Synopsis of Wonders of the World

Synopsis of Wonders of the World

Hatch Johns is a twenty-six-year old journalist specializing in architecture. He has just arrived in New York to begin a mission of redemption, stemming fromfifteen year-oldtragedy that he has recently not only learned of, but discovered it washe who was responsible.

For the last couple of mornings waits on the torch of the Statue of Liberty for his muse to appear over the Atlantic in the most fantastic airship ever constructed. As he does so, he is constantly making notes on a book, which identifies and develops his own personal mythology. The foundation of the book waswritten by the author he awaits, who is the newly installed president of the Burning Glass Foundation, dedicated to the development of prodigies. She is coming to America to establish its new headquarters in San Francisco and to recruit a new generation of participants.

Meanwhile, across the Atlantic in the small town of Friedrichshafen, Germany Zeppelin is frantic because Dr. Kohl, the books author, has not arrived for the launch, which will be departing in just a few hours.

This fact is angrily brought to the attention of Zeppelin president, Dr. Hugo Eckener by his second in command, Captain Ernst Lehmann. Over the last few months, there have been several occasions where her conduct, in the brief moments he has seen her, has upset him.

It will be Eckener's job to oversee the flight to America, but once there, it will be Lehmann's job to command the vessel throughout the remainder of the maiden tour.

This comes at a high price for Lehmann. The company is developing their own ship, the Graf Zeppelin, which they plan to use as the basis of an international passenger service, which has been there long held dream since even before the war. Being gone, although necessary for the survival of the company, is troublesome to him.

With Dr. Kohl missing it becomes Eckener's unsolicited job to introduce the seven prodigies to an audience of three hundred, comprised of family, press, locals and aviation enthusiasts. Their peculiar behavior makes Eckener ill at ease and dread the additional responsibility this development imposes on him by a passenger roster that not only includes the seven prodigies, fourteen crew but seven correspondents; six from Europe and one from an American newspaper.

After a successful launch, the first objective is to launch a small biplane from the airship to pick up Dr. Kohl at an airport. Unfortunately, since it was designed to be a light a possible, there will be almost no room for Dr. Kohl's luggage. The aviation and the diplomacy falls upon a crew member who fought against the German's in WW1, and personally shot down four Zeppelins. As the wisdom of this selection is not only questioned by Captain Lehmann, and the American correspondent, a new problem it brought to Eckener's attention.There's a stowaway that could compromise the safety of the helium bags. It's a two-year-old spider monkey that mysteriously got on board.

To capture the creature, Eckener recruits a few of the prodigies, particularly one that is known for her ability to talk to animals.

The girls look for the monkey

The adventure brings the girls into the bowels of the ship where they have the opportunity to experience the behind the scenes mechanics which allow the ship operate. While trying to capture the monkey, their individual personalities are accentuated.

Before the monkey is actually caught, this wild adventure comes to an abrupt end when Dr. Kohl arrives on board, announcing that he left the pilot back at the airport and flew the plane herself.

Grasping the situation as something horrific, Dr. Kohl challenges Eckener's professionalism in allowing the girls to run wild in a place filled with such dangers. As a consequence, Kohl chooses to isolate the girls from the crew.

On the train

Several days later, on a train heading toward the small town of Alexandria, the passengers are treated to two milestones in aviation. The latest pursuer of the greatest prize in aviation, Charles Lindbergh has just taken off, heading to Paris to make transatlantic history. However, their brush with aviation history is even closer at hand. The seven prodigies and Dr. Kohl are on board after surviving a treacherous landing in New York harbor, having made an emergency landing after the ship was pierced by the spikes on the crown of the Statue of Liberty.

Also on board is Hatch Johns, who is discretely observing Dr. Kohl as she is having the prodigies draw short sketches of the landscape as if passes by.

Sitting next to Hatch is a gentleman reading an article about the recently deceased Spanish architect named Gaudi. Hatch points out that the article that the man is reading has a mistake. When asked how his is aware of the mistake, Hatch points to the byline, which says "Hatch Johns."

The chairman shares his concerns about the state of the hotel, and the potential chaos that his conference may suffer as a result.

While talking an associate of Hatch's, Charlie Lafferty, one of the correspondents who traveled with the airship enters their compartment. Immediately he falls. At the same moment, Dr. Kohl after holding her breath to make a point with the prodigies, has collapsed.

The two of them, side by side lay on the floor. The chairman bolts up and yells "Stop the train!"

Lafferty's spyglass rolls forward. A lit candle that had been in the hand of a praying woman falls, extinguishing itself.

Arthur Lafferty ponders the comet

This provokes Hatch to think about the first moments of the Lafferty mythology, which started on a warm moonless night a century ago.

Arthur Lafferty stopped working on his accounts for a moment to catch a glimpse of a comet with his spyglass he had received in lieu of payment.

When he put the spyglass back in the drawer, he accidently knocked a bit of wax onto an invoice. While scraping it off, one of the numbers became slightly smudged.

This creates a problem that would not have happened normally, but the accountant at the Gaiety Theatre had been under siege every since the owner, Mr. Flannigan had decided to expand the number of performances to a new play twice a week.

His carelessness made him think that the seven was actually a one and he paid accordingly, reducing the payment seven fold. Compounding the insult, he had also overlooked an invitation to a party celebrating the birth of Dora Jordan's American born grandson.

These unintended slights were brought to Jordan's attention by her housekeeper, who took the opportunity to contrast the behavior of Arthur Lafferty who not only had been her conscientious guardian of her business affairs, but he had been the very first respondent to the party, even though his own wife would be giving birth soon. Dora wanted to help out Lafferty without him knowing it, so she decided to sue Sean Flannigan.

Dora pays Arthur handsomely with the understanding that the task will be great. That evening, Dora performs at a theatre rivaling the Gaiety Theatre and casts Lafferty in the role of a herculean, which contrasts Lafferty's diminutive stature. At the end of each fantastic story, it ends in the refrain, "Get me Lafferty."

This phrase bleeds out into the pubs that evening, and the stories become even more exaggerated.

The next morning, when Sean Flannigan is buying breakfast from a street merchant he learns that he has been the source of ridicule, since he is going up against such a powerful attorney.

After having heard the stories all day long, he thinks that it's prudent to settle with Dora as quickly as possible. As part of the settlement, he offers Arthur Lafferty's child, upon his seventh birthday a permanent seat in the Gaiety Theatre.

The Seventh Birthday of James Lafferty

When that day comes, Flannigan discovers that the young man, even at the tender age of seven has a keen grasp of the financial and political implications of owning the seat.

Over the next decade and beyond, James does take hearty advantage of the seat, never missing a single play, sometimes observing the same play for every one of its performances. On several occasions when an actor was unavailable, James would be asked to take his place. Although he would not always know the exact line, his broad experience with theatrical concepts allowed him to convincingly improvise.

In his studies, he learned as much or more from the theatre, as he ddid from books, professors or his father's tutelage.

Not only could he quote from the many hundreds of plays he had seen, but he developed a keen sense of showmanship that always served him well.

His first job comes at nineteen with the Dublin Zoo. His first assignment is to bring a baby elephant to the London Zoo. As a result of a little girl placing a red cape on the elephant on a cold night and a momentary perception of her imagining that it flew as it was coming out of a trailor, she called it the "Flying Red Elephant."

While on the voyage, James taught the elephant several tricks, including how to curtsy and guess women's age.

When he arrives with the elephant, he makes quite an impression on the board. Years later when they are facing a crises, they employ the phrase, "Get me Lafferty!" A fire destroys the exhibiting gallery for a world-renowned hummingbird exhibit. The problem is exacerbated by the fact that there exhibited slated for the Crystal Palace. Lafferty finds the solution in having the hummingbirds appear at the exhibition.

When the exhibition arrives, Lafferty meets a fumbling American patent attorney who runs a firm in America with more business than he can handle. That evening Lafferty has a run in with a distressed sea captain who lost his cargo of red silk to pirates and when held captive until his recent escape. When the attorney sees how deftly Lafferty handles a crowd waiting for the Hummingbird Exhibit to open, he offers him a job. At first Lafferty refuses, but later that day when he learns about the death of his father, he accepts the offer on the condition that he can go back to Ireland to settle his father's estate.

Lafferty sails back to Dublin, settles his father's affairs and releases his seat at the Gaiety Theatre. While using the spyglass he is accidentally bumped and his right eye is badly hurt. It becomes infected and the local surgeon removes the eye."I'll always be able to keep an eye on Dublin," says Lafferty. As he sails off, he looks back at the shore using his spyglass.

Seven years later another young son put his father to the grave and then soon found himself under the jurisdiction of a philistine of a stepfather, who believed that "tutors were a waste of money." However, in an attempt to demean young Joseph Pulitzer, while the lad philosophized over his destiny, he bestowed upon him a title that would one day give him a strategic status at a critical moment in his early career.

The moment did not come through his service for the North in the American Civil War, nor when he worked in the caves for his new employer or even when he dug graves. It came at the moment when the city fathers were paralyzed with indecision on how to fight the cholera plague.Although looking like a tramp, he established his credibility with the chess club when he announced that back in Hungary they called him "Attila the Rook!" Pulitzer had his own gambit. While working in the caves with a renown photographer, he had been using prototype lamps as part of the testing procedure set up by the extraordinary patent attorney James Lafferty, who had gained great fame from his daring escape from Hummingbird Island, where he was held captive by pirates. Through Whiley's stories, Pulitizer had come to the opinion that if there was a man who, through the shear force of his personality and litigious acumen, who could lead the city to safety, it would be James Lafferty. Since, James Lafferty had already sent a check in the hopes of recovering the lamps, Pulitizer demanded that the Chess Club return the draft and ask for something more valuable—Lafferty himself. Pulitzer, as he leaves the club to resume digging the graves of cholera victims, suggests to the club that they should stand up in one voice and yell, "Get me Lafferty!"

Lafferty never came, and on their leaders muddled through. The city survived, and Pulitzer himself, not only survived, but flourished in the St. Louis economy.

But it was James Lafferty himself and his inner reputation that lost it sheen. Several years latter and an attempt to cut along the borders of his redemption, he journeyed to Paris on the cover of doing patent work with the famed photographer Nadar. Although he did pay the photographer a visit, it was to meet his son, Abe for the first time. At nineteen, he was the product of an evening in London, which Lafferty had been making financial amends for over a dozen years. In Paris he scratching out a meager living by cleaning and feeding racing pigeons.

On the day that James Lafferty arrived in Paris, the Prussians had laid siege to the city. He learned this while discussing a photographic process for aerial photography with Nadar. The photographer had received a letter from James Lafferty's son, James Jr. When Lafferty opened the letter he was perplexed when all he found was a tiny sliver of a negative. Nadar informed him that it was microfilm. As he was setting up the equipment, there was a knock on the door. It was a lieutenant, a friend of Nadar. He informed the two of them of the siege and that Paris would be isolated. When Nadar projects James Junior letter on the wall it announces his engagement and has a photograph of his future wife.

