Re: The Grand Battle S2G1! [Round Four: New Battleopolis!]
03-15-2012, 03:10 AM
Originally posted on MSPA by Lord Paradise.
When forcefully invading another person’s dreamspace, it’s important to keep in mind that you’re juggling a lot of very fragile metaphors. If you want your victim to wake up the next morning as essentially the same person (though of course philomantic debate rages as to whether this is at all possible in the first place), you want to make sure not to introduce any elements that would significantly upset their psyche. For instance, if you want to appear in someone’s dream disguised as their mother, it is essential that you remember to wear clothes. Also, if you’re sending an emissary into the brain of a young woman who has recently come out of an ordeal of psychic manipulation by a parasitic wyrm, you wouldn’t want your emissary to be, say, the harbinger of one of the most efficiently devastating parasitic organisms in the entirety of its home universe.
Then again, depending on your motivations, that might be exactly what you want to do.
* * * * *
”Tor” and Nancy were in the planetarium, toying with the Eye of the Empress, when they got the news. Red burst in to the odd sight of his boss, now decidedly womanly in aspect, hungrily examining candid imagery of all the remaining non-humans on base and chatting absentmindedly with that frightened-looking human girl who was (her?) new plaything now. The lobster decided he had bigger problems on his mind than what he suspected to be the imminent downfall of the society he had helped build here, and he called out, “Sir,” a little uncertainly. “Sorry to interrupt, but, uh, you’re going to want to have a look at the sun.”
“The sun, huh?” Tor apathetically sized up her comrade before sighing and giving the empress’ skull a lazy thump. The image of Velobo Calidad doing his morning exercises flicked to that of the sky above the museum, and the non-human saw the problem immediately. The sun, which could normally be trusted to function around this time, was being eclipsed by a slice of beige that bent the light around it, putting all her territory in the shade.
”We believe it to be relatively small, but low in the sky,” posited Red.
”I don’t understand,” said Nancy. ”What does this mean?”
”I’m normally a staunch believer in arming one’s self with knowledge,” joked Red nervously, ”But in this case, I think we’d be better off not finding out.”
They found out in about a minute, when a fragment of the Amalgam strolled right up to the border of Tor’s territory, nonchalantly took one step past, and raised his megaphone. Aside from that bug-eyed smile on his face, this one would hardly be recognizable as a fragment, because he lacked that disgustingly average quality—he had been selected for his task on the basis his movie-star good looks and showmanship. “Greetings, genetically inferior scum!” he announced, his voice dripping with so much optimism it might have given him pneumonia. “Don’t mind me; I’m just here to tell you about the wonders of... humanity!”
Right on cue, humans appeared on the border. Lots of them. Really, really quite a lot of humans indeed. In unison, all-quite-a-lot of them took one step into non-human territory and proceeded to march.
Fanthalion, watching on the planetarium's screen, rose to Tor’s feet. ”Red,” she commanded. ”Gather everyone still fit to fight and show these humans how it's done.” Red saluted and wordlessly exited the planetarium.
“—famous humans throughout history include Albert Einstein, Pontius Pilate, Emma Broderburg, William Shatner, Rosa Parks, Peter the Great, three of the Beatles, Louis Sachar, the pharaoh Hatshepsut, the Hand of Silver, Lisa Gherardini, Qin Shi Huang, Penélope Cruz—“
Tor turned to Nancy, her commanding presence replaced by alarm. ”We need to get out of here,” she determined. ”Preferably before the killing starts.”
”Okay,” whimpered Nancy, watching the human army march across the projection. Fantha dislodged the skull from the projector, and the planetarium went dark, though the voice on the megaphone continued:
“—Considered to be one of the most versatile races in Dungeons & Dragons, though they are in actuality a species—“
Taking the skull in one hand and Nancy in the other, Tor ran out to the stairwell and climbed up to the roof of the museum. The battle had already been joined, with Eximo’s vacuum army making its stand against the first wave of humans—but every human who fell simply collapsed out of existence and was replaced by another. The giant Ovoid in the sky bobbed excitedly in billions of directions at once, throwing an odd non-Euclidian strobe effect over the whole scene. Fanthalion vaguely understood that if it wanted, this thing could simply materialize an army inside the walls of the museum, but like a cat (or, more aptly, like a particularly sadistic human) it was choosing to toy with its food.
