The Damned Birdie's Hull Shelf
Scrap metal, welded together, rusting, irregular. Press an ear up to the shelf, feel how cold the amalgam is. Can you hear them? Their panic? Their terror? A pulsar— their cosmic lighthouse— fried the electronics, life support, heat and oxygen. Metal once warm, now in a perpetual chill, traumatized. They're like children, y'know. Ships. No, no, don't pull away just yet, they'll soon reach their horrific crescendo. They didn't die to cold or suffocation.
(Warped scrap metal, welded together. Press an ear up to it, feel how cold the amalgam is. Can you hear them? They were broiled alive, its remnants now in a perpetual chill. Once it'd left perihelion, once the sealant had stopped bubbling, there was nothing left to heat it. They're parasitic, y'know. Ships. No, no, don't pull away just yet, they'll soon reach their horrific crescendo, when fat became liquid. It's gonna hurt, but fortune favors bravery.)
- EMPTY
- Painless Plainness
- Richter
- SMA
- Brainstorms / what is stuck in my brain
- misc list of things to do, use, etc
Warfare Bets
- A location like betting on race horses, needs to be exact
— Hundreds of screens, drinks abound, excitement and resentment in the air
— Each screen shows footage of modern warfare, drones and jets, tanks and boots; two foreign nations
— People bet on outcomes, wildly sway with money, scream and cheer
— Even people who aren't betting are there, enjoying the best show in town
— And even still, this scene is dying, its golden years behind it. Not because people have gotten better, but because they're doing it from home. Wartime gambling is hotter than ever
— Inhuman, callous, disconnected
- Three men with friends in office
— "Rigging bets", an unlikely bombing run, a declaration of war
- Perhaps not even a main character? The locale and scene are the character?
- Modern sports betting mixed with online warfare consumption
In a dark corner, three men in suits lounge, the dull blue of the cushions beneath them stained, engine grease seeping from their pores. A nearby sign with no conscience forbids smoking, but see how they still pluck fat cigars from coat pockets, the rich scent of tobacco flooding the atmosphere before a single flame's been lit. One cartoonishly runs it beneath his nose, inhaling. The other two chuckle as they bring out cutters and circumcise their growth stunters. Not that they care, they're as tall as skyscrapers.
A lighter clicks, its cap thrown back, Ronsonol-soaked wick bare. A slide of the flint wheel, a calloused thumb— ignition. They lean into the flame, their ivory teeth gleaming in the faint light as they smile and grit, cigar caught between. Hollow breaths, vapid and paper-thin, but still smoke comes. For a moment, the smell of petroleum overtakes the tobacco's musk— a consequence of the lighter's fuel— but they salivate. Pretentious, habitual smokers scoff as the men pull from their sodden cigars, but the men treasure ruination. Another click and the fire dies, the mean sitting back. One props a leg up on another, ankle pressed to the end of his thigh. The polish on his penny loafer gleams, peering out from the darkness.
One points to a distant television, hanging amid many akin to it, chaos still reigning. He's had his eyes on it for only a few minutes, he knows which to watch, picks out the right logo plastered eternally on a bottom-right corner, burned into the screen. The newslady on it, her face bright, suddenly stops spouting stock numbers, though they continue to roll beneath her. Her cookie-cutter smile falls, her eyes seem alive for the first time in years, so long spent as a machine who'd wasted her education, her integrity, her fire. The men laugh. They can practically hear the murmur coming through her ear piece. She licks her lips, blinks a few times. With a trembling voice, she announces what the men already know: a bombing run on foreign soil by the very nation they sit it. Her face slips away, appearing instantly again at the bottom right, just above the logo. Where she once was is now a cell phone video taken a few miles away from ground zero, watching a shanty town from a hill. A flock of jets drift, perspective and distance warping reality. In their wake, fire rises, plumes of orange and red, dull thumps sounding out.
20/1
+2000
An easy 2.1 million dollars each.
Outlines & Thematic Thoughts
- Begin with a simple manhunt, carrying insider secrets (hard drive in his organ bag)
— Richter wants to leave him alive
- Return the info to Tieshine
— "Anything new on your personal pest?" "No, go away."
- Richter back home, shoddy apartment, cheap stuff
— Reflecting on it, newfound income
— Play with the switchblade, he hasn't held a gun since Hinnom
— Drinks himself to sleep (again)
- A nightmare, an early glimpse into Richter's psyche, just a little hazy on meaning for now (some stuff will still be obvious, of course, but try to play it coy)
— Summons to see Tieshine
— Tieshine's office, a new lead on Jabberjabber has come up
— Hinnom, a figure shrouded in darkness behind the bar, replacing Pal; a horrifying silhouette
— - Secret secret: it's Richter's father
— - "I am my mother's son" "She didn't name you, she's not your last name, the final say-so."
— Richter walks into a morgue
— - "Are you the deceased's friend or family? No one's come to see him in the weeks since he arrived, don't have any records to confirm him. Is this Richter LAST NAME?"
— - Richter's corpse stares at Richter, wide-eyed, mouth slightly ajar; Richter can't help but notice just how much metal, rubber, and silicon has replaced his flesh
— — Seven bullet holes in his chest, one in his left knee; the knee one came from behind, blew out the front of his kneecap
— - "Unsightly, I know." The mortician sticks two fingers into the corpses mouth, pulling the lips back into a smile. "Not even a smile."
— - The corpse of Richter's eyes flick to meet alive Richter's
- Cue cold sweat thrash in bed
— A new message: come to Tieshine's office
— - Reflective of the dream's beginnings
- In Tieshine's office
— "I know you let Vin live. Go fix it, he works for Meior too."
— - Lots of intimidation. Tieshine only lets Richter live and work because he's loyal
— — Not loyal to Tieshine, loyal to the thrill and money
— "Are you happy?"
— "Happiness has nothing to do with it."
- Richter finds Vin in a backalley clinic
— Chases him out, corners him in a warehouse
— Richter doesn't want to do it, but he does kill Vin
— - His first kill since Hinnom
— — But this one was completely different
— — Not self-defense. Vin begged for his life, was completely at Richter's mercy
- Months later
— Tieshine finally has a lead on Jabberjabber
— Sends Richter to go and capture him
— - Tieshine knows Jabberjabber likely doesn't have what he stole anymore, it's more about the personal retribution
— Richter finds him in a bar
— They talk, slowly escalates into a fight
— -Which Richter loses
— Richter has failed again
— He knows he should make tracks, flee Tieshine
— - But he can't give up the life
— — Maybe he's already become his father, he realizes. An addict
— — - Maybe there's no hope (Part of discussion with Jabberjabber)
- Richter has a new job, a miserable and dangerous one, part of his punishment
— He has to go out and negotiate with the Olristaan of Ocular Haze fame
— - You want Wheelbarrow, we want Jabberjabber
— — We'll help you, you help us
- Thematically
— The hollowing effects of money and power
— Trading morals for money and pleasure, addiction
— Running from the past as it feels inescapable
— - Mistakes following like blood hounds, even the mistakes of those who came before us
Title Ideas:
Autoartifice
Unescensi Lowball
Unescensi Lowball; or, the Art of Autoartifice
Autoartifice Amid a Soul-Numbing Game of Unescensi Lowball
"You ain't— you ain't getting anything from me." The liaison's head squirmed under Richter's boot, all three of his oculars cracked, glass shards scattered on the grimy alleyway ground, splayed out on his back, hands futilely trying to shove Richter off. His hip and mess of twenty-something cable-thin legs were scattered a few feet away, separated from his torso. Standing behind the two, a wiry woman idly twitched and fiddled, a multitude of tools slung to her body, oculars rapidly shifting around on flexible stalks, taking in the scene.
"Wanna take bets on that?" Richter hissed, pressing harder onto his temple.
"Don't even got any credits on me, nothing for street-sweeping scum like you."
"Not here for credits, Vin."
The liaison's head stopped wriggling for a moment, his struggle brought to a stunned standstill at the sound of his name.
"I'm sorry to say, but this isn't some random hold up. I'm here for the HDD."
"They'd kill me if I gave it up."
"Hell of a lotta things worse than death, least they'd be quick 'bout it. Bullet in the skull, maybe. Us? We've got time to spare." Richter reached into his pocket and drew his knife, the blade swinging out with a swift click as he pressed the release, matching it with a flick of his wrist for show. The cold steel gleamed in the dim white of the only bulb in the alley.
Staring at it, Vin started writhing again, now with much more fervor, the pseudobreaths of the system in his chest hastening. "Look look look— I can't give it to you, I just can't."
"Why not?"
"It's stuck in my organ bag!"
"Alright, so I've gotta gut you. Wouldn't be the first time I've done it."
"And what?! Risk ruining it?! You know as well as I do you're gonna need a technician to get it outta me! Cut wrong and the fluid solidifies, bag the drive's in pops and it's kaput!"
"Fortunately for the both of us, my good friend here's quite the quack," Richter said as he leaned in closer, jamming his thumb back towards the woman standing by.
Vin started writhing even harder, trying his damndest to escape out from underneath Richter, weak sounds of terror escaping. He flailed his arms about, but didn't have the strength to knock Richter off of him.
Richter prodded Vin's torso with his switchblade, just enough to draw a dollop of blood, confirming what he suspected as he cried out. "Still got nerves up there, huh? Gonna wish you'd killed them." He shifted his boot to be pressing onto the liaison's neck, the chest-breathing apparatus making sure he didn't suffocate. He didn't want to kill him. Richter looked back to the fidgety woman and waved her over, "C'mon Keeny, it's in his organ bag. And be careful, give it so much as a scratch and Kriegen'll kill us."
With a sudden movement like gleeful joy, Keeny stumbled forward, quickly falling to her knees right by Vin's torso, pulling his coat apart and jerking his thick pullover up to his neck. She giggled as she plucked tools free from their various holsters and bandoliers and set them on the ground, arranged like a surgeon's arsenal. Though he'd known it'd been coming, Richter still found himself flinching when she took hold of a scalpel, obsidian blade gleaming.
Keeny leaned in close and whispered to Vin, her voice wafting out from a small speaker on her throat, "Come now, where exactly is it at, hm? Wouldn't want to make more cuts than I have to." The scar where it'd been put inside him was plain to see.
