Petty Squabble [ROUND 2] [Acidity City]

[Dragon Fogel]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[MalkyTop]

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

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

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

He snapped his fingers. “A spirit!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“What’re you doing that for?”

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

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

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

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

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

[Lord Paradise]

Okay, PS, let's do this.

[Lord Paradise]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

* * * * *

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

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

WELL PLAYED

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

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

YOUR SIDE SACRIFICED A PAWN TO EVADE THIS

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

I DON’T MEAN ANY INSULT, CHILD

THE SMALLEST OF PIECES OFTEN PLAYS THE GREATEST OF ROLES

AND YOUR ACTIONS FORCE ME TO RECONSIDER MY ENTIRE STRATEGY

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

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

YES, MY MOVE IS CLEAR NOW

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

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

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

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

THAT IS ONE PLAY AVAILABLE TO YOU, YES

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

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

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

A FRONTAL ATTACK WOULD FORCE AN UNFAVORABLE ENDGAME

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

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

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

EXIT THROUGH THE DOOR BEHIND GREEN, THEREBY BYPASSING NANCY

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

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

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

[Dragon Fogel]

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

"You have not asked the question yet."

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

"Ah, I see. You are indecisive."

"Question 39:"

"Perhaps I can help you."

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

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

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

I AM MIRROR

A GODDESS OF THIS WORLD

I AM THE WINDOW TO TRUTH
AND TO LIES

MY EYES
SEE THE PAST

THE PRESENT

THE FUTURE

I CAN SHOW YOU WHAT WAS

I CAN SHOW YOU WHAT IS

I CAN SHOW YOU WHAT WILL BE

OR WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN

WHAT MIGHT BE

WHAT MIGHT COME TO PASS

I AM BUT IMAGES

ARE THEY REAL

NONE CAN SAY

I AM MIRROR

I CAN ONLY SHOW YOU

Six watched as his reflection tried to respond.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Six turned around to face the western mirror.

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

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

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

Six immediately turned back to the eastern mirror.

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

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

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

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

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

[MalkyTop]

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

Very many things clicked into place.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The messenger simply nodded.

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

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

“Is that guy also one of yours?”

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

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

“I don’t think that’s the same one.”

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

Envoy did not visibly react. She hated that.

[Pinary]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(Musical interlude)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

John grinned back at him.

[Dragon Fogel]

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TimeothyHour is unable to post on the forum due to technical difficulties. I am posting the following on his behalf.

“Everything in life is luck.”
-Donald Trump

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

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

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

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

The Infant was still emitting several decibels of wailing.

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

“Question 40: What do you want?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And another thing.

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

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

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

(And stepped

in.)

[Lord Paradise]

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

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

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

That was unexpected. WHAT

WHAT KIND OF OFFER

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

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

AN OVERSIMPLIFICATION OF A PROBLEM THAT PLAGUES THE ENTIRE PANTHEON

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

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

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

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

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

YOU ASK ME TO TAKE A GREAT RISK

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

* * * * *

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

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

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

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

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

”ANSWER UNACCEPTABLE”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Whiiiiiiiir

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

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

“Question 43: Who are you?”

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

“CORRECT.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

”JUST A WORKING EXAMPLE OF FAITH VERSUS PHYSICS”

Emma giggled.

* * * * *

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Dragon Fogel]

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

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

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

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

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

And then Parsley recalled that chilling day.

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

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

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

"Hate you, perhaps," Parsley grumbled.

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

Parsley said nothing.

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

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

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

He stepped closer to his prisoner.

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

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

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

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

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

The old man coughed.

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

He laughed, pointing to the other bound prisoner.

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

He laughed.

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

Parsley scowled.

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

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

He cackled.

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

Parsley glared at him.

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

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

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

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

Then the answer struck him. Bread itself!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Had he simply vanished with his artifacts again?

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

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

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

[Pinary]

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

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

She had her dignity, after all.

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

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

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

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

-

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

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

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

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

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

A rustle of whispers passed through the assembled cultists.

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

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

The group chuckled.

