ins Schloss stecken

The crackle, the familiar static buzz, a message coming through on the wire.  The Brotherhood had finished their part of the machine, and now it was our turn.  They had left instructions for how we were to connect, but first we had to get there.

Taxi. Wait. Scan. Wait. Fly. Coffee. biscuits. Land.

Sheep-like at Schipol, we prodded screens, hoping we could get some clues for what to do.  The box spat out a ticket telling us we didn’t exist, that we needed to get instructions, that we were PP/ET (puppets).  We stepped down our mind-control defenses a little, popped some Total Loss™ pills and danced with the children learning how to chase the spectacle. The shops were all full of ‘and’ – one thing isn’t enough, you must want whiskey AND tobacco, cosmetics AND perfume, desire AND lack.

Wacht. Aftasten. Eet. Wacht. Wacht. Wacht. Wacht. Wacht. Vlieg. Koffie. koekjes. Land. Taxi.

The plane had picked up some HALTERS: invisible tendrils that would hold us back, so we had to wait while the air tenders fought them off with sprays of poison gas.  The delay meant we had to rush to get the key before the time limit, so two of us stayed at the U-bahn, while the other two went to find it. Crunching through the minus  twelve snow, we eventually found the right building and buzzed the entryphone. The  guardian said “yes, I am in the front house, come through the door”, but when we did we fell into a multi-levelled maze, watched by strange faces.

Lost, cold and confused, we thought we’d found the right door, but it was opened by a scary bald man who just stared at us. We asked him if he was the curator with the boat, but he just pointed in the wrong direction. Fortunately, the key guardian had just been watching Twin Peaks and called us to the right flat by talking backwards.

Meanwhile at the U-bahn station, the others had been battling the clones of the boat-curator, chanting entartete Kunst slogans until they backed off. We got to the apartment building but the HALTERS were still attacking us, making the key freeze to the lock, everything that touched it became part of the frozen HALTPILE, like a cold Katamari Damasi. We called out for help, and those inside joined in the struggle but the best we could do was unstick ourselves from the door and sneak round to the fire exit, where friends of the cause let us in.