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Interlude - Office Hours Gorden Maxwell's backstory and lawbreak incident The only thing marking Gorden’s allocated office from any other student workroom in the building was a perfunctory “Mr. Gorden Maxwell, Student Teacher, Physics Department” printed out on plain white paper and tacky glued to the door--and it showed. The World War 2 era desk and industrial metal bookshelves were far too large for the small space, and Gorden regularly had to sidle in on tiptoe to get to his creaky office chair. Still, the messy desk, hopelessly obsolete computer (Windows 95? COME ON.), and misfiled book collection, with a treatise on Aleister Crowley’s methods of madness sandwiched between a “Handbook of Physics Constants” and a large, green hardcover simply labelled “Bohr”, lent an almost homey air to the small space. “Mad Science Chic”, he had told one undergrad who had asked why his office looked like it hadn’t been cleaned up since the last hurricane. It wasn’t like the mess made him misplace the last class’ practical lab write-ups, anyways, and he was bent over and marking up the sheets of graph paper with a red pencil when someone knocked on the door. “Come in,” he announced. “Mr Maxwell?” A slim black girl with round glasses and a worried look on her face poked her head into the room. She slipped inside and closed the door behind her, stepping over the stacks of folders and papers with the care you might give to a live minefield. “Hey, Sharene!” Gorden nodded and smiled in welcome. Suddenly noticing, he flipped the stack of lab write-ups over and reached over the desk to move a handful of binders out of the other chair in the room. He motioned to the now-empty chair and tightened his lips in concern. “You alright? You look like something’s bothering you.” “I’m alright, yeah. It’s someone else that’s the trouble…” She hugged her purse in her lap and her eyes flicked between the books on his desk. The Crowley book caught her attention for more than a minute. “Um, maybe this is a crazy thing to ask, but here goes: Are you a wizard, Mr. Maxwell?” Gorden’s eyebrows went straight up at the question. poo poo, he hadn’t told anybody about that! Not since his last attempt at experimental confirmation went...so...he blinked to clear the vision. His still numb left hand, hidden under his right, tapped quietly on the desk, unconsciously alternating a small, nearly invisible piece of the paper monthly planner under his knuckle between pristine white and acid-eaten yellow. “...I’m guessing that’s not an early Halloween costume question. Why don’t you tell me what’s on your mind, and we’ll see if I can’t help you out, wizard or not.” Sharene sighed. “It’s my friend, Amanda. She’s in the art courses so you probably don’t know her, but this summer she got assigned some extra credit and… lets just say it wasn’t normal. She not the only one, either. I’ve been hearing stories. Someone’s using the Tulane students to do their dirty work. I think…” She paused and took a deep breath. “I think it might be one of the staff.” No time to not be surprised yet, Gorden. He scratched the back of his neck, doing his best to keep his expression open and supportive. “That’s...wow, that’s a serious allegation.” He closed his eyes again, leaning forward to think, and lower his voice. Somehow he figured Sharene might appreciate it. “Has anyone been injured? Does campus security know about this? What kind of stories have you been hearing?” She shook her head vigorously. “Campus security won’t believe any of it. And as far as I know no one’s been hurt yet, but a grad student dropped out over it last semester… Mandy said she was just scared and tired, but she got rescued in the middle of it by the magic cops.” The magic cops? Everything Sharene was saying wasn’t making any sense at all...but clearly she believed it, and so did at least one other student. There’d be a record of a grad student leaving without completing a degree program--that was something he could follow up on, magic cops or no. “Alright, I understand so far. But why come to me about this? Why not one of the tenured professors, or even one of the deans?” “Because I thought you might believe me.” Sharene picked up a book that featured a brightly painted voodoo priest on the cover. “My mama runs a tourist trap that sells all this junk, and no one who picks up Caribbean Spiritualism and Ritual actually cares about the history of local religions. Especially no one in the physics department.” She sighed heavily and then rushed through the rest of her story. “Mandy said she picked up a ship in a bottle, got sucked inside by magic, and was forced to carve faces on candles for a ghost pirate. Try telling that to the dean.” “Dr. Etienam is a respected and diligent ethnographer, and--” Gorden started, before stopping and sighing. “You’re right, I...I’m sorry for yelling.” He still wasn’t sure about the story--ship in a bottle with a ghost pirate? What was this, Spongebob Squarepants?!--but the least he could do was believe her and do due diligence. “I’ll...I’ll do what I can. For your sake, and for Mandy’s and anyone else’s.” He took another deep breath. “If someone dropped out over this, it must be at least worth looking into. I can go to the dean of students’ offices and check their records, but do you know this person?” Sharene shook her head. “I heard it was a girl from the biology department.” Gorden nodded. “At least that’s a reduction from ‘all the grad students’. Thanks, Sharene. I’ll look into her as soon as I can. You know how to get in touch with me if you need to. Is there anything else?” “I don’t think whoever’s doing this is going to like getting caught,” she said, seriously. “Be careful, okay?” “Well, maybe they should have thought of that before they started harassing the student body,” he answered with a determined smile. “I’ll be careful, don’t worry.” Sharene smiled at him and made her way just as carefully back towards the door. “You know,” she said, hand on the knob. “Mama sells the real stuff too, if you’re interested in more than just history books.” “I’ll...keep that in mind.” Gorden answered, keeping the skepticism out of his voice. “Take care of yourself.” (Contacts to try to locate the grad student dropout: @Davin_Valkri: 4dF+4 = (+-b-)+4 = 3, invoking "You Can't Scare Me, I'm a TA" to tie.) Davin Valkri fucked around with this message at 06:21 on Oct 16, 2018 |
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Oct 3, 2018 03:00
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First Contact Gorden’s pulling of strings with the Dean of Students had confirmed that a “Shirley Quinn” had been on the Biology (specialty hydrology) grad student list, but was now taking a sabbatical with no forwarding address given. A full day spent further searching through ordinary channels had not turned up anything, so he did the next best thing, a wild guess based on her major--he asked Scott. Scott knew plenty about the “poor lassie” and her “new creepy-tae-fook boyfriend”, but would only talk over a healthy dinner and drinks. Between a long meal and a lot of New Orleans traffic, the new moon was high in the sky as Gorden pulled his car up to the address he’d been given. Well...SOMEONE really likes Halloween, he thought to himself as he looked over the wide, old mansion with turn-of-the-last century styling and the adjunct tower. The out-of-timeness was only barely compensated for by the electric lights illuminating the “Antiques, Appraisal and Disposal of” sign in the front. He suddenly felt very out of place parking in front with a Toyota instead of a black horse and gothic carriage. Tucking his book tighter under his left arm and briefly fingering his steel covered necklace, he stepped out of the car, walked over the grounds, and knocked at the door. It creaked open ominously after a few minutes, but the girl that answered it was oddly… normal looking. She had curly hair and glasses and was wearing pink and grey pajamas with bunnies on them. She gave Gorden a yawn and a confused look. “Uh, you lost mister? Phone dead or something?” If Gorden were completely honest with himself, he had expected the person answering the door to look like Marilyn Manson, not a mousy young woman. “Uh, hi!” he answered back, forcing a smile despite the gloomy atmosphere. “No, I’m not lost, I’m looking for a woman by the name of Shirley. I was told this was where she lived…?” He hoped like hell he didn’t come off as super-creepy. “Oh really? And who told you that?” She adjusted her glasses to peer at him. If she didn’t think he was super-creepy, he was trending dangerously close to the line. No sense being cagey, or else he might get the door slammed in his face. “Er, Sharene said you could help me with something! Sharene Laveau, do you know her? Student at Tulane? She said that her friend had been coerced by a professor into doing some weird stuff over the summer, and she said you could help me help her with that.” He took a deep breath. If this did not go over well… “...she said her friend had to something with a...ghost pirate?” “A ghost pirate,” probably-Shirley repeated. She turned back towards the interior of the house. “Danny! Are there ghost pirates in town?” “Bunch of ‘em!” presumably-Danny called back from deeper inside. Probably-Shirley crossed her arms and leaned against the door. “I don’t know any Sharenes, but say I believe you. What’s your name? You a student too?” She gave his Tulane baseball cap a pointed stare. “Gorden! Gorden Maxwell!” he responded, suddenly very eager to prove that he wasn’t a creep. “I’m a grad student at Tulane--student teacher actually! That’s why Sharene came to me to help her friend.” Another deep breath. “She told me whoever it was that coerced her friend hurt you too. I just want to help you both.” He stood up a little straighter and tried to project an effortless kindness. “Because, you know, it’d be really hosed up if a professor could get away with that.” Gorden has Rapport +3: /r 4dF+3: (b+-b)+3 = 3 And playing up the matter by invoking New Age Anti-Retro Millennial to make that a 5 Probably-Shirley’s eyes narrowed. “Yeah, it sure would.” She pushed the door all the way open and stepped to one side. “May I come in, then?” Gorden asked, shivering a bit. “I should’ve brought a jacket.” “Up to you,” she said noncommittally. “Thank you, then.” A quick answer as Gorden stepped forward. And promptly fell flat on his face over the door jamb, as if someone had decided to drop a 50 pound sack on his neck the moment he stepped through the door. By the time he’d pulled himself up from the mat inside he could feel the giant smothering weight above him… ...and yet his observant side noticed that the weight was evenly distributed across everything that could be considered “inside” the house, and his legs, being still outside, were decidedly not being crushed. Also that something was running down his face and over his lips. “I...uh...wow, that’s...erm...is this a new burglar alarm? Is my nose bleeding?” “For chrissakes, Shirl,” said Danny, or at least, someone wearing a pair of fuzzy slippers that appeared in Gorden’s limited line of view. “Gorden, you can come in.” “Ouch...thanks,” Gorden managed to mutter through a handkerchief pressed against his nose. Amazing--the sensation abated immediately after the second person said “come in!” He delicately took the offered hand to pull himself up and came face-to-face with…”Danny, right? Nice to meet you.” He gave a quick shake of the hand before shifting his grip on the handkerchief. “Sorry, I...what was that? It felt like everything above my waist was getting squashed flat.” Danny tilted his head and looked Gorden up and down. “You’re magic enough to get pancaked by Grandma’s wards and you don’t know what a threshold is?” “Mmmph. Let’s just say I’m mostly self taught.” “Alright, well, basically, don’t go into a home without being invited,” Danny said. “Real homes have a natural defense against supernatural intruders. Usually that just means you can’t use magic inside, but some places- like this one- have beefier security.” “I wanted to know if you were a muggle, so I didn’t invite you,” Shirley said, tucking her hair behind her ear self-consciously. “Sorry, I didn’t know you didn’t know better.” “Nnn, it’s alright,” Gorden waved off Shirley’s apology. “I guess I should be thankful it wasn’t, I dunno, Danny hiding behind the door with a cast iron skillet.” Yeah, on balance that would be a lot more permanent. “Lesson learned on my part! Do you want to, er…” he looked back and forth between Shirley and Danny. “Do you know why she, uh…”. Oh, how was he going to broach the subject now?! Okay, change of tacks. “What was that you said about a bunch of ghost pirates earlier, Danny?” “That there’s a lot of ‘em? I mean, this is a port town that’s over a century old. It’s not exactly shocking. Come on, let’s get out of the cold.” He ambled through the foyer into a large living room filled with antique furniture. There was a fire burning in the fireplace. It looked like something out of a Dickens novel. “You can toss your hanky in there,” he said. “Never a good idea to leave blood lying around.” “Thanks,” said Gorden with an involuntary shiver. His eyebrows went up at the mention of leaving blood around. “Uh, I guess you take cleanliness seriously here? I mean, if it helps, I don’t have any infectious diseases or anything...it’s really not a bother, I can help you clean up and wash this off at home…” “I already got it, don’t worry,” Shirley said, brandishing a wet napkin she’d fetched from the kitchen. She headed back to the foyer to take care of the small mess. “I don’t care about the stain man, it’s just common sense.” Danny looked down at his hand, where he’d taken Gorden’s to help him up. There was a single bead of blood on his knuckle. He sighed. “Normally I wouldn’t do this but…” That quick, he licked the drop clean. And then Gorden was face to face with... himself, sitting in the big easy chair in Danny’s clothes. “Your blood links back to you,” Danny-Gorden said, his voice a perfect copy of the original. “And this is about the least nasty thing that I could do with it.” “HOLY F--” Gorden fell backwards in shock--if he hadn’t already been positioned in front of a plush armchair he might have prompted another nosebleed from hitting something. He shuddered, shaking to clear his head and look his double square in the eyes. “Okay! Wow! That--I--drat--” Conscious and coherent thought took a little bit longer. “Danny stop being creepy!” Shirley yelled from the foyer. “I’m not being creepy!” Danny, who was suddenly himself again, shouted back. “I’m trying to teach this kid how not to get killed!” “I was not expecting--can you model a face statistically? Sure, but visually, not--the pattern must have come from the DNA in the blood--but DNA only gets you to the proteins, not the connections between--and it doesn’t account for environmental factors--DNA won’t tell you how a nose looks after it’s broken--can you really reverse engineer a person’s face entropically from--” He looked up suddenly as Danny and Shirley yelled at each other. “Actually, I, uh...I know I shouted earlier but, y’know, right now I’m just trying to figure out how the hell he pulled that off!” “You’re a math major, aren’tcha?” Shirley said, walking back into the room. She tossed the dirty napkin into the fireplace and sat down on a couch, tucking her feet underneath her. “Physics,” answered Gorden, suppressing another involuntary shudder--not from cold this time--as he tossed the handkerchief into the fireplace. “But my particular subfield uses a lot of math--statistics, especially.” Another deep exhale. “No, seriously, how did you do that?” “Magic,” Danny said, as if that were perfectly obvious. Maybe if one had been raised in magical traditions one’s entire life it’d be obvious, but Gorden hadn’t, so it wasn’t. “Okaaaaay...how did you get from my blood that my hair was white? I wasn’t born this way, you know. Also magic?” It couldn’t be a purely DNA mechanism then--Danny’s disguise would have black hair if it were. Of course he could have done it by looking at him, but… “...can you do that with someone you’ve never met, too? Scars, dyed hair, and all?” “Only if the blood’s fresh,” Danny said, sinking back in his chair. “But yeah, pretty much. I wouldn’t know how they style their hair or what they’re wearing, but physically I’d look the same. Magic works off of sympathy, not peptides. If I can see you, I can get the minor alterations like tattoos or piercings. Those will only show up blind if they’re like, an intrinsic part of who you are.” “It also only lasts a couple seconds with that much,” Shirley explained. She’d dated a few math majors in her time at Tulane so she knew Gorden wasn’t going to just let this go. “If a demon wants to impersonate you long term, they’ll just eat you.” “R-right…” Gorden sank in his chair at the mention of being eaten. “You, uh, say that like you’ve seen it before. That’s not what the professor was involved with, was it?” Students getting eaten/body snatched? Could you hide that? “Reuben? Naw, he was on the run from the fishheads. Er, I mean the Fomor.” She made monster claws with her hands. “They’re fishheads. Kidnapped me last year right out of my dinghy when I was trying to collect water samples on Lake Pontchartrain, then stuck freaky worm eggs in my ear so I’d work for them. It was awful.” “Ah, jeez, I’m sorry to hear that.” Gorden said apologetically. The mention of the Fomor was filed away alongside “demon blood transformation by eating” and “wards that smash you flat without an invite” as things to research later. Clearly there was a ton of crazy stuff he was going to need to look into more. He slipped backwards into the plush of the armchair as he thought about the Tulane faculty, something he knew somewhat more about. “Reuben, Reuben... I think Scott said something about a Prof. Lancaster in Biology? His first name was Reuben...unless it was Rudy...or Rudolph...it’s been a couple years since he mentioned him.” “That’s him,” Shirley said, narrowing her eyes. “It was his fault I was out on the lake that day. I never found out if he sent me out there knowing what would happen, but even if he didn’t he didn’t do a drat thing to help me. I got lucky and the wizards ended up rescuing me, which is when I finally had to accept the whole ‘magic is real’ thing.” She hugged her knees.“But I mean, even after I escaped, the fishheads had my wallet so they knew where I lived. My apartment got tossed, so I couldn’t stay there anymore. That’s why I wanted to know how you found out I was here. No one’s supposed to know that.” “Erm, like I said, Sharene mentioned that one of the professors was making one of her friends do creepy stuff, and she said someone had dropped out over it. For what it’s worth I had to do a lot of digging to find you--the administration don’t know where you live.” “What kind of digging?” Danny asked. “Tracking spell? Where’d you get a link?” “Through you, actually. Someone mentioned a ‘creepy tae gently caress’ boyfriend with a ‘creepy tae gently caress’ big spooky house.” Gorden scratched the back of his head and shrugged. “Sorry.” “B-Boyfriend?” Shirley stammered. Danny took one look at her indignant face and started laughing like he wasn’t going to stop. “That’s what he said! Not me!” “We’re roommates,” Shirley said, still flustered. Danny poked her with his cane. “Since when? You aren’t paying rent!” “Since you couldn’t get to the bathroom by yourself for three months, oh how quickly we forget…” Danny cleared his throat. “Well that’s what happens when you get shot, Shirl. You can’t do anything by yourself for three months.” He sighed. “Look Gorden, it’s late and I think you got what you came here for, so-” “Hold on a second,” Shirley interrupted. “I want to know who’s telling stories about me at school. We hadn’t even met when I was kidnapped so this is as fishy as a Monday market.” She turned on Gorden. “I gave you a name, you give me a name. Whose rear end do I have to go kick?” “I assure you, he told me that in the utmost confidence!” Gorden raised his hands in front of him in a “calm down” gesture. “He was worried about you, and when you took the sabbatical he didn’t want to pry, but when I mentioned I was looking for you he said to make sure she was okay. You don’t need to kick his rear end or anyone else’s rear end! I know Lancaster did wrong by you, but this guy’s a good person; he’s not the type to leave a student to hang in the wind!” @Davin_Valkri: 4dF+3 = (bb++)+3 = 5, invoking You Can’t Scare Me, I’m a TA for a +7
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Nov 8, 2018 05:00
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She looked like she wanted to keep arguing but knew it wouldn’t be any use, at least not right now. “Fine. If you- the guy I met ten minutes ago- say he’s trustworthy, I guess I have to believe you. It’s only my life on the line if the Fomor find me out again.” “I know, when you put it that way it sounds crazy,” Gorden held up his arms to placate her. “Tell ya what, I’ll tell him you’re alright and see if he’s willing to get in touch with you. If he is, I’ll give you his name. Maybe he can help out with Professor Lancaster’s shady magic stuff.” Shirley nodded. “I’ll hold you to that, Gorden. I want to go back to class, but unless things change it’s too dangerous. I haven’t even been able to get back to the lake to check my numbers recently, which sucks even more than skipping a semester. Those PH values won’t wait.” “I hear that!” At the discussion of research he immediately relaxed. “I got antsy when the power went out at the lab for three days--I can’t imagine not being able to work on your passion for months on end! Don’t worry, you’ll be taking new water samples soon, I’m sure of it!” “I hope so…” She sighed. “Anything is better than playing nurse for another three months. But you don’t need to hear about any more of my problems. Go talk to your friend, see if you can help that other student. Sharene Laveau was it?” She bit her lip, thinking. “Hey Danny, isn’t that the same last name as the lady who runs that tourist trap?” Danny laughed. “There’s like twenty people claiming to have that last name running tourist traps in the city, Shirl, it’s kinda famous. Voodoo Queen of N’Orleans ring a bell?” “Well, fair enough, but if it’s the one I’m thinking of, that’s where a bunch of your Gran’s books came from. Isn’t Anna’s next meetup supposed to be there?” “Oh that tourist trap,” Danny said, scratching his cheek. “Yeah, actually. You thinking about going this time?” “Not me,” she shook her head. “Gorden. It’d save us the trouble of doing all the explaining.” “Erm…” Gorden’s head bounced back and forth as he followed the discussion. “When we talked, Sharene said that her mama runs a store that sells books about Caribbean religious customs and...I think she said ‘the real stuff’.” He left out the part where she’d only mentioned that because she’d seen one of Tulane’s research libraries’ books on that very subject on his desk. “Is that who you’re talking about?” “Yeah,” Shirley nodded. “The whole place is a front for an actual magic shop. Eye of newt, spell books, magic wands, all of that stuff.” “How many times do I have to tell you that no one uses newt’s eyes to do anything,” Danny said, sounding exasperated. “Seriously, what did newts ever do to you people.” Shirley ignored him and dug through a pile of mail on the table next to the couch. “Ahah!” She pulled an orange flyer out of the stack and offered it to Gorden. It said ‘Monthly Para-net Meeting’ in a scripted font and gave the address for Mary Laveau’s Voodoo Emporium, with a date and time for the following Saturday after lunch. “It’s a group meetup for magical folks, kind of a neighborhood watch thing,” Shirley explained. “The woman who runs it, Anna, is real good about newbies. She’ll help you out.” Gorden took the offered flyer and read the details. And read it again. And again, as if he couldn’t believe what he was reading. “Son of a…” Then he took his “grimore” and gently bopped himself on the forehead with it. “If this group existed a year ago, I wouldn’t have spent the next few months locked in my dorm room playing with shattered cups and wind up cats!” He crumpled the paper into a ball in frustration, then-- “whoops, should save that”-- grabbed a sticking-out corner and flicked it back into pristine smoothness in a single whip-like action. “Were they just founded, or did they exist a year ago and I just didn’t know about it?” “Well the para-net is kind of recent, but more than couple years old,” Danny said. “The internet made it a lot easier for adepts to find each other and all. But since tech fizzles around anyone with enough power, it’s mostly just little people. The stronger ones tend to get picked up by the wizards or burn out on black magic. More of the latter, lately.” “That or the Fomor get ‘em,” Shirley said darkly. “Fish-heads have been kidnapping people for a few months now, turning ‘em into more fish-heads.” “I guess I should have checked online, then,” Gorden chuckles bitterly. It was interesting to know that his woes with the instruments weren’t limited to himself, but that could wait for another time. At Shirley’s comment, he nodded seriously. “And the professor might be helping him do it. Dammit. Alright, I’ll make time to attend this paranet meetup. Maybe one of them already knows what the professor is up to. We’ll just have to see. Thanks, Shirley.” “No problem. What do you do anyways?” She flicked her fingers like he had to uncrinkle the paper. “Hmmm...it’s kinda hard to describe without a lot of math-y terms...well, let me demonstrate first.” Gorden turned to the fireplace, still happily burning away, flipped open his book, and began to mumble. “Combustion’s an easy reaction…products and energy release...it’s like playing the video in reverse, setting the tape to rewind, the arrow of the reaction running backwards...” The fire stopped glowing--and became a great shadow sitting in the log holder, imperceptible--and the room began to grow colder as the fireplace log steadily rebuilt itself from ashes and smoke. “Okay, you might want to cover your eyes for this one…imagine all the frames of the video played simultaneously, super-fast-forward, you know? You’d get a big release of heat, a smear of light...” All of the smoke, heat, and light that had accumulated into the fireplace log released in an instant into the chimney and room, with a blinding flash. The log no longer existed, having burnt completely into soot and dust. Gorden looked at the result, then at Shirley and Danny, and shrugged. “I guess you could say I break time.” “You’re not kidding,” Shirley said, looking legitimately impressed. “Great, more time magic,” Danny muttered under his breath. “You sound worried,” Gorden looked at Danny in concern. “I don’t get it. Imagine what you could do with this. Just in energy alone--carbon sequestration, nuclear recycling--you could solve the world’s problems in an instant with this! Imagine that wasn’t a fireplace log but a spent fuel rod, or, or a toxic by-product of some reaction. You could break it down in an instant by running it forward as fast as you could!” He tilted his head. “Is there...something wrong with time magic?” “Well, you probably didn’t hear about it but someone else decided to break time around here a few months ago. Kinda threw everything into chaos for… well, one night. Or six years, depending on where you were standing. A lot of people died.” He sighed. “Power’s power. It’s only wrong if someone abuses it. You seem like a decent guy, so I’ll let you know something before you go. What you did there? That’s fine, no one’s gonna care about that, or breaking and fixing coffee cups or whatever else you’ve been doing. But whatever you can do, don’t try it on a person. Not even yourself. Time travel is illegal, and the Wardens aren’t going to give you a trial if they catch you at it, they’ll just execute you.” “Oh...oh poo poo.” Once again Gorden stared at a revelation from Danny. He wondered for a moment how the heck something like that could happen just...like that, but then the last sentences sank in. “Uhm...well, what I just did to that fireplace log would be a lot more complex to do on a person. It’s, like, several orders of magnitude more complex, and a ton of different reactions to consider…” Unconsciously his scarred left hand crept behind his book towards his hanging necklace. “My brain’s getting dizzy just thinking about it…Wait, what’s this about Wardens who want to kill me? Are they like those fish-heads?” “No,” Shirley shook her head. “They’re regular, er, well, they’re wizards. People with magic. Kinda like the magic police I guess?” “All cops are bad,” Danny grumbled. “I should know, I work freelance for a bunch of them.” “I’ll try not to get on their bad side, then,” Gorden murmured, numb hand now clenched firmly around the necklace. “I think that’s everything I came for, and more besides. There’s a whole world out there I didn’t know existed. I’m going to have to carry this thing around with me for a while.” He taps the book again. “Thanks for all the help you’ve given me, Shirley, Danny. I’ll do everything I can to make sure Professor Lancaster doesn’t get away with hurting you and everyone else.” “No problem,” Shirley stood up to walk him to the door. “It’s a lot to take in all at once. Believe me, I know.” “No kidding,” Gorden responded as he stood up in turn. “Alright, guess I’ll see you both at this meetup.” “Oh… sure.” She tucked a curl behind her ear. “It was nice to talk to you. I haven’t been getting out much. You uh, you want to swap emails?” “Yeah, emails and phone numbers. I hope my phone still works after all of this--especially at the event!” Shirley winced. “Yeah… about that...”
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Nov 8, 2018 05:00
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Orientation! Scene: Voodoo Shop There wasn’t any more big news to report and after a few minor items Anna finished up her notes and there was a general break. Mary opened up some desert boxes that had been hiding under the pizza table and people broke off into twos and fours to eat and talk about things. “Okay, Gorden,” Anna said, pulling him aside once everyone had a chance to get some brownies. “Shirley said you were fresh off the farm, so why don’t you tell me what you do know and I can start filling in some blanks for you?” Gorden had just picked up a tasty looking beignet when Anna called him aside. Asked about what he knew of magic, he set it down and picked up his grimoire from his seat instead. “You mean about...everything out there or just magic stuff generally?” he asked. “Because one I’ve spent about a year playing around with and one I just learned about last week.” “A year’s long enough to get a lot figured out,” Anna smiled warmly. “So sure, start there. What sort of magic do you got?” “It’s kind of a ‘catalyst’ magic, I think--I used...er, one word with someone else last week and he thought I was talking about something else. Maybe a better word is...hmm…’entropy’!” Gorden nodded at the familiar word. “It’s magic that manipulates entropy, disorder.” “Entropexousia?” Elbridge asked, approaching the conversation with a drink in hand that had only had a single dash from his flask added. “Risky sort of magic, controlling luck. Of course, I suppose that the point of controlling luck is to mitigate risks, but even so…” “Whoa, where’d you come from?” Gorden took a step back at El suddenly entering their conversation. “And what does luck have to do with it? I mean, I guess entropy is based on probability, but it’s more like ‘statistical sorting’ probability than ‘roll dice’ probability…I can’t see how it’d be risky at all.” “Isn’t statistical sorting just the process of rolling enough dice enough times?” Elbridge asked. “In this metaphor, your magic sounds like playing with weighted dice. Loading the numbers might produce the desired outcome for a single roll, but if you leave those dice on the table for different games, it can yield unexpected results.” He swirled his drink before taking another gulp. “And of course, there’s always the chance the house will catch you and toss you out.” “Maybe a demonstration?” Anna asked, having become quite lost some time ago. “Er, okay, but a lot of the microscopic results are similar at macroscopic levels, so ‘rolling the dice’ won’t make things look any different if you keep hitting those states. And it wouldn’t be so much the house throwing you out as you reaching a point where your earned value is the same as your bet, so…” Gorden scratched his head. “Are we talking about the same thing? Lemme try something. Can I touch your glass for a second? Anna, if you’d like you can touch it too.” “Certainly.” Elbridge held out his glass of spiked lemonade. “Alright. I don’t need to hold it, I should be able to just…” Gorden reached out his fingers along the bottom of the glass, using his other hand to flip open his grimoire. “Ice is an easy way to understand entropy,” he began, his voice going into student teacher mode. “There are only so many ways water molecules can sort themselves out into ice crystals. There’s a lot more ways they can be liquid water, and even more ways they can bounce around as steam. Aaaaaaanyway, if you add energy into ice--or, like, let the sun do it for you--it melts, obviously, everybody knows that.” As he spoke, anybody touching the glass would notice it growing ever so slightly colder, as its heat went into the lemonade, rapidly melting the ice. “Of course, you could also run it backwards, taking energy out of water to turn it into ice. You could stick it in a freezer, or…” And suddenly, with a somewhat hotter glass, Elbridge was holding a lemon alcohol ice pop in a cup. “...oh, god, I’m an idiot, I could have shown this even more simply.” Gorden released the cup’s underside, tapped his forehead, and reached into his jacket for the Paranet meeting flier. He began to crumple it with one hand. “There’s lots...of ways...to call...a piece...of paper...a balled...up...trash...ball…” he grunted, pressing down hard on the creases before revealing the flyer, turned into a yellowing, hole-spotted waste-basketball. “But there’s only one way…” he flicked out the paper again, converting the creases back into smoothness and filling in the rotted holes. “...to call it a clean sheet.” If he were in class right now he’d bow like a magician, but being in front of two people much older than him, he nodded. “That’s what I mean by ‘entropy’.” “That’s what I meant as well,” Elbridge said, withdrawing his frozen drink from the glass by a protruding toothpick. “Manipulation of probability. Loading the cosmic dice - although it seems that you were referring to atomic-scale events…” He closed his eyes, muttered an incantation, and flicked the ice pop blindly over his shoulder. It landed upside-down on the countertop, balanced exactly on the point of the toothpick. “...rather than anything of a more-Newtonian scale.” “I mean, personally I think of it as the same principle as those touch-activated heat packs, just a little more extreme, but--” Gorden’s...explanation? Rationalization?...was interrupted by El tossing over the ice pop to land toothpick-side-down on the counter. He stared. “...okay, I can’t do that. I mean, maybe I could get the toss technique down, but gravity and the recoil from the table would take over as soon as it hit and…” He realized he was rushing, and stopped to take a deep breath. “Yeah, I guess ‘manipulating probability at atomic scale’ makes sense. But, you know, so’s any other catalyst, so I don’t get the bit about ‘the house throwing you out’. Eventually you’d just reach a point where there’s no more energy or fuel to use and the house stops moving. The reaction you’re driving isn’t going to suddenly get angry at you...unless you were playing with explosives, maybe?” “I wouldn’t be so sure of that,” Elbridge cautioned him. “Fire elementals can be opinionated like you wouldn’t believe. Once had a storm spirit get so miffed at the demon controlling her that she gave us a lock of her own hair to use in aiming a lightning bolt right at the infernal slattern.” “Those exist?” Gorden’s eyebrows went up. “You say ‘fire elemental’ and ‘storm spirit’ and all I can think of is, like, those orange mom-bombs from Final Fantasy and stuff.” Demons and Fish-heads and elementals, oh my--would a moogle or jack frost be next? “Too bad neither of us can cast Blizzaja,” Marcine observed, having walked up by Elbridge while three people were holding one glass. There was a crass joke there that she wouldn’t make in this company. “Odds are, if it’s shown up in a video game or a fantasy novel, something similar to it probably exists.” “Most of those things are based on real myths and legends,” Anna said, wiping her hands off on her pants. “So… it sounds like you’ve got the basics down as to what you can do, at least. You’re just missing out on what everyone else is up to. Rules, society, that kind of thing. Sound about right?” “Don’t tell me storm spirits are Pikachu--or they’ve started to look more like Pikachu after 1998 or something,” Gorden answered Marcine and Anna. “Is that a thing that happens? These magical things changing according to what cultures expect them to be like? And...yeah, that sounds about right about what I know, Anna. I dug through a bunch of books about magic stuff, but they seemed really cagey about, like, how many magicians there were in the world.” “Belief only shapes supernatural beings indirectly,” Elbridge explained. “The beliefs of human magicians colour the spells they work upon others - and of course, some beings change their image to draw power from an existing icon of belief, or simply to keep up with the times. As for the other matter, taking any sort of census has always been a difficult proposition at the best of times...and these are not the best of times.” “It’d be less difficult if the Council didn’t set the standards for who counts as a wizard,” Anna grumbled. “Its arbitrary and ridiculous.” “Ridiculous, yes,” Elbridge said. “Arbitrary, no. The criteria are rigid, but objective, and I don’t believe that examination standards have changed since the twelfth century. The title does mean something. Our chief failing has been an unwillingness to give back to the larger community, to invest in our future, to teach...” His eyes flicked toward Nicky for a split second. “...or to extend the protection of law to all but an elite few.” “The twelfth century?!” Gorden spat in confusion. “I...that...to heck with deliberate change, language drift alone should make those standards totally unrecognizable! They’d have missed...dammit, history wasn’t my best subject...they’d have missed a lot of stuff. You can’t even go two weeks without a bylaw changing in New Orleans, if only by enforcement. How do you pretend a societal structure has stayed the same for nine hundred years?!” “Written records, supplemented with firsthand accounts,” Elbridge explained. “Mind you, I don’t know of any wizard living for that long, but three or even four centuries isn’t unheard-of.” “Doesn’t matter,” said Gorden with a negative wave of his hands. “Tulane administration writes down plenty of rules--doesn’t stop them from accidentally deleting or reverting to old versions of the syllabus every three months. Information is also subject to decay, even...heck, especially...if you’d have to copy everything down by hand with quills and ink and, I dunno, open flames all over the place. At that point you might as well just...lean into it, embrace the decay and change as you go.” “The things we lost when we stopped carving hieroglyphs into rocks,” Marcine said dryly. “Maybe you stopped…” Elbridge ribbed her. “Hard to carry around your sheet music on sandstone.” “Even then, paint fades, rocks weather, the next guy might think you’re a jerk and tear down all your stuff.” Gorden interjected. “This from the guy who can un-melt ice cubes,” Anna noted. “An excellent point,” Elbridge agreed. “Magic affords many, many options for verifying these records, whether through divination, truth spells, or consultation with immortal entities who cannot lie. At any rate, I never said that the Council structure has remained unchanged for so long,” he reminded Gorden. “Only the criteria for claiming the title of ‘Wizard’: Proficiency with both evocation and ritual magic; an oath to uphold our duties and customs; and a Soulgaze to prove that one hasn’t broken the Laws.” “Yeah, but digging through all that Crowley stuff didn’t exactly suggest people like me were common,” he answered Anna. Turning back to Elbridge, he continued: “...well, I mean, what your duties and customs and Laws are can change over time. I can’t imagine you’d have a Law against, I dunno, talking about your powers on the internet...without an internet.” “They’re more like the 10 commandments than what we’d think of as laws,” Anna said, reaching into her binder for a pamphlet, which said ‘The Laws of Magic and you!’ in a cheerful sans-font. There was a smiling cartoon wizard with a beard on the front page. “Possibly older, definitely more firmly enforced.” Marcine didn’t say anything about the binder’s aesthetic design, but she didn’t really need to when her expression screamed ‘Seriously?’ “I see,” Gorden said, taking up the pamphlet and flipping through it. “Don’t kill, don’t transform others, don’t invade other’s privacy--” His muttering stopped short when he reached the section labelled “Never Swim Against the Flow of Time.” He remembered Danny’s words about cutting people’s heads off and licked his lip nervously. “And, uh, what exactly does a Soulgaze entail? Just from the sound of it it sounds like a privacy invasion...with magic?” “It’s a natural consequence of a capable practitioner making eye contact with another person for the first time,” Elbridge said. “The exact details are...well, not to go on at length, but there’s a difference between such a passive, two-way encounter and the active invasion of another mind. Magic is an act of will. It asserts the primacy of your will, your soul, over the world, and when you use that power to do dreadful things, your soul is left stained. Kill with magic, and you’ve decided that you are, at the core of your being, a killer. Tear apart the natural order, and you become unable to exist within it.” “It’s addicting too, or so I’ve heard,” Anna added. “But you don’t have to worry about that, right?” She gave Gorden a friendly pat on the shoulder. “Most of this stuff is just common sense anyways. It wouldn’t be right to turn someone into an animal, or mind control them, or change history. No one has to tell you that.” “Er...right…” Gorden tried to reassure her. “I’m not sure if I’m capable of even DOING most of these.” Most, not all, of course. He suddenly found himself very interested in his set down beignet. Had he made eye contact with Elbridge? Was his head about to get wingding Xes for eyes? “It’s best to understand your abilities so that you can learn to control them as early as possible,” Elbridge said. Gorden had the look of someone who’d only just discovered what he could do, and knew next to nothing about the magical world. Most Warlocks were sorcerers who didn’t yet understand the Laws, nor why they were so important, until it was far too late. “I’m about to begin our regular self-defense lessons. You’re welcome to join in, if you’d like a primer.” It’d be too suspicious to say “no”. “I think I’d like that, sure.”
