Re: Grand Battle S3G1! (Round One: Vio Maleficat)
12-31-2010, 06:52 PM
Originally posted on MSPA by Lord Paradise.
One (1): On Chaos and Giving a Shit
The Saint woke up in a marsh.
His four-poster bed was either slowly sinking into the murk or being pulled under by the insipid-looking ivy that wormed its way over the canopy. Dragonflies the size of dachshunds did synchronized acrobatics near the ceiling, trailing pink smoke that crystallized and fell as snow onto the liquefied carpet.
The Unity Belt had fallen out of its charger again. It was the third time this month, and the Saint suspected foul play on the part of the universe.
He plugged the belt back in and it whirred to life, sending out a calming pulse of New Order that washed away the stink of nature. The reeds obscuring the wall withered into dust, revealing portraits of the Saint behind them; the leeches on his skin put down their comically large hypodermic needles and ceased to be, leaving the silk bedclothes of the Saint untarnished; in a few seconds, the cicadas ceased their debates and the Saint could hear the familiar sounds of his palace stuff, constantly working towards his satisfaction and the maintenance of his New Order (though of course the Belt did most of that work for them). And the Saint turned on the Light, and reminded himself that it was Good.
The Unity Belt was at only a fraction of its immense energy storage capacity, meaning that the Saint would either have to lie in bed for three hours waiting for the New Order to saturate, or he could lug the battery pack around on his back for the rest of the day. The battery pack tended to glitch.
The Saint sighed and swung his feet over the side of his bed. A lingering alligator snapped at his ankle and at the same moment remembered that it was just a vestige of the Old Order and had no place in the Unity of the world’s one true Saint.
The battery pack made it impractical to shower. The Saint hoped that nobody would notice the smell of sweat and boredom on him.
<font size="3">Two (2): Organs and Origins
The organ’s pipes stretched out through the castle, and in fact made up about half of the hallways, so that at its full volume the proper pitch of the music produced could only be perceived at a distance of five miles or greater, and when all the doors in the palace were closed. The Saint was proud of this feature but had never employed it because he wasn’t very good at the organ. On the electronic keyboard that he’d shoddily placed over the organ’s keys, he frantically concentrated on not fumbling the opening notes of “Heart and Soul.” He tried to imagine his hands as a man and a woman dancing (he was better at dancing than he was at playing the piano, at least), but this only made it more jarring when they tripped and fell, reducing the song to an off-key catastrophe.
A wet clapping sound registered TinTen’s entrance into the organ chamber.</font> ”Stepping up your efforts, I see. Shows.”
”TinTen,” said the Saint, breathing portentiously. “What. The hell? Gives you the right to take that attitude with me?”
”Don’t know what Lord talks about,” said TinTen, earnestly. ”Lord’s artistic development key to cultural development of Lord’s world. Have said yourself, if recollections serve.”
”I did say that, Tinten. I said that hoping that you would take the hint and leave me well alone when I am trying to play the twice-damned organ.” The Saint rose resplendently from his stool and walked past his Meipi acolyte gruffly. “Is it in your prophecies that you have to be my mother as well as my faithful servant?”
“Role of the mother in Lord’s human societies may be different than in… Huebert’s.” The Saint chose to ignore TinTen’s shudder. ”Am friend, as has been ordained.”
”Friend. Very well. TinTen, why hasn’t the Fool come for me yet?”
”For ‘us.’ Click. Distasteful pronoun.”
”For any of us. The… none of my precautions should be able to keep out an omnipotent being of the Fool’s caliber. God knows I had enough trouble sorting out Ben’s situation… he said, ‘Kill each other or else.’ Or else. He said that, didn’t he?”
”Yes, Lord.”
”It’s been months since the last death. The battle is stalled, he must know that. Unless we’re still trying to kill each other, hmm, TinTen?” The Saint picked TinTen up by the squishy middle. “Are you hiding something from me?”
”No. Remind Lord that killing makes all this go away. End of round an undesired outcome with all that Lord has built.”
The Saint snarled and dropped TinTen on the floor with a squelch. “Maybe he’s dead,” he said. “Maybe the Fool got himself killed and we’re stranded out here and don’t even know it.”
”Lord rules over 18 billion sentients,” reminded TinTen. ”’Stranded’ may not be apt word choice.”
The Saint looked down at the carpet. The fibers were beginning to fray and unravel, rearranging themselves into the text of various Herman Melville works. The battery pack on his back hummed with the mechanical equivalent of desperation.
