Re: Petty Squabble [ROUND 2] [Acidity City]
06-24-2012, 04:01 PM
Originally posted on MSPA by Lord Paradise.
Science can explain this. Honestly.
An acidic solution is any body of water containing a high concentration of hydronium (H-and-a-little-three-O-and-a-little-plus-sign-up-top) molecules relative to its concentration of hydroxide (H-O-and-a-little-minus-sign) molecules. Those hydronium molecules want to slough off their excess protons and become water molecules (why do science teachers always assign agency to the forces of nature? The molecule doesn’t want to do anything, it is compelled) but first they’ll have to find something to donate to.
And as the hydronium donateth, so can it taketh away.
It began to rain. ”Ow!” Alison shouted aloud, clutching the back of her hand as the green (okay, science can’t explain why it’s green) water droplet that had just landed on it sizzled its way through her epidermis. She looked around her for shelter. There were no buildings within running distance, but there were a handful of gondolas lying on the banks of the acid river. If those things could float on the river, then they could handle a little rain, was Alison’s reasoning as she flipped one of the boats over itself and crouched underneath it.
The girl used the dim light of her cellphone to scan the area for spiders before making any attempt to become comfortable. She lay in the darkness, listening to the intensifying pitter-patter of the rain on the hull of the gondola.
Pitter-patter-pitter-patter-pitter-patter-pitter-patter
Nancy looked up. “Don’t worry,” said her current opponent nonchalantly. “The rain can’t get through. Things are in balance here.”
“That’s not what I’m seeing,” Nancy responded with a smile, looking back to the board. “I have you in five moves. I think.” This latest victory of Nancy’s could not have been entirely discarded as beginner’s luck—she was beginning to get quite the handle on tactics. Pieces that had seemed useless to her, like the Name piece, which forces the opponent to declare which moves they intended to make, or the Alkali, which turned rivers to water but only downstream of where it drowned, were now key to her strategy. The chess-priest was reduced to a single quadrant of the board, furiously using his surviving Fertility to multiply his spearmen in time for Nancy to mow them down in large swaths with her own troops. It was over in four moves.
The priest handed over a few gold coins, which Nancy slipped into her pocket alongside the rest. The next priestess in line wordlessly took her seat at Green and began reassembling the opening setup.
Before Nancy made her first move, she looked over the board. “It’s sort of curious,” she told her opponent. “Why are there two spearmen on the left side of the king and only one on the right?” She pointed at the asymmetrical spearman. “For that matter, this one looks brand new. It’s almost as if some other piece was meant to go here.”
The priestess looked around at the other natives, then reluctantly nodded. “There was another who once sat at the King’s left hand,” she confessed. “We don’t play with him anymore. Leave this matter.”
“A variant, then?” piped up Nancy cheerily. “I’d like to play it, if you don’t mind. I think I have this setup figured out, and it’s starting to get a bit boring—no offense,” she added graciously. “You’re all very good.”
The priestess frowned gravely. “The Dice threw the game out of balance. It was removed.”
Nancy clapped her hands together. “Dice! Now that’s more my style. I used to roll the bones now and—“
“To bring back the Dice would be to upset the balance once more. It is forbidden.”
“Alright, alright,” relented Nancy. “What side did it favor? Green or grey?”
The priestess rolled her eyes. “The Dice favored the Dice. Now, are you going to make the first move, or--”
The players were interrupted by the very, very, very sudden arrival of a wiry, athletic native. “I come with a message for the Goddess,” he panted.
Nancy eyed the Messenger piece on the board. The resemblance was striking. “The Goddess is in the Inner Temple, I’ve been told,” she told the newcomer. “While you’re down there, can you tell Alison—girl about yea high, hard to miss—tell her she’s been down there an awfully long time and I’m starting to worry.”
“The girl isn’t where you think she is,” replied Messenger. “I’ll convey your worries,” he promised, “But I’m not going down into the Inner Temple. I have no time to get wrapped up in the goddess’ games. You, priestess,” he said, addressing Nancy’s opponent. “You go in my stead. Tell her that I’m going to contact her equivalent piece in the new Pantheon—this ‘COFCA’—and make them the offer we discussed. Tell her our gambit is in the endgame now. Show her these.”
Messenger reached behind his back and produced a pair of dice. One was green, one was grey. The chess-priestess snatched them up with a sidelong glare at Nancy. “I’m going to speak with the goddess,” she said. “By the time I get back, I’d appreciate if you’d made your move.”
Nancy took one more look at the board. She was in a different place emotionally than she had been three games ago, she could be sure of that. “If it’s all the same to you,” she told the priestess, standing and picking up her typewriter, “I think I’ll come along. I’ve never been in an Inner Temple before. Is that the same thing as an Inner Sanctum?”