Vin's breaths were shuddering, getting stuck in its tubes, the system jamming in places. Disturbing how even faux mechanics still somehow managed to mimic their natural counterparts through glitches caused by emotional overload or some other esoteric nonsense. If he still had his tear ducts, he'd have probably been crying. "Just right of my stomach," he managed to whimper out, pointing with a trembling finger.
"Good boy," Keeny hissed as she kneeled on his hip, keeping it pinned. Richter kept his boot on Vin's neck, kneeling on his chest with his other leg to better keep him still, a hand now over his mouth. He was gonna start writhing again, and Keeny would take umbrage with him if she slipped because he jerked around a bit too much, perfectionist that she was. Richter squeezed his eyes shut, switching off his aural intakes, but not before he heard Vin's muffled scream rise, felt it against his gloved hand, Keeny's scalpel digging into his flesh.
The gin was bitter in Richter's mouth, the wrong kind of bitter. He grimaced, staring down into the glass. Across the table from him, Keeny lay back against her booth seat, eye stalks flaccid as she imbibed in some drug Richter couldn't remember the name of, a clear, rubber tube inserted into a port directly over her axillary vein, a fast track to her heart, connected on the other side to a small silver canister that lay on the table.
"Wonderful work today, Richter," Keeny sighed.
"Sure."
"I had my doubts about you, but you're quite the intimidator when you want to be, hm?"
"Thanks."
Keeny moved her eye stalks to look at Richter. "Post-job crash, eh? Used to get that too, just ride it out now," she said, tapping the canister.
"Nah, just not my kinda shindig."
"Mmmm… so, what, you didn't enjoy it?" she asked slyly. "I thought you the sadistic type, seeing as you begged me to close him back up. Now he's gotta face his superiors."
Richter squinted at her, choosing his words carefully. "No, just didn't care for it. Didn't take to this line of work to be torturing helpless delivery boys in an alleyway. And I asked you to do that 'cause I don't see the point in letting him die just 'cause he tried to fund next week's food with a quick job. Not like he's gonna go back to the suits and snitch on us. He's gonna make tracks."
"You don't think he wasn't already being paid handsomely? A likely well-known liaison, entrusted with a very important piece of hardware?"
"Doesn't matter. What's done is done."
Keeny's eye stalks relaxed again, the LEDs behind their lenses dimming a bit. "Mmm, fine, fine… But I do agree with you on the helpless part, I wish he would have put up more of a fight."
"How much more you got in the tank," Richter asked, diverting the conversation. "We should really get it back to Kriegen."
"Oh, stop being so paranoid, Richter," Keeny said with a groan. "Enjoy yourself. We've done a good day's work. Tracking down that little prick was such a pain. We really should have just left him to die, if only for the trouble he put us through."
Richter dodged the jab. "I'd enjoy myself a whole lot more if I wasn't toting around a slab of data worth who knows how many credits that if we lost or broke would lead to us both being tortured and turned into drones."
"You're such a buzzkill, Richter."
"I treasure my continued survival."
Tieshine's office was quiet when Richter and Keeny stepped into it. The corporate man was sat behind his desk in a large, leather desk chair, reading something or another on a bulky monitor, a bundle of thick wires running from it to the massive computers that occupied most of the wall space in the office, an idle hum permeating. He let the pair stand in the silence for a minute before turning away from the scanlines, setting his now knit-together hands on his lacquered desk, facing them, eyes cold.
"I assume since you two are bold enough to walk into the building that you successfully recovered the chip?" he asked, voice like silk— smooth as ever.
"Yes sir, Mr. Mallifier, sir," Keeny said. Richter reached into his coat pocket and pulled out the hard drive, setting it in front of Tieshine.
"Good." Tieshine picked the drive up, inspecting it closely. Tieshine held it for a moment before standing up and walking over to one of the many computer towers. He pulled the SATA cables out of an open space and plugged them into the drive before slotting the thing in itself.
Tieshine walked back to his desk and reset his focus back onto the monitor. After a few keystrokes and clicks of his mouse, a wealth of text popped up on the screen. He quickly skimmed it, giving no indication how he felt about what he was reading, sculpted face stoic. Richter fought off the part of him that wanted to lean on the desk and peer closer.
"Does it have what you need, Mr. Mallifier?" The name felt foreign on Richter's tongue. In private, Tieshine still let him use his underground nickname. Not out of a sense of comradery or ease, but simply because he didn't care. If someone else was there, however, Richter was obligated to use the name engraved on a small plaque sitting on his desk: Kriegen Mallifier.
"Time will tell, Richter."
"Yes sir."
"For now, though, it seems you two performed your duty." He tapped a few keys on his keyboard, the credit bank built into his desk coming to life, a green light slowly blinking on it. "Payment's ready."
Keeny was first to pull her credit box out and slide it into the bank, a rapid series of clicks sounding out. She giggled as she listened, though not as gleefully as she had back in the alley. Richter scowled.
"Thank you Mr. Mallifier, sir!" she said once the clicks had stopped and she'd pulled her credit box free. Tieshine didn't take his eyes off the monitor, only grunting in response. Content, Keeny left the office, almost skipping.
"Psycho," Richter muttered as he took his turn receiving his payment.
"Judging the company he keeps," Tieshine remarked, side-eyeing Richter, the rapid clicks playing on key. "You're collecting credits for the same job, Richter."
The hallway reeked, musty, hints of ammonia. Richter scowled as he pulled a key from his pocket, the metal cloudy. The smell of urine hadn't been there when he'd left.
Richter woke to the sound of screaming, a phantasmal echo of Vin reverberating off the concrete floor, walls, and ceiling. His heart racing, he wrenched the thin sheet off his naked body, searching his empty apartment for any sign of the corpse. Sitting in the middle of the bare floor was his phone, a small red pinprick on its outer shell alight with intent, blinking back at him. He crawled to it, knees scraping against the rough grain of the cold ground, feet limp. His arms and throat ached, a throbbing pain in his skull flaring as he moved, blurring his vision. He collapsed for a moment, still yards away from the phone, catching his breath.
The idea of sinking into the floor took root in Richter's mind. Subsumed by the architecture, never to be seen again. To watch the tenants slink through him, feel their touch and breath, an intimate connection.
He crawled forward, finally reaching the phone. He flipped it open, the blue LCD greeting him harshly, raking its claws against his ocular nerves. It was a message from Tieshine, a command from on high to come to his office, ascension.
Better the devil you know, Richter whispered to himself as he peeled his form off the floor, some of his scant remaining skin ripping, the wounds weeping motor oil.
Stuck fast to the opposite wall were his clothes, held by industrial rivets he could vaguely remember putting there himself a lifetime ago, assembling some product or another. Richter took out his switchblade and made quick work of the bolts, managing to pry them free, his clothes falling limply to the floor.
Dressed, back finally straight, Richter walked out the door and onto the streets of Unescensi. He was five levels deep, the air thick with waste and residual heat from the factories that flanked his apartment. He stared down the sidewalk to his right. Factory after factory, no residential building in sight. To his left, the same. No vehicles sped by on the massive twenty lane highway in front of him, no pedestrians marred the sidewalk with hobnailed shoes. It was quiet.
Slowly, slowly, Richter made his way up Unescensi, one foot in front of the other. He'd walked from out of his mother's womb and he'd walk into his grave, wherever it may be. Lying frozen under perpetual night, buried beneath garbage in an alley, rotting in a den of sin. He craned his neck upward, hoping catch a glimpse of the upper levels of the bandcity, snatch in his hand a mote of the glittering lights of the living, but there was only darkness. All he could do was keep his head down and make his way through the dead streets.
Hours passed in numb silence before Richter finally found himself at the top level, standing at the foot of a massive building, a hive of glass panes framed by steel. The titan rose for countless storeys, disappearing into darkness. Above the glass double door in front of him was a massive, purple hexagon, bearing a bold "I" inside an even bolder "M". Scattered around were the first people he'd seen all day: corpses, their clothes ragged, augments cheap and shoddy, injured and scarred from endless manual labor with no safety regulations in sight. They regarded Richter with a quiet indifference, refusing to look him in the eye, even when he tried to meet theirs.
When Richter opened the glass door, a whirl of air rushed out. Walking inside, Tieshine sat behind his desk, staring at a monitor. "You're late," he said.
Richter nodded.
"Morning came so quickly, rest a forgotten platitude. If only you had more time."
Richter nodded.
"Not that you'd ever consider sullying your knees, of course."
Richter nodded.
"I've gotten a line on where he could be, I want you to go investigate."
Richter nodded.
"He's back home. Waiting for you."
Richter nodded.
"Mush."
Richter nodded and turned, Tieshine's eyes still fixed to the monitor, never left, never leaving. He grasped the brass knob of the polished wood door tightly in his hand, hesitating for a moment before twisting and pulling.
Through the office door, Richter saw a tight concrete stairway that sharply descended into a maintenance passageway. A warm orange light creeped up the stairs. He quickly stepped down, the door closing loudly behind him, screeching like metal as it fought against the concrete frame. At the bottom, he found that the light came from caged bulbs embedded intermittently in the walls, seemingly installed with no pattern or consistency in mind.
The tunnel moved forward for only a breath before coming to an abrupt end, a large metal door standing between him and the intrainterior. A burly woman leaned against the wall, just before the door, staring at him, one of her oculars shattered, blood continually oozing out of it, the other glowing a scalding red. A mohawk of scrap metal adorned her bare scalp, multiple pieces ripped out and laying on the ground, blood trailing down in numerous streams. The box of metal making up the lower portion of her face was cracked and a knife was buried nearly hilt-deep in one of her legs.
"Back so soon, Chronicloss?" she whispered, opening the door.
"You consider nearly three years soon, Shoveside?"
"If anyone ever shows up again, it's soon," she hissed in his ear as he passed, quickly shutting the door behind him, locking him away.
Hinnom was in ruins, completely devoid of any life. Broken tables and rotting chairs littered the ground, cards, dice, and credits filling in the gaps between. Every light was extinguished, save for a single bulb that hung above a stool in front of Pal's bar. Richter trudged through the wreckage, stepping over or kicking away anything threatening to impede his journey, until he finally arrived at the last remaining seat in the house.
Richter sat down, scooting the stool a bit closer to the counter, nearly pressing his chest into it. He leaned forward, rested crossed arms on the cold stone top, craning his head around, staring at the decimated remains of the underground gambling ring. Once so mighty and boisterous, reduced to naught but viscera.
