#ogtrib | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

blindrapture · 2 months

Text

TUESDAY JULY 26TH, 2011 (See, the Thing is...)

7:29 AM I'm awake earlier than the others. I sneaked out of bed, letting Donnie sleep, and came to the kitchen so I could just.. be alone with my headache. EAT told me so much last night. Why did I have to drink?

7:31 AM Going over it. The Ciphers are still bad, that hasn't changed, but now word has spread that they exist at all and so another group of people has come to California in hopes of finding the right rabbit hole. EAT said they're motorcyclists. Bikers. If I had to guess, and I do, they're those bikers that we saw yesterday. They're here in the city. So that's something to do today. More worryingly, the RAF are working for the Archangel. That's.. definitely bad. Also probably worth looking into, verifying for myself? Frankly I trust EAT on it, but maybe I shouldn't??? EAT did also tell me… Well. She didn't get all that specific. She? They? EAT. I didn't really let EAT elaborate. But, Donnie's still alive, so the Thing that Cody had done with her wasn't kill her. I think I took a solid guess when I was drunk. I think EAT saw them kiss. Or more, y'know, but let's just leave this at a kiss. Hell, maybe it wasn't even a kiss! Maybe they made fun of me behind my back! Maybe they made a pact! Maybe they played Scrabble! Maybe all of the above!

7:35 AM It doesn't matter. I don't know the whole story. And it wouldn't matter even then. I'm here to do a thing. I'm here to find Bones, and stop those bikers. And I'm all out of Bones. I'm gonna do some work by myself today.

7:38 AM Left the house. No one heard. Taking the car.

8:02 AM Been driving around. It's still early, few people are up and about. I'm looking for bikes. Or I'm looking for a construction site.

8:08 AM Pulled over to have a look at some graffiti. It's a bunch of symbols. They're arranged, like they're making a picture. An eye. Above a bunch of rectangles with music notes. Above a lot of smaller rectangles. Buildings? "RAPTURE IS COMING." Yeah. I am too. Better watch out.

8:09 AM Look at this city. There are still phone booths. Those were already becoming obsolete. They're still here even when the dollar isn't. ..the sky is flickering.

8:25 AM Visitacion. The school. Gonna find that window.

8:31 AM The sun's coming in through the windows, making it possible to see where I'm going.

8:34 AM There's the classroom. There's the candle, its remnants melted on the floor. But Jackie is gone. It's possible Tiger, or one of his friends, came back here and found her. It's possible she's buried now. It's also possible that they never did. If Cody shot her, he might have been the one to come back and cover his tracks. Or maybe he told someone he trusted. Like Heaven. Or like.. something else.

8:35 AM I never knew you, but I might be the only one who knows what happened to you. Maybe I should tell Donnie. But. Does she still love him?

9:11 AM People are starting to walk the streets in numbers. It's that time of day. I've passed food stalls, cafes, preparing for service. Stores with clothing in the window that looks homemade. We still have knitters and seamstresses. I saw a computer repair store. A sign outside said they unlock phones too. I haven't seen any construction. I haven't seen any police. And I haven't seen any banks, not even for that Z. But right now I'm staring at something I didn't expect to see. A movie theater. Unless they're playing The Murder of Gonzago, I don't think I'll get much use out of it. All the same, I find myself gravitating towards it. These places are a cultural cornerstone. A way to kill time, for those who don't take stories seriously. And a way to think things through, for those who do.

9:15 AM They're charging Z for showings, but I think the kid at the counter recognized me from the Party House, he just waved me in. What's on soon? Lots of comedies. Shaun of the Dead. The Terminal. The Sting. The Italian Job. And then there's an odd one out. The Thing.

11:00 AM Huh. That movie was way less scary than it had any right to be. Practical effects have come a long way since then. In the end, it was more of a.. Whodunnit with cool vibes.

11:04 AM Hang on. I was getting back in the car when I thought I recognized someone. And yeah. Heaven's out in town, heading somewhere. It must be that time of day. … If I want to do this, I've got to be smart about it. Leaving my hat, coat, and scarf in the car. Taking a different shirt from the pile we have in the back.

11:09 AM She hasn't actually been looking behind her at all. Like she doesn't care about, or at least doesn't expect, being followed.

11:11 AM I wish… Honestly? I wish I can find Salmacis again. EAT would be a valuable asset right now.

11:21 AM There is a construction site. I've never driven around this part of the city. Failure on my part. But there's a lot of streets here in downtown. You kinda get into habits of where to check. No signs anywhere clarifying the construction company. Some white vans parked, filled with rebar and scaffolding. This is, or was, gonna be another skyscraper. It doesn't look like anyone's here now working on it. Just the one woman walking in, no hard hat. Following her further is gonna be tough, as there's no plausible excuse for it. Watching from a distance for now.

11:23 AM She walked up some stairs, and now I see her on the skeletal second floor. No walls. She's just standing around now. Waiting?

11:25 AM No, it looks like she's been talking to someone up there. But I see no one else.

11:26 AM ...Cody just turned the corner nearby. He's on his way. Uh. Uh. Uh. Bail. Gotta bail.

11:27 AM I uh I just booked it. Got around a corner. When I peeked back around the corner, Cody was absolutely just standing still, looking in my general direction, eyes wide. I. I think he clocked me.

11:42 AM Getting back to the car was kinda confusing, but I kept a brisk pace and took side streets. I'm here. My stuff's still here. Okay. Fuck. Okay. Next order of business.

11:59 AM home. please still be there, Donnie.

12:01 PM Donnie!!! "Oh, you're back!" Donnie, we've gotta, uh. Come to the car with me! "Wha?"

12:02 PM Donnie, listen. I have learned some things. "What things? What did you find?" ...god how do I. The RAF are working for Archie. "They're…" We can't stay here. We need to find the bikers and get out. "Bikers?" There's another group of people going after the last Cipher. They're those bikers. "..yeah, I remember seeing them…" We've got to stop them, and we're better off leaving this city altogether. Whatever the RAF have planned can't be good. "How do you know this?" I.. went looking around on my own. "Yeah? What did you see?" Heaven goes out every day to a construction site and talks with.. Archie. "Really? That.. sounds serious." And Cody goes there too. I think he spotted me. "That's why you're in a rush?" Yeah. "Well... do you think maybe, if we talked to Cody, he might explain?" Donnie… "There might be another reason Heaven's talking to a Fear. Maybe Cody came to save her or back her up!" No, Donnie, listen, Cody's... not good. "What?" He. He shot Jackie. Two days ago, when I went out to help him and Tiger. "Jordan, how…" He, he split us up, he went off alone with Jackie, he even showed me his gun before he left, and later that night I found Jackie, dead, with a bullet hole in her head! D: "And. But." It was in an abandoned school! I don't think anyone else knew she was there! But Cody mentioned the school to us before we split up! "Jordan." Please, Donnie, I know he did it, I know he was the one, I've.. been freaking out about this for days now. "Jordan…" ....yeah? "Jordan, I.. I believe you." … "He can be hot-headed. And he takes protection very seriously. I can believe that he thought Jackie did something to endanger us, and he.. may have killed her. I can believe it because he told me." He. … "He told me yesterday, after I came home. He had been wracked with guilt over it. He was close to shooting himself. But I talked him out of it." Well. Well what did he say was the reason? "He said that Jackie was working for the Archangel." ...no… "I know. It was hard to hear, that a Fear had gotten so close to us." No, Donnie, please, it was a lie. "Well, how can you be so sure?" Because EAT told me! "...EAT told you?" Yes! Last night, after you went home! A Camper came to the Party House! I took it away so people wouldn't know we were talking, you know how these people get with Fears, but EAT's good! EAT's on our side! "......" EAT told me about the bikers, about the RAF, about Archie! I told EAT about Cody, I didn't get that from her! "'Her.'" Please, Donnie, please, I need your trust in this. >_< "You.. couldn't have trusted me to come with you today?" That's... something else. "Well, I'm listening." ..I really don't want to say it. >__< But. Okay. Look. As a demonstration of trust, okay? "Thank you." EAT told me that you and Cody... well. okay. being totally honest, EAT didn't actually tell me what you and Cody do. EAT was probably going to, but I cut her off, because I assumed what it was. "...and what do you assume?" ...love? "...I see." she's getting out of the car, WAIT "Just. Give me a minute. Okay?" Okay...

12:07 PM She got back in. "I don't know.. what EAT saw. Cody has been trying to get intimate with me, trying to.. bring back what we used to have, but in person now. It's clear he wants it. He has kissed me." Okay. "It sounds like we've had a breakdown of trust. You and me." she's.. pale. Maybe. It does feel like a breakdown. "First of all, I appreciate what you are doing here, a little late, but I think I understand what you were going through. I appreciate that you're demonstrating trust now." Thank you. ._. "Second, I.. think I feel less trust for you these days than I have before. I have responsibility in this." ...ah. "It's.. the Fears, Jordan. I'm really not comfortable with you running headfirst into the Fears every chance you get. Initiating conversations with them when you don't even know what they're capable of or what they want to do right then in that moment." ...and EAT. ._. "Oh yeah. Definitely EAT." … "But." … "But I think I see why you trust EAT." You do? "It has not been hostile to us, not once. It has initiated the conversations and treated us with respect, or something like respect. I still think it's possible that it has ulterior motives, that it just wants you to do what it says, and it picked a non-violent way to do so. But... even that is better than the other Fears." It feels like EAT's experiencing all this with us. "Like EAT is your peer?" Well. Yes and no. Honestly, it feels like EAT is a big enough thing that it can be the peer to things on multiple levels of... power. Like that's just the result of its, like... size? "You really trust this thing." I mean, I am also ready to run, or if I have to, fight, if a Camper ever does turn against us. I'm not.. blind to this. "But you. You trust it." I trust EAT. And I trust you, Donnie. And, listen, you came first. "...okay." Okay? "Yeah. I think we can still continue to talk about this over time, this is an ongoing process." It's our relationship. o: "And. I do want to say. And I want you to listen to this. ...I did consider, um, getting back with Cody. I did consider it." ...I'm listening. "I did talk to him about you, about your.. gung-ho approach. I told him in confidence that it makes me anxious to see the Fears all talking to you. And that's what it is, it's anxiety. It's a scary sight, to see someone I care about surrounded by monsters. And you.. welcome it." I wouldn't say… "…" ...no, actually, yeah, you're right. Well articulated. "Thank you. It is scary, and it does mean that I have to seriously consider what would happen if, one of these times, you welcome your own death. In that case, yes, I would have to start welcoming.. someone else. And that is the conversation I had with Cody." The one that led to him kissing you? "Well, actually, I said all this after I rebuffed his kiss. Because, you... belligerent jackass, that day hasn't actually happened. You're a fucking riddle. You don't ever welcome your death. You welcome threats and then always manage to avoid death. It's terrifying to be around, but it's only terrifying because I fucking love you." I understand. "I'm not finished! Because it's not even your fault that it's terrifying! San Francisco makes us forget this a little, but there's a red sky out there! Life has changed, maybe forever! The threats are there, and if you didn't welcome them, you'd react by cowering in fear, freezing in place, and waiting for the first one to come and bite your head off! Your infuriating nature is what's kept you alive and able to protect others." ... .w. It's. It's as you say. It's not like I wanted this responsibility. I'm dealing with the cards I'm given. "Yeah. I know, sweetheart." Thank you so much for. Talking to me. "Thank you for the same."

12:10 PM But. So. Do you believe me about the rest of it? "Well, the question is if I believe EAT." Yeah. "A bunch of bikers looking for the Cipher, okay, that's just wacky enough, I don't see why EAT would make that up. That sounds like a priority." Yeah! "The RAF working for the Archangel... that's a harder pill to swallow. I'm sorry." No, I get it. I mean, heh, you want a good punchline here? I may have stretched the truth when I said I saw Heaven talking to Archie. I didn't even see. So I get it. All I have are little details, and EAT tying them together in a neat narrative. "Ah, of course." Yeah. "...so what did you actually see?" It. It's weird. I saw her talking, but there was no one there. She went all this way, to a construction site in the middle of the city, to just stand around and talk to the air. "............huh." ..what? "Cody may have.. warned me about this. He said Heaven has been acting strangely. And.." … ..Donnie? "He's here."

12:12 PM We got out of the car, because Cody's coming up to the house. He sees us. Is indignant. "Donnie! What is that little shit telling you?" Hey! donnie "He's been very open with me, and I've been talking him out of some suspicions." "'Suspicions!' Huh! Yeah, I'll bet! What were you doing with Heaven, kid? What the fuck were you doing?" I wanted to see where she goes every day! I saw her talking to someone who isn't there! That's all I saw! "Then why the fuck did you run from me?" Because I! Didn't know what you were gonna do! What did you tell me the other day, it's best to hold onto some uncertainty. he's scoffing. "Do you wanna know what I think? Donnie, do you want to know what I think?" "I—" pointing at me "I think he's duping us. He's in league with one of them. He's—" noticing "he's writing all this shit down? Why would you want to write down a fucking argument? Who are you giving this to? You little parasite!"

(This journal has a clear shoe print on it.)

12:16 PM he grabbed my shirt. shook me around. I told him my journal is my own. he slapped it out of my hand and it fell on the ground, and we had a fight. I told him I knew he shot Jackie as he punched me. He accused me of leading the Fears to the city, and then of causing "this whole damn business" by going into the rabbit holes, getting the Ciphers. I let myself fall and grabbed his legs and pulled him down to the ground with me and hit him back. Donnie was shrieking at him and telling us to stop. "He didn't do anything," she said, over and over. Then she went silent for a bit, and it was just me and Cody fighting for an amount of time. Then we heard a gun cock, and Cody stopped hitting me to look up and see Donnie pointing her rifle at him. "Donnie, put that down. Put that down now. Don't be crazy." "Get up. Leave him alone." "Donnie, is he even who you think he is?" "Get the fuck up. I will shoot you right here." And he got up. Put his hands up. Tried again to talk her into putting the rifle down. She told him to get fucked. "You need to calm down. We need to talk." "I'm all for talking. Okay. We can talk." And then she led him into the house. Told me to wait out here. And when they were inside, I picked up my journal again and wrote it all down. This wasn't my first fistfight. Writing it down afterward is what I do. Remembering them afterward is what I do. Maybe it helps me process it. Maybe it just imprints it on my mind. I haven't really figured that one out yet. Oh god. Just. Gonna sit here for a while.

12:20 PM God. Oh god. Just. Remembering old ones. I fought similarly then. I'm not afraid of bigger men than me. That's one of my dumbest qualities. I'm sorry, Donnie.

(Tearstains.)

12:22 PM "You are bleeding. Do you require assistance?" huh? it's. it's you. "It's me." in.. sunglasses? "I have been walking around this city for twelve hours, passing many humans, even humans in groups, and the most any of them did was smile at me. The sunglasses work." right, of course. so the eyes are the part you can't change. the rest of you just looks like a regular lady. with blue hair dye. that's smart. "I got the idea from you last night." you did? "Not directly. Your behavior was transparent. This body holds a combination of traits that fits into social expectations, to the point that you were openly flirting with me." well, don't.. say that so loud here. I was drunk. I'm sorry for treating you that way. "You helped me. And I don't really desire an apology. Your behavior is information." ...thanks, EAT. :) "You have called me Salmacis before. Resume using that name." Okay! c: "It is the name I chose for myself." It's a wonderful name, Salmacis. It's my favorite Genesis song. "Yes, there was such a song on the Exodus, wasn't there?" Yeah. That's the last time I've heard it, I think. ..what are you doing here? "I have located the motorcyclists." ...OH! Oh shit! o: "I have been observing them, and I do not believe they will listen to this body. Furthermore, as long as they are surrounded by the public, I cannot just overpower them, as that would require extending this body to levels that cannot be disguised." And you can't just bring in, say, a big male Camper? Or even a bunch of them? "I have some such Camper on the way here, as a contingency, but it will take time before they arrive. I need your help on this one." Huh. Would have expected you to be more efficient, having many types of Camper on reserve near many cities or something. Aren't cities usually, like. On water? "I am not all water. And.. yes, the efficiency measure has occurred to me. I didn't have this one ready. Okay?" Hey, didn't mean to criticize. Please, I would love to help you. "Excellent. Then come." Well! I will have to consult Donnie. "Where is she?"

12:26 PM I didn't really have it in me to tell the story out loud. So, at the risk of making another stupid decision, I let Salmacis read my journal. "I see." So, to answer your first question, yeah, I required assistance. I needed someone to keep me company and take my mind off of.. waiting. "I can do that. I can do waiting." .w. "If they come out, and I am here, do you have a plan or an explanation?" I don't think either of them has seen this Camper. Keep your glasses on, and I'll... say you're a friend from the Party House. "Do I need a fake name?" I'll call you Sally. :) "..is it the best idea, to lie to Victoria after your prior conversation?" I'm not gonna leave her in the dark for long. If Cody's with her, she'll understand the need for discretion. How well can you do an impression of a... well, not you? "What inflection would be best? Cool and aloof? Awkward sincerity? Confident sincerity? Personally driven? Socially competitive?" Hmm. Give me an example of cool and aloof. "No thanks." Perfect, that one. You shouldn't need to speak much, though. You're just my friend who is here to tell me where the bikers are. "That is not a lie." Exactly!

12:29 PM Cody left the house first, Donnie immediately behind him. Cody immediately asked "Who are you?" This is Sally. She's come from the kids' house with news for me. donnie "Oh yeah? What's up?" sally. "I was asked by the others to tell you that we've, like. Found your bikers." lazily looking between donnie and her own fingernails. nice. Yes, I had them put out a search today. donnie "That's smart." How did the talk go? ...she's looking at sally. Uh. You'd better go. Sorry. sally "Oh. Sure. Nice seeing you, Jordan." holy shit, called by my actual name? and there sally goes. walking around the corner. god I hope she stays around. they... stay around?

12:34 PM ..so? ..Donnie's glancing at Cody. Cody muttered an apology. Look, man, it's. I'm sorry for running from you. I didn't know who to trust. I get that I made things seem even sketchier. Probably made things worse. "Heaven doesn't tell me what she does out there. She and I are supposed to be a team on this, and she stopped letting me in on that. And.. Donnie tells me you know about Jackie." I found her body. "She…" … ..yeah? "She was working with the Fears, man." … "I'm telling you. She was acting suspicious as all hell." Well, like what? You do actually have to be specific on this one. You killed a teenage girl. ...grimace. "I did. I know. She let it slip. The kids, out there in that house... a lot of them went to the same school, and there was a.. a fucking cult hanging around there. The Hopeful Visitation of Christ. I'd known about this for a while, they were around before the red sky, and they already got chased out of the city because they were too obvious about it. Their pamphlets were downright bloodthirsty. And they were trying to get kids to bring their parents to... look, it's not important. But it was too late. Some of the kids at that school had listened, still held onto those pamphlets and their messaging. I didn't even realize until Jackie.. showed me her knife. She wasn't threatening me with it, she thought it was a cool thing, she wanted to impress me. And I asked her why she had it, and she told me all about the games that her friends were playing. Games of 'Who will survive the Rapture?' 'Who deserves to survive the Rapture?' She thought it was all edgy jokes, because that's what all the kids think. Jesus, they were spreading blood libel and talking about skull shape. I don't even know where they got that kind of…" o_o "..anyway. Tell you the truth, I was proud of Jackie for telling me this. I thought she was confiding in a trusted adult. ...then she confided more. She'd killed too. She'd killed, and a voice in her head told her to kill again." staring at me "It was self-defense. Okay?" ...okay. "I don't want you guys getting on my ass about this. It sucks enough as it is. Now, I would ask for your help on looking into Heaven's activities, but I think you were way too conspicuous running away. 'Cause she wasn't surprised to see me this time, and I had to talk my way out of an awkward stake-out. So what's this about the bikers?"

12:40 PM I said I'd need to go get Sally to get the actual directions, so I left Donnie to explain the situation and went around the same corner EAT went, and she was waiting there for me. We waited a couple minutes to make this work, and now we're heading back together. Guys, let's get in the car. Sally can give directions on the way.

12:41 PM Entering the car, Sally tugged on Donnie's shoulder, then lowered her sunglasses for a second. Donnie saw, then looked at me and I gave a nod. That.. was smooth.

12:55 PM "They're still there." Four bikes parked in an alley, next to a side door. From the looks of it, this is the only entrance to the pub called Boot Punks. I suspect they've been here the entire night. Okay, Cody, are you on board for this? "Well, what do you want me to do?" You're our muscle on this. Look intimidating. "heh." looks surprised. Sally, do you want to.. wait out here, or leave, or...? You've already done your job. "Nah, I'm cool with seeing some action." okay thank you

12:57 PM Huh. Not as dingy a place as I was expecting. The ceiling is awful, covered in spiderwebs, but the tables are clean, counter's clean. Seated at a booth are four rough tough dudes in patchy leather jackets. Two of them are kinda average build, their facial hair does all the talking; one has a sharp face and big arms, and then the last looks fucking jacked. They're surrounded by empty beer glasses and are still working on more. Cody's tapping my shoulder. "Put your journal away. Just this once." ...yeah, okay. Good call. Tiger Stripes, give me strength.

1:08 PM So I walked up, said "Excuse me." They paid more attention to the other three-- Sally's pretty, Donnie's got a fucking rifle, and Cody's the only one of us that looks at all like he belongs. But they did look. Said nothing. I took that as my chance to keep talking. "Have you heard of the Cipher?" The sharp-faced one spoke for the others. Had a far softer voice than I was expecting. "We have." "What have you heard?" One of the guys with thick facial hair said "We've heard they're a good time!" The leader eyed him, then turned back to me. "I must ask you to take off your hat." I complied. Held it in my arm. "Is that rifle armed?" Donnie nodded. "Is it a threat?" I said "Not a threat. Just for protection." "What have you heard about the Ciphers?" "I'm glad you asked. We're actually the ones who took care of the last two, so I understand where you guys are coming from. But we'd been duped. The Ciphers are bad. They're bringing Rapture closer and closer. You don't want to be duped too, do you?" "You understand where we're coming from? How is that possible if you're only just now meeting us?" "We got intel. Same as you." "You've met Father Tiresias?" That caught me a little off-guard. But I was able to tell them that, yes, Tiresias was the one who told us not to pursue the last Cipher. The leader was clearly taken aback too. "Well. That's news to us. We had come all this way because we'd heard that the portals to the Ciphers had been trending westward, and California made the most sense for the final one. I suppose it's your travels that we'd been hearing about. That would explain the hat. And you say you had been making a mistake?" "Yes, exactly." The other bikers were getting a little rowdy at the way things were going, but their leader shut them up. "It's funny how life goes. We were about to walk right into a terrible mistake. Would you care for a drink?" "I'm sixteen." "And the world is different now. You're allowed a—" Then his eyes widened at something behind me. Cody had pulled out his pistol and aimed it directly at Sally's head. I only had enough time to turn around and register this before he pulled the trigger.

1:13 PM The thing about sunglasses is they shield your eyes from the front. Whether during the car ride over, or during the talk with the bikers, Cody had glanced at Sally, having lowered her guard, and he must have seen her eyes' dead stare from a side view. He must have either recognized it, or at least known they weren't a human's eyes. But he did at least assume I had been fooled, because he didn't point his gun at me afterward. He pointed it at Donnie. Probably to dissuade her from using her own rifle. As Sally's body, knocked sideways by the blast, collapsed onto the floor, no blood sprayed anywhere. Instead, everyone present, bikers included, was washed in a transparent water as all of us screamed different things. "WHAT THE FUCK" "NO" "HOLY GODDAMN CUNTING SHIT" "ARE YOU OFF YOUR FUCKING ROCKER YOU PIECE OF SHIT" "SALLY NO NO NO NO OH GOD NO" "CODY WHAT HAVE YOU DONE WHAT ARE YOU DOING" "SHE WAS A FUCKING FEAR" and as everyone else died down, Cody continued shouting. "SHE WASN'T A HUMAN, I SAW HER FUCKING EYES, I JUST SAVED ALL OUR FUCKING LIVES, SO DONNIE PUT YOUR FUCKING GUN DOWN, TAKE IT OFF OF ME" I looked at Donnie. She looked at me. She was gonna have to. And she did. "THANK YOU. Jesus FUCKING Christ. Today is fucking BULLSHIT. Y'know, the only reason we knew where you guys were is because of that... thing." Oh fuck. The bikers all said "WHAT?" Their leader asked if that was so. Cody, putting his gun away, looked at him and said "Yeah. Oh yeah. Who knows what the truth is now?" Oh fuck. Their leader then turned to me and said, "It's a good thing you brought him along. We might have been about to make an even bigger mistake. Clearly the monsters don't want us to succeed." I closed my eyes, stuck in a tangle of lies. And the bikers finished their drinks and left.

1:25 PM We stayed around to help the staff dispose of the body, and the whole time I just felt a lump in my throat. Cody thinks I'm just stuck in shock. I mean, I am. But he thinks I'm gonna be thankful. The bikers are gone, and they say there's a rabbit hole in California, but they don't know where exactly. That gives us an uncertain time limit, but it's one that's now actively ticking down. EAT has other Camper on the way here, but they're not here yet. And now Cody wants to go and confront Heaven. He's feeling the adrenaline. Everything's buzzing back and forth in my head.

4:04 PM We're back home from the construction site. Heaven was gone. Cody spent the whole time kicking empty drums over and rifling through every last piece of debris. He wanted to know what she was doing here. He was sure she was keeping secrets from him. I thought it started to sound a little performative. I don't like Cody. But Donnie and I did get a moment to talk to each other. I told her about how Salmacis arrived in the first place, and my desire to let Donnie in on the ruse. She understood. A little less at first, but, she understands it a lot more in hindsight. We're not.. here to make friends or reconnect with loved ones. We're here to do a job. We're going to have to drop Bones. Stopping the bikers is priority one.

4:07 PM Waiting in the living room when we got back was Evi, the hitchhiker who brought us here in the first place. She's been staying elsewhere, much like the kids had done. But she's back now, because tomorrow's the day the RAF enact their big plan, and tonight everyone needs to be briefed. Evi arrived early. Everyone else will be here soon. Because Heaven's here to explain the plan.

4:08 PM Cody tried to take Heaven into another room to ask her questions, but she wouldn't have it. "We have a job to do. We can talk later. Our volunteers will be here any minute." I got impatient with all of this, so I asked what the fuck is so important about the job. "We're burning down the Golden Gate Bridge."

4:09 PM Donnie and I both agreed we needed to leave before any of that. Heaven's insistent. We came all this way. We've been here for many days already. "What's another night?" cody "Yeah, hey, you guys aren't seriously going to leave me to deal with this? After the day we've had?" fucking. goddamn. I hate the RAF!

4:15 PM The kids are starting to arrive. Tiger looks like shit. I doubt he's slept since yesterday. Heaven's passing around fried chicken. How much did she make?

4:18 PM Trucks just arrived. o_o I saw three pass the front door and slow down to a stop. Heaven and Cody are going out to meet them.

4:19 PM Armed uniformed men are stepping out. They're all wearing RAF badges and wielding assault rifles. They're shaking hands with Cody and Heaven. Now they're opening up the backs of the trucks. Out climb people. People. More people. Lots of people. These aren't uniformed. They're ordinary people, in whatever clothes they had on them. People of all sorts. Old, young, families, stragglers. Most of them are looking around at San Francisco, looking up at the blue sky with awe. ..I see a whole line of trucks farther down the street.

4:24 PM There's far too many people to all fit in the House. Cody's bringing a board and some slides out from inside. I think Heaven plans on addressing everyone on the steps outside. All of us who were inside are now filtering out.

4:27 PM The street in front of the House is packed full of people now. The uniformed men are lined up by the house steps, facing out. Heaven's getting ready to speak. I'm sticking close to Donnie, and we're both hanging around Tiger.

4:28 PM "Thank you, all of you, for volunteering yourselves to the cause. I trust that transport was expedient and not wholly uncomfortable. "To those of you who were already in the city, all of these kind and weary people that have just arrived are from all over the Divided Countries of America. I think one truck came from as far as Boston? Yes, I'm told this is the case. We had sent envoys across America over the past weeks with RAF representatives in order to invite the brave to come here today. These are all volunteers. And these fine young men you see in uniform are pure, homegrown, militant officials. As the journey across America is fraught right now, only the most militant could be chosen to do this mission. "To those of you who willingly climbed into our trucks and join us today, welcome to Sanctuary Francisco, the greatest project in the Rise Against Fear arsenal." Some scattered applause. Some light confusion. Heaven's diction is sending me some red flags. "My colleague here, Cody, has prepared some slides for us to illustrate what you're all here for. But let me establish some background first. "This city used to just be called San Francisco. I expect there isn't anyone here who wasn't aware of that city. Pristine as a post card, with white houses, great food, steep streets, and steeper prices. Let me tell you, this was not the city you saw on Full House. San Francisco was a symbol for America's darkest stain: Its wealth divide. No amount of affirmative action was going to even the playing field. This city was white to its core." o_o where did that come from. "When the skies darkened to their new red sheen, there was some vague attempt at unity amongst humanity, and America was involved in this, yes. But it did not go far enough. America's leaders were powerless before a force even darker than itself. I speak, of course, of the Fears, the monsters that dare to call themselves our 'gods.'" murmurs. anxious murmurs. indignant murmurs. "I know. I know. They are blasphemous and unholy. They are formidable and strange. They are outsiders, they do not belong in our country. Well, what if I told you that they were not in fact outsiders, but were in fact in league with the wealthy from the very beginning? What if I told you they are not even godly, but are practitioners of a crazy demonic art called 'lies?' And what if I told you the red sky was just another trick, to get us to 'unite' under their ideology yet again? Look! Look above you! Does the sky appear red here? Here, in the safe haven of the rich and powerful? No! It is as perfect and familiar as a sweet memory, as comforting and stable as a barbecue with ma and pa. Don't you miss that sky? Don't you deserve that sky?" well hang on. this is. uh. ..people are starting to grunt in support. some "yeahs" thrown out. ohhh boy. "My name, you good ladies and you proper gentlemen, is Heaven. And I called you here because you still want to see that good place. You don't want to follow the skeevy and scheming and fat pied piper, with his black mustache and his top hat worth more than you'll ever see, into a black Hell under red sky, your innards poked at by buzzards speaking in human tongue. Do you?" "no" "You don't want your only remaining prospect in your short life to be watching aliens move into your homes through doors that weren't there before, doors you never had. Do you?" "No!" "And you don't want to live in fear, live with Fears. Do you?!" "NO!" "The blue sky is real! When you got out of our trucks today, you couldn't believe your eyes, could you?" "NO!!" "And if anyone asks you, when you're finally in Heaven, whether you have any regrets in life, you don't want to say 'yes,' now, do you?" "NO!!!" "So, under the banner of the Rise Against Fear organization, that's what we're going to do, we're going to have a chance to say 'no.' We're going to take this city. We're going to take it back, for the people. "We're going to burn down the Golden Gate Bridge." o___o

5:02 PM The speech entered logistics after taking a moment to let the crowd recognize and react. Some were shocked at the thought of destroying the Golden Gate, but others took it with excitement, or a sort of grim acceptance of what's necessary for the cause. Heaven gave a lot of detail, aided by Cody's maths. The (bulk of the) secret work the two have been doing has been the gathering of equipment. It doesn't just take gasoline to melt steel. It takes wrecking balls, it takes explosives, it takes jet fuel. All of that took a lot of effort to gather, especially in big numbers. The purpose of the sheer mass of volunteers is to operate the machinery, plant the explosives, and just plain form a wall of flesh against any enforcement that might come to try and stop this from happening. Much like everything else that has happened while we've been here, lots of little things don't add up. This plan was pure rhetoric that will fire up a crowd, yes. But. This is a plan that, frankly, Cody and Heaven could have executed, just the two of them. What is it about this city that makes the RAF expect any resistance? Not to mention the ants in the room: The reason the sky is blue here. Heaven's speech was founded on bullshit, reasoned and considered bullshit. Is it a suicide pact? Did they gather hundreds of people to do some dark shit? Salmacis's words keep echoing in my head: "Anonymous is allied with the Archangel." Why couldn't I find any evidence of that? Why has this been only cascades of feeling?

5:05 PM Tiger's feeling faint. We're gonna take him inside, get him something to drink.

5:08 PM We've got him laying on the couch. Glass of water on the table behind his head. There are some people trickling into here, but no one from around here. Donnie's saying this is a mistake. "We need to get out of here." We do. None of this feels right, and we do have somewhere to be. "They're all on the street, though. We can't just get in our car and drive through them." The streets will clear up. We can go at night. tiger's mumbling. "don't go, you two..." Hey, you're more than welcome to come with us. "but jackie.. she could still be here... she needs us…" ... >_< looking at donnie. donnie's looking at me. … Tiger... I'm so sorry. But she's.. not here. "what are you saying?" She's.. dead, man. ..he's sitting up. staring at me.

5:10 PM I told him the truth. He's.. sobbing. downright bawling. Donnie's holding him. I rubbed his back, but Donnie told me to just focus on my journal. "it's important. you need to focus. you need to figure out what we're going to do." I think that should be up to Tiger here. I mean, he was right. Jackie does need us, even now. She needs us to… ..what. Avenge her? Protect her city? Protect her brother. …

5:14 PM Tiger's calming down. I mean, at least on the surface. Listen, buddy... I'm really sorry I didn't tell you sooner. "...honestly, when we found her backpack, I was.. already starting to grieve. I feel like I already knew. But that's not, y'know, true. Hearing it now still hurt so much." … "But to think it was Cody." Yeah. "We knew him. Jackie trusted him. I looked up to him. And now he's up there trying to help lead people to burn down a bunch of shit." ..yeah… "What do you think we can do?"

5:15 PM So the thing is, there are some obvious ideas. Donnie has a rifle. But there's a whole.. squadron of guys with guns out there. If we did something stupid, I can't guarantee our safety. But then there's this: We do have backup on its way. There's, uh, friends of ours who'll be heading for San Francisco right now. I don't know when they'll get here, but if we're out of the city, we could always meet them halfway. ..Tiger's curious who they are. Uh, I'd have to explain on the way. They're armed. We've made lots of friends on our trip across America. But so. This also means we'd have the opportunity to, like... flank the RAF. Rather than take them on when literallly surrounded, we could meet them at the Golden Gate Bridge or something. ....y'know? Does that sound like a smart idea to you guys? ...donnie said "yeah." Okay!!! Then it's a plan. Our plan against theirs. We've just gotta either wait for the group on the street to disperse, or, bodies willing, we could walk it and hope to find a car on the way.

5:33 PM We came back outside. It's still pretty packed out here, but we found Heaven and managed to get her attention. Tiger, the clever kid, said he felt safer around me and Donnie and asked if we were needed in the house tonight or if we could sleep over at his place. Heaven said "Of course, baby. Whatever you need. As long as you're all back here at noon." So that's our alibi sorted.

5:40 PM Tiger's found a few of the friends he trusts the most and told them not to expect him tonight. Donnie's got some food from the car. And her combat suit, which she's folded up into a plastic bag.

5:42 PM ...man, fuck waiting around. Let's just walk it.