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Nov 28, 2018 04:29
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In Defense Of Mad Science At the sound of Marcine’s calm and interested question, Gorden took a deep, slow breath. What would happen if he screwed up explaining this? Probably something very, very bad. He’d have to be very calm and very certain going forward. Kinda like defending a thesis. “Okay, so. I have magic powers,” he started, obviously. “I can’t exactly ignore them or pretend they don’t exist; that would be betraying everything I’ve worked on for the past decade and a half. So a lot of things in how the universe is believed to work have to change, to accommodate the existence of such things, like you said at the Para-net meeting. That means I need to be able to understand just what it is I’m dealing with. Extraordinary claims need extraordinary evidence, and I'd need to understand, from the ground up, something really extraordinary. “Maybe magic is the dark energy astrophysicists have been searching for. Maybe the fact that electronics keep breaking when I try to examine magic with probes means our understanding of electromagnetism needs to change. Once I have even an inkling of what’s happening when I use magic, I can explain it to others, and they can explain it to others, and instead of just me scribbling in the margins, entire laboratories can study the subject. And then everyone at that Para-net meeting won't need to hide anymore. Shirley won't need to drop out because rear end in a top hat professors victimise her and no one would believe her if she tried to get help. You won't need to...nerve gas fish-heads that kidnap people, because it would never get that far. “I guess…” he shrugged. “...what I'm trying to do is...make magic part of the world?” “Magic is already part of the world,” Elbridge said. “Part of several, in fact. Scientific study is extraordinarily-difficult for multiple reasons, some of which I addressed at the seminar, but the lack of public awareness has less to do with those than it does with the simple fact that most humans don’t want to know. Knowing would impose an obligation to do something. The public already prefers to remain ignorant of human trafficking and college professors victimising their female assistants. Magic has nothing to do with that.” “You’re not wrong,” Gorden acknowledged grimly. “And, yeah, apathy hurts the world’s non-magical problems too. But the world’s a little less apathetic about poo poo like starvation and ethnic cleansing than it was a decade or two ago. And on the scale of that magical organization you mentioned? Those wizard requirements that hadn’t changed in nine centuries? Nine centuries ago raiding the next tribe over and letting them freeze in the snow was considered a just and proper fate for the poor victims. I’d like to think things are different now, nine centuries later. Maybe if magic were revealed and accepted tomorrow things wouldn’t change the day after, but nine hundred years after? You gotta start somewhere.” “And that is a laudable ambition, but time magic in particular has a way of going badly-awry,” Elbridge told him. “I’m not trying to discourage you, I’m trying to warn you. Don’t you think that the researchers at Los Alamos would have preferred to know about radiation poisoning in advance, before they had to experience it firsthand?” “Of course I’m sure Daghlian and Slotin would have wanted that,” Gorden answered, “but there is a difference between ‘this topic requires caution, so research and experiment with it using proper PPE and isolation equipment’ and ‘this topic is forbidden, and we will literally kill you if you attempt to look into it.’” He had every reason to believe Danny was being dead serious when he said that, and now the misgivings that had started at the Para-net were coming back. Why was he so easy to bribe with free food?! “So research it in a controlled way,” Marcine said. She gave Gorden a somewhat apologetic smile. “We just dealt with the fallout of time travel going bad, so it’s a touchy subject right now.” Understatement of the century, right there. “But you have a point. They ought to have some working knowledge on the subject after all this time that could be used as a guideline for being responsible.” There, she thought, was the key word. But the Council didn’t have a great track record of actually understanding the things they were afraid of... “Yeah, Danny mentioned something like that,” Gorden grimaced. “He said a lot of people died. But it would be just as irresponsibly hosed up if they magically teleported the city to the Pacific Ocean or Europa, and not bothered with the time aspect at all--” “Gorden.” Elbridge held up his hand. “I’m going to stop you right there. In the process of changing history, the divergent timeline would have overwritten this one, along with everyone in it. The death toll was in the thousands, and we were fortunate to keep it so low. Had we failed…” He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “Teleportation magic is also dangerous, yes. It can be misused. However, its dangers are well-understood. That is why the first lesson an apprentice learns regarding portals, before they are allowed to even attempt one, is to never open a door that they can’t close. Mr. Maxwell, I just...want to know...that you understand.” “...yes, I understand,” Gorden answered after a long pause. “I guess science has its own risks and laws--chemical experiments making poison gas, medicine done without consent from the patients. And yet…” he turned to Marcine for just a second, as if to draw strength from her, before turning back to Elbridge. “...let’s go back to Los Alamos for a sec. You might have heard that when they tested Trinity, the scientists made a bet about whether the bomb would ignite the nitrogen in the atmosphere and destroy the world. That’s kinda true but also kinda not--the bet was a joke, they’d worked the math beforehand and determined the numbers didn’t add up. You've just mentioned something similar--teleportation has risks, but they're well known and are not infinite. Presumably, someone, at some point, crunched the numbers on what would happen if, say, someone tried to, I dunno, open a portal to deep space. Or maybe someone actually opened a portal to deep space. Doesn't really matter. If there were a Law that said 'do not attempt to fold Space, on penalty of being killed,’ would you understand its hazards, and how to avoid them, as well as you do now?” “There are several points in that statement that demand edification,” Elbridge said. “Most portals do not work by ‘folding space’. They open into the Nevernever, a parallel realm where distance is a function of sympathetic connection, not of geometry. They are sustained by magic, and close when that magic is broken. Thus, it is very difficult to open a free-standing rift to another point in space, and if such a rift leads to someplace hazardous, it will almost certainly collapse as soon as said hazardous environs kill the ritualists foolish enough to have opened it.” “Fair enough!” Gorden said, lifting his hands off his drink--how come the ice cubes hadn’t melted yet?--to acknowledge the point. “But then the Law could just as well say ‘Don’t attempt to contact-slash-interface with the Nevernever, on pain of death,’ could it not?” “Why would it?” Elbridge asked. “Mr. Maxwell, you seem to be under the impression that the Laws are arbitrary decrees, or acts of legislature. They’re more akin to laws such as universal gravitation, or thermodynamics. The misuse of magic in any of those seven specific regards will change a magician in deeply-unpleasant ways. Moreover, many of those exceptions and limitations you describe are already known. Time magic is not forbidden. Altering the past is. You can adjust the speed so long as you don’t attempt to change its direction.” “Like laws of nature…?” Gorden blinked in confusion before clearing his head. “I’m...guessing they weren’t figured out by experiment. But, uh...if I’d had tried to dodge those nerf balls by letting them hit me, figuring out their path from that, then rewinding their energy state so they were back in flight and then stepping out of the way, would you have killed me?” “No more than if you reversed the energy states of our cold meals to reheat them,” Elbridge said. “Which you should do, by the way. Now, if you’d reversed their progression through the medium of time separately from the medium of space, such that they’d appeared alongside their past instances...well, I wouldn’t have killed you. You would have killed yourself. Nature abhors a paradox, and the simplest way to resolve one is to simply kill the instigator. The instance of yourself who’d sent the balls back in time would cease to be, overwritten by a copy with knowledge of their future trajectory but no epistemological basis for that knowledge.” Melancholy, Elbridge stared down at his reflection in the whiskey. “No observers would have been able to tell the difference...save for the ones that exist outside of time and space altogether. You really don’t want to catch their attention.” He swirled the glass, and his reflection dissolved. He hoped that his double had perished when the meteors hit. If he hadn’t… As if snapping out of a trance, Gorden shook his head in confusion and looked at the placemat in front of him. How long had that plate been there? What kind of powers did Elbridge have to make him miss dinner being put in front of him? “Uh...time separate from space? Erm…” He’d been thinking so long in terms of combined space-time that separating them out again in his head was...difficult. “Well...I’ve heard of what you’re talking about, but it’s usually used to talk about philosophy and ethics in, like, sci-fi, teleportation stuff. That’s a real thing? You’ve seen that?” Unconsciously he’d picked up his spoon and started stirring the mole sauce on his plate--someone watching very closely might have noticed wisps of steam creeping back into the sauce. “And the ‘ones that exist outside of time and space’--that’s the Cthulhu stuff from the other Law, right?” “Correct on both counts,” Elbridge said. “I understand that all of this must be terribly-confusing to you, coming from your background as a physicist. It’s difficult to explain, as well - I know quite a lot more than most people, but I don’t pretend to know everything…usually. To wit - what you’ve been taught accurately describes the laws of this world...but there are others that overlap with or intersect it to a lesser or greater degree, and they have their own laws. When those laws come into conflict, things get...complicated, to say the least.” “Like GPS?” Gorden said, with a little quirk in the corner of his mouth that suggested it was supposed to be a joke. “...okay, that was just the first thing I thought of where you have to correct stuff using a completely different paradigm, but it’s not like I’m not familiar with trying to make sense of multiple sets of completely different observable laws. Half of the department loves to go on about string theory, but I’d like to see them work magic into their vibrating strings,” Another joke? Would Elbridge get it, laugh, get off his case a bit? “They’ve already predicted the existence of groups of monsters in other dimensions,” Elbridge said, drily-amused. “Apparently, it takes a professional moonshiner such as myself to find them.” Strings vibrating across all possible worlds...was that how Marcine had manage to reach him in the Void, he wondered? “Did...did you just make a monstrous moonshine joke?” Gorden felt his jaw drop. “I did.” Elbridge nodded and finally tucked into his own meal. “And at that, I hope that I’ve impressed upon you that I’m not just some overly-cautious old fogey who doesn’t know what he’s on about. If you’d like to get into the weeds on the subject, I recommend speaking with Wizard Cantor. He has a great deal of knowledge both theoretical and practical on the matter.” Now there was a conversation that would be entertaining to eavesdrop on, Marcine thought. Cantor...another math joke from the universe? “That really anxious guy from the Para-net meeting? Uh…Nicholas?” “The same,” Elbridge confirmed. “Wizard Nicholas Cantor is one of the foremost experts in his area of study. He simply, er...has a certain habit of…” “Not meeting your standards,” Marcine said, in a tone that suggested she didn’t necessarily think that was all Cantor’s fault. “He’s made progress of late,” Elbridge sighed. “He just doesn’t handle pressure very well.” “Yeah, I noticed with the balls,” Gorden observed. “But, hey, no matter how anxious he is, you call him 'wizard’. You don't call me that. So that's something he'll have going for him when we talk.” He looks down at his almost untouched plate. “...maybe we should do it over something that doesn't get cold.” You’d have to stand him on his head for that, Elbridge thought. “A prudent choice for another time,” he said.
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Jan 1, 2019 01:55
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Discreet Investigations Location: Tulane University, Biology building “‘Professor Reuben Lancaster, PhD, Biology,’” Gorden read off the brass nameplate on the door. The Bio department may have been a short walk from Physics, but there’d been precious little reason for an astrophysicist to come here after undergrad (short of aliens talk), so the building had a bit of a “foreign country” air, down to the faux wood paneling and shaded lights. But he’d gotten a copy of the professor’s teaching schedule, and this was one of the few times in the week he wasn’t holding office hours or teaching labs in his office. If there was anything in there to find connecting him to Sharene and Shirley’s woes, this was the time to search it. He briefly checked up and down the hall, then, not expecting much, tried the handle while shoving his shoulder up against the door. He’s not sure what he expected. Of course the thing was locked. He wondered idly whether the door was made of actual wood or just a cheap veneer, before throwing up his hands, checked the hall one last time, and--remembering the odd times his dorm decided they wanted to play Call of Duty with Nerf Guns and door breaches--snap kicked the door just above the lock. (Physique roll: @Davin_Valkri: 4dF+2 = (+---)+2 = 0) “ARGH! Gah...sss...ouch!” Okay, definitely hardwood! Screw it! Change of plans! He grabbed hold of the locking mechanism and focused on the bolt inside. At some point in the past or some point in the future, it would be in its alternative equilibrium state of an open bolt. Just need to fix its local energy to that point… (CEKing the door open, nuts to this! @Davin_Valkri: 4dF+4 = (b-bb)+4 = 3) With a click and a pop, the bolt drew back, letting Gorden into an untidy office that smelled like mud and mold. There were samples of both sitting on the man’s desk. It wasn’t that much different from his own office, otherwise, though the piles of books and papers were on different topics and there were test tubes of dirty water in a stand against the window. Gorden threw the bolt back into the “locked” position behind him as he examined the office. Bigger than his own, though just as messy. And the biological samples gave the place a strange, “Frankenstein” like air--the smell reminded him of grave dirt, even though he knew they had to be swamp and wetland samples. Undaunted, he began to step around the papers and books to behind the desk, looking for ashes or some other destroyed evidence. Notice: @Davin_Valkri: 4dF+5 = (bb++)+5 = 7 “There!” Under the desk! A paper shredder, yes! A year ago, he’d have approached this problem like an undergrad, being saddled with any other giant pile of uncollated data. Dump all the paper on a desk and sort through them slowly, with tape and time. But now he could focus on the papers and unshred them just like that. Well, maybe not just like that--even if whole, legible papers were what he wanted, a bunch of whole papers with the strips all assembled wrong was still more ordered than a bunch of confetti. Still, he had to try. As he was preparing to make a large mess of the paper shreds, someone knocked on the office door. “Reuben? Was that you? Is everything alright?” A woman’s voice, not one Gorden recognized. She must have heard him yell earlier! Oh shoot! Gorden searched the room--any place he could hide he’d be found out easily. Who was this woman? He hadn’t seen anyone in the halls before entering the office! Was she one of the other professors, or one of the office assistants? “Uh, campus delivery! Professor Lancaster asked me to bring up his, uh--” poo poo, why was biology 101 so long ago?! “--artificial polymerase in the chemistry department, really crazy handling requirements with a long manufacture time, asked me to bring it back to his office before the prokaryotics break down in the heat of the labs, you know, with all the ventilation problems of being in the basement!” That didn’t explain the noise, though. “Uh, knocked over one of his books on…” he read the titles off of one of the stacks of paper. “...’Large Animalia Biodiversity In and Along Semi-Urbanized Environments’, just put it back! Sorry if I scared you!” If she wasn’t a biology staff member she might have bought that, but if she was… (Deceiving, possibly with He Blinded Me with Science? @Davin_Valkri: 4dF+1 = (bb-+)+1 = 1) “Oh?” The door jiggled. “Why’ve you locked yourself in then?” “Oh, automatic response on my part, ma’am! Always return other people’s stuff to its original position after you’re done with it!” he answered with the force that it said it might actually have been normal procedure. “This time I just did it coming in instead of going out. My bad!” (This is suspicious, so I spend a GM FP to bump the base difficulty to 5. Gorden Invokes You Can’t Scare Me, I’m a TA, because this is totally the normal procedure for delivering things to offices, honest.) “Oh, I see. Carry on then,” she said. But Gorden doesn’t hear her leave. “No problem!” Gorden called through the door. “Uh, this might take a little while, though! Need to plug in the cooling pump and make sure the temperature’s stabilized! “ She doesn’t answer. Maybe she left? But maybe not… Well, he must have bought himself a little time, at least! Gorden starts to sort through the paper shredder’s bin, keeping an eye on the door in case someone with the key came by. >Need a roll to de-shred the papers. Q: would papers need to be reshredded or does moving them forward in time return them to their original state? (Using CEK to try to reassemble the papers: @Davin_Valkri: 4dF+4 assembling shreds = (++--)+4 = 4 . That’s a very interesting question! I’d like to say that because the papers were already shredded, moving them forward in time will return them to shreds--but how long that takes depends on how long it’s been since they’ve been shredded. If they’ve been in strips for a while, they’ll return to strips more quickly than if the Professor jammed them in just before heading out for lunch today.) The more recently shredded papers reassembled more quickly. Most of them were junk mail. A few school-staff related emails. One large photo of a wet kitten. Ahah! A study guide for moss growth rates under different moisture conditions! It all seemed useless, and Gorden was about to give up when he noticed handwriting on the back of the study guide. ‘Sending you Nguyen, Bakersfield, and Indra tomorrow at 4:00pm.’ -KC Judging by how quickly it un-shredded itself, this paper was destroyed recently. A few hours ago at most. It could just be a student project, or a study session… Gorden ran his eyes over the stitching papers (who actually printed out lolcats?!) before stopping on the paper on moss growth. It definitely wasn’t his field, but it was the only science-related item in the bunch. And...jackpot! He slid his grimoire out onto the table and took out a pen to transcribe the message. He’d already gotten a couple of pictures with his phone as the paper assembled, but it was good to have backups in case the snaps turned out blurry and illegible. “Indra” was a bit weird, and “KC” could be anyone, but “Nguyen” and “Bakersfield” had to be surnames. And if this was only shredded today, then he still had a good 24 hours plus to protect three people from whatever batshit insanity Professor Lancaster and “KC” were planning. Gorden stuffed the papers back into the shredder bin, the “stitching” of the papers already coming undone. Now, how was he going to get out of here? He listened at the door again, wondering if whoever was talking earlier had left. She was strangely quiet. Or she’d left. Gorden quickly scanned the desk and office one last time, wondering if the professor was the sort to keep a spare key around. (@Davin_Valkri: 4dF+5 = (+-b-)+5 = 4, FP on You Can't Scare Me..., this isn't Gorden's first messy office.) There was a key in the second drawer of the desk that looked similar to his own office key, buried under some papers and mixed into a pile of drawer detritus (tacks, paperclips, sticky notes…) It might not be missed immediately, if he was lucky. With this, Gorden could at least exit without arousing suspicion from magicking the lock back into place. As for how to go from there… well, the first thing was to get out of here. Then inform Elbridge and company by text and silver pin thing. With a deep breath he pulled his head down and opened the door out of the office. Davin Valkri fucked around with this message at 03:20 on Mar 26, 2019 |
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Mar 24, 2019 03:33
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A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to El Gato Negro Scene: Just outside the restaurant Elbridge better be paying for dinner, Gorden thought as he pulled his cheap car into the driveway. The replacement ID cost thirty bucks! Were wizards expected to pay their way by turning stuff into gold?! And how was he even supposed to get into the building without it, break a window and get busted by campus security? He continued his distracted grumbling as he switched off the engine. As Gorden walked through the parking lot towards the entrance to the restaurant, he heard a noise. *Tink, tink, tink…* A can rolled between the parked cars. No, not a can. A canister. LAN parties of CS: Source gave him an inkling of what knocked into his sneakers, but by the time he recognized what it was, it was too late to even close his eyes. It burst open in a blinding flash of light and disorienting sound, and the sound didn’t fade, or maybe it did and that was some other high pitched shrieking? He clutched his hands to his eyes, trying to force the washed-out rods and cones to rewind themselves, but nothing happened. It just felt like someone decided to do impromptu laser eye surgery with a laboratory laser. He was still trying to figure it out when something hit him over the back of the head, and then he wasn’t doing much thinking at all. --- Marcine pulled into the parking lot of the Gato just as a black SUV pulled out of it, tires squealing. She barely caught a glimpse of the driver, a large bald man in a turtleneck sweater, as he almost ran her off the road and lurched off down the street. Her car bumped to an abrupt stop when she turned her attention back to the parking lot. Faint smoke was drifting away in the wind, and a moment later, she picked up the smell of sulphur. She almost heard the bang and gunshots that had accompanied the last time she smelled that. She parked without care for tidiness and scanned the ground. There - hidden under a bumper and only visible because of a streetlight, she spotted the canister, dented but mostly intact. Like the one that had gone off in the the other El's cabin. She didn't sense a disturbance, felt nothing aggressive nearby, and so all but ran into the El Gato Negro to find out who was missing.
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Apr 28, 2019 00:20
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Cause For Concern Scene: Marina Parking Lot Gorden had been alternating between staring at the chimera’s corpse in awe and making sure the one in the trunk didn’t try anything stupid--although Ada trying to smash his rusted lock made him flinch! At Elbridge’s mention of “operational security,” Gorden rolled his eyes. “El, me walking around on campus without my ID card is a lot more suspicious than the alternatives. So could you...not get on my back about that?” “Mr. Maxwell, do you recall what I said at Anna’s community meeting? ‘If it can be used to identify you, it can be used to curse you’.” Elbridge rinsed the slime from his hands and massaged his aching temples. “A name alone is a weak link...unless you happen to be wearing something with your name on it. How do you think they knew exactly where to find you?” He sighed again, blinking back a migraine, exhausted and exasperated. “Gorden, you were attacked and abducted. You could have been killed, or worse -” Elbridge gestured to the captive - “turned. If Miss Sterling hadn’t happened to witness the event, we would not be here to have this conversation.” “What did you want me to do, break into the closed City Hall and change my name after I was done?” Gorden countered. “I literally can’t get into my office without my ID card--which, by the way, has my name on the door! When I go get lunch at the dining hall, I pay with my ID card. I want to get into the labs after hours, I need to tap in with my ID card. I can’t even get onto my dorm grounds without my ID card. So unless you want me to go back in time and tell my younger self to call himself Emmett Brown, there’s nothing I can do about it.” “All inconvenient, I’m sure,” Elbridge said, “but far easier to replace than your life. Once you were discovered, getting to safety should have been your first and only priority. Taking time to acquire a replacement identification badge while you were being tracked by a sorceress was an astonishingly-reckless decision. Again, if we hadn’t arrived in time…” “I thought I was able to lose her after I got out of the building,” Gorden said defensively. “And I did throw away my old ID card. This is a completely different ID card and the badging office was deserted, and I wouldn’t have been able to get to my car without it. How could she track me with this one if she wasn’t around to see me pick it up?” “Wait, you just threw it away?” Elbridge asked. “You didn’t destroy it in the chemistry lab?” “There was a shredder in the library when I called you. Specifically for destroying expired credit cards and stuff. I put it through that.” “A willful act of destruction by its owner...yes, that would certainly break any sympathetic link to you. And a name alone wouldn’t have been enough for a tracking spell…” the coin dropped in Elbridge’s head. “...which means that she must have already had them in place to tail and abduct you. Aha - you found three other names in Lancaster’s office, yes?” “Nguyen, Bakersfield, and Indra, yeah. Why--wait, do you think they’re working with Lancaster already?” “Oh the contrary.” Elbridge shook his head. “I think this team was on standby to take them, and sending them after you instead was an act of haste and desperation. You’ve probably saved their lives.” “Are you sure about that?” Gorden wrinkled his face in confusion. “It sounded more like they had them already, and they’d made arrangements to give them to these bastards tomorrow.” “The phrasing was ambiguous,” Elbridge agreed. “When we recapture these yokels, I’ll ask them to elaborate.” “What about this guy?” asked James, gesturing with his thumb over his shoulder at the goon currently confined within the van, “Need to stash him somewhere, too.” “Ah, yes. You.” Elbridge rounded on the surviving servitor, flashing a grim smile through the fogged windows of the sedan. “You’ve lost. You must know that, and therefore must know what happens next, but since protocol demands it: will you offer your formal oath of surrender to me as a representative of the White Council?” He glanced back as Ada approached, still soaked from head to platform-shod toe in gore, holding Rick’s sword in one hand and her own knife in her other, breathing heavily and stomping with every step like she meant to murder the very ground. “Or will you entrust your fate to her?” For a few seconds he watched her approach, then turned back to the window. “If you mean to ransom me, then I will consider it. If you mean to imprison me as you did our sister, you may as well let your mad dog have me. Save us both the trouble.” “I’ll take that under consideration,” Elbridge said in his best ‘You’re in no position to make demands’ tone of voice. “You have until she reaches the car.” He waited, blank-faced, all the way to the very last moment. “Then I offer my surrender.” “I accept it. Ada! Good news!” Elbridge smiled at her. “You don’t owe me a prisoner any longer!” His smile wavered a little as he caught sight of Rick’s expression, and then the mutilated carcass of the shark. “My, good work on that…” He stopped. Her face was rictus-taut, sweating and ruddy. It wasn’t the look of overexertion in the Louisiana heat, and neither was the bone-white colour of her knuckles as she held the Warden’s Sword in an iron grip. She looked feverish. Sick. She looked like El had when they’d spoken in the mirror and he hadn’t had a drink in thirty-six hours. “Er...Miss duSang? Ada?” The glare she threw back at him was as withering as any other he’d seen, but there was something more there...a haunting look that he’d been trying to forget since their return from the alternate timeline New Orleans and their encounter with the still-living Red Court. Barely-concealed, intense hunger, aimed right at him. “Ada? Can you hear me?” Just like Bree. “...can you understand me?” “Heard you cracking jokes” came the reply through gritted teeth. “Got no idea why you think it’s loving funny.” She didn’t stop to chat as she passed by him, instead grabbing Gorden by his sleeve. “Those punks got away. We need to find them,” she said, tugging him along. “Come on.” “Whoa, whoa, hey, I’ll come along, you don’t need to drag me!” Gorden interjected. “I’ll keep an eye on them,” Rick said, standing protectively between Elbridge and Ada. “Can you take care of that one?” He nodded towards the SUV and the prisoner locked inside, who was watching all this with passive interest. “I suppose they could use an escort, but Rick - wouldn’t it be safer for us to recapture them together?” And for them, he did not have to say. Rick looked back at Ada, tilting his head slightly in unspoken question. There was a pause, and the pressure on the blade’s hilt lightened a little. It was hard to think while still so unsated, especially in the long term. But eventually she spoke. “No. They’re just panicky goons. We need answers on what that thing is and what he knows,” she said, pointing the sword at the shark’s remains and the van in turn. “Gotta be ready for their next move.” She was still using complete sentences, Elbridge noted, but that was little comfort - he himself could recite the entire alphabet backwards then count down from one-thousand by sevens while standing on one foot. He’d had lots of practise. “Ada, you’re not well. You need rest.” She shot him a look of disbelief. “Rest? Like this?” “You’re not in your right - you’re not focused,” Elbridge corrected awkwardly. “If you go as you are, you’ll put yourself and others in danger.” “El, this is nothing new.” Rick said, through his teeth. “I said I’d keep an eye on them. We can talk later if you want but those goons are getting distance on us, if they haven’t found a car already.” “...very well,” Elbridge said uneasily at last. “I’ll leave this in your hands, then.”
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Aug 25, 2019 20:56
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What Does It Feel Like? Scene: Long John Blackbeard’s Parking Lot Nothing did. The front door was locked up tight and a slow walk around the perimeter of the building didn’t reveal any signs of forced entry. It looked like the boys had at least taken Carl’s advice on avoiding the restaurant. They spent some time combing the parking lot for clues and checking the road, but there was no sign of the two missing men. However, as they circled around to the car again Gorden did spot a half dried trail of slime that led directly to the nearest sewer grate and vanished into the running water below. “Uh, Ada…” Gorden exclaimed as he pointed at the slime trail. “I think I figured out where the chestburster went…” He traced the slime trail from the car to the storm drain. “So we’ve got monsters in the sewers now? Great. Just great...” For a moment, Ada looked at the drain, and then she shook her head. “Let’s get some slime samples and get out of here. I don’t need to both take a blood bath and go swimming in sewage all in one day.” And there went her last chance at finding her prey for now. “Goddammit…” she whispered, leaning against the car for support. This unsated hunger was like an unpaid bill accruing interest. Some day it’d come due, and probably very soon. Suddenly she felt tired. So tired… “A kidnapping, a fight to the death and then stumbling upon an alien murder scene. Hell of an introduction to the wider supernatural world, isn’t it?” She muttered, after a moment, looking up to glance at Gorden. “I guess it could be worse, could be the end of the--” Gorden started before he noticed Ada looking very weak all of a sudden. He reached out a helping hand. “You alright? You looked...really dizzy for a second there.” “Withdrawal,” she murmured, resting her weight against him. “Using too much magic takes a lot out of you. I can’t cast anymore, but I still got to deal with something like that.” Something born from that, even. “You ever felt something like this?” “I…” he stammered, remembering that feeling lying on the floor of his dorm room, stardust in hand and eyes replaying the beginning of a universe. “Once, but it was more...psychosomatic. I did a lot more research to fill the time. You sure you’re alright? Need a hand up?” “Yeah, I’m fine. Just gotta go home, take a long shower and sleep this off.” He was hiding something, but she didn’t press the point further. Whatever he’d held back must have been important enough to be worth protecting, and that meant according it the respect it deserved. Instead, Ada glanced at him with a curious look in her eyes. “What’s using time magic like? The only time mage I know tries not to go to the well too much, and he’s old-school.” “What’s it like?” Gorden looked a bit caught short at the answer. On the one hand they still needed to follow the other two henchmen, Ernie and Carl’s son; on the other hand Ada looked like she could use a break. So he slid his hands over his knees and thought about it. What was it like? Strange, unusual, but almost a party trick at first. Only after much experimentation did he see the possibilities, and then...seeing the birth of a new universe...made the enormity of its implications truly sink in. “It seems like such a small thing at first, I guess,” Gorden offered. “You aren’t making fire out of thin air or, I dunno, making giant plants spring up on the football field. Compared to them you’re almost playing with particles. You need to think through just how many particles you’re playing with, what that changes on the macroscopic level. That’s not really something that comes naturally, but once you can think that way…” How to describe the incident that had bleached his hair and scarred his hand without giving Elbridge a reason to want his head cut off? “...it’s like walking into the cosmic ocean, and finding out you can breathe water.” In spite of herself, Ada couldn’t help but smile. Even through the lingering rage and hunger, it was hard not to feel taken in by the wonder in Gorden’s voice. “Amazing. I wasn’t expecting a science student to take to it so well. You haven’t talked to Rick about it yet, have you? You’d get along like a house on fire with how much you both like magic.” It was at that moment that Ada noticed she couldn’t feel his presence. “Hold that thought,” she said, as a feeling of numbing cold spread throughout her palm, beginning with the part of her palm holding the Warden’s sword. “Rick, where are you?” she called out, raising the sword closer to her mouth so he could hear...and in that moment, she realized that frost was now coating the edge of the blade. “Well, I could just pretend it didn’t happen, but that--” Gorden started, before noticing that Ada’s attention was on the sword...which was very clearly beginning to ice up. Somehow. “Ada...what…?” “It’s fine,” she said, raising the hand that still carried the obsidian knife to forestall question. “Explain in a minute.” Focusing her attention on the blade, she listened, trying to hear his voice. “Ada…?” Rick’s reply sounded distant, distracted. When she looked for him he was standing by the sewer grate, staring down through the bars into the dark water. It was an effort to stand up, but she managed slowly. “What’s wrong? You OK?” she asked, taking a step towards him. “I should follow it, right?” He didn’t move, though, not even to look at her. “No real reason I couldn’t. But there’s… a lot of water, down there.” He shivered unconsciously. His appearance was shifting subtly, to something wetter, and more haggard. Ada’s lips pursed. Rick had died trapped under ice, ice he’d woven out of the water he’d been drowning in. Maybe being close to a pocket of contained water brought back bad memories. Carefully, she raised the sword up to her mouth once again -- and this time, she breathed on it and began rubbing her fingertips on the flat of the blade, spreading the warmth. “Ada!” Rick yelped, falling flat on his rear end. Even in the moonlight the sword took on a rusty copper color. “Come on, don’t give me that look,” she said, sparing him a deadpan expression for only a moment before she resumed her work. “I don’t know if ghosts can catch a cold, but I don’t wanna gamble on it. It’s better to be safe than sorry with this kind of thing.” “I’m completely fine, thank you!” He left the grate and whatever mysteries it might have held behind and rushed back to her side. That didn’t deter Ada one bit and he buried his face in a palm. “Come on, not in front of Gorden!” Ada made a tching sound, then slapped the blade lightly. “Cut it out. You’re acting like a teenaged schoolgirl. That’s my turf,” she said, before continuing on, with a very determined look on her face. “Should I turn away for this?” Gorden offered in confusion, watching Ada polish up the sword and call someone--presumably Rick--a teenage schoolgirl. Except going by the new patina on the sword she wasn’t polishing it at all. “Why’s Rick acting like a teenage schoolgirl?” “You can throw me in the sewer now,” Rick said from between his fingers. “Sometimes even swords need a pick-me-up. He’s not used to being one just yet,” Ada said, giving the blade one last rub before raising it up for a better look. “How are you feeling? All better now?” There wasn’t a trace of frost on the blade any longer, though it had somehow gone from copper to rose-gold. Rick sighed and put his hand down. “Yeah, I guess. But… Ada, you can’t keep doing this to me. It’s too much and not enough, all at the same time. What am I supposed to do with all of this...” A surge of emotion ran through the hilt. Hungry, needy, lonely feelings, that had all been buried in a shallow grave that she’d easily dug up. It was a subtle thing. The emotionless façade disappeared, leaving Ada’s expression neutral, yet filled with profound exhaustion. “...Yeah. You’re right.” Silently, she lowered the blade, lost in thought. There was so much she wanted to say to him...but not here, with Gorden listening in. Not now. “We’re not gonna find what we’re looking for tonight,” she said, with the look of quiet contrition of someone who’d crossed an important line and regretted it, but couldn’t find a proper way to make amends. “Let’s get that sample we talked about. I think it’s time we all went home.” “Ada,” Gorden said with a bit more firmness. Magic exhaustion he might not know, but he’s been around enough nervous, stressed out undergrads to recognize when something’s wrong, even if they don’t want to talk about it. “For what it’s worth, I just want you to know that…” he swallowed. Obviously Ada was a lot more experienced, but she really didn’t look that much older. “If you need anything, I’m here for you. So just...don’t feel like you gotta take on everything yourself, okay?” A little smile pulled up the corners of Ada’s lips as she took in Gorden’s words. “It’s appreciated. Really.” It reminded her of how things used to be a year ago. Life was easy when it didn’t feel like she was on the brink of losing control at any time. So much had happened in a year…would he still make that offer if he knew about everything that had gone down since that announcement at the House of the Rising Sun so long ago? ...Maybe he should know. “Has Elbridge told you anything about how we all came together?” she asked, her green eyes studying his face attentively as she awaited his answer. “I don’t think he did,” said Gorden. “Did it involve you all meeting in a tavern?” He tried to crack a smile at that. “Something like that. It all started at a bar known as the House of the Rising Sun…” she began, but then caught herself. “...But it’s a long story, and one that deserves to be told when we’re not tired and exposed and I’m not soaked in blood from head to toe. You wanna drop by my house in a couple hours? I’ve got a fireplace we can cozy up next to while I tell the tale.” “Yeah...yeah, I think we could both use a breather,” Gorden nodded. “Then we can get after the three students.” He licked his lips in thought. “...how did you get here?” “Took a portal through the Nevernever, the fairy realm. It was a one way ticket, though -- Elbridge was the one who opened it, and him and the others are probably long gone by now. We’re gonna need a ride. Can you hotwire a car?” “Why would I know how to…?” “There’s more to people than meets the eye. You wouldn’t have thought I’d be the type to gut an sharktopus back at the pizza party, would you?” She said, giving him a wink. “If we can’t find a ride out of here on our own, I know someone who can give us a lift.” Taking out her cellphone (which was miraculously unbloodied, protected by the pocket it had been placed within), she punched in a number she kept on speed dial. It didn’t take long for the man on the other end of the line to answer. “Yo,” said Blaise. He was clearly still awake, and there was heavy music thumping in the background. “Yo. Sorry about calling so late. Can you drop by the docks with the old Camaro? The Fomor tried another kidnapping. We kicked their asses, but me and the guy they went after need a ride.” “Aight, I’ll come taxi. But this isn’t a free ride. You been out of touch for a while, Ada. If you’re just gonna call when you need something that ain’t right.” “Yeah.” Life was a whirlwind these days. Felt like she couldn’t stay with anyone for too long to keep up. But that didn’t mean she couldn’t try. “Gotta pay back love with love. You got something in mind?” Blaise took a moment to think about it and grunted an assent. “Swing by the rec center tomorrow afternoonish? Got a kid needs some sense knocked into his thick head. Figure he’s more likely to listen to you than me.” “Gotcha. I’ll be there. Oh, and Blaise?” “Yeah?” “We got two of the fish fuckers,” she said, a note of grim satisfaction in her voice. “Took one of them alive, too. Didn’t lose anybody either. When word gets out of what happened here tonight, it’s gonna make waves. It’s gonna take a while before everyone joins up with us, but we’ll get there.” For the first time since she’d sank her knife into Gruff, a little bit of relief and excitement shone in Ada’s eyes. “This is how it starts, man.” “Now that’s what I want to hear,” Blaise said, a little bit of the old gang-pride coming back into his voice. “Where you at? Half the west side is docks.” “Right outside the Long John Blackbeard’s. We’ll be waiting. Oh, and bring a towel. It got bloody and I don’t want to paint those leather seats red.”
