Al gleefully re-read its newest letter, the cheap paper of Her Majesty’s Agents overshadowed by the pure joy manifested by the small plastic National Insurance card which had inexplicably made its way back via the fiery portal of the post office.

Al’s joy at being recognised was tinged with confusion however, when a quick google search had confirmed that like its own London, that London had discontinued the production of the cards sometime in 2011. Regardless, it was an excellent piece of official recognition and a massive step forward for Al’s online store. With luck within a few short weeks, it would be back into the rhythm of regular dressmaking and tailoring through the wonder of online consultation and video calls.

Not that it hadn’t enjoyed working on Red’s suit, but a technical challenge with no aesthetics requirements could only bring so much joy to a creative mind. Still, it had been an excuse to pull out the tailoring dummy and re-sharpen its skills before the online shop opened.

Unfortunately, such fun had come with a price, and the usually tidy living room had been strewn with coarse thread, tools, and thick fabric; primarily the bits that had arrived too burnt to use and had needed to be trimmed for fear of integrity failure.

It sighed as it viewed the mess, an enormous task that it had spent the last day thoroughly ignoring. Still if it was to get back into business the first thing Al needed to do was get properly setup and ready to work before commissions started rolling in.

As Al pondered this irritating thought, its phone vibrated in its pocket. Happy for the distraction, Al pulled it out and checked what had triggered the notification.

It was a text message from Red which simply stated: Drift Quake inbound ETA 10.6s.

Al, stared at its phone in confusion.

“What on earth is a drift qu..”

Its musing was cut off as the room shook abruptly causing Al to bite down hard on its tongue.

~~Meanwhile in the merry chaos of Sai’s Living room~~

Sai considered the ruined painting before them as the initial quake faded, ignoring the periodic buzzing of their mobile as they took stock of the artistic disaster.

They put the brush to one side as they leaned in closer. Was the canvas repairable where it had stabbed through?

Upon close examination of the ragged hole, it seemed unlikely, however maybe it was salvageable with some re-branding.

Sai took a step back and positioned their hands to frame the picture as they put on their best sales pitch voice:

“I call this …. A real crap painting with a hole in it? Hmm, no that doesn’t work – It needs more pazaz.”

“I call this.... A metaphor for angst..? - too pretentious”

“I call this… Sai’s attempt to sell garbage to idiots?”

Sai snorted as they considered the mental image of that name embossed on a glossy museum plaque next to the painting.

“I think even Red would think that’s too on the nose.”

Unable to think of an appropriate name Sai stopped trying and instead considered the canvas, taking in the full extent of the damage and its impact on the nearly complete painting as they stepped around the detritus at the perimeter of the room. Was there a way to tie the new hole into the image they had been painting?

The rent was just above the horizon of the painting, a shadowy outline of the street as it had been the first time Sai had stepped out through their door and into their new, weirder life. Maybe it could be painted like one of the rain filled portals that floated above the street, it was likely there had been one up there, even if Sai couldn’t recall it.

Or perhaps it would better suit as some kind of metaphor?

They paused, as a new thought aligned perfectly with the sight of a polaroid photo peeking into view between the ripped edges of the painting.

Multi-media art, the perfect solution!

As they rushed over to grab the picture the street shook again, pitching the damp oil painting towards the floor as Sai sailed past the canvas into the wall.

~~Meanwhile in Li’s Workshop~~

Li braced emself against the workbench as the second quake shook the little workshop pausing to rub eir bad leg as shallow pain ran through it like an aftershock.

Eir phone vibrated briefly as a message came in from Red, it seemed she had collated a list of the expected arrival times for each shock. The nanosecond precise timings weren't particularly useful but knowing how many to expect was, so Li wasn’t going to complain.

Ey paused eir inspection of the broken rod before em as ey read through the list.

"Five drift quakes? That is a lot more that we have had before, hmm must be something large. Well, I will find out soon enough, no point rushing out before it’s safe."