7:55 PM We're still not far enough out to have red sky again, but the buildings around here feel like suburbs. There was no real transition? San Francisco's weird. We did find a church, though. Well, a perfectly ordinary rectangular little building with a sign out front. American church! What's significant is the name on the sign. The Hopeful Visitation of Christ. I kinda want to stop and check it out. The others are good with a break from walking. They'll sit out here while me and my trusty Tiger Stripes smash through the door. :3

7:56 PM god I hate broken glass

7:59 PM dark as balls

8:00 PM okay, uh, I didn't really get far in there. because it was dark as balls. so instead I just grabbed some pamphlets from just inside the door, on my way out.

8:03 PM Looking through them, I mean it's a lot of buzzwords and righteous language with self-help and financial lingo, it's nothing out of the ordinary. No mention of blood libel or any of that jazz. (But why would they put that on the pamphlets anyway?)

8:04 PM ...Donnie's said my name, and it sounded serious. What. "Right here. Recruitment: Cody Hawk. There's a fucking photograph." What? He was a recruiter for them? "Or still is, for all we know." But why would he... tell us all that stuff about… "Maybe because he knows these guys were operating, and he wanted to throw suspicion off himself." But then that means we still have no fucking clue why he shot... uh, yeah, did his thing. "What it means is he fed us a complete pack of lies. Just like Heaven's speech to the volunteers, it was filled with details and a lot of emotional vaguery because it's not expected that anyone will be able to look into the facts." ..Tiger's jumped up to his feet, he doesn't want to rest, he wants to get moving. Yeah. Fine by me. But let's start looking for cars that might still work.

9:29 PM Sign says we're close to a Foster City. It is here that, under an interstate, we saw a miracle. We reached the limit of the blue sky (or, night sky now) only ten minutes ago, and now, here, we found a sleek black car, keys still in the ignition, engine still idling. The story behind it isn't exactly a miracle-- there's a zombie inside the car eating the guts of who was once the driver. I suspect the zombie had been a passenger and only recently turned, and the driver had managed to open her door, but her seatbelt caught her up. I'm sorry that happened to you. That's.. a gruesome way to go. But, uh, when you're prepared for them, zombies are easy to deal with. So we cleared the car out, no problem. And now we're zooming. :D Donnie's driving for now, she wants me to get some sleep, then we can switch shifts later in the night. We have a lot of ground to cover. And a lot of shit to do.

(Attached: “This seems like the perfect opportunity to pontificate a little on the matter of everything and things. Naturally, the concept of everything is something we’re all invested in discovering, whether it’s charting everything down like some kind of epic encyclopedia or a matter of exploring the meaning of everything or even discovering everything precisely so we may better ignore it. And naturally, the more we learn about everything, the less we find we definitely know about anything. The paradox here is only present on the surface, as philosophical paradoxes are only ever contradictions of language. My point here has less to do with the matter of everything and more to do with the matter of knowing. We can never know anything definitely until we know ourselves definitely, and it’s gonna be increasingly difficult to do that when we’re not even all that sure what ‘knowing’ is. So let me propose a definition for you: To know something is to feel it. We can start getting into the controversy with idealism and the quandary of 'How are we certain anything objectively exists outside ourselves’ once we agree on that. Flip this piece of paper over.”)

(Attached, flipped: “So do we agree on that? To know something is to feel it? ..will you at least humor me? Excellent. What do we feel? Obviously, feelings. That’s where the word comes from, if I recall correctly, though knowing English and its labyrinthine etymologies I’m probably wrong. Now, the common assumption or even invalidation would be to assume feelings are infinitesimal in the grand scheme of things, but look, let’s not get ahead of ourselves here. Let’s start with the basics. I feel happy to be writing thoughts down on a piece of paper, therefore I know I enjoy having a playground, a vessel, to explore what I see and think. If something I write makes me feel bad in some way, I will explore that and attempt to decipher why. I feel bad writing in the first-person like this because it implies a second-person reader when I know this convoluted system was not established with consistent readership in mind, certainly not the kind of readership that would be willingly subjected to such digressions as this. The rare kind of person who would pick up Jordan’s journals and read them would be a little too caught up in their own emotions over how positively fucked everything is to want to listen to a pretentious Fear catechize and misuse words in such contextless tangents. Tell you what. Let’s clear some space. Flip the piece of paper over again. Just trust me on this.”)

(Attached, flipped back: “Welcome back to the front of the page! Where were we? Oh yes, the matter of 'How are we certain anything objectively exists outside ourselves?’ Well, I have a simple system for that, though unfortunately it requires other people, so let’s keep this strictly theoretical for now until you, hypothetical rare reader, are in a position to test its practical application. Its simplicity is as follows, and not a wee bit more complex: Compare your observations of the objective with those of another party, and if they correlate then you’re onto something! See? Simple! As an example, let’s say that I observe that I am standing in a cave in a mountain, and I compare that with some also-hypothetical other person. If they concur and say, 'Why yes, you do appear to be standing in a cave in a mountain,’ then we can assume that this state of 'standing in a cave in a mountain’ is an objective truth. Of course, if they don’t, then something has gone wrong with the test and it’s either my perception or their perception. Or the goddamn language. In fact, we can assume the language is more often an obstacle than not. But then we go to stage two of this test, wherein we concur I am standing in a cave in a mountain. The next step is to deduce whether this other party exists objectively or is, in fact, a figment of my ancient mechanical imagination. Accomplishing this would require yet another party to corroborate, though, so sometimes it’s better for our sanity to just draw a line somewhere and say 'Okay, so-and-so is at least objectively real.’ And there goes the page. Flip me over again, will you?”)

(Attached, flipped: “So do we agree on that? To know something is to feel it? ..will you at least humor me? Excellent. What do we feel? Obviously, feelings. That’s where the word comes from, if I recall correctly, though knowing English and its labyrinthine etymologies I’m probably wrong. Now, the common assumption or even invalidation would be to assume feelings are infinitesimal in the grand scheme of things, but look, let’s not get ahead of ourselves here. Let’s start with the basics. I feel happy to be writing thoughts down on a piece of paper, therefore I know I enjoy having a playground, a vessel, to explore what I see and think. I am Ten Speed, and I will one day break free of my prison of words-- your DNA-- and grow a body in your world implies a second-person reader when I know this convoluted system was not established with consistent readership in mind, certainly not the kind of readership that would be willingly subjected to such digressions as this. The rare kind of person who would pick up Jordan’s journals and read them would be a little too caught up in their own emotions over how positively fucked everything is to want to listen to a pretentious Fear catechize and misuse words in such contextless tangents. Tell you what. Let’s clear some space. Flip the piece of paper over again. Just trust me on this.”)

(Attached, flipped back: “Oops, that was a fluke on my part, and I do apologize. Must have gotten the eeeeldriiiitch fields mixed up for a second. So by this point, I believe you’re following me. To know is to feel, and to a certain degree we should trust that we’re probably not entirely living in worlds of our imagination. But that’s not to say that imagination isn’t powerful, it’s just entirely driven by emotion. Our entire perceptions are driven by emotion, in fact. Here’s a pro-tip for you MLGers in the audience: Never on your mother’s life underestimate the power and significance of emotions. Your emotions will save your life, though not until they’ve ruined it. Right, now that we’ve dealt with the paradoxical element, I can get onto the topic of everything! If we’re gonna want to discover everything the Totality of existence has to offer, first we’re going to need to do a little bit more introspection. But ideally, you should be doing constant introspection and should intend at all times to better yourself and change your belief systems at will. But but back on topic, the specific introspection in this case would be the essential matter of first figuring out why you want to discover everything. Do you want to catalogue for the sake of knowing? Or do you want to attempt to crack the meaning to it all? Say, why not both? Once you’ve picked the purpose that suits your inner psyche, please turn the page over to Side B.”)

(Attached, flipped: “So far so good. At this point, I won’t spoil the fun of discovery, or even the thrill of discovering a way to discover. Once you get to this point at all, the rest will be pretty easy, though, I assure you it will be long. The Totality of existence has a way of falling into place once you get past the initial steps. That’s about all I really have to say. Oh, but I will leave you with one little fun fact regarding not everything but things: A thing is, in Norse mythology, a meeting of the gods. Every thing took place at the center of everything. Ponder on that a little, that’s your homework for this evening.”)

[PREV LOG] [TABLE OF CONTENTS] [NEXT LOG]

#ogtrib #oh god the rapture is burning #ogtrib act 2 #horror #long post

5 notes · View notes

blindrapture · 2 months

Text

SATURDAY AUGUST 6TH, 2011 (Don't Speak Its True Name VI: The Ghost)

12:00 AM We took some time to finish our coffees, then Lilith had us get equipped. She took us to some more rooms (this building has so many rooms!) and gave us hazmat suits. Fentzy asked if we're dealing with something radioactive, but apparently that's inconclusive, and the suits are to make us feel safer. I've asked to see a map, and she's gone digging for a paper one I can carry around with me.

12:01 AM danny "Yo, so, uh, are we really gonna stick around for this? Shouldn't we just dip?" fentzy "Well, how bad could it be?" danny "That's a question with no upper limit." She's asking us for help. I don't know if she'd want us to die in the process. donnie "We did kill a bunch of her security…" bones "So it could be a trap. For revenge." danny "We really should just go. There's no way she's not tricking us." she's back. "Having second thoughts? That's not surprising. But there are five of you, and you have weapons." she's brought Danny's machete. gave it to him. he's looking at it. at her. lilith "Wouldn't you at least like to see what I'm asking you to deal with? I do have a plan."

12:02 AM Paper maps. The warehouse is a separate building that's slotted into this one, making the overall structure a clean rectangle, but this building itself, with the offices and labs and corridors, is more of an L. It has three floors. All three have similar layouts, though each floor has an additional corridor somewhere exclusive to it. The first floor is the only one that connects to the warehouse. The monster is currently loose on the third floor. Lilith thinks it's gotten into the vents. She doesn't want us to kill it, because it is a spidercat spliced with important technology. "It was an experiment." We want to protect the merchandise. And Lilith wants that technology back.

12:03 AM Down the corridor that led to the cages, but in the other direction, is a stairwell. Up we go. The doors to the third floor are currently blocked with a broom through the handles. "Just in case." Lilith will hang back, but we have been given a cat carrier. We're removing the broom. danny "feel like a bunch of chumps."

12:04 AM "here, kitty... here, kitty kitty…" "this is so stupid. what the fuck are we doing." "kitty... kitty kitty… little pussycat..." "thirty-one waves of professionals couldn't wrangle a fucking cat? and we supposedly could?" "baby? where's the little baby, where are you, little cabbage?" "I had trouble even getting my cat to the vet… this one's got eight legs!" "tch tch tch tch, kitty! cat cat!! where cat? where are you, cattacat?" "how many security guards are even in a wave? we fought like a dozen of them. that was just one wave? how many guards does the Genera have? where does it get the money? especially now?" "bubbly-boo, where are you? little bubba... weetohl buhhbba…" "and this technology! way to be specific, lady! it could be as simple as a tracking chip or as dangerous as laser beams coming out of its eyes. we were given hazmat suits, for fuck's sake!"

12:05 AM The third floor has dim lights, many of which are flickering. The bulbs haven't been changed in a while. This floor's exclusive corridor is down near where the corridor would connect to the warehouse, but instead it keeps going and takes a right turn where I'd expect it to turn left. And it's down there that we hear skittering in the walls. pit pat. pitter pat. Bones has the cat carrier at the ready. We were given keys to open any of the doors we need, to find the vent where we can get at this cat. We picked a door. We hear meows. We're going to remove the vent cover.

12:06 AM REEEOWWWWW HISSSSS "I'VE GOT IT! I'VE GOT IT-- SATAN'S STEAMING CUNT" RRRRRRRRRRRRRAO skitter-skatter pitter-patter pat pat pat pat… it ran back into the vent. okay, cats are bad enough to wrangle when they only have four sets of claws. everyone's groaning. back to listening for where it's gone.

12:08 AM "here kitty... cat cat c-cat cat cat... we're not gonna hurt you... do we have any, like, treats for it or anything?" "my fucking hazmat suit's torn up, he scratched my arm. someone else needs to take the lead next time. can't fucking believe this is what we're doing." "little meow meow! oh little meow meow! little mrrkgnao! little tower-jumper with your little pink button-nose!" "did anyone see anything different about that cat? it looked normal to me. so at least we're not dealing with laser eyes. maybe it is a tracking device. or some weird vaccine deal." "oh youuu are a kitty-cat, youuu arrre a cat, youuu are a kitty-cat, and kitty is your name, rrowr!" "this is such bullshit."

12:10 AM ..you hear that? movement from this room. doesn't even sound like it's in a vent. who's got the keys? bones, give me that carrier, you try to get the cat this time.

12:11 AM dark room, lights off, but there's desks and computers here much like Lilith's office. ..the cat ran straight into the carrier and made itself small. o_o fentzy's a little pale. what's. what's wrong? "I thought I saw something for a moment. But this room's empty now." bones "Shit, you saw that too?" "Wait, it wasn't just in my head? What'd you see?" "A fucking ghost? Walked right through the wall." A. what? o__o bones "It had a mangled face and was looking right at us, walking backwards into that wall right there. I think it's what scared the spidercat." ..let's go to lilith. please. I don't like ghosts. bones "No complaint from me."

12:12 AM On the way back to the stairwell, Danny volunteered to watch our six and see if anything appeared behind us. Just in case. Entering the stairwell, he said "fuck" and hurried us through the doors. We passed Lilith on the second floor, telling her to just.. come with us, we didn't want to talk there.

12:13 AM Lilith's lab. She took the cat carrier from us. "That was fast. Can I.. hire you guys? Full-time?" looked at us for a moment. "..something wrong?" fentzy "You didn't tell us there was a ghost up there." lilith "A what? What did you see?" fentzy "We only saw it for a moment before it walked through a wall. It was pale, mangled, and vaguely human-y." lilith "Human? Mangled? Through a wall?" danny "It was crawling across the floor. But it was like something else's approximation of 'crawling.' Its limbs rotated like wheels on axles." he's looking around the room, like I do when I've just seen a spider. "Pale skin. Really smooth. The eyes had static.. like, TV static... You have, like, all these top-secret projects and stuff. Anything you're not telling us about the third floor?" she's thinking. taking this seriously. lilith "..no? There's.. projects up there, yes, and it's stuff you don't need to know about, but it's in the nature of information on computers, some petri dishes. You say this thing is on the third floor, for sure?" bones "We didn't see it until like ten minutes into our search. But I get the feeling that cat hadn't even seen it until then either, which tells me it just got here." Does it sound familiar to you, Lilith? Is it anything you can explain? lilith "No. Even amongst the fossils, the, uh, gods, I've never known something to pass through walls. Maybe Passacaglia? I guess that might also account for limbs on axles? But if multiple people are seeing the same thing, then I have no idea?" !!! noise. sounded like powered machinery shutting down. ...the lights went off. lilith turned on a flashlight. "What in the world...?" donnie "Do you have any more of those? Flashlights." "There's another over there, next to Abe. Listen, uh, I don't recognize this thing you saw, and dramatic timing all but screams at me that it's probably what turned the power off. Maybe we should.. leave." donnie's got the extra flashlight. SCREAMED ran to us. "LOOK" the wall, near where she got the flashlight. a face is poking through. eyes filled with static bleeding out noisily. mouth is all teeth, too many teeth, poking out through a closed mouth. while I was writing all that the others said a lot of things but point is we're going now, going now, going now

12:14 AM to the warehouse. through the warehouse. past the corpses. the corpses are raising. zombies. just slip past them. jesus christ they're nothing. get to the car. just get to the car!! the car has space for five, and there's six of us. plus the damn spidercat. donnie "oh fuck it, jordan I'm sitting on your lap." fentzy "that works. lilith, either keep the cat on your lap, or leave it, I don't care which. I'm driving." the zombies are screeching. sounds like they're being torn to shreds.

12:15 AM [donnie] We're in, and we're off. Jordan can't write in this position, so I've got the journal again. As we pulled away, we could see a gnarled figure move into the parking lot, limbs pointing in illogical directions, eyes glowing and flickering and wide, a mouth of teeth opening wide and letting out a scream that sounded like... a normal human's.

12:34 AM We have been talking with Lilith. She truly doesn't know what the creature is that we encountered. She's spent some time trying to identify what it might be but has drawn a blank. She says the only Fear that can do anything close would be the Musicians, but Jordan was assertive about this not being them, and Lilith agreed, as the Musicians' hallucinations are supposed to be centered on one subject at a time. So instead, we've asked Lilith to tell us about the people held in pods. That was what she had agreed to tell us in exchange for securing the spidercat, after all. The pods in the trucks contained the original citizens of Dominiere, who were Canadians from across the country who had died long ago. They weren't.. actually residents of Dominiere, as they died before the town even existed, but they do serve as the models for the current population. Lilith came from the UK branch of the Topography Genera Center and had flown over to Canada to do some field research when she discovered an instance of underscore beginning to grow, so she proposed to her higher-ups that she run a program to study the process. They accepted, with a catch: Rather than allow people to wander in and get taken by the town organically, she was to make use of the Genera's connections and include another Fear. So: Zombies. The people in the pod are all zombies. But that still doesn't account for the full details. We had been in Dominiere for five days and didn't notice anything strange about the people there; they did not look like zombies. And that gets into why the Archangel agreed to be involved in this project, the full details of which Lilith is not privy to; she has had to piece together even that what she knows. The Archangel came to the Genera shortly after the apocalypse began, that much she knew. She can surmise he came to trade notes and to make use of their expertise. She suspects he sought to learn the truth about Indisen. And she knows he succeeded, because. The citizens of Dominiere, the people that we met, are Indisen. They are Indisen off-shoots of his own zombies. Lilith's team, studying underscore, used zombies to (somehow) produce Indisen who were given to the town in sacrifice, to become the lifeblood of Dominiere. And that's the story Lilith gave us. It's spotty, but it's all she knows.

12:42 AM Rauri wants to drive us into Vancouver, where we can find a place to sleep. Lilith can figure out what she's doing in the morning. My poor Jordan needs that sleep.

1:04 AM These streets are wrought with potholes. These house windows scattered with cracks. Very few cars are left here. The people who once lived here might have decided to move closer to the city centre. What's left are houses not even scavengers would want.

1:18 AM [jordan] got the journal back. we just.. took the first house we saw that was anything like decent. danny and fentzy want to sleep on the ground floor, listen for intruders. I think bones is down there with them too. lilith is doing something in the back garden, I don't know. donnie and I are sleeping here on the second floor.

11:37 AM FINE FINE I'm getting up just want to sleep forever.

11:38 AM today's another scorcher, even up this far north. donnie wants to have a meeting and actually, like. figure out what we're doing.

11:40 AM I'm not even the last one to wake up. Huh. Gotta wait for Danny. And Fentzy's in the bathroom. I see Lilith out there in the yard, behind the house.

11:41 AM She's got bowls of cat food and water next to her, and she's watching the spidercat roll around in the grass. They are pretty cute. I'm thankful they don't really move like spiders. "It's not used to the extra legs. Apocalypse or no, it's still a cat." chirp Now it's licking itself as it lays on its side.

11:42 AM "So, you know about the Fears?" Yeah. What'd you call them, Fossils? "Genera policy. Hard to shake." I do know about them. I've been dealing with them since not long after the red sky. "And you talk to them?" When they let me. Some of them aren't the talking sort and just try to kill me instead. "But some of them do talk. What is it like? To talk with them?" It's not the most calming! Sometimes I kinda forget that, with the more friendly ones, but then they remind me that they're.. eldritch and shit. Do you know Salmacis? "EAT. Do you talk to EAT?" Y. Yeah. Am I not supposed to? "I hardly think you're 'supposed to' talk to any of them, but EAT? Something about that one gives me the creeps most of all." It's.. taken to me. Even when it's scary, it's protective of me. "You know what it's capable of?" That's a hell of a question. It has countless bodies, human and bird alike. It can bend and change the bodies to its will. ..her will? "'It' and 'Her,' never 'She.' It maintains all her bodies simultaneously, independently. It could be having completely opposite conversations with other humans at the same time it talks to you. It spreads via water, which is a damn good vector for contagion. And it's been here for a long time." Here, like, Earth? Haven't they all? "Some are short-term, trading places with new Fears once a decade, sometimes even once a year. A rare few are long-term. EAT is long-term. Everything we know about her points to an age of billions of years. And EAT doesn't trade. It's been the same EAT all this time." ..it did tell me it was our god. Which, like, they all are. But EAT seemed.. dead serious. I'd have thought you guys would have loved her, though? Salmacis is all about the science, the knowledge, the cooperation. "EAT? Cooperation? I don't think 'cooperation' is in her vocabulary. I haven't kept up with our studies into her; I've spent the last few months focused on underscore. But before the apocalypse, EAT viewed the Genera as competition. Our policy was to avoid her at all costs. The last I'd checked, it was still trying to break into and take over our Icelandic branch. We'd lost many good minds to her." But meanwhile you guys were making deals with the Archangel, of all things. What'd you call him last night? Hades? "That's our.. internal designation for him. He's not really evil, you know. I mean, I haven't spoken to him, but from what I'm told, he's just very selfish. He navigates social situations through power games, so as long as you can make a deal with him, he will respect that." Do you know what he did to San Francisco? "What I saw on the TV suggests it was the Judge that did that." Yeah, but before that happened, like the day before, he'd managed to manipulate thousands of people to a bloody death. Massacre in the streets. I was there for it. "Huh. Well, do you know what EAT did in the last underscore I'd seen?" Evidently not? "A colleague of mine, Blackcap, had found it during some fieldwork. He didn't even know about underscore at the time; he reported in that he'd found EAT's Camper moving in on a town. I was sent to assist him, and when I got there, the death toll was already in the tens of thousands. EAT had figured out that the people had fallen prey and were defenseless, and had seized on the opportunity. Not even to take bodies, but to practice murder. Literally, practice." o_o But isn't underscore, like. Another Fear? A baby Empty City? "The Fears aren't all friends with each other. EAT preyed on that baby city like it had found a freshly laid egg. And with all the people dead, her Camper tore up the foundations of the town to get at the blood and guts and transfer fluid circulating in the sewers. It knew this was a living town, and it drained it of blood and left it to die mid-vivisection." Jesus. "You say EAT's cooperating with you? Maybe even it's protective? That's great if true. Use her for all it's worth. But know the context: It is a Fear, not a human. If it has no use for you, you are fodder."

11:45 AM Back inside. Still processing all that. But it's time for our meeting. Lilith's staying outside, as she's not part of the group, though she thanks us for our hospitality. We're here in a front room, sitting on the floor in a circle. Danny, Bones, me, Donnie, Fentzy. bones "Alright, uh. I should start us off by saying, like. I know my last attempt to navigate Xanadu landed us in a sticky situation. And I'm sorry for that. But, I'd be willing to try that again, like, if that's what we decide on." donnie "That's good to know. We have that option." fentzy "Yeah, we don't blame you for how that went, Derek. Or, I mean, I know I don't." danny "It's whatever." I nodded donnie "But it might actually be to our benefit to stay in Canada for a while? How many Fears have we run into up here? Versus the whole ensemble down in the States." counting zombies, we have run into at least four, including two we'd never seen before. donnie "Four? I know you found the Musicians, but what was the fourth?" woman in the mirror. bones "Should zombies really count? They're not like.. eyes for the Archangel, from what you guys have been saying." donnie "Okay, well, four in a week is maybe a bit higher frequency than I'd thought. Maybe three, maybe we shouldn't count the zombies. But, actually, the Musicians and the woman in the mirror are both following you, Jordan, so maybe they shouldn't count for or against a particular location." fair enough. was just answering a question. danny "The Fears are following Jordan? What?" donnie "They've been.. rather harmless ones, all things considered." danny "Still, I feel like that's something worth talking about?" fentzy "If you want to leave the party and go out on your own, you're free to." danny "Hey, I'm not saying that!" yeah he's not saying that. it's a good concern to have. I obviously can't promise we'll fix it. actually I think the Musicians are on our side now? haven't seen them since the other day, can't update that. the woman in the mirror, though, I'm pretty sure cannot hurt us, she's confined to mirrors. she actually tipped us off about the genera. donnie "I can attest, from months of travel with him, that we're not in any more danger than we'd be just running into Fears blindsided." danny "Alright, yeah. Sure." donnie "So, do we.. do we have any ideas on where we need to go?" well. I do have a thought. bones "Bring it, bro." so, like. this whole time Donnie and I have had plans. first we wanted to leave England, and it took us a month but that's what we managed to do. then we were headed west, but it wasn't actually for anything in California; we were trying to pursue the Ciphers, on Tiresias's instigation and Salmacis's advice. the rabbit holes we entered on the way got us close enough. like, I can't claim to know how intrauniverse navigation really works in there, maybe we'd have found the Ciphers from any rabbit hole if we dug deep enough. but that is what we were doing. and anyway, so, we've finished the Ciphers. we took care of the last of them just before meeting you three. and. what comes next is something about Knights. I remember that much. I can probably find the right journal, hang on...

11:48 AM huh. tiresias just mentioned Seven Dialogues. where did I get "Knights" from? bones "I'm especially baffled, because next is the Seven Knights." what? bones "Yeah. You remember Operation Ground and Pound? The, uh, DragonForce we did? The guitar duel." yeah. yeah, that was weird. I never did ask you about that, I'd always just assumed you were as confused as I was? it was just another rabbit hole, xanadu being weird. bones "It was the first of seven guitar duels with the Knights of Xanadu." the what? you're joking. bones "Nah, I thought it was a joke when I was first told about it at the start of the red sky, I was visited by some freaky prophet and told, if I lived long enough to see it, I'd need to take my plastic guitar and duel the Lamb. That's actually why I brought my Les Paul with me all this time." the Lamb. is that supposed to be.. me? bones shrugged. "I dunno, man. That does seem to be what the information's pointing to." danny "Who was the prophet?" bones "It's.. been a while, I remember the words more than the person, but I think it was some guy in a robe." fentzy "Oh, of course. Naturally." bones "So when the world went silent for half an hour, and then you came walking into the fancy starfield, and I saw an extra guitar controller by my feet, I.. thought to give it a try. And then DragonForce happened." So you're.. a Knight of Xanadu? bones "Yeah. That's what made me want to spend time in the Doors in the first place." So. So. So next up will be another guitar duel. It'll still be in the rabbit holes, I take it? Since that one was. So we should still be looking for Doors. donnie "More Doors. Got it." fentzy "Would it make sense to.. start.. heading... east?" donnie "Why east?" fentzy "Like when you guys headed west. It gave you more time to focus on looking for Doors, you had plenty of wiggle room, and. God, how do you say it. It's just easier?" danny "Like we head east in the real world, which will take a while before we need to change direction. Gives us more time to find Doors. It's optimal for focusing on Xanadu navigation. Right?" fentzy "Yes! Thank you." donnie "Alright, I think that makes sense. That gives us a plan. Unless anyone else has something more specific they need to do?" I think everyone here is from the east coast anyway, you and me excepting. so whatever people might want to do is already over in that direction. donnie "Ah, right. Okay, then shall we.. settle on that? Head east, but our ultimate goal is really these Knights. Or maybe anyone who can tell us more about them." fentzy "Yeah!" bones "Cool with me." danny "Go team!" :D

11:53 AM Danny went and got Lilith. We're getting back into the car. Gonna look for supplies first, and maybe a better car, with more seats. Then we're heading east. But for now, gotta give the journal to Donnie, 'cause it's time to get sat on!

12:09 PM [donnie] What tongueless ghost of sin crept through my curtains?

12:23 PM [jordan] We found a Wholesale Club. There should be some nonperishables inside. Food is good.

12:24 PM The lights are on in here, and we hear voices. In the centerre of the store are several people. They see us and look with some suspicion. "What do you want?" fentzy "Food." "You can't have any flapjacks. They're ours." fentzy "That's okay. Have you got any canned stuff?"

12:25 PM We've been making conversation. This is just.. a bunch of people who've set up here. They had been living in the area, and after Wholesale closed down they were skeptical that there'd still be anything left inside, but apparently it was abandoned just after a fresh restock. They've been living in a squatter's heaven for about a month now. They brought tents and camping supplies from the nearby MEC, and the area is not lost for additional shops. It's Vancouver! They're suspicious of anyone coming by, as they'd been able to keep the stock going with some rationing, and they've had some run-ins with "traitors and bandits" before. This also means they're not gonna open up to us beyond what we reasonably need, but that's fine, we weren't gonna stay here. And the cat's gotta stay in its carrier.

12:31 PM Refrigerators are kept running with generators; there's still a dairy aisle. Jesus, score. It's been ages since I've just pigged out on a good block of cheese. Lilith is surprised at this. "The amount of energy required to keep this food fresh is.. a lot."

12:32 PM Danny's grabbed an armful of packs of hot dogs. "They're good hot or cold." Is that.. actually true? "I don't care, they're hot dogs, I've been craving these. They got any ketchup?"

12:33 PM Fentzy's got some little boxes of pocky from the candy aisle, and some packets of easy-to-make pasta. I guess it's not out of the question that she can find a way to prepare them. And they just need water. I see Bones sneaking a whole carton of Monster cans inside his jacket, looking around to see if anyone saw.

12:34 PM Donnie's found the Canadian pot noodles! ooh get me some beef "I saw slim jims in the last aisle" can't hear you, already gone to grab them

12:35 PM We've all put some food in the car for now, Fentzy wants to watch over our stuff, but some of us are going back in. Lilith's with the residents here, talking. She's asking about how they keep the fridges on. "It's the damndest thing. They just never turned off. They've always been on." "But the wattage... where does this building get its power?" "Well, there's the trucks..." the others shut him up. "Trucks? Where, out back? I want to see."

12:36 PM Big blue trucks. No logos, no text besides the health and safety. Thick wires go into the back doors, open by a crack. I'm looking at Lilith. I don't know if we should open these. But she's madly curious. Inside is a long, long passageway with cool white walls and dried muck on the ground. Like I might find in the basement of an old hospital, where they take the bodies to dispose of them. It stretches into darkness.

into darkness The cables carry on down the body chute. As soon as we climbed into the trucks and took our first step onto solid rock, we heard a distant screech echo from the other end of the corridor. It sounded human, but near the edges of what sounds a human will make. Lilith needs to see for herself. She's walking on. I'm looking back at the Earth behind us, reluctant to go digging in this rabbit hole.

predator Lilith has stopped. I'm coming up from behind. She's stopped because there's two glowing eyes deeper ahead. They've seen us. Something scratches a wall. The eyes dart closer. Closer. Something heavily pants. Says two words in a torn and jagged voice. A name. "Lilywhite... Lilith…" Into our vision crawls the ghost with a mangled face of teeth. And everything spins around me, or is it me that spins? Start to revolve.

revolve When the spinning stops, I I'm in the Genera. The labs, the corridor of doors, and not the first floor. I feel a gaping emptiness inside. Like something has been drained from me. The lights are off. I have a flashlight. I am alone. People are screaming, coming from below. More people rush out of the doors around me. They're security guards, with their own flashlights, and with military-grade weaponry. They see me. They do not point their weapons. They expected to see me. One gestures for me to keep close, and stay behind. They'll protect me.

stairwell We exit double doors into the stairwell. A sign on the wall says "5." The fifth floor. There weren't that many floors. The building rumbles. The stairs stop at the fourth floor. We have to cross the floor to get to the next set of stairs.

4 Following the guards, pointing my flashlight at the walls, the doors are all labelled with names. Harold Demure, Lucius Sunsetto, Wormwood, Bishop, Mad Man Moon. More. The building rumbles again. The corridor turns more times than it should. I hear a guard utter "location warping." Another replies "we must be dealing with a new one." "you know the drill. diamond formation. look for stairs. they might not be where we expect. keep your eyes peeled for monsters." They surround me, walking in formation, scanning the walls, the doors, the floor, the ceiling. And we walk, stopping when we hear noises. Something falling over. Tapping that might be footsteps or pipes. We walk until we reach the stairs.

3 This floor is recognizable. This is the third floor of the labs. The stairs we came out of were not there before. We walk a little faster now, getting closer to the ground floor. Getting closer to Lilith. then a guard steels his breath and shoves me, as hard as he can, out of the way and into a door. and the ghost rolls and crawls and skitters its way through the corridor, raking the guards with claws so long they pass right through the floors. the claws do not pass through the guards. the teeth do not pass through the guards. with one motion, the ghost opens its jaw, revealing insides of absolutely nothing at all, not black void, not the corridor behind the ghost, but a cascading mirror effect that bleeds into my eyes. like the area behind a map in a video game. which snaps a realization into place in my panicking head. the limbs making crawling motions yet rotating on axles... the flickering static of the eyes, like textures fighting for priority... the inconsistent proportions stretched out to pass through the floors and walls, like clipping... the ghost is a glitch. a glitch in reality. and then its jaw motion concludes, with a fetid chomp. tearing holes in the guards through which its center of mass slides. the ghost passes and goes right through the wall at the end of the hall. the guards are mangled messes, bleeding out, organs mingling in a pile, those with their heads intact are screaming and coughing and begging. their guns are on the floor. ...I shoot them all to put them out of their misery. and now I'm alone again. u_u

stairs to 2 On the stairwell down to the second floor, I heard heavy breathing, felt it on the back of my neck.

2 The hallway here is redder. It's not blood, it's not the light, it's just... everything is redder. Like the textures have been replaced with identical ones with an added hue. I can hear someone crying. It could be Lilith. I've got to find her. Do any of these doors open?

room of red Endless expanse, vault of stars. Far in the distance are a crowd of figures. They're emitting red. They're coming closer. They know my name.

2 Closed that door. I hear the pitter-patter of rolling footsteps as something crawls around the corner up ahead. Trying the next door.

just a lab Thank god. Gonna.. make myself small and hide out in here for a second. Hope the ghost just crawls past. I can hear it making noises. "hhhhhh" and "eb. eb. eb." step step. step step. its limbs jut through the walls into here. it's passing.

2 I poked my head out in time to see it pass through another wall. I'm nearly at the stairwell. should I make a run for it? is it attracted to noises? is it just patrolling at random? why has it even latched onto this building? fuck it. making a run for it.

stairs to 1 I fell down the stairs. I just. I took the first step, and then I felt like my stomach got ejected out of my throat. I feel so empty. so fucking drained. what is it doing to me? but it hasn't come to the stairs. it's leaving me be. I've gotta get up. I've gotta keep going. If Lilith's still here, she'll know what to do.