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Sep 13, 2019 02:43
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A Guest in the House of DuSang Scene: Chateau duSang Ada’s friend had dropped them off at El Gato Negro, and Gorden had driven them to Ada’s...he wanted to say “house”, but this was not a house. Too big, too fancy, too old, too...oppressive, like someone in Hollywood wanted to make a Southern Gothic horror movie and built the set to cliche spec. Or maybe he was just jealous that even one the guest rooms (Rooms! Multiple guest rooms!) was bigger than his entire dorm room, kitchenette and bathroom included. After he’d pulled up to the front door and a valet (a valet?!) had insisted on taking his car out back, he’d escorted Ada inside and politely waited in the foyer for her return, so they could discuss the long and exhausting past she’d hinted at catching her breath at Long John Blackbeard. But after an hour another servant (how many serving staff did she have?!) had informed him that Ada was “indisposed”, and that, per instructions sent ahead by Elbridge, he couldn’t go back to his dorm for the night (for fear of watchers...okay, maybe that mental woman had other friends on campus, but still!). So now here he was sitting in a bed too big and too plush to be familiar, between faded wallpaper and tarnished brass fixtures, recounting the events of… His discovery in Lancaster’s office, the fight with the mentalist woman, ditching her in the library, driving to El Gato Negro, getting flashbanged in the parking lot, rescued at the docks, fighting for his life against his kidnappers, seeing the shark-chimera thing, figuring out how to track previous sound, finding Carl’s body, comforting Ada… ...did all of that truly happen in one night? With a heavy sigh he let himself fall back against one of the pillows. What little Ada had said in the parking lot made it sound like she and Elbridge and everyone else in this...coterie had been through this sort of things several times before. Small wonder she’d seemed so tired. He wanted to relax, but the names of the students suddenly cropped up in his head. Nguyen, Bakersfield, and Indra. They had to save them by tomorrow. If not...he shuddered involuntarily. He didn’t want to think about what would happen to them if they didn’t. And Lancaster would get away, and Shirley wouldn’t be able to follow her dreams… ...didn’t Shirley ask him to do something as well? A buzzing from Gorden’s pocket made him feel around for his cell phone. He’d missed a few calls and messages, mostly from...Scotty. “Oy, ya daft bastard!” said the last voice mail. “Pick up the drat phone! Bio’s in a right nit about their faculty offices gettin’ trashed, and yer name keeps comin’ up! What the hell happened, man?! Stop avoidin’ meh an’ pick up!” With another heavy sigh, Gorden sat up and pressed “redial.” “Gorden, ya fecking arse!” answered Scotty’s voice. “About bloody time! Where’ve ya been all evenin’, ya nutter?! I’ve been gettin’ questions left an’ right about why one o’ tha physics grad students ‘as ben sneakin’ around on enemy territoreh!” “Sorry, Scott, it’s been a...long night,” said Gorden placatingly. He wasn’t wrong, but… “What’s the Bio program saying about the higher science now?” “Now’s not the time fer jokes, Gorden!” Scotty countered. “Professor Lancaster’s been tellin’ everyone who’ll listen that yer a right bastard who tried ta blow up ‘is office over some stupid shite! I’ve denied everythin’, o’ course, and the whole Physics department vouches for ya, but the Deans are gettin’ antsy, an’ the rumor mill says CampSec has yer name on the buildin’ access list, so d’ya wanna tell me what the fook happened?” Wait, if Lancaster knew he’d been poking around in his office...oh poo poo. “Scotty, I promise you there’s a perfectly valid explanation for anything, but for now it’s going to have to wait. When you listened to Lancaster did he mention anything about a Shirley? You know, the former student with the ‘creepy boyfriend’ you mentioned the other day? This is really loving important...” “Cannae say he did. Why? Ya go pokin’ ‘round ‘er place too then?” “...what do you mean, ‘too’?” “I meant in addition ta breakin’ into the Biology department, ya daft idjit, what d’ya think I meant? Did she put ya up to it? I know how ‘tis, pretty lassie askin’ ya fer favors...” Gorden cradled his head in his hands and sighed in relief. So Lancaster hadn’t tracked back Shirley or even Sharene through him. He could take him. Them…? “I...it’s not quite like that. Scotty, I know this is going to sound weird, but you’ve gotta believe me.” Another deep breath. How to explain it in a way he would understand, without freaking him out? “You’re right, I did go to her place. And when I was there...she mentioned that she dropped out…” You’ve gotta sell, this, Gorden! If Scotty doesn’t buy this, it’s only a matter of time before Lancaster figures out who put him up to it. “She dropped out because Lancaster had been harassing her.” “...’e always did seem a mite shady, that’n. But why wouldn’t I believe ya? It’s not like handsy professors are a new development, laddie.” “Yeah, well...she freaked out at first because she thought I was working for Lancaster when I dropped by. She didn’t know anybody at Tulane had her address…” “An’ just what’re ya accusin’ me of, then?” Scotty said, a little miffed. “Maybe I watch out for all o’ ye, lower science or no.” (Rapport roll, diff 4: Davin_Valkri: 4dF +3 = (b++-) +3 = 4) “And I believe you, I believe you!” Gorden exclaimed, waving his hand placatingly despite Scotty not being there to see it. “I trust you, which is why I didn’t tell her that you gave me her address. But she was absolutely terrified of Lancaster finding her again, and can you blame her?” “Aye, aye, alright. Truth o’ the matter is I saw ‘er and ‘er boyfriend at the hospital. Back when I had that bad flu, a few months back, ye recall? I recognized the lassie, missin’ as she was from the lab, so I decided to follow ‘er home. He was in a bad way, the young man. Asked one o’ the nurses and she said ‘e was shot.” “drat...is that why you called him ‘creepy’ when I asked about Shirley? Because you’d heard he’d been shot?” “Well… did ya meet ‘im?” “He seemed nice enough.” Gorden answered noncommittally. He’s also magic and wore my face for a little while but that’s neither here nor there, he thought. “If ya say so. All I know is, all tha hairs on tha back o’ me neck stand up whenever I’m in the same room with ta man. Sixth sense, me maw called it.” “Well, Shirley feels safe around him. And it’s not like your hairs stand up around Lancaster, do they?” “‘Course they do. Why’s ‘e always smell like ladies’ handsoap? S’not right.” “I can think of a few reasons,” answered Gorden with a shudder as he imagined Lancaster’s dealings with fish people, selling them students for his own ends. He got to the slimy post deal “handshake” before he blinked and shook his head to clear the vision. “Shirley said that Lancaster might have tried to snare more students into his web. Do the names Indra, Bakersfield, and Nguyen ring a bell?” “Hm, not from tha Science department, or at least not as a group. Indra… Indra… Maybe I seen it on one o’ them playbills from Drama? Sounds familiar.” Drama?! Lancaster, you jackass, would you turn over the entire student body to these Fomors?! Gorden grit his teeth, though he knew Scotty wouldn’t see it. “Wonder what his interest is in theater kids,” he said aloud. “Scotty, I’m gonna ask you for a favor, and if you go through with it, I’ll buy you dinner for, like, a month. I think Lancaster’s up to something even worse than just harassing students, and that he’s going to be doing something at four o’clock tomorrow. Can you keep an eye on him and give me a call if he leaves the campus? Don’t, like, confront him or anything, just watch him and call me.” Scotty went uncharacteristically quiet for a moment, weighing the free lunches against the challenge being posed as any good scientist would do. Finally, he grunted. “Gorden ah’m workin’ all day tomorrow; if one o’ the samples needs tendin’... and besides that, ‘e’s already got his gander up about what ya did t’is office…” (Roll Rapport vs. +3 to convince: @Davin_Valkri: 4dF +3 = (b+b-) +3 = 3 and invoke New Age Anti-Retro Millennial for a +5 “Can’t you lean on someone in the Biology department, then? Surely somebody owes you money…?” Gorden took a deep breath, and then the words all came tumbling out. “Scott. Lancaster has already ruined Shirley’s life. She’s in hiding, and he’s back to teaching like nothing ever happened. Now I think he’s going to ruin the lives of three more students. And if he gets away with this he’ll hurt so many more of them...tell me that’s not something you’re okay with, Scotty.” “Course not, but what’s ‘e doin’ ta ‘em then? Ya aren’t givin’ me anythin’ to go on!” “I think he’s kidnapped them, Scott,” said Gorden, with an unflinching voice. “I think he’s holding them somewhere and I think he’s going to sell them to someone who will make sure they never see New Orleans again.” He wasn’t sure about the last part, but given what Elbridge had said about the Fomor in Florida...hell, it might well have been possible. “That’s what I found in his office. That’s why he’s so angry at being discovered.” “Tha’s human traffickin’, Gorden! ‘Ave ya tried callin’ tha police?” Scotty sputtered. “We’ve tried--Sharene tried, Shirley tried--and they didn’t believe them!” Gorden continued. “I’ve found...allies... who can help on my side, but on campus, you’ve seen what he can stir up. Please, Scotty, for the lives of three students, help me!” “Fine! Fine ya daft bugger, ah’ll do wha’ ah can. Jus’ promise me ya aren’t bitin’ off more than ya can chew with this! Allies, ‘e says. Who? Neighbor’ood watch? If ‘e’s as mad as you claim ‘e’ll have allies of ‘is own and weapons to boot!” “So do mine, Scotty. Good luck and stay safe.” “Keep in touch, laddie,” Scotty said. “Ah don’t want to hear anythin’ ‘appened to ya… Ya been a bit off ya’self tha past few months.” “Just...stress, I guess.” Gorden stammered in reply. “And don’t worry, I’ll be fine. See you tomorrow.” “Aye, see ya.” Gorden hung up the phone with a *beep* and threw himself backwards onto the sheets again. That was one matter done. He hoped he wouldn’t regret bring Scotty into this, but at least he had a friend on campus. And Shirley would be relieved that the man who’d given him her address had her interests at heart too. He rolled his phone in his hands, staring up at the gilded ceiling, pondering the next step.
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Sep 29, 2019 16:09
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Breakfast at Ada’s Scene: Chateau duSang Gorden woke to the gentle but insistent tapping on the door, and the Butler’s muffled voice saying, “Mister Maxwell, breakfast is being served in the dining room, if you’d care to partake?” At the sound of the knocking, Gorden rolled out of bed with a heavy *whump*, missing crushing his phone by centimeters. He had no idea when he’d fallen asleep--he’d been staring up at the ceiling in worry and must have drifted off. His phone spat a low battery warning as he lifted himself up. “Yeah, yeah...I’m comin’, just...just a minute,” he mumbled towards the door. A chance look around showed an outlet hidden behind one of the many nightstand tables in the room, so Gorden plugged in his phone, took a moment to tug down his jacket (he was still a goddamn mess from getting bundled up and thrown in the back of a van, but he doubted Ada would care), and cracked the door. “So, uh, which way to the dining room, then?” he asked the butler. --- The dining room was dominated by a massive table that could easily sit twenty-four people, perhaps more with some cramping together. Seating near the end of the table, her eyes glued to an enormous mass of papers, faded old books and medical reports was Ada. She didn’t look up as he came in, immersed in the documents as she was. What kind of parties does Ada have in here? Gorden thought as he walked down the aisle towards Ada. This table could seat everybody at the Paranet pizza party and one of his lab groups at once. Which would be one hell of a gathering… Without waiting for an invitation, he walked to the chair on Ada’s left and sat himself down. “Morning, Ada. Long night?” he greeted her. “Gorden…?” she said, blinking repeatedly as she looked up at him. There were bags underneath her eyes, and her lips pursed as she took stock of him. “...Yeah. Like you wouldn’t believe. What about you? Guest rooms alright?” “The rooms are fine!” Gorden shrugged. “Just a little weird when you’re used to a foam mattress in a dorm room, I guess. And I, uh...made a couple of calls last night. Some friends to help with our case. Looks like you’ve had the worse of it, though.” “It’s not just uni students that can pull all-nighters,” she said, offering him a sheepish smile. “Got caught up in trawling through ancient history. I didn’t feel like sleeping and I figured if I’m going to explain how this all started, I might as well catch up on the past.” Pushing the documents aside, she shook her head and stared at him once again, now more attentively. “What do you want for breakfast? Coffee? Tea? Eggs, toast, croissants...?” “Lots of coffee and whatever you suggest; I’m easy,” Gorden said without hesitation. “That’s...quite a bit of past you have there. Is that the kind of stuff you were talking about yesterday?” There was a noticeable moment of hesitation before she answered. “Sort of. It’s all connected, but not always in obvious ways. You could say one thing led to another. Take out one link in the chain, and no one knows where things might have ended up.” She remembered another conversation like that, so long ago. Suddenly, Ada perked up. “One second. Roy?” she said, raising her voice. “Tell Selene we want coffee, eggs, brownies, buttered toast and a chocolate submarine.” “Of course, Mistress Ada. To be shared between the both of you?” Roy asked, shooting Gorden a meaningful look. “One portion for me and one guest serving for him, please,” she said, shaking her head. “My stomach’s kind of rumbling.” “At once,” he said, taking a bow and departing. “So,” she said, once he was gone, leaning forward to listen attentively to Gorden’s response.. “That makes me wonder. You can look into the past, but can you look into other presents? The what-ifs and might-have-beens?” Gorden drummed his fingers against the silverware in thought at the question. “Hmmm...other presents…” The drumming became more intense, until it was an audible “tink tink tink” as the butter knife went into the teaspoon. “That’s an interesting question. I suppose it isn’t impossible, just in a generic predictive sense--” Suddenly he scrunched up his face. “--ah, crud, I just had a morbid thought.” He stopped drumming and looked Ada in the eye. “What-ifs and might-have-beens can be broad as hell, but they’re still probabilistic. There’s only a few ways to have, say, you, like I know you, except you dye your hair on a regular basis. There’s an awful lot of ways for you to be dead. Disease, accidents, sudden infections...any sort of probability continuum of Adas is gonna include a bunch of ‘here lies Ada, your birthday to date X’, just because there’s a lot of ways for that end state to happen.” He winced a bit. “Sorry, but that’s just how things break down.” “Because life’s rare to begin with and our continued survival is even more of a miracle?” she ventured. “That’s...yeah, that’s a pretty good way of putting it.” Gorden nodded. “One of my pre-med colleagues would put it more bluntly--something about all the bits of you working in every different direction, somehow producing a working human on the other side, and if one of those bits gets out of order you have shock, diabetic comas, hyper immune responses, fevers, cancers…and that’s just internal stuff; if she were going into trauma medicine you could add everything from nasty bumps to external hemorrhaging.” He shrugged his shoulders. “A little snarkier, but the same principle. Lots of ways to die, not a lot of ways to live.” “You’d be surprised,” Ada murmured, thinking back on all the paths she’d walked. From child born in the lap of luxury, to street urchin, to mindless reveler in an underground realm of endless hedonism, to gang leader, to unexpected vigilante, all the way to whatever she was becoming now, it was hard to believe she’d had the chance to experience so many possible ways to live. And there were so many others yet unexplored… ...She shook her head. Not a good way to think about it. Trying to experience everything was what had broken her to begin with. Better to leave well enough alone. “If you’d seen the group that stopped Hurricane Nicole, you wouldn’t be so sure. Remember how the city didn’t get the worst of it last year?” “I remember that. We had to lock down and board up everything we had, and I still got my room flooded. Branch or desk or something went into the window and the rain ruined the floor...wait, were you doing something then?” “Banishing the archdemon that nearly brought God’s wrath down upon New Orleans to steal away one of his angels, yeah,” she said, nodding. It felt like a distant dream that had happened eons ago. Ever since that day, life had never really stopped moving at full blast. “It all started when New Orleans got called up by the White Council for a meeting. Representatives of all its major factions and several minor ones came together at the House of the Rising Sun, a bar on Port Street just off St. Claude’s. That’s where Warden Captain Laura Bellworth broke the news that the vampires of the Red Court had been genocided.” Slowly, Ada drew a deep breath. If she closed her eyes, she could still see her on the stage, dropping one bombshell after another. “All of them dead, wiped out by the Council. And she also told us New Orleans was Council protected territory now. She also instated a Warden, and introduced him to us. His name was Richter Cole.” “Archdemons, vampires, drat, I thought it was just wizards and rear end in a top hat wizards,” Gorden murmured. His eyes widened at the name at the end. “Richter...Rick? El’s sword ghost friend Rick?” “The one and only,” Ada said, nodding gravely. “He was human then. As human as you...” ‘Or me’, she tried to say, but the words caught in her throat. “I went there with a couple friends of my own. Their names were Jenny Hirsch and Hugues Turner. Both of them are long gone now. Skipped town without a word. But that comes later. We didn’t get much of a chance to mingle or meet the new Warden that night. Not too long after introductions, two people died. One was murdered, killed seemingly by a fat ghoul looking for a quick meal. The other was executed by Bellworth for turning dozens of people into broken puppets...” And so she unfolded the tale. The trying circumstances in which they’d all met. Their investigation into the death of Pamela Nazarene. The first real conversation she’d ever had with Rick, after the battle at the church. The chain of murders, and the demons’ attacks, including Jenny’s possession and the blast of hellfire she herself had taken on the chin during the battle against the monster who’d taken control of her, and somehow survived. Her bargain with Ruby, and the lives the Deathstone had helped to save. The disastrous meeting at Diamond Skies, the pointless murder they’d committed for the sake of information, and the vampire she’d saved and who had paid her back by breaking her. Elbridge’s arrival, their discovery of the grand plan and their first encounter with Mel’karshok. The fate of Antoine Skavis, the ritual they’d conducted to raise an improvised lance against the archdemoness, and their final battle at the Superdome. The angel Zophiel’s blessing, and his confirmation that Alisa, her departed sister, was still with her. She was winding down the tale of their first adventure when Selene arrived, bringing with her a tray packed with a dozen plates, carrying what felt like enough food to feed a regiment. Though most of the portions were quickly laid down on Ada’s side of the table, she didn’t reach out to grasp any of them, instead closing her eyes. “There were six of us at the House when it all began. Six of us, and now I’m the last one standing. Everyone else is dead or gone, and I didn’t get to say goodbye to even one of them. There’s only me now. Only me…” Exhaustion crept into her voice as she mumbled the words out. In that moment, the limitless confidence that had driven her every action since Gorden had first met her had totally disappeared. Without it, she looked tiny and lost at sea. As revelation after tragedy after crisis followed out of Ada’s mouth, Gorden’s face fell lower and lower. He didn’t even register the food and coffee pot put down in front of them. As she concluded her saga (“story” seemed...insufficient), he looked at her face. Without the confidence and bravado he’d seen at the dock, he suddenly realized--gently caress, she’s younger than Sharene! In the back of his mind, he knew that he was totally unequipped to help her with her traumas. She needed an experienced counselor and a whole lot of time, and maybe a retreat to a happier place with sun and pina coladas on tap. He wasn’t licensed for the first, and too poor for the last, and his powers would give her time, but probably at the cost of obliterating her brain entirely. So he did the only thing he could think to do. He got out of his chair, walked two steps around the table corner, knelt down, and held out his hands in the universal gesture of “do you need a hug”. She’d stood up and raised her arms before her brain caught up to her instincts, and then she froze. Always chasing a new thrill. Even sadness and soreness feels nice when all you want is to feel. What if it’s wrong to take this? Everyone I pull into my web gets hurt. Maybe I should just leave him alone... He watched her prepare to hug him and then stop. Gorden looked at the expression on her face. He’d seen something like it before, in his office--not often, but enough to tell. Usually with underprivileged students or those struggling with the material. The “I don’t deserve to have nice things” look. gently caress. That. He leaned forward and wrapped his arms over her shoulders. When he did so, she squeezed back, tight. “It doesn’t end,” she whispered, breathing heavily, trying not to lose what little control she had left. “It never does. It never does!” “It’s okay, it’s allllright,” Gorden tried to reassure her, reciprocating her squeeze. “It always feels like it never ends until it does.” Somehow, that felt totally insufficient. “We only remember the past, and we think that pain defines what has to happen next.” A little better. “We can’t remember the future, so we can’t remember the end until it’s actually happened, and it becomes the past.” He closed his eyes and leaned back a bit, to let her weight fall a little more towards him. “And then we have a different future we don’t remember to look forward to.” She sniffled. “That’s the dorkiest attempt to cheer someone up I’ve ever heard,” she said, with a voice that didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. “Do you always use science facts when someone needs comforting?” “Not always,” and Gorden couldn’t help but smile just a bit at Ada’s judgement. “Did it help any?” “A bit.” She didn’t let go until several moments more had gone by. “But you haven’t heard the worst yet.” She sniffled again. “I need to eat something. If I try to tell you the story of how I broke the laws of magic on an empty stomach, I think I’ll just fall down. Food break?” Gorden felt his stomach gurgle at the mention. “Food break.”
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Sep 30, 2019 05:59
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...If You Show Me Yours Wordlessly, Ada reached out to the knife and put it back inside the pocket it’d come from. Once that was done, she motioned to take Gorden’s hand, but held back at the last second. He’s wounded. Vulnerable. Can’t touch unless I want the hunger to stir. “...Is it as dangerous for you as it is for me?” she asked, quietly. “Having broken one of the Laws, I mean. How did you end up swimming against time?” Gorden’s eyes suddenly snapped up from his injured hand, looking at Ada with the distinct wide-eyedness of a deer in the headlights. “I...who said anything about swimming against time? I didn’t...it was accidental, I wasn’t trying to…” His murmurs ended with a heavy sigh. “You told me everything, so maybe...promise not to tell El?” “I think he already suspects it,” Ada said, but nodded slowly. “If he wants the whole truth, though, he won’t get it from me.” It’d been just a hunch, but she wasn’t surprised to find out it was true. Gorden was too young and too curious to already know how to handle time magic responsibly, the way Junior did. No one’s born perfect, she thought as she waited for him to begin. We all make mistakes when we’re starting out, even if we don’t know just how much they’ll cost us. “Well, he hasn’t asked Rick to cut my head off,” Gorden noted. “I guess that’s a plus.” He took another deep breath and relaxed into his chair. “The first time I used this power...it was really trivial. I had a late night, knocked a coffee cup off a table, ended up using it to unbreak the coffee cup. Let’s just say that was the start of a really long string of late nights. I hadn’t learned anything about hexing yet, so I thought I could try to measure the effects of my magic, using, you know, high speed cameras, oscilloscopes, all those cool things. But whenever I used anything more complex than a cheapo bulb thermometer I just got...zero. Nothing. Well, a bunch blurred to heck images, shorted wires, and released magic smoke--I...might have taken the battery out of the smoke detector more than once--but they didn’t do anything to help me figure out what was going on. It was...really frustrating. Maybe it was the same for you when you first discovered your powers. Or...maybe you had someone who could help out.” “Kind of. My mother’s a practitioner too, but...” she hadn’t learned magic at her side. The learning had come at the Carnival and with Rook. She shivered violently, using the motion to shake off the memories trying to rise to the surface. “...Let’s just say I wasn’t on the nice side of town when I started practicing. The projects don’t have too many lights you can blow out when you cut loose. I learned as I went until recently. After we finished dealing with Mel and Nicole, Rick took me in for an apprenticeship. It was touch and go, but I still learned enough to protect myself from the worst downsides of blood magic.” She fell silent for a moment, thinking about his situation. “I know a time mage who might be able to help. Father of a close friend of mine. You wanna meet up with him and see if he can point you in the right direction?” Gorden nodded at the offer. “That might be helpful. Especially since, well...I really had no idea about what ‘the right direction’ was. I thought I was alone, and I wasn’t about to pipe up and say ‘hey, I can break the second law of thermodynamics like--’” he snapped his fingers to emphasize, and a portion of the tablecloth crumpled by their brief struggle over Ada’s knife straightened itself. “I’d get ejected from Tulane faster than you can say ‘fraud’. So I had to come up with some way to show that what was happening wasn’t just some Penn and Teller act, and I thought, hey, the labs have a bunch of obsolete equipment and some EM isolation foil that they aren’t using, let’s throw all of THAT at the problem and see if anything sticks. Cause, you know, it’s causing these electronics to go crazy, maybe we can protect them. Tried all day to get a publishable result, and it didn’t work. I got really frustrated and threw everything at the problem around midnight, there was a power surge from a lightning strike and…” Gorden took another deep breath, and flexed the fingers on his scarred hands. “...I ended up nowhere. And I know that sounds like I woke up in a cornfield or something, but this was literally void. Vacuum. Nothingness. There was only one other thing there, and that might have been a voice in my head that I made up because my stupid brain decided remembering video games was important when I was going to die. My arrival moved some particles, the particles made a star…” he tugged the clasp on his iron pendant free and tossed it onto the table. “...and the star brought me back here.” He sighed one more time, and looked above and through Ada. “The voice said that the void wasn’t nothing. It was ‘many things evenly distributed’. And when the many things were disturbed they made...well. I think I saw the heat death of the universe.” “Wait,” Ada interjected, eyes narrowing. “You’re saying you traveled eons forward in time? But how? I got sent back a hundred years through time and it required a solstice, a special location and an unwilling caster to act as fuel. There’s no way you could go that far all alone.” “I’d like to know myself,” Gorden offered sympathetically, “and how I got back with nothing but a burnt hand and white hair to show for it. Maybe the many worlds theory is true, and I went not forwards, but sideways, to a universe where the Big Bang...petered out. That’d make sense with what Danny was talking about. Or maybe I lost control of my powers for a second and--” he suddenly shuddered. “--aged everyone and everything into a fine hydrogen dust. I...really hope that’s not true.” “Nobody’s that good. Take it from someone who found a way to prevent a suicide by time paradox.” Ada smiled warmly, and for the first time in a while, she truly looked like herself once again. “How it happened doesn’t really matter though. What matters is how you feel. You haven’t felt tempted to start jumping through time just to solve your problems yet, have you? To set right what went wrong or find out what could?” “Uhm...I dunno about ‘what could have been’,” Gorden answered with a headscratch, “but when we were following those guys to the Long John Blackbeard’s with their long lost voices? Honestly? I wanted to try.” He looked to Ada’s side again, avoiding her eyes. “For the sake of those three students, I was willing to try. I stopped when you showed me the dead body, and I lost my focus. But between crossing the street and finding that truck, I was willing to try.” “Even if it meant treading all over every decision they’d ever make about their lives?” Ada asked, a distant look in her eyes. “I wouldn’t need to look at their whole lives,” Gorden answered, a bit more forcefully. “The relevant parts would have happened in the last few weeks. And we’re talking about an enemy that was so dangerous El’s friends were willing to poison large parts of Florida’s water to stop them. Could you live with yourself if you couldn’t say ‘yes, I did everything I could to try and protect their victims’?” Ada shook her head. “That’s not what I mean. Think about it. Imagine you found out where they were being kept, snuck in and guided them to safety. Imagine saving them from a life as servitors to the fomor. Their entire future would change, and a person’s future isn’t just a series of events that haven’t happened yet -- it’s the sum of their decisions, of the life experiences that determine who they are. Changing the future means deleting an entire person that might have been, or even many people depending on what you do”. She tapped the pocket where the knife rested. “If you had to kill them with a knife instead of a spell, could you? Could you look into their eyes?” “And then they end up like the two men at the docks,” Gorden responded. “And they also die, but even more painfully, and with more regrets behind them. Or maybe the Fomor decide they don’t need them and set them up to drown. I’m not going to automatically save their lives by holding back.” “It’s not about saving their lives,” Ada countered. “It’s about deciding you get to dictate their course beyond what anyone else could. The Laws of Magic aren’t the laws of physics. Breaking them doesn’t hollow us out like removing gravity makes things float. It breaks us because you need to want something badly to be able to do magic. What does it say about you if you want to determine a person’s future so badly time bends to make it happen?” “You say that like they’ve been ordained to turned into the Fomor’s playthings,” said Gorden through gritted teeth. “Like it’s already happened, and all we can do is make sure it does so the timey wimey ball doesn’t disintegrate. But you wouldn’t have fought to rescue me so hard if you really believed that.” “And I don’t,” Ada said, nodding in agreement. “The future isn’t set in stone. Things are supposed to go one way, but if you push hard enough, you can break that fate. Rick was supposed to die back at the Superdome, but we didn’t let it happen. Ruby was supposed to lose her family, but we found a way to save them. But when you play with time, you have to be careful. There’s an experiment about what happens when you try to determine something uncertain, isn’t it? Something about a cat in a box?” “First off,” Gorden started, his determined expression not changing with his now professorial voice. “Schroedinger’s Cat was a thought experiment intended to explain why the Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum mechanics was naive and incomplete, a statement more forcefully pushed by the EPR paradox. Second, and a lot more important, the driver of the force that might or might not kill the cat in that experiment is a radioactive decay breaking open a bottle of gas, a force that is both statistical and non-sentient. To translate it to what we’re facing now, you’d have to replace that with a light that might or might not turn on, and a man who is ordered ‘if you see the light turn on, shoot the cat’. I don’t know about you, but the way you’ve described these Fomor, they don’t sound like a statistical phenomenon, they sound like a man with a gun that you can slide tackle if the light turns on.” “You better not go on tangents like that when lecturing your students,” Ada said, pointing at him warningly. “They’re gonna end up hopelessly lost. But what I was trying to say is the future isn’t set in stone, just like the fate of Schröedinger’s cat. You can’t know what’s going to happen until you interact with it, and when you do, you make it more real. Picking out a future where the worst thing happens and reacting to it gives it more power over the present. Who’s to say your actions don’t generate an equal reaction as the thing you tried to prevent struggles to come true?” “Like what, slide tackling the man with the gun, it goes off, and the ricochet headshots the cat?” Gorden scoffed. “That just sounds like an excuse to let it happen.” “Too many analogies, not enough facing the problem,” Ada said, now dead serious. “You know what happens to those who change the past so they never could’ve existed? They get shaded. The world doesn’t recognize they’re there anymore, and they can’t even remember themselves. You can’t learn about the future while still remaining here, can’t you? You’ve got to get there. Which means that when you go back to the present and try to make things different...” “You break the time law and the information entropy goes haywire,” Gorden sighed. “El talked about that at the pizza party. And yet somehow…I just...letting Lancaster and the students and the Fomor just...ugh!” he pounded his injured hand on the table. “Freaking magic laws...Should we take the extra helpings to go? We should be getting ready for the four o’clock meet.” “Yeah. Wouldn’t want to let them go to waste. I’ll call Ruby and ask if her dad is up for giving you some pointers after we’re done with the meeting,” she said, reaching for her cell-phone. She dialed the number, but didn’t punch it in. Maybe she was already lost, but that didn’t mean he had to be. “...There’s gonna be a point where breaking the laws might be the only way to save someone. Gorden...if it comes down to that, I don’t think you should hesitate to save a life, even if there’s a price to pay. But it doesn’t have to end up like that. You don’t need to look into the future if you’re visionary enough.” Gorden nodded, but inside he thought to himself, how visionary is enough?
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Sep 30, 2019 06:05
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Back to School Scene: Tulane College Arriving via several vehicles the first thing the group notices is that there are flyers posted for the upcoming fall play, a black-box production of The Odyssey, with the tryouts taking place in the Performing Arts building at the suspicious timing of 4pm. There’s also a big notice about the women’s volleyball game later that night and the men’s football game on Sunday. Elbridge was on-site and clutching a fistful of brochures, for Tulane and a number of other universities in the tri-state area. If anyone asked, he was just looking for a good school for a favourite niece, who was either about to graduate high school or just had. One of the advantages of his visible age was that no-one would question it if he was fuzzy on the details. “And you can see the Physics building right over there,” said Gorden with a bit too much eagerness, slotting into a tour guide role to make sure Elbridge’s wizardly wanderings didn’t accidentally short out some poor group’s LAN session. “Beautiful views of the night sky, much better than the Biology building, and I’m not just saying that because…” Being on a college campus again reminded James of better times - sure, the climate was more than a touch warmer, and the sports posters were for a football team instead of hockey - but the whole college atmosphere was still similar enough. A shift in his posture from the heavy shoulders of a labourer to that of a more hopeful student standing tall, an easy grin on his face - and he looked plenty in place. He did wonder if people would think he was a visiting alumnus or a current student, though, even if he hoped it was the latter. “So this is what a university campus is like...” Ada murmured as she walked beside him, a case slung over her shoulders within which Rick’s sword lay. She’d never had the chance to get into academia, what with how busy her life had been. It was hard to believe they were looking for info on a possible case of human trafficking in such a peaceful-looking place. Covering her scars in armwraps had turned out to be a great idea, in hindsight. With them covered up, she’d had no trouble blending in with the sports crowd. “...and if your niece wants to major in more artsy specialties, we have a full humanities and audiovisual arts suite on campus,” Gorden continued, maintaining the “spiel” tone of voice. “If you want to take a look for yourself, they’ve got a bunch of theater students doing auditions for The Odyssey in a half hour; I’m sure you won’t want to miss that!” “Oh, of course not!” Elbridge said. “Always good to see children taking an interest in the classics.” Not that the classics were remotely-suited for children, in all honesty, especially not where Circe was involved. And so, the gang split up.
