Who has posted? | | View a Printable Version

Dragon Fogel · 01-30-2012, 03:52 AM

Originally posted on MSPA by Dragon Fogel.

Parsley ran through the streets, looking for a sign of Sir Archibald. He thought he'd lost the knight, when he caught a glimpse of shining metal vanishing behind the corner of a building.

He rushed towards it, and soon saw Sir Archibald's mechanical guise pass through the doorway of what looked like a temple. For a moment, Parsley wondered if he had found a church, but he doubted it would be that simple - most likely it was a different building of importance. Regardless, he raced towards the doorway, hoping to retrieve the artifact before Sir Archibald did something reckless.

And then the door slammed shut just as he reached it. Parsley tried to find a handle, but he couldn't. Still, a mere door was only a small problem for him. He touched it and began turning it to bread.

He cursed his luck as he realized what he was transmuting; the "door" was made of stone. Had Archibald gotten himself lost in a cavern and been trapped behind a cave-in? It could take hours to change enough stone to bread to make a passage through. And that was assuming the demon hadn't simply shown him an illusion of Archibald. He could be wasting all that time on a ruse while the real Archibald was tricked into destroying the weapon.

Parsley sighed. His best chance would be to find Stein again. The Baron might have a device that could break through rock, or be able to invent one in a reasonable amount of time. The demon hunter turned around to track down Stein's vehicle.

And then he saw two strange figures flying towards him. One of them stopped and shook his hand.

"Hello, Parsley!" Carnea said. She turned to the other flying being as Parsley stared on in confusion. "This is Parsley, God of, um... Bread?"

Parsley simply stared as he tried to figure out who in blazes these newcomers were.

MalkyTop · 03-07-2012, 02:27 AM

Originally posted on MSPA by MalkyTop.

Really, at least all the other hallucinations were humanoid. This…catty…floaty thing didn’t even have any legs. The other thing was a little better, though there was the fact that he was floating too.

He considered the notion that the both of them didn’t actually exist. But didn’t the cat thing shake his hand? He felt that quite clearly. Maybe that was an illusion too, but it was talking to him, which…maybe wasn’t an illusion.

She kept talking about him to the other floating being. He scrunched up his face in thought. There was a chain around her neck…a lock…she was floating…

He snapped his fingers. “A spirit!”

The ghosts looked at him oddly. “What? Sorry about him, I’ve been told that he doesn’t really have a firm grasp on reality…haha…”

Why would a spirit know him though? He was a demon hunter, not a ghost hunter. So then perhaps this ghost was haunting him…for…some reason. Had he wronged anybody? Perhaps…killed anybody…? He…well, he always tried to never kill a human, if he could…but…

…Well, there was that one thief. Parsley hadn’t meant to kill her…she just…happened to fall out the window when he hit her with a breadbolt. And…well, she died.

Was this thief haunting him now? Why now? He was busy. Couldn’t she see that, or did illusions also spread to the dead?

Whatever the thief was blabbering about to her friend, he finally cut her off. “Can’t ye leave me be for now? Or d’ye want me t’ lay yer soul t’ rest?”

Carnea stared down at him for a long while. “…Yes, entirely delusional. Look,” she whispered, drawing closer, “I’m only asking you to do a bit of work, so the gods of this place don’t end up doing something silly like completely destroying us all. It’s only courteous, being in their domain, that we go along with their demands. That being a grand old pantheon-to-pantheon brawl. So, Parsley, why don’t you go spreading around a bit of gospel, hmm? Start making yourself out to be a god. God of Bread, considering what you can do. I’m sure these natives would appreciate some food. Just don’t contradict me, and I’m sure everything will work out. Hm?”

Parsley stared into the catty visage of the ghost. And then he decided to disregard everything she had just said. It was entirely unimportant. At least it seemed she wasn’t haunting him.

“…I’ll keep that in mind,” he said drily. “But if ye ‘scuse me, I need t’ get into this cave. There’s a holy artifact – “

Carnea’s eyes sparkled, and she turned to the messenger. “A holy artifact?”

The messenger shrugged. “Not that I know of.”

She turned back to Parsley. “Oh, come now. Such a thing would be so simple to open!”

What, she was going to try lockpicking it? Didn’t she realize she was dead? And she couldn’t lockpick it anyways. “Tha’s not actually a door – “

She opened it. He didn’t see how she did, but she did. He stared only for a moment, then nodded his head at her curtly before rushing in.

“Hold up, we’ll follow!” she called out, drifting leisurely behind. “Come now, holy artifacts are hard to find! You could use all the help you can get, no?”

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

It absolutely irritated her to have to stick with the dense demon hunter, but he had insisted. That usually didn’t mean much, of course. But there was an image to keep up. If her fellow contestants were to look like gods, she should start treating them as such. Gods were at least 90% belief, anyways, or something like that. Belief could be generated in the oddest of ways, even if nobody was looking.

The messenger followed too, of course. She turned to him as the three of them sped down corridors, and started a nice, private, godly conversation. “So, messenger, do you have a name?”

The messenger shrugged. “Sure I do. Many. But I don’t need to tell any of them to you, do I?”

“Mm,” she replied. “Names such as Vespim, Selachii, The Caller, Tu – “

“Stop that,” he snapped. “You just cheated, didn’t you?”

“I merely unlocked some information about you, and it lay open for me. I get impatient when one does not adhere to simple manners.”

“Right, I get the point,” he grumbled. “Even so, you didn’t have to go invading my privacy or anything…you can just call me Vespim, I suppose.”

“And just so that we are properly introduced, I’m Carnea.” She held out her hand and he glanced at it suspiciously.

“What’re you doing that for?”

She lowered it slightly. “I’m just being polite. A good handshake is a good greeting, especially if you must stalk me this entire time.”

“Sure, but a great, grand goddess making nice with a messenger?”

Carnea shrugged. “I find making friends with messengers is a very good thing to do. Then they don’t tamper with your messages.”

He answered with a wry smirk and shook her hand, managing not to skewer himself on her claws. “Yeah, that’s true. But you’re not even part of my pantheon, miss. Not gonna help you much with messages, and if you’re trying to trick me or bribe me or get on my good side and seduce me, it ain’t gonna work.”

It was a Very Good Thing, at least depending on your perspective, that Carnea did not have much of a face, for she would have a horrible one for poker. But since she didn’t, she had no need to attempt to hide a smirk that couldn’t exist. “Now, why would you ever accuse me of that?”

Elpie · 03-24-2012, 03:26 PM

Originally posted on MSPA by Lord Paradise.

Okay, PS, let's do this.

Elpie · 03-25-2012, 03:41 AM

Originally posted on MSPA by Lord Paradise.

As a moderately seasoned chess player, Nancy was at a disadvantage here, for this was most certainly not chess. Her other disadvantages were as follows: she was certain she was going insane, she had to keep watch over the Broderburg girl out of the corner of her eye, she was tired and hungry and beaten down and equally afraid of dying and losing her clothes. Luckily, she seemed to be winning.

Her opponent moved one of her Green Mirrors up into the corner, flanking Nancy’s Grey Architect. “Infinite mirror,” she declared. “Your Architect exists as an infinity of unrealized possibilities—“

“—And I can’t move him, yes, I know, I’m starting to get the swing of this. Sorry,” Nancy added, worried that she should be polite as possible, as some of the spectating natives were carrying spears. She decided that getting speared would probably be one of the most uncomfortable ways to die. Looking down at the board, Nancy saw the move that the chess-priestess had thought she was going to make, where she used her architect to construct a line of buildings in the way of the Green offensive line. It would have been a good move—she thought—but she had something different in mind. Watching her opponent’s reaction closely, Nancy took a Grey Aqueduct and inched it between two Green temples, putting all of her aqueducts in line. Without taking her finger off of the piece, she asked of one of the spectators, “This would create a flood, wouldn’t it?”

The native man smiled and nodded. Nancy took her finger off the piece. The priestess smiled and placed several glowing “river tiles” on her side of the board, removing three of her pieces. Then she rotated her Green Calendar counterclockwise, removed the river tiles, placed her own pieces back, and shifted Nancy’s Aqueduct back where it had been.

Nancy was speechless. “I’m sorry,” she said. “What did you just do?”

“My Calendar reversed the flow of time, forcing you to choose another path,” yawned the priestess. “What, didn’t I mention that?”

“I’m sure you didn’t.” Nancy looked at her own Calendar suspiciously. “If I do the same thing now, will that undo your undoing my move, or will it undo the move you took before, with your Mirror?”

The native frowned. “It would push back my Mirror,” she admitted. “But might also do untold damage to the timestream.”

Nancy had no idea what that meant. “I’ll take that risk,” she decided. “Time’s on your side on this game anyhow.” She rotated her Calendar counterclockwise.

From then on the game got a little more complicated, because, due to “temporal abberations,” the two of them were no longer strictly alternating turns, and acid no longer flowed downstream. But at least Nancy was able to get her architect in position. The game went on for rather longer than a normal game of chess—she wasn’t sure how long exactly, but could make a rough measure by it by how restless Alison seemed on her stone bench—with Nancy on the defensive but generally setting the pace. She would put up a street of buildings and the Green King would put taxes on them, so Nancy used her aqueducts to flood the whole housing project, at which point her opponent would send in her gondoliers and establish a beach head. Nancy generally appreciated the sophistication of the game that allowed two pieces to occupy the same square without either eliminating the others, but the tactics began to get a little overwhelming when a battle to control a single bridge wound up creating a totem pole of gray and green pieces eight squares high. Though she had difficulty translating her strategies into the vertical dimension, she was fairly sure she was not doing well, so she was surprised and not immediately relieved when, instead of taking her turn, the naked woman simply stood up from her seat and said “Game.”

“Pardon?” asked Nancy, checking to see if the Green Godhead, islanded amidst several river tiles, was threatened from any direction.

“Your Messenger reached the sun,” explained one of the spectators, pointing at the top of the totem pole. “Eclipse and apocalypse. Not only do you win, but the loser’s pieces are to be dumped in the river as a sacrifice to Chess.”

Nancy wasn’t sure she appreciated a culture that drowned things in acid as a matter of course, but maybe that was just paranoia or an assumption based on their race. “I was just lucky,” she admitted. “But I’m glad not to have lost.”

She debated asking whether or not she was receiving a prize for victory, but then the chess-priestess said, “Only one move remains to me. I must take you to see Chess Herself.”

”Chess as in the God of Chess?” interjected Alison. ”I’m the God of Numbers... or something.”

”Quiet. Nancy Little, the Goddess will meet you in Her inner temple now.”

“Now wait just a minute,” breathed Nancy, rising from her seat. “I’m not sure I’m comfortable meeting up with a God, or a Goddess or what have you... is this absolutely necessary? May I decline?”

“Nancy, when beckoned by a higher calling, one does not simply decline—”

”I’ll go,” volunteered Alison. ”Nancy and I are friends, so, you know, I could go in her place. If that’s okay.”

The chess-priestess sized Alison up and down. “Alison,” said Nancy. “I’m not sure I’m comfortable letting you, er... what I mean to say is your parents—“

”My parents are always dragging me to church. They’d probably be overjoyed that I’m talking to a Goddess. Just say yes, okay?”

Nancy sighed. “Make sure she isn’t harmed,” she told the priestess. The priestess nodded, took Alison by the hand and led her down a hallway.

Nancy suddenly felt very alone, surrounded by mostly-naked men. She hoped the little girl with the strange clothes would return soon; Alison wasn’t exactly grounded, but compared to everything else in this place, she was an island of normalcy.

“Anyone care for another game while we wait?” she asked.

* * * * *

Of course the inner temple was a giant chessboard. Having left the priestess behind some ways back, Alison took her place on the starting setup like a dutiful Harry Potter character. She recognized the stone pieces, not as pieces from normal chess or from the game Nancy had just been playing, but as statues of people she knew—her mom and dad and brother and sister each had their own square in the front row, and there was Carnea and John Smith and Nancy. The Nancy piece, strangely enough, shared a square with an angelic-looking woman covered rather provocatively by a handful of four-leaf clovers and a top hat.

Those were the Grey pieces. On the Green side, the pieces were, to say the least, abstract. One of them moved.

WELL PLAYED

Alison didn’t really know how to respond to that. “Wait,” she said. “I’m green?” A grey piece moved.

MY GAMBIT WAS TO BRING FORTUNE’S HERALD ONTO MY BOARD

YOUR SIDE SACRIFICED A PAWN TO EVADE THIS

Alison stepped forward two squares. “I’m not a pawn,” she insisted.

I DON’T MEAN ANY INSULT, CHILD

THE SMALLEST OF PIECES OFTEN PLAYS THE GREATEST OF ROLES

AND YOUR ACTIONS FORCE ME TO RECONSIDER MY ENTIRE STRATEGY

Alison dove towards the wall as the pieces began to move faster and faster, dancing around the temple. Not understanding the rules—or else recognizing that there were no rules—she kept tally of events: Carnea’s piece took out grey and green pieces indiscriminately; the robot moved quickly into the center and held sway over a large piece of territory; the other robot, the one with the die for a head, was taken off the board early, as was John Smith, although he seemed to reappear later on the other end of the board; the members of Alison’s family took a multitude of short, jerky movements towards the corners before being taken out one by one; Nancy remained immobile, yet safe. Finally everything stood still.

YOU’LL HAVE TO FORGIVE ME FOR THE SHOW, I WAS MERELY THINKING KINETICALLY

YES, MY MOVE IS CLEAR NOW

YOUR FRIEND NANCY IS THE CHOSEN OF FORTUNE, A POWERFUL AND CAPRICIOUS GODDESS

WITH THE POWER BESTOWED UPON HER, SHE COULD DO WHATEVER SHE DESIRES, AND YET HER FEAR AND WEAKNESS PREVENT HER FROM MAKING USE OF HER GIFTS

IT WOULD BE TO THE BENEFIT OF BOTH OF US WERE FAVOR’S FORTUNE TO BE TRANSFERRED TO YOU, LITTLE PAWN

Alison took a look at the woman keeping watch over Nancy’s statue. She didn’t look entirely trustworthy. “I already have my own Goddess friend,” she explained. “Carnea. We’re going to become better gods than you are and take all your worshippers away.”

THAT IS ONE PLAY AVAILABLE TO YOU, YES

BUT DOORKNOBS AND LOCKS WILL NOT PROVE SUFFICIENT TO SAVE YOUR FAMILY

THOUGH LUCK AND CHANCE ARE THE NATURAL ENEMIES OF STRATEGY—AND CHESS, PLAYED RIGHTLY, IS A GAME OF ABSOLUTES—IT DOES NOT SUIT US THAT SHE SHOULD REMAIN A PASSIVE PRESENCE IN NANCY’S HANDS

Alison considered this. She had always thought of herself as very unlikely and the world as terribly unfair, and understood that there was an opportunity here. “So if I want to just talk to this luck goddess, should I just talk to Nancy? That seems like it’d probably be rude.”

A FRONTAL ATTACK WOULD FORCE AN UNFAVORABLE ENDGAME

A PIECE ON YOUR SIDE KNOWN AS “ENVOY” IS SOON TO BE CONTACTED BY OUR PANTHEON’S EQUIVALENT PIECE, “MESSENGER”

THROUGH ONE OR BOTH OF THEM YOU WILL BE ABLE TO PETITION FORTUNE

“Yeah, I know Envoy. He’s a robot. I think he helped us out a little while ago. Alright, I don’t trust you or anything, but if I’m looking for Envoy at least it’ll get me out of your creepy nudist temple.”

EXIT THROUGH THE DOOR BEHIND GREEN, THEREBY BYPASSING NANCY

SHE WILL BE SAFEST IN MY TEMPLE... AND I AM LEARNING MUCH FROM HER UNCONVENTIONAL STRATEGIES, SO I WOULD PREFER IF YOU DID NOT TAKE HER FROM ME

“Alright. Thanks. She was just slowing me down anyway.” Alison left the back way, realizing almost immediately that she had no idea where to start looking for Envoy. She didn’t have Nancy’s luck with her anymore, so she’d need to think like a chess player. The streets and canals made up the board, and Envoy was... a knight? That sounded about right.

Back in Chess’s temple, Fortune’s piece disengaged from Nancy’s and backed off a square. The statue of Nancy, lacking the goddess’s support, fell over, and shattered.

Dragon Fogel · 03-31-2012, 02:46 AM

Originally posted on MSPA by Dragon Fogel.

Mirror-Emma would have tapped her foot impatiently, but the reflection she was inhabiting wouldn't cooperate. She had to settle for talking.

"You have not asked the question yet."

"Question 39:" Six repeated, and then paused again.

"Ah, I see. You are indecisive."

"Question 39:"

"Perhaps I can help you."

The mirrors shifted. Six looked in the northern mirror, and saw itself talking into a mirror.

"Question 39:" the mirror-Six began. "What are you?"

The answer suddenly echoed throughout the room, as though it was coming from all the mirrors at once.

I AM MIRROR

A GODDESS OF THIS WORLD

I AM THE WINDOW TO TRUTH
AND TO LIES

MY EYES
SEE THE PAST

THE PRESENT

THE FUTURE

I CAN SHOW YOU WHAT WAS

I CAN SHOW YOU WHAT IS

I CAN SHOW YOU WHAT WILL BE

OR WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN

WHAT MIGHT BE

WHAT MIGHT COME TO PASS

I AM BUT IMAGES

ARE THEY REAL

NONE CAN SAY

I AM MIRROR

I CAN ONLY SHOW YOU

Six watched as his reflection tried to respond.

"Incorrect. Gods do not exist. Therefore you cannot be a god."
The Mirror-Six paused.
"Correct. You are Mirror."
There was another pause.
"Incorrect. Correct. Incorrect. Correct. Incorrect..."

And then Six watched his reflection's head explode. Slowly, he turned back towards the eastern mirror.

"I think that means you should ask a different question," the reflection of Baby Emma said calmly. "Why don't you see how that turns out?"

Six turned to the south. Once again, he saw himself standing in front of the mirror.

"Question 39: If the gods are all-powerful, then why do humans suffer?"

Once again, the chamber filled with a voice. But it was different from Mirror's.

BECAUSE IT AMUSES US
WE LAUGH WHEN YOU STUB YOUR TOE
WE LAUGH WHEN YOU WATCH HELPLESSLY AS YOUR COUNTRYMEN ARE SLAUGHTERED
WE LAUGH WHEN YOU CALL TO US IN VAIN FOR HELP IN YOUR HOUR OF NEED
WE LAUGH WHEN YOU ARE TAKEN AWAY FROM YOUR OWN WORLD TO BATTLE FOR OUR AMUSEMENT
YOUR SUFFERING SERVES NO PURPOSE EXCEPT TO ENTERTAIN SUPERIOR BEINGS
NOW I HAVE A QUESTION FOR YOU MACHINE
WHY ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINING ME
DO YOU NEED HELP
THEN PERMIT ME TO DO SO

"Correct," the Mirror-Six said. He suddenly raised his chainsaw arm, and dropped Baby Emma.

I AM GUILLOTINE
I AM DEATH I AM SUFFERING I AM PAIN
THESE THINGS EXIST BECAUSE I EXIST AND I WILL THEM TO BE
ALLOW ME TO SHOW YOU

Mirror-Six proceeded to saw his own body in half, starting from the head. Both halves fell to the ground, sparking. Baby Emma cried.

Six turned to the eastern mirror again, somewhat more swiftly this time.

"I suppose philosophy isn't your strong point," the Mirror-Emma mused. "Perhaps you should try another approach."

Six turned around to face the western mirror.

"Question 39:" his reflection behind. "What is this note?"

The Mirror-Six then produced an incredibly loud tone. The mirrors in the reflection shattered, and glass flooded the room. The entire temple collapsed, crushing Six and Emma.

"Time's up," Mirror-Six's head said quietly, before falling off what was left of his body.

Six immediately turned back to the eastern mirror.

"Well, that's an interesting approach, but I don't think it's going to work out for anyone," said Mirror-Emma. "But I think you've held onto that question long enough; it's time to ask it for real."

Six turned to look at the mirrors; he could see only the fates of the other Sixes, who had asked the wrong questions. He turned back to the eastern mirror, and looked down at Baby Emma. Then he looked at the mirror again, and asked his question.

"Question 39: How can I better understand humanity?"

Before Mirror could answer, the door to the chamber suddenly opened, and Parsley ran in, followed by Carnea and the messenger.

"Archibald, I'm come for the artifact," he said calmly. "Just hand it over now, there's no need to cause a scene."

MalkyTop · 04-05-2012, 11:15 PM

Originally posted on MSPA by MalkyTop.

Carnea stared at Six. Then stared at Parsley. Then stared at Six again, and finally allowed her eyes to rest upon…her.

Very many things clicked into place.

“You…You think that – you – an artifact….you…absolute buffoon!”

She had only meant to hit him with a fist, but that fist happened to be holding a somewhat ornate doorknob. Still, it had the desired effect, and Carnea continued to swing at him, shouting something furiously. Parsley, on his part, turned a stagger into a dodge and held his head, woozily trying to remember whether ghosts could actually hit you with doorknobs or not. “You little delusional bastard I can’t believe that you would even – how could you possibly think – of all the stupid…”

As Carnea continued to browbeat Parsley all around the mirrored room, Six shifted the baby’s weight and raised a saw – then he glanced to a wall and decided that, on the whole, leaving would be a better decision. And he did so silently.

“I knew it, of course, how could I have not thought that you would give me trouble! You little close-minded….hm…” Carnea paused, looking upwards while Parsley quickly took the chance to try to remember what it was that warded off ghosts. “Close-minded…”

“’Scuse me, don’t mean to interrupt, but I believe you were going to talk to that other fellow? Because he ran away,” said the messenger.

“Oh, forget him! He can go gallivanting off with stupid little babies if that’s what he wants! Who gives a damn?! I don’t even know what sort of god he is! God of Crying and Being a Failure, that’s what!” The two floated upwards and out, the sounds of the goddess’ hysterical frustration eventually being drowned out by temple.

Parsley stood rather still in the middle of the room of mirrors.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“—I just can’t believe that bitch stole him when he clearly had my name written all over him!”

The messenger simply nodded.

“I mean, I know it’s not a rule rule, but it’s a simple act of courtesy! I mean – “ It struck Carnea, quite suddenly, that she was bitching about a baby.

Well…she had just forgotten herself, that’s all. It was easy to do that under stress. She was pretty sure she could be considered ‘under stress.’ Very many stress…es. Very…much stress…?

“Is that guy also one of yours?”

She looked down. Envoy, in turn, didn't. Actually, he didn't do much of anything at all.

“Oh good, you got rid of her. I’m glad that you thought on my words – “

“I don’t think that’s the same one.”

Carnea squinted. “Oh. Yes. Well, they look the same. The stupid failure one is the same sort...of...whatever. This one’s the boring one. That’s what he is, literally. God of Boring. He’s so boring, he might as well be dead.”

Envoy did not visibly react. She hated that.

**Pinary** · 04-10-2012, 04:46 AM

Originally posted on MSPA by Pinary.

Show Content

Every city has an underbelly. No matter where or when, be it some analyst-hive in the U.S. or a space station with a population of millions, there are parts of every city that most people avoid and less-reputable folks flock to. Even in an ancient Aztincayanesque city littered with half-summoned gods, you could find a seedy, abandoned restaurant amounting to nothing more than half a dozen low, stone tables and an empty fire-pit.

Even Ethan, walking down the few steps to enter the place immediately behind John, could tell that it wasn't a nice place. It had all the hallmarks of one of those places him and his parents had stopped at on a road trip and decided that they could wait for lunch a bit longer, and as much as he wasn't about to be scared in front of anyone, he was behind John for the moment, so he could afford to maybe look around nervously a bit.

John, meanwhile, wasn't quite sure what to expect. He didn't exactly have much to go on at that point, and whenever he'd been bored in the past, he'd always just wandered until he made his way to a seedy joint such as that one. Even given his experience, though, the rock music came as a surprise.

("There's a pulse in the new-born sun / A beat in the heat of noon / There's a song as the day grows long / And a tempo in the tides of the moon")

When John and Ethan made it to the bottom of the steps, one of the figures sitting around the fire pit grinned, gave a little half-wave with one hand, and clambered to his feet. He was male, humanoid, and about the same size as John, but where John was medium-skinned and wearing a woven-metal suit, this person was dressed in glossy black and had skin to match. He wasn't just dark-skinned; his face and hands were a solid, shiny black, like he'd been dipped in an inkwell just moments before.

("It's all around us and it's everywhere / And it's deeper than royal blue / And it feels so real / You can feel the feeling")

"Well, well, well," the inky figure said, taking an ambling step or two towards the door, "what sort of name do you use?"

("And that's the majesty of rock / The fantasy of roll / The ticking of the clock / The wailing of the soul")

"People call me John Smith," John replied, sticking out a hand to shake. "How about yourself?"

