Chapter 2 Looking for allies
While Jenny was out and about securing the money and the watermill itself Edmund was on his dual quest to find the right people who could help them in bringing it to life. He was a good choice for the task, he and Jenny knew each other from the university but where she had followed the narrow path towards success, Edmund hat followed down the broad boulevard of academic purity. The most noble of paths for any academic, but also the one framed by private mansions reserved only for the rich, powerful and lucky. He wasn't rich, his family was unremarkable and while Lady Fortuna didn't fancy him all that much. That combined with his adamant pursuit of academic purity made him to one of the most promising people in his field who would never work in it. He loved the platonic ideal of knowing and understanding not only things but also people, which brought him into contact with other driven people and made it easy to get to know them. His acquaintances were legion.
He was determined to do right by Jenny. For one, he loved the project. He had seen the watermill and as Jenny had given him the tour through its decomposing structure, her words had brought the building back to life in many different ways one more beautiful than the other. He had faith in Jennies vision from the very beginning but after she was done with her tour looking at him beaming, smile radiant and eyes shining he had absolute faith in her. The fire in her soul was back, a bright bonfire illuminating her from within. The quality that had drawn him to Jenny when he first met her and kept him at her side ever since.
So the first thing he had done after they had parted ways that morning was to go and get some breakfast. The city was marbled with cafés, bistros, eateries, restaurants, snack-bars in all their possible manifestations giving it its excellent taste for which it was world famous. Its varied delights attracted chefs, critics, writers, bloggers and instagramers, which again lead to more places to open up. The city servants of the city loved it. It made their hive so much more attractive and as the city prospered so did they. Getting a license to sell food was always easy. Where the clerks usually jealously guarded their city against the unwashed and the poor, pretty much everyone was welcome to try to feed the inhabitants.
This made Edmund's first mission simple to start but very hard to get done. So he ate a morsel here, drank an espresso there, drifting through the city getting a feeling for what was working and how. He was also hungry, that helped too. He had started with traditional places serving at least metaphorically the meat and potatoes, switching over to the more out there and exotic and turning back to the outrageously simple. By midday he was stuffed like a Christmas turkey but not one inch closer to knowing what the mill needed to be able to thrive as a café. However he had become acquainted with the terroir and was now near the ivory towers of the university which was integral to finding the right people who could help him with this second quest.
He left the grey of the city entering the hallowed grounds of the university. Everything was more vibrant, more real here. This was a place where people thought about everything and they did in depth and in detail. Outside people just believed things, nothing had to make much sense as long as it seemed to make some kind of sense and the first truth that appeared was usually good enough and cordially invited in into the minds of people. In here things were different. Even ideas that had proven themselves were often invited out for a sound thrashing just to make sure that they still lived up to their promise. Sure even this paradise was unclean as it still involved people and their petty motivations, but they were polluted with a hight degree of sophistication. Edmund felt right at home again, he relaxed and became more like his ideal self. He also became bitter as he was reminded that he would only ever be a visitor in this place and would never get to live here ever again. Before that thought could drag him to far down he reminded himself that it also meant that he was free of the hierarchies that controlled this world. 'Well' he thought to himself 'I will enjoy the virtues and leave the vices behind me.' he shrugged his bitterness off, leaving it to be blown away by the autumn wind while he walked towards the engineering department at a brisk pace.
"Hydroelectric power?" Russell who was slightly nervous as always said looking at Edmund blinking a bit to frequently, "Big style? Like damns? That'll be difficult." His eyes twitched their focus into space.
"No not dams." said Edmund "It's for a watermill. The water turns the wheel and that power is used to make electricity."
"Oh." said Russell his eyes twitching back to Edmund and remain there now calm. "That's actually pretty trivial."
Edmund waited for a moment thinking that Russell would say more, but as he didn't he tried again.
"So there is no on that?" Edmund asked.
"No." snorted his disdain giving him the coolness that evaded him in his normal life. "That would be not much more than a dynamo. That's something your bike can do."
Lesser men would have either run out of idea by now or would have recoiled from the physical force Russell's condescension produced,for Edmund this was a challenge.
"You obviously don't see what is at hand here." Edmund said.
"Nothing which can't be solved by something you could by in any store." Russell said overestimating what a normal store sold.
"I'm not talking about something you could buy in a store." Edmund had to find the spark that would ignite Russell's passion. "I'm looking for something better."
"Better?" Now Russell did not look like a nervous techy any more but more like a predator who was now considering if it was not about time to become hungry. "Better how?"
"Well..." Edmund said "First of all we are looking for a bespoke solution. This is an ancient watermill that we are talking about, the engine must fit the mill."
"Generator" Russell corrected.
Edmund lips moved only the tiniest bit but his eyes betrayed his smile. "Yes, sorry, the generator must fit the mill. An old structure with no technical infrastructure at all. Well apart from the moving parts which might as well still be from the middle ages."
