RE: The Gradual Massacre (GBS2G4) [Round 5: GrandCon]
06-06-2013, 12:57 AM
(This post was last modified: 06-06-2013, 01:02 AM by MalkyTop.)
It was the fastest that he had ever consumed a series in its entirety. What should have happened, he thought, was that he should have felt a crescendo of anger and righteous fury bubbling within him and exploding into an inferno of wrath. Instead he felt:
1. That this was completely impossible. It was a big trick. Or a big coincidence. In any case, he didn’t remember any of this in any meaningful way. This was only something with a character that happened to have his name. And his powers. And his past, but without all the holes.
no this has all happened
2. That, okay, maybe someone had been writing about his life, but he was real. He was a person, he wasn’t made-up, wasn’t the product of someone’s imagination. Even to him, this thought had a strong flavor of desperation to it.
3. That maybe he was insane. Maybe he was actually a cosplayer who sincerely believed he was Algernon. It would explain why he didn’t know all of Algernon’s life. The fact that Algernon was a character who constantly forgets was simply a convenient excuse.
no, no, you are him
This theory seemed extremely insane, even more insane than he (possibly) was, and was disproven by the materialization of a bullet.
4. That he was a fictional character. He really was a fictional character. He was created by a mortal god for the sole purpose of being tortured for the sick entertainment of others and all of his actions and thoughts were predetermined, even the thoughts he was having right now about the nature of his own existence and there was nothing he could do because everything he did was already written down, or maybe will be written down.
5. That this was really messing with his atheism.
you don’t have to stand for this
6. That he didn’t have to stand for this.
He turned back to the front of the book, casually, lazily, noting the name of the author. Bartleby had been standing by him the whole time, looking extremely impatient.
“I led you here so you could buy your own copies. I didn’t bring you here to read,” she said, her tone matching the affront on the booth-owner’s face. Underneath her words, Algernon heard her unsaid words, that he was a moron, a waste of time, a cheap miser, a not-a-true-fan. He ignored this, bought the books by imagining up some money to buy them with, and started the journey to the front desk. The booth-owner wouldn’t notice the money had disappeared instantly until a while later.
The woman behind the desk gave him a cheery smile that told him that she didn’t appreciate his clothes. He didn’t give her a chance to speak. “Where’s LeMarche’s room?”
The woman said, “I can’t tell you that,” but what she did not say was “504” and so he thanked her and started towards the stairs just as Bartleby caught up, shooting complaints at his back.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
The trail of confusion suddenly disappeared, and Holly was left with no confusion except her own. He was always confused. When had he ever not been confused? Never. Algernon wasn’t Algernon if he wasn’t confused. Confusion was part of his entire being.
But it was gone. All she could vaguely get was that the trail was leading downstairs, mostly because she had been heading downstairs when the trail ceased. So now she was just standing in the stairwell, wondering if she should bother trying to search with her eyes when suddenly, Algernon almost walked right into her.
Holly instantly knew it was him. Once or twice, she had seen ‘Algernon cosplayers,’ and the difference between them and him was that they went with his clothes he wore at the start of the battle. Currently, Algernon was wearing the clothes he had from the swamp. Also currently (but not relatedly), Algernon looked…very different.
Well, he was clean for one thing, but that wasn’t what Holly was unnerved by. His face wasn’t the face of a sniveling coward, but the face of a Man on a Mission. He was Determined. Something that was completely foreign to her when associated with Algernon. Holly approached him nonetheless.
“There you are,” she said, but in a tone that did not imply a fact so much as a question. She tried to recover by trying to look accusatory. “I’ve been looking for you.”
Behind Algernon, there was some other strangely dressed woman who seemed to be struggling to walk. It might have something to do with the blocks around her feet. The woman caught her breath and then looked up. “What, you were looking for your girlfriend?” she sneered. “Let me guess, Hollgy shippers? Cute.”
Both battlers ignored her. The stairs were getting cramped.
“I’m not interested, Holly,” he said, and the elf tried not to show anything. Or was she supposed to show something? She didn’t want to show something but maybe she should. “I’ve got more important things to do.”
Of course. In a society filled with escapees from grand battles, he didn’t learn a single thing. But in a different society surrounding grand battles…well…they did sell books…and there were people going around sometimes dressed like them…and okay yeah maybe she should have seen this coming. The woman with the block feet just stood back and watched with some interest. “Look, I know you’re probably…um…a little disoriented…and maybe you’ve just learned some…look, I just wanted to talk to you, to help.” A man had been hovering above them for a little, apparently considering whether it was a good idea to try to squeeze past what appeared to be a lover’s spat in action.