{So- So- So what'll it be?} a voice shuddered from the darkness behind the counter, startling Richter. It was thickly robotic, slipping through a throat of metal and wires, the ghost of flesh vocal cords still haunting it. He hadn't stuttered, but gotten stuck and looped, retracing his verbal steps. Richter's head snapped back in place, pulled taut by iron lines, an ancient dread reeling.
A haunting figure now stood behind the bar, the details of his form hidden away by the darkness, only scant traces left for eyes to writhe over. He loomed over Richter, a beast of awful disproportions, a multitude of limbs and oculars and augments secured in all the wrong places, twisted and bent. The horrific silhouette leaned in closer, nearly pushing Richter off the stool.
{What will it be?} the silhouette asked again.
"Gin," Richter answered nervously.
{Gin, eh? -eh? Gin was my favorite- favorite too.} The figure retreated and seemed to turn, sinking further into the black. Glass clinking sounded out, escaping the suffocating darkness, before the man suddenly whipped back around. He moved a twitching hand into the light, tightly grasping a tumbler of gin, the glass cloudy and cracked. The hand had only three fingers, all completely biological, each a different skin tone, blood weeping from where they were connected to the metal base.
Richter accepted the drink hesitantly, the hand slinking back into the shadows. He stared into the spirit, watching as it glimmered under the light, motes to catch with his tongue. He closed his eyes and took a gentle pull, expecting a comforting bite. Gravel and ash poured down his throat, cold and jagged, scratching at the tender flesh of his interior, tasting like smog. Richter coughed, choking for a moment.
{Like silk- silk- silk, isn't it?}
Richter finished the drink. "Are you—?"
{No, I'm not. I'm afraid- I'm afraid Kriegen's thief is somewhere else.}
"Who are you, then?"
{You may not- not recognize my faces, it was so long ago, but you know who I am- who I am- who I am. Some deeper, more natal part of you. Your ears should recognize me too. The better- better question is 'Who are you?- you?- you?'}
"I'm my mother's son."
The silhouette laughed. {But that's only half- only half- only half of the answer. She didn't give you that name. She isn't- isn't your last name either, the final say-so.}
"I don't have a last name."
{And yet it will follow you until the day die- die- die- die. And there I'll be. Run all you like, Richter. You'll only tire yourself out.}
"We aren't akin," Richter hissed through gritted teeth, his fists clenching, heart racing. He felt nauseous, body beginning to tilt.
The figure leaned in again. {We're just a mirror of our forebears, Richter- Richter. All of us. Fate tied around our genes like nooses- nooses- nooses. A thick, red wire,} he whispered.
Richter fell off the stool, his back cracking on the hard floor, a sharp pain flaring just below his shoulder. He tried to roll onto his stomach and stand up, but only collapsed back to the ground, the world tilting and whirling around him, bile rising. He tried to resist it, but inevitably threw up, booze and stomach acid pulsing from his mouth until it was all gone. Still his body rejected and fought, leaving him dry heaving, vomit trickling from his lips as he shivered.
{Get out,} the man said after staring at Richter in silence for a time, voice sodden with disgust.
"Yes, sir." Richter weakly managed to get up, still wobbling. The expulsion had sedated his nausea enough to let him walk away, slowly. He wiped his mouth on his sleeve as he went, vision tunneling around the metal door he'd come in through.
{See you soon, Richter,} he called one final time as Richter reached the door and pulled it open, stumbling through.
The air suddenly turned sharp, smelling of formaldehyde and rubbing alcohol. Richter looked around, the grey concrete bathed in soft orange light had been replaced with stark white tiles illuminated by harsh, sterile light. His nausea was rapidly draining, replaced with a growing sense of discomfort, egged on by the incessant buzzing the long tube-bulbs emitted. The new, long room was mostly barren, save for rows and rows of large metal drawers, built into three of the walls, only the one behind him spared, save for the door. It was cold too, colder than the surface. Richter could see his breath, feel his machinery slowing.
Walking forward, he found himself staring at the drawers, each labeled with a number. He wrapped his hand around the handle of a random one and was about to pull when the door to the room opened, a wiry woman walking through, ocular stalks all focused in on the clipboard she held. She was dressed like a stereotypical lab technician, clothes as white as the room, hands wrapped in blue latex.
"Keeny?" Richter managed to eek out, voice still weak from the vomiting.
"Are you the deceased's family or a friend?" she asked, never looking away from the papers held to her clipboard.
"The deceased?"
She broke away from the documents, but only to glance at the drawer Richter was in front off. "Good guess, that's his. Here, let me open it." She brushed him aside and opened the metal door, quickly sliding a metal slab out, a humanoid lump laying atop it, covered with a white sheet. "We've been waiting for weeks for someone to come in who could identify him. Some of the info in his breadboard said it was him, but can't ever be too sure," she said as she pulled the sheet off, laying it in a bundle at the corpse's feet. As Richter stared, she went back to her clipboard. "Died five and a half weeks ago, sustained eight GSWs, seven to the chest, one to the knee. The one to the knee came from the back, the chest shots came from the front."
Laying on the cold metal was Richter, staring at the ceiling wide-eyed, mouth slightly ajar.
"Is this Richter Belview?" Keeny asked, still studying her clipboard.
Richter didn't answer.
"Sir?"
"Yeah. Yeah, it is," Richter said after a moment more, eyes stuck on his own corpse. He has so little flesh left, so much of him was metal or rubber. "I'm sorry, this is…"
"Unsightly, I know," Keeny interjected, setting her clipboard aside on the roll-out table. "Not even a smile on his face." She stuck two fingers in the corners of the body's mouth and pulled them back. Richter's eyes quickly flicked away from the horrible show, meeting his own eyes instead, now staring back at him.
A loud, shrill tone ripped Richter from his dream and he thrashed for a moment on the old, worn mattress, sweating, his heart racing. A little red light on the outer shell of his cell phone blinked, letting him know he'd gotten a new message. He always laid it on the ground next to his head, the volume for notifications set to be as loud as possible. He reached over and flipped it open.
It was a message from Tieshine, telling him to come to his office as soon as possible.
Richter sat in an uncomfortable chair in front of Tieshine's desk, legs bouncing as the fingers of his left hand danced on the armrest. In the last few years he'd come to occupy bored hands with his switchblade, flicking it open and closed, spinning it over and around his fingers, but weaponry wasn't allowed past the foyer of the building— at least for people of Richter's ilk.
Tieshine flipped another paper over, reading its back. He'd not said a word to Richter after "Come in."
He'd been sitting there nearly twenty minutes, if Tieshine's clock was worth believing, ticking away on the wall, almost abrasive in the silence. As time passed he'd slouched further and further in the seat, head nearly lolling.
"Apologies, Richter," Tieshine said as he signed the last paper and slid it aside, standing up. He walked over to a small table behind his desk, adorned with a tight pack of expensive, highrise liquors and crystalline glasses for them to be poured into. His back to Richter, now sitting up again, at attention, Tieshine pulled the stopper out of one filled with a deep amber drink. "Would you like a glass?"
"Uh," Richter paused, a bit stunned. In the three years he'd been under Tieshine's thumb, he'd never once offered him a drink. Something in the back of his mind yelped, his stomach dropping. "Sure, sure."
Silence again, save for the sound of Tieshine pouring, the tick of the clock, Richter's heartbeat in his ears. Tieshine turned and walked around his desk, two tumblers in hand. He held one of them out to Richter who accepted it with some apprehension. The liquor inside shimmered, its image distorted from the side by the intricate design of the glass, some kind of whisky. Tieshine leaned back onto the front of his desk, watching Richter closely as he took a gentle sip. Richter stared back over the lip of the glass, trying to pry something free, but the suit was steely as ever.
"Thanks."
Tieshine only nodded in return, taking his own pulls from his glass. He continued to stare for a moment more before clearing his throat. "Do you think you're slick, Richter?"
Richter stopped mid drink, now completely on edge.
"I'm sure you do. In fact, I imagine you must think you're the pinnacle of slickness," Tieshine said with a smile, setting his drink on his desk. "Some low-life prick who's got me and everyone else wrapped around his finger like a bit of wire."
"I'm pretty sure the only finger you're wrapped around is Meior's," Richter shot back without much thought, muscle memory taking over.
"There it is, the biting retort. Never takes much to spark ignition, does it?"
"I'll admit it's a blade I keep close."
"And now you've cut the wrong vein. Maybe if your mother had ever taught you to shut your mouth we wouldn't be here."
"Mom wasn't much a teacher, I'm—"
"I know you let that errand boy live."
Richter froze, muscles tensing, fight or flight screaming at him to sprint out of the office as fast as possible. Tieshine's stoic demeanor had turned from inscrutable to intimidating, his cold gaze fiery. He stood up straight, slowly walking around Richter's chair.
"And I know in the past you've done the same, multiple times over. It's why you've been nothing more than a glorified gofer for so long now. Fetch this, drop this off, talk to this person, intimidate or interrogate this person." He was now behind Richter who didn't dare turn his head, fear jamming up his systems, rusting his joints. "I had hoped that Keeny being there would have prevented this from happening, but I was wrong. No, she decided she'd like to get a little bonus in her pay for ratting you out to me."
Tieshine suddenly grabbed Richter by the back of his collar, wrenching him out of the chair and slamming him into the desk, pinning his head with an arm, Richter's drink cascading to the floor, glass sounding out. He leaned in close to Richter and whispered, "All those other times, I couldn't care less about. Those pricks would rather die that slink back to their owners, tell them they screwed up. But Vin, Vin being alive is a problem you've never even dreamed the likes of Richter. Because once he's done licking his wounds, he'll weasel his way back to his boss without a care in the world and tell her that the miserable pieces of shit who robbed him worked for a high-ranking corporate name in Meior, just like her. And then we're both doomed."
Richter watched in fear as Tieshine picked the fountain pen he'd signed the last paper with up and out of his limited line of sight. "Luckily for you, I know where he is." Richter felt the sharp nib of the pen begin digging into his neck. "After Keeny told me, I had some people go look for him. One of them came back and said they saw him in a clinic, recovering from having his organ bag split open." The pen dug in a little harder. "Now you're gonna go pay him a visit and fix your mistake."
"Why me?! Why not just have some other bloodthirsty asshole go ventilate him?!" Richter hissed.
