After spending some time with the stones, Elaine Ablach led us back down Storm Mountain, talking the whole time.

"They've laid harnesses over everything," she said. "Harnessed the water, the magnetic fields. They laid iron chains all over the place."

We'd stopped at a little spring, shimmering in the moonlight.

"But the energy still seeps out, here and there."

A giant white salamander crawled out of the water and sniffed Elaine's stick. Then it licked it with its big tongue.

We came out of the trails at the cemetery on the edge of town. Elaine ran ahead and did a cartwheel in the dewy grass.

"The whole thing works on a machine intelligence, if you can call it that. Because it's not actually intelligent. Everything is 'on' or 'off.' Black or white. Binary."

We came to some kind of water pump, or hydrant, or something. It was rusty and had a wheel.

"So it SOUNDS like they're giving you a choice, right? Heads or tails?"

Elaine started tapping on the wheel with her stick. It had a kind of ring to it.

"But the whole game is rigged. Just two choices? It's so clearly a set up, but everybody has to put their dime into it and spin the wheel."

She started tapping more quickly.

"Half the time they kill everybody. Then they kill half of everybody else. Halflife, amirite? Keep making you choose and they keep making you lose. Their terms."

Elaine stopped tapping with her stick. The ringing had become a sustained tone.

"Makes people forget there's so much energy left untapped."

Between the headstones and the trees, a path through the cemetery lit up with a purple and green glow.

"The cat is ALIVE."

“Correlation is not causation. That’s one of their litanies,” said Elaine. “Total bullshit.”

It was still night. How long could a night be? After making our way through the cemetery, with Elaine stopping here and there to wave her stick or make other adjustments to the info-firmament, we ended up in the alley behind the Handymart. 

“They use it to deny any other path to their forgone conclusion — that the cat is dead.” 

Elaine nudged some cardboard boxes aside with her toe. “All the way down the line, you’re given a series of choices, each one reducing your options for the future.”

She pulled out her stick. 

“It’s the funnel. The chute. And at the end of the line, the Final Cause. A decaying isotope rigged up to a hammer and a beaker full of poison. Run that experiment enough and they'll always get the outcome they want. They want us to believe that the Theory of Everything is just a game of Russian Roulette you keep playing till it's over."

She'd cleared the space up to the side of the dumpster. She eyed the dumpster for a moment and gave big kick, which was really loud in the middle of the night in an alley.

Then, a purple and green pattern swirled on the side of the dumpster and blossomed out into circular pattern in the air. Like one of those Aztec calendars, slowly rotating, with little animated characters all around it.

"This is the node you're after. I'll let you drive from here."

I looked at Elaine like I didn't know what she was talking about. Which I didn't.

"All it takes is intent, " she said. "The cat is ALIVE."

And that's how I found Mr. Bumbles.

I spun the purple wheel and slapped at a few green pictographs. I didn't really know what I was doing, but after watching Elaine do it all night long, I kinda had the jist. Like Elaine always says, it's really about the intent, mostly.

So I gave the dumpster a big kick when I was done. The sound echoed down the alley, and Mr. Bumbles walked around from behind the dumpster and meowed.

"Mr. Bumbles!!!!" Elaine cried and scooped him up.

Mr. Bumbles looked awful. Like a drowned rat. How did he get so wet? Plus, his paws were muddy and there were fresh leaves stuck to his fur. He was a mess.

"Let's take this very ALIVE Mr. Bumbles back to the 13th floor of the Blavatsky Complex and get him some FOOD, shall we?"

As we walked back to the school, I wondered how Elaine had done it. Had she really fiddled with the controls of the world -- the "big board" as she called it -- and arranged things so that we shared the same world with the Mr. Bumbles who was alive? Or had she just used natural energies to help guide her intuition till we discovered the most likely place for him to be?

"Or..." said Elaine, with Mr. Bumbles wrapped up in her sweater, "did I know he was living in the alley behind the Handy Mart the whole time?"

Only Mr. Bumbles knows for sure, I suppose.