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Oct 27, 2019 21:07
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A Matter of Perspective Scene: Costume closet It took a little time for Gorden to find the Costume closet upstairs. Well, it wasn’t a “closet” in the usual sense. It was a large room with a wall length open closet and hundreds of costumes for everything from Romeo and Juliet to Hamilton to Phantom of the Opera to Gone With the Wind. It was in a bit of disarray, which was pretty normal for this sort of collection, and it would probably take hours to dig through all the stuff here, even if he knew what he was looking for. For the first time ever, Gorden wished he was a theater student. How many performances were kept in the dust back here, how many memories? And how was he supposed to figure out which ones were magic or not?! Elbridge had mentioned four separate items that he’d noticed had been moved from the hall he’d just been in. What had he said…? Elbridge posted:“That mannequin was wearing a mask, there are circles in the dust where two awards used to be, and Yorick’s new skull still has the price tag from the costume store.” A mask, two awards, and Yorick’s skull from Hamlet. Well, at least one of them was easy. He’d just have to figure out which of these sets of costumes corresponded with that one. Two awards...trophies or plaques would hopefully stick out from the rest of the clutter. And the mask...well, if a skull was one of the enchanted items, maybe the mask was something equally mystically significant? But the easiest one would hopefully be the skull. Gorden began to slide into the colorful array of costumes, Googling for Tulane University’s previous playbills as he went. The older the play the further back he could expect to go...he hoped. If the items were recently moved in then they’d look a lot shinier than the items that’d been here a while, Gorden reasoned. Closer to the top of the pile, less dust and fading. And if Chesterfield had been in performing arts for a while, some of them might have some really notable geometric patterns right out of Crowley… Before making the actual roll, Gorden is establishing two advantages, one with Notice +5, one with Lore (Mortal Folklore) +3. Notice +5, Lore (mortal folklore) +3. /r 4dF+5: @Davin_Valkri: 4dF+5 = (--b-)+5 = 2, ...rerolling that with a spend on Impossible Means I Get to Name It, for a +3. /r 4dF +3 @Davin_Valkri: 4dF +3 = (+bb+) +3 = 5 The last Tulane production of Hamlet was directed by one K. Chesterfield, so that checked out. It was also about three years ago, which put it pretty far back in the closet… though if the skull wasn’t with the other Hamlet things originally, would it be there now? He quickly stumbled upon a slew of dusty doublets and dresses... But there was no skull, plastic or otherwise. As far as shiny things, well, there were a lot of them. Fake jewelry, fake weapons, stuffed animals and props of every kind. Most of them looked undisturbed though there were a few medium sized boxes that had been moved recently, if the dust squares on the floor were any indication. But moved where? No sign of them. Of course she’d throw the chronology completely off to hide her tracks, Gorden thought to himself as he carefully shifted one pile of cloth from atop another pile of cloth. He could re-order the room with a wave of his hands, but he wasn’t here to clean the place up, and without harder evidence of which item precisely he wanted, getting the room tidied up was a full stop bogosort, as likely to put the items he needed in his hands as to press them neatly against the back wall hidden behind a hundred groaning shelves of props. How had El figured out which items were magic during the “tour”? There must have been some waste heat, some residual trace that had let him see where the items had been moved. And hadn’t Gorden felt just that, those months ago when he didn’t know the first thing about magic and resorted to enchanting wind-up cats and coffee mugs? How had those enchanted toys and cups felt in his hand? He wasn’t unfamiliar with the concept. He just had to figure out what Chesterfield’s magic would feel like...preferably when it wasn’t dedicated to giving him nosebleeds. He opened his grimoire, closed his eyes, tried to remember how her Escher magic had felt in his mind, wondered if she hid them in a pocket of space or a trick of perspective, and reached out… Rolling against a +9 notice challenge, rolling Notice +5: /r 4dF +5, @Davin_Valkri: 4dF +5 = (bbbb) +5 = 5, A perfectly ordinary roll, using my prior 2 CAs to get it to +9. And an FP on Magic from First Principles (as he's remembering his earliest experiments) to make it a clean success at +11 There was something he remembered about her magic besides the taste of copper. The feel of it in his mind had been like a tone of voice that brooked no argument. If it said the sky was pink then you had better agree, even if it wasn’t and never had been. Prickly, rigid, demanding of authority. The world itself didn’t change, only how you saw it, because she made you see it that way by blinding you, by rubbing your nose in it, by badgering and gaslighting until truth held no more meaning and you just nodded along. Which meant the box hadn’t been moved. Only his perception of it was distorted, his senses lying to him the same way they had in the infinite hallway. But that meant… He turned in place, and noticed right away that the large wooden door, with its red EXIT sign, was missing from the wall. “The same trick as last time?” Gorden said with a notable grimace as he looked at where the exit should have been. This had to be a good thing--she wouldn’t have set up these forced perspective traps if she’d taken her magic items off campus. He was getting closer. “I still see four lights, by the way,” he laughed as he counted the fluorescent lights in the ceiling. Changing the lights was probably too much work for her. Collapsing the wall out of spite had a certain appeal, but he didn’t come here just to flip her off again. He turned back from the blank wall and reassessed the room. Shifted perspectives cut both ways. He could see where a box should have been but wasn’t. Just like he could see where a door definitely was, but now wasn’t. But if it was just his perception of the thing that was gone, and not the thing itself, then what would happen if he let something else do the perceiving? With a sudden burst of experimental inspiration, Gorden walked to the back of the room, grabbed the oldest, dustiest, shedding-ist thing he could find, held it over where the missing box should have been, and shook aggressively. Shabby, rainbow colored feathers floated down through the air and landed on the floor where the box should have been. ...okay, he was seeing the feathers, he should have expected that. Gorden snorted and tossed the costume aside. This was a trick of perspective, Gorden reminded himself as he began to pace a circle around where the box should have been. The box and the door weren’t gone, they were just in a bit of a blind spot. One that also included its apparent effects on other objects like feathers. Weren’t there a bunch of exotic matter types that acted similarly? Neutrinos, black holes, dark matter, strings and superstrings...none of those could be directly detected, not in the same way ordinary stuff could. Okay, the jury was still out on those last two, but the point remained. He pulled out his phone and idly turned on the camera. Suppose this box and that door were all of a sudden a bunch of neutrinos, Gorden thought to himself. What changes about how they interact with the world? What doesn’t? Do they still cast a “shadow”...? This is me trying to justify getting out Science to try to overcome, or at least create an advantage to leverage against this. Rolling to Create an Advantage with Theoretical Physics gives a @Davin_Valkri: 3dF+5 = (b--)+5 = 3 +3, which I think gives a boost, right? Rolling Will to Overcome gives a @Davin_Valkri: 4dF +5 = (++b+) +5 = 8, and I want to spend the boost to make it +10! Somewhere in between the 4th and 5th page of his grimoire covered in scrawled notes about the possibility of faster-than-light detection systems he must have realized he’d gotten off track. Gorden knew, intellectually, that time was very much of the essence and that he couldn’t waste time if he wanted to get out of Chesterfield’s trick. And yet the problem before him was simply too fascinating, too tantalizing to drop. The room itself seemed to agree with him--the harsh buzz of the lights had faded and the dust kicked up by his movement no longer danced in the air. So he continued his meditations on the relationship between neutrinos and magic perspective in peace. And suddenly, somewhere on the 12th page of scribbled notes, everything snapped into place. Of course! He’d been thinking about it all wrong; this was not neutrinos, but gravitational mirages. That was how it could be corrected. How had he missed that?! Written in the scribbles it was there, in black and white. Okay, it wasn’t all there, but it was definitely a strong enough hypothesis to proceed. He looked up from his grimoire and noticed that little time had passed at all--what seemed like hours could not have been more than a few minutes. The perspective correction stared up at him, and his hurried script blurred the variables and symbols into something rather more arcane looking. Chesterfield’s magic bent perspective. But it couldn’t make the source object go away, only change where it apparently was from where it actually was. Gorden nodded at his equation, closed his eyes, and dragged his hand from where the box seemingly had been to where it had to be. His knuckles rapped against cardboard. When he opened his eyes, the box and the door were right where they should have been, obviously, as if they were never gone. Gorden smirked a bit. He got up to examine the now very visible box, and hopefully the contents inside. Rolled a +2 Notice to figure out which item is relevant; spent my last FP to turn it to a +5 The box was big enough that he’d need two hands to carry it, and it was stuffed to the brim with… well, mostly useless junk as far as he could tell. Fur hats and feather boas and old trophies. Dreamcatchers, fake jewelry and dusty purses… At the very bottom of the clutter was an old ceramic skull with a missing jaw. One of the dream catchers caught his eye as well. There was a symbol woven into it that didn’t seem to match any Native American design he knew. The trophies were anyone’s guess. None of them felt particularly more magical than the others, and there were six of them altogether, which would be impossible to stuff into his coat. He’d have to make some choices. Or attempt to abscond with the box. “drat your cluttered ways, Chesterfield!” Gorden swore, ignoring that several boxes in his own office were just this messy. The skull was obvious, and one of the dreamcatchers looked funny, but why did she keep six different trophies in this box? And more importantly, where was the mask Elbridge mentioned?! He snatched up the skull and stuffed it into his coat, then regarded the suspicious dreamcatcher. Frankly even if it wasn’t magical, her taste (and disrespect for the Chitimacha) was horrible, so he picked that up too. Then he moved for the door. It was about then that Elbridge called him on his Warden pin…
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Nov 19, 2019 00:44
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Double Or Nothing Scene: Performing Arts Building Gorden hadn’t been...successful in getting out from under Chesterfield’s nose last time, but this was a whole new independent trial. He grabbed one of the cleaner looking hats off of one of the mannequins--he could switch it back for his baseball cap soon enough--and cracked open the door to look for her, before heading back into the hall. Chesterfield wasn’t there, though there were a few other people in the hall, talking or just passing through. No one seemed overly concerned with the Costume Closet. Hey, wait a minute, Gorden thought to himself, suddenly pulling out the two dreamcatchers. Chesterfield used this to bend space in such a way that the things they were attached to couldn’t be seen. Why couldn’t he use that trick?! If she put the magic in the dreamcatchers and put them on the things she wanted to disappear, could he just...put the magic back in and blind-spot his way all the way back to Elbridge? Seemed a lot easier than peeking around every corner for her face. He’d just have to figure out how to turn them back on again. Maybe rewinding local time on them so they’d be charged with whatever Chesterfield put in them… (Gorden accepts a compel on Magic From First Principles!) Tweaking time around the objects didn’t seem to do anything, or at least not anything visible. Huh, that didn’t seem to...oh, wait! Gorden remembered. These things weren’t just hanging out in the middle of nowhere, they were on the things that got perspective shifted. He took one and hung it on the door behind him, keeping his hand on it to see if the door suddenly disappeared. It didn’t. Oh come on, did Chesterfield need to coax them personally into working, Gorden thought with a frown. Did she use bags of salty snacks like Taiwanese astronomers putting chip bags on million dollar telescopes? He wanted to get an external confirmation, but asking a passerby “hey, did that door just disappear” didn’t seem...appropriate. Maybe he could gauge their reaction some other way? He looked down the hall for someone walking in his direction, then threaded one of the dreamcatchers onto his wrist. Their reaction was immediate. “Gah!” said the student, backing against the wall with a look of utter shock on his face. “What the-” This caused several other people to look up and make similar stunned noises and expressions. They were sure seeing something. One of them pointed to a spot on the ceiling, two doors down from him. “Over there too!” That...was not the reaction Gorden was expecting. His gaze followed the pointing student to the ceiling. He wasn’t Pepper’s Ghosting up there, was he? Well, if he was he couldn’t see it. There was nothing there from his perspective. “Senior prank?” One of the school janitors asked, looking confusedly at Gorden and then the spot on the ceiling. It was Mr. Fitzgerald, who would definitely recognize him if he got a good look at Gorden’s face. A couple people had their phones out and were taking pictures now. Oh nuts, when did Mr. Fitzgerald get assigned to the performing arts buildings?! And he’d acted like he could still see him, too! This was not working at all. He pulled down his cap over his head and moved down the hall, struggling to get the dreamcatcher off on the run. There were a number of confused noises and a dozen camera clicks as he ran off, but people seemed more amused than afraid. “El, where are you?!” Gorden hissed into the pin as soon as he was in an empty area. He continued to struggle with the dreamcatcher like an angry tiny latex glove. “Dammit, why won’t this thing come off?!” “I’m headed for the chemistry building,” Elbridge replied. “Shouldn’t be too difficult to find a vacant laboratory on a Saturday. Perfect for some otherwise, ah, hazardous experiments.” “Right, I know...ngh...where that is,” Gorden answered as he pulled into the building’s foyer. “Just need...gah!...a second to...agh...cross the courtyard...” He ditched the newsie hat on one of the lamps, pulled on his baseball cap, and shoved open the exit with his hip, still wrestling in vain with the dreamcatcher. Eventually he pulled it off, then, breathing a sigh of relief, put it back under his coat and walked across the courtyard. It didn’t take long before people started to notice… something. A girl eating lunch while sitting on one of the fountain benches saw him first. She stared so hard she dropped half her sandwich. Then someone else called out, and someone laughed, and suddenly he had three times as many eyes on… something… as he had back by the closet! Most of them were pointing up in the air behind him, too. Oh for the love of...Gorden grimaced again, pulled his cap down tighter, and walked faster until he reached the chemistry building. “Have you found a place, Elbridge? I’m getting some weird looks…” *CLNK!* “Yes, find me in Room 122, please.” “Got it. Just, uh, don’t look out the window,” Gorden said as he approached the chemistry building door. Elbridge immediately looked out the window. A pair of pants ran by, attached to a pair of shoes but no visible torso. A few seconds later a torso floated by, upside down, arms pumping, with no visible head on. “Oh. Oh dear,” Elbridge mumbled. “That won’t do at all…” He waited for the head, the missing piece of the puzzle, to follow, and when it didn’t, that was when Elbridge began to grow truly-concerned. “Did you look out the window?!” “Lectures are for the classroom. Now, hurry up and get here so that we can put you back together.” “I am together! Just gimme a second, I’m at the door now.” Thankfully Chemistry had a different security scheme than the physics labs, so he didn’t need to fumble around for his ID to get in...probably how Elbridge got in too. Tempting as it was to just ditch the drat dreamcatchers, El wanted one, and he was curious too, so funny looks be damned, he was doing this live! He counted the doors to room 122 and walked on in, tossing the dreamcatchers on the nearest lab counter. As soon as the talismans left his person, Gorden’s free-floating body parts flew back together as if they’d been tethered with elastic bands. It was quite disorienting to observe from an outside perspective, but at least he was back in one piece. Elbridge wasted no time in drawing a circle around the charms, and in completing the ward on the laboratory door. No accidents, no interruptions. ...not that this ward would help with that any. The door’s latent threshold was nonexistent, and the wood must have been chemically-treated because none of Elbridge’s runes seemed willing to stay put on its surface. He pulled a sour expression at his shoddy handiwork, but there was nothing else for it. They’d just have to work swiftly. Elbridge rolls Lore: Wards to CA and get some preventative measures up before we begin: /--- +4 = 1, ick. FP on “Neither Wealth Nor Taste” to reroll work with sub-par materials: +--- +4 = 2. Botspite is real tonight. El cuts his losses at one FP and just takes the failure. Elbridge FP 5->4. Gorden gently set the skull down beside the dreamcatchers before leaning back against the counter opposite. “That was...an interesting experiment,” Gorden finally said after a moment. “Uh, what did I look like just now? I couldn’t see what everybody else was seeing.” “Much as you did before,” Elbridge said, “save that you were in three separate pieces, none of which moved with any relation to the others.” Gorden sucked in a deep breath. “Okay. That’s...not how they affect the box and the door at all; they just looked...not there, not scattered around the costume storage.” He set his grimoire on the table and flipped to his correction equation. “Had to do some mirage correction to find the real things.” “It’s uncanny,” remarked James as he slid through the opposite door, opening it as little as he had to before shutting it behind him, “Everyone out there’s talking about some separated body parts running about as if by some unseen force. Had to tell a pair of campus security guards and a trio of students that looked suspiciously like ghostbusters rejects that I’d seen them head straight through this building and out the back door. Should get everyone looking everywhere but here, at least for a bit.” “Thanks, James,” Gorden nodded. “Maybe they’re only supposed to work on boxes, not people…” Elbridge winced. “Let’s not linger, then. I expect that the refraction effect occurred from the talismans acting too close to one another, but to learn more than that...hrmph. We simply don’t have enough time-” And then he paused and looked at Gorden with one of his trademark, Elbridge-has-a-terrifying-idea looks. “...perhaps we should make this a bit of a field trip. Mr. Maxwell, you know that attempting to undo the past is rightly-forbidden, but...have you ever accelerated time?” “Hmm…” Gorden drummed his fingers on the table. “I can’t say I’ve done it…consciously? When I was still feeling out what this magic could do, time seemed to go by in a blur for me, but I could never tell whether that was the magic or the coffee. Maybe it was both?” He gave a confused shrug that said he genuinely didn’t know. “If...you want me to try it on you, I think I’m gonna need some coffee.” “We have ten minutes at best. It’ll have to be instant.” “If there isn’t a machine in the hall, I’ll eat a page out of my book.” Was going to roll CEK to help El get more actions to study the dreamcatchers, but… @Davin_Valkri: 4dF+4 = (---b)+4 = 1 Two minutes later Gorden had returned to the room with an empty paper cup. “I’ve only ever done this with a caffeine buzz...What self respecting science building has a broken coffee machine?!” He swallowed dry. “Here goes nothing…” He flipped his grimoire to another page covered in notes and focused on Elbridge’s head. Rerolling with @Davin_Valkri: 4dF+4 = (b+-b)+4 = 4 vs a difficulty of 3, which earns Elbridge one bonus action before they need to get out of dodge. “Er...perhaps we’d better not, then,” Elbridge said, hastily tucking his own flask back into his pocket. “Too late! Tell me if you feel like you’re head’s going to explode,” Gorden said with full seriousness. The last syllable of ‘explode’ dragged out into a lengthy, hollow echo as everything in the room slowed to a crawl. James turned his head and blinked at Elbridge in slow-motion. ”wellthisisafinemessyouvelandedusinbutwecansavetherecriminationsforanothertime” It took James a few more blinks, a glance down at his watch and a few seconds - to him, at any rate - to work out what was going on, but when he finally realised Elbridge had, well, super-speed, he whistled, impressed. Glancing over to Gorden, he said, "Remind me you can do this when tax season rolls around, man." “I think if I did this to a computer it’d overclock and fry,” answered Gorden. “At least El’s taking it alright. El, if you’re not taking it alright, signal, alright?” "Won't we just sound like an audio file played at some god awful slow speed to him?" questioned James as he raised an eyebrow at Gorden. Gorden glanced at James with a tweaked eyebrow. “Iiiif yooooou’re haaaaaving aaah heaaaart attaaaaack, waaaave.” Elbridge scoffed (which sounded more like a hiccup, in his present state). ”yourconcernsareappreciatedbutiknowmylimitsandasimplethresholdshouldbreakthisspell” And so Elbridge set about testing, poking, prodding, and analysing, paying careful attention to the building’s clocks. First, he moved a heavy, wheeled cabinet of glassware to the centre of the room and drew another circle around it, exhausting the lab’s supply of sodium chloride in the bargain (he marked a cell on a laminated supply manifest on the wall so that they’d know to order more). When one of the dreamcatchers was placed on the handle, the towering cabinet vanished; when Elbridge closed the circle around the empty space, it reappeared. A mental illusion, then - not an optical one. Dangerous. He made a note and moved on. The next test involved the other two, and some failed attempts at communication before Elbridge managed to slow himself down enough for them to understand. He was beginning to feel lightheaded - three of his estimated five minutes (normal time) had elapsed. There wouldn’t be time for a third test. Once Elbridge had made his meaning clear, Gorden took one of the dreamcatchers and disappeared from sight. Invisible, he moved from the front of the lab, near the door, to the back, near the window. At no point did he reappear. Elbridge motioned for him to step into the hall and stand at one end, then zipped to the other like an eggplant-patterned hummingbird. Gorden was still nowhere to be seen - either the talismans had an incredible effective range, or worked through some means as to disregard it altogether. That was worrisome. So were the spots swimming in front of his eyes and the tightness in his chest. He went back into the lab and stepped into his own circle to cut off Gorden’s spell before his heart could give out. James turned away from his spot staring out the window - they didn’t know when Chesterfield might come snooping, and he’d have felt uncomfortable not watching out for her arrival - as the rapid patter of El’s sped up footsteps finally came to an end. Raising an eyebrow, he stared at the Warden - El’s cheeks were flushed, and his chest seemed to be heaving - the man looked like he’d run a marathon. “You OK?” he asked, concerned. “A bit winded,” Elbridge confessed, conjuring a cloud of cold mist to cool himself down. “That worked well enough, but perhaps we oughtn’t make a habit of it.” “Probably a good idea, because you look like your heart’s about ready to explode,” he replied, turning back around and lowering the blind with his hand to resume his watch, “Are those things safe to move offsite, then?” “They shouldn’t be a problem, so long as they’re properly-stored,” Elbridge said. “Just don’t hang them over the dash like an air-freshener. Automobiles are dangerous enough without-” “She’s not tracking them, is she?” asked James, interrupting El’s explanation. Peering out the gap in the blinds, he could see the professor on the quad below moving with purpose, right towards the building they were hiding in, “Because she’s coming right for us.” Elbridge closed his eyes, and his glasses briefly vanished from his face, reappearing when he opened them again. “You know, I do believe that she is. Well, that tears it.” Gorden looked out the window in the same direction James looked. “Oh nuts. You want me to grab one of these and run, El? She knows me, but she still doesn’t know you two yet.” "No offense intended, Gorden," said James, "But if we were going with the 'split up and mess with her tracking' plan, you wouldn't be my choice for one of the runners, man." With a glance back to El, he added, "But I'm guessing that's not the plan, is it?" “You want me to just hide in the glassware closet, then?” “No.” Elbridge pulled up a swiveling chair and took a seat at the teacher’s desk, steepling his fingers. “I think that we’ve seen enough for now. I believe that some introductions are in order. Let’s have a talk with our Ms. Chesterfield.”
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Dec 20, 2019 02:47
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The First Lesson of Time Travel Scene: The Lytle’s safehouse Lago was still standing near the fence when Ada and Gorden approached the dark blue safehouse where Ruby’s family was currently hiding out. He tugged his plaid cabbie cap down and scowled at Ada. “Tch, y’came back. Now I owe sleeping beauty two bits. Of all the rotten luck.” “It’s not bad luck when you take a losing bet,” she replied as she knocked on the door. “Just poor life decisions.” She wanted to ask about sleeping beauty, but thought better of it. Given the person she was talking to, odds were good he’d just tell her to piss off. Emma answered the door again. “Ada! Come in, come in. And this must be…” She paused, looking at Gorden. For a moment she didn’t seem quite sure to make of him. “What happened to your hair?” she asked bluntly. Gorden considered her question for a moment before answering. “Gorden, yes. Mad science issue,” he said, which was true. If not...complete. Emma glanced at Ada. “Okay, well, Gorden… You stay right here and I’ll get my daddy. I think he wanted to talk to you outside.” She left the door open and vanished into the house, leaving Ada with her invitation, and Gorden without one. “Does she have that thing like with Shirley’s place?” Gorden whispered to Ada. “You mean a threshold?” Ada asked. “Yeah. Every house does. Call this a bit of safety protocol, you’ll come in soon enough if Junior thinks you’re on the level.” Giving him a light boop on the shoulder for good luck, she made her way in. There was no need to tell Gorden why exactly this kind of safety was needed. Not yet, anyway. --- A few minutes later a large man in a plaid shirt and canvas pants opened the door. He was maybe in his forties, a little grey in his beard and moustache, and not much hair left on his head. “Nice to meet’cha,” he said, offering a meaty hand to Gorden. “Call me Junior, everyone does.” “Okay...hi, Junior,” Gorden said as he reached forward to returned the handshake, careful not to let his hand cross the doorframe. “I’m Gorden, Ada’s friend.” He suddenly wondered what the heck “Senior” looked like. “May I come in?” “I reckon not,” he said, closing the door behind him and putting his hands into his coat pockets as he joined Gorden on the porch. “There’s four women in that house that could eat the both of us for breakfast and half of ‘em are in a foul mood. Let’s enjoy the fresh air instead, ya ken?” Distantly they could both hear someone shouting and a door being slammed somewhere in the house. Junior pulled a hand-rolled cigarette out of his pocket and lit it by snapping his fingers. “Smoke?” Gorden remembered seeing Ada angry from his rescue and shuddered involuntarily. “Yeah...yeah, I think I ken.” He took a deep breath as he turned to follow Junior, and watched the demonstration of pyrokinesis...or maybe just thermokinesis? Paper flash-fired pretty fast, after all. “I’d be a hit at parties with that...jazz cigarette or normal one?” “Jest tobacco, ain’t knowing anyone these days with better leaf.” “Eh, alright, thanks, I’ll take one.” Gorden said with a nod. Ada’s talk suggested he wanted to get on their good sides, plus it couldn’t be any worse than what the Biology department grad students could cook up. Junior reached for his pocket and produced a second cigarette, handing it to Gorden unlit. He was clearly waiting for him to handle the rest himself. “Right, thanks,” Gorden nodded as he took the cigarette. He took a moment to examine the unlit thing, wondering whether he could make the paper open up, before mentally slapping himself. Of course. He had a little miniature sun right here around his neck. Duh. He held the cigarette out horizontally and pulled his pendant out directly above. A moment’s concentration, and--he got the cigarette alight, but quickly scampered forward to stomp out the dry leaves underneath he’d accidentally ignited too. Junior watched this with a completely straight face, waiting patiently. When things seemed settled he took a long drag on the cigarette and smiled. “So, all Ada said was that you were a youngin’ out lookin’ for some advice as pertaining to time magic. Anything in particular you want to know about?” Gorden took a breath from his cigarette to fill the time, and resisted the urge to cough. He had to consider that anything he said might make its way back to El in short order, and while he was pretty sure he wouldn’t try to cut off his head if he brought up how he got his fancy pendant...why give him a reason? “...how does your particular style of time magic work?” he began, neutrally. “Oh, like anyone’s I figure,” Junior said. He tapped his cigarette against his fingers and it unburned itself, precisely to the moment it’d been lit. “Handy for small things, like fixing what’s been broke or finding out how it got that way… I don’t dabble much in the bigger workings. Suppose that’s how I got missed when Narcissus rounded us all up a while back. Only for so long o’course.” He spoke slowly and very deliberately. “If you’re runnin’ with Ada you must have met with the Council fellas by now. Good folks, mostly, but they don’t know much about time magic. Same as with the mentalists. Too risky, they say. Tar us all with that ‘black magic’ brush.” He smiled. “Could be they’re right, but it is what it is, and those of us with that sort’a gift have to find our own ways of doing things.” He nodded at the unburning cigarette, recognizing the familiar transformation. "Yeah… El's nice but it's hard to be excited about people looking for a reason to go all Highlander...what was that about Narcissus?" Gorden suddenly swallowed. "I heard some crazy time stuff went down but details haven't been... complete. Is that the flower guy? Was he in on that?" “Fancy fella who liked his own looks too much, aye. If people have been giving you guff over your powers he’s likely to blame. He used to run the Summer Court around here. Thought he could keep time in a bottle, measure out bits here and there to keep himself in power. It was upsetting the natural order of things, but only a little, up until last June. Reckon I can’t go into details on account of who else was involved, but we almost had one o’ them apocalypses over it. Them Council fellas, Hardley and Cole, and a few others, managed to piece it back together on the future end, and my family and Ada patched it in the past. Things still got a mite too close for anybody’s comfort.” “I...I see,” acknowledged Gorden, throat suddenly dry. Hardley was Elbridge, and Cole was...the sword ghost. Right. Okay. “That makes...sense?” Maybe Narcissus was a time mage, Gorden thought to himself, but going by all of that he must have been first and foremost an asshat. That would have to be reassurance enough....hey wait. “You went to the past? El went to the future? How…?” “Half-right. I’m from the past. On our end it all went down in 1929. You’d have to ask the wizard what happened on his end, though I’m told it involves time branches and when Yggdrasil starts branching off things tend to grow sideways. Hah.” He laughed a bit at his own joke. “City was ground zero for a full temporal rewrite, but some bit of it got stuck, and the bit that was supposed to replace it got dumped outside of reality. You probably slept through the whole thing, it took less than six hours on the inside, and very few the wiser.” Gorden bit down a bit on his cigarette at the mention of 1929, but caught it before he bit the filter off. “Hm. I dunno. I wasn’t sleeping a lot around that time.” He took another drag. Well, if he’d already come from 80 years ago, he probably was safe to ask. “So...let’s say, just...hypothetically, you mentioned a sort of tree of time, keeping with that metaphor...how could someone happen to go all the way to the tips of one of the branches and spring back?” Junior chuckled. “So remember, you’re allowed to go as far forward as you want. Swimming against the currents of time, that’s the taboo. Which mostly means once you go out there you’re not allowed to come back. Going all the way to the end… The tree of time isn’t exactly metaphorical, son. If you get out where the branches are thin you might snap one off and there’s nothing out there but darkness and the things that came Before. It’s not a good way to go.” He paused and gave Gorden’s necklace a bit of a look. “Course, this is all hypothetical, like you said, but I’d imagine two things. One, you’d need to be stronger than most to even try something that touched in the head. Two, if you got that far out, you probably wouldn’t make it back on your own. Far as I’m concerned, the first rule of time travel is: Don’t.” “Yeah...hypothetically,” Gorden nodded. “I mean, unless the Big Chill is true, but that’s just theoretical.” Things that came Before did not sound good...but Gaspar didn’t exactly sound bad, was he? Then again, all he’d seen when he got...that far out was “darkness” and Gaspar. He knew what “things evenly distributed throughout” was, but it sure looked pretty dark before the star came about. “So if someone, I dunno, went down into the university library and read something that sent him back to Issac Newton’s time by accident, would El be obliged to do the full Highlander thing on him?” “You don’t break the Laws of Magic by accident,” Junior said. “If you touched a cursed book and got sent back in time it wasn’t your magic that did it, so it’s not on you. If you travel through time on your own then it was because you wanted to. Magic is an expression of your will as a magician, there are no ‘accidents,’ by definition.” “Well, I didn’t plan to--” Gorden started, then thought better of it. “Well, if God is allowed to play dice, then--” he began again, before realizing that Junior was contemporary with Einstein and thus would have no idea what he was talking about. He sighed again. “These ‘things that came Before’...what are they supposed to be like?” “You’re not supposed to ask,” Junior said. “Thou shalt not open the Outer Gates, seventh law.” “I’m aware,” answered Gorden. “But there must have been someone who decided to try anyway and was arrogant enough to write everything down.” “Oh there have been, like that idiot Lovecraft. They’re theoretical entities, Gorden. The more you look at them the more real they become, the more purchase they have, the more influence, and the closer they get to turning out the stars. Reality is… anathema to the unreal. They’ve been trying to stomp it out since the big bang. Knowing about Outsiders is dangerous, naming them is reckless, and trying to buy power from them is downright foolhardy. Course, the game they’re playing is on the scale of eons, they’re… they’re like entropy. They won’t be satisfied till everything is dust.” “Lovecraft didn’t know the first thing about mathematics,” Gorden stated affirmatively, as if that explained everything. “If his stuff is about Outsiders, then normal people use Outsider magic every time they use a GPS...or just...freaking navigate between two points on the planet. And if they’re like entropy--” Gorden repeated Junior’s demonstration with a bit of cigarette ash, but suddenly choked on the smoke coming out of his lungs. “Hack...cough...well, you know what I mean. If they want everything to be dust, we could...undust it.” Junior stared at him for a long moment. “I’m startin’ to think that telling you how things work is a mite irresponsible.” “I think I annoyed Elbridge too,” Gorden acknowledged sheepishly. “If this is about the Lovecraft thing...well, one, he was super racist, and two, a lot of things he wrote about scaring him could be...really mundane. Like, oooh, that thing is so scary he’s ‘non-Euclidian’! He thinks in terms of geometry that’s not a flat plane! Like...the planet Earth! Going from here to Los Angeles requires thinking about the Earth as a ball, and that’s scaaaaary.” He punctuated the last word with a bit of in-air jazz hands, spreading the reconstituted cigarette ash over the ground. “I believe you and Elbridge when you say Outsiders are dangerous, but I wouldn’t believe Lovecraft about it, that’s all.” Junior sighed. “It doesn’t matter if anything he wrote was true, it’s the fact that he published the Names of a bunch of nasty critters and now any fool can open up a door to let one of them run around causing chaos. And really that’s about all I know- or want to know- on that subject.” “He actually named--” Gorden started. “Ugh. Moron.” He would have left it at that, but… Forces have been set in motion. A new possibility has arisen. And I can realize that possibility. The Outsiders wanted everything to be done and dusted, right? ...you have facilitated the formation of something. And that will allow the formation of more things. That...did not sound like an Outsider talking. “...there isn’t something like an Anti-Outsider, is there?” “Never heard of one,” Junior said, shrugging. He was starting to sound annoyed. “You want to talk about something I know something about?” “Sorry, sorry!” said Gorden, waving his arms in apology. “I’m just...thinking about a lot of things right now.” His experience with time magic was centered solely on himself. Narcissus was a jerk. Junior, though, had other magical people to consult for his training. “How does your family like your…” he waved at the cigarette in Junior’s hand. “...talents?” “Just fine I suppose? It ain’t like I gotta hide it from ‘em. But my skills came down through my mother, and such. Always been a part of the Lytle clan.” “And how do other wizards see the Lytles?” Gorden continued. “The first time I met another wizard and told him what I could do, he wasn’t the most...enthusiastic about it.” “You ain’t a wizard,” Junior corrected. “Wizard is a title, means you’re part of the White Council of wizards. If you’re talking about magical folks- human ones- in general then use practitioner. People like us tend to avoid the wizards to stay on the safe side, but other practitioners don’t usually see time magic as anything more or less special than what they can do themselves.” He smirked. “Honestly we’re a bigger threat to ourselves than others most of the time. Fire mage messes up he can cause a heap of trouble for everyone. Time mage messes up, well, no one remembers he ever existed.” “Well, there’s one particular Wizard I can’t avoid now,” Gorden answered, mentally filing away the correct lexicon. “Is it just time travel to the past, or are there other ways for a time mage to ‘mess up’? You aren’t going to disappear in front of me if you restore that cigarette enough, are you?” “Naw, little things like this ain’t going to hurt ya,” he thought that was amusing. “Maybe if you tried to restore a whole tobacco field. You’re only limited by your strength of will. That said, using a lot of magic at once can exhaust you to the point where you can’t defend yourself… And using all of your magic, every last bit, will kill you. Which makes it very dangerous to put a practitioner in a corner he knows he can’t get out of.” “Like...what, turning everyone threatening him into little babies?” “Hmm… Usually more like aging everything in a twenty foot circle to dust, though really it’s whatever strikes your fancy in your last moments on earth. There’s been songs and stories written about some of the more poetic death curses.” “It’s not possible to use a sudden burst of power like that to save yourself? Do you need to spray blood everywhere into a transmutation circle or something?” Gorden scratched his head. “What the… No it’s not possible to save yourself with a death curse!” Junior just stared openly at him. “Are you even listening to a word I’m saying? If you use up all your magic at once, you die. It’s like burning down the whole tree instead of taking a branch or two for firewood. There’s no time for it to grow back. It’s commiting soul-suicide in return for enough power to make a miracle. Whatever miracle you like, but that’s the end for you.” “I kinda went into this stuff blind, alright?!” Gorden suddenly shouted. Then he suddenly grimaced and squeezed his cigarette, the lit end rapidly consuming itself. “Sorry, sorry, I...that was rude. I shouldn’t have done that. I’ll ask Ada for more of the details. Let’s just...time magic. Let’s get back to time magic. I...there’s so much research on LITERALLY EVERYTHING ELSE but when it came to what I could do, I had to just keep playing with some broken toys and lab equipment that didn’t work. And there’s a whole subset of it that El goes ‘if you do this we kill you’ and ‘if you gently caress up you’ll disappear’ and…” he sighed again, much more heavily. “...why does this power exist?” Junior let out a long, weary sigh. “You didn’t grow up with it, did you? For me it’s like breathing. I could do things, small things, from when I was young. My mama taught me what to do and what not to before I was strong enough to do myself any lasting harm. Same as using a knife, or a hunting rifle. Magic is a tool, not a toy, and such-like...” He paused a moment, deep in thought. “What’s it for? Why does it exist? Well, it’s something that’s always existed, long before any of us. Magic’s as much a part of the world as the rain. Might as well ask why that happens. If you mean why time magic, well, I don’t know that neither, but I wonder if you’re frustrated because people keep telling you what you can’t do instead of what you can.” “I grew up thinking ‘magic’ was that toy star field projector I got for my 5th birthday,” answered Gorden. “When I first discovered it, I thought this was something everybody figured out on their own. Nobody’d believe me if I said I could do stuff like unbreak a cup. And then someone came into my life, and through a long chain of people Elbridge came in and he came in with all these extra things…” He sighed again. “What did your mom teach you?” “I think the first thing was how to un-spill milk,” Junior said thoughtfully. “But it sounds like you’ve had time to figure that much out on your own. Hm. Before we get to any lessons, I think we need to discuss payment. Knowledge isn’t free, you know.” “I’m a grad student. I don’t have much money,” Gorden grimaced. “Good thing I don’t need your money then.” The older man stood a little straighter. “Seeing as how I happen to find myself a bit… behind the times nowadays, I’d propose a trade. An hour of magic lessons for an hour of… modern lessons. Then we can both sound just as foolish to the other and it’ll all be square.” “Sounds good to me too,” said Gorden. He switched the hand of his cigarette, now burnt down to the filter, and held it out. Junior took it and shook it hard. His hands were rough, he’d clearly been the working outdoors type his whole life. “So, before we get started, tell me what’s the most difficult thing you’ve managed to do is so I have a baseline for where you’re at now, then I can think up some kind of exercises...”
