Book Five, Chapter 50: Sensitive Measures

It was incredible how life could move forward so quickly and yet seemingly stay the same.

Days earlier, we had completed our first rescue. Before we could be satisfied with our success, we had to worry about the whole Lila fiasco.

But then I woke up one day not so long after, and she was in the kitchen making eggs for everyone.

It was a special morning for me because I woke up to the sound of laughter from a few rooms away. That hadn’t happened in a long while, maybe not since Camp Dyer.

As I opened my eyes, I smiled—not because I heard the joke, but because I could tell the atmosphere was improving. Just by adding three new players, we were building our own little camp.

After I got out of my room and did my morning routine, I came into the living room and figured out what they were all laughing at.

“Kimberly, I’m telling you, you have to sign on to this movie if you’re looking for something new, something you’ve never done. And you have never done it because it is complete nonsense. No one knows what’s happening, and everyone will say it’s smarter than it is just because it’s confusing, and you’ll get accolades if you succeed. Of course, if you fail, I may not be able to take your calls anymore. That’s just business, dear. You understand. If you pull it off, though, it will instantly elevate your career—just don’t answer reporters’ questions about the plot because then they’ll know you’re in over your head.”

It was Kimberly’s fake talent agent, Sal. He was always good for a laugh.

“Of course, if you do decide to take it, just know it is going to be one of the biggest acting challenges of your life, and there’s a very real chance it might not score well with audiences. Keeping the timeline straight will be difficult for everyone, including the screenwriter,” Sal said. “But at the end, all that matters is that you beat the bad guy, right? That’s how these movies go. I’m told, though, that it does have some pretty squeamish scenes. But if you’re very lucky, you won’t be in any of them.”

Timeline and squeamish scenes? I knew immediately which movie Sal was talking about.

“Well, anyway, sweetheart, that’s all I have to say. If you have any more questions, please be sure to call,” Sal said.

Kimberly said her goodbyes and hung up the phone. As I walked further into the room, I saw that Andrew, Antoine, and most of the others were hovering around the kitchen table, listening to Kimberly’s call.

“We should have recorded that,” Andrew said. “We should have recorded all of the various calls to see what differences there were. Are we able to call again?”

He was discovering the incredible potential of her scouting trope.

“Yeah,” Kimberly said. “He doesn’t seem to remember past phone calls. He’s always happy to hear from me.”

I had slept in by a few hours. It seemed like they were already getting to work while eating cheesy eggs.

If there was one thing Eastern Carousel General Store had, it was eggs.

“Post-Traumatic?” I asked. We were always looking for new information about that storyline because one day, we were going to rescue our friends from it.

Kimberly nodded. “My rescue trope works on it, we think. So does Antoine’s,” she said. “Sal kind of references them.”

“He didn’t have as much to say about mine, though,” Antoine added. “That might mean it’s a higher level.”

We had discovered that if Kimberly asked her agent about a storyline while one of us had a rescue trope equipped, then Sal would talk about the altered rescue version instead of the original.

It was helpful to compare them.

“Did you get any good info?” I asked. They all looked at each other, tilting their heads, shrugging their shoulders—that sort of thing.

“It’s pretty high level,” Antoine said. “We didn’t get much—not much more than we already knew.”

Bummer. That was pretty much what always happened with Post-Traumatic.

I decided to help myself to the last remaining cheesy eggs in the pan—at least the part that hadn’t gone crusty yet. Then I walked over to them, scooping the eggs into my mouth right off the paper plate.

“I have an idea,” I said.

“And what’s that?” Antoine asked.

“We’ll need to take a walk,” I said.

I had a theory for learning things about Post-Traumatic, but unlike Kimberly, I couldn’t do it from a long distance. I had to be looking at the omen itself.

The airport was about halfway between downtown and eastern Carousel, so it was not a bad walk, but definitely not a short one. The roller rink, which occasionally disappeared, was right next to the airport. That was the omen we were after.

Lila had offered to open up some sound stages for us to travel through, but as cool as that sounded, from the way she described it, it was also a lot more walking.

I figured the faster we were done with this, the better. So, we walked in one big group out of the more densely populated part of Carousel into the more small-town outskirts.

