"Mmm... Chocolate banana cake... Restores my faith in the humankind..."
"Who needs the cake when they have ice cream?"

The waitress puts the cake, the ice cream and two cups of hot chocolate in front of us.

"What are we gonna do there?"
"I wanna see everything I missed the last time. The Winter Palace, the St. Isaac Cathedral, all the cultural thingies."
"Me too, the cultural thingies. But I also wanna go to some club or something..."
"I've been to a club last time I was there. That's why I didn't get to see any cultural thingies."
"A better club this time? Stop feeding your ice cream to your hair, it probably doesn't like it."
"Ice cream or hair?"
"Either."

I fish Timo's hair out of the ice cream and stick it (the hair, not the ice cream) behind his ear.

"Where is everyone?"
"Late as usual. Probably having wild monkey sex."
"What, all four of them? Without us?"
"Late, us? 'Punctuality' is our collective middle name," Rudy says from behind me and and sits down. Katie and Tarja linger for a while looking at the cakes under the glass, and then also sit down.
"Jamie is gonna be here soon, he just went to a club for a little while with some coworker," continues Rudy, "can't wait to see him, he went to a hairdresser today".
"He what? Did he lose some kind of a bet? What is he getting?"

AFAIK the only two times he had visited a hairdresser as an adult was to fix a home coloring disaster of truly epic proportions, which is what I suspect has happened to him again. Some people never learn. And some people will never be blond. And some people never learn that they are never gonna be blond.

"No, he went there quite voluntarily, though I wouldn't say 'happily'. He did not say exactly, but he did hint about a brave new color."
"I remember his last brave new color. He had to wear all his hair up under a ski cap for two weeks until he managed to get it fixed."
"I want cake," says Katie impatiently, obviously not very concerned with her husband's adventures in hair coloring.

The waitress comes to take their orders. At that moment Jamie appears, wearing a ski cap, pulls up a chair, and says "chocolate banana cake, please, a tea, and two scoops of chocolate ice cream," staring at the waitress with inhuman eyes of solid black. She recoils.

"Jamie, you moron, you forgot the contacts on," says Katie, but he has already figured it out, apologized to the waitress, and run off to the bathroom. I don't understand this fashion for flashy unnatural contacts on people who don't really need contacts of any kind.

Jamie comes back from the bathroom without the contacts, still wearing a ski cap, all his hair tucked under it. We demand to see the brave new color. He seems to be a little shy about it, but pulls the cap off and opens his ponytail. It is a bit of anticlimax, because I can't see any difference from what his hair usually looks like.

"Your brave new color resembles your brave old color in a very stylish and impressive way," says Timo diplomatically.
"You need more light to see it. The damn thing cost 150 euros and took 4 hours," answers Jamie defensively.

We go under a bright light. Wow. His natural color is blue black, which is normally the term for black with no visible brown in it. The color he has now is literally blue black, very dark but with visible blue in it. A beautiful color indeed, and not even particularly anime-like, but you really need bright light to see the difference. The coloring job is truly excellent, but I can imagine a man might be a bit miffed at paying 150 euro for the color that needs bright light to be noticeable. Oh well, serves him right.

The waitress returns with the cakes and ice creams and other goodies, and we go back to the table.

"So, has any of you been there before?" asks Katie, meaning St. Petersburg, even though she already knows the answers.
"I have," says Rudy. "Wouldn't wanna live there, but it's a very cool destination for a long weekend."
"Very, very cool," I say, "especially in March."
"I have too," says Timo, "and my liver is still crying every time it remembers that trip. I used to date an engineering student then, and went with them. It was the hangover of my life. And in the end we had to carry our group leader to the bus. And then we had to stick his head out of the window because we ran out of plastic bags."
"Did you get to see any museums?" asks Tarja.
"I wouldn't remember. I prefer to assume I did."
"I've been there once too," says Tarja, "with Suvi and Liisa. It was fun until Liisa fell into Neva and all her papers floated away."
"I promise not to get drunk this time," says Timo.
"Me too!" says Jamie, who doesn't drink.
"I can drink your share," suggests Rudy helpfully.
"Last time you got too drunk you almost got your dick bitten off," reminds him Tarja, wisely avoiding mentioning what transgressions led to that unfortunate event. Rudy blushes.