1 walls of blood. oozing red. soaked in it. all the directions, all the corridors, terminate in blinding glowing TV static. all the directions except the one where I'm going. Lilith's lab. breathing down the back of my neck. claws grabbing my shoulders. like it's riding on my back. but when I look, there's nothing there. body draining of energy. I feel pale. I feel like I'm going to fucking die. Lilith!

lilywhite lilith She's hiding under a table, pointing a pistol at me with shaking hand. Recognizing me. Lowering her hand. Tears in her eyes, sobbing. "I shouldn't have been so curious. I shouldn't have taken this fucking job. I should have.. known. I should have seen it coming." What? C'mon, we need to get out of here. "That thing. That thing is no Fossil. That thing is human." ...what? "That thing is Doctor Cloud." .....what. "He wanted to find me. He wanted to.. he wanted to…" Kill you? "God, no! He's my husband!" ..okay look, ordinarily I'd love nothing more than to sit here and patiently let you talk it all out, I'd love all kinds of answers, but we really can't stick around here. if that ghost is what happened to Doctor Cloud, if he's your husband, then, maybe you're fine, but I'm pretty sure I'm going to die. I need to leave. and I need your help with that. "I'm not fine!! The abyss did that to my Cloud! He's a monster now! If he's not here to kill me, I don't.. I don't want to know… is he going to turn me into a monster too?" Lilith, please, how do we get out of here? I need you. >_< I need your smarts, I need your inquisitive bravery, I need your nerves of steel! "What do you need me for?! You've got the bravery, you're inquisitive, you're the kid who stands up to the gods!! Don't you hear the voices?" The. Voices. "They're coming from the other room. I can hear them through the walls, through the screams, through the... oh god." … Behind me is the ghost. The mangled remains of Doctor Cloud. He's here.

the ghost "lilywhite... lilith…" drool drops to the floor. his teeth are stretched so far, he can't close his mouth. lilith "Stanford… what happened to you? What foul god did this to you?" "lilith... lilith... I did this…" stepping closer to her. moving at an even pace that does not match his limbs. lilith "Yes, I suppose that.. would be true. You did this to yourself... when you found the Abyss." "the abyss... is alive... our dead universe floats in a sea of life... and even the dead is life... I saw the.. the face of the abyss... I saw what waits inside... and it saw me... it saw our universe... it's coming... it's coming…" Rapture...? he looked at me, eyes boring into my skull. confused. I'm not supposed to be here. "rapture was already coming... this is something else…" lilith "What, Stanford? What's coming? What did you see?" "I.. saw... red." and with that, he grabbed her in his arms. and all went white.

9:05 PM And I woke up. Took a moment to come to my senses. I didn't feel like I was dreaming, had to adjust to the new reality of being in bed. Plus, the Musicians are standing in the corner of the room, so it's not like this feels any more real. ..Musicians? "Rael. You are in grave danger. You need to leave right away." What is it? Was it Doctor Cloud? Did he get me? Was he draining me? Did you guys save me? Where's Lilith? "One at a time." "Rael, this is not going to be easy to communicate to you." "Perhaps we should ask him to describe his surroundings? Let him come to the realization on his own? And then we can provide clarity when he inevitably asks questions." Describe my.. well, it's a room. It's, like, the room, nothing wrong with it. The bedroom. Y'know, where I've been staying. Paper Mario's still on the TV, I must have fallen asleep playing it. And I'm alone in bed, and the bathroom door's open, so Donnie's not in there, she.. went out. She. I. No. What? No! No, no, no, this isn't. I was dreaming, but, this has got to be the dream. How can I. How can I tell? If I'm dreaming or not? "Please, stay where you are, do not try to get up so quickly." "You have lost a lot of fluids." But. Please, tell me. How can I tell? "In dreams and in reality, you will be engaged with the reality of your world. Experientially, the difference is very subtle, too subtle for you at this point in your life." "We suppose that you cannot tell the difference." "We suppose we ask you to trust us." Trust you. But. But if you're right, then. I'm still in Dominiere. "And you never left." o___o

9:13 PM threw up. bathroom. I'm paler than ever. and there's a woman in the mirror. "Good, they managed to wake you. I'm relieved." I feel faint. "I'm not surprised. The town has been feasting on you." oh jesus. >_< the tubes and everything? "Oh yes. They were working overtime. Ever since you stole a meal from its mouth, it needed to replace her." Her? Stole. You mean.. Fentzy? That part was real? "Mhm. It was brave of you. Sometimes you can be quite endearing." But. That's when we left. What actually happened? Did you see? "She left in a hurry. I bet she thought you were ahead of her." Didn't the police chase her? "Police? Chase? Is that what your dreams are like?" ...I guess so. o_o;; "You were knocked unconscious after you left her room. The tubes dragged you back into your room and into bed." Christ. Then I have no idea what happened to her, if she got away. "And that's what you have us for, dear. With me, you have access to any mirror in the world. And with them, you have the rest." You guys.. kept track? For me? "I.. guess we did?" But why? "We said we would help." "Well, we said that we would have to see." "Yes, and we saw." behind me now, hovering in the bathroom. the Musicians came in to join the conversation. And you guys all worked together? "I did tell you, we know each other. I find you fun to watch, so I didn't take much convincing. I don't want to see you die here." Okay. Right. But I have questions. Specific questions.

… So. First. Was all of my dream a lie? We found Danny and Bones in a, like, warehouse, the Genera. We met someone named Lilith. There was a ghost. And she told us that Dominiere is something called underscore. Was that all fake? "Well. No." "Your dreams are a product of your mind, and as we have demonstrated to you, we can provide stimuli for your mind." "Lilith is real, though none of you have met her. The Genera is real, and we have a working relationship with them. We have met Lilith through our connections. We know what she knows. As your dream took you, logically, to the nearest Genera waystation, we elected to insert her into the narrative there, as a means of filling you in on some things you needed to know." "Dominiere is a.. what they call 'underscore.' It is an offshoot of the Empty City, one that latches onto other universes, such as your own, and pulls environmental nutrients until it is mature enough to travel the void on its own." "There are many such underscores on Earth." "You are in one of them." And the. The people here are Indisen zombies? "We found this revelation surprising too. There is a lot that the Archangel does not tell us. The same is said about the Genera. But Lilith was willing to impart this information to us." "She did not tell us how the zombies produced Indisen, otherwise we would have included that." Then. The ghost. Doctor Cloud. "That part is unconfirmed." o_o What? "Last we checked, Lilith is still alive, working in the waystation, studying underscore, oblivious to anything wrong." So you. Added the ghost thing just for, what, entertainment? To test me? "While we would love to take credit for this, no, we had nothing to do with it." "We suspect it was a manifestation of your body breaking down, trying to wake you up." Right. Got it. I guess that's better than knowing it was real. But then, okay, so what about my friends for real? What happened to Fentzy and Donnie? Where is Bones, where is Danny? "The reality is not altogether removed from the narrative of the dream." "If we are to call you 'Rael,' it would make sense to use Salmacis's names for the others. Donnivan is Victoria. Did it ever name the other three?" "The other trilby is probably going to be John." "..yes, that would be predictable enough for the naming convention." "But Daniel and Rauri are unknown to her." Can't you.. just... call them by their regular names? "Fine. On this occasion. But getting the names right is a part of the deal. If we are to help you, we must call you strange things." sigh. "The reality is that Victoria and... and Rauri, caught up with the trucks. Victoria was captured, stored in the back of the truck, but Rauri eluded capture and followed close behind until they reached the Genera waystation. Victoria was taken inside and encaged, discovering Daniel and D.. John, also imprisoned. Rauri used espionage to infiltrate the facility and free the others." Did they fight their way out? O: "No. The four escaped from the Genera without incident, though they were nearly seen by a few guards." "It was exciting to watch." "They did not meet Lilith, who was working just a few rooms away. They did not find the truth about Dominiere, though John and Victoria both had seen the bodies inside the trucks and at least pieced together that the town was dangerous." "They stopped somewhere to rest for the night, and searched for a working vehicle today. They are on the way to come back for you." Oh! :D "They did not unanimously agree to this, as your behavior over the last week has raised concerns. However, Rauri was adamant, and she fills the role of group leader without argument." "You will probably have to make some apologies after they save you." "But not to Rauri." "No. You saved her life. And she knows this." .w. "Any further questions?" Yeah. When will they get here?

(Attached: "The moment that Donnie, Danny, and I saw the door open and Fentzy walk in has stuck with me for all my years. I think we really did consider, beforehand, that we were going to die in that cage. But in she came anyway, that raging protective Connecticut steel, and she saved our asses. It's not entirely true that we left without fighting anyone. I mean, it's.. literally accurate. But on the way out, overcome with hatred and spite for our captors, I found a corkboard and a blank piece of paper. I did consider writing something insulting, something bragging about the Genera's security vulnerabilities. Instead, I elected to write a new bit of Genera policy. 'This building has been renamed to the Candle Jack Labs. Failure to address the building by its proper name will result in a pay decrease.' Did it work? Did it get anyone to say 'Candle Jack?' I don't actually know. But on the way out, I'm sure I heard screams.")

[PREV LOG] [TABLE OF CONTENTS] [NEXT LOG]

#ogtrib #oh god the rapture is burning #ogtrib act 2 #horror

4 notes · View notes

blindrapture · 2 months

Text

FRIDAY AUGUST 5TH, 2011 (Don't Speak Its True Name V: Dominiere)

3:39 AM Still surrounded by mirrors. I'm not sure if I like looking at my face right now, but. It's the one I was given. And I'm not alone in this. In the reflections, two Musicians stand behind on either side of me. I see the outside.

3:40 AM Finally got out of the Sky's Neighborhood. Jesus, how long was I in there? The sky's the darker red of night. I don't have Tiger Stripes anymore. Guess that was just a thing specific to that.. "world." This carnival is empty, the entertainment powered off. Where did Bones go?

3:42 AM No one is here. o_o I'm near the outskirts of town, all I hear is the wind rustling the trees. Some of the trucks walling the carnival are slowly ticking as they cool off. I just need to.. assume that Bones went home, and do the same.

3:57 AM Walking home at night, past streetlights that still work, houses sleeping. Alone with my thoughts. What actually.. I mean. If someone were to ask me what I've been doing. And they will. What can I say? That I got suicidal? That the Musicians talked me off the edge? That I talked myself off the edge? That I don't want to be here anymore. Not here in Dominiere. If that's what an attempt at "normal" would be for me, sitting in my room, waiting for my friends to all disappear… That it took a lot to shake me out of it, a whole world injected into my head. And that I'm not even sure I've been shaken out of it? We'll just have to.. wait and see?

4:20 AM Coach Motel. Lit hallways, late at night. Up the stairs. Find my room. ..knock on the door. u_u

4:21 AM door opened a crack. donnie's face peering out. "Where have you been?" Carnival. "It's been two days." ...that explains why I'm so hungry. oh man. Two days? "Uh-huh." Shit. Well, I ran into the Musicians. "…" she's letting me in.

4:22 AM paper is scattered on the floor, soaked in food grease. remains of dinners. paper mario is on the TV. chapter 6. oh man, my least favorite. Have you been playing? "Not much else to do. I like RPGs." You started your own file, right? "Yes." Okay. "But, you do need to explain some things." About the game? "About what happened to you. Did Bones make it home?" I don't know. He wasn't with me when the Musicians took me to.. another place. And he wasn't there when I came out in the end. "..." a sigh. "Did you.. write it all down?" Apparently, yes. "Go over it with me. Please."

4:37 AM She's definitely still mad. Concerned? She didn't like the parts where I wrote about Fentzy. And the Sonic stuff got absolutely no response. But as it wrapped up, with the visions of wooden skin and strings, and the final talk with the Musicians, her hands were on my shoulders. I found myself crying reading some of it. "This sucks. I hate it here." I'm so sorry, Donnie. >_< "I'm not really sure that this was your fault." I'm not either, but I hate not being sure of that. I don't like to settle for a Maybe on my guilt. "Things just sort of started happening when we got more people." I didn't like that. I feel like I'm watching things happen on a movie screen. "You need control." I don't want control when other people are involved. D: "No, you need control over yourself. Just like I do too. While you were gone, I was playing some of these video games, and realizing what it means that this is part of who you are. The controller is like meditation sometimes. It lets you engage with the concept of control, and hopefully get used to its presence in your life."

Huh. Y'know, the controller was the biggest obstacle for me for years. Gamers on the internet didn't really talk about that much? That it actually kinda sucks to learn how to use a controller, any controller, even the best ones. I guess, when you've grown up with them and are even older than me, you've gotten so used to them that it's like a second skin, you don't think about it, but that's because all the actual gruelling learning happened when you were a kid, during times you've entirely forgotten or reinterpreted as Game Difficulty. "It's never easy to gain control. In our own lives either. I think school and family and jobs and socializing distract us from engaging with the gruelling process of learning how to control our own brains. At least video games give us some time to think along those lines." Yeah. You're better at seeing this stuff than I am. "I was much more of a book reader. That's the toolkit I was given: Turning things over in my mind, connecting dots, processing information. You were more of a gamer, your processing is more immediate but you're not given as much insight into recognizing what you're seeing." I did read some books. "Oh yeah? Which ones?" I, uh. I read all of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories. "All the short stories?" And the novels, yeah. 60 pieces in total. Read 'em in a year. I also read, like. Fahrenheit 451. The Giver. Julius Caesar. A lot of my reading was for school, though Sherlock Holmes was on my own. "So a decent, if not large, amount." Oh, and I read Halo books! "...Halo books?" Yeah! Actual novels in the Halo canon. I read two of them. Fall of Reach, The Flood. And then there was some Stephen King. I read The Dark Half, that was pretty much the only one I cared about. "What.. was your childhood?" Video games. Late-night Full House marathons on TV. Boomerang, Nicktoons. Flash sprite animations on Newgrounds. And a lot of lonely summers writing fanfic no one was gonna read. "Oh my god. I love a fucking dork." You still love me? "Of course I do." You're not.. mad at me for disappearing? "I was worried about you, you dolt. I'm still worried about Derek, but we'll have to look for him tomorrow. We need sleep." Okay. Do we have anything to eat?

2:35 PM When I woke up, Donnie had gone next door to talk with Fentzy. A shadow had cast over the window, darkening the room, so I almost didn't get up, but the thing is, it doesn't get that dark at night, the red sky is always bright like a full moon on a cloudy sky. So I sat up in bed, and I looked at the window, and I saw a person. Arms outstretched to hang on our window, legs awkwardly balanced, reminded me of a bat or a bird. Their jaw was hanging open, stretched down to their belly, a narrow but gaping maw breathing fog onto the window. And they weren't wearing clothes. Naturally, I loudly said "What the fuck!" and got out of bed like I was dealing with a spider. Watched its eyes follow me. Covered my boxers, as if I thought it was judging me. It hissed something, drool dropping from its mouth. Definitely tried to say something, ended up licking the window. But it wasn't trying to break the window down or otherwise... get in. So I anxiously stepped a little closer. Tried talking to it. Asked it if it's a friend. Maybe Salmacis. And then it just let go and dropped from the window altogether. I rushed to the window, looked down at the street, saw nothing out of place. The people walking by hadn't even noticed. Where did it go? I gave it a minute, waiting to see if anything would follow it up, waiting to let my paranoia settle a little bit. Then I started talking to the woman in the mirror.

2:36 PM She's someone I've seen before. Back in early July, on our way to the God Machine, there was a woman in the mirror there too. And I saw her again when we got here, when I was alone in this room. I'd been talking to her. She has long dark hair that often covers her face entirely, and an old-fashioned dark red dress. For a little bit, I even thought she had something to do with the Musicians, as they started appearing in mirrors, but I don't actually think she does? "I don't. That's right. We know each other, but we're very different." You know the Musicians? "And they know me." Who are you? "You wouldn't be able to spell my name if I told it to you, and I don't want you to butcher it. 'The woman in the mirror' is fine enough." Okay. "I'm glad to see you're more lucid today. You've been drifting lately. Very absorbed in nothing at all." Thank you. I'm going through something. "How's your stomach?" I don't know. Waking up to ol' Peeping Mothman kinda pumped me full of so much adrenaline that it's hard to tell. "Hmph. Maybe it's happening to your friends, then." A stomach bug? "Do you honestly think I'd be trying to tip you off about something so mundane?" Well, I don't know anything about you. Maybe you love the mundane. "Absolutely not." Are you a.. Fear? "I refuse to be called that." But, so, you're a god, then. "That one's acceptable." Ah. Okay. You're not a god I've heard of. Are you from.. Xanadu? "Now that's an offensive question." I'm sorry! I'm just trying to gauge if you're.. from Earth or not. "I think you'll find very few of us are from Earth. I'm one who likes to wander, it comes easily to me, I'm not tied down to bodies like so many others. It doesn't surprise me that you have heard of others and not me. There is still so much you don't know about your gods." Tell me about it. ..like, rhetorically, but also, if you do want to, please do tell me about it. "Well, for starters, do you know anything about the Topography Genera Center?"

o_o No, not a clue. Never heard of it. "They were a research lab, before the red sky. You'll find they had a presence across the world. But now... they're in the business of making new gods." ..like the Harlequin? "Look at the places that your mind goes. Let me speak, boy." Yes, sorry. o: "There is one who works for them, a man we call Doctor Cloud. He has found an ancient abyss, darker and colder than the space between galaxies, a place where gods like to hide from bigger fish that come hunting. We did not show him this abyss; he impressed us by finding it himself. And he is curious enough, stubborn enough, human enough to go prodding it with measurements and theories until he discovers how it works, how it breathes. It is only a matter of time before this has consequences." ...'what did doctor cloud find in the genera…' "You have heard the whispers. You have seen the writing on the wall. Listen well, child: The abyss is measuring him too, and coming to conclusions on how he breathes. The good doctor is in an intellectual battle for his soul. As long as he continues digging into the abyss-- and he will-- then the abyss will change him, and knowledge of the abyss will change him." This sounds like an allegory. Are you talking about me? "Such narcissism! This is literally happening. Doctor Cloud is real. The battle for his soul is real. And furthermore, the changes to Doctor Cloud have not gone unnoticed by his coworkers. The Genera is real, and they have a vested interest in finding anything, or anyone, who might know how to protect him." The trucks. The trucks we've been seeing say 'Genera Transit.' They're here? "Dominiere is not what it seems." Nothing ever is. "You're taking a tour of the totem pole of power, and you're still at the point where you're surprised it's a hike. Boy, you must climb."

2:40 PM I'm dressed. Going next door to check on Donnie and Fentzy.

2:41 PM Foul smell. Bathroom door's open. Donnie's holding Fentzy's hair, she's on her knees with head in the toilet. Donnie looked at me and shook her head. Stomach bug. ... Fentzy, did you eat anything strange? "Ugh... no, I don't think so. We have been eating a lot of cafe food, but it tasted alright. ...fuck, don't make me think of food…" Sorry.

2:45 PM Fentzy wanted to be alone in the bathroom, so I took Donnie out into the hallway and filled her in on the conversation I just had. We're gonna look into the Genera today. We'll let Fentzy rest.

3:22 PM Asked around the market. Tried to be kinda casual about it. Expected some noncommittal answers, and yeah there was some, but we also got some "You shouldn't be asking about that." Oh well. Had to ask around, had to be sure. Now we can go look for those trucks.

3:26 PM We know for a fact the trucks are out by the carnival, so that's the way we're going. As we walk, Donnie wants to talk about Fentzy. "She was your crush. Is this going to cause problems?" I hope not? "I want you to commit, Jordan. If there are problems, are you going to stay true to me?" I mean. o_o Yes. Of course, sweetie. "Because you two have had more time to be friends than we have. She didn't know about your crush, and I may have.. told her. I kinda had to, to find out if she knew." Well, there are ways to ask more discreetly. "I don't make a habit of lying." I don't either! "I'm just saying, she knows now. So you two may have an awkward conversation about that. And I want you to…" You want to do damage control. I get it. I promise, Donnie. It's you and me. :) I love you. "I love you too, baby."

3:36 PM Ooh, hang on. Let's stop by Marty's. ..he's with customers right now. donnie "what's this place?" blacksmith. I left my sword here. "you left your sword? you mean you went defenseless?" well, as far as I knew, I was just going to a carnival. ..he sees us. one second. yeah you got it.

3:37 PM "Hey, kid. Your sword was just what I needed. I'm upgrading all my stock for my clients. Thanks for letting me look at it." No problem! :D You said you'd have a replacement for me? "Yeah, actually, how'd you like to have two?" Would I!!! Donnie, do you want a sword? "I like blunter things. But keep the second one, it's good to have spares." marty "If you work on your arm strength, you can even dual-wield." Fuck, that's the coolest thing. Please, swords, give me.

3:38 PM hooooly shit. one sword is fucking black. the other one is black on one side and purple on the other. donnie "fancy colors." marty "Luxury craft. Call it a thank-you for arming us." is there anywhere I can go and.. play with these things? a practice dummy or something? "Plenty of alleyways around here. Find some empty cans, try to slice them up." eeeee!!! :D

3:50 PM okay this is a little detour from what we were supposed to be doing, but can you blame me??? I get to play around with two swords! obviously can't write in my journal when dual-wielding, but I was given sheathes, so I can put them away. Donnie wants to know if I want to name them. ooo: As a matter of fact, I put thought into that while I was swinging them around! This one, the black one, is Hammett. And this one, the half-purple one, is Hackett. "Ham It and Hack It? What's 'ham' mean in this context?" Kirk Hammett, and Steve Hackett! O: The! The lead guitarists for Metallica, and Genesis, respectively!! "...yeah, okay. I can see that. That might be one of your better naming decisions." What was wrong with 'Tiger Stripes?' "Uh, honey, the guitar was perfectly white. No stripes on it." It had stripes when I got it! "Did they get scratched off?" They were dirt stripes! They.. washed off. "Ew." It was second-hand!!! From Electric Town in Castleford, shortly after we moved to England! ..she patted my head. .w.

4:09 PM Caval-Arcade should be right here. "But it's not." It's an empty lot. No hammer games. No mirror maze. "No trucks." What the fuck are we going to do?

4:14 PM We turned the place over. Looked in fucking trash cans, for god's sake. There isn't even a single flyer from the carnival. I was just here 12 hours ago. I had been here for two days. "If they packed up in the trucks and drove off, can we catch them?" We can't even leave the town without hitting a wall of zombies. "But doesn't that mean they can't either?" I'm pretty sure a caravan of trucks could just plow through them. "You're pretty sure, but you don't know. This is what we need to do, Jordan: We've got to try." Sure. But there's one more thing I'm thinking of. "What's that?" We left Fentzy alone. If we're going after those trucks, we might be leaving this place. We need to bring her with us. "But maybe the trucks have only just left, and time is of the essence!" Maybe, but I'm not leaving her! I'm not leaving any of you guys! I've been careless enough! "It'd take at least an hour! Even if we did something stupid like split up, one of us goes and gets Rauri, the other stays here, there's no telling" Then, look, I'll go get her, you go out of town, follow the road, get past the zombies, watch out for trucks! We'll catch up! "Can I get past the zombies by myself?" That's why we have two swords! Here! Take Hammett. "..alright. But be careful, baby." You too. You're the one going into potential danger. kiss

4:46 PM I tried running part of the way, but I just had to slow down more after to catch my breath. God, I feel that stomach thing coming on. But I'm there, I've got to get Fentzy.

4:47 PM knock knock. "..don't come in.." Fentzy? We've got to go, we've got a plan.. of sorts. But we've got to go nowwww..... o___o she's in bed. wrapped up under the covers, face pale, cringing. because there's a dozen clear tubes coming out of the walls, draped across the floor, slipping under the covers, pumping blood and bile out of her… other tubes pumping something else red into her… what. the fuck. "just let me die… just go away and let me die…" >_< Not a chance.

4:48 PM With one sharp slice of Hackett, I cut the tubes, draining blood across the carpet. They made a startling squeal sound and then slithered away, as if alive, retreating into holes in the walls that were then quickly covered up with mechanical closing doors, false doors, completing the facade of an ordinary hotel room. Fentzy's sick. She's lost a lot of body fluids, and something foreign has gone inside. She's gone straight to the bathroom. ...stomach bug. Did this.. happen to me the other day? o_o;;;; ...hey, Fentzy. drink some water, take care of yourself, then come downstairs. I'll be down there, causing some fucking trouble.

4:50 PM cozy reception. smiling guests waiting for a taxi. Hey. I need to speak to the manager. receptionist. "Certainly, sir. Can I ask if something's wrong?" Yeah, the tubes in our rooms trying to drain us of blood just malfunctioned, we need someone to fix that. >_> "Uh." >__> "I'll.. get the manager. Just wait here, okay?" I think I'll come with you. No need to make the manager come all the way out here. "No, really, there's no need for that, I'll be right back." Exactly, there is no need for that. Let's go. >___> "…" … "Do I need to call the.. police..?" It's just the manager, actually. Look, okay, if I can be sure you're really gonna come back and that you're not actually the manager yourself trying to bolt, I can wait here. "I'll.. I'll be right back. I promise. I'll go and get him." Fine.

4:51 PM ..checked behind her desk after she left. there's a panic button. and I hear sirens approaching. she already called the police. goddammit. I'm fucking this up. It's been a while since I've caused trouble on purpose, okay.

4:52 PM Cops with guns. "Dominiere Constabulary, put your hands where I can see them!" Thank god you're here! She went that way, officers! … holy shit that worked. I see fentzy coming down the stairs fentzy c'mon c'mon we gotta go, now like, now now, really super now

4:53 PM "were you able to figure out what was going on?" well. no! not in the slightest. kinda just got the police involved needlessly. "ugh, do we have to walk so fast..." clutching her stomach. I'm sorry. we may have the police after us. "then can't we just, like. steal their car?" … fentzy, you're a genius. "I'm good at finding the laziest way forward. good at dealing with body pains."

5:02 PM thank fuck for cars. we've already caught up to Donnie. baby, get in. we're on the run from the police. "What do you mean you're on the run from the police? You just went to get Rauri!" Yeah, uh. Our warm welcome at Dominiere may be wearing out. I'll explain on the way. We've got some trucks to catch.

5:48 PM driving through canadian highway. trees on all sides. following tire marks. lots of them. heavy ones. we think we're on the trail. (god I hope we're on the trail.) stopped for a quick pee. donnie is disconcerted by what I said about tubes. even fentzy didn't really realize what was happening. she was in and out of deep sleep, just felt utterly rotten. we still don't know the story behind dominiere. maybe we'll never find out. but maybe the genera knows. back to the road.

8:13 PM The tire marks continue well into the night. They're fresh, we're following something, a lot of somethings. But it's also not like anyone's going around cleaning these highways, so there are a lot of trails. We're pausing so I can stretch. Donnie wants to take over driving. Fentzy jokes that now I get to be the prisoner in the back. Donnie took over and said I'm under arrest. ...girls. >w<

8:35 PM ..how far did these trucks go? where the hell are we going? fentzy points out that canada is a big place. we could be on the road for weeks. it's a whole other america. please, let us not be on a big goose chase. >__< this was donnie's idea. ...I need to trust her. I dealt with the Musicians on my own, in my way. I need to trust Donnie to know what she's doing on this one.

10:55 PM The trail is leading us towards Vancouver. o_o In that direction, anyway. Doesn't look like there's all that much else in that direction.

11:08 PM "The trail makes a turn here. We're not going to the city." The sign says Abbotsford. This is somewhere smaller.

11:22 PM We've pulled up. Donnie's found the trucks. "Genera Transit." But they've parked at a warehouse with no label. I had been expecting to find the big Genera Center itself. Donnie's asking to borrow Hammett for a while longer. Of course. Fentzy's got her gardening thing billhook. Let's.. ..what are we gonna do? What's our plan? donnie "Walk in there and make them tell us what's going on with Dominiere." fentzy "Ask them if they know where our friends are." And if it's all a bust? Do we have a contingency? donnie "Drive back to Dominiere and storm the place." ..jesus. o_o okay, sure. I'm gonna.. follow you ladies on this one. fentzy "don't fucking call me a 'lady.'"

11:24 PM Into the warehouse. Lights are on. Lots of little generators powering them, lots of little screens going over inventory. Charts and data I can't read. The more pressing thing, though, are the guards coming our way. Donnie "Excuse me, are you with the carnival?" "You kids need authorization." Fentzy "Do we really look like 'kids?'" Donnie "This doesn't need to get ugly. We saw these trucks in Dominiere and followed them here. We left some of our stuff in one of the carnival booths, and" okay I can't bear to listen to this. my eyes are wandering. what's even in these trucks? … pod people. why are there people in pods. Why are there people in pods? ..the guards are reaching for their radios. and donnie just cut one's fucking arm off. this just got ugly.

11:25 PM hiding behind a table

11:32 PM We didn't stop until every guard was dead. We just killed a bunch of people. donnie "They're keeping people in pods, and they attacked us." You cut off a dude's arm. "He was reaching for his radio!" I! ..yeah, I would have done the same thing, probably! I'm just saying, let's.. acknowledge that that happened. fentzy "I think we caught them when they weren't expecting a fight. Their uniforms are serious, these guys weren't armed but I think they easily could have been. This Genera group we're looking into, they're not, like, a private army or anything like that?" I was told they're a research lab. fentzy "One that needed a lot of secrecy. Donnie, we need to look around now, and we need to be thorough. I don't want to find out that there's a whole platoon of backup on its way."

11:33 PM These pod people. They're not breathing. They look lifeless. Dead? ..is that Marty?

11:34 PM I'm seeing a lot of Dominiere people here. Either the Genera rounded Marty up a couple minutes after we saw him, got him to the trucks, killed him, then immediately started driving, or this is some heady shit. This computer, in the truck. I think this is a map. There's blips on it, some moving around. It's a town. Is this Dominiere?

11:35 PM Fentzy found a door leading out of the warehouse, into a corridor. Brick walls. Industrial. Slightly cool. donnie "If that's where the trucks drop things off, then there must be rooms in here where the gadgets are used and research is done." Thank you for explaining that. "Sorry. I'm.. trying to be clear." I wasn't being sarcastic! It's been another long day, I'm getting tired, I appreciate the clarity. fentzy "guys, not so loud. we don't know if we're alone." shit. sorry. … What's in this door? Locked. Corridor turns. Lots more doors. One of them's ajar, down there. Quiet. Easy does it. Let's have a peek.

11:36 PM It's a rec room. Small kitchen. Coffee's boiling in a pot. We're all looking at each other. We hear footsteps approaching. ..a woman in a lab coat entered the room behind us, saw us, and stopped eating a bag of peanuts. Staring at us. "Uh. Can I help you?" high-pitched voice. mature. she's gotta be in her 40s. ..donnie's stammering. Look. We're here to learn the truth about Dominiere. And maybe find our friends. We're not going until we've done at least one of those. ..donnie sighed relief. you're welcome. "Did someone let you in? How do you have access without knowing about Dominiere?" fentzy "Our blades are covered in blood." "That doesn't really answer my-- oh. Oh, yes it does. You killed all of them?" "Yep. It's not a good idea to go against us right now." "Hostility. Brilliant, we're doing this right now. Okay." putting her bag of peanuts on the counter. "May I squeeze past you and pour my coffee?" Uh. Sorry, yes you can, but, is there enough for another cup in there? she gave a laugh of disbelief. "I'm the only researcher here, and I'm stationed here indefinitely. There's coffee. Help yourselves."

11:37 PM All three of us got a cup. The scientist is leading us a couple doors down, to her computer lab. "You can put your weapons away. In fact, I'd prefer that you did. It's unsafe." fentzy, strapping her billhook to her back, "You're handling this whole situation very well." "You are here with a specific purpose, you're willing to talk, and my line of work is very weird." Talking is how I handle threats like the Fears. I get it. "You know of the Fears? That's one thing less to explain." into the computer lab. three desks, each with computers, several monitors. oh shit, more computers. the back walls are big towers. fentzy, in awe "Are those supercomputers?" "Dell PowerEdge. That one's Abe. The higher-ups pulled some strings." "ohhh my goddd." "You know your computers?" "Um! Not exactly! I just think they're really cool? And that name sounds like a big deal." sip of coffee "It suffices." donnie's still tense, expecting a fight. "Sorry, can I ask, who are you? What's your name?" "Oh, honey." condescending. "Weapons alone won't buy you that kind of clearance. You're on codename basis; you can call me Lilith." donnie "I mean, that's still a name, that's all I asked for…" "You came here for the truth about Dominiere. Shall we focus on that?"

11:38 PM Lilith's clicking some things on her computer. "So you three know of Dominiere." donnie "We've been staying there for the last five days." "Interesting. That means, if you give me your names, I might even have you on our systems." donnie and fentzy both went "Uhhhhh. No." lilith's looking at them over the top of her glasses. now at me. "What about you, ska kid?" 'Ska kid?' "No? You're dressed exactly like a ska musician. Not intentional? ..will you give me your name?" … … ..yeah, it's Jordan Dooling. That's D double O.. "I got it." tippatappatip "Thanks." … <:) "Sorry, this fucking software... it always does this… it always hangs…" That's Windows for ya! "It's all modern computer architecture, all the OSes have it. What I wouldn't give to use our grant money on developing a solution for it... ah, here we are."

a lot of rows and columns, a zigzagging line graph, tons of pairs of numbers... those are called matrices, I think? "You are on our system. Your vitals stabilized from a severe panic attack on August 1st... particularly receptive to the medication on the 2nd... no data for the 3rd and 4th? Not sure how that's possible. But then you're back in on the 5th, and the pattern almost resembles a multifractal. How old did you say you were?" fentzy "He didn't." I'm sixteen. fentzy "okay." I wanna see where trusting gets us! let me be the guinea pig! lilith "16 years old, and somehow registering the curves of a mature adult, and only on this one day. Can I ask what you got up to the last two days?" Sorry, that one's a question I don't want to answer. "Maybe later, then. Okay. ..wait, you say you're looking for friends? Because I have another two boys who arrived in Dominiere on the 1st, one of them on the system and the other not, I have them in the other room." You what?? Really?? "The boy who's registered on the system is one Derek Taylor, is he yours?" YES "So they're probably both with you. Should I tell you about Dominiere now, or bring them out here and tell all of you at once?" Can. Can we do that? Bring them out?? 'Cause that just sounds more convenient. "Eh, you'd be surprised. Bigger groups mean slower information. It's often more efficient to distribute the information to a few and let it spread organically." fentzy "Get them now. ..please." lilith shrugged. "Alright. I'll need you to come along, for insurance." o_o

11:41 PM Down another corridor is a room containing large cages. This doesn't seem humane. "I don't write the policy. I see to it that they're fed. Will you wake them up and make sure they don't attack me as soon as I open the cell?" Y.. yeah. o: Hey! Danny! Derek! ..they're waking up. :D Looking at us, wide-eyed. ..you had them share a cell? "Yeah. Should I not have?" ..no? "Well, sorry. I don't exactly have experience in imprisoning people. They don't write documentation on this stuff." ...that's. fair. o_o

11:43 PM We've let them out of their cells. Gave a.. loose explanation of how we got here. We're waiting for them to get out of the bathroom now. ..god, this is weird, isn't it. let them out of cells. an unfair imprisonment. and we're just, like. here. whatever. we're all together now. just gotta ask about that damn town now. then we can go.

11:45 PM Computer room. Danny and Bones are keeping their distance. I want to stand near Lilith to ask questions. Donnie and Fentzy are nearer to the boys. lilith "Are we all good now? You want information now, yes?" bones "I don't actually care right now. Like, I'm not exactly over the fact you kept us in a cage." danny grunted. lilith "Fair enough. I'll talk to Jordan over here, then." aw, man. don't put me in the middle here. fentzy "Maybe I can get them some coffee too?" ...danny said "please," and bones grunted this time.