“—the invention of the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, crop rotation, the jetpack, the pornographic magazine, democracy, the wheel, the domesticated parrot, the polio vaccine, plastic surgery, the viola—“
* * * * *
”—the nuclear family, the particle accelerator, written language, standardized time, the hyperdimensional resonator, Raiders of the Lost Ark, the race riot--“
In fact, there were precisely two fragments of the Amalgam who had appeared inside Tor’s borders, and they passed completely unnoticed as they searched for their target, given that everybody was focused on the much more exciting events inside. They found her still unconscious and largely forgotten on a hospital bed next to a typewriter.
The female of the duo, who insofar as she was capable of independent thought liked to think of herself as a maternal, nurturing figure, nudged Jen’s cheek. “Wake up!” she said, failing to be quiet or gentle at all. “It is important that you be removed from the premises before—“
ClackClackClackClackClackClackClackClack
The two Fragments leaned over and examined the typewriter, which was typing out a steady stream of ”CCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCC CCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCC okay, got your attention.
“So you guys are into humans, are you? I’ll tell you about humans. Humans—“
Meanwhile, the voice over the loudspeaker reminded everyone in the vicinity that “It was Leo Tolstoy who said—“
* * * * *
”—‘The sole purpose of life is to serve humanity!’ And has Tolstoy ever led you astray? No he hasn’t!”
Watching the situation from above, Nancy realized she only thought she was watching a heated battle between humans and non-humans because it was what she expected to see. In reality, the marching legions of humans weren't actually fighting at all, except in that they seemed to be winning. As the lobster and his army of angels, goat men, clockwork women, vacuums, and assorted other oddities waded weapons-first into the sea of beige, it seemed to swallow them up and then spit them out again, in a way that was hard to perceive exactly. It was as though reality around the combat zone wasn’t working the way it should.
”—weak, ignorant, unattractive, developmentally stunted, undereducated, racist, superstitious, greedy, sexually repressed--“
”—Greater breadth of documented sexual positions than any other species in the known multiverse—“
The building was starting to shake. Nancy grabbed Fanthalion’s arm.
”—louts, masochists, slobs, whores, crybabies, hacks, evangelicals, bulimics, aspiring photographers--“
”—proponents of simulation theory agree that the multiverse was in fact created by humans, while critics at least grudgingly admit that simulation theory itself was a human creation—“
They tried to jump off the roof but somehow ended up jumping sideways and falling up, which was worrying. As bits of the museum began to bend, flicker, waltz and otherwise reject their own inertia, Tor and Nancy clung to one another, each reassured by the solidity of the other’s body.
”—sum total of a thousand generations of parents telling their children the easy lie that will get them to go to bed the soonest. Your entire society is a ten-billion-way mutual Stockholm case. You’ll take anyone to the prom if you think the odds are above half that he won’t whip his dick out on the dance floor--“
”—and remember, boys and girls, these animals don’t even feel pain the way we do!”
”—my body isn’t even capable of producing bile, but the way you people fail on such a consistent basis to cope with even the most inane shit—“
”God is made in the image of us! When we pass a non-human in the streets and tell it to get on his knees, it’s not because we want it to lick our boots, it’s so we can step over it and keep on—”
”—Pretend you aren’t just a minor, insignificant contribution to a cycle of eating and fucking each other and shitting each other out across all of history and if you do rise above the pack and accomplish something that will last a hundred times your lifetime, that’s what the universe calls A FUCKING KIDNEY STONE! EVERY SINGLE FUCKING—“
”Shut,” one of the fragments scolded Etiyr, his Ovoid-brand smile cracking as he grabbed the typewriter and lifted it over his head. “The hell. U—”
”Boris!” cried Jen, sitting up with a start. The male fragment attempted to restore his smile, but only succeeded in preventing himself from breaking into a sob as the tears began to flow. The female one grabbed the girl’s hand. “Hello!” she said. “We are here to remove you from this place while it can still be said to exist. Did you just say ‘Bori—’”
At which juncture the two fragments were eviscerated by a swarm of death-dealing insects that burst through the wall. Jen, feeling awake all of a sudden, caught the typewriter as it fell, which was easy because it fell towards her rather than towards the floor. The ouroborites, meanwhile, seemed to become farther away the more they flew towards Jen. And for that matter, so were the walls. All seven of them.