“No. I don’t want it,” said Algernon, who was maintaining a lot of eye contact, Holly noticed. The waves of emotion she saw from him, she tried to compare it to a hurricane, but at least those had structure. This was more like an abstract painting. She saw hate wrapped around fear. There was a kernel of self-doubt somewhere over there. A blotch of what perhaps might have been nihilism, covered up very shoddily by self-righteousness. And…was that a flash of pity?
Instinctively, she raised an arm, because she knew she could make this better (and at the same time she knew she shouldn’t). “No,” Algernon repeated more firmly, raising an arm as though that would protect him. “If you pull your manipulative shit, I swear I’ll…” In typical Algernon fashion, he hadn’t actually thought of a threat. But Holly got the idea. The man decided that this lull was a good time to scoot past, and everybody shuffled to one side to let him by. “I don’t care what you want to say,” Algernon continued. “I don’t care what excuses you want to throw at me, I don’t care about how you’ve been manipulating emotions for so long, yours included, that you don’t even know what a true, genuine feeling is. All I care about is finding someone called Elmo LeMarche.”
Holly, stunned and disoriented, said, “He just passed us.”
Algernon whirled around. So did Bartleby. LeMarche had actually been frozen since he heard his name, and his eyes were staring at Algernon as though they wished they were seeing a wall instead.
Algernon walked up to LeMarche and punched him in the nose. What surprised Holly the most was that it actually toppled him over.
“What – “ Bartleby managed, not quite expecting this turn of events. She looked like she wanted to say more but was as frozen to the spot as Holly was. Algernon picked LeMarche up by the shirt.
“You shithead! You bastard!” Algernon spat. “You did this to me! You made my life a living hell! Well? Did you have fun?!”
Previously, LeMarche would have called for help and security, but his head was still spinning from recent events. All he could think to say was, “I’m sorry.”
At some point, Algernon had started crying, and his self-consciousness was starting to catch up and all he could choke out was, “Why.”
Bartleby looked like she was about say something again, but she was promptly interrupted by Ouroborous bursting out of the vents.
Algernon blinked. He had forgotten completely about Ouroborous. LeMarche, knowing what he was thinking, said, “I do too, sometimes.”
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Countess heard the noise and she knew what was going on. The others that had been kicked out quickly backed away from the building, but she strode up and pushed the door aside. After all, security was going to have a bigger problem on their hands.
Ouroborous was attacking. She didn’t really care about that. What she did care about was Algernon. All of a sudden, he was extremely useful. But also, frustratingly enough, extremely fragile. Did that mean that she was going through with the plan of revenge?
She wasn’t sure.
The Controller…she had admired him. She had wanted to impress him. She thought he was brilliant. She didn’t want to think he betrayed her, but recently, all evidence had pointed to this. She didn’t know if he had been planning this all along or if she had somehow disappointed him. But either way…Countess didn’t like it. The whole thing made the game itself go sour. She wanted to burn down the Ouroborites that were currently annoying her. She wanted to eviscerate that worthless elf. And she wanted so badly to torture the simpering human until he passed out.
But there was no fun in it. She couldn’t take pleasure in it.
Because…because…
…she felt used. Manipulated. And things that would have given her pleasure didn’t because she almost felt she had no autonomy in doing those things.
The only thing that would give her autonomy, to break out, was killing the Controller. That was the way forward. That seemed like the most meaningful future.
Dear Countess,
It appears that you have reached a decision, but have not yet formed any semblance of a plan…
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The four in the staircase heard the noise and three of them knew what was going on. The fourth was having trouble.
There weren’t really Ouroborites in the stairs. Ouroborous was more interested in the larger mass of meat in the halls. But it wasn’t to say that they wouldn’t soon be interested in smaller masses of meat. They were, of course, indiscriminate. So the four ran, automatically going back to LeMarche’s room. Four straight flights.
Once inside, everybody was out of breath. But Algernon still stared pointedly at LeMarche. “Finish it. Now.”
LeMarche looked up, panting. He had never been the athletic type. “Wh…how…”
“You started this, didn’t you? This whole mess is happening because of you, so finish it! Let me go back home, or something,” he pleaded.
LeMarche continued to try to catch his breath, but he was partly pretending because this was insane and also he didn’t want to be confronted by his actual work like this. Parents and media decrying his work was bad enough.
Bartleby had been too busy silently freaking out, being a fan and all. So Holly noticed it first.
“I think you were robbed.”
Both Algernon and LeMarche looked up at this. The room had the air of one that had been robbed. This was most noticeable by the complete lack of bags or a laptop.