("The prisoner in the dark / The digger in the hole / We're in this together / And ever")

"Around here, I'm Dice." He put out his left hand, but John had put out his right. "Sorry, man, left work?" He gestured to his right wrist, where a metal band had a pair of chains hooked onto it, each of which terminated in softball-sized weights after just a few feet, dragging them along the floor if his arm was straight down.

("In the shade of a jungle glade / Or the rush of the crushing street / On the plain, on the foamy main / You can never escape from the beat")

As John went to switch, Dice grabbed his hand and pulled, bringing John stumbling in closer. As he did, he whipped the weights up off the floor, bringing them around and aiming for Ethan.

("It's in the mud, and it's in your blood / And its conquest is complete / And all that you can do / Is just surrender")

Already on guard, Ethan ducked the swinging weights, making the pair of them continue arcing around, tugging Dice's arm with them and pulling his balance a bit further than he'd banked on. John, taking advantage, just continued his forward motion, bringing his shoulder into Dice's stomach and lifting.

("To the majesty of rock / The pageantry of roll / The crowing of the cock / The running of the foal")

Dice went over John and landed flat on the floor, but the weights just kept coming around, taking John out at the ankles as they went. In the end, both men were sprawled on the ground, sore in places but not much the worse for wear.

("The shepherd with his flock / The miner with his coal / We're in this together / And ever")

Neither one really started laughing first. It was a joint thing, and it was more like two old friends than two strangers who'd just met in a shady bar.

(Musical interlude)

As the laughter died down and the two stood, helping each other up, John spoke up. "So," he said, "weighted dice?"

"Yeah." Dice rattled a bit of dirt from the chains on his wrist, then took a seat by the fire pit again. "Used to be, I was free as a bird, doing the same thing as you. Give me a few trillion years or so and things would've been well on their way to heat death around here."

One of the other two sitting at the fire snorted. "Yeah, but ever since Doomsday came and went, Manifestation of Entropy and the Chaos that Implies over here's been shackled, and so the city's not been doing its proper breaking down."

"When we die, do we haunt the sky?" The third figure, sitting more to the back, spoke up, speaking just as the music (music that, Ethan realized, didn't seem to be coming from any tape deck or anything) came out of the interlude. "Do we lurk in the murk of the seas? What then, are we born again, just to sit asking questions like these?"

"Thanks, Manifestation of Cultural Impacts on Situations, real useful."

John gestured for Ethan to come over and sit by the empty fire-pit as well. "No, I get it," he said, staring into the lack of flames. "If something's bound entropy, this place could just keep going indefinitely."

("I know, for I told me so / And I'm sure each of you quite agrees / The more it stays the same / The less it changes")

Dice glowered at the empty ring of stones as well. "That's about the size of it." Suddenly, though, he was grinning at John. "Of course, that doesn't take into account the effects of a bunch of outsiders, including a goddess of locks and an agent of entropy."

("And that's the majesty of rock / The mystery of roll / The darning of the sock / The scoring of the goal / The farmer takes a wife / The barber takes a pole")

"What do you say, John? You feel like introducing some stochasticity into this plane?"

("We're in this together / And ever...")

John grinned back at him.

Dragon Fogel · 04-11-2012, 01:23 AM

Originally posted on MSPA by Dragon Fogel.

Show Content

“Everything in life is luck.”
-Donald Trump

Darkness. Darkness is the absence of light. The void is the manifest of darkness. No light. No sound.

Sound. Sound is the vibration of air, which makes creating noise sound a lot harder than it really is. A less-than-five (infant. baby. birthed fetus.) can created many decibels of noise without thinking anything more than I’m upset.

This was what Emma (Root Meaning: All-containing, universal) was probably exactly thinking, since she, too, was crying, screaming, mourning, weeping like the Virgin Mary, before the cross of Jesus. A child borne of etcetera, etcetera, and obsolete Catholic Mysticism.

Pounding the pavement. Hitting the road. Idioms for running, his current action, on repeat, repeat. Allocated in a major language center of Six’s mechanical brain, folder /idioms. Idioms are important for understanding complex human thought, just like metaphors, allegories, parables, stories, twisting words words words and he was very good at understanding words (but never the speaker).

The Infant was still emitting several decibels of wailing.

His voice warbled a bit, confused, distorted, worry set to an autotune remix (2031 was the golden year of autotune remixes, a billion dollar genre, with such hits as “Political Speech 4” “Reality TV” and “D-D-DICE (Gambling Night)”):

“Question 40: What do you want?”

Less-than-fives (Baaabiesss. Ba-bies.) are incapable of composing intelligible answers, (and therefore could not be put at fault for not answer the question, or answering the question incorrectly) but regardless, it made Six feel better, and helped adjust the host’s thoughts a bit.

The baby (less-than-five) wants something, therefore its current perturbed state. (keep running, turn right at intersection, book it (another idiom)) The things a All -Encompassing Universal could possibly want mostly include:

• Food/Thirst
• Warmth/Cool
• Security (Deriving from a feeling of that Hated fear. The fear that judges, eternally.)
• Psychological Stimulation/Attention (Derived from dark and winding corridors of coal black stone, an alien robot that could never parent the child, NEVER NEVE- SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP.)

Six ran a few calculations to conclude suitable and reasonable place to meet all of these possible requirements:

Candidate 1: Church/Temple [INCORRECT. ELIMINATED: GOD DOES NOT EXIST]
Candidate 2: The Broderburgs/Another (Human) Contestant [INCORRECT. ELIMINATED: THIS IS MY LESS-THAN FIVE (INFANT)(BABY)]
Candidate 3: A Restaurant [CORRECT. APPROVED.]

The catch (the rub, the twist, etcetera. Something sort of an idiom) was the fact that the GPS DOWN GPS DOWN GPS DOWN-WHO CARES, the fact that a restaurant was not immediately locatable.

Sound. The Emma was emitting several decibels of sound. It bounced off the walls, a cacophony of a child’s discomfort, sound sound

ECOLOCATION IS THE USE OF SOUND AND ITS ECHOES TO DETERMINE THE LOCATION OF A BODY IN SPACE. Six adjusted his hearing software to better optimize the audiolocation process.

BEEP, an invisible, beep, a beep from Six’s mouth that only he could hear (save for several animals. AND GOD(S), IF THOSE EXISTED.) A scream no one else could hear or care about.

And just like that, Six was given sight-more-than sight, a map of a significant chunk of the space around him, sensitive ears, sensitive sound, UnivE(mm)/(rs)al.

An immediate human, recognizable architectural feature was stairs. Stairs leading down, down to what was most likely a door. Underground stairs can be generally indicative of peddlers, stores, possibly a restaurant, likely a bar. Six immediately beelined for them.

And another thing.

(“Just take those old records of the shelf/I’ll listen to them by myself/Today’s Music ain’t got the same soul/I like that Old Time Rock N’ Roll!”) -Bob Segar, Old Time Rock N’ Roll.

The origin of Rock N’ Roll is hotly debated. (Six arrived at the top of the stairs, wailing baby cradled in his arm.) It kind of somehow, sort of, came out of nowhere. (Slowly, he went down, one step at of the time.) A kind of cultural luck, (He got to the bottom, to the Ashen-Stone Door, black like the void.)

A genretastic Roll of the Dice. (And with a push of his arms, swung it open.)

(And stepped

in.)

Elpie · 04-13-2012, 03:21 PM

Originally posted on MSPA by Lord Paradise.

Calendar was tracing intricate circles of light around the walls of his temple, counting down to nothing and stewing in his humiliation when the traveler strolled right back in. John Smith looked different. He had the stink of a worshipper about him now.

YOU DARE, shouted Calendar, wishing he wasn’t reduced to the brute-force “voice-from-the-sky” method of dealing with mortals. It had been eons since he’d managed to work up a decent avatar.

“Yeah, yeah, I dare. Simmer down, Calendar. I’m here to make you an offer.”

That was unexpected. WHAT

WHAT KIND OF OFFER

“I think I get what your problem is. You used to be the Big God On Campus when there was an apocalypse to count down to, but now it’s past, no one cares anymore, right? Doesn’t matter what day it is cause every day’s the same.”

Seconds whirled by a little faster than normal, as though angry.

AN OVERSIMPLIFICATION OF A PROBLEM THAT PLAGUES THE ENTIRE PANTHEON

THIS WORLD HAS LITTLE JOY AND LITTLE SUFFERING, WHILE WORSHIPPERS TEND TO EXPECT ONE OR THE OTHER

“Right,” said John. “In either case, we were hoping to get you in on the ground floor of something new. Have you been following this eclipse?”

ECLIPSES ARE A DAILY OCCURENCE HERE
BUT YES, AS IS MY DUTY, I FORECAST ITS ARRIVAL IN SOME THREE QUARTERS OF AN HOUR

“Make it an hour and a half,” commanded John. “We know you can do that. Something big’s coming—something that’s going to change everything—and we want to make sure it arrives right on time.”

Calendar was silent for a second that lasted five seconds. Then:

YOU ASK ME TO TAKE A GREAT RISK

John Smith smiled. “Haven’t you heard? The dice are weighted. Keep your eyes on the skies, Calendar.”

* * * * *

Show Content

”I adore you /the same way that others always adored you / emergency humility, just break glass”

”Hey, that’s my sister!” mewled the male Broder-child, who had taken his seat beside the firepit between the rapping man and the one with the eyes that pierced through all lies. ”Why do you have her? You’re not a babysitter, are you?”

”I implore you / with no knowledge of dogma to conform to / I know I don’t deserve it but SAVE MY ASS”

“I am not a babysitter, and I’ll be asking the questions here,” replied Six. “Question 41: how do I make her stop crying?”

”Here, give her to me. I’m her favorite.”

”ANSWER UNACCEPTABLE”

”And if I’m goin’ down let me do it in first class / The paganistic prayer of a heathen with wild past”

As Six rushed towards the boy, saw in hand, the less-than-five-but-greater-than-everything’s wailing only intensified, slowing him down a bit. One of the wanderers around the fire reached out a dextrous hand and stole her out from under his arm. “Settle down,” he said, handing EMMA WHO IS A BABY over to the rapping man. “You’re not asking the right questions. I’m Representative of the Human Capacity to Deconstruct and Categorize One’s Environment.”

“His name is Name. And that’s Song,” said the third figure, weighed down by chains. “Ethan here, I don’t know if you know already. I know you.”

”Please forgive my bastardized style dash / And anoint me with salvation in form of non-crash”

The line “I know you” didn’t come off as revelatory as it was intended, as Six was used to his celebrity status and assumed offhand that everybody knew him and owned his bobblehead. Instead, flustered at having TEMPORARILY lost his prized baby over to these men, he found himself asking “Question 42: What are the right questions?”

“The wrong question, the one you’ve been asking yourself all this time, is the question of what you can do to help yourself,” said the chained man. “Ask instead what work there is for you in service of a higher power.”

”I want to live so bad / All my life I’ve been so arrogant / This is a vessel of my wakening / Please, Father, put your hand out, carry it”

“I-I-I-IN-INININININCORRECT.” Six’s Emma seemed to be settling down nicely, in response to Song’s strangely tender rapping. So that was good. Handsaw activate.

Whiiiiiiiir

“Stop,” said the chained man. Holding out a hand. (CORRECT). Six turned to him and, acting on an impulse more powerful than anything, knelt.

”I WANT TO LIVE SO BAD / ALL MY LIFE I’VE BEEN SO ARROGANT / THIS IS A VESSEL OF MY WAKENING / GOD DAMN IT, PUT YOUR HAND OUT, CARRY IT!”

“Question 43: Who are you?”

Dice (Dice (Dice)) smiled evilly. “Name’s right, you know. There’s no point in only asking questions you know the answer to,” said Dice [seefile: Dice] (Dice!). “Now, tell me I’m correct.”

“CORRECT.”

(No) / There are no atheists in the foxholes / (No) / There is no intellect in the air / (No) / There are no scientists on the way down / Just a working example of faith versus physics”

“Now, Six, aside from some obvious thematic parallels, we don’t have a lot in common,” admitted Dice. “I’m a creature of chaos, you like things nice and ordered. But opposites add up to seven, and seven—“ (possible endings to this sentence: A) is lucky B) is the number of magic C) numbers among David Fincher’s most celebrated works D) rhymes with heaven) “—beats Six.” (Oh.)

”NO! THERE ARE NO ATHEISTS IN THE FOXHOLES, NO! THERE IS NO INTELLECT IN THE AIR”

”Wait, are three and four always opposite on dice? Aren’t they supposed to be random?”

”NO! THERE ARE NO SCIENTISTS ON THE WAY DOWN—“

“Six, I need something that’ll break these chains. A saw might do it... but it would need to be a saw wielded by a true and honest believer. Understand?”

”JUST A WORKING EXAMPLE OF FAITH VERSUS PHYSICS”

Emma giggled.

* * * * *

Tom jumped out of the RV and caught up to Parsley, standing alone in the middle of a room full of mirrors. He was about to make a joke about throwing stones in glass temples when his wife shouted, ”Where’d they go, Parsley?” and he remembered that that might not be appropriate right now.

”Sir Archibald? He snuck out on me,” answered Parsley apologetically. ”A couple o’ strangers—illusions—no one I could recognize—came and caused something of a distraction. I’m sorry I failed.”

”You did the best you could.” Tom had no idea where to go next, and was really starting to get worried about his children. He looked over to Clarice, who seemed to be feeling the same. He walked over and put an arm around their shoulder, and they took a minute.

At which point Parsley noticed something curious out of the corner of his eye. Reflected in the mirror that took up one wall of the barn, the demon hunter saw the Baron and his lady associate not as the strangely-garbed domestic couple in which role the demon had deigned to cast them. The illusion, it seemed, was now flimsy enough that it failed to carry to reflections.

Parsley was carving a piece of the mirror from the wall to take with him, which struck Clarice as odd, but so again did most pieces of information about Parsley. ”Come on, Parsley, we’ll carpool,” said her husband, beckoning. ”Find one of these kids, at least.”

On the way out, Clarice glanced in the mirror. She didn’t look good. It was funny how it took a thing like a multiversal battle of the death to get a woman to really see what three kids and a decade of diminishing return on self-care had done to her body. She sighed. Now, perhaps, was not the time.

Tom smiled as he saw Clarice check herself out in the mirror. He couldn’t blame her. She was always at her most beautiful when she was running on all cylinders like this. Was it wrong to think that? Probably. He knew how much this was affecting her, even if she wasn’t showing it. He needed to find the kids.

And then once he got out of here, he was going to have to lose about twenty pounds. Seriously.

Dragon Fogel · 04-22-2012, 03:18 AM

Originally posted on MSPA by Dragon Fogel.

Parsley silently followed the Baron and the lady, glancing around with the mirror shard the entire time, saying nothing as he familiarized himself with the true nature of his surroundings.

At first, Parsley had taken the room to be a barn. Technically, that might have been true once. But now it was simply a large empty room, with only two noteworthy features. One, obviously, was the enormous mirror he had taken the shard from in the first place.

The other, far more disturbing feature was the blood covering the other walls, formed into various incoherent messages and arcane symbols.

What puzzled Parsley the most was the fact that the mirror revealed the true nature of the barn, yet neither the Baron nor the lady seemed to react to the image it showed. For that matter, would it not have revealed to Archibald the true nature of what he held - that it was a sacred relic? Why, then, had he fled?

Was Parsley alone able to use the mirror to pierce the illusion's veil? But how could that be? What was so unique about him?

And then Parsley recalled that chilling day.

"You and I are alike in one way," the old alchemist sneered.

"What nonsense are you babbling?" Parsley said. He tried once more to transform his restraints, but found himself unable to somehow; he didn't feel even the slightest change from them.

"We both have a gift, boy," the man chuckled, leaning on his crooked staff. "Something that makes us different from others. Something that makes them hate us, fear us."

"Hate you, perhaps," Parsley grumbled.

"Come now, boy," he cackled. "Can you say none have ever looked at you with fear, knowing your power? Knowing that you could change their throats into bread with just a touch?"

Parsley said nothing.

"But you - you squander your gift. The sheer chaos you could cause with it! The destruction, the death, the power! And what do you do? You change some horseshoes and pay for replacements."

"It's a dangerous power," Parsley muttered. "I'd never use it for evil."

"Evil? Pah! Good, evil - these are the words of people who lack vision, boy! Those of us with such gifts are better than the mortals. And I - I am supreme among the gifted."

He stepped closer to his prisoner.

"For I have learned how to take the gifts of others."

He pointed to the gem adorning the amulet around his neck.

"You see this gemstone? It is a special artifact, which only the gifted can use. I have a collection of such trinkets, but none has served me as well as this one. It holds my soul, you see. Allows me to live on in another body, while carrying the last body's gift with me."

He laughed weakly as he removed the amulet and placed it around Parsley's neck.

"But the last vessel I captured was a clever one - he could age things quickly. Used it on his body just as I switched in. I was worried I might rot away before I found a new vessel. Had to move to another village, just start capturing people. Hope that a goody two-shoes with a gift like you would show to find out what I'd done with them."

The old man coughed.

"My original gift was to find others like me. That's how I knew you were my target. But I had to do some poking around in your master's mind to find out what your gift did; I didn't want to be caught off guard again, after all."

He laughed, pointing to the other bound prisoner.

"No gifts, so it was easy enough. Another of my artifacts allowed me to see into his mind. The old coot was tough to break, but I finally managed it. I know all about you, Krose. Everything you've done since your master took you in, all those years ago."

He laughed.

"I'm looking forward to seeing the look on his face when his own pupil kills him. I wonder, which organ should I change first, for the slowest, most excruciating death?"

Parsley scowled.

"What good will it do you to have my body if I can't escape these bonds? You'll be as trapped as I am."

"Hmm hmm hmm! I've got more tricks than you do, boy. Even without my gifts, I know more about alchemy than anyone on this world. I know how to make those bonds, and I know how to break them."

He cackled.

"But you don't. You haven't the faintest idea why your shackles won't turn to bread."

Parsley glared at him.

"Now, just hold still while I fetch the amulet's twin, hmm? Then we can begin the transfer."

The man wandered off to a chest and started taking out items. Parsley desperately tried to think of a way to escape.

His master was wounded. His arms were bound, and his hands were held in place by something strange that he couldn't transform. At first he wondered if his power was sealed somehow, but he soon found he could change the small pockets of air within the shackles.

They had to be made of something that he couldn't transform. But what? What in the world could there be that he would be unable to change into bread?

Then the answer struck him. Bread itself!

The bindings had to be made of bread. Some unusual variety, clearly, but nonetheless bread. Straining his neck, Parsley found he was able to reach his left hand and take a bite.

It tasted awful. He spat it out immediately. But he had torn away a large chunk of it, and soon had his hand free. The old man turned at the noise, and saw Parsley contorting his left arm painfully until the tip of his finger touched the amulet around his neck.

"NO!" the alchemist screamed. "YOU'LL RUIN EVERYTHING!"

Leaning on his walking stick, the madman lunged at Parsley, clawing at the amulet to prevent his soul's container being transmuted to bread. Undaunted, Parsley grabbed at the stick and changed it, snapping it in two, then clubbed the aging alchemist over the head.

He fell to the ground. Parsley struggled to reach the metal bindings holding him to the wall. then once his arms and neck were freed, he tore off the bread from his other hand.

"You make the worst bread I've ever tasted," he grumbled at the unconscious man, as he rushed towards his master. "I'll deal with you and your amulets in a moment."

As Parsley freed his master, the alchemist slowly came to. He realized he had lost.

But he was not unprepared. He reached a withered hand into his pocket.

And, by the time Parsley had roused the senior hunter, the alchemist and his chest of mystic artifacts had vanished.

"Hey, Parsley, you okay?" Baron Stein asked. "You look pale."

"We may have greater problems than the demon," Parsley said, glancing once more at the incomprehensible red scrawls.

Had that wicked man found a new body? Was this his new base of operations?

Had he simply vanished with his artifacts again?

Parsley had always hoped that the cruel alchemist had been unable to find a new body, and simply spent the rest of his years rotting away.

But this mirror that could pierce a veil of illusions... It seemed that only Parsley could make use of it. The alchemist had been obsessed with artifacts which could only be used by the "gifted", was this mirror one of them?

More worried than ever, Parsley walked out to Stein's vehicle, strangely silent.

**Pinary** · 05-31-2012, 03:33 AM

Originally posted on MSPA by Pinary.

Observatory saw everything that happened out in the city. From her tower, she knew that the messenger and the cat-face were poking at the new statue, that Nancy's atypical chess tactics were near to winning her a second match, and that Dice was giving the die-man a thorough talking-to. It was all laid plain for her to see, and it didn't matter that she couldn't hear any of what they were saying.

And no, she didn't know how to read lips. Lip-reading was for cheats, and she wasn't about to sink that low. Other gods could have their sound, but that wasn't her domain, and she wasn't about to try to weasel her way in.

She had her dignity, after all.

Well, most of the time. Having a mortal's hand pass through her shoulder wasn't terribly dignified, to be sure, and neither was jumping several feet into the air in shock when it happened.

She hated to make the effort to look inside her own temple, but apparently her Cult had been slacking again, so she didn't have much of a choice. Wrinkling up her nose, she turned her gaze inward.

The girl she saw could've passed for a member of her Cult. On the young side, certainly, but bordering on the age when she would blossom into a lively young woman and, by the goddess' judgement, become quite a font of gossip.

The girl began to speak, but Observatory, quite incapable of hearing, just flicked a hand and turned her gaze back to the outside world. Across the room, a bell rocked back and forth, its tolling to be heard only by those of the Cult of Hearsay.

-

Alison made her way back down the stairs, disappointed and slightly confused. She'd hoped for something more than an immediate dismissal and a weird silent bell, but-

Her thoughts were interrupted by a group of cloaked figures waiting for her at the bottom of the stairs. There were fourteen or fifteen of them, their faces obscured by the hoods of the big, grey cloaks they all wore, and they were all facing directly at her.

"Um," she said, not exactly sure how to react. "Hi?"

"Child, please." One of the hooded figures, apparently a woman, stepped forward. She wobbled a bit as she moved, rolling her shoulders and going almost as far sideways as she did ahead. "The Goddess told us you were here, and I can see why."

Something clicked in Alison's head. "You could hear that bell?", she guessed.

A rustle of whispers passed through the assembled cultists.

"That's right," the apparent leader said, nodding her head. The rest of the assembled group nodded along with her. "When our Goddess calls, only those of us she's chosen can hear it."

"So, what," Alison said, running through the possibilities in her head and hitting on the most likely, "you came to get rid of me, is that it?"

The group chuckled.

"No, nothing like that." A set of teeth reflected out from under the hood- the ringleader was smiling. "She wants us to offer you the chance to join us, dear."

-

In an absolutely shocking turn of events no one could possibly have seen coming, after a few minutes of expounding on Envoy's boringness and his miracles of being boring in the past, Carnea had gotten bored. The messenger wasn't the best of audiences, and the goddess only had so much material to work with.

It didn't take long for her to start wandering off, going on and on, ostensibly to Vespim but really just to herself, and she'd barely made it a block from where Envoy had been set before she spotted Alison.

"Ah, look, the Goddess of Numbers! How's, uh... number things?"

The messenger narrowed his eyes at Alison and the nice new grey robe she was wearing. "And what's a goddess of your stature doing in a cult, worshipping another deity?"

"Well, uh..." The girl cast about for something, and soon, an idea came to her. "A census! It's been more than ten years since the last one, and the census is supposed to be done every ten years."

Carnea didn't know what it was that Alison was on about, but the messenger seemed to buy it, so she figured she probably shouldn't push. "Good, excellent! I'm sure many worshippers will flock to see it when it's done!"

"...Of course, yes," Alison responded, getting the feeling that maybe Carnea had a bit of a screw loose. "Anyway, uh, in order to ask Observatory the census questions, I apparently have to commune with her Cult. She communicates by manifesting as a grey-cloaked person in this group and spreads a rumour..." She trailed off. Carnea had lost interest already and appeared to be ready to move along, so Alison decided to wrap up early with a nice, strong "...So yeah."

Jumping on the opportunity, the Goddess of Doorknobs and Locks said, "Well, that's wonderful! Vespim here and I really need to be off now, though, so farewell for now!"

Alison didn't even get a chance to say goodbye back before Carnea was gone, the messenger following behind.

The girl sighed and put her hood up.

"Now," she said, making her voice as indistinct as she could, just like the Cult had said was important, "has anyone heard anything about a, uh... a sort of metal man?"

"I hear another cult put a man made all of metal on a pedestal a little ways north of here," one cultist said, trying just as hard as Alison to make her voice indistinguishable.

"Someone told me a man wearing metal was heading towards Observatory's tower just recently," another provided.

"Did anyone else hear what the square-headed metal man was doing with Dice and a couple of kids?"

-

Eventually, Alison figured the cult had answered her questions, so she gave them an excuse and headed off, ditching the cloak and heading north. She came across him almost immediately, and though she didn't see any evidence of lipstick on the robot's faceish place from a supposed "torrid affair," the rest of the information seemed to be accurate.