In transit through something that cannot rightly be called “space,” Jen momentarily ceased to exist, giving her a nanosecond’s reprieve from her headache.
When forcefully invading another person’s dreamspace, it’s important to keep in mind that you’re juggling a lot of very fragile metaphors. If you want your victim to wake up the next morning as essentially the same person (though of course philomantic debate rages as to whether this is at all possible in the first place), you want to make sure not to introduce any elements that would significantly upset their psyche. For instance, if you want to appear in someone’s dream disguised as their mother, it is essential that you remember to wear clothes. Also, if you’re sending an emissary into the brain of a young woman who has recently come out of an ordeal of psychic manipulation by a parasitic wyrm, you wouldn’t want your emissary to be, say, the harbinger of one of the most efficiently devastating parasitic organisms in the entirety of its home universe.
Then again, depending on your motivations, that might be exactly what you want to do.
* * * * *
”Tor” and Nancy were in the planetarium, toying with the Eye of the Empress, when they got the news. Red burst in to the odd sight of his boss, now decidedly womanly in aspect, hungrily examining candid imagery of all the remaining non-humans on base and chatting absentmindedly with that frightened-looking human girl who was (her?) new plaything now. The lobster decided he had bigger problems on his mind than what he suspected to be the imminent downfall of the society he had helped build here, and he called out, “Sir,” a little uncertainly. “Sorry to interrupt, but, uh, you’re going to want to have a look at the sun.”
“The sun, huh?” Tor apathetically sized up her comrade before sighing and giving the empress’ skull a lazy thump. The image of Velobo Calidad doing his morning exercises flicked to that of the sky above the museum, and the non-human saw the problem immediately. The sun, which could normally be trusted to function around this time, was being eclipsed by a slice of beige that bent the light around it, putting all her territory in the shade.
”We believe it to be relatively small, but low in the sky,” posited Red.
”I don’t understand,” said Nancy. ”What does this mean?”
”I’m normally a staunch believer in arming one’s self with knowledge,” joked Red nervously, ”But in this case, I think we’d be better off not finding out.”
They found out in about a minute, when a fragment of the Amalgam strolled right up to the border of Tor’s territory, nonchalantly took one step past, and raised his megaphone. Aside from that bug-eyed smile on his face, this one would hardly be recognizable as a fragment, because he lacked that disgustingly average quality—he had been selected for his task on the basis his movie-star good looks and showmanship. “Greetings, genetically inferior scum!” he announced, his voice dripping with so much optimism it might have given him pneumonia. “Don’t mind me; I’m just here to tell you about the wonders of... humanity!”
Right on cue, humans appeared on the border. Lots of them. Really, really quite a lot of humans indeed. In unison, all-quite-a-lot of them took one step into non-human territory and proceeded to march.
Fanthalion, watching on the planetarium's screen, rose to Tor’s feet. ”Red,” she commanded. ”Gather everyone still fit to fight and show these humans how it's done.” Red saluted and wordlessly exited the planetarium.
“—famous humans throughout history include Albert Einstein, Pontius Pilate, Emma Broderburg, William Shatner, Rosa Parks, Peter the Great, three of the Beatles, Louis Sachar, the pharaoh Hatshepsut, the Hand of Silver, Lisa Gherardini, Qin Shi Huang, Penélope Cruz—“
Tor turned to Nancy, her commanding presence replaced by alarm. ”We need to get out of here,” she determined. ”Preferably before the killing starts.”
”Okay,” whimpered Nancy, watching the human army march across the projection. Fantha dislodged the skull from the projector, and the planetarium went dark, though the voice on the megaphone continued:
“—Considered to be one of the most versatile races in Dungeons & Dragons, though they are in actuality a species—“
Taking the skull in one hand and Nancy in the other, Tor ran out to the stairwell and climbed up to the roof of the museum. The battle had already been joined, with Eximo’s vacuum army making its stand against the first wave of humans—but every human who fell simply collapsed out of existence and was replaced by another. The giant Ovoid in the sky bobbed excitedly in billions of directions at once, throwing an odd non-Euclidian strobe effect over the whole scene. Fanthalion vaguely understood that if it wanted, this thing could simply materialize an army inside the walls of the museum, but like a cat (or, more aptly, like a particularly sadistic human) it was choosing to toy with its food.