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Jan 6, 2020 03:07
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Three S’s Scene: Gorden’s Office at Tulane It felt like forever since Gorden had sat in his cheap chair with his old desk and obsolete computer. How much the world had grown since. Thinking as he once did--that he was alone on campus with his power--was something laughable now. Tulane, too, was filled with magic. And all of the troubles that came with it. He thought of Lancaster and Chesterfield, and grimaced. Grading papers like nothing was wrong, not a mile from their seats of power, seemed...insufficient. Maybe that was why his red pen had been in the same spot on this lab report for the last fifteen minutes. Or maybe he just needed a decent night of sleep. He set down his pen, got up, and stretched. How could Elbridge, or Ada, or Nick, or Sharene, or anybody who’d known magic for far longer do this? Someone knocked on the door. “Grk!” Mid stretch, the sudden sound shook him from his reverie--and sent his hand smashing into the stack of papers on his desk. He leapt up to grab them and promptly splayed over his workspace, his back soon buried under a thin layer of papers like snow. “...come in,” he grunted. Sharene’s face peeked in through the door. Her hair was still damp from the shower. “Uh, Mr Maxwell? Is this a bad time?” “No, no!” Gorden answered in panic, bolting upright and sending the papers flying behind him. “It’s good, I can...clean those up later. Uh, so, about your...problems, I’ve been doing some investigations, called in some outside help, and I think we’ve figured out who and how, but…” he trailed off and sighed again. “...but what?” Sharene closed the door behind herself and stood awkwardly against it. “He’s connected,” continued Gorden. “And not just to weird groups off campus--there are actual full on magicians on campus, and he’s tied to them too, and they’re tied to even more people, and...this mess is huge!” Sharene hunched her shoulders and looked down at her shoes. “S-sorry, I should have just asked Mom to tell Mr. Hardley but… He’s kind of...” She fumbled, trying to find the right word. “Scary? Busy? Old?” Gorden offered. “Yeah,” Sharene agreed, head still down. “I didn’t really want to tell Mom there were problems on campus, you know? She works so hard to help me pay for school.” “Yeah,” Gorden assented. “Look, I’m not, you know...mad or anything that you came to me. I’m just...surprised at what we’ve found, that’s all. If it were just Lancaster, that’d be one thing, but…well, even after all of that, I’m glad you came to me. How’ve you been doing? Has Chesterfield called you up lately?” Sharene shook her head and finally looked up at him. “No, not since she patted me on the shoulder this morning, which I guess was how I got bugged. Is it… gone? I scrubbed everything but I don’t know how to check.” “I have...no idea how to check either,” Gorden admitted, looking at the ear Elbridge had indicated before. “Do you, uh, feel tingly there? Do you want me to call Mr. Hardley?” “No, it’s fine. It doesn’t feel like anything,” she said, pinching her earlobe. “Um, so… what’s going to happen now? Mr. Hardley said she was a dangerous warlock and that’s… really bad right? Did he… Is he going to...” “Even if she wasn’t a warlock she’s a danger to her students,” said Gorden, flatly. “But...if he was gonna...do the thing...he had a chance and he didn’t take it.” He shrugged. “So unless she does something even more stupid…” Sharene’s eyebrows went up. “So what, he gave her a slap on the wrist and said don’t do it again? Is that really good enough?” “Yeah, I hear your frustration, but…” Gorden brushed back a lock of hair. He wasn’t sure if he believed it himself, but… “Remember how I said she has friends off campus? I think he wants to make sure they’re caught too. She can’t talk if he...you know, right?” “Sorry if that doesn’t make me feel any safer.” She crossed her arms. “This is a lot bigger than I thought it was. Maybe I should get April to quit Drama...” “Trust me, I understand how you feel completely,” answered Gorden with a nod. “The whole world’s bigger than I thought it was. But...I dunno about asking April to leave Drama. Doesn’t she live on campus? It’s not like Chesterfield couldn’t just pop by her dorm.” Compelling New Age Anti-Retro Millennial, because this isn’t what Sharene needs to hear. “Ohmygod you’re right!” Sharene said. “I should get her to drop out!” Gorden’s eyes widened involuntarily. “Wait, no! That’s not what I meant at all! I...crud.” He nearly put his head on one of the piles of paper on his desk, but caught himself at the last moment. “I just meant...Chesterfield panicking and dragging the entire campus into her schemes is the last thing we need.” He took a deep breath. “Please don’t ask April to drop out. I don’t want another one of your friends to be mad at me.” “I don’t care who she gets mad at, I want to keep her safe!” Sharene shouted. “Is Professor Chesterfield a danger to her students or not, Mr. Maxwell?” Just then the door burst open, knocking Sharene off balance. She tripped over a pile of books and landed butt-first on a scientific model which went crunch. “Gordon!” Scotty said, announcing his presence before even shutting the door. “Where the hell have you been laddie?! What about the kidnappin’! Did ye stop et?” Sharene blinked up at him from the mess on the floor. “Hey!” “Ah… er, sorry lass.” He scooted inside and tried to offer her a hand up but she slapped it away and continued crunching on the books and what was left of the model as she pulled herself up off the floor. Sharene rounded on Gorden. “Kidnapping? What kidnapping? Was there a kidnapping?!” “She’s--” Gorden started before the door slammed in and he suddenly stood up. “Scotty! I--can’t you--” He felt his jaw slip open again as Scotty talked about what he’d heard--rather, what he’d TOLD Scotty--and Sharene started panicking even worse. “No, there wasn’t! We…” From what he’d heard, Ada had been instrumental in that part. He exhaled heavily. “We think she got spooked and called it off.” He remembered what Chesterfield had said in their chemistry lab confrontation, about the student who she had basically poisoned to shake off a fairy paramour. “I can’t guarantee she won’t try again, though.” Another deep breath, another heavy sigh, a grimace. “And...I think she sees her students as tools, Sharene.” The student with the fairy matched that, as did what he’d heard about her conduct during the audition. “Means to an end. So maybe not actively dangerous, maybe something else.” “So get her fired! You don’t need to kill her to keep her away from the students!” Sharene pushed past Scotty and opened the door. “Thanks for trying I guess,” she said, and then she was gone before he could respond. “That could've gone a mite better, I take et?” Scotty asked, looking genuinely sorry about his part in the mess. “So, no kidnappin’ then? That’s good news at least. Though what’s all this about killin’ folks and tryin’ again? What exactly have ye stumbled into, Gorden?” Gorden was too stunned by Sharene’s...entirely justified reaction to answer for a moment. Hell, were their positions reversed, he’d have acted exactly like she did. He stared at his closed office door for a few moments longer before stammering “...yeah. Yeah, that could’ve gone better.” Gorden winced visibly before trying to compose himself. How much did Scotty already know about the magic world? “I’ve stumbled into something...kinda big.” He racked his brain for a neutral test. “Uh, have you heard anything about an eco disaster in Florida? A spill in the ocean or something?” “What’s Florida got tae do with anythin’?” Scotty asked, staring at him like he’d grown an extra head. “Start makin’ sense or I’m goin’ tae the police.” How did Ada and Junior and Elbridge live their entire lives doing this, Gorden suddenly thought to himself. Maybe they just dealt with people who already understood magic. “I think Chesterfield has contacts with groups outside of campus, and those groups have people outside of New Orleans. Including Florida.” “And they’re what, eco-terrorists? Are those a real thing?” Scotty asked. “Something like that…?” Gorden answered, the question mark entering the end in spite of himself. “...Much of this is secondhand. I barely know myself.” At that moment Gorden’s cell phone rang. Shirley’s name loomed ominously over the number on the screen. “Oh…” Gorden wanted to say “poo poo”, but Sharene was sure he’d lost control, and he didn’t want Scotty to start believing that too. “Sorry, I have to take this, it’s important,” he stammered, standing up and pushing away from his desk, past piles of papers and Scott, to the door. He brought the cell phone to his ear as he swung the door open. “...Hi, Shirley.” Shirley’s voice had an impatient ring that she wasn’t bothering to hide. “Hi Gorden, just wondering when you were going to follow up, y’know, like you said you would…” “That had better be yer mother on her deathbed!” Scotty called irritably from behind him. Gorden slammed the mute button just in time before Scotty started yelling through the door. “It’s actually pretty darn close!” he called back. Then he switched off the mute and brought the phone up. “Yeah, sorry, I...got tied up.” It wasn’t wrong… “Lancaster has friends, both on campus and off. This stuff goes deep.” He took a deep breath. “We were hoping to pin one of them down yesterday, but...she’s callous and unethical as hell, but Elbridge couldn’t get her on anything, like…” he dropped his voice. “...magic-illegal.” “Uh-huh. What about him? You know, Lancaster?” “El said he was feeding something in his backyard with a ton of raw hamburger, in a shed with, like, sigils out of Fullmetal Alchemist painted in blood. We were trying to leverage his more magical roommate to figure out what he was doing. Hey, did you see Professor Chesterfield when you were still on campus?” “The drama teacher?” She sounded skeptical. “Yeah, she…” he lowered his voice again. “She has perspective magic. You ever seen an Escher painting? She makes your brain do that stuff for real. Did she ever take an interest in you?” “No, I don’t think I ever said more than two words to her. I was STEM…” Shirley said, sounding concerned. “Are you okay? You didn’t get stuck on an endless staircase did you?” “Infinite hallway, but I got out,” Gorden answered. “Huh. Maybe they cover their own sides of the university...Anyway, the point is, she had a kidnapping plot too, but we managed to foil it, at least for one day. I...wish I had better news.” “Er… well that’s better than not foiling it I guess? What about the guy who was snooping around Danny’s house?” “When’s the funeral, Gorden? I wouldn’t want tae miss it!” Scotty yelled through the door. “Still looking, sorry,” Gorden admitted, before muting the phone and yelling “It’s not a funeral! This is serious!” through the door at Scotty. Then he switched the mute off and continued to talk. “I understand your pain and you have every right to be disappointed, but I swear, I’m doing everything I can, Elbridge is doing everything he can, we’ve got friends doing everything they can to help you.” “I guess…” She paused for a moment. “Are you okay, Gorden? You sound like you're really stressed out.” “I’m a grad student, when are we not stressed out?” Gorden countered. “But, for real, we’re working on it, so you just stay safe and you’ll be back on campus as soon as we can make it.” “Okay.” She was quiet for a moment. “Hey, do you want to come over? I think Brian is making teriyaki tonight, we should have extra.” “...that might actually help, yeah,” Gorden said without thinking. “I think I need to get off campus for a bit.” “Yeah, see you then.” “See you,” said Gorden, waiting for the beep at the other end. Then he turned back to the door and cracked it open to look Scotty in the eye. Scotty glared at him. “How many years have we been watchin’ each other’s backs, Gorden?” “...since I’ve been here…” Gorden admitted. “Aye, so what’s got you twisted up so tight you won’t be honest with me?” He sounded more worried than angry, though he was definitely that too. “This has been goin’ on fer longer than a few days. Ye’ve been hidin’ something for weeks, or did ya think I couldn’t tell? What’s so damned secret?” gently caress, was he that obvious? Gorden thought. Of course he was. He was a researcher, a collaborator, first and foremost. The idea of keeping something close to the chest had been...alien before that night with the broken mug. Junior and Ada were right. They all had support networks to explain their magics, to make it a part of their world. Gorden had had long nights alone with busted toys, and then tomes of occasionally questionable provenance. He needed another friend on campus. He needed… “I...can’t really explain it,” he started. “But I know someone who can. That was Shirley on the phone just now. She invited me to dinner. You free tonight?” “Shirley, the student who dropped out? What’s she got to do with-” He paused and held up both hands. “Fine, Gorden. But this is yer last chance. If things don’t make sense by dessert, you’ve lost me. And maybe even if they do. I hafta think of the other students, you know?” “I know,” answered Gorden. “I do too.”
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Mar 16, 2020 03:19
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Another Awkward Free Dinner Scene: Danny’s House It was only after Gorden pulled up to Danny’s antiques shop cum Shirley’s safehouse that he’d realized he’d never actually told Scotty about when to meet for dinner. Judging by the second car pulled up by the lit up “Antiques, Appraisal and Disposal of” sign, though, he was already there--and of course he knew where Shirley was staying. He had given him the address. He mentally tripped over the last fact as he stepped out of his car, and that nearly caused him to trip on the curb. He’d given him her address. He knew about Danny, if only as a “creepy boyfriend”. And all the times over the months when he’d been taking the old lab equipment...he had to have known about that. Had Scotty been clued in to the magic stuff the whole time? Did he know about the wizards, Fomor...everything? And if he had…then he wouldn’t have had to dance around what Lancaster and Chesterfield were doing. He wouldn’t have had to wear his trust down to the bone. If he was still in his car he’d have head-desked his face into the horn. As it was he tapped his forehead with his scarred hand as he looked up and saw Scotty sitting in his car, looking impatiently between his watch and the front door. He looked up towards the door again, saw him, and rolled down the window. “Gorden, where’ve ya been, ya lunatic!” he shouted, loud enough for the sound to carry all the way up the street. “Leavin’ me here wi’ Shirley’s creepy tae gently caress boyfriend!” “Hi Scotty, and he’s not creepy, okay, I’ve met him,” answered Gorden quickly, in a hushed tone. “And tonight I hope you’re gonna meet him too.” “Ah, that’s just great, yer in some kinda poly relationship now?! Is that yer big secret?!” “He’s not my boyfriend!” Shirley yelled from the front door. She looked incensed. “And who the hell are you?!” “We’re not in a poly--!” Gorden spluttered simultaneously. “Argh! I was hoping for a more...controlled first meeting. Shirley, this is Scotty, my--” colleague, supervisor, laboratory chief would all fit, but he turned to Scotty with a smirk. “--my lab lackey, from Tulane. Scotty, say hi to Shirley.” Shirley stared at Gorden as if he’d grown an extra head. “And you thought… that it’d be a good idea to bring a plus one to my home without asking me?” “I…” started Gorden, before realizing that, no, he hadn’t called her back about inviting Scotty like he’d planned. He turned to Scotty, said “could you wait here a sec?” and jogged over to whispering range by Shirley. “Okay, I know he’s a little bit rude, but I trust him, okay?” he whisper-pleaded. “And if I can’t talk to somebody on campus about wizards and warlocks and magic and poo poo, one, I’m going to go mad, and two, I’ll be a lot less effective at getting Lancaster and Chesterfield nailed, okay? I’ve had to try to have Scotty watch for them on campus while dancing around what they’ve been up to and it makes it really hard to explain things. So can’t we just...you know...clue him in?” “Yes I’ll just wave my magic wand and- oh wait I don’t have one, YOU do.” She poked him in the chest. “Just unwrinkle some papers at him! It’s not that hard.” “If I do that and just ramble about Fomor and laws of magic at him he’ll think I’m crazy,” answered Gorden. “And I barely learned about that stuff, I never grew up with it, I’m not immersed enough to explain it to someone else! You are, Danny is, heck, if Elbridge were here he’d be perfect...” Shirley sighed, touching her temple with her fingers. “Look, is this a stray kitten situation? Every time you come back here it’s with more of your friends, looking for a free meal? Cuz I didn’t sign up for that.” “Scotty’s a lot of things, but he’s gainfully employed,” Gorden offered, “and he’s one of the few people on campus I’d trust with my life. I hope one day under...better...circumstances he can show that to you, too. Please, Shirley, help me help you help us both here…” Need a Rapport roll of +5 to get Scotty in the house. Gorden has Rapport +3, roll is @Davin_Valkri: 4dF +3 = (-bb+) +3 = 3. Invoke +2 on New Age Anti-Retro Millenial because (1) they're roughly the same age and (2) Gorden's appealing to a sort of fraternity of Tulane weirdos. A tie is good enough for me, but it puts “Being Watched” on Scotty. “I didn’t mean literally with the-” She facepalmed. “Just don’t expect me to do this for you more than once. Pay attention so you can handle it next time. It’s not like I grew up with any of this stuff either! I’m the normal one.” “We don’t use that word in this house!” Danny called from behind her. “Are ye done with the hostage negotiations yet, Gorden?!” Scotty yelled through cupped hands. “Christ on a crutch, I’ve had budget meetins go shorter than this!” “Uh, yeah, yeah, you’re good, Scotty! Come on in!” Gorden called back, before giving an apologetic smile to Shirley and Danny. “About bloody time…” Scotty muttered as he walked up to the doorway. “Well, yer Shirley, and who’s yer not-boyfriend back there, then, eh?” “The guy who owns the house,” Danny grumbled from his chair. “That’s Danny, Brian is in the kitchen.” Shirley gave Gorden an extremely displeased look. “You can come in,” she said. Her eyes flicked to Scotty. “I’m watching you.” “Just...give him a chance, that’s all I’m asking,” said Gorden apologetically as he crossed the threshold, half expecting another face-slam into the floor. “Uh--” “Ya got an interestin’ style here, Danny-boy,” said Scotty with what seemed to be genuine appreciation as he stepped through the doorway without incident. “Reminds me o’ more than a few houses back in the old country.” “No poo poo, you got any demon summoners in the family?” “Mah sister’s in-laws are a right batch o’ demons, do they count?” Shirley nodded to herself, seeming satisfied. “Good. He’s normal.” “Hey, we don’t use that word,” Brian said, walking into the living room. He was a tall, gaunt man with slightly thinning hair and a bright pink ‘Kiss the Chef’ apron on over his clothes. He moved to Danny’s side and offered a hand up to him. “Dinner is served, love.” “Good, let’s get to it.” Danny staggered up out of the chair with Brian’s help and managed to walk almost unassisted. “That’s rich, ye think I’m normal!” Scotty laughed as he followed them to the dinner table. “Not that kind of normal,” Gorden mumbled under his breath as he unconsciously moved to a position to catch Danny if he slipped. ---- “I’m tellin’ ya, kids these days run on nothin’ but coffee if ya let ‘em,” Scotty was saying between bites. “More than once I’ve had ta tell this kid, hey, Gorden, Christ almighty, lab’s closed fer an hour, go eat somethin’ before ya end up being somethin’ ta study, instead a’ doin’ the studyin’!” Gorden nearly choked on a sip of black coffee. This had been a terrible idea. Why hadn’t he just put his phone on speaker and left it in his pocket? “Sounds like Danny,” said Brian, nudging his partner on the shoulder and laughing. “You’d think he had a coffee pot instead of a stomach, that’s all that’s ever in it.” “You forgot the Red Vines,” Shirley said. “I swear I shoulda bought stock in those things the amount of times I’ve had to pick them up at the store.” Danny looked across the table at Gorden with solidarity at being the brunt of all the teasing. “That’s probably how his hair turned all white, too,” Scotty continued with a casual wave. “Cause it sure wasn’t like that when ya came to Tulane ta start! Compensatin’ fer all the coffee an’ late nights in yer--” “I’m glad you’re getting along now,” Gorden interjected quickly. “Thanks for the teriyaki, Danny, Brian, Shirley.” “Don’t try ta change the subject, Gorden!” Scotty snapped back, suddenly a lot more focused. “It started before that, but ever since yer hair got bleached you’ve been even worse about keepin’ secrets an’ actin’ funny about it! And now it’s escalated inta breakin’ inta offices and makin’ me watch fer human traffickin’ on campus?! And what’s this I hear about ya projectin’ yer head on the clouds? Yer sayin’ Shirley can help ya explain? Well, here she is! What the hell’s been goin’ on, Gorden?!” Shirley gave Gorden a questioning eyebrow. One that said: ‘Are you sure about this?’ I’m really out of options, Gorden mouthed back as he sighed and leaned back in his seat. “Scotty, don’t laugh at this, this is a serious question. How much do you know about magic?” “Like what, Penn and Teller makin’ ‘emselves look like morons?” “Er, not quite,” Gorden said. He took one more sip of coffee to make sure it was sufficiently cooled, gave a nervous, apologetic smile to the hosts...then tossed what was left in the cup to Scotty. “Ack! Gorden!” Scotty spluttered, taking a napkin to his shirt. “Have ye lost yer--” And with a wave of his hand, Gorden recalled the coffee back to his cup. He watched Scotty carefully as he drank down the rest of it, looking for any sort of reaction. And nearly choking on something else that had gone back into the cup--was that dust or cat hair? “Gorden,” Scotty said, his tone an absolute deadpan. “I figured somethin’s been up with ya. Something’s been up with ya an’ the whole drat city these past few months. Why didn’ ya trust me about it? I didn’ think it was--” “Sometimes it’s hardest to tell those closest to us the truth,” Brian said, giving a light sigh. “Why don’t we discuss all this further over drinks, hm?” “You just want an excuse to bust out Grandma’s stash,” Danny grumbled. Brian didn’t deny this and disappeared downstairs to fetch a bottle of something that would be very expensive if in fact it had ever seen a market. “NOW we’re gettin’ somewhere!” Scotty clapped his hands at the offer. “Gorden, we’re gonna drink scotch for the rest o’ the night, and yer gonna get everythin’ off yer chest, right here, right now!” Gorden quietly spat the dust back into the coffee cup and nodded. “Yeah. Some of this will only make sense if you’re drunk.”
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May 25, 2020 04:44
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Tech Support Location: James’ Apartment James woke up feeling as though he'd been a few rounds in the ring with someone bigger than he was, and his arm - even after Carl's shady doctor had given him an anti-venom - still felt stiff and sore. He'd been so worn out from what had seemed like the Sunday from hell that he'd even let himself sleep in, but the sun shining through the half-closed curtains was too much to ignore, and after a quick glance at the alarm clock on his bedside table, he resigned himself to waking up - it was seven-thirty, after all. After a shower and a quick breakfast - which at least made him feel alive again - he slumped down at his desk. Frisk's phone sat where he'd left it the night before, submerged in a bag of rice. It was probably a dead end after sitting in the swamp for a while, but he'd be remiss if he didn't at least try. Or at least he would have, had his phone - he’d had to pull his sim card from his smartphone and use a spare burner as a backup - not taken that exact moment to chime to indicate he’d received a text. With a sigh, he pushed the bag of rice to the back of his desk and grabbed his phone. Thinking about questioning the big guy we took in during the kidnapping today. Found anything about him yet? -A In all the business with Frisk, that he’d agreed to try and track down the man’s name had entirely slipped his mind. And, of course, with Drouillard out of action, he couldn’t just get his photo and prints run through Missing Persons, either. Instead, he grabbed his laptop and booted it up. Official databases were out of the question - he’d have had to go out to a coffee shop or somewhere else with a lack of cameras and open WiFi and hack in to run the photo - but social media was the next best thing, thankfully. He flicked through the photos he’d taken of the man after he’d taken him to the motel and then uploaded the best one. (James, Hacking: -+++ +3 = +5) The algorithm wasn’t perfect, but it did narrow things down considerably… and eventually struck gold. It was a memorialized facebook page for one Jacob Manning, with a heartfelt post from his brother Lucas saying that he’d been missing for a full year now and they had no choice but to hope and pray and move on. He didn’t look a lot different from the man James had fought in the parking lot, other than the teeth. The odd thing though… from the pictures posted James was almost certain that he was, or had been, a chaplain for the Army. There wasn’t anything else to go off of though, and his contacts were locked. James grabbed his phone and fired off a text with a link to the memorial page to Ada, along with a second text that read 'Brother might be an angle?'. Knowing who the guy was should be enough for the initial interrogation - if he needed to, he could dig more later. Shutting the laptop off, he pushed it aside - he had more important things to deal with for the moment, like Frisk's phone. He pulled the bag of rice forward again. Carefully, he pulled the battered, dirty phone from the rice and set it down on his desk. Cell phones weren't made to last and so, while they were focal points for most people's lives, they didn't manage to build up much of an imprint before they were discarded - but after what Frisk had presumably been through, James thought he might get lucky and find something. Taking a deep breath, he centered himself and opened his mind, drawing on his own meagre magical abilities as he rested his fingertips upon the phone. (James, Psychometry: /-// +3 = +2) To no real surprise, after who knows how long it had been sitting in the swamp, there wasn’t much of anything - just vague senses of emotion radiating out from the device. A strong sense of fear, of the purest terror - not entirely surprising, given the man had been kidnapped - and just a hint of something more… of desperation, and of guile. Well, it wasn’t a dead end, then. James’ guess? Frisk had left something on the phone - a message, a photograph, a recording, something and then tossed the thing before he’d been turned to stone. He glanced over at his toolbox sitting to one side - he could take the thing apart, try and see if the memory card was intact and usable… but if it wasn’t, he’d have lost the trail and ruined the evidence. He tapped his fingers on the desk, deep in thought, pondering the predicament - there had to be another solution. Hadn’t that Gorden kid they’d had to rescue been able to fix things with his magic? That was worth a try. He flipped open his laptop and pulled up the Tulane website - before long he’d found Gorden’s entry in the directory, complete with a picture with black hair, rather than the white hair James had seen him with. A little curious, but then, the kid was in college. Thankfully, though, the entry had a contact number, rather than just an email. James grabbed his cell off the desk and dialed it. In a dorm room in Tulane University, Gordon had finally reached the end of how long coffee and leftover adrenaline from being kidnapped and trying to sting two professors could keep him awake, and was face down on a pillow when he heard his cell phone ring. Without getting up, he felt along the nightstand and pressed the call button, answering with a muffled “Grrdn Mswl speekn” into the pillow. He glanced at the caller ID and rolled over. “Oh, hey James. What’s up? If this is about a party at the CIA I’ll have to take a pass on that…” Had he ever actually given James his number? If he’d gone out of his way to look him up and call directly, then… “...this is about something actually important, isn’t it.” James rolled his eyes at Gorden's half-asleep comment about a CIA party - there were so many things wrong with it that, were he not calling for a good reason, he'd make a point to correct just so someone didn't drag the poor kid into something dangerous… again. "No, no party," he replied, "And I think it's important? I've got a piece of tech, severely water damaged - I was wondering if your particular talents would be able to restore it to working order enough to pull anything useful off it?" “Hmm…” Gorden pulled himself upright in bed, working over the problem in his head. “I think drying it out shouldn’t be too hard. Restoring the data would be...well, one of the Computer Science majors could talk about it in more detail, but I’d say if I can get it back to a readable condition, you’d better have something to copy it to, because it’s probably going to be a one shot deal. Where you at? I’m gonna come down. I’ll bring a backup hard drive, but see if you can put a hair dryer or something on it if you can. I’ve seen some Chem and Bio peeps do that when they get their phones wet. This is speculative, but I think the less…’work’ I do on it, the fewer bits I’ll scramble beyond readability.” "I left it in a bag of dried rice overnight, it's as dry as it's going to get," he replied - he didn't bother to explain why, because he assumed Gorden would know the trick, "As for copying it onto something, I can bring a laptop. I'm still at my apartment. I can text you the address if you're on your cell, but I can just as easily bring it down to your office if that's more convenient?" “Oh, right, you’re not El, you can use a computer,” Gorden chuckled. “Nah, I need a break from my office. I’ve been playing catch-up there for all the people I’ve left hanging for the past couple of days. Shoot me the address and I’ll be right over.” "Don't remind me about the old man and technology, I'm down a smartphone thanks to him," replied James with a sigh, "I'll see you soon, Gorden." Hanging up, he texted Gorden his address and set the phone down before heading to get dressed. --- James' address led to a second floor condo in a nice enough neighborhood - not quite gated community nice, but still decent. His parking spot was empty - he'd not yet retrieved his car from the docks. Gorden craned his head around as he drove through the blocks of condos. Not as fancy as Danny’s antiques shop, obviously, but still more than anything Gorden could afford on his stipend, and probably for some time after. He pulled up to the spot designated for James’ address, beside a rather large Lexus that was presumably for his downstairs neighbor, stepped out with a sense of purpose, and made sure his uncombed hair and tossed-on jacket were marginally presentable in the side view mirror. Then he marched up to James’ condo door and knocked. James opened the door already dressed ready for work - business casual, with slacks and a shirt. With a nod, he said, "Welcome, you can come in, Gorden." Not that bachelor pads he'd been living in for but a few months built up much of a threshold, mind, but it was still courtesy. Stepping aside, he let Gorden in. The place was well furnished enough, with everything new or nearly new, but most of it didn't really look lived in. Beyond just being tidy, most of it looked unused. Of the main living area, only a desk against the wall showed real signs of habitation - an open laptop, a trash can with some shredded remains of some papers, a small tool box waiting nearby. Even the walls were bare - the only personal items that adorned them were a pair of crossed hockey sticks and framed jerseys. “Thanks,” nodded Gorden as he stepped over the jamb with the slightest twinge of anticipation. Of course it had only happened once, and this time he was invited, but still. He looked around at the...borderline sterile environment. At least James was a hockey fan; that was the only bit of actual decor around. He took a moment to consider his own dorm room--much smaller, but much more lived in, with posters on the walls and tchotchkes on the window, even discounting the mess on the floor and kitchenette. “So who are you rooting for this season? Oh, and where’s this wet piece of hardware you mentioned?” "Wilds, same as every season. What can I say, as much as I might have left it behind, I'm still a Minnesota lad at heart," James replied with a grin as he swung the door shut behind Gorden. Heading over to the desk, he nodded at the mostly-dry-but-still-dirty cell phone. "Here. It's been sitting in a swamp for a while, so most of the internals are gone and any psychic imprint has been mostly washed away. Reckon you can bring it back to life long enough to get any clues?" “In a s--” Gorden spluttered as he looked at the phone. “Define ‘swamp’. And ‘a while.’” He gingerly picked up the phone by one corner, as if James had said he’d recovered it from the sewer. “I thought you’d just dropped it in a toilet or something, geez.” He sat down at the desk, set his grimoire on the side, and gently centered the cell phone before him. “You got, like, one of those makeup brushes here? Or a watercolor brush, or a bunch of cotton swabs. Like I said on the phone, the more I can get off normally, the less I have to do with--” he motioned towards the grimoire. “--and all the bit scrambling that would imply.” "Dirty, full of water, reachable by airboat. Y'know, the usual for New Orleans. As for how long… not sure exactly but about two weeks if I had to guess," replied James. Walking over, he popped open the tool box - it looked full of all manner of tools for tinkering with electronics - pulled out a brush and a bag of cotton swabs and set them down in front of Gorden. "I didn't want to start taking it apart unless I really had to, because I'm not sure if the memory will be intact." “If it’s been in a swamp that long, we probably have to take it apart,” replied Gorden, swabbing out the headphone port and grimacing in disgust. “Memory and maybe the SIM card if it’s still in there are the only essential parts. Everything else you can get replacements for or just skip. Especially someone like you, CIA guy.” He brushed, wiped, and swabbed the entire exterior of the phone, still flinching at the dirt coming off. “Yeah, hand me a spudger, I’m gonna need to brush the contacts out first.” "I was afraid it would come to this," James replied, handing Gorden the tool once he'd retrieved it from the toolbox. "As for phone parts, you don't need a shady black market contact for something like that, man - the internet's just a few clicks away. And I'm not a spook anymore, either - Uncle Sam objected when I tried to say magic existed." “Yeah, I know how that feels,” Gorden acknowledged as he popped the case like a...well, not quite an expert, but someone who’d been asked to help replace a friend’s shattered screen a few times. “I just thought given...you know, breaking it open would have been the first thing you did.” "Nah, first thing I tried was my own magic, but it didn't get much." James leaned on the desk, "Anyway, I thought your magic could restore stuff good as new? Or is it one of those technology-magic interactions that fries the thing in the process?" “It’s not really ‘restoring’, more like…disentangling?” Gorden thought about it midway through a swiff of the brush. How to explain it to a spy-type? “Imagine people sent coded messages to each other by writing them with Scrabble tiles, putting them in a bag, and sending the bag over. There’s a lot of ways for those letter tiles to be in a mess in the bag. There’s fewer ways to have them out on a table. And even fewer ways for them to be arranged coherently.” He gingerly lifted up the phone slightly to point at the underside. “This case can be broken plenty of different ways, but only put together one way. And since it’s pretty homogenous, it’s easy to see how it can be restored one way.” Then he pointed to the motherboard. “This part? Much more complex. Lots of ways for it to be broken, yeah, but also lots of ways to be restored badly and corrupted. And equally as many ways to be restored wrong. Numbers transposed, text turned to gibberish.” He set the phone down. “Something alive would be even worse…” he mumbled, before looking back up at James. “Almost done getting out everything I can beforehand. Then I think I can break out the grimoire. That make sense? Whatever happens after that, that’s gonna be it.” "I think I get the gist of it, yeah. The more complex the object, the harder it is to put back together correctly and in the same state, right? Add more parts and it amplifies the challenge, which means a phone must be a nightmare, especially since everything's so small, too," replied James, "Not sure about the Scrabble tile thing, though. Might work if you're just passing yes or no." “Yep, you got it,” Gorden nodded. “The Scrabble thing was just an example about how you can ‘restore’ a message and still get it wrong--a message like ‘wet rain’ could be put back together as ‘train, ew!’” He shrugged. “Or, you know. Something more spycrafty.” He flipped open the grimoire to a page that must have looked to James like random scribbles. “And this part...is going to take some time and focus. But I’ll give you everything I’ve got.” Gorden bent forward, pulled the grimoire closer, and leaned over the memory on the exposed motherboard. He looked again over the principles he’d derived while he traced the circuit lines. Of course he’d worked with systems of structures before with his powers, but mostly mechanical ones of springs and wheels--a digital system was novel, and a fascinating test for the predictive power of chrono-entropo-kinetic theory, which right now only existed as marginalia but would hopefully someday be a full thesis paper. Of course the fact that he only had one sample meant that he had to be careful, and El’s experience had been plenty about the horror stories of magic interacting with technology. But was that a function of the magic in and of itself, or of El being an old fogey who hadn’t grown up with cell phones and the internet? This cell phone would provide a crucial data point...one way or the other. Rolling to overcome with chrono-entropo-kinesis, /r 4dF+4 gives a roll of (b+b-)+4 = 4, I actually kinda want to go Success with style, so I'll use the free invoke on Magic from First Principles (or spend an FP if that's not valid), and invoke The Time Lord Most Curious (as this is the first time Gorden has tried to use CEK on something this complex) and Impossible Means I Get to Name It (since he's talked up how he's only got one shot on this). That means spending 2 FP to make it a +10. Gorden was happily in his own little world, writing down additional notes in his grimoire and giving contented “hm”s as he touched each microchip in turn. Someone observing from the outside might have seen slightly more...cataclysmic decay happening to the desk and wall before suddenly reverting back to normal, but he paid no mind with each gentle tilt and touch on the cellphone. Finally he snapped the casing back together and pressed the power button...and heard the phone beep back to life, factory fresh. “Got it!” he exclaimed to James. James watched intently from the side, ready to boot his laptop if they needed to pull any files in a hurry. It wasn't often he got to watch serious magic, and it always fascinated him. The occasional ripple of decay and repair was starting to worry him, but Gorden seemed not to be bothered about it, so he'd have to tolerate it, at least for the moment. And then, after all the prodding, suddenly Gorden had a working phone. Even by magical standards, it was strange and inexplicable. “That was fun! Maybe I should try it when my friends have computer crashes,” Gorden said nonchalantly, as if he hadn’t pulled off a miracle. “I know one guy who still has an Apple II for some reason…” --- As James picked up the phone, which was by some miracle unlocked, he noticed the camera app was open, and there was a recording in progress. “Don’t look at me, I just turned it on,” Gordon said defensively. “Must’ve been the last thing whoever dropped the phone was doing.” "Means he was smart, he was trying to leave a trail, a clue, so people could track him down," replied James, "Though I doubt he expected us to be the people doing it." After sticking the phone in aeroplane mode, just to be safe, he hit play on the recording. The video feed was black, and the audio was slightly muffled, as though it were recording from inside of a pocket. “...long did you expect me to wait?” A woman’s voice, angry, mid-sentence. “Had to make sure I wasn’t followed.” A male voice, calm, professional. “This one is too high profile to make mistakes with. Wouldn’t bury him out here if I was you.” “I’m not stupid,” the woman said. “He’s going somewhere no one’s going to find him.” There was a splash and the audio suddenly cleared up. For a moment it was just the sound of an outboard motor getting further away, then a different male voice spoke up, one that James recognized right away. “You’re not getting away with this, Jane,” said Ben Frisk. “I got people, they’ll be looking for me.” She laughed. “Not at the carnival, they won’t. Now get up and walk.” Mud squelched, close by and then distantly as they left the phone behind. An airboat started up and then that too faded into nothing, and the recording went quiet. It was about an hour longer but nothing else was on it except the sounds of the swamp at night. "Well, poo poo," exclaimed James, finally breaking the silence that had fallen over them. "It means he's not there with the rest of them." He opened his laptop, booting it as he retrieved a cable for the phone. With a glance at Gorden, he said, "Thanks for your help, you've given us a trail to follow. The smart thing to do would be to forget you heard that - this is some dangerous business, and if people knew you'd heard it, you'd have a target on your back." He shrugged, "I mean no offense, mind." “Eh, I already have one,” Gorden shrugged. “Got kidnapped, remember?” "Ah, but this is a different bunch of bad guys," replied James. “Oh,” said Gorden. “How many bunches of bad guys can there be?” He asked that question in a way that said “a lot, right?”. "Too many, man. It's like a jungle out there, and we humans are the prey," replied James in a tone that suggested he'd said it more than a few times before. "Still, cheers for the assist." “No problem,” nodded Gorden. “Call me if anything else breaks.” --- Once Gorden had left, James dialed Elbridge's office. He got through to the Warden's answering machine, which wasn't much of a surprise - if Ada was questioning the prisoner today, El would no doubt be there, too. The message he left was cryptic, but he knew the old Wizard would understand, "It's Ivarson, we need to talk. That prize piece you were looking for? It isn't with the rest of the collection, I'm afraid."