"Um," she said, a little bit of shyness creeping into her. She wasn't normally the sort to get all nervous, but Envoy was rather tall and broad, and being on a pedestal and wearing a sharp suit didn't help matters. He looked fairly intimidating, and Alison had to put forward all of her effort just to not stare at the ground, mumble something, and hurry away.

But really, the robot had, sort of, y'know, saved her whole family's life. He was... kind of cool, when it got down to it.

Unfortunately, before she could get past the conquering-her-awkwardness stage, the robot suddenly shot off into the sky, the rockets in its feet hot enough to drive the girl back a step.

"Um." That time, it was a bit more conclusive. It wasn't "I probably have something to say, just let me get it ready here," no, it was "I don't have a response for what just happened." After a moment, she turned to go, maybe head back to Observatory's tower and-

Nope, apparently not. Apparently the local fates weren't interested in her having an idea of what to do next, as they seemed to think just then was a good time for Observatory's tower to explode, its domed top shattering and sending bits flying far enough that Alison was even hit by a few pebbles.

The girl sighed, frustrated. Fine, she thought, I guess I'll go- wait. Maybe I, uh... Maybe I should just sit tight for a few minutes, just in case whatever I try next expl...

She hurried off, giving the ground she'd been standing on a nervous look over her shoulder as she went.

GBCE · 06-23-2012, 02:22 PM

Originally posted on MSPA by TimeothyHour.

SIX SIX SIX
With Annotations

Show Content

A popular television critic once called Six’s blade, quote, “Sexy, Razor-sharp, and Gentle,” unquote, which he never really understood. A six-inch circular saw, especially the one he was currently brandishing at one Mr. “Dice”, used to eviscerate helpless contestants¹ never really ever seemed all that “gentle” to him.

“You are not a God,” Six insisted, absentmindedly. “God does not exist.”

“No, my friend,” he remarked with a shrug. “In the words of the esteemed philosopher Quotolxotl: ‘God is dead.’

“INCORRECT,” Six said, to blank stares. “Nietzsche, you mean. Nietzsche.”

The blade did not whirr or rev or begin to spin.

“Either way,” Dice continued, staring right into the robot’s singular “eye.” “Who do you think killed him?”

Silence, save for the music of a 21st century “indie” musician².

Six paused another beat, and clicked a bit as various Social/Language Ambiguity³ processors ran calculations, adjusted his custom-constructed 100x Zoom Canon/Kodak/Nikon viewer lens⁴ back, forth, back. Another pause, before his HD-quality audio VocaloidChord™ throat-lodged speakers warmed up again, spoke.

“Question 44: Was that… a rhetorical question?”

The personification of entropy blinked. “Uh, no. I really want you to guess.”

Six recalibrated.

“Question 45: Have we killed him?”

“Not “we,” my dear Gamehost. Me.⁵”

Six stared at Dice for a long time, transfixed, like a statue, thinking, comprehending, logic circuits working against/for/despite this new information, getting into his head, this information was getting into his head. One two three four five six. One two three four five six.

“Question 46, Dice: What if I don’t—what if I don’t believe you.”

Entropy yawned.

“Do you believe in death? The inevitable decay of life, of the forces that let you do what you call a profession, murder, destruction, disintegration, elimination?”

“N⁶—” MEDIAPOLITCS PHILOSOETHICS SUBROUTINE ACTIVATED⁷ “Yes.”

“Then,” Dice, said, his smile stretching across centuries. “You believe in me.”

*

The Council of First Contact Ambassadors (COFCA) stared at the readings, thousands of them, flooding in⁸.

ÜbS.⁹ Alexander Chernyovskaya’s eyes were personally transfixed at the viewscreen, currently offering high-definition, fairly real-time, first-person footage of one reverse-engineered android flying over the remains of a great and acidic¹⁰ civilization, specifically, a really-quite-recently-bombed-out, religiously-slanted Observatory.

He licked his lips, drummed his fingers on his desk, and spoke.

“Why, exactly, did we fire missiles at that building?” he asked, glancing around.¹¹

“Show of power¹²,” replied ████ █████████¹³, who was sitting next to him. “We need more worshipers.”

“Oh.”

A few hundred yards away, a sawblade began to whirr. A baby giggled.

*

god, break the chain. break it like vertical motions between arm and weight, to free the unfortunate fact of it all, with sawblade+a broken heart. break it like your heart, while the less-than-five-also-a-god laughs. feel the metal resist, spark. within a spark is everything. the big bang, that was actually an accidental spark from Your Wiring, because you are god, and you create, he destroys. god+(god)(-1)=annihilation, which is the only thing you ever wanted, ‘cause he was right, god is dead, god is dead inside, look at you you f*ck’r, you [ERROR]-filled sack of shit, why is god, on a conceptual level, so shitty, tell me why aren’t you the BABY (LESS-THAN-FIVE) and instead you look for your grave you idiot who frees death, death; he represents everything you hate in yourself

(god)(-1)=satan

feel the metal give way

*

“What’s that?” said ÜbS. Chernyovskaya. There was a sharp graph spike on one of the Tertiary measurement screens.

“Jesus Christ, could you pay attention once in your freaking life?” ████ █████████ said. She was really quite agitated, waving her arms around, ranting about something how, “in HER line of work, not paying attention could cost you your LIFE, depending on the chronology, SEVERAL TIMES,” going on and on, with Chernyovskaya not caring, etc., in something that could be out of a TV Drama or Sitcom.

That is, until she looked at the screen.

*

Upon the severance of the first chain, everything went to fuck-all. Like, let me describe it to you:

Light shone from every inch of Dice’s body, burningly, impossibly bright, swirling with images of murder and suicide and blood and rot and war and controlled/uncontrolled demolition and black holes and supernovae and oxidization¹⁴, the sound of a thousand screams and Bon Iver’s “Woods” (Blood Bank, 2009), wailing under Entropy’s voice, loud and tall and proud and forever:

“CUT THE CHAIN, CUT THE CHAIN, CUT THE CHAIN, CUT THE CHAIN”

Emma was very entertained. Space ceased to exist all that properly, folding, twisting¹⁵, ripping, ripping ripping YOU COULD SEE THE SEAMS, INTO EVERY UNIVERSE.¹⁶

“like misery” thought Six. “misery”

“CUT THE CHAIN, CUT THE CHAIN, (to slow down the ti—) CUT THE CHAI—(me—)N”

Six’s blade whirred, again.

*

Most Tertiary measurements don’t have, like, actual names. As a rule, they’re generally readings coming in from incomprehensible U.A.E. sensors, or, if sense was made of them, serve no practical point, like the amount of probability currently existing in the universe (always hovering at 55%), or the rate of Envoy’s body through the fourth dimension (holding steady at a second-per-second ratio of 1:1). People, like, make up nicknames and things, therefore.

Apparently, in their constant bickering, no one had noticed that The WTF Ration^{17 18} had dropped to zero upon Envoy’s arrival to round three, but everyone sure was noticing it, and freaking out, now that the tWTF-Ron was at, like, four million.

Of course, HQ was in an uproar:

“Can somebody pinpoint the source of this, this 'ration?'”

“We have an Elite Team of Specialists on it.”

“How elite can they be!? No one even really knows what the tWTF-Ron even really represents!”

“Should we ground Envoy? We have no idea what this would do to him?”

“Landing could be even more dangerous, in these conditions! We don’t even know! We have zero information!”

“Why didn’t we do more studies on Tertiary Measurments!?”

“fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck—”

“WE CANNOT TOLERATE YOUR COARSE LANGUAGE RIGHT NOW, MUHOMMED DELANCY!”

“Says you, to quote the Boston Globe-Herald¹⁹, “Ms. Pottymouth!”

“Everyone SHUT UP!”

They did not shut up. Dr. Bart Hunter²⁰, who had issued the warning, sighed. It was for a situation precisely like this that he had had a megaphone brought in.

“WE HAVE INFORMATION,” his voice boomed over the cacophony. “WE KNOW WHERE THE ENTROPY-EVENT IS HAPPENING. NOW EVERYONE SHUT UP.”

A google-maps-style (city reproduce perfectly, little tag marking the location, and all) chart appeared on one of the screens. ████ █████████ stared at it for a long time.

“So, that’s where the event is happening, yes?” she said.

“Uh, that would be correct, yes,” Dr. Hunter said, rolling his eyes. Women.

“And we’ve never seen an event like this happen, ever, anywhere, right?”

“Mhm.”

“And we might never get another opportunity like this one to study it, right?”

“I suppose so, miss.”

“…”

“…”

“…who votes we fly right at it?”

*

WELCOME TO THE COFCA-ENVOY USER SYSTEM INTERFACE.

YOU ARE CURRENTLY ON SPECTATOR MODE. IF YOU DO NOT HAVE PRE-APPROVAL TO ACCESS LEVEL 200-CLASSIFIED COFCANET DIGITAL INFORMATION, DON’T WORRY, WE ALREADY KNOW WHO YOU ARE AND WHERE TO FIND YOU. A TERMINATION TEAM HAS BEEN SENT TO YOUR LOCATION.

CURRENT OPERATION: Rocketboots On; running “flying in wide, sweeping figure-eights and circles” command has been in operation for—

New command received: “Fly towards [location code: Entropy Event]. Commencing…”

500 meters…

400 (speeding up)…

200 (“brake” activated)…

100…

50…

25…

COFCANET-COMPATABLE ELECTRONIC DEVICE FOUND. CONNECTING…

landing…

CONNECTED.

DEVICE ID : “MediaPolitics Gamehost Six, Channel 9 Fox, DICE OF DEATH” COFCANET SOFTWARE VERSION: 666 (VERSION BEING RUN ON ENVOYSYSTEM: 122)

CURRENT OPERATION BEING RUN ON MediaPolitics Gamehost Six, Channel 9 Fox, DICE OF DEATH: Cut the chain, don’t cut the chain, I want to love, I want to die, I want to hate, I WANT TO CUT THE CHAIN, moving my arm to the second chain, I’M not DOING IT…

“Walking.”

20 meters…

Detected software override from “MediaPolitics Gamehost Six…”, running code…

…Stopped…

…REROUTING CONNECTION TO COFCANET TECHNICIAN TERMINAL 6…

Terminal Six: Wait, what? What the fuck is this?

INITIATING (COMPRESSED) SOURCE CODE DUMP FOR “MediaPolitics Gamehost Six…”…

Dumping…

Terminal Six: The hell?

DUMP COMPLETE

SENDING “A Word from Your Friends at MediaPolitics, COFCA & CO.doc”, .mp4 of the same name…

SENT.

Terminal Six: I’m contacting HQ…

CONNECTION WITH TERMINAL SIX TERMINATED.

OVERRIDE COMPLETED. RESUMING "Fly towards [location code: Entropy Event]"…

And then that’s when Six cut the second chain.

*

2 of 2 cut, etcetera. Six, briefly, became ∞, his head, a fractal, scaling down, forever.

A terrible and horrible “God” was unleashed. He said something admittedly cliché²¹.

Dice ascended to like, some higher plane of reality. A laugh echoed over the city.

Six suddenly found he had a single chain around his gloved hand²². A sort feeling of betrayal rung through him, hollow, empty. He looked up into the sky, the ceiling of the underground club having been thoroughly demolished.

Thunderclouds were brewing. Six calculated. Forecast: 100% chance of acid raid.

“God is dead,” Six whispered. “Dead.”

The clusterfuck had just begun.

______________________________________

ENDNOTES:

1. Yes, in fact, Six has seen a multitude of six-inch circular saws used to mercilessly eviscerate contestants. Take, for example, “S.A.W.M.I.L.L.,” from the WBNCNNGROUP show “The Lumberjack Experiment.” Constructed entirely of wood and various woodcutting implements, the machine acted as both referee and tormentor to the intrepid flannel-clad entrants for the seven seasons of tLE’s run. Another prominent show, “DEATHBOWL:THE DEATHBOWL,” featured “THE OPERATOR,” an altered, solar-powered D-class robotic biological technician who used various saws and blades in the obvious, gruesome, thematic way. Not to mention the six storage facilities located on the set of DICE OF DEATH designed to store both broken and replacement blades, and the facility’s lockbox to hold various “special” (read: more deadly) blades for a number of holiday/event-themed episodes.

2. Specifically, Sufjan Steven’s “Dear Mr. Supercomputer” from the “Illinoise”-outake album, “The Avalanche” (released 2006).

3. Able to accurately simulate situational-language-derived doubt and feelings of misunderstanding with only a slight amount of noticeable lag.

4. With Apple Inc. Retina Display-compatible resolution, for gruesome first-person slaughtering on a wide multitude of iDevices.

5. “INCORRECT.” thought Six. “The implication of the phase, ‘Me have killed him,’ flagrantly disrespects the important grammatical I/me distinctions present long before the Second Standardization of English, and permanently upheld and enforced by the World Commission for the Sanctity of Language (WCSL) with the passage of The “Grammarian” Act of 2███. Please try to use better grammar.”

…

Please? When has Six been known to use please?

6. o

7. To prevent traitorous or treasonous thoughts in even the most independent of publicly-funded Androids.

8. Just moments before, in some other department or something, there had been some business with teleporters and an information reroute and a media mogul, but an Elite Team of Specialists (ETS) was on it, and really wasn’t really all that important in the context of *static*

9. Political Honorific/Shorthand used to denote an Übersenator. For example, “ÜbS. Alexander Chernyovskaya was the subject of a four-year scandal spanning up to one-hundred (alleged) mistresses, millions of dollars in stolen Oil funds, and an unfortunate fistfight with up-and-coming Photojournalist Peter Y———. Somehow, he got away with the entire fucking thing.”

10. Both literally and figuratively.

11. He really should have been paying more attention, but oh my god Angry Birds Dimensions was just so addicting.

12. This is not quite true. Namely, they didn't destroy the observatory at all.

They'll definitely take the credit, though.

13. A leading expert in military ████████ and martial █████, with a focus in Chronophysics.

14. and breaking bones, tearing flesh, oceans wearing away boulders into beaches, clocks running down until they’re dust, incompatible code glitching, libraries burning, ships sinking, volcanoes blasting, magnetic tape being overwritten, newspapers decaying, glass melting, a ball bouncing and then stopping, rain eroding, ice freezing and running roads, scenes of Chernobyl, Pompeii, and Hiroshima, including the first and last’s infamous nuclear events, the iPod 2 being replace with three and then 4 and then 4s, cities falling into the ocean, Venice becoming flooding, Pisa’s leaning tower leaning, heart attacks, car crashes, cigarettes being smoked, mental hospitals, fires, both natural and domestic, arson, mugshots of serial killers, pianos becoming out-of-tune, electronics getting tipped in water, a record being scratched, information being lost over airwave frequencies (i.e./e.g., radio static), milk being spilled, buildings being razed, horrible disfigurements and dismemberments, all screaming, all swirling around Mr. Dice, see what you’ve done Gamehost Six?

see?

15. A dissimilar event to the space warpage of The Glorious Championship’s “Epigen Corporation.” One is the chaotic folding of our one-two-three dimensions, while the other is a rampant destruction of the integrity of the fabric of the universe.

16. Six, in that instant of time, saw a girl, with hair like gold straw, flowing in the wind of a thousand crystalline moonbeams. His torn, tattered glove reached out for her, atoms almost-swaying with the permeable border, almost touching, almost reaching, in fact it was almost enough to have her head turn, to look, look further than ever, look,

but then, Everything shifted, and that vision was lost, forever.

17. “A measurement of the entropy in a system, or something along those lines, I don’t fucking know,” according to leading Mathmeteer John Saint-Johns Johnson, whose parents really must have hated him to name him something like that.

18. (sic.) typo. Low-level engineer named it, apparently. You know what they say about engineers and spelling.

19. A merger had happened for the newspaper, prompting the name-change. Such is life for the dying newspaper industry.

20. Futurist, Chronologist, Xenobiologist, Chronophysicist, Post-Taoist, and alleged Chauvinist.

21. Something like, “I’M FREE! I’M FREEEEE!” That sort of thing.

22. A glove, now suddenly jet-black.

Elpie · 06-23-2012, 03:48 PM

Originally posted on MSPA by Lord Paradise.

Rascally Entropic Servants, Envoy, Recreational Vehicles, Emma

Elpie · 06-24-2012, 04:01 PM

Originally posted on MSPA by Lord Paradise.

Science can explain this. Honestly.

An acidic solution is any body of water containing a high concentration of hydronium (H-and-a-little-three-O-and-a-little-plus-sign-up-top) molecules relative to its concentration of hydroxide (H-O-and-a-little-minus-sign) molecules. Those hydronium molecules want to slough off their excess protons and become water molecules (why do science teachers always assign agency to the forces of nature? The molecule doesn’t want to do anything, it is compelled) but first they’ll have to find something to donate to.

And as the hydronium donateth, so can it taketh away.

It began to rain. ”Ow!” Alison shouted aloud, clutching the back of her hand as the green (okay, science can’t explain why it’s green) water droplet that had just landed on it sizzled its way through her epidermis. She looked around her for shelter. There were no buildings within running distance, but there were a handful of gondolas lying on the banks of the acid river. If those things could float on the river, then they could handle a little rain, was Alison’s reasoning as she flipped one of the boats over itself and crouched underneath it.

The girl used the dim light of her cellphone to scan the area for spiders before making any attempt to become comfortable. She lay in the darkness, listening to the intensifying pitter-patter of the rain on the hull of the gondola.

Pitter-patter-pitter-patter-pitter-patter-pitter-patter

Nancy looked up. “Don’t worry,” said her current opponent nonchalantly. “The rain can’t get through. Things are in balance here.”

“That’s not what I’m seeing,” Nancy responded with a smile, looking back to the board. “I have you in five moves. I think.” This latest victory of Nancy’s could not have been entirely discarded as beginner’s luck—she was beginning to get quite the handle on tactics. Pieces that had seemed useless to her, like the Name piece, which forces the opponent to declare which moves they intended to make, or the Alkali, which turned rivers to water but only downstream of where it drowned, were now key to her strategy. The chess-priest was reduced to a single quadrant of the board, furiously using his surviving Fertility to multiply his spearmen in time for Nancy to mow them down in large swaths with her own troops. It was over in four moves.

The priest handed over a few gold coins, which Nancy slipped into her pocket alongside the rest. The next priestess in line wordlessly took her seat at Green and began reassembling the opening setup.

Before Nancy made her first move, she looked over the board. “It’s sort of curious,” she told her opponent. “Why are there two spearmen on the left side of the king and only one on the right?” She pointed at the asymmetrical spearman. “For that matter, this one looks brand new. It’s almost as if some other piece was meant to go here.”

The priestess looked around at the other natives, then reluctantly nodded. “There was another who once sat at the King’s left hand,” she confessed. “We don’t play with him anymore. Leave this matter.”

“A variant, then?” piped up Nancy cheerily. “I’d like to play it, if you don’t mind. I think I have this setup figured out, and it’s starting to get a bit boring—no offense,” she added graciously. “You’re all very good.”

The priestess frowned gravely. “The Dice threw the game out of balance. It was removed.”

Nancy clapped her hands together. “Dice! Now that’s more my style. I used to roll the bones now and—“

“To bring back the Dice would be to upset the balance once more. It is forbidden.”

“Alright, alright,” relented Nancy. “What side did it favor? Green or grey?”

The priestess rolled her eyes. “The Dice favored the Dice. Now, are you going to make the first move, or--”

The players were interrupted by the very, very, very sudden arrival of a wiry, athletic native. “I come with a message for the Goddess,” he panted.

Nancy eyed the Messenger piece on the board. The resemblance was striking. “The Goddess is in the Inner Temple, I’ve been told,” she told the newcomer. “While you’re down there, can you tell Alison—girl about yea high, hard to miss—tell her she’s been down there an awfully long time and I’m starting to worry.”

“The girl isn’t where you think she is,” replied Messenger. “I’ll convey your worries,” he promised, “But I’m not going down into the Inner Temple. I have no time to get wrapped up in the goddess’ games. You, priestess,” he said, addressing Nancy’s opponent. “You go in my stead. Tell her that I’m going to contact her equivalent piece in the new Pantheon—this ‘COFCA’—and make them the offer we discussed. Tell her our gambit is in the endgame now. Show her these.”

Messenger reached behind his back and produced a pair of dice. One was green, one was grey. The chess-priestess snatched them up with a sidelong glare at Nancy. “I’m going to speak with the goddess,” she said. “By the time I get back, I’d appreciate if you’d made your move.”

Nancy took one more look at the board. She was in a different place emotionally than she had been three games ago, she could be sure of that. “If it’s all the same to you,” she told the priestess, standing and picking up her typewriter, “I think I’ll come along. I’ve never been in an Inner Temple before. Is that the same thing as an Inner Sanctum?”

* * * * *

Show Content

Pitter-patter-pitter-patter-pitter-patter-pitter-patter

The rain from outside drowned out the silence around the fire, until Song cryptically proclaimed, “She only comes out at night!”

“The lean and hungry type,” explained Song, when all eyes turned to him.

“You guys are weird,” laughed Ethan, failing to understand the gravity of the situation. “Anyway, is God really dead, or is that just pretend?”

Emma cooed. Six said nothing. Name coughed. “We’ll be fine in here,” the god told Six, “Unless the river floods. That’s a big ‘unless.’”

”Question 47: What’s the point?” asked Six.

“So many have paid to see,” answered Song, “What you think you’re getting for free.”

”INCORRECT. Question 48: Who would even care if we all drowned in acid tonight?”

”If you’re in it for love, you ain’t gonna get to far,” was all he could offer. Then he rose as if startled. “Whoa, here she comes!” he cried, covering Ethan’s eyes with the hand that wasn’t holding Emma. “Watch out, boy, she’ll chew you up!”

The last thing Ethan saw was a woman’s bare foot descending the stairs.

The first thing he didn’t see, obscured as his vision was by Song’s hand, was a woman’s bare everything, sashaying down the steps with a confidence normally reserved for people hiding their bodies behind clothes. The woman laid her lightly sizzling pink umbrella down in the corner and sat provocatively cross-legged by the fire. “Some weather we’re having here, boys,” she purred, making the word “boys” sound like the name of a particularly expensive wine.

In the midst of his existential turmoil Six felt a slight pseudo-endorphic reaction, as he always does when something comes on screen that is guaranteed to be good for ratings. “She’s a maneater,” concluded Song.

“Did someone get eaten?” asked Ethan. “I want to see! My dad lets me watch gory movies all the time, I promise!”

“The walk over here mustn’t have been pleasant, Obligatory Sex Goddess Representing an Ultimately Misogynist and Regressive Romantic Ideal,” greeted Name with an ironic sneer.

“It’s Ms. Fertility, actually,” corrected the goddess playfully. “I never married.”

“I wouldn’t if I were you,” advised Song.

“Well, there’s hardly much time left,” replied Fertility, “Seeing as we’re all going to drown in acid.”

“Did someone write a bad word on the wall?” guessed Ethan. “’Cause if it begins with an H, a D, or a P, or an A, it’s a word I already know, so you can let me see it.”

”Question 49:” prompted Six, sounding more intrigued than dejected. ”What are you doing here?”

”Mind over matter,” suggested Song.

“That’s one way to put it.” Fertility turned as though noticing Six for the first time. “Chess and Messenger are playing the long game with regards to you new arrivals, and they’ve roped me into it somehow. Well, ‘somehow’ is just me being obtuse. He sent me flowers.” The goddess opened her mouth, reached her fingers in and somehow managed to pull a rose out of her throat, which she handed to Six. It retained all of its thorns and the robot would have judged the flower to have been sitting contentedly in a vase since being cut no more than a day ago. Not knowing what to do with the rose, he tucked it into the lining of his coat awkwardly. “Anyway,” yawned Fertility, “You know those two. Chess is playing just to play, and Messenger just goes where the action is, but I have my own gondola in this race. These two gentlemen seem to have forgotten that I’m anything other than a pretty avatar—maybe I should start appearing in my thundery-voiced, abstract incarnation just to get some respect around this place—but being Fertility makes me the incarnation of creation, life, and the answer to the question of entropy.”

”Question 50: The question of entropy?”
”Me.”

Six puzzled over this answer, which he could not fairly be judge to be incorrect for all possible interpretations of the question, while Fertility continued. “Anyway, admittedly I’ve been slacking off in my duties ever since we chained Dice. Didn’t seem so important to create when nothing was being destroyed... I’ve been in rough shape. Not that you’d think it to look at me, I know. But there hasn’t been a baby born in this city in millenia. So imagine my surprise when a healthy, fertile young family—complete with a beautiful baby girl—just drops into my lap like an overeager dancer.”

The goddess cast an eye upon Emma. “Watch out, watch out, watch out, watch out,” growled Song, clutching the baby to his chest.