We are going on a long weekend to St. Petersburg tomorrow, all six of us. In principle we are supposed to discuss our plans tonight, but the plans are all rather clear already: overnight train there and back, an apartment that I found on the Net - a big, nice, not very expensive place on the corner of Nevsky and Liteiny - gorgeous museums by day - Katie has printed a huge list from somewhere - trendy little clubs by night, the works. The atavistic racial memory, or rather the stories of my mother's childhood and young adulthood, paints a different picture: huge supermarket lines, scary hooligans, and no toilet paper. I decide to take some Imodium with me, just in case.

"Should we call it a night?" asks Rudy at some point, "none of you have packed a single pant yet."
"I have packed almost everything!" Katie sounds outraged. Her "packing almost everything" usually involves giving about 5 seconds of thought to where the bag might possibly be.
"I haven't," says Tarja, "but the night is young. How about that little whisky place in Tapiola?"
"What whisky place?" you can actually see Rudy's ears perk up.
"Come, and you'll see."

We get out of Engel and walk to Kamppi, all the time cursing the obviously insufficient global warming. The bus is in 15 minutes, they really should have those buses more often when people want to drink.

"Mira and I found another cool whisky place last week," says Timo, "a tiny hole in the wall in Puotila, but it has more whisky than Heathrow."
"Wow! Can we go there next week?" asks Tarja.
"Anything you want, love," Rudy kisses her, "except that Junttikrouvi place in Kontula."
"They won't let us in anyway after the last time."
"You managed to get yourselves banned out of Junttikrouvi?" asks Timo. "I didn't think it was possible. What did you do, set the place on fire?"
"It was an accident," says Tarja, "and no, no fire."
"Oh, by the way, I saw Fazil," says Rudy, who has just come back from visiting his parents in Edinburgh and keeps sharing gossip of their old friends, some of whom I've met and most of whom I have only heard about. "He had a woman with him and was pushing a pram. With a real live baby. You know, Jamie, he has outdone you in the quest for the world's tallest woman."
"I'll have to do with the second tallest. What's up with him?"
"Somebody had dishonored his sister."
"Hold on, wasn't he the guy about whom you said last summer that somebody has dishonored his sister? What, did they do it again?" asks Timo, who has never met the man. Fazil is Rudy's old classmate and Jamie's old bandmate from The World's Worst Klezmer Band, a nice laid-back guy originally from one of Soviet Union's numerous Whateverstans.
"Fazil is a man of many sisters," explains Rudy.
"Six, to be exact," specifies Jamie. "But now the last one of those got dishonored, so he can stop with shotgun weddings."
"Eew," Tarja is horrified. "What does he do if the guy refuses to marry his sister, or the sister refuses to marry the guy?"
"It's their culture," explains Jamie. "And nobody has ever refused. Fazil usually waits till the sister and the evildoer have a house and a mortgage and at least a second kid on the way."
"Not very fast, is he?" laughs Tarja.
"Doing things with dignity and without any hurry is also part of their culture," Rudy grins.

A woman walking by stops and stares at us from about 5 meters away.

"Hey, did he..." starts Jamie, who is sitting on the floor with his back to the woman, but suddenly jumps up as if something bit him on the ass, and runs up to her. She looks scared but does not try to run away. They walk a few meters away from us and start talking. The conversation is very animated, cards are exchanged, and it seems like they are arguing. The woman is tall and blond, about 45, probably Finnish. I have never seen her before.

Eventually our bus comes, Jamie comes back, and the woman goes away.

"Who was that?" asks Katie.
"Elina. From Rovaniemi."
"And now for some actual information?"
"A Net acquaintance. I recognized her from her website picture. Never seen her in person before."