Thus decided, Li put all thoughts of drift quakes to one side and took stock of the progress ey had made so far.

Fortunately, ey had managed to cut through the sticky black tape, the ugly mess that marked Sai’s repair work, just before the quakes had started, and all that was left was just carefully separating the shards and seeing what, if anything was salvageable.

After a quick examination Li discovered that the damage was well contained, limited to within a centimetre or so of the main breakpoint. With a practiced eye and knowledge drawn from years of impromptu repairs, Li made note of the necessary steps needed for the repair.

Pull up shard Flatten Shard Glue down shard Repeat

Using a pair of tweezers from a well-placed toolbox, ey repeated the steps in quick succession, manoeuvring each shard to lay flat against the fibres beneath and holding it in place with the tiniest application of glue. As ey waited for each spot of glue to dry, Li checked eir phone, conscious of the time as the next shock creeped closer.

Fortunately, Li was well practiced in this kind of impromptu repair work. Each day brought em a new breakage to be repaired without the correct tools or materials. Frankly by comparison the rebuilding of a fishing rod, a task which Sai had asked of em a dozen or so time prior had been easy and Li managed to place the repaired rod on a safe shelf moments before the next quake shook the street.

~~Meanwhile out on the street proper~~

Common sense dictated, that it was foolish and dangerous to be out on the street when a drift quake hit, but Charlie had already been out jogging and really how bad could it be. Besides, there had already been three quakes, so the worst was for sure behind them.

No sign of the new building along his route, but he was almost at the post office now anyway so maybe they’d see it on the way back. For now his focus was on the post office, it's pearlescent spender waiting to deliver charlie their most recent eBay purchase.

Charlie picked up the pace as they approached, ordering items to be delivered to the street was not without risk and he’d be damned if he arrived just to see it smash on the ground from a distance. The glowing portals tendency to violently vomit parcels out onto the street did nothing to improve the integrity of parcels which had already suffered through both the intense heat of interdimensional travel and the chaos that was the London postage network.

To that end, most just ordered sturdy items, but not Charlie. Keen as they were to have delicate props for their video shoots Charlie instead paid for tracking and waited poised by the post office portal for his parcels to arrive.

Despite the quakes that had been shaking the street, today’s delivery was no exception and Charlie stopped a few meters away pulling loose a worn quilt to hold between outstretched arms when the time came; ready to cushion and catch the projectile post.

Charlie checked his phone swiping away the new message notifications as they re-opened the tracking app. He’d never found Postal Tracking to be that accurate at the best of times so even with the parcel tracking app his process involved quite a degree of guesswork.

That said, the app currently showed a last location of the east London postage distribution centre and a current location of “ERROR” which as far as Charlie’s experience was concerned meant the packages’ arrival was imminent.

Sure enough, the post office began to tremble and warp, vibrating like a hive of angry wasps as it processed the parcels entry through it, the melted wrapping tape barely visible amongst the shifting colours.

For a split second the parcel hung in the air surrounded by the smoky effervescence of its arrival. As it hung, the label Charlie Tan – The Tan Household, Queer Steet, London was visible for a split second, and then the inertia broke, and the parcel snapped towards the well-padded arms of the awaiting Charlie.

Parcel acquired, Charlie set it down carefully and looked around for the new building once more – Instead he was thrown to the ground as a fourth quake shook the street, and for a moment an enormous shadow outline was visible, superimposed over the skyline.

Charlie stared into the middle distance as the afterimage faded and their eyes readjusted.

Surely not? Surely, he’d seen wrong? A trick of the eye trying to register an office building or house?

Surely, they hadn’t seen a castle approaching?

~~Meanwhile in Biz’s Lab:- The Stasis Chamber~~

With a grimace Biz disabled the double doors of the stasis chamber, pushing them shut before the last quake shut. Xe had no for sure answer on what would happen if the new building appeared and xyr lab was unable to move around the street to avoid it, but Red’s simulations had revealed some harrowing possibilities

The last time she had run Biz through them she had stated with giddy excitement that there was a point zero one percent chance that the two buildings would end up occupying the same physical space. Something which according to a follow up simulation would essentially fuse both buildings into an enormous bomb.

