The first sign that something was going on was the hat. Mayor Shaar Longplume
was not the kind of woman who wore hats. Not that hats were popular in Hallifax
anyway; all the winds made them somewhat impractical. And while some
Hallifaxians might indulge in whimsy, it was certainly not the norm. Perhaps
that's why Shaar was the mayor; in a city full of prim, studious, sober people,
she was the most sober. The most collected person in the Collective, you might
say. She wouldn't say that; puns were not in her repertoire, not even weak
ones. But you might. I don't know who you are. Maybe you're the kind of
person to make puns like that. I try not to judge.

And yet, against all expectations, one day she came down from the shopping
district wearing a hat. And not just any hat. This one was a bit frivolous, in
a vivid cranberry hue adorned with a few gemstones. In many places, it would be
considered humdrum. The people of New Celest might think it suitable for an
evening out dancing. In Gaudiguch, it would be so plain that it would have to
be used to make a statement about refusal to conform with the prevailing
standard of excess -- or perhaps refusing to conform with those who object to
those who refused to conform to the prevailing standard. In Gaudiguch, it was
easy to lose track of how many layers of rebellion were currently in fashion.

But in Hallifax, it was, in a word, exuberant. And Shaar showed no sign of
recognition of the oddity of the hat. She went about her business, processing
the requests that filtered up through the bureaucracy to her, overseeing
projects for improvements to the city, meetings with the ministers to discuss
everything from budget requests to tactical deployments. Some of the braver
people asked about the hat, but she had no explanation to offer other than that
she'd seen it in a shop and took a fancy to it.

Mayor Shaar Longplume took many things. But fancies were not amongst them. She
didn't take them, give them, make them, sell them, or have any traffic
whatsoever with them. Fancies were for other people.

= = = = =

Master Prelate Deruu Tleeth glared angrily at his apprentice, but there wasn't
anything Apprentice Levrem Destee could offer. The researcher in the next room,
shrouded in an oily, heady smoke, was so inebriated with mind-altering substance
as to be wholly unaware of his part in their plans. Levrem had done his job of
keeping the researcher in so constant a state of drug-addled stupor that he
never realized where he was, or the real import of his actions. Previously,
Levrem had played his part in Deruu's complex plan to lure the researcher into
this trap, and despite a host of comically unexpected mishaps along the way,
ultimately, things had gone just as planned.

There, nestled in something that appeared at first glance like a basket, at
least until some of the flesh that comprised it twitched or shifted, was a small
crystal, sheathed in tendrils of flesh, pulsing in a regular rhythm. One, two,
pause, pause. One, two, pause, pause. Staring at it for even a few moments
made Levrem become aware of the rhythm of his own heart, and how it was slowing
to match the crystal's cadence, causing him to feel sleepy. Or maybe it was the
smoke making him sleepy. By this point he couldn't remember how long he'd been
doing this. A few days, or a few months? Sometimes he couldn't tell which was
which.

But while Deruu yelled at him, it was definitely minutes passing, long, endless
minutes. The master was yelling something about a hat. He seemed really upset
about it. Levrem put a hand to his head to check if he was wearing a hat. No,
he wasn't. Was he supposed to be? He frowned and tried to focus, but at that
moment, the sausage sandwich he'd eaten for lunch met up with some of the
firemead he'd had to drink to keep their captive drinking, and they decided to
do a little dance. A waltz, maybe? No, this was a more festive dance. The
apprentice started to turn a little green, but Deruu didn't notice. Nothing was
going like it was supposed to go.

= = = = =

The next day there was the regularly scheduled committee meeting concerning
power allocations. Everything was going the way it was supposed to go --
insistent, yet dry, arguments for increases in allocations, sober realities
concerning monthly Matrix production quotas, the inevitable proposal of another
power contest, and the stamping and signing of endless requisition forms. The
power minister had brought another one of his colourful charts. A few months
earlier, Shaar had lauded the first of these charts as an excellent method of
visualizing power distribution trends, but had soon come to regret it. Now
every meeting was full of charts, ever bigger, ever brighter, and everyone
thought the chart thing had gotten out of hand, but no one wanted to be the
first not to bring one. The way things were going, one day, someone would
figure out how to make animated, dancing charts.

But it wasn't the charts that led Shaar to surprise everyone. It wasn't even
the hat; by now everyone had gotten used to it, or just decided to ignore it
until it went away. But when the second vice-assistant to the minister of power
made a routine comment wondering whether or not the Force Commander and the
Minister of Peace, who happened to be married and happened to be absent from the
meeting, were coming, Shaar made a small, painfully obvious, and not at all
funny joke.

Yes, you know what the joke was; if you've ever spent time in the company of a
twelve-year-old boy, or anyone who was once a twelve-year-old boy and hasn't
fully recovered yet, you've heard some variant on it. Don't ask me to spell it
out. What's important here is not the joke. It's that Shaar, the
straight-laced, sober, serious mayor of a straight-laced, sober, serious city,
made it. In a committee meeting, no less.