In the whisky place Tarja runs off to study the selection, Rudy continues his story about Edinburgh:

"I saw Brian MacDonald, too. And Ang."
"Hopefully not in the same place," comments Jamie. Those are his old climbing buddies, who no longer are on speaking terms with him or each other. I haven't seen either for years but from Rudy's stories I figured Brian is not on speaking terms with pretty much anyone.
"Brian was my first sexual experience," explains Katie to Timo, who has never heard about Brian. "I was 15 or so, and I passed out at some party and he tried to screw me, so I woke up, bit him on the nose and went to sleep again."
"The bastard," says Rudy, "I should kick his ass."
"Too late for that."
"It's still my duty as your brother. BTW, you guys are not gonna believe it: Ang had a woman with him too." He is right, I don't believe it. No woman would put up with a man whose one and only topic of conversation is mountaneering.
"Most surprising people sometimes do," comments Tarja dryly, returning to her place."Why is it too late to kick that Brian guy's ass?"
"He lost his hands and feet and nose and ears climbing some mountain," explain Katie.
"Ouch. Why do people go climbing mountains?" says Tarja.
"He still has his ass, though, and I can kick it," says Rudy.
"Insanity," suggests Jamie in answer to Tarja's question. He used to climb when he was young, in fact there were three years or so when he did every extreme sport in existence, including visiting a minor war somewhere, but later realized that therapy is safer and more effective. This realization was much helped by the moment when Ang and him had to search for lost and badly frostbitten Brian in a storm on Mount McKinley. "The mountains are cold and wet."
"So is Tapiola," sighs Katie, "they keep promising us global warming, and where is it?"
"You are not doing your share. Get yourself a car," suggests Rudy.

Oh God, oh God! We drank too much whisky and I ended up in Timo's place and now I am horribly hung over and have to go to work and still haven't packed a single pant.