“Far to risky.” Xe muttered to xemself – Just as with the vortex, low probability was a poor excuse to risk the total annihilation of the street.

Not that Biz cared about the street specifically, but not liking the street was not the same as wanting a nuclear explosion to happen on it – especially when you were one of the idiots trapped there.

Reasoning established, Biz kicked the door shut firmly, the stiletto point of xyr heel rendering a less violent movement all but useless.

It had been a while since Biz had dressed up. “Dressed to the nines” as xyr father would have said and xe was already regretting the choice to wear xyr stilettos, especially when in all likelihood there wouldn’t even be anyone new to appreciate the effort.

Xe inspected xemself in the well-polished steel of the table, already regretting the punk-glam look xe had gone for.

Sure, the shaved, polished head was a great look and it matched xyr gold hoop earrings well, but the sparkly black dress? The torn, patched and re-stitched punked prom dress? Well, in hindsight it gave off major midlife crisis vibes.

As they looked at xemself in the reflection again, xe realised the problem. Xe’d not gone far enough, punk after all was about commitment, about not caring what the world thought.

Xe immediately knew how to pull it together and grabbed xyr lab coat, heeled boots and measurement tools as the fifth and final quake shook the lab.

~~Meanwhile in the note strewn squalor of Reds bedroom~~

Red checked and rechecked their notes as she searched for inconsistencies or errors in their mapping. The new building was large for sure, but even so her calculations confirmed that that had been the last quake.

They’d spent the morning considering what might appear. What building was making entry onto the street – an object so impactful as to shake the world five times over would require extensive adjustments to the current maps before the street was a safe predictable place once more.

She’d made a map of the probabilities of course, prepared themself as much as was possible ahead of time, despite their uncertainty on the specifics.

But now, with the last quake over the building would be there, a new entry to the street, and potentially a new person (or two!) to map the emotional spectrum of.

She braced herself and a pulled open the door to see the new street configuration.

The street, of course looked much the same, an erratic miss-mash of buildings with nothing new in sight.

Red looked up at the sky and frowned as she examined it, cross-referencing the configuration of silhouettes against the rough adjustments scrawled in the margins of her notebook.

It was a new pattern as expected, but familiar, and it was probable that the new building would be ten or so minutes to the left. Anxious and uncertain, she set off at a steady pace towards where she hoped the building would be.

To their relief Red arrived to find Sai, Al, Charlie, Li, and Bismuth already there, the familiar group a calming presence despite the uncertainty of the new building.

Charlie waved Red over as they spotted her and gestured excitedly at the medieval keep behind the group.

“Well, I don’ know about you Red, but I didn’t expect this! - This is SO COOL, we are takin’ bets on where it’s from, I’m thinkin Norwegian!”

Red frowned. “Well, it doesn’t really matter what country it’s from, what I really need to know is what the physical constants are, are they consistent with what else is on the street? Broadly speaking is it from a type A earth or a type B earth?”

Charlie stared back blankly and re-adjusted the parcel under their arm as they started to respond only to be cut off by his spouse as Li limped over to join them.

“Biz says it’s a type A-6? Which means err safe ish right?” Ey glance back at Bismuth who shrugged noncommittally and continued sweeping xyr tools across the stone wall.

Red smiled and scribbled the designation into her notebook, carefully circling the dangerous, unmapped building. Type A-6. Despite the new data, the keep still felt unsafe, dangerous somehow, more so than any other on the street.

It felt wrong, oily, like the darkness behind the street. Dark, and alive? She tried to shake the irrational thought, but it refused to budge.

Sai’s panicked voice cut through her thoughts as she tried to push the feeling back.

“Everyone, EVERYONE STOP WHAT YOUR DOING – Can anyone see Al?!?”