"I can see how that would need at least some proper work done." Russell was now looking inwards visualising the situation throwing around a few variables. Before he he could add anything more to the conversation Edmund added: "And the place needs to be completely self-sufficient."
Russell paused at that. "Self-sufficient? How big is the water wheel?"
"I'm not sure twelve meters perhaps?"
Russell smiled a lopsided smile. "That's difficult."
"It probably won't be possible." Edmund added to the fire he had carefully brought to life.
"I never said impossible." said Russell. "This is nor my area of expertise but I know someone who I'm sure would love to talk to you. "Her name is Linda and she is really into ultra high efficiency energy conversion, she's working on her PhD right now and I think she just might want a project that can bring her work together in a coherent way"
"That sounds excellent." Edmund said. "You can tell her that can discuss the project over dinner. The location her choice." He might as well use the time he would spend talking to this Linda person to keep working on his other assignment. Win win.
Friday 2 November 2018
Thursday 1 November 2018
Project Coffee Break Redux 000
The following is an editeted version of last years attempt at writing a novel, it is the seed and basis for this years attempt.
Project Coffee Break Redux
Prologue: Into the Dream
Make your dreams come true. Sounds easy. Yet most people don't even try. For most of her life Jenny had been one of those people. Retreating from the world into the dream was far easier than trying to force the dream into reality. It's lot of hard work. Dreams are supposed to be comfortable places, safe and warm. Not something one wants to sully with the sweat of work and dirtying it with the banalities of everyday life.
So for many years she just cultivated her dream in her mind, letting the warm feeling it left follow her where ever she went. It worked well for her. If life got hard or tedious, she could change focus from the world to her fantasy. Here she was the proprietor of a small café. A cosy place that always had the smell of freshly roasted coffee in the air, filled with the light of a late summer sun that never set, to the sound of clinking cutlery and the murmur of the other guests. It was like a little holiday of the mind. It had the great advantage that she could change the interior and the location whenever and however she wanted. She also didn't have to worry about small details like paying bills, where to get all the things she needed to run a café in the first place or learn how to roast coffee.
As time went by however there was something missing in her life. She had a good enough job, her colleagues were nice, some of whom she counted as her personal friends.
Life was... OK.
Yet there was this tiny little hole in her soul, one that slowly increased in size as time washed through it. At first she had not realised it was there.And when she started to notice that something was amiss she was still not sure what it was. Well, apart from the fact that her life was for all intents an purposes pretty 'meh'.
Se only came to understand what was wrong when she went out of the city for a short vacation during a long weekend. She was thinking about renting a small cottage not too far away from the city to spend some time there with herself. To get to know her heart again. Leaving the daily routine behind to see what was left of her if she let her daily life slide away.
Turns out there was a lot of her still left. Mostly she was just tired, not in a sleepy way but her mind and her feelings were tired. Being outside in the warm tempestuous wind of an impatient autumn that was wrestling with a summer that just didn't want to die, helped to clear her thoughts. She didn't hate her life she was just bored to tears by it. She had muddled her way through school, forced herself to push towards approaching what as considered excellence at the university only to enter a world that didn't really give a fuck about her. She was to work somewhere, her qualifications be damned and her needs as a human being barely tolerated as nuisance as long as she was fulfilling her functions as a human resource.
"Meh" she said to the wind. The wind roared with sympathy ruining her hair in the process.
Looking up the skies she could see that autumn had brought some big burly cloud friends to its disagreement with summer. They were already flexing their edges and starting to turn into dark grey towers to scare summer away. It was time to seek shelter. So she hurried along her path which wound through fields and little patches of forest, resulting in the picturesque landscape she had sought for her weekend retreat. According to her phone and the strength of its signal civilisation was near hiding behind a some trees. Which turned out for the best, it had already started to rain when she reached the little outgrowth of the city. The kind of rain that with thick ponderous drops of water gave fair warning to everyone that the real show was about to begin. The air was starting to heat up, the light turning to a dramatic green.
Jenny realised that she would have to find proper shelter soon or risk being washed away by the quarrel of the seasons.
This is how she found the watermill. Deliberating whether or not to knock on a random door to ask for asylum and hope for a warm cup of tea, she reached a little stone bridge that looked like it had crossed the the little river it was built over for more than a thousand years. Composed of rough hewn rock and clothed in patches of moss and lichen that would always be in style it stood there calmly waiting for the storm to do its worst. It had stood there for countless centuries and it was planning of continuing doing so for the aeons to come. As Jenny was crossing it her eyes were automatically drawn to an ancient watermill that stood not far upstream from the defiant little bridge. Not as old as the bridge the watermill too had stood on the same sport for dozens of generations. Jenny felt a slight tug of admiration as she saw it, there was something about the building that she found touching. That mill had been a place where people had lived and worked for so long that the language and the country around it had changed in character and appearance so much, that it had left the mill stranded in an utterly alien place. And yet it was suited perfectly for that spot. Then Jenny felt a much harder tug, this time it was strong gust of wind telling her that the show was about to start and if she did not get out of the way very soon she would become part of it.
