#annnnnd drum roll for tomorrow...

[revacholianpizzaagenda]

Püha ja õudne lõhn (Sacred and Terrible Air) chapters 7+8 summary

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7. THE WORLD IS GOING WRONG, TIME IS OUT OF JOINT

Present. Khan goes through a cute, dorky wake-up routine at sunset. He lives in his mother’s basement, where he keeps an impressive collection of disappearance memorabilia. There are items related to Nadja Harnankur, a dodecahedron autographed by dodecaphonic composed Comte de Perouse Mittrecie, mementos of Ramout Karzai who braved the Erg desert to ask for an audience with God, of Gon Tzu who sailed east from Samara to look for the peaches of immortality for the emperor of Safre and never came back, and of course all the documents related to the Lund girls. Among them, letters allegedly sent by the girls, claiming that they were well and with “the Man”.

2 years ago, the falling out between Jesper and Khan, It happens at a fancy place where Jesper helped Khan get a reservation for a date with a girl. The date goes poorly, Khan waves at Jesper as a lifeline, to show he’s friends with a famous guy, but for his part Jesper pretends to his rich acquaintances that he doesn’t know his old friend.

18 years before that. The next meetup on the beach is at the boys’ secret hideout. It goes very well – they drink cider and exchange tales, including that of Gon Tzu. Peaches of immortality don’t exist, says Khan. What if they did and Gon Tzu just kept them for himself and his friends, say the girls.

Present. Tereesz is discharged. In his ZA/UM hangover, he dreamt of a Man made of violence who lurked at the corner of the girls’ presence, he was him and Hird and a grown-up Khan and Tereesz’s father and more figures still.

Jesper has come to visit Khan in his basement. He is, despite himself, charmed by the collection and by its crown jewel, a rare copy of the model of the disappeared Harnankur ship. They are worried about Tereesz – it’s been two days since the Hird interview. Right then, Tereesz calls from a payphone and urges them to reach him in town.

20 years ago. The girls invite them for the following Saturday at their secret spot. They ask the boys to bring a drug called cherry speed and give them the seller’s contact: Zigi.

8. LINOLEUM SALESMAN

The traveling Linoleum Salesman turns out to be a pedophile. In Kexholm, he finds a group of people like him, who all identify themselves by their day jobs. One day, he sees the girls and desires them as his final target before killing himself.

Present. The trio’s objective – Tereesz’s lead from Hird – is Deerek Trentmöller, who now lives in a retirement home. Tereesz tries to hide having obtained his info via ZA/UM, but Khan susses it out and is worried – for Tereesz but also for Tereesz’s job, which is crucial to their endeavours. Hird and Trentmöller bonded in prison, and Trentmöller got the drawing from the leader of the infamous, alleged Kexholm ring. Now Trentmöller is senile, but they will try to get info on the leader from him, one way or another. Under Tereesz’s rough questioning, the confused old man tells them that the Linoleum Salesman lived in Kexholm, and that he watched the girls from the Havsänglar hotel overlooking the beach.

Elsewhere, past winter’s orbit, a metereological ship is caught in a sudden onslaught of pale. Satellites witness the worldwide range of the phenomenon: Katla’s Northern Passage, Samarskilt, half of Supramundi, Lemminkäise, Nad-Umai, Yekokataa, Severnaya Zemlya, the Semenine islands, all gone. It’s the beginning of the end of the world.

The trio calls Havsänglar to jot down all the names of the full guests list of June-July 52. Midway through the hundreds of names: Deerek Trentmöller, purpose of the stay: vacation, profession: linoleum salesman. They rush back to the retirement home and Tereesz subjects the man to ZA/UM.

But the mind-melding drug shows that neither Deerek Trentmöller nor his Linoleum Salesman persona did it. The last memory Tereesz sees: on the day of the girls’ disappearance, Trentmöller feels a deep wrongness. He checks his photographs taken with the binocular-plus-camera, he is sure that the girls were there, but they are not. Tereesz is feverish and they are out of leads. But Khan has an idea.

#disco elysium #sacred and terrible air #püha ja õudne lõhn #pjõl summaries #there's sth off about the Trentmöller thing but I'm still at the confused math lady stage #the whole identity play has something Harry-ish about it but with a twist that hmmmm #annnnnd drum roll for tomorrow...