When Bartody sees the image of the woman projected on the wall he is thunderstruck and it inspires him to tell about the project he is working on involving the building of a great statue symbolizing freedom.

James needs to get out of Paris and asks Nadar's help to secure the use of a balloon . Abe asks him to take along a pigeon so that he will know that he has escaped safely. As the day approaches, Abe has sold the rights to several hundred messages. James Lafferty and Barthody leave Paris with over a hundred pigeons and a thousand letters.

Bartody and James Lafferty escape from Paris. As they are landing, Bartody borrows James Lafferty's spyglass. A Prussian bullet ricochets off of te spyglass and wounds James.

Lafferty's last request is tat Bartody gives the spyglass to is son James Jr. and tat Abe is notified.

Seven years later, Abe short lived maritime career comes to an end, but the seed of his new career was planted. The ship Abe worked for sinks. Fortunately, not only does he manage to save is own life, but he makes a small fortune fishing others out of the thames. Abe's celebrity grows at the funeral, which is attended by thousands of mourners. Mistakenlyhis name is read in a roster of the dead, whichhe manages to exploit for sympathy.

This small mistake becomes is calling card and he uses it to get free drinks and meals. Ultimately, this mistake becomes so well known that some civic leaders end up making him the guest of honor at a banquet honorBritain's most acclaimed engineer.

It is here where his new career took its most decisive turn. It started with a seven course meal and collimated in a meal with only one meat on the plate.

The evening celebrated the fine achievements of Britian's engineers, but Abe was not completely satisfied with their performance. He fancied himself an authority on the subject because of his evening of swimming and fishing in the Thames on "that night," as he always refers to it as. In an ingracious manner, Abe challenged their integrity. However, the masters of ceremonies, the American ambassador managed to smooth things over, claiming the relations between the United States and Britian were in such good shape that the only issue separating the happiness of the two countries is the dispute over Jumbo, the gigantic elephant purchased from the London Zoological Society by P.T. Barnum.

This small issue that night would have big consequence for that night and for Abe. The makeshift podium used to officiate was based on a large wheeled crate, covered with linen maps. During the ceremony, the maps accidently falls, revealing the hand painting sign which displays its true purpose. It is the crate that is intended to transport Jumbo to America.

The dinner guests, indignit to the insult lodged against them, stormed out, leaving all of the culinary wonders uneaten. However, Abe is unruffled by the development. In fact is rather sanguine about the development since he has just met the daughter of the Assyrian Monarch, the freighter which will bring Jumbo to the U.S. She offers him the job of escorting Jumbo to America.

Not only does Abe escort Jumbo to America but he sticks with the circus until the night of Jumbo's tragic death in Ontario.

He, with Barnum's consent, brings in a horde of butchers to remove the meat from the dead elephant in preparation for his remains to be sent to a taxidermist. That night Jumbo's meat is barbequed and Abe pockets the money.

The next day Abe escorts Jumbo's remains the to world's most famous taxidermist. Abe stays on and assists with the various processes involved in mounting the hide and skeleton. Finally after several months of tedious labor, not only one Jumbo, but two, one skeleton and one lifelike hide are ready for exhibition. This leads to the big unveiling at the famous hippodrome, and it also is the stage for the meeting of the two brothers, James and Abe.

Much like how James Senior had felt that meeting Abe was long overdue, Abe felt the same way about meeting his brother. Also, the Hipprodrome presentation marked the end of his employment. He sends an invitation to James, who accepts.

When the big night comes, James Junior also brings his son Charlie, and his wife. P.T. Barnum, as master of ceremonies, presents a magic lantern show, depicting the role of the elephant from the time of Hannibal crossing the Alps to the ultimate death of Jumbo.

Although he hardly recognizes Abe he gives him an introduction reminiscent of the night Arthur Lafferty was the subject of heroic tales by Dora. When it comes to opening the curtain, Barnum asks the audience: Who should we get for such a heroic task, the audience yells back "Get me Lafferty!"

Lafferty awkwardly takes the stage. When he pulls the curtains open, two Jumbos are revealed. On top of the hide is Charlemagne.

Barnum also spots someone else in the audience. It's Joseph Pulitzer. Barnum invites him on stageto make sure he got the nickel he sent to the publisher for his fund to raise money for the building of the pedestal to be used for the Statue of Liberty. Pulitzer thanks Barnum for his extraordinary generosity. Pulitzer mentions to Abe that he once knew of a legendary lawyer named James Lafferty. Abe informs him that James was his father and that his other son, James Junior, and his grandson, Charlie are somewhere in the audience. Barnum invites them on stage.

James, his wife and Charlie take the stage.

"We've met," says Abe to Mrs. Lafferty. When Abe meets them, his memories of seeing her flood back, and he reminds them that he once saw a picture of her projected on the wall of Nadar's studio.

Pulitizer notes to Barnum that Mrs. Lafferty is the very picture of the sketches he has seen of the face of the Statue of Liberty. James informs Barnum that this spyglass was delivered to him by Bartoldy. James Seniors last words were inscribed on the sixth rung of the spyglass "The Redemption of St. Louis."

Barnum says that what is needed is the "Redemption of Jumbo" a monument as great as the Statue of Liberty.

A Jumbo Palace! Says Barnum. Then Barnum asks if he could build such a thing? James says he could, but he needs a buyer. Barnum grabs the spyglass and scans the audience looking for a buyer.

"I'll buy it!" shouts a woman's voice. Cartwheeling and backflipping onto stage is Bendini. Barnum introduces her to the audience.

Barnum says that if they have it opened by the same date as the opening of the Statue of Liberty he'll pay Abe's and Charlemagne's salary.

The first order of business was to secure the property. Along Surf Avenue were ramshackle clam shacks and bathhouses. James Lafferty Jr., Abe and Charlemagne all participated in the purchase of the leases to avoid the possibility of paying an exhorbinate price were it found out there were plans for a hotel.

Although James Junior and Bendini hashed out all of the details with fine precision, the final plans were drawn by architect William Free.

The rooms were given appropriate names, relating to the elephant's anatomy. The elephant was divided into 31 rooms, each with its own designation such as Main Hall, Shoulder Room, Throat Room, Stomach Room, etc.From the Howdah which topped the structure the visitor had an aerial view of more than 50 miles of ocean, bays and the cities of New York, Brooklyn and Jersey City.

Seventy windows took care of ventilation. It was illuminated by 21 electric lights.

The Elephant contained 3,500,000 feet of lumber, 14,000 kegs of nails, 7 tons of iron bolts and is covered by 57,000 square feet of tin. It took 277 men, 140 full working days to complete.

Located on Surf Avenue, it was just across from the terminals of all the railroad and steamboat lines into Coney Island. The "New York and Sea Beach RR runs direct to the entrance of the Elephant".The Coney Island elephant cost $250,000 to build and stood 125 feet high (7 stories) and had 31 hotel rooms. Her legs were 60 feet in circumference (one leg housed a cigar store, another had a diorama, and the 2 others had circular staircases). The elephant faced the sea and gave visitors to the observatory great ocean vistas through slits in the elephant's eyes. You could go to the top for a full 360 degree 50 mile view. At night, searchlights flashed erratically from her eyes. It was advertised as the 8th Wonder of the World.

The next time that Charlie Lafferty met Pulitzer was in 1893 at the Colombian

Exposition. They looked at the whole fantastic event from the centerpiece of the Midway, the Ferris Wheel. Pulitzer told Charlie about how he had first learned of his grandfather, James Senior and told him that as an act of family redemption he would offer him a seven-year apprenticeship at the New York World.

Five years later Charlie began his career as a journalist. His first story violated Pulitzer's credo of "accuracy, accuracy, accuracy."

It was less a mistake, than a nuance, but for the personages involved, it was an important distinction. "Were are two women that share one body; not a two-headed woman. You make out to be a freak!"

Pulitzer is intrigued by their special capabilities and knowledge of theater and literature. His extreme sensitivity to noise requires that not only he work in a silent environment, but during his rest periods that his mind is kept stimulated and distracted.Although the twins continue some of their acrobatic activities, such as crossing Niagara Falls, they become an integral part of his personal staff by performing special services for him on his yacht, Liberty where he operates the newspaper. They read Shakespeare, recite poetry, analyze the daily newspapers and send a torrent of telegrams to the newspaper.

Although Pulitzer forms this close relationship with the Twins, they are never seen in public together. Only Charlie Lafferty even knows about them at all.

When the 1901 Pam-American Exhibition comes to Buffalo, Charlie brings both Pulitzer and the Twins. On the night of President's day, when McKinley pays a visit to an attraction, Charlie escorts the Twins. He is also curious to see Abe Lafferty working at his temporary job while the Elephant Hotel is being prepared to move. Abe is playing the captain of the Trip to the Moon. It is a thirty minute ride that takes two dozens passengers on a rollicking space adventure, culminating with a reception in the lavish quarters of the Moon King, played by Charlemagne.

Unfortunately, problems arise. The twins give birth prematurely to a son in the Kingdom of the moon, using the throne. President McKinley does the delivery.

The mother is rushed off to the Emergency hospital on the park grounds, while the premature baby is taken to another attraction at the exposition called the Infant Incubator.

Unfortunately, the doctor who would have been most proficient in aiding mothers who had just given a traumatic birth was unavailable. The Twins died the next morning as she was transferred to a Brooklyn hospital.

Early the next morning, Abe and Charlemagne returned to Coney Island in time to help with moving the Elephant Hotel down Surf Avenue to its new, and smaller location.

Bendini has managed to turn the moving of the hotel into a major community event, drawing upon hundreds of the citizens to pulled the hotel down the main street.

A few minutes into the move, a carrier pigeon brings a piece of disturbing news. Charlemagne opens the note, reads it and dismounts from the elephant. He brings it to Bendini. She is horrified at the news and instructs Charlemagne to not reveal it until the hotel is moved. While they are talking, a second pigeon arrives. Abe opens the note. Charlemagne fails to stop Abe in time, who reads the note using his megaphone. "The President of the United States has been shot!"

Pandemonium breaks out into the streets. The Elephant Hotel is left, helpless in the middle of the street.

The owner of the Brighton Hotel comes to Bendini's rescue by laying down tracks and pulls the Elephant Hotel to its new location by locomotive.

Meanwhile, the President has died in the home of the President of the Fair. As the President's death casket is snaking through the streets of the fair, a tall veiled woman storms into the Infant Incubator exhibit and demands that out of respect for the death of the President that they close. The nurse on duty, frantically tries to summon the doctor in charge. As she is doing so, the woman steals the baby born on the moon. Outside she discards her heavy coat and veil and places the baby in a carriage and blends into the crowd of those watching the President's casket being pulled.

She sends off a telegram. At the Elephant Hotel it is received and a special room is created for the baby by a nearby scientific wiz, named Professor Jordan, the great grandson of Dora Jordan.