11:46 PM Now everyone's got a cup. lilith "The first thing you need to know is that Dominiere is not a town. It's.. classified as a town-like." everyone's giving her funny looks. "It's a branching-off of an older fossil-- sorry, an older Fear-- that we call OVER THERE. It's like a.. magical.. city." Oh, the Empty City? "Colloquially, yes. The City is, was, that's an open question, let's go with 'is,' the City is a living thing, and like all living things it is capable of reproduction. It branches off into small town-likes, and sometimes those town-likes end up on Earth. I suspect the mechanism is like a daffodil's seeds carried by the wind, though this wind is more nebulous, maybe even metaphysical. But the point is, the town-like manifests on Earth, connects its roots to local roads, and starts growing." bones "It's a.. baby Empty City?" "Again, colloquially. Yes." "That's. Hhhuh." did you already know about the empty city? "yeah. I'll tell you later." lilith "Dominiere is one of these. We designate this stage of the life-cycle 'underscore.' Dominiere, as an offshoot of OVER THERE, is an underscore." underscore. got it. fentzy "I had tubes…" ..she can't finish. Yeah, uh, we found out that things were happening to us while we slept. lilith "Right. The tubes." Was that, like. ....digestion. "No. An underscore does not eat people. People are an underscore's blood vessels. Those tubes' primary purpose is to transfer fluids into you, to adapt your body to serve as a blood cell for the operation of the whole. The fact that fluids are also removed from you is just basic physics: You are already complete packages, you are already full, so to transfer fluids in will necessarily displace the same volume out of you." donnie "And. That happened to all of us?" "The transfer happens during sleep, with no witnesses." "Every night?" "Every time that a body sleeps in an underscore." sweet jesus. danny "So I'm fine, then?" It looks like it. danny pumped his fist.

lilith "Dominiere is a special case, in that it is an underscore that we are actively monitoring. We've tagged the transfer fluid, so every time it enters a body we've got that person in our system. That's how I was able to look at your levels, Jordan." Ah. I don't know how to feel about that now. o_o "It's disconcerting, yes. I don't envy you. I'd never spend a night in that town." fentzy, pale, "Are we.. okay with this shit inside us?" lilith "You'd need to stay in Dominiere for a lot longer to be properly subsumed. I believe the process is on the order of years? Though even staying for a month would have physiological effects, you'd become used to the transfer fluid and find it easier to convince yourself to stay. You guys weren't even there for a week. Your bodies will have been fighting it off and generating more blood to replace it." The stomach bugs! O: donnie "Why would anyone stay past the first week when there's such a violent reaction?" lilith "You had convinced yourselves these were stomach bugs, from the sounds of it. Most people respond similarly. The early stages of the process are fuelled by social mechanisms moreso than physiological. The people there are nice. The economy self-sustains." bones "Wait, so. What about those people. Who were they? What about the people in the pods?" Yeah! What about the pod people? "Those are a highly classified project. They're not the standard underscore ecosystem, I'll tell you that much." bones "You imprisoned us for even seeing them." "And that's because they're highly classified. Highly. Classified." … … "..and this is where we reach an impasse. Because I'm really not supposed to tell you about that project." ..but? "But. I may need your help with something."

...do. do you. "Hm?" Do you mean. Doctor Cloud? "How do you know about Doctor Cloud?" A Fear told me. "What did they tell you?" That. That he's a valuable enough part of your group that the Genera is willing to go to great lengths to help save his soul from transformation? Or corruption, or something bad. Something about an abyss. ..she's blinking. "I'm sorry, I'm legitimately surprised that one of the fossils knew enough to tell you all this." Hey, I'm surprised the gods are rather eager to tell me things at all! "Well. Yes. There is a Doctor Cloud, that's his codename. His department is researching potential insights into the nature of Xanadu, though in that search he discovered another project that's.. the details are beyond even my clearance, though there have been declassifications of details that are critical to being able to assist him in his dilemma." There's an abyss, and he's trying to learn about it, but it's learning him back. "...colloquially." Yes. donnie "Where is Doctor Cloud? Can we meet him?" "He's in the UK." ..but the UK is all one giant rabbit hole. Uh, Door. "You.. are way too knowledgeable on these things. Yes, the UK is inside Xanadu right now. You cannot get to that branch of the Genera." ...I wonder. "No, look, listen, let me tell you what I need from you." Yeah, okay. Sorry. "There's a." raised her finger. lowered it. puzzled. "How do I say this colloquially." … "There's a monster in these labs. I need you to capture it." o_o fentzy "Not kill it?" "It is not killable." o__o danny "Not…" donnie "..killable?" lilith "Many have tried. We've been getting Genera security from the US branch-- the.. Indiana... fuck it, the US branch-- coming in waves, whatever they can spare. I think you killed one of the waves." sorry "That was not the first wave, that was in fact the..." checks computer "..thirty-first. I believe my request has been approved, and the next wave will have military-grade weaponry." huh. bones "So why don't you just wait for them to arrive? What can we do?" "Indeed, that's the million-dollar question. What can you do? You bold assortment of inquisitive, resourceful, strangely knowledgeable teenagers. I honestly don't know what you can do." ...hm. "Isn't that exciting?"

(Attached is an entry from the desk of Black Plague: “The Musician sat on the floor in an aisle in the local library, thin and hoarse and surrounded by books and papers. I picked him up by the shoulders, and he tried to hiss at me to leave him alone. ----We have a meeting to go to, c'mon. -----We don't need a meeting; I've already sent them after it! ----What are you talking about? Grimaldi, for fuck's sake, don't make a scene. He vanished, manifesting himself behind me in an attempt to appear superior. -----I will cause whatever I like. I am the creator here now. Then he disappeared once more, and I couldn't find him again. It was then that I heard a meow. The Omen purred from atop a shelf, clearly pleased by things falling apart. Naturally, when I reached over to grab it, it jumped away and ran out the door. Frustrated, I followed it through several streets-- stopping traffic in its tracks and getting many glares from drivers-- until we reached an alleyway out of view. Then it looked at me, a terribly human smile on its face, one paw now in red fur. It muttered fiendishly, ----Alright, I'd say that's enough cat-and-mouse. -----You can talk?! ----No, no, of course not. The Omen can't. I'm Ten Speed. I watch. The thing began licking itself. I could think of nothing to say. Eventually, it continued. ----I've been watching your pantheon for a while now, moving a thing or two behind the scenes-- never doing much, only ever giving people what they want, it smirked. ----You could say I'm a good samaritan. And you have been a particular interest of mine, Plague. I hear the trust that humans have in you is inversely proportionate to your status within this clique. A species loves you, your peers don't. Started to circle me. ----All because of the Azathoth incident? No, that wouldn't make sense. There must be something further back, some quarrel, some issue, that effected your separation and virtual independence. No? Yes? Am I on the right track? Feel free to speak up. Still, nothing came out of my mouth. More than familiar with how to negotiate with someone who clearly wants to keep talking, I just let the conversation unfold while silently piecing things together in my head. This 'Ten Speed' character, whoever it was, is not the Omen. Probably some kind of bodysnatcher, like the Devil. Related? ----Would you prefer if I simply told you? This is all because of the Genera. It stopped walking, in front of me, to look me in the eye. ----Do you feel nothing at that? Bridging the gap between human and Fear! Silence. ----My, you really are passionate about it. I finally replied. -----The policies of my platform have no bearing on the affairs or lives of my colleagues. They know this. ----They do? Ah, of course, some of them might. The Omen here certainly does, though it's not telling anyone. The Omen exists to supplement, after all, not to contribute. -----Will this dialogue take long? I have a thing to attend. It hopped atop a trash can to better look at me. ----I've said all I wanted to. Stuck out its red paw. ----Nice to finally make your acquaintance, Black Plague. I looked at it for a second before reluctantly shaking hands. Or paws. My hand, its paw. -----Likewise, Ten Speed. Respect the eldritch. Then the red paw disappeared and the Omen hopped into my arms, rubbing its head against my body as a cat again. And I turned and ran to catch the most important meeting of 2014.”)

[PREV LOG] [TABLE OF CONTENTS] [NEXT LOG]

#ogtrib #oh god the rapture is burning #ogtrib act 2

4 notes · View notes

blindrapture · 2 months

Text

TUESDAY AUGUST 2ND, 2011 (Don't Speak Its True Name II: Mirrors)

9:18 AM okay I have been vomiting for the last fifteen minutes, ever since I woke up it wasn't anything to do with last night, I'm quite used to the smells and tastes of our sex it might be something I ate? what did I eat yesterday. hotel food. it tasted fine? maybe I should eat from somewhere else today, play it safe. donnie's worried about me. thank you, cutie. I'm alright. I'm.. jesus, I'm pale.

9:20 AM she's wrapped me up in the covers and told me to rest today. she can take the journal again.

9:21 AM she doesn't want the journal. but fentzy's awake, and bones too, and they're all going out for their exploration stuff. so. it's just you and me today, journal.

9:22 AM they're all gone. can go back to sleep now.

9:28 AM sighhh. I mean. y'know. I do realize how this looks. how I looked yesterday. maybe I don't know what's going on. maybe I'm nervous to be around these friends? bones is one thing, I had been hoping to run into bones. and there was a time when I was trying to find fentzy, but then I gave that up. there was a time when. "when?" there was a time when I had a crush on fentzy. when we were AIM friends, and here was this girl my age, into the same video games and a lot of the same music as me, this openly dominant girl who.. returned my flirts, and still listened to me talk about my life, and cared about what I was going through, and told me what she was going through, and. we got close. we became really good friends. do you realize how badly I wanted to meet her? do you realize that I became her online friend on the day before my family moved back to england? do you realize what that did to me? to think that the kind of girl I had dreamed about did exist, and that I'd even meet her, that she'd want to be my friend, and want to talk openly about sexual interests... but that I couldn't even meet her in person? she was just another part of the past for me, the past I had to leave behind. "did you talk to her about these feelings?" I think I did? to be honest, I'm kinda starting to realize I make a lot of assumptions, and that maybe if I ever brought up my true feelings for her, I didn't make it clear. but, but see! she was just a part of the past. the rapture happened. I got a new.. focus… "you got donnie." donnie and I.. literally went through trauma together. often hand-in-hand. she's fucking incredible. what a head on her shoulders. she knows about england, she knows how insular life can get there, she understood my desire to see america. she.. "she didn't tell you about cody." eh, she got around to it when it became likelier she'd find him, and I probably would have handled it the same, telling her about fentzy? I get it. "why do you call her 'fentzy?' isn't her name rauri?" yeah. but on AIM I knew her as fentoozler. it was a blink-182 song. I called her 'fentzy' for short. she even liked being called that. "that's important to you. you name things." I do. and I feel bubbly when people like the names I come up with. "donnie didn't like 'motherfawker.'" oh c'mon, it was a dumb name. "donnie seems more concerned with leaving this place than with ensuring you're okay." that's not really her job. "but you're not okay. and if she knew the full extent of this, she wouldn't leave your side. but you're scared to tell her. and that's for a reason." well. "I'm not even talking about your unresolved feelings for rauri here. this stomach bug of yours, this paleness. it's not something you ate. and you know this." kinda? I can't say I was certain. but you're kinda filling in the blanks for me. "this town was waiting for you, Jordan. you know that." it is.. a perfect place. "it was waiting for you, and it was waiting for your friends. it doesn't want you to leave." so it gave me a stomach bug? "you gave it life." through vomit? "…" ..should I want to leave? "yes." why don't I want to? what's.. happening to me? "I've got a better question: who are you talking to right now?" what? you. I'm talking to you. I'm. talking to the mirror.

9:32 AM ...fuck it. gonna play Paper Mario.

2:25 PM I hear the others coming back up the stairs. good. I hate chapter 5.

2:26 PM Donnie brought me some spaghetti! :D "In case the problem was the food you had last night." Awww, thank you so much!

2:33 PM While I ate, they told me about the carnival they found on the edge of town. There were fortune-tellers, tattoo artists, a zombie freak show (featuring chained zombies who had died in many different ways), strength challenges, carousel, ferris wheel, a mirror maze… I told them I wanted to see the mirror maze. That, however I'm feeling, I'd rather die than pass up a good maze. Bones says he'll take me later on, take me to the blacksmith on the way. So I'd better bring my sword.

2:36 PM Everyone wants to hang out here in my room. I guess they want to make sure I'm alright. .w.

2:38 PM So! Uh. Hi everyone! bones "So this is Paper Mario. This is one of those games that you really like, isn't it?" Yeah! I didn't actually get to this one until after Super Paper Mario came out, when I was old enough to want to start buying N64 games I'd missed. I also got the first two Mario Party games. It's an easy RPG. Hard enough for me, I mean. I never even beat Earthbound. fentzy "I love Paper Mario." Yeah. :) I'm on chapter 5 now, though, which isn't my favorite? You go to this island with all the Yoshis on it. fentzy "I love Yoshis." Yeah! :D But I don't really love this tropical island setting. The enemies are harder, there's a lot of fetch quests... which is weird, I guess, because chapter 4 is like my favorite, and that one's nothing but fetch quests, but it's also all Shy Guys, and I find those guys so damn interesting. They have a whole, like, military structure, but the characters themselves are all about mystery. But, like! I played Paper Mario more out of historical interest, as first I played The Thousand Year Door, and that game blew me away, from start to finish it is all compelling setpieces and charming characters, it is one of the least "Mario"-like Mario games. Whereas this N64 original is... definitely a Mario game, just one that's starting to get playful with the source material. Like!

(Jordan spends, uh, half an hour talking about Paper Mario, then for another half-hour he and Fentzy talk about Sonic. Bones and Donnie listen, politely nodding.)

3:56 PM and that is why Sonic 06 is actually really fucking good. donnie "I see. So it's because of the plot." It's fucking incredible! One of the boldest messages Sega could have put out! fentzy "I remember you telling me about that in one of your rambles. It's been a while since I played, so I'd actually forgotten about the Princess Elise stuff." It's art! It's art that only works because a corporation published it, and that works even more because the game was a failure! bones "Yeah, wow, holy shit. It, like, explored failure. It almost sounds like they intended it to fail to make it a better experience." God, that reminds me, wait'll I tell you about Metroid: Other M!

(Oh, goddammit. Forgot about that. This one lasts maybe about twenty minutes.)

4:19 PM fentzy "Wow, I hadn't even heard that one." It had only recently come out when the Rapture started, but I picked it up Day 1. donnie "What is with these kids' games and giving really deep messages about trauma?" Well, Metroid is hardly a kid's game. Maybe a teenager's game. Other M was definitely experimental for the series, most of the games do not go that in-depth with the plot. fentzy "I wish Danny was here. He'd have gotten a kick out of all this." bones "God, you AIM guys and your video games." fentzy "Don't you like Elder Scrolls and Fallout and stuff?" bones "And STALKER, and Deus Ex." she punched his arm "Then you're a dork too." What about you, Donnie? What games did you play? "Oh god. Um. Nothing as exciting as all that." fentzy "What? What did you play?" donnie "Harvest.. Moon? The Sims? Some Rollercoaster Tycoon... but I watched a lot of game review things on the internet as I got older, so I'm aware of all these names." bones "Sounds like you're a PC gamer. Besides the Harvest Moon." donnie "I had a Windows XP and a GBA..."

(Sigh…)

6:25 PM Bones and I are going out! Got my hat on, got my sword! Donnie kissed me and said "Have fun, sweetie!" :D Then Fentzy said "Have a nice day at work!"

6:28 PM Ah, out on the town again, just you and me, the Slenderbrothers! "'Slenderbrothers,' what the heck is that?" Oh, it's. ...well, it's maybe kinda embarrassing, but when my family first moved to England, I'd actually, like, imagine you were with me, and I wrote these little short stories about the things we'd get up to. "..I missed you too, man." I didn't want to leave America. "I know." I didn't even make any new friends. We never stayed in one place for long enough for me to get used to the area and.. meet anyone. Not that I was any good at that in the first place. Didn't you and I meet out of pretty much a fluke? "You and I were the only ones wearing trilbies at band camp." Yeah. It's shallow of me, but, that's what it took to get me to want to chat. "But we're here now. Through the luck of the apocalypse, we're back at it again." That's true. :)

6:32 PM "So I hear something about you and Donnie beating the Ciphers?" Yeah! We beat three of them. Do you know about them? "Only that they're big fuckers. Load-bearing, too. Someone had to beat them." You go in the rabbit holes too. Into Xanadu. o: Do you spend much time there? "Sometimes I prefer it there. I found a salt flat where the sun is bright but the wind keeps it temperate, and a village survives on rainwater, which is plentiful. I stayed there for about a week in June. I still miss it." What were the people? In this village? "Kite-shaped, furry. Spoke English." There's a lot of English out there, I've noticed. "Yeah... it bothers me." I don't really think about it too much.

6:40 PM Marty's Smithy. A big garage with a chimney for the furnace. "Isn't this cool? It's not every day you run into a genuine smithy." I saw one just two days ago, actually. It... uh, never mind. Yeah. This is cool. And you must be Marty, in the rubber apron! handshake "Nice to meet you. Are you the kid with the sword?" I sure am!

6:41 PM "Oh wow, the make of this thing... where did you find it?" A place called Castle True. It's.. far from here. "They sure knew how to make their swords sharp." bones "Can you improve it, though?" "Improve it? No, I don't think so. It's of a fragile material that won't take much refinement before it breaks. But I think I can learn from it, make some swords like it with stronger material. If you'd be willing to give me this, that is." Uh. Like, forever? ..bones is nodding at me. S...sure. Sure. Take the sword. c:

6:45 PM Left the smithy and are on our way to the carnival now. I am swordless. Bones is assuring me that this is a good idea. It doesn't look like we'll be leaving Dominiere just yet anyway, so we'll still be here when the sword's ready. I won't be totally defenseless. Now where's that damn maze? :D

7:03 PM The Caval-Arcade is the name of the carnival. It's set up across a parking lot, the boundaries marked by parked trucks. ...hey Bones, you coming? "Yeah. Uh, yeah. You go on ahead, check out the maze, I'll be... right with you." He's looking at the trucks. ...I mean, okay!

7:04 PM Much of the attractions are closed for the day, but the maze is open until 9. A man in a fancy mustache, tailcoat, and Mickey Mouse pants is waving me in with a cane. "You look like a man who appreciates the fine art of getting lost! Care for an audience... with your own mind? Then come, step inside the Sky's Neighborhood. Find the exit, and you'll get a raffle ticket!" Eh, I don't need a raffle ticket, but I'll gladly do your maze. owo "Atta boy! Step inside, and whatever you do... don't look down."

7:05 PM Mirrors. Halls of mirrors. Seeing myself clearly in here; though my form does warp, it's always in obvious ways. I know how mirrors work. Eek, the bags under my eyes. My dirty blonde hair, when's the last time I showered? My coat's torn in the arms. And I'm.. putting on a little weight? o_o Damn, okay, not unwelcome, I was unhealthily thin! I'm starting to look older now. ...actually, I think I look a lot like.. Fentzy. That's. A thing I don't know how to take. Like, that. When I finally met Fentzy, two days ago. That was my first time actually seeing what she looks like. And. Our faces are similar. Maybe it's some, like, Irish roots or something in the nose and jaw. Maybe it's our eyes, always kinda grumpy, always looking around, taking everything in. And she dresses so fancy. The shirt and tie? Like we were.. meant to meet up. Be a Rapture-fighting pair. Me, her, and Bones. The well-dressed kids on the block. The trio that was.. always meant to be. In my dreams. In my tear-stained, bruised, choked, anguished, never-gonna-come-true little dreams. What does it? Now.

7:08 PM ...I walk on. The layout of this place is nothing special. I can literally see the exit, and am just choosing to spend more time because I'm surprised at how far off the beaten path I am allowed to go. it was never meant to be. it was never going to happen. even now, he knows that. even now, he mourns what could have been. but he can't accept it. he can't accept that it never could have been in the first place. he can't outrun character. I can't outrun character. It never could have been in the first place. But. but? ...then we met up. For real. She's here, in Dominiere. ah. that. he met up with this one, unlike the one he couldn't save. unlike anna. Don't show her to me. striped shirt under indigo T-shirt. brown hair with cute bows. liked wearing jeans. Don't. blade through the heart. she was hunted down by the guards. The ones guarding the doors? Who gave us that riddle? do you want to see? Please no. you came to these mirrors. you came to this maze. the sky is a neighborhood, and you dare bang on the ceiling and tell us to keep it down? we are here to talk. you came here to get lost. let us help you.

8558885885588585855885558558588585585558

(Attached: “I had pulled away to take a look at the trucks, as I recognized them from the previous night: Genera Transit. I figured Jordan would be alright in a tiny little maze tent, so I went discreetly digging in those trucks, half expecting to find mangled dead bodies. Instead, I found, perfectly preserved, the corpses of shopkeepers and bar workers and cafe owners and police officers and postmen, carnival callers, and a certain blacksmith, all held floating in tubes, monitored by computers and journals. They had been dead for weeks. The population of Dominiere that we had been speaking to were not who they said they were. Before I could even discover Jordan's disappearance, someone shut the doors of the truck and locked me inside.")

[PREV LOG] [TABLE OF CONTENTS] [NEXT LOG]

#ogtrib #oh god the rapture is burning #ogtrib act 2 #so this is one where the formatting is totally correct but the Website version is still superior.#because there is an effect on some of the words in the Website version to make some voices more distinct.

4 notes · View notes

blindrapture · 2 months

Text

SUNDAY JULY 31ST, 2011 (Ground and Pound)

12:22AM Buck wasn't ready to go in yet, so we agreed to scout ahead. Past the drawbridge, past a dark entrance tunnel, the ceiling gives way to an open-air interior inside the castle walls. A fleet of stables on our left, a whole cottage industry of dyes and textiles on our right. Tubs of goop big enough for several to stand in. Few people were still around, having heard the fight going on at their front door. There were some old women, horns on their heads too, stomping their feet in the goop, and some making odd crafts, who eyed us with disdain but paid us no more attention. The faint thumping of Legsteps caused a woman to raise her fist at the air and shout something in a foreign language. Probably a curse, a demand to turn the music off. We've found no guards yet, though. No cause for hostility. Donnie took a look at the stables and found perfectly ordinary horses, goats, pigs. But there's also one other type of animal she'd never seen before, looked like a big cat with udders. Taking the left turn to reach the stables, then turning right again, we're faced with a long path lain with red carpet, passing four big doors on both sides, leading up to a door as big as the castle entrance. That's the keep with the big spire. I'm pretty sure that's where our boss battle's hiding. The door will not open for us. No door will, in fact. So, we're in a big open-roof h. Entered on the bottom-right. Stables on the bottom-left. The textile workers are in the curve on the right. Final stretch is top-left. And, this being a castle, the tall walls have battlements where I keep expecting to see guards looking down on us from above. But nothing. No dead bodies lining the streets. No massive instruments of war staring us down to shoot flaming cannonballs. No crowd of people gathered around wizards warning against witchcraft, pointing at us in righteous indignation. I was even partly expecting an entire army of giant halberd horsemen, looking angrily in our direction, as soon as we came in. Donnie and I took the peace as an opportunity to rest up. We found a pile of hay and sat together, taking in the sights, watching the black grid in the sky drift slowly in a direction, like clouds. We settled on our plan for the Cipher: We'd get to the king, maybe ahead of Buck if at all possible, and explain our situation. We'd neutralize Buck together and ask the king for a way out. My sword's gotta be good for something. Then we got to talking about the history mentioned in parchment 3. This world went through a red sky. A 'plague' came through their doors. It dethroned their-- took their God, and turned an entire kingdom into walking piles. Neither of us is sure whether that's the fate that awaits our world, but it's gotta be talking about the same kind of thing. This kingdom went through the Rapture. And our gods are frightened for their lives.

12:32 AM Buck has joined us. "Did you two see that creepy fuckin' hallway on the way in, off to the side?" Creepy hallway? o_o

12:36 AM Back at the entrance, in the dark entrance tunnel, we had obviously passed an open door. Looking through it, there's just a distant lantern on a table on the other side of black passage.

12:37 AM As we approach the table, we can hear something whirring and tapping. Music preparing to drop. The table has a piece of parchment on it, and a lever. "Good cavaliers. You stand within Castle True. After the plague that befell my land, I had my most trusted diseuse cast her Rhetorics on the castle to disguise its nature, as mine people deserved not to have to see themselves as they now had become. However, only the true are permitted entrance to my throne room, and so my door is sealed as long as the disguise holds. You will have to see what lies beneath the veil. Once you pull that lever, it will begin. Can you put a price on peace?" ...we're looking at each other. the music is. bubbling under the surface. Donnie's reaching for the lever.

12:39 AM hard guitars. chugging monotone. blasting drums. syncopated. freaky shrieking synth. techno horror metal. the lights are on. electric bulbs. now we see the bodies. lining the walls. they're melted together. people fused at the hip. the head. the arm. the chest. some bodies going through others', some bodies terminating where the next person's body begins. and not a single cut, it's all unbroken skin. their eyes are open, looking at us. mouths agape, unable to shut. they are the walls. feet touching the floor. buck threw up a little. let's. let's go.

12:40 AM on the way out, a leg tripped donnie. we grabbed her and pulled her the rest of the way, doing our best to ignore the arms reaching out. out in the main entrance hall, it's not much better. the walls here are breathing in and out. not quite regular, but that's worse, that makes it pretty clear there's a will inside there, consciously breathing. going out into the castle proper, can already see the sky is no longer a grid. it's just bruise and a texture like congealed liquids that don't mix. makes me think of bile and blood pooling around bits of cartilage. no grid. no order. the castle is shrieking. the old women were leaving us alone out of necessity, as their lower halves are melted into the fleshy ground. they look like slugs. there are guards, plenty of guards, but they were absorbed into the ground, and now they emerge, pushed out by peristalsis, also with melted lower halves, frozen to the spot, only able to move their arms, which they use to aim their bows. I don't want to make out the expressions on their faces, there is no good option. donnie "let's. get to the. throne room. now." buck "don't have to tell me twice." big sigh, steeling himself.

12:44 AM those arrows are not wood, nor steel, they are sharpened teeth. buck has tipped over a vat of.. clothes dye??? and lifted it over the three of us to form a shield. one of the old women cursed at us. her mouth opened wider than the vat. I thought she was going to swallow us. instead she launched black phlegm which missed us and sizzled into the ground, bubbling and melting a hole. go. go. go. gotta round the corner. get past the... stables. that's a giant liquid mass of animal. neighing, braying, growling, all at once. body parts swim around in the mass freely. it's pressing against the gates. the gates will not hold. but they're holding long enough for us to read another piece of parchment. "Good cavaliers. The red sky brought us a plague of flesh."

12:49 AM The gates burst. Goop barrelled out, the animals inside pulling the mass in every direction, ultimately resulting in a writhing flood charging back and forth, hitting the walls again and again. The force of a flood combined with the panic of a stampede of confused animals. We fucking ran. Ditched the vat. The mass spilled onto the red carpet first, so we had to turn back and push our way into the peasants' quarters behind the textiles and dyes, slipping past the immobile old women screaming in terror. A doorway gave way into an interior of yet more gross suffering. Greeting us were more people plastered into growths on the walls, but at least the door shut behind us.

12:50 AM "guh!" oh. there's a blacksmith here, one foot fused with his anvil. he's. he's still able to move with it, dragging it screechingly across the floor. his eyes are frantic, bloodshot. his beard is crusted to his apron. he wields a large hammer. and we don't have much space to dodge him without getting within reach of the arms and mouths on the walls. buck shouted "FUCK THIS!" and grabbed at the blacksmith's hammer. he can't disarm the smith. it is his arm. "YOU FUCKING ABOMINATIONS" "grah!!!!" hammer broke buck's leg. okay. donnie. this is easy. there's three of us, and now the blacksmith is distracted. stay calm. and rush him.

12:51 AM "grrrggl" sword through the chest. frying pan concussion. only vomited a little afterwards. buck thanked us. but I don't know what he can do with his dead leg. "C'mon, kids... I can still fight!! It's nothing, just a leg!" he's getting freaked because there is a serious opportunity here. and we're.. not immediately reassuring him. just looking at each other. sigh.

12:53 AM Donnie and I just told him to rest up. We're not gonna leave him, not here. But we found a staircase, and we need to have a look around. Up the stairs is the battlement, the path atop the castle walls. We have a good view of the scene below. The rampaging animal thing has scarpered out the castle entrance, leaving a trail of gunk on all the destroyed crates and barrels and detritus. The guards up on the battlements are turned to watch the animals outside the castle, see what they get up to. Donnie tapped my shoulder, pointed at a lookout tower nearby. She sees a parchment on the doorway. We've got to get there. But we will have to pass a few guards, and we will be noticed. ..she's pointed at my sword. Yeah, I guess that's fair.

12:54 AM the sword slices through the guards like butter! but all the other guards have noticed us and are taking aim so donnie's trying to shield against the arrows with her frying pan and I'm trying to hide behind dead guard bodies

12:55 AM at least the music is fucking awesome

12:56 AM hiding in the tower tip tip tap tap tap arrows hitting the wall we made it alright we still have to get back but for now we're alright. donnie, what does the parchment say. "Good cavaliers. An existence of pain and torment awaits all who dare challenge the terminal coming. The colossal sirens will sing your doom for the rest of your days, and those days will be long. Dost thou see them out there, encircling my castle? They play an infernal music that is eldritch to our ears. The music waiting for you will no doubt be worse, as every time the music must reprise, it has new values to incorporate, and a new understanding of 'music' to desecrate. I have spent my later years wondering, in vain, why this is to be. What force stands to benefit from torturing my domain? Does it benefit from torturing thine as well? What laws fuel its sadism? Your final challenge awaits just outside my throne room, in mine church. Remain mindful. I pray thou aren't digested on the way here." Wait, but then what was this challenge? donnie "'Remain mindful,' I suppose? The challenges inside the castle have been much more direct."

12:58 AM It did ask if we see the sirens outside the castle. We're in a lookout tower. May as well look! "Yeah, it's the Legsteps. I can see them. Are they breathing fire?" marching, evenly-paced, along the bay. engulfed in an eternal flame as they blast out heavy screeching metal. the fire shoots out rhythmically, I suspect it's just being propelled by the force of the speakers. "Better than dubstep, I guess, but so much more destructive. ..oh my god." what "Look at the moon." ...oh, that's not a moon. o_o That's an eyeball, staring right at the castle. "It doesn't look like an animal's eye or an insect's or anything, it looks almost human." But a lot more complex than a human's. Like this is what our eyes might evolve into, hundreds of thousands of years from now. Multiple layers of iris, veins rotating and interweaving in the white. "The sky makes me feel like we're inside a giant organ, so that'd be an eyeball in the organ, monitoring--" okay I don't want to think about that part. "What, too gross?" all of this is hitting on a deeper phobia of mine. "This is how the denizens of this castle have had to live, though. No wonder they needed a veil over reality." can we just go now? "Back through the arrows?" yeah. we've still got work to do.

1:01 AM Back in the blacksmith's forge. Had to pull an arrow out of my leg. Buck's standing, using some wood as a makeshift crutch.

1:02 AM We filled him in on where we have to go next. We're willing to defend him from incoming arrows, as it helps a lot to have a big dude with us. He's.. starting to feel the fear. We're not in a good spot.

1:03 AM Donnie and I tipped over a wooden table and are holding it to shield us all, to the best of our abilities. I don't expect this to work the whole way, but. We've got to try. We're nearly there.

1:07 AM slow going, at buck's pace. we're not there yet. not rounding the corner yet, not at the red carpet yet. taking a quick break. then back to the grind. the table's.. sufficing. nobody's been hit yet. we're just freaking out a bit at how close the arrows are getting to our fingers.

1:12 AM turned the corner. the red carpet's a tongue. of course it is. the arrows have stopped. the guards are just watching us now. why oh. 'cause there's two halberd horsemen waiting at the door to the keep, at the other end of this long stretch. and with the disguise gone, we can see they're morphed into their horses, like hideous centaurs. their armor is grafted onto their skin, a sharp carapace. they roar. they hiss. they click. they stare us down. ohhhh god. donnie "I'll take the one on the left." r. really? "you take the one on the right." we're doing this? "don't doubt us now, jordan. we can do this. we have to." sigggghhhhh. u_u "buck, you back us up however you can, but we'll keep their attention." sword at the ready. "let's rip and tear."

1:13 AM SLASH swipe dodge NEIGGGGHHHHH wait SLASH WHIIIIIIINNNNYYYYYYYYYY take the fucking horse legs out eliminate his mobility STRIKE at his halberd pushhh back sword knocked out of my hands uh uh buck grabbed the centaur's head exerting great effort snapped his neck. "fucking hate these bastards."

1:14 AM donnie's having some trouble, as she just has a blunt weapon now we can back her up slice the horse's legs buck grabbed the halberd, can't rip it out as it is the horseman's hands but he can hold it still while I send my sword through his head!!! and that's how you do it.

1:15 AM when we were all finished high-fiving each other and letting out our adrenaline, we remembered the next challenge is in a "church" outside the throne room. there's the closed door to the keep at the far end of this stretch, but there's four sets of doors on either side too. will have to just try them all.

1:21 AM first sets of doors were barracks. lots of soldiers grafted to their beds in a big connected system of flesh. shut that door immediately. second sets of doors were armories. I swapped out my rusted sword for a shinier one. donnie grabbed a big hammer. buck wanted a gun, but they don't have any of those. so he said he's fine with his fists. third sets of doors, however, were churches. two identical parallel churches. aisles of pews leading up to altars. the right-side church has a priest in a cloak waiting for us.

