Book Five, Chapter 24: Before the Rescue

I stood in the living room area of the loft next to Antoine and Kimberly. We had taken days off, but knowing the task that lay ahead, there was only so much relaxing that we could do.

The storyline, Itch, taunted us.

No matter how much work we put into it, we never felt like we were learning enough. But at the end of the day, we were never going to escape Carousel without taking risks.

“Right now,” I said, “I see Itch as being a science fiction movie.”

“So you don’t think the werewolves are involved?” Bobby asked. ” Werewolves usually aren’t strictly science fiction. Itch does sound like the title of a werewolf movie.”

I was in agreement with that; I imagined that growing fur would be very itchy.

“I don’t think so,” I said. “I have a few reasons. First, we have no explanation for what happened to the remaining two members of Andrew Hughes’ team. Our working theory is that they were killed by whatever lies in the monster’s lair, which we think are werewolves. So, if they were killed by the werewolves, and the werewolves are a part of Itch, then they should show up as potential rescues for that movie, but they don’t.”

The Atlas was clear that if you got killed by monsters outside of a storyline, you could be rescued from the storyline those monsters were originally from.

“Also, the poster for Itch was some kind of control panel, like for a computer from the ’80s. I don’t know what that means, but that doesn’t seem like werewolves. But most of all, right now, we’re pretty sure that the base story of Itch doesn’t allow psychic powers, and I have a hard time imagining a werewolf story where psychics couldn’t exist.”

Of course, it was always possible that there was just a very powerful psychic trope that canceled out other psychic powers, but there were a million possibilities. I just had to make my best guess.

“Well then, that opens back up the question of how science fiction works in Carousel,” Bobby said.

This type of subject was something that Bobby liked to talk about. We had both been working to try and find our way through the Carousel Atlas as best we could. When it came to things like genre, the problem wasn’t that there wasn’t enough information—it was that there was too much information, and it was spread out all throughout the Atlas.

The first thing we wanted to know was exactly how technology lined up with the year the storyline was supposed to be set. We were aware that Carousel was more or less organized by date. We had been hauled up and down time enough to know that.

The period that was supposed to look like 1960 was called Carousel 1960, and sure enough, all of the stories from that era looked like they took place at the appropriate time.

But then, how would science fiction work?

Would we have to wait until 2198, when technology really started to pop off?

The answer was no.

Science fiction seemed to be the biggest counterpoint to the charade of Carousel’s timeline. The Atlas referenced things that just did not exist in the time periods their stories were set.

We found references to ray guns and teleportation, as well as genetic advancements like those we had seen during our fake tutorial, that just could not possibly exist in our world, even in modern times, and yet they existed in stories set in the ’80s, ’90s, or even further back.

If Itch was science fiction, we had no way of knowing what to expect.

“Another point for Itch being science fiction and not werewolves,” Antoine added, “is that there were no forests or woods, right?”

I looked at him for a moment and nodded. My location scout ability had not given any locations that involved a natural landscape of any kind. It appeared that the story took place inside a building with hallways, control rooms, and storage areas.

Of course, Antoine intentionally pointed out that there were no woods because he wanted to go on this rescue, and he knew I was hesitant to support him if there was a chance he would have another episode.

“The whole thing takes place inside, right?” he asked.

I reluctantly nodded. “It would appear that way,” I said. “Noting explicit, at least. Of course, I am missing information because Location Scout wasn’t giving the best information.”

My Savvy was good, but it wasn’t exactly my dominant stat; it was more tied with Moxie and Hustle.

“So, what else is there to discuss?” Dina asked. “We have literally talked ourselves around in circles on this subject. We either need to do it or move on to something else.”

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

Dina was never really big on discussion or talking things through. When we talked about going on Itch, her contribution was, “When are we leaving?”

I gazed around the room at our little group of friends. We still looked like squatters because we had no furniture, and yet we had all made ourselves comfortable on the floor or in fold-up chairs.

“We need to figure out who’s going,” I said.

In the pit of my stomach, I knew there was no good answer, but I was hoping someone would come up with one.

“We know that because of Dina’s rescue trope, we’re all going to be background characters,” I said. “We don’t know if that means we’ll be off-screen the entire time—we just have no idea. And we also know that because it’s a rescue story, some tropes just basically won’t work. So that needs to go into account for who we bring, what tropes we bring.”

Antoine took in a big breath and walked forward.

“I know that Cassie and Isaac were hoping to go,” he said.

He looked at them, and they nodded.

“We need to save Andrew,” Cassie said.

This was one subject that Isaac didn’t joke about.

“So, I think what we have to do,” Antoine said, “is bring everybody. We have to bring all of our top players, and we can’t leave anybody behind. I know you were talking about only bringing five players,” he said, looking at me, “but I just don’t see how that could work.”