She was not quite sure why she was doing it, but the first place Jenny sought shelter at was the watermill. She tested its door. It was unlocked. Now looking at it directly she noticed that the watermill was very close to being a ruin while still maintaining enough of its dignity to keep up appearances. Inside the building was mostly empty apart from some random debris and what other people who had sought shelter here before had left lying around. It was far from tidy but then Jenny knew some streets back in the city where this level of 'cleanliness' would've been considered close to spotless. She looked around the ground floor found the stairs and went up a floor. Still mostly a ruin upstairs but it much cleaner upstairs. Most things that had broken had fallen to the ground floor and it seemed that most people were not feeling so adventures as to tempt going up the creaking wooden stairs of an ancient derelict like this. Distracted by her fascination for the old mill Jenny kept exploring. She found a small room with a mostly intact window overlooking the river that had changed into his best white foam attire to take part in the dispute between the seasons that was reaching its full force outside. Jenny was pleasantly surprised that the window was actually keeping wind and rain outside. Letting her eyes wander she was delighted to find an old leather chair. Its best years had past long before she was born. Jenny didn't mind she sat down surprised to find, that it was still supremely comfortable and that below an aroma of stone dust she could still smell the leather. This feeling of comfort reminded her of the times when she had visited her grandfather's home and sat in his leather chair, a monster of a thing that to her child sensibilities had enough space that she could build herself a room on it. She loved to sit in that chair like a tiny queen, while here grandpa sat on the couch facing the chair reading fairy tales to her.
She remembered feeling the warmth of the sun in her face, the voice of her grandfather fading slowly. She smelt freshly ground coffee, he had gotten up when she fell asleep to make himself a cup and he would make her a giant cup of hot chocolate. She smiled slowly opening her eyes, the sun was getting close to the horizon changing into her crimson night clothes but still bright enough to blind her, she looked around the room, filled with wooden shelves an a tidy work desk that she remembered always wanting since she had been in university. Which reminded her that her grandfather was long dead, and that there was no couch in the room. And like that very slowly the dilapidated room where she had fallen asleep in slowly resurfaced from what had been left of her dream. Only the the bright light of the setting sun remained.
That and at the very edge of perception the smell of coffee.
Chapter 1 Into Reality
That moment in the windmill got stuck in Jennies heart. Her usual dream had turned into a deep kind of yearning. Her soul café stopped changing its form and location, instead it was now filling the spaces of the old watermill. The light of the setting sun which had woken her up had also pulled her dreams out into the waking world. Now when she left work after another day of joyless toil she was embraced by this crimson glow showing her this other world. A place that was only slightly out of reach.
The next step was being declared completely and utterly crazy by pretty much everyone she knew.
Starting with her parents who somehow managed to act as polar opposites while coming to the same conclusion. Her mother was deeply distraught berating her for even contemplating of throwing her security and thus her life away for such a foolish dream. "I mean just look around you", she would say. "There are cafés everywhere." the last bit stressed in a way that was usually reserved for cockroaches. "Surely every café that is needed has already been opened." her mother had always been the one with a vision in her family. "And remember the nice little place by the embankment that I liked so much?" the one her mother loved to walk past on her fitness walks but never entered, because she could have her tea just as well at home and eating cake would surely defeat the point of doing sports. "It is gone. Just like that." With that the matter was concluded for her mother.
Her father was even worse. He just laughed. She tried to explain to him why it was a good idea, how it would help her get ahead not only professionally but also as human being. He found the entire endeavour hilarious. No matter what she told him he was mostly choking on the M&Ms he was eating at the time. She tried several angles which to her father all sounded like the funniest thing in the world. "And you will get that money from where?" he'd ask and while she was still explaining he was already trying to suppress his laughter not wanting to waste his mirth until she had reached the punchline. She came out of that conversation feeling like a tiny little idiot.
The conclusion to this fiasco was a last ditch effort from her side, putting both her parents together in the living room sitting before them and asking them for a loan. A substantial one, but one she knew they could afford. She also explained her meticulous plan of how to pay them back and how the entire thing would be delayed if it all should end badly. Her mother sat there with a face so full of pity it deformed her expression, while her father sat there with big unbelieving eyes marvelling that this joke had turned out into one that just kept delivering.
So there they sat, side by side delivering their final verdict. "No." cold and worried from her mother. And a chuckled "No bloody way." from her father. There they were her parents playing the part of an exalted royalty amused by the incomprehensible wishes of the mortal peasants. Like Oberon and Titania, but arseholes.