The Giantess takes care of the baby for a couple of years, until she is killed in a threatre file in Chicago. The responsibilities of the toddler fall upon the joint efforts of Abe, Charlemagne, and Bendini.

At about that time, Abe learns through Lafferty and Associates that Professor Jordan died in Seville Spain, while researching for his book about the Wonders of the World.

He is survived by his widow, Helen.

Shortly after her return to America, Bendini accepts a marriage proposal from the owner of the Brighton Beach Hotel. She put the Elephant Hotel up for sale and that night it burns down. Graciously the Jordan window, Helentakes in Charlemagne, Abe and the baby who is named Hatch.

Only a few days after moving into the house does an incident occur that makes the employment prospects brighten for Charlemagne and Abe. A former state senator, William Reynolds visits the house, expecting to meet with the Professor. Abe informs him of the sad news. Their conversation reveals that a new amusement park is about to be built. When Abe tells Reynolds about his experience with the Trip to the Moon ride, the senator is excited, and tells Abe he's hired as soon as the park opens.

After a whirlwind of activity the park is on the brink of opening when the senator returns to talk to Helen. During his first visit he noticed several illustrations with her signature on them. He commissioned her to create and print a special illustration commemorating each new season of Dreamland. The theme would loosely be based on the Seven Wonders of the World and Dreamland.

She accepts and is invited to watch Dreamland in its final month of preparation. She comes with her idea and manages to get the posters printed just in time.

On the eve of Dreamland opening a figure from the past arrives. It's Charley Lafferty. By this time Charlie isa worldly, troubled but confident man, knowledgeable about political affairs and exudes an air of authority.

But unlike his grandfather, James Senior, Charlie is serious and all business.

He has come to pay Abe a visit and to cover the opening of Dreamland. Abe is surprised that Charlie would be writing a story as prosaic as the opening of an amusement park, but Charlie explains by saying that Pulitzer had wanted to talk to him for some time and this is a good opportunity.

While at the house, he meets Helen and Hatch. He offers to take Helen for a visit to Dreamland in its final moments before shutting down for the night before the opening tomorrow morning. Before they leave, Helen unveils her spectacular poster.

The next morning the entire household joins Dreamlands opening. Abe Lafferty works a boat ride, Charlemagne is a court jester in Lilliputia. Helen signs her posters.

The next morning Abe notices a new addition to the mantleplace, a candle in the shape of Dreamland's main tower. It is burned down about an inch.

The reopening and closing of the amusement parks creates within the Coney Island community a sense of rhythm that goes beyond the changes in the weather.

The household is disrupted one day when Charlemagne announces that he is about to marry a mermaid from Luna Park. Helen invites him to hold the wedding at the house.

The wedding becomes the social event of the season, but it is ruined by the announcement that the racetracks are closing, which signals an unprecedented economic hardship to the Coney. Also, for Hatch the romance in the air was less than enjoyable. He was sharing his first kiss with the daughter of the Snake Woman, Capri who was absently tending her mother's wagon when somehow the python escaped and chomped on the dog of a passing woman.In doing so, Hatch had felt that his unfaithfulness to his fantasy girlfriend, the Bubble Girl had been avenged.

Immediately after the wedding the owners of the big three amusement parks hold an emergency meeting to reckon with the closing of the racetracks.

The results of the meeting manifest themselves in the Jordan Household. Sam Gumpertz has been elevated to general manager of Dreamland. In order to be closer to Dreamland to prepare for the next season he rents Charlemagne's room.

Gumpertz is charged with the responsibility of getting all of the expositioneers to upgrade.

As a result of the close proximity to Gumpertz, Abe Lafferty is offered the chance to have one of the few Dreamland sponsored rides when Gumpertz discovers that one of their employees won't be back. This comes as a result of Hatch's dream of ride that was a variation of Trip to the Moon, Dante's inferno and Abe's own nightmarish experience when the Princess Alice sank.

In a single moment Hatch outlined the ride in its entirety, complete with its hydraulics and precise dimensions. The moment was electrifying. It was first time that Hatch had ever said much of anything.

Just as Hatch and Abe started to work on the planning of the ride, a messenger came with some disturbing news. Accidently a courier from Lafferty and Associates suggested that the house was for sale. But the news got worse.

Hatch had been listening to a series of wax cylinders made by the professor about science and engineering, but one day the wax cylinders took a grim jag. Professor Jordan seemed to have changed his usual detached self and started speaking like a paranoid. He injected suspicions about his wife, Helen. He had theorized that he was undermining him by secretly arranging a flood of useless work in order to gain control of his finances and patent rights.

His own suspicions of Helen growing, Hatch comes up with his own scheme to do to her what she did to the Professor, so that he could become financially independent for enough time to finish school.

He inflames her interest in her illustration by forging letters from foreign publishers who had "seen" her posters and wanted to see more.

Helen is overwhelmed with work and ambition. Hatch plants seeds of discontentment with one of the borders and the house starts falling apart. All of this allows Hatch to assume more responsibilities, including the banking and bill paying.

This all culminates in the sale of a patent which is deposited into Hatch's phonied up account in the name of Professor Jordan.

But problems for Hatch occur when he receives a carrier pigeon note from Abe alerting him that the Hellgate ride is leaking and that all of the craftsmen are unavailable because they are engaged working on last minute projects for all of the amusement parks, restaurants and hotels.

Abe can't get away to find help because he has to bail out and mop up the water. Hatch resorts to tracking down the tinsmith who worked on the Elephant Hotel. He finds him working on the ceiling of the dinning room of the Oriental Hotel. Hatch discovers that six of the posters created by Helen are framed on the wall, and that there is an empty frame waiting to be filled with the next one. They are all signed and numbered. The lowest number is seventy.

When Hatch tells his problem to the manager, he is informed that all of the craftsmen are desperately needed. Hatch makes him an intriguing offer. Hatch guarantees to give him the seventh print from Helen's new poster. The manager accepts with the understanding that he will not be able to release the tinsmith until midnight.

Hatch gets Abe's assurance that he will follow through on getting the poster to the manager.

That night amid the hubbub of the last minute preparations Hatch leaves Dreamland, Coney Island and his childhood after the tin man arrives to fix the leak. As he is leaving, he notices Charlie talking to the concessionaires.

As Hatch is riding tricycle, horse drawn fire trucks rush past him.

At the docks Hatch discovers the reason why passage to San Francisco was as cheap as it was. It was a circus boat and he was expected to work his way across. He used his minimal skills in printing to prepare posters and leaflets.
These were to be used to rouse the construction workers on the Panama Canal to watch the circus. When the boat arrived on the east coast, they departed and traveled to the site by train while their boat circumnavigated the tip of South America.

After finishing their tours in the Canal Zone, the troupe caught their boat and traveled to San Francisco. Hatch managed to enter the private school as the son of Professor Jordan. However, the money eventually ran out and Hatch was forced to join the San Francisco World's Fair inorder to support himself.

He worked the spectacular lights of The "Scintillator," a battery of searchlights on a barge in the Bay, which beamed 48 lights in seven colors across San Francisco's fog banks generated by a steam locomotive.

At the end of run Hatch rejoins the circus as a nail spitter. Under the auspicious of the Larchmont Brothers, a conjoined twins who work together running the advertising from a specially designed rail car. The brothers are not only exceptional at their day to day operation, but are highly respected as kind of moral pillars in a profession rife with shenanigans and deceit. However, they do not get taken nor do they not retaliate when necessary.

Hatch learns the tricks of the trade, which include designing false posters for the opposition, canceling their advertising, changing dates and misdirecting the trucks during set ups.

A train wreck ends Hatch's employment with this circus and he finds himself working for the very kind of unscrupulous circus that the Larchmont Brothers had always talked about. But Hatch found he fit in just fine and enjoyed the unfettered use of the skills he had learned.

However, this came to an abrupt end when one evening he became the victim of being "redlighted." Dropped off in some small town without his paycheck and never picked up.

This leads to a new turn in his life that harkins back to his days of apprenticeship under Professor Jordan when he listed to the wax cylinders. He is hired by an architecture professor to assist him when he and his daughter, Melissa travels to Europe to retrace the steps of John Ruskin Venetian tour when he wrote the Seven Lamps of Architecture.

Melissa is a fabulous illustrator and Hatch falls in love with her while they're in Venice. The professor is alarmed by this development when she talks about their possible marriage when they return to America. The Professor hires a private detective and learns some damaging information about Hatch. The Professor confronts Hatch with the fact that he has had him investigated but refuses to be specific about what he had learned. He gave him the opportunity escape the consequences of these revelations by staying away from Melissa and out of the country for two years.

Hatch accepted the bargain. He left a note for Melissa and took the train to Paris where he used his new knowledge of architecture to get a job writing for an American Architecture Monthly.

His first major assignment was to cover the architecture at the Paris World's Fair. During one of the evenings when he was studying his notes, he overhead some curious disturbing words yelled out by a local theatre troupe. To the troupe, these lines to no more significance than any of their other performances. However, to Hatch this would become the moment that his life would take a dramatic change. Everything from that moment on would be defined by what he heard.

Their performance was about his last day in Coney Island and the horrific events which occurred shortly after his departure. Dreamland, that night, was destroyed by fire and two people close to Hatch were killed: Abe and Helen. Worse, still, the demise of that amusement park sent Coney Island and the thousands of its community members into a downward spiral. But worst of all, the performance suggests that a ten-year-old boy, named "Match" was responsible. It was his fiery genius, gone arie that led to the disaster.

The next evening, the opera premiered. It played for seven nights and Hatch, sitting in the first row watched every performance. Hatch was depicted as an unwitting devilish pyromaniac whose genius causes spontaneous combustion, which probably led to the destruction of Dreamland.He had learned that it was loosely based on an article written by Charlie Lafferty published in the World the day after the tragedy.

Hatch learned from Marcus, the opera's director, that Charlie Lafferty worked locally as the Paris Bureau Chief for the New York World.

Hatch decided to pay Charlie a visit.

When he came to the office, Charlie was not there, but his secretary allowed him to take a look at the article.

Although the article did not conclude it was Hatch's fault, the implications were strong. It quoted fire chief Lally who directed most of the blame on Abe. It also insinuated that Hatch, since he was missing, was either killed in the fire, or had started the blaze and escaped.

Several agonizing days later, Hatch returns to Charlie's office. Charlie is in. When Hatch enters the office he sees Charlie looking out of the window, staring at the Eiffel Tower through his spyglass.

Without looking at Hatch Charlie says to him that Guy de Maupassant used to dine at the top of the Eiffel to so that he wouldn't have to look at it.

In addition to Charlie's cold detached manner, there were several other disturbing things Hatch noticed. Behind Charlie was a photograph of the gallery of the Oriental Hotel dinningroom. It showed that the frame intended for the seventh poster was still empty at the date the photograph was taken.

But most disturbing was that Charlie was supported by a crutch because he had a missing leg. "My investigator told me about you.Apparently I am not the only one who has recently made inquires as to your legitimacy. He convinced me that you really are Hatch. Welcome back to the living. You died the same year that Pulitzer died. I don't expect him here anytime soon.I always felt that one way or another, Coney Island of 1911 would come pounding on my door."