* * * * *
Pitter-patter-pitter-patter-pitter-patter-pitter-patter
The rain from outside drowned out the silence around the fire, until Song cryptically proclaimed, “She only comes out at night!”
“The lean and hungry type,” explained Song, when all eyes turned to him.
“You guys are weird,” laughed Ethan, failing to understand the gravity of the situation. “Anyway, is God really dead, or is that just pretend?”
Emma cooed. Six said nothing. Name coughed. “We’ll be fine in here,” the god told Six, “Unless the river floods. That’s a big ‘unless.’”
”Question 47: What’s the point?” asked Six.
“So many have paid to see,” answered Song, “What you think you’re getting for free.”
”INCORRECT. Question 48: Who would even care if we all drowned in acid tonight?”
”If you’re in it for love, you ain’t gonna get to far,” was all he could offer. Then he rose as if startled. “Whoa, here she comes!” he cried, covering Ethan’s eyes with the hand that wasn’t holding Emma. “Watch out, boy, she’ll chew you up!”
The last thing Ethan saw was a woman’s bare foot descending the stairs.
The first thing he didn’t see, obscured as his vision was by Song’s hand, was a woman’s bare everything, sashaying down the steps with a confidence normally reserved for people hiding their bodies behind clothes. The woman laid her lightly sizzling pink umbrella down in the corner and sat provocatively cross-legged by the fire. “Some weather we’re having here, boys,” she purred, making the word “boys” sound like the name of a particularly expensive wine.
In the midst of his existential turmoil Six felt a slight pseudo-endorphic reaction, as he always does when something comes on screen that is guaranteed to be good for ratings. “She’s a maneater,” concluded Song.
“Did someone get eaten?” asked Ethan. “I want to see! My dad lets me watch gory movies all the time, I promise!”
“The walk over here mustn’t have been pleasant, Obligatory Sex Goddess Representing an Ultimately Misogynist and Regressive Romantic Ideal,” greeted Name with an ironic sneer.
“It’s Ms. Fertility, actually,” corrected the goddess playfully. “I never married.”
“I wouldn’t if I were you,” advised Song.
“Well, there’s hardly much time left,” replied Fertility, “Seeing as we’re all going to drown in acid.”
“Did someone write a bad word on the wall?” guessed Ethan. “’Cause if it begins with an H, a D, or a P, or an A, it’s a word I already know, so you can let me see it.”
”Question 49:” prompted Six, sounding more intrigued than dejected. ”What are you doing here?”
”Mind over matter,” suggested Song.
“That’s one way to put it.” Fertility turned as though noticing Six for the first time. “Chess and Messenger are playing the long game with regards to you new arrivals, and they’ve roped me into it somehow. Well, ‘somehow’ is just me being obtuse. He sent me flowers.” The goddess opened her mouth, reached her fingers in and somehow managed to pull a rose out of her throat, which she handed to Six. It retained all of its thorns and the robot would have judged the flower to have been sitting contentedly in a vase since being cut no more than a day ago. Not knowing what to do with the rose, he tucked it into the lining of his coat awkwardly. “Anyway,” yawned Fertility, “You know those two. Chess is playing just to play, and Messenger just goes where the action is, but I have my own gondola in this race. These two gentlemen seem to have forgotten that I’m anything other than a pretty avatar—maybe I should start appearing in my thundery-voiced, abstract incarnation just to get some respect around this place—but being Fertility makes me the incarnation of creation, life, and the answer to the question of entropy.”
”Question 50: The question of entropy?”
”Me.”
Six puzzled over this answer, which he could not fairly be judge to be incorrect for all possible interpretations of the question, while Fertility continued. “Anyway, admittedly I’ve been slacking off in my duties ever since we chained Dice. Didn’t seem so important to create when nothing was being destroyed... I’ve been in rough shape. Not that you’d think it to look at me, I know. But there hasn’t been a baby born in this city in millenia. So imagine my surprise when a healthy, fertile young family—complete with a beautiful baby girl—just drops into my lap like an overeager dancer.”
The goddess cast an eye upon Emma. “Watch out, watch out, watch out, watch out,” growled Song, clutching the baby to his chest.
“Oh, you don’t need to worry about me,” smiled Fertility. “We have the girl out accumulating worshippers thinking she’s impressing the new Doorknobs and Locks, and dozens of sightings of her parents’ vehicle rolling uphill in violation of all reason. The boy has shared a fire with gods, and the girl has joined at least two cults in the last couple hours. These ‘Broderburgs’ are becoming charged with heroic myth. If Chess’s plan works out, we’ll be able to build a new, prosperous civilization, modeled on their image.”
