Book Five, Chapter 141: The Standing Ovation

The credits began to roll, intercut with footage from security cameras showing the characters from the story.

It showed Anna, Camden, and Gabriel walking out of the roller rink safely—because, of course, for every disaster, there was another reality where the disaster never happened.

There was footage of Kimberly and Logan at some speaking event for the museum system, and then there was security footage of Bobby walking his dogs while on patrol.

I saw footage I didn’t understand at first of an older janitor in a museum sweeping up. He turned and stared up at the security camera curiously, as if he had never seen one before. It was Grant Leitner—a version of Grant Leitner who had never become Generation Killer—still working as a custodian at a museum. That was a fun way to show my Lake Dyer plan had worked. The meteor wasn’t found in time for him to steal it.

There were a few other clips, but I didn’t have time to focus on them because as soon as the main film ended, a room full of immortals all turned their heads to look at me.

I didn’t know what to expect from them. Perhaps I was being naïve when I hoped for them to be… I don’t know; “impressed” wasn’t the right word. Maybe I just wanted them to realize they had underestimated us—to realize they were wrong.

But they looked absolutely thrilled.

No, it wasn’t “thrilled”—that was the wrong word.

They looked entertained.

They actually started to clap.

To them, we had not just overcome our destruction against all odds. I had just done some sort of flourish.

For some reason, that really sat wrong in my gut. That wasn’t a performance—I was fighting for my life and the lives of my friends—and yet they were acting like I had just made my assistant disappear or pulled a rabbit out of my hat.

What was it they say about the banality of evil?

For some reason, the applause caught me off guard, and I didn’t say anything.

Luckily, Vincent St. Vane was apparently always ready with words.

“Riley Lawrence, ladies and gentlemen! The Film Buff!” he said aloud, speaking over the applause. “Riley Lawrence,” he repeated, staring into my eyes with a devilish grin.

The worst part was that I didn’t think he was faking it. I thought he was actually happy, in a strange way—not because he cared whether we lived or died, but because he found it fun to watch. He didn’t feel defeated or proven wrong.

“The Party of Promise, indeed,” he said.

The applause didn’t last forever, but it did overstay its welcome.

I was at a loss for words.

“The next time we see you,” St. Vane said, “I hope it will be after a long journey westward, filled with trials and tribulations and many more victories. But your time here is at an end.”

He wanted this whole thing to be over. I had ruined his press conference.

“So many things to say and so little time to say it in. Do you have any last words?” he asked. The crowd laughed as if that was a joke.

What are you supposed to say to the multiversal immortal society that watches you struggle through a death game for their own entertainment and profit?

I must have been behind on the etiquette. Even Kimberly would be stumped here.

I turned to the crowd of journalists behind me, each of them pushing their little handheld microphones out toward me.

I put the camera back in my pocket and considered taking the hole puncher I had lifted from the supply room and using it on the ticket around my neck. But then I feared that I might not get to keep it if it was in my hand whenever my soul returned to my real body.

“We are real people. We’re not characters,” I thought to say to the journalists, but then I saw the unnerving mosaic of their unsympathetic, aloof, yet cheery expressions staring back at me in each of those people.

I stopped speaking and just stared for a moment. I realized, so suddenly, that I wasn’t going to break through to them.

It wasn’t that they didn’t recognize my humanity—it was that they thought humanity wasn’t so big of a deal. These people had seen their own worlds end in tragedy or mystery. How could you say to the sole immortal survivor of a human race from an entire universe that they should care about a few measly humans from a world they didn’t even know?

That’s what the Manifest Consortium was, right? The few winners of immortality from the Sweepstakes from across an untold amount of worlds.

They didn’t see my existence as terribly important. They had seen my plight a million times in a million different ways.

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

They were looking right through me.

There was no convincing them. There was no reasoning. To them, I was just a character.

And if I was going to be a character, I couldn’t plead for mercy, that would make most of them dislike me. If I needed anything, I needed fans, not sympathizers.

So I decided to take a different tact.

“Do not abandon us,” I said loudly. “I know it may seem like the odds are unbeatable, but I just have one thing to say to you—whoever is watching this, whoever thinks that victory is impossible: don’t bet against us. If we have to beat the game at Carousel to go home, that is what we will do. Do not bet against us.”

People cheered around the room.

These people would have liked the WWE.

Voices started to ring out from around me—from employees and journalists alike—warning me that I needed to go back to my real body before the movie ended. The credits weren’t going to last that long.

Not wanting to use my own hole puncher for fear of losing it, I walked up to the nearest journalist, grabbed hers from her belt, and pulled it toward my ticket. It was attached by a retractable tether. The lady reminded me of April O’Neil. She looked me in the eyes while I did it with a strange smile like she thought I was coming onto her.

I gave one last look back at Vincent St. Vane—God, that could not possibly be his real name. Of course, it wasn’t. He was the proprietor of a horror attraction. Vincent St. Vane was a good name for that.

I moved the hole puncher over the word Disillusion and hoped I had gotten enough information to satisfy our curiosity, so that we could move forward. Then I clicked the hole puncher down.

My body collapsed to the ground and rapidly began to deteriorate into stardust. Did it usually do that?

The reporters around me excitedly started describing what they had just seen—what events had just unfolded.

“An incredible display of cunning,” they said.

“A feisty scream against the dark eternity of Carousel,” they said.

Because, of course, it was Carousel who was the enemy. Not them. They were just there to watch. To sell their merch. To search Carousel for the answers they thought mattered.