Book Five, Chapter 22: Horrific Events Through the Ages

The Carousel Atlas’ section on rescues was written, or at least rewritten, by Curtis W., who was the same guy whose journal entries in the Atlas told us about Project Rewind.

He proposed a system for rating rescue tropes based on three criteria: Potency, Availability, and Risk (PAR).

I read through the entry in the Atlas aloud so that everyone else could hear.

“Availability is exactly like it sounds,” I said. “It’s how likely, on a scale of one to five, a rescue trope is to work in any given storyline. Potency is about how straightforward and beatable the ‘game’ becomes, with emphasis on the win condition that the rescue trope creates. Risk is a question of the conditions for the rescue trope and whether they favor rescuers or not.”

I continued reading to myself for a little bit, but Antoine interrupted me.

“What kind of conditions are we talking about?” he asked. “Is that talking about the live-to-tell-the-tale part?”

“Yes,” I said. “Rescue tropes with high risk create storylines that are just as dangerous to the rescuers as they are to the people they were rescuing. The ones with low risk: You can fail the rescue, but as long as you don’t die, you’ll be fine.”

Antoine nodded. “Mine must be low risk then.”

In fact, there was a way to check.

Popular rescue tropes had their own small sections. Antoine’s rescue trope was called a Race Against Time. It had a risk of two, a potency of four, and an availability of three.

Kimberly’s rescue trope was A Woman in Mourning. It had an availability of one, a potency of five, and a risk of four.

My rescue trope was not listed. Overall, the Atlas didn’t have much information about Film Buffs.

“I kind of like Dina’s,” I said. “It was a pretty popular one from what I can tell.”

I looked up from the book. She wasn’t there.

“Where’s Dina?” I asked.

“She went downstairs,” Kimberly answered.

For the first time in a while, I put the Atlas down and took a moment to see what the others were doing. Surprise, surprise, they had not been just listening to me with rapt attention. Cassie was trying to use her psychic trope to learn more about the enemy we faced. She was not having a good time.

“I’m sorry,” she said, tears flowing down her cheeks. “I’m trying my best, but it just isn’t working.”

Kimberly comforted her. “There’s clearly something about this storyline that makes scouting it hard,” Kimberly said soothingly. “We’ll figure it out. Don’t you worry.”

But Cassie was worried because her brother’s life was literally on the line.

At that moment, Dina came back upstairs holding a beer with its label torn off, which is how they sometimes appear in movies to obstruct the brand name.

“The creepy guy’s back,” she said.

There was a man who was clearly up to something, but it wasn’t clear what. He would just stare at us anytime we went down to the restaurant. He wasn’t an omen, and he wasn’t an enemy as far as we could tell, but he was unnerving because he wasn’t hiding his staring at all. He was an NPC with a generic title, “Drifter.”

No name other than that.

We had seen him a few times.

“I got something,” Cassie said. “It’s weird, but I’m definitely hearing something.”

Dina stopped and stared as we waited for Cassie to extract as much information as possible from her I’m Blocked trope.

“It’s talking too fast,” she added.

We waited as Cassie listened to something we couldn’t hear.

“Well, I’m going upstairs to get some ice,” Dina said. She went toward the stairs that led up to the roof, and after she was out of the room, Cassie exclaimed, “I lost it!”

Cassie started to cry; her eyeliner was hopelessly smeared.

I didn’t know what was going on with this storyline that we were having such difficulty doing scouting. It was true that whatever tropes the storyline had would apply to the scout’s abilities as if they were in a storyline.

That was likely the reason that the Atlas contained very little scouting information for the story.

If we could just figure out what was going on, we might be able to learn something more. Of course, it would be easier one day when we had lots of players who could contribute.

Back at Camp Dyer, anytime someone needed to scout out a new storyline, they could make the rounds, talking to all the different archetypes they could find with dozens of different scouting tropes that could tell you all kinds of information.

They never let us do that because they wanted us to learn to play the game the old-fashioned way.

After a moment, Dina came back down the stairs and asked, “Why can we not keep the ice scoop in the ice machine?”

“Just use the cup,” Isaac said. “It’s there for a reason.”

In the middle of a town filled with horror stories, the biggest debate going on at the loft was whether the metal scoop we owned should be used in the rice bin or the ice machine. Everyone took sides, and it got messy.

“It’s back,” Cassie said. “I hear it again. It’s just talking so fast.”

“Whatever,” Dina said as she went back upstairs again.

“What are you trying to drink beer with ice?” Isaac asked.

“I want a glass of ice water,” Dina said as she continued walking back upstairs.

Isaac shrugged.

“I lost it,” Cassie said again. This time there were no tears, just resignation.

I started to notice a pattern.

“Dina, come back down here,” I said. “Just for a second, come back down.”

She did just that.

“What?” she asked.

“Cassie, try to use your trope again.”

So, Cassie did.

“It’s working!” she said. “I keep hearing this voice. It’s definitely a voice, but it’s talking so fast I can’t understand it.”

“Now, Dina, go back upstairs,” I said.

Intrigued, she did as I asked.

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Right on cue, Cassie said, “Now I’ve lost it.”

We all stared at each other. Antoine stood and started looking back and forth between Dina and Cassie. He motioned for Dina to come back down.

Cassie, noticing what we were doing, immediately reported that when Dina got back down to the living room, she could suddenly hear the voice again, an unintelligible whisper telling her in some manner or another to stay away.

“What’s happening right now?” Dina asked.

We didn’t exactly have an answer, but I had a hunch.

“Dina, unequip your rescue trope,” I said.

She did so.

Immediately afterward, Cassie said, “The voice is gone.”

We all looked at each other.

I had a theory.

“The base story cancels out psychic tropes,” I said.

That was the only explanation that I could come up with. When Dina was around and a part of the party, so to speak, Cassie’s power was being used to scout out the rescue version of the storyline.

When Dina left, she was scouting out the base version.

“Now, Antoine, try,” I said. Antoine equipped his rescue trope.

We waited a moment for answers to come.

“I’m not hearing anything,” Cassie said.

We looked at Dina.