Emma giggled and pointed at Fertility; Song, suddenly short of words, hesitantly handed the baby over. The goddess sighed contentedly. “Gods, it’s been so long since I held a child.”
“Don’t you dare feed her, Bitch Who Cheated On Me With Poem But Is Admittedly The Best Hope For Our Civilization,” warned Name. “You know what the milk of a goddess will do to her. You don’t want that. She should grow up a normal child.”
“Oh, I know,” pouted Fertility. “I need to get her back to her mother. A nice, normal child who teleported in from Observatory-knows-what corner of the multiverse. Here, why don’t I cover myself before Song over there gives the boy a stroke trying to preserve my modesty?”
Ethan was, indeed, struggling, having successively become certain that he was missing a monkey, a dead body, a ghost, and a Sega Dreamcast. Fertility took Emma under one arm and with the other lifted the fire right out of the pit, folding it around her as a flaming robe. Emma, wide-eyed, grabbed at the dancing light of the fire rising off of the goddess’s chest. Song let Ethan go; the boy leapt forwards directly into the pit where the fire had been five seconds before, covering his face in soot.
The boy Broderburg looked up and was disappointed to see nothing more interesting than a woman holding his baby sister while her entire body was wreathed in flame. “Hi,” he groaned. “I’m Ethan. Were you wrapping presents just now?”
Fertility chuckled. “You could say that. Hi, Ethan, I’m Fertility. I’m here to take you and your sister back to your parents.”
Whirr
The goddess, looking towards Six as though noticing him for the first time all over again, smiled towards the robot. “You want to come along for the ride, big fella? I’m guessing you have no place to be after unleashing death upon the world.”
Six stared back at Fertility thoughtfully. “Come on,” she pleaded. “It could be fun. Don’t be a square.”
The goddess framed the gamehost’s face with her thumbs and forefingers, leaving Emma suspended happily in midair. The robot, though well aware that he was a cube and not a square, nonetheless had much to think about.
* * * * *
Pitter patter pitter patter pitter patter pitter patter
The storm was wreaking havoc on Alison’s cellphone reception, though her battery was holding strong. She didn’t feel like sleeping. Her body had no idea how long it had been awake. As an experiment, Alison fiddled with the alarm function on her phone, setting it to ring in exactly one hour. She hoped she wouldn’t still be sitting bored under this canoe at that point.
About thirty seconds passed before it rang. “What the hell?” cried Alison aloud, opening the phone in distress.
Displayed on the cellular’s screen was a “text-message,” some obscure feature of the phone that Alison had never trifled with much, as it seemed to her to be a more laborious and expensive version of AOL Instant Messenger. The message read as follows:
Lift up the left side of the gondola about five inches, please.
It left no callback number. Alison held the phone at arm’s length, as if it were something contagious, and reread the message. It was very direct and polite. Her mother had warned her not to trust direct, polite strangers. Always willing to ignore her mother’s warnings, the girl braced her back against what was the left side of the gondola from her perspective at least and lifted.
The native man who Alison had remembered seeing talking to Carnea earlier slid belly-first into the underside of the boat and rolled into a sitting position opposite the Broderburg. “Hi,” he began, speaking somewhat faster than is normal. “I’m Messenger. We’ve met. Kind of. Nancy says she’s worried about you but that’s not what’s important right now.”
“Hi, Messenger,” responded Alison, putting away her phone. “Chess told me I should talk to you. But I think she thought I was going to go talk to Envoy first? Whatever.”
“Yeah, I was supposed to be talking to C.O.F.C.A. like, half an hour ago. But I’ve been busy. Messages flying around everywhere. But, you know, neither acid rain nor acid snow nor acid heat nor gloom of eclipse stays this courier from swift completion of his appointed rounds. Heh. Hey, I’m supposed to be taking you back to your parents--”
Alison groaned.
“—But do you mind if I stop and see Envoy first? We’ll be heading right into the source of all death and chaos in the world. Could be fun.”
That didn’t sound all that fun—maybe more like something Ethan would be into—but if it kept her from getting back to her parents for a bit, she was in. “Alright,” she said.
“Thanks,” smiled Messenger. “That’ll save me some time. Do you know how hard it is to run the entire length of this city without a single raindrop touching you?”
Alison listened to the sound of the rain, which was coming down pretty hard now. “Really, really hard?” she guessed.
The god shrugged. “Not really, if you’re me,” he said. “Anyway, let’s go.” With one hand, Messenger grabbed Alison’s wrist; with the other, he threw the gondola casually through the air into the river, exposing the two of them to the rain outside.