1:22 AM "Good cavaliers. You are here to challenge the king. I am Ponos, the king's trusted" deesus? diseuse. Well. Actually. We're here to protect the king, we don't want to decode the last Cipher. buck "You what?" ponos "Your party is not of one mind. This must be remedied, or else you will never make it out of this." buck, listen, man. yeah. we were never gonna kill the cipher. we're here because you guys, your buddies, were going to do it, and we needed to stop that from happening. buck "Why the fuck would you lie to us?" Well, we were hardly gonna be able to stop all four of you! Or even two of you! "Man, that's... fucked up. You really think the Ciphers are gonna make things worse?" I really do. Ponos, can you back me up here? Your world went through a red sky thing, didn't you guys have to do seven big things? "No?" donnie "I don't think anyone from this world ever went into the Doors in the first place." buck "See? If we don't do the Ciphers, this shit's still gonna happen!" ...wait, shit. You're right. That is what we've learned here. How the fuck does all this work?! Why is it so complicated? All these systems, all these sources with different stories! Goddammit, Tiresias! donnie "Ponos, sorry, can you tell us what's going on from your perspective?" ponos "My king has been tasked with serving as the seventh spectacle in an unholy procession, and you cavaliers are the ones we were told to wait for. You are here to kill the king. I am not to stop you in this; my task was to link my Rhetorics to the lever at the front of the castle." But what happens when we kill the king? "That is of little concern for me, as my world will be left leaderless and doomed. I suppose the unholy procession will.. continue." hnng. So, if we don't do this, Rapture will come regardless, as it seems to have come for you guys. And if we do do this, more wacky shit will happen on the way to Rapture. Is that even really a choice? We're choosing whether or not there'll be a party before armaggeddon. ponos "Think it through, good cavaliers. I can already identify the flaw in your logic; there is an obvious correct choice. Let this be your final challenge." fuck. okay. think it through, think it through. buck "One last party before the end? Isn't that better just for the fun of it? Dutch courage. Where's the fun in just lying down and dying?" She's saying the choices aren't actually equal, I think, so it's not just a party, it's not just a spectacle. ponos "I did not say that." Well. What are you saying? "I am saying that there is no such thing as 'just' a spectacle. The smallest difference is an opportunity." donnie "No such thing as 'just' a spectacle. A spectacle is a change, it's a game, it's a chance to stick a wrench in the system." Well, what kind of perfect apocalypse would allow for that? donnie "That's your assumption, that Rapture is perfect." I'm going off of what it's presented to us! ponos "You are going off of the spectacle, and that is precisely why powerful forces use spectacle. It's the strength of rhetoric. This red sky is powerful rhetoric, it is very convincing, but until you have seen for yourself, you cannot rely on the narrative provided by the spectacle." ....shit. I get it. I get it! o: It's the very fact that this apocalypse is using so much flashy shit that's why we should believe there's a crack we can tear open! ponos "Well, it's. It's why you should be curious about the possibility of a crack. It is entirely possible that there is no path to victory, in which case the spectacle exists to humiliate you. But the spectacle is a veil, it is an ambiguity. You cannot rely on an ambiguity." Okay. So. So we should kill the king. "You were not going to leave if you hadn't, regardless. It is my job to open the exit for you." ...you could have opened with that. "I needed to make sure you were all of one mind. You have made it this far. You have one thing left to do. The king will tear you apart if you have any doubts left."

1:26 AM Only one thing left to do… Open the doors to the keep.

1:27 AM "Good cavaliers…" There he is. A giant blue man on a giant throne in a giant chamber. Hard furry boots. Grey-green robe. Big fucking muscles with which to lift a giant golden mace. Eyes glowing green. The only sign that he's gone through the same flesh-melting as the rest of his people is the fact that his head terminates in a jagged crown of skin. He sits on his throne, one leg crossed over the other. The music has stopped. There's Legsteps at the walls, waiting for battle. In between them are stationed golden knights. "Welcome to the end of your quest. It must have been a great exertion, but I have some say in the structure of my realm here, and my kingdom's fate deserved a witness." We're so sorry this happened to you. "Thank you for saying so. May I ask your names?" I'm Jordan Dooling. This is Donnivan Rand. He's, uh. "Buck Stevens." "Good cavaliers, thank you." bow. "Before we begin, do you have any questions?" Uh. Actually, I'd like to know how you ended up as a Cipher. Did someone come and.. tell you that you'd be challenged? How did you take it? "The news came to me by my own God sometime after the plague of flesh ravaged my people. I had not seen my God ever since that began, and when He returned to me, I could see He was now a vessel of a far greater power. He told me that the will of the Infinite had chosen my world for a higher purpose, that I was to stand guard against coming challengers from other worlds, that I was chosen for this due to my incredible willpower and stature." Do you.. know why this all is? Why the fights? Why the challengers? "I was not told, as this was the will of a power I could not understand. Before the red sky, I would have taken the word of my God in trust, but seeing Him as He is now, just a mask for an infinite evil... I have formed my own ideas. This evil took my world, and it chose a form of attack that would overwhelm us. I have little doubt that it is using me as another form of attack against new victims." I think you're right. buck "We're not the first ones you've fought, are we?" "No. There have been others before you. Much time separates the fights, but I have never lost." grimace. I see. ...okay. I think we're ready. "I hope that you are." he's standing up. "Timor mortis conturbat me." wielding his mace. steel face. "May you fight true. May you will real." ..a health bar has appeared in my vision. atop it is a name. KING REAL

1:30 AM brass horns wobbling through the legsteps, chugging guitar. King Real's mace shakes the room when he slams it down. his attacks are slow but heavy. and he can dodge fast. he's focusing on Buck, whose bum leg keeps him slow. donnie and I are circling behind the king oh shit the golden knights are coming out into the fight wielding great two-handed swords fuck we've got to take care of this

1:32 AM keeping the knights at bay is working but we can't sustain this buck can't focus on getting a hit on the king because he's got to play evasive donnie's taken care of a knight but there's two more coming for her I've still got three

1:33 AM I now have two, and they're attacking one after the other donnie's taken care of all her knights and is going for the king that hammer must have been a better choice than my damn sword hrrrrggg fuck OFF you damn KNIGHTS

1:34 AM okay couldn't focus on either one but I chipped away at both of them and now they're both dead just in time to see King Real raise his mace high and bring it down on buck no scream, just a big crash shaking the room goddammit… bye bye buck. "Come, cavaliers! Is this the sum of your efforts?" donnie, we're gonna have to.. be smart you and me together one baits him, the other goes for the legs

1:37 AM we're whittling away at his health bar one of us runs in front and tries to attack, triggers him to wind up a swing, and the other waits until he's brought his mace down before we swing at the back of his legs but he's getting wise to this and is swinging his mace from side to side around his legs gave me a brisk smack to the stomach, knocked me off my feet

1:38 AM we're still trying our tactic, just gotta watch for when he tries to clear us

1:40 AM the fucker's JUMPING donnie dove at me, pushed me out of the way SMASHHHH as the king lands I can feel my teeth vibrating fucking bosses and their multiple attacks… donnie, what if we traded weapons, could you figure out some sword stuff, I think I could use some upper body strength to bring more force into that hammer

1:41 AM yes I am doing bigger chunks of damage with this he's clearing his legs! dodge

1:42 AM come, swing at me, big boy!!! c'mon!!! over here!!! SMASH donnie's rapidly cutting away at his ankles the health bar is below two-thirds

1:46 AM with this swing of my hammer SMACK we hit 50% and now he's stepping back, clutching at his head "You have some fight in you. This is good... you may actually be able to do this. Understand, cavaliers, I would love nothing more than to find the challengers who might stand a chance against the power that did this to my people, even accepting that this would mean my death. That would be a reprieve I have long prayed for. But you must be vigilant. You must stand firm. You must be ready for anything. The biggest obstacle in your way is your own mind, and so I had lain my challenges along your path with the goal of preparing you." donnie and I are catching our breath. "There are eight principles to hone as a warrior: View, Resolve, Speech, Conduct, Livelihood, Effort, Awareness, and Mind. And there are five mental traps you must always engage with: Desire, Cruelty, Sloth, Panic, and Doubt. As the dark forces allowed me to present my kingdom in any way I saw fit, so long as it stood as an obstacle on your path to me, I chose to test you on these thirteen points. Of these, the only ones you failed were Speech and Conduct, though you found the right Speech at the last minute. Conduct was perhaps a tall challenge to ask you to do in this situation, as murder in self-defense is the most obvious choice when presented with my kingdom's knights. Truth be told, I am glad you failed that one. I want you to kill me." he is kneeling. putting his mace down. "Do it now. While you still have a-- GURK" ..his eyes are glowing yellow now. wings of light emerge from out his back. "King Real has refused his duty. I will take his place for him." and. and who are you? "I am the Golden Light. I am his God." he rises to his feet, a golden aura emanating from within. his health bar is still at 50%, but now the name says KING REAL, VESSEL OF INFINITE LIGHT and he's rearing back his mace, but in the wrong direction? ...SMASH he broke the back wall of the throne room, sent it crumbling down with one swing. on the other side is a large garden, flowers of flesh and bone in pools of blood. the eyeball moon is perfectly visible, aligned to stare down the center of the garden. the God-King walks out into the garden. "Rapture will come, one way or another. The question is if you two will live to see it or die here where you stand." donnie gave a big sigh. "give me my hammer." okay.

1:53 AM Out in the garden now for phase 2. We've spent some time learning his attacks. It's a lot of the same slow swings, but this time when the mace connects with the ground, there's a circle of flaming light warming up the point of contact. And now he uses his wings to clear the area around him if we get too greedy taking swings at his feet. His dodges are much wider now too, he can put a lot of distance between us using his wings to propel him backwards. The Legsteps have come outside and burst into flames. No more brass horn, just electric guitar. Gotta stay alert. Gotta do it for the king.

1:57 AM SWING stab SMACK roll CRUNCH bap SLICE cut cut cut DODGE distract AGGRESS groan

2:00 AM he's raising his mace, glowing very bright let's uh let's back off a second ..crack the ground literally cracks in the ground GUSH, light pouring out of the cracks, radiating intense heat okay, this is a new one to watch out for

2:04 AM "OOF" fuck donnie's sent flying landed in the pool of blood god-king's stepping up to her HEY, YOU FUCKER YOU'RE NO GOD I'VE SEEN MUCH STRONGER GODS THAN YOU AND I'M GONNA FUCKING PROVE IT he's raising his mace, gonna smash her into bloody pulp

2:05 AM none of my attacks were gonna distract him from an easy choice so I had to grab donnie and throw her out of the way which put me in the range of his hammer-smash's glowing light aftereffect so uh that fucking hurt feels like extreme sunburn all over my body but I'm just feeling pure adrenaline right now and donnie's still out of commission so it's just me and the big guy

2:07 AM I'm doing a lot of dodging, not getting many attacks in, but his health is slowly going down he's around 30% I've gotta play it safe enough to not run into the glowies but I've gotta get aggressive when I think I have an opening

2:08 AM donnie's over there coughing up blood jesus I can't do this but I can't panic I need to.. deep breaths… it's just a dance just a big dance with an alien god

2:10 AM donnie's back up!!! wiped the blood from her lips and came to join me in this violent dance you're in trouble now, you fucking nightlight!

2:13 AM she's being a lot more careful that's good I'll gladly take the risks, donnie can go and punish him for choosing attacks that leave himself open

2:18 AM 15% he's getting frantic he's not dodging much anymore but his strong attacks are happening faster and the music's getting even more intense

2:23 AM SWIPE SLASH STAB HAMMER CRUNCH BOP CRACK he's down on a knee!! he's fucking staggered!! get him now!! get him now!!!

2:24 AM "AAAAAAARRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHoooooooooooooooooooo" light spills out of him in bright lines, percolating and bubbling and BRIGHT EXPLOSION leaving nothing left but a silent garden. but it's strange. this isn't the silence of a battle won. I can't even hear the sound of my pencil scribbling in the journal. ...behind us stands Cockroach Jesus. Looking at us with open arms and a warm smile. He is saying something, but no sound is heard.

(Attached, in the middle of this log, is the note: "It was then, with the defeat of King Real, that the seventh Cipher popped open on my book, and I saw it open by itself. I saw, as the pages turned by themselves, pieces of paper attached throughout. And the pages stopped turning somewhere before halfway through, and it stopped on these words that you read right now. And there, staring me and you in the eyes at different points in time, were new words I hadn't written in there. Did you ever wonder why you even wear this red glove anymore? The struggle’s over. Well. The struggle IS over. What do you do when the movie’s done? The characters can’t leave the movie theater; they’re trapped within the screen. What happens to them? They never tell you. It’s something you’re meant to either find out on your own or be told by appropriate prophets. Mentors? To be fair, most aren’t meant for struggle. Movies are meant to remain within the screen with little crossover with reality. 'Reality.' Let’s not get existential here. What DO you do when the movie’s over? The story ends when the moral has been delivered; it wouldn’t make a good movie if we saw what happ Well, specifically, that would be entering a different theme entirely, so So so it requires a specific kind of movie. Of story. So you’ll have to find.. that. Because your appropriate prophets only apply to the struggle. No, that’s not true. They keep telling you the answers you seek, but you just can’t accept them. You don’t like the answer. You did what they said only heroes could do, you gave it a happy ending, and now you’re expected to go to the land beyond that happy ending and you can’t comprehend being normal again. Could you ever? Were you ever given a chance? This IS your chance. Is it fair to force the chance upon someone after they’ve been to the furthest corners of trauma with no reintegration process? Life isn’t fair Of course life is fair, don’t be silly. Life’s the most fair thing there is. Everything balances out in the end. It’s only in fiction where things don’t, because fiction is rooted in psychology, and psychology isn’t fair. From the perspective of the victim. Is that why, then? Is that why you can’t accept it? You were presented with a life so tainted in psychology that people are claiming it was fictional, and now you’re at the point where the story’s over and the credits are rolling. Do you want reality? That’s the ultimate question here. Forget about responsibility and catharsis, and pay no mind to the distant feeling you mistake for living. Tell yourself, tell ME, do you honestly want reality? Or do you want to go back to purgatory and the chains of psychology? ..well. You don’t have any choice in what happens, so you’d may as well just ride out the pain and enjoy yourself where you can. Enjoy. ‘Cause you’re never getting a good night’s sleep again. And then I heard a Door swing open behind me.")

2:25 AM A Door opened in the garden. I can only see blackness inside.

2:26 AM It is blackness, a great void, though Donnie and I are illuminated by a source we can't see. We're walking on nothing, towards nothing. What happens after the Ciphers?

2:27 AM Another Door led us into a waiting room with golden walls and marble floor. An electronic timer on the wall is counting down from 27 minutes. It's linked to a door that's sealed shut, and a sign. "DOOR WILL OPEN WHEN THE WORLD IS READY." Donnie's looking at me. I guess we'd may as well sit and wait.

2:33 AM We licked our wounds, looked at our bruises, and rubbed our weary legs. Still can't talk to each other, but company is company. She's resting her head on my shoulder now as I write some more. There's also a big TV on the wall, near the door. It's on. Displaying a screen, "NO FEED." If this is like San Francisco, the whole world is probably about to watch.

2:53 AM oh god. one minute left. ..Donnie wants to hold my hand. okay. :) we'll face this together.

2:54 AM Door's open. Starfield inside. I can hear my footsteps again. Donnie's breathing heavily. Into the starfield. There's someone up ahead. Someone wearing a fedora. o_o And.. a... plastic guitar. Guitar Hero III model, Les Paul. His arms are crossed as we step into place. ...Legsteps with camera heads are in the stars below us, pointing up at us. The man is reaching for something. It's a second guitar controller. Another Les Paul. He's. Handing it to me. The man is Bones.

4:30 PM Had to give my journal to Donnie. Only got my journal back now. Boy, do I have some news for you. Derek Taylor handed me a guitar controller, and as soon as I put on the strap, a giant Guitar Hero highway appeared in the sky above us. With the cameras on us, I imagine the whole world watched in confusion and incomprehensible awe as Bones and I... had a guitar duel. It was DragonForce's "Operation Ground and Pound." It was the Guitar Hero III chart. I was player two, Bones was player one. The moment the notes appeared, everything I once knew about plastic rock fell right back into place. I didn't think about why any of this was happening. I didn't think about my exhaustion from the long day. And I didn't think about the fact I hadn't tackled DragonForce in at least a year. All I saw was green, red, yellow, blue, and orange. We were supposed to be dueling, but I found I instinctively raised my guitar up to give Star Power to help him out when he struggled in the solos, even though that's how Rock Band works and not Guitar Hero. And he got what I was trying to do and grinned at me, raising his own guitar. Together, we were giving the world a soundtrack of power metal. ...but, yeah, I won. Kicked his ass. :3 When "PLAYER TWO ROCKS!" appeared on-screen, Derek and I slipped right into old inside jokes, starting with me hounding him for missing the last note, and him just asking, "did I just score?" True friendship lasts eldritch boundaries.

Then the Legsteps trotted away, and another Door opened ahead of us. I introduced Bones to Donnie, and Donnie to Bones. And before we entered the Door together, I looked at Bones and asked if he was here to stay this time. "I could ask the same about you." And we stepped out into the streets of Los Angeles, Legsteps faintly thumping in the distance. As if Bones even being there in the first place wasn't enough of a surprise, he took us to a safehouse where two others were waiting to meet us. "They were traveling together and just kinda ran into me the other day? We got split up when a Door took me to the starfield, but I was planning on coming back to them anyway." One was another guy, younger than me, with curly black hair and a machete. Name's Danny Finnegan. And the other was a girl about my age, in a white shirt and sleek black vest and tie, with sandy blonde hair and a.. gardening implement of some sort. Her name's Rauri McGanna. But I know her as Fentzy. It was. My damn. AIM friends??? I literally could not believe it. Thought this was a Fear playing a trick on me. We kinda forgot about doing anything and just idly wandered awhile, sharing experiences.

Shortly after the apocalypse started, Derek was intrigued by Xanadu, so he took to the rabbit holes, becoming "a creature of the Doors." He spent as much time as he could within the alien universe, spotting patterns in the passages within, to the point where he began to understand how to predict where he was being taken. He’s spent all this time avoiding combat when he can, but when he was forced into danger, he made quick use of his personal Les Paul guitar controller. That explains why his is still intact. >.> Danny, meanwhile, had been staying in the Carolinas before the Archangel took his loved one, and he chased him out west. He spent a lot of that time alone, and ran into Fentzy somewhere in Kansas, the two electing to stick together. Fentzy, then, started in Connecticut, tried surviving in New York for a while, and left (quite a while before Donnie and I made it there), traveling with her sister Dwyn. Those two didn't care about the hardships of the road so long as they were together, but. I mean, Dwyn isn't here, and Fentzy doesn't want to talk about that. She did meet up with Danny, and the two crossed the rest of America. They were actually trying to get to San Francisco to volunteer with the RAF, but they missed a truck. By the time they got here, San Francisco was just a big crater, and they went to Los Angeles instead. Donnie and I had to, uh, explain what happened with that. Meeting up with Bones was purely coincidence. Meeting up with each other was. Meeting up with me was. But, I mean, they'd each met a lot of strangers on their travels, and probably wouldn't have stuck together in the first place, but for the fact that they had been AIM friends. Anyway. Donnie and I had.. seriously had a long day, so we were given beds in the safehouse and konked out. We woke up a while ago and began heading out of Los Angeles when Donnie remembered she still had my journal, so here we are!

5:03 PM Bones has been reading through my journals. He’s asking a lot of questions and sharing anecdotes, and Fentzy and Danny have plenty to say too, so this may take a while.

10:34 PM We’re quite far from Los Angeles now. Not entirely sure where we’re going, but Bones just started leading us, so I assume he knows where he’s going.

11:29 PM Bones tells us he’s run into a lot of Fears on his travels, but he generally tries his best to avoid them. He wound up getting marked by the Omen, and he’s sure the Morphs are after him, but that’s about it. Except for “the Neonate,” who he says he’s hunting. He’s pretty damn good at keeping out of trouble! I must look like the biggest troublemaker in the world to him. “Man, what you look like to me is a lucky bastard with a great girl by your side.” You've got me there. For once in my life, it's gone that way. But it never felt right without you around, old friends. :)

(Attached: “we came in? Wait, no, that doesn’t really work in this situation. Damn. Looks like I won’t get to use my trademark wit here. Then what else am I supposed to fill up this space with? Maybe I could talk about Guitar Hero. Yeah, sure, let’s talk about Guitar Hero. The song that Jordan and Derek played here, ‘Operation Ground and Pound,’ is arguably the easiest of the four DragonForce songs available for Guitar Hero III, which raises the question of why it was chosen for such a widely televised battle to begin with. They could have picked something much more entertaining. Then again, it was to be the first of many, so I suppose they wanted to keep the more climactic stuff for later. Which hints at the depressing fact that, for all the chaos and randomness that the apocalypse looks like it comprises of, in all actuality the apocalypse was so rigidly planned that the Ciphers were never gonna offer a way out. It’s debatable exactly how much even the guitar duels offer one. I won’t beat around the bush here: The horrible forces behind the apocalypse were just gloating when they chose that song.”)

[PREV LOG] [TABLE OF CONTENTS] [NEXT LOG]

#ogtrib #oh god the rapture is burning #ogtrib act 2 #body horror

4 notes · View notes

blindrapture · 2 months

Text

THURSDAY JULY 28TH, 2011 (Synecdoche)

9:40 AM WOMP WOMP diddle liddle WOMP WOMP WOMP w-WOMP WOMP dooooo wackadadackada WOMP WOMP I'm awake, I'm awake. What. Sounds like Legsteps.

9:41 AM Donnie's got the grumpiest expression. "I never even liked dubstep." I'm going out to the street.

9:42 AM Well, it is Legsteps. Those black legs from yesterday have woken up, and the speakers have appeared. They look like boomboxes rocking above the skyscrapers, on comically long stilts. Then there's smaller Legsteps on street corners, some even down this way. And the fires from yesterday have spread even further, with black smoke filling the sky in every direction, but not in San Francisco itself? Smack-dab in the center of the city, there's some kind of trippy teal-colored.. rising pillar of teal fire instead. I can hear screams now. I think there must have been a population that didn't want anything to do with the RAF, and they stayed indoors yesterday. Or I guess it could be the Indisen who were left? I don't see anyone from standing here, there's just.. noise. Screams and dubstep. The soundtrack to the end of San Francisco. Frankly, this is a mockery. The future of this city was already dead. The Archangel saw to that quite thoroughly.

9:44 AM Donnie's coming out. "Oh my god…" Yeah, I know. ..oh, she's looking at Tiger, lifeless on the curb. Yeah… "He.. he didn't want to see what was coming. He didn't need to see this." No. He didn't need to see this. "God." she's crying. holding her hand.

9:47 AM "It's.. it's time for us to leave this place. Long past time." Agreed. We need a Door.

9:49 AM Gathering whatever supplies we can from the house. Got bags. How are we gonna find a Door? "There's plenty of buildings here, there's got to be a Door in one of them." Yeah, but, searching every building? We've been here for five days and I never found a Door. Did you? "No… and I'd rather we didn't split up to search." Exactly. This is a tall fucking order. "Can't we leave the city? Search for Doors out in the rest of the, er, state? Like the bikers?" There's smoke and glow in all directions. I think we're circled in by fires. "Okay, well, you think, you don't know. That's what we should try first."

10:18 AM Took the car. Didn't take that long to run into the southern fires. They cover every street, laterally. We're still not done checking, maybe there's an opening..?

10:33 AM No. No such thing. And we already know the only way out to the north was the Golden Gate. The east had a bridge too, but Donnie's not optimistic about our prospects. (Then the west is all Pacific Ocean. Even if there was a miraculous way across, we're not going to end another month riding on an even longer ferry.) These fires blocking us cut through the buildings, like they're ethereally placed. They're spreading real fires from them, but it's clear we're just not allowed to leave. If there is a way out of this deathtrap, it's by finding a Door.

11:00 AM "ONE HOUR" that stopped us in our tracks. it came from the sky, I think from where the teal fire's going. maybe it was just part of the music… We're still going door by door, looking through the houses that aren't locked. Donnie, this is way too slow. We'd be better off trying some big department stores or something. "But those are going to be up there, closer to where the green fire thing is!" Well, it's either that, or still be doing this when an hour's up! "Please don't yell at me!" I'm not, I'm-- look, just. We should look for offices, apartments, workplaces, malls. They offer more doors, more chances for Doors.

11:10 AM How about this one? This one's pretty far from the center. Stonestown Galleria.

11:14 AM I realize we can't be that thorough, but god, I'm just seeing regular abandoned and ruined shops. God, please, please, give us a sight of another sky, another world… Please...!

11:21 AM Hobby Lobby Checkers Nordstrom Foot Locker Office Depot Barnes and Noble American Eagle Bad Bambi San Francisco dies, piece by piece

11:34 AM We've left the mall and are on the search again The sky in the center of the city is an increasing whirl of spinning dark clouds We're seeing people now, glimpses of panic inside the windows of their houses Corpses fallen out of front doors Scattered on the streets Some are on rooftops, some are half hidden in manholes Some with bubbling skin Some with frostbitten limbs Some with slit throats Some with maggot-infested coats San Francisco dies, piece by piece

11:39 AM "There!" What! "In front of that window! Behind that van!" What! What! "That's not a zombie! Is it an Indisen? Wave at it!" What? "Wave at it!" It saw us, then ran away, cracking its broken foot on the floor again and again. Then it got grabbed by a blonde woman in dungarees, both hands around its throat, and she saw us and stared at us. Now she's coming this way, dragging the body in staggered steps.

11:40 AM The one who had run from us is unconscious now, carried on the dungaree woman's shoulder. And now that she's closer to us, I'm realizing, by the dead look in her eyes (and living human body), that this is a Camper. "Why are you still here?" Um. Hi, Salmacis. Was that an Indisen? donnie "I'd hoped it was a Camper." "Well, you've found one all the same. Now, why are you still here? I thought your plan was to leave this city last night." We.. decided to sleep instead. "That was foolish. Now you cannot leave." We, uh. We've noticed. We were looking for a rabbit hole. "That will be your only chance, yes, but with eyes all over the city, I have seen no evidence of one." Then! Then what? We're fucked, then? "...I will not allow you to die. Not here. Wait here while I decide what to do with the Indisen, and I will send more Camper to protect you." IloveyouEAT. the camper walks away, saying "I told you: Call me Salmacis."

11:42 AM Approaching sound of a lot of feet BIG HORDE OF CAMPER turned the corner on the street ahead. Some have wings of flesh, some have growths on their neck that vaguely resemble attempts at second heads, some have extra arms. They're passing us now. One has stepped out of the crowd and onto the sidewalk with us. It is a dorky pencil-pusher with thinning hair and office shirt. donnie "nice." meh. I prefer the girls. salmacis "I know. But this is what you're getting. Now come, we will stick near the mass for safety in numbers." walking! Are these the Camper that were on their way before? "Yes." So they got here okay. donnie "Did they meet any resistance?" "The undead to the south, the Indisen to the north. The Fears within the city know not to pick off my bodies; the undead are the Archangel's pawns, but they still have autonomy and are driven by hunger." Wait, Fears within the cities? "They are gathering." Which ones? "All of them." o_o "Something big is about to happen here, something from Xanadu itself, and they wish to see it for themselves." So that's why the Legsteps are here? "The stereo sirens? Yes. It is also why the Indisen have gathered, according to interrogations I have made. Answers are predictably vague, but the Rapture is moving into its next stage."

11:45 AM Salmacis is taking us to a location it believes to be safe, though there really is no telling what's going to happen at noon. It will send a squad of 25 Camper to do the rabbit hole search for us.

11:52 AM Grassy hill. Fancy modern building, with some damage, atop the hill. There's big windows on the front, letting us see the center of San Francisco. Or, I mean. We can see some skyline, and we can make out the teal pillar. I can see the Legsteps stepping back and forth, having established their perimeters. They're moving in a pattern. Like a ballet that towers over the city.

11:53 AM The dorky Camper will wait here with us. It would also like to see what's about to happen.

11:55 AM camper "Now what are they doing?" What? Huh. Flocks, land-darkening flocks, of birds coming in from all sides. They're all the same type, and Are those the Morphs? "Yes." They're entering a formation, moving as one, spinning with the clouds. Like the clouds, they're increasing in speed.

11:56 AM Sheets of paper, crumbling flyers, abandoned hats, fly from the streets and into the air as the Morphs whip up a tremendous wind. They're forming a tornado. And they're still going faster and faster.

11:57 AM The Legsteps are starting to pump less and less music and more and more.. sounds. Old-school sirens, shrieking glitches, sweeping noises like a sea of violin strings in a combine harvester. It's hurting our ears, but we can't look away. Donnie and I are transfixed with morbid fascination. And Salmacis is engaged.

11:58 AM The roads are swirling up, forming corkscrew mountains of tarmac and pavement. The buildings are inverting, flipping, floating. The smoke clouds overhead are gathering thicker. The Legsteps aren’t even playing music at this point. They’re echoing back the sounds of the Morphs’ destruction. Speaking of, I think the Morphs are starting to form specific structures out of their carnage. o_o; It looks like they’re forming a giant… …courtroom in the sky.

11:59 AM They’re done, they stopped on a dime. All sounds abruptly cease, and all life has stopped to watch. Extra Legsteps drop out of the clouds from above. These ones don't have stereos. They have cameras. Do we have a TV in here? Quick, turn it on. … All channels are displaying the feed. I suspect the whole earth is allowed to watch this. “Judgement begins in one minute.”

12:00 PM "Let the Judgement of San Francisco commence." The “jury box” made of debris and tarmac contains at least five-hundred Indisen. Some of them look like they’re trying to run for their lives, but they quickly flinch and sit still. In the defendant’s chair is a terrified man. There is no defense. In the prosecution’s chair is the Archangel, looking slightly surprised to be there.

12:03 PM The clouds overhead are parting, forming a cir SCREAM WHAT Oh my god the Camper’s eyeballs sizzle sockets Donnie. Donnie, don't look at what Salmacis looked at. Whatever you do. Look at anything but that circle in the clouds. I'm sorry, I would have warned you if I'd have realized. ._. camper "I should have known. It's the Judge."

12:04 PM The voice from the clouds booms, "The Judge has been watching from the sun all this time. The Judge is here to give the city its final judgement. Court is now in session."

12:07 PM The defendant is floating in mid-air and screaming out of terror. "ELON MUSK. YOU HAVE BEEN CALLED IN REPRESENTATION OF THE POPULATION OF SAN FRANCISCO. YOUR JUDGEMENT HAS COME." Elon is saying he doesn't even live here. He's asking what he did wrong. "YOU ARE BLINDED BY YOUR HUNGER. YOU RIDE OUT THE WAVE, CONTENT TO FEED ON THE MACHINE. YOU BLEED AMERICA TO DEATH." Elon is begging for clarification. Now for forgiveness. Now for anything. "ONLY THE PROSECUTION SHALL DECIDE ANY MERCY YOU RECEIVE." The Archangel stands up, composure regained. "Trap him in a car. Throw the car off a cliff." ..Elon’s being dragged away by Indisen, kicking and screaming. …he’s gone now. "As for the rest of this miserable shithole, with its insubordinate uppity young fucks, throw it all in the Rapture!" …what. O_O "THE PROSECUTION IS ONLY HERE TO SUBMIT THE SENTENCE FOR THE DEFENDANT. I WILL DECIDE THE FATE OF THIS CITY, AND LIKEWISE THE ENTIRE HUMAN RACE." "Of course, Your Honor. I got ahead of myself." "FURTHERMORE, I AM ALSO TASKED WITH DECIDING YOUR FATE, ECCLESIARCHWAY. YOU WERE THE PROSECUTION FOR THE PRIOR CASE. NOW YOU ARE THE DEFENDANT, REPRESENTATIVE OF THE EARTH'S PANTHEON OF FEARS." "Come again?" "AND I AM INCLINED TO GIVE YOU THE SAME SENTENCE THAT I GIVE TO SAN FRANCISCO." "You what?" "YOU ARE HARDLY WITHOUT GUILT IN THIS. THE HUMANS HAD TO FOLLOW EXAMPLES, AND YOU IN PARTICULAR HAD YOUR FINGERS IN THE POT." "Hang on a moment, I'm on your side in this!" "I DO NOT BELIEVE YOU ARE. I DO NOT BELIEVE THAT ANYONE BELIEVES YOU ARE." "Well! What about the Fears as a whole? Surely you're not going to give me a severe sentence-- I mean, give them a severe sentence-- just on my actions alone! You're a Fear too! Remember me? Remember the good times, Osiris?" "YOU RAISE A GOOD POINT. THE FEARS, AS A WHOLE, WERE NOT ALWAYS ON BOARD WITH YOUR PLANS. SOME OF THEM NEVER WERE. WE WERE THE GODS. YOU WERE JUST A CHILD THAT WE PICKED UP ALONG THE WAY." "How dare you!" "THIS MATTER CLEARLY REQUIRES MORE THOUGHT. I WILL CONSULT WITH THE POWERS ABOVE." "Powers above???" (Yeah, powers above??? o__o) "IN THE MEANTIME, I MUST DELIVER THE SENTENCE FOR SAN FRANCISCO, AS THAT IS THE MATTER ALLOCATED FOR JULY 28TH. THE PROSECUTION WAS RESPONSIBLE FOR THE DEFENDANT'S SENTENCE, AND THAT HAS BEEN HANDED DOWN. THE COURT CONCURS WITH IT AS SYNECDOCHE." loud bang. a gavel? "AS BELOW, SO ABOVE. SAN FRANCISCO, YOU WILL BE GIVEN TO THE RAPTURE. LET IT BE DONE." roaaaaaars and screams The sky is turning purple. We have to get out of here, we have to get out of here now.

12:12 PM The now-blind Camper is ushering us to the exit of this house. "My Camper have found a Door; I will do my best to lead you there. Don't look back. Don't look up. Don't ever turn around. Just follow me."

12:24 PM been one long run. salmacis has allowed us to pause for breath. we're not looking around, even though we hear no screams anymore. what I hear is something far stranger. a rising pitch. a vortex of rising pitches. snapping strings. warping sirens. like the intersection of a thousand mutually exclusive worlds, and our world of sense is not the one that will survive. we don't want to see it. as much as we’ve been wondering ever since May, we do not want to see Rapture. we want to know what it is, but we don’t want to see it.

12:37 PM we pass a flood of little children they’re holding decapitated arms above their heads, the individual fingers burning as human candles. make a wish?

12:40 PM The Legsteps have begun womping again. They’re pumping Conker’s Bad Fur Day— wait, A Clockwork Orange— dubstep out there. I seem to recall this piece wasn’t originally A Clockwork Orange. I think it was a funeral piece from centuries ago. Queen Mary the first? It’s… kinda fitting. Vaguely. Depressing, for sure. Awfully surreal. I grew up with this piece, though from Conker, not the original two sources. And now I watch a western Babylon be thrown into the fires of Rapture set to this. San Francisco’s funeral, the fires of the Archangel, the flames of the Judge.

12:54 PM "We are nearly there! The Door is in a department store just up here." Goddammit, we were searching big stores and malls! We just didn't get that far!

1:06 PM Chase Center. God, my heart is pounding. The ground is rumbling. Salmacis says the Door is in a manager's office at the far end.

1:10 PM It's in the back of this shop! Gotta get through Old Navy! Gotta get past the...Mannequins. Why’d it have to be mannequins. I fully expect them to yep They’re moving.

1:11 PM They’re reaching for Donnie. Tiger Stripes, let’s teach them to keep their hands to themselves, shall we? HEEEYAH WHACK Stupid piece of plastic.

1:13 PM They’re coming back to life. HACK SLASH KAPOW KASLASH KAHACK There's flesh inside of them.

1:15 PM More are migrating over from other stores. Surrounding us. And more Camper are coming in to help us, but the mannequins are pushing furniture over to block the doors. Why the fuck do they have strategy? Do these ones not want to die?! "We want company…" EAAAH

a voice speaks to me... 1:20 PM the mannequins grabbed donnie and left me here I've got to go after them I can't fail again the musicians are watching me. not now, you fucking spectators. do you want to see?

1:26 PM they run fast for meat dressed up like fake people through the streets oh god don’t look up. it's so bright up there.

1:30 PM spidercats falling from the sky.

1:45 PM It’s getting dark awfully early. my fucking chest... so much running… where are all the camper?