Three (3): Should Old Acquaintance Be Forgot
The Saint solemnly studied his reflection on the other side of the glass. There were noticeable flecks of grey in his reflection’s black hair; his clothes were ragged, he was skinnier than he had ever been, and he gave off the lonely exasperation of a man trapped in a glass box. Because, of course, he was.
“Have you come to release me?” the spitting image of the Saint asked the original.
“Of course not, don’t be ridiculous,” said the Saint. “No, Ben, I’m just making sure you’re still me.”
“I’m still you,” said Ben, glumly. “Why am I you? Can’t I at least know what you’re doing to the world that makes this happen?”
”Figure it out yourself, if you’re so clever. God knows you’ve had plenty of time to think about it.” Scofflaw fell into a silent contemplation that was entirely unlike guilt. “You’re thin.”
”You don’t let me eat solid food.”
”You might choke on it. On purpose, maybe. I can’t have you dying on me. Do you want to die, Ben?” Ben sighed noncommittally. “Close enough. Hold that indifference close to the chest. Remember that at least you have a home now. I’m your savior, in a way.”
Ben clutched his arms as though worrying that he’d fade away.
”I haven’t forgotten,” he admitted.
“That’s good,” said the Saint. “You know certain theories of the afterlife suggest that it’s a lot like your past situation, Ben. Limbo. Endless not belonging, neither being nor not being, and, when being, being both everywhere and nowhere at all. I try not to think about it that much, but then again I’m not the one on suicide watch, am I, Ben?”
Ben put a hand to the glass. The battery pack on the Saint’s back began to hum. ”You don’t have to worry about me, Scofflaw. Go back to ruuurring thuur vvhvwuuuurrr”
The Saint jumped back from the glass as his reflection’s face warped into something reptilian and angry. He turned and ran, followed only by the heat exhaust blowing from the battery pack down to his heels.
”Scofflaw?” echoed a voice through the corridors as Ben’s captor scrambled away, calling for his Plazmuths. ”Scofflaw, what did you see? What did you just see?” But the Saint kept running.
Four (4): And Never Brought to Mind
The Saint, panicking and perhaps a bit delirious, warmed up the machine in the Shaman’s room in a flurry. Switches were flicked, electrical conductors were kicked into motions and brightly-colored fluids began to cascade through the tubes into the veins of the barely-recognizable (but still, in just enough ways to count, alive) deinonychus crucified to the wall.
Trails of sparks ran through the dinosaur’s tail, up his spine into his brain stem, which blossomed out into a beautiful and regrettably formaldehyde-smelling network of nerves that covered every wall of the room. TinTen flipped his goggles over his eyes, allowing the light show to settle down a bit before signaling for the Saint to hit the button.
The Saint hit the button, firing Broca’s area on the lobotomized dinosaur and enabling speech. Kerak’s eyelids opened, but behind them were only two luminescent glass balls. Despite the fact that his throat had wilted away to something resembling a soggy French fry, his speech was clear and penetrating:
”all are flotsam save one two four twelve infinity the cranberry juice rhapsody of Immanual Kant if you’ll turn to page thirty-four of your lovely insides today is Halloween and that means we get to get going git girl it’s getting hot in here did I say twelve I meant Murdoch the Fool points out the emperor has no clothes off with her head a royal flush goes the weasel Adolf Hitler in the attic a teenager if ever there was one Christ I could use a cigaraffe or was it a camel my lovely lady necks viva la guillotine atheism gets me hot a Cornell graduate you know isn't that speci--”
The Saint hit the button and turned expectantly towards TinTen. “What do you hear?” he asked.
”Same thing heard everytime Lord pulls out this relic. Chaos.” TinTen yanked off his glasses and threw them under his tentacles. ”Truest prophecy of all. Still can’t believe haven’t figured it out yet, Scofflaw.”
”What did you call me? Listen, TinTen, I don’t employ you to tell me riddles, you’re supposed to be interpreting them. What did the Shaman tell you?”
”Glossolalia of the shaman reveals only the fact of the outside. Figured it out weeks ago. Unity Field still processing request.”
The Saint put a hand to his belt. “You’re always smarter than I give you credit for, eh, TinTen? Have you been messing with the code? Where’s the Fool?”
”Guess would be that generation of omnipotent beings to serve half-baked notions of Order overloads Unity servers. Fool’s not coming. Fool’s not here, neither are we.”
”There is no ‘overload.’ Unity remade the world in my image and it’s a self-perpetuating system. This isn’t Vio anymore, there are rules.”
