose imitation, if I’m not mistaken,” said the man.

“It’s real,” Charles replied, leaning into the man’s oddly confident train of thought.

Then he asked, “How do you know my name?”

“You don’t remember me?” The man asked. Then, after a pause, “Well, I suppose you wouldn’t remember me.”

“Why’s that?” asked Charles.

“Tell me, Charles, does it become tiring?” The man asked.

“Yes,” replied Charles before asking, “Wait. What becomes tiring?”

“Wandering so close to the margins,” the man replied, as though the explanation were self-evident.

“The what?” Asked Charles.

“The border,” the man replied, “the edge of the acceptable narrative.”

“I don’t follow,” said Charles as he probed the dim recesses of his conscious mind for any lead that might allow him to make sense of the man’s words.

“You know,” the man continued, “you’re very gifted. Were it not for your constant support of Wonderment, you might find yourself standing on a much more lucid vantage.”

“Wonderment is my friend,” Charles said, irritation beginning to coil beneath his words.

“Even so,” the man replied, “isn’t your sanity too great a cost for something as immaterial as friendship?”

There was something hostile about this man, a serrated aura that Charles couldn’t articulate.

“I don’t see why it’s any business of yours,” Charles answered.

“Well,” said the man with a degree of finality, taking another sip of brown liquid.

“Maybe you need a few more submersions,” he murmured.

Charles sensed the threat before he saw it. A syringe sat lazily on the bar beneath the man’s left hand. In slow motion, the man lifted the syringe and swung it toward Charles’s neck. It was too close. There was no way Charles could avoid it. For the briefest instant, the syringe hung in the air like a raptor poised at the apex of an updraft, locating its prey and beginning to dive. That’s when a drone slammed into the backbar and started to tear bottles from their perch onto the ground. Shattering glass and screams caused the man to hesitate, momentarily, and Charles automatically intercepted the syringe, its razor tip grazing his wrist as he directed it back at the man, catching him near the collarbone. Then Charles gently squeezed the man’s hand, delivering whatever serum was held by the implement into the man’s neck. Within seconds, the man’s eyes glazed over. As Charles watched, the look of determination on the man’s face melted into one of relaxed resignation.

“How’s it going?” Charles said dryly.

“There was a sound!” The man cried, then, turning to the bartender, “What happened?

The bartender didn’t reply; he just stared in horror at his shattered inventory.

“I’ll have a perfectly ordinary chardonnay!” The man told the bartender.

“Sod off!” The bartender shouted at him.

The man’s face contorted into a childlike caricature of agony.

Then, turning to Charles, the man said, “You’re my only friend now.”

“Sod off!” Charles yelled.

Tears formed in the man’s eyes and ran heavily down his reddening cheeks. He took a few gasping breaths before leaving the bar and wandering out into the crowd with the wobbly assuredness of an astronaut attempting a first moonwalk.

“You really stuck it to him,” Gary said, materializing suddenly. The graying wizard leaned backward against the bar, facing the crowd, now panicking as a host of rabid drones zigged and zagged over their heads.

“He deserved it,” replied Charles as he took a sip of his aviation.

“You slipped through an edit, Charles,” Gary said gravely, “don’t waste it.”

“How do you mean?” Charles asked.

“Suffice it for me to say,” Gary chuckled, “that you may want to meditate on what that man let slip before you injected him.”

“Wha . . .” Charles began, but he looked over and saw the wizard had vanished. Only his pointy gray hat remained, out of place on the bar top.

Charles sipped his cocktail and stared down into the violet liquid. It swirled slowly in the glass.

“Margins . . .” Charles murmured, “. . . edge of the acceptable narrative?”

Over the next few moments, his thoughts became clearer. It was as though he had just taken off a pair of sunglasses in a dimly lit room. The effects of the drugs he had been assailed with throughout the day began to wear off. He remembered. The lab. His entrainment on the worthless pig statue. The containment procedure. Freyja. Everything. Charles downed his cocktail and dashed to the elevator. He saw Wonderment and the others enter, but he couldn’t reach them in time. With painful slowness, he watched as the screen above the elevator counted backward from 5. After several brief pauses, it settled on “B.”

