Re: Petty Squabble [ROUND 2] [Acidity City]
01-24-2012, 05:21 AM
Originally posted on MSPA by Lord Paradise.
”Hey, there’s your sister down there. Should we go pick her up?”
Ethan shook his head. ”No! She’ll just want to ruin all the fun we’re having. She doesn’t understand.”
John looked down at the girl sulking by the bank of the acid river and considered his moral obligations. Keeping the Broderburg kids safe under his wing seemed like the obvious thing to do. On the other hand, these kids were feral, and if he kept them together for five minutes there was a good chance one of them would push the other right into the acid for a laugh. Alison would be safer on her own, especially with what he had planned.
Plus, John was in no mood to listen to the two of them argue. “Alright, Ethan, it’s your call. But if we see your parents, it’d be best if you didn’t tell them we saw her.”
”Cool! Hey, I’ll race you down those rocks!” Here Ethan launched into some truly dangerous-looking parkour, vaulting his way down the rubble with his arms splayed to each side, like an airplane. John wasn’t overly concerned for the kid’s safety; a few hard knocks on the head might do him some good.
* * * * *
”Well, it’s official. All of our children have been stolen by crazy people.”
Tom massaged his wife’s shoulders absentmindedly. He supposed that it was somewhat emasculating that she had commandeered the wheel of the RV, but she was very upset and generally knew what to do in these situations, so he let her drive. “Parsley seems alright,” he offered. “There’s a good chance he’ll catch up to the robot if we don’t.”
”Yes, well, we will,” snapped Clarice, slamming on the accelerator. “Everyone else in this city is on foot. That gives us an advantage, doesn’t it?” She met his eyes in the rear-view mirror, which, it had always seemed to Tom, was a silly thing to have if it only showed you what was going on in the back of an RV. ”Tom, honey,” she said, ”I think it’s time we discuss the idea of killing some of the other contestants.”
Tom sighed. “Now, Clarice,” he responded. “This is hard on both of us. But I don’t think violence is the solution.” He thought for a second. “The robots, though. I don’t see anything wrong with taking apart the robots.”
Clarice smiled and nudged his hand with her cheek. ”Go get your rifle. We get our baby back from the robot, we kill it, then hopefully we can warp somewhere with a decent hotel. We could all use a little rest.”
Tom kissed his wife just above the ear. “God, I love you.”
”Yeah, yeah, me too. Save it for the hotel room, hubby.”
* * * * *
Six's instincts told him to hide in the darkest, emptiest place possible, and since he didn’t have a heart, instead he ducked into a temple. The only inhabitant of this place, he deduced, would be a God, and that wasn’t a thing that existed, so it represented only a miniscule threat.
Cradling the baby carefully in one arm, he directed his laser towards the firepit in the middle of the room and set it off. For a millisecond of confused visual input, the gamehost deduced that A) the temple was much larger than he had thought it to be and B) he was not, in fact, alone. However, further processing revealed that he was merely surrounded by a number of exceptionally large mirrors. Disabling his fight-or-flight protocols, Six briefly mused that he was very superior to these superstitious natives because he didn’t need to build a building made of mirrors to feel good about himself, but then he remembered that he had no way of feeling good about himself at all, and he promptly archived the musing.
It occurred to Six that, having memorized the layout of his surroundings, he ought to turn off the light to avoid detection. However, he lacked any appropriate substance to dowse the rather substantial flame, except for the water that made up the majority of the baby’s biomass, and he
He uh
He did not burn the baby and instead he just kicked over the firepit to little effect. Six ran some quick calculations and came to the conclusion that he would need to get out of here very fast or either Parsley or the baby’s parents would find him. Unfortunately, he subsequently discovered that the door behind him had shut and was quite impassable. He concluded that while it was inconvenient for him to be trapped here, it at least made it less likely that one of the other contestants would find him. At this point Gamehost Six experienced a great deal of stress and decided to think about other things like how long the baby would survive given a number of variables (returned to parents? Left in temple? Thrown in fire?) and deduced that under ideal circumstances he could teach the baby its first word (either “Six” or “no” seemed viable candidates for which word) by repeating the word twice per second until the baby died.
In the reflection in the mirror on the north side of the temple, coincidentally, the baby had already died. Six’s reflection was rather tenderly digging a grave for the poor thing, at least until it realized that the efficient course of action was to saw the corpse into tiny bits and bury them each separately.
On the west face of the temple, the reflection showed the opposite scenario—Six lay dead at the feet of the baby’s entire family, who were all now heavily armed with various deadly-looking weapons. They looked happy. Six, always the showman, considered this reflection to capture his poor side ERR cognitiveDissonance has joined the chat room. DragonFogel: Hey cD post in PS.