”Still don’t understand. This is indeed Vio. World being processed in your image but is fat and repugnant world. Unity calculations approaching final solution as chaos bleed accelerates.”
The battery pack fizzled and began to smoke. Kerak, at the same moment, began to sing:
”A frog in a pond can’t understand the ocean”
The Saint, ignoring the dinosaur, scoffed at TinTen self-righteously. “That, though completely plausible, is utter bullshit.”
”A human can’t feel the Earth in motion”
There was a sound of rushing water. TinTen began to back away from the door. ”All this will have happened with none of us remembering. Have studied the technology. Are just a flicker of unreality in ‘Lord’s’ life. Grand Battle to resume shortly.”
They used to blame it on the ice age; they could have blamed it on the God’s rage!” belted Kerak, tauntingly, without a trace of emotion in his braindead face.
“Suppose you’re right,” said Scofflaw. “What’s the prize behind the door, then? What’s the final solution?”
”Comeuppance.”
The doors burst open with a flood of levitating water.
”But I killed the dinosaurs, Abby,” sang Kerak. The floor started to all gather in one place, like the inside of a garbage bag being picked up. The Saint screamed something that the universe never had time to hear before it all came tearing down with a splash and a Leviath’s roar.
"I killed the dinosaurs, Abby
And I’m coming for your kind too"
Five (5): And Days of Auld Lang Syne
It didn’t work.
Scofflaw groaned and removed his dagger, which sparked slightly, indignantly protesting the flashing “REQUEST DENIED” that had decided to hold a sit-in on the computer monitor like it was protesting a war. He turned and began to walk away, beginning to suspect that the Grand Battle wouldn’t be terribly easy for him.
He almost made it out of the room before the horse jumped through the computer screen, with a whinny of broken glass.
Scofflaw turned to face the horse and pressed a button on his dagger. The dagger’s blade retracted and was replaced by a three-foot-long pole, at the top of which sprouted a rather heavy-looking hammer’s head.
The horse, spooked from coming down with a sudden case of the Existences, shook her head from side to side as though begging Scofflaw to just leave her well enough alone. Then the hammer slapped her in the jaw, reducing her neck to a paper bag full of slosh.
Scofflaw kept hitting the horse until from a legal standpoint it was less a question of animal abuse and more a question of the improper disposal of biological materials. He couldn’t quite put his finger on why he was so angry.
Then he left, back into the corridors. He walked for some time.
One (1): On Chaos and Giving a Shit
The Saint woke up in a marsh.
His four-poster bed was either slowly sinking into the murk or being pulled under by the insipid-looking ivy that wormed its way over the canopy. Dragonflies the size of dachshunds did synchronized acrobatics near the ceiling, trailing pink smoke that crystallized and fell as snow onto the liquefied carpet.
The Unity Belt had fallen out of its charger again. It was the third time this month, and the Saint suspected foul play on the part of the universe.
He plugged the belt back in and it whirred to life, sending out a calming pulse of New Order that washed away the stink of nature. The reeds obscuring the wall withered into dust, revealing portraits of the Saint behind them; the leeches on his skin put down their comically large hypodermic needles and ceased to be, leaving the silk bedclothes of the Saint untarnished; in a few seconds, the cicadas ceased their debates and the Saint could hear the familiar sounds of his palace stuff, constantly working towards his satisfaction and the maintenance of his New Order (though of course the Belt did most of that work for them). And the Saint turned on the Light, and reminded himself that it was Good.
The Unity Belt was at only a fraction of its immense energy storage capacity, meaning that the Saint would either have to lie in bed for three hours waiting for the New Order to saturate, or he could lug the battery pack around on his back for the rest of the day. The battery pack tended to glitch.
The Saint sighed and swung his feet over the side of his bed. A lingering alligator snapped at his ankle and at the same moment remembered that it was just a vestige of the Old Order and had no place in the Unity of the world’s one true Saint.
The battery pack made it impractical to shower. The Saint hoped that nobody would notice the smell of sweat and boredom on him.
<font size="3">Two (2): Organs and Origins
The organ’s pipes stretched out through the castle, and in fact made up about half of the hallways, so that at its full volume the proper pitch of the music produced could only be perceived at a distance of five miles or greater, and when all the doors in the palace were closed. The Saint was proud of this feature but had never employed it because he wasn’t very good at the organ. On the electronic keyboard that he’d shoddily placed over the organ’s keys, he frantically concentrated on not fumbling the opening notes of “Heart and Soul.” He tried to imagine his hands as a man and a woman dancing (he was better at dancing than he was at playing the piano, at least), but this only made it more jarring when they tripped and fell, reducing the song to an off-key catastrophe.