And then he began to run.
Flying right into the thing may not have been the best idea.
Envoy could handle the acid rain, that wasn’t a problem. A sustained period of immersion in that river might do some damage, but the usual wear and tear of a zero pH substance battering him from above wouldn’t cause any damage that couldn’t be buffed out.
But something else was happening here, in the eye of the storm. Something that was making basically all measurements associated with Envoy drop between two to three percent from normal levels. Reaction time, optical resolution, battery life, mass. The best guess back at the Council was that something was making their robot age. And given that he was intended to survive a space flight to a distant civilization, it would take a lot of age to start having an effect like this.
For explanations, the C.O.F.C.A. needed look no farther than the ominous, booming voice emanating from the sky.
YOU CANNOT ESCAPE ME, LITTLE ROBOT
The winds were making it difficult to get to safety, and there was nothing to shoot. Three C.O.F.C.A.teers got into a lively but ultimately fruitless discussion of weather control and why exactly the rain was green and glowing when they were pulled out of the fire by an act of God.
Specifically, an act of Messenger. Still dragging a conspicuously dry-haired Alison by one arm, the god seemed to leap through the air into the eye of the storm, throw Envoy over one shoulder and descend, landing semi-gracefully by the entrance to a spare temple.
Messenger ducked inside to catch his breath and allow Alison’s inner ears to rebalance. “Whew,” he sighed, sounding more exhilarated than tired. Then he addressed Envoy. “Hi. COFCA, right? I’m Messenger.”
After a slight delay, the robot nodded.
“Good, good, good. I’d like to ask for your help with something. I’m something of an ambassador myself, you see.”
Envoy did not make any motion to indicate that he was impressed by this, or even that he cared.
“And I’ve been trying to get a bunch of gods together to try and fight off Dice, that’s the god who started all this, or else weigh him back in our favor, and maybe jumpstart our civilization again. Which benefits everyone, right?”
Still the robot stood perfectly still.
“The thing is, owing to some ancient pacts, rules we have to follow and such, there’s one god, the god that we need more than any if we want this to work, and none of us can get to him. His name is Base. You might be able to serve as an ambassador between us and him.”
No response from Envoy. Messenger sighed. “Think about it. That’s the message.” The god turned back towards Alison. “Are you alright?” he asked.
”Yeah, I think so.” Alison looked outside. “I’ve been trying to avoid my parents, but I guess now that it’s raining out I don’t really have anything to do other than head home. Are we gonna go?”
“Yeah, whenever you’re ready,” said Messenger. “But first, you said you were looking for me, right? Did you have a message to send?”
* * * * *
Tinktinktinktinktinktinktinksizzle plop
A drop of acid burned through the roof of the RV and landed on the couch. “That’s not good,” Tom breathed, stepping on the accelerator. “We need to find a garage, fast.”
”It’s only a bit of rain, Stein,” mocked Parsley. ”Haven’t we bigger concerns at the moment than a leaking roof?”
”How about a leaking skull?” asked John, impatiently.
”You might want to slow down a little,” cautioned Clarice. ”The road’s slippery, you can’t see a thing, and the kids are out there somewhere.”
”The kids hate the rain, they’ll be holed up indoors watching TV or whatever it is that kids do here,” assured Tom. “Anyway, the road just follows the riverbank, which is glowing, so—“
”Watch out!”
Seeing the figure in the middle of the road too late, Tom swerved the RV left, sending it careening into the river.
If he’d been paying close attention, he might have noticed that for a radius of about five feet around the figure, the rain wasn’t falling. As though the rain were doing the man’s bidding, or the man the rain’s.
John saw the hood of the RV slide into the river and slowly begin to roll down the bank. He didn’t have time to pull off a dramatic rescue, and was fairly sure someone else would get around to it. He had bigger concerns.
John stepped into the temple (was every other building in this city somebody’s temple?) and began to descend the long, spiral staircase that awaited him inside. At the bottom of the stairs was a large, ornate door. John pulled on the handle, to no avail. “It’s locked,” he complained aloud. The voice of Dice berated him from above:
“No,” said John. He examined the door to the inner temple. The heiroglyphs carved onto it he at first took to be something of a Promethean narrative, with a god giving some symbol of positive energy to Man. But on a second glance, the godly figure in the pictographs was the man accepting the gift, not the giver. It wasn’t a creation myth, it was a chemical equation. “I’ll still deliver Base, as promised,” he told Dice. “I’ll just need to call in an expert on locks.”
Science can explain this. Honestly.