It went better with her brother Chris, who at least took her seriously. He could not really help her, as he spent his time mostly travelling around the world for his work as a lighting artist for live concerts or where ever else people needed spectacular light shows. There was little help he could offer in getting the renovations done. And as he usually spent most of his salary back into his work, there wasn't much money to be borrowed from him either, beyond a very welcome but mostly symbolic sum. He did however promise her that if she got the thing off the ground he would take a month of his schedule and give her café the best lighting that human ingenuity could provide.
As small step at least. Jenny was also surprised how much comfort she got from having at least one person believing in her and her dream. Even more impressive was that in that short Skype conversation, that had regularly descended into confused robots trying to establish communications, she had gotten closer to her brother than she had been for many years. Turns out that when he decided to become a light designer he had encountered pretty much the same reaction from their delightful parents. Only with reversed roles. It was their mother who had found the idea hysterical, while it was their father who had asked him how the hell he was supposed to make a living by setting up a few lamps. Resistance had been futile. The only alternative he was given was to be more like his elder sister who had done the sensible thing of not dropping out of university to run with the wrong crowd and getting a job afterwards instead of deciding to follow what ever drug fuelled idea he stumbled over after a particularly debauched night. That episode had inspired Chris to go on a rebellious rampage, on the way developing a deep distaste for his sister that he never admitted even to himself, but seeped out of his very pores whenever they met. Chris went on to become a light wizard as well as the best paid member of his family drifting ever farther away. But that night, for him an early Indonesian morning, Jenny had found the brother she had almost forgotten she had. She was delighted to find an ally in the most unexpected of places especially after the reaction of her parents.
Edmund however was the rock on which she built her confidence. Her best friends reaction was relieve spiced with enthusiasm. "Finally! I was hatching plans of how to save you for years now, but I couldn't think of anything sane and feasible." it was clear that his problem had been the feasible part, sanity was strictly optional.
"Save me from what?" Jenny asked not quite sure what exactly buying a watermill to open a café would save her from.
"From fading away." he said stating the obvious. "So this watermill will need some work right?"
"Yes, it is closer to a ruin than to a proper building." Jenny hesitated. "Fading away?"
"This might be a good thing. If you're lucky the mill belongs to the city which would love to sell it for a few quid along with the responsibilities of maintaining it." he continued getting more exited by the minute. "And yes, fading away. You, the you that lives in the core of your heart, it was slowly wilting away."
"I wasn't wilting!" Jenny said, she had joined a gym a year ago and worked hard on keeping fit and there was certainly no wilting. "Why would the city sell the mill if it wants it maintained?"
"Come on, you know what I am talking about. You were getting more and more tired. Your hobbies were either going to that infernal gym of yours or couching your way through your Netflix list. When was the last time you painted? Also remember how we used to go to the theatre? Or go on our little expeditions trying to find new interesting artists? The most Jenny things about you were disappearing. But look at you now! Your eyes are on fire again. I look at them and I can see the stars again." he grinned broadly. "And they would sell because the city loves its scenic and historical sites, but really hates to spend money on that, so they'd rather give it away to some idiot, like you for example, who is under an obligation to maintain it, doing all the work, while they can boast their historic sites and shit like that."
"So how little would a few quid be?" she asked.
"Do you want to get way ahead of yourself?"
"Yes." Jenny nodded earnestly.
"One." Edmund said with equal gravity.
"One?"
"Yes. But only if you are really lucky, the city very desperate and you very stupid." he said.
After thinking it through for a couple of seconds Jenny said "I can be stupid..."
"And when it comes to not spending money, the city is always desperate." Edmund beamed.
"Also, the fire in my soul was always burning, I was just conserving its power waiting for the right moment."
"I'm just glad to see you coming back to live J." his smile widened.
The following week she investigated the watermill. Turned out it was a historic site. The city was not actively looking for anyone to take over the mill, however there had been some half hearted attempts to save the mill trailing back to at least the beginning of the 20th century. None of these attempts had amounted to anything as there were always more worthy projects with a higher priority, like for example not spending any money on some old mill no one would ever use. This however meant that it was a historical monument, at least it was declared one. While not quite what she had envisioned it led Jenny to formulate a plan.
She told her brother to plan for his return home in the near future to work his lighting magic. Then sent an overexcited Edmund on a couple of grand quest: the first was to find ways to turn the watermill into some kind of tiny hydroelectric power plant, the other was immersing himself into the hipster overground to learn as much about their café magic as possible. Jenny knew that giving him two monumental tasks instead of just one would yield the best results as Edmund's perpetual enthusiasm constantly engaged in a heated war with his attention deficit to see which of them was the most powerful of his defining characteristics.