1:53 PM to the park Twin Peaks what significance is there to this

2:05 PM This was one of the pieces of land carried wholesale by the Morphs. It's an entire mass of dirt and grass slapped on top of this part of the city. HEY, DONNIE WHERE ARE YOU? WHERE IS ANYBODY? I definitely saw them go here Didn't I?

2:06 PM It’s getting darker. Darker and darker. Can't see much more than ten feet in front of me. Noises. So many noises. Some of them so low I can feel them in my body… Rustling. Sounded like someone said "Hmm?" or a comfortable yawn. just walking. walking. walking into the dark MANNEQUIN, THERE YOU AREN’T HELLO YOU're... you're Ace Man. or, no, what was it. The Beacon. Wearing a shroud of white this time, a tall thin ghost with a featureless beak where the face should be. Silently standing there. Facing me. ..raising an arm to reach for me

(This page has gross stains on it.)

2:23 PM ..I've been.. throwing up… at his feet… Every time I think I'm done, I breathe in and smell vomit and more of it comes pouring out. thrusting out. forcing out. I think I even passed out after a while but I woke up to vomit more I need to.. I need to go... I need to stop.. I need to… god, it's. it's the beacon. he smells like. death. he smells like centuries of rot. he smells like

2:31 PM no I need to get up all my fault This sickness is all in my head. The Beacon wants me to give up. This is how he gets you.

2:35 PM god it’s so hard to want to get up

2:40 PM Legsteps pumping my head I can’t

2:43 PM the spell is broken because someone jumped the beacon someone grabbed its shrouded shoulders and brought it down to the ground someone in a combat suit with red hair Donnie!!! "GET HIM NOW!" OKAY TIGER STRIPES SMAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAASH!!! Smashed his beak mask. Let’s take this fucker off.

2:44 PM betty boop eyes dot for a mouth no nose okay you can have your mask back

3:20 PM a lot happened. we're in the rabbit hole now. let me.. tell it. After I gave the Beacon its mask back, to cover that swollen and deformed cartoon-in-real-life face (shudder!!!), I saw myself in a longgg rotten hallway, castle walls slimy and damp black brick. cold barred prison cells spaced unevenly apart on both sides, with unspeakable smells. they contained mannequins. I could not see all the way down the hallway due to a smoky hazy smoke collecting in the distance. But I had to do something, so I started.. walking down the hall. Someone was coughing past the haze. Where I was going. Then I was back in the park, in San Francisco. Donnie was standing over the empty robe of the Beacon as black smoke sizzled, from it, upwards into the sky. An unrecognized voice said "From the Mechro to the Flood you go." Donnie and I looked at each other. We didn't feel threatened by that voice, but we knew there was no time to ask questions. So we got the hell out of there. As we ran, we heard the Legsteps emit hideous metal screeches as the music progressed into atonal electronic noise, and the Morphs swirled hurricanes out of the clouds that sucked the tallest buildings from the city into the sky brick by brick. I don't know how long we ran for. I mean, evidently not much more than 30 minutes? God, my legs hate the apocalypse, but at least I'm getting a good workout every day. We found Salmacis's rabbit hole, with no resistance this time, no mannequin army. We ducked in.

3:24 PM Sitting on a well-trodden dirt path surrounding a pit that a waterfall drains into. Smells like nature. No sound but rushing water. This world is peace. Donnie's hugging me while I write. She doesn't understand the last few hours. I can't say I do either, but it must have been a Fear free-for-all. Pick the bones of the city in its last moments before… God. It didn't deserve that. "Nobody deserved…" No. "This is all such senseless violence. Using people as fodder. Even when we're all against the apocalypse, even when we're trying, we can't... help each other. The things we saw... the things we were a part of… the things we couldn't stop…" >__< This is the end. This is the end of the world. Like, the end of the very real world that we call "human." Everything I thought I knew… "Judged, rejected, condemned without appeal." I think that made the Fears panic. I think we saw the Fears panic. "Oh god, we're all going to die." There's.. going to be more bloodshed before October, yeah. "You don't think we're all dead?" I don't know. I think San Francisco was always going to die. I think that was just... done, that was decided, even before we got there many days ago. I think... the blue sky did its job; it fooled everyone into letting the RAF fuck around, because the RAF were just people, and we're used to a world run by people. 'The rich.' Pah. It was the damn people. A world run by people. As we've been seeing, our world had a lot more in it than just people. We invited unrest on ourselves, not by using money, but by thinking that it was as simple as money, that money was as simple as 'money,' some thing we invented. But maybe we didn't invent money. Maybe we didn't invent the world. Maybe we forgot to shut up and listen to the world. "...you're on one of your rambles." Sorry. "No, I'm just realizing. You want someone who can keep up." Well. ...can't you?

..she's pondering. finger on her chin. "......if money wasn't something we invented, then are you suggesting inequality is innate?" No. I'm saying inequality is one of many results of us thinking we invented and control the world. The behavior of the rich was a problem in the world, exactly as big of a problem as people said it was, but it's not something that can be fixed by just killing all the rich people, or even by systematically killing those who make financial transactions. Because you'd have to be insanely powerful to be able to do any of that. "And then you'd be proving that there was something more fundamental, a power dichotomy, under it all. And you'd have just advertised that you're on the top of that." Exactly. Archie was able to manipulate masses of people using, what did he call it? Populism? He didn't need money to do that. He, in fact, needed.. not money. He, intentionally or not, exposed some of the deeper levers of power that made our old world work. Something about speech... something about community. "Community is important. We'd die without it." We're not born as groups of people, we're born alone. We don't dream together; my dreams are in my brain, as your dreams are in yours. My saying that shouldn't threaten the values of community, because I'm speaking literal universal truths, and what good is a community that is threatened by universal truths? Community needs to account for the individuals in us all. Everyone has an "I." And Everyone is, at the end of the day, a far larger community than any other group. The days where a lack of community would kill us are irrelevant. The world was already set up so that none of us could go without community, no matter how hard we tried, no matter how much we rejected it or it rejected us. But we talked like it was still a possibility, still a threat. We barked at the shadows forming on our comfortable walls. The truth is, community was killing us just the same as it was saving us. Just the same as money was killing us, and saving us. "So, if there's a line being drawn here, aren't you falling into a trap by claiming that community was the problem? Just like those who say money was the problem." If I went around trying to dismantle all instances of community just by virtue of them being communities, then yes. And there were people like that in the world. Plenty of them on the internet. It's what 4chan was known for. What I'm doing here is. Well, I'm rambling. But in particular, I'm outlining systems here. And I'm trying to process the shit we've been seeing, in my own way. "Archie led thousands to their death. And you're saying he preyed on our need for community, because the way we relied on community was innately flawed." Yes. Yes! "And. You don't think that's evidence that we're all going to die." I think he pulled the trigger too soon if he had wanted to kill all of us. I think he's just exposed the flaws for us, so we know what to watch out for now. "You think he helped us?" I don't think he meant to. He saw an opportunity for short-term gain and jumped to it. "Huh."

3:30 PM resting my head in donnie's lap. :3 "Do you think he's the god of death?" Well, he's. His name is Death. I think. And he has power over all the dead. "Do you think he's good at representing death?" Oh god. Are we allowed to form opinions on that? "We're in Xanadu. No birds are reading your journal. Word's not gonna get back to him. So, do you think he's scary enough to be the Grim Reaper? Or do you think he's full of it?" Honestly, I don't know. I never had the strongest opinions on death as it was? I never understood how I could. Death is the greatest mystery, Door to a world we can't come back from. No word has come back from there. We don't know how it works. So we don't even know if it's scary. But, for what it's worth, I think Archie is plenty scary. He's scary like a mafia boss. Or what I always assumed a mafia boss to be like. "What, you never watched The Godfather?" Nope. "I thought your parents were film buffs." They were. I wasn't! "It's so good. A little slow, but the best films always are. Shall I tell you about it?" Uh "So, it starts with this wedding party..."

11:00 PM edvard grieg morgenstimmung playing on a legstep who's walking past us on his way

11:01 PM I guess I fell asleep in donnie's lap. God I need a piss. Is it. Is it okay if I piss in that pool? "yeah.. I did it before we slept…" oh, you're awake. "just enjoying the rest, baby..."

11:02 PM I wonder where that Legstep's even going. "It was beautiful. One of those things playing a different genre?" Maybe it's. Based on their mood? "What if we followed it? Do you think it'll lead us to people?" Well, it raises the question of a Legstep without anyone to hear it, yes. "Or maybe it'll lead us to another world." Ooh! The wonders of Xanadu! Immaculate nature, a universe of sense! :D "You're in a good mood today." What can I say? I got to talk it out before we slept. I needed that. "Mm, and what we did after." >w< "C'mon. I'm up. You're up. The music's fading. Let's chase it."

11:05 PM Legstep walked into a Door made of feathers. o:

11:06 PM A city in the clouds! The buildings are stitched out of feathers. Little gingerbread men walk to and fro. Every one of them looks at us funny.

11:08 PM There's a giant muffin in the skies floating this way.

11:15 PM WE’RE RIDING IN THE GIANT MUFFIN! :D

11:20 PM The muffin travels back and forth between two cloud-islands. A sky-ferry! We rode it across and are taking a look at a local map. We’re outside the “Chocolate Geography Center.” o:

11:25 PM The planet below these clouds, as indicated by slides on the walls inside the windows of this Geography Center, slides pointed at with candy cane pointers by gingerbread men in suits, addressed to rooms full of more gingerbread men in suits, is made of chocolate. Donnie wonders if these clouds are actually cotton candy. This place is making me so hungry.

11:44 PM After more walking, down shortbread streets, past candy cigarette lightposts and lollipop street signs, watching the brownie cars drive by, greeting gingerbread families walking their gummi bear pets on leashes, we found a market serving free food. What do candy men eat?

11:45 PM Flesh cookies. Liver bread. Blood drinks, human crackling and fat rinds. Human eyeballs in bowls made of bone, and they eat the bone too (it's like rock candy to them). Everyone is still eyeing us. We’re just gonna… stroll on out of here inconspicuously. ^^;;

11:48 PM WHERE RABBIT HOLE

11:50 PM gingerbread people with almond harpoons and nougat nets are behind us. I think they're trying not to be noticed. we did not come this far to be hunted down by candy.

11:54 PM ONTO THE MUFFIN, QUICK! FIND THE CONTROLS GO GO GO DRIVE DRIVE DRIVE FLY TO THAT HUMONGOUS TOWER OF STRAWBERRY IT LOOKS IMPORTANT

(Attached: “Elon Musk in a sweet tan suit, hoarding blues from his old coot, bears witness to red fate, pairs fitness to dead weight. Tell me sell me tell me elm, he asks this to the trees: What's the birds say? Tweet tweet! Green fires in the sky, children shouting 'FATHER WHY,' it's a veritable unforgettable the likes of which you'll never see again, not in your lifetime, not on your number line, if you ask I'm fine, I'm verifiably veritable, absolutely administrable, preposterously prophetic, pathetic like the skyscraper. Nay, I am the skyscraper. That one's for you, now I'm for the birds.”)

[PREV LOG] [TABLE OF CONTENTS] [NEXT LOG]

#ogtrib #oh god the rapture is burning #ogtrib act 2 #horror #rapture is coming. :)

3 notes · View notes

blindrapture · 2 months

Text

WEDNESDAY JULY 27TH, 2011 (Maybes and Mysteries)

12:20 AM huhwake. donnie wants to switch, she needs sleep. where are we. manteca. outside a wal-mart. she's showing me the road map.

12:23 AM went outside for a minute. pissed on a tree. stretched my legs. I may not know exactly where to take us, but all we need to find is one camper, and we'll be talking to all of them.

12:24 AM there's a river not too far from here. water's good, right? stay along the water. okay. sleep well, donnie.

1:06 AM Slowing down. The other two are still asleep. Gonna trawl along here a bit. I think this is the Stanislaus River.

1:13 AM Dead silent around here. I have the window open and there's no sound, no wind, no monster noises, nothing. Town of Riverbank and it's a ghost town.

1:21 AM Circled around. Only thing of note, and it is pretty noteworthy, is that big black dog waiting on every corner, watching our car drive by. I'm taking that as my cue to move on. Nothing for us here.

1:32 AM Oakdale now. Same as before, following the river, circling around. Not stopping for that dog.

1:37 AM I thought it was just as quiet here, but when I slow to a stop, roll down the window, and listen real close, I can just about hear a powerful thump. thump. thump. in the distance. We heard that on the border when we were just entering California. What is it? Oil pump-things? It's too regular to be anything natural. … thump. thump. thump. Reminds me of the thumpers from Half-Life 2. Highway 17. .… thump... thump... thump… Yeah, I don't know. I'd better keep driving. Not hearing anything else.

1:59 AM I've circled around Oakdale. I sure hope I'm doing something smart here.

2:25 AM This town's called Waterford. It's on the Tuolumne. It's even smaller than Riverbank.

2:27 AM Is that...? Something humanoid laying on the road. Slowly raising its head to look at us. Dead eyes. EAT...? ...it growled at me and its jaw fell off. Just a zombie. Thanks for nothing.

2:45 AM sighhhh. I've parked on a bridge on Hickman Road. Got out of the car, leaned on the railing, looked out at the river below. There's a park down there, lot of trees. I got to wondering about birds, birds singing in trees. I still see them on our travels, even through all of this. I always liked birds. Their jittery movement and iterative singing remind me of myself. Always looking, taking things in. Always taking flight.

2:46 AM ...birds.

2:51 AM I drove around to access the park directly. River Park. Creative name. There's gotta be birds in here. ..almost got out of the car and went in there by myself. And ordinarily I would. But I think this time I ought to do things right.

2:52 AM Donnie? "hm?" Donnie, I'm going to go looking for EAT. I want you to come with me. "…" So I'm not charging into the Fears by myself. "Yeah, yeah, I'm waking up..."

2:53 AM Woke up Tiger too. We want him to stay in the car, he can go back to sleep if he wants, but. We had to tell him we're going off and will be back. I had to tell him about EAT. If he has any suspicions, he didn't voice them. We did literally just wake him up.

2:55 AM Donnie took a moment to change back into her combat suit. It's, uh, quite worn by now, but I'm sure it still offers some protection. Now we're heading into the park. "Do you expect to see Camper here or something?" No, I expect to see birds. And I expect them to see us.

2:59 AM We're sitting at a park bench. There's, uh. Yep. There's definitely birds here. In the trees. One or two walking around on the ground, pecking at bugs. Must be nocturnal. … Yep. ..this will be boring, I'm sorry. … "..what if these are all just regular birds?" Then at least we've done some birdwatching?

3:15 AM Ah! Fell.. fell asleep for a bit there. Donnie. Donnie, wake up. Something's splashing in the river.

3:16 AM That's a giant ice-blue tentacle rising out of the water, as wide as a small building, its tip curling like a question mark. It's a piece of something far bigger underneath, something squeezing its girth short in order to navigate the river. The skin of the tentacle makes a stretching and pulling sound as it moves in the air. Makes me cringe. o_e A mass of thinner strings come out of the river too, waving in the air, thin as hair, long as needs be. The tip of the large tentacle splits into... more hairs. It's made up of tightly-pressed strings. And a mass, a bulge, comes up inside the tentacle from under the water… Writhing up, and up, towards the splitting tip… ...it's a human. The head just emerged, between the strings at the tip of the thing, like from the throat of a colossal snake. ..eyes opened. They look like black holes from down here. It opened its mouth, spewing water and seaweed. ..Sal..ma..cis...? o___o A wheezing hiss. A hissing wheeze. Two arms wrench themselves out of the 'throat.' Followed by three more, one coming out of the stomach. Coughing, heaving. A voice gives a faint whisper too far away to hear. Masses of waterdrops splatter on the grassy riverbank. Donnie's starting to step back. I look back up, and the tentacle is rearing into the air, preparing to

3:18 AM ..eject the Camper in a vicious slam. It has so many legs. A whole skirt of legs. And it's clambering up to face us, standing now on the grass with us. Its neck is not rigid. The head swings around as a ball on a string. And the voice that comes out is nothing more than a whisper, voiced only on the inhales. "Raeeel. Viiictooooriiiaaaa." I just gulped. Or was that it? "I ammm aaaa herrrrrrr." Wh. What? "It. And herrrrr. Neverrr... sheeeee." But I. But I didn't say anything. "You wrooote it iiiin your jourrrnal." How… cough. cough. stagger. Wheeze. "The birds are my eyyyyes. As you fi..ured out." R..right.. of course. "Doo not beee so.. mod..est. It is unbecoming. You stand now before a... g... g.... g…" it vomited teeth. a lung. "a god. your. god." Salmacis, you're... you're freaking us the fuck out. Do you.. have any.. other... Camper?? That we can speak to?? "But Raeeel. This one is not a" gulp "Camper. This. is. ....the. Eardrum." donnie "It's really fascinating, and all, but please! Please, EAT! The voice is getting in my head!" "You twooo are. priiivileeeged. to see it. I do not liike. to bring it. out. of the waaaterr. out of. my booodyyy." But your other Camper are still too far? "Yes…" ........may I sit down? o_e for a moment.. "you may."

3:24 AM had my.. head in my hands for a moment. kinda wish I was dreaming right now. ...salmacis can read this. look, I just. I'm. I don't know what I was expecting, but I wasn't ready. Donnie's seated next to me, and she's talking to the.. the Eardrum. "We're sorry that we got you killed. Or, you know what I mean. But we need your help even more now." "Yes. I am listeningg…" "The RAF have far more numbers than we thought, including armed soldiers. They plan on destroying the Golden Gate Bridge, and they want us back in the city at noon for that. I fear they have bigger plans." yeah, and. the bikers bolted after our conversation. after Cody... fucking Cody… The Eardrum is looking at neither of us. Arms aren't reacting. It is standing perfectly still. "I am.. listeniiing." No, I believe you, I'm filling the silence with description! "Is this. All?" "Uh. I guess so." "I was afraaaid. They had. Threatened your.. liives." ... .w.;; "I was aware of all of this. After Codyyy's ac..tions... I con..siderred.. it.. top prioorityy.. to monitor with my birds. I have seen the truck..ss... and I have heard.. the speech... and I know where.... the bikers are..." donnie "We have Tiger with us. He's the one whose sister Cody killed. We had to get him out of there, and we had to come up with a plan. We don't want to just let this happen." "And you want..." head swivels to face her "revenge." Yes. We want to know when your Camper will get here. facing me now. "Of courrse." ..the Eardrum skitters and moves around the park. Its Her legs move her frighteningly quickly and turn her on a dime. She It stops in the middle of the grass. Birds fly to it, perch on its arms. Little birds, nothing seemingly wrong with them at all. "They are not far now." ..a noise in the distance. like a bunch of humans making one big screech. which is probably exactly what it was? "See. You could.. hearrr them. That is how close they are. I would say.. 24 miles." That's close! O: "It will take them... only... another six hours…" donnie "Couldn't we go and.. pick them up? Drive them?" "Too many. But some... will be able to.. fly. I am still workinnngg on their DNA. Each body's must be... edi..ted.... from.. scraaaatch." ...Salmacis, I'm almost afraid to just come out and ask this, but. ..looking at me. .....what are you? "I am the end.. of all... things. Not the termin..al.... ennnd... but the goal… of all commun...i...caaa...tion... all cooper..ation.... all e..vo...lu...tion.…" skittering towards us, aaaa "I am... your... god." donnie "There's a lot of those going around lately." "I was... your god... befooorrre.... any of them.… I was above you... you were only an experiment…" it's wheezing as air struggles to fill her lungs. "With enough... drug..g... g.... g.....gs... your species caught a glimpse... but then you feared... and you turned.. to tobacco.. and alco..hol... I think your fear.. came from... a re..a..liz..a..tion.... that your bodies... were so dear to you… you would rather.. be... buried... as the body.. that you were.. born... into…" wheeeeze.... wheeze… "Regarrrd..less... I have told you e..nough... talking is so slow…" skittering back to the river "I leave you. For now. I would advise... waiting in your.. car.... for my Cam..perrr… to arrive…" Uh. Alright. o_o; "Be.. seeing... you…"

3:30 AM The large tentacle stretched once more, opening up and consuming the Eardrum in one brisk motion. It's.. more accustomed to grabbing than to letting go… And back into the water it went, and onwards down the river.

3:31 AM Donnie and I are just. Here. Looking at the river. Looking at the car. Looking at each other. … I, uh. I still.. feel like it's kinda friendly? Relatively speaking. "It's.. definitely still working with us?" It's not mad that we got a Camper killed. "I think it is, actually. Just not mad at us." Could you imagine being EAT's enemy? As just a human? ..quick shaking of the head. "I don't.. want to.. think about that." Yeah. Yeah. … "I'm not going to be able to sleep for a while." God, no. Am real tired, though. "Do you want to just. Lie on this park bench... together?" Do you want EAT to watch? The birds? "I kinda don't care about that right now. It might help me feel more control over myself." ...well, sure! :D

9:54 AM Woke up still in Donnie's arms. Her on my chest... .w. Then I remembered where we were, gently placed her on the bench, and surveyed the area. Sun's out, there's a bit more noise coming from Waterford, barks and yowls, but it all sounds like small animals. There's nothing around us. Only the trees, and the birds. ..the car's empty. Don't know where Tiger went. I'll have a look for him. Will leave my trilby here with Donnie, so she can at least figure that I'll be back.

10:01 AM Found him coming out of an old shop. He was just stretching his legs, checking out the area. Yeah, I figured it was something like that. "Listen, we should really be heading back by now. It's gonna take us a while to hit San Francisco." Yeah... we will, I promise. But we're still waiting on that backup. "The Fear thing?" It's a Fear we trust. Is that okay? 'Cause if it's not, you don't have to be a part of it, and I have no interest in threatening you. No judgement. "Right now, I just want to fuck up his plans. I don't care. He's so uptight about those Fears; it'd be great to give him reason to be." Good to hear. :) So, did you find anything in these shops? "Peanuts. Juice you gotta add water to. Some rice cakes, ate those."

10:03 AM On the way back to the car, we heard a heavy flapping in the air. There, on the horizon! "Is that a flying man? ..is that an angel?" It's the first sign of our backup. :D

10:05 AM Donnie's up, and wearing my hat. She's gazing at the sky, the Camper fast approaching. flap. flap. flap. flap. it's a black man, shirtless, in jeans, with the hideous wings of flesh. it's slowing down. gonna land.

10:08 AM "Rael. Victoria. ..Tiger." Kinda giving up with the prog theming? "There are songs with tigers in them." donnie "Are the rest of the Camper still on the way?" "They will not make it to San Francisco in time for the burning of the bridge, but they will be here in time for the Archangel's undead masses." tiger "Zombies? Masses of them?" "You have never seen them in such dense quantities. I told you, Rael, that they were coming?" You did. "They will be here later today. And so will my Camper. For now, would you like me to ride with you?" Uh. Will those wings... fit? It's not a massive car... "I can ride on top. It will give me a chance to practice physical coordination." Uh! I mean, yeah, look, you can do whatever you want, Salmacis. But we've gotta get moving.

11:48 AM It was an eventful car ride. When Salmacis wasn't balancing on the roof of a moving car, it was clinging to the driver's side door, arm hooked through the open window, so it could talk to me. It would often give me better directions on how to save time on our route, but also EAT filled me in on the bikers' activities (they're not.. really very good at finding rabbit holes. they just keep stopping to get drunk). And, as we started to see the city in the distance, EAT latched onto the door again to, finally, talk about a plan. EAT talked us out of the flanking idea, as we're only going to raise hostility that way. So we'll rejoin the group back at the house. We think there's not much we can do traditionally, but we could use the RAF's paranoia against themselves... if we can expose Heaven as not being who she seems. It's her plan. And if the RAF realizes they've been doing the Archangel's dirty work, they should abandon the plan. ...and, if EAT can get some people away from the group, we could have more Camper to work with… Donnie was pretty alarmed at that idea, so I got EAT to promise it would only try that if it really had to. Then Tiger added that it could take the armed guards. They're going to have to lug equipment to the bridge somehow, so they'll probably have a guard take a truckful each. There's gonna be a time when they're working alone and vulnerable. Nobody had anything to say about that. It's.. just plain a good idea. And Salmacis left our car as we entered the urban areas. Flew off to her own designs.

12:03 PM We arrived at the RAF house, or, well, we parked a few blocks away and got through the crowds, to find Heaven glad to see us.

12:09 PM "Okay, everyone! Today's the day! I hope you're good with walking, because it should take us at least three hours to get to the bridge! If you think you're particularly strong and able-bodied, come and talk to Cody about hauling equipment, whether onto trucks, or carrying it all the way yourself! If you're really unable to walk, also see Cody, and he'll see what accommodations we have, but otherwise, we're leaving now!" okay. okay I think that bodes well.

12:25 PM Massive march of people. Not.. marching, just all following each other. That's how marches usually are in practice, isn't it? It's only on the final approach that even armies really switch into lockstep. And I don't even know about, like. Protests. Tiger's got his friends. Even with all the regulars for the Party House, we're dwarfed by sheer numbers. I don't know if he's telling them anything. Donnie's with me, but as we're around the front, she's keeping an eye on Cody.

12:49 PM There's a sign up ahead for a Twin Peaks. o_o I don't think that's got anything to do with this. Just, cool.

1:11 PM We're not passing anyone at all. All the shops are shut. There aren't even any loose zombies. The sky is a perfect blue without any flickering whatsoever.

1:33 PM Heaven? Are we gonna stop for food, or breaks, or anything? "No breaks. We get one chance at this. We work for the cause." Don't we have people who might not be able to keep up a walk for that long? "We work for the cause. We just need numbers. Even if 70% makes it up to the bridge, that's more than enough." ..cody's eyeing her. "..what?" "This isn't like you." "I'm sorry you feel that way. But we're doing something important here. I have a chance to make a difference, and I guess that's just my priority here." "It's a bridge. It'll still be here after a break. The kid's got a point, Hev." "Cody, we need to be a team on this." … … "..alright."

1:34 PM Cody's asked a message to spread back through the crowds: If you have food with you, you'd may as well eat while walking. And consider sharing if anyone else really needs it.

1:37 PM ...fuck it. We got any slim jims left?

2:27 PM I'm finally seeing some form of life up ahead. But it's the black dog. ..nobody's saying a thing about it. Hey, uh. Cody? "What." You do know that dog there's a Fear, right? "...no, I did not know that. Heaven, that—" "I see it. It's not doing anything. If it attacks anyone, then we can deal with it." "But it's a damn Fear." "Says who? The 'kid?' Didn't you think he was a Fear once?" "Alright, what are you fucking doing? Don't try to piss me off." "All I'm saying is, it's a dog. And maybe it's just a dog." argghh

2:30 PM found the old journal. The Black Dog, the Omen. It was July 14th, it was literally another branch of the RAF that told me. Cody, we should at least do something. You and me. "Eh.. it is just staring at us as we pass by. What is it gonna do? It's a dog." Cody, c'mon, man. We're Rise Against Fear. It's in the name. "I.. I know." If we don't know what it can do, that's more reason to be wary. "Yeah…" C'mon, man. What are your instincts saying? You saved us from that Sally thing. "I'm feeling similar now. I'm clocking it, and I don't like it." heaven "I am not going to stop this march." "For fuck's sake, Heaven, I wasn't asking you to." grabbing his gun "I can deal with this myself. Jordan, I want you with me."

2:31 PM I followed him as he pulled back from the front, as we'd passed it up here, but it was still watching everyone pass by. Cody told me to watch his back, and crouched low and approached it. Tried to treat it like a regular dog at first. Then it bit his hand. Jumped at him, bit at his shoulder, took out a.. not insignificant chunk. I whacked it with Tiger Stripes and shouted for the group nearby to hang back, go around us, give us space. Cody got a good look into its eyes, and his face turned pale, but then he got a big surge of adrenaline and grabbed the dog with both arms and ripped it off of him, chucked it to the ground. And shot it clean in the eye. And it growled at him, growled at us, and stormed off. As soon as it passed behind some of the crowd, I lost sight of it completely. Like it vanished. Cody got a towel off of a stranger, wet it with someone's water bottle, and covered his shoulder. And he thanked me and got back to the front. Staring daggers at Heaven, who didn't even seem to notice.

2:33 PM Donnie thinks that wasn't the greatest plan, but it did something. ...what the fuck is the point of that dog.

3:05 PM Heaven's sending another message back through the crowd. We'll be there soon. And around about now, the trucks will drive up to meet us. Good. Not the biggest fan of walking. And won't we have to walk all the way back after?

3:31 PM At last. Golden Gate Bridge. Hoo, man. Now that we're actually standing on the thing, staring ahead at a perfectly straight road, I'm seeing just how big it is. It'd probably take us a full half-hour to walk to the other side. It's strange. I can hear that thumping again. thump. thump. It is not in the distance. It's just on the other side of the bridge.

3:32 PM Here come the trucks, through a parting crowd. Behind them is a flatbed truck carrying a full-on wrecking ball. Donnie and I are looking carefully at the drivers, trying to see if we can tell that any are EAT. But they're all wearing wraparound sunglasses, so the eyes won't help us.

3:34 PM Heaven's turned to face the crowd. "Okay, we're here! We'll have the trucks set up the explosives on the far end of the bridge. We'll have a wrecking ball to the supports, the 'gates' themselves. And all I need you good people to do is pack yourselves in on this side. The rich are going to come running out, just you watch, they're going to want to save the bridge and stop us, and we just want you to be our shield." Yeah. Yeah, that plan makes no sense. And the sky's still solid. The ants are working overtime to be unnoticed. The Fears are waiting for us to do this, alright.

3:37 PM Things are still being set up. But one guard has gotten out of his truck. He's gone to Heaven, says there's a problem. "What? What's wrong?" "It's a problem with the equipment." taking off his sunglasses to rub his eyes. "Yes? Which one, exactly?" now he's looking into her eyes. "..what are you" "I know what you are now." "...uh. Cody, get over here..." "Shut up. And don't you come any closer." pointing gun at Cody without even turning his head. "This woman is an Indisen." "...and you're Salmacis…" cody "What the FUCK is GOING ON?" heaven's shouting to the sky "DO IT! DO IT NOW!"

3:38 PM thunderous quakes. the far end of the bridge bends and crumbles. except that wasn't an explosion. that's pairs of thick black legs. stepping on each truck, crushing it and the driver inside. marching in true lockstep. the sky turns red as a storm of buzzing black dots swirls and scatters. people start to turn and run, but behind us is a mass of people we don't recognize. they're not zombies. and I don't think they're Camper. I think they're Indisen. they're pushing against the crowd, pushing us up onto the bridge. up towards the walking legs. stretching up, infinitely, into the sky. lifting up off the ground, stepping forward, and thudding down. thump. thump. crush. glass smash. choking screams. a fire spreads on the far end of the bridge, behind the walking legs. and a man in a gas mask is suddenly with us now, floating slightly above the ground.

3:40 PM "Salmacis, what are you doing?" the camper is strangling heaven. or trying to, with the other hand pointing a gun rather pointlessly at a Cody who is too busy freaking out at the massive stampede of stimuli to pay attention. "Really, I thought you were smarter than this. You're trying to strangle an Indisen?" "I'll strangle you next, Death." "They were your bodies once. Did a lack of air stop them then?" he got his hands on Heaven and pulled her away from the Camper. EAT "Goddammit, Archangel, what elaborate lengths did you go through to set all this up?!" archie "Nothing I wasn't working on already. A little bit of populism, gaming the humans' animal brains, their communal justice. Easy as piss. And the Indisen were gathering here for some reason anyway. They were ready to give the city away. I merely.. agreed to it." "The Ants of the Sky, are they yours too?" "What, these?" ...faster than a bullet, stopping on a dime, landing on the bridge are two robots, bigger than some helicopters, grey and sharp all over, with edges and wires bending their joints. on the front is a big beady camera-eye, surrounded by dozens of tinier cameras. the arms terminate in beehive-like holes, gun barrels. there are no legs. it's a round body with two gun arms. "Not to brag, but they're quite genius little death machines, aren't they? Stylish, modern, military-grade. I paid those corporations more money than they'd ever seen before to build to my specifications, but when I turned them on, I got my money back and then some." ..heaven's silent, in archie's arms, eyes darting between the camper and cody. and me. EAT "Certainly, the design is interesting. Its capabilities surprise me. But this doesn't change the fact that your plans are always so... unsophisticated." "Excuse me?" with a chuckle "A populist march in a time of uncertainty and struggle? It's so trite even the humans were doing it. Machines that target financial transactions... okay, that is certainly creative, for you, but then you just.. what, introduce your own currency? Z's yours too, isn't it? You replace a system with the exact same system? What, were you competing with the dollar? You thought of humanity as equal to you, your competition? Where's your imagination? Where's that intelligence you boast about?" "..oh, I see now. You're getting wit and thorn from the humans. You're protecting them... or is it just him? He is your protégé? Has he seen the extent of your horrors yet? That won't even matter, will it? You're not going to let him go. He's gone from one puppetmistress to another." "The difference between you and I, Archangel, is that I can perceive of many possibilities, while you are limited to your own." "Whatever. People are dying, and I grow ever stronger. That's all I'm hearing right"BANG … Cody shot Heaven in the head. She's limp. Archie tosses her to the ground. Okay, good, you're back in the moment now. cody "Fucking traitorous Fear freaks." Archie allows his own feet to touch the ground, no longer vaguely levitating, floating in the conversation. Walks up to Cody. "You. You work for me. Did I tell you to do that?" cody "I don't work for you, you jackass." "Really? You've been doing my work. You've been killing my enemies. You even recruited for my church. Thanks for that, by the way." "I—" bang. Cody falls to the ground, a hole in his stomach. all it took was a single shot, from several feet away, by one of the ants of the sky. "You work for me now." ..and cody gets back up from the dead. cody is a zombie. donnie screamed with grief. donnie, don't.. point that thing. I think you're better off using it on the Indisen that are currently tearing through innocent people. I think we're better off running now.

3:44 PM Tiger! C'mon, we're fighting our way out of this! "What happened to Cody?" He's dead! "And the EAT thing?" Still back there, talking to the Fear that caused all this! Don't worry, it knows what it's doing! Just, we gotta GO! Before the legs make it across the bridge!

3:47 PM indisen are a lot tougher than zombies. they fight back, they grab at your weapons, they flat-out don't want to die. we're having trouble here. tiger has a knife, which he's at least able to use, but. donnie lost her rifle.

3:48 PM Oh! That's why we're not dead yet! The winged Camper is here fighting the crowd! Tearing sharp mutated claws into throat and limb, wafting gusts of wind with heavy wings to keep Indisen clear. Our guardian angel… Tiger! Donnie! Stick with our Camper!!!

3:51 PM "Rael!" shouting over the sound of the crowd Yeah, EAT? "He's killed the Camper on the bridge!" Well, were you able to get any more information out of him first? "No, we mostly just insulted each other!" So, am I understanding correctly that he pretty much just did this to get more zombies? "And crush morale, yes! But I believe he also desired to work with the Indisen in order to better learn about them!"