"I've got muscle lined up to go with you, make no mistake, but you will be the one do the wet work. Those 'bloodthirsty assholes' aren't the ones who put my neck on the line. No more questions, you're simply going to do as you're told." Tieshine yanked him up and shoved him off, taking a deep breath and setting the fountain pen back down on his desk as Richter stumbled backwards, his back hitting the opposite wall. An old wound, now a scar, stung for a moment, almost a phantom pain.
Richter stood still for a moment, leaning onto the wall, his adrenaline beginning to plummet.
Tieshine's eyes bored into Richter, ablaze, stoked stronger than he'd ever seen. "I've thought countless times about ripping up your brain and turning you into a drone, Richter."
Richter took a deep breath, shuddering in spite of himself.
"Shame that your instincts and skills aren't what make you so useful. But that usefulness can only take you so far from my good graces before something gives."
Richter finds and kills Vin.
The freezing air whipped around Richter as the Zipper bore down the icy surface of the wasteland. The small, two-seater vehicle, elongated, gently rising from front to back, violently hummed as the spiked treads in the back dug into the ground, the skate-like front gliding and slicing. To his right, built into the other open cockpit, was a drone, made specifically to pilot the Zipper, utilizing the brain of a former racer for its instincts and training. It was skilled in traversing the rough, treacherous wasteland ground, transporting Meior employees wherever they needed to go at high speeds with few complications, though only a "privileged" few actually got to board the craft.
Richter himself was tightly stuffed into the passenger cockpit, his every part covered in various wrappings and external augments meant to keep him from freezing to death, goggles strapped tightly over his oculars letting him see in the oppressive, perpetual black. He'd refused to integrate scavver-style tech into his body for the job, choosing instead to sacrifice some dexterity for the encumbering gear. He had few plans to ever step foot outside of a bandcity again once he was back in Unescensi, save for within enclosed and regulated transportation.
It'd been [TIME DISCUSS WITH VISH] since he'd so royally screwed up, earning Tieshine's wrath and Meior's breath down their collective necks. He supposed this was part of his recompense. Better the misery of surface traveling and risk of negotiation with veritable psychos than guaranteed death after weeks of torture conducted just for the hell of it.
As the Zipper hit a bump and took on air for a brief moment, Richter remembered that he should be terrified of the journey, not just uncomfortable. If the Zipper crashed, he was a goner. Even if he wasn't killed in the accident, he would be stranded in the middle of nowhere, left to wander aimlessly until the systems keeping him alive gave out. Left to freeze over, become a part of the hellish landscape. But, in truth, he was far more afraid of his destination. The people who spent much of their time on the fringe tended to be wild, unpredictable. The people who lived there were beasts of a whole other nature, especially the more powerful ones, those who bore a credible, well-earned title.
Richter soaked in his fear. With terror came adrenaline, with adrenaline came bravado, and he'd need every drop of confidence he could muster for the unscheduled meeting he was going to have. It tasted bitter on his tongue, wrapped his stomach in knots, but he drank it, drank deep.
After a few hours more of barren nothingness, Richter spotted beacon lights in the distance, signaling their imminent arrival at the outpost. As it grew closer, he began to make out the vague cones of spotlights that seemed to sweep about, ever searching. Soon after, the radio in front of Richter crackled to life, a tinny, emotionless voice coming through, clearly some kind of drone.
"-taliation. Repeat, this is Wermesckir outpost Orenlensca. Unidentified speeder vehicle, identify yourself or face retaliation. Repeat, this is Wermesckir outpost-”
Richter held down a glowing red button and flipped a small switch, his mask already connected to the radio, spilling his rehearsed lines. "Wermesckir outpost Orenlensca, this vehicle's signal signature is unveiled and being fed to your system, please confirm it before you do anything rash." The outpost was rapidly coming into view, a tower rising up inside an enclosure of concrete walls.
"Confirming vehicle signature, Zipper VB-SW18-WJ21-CW22-VA25, bearing additional Meior Industries signature. Consulting, please standby." There was a moment of silence before the voice reported back. "You will stop the vehicle at the marked safety line in front of the main gate. All occupants will disembark for an inspection. Suspicious activity will be met with gunfire."
Richter lazily scoffed at the hollow threat before passing the instructions to his driver, taking his finger off the button on the radio and flicking the switch back. Following the instructions to a T, the drone pulled the Zipper up onto a concrete plateau attached to the outpost, coming to a stop behind a wide red stripe of battered paint, multiple spotlights trained onto the area. Richter climbed out of the Zipper and stood beside it, lifting his goggles away from his oculars before shoving his hands into his pockets, waiting. Under the oppressive luminescence of the spotlights, the nightvision goggles did little more than blind him.
The outpost was a small affair, smaller than most corporate complexes that had come to plague Richter's life at least, but still respectable in size. The pockmarked concrete walls formed a large octagonal shape, housing a multitude of towers inside it, the especially tall one in the center the one he'd seen at a distance, crowned with beacon lights that gently blinked in the perpetual night. Around thirty yards away, Richter estimated, was the gatehouse, already cracked open, a platoon of seemingly-Wermesckir mercenaries framing the walls, come to greet him from a distance with cold stares as they held their weaponry with militaristic pride. Not quite brandishing, but not stowed away.
As he stood there, one of the Wermesckir soldiers broke away from the formation and stepped up to Richter with the stoic haughtiness he'd come to expect of gun-toting pricks who thought they chose who lived or died. "Raise your arms for a brief scan," they growled at Richter, voice emanating from a pair of speakers embedded their shoulders, wires running to their boxy head. Richter complied and the soldier slung their rifle over their shoulder, unclipping a small scanner from their belt. They brought it up to Richter's head and slowly worked their way down his body, staring lifelessly into a little LCD display, carefully reading the output. For the briefest of moments, the spotlights pointed at them seemed to shift to a deep orange, sending a chill down Richter's spine, a warm shiver, before turning back to a harsh, incandescent white.
"All clear," the soldier said to seemingly no one, securing the scanner onto their belt before marching back into position by the massive gate, drawing their firearm once more.
Richter stood on the red line for a few minutes more in relative silence backed by white noise, the idle sounds of the activity within the outpost and the whistling of the waste's winds playing tune to the scene. More than likely, the woman he was here to meet had been ready to greet him at the gates before he'd even arrived, but was making him wait as a show of dominance. Reminding him that this was her outpost and that it didn't matter who Richter answered to, he would abide by her whims as long as he reclined in her den.
Idly scanning the structures that rose above the massive walls, Richter caught a faint glint from a radio tower as a scanning spotlight ran past it. He turned his complete focus onto it and made out the faint shape of a crouched figure on one of the upper catwalks. The spotlight ran over the catwalk again, revealing a sniper, watching Richter through the scope.
Paranoid sort. It was one thing to be greeted with sixteen different soldiers at the gate, but to also have overwatch… Richter suddenly felt a new-formed bit of worry creep up in his gut.
Richter didn't have time to think on it too much before the gate opened up further, the concrete and metal that scraped against one another howling violently. From within the outpost stepped out an exceedingly tall, lanky woman, her limbs heavily augmented, multiple joints adorning each one. As she came to a rest right outside the gate, all of the soldiers saluted her in unison.
"Welcome to my outpost," the woman crooned above the wind, spreading her arms open. "Seeing as you've approached me, I assume there is no need to introduce myself."
"No, Olristaan, there isn't," Richter replied dryly.
The Olristaan chuckled. "Of course, I'd rather not have our relationship be so one-sided. I'm sure you understand." She limbered over to him until she stood just before the painted red line. She towered over Richter, easily twice his height, and then some. "So, who might you be?"
Richter cleared his throat. "I'm a representative of Meior Industries. I was sent to hold brief negotiations with you."
The Olristaan's face morphed into mild faux-surprise. "Meior Industries? Is that so?" There was no chance she hadn't seen every byte of information Richter had willingly transmitted to them as he'd arrived. He'd bet all he had to his name on that.
"Yes, Olristaan."
"I can't say I was expecting to be graced with such attention," she said, her voice tinged with sarcasm. "But, that wasn't what I asked. Who are you?" she emphasized, leaning down towards him.
"Richter."
"Richter? Is that all?"
"All that matters."
"It's not often I get the pleasure of meeting someone at my gates who hasn't left their name to rot, replaced it with some crude facsimile."
"Never was my style."
"And neither are surface augments, it seems," she said, bringing a hand down to poke and fiddle with his clothing, patronizing in her tone. "You must be far out of your element, Richter."
Taking the opportunity to riposte, Richter brushed her arm away. "I didn't travel all the way here from Unescensi to be talked down to," he shot, staring her in the eyes. Her smile turned to a sneer for a moment, but she quickly covered it up again.
"Then talk," she responded coldly, her voice now full of steel.
"The man I work for has been looking for a particular scavver for a while now, goes by Jabberjabber."
"I'm afraid I don't know anyone by that name."
"But you do know the people he's been running with."
"Is that so?"
"Group of scavvers led by a rogue ringworker nicknamed Eithenin and a freak, Needles."
"I'm afraid I'm as unfamiliar with those names as I am— what did you say his name was? Jibberjobber?"
"Meior doesn't care who you trade scrap with, Olristaan. I'm here to strike a deal."
"And what deal would that be?"
"The same source who told us about your trades also informed us that you're currently hunting them down. Meior wants to help you."
"If I were searching for anyone, I'm sure I could find them quite easily on my own."
"Of course, which is why our half of the bargain has nothing to do with finding them."
"Oh? Then what does your half entail?"
"Firepower. As I said, Meior's managed to gather quite a bit of intelligence on the group and we have a good idea of what they're capable of. And they're a real capable little group of scavvers, aren't they? Mech pilots, mercs, professional thieves. Hell, I've heard rumor of a certain terrorist who might be in their ranks."
The Olristaan's gaze bore into Richter. She quietly studied him for a moment, flexing her powerful hands. Richter was sweating bullets under all of his clothing, terror prodding at him. She could easily rip him in two, her soldiers could blow his head clean off at any moment. He had some protection being a liaison of such a powerful company, but that barrier could only hold a woman like the Olristaan back so much. He was toeing the line.
He couldn't help but smile under his mask.
