Ring, Ring! Abbie flips her braid and pauses the webcast of her favorite show. She doesn’t even need to look at the phone as she grabs it without looking. She knows who it is. She unlocks and answers it before it can ring again. “Yeah Bree. What’s up?” I knew I shouldn’t have bothered that worrywart.

The usual nervous voice speaks back, “Abbie? Are you still going through with tomorrow?”

Okay, here’s the trick. Confident enough not to scare her away but enough to convince her to go. Maybe if I pretend I don’t know why she’s calling. “Yeah?” I mean, Duh, I’m going.

“Okay, I’ll see you there.” With each word, the fear leaves her friend’s voice. Good. I did it right. She’ll be there.

The next day, Abbie gets ready, heads down there. Penny is her usual pleasant pushy self. She gets a little nervous when BreeAnn doesn’t arrive with Abbie, “Where’s your friend?”

“Oh, she’ll be here. Give her a few,” Abbie responds. Nick lounges in the corner flipping through a magazine. At first, Abbie thinks it’s a standard kind, but she doesn’t recognize the name on the cover, PhotoBomb. She expects there to be someone in the background, but below the magazine title there is nothing but a beautiful close up of a flower blooming. “What is that,” she asks him.

Looking up to figure if she is asking him, he realizes she is. Nick flips the periodical around, to show two pages of amazing photos, “This? It’s just a buncha pictures. It helps me be more creative when I get into a Venn machine.” He darts a little glare at Penny then his face returns to the passive that it has been the couple of times she’s seen him.

Nick ends the conversation by returning to reading or ogling, Abbie’s not sure which. Not wanting to interact with increasing bouncy Penny and being done with Nick leaves her not much to do, so she looks around the room. She notices something that wasn’t there a couple of days ago, her money framed. Wait. I was the first? Play it cool. “Hey, that’s cool. That’s the money I paid you yesterday.”

Abbie waits for them to confirm it, but they seem to be looking elsewhere. She turns spotting BreeAnn near the door. When did she get here? “See. I told you she was coming.”

Money exchanges hands. Abbie and Bree follow Nick to a box that people are lined up to use. After getting confirmation that was a Venn machine, Abbie pay minimal attention as Bree and Nick talk. She decides to people watch. A guy leashes a platypus and they head off on a walk. Another rushes to the other opening and pulls out a massive cake while licking their lips.

Bree’s voice penetrates Abbie’s concentration, “What’s a Venn machine?”

“I’m not sure,” Abbie shrugs, “I’ve been hearing about people who want to get in them, so it can’t be all bad.” That’s when Abbie sees something unusual. A boy and girl enter and a voluptuous woman emerges, collects a black cat suit, and starts talking to it. Freaks.

Turning away Abbie sees Bree in full panic mode again. Abbie shrugs her shoulders, It’s not that big a deal. We’ve seen a dozen or so people go in there and come out. Abbie heads toward Nick and the opening in the machine. She feels Bree’s hand thread into hers for comfort.

Once they enter, Abbie’s hand gets crushed by Bree as the door seals them in. Where did it go? But being further away makes it tricky for her to search for a seam. Abbie smiles as she notices that Nick is in his element. It makes sense why he looks at that magazine, she thinks as his eyes and fingers dart around, From all these versions of him on this side, he probably has to pick exact pictures. It must be nice to pull from a large collection of mental pictures.

“Okay, Ladies. See you when you get back.” His words break Abbie out of her thoughts. She looks to him, and then he disappears.

The door past the interface is open. An asian looks in from the far side, “Green button, please.” The indicated button is easily spotted and pressed. “Done?” Abbie nods and the woman enters and they are surrounded by the illumination of the transparent-ish surface between them. The woman mutters to herself, “I hope you aren’t a nervous wreck like the last one.”

Abbie laughs, “Oh? You did Bree, first? Poor you. Yeah, Bree needs to chill some, but she’s cool when she’s not in full panic mode.”

The woman stops looking around the edges of Abbie to look at her, “Welcome to Carmeloro. I’m Jen. I work at the hotel of the stars whose name I’m not supposed to say to non-guests.”

This gives Abbie pause, “But I’m a guest, right? Or I’m going to be, right?”

