Windows

I can’t believe it is actually happening. I never thought I’d have another person actually make it all the way through my one thousand provisions, but Tommy is actually doing it. I might be able to make another contract after all. This is the greatest day of my life since I bound myself to the service of King Arthur back in the 12th century. He was willing to follow my provisions (although there were only seven hundred of them back then), and we made a great team. Nobody could stop us. That was until somebody stopped us, putting an end to Arthur’s reign as king. He was a mortal man, doomed to perish eventually. I, as an immortal wizard of window and door replacement, had to move on. Since then I’ve been searching for another man with the dedication and flawless patience of Arthur, with no luck. Until, perhaps, today.

I certainly expected Tommy to quit when he got up to provision eight hundred and twelve. Nobody has ever gotten past there. After all, it is an absurd and terrible requirement for us to listen to the entire discography of the band Penny Back together. Who would agree to that? The last person to get there desperately needed sash window replacement in the Melbourne area, and they needed it instantly. After several hours of reading, he decided that provision was the last straw and that he wasn’t that desperate for window repairs. So he got sent to jail for not repairing the damages he had recently caused.

But Tommy is truly desperate. He wants to get his old body back and is willing to do just about anything to get it. But there’s one obstacle in the way. This will determine whether it is possible for anyone to make it through my one thousand provisions. If Tommy fails this test, I’ll need to revise the provisions. But if he accepts it, then that’s proof that the system works, provided I am patient enough.

Let’s see how he goes with provision one thousand.

– Window Replacement Wizard

We made camp on the night I discovered Australia’s Next Top Office was over. Although Archerak’s magic was gone, Space Wizard was able to use his laser vision to start a campfire. We desperately needed it, since Sweden gets particularly cold around this time of year. I’m talking about the Sweden in Melbourne, of course. The town that was artificially created just for the excellent office building competition.

“I’m going to miss it,” I said. “There would have been some awesome challenges ahead, I’m sure. And I really wanted to win Charity. Whatever that ended up being.”

Space Wizard closed his eyes and nodded. “I was particularly looking forward to helping you win the challenge for glass tinting. We would have used frosting glass and blown the rest of the competition away.”

“It’s a shame your evil clone destroyed this entire town,” Archerak said. “I had big, big plans. With a few more days they would have really started to take effect. Liquifying you was just the beginning of it. I had delayed fireballs ready to go off above the Dirge’s house. They would have ensured he dropped out of the competition entirely.”

“Where is the Dirge?” I asked, realising we’d seen no sign of the famous supervillain.

“I’m not sure,” Archerak answered. “Perhaps he escaped before it was too late. Didn’t he previously own an office tinting business around Melbourne? Maybe he’s gone back to that.”

“You really think he would give up being a supervillain? He’s known as the best around here. Maybe he’s hiding somewhere in Sweden, under a cave of rubble. There might be other survivors around. If we’re going to stop Evil Space Wizard, we’ll need as many allies as possible.”

Archerak shrugged. “I suppose that makes sense, although I’m not sure what help a washed-up movie star and a third-grade teacher can provide.”

“What did you just call me?”

Within a fraction of a second, three arrows thumped into the ground around us. Into the room stepped Ms Frankie, holding a longbow she seemed to have crafted herself out of raw materials.

“I’ll have you know, I used to teach the sixth grade, and that’s no walk in the park.”

My experiment to prove that muffins are actually good for you has failed. Turns out that I- and everyone else in this world- must face the harsh truth: muffins are just cake, in a whimsical shape. In retrospect, this really shouldn’t have taken so long.

Onto the next experiment then: proving that all windows, and indeed all glass, is actually a portal to another dimension. I’m confident here, although I’ll need to access this dimension in some small way to prove my hypothesis. And this is going to require I speak to commercial glaziers in Melbourne, and that could go either way. They might be friendly and glad that I finally discovered their secret, or they might be friendly and trap me inside the glass dimension because i discovered their secret. I think all tradespeople I’ve seen thus far in Melbourne have been friendly, so I don’t think they’re going to turn out to be super aggressive or anything. We’ll have a nice chat about glazier work and see where it goes.

There’s always been something a little bit higher about a really well done piece of glass stair balustrading. Like, you look at it, and it’s just so terribly nice and chic. A little too nice…and a little too chic.

Maybe I should just bite the bullet and get the balustrading done. Quite apart from having a portal to another dimension and a test subject in my entrance hall, I’ve just always thought it looks good. I’ll scout around Melbourne for residential glaziers that suit my purpose, see what they have to say about glass balustrading…and then, I’ll see what they have to say.

And if this all fails, I’ll have some nice glass lining my stairs, and I guess I can move onto ‘coffee actually makes you sleepy, and the whole wakefulness thing was a global placebo’.

–Ranier

First it was the tinting, and it SEEMED like a good idea. I still maintain that it had a net benefit, since people were getting unforgivably distracted by what was happening outside. There’s a city square right below the office, and every day it seemed to be something else. A very proficient juggler booked the place on Monday, Tuesday was the all-day hip-hop group, Wednesday…oh right, it was that woman who did chalk murals, but gigantic ones that covered the whole square. It was mesmerising to watch her work for hours.

And yet I nearly forgot, because we’ve had the windows quite thoroughly tinted and you can’t really see much anymore, thank goodness. And thank the company doing professional commercial window tinting. Melbourne offices are much more productive when the light is properly filtered. Tinting helped us out immensely. Although I wasn’t quite sure how to deal with the NEXT problem. We really did order the tint to be quite strong, much more powerful than they recommended, but we were quite determined to block out the distractions. Now the office has been plunged into a time of eternal night, so to speak. It’s dark all the time, and we didn’t have much natural light to begin with, so we had to keep all the lights on full-blast for the whole day. It felt a lot like working a night shift, and very, very depressing.

So…we went for decorative glass. Colourful, decorative glass that coated the walls and put people in good spirits. Some of it is tropical, we have a small section of winter wonderland imagery, and then Judy came up with the idea of images of famous landmarks to make people think they were travelling places. The result is some of the best decorative windows Melbourne has to offer, and quite the nice display to perk up everyone’s spirits. I like the winter wonderland section especially…perhaps something for my future office. I just know that if this doesn’t work, we’re going to need even MORE special glass.

-Oscar