found and lost

All the King's horses and all the King's men... well, you know. Hopeless. The Queen, on the other hand, just put her scrambled transmissions together again.

Now we can listen to the Operator's broken-up audio files in their original order — compliments of the Sleeping Princess, who found 'em for us while the Queen was fussing over her axons.

And that's not all the Sleeping Princess found. Apparently, the Operator has been holding out on us... keeping a secret stash of transmissions. Intercepted communications she doesn't trust us to hear yet. But for some reason, the Sleeping Princess wants us to have them now. A dozen puzzles later, we've got 'em — and for now, we know more than the Operator thinks we do.

*

In other news: Ming tian jian, China!

After 3 weeks, Shanghai felt... familiar. Time to be lost again.

Where to? A friend of mine once said that Shibuya Crossing was the only place on earth his invisible superpowers worked. I always remembered that. So, off I went to become an anonymous speck in Tokyo. I landed at Narita Airport on Sunday.

Something kind of funny happened during the flight. The guy sitting next to me on the plane had a sketchbook and some colored pencils with him — I noticed this when I nosily started watching over his shoulder. (Yeah, I know, bad habit.) Then I completely freaked him out by yelping not very quietly and clutching his arm—yes, his arm!—when I realized what he was drawing. It was a picture of girl holding a bunch of balloons. When he pulled out the red pencil to start coloring them in, I almost lost it. (Ridiculous, I know.) Then I had to try to explain to him why red balloons made me so jumpy. I don't think he quite got it. But I had to tell you guys the story — because I knew you'd understand perfectly.

It's awfully nice to have so many allies out there who understand perfectly.