With the longer term goals in Edmund's twitchy hands she went to a few banks to get the most biggest obstacle present out if the way. Where ever she arrived she did her well studied song and dance. Injected with only the tiniest bit of her true love of the project it was mostly power point to the dissonant tune of corporate logic she had learned at her work. This led to the reaction that Jenny had expected, the bank puppets who only faintly remembered what it was like to be human had nodded politely, asked the Exceedingly Clever Questions that had been handed down the generations of ancestor puppet people, followed by days of careful ritual motions representing what they understood as deliberation. The result was always the same they told Jenny in the politest terms to please go away and ruin another bank. Puppet smile. Deceased handshake.
What they did not know, was that Jenny had planted seeds in their minds, which now had time to germinate. Soon she would return and water them. While the idea gestated she went back to the city and told it that she wanted the mill. Another song and dance to another breed of institutional undead. Here she painted another picture. One of a site that would be revived to its full splendour, another jewel in the crown of the city.
"But it is a small mill. Faraway in the remotest corners of the city." the clerk people said.
"Ah, but just think what the tourists will think, when they walk to the outer rim, where the city touches nature and they see that even out there, so close to the wilderness the treasures of the city are kept in perfect condition. How far its reach! How great its commitment."
The clerk people had not expected this. One of them, with a willy strong animal soul smelled an opportunity and perked up. When Jenny noticed this she added "Also think what it will do to the property value. Nice part of the city, close to nature, a main road not far away and now add to that a historical monument in pristine condition." The feral clerk could see how that would improve his standing in his murder. He liked that mental picture. "Now add to that the possibility of some quality gastronomy..." The clerk thing did and he liked what his senses told him. Licking his lips he offered her the building and the plot of land for 100 currency, a symbolic price but one with weight, each year, a ritual repeated that would increase its power continually.
"For how long?" Jenny asked now avoiding most movements or expressions, this was a crucial moment.
"For as long as you and your heirs live but not longer than.... ten thousand years." the clerk bared its teeth in a face splitting smile. 'One thousand more than Guinness, I will be legend.'
Jenny agreed and thanked the clerk thing profusely, telling it with demands wearing the ashen dress of simple minded questions to give her the most pompous certificate its bureaucratic heart machine could come up with.
Armed with the certificate and one last weapon she returned to the banks. Now she wielded the will of the city, who saw Great Worth in her endeavour in one hand and a piece of paper that told the bank people that she called a well developed five figure amount of money her own. Both powerful motivators for the bank tribes. The vision of the city was a handy replacement for their lack of vision. And seeing fertile money that could be theirs was a most juicy morsel. The little idea she had planted before had become a tiny seedling. What to the bank people had appeared as desert ground now looked like good mother soil and so the seedling was nourished and grew. The bank people withdrew into their caverns of glass and steel and they discussed the matter anew. After that Jenny just had to direct their attention at each other. Two of them remained resolute. They would not stoop for mortals and much less for other, lesser banks, but the others hissed at each other, showing off their bespoke suits and designer accessories until only one remained and proudly presented Jenny with the least worst deal for herself.
Thus she returned from the dark depths of the city with a sack full of money and a predatory gleam in her eyes.
She felt like her ancestors must have felt when they had hunted down the beasts that preyed on mankind using their tools and their cunning.
Project Coffee Break Redux
Prologue: Into the Dream
Make your dreams come true. Sounds easy. Yet most people don't even try. For most of her life Jenny had been one of those people. Retreating from the world into the dream was far easier than trying to force the dream into reality. It's lot of hard work. Dreams are supposed to be comfortable places, safe and warm. Not something one wants to sully with the sweat of work and dirtying it with the banalities of everyday life.
So for many years she just cultivated her dream in her mind, letting the warm feeling it left follow her where ever she went. It worked well for her. If life got hard or tedious, she could change focus from the world to her fantasy. Here she was the proprietor of a small café. A cosy place that always had the smell of freshly roasted coffee in the air, filled with the light of a late summer sun that never set, to the sound of clinking cutlery and the murmur of the other guests. It was like a little holiday of the mind. It had the great advantage that she could change the interior and the location whenever and however she wanted. She also didn't have to worry about small details like paying bills, where to get all the things she needed to run a café in the first place or learn how to roast coffee.
As time went by however there was something missing in her life. She had a good enough job, her colleagues were nice, some of whom she counted as her personal friends.
Life was... OK.
Yet there was this tiny little hole in her soul, one that slowly increased in size as time washed through it. At first she had not realised it was there.And when she started to notice that something was amiss she was still not sure what it was. Well, apart from the fact that her life was for all intents an purposes pretty 'meh'.
Se only came to understand what was wrong when she went out of the city for a short vacation during a long weekend. She was thinking about renting a small cottage not too far away from the city to spend some time there with herself. To get to know her heart again. Leaving the daily routine behind to see what was left of her if she let her daily life slide away.