Jen realizes her mistake and has the grace enough not to cover her mouth. She takes a deep breath, “Listen. I can’t say much since it’s trade secrets, but you will be staying in the hotel with the stars but you won’t be a guest.”

“I’m going to be working, then?” Abbie hears Jen’s voice but not the words. From the tone of voice and the increased velocity of her poking in Abbie’s direction, she begins to suspect something is up. That is until she can no longer see Jen.

Abbie realizes that she can see, but the images aren’t right. She sees the wall, at least she thinks that’s what she’s seeing, the floor, the ceiling, behind her, and a green thing that has darker spots. As much as her brain can process, the floor seems nearer then the ceiling, so she must be on the ground. Nothing makes sense including the round shadow on the wall.

Then most of her world darkens as a giant hand wraps around part of her. The exposed part seems to headed toward the street light outside so she mentally labels that ‘Front.’ Out the corner of her eye or maybe one of her eyes, she sees a watermelon on the floor. Which is funny because while some of her is moving, some is not. Jen’s face crosses in front of her as the hands exchange her and deposit her into a pocket.

Then she feels the rest of herself moving with effort.

The journey is confusing at best, part of her swings one way while the rest goes the other. At last, something changes. Thump! The part of her that is not in the pocket lands on something. Then she is fished out and placed next to the watermelon. She watches Jen spend a moment longer writing something and then she leaves Abbie alone.

Since she has come to rest, at least for the moment, Abbie tries to figure out what happened to herself. That watermelon is me and over here is me. But what is over here? One at a time, she focuses on each ‘eye’ and tries to put the pieces together. The back side seems to come to a point. The ‘front’ eyes are trickier to figure out as they kinda face the same direction. Linked triangles? Her brain sits on the descriptions she has given herself.

Then after a long time, it comes to her. I’m a gem. And I can look out all the facets. With some training and practice, Abbie can now see all around herself including the paper that is under her watermelon self. Now that mystery is solved, what do I do?

Abbie lets her mind relax and her eyes unfocused. At first, every movement of anyone around her would rouse her attention, but with everyone ignoring her, she soon ignores everyone else.

She does come out of it when someone moves her big body. She tries to get her mind back in gear. Looking around she sees a huge person wearing white. It takes a moment for her mind to finish waking up. She realizes that the person there looks like a cook or chef. His eyes seem to be focused on the paper in his hand. Mine will be next, Abbie thinks to herself. Then, she notices her paper is gone. That is my paper.

Realizing that, she attempts to read the paper, too. The light, angle, and just about everything thwart her. She does manage to reverse engineer some of the words, ‘dinner’ and ‘tonight’. The cook leaves and then returns without the paper. He picks her up and she moves from what looks like a hallway to a very busy room.

More chefs and cooks move and swirl around. Things don’t seem to make sense, at first. But as she watches, because Abbie has nothing else to do, she begins to notice patterns. That one cooks the meat. That one makes the eggs. That’s the boss. It’s a beautiful dance with many bodies in motion.

The swirl slows for a time. A couple of workers are sent to work on the dishes while others reset the place. Still others are still cooking. The swirling mass changes their directions and yet they never run into each other. And then things whirl up again.

Abbie would squint if she could. Everything is the same yet different. She looks even more carefully at the movements. The meats have changed and now there is more bread and greens. Where are the eggs? It takes longer for her crystalline mind to work it out, but it comes. Oh! The first was breakfast. Now we are at lunch.

During the ‘break’ after lunch, someone started to pay attention to Abbie. The worker, this one female, with a name tag of Stephanie slides Abbie’s gem self to the side. From this position, she can see all that Stephanie is doing.

The first is that she pulls out a massive, sharp knife. If Abbie could gasp or scream in terror, she would. Instead she watches the blade lop off a bit of skin along one long side, making it flat. All is dark.

Then she realizes that she closed her eyes and It didn’t hurt. She tries to analyze it as the blade digs in again. She watches as the upper ‘half’ of her is sliced off and discarded in the trash. Then comes an interesting feeling. A hemisphere spoon tool scoops her insides out. She could swear she’s seen one at her mom’s house but has no idea what it’s called. Ball after watermelon ball gets scooped out of her and placed in a large bowl.