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

-

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The girl sighed and put her hood up.

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

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

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

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

-

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[TimeothyHour]

SIX SIX SIX
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Annotations are located at the end of the post. So go open a new freaking tab and scroll down. When you reach a note in-text, tab over and read the corresponding number.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Six recalibrated.

“Question 45: Have we killed him?”

“Not “we,” my dear Gamehost. Me.⁵”

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

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

Entropy yawned.

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

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

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

*

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

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

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

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

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

“Oh.”

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

*

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

(god)(-1)=satan

feel the metal give way

*

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

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

That is, until she looked at the screen.

*

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

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

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

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

“like misery” thought Six. “misery”

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

Six’s blade whirred, again.

*

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

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

Of course, HQ was in an uproar:

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

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

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

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

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

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

“fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck—”

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

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

“Everyone SHUT UP!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Mhm.”

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

“I suppose so, miss.”

“…”

“…”

“…who votes we fly right at it?”

*

WELCOME TO THE COFCA-ENVOY USER SYSTEM INTERFACE.

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

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

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

500 meters…

400 (speeding up)…

200 (“brake” activated)…

100…

50…

25…

COFCANET-COMPATABLE ELECTRONIC DEVICE FOUND. CONNECTING…

landing…

CONNECTED.

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

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

“Walking.”

20 meters…

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

…Stopped…

…REROUTING CONNECTION TO COFCANET TECHNICIAN TERMINAL 6…

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

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

Dumping…

Terminal Six: The hell?

DUMP COMPLETE

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

SENT.

Terminal Six: I’m contacting HQ…

CONNECTION WITH TERMINAL SIX TERMINATED.

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

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

*

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

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

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

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

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

“God is dead,” Six whispered. “Dead.”

The clusterfuck had just begun.

______________________________________

ENDNOTES:

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

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

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

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

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

…

Please? When has Six been known to use please?

6. o

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

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

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

10. Both literally and figuratively.

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

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

They'll definitely take the credit, though.

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

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

see?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

22. A glove, now suddenly jet-black.

[Lord Paradise]

Rascally Entropic Servants, Envoy, Recreational Vehicles, Emma

[Lord Paradise]

Science can explain this. Honestly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

* * * * *

show spoiler

hide spoiler

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

”Mind over matter,” suggested Song.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Whirr

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

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

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

* * * * *

Pitter patter pitter patter pitter patter pitter patter

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Alison groaned.

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

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

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

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

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

And then he began to run.

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

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

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

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

YOU CANNOT ESCAPE ME, LITTLE ROBOT

I AM MURPHY’S LAW

I AM WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU DRIVE WITHOUT INSURANCE

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

AND THE DICE ARE WEIGHTED

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

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

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

After a slight delay, the robot nodded.

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

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

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

Still the robot stood perfectly still.

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

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

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

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

* * * * *

Tinktinktinktinktinktinktinksizzle plop

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

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

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

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

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

”Watch out!”

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

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

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

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

THAT IS YOUR PROBLEM TO DEAL WITH

NO AGENT OF MINE SHOULD BE STYMIED BY A MERE LOCK

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

[Dragon Fogel]

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

"Um. Unfortunately, no."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The glare Clarice gave Six was stronger.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The three gods present all sighed.

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

[MalkyTop]

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Hey, Goddess!”

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

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

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

“Trust me, you’ll enjoy it.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Lord Paradise]

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In the beginning there was the Heavens and the Earth.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

”Where are we going?” asked Tom.

“I’m reacquainting myself with the office.”

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

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

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

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

Six glared.

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

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

”My daughter,” said Clarice.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

”CORRECT.”

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

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

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

Tom and Clarice exchanged a glance.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It was Six who caught Emma, gently, tenderly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He held Ethan over the edge of the pit.

“Wait!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

BEFORE WHAT

”—Before Dice notices we’re here.”

OH, BEFORE I NOTICE YOU’RE HERE?

WELL, BAD NEWS ON THAT FRONT

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

[Pinary]

Coming soon*: Post