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Jun 13, 2020 21:21
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Are You In? Scene: Tulane College, After Lunch Not long after Gorden had departed James’ apartment, his phone rang again. “Hey Gorden,” said Ada. “Do you have a minute to meet up with me? There’s something big I need to talk to you about.” Her voice was calm, but there was a hint of tension underneath the surface that suggested it was urgent. Gorden had just stepped out of his car when his phone buzzed in his pocket. “Hey, Ada,” he said around a mouth half full of burger. Even he could see that there was something intense in her voice, even though she was talking really nicely. “You got a place already or you coming over?” “Where are you at?” “Just got out of my car at Tulane, but I wouldn’t mind going for another day trip.” “Stick around. I’ll be right there. You know somewhere private we can talk at?” “Erm…” Gorden’s own dorm room was just that--a place in a crowded building with not very thick walls. And he had to assume that being in a faculty only area wasn’t a defense-- Chesterfield or Lancaster could step in at any time. Still, there had to be some options… “There’s a couple of rooms in the physics labs they use for sensitive equipment. Pretty soundproof. That private enough?” “Yeah. See you there in fifteen.” “See ya there.” --- The door to the lab room opened with a quiet click and Ada came inside, her eyes scanning the place for signs of eavesdropping. When she saw there was no one but Gorden around, she relaxed...but only a little bit. “Sorry about setting this up so suddenly,” she said, after making sure the door was tightly shut. “Things have been even crazier than they usually are today. How are you holding up?” “Surprisingly alright,” answered Gorden with a shrug. “I helped James with some, uh, tech support before I got back. Got it working. How are you feeling?” Tired. Worried. Not sure how to solve half the problems on my plate. She had even more answers than those, but instead she shook her head. “Better than before. More clearheaded.” She bit her lip, pondering how to broker the subject. “I was thinking. Back at the pizza party, you said you wanted to make a difference if you could. Now that you’ve seen the kinds of dangers that brings first-hand, do you still feel the same way?” Gorden considered, and nodded. “I’ve still got friends in the middle of this,” he answered. A small smile lit Ada’s face. “That’s good to hear. I’ve got a meeting planned between my gang and other people I know I can count on. We’re gonna sit down and decide how to get back at the Fomor for everything they’ve done, and try to work out how to create a power bloc for humans that makes monsters like them reconsider trying to snatch our loved ones up. I figured if we’re gonna do this, we need all kinds of voices there. And you’re a good candidate for representing the people who are new to this, who don’t just think we have to be cautious and not rock the boat because this is how things have always been. What do you think about it?” Gordon listened carefully and nodded along as he heard Ada’s proposal. “The way you’re talking it sounds like a group that doesn’t include El,” he observed, noting the emphasis on the last statement. Then he smiled. “Well, count me in. I still owe the Fomor for hurting Shirley and Sharene. And, you know, for getting bundled up.” He cocked his head as he considered what “all kinds of voices” meant. “So, you, me, Danny, the people at the Paranet meeting...who else did you have in mind?” “Not them yet. And Elbridge already said he’d be there,” Ada corrected him. “What I want to do is change the face of how supernatural entities operate in New Orleans forever, and they’re not gonna like it. Showing up at that meeting means being willing to fight, and take risks, and probably get hurt to make things better -- and that’s why not everyone’s been invited yet. Danny and the others are trustworthy, but they’re risk-averse. They won’t commit to this until they see it’s not just a fool’s errand.” She approached the window and threw it open, thinking about how to explain why she’d set her sights on him and not them. “This is about a call to arms. No one’s willing to go to war if they don’t think they’re going to win, you know? Which is why nobody’s done this before. Either they didn’t have the courage to try, or the skills to succeed, or the right people to accompany them. Before we have a movement, we’ll need to have a vanguard, doing things that seem impossible to everyone else to inspire them to dream bigger.” She looked back at him, and it was like she was staring not at the man before her, but the man he could become some day. “That’s why I want you to be there. I’ve swam against the currents of time before. I know how to spot a man who makes the impossible possible when I see him.” “You want a victory for everybody to rally round,” observed Gorden, “and you’re hoping pushing out the Fomor will be that victory.” He nodded again, but this time he got up and closed the window behind Ada with a jocular whisper of “Thought you said you wanted privacy.” He turned back to her and shrugged out his shoulders. “I’m thrilled by your vote of confidence, but most of the stuff I did at the docks and for James was just a lot of math.” He bit his lip and looked away for a moment. Well, she’d said it already. “...the one time I went backwards in time...I’m pretty sure that was an accident.” She leaned back against the window. “...You traveled back in time too?” She asked, surprised. “Well, it was forward in time first,” Gordon admitted with another shrug. “This was months before I met you and El and James and Danny and everybody, when I was pulling my hair out trying to recreate what I was doing all by myself. I had a ton of old lab equipment I was playing with, and then something happened, and…” He took a deep breath and remembered the feeling of vacuum that stole the air from his lungs. “Do you know what the ‘heat death of the universe’ is? I’m pretty sure it was that.” “No. What is it?” “Okay,” Gorden’s voice shifted into “teaching mode” as he produced his grimoire. “You know my magic works with entropy, right? Goes backwards, stuff gets more orderly, goes forward, stuff gets more chaotic. Time has a direction, and it’s defined by entropy going forward, increasing.” He shook his grimoire, and several of the dog ears rustled disconcertingly. “Imagine I put this thing in a paper shredder, and I kept doing it to the shreds again and again and again. Eventually there wouldn’t be anything left but a fine fiber snow. Nothing you’d even call paper, nevermind anything readable.” He took another deep breath, and sighed heavily. “Now imagine that happening to the entire universe. A state of absolute maximum entropy, with nothing left to increase it. You wouldn’t be able to see it, because all the reactions that made light stopped long ago. You wouldn’t be able to breathe in it, because all the air decomposed into its component quarks already. Imagine a universe consisting of absolutely nothing but a thin, evenly distributed particle soup, stretching out in every direction, at least as far as directions would even exist then, forever.” “...So the kind of world that outsiders want, then.” There was a very serious look in Ada’s face. “There wouldn’t even be the memory of the universe’s existence at that point, would there?” “Anything capable of creating memory would have died and disintegrated long before that,” Gorden answered. “Unless you think our universe is the attenuating echo of a place where entropy is perfectly reversible, and that place spawned a ton of other universes just like ours flying off everywhere, some of which have the exact opposite direction for time...but that's speculative. The point is, completely by accident, I’d reached the absolute end of a universe...and I met someone there.” “The guy waiting to close the door on the universe?” She guessed. “Well, it was a guy...I think…” Gorden scrunched his expression. “No, that’s not the right way to think about it. I just think he’s a ‘guy’ cause in my head, there was this old video game where the ‘end of time’ is a cobblestone square with a streetlight and a sleepy old man, so I associate it with a guy’s name. ‘Gaspar.’ But he wasn’t a guy and he wasn’t closing the door on anything. In fact…” He fingered his pendant a little bit with his scarred hand. “He said that my arrival had made the evenly distributed particle soup a bit less evenly distributed. Enough for stuff to actually begin moving again. The stuff I disturbed got closer and closer, and then they made a star, and that’s how I got these…” With his pendant hand he motioned towards his white hair. “And I ended up back here.” “So you gave the universe a new lease on life.” There was a brief moment of silence as Ada considered his words. “Doesn’t that mean you broke entropy then?” “I helped create a star in a universe,” Gorden clarified. “Might’ve just shifted from our universe to one where the Big Bang fizzled out early. Which...still sounds kinda godlike. And it took a lot of power to do it.” He presented the pendant for Ada to examine, inviting her to touch it. “This thing? The core is stellar iron. It’s the stuff that’s created at the absolute end of a star’s life. Remember, I saw a star being born, so whatever force put me back here, it took every last bit of energy fusing this bit of iron from hydrogen would have created. A notable fraction of the output a star would produce over billions of years. That is...a LOT of energy.” Ada nodded. “Enough that if you got your hands on that much energy in the present day, you could do just about anything. And you don’t think you did that yourself, do you?” “There’s no chance in hell I did that myself.” “Which means Gaspar wasn’t just the entity at the end of time. He was the wizard at the end of time. And he cast a spell to send you back home, using all the energy he could find at the end of time...why?” “I don’t know. For all I know I was just a side effect, a bit of otherwise wasted energy being used to send off the disturbance while the rest of the universe formed or reformed elsewhere.” Gorden shrugged again. “But, hey, if you need an inspirational story to rally people, now you have one. Things can still happen even after the heat death of the universe.” He gave a confused, hollow smile. Ada broke into a laugh. “It’s probably gonna confuse them too much to make sense in the heat of the moment,” she said, still grinning. “But you’re right. The very fact you’re here is a miracle. Going forward shouldn’t have happened. Coming back shouldn’t even have been a one in a million chance. And yet, you’re still here, with all the knowledge your trip to the end of time gave you. Now it’s my turn to make a miracle happen, but I can’t do it alone. And...” ...And then her eyes went wide. “...And I think you just gave me an idea. If you ran into a pocket of entropy and stillness today, here, could you jumble it up like you did in the future? Could you break it again?” “Uh...sure, but what exactly are you thinking of?” Gorden looked at her in confusion. “I’m guessing this isn’t literally the end of the world.” “No, but it’s about the people working towards it. The Fomor want to throw open the gates that keep the creatures from beyond the world from coming in and returning it to the nothingness that existed before time. That sounds a lot like entropy if you ask me. So maybe the Fomor’s endgame is total entropy, millions of years ahead of schedule. Maybe the outsiders’ powers rely on bringing entropy into the world. And if you can break entropy in the time and place where it’s at its strongest…” The light in Ada’s eyes shone so brightly it almost seemed like an actual visible glow. This felt just like her conversation with the Lytles back in the old New Orleans of 1929. There was something here, something big. Maybe Gorden had stumbled upon a weapon they could use to protect the world from its worst enemies. “I’m....not sure but I’m definitely willing to try!” Gorden said confidently. “It’s gonna be a ton of work but I’ll give you everything I can.” That part was true, but something was strange about the Fomor and their Outsiders’ view of time, at least as Ada had described it. Perhaps it was just magic working differently, but...wouldn’t returning to “the nothingness before time” mean running the clock backwards to before the Big Bang? Not an increase in entropy, but a massive decrease, enough to use the resulting potential to completely rewrite the universe? He looked at the stars in Ada’s eyes and decided that was a line of thought best considered another time. “I better not keep you from it any longer,” Ada said, nodding in agreement. “Science waits for no one. If you need any help setting up an experiment, or testing out how trying to repeat the feat might work in the present day, just let me know, alright? I can’t wait to see what you find out.” “I’ll do that,” replied Gorden. “I can’t wait to see what I find out either!” But was he going to have to get himself kidnapped again to test that, or was there another way to talk to a Fomor?
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Jun 13, 2020 21:46
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Tracking Data Scene: Danny’s Place Shirley handed a big bowl of pretzels to Zia and sat down at the long kitchen table, which had been turned into a study-session-slash-warroom. The map that Elbridge had given to Gorden was just an everyday road map, which meant figuring out what the locations the Servitor had emerged from the water at had in common, among other things. “Sorry we’re dragging you back into this,” Gorden said sheepishly as he re-read the rough draft abstract of Shirley’s notes. He’d made a bunch of copies of the map as soon as he could, and now they were scattered around the table, highlights connecting experimental networks on each like a conspirator’s red string. “But I don’t think anybody else in the Biology department would know what we’re looking for.” He scratched his head absently as he crumpled up another copy of the map. “Maybe I need some of those pretzels…” Notice roll to try to find something in the maps themselves… @Davin_Valkri: 4dF +5 = (-+--) +5 = 3...welp! “There’s plenty to go around,” Shirley said, puzzling over the map. “And don’t be sorry, you’re giving me a chance to hit back at the jerks that took my life from me. I should be thanking you.” “Oh, that’s good,” Gorden said between pretzel bites. “I was never any good at fluid dynamics anyway. Good thing that’s what your thesis was all about, I guess.” “So let’s look at this rationally,” Shirley said. “We’ve got like, a dozen and a half spots altogether. Most of them are in clusters of two or three… All over the city.” “Hmm…” Zia pointed to the edge of Lake Pontchartrain. “She went to these three a couple of times, so maybe they’re more important? What’s here?” Gorden examined the points Zia pointed out, scratching his head. “Wait, I remember this…” He pulled out a transparency of a map related to Hurricane Katrina reconstruction and overlaid it, aligning along the shore of Lake Pontchartrain. “Yeah, they’re pumping stations. Hmm...that’s, uh…come to think of it, I’d bet they’d really liked it if the city was flooded again, wouldn’t they?” “Yeah, I bet they would,” Shirley said, frowning. “But breaking the pumps wouldn’t do anything by itself. There’d need to be a big storm to cause the flooding in the first place, right?” “To hear Elbridge talk about it, wouldn’t surprise me if they could summon one up,” Gorden noted with more head scratches. “These other places mean anything to you? Just supply raids for people they’ve kidnapped or something more...hydrology related?” “More pumping stations,” Zia said. “Most of the city’s under sea level, so…” Shirley nodded. “Yeah, they’re all over the city. Basically you only hear about them when they get overwhelmed which has been… well, it’s been happening a lot since Katrina but the city won’t spend the money to install new ones. Frisk was campaigning on finally doing something about it, but I guess he’s dropping out.” “Well, now we know where she’s been and what they have in common,” noted Gorden. “Could be monitoring, could be active sabotage...but then why would Chesterfield and Lancaster want to play along? All their poo poo would be underwater too.” “Who says they know about this?” Zia asked, tilting her head. “I mean, they have to be privy to more information than we are, since, you know…” Gorden nodded towards Shirley semi-inconspicuously. “We just had this map and we’re actively working against them, and we still figured it out. You don’t get tenure at Tulane...or, uh, cover up your heinous magical crimes...by being dumb.” He looked at the map again, and remembered that Elbridge had to get it by treating one of the Fomor like a whale and feeding her a tracker. “Though maybe that means there’s a lot...less cooperation between them and the Fomor than I thought. Something to wring out of Chesterfield, I guess.” He looks at the map one more time, picking up a compass and setting one leg to draw a curve near the clusters near Lake Pontchartrain. “How fast do these guys swim, you think?” “Fast,” Zia said. “Not speedboat fast, but I dunno, dolphin fast? Pretty fast.” “Okay,” affirmed Gorden. “So maybe the reason these ones on the shore of the lake got hit multiple times is because she could hit all three really fast, maybe in one night. These further away ones--” he indicated the other, more scattered dots. “--she might have had to swim more, maybe half the night there and half the night back.” He checked the scale on the map and reset the compass to the cluster of pumping stations on the lake shore. “So ‘dolphin speed’ would be...and if we draw this line out…drat, it’s been forever since I’ve done pure geometry...” Attempting to triangulate and narrow down the possibilities of where the Fomor base might be using math, which in this case is Science!… @Davin_Valkri: 4dF+3 = (bb+b)+3 = 4 “HERE!” Gorden shouted, jabbing a spot...square in the middle of Lake Pontchartrain. “Wait, shoot, it could...also be here.” More sheepishly he pointed at its mirror on shore. “Trouble with pure math is that you always gotta check your boundaries…” Shirley looked at where he was pointing and frowned. “So how much do you know about what the fish-heads have been doing to the lake?” she asked. “Uh, not a lot of...direct experience with that part,” Gorden admitted. “From what the people said about Miami way back when, probably nothing good.” “Well, I don’t know what was going on in Florida, the Atlantic is out of my wheelhouse. My studies have all been on brackish water. Deltas, river mouths, estuaries- like the ‘lake.’” (she made finger quotes.) “Anyways, I noticed there was something off about the salinity and PH values I was seeing about a year ago, and one long story involving me getting kidnapped by monsters and rescued by the magic police later, I figured out that the fish-heads have been trying to make the lake into more of a sea. The Mediterannean Sea, to be precise. Which is bad news for all kinds of reasons.” “They want to make the lake a giant saltwater fishing spot?” Gorden asked in confusion. “Who knows? But Lake Pontchartrain isn’t deep enough or salty enough for whatever they’re trying to do. And they’re working to change that. See this spot?” She pointed to the shoreline where he’d motioned. “This is really close to where I got nabbed by them. They’d set up shop in some of the old lighthouses along the lakeshore- until the magic police showed up and made sure they couldn’t use them anymore. I’m sure their plans got set back a while after that but… after Mr. Cole died...” “There’s only a few of those magic cops,” Zia said, shrugging. “Kinda hard for them to deal with everything, and the Fomor are a big pain in the rear end to get to.” “I haven’t been able to take samples in months,” Shirley said, disappointed. “I don’t know if it’s still getting worse or not. It just hasn’t been safe to go, especially with Danny still recovering from being shot and all. Maybe… Do you think you could go with me? You’ve got magic.” She turned her best puppy-dog eyes on him. “Please! I really need to know, especially now that they’re messing with the city’s water too.” “Yeah, I think I--whoa, hey, you don’t need to make those big begging eyes with me!” Gorden agreed, leaning back slightly as Shirley put on her teary face. “Even if I wasn’t magic I’d go with you out of sheer scientific interest. Zia, this sound like something you’re up for? When do you want to get going? If you want we can go now, I can call El and Ada on the way, and we can get to the lake shore before sunset.” He thought for a second about what Shirley wanted to look for. “Hang on. You don’t think...if their base is where they’re set up, that’s where they’d have been working on the water the longest, right? You think we can find them by following the salinity?” “That’s a great idea!” Shirley said. “Go ahead and call Ada now, I’ll dig my kit out of the closet. Haven’t had much reason to use it lately so it’ll take me a minute.” She pushed away from the table and sprinted for the stairs. Zia smiled, a little wistful. “If you don’t mind me tagging along I’m game,” she said. “I’m a little nervous about running into the Choir, but I should at least be able to tell you if we get close to them.” “That’s appreciated Zia, thanks,” Gorden answered. “You wanna hit back at them like Shirley, huh. Alright, you help her get her stuff together. I need to make a phone call.” “Honestly, I could go the rest of my life and never think about them again,” Zia said, shaking her head. “Revenge really isn’t my thing. But this is important to Ada, and that matters to me.” She stood up and shoved a few extra pretzels into her hoodie’s pockets. “I’ll see you guys out in the car.”
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Jan 2, 2021 05:07
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Sample Sizes Scene: Lake Pontchartrain Zia sat at the front of the airboat, head slightly tilted and eyes closed. Something soft hummed deep in the back of her skull, but the chorus wasn’t close enough to be afraid of yet. They’d turned the big fan off just a few moments ago, and Grace was using a long metal pole to propel the boat forward a little at a time. Poling was a very effective means of propulsion here, where the water was only a couple meters deep. It was mid-afternoon now, though the sun didn’t seem to be offering much warmth. Zia watched Shirley lean over and scoop up a vial full of lake water, holding it up and looking at the brownish-liquid as if it held all the secrets of the universe. “Hear anything yet?” Shirley asked her. “Not yet,” she said. “Maybe we’ll be lucky and they’ll be somewhere else today.” “Let’s hope so, cause I can’t see a thing,” said Gorden, staring over the side of the airboat at the brackish water and holding a fire extinguisher as if he was actually going to try to knock a Fomor off the boat. “Hey, Grace, did you ever notice anything weird out here? Like, salt in the water and stuff?” Grace made a long, deep push, letting the boat glide forward for a bit while she turned and responded to Gorden. “I uh, actually normally hang out on the south side of town. Pontchartrain is a bit too open for my tastes, to be honest.” “Oh,” said Gorden, with an expression that looked like someone had just gut-punched him. “That makes sense.” “There’s always some salt in the water here,” Shirley said. “This isn’t even a real lake, it’s an estuary.” “And there’s way too many tourists up here.” Grace chimed in. “How do you tie into this whole mess, anyway, Gorden? I made friends with James and ended up doing some odd jobs for Ada, but somebody said you’re a grad student?” “Yeah, Astrophysics at Tulane,” Gorden affirmed. “Shirley did...does…” he stumbled. “Hydrology there too. One of my undergrad students said she heard rumors about her quitting and wanted to know why, I did some digging, that led me to Elbridge and all the rest and...now I’m here. Helping Shirley get her life back together.” “Um, I thought this was about preserving the lake…?” Shirley said uncomfortably. “Since the fish-heads are going to ruin the local ecology? Kill all the fish and amphibians and birds and everything that isn’t a blood sucking mosquito?” “Well, that too, obviously!” Gorden fired back, “but Grace asked why I’m here, and it started with looking for you and then helping out with the bullshit you’ve had to put up with!” “Okay, fine! I appreciate it!” Shirley said, scrunching down in her seat. “But you’re making it sound like I’m a damsel in distress or something. I was doing just fine when you showed up on the porch like a lost kitten who didn’t even know what a threshold was.” “Quiet, both of you. I thought we were trying to be stealthy out here.” Grace let out a grunt with her next push, half muttering to herself. “I’m just over here trying to avenge all my dead friends and family, don’t mind me.” There was a brief, awkward silence. “Maybe we should start over,” Zia said quietly. “Hi everybody, my name is Zia, I like to do street art. This summer I got captured by the Fomor and they tried to integrate me into their creepy cult, but then Ada got me back in a prisoner exchange and I’ve been trying to y’know, do life stuff again since.” It was an almost practiced method of introduction, like she was at an AA meeting, or some kind of group therapy. She hid a smile behind her sleeve. “Okay, now you guys. One at a time though.” “...probably for the best,” Gorden admitted. “Sorry, Shirley. Uh, I’m Gorden, grad student at Tulane, Astrophysics. And, uh, also a time mage, I guess. Someone asked me to help out with...things,” he paused, trying to avoid picking at that scab, “and then I fought one of the profs on campus, and then they tried to kidnap me and throw me to the Fomor, and then I got rescued, and then...uh, well the point is, now I’m here.” He looked around the airboat. “I’ve had to do these ‘everybody introduce yourselves’ things since kindergarten, you’d think it’d be easier.” “You’d think,” Shirley sighed. “I didn’t mean to snap, Gorden. It’s just that we’re getting close to well… that.” she pointed at the spire of a lighthouse looming ominously over their location. “I’m Shirley, also a grad student at Tulane, Hydrology. I’m currently on sabbatical because the last time I was out taking samples on this estuary the fish-heads kidnapped me and locked me in that lighthouse. They wanted me to do measurements for them, so I did for a few weeks. They weren’t trying to induct me, just control me via a bunch of parasite eggs they put in my ear. Anyways, the Warden- the previous Warden that is- and his friends broke me out of there and I ended up moving in with my mostly-a-demon roommate since they knew where I lived. That’s why I can’t go back to school, even if the whole rear end in a top hat professor thing gets handled.” “And I’m Grace, were-gator. Probably the last gator of Clan LeBlanc of the Everglades after a fomori massacre. Delivery girl for A-1 Delivery, as well as a side business delivering for anyone up to and including honest to god faerie princesses. And whatever Ada needs as long as she’s turning my spare change into gold. Oh, and helping a freaking vampire save the The Gilded Lily, because as weird as life in the glades could get, being back home is way weirder.” “I wish I could turn into an alligator,” Zia said, dipping her fingers over the side of the boat into the cool water. “That sounds so relaxing.” Grace laughed softly at Zia. “It can be. There’s a… stillness that the human world just doesn’t experience. All this... “ She waved her hand vaguely in the air. “Nonsense matters less. I can just sit and watch the world just happen.” She let the thought settle in the quiet of the lake for a second. “Maybe once this all settles down we can see about starting Clan Wagner if you’re still interested.” “Is it something you can teach?” Zia’s eyes widened. “I thought magic was something you had to be born with.” Grace shrugged at Zia. “Becoming one with a gator isn’t exactly magic you do. It’s magic done to you. I’m not sure I have the talent to pull it off, to be honest. But it’s way more about being open and willing to share your body with another soul. Which also can’t be really be taught, I suppose.” “I’m imagining walking on all fours and having a tail and big jaws and my brain’s spinning already,” laughed Gorden, taking advantage of the moment of relief. “How long does it take to get used to that?” “Honestly, no time at all? It’s like a memory that you forgot you had. All of the human worries and stress fade away, and you’re just another gator floating and waiting for something delicious to pass by. It’s coming back that can get hard. When your human life has bills to pay and an early delivery tomorrow morning... ” Grace stopped and gave the boat another push. “Pretty sure that’s why most were-s don’t have nine to five jobs, ya know?” “I wonder if I would ever want to come back,” Zia said wistfully. “Maybe it’s better that I don’t have the temptation. It’s fun to think about though...” Grace laughed a little at Zia’s musings. “Yeah, well, that’s why you need to be in a good place before going down that path. Those that aren’t end up getting some pretty bad movies made about them. What was that vampire versus werewolf movie?” “Underworld, I think?” chimed in Gorden. “I saw it on a student discount and I think I overpaid.” “I saw it for free and I felt like I overpaid,” Shirley said, smirking through the greenish-liquid in the vial she was holding up. “Being able to turn into an animal sounds really cool but I wouldn’t trade my opposable thumbs for anything. Gotta love humanity’s one weird evolutionary trick, y’know?” “Apes together strong!” agreed Gorden. “Anyway...hey, Shirley, need some help getting that data written up?” “Please,” Shirley said, nudging the (somewhat damp) pad of paper over towards him. “I’ve got testing strips in half of these already, I’ll do the rest if you can do the notation?” “Gotcha,” said Gorden, grabbing the pad and pulling out a pen. “Feels kinda nice doing stuff old school--playing with entropy might make the gathering faster but I can only imagine it’d play hell with the diffusion coefficients, and that’s the whole reason we’re out here, right?” “Right, and given how poorly water conducts magic it’d likely do more harm than good.” Shirley seemed quite pleased by his dedication to science. “Magic is a great tool, but when you use it to take shortcuts… well, it can get ugly.” Doing it with Science! 4dF +3 = (b+-+) +3 = 4 Grace ignored their chatter, scanning the calm waters of the lake as they worked. Zia seemed content to do the same, running her fingers through her long dark hair while staring off into the middle distance. But a few moments later her head snapped up and she grabbed the side of the boat with one hand and pointed with the other. “They’re coming. That way. Two or three, maybe.” She looked back at Grace. Her eyes had gone very round, almost inhumanly so. Grace hissed at Gorden and Shirley, while very deliberately making a single push towards the shore. “Quiet. Now.” A second push angled into some reeds and grass, hopefully enough that whatever Fomor were passing by wouldn’t look any closer. She kneeled and stuck the pole into the mud below them, her eyes on Zia, rather than the lake. Stealth to avoid the Fomor, 4dF +5 = (b+b-) +5, Invoke Weregator Without A Cause for +2 = 7 “Is this the last one?” A man’s simpering voice crept in through the tall cattails, and Shirley’s head whipped towards it, her expression a mix of shock and fury. “Yes, yes, we’re almost done,” said another voice, this one deep and croaking. “Pull us ashore, my pets.” Through the reeds, the passengers on the fanboat could make out a small dinghy with three occupants sliding by at around the same speed they had been traveling. In the back sat two grey-skinned fomor, with round, amphibious eyes and wide, frog-like mouths. At the prow sat a mussed up, mousey-looking professor that Gorden instantly recognized from his profile picture. Lancaster. “What the F--?!” started Gorden, before clamping his mouth shut and trying to fumble for his phone. With all the magic going around it might have been merely a placebo, but it was something to do besides scream. “Good,” Lancaster said, fidgeting with his hands. “Very good. And if all goes to plan this should be the last renewal...” “Won’t you miss our little trips together?” The second fomor’s voice carried that same croak but had a softer, feminine tone. “I’ve enjoyed our chats, the…” she paused, smiling to herself. “Cultural exchanges…” Lancaster returned her smile with an almost sheepish one of his own. “Yes, well, there’s no reason we can’t stay in touch after, you know, all this business is settled. I would like that very much, in fact.” The hull of the dinghy scraped softly on the mud as it beached and the three passengers stepped out into the shallow, brackish water. “You’ll need to come up with some other arrangement with Lord Ibor if you mean to keep that creature fed,” said the fomor man. “Ah, I had hoped Prince Dierg would be more… amenable?” Lancaster said. “To cutting deals with your kind? Oh, there’s no doubt about that. Prince Dierg was the one who suggested this plan to begin with. But… Lord Ibor does not easily trust men who are not kept as sheep, and even they are suspect to him. If it were not for the Key being among the humans I wonder if he would even keep a flock of his own.” Lancaster was pawing around in the water, looking for something, but his expression at the mention of the ‘flock’ was pained. “Will he release them, after the Key is found? If he doesn’t trust them, perhaps...” “Oh no,” said the fomor woman. “Don’t hope for it, Rueben. I know how you feel but there aren’t enough of us to take the Gates without the flocks. And we cannot wield the ironbane- which will be needed to drive the Winter Sidhe away. Once the Key is found there will be counts, and when the quota is met the holy war will begin.” “And everything else will come to an end,” Lancaster said miserably. “No, it simply changes, as all things must,” said the fomor man. “The Singer Below used to long for silence, as all their kind did, but not anymore. They have changed, and their lost kin will change too.” “But how many will they consume-” “Oh! Here it is,” said the woman, lifting a large silver disc out of the water. It glimmered with celtic designs. Lancaster took it from her and nodded. He started to chant over the disc while the fomor pair watched in silence. After a few moments he sighed and wiped his brow. “There, it’s done. How many did we do today, twenty? I can barely see straight.” “It’s no small task to blind the lords of faerie,” the woman said, laying a webbed hand on his chest. “You may not believe in our gods, but your service to the Singer will be rewarded.” “Of course it will, Fia,” Lancaster said. “In the form of a truckload of fish flesh. Friday delivery, as usual?” She shook her head and sighed. “As usual. Let’s go home. I tire of all this air-breathing.” “As do I,” said the fomor man. “And on Saturday? Has Katherine finished her preparations?” “I believe she has.” He bit his lip. “This is the only way, you’re sure?” “It’s only one,” Fia said. “The last one, as promised.” “...right.” The three of them climbed back into the boat and it slipped away from the shore, turned silently, and went back the way it had come from. A few moments later all was still. 4dF +4 Notice = (+-++) +4 = 6 Between the cattails, the shaking of the boat, and Gorden quivering with suppressed swearing the phone video was useless. He sighed and resisted the urge to kick the side of the fanboat. “That spineless… sneaking… shithead!” Shirley tried not to raise her voice but didn’t bother hiding her contempt. “He’s not just working for them, he’s friends with them? Oh it’s just one grad student, I bet that’s what they told him, just one, it’s fine!” Grace watched Gorden and Shirley’s responses, her eyes started to turn to vertical slits. She doesn’t know who Lancaster is, but clearly he’s a problem. “Should I go retrieve him… or at least his body?” she asks Gorden. “I thought the whole reason we were doing is this is so they didn’t figure out we’re here,” hissed Gorden in answer. “Yeah, but…” Grace hissed back and gestured towards the direction of Lancaster. “I don’t know who that guy is, but he’s a traitor and clearly deserves to be fed to the wildlife.” “And what happens to us after you get Lancaster and then his buddies call their pals on us?! Maybe you can fight, but I’m not exactly a SEAL, here!” Grace just responded with a long, low growl before taking a deep breath. “Fine, this is your show, but he will end up dead and eaten before this is all said and done.” “Now that’s a good reason to give up opposable thumbs,” Shirley muttered under her breath. “Did you see what they were doing out there? With the disk thingies?” Gorden turned to Shirley and Zia. “Are those giant self-replenishing salt licks or something?” Zia shrugged. Her eyes had gone back to normal and she seemed tired. “If I had to guess that was a ward of some kind, but I don’t do magic so I’m not sure…” “Can we check it out or do you think there’s an alarm or something?” Shirley asked. “They’d probably come running back if we moved it, but if they alarmed it against looking, every fish in the lake would set it off,” Gorden suggested. “I’m sure we can at least do that.” Grace didn’t turn her head from watching where Lancaster and the fomor headed off to as she responded. “Well then go look, I’ll let you know if they come back.” “I can do that,” Zia said with a small smile. “Don’t worry.” “Pole us over to that shallow part then. Good thing I brought waders…” Notice Roll: @Davin_Valkri: 4dF +5 = (+--b) +5 = 4, spending an FP on The Time Lord Most Curious to investigate this potentially dangerous thing to make it +6, and Grace assists for a +7. “Gah, this is cold...should have brought thicker ones,” shivered Gorden as he flopped over the side of the airboat. “Okay...Lancaster pulled up there, they walked over here…” he recited as he walked with great effort through the mud. “And his friend pulled it up...where the hell is it?” Grace let Gorden muck about for a bit, mostly wondering how she kept ending up in the swamp with guys who have no business out here. “Try the reeds to your left. Their root structure kind of floats, easy to hide something under them.” She’d kept some fae ‘shine in similar hiding places before, not that he needed to know that. “These reeds here--whoa!” It turned out roots that floated off the muck made quite the trip hazard, and Gorden just barely caught himself before his face hit the water. Fortunately, that put him at just the right angle to see the disc lying on the bottom. “Oh, there it is.” It was hard to keep his eyes on it, the symbols and lines seeming to draw his gaze away into the murky water. A fish swam by and he couldn’t help following it, momentarily forgetting all about what he’d found. Only by focusing very hard was he able to draw his attention back to it, and keeping it there was like holding onto a bar of soap. “What the...ungh…” If Gorden hadn’t had practice sweeping the night sky for almost imperceptible phenomena he’d probably have glazed right over the disk. It was somehow like finding a pixel in a sea of vaguely similar pixels, but the drat thing was bigger than a laptop, so how could that be?! With great effort he pulled out his grimoire and, between balancing it atop the water and repeatedly glancing back at the disk, painstakingly and hesitantly transcribed the patterns he could see. Will roll to not mess it up! Vs +6: @Davin_Valkri: 4dF +5 = (-+++) +5 = 7 It went better than could be expected, given the water distortion. He soon had a good sketch of each symbol, and the overall disc itself. “Well, I’ve got my samples,” Shirley said. “I think, given everything going on, we’d better finish this up at home. If things go well, I should be able to give you a solid map of the salinity levels in the lake by tomorrow afternoon. Which should tell us approximately where the salt’s coming from, which should be some kind of fish-head… facility? Something like that. Then you guys and the magic cops can go kick the doors in, right?” “Last time I broke in somewhere, Chesterfield got on my rear end and got people to flashbang me,” Gorden half-joked as he pulled himself back onto the boat. “I got the pattern, and you got the samples. Let's go before the fomor reveal they have flashbangs.” Grace didn’t need any further convincing. She poled them back towards the inlet they entered from.