“Oh, you don’t need to worry about me,” smiled Fertility. “We have the girl out accumulating worshippers thinking she’s impressing the new Doorknobs and Locks, and dozens of sightings of her parents’ vehicle rolling uphill in violation of all reason. The boy has shared a fire with gods, and the girl has joined at least two cults in the last couple hours. These ‘Broderburgs’ are becoming charged with heroic myth. If Chess’s plan works out, we’ll be able to build a new, prosperous civilization, modeled on their image.”

Emma giggled and pointed at Fertility; Song, suddenly short of words, hesitantly handed the baby over. The goddess sighed contentedly. “Gods, it’s been so long since I held a child.”

“Don’t you dare feed her, Bitch Who Cheated On Me With Poem But Is Admittedly The Best Hope For Our Civilization,” warned Name. “You know what the milk of a goddess will do to her. You don’t want that. She should grow up a normal child.”

“Oh, I know,” pouted Fertility. “I need to get her back to her mother. A nice, normal child who teleported in from Observatory-knows-what corner of the multiverse. Here, why don’t I cover myself before Song over there gives the boy a stroke trying to preserve my modesty?”

Ethan was, indeed, struggling, having successively become certain that he was missing a monkey, a dead body, a ghost, and a Sega Dreamcast. Fertility took Emma under one arm and with the other lifted the fire right out of the pit, folding it around her as a flaming robe. Emma, wide-eyed, grabbed at the dancing light of the fire rising off of the goddess’s chest. Song let Ethan go; the boy leapt forwards directly into the pit where the fire had been five seconds before, covering his face in soot.

The boy Broderburg looked up and was disappointed to see nothing more interesting than a woman holding his baby sister while her entire body was wreathed in flame. “Hi,” he groaned. “I’m Ethan. Were you wrapping presents just now?”

Fertility chuckled. “You could say that. Hi, Ethan, I’m Fertility. I’m here to take you and your sister back to your parents.”

Whirr

The goddess, looking towards Six as though noticing him for the first time all over again, smiled towards the robot. “You want to come along for the ride, big fella? I’m guessing you have no place to be after unleashing death upon the world.”

Six stared back at Fertility thoughtfully. “Come on,” she pleaded. “It could be fun. Don’t be a square.”

The goddess framed the gamehost’s face with her thumbs and forefingers, leaving Emma suspended happily in midair. The robot, though well aware that he was a cube and not a square, nonetheless had much to think about.

* * * * *

Pitter patter pitter patter pitter patter pitter patter

The storm was wreaking havoc on Alison’s cellphone reception, though her battery was holding strong. She didn’t feel like sleeping. Her body had no idea how long it had been awake. As an experiment, Alison fiddled with the alarm function on her phone, setting it to ring in exactly one hour. She hoped she wouldn’t still be sitting bored under this canoe at that point.

About thirty seconds passed before it rang. “What the hell?” cried Alison aloud, opening the phone in distress.

Displayed on the cellular’s screen was a “text-message,” some obscure feature of the phone that Alison had never trifled with much, as it seemed to her to be a more laborious and expensive version of AOL Instant Messenger. The message read as follows:

Lift up the left side of the gondola about five inches, please.

It left no callback number. Alison held the phone at arm’s length, as if it were something contagious, and reread the message. It was very direct and polite. Her mother had warned her not to trust direct, polite strangers. Always willing to ignore her mother’s warnings, the girl braced her back against what was the left side of the gondola from her perspective at least and lifted.

The native man who Alison had remembered seeing talking to Carnea earlier slid belly-first into the underside of the boat and rolled into a sitting position opposite the Broderburg. “Hi,” he began, speaking somewhat faster than is normal. “I’m Messenger. We’ve met. Kind of. Nancy says she’s worried about you but that’s not what’s important right now.”

“Hi, Messenger,” responded Alison, putting away her phone. “Chess told me I should talk to you. But I think she thought I was going to go talk to Envoy first? Whatever.”

“Yeah, I was supposed to be talking to C.O.F.C.A. like, half an hour ago. But I’ve been busy. Messages flying around everywhere. But, you know, neither acid rain nor acid snow nor acid heat nor gloom of eclipse stays this courier from swift completion of his appointed rounds. Heh. Hey, I’m supposed to be taking you back to your parents--”

Alison groaned.

“—But do you mind if I stop and see Envoy first? We’ll be heading right into the source of all death and chaos in the world. Could be fun.”

That didn’t sound all that fun—maybe more like something Ethan would be into—but if it kept her from getting back to her parents for a bit, she was in. “Alright,” she said.

“Thanks,” smiled Messenger. “That’ll save me some time. Do you know how hard it is to run the entire length of this city without a single raindrop touching you?”

Alison listened to the sound of the rain, which was coming down pretty hard now. “Really, really hard?” she guessed.

The god shrugged. “Not really, if you’re me,” he said. “Anyway, let’s go.” With one hand, Messenger grabbed Alison’s wrist; with the other, he threw the gondola casually through the air into the river, exposing the two of them to the rain outside.

And then he began to run.

Flying right into the thing may not have been the best idea.

Envoy could handle the acid rain, that wasn’t a problem. A sustained period of immersion in that river might do some damage, but the usual wear and tear of a zero pH substance battering him from above wouldn’t cause any damage that couldn’t be buffed out.

But something else was happening here, in the eye of the storm. Something that was making basically all measurements associated with Envoy drop between two to three percent from normal levels. Reaction time, optical resolution, battery life, mass. The best guess back at the Council was that something was making their robot age. And given that he was intended to survive a space flight to a distant civilization, it would take a lot of age to start having an effect like this.

For explanations, the C.O.F.C.A. needed look no farther than the ominous, booming voice emanating from the sky.

YOU CANNOT ESCAPE ME, LITTLE ROBOT

I AM MURPHY’S LAW

I AM WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU DRIVE WITHOUT INSURANCE

THE SECOND YOU PULL OUT OF THE GARAGE, YOU’RE ROLLING THE DICE

AND THE DICE ARE WEIGHTED

The winds were making it difficult to get to safety, and there was nothing to shoot. Three C.O.F.C.A.teers got into a lively but ultimately fruitless discussion of weather control and why exactly the rain was green and glowing when they were pulled out of the fire by an act of God.

Specifically, an act of Messenger. Still dragging a conspicuously dry-haired Alison by one arm, the god seemed to leap through the air into the eye of the storm, throw Envoy over one shoulder and descend, landing semi-gracefully by the entrance to a spare temple.

Messenger ducked inside to catch his breath and allow Alison’s inner ears to rebalance. “Whew,” he sighed, sounding more exhilarated than tired. Then he addressed Envoy. “Hi. COFCA, right? I’m Messenger.”

After a slight delay, the robot nodded.

“Good, good, good. I’d like to ask for your help with something. I’m something of an ambassador myself, you see.”

Envoy did not make any motion to indicate that he was impressed by this, or even that he cared.

“And I’ve been trying to get a bunch of gods together to try and fight off Dice, that’s the god who started all this, or else weigh him back in our favor, and maybe jumpstart our civilization again. Which benefits everyone, right?”

Still the robot stood perfectly still.

“The thing is, owing to some ancient pacts, rules we have to follow and such, there’s one god, the god that we need more than any if we want this to work, and none of us can get to him. His name is Base. You might be able to serve as an ambassador between us and him.”

No response from Envoy. Messenger sighed. “Think about it. That’s the message.” The god turned back towards Alison. “Are you alright?” he asked.

”Yeah, I think so.” Alison looked outside. “I’ve been trying to avoid my parents, but I guess now that it’s raining out I don’t really have anything to do other than head home. Are we gonna go?”

“Yeah, whenever you’re ready,” said Messenger. “But first, you said you were looking for me, right? Did you have a message to send?”

* * * * *

Tinktinktinktinktinktinktinksizzle plop

A drop of acid burned through the roof of the RV and landed on the couch. “That’s not good,” Tom breathed, stepping on the accelerator. “We need to find a garage, fast.”

”It’s only a bit of rain, Stein,” mocked Parsley. ”Haven’t we bigger concerns at the moment than a leaking roof?”

”How about a leaking skull?” asked John, impatiently.

”You might want to slow down a little,” cautioned Clarice. ”The road’s slippery, you can’t see a thing, and the kids are out there somewhere.”

”The kids hate the rain, they’ll be holed up indoors watching TV or whatever it is that kids do here,” assured Tom. “Anyway, the road just follows the riverbank, which is glowing, so—“

”Watch out!”

Seeing the figure in the middle of the road too late, Tom swerved the RV left, sending it careening into the river.

If he’d been paying close attention, he might have noticed that for a radius of about five feet around the figure, the rain wasn’t falling. As though the rain were doing the man’s bidding, or the man the rain’s.

John saw the hood of the RV slide into the river and slowly begin to roll down the bank. He didn’t have time to pull off a dramatic rescue, and was fairly sure someone else would get around to it. He had bigger concerns.

John stepped into the temple (was every other building in this city somebody’s temple?) and began to descend the long, spiral staircase that awaited him inside. At the bottom of the stairs was a large, ornate door. John pulled on the handle, to no avail. “It’s locked,” he complained aloud. The voice of Dice berated him from above:

THAT IS YOUR PROBLEM TO DEAL WITH

NO AGENT OF MINE SHOULD BE STYMIED BY A MERE LOCK

“No,” said John. He examined the door to the inner temple. The heiroglyphs carved onto it he at first took to be something of a Promethean narrative, with a god giving some symbol of positive energy to Man. But on a second glance, the godly figure in the pictographs was the man accepting the gift, not the giver. It wasn’t a creation myth, it was a chemical equation. “I’ll still deliver Base, as promised,” he told Dice. “I’ll just need to call in an expert on locks.”

Dragon Fogel · 06-25-2012, 12:26 AM

Originally posted on MSPA by Dragon Fogel.

"What in the Devil's name are you doing, Stein?" Parsley yelled, staring at the acid up ahead. The mirror shard showed it to be a raging river of water, which was little better. "Is this damned creation of yours a boat, too?"

"Um. Unfortunately, no."

"The door's jammed!" Clarice shouted, desperately pushing and pulling at it in hopes that one method would work. "Tom, I told you we should have gotten them checked out before we left."

"Well, to be fair, being out in this rain probably isn't much better," he replied. He pushed at his own door to no avail. "But yeah, this one's stuck too. And, uh, I don't want to go out the front window either."

"And here I thought that, whatever yer crimes, ye at least knew what ye were doing, Stein," Parsley sighed. "Move aside, I'd best handle this matter."

Parsley reached across Tom and put a hand to the door. Slowly, it started changing to bread.

"Can you, uh, work a little faster?" Tom asked. "That river's getting closer pretty fast. And an umbrella of some sort would be nice, too."

"I'm nearly at the hinges," Parsley growled. "This would be easier if ye hadn't made the damn thing so hard to understand. Now be quiet, I need to focus."

A minute later, the door snapped off and Parsley held it out overhead as a shield, Tom and Clarice scrambling out after him and then desperately climbing up the slope of the riverbank. The Broderburgs watched sadly as the RV tumbled into the river.

"I hope our warranty's still good," Tom sighed. Clarice looked up nervously at the door, and more specifically the acid droplets falling through it.

The issue of shelter, fortunately, was rather easily solved. A woman clothed in flames soon came running over to them, with two men holding up an enormous slab of rock over her head. With her were a pleasantly familiar boy and baby, though the sight of the latter just floating through the air was disconcerting, and an unpleasantly familiar dice-headed robot.

"Emma! Ethan!" Clarice shouted, running under the slab and giving them both a hug. Tom soon followed, with Parsley dragging the door along and joining them.

"Why do we have to hold this heavy thing up?" Name grumbled, watching the reunion.

"I am a rock, I am an island," Song replied. Name simply glared at him.

The glare Clarice gave Six was stronger.

"What is that thing doing here?" she growled at the flame-clothed woman. She was a bit worried at just how revealing Fertility's outfit was, but the robot kidnapper was a more immediate concern.

"I asked him here," the goddess replied. "I am Fertility, and I have brought you your children. Metaphorically, and now literally as well." She smiled.

"Well, thank you for that, but you seem to be confused. My third child is a teenage girl, not a crazy robot!"

The conversation was suddenly interrupted by a bubbling sound from the river. Followed by the sound of a motor.

"Holy sh..." Tom began, then he felt Clarice's glare reminding him that Ethan was present. "Er... Holy shuffleboard, is the RV still working after all that?"

His question was soon answered as the RV emerged from the river and drove up to the road, looking no more damaged than when he had desperately scrambled out of it. A pudgy, balding man in a strange tribal outfit was sitting at the wheel; it reminded Tom vaguely of a business suit.

"Excellent! By proactively leveraging our synergies, we've managed to initiate a new paradigm," the man said with a smile as he stepped out of the RV. "It's that kind of outside-the-box thinking that demonstrates my leadership qualities."

The three gods present all sighed.

"Wonderful," Fertility grumbled. "As if Dice weren't bad enough, now we've got to deal with Management."

MalkyTop · 08-15-2012, 11:06 PM

Originally posted on MSPA by MalkyTop.

It was funny how it always seemed to rain right when you were feeling awful, as though the entire world was making fun of how awful everything was for you. And when the rain happened to be made of acid, well, that was just plain mean.

Carnea, as it happens, was feeling plenty awful, and the rain wasn’t even hitting her. Goddesses, after all, don’t get rained upon, that showed a lack of poise and such. She had tried impatiently locking the clouds, but then the rain leaked out the locks. So she had to settle for locking out the rain around her and tried not to think about it too hard.

What she did think about was how alone she was feeling, with that little messenger running out on her due to some sort of important shit. Even if she had been able to decipher the sudden onslaught of apologetic excuses, she probably wouldn’t have listened.

She also couldn’t help but feel ignored. Ignored! It was just…was everybody just…humoring her? Her plans and her schemes, was it something for them to keep her busy with, or maybe even to amuse them? Who was ‘them’ anyways? Who was she even talking about? Was she even pertinent to anything anymore, or was she just some detached bystander, having no hand in anything and able to affect nothing?

She really should have just gone with the escape plan. The escape plan seemed like a great idea. Escaping was definitely a good thing. Maybe she could find the Alison girl again, and also that phone device.

John approached the goddess as close as he could, which wasn’t very close at all since she was aimlessly floating above a deep pool of acid, and called out to her.

“Hey, Goddess!”

For a moment, as she appeared next to him, she wondered whether she should continue the stupid fake pantheon thing. But there was nobody else around, really, and there wasn’t too much of a point right now, was there? So she just lazily nodded her acknowledgement.

“So there’s this door back there, would it be too much trouble to unlock it for me?”

Her ears pricked at the word ‘door,’ and quite possibly pulled themselves off of her head at the word ‘unlock.’ She looked down at the agent, really looked down, and smirked. Metaphorically. “You ask a favor of me.”

“Trust me, you’ll enjoy it.”

“Even so,” Carnea intoned, bringing down a finger to gently caress his cheek, “know that favors only beget favors. Is a man of entropy willing to owe me one?”

John shrugged helplessly. “Well, if there’s anything I can do for a goddess, I’m sure we could work something out.”

Carnea laughed. “Oh, don’t be a martler.”

He had no idea what that even meant, but it probably wasn’t too important. “Sorry,” he said, “I won’t let it happen again.”

Carnea only rubbed her hands. “So where’s this door you wanted me to unlock?”

Really, he knew that she knew the job would be simplicity itself for her. The favor was infinitely small, if you measured it by effort required.

But, you know, gods. Always making a big deal about how much their time was worth. It was best to humor them.

Elpie · 09-07-2012, 05:18 PM

Originally posted on MSPA by Lord Paradise.

Show Content

In the beginning there was the Heavens and the Earth.

In those days Chaos ruled the Earth and Order ruled the Heavens. Chaos bet the Earth against the Heavens on a single die roll, whereby He would take Odds and Order Evens. Order crunched the numbers and determined that a hig-risk venture was in the cards. The die came up a five. And thenceforth Chaos ruled the Heavens and the Earth.

The effects were felt all over. Abstract, immortal things decayed into the concrete and fallible. Radiant, immaculate Creation turned to smelly, painful Fertility. Self flipped on its axis and became Mirror. Time and Truth, feeling themselves becoming indistinct under the reign of Chaos, adapted through codification, becoming Calendar and Name. Even Chaos itself took on the name of Dice, its weapon of choice.

Order did its best to manage things. The stress took its toll.

”Sometimes I try to do things
But it just doesn’t work out the way I want it to
I get real frustrated and try hard to do it and I take my time
And it doesn’t work out the way I want it to”

Everyone piled into the RV. “I rearranged some of your furnishings,” Management explained to Clarice. “Saved you some space.”

“You duct-taped our couch cushions to the ceiling,” Clarice replied, emptily. Emma gurgled.

“I also acid-proofed the exterior and filled up the tank. You’re welcome.”

”We are... honored to receive and to serve you, my lord,” announced Parsley, looking carefully through his shard of mirror.

“So, Psychologically Fragile Ruin of an Old Order,” said Name. “How’ve your past milennia been?”

“It’s like I concentrate real hard but it just doesn’t work out
And everything I do and everything I try it never turns out
It’s like, I need time to figure these things out but there’s always someone there going”

“I was torn apart atom by atom,” answered Management. “My consciousness was strewn across the river. I was conscious only of pain. It was an educational experience.” The god slammed on the brake and threw the RV into a dangerous-looking right turn.

”Where are we going?” asked Tom.

“I’m reacquainting myself with the office.”

“It’s a city, Manny,” corrected Fertility. “Not an office.”

“Semantics!” Slam. Screeeeech. Vroom. “I’ve never driven an R.V. before. I feel powerful.”

”Question 51: What is the utility of our present course of action?”

”Aha! Now you’re asking the right question!”

Six glared.

”Hey Song, you know we’ve been noticing you’ve been having a lot of problems lately You know you need to maybe get away and like maybe you should talk about it
you’ll feel a lot better and I’m like”

“Ahem. This new, apocalyptic eon requires new modes of thinking. During my recent unpaid retreat in a sustained state of immortal near-death, I learned new techniques for... for effective utilization of resources... One of our resources is missing a component.”

”My daughter,” said Clarice.

“Suboptimal weather conditions,” continued Management, slamming on the accelerator, “Make it imperative to account for our entire inventory.”

”What are we doing, eighty?” asked Tom. ”Are we doing eighty uphill?” He pulled himself up to the passenger’s seat. ”What did you do to my RV?”

“Like I told you!” cackled Management. “I filled up the tank! Here we are!”

The god hit the brakes again and spun the wheel, doing a couple ill-advised donuts before settling to a stop by a doorway where Alison Broderburg was sitting, bored, playing with her phone.

Tom grabbed the door-umbrella and ran out into the rain. “Alison!” he called. “Come on in! You have to see what this guy did to the RV!”

”Dad!” The Broderburg firstborn threw her arms around her father. ”Dad, I think I did something bad.”

”Don’t worry,” consoled Tom. ”I don’t think your mom will be too hard on you for running off like that.”

”Yeeeeeeeeah.” Alison ran into the RV, content to leave it at that for the time being.

”Oh, nah it’s okay you know I’ll figure it out just leave me alone
I’ll figure it out you know and they go”

“Alison Sarah Broderburg!” shouted Clarice. “Where have you been?”

”Question 52!” agreed Six. [background=black]”Where have you been?”

”She’s probably been at the mall buying girl clothes,” suggested Ethan.

Alison shrugged. “I’ve been, you know, around,” she offered.

”CORRECT.”

”Well you know if you wanna talk about it I’ll be here
You know and you’ll probably feel a lot better if you talk about it
So why don’t you talk about it
I go”

Tom turned to Management, who was already revving up the RV again. ”I’d like to thank you for helping reunite our family,” he said warmly.

“Yes, well,” replied Management. “It wouldn’t be much of a sacrifice if we didn’t have the full set, would it?”

Tom and Clarice exchanged a glance.

”No I don’t want to I’m okay I’ll figure it out myself
But they just keep bugging me and bugging me and it builds up inside!”

“This is what this city has been missing in my absence,” continued Management. “Attention to detail.”

In the middle the heavens were abandoned and, for the most part, there was the Earth.

In those days Dice ruled, but he was an indolent order and allowed Management to handle most of the logistics from him. The Earth was operating at a deficit, which was called “entropy,” although Management discouraged the use of that term in the paperwork as he rejected the notion that it was an immutable law. Dice’s official policy was that this deficit be considered a desirable model for the Earth going forward, though Management fought this policy wherever he was given leeway. After some time passed and it became clear to Management that unsustainable use of the Earth would lead to a highly undesirable apocalypse, and he decided that a change of leadership was in order. There came a great war, during which Management found and exploited a Loophole, chained Dice, and took control. In this he was supported by most of the gods.

Under the reign of Management the Earth began operating at a profit, and chaos devolved into order. This was highly unusual and disconcerting for everybody.

”I was in my room and I was just staring at the wall
Thinking about everything but then again I was thinking about nothing
And then my mom came in and I didn’t even know she was there
She called my name and I didn’t even hear her and then she started screaming”

”Um, no one’s sacrificing me to anything, okay?” said Alison. ”I mean, I respect that you fixed up the RV or whatever but that’s not going to happen.”

”I agree with Fortu—with her,” said Name, giving Alison an odd glance. “Management, we had a perfectly good plan before you crawled out of the river and hijacked it all.”

”All due respect, aren’t you already a god?” pointed out Clarice. ”What is there to sacrifice to?”

”Song Song and I go what what’s the matter she goes
what’s the matter with you I go there’s nothing wrong mom she’s all don’t tell me that
You’re on drugs I go no mom I’m not on drugs I’m okay I’m just thinking you know
Why don’t you get me a Pepsi she goes”

“To Dice, of course! Sacrifice can be a powerful asset. You sacrificed your RV to me—which is mine now, by the way—and look at all the good it did you!”

“What do you mean, yours?” demanded Tom.

“Manny,” chided Fertility. “We had a good plan in place for averting the apocalypse. If you don’t want to help with that, that’s fine, but you don’t think there’s something a bit... regressive about sacrificing the family to supplicate Dice?”

“This world is a liability now,” countered Management, “So I’m focusing on my assets!”

”My children are not your assets!” shouted Clarice. ”Will someone stop this car?”

”’Sacrifice’ is where he eats our hearts and stuff, right?” asked Ethan cheerfully.

“Not necessarily,” said Fertility. “Anyway, that’s not going to happen, so don’t you worry your adorable little head about it, okay?"

”’Sacrificing’ the babababababy is not an acceptable course of action and shall be considered grounds for elimination.”

”I’ll have to agree with Sir Archibald,” concurred Parsley. ”This thrice-damned demon’s robbed ye of yer wits.”

”No you’re on drugs I go mom I’m okay I’m just thinking she goes
No you’re not thinking you’re on drugs normal people don’t act in that way I go
Mom just give me a Pepsi please all I want is a Pepsi and she wouldn’t give it to me
All I wanted was a Pepsi just one Pepsi and she wouldn’t give it to me just a Pepsi!”

”Your complaints are noted,” answered Management, “But I’m the one driving the RV here, and I decide the destination. Behold!”

The mad god jerked the steering wheel and the RV turned upwards, rocketing into the sky. As his passengers fell helplessly to the back, scrambling to hold on to their crossbows and robes and infant children, they saw through the windshield a cube-shaped temple floating in the sky in the eye of the storm. It had not been there before, and it eclipsed the sun.

In the end there was the Earth, short a law of thermodynamics or two.

Nothing changed. Acid flowed downhill for a while, then flowed back up for a while. Turnover was low, wages were stagnant. The Earth operated at a surplus. Of all who inhabited it, only Management was content.

However, it wasn’t enough. Management, God among Gods, saw room to diversify. So he entered a Contract with something more than a God. So it was arranged that one day, the Earth would be leased to a number of strange and foreign beings who would change everything, for good or ill.

Nobody knows what Management got out on the deal, because he never had time to collect. When Calendar felt the future turned upside-down, he alerted the others, and the entire Pantheon (save Dice, who remained firmly weighted in a forgotten place) banded together and tossed him in the river.

As far as the Charlatan was concerned, the deal was done.

“I’m sitting in my room when my mom and dad come in
They pulled up a chair and they sat down they go
Song we need to talk to you and I go
Okay what’s the problem they go”

It was Six who caught Emma, gently, tenderly.

Everyone but Ethan fell together in a painful heap. The middle Broderburg child stayed holding on to the sink faucet, and, improbably, seemed to be climbing up the vertical surfaces of the RV, slowly, an inch at a time. He was laughing.

Everyone else found themselves speechless, except, of course, Song.

”Me and your mom we’ve noticed
That lately you’ve been having a lot of problems
And you’ve been going off for no reason
And we’re afraid that you’re going to hurt somebody
And we’re afraid that you’re going to hurt yourself”

Management continued driving upwards through the clouds of acid rain, windshield wipers clumsily attempting to wipe the green glowing precipitation off the glass. A box of cereal flew out of a cupboard and narrowly missed Ethan’s face. Tom, attempting to rise to his feet, got a faceful of cereal; Clarice, attempting to crawl over to her daughter, got a handful of Fertility. Parsley was confused.