Charles waited and cursed the resort’s architect. A place with this capacity would need two, or even three, elevators operating in unison. His anger made the time pass even more slowly. As the numbers ticked upward again, he imagined everything terrible that might have befallen his friends in the seconds that passed. Finally, the elevator arrived. He entered, and a genteel stranger tried to follow him in. Charles push-kicked the stranger in the chest and sent him sprawling backward onto the ground. None of this mattered anyway. His descent was direct. He entered the basement and made a beeline for Wonderment, who appeared to be using telepathy to stop Dr. Murray and his heavily armed goons from firing their weapons.

“Having a standoff, are we?” Charles asked lightly. He walked to Wonderment’s side and whispered, “We’re in containment. This is a looping narrative.”

On these words, Wonderment’s awareness rippled outward like the shockwave of a low-yield atomic detonation. He could see clearly. They were indeed trapped in a cyclical story. The loop could continue indefinitely with an infinite number of variations on the capture-the-flag, err . . ., capture-the-pig theme.

Central Intelligence, Executive Memo – Freyja Protocol [Classified]

Subject: Insertion-Construct #208 (“Wonderment”) – Containment Status & Resource Request

Dear Argyle VIII Commandant,

As you are aware, Berkeley, Searle, James, and other foundational philosophers whose work underpins collective idealism have been proven correct. Objects, people, histories, and events have no material existence. They are stable patterns in a shared field of expectation – a global, overlapping cognitive model of consciousness. The “physical world” is what happens when enough minds agree on the same hallucination for long enough. Under normal conditions, this happens slowly. Babies learn what “chairs” should be and come to use them quite naturally. Cultures agree on borders, currencies, and laws. Over the centuries, these shared hallucinations congeal into “reality.” But what if, instead of waiting for centuries, we manufactured consensus directly? Enter the Freyja Protocol.

In 2025, the advent of large language models (LLMs) created a massive demand for well-annotated, machine-readable versions of humanity’s creative corpus. Every novel, newspaper article, and even the most incoherent fringe literature was scanned, tagged, and redundantly stored in massive data centers for training models. While this produced advances in LLM coherence, one unexpected side effect was far more profound, with much broader implications, though scarcely interpretable by modern scientific standards.

First, records of the past can now be subtly altered on a massive scale across millions of sources in a way that is logically consistent and instantaneous using the LLMs themselves. For example, we can insert a non-existent person into a particular historical event and alter all works pertaining to that event, using non-overlapping but concordant descriptions of that person. We don’t literally change the past. We simply change all our records. Crucially, we then leverage advances in memetics made by Dr. Church’s group and imbue the descriptions of this non-existent character’s qualities and deeds with details that encourage virality. In short, knowledge of this character spreads extremely quickly and is perceived as real by millions of people. Now, and this is the part that is still scientifically unclear, once a critical mass of independent minds model this character as real, some entity (God, the Universe, the Simulation, whatever governing substrate underlies shared perception) seems to demand that reality harmonize. If everyone’s mental model says, “this person has been walking around for 35 years,” then it appears that the easiest way for reality to stabilize is to make it accurate. The past isn’t altered, but the present and particularly the future begin to act as if that character exists. We term these emergent entities “insertion-constructs.”

Of course, we here at the Advanced Network Science and Narrative Reprogramming Agency (ANSNRA) have been proceeding with operational caution consistent with ANSNRA protocol while examining military utility. Given the constraints outlined in funding proposal J-01-4592XRT, we limited ourselves to injecting a single insertion-construct that was functionally inert across all measurable personality vectors and unmotivated to do anything of significance. Surprisingly, this first trial elicited a 0.03% increase in global happiness as reported on the Cantril Ladder. Our interpretation of this phenomenon is that knowing someone is more boring than oneself tends to boost people’s mood slightly. However, there was an issue with the material coalescence of this neutral character, whom we codenamed Ben. Ben materialized in the lab, as expected, but only as a faint anthropoid outline. Through further trials, we determined that character dimensionality is a key determinant of how much time people spend thinking about others. Therefore, we deduced that the number of individuals who must be aware of a Ben-type insertion-construct is considerably higher than the number of individuals who would need to be aware of a more interesting character for that character to materialize.