A wet clapping sound registered TinTen’s entrance into the organ chamber.</font> ”Stepping up your efforts, I see. Shows.”
”TinTen,” said the Saint, breathing portentiously. “What. The hell? Gives you the right to take that attitude with me?”
”Don’t know what Lord talks about,” said TinTen, earnestly. ”Lord’s artistic development key to cultural development of Lord’s world. Have said yourself, if recollections serve.”
”I did say that, Tinten. I said that hoping that you would take the hint and leave me well alone when I am trying to play the twice-damned organ.” The Saint rose resplendently from his stool and walked past his Meipi acolyte gruffly. “Is it in your prophecies that you have to be my mother as well as my faithful servant?”
“Role of the mother in Lord’s human societies may be different than in… Huebert’s.” The Saint chose to ignore TinTen’s shudder. ”Am friend, as has been ordained.”
”Friend. Very well. TinTen, why hasn’t the Fool come for me yet?”
”For ‘us.’ Click. Distasteful pronoun.”
”For any of us. The… none of my precautions should be able to keep out an omnipotent being of the Fool’s caliber. God knows I had enough trouble sorting out Ben’s situation… he said, ‘Kill each other or else.’ Or else. He said that, didn’t he?”
”Yes, Lord.”
”It’s been months since the last death. The battle is stalled, he must know that. Unless we’re still trying to kill each other, hmm, TinTen?” The Saint picked TinTen up by the squishy middle. “Are you hiding something from me?”
”No. Remind Lord that killing makes all this go away. End of round an undesired outcome with all that Lord has built.”
The Saint snarled and dropped TinTen on the floor with a squelch. “Maybe he’s dead,” he said. “Maybe the Fool got himself killed and we’re stranded out here and don’t even know it.”
”Lord rules over 18 billion sentients,” reminded TinTen. ”’Stranded’ may not be apt word choice.”
The Saint looked down at the carpet. The fibers were beginning to fray and unravel, rearranging themselves into the text of various Herman Melville works. The battery pack on his back hummed with the mechanical equivalent of desperation.
Three (3): Should Old Acquaintance Be Forgot
The Saint solemnly studied his reflection on the other side of the glass. There were noticeable flecks of grey in his reflection’s black hair; his clothes were ragged, he was skinnier than he had ever been, and he gave off the lonely exasperation of a man trapped in a glass box. Because, of course, he was.
“Have you come to release me?” the spitting image of the Saint asked the original.
“Of course not, don’t be ridiculous,” said the Saint. “No, Ben, I’m just making sure you’re still me.”
“I’m still you,” said Ben, glumly. “Why am I you? Can’t I at least know what you’re doing to the world that makes this happen?”
”Figure it out yourself, if you’re so clever. God knows you’ve had plenty of time to think about it.” Scofflaw fell into a silent contemplation that was entirely unlike guilt. “You’re thin.”
”You don’t let me eat solid food.”
”You might choke on it. On purpose, maybe. I can’t have you dying on me. Do you want to die, Ben?” Ben sighed noncommittally. “Close enough. Hold that indifference close to the chest. Remember that at least you have a home now. I’m your savior, in a way.”
Ben clutched his arms as though worrying that he’d fade away.
”I haven’t forgotten,” he admitted.
“That’s good,” said the Saint. “You know certain theories of the afterlife suggest that it’s a lot like your past situation, Ben. Limbo. Endless not belonging, neither being nor not being, and, when being, being both everywhere and nowhere at all. I try not to think about it that much, but then again I’m not the one on suicide watch, am I, Ben?”
Ben put a hand to the glass. The battery pack on the Saint’s back began to hum. ”You don’t have to worry about me, Scofflaw. Go back to ruuurring thuur vvhvwuuuurrr”
The Saint jumped back from the glass as his reflection’s face warped into something reptilian and angry. He turned and ran, followed only by the heat exhaust blowing from the battery pack down to his heels.
”Scofflaw?” echoed a voice through the corridors as Ben’s captor scrambled away, calling for his Plazmuths. ”Scofflaw, what did you see? What did you just see?” But the Saint kept running.
Four (4): And Never Brought to Mind
The Saint, panicking and perhaps a bit delirious, warmed up the machine in the Shaman’s room in a flurry. Switches were flicked, electrical conductors were kicked into motions and brightly-colored fluids began to cascade through the tubes into the veins of the barely-recognizable (but still, in just enough ways to count, alive) deinonychus crucified to the wall.