* * * Community's IRC channel

<Elina> OMG! I just met a new guy last night. In Helsinki. An incredible mind-reader.
<Sinikka> A new guy? In person? Who? When did he get the Skills? What are you gonna do?
<Elina> That's the thing, he says he's always had the Skills, and that he's always thought he was the only one. I don't think anyone has seen him before. Or Seen.
<Wei> I thought our scanning worked better than that.
<Elina> I just tried to scan him from here. He shows up as a normal at the distance. Shit. Shit, shit, shit.
<Lauri> Are you sure he actually has the Skills?
<Elina> Quite sure. His aura was visible from the other end of Kamppi terminal. And when I tried to read his mind he firewalled me right out.
<Sinikka> Firewalled YOU?
<Michael> Firewalled *you*?
<Lauri> Firewalled you?
<Hanne> FIREWALLED YOU?
<Peilin> Firewalled *you*?
<Elina> Michael, yeah. And he tried to break through my firewall, too. He doesn't have enough experience for that, but he does have the power.
<Michael> You mean he is as strong as Alicia or Dana or Diego?
<Elina> Michael, not sure, but he is definitely in the same class.
<Hanne> Just what we needed, a super-mind-reader who does not show up on scanning.
<Elina> He shows up on scanning like everyone else, you just can't see that he has the Skills. Yeah, and another thing: he does not have the Sight.
<Michael> Skills, but no Sight? Never seen that before. Are you sure? I don't think it's possible.
<Elina> Michael, hard to be sure with all the firewalling, but I asked him several questions about the Sight and he really sounded like he had no idea what I was talking about.
<Michael> Any Skills besides the mind-reading? At this level he should be capable of writing too, at least a little.
<Elina> Probably. He did not sound like he knew of any other Skills, and I did not think it was a good idea to ask.
<Sinikka> You were right.
<Elina> I am always right. Sinikka, Lauri, Hanne, Michael: I'll transmit you his ident for scanning, relay to whoever you can.
<Sinikka> Thanks. Who is the guy? Any info on him?
<Elina> He gave me a card and said a few words. Jamie Hallgrimsson, 34, married, Scottish, currently living in Helsinki. I scanned him later: he was hanging out in some bar in Tapiola with five people. I should have taken a better look at them in Kamppi, but I was so shocked... Anyway, he lives in Pasila with his wife and some other guy. The sign on the door says Goldberg and Hallgrimsson. Seem like regular urban middle-class somewhat-bohemian folks. Lots of computers in the apartment. Two dogs and a cat. There is quite a lot on him on the Net, too, a blog and a webpage. A system administrator; used to be a matematician; has some strong opinions on Microsoft, academic life, free speech and suchlike. Lots of pictures, too. I'll put all the info in the wiki.
<Lauri> Hallgrimsson doesn't seem a very Scottish name.
<Hanne> Come on, Lauri is not a very Swedish name either. Everyone moves around so much. Else's daughter got married to some Icelandic guy and they live in Scotland.
<Sinikka> Damn, could it be the same guy?
<Hanne> No, that guy is at least 60 and IIRC his name is Asgeir.
<Michael> Elina, did you convince him to come and sort things out?
<Elina> Michael, I tried to get him to come with me; he said he was going on vacation with friends and will be back sometime next week and will call me. This is kind of an emergency, this guy running around. We should alert all the northern Europe.
<Sinikka> Did he say where?
<Elina> No. We'll see. We should not have an untrained person of such power running around.
<Sinikka> Could you have forced him?
<Elina> Are you kidding?
<Michael> Chill out, folks. The man has been running around with unchecked Skills for 34 years, he is not gonna cause the end of the world over the weekend. Not even the long weekend.
<Elina> Better safe than sorry. He is probably not going very far away for the weekend, better alert our people in Sweden, Estonia and St. Petersburg. Sinikka and I got Finland covered.
<Lauri> Elina, "our people in Sweden" is me. A better question is what the fuck am I gonna do against a super-mind-reader if push comes to shove. And we don't have anyone in Estonia.
<Hanne> Can't we get Aldona to get her ass to Tallinn?
<Elina> Most days we can't even get her to get her ass to the computer. Forget Tallinn.
<Sinikka> I just tried to contact Borya, can't find him anywhere, what happened?
<Wei> He is on vacation in New Zealand.
<Sinikka> Wei, can you See that far?
<Wei> No, but I can see the IRC log from last Saturday. He said he was going to New Zealand for three weeks.
<Elina> Then we don't have Tallinn or St. Petersburg covered.
<Michael> Don't worry about the man. He'll probably get there and back without much trouble. Maybe reads a few minds on the way, who cares. I am more worried about the bigger picture. Do you realize what we have a guy whose Skills DO NOT SHOW UP ON SCAN? Who knows how many more of them are out there?
<Elina> Ugh. A lovely thought.
<Michael> Elina: are you ready to see him when he gets back? Are you scared? Do you need help?
<Elina> Michael, yes. He didn't seem hostile, just curious, and a bit suspicious, all the normal reactions. Seemed fairly nice and normal. He's probably quite ready to talk. I think I can try on my own.
<Michael> Good luck. Call me if you need help.
<Elina> OTOH with those powers would be strange if he couldn't make himself seem nice and normal.
<Lauri> Look, they are waking up! The wife is very hot BTW. Ooh, she is going to the shower!
<Sinikka> The other guy too! I mean hot, not in the shower.
<Hanne> Shame on you perverts! Using the Sight for that... :)
<Wei> Wife? Hot? I wanna see too! Somebody give me the visual.
<Hanne> Wei so needs a girlfriend...
<Michael> Considering that he is having trouble keeping his current three girlfriends from finding out about each other, I'd say definitely not. :P
<Wei> Do we have to spy on each other all day long?
<Sinikka> Where is Else? Haven't seen her for days.
<Hanne> Sailing in the harbor every day, the weather has been nice.
<Sinikka> This is so like her: we are having an emergency and she is sailing.
<Hanne> She is always sailing in spring.
<Wei> And we are always having some kind of an emergency. :)
<Elina> At that age they do whatever they damn well please. It's not like she can help anyway. We don't need anything set on fire or any planes dropped from the sky.
<Perv> Whee, a new guy! Do you think he'd come work for me?
<Wei> Perv, man, how have you been? Long time no see.
<Perv> This fucking job is killing me. Gonna burn out soon, and surrender myself to Elina's gentle ministrations. So, Elina, gonna introduce me to the new guy?
<Elina> Perv: don't even start.
<Perv> :(

* * *