Finally, she spoke again, returning to her full height as she straightened out her back and various knees. "While I greatly appreciate Meior's generosity," she spat, venom dripping from her words, "we are more than capable. You must have forgotten, but this is a Wermesckir outpost. We possess the fire and manpower needed to tear down Wheelbarrow. And if we didn't, we would simply call on another outpost to aid us."
"The Wermesckirs have been in turmoil ever since the last leader of the faction died. Whole lotta sects have split off, taking charge of themselves." Richter leaned over to look past the Olristaan, pretending to be taking in the soldiers that stood guard for the first time. "And judging by the individuality your grunts are demonstrating— custom augments, a wide variety of weaponry, a multitude of insignias, variations in uniform— I can only assume your relationship with the main body has deteriorated."
The Olristaan huffed. "As I said: the outfittings of this outpost are more than enough to crush a group of scavengers, even if we were disconnected from the rest of the Wermesckirs."
Richter scoffed. "Alone, out in the wastes, forced to trade with scavvers to survive? At best, that puts your belongings at the same level as theirs. But, realistically, you're all still soldiers at heart, weened on proper equipment and outposts and bandcities. You're fighting on their home turf with their tools. They live and breathe the wastes, have wet dreams about it. You're just a tourist hiding out in a secure outpost, waiting on your next shipment of scraps. But, if you decide to work with us, we'll lend you a helping hand. Provide you with whatever armaments and manpower you want.
"All you have to do is find them. And once you've razed their little shindig, bring Jabberjabber back to us alive."
Tale of a religious outcast, absconding to an abandoned research station on Tethys, a moon of Saturn
- Eteocles, nicknamed Et
— Malformed leg causes him to stumble when he walks, cystic fibrosis, heart irregularities, seen as "monstrously ugly" by others due to facial malformities
— - The product of incest across his family line
— — Family were high ranking members of the local cult, have been for ages, now excommunicated for their various crimes and "sins against nature"
— — - Eteocles is taken away from them and housed with the Order
- A "member" of a cult located on the former Cyclades of the Aegean Sea
— The Order of Iridescent Modus
— - Focused on the "natural order" of life, machine evolution is a part of the new natural order, a branch of a branch of a branch kinda thing
— - Also focuses on the idea of strenuous acts to further evolution, hence why a machine cult willingly lives on a fucking island, i.e. corrosion city!
— - Known for augments where the metal has undergone a chemical finish to make them an aqua-pearlescent
— Works as a grunt for the high-ranking members, does menial tasks
— Abused verbally and physically for his deformities and lineage
— Performs his duties well, is intelligent, learned how to be capable, but still seen as lesser
- He has only a few augments, his "mentor" barred them from him, stating that he should carry his burdens
— "You are a living testament to the sins of your parents"
— Exceptions: one keeps his heart regulated, one keeps his cystic fibrosis at bay, thinning and draining mucus; both are rudimentary, his heart burns and twinges, mucus is expelled through his esophagus, has to constantly drink water for thinning (think like when on Mucinex)
- Scrounges archives in his free time, comes across an account of an old research station on Tethys
Turning point:
- Murders his "mentor"
— Leaves a message with his corpse: "The joke has come upon me!"
- Steals sacred artifacts and sells them on the black market
- Gets new augments that allow him to utilize oxygen tanks (and improves efficiency? So he needs less overall?)
- Hitchhikes with a space trucker, off to deliver supplies to a distant colony
— Akin to Trout in Breakfast of Champions
— Makes fueling stops at Pluto frequently
— Eteocles pays him to drop him off at Tethys and carry some oxygen tanks, power cells, and filters
— - (The base utilizes electrolysis to create oxygen to breathe and hydrogen for power, Tethys is largely water ice)
— - (In this fictional version, a research station was established as a subsurface of terra was discovered, Eteocles will use this to farm?)
— — (Or has enough left over money to pay the trucker to regularly bring him rations, enough time to decide what he wants to do with himself, where to go, etc)
- Reflective in form, beginning as Eteocles sits passenger with the trucker
- Nimrod's Son
- Fantastic Pace
- Despair
- Dead Swallow
- It's No Use
κληρονομία
Kleronomia
"Now, now, don't cry little Eteocles, it's unbecoming.
"I promise I will not hurt you, you can come closer. You know me well.
"Your father and mother are vile monsters who have disgraced both themselves and the Order. You will never have to see them again.
"But fret not, I will take you under my wing. I will try to cut their impurity from you.
"Come, let me introduce you to your new brothers and sisters. Show you your new home.
"No, you cannot take my hand. You must learn to bear your own weight, you've inherited a great evil that rests on your shoulders.
"You will come to understand what I mean."
I shuffle through the port as quickly as I can, bag clutched close to my chest. Any one of the vagrants or scoundrels here could pull a knife on me and rip away my only chance to escape. They glare at me, some wide-eyed. A mother clutches a child close as I pass by in a limping hurry. I'm more than accustomed to the stares, it's the people themselves who are unknown. Dirty, sweat-soaked. Machinery that coughs black, augments that have long lost their luster— if they ever had any to begin with.
Finally, I see one: a long-distance hauler ship. Maybe eighty yards long, mostly cargo holds. A man I can only assume is the pilot is directing a small crew loading massive amounts of sealed crates into the belly of the thing. In one hand is a clipboard, the other leaning on a cane. There's barely any hair on his scalp, what little there is is a pepper rapidly becoming more white than grey and black.
I tap him on the shoulder. When he turns around and looks at me, he takes a step back, eyebrows raised. "What can I do you for?"
"How far are you going?"
"Whats it matter to you?"
"I'm looking for someone to take me far, far away from here."
"How far we talking?"
"Saturn. Tethys, specifically."
The hauler looks me up and down for a moment. Whatever he's looking for, he finds it. "Bound for Pluto, myself. Gonna deliver all this to some of the colonies out there."
"So you'll take me?"
"Stopping at Tethys is gonna cost me fuel. You got the means to pay?"
I nod, inching closer and opening my pack for him to see. Inside, a full metal arm gleams in the afternoon light, shoulder to fingertips. The metal has an iridescent sheen to it, resting solely in teals, greens, and blues. Sitting around it are large pearls, maybe forty of them. I never counted.
The hauler whistles. "What's that thing made up of?"
"The major parts are platinum and gold, but some are iridium. It's fully functional."
"Where'd you get all this?" he suddenly asks, looking back up at me, suspicious.
"I earned them. I sweat and bled." Others bled too.
"Alright, I suppose this should cover it," he mutters trying to hide his smile. I don't care.
"Then how long until we depart?"
"A week. Maybe two."
"A week?!" I ask, betraying my panic.
"Got some deliveries still haven't come in."
I weigh my options. I want to leave as soon as possible, but I've put myself into a corner in my haste. The hauler knows what I'm carrying, he could start talking, especially if I drop out, leaving him irritated and chatty over a beer. Better the Devil you know, I decide.
"Fine. Here," I hand him the bag. "The only thing I ask is that you utilize some of this to purchase some fuel cells and oxygen tanks, enough to power a small research station for a few weeks and keep one man alive inside it."
The hauler eyes me again, raising an eyebrow. "Sure, sure," he finally says after a moment. "Don't know much about fuel cells myself, don't seem like you do either, so I'll go talk to someone. See what I can do. You're free to walk on in, just don't touch nothing."
I'm about to walk away, up into the ship alongside the cargo, before the hauler stops me, a smile on his face. "Name's Ronan, by the way."
I meet his gaze for a moment before sighing. "Et," I whisper, "I'm Et."
I awoke with a jolt, falling off of my little cot as it tilted and onto the cold, dirty floor of the basement, a laugh sounding out. I'd been living there ever since I'd been taken in, shoved away from the rest of the Order. I wasn't even fit for a place in the bunks, it seemed. Now someone had invaded my one place of safety, of peace.
I instinctively crawled across the floor and up against a nearby wall, fear sending bolts of electric panic through my body. I blinked at the form laughing a bit away from me, now sitting on a box. The blurriness of sleep fell away and I found a young girl, just a bit older than me.
"Pavlos sent me to find you since you didn't show up for dinner," Thalia said.
Thalia was the cruelest of my brothers and sisters. She treated me like my mentor Magistrate Pavlos did. Though her hands were flesh, they seemed as cold as Pavlos' metal one when they grabbed hold of me, hurt me.
I huddled up into myself, avoiding her gaze. "I think I'm coming down with something. I didn't wish to spread whatever I have."
Thalia only shook her head. I'd been sick many days of my life, far more than any of my brothers or sisters.
"Would you please convey my apologies to Magistrate Pavlos?" I asked. "I'm sure he would appreciate my not approaching him myself."
"Only if you tell me what you were crying about."
"I'm sorry?"
"Heard you muttering in your sleep, watched you cry a bit. What were you dreaming about?" she asked with a smile.
I tucked into myself a bit more. The endless trial, the imposing judge's bench, Pavlos leering down at me from miles above. The breeze that blew in from the sea, the sound of the ropes straining.
"I don't want to discuss it," I managed to eke out after a moment.
"Come on, Eteocles, you can tell me," she said as she stood up, slowly walking forward me until she was directly in front of me, casting an imposing shadow, her form blocking the faint lamplight. When I didn't respond, she crouched down. "Why don't you want to tell me?"
"It's personal."
Thalia put on a faux expression of pity. "Oh, was it about your mom and dad?" she asked, her tone patronizing. "Or are you just scared of me?"
"I'm not afraid of you, Thalia."
She smiled before suddenly jumping forward, her palms slamming into the wall either side of my head, shouting as she does. Against my own will, I fell further to the floor, onto my side, protecting my head, curling up. My heart beat rapidly. It burned, burned so badly as my shoddy augment tried to keep it in check, mistaking my terror for irregularity.
Thalia laughed as she rolled me onto my back, prying my arms away from my face. As she stared into my reddened eyes, tears streaming down my face, she hissed, "You and your people are a disgrace to this Order. It's a mercy that Pavlos took you in, one I can't understand. Were it up to me, I'd throw you into the sea to rot, drift wood atop the endless depths, slowly peeling away in the sun and salt."
Finally, mercifully, she let me go, walking out of the basement in silence, spitting onto the floor as a goodbye. Relief washed over me as I hiccuped, suppressing the cries that tried to burst out of my chest.
Relief that she was gone. That she hadn't noticed I'd soiled myself in the depths of my fear.