Charlie claimed that in later stories he wrote about the Dreamland fire that Abe was exonerated.

Charlie also suggested that he had some insights to how the fire started, but did not want to elaborate at that time.

Hatch explained to Charlie that as a result of this revelation, he had fallen into a deep depression, and starting drinking Absinthe and visiting opium dens.

Alarmed Charlie made a call to a friend of his to get Hatch a full time job.

Still depressed, Hatch starts to work at the American Weekly. His first assignment is to write a book review and profile the author of a book called "The Torch: redemption through personal mythology."

The author, Dr. Kohl is a strange woman with phenomenal intellectual powers, which include speaking several hundred languages.

The book propounds a philosophy of salvation through the development of a conscious effort to associate one's life and a plan with something on a heroic scale. With the idea of finding a challenge as close to the initial problem that caused the guilt or depression. Many times because the thing had happened long ago and all of people associated may be dead and or gone, the pursuit or wrong to be righted may be something relatively small: a favor unrepaid, a small dept allowed to go unpaid.

The objective is far less important than the ritualistic steps needed to achieve it.

The richer and more far reaching the mythology the better. The more elements associated with the problem, the better. The idea is to touch upon as many of the elements that made up ones life, even at the expense of the efficient obtainment of the stated objective—even if the stated objective is never reached. It is quite possible that one of the avenues opened up in the process of the search is ultimately more important than the original main theme conceived as the solution to the original problem. It is also suggested that one imbue these elements and details with as much meaning as possible, and along the way to seek out and fortify other seekers and payers of tribute to their personal mythology and to help others identify and pursue their own quest.

At every point of the way, the pursuer is to make everything on the grandest scale possible.

 

Because of the nature of the book and the fact that it was his first assignment at the weekly paper it took him longer than usual to write the review. But he finally got it done and the ideas of the book continued to swim in the subconscious of his mind. Sometimes he would awaken with vivid visualizations that superimposed his own story with some of the examples provided in Kohl's book.

The next time he had heard of Dr. Kohl was when an unusual story came across his desk. A foundation for the advancement of prodigies fired their president and hired Dr. Kohl to establish their new headquarters in San Francisco.

But what made the story most interesting is that her reign would begin with a recruiting tour using a specially built Zeppelin, and that this airship would cross the Atlantic in May.

This was the final piece of information that Hatch needed. He would find his redemption from the tragedy of Dreamland by creating and executing his own personal mythology and a part of it would involve a rendezvous with Dr. Kohl herself.

The specific objective of the quest would be to find a copy of the Seventh Poster and bring it to the dinning room of the Oriental Hotel.

Compounding his decision was a small ad that he found in the paper for a bookshop that is selling out its inventory of circus and Island posters. He immediately wrote to the proprietor. She responded by saying that there was too much there to know what she had.

Just before leaving on his quest, he stopped by Charlie's office. Two strange things occurred. First, his secretary informed him that Charlie has relinquished his post in Paris and has decided to cover stories in the field. At the moment, he was on his way to Africa.

The other odd thing was that he said that since Charlie was dissolving his office, there was something Charlie thought that Hatch may want. The secretary handed him an envelope. Inside was the photograph of the gallery in the Oriental Hotel.

The note said: since you were interested.

With Charlie gone, the department in his newspaper discontinued, the lease to his apartment up, all signs led to one thing—The Quest for the Seventh Poster.

It all began quietly in his room. Using a borrowed miterbox saw he trimmed off the extra margins off the book the Torch so that it would easily fit into his inner coat pocket. He also drilled holes and attached the pages with butterfly nuts so it would be possible to add and remove pages as needed.

The next step was to return to the scene of the crime. He went to the Eiffel Tower and wrote out his pledge.

While doing so he recalled the oath taken by the nine-year-old Hannibal who placed his hand on a freshly sacrificed sheep and swore to his father that Rome would be his eternal enemy.

The first leg of the journey was to trace the steps of the sacred trail blazed by Abe by catching a freighter at the Saint Katherine's docks. It was an eerie an uncomfortable world of seaman and the animals they were transporting. During this time at sea, Hatch meditated on Abe's crossing of the Atlantic and thought about what it must be like escorting the world's largest animal to the new world. However, the one thing that he thought most about was Abe's story of the "Flying Red Silk."

When the ship landed in New York Harbor, Hatch stepped on the land fully cognizant of the fact that he was breaking his promise to Melisa's father by coming back to America before the forced exile was over.

The first thing he did in New York was to visit the Flatiron Building to take a look at the architectural firm that designed Dreamland. He caught a glimpse of Senator Reynolds with a rendering of a new building topped by a helmet that could have come straight out of the Paris Expo.

The next thing on the list was to visit the giant goddess, the Statue of Liberty herself. And it is there where he held vigil until the moment when the giant elephant airship had its ignominious collision with the spike of light which forced it's premature landing.

But as luck would have it, it was less of a problem than one might have imagined. There were two seagoing vessels uniquely capable of assisting in the emergency. The first was U.S.S Patoka.It was designed to be an adjunct tothe ill-fated Shenandoahand was the only ship in the world that had 125-foot mooring mast. There were also accommodations for the airship's crew and facilities for the helium, gasoline, and other supplies necessary. Its first successful mooring was made August 8, 1924.

This ship provided the perfect solution to the Elephant Airship's problem. As the huge craft inched toward the ground, it was connected with the Patoka's mooring mast. The passengers and crew disembarked and refreshed themselves in the ship's quarters for several hours, while the crew attended to the minor repairs needed.

The seven prodigies and Dr. Kohl disembarked from the Patoka and were brought ashore in a luxury yatchcalled the "Liberty."

After landing they whisked through the street of New York to catch a train at Grand Central. This is where Hatch had assumed they'd be going, and he was there waiting. He was not the only one, either. Several reporters picked up the scent and pressured Dr. Kohl into giving a short interview on the mezzanine steps.

They reproached her because of all of the parents from hopeful parents at Lakehurst she failed to talk to because of the airships mishap.

She told them that they were not invited to bring there children there and that even if they had landed there as originally planned, she still wouldn't have seen them, anyhow.

Only the children with tryout slots at the Crossroads Hotel would be considered.

Shortly thereafter they boarded the train. Hatch already on board, along with the rest of the passengers watched with great interested as they took their seats.

Before they even left the station, Kohl instructed the girls on how she wanted them to sketch the sights along the trip.

The sketches kept a rather thorough record of the train trip. Even when Dr. Kohl and Charlie Lafferty were passed out on the train floor, the prodigies caught those moments.

Even when they arrived at the Crossroads Hotel, they continued to capture the moments in their sketches. It was a good thing too, for the hotel lobby was a scene of great chaos.

Guests were lined up at the front desk, unable to get the keys to their rooms. Their were several problems that accounted for the troubles. The main problem, from which everything else seemed to have flown from was that the Crossroads Hotel had just been bought by a new owner. As a result two things happened: the maid's contract expired at midnight, and for an inexplicable reason, the concierge, a long-time, faithful employee who practically ran the place and was the city's linchpin, was mysteriously gone.

As a result, not only were the room undone, the reservations were in a shambles. Compounding this problem was the fact that there were two special events that required the larger facilities and additional services from the hotel staff.

The first, and most complicated was the architectural convention. The other was the tryouts for the Burning Glass Foundation.

Fortunately for the convention, they had been so well organized that they had everything printed up and each of its many facilities were so well scheduled that it gave the chairman a kind of authority in the midst of the chaos.

The only sign of visible authority from the hotel was a temporary clerk who was actually a journalist working off his hotel room rent.

By the time that Dr. Kohl had arrived, she was forced to wait in a line of guest that was more of a mob, particularly when they discovered after the long wait, that there rooms would not be made for several hours.

Kohl's frustration would soon be greatly reduced by an incident that utilized one of the unique skills possessed by one of the prodigies.

As deliverymen are bringing a scale model of Gaudí's unfinished masterpiece, SagradaFamília, one of the steeples is crushed in the revolving door.

Hatch rushes over to the door, just as the distraught chairman arrives. They talk privately for a few moments then Hatch walks over to Dr. Kohl and introduces himself with a proposition of help.

He asks her to bring the prodigy named Chamera over to the chairman. Hatch introduces Kohl and Chamera to the chairman, shows the crushed steeple and strikes a bargain. In return for the prodigy to use her famous talents at crafting miniatures, the chairman will yield the hotel's theatre to use for the tryouts.

The chairman, meeting with Kohl, works additional agreements to have the other prodigies work on other aspects of the conference.

When these negotiations settle down, Dr. Kohl have a chance to talk. She first tells him about the captain of the Hannibal. "He had these girls chasing after a monkey in the gas chamber of an airship."

Hatch, although tempted, does not reveal to her that he had been studying her book, her and is on the very kind of quest she outlined in her book.

As they are walking down a hallway, a mother with a portfolio of art accosts Dr. Kohl in an attempt to gain special access to the interviewing process. Kohl refuses and warns her that her daughter will be eliminated if she persists.

The hallway leads to the courtyard that will become the new entrance. Dominating the area is a massive bronze statue behind rows of scaffolding. The head and the arms are draped in canvas.

One of the prodigies explains to Kohl and Hatch that the Crossroads is changing its focus and will become an international meeting place for conferences and conventions. The new entrance, facing the river and the new airstrip across the way, symbolizes its new direction.

Hatch obliquely refers to the new direction his life is likely to take when he finishes his business here in Alexandria. Without revealing the larger implications, he mentions cavalierly that he wants to pick up a poster and return it to a Coney Island hotel.

In turn, Dr. Kohl also, obliquely suggests that she too is about to find a new direction, apart from the establishing of the new San Francisco headquarters and running the organization as an American foundation.

As they part, Dr. Kohl says that he has enjoyed being in the company of someone who didn't want something from her, and that she would enjoy seeing him again tonight, after he has gone on his hunt for his poster and she had conducted her search for the new generation of prodigies.

As Kohl goes back inside of the hotel, Hatch lingers a moment longer to make a quick sketch of the statue. Kohl steps back into the courtyard for a moment and catches a glimpse of Hatch drawing in his bolted together book.

Outside the hotel, Hatch hires a carriage. He tells the driver about the exciting quest that he is on, but this enthusiasm is greeted with indifference.

The main street seems to be filled with shops brimming with significance to Hatch's personal history. The first he noticed was a booking office for 1928 World's fairs in Cologne, Germany, and Long Beach, California.

There was also the headquarters for a pigeon racing society, an incubator supply store, a taxidermist, a chess store, and most ominously a fire fighting equipment store.

They make him feel that he has crossed another threshold that the "Torch" mentions.

Then the new sight appears. It's unfamiliar. It's Huntington's Bookshop. It has the look of a business that has been there a century, but it is soon coming to an end. Inside there are boxes everywhere.