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Apr 11, 2021 21:27
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The Second Lesson of Time Travel Scene: Winter Safehouse The first thing Gorden saw when he got back to the Lytle’s safehouse was Junior, sitting in a lawn chair, smoking a hand rolled cigarette. There was another empty chair next to him, and he waved Gorden in to sit beside him, much to the chagrin of the stocky little guard that was standing at the gate. “Nice to see you’re punctual,” Junior said with a bit of a wry grin. “So I guess we’re really doing this. Tradin’ knowledge, that is. You think up any questions for me? I er, I ain’t real sure where to start, if I’m honest. Never had to train nobody before, ‘cept my little girl, and she weren’t near as strong as you are.” Gordon gave a polite wave and a reassuring smile to the guard as he walked by towards the empty seat. “Hi Junior,” nodded Gorden. “Glad to know my pocket watch hasn’t fallen apart yet.” He pulled his phone ever so slightly out of his pocket to show what he meant. “Hmm...you know, I just realized. You and Elbridge and I talk about ‘time’ magic when it comes to what you and I do. But when I was first trying to figure out what the heck I was capable of doing, I was following my...is ‘training’ the right word? Math, entropy, statistics, I was framing everything in terms of what I already knew, all the university stuff I’d already done. And I’m sure that influences what I can do with magic. Or at least, what I think I can do.” He took a deep breath, tapped his fingers together a bit. “So I thought I’d ask, how do you think about your magic? When you use it, what are you thinking of?” “Hm! Now that’s a good question. And you’re right by the way, what you think you can do sure does have an effect on what you’re capable of. Magic is will, plain and simple. So if’n you don’t believe you can do something with all your heart and mind, you surely can’t. As fer me though...” He leaned back in the chair, lacing his fingers together over his stomach. The cigarette smoke curled lazily from the stub still tucked between them. “My grandpappy was a rancher,” he began, with the voice of a man used to telling stories. “So I spent most of my youth out under the sun. I used to know the hour by where the sun was. Hell, I could put a stick in the dirt and watch the shadow, if’n I wanted to be more precise with it. Never had a watch, never had the money for one. So when I learned I could do things, little things at first but then bigger’n’bigger ones… I thought about the sun, and the shadows, and how to bring the shadows all the way around the stick, one way or t’other. I think about things moving, forward and back, faster or slower. Slower’s nice. That’s what I’m best at, really. Making that shadow crawl, really take it’s time, so I got to keep it all to myself. When I was really fixin’ to, I could get a good hour’s nap in just five minutes.” He grinned, remembering it. “drat, I wish I’d thought of that,” Gorden admitted. “Could’ve sneaked myself catnaps and coffee at any time…so when you do your magic now, are you still thinking of that improvised sundial? The stick and the shadow going round it? ‘Sunrise, sunset’ and all that?” He tried to imagine it himself, and reaching out with magic as the shadow spun, but his thinking soon got derailed by memories of watching Carl Sagan calmly discussing Eratosthenes. Junior nodded. “It’s the easiest for me, but I reckon every young talent has their own way of expressin’ things. Ain’t no wrong way to do it. What’s your method, if’n you don’t mind me askin’?” “Like I said, there’s a ton of statistics involved in it,” Gorden admitted. “Probably why I never thought of napping at my desk. Uh, you know how as things get older they start to fall apart? Cars and houses break down, rocks erode, stars get dimmer...the universe grows, maybe forever, maybe not? Most of the laws of physics actually work just fine for cars that spontaneously un-rust or rocks that reassemble as water flows over them, but you’d never see that. I guess I just...imagine all the ways things fall apart, and walk them back until they’re in the way they started. You could call it ‘reversing the arrow of time’, but I think of it more as a reduction in entropy.” He scratched his head. “It’s...computationally complex. But I’m so immersed in it my spellbook is an old book about physics--” he produced his grimoire and pointed to Stephen Hawking on the cover. “--so I guess it’s just the track my brain started on.” “Entropy, eh?” He took a single puff of his cigarette and nodded to himself. “I’m not a man of science, myself, but I think I understand the concept well enough. That’s a very unique perspective on it, young man. I think you can go farther than most, if’n you think of it that way…” He paused for a moment. “What’s the biggest thing you ever ‘reduced entropy’ on? Just curious.” Gorden considered briefly, then made a snap decision. If he couldn’t be open about this with another time mage, who else could he be? He produced his little stellar iron pendant and held it out ahead of him. “Well, this used to be a star…and I think it was part of a universe of stars. Those I...might have had help with, but...” He concentrated for a brief moment and let the tiniest bit of time flow back into the dead iron, and for a moment it subtly glowed the soft blue-white of a white dwarf. Junior sat up at that, leaned forward, and gazed at the pendant in something like awe for a moment. Then his face cracked into a smile and he slapped his knee. “That’s a hell of a lighter you’ve got there!” he said. “But if’n you’re telling me you turned a whole got-danged star into that little bitty trinket, well, I think you’ve got some explainin’ to do.” He glanced up from the pendant to Gorden’s face. “Was this what all that space talk was about last time? Outsider’s ‘n thin branches on the world tree ‘n all that?” “I think you’re the one who started with that metaphor,” Gorden noted as he let the pendant fall down to his neck. “But, yeah, last time I was talking about going out to the heat death of the universe, and it was...kinda less hypothetical.” He licked his lips momentarily, then continued. “But apparently my arrival moved enough particles around that there was enough potential energy to...well, make stars form. According to the thing I talked to out there, anyway. So...I guess you could say this thing is a souvenir from an undead universe!” He tried to smile at the idea, but it felt a little thin. “...that’s why I was asking about ‘anti-Outsiders’. Whatever this thing was, it accelerated gravity pulling those particles together, the fusion reactions that resulted in those new stars being formed, the universe reforming itself from Big Bang principles. The exact opposite of what the Outsiders want to do.” “Are you sayin’ you met God out there, at the end of time, Gorden?” From anyone else, that might have been sarcastic, but Junior was dead serious. “Maybe? I dunno!” Gorden answered with a sudden throwing up of his hands. “If that wasn’t God, it was certainly something drat close!” “Well, poo poo, son! What’d he say?” “It said…” Gorden scratched his head as he recalled. “...that my arriving created a possibility. A possibility that it exploited, made happen. And that it wished to do more some time. And...it did say ‘let there be light’...” “And here I thought savin’ history was a tall enough tale,” Junior just shook his head. “poo poo, I think you should be the one givin’ ME lessons if you can do somethin’ like that.” He held a hand up to ward off an interruption. “I know, I know, you didn’t do it on purpose an’ all. Still, I wouldn’t go around tellin’ too many folks about that’n...” He sighed and scratched at his chin for a moment. “Can you make things go a mite faster or slower without entro-ping them to pieces? That might be a place to start learnin’, if’n you haven’t tried it.” “I think so? I can show you if you want,” Gorden replied. “Got another cigarette? I’d offer to try on yours but that’s rude.” “I don’t mean un-burnin’ something,” Junior said, reaching into his pocket for another. “I’m talkin’ ‘bout manipulatin’ inertia. Like so.” He made a tossing motion, and whispered something Gorden couldn’t hear. The cigarette left his hand and tumbled through the air towards Gorden in super slow motion. “Yeah, changes in entropy, a rate of change, deltas, first derivatives,” Gorden spoke quickly in answer, the math terms tumbling out in a professorial mess. He caught the slow motion cigarette out of the air, jumped a bit as the friction between his fingers and the suddenly accelerated back to normal paper bit shocked him, and held up the stellar iron to the end of the cigarette. “Okay, that’s the normal burn rate...and now…” A bit of concentration and the cigarette paper became ash slower...and slower… “Well, that wasn’t quite what I meant,” Junior said, quietly so not to disturb his concentration. “But you figured out how to make ever-burnin’ candles, right enough. Not so useful on a cigarette, as you won’t get much smoke out of one if it’s like that.” “Oh, you mean like--” Gorden gave a little shake of the cigarette and sent a burst of ash up into the air in a neat, slow, lazy, glowing arc. Junior’s eyes lit up and he nodded. “There ya go, just like that.” He laughed. “This is going a mite better than I thought it would. You’re a quick learner, Gorden. Now try your hand at...” It went on that way for a while, Junior suggesting things, Gorden attempting them. It was going pretty well until Gorden waved around his little piece of star a little too enthusiastically, and held it in his unscarred hand a little bit too long. He yelped at the sudden burst of pain, and flipped the stellar iron back to normal, while rolling it over the burned area as he concentrated on restoring the cells, his brain automatically maintaining the “let’s see what time magic can do” experimental mode that they’d been practicing for...he’d lost track of time on exactly how long. In his head he imagined the “energy states” at the point of contact, and willed the energy state of the stellar iron at that point to go down. Roll is -1, which becomes +3 after the CEK skill is added. Also needs an FP, spending from 5 to 4. Gorden felt himself slip back into the chair uneasily as he blinked, and saw that his hand was perfectly fine. But it wasn’t perfectly fine earlier, that’s why he was focusing on it...it was burnt, right? And he unburned it? He shook his head fiercely to try to shake off the dizziness. “Uh, Junior? Was I doing something really intensive just now?” Junior was staring openly, the cigarette having fallen right out of his mouth onto the dirt. “You could say that...” He took a deep breath and wiped his brow with one hand. “You got a little too close to yer sun there and then, zip a dee doo dah, you hadn’t done it after all. Looked like one of them moving pictures in reverse, but...” He spread his hands, not having quite the words to describe it. “You feelin’ okay?” “Yeah...no...sorta?” Gorden mumbled as he stretched in the chair. “Just feeling...really tired all of a sudden. Give me a minute, and then we can get...get right back into it...hah…” “Oh no, I think that’s enough for one day.” Junior walked over and checked Gorden’s forehead and cheeks. Hot and a little shaky… but nothing obviously damaged. He let out a sigh of relief. “Alright, seems like you didn’t do yerself any lasting harm. But bodies don’t like bein’ yanked backward like that, no sir. You need water and something to nibble on to reground yourself. Do ya like cookies?” “Who doesn’t like cookies?” Gorden chuckled, pulling himself up. “Okay, now for my side of the deal...what did you want to know about…” he shrugged, and vaguely indicated the rest of the world. “...you know, that?” “Don’t get ahead of yourself, we got time,” Junior said. “Come on inside, we’ll talk over the table.” The gate guard turned around and gave him a cool look, but Junior flatly ignored that and led Gorden into the safehouse.
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Oct 3, 2021 00:16
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Threading the Loophole Grumbling, Elbridge set about drawing the last few diagrams needed for the final ritual, infusing them with his power with painstaking care to get every last rune, sigil, and diacritical mark just so. Three times, he paced the bounds of the space, winding a threefold loop of flax yarn using the branches of his staff as a loom. With seven stones from seven rivers, he anchored the cat’s cradle at its ends, lacing them about the circle containing Eriol himself. His fate would be guided along the thread, from himself to himself, spliced together like a magician’s trick cord. <I consecrate this space>, Elbridge said in a language that had been dead when Latin was alive, <to the weaving of portions, to the preservation of living things, to the perseverance of unliving things, to the bridging of the boundary.> Each curtain in the room drew shut in turn, that the changing of hours, of day to night, would not break the spell. <I state my intent, upon my Staff and my Name and my Power, to preserve the life within this circle, and to bring forth the greatest virtues of metals as are evinced in flesh. Let hungry spirits look elsewhere for their food; let the netherworlds take none here for their due.> Candle wicks sputtered to life, untouched by any flame, burning with an eerie, colourless light to be found on no natural spectrum. <By this magic may the silver cord be tethered, may the golden bowl endure. By this magic shall ERIOL remain ERIOL. By this magic may his body remain his body, fashioned anew.> Elbridge took one of the candles and set it in a basin of brackish water, submerging it all the way to the wick. It burned nonetheless. “We have until this candle expires,” he told Ada, in English. “Begin.” With a nod, Ada took a step forward, pulling off her right glove as she did so. “Sleep tight, Eriol,” she whispered to him, as she knelt down beside him. “It’ll be a bright new you when you wake.” She scratched the back of his head, and the gold spread quickly, granting unto him the gift of endless, dreamless sleep. One by one, Elbridge inscribed more circles about Eriol’s golden limbs, matching the engraving on the golem and preparing his body to receive the transplants of crystal, silver, and clay. Each sat suspended above the workspace, caught in the cords, and as Elbridge completed each binding, they vanished, merged with his golden flesh. He’d modified them exactly as directed by Wizard Cantor and Brother William. If all went as he hoped, they would be bound to Eriol in truth, as much a part of him as if he’d been born with them. And then he touched his staff to the threads again, and things began to go awry. Candles sputtered out. The cords raveled and snarled of their own volition. In the room and in the household above, mirrors warped and cracked - the enchanted one in the ritual space itself held, but with an ominous, crystalline keening. A horseshoe above the hearth flipped upside-down, and every black-furred cat in the neighbourhood began to meander toward the Châteaux duSang, drawn by curiosity and uncanny intuition. Elbridge steadied himself with deep, level breaths and checked the submerged flame in the basin. It burned still, but the threads above the diagram were twisting and braiding into increasingly-tangled knots. He had to unravel the mess before it was too late, but he didn’t dare take his attention off of Eriol. “Mr. Maxwell,” he said, as calmly as he could manage. “If you would stabilise the currents of probability?” Elbridge rolls Divination, spending a FP to act outside the skill’s normal parameters, with +2 from assistance from Rick and Gorden: /--- +7 = 4, ick. Gotta boost up to 22 or bad things will happen, so El Invokes his High Concept for another attempt and: /--- +7 = 4. Evidently the Fates DO have something to say here. He also pays the first of ten Costs here: Minor Consequence (Mystical Overexertion). Elbridge FP 5->3. Gorden had watched the bizarre phenomena with rapt interest, noting the cracking and flipping and twisting in his grimoire, but looked up at Elbridge’s strained question. “Oh, uh, right, I got this,” he answered as he flipped to another page. “They were separate lines when you started, and they didn’t get untied at either end, so separating them should be as easy as an untwist here, and an unbraid there...” As he spoke the threads began to uncoil themselves back into the way they were supposed to. “Man, it’s like topology, pure math, but...applied.” “Welcome to magic,” Elbridge said, sighing in relief. “Where we eff the ineffable on a daily basis.” He resumed his incantation, and the engravings in Eriol’s body began to gleam softly despite the gloomy lighting. It looked impressively-eerie. It was also not at all a good sign. As Elbridge watched, the flame in the basin sputtered and dimmed, fading further as the binding magics took. They were drawing too much from Eriol - the power required to sustain a golem body was evidently a good deal more than even a vital young creature such as himself had to give. If it went on, the result would be a golem, alright - ONLY a golem, mindless and obedient, with Eriol himself reduced to an animating force with no control over his own body. Elbridge changed course, and the engravings dimmed. The candle flame burned steadily once more… too steadily. It ceased to flicker and dance, holding perfectly-still like a photograph. “Too far...wrong direction,” he grunted. “Frozen...one shape...need a catalyst...for change…” Grace moved towards Elbridge as soon as she realized what he was saying. She took off her necklace, quietly speaking as she placed it over the top of his staff and let it rest on his hand. “A tooth from me, from my love, teeth from our family and from our clan. From both halves of all of us.” It was a symbol of change, as he asked for, but also of death and rebirth and memories. It seemed fitting. She was also going to have words with him if it was permanently damaged. “That...should do…” he gritted out. “Thank you…” Elbridge felt the power drain from the talisman, flowing through his staff and into the spell. All at once, the teeth shivered, then fell to the floor, the thread of the necklace itself vanishing into thin air. No, not thin air...its fibres came apart, frayed at the end, splicing themselves into the lines woven for the spell. Eriol’s form went limp. Not like a marionette or an articulated doll - like a living dog, slouching as he napped. It was working. If all went as planned, Eriol would subsume the cords, or the cords would subsume Eriol - either way, he would be back into the normal flow of cause and effect, his being not held in check by an outside force. If. If was such stuff as the Fates made their playthings. With a sudden, jarring *twang!* of vibrating strings, the cables ceased to spin and pulled taut. “Oh, balls,” Elbridge swore, in the sort of tone that might have been used on the Titanic just as the crew realised they were about to hit the iceberg. There was no time for prudence nor caution. In another instant, the thread would snap, and all would be lost. Elbridge lunged and grabbed it with a bare hand. It was like touching a live electrical wire, if the wire was made of past, present, and future and the current was made of questions and answers, events and outcomes. So, perhaps, not at all like touching a live wire, except in that it made his hand go numb and the rest of him really hurt. “Clip…” he gasped out. “Something...binding...Rick...cut it…” Rick had been standing next to Ada, wringing his hands as one near disaster after another almost ended the ritual. He couldn’t help feeling like he should be in there, pulling threads together, taking some of the tremendous load off of El. Having the knowledge, the training, and not the ability made spectating an excruciating sport. He was already looking for the snag when Elbridge called his name, and had been since he heard the *twang!* But he couldn’t find it anywhere in the visible spell matrix, and he couldn’t see beyond what was visible anymore. He didn’t have the Sight, or any wizard’s senses. But he did have something else. Ever since El had begun chanting he’d felt energized, in the same way he had when he was poking around the Standing Stones in deep Winter. Magic seemed to have that effect on him now, his sword’s forged-in counterspell taking notice, taking measure, whenever he was exposed to it. Could he use that? The cord in Elbridge’s hand thrummed again, and he choked back a cry of pain. “RICK. PLEASE.” “Working on it!” Rick said, closing his eyes and straining until the blade itself started to hum with a subtle vibration. There was so much magic in the air that it was like looking for a snowball in a blizzard, but he could just make out something like… like a kink in the hose, a blockage… if he had more time… “Damnit, this isn’t- Gorden! I need your eyes!” “Huh?! Uh, alright!” Gorden gingerly stepped around the ritual to Rick and looked at the taut cables. “Uh...I think I see it! It’s…” he realized that it was highly likely that if Rick couldn’t see the snag, guiding him onto it was going to take forever. “What do I do, just pick up the sword and cut it?!” His hand instinctively came to rest on the handle, as if indicating permission. For a second Rick almost said yes, but the idea of letting Gorden swing him wildly at the snag when there was a very delicate thread underneath it… “No, just relax.” <I’ve got it,> he finished, a voice in Gorden’s mind as he grabbed hold. To Gorden, it felt like having someone squish in next to him on a much too small bus seat, except the bus seat was his own body. “Geez--” Gorden managed before the feeling of getting slammed inside his own head nearly made him fall over. He was about to say something when he felt himself drawing the sword with much more grace than he could ever manage on his own. Which made sense--the closest thing to a sword fight he’d seen was Star Wars. <All yours, Rick!> he thought to “himself”. <You don’t want to see me flailing this thing.> <Where?> Rick asked, trying not to go any deeper than he had to. Gorden’s magic was much stronger than his had ever been, and it was almost intoxicating being this close to it. <Show me, hurry!> <Right there!> Gorden pointed with the end of the sheath. And there it was, a bright red ribbon knotted around the nearly-empty distaff, floating right where he’d thought it would be. He took two steps and thrust forwards, the blade sliding snugly beneath the ribbon, then twisted it in his hand and cut upwards. The ribbon was made of something much stronger and stranger than cloth, and he had to bring the full strength of the counterspell to bear, the blade keening as one by one the threads parted, until it gave way altogether. “Got it!” he shouted, in Gorden’s voice, a sense of hot satisfaction leaking through the blade to his host. The tension gone, the yarn began to move again, passed from its unseen spindle by an unseen shuttle. Unseen before now, at any rate. Gorden, and Rick through him, could clearly see the skeins of possibility and probability, carried along by something luminous and fluttery that moved in time with Elbridge’s voice, threading weft through warp and anchoring Eriol to causality. They could also see how other things caught and snagged, dragged along as they were snared by the threads, until the motions of the spell gently freed them to pursue their own fates. It was pretty easy to see how if the wrong butterfly flapped its wings at exactly the wrong moment, the result could be a real mess. Gently, gingerly, Elbridge released his hold of the thread. His hand looked mildly rope-burned. The other threads, coming from his person and visible only to Rick and Gorden, looked like someone’s hair after a nasty static shock. Like someone had put wool fabric through a full wash-and-dry cycle, in brazen defiance of a “DRY CLEAN ONLY” tag. Rick renders his share of the assistance, and Elbridge takes a Moderate Consequence: “Frayed Fate”. “Now…” Elbridge said, leaning on his staff for support. “...now he just needs energy. Enough to replace what the spell took from him. Not sure...how much more...I can give…” Grace patted at her pockets. “I’m all out of teeth over here. Unless you want a fresh one.” She was pretty sure her joke was going to fall flat. “It...may do,” he replied. He shuddered as he spoke, as though each breath cost him dearly. “Vital forces...into the cardinal points...until the flame in the bowl...burns above water…” There were indeed four smaller circles within the greater one, arranged at the compass points, only the northern of which overlapped with the pentacle. “Whatever you can spare…” “Oh. OH! Oh poo poo.” Grace fumbled for her leatherman, flipping out a little pair of pliers. “Don’t worry, they grow back, this is just going to, well, here goes nothing.” She put the pliers into her mouth, and started to twist and pull. Anyone paying attention would have seen her arm briefly become scaly before she pulled a tooth out with a squelch. “God drat!” she slurred, “Just, put it in here?” She held it over the north point with the leatherman as a drop of blood fell from the tooth into the circle. Elbridge gave a curt nod and Grace released the tooth. “Need another?” The offering hissed and sizzled like it’d been touched to a flame, and the candle burned a little brighter. Its motion was wan and sluggish, however, and the taper itself began to soften and sag. “No,” Elbridge said, shaking his head as he noted the change. “Something to...balance your essence…” "What's wrong with my essence?" Grace lifted up the collar of her t-shirt and wiped some blood from her lips. Elbridge took several seconds to catch his breath, during which Grace continued to bleed profusely. “It’s changing his own too much. Rendering him torpid. There seems to be a slight issue of compatibility.” “Too much gator, not enough golden retriever,” Ada murmured, watching the situation unfold. Without thinking twice, she stepped forward, the obsidian knife in her hand seeming to absorb light like a black hole. “Let me stabilize it. I’m a universal donor.” She slashed at the wrist, not waiting for confirmation, and held it over the flame. Blood welled up at the bottom, without even a single drop falling, and then something like a rushing wind coursed through her body, passing on the same sluggishness the candle had shown moments before to her as a steady trickle of blood fell upon the flame, energizing it. “Dammit…” she murmured, as blood continued to pour down. “This stuff takes a hell of a lot out of you, doesn’t it...?” Grace slumped against the wall, breathing deeply. "Yeah, it does Ada. I've lost teeth before, but this was… oof." The ritual threatens to go awry, so Ada and Grace offer up a Mild Consequence to cover up some costs. Ada takes a Major Blood Donation Mild Consequence, and Grace takes a X Mild consequence in turn. <Rick, do all of these rituals have bits that came out of a frat initiation?!> Gorden thought “out loud” switching back and forth between Grace and Ada. <Who do you think those initiations are imitating?> Rick answered, though he wasn’t any happier about it than Gorden. <But no, not usually. This thing is guzzling power like a full-size truck with a gas leak.> It seemed like Ada’s donation had done what was needed. <Thus...it is done,> Elbridge spoke. <The thread is woven. The die is cast.> He took the collar that Eriol had worn and with a simple gesture made an engraving on the tag: Εριολ. Every other remaining candle flared bright as a flashbulb, then snuffed out. Dozens of ribbons of smoke drifted from the extinguished wicks, twisting lazily about the woven flax, which sagged under its weight now that the magic was gone from it.
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Oct 26, 2021 02:05
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Low Battery Scene: Ritual Chamber The candle’s flame was holding as still and steady as a painting. “So why’d he stop moving?” Rick muttered, walking over to kneel at the dog’s side. “I wonder… he’s technically been converted to a golem, right? Golems aren’t always active. This IS what it looks like when they aren’t.” Gorden was snapping his fingers over the candle flame, paused like a still shot in a video. “I dunno. Maybe his entropy’s gotten caught on something, like a rock rolling downhill getting stuck on a pile of other rocks.” He held his hand a little bit closer than advisable to the flame, feeling for heat. It was still just as warm as it should be. “The heat output’s fine here, it’s just not...actually burning.” “So it’s like his entropy circuit is blocked or scuffed? How do we get it unstuck?” Ada asked, her voice harsher than she actually wanted it to be. More delays, more problems…how the hell are there so many obstacles still in the way with even the Fates looking the other way? Rick’s face twisted in confusion. “We broke the distaff, what the heck could it have gotten caught on? I’m not sure I understand you.” “I have no idea, I’m spitballing based on observations,” Gorden admitted as he looked back at Eriol. “Don’t suppose we can try some more dog treats? See if he’s just ‘hungry’ or ‘sleeping’? If not, maybe I can do that thing again to see if he’s gotten stuck on something else.” He felt tired just talking about it, but if it had to be done, well. "We won't use the Sight again if we can help it," Ada reassured him, before turning her attention to Eriol. "This has to be something linked to the ritual. Something isn't working out." Her eyes flickered to the candle, briefly, then back to Eriol...and then, an unexplainable feeling of alarm kicked in. She glanced at the candle once more, trying to see what was wrong with it, but it seemed quite still. And yet… She looked away, and that sense of wrongness returned. It was only when she stared fixedly at the flame for the third time that Ada finally saw it. "Hold up. Look at the candle for a couple seconds and then look away and back again. Do you see it? It's not moving, but…it's still fading." “Huh? Are you telling me we’ve somehow turned these things into Boos?” Gorden seemed confused, but followed Ada’s instructions, looking at the candle, then turning away and counting out loud. “One...two...three...four...five.” He turned back and-- “Okay, hang on, that wasn’t where it was before. It looks...dimmer. That’s bad, right?” “Maybe,” Rick said, brows furrowed. “Maybe he’s just gone into power-saving mode.” “A puppet cannot dance on its own, no matter how lifelike it may seem,” said Circe, smoothing her dress. “What power gives the golden beast life? Is it sufficient for the task?” "Elbridge prepped Eriol's body with precious metals and jewels, but I don't think he used anything as a core. It was just a direct magic infusion. You think it's starting to run out?" Ada asked, shooting Gorden and Circe a look. “Guessing is a fool’s game,” Circe said dismissively. “Consult someone who knows better or wait for the wizard’s return.” "So we need a golem expert." She thought about it for a moment, then looked at Rick. "Nicky?" She asked, thoughtfully. “Worth a shot,” said Rick. “Let him know I’m here while you’re at it.” --- “Stitch in Time, alterations, restorations, and commissions, how can I help you?” Nicky’s voice on the phone had that sing-song quality that all customer service people develop after having said the same phrase a thousand times. "Nicky, it's Ada. I've got a golemancy problem I need some guidance with," she said, cutting straight to the chase. "You got a minute to go over it?" “Oh…” The sound of cloth rustling in the background crackled through the phone for a moment. “I take it that something went wrong with the highly unethical animal-spirit inanimate body conversion?” He gave an exasperated sigh. “Tell me everything.” She did so, as quickly as she could. "Best guess we got is we're missing a power source, but that's all we got right now. Any ideas?” “I was afraid of this,” Nicky said. “It’s not Elbridge’s fault, it sounds like he followed the instructions to the letter. But without a proper shem… Er, to keep it very simple, your hypothesis is correct. The puppy’s soul isn’t strong enough to power his body. You’ll need to link something else to it. Usually in these cases that would be the caster’s soul, for whatever length of time the creature is required to stay animate.” "So we need to have someone use their soul as kindling and set it on fire to keep the candle burning? Elbridge isn't gonna be an option then. He was pretty much tapped out by the time the ritual finished. Would someone else's soul work for a replacement?" “Any mage can do it, really. Think of it like an umbilical cord rather than kindling. It’s a steady drain of energy. Just have them er, wipe some blood on one of the gems and sincerely offer themselves to it. If that doesn’t work, call me back.” "Gotcha, will do." Cutting off the line, Ada looked up. "Aight, we've got a solution sorted out. Who wants to be a gold dog's mommy?" she asked, before adding, "Or man-mommy, taking present company into account." “‘Man-mommy’?” Gorden repeated with credulity. “Er, um, so is it just pricking a finger and petting him? I really want to keep him, but the dorm at Tulane isn’t super into dogs, even golden ones that don’t poop.” “Are you not gifting the creature to Midas?” Circe asked Ada. “I am. He won’t accept a dormant dog, though, that was part of the terms of this wager.” “Oh, hang on,” Gorden suddenly perked up. “The way Nicky said it it sounded like the, uh, ‘donor’, for lack of a better word had to be physically close to the dog for the thing to work. If Midas is going to be holding onto him anyway…” he thought about it. “Yeah, you’ve done enough, Ada. I’ve already put some sweat into this--” he glanced at Rick. “--might as well put some blood in as well.” “It’s not gonna be a one-time payment,” Ada warned him. “You might feel under the weather for a while. You still sure you wanna go for it?” “Grace threw in a tooth already,” noted Gorden. “Compared to that, this’ll be fiiiine.” “Alright. Gimme a finger then,” Ada said, drawing the obsidian knife. Gorden held out a finger with a little trepidation. “How come we can’t use a needle or a lancet--” The slice caught him off-guard, a bright, but brief flash of pain as his fingertip was split open. “There. Go for it, we’ve got band-aids up above for when you’re done,” Ada said, taking a step aside to clear the way. “Ack!” he yelped, nearly recoiling his finger back into a fist before remembering what he’d volunteered for. “Right...here, Eriol...good doggy…” He ran his hand over the golden snout, leaving a thin blood trail to the various nearby gems. For a moment nothing happened, but then… a feeling like someone was tugging lightly on his arm. If it was similar to anything he’d experienced before it was the pressure of crossing a threshold uninvited, only much lighter. Eriol’s body creaked and rocked suddenly, like it needed oiling, and the pressure on Gorden’s soul increased a little more, until finally the dog leaned forward and stretched, and his movements smoothed out again until he was a perfect facsimile of a living animal. “Woof, magic is tiring,” Gorden joked. “I need to do more cardio.” He watched Eriol stretch out and sit with heavy breaths. “Guess it was an initial energy problem, not an entropy problem. He look good, Rick, Ada?” “I think so?” Rick said. “Maybe you should run him around outside for a few minutes just to be sure.” “Not a bad idea. You can get started on that cardio while he’s at it, too,” Ada joked, as the weight on her chest finally began to lift. This was it, the final obstacle. Now, there was nothing left standing between her and the completion of Midas’ wager. “Sounds like a plan,” nodded Gorden as he tried to shake off the feeling of drowsiness again, “though I don’t know what I’m gonna do if he gets somewhere he shouldn’t. Even those giant mastiffs don’t weigh as much as this guy.” “You’re a master of time and space. If anyone can come up with a way to keep an overexcited doggy on a leash, it’ll be you,” Ada said, and she meant it.
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Jan 2, 2022 02:17
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Career Counsel Scene: Upstairs, Château du Sang Elbridge could hear Eriol coming up the stairwell all the way from the parlour. The flooring vibrated with every step, shaking dust from the fixtures and rattling El’s teacup on top of his saucer. When he actually entered the room, the overhead chandelier began to sway ominously. “Ah, Mr. Maxwell. I take it you managed to resolve that little complication?” he asked, keeping a wary eye on the wriggling puppy - the solid-metal, eighty-kilogram puppy, now with the requisite strength to move his new body. “He’s all good!” Gorden gasped between heavy breaths, kneeling down where Eriol sat and panted and running a hand over his snout, where a keen observer might notice a slight dried blood color around the gem inlays. “He might have cracked a paver or two, but as far as I can tell he’s lively, if...dense.” He took a deliberate, deep breath in and out. “And fast. Ha-ah...” “Excellent work,” Elbridge said. “Ah! But where are my manners? Gorden, this is Madame Claudia du Sang. Madame du Sang, Deputy Warden Gorden Maxwell.” Gorden pulled himself up to a standing, if still very casual, position off of Eriol’s leash. “Hi there--” he nearly said “Ada’s mom”, but he realized he’d seen enough to Ada to realize that their relationship...couldn’t be that great. “--Madame du Sang,” he finished. “Mr. Maxwell,” Claudia replied in turn, acknowledging him with a brief nod. “My thanks for assisting my daughter in her ritual. You were informed about it on short notice, and from everything I’ve been able to glean from it…” and at this, she gave Eriol a look. “You excelled.” “Oh, I just helped with the theory a bit, gave a little push at the end,” Gorden said self effacingly. “Rick, Grace, El, your daughter, they all did the hard parts.” “Nevertheless, your contribution made all the difference,” Elbridge said, absently reaching to pat Eriol’s head. He felt the crusted blood and paused, turning over his hand to inspect the red powder. “...aha. He requires assistance to remain animate?” “I did say ‘a little push at the end’,” answered Gorden, scratching under Eriol’s chin with his bandaged finger. “A minor inconvenience, for such a sophisticated project,” Elbridge said. “Still, I should search for a replacement source of power when there’s time. It wouldn’t do to overburden you.” “I’ll be fine, El, just a little--” Gorden’s answer was interrupted by a yawn and a stretch. “I’ll make sure not to skip meals tomorrow, alright?” Does he, ordinarily? Elbridge wondered. “Get plenty of iron and protein,” he suggested. “Not to mention a good night’s sleep. That fatigue you’re feeling is more than physical.” “Mr. Hardley has the right of it. He received similar medical instructions when I looked into his wounds,” Claudia said, as she finished her teacup and stood up. “I believe you have the house’s number. If you experience any unexplainable pain, discomfort or injury, don’t hesitate to call. We shall see to it that your wounds are tended to. Now, if you will excuse me, I have business to take care of.” And with that, she glided out of the foyer, like the manor’s head ghost. “A rousing success, then!” Elbridge said. “I daresay few Wizards of the Council have started their careers with such an ambitious project!” “Awesome!” cheered Gorden. “So how long do we have to watch Eriol before Ada gives him to Midas, and then do we write this up?” “No later than this Friday, and yes.” Elbridge pulled out his journal and made one final entry noting Gorden’s additional contribution. He was about to close it again when he hesitated. “‘Deputy Warden Maxwell’. Hmmm. Is that how you’d prefer to be credited?” Gorden opened his mouth to answer, then closed it again. “Huh. You know, I don’t know. If this were Tulane it’d just be, like, ‘Maxwell, Gorden, Dept. of Physics’, no fancy title or anything. You think anybody would look at you funny for pulling a ‘Deputy Warden’ out of nowhere?” “Formal deputisation is common practise,” Elbridge said. “Full Wizards are rare, and Wardens are drawn exclusively from our ranks. To be candid, there just aren’t enough Wardens to go around, especially not since…” He trailed off, grimacing. “...how much do you know about the Vampire War?” he asked. “I’ve read Dracula?” Gorden admitted, in a way that made it clear that that wasn’t sufficient. “They’re real too, huh? And I guess they kill wizards?” “There were three courts of them active in North America. Three…species, if you will. Dracula was of the Black Court - animate corpses with a thirst for blood. The eponymous novel was commissioned by his rivals to publicise their weaknesses. The White Court are the most-human of the three, but exist in symbiosis with malevolent spirits that feed on the life-force of others. And then there was the Red Court - shapeshifting, blood-drinking demons that began as parasitic infections within humans before killing them from the inside-out and wearing their skins.” Elbridge raised a finger on his hand for each, counting them off as he described them with the same look of clinical detachment he’d shown Circe earlier. “It was the Red Court that baited one of our own into an especially-egregious and stupid breach of protocol, using his blunder as a pretext for war.” “And now you need people to fight that war?” insinuated Gorden, suddenly feeling like a conscript under the eye of a medical examiner. “I have to admit, I thought of ‘fighting vampires’ as more of a...werewolf thing.” “Hm? Oh, oh no.” Elbridge shook his head. “The war is over. It ended last year. We sustained...terrible losses. Nearly-unbearable. But the man who started the war managed to redeem himself by ending it. To wit: The Red King in Chichen Itza meant to wipe out this Wizard’s entire bloodline with a curse. The spell was instead redirected to the King’s own. There is no Red Court, any more.” “Oh,” said Gorden with a very obvious sigh of relief. “So the war’s over, but the Wardens still aren’t back to full strength, which is why--” he waved his hand around to indicate roughly “all this poo poo is happening.” “I gotta admit, the kind of organization you’re talking about sounds like it’d be right up James’ alley. Why not ask him? Get his friends to help you out.” “The Council often works alongside the Venatori where our interests align,” Elbridge said, neatly eliding that James was in the proverbial doghouse at the moment. “But our primary concern is education. As I’ve said, full Wizards are rare. It takes a considerable degree of talent and drive to become one. Which, to return to the topic at hand, is why I asked you a question. Would you prefer to be credited as ‘Deputy Warden Maxwell’...or ‘Apprentice Wizard Maxwell’?” “‘Apprentice Wizard’?” Gorden repeated, his jaw going slack. For a moment he fantasized about introducing himself as “Dr. Maxwell, Astrophysicist and Wizard”, but caught himself. “Your apprentice, obviously, uh…” his face suddenly fell. “Given what just happened with, you know...you, Ada, Junior...are the rest of the Wardens going to be okay with you taking on as a protege someone specializing in timey wimey BS?” “So long as you take care not to violate the strict letter of the Sixth Law, I doubt that they’d worry overmuch,” Elbridge said. “‘Thou shalt not swim against the currents of time’. Going with them, moving at a more leisurely pace, diverting them, or fishing things from the stream are all acceptable to various degrees, although I wouldn’t make a habit of skirting the edge cases. ‘No ontological paradoxes’ is a safe heuristic.” “That makes sense,” replied Gorden, as if everybody dealt with ontological paradoxes on a regular basis. “Okay...yeah, ‘Apprentice Wizard’ would be pretty neat? Is there some formal thing you have to do, or do you just put my name down that way and anybody who asks gets a death glare?” “A distinction without a difference,” Elbridge explained. “Most forms of spoken oath are considered binding among Wizards and other supernatural entities, and such matters are taken extremely seriously by all involved. After the pledge is made...well, there’s a great bloody list of formalities and niceties we’re meant to observe, but the substance is that I provide training and protection, while you take my instruction to heart and try not to do anything too dreadfully-foolish on my watch.” “That oath sounds like it needs to be made in front of someone,” observed Gorden, “Unless I’m just supposed to say ‘I solemnly swear I will try to do good’ right here and now.” “Only at...well, it amounts to a graduation ceremony,” Elbridge said. “Other Wizards may be in attendance, but even at the best of times, it was difficult to get more than a few of us under the same roof, and these are not the best of times. Still, let’s not get ahead of ourselves. The full oath is only taken when you receive your stole. For now, let us discuss your education.” He spread his arms in as open a gesture as Gorden had ever seen him to make. “You must have questions. Ask, and I shall answer.” “I get a scarf, too?” Gorden said, suppressing a giggle. “Not going to need that much in New Orleans. How is this going to work, like...physically? I think you’ve mentioned Edinburgh before; do you need to go overseas in the middle of...all this? Or do I just need to keep Saturdays open?” “I may need to travel there for work, or to borrow texts for you to read,” Elbridge replied. “As for how to reach Edinburgh, there’s a perfectly-serviceable Waypoint in the public library. It turns what would otherwise be a trans-Atlantic voyage measured in weeks into a hike of a few hours.” I guess wizards can’t take planes; that has to suck, Gorden noted to himself at El’s addendum. “Am I going to come with you for any of this? I can’t say I’ve been to Edinburgh.” Elbridge took a moment to think on the question, his brow furrowed. “You may, if you wish. Eat a hearty meal in advance. Bringing your own food into Faerie is imprudent, while eating food from Faerie - unless freely-given, with an express guarantee of hospitality - is an excellent way to never return home again.” “‘Spirited Away’ rules, got it, I can work with that,” Gorden filled in the blanks. “Uh, not sure if you’ve seen that. It only came out, well...a decade ago. Have you done this ‘apprentice’ thing before? Formally, I mean, not just trying to tell Ada to slow her roll a bit.” “Not formally, no!” Elbridge admitted. “I’ve offered consultation regarding other apprenticeships, but never taken one on myself. Gave a few lectures and wrote a few books, though.” “First time for both of us, then,” cracked Gorden, “that’s good to know!” He smiled, but then his face fell a little. “Uh, last question, I think. We just saw a ton of magic get thrown around in there. I gotta assume we can multiply that across the city, and across how long you’ve lived. Across all that space and all that time, why pick me to be your first?” “Hrm.” Elbridge fell quiet at that, pondering the question. “Two reasons, I would say. Firstly, that now is the first time in a long while that I’ve been in a good position to make the offer. Early in my career, I lacked seniority; later on, I had...other concerns. Personal projects, subsistence, wars and so on. Secondly - try not to roll your eyes at this - you do remind me a bit of myself at your age: Talented, driven, and curious about the mysteries of the world.” He mopped his brow and polished his spectacles. “I had enough close calls of my own that it was a wonder I lived to fifty, let alone a hundred and fifty, and I thought you might benefit from some, er, hindsight.” Gorden might not have eye rolled, but if he’d been drinking coffee he’d probably have suddenly spat it out. “Flattering,” he managed. “So do I need to do anything to sign off the research we have as ‘Apprentice Wizard’ right this moment?” “Only to sign the report as such,” Elbridge said, turning the notepad around and handing it to Gorden along with a pencil. “I’ll handle the rest.” Gorden was almost going to say something about not using a century old fountain pen, but the thought passed as he picked up the pencil and looked at the blank spot where he obviously was supposed to sign. He rolled the pencil between his fingers in a practiced way before signing “Gorden Maxwell” in a simple cursive, printing the “Apprentice Wizard” part in subscript. “Definitely going to need to get used to that...and to make sure not to sign my physics papers that way.” “Not until after you’ve passed your thesis defense, at any rate.”