It's not like there were never jokes at the committee meetings. Someone had
made a particularly complex, multi-layered pun about "core competencies" just
the previous spring. There were even mildly off-colour jokes now and then.
Once, the Archmage made one about action items on the agenda, and even the
people who didn't get it politely laughed. But when there were jokes at
committee meetings, they were surely never this crude. And they certainly
didn't come from the mayor. When people made jokes around her, she either
didn't notice, or she gave a small, thin-lipped, condescending nod of feigned
gratitude, and then changed the subject.

But after making this crude pun, she laughed. The ministers weren't sure that's
what she was doing at first. No one had ever heard the sound from her before.
They didn't know how to react. A few of them tried to laugh along with her.
Some rolled their eyes, thinking maybe she was being intentionally ironic in
some way they hadn't quite figured out yet. Most of them just waited with their
eyes down for the next action item on the agenda. The Archmage thought about
the joke she'd made on that very subject the year before, and giggled a little
at the memory of that.

And then the meeting went on, a little hurriedly, as if everyone was eager to
get back to normalcy. No one dared to look up from their charts, for fear the
mayor would turn out to be smiling, and then they'd be forced to be the one who
noticed.

= = = = =

Things had not gotten better for Levrem. After he'd lost his lunch, and then
been forced to clean it up, and then lost his breakfast from the act of cleaning
it up, and then had to clean that up too, he'd had to endure a ranting recap of
the plan from Deruu. Fortunately, emptying his stomach had cleared his thoughts
a bit, as had some time away from the constant stream of hallucinatories being
fed to the researcher in the next room, now being attended by another
apprentice. Unfortunately, Deruu's narration was still a bit muddled. Levrem
had the idea that maybe a chart would help make the plan a little clearer, but
he didn't dare suggest the idea.

The heartstone, nestled amongst this miniature version of a fleshpot, was
definitely part of it. It had come from the researcher, Levrem knew that, since
he'd helped lure the young scientist off and get him stoned out of his gourd,
and then played some inexplicable part in a bizarre performance by which Deruu
fooled the lad's weed-addled mind to conclude that handing over the mayor's
heartstone would be a good idea. Part of some kind of experiment, Levrem
expected, but all he'd done was listened for his cues, said his lines, hit his
marks, and hoped Deruu would remember how good a job he'd done when it was time
for his next apprenticeship evaluation.

And there was some kind of obscure method by which the fleshpot was working to
transplant some of its flesh through the crystal into the mayor's heart, a sort
of remote "heart transplant" as Deruu called it, but the master refused to say
anything coherent about that, and Levrem knew better than to ask. Being a
student in the Illuminati was a very tricky business. One had to seem
simultaneously eager to learn and receptive to knowledge, yet always mindful of
secrecy and never looking to pry beyond one's station. Whatever this heart
transplant was, it was definitely beyond that unseen border.

The goal clearly was to have some kind of influence on the mayor which would
either sway Hallifax to become more receptive to Gaudiguchian ideals, or make
them vulnerable to some other plan of which even Deruu might not be aware
(Levrem had learned that not being aware of how you were helping the larger goal
was a virtue in the Illuminati, though he often wondered if there really was a
larger plan), or who knows what else. Whatever it was, Deruu was clearly
convinced it wasn't happening. He ranted about some kind of joke and a power
committee meeting, growing progressively more incoherent as he frothed.

He also said something about a chart. Maybe the chart idea wasn't a bad one
after all. Levrem made a mental note to bring it up, later, when this was all
over.

= = = = =

By a year later, no one really even wondered anymore. Shaar sometimes wore
hats, occasionally made crude jokes, and had even taken to eating dishes made
with meat. Once in a while, when she and her formerly estranged husband emerged
from their manse on their way to committee meetings, he had an odd grin on his
face, like the proverbial cat that had gotten the equally proverbial canary.
There were rumours that on rare occasions, when attending the Grand Hallifaxian
Opera House, Shaar smiled at the performance. There was even a time when, at a
state ball welcoming visiting dignitaries before a diplomatic negotation, she'd
been asked to dance by one of the diplomats, and did so, with an entirely
unnecessary level of enthusiasm.

But the negotiations were concluded satisfactorily, with all proper decorum
despite the occasional smile and even one slightly jejune joke, and to the
considerable benefit of the Collective. Power production continued to meet
quotas. Committee meetings were held regularly (although one minister had
invented a way to make animated charts, but fortunately, one of them caught fire
-- it is expected the minister will make a full recovery -- and soon charts
passed out of vogue). Forms were stamped and signed, decisions rendered for the
good of the Collective, citizens rewarded or punished for their behavior
appropriately, and each day followed the previous as it always had.

(Except that one time, but the Institute still has declared that incident
classified, so that story will have to wait for another day.)

No one could deny that Shaar had changed. It was as if her heart itself had
been replaced. She made jokes and laughed at the jokes of others. She even,
from time to time, took fancies. Hallifax never once plummeted to earth.

(Except that one time, but the Aeromancers are working on expunging all records
of that, so I will say no more about it.)