Order and Chaos

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A young man stands in his bedroom. It just so happens that today, the 2nd
of November, 2016, is this young man's birthday. Though it was twenty years
ago he was given life, it is only today he will be given a name!

What will the name of this young man be?

He stands in his bedroom on his birthday.
Date of birth: Nov. 2, 1996.

Name?

HE BEDBIRTH

11296

NAME

It is a period of birth day.

The passage of time, striking from a hidden base,
has won its first victory against the evil Boy.

During the battle, Time spies managed to steal
secret plans to the Boy's ultimate weapon, the
TWENTY YEARS OLD, an age with enough power
to destroy an entire planet.

Pursued by the Boy's sinister agents, You race
home aboard your starship, custodian of the name
that can save your people and restore freedom to
the galaxy....

HE BEDBIRTH

11296

NAME

20 cool

I woke up with a start.

Apparently, this world needed to be actively maintained or it would degenerate into incomprehensible nonsense. I'd complain to whichever deity set it up that way, but they were dead already.

And, I supposed, I couldn't count on the world I woke up to being exactly the same as the one I'd fallen asleep in. With all the power I now possessed, misremembering one tiny detail could have consequences on a universal scale.

So the first thing that had to be done was granting the universe-stability functions to someone who didn't need to sleep. And it would probably be helpful if they couldn't be killed.

Oh, that's right. That was Mary, the ghoul. I granted her the necessary powers and went back to my nap.

---

I screamed suddenly.

"What's the matter?" Commun asked, more than a little confused. "I thought you were happy about your dream-girlfriend suddenly appearing out of nowhere."

I struggled with how to explain it. How did you tell someone that you were now acutely aware of the state of the universe, and that it was in grievous pain? And that you somehow knew that you alone had the power to fix this, but you didn't have the slightest idea what exactly you were supposed to do?

I made the best effort I could.

"Commun," I said, "I need to fix the universe."

"Oh," he said.

"And I don't know how."

"Oh."

He stood there for a while, as Adeline kissed me madly, not caring about my undead status. I wished I could have enjoyed it, but the universe insisted on not letting me.

"Do you, um. Do you know what about it is actually broken?" Commun finally asked.

"Yes, but our language doesn't have words for any of the concepts involved. They're very complicated, even though I seem to have a sudden implicit understanding of them."

"Oh. I was hoping it was simpler than that, like that there's something in the universe that shouldn't be in there."

"I suppose you could put it in those terms, but I can't describe what that something actually is. Also, it's rather difficult to take something out of the universe entirely."

"Is it these dreams?"

"No, the dreams are part of the universe, it's just that normally they're separated from the part we're in. I don't think I have to do anything about that, Milton can take care of it."

"Take care of what?" Milton asked.

"Not you, Milton the cat."

"Oh, that's good," said Milton. "Because I don't have any idea what we're talking about."

"I don't either," said Commun. "But I think it's bad."

So it seemed I wasn't going to be getting any advice. I'd have to take care of this indescribable problem on my own.

What was the first thing I had to do about it?

try tilting it to the left a little bit

try tilting it to the left a little bit

Oh, that fixed it.

lunch break

>start a fire, it will be exciting

lunch break

"All right, it's fixed now," I said. "I had to tilt the entire universe to the left a bit, but the thing that shouldn't be there seems to be gone. So I'm going to have lunch now."

"Mary, you're a ghoul. You don't need to eat any more," Commun said.

"Maybe I don't need to, but tilting the entire universe is a draining task."

"You shouldn't feel fatigued, either."

"Well, I do! It's probably just because I'm doing this weird cosmic stuff I don't even understand. It should be fine after I eat something."

But what was I going to eat?

>start a fire, it will be exciting

I decided that it would be best to just roast something up. I wasn't sure just what yet. So I lit a fire in the castle halls and figured I'd wait for something edible to show up.

And then an attendant rudely came in and doused it with a bucket of water.

"Excuse me," I said to the attendant, "I was using that."

"It was a fire hazard!" she protested.

"Do you know who I am?"

"Yeah, you're the Princess. Not the Queen. Queen's fire safety rules are still in effect. Good day, Your Highness."