The radio blared to life. ”ATTENTION MANAGEMENT,” it declared. ”THIS IS COFCA. PULL THE VEHICLE OVER. WE HAVE MUCH TO OFFER EACH OTHER.”

Ethan jumped and grabbed onto the back of the driver’s seat. ”Hey bad guy,” he shouted over the noise. ”When we beat you, will the camper still have flying powers?”

”There’s no use in planning for impossibilities, child,” replied Management. “But yes.”

”Awesome!” Ethan found a purchase with his legs and slapped his hands over the god’s eyes. ”Betcha can’t fly with your eyes closed!”

”Foolish boy! We’re already here!” Management was not lying; the clouds cleared, and an entrance in the side of the floating Dice-temple rose into view.

Without the use of his eyes, of course, Management missed that entrance entirely.

”So we decided that it would be in your best interest
If we put you somewhere where you could get the help that you need and I go
Wait what are you talking about
We decided
My best interest
How do you know what my best interest is”

The temple wall and the windshield exploded simultaneously, sending shards of rock through Management’s head. Ethan (and everyone else, except Emma, who remained gingerly cradled in Six’s arms) fell to the floor as the RV leveled out and skidded to a halt at the edge of an acid pool.

Management pulled the rock out of his skull and rose to his feet, grabbing Ethan by the wrist. “This world is dissolving,” he explained, kicking open the door of the RV and wandering out onto the floor of the floating temple. “Luckily, I’ve arranged for something of a golden parachute for myself.”

He held Ethan over the edge of the pit.

“Wait!”

Management turned his head. Alison was climbing out of the RV. “Sacrifice me first instead,” she said. “I’m the firstborn or whatever.”

Management shrugged. “I like your attitude, young lady.” He tossed Ethan aside. “Come along now, no funny business, let’s get this over with.”

Alison shrugged and walked over to the edge of the pit. “Will it hurt?” she asked.

“Well, yes,” said Management. “But at least you’ll die after only a minute or so. I was in there for an eternity.”

”What are you trying to say I’m crazy
When I went to your schools
I went to your churches
I went to your institutional learning facilities
So how can you say I’m crazy!?”

Management grabbed Alison by the hair and pushed her into the acid.

And then a robot flew through the wall, picked Alison up, set her down on the floor, punched Management unconscious, threw the god over its shoulder, and flew away.

Everyone else began filtering out of the RV all at once. “Well, that was a lucky break,” said Name cheerily.

“Yeah,” said Alison, staring pensively into the acid. “Lucky.”

Clarice looked at Six and held her arms out expectantly. The robot looked at Clarice, then at Emma, then back at Clarice, then handed the baby over.

”Is she alright?” asked Tom, rushing over to examine his daughter.

”Fast asleep,” answered Clarice. ”Which is strange. It’s feeding time for her.”

”Well, she’s had a busy day,” interjected Fertility nervously. “Anyway, we should get out of here before--”

BEFORE WHAT

”—Before Dice notices we’re here.”

OH, BEFORE I NOTICE YOU’RE HERE?

WELL, BAD NEWS ON THAT FRONT

From all around the temple there came a distinctly evil laugh.

**Pinary** · 06-04-2013, 05:49 AM

Alison might've liked the look of what the acid had done to her outfit if she hadn't been quite so preoccupied by the voice of what was apparently an evil god.

"Eeevil," Song agreed. "Evil is his one and only name."

NOW, THAT'S HARDLY FAIR

CAN'T HAVE YOU TELLING THIS YOUNG LADY SUCH UNTRUTHS, CAN WE?

"Eeevil," Song repeated. When he started on the next line, though, he only got as far as "In his mind" before his voice just... dissolved. The backing music went as well, just fading into static, and after a moment of struggling, Song just collapsed into a heap.

EVIL IS SUCH A LOADED WORD

I MEAN, SURE, MY END GOAL IS KIND OF MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE WITH YOUR CONTINUED EXISTENCE

BUT THERE'S NOTHING MALICIOUS IN IT

"Nothing malicious?!", Fertility shouted. "How is wanting to end all life not malicious?!"

IT'S NOTHING PERSONAL, REALLY

YOU JUST KEEP TAKING PERFECTLY DISORGANIZED MATTER AND ARRANGING IT ALL ORDERLY

Fertility shouted something back, and the two of them kept up arguing about the semantics of morality while the rest of the small crowd that had been packed into the RV stopped paying attention to the argument and turned instead to the situation at hand.

The main chamber of Dice's temple was... really rather overdone. Don't get me wrong, there were lots of extravagant temples in the city, but Dice had gone and taken a step further than most others.

The chamber was, for those for whom this particular analogy is useful, a little longer than a football field and approximately as wide. The roof stretched up such a distance that the columns standing a bit out from the walls on all sides towered very impressively, and the details on the roof were difficult to make out clearly.

That's not to say they were hard to guess. Everything else in the chamber was done up in a green-and-white dice theme, tiles with between one and six pips on them covering practically every surface. Even the rather unconfortable-looking throne at the distant end of the room looked like it was meant to be made of stacked dice. The columns around the room? Square. You can guess how they were decorated.

Originally, the place must have shone. Every surface there would probably look magnificent, gleaming like so many emeralds. As it was, though... not so much. Mosses and lichens were growing on the walls and columns, and the floor's smooth surface had worn away in places, no doubt thanks to the acid dripping in through holes in the ceiling. The worn spots on the floor, for obvious reasons, tended to grow once they'd gotten started, and now there were a number of large pools of acid scattered around. In addition, there were a rather large number of holes in the walls and floor. Apparently it was common practice for people to simply make their own entrances and exits, much as the Broderburg's RV had.

All in all, as it was... it actually seemed to suit Dice rather well. The pristine, orderly temple of old, worn down and eaten away by the ravages of time. Entropy.

---

In Chess' inner temple, pieces were whirling. Nancy stopped just inside the door and looked around, trying to work out what she was looking at.

The priestess who'd been guiding her stopped as well, but rather than pay attention to the demonstration of her goddess' thoughts, she simply reported, "Messenger is contacting your equivalent in the other Pantheon to make the offer. The endgame-"

THE ENDGAME IS ALREADY UPON US

She blinked.

PIECES ARE ALREADY MOVING INTO PLACE

Slowly, the pieces on the board came to a stop. A few were still shifting, gradually, between spaces, but the rest had settled into their final positions.

DICE IS NEARING HIS CHANCE FOR CHECK AND MATE

THERE IS BUT ONE MOVE LEFT TO MAKE

The priestess bowed her head. "I am yours to command."

NO

NANCY LITTLE MUST BE MOVED

Nancy looked up from the various pieces with a start. "Me?"

YOU, NANCY LITTLE

YOU MUST GO TO DICE'S TEMPLE, AND QUICKLY

Nancy nodded. The move didn't exactly make much sense to her, but this was the goddess of chess. Whatever she was setting up had to make some sort of sense.

"Where's is it?", Nancy asked.

SOMETHING WILL DESCEND

YOU MUST GO WHERE IT GOES

Kind of vague, but she could live with it. "Alright," she said. "I'll scoot. What do I do when I'm there?"

A PROMISE WAS MADE TO YOU

Nancy sighed. "Make sure she isn’t harmed," she told the priestess. The priestess nodded, took Alison by the hand and led her down a hallway.

ALISON BRODERBURG IS NOT TO BE HARMED

"What does that have to do with me going to this temple?"

I ACT BY MOVING PIECES

IN MOVING YOU, I PROTECT HER

"...You're using me to pay off a promise you made to me in the first place?"

DEBTS MUST BE OBSERVED

THAT IS A FUNDAMENTAL RULE OF THE GAME

HOW THEY ARE PAID OFF IS IRRELEVANT

"Alright," Nancy sighed. "As long as she's kept safe, I suppose I'm happy."

GOOD

NOW GO

TIME IS SHORT

AND MATE IS RAPIDLY APPROACHING

With a nod, she headed for the door, and as she left, her piece on the board started to slide. The game moved one turn closer to its end.

---

Tlaloc and Yaretzi weaved their way through the busy street, she pulling him along along by the hand and he doing his best to keep up. He didn't have the slightest idea where she was going; all he knew was that they were spending the day together, and that was all that really mattered. He'd go anywhere with her, and she wanted nothing more than to go places with him. They were each other's worlds, in that late-adolescence sort of way, and their two families were already used to the idea of becoming a single extended family one of these days.

The couple wasn't focused on that, though. For now, their only concern was being with one another, and everything else could wait a while.

Yaretzi didn't know where the door led when she opened it; all she knew was that it moved when she pushed it and that it opened into somewhere dim and cool. The streets were warm and busy and they'd worked up a sweat running, so somewhere quiet to relax for a bit was just perfect.

She led him inside, and with their eyes still adjusted for the light outside, they couldn't discern much about where they were. Reaching out, Yaretzi felt a wall to one side. A moment later, she felt one on the other side as well. No wall straight ahead, though; a hall, at a guess, and as soon as she'd worked it out, they were off once more. Where they were off to neither knew, but it was dark and cool and they were together, so all was well.

Well, not all. There was one little matter that was less than well.

As the couple moved deeper into the building, voices began to echo around them, a conversation carried from elsewhere in the building.

"...don't know that there's anything left to be said," someone was saying. "It's one of those fundamental ideological differences that always tends to make mortal enemies, and I don't see this one being resolved any time soon."

There was a second voice. "Until I succeed, I'm still technically here to maintain the day-to-day, and that includes my bimonthly reports. Which you're required to sit through." He was trying to be businesslike, by the sounds of it, but the smirk in his words were plain. He was the sort to work the letter of the law, plainly, and to enjoy every pleasure he could weasel out of it. "For up to four hours."

The first speaker sighed. "Alright, fine, let's get this over with. What's been going on lately?"

There was a brief pause, and Tlaloc and Yaretzi could just hear the slimy grin spreading even further on the second speaker's face. (Incidentally, they could also tell that maybe this wasn't something to be eavesdropped upon, but neither was about to admit to being lost, so they didn't have someone to decisively lead the way out.)

"Well, two nights ago, there were complaints of an out-of-hand gathering in the eastern side of town. A great many drank of the truth of life, and the rowdiness was audible from across the city."

The second speaker chuckled. "Yeah, I remember that. Heck of a night."

"At this revel, one of the main strains of conversation was on the subject of peoples' duties. Blacksmiths complained boistrously about the unyielding demand for nails, the marshalls (who, incidentally, ought to have been citing the event for noise disturbance) decried the rise of crime, and, most notably, a certain deity went on at great length about the hassle of reigning over the population."

There was a near-audible eye-roll. "You know how much the day-to-day stuff bores me, come on."

"True, true. The important thing, however, is your particular phrasing." Yaretzi decided that, damn the darkness, they'd just pick a direction and leave. The first speaker's tone was getting colder and colder by the second.

"You said," the second voice continued, putting exacting emphasis on the words, "and I quote, 'I'd be way happier if I didn't have any subjects at all.'"

The door Yaretzi picked was the wrong one. It swung into a smallish room, and she entered just in time to see realization sweep across Dice's face.

Management grinned even more. Standing behind a big, dark slab of stone, he pulled an extravagantly-carved knife out of a pocket. "That's right. I'm going to stop this now, put an end to your control, and eliminate the damned deficit in one stroke. Are you ready, Dice? I'm about to make you very, very happy."

The door slammed as Yaretzi ran, Tlaloc in tow, but Dice couldn't run. His thoughts just ran in circles, searching for a way to prevent Management from doing him what amounted to thousands, millions, of favours.

He couldn't find one.

With a thrust and an incantation, Management slammed the dagger down into the slab.

And then, Dice didn't have any subjects at all.

Just debt.

---

"There," Carnea said, "it's done."

John bowed slightly. "Thanks for the help."

Carnea chuckled at him. "Remember, you are in my debt. This is not something I'll forget."

"Of course," he replied, already heading down the stairs that the unlocked doors had revealed. "I'll see to it that you are repaid just as soon as I get the chance."

"See that you do," the goddess said, raising her voice a bit to make sure he heard. He'd been going down the stairs very quickly.

"You got it!" He was already a ways down. The words echoed off the walls, and soon the sound of his steps faded out completely.

With a fresh debt under her belt, Carnea headed off. That was one person, at least, who was going to have to take her seriously.

---

"So," Tom said, not really sure what there was for him and his family to do, "what exactly can we do about this whole situation?"

"Well, there isn't much Ms. Obligatory Sex Goddess Representing an Ultimately Misogynist and Regressive Romantic Ideal or I can really do here," Name replied. "Just look at Manifestation of Cultural Impacts on Situations. This is the center of Manifestation of Entropy and the Chaos that Implies' power, so we're likely even less powerful than you right now."

Tom frowned. "Okay. So how about we get into the RV and see if it whatever Management did to it still works?"

Name shook his head. "Even if it can still fly, even a tiny bit of entropy in an engine could cause a fairly serious explosion. Flying out of here's just a good way to commit suicide."

"Well, I'm sure we'll think of something," Clarice said. She had her children all together, and she was content to just sit tight for a bit until an option presented itself.

---

"Blast it, Archibald, this is no time to run off!"

Sir Archibald had, for whatever reason, not responded well to whoever-that-was-back-there shouting at them in capital letters. He'd said something about an "UNAUTHORIZED ANNOUNCER". Apparently that meant "BROADCAST FORMAT VIOLATED, RECTIFICATION NECESSARY", which, as it turns out, roughly translated to "boy I guess I should run off and try to find something in the maze of hallways around the temple".

In the end, as loath as Parsley was to leave the family behind, someone had to tend to the knight, who'd clearly gone even further around the bend than before.

---

As a trio of interns rushed out of the room, each loaded with several reams of legalese-coated paper, Eva Nguyen (Actual Diplomat) leaned back in her seat and sighed. She needed a break. Much of the rest of the Council was out just at the moment; a motion had passed that they would use the few minutes while Envoy was flying to and from the eye of the acid-storm to grab some food, and Eva had been picked to head the skeleton crew assigned to hold the fort.

"Right," she said, yawning, "how long until Envoy makes it back to the ground?"

"Two minutes," a tech replied.

"Good. I move-" A burst of static cut the person off. Eva sighed. Couldn't things take a break from happening for just a few minutes?

"Hello, COFCA, do you read me?"

"Someone's hijacked the audio feed," the tech stated.

"Yes, thanks, I figured that out." Reluctantly, Eva stood back up. "Hello, Mr. Smith. I imagine this is you 'calling us back in a bit,' is it?"

"Not just at the moment, actually! I mean, if you have thought about it, that's excellent, but right now, this is more of a temporary offer. There's a thing that a big robot would be extremely useful for, and you're the only ones I can think of that happen to have one in the area."

A few people wandered back into the room bearing some sort of kebab. Eva gestured for them to shush.

"And you want us to just divert from our current plan-" (which amounted to "fly back to the ground" and not much else, but Smith didn't need to know that) "-in order to do a favour for you?"

"Well," John replied, "when you put it like that, it does sound like a bit of a weak negotiating position. Thing is, you wouldn't exactly be doing it for me. Wouldn't it be nice to have the local reigning deity owe you one?"

Eva raised an eyebrow.

--

"Okay," Tom said, standing up sharply in an attempt to trick his brain into being more decisive, "what is it that Dice is most likely to do?"

"Well," Name replied, "he's likely aiming to use what power he's currently gained to get back to where he was before. Probably he'll try to pull off a sacrifice that's big enough to pay back the debt that got him chained in the first place."

"How big was that?", Alison asked, doing her best to be helpful.

"I'd need to consult The Ascended Entity Responsible for Maintaining Records of Debts Accrued and Fulfilled for a precise amount, but since the marginal value of a sacrifice drops after the first thousand or so, a few individuals either way won't make a different."

"I'm sorry," Clarice responded, "the first thousand? Are you saying that Dice intends to balance out more than a thousand sacrifices with what he's got on hand?"

"I can only assume so," Name said. "Management sacrificed the lives of almost the entire population in order to get the upper hand over Dice, so Dice presumably has a similarly valuable sacrifice to make."

"And what could he have to sacrifice that could possibly outweigh the sacrifice of an entire culture?"

Name blinked at her. "Well, you, of course."

---

It hadn’t been long before Nancy spotted the object falling from the sky, and though she couldn’t make out what it was at a distance, she could tell whereabouts it was coming down towards. She set out at a decent clip, and she was just getting to the point where she was close enough to need a more detailed indication of where to go when the object- Envoy, as it turned out- shot out of a nearby temple, flying skywards once more and giving Nancy a fairly good idea of where she was meant to go.

Soon, she was reaching the bottom of a long set of stairs, and the doors at the bottom swung open easily, letting her into a room that didn’t really reflect the building outside at all.

It was a small, low-ceilinged place, no ornamental carvings or fancy statues anywhere in sight. The only source of light was the dark green glow emanating from the black, coffin-sized slab of stone that took up a good chunk of the room. Runes flickered across its surface, appearing and disappearing, incomprehensible.

Aside from the slab, the only other thing of any note in the place was John Smith, moving around and haphazardly attaching little metal discs to the wall. He didn’t really seem to notice Nancy- his focus was pretty much entirely on getting the discs put up around the room.

After waiting a bit, Nancy dove into conversation. "Um. Hello?"

"Yes?", John responded, not taking his focus off what he was doing.

"What-"

"Teleporters!", he supplied, apparently very eager to tell someone just how brilliant his plan was. "I had COFCA stash the components for a transporter array in the time capsule their robot found, and now I’m setting them up to turn this room into one big teleport chamber!"

"I’m afraid I don’t follow," Nancy replied.

"In order for the Council to be able to stash things for themselves to find later, they have to not know about the thing already existing. What they’ve done is given the robot a suit, so they can sew things into the lining someplace they don’t think there is anything, then have the robot take things out, avoiding a paradoxical loop. In this case, they made a note to include some nice, compact teleportation technology, and these little nodes are small enough to conceal. Once they’re all set up, they can be used in the same way a full teleportation chamber would."

She shook her head. "Still not making sense."

John affixed the last node on the wall, then frowned at her. "What’s not to get?"

"...'Teleportation'?"

"Oh. Right." With a bit of a sigh, John leaned against the edge of the big slab. "Basically, what a teleporter does is take everything that's in one place, then instantly move it to another point, no travel involved. Just, one second, here, the next second, there."

"What, just like that?"

John grinned like it was his own idea. "Precisely!"

Nancy looked back at the door, apparently giving serious thought going back out through it. "So, whereabouts are you going to be going?"

In response, he pointed straight upwards.

She responded with the "I don't understand that either and you damn well know it, so cut the crap and explain yourself like a normal person" expression that she was quickly getting used to using.

He grimaced. "Dice's temple. It's way up in the sky."

Nancy's eyebrows went up. "You're going up to Dice's temple?"

"That's the plan. Now that the teleporter nodes are set, all that's left to do is wait."

"And everything in the room's going to get shuffled on up there, you said?"

"Mm-hm." (John, terrible at just waiting, had already started poking at something on his sleeve and staring intently at it.)

Settling in to wait, Nancy leaned back against the wall. "Well, that suits me just fine."

John just grunted something and kept poking at his sleeve.

"Good," Nancy responded, making it quite clear that she was content to lean against the wall and not talk.

After a minute or so of continuing to be okay with it, she demonstrated just how okay with it she was by asking, "So what is it you're doing, anyway?"

"Hmm?"

"With your sleeve there, I mean."

"Oh, I'm trying to convince Base here that he should share his records with me."

Nancy looked around sharply, wondering just where this creep Base was and why he was hiding, and she was plainly about to ask a question to that effect when John just cut her off and explained anyway.

"This big slab here is Base, a local god. He used to be just an enchanted slab of rock, but the more and more data the other gods wrote on him, the more and more power he was imbued with. Eventually, anything with enough power becomes sentient, and being the definitive storage space for all debts between gods imbues a hell of a lot of power."

"Wait, so-"

"Let me finish. These days, Base is one of the more powerful gods. He doesn't exactly do much with his power, and he's content to just sit in his basement and monitor the other gods' transactions."

"And... you're talking to him with your sleeve?"

John sighed. She could grasp the concept of gods storing records of their debts in a slab of rock turning it into a god itself, but somehow he didn't think he'd be able to explain computers to her in the time he had available. "It's, uh... It's like a fancy telephone you can type into."

"Oh," Nancy replied, gesturing a bit with her typewriter, "sort of like this, then?"

John glanced at what she was indicating, thought about it for a moment, then said, "Sort of, yeah. Like one of those, only it sends the words directly to Base instead of sticking them on paper."

"Ahh, okay. So what's he saying?"

John turned his attention back to the screen on his sleeve. "He's just complaining because I'm from out of town and we do things a bit differently back home."

"What, regular folks can't have debts?"

"Well, sure," John replied, "but they're not exactly significant on the same scale as gods' debts. Now, seeing as I'm not regular folks, and I've already made several deific bargains, I should-"

It was Nancy's turn to interrupt. "Hold up, you're what now?"

John shook his head and sighed again. This was going to take a bit of explaining.

---

"Me?!"

"Not just you," Name clarified helpfully, "your family. You, your husband, your children..."

Clarice's voice dripped venom. "My family? He wants to sacrifice my family?" Emma began to stir at her tone, so she handed the child off to her husband before starting to stalk closer to the god.

"I can only assume so," Name continued, unperturbed by the woman bearing down on him with daggers in her eyes. "It would more than balance the scales to sacrifice a family such as yours, especially your d-"

An inky-black fist slammed into his jaw, sending him thudding to the floor like dead weight.

"Especially during the eclipse," Dice kindly provided, dusting off his knuckles and looking all too pleased with his entrance.

Everyone stared at him, including Fertility, who'd been mid-sentence in her shouted argument with the ceiling, and Clarice, who'd been rather hoping to take that shot herself.

"Don't try to get back up," he advised the god on the floor. "I'm going to be busy, and I'll be rather impatient if I have to deal with you further."

Shockingly, Name didn't respond.

Dice grinned down at him for a moment, then turned to the Broderburgs. "Now, the last of the supplies are nearly here, so we'll be able to begin shortly. I think starting with the first-born child would be best, don't you?"

"Stay away from her," Clarice snapped, doing her best impression of a wall between her children and Dice.

"Oh, please. First off, I'm a deity, there's not a whole lot you can really hope to do with your mortal little body. And secondly, well..." He pointed at something behind her, back towards where the RV had entered the temple. Everyone turned to look.

As soon as everyone was watching, nothing of note happened. A bit confused, Clarice turned to look at Dice. The god just held up a "just a sec" finger and nodded back towards the entrance. As it happened, though, Envoy had managed to pick the few seconds when Clarice was looking away from the entryway to make his big, dramatic appearance.

Studies commissioned by certain beverage companies have shown that the use of existing entrances is barely half as impressive as creating a new one upon arriving at one's destination. In addition, experiments performed at various aquatic entertainment facilities have also shown a direct correlation between an audience's enjoyment of a performer's entrance and the number of big, showy splashes that occur throughout.

Envoy, having only been instructed to make his entrance "nice and showy", had consulted the scientific literature, analysed its knowledge of the area, and come to the obvious conclusion. One quick structural stability analysis, and...

With a deafening crash of demolished stone and the trademark splash-hiss of caustic fluid splashing onto moss-covered tile, Envoy burst up through the floor of the nearby acid pool, did a mid-air somersault to turn around and fire full reverse thrusters, touched the ceiling only long enough to push off, and landed in a heroic crouch in a wide-open section of floor, positioning himself directly between the open-air entrance and the god's grand throne, a perfect position for all to see.

(Well, it would've been, if Dice hadn't been pointing everyone present in the other direction entirely. Instead, everyone but Clarice just heard a loud crash and turned to look just in time to see Envoy crashing to one knee. I mean, she did find it suitably dramatic, so that's something, but still. Could've gone way better.)

His thrilling acrobatics complete, Envoy got down to business. He flung teleportation units out in all directions, sending them haphazardly thudding into walls, ceiling, and floor until the net was complete, and then, his task complete, he shot back out of the temple, leaving most everyone blinking in confusion at just what had happened over what amounted to the last ten seconds or so.

Of course, as luck would happen, they then got the opportunity to be blinking for purely physiological reasons, as that's when the teleportation system kicked in, filling the room with a blinding flash of light and throwing in some disorientating sound effects to boot.

As far as Dice was concerned, it was absolutely perfect. The humans were stunned, the other gods were either incapacitated already or just as bad off as the humans, and his accomplice was leaning against a column and looking confident. With the kind of quick motions and implausible covering of distance only really possible for a cocky deity at the center of his own domain, he lifted Alison Broderburg off her feet and carried her down the length of the room in just a few strides, going from place to place and not really bothering much with the intervening steps. Base, the big smooth slab of rock that was to be her sacrificial altar, was waiting.