An acidic solution is any body of water containing a high concentration of hydronium (H-and-a-little-three-O-and-a-little-plus-sign-up-top) molecules relative to its concentration of hydroxide (H-O-and-a-little-minus-sign) molecules. Those hydronium molecules want to slough off their excess protons and become water molecules (why do science teachers always assign agency to the forces of nature? The molecule doesn’t want to do anything, it is compelled) but first they’ll have to find something to donate to.
And as the hydronium donateth, so can it taketh away.
It began to rain. ”Ow!” Alison shouted aloud, clutching the back of her hand as the green (okay, science can’t explain why it’s green) water droplet that had just landed on it sizzled its way through her epidermis. She looked around her for shelter. There were no buildings within running distance, but there were a handful of gondolas lying on the banks of the acid river. If those things could float on the river, then they could handle a little rain, was Alison’s reasoning as she flipped one of the boats over itself and crouched underneath it.
The girl used the dim light of her cellphone to scan the area for spiders before making any attempt to become comfortable. She lay in the darkness, listening to the intensifying pitter-patter of the rain on the hull of the gondola.
Pitter-patter-pitter-patter-pitter-patter-pitter-patter
Nancy looked up. “Don’t worry,” said her current opponent nonchalantly. “The rain can’t get through. Things are in balance here.”
“That’s not what I’m seeing,” Nancy responded with a smile, looking back to the board. “I have you in five moves. I think.” This latest victory of Nancy’s could not have been entirely discarded as beginner’s luck—she was beginning to get quite the handle on tactics. Pieces that had seemed useless to her, like the Name piece, which forces the opponent to declare which moves they intended to make, or the Alkali, which turned rivers to water but only downstream of where it drowned, were now key to her strategy. The chess-priest was reduced to a single quadrant of the board, furiously using his surviving Fertility to multiply his spearmen in time for Nancy to mow them down in large swaths with her own troops. It was over in four moves.
The priest handed over a few gold coins, which Nancy slipped into her pocket alongside the rest. The next priestess in line wordlessly took her seat at Green and began reassembling the opening setup.
Before Nancy made her first move, she looked over the board. “It’s sort of curious,” she told her opponent. “Why are there two spearmen on the left side of the king and only one on the right?” She pointed at the asymmetrical spearman. “For that matter, this one looks brand new. It’s almost as if some other piece was meant to go here.”
The priestess looked around at the other natives, then reluctantly nodded. “There was another who once sat at the King’s left hand,” she confessed. “We don’t play with him anymore. Leave this matter.”
“A variant, then?” piped up Nancy cheerily. “I’d like to play it, if you don’t mind. I think I have this setup figured out, and it’s starting to get a bit boring—no offense,” she added graciously. “You’re all very good.”
The priestess frowned gravely. “The Dice threw the game out of balance. It was removed.”
Nancy clapped her hands together. “Dice! Now that’s more my style. I used to roll the bones now and—“
“To bring back the Dice would be to upset the balance once more. It is forbidden.”
“Alright, alright,” relented Nancy. “What side did it favor? Green or grey?”
The priestess rolled her eyes. “The Dice favored the Dice. Now, are you going to make the first move, or--”
The players were interrupted by the very, very, very sudden arrival of a wiry, athletic native. “I come with a message for the Goddess,” he panted.
Nancy eyed the Messenger piece on the board. The resemblance was striking. “The Goddess is in the Inner Temple, I’ve been told,” she told the newcomer. “While you’re down there, can you tell Alison—girl about yea high, hard to miss—tell her she’s been down there an awfully long time and I’m starting to worry.”
“The girl isn’t where you think she is,” replied Messenger. “I’ll convey your worries,” he promised, “But I’m not going down into the Inner Temple. I have no time to get wrapped up in the goddess’ games. You, priestess,” he said, addressing Nancy’s opponent. “You go in my stead. Tell her that I’m going to contact her equivalent piece in the new Pantheon—this ‘COFCA’—and make them the offer we discussed. Tell her our gambit is in the endgame now. Show her these.”
Messenger reached behind his back and produced a pair of dice. One was green, one was grey. The chess-priestess snatched them up with a sidelong glare at Nancy. “I’m going to speak with the goddess,” she said. “By the time I get back, I’d appreciate if you’d made your move.”
Nancy took one more look at the board. She was in a different place emotionally than she had been three games ago, she could be sure of that. “If it’s all the same to you,” she told the priestess, standing and picking up her typewriter, “I think I’ll come along. I’ve never been in an Inner Temple before. Is that the same thing as an Inner Sanctum?”
* * * * *
Pitter-patter-pitter-patter-pitter-patter-pitter-patter
The rain from outside drowned out the silence around the fire, until Song cryptically proclaimed, “She only comes out at night!”