Oh. Right.

"Commun, why am I not Queen yet?"

"Well, we haven't had a coronation ceremony. Partly because you weren't here, partly because the Royal Court is too busy fighting amongst themselves to actually start arranging one."

"Well, I'm here now. So let's go make me a queen!"

"I'll submit a petition to the Court on your behalf right away, so they can hopefully get started." Commun sighed.

No, that wouldn't do. The Royal Court was far too incompetent to make me Queen in a timely manner. I'd need to do something drastic to get them to move things along.

But what?

eat them but not in a vore way

eat them but in a vore way

eat them but not in a vore way

"I'm going on a hunger ſtrike," Mary declared.

"Oh thank De," I said.

"ſtarting with you!" Mary added, and then she lunged for the attendant and tore out their larynx with her teeth.

"Ooh, I'm liking the new look, Mary!" said Milton.

Oh no, thought I. Was it perhaps a poor choice to add the responsibility of universal stability onto the shoulders of such an already-overstressed-and-unstable personage? I pulled Mary off the attendant by the shoulders as she snapped viciously.

"Mary!" I admonished her. "Whatever are you doing? What would," I turned her head away from the attendant she was still growling at and continued in hushed tones, "what would Adeline think?"

Mary stopped. She wiped the blood off her mouth onto her nice white sleeve.

"You're right, Commun," she said, composing herself. "I have made the quite the fool of myſelf." The attendant spat up their own blood out of their throat hole in a geyser. "Thiſ iſ ſimply not behavior befitting a queen. We muſt find an attendant who can diſcreetly bury this body at once."

"What about this one right here?" said Milton, holding up the left hand of the attendant choking on their lack of throat.

"I like it, it's efficient," said Mary. "I'll get changed into ſomething more regal for the ceremony. Milton, you have a way with mother, you ſort my aſcenſion out with her." Milton nodded and set off, probably to do anything but that. "And Commun, you take care of the court. We ſhould have this knocked out before the afternoon is out!"

"It's already 10 at night," I whined.

"Adeline dear!" Mary hollered. "Be received at once."

"You needn't add witnesses," I grumbled.

Adeline hustled into this room and then staggered backwards in horror at the sight of the unnamed attendant's desiccated, writhing near-corpse.

"Adeline my love, I'm afraid we have a problem, or rather, two," said Mary as Adeline screamed, backed into the corner, clawing at her face. "The firſt is that you happen to exiſt but are not real, I have come to realize that you are ſimply a manifeſtation of my dreamſ and fantaſieſ or a diſtorted reproduction baſed on my memorieſ of thoſe few dayſ I had with the original Adeline, bereft of her unknown complexitieſ and experienceſ."

Adeline had turned to sob into the cobblestone corner, so Mary turned her back to face her Highness by the wrists.

"The ſecond," Mary said, blood and viscera still left on her chin and wetting her dress collar, "is that all the violence I have ſeen, had viſited upon my perſon, and perpetuated upon otherſ, eſpecially in the lateſt inſtance, haſ left me extremely horny. I am very into that, ſexually."

The revived Adeline flapped her gums open and close wordlessly and sweatingly as if to say "I am left wordless and do not know what to say even though I wish to express my thoughts through speech at the present moment."

"I would like to proposition you up to my quarterſ, for extremely rough ſex before I get dreſſed and become queen, if you would pleaſe," Mary concluded.

"Woo!" said Milton, digging a grave in the middle of the hall by holding onto a shovel with the dying attendant's hands. "Get it girl!"

Adeline's eyes darted from one corner of the hallway to another, licking her lips. Then, she looked Mary dead in the eyes and nodded slowly. Mary released her. "Good," Mary said. "Run along to my room, even though you would have no realiſtic way of knowing where that iſ, and I will meet you there." Adeline nodded and dashed off, eager to leave that horrifying room. That left just me and the future Queen, who sighed and turned to me:

"Commun," she said, "I don't know what I can do. I can't marry that figment." And despite it all, De damn it, my heart broke for her then. "I want to love her, I want to find out about her, I want to... find her. We need to bring her back." She looked at me with dewey eyes. "But later." A twinge of a smile at the corner of her lips.