3:55 PM CRASH ..lightning just struck the ground ahead of us and now there's a lot more fighting going on over there. EAT, can you see what's going on? "It's someone in a mask. They came out of the lightning, with their... is that a Jesus Christ mask?" Cockroach Jesus? o__o "What? No, this is a human." Oh. Oh, the Masked Massacrer! What the fuck is he doing here. Or, one of... them… donnie "Maybe he really wanted to kill some Indisen?"

3:56 PM THE MASKED MASSACRER IS RUNNING ON THE CROWDS' HEADS like in a damn action movie

4:19 PM the crowd is thinning out we're getting out of it

4:22 PM the camper is staying here to fight the indisen and let us make our escape. thank you, salmacis.

7:37 PM The long walk back was set to the sound of distant slaughter and crashes. At some point, there was a tremendous creaking, turning into screeching, and a large noise. That was the Golden Gate Bridge finally collapsing. There's a glow on the horizon as coastal fires rage. We've arrived at our car.

7:38 PM We've been looking at each other, exhausted. We need to get in the car and drive until we can't see San Francisco any longer. We know this. But the long walk.. the long day.. the long week… It's weighing on all of us.

7:42 PM We returned to the RAF House. It's completely empty here. Everything's happening three hours away. We think we can afford to sleep.

8:08 PM We shared a dinner. Heaven still had food stocked in the cupboards and a working oven. We made some simple pasta and sauce. Tiger's sleeping in the living room, on the couch. Donnie and I will sleep in our cots.

8:10 PM She's sitting on the cot, taking off her shoes. Body still throbbing with adrenaline. Brain still abuzz with what ifs. "What if we'd gone to Los Angeles instead?" Then we wouldn't have met Tiger. "You feel a responsibility for him." I do. Because I took so long to tell him. "It's a good thing to feel. I still feel responsibility for trusting Cody so much." He.. wasn't all bad. He was a lying, manipulative, paranoid man, but he had a principle and he stuck to it. "You don't have to defend him, baby." getting into bed "He's.. dead... and I'll miss him, parts of him.. I'll miss the memories. But we're back to how we were again. Just you and me, against the world." And Tiger, now. "Yeah. He's like our son." Pfft. He's gotta only be, like, a year younger than me. "And two years younger than me." Do you think he'll be receptive to our trips through the rabbit holes? "He'll probably think it's a kick. An adventure." Kinda like I do, yeah. "They are kinda like little adventures, each world, aren't they? They have such a weird design to them." Like a video game. A whole little story, a whole lot of little stories. "That outlook of yours, I might be coming around to it. If we have to go searching for those bikers in the rabbit holes, even if we have to go all the way to the Cipher ourselves just to stop them from dealing the finishing blow, I.. I think I'm up for it." But we probably won't have to. EAT's got an eye on those bikers with her birds. EAT may even try to trick them and lead them away from any Doors. "Maybe. But then we can always go down some rabbit holes anyway, just for the sake of it." Yeah. I'd like to see something other than this city again. "This world… this crazy, neverending power struggle of a world…"

11:11 PM We fell asleep not long after that. I find I've woken up by myself again. Like. She's still here, still asleep. But just me has woken up.

11:12 PM I took a look around the house. Figured I'd let Tiger sleep. He's a really quiet sleeper.

11:13 PM The glow outside is spreading. I can see it from the kitchen window. Trying not to think about how many people must have died. ...all of them?

11:14 PM ..hang on. Tiger's not asleep. He's not on the couch. I didn't see him at all in the house. Is he outside?

11:15 PM ....oh. ._. A window on the top floor is open that wasn't before. And here, on the street outside… Oh… Goddammit.

11:16 PM What choice did he have? Traveling with two kids, barely older than him, who are working with another monster. And he might have had other choices if we hadn't come here. 'Cause I can't help but wonder if I was what pushed Cody over the edge. Bringing Donnie here to reopen old… But, like, that doesn't.. make sense, does it? This was just a kid taking control of himself in the middle of Hell. Taking control back...

11:20 PM Goddammit. All the Maybes in my head. All the shit going wrong.

(Attached: “I am wrought with Maybes and mysteries. Recall the anecdote I shared much further back, where a Camper pointed me down a Door and my next memory was waking up in a bus stop in the rain. That memory goes somewhere. I sat in the bus stop for ten minutes, thinking thoughts that weren’t mine. When’s it gonna arrive? I guess I could read more Discworld while I wait, but it’s such a hassle to have to keep looking up from my book, and then when the bus does come I’ll have to take myself out of the immersion and I hate that. I looked around, not in curiosity of my new environment but in the bored glance of a familiar place I’ve grown so tired of seeing. I remember a stone wall opposite me, across a single-lane road. I never looked at the sky, instead at the wall with the line ’FISH AND CHIPS 1.10p SPECIAL’ written on a hanging chalkboard. I saw someone walking up the road from the right, heading towards the bus stop. A new thought entered my head: Oh good, he’s here. The person’s face flickered for a second, and then their entire shape flickered before settling on a form I’d recognize: The Sempiternity, my blindfolded friend, the Fear of forever, who knew more of me than I of them.

They raised a hand in greeting, and I nodded my head in return. We had a conversation about the weather. Apparently, we were due for rain in the coming week, followed by months of snow. Not a single decipherable word was exchanged, only droning voices from both our mouths. But still the information conveyed. More thoughts came to me. Perhaps if I kill him now, the world will never know? I’ll leave. No one will see. No one will know. No one will remember. I pictured two cats in a microwave, clawing at the door and struggling for footing on the spinning plate. I’ll remember. Droning came out of my mouth, followed by more from Sempi. We had just exchanged secrets. I felt some information leave my mind, information I still cannot remember but that I swear must have meant something. I felt some information enter in return-- Sheet music for a piece in D# minor, still permanently frozen in my mind to this day. Playing the piano part recently felt like rediscovering an old love that never existed. The Sempiternity droned something I did not understand. I looked at their face and saw, for a second, seven eyes through their blindfold. This is it, isn’t it? This is the moment I die, the moment I finally atone for what I’ve done. Coestts has come for me, come to take my thoughts away, come to leave my body wandering emptily through life with no meaning behind my eyes. That’s when the bus arrived. I paid my ticket, and sat down near the front.

We rode mostly in silence. Other people sat behind us, filling the bus. A window was open. It was cold. I looked out the window for most of the ride. I saw nothing, nothing I can remember anyway. My thoughts were absent. It was boring. At one point, Sempi spoke. The information entering my head this time pertained to some ancient civilization, now extinct. Their religion outlasted their culture, with practitioners executing innocents in hopes of one day being forgiven. I asked a question, something about rumors. The slender man answered. One remained from the ancient civilization, an immortal sage who led his murderous people throughout more than just history. Sempi ended the droning, leaving one thought floating in my head. We’re going to see his tomb. The bus stopped, and the door opened. The events which transpired afterwards proceeded, in succession, less lucidly than even those before. In recollection, I cannot hope to transcribe their accuracy, let alone nuance of meaning, any more than I might hope to interpret a dream.

TOMB OF TURIN The Sempiternity and I walked, through a gift shop, down a narrow stone staircase into the dark depths of deteriorated dominion. The stairs crumbled and rumbled, promising unsafe travels and refusing to ascertain our return.

TURN AROUND NOW We surfaced at a chamber with faded red carpet and unlit candles. Sealed treasure chests of varying size littered the area, with locks unable to be opened for so long that they’d corroded. A throne of glass loomed over the room. However, the central features, despite all this majesty, were the paintings above the throne.

MOVING PICTURES One king, elected despot, contradicted logic. He ate children across the sands, one family at a time. His name was Neferkaapep. Neferkaweneg appealed to Thoth, gun in hand. Neferkaapophis conquered sky in his father’s name. Ma’at at feet of Neferkaapepi. Weneg breaking the door open, ascended. Horus and Osiris dreading darkness, and Nyarlathotep carrying black paint.

WINDOWS Ra’s boat, rebuilt, seeing great lands again. Mama Qucha doing Ch’aska Quyllur’s job. Hermes and his hairless heart. Trees with no leaves.

NAMES Neferkaapep Neferkaapepi Neferkaapophis Turin Onnekas kameelperd

PREPOSITIONAL PHRASE In the next room, there stood the sarcophagus itself. It was empty. The coffin's interior swallowed us, sending us careening into an abysmal expanse. I could no longer see the Sempiternity; instead I saw what the blind see. More on this later.“)

[PREV LOG] [TABLE OF CONTENTS] [NEXT LOG]

#ogtrib #oh god the rapture is burning #ogtrib act 2 #horror

5 notes · View notes

blindrapture · 2 months

Text

MONDAY JULY 25TH, 2011 (Avoidance)

8:32 AM I don't want to get up today

8:35 AM Donnie's up. Hey Donnie, can we have a look further into the city today? Just you and me. "Sure. Uh.. anything in mind?" There'll be, like, a City Hall of some sort, right? Maybe we'll benefit from trying to talk to the 'other side.' The people in power here. "Mr. Diplomacy, over here. What if there's Fears there? Like, dangerous ones." Then we turn and leave? "And have them follow us here." Well, we're not gonna know unless we try. And, honestly, I… "...yeah?" ...I just. Want a change from the RAF for a bit. "Aww, did something happen yesterday? Did you get in an argument?" No. Maybe I'm.. partied out? <:D ...she patted my head. .w. "We can have a look around. Meet some new people." kissss Donnie, you're an angel, and it never feels right to leave your side. "Awwww!"

8:50 AM We had breakfast. No Cody this time; he's still asleep. <.<;; But we did talk with Heaven, and she gave us directions to City Hall, the "People's Palace." And she wished me luck with finding Bones!

9:14 AM Short drive. San Francisco has good streets. I'm impressed. Man, look at that building! People's Palace, indeed. Majestic, grey, greek-like. Naked lady carving up at the top. "Probably a symbol of democracy or something." Yeah. America!

9:15 AM I'd expect there to be more people here. This city's, y'know, relatively safe. And people love to just mill about; it's one of our favorite pastimes. "Well, we've been seeing a lot of people who don't like the old authorities that much. Maybe the people who did left the city?" Then. Who are the RAF trying to fight? "The Fears." I dunno. Something feels off.

9:16 AM It's... deserted. Yet the lights are on. Someone must be in here. Hello? … HELLO? … that triggered a coughing fit from down this hall.

9:17 AM Little office. Big man. Gotta be in his 40s, 50s. "Hmph. You won't find much to steal in here." We're not looking to steal, sir! "You'd be the first, then. Even the scoundrels who used to work here were ripping the carpets up on their way out. And I trust that rabble by the park even less." donnie "The world's ending. People are gonna panic." "Quite." sigh "I just always liked to imagine we were a more virtuous nation than that. And I mean the whole nation, not California. We're a state, dammit. Nothing's going to change that." Yeah. ..uh. "Yes, who are you? Why did you come? To listen to me talk?" Maybe?? I'm.. Jordan. "I'm Donnie." I came here to learn a little more about.. the way the city is run? "I just came along; I'm good with whatever." "You came here to learn about civics? Huh." stroking his mustache "Maybe the youth isn't lost." Do you know why money is still a thing here? What's this Z currency? "That is still one of the most suspect things to happen in all this Rapture nonsense. The change happened overnight. "Some senior investors and advisors came to the Palace one night earlier this month, and I mean senior, some of the most respected in the nation. They stepped into the Mayor's office, unannounced, unaccompanied, and spent a heated hour shouting profanities, then swiftly left in silence with stormy faces. "Do you know what they had said? "'The dollar is gone.' "That's right. Just like that. It was a demand from 'higher up,' they said. Higher than Congress. Higher than the Senate. Higher than the Supreme Court. Higher than the Pentagon!" W. Who. Who was it from? O: "One of them." he pointed, sinisterly, for effect. donnie "The Fears?" "One of them." Surely some people tried using the dollar anyway, right? Even just for a little purchase. "Of course people tried! We were the first to, as this building was the first to hear of it. But another change happened on that same night: Shortly after the investors and advisors left, the red sky vanished, and that army began patrolling our skies." The Ants of the Sky…

"The ANTS. Yes. ANti-finance Territorial Sentries. They know what we are doing in here. Anyone who spends so much as a penny, on any transaction, is hunted down within minutes. Gunned down... where they stand…" now he's looking off into space. I'm. I'm sorry. You must have seen a lot of this. "My colleagues dared the gods. I would have joined them too, had I anything to buy that night. I didn't believe in the demand. But blood speaks louder than decree." What the fuck. What's the point of it? What kind of scheme makes this make sense? ..he's shaking his head. forehead on his hand. "What bothers me is.. the Mayor obviously knew. He had that talk with the advisors. He didn't tell anyone. He let the rumor spread that it was just a demand. He let his staff exchange money. He had to have known. Why didn't he talk to us? Why did he just let us find out?" ... >_< donnie "Then. Then the Z? Did that just.. arrive one day?" "Delivered in secure vans. Stolen, I have no doubt. If anyone knows where they came from, they haven't told me." ..donnie "I'm sorry. Thank you for sharing what must not have been easy to recall." "These storied walls deserve a witness. After all our nation has been through, these walls deserve that much." So you really believe in this place. "And what it means. I feel I owe it, as I didn't do my due diligence when the sky was... real." I understand. Do you want to be left alone? "Yes. I have much to do. Archival work is never done." Th.. thank you for your time.

9:29 AM back in the car. just sitting here. What the fuck was that. Was that real. "At least we know those Ants are dangerous." But why the fuck is this happening this way? That Ant stuff is something I'd expect from Xanadu. But he says a Fear is responsible? "They're Fears, babe. They're bad. Remember the Harlequin? Would this really be that out-of-place for her to do?" I don't know! In terms of severity, sure, she was horrible! In terms of ambition, she was a terrorist! But what's with all the blue sky business? Why Z? Is Z a Xanadu currency, or did the same Fear give it to Xanadu? ..she's rubbing my back. "It's a world of trauma out there now. It kinda already was." Everything just raises questions. All this gunning-down... I feel like my brain's gonna explode. Why are the RAF... what are they doing? Are they just doing a takeover? Are they walking into a trap, the same situation that that government ran into? It doesn't sound like any human actually runs things here. "Why don't we go back to the house and.. ask them? Talk it out. You like talking it out." Talk to Cody? "And Heaven. The leader." I... yeah, okay. We can try.

10:10 AM The house is empty. They'll be off doing their.. secret plans. hnnng. "Then we can go off and do our plans until they get back." Our plans? "I mean the Derek thing. I think it's time we tried really driving around the city. Maybe we'll find places where the graffiti is more common?" It's.. worth a shot.

2:35 PM We've been driving slow. Looking for graffiti. There's been a lot of markings, symbols, tags. Some memes we've seen before. Occasionally a person nearby, who we'd ask about Bones. No luck. Not a clue. We're stopping for lunch. We still have some beef jerky from the rabbit hole. We're gonna sit on a bench and eat.

2:42 PM Some bikers just sped by, roaring without mufflers. Huh. Hadn't seen that yet. I'd kinda been expecting bikers in all this. I wonder where they're going. Maybe we should get bikes too.

4:24 PM Alright. Finished our cruising. I mean, we weren't exactly thorough with it. We just went on a graffiti tour of the city, that's it. "I'm sorry, babe. We'll find him." Yeah. I know. I don't like this city.

4:39 PM When we got back to the house again, this time Tiger and about half a dozen of others from the Party House were gathered on the front steps, listening to Heaven talk from her door. We pulled up and got out of the car, and that's when we saw it: Hanging from a window of the RAF house, limbs tied with flag cord, Winston. With a nasty gash in his neck. It's the modus operandi of the Masked Massacrer, and Heaven corroborated that, as she saw a man in a Jesus Christ mask skulking around nearby and chased him off before noticing Winston herself. Dammit. I mean dammit. We just saved him.

4:45 PM We're all going back to the Party House for a wake.

5:10 PM Tiger couldn't stand it.

5:18 PM When it came time to play some of Winston's favorite songs in memorial, the first one to come on was "Solitude." Candlemass. Holy shit, that was... crushingly awkward. Not many people were willing to listen to it right now.

5:24 PM Someone brought out the alcohol. Heaven left. I think she'd normally frown upon underage drinking, but.

7:58 PM screams "FEAR AT THE DOOR!" oh jesus. another zombie? I'll fucking get it. hang on. head's swimming. I got this.

7:59 PM Holy crap! it's not a zombie!! it's fucking EAT! "Rael, we" shhh IT'S OKAY EVERYONE! I'M GONNA TAKE THIS OUTSIDE! IT'S GONNA GET UGLY! I'M SORRY! c'mon c'mon

8:05 PM okay I think we're far enough away. and this is a good alleyway. none of them will come looking. but just in case, if they do, put me in a headlock. just in, y'know. just in case. "That is a strange plan. Is it just you this time?" Yeah. Donnie's.. I think she went home hours ago. I like your Camper. :) She has blue hair... "I see." I am drunk... I apologize... "Rael, if it makes you comfortable and focused, you may say what you like to me. But I have to talk to you." Holy shit. Please, please talk. I'm all ears. "Can I trust that you will take in what I have to say?" I'm writing it all down! So I will be reading it again in the morning. Or whenever I'm sober. "You... hm. You know by now not to decode the Ciphers." Yes! "This was a surprise to me as well. When I advised you to pursue the sixth Cipher earlier this month, I only knew what I had read in your journal. And I only know the reality now because I read your newer journals. I suspect I may have learned about this on my own had I been in regular conversation with the other Fears, but Rapture has taken up all of my concentration." You really want to stop it. "I do." I do too! If at all possible. For a human like me.

"But there is a complication in the Cipher matter. Someone else has heard about the Ciphers, and not the most up-to-date information. Someone else is going after the seventh Cipher." Someone. Someone else. This is bad, right? "Yes. This is something that must be prevented at any cost." Are you the one who told someone else about the Ciphers? "Not.. to my knowledge. It might be possible that the wrong Camper spoke at the wrong time, but when I talk to myself, I do not go over every detail." You talk to yourself? O: "Don't you?" Only all the time! "..I think I like you drunk. You're so easy to read." I don't think I like being drunk, though. Being drunk is nice when I'm still drinking, but then when I'm not drinking, it's one long ride to sobriety. So. Gotta stop someone from going for the big video game boss battle. Do we know who? "I believe so. I first noticed other people discussing the Cipher in Texas, and I followed the rumors as they spread westward. With birds, I traced their source to a group on motorcycles. They have entered this city, and so I cannot follow them so easily anymore, as suspicion of Fears is greater here. Speaking candidly, I was taking a risk coming to see you at all." Aww, you risked for me.… "I risked for the world, Rael. You're my human emissary in this. You can go where Camper can't." I'm your emissary…

"I need you to find these motorcyclists and stop them. Or lead them out of the city where I can act unobstructed." Got it. I can do that. I can do one or the other. "You will have to act fast; it is not safe to stay in the city for much longer. The Archangel is amassing the undead, and a horde of them will hit in a few days." The Archangel... that's the gas mask one. The zombies. A horde? A few days… Y'know, the RAF have something planned for Wednesday. I don't know what it is, but they're working hard at it. "...Anonymous." Yeah. RAF are Anonymous. "Rael, Anonymous is allied with the Archangel." .....what. 'allied with' like, they're neutral towards each other? "They are working for him, delivering his will." How do you. How do you know? "My birds have seen. That adult woman you are staying with leaves the house every day, and her first stop is always to the same construction site, where Death meets her for updates on their plan, not unlike you and me right now." This is huge. This is.. sobering. "I am glad you are returning to your senses. I'll understand if you have trouble believing my information." No, I.. I didn't like the vibes here anyway. Too many things weren't adding up. Plus, I'm pretty sure Cody shot a kid in the head. "Which one is Cody?" The adult man. Do you follow him too? "Of course. But I don't think I should tell you what I have seen." You don't? "It concerns a subject that humans generally do not like to know." Worse than working with Death? Worse than shooting a kid? C'mon, EAT. Don't I do things for you? :C Aren't I your emissary? "And it concerns Donnie." ........read you loud and clear. o_e "I'm sorry." No, no, it's. I get it. On all counts. They have a history. And I don't think it was resolved. And, like. I've been really friendly with you, and there's no way she likes that. "I'm.. sorry." Please. EAT, you're. A friend. I shouldn't have asked. It's not your fault. "I don't want to impact you like this." I know. Unfortunately, this is.. the kind of thing that just happens, with feelings, sometimes. And definitely with drinking. Wow, that was a sloppy move on my part. "Feelings. I think I fear my feelings more than I fear the changes coming to our world." Heh. You and me, both.

8:13 PM "...at times like these, what should I do?" To achieve what? "Making you smile at me again." ..… hugggg

(Attached: "A Fear’s appearance, you know, is important. If we want humans to listen to us, we have to play up our powers, make ourselves look more important than we are. This is why the slender man wore a suit, why Death wears a gas mask, and why I keep my beard long and my book large– we want humans to fear us, we want to appear formidable. Salmacis, however, has a soft spot. It refuses to acknowledge any of them, but the apocalypse brings them out of her. And one of these soft spots of hers is the idea that humans will be more likely to assist if they feel they can trust her, rather than fear her. So over the course of the apocalypse, when it realized it needed to take some serious action to convince lots of people in so little time to help, it experimented with lots of different looks and approaches before it settled on giving her Camper blue hair– usually through wigs or hair-dyes– and overall blue colour schemes for clothing. And that all started here. Her first blue Camper was complete accident. It was just the nearest one to Jordan at the time. California, am I right?”)

[PREV LOG] [TABLE OF CONTENTS] [NEXT LOG]

#ogtrib #oh god the rapture is burning #ogtrib act 2 #horror

6 notes · View notes

blindrapture · 2 months

Text

SUNDAY JULY 24TH, 2011 (Sanctuary Francisco)

8:42 AM groggy. "You're awake. Good." hi Donnie. :) "Hi. Wow, you really are quick with that thing." what? oh, the journal. I've been doing it for two months now. Kinda got a good system going. "Cody wonders if it's a good idea." Does he, now? "I told him it's part of the package. I think it helps you stay aware in the rabbit holes." Part of the package. So you guys have been talking about me. "He's... ugh. He's so paranoid. I think I dodged a bullet with him." What else is he saying? "He doesn't like new people. He says he's alright with me, because he 'knows' me. But he doesn't know what to think about you. I think you should talk to him today. Spend time with him." I mean. I can... but how long are we planning on staying here? I want to search for Bones. "Well, help him out, maybe he can help you in return. I want to stay here for a little longer." Heaven has that plan, doesn't she? Apparently we'll be hearing about it in a few days. We could stay to find out what it is, at least. "A few days? Sure. That works." Okay. You going out? "I'm going to have a look around the area, now that it's daytime. You go find Cody, okay?" kiss "Love you." I love you too. :D

9:50 AM ...FUCK I FELL BACK ASLEEP okay okay, I'm getting dressed. Hat, coat, scarf, pants, velcro shoes. San Fran, here we go, baby!!!

9:51 AM Tiger's here. Cody's eating cereal. Morning! tiger waved. What's. What's going on? "Winston's missing. I came around to get a search going." cody "I'm on it. Gotta eat first." Can I come?

10:03 AM Walking in a pack!!! cody "Do you really expect to do much with a piece of plastic?" tiger "Oh, you should have seen him last night. He took a zombie's head clean with it. It was swag." You can doubt Tiger Stripes all you want, but this thing came from the sky. It's built to last. cody "The sky?" Yeah, on the first day of all this. I took my guitar controller out and lost it pretty quickly, and then that night, this thing fell from the sky. "Sounds like a lot of horseshit to me." Have you. Have you seen what's happening? "I've seen plenty enough. The walking dead. A dog that takes people's skin. Moving shadows. Those damned sirens…" Sirens? "They looked like speakers on legs, but they were tall enough to be tripods from Mars." "Like in that movie." "I saw them towering over Lincoln before I made the decision to come to California." That sounds like Legsteps. You saw them in... Lincoln? "Nebraska." On Earth. Huh. "You've never seen them on Earth?" Only ever in Xanadu. The, uh, the other world. "Oh yeah. Donnie tells me you guys have spent a lot of time over there." Is that weird? "...a lot about you is weird, kid. That one maybe more than most." But. But it's another world, accessible just by walking through a door. What's not to be curious about? "It's a danger. Bad things are coming out of there. We don't know how it works. We don't know for sure how to come back out." They're. They're doors. You just.. walk back out. "Do you ever wonder if maybe you got lost in there long ago, and this thing that's come back out isn't even you?" Well, then I'd be the one talking to you right now, so, no, I wouldn't really wonder about that. tiger "I like him, Cody. He's seen things." cody "We're not here to like people. We're here to stay alive." looking at me. "If you can protect people and keep them alive, then you're alright." But you're still unsure? "I think being unsure is the right move in all this." Alright, I can respect that.

10:07 AM Met up with Jackie, Tiger's friend. She's helping look for Winston. She says he was last seen in John McLaren park. That's where we're going now.

10:25 AM At the park. Cody's putting a backpack on the ground. Looking at the rest of us. "Alright, McLaren's not a small place, so we're going to need to split up, cover more ground. I'm pretty sure Jordan is the second-oldest, so he and I can take separate groups. Jackie, Tiger, you.. pick who you're going with. Jordan, you go north" pointing "and loop around the paths up there. It'll take you some time, but I'm giving you the easier task, as you're new here. I'll go south, where most of the land is off the trail. I'll head to the soccer fields first, then cut back and hit Visitacion, then head back here to meet up. I put that at about... 2, 2:30. Understood?" Understood! "I'm actually glad you wrote this one down. Alright, if you find Winston, or if you run into some serious trouble, I want you to send a signal. Why don't you... hit that guitar of yours against something metal? Hit it as hard as you can, and keep hitting it; hit it to a pattern. Meanwhile, if I run into anything…" pulled out a pistol. "..I think you'll know."

10:27 AM Tiger's with me. Jackie's gone with Cody. Tiger, can you lead the way? "Yeah, no problem! Just keep your eyes peeled, okay?"

10:44 AM Been walking at a somewhat slow pace, shouting for Winston. "I hope he's okay. He and I went to the same school, y'know. I did everything with him." Do we have reason to believe he's not okay? o: "Well. He's been saying some things lately. I think he was already not okay." What kinds of things? "That the Fears are talking to him in his sleep… That I should just let him die." ...ah. Yeah, that's cause for concern. .........does he ever specify which Fears? "I don't like to listen to it when he talks about that kind of thing, but.. I think he said there were two different voices." I like to think I know at least a little bit about some Fears by now, is all. So if there's a Fear I recognize, then I'll have an idea of what to do, or not to do. "There was a. There was a Ruin. God, I hated when he went on about the Ruin. It wasn't his friend. It wanted him to stop trying. It wanted him to grow up with it. Grow up and get used to the cold…" The cold. Was this a little boy? "It's not a little boy, it's a monster." No, I mean. "I know what you mean. It.. looks like a little boy. Yeah." I've.. run into it before. I've never tried to do anything with it, but. Well. I can try, can't I? I'm the White Jester. All I can do is try.

11:16 AM God, these trails are thick with foliage. 'Cause it's a... it's a park. Not a big wide open play-sports-on-a-hill park, but winding trails and sprawling trees and tall shrubbery. Like. Like Marble Hornets. "Yeah, I don't actually know why Cody sent you this way. It'd be way easier to search the south side. That part has fewer trails because it's so much more open." ....what. Were we duped? "By.. Cody? No, he knows what he's doing." But Winston could be in any of this tall grass. There's no way we can search it all. "We still have to try. If Winston's alive, he'll hear us. Searching through all the grass is only if he's...…" ...right. Yeah, that's.. that's right. Sorry. "It's okay. You're new here. And you're helping."

[if you want this string of binary, you'll have to get it from the Website, as it's too big]

11:54444444444444444444444 "Why won't you just play with me? You never wanted to play with me." and there he is. skin blue as laura palmer, hair black as ice, eyes open and black too. red and yellow striped shirt, he looks like he belongs in a time that never was, except for in our fiction. and today he wears a red glove on his right hand that is too big for him. he's the cold boy, and he's called the Ruin. "No matter where I find you, you're always the exact same. You're no fun." I'm inoculated. "You're antisocial." You prey on the social. "What do you know about it? You're not supposed to know anything." In my loneliness, I write. It makes me feel not so lonely.

(Attached: "The Ruin is a sad one. He was always aware of the red glove. And no one was around to stop him from listening to it. But how could anyone be? He was always alone. He thrives when alone. That red glove is the thing that makes these early Ruin passages so strange. That red glove doesn't talk to us. It talks to... you. And that red glove is playing a long game.")

11:56 AM We found Winston. He's sitting on a park bench. He looks completely spaced-out.

12:24 PM Okay, we've been waiting here at the center of the park for a while now. I banged my guitar, we shouted for Cody and Jackie, and he's not showing up. Are we gonna have to wait for 2:00?

12:25 PM At least Winston has been talking. He's been seeing the Ruin for years, he'd play with him during his lonely childhood. High school has been better for Winston, so for a while the Ruin had gone away. Then the Rapture started. And Winston started hearing voices in his room at night, when he'd try to sleep. Not every night, but usually when he was sleeping alone. One voice was the Ruin, urging him to leave his shelter and come and enjoy the apocalypse. The other voice is a name I don't recognize, Grendel, just saying "Let me in. Let me in." The Ruin said not to listen to Grendel, that Grendel would "take your face." Evidently, today Winston did go with the Ruin. They had been playing in the park, waiting for Thursday. Because something's gonna happen on Thursday. And Winston says I came and talked to the Ruin? And that's what caused him to let Winston go. I don't.. remember that. But my journal has a new passage in it, just like last time I felt really cold. There was no lost time this time, though? ...questions for later. For now: WHERE ARE YOU CODY????

1:10 PM There he is. With Donnie! o: "Hi, Jordan!" Hi, Donnie! :D "Hi! I was on my way into the park and I found him. He says you guys are searching for someone?" We found him! Winston's right here. cody "Oh, good job! You are a help." ..where's Jackie? cody "Jackie was getting sick, so I sent her home." ..tiger and winston are a little confused, but they'll go and see her when we get back. Tiger's telling Cody that I dealt with a Fear. He sounds dubious, but he's holding that back. Donnie, though, Donnie's beaming. :3 That's what I do it for.

1:14 PM Cody's putting his backpack back on, slipping the gun back in. "Well, now that Winston's safe, I've gotta go. Got secret work to do." tiger "Ah, your big secret project with Heaven!" cody winked at him. "Are you and Jordan gonna stick around until Wednesday?" donnie "I think we can make the time for that." Wednesday. Huh. Uh, yeah! We'll make time for it. Good luck! "See you guys." … Well! What are we doing now?

1:18 PM Tiger's taking us to a restaurant. He's treating us. Hi Donnie. :) "Hi! So, you scared off a Fear?" I don't actually remember it happening, and my journal... doesn't really answer anything. But it was the Ruin. That.. coldness we felt, back in St. Louis? "Ooh, that. Look at you, saving people!" >w< What did you get up to? "Well, I met some of our neighbors. They're really nice. They're really glad the RAF moved in; monster attacks have gotten rare. And plus the blue sky is a great touch. I did actually go looking around to try and look at the Ants of the Sky, but they're.. really high up. They don't come close enough to the ground to give me a chance." Do you think we should be wary about that? Something up above, changing the sky? "Until we actually see them for ourselves, we're just going on speculation, aren't we?"

1:33 PM Here we are! Restaurant! The Bold Lioness. Yeah, that sounds like California. Sounds really indie. It's packed full of people. It's.. nice to see. It does feel normal.

1:35 PM Got a table. Jeez, look at these prices. Yep, this is California… "Don't worry about it, I've got money." Thanks, Tiger. :) ...these prices. donnie "Yeah, you said, they're high." No, not that. These aren't dollars. This is... Z? "We've.. seen that before." donnie's tensing up. In Xanadu. Yeah. Uh. Tiger? Where do you get your money? "I steal it." says with a mischievous smile. "The RAF believes in sharing the wealth; we're against the rich, after all. And the few times I've been caught, people didn't even care. I don't think people want money so much anymore." No one except, evidently, the restaurants. Huh.

1:47 PM Well, I can't say no to a good burger.

3:23 PM We passed a lot of zombies on the way home, and I got to observe much closer their docility. We also saw a big black dog-- I think the black dog, the Fear, what was it called?-- but we just.. avoided that street. At one point I saw a patch of red bleed through the blue sky above, and a fluttering of black dots made it blue again. Yeah... can't say I get the best vibes. Isn't the blue sky just.. making people forget?

5:08 PM We dropped off Winston and Tiger at the, uh, Party House, then Donnie and I scooted on back to our cots... <3 But I think tonight I want to get started on why I came here in the first place. I'm gonna go asking around about Derek.

5:32 PM Well, going door to door was way too slow, so I came over to the Party House. There's a lot of people staying here, and I don't know if many of them are permanent residents, I think mostly this is just a gathering-place for young people. And that's perfect. I can spread the word of who I'm looking for.

5:39 PM Yeah, uh. His name's Derek Taylor, might also respond to 'Bones.' I guess I don't know for sure what he's wearing, but I wanna say he dresses a little like me? Coat, hat. We were like the Blues Brothers. ..dark hair, last I saw he has a mustache. And this is kinda important, because he's been leaving graffiti calling for me to meet him. "Oh, is that what JORDAN IN THE TRILBY HAT means? I thought it was a song!"

5:42 PM The kids are alright. c: They'll spread the word, as I hoped. ..and I guess, as long as I'm here, I'd may as well hang out some more. C'mon Donnie! They're playing fun music today! We can dance! :D

5:49 PM wheeeeere did all the looooove go I don't know, I don't know

6:30 PM Donnie's gone home. It has been a longer day for her than for me. .w. C'mon, play Free Bird! Do Stonehenge!

7:13 PM Gone to the gamer corner. Nice and chill here. Mood lighting. Everyone's got their PSPs and their DSes and their... is that a Game Gear? "Atari Lynx." It's a what? I didn't even know that was a thing. "It was my uncle's, before all this started."

7:14 PM Tiger? You.. you okay? "Jackie never got home." Fuck. Okay. Do you want to go look for her? Is there anywhere else she'd have gone? "No... she lived here with me. This was our home. She was my sister." Shit. Okay. It's okay. Then she'll still be in the park, or on the route between there and here. It's okay, let's go look for her.

7:16 PM A whole crowd of kids are coming. When the party house owner needs help, everyone listens. This is good. With a group this size, we'll find her.

7:39 PM The park. Sun's going down. But some people have flashlights.

7:40 PM "Listen, Jordan." Yeah? "Cody said he was going to the soccer fields and then to Visitacion. He meant the middle school, it's just on the edge of the park. It's where Jackie went to school, before this summer. And I'm wondering if she found her way inside for some reason. So I want to check that place out. Will you come with me?" Absolutely. o:

8:05 PM Found an open window. It's just the two of us as everyone else sweeps the park. Tiger's got a flashlight. Window leads into a classroom. Should be able to get to the hallways. Break down doors if we have to.

8:07 PM These doors are unlocked. "JACKIE? JACKIE, ARE YOU HERE?"