Trails of sparks ran through the dinosaur’s tail, up his spine into his brain stem, which blossomed out into a beautiful and regrettably formaldehyde-smelling network of nerves that covered every wall of the room. TinTen flipped his goggles over his eyes, allowing the light show to settle down a bit before signaling for the Saint to hit the button.
The Saint hit the button, firing Broca’s area on the lobotomized dinosaur and enabling speech. Kerak’s eyelids opened, but behind them were only two luminescent glass balls. Despite the fact that his throat had wilted away to something resembling a soggy French fry, his speech was clear and penetrating:
”all are flotsam save one two four twelve infinity the cranberry juice rhapsody of Immanual Kant if you’ll turn to page thirty-four of your lovely insides today is Halloween and that means we get to get going git girl it’s getting hot in here did I say twelve I meant Murdoch the Fool points out the emperor has no clothes off with her head a royal flush goes the weasel Adolf Hitler in the attic a teenager if ever there was one Christ I could use a cigaraffe or was it a camel my lovely lady necks viva la guillotine atheism gets me hot a Cornell graduate you know isn't that speci--”
The Saint hit the button and turned expectantly towards TinTen. “What do you hear?” he asked.
”Same thing heard everytime Lord pulls out this relic. Chaos.” TinTen yanked off his glasses and threw them under his tentacles. ”Truest prophecy of all. Still can’t believe haven’t figured it out yet, Scofflaw.”
”What did you call me? Listen, TinTen, I don’t employ you to tell me riddles, you’re supposed to be interpreting them. What did the Shaman tell you?”
”Glossolalia of the shaman reveals only the fact of the outside. Figured it out weeks ago. Unity Field still processing request.”
The Saint put a hand to his belt. “You’re always smarter than I give you credit for, eh, TinTen? Have you been messing with the code? Where’s the Fool?”
”Guess would be that generation of omnipotent beings to serve half-baked notions of Order overloads Unity servers. Fool’s not coming. Fool’s not here, neither are we.”
”There is no ‘overload.’ Unity remade the world in my image and it’s a self-perpetuating system. This isn’t Vio anymore, there are rules.”
”Still don’t understand. This is indeed Vio. World being processed in your image but is fat and repugnant world. Unity calculations approaching final solution as chaos bleed accelerates.”
The battery pack fizzled and began to smoke. Kerak, at the same moment, began to sing:
”A frog in a pond can’t understand the ocean”
The Saint, ignoring the dinosaur, scoffed at TinTen self-righteously. “That, though completely plausible, is utter bullshit.”
”A human can’t feel the Earth in motion”
There was a sound of rushing water. TinTen began to back away from the door. ”All this will have happened with none of us remembering. Have studied the technology. Are just a flicker of unreality in ‘Lord’s’ life. Grand Battle to resume shortly.”
They used to blame it on the ice age; they could have blamed it on the God’s rage!” belted Kerak, tauntingly, without a trace of emotion in his braindead face.
“Suppose you’re right,” said Scofflaw. “What’s the prize behind the door, then? What’s the final solution?”
”Comeuppance.”
The doors burst open with a flood of levitating water.
”But I killed the dinosaurs, Abby,” sang Kerak. The floor started to all gather in one place, like the inside of a garbage bag being picked up. The Saint screamed something that the universe never had time to hear before it all came tearing down with a splash and a Leviath’s roar.
"I killed the dinosaurs, Abby
And I’m coming for your kind too"
Five (5): And Days of Auld Lang Syne
It didn’t work.
Scofflaw groaned and removed his dagger, which sparked slightly, indignantly protesting the flashing “REQUEST DENIED” that had decided to hold a sit-in on the computer monitor like it was protesting a war. He turned and began to walk away, beginning to suspect that the Grand Battle wouldn’t be terribly easy for him.
He almost made it out of the room before the horse jumped through the computer screen, with a whinny of broken glass.
Scofflaw turned to face the horse and pressed a button on his dagger. The dagger’s blade retracted and was replaced by a three-foot-long pole, at the top of which sprouted a rather heavy-looking hammer’s head.
The horse, spooked from coming down with a sudden case of the Existences, shook her head from side to side as though begging Scofflaw to just leave her well enough alone. Then the hammer slapped her in the jaw, reducing her neck to a paper bag full of slosh.
Scofflaw kept hitting the horse until from a legal standpoint it was less a question of animal abuse and more a question of the improper disposal of biological materials. He couldn’t quite put his finger on why he was so angry.
Then he left, back into the corridors. He walked for some time.