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Jan 2, 2022 03:58
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A Cat Where It Shouldn’t Be Scene: El Gato Negro “Rough day?” Maria asked, stopping by Gorden’s table with a basket of chips and a cup of salsa. “Long day,” Gorden specified with a heavy sigh, vaguely wondering if his “free El Gato Negro food” coupon was good for multiple entrees off the menu. He remembered Eriol wagging his tail and managed a smile. “But a good one, in the end. Uh, I know it says ‘for two’, but you think one hungry college student can polish off the combo platter?” “It won’t be easy, but you can always take the rest home if you can’t,” she said with an understanding smile. As she walked away he heard the clip of a cane on tile and looked over to see Danny walking towards the bar. Gorden looked up from the menu at the sound of the cane and waved. His table was closer than the bar, and he’d probably get less dirty looks from ordering the combo platter with someone else at the table. “Danny, hey! Over here!” Danny’s head turned at hearing his name and a wide smile broke out on his face. “Hey! How ya doin Gorden?” he said, shuffling over to the table. He plopped into the opposing chair and started going to town on the chips and salsa. “There’s nothing like fresh made corn chips man,” he said happily. “You up to anything crazy or just taking a break?” “Taking a break from something crazy,” answered Gorden between his own bites of tomato and peppers and corn. “And exhausting. It’s why I’m here stuffing my face.” He took a drink of water and a deep breath. “But it all worked out in the end, or I’d probably be hiding in my room.” “Wanna talk about it?” Danny asked, concerned. “Wizards can get kinda… intense. I don’t even think it’s on purpose, that’s just how they are. And the ones that live ‘round here more than most.” “It was intense, but…kinda…I dunno,” Gorden murmured, lowering his voice. “My name’s on a paper and Elbridge says I’m his apprentice and I walked a golden dog and right now I’m just really, really hungry.” He looked at a waitress bringing over another basket of chips and salsa with relief. “Whoa, really? Congrats!” Danny clapped his hands together softly. “That’s just… drat. That was fast. I don’t think old Wizard Hardley’s ever taken an apprentice before. You need someone to celebrate with? Couple cervezas?” “I did drive here,” said Gorden, thinking it over. “So…maybe just the one? With lots of food. I got a voucher here and everything!” “Alcohol is not included with a meal,” Maria said, dropping off Gorden’s combo platter. “I shouldn’t even be letting you get away with a platter, it’s supposed to be a single entree.” “A saint, this woman,” Danny said with a cheeky smile. “Get me the usual and dos house lagers.” He turned back to Gorden. “I’m buying, don’t worry. And we can always call a cab if we need to. Wouldn’t be my first time.” He leaned back and let Gorden have at it for a few minutes. No one wanted to talk when there was good food hot on a plate in front of them. “Ah, sorry, but thanks,” Gorden apologized sheepishly. “I’ll make sure to order an extra next time, then.” As soon as Maria turned back to the kitchen he dug in hungrily. Several large bites and an enchilada disappeared from the plate. “You know,” he managed after a sip of water, “I can feel this stuff landing in my stomach, but my brain’s telling me ‘order another, another!’, like they aren’t talking to each other. I can eat a lot, but not that much!” “Any reason that might be the case?” Danny asked, concerned. “You do look a little under the weather.” “I did have to rub some blood on the doggy to get him moving,” Gorden admitted. “I know blood and magic and power and all that, but…whew, it was only a few drops. El and company weren’t kidding when they said it’d take a lot out.” “...get him moving?” Danny asked, tilting his head. “Wait a second, did you… link yourself to some kind of automaton? A dog made of actual gold?” “He used to be a normal dog,” said Gorden, as if that made any difference. “But, yeah, that’s the short version. The dog got turned into gold and…he’s still gold but now he’s moving and barking and all that.” “...huh.” Danny looked like he was about to say something else, but nothing came out. That was when Maria came back with two beers, two tall glasses, and a wind-up cat, all of which she set automatically on the table before picking up the cat again with a confused expression. “Oh my, how did this get here?” It was a black cat, the bar’s namesake, but Gorden had seen one just like it before. Suspiciously so, it even had the chipped ear from when it had fallen off the table during one of his early experiments… “Oh, thank you–” started Gorden as he automatically moved one bottle and glass over to Danny, before he noticed the toy cat just as Maria picked it up. “...wait…oh…” It took him a moment to notice the chipped ear, but once he did he had to resist the urge to reach up and snatch the cat from Maria’s hand. Instead he twisted open one of the beer bottles to keep his hands occupied. “I think I might know where that cat came from. May I see it?” “Sure,” she offered it to him. “I think I’ve had it on my shelf for a few weeks, but… I can’t remember who gave it to me.” She gestured towards the bar where one shelf was dedicated to a hundred different statues, toys, and trinkets of black cats. Gorden gave a little smile at the shelf of toy cats (with more than one waving black cat with gold coin) as he took the toy. “Yeah, the Black Cat. Makes sense.” He gave the winding peg a small twist before setting it down on the tabletop–it set off slowly in its familiar canted circle. “And you’ve had this for a few weeks, you say?” Because he was drat sure he hadn’t brought the toy to the bar. “I think so?” She looked a bit distant suddenly, as if she wasn’t sure. “It must not have been a regular, ‘cause I just can’t think of their face. I’m usually pretty good about faces, too. Oh well, maybe it was a tourist?” “Maybe it was,” lied Gorden noncommittally. Without looking he moved his hand to catch the cat as its circle nearly took it off the tabletop. “Did someone else assemble the beer order? Maybe knock the cat onto the tray by mistake?” Maria shook her head. “Must’ve been me, there’s only two other-” The bell over the door jangled, but when Maria paused to glance over, there was no one coming in or out. “Maybe you got a ghost?” Danny suggested. “Dios mio, not again,” Maria cursed under her breath. “I have two more tables, just bring it back up when you pay your tab, okay?” And off she went, too busy to pay the whole thing any more attention. “What’s wrong?” Danny asked, brow furrowed. “You’re looking at that toy like it’s a rattlesnake.” With Maria gone Gorden went back to leaning in, even more conspiratorially if possible. “There’s only supposed to be one of these toys with the chipped ear and the canted wheel, and I know there’s only supposed to be one because it’s sitting in my apartment right now. And I’m pretty sure I’d have remembered if I brought it to the Gato Negro, especially several weeks ago.” Now Danny started giving the cat the live-cobra stare. “Wait, then how is it here? Did someone steal it? That doesn’t make any sense. It couldn’t just get up and walk over, right?” “It’s a perfectly normal cat toy,” Gorden hissed. “I might have used it a few times to figure out the whole–” he waved his fingers over the cat as if he were a conjurer on stage, “but I couldn’t make it move without input if you paid me.” “Okay so then… did you…” Danny waved his hands around in a similarly stage magician fashion. “Go back a few weeks and drop it off? Like, maybe not yet, but eventually? But, wait a second. I’ve seen Maria remember people’s names when they come in on a second holiday two years after the first one. She never forgets a face. And not to be mean or anything but you stick out a little bit with the hair. There’s no way…” “I keep telling people it’s mad science chic,” started Gorden, as if that were the most important thing right now. “And I don’t exactly want to get my head cut off; what would be so vital that I go back in time to drop off this one specific thing in one specific public place and risk, you know–” a brief throat cutting motion sufficed. “--and not even bother to leave a note?” “You must have been pretty desperate, yeah,” Danny agreed. “It’s hard to guess about something that hasn’t happened though. But we’re having this conversation now because of it, and that’s probably not coincidental. Er, maybe?” He took a long gulp of his beer, straight out of the bottle. “Time travel is hard, man.” “You’re telling me,” Gorden sighed as he opened his own bottle and poured it out into the glass. “Unless I left a note in the gear-work of this little toy,” he mused as the beer fizzed ominously. “If you were desperate to get a message of great importance out at risk of your own life, wouldn’t you want to be a bit more forthright about the message?” He idly popped open a section of the cat toy he’d opened many times to examine the gearing closely under magic, as if actually expecting a fortune cookie paper slip to fall out. And then one did. And another one. And a third. “Wha–?!” Gorden’s eyes snapped between the paper slips, Danny, and the toy cat in rapid succession as he tried to gather himself. Had he–future him, rather–actually defied getting his head cut off to deliver notes in a toy cat? He finally managed to collect himself enough to flip the cat over and see if a fourth note or a thousand dollar bill or some other piece of paper had gotten caught in the plastic gears with one hand, while sorting and opening the paper slips with the other. The cat was (sadly?) devoid of further tampering. The notes were exactly what they looked like. Fortune cookie slips. White paper with pink letters, a quote, and some lucky numbers and ‘how to say’ phrases in chinese on the back. The quotes read: Keep your eye out for someone special. Life isn’t about holding the good cards, it’s about playing the cards you hold well. You must try, or hate yourself for not trying. “I never imagined myself to be so annoyingly cryptic,” Gorden moaned, resting his head in his hands. It flew in the face of all the ways he was taught to communicate. Maybe the magic stuff would start getting to him in the future. “Danny, are there any Laws about leaving messages to yourself? Or is being this nonspecific my future self’s way of trying to keep his head?” “Let me see those,” Danny said, tugging them out from under Gorden’s hand. “Hm, it’s not that cryptic, is it? Look out for someone special, and then a caution to do something… okay that bit’s pretty vague, but whatever it is you’ve got to do it or you’ll regret it.” He glanced at the door thoughtfully. “Whoever left this was pretty specific about making sure it got delivered at this exact moment too, so that’s probably important. How’d they get in and out without being seen? You got some invisibility powers I don’t know about?” “If I got invisibility powers I’d be as surprised as you,” Gorden managed, still holding his head down. “Closest thing to that was some light-bending trickery that wasn’t even my own magic. Unless time magic includes some kind of, I dunno, Stephen King-Langoliers type bullshit if you specialize in it hard enough, existing outside of normal temporal perception or…something.” He finally lifted his head up to take a sip of beer, then picked up the last slip of paper. “Maybe the guy who just left is still outside. You wanna…” he made a motion pointing at the beer and the bar that said “pay for this” “...while I…?” Another motion, indicating the exit that had caught Maria’s eye when she brought the beers. “Yeah, sure, but be careful, okay? Something’s not right about all this and I haven’t figured out what yet.” Danny reached for his wallet, letting Gorden go ahead if he wanted. It wouldn’t have taken long to pay, but if that guy was still outside he was probably too skittish to show if both of them went out together. “Thanks, Danny,” Gorden said gratefully as he got up. “And don’t forget the to-go boxes.” It was as much a true statement about how he planned to finish up his food as a promise that he would try not to do anything stupid. Forcing himself to be calm, he headed out the door, hoping whoever had left was still around, or at least left something to follow.
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May 3, 2022 02:50
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Lab Work [Scene: Gorden’s Dorm Room] Shadows and red, red, red light, dancing and sparking like a mad disco ball, producing a stutter effect that makes anything moving seem to do so in fast forward. Flicker, flicker, flicker, the shadows closing in all around, becoming one, splitting apart. Screams of anger, of frustration, dissolving into furious laughter. Squelching, sickening thuds, splatters of wet. Purple veins sticking out against flushed skin, eyes so wide they hold no color at all, just black dots in a field of mad white. Chains being dragged across the hot metal floor, sizzling against flesh. There is no escape here, and no desire to escape. Claws on your hands, your mouth filled with sharp fangs, muscles tense and tight. All you want now is to HURT. Someone else, yourself, the metal walls, it doesn’t matter in the slightest. You lunge forwards- As dream-Gorden lunged, real-world Gorden snorted as his chair slid backwards, pulling his head off the table and sending him crumpling to the floor. “Urgh…” he groaned as he pulled himself up to table height again, briefly making sure the crystal he’d once again spent an all-nighter working over hadn’t fallen with him before slumping back into his chair, making sure to lean backwards this time. “I’ve got to stop doing this,” he muttered to no one as he finally pulled himself up, shuffled over to the mini-fridge, and grabbed a can of iced tea before shambling back to the table, obviously still intent on “doing this.” He drained the can in one long, deep sip, then crushed a sizeable dent in one side. Then with some little trepidation, he held the can in one hand, touched the crystal with the other, and focused on making the can undamaged again. The can swiftly undented with a noisy pop! The crystal didn’t change in any visible way and the multimeter didn’t fluctuate in the slightest, still giving off that same low level energy reading it had reverted back to once it had recovered from the surge of shattering Danny’s pendant. “Huh, so…not all magic then?” Gorden scratched his head at the lack of reaction. Danny had said that his pendant was made with demon tricks and damned tears. That didn’t sound like the sort of magic, say, Elbridge would know how to pull off. Didn’t he have something like that? He took off his pendant and set it down on the desk. Then he thought for a moment, ran to the kitchenette, grabbed the toaster oven tray and set the pendant on that. For what he was about to do he was pretty sure he wanted it to be on something that wouldn’t…well…catch fire. He gently put a wire scrap connecting the pendant and the crystal, set his finger against the pendant, and gave it a little mental “kick”. As the star-iron pendant began to give off heat, the red crystal seemed to take on a brighter glow. Slowly at first, and then more intensely. The multimeter began to rise, and as it did Gorden felt the star-iron cooling. Not because he had stopped putting magic into it, because he hadn’t, but because the red crystal appeared to be absorbing the energy as it was produced. A reaction! And a controlled one, not one that required Gorden to chase bits of red hot iron across his room. He produced his grimoire and noted the effect beside a sketch of the device he’d already made. The sudden reaction with Danny’s necklace…had the rush of demon energy overloaded the thing, feeding it back into the necklace and making it explode? He watched the multimeter rise, wondering what would happen as it approached the top of its reading. As he put more magic into the star-iron, it started to heat further, and the red crystal kept glowing brighter and brighter until he couldn’t look at it without squinting. The multimeter capped out, but the crystal seemed like it was still hungry for more energy. Suddenly, Gorden realized he could feel something drawing his magic out. More than he’d planned to use, as though it were being sucked right out of him, but subtly enough that he hadn’t noticed it at first. Also, the heat of the star-iron was melting through the toaster pan and would become a problem in a moment. “Crap, crap, crap!” Gorden hissed out loud. He got up out of the chair intending to go for the fire extinguisher, but somehow he just couldn’t take his eyes–and his hands–off of the experiment before him. (("Will roll +5 vs 6"You got an Epic(+7) result!)) With one last panicked gasp he finally pushed himself off from the desk and scrambled for the extinguisher under the sink, blasting the stellar iron with CO2 before it set off the smoke detector. The red crystal kept shining brightly, and the multimeter stayed capped out. The stellar iron, bathed in CO2 and deprived of its magical fuel, immediately began to cool again (though the toaster pan was probably a loss.) Gorden stared at the hole he’d burnt into the toaster pan and groaned as he returned his stellar iron pendant to its usual spot. He shoved the pan off the table with a note to recycle it later and returned to the red crystal. So, not just a measurement…a magic capacitor, as well. Perhaps one that only responded to otherworldly magic. And could actively drain it, or cause feedback, if Danny was any indication. But why would he want to create something that could do that? Would there be some sort of dangerous magic in the future that would need to be contained? The faerie hiding spell…the Fomor’s plan to drown New Orleans…maybe something of Chesterfield’s…okay, there were a lot of options there. A thought struck him–if the crystal was only intended to contain otherworldly or otherwise dangerous magic, it wouldn’t need the multimeter. It would just need to be a giant crystal to be as much of a magic sink as possible. Could he use it the other way? To power something? On a lark, he fished up some test leads and a piece of mechanical pencil lead, stuck the leads to the crystal, reconfirmed the location of the fire extinguisher, then gingerly clipped the other ends of the test lead on the graphite. The graphite immediately lit up a brilliant, molten orange as power ran through it. Gorden quickly disconnected the leads before something else caught fire. He had a pretty good idea what it was capable of. Now where had it come from? His future self had given it to him, but where had he sourced it? Tulane had a lot of old equipment in the backrooms, but he was pretty sure the dial multimeter wasn’t one of them. He took a picture of it with his phone–half for records, half to see if the stored magic energy would affect the picture quality–and then flipped over to Junior’s speed dial. “Y’ello,” Junior said after a few rings. “Hey, Junior, it’s Gorden!” Gorden answered. “Sorry it’s so late but I had a question, and it’s gonna sound a little weird so bear with me.” He breathed in and wondered about the possibility of some all-destroying time paradox, but decided that as long as he didn’t actually bring the thing to Junior’s house, there couldn’t be that much harm in it. “Do you have anything in the house that, uh, kinda looks like a pocket watch or a steam gauge, says ‘volts’ and ‘milliamps’ on it?” “...you talking about a multimeter?” Junior asked. “I mighta had one in the barn once upon a time but it would’ve got left behind when we had to run. Lost all my carpentry tools, the wrenches and the hammers, everything. Could probably find a nice new one at one of those automobile shops you’ve got nowadays.” “Yeah, that’s it,” Gordon nodded, even though obviously Junior couldn’t see it. As he continued to talk he looked around for some gloves to not handle the powerful and potentially explosive magic crystal with bare hands. “And I can get lots of multimeters, either buying one at R– S– or just checking one out from the lab, but they’re all digital ones. I was looking to get something electro-mechanical for…reasons, and you’re the first person I thought of for that.” “What, ‘cause I’m old?” He started to laugh at his own observation. “Sorry Gorden, anything old enough that I might’ve used it like that, you’re going to have to find at the junk sellers or an antique stand. You know what? I’m actually curious now, cause I’d have hexed that sorta thing if I wasn’t careful back in my day. Wonder if I still would…” “I mean, someone else would ask me if I was getting into steampunk,” Gorden defended himself lamely. So his future self didn’t source it from Junior. Maybe from his old house, but not him directly. “Though now I’m wondering how you can hear me since I’m calling you on a cellphone.” He made a brief note about the hexing in his grimoire. “Anyway…” he looked at the multimeter again. “...if I find one for the project I’m working on, maybe I’ll bring it over and see if you hex it?” “I’m not anywhere near your phone, so I don’t know how I’d be hexing that. I’m also not doing any magic right now so my phone’s mostly safe. It’s what Ruby calls a ‘land-line’, it’s supposed to be alright because it’s older, for this time, though it’s still newer’n me… Honestly I don’t know how you haven’t blown your new-fangled phone to smithereens yet, must just be lucky. Er, if you find one, I wouldn’t mind taking a crack at it but make sure you don’t need it no more first since if I hex it… well, I s’pose you could fix it, probably. Is that how you keep your phone working? You un-hex it after you fry it?” “Honestly? My phone’s never been hexed. At least not on my end. I’ve gotten plenty of dropped calls, but I had those before the magic stuff came out.” Again Gorden shrugged even though Junior couldn’t see him. “Although now I’m going to be paranoid about breaking this thing,” he joked. “Thanks.” “Anytime,” Junior said. “I’m serious about those junk shops though, you can find all sorts of useful old things.” “I’ll definitely check them out,” responded Gorden, suddenly realizing he might need to make the crystal from scratch in order to return and give it to himself…and realizing that Danny’s old mansion had signage out front saying it was an antiques store, and he had a business card from James’ store as well. “And I think I know a couple of places to start.”
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Jul 6, 2022 22:57
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Magical Mineralogy “Hey, new guy!” said a familiar voice, interrupting his train of thought. When he looked up, Anna, the woman who’d run the pizza party, was a few rows over, waving at him. William HAD said there were some other patrons today. “Gorden, right? I see you found the Library. How’ve you been, man?” “Hm?” He looked up from his notes. “Oh, hey Anna,” Gorden answered when he recovered his wits. “Yeah, Mama Laveau gave me the address to translate some fae runes. I’m working on something else right now, though.” Was the theft public knowledge? The missing book had come from the restricted section. And here he was reading the accounts in the open. As if moving with the reactions of a sloth, he sheepishly turned over the papers in front of him. Anna crossed over to his table in a few quick strides, genuinely happy to see him. “Oho! Anything fun? Or has old man Hardley got you runnin’ errands?” She didn’t even look at the papers, but a second later she noticed the Guardian Lion frozen in mid leap. “Er… what pissed HIM off?” “Kinda…half and half,” Gorden said equivocally. He’d picked this up of his own accord, and Brother William wanted Warden help, so it was absolutely true. “Yeah, por que no los dos. And the lion, uh…from what I’ve heard, after what happened a while back, maybe he’s just sensitive to time magic. I was here with someone else before, and he didn’t get like this then.” “Weird,” Anna said. She didn’t sound like she disbelieved him, though. “Oh well. I’m just here looking up some old property rights stuff. Few of the ghosts in No. 2 have been worried the city’s going to do some kind of renovation project and mess the graveyards up.” She shook her head. “Won’t be the first time I’ve had to go knock on some heads at city hall, won’t be the last. Did ya need any help with… whatever that’s about?” An extra brain to bounce things off of would be very helpful, but Gorden really wasn’t sure whether being a deputy warden meant he could share possibly secret stuff around. The crystal was potentially more dangerous, but the only person keeping him from sharing that was himself. And Anna did know Mama LeVeau. “I think I’ll take all the help I can,” he finally answered. “I’d be a crappy grad student if I didn’t. Are you up on magic crystals?” “Only as a hobbyist,” Anna said, with the tone of a woman who took her hobbies very seriously. “Why? Did you find a neat one?” “Hobby is good. Maybe better; it means you love what you’re learning,” Gorden nodded as he moved the velvet dice bag front and center. Making sure to hold it by the velvet, he pushed the crystal out for Anna to see. “Look like anything you know?” “Huh,” Anna said, peering closely at it. “Red, with a black inner shadow… and glowing. Do you know any of its properties? Like, does it give off heat or cold or make you delusional or uh… let’s go with ‘aroused’?” “It seems to absorb magic and release it,” Gorden answered, “sometimes…uncommanded. It melted through my toaster oven tray…but, uh, I don’t think it’s had any mental effects.” He thought about it for a moment. “Well…actually, I had a bit of a weird dream when I was looking it over, but I thought that was too much coffee and not enough sleep. You know how it is, right? When you’ve been up too long and things get loopy?” Her eyes flicked up to him suspiciously. “Did it feel like an ordinary coffee and insomnia dream? Or more like you were someone else? Or somewhere else? Like a… a hosed up hallucination.” Gorden blinked. “I did have claws in the dream. And it was very…vivid. A lot more so than a ‘fell asleep after seeing a bad movie’ kind of dream. Like I was a…a demon or a werewolf or something that really wanted to hurt someone.’” “So… that sounds a lot like a Tear of Lythe,” Anna said. She glanced at the guardian lion for a moment. “Which would explain why HE got all hot and bothered too. It’s… pretty bad juju. I’ve never seen one in person before.” “But you can tell them on sight, so that’s better than me,” Gorden answered, suddenly wondering if he should have gone to the university hospital and grabbed a container for radionuclides. “Er, I had it in my room for a while. Is this a ‘drop and run’ thing?” “That would be irresponsible,” Anna said matter-of-factly. “Even if it was.” “Even if what was?” Brother William asked, as he reappeared from behind a shelf, with a book titled ‘Mystical Crystals: the Beautiful, the Practical, and the Dangerous’ in his hands. “The crystal I mentioned earlier, and hi again, Brother William,” Gorden responded, less smoothly than he’d have liked. “Anna knows what it is, so now we know what to look for in that book. Set it down on the table so we can all see.” He did so, and there was, in fact, a page on Tears of Lythe… in the ‘Dangerous’ chapter of the book, of course. The example picture showed a crystal that looked extremely similar to the one in his bag, with the major exception that it had been faceted and shaped into an ornate knife blade. Mystical Crystals posted:Tears of Lythe are not in fact, precious stones, but more akin to demonic amber. They are formed from the calcified life-blood of a high ranking demon of violence. (Tears being something of a misnomer, unless one considers a mortal wound to ‘weep’.) Weapons made from this material have the property of absorbing magical energy, a property inherited from the demons it comes from. This stored energy does not leak in any way, and is in fact jealously guarded by the blood. Two sentences had been partially highlighted in bright yellow, (a fact that Apprentice Brother William groaned over before he even read the text.) “...well, crap.” Gorden managed as he read the text. The blood of a high ranking demon–where would his older self even come across something like that?! “‘...valuable material for weapons…’” he continued muttering, noting the decidedly un-weapon-like shape of the crystal-with-multimeter, and the un-pierced skin on his hand, even though had nevertheless decided to try sucking out his magic through his stellar iron pendant. “So this thing is a ‘cursed’ magic capacitor. Made from demons. I…that…” He thought of safety procedure after safety procedure drilled into his head to use the university labs, and how much of that his older self would have had to throw out to willingly make something like what he’d poked and carried around. Suddenly the future didn’t seem quite so bright. “I can’t say I blame the lion for being upset,” Brother William said, giving the crystal a side-eye. “Where did you say you came by that nasty thing?” “If I said ‘in a restaurant back alley,’ would you believe it?” Gorden said, his voice suggesting that there was no way they would. If he didn’t have it he wouldn’t believe it himself, either. William and Anna looked at each other for a second, both extremely concerned but neither disbelieving. “Did you find it there, or did someone give it to you?” Anna asked. “This is really important, Gorden. If someone is handing out demonic crystals in New Orleans we need to find them and stop them. If someone’s just leaving them lying around that’s almost as bad… Warden Hardley needs to be told about this, immediately.” “Oh bloody…” William threw his hands up, exasperated. “One more thing to shovel onto his plate when he can barely bother sending a deputy to look into a robbery that happened last summer. This is why nothing ever gets done in this city, I swear to Thoth. Did you even get a chance to read the report, Gorden? What did you think of it?” “It was given to me,” Gorden nodded emphatically. This he was certain of. Elbridge…he was his teacher, but he was also a warden, and did he really want to walk up to him with incontrovertible proof that someone, probably himself, had been throwing things upstream in time? “And while I can’t really remember who gave it to me…” He swung the report back to Brother William, finger pointed easily but noticeably at the name of the author of the missing book. “...maybe I can guess.” William turned a shade whiter than his already pasty complexion. “Th-that’s…” “Yeah? Who?” Anna asked. She hadn’t seen the report. “Connected to some confidential matters,” William said shortly. “Better if you aren’t involved, Anna, you know how messy these things get.” Anna regarded him coolly, then turned to Gorden, crossing her arms. “You wouldn’t even know what that thing was if it wasn’t for me, you really going to cut me out now?” “You did, and thanks for the collaboration!” Gorden turned back to her, smiled and nodded. “That said, this seems to involve some, uh…” With a shrug, he whistled a few bars from the opening to Doctor Who. “And I don’t want to have El calling you in an…official capacity.” “Is that supposed to be a threat?” she asked. “Fine, keep your secrets, see if I point out your new toy’s going to eat your soul next time.” She left in a huff. “It wasn’t a threat, I just don’t want someone else to–!” Gorden stammered as Anna turned and left. “Crap.” He slumped in his chair. William mopped his brow with a genuine handkerchief and sighed. “It’s not common knowledge that we keep a shelf of hypothetical works, and I’d like to keep it that way. You really think your mysterious stone is connected to the case somehow?” “This kind of improvisation with a multimeter is exactly the kind of bullshit I’d try,” Gorden managed in a muffled tone, still having his head between his hands. “And now there’s a second thing in the here and now by future-me? Yeah, I think they’re connected.” William nodded worriedly. “Future-you seems to be making this entire affair needlessly complicated, if you ask me. I suppose I should apologize for being so curt earlier, though. You may be exactly the man for this job after all. Do you have any idea where to go next?” “I think I do,” Gorden finally said as he lifted up his head. He looked to the crystal again, and the very machined, very human multimeter attached to it. “I’d like to follow up on the other half of this thing…”
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Jul 7, 2022 21:58
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Gift From the G-Man Scene: Tulane College A couple hours later Gorden found himself standing in front of locker 0028, which was actually a janitor’s locker in a forgotten closet in one of the least used wings of the building. Gorden was faculty, and most of the buildings were still open for evening classes or late lab work, so nobody paid him much mind as he entered. He still took a moment to check left and right down the halls before turning the key. When he opened the door, there was only one thing inside. A book. THE book. The Time Fractal Paradox, by G. Maxwell. Gorden’s breath caught as if he’d found the Holy Grail. Another furtive glance left and right, and a little bit of a quick feel around the edge of the locker to see if there were any traps, he took a moment to peek inside at the publisher’s page. It was then that he found out that every single bit of text in the book had been gone over with a black felt-tipped marker. “drat you, G-man!” Gorden swore under his breath as he grabbed the book, rapidly flipping through the pages for something left uncovered, or perhaps left between the pages. The book itself was not very thick, though it was a hardcover and resembled a textbook, including an abstract rainbow being split by a prism on the cover. Nothing fell out of the pages as he flipped through them, but he did find a single chapter that was still unreadable, except the stain covering the words was obviously dark blue instead of black. There was also something magical about the book, or possibly just the ink. He could feel it tingle against his fingers when he turned the pages. It felt a little like holding his grimoire. “Huh, maybe I can undo that…or even set up some kind of optical filter for that…” He made a mental note to look for a pair of cheap 3d glasses and cut off the blue side, then experimentally swiped his finger over a part of the blue ink, willing it away. It didn’t work, but he brushed against the ink again and could almost see it smear a little, before reverting back to its original smooth line. “Fascinating–you made the ink want to settle here. I’ve never thought of that application–like an old airplane with stability that resists pilot input, but with semi-static materials. Could you take anything, set it how you want, and make that the ground state?” Gorden’s sudden diversion of thought was interrupted by his phone making a garbled, off-tone noise that vaguely resembled the one it should make when he received a text. “Oh, shoot,” he muttered as he closed the book, slid it under his arm, and pulled out his phone. Grace the Gator posted:hey you busy? Need an update on the lake stuff “Ah crud,” Gorden muttered, as he grabbed the book and slid it under his arm with the grimoire. With the books under arm he walked down the hall, adroitly texting with the remaining hand with the experience of someone who had done this many times. ”Gorden (You)” posted:Sent a text to El a few hours ago. What’s up? Grace the Gator posted:sounds like el got busy, can you meet? Too long for text ”Gorden (You)” posted:Where at? I’m at Tulane right now but I still got my car. Grace the Gator posted:i can meet you there, i got a new bike. Gimme like 30? ”Gorden (You)” posted:Cool, the library is public access, see you there. As Gorden wandered out of the building and headed for the library, he wondered how much attention a biker lady with a necklace of teeth would catch, leaving aside the whole were-gator thing. ”Gorden (You)” posted:Look for me in the front, I’ll get us a private room. Grace was just as unsubtle as Gorden had feared in her leathers and boots and helmet hair. She parked her motorcycle and headed into the library. The front desk, as promised, featured Gorden himself. She tossed her helmet in the air, catching it with one hand, but her words were all business. "Yo. Thanks for making time for this tonight. Things are heating up out here." “Yeah, don’t have to tell me that,” Gorden acknowledged. “Reading rooms are this way, and they’ve got locks on. We’ll be good to talk in there.” Grace gave him a single nod. "Good call." Gorden guided Grace past lines of desks and shelves and students thankfully too busy cramming for exams or taking phone photos of sources to notice his unusual company. At last he indicated an empty reading room with a plain table and a whiteboard on the wall, and locked the door behind them. “I…have to admit I never actually mentioned the lake stuff while we were at Ada’s place working with Eriol, but I remembered and texted him the stuff earlier today.” Unprofessionally, Grace giggled at his confession. “Oh lord, we’re gonna have to buy him a fruit basket. Do you get wizards fruit baskets? We gotta get him something. I ended up totally blowing him off today to do some stuff with Ada, James got distracted getting beat up by some black court… so yeah. Busy day for everybody.” She shook her head vigorously for a moment, trying to shake the events of today out and focus. “We’ll make that up to him when we can, I guess. Anyway, the point is I’m working for Ada full time now, and she’s started making political moves, get an actual force together. This evening we met with the Leatherheads, gang of were-s, mostly gators but some other fun stuff mixed in. They’re real concerned about the Fomor and the canals and the poo poo at the lake… which means you’re up to bat. Show me what you got.” Gorden’s eyes widened slightly as Grace asked for the new information. Someone else might not have noticed, but a were-predator surely would. “Erm…after the lab work at the lake, we went to that thing with Eriol…and then I was really tired…and then something else came up…” he rambled as he set the books and crystal assembly he was holding on the table in a hurried mess. “So I haven’t really had a chance to look at Shirley’s notes again. Sorry.” Grace completely deflated. “No, you’re good. We all had something else come up. Even El, it sounds like. Sorry for dragging you away, I was just hoping we’d have something more concrete to feed the Leatherheads. So, I guess the next question is, is there anything I can do to help? Either figuring out how to screw up those magic discs or with your other projects so you can get back to them?” “Are you familiar with demon crystals?” Gorden offered hopefully as he indicated the crystal-multimeter conundrum on the table. “This is powerful stuff, and I think my fu–”G-Man” dead-dropped it for me to use on something–maybe those magic disks, or something related to the Fomor. But I didn’t even know magic existed when this year started. You’ve been immersed in it your whole life. So you might have a better perspective on what sorts of things a magic-absorbing crystal with a multimeter on it might do. Maybe it can suck the faerie spells right out of those stones, I dunno.” "Not my whole life, not by a long shot. Everything was pretty normal until after high school, actually. When everybody else went onto get jobs or move to college, I fell in love and moved to the 'Glades. So yeah, I don't even know what a demon crystal is, nevermind a multi-whatever. Hell, I can't even fix my necklace without finding some help." She grumbled. "Anyway, if you actually think there's a chance it'll inactivate those stones, then, yeah. Let's look into that. We got a whole buncha angry gators who are tired of the fomor messing up their territory, and I'd love to give them a target." “Oh…I see…” Gorden deflated in a similar way to Grace just moments before. Then his face brightened. “You know, come to think of it, I did test this thing on my pendant…last night? This morning? I stayed up late again. Anyway, I started channeling magic through it and then it wouldn’t stop, and it nearly burned my place down. I’m definitely going to need a new toaster pan…and to recharge the fire extinguisher. So, yeah, I think we got a working hypothesis to test.” "Well, there's our move then. I'm not entirely sure what my schedule looks like, to be honest, but I've got to get some sleep soon. What's your day look like tomorrow? Got time to go back out to the lake?" “I think I got some time, yeah. At least to test it. Do you think we can find one of those stones again? We know they’re there now, but focusing enough to find them again is going to be a giant pain. Especially if there’s 27 of them like Ms. Laveau said." "I kinda remember where the one we traced was, we can probably find it again." She shrugged. She had a good memory for shorelines, usually. “Sounds like a plan. If it does work…” Gorden scratched the back of his head. “Do we want to drain the stone and take it to your friends, or do we want to leave it in place to avoid tipping our hand?” She thought for a moment. "Honestly, if it's not working, let's just leave it. Maybe it'll confuse them for a day or two. We'll have to deactivate more than one of them anyway before it has any real effect, right?" “Yeah, that’s what Mama Laveau said,” nodded Gorden. “Does that mean we’ll take it if it does work?” "Eh. We can play it by ear. If you want it to play with, we can grab you one though." Grace stood up and yawned. "I'll text you in the morning, yeah?" “Yeah, I can drive by your place, or you can come pick me up here,” said Gorden, who yawned sympathetically. Lack of sleep was really starting to get to him, but there was still the book’s blue ink… “I really need to sleep more…goodnight.” "You and me both, Gorden. You and me both."
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Nov 11, 2022 23:56
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