Book Eight, Chapter 4: The Mission

Lucky was already there when we arrived at the food court. As distracted as we were by the various exhibits at the zoo, we tried to hurry, dodging every Omen that came in our path.

Funny enough, not all of the Omens had to do with animals in a direct way that I could tell. Some just used the zoo as a setting but were otherwise run-of-the-mill, which was interesting; you don’t see a lot of horror movies set in zoos.

Zoos probably wouldn’t give filmmakers permission for that. They would have to film them guerrilla style.

There was a vibe around the place, like you could turn a corner and end up on a strange continent by accident.

The NPCs at the zoo seemed to be genuinely enjoying themselves, and a lot of the exhibits were nothing but extraordinary animals. There was a termite colony on display that had taken over an entire mansion; you could still see the outline of where the building used to be. I couldn’t find a single Omen attached to it. It was like Carousel found it and was proud of it, so it put it on display.

We walked past the wolf enclosure, which included a worker who had accidentally gotten locked inside the pen and was asking for help. That was an Omen that would result in a strange wolf curse from what I could tell, which was different than a werewolf curse.

Lucky barely acknowledged us when we got there.

His eyes were on an NPC across the food court who walked strangely, as if he wasn’t used to legs. His arms were out in front of him like they were heavier than they should have been, but otherwise, he was an ordinary man, staring at the animals and the people with a smile on his face. He began digging in the trash can and pulled out half a plate of nachos, which he quickly devoured.

Lucky smiled at that.

“No worries,” he said. “There’s an ape in the primates’ habitat that can swap souls with people who make prolonged eye contact. It doesn’t do anything harmful on its own; it just likes to leave the cage every once in a while to see the sights.”

We continued watching the man with him, who was apparently an ape on the inside, as he calmly walked off back toward the primate enclosure. Again, I saw no Omen associated with that, but perhaps the Omen only appeared when the ape was ready to find a body to walk around in.

“So what are we doing here?” Antoine asked, the first to summon the courage to talk to the Narrator.

Lucky was wearing the same clothes he had been the day before. In fact, I got a sneaking suspicion that only minutes or hours had passed for him between these conversations.

“Oh, I’m just watching the apes,” Lucky said as he scanned across all the people in the crowd enjoying themselves. And then he stared at us.

It actually was a great place, but maybe that was because there were so few Omens.

“I had a theory that the reason for Carousel’s little sanctuary for NPCs was this,” he said, waving his arm around at the people. “It wanted to watch people. It wanted to learn how they reacted when they weren’t being scripted, so it could create places like this—places that almost feel real. But I don’t know anymore.”

At that moment, we were standing around awkwardly, but I got closer to Lucky and took a seat on a bench under a shade tree right next to him.

“Do we have to assume that this neighborhood of yours exists for a logical reason?” I asked.

Lucky leaned back in his seat and stared up at the sky.

“We don’t,” he said. “But one does not dissect the mind of God looking for coincidence.”

He then turned his attention to the rest of the group.

“Spread out. Take a seat. You’re safe here, I promise. We didn’t finish the zoo. The Omens here aren’t as aggressive or common as they are in other places—that’s why it looks relatively peaceful here despite the… eccentricities.”

He leaned forward in his chair, and just like that, we were having the conversation. No more awkward pauses. No more talking about Carousel’s grand ambitions.

“I had a group of players once, seven of them. I could rely on them for anything. They did what I said, and they loved Carousel. They enjoyed it in a visceral way, like you might expect a gladiator to. Some of you might understand. They were well-trained, but Carousel didn’t like them as much as they liked it. They didn’t make good stories. They made action. They bloodied things up. But it resisted them because they were unoriginal. I never asked anything different; it didn’t seem so important at the time. They weren’t really playing the game, you see. They were working for me.”

“And then they disappeared,” I said. Having met him before, I knew that he was prone to add backstories and long-winded tangents.

“They did. Not long after they discovered the sanctuary, actually. A neighborhood separated from Carousel proper, where meta-aware NPCs roamed in relative peace. No storylines and no script. Just the occasional monster hunt. Before I could go there myself, Carousel reset and took back most of the control we had. We’re still working on that.”

He let his words hang in the air. The other players were tense. Hearing about the Manifest Consortium was one thing, but when they start talking about the multiversal death game you are trapped in like it’s a malfunctioning machine, it could be unnerving.

“And when we get to this sanctuary for meta-aware NPCs,” Antoine said, “are you hoping that your team will be there?”

“Yes, I do hope so. I was very fond of them. The trouble is, I don’t know how they got there. Finding the sanctuary may be quite difficult. It took long enough the first time, but the first time, they weren’t looking for it.”

That didn’t make a lot of sense, because as far as I knew, pulling the proverbial thread led you in the direction you pulled it.

“Didn’t you say that they were working on a throughline of yours when they disappeared?”

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“They were,” Lucky confirmed. “A through line designed to map Carousel. Unfortunately, such a feat is relatively hands-off for a Narrator. We can’t manipulate elements unless we know what they are. It takes time, more than planning. That’s why my team was fit for the job: they had all the time in the world, and they were disciplined.”

“Are you saying you don’t know how they got there?” Antoine asked. “How could you lose track like that?”

To Lucky’s credit, he did seem fairly tolerant of being talked to like a normal person despite us being mortal.

“It’s easier than you’d think to lose things in Carousel,” he said.

I’d actually put a bit of thought into that even before I knew about Lucky’s situation. One detail of how Carousel worked always intrigued me.

“The time differential,” I said. “You set them to mapping Carousel, and then you just let time move forward, didn’t you? Years pass for them, and you get results quick.”

When I had made my trip over to the other side of the mountain, it was readily apparent that the way time moved was different between Carousel proper and the place that the immortal sorcerers called home. Sometimes, Carousel would be frozen in time while the Manifest Consortium worked, and other times, weeks would pass as players didn’t do anything interesting. Still, to the Consortium, it would be mere minutes.