Algernon was stunned, then became doubly-stunned when he saw that LeMarche looked stunned. He had no idea what this meant for the apparently deterministic world he lived in.
Maybe…this meant he actually had autonomy. Maybe he really was a separate entity, independent from anybody’s imagination.
This was almost a hopeful thought, if it wasn’t for the fact that his plan had been dependent on his universe being deterministic.
Holly wasn’t yet comfortable with talking directly to Algernon at the moment. But she was comfortable with talking. “So…what exactly are we doing up here?”
“We – I thought…he could…write things to make things…better.”
At this, Holly squinted at the highly unimpressive LeMarche. “No. That’s impossible. I’m not fictional. Writers can’t just make people. You – you probably just, like, dreamt about what was happening or something – “
“Wait,” said Bartleby, who was still struggling to comprehend what was going on. “You two are actually Holly and Algernon? And that was actually Ouroborous?”
LeMarche stood up straight. “Ex-cuse me? Are you saying that all my work, everything I was doing, I was just copying? That nothing I did was actually from me? My own mind, my own imagination? I’ve been writing everything that happened this whole time!”
“So…that means that…this is a grand battle round…and…I’m a character…in a grand battle.” Light was starting to dawn on Bartleby’s face and she began to dismantle her costume.
“What I’m saying,” Holly said, trying to be the reasonable one, though she spat that last word out, “is that you didn’t create me. I’m a real person, and – “
“Both of you shut up,” Algernon snapped, his mind growing frantic. “We need to get out of here. You need to write.”
“My real name is Alex,” said Alex nervously to nobody in particular, kicking off her styrofoam concrete.
“I mean if, if you need the stuff you wrote before, you have extra copies, right?” Algernon babbled. “Look, do you use paper? Laptops?” Holly looked confused at the last word, but LeMarche realized something. “I…I mean, I could…”
“No wait, I have an idea.”
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
When Lynette had heard the noise, she had absolutely no idea what was going on. But it sounded bad. So it was probably best to stay in her room.
When the noise didn’t leave, she started to worry and wonder if she should hide somewhere.
Then the door knocked and she spent a long time trying to figure out if she should open it or not. A look through the peephole revealed the distorted face of LeMarche. A peep through the door revealed three more people, two of them looking emotionally unstable, one of them obviously excited despite the situation, and she was ready to close the door again.
“Lynette, wait,” LeMarche said quickly. “This is really important but if I explain it to you it’s going to sound really crazy, so do you have that USB of every GB thing and also can I use your laptop?”
Lynette stared.
1. That this was completely impossible. It was a big trick. Or a big coincidence. In any case, he didn’t remember any of this in any meaningful way. This was only something with a character that happened to have his name. And his powers. And his past, but without all the holes.
no this has all happened
2. That, okay, maybe someone had been writing about his life, but he was real. He was a person, he wasn’t made-up, wasn’t the product of someone’s imagination. Even to him, this thought had a strong flavor of desperation to it.
3. That maybe he was insane. Maybe he was actually a cosplayer who sincerely believed he was Algernon. It would explain why he didn’t know all of Algernon’s life. The fact that Algernon was a character who constantly forgets was simply a convenient excuse.
no, no, you are him
This theory seemed extremely insane, even more insane than he (possibly) was, and was disproven by the materialization of a bullet.
4. That he was a fictional character. He really was a fictional character. He was created by a mortal god for the sole purpose of being tortured for the sick entertainment of others and all of his actions and thoughts were predetermined, even the thoughts he was having right now about the nature of his own existence and there was nothing he could do because everything he did was already written down, or maybe will be written down.
5. That this was really messing with his atheism.
you don’t have to stand for this
6. That he didn’t have to stand for this.
He turned back to the front of the book, casually, lazily, noting the name of the author. Bartleby had been standing by him the whole time, looking extremely impatient.
“I led you here so you could buy your own copies. I didn’t bring you here to read,” she said, her tone matching the affront on the booth-owner’s face. Underneath her words, Algernon heard her unsaid words, that he was a moron, a waste of time, a cheap miser, a not-a-true-fan. He ignored this, bought the books by imagining up some money to buy them with, and started the journey to the front desk. The booth-owner wouldn’t notice the money had disappeared instantly until a while later.
The woman behind the desk gave him a cheery smile that told him that she didn’t appreciate his clothes. He didn’t give her a chance to speak. “Where’s LeMarche’s room?”
The woman said, “I can’t tell you that,” but what she did not say was “504” and so he thanked her and started towards the stairs just as Bartleby caught up, shooting complaints at his back.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
The trail of confusion suddenly disappeared, and Holly was left with no confusion except her own. He was always confused. When had he ever not been confused? Never. Algernon wasn’t Algernon if he wasn’t confused. Confusion was part of his entire being.
