Book Five, Chapter 107: Post-Traumatic

🔴 REC   SEP 13, 2018 15:47:36    [▮▮▯▯▯ 40%]

“Get that damn camera out of my face!” a voice screamed into my ear.

All I could think about was the sensation of falling and the sudden realization that I had hit the ground.

I was sitting down—but I wasn’t out on the asphalt or down in the dirt. I was in the passenger seat of a truck, like a U-Haul truck, and the front of it had gotten messed up.

It took me a moment to get my bearings and realize we were tilted, but when I did, I heard the voice again.

“I said, get the camera out of my face!” the voice said.

I suddenly realized the person was speaking to me—and that I did indeed have a camera in their face. It was a nice camera, portable, high-tech, and strapped to my left hand.

The truck driver, an NPC named Earl, was next to me, and he was not pleased.

I turned the camera forward so that it wasn’t filming him anymore and looked at my situation. Earl had driven the truck down into the pit where the roller rink had once been, and somehow, I had gone with him.

Earl was not happy with me, but he was even less happy with himself.

“I don’t know what just happened,” he said. “I didn’t mean to do that.”

“We’re all right,” I said. “Everything’s gonna be fine.”

I didn’t know if that was true, but it felt like the thing to say.

I opened my door and crawled out onto the pit’s dirt, instinctively filming as I went. Looking back at the way we had come, I could see the clear path where the truck had turned off the road and down into the dirt.

Up ahead of us, the front end of the moving truck had hit a dirt embankment, and that had put a stop to us. I backed away, climbing up out of the pit and filming the surroundings as I went.

I didn’t even notice I was On-Screen until I was almost out and up onto the road.

Earl came after me with his head in his hands, apologies pouring out of his mouth one after another.

“I thought I saw a parking lot,” he said.

I didn’t comment on that but tried to reassure him.

It wasn’t long before an SUV pulled up on the road next to where we had turned off into the pit. Kimberly was driving, and Logan was in the passenger seat. She put it in park, got out, and started asking what was going on.

“Is everyone okay? Is anyone hurt?” she asked.

I patted myself down and then called out, “I’m fine. How about you, Earl?”

He held up a thumbs-up, but I could see the worry on his face as he broke into apologies toward Kimberly.

“I’m so sorry, Miss Madison. I could have sworn I saw a parking lot. I was going to pull in and wait for you all to catch up.”

And then he kept apologizing like a man about to lose his job.

“Earl, it’s alright. Accidents happen,” she said as she got closer to us and started visually checking to make sure we weren’t injured.

Logan was out of the SUV and down into the pit with us soon after Kimberly. He didn’t seem as concerned with our health or well-being.

“We’ve been in possession of those artifacts for all of seven minutes, and we already dropped them in a hole,” he said as he started racing down into the pit toward the moving truck.

He looked back up at me and said, “Stop filming and go grab the manifest.”

I went toward the SUV, taking a few moments to look through it. It was filled with small wooden crates—the kind museum exhibits might be contained in. I found the manifest, which listed different artifacts.

It wasn’t anything fancy, just the kind of stuff you’d expect to see in a jailhouse museum: various paintings related to the history of the place, some personal effects of judges and prisoners known to be connected to the jailhouse—that sort of thing.

The manifest also listed the flight all this cargo had just gotten off of. I looked down the road and saw the airstrip. Putting two and two together, I realized our characters must have just picked all of this up.

On my way back down into the pit with the manifest, I passed Kimberly, who was comforting Earl. Then, I worked with Logan as we sorted through the crates in the back of the moving truck to make sure nothing was broken.

It was only a few minutes after we started that I had the presence of mind to look at the camera.

On the red wallpaper was a trope—not a player trope like the items we had recently come across after the tutorial. It was one of those old-fashioned tropes like we’d seen on the Astralist’s death machine.

The trope was called Found Footage, and its description was simple: Press record to go On-Screen. Press stop to go off.