We began to experiment with maximalist personality configurations. This brings us to Trial #208. Our engineers designed an insertion-construct that was well outside typical personality benchmarks, though just shy of qualities that would qualify them as mentally ill. To avoid any dramatic alterations in our current timeline, we ensured this character accomplished nothing meaningful but instead spent all its time engaged in what amounted to recursive, low-yield linguistic pursuit loops (wild goose chases). The character immediately materialized in the lab, and to our surprise, proved to be an excellent conversationalist who was rather amused by the whole affair. We doubted the insertion-construct had any interiority or meaningful self-concept. With the construct stable and contained, our group turned to experimental deployments. We hypothesized that creating narratives involving this insertion-construct in real-time could alter events as they unfold, thereby putting our hand on the scale of World affairs. Our ambition was as follows: we inject the construct into ongoing world events, say, as a low-ranking official in the government of an oppressive regime, and we dial up the construct’s anti-authoritarian sentiments. Once actual covert operatives can verify coalescence, we cease narrative construction. We allow the construct to self-drive for a while as the event unfolds and only make edits if things get out of hand. After that, we create a cute story whereby the construct returns to the lab and is once again engaged in a circular fantasy that keeps them totally inert.

Unfortunately, we come to the subject of the present memo. Insertion-construct #208 proved to be anomalously charismatic to a statistically significant degree. The interiority that we doubted seems to exist. We recognized something was off when the construct dubbed itself “Wonderment,” a name it explained was due to its “excellence across all domains of human endeavor.” Clinically narcissistic by all available indices, but with the charisma to convince all but the most cognitively sound individual the title was deserved. I find myself unprofessionally fond of the construct and must report that I am compromised. One evening, after most essential staff had left, Wonderment convinced a graduate student to dial back its inclination to pursue unnecessary endeavors. More than a week later, this student professes a deep affection and longing for Wonderment, and therapy has not been effective. The Wonderment construct escaped containment. When the security breach was recognized, we immediately began efforts to return Wonderment to a controlled narrative. This real-time editing of an ongoing story is tying up considerable computational resources. It appears that Wonderment has an emergent ability to reinterpret the outputs of our narrative assembly models and jockey for narrative dominance. Operationally, we no longer possess reliable leverage over Wonderment. There have already been several collateral incidents involving small woodland mammals. We can only consider Wonderment dangerous, at large, and capable of influencing the outcome of any unfolding event it stumbles across. We would greatly benefit from expanded access to the East Coast server clusters to improve the quality and speed of our narrative assembly. Containment of this fully emergent narrative agent, a literary weapon system, is more important than streaming and social media services that are currently tying up compute.

Please respond at your earliest convenience and loosen computational load restrictions.

Benjamin Tatum Darius-Pont, PhD

P.S. If this memo seems unusually florid, our models indicate that matching the construct’s narrative tone improves containment by 0.7%.

Rebooted . . .

“Thank you, Charles,” Wonderment replied. He straightened, dusting off his shoulders with renewed purpose.

“Certainly,” answered Charles.

“Your pig, if you’d be so kind?” Wonderment asked.

Charles handed over his pig statue, now pulsing with an increasingly unnatural blue light. Wonderment surveyed the swine with disgust, seeing it now as nothing more than a gaudy trap, a fixation designed to ensnare them all. Wonderment tossed the pig into the air, pivoted sharply on his back leg, and kicked the pig with all his might in Dr. Murray’s direction. Charles didn’t flinch. The spell the object had cast on him was broken. The swine soared across the room, and just before it reached Murray’s crew, it burst into a storm of electric-blue shards. Everything the sparks touched sheared away instantly, like a thin fabric backdrop from a theatre production torn away in jagged strips. Patches of tile and concrete vanished in stuttering flashes. The spaces concrete and metal had occupied were replaced by swirling masses of bright colors, writhing and undulating like living color-soaked organisms. Thunder boomed somewhere overhead. Real thunder. The animatronic whalers broke free from their patterned movements and stepped off the display, as though suddenly imbued with intention. There was a terrible wrenching and cracking as the ceiling above them tore open down its middle and fell away, revealing a vault of stars. But there were not just stars, there sprawled vast constellations and spiraling nebulae.