Turns out there was a lot of her still left. Mostly she was just tired, not in a sleepy way but her mind and her feelings were tired. Being outside in the warm tempestuous wind of an impatient autumn that was wrestling with a summer that just didn't want to die, helped to clear her thoughts. She didn't hate her life she was just bored to tears by it. She had muddled her way through school, forced herself to push towards approaching what as considered excellence at the university only to enter a world that didn't really give a fuck about her. She was to work somewhere, her qualifications be damned and her needs as a human being barely tolerated as nuisance as long as she was fulfilling her functions as a human resource.
"Meh" she said to the wind. The wind roared with sympathy ruining her hair in the process.
Looking up the skies she could see that autumn had brought some big burly cloud friends to its disagreement with summer. They were already flexing their edges and starting to turn into dark grey towers to scare summer away. It was time to seek shelter. So she hurried along her path which wound through fields and little patches of forest, resulting in the picturesque landscape she had sought for her weekend retreat. According to her phone and the strength of its signal civilisation was near hiding behind a some trees. Which turned out for the best, it had already started to rain when she reached the little outgrowth of the city. The kind of rain that with thick ponderous drops of water gave fair warning to everyone that the real show was about to begin. The air was starting to heat up, the light turning to a dramatic green.
Jenny realised that she would have to find proper shelter soon or risk being washed away by the quarrel of the seasons.
This is how she found the watermill. Deliberating whether or not to knock on a random door to ask for asylum and hope for a warm cup of tea, she reached a little stone bridge that looked like it had crossed the the little river it was built over for more than a thousand years. Composed of rough hewn rock and clothed in patches of moss and lichen that would always be in style it stood there calmly waiting for the storm to do its worst. It had stood there for countless centuries and it was planning of continuing doing so for the aeons to come. As Jenny was crossing it her eyes were automatically drawn to an ancient watermill that stood not far upstream from the defiant little bridge. Not as old as the bridge the watermill too had stood on the same sport for dozens of generations. Jenny felt a slight tug of admiration as she saw it, there was something about the building that she found touching. That mill had been a place where people had lived and worked for so long that the language and the country around it had changed in character and appearance so much, that it had left the mill stranded in an utterly alien place. And yet it was suited perfectly for that spot. Then Jenny felt a much harder tug, this time it was strong gust of wind telling her that the show was about to start and if she did not get out of the way very soon she would become part of it.
She was not quite sure why she was doing it, but the first place Jenny sought shelter at was the watermill. She tested its door. It was unlocked. Now looking at it directly she noticed that the watermill was very close to being a ruin while still maintaining enough of its dignity to keep up appearances. Inside the building was mostly empty apart from some random debris and what other people who had sought shelter here before had left lying around. It was far from tidy but then Jenny knew some streets back in the city where this level of 'cleanliness' would've been considered close to spotless. She looked around the ground floor found the stairs and went up a floor. Still mostly a ruin upstairs but it much cleaner upstairs. Most things that had broken had fallen to the ground floor and it seemed that most people were not feeling so adventures as to tempt going up the creaking wooden stairs of an ancient derelict like this. Distracted by her fascination for the old mill Jenny kept exploring. She found a small room with a mostly intact window overlooking the river that had changed into his best white foam attire to take part in the dispute between the seasons that was reaching its full force outside. Jenny was pleasantly surprised that the window was actually keeping wind and rain outside. Letting her eyes wander she was delighted to find an old leather chair. Its best years had past long before she was born. Jenny didn't mind she sat down surprised to find, that it was still supremely comfortable and that below an aroma of stone dust she could still smell the leather. This feeling of comfort reminded her of the times when she had visited her grandfather's home and sat in his leather chair, a monster of a thing that to her child sensibilities had enough space that she could build herself a room on it. She loved to sit in that chair like a tiny queen, while here grandpa sat on the couch facing the chair reading fairy tales to her.
She remembered feeling the warmth of the sun in her face, the voice of her grandfather fading slowly. She smelt freshly ground coffee, he had gotten up when she fell asleep to make himself a cup and he would make her a giant cup of hot chocolate. She smiled slowly opening her eyes, the sun was getting close to the horizon changing into her crimson night clothes but still bright enough to blind her, she looked around the room, filled with wooden shelves an a tidy work desk that she remembered always wanting since she had been in university. Which reminded her that her grandfather was long dead, and that there was no couch in the room. And like that very slowly the dilapidated room where she had fallen asleep in slowly resurfaced from what had been left of her dream. Only the the bright light of the setting sun remained.
That and at the very edge of perception the smell of coffee.
Chapter 1 Into Reality
That moment in the windmill got stuck in Jennies heart. Her usual dream had turned into a deep kind of yearning. Her soul café stopped changing its form and location, instead it was now filling the spaces of the old watermill. The light of the setting sun which had woken her up had also pulled her dreams out into the waking world. Now when she left work after another day of joyless toil she was embraced by this crimson glow showing her this other world. A place that was only slightly out of reach.
The next step was being declared completely and utterly crazy by pretty much everyone she knew.