The preoccupied owner, Vera Huntington, greets Hatch with contemptuous indifference. It was in that moment when Hatch came to a moment of desperate realization that the entire idea of the quest was ludicrous. This was not a great battleground, some lofty peak or anything else that could approximate the nobility of a great moment. It was a dusty bookshop in its last days. Even if they had the poster, would it have made the moment greater? There was something so commonplace, dingy and unmagnificent. There were no dragons. No sea serpents, and the closest thing to a siren was the distracted Mrs. Huntington.

As Hatch peeked into a box marked circus posters, it all changed miraculously. Mrs. Huntington's mood jumped from indifferent agitation to outright hysteria. "It's gone!" She shouted repeatedly as she ran down the isles.

Moments later Hatch dramatically came to realize what was gone. Something slithered up his leg and bit him.

Excruciating pain blasted up his leg. This touched off a series of vivid hallucinations merging his actual experiences with images he had heard of.

It started with a tremendous fireworks display which etched the faces in the sky of Abe, Helen and Little Hip. This was reminiscent of the display of President McKinley on the night of Hatch's birth.

This dissolved into the sight of Mrs. Huntington standing over him, trying to get his attention.

In a hyper-delusional state, he barely could distinguish what was really happening and what he was imagining: until this happened.

Mrs. Huntington gently released his shoulders and picked up his right hand and gently squeezed as if checking to see if he were still alive.While never releasing him from her powerful gaze, she began to slowly undo the top button of her white, lacy blouse. As the shiny button started to release its grip on the blouse, a 120-piece string symphony orchestra began to float across and through the thousands of books stored in the aisles. They played a soft, smoky melody that was sucked into Mrs. Huntington's eyes. The music crescendoed with muffled symbol and abruptly ended when the button was completely freed.

Drawing a long deep breath,her fingers moved down to the second button, and as she started to undo it,floppy earedAfrican elephants, flew from one side of her blouse. Then a terrific fire exploded in her eyes. Flames billowed as a tornado of smoke rushed out.

White tigers, terrified giraffes and red caped elephants stampeded. The button was freed from the blouse and the menagerie was instantly consumed in invisible mist.

The third button would not unhook so easily. It seemed to be a grave matter requiring more strength than Mrs. Huntington was capable of summoning at the moment. She looked at Hatch's leg then up at the brilliant array of stars and planets in the solar system, that shone brightly through her translucent ceiling. Her gaze fixed on Saturn, Mrs. Huntington drew it a 100 million miles closer. Its spinning rings, edged with spear shaped diamonds, silently buzzed through the bookshop and found its way to the cotton fibers holding the third button on her blouse. Cleanly it cut the first, second and third threads. The discharged button crashed to the floor.

The half way openedblouse, exposed Mrs. Huntington's snowy white naked bosom. She took Hatch's left hand in her right, she stared gravely for a moment. Then slowly she placed his hand on her left breast and held it there tightly. He felt her soft nipple in his palm asshe pressed his hand harder and harder until the only thing that he could feel was the pressure. High pitched sirens started to wail. Horse-drawn fire trucks, hundreds of them, stormed out of her eyes.

Then an effervescent dam broke in her breast and gushed into his hand. Hundreds of gallons of seltzer water, like the kind sold at Mr. Blanski's stall, rushed through his arm like thousands microscopic firecrackers. His body vibrated as a sea of the alternating boiling and freezing liquid froze and scorched its way to his heart. From there it was redirected and sprayed out from every pore, causing the entire bookshop to become a fiery glacier.

In the distance, with a haunting echo, he heardMelissa's father as gondola driver, singing songs of the days when Venice and was at the helm of a great empire. As he got closer the glacier melted and the fires drowned in rising black waters. Hesee him emerging from the black tunnel with a giant ore in his right hand and a blinding torch in the other. Twelve passengers, all lovers wearing red silk robes, lavished extravagant affections on one another as the gondola man in a harsh Coney Island accent barked out a litany of coming attractions, "dance till you drop contests" and "sauerkraut specials."The black water continued to rise until there was no land or air. All that Hatch could see was a dense forest of dark green kelp disintegrating into a massive school flat fluorescent fish. Bright white neon bulbs formed along their sides. Then a deep low rumble started to shake the waters and part the wall of fish. He could see a mossy Neptune, sitting on a throne. But it wasn't the water god, it was one-legged Charley Lafferty,imperiously leaning on a crutch like trident.Behind him,shoveling water into the flames of Hell,while animals leapt in terror, was a melting Abe Lafferty.

He awoke from the nightmare to searing pain, feeling that his leg was being bitten off. Regaining consciousness, he opened my eyes to discover he was in small bed with his pants removed. A gray haired woman, wearing a silver tiara, was sucking his inner thigh with blinding ferocity, while her hands, as powerful as those of a deranged gorilla, squeezed his leg.

An oscillating fan pushed the smoke-laden air breeze, saturated with the hypnotic scent of heavy jasmine incense, over his exposed flesh. At the climax of each pass, glass wind chimes jangled out a tiny melody.

Inhis state of semi paralysis, trying to remember what just happened in the bookshophe couldn't even form simple words. Keeping his eyes meagerly opened and partially focused was the utmost of his abilities.

His memories were kaleidoscopic. However, the important thing was that he was bit and that was the probably reason for all of the circumstances that followed.

Just as he was resigned to the situation, he started to get anxious. Soon this treatment would come to an end. He would be confronted me with the embarrassment of the first few seconds of a conversation that started off with being half-naked in the presence of a strange woman.

As his dread grew, the pain lessened. He couldn't tell whether this treatment was working or his fear of the awkwardness was growing.

"What do you say to a woman who has been sucking your thigh?" he wondered.

In a moment this became moot.

Without warning, a scolding wet towel wasplaced on his face. This brought the meeting to order instantly.

He was fully awake, lucid but blinded

"Ahh!" he screamed. "Please take this off!" he demanded.

in a mysterious foreign accentthe womansaid "Don't act like a big baby. Leave it there for a moment. It will cost you the same."

Cost you the same? He thought. At the moment it seemed like a compelling argument. Apparently he was in the hands of someone professional enough to know the economies of a hot towel. Also, laying there with he face covered forestalled the moment of confrontation.

However, all was not completely free from awkwardness. The woman's cool and wet hand started to rhythmically rubhisinner thigh with an ointment for the bite.

During this reprieve, hetook stock of his condition.

Starting with his toes he stretched and wiggled. "Toes are working fine." He thought as if he were a crop duster making acheck for a flight. The ankles were next item. They worked fine. Next he tried the knees. Because of the situation he was in, he couldn't do much without alerting his hostesses that he was conducting my own medical examination.

"Lay still, please" she said in a commanding voice andpulled the towel, which had grown cool, off my face.

Finally I got a good look at her face. Her hair,although gray, course and thick, looked like it belonged to the tail of a pastured mare, her face didn't look older than 35. It was firm, the lower lip full, but the upper lip was thin and ill-defined. Her left eye was dark gray, and the right was hazel with flecks of red.

"I'm Madame Tanya," she announced, continuing to eye my wound. I started to introduce myself but she cut me off with a dismissive wave and anannoyeddeep breath.

"Yes! I know who and what you are," she said walking to the stove. "I'm going to make you a pot of tea. Drink it all."

While she heated the water in a copper kettle, she told me that she uses herbal medicine, digital pressure, and mood elevators to cure everything from depression, to a bad heart.

My case, she considered rather simple. It was not nearly as interesting as those she usually had been called upon to treat. I had "simply" been bitten by a camel snake.

It was marginally worth her time. The worst that could happen, she told me, was that I could die. Under normal circumstances Hatch would have offended at her cavalier attitude to his mortality. But in his altered state, he was dependant on her good graces.

Every time she passed, he caught a whiff of her intoxicating perfume, which forced feelings and memories.

With the incense burning, her perfume erupting, and the wind chimes singing, he futilely held on to what he perceived as reality.

When he started to drink the thick, creamy concoction she called Miner's Tea, she started to tell him about the snake. Then she pulled back her hair to reveal a silver snake shaped earring, that formed lips. At instant his capacity to stay in that time was overloaded with images that required immediate attention.

"It's better if you get on your feet and move around a little bit," said Tanya, gently shaking his leg.

Uncertain as to whether he could even stand up it occurred to him that his pants were still off and that had actually grown reasonably comfortable being partially nude around this strange woman. So cold and detached, she exuded no sense of embarrassment, modesty or any of the conventional pretexts between a man and a woman.

Following the "doctor's" prescription he stood up on her rich and deepcarpet.

"Put all of your weight on the right leg," Tanya commanded.

Lifting my left leg up about two inches he could better feel that his right was weaker than he thought.

"Higher," she demanded.

He raised it another three inches. She studied and analyzed.

While he stood there, doing his best to keep balanced, she sat cross-legged on the carpet next to him.

She let her eyelids fall, and placed her palms on her knees.

Without opening her eyes, she quietly told him to sit down.

It was a relief because he was getting exhausted.

Her breathing became more pronounced. Her head began to move from side to side rhythmically. As if it were a slow moving snake, her sinuous right arm reached out and grabbed his right knee and held it tightly.

A cuckoo clock paid a musical visit with four brief serenades. The fan stopped oscillating. A long incense ash, giving way to the persistent breeze of the fan, broke off and landed with a shatter. Her grip on my knee tightened, stimulating undulating pain signals.Avoiding being called me a big baby again, Hatch refrained from protest.

Coming out of her meditative state, she asked me to tell her when it hurt.

"It hurts!" he said immediately.

"Why didn't you tell me that it hurt?" she asked.

"I didn't think about it until you asked," helied. Her expression was skeptical.

"The next couple of days you are going to have to be careful," she said taking out a note pad of small textured paper. She wrote a few words, ripped the slip from the pad and folded it twice.

"Most of the poison is out of your body, but some always remains.," she said handing the note. All it contained was her name and phone number.

Taking my hand in hersshe said,"You have to go now,there is business that I must attend to right now."

Giving her hand a little squeeze, he said"Thank you for all of your help."

There no response from her hand. "How much do I owe you for your services?" he asked.

"When we are done you canpay me. I'll need to see you again," she said letting his hand go and sharply rising, signaling the session had ended.

Putting his pants felt strangely self-conscious about buttoning my fly.

"When should I see you again?" He said tying hisshoe lace.

It was as if she couldn't or didn't want to hear him. In silence she carefully lifted from a cut glass vase three sticks ofcolored incense.

She bundled them together in a tight fist. Then using a candle shaped like a nude woman, which had melted down to her breasts, she lit them collectively.

She took the violet colored stick in her right hand and gently blew the smoke in my face. The ember glowed brightly as the smoke washed over me.

To Hatch it didn't feel like smoke or smell like incense.

It was aVenetian breeze. The way it felt on the night heleft Melissa. The red ember of the incense made him imagine the lonely torches the lit the canals.