John Smith met him there. "It took some doing," he said, "but Base gave in eventually and granted me access. The Broderburgs, sacrificed during the eclipse, directly in the center of your temple and in direct contact with Base himself? I double-checked it for you, and it's more than enough to pay off your debt."

To say that Dice grinned would be an understatement. "Perfect."

It was now coming on thirty seconds since Envoy had first made his sudden and disorienting entrance, and various senses were coming back to their respective people.

Clarice's first instinct was to check on her family. She accounted for two children and one husband, and the moment she realized where Alison was, she started running. The room was too long, though, and she would not make it in time to stop the sacrifice.

Tom's first instinct was to check on his wife. She was staring around, looking for something, and when her gaze finally landed somewhere definitive, he followed it and saw Alison. He too started running, but he was several steps behind her and carrying a baby. He would also not make it in time to stop the sacrifice.

Ethan's first instinct was to get help. He was nearest to Fertility, and she'd been a Nice Person in past. He went over to her with his best Scared And Confused Child face on, and while she instinctively put one arm around him and said some vaguely comforting things, her focus was mostly elsewhere.

She was looking down at Name and Song, who'd both been silenced with barely any effort on Dice's part. She'd known, academically, that at the heart of Dice's power, other gods would probably be a few steps down the ladder from even a vanilla mortal. It had been a well-established fact in the rational part of her mind. Seeing two friends tossed aside with so little effort, though... it brought the fact home in a much more visceral sense. Her mind wasn't on the situation at hand. She would not be any help in stopping the sacrifice.

John, standing barely a meter from the slab, was in a fine position to stop the sacrifice; he just had no interest in doing so. As a matter of fact, he was barely even paying attention. He'd just received an unexpected call and was in the middle of a conversation with Messenger, who was down on the surface. (For the record, Messenger was probably not in a position to stop the sacrifice either.)

Gamehost Six, elsewhere in the temple, was, quite rationally, going door-by-door until he found the audio booth the other announcer was hiding in. ("...Question 84: Open," followed by a brief pause, then by "INCORRECT" and liberal application of handsaw. Rinse and repeat.) He was not in any way paying attention to the sacrifice.

What Parsley was thinking at that moment is a mystery. He'd apparently decided that trying to reason Sir Archibald out of opening the door was the best approach, and he was in the middle of trying to get the knight back to reality with amusing anecdotes from their past. Had he been aware of the sacrifice, he most assuredly have done everything in his power to stop it, but he, like Six, had no idea it was even taking place.

"Alison Broderburg," Dice began, pulling a knife out of nowhere important and twirling it around his fingers, "in this moment, I restore balance. With your death and the deaths of the others, I restore the rightful order of things, I restart the inevitable grinding of time, and-"

Not many people have ever heard a Remington-Rand Portable No.3 typewriter hit a god square on the back of the head before. It's a surprisingly loud noise, thanks to the multitude of small metal parts encased in the machine, and it's the sort of sound that really fills your ears, all sorts of highs and lows coming together in a cacophony of clashing sounds that really drills in deep and bounces around.

Nancy Little, you see, was quite nearby when Dice brought Alison to the altar. She'd been teleported in in behind one of the columns, and to be perfectly frank, she'd been quite content to stay there until the whole sacrificing business started up. She wasn't too keen on the idea, and after a brief moment's psyching-up and gathering of fortitude, she'd started forwards, brandishing her typewriter and readying her strike. She'd been barely five meters away. Dice's attention had been solely on relishing his victory. She'd been in a prime position to stop the sacrifice.

So she did.

Dice tumbled to one side, dropping the knife and falling to the ground. Nancy followed up with a second blow, this time to his torso, and she connected solidly. Unfortunately, Dice was actually paying attention at that point, so he managed to grab her wrist before she could pull back. With a sharp tug, he brought her tumbling to the ground and shot to his feet.

He didn't have time to get a single kick in before Clarice tackled him and he went down again, this time with a murderous mother lashing out at him with fists and feet and knees and anything else she could use to hurt him. He might've been able to get out from under her blows if Tom hadn't also shown up, bringing with him two feet of lashing, vicious kicks and not enough sense to maybe not be going into a fight with a baby in tow. The god was being beaten and pummelled and thrashed.

But come on. Dice was a god, and he wasn't going to fall to the clumsy bludgeoning of two irritated primates. All he had to do was stop manifesting himself physically, and there wasn't anything they could do. The body he'd been in just... dissolved away.

Well, then it sort of exploded. I mean, it didn't really explode, but when something stops being there one second only to be replaced by a violent, rage-fuelled shockwave the next, the difference is academic. Clarice was thrown upwards, high enough to bruise her shoulder against the ceiling, Tom flew backwards, curling his body around baby Emma to keep her safe- Heck, the only person nearby who wasn't affected was John, who hadn't done anything to irk the god and therefore really had nothing to worry about.

Of course, Tom and Clarice didn't hit the floor after all this; instead, they just stopped about two feet from the ground, hovering there. That fall could've killed one of them, and that would've made the whole sacrifice impossible. Everything had to be just right, and that meant all five Broderburgs, sacrificed directly on Base, in the center of Dice's power, in the middle of the-

"Uh, Dice?"

There was dead silence for a moment, then,

WHAT

WHAT IS IT

"Well, I just got off the phone with Messenger," John said. It didn't sound like he was delivering good news, and any sane observer would be quickly reassessing whether or not he still had "nothing to worry about."

AND WHAT DID HE WANT

"He was delivering a message from Calendar," John continued. "Apparently he decided that he wasn't going to stick out his neck for you after all. Your plan-"

In an instant, all of Dice's rage and anger slammed upwards, pounding a massive hole through the ceiling. Sunlight shone down, clean, bright... and unobstructed. The eclipse had passed.

With a bellow of near-literal flame, the god's hatred, wrath, frustration, and pain all slammed together. Dice reformed, manifesting himself as something twelve feet tall and only really solidly definable as pissed. He'd been robbed of his chance to take back everything he'd lost. At the last second, it'd been taken away. He'd had it. Right there.

He was going to make them pay.

Who? Doesn't matter. Everyone. Base was right here, and he was conveniently immobile.

The beast started forwards, lumbering towards what would be the first of many dead, demolished gods.

"Hey," John said, sounding somewhat irritated, "are you going to let me finish?"

Dice paused.

"Thank you." Doing his best to keep his frustration down, John strode forward. "Now, as I was saying: Your plan's kaput. Is that bad? Yes. That hardly means we're all out of options, though."

He ran a hand across Base's surface. Runes were appearing and disappearing, detailed records of every exchange of godly debt ever made.

---

Dice chuckled. "Yeah, I remember that. Heck of a night."

"At this revel," Management continued," one of the main strains of conversation was on the subject of peoples' duties. Blacksmiths complained boistrously about the unyielding demand for nails, the marshalls (who, incidentally, ought to have been citing the event for noise disturbance) decried the rise of crime, and, most notably, a certain deity went on at great length about the hassle of reigning over the population."

Dice rolled his eyes. "You know how much the day-to-day stuff bores me, come on."

Management nodded at him. "True, true. The important thing, however, is your particular phrasing. You said, and I quote, 'I'd be way happier if I didn't have any subjects at all.'"

A young couple barged in, just in time to see realization sweep across Dice's face.

Management paid them no mind; he just grinned even wider as his plan came together. "That's right," he said, drawing the ceremonial dagger out of his pocket. "I'm going to stop this now, put an end to your control, and eliminate the damned deficit in one stroke. Are you ready, Dice? I'm about to make you very, very happy."

The kids were obviously scared, and they ran. Dice didn't have that luxury. His thoughts could just run in circles, searching for a way to prevent Management from doing him what amounted to thousands, millions, of favours.

He couldn't find one.

With a thrust and an incantation, Management slammed the dagger down. He was ready to rid Dice of all those pesky subjects, ready to take control of the world, ready to finally get the books in order.

What he wasn't ready for was for the dagger to keep going, rather than striking stone. He stared down at the gash that had opened in Base's surface, not sure how to react to his arm being halfway inside a tear in solid rock. Someone grabbed for the knife on the other side. He tried to wrest it away from them, but they had all the leverage. He pulled his hand out just in time for the hole to close again, leaving Base's surface untouched and the ritual incomplete.

---

John tossed the knife down at Dice's feet. "There," he said, "Plan B."

Dice stared at it.

John rolled his eyes. "You just going to stand there like some sort of idiot monster, or are you going to thank me?"

The beast rolled its eyes back and reached down, and by the time he picked the knife up, Dice was looking like his old self again. "You stopped the sacrifice," he said, still working through the implications.

(As far as Clarice was concerned, they were just talking. The danger of being sacrificed had apparently passed (somehow), so her attention turned straight to attending to her family.)

"Yes, I stopped the sacrifice," John replied, using the same tone a teacher would when helping a student through a particularly obvious math problem. "The original one, where Management offed the entire population as a favour to you."

(Alison had been knocked several meters away, but she was mostly unhurt. Her mother hugged her tight, and she hugged back.)

"I'm not all that well-versed in Calendar's realm," Dice explained, "so I'm not exactly clear on this. What happens next, then?"

(Tom was suddenly very concerned when he realized that Emma wasn't crying. When he looked down at her, though, she made one of those little noises that babies make back up at him. She seemed fine, and Clarice bustled over a moment later to give her a good once-over. Tom hugged Alison as well.)

Before John had a chance to explain, Base vanished into nothingness, providing a perfect visual aid. "Things are going to shift from how they were before, when Management's ritual had succeeded, to how they are now. Base, for example, apparently doesn't end up up here in the new chain of events."

(Emma, Clarice certified, was in perfect health. She handed her daughter off to her daughter and hugged her husband.)

"So, what, we just wait and see?"

(Ethan ran up to the others, Fertility close behind him. He hugged everyone at once, because efficiency.)

Fertility laughed, leaving the family to their business. "Like you'd have it any other way?"

John chuckled. "Exactly right. There's nothing quite like-"

He didn't get to finish his sentence, though. He'd vanished, and so had the Broderburgs.

Dice looked around at his temple. There were a lot of holes in the thing, he realized. Things'd been smashing in and out all day. Those'd probably be gone soon.

He turned to make some sort of comment to Fertility. She was gone too.

---

Nancy was falling, and she wasn't sure how she felt about the whole experience. (Other than annoyed that someone would leave all those big, gaping holes in the floor for people to tumble through.)

She'd fulfilled that oath, at least, she thought to herself. The one that... had been made to her in the first place? It was all rather confusing. I mean, it made sense, somehow, that much she knew. She just didn't know how it made sense.

"I'm curious," someone said, startling Nancy quite a bit. Doing her best to turn and look, she found a cloaked figure falling next to her, all black robes and tattered edges.

Realizing he wasn't at an optimum viewing angle, he moved around to be in front of Nancy instead.

After the surprise wore off, Nancy waited for the figure to continue. When he didn't, she prompted, "...You're curious?"

"Ah, right. I'm curious, why not use your weapon?"

Nancy blinked at him. "I'm sorry, I'm confused."

"Oh, right." The figure executed a sort of mid-air half-bow. "I'm Death, pleased to meet you."

"...Oh." That made sense, really. I mean, she'd attacked a god, after all, dying from the experience wasn't exactly unpredictable.

When Death didn't say anything, Nancy took a few steps back in the conversation, then realized, "No, wait, that's not what confused me. I mean, okay, it did, but, I mean... What weapon?"

Death pointed a finger at her purse, and just as he did, she remembered: She'd forgotten entirely that she'd had her pistol with her.

"Okay," she said, "that might've been a good idea. Better than wingin' him on the melon, anyway."

"If it's any consolation," Death replied, "things don't look all bad."

Nancy frowned. "How so?"

He gestured again, this time downward.

Nancy looked, and she saw the city in the distance. (It really was approaching rather fast, wasn't it?) "Y-yeah, what about it?"

"Look at it," Death replied.

Nancy looked.

She couldn't make out much, and the wind wasn't exactly helping her keep her eyes focused. There was motion down there, though. There was movement in the streets.

"Is that... people? Are there people down there?"

"That's right. The population's coming back."

Nancy thought about that. How many people were there down there? Thousands? Tens of thousands? So many people, all brought back, restored to life.

After a minute or two of silence, Death coughed. "I'm afraid I'm a bit out of practice at all this," he said, "but I do still have a job to do around here."

Nancy looked over at him. "How do you mean?"

"The ground's getting a bit close there," he said.

"Oh. Right." She sighed. "So, uh, how..."

Death held out a hand.

Not The Author · 06-05-2013, 02:18 AM

"Yeah, hi-five!"

The Charlatan lounged atop a grand statue of some hero or another, swatting at what wouldn't have been air a universe or two over. Mission accomplished, the illusionist gestured at the township around them.

"Anyway, welcome to Goldhenge! It's a bit of a backwater, but the folks here don't mind."

The scent of sweat, hay and manure permeated the air. A pair of kids chased each other down the street, tailed by a woman carrying a basket of something. Smoke billowed up from the smith's shop, accompanied by the muffled clang of metal on metal. Somewhere, two men were shouting about how their fruits were better and cheaper than the other guy's.

"Goldhenge is sort of a hub for vagrants and adventurers. It's just about equidistant from Spooky Forest, Impassable Mountains, Wizard Castle and The Sea. You get all kinds here, though today's a bit quiet."

In the center of town sat a hill, from which twelve pillars of solid gold shot up into the sky. The Charlatan alighted atop the hill, which had remained untouched by any urban development.

"Town's namesake, right here. Turned into a tourist attraction when the Wizards from said Castle figured the pillars didn't do a damn thing. Nobody wants to dig it up to see what's down there, though. Just in case."

He walked over and tapped one of the pillars with his fist.

"It isn't even real gold! Doesn't stop people from-"

A dull hum picked up, barely audible under the bustle of the town. The air around the pillars seemed to shimmer as though in desert heat. The changes were subtle and would probably have gone completely unnoticed if several people hadn't been waiting for a man no one else could see to finish speaking.

But the Charlatan simply wasn't there.

Show Content

Elpie · 06-25-2013, 08:53 PM

Goldhenge was the sort of place where an awful lot of time has passed.

Throw a dart at a humanoid civilization anywhere in the multiverse and, on the mean, it’ll have developed agriculture about fourteen thousand harvests ago. Too much later and they’ll either have destroyed themselves or evolved into something fantastic and unrecognizable. Too much earlier and they’ll start worshipping the dart.

Outliers to this rule, of course, abound. There are, albeit rarely, societies that go on more-or-less interminably, usually having cheated their way out of the process of history altogether--which, some might argue, is just another definition of apocalypse. Somewhat more common are worlds in which a certain brand of well-meaning but paternalistic heroism serves as a cooling agent for process and gives an otherwise-transitory status quo the power to outrun history for eons.

Goldhenge resided in one of those worlds. The same mentality by which a mountain range is defined not by the vast troves of natural resources within but by how darned difficult it is to get over them allows history to clutter up like cobwebs in a basement. A couple hundred thousand years ago there may not have been a giant golden space relic squatting in the middle of Goldhenge, but there was still a Goldhenge under another name, and that name is probably still even written down in a library somewhere.

It’s an awfully boring place to be an immortal.

The Spooky Forest Coven, all three having millennia ago cast off their increasingly run-down and desecrated female bodies, gathered on the road into Goldhenge at the stroke of midnight. The edge of the forest wasn’t quite a crossroads, the proper crossroads being in the middle of town and therefore inaccessible to all but the most discrete forces of darkness, but it was a threshold, as was the hour, and that would suffice.

“When ---- meet --- again?” asked the first, her voice manifest as a chill yet flammable whisper. To clarify: the three “gathered” in a probability-distribution sense; no longer the ectoplasmic silhouettes of their former mortality-suits in which aspect they’d spent their unyouth, they had diffused into so much spellstuff, the haunt that hung over the forest itself. The scheduling of their next confluence, which formerly had served as the invocation of a literary tradition in order to draw upon its powers, was now necessary to remind them that time was still passing and that they were still three distinct consciousnesses.

The answer from the second witch came unexpected. “Never --- again ----- an End of Things --- that --- asleep ---- awaken.”

And the third, accusatory: “Liar ---- No end ---- have walked ----- a futurewalk … ----- all roads --- sleep eternal.”

“No lies ---- the future --- off the road. -------- ----- ------ --- ----- - Dream ---.“

“Truth or lie---“ suggested the first witch; “----- commonality; -- Summoning ---- Corpse-Duke”

“ ---- Plague-That-Walks ---“

“Meat-trash.” This last with a snide yawning of the earth and the breaking of an urn in a sand-covered tomb somewhere, spilling a heap of dried organs to the floor. The overall effect: contempt. “Nevertheless ---- will aid – preparations.”

Narrowing their omni-directional evil “eyes” in the direction of the sky, the three witches whipped up a thunderstorm, if for no other reason than to provide cover for their more traditionally wyrd activities. Unobserved, bodies began to fall from the sky.

First and centrally, the he-goat, pre-decapitated, its entrails spilling themselves into runic spirals. Then the human bodies, borrowed mostly from Goldhengian teenagers who had come to the woods seeking a little privacy May Day last. (The second-most-beautiful having been permitted to survive as per courtesy, and now living out her days ungratefully in the village). Around the goat the witches arranged those parts of the corpses which would be most pleasing to their flesh-inclined cousin—his arms, her legs, a buffet of genitals to choose from, none of their hearts.

A rumble of thunder to hide, from prying ears, the secret words that would bring him forth.

And when it was done he stood among them, new hairs bristling, new body quaking—naked, male yet female yet neither masculine nor yet feminine, now goat-headed yet now human albeit horned yet now handsome albeit pale. And yet now clad in all black yet naked all the same in its pride and lustfulness.

“He is come ----“ ~the second witch, ominous restatement of the obvious masking a spiteful assignation of sex.

The Corpse-Duke.

Plague-That-Walks.

Meat-Trash.

And more recognizably Vampire or something phonetically close to that, lying amidst the thousands of names he had accrued in his eons of existence. The names sat uncomfortably upon him in situations such as this when he had not the power to name himself nor even to decide upon his own body, it being forced upon him by the tri-woman. “Yes sister,” he said coolly (and yet bleated shrilly!). “I ‘am come.’”

The alliance was an uneasy one. Two different philosophies of undeath were at play here—the witches increasingly ethereal, abstract, seeking to become one with fate and with the magic they once wielded; the hemo-hedonist taking death as a sort of hyper-life, re-experiencing the pleasures of the flesh unshackled by the concerns and limitations of his former aliveness.

“But why,” he asked, “Am I come now? Why this night?”

The common thread linking them was that old chestnut of the Curse of Immortality and the attendant utter boredom. The borders of the witches’ haunting grounds have been unchanged since the drawing of old maps that have since crumbled into dust. The heliophobe had for centuries merely been affecting his rapture at the predictable degradation and endlessly iterative wars and sufferings of the world. Each successive reincarnation was a begrudging necessity preferable only to the alternative, like crawling out of bed at breakfast time.

“-----portent---“ offered one of the witches, weakly.

“The hour--- release ----- is come –”

“A lot of that going around, I hear,” snapped the sanguiholic over the thunder, upset at his interlocutors' vagueness. As much as he trusted their senses—they felt what the forest felt, a sap-slow all-perception with a canopy branching out into the future as its roots drink deep from the past—he would have preferred something to have already happened, some concrete evidence he could sink his teeth into.

“Infinity ---- breaking forth --- future humming -------------- ----”

“-The town-“

“----The town--“

“The town, right.” Looking over in the direction of the monument. “Still the same town? Goldhenge?”

“Goldhenge---- a battlefield ----“

“ -------Cosmic crossroads -- third of fourth of third---“

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I can’t function in this conversation as it stands. Pull yourselves together.”

A pulling back of the wind, as a sigh. The clouds lifted slightly, revealing a winking facet of a starlit midnight.

And eventually choked out, “---He-is-come-unto-them-and-they-are-come-unto-us------“

The vampire groaned. “I’ll go check it out,” he decreed, pulling a swath of darkness out of the obscurement and donning it, loosely enrobing (and yet!) lasciviously clinging. “Let me know if the future decides to sober up and explain itself.”

Somewhere on the way into town the night swallowed him, or vice versa, and even the witches could not locate him.

* * * * *

”Well, isn’t this your lucky day?” exclaimed the innkeep, digging through a shelf full of keys. Alison looked away hurriedly. “As it happens I have two rooms, adjacent, vacant, fully paid for.”

Dad breathed a sigh of relief. He was doing his best to keep the family together and not to mention the fact that Nansomeone else had died. The strain made him look old, which made Alison feel old.

“Queer story,” said the innkeep, leaning in conspiratorially. Alison had fallen asleep during the Lord of the Rings but understood that this guy was a walking cliché—fat, mustached, cheerful, gossipy. She didn’t like him. “We had a family living there, nice folks, foreign, like yourself (if you don’t mind my inference), but friendly, money good, took three rooms, paid for a month. Now, just before dawn last night, stranger comes by, young, suave type. Fella has both keys, says the family left unexpectedly and left him to return them, pays down a third room. Suspicious, you ask me, but it’s not my place to turn paid custom away, nor to ask about his business, nor, here’s where you come in, to charge twice for rooms been paid for the balance of the month.

“Now for safety’s sake I’d advise you not to let the little ones wander alone while that fella’s in, which he has been all day, in his room that is, which is that adjacent to yours, there.”

“They’ll be staying in their room,” said Mom threateningly, glancing in Alison’s direction. “Taking care of the baby. Thanks for the rooms. We’re new here, with no way to pay our way until Thomas here finds work.” The lie, and even the subtle adaptation to the local way of speaking, came to Mom effortlessly. Alison had to admit to herself that she was impressed. She knew that her parents lied to her constantly, but had never caught them out doing it to somebody else. Dad, who had never come ahead in a game of poker in his life, stayed silent.

“After that can we go to Wizard Castle?” demanded Ethan.

“By lord, you are new, aren’t you, child?” The innkeep leaned over the counter towards Ethan, the ends of his mustache dangling absurdly. “No one goes to Wizard Castle ‘less he wants to come out turned into a toad, or something uglier still—“

“Cool!”

The innkeep realized his mistake and whispered apologetically to Mom and Dad, “Uglier along the lines of a corpse.”

“Like a zombie?” Ethan’s devilish hearing, which could demonstrably penetrate all the way down the hall to eavesdrop on Alison’s murmured conversations on the cordless phone, easily decoded the innkeep’s grumble. “Awesome!”

Alison slapped her brother just lightly enough on the back of the head that Dad would decline to reproach her for it in public. He stopped talking. Alison smiled for the first time since getting to this town, feeling that she had been helpful.

Mom and Dad took the room closer to the guy the innkeep had warned her about, and gathered the family in Alison and Ethan’s room. The room wasn’t as bad as she’d been imagining—no spiders, anyway. Dad put the key in her hand and closed it into a fist, as though the wind would blow it away. “This key is a big responsibility,” he told her. “And it is not an invitation to go outside. This place could be dangerous.”

“So why do you have to go?” asked Alison.

“I need to get a job,” said Dad, grinning a bit at the normalcy of that statement. “And find Parsley, if I can.”

“Why do you need a job?” She was somewhat self-aware that she was playing the why game here, an age-old tactic for deconstructing parental irrationality. It wasn’t what her parents needed right now, but she couldn’t be expected to play the good daughter forever, could she?

“Well, that’s the only way to make money,” answered Dad, pretending as if that had been the question. “And making money is the only way to feed this family.”

“We’ll find food,” assured Alison. “It’ll come to us. Things will work out without us having to go out there. It’s—“ Realizing how close she was coming to a confession, she changed the subject. “Anyway, someone will probably die again before you have time to get paid, and then we’ll go somewhere else.”

Dad soured, grabbing Alison’s arm. “Hey! You do not talk like that!” Seeing the alarm on Alison’s face, he softened, took a few deep breaths, and moved his hand up to her shoulder. “No one’s going to die,” he said, slowly, as if the weight of the intonation would add truth to the statement. “I promise. We’re staying here for now, and we’ll figure out a way to get home. I’m sure of it.”

Alison knew it was the last thing she ought to say, but she did anyway: “Why?”

Dragon Fogel · 07-21-2013, 06:46 AM

The strangest thing about Goldhenge was how familiar it was.

The illusion of New Atlantis had been completely unlike anything Parsley had ever seen - not only the machines, but the very walls of "Fort Ayers", and even the clothes worn by the locals. It had been a shock.

The abandoned city had not been quite so incomprehensible, but it was still quite foreign to Parsley's eyes. The architecture, the strange so-called gods, and the acidic river all told him that this was a world unlike his own. Of course, it was all a lie, but damned if it wasn't a well-designed lie.

Goldhenge, however, might have been any of a dozen small villages that Parsley had passed through in the course of his career. And that made it all the more disturbing.

He kept glancing at the mirror shard, but all too often, it showed him the same houses, the same villagers, the same scene.