On the south side, Six was pleased to see that the baby’s reflection had grown up into a lovely young woman, and the two of them seemed to be getting married on the shores of the acid river. This Emma had the very best qualities of her mother and her father, and Six instinctively hated her, though he was unable to gauge the emotional (“emotional”) state of his reflection ERRised INCORRECT INCORRECT INCORRECT INCORRECT
The eastern mirror seemed to check out, except, of course, that the other reflections were reflected behind his reflection. Also, in this reflection, Baby Emma was speaking to him.”Hello, Six, it’s me again. Mirror.”
Gamehost Six made a humming noise all through his system, the robotic equivalent of a deep breath. Then he said: “Question 39:”
* * * * *
Alison came across Nancy crying by the river and was emotionally torn. On the one hand, she’d be happy for the company, and Nancy had seemed cool when she’d been introduced at the beginning of the battle. On the other hand, she really didn’t have to deal with whatever baggage Nancy was carrying. Ah, well. She sat down beside Nancy and simply said, “Hi.”
Nancy blearily looked up. ”I’m sorry,”she replied weakly. ”I’ve just been having the most awful day.”
”Hmmph.” Alison, overall, had been enjoying her day spent battling to the death or whatever, especially after she’d gotten away with her parents. It had been the most interesting part of the family road trip by far. She decided not to share that line of thinking with Nancy, who she judged to be just a little too old to have any fun. She decided to say something more reassuring. “The, uh, the Charlatan guy said you were, uh, insecure and... something else.”
”Apathetic,” Nancy sobbed. That hadn’t worked out the way Alison had wanted. ”I remember quite clearly. I was wondering what he had meant by that, and now that I’ve been around some of you people it’s quite clear. ‘Insecure and apathetic’ means that I’m the only one who’s worried at all that—that none of this makes sense and—and we’re all going to die.”
”Oh, we’re not all going to die,” said Alison, putting an arm around the older woman’s shoulders and noticing that she could probably push Nancy into the acid and move to somewhere less boring and be a little closer to home. She wasn’t sure she really liked Nancy, who if she remembered her vocabulary words was the exact opposite of “apathetic,” but in a bad way.
It was only a thought, of course. Alison wasn’t really going to kill anybody.
“Cheer up,” she continued. “Look. Carnea and I are doing this thing where we’re trying to find some natives and convince them that we’re gods and get us to worship us, which I think is unfair because she actually is a god, so I could use some help, and I think it would do you some good to get out and do something aside from sit and cry and probably end up falling into the acid and killing yourself. Okay?”
”Falling into the acid and killing myself,” was all Nancy said, dreamily, as though she’d just been given a good idea.
That worried Alison. She grabbed Nancy’s hand and pulled her to her feet. “Come on, useless,” she urged. “Natives. Worship. Think of it as a game if you have to. Like we’re detectives.”
”Detectives, eh?” said Nancy, a little less distantly. Alison pieced together an association that was lingering in the back of her head: Nancy reminded her of the student teachers who used to come in to help out in elementary school, and who always tried very hard to be nice but everybody in the room knew they were on a track towards becoming just another crotchety old child-hating lady-teacher. She took another glance at the acid river.
“Excuse me,” said a voice behind them. “Did I hear one of you say something about a game?”
Nancy gasped and tried to cover Alison’s eyes, but it was too late, the damage was done—the dark skinned woman who had popped up before them was wearing nothing but a loincloth around the waist and there was nothing that either of them could do about it. Alison wrenched her head free and stared, conflicted between embarrassment, jealousy, rage, and admiration.
Having learned from R-rated movies that in these sort of situations the person who could most convincingly pretend that nothing out of the ordinary was going on had the upper hand, Alison turned her eyes with great difficulty to Nancy. “See, we found a native already! I wander around for like twenty minutes and don’t find one and then you join the team and one pops up in like three seconds! You’re lucky at this.”
Nancy didn’t seem to know where to look. ”Lucky,”she stammered. ”Yes. Right. Are you not cold?”
”I have an interest,” said the shameless woman. “In games. And I see that the two of you are pieces.” Alison decided after a few seconds that that wasn’t a compliment. “Pieces working in opposition of my master, Chess.”
”Chess?” said Nancy, perking up. ”Do you play, then? A good game of chess always soothes my nerves.”
”Hmm.” The woman studied Nancy closely. “When a piece plays another piece, nothing can be gained on the part of the players except for knowledge of the other players’ pieces’ tactics. And seeing as I already know your first move, which is to offer the play, I know more about your tactics than you do about mine. Therefore the obvious response on my part is to decline.”
Nancy briefly considered this. ”Well that doesn’t make a lot of sense. See, now I know that you’ve declined, so we’re flush, aren’t we?”
The native grimaced. “I... very well. Follow me to the temple. We’ll play, but if I win, I get to take your clothes.”