Starting with her parents who somehow managed to act as polar opposites while coming to the same conclusion. Her mother was deeply distraught berating her for even contemplating of throwing her security and thus her life away for such a foolish dream. "I mean just look around you", she would say. "There are cafés everywhere." the last bit stressed in a way that was usually reserved for cockroaches. "Surely every café that is needed has already been opened." her mother had always been the one with a vision in her family. "And remember the nice little place by the embankment that I liked so much?" the one her mother loved to walk past on her fitness walks but never entered, because she could have her tea just as well at home and eating cake would surely defeat the point of doing sports. "It is gone. Just like that." With that the matter was concluded for her mother.
Her father was even worse. He just laughed. She tried to explain to him why it was a good idea, how it would help her get ahead not only professionally but also as human being. He found the entire endeavour hilarious. No matter what she told him he was mostly choking on the M&Ms he was eating at the time. She tried several angles which to her father all sounded like the funniest thing in the world. "And you will get that money from where?" he'd ask and while she was still explaining he was already trying to suppress his laughter not wanting to waste his mirth until she had reached the punchline. She came out of that conversation feeling like a tiny little idiot.
The conclusion to this fiasco was a last ditch effort from her side, putting both her parents together in the living room sitting before them and asking them for a loan. A substantial one, but one she knew they could afford. She also explained her meticulous plan of how to pay them back and how the entire thing would be delayed if it all should end badly. Her mother sat there with a face so full of pity it deformed her expression, while her father sat there with big unbelieving eyes marvelling that this joke had turned out into one that just kept delivering.
So there they sat, side by side delivering their final verdict. "No." cold and worried from her mother. And a chuckled "No bloody way." from her father. There they were her parents playing the part of an exalted royalty amused by the incomprehensible wishes of the mortal peasants. Like Oberon and Titania, but arseholes.
It went better with her brother Chris, who at least took her seriously. He could not really help her, as he spent his time mostly travelling around the world for his work as a lighting artist for live concerts or where ever else people needed spectacular light shows. There was little help he could offer in getting the renovations done. And as he usually spent most of his salary back into his work, there wasn't much money to be borrowed from him either, beyond a very welcome but mostly symbolic sum. He did however promise her that if she got the thing off the ground he would take a month of his schedule and give her café the best lighting that human ingenuity could provide.
As small step at least. Jenny was also surprised how much comfort she got from having at least one person believing in her and her dream. Even more impressive was that in that short Skype conversation, that had regularly descended into confused robots trying to establish communications, she had gotten closer to her brother than she had been for many years. Turns out that when he decided to become a light designer he had encountered pretty much the same reaction from their delightful parents. Only with reversed roles. It was their mother who had found the idea hysterical, while it was their father who had asked him how the hell he was supposed to make a living by setting up a few lamps. Resistance had been futile. The only alternative he was given was to be more like his elder sister who had done the sensible thing of not dropping out of university to run with the wrong crowd and getting a job afterwards instead of deciding to follow what ever drug fuelled idea he stumbled over after a particularly debauched night. That episode had inspired Chris to go on a rebellious rampage, on the way developing a deep distaste for his sister that he never admitted even to himself, but seeped out of his very pores whenever they met. Chris went on to become a light wizard as well as the best paid member of his family drifting ever farther away. But that night, for him an early Indonesian morning, Jenny had found the brother she had almost forgotten she had. She was delighted to find an ally in the most unexpected of places especially after the reaction of her parents.
Edmund however was the rock on which she built her confidence. Her best friends reaction was relieve spiced with enthusiasm. "Finally! I was hatching plans of how to save you for years now, but I couldn't think of anything sane and feasible." it was clear that his problem had been the feasible part, sanity was strictly optional.
"Save me from what?" Jenny asked not quite sure what exactly buying a watermill to open a café would save her from.
"From fading away." he said stating the obvious. "So this watermill will need some work right?"
"Yes, it is closer to a ruin than to a proper building." Jenny hesitated. "Fading away?"
"This might be a good thing. If you're lucky the mill belongs to the city which would love to sell it for a few quid along with the responsibilities of maintaining it." he continued getting more exited by the minute. "And yes, fading away. You, the you that lives in the core of your heart, it was slowly wilting away."
"I wasn't wilting!" Jenny said, she had joined a gym a year ago and worked hard on keeping fit and there was certainly no wilting. "Why would the city sell the mill if it wants it maintained?"
"Come on, you know what I am talking about. You were getting more and more tired. Your hobbies were either going to that infernal gym of yours or couching your way through your Netflix list. When was the last time you painted? Also remember how we used to go to the theatre? Or go on our little expeditions trying to find new interesting artists? The most Jenny things about you were disappearing. But look at you now! Your eyes are on fire again. I look at them and I can see the stars again." he grinned broadly. "And they would sell because the city loves its scenic and historical sites, but really hates to spend money on that, so they'd rather give it away to some idiot, like you for example, who is under an obligation to maintain it, doing all the work, while they can boast their historic sites and shit like that."