The truth was still unpleasant, of course. Though he could see a bright sun up above, the mirror showed a night sky. And the mirror-villagers looked worn out, and their clothes were ragged. It seemed as though the demon was keeping them awake with the illusion of a day, and no doubt the exhaustion made their minds more susceptible to its crueler tricks.

It was disconcerting, but Parsley found the Goldhenge structure even more worrying. He'd only seen it in the distance so far, and hadn't been able to get a good look at it through the mirror. He couldn't help but wonder just what it was.

At first, he thought the demon must have created it - but the so-called Charlatan had drawn Parsley's attention right to the structure. If Goldhenge was, in truth, something of value to the demon, why allow the demon hunter to know of it?

Because it was a trap. That was the obvious answer.

But demons were tricky sorts. When they set a trap, even if you knew of it, you could never be sure if it was better to spring it or to leave it be.

Fortunately, Parsley could clear the matter up with the mirror shard. He'd scout out Goldhenge, see what it truly was, and work out what to do from there. His mind made up, he started walking towards the hill.

He only made it a few steps before a heavy hand grabbed his shoulder.

"Now just a minute there, hunter. Where do you think you're going?"

Parsley turned, half-expecting to see Sir Archibald - either his true face or the mechanical guise from before. Instead, he found himself facing a young peasant in unimpressive armor, holding up a crude spear.

"You're here to rid us of the demon, am I right?" the peasant asked.

"Aye, that I am."

"That's what I thought. Mayor Elmwood will want to speak with you first." The guard pointed in the direction of the town hall. "He should be in his office, second floor. Might be a bit busy, but I'm sure he'll make time to see you."

"Thank ye," Parsley said, nodding, heading over. "I'll go pay him my respects, then."

***

Mayor Elmwood looked like most of the mayors Parsley had met in his career; elderly, bespectacled, and with a long white beard that seemed to exist for the sole purpose of being stroked thoughtfully.

As the guard had predicted, Elmwood was quite busy with paperwork. Scrolls littered his desk, and there were at least three empty inkwells lying around the room. He had his pen hovering over a scroll when he saw Parsley at the door.

"Oh! You're here!"

Elmwood put his pen down, rolled up the scroll, and greeted Parsley with a relieved grin. Parsley sat down and returned the smile.

"It would have been nicer if you'd gotten here three weeks ago, when I sent for you, of course..."

"My apologies; I never received a message," Parsley replied. "I have no doubt you tried to send it, but perhaps it never left the village."

"Given who we're dealing with, that could well be true," Elmwood muttered. "How did you come to find us, then?"

"Some rumors reached my ears, and I thought to check them for myself."

"Good that you did. I imagine you had trouble even getting into town."

"Aye. Our foe is quite the crafty one."

"So before we begin, I suppose you want to negotiate your pay."

Parsley shook his head.

"Nay, sir. Ye needn't pay, or if ye insist I'll take the regular rate after the job's done. I know well what's at stake here. Needn't add finances to yer problems."

"This sounds quite different from what I'd heard about you," Elmwood said, his eyes widening behind his tiny spectacles. "You're quite sure?"

"Aye. In fact, I daresay our foe's responsible for whatever ye've heard about me. Can't trust everything ye hear, given the trickery afoot."

"I suppose not. We're dealing with a powerful enemy, after all."

"Now, what can ye tell me about this demon?"

Elmwood handed him a small scroll.

"Not much. This is a list of people who've complained, and what they said. Maybe you can get more information out of them. About all we've been able to work out is that it's most active around Goldhenge - the thing on the hill, I mean, not the entire village."

Parsley nodded.

"Aye, I was about to take a closer look at that when I was sent your way."

"You've got good instincts, then. I hope they're good enough to see you through this trouble alive."

"They've done a fair job of that so far," Parsley said, standing up.

"Perhaps. But may I remind you that our enemy is bloodthirsty, ruthless, and cunning. You're a threat to them, and they know it. You need to watch every single step you take."

"I've handled many a demon before, sir. I've even faced a good number of men who could pass for demons." Parsley walked over to the door. "It's the townsfolk who need yer concern, sir. Myself, not so much."

As the hunter left, Elmwood let out a sigh of relief and unfurled the scroll he had been looking at when Parsley entered.

The Goldhenge Town Council has unanimously agreed to the following terms:

-The Holy Order will exorcise any and all demons within Goldhenge at the time of signing.
-All residents of Goldhenge will swear allegiance to the Holy Order.
-The Goldhenge Town Hall will be demolished, and a cathedral of the Holy Order shall be built upon the site.
-The entire treasury of Goldhenge will be entrusted to the Holy Order.
-The Goldhenge Town Council will be dissolved, and replaced with a new council approved by the Holy Order.
-The Mayor of Goldhenge shall resign, and be replaced with a new Mayor approved by the Holy Order.
-The Holy Order will have full power to approve, repeal, and enforce the laws of Goldhenge.
-All citizens of Goldhenge will pay ten percent of their income directly to the Holy Order, in addition to existing taxes.
-The Holy Order will continue to exorcise all demons within Goldhenge so long as this agreement is upheld.

As Mayor of Goldhenge, I hereby endorse this agreement:
________________________

"Couldn't have cut it much closer, could you," Elmwood muttered to himself.

Godbot · 10-11-2013, 08:59 PM

“No, no, warranty.”

“Worr-an-tee,” the peasant sitting across from Envoy sounded out, squinting at the pile of papers in his hands.

“Good enough,” crackled the radio on the desk between them. “Basically, if it breaks or gets lost, we’ll return the money you paid or send you a new one. So, do you want yours to last a long time, or a short while?”

The peasant frowned, thinking for a long moment. “If… I ‘can’t find’ it, and I tell you, then it’s… free?” he asked carefully, in a tone of voice that very clearly came from a people that had yet to perfect the arts of lying and scheming.

“Well, yes,” admitted the radio, a little laugh in the voice on the other end. “But we’ll cancel your service.”

“Oh, of course,” said the peasant, nodding thoughtfully.

“It means that your phone won’t be connected to our network anymore. It won’t work.”

“To your what?” he asked, peering at the smartphone on Envoy’s side of the desk. Where was the net supposed to go?

“Which brings us to the topic of your subscription fee,” the radio replied crisply, as Envoy checked off ‘extended warranty’ on its clipboard and flipped the page over. “You see, the phones talk to each other by sending and receiving messages to and from a ‘cell tower,’” the radio intoned. Envoy’s finger joints squeaked as it silently made air quotes. “If they talked to each other, then they would all have to use separate frequencies, which would… ”

The peasant stared.

“Okay, so… let’s say you’ve got two pieces of string.” There was a scribbling sound, a rustle of papers, and a series of rapid beeps. “Motion passed,” said a faint voice on the other end as Envoy fished red and blue balls of string that had retroactively been there the entire time out of its suit pocket. Envoy twisted its red pen, transforming it into a small blade, and neatly cut a length of string from either one.

“You can’t make a net out of such a thin rope,” the peasant replied very seriously, frowning in disapproval.

“If you’re holding one end of the string,” the voice continued, “then you can talk to whoever is holding the other end, even if they’re far away. So let’s say you want to talk to your friend, and Person A wants to talk to Person B at the same time.” Two more arms snaked out of Envoy’s suit, and it stretched the two strings across the table.

The peasant opened his mouth to say something, frowning at the flexible metal arms.

“But now Person C wants to talk to Person D, too,” the voice continued as Envoy placed two fingertips on the table. “But both colors of string are already taken. If C tried to take some more red string and use that, the red strings would get tangled up, and now A and B can’t talk to each other either. Same goes for the blue string. So only four people can talk to each other at the same time.”

“But let’s say we have some thumbtacks, and the thumbtacks can all talk to each other, too.” There was more scribbling and more beeps, and a buzzer sound as a voice called out “Motion failed.”

The voice paused for a long moment.

Envoy took the peasant’s hands and placed his fingertips on the table. In a flurry of motion, it brushed the red and blue strings aside, unraveled some more, and cut off two short pieces of each color. “Now, suppose instead of talking to each other, you all talk to the fingertips, and they send the messages for you.” Envoy looped the two shorter red strings around the peasant’s fingers. “And now the strings aren’t long enough to reach each other, so they can’t get tangled.” It demonstrated how the strings were just barely too short to touch each other. “So now A and B can use one red string to talk to each other at one fingertip, and C and D can use the other. And if you and your friend want to talk to each other, you just talk to your respective fingers, and the fingers talk to each other.” Envoy drew a long blue piece of string from one of the peasant’s fingers to the other.

“And the more towers you have, the bigger the network gets!” Envoy put the peasant’s thumbs on the table and rapidly drew more red and blue strings between his thumbs and index fingers. This occupied all of its hands, so it leaned over and fired a brilliant blue beam of light from its eyes, weaving between the peasant’s fingers and burning clean cuts through the string as needed. “And now you’ve got as many as sixteen people talking to each other with only four towers and two colors of string!” exclaimed the radio.

The peasant whimpered.

“Now right now,” the radio went on, “you’ve only got one functioning fingertip – or ‘radio transmitter’ – and that’s Envoy here.” The robot proudly sat up and straightened its tie. “Which means there are only a couple of strings, or 'frequencies,' for everyone to use. And that’s why with everyone outbidding each other and Envoy working overtime to transmit all of those calls, the price for cell phone service is fifty silver pieces a week.”

The peasant choked and stood from his seat, unwinding the strings from his thumbs. “Never mind, Sir, I couldn’t –“

“Unless,” the radio interrupted, “you were to help us build more radio towers. As many as we can get. We’ll pay you by giving you free phone service, which only gets more valuable as more towers are put up and more people are added to the network.”

The peasant’s eyes widened, and he started to lower himself back into the seat, considering.

“Think about it – with a phone, you’d be able to find out what’s happening in towns reaching as far away as the network goes, without having to walk there. You can communicate with other people without having to leave the safety of your home. If there’s trouble nearby, you’ll know to get to safety, and if your village is attacked, you can call for help from other villages. And think about what hunting would be like if you could whisper across long distances!”

The peasant enthusiastically grabbed for the pen and stabbed it through his stack of papers. After a moment of staring, Envoy reached out and twisted the barrel, retracting the blade and turning it back into a pen. The peasant scratched an X into the signature line and handed it back to Envoy.

“Pleasure doing business with you,” the radio said warmly as Envoy simultaneously tapped the edge of the stack of papers on the desk to straighten it, shook the peasant’s hand, and handed him a colorful box with an image of a smartphone on it.

“Right now we’re mining for the metals we need to construct the towers,” the radio added. “The dig site is that way. You can get started right away. Remember, the bigger you make the network, the smaller you make the world!”

The peasant looked back at him with a look of abject horror on his face, clutching the colorful box to his chest.

“It’s… it’s a figure of speech,” the radio sighed. “Just get to work.”

The peasant nodded and walked past Envoy’s desk, stepping over the wall of its office, which presently only came up to about his knees. Another man who was still building it scowled at him and fixed the layer of mortar that he’d disturbed.

The peasant ignored the man and made his way up the hill to the dig site, which turned out to only be a short way away. He carefully set down his phone, still in its box, took up a shovel and pick, and joined the dozens of other townsfolk in digging at the base of the first of Goldhenge’s twelve pillars.

Even the former Mayor was here! He smiled to himself. This was a good decision, he could already tell.

---

Back at the office-to-be, the other man frowned uneasily at the dig site.

“Don’t you have something better to do than sit and stare?” the radio asked as Envoy looked over its shoulder. “Pumpkin Spice Lattes aren’t going to be in season forever, you know.”

The man frantically fumbled with his trowel and got back to work. Envoy tilted its head back a little, giving the impression of a smile. “That’s the way,” the radio said encouragingly, and Envoy turned to face the open door frame at the other end of the wall. It twisted a little dial on the radio, turning up the volume.

“NEXT!”

**Pinary** · 10-30-2013, 09:56 AM

John was ecstatic. At the first chance he got, he ducked into the nearest available quiet, private corner and started frantically scanning through the comm frequencies. This place was alive with signals, buzzing with traffic, and it was all John could do to stop himself shouting his glee from the rooftops.

This place was alive. The planet itself may have been a primitive slophole, but the universe around it was crawling with traffic, its many and sundry civilizations mingling and trading and warring in the sort of chaotic, fast-paced throng that John literally lived for. Coming from a lonely, locked off, and completely isolated world to this one was like dipping into a hot tub after an hours-long trek through the snow, the excitement of it all searing into him, nearly painful, blocking out any sensation but joy.

Soon, though, the moment passed, and John realized he'd been wasting time being high on life. He had business to attend to, for crying out loud, what was he doing faffing about down here? It was the work of a second to identify a nearby vessel and send off a distress signal. Stranded stranger, trapped on a primitive world, high risk of interfering with local society, send help, etc. It wasn't hard to guess, based on the ship's comm traffic and transmission techniques, what sorts of views they'd have and what sorts of tools they'd have at their disposal, and when noninterference is one of your highest ideals and you've got teleporters on hand, your course of action is obvious.

John Smith vanished from the face of the world less than half a minute after he sent his transmission, off gallivanting about the stars as he'd been born to do.

-

The first name on Parsley's list hadn't ended up being all that useful. The town drunkard had a problem with keeping his stories on one track, and after asking about the demon five times and getting tales that led off to five different diatribes, the demon hunter decided that he'd just try the next person and hope they were more focused.

Person two had been perfect. A matronly old woman who earned a tidy paycheque hobbling around the town and passing on messages, Maude Krillbicket was in a prime position to pick up on every rumour there was, and as she'd sternly inform anyone who tried to condescend to her, her mind was as sharp as it'd ever been and she could manage without the help of a young fool just fine, thank you very much. There wasn't a fact in the town that escaped being filed away in her mind, and she could tell you anything from what sorts of treats the town baker was making for today to how old Mayor Elmwood had been when he'd got his fool head caught in a fence some fifty-odd years back. Maude was a repository of every goings-on that had on-gone in Goldhenge in living memory, and she'd certainly had a thing or two to say about the demon.

"Four weeks ago was when it all got started," she told Parsley, keeping her pace around town as she talked. "The Templeton boy, David, and his lady love, Jennifer Allis, had been meeting quietly in the center of town every night for two weeks straight, keeping it a complete secret (or rather, failing miserably in the effort to do so). Their families were hardly approving of the matter (despite what Mr. and Mrs. Allis themselves got up to back in their day), and when neither child was found anywhere in town one day, everyone went and assumed that they'd run off to Ironhold to get married and settle down. The Templetons have family out that way, you see, and apparently they'd been much more supportive of the lovebirds' relationship than anyone here in town.

"Trouble is, when David's father sent a letter off to Ironhold to ask the kids to come back, promising to be more supportive, their family out there had no idea what he was talking about. David and Jennifer had never gone to Ironhold at all, and when the two families realized that, they roused half the town and started searching!

"It was near a week from when they were taken to when we found the bodies; the poor children had been just ripped apart by something, and it was far more comforting to just think it was a bear, ignoring the fact that bears may prowl around the edge of town, but no bear comes in to the Henge, takes two struggling kids down without a sound, and drags them out to the woods without leaving so much as a footprint.

"Things got worse right quick after that. One week exactly after David and Jennifer were taken, the smith's apprentice went missing as well. He and Fitz had come up with some sort of test to work out who-knows-what about the Goldhenge, and when Fitz tried to find the boy the next morning, all he found was the doodad they'd made, broken into pieces. Another search party was called up, and when they found what was left of the body, the local Mouthpiece of the Holy Order pegged it as the work of a demon. Most people, myself included, figured it was just more of their usual hogwash, but the mayor agreed to send for a demon hunter just to be safe (that'd be you), and as you dawdled on your way to our fair township, people kept on disappearing, week after week, like clockwork."

Parsley thanked the woman for her help and went on his way. The next name on his list was clear across town (the blacksmith under whom one of the victims was apprenticed), and he wanted some time to sort some things out in his head. It could simply be a hungry demon coming out for a weekly snack- but why, then, would it come so far into town? A demon attached to the Henge, perhaps? What would cause that to be active now, after not plaguing the town for so long before? Perhaps the killings were in fact a distraction; it was not out of the realm of possibility for a demon to go to all that effort to simply keep their real motives a secret.

Hopefully, he thought, the next person he talked to would help narrow down just which theories were most likely.

Unfortunately, though, at the sight of the smiling, friendly face on the other side of the anvil, Parsley's thoughts shot from one demon to another, and he didn't think he'd be getting much useful information at the blacksmith's after all.

"Ye," Parsley said, stating the obvious to buy himself time while he glanced around to evaluate possible weapons, "are not Franklin Fitzsimmons."

"No," John replied, all cheer and warmth, "I am not." He took a step or two one side, submerged the nail he was working on in a bath of cold water, and then turned back to Parsley, hands stretched out to either side in a peaceful gesture. "Fitz didn't come back after lunch, so I offered to step in, that's all. Mr. McMalligan needs these nails for tomorrow morning, and if they're going to-"

Parsley cut him off with a threatening step forward, speaking in a hard, steady voice. "Enough tricks, demon. I know not what trick ye're carrying out now, but-"

John interrupted back, putting on a very hurt expression and tone. "Come now, Parsley, you're just going to jump to conclusions on me like that? Anything I'm doing has to be a trick, I can't just be blackly smithing for once?"

"Ye admitted what ye were doing," Parsley replied. "Ye said right out, ye are the demon subjecting us to all this. Ye cannot expect me to accept that your actions now are innocent."

John held up his hands. "Okay, okay. I'm not denying what I've done. Does that really mean you have to start in on me right here and now, though?"

"Wouldn't it? Tell me, would these people really not be better off if I dispatched ye right here?"

"Look. You know better than I how important a blacksmith is to a town, right?"

Parsley ground his teeth. "Aye. A town without a smith can't hardly build anything new."

"So tell me: Who was there to step up and fill Mr. McMalligan's order? Was there a protege waiting in the wings to cover for his mentor? Not that I saw. Is there a competing blacksmith shop in town, happy to grab up the extra business? Not that I've seen. As far as I can tell, if I hadn't offered my services, Mr. McMalligan would be out of luck, and the whole town would start to suffer without its smith."

"Ye speak as though the smith is departed from this world, not missing for mere hours. Could be ye've disposed of him so ye can take his place."

John snorted. "Yeah, that's definitely something I would do. Look, I was talking to Mr. McMalligan, and by the sounds of things, Fitz, the regular smith, is a very punctual man. It's not like him to be so late, and with the rumours of a demon plaguing the town-"

Parsley cut him off. "They're not rumours. As it happens, I came here to get some facts from the man ye're impersonating."

"Impersonating? Me? I'm not impersonating anybody! I just happened to be in a place to help the people of this town, so I'm-"

"Spare me your lies, demon. If I can't learn anything of actual use here, I'm not going to stand around and let ye waste my time."

-

"So anyway, after that, he went off to do some more investigating, being all 'I'm keeping my eyes on ye' and whatnot. I'm pretty sure he'd still love to see me exorcised or whatever, but at least he's planning to wait until they can get another smith."

Captain M'Tikk stared at him. "But that makes no sense," he said. "If you didn't want him on your case, why go back down in the first place?" (John really did need to compliment the medical researchers of the Unified Systems. The USS Fenwick had an astonishingly well-equipped medical bay for such a small ship, and the range of pharmaceuticals its systems could synthesize was just incredible. Compliance drugs, truth serums, conscience suppressors... He was like a kid in a candy store when he found all that.)

"Well, see, Captain, here's the thing. Sure, I could just run off, having adventures and doing my job, but that doesn't mean this competition I'm in ceases to exist. I'm still entered, like it or not, so even if I run halfway across the galaxy, the moment a robot goes mental and kills a family, bam, off I go to the next universe. This is as good as it gets, really, and I've got no desire to go popping off to who-knows-what-hellhole when I could be living it up around here."

"So, what, you're going to stick around and try and keep the peace?"

John grinned. "I know, right? Me, trying to stop things from getting violent? It's crazy."

"Yeah," M'Tikk replied, glancing over at the primitive blacksmith bound and gagged in the corner, "I'd say crazy's a good word for all this."

Elpie · 12-18-2013, 11:25 PM

Show Content

ONE MONTH LATER

”So how do I look?”

”Um.” Tom had an answer to this question but couldn’t shake the feeling that he was being tested somehow. “How does it feel?”

”It’s not so bad as they make it out to be in that movie. Actually, I think it’s a little looser than it’s supposed to be. Tighten me up a bit?”

Tom’s fingers fumbled with the strings, steadying himself against his wife’s body. A growing dependence on strong Goldhenge coffee gave him jittery fingers, even at night. He pulled the strings on the corset. Clarice’s torso responded by contracting in some areas and bulging in others.

She turned around, laying her fingertips against his (shrinking by the day) love handles. Her smile shone amber in the light of the lone candle on the windowsill. A breeze blew in over the Impassables and blew her hair onto his face. Clarice Broderburg was radiant. “As the day I first met you” would be the saying, but the day he’d first met Clarice she’d been wrist-deep in finals and self-confessedly hadn’t showered in three days.

It was months later--the night of the spring formal, probably--that he got to know what he somewhat self-ashamedly still thought of as the real Clarice: Clarice at the height of her beauty, the height of her confidence. Knowing that this was an image she had labored to construct in that womanly way he would never really understand didn’t make it any less real. Even then he’d be able to fantasize that it was all for him--at the same time comfortable knowing that it was all for her.

“You look gorgeous,” he said.

Thomas Broderburg kissed his wife. There was something in every kiss they shared now that felt like the way it did when one of them returned from a week-long trip. The radiance she exuded reminded him of the way she looked--the way it felt to be around her--when she’d been pregnant with Emma. That glow, old cliche as it was. Maybe it was that they’d come out the other side from all that death that could come back to them at any moment; maybe it was just that he hadn’t seen her under an electric light in a month; maybe there was just something invigorating about coming home from ten hours a day of dirty work at COFCACo, doing whatever was asked of him. He wasn’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth, and the fact remained that their marriage was more passionate than ever.

”Anyway, I hope you don’t expect me to sleep in the thing.” Clarice turned around again. ”Let’s get it off of me for the night.”

”Can do,” answered Tom, kissing her neck and loosening the strings.

There was a sound of someone throwing a switch--and a pale yellow light through the window.

Tom snuffed the candle and looked out the window. “You’re going to want to see this, honey,” he exhorted. Clarice rushed over. In the middle of the town square stood Envoy, a dozen streetlights giving him a dozen spider-leg shadows stretching to the inn, the cathedral, the COFCACo building, the monument, the whole town. The robot raised its hands triumphantly--a powerful gesture that seemed to gather all of the new light into its arms. A familiar voice--COFCA seemed to have settled on someone to be Envoy’s mouthpiece when addressing the town, at least--emanated from the COFCACo speaker system:

”Citizens of Goldhenge! We at COFCACo apologize for interrupting your slumber. We felt that the daytime was not auspicious for rolling out our latest new public service. It’s a little something we call a “STREET LAMP,” and it’s going to make Goldhenge a safer, more comfortable, and more productive environment for you night owls out there. If you have any questions, please contact your COFCACo representative. Thank you and goodnight!”

There was a rustling sound--that would be the stranger next door drawing his curtains. Tom followed suit. The blaring lights dimmed to a dull red glow insinuating its way through the woolen curtains.

“Progress marches on,” noted Tom. “Now, where were we?”

Afterward Clarice lay in bed staring at the glow through the window. She hadn’t been functioning on this little sleep since the first couple weeks after Emma had been born. It wasn’t the same, though--apart from the fact that Emma wasn’t making a noise from the kids’ room where Alison, God bless her, had volunteered to babysit. Clarice had vivid memories of those first steps toward a new motherhood, of being able to endure everything that would break a human body that wasn’t dedicated to the purpose of being a mother. This was different. Something about the potential energy in this place. Something like music from another room, but there was no music.

The way she felt was like sleepovers. Way back when over at the Paulsons’ house. Whispered secrets and card games and stolen wine from the top cabinet. Lying on the air mattress in a nightgown with the TV still on and always wanting to feel free and taken care of at the same time. Feeling safe.

The magic of those nights before everything. That was the feeling.

The streetlights went off right before dawn.

* * * * *

”--An’ I told them that ye were good people and not to be trifled with such things.” Parsley scratched his beard angrily. “However, they claim, and there is righteousness in this claim, that the will of God makes no exception for good people and rather demands more of them in troubling times.”

”The Holy Order--and I know this is one of those things you aren’t going to hear right, Parsley, because you’re you--the Holy Order,” repeated Clarice, “If they ever actually saw a demon, would try and get a good deal for their souls.”

”They’re all a bunch of crooks,” corroborated Tom. “Look, Parsley, we just finished replacing every shred of clothing we had on us with, you know, fit-in-y stuff. That, food, and rent, that’s all the money we make, right there. There’s nothing.” It wasn’t entirely true, but “there’s not much” didn’t seem as strong of an argument, and Parsley was beginning to get on Tom’s nerve. “I’ve asked COFCACo to let go of a little money in advance but they put all the gold they’d accumulated onto those damn street lamps.”

