Grand Battle S3G1! (Round Four: City of the Dead)

Grand Battle S3G1! (Round Four: City of the Dead)
RE: Grand Battle S3G1! (Round Four: City of the Dead)
Saint Scofflaw--he was resigned, he’d decided, to the fact that the name had stuck, for purposes of this battle--swore in every language he knew:

”Fuck.

Frak.

Bugger!”

Some sort of covenant had been broken. There was a yin and yang he’d been struggling to preserve--team up with the heroes, betray them, align oneself with a greater evil, betray them, status quo uneasily restored, dignity salvaged, “someday they will all pay,” go out drinking, repeat. Unfortunately, his insurrection against Midday had led to the whole damn station dropping out of the sky, and (evidently) someone dying; this negated the brownie points Scofflaw had intended to score in order to restore himself to a state of ambiguity after the whole mass-mind-control thing.

In other words, he was off his game. This was unusual. He had his theories as to why, theories that had been apparently corroborated by his encounters with the science-curators in the closing minutes of the previous rounds.

The new data raised the stakes in a way that frightened and aroused the Saint. The opportunities associated with the battle were greater than he had realized. He looked around. The city--O brave new world that has such zombies on’t!--stretched flat and reeking before him like a piece of roadkill. The City of the Dead was suffering a crisis of genre. Those few buildings which had not been built to appear very old had been built to appear very new--a few rows of solar panels connected by stripped copper wire struggled to find purchase amidst a canopy of marble columns, granite battlements, modernist statements in sandstone. The few grey-skinned adolescents marching the cobblestones gave off the impression that they were anarchically violating an agreed-upon siesta. The City of the Dead rested in peace.

Scofflaw tried to make himself look dead and realized he was doing a pretty good job of it without much effort. He wondered if anybody here sold coffee. Or food. Certainly some of these people indulged in some manner of metabolism, but he never ate raw brains without white wine or drank human blood without vanilla Oreo’s to dip them in. He was far too hungry and particular to be penniless and marginalized in a strange city that he wasn’t in complete control of.

He recited a special mantra to dispel the part of his mind that creates schemes (“footjobs,” in case you really needed to know that) and took a step back, remembering about butterflies and assorted what-happened-last-times. Megalomania later. Microlomania now. He needed to take things slowly and carefully. Gather reconnaisance. Build up contacts. Not get ousted as a living being and killed and eaten. This required tiny plans. More agendas than plans, really. Checklists. Little adorable schemelings with the goal of achieving some manner of solid footing. No grand gestures, no swinging on chandeliers. Footjobs footjobs footjobs.

Scofflaw stood absolutely paralyzed for about three minutes before he came up with a scheme that was too good to pass up.


* * * * *

A FEW MINUTES EARLIER

* * * * *

Scofflaw had grown into science. He was a man who took great pride into having filled out over the years at no significant loss of physical functionality. He wanted to inspire words like decadent and robust. Unfortunately, this put him in the minority in the scientific community.

The NSC agent had shrunk into science. He had taken on the form of the graduated cylinders and test tubes that constituted his workspace, the forceps, the scalpels, thin and precise things. He seemed to keep himself at a distance. His fingers were too long, his nose too long, his face too long. His spectacles were rectangles of the Golden Ratio, of course. Generally the impression was that here was a man who was overly aware of the fact that he was a volatile mixture of chemicals and that he perhaps had too many of some and too few of some others, and had come to physically embody this self-image. He inspired words like thyroid and hypoallergenic. His superior attitude was, in Scofflaw’s estimation, entirely unjustified.

“It has to be yours,” he insisted. “These simulacra may share your DNA, but they were generated through magical means in this universe and occupy the properties thereof. We’re looking to gather data on a subatomic level. A sort of multiversal DNA, if you will.”

“Every particle of my body is precious,” Scofflaw insisted, belching. He was not a morning person and a tad jet-lagged, so he was giving this nerd probably a harder time than he might have otherwise. At least, due to the nerd’s gravity stabilizer, he was no longer experiencing the sensation of dropping out of the sky--which was potentially a problem--so he didn’t have to worry about airsickness.

“A nice thing about transuniversal physics,” said the nerd, deftly pulling out a pair of tweezers, “Is that they aren’t magically dependent upon your consent.” He jabbed at Scofflaw’s arm, coming out with some dry skin and a little blood, which he then placed on a slide. “Unless they do. We’ll find out in a moment.”

Scofflaw tried to hide how impressed he was by the elegant device which the nerd passed over the tissue sample. It was white and gave off a faint blue glow, beeping seductively. “Steve Jobs much?” he grumbled. “If I had an omniversal physics analyzer, I’d at least make sure it was also a revolver.”

The nerd looked up at Scofflaw and blinked, and then after about five seconds said, “Oh, this is actually interesting,” without looking back down on the scanner. Then he said, “Ow! Give those back!” He was talking about his glasses.

“No,” growled Scofflaw. “Now tell me what’s ‘actually’ interesting about me, and be quick.”

The nerd gave a sigh indicating that he was not actually going to be quick. “Okay. Are you aware of the concept of entropy?”

Am I? You’re looking at the inventor of the Entropy Ray, I’ll have you--”

“Okay. Here’s what might be useful for you to understand. On about ninety eight and a half out of every hundred universes, entropy is a law of thermodynamics--it’s written into the universe. The entire universe. The accepted life cycle of a universe is that it trends toward chaos until it dies a ‘heat death.’ Your universe lacks this, and will perpetuate forever unless acted upon by an outside force. Now, I’m sure you’ve studied entropic universes in theory, but if I were to have my guess your multiversal forays prior to this battle have been to a small handful of other non-entropic universes, yes?”

Scofflaw tried to nod in a way that made him look like he wasn’t being given a lesson in elementary physics.