Then Tanya picked out the lime incense. This time she blew it in gentle sweeping motion. Instead of it going directly in my face, I was surrounded by puffs of smoke. As it cleared I could see Tanya's face with a quizzical expression, as if she were disappointed that nothing seemed to be happening. No mirages, intense memories or hallucinations. She set both sticks of incense into a short ceramic vase. She looked at the incense and then at me again.

It was as if the third one, deep brown, was the one that really counted, and she wanted to make sure it took. Holding it just three inches away from her lips, she gently blew on it until the ember glowed so hot it seemed ready to combust. When she stopped, the heat receded and plumes of smoke billowed forcefully into the air.

Although the smoke came in great quantities, it light and delicate.As if it were a fine tobacco, it tempted me to inhale.

Tanya motioned her hands as if entreating me to breathe it in deep.

I took a short tentative whiff. It was gentle. A curious thing happened. For those few seconds that the smoke filled my lungs, it was as if a door opened to very specific mental images. As I exhaled, they vanished.

Unlike the avalanche of memories that I had been experiencing, this was different. This was a peek at something I hadn't experienced myself.

This second hand memory could have come from a story that I had read, a photograph or a piece of art, but it clearly was not something that I had actually experienced.

When I breathed in the smoke again, I took it in deeper and held it longer. The visions reappeared. It was not exactly the same, but it was as if it were a few moments later. I saw a bearded man, wearing an overcoat and hat, sitting at a table drawing a fast moving train. He was the only thing really clear in my images. The background was distorted as if it were intentionally out of focus.

I exhaled. Like before, it all vanished.

By now most of the smoke was dissipated. Tanya inserted the incense into the holder.

"You've seen your past and future," Tanya said.

Like everything she said, it was mysterious and it seemed that this was not the moment to pursue more of this metaphysical, otherworldly material.

My thinking was starting to become sharpen and I felt the urgency to get on with my pursuit.

She escorted me to her door and opened it. It led to a long dark staircase.

"Be careful.The light is out. When the pain starts,call me," she said, extending her hand as if I were to kiss it.

He chose to shake it, but when he reached for it there was not the give that he expected. The hand stood there rigid. This was a hand determined to be kissed.

He managed,too much of a clumsy fuss,to convert a handshake into a hand kiss.

"Go," she simply said.

He started a carefully worded thank, just as he heard someone talking in her apartment.

She waved him off.He was dismissed.

He gave her a slight bow.

Turning toward the stairs, he saw he had a slight journey before reaching the bottom. There must have been a hundred steps.

Then unexpectedly, Tanya reappeared at the door holding a cane.

"Take this," she said then walked back into the recesses of her lair.

Although it was too dark to make out any details, Hatch could feel that the cane was heavily carved. It was topped with a dragon's head. Although it was ornate, but still fit in his hand comfortably, despite the flaring wings.

It had the feel of a sword.

Slowly he began his journey down the stairs. Noticing a gallery of posters, show cards, and assorted memorabilia detailing an array of some of the wildest acts that he'd ever seen. Considering the years he had spent in Coney Island and with the circuses, it was no small feat.

By the time he had reached the bottom, he surmised that the mindwas the consistent theme of the posters. The largest was ten feet wide. It promoted a special performance of "Zandar the Mentalist," who could not only read minds but could make audience think of anything he chose.

At the very bottom Zandar was joined by "Cubnar, the mesmerist," who had the power to clear or cloud men's minds at will.

Nailed to the door was the poster that interested him the most. It was a caricature of Madame Tanya. Unfortunately the bottom was ripped, but Hatch could see her penetrating eyes made the printing technique look even more intimidating.

He found the doorknob and turned it, but the door didn't open. He felt for the lock. After a few moments he found it. He kept thinking that I might not be able to get out without going back up stairs and asking for help.

I pushed open the heavy door. As expected, it creaked and wailed as if hadn't been oiled in a century. When he closed the door, it shut with such definiteness and seemed to be locked so tightly, it was as if I had been suddenly cut off from a world to which I had just become accustomed. Although he was anxious to leave there.The instant disconnection was disconcerting, making his leg throb a little.

Architectural fantasy

To Hatch's surprise its was raining. While inside, he hadn't been aware of the rain at all. It was evidence that Madame Tanya ruled her own little world. With clocks ticking, wind chimes jangling, and kettles steaming, there was no end to the array of sounds generated in her parlor.

He stayed beneath the awning, and pondered whether he could go back to the bookstore or should he catch a cab to go the hotel.

The brisk air and the rain helped him to focus his attention, which made him disturbed that I didn't asked Madame Tanya some key questions.

For instance, he didn't exactly know where I was. At best he was close to Hunt's bookshops. But the rain kept him prisoner.

Since I didn't know which way to go, he just stood there, helplessly.

It was as if this whole experience diminished his ability to make decisions,as if Cubnar, or Zandar, was clouding his mind. Since his leg was not strong, aimlessly wandering in the rain was a bad idea.

For no particularly good reason, he grasped the dragon cane and put as much weight on it as he could to test its sturdiness.

The support felt comforting.It was as if it were connected to the ground by an electrical current which flowed through his body.

A second later, a limousine screeched to a stop in front of Hatch.

The driver jumped out, holding an umbrella.

"Are you Hatch Johns?" he asked opening up the oversized black umbrella.

"Yes I am," he said with a strange burst of confidence.

"They sent me to pick you up," the driver said sheltering him with the umbrella.

"It's about time," Hatch told him as he opened the door to the spacious car.

"It was a little harder finding you than I had thought," the driver said shutting the door. "We'll be there in a jiffy," he said running around to his door.

"Good man, that's what I like to see," Hatch said, settling in.

The driver was about forty-five years old, a little overweight and seemed to have a habit of tipping his hat every time he said anything.

Just as the car pulled off, Hatch realized that he had better get a look at Tanya's place so if he had to return he'd have some reference points.

The back window was curtained. He pulled them aside just in time to get a glimpse of the building.

It was a sight to behold. A mural, covering the entire two-story building loomed over the hilltop like a demonic cathedral. Madame Tanya, with scorching eyes, spiraling hypnotically and glowing menacingly, was ripping out the spine of a three-headed, fire-breathing dragon with her sharp, long bloody teeth.

Contrasting this mayhem, in the background, on a cloudy field of sky blue two flocks of white doves coming from opposite directions flapped towards the rising sun.

Emblazoned below, in letters of exploding fire, was a single one-syllable word that summed up all of the reasons necessary for engaging Madame Tanya's services. It's brevity and modest claim trumpeted its message louder than the ostentatious ballyhoos becoming fashionable in advertising. It simply read: Relief.

Turning the corner, they passed Huntington's Bookshop, and worked their way through the traffic.

He drove professionally. His leather gloved hands were at the ten and two o'clock positions. He changed lanes with formal, precise hand signals and gave his complete attention to the task

It felt nice to be taken care of, Hatch thought, but then realized there was something wrong. He didn't know where he was going.

He was reticent to just ask the driver. He felt that maintaining an air of confidence would be the best way to ensure his safety.

"What route are you planning to take?" Hatch asked.

"If you have a preference, please let me know," asked the driver, turning off his windshield wipers.

"I was thinking that I may want to stop by my hotel first," Hatch said.

"Mr. Johns," said the puzzled driver, "I had thought that you were staying at the Crossroads. We should be there in five minutes."

"That rain was terrific," Hatch commented,diverting attention away from hismistake.

"Yes, Mr. Johns.Quite the downpour," he said skeptically.

Arriving at the Hotel Rhodes' compound the rain began to pound. Touring cars, taxis and limousines inched their way around the construction to the entrance.

Two tuxedoedmen, huddled beneath an umbrella, were checking all of the cabs. As Hatch's car got closer, the driver briskly saluted them.

The taller of the two, wearing horn-rimmed glasses, tapped his partner on the shoulder, and pointed at our car.

As they walked toward his cab,they were pleased to see buthe felt apprehensive. His right thigh quivered.Tiny drops of perspiration formed on his forehead. The sound of his heartbeat transferred his conscious mind. The sound of my lungs, filling with air, became perceptible. He wonderedhe would be able to hear his liver purifying his blood, or synapses firing in his brain.

At a car's length away he tucked in his shirt and grabbed the cane. The espresso jolt, charged back.

"Mr. Johns," the taller of the two men said, "How delighted we are to see you."

"We heard about what happened to you today. Dreadful accident. I can't tell you how happy and relieved we are that you are here now," he said, helping me out of the car.

They introduced each other as we walked towards the main entrance. The taller man was Howard Farnsworth, vice-president of the International Architects Association. The other was Peter Thompson, was the speaker's coordinator.

"There are going to be a lot of architects who are going to try to get you to do for them what you have done for so many," said Farnsworth. "But I understand that you can only do so much," he said leading Thompson and I through revolving doors into the hotel's lobby.

Inside Thompson slowed down to detail the conference mechanics.

He had scheduled three meetings with the most promising of their new crop of architects. The kind, he emphasized, were in the mode of the "Johns" school of architecture.

A dinner in Hatch's honor would start in about two hours. He assured me that since Coolidge would not be staying at the Crossroads Hotel tonight, I would be given the presidential suite, complete with all of the amenities a young man would need while away from the comforts of home.

Hatch took this to mean call girls, and at tonight's party there would be ample numbers of women who were not only intellectually and artistically gifted, but endowed the charms appreciated by the superficial man.

It seems that the timing of my arrival was quite apt, because the keynote speech would be delivered in ten minutes.

"Let's go backstage so you can get comfortable with the setting," suggested Thompson.

In his short career as a reporter, Hatch had been privy to the behind the scenes of events and thought this idea was well within the lines of what I had been accustomed.

Hatchwas led through a series of interior channels until they found ourselves on stage behind the red velvet curtain.

The ceiling was an arsenal of lights, scenery, ropes and pulleys of all kinds.

Farnsworth, glowing with excitement, tugging the curtain back from the left side of the stage, said "It's even bigger than I thought. They're really excited about hearing you speak."

"Do you use a podium?" Thompson asked Hatch.

Before Hatch could answer, Farnsworth, looking at his gold pocket watch attached to a long chain on his vest announced "Two minutes to curtain."

"Do you want a podium?" Thompson repeated.

The band started to play. The audience cheered.

"One minute," said Farnsworth, sticking his head back through the curtain.

Over the welling music,again Thompsonshouted to Hatch. "The podium!Do. You. Want. A. Podium?" He said as if each word was a complete sentence.

Hatch's inner thigh throbbed. His right leg grew weak. Hegot dizzy. His weakening condition caught Thompson's attention. He saw the cane on a table and handed it to Hatch.

He grasped its head tightly, and put all of his weight on it just as the curtain started to rise.

The music welled and the current back—stronger. It was espresso, double espresso, triple espresso!

Amp after amp surged his veins. Three spots lights, beaming from the balcony, swept the stage like lighthouse beacons.

Over the audience'shuge cheers the invigorated Hatch, pounding the cane on the boardshouted to Thompson "I don't use a podium! They're for weaklings."