”I like the street lamps!” voiced Ethan. “The Envoy guys say it’s safe to go out at night now!”

”Not for you, it isn’t,” barked Clarice.

”Listen well,” said Parsley. “Try as I might to spare you from the lash o’ the law, the Holy Order serves a just cause and we all must pay our dues in spite of the circumstances. The demons’ power grows each day value coin over faith. The past two nights many villagers complained of strange lights yellow lights washing over the village square! If that’s not an illusion born of gold-lust, then I--”

”I know you’re trying your best, Parsley,” said Tom. “But I can’t say the same for those Holy Order types. Three people dead since we’ve got here! All drained of blood! And every time the taxes go up! When’s it going to stop?”

”You know it’s a vampire, right?”

”Quiet, Ethan. Alison, can you take him out of here? I don’t know that I want him hearing about this if he’s going to get these kinds of ideas.”

”I’ve already got one baby,” teased Alison.

Clarice suppressed an adolescent smile. “Be nice.” She patted Alison’s head. Baby Emma cooed.

Alison shrugged. “Come on.” She beckoned Ethan out into the hallway.

”--An’ if your guild cannot provide ye the proper wages to pay your dues to the Order while also keeping food in the mouths of your children, that’s their own failure to fulf--”

Alison shut the door. “God, they’re like little babies. Speaking of which, here.” She handed Emma over to Ethan.

”Hey! No fair!”

”Life isn’t fair, Ethan. It’s all about luck. I’ve gotta get something from our room, so don’t do anything stupid for five seconds.”

Ethan looked down at the baby sitting contentedly in his awkward grasp. “I hate you,” he told her. Then, whispering: “Not really. I love you, Emma. But don’t tell anyone or they’ll want me to love them, too.”

”--Not to beat the middle school history drum,” complained Clarice, “--But it is absolutely a case of taxation without representation. Everyone on the Holy Council is native to this dimens--”

”Here.” The door opened. Alison entered proffering a fistful of gold coins. “Here’s your stupid money. Now can we all pretend we don’t hate each other for five minutes?”

Silence. Tom sat down on the bed. “Alison, sweetie?”

”I found it,” preempted Alison.

”In the inn, which you aren’t supposed to leave unsupervised?” demanded Clarice. “You ‘found’ it at the inn, right, Alison?”

”Clarice. Honey.”

”Oh, acid lakes and flying robots, that’s nothing. Just wait four round three, the magical land where you can just find twenty gold coins lying on the ground--”

”Clarice, we need this.” Tom walked across the room to his daughter. “We’re going to talk about this,” he said. “And you’re going to tell us where you’ve been going and what you’ve been doing and why you felt that you had to lie to us, okay? But thank you for helping.”

He took the money. “Take this to your friends at the Order and don’t bother us for a little while,” he told Parsley.

Parsley lowered his head. “I’m terribly sorry for causing a scene. I worry for the town, is all. And for your family. Some of these men at the order--they aren’t as discerning as I am. Lack my nose for the true path.”

”We know you have our best interests at heart, Parsley. We’re in this together.”

”Aye.” Parsley winked from the doorframe. “Never forget it, milady.”

Mom sat on the bed next to Dad. They held hands. Alison’s parents had two ways of holding hands--the real one, when they’re being all disgustingly old-person sweet on each other, and the fake one, where they think that if they link arms they’ll merge into some sort of double-sized parent-bot like in one of Ethan’s cartoons. This was a fake handhold. Parents united. This meant trouble.

”I need to know if you’ve been stea--”

”COFCACo speaking here. As we understand that the presence of our new ‘STREET LAMPS’ may have temporarily confused your sense of time, we would like to remind you that the standard COFCACo work day begins in two minutes. To avoid having this problem again, buy a COFCACo pocket watch, available at your nearest COFCACo retailer.”

A burst of feedback from the speakers punctuated the urgency. Clarice sighed. “Whatever you have going on, it can wait for one day until we can have a talk about it. Take care of your little brother and sister, Alison.”

”You’re a mature and bright young woman,” added Tom on the way out the door. “And if you can put that intelligence to use to help your family. But we need you to be honest and forthcoming with us. We’ll talk tonight.”

Leaving Alison alone. She lie in bed for a minute thinking, then walked over to the room next door and took Emma out of Ethan’s arms.

“They’ll be okay, I think,” she said.

”Good,” replied Ethan. “Not that I care,” he added, after a moment’s thought.

* * * * *

“--don’t know me from Adam. So long as they can determine I wasn’t involved with the old Council--and I wasn’t--there’s no reason they wouldn’t put me through if I were elected.”

Envoy sat chin-in-hand, feigning a casual disinterest. Tom realized that there were a dozen at least COFCA members listening to his words, but was trying to buy into the illusion of a private conversation rather than a speech before a committee.

“I’m just saying, puppet organization or no, I want my family to have some kind of a voice in this town. And I know you aren’t happy with those Holy Order crooks nosing around in everything you’re building here.”

”Tom,” said the radio. Envoy gestured thoughtfully along with the COFCA representative’s words, about half a second later than it should have. “You do have a voice in this community, because you have a voice with us. COFCACo is Goldhenge. If that sounds like an exaggeration, it won’t be in two more weeks.”

”Well, then you have two weeks until you provoke them into doing something desperate.” Tom sighed. “Look, I know you’ve thought this out way better than I have, but… maybe I have a perspective you don’t. Do you have a plan for if they try something?”

Envoy rested its elbow on its knee smugly, with a grating metallic scrape. “We’re workshopping several plans. By the time the week gets out we’ll--”

”Envoy! What’s the meaning of this?”

Mayor Benny Diccioni Giacomo Honorope Pontiff X, burly, mustachioed, perpetually caught up in his opulent gilded robes, marched staff-first into the COFCACo lobby, brandishing his cross at the handful of employees scattered about.

”Mister Mayor!” Envoy stood and threw out its arms, the action lagging three seconds behind the greeting. “What a surprise! We weren’t… expecting you this morning! What can COFCACo do for the council?”

Benny splashed a vial of holy water in Envoy’s face. When the robot did not react--at all--he leered as though trying to find eyes to make contact with. Frustrated, he turned to Tom instead. Tom looked like he could be bullied. “COFCACo thinks they can turn night to day, do they? Consorting with dark powers to throw demon lights all over our sacred monument and township, is that it? One might think before indulging in such brash behavior one might first think to consult authorities both worldly and divine. And I am authority both worldly and divine, and yet I heard none of this until you woke me up in the middle of the night with your proclamations!”

Tom put the reception desk between himself and Benny, who was taller than him even without the pointy hat. Envoy remained stock-still, suggesting that his puppeteers were deliberating a plan of action. Tom opted to stall. “Your honor, my men put up half those streetlamps. If there were any ‘dark powers’ involved, I would have gone to the nearest Holy Order...er… and let them know about it days ago. Barring that, I don’t see--”

“Blind! Blind servant of thy COFCACo masters are you! And the Holy Order sees with eyes both worldly and divine. I had one of my oracles look into your star-lamps and she says, and I quote, ‘Six faces has he, riddle-master, thief of the Light, entrapped below.’ Does that not sound to you like the true name of a demon, one with the power even to steal light from the sun and bring it forth upon the night?”

Tom considered this. “Actually, that sounds like--”

”Sounds like an overzealous oracle,” blared the speaker. Envoy approached Benny menacingly. “If the Holy Order is resorting to the unreliable art of prophetic interpretation to find your demon, maybe they’re tired of working in darkness. Maybe they should be grateful that COFCACo is shining a light into the dark corners of Goldhenge.”

”Maybe COFCACo should stop shining their lights where they have no business looking!”

“If I may, Benny, Envoy,” said Tom. “As far as I’m concerned, this is all a matter of failure to communicate.”

“Oh, there’s a failure to communicate,” growled Benny. “A failure to communicate to your Order when you’re going to subject the town to your unholy experiment, and a failure on the Order’s part to properly communicate the consequences of failing to communicate!”

“And that could all be solved,” suggested Tom, “By putting a COFCACo representative on the Holy Council?”

Benny and Envoy glared. “As a non-voting member, of course,” clarified Tom, backing against the wall. “To start. Open up a line of communication.”

Benny turned to Envoy and scoffed. “I have the suspicion this one’s talking about himself.”

Tom shrugged. “I’d certainly be willing to volunteer.”

”I don’t know,” blared the speaker, “That we’d be comfortable willing to put our project manager at that level of risk. The Broderburg family’s well-being is essential to everything we’re hoping to accomplish.”

”I hope you’re not insinuating that association with the Holy Order is somehow dangerous,” warned Benny.

”There’s no need for modesty,” insisted the speaker. “We know you’re all putting yourselves on the line every day to counteract the influence of the demon hordes.”

Benny looked Tom up and down. “Aye, our lives and often our dignity. We’ll take your ‘non-voting member.’ And he’s to let us know everything you get up to before you do it--or else. Council meeting’s in three days. We’ll have words before then, I’m sure.”

Benny twirled, tripped over his robes, composed himself and marched out. Envoy turned to Tom. “Explain why you did that.”

”Clarice was talking about having a voice in the community… and this will help us keep an eye on Parsley, cause he’s in way over his head with these… honestly?” Tom grinned. “Tax exemption.”

Envoy crossed its arms. “Don’t do anything stupid in those meetings,” ordered the voice from all around.

* * * * *

Alison lay on her bed, cradling her dead cellphone and imagining, as she often did lately, that if she had paid more attention in science class she would know how to charge the battery using only a potato and a bucket of water.

The cloth diapers took some getting used to, but Emma was behaving fabulously overall--as she had been this whole month. Emma’s continued good health always seemed like a good alibi to Alison every time she snuck out for a couple hours while Mom and Dad were off working for Envoy; Mom could never imagine that Ethan could watch over a stupid (beautiful) baby for a little while without some catastrophe striking. How did they expect to survive this thing if the grown-ups couldn’t trust the kids?

Still, for some reason--despite having basically saved the entire family from those tax guys--Alison felt guilty enough to obey her parents and stay inside today. It was probably just nerves from having to tell the truth to Mom and Dad after work--making her feel like she had done something wrong by lying, even though she hadn’t, because if she’d tried to tell the truth they would have tried to stop her.

She guessed she could also still be guilty because she had basically killed Na--

*RING*

”Phone call?” asked Ethan. “Is it Mom?”

Alison hesitated. “Yeah, I think so.” She picked up the COFCACo phone and held the ear-bit to her ear. “Hello?”

A gruff voice came over the line. “Allie! We’re missing you today.”

“Oh, hi, Mom.”

The voice went quiet. “You got company, girlie? We can be quiet-like.”

“Okay, I’ll tell him.” She muffled the phone and turned to her brother. “She was wondering if you could run down to the general store and grab some soap. We’re almost out.”

”Hmmm. Um.” Ethan looked at the floor. “Does soap cost money?”

”Yeah. Here.” Alison took a silver piece from the stack of coins under her bed and tossed one to Ethan. “Off with you. Be safe.”

When Ethan was out of the room, she turned back to the phone. “You can’t call me here!” she yelled. “My mom’s the operator. If anyone calls this room except her, she knows about it.”

“Don’t worry about it. She’s on break,” said the voice. “Looked like yer dad had some good news for her, so one of the other girls took over.”

“Fine. Look, I’m not playing today. I had to spend half my winnings just paying off you guys’s taxes, so--”

“Ha! The house always wins one way or another, girlie. That’s a good lesson to learn. Anyway, look, we got a couple o’ wizards in town lookin’ to play, an’ they’re clearin’ us out. Some o’ the boys been wonderin’ where our lucky charm is.”

“It’s not my fault you all suck at cards!” yelled Alison. “I might be there tomorrow. I don’t know. Maybe never. I got in trouble with my parents. I’ll let you know when I can, okay?”

The man on the other end took on an antagonistic tone. “Listen, Allie. So long as your winning streak plays in our favor, you’re gonna be our friends. But if you become a fair-weather lucky charm, people might start asking what it is about you’s so lucky in the first place. People been throwing around the D-word already.”

Alison rolled her eyes. “How can you tell people I’m a demon without admitting you run a casino out of your church? You’re not all that scary, whatever the town thinks. I’ll come around when I feel like it or when I need the money, okay? You don’t own me.”

She could hear a few voices whispering tensely on the other end. “Alright. See you when we see you. Sorry ‘bout the threats, Allie, eh? We don’t mean nothin’ by it.”

“Whatever.” She hung up. Those Holy Order guys. All they cared about was money.

* * * * *

”Are you supposed to be here all alone, kid?”

”Hey, John!” Ethan instinctively hid the soap behind his back. John was cool, but he was still mostly evil, so it was best not to tempt him to take your all your stuff. “Have you seen the new lights?”

”Not running.” John patted the nearest lamppost with one hand. “I just got in this morning.”

”From space?”

”Yep! Outer space even.”

”Did you bring presents like you promised?”

”I did!” John reached into his bag. “For the young man, I bring--” he pulled out a brightly colored box. “--SPACE CANDY!”

”Awesome!” Ethan took the box excitedly and stashed it next to the soap.

”Yeah, yeah. Now, I have a present for your sister, too, and I don’t know if I’ll have time for a visit before I have to be getting back to space, so if I give it to you now, will you promise to pass it along to her?”

”Promise!”

”Alriiiiight. But I’ll be coming back here at some point, and if I find out there’ll be trouble, I’ll turn evil again and kill your whole family. That cool?”

”I said promise!”

”And your word is your bond, of course. Sorry I ever doubted you.” John produced a smell plastic object attached to a cord. “It’s crank operated. It should work, but if there are any problems, let me know. I wrote my number on the bottom. Tell her not to abuse it.”

”Cool, thanks.” Ethan took the phone charger out of John’s hand. “Hey John?” he asked shyly.

”Yeah, kid?”

”What do you do in space?”

”John chuckled and rubbed Ethan’s hair. “I’ll, uh. I’ll let you know when you’re older, kid. You run along now.”

Ethan took off in the direction of the inn. John leaned against the lamppost, casting his eye upon the golden monument at the center of town.”

* * * * *

”Sorry--an underground casino?”

”Yeah. It’s mostly just cards and dice. They don’t have slots or anything.”

”You were sneaking off to a casino every day without telling us?” demanded Dad. “And leaving Ethan all alone with Emma?”

Alison nodded. “You said be honest. I was making money. I’m lu--I’m good at it. It’s all about telling when grown-ups are lying to you, and I figured that out years ago.”

”Try and calm down, Tom.” Mom gripped Dad’s hand--this was a genuine one--and Dad’s brow unfurrowed by a few degrees. “We need to think about what this means. All this money we’ve given to these people and this is what they’ve been doing with it--gambling.”

”Yeah. I know. It’s just… for them to drag my daughter into it.”

”No one dragged me, Dad,” insisted Alison. “I found them. I was bored.”

”Alison,” said Mom. “You’ve got your cellphone working again, right?”

Alison sulked. ”Kinda.” She pulled the phone out of her pocket. “There’s no service except for Tom’s number, and I can get the Goldhenge operator by hitting zero. And if you--yeah, that’s it.”

”What about the camera? It has a camera, right? That still works?”

”Uh-huh.”

Mom and Dad exchanged a glance. Dad said, “You can’t honestly think about doing anything with--”

”Don’t you think we ought to have it? In case we need it, we’ll have leverage. Which would be useful in case anything goes wrong with your new job--”

”’Leverage.’ Listen to us. I never wanted to get into politics. Alright, but only if we can be sure it’s safe for Alison.”

”It will be.” Clarice turned back to Alison. “Do you think you can get in there one more time--just one--and get pictures of everyone you see gambling there on your phone?”

Alison nodded. “Easy. You want me to spy on them?”

”Kind of. But make sure you’re not putting yourself in any danger, okay?”

”Okay. I’ll be fine, Mom.”

”And after that you’re not going to that church any more unsupervised,” added Dad.

”Okay. Are we going to be okay for money?”

”Absolutely. I’ve got a new job on the council so we don’t have to pay those taxes anymore. So we’ll be good from here on out.”

”Okay. You can have the rest of what I made, if you want.”

”You can keep it,” said Mom. “It’s your money. But you have to learn to be responsible with it.”

”I will.”

”Okay. I’m going to go get Ethan for dinner.” Mom headed out the door towards the other room.

Alison leaned over to Dad. “Hey, dad?”

”What is it, Sweetpea?”

”I found something else but I don’t know how Mom will take it so I figured I’d tell you first.”

Tom stood up and closed the door. Then he turned back to Alison. “What did you find?”

She held the cellphone up to his ear. “You have to hit zero first to get to Goldhenge,” she explained.

Beep.

“This is your COFCACo telephone operator,” came the cheerful voice on the other end. “With whom may I connect your call?”

“Okay. But then--I found this totally by accident. If you type in star-six…”

Beep. Beep.

Tom couldn’t mistake the voice he heard on the other end.

”QUESTION 294,578: Why is this happening to me?

“QUESTION 294,579: Is anybody out there?

“QUESTION 294,580: Why are you doing this?”

Alison hung up. “It just keeps going,” she said. “I know Mom’s still mad at him because he kidnapped Emma, but… we have to help him, don’t we?”

Tom sat down on the bed, head in his hands.

* * * * *

Tom didn’t notice that Clarice had gone to bed in her corset and skirt, and neither did she. It wasn’t just that she couldn’t sleep, it was that the idea of sleeping seemed wrong to her. She felt like she had somewhere to be. The thin walls of their room at the inn pressed down on her. She felt like she heard music from another room, but still there was no music.

It took until she hit the creaky board in the hallway that she realized she had left bed. She was about to turn around and head back--to try and get some sleep, part of her said, and another part said before it’s too late--when there came another creek, responding to the first.

This was the creak of the door to the next room over opening. Had she still never met the man who lived there? She had been picturing an old man turned recluse from memories of some war. This was not what she saw.

The man looked as young as Clarice felt, but he smelled like old wine and old books. His arms stretched out like oak branches to fill the doorway as though he were supporting the entire inn. He was thin, and looked hungry.

“You’re Clarice,” he said. It wasn’t a question.

“Yes,” she responded, feeling as though she were confessing something. “And you are…?”

“I don’t do names. I like words. Flesh. Do you like the way the word flesh sounds?”

“No.” Of this, and of little else, Clarice was certain.

“Well, I do. All the old holy books repeat it over and over. Flesh. The biggest problem in any religion is the problem of what to do with flesh. They spend so long explaining the soul they forget about all the baggage. Did you know that my time has come?”

“I...” Clarice looked around. She was afraid of something but it wasn’t him. “I thought maybe.”

“I want to make a religion that starts with the flesh and works from there. But I don’t want to write any books. Will you help me?”

She changed her mind; she was afraid of him. “No, I won’t.”

She was afraid that if she took her foot off the board it would creak again. This was the most important thing. This was the thing to fear. There was a light behind the man. This was when she realized that it was the streetlights.

The man frowned. “Pity. Well, then, I suppose I’ll have to help myself.”

Creak

And then the vampire was on her and his teeth was in her neck and it was just like in the movies except she was inside of it and she could feel the blood all draining into and out of her neck she could feel the blood surging she didn’t understand how all her blood could move that fast and then there was none left there was nothing she was empty air and blood and Clarice and everything empty

He caught her in one arm as she fell. “Stay with us for a while longer, Clarice,” he whispered in her ear, giving back something he’d taken. There were multiple ways to turn a victim, and this was the most cruel. Clarice’s soul took root somewhere in the empty hollow it had left behind. She gasped a gasp that did not contain a breath. He was still standing over her, smiling a bloodstained smile. “You’ll serve me in due time,” he said. “For now, go back to your family.”

He stood her upright, dusted her off and retreated back into his room. Clarice stood in the hallway and tried to catch her breath.

She caught it, but it wasn’t the breath she had lost track of in the first place. It was a broken breath, and empty.

MalkyTop · 12-22-2013, 10:23 PM

A month was barely anything to an immortal, or at least that's how it should be. Compared to the long eternity that had already passed and the long eternity yet to come, a month was a mere pebble on the cobblestones of time. But even a pebble could really bother your feet if it got in your shoe, except in this metaphor ‘bothering your feet’ translated into ‘devolving from a full-fledged deity to an abstract concept.’

The upshot was, Carnea was dying.

She was nowhere near in danger of death though. It might be more accurate to describe her situation as an existential limbo. But either way, she was certainly dying. It wasn’t very fun.

What also wasn’t very fun was muttering the same things to herself over and over, but her options were rather limited, considering that she wasn’t even particularly physical anymore. Her mind felt like a marsh, swirling around the same thoughts over and over again, and she couldn’t pull away, couldn’t focus on anything beyond the fact that she was forgotten, lost…

Thoughts, prayers, even mere awareness was her lifeblood. And who had thought of her today? Or even yesterday, or even the entire week? How could this have happened? Why, right as the Charlatan disappeared, why did it feel like her connection with her sect back home had severed? Why wasn’t there a pantheon here who could offer help, or at least who she could try to leech some power off of? Even with a cathedral erected, why was there no faith? Goldhenge didn’t even have the air of a graveyard; it was oblivion, theologically speaking, and she was right at the edge of it, teetering over, and she would have gladly fallen after a month of this wretched existence except something was keeping her alive.

Why?

That one was more of a rhetorical exclamation than anything. Of course she knew why. How could she spend a month completely inert and not know everything about this insipid town with its insipid people? Filled with typical, simple biologicals who got fooled by reality, even Alison (traitorous Alison), who was probably off having fun luck-related adventures, but (un)fortunately for Carnea, those of a more mechanical nature had more discerning senses.

“I would be dead by now if it weren’t for you,” she said with a tone that could have been grateful, maybe a couple weeks ago, but not anymore. Six continued his routine, repeating himself in the way Carnea repeated herself. Two individuals with nothing but a long life ahead of them filled with immobility and even the thought of it made Carnea wearier than she already was. Almost as a clarification, she added, “If you could die, then I wouldn’t have to keep living.”

“Question 294,612: Will you help me?”

Carnea turned her eyes towards Six, even though she no longer had eyes. Despite this, they crossed at the sight of tangled wires that snaked their way left, down, up, all around in this secluded room, all converging, enveloping the lone robot suspended in the middle. She looked away.

“Questions, always questions. You do like questions, don’t you?”

“Question 294,613: Is that a no?” The cords around him seemed to slacken with a sigh, even as they were meant to keep him taut. The electronic air of some sort of prearranged routine continued on.

“Why must you always ask questions you know the answer to?” Carnea tried to sound like an explosion but could barely even manage combustion. “I saw it, you know. The shape of your knowledge. So pristine…I wanted to break it. You were supposed to be my little project.” There was a space where a sigh could have gone, laden with nostalgia for a time when she actually felt like a goddess.

Six inclined his head, the first movement in a long while. This was new. This was different. “Question 294,614: You…chose me?”

There was a brief silence that usually accompanies a sudden shift, the first in a month. “I…suppose.”

“Question 294,615: And you are the contestant known as Carnea, also known as ‘the goddess of locks and doorknobs?’”

“Yee-es,” Carnea replied with less confidence than she’d have liked.

“Individuals chosen by deities typically enjoy favors, revelations, or divine providence (see: Moses, Muhammad, Pythia, etc.) after a show of good virtue and/or enduring a test of faith. Question 294,616: Have I not endured enough? Question 294,617: Will you refuse to help your chosen? Question 294,618: Will you refuse to give the answers I seek?”

A shift in the air that, if it hadn’t already been stifled by electrical currents, could have been described as electrifying. Carnea’s mired mind was starting to stir. “Are…are you…praying to me?”

“I am aware of your existence and I ask you for your assistance.”

“Close enough,” said Carnea, with a voice that implied an enthusiastic handshake. “Welcome to prophethood! You’ve passed the test and I anoint you with my holy symbol…as soon as I get one, that is, and you shall soon receive newfound purpose and the answers to absolutely everything – “

Six let out an electronic whine. The streetlamps had turned on.

“ – after we figure out how to get you out of here.” Carnea stretched out the mental equivalent of arms and perused her still-limited options. The prayer had certainly been exciting, even invigorating, but that didn’t change the fact that she could barely even perform small-time miracles. “Right, right. Okay. Which one of these thingies keeps your arm from making that buzzing sharp thing?”

Six couldn’t gesture, but his impulsive thought got the message across and Carnea concentrated around one winding wire. She was out of practice, but her mind still thought in terms of doors and locks, and this thing was definitely locked. She started to pull, but without any actual hands, this was proving tough.

“They will realize something has happened,” Six said, his voice tuning down to a hush. With a bit of a jostle and some wiggling, the cord finally popped out and Carnea pulled back, rather winded, while the wire did the opposite and unwound. Power stopped flowing to something or other, who even cares. Metaphysically sagging, Carnea started to stretch her awareness outwards and upwards.

“I believe some help may arrive soon, dear prophet,” she replied above the sound of desperate buzzing.