The cabin of the hauler's ship reeks of tobacco and musk. He apologized for it a week and a half ago, even sprays the place with an aerosol air freshener somewhat regularly, but all it's done is create a sickly-sweet miasma that makes me want to vomit if I think about it for too long, become aware of my senses again. He told me he'd just gotten used to it after the countless years spent by his lonesome, trekking through the vast emptiness, doing petty work for corporations. Another red blood cell carrying oxygen to keep the body alive.
The cushy seat I'm sitting crisscross on is comfortable, though. Old, overstuffed, stained, but comfortable nonetheless. It's lived in. To my left, the hauler is sitting at the helm, playing solitaire on the dash, humming along with the music that permeates the whole cabin. When I initially joined up with him, I was afraid I'd have to put up with endless hours of crooning countryfolk pining for sex and alcohol, godless rock 'n' roll, or some other detritus, but he turned out to be quite the connoisseur in the realm of the orchestral. I suppose one can't judge a book by its cover, even if that cover has a potbelly, a stained, greying beard and is missing a few teeth. He takes a break from his game to pull a thin, plastic water bottle to his lips and spits some heinous brown sludge into it, adding to the collection already congealing within.
"You'll rot your gums and teeth out one day," I mutter as he puts the bottle back down. The words come out apprehensive, as if I'm afraid of the man. I elongate some of the phonemes, hesitate before letting some words spill out rapidly. In reality, I could easily end his life. He's a withering old man. When he walks, I can hear the augments in his joints creaking. I can see how his left optic spasms when he's trying to focus. His connections are frayed, degrading. The truth is that my lines are tenuous too, my biological ones.
I was born with thin wires, loose connections, unresponsive nodes.
"Just get 'em replaced, I suppose," the hauler says with a wheezy laugh. "Could always do with a new jaw." He goes back to lining up cards in cascading columns.
I close my eyes and take a deep breath, deciding it better to separate myself from the present world. The smell of the air freshener hits me in full force again, some perverse mixture daring to call itself "Bay Breeze". Though I suppose it's hard to tell where the chemical ends and the body odor begins. Still, there's a part of me that feels almost disrespected by the audacity. I know the scent of gentle winds rolling down shores well, intimately so, and this is not it.
I open my eyes again, staring off into the wraparound glass that comprises the viewport of the cabin. The cold expanse of space sits just on the other side, cluttered with the space junk of other casual commuters in their vehicles, crowding around us, everyone waiting their turn to take a leap. A trip that formerly would have taken years turned to a mere hour by the wonders of modern technology, then reigned back into place by bureaucracy, regulation. The only thing governments and the major Orders seemed to agree on: surely they couldn't let everyone zip about at their own leisure. Save, of course, for the rich, the privileged, the high-ranking, and so on and so forth.
Most circumvent such restrictions when leaving the pre-Jovian zone as little actual policing is done to assuage them, but the hauler avoids such actions after having once been caught by a zealous officer with a light trigger and green gills. Or so he told me.
"We're gonna be here few days," the hauler had said to me when I'd woken up a few hours earlier, shocked by the sight of a congested vacuum.
"It still amazes me how enclosed space can feel," I remark, mostly to myself, accepting that I was to be present.
"Lotta grounded folk get like that when they first come up."
"The stories I always heard told of the vast emptiness, the unfettered wilds of the frontier."
The hauler chuckles at that. "Space hasn't been 'wild' in a long, long while. Be like if I told you you could hop on down to Earth and get into a twelve-paces duel with a genuine gunslinger got spurs on his boots. Been centuries since that were the truth."
"I was never told stories of cowboys and Indians, they always told me of gladiators and god-chosen heroes. Old, ancient texts nobody else cared about but my people."
"Really? Where you from?"
"South of what was once Greece. The Cyclades, nestled into the Aegean Sea."
"That some collection of islands?"
"Supposedly."
"'Supposedly'?"
I shrugged, "It's something my mentor used to say." Echoing was a habit I'd developed early in my life.
"You were an apprentice? Of what trade?"
"I wasn't an apprentice of any trade, I was a workhorse."
"So, what, you just worked around a warehouse or something?"
"You clearly haven't been around the Cyclades."
The hauler scowled. "Humor me."
"I was a member of the Order of Iridescent Modus."
"You were part of an Order?"
"Is that not what I just said?"
"Was expressing disbelief."
I only grunt.
"Aside from the stick up your ass, you sure don't reek of Order."
Gritting my teeth, I decide to ignore the backhand, something I've learned how to do very well. Almost an instinct. "Mayhaps because my membership was tenuous at best. As I said, I was nothing but a mule to them. A walking sin."
"And you willingly went into that?"
"Of course I didn't. I'm no fool. It's because of my parents that I was brought into the fold."
The trucker nodded. "Mm, born into it."
"In one sense."
"So where's your augments?"
"Do you have any water?" I interject.
"Water?"
"Yes, water," I press sternly.
"Gonna have to pull from the sink, either in the john or the kitchenette."
"I need to relieve myself anyways," I mutter as I stand up from the chair, walking out of the cabin. My chest feels clogged and there is something slimy beginning to crawl up my throat. I beat my chest a few times with a fist as I cough, a bit of thin mucus flying out and catching on my lip.
I rub what fell onto the carpeted floor of the cabin into the fibers with my boot.
I stood on a balcony, watching as the sun set, sinking into the sea, creating a shimmering mirage of oranges, reds, purples, and deep blues. I coughed, my mouth filling with thin mucus, and I spat it out into the rocky shore far below me. My chest was congested. I coughed again, more mucus coming up. Coughing, coughing, coughing, almost uncontrollably. I was drowning in mucus.
I leaned over the eave and retched, acid and phlegm spilling out. The strain caused my heart to beat faster, a burning sensation filling my chest, complimenting the congestion in the most awful of ways. But I was used to it.
The glass door behind me opened and I could hear clacking footsteps come up behind me. A hand roughly smacked my back a few times as the last of the mucus was expelled, as if I were a baby choking on my own spit up.
"Come now," the voice said, thin and sharp. "Get it all out of your system, Eteocles."
I knew he didn't mean well. He never did. The knife of the gesture was soon to slip between my ribs, as always.
"You overflow with malice, but perhaps the font will one day dry up."
I wanted to whip around and smash my fist into his face, hopefully break his aquiline nose in the effort. But I hold myself back. "I apologize that you had to see that, Magistrate Pavlos."
"And I'm sorry that I bore witness to it."
My heart still burned, an electric twinge stabbing through it suddenly. I let out a puff of air.
"The ceremony for Thalia is tomorrow."
I nodded.
"Her cargo has yet to be loaded onto her ship. I want you to go and handle that."
I sighed, almost involuntarily. Pavlos quickly smacked me upside my head, sneering.
"She is your sister, have some pride in her progress. Feel honored that you are being permitted to set foot on such a sacred vessel, much less be allowed to even look at it."
"Yes, Magistrate Pavlos." I muttered as I walked away, cursing under my breath once I was far enough away.
As I walked down a spiral of marble stairs, a realization struck me. At the bottom, I changed course and made my way to the basement, trudging through the mess of storage until I stumbled onto the space I'd carved out for myself, crates and shelves creating a cozy hideaway.
Tucked away in a corner, near my ratty cot, was a small box where I kept the treasures that if Pavlos found out I had, he'd beat me within and inch of my life. I pulled the few moth-eaten blankets that sat on top away, rifling through the contents within: a few bottles of liquor, pornographic tapes, heretical massmarket paperbacks, a little device with near-endless orchestra stored within, and other things antithetical to my place within the Order.
Finally, I found what I was searching for: a small vial of a pale beige powder. I'd bought it from an underground market a few years ago, waiting for the perfect time to use it.
Forced by Pavlos to load all of the things Thalia was taking with her on her pilgrimage, I'd have access to what little foodstuffs she was permitted to bring.
She wouldn't be returning to the Cyclades.
"So what's your old Order into?" The hauler is chewing through a dense stick of some dried meat, staring me down across the small table.
"I'm sorry?"
"Lotta Orders seem real into some idea or another. Course, I'm assuming augmentation, but what was y'all's niche?"
"Ah." I quietly spin my fork in microwaved spaghetti. It tastes horrific, but I'm hungry. "The Order of the Iridescent Modus was keen on what they referred to as 'the natural order' and 'the command of evolution.'"
The hauler frowns. "Sounds vaguely eugenic."
"They were not scientifically ignorant. They knew that a blend of genetics resulted in stronger offspring."
"And outside of genetics? Schools of thought, ideas of personhood?"
I stare down into the rapidly cooling noodles and sauce. "So long as it did not clash with what the Overseer and her officers spoke."
"And what is it they were saying?"
"I was not permitted into most ceremonies or sermons. I know of only the broad strokes. Nature demands strength and capability, life is a whetstone, and augmentation is the next major phase of life."
"Hm. Still strange to me that I ain't never heard of y'all before now. Thought I knew of most Orders by now. Cog's Teeth, Iron Eye, Sol's Grace, Vigilant Wing, bunch of others."
"There are very few schisms, most decimated under an Overseer's boot before they can even formulate a full thought, but they do exist."
"So Modus is a schism?"
I nod. "I don't know which Order we broke off from, but I do know that our Overseer only got away with it due to the original Overseer pitying her. I was always hidden away when the true Overseer would visit. The Order of Iridescent Modus has no hand in the greater politics of the Orders, it simply keeps to itself on the Cyclades."
"Way you talk about your time there, sounds more like you were a prisoner than you were a member."
"My family is source of great shame."
Territorial Dispute
- The Rat King's glorious return
— Discovers a Way into the Library
— - Discovers a whole new world to conquer and make his own
- Well, he's the king of the rats, and his home was the sewers, so he'll begin in the Underbelly
— But it's already occupied, and the occupants aren't too keen on sharing
- The Meerkats and the Prairie Dogs negotiate a shaky truce, working together to dethrone the despot
— Thus begins a great mob war
- Make maps detailing territory won and lost, like those history channels and the History Channel
— Fuck it: mini documentary?
- Talk to zip. They write the Meerkat stuff, I write the Rat King stuff?
My Blood
- Dedicated to Max
- A tale of brotherhood, pulling each other up
- “I’ll go with you.”