“The lean and hungry type,” explained Song, when all eyes turned to him.
“You guys are weird,” laughed Ethan, failing to understand the gravity of the situation. “Anyway, is God really dead, or is that just pretend?”
Emma cooed. Six said nothing. Name coughed. “We’ll be fine in here,” the god told Six, “Unless the river floods. That’s a big ‘unless.’”
”Question 47: What’s the point?” asked Six.
“So many have paid to see,” answered Song, “What you think you’re getting for free.”
”INCORRECT. Question 48: Who would even care if we all drowned in acid tonight?”
”If you’re in it for love, you ain’t gonna get to far,” was all he could offer. Then he rose as if startled. “Whoa, here she comes!” he cried, covering Ethan’s eyes with the hand that wasn’t holding Emma. “Watch out, boy, she’ll chew you up!”
The last thing Ethan saw was a woman’s bare foot descending the stairs.
The first thing he didn’t see, obscured as his vision was by Song’s hand, was a woman’s bare everything, sashaying down the steps with a confidence normally reserved for people hiding their bodies behind clothes. The woman laid her lightly sizzling pink umbrella down in the corner and sat provocatively cross-legged by the fire. “Some weather we’re having here, boys,” she purred, making the word “boys” sound like the name of a particularly expensive wine.
In the midst of his existential turmoil Six felt a slight pseudo-endorphic reaction, as he always does when something comes on screen that is guaranteed to be good for ratings. “She’s a maneater,” concluded Song.
“Did someone get eaten?” asked Ethan. “I want to see! My dad lets me watch gory movies all the time, I promise!”
“The walk over here mustn’t have been pleasant, Obligatory Sex Goddess Representing an Ultimately Misogynist and Regressive Romantic Ideal,” greeted Name with an ironic sneer.
“It’s Ms. Fertility, actually,” corrected the goddess playfully. “I never married.”
“I wouldn’t if I were you,” advised Song.
“Well, there’s hardly much time left,” replied Fertility, “Seeing as we’re all going to drown in acid.”
“Did someone write a bad word on the wall?” guessed Ethan. “’Cause if it begins with an H, a D, or a P, or an A, it’s a word I already know, so you can let me see it.”
”Question 49:” prompted Six, sounding more intrigued than dejected. ”What are you doing here?”
”Mind over matter,” suggested Song.
“That’s one way to put it.” Fertility turned as though noticing Six for the first time. “Chess and Messenger are playing the long game with regards to you new arrivals, and they’ve roped me into it somehow. Well, ‘somehow’ is just me being obtuse. He sent me flowers.” The goddess opened her mouth, reached her fingers in and somehow managed to pull a rose out of her throat, which she handed to Six. It retained all of its thorns and the robot would have judged the flower to have been sitting contentedly in a vase since being cut no more than a day ago. Not knowing what to do with the rose, he tucked it into the lining of his coat awkwardly. “Anyway,” yawned Fertility, “You know those two. Chess is playing just to play, and Messenger just goes where the action is, but I have my own gondola in this race. These two gentlemen seem to have forgotten that I’m anything other than a pretty avatar—maybe I should start appearing in my thundery-voiced, abstract incarnation just to get some respect around this place—but being Fertility makes me the incarnation of creation, life, and the answer to the question of entropy.”
”Question 50: The question of entropy?”
”Me.”
Six puzzled over this answer, which he could not fairly be judge to be incorrect for all possible interpretations of the question, while Fertility continued. “Anyway, admittedly I’ve been slacking off in my duties ever since we chained Dice. Didn’t seem so important to create when nothing was being destroyed... I’ve been in rough shape. Not that you’d think it to look at me, I know. But there hasn’t been a baby born in this city in millenia. So imagine my surprise when a healthy, fertile young family—complete with a beautiful baby girl—just drops into my lap like an overeager dancer.”
The goddess cast an eye upon Emma. “Watch out, watch out, watch out, watch out,” growled Song, clutching the baby to his chest.
“Oh, you don’t need to worry about me,” smiled Fertility. “We have the girl out accumulating worshippers thinking she’s impressing the new Doorknobs and Locks, and dozens of sightings of her parents’ vehicle rolling uphill in violation of all reason. The boy has shared a fire with gods, and the girl has joined at least two cults in the last couple hours. These ‘Broderburgs’ are becoming charged with heroic myth. If Chess’s plan works out, we’ll be able to build a new, prosperous civilization, modeled on their image.”
Emma giggled and pointed at Fertility; Song, suddenly short of words, hesitantly handed the baby over. The goddess sighed contentedly. “Gods, it’s been so long since I held a child.”