Feeling parts of her touching other parts of her that shouldn’t touch is strange. I wish I could do more than just watch myself get pulled apart.

From her peripheral, Abbie notices the kitchen spin up again. Stephanie pays it minimal mind and looks away and answers questions or comments while working on Abbie. At least, that’s what Abbie thinks from what she sees. Then a smaller knife appears. A few graceful gestures later and the rim of her hollowed out body looks very artistic and beautiful. Her edge looks like curling waves chasing each other.

She watches Stephanie gather more fruit. With professional movements and cuts, they are chopped into pieces. Bunches of sliced strawberries, chucks of pineapple, handfuls of blueberries, slices of tiny oranges, clusters of purple grapes, and scoops of balled watermelon are all dumped into her body and mixed together.

With all the assorted colors filling her ‘other’ body, Abbie notices something she had missed before, a pink mast sticking up out of the middle of the fruit. I wonder what that’s for?

She finds out right after that as Stephanie lifts up her gem body and plunges it into the top of the watermelon pole. Abbie sits there watching over her body and appreciating the new view of the cooks in motion. It’s beautiful.

As the kitchen speeds up for dinner, Stephanie returns and carries Abbie to her new location. She is placed on a burgundy table cloth surrounded by greenery and two towering ice sculptures of angels facing each other over the top of her. Wooooowwww.

At tables all around her, she sees all sorts of people she recognizes. Oh! There’s director Shubert! And Kelly Stanley. She looks even more pretty than she did in her film. If Abbie could squeal and point and hide behind things, and in general fangirl over everyone, she would be.

She scans the crowd as best as she can, but there is one face she doesn’t see. No Jason Silverstein. Bree will be so bummed.

Time passes. Abbie can tell because people wipe their mouths with napkins and leave their tables. Waiters scoop up the dirty dishes and disappear through the swinging door that Abbie was carried through earlier.

Then the room is empty. Celebrities do stop by from time to time to grab some fruit and converse. Abbie recognizes a few. And then, the last person leaves and the lights dim. Another chef, not Stephanie, comes and takes Abbie back to the kitchen. Right before the door swings shut she sees a familiar face. He’s here!

And then she is dumped in the trash.

Abbie’s view becomes limited to the garbage around her and the narrow tunnel view of the ceiling. And before long, the last of the clean up happens and Abbie gets covered in used grounds from the night coffee. Her vision is even less now.

Rather than struggle to look at the ceiling better, Abbie just lets herself fade away, like she did before. Perhaps it will be just as restful as before.

Again, movement wakes Abbie up. She looks up at Jen's dirty face and mussed up hair. Her filthy hand reaches for Abbie as her grimy fingers wrap around gem body. Surprise fills Jen's face before everything goes dark again.

When she sees Jen again, coffee grounds freckle her face, trickle out of her hair, and cover her suit jacket in patches. Abbie watches Jen crawl into the trash and drag her watermelon bowl self out. Like before Abbie gets switched from hand to hand before dropping into her pocket.

After that, she feels parts of her watermelon body getting grabbed and placed against each other at strange angles. They she feels herself moved with effort. After a time, she is set down. We must be back at the Venn machine.

She is moved again and without warning, she is herself again in an empty machine. With full light streaming, Jen enters again , "Welcome back."

Abbie nearly falls over. This is the first thing she has heard in ... since the last time I was in here. She also notices that Jen looks cleaner that when she last saw her.

"You know," Abbie begins, "I enjoyed my time here. It was very relaxing." She continues as Jen pokes at the space between them."I should let you know that I couldn't hear--"

"--anything at all."

"Red button," Nick calls through the open door. Abbie bumps into Bree and they manage to press it. Outside they meet Nick for them in the morning light. Abbie squints as her eyes are used to the dark. She sees that Bree is the same.

They follow Nick to the office and fill out their reviews Once they reach their cars they have a little powwow. "So did you see him," asks Abbie.

"See him," Bree gushes, "I helped him write his newest song. I'm the first one to hear it besides him."

"No way."

"Totally. Plus I'm relaxed and ready for work."

Abbie stretches, checking herself, "Now that you mention it, I am too."

“Let’s do this again,” They agree together.