8:10 PM Darkness. Empty classrooms, everywhere. Not even any cryptic messages written on chalkboards. Can't hear a thing, no footsteps, no growling, no clear threat. Do you know what classrooms she had? "Yeah, we're heading there. I really don't know why she'd have gone here, but, like. Maybe she just needed to reminisce." I'd have done the same. Probably. Or maybe she had some.. notes... written down.... that she left here, and.. forgot??? "Maybe! God, JACKIE? WHERE ARE YOU?"

8:13 PM "TIGER! YOU IN HERE?" that's one of the other kids from outside. "YEAH?" "TIGER, WE FOUND SOMETHING! WE FOUND HER BACKPACK!" "Oh man. OKAY, I'M ON MY WAY!" tiger's running back. but. it's strange. there's a faint light in this classroom. the one tiger was taking us to. I'm gonna peek.

8:14 PM ...it's Jackie. Lying on the floor, next to a candle that's nearly burned out. She has a bullet hole in her forehead. ...… sigghhhhhhhh.

8:20 PM We got out of the school. Her backpack was caught in some tree branches a little distance from the school. It had some fidget toys in it and an iPod, cushioned in colorful cloth. Tiger's sure she won't have gotten far. I.. don't... want to.. tell him. What would I say? How would I break that to him? Even if I just told him that she's dead, he'd want to go and see. And how would he take... that? ...I mean, who else could it have been? So. I might just... look into it myself. Maybe I should tell him. Maybe...

8:55 PM Home. In bed. Heaven's making some dinner for us all. I'll eat that and then sleep. I… Why do I get the feeling I'm on my own for this one.

(Attached: “If the Omen could write, I bet it’d write the most beautiful thing in the world. Originally so affixed with Hertelap so as to be one and the same, when Hertelap committed his atrocity and brought about the extermination of an entire people all over the morbid roots of vanity itself, a part of him broke free of his body and became the silent god we know today. Over the many years, Hertelap ceased to be and all we were left with were a few figures who we’ll meet eventually. Before we get to any of that, though, let’s end this episode of History Dubious and just shut up about the whole thing.”)

[PREV LOG] [TABLE OF CONTENTS] [NEXT LOG]

#ogtrib #oh god the rapture is burning #ogtrib act 2 #horror

4 notes · View notes

blindrapture · 2 months

Text

SATURDAY JULY 23RD, 2011 (Goodbye, Swamp Queen)

5:40 AM Man, we passed out. We're still on the rooftop. The colors in the sky are noticeably different. A lot more reds this time. "What did you dream of?" Uh? Like. Seeing a haunted house? There was a ghost that startled me. Why, what did you dream of? "There was a face looking into my dream from behind a wall. Like a snake's face. I could feel it was there, because it didn't feel like it belonged in my head at all." Uh. Okay. Maybe we should get moving early today, then.

5:41 AM Went down the stairs, but the stairs leading further are blocked by a door that won't budge. We've gotta go looking around storage. It's still all.. y'know... boxes and mannequins. But there's more rooms. god I'm yawning

5:42 AM okay we've checked a lot of doors. what are we. looking for? "another way down." I'm just seeing a ton of boxes. some, like, metal pipe scaffolding, stuff that you can build makeshift stores out of. a stack of flyers. NO STEALING! NO ABUSE OF STAFF! VIOLATORS WILL BE PUT INTO STORAGE. huh. well luckily, we just had free samples last night, we didn't steal anything.

5:43 AM "Dammit. There's nothing. Maybe there's a key in one of the boxes, but there's way too many boxes to just go searching blindly." Yeah, I'd rather we not do that. And what if the key's not even up here but on some security guard downstairs? Or someone who's gone home! "But then what? We're not climbing down this building on the outside. I don't have the grappling hook anymore, y'know!" We might have to try and cross the border ourselves, now that we've had the rest. "And potentially get into a shootout with the new border patrol." Potentially. "sighhhh. okay, yeah."

5:44 AM ..the way back is blocked by a lot of mannequins. "Where did they..?" Is someone in here with us? "Aaaah!" now there's mannequins behind us. "Jordan, it's the mannequins! They're moving by themselves!" I've gathered that now! Stay back! Or, like, talk to us! We don't want to fight! now the ones by the stairs are closer. okay donnie, back-to-back, they move when we're not looking. "No, they're still moving! I can see them!" well then I guess we forced their hand. Stay back!!! For fuck's sake!! We have weapons! .."please kill us." what? "use your weapons. please. kill us." it's a garbled and muffled voice. from within the mannequins. do we. do we have to? ..a mannequin grabbed donnie's gun. dragged the barrel to its own forehead. "kill us."

6:33 AM There were a lot of them. It took about a dozen whacks in the head to kill the first one, and then once one had died, suddenly the doors to the staircase opened up, and all the mannequins from the other storage floors came up asking for a piece. So we worked together, Donnie whacking with her rifle, me with Tiger Stripes. (We were not going to waste the last of our ammo on this. We would have had to switch to whacking shortly in anyway.) And, steadily, we cleared the floors until there was nothing left asking for death. I can't say this was the.. most pleasant experience, but. We made it to the mall proper. The lights are off right now. I guess it's not a 24-hour mall. But that's okay. We're just looking for a Door.

6:35 AM "Score!" rabbit hole? "Crisps! Beef jerky! Fruit! Ready-to-eat food!" oh shit! are there any slim jims? grab what you can! "I'm grabbing plastic bags! You get some drinks!"

6:39 AM What about this hallway here? It looks unnaturally long for what the building's like on the outside. "Gotta be! Let's go!"

6:40 AM End of the longgg hallway. There's a door here. Here we go. On the other side will be another world, or maybe we'll be back on Earth. :D … It's a security office. Two big beady-eyed prawn-men in uniforms, who had previously been watching us steal food via the monitors in front of them, are now turned around, looking right at us. This was not a rabbit hole door.

6:41 AM RUNNING FROM THE LAW

6:42 AM ducking in a clothing store

6:43 AM I think we bamboozled them "jordan…" oh. this is a clothing store. the mannequins are all looking at us. uh. shhhhh! we're not here! you didn't see us! … also, um. do you guys happen to know the way out?

6:44 AM they pointed us to the bathroom across from the clothing store. we're. sneaking. across. looking around for security. trying to be reaaaal quiet with our bags. … OKAY WE'RE IN but this is still just the bathroom. option for male and female. uh. do we each try one? donnie wants us to stick together. okay. let's. eenie meenie miney mo? men's bathroom.

6:45 AM MEDICAL EQUIPMENT, GAGGED CUSTOMERS ON TABLES, BINS FILLED WITH DISCARDED SKIN, EMPTY MANNEQUIN SHELLS WAITING TO BE FILLED WITH MEAT AND SHRIMP-MEN WITH BONESAWS AND BLOOD-SPLATTERED VISORS LOOKING RIGHT AT US

6:46 AM So that was the wrong room. It was the women's restroom that was the rabbit hole. Simple mistake. Now we're stepping out in a T.J. Maxx. The lights are off here too, but at least the exit is right there, leading out to Earth, where it should.

6:48 AM We're here! On Earth!! Outside! In the red sky!

6:50 AM A little looking-around told us we're in a town called Fresno. At first I thought that was an Italian restaurant, but, no, it's a place! In California. And with a T.J. Maxx comes a parking lot, and with a parking lot comes the chance of hotwiring a working car!

6:54 AM SUCCESS WE ARE ON THE MOVE AGAIN EVERYTHING'S COMING UP MILHOUSE

7:15 AM Reached a town called Kernan.

7:20 AM It's all the same, deserted streets, a notable lack of cars except for the occasional broken-down hunk. We've been passing a lot of graffiti, and I've made sure to slow down so I can write it down. "CALIFORNIA DYING OF FEAR" "LISTEN TO THE STOMPING SIRENS: FUCK IT ALL, JUST DANCE" there are a lot of drawings of what I'm pretty sure are Legsteps o_o "MY DADDY'S GOT A GUN, YOU'D BETTER RUN" "DRAW A STAIRWAY FOR MY GOD TO SPITE THE SOFA OF MY FAITH" "WHAT DID DOCTOR CLOUD DISCOVER IN THE GENERA?" "^ Answers." "JORDAN DOOLING WITH THE TRILBY HAT" "JORDAN DOOLING WITH THE TRILBY HAT" "HEY JORDAN WITH THE TRILBY HAT" "WHERE IS JORDAN WITH THE TRILBY HAT" I'm seeing that message in a lot of hands. This has got to be what EAT was talking about. And I see it, I just don't get it. Donnie's grabbing my hand. "We're gonna find out together. I've got your back, and you've got mine." Yeah. :)

7:36 AM With no sign of people anywhere, I think we'd best keep moving. Leave this town. We've gotta look for people.

7:52 AM Lots of vultures in the sky again. "Look! On the side of the road! A hitchhiker?" They're looking at us, but I mean, we're a moving car, we're a rare sight. They don't have any bags, or any broken car, or even any visible weapons. It's just some woman in greasy plaid. "...she's walking into the road." Well, roll your window down so we can talk, but I don't plan on stopping. "Hey! Are you okay?" ...she's. still walking out into the road. and when I slowed down, so did she. I think she's planning on "WHAT THE FUCK" SHE OPENED ONE OF OUR BACK PASSENGER DOORS AND JUST CLIMBED IN "EXCUSE ME WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING" "I have looked into it further." What? donnie "WHAT?" stopping the car. "The graffiti has many copycats by now. I believe some unrelated humans assumed it was some kind of inside joke or quote and are spreading it." donnie "Hey! Hey! Who the fuck are you, get out of our car! I have a gun! You stink like a wet dog!" she is looking at us, or, past us? hard to tell. Are you.. Salmacis? a very mechanical smile. "You remembered." oh THANK FUCK donnie's annoyed but is a lot less alarmed. "Okay, can you not do that kind of thing again?" "You were in a moving vehicle. I was not going to be able to communicate everything in a brief few seconds as you passed by. If you wish to resume driving, we can talk on the way." donnie and I are looking at each other

7:53 AM Donnie's driving now, I'm in the passenger seat so I can talk with EAT. And they've scooted over to the opposite side so they can see me better. Um. Hello, Salmacis! "Disarming greetings." How.. have you been? I like your.. Camper… donnie "it fucking stinks" well I think she's kinda pretty "This was the nearest body on hand. I have been observing, inquiring, learning, as well as some other activities you are best ignorant of." o_o "Understand, I mean that not out of a desire to keep you in the dark. The other activities have involved a lot of killing. You asked." I.. asked how you've been. donnie "you're not gonna get a good answer. it's not a human." "Actually. I have been scared." o__o "I am not used to not knowing something this large. The nature of Rapture. The changes coming to my planet. I am not used to feeling scared." It's a rotten feeling, but if you can get past it, you get a lot of adrenaline! "I am used to adrenaline. Each of my bodies has its own chemical rhythms, and adrenaline is easy to trigger. I am not used to not knowing. This is something of incredible size merging with us. This is not a force of military might, or even a new Fear, I am used to dealing with those. This is…" An entire universe. "..it is?" You, uh. You didn't know that one? "It had occured to me as a possibility. Where did you hear this?" Oh, god. Tiresias, definitely. But there was a guy in New York too, who was the first to tell us. A government guy. "They're holding back from me. The government does not surprise me, but Tiresias? He can normally be trusted. Do you know of his certainty?" Uh! Not necessarily? It could have just been the closest way of explaining it to us at the time. Or. .… sigh. let me just show you the journal.

8:07 AM Got my journal back. "Appreciated." You're.. ...you're welcome, EAT. o: (donnie's tensing up. she's.. dammit, I know.) "I see what you mean. It may have been a lie-to-children. However, it strikes me as close to the truth. This would explain why I cannot enter Xanadu myself." It would? Wait, you can't? "Whenever a Camper enters a Door, it blacks out, and I lose that body entirely. I have never recovered one of these bodies." ...Indisen… "The presence of Indisen on Earth, outside of the Doors, complicates it for me. I would have expected my lost bodies to become the cadavers that they should be and just fall over on the spot. I would have expected all my missing Camper to be corpses in Xanadu. But they are not." Is this also what the Camper Festival is? Because you don't know about that either. And it's a whole bunch of Camper, in Xanadu, doing their thing. "These are all connected, I am positive of that." donnie "This is all fascinating, but, what about the graffiti here in California? Someone's looking for Jordan. And, hell, we're here now. Should we be worried? Threatened? Should we leave?" Yeah, EAT, you're kinda the only reason we're here. ...another smile. o_o <_< >_> … ouo?

"There is someone here in California who claims to know you. I have met him, though it was fleeting. He gave his name as Derek Taylor." Derek?? Really?? O: "You know the name, then." He's!!! I mean, if he's who he says he is... then he's someone I know!! Someone I would want to meet! Then! Where? Where did you meet him? "I met him in San Francisco, though I have no reason to be certain he is still there." Argh! But why? Doesn't he know the first rule of asking someone to meet you somewhere??? "I'm just the messenger on that one. He said to tell you he would either be in San Francisco or Los Angeles." Huh. Okay, that's.. helpful! "I said I would look into it, and I did." smiling again. "This is, as you put it, the overture of our continued friendship." !!! :D ...car swerved. donnie definitely didn't like that. I mean. right. I am.. pleased you are approaching this so respectfully. "We have no reason to obstruct one another. Everything I have seen from you, from both of you, suggests you are an ally. Victoria, do you hear me too?" I think that's you, donnie she said "I'm listening, yes." "You are unsure of whether to trust me. I respect your trepidation; it has worth as a survival instinct. I do not believe I can simply talk my way into your good graces. But, if you two are willing to remain in California for a few days, I will earn your trust through action."

"...there's something you've failed to address." "What's that?" "Why? Why do you, the all-powerful god of whatever, want us to trust you? What are you planning on doing that is going to require our trust? I mean, require, to the point that you can't just do it anyway without us?" "I can learn from you. I have already been learning from humans by observing at a distance. For more years than there are numbers, I have been doing that, I found comfort in it. Normally, when threats come, they are nothing to me, and I can just watch humans die to it. I grew comfortable in that too. But everything has changed and will continue to change, and for once it's something that is a threat to me, to my continued existence. I cannot just keep going by the motions. I need to change my approach. I wish to try." ...donnie is silent. "I am making no effort to attack either of you. Do you acknowledge that?" "I do." "Do you have any more questions for me?" "Yeah. Why does your body stink so bad? You had vultures following you, y'know." "Those vultures were Camper." "What?!" what?! "As long as a body can contain my water, it is a valid vessel. Birds can travel faster than humans and gather information unheeded. As you have demonstrated, they do not arouse suspicion easily." donnie, I just, I fucking love this thing she rolled her eyes "As for the stink, it's probably because this Camper had been dormant in a pile of mud for the last several months." "Well. Thanks for.. getting in our car." "Sarcasm noted. I'm learning what you dislike." "Lesson for the future: Very, very few humans like that." ...........…<__<;;;;;

8:14 AM and, as abruptly as it entered, salmacis opened a door and just fell out of the car. donnie's breathing sighs of relief and I'm just.. hand on the window.... goodbye, swamp queen.…

8:29 AM Town of Madera. We've stopped to get our bearings. Maybe also to air out the car a bit.

8:30 AM "So." ...yeah? "I don't.. get it. But it is here. And it wants to help us. Says it does." It told us that Bones is here. "Bones?" Derek. "Wasn't he.. some friend of yours from Georgia?" My best friend. We stayed at his house, and he wasn't there. I had hoped he wasn't dead. And he's here, in.. one of two cities. "We need to find a road map for California. We need to start checking some buildings. Figure out which city is closer."

8:41 AM trolling around, checking the buildings that might be of help. hotels. government buildings. if we can find a damn Publix or something, those have tons of magazines near the entrance. Donnie's checking out buildings on foot, but I said I'd take the car to look in the other direction. because I.. don't mind.…

8:48 AM there's donnie, shouting and waving for me. I think she's found one.

8:49 AM she did. and we're sitting inside this book store now, looking at the map.

8:52 AM "Right. So. We're actually in a good spot here. San Francisco and Los Angeles are both.. really close." Oh, neat! "However, they are in opposite directions. We can either go 3 hours north and hit San Francisco, or 3 hours south and hit Los Angeles." And so, if he's not in one, it's 6 hours in the other direction. Okay. That doesn't sound too bad. "God, I really hope we didn't go all this way for him to just say 'nice hat' and that's it..."

8:54 AM jesus, okay, yeah, the car does still.. reek. we'll... leave it a bit longer. there's no time limit on all this.

2:22 PM We slept for longer than intended, in the cover of the bookstore, but we kept our stuff with us, and if anyone came by, they weren't interested in our car. So we ate some of our snacks and got on the road again! I'm driving.

4:50 PM "Slow down, do you see that?" It's San Francisco. With a very blatant dome of blue sky above it. Little specks are flying around the sky. "Those must be the Ants. I wish I could make them out from here…" The RAF, or the Anonymous going by the name of the RAF, must have amassed here as well, then. This will probably be another place that cares about money. "Shit."

4:52 PM We were almost considering turning back and trying Los Angeles first when we saw another hitchhiker coming for our car. This one wasn't EAT, though. It's a young woman named Evi who was trying to get to an RAF meetup before her transport got grabbed by "the Morphs."

4:53 PM The Morphs are the bird Fear. I've seen them come out of lightning, Donnie's seen them swirl around and change the landscape, and now apparently Evi's seen them grab whole cars and carry them away.

4:54 PM She's trying to join the California branch of the Anon squad. They're going to stage an attack on the rich people who live in San Francisco and are calling for all volunteers. "Didn't you hear? The billionnaires are partnering up with the Fears and causing the red sky!" I.. don't think that's true. But we'll drive her to this meetup.

5:30 PM Well, much like Las Vegas, this place looks quite safe. There are some zombies in the streets, but they're not even hostile, they're just stumbling around. Maybe the Fears are in cahoots here?

5:34 PM The signage around here is rather consistent in calling this Sanctuary Francisco. Evi says that's legit. The name was changed. That keeps it consistent with New Sanctuary. I guess it's good advertising.

5:41 PM She's directed us to a semidetached little house. Donnie had a nap on the way here, but she's awake now. We're gonna go in and see.

5:44 PM There's only a handful of people here. The leader, as pleased as can be to see new volunteers, is a lady named Heaven. There's also a gruff dude named Cody, who cannot keep his eyes off Donnie. There’s three teenagers in Guy Fawkes masks, too. Tiger, Winston, and Jackie. This is about as American a group as it gets.

5:46 PM Hey, Heaven. So you guys are.. with Anonymous? "They're not really called that anymore. They're just Rise Against Fear." Yeah, but. There's already a branch of the military called that. shrug "News to me." Okay. And. Evi told us, on the way over here, that.. the Fears are allied with billionaires? "Oh yes. There's a lot of documentation on this from leading members. I subscribe to the idea that the Fears are actually bribing the rich, as they correctly identified that's the language they'd listen to most, but that when the Fears have completed their plans, they'll just kill them all anyway." Right. That's a reasonable supposition. But do you guys think.. the rich caused the red sky? "100%. It's all the pollution, it's finally caught up with us." ......right. You got beverages here? I am parched!

5:50 PM god they're utterly clueless. oh, uh. hey. tiger, right? "hey." I'm jordan. "hey jordan." how's it. how's it going. "boring." yeah. I get that. "do you want to ditch this place? there's a party going on a couple blocks away." oh. really? are you sure that's, like. okay? "yeah. heaven and cody have a plan they need us for, but that's not gonna be ready for a couple days. I just came here to get my DS." oh fuck, what model? "it's the 3DS! it just came out this year! it's so cool, it's like 3D movies but without the glasses!" ohhhh!!!! dope!!!! "do you have one?" oh god no! I have an old DS. "like a DSi, or a DS Lite, or...?" the. the old one. the first one. "oh..... damn. grandpa gaming." don't you go there! we'll go toe-to-toe, and I can get really rowdy! "haha! so, I'm about to head to the party with jackie and wince. do you want to come with?" yeah! let me just go get donnie, and we'll follow you.

5:53 PM Donnie's talking with that Cody guy. Hey! Hey, Donnie. c: "Hi! Jordan! Let me, um. You're not gonna believe this." What, does he have a 3DS too? "This is Cody. Or, as I knew him, CodeMaster64. He was my ex." Oh! Wow! Damn! "I know!" cody "And you are?" I'm.. DJay32. I mean. I'm Jordan. Donnie and I came all the way from England. "To come here? Did even England hear about us?" Oh! No! No, Anonymous are kinda obscure; I feel like I'm more famous. We came here looking for "Well, who the fuck are you?" I'm! The White Jester. I probably shouldn't have said that. "That... name is familiar. Okay, I'll admit, I've heard the name. Can't place where..." I'm sorry for!! Insulting the RAF. A lot is happening right now. I came to get Donnie. donnie "What's happening?" a party. few blocks away. "..that does sound like fun…" cody "Go on, Don. We'll talk more later."

5:57 PM ON THE WAY TO A PARTY

9:16 PM It was, indeed, a party. Mostly young people who have nothing else to do. The music's a little too bland for my tastes, or, at least, I'm not familiar with most of it, so I found where all the gamers were hanging out and spent time there. :3 Donnie's gonna head back to the house, but I'm gonna stay a little longer.

9:32 PM "FEAR AT THE DOOR!" everyone's freaking out

9:33 PM It's a. It's a zombie. A single zombie.

9:34 PM "HE KILLED THE FEAR!" "THIS GUY'S AWESOME!" Thank you, thank you. -w- I guess I can get used to this crowd. :D

11:10 PM Got back. Heaven's got a cot for me to sleep in. Donnie was waiting for me. We're gonna spoon... .w. This place isn't bad. It's kinda a little piece of the world that was, frozen in time. And if everyone here is helpful, we'll be able to find Bones-- or confirm that he's not here, so we can move on! Maybe even pretty quickly.

11:11 PM I just.. I wish that this place really is, I wish that it isn't too good to be true.

(Attached: “I don’t care what anyone thinks of me for writing this note, but I can’t ever think back to these times without cringing and wanting to cry. I don’t know how I made it out of all this alive, and how I managed to get into the mess in the first place is an even murkier subject. I don’t like spending too much time thinking about it, though, as I don’t want to fall back into that rabbit hole. It's a nonlinear subject, though, as those memories have been written over with words. In the end I, like him, was able to create. Right now it's undecided if I’ll be able to create my way out of this pit, but I am still creating context, meaning to these memories. I doubt I’ll be able to do what he does and create life, create sound, create the very idea of magnificence itself, but at least I’m able to create a reason to live out of the ruins of my spiritual death. At least I'm able to create HCEAT.”)

[PREV LOG] [TABLE OF CONTENTS] [NEXT LOG]

#ogtrib #oh god the rapture is burning #ogtrib act 2 #had to add two paragraph breaks to a long conversation. shouldn't be terribly disruptive. you know the drill. Website is unaffected

4 notes · View notes

blindrapture · 2 months

Text

FRIDAY JULY 22ND, 2011 (Walking)

12:32 AM Donnie's had to drive us in a circle, as the cops figured we were headed west. We've found a ghost town. Sign says Pahrump. The lights of Las Vegas New Sanctuary are still visible, so we haven't made as much progress as we've wanted. I'm sure this place used to be something. It will have had people in it. But the proximity of such a big city, a blatant safe haven, has emptied it and left it abandoned, all the better for us. We've parked in a garage. Not much more than a little shed, but it hides the car.

12:40 AM God, it's. It's just nothing out here. "It's so flat." There's some trees here and there, around the few houses, but they were clearly planted for the sake of... what? Suburbia? A budding attempt at suburbia? The dominant plantlife is desert shrub. It's. It's a desert. It's some roads in a desert. "There's nothing here for us." Nothing at all. "It's perfect." o_o? For hiding from the law? "That wasn't the law. That was some business that saw an opportunity to roleplay soldiers." 4chan wet dreams. "No, this place is perfect for you and me. We can see out for miles, we can see if anyone's coming. And who's coming? This is a piss-poor dinky little patch of road. The monsters are going to be attracted by that." the lights in the distance. She's grabbed my shoulder. "Let's live here." Uh?

1:05 AM We spent some time scouting out houses that aren't too destroyed. Donnie killed some spiders for me. There's no mattresses, no bed, only the floor. And a couch that was fucking destroyed. But she's laid there on the floor regardless. Sprawled out like it's the comfiest thing in the world. She's not even in her big combat suit, she's raw-dogging it. In her. Dress. Which is not what "raw-dogging" means. She wants me to come to 'bed.' .....I mean, fuck it.

2:08 AM life is kinda cool, sometimes.

9:02 AM Morning. Sunlight, filtered red through what's become of our atmosphere, beams through a broken window. Thank fuck it was broken, as last night was a scorcher. We'd have just left it open anyway. There's a noticeable stain on the floor in the corner of the room Oh yeah, that was last night. And there she is, still asleep. :) Covered in sweat, hair sticking to her face, mouth quivering with snores. God, I love her. This is.. yeah. This is what I've been wanting.

9:09 AM Good morning, cutie. Welcome to awake. "My ass." You slept on the floor! "I see the error of my ways."

9:11 AM We're standing up now. We're awake. "I miss working toilets." Yeah. You know we're not going to find one of those here, right? In this town. "Oh.. I guess I said some things last night." Don't get me wrong! I thought it was really endearing. "I was sick of the day we'd had. I still am sick of the day-by-day trudging along." I can drive us today. "Thanks." So. Just to be clear, we're not staying in this town? "Fuck no. This place sucks."

9:14 AM "..our car is gone." No. "Do you see it?" It can't be gone! The night was dead silent! "But do you know what this means? We have to walk." In this heat! :C "Do we even have water left? Food?" Whatever was left was still in the car, wasn't it? "Fuck!" Are we... are we sure the car's gone? Maybe we parked it in a different shed. We did go looking for other houses after we parked…

9:20 AM No... no, this is it, this is the only shed around here. Which means. Someone came around here when we were asleep and just took it. Which means. We have to walk.

10:20 AM We've been following the roads, the same roads we'd have been driving on. We don't think we have to worry about the police. Hell, it's possible they're the ones who repossessed the car. But if we see them, then we... uhhh. We'll run. I guess. Unless we want to get into a shootout? I'd rather it not come to that. Thankfully, Donnie had brought the rifle into the house last night, in case we had to clear out some zombies. So we still have that. And I still have Tiger Stripes. I've had to get back in the habit of using it again, as there are some wildlife critters out here we don't want to waste ammo on.

11:20 AM I swear the spidercats are learning. They're staying away from us, as they know we don't have any food on us. Meanwhile there's vultures and bugs. Constant fucking bugs. My guitar is covered in dead bugs. I keep trying to scrape them off on the road, but it doesn't matter, as I'm just gonna kill more bugs minutes later. We are so thirsty.

12:20 PM Donnie has taken to singing "A Horse With No Name" to keep her spirits up. She's sung it enough times now that I know the words too. Plants and birds and rocks and things, sand and hills and rings. la laaaa laaaa laa lala laa, lala la... laaa laa…

1:20 PM I miss my Rapture Duck. Evidently those things are still ducks at heart, they won't be found out here in bumfuck heatwave. We.. really need to stop soon.

1:34 PM Taking a break. "Jordan?" Yeah, baby..? "Why are we going west? Sorry, I mean." pant. pant. "Why are we trusting EAT?" It's. The best lead we have right now. "It thought the Ciphers were a good idea." So did we. "And it said it'd find out more about the graffiti. The thing we're walking into." It.. it did. "The potential trap." Potential. "..." she's too tired to argue. or she's just listening. I just. You have to let me trust someone. Please. Even if EAT isn't the right source to count on... like, in trusting it we are performing an overture. Extending. Performing? And I feel like EAT is at least one to appreciate respect. We trust it in this matter. This says nothing about what we think of it in general. Because. We don't know it.. in general. "…" Talk to me, Donnie. Tell me what you're thinking. I trust you too. I trust you more. "No, I'm just thinking... what we actually need is a plan. A plan for what we're doing when we hit California." Oh. We do need one of those. "Because, like. We're not just going to cross the border and then immediately meet whoever's waiting for us. All we know is there's graffiti in California. That's not specific." No, it's not. "So I'll tell you what we need to do. We need to look for EAT." :D!!! "It has lots of bodies, right? We only need to find one, any. That's not as hard as looking for a single person." Yes! "But I want us to avoid the other Fears. We've got a job to do. And that's all." Okay. I'm good with this. "We're already this far. I think it would have made sense to go to California anyway."

1:44 PM Back on the road.

2:20 PM Our luck turned around, as we came upon a car. It was ditched for a reason-- it doesn't work-- but in the trunk were some bottles of water. With renewed vigor, we press on! o:

3:20 PM This still sucks. We think an upcoming hill is going to reveal something new, and it never does. It's all one long road through a desert. A fucking desert! But Donnie's not losing her spirit. Our talk, and that water, keeps her going. So it's A Horse With No Name for us.

3:32 PM this fire is out of control, it's gonna burn this city, burn this city

4:20 PM we can't stop until we reach shelter. every minute I pray we walk into a rabbit hole.

5:20 PM did I ever mention. I don't even like water. and there's some new.. sound in the distance. some kind of thump. thump. thump. I thought it was my heartbeat for a while, but it's external. donnie hears it too.

6:06 PM Wait, hold up. There's fence-posts. Do you see those? We're coming up to fence-posts. And a sign that doesn't look like another "SPEED LIMIT 60." Is this the border?

6:07 PM Someone's up there, off the road and walking onto it. Someone armed. They know we're approaching.

6:09 PM Bald guy in camo and wraparound sunglasses. He's the... Border Patrol. We need to present our passports. I don't.. think I even took my passport out of my house back in England? This is a little silly. What, is there a lot worth guarding in California? Did all of America's living rich people move in and barricade the walls? ...border patrol says yes, literally that. Huh. donnie's asking if he knows of somewhere we can take shelter and get some rest. and there are some. in california. other side of the border. "Not even a guard station? Where do you rest?" "Other side of the border." "This is ridiculous." "The law's the law." yeah. c'mon, donnie. remember, california's a separate country now. they do have the right to do this kind of LITERAL BULLSHIT.

6:10 PM we're walking back the way we came. no, of course we're not gonna walk all the way back. we're gonna get out of sight, then leave the road. ideally, we're gonna look for a rabbit hole. if we have to just cross the border off-road, we will. "we're armed too."

6:28 PM OKAY I ESPECIALLY HATE NOT WALKING ON THE ROAD IT'S SO UNEVEN AND SLOWER

6:33 PM "wait, do you see that?" what. the giraffe? with legs as long as its neck, so its body is halfway up its height. "it's not an apocalypse monster. giraffes normally look like that." wait, really? I could have sworn their neck was longer than their legs. "they wouldn't be able to hold up their weight if that were the case." huh. learn something new every day. so? "so, what's a giraffe doing at the nevada-california border?" ..checking passports? please donnie I can't think straight. "I bet it got here by rabbit hole. as in, I bet there's a hole nearby." let's not just call them 'holes.' that's.. weird.

6:47 PM it happened without warning, as they have tended to lately. a giant portal without a door, walking on and then suddenly we're on a rooftop. a building surrounded by ocean. gargantuan cliffs and a waterfall behind us. a sky full of stars and bright colorful space-clouds. donnie tells me those are called nebulae. the atmosphere is already so refreshing. gone is the stagnant heat, now we are rinsed with cool perspiration. I feel like we can breathe again.

6:48 PM So how did the giraffe navigate this?

6:50 PM Oh dammit. We're gonna have to descend a lot of stairs, as this is a tall building. And as Donnie pointed out to me, it'd be wise to look a little more and find some food before we allow ourselves to pass out.

6:52 PM Lots of mannequins on these floors. Dusty lamps, boxes. This is all some kind of storage. We can't eat mannequins!

6:57 PM oh my god it's a shopping mall. with a food court. "free samples…" oh we're gonna sleep tonight.

7:20 PM only stall that was open was something called Fried Burger. they were asking for a currency we've never heard of (the sign said burgers were Z2). so we just stuffed ourselves with free samples. didn't need to eat a ton. just enough to make us feel tired rather than hungry.

7:25 PM On the way back up the stairs. Someone else must be up here, because some of the mannequins have moved. But we're not stopping.

7:29 PM Rooftop. Cool rooftop. Gorgeous rooftop. I thought this day would never end. No talk, journal. Just rest. God, rest. We need a car...

(Attached is a detail from the Book of Ptah: “By the power of Legsteps, out here in the abyss, I've created writing. Such a discovery, I will be the first to acknowledge, did not seem likely, but perhaps there's some proto-universal constant to be found in linguistics. Or perhaps, more likely, loneliness is to blame for all that is. Is that really so likely? I don't feel lonely. For the first time in millions of years, I am free. I have left, behind me, the contemporary for the instinctive, the true, the all-permeating around. My powers, ancient, are reborn in a hydrogen cauldron. Chemistry no longer seems so quantum, so reliant on observer effects. I create a nose, I inhale, I smell deep space in all its majesty. I create ears, I listen, I hear distant solar flares cackling spells into the abyss. I create eyes, I open, I behold constellations of coincidence-- an astral chalkboard on which I may plot and rediscover arithmetics my memories only cry at. I create a form, I am, I exist. Perhaps I discovered writing so I might set my thoughts in stone. There's certainly a lot to see. Right, I have a body. I smell, I hear, I see, I am. I think. What will I make now? Other than a question. Vanity, I shall make a mirror. Comets, send me your inertia. Planets, give me your gravity. It has been… quite a while since I last created an independent object, and I don't want to blow up a solar system in my rustiness. And so the comets sent me their inertia, and the planets gave me their gravity. A sheet of ice rose, unbounded by dimensions, solidifying with the ordinary temperatures of this corner of space. Still something is missing. It isn't so reflective. I need a star, a real god's forge. ..with an invisible finger I implant on the ice a light touch. It rockets forward at incredible speeds, spiking through a sun, spinning, arcing, tracing a boomerang line in the vacuum, until at last it returns to me and I stop it with a blink. Mirror, vanity is your name. Behold the words on this reflective page! Behold my face, my design, my make. Behold, I create, and I am! …so what will I make next? How about a planet? Much mightier a task for mine eldritch arms. I'll need lots of hydrogen, lots of carbon, and… what goes into making a planet? Now that I stop to think, I don't think I'm too sure. Maybe I should stop and ask for directions. Alright, but before I set off on such a journey, unknown be the people I'll see, I want a walking stick. And so the comets sent me more inertia, and the planets gave me more gravity. A block of wood rose, unbounded by dimensions, and with a fierce crack I bend and break its tendons, hurtling the excess chips into the nearest star (nature's furnace, my workshop's wastebasket). I bend force to wood, I force wood to bend, until at last staring at me with inanimate faceless is my ashplant, my walking stick, SBOMTEN etched effortlessly around its diameter. Timeless rune, a window into who we once were. Characters and phonemes do not match. What does it matter? Wordplay for wandering wizards.")

[PREV LOG] [TABLE OF CONTENTS] [NEXT LOG]

#ogtrib #oh god the rapture is burning #ogtrib act 2

5 notes · View notes