But it was gone. All she could vaguely get was that the trail was leading downstairs, mostly because she had been heading downstairs when the trail ceased. So now she was just standing in the stairwell, wondering if she should bother trying to search with her eyes when suddenly, Algernon almost walked right into her.
Holly instantly knew it was him. Once or twice, she had seen ‘Algernon cosplayers,’ and the difference between them and him was that they went with his clothes he wore at the start of the battle. Currently, Algernon was wearing the clothes he had from the swamp. Also currently (but not relatedly), Algernon looked…very different.
Well, he was clean for one thing, but that wasn’t what Holly was unnerved by. His face wasn’t the face of a sniveling coward, but the face of a Man on a Mission. He was Determined. Something that was completely foreign to her when associated with Algernon. Holly approached him nonetheless.
“There you are,” she said, but in a tone that did not imply a fact so much as a question. She tried to recover by trying to look accusatory. “I’ve been looking for you.”
Behind Algernon, there was some other strangely dressed woman who seemed to be struggling to walk. It might have something to do with the blocks around her feet. The woman caught her breath and then looked up. “What, you were looking for your girlfriend?” she sneered. “Let me guess, Hollgy shippers? Cute.”
Both battlers ignored her. The stairs were getting cramped.
“I’m not interested, Holly,” he said, and the elf tried not to show anything. Or was she supposed to show something? She didn’t want to show something but maybe she should. “I’ve got more important things to do.”
Of course. In a society filled with escapees from grand battles, he didn’t learn a single thing. But in a different society surrounding grand battles…well…they did sell books…and there were people going around sometimes dressed like them…and okay yeah maybe she should have seen this coming. The woman with the block feet just stood back and watched with some interest. “Look, I know you’re probably…um…a little disoriented…and maybe you’ve just learned some…look, I just wanted to talk to you, to help.” A man had been hovering above them for a little, apparently considering whether it was a good idea to try to squeeze past what appeared to be a lover’s spat in action.
“No. I don’t want it,” said Algernon, who was maintaining a lot of eye contact, Holly noticed. The waves of emotion she saw from him, she tried to compare it to a hurricane, but at least those had structure. This was more like an abstract painting. She saw hate wrapped around fear. There was a kernel of self-doubt somewhere over there. A blotch of what perhaps might have been nihilism, covered up very shoddily by self-righteousness. And…was that a flash of pity?
Instinctively, she raised an arm, because she knew she could make this better (and at the same time she knew she shouldn’t). “No,” Algernon repeated more firmly, raising an arm as though that would protect him. “If you pull your manipulative shit, I swear I’ll…” In typical Algernon fashion, he hadn’t actually thought of a threat. But Holly got the idea. The man decided that this lull was a good time to scoot past, and everybody shuffled to one side to let him by. “I don’t care what you want to say,” Algernon continued. “I don’t care what excuses you want to throw at me, I don’t care about how you’ve been manipulating emotions for so long, yours included, that you don’t even know what a true, genuine feeling is. All I care about is finding someone called Elmo LeMarche.”
Holly, stunned and disoriented, said, “He just passed us.”
Algernon whirled around. So did Bartleby. LeMarche had actually been frozen since he heard his name, and his eyes were staring at Algernon as though they wished they were seeing a wall instead.
Algernon walked up to LeMarche and punched him in the nose. What surprised Holly the most was that it actually toppled him over.
“What – “ Bartleby managed, not quite expecting this turn of events. She looked like she wanted to say more but was as frozen to the spot as Holly was. Algernon picked LeMarche up by the shirt.
“You shithead! You bastard!” Algernon spat. “You did this to me! You made my life a living hell! Well? Did you have fun?!”
Previously, LeMarche would have called for help and security, but his head was still spinning from recent events. All he could think to say was, “I’m sorry.”
At some point, Algernon had started crying, and his self-consciousness was starting to catch up and all he could choke out was, “Why.”
Bartleby looked like she was about say something again, but she was promptly interrupted by Ouroborous bursting out of the vents.
Algernon blinked. He had forgotten completely about Ouroborous. LeMarche, knowing what he was thinking, said, “I do too, sometimes.”
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Countess heard the noise and she knew what was going on. The others that had been kicked out quickly backed away from the building, but she strode up and pushed the door aside. After all, security was going to have a bigger problem on their hands.
Ouroborous was attacking. She didn’t really care about that. What she did care about was Algernon. All of a sudden, he was extremely useful. But also, frustratingly enough, extremely fragile. Did that mean that she was going through with the plan of revenge?