“Don’t you dare feed her, Bitch Who Cheated On Me With Poem But Is Admittedly The Best Hope For Our Civilization,” warned Name. “You know what the milk of a goddess will do to her. You don’t want that. She should grow up a normal child.”
“Oh, I know,” pouted Fertility. “I need to get her back to her mother. A nice, normal child who teleported in from Observatory-knows-what corner of the multiverse. Here, why don’t I cover myself before Song over there gives the boy a stroke trying to preserve my modesty?”
Ethan was, indeed, struggling, having successively become certain that he was missing a monkey, a dead body, a ghost, and a Sega Dreamcast. Fertility took Emma under one arm and with the other lifted the fire right out of the pit, folding it around her as a flaming robe. Emma, wide-eyed, grabbed at the dancing light of the fire rising off of the goddess’s chest. Song let Ethan go; the boy leapt forwards directly into the pit where the fire had been five seconds before, covering his face in soot.
The boy Broderburg looked up and was disappointed to see nothing more interesting than a woman holding his baby sister while her entire body was wreathed in flame. “Hi,” he groaned. “I’m Ethan. Were you wrapping presents just now?”
Fertility chuckled. “You could say that. Hi, Ethan, I’m Fertility. I’m here to take you and your sister back to your parents.”
Whirr
The goddess, looking towards Six as though noticing him for the first time all over again, smiled towards the robot. “You want to come along for the ride, big fella? I’m guessing you have no place to be after unleashing death upon the world.”
Six stared back at Fertility thoughtfully. “Come on,” she pleaded. “It could be fun. Don’t be a square.”
The goddess framed the gamehost’s face with her thumbs and forefingers, leaving Emma suspended happily in midair. The robot, though well aware that he was a cube and not a square, nonetheless had much to think about.
* * * * *
Pitter patter pitter patter pitter patter pitter patter
The storm was wreaking havoc on Alison’s cellphone reception, though her battery was holding strong. She didn’t feel like sleeping. Her body had no idea how long it had been awake. As an experiment, Alison fiddled with the alarm function on her phone, setting it to ring in exactly one hour. She hoped she wouldn’t still be sitting bored under this canoe at that point.
About thirty seconds passed before it rang. “What the hell?” cried Alison aloud, opening the phone in distress.
Displayed on the cellular’s screen was a “text-message,” some obscure feature of the phone that Alison had never trifled with much, as it seemed to her to be a more laborious and expensive version of AOL Instant Messenger. The message read as follows:
Lift up the left side of the gondola about five inches, please.
It left no callback number. Alison held the phone at arm’s length, as if it were something contagious, and reread the message. It was very direct and polite. Her mother had warned her not to trust direct, polite strangers. Always willing to ignore her mother’s warnings, the girl braced her back against what was the left side of the gondola from her perspective at least and lifted.
The native man who Alison had remembered seeing talking to Carnea earlier slid belly-first into the underside of the boat and rolled into a sitting position opposite the Broderburg. “Hi,” he began, speaking somewhat faster than is normal. “I’m Messenger. We’ve met. Kind of. Nancy says she’s worried about you but that’s not what’s important right now.”
“Hi, Messenger,” responded Alison, putting away her phone. “Chess told me I should talk to you. But I think she thought I was going to go talk to Envoy first? Whatever.”
“Yeah, I was supposed to be talking to C.O.F.C.A. like, half an hour ago. But I’ve been busy. Messages flying around everywhere. But, you know, neither acid rain nor acid snow nor acid heat nor gloom of eclipse stays this courier from swift completion of his appointed rounds. Heh. Hey, I’m supposed to be taking you back to your parents--”
Alison groaned.
“—But do you mind if I stop and see Envoy first? We’ll be heading right into the source of all death and chaos in the world. Could be fun.”
That didn’t sound all that fun—maybe more like something Ethan would be into—but if it kept her from getting back to her parents for a bit, she was in. “Alright,” she said.
“Thanks,” smiled Messenger. “That’ll save me some time. Do you know how hard it is to run the entire length of this city without a single raindrop touching you?”
Alison listened to the sound of the rain, which was coming down pretty hard now. “Really, really hard?” she guessed.
The god shrugged. “Not really, if you’re me,” he said. “Anyway, let’s go.” With one hand, Messenger grabbed Alison’s wrist; with the other, he threw the gondola casually through the air into the river, exposing the two of them to the rain outside.
And then he began to run.
Flying right into the thing may not have been the best idea.
Envoy could handle the acid rain, that wasn’t a problem. A sustained period of immersion in that river might do some damage, but the usual wear and tear of a zero pH substance battering him from above wouldn’t cause any damage that couldn’t be buffed out.