"So how little would a few quid be?" she asked.
"Do you want to get way ahead of yourself?"
"Yes." Jenny nodded earnestly.
"One." Edmund said with equal gravity.
"One?"
"Yes. But only if you are really lucky, the city very desperate and you very stupid." he said.
After thinking it through for a couple of seconds Jenny said "I can be stupid..."
"And when it comes to not spending money, the city is always desperate." Edmund beamed.
"Also, the fire in my soul was always burning, I was just conserving its power waiting for the right moment."
"I'm just glad to see you coming back to live J." his smile widened.
The following week she investigated the watermill. Turned out it was a historic site. The city was not actively looking for anyone to take over the mill, however there had been some half hearted attempts to save the mill trailing back to at least the beginning of the 20th century. None of these attempts had amounted to anything as there were always more worthy projects with a higher priority, like for example not spending any money on some old mill no one would ever use. This however meant that it was a historical monument, at least it was declared one. While not quite what she had envisioned it led Jenny to formulate a plan.
She told her brother to plan for his return home in the near future to work his lighting magic. Then sent an overexcited Edmund on a couple of grand quest: the first was to find ways to turn the watermill into some kind of tiny hydroelectric power plant, the other was immersing himself into the hipster overground to learn as much about their café magic as possible. Jenny knew that giving him two monumental tasks instead of just one would yield the best results as Edmund's perpetual enthusiasm constantly engaged in a heated war with his attention deficit to see which of them was the most powerful of his defining characteristics.
With the longer term goals in Edmund's twitchy hands she went to a few banks to get the most biggest obstacle present out if the way. Where ever she arrived she did her well studied song and dance. Injected with only the tiniest bit of her true love of the project it was mostly power point to the dissonant tune of corporate logic she had learned at her work. This led to the reaction that Jenny had expected, the bank puppets who only faintly remembered what it was like to be human had nodded politely, asked the Exceedingly Clever Questions that had been handed down the generations of ancestor puppet people, followed by days of careful ritual motions representing what they understood as deliberation. The result was always the same they told Jenny in the politest terms to please go away and ruin another bank. Puppet smile. Deceased handshake.
What they did not know, was that Jenny had planted seeds in their minds, which now had time to germinate. Soon she would return and water them. While the idea gestated she went back to the city and told it that she wanted the mill. Another song and dance to another breed of institutional undead. Here she painted another picture. One of a site that would be revived to its full splendour, another jewel in the crown of the city.
"But it is a small mill. Faraway in the remotest corners of the city." the clerk people said.
"Ah, but just think what the tourists will think, when they walk to the outer rim, where the city touches nature and they see that even out there, so close to the wilderness the treasures of the city are kept in perfect condition. How far its reach! How great its commitment."
The clerk people had not expected this. One of them, with a willy strong animal soul smelled an opportunity and perked up. When Jenny noticed this she added "Also think what it will do to the property value. Nice part of the city, close to nature, a main road not far away and now add to that a historical monument in pristine condition." The feral clerk could see how that would improve his standing in his murder. He liked that mental picture. "Now add to that the possibility of some quality gastronomy..." The clerk thing did and he liked what his senses told him. Licking his lips he offered her the building and the plot of land for 100 currency, a symbolic price but one with weight, each year, a ritual repeated that would increase its power continually.
"For how long?" Jenny asked now avoiding most movements or expressions, this was a crucial moment.
"For as long as you and your heirs live but not longer than.... ten thousand years." the clerk bared its teeth in a face splitting smile. 'One thousand more than Guinness, I will be legend.'
Jenny agreed and thanked the clerk thing profusely, telling it with demands wearing the ashen dress of simple minded questions to give her the most pompous certificate its bureaucratic heart machine could come up with.
Armed with the certificate and one last weapon she returned to the banks. Now she wielded the will of the city, who saw Great Worth in her endeavour in one hand and a piece of paper that told the bank people that she called a well developed five figure amount of money her own. Both powerful motivators for the bank tribes. The vision of the city was a handy replacement for their lack of vision. And seeing fertile money that could be theirs was a most juicy morsel. The little idea she had planted before had become a tiny seedling. What to the bank people had appeared as desert ground now looked like good mother soil and so the seedling was nourished and grew. The bank people withdrew into their caverns of glass and steel and they discussed the matter anew. After that Jenny just had to direct their attention at each other. Two of them remained resolute. They would not stoop for mortals and much less for other, lesser banks, but the others hissed at each other, showing off their bespoke suits and designer accessories until only one remained and proudly presented Jenny with the least worst deal for herself.
Thus she returned from the dark depths of the city with a sack full of money and a predatory gleam in her eyes.
She felt like her ancestors must have felt when they had hunted down the beasts that preyed on mankind using their tools and their cunning.
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