She wasn’t sure.
The Controller…she had admired him. She had wanted to impress him. She thought he was brilliant. She didn’t want to think he betrayed her, but recently, all evidence had pointed to this. She didn’t know if he had been planning this all along or if she had somehow disappointed him. But either way…Countess didn’t like it. The whole thing made the game itself go sour. She wanted to burn down the Ouroborites that were currently annoying her. She wanted to eviscerate that worthless elf. And she wanted so badly to torture the simpering human until he passed out.
But there was no fun in it. She couldn’t take pleasure in it.
Because…because…
…she felt used. Manipulated. And things that would have given her pleasure didn’t because she almost felt she had no autonomy in doing those things.
The only thing that would give her autonomy, to break out, was killing the Controller. That was the way forward. That seemed like the most meaningful future.
Dear Countess,
It appears that you have reached a decision, but have not yet formed any semblance of a plan…
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The four in the staircase heard the noise and three of them knew what was going on. The fourth was having trouble.
There weren’t really Ouroborites in the stairs. Ouroborous was more interested in the larger mass of meat in the halls. But it wasn’t to say that they wouldn’t soon be interested in smaller masses of meat. They were, of course, indiscriminate. So the four ran, automatically going back to LeMarche’s room. Four straight flights.
Once inside, everybody was out of breath. But Algernon still stared pointedly at LeMarche. “Finish it. Now.”
LeMarche looked up, panting. He had never been the athletic type. “Wh…how…”
“You started this, didn’t you? This whole mess is happening because of you, so finish it! Let me go back home, or something,” he pleaded.
LeMarche continued to try to catch his breath, but he was partly pretending because this was insane and also he didn’t want to be confronted by his actual work like this. Parents and media decrying his work was bad enough.
Bartleby had been too busy silently freaking out, being a fan and all. So Holly noticed it first.
“I think you were robbed.”
Both Algernon and LeMarche looked up at this. The room had the air of one that had been robbed. This was most noticeable by the complete lack of bags or a laptop.
Algernon was stunned, then became doubly-stunned when he saw that LeMarche looked stunned. He had no idea what this meant for the apparently deterministic world he lived in.
Maybe…this meant he actually had autonomy. Maybe he really was a separate entity, independent from anybody’s imagination.
This was almost a hopeful thought, if it wasn’t for the fact that his plan had been dependent on his universe being deterministic.
Holly wasn’t yet comfortable with talking directly to Algernon at the moment. But she was comfortable with talking. “So…what exactly are we doing up here?”
“We – I thought…he could…write things to make things…better.”
At this, Holly squinted at the highly unimpressive LeMarche. “No. That’s impossible. I’m not fictional. Writers can’t just make people. You – you probably just, like, dreamt about what was happening or something – “
“Wait,” said Bartleby, who was still struggling to comprehend what was going on. “You two are actually Holly and Algernon? And that was actually Ouroborous?”
LeMarche stood up straight. “Ex-cuse me? Are you saying that all my work, everything I was doing, I was just copying? That nothing I did was actually from me? My own mind, my own imagination? I’ve been writing everything that happened this whole time!”
“So…that means that…this is a grand battle round…and…I’m a character…in a grand battle.” Light was starting to dawn on Bartleby’s face and she began to dismantle her costume.
“What I’m saying,” Holly said, trying to be the reasonable one, though she spat that last word out, “is that you didn’t create me. I’m a real person, and – “
“Both of you shut up,” Algernon snapped, his mind growing frantic. “We need to get out of here. You need to write.”
“My real name is Alex,” said Alex nervously to nobody in particular, kicking off her styrofoam concrete.
“I mean if, if you need the stuff you wrote before, you have extra copies, right?” Algernon babbled. “Look, do you use paper? Laptops?” Holly looked confused at the last word, but LeMarche realized something. “I…I mean, I could…”
“No wait, I have an idea.”
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
When Lynette had heard the noise, she had absolutely no idea what was going on. But it sounded bad. So it was probably best to stay in her room.
When the noise didn’t leave, she started to worry and wonder if she should hide somewhere.
Then the door knocked and she spent a long time trying to figure out if she should open it or not. A look through the peephole revealed the distorted face of LeMarche. A peep through the door revealed three more people, two of them looking emotionally unstable, one of them obviously excited despite the situation, and she was ready to close the door again.
“Lynette, wait,” LeMarche said quickly. “This is really important but if I explain it to you it’s going to sound really crazy, so do you have that USB of every GB thing and also can I use your laptop?”
Lynette stared.