Nancy wilted and looked to Alison to support. Alison merely shrugged.
”Hey, there’s your sister down there. Should we go pick her up?”
Ethan shook his head. ”No! She’ll just want to ruin all the fun we’re having. She doesn’t understand.”
John looked down at the girl sulking by the bank of the acid river and considered his moral obligations. Keeping the Broderburg kids safe under his wing seemed like the obvious thing to do. On the other hand, these kids were feral, and if he kept them together for five minutes there was a good chance one of them would push the other right into the acid for a laugh. Alison would be safer on her own, especially with what he had planned.
Plus, John was in no mood to listen to the two of them argue. “Alright, Ethan, it’s your call. But if we see your parents, it’d be best if you didn’t tell them we saw her.”
”Cool! Hey, I’ll race you down those rocks!” Here Ethan launched into some truly dangerous-looking parkour, vaulting his way down the rubble with his arms splayed to each side, like an airplane. John wasn’t overly concerned for the kid’s safety; a few hard knocks on the head might do him some good.
* * * * *
”Well, it’s official. All of our children have been stolen by crazy people.”
Tom massaged his wife’s shoulders absentmindedly. He supposed that it was somewhat emasculating that she had commandeered the wheel of the RV, but she was very upset and generally knew what to do in these situations, so he let her drive. “Parsley seems alright,” he offered. “There’s a good chance he’ll catch up to the robot if we don’t.”
”Yes, well, we will,” snapped Clarice, slamming on the accelerator. “Everyone else in this city is on foot. That gives us an advantage, doesn’t it?” She met his eyes in the rear-view mirror, which, it had always seemed to Tom, was a silly thing to have if it only showed you what was going on in the back of an RV. ”Tom, honey,” she said, ”I think it’s time we discuss the idea of killing some of the other contestants.”
Tom sighed. “Now, Clarice,” he responded. “This is hard on both of us. But I don’t think violence is the solution.” He thought for a second. “The robots, though. I don’t see anything wrong with taking apart the robots.”
Clarice smiled and nudged his hand with her cheek. ”Go get your rifle. We get our baby back from the robot, we kill it, then hopefully we can warp somewhere with a decent hotel. We could all use a little rest.”
Tom kissed his wife just above the ear. “God, I love you.”
”Yeah, yeah, me too. Save it for the hotel room, hubby.”
* * * * *
Six's instincts told him to hide in the darkest, emptiest place possible, and since he didn’t have a heart, instead he ducked into a temple. The only inhabitant of this place, he deduced, would be a God, and that wasn’t a thing that existed, so it represented only a miniscule threat.
Cradling the baby carefully in one arm, he directed his laser towards the firepit in the middle of the room and set it off. For a millisecond of confused visual input, the gamehost deduced that A) the temple was much larger than he had thought it to be and B) he was not, in fact, alone. However, further processing revealed that he was merely surrounded by a number of exceptionally large mirrors. Disabling his fight-or-flight protocols, Six briefly mused that he was very superior to these superstitious natives because he didn’t need to build a building made of mirrors to feel good about himself, but then he remembered that he had no way of feeling good about himself at all, and he promptly archived the musing.
It occurred to Six that, having memorized the layout of his surroundings, he ought to turn off the light to avoid detection. However, he lacked any appropriate substance to dowse the rather substantial flame, except for the water that made up the majority of the baby’s biomass, and he
He uh
He did not burn the baby and instead he just kicked over the firepit to little effect. Six ran some quick calculations and came to the conclusion that he would need to get out of here very fast or either Parsley or the baby’s parents would find him. Unfortunately, he subsequently discovered that the door behind him had shut and was quite impassable. He concluded that while it was inconvenient for him to be trapped here, it at least made it less likely that one of the other contestants would find him. At this point Gamehost Six experienced a great deal of stress and decided to think about other things like how long the baby would survive given a number of variables (returned to parents? Left in temple? Thrown in fire?) and deduced that under ideal circumstances he could teach the baby its first word (either “Six” or “no” seemed viable candidates for which word) by repeating the word twice per second until the baby died.
In the reflection in the mirror on the north side of the temple, coincidentally, the baby had already died. Six’s reflection was rather tenderly digging a grave for the poor thing, at least until it realized that the efficient course of action was to saw the corpse into tiny bits and bury them each separately.
On the west face of the temple, the reflection showed the opposite scenario—Six lay dead at the feet of the baby’s entire family, who were all now heavily armed with various deadly-looking weapons. They looked happy. Six, always the showman, considered this reflection to capture his poor side ERR cognitiveDissonance has joined the chat room. DragonFogel: Hey cD post in PS.
