Cathal's Journal

29^th March 2013

You know sometimes you really have to wonder if god is an anarchist. You know you get your life on an even keel and you think you know where you're going and what your going to do, although I don't definitely know if Liliana and I will settle down, marry and have a family, or where for that matter, and then you get something happen completely out the left field that throws everything off kilter.

Today was like pretty much every other Good Friday for the last 5 years or so. We'd been to church, made our venerations and then returned home.It was at this point we discovered the Envelope. The hand written on sealed with wax addressed to me. Neither my father nor I had any idea how it had been placed wher it had on the mantle piece in the front room nor who might have been able to do such a thing unnoticed and without leaving any trace. I had opened it then and read the partially hand written invitation inside

"Cathal O'Donoghue Esquire you are here by invited as my personal guest to the Mizzurian Expo (May 2nd – 5th) and Grand Expo Ball (4th May 8:00pm)
As my personal guest you will be staying at my residence in Carnelian and all transfer to and from the Expo will be catered for.
I will be on hand to personally collect you at 12:20 pm on Monday 29th April.
Sincerely yours
Cordelia Chan
President and CEO Mizzurian Corporation
Please ensure you have this invitation with you on the day."

I showed it to my father then. He was as perplexed as I was. I had only the vaguest idea as to who Mizzurian were. There were a group when I was in the sixth form who used to talk incessantly about one of their games and there was a brief hullabaloo just before Christmas at university caused by some advert they'd released but I'd not really paid it any attention, computer games were just not my thing; I didn't see any point to them.

So I knew virtually nothing about the company, and even less about the CEO, and no reason why I would get a personal invite to a computer games event. So I did what everybody else does in this day and age. I "googled" her and the company. Various posts and articles came up in relation to the Company and in particular to the supposed immersive VR sci-fi game they were launching at the Expo along with some VR Games console. It seems opinions were divided as to whether this was glorified publicity stunt over a fake game or whether they were seriously launching such a revolutionary product. I have to admit I was impresed by the advent having sat and watched it a couple of times. There was also something about the girl that bothered me but I couldn't put my finger on it.

As to Miss Cordelia Chan President and CEO I could find only one article, a reproduction of a Time(TM) magazine article from August 2004. My first impressions on reading it were how strange the opening paragraph was and how very little the article actually said about her, other than the very much implied links to both the Triads and Yakuza. It was almost as if the author knew something she either wasn't saying or couldn't say. Finding out what the publicity stunt referenced in the article was proved not to be as tricky as I'd imagined. It appears she and 2 friends went shopping stark naked in LA One of those friends, a Miss Marci Gray, turned up on the Letterman Show the following day, revealing that the stunt was the result of a bet relating to attending a ball, one which Cordelia Chan lost, and that as a result  Marci had now not only been able to cover most of her college fees, but the 4 of them now had designer dresses for the ball courtesy of 3 of the stores they visited. Locating details, particularly an email address for Juan-Qiangwei Wong, the article's author proved a little more difficult but I eventually found one I believed to be genuine and fired off an email. The final sentence of the article had jarred with another memory, the strange and sudden disappearance of my own mother.

2^nd April 2013

Things got lightly stranger today. The email address I located for Juan-Qiangwei Wong was correct. Her basic response was that she wasn't going to say anything beyond what was in the article until I mentioned that I had received a VIP personal invite from Cordelia Chan, a copy of which I attached to the email, to the Expo completely out of the blue.

Miss Wong's response was a name, "Carl Corey". Now a google search on that name is interesting. There are a number of "Carl Corey's", but the interesting angle is it throws up story about a prince of Amber by the name of "Tiberius". To anybody else that's just a story, however I know from my mother that Amber is a real place, so why would a query about the father of somebody who sent me a personal invite to an Expo result in a reference to a story about a Prince of Amber. I need to do some more research before I responded.

3^rd April 2013

I need to go buy a copy of the books or at least the omni-bus addition. I could order it off Amazon but I don't want to wait 3 days if I can avoid it. The wiki synopsis is quite useful but lacks detail. I am hoping that talking to Miss Wong's directly will yield some answers. She initially refused my request but when I stated that my mother knew Logan and that I'm his son her tone changed. We are to meet on Saturday at 3pm at the Generator Hostel in Dublin.

6^th April 2013

So my meeting with Linda Wong was very interesting not least because there are 2 Linda Wong's, and the article written for Time magazine was very much an understatement (even the real one which wasn't written on this Shadow). What the Miss Wong from the other Shadow Earth, the one Cordelia Chan comes from, confirmed was that Cordelia Chan is indeed Tiberius's daughter, and that the books are a modified version of events from Tiberius's perspective. What I have yet to fathom out is how Cordelia Chan found me in the first place and what her motives are for doing so, but that will probably have to wait until I can get a chance to talk to her directly.
That event may possibly also allow me to resolve an number of personal issues, not the least of which is meeting my biological father. My next hurdle is what if anything do I tell Liliana. This could seriously change our relationship as she has no idea of who I really am, but then in truth neither do I really.

10^th April 2013

So things took another twist today. I'm sure I was being watched or followed for several hours today. I managed to catch a few glimpses of a figure, female I think, in black and red motorcycle leathers riding a red yamaha (I think). I'm also fairly sure I was followed for a while by a large shaggy wolfhound. Now given this is a form I use myself does this mean whoever it was is also a shapeshifter? More to the point is this connected in some manner to my getting the Expo ticket? There is too much of a coincidence here for it not to be.

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