He strode to the microphone stand, unfastened it, and walked up to Farnsworth, shook his hand, and patted him on the back.

Hatchedwaved over Thompson. He stepped over to Hatch. Then at that moment Hatch caught a look at a sign on an easel, announcing that "Hatch Johns, distinguished journalist of architecture," would deliver the keynote speech on the "Heroes of Architecture" at the first conference of the International Architect's Association.

As the applause started to die down, Thompson said that he would first give me an introduction.

"I had something else in mind," I told him then walked to center stage, leaving Farnsworth and Thompson in shock.

He searched his inner coat pocket and foundthe notes that he had made about some of the bookshops that I was planning to visit.

As the audience became silent and the band finished its fanfare,heflashed them with a bursting smile

He took the microphone, blew in it a couple of times to test the sound.

"I was planning on delivering," hesaid to the assemblage, continuing to test the volume of his voice "a highly academic, historic account of those giants in architecture, that all of you know so well. However, this speech…" he said waving the notes. Then he found his box of matches. Hegrabbed a half dozen matches, and in an grand sweep, he struck the matches, causing a sulfur explosion.

"…This is not the speech that you deserve," he said setting the blank page on fire.

The audience combusted with wild applause.

"Who are the heroes?" he asked rhetorically, dropping the burning paper to the ground.

"You are the heroes!" He shouted to their cheers, while stamping out the flaming sheet.

Throughout the next hour, Hatch played ringmaster to 700 architects, students and scholars.

Parading up and down the aisles like prancing show ponies, the took bows, and congratulated and each other.

There was hardly a category of architectural achievement that Hatch did not bestow grandiose recognition.

The seniors saluted the juniors and they saluted the graduates.

The speech crescendoed with the audience storming the stage and taking Thompson atop their shoulders and marching him to the banquet.

As the hall cleared, Farnsworth and Hatch sauntered behind the stragglers.

"Johns," Farnsworth said, then lit a cigar "never I have seen a performance like that. If this conference has any success at it's because of yourmagic."

They followed the celebratory throng into the banquet hall. There must have been two hundred tables with chairs for the guests to dine, and then another fifty tables, in a horseshoe shape, gushing with dazzling cuisine.

As Farnsworth and Hatchcrowded in, two golden tuxedoed men in their twenties opened double doors leading to the kitchen. A bearded, rotund man, dressed in white with a baker's hat, flanked by two trumpeters playing the French national anthem, marched in the hall.

"In honor of the occasion," started the baker, "the foreign minister of France sends his congratulations with this…" then he stopped and looked back, "…very delicious token of his esteem."

Arch of Triumph

A model of the Arch of Triumph on marble pedestal,tethered by golden chains was majesticallypulledby four men in black tuxedoes.

It was lit by small moving spotlights lodged in pedestal's four corners,which had casted an undulating shimmer on the monument.

Carefully the attendants placed it on a table near the center of the hall.

Armed with crackers, the architectsunhesitatenly converged on it.Without ceremony or delay of any kind they scraped away until nothing but a smear remained.

"It was constructed from Gwaza cheese," said Farnsworth.

The golden tuxedoed men took up positionsbefore the double doors.With their golden trumpets, they flourished few notes to hail the entrance of rotund baker, wearing a red diplomatic sash across his chest.

"From the President, and the French people themselves, I have the extraordinary privilege of presenting the culmination of our art and technology…" he said, then added with a mischievous smile "…and confectionary genius."

He stepped aside as a dozen men, decked in red caped tuxedos, inched out the next exhibition. Its monumental size required that it be lowered on its side, and carried through the door using hooked poles.

Once it had cleared, the army hoisted the structure into position.

Illuminated with a phalanx of rousing searchlights, it was adark chocolate Eiffel Tower.

TheArch of Triumph's pedestal was ushered out by a single attendant, as the tower positioned by the dozen red capedmen majestically took its place in the hall'scenter.

Emerging from the crowd, Thompsonstrutted to the front.He flayedhe arms,feigningfright of the monstrous chocolate tower.

"This is dessert. We'll have no repeat of what will become known as the 'Arch of Triumph massacre'—at least not yet." The lights on the chocolate Eiffel Tower spasmed. "In light of the moment," Thompson said, wearily waiting for the illumination to settle down. "We should start off with Alexandre-gustave Eiffel."

"Since he was buried four years ago, he probably demands a bonus?" asked Farnsworth.

"He was not otherwise engaged.I got him for a song," Thompson said alerting the tuxedoed attendants toprepare house lights.They dimmed so much that only the red coals of theburning cigarettes and cigars could be seen.

Suddenly two powerfulspotlights,blazed their forty-five degree attention on the Tower. Their shadowspainted Thompson'sface with frolicking crisscrosses asyelled,"Hatch!The cane!"

Without deliberation, I tossed it to him. Thompsoncaught it by its tip and held it over its dragon head into a red spotlight.

Themonster's ominous silhouette projected on the double doors and itsfaceted ruby eyesparkled.

For sevenbright and shiny seconds,Thompson held the cane firm, before lettingit slide through his fingers,catching itbyits head. Waving the staff a few zigzagging stepshe parted the red sea of conventioneers like a latter dayMoses.

Reverberating throughout the hall wasan exploding bank of lights and ttheshifting of moving tables and chairs, pushed into formation by the attendants.

Seemingly coming from everywhere,was a soft, luxurious French melody.

As the tempo picked up, a figure from the back of the hall, started slinking down the aisle.

It was an extravagantly attired woman, beneath afour-foot white and gold trimmed, feathered headdress.

Behind her, a duplicate.Behind the duplicate, a triplicate.And another and another.The and the applause merged into the melody.

As the giant headdressed feminine parade wobbled and danced down the aisle, theywere greeted by frenzy of catcalls, whistles and the eruption of matches to light erotic quenching cigarettes, cigars and pipes. The drifting clouds of new smoke seduced the spotlights for attention.

Thompson raised the cane, thensnapped it down, cutting off the procession that could have gone on infinitely.

In hard numbers there were only twenty-oneidentically dressed showgirls, but there forty-two bosoms, coned to blistering perfection, and a throbbing mile of slenderishouslegs . Thompson escorted them to the double doors asthey divided along the double doors.

The showgirls on the right flank winked at the howling men, and gracefully pulled open the doors.

Popping out, wearing top hat and tails, and full beard, was the physical embodiment ofnone other than Alexandre-gustave Eiffel himself.

Showing their respect to the resurrected architect, all 21 of the girls,while keeping their headdresses perfectly level, executed an extraordinary curtsy. Eiffel paid homage with a knee-crushing bow,capped with a sweep of his hat.

Eiffel began kissinghands of the each twenty girls,starting with the showgirl at the end of the column.

With unvarying repetition, much like the methodical, and precise engineer he is, he stamped out every kiss to uniform to specifications, much like when he constructed his great tower.

Each woman offered her giddy appreciation.

Like a jewelry store display Eiffel mechanically grinded out the cookie cutter hand kisses, as if on programmed conduit. Thompson sensedthe engineer's rhythm, and outlinedhis movementswiththe cane.

Halfway, at girl number eleven, as Eiffel was finishing the first side of the showgirl aisle, he caught notice of Thompson's mockery andstormed over to the chairman.

The furious engineer grabbed the cane out of Thompson's surprised hands, and to the amusement, demonstratedhow to properly ridicule him, using smaller and more precise strokes.

Eiffel returned the cane back to Thompson, and was satisfied with the pupil's performance.When Eiffel resumed the second half, he retooled. Not only did he manage to kiss thehands of the beautiful woman in the same manner as before, but managed to incorporated a subroutine allowing periodic review of Thompson's mockery.

This extra complicationwas too much for Thompson and he ended his act with a frustrated slash and poke of the cane.

Once the engineer completed hishandkissing ritual duties, he marched over to examine the chocolate tower. Taking of off his white glove and glided his fingera few inches over a truss. His thumb and index finger as his micrometer, he gauged thesweet material's thickness.

"If the girders in my tower," he said replacing his glove, "were as thick as these, it would have collapsed."

Thompson, walking up to Eiffel said, "While you may have been called the 'magician of iron,' Andre of Paris, our confectioner-extraordinaire, is the 'magician of chocolate.'"

Farnsworth walked up to Eiffel and Thompson.

"Although your tower is the world's tallest manmade structure, Andre's has is the world tallest desserts," he said getting a quick sniff. "Our esteemed assemblage here has traveled from all over the world for just this moment and I would like to offer you the high honor of sampling the first piece?"

The engineer, removing his glove, climbed the ladder placed by an attendant and snapped off the pole atop the chocolate tower.

Holding the chocolate pole, he climbed down, a little awkwardly.

Eiffel took a nip, and offered an exaggerated smile. "If Andre worked for me during the twoyears of building the tower, I would have been less famous for the height of my tower than the girth of my waste."

With those words Farnsworth, led the "taste the tower "procession.

Spotlights jumped as a burst of applause filled the hall. Thompson waved the cane. An orderly procession of architects formed. They solemnly passed, shook Eiffel's ungloved hand, climbed the ladder, broke off a piece of the tower and returned to their seats as if having received Holy Communion. After only seven of minutes steady of demolition, all that remained of the sweet replica of the headliner of the International Exposition of 1889 was a few chocolate flakes.

As if sacred artifacts, using a business card,Thompson scraped those up, and dropped them into an invitation-sized envelope.After sealing it, he wrote "Eiffel Tower of Chocolate."

Feigning drunkenness, Farnsworth strode to Thompsondemanding "Where's all of this panache that you've promised?"

"A twelve foot chocolate Eiffel Tower? I resurrect France's most celebrated builder?" said Thompson.

"He's only been dead for a couple of years," Farnsworth says.

"For God's sake, how long was Lazarus dead before Christ resurrected him?" Thompson asked.

"When Christ resurrected Lazarus after he'd only been dead for four days, they called it a miracle, so you'd think that I'd get a little credit for bringing back a man who's been gone for four years," Thompson said.

"I have high expectations," said Farnsworth.

"You won't be disappointed. More panache is coming," Thompson said as Eiffel and the twenty showgirls filed through the door.

The back curtain rise, as the attendants cleared out the ladder and the tables of decimated food.

Materializing behind the curtain was a crystal clear panoramic projectionof the Acropolis as it looked in Athens during the golden age of Greece.

The colors were brilliant, but the details were simplistic.

Thompson pickedmicrophoneand narratedlike travelogue.

"The Acropolis, built during the second half of the 5th century BC, located on a craggy, walled hill, was built as a home of Athena, the patron goddess of the city," said Thompson, as the attendants cleared the hall of the tables, decorations and even the chairs the guests were sitting on.

Red-coated ushers wielding powerful flashlights,laid out a pattern of red velvet ropes to group the guests into sections.

Thompson droned onwithout the expectation of attention.

More attendants filtered into the hall, taking up their posts and marking the territory with extreme exactitude.