“Right. Because you’re looking for the ball bearings in a bag of popping corn, if that makes sense, and the popcorn’s energy signature is not only different, it’s constantly in flux. Now. You’re a man of science--” and you’re a eunuch of science you anemic tube of paste “--So surely you’re beginning to understand the corollaries here.”

“I think so.”

“Just so we’re clear--and speaking of clarity, if I could have my glasses back ow ow ow let go of my arm please thank you you can hold on to those for now--just so we’re clear, the intrinsic structure of a universe is mirrored all the way down through the hard sciences to the social sciences and the humanities. You’ve been living a non-entropic life. Whatever conflicts you’ve been engaged in will course-correct toward order, so you can’t really win or lose. Here, you can.

“Isn’t that interesting?” he concluded, smiling punchably. It took a while through his glasses-less fog for Professor Cameron to realize that the subject had already vanished. Ah, yes. This would be a “round transition.” He hit the one big, satisfying, multi-purpose button on his scanner and shouted “We’re through here! Pull me out!”

Back at the offices of the NSC Task Force on Case Designate GB-005, Cameron’s tea was already waiting. “Do we have a lock yet?”

“Just a couple minutes,” announced one of the interns.

Reliant on subsistence-wage labor or no, The GB-005 Task Force was one of only two special divisions devoted to “Grand Battle contestants” worthy of the designation “special,” the other one being that devoted to the Plazmuth.

“Which did we lose?” asked Cameron.

“GB-007,” chimed the interns.

“Fantastic.” Make that the only special division worthy of the designation “special.” “Send in a request for as much of their equipment as we can use.” Cameron was winning at science.

“In the meantime, we have a lock. Beaming the specs of GB-005’s home universe to your glasses now.”

“I, uh… I’ll look over.” Cameron hopped down the ramp to where the interns lived out an ergonomic nightmare over a couple of old tri-monitors.

The non-entropic universe sure did look like a non-entropic universe. “Point me to the things that aren’t boring,” he commanded his interns, feeling a flush of power.

“A couple crazy power signatures running around. Some on Earth, some that kinda hop back and forth to Earth now and then. And here, look--they’re all over the Non-Infringers’ files--classified, of course.”

“Of course.” Multiverse cops. Pain in Cameron’s ass. “So, the question becomes--do we make contact?”

The interns looked up all at once. “Are we… are we supposed to make contact?”

“We’re not supposed to not make contact. Look, interns.” Cameron made a gesture with his arms as though to precipitate a group hug--some of the interns rolled their chairs about six inches closer to him. “I want to be completely honest with you here. One: I’m angling for a promotion out of this. Two: I’m in the throes of weird multiverse-science and feel like taking dangerous risks. Three: If I get a promotion out of this I’ll do everything I can to drag you with me, if I also like you.”

“I’m in,” declared one of the interns. The others mostly nodded assent.

“Cool. Send out a couple lines directed at their earth. SOSes directed at altruistic or otherwise curious organizations. Hard-encrypted stuff that wouldn’t pick up on a normal newly-atomic Earth. See who bites.”

“On it.”

Cameron leaned back in his chair for about four minutes, feeling the science surge forth from his loins. He shouldn’t be having this much caffeine. It set his heart into palpitations especially when juxtaposed with the siren song of science-destiny. He took some vitamin supplements and then was informed that he had a hit. “Well, what are you waiting for, interns? Get me video!”

He had no idea what the man on the other side of the call was wearing, but it was very exciting. “Hello?” the man was repeating. “This is Doctor Macro here on the inside-outside of the moon. What is the nature and scale of your emergency?”

“Hello, Doctor Macro,” started Cameron nervously, trying to emulate the non-entropic man’s speech patterns. “I’m just a lowly scientist and I’ve stumbled into something bigger-than-all-of-us. Does the name Saint Scofflaw mean anything to you?”

Doctor Macro looked up with a start. Even from the other end of the multiverse Cameron felt threatened by his jaw.

“Hold the line one moment, if you will, my friend in science,” he cautioned. “I’m going to summon the Archetypes.

“Help is on the way.”


* * * * *

The junkie’s intestines were spilling out, which was a catastrophic threat to the floor. “Can someone bandage up this guy’s gut?” snapped the orderly impatiently.

Rebekshep gave him a glare. Yes, it was midday, no, nobody wanted to be here, but that was the nature of ERs, wasn’t it? If she met anyone who wanted to be here she would have to ask them to leave. She pulled some bandages off of her arm and proffered them to the orderly. The joke is that she’s a mummy, and the patient’s a zombie, because we’re back in the city of the dead.

Before Saint Scofflaw entered her life, Rebekshep’s biggest concern was that she had to swing by and lay out a sacrifice for her boyfriend’s cats before going home to sleep for three thousand years. Figuratively three thousand years, not actually. Even in the City of the Dead, people still find that kind of thing funny.

In runs a crazy hobo. The crazy hobo is Saint Scofflaw but Rebekshep doesn’t know that yet. “Somebody help me!” he’s screaming. Really hamming it up, this guy, but in a way that could be genuine. Crazy hobos have a unique tendency to melodramatize their very real suffering.

She left the zombie to the orderly and took his arm. He was warm. Very warm. That was a bad sign. “Calm down, mister,” she said in her nursiest voice. “What’s the problem?”

“I woke up, and-- and my heart--” Keep in mind this is Saint Scofflaw so everything he’s saying is a lie. “Well, you can feel, can’t you? You can all see.

“I just woke up and I was alive,” he bellowed, weeping. And then repeated, for good measure:

“Somebody please help me!”
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RE: Grand Battle S3G1! (Round Four: City of the Dead) - by Elpie - 12-11-2013, 06:29 AM