Arc II, Chapter 47: Reply the Departed, Classic

Antoine laid back on the overstuffed chair I had grown fond of in our time at the hilltop suite that had once been Jedediah Geist’s home. Every few moments, it looked like Antoine was about to get up and go somewhere else, but he didn’t.

We sat and had the same conversation we had been having ever since the second Tutorial storyline. It was going nowhere.

“That’s it,” Antoine finally said as he started to get up, “I’m making myself something to eat. I can’t think about this anymore.”

At last, I had the chance to reclaim my seat.

Or so I thought.

“I ordered room service,” Bobby said, “They make pizza from scratch in the kitchens.”

Antoine plopped back down in the chair. “Thanks, man,” he said.

Bobby nodded.

And so I never did get to sit in that chair again.

What a pity.

We had gone over all of the information we had gathered a half dozen times.

After Lillian Geist made her appearance, we were more certain than ever that the news articles attached to the junior high history display at the Centennial were more than just story flavor. They were some kind of checklist.

Kimberly had written the information we had on the wall with a marker.

• Geist Buys Town (1922): Bartholomew Geist acquires bankrupt township with help of Silas Dyrkon, plans revival.
• Carousel Revival (1924): Geist seeks partners for agricultural, industrial, tourism boost, etc.
• Film Sets & Criticism (1934): Geist family’s film set projects in Carousel face local safety concerns.
• Asylum Project (1964): Cherise Geist’s asylum construction speculated as film set/tax write-off.
• Pageant Win (1972): Lillian Geist wins Miss Carousel, highlighting family’s local influence.
• Factory Fire (1984): No injuries in Geist factory blaze due to upstanding citizen; Bensen Geist plans innovative rebuild.
• Film Set Tragedy (1984): Fatal accident on Geist horror film set kills 4, including Carlyle Geist.
• Manor Blaze (1984): Mysterious fire destroys Geist Manor during event; all family members present affected.

Some of these were just background, but we still knew nothing about the movie sets, the asylum, or the various fires except that they happened.

“When we tell Camden about this, we’re going to pretend we figured it out a lot sooner,” I said.

I pulled my hair as I looked over the info.

“Yeah, everyone else gets to die and we have to play a game,” Antoine said.

Kimberly was still writing things on the wall. She was convinced that if we just saw it all in front of us, we would stop going in circles.

She wrote about the events of The Ten Second Game and Cold Blooded Things. She wrote what the Paragons had told us and what Howard Halle had told me.

“What are we missing?” I said in frustration.

“Are we thinking that Madam Celia was talking about a player or something else?” Kimberly asked. I had told them everything I could remember about my chat with the Psychic.

“I think it’s from the Throughline,” I said. “She was in character when she said it. If she was talking about a player, I don’t think she would have mentioned it at all. She had to be talking about a character in the story, someone who knew about storylines from the sound of it, someone who thought they could change the past by triggering one.”

Kimberly started to write things out on a numbered list.

1. Mystery Woman X changed the past (storyline?)

2. X also wants to save the people who died somehow at the original centennial, where the time capsule is from.

3. Celia tells X to contact Jed’s ghost.

4. X steals the murder weapon.

5. …

6. Continuity loop

7. Thirty years pass

8. Game starts

“What do we know?” Kimberly asked. “She does the ritual?”

“She had to have,” Antoine said. “It would be weird if she didn’t.”

“Which means the fireplace poker was brought here to the hotel,” Dina added. “Where Jed Geist died. But it’s not here now. We’ve torn the place apart looking.”

We had literally torn it apart. The NPCs had to fix it. Everything smelled like paint.

“Why is this mystery person just now showing up?” Cassie asked. “Is there a chance we met her already?”

“If we did, we didn’t talk to her,” Antoine said.

It was really late to introduce an important character. If this person was important, why are we just now hearing about her?

“Is it possible we just aren’t able to beat the Tutorial the first time around?” Bobby asked. “That’s something Carousel might do. The first storyline told us barely anything about the Throughline, and the second one was designed so that the Throughline information could be skipped, too.”

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No one wanted that to be true, but it did make sense. Carousel’s first storylines were designed to be beatable without learning important plot points.

“I hate it when demonic interdimensional towns play tricks like that,” Isaac said. “It’s just not neighborly. Worse than that, it’s cheating. I’m starting to think all those protestors are right. We really should have a recall election. The leadership in this town is lacking.”

Would Carousel flat-out cheat? If the information Celia had was necessary for a player to learn, then newcomers couldn’t possibly get it because it cost money to do the reading. They would have to play through twice.

“Why cheat, though?” Kimberly asked. “New players are going to be so freaked out they have no chance of solving it. Why hide things like this?”

“It’s a fool who looks for reason in the mind of a cosmic entity,” Isaac said.

It felt like we were missing something essential.

“Alright,” I said. “We thought about it from a story perspective. How about a game perspective?”

“We did talk about that,” Isaac said. “Carousel cheats.”

Isaac could sometimes get caught in cycles of evangelizing cynicism.

“We technically cheated too,” Bobby said, “I doubt any players in the history of the game were set up as well as we were to win.”

We did have experience. We knew what we were getting into. Project Rewind had set us up to win and the Atlas often made questions of gameplay knowledge trivial.