“—the invention of the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, crop rotation, the jetpack, the pornographic magazine, democracy, the wheel, the domesticated parrot, the polio vaccine, plastic surgery, the viola—“
* * * * *
”—the nuclear family, the particle accelerator, written language, standardized time, the hyperdimensional resonator, Raiders of the Lost Ark, the race riot--“
In fact, there were precisely two fragments of the Amalgam who had appeared inside Tor’s borders, and they passed completely unnoticed as they searched for their target, given that everybody was focused on the much more exciting events inside. They found her still unconscious and largely forgotten on a hospital bed next to a typewriter.
The female of the duo, who insofar as she was capable of independent thought liked to think of herself as a maternal, nurturing figure, nudged Jen’s cheek. “Wake up!” she said, failing to be quiet or gentle at all. “It is important that you be removed from the premises before—“
ClackClackClackClackClackClackClackClack
The two Fragments leaned over and examined the typewriter, which was typing out a steady stream of ”CCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCC CCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCC okay, got your attention.
“So you guys are into humans, are you? I’ll tell you about humans. Humans—“
Meanwhile, the voice over the loudspeaker reminded everyone in the vicinity that “It was Leo Tolstoy who said—“
* * * * *
”—‘The sole purpose of life is to serve humanity!’ And has Tolstoy ever led you astray? No he hasn’t!”
Watching the situation from above, Nancy realized she only thought she was watching a heated battle between humans and non-humans because it was what she expected to see. In reality, the marching legions of humans weren't actually fighting at all, except in that they seemed to be winning. As the lobster and his army of angels, goat men, clockwork women, vacuums, and assorted other oddities waded weapons-first into the sea of beige, it seemed to swallow them up and then spit them out again, in a way that was hard to perceive exactly. It was as though reality around the combat zone wasn’t working the way it should.
”—weak, ignorant, unattractive, developmentally stunted, undereducated, racist, superstitious, greedy, sexually repressed--“
”—Greater breadth of documented sexual positions than any other species in the known multiverse—“
The building was starting to shake. Nancy grabbed Fanthalion’s arm.
”—louts, masochists, slobs, whores, crybabies, hacks, evangelicals, bulimics, aspiring photographers--“
”—proponents of simulation theory agree that the multiverse was in fact created by humans, while critics at least grudgingly admit that simulation theory itself was a human creation—“
They tried to jump off the roof but somehow ended up jumping sideways and falling up, which was worrying. As bits of the museum began to bend, flicker, waltz and otherwise reject their own inertia, Tor and Nancy clung to one another, each reassured by the solidity of the other’s body.
”—sum total of a thousand generations of parents telling their children the easy lie that will get them to go to bed the soonest. Your entire society is a ten-billion-way mutual Stockholm case. You’ll take anyone to the prom if you think the odds are above half that he won’t whip his dick out on the dance floor--“
”—and remember, boys and girls, these animals don’t even feel pain the way we do!”
”—my body isn’t even capable of producing bile, but the way you people fail on such a consistent basis to cope with even the most inane shit—“
”God is made in the image of us! When we pass a non-human in the streets and tell it to get on his knees, it’s not because we want it to lick our boots, it’s so we can step over it and keep on—”
”—Pretend you aren’t just a minor, insignificant contribution to a cycle of eating and fucking each other and shitting each other out across all of history and if you do rise above the pack and accomplish something that will last a hundred times your lifetime, that’s what the universe calls A FUCKING KIDNEY STONE! EVERY SINGLE FUCKING—“
”Shut,” one of the fragments scolded Etiyr, his Ovoid-brand smile cracking as he grabbed the typewriter and lifted it over his head. “The hell. U—”
”Boris!” cried Jen, sitting up with a start. The male fragment attempted to restore his smile, but only succeeded in preventing himself from breaking into a sob as the tears began to flow. The female one grabbed the girl’s hand. “Hello!” she said. “We are here to remove you from this place while it can still be said to exist. Did you just say ‘Bori—’”
At which juncture the two fragments were eviscerated by a swarm of death-dealing insects that burst through the wall. Jen, feeling awake all of a sudden, caught the typewriter as it fell, which was easy because it fell towards her rather than towards the floor. The ouroborites, meanwhile, seemed to become farther away the more they flew towards Jen. And for that matter, so were the walls. All seven of them.
In transit through something that cannot rightly be called “space,” Jen momentarily ceased to exist, giving her a nanosecond’s reprieve from her headache.