I spent much of the day working.  And working.  And working a
little more.  And when I was bored of that, I thought I'd go off and work.

	*sigh*

	I don't know what to make of the problems with Eddie.  Basically,
I've lost most of my project.  BUT, to compensate, I've discovered that
Eddie made off with and is carrying around the thing that powered him, my
old Amulet.  That, and he has my sorcery signature all over him.

Bad things:

	- The amulet is gone, meaning that I cannot rebuild the EDI past
	just software.
	- My machine is just that, a machine, and God knows what's wandering
	around in Shadow.

Good Things:

	- The amulet has a compulsion on it to come back to me.  So I'll be
	seeing it again, either as the lump of metal it currently is, or
	the manifested form of Eddie.
	- The amulet has a VERY distinctive signature in Shadow, making it
	eminently detectable. 

	So, once he rears his ugly head, he will be found, detected, and
Dealt With.

	In the meantime, I have just a machine.  I've cut it over from
doing analysis of the Badlands, and put it to work being what it's
supposed to be: a big Trump calculator.  Hopefully it will return the data
that I want on the suspicious Trump activity going on around here.  If my
theory on Inter-Shadow is right, I should be able to use it myself within
a week.

	On some of my queries, I found Joseph, still stuck in his Shadow,
waiting for me to free him.  I wonder why everyone suddenly thought he was
the guy that got scragged on the Pattern?

	All my Trump activity is going to drive a certain nosy person that
needs to get a life, or a hobby, or laid, or something, absolutely nuts. 
I don't understand this tuning into the all Aleksandr Channel all the time
mentality, but it's really annoying.  And since I'm pretty sure who it is,
and spying IS opening up a contact, just a little bit, I can grab a
signature, and work on how this is going to be squashed.  In the meantime,
though, I gotta watch what I say and who I Trump.  And to think, if
Laughter had said nothing, I'd still be totally clueless.

	Not that I'm NOT totally clueless, but that's beside the point.

Okay, quickie on personal life:

	Melanie and Kaedric seem to be an item.  This gives me the warm
fuzzies, I think they should be together.  Although I doubt Kaedric's
wisdom of teaching little Smiley here lockpicking and pickpocketing.  BUT,
she has the attention span of a gnat.  Luckily.

	Caitlin.  What the hell am I going to do about Caitlin?  Shoot
myself, I guess.  Or jump off the roof of Amber.  Not like I haven't
considered all that.  Suicide has been way, way up there on the thought
count for the last couple of days.  What keeps me from taking my last 100
or so sedatives at once has been Nadine (the Lady Love of my life :) ) and
that it would kill Melanie to lose BOTH of her brothers by their own hands
in such a short span of time.

	Well, Caitlin says that she's in love with me.  She says she lusts
after me.  She says she'll do anything for me.  I'm flattered.  I don't
really understand WHY.  I know what I look like, I looked in the mirror
today.  No illusions here.  There are tons of totally hunky guys around
here (I should know...) and she looks at the skinny, little, androgynous
goofball.

	Ah, who knows.  I don't.  At least we're on good terms.

	And about Anton.  I'm so upset, I just don't think about it.  With
my imprint, I would have gone charging across Shadow looking for him,
ripping Shadow apart to get to the juicy Inter-Shadow center to get him
back.  Hell, I'm trying to do that NOW, without the imprint.

	I can't do this alone.  I don't think I can do this at all.  And I
get no help.  Melanie knows, but she's busy.  Archimedes knows, but I'm
not important enough to have my family protected by the crown.  Caitlin
knows, but she has her mother to attend to, first.  Everyone just has
something more important, and that's all there is to it.

	So, I think he's dead.  It'll be three days come morning that he's
been gone.  No ransom note, no message, no leads.  Nothing.

	If he's out there, alive, still, I really, really hope he's okay. 
I'd much rather him be HERE, so that I know he's okay, and not talking to
me, then just gone.  And if he isn't okay, I'd like to know what has
happened.  I don't want him in any pain or misery.

	I don't know.  This is slowly killing me.

	I'm doing a good job of just not thinking about all of it.

	Anton, please, just come home, we can work it out.  I love you.