Thematically: toeing the line, teetering on the knife's edge
— The border between drying off in the warmth and beginning to sweat
- Financial advisor protag, fired from job
- Extremely frustrated and angry
- Kids are selling lemonade in winter
— "They're just as stupid as CEOs"
- Work with one table on a bet, devolves into a capitalist frenzy
— Subsuming other neighborhood tables
— Get seriously white collar crime with it
— Soaking a kid's Big Wheel in gasoline, lighting it on fire, letting it melt: sending a message
- Ol' Sauce???
- Babel Chimes
— "30 people, 30 pickaxes, 30 minutes."
Desert Gas Station
- Gus, lone worker in a gas station in the middle of nowhere
- Sand everywhere, an endless horizon, not even a bump in the landscape.
- A cracked, faded highway extends from East to West, no turn or twist in its run
— Consider: Acceleracers & World Race, Highway 35; Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, intro; Ultimate Fuel, Pilotredsun
- Canto-14 Station
- Hot dog rollers necessary!
- It's not a metaphor for anything, it isn't Hell, it's not some dream, it's not a purgatory, but it also isn't all that real.
— "Then what the hell is it?" What are you, a cop?
- Light another character's cig w/ their lit cig
- Answer a phone with "Lagoon Traders" as a guise
- Do the cupped-hand, gentle face slap thing, degrading connotation
— Some real "sweet summer child" stuff
— Just need more gentle degradation in general, stings all the worse, "I'm disappointed" kinda stuff
- I always need more tisking in my life
- Read a Vonnegut book
- Encounter a character from an entirely different story, very far separated (RK and Linus?)
- Rest their head on another character's shoulder from behind, read over their shoulder
- Phonebooks in the Library (phone booth?)
- The jaded wanderer (the one with a heart of gold) and the jaded wanderer (the one who got turned into jade)
- Snake oil salesman in the Library
- "He pulled first, it was justified."
THE BACKBURNER
- A group of people who lead a revolution against a tyrannical king
— They can all agree: the king needs to go
— - But standing in the street, watching him swing as the crowd cheers, they see only strangers in each other
- The country is divided up between them
— The claw for power against one another, the dissolution of their own power at the hands of one another
Mathias Powell
- Voracious desire for power, disguised beneath a hatred for the old ruler
- The head of the five leaders, formed the group
- Shows of power, of strength
His end: By rope, just like the king before them, a revolution incited by another member of the group
Juneau Greerer
- Religious, manically so (but did not begin as such) ((Think: The Smallest Church in Sussex —> The Book))
- The revolution and their subsequent rise to power were ordained by her god
Her end: Ritualistic suicide after a mass sacrifice, inspired by visions after being poisoned by another member of the group, leaping into a massive pyre
Salvatore Eyrstrom
- The sole voice of true reason, empathetic to the people's struggles
- The others and their rhetoric scares him sometimes, but he continues on for the sake of the revolution
- Slowly descends into paranoia as leaders drop like flies, suspecting that they're the works of the others
- The last to be killed
His end: In his office, a bullet between the eyes
Edith Fairen
- Just as voracious for power as Mathias, but far more subtle about it
- Scheming, planning, the ideas person
- In some ways, incites the downfall of all others, in other ways, only sits back and lets nature take its course
Mathias pulled, his muscles tensing, feet digging into the flagstones of the plaza. The rope strained and the crowd roared, drowning out the sound of the king choking, trying to scream. He clawed in desperation at the noose, the flesh of his neck bulging, fingernails beginning to pry.
Thousands of revolutionaries gathered in the bloody, body-strewn plaza just before the tyrant's grand mansion, crying out with unadulterated glee as they beheld the almost childlike terror on the king's face, now a deep red that was quickly sun-setting into purples. His body thrashed, legs kicked, moving him like a defective pendulum, counting down the seconds to his death. For those beautiful few moments, the corpses of their friends and family— allies and enemies alike— disappeared. And they cheered, cheered until their throat were raw.
Finally, he went slack, twitching with the scant remnants of electrical impulses and adrenaline. Urine trickled from one of the legs of his gaudy, crushed velvet pants, soaking his shoes and spilling onto the ground six feet below him.
"Juneau," Mathias called out, "the tie!"
From a group of three that stood before the crowd, a woman hurried over to the executioner with the tools in hand. Juneau knelt down next to Mathias, setting the point of a T-shaped tie into the grout between flagstones, tapping it with the sledgehammer, hand choked all the way up. Once it was set, she stood up and took proper hold of the hammer, only needing a few heavy swings to sink the tie secure. Throwing the sledgehammer to the side, Juneau knelt down once more and took hold of the rope's slack, knotting it around the tie. When she was done, Mathias slowly let the slack slide through his calloused hands, the corpse sinking nearly to the street, the tie holding sure.
Mathias and Juneau backed away, rejoining the group at the front. They spoke silently to one another for a moment before walking to the manor's grand front doors together, the crowd quickly taking their place, swarming the tyrant's remains, beating and defacing it with wild abandon. It wasn't long before the tie came loose in the fervor, but by then the four had fled into the foyer, oak doors with steel and brass fittings shut behind them, locked.
The sudden silence left their ears ringing, the doors and walls so thick as to soak up any errant noise from outside before it could slither through. For a moment, they all stood in the darkness, no windows nearby, and breathed. Salvatore was the first to move, stepping quietly into the interior further, each step carefully placed, stepping around blood and bodies. Not ten minutes ago, they'd drug the king out through the very doors that now separated them from their people, a long streak of blood across the old wooden floorboards where his slack, defeated feet had run through a thick pool a testament to that. His last mark on their country. Edith regarded it with great pleasure, brightly smiling and laughing to herself, before following Salvatore. One by one, they shuffled into the massive dining room, each taking a seat around the large table.
Seven years ago they'd sat around the dingy table in some dingy pub owned by a friend of Edith's and decided that the king had to go. Back then, they'd all been bright-eyed and full of passion and venom. Now there were only slouched backs and deep bags under eyes, silently watching one another, gazes shifting about, sometimes meeting. Where they did, sparks of history flew, blinking, searching.
Mathias Powell, the leader of it all, eyes like cold steel. The man who brought them together, who rallied the people. The face of the revolution. Hungry, but not for change. Something else. No one could ever seem to place what it was he salivated over in his dreams.
Juneau Greerer, the face behind the face, the moral justifier of it all. Deeply religious, somehow growing ever more fanatic and convicted as time wound on. Once the gentle shepherd, now grasping tightly to a crook twisted with thorns.
Salvatore Eyrstrom, the mind, the meekest of them all. Logistics ruled his world, the methods by which real work was done, but work those stronger than him commanded and enacted, namely Mathias and Juneau. He tapped his fingers on the lacquered table, eyes twitching from one leader to the next the fastest of them all. Searching for something.
Edith Fairen, the guile and sleight, something sinister always lying below the surface. She both planned and performed, slick as the oils the king had sold them out for. Salvatore had once compared looking her in the eye to staring down the bore of a gun. She seemed the only one relaxed, still grinning.
On it went, a crosshatched round robin, each seeing each a multitude of times. Looking, trawling for what now weighed heavy on their chests.
Salvatore was the first to place it, realization descending onto the others quickly after.
All through out the seven years they'd worked together, they'd never once held forth to the others their inner selves and lives for inspection outside of what their purpose within the movement brought forth. The revolution was all-encompassing. They'd said it to one another repeatedly, "nothing but the revolution."
Now they sat in the waning daylight of the revolution and found only strangers in one another.
"The city is long abandoned, the people erased, but rumor has it that dreams, truths, and prophecies lie in the derelict buildings— if you know which ones to go into."
- Post-war?
— No one goes in because it's so heavily irradiated
— Something akin to a neutron bomb, but no one knows
- The result of cruel men who couldn't see beyond the bridges of their noses
- A flashbulb, leaving shadows on the walls and streets
— The moment of death, perfectly preserved and painted
— Not one person knew what was going to happen, not one person had time to even flinch
- Protag is desperate, voraciously curious
— The radiation isn't even a consideration
- Their surface question is: what happened? Why did it happen?
— Their greater internal question is: Why keep going? What's the point?
— Of course it was no deific act, like some have postulated, it was the fury of man
- The Test Dream
- Presque Vu?
[[include :wanderers-library:component:haunted-halls-theme]
Dr. Charly Baumann, the voice from the intercom
- Enactor of the Gebel-William's Technique
Dr. Dolores Vallecita, the psychopomp, Beatrice
2nd Person
- Jamais vu, intense headache at wakeup, shaved scalp, scars on head
- Emotions, emotions, emotions
— Feelings, intense, foundationless
— - Only a few rooms make up their reality
- Suggested to be discovered by a Good Samaritan unconscious in an alleyway
— Homeless, taken to an ER
— Due to extensive head trauma, suffered short and long term amnesia, taken to a research institute specializing in neurology
— - The short term "went away", only the long remains
— — "They're trying to fix their brain!!!"
- They "had no ID" so the doctors have given them a nickname: Hearst
Dr. Charly Baumann, AKA the voice from the intercom
- NEVER seen in person
— They only ever hear his voice
— - Distinct foreign accent (fake nation)
- Angry, intense, abusive; if anything bad happens to the protag, it's always his fault, was his choice
Dr. Dolores Vallecita, AKA the protag's only source of comfort, motherly affection
- Practically radiates kindness, softness
— Smiling, warm, gentle, soothing
— She speaks like the protagonist, she has the same color hair
— - She vocally disagrees with Dr. Baumann's choices, but there's nothing she can do as "he is above her"
— — All she can do is try to salve the protag's woes
— — But she does believe in the efficacy of the Gebel-William's Technique
- Also the protag's only connection to the world outside of the institute
— Their only connection to anything
— - She brings food, she brings medicine, she brings affection
Reality
- Both doctors are working together on a government-funded research project into conditioning individuals
— Over time, the protagonist will be told that a foreign nation (the same to whom Dr. Baumann sounds he belongs to) are committing more and more heinous acts against his home country, his people (the same to whom Dr. Vallecita seems she belongs to)
— Dr. Baumann's "tasks" are difficult and sometimes painful, and when the protag fails he will berate them
— - Only for Dr. Vallecita to play the loving doctor after
- Psychotropic drugs are introduced into the protag's food, the same Vallecita brings to them
— Heightens intensity of the experience, warps reality, induces great fear, all at the hands of the voice over the intercom, a faceless, formless evil that comes to represent the entire body of a nation
- It's true that the protag was homeless
— No family looking for them, few social connections, largely ignored by society
— - Perfect for shanghaiing
— But all else is false
— - The background is largely unnecessary for current idea, past won't be unveiled
— — Big important background detail to be implied though: amnesia wasn't real, their brain was operated on (see: scars; too even, too clean)
Possible titles
- The Orange Ticks
- A Succulent Ticking
- Crucible, Katabasis
THIS IS A TEST OF DR. BAUMANN'S SPEECH.
