Where'd we leave off? Oh, right, with the grand mystic conspiracies. Sorry. It's so easy to lose track of these things.

Some mystical force (I think we call it "optics") prevented the true effect of this picture from seeing the light of day. The ankh-encrusted obelisk leads onward to the green awning, which bears the legend of another facet of the grand conspiracy. We were not the first to consider it, just another pair of poor souls to verify it. (I'll give you a hint: the sign under the green awning looks something like a mermaid.)

This is a very considerate secret society, though: they post their hours on the temple doors.

We both noticed that the foliage was fairly convincing to the untrained eye, although maybe people more obsessed with Egypt than we would have been appalled. I, however, expected to find Baby Moses in there at any moment.

(There was another row of four goats on the other side of the hippo. "Eight Goats and a Hippo." No. I don't think that'll catch on as a title.)

The planetarium.

Swine monkey.

It made me very glad that I changed the AI in "Anna's Implants" from Francis Bacon to Thomas Tallis, whose only secret society to the best of my knowledge was that he was a crypto-Papist.

The djinn of Declare will be going nowhere near this building. Not in the same area code, I'm thinking. Because that's just a lot of ankhs.

Then we went to the San Jose Municipal Rose Garden two blocks down, but did the mystical conspiracies stop? They did not. Roses, Rosicrucians, come on, people! That one wasn't even hard!