"You can never tell anyone," I reminded her. "I don't think you understand how you could demolish your rulership's legitimacy in the opening week with this."

"We have to get to work," she reminded me. "TTFN."

---

Now it was up to me to convince the court to assemble a coronation ceremony for the crown princess, which, if you didn't notice, was the suggestion prompt for the previous update. The first problem was to wake them all up and assemble them for the formal arrangements.

"As you may well know," said I, "the king has fallen in his battle against the gods themselves." Murmuring erupted amongst the assembly!

I am too drunk to write the effort-intensive banter for the assembled dukes, duchesses, and lords who are constantly killing and replacing each other in ever-more elaborate and novel fashions, so kindly refer to page 6.

The drift is: The court loves, even more than political murder, planning a once-in-a-lifetime party!

---

So, Mary comes down the central aisle an hour and a half later, dressed in an ornate, all-white dress, complete with gloves and a veil that completely covered her face, topped with a crown of white chocolate, because when you're queen, every day is your wedding, your wedding to your country, flanked by hundreds of multicolored balloons with the whole audience tossing in lilacs, also of many colors, not just lilac, to the score of a brass band playing The Sound Of Silence in instrumental form. Mary was stricken... this was not a song that existed in her own time and place, and yet, from somewhere, the lyrics came to her, and she began to quietly sing:

Hello darkneſſ, my old friend.
I've come to talk with you again.
Becauſe a viſion ſoftly creeping
Left itſ ſeeds while I waſ ſleeping,
And the viſion that waſ planted in my brain
Still remainſ
Within the ſound of ſilence...

She paused, then continued, louder and more confident:

In restleſſ dreamſ I walked alone!
Narrow ſtreetſ of cobbleſtone
'Neath the halo of a ſtreet lamp,
I turned my collar to the cold and damp,
When my eyes were ſtabbed by the flaſh of a neon light
That ſplit the night
And touched the ſound of ſilence...

It was an impromptu improvisation that would not be tolerated by the court. They began to riot. They set Larry King's cop car on fire. This update is not very funny.

Nonetheless it would not interrupt the ceremony. Mary Lee Vindictus continued to the end of the aisle, where she would kneel to be crowned, once and for all, as Absolute Queen.

But who was the one there to crown her?

>But what of the eternal soul?
>*wink*

> Gaaaaaaaaryyyyy~

semi-important celebrity with vague name recognition!

> Gaaaaaaaaryyyyy~

semi-important celebrity with vague name recognition!

"Gary?" Mary asked, a little unsure of her memory.

"No," said Herman Cain, President of the United States. "It's Herman Cain, President of the United States. You shot me in the hall a while ago."

"Oh, right," Mary said. "Well, go ahead and make me Queen now."

"I will not," said Video Kojima, genius board game designer. "For my entire plan has been to put your half-brother on the throne. And I am not about to see my plans fail now."

"Weren't you someone else a moment ago?" Mary asked.

"You dare defy Richard Doomcall, scourge of the land, soon to be the true successor to Malcolm Vindictus?"

"I've never heard of you," said Mary.

At this point, I was thoroughly confused, because it was quite apparent to me that Sir Nose had been standing there the whole time. But Mary seemed to think otherwise.

"Wait a minute," Mary said, either having an ingenious realization or finally losing her last shreds of sanity. "You're Nothing, aren't you. That's why you keep changing your form."

"Don't be ridiculous," said Chwoka. "Nothing was crushed under a cosmic dumpster in your dreams, that's what caused this whole mess in the first place. I'm Chwoka and always have been, just ask anyone in this room."

"All right then," Mary said, turning (of course) to me. "Commun, has he always been Chwoka, whoever that is?"

And so I was faced with a choice. Did I go with what my eyes and memories told me, that this man had a consistent identity? Or did I back up Mary's absurd explanation, so she would not lose face and possibly the crown?

help mary duh

What even is a Chwoka, back Mary up

get punched in the teeth; lose crown

I've never even heard of a Chwoka. Must be some fancy title.