This is a test of Dr. Vallecita's speech.
There's a sensation of falling, and you're jolted awake, leaping in your bed.
Your bed?
Something about that immediately strikes you as strange.
It isn't even a bed, it's little more than an army cot with a thick pad on top of it. The metal frame clacks loudly as it jumps with you, smacking and scraping against tile. Your eyes shoot open and are immediately inundated with fluorescence, harsh white that burns your eyes. You throw your hands over them as your eyelids squeeze tight, begging once more for the dark depths of… sleep? You don't feel like you've just woken up, though that could be attributed to the adrenaline rush.
As the rest of your senses join you in the waking world, so too does a throbbing headache. It's intense and occupies much of your brainspace. Every inch pulses with your racing heart, not just one area. Your hands crawl from your eyes to your head, gently massaging the exterior, hoping it alleviates the interior, even if only somewhat.
Your scalp is almost bare, only the faintest pinpricks of hair present. You also find a scar that runs around your skull, just above your forehead, crowning you like a halo, condescended.
https://lasvegassun.com/news/1999/nov/05/judge-plays-solomon-with-beanie-babies/
Divorce court, couple has to divvy up the Beanie Babies
- Because they're collector's items, worth money
— Pile is appraised to be worth anywhere from $2.5k to $5k
- The two cannot distribute the pile themselves, so the judge forces them to do it on the court room floor, one by one
Phyllis and Vernor
- Both loved to collect Beanie Babies
— Took on a new meaning for them when they found out Vernor was infertile
- They argue over adoption
— The anger leaks out into other facets of life, leading to more arguments generally
- Then, divorce
— All goes as smoothly as a divorce can go, until they reach the Beanie Babies
- They can't divide them amongst themselves
— They can't agree, they only argue
- Judge gets sick of it and makes them divvy them up on the floor
— Forced to do it, they begin to realize what's kept them from doing it up until then
— It's the last thing they will do together as a couple
- But there's no take backs, it's too late, the words have been spoken and hearts broken
— It's a memory of their love for one another, how they used to face life together
Phyllis and Vernor met for the first time on a cool November night in 1995.
At the time, they were Phyllis Rheese and Vernor Mindown, two strangers walking through the Clark Country Fair and Rodeo in their home state of Nevada. They found themselves side-by-side at a shooting gallery, BB guns in hand, trying their best to hit as many of the styrofoam targets as possible, a bored worker keeping tally of who was ahead with half-open eyes. Both were vying for a small plush toy of a moose that sat on a shelf near the worker, a bright red tag in the shape of a heart dangling from one of its orange antlers, the letters "ty" boldly printed on it in white.
Neither of them cared too much who won, it was more about the friendly competition between one another. All it had taken was Vernor making a comment about snatching the moose out from under Phyllis. They'd both quickly gotten to work, setting down their requisite fifty cents each, cocking the levers on their BB guns, and taking aim.
In the end, despite his cocky predictions, Vernor would lose to Phyllis. After the worker had handed the little moose plushie over to Phyllis, Vernor offered her an exaggerated bow, proclaiming that she was truly the greatest shot in Nevada, calling her "Ms. Yukon." Phyllis laughed at that, remarking that she needed to send the moose off to her taxidermist to be stuffed so she could mount it above her fireplace.
Now pleasantly acquainted with one another through the tried and true human experience of friendly competition, they decided to walk down to a funnel cake stand together. It was only once they'd sat down and begun talking more casually that they discovered that they'd been working in the same office for years, just on different floors. It was a strange feeling to the both of them, having met a kind stranger who they'd probably passed by hundreds of times without so much as a glance.
Once her plate was bare and her fingers cleared of powdered sugar, Phyllis picked her prize up again. The little tag attached to its rear said its name was "Chocolate". Phyllis hugged Chocolate close, enjoying the plush, velvety material.
- A script in second person
- Centered
- Bold names
- Italic stage directions and actor cues
- Names in stage directions / cues are in all caps
— Basic script stuff
- YOU in prelude and intermission is meek, doesn't speak, self conscious
- YOU in ACT 1 & 2 is spiteful, angry, mean, vindictive
— YOU in prelude and intermission is the true self hiding behind the YOU in ACT 1 & 2
- No physical descriptors, really try to make the reader see it as them, push the boundaries of second person
ACT 1: — Roommate is shaving his beard because a girl said she didn't like it, something something "changing yourself" debate
ACT 2: — Boardwalk, something reminiscent of a flea market, portrait painter paints you perfectly and you hate them for it, men playing poker under a streetlamp
PRELUDE
Curtain up.
The scene is decorated to resemble the foyer of a theater, dust and cobwebs permeate the space, the linoleum floor is cracked and warped, and there are no ushers or theater-goers.
YOU enter from stage-left, walking intently and looking around curiously.
YOU stop at the ticket booth, searching for an employee.
YOU set your ticket on the counter, a cloud of dust rising from the commotion.
YOU feel bad simply entering without actually presenting your ticket to an employee, but there's nothing YOU can do about it.
YOU open the door to the auditorium, the hinges creak from disuse.
Inside, rows of dirty velvet seats descend to the foot of the stage.
The air is heavy and musty.
The curtain is a faded crimson, stained, and riddled with holes that seem to be caused by fire.
The faint, unintelligible chatter of the actors can barely be heard from backstage.
YOU walk to a seat in the middle of the middle-back row.
It's the best seat in the house, after all.
A playbill rests on the cushion, there are no playbills on any other seat.
YOU pick up the playbill and sit, gazing briefly at the surrounding area.
No one to the left.
No one to the right.
No one behind.
No one in front.
Satisfied, YOU cross one leg over the other and begin to read the playbill.
The cover features only the title of the play in large red letters, all capitalized: "TITLE".
Inside, only one actor is listed: "You".
Their blurb reads: "Young, spirited, yet prone to cynicism. A comb switchblade.
They are studying to get a Masters in Accounting and Finance with a Minor in Spanish.
Please don't applaud, they don't want your praise. (They do.)
Please don't weep, they don't want your sympathy. (They do.)
Please leave in a timely manner once the play has concluded, standing ovations are unnecessary.
(Dear God in Heaven above, please let them bow twice. They're desperate.)"
YOU look confused while reading the blurb.
YOU consider making a comment, but refrain.
It'd be disruptive.
And no one wants to hear what YOU have to say.
The houselights dim, silencing your anxieties.
It'd be rude to not pay attention to the actors, they worked so hard.
And they'd know if YOU weren't paying attention.
YOU shift in your seat.
The air is suddenly too dense.
Sweat beads on your forehead.
Your tongue feels swollen.
YOU blink rapidly, fighting the welling tears.
A cry rises in your throat, but you shove it back down.
The houselights are all down now, meaning the play is about to begin.
Of course, YOU already knew that.
Curtain down.
INTERMISSION
Curtain up.
The house lights brighten.
YOU blink your eyes a few times, adjusting to the light.
YOU stand up, haphazardly shoving the playbill into your pocket.
YOU walk out into the foyer, searching for a bathroom.
Spotting one, YOU enter, relief showing on your face.
This door, too, creaks loudly from disuse.
The bathroom is dirty, grime and grease embedded in the tile floor, the mirrors are cloudy, and the porcelain of the sink is grey and cracked.
YOU walk to a stall.
The stall is covered in vulgar graffiti: swastikas, sexual offers followed by a phone number, various anatomical doodles of various genitals, profanity directed at either everyone or no one, proclamations that someone whose name YOU don't recognize is a whore, and so on and so forth.
This door, too, creaks loudly from disuse.
The door closes behind YOU.
A moment of privacy passes, unbeknownst to anyone.
YOU step out of the stall and walk to the sink.
YOU turn the sink on.
The water is murky, a slight green to it, like a river.
The soap pump is empty.
As YOU wash your hands, YOU catch a glimpse of yourself in the mirror.
YOU stop washing your hands, letting the water continue to run over them as YOU stare.
Your eyes look red like you've been crying, underlined by the bags underneath them.
Wrinkles detail years of smiles and frowns.
Anger, joy, sorrow, anxiety, and so, so much more.
Your eyes dart about, deciding to look at anything else other than yourself.
YOU sniff to dismiss the moment, it's over now.
No need to contemplate.
YOU finish washing your hands.
YOU reach to the paper towel dispenser to find that it is empty.
There is an air dryer, but YOU feel that the noise it would make would be too disruptive.
YOU shake the excess water off and wipe your hands on your pants to finish drying them.
YOU step out of the bathroom.
The door doesn't creak quite as loud this time.
YOU stand in the foyer, looking to the water fountain.
Remembering the water in the bathroom, YOU instead walk to the concession counter.
Just as with the ticket booth and ushers, there is no employee.
YOU walk behind the counter.
Sitting inside the counter are two shelves.
The shelf on the left is stocked with boxes of Sno-Caps.
The shelf on the right is stocked with amber bottles filled with an unknown liquid, the label having been torn off.
YOU frown at the Sno-Caps, disappointed, before grabbing a bottle.
The cap has a quality seal that isn't bulging, telling that the bottle is unopened.
A small blue sticker on it reads: "$2.15".
YOU leave three dollars on the counter before heading back into the auditorium.
Seated once more, YOU twist the cap off the bottle, a faint hiss following.
YOU bring the bottle to your nose, smelling the unknown liquid.
It's root beer.
YOU lower the bottle to your lips, taking a swig of the root beer.
It's room temperature, the carbonation tickling your tongue as the sweet liquid pours over it.
YOU pull the playbill out of your pocket.
Looking inside, YOU gaze at the photo next to your blurb.
You're smiling in the photo.
Your eyes are a stark white and your irises are vibrant.
Your skin is clear and clean, no signs of wrinkles or creases.
YOU were told they wouldn't be editing the photos.
The photo is of someone else.
You're sure of it.
The house lights dim once more.
Curtain down.