But something else was happening here, in the eye of the storm. Something that was making basically all measurements associated with Envoy drop between two to three percent from normal levels. Reaction time, optical resolution, battery life, mass. The best guess back at the Council was that something was making their robot age. And given that he was intended to survive a space flight to a distant civilization, it would take a lot of age to start having an effect like this.
For explanations, the C.O.F.C.A. needed look no farther than the ominous, booming voice emanating from the sky.
YOU CANNOT ESCAPE ME, LITTLE ROBOT
I AM MURPHY’S LAW
I AM WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU DRIVE WITHOUT INSURANCE
THE SECOND YOU PULL OUT OF THE GARAGE, YOU’RE ROLLING THE DICEAND THE DICE ARE WEIGHTED
The winds were making it difficult to get to safety, and there was nothing to shoot. Three C.O.F.C.A.teers got into a lively but ultimately fruitless discussion of weather control and why exactly the rain was green and glowing when they were pulled out of the fire by an act of God.
Specifically, an act of Messenger. Still dragging a conspicuously dry-haired Alison by one arm, the god seemed to leap through the air into the eye of the storm, throw Envoy over one shoulder and descend, landing semi-gracefully by the entrance to a spare temple.
Messenger ducked inside to catch his breath and allow Alison’s inner ears to rebalance. “Whew,” he sighed, sounding more exhilarated than tired. Then he addressed Envoy. “Hi. COFCA, right? I’m Messenger.”
After a slight delay, the robot nodded.
“Good, good, good. I’d like to ask for your help with something. I’m something of an ambassador myself, you see.”
Envoy did not make any motion to indicate that he was impressed by this, or even that he cared.
“And I’ve been trying to get a bunch of gods together to try and fight off Dice, that’s the god who started all this, or else weigh him back in our favor, and maybe jumpstart our civilization again. Which benefits everyone, right?”
Still the robot stood perfectly still.
“The thing is, owing to some ancient pacts, rules we have to follow and such, there’s one god, the god that we need more than any if we want this to work, and none of us can get to him. His name is Base. You might be able to serve as an ambassador between us and him.”
No response from Envoy. Messenger sighed. “Think about it. That’s the message.” The god turned back towards Alison. “Are you alright?” he asked.
”Yeah, I think so.” Alison looked outside. “I’ve been trying to avoid my parents, but I guess now that it’s raining out I don’t really have anything to do other than head home. Are we gonna go?”
“Yeah, whenever you’re ready,” said Messenger. “But first, you said you were looking for me, right? Did you have a message to send?”
* * * * *
Tinktinktinktinktinktinktinksizzle plop
A drop of acid burned through the roof of the RV and landed on the couch. “That’s not good,” Tom breathed, stepping on the accelerator. “We need to find a garage, fast.”
”It’s only a bit of rain, Stein,” mocked Parsley. ”Haven’t we bigger concerns at the moment than a leaking roof?”
”How about a leaking skull?” asked John, impatiently.
”You might want to slow down a little,” cautioned Clarice. ”The road’s slippery, you can’t see a thing, and the kids are out there somewhere.”
”The kids hate the rain, they’ll be holed up indoors watching TV or whatever it is that kids do here,” assured Tom. “Anyway, the road just follows the riverbank, which is glowing, so—“
”Watch out!”
Seeing the figure in the middle of the road too late, Tom swerved the RV left, sending it careening into the river.
If he’d been paying close attention, he might have noticed that for a radius of about five feet around the figure, the rain wasn’t falling. As though the rain were doing the man’s bidding, or the man the rain’s.
John saw the hood of the RV slide into the river and slowly begin to roll down the bank. He didn’t have time to pull off a dramatic rescue, and was fairly sure someone else would get around to it. He had bigger concerns.
John stepped into the temple (was every other building in this city somebody’s temple?) and began to descend the long, spiral staircase that awaited him inside. At the bottom of the stairs was a large, ornate door. John pulled on the handle, to no avail. “It’s locked,” he complained aloud. The voice of Dice berated him from above:
THAT IS YOUR PROBLEM TO DEAL WITH
NO AGENT OF MINE SHOULD BE STYMIED BY A MERE LOCK
NO AGENT OF MINE SHOULD BE STYMIED BY A MERE LOCK
“No,” said John. He examined the door to the inner temple. The heiroglyphs carved onto it he at first took to be something of a Promethean narrative, with a god giving some symbol of positive energy to Man. But on a second glance, the godly figure in the pictographs was the man accepting the gift, not the giver. It wasn’t a creation myth, it was a chemical equation. “I’ll still deliver Base, as promised,” he told Dice. “I’ll just need to call in an expert on locks.”