On the south side, Six was pleased to see that the baby’s reflection had grown up into a lovely young woman, and the two of them seemed to be getting married on the shores of the acid river. This Emma had the very best qualities of her mother and her father, and Six instinctively hated her, though he was unable to gauge the emotional (“emotional”) state of his reflection ERRised INCORRECT INCORRECT INCORRECT INCORRECT
The eastern mirror seemed to check out, except, of course, that the other reflections were reflected behind his reflection. Also, in this reflection, Baby Emma was speaking to him.”Hello, Six, it’s me again. Mirror.”
Gamehost Six made a humming noise all through his system, the robotic equivalent of a deep breath. Then he said: “Question 39:”
* * * * *
Alison came across Nancy crying by the river and was emotionally torn. On the one hand, she’d be happy for the company, and Nancy had seemed cool when she’d been introduced at the beginning of the battle. On the other hand, she really didn’t have to deal with whatever baggage Nancy was carrying. Ah, well. She sat down beside Nancy and simply said, “Hi.”
Nancy blearily looked up. ”I’m sorry,”she replied weakly. ”I’ve just been having the most awful day.”
”Hmmph.” Alison, overall, had been enjoying her day spent battling to the death or whatever, especially after she’d gotten away with her parents. It had been the most interesting part of the family road trip by far. She decided not to share that line of thinking with Nancy, who she judged to be just a little too old to have any fun. She decided to say something more reassuring. “The, uh, the Charlatan guy said you were, uh, insecure and... something else.”
”Apathetic,” Nancy sobbed. That hadn’t worked out the way Alison had wanted. ”I remember quite clearly. I was wondering what he had meant by that, and now that I’ve been around some of you people it’s quite clear. ‘Insecure and apathetic’ means that I’m the only one who’s worried at all that—that none of this makes sense and—and we’re all going to die.”
”Oh, we’re not all going to die,” said Alison, putting an arm around the older woman’s shoulders and noticing that she could probably push Nancy into the acid and move to somewhere less boring and be a little closer to home. She wasn’t sure she really liked Nancy, who if she remembered her vocabulary words was the exact opposite of “apathetic,” but in a bad way.
It was only a thought, of course. Alison wasn’t really going to kill anybody.
“Cheer up,” she continued. “Look. Carnea and I are doing this thing where we’re trying to find some natives and convince them that we’re gods and get us to worship us, which I think is unfair because she actually is a god, so I could use some help, and I think it would do you some good to get out and do something aside from sit and cry and probably end up falling into the acid and killing yourself. Okay?”
”Falling into the acid and killing myself,” was all Nancy said, dreamily, as though she’d just been given a good idea.
That worried Alison. She grabbed Nancy’s hand and pulled her to her feet. “Come on, useless,” she urged. “Natives. Worship. Think of it as a game if you have to. Like we’re detectives.”
”Detectives, eh?” said Nancy, a little less distantly. Alison pieced together an association that was lingering in the back of her head: Nancy reminded her of the student teachers who used to come in to help out in elementary school, and who always tried very hard to be nice but everybody in the room knew they were on a track towards becoming just another crotchety old child-hating lady-teacher. She took another glance at the acid river.
“Excuse me,” said a voice behind them. “Did I hear one of you say something about a game?”
Nancy gasped and tried to cover Alison’s eyes, but it was too late, the damage was done—the dark skinned woman who had popped up before them was wearing nothing but a loincloth around the waist and there was nothing that either of them could do about it. Alison wrenched her head free and stared, conflicted between embarrassment, jealousy, rage, and admiration.
Having learned from R-rated movies that in these sort of situations the person who could most convincingly pretend that nothing out of the ordinary was going on had the upper hand, Alison turned her eyes with great difficulty to Nancy. “See, we found a native already! I wander around for like twenty minutes and don’t find one and then you join the team and one pops up in like three seconds! You’re lucky at this.”
Nancy didn’t seem to know where to look. ”Lucky,”she stammered. ”Yes. Right. Are you not cold?”
”I have an interest,” said the shameless woman. “In games. And I see that the two of you are pieces.” Alison decided after a few seconds that that wasn’t a compliment. “Pieces working in opposition of my master, Chess.”
”Chess?” said Nancy, perking up. ”Do you play, then? A good game of chess always soothes my nerves.”
”Hmm.” The woman studied Nancy closely. “When a piece plays another piece, nothing can be gained on the part of the players except for knowledge of the other players’ pieces’ tactics. And seeing as I already know your first move, which is to offer the play, I know more about your tactics than you do about mine. Therefore the obvious response on my part is to decline.”
Nancy briefly considered this. ”Well that doesn’t make a lot of sense. See, now I know that you’ve declined, so we’re flush, aren’t we?”
The native grimaced. “I... very well. Follow me to the temple. We’ll play, but if I win, I get to take your clothes.”
Nancy wilted and looked to Alison to support. Alison merely shrugged.