Book Five, Chapter 133: The Scientist

There were no security guards, no real fences, nothing to protect the building from someone trespassing except, perhaps, the remote locale.

The paved trail leading away from the building disappeared into the inky darkness of the woods.

For a moment, I just people-watched as I planned my next move.

The ironic part of this stealth mission was that I had just the item that should have made it easy. I had the magical masquerade mask I had taken from The Strings Attached. It wouldn’t make me undetectable, but it would make people ignore my face.

Unfortunately, magical items from one story did not work in another unless the second story was also magical. Post-Traumatic, for all of its hand wavy physics, was not a magic storyline. The mask wouldn’t work. It didn’t even seem to have the strange mystical quality it usually did when I looked at it. It was just a mask. I shoved it back in my pocket.

Since there were people wearing my hoodie for some reason, I felt a lot less worried about getting caught. Maybe that was foolish, but at the very least, the sight of me in the distance wouldn’t trigger any alarms—unless, of course, they could see me on the red wallpaper where I couldn’t see them.

This whole endeavor was a risk. I just had to make it worth it.

A whistle blew, loud and clear, across the courtyard, and all the masses of people—the huddles of social groups—started to move back toward the various doors leading into the building.

It occurred to me that, the way these people walked, it didn’t look like they were headed back in after some intermission in for the film they were watching, as I had first suspected. Instead, I got the impression that they were just going back to work.

It didn’t make a difference to me.

I started following along at the back of the pack. I couldn’t just re-enter the backstage area—I would get lost quickly trying to explore it. I needed to enter the main building. Now that I knew this was the entrance to Carousel players were meant to take, I had hoped there would be some information booth or something similar that could explain our situation in ways that hadn’t already been done.

As I walked along, I observed a man throw a newspaper into a garbage receptacle.

A newspaper could be very useful.

I casually followed behind and quickly reached down into the receptacle, grabbing the paper.

Before I unfolded it, I noticed a section of the paper titled Carousel By the Numbers, which read as follows:

455 years since First Contact
387 years since Colonization
138 years since the First Game
68 days since Carousel’s Revolt
34 years experienced by current Players
2 Resets
284 Resting Dead
5 Rescued Souls
13 Players Left Alive

I read those numbers twice, trying to digest them. 68 days since Carousel’s revolt? 34 years to the players?

I knew time was inconsistent here but that was an overwhelming disparity. I felt like I was kicked in the chest.

Before I could get a good look at the paper, I heard a voice from behind me call out:

“Young man, do you think you might help an old woman to the entrance?”

I froze.

My first thought: did she just see me pull that newspaper out of the trash can?
My second thought: does she recognize me? Has all of this been for nothing?

It’s strange how priorities can be out of order before you have time to think about them. My instincts were more concerned about looking like a hobo.

I shoved the newspaper into my pocket, where it fell into the subspace along with everything else I carried. This body really was a good duplicate.

I turned and saw an older woman with dark gray hair—almost black—put up into a bun. She wore a tan overcoat and a silk scarf.

And while I was expecting a feeble woman, that is not what I saw. She stood tall with an air of confidence.

Still, I weighed my options. Running away might not have been the best move. I didn’t know if she recognized me, and if I did run—well, that would create suspicion.

But how could she not recognize me? She was standing so close.

I had to make a judgment call based on nothing but my own people skills and Moxie. Which was to say, I had to make a judgment call based on my Moxie alone.

Would Moxie even work against these people?

“Certainly,” I said.

She was a young sixty, I determined—not the age that generally needed assistance. When magic was involved, I needed to be prepared for anything.

She walked closer to me, and I extended my arm for her to grab onto. I noticed that she did have a slight stiffness in her walk, but nothing close to a disability. Otherwise, how would she have gotten to where she was?

The building was so huge, and when she said the entrance, she meant the large entrance at the center of the Crescent, which meant we legitimately had a mile to walk.

“A lovely evening,” she said matter-of-factly.

“Yes,” I said. “I’m glad to have picked up this sweatshirt.”

Smooth.

We started to walk.

“I saw that they were selling those in the gift shop,” she said. “Do you know why?”

“People will spend money on anything,” I said.

By that point, I was confident that she knew who I was. But I also, strangely, felt at ease. If she was going to sound the alarm, wouldn’t she have already? She didn’t seem threatening. She seemed curious.

Would there even be an alarm for this sort of thing? Was I actually breaking any rules?

I had spent a great deal of my life back in the real world paralyzed by imagined social red tape. Was I being dramatic to expect these people to respond poorly to my presence?

“Yes, they do love memorabilia,” she said. ” I tell you that is all our culture cares about anymore. We are obsessed with the worlds that could have been. Carousel has never been more popular across the Manifest Consortium. It would seem that this recent crisis has made celebrities out of low-worlders who have no idea what it is they have stumbled into.”

She spoke with a reserved manner. A pleasant manner.

“I’ll say,” I said.

We walked across the cold grounds. I was ready at any minute to flee.

There was no point in being clever—I had no idea what I was up against.

Were these people sorcerers? They had to be something like that.

Running felt pointless, so I would try to use my words instead.

“I imagine the worst part is just not knowing what is going on,” I said. Even if she knew who I was, I wasn’t going to admit it first.

“You imagine?” she asked with a smile I could see out of the corner of my eye. “Yes, I imagine the same,” she said. “Normally, players arrive in Carousel through those gates behind us. For them, it’s easy. They arrive and are immediately met with explanations and guidance.”

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“What kind of guidance are they given?” I asked.

“They’re told that they’re in a game, first of all, and often they are given a choice of narrator to follow. You see, that is the true gift. Narrators have their own aspirations and ambitions, so when they recruit players, they can help them as they see fit. The company cannot help players—not especially. That help would be seen as unfair. It is quite a conundrum.”

She was talking about Carousel’s weird rules.

“Why would the company’s help be different than the Narrators’?” I asked.

The woman didn’t speak for a moment, but then she asked, “Why do you think that might be?”

“Because the narrator is getting help from the players, so helping them in return isn’t unfair—not by Carousel’s standards,” I said. “But that’s just my guess. Does the company not benefit from the players’ help?”

She took a soft breath.

“It certainly benefits from the players,” the woman said. “But I wouldn’t call it fair. Look at this,” she said, pointing to a large statue in the center of the courtyard.

The statue was enormous and featured a man in Victorian clothing—at least as best I could tell—standing amongst a sea of monsters.

We walked closer until we could see the plaque commemorating it.

The plaque simply said: The Proprietor tames the evils of Carousel.

I stared up at the statue and saw the various monsters depicted. The man—the Proprietor, apparently—held out his hand as if telling them to stop, as if he were directing traffic, and all of the monsters backed away in anguish and fear.

I recognized some of those monsters. One of them was Benny, the haunted scarecrow.

“The Proprietor. The man in violet lights. Have you met him?” I asked.

“Oh, yes,” she said as she stared up at the statue. “Yes, this captures his likeness, if nothing else. Come along, dear, it is quite cold.”

We walked around the side of the statue toward the doors.

As we got closer, I started to notice large posters had been placed around the walls near the entrance.

She noticed I was looking at them.

“You’ll recognize Silas Dyrkon,” she said.

Actually, I hadn’t. But moments after she mentioned his name, I found the poster. He was unmistakable with his dark demeanor and strong features.