I thought I’d give it a test. I looked at the panel on the side of the camera, found the button that said “stop,” and…

■ STOP

🔴 REC    SEP 14, 2018 09:23:15    [▮▮▮▮▮ 100%]

We were in one of the jailhouse’s offices, which had been completely renovated to look like a modern workspace. One huge section contained a workbench with various crates holding the artifacts we had brought from the airport.

That was Logan’s space. He stood in front of me, examining an old pair of shackles—or at least that’s what he was trying to do.

“Can you tell us who you are and what you do?” I asked, holding the camera out toward him. I held it steady using Hustle.

He kept his eyes on the shackles, moving them around with his gloved hands. Reluctantly, he spoke.

“My name is Logan Maize. I am the historian here. I focus on researching and preserving the history of this building and its role in the town’s justice system. My specialty is local history, and I work with records and artifacts to make sure the past is documented accurately. That’s about it.”

“Can you tell us about what you’re working on right now?” I asked.

He stared at me blankly for a moment, then said, “This is a pair of shackles. These were alleged to have been stolen from the body of Calvin Monroe after he was hanged in town square over a hundred and fifty years ago. We can’t verify that, but I can at least ensure that these are authentic to the era.”

He turned his eyes back to the shackles and continued examining them carefully.

“What do you like most about working here?” I asked.

He placed the shackles back down on his workbench, looked at me very seriously, and said, “I appreciate the professional atmosphere that allows me to focus on the tasks I’ve been assigned. I don’t like constantly being pestered for videos on social media.”

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He turned back to the shackles.

I continued to record him, and he ignored me.

“Just pretend that I’m not here,” I said.

He looked back up at me and started laughing, the whole thing a joke between us.

■ STOP

I had some time to figure out how the camera worked. I could take things around me On-Screen by recording them, but that didn’t change the normal way that On-Screen and Off-Screen worked.

If Carousel had better ideas about what should be On-Screen, my camera would stop recording.

On the other hand, I found that some scenes simply wouldn’t start unless I was recording. This camera wasn’t simply a prop.

It was fun to fool around with, but it was very clear to me that this whole gimmick was designed as an obstacle.

And it would certainly be one.

🔴 REC    SEP 14, 2018 10:12:46    [▮▮▮▮▮ 100%]

“My name is Kimberly Madison. I am the director and acting curator of the Carousel Museum of Crime and Justice, also known as the Carousel Jailhouse Museum. Right now, you’re watching as we transform this historical location into an active place of learning.

This is the original jailhouse, courthouse, and police station of the town of Carousel and the county seat of Carousel County. A great deal of history happened within these walls.”

She stared at me, waiting for another question.

“Well, not the original jailhouse, police station, or courthouse,” I said.

Kimberly smiled. “No, not the original, but the jailhouse was built on the exact same cornerstone as the original jailhouse at the Carousel settlement founded in 1718 before the original town was wiped out by the Carousel Valley Meteor Strike in 1742. So, in some ways, this is the original jailhouse.”

The history of Carousel was as liquid as a cat lying in a sunny spot.

There was an exhibit about the meteor strike. It had destroyed the whole original town of Carousel.

The town was refounded forty years later.

“Can you talk about the sordid history of crime in Carousel and what someone might be able to learn about it by coming to the museum?” I asked.

Kimberly looked past the camera and at me, her displeasure evident in her eyes.

“Well, the focus of the Museum of Crime and Justice is on the positive history of the courts and police officers who have kept Carousel citizens safe. But we would be remiss not to include artifacts and historical anecdotes related to Carousel’s darker history. After all, many of the most notorious criminals in our history came right through this jailhouse.”

“They used to keep prisoners who were marked for death in the cells beneath us, didn’t they?” I asked.

“Yes. Pretty much every prisoner who was executed in Carousel had to stay at this jailhouse.”

I wasn’t supposed to emphasize the darker history of Carousel, so Kimberly was eyeing me harshly.