Saint James Infirmary 346: Baggage Claim.

[Daphne]

Friday, November 7th!

[mns_95125]

I'd been wondering if the next comic would follow the "meeting Johannes" thread or the Derek/Caitlyn thread.  Naturally Daphne gives the next comic a title that could easily apply to either.  Since I love a good pun, though, I'm going to assume this is one and go with Derek/Caitlyn.

[Haight]

Even if Derek was an evil bastard, he'd be better served by doing something else at the moment, methinks. Dude's somewhat small-minded.

[jmundt29]

Derek's limited strategy imagination is, perhaps, his only redeeming quality.

It's possible that Johannes is so disconnected from his own operation that he'd not have met or recognize the names of his own people, but I doubt it.  If he were operating a cleanup and salvage crew in Kearsage, I'd expect him to be at least as familiar with them as he is with Dani...er, Ms. Pellerin.  Obviously, he is not.  So, the only person we've met who works for him is Her Unpronounceableness (who is his personal pilot, no matter who her friends from her Air Force days might be).  Perhaps Baby Brother's reach isn't as developed as his workout program.

About Derek, thinking about his planning and confrontation skills, they tend to remind me of a scene from Snatch where a hitman named Bullet-Tooth Tony (played by Vinnie Jones) confronts and mocks three amateurs who try to rip him off.  His description of them, or their nominal "leader" (known to fire blanks through his own closed car window, six inches from his own head) is an apt description of Derek.  I had forgotten that during his surprising stretch of competence in New York.

ETA--Our history with the odd couple seems to indicate that whoever called Julian, it can't have been Johannes.  If Julian were working directly for him and Cherry hadn't been introduced, Julian would have acted as intermediary.  Or Johannes would have said something like "Julian, good to see you.  You have excellent taste in partners.  But, then again, so do I."  [with an proprietary but dismissive smile at Einfrudur]

So, the odd couple is probably working for Jakob (or, at least, Johannes' secretary).

About Zenon's crystal--the reason there's confusion is that both the bauble Zenon uses in treatment/investigation and the coveted Wilmot shells are referred to as "crystals."  Unless the bauble we see is a hollow covering for the shell shards that Jakob owned when he first ran across Dani, the "crystals" seem to be unrelated but serve similar functions.  Zenon's bauble is less powerful than the Wilmot Shells (I hope).

[Haight]

I think it was stated that broken bits of a crystal were used to make Zenon's bauble thing.

[jmundt29]

It was stated that that was all Jakob had when Dani fell into his lap.  He sent her after more material.  She retrieved a whole shell crystal and used it to power The Watch.  Then, weirdness happened that we're still clearing up.  Oh, and if Zenon's bauble has shell shards at its center, it seems that Dani worked on that too.  We have a panel of Jakob dropping the shards into her hand during Pearl's psychedelic memory trip.

[GodWilling]

It was stated that a piece of a broken scallop was used in the pendant, and also that Jakob didn't make it. As it was apparently Dani who made the second statement, we might infer that she was involved in making it. (If that's Dani's hand in 333 and those are the pieces of the broken scallop then a comparison with 208 suggests that it must have been enormous - but it's presumably only a dream-like representation of the truth.)

It was Cherry who took the call from "the boss". As far as we know, Julian hasn't tried the crystal on her and he leaves her to do the talking here, despite he and Johannes possibly sharing a first language. They appear to me to be at least equal partners.

I'm interested to know exactly what their plan is regarding Johannes, whomever they're working for. I mean, Derek was supposed to take him somewhere, Caitlyn was supposed to take him somewhere else; where are they meant to be taking him? They're not averse to killing people - if only to jog their memories. As I said, "He's flying in" could have been an event a bunch of people were eagerly waiting for. Is this a plan coming to fruition?

Einfriður looks an awful lot like Dani. Her journey from g24 to here is indeed intriguing. But what she was after there was promotion - and it was the fact that Johannes's connections were better than her own that she was seeking to exploit. It's possible that she'd consider this job to be just such a promotion (and that consequently a disappointing lack of mind control was involved).

Let's hope that hypnotic crystal stays in Julian's pocket because the last thing I want to see is the clever, strong, beautiful...

[Haight]

What's the alt code for that funky looking nordic d?

Honestly I'm expecting Her Unpronouncableness to introduce herself to someone and for their response to be just "Bless you."

[GodWilling]

What's the alt code for that funky looking nordic d?

ctrl-c; ctrl-v

[Daphne]

Honestly I'm expecting Her Unpronouncableness to introduce herself to someone and for their response to be just "Bless you."

EIN-free-thurr. It's not THAT hard.

[OctaviaMoon]

Just as a funny little by-the-by, when I was lettering this page the weird little "ð" thingy in the middle of her name came out as a "?" (only in lower case, I tried it in an MSWord document too (same font) and it didn't happen but no matter what I tried in Adobe Illustrator it was always changed to a "?"...I had to change it to a "d"....maybe the "?" was more appropriate? lol!

[Haight]

ctrl-c; ctrl-v

Lol that's the coward's way.

I assume that this pilot is icelandic? They're the ones who still use that kind of patrynomic, right?

[GodWilling]

They also predominate in the Icelandic coastguard, which is where she was working when we first met her in g14. Although unless you're a helicopter spotter, or Icelandic, you'd only have got that from the forum thread.

[jmundt29]

Is Jakob's pendant in flashback that pendant?  I...plus we have unreliable narrators all over and some narrators are quite reliable for some bits and atrocious in others.  This seems to be one of the foggiest sections of the continuum.  If shards are housed in Zenon's bauble, who cut the covering for Jakob?  Did he inherit it?  Is it a reminder of college days?

Well, that cinches it that Julian and Cherry are either working for Jakob, the secretary, themselves, or some as yet unidentified benefactor.  Johannes has never met her.  And if they'd had conversations on the phone, he probably would have said--"Nice to put a beautiful face with the voice," or something similar.

Einfirdur might have taken a significant salary bump to go from the Icelandic Coast Guard to personal sky chauffer with benefits to billionaires.  However, I don't think she'd consider it a "promotion."

[GodWilling]

However, I don't think she'd consider it a "promotion."

Fair enough. I don't know enough about her to have a strong idea what she'd think. The Icelandic Coast Guard is more military than ours here. Sleeping with a friend of the Admiral and agreeing to lie by omission in an official report in return for favours... well, at the very least I'd question the depth of her dedication to the service.

We've good reason to believe Julian's pendant is Zenon's pendant. When it first appeared we had no reason to assume that it had any special powers rather than that Zenon was a skilled hypnotist. It has re-appeared in Julian's hands and almost simultaneously - and quite independently - in Miriam's and Dani's recollections of Jakob. And it looks identical to Jakob's. As it seems to have hypnotic properties, and Miriam and Dani referred to "the pendant", I think it's a fair assumption at this point that it's the same object. We have a possible route from Jakob to Claudia to Zenon to explain its history.

Johannes has flown in specifically to meet with Dani. Arrangements were in place for Caitlyn to get him from Concord to Kearsarge. Cherry and Julian have intercepted him and given him to understand that they are here in Caitlyn's place. Surely that is all the evidence we need that it was not he who gave them the order to come and pick him up.