A group of white coatedtechniciansfiled in witha score of flat spiral shaped radiators attached to thin black hoses four feet apart anddining table sized encased fans. There were hoisted 30 feet above the ground by a three-inch metal tube.

The Parthenon

The projection of the Acropolis,with three muffled clicks, dissolved into the Parthenon.

"The Parthenon," started Thompson, "the jewel of the Acropolis, was built by Ictinus and Callicrates, under the watchful eye of the master-sculptor Pheidias, commissioned by the golden age's greatest political figure Pericles," said Thompson as the workers were making the final preparations.

"The Parthenon's jubilate decoration is a rich source of Athenian legend," said Thompson as the overview broke into scenes of the monument's exterior. Epic battles between the gods and the giants jumped out of relief into animation. Then the battle between the Lapiths and the Centaurs erupted across the stage and it dissolved into the war of the Greeks and Trojans.

As the animated battle raged on an attendant walked up to Thompson and whispered in his ear. Thompson issue instructions. The attendant walked behind stage.

"Stand exactly where you are. In a moment you are going to witness what select Athenians did on one of Greece's greatest days," said Thompson signaling to the attendant by slowly lowering his hand.

The hall blackened as the overhead fans turned on, causing a breeze and a powerful hum.

From the floor a muffled hiss sounding like steam started. I began to sense a warm, moist, presence.

From everywhere, was the smooth sound of well- oiled gears as glowing snow blossoms of light tenderly floated from the ceiling.

The new image being projected from thousands of tiny holes, emanating from the fan housings and radiators that had been placed on the floor.

At first it was as if there were three layers of clouds hanging over the audience.

The gears pulled, clicks sounded, and the haze started to take on a distinct form.

At the perimeter I could make out what appeared to be a series of columns. However, what I assumed to be at the center was so fuzzy that it remained illusive.

Backstage there were some angry voices. Lights flicked breaking the partial illusion.

I had felt that I was inside an out-of-focus, giant camera obscurer that used some strange mist as its projection screen.

Images continued to blur and sharpen, corresponding to the symphony of clicks, grinding gears and moving shafts.

Within a few moments, the right combinations of settings had been reached.

The entire assemblage of architects, students, draftsmen and support staff, gawked open-mouthed as we found ourselves magically transported to the mid fourth century B.C. to the opening day of Athens' finest architectural achievement—the Parthenon.

Although it was just a projection against mist, the image was remarkably clear.

As I stood there, marveling at the detail of the columns and the lusciousness of the relief art on the walls, it was almost as interesting to watch the expressions on the faces of the audience.

There was awe, skepticism, and a few managed to squeeze out concocted facial contortions that implied acute boredom.

Preparing for the virgin

Although most everything was in focus, there was a large figure that moved between the columns that remained a ghostly image.

"The Parthenon," said Thompson, "means apartment to the Virgin, referring to their goddess Athena. She was the protectress of the city, Zeus' favorite daughter, whom he allowed to carry his thunderbolt. She was fierce and powerful in the discharging of her duty, never wavered, never wandered off course. Her tree is the olive."

The image stopped in the center.

"Athena!" Thompson cried out, "are you ready to show yourself?" he said simulating the sound of a séance operator.

She was. The Parthenon, and all of it splendid mythic imagery disintegrated into a swirling flock of owls, with her figure at its center, slowly becoming visible.

"The owl…" Thompson said, in a tone lacking the confidence that he had exuded all evening, "…is Athena's…" He stopped again, and finally said "…bird."

Had this been the circus, and the star trapeze artist fell to his death, the ringmaster would have said "It's all part of the show, folks."

This wasn't the circus. Thompson wasn't an experienced ringmaster capable of capitalizing on any unforeseen turn of events. He was a first time conference chairman and something was happening that wasn't in the program.

Farnsworth walked up to him, whispered something in his ear, then sat down.

Thompson looked back at Farnsworth with an expression that seemed to say that he had no idea what was happening.

As the owls encircled the figure, their speed quickened and their numbers grew. In a few moments the birds moved so fast that they were only a blur.

Then they suddenly stopped. The feather mass shattered into uniform grains as small as sugar. As they started to fall they transformed themselves into a new molecular configuration—bubbles. Hundreds of them. They were pairing up. Kissing, as it were.

The figure in the center came into sharp focus. Looking at about the size of three-story building— it was her, although a grown woman, still radiating unnatural beauty. It was the Bubble Girl, waving a wand the size of a car, creating bubbles large enough to have their own atmosphere.

Her hair was long, wavy and as bright as freshly polished gold. She wore a simple dress that just looked like a piece of white silk wrapped around her.

Although I continued to have an attraction to her, based on years of perpetual fantasy, my feelings at that moment were primarily profound disappointment and embarrassment.

Although there were too many things that had happened in the last few hours for me to be totally oblivious to what was happening, I could no longer deny the obvious truth of the situation. I was dreaming.

However, I found it quite ironic, that although I knew at that point that none of this was really happening, I felt embarrassment, and even guilt that I had caused so much trouble for everyone because of my dreams.

Particularly Thompson, who had been through enormous trouble in order to make all of this happen.

It didn't take the Bubble Girl too long to become bored with standing in one place.

She started to walk towards the front of the hall.

Even as beautiful as she was, at forty or fifty feet tall, she was quite intimidating. Hundreds of the architects, many who appeared to be self-possessed mature men, screamed like little girls as her giant feet moved towards them.

Thompson, who appeared to be a broken man, came up to me and started to apologize that the dinner in my honor ultimately became a nightmare.

I was torn. Should I make it clear to him that he shouldn't worry because it was all a dream and he, this place and the hundreds of architects, are just creatures of my imagination?

I didn't really want to take too much blame for what was happening, because this ultimate fiasco was not, so it seemed, of my doing. This Bubble Woman and I are really not much more that acquaintances. We've only had, in the purist sense of the word, a Platonic relationship, and never really even had an actual conversation.

Honor turns to shame

Her showing up in this manner, causing me, on the night of my honor, this great shame was an affront that I could hardly tolerate.

It had been bad enough that over the years, she had flirted and abandoned me in all of the different forms that she had taken on.

I saw her selling ice cold Cocoa Cola in magazine ads, seductively smoking cigarettes on billboards, and the worst is when she being escorted away. I either couldn't have her because she revealed herself in ink, or was already in the hands of another man.

Although the sight of her started to cause me the pain that comes with deprivation, this was the first time that I was caused embarrassment in the presence of my colleagues, even if they were just in my dreams.

They all knew that she was my own personal delusion, something that I could only worship but never actually touch. Kisses were only on cold metal, or tossed at her in the air, or smudged on shiny glass. She was always cold. They had no affect on her, and never were returned.

But this was different.

Somehow, although knowing that I had been dreaming, I had been able to, or forced to forestall its conclusion.

I slowly walked around the hall, as the attendants, now dressed in shabby clothing, dismantled all of the equipment needed to produce the effects.

They carelessly tossed the radiators, hosing, and metal fittings into withered wheelbarrows, as if it had now become just trash.

Farnsworth, Thompson and Eiffel sat at the base of the stage, with their tuxedos and tails looking frayed and soiled.

Disinterestedly, in near catatonia, they softly spoke to each other. Their expressions reminded me of the many families I had seen waiting just outside of where a circus or carnival fire had ravaged everything they loved. They were exhausted, dejected and helpless to save anyone or anything.

At the other side of the stage, the showgirls, at least those half dozen that I could see, had taken up a fortification. While four were apathetically lounging with their headdresses on the floor, one, still fully costumed, animatedly spoke her mind. In a heated frenzy, she pointed at me, and threw her arms in the air in raging disgust, while directly behind her, the sixth member, with a clump of bedraggled feathers that had earlier been a headdress partially clinging to her hair, was leaning over, convulsing in uncontrollable sobs.

I was too humiliated to talk to Thompson, too scared to talk to the girls and too tired to join the architects who were fortunate enough to have just left the scene of a tragedy.

Where was I?

I knew that I would soon wake up. That too filled me with anxiety. Where had I left off at? I wondered. Was I still in Huntington's Bookstore, writhing on the floor in excruciating pain? Is that what I had to look forward to as soon as I awoke?

That miserable thought gave me the strength and momentary courage to try to make amends with my surreal guests.

I looked around the stage area to find a microphone. They all had been carried off by the clean up crew.

This little search of mine aroused attention. Thompson, Eiffel and Farnsworth looked my way.

The showgirls all stood with their hands on their hips. The architects who had been exiting, stopped and turned toward me.

The lights started to dim and three spotlights popped to bathe me in harsh light.

Although I was partially blinded, I could see a figure coming in my direction.

It was a midget-sized, red-faced clown, crying white tears, wearing a partially blackened engineer's cap, carrying a megaphone as large as he was.

Forsaken past

"Mr. Johns," the clown started to say then stopped himself. "Hatch, I mean," he said harshly, "Although you have forsaken us, shunned us, and denied, we will never let you go," he said, using both hands to give me the megaphone.

"Thank you," I weakly told him as he turned away. He walk into the spotlight, and a moment later was just a tiny speck.

Picking up the megaphone, I shouted at him "I had to do it. Melissa would have never loved me if I smelled like sawdust and elephant sweat."

That was it. Those words. Those images. They all finally came together at that moment.

It didn't matter anymore what my surreal hosts thought of me. They were ignoring me anyhow, holding their private conversations in disgust of what I had done to them. The showgirls now all had the feather headdress off. Two were fast asleep, while the other four were reclining in chase lounges.

Only one architect was left. He stood by the entrance as if waiting to see if there was one more act.

"Show's over, folks," I announced, using the megaphone.

The architect gave me a slight nod and left, allowing the door to slam shut.

I looked back one more time at the shambles, heartbreak and dishonor. "Was this it?" I thought to myself. Was this the zenith of the career that I never had. Would a dinner ever be in my honor? Would I ever be chosen to be the one to deliver a keynote speech?

I set the megaphone down. I picked up the dragon head cane that fallen into the rubble. I then took a deep breath and prepared, just like that last architect, to exit and allow the door to slam shut.

When I pushed against the door knob it wouldn't open. I turned and turned until I felt dizzy, seeing giant wheels spinning and a carnival barker chanting "Round and round it goes, where it stops, nobody knows."

Then I felt that I was on a spinning cups ride. Going round and round, seeing a distorted panorama of the things that I had experienced that day.

I saw the train rifling through a tunnel, the nine teenage ladies sketching a flaming dirigible, Mrs. Huntington eye's blazing, and Tanya's incense curling into snakes.

"Where she stops, nobody knows," repeated the barker, over and over.

The speed increased. The centrifugal force was pulling me somewhere, but the destination had yet to be determined. "Where would I land? What was real? When did this nightmare begin?" I thought.

Did I even come to Alexandria on the train today. Maybe I was still planning the trip and was actually back in my twelve by ten foot room.

All that I thought that I had experienced may have just lasted a second or two.

The spinning accelerated until the platform broke loose with a giant startling snap that somehow centered its force on the heal of my foot.