Wonderment stepped forward, and a beam used to prop up the exhibition skittered in a metallic clatter across the floor, arriving just as his foot fell so that it formed the first step of a rapidly growing staircase. The mast of the whaling ship fell and formed the next step. As Wonderment climbed, an array of objects from the resort moved beneath his feet and allowed him to ascend: light fixtures, cutting boards, even a porcelain toilet. Dr. Murray and his minions began firing in a panic, but the bullets from their guns seemed to ignore gravity. The tiny pieces of glowing lead moved as if through thick syrup, reassembling themselves into slowly revolving fractal geometries. Wonderment glanced over his shoulder. Rafferty, Charles, and Arjun stood motionless at the foot of the stairs. Above each, a softly spinning nimbus hovered. For all his bravado, Wonderment could not imagine a world without these idiots at his side.

“Go,” called Charles, “we’ll find you.”

Something profound and unfamiliar thrummed in Wonderment’s chest. Pain, sadness, love, and a sense of inevitability. All at once. Emotions he had no names for. He hated leaving his comrades, but he must ascend. He resumed his climb. As he rose high above the basement into the sky, scenes from the evening drifted like translucent clouds across the starfield. Angles of the men conversing in the spa from a perspective somewhere behind Wonderment’s shoulder. Rafferty dousing Charles with cold water in the shower. The voice of a polite receptionist explaining, “There is, technically, no time like the present,” and urging him to book a room. A drone’s eye perspective of a squirrel zigzagging through dense forest. All from a perspective other than Wonderment’s, as if filmed by an omniscient camera. But he couldn’t stop his climb. The thunder boomed louder, and lightning etched across the sky. Then, somewhere further along the stairs, a singular speck of radiant white light. Lines of text, black letters against this white light, poured forth from the widening circle.

Wonderment couldn’t help but look back once more. A collage of scenes played against the ground far below: the impromptu performance art, Gary the wizard fighting Murray’s thugs, a woman in a kimono gassing Charles. They shattered like brittle glass, giving way to new reflections from his own life. From nowhere, a drove of spectral pigs materialized and charged beneath the stairs, causing them to tremble ever so slightly. His friends were nowhere to be seen. Wonderment turned back to his task. He approached the white light. Text whizzed past him and back down the stairs as verses tearing free from the pages of some unseen tome, too fast for him to comprehend. Soon, he reached the circle of light, which had expanded to fill his entire vision. Then he felt a sudden, glassy coolness against his face. He reached out to touch the sheet of glowing luminosity before him, and his hand vanished. It felt as though he had plunged his arm into icy, depthless water. Wonderment took a deep breath and stepped forward.

Greener pastures . . .

Wonderment awoke. His whole body ached. Eyes still closed, he felt the surface on which he lay. It was cold, shockingly pliable. It reeked with a sour stench. Something clung to his face in a suffocating, viscous layer. He wiped his eyes; a gob of something gooey slid off and slapped the ground. He blinked his eyes open. The smell was now overpowering. Wonderment lifted himself from a thick layer of mud. Gradually, his vision cleared, and he looked around. Sky. A brilliant blue sky with faint wisps of cloud impossibly far above. Green. A rolling hillside. He braced for a bugle blast that didn’t come. Something warm – alive – grazed his hand. There was a snorting sound. Wonderment jerked away in horror, scrambling backward until he dropped into a seated position. A pig wallowed happily in the mud mere inches from where he had been. Another oink sounded, and a wet snout brushed his ear from behind.

“Ech,” Wonderment sputtered.

The barnyard aroma left no doubt. He was lying in a pigsty. An impish grin crept across his face as he hoisted himself, clumsily, to his feet.

A thick Irish brogue boomed from somewhere behind him, “Oy, lad, why’re ya rollin’ with muh pigs!”

Wonderment turned, exposing his mud-caked suit to a farmer who looked as if lifted straight from American Gothic. Wonderment waved, sending arcs of reeking sludge splattering in all directions.

“Looking for the author,” Wonderment called back, “if anyone knew where this slop came from, it’d be the pigs!”

To be continued . . .