The street looked like any street that could be found in any small town back home—or, heck, probably anywhere in the real world. Except this one brought back memories.

As we were walking past a neighborhood that was probably middle to lower-middle-class, I spotted a structure in the backyard of one of the houses. It was a shed.

Even without all of the black snow all over the ground, I recognized it.

That was Reggie’s shed.

That was as far as he had been able to make it into the black snow, as far as I could tell—but then again, I only got to watch the trailer for the apocalypse, not the whole thing.

When the Black Snow Apocalypse had been sent—for whatever reason it had been sent—Reggie Vargas, a bruiser, one of the vets at Camp Dyer and member of the Bowlers team, had sacrificed himself to help Anna and Camden get into a storyline so that they would not die from the apocalypse.

Anna had made sure to note his sacrifice in her letter to us, which was attached to the back of Silas, the mechanical showman.

One day, we would be able to rescue Anna and Camden and make his sacrifice worth it. I hoped we would rescue him, too.

A flood of memories came over me of the Bowlers and how they helped make Camp Dyer seem so normal. Grace loved to cook and was whip-smart, keeping her team of Bruisers in line against all odds.

Of course, they were all gone now.

I had seen Reggie’s fate—or at least part of it—thanks to my Coming to a Theater Near You trope. I had seen him bunker down in that shed.

“Is it an omen?” Antoine asked as he caught me staring.

I shook my head. “We’re almost there,” I said. I didn’t need to share that sad memory with them again.

As we crested a small hill, the tiny Carousel airport appeared in the distance. Far before it was the corner lot where the roller rink stood. It was blinking like normal—sometimes existing, sometimes nothing more than a large pit in the earth.

“All right, everyone,” I said. “I’ve never messed around with this before, but we’re going to try to be as scientific as possible.” I looked back down at the roller rink and then cleared my throat. “We’re going to take all of the highest-level players we have—that’s me, Antoine, Kimberly, Bobby, and Andrew. The rest of you, stay up here. Lila and Isaac, keep your eyes out for omens.”

I had explained my plans briefly. Still, most of them looked either on edge or terrified to be out in Carousel Proper without protection.

With that, we split up. Those who I grouped with myself walked down the hill toward the roller rink, and the rest stood there watching.

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“Exactly how far apart do we have to be for this to work?” Antoine asked.

“Just a bit further, I think,” I said.

The establishment’s name was Carousel Roller Daze. Its design and decor were like something from another decade, but that made sense, as Post-Traumatic was a time travel horror movie.

I kept my eye on the red wallpaper. My I Don’t Like It Here trope gave me a rough estimate of how difficult a storyline was, but that estimate was based on my current party. I had a hunch it wasn’t just about pure levels. I thought it factored in everything, like Archetypes or equipped tropes.

We were about to find out.

Ever since we had figured out that Kimberly’s talent agent trope could give a different answer depending on what tropes were equipped, I had been wondering if we could use the same thing for my scouting trope.

I had collected all of the highest-level players. As we walked further down the hill, I became confident that we had finally separated from the others enough that my reading would be just about us and not include the players at the top of the hill.

I looked at the flickering roller rink and stared at its poster on the red wallpaper.

Post-Traumatic registered as This Is Scaring Me, which was one of the most dangerous levels that my trope would tell me.

Of course, I was mostly guessing based on the innate fear and anxiety that my trope gave me, but I was pretty confident that this was a very dangerous storyline. It wasn’t the most dangerous, but it was a contender—we were easily out-leveled by ten plot armor or more.

“Kimberly, equip your rescue trope.”

She quickly did.

The difficulty increased. Not only could I see it jump all the way to Get to the Car Now!, but I could feel it getting more difficult in an instant—perhaps because I was focused on it.

The anxiety hit me in the back of the neck, and I subconsciously stretched my shoulders, contorting myself, trying to ease the stress.

“So it obviously got more difficult,” I said, “but it’s always going to do that for a rescue trope. Could you unequip it?”

Kimberly nodded and did as I asked.

Unfortunately, the storyline was so much stronger than us that this exercise might have been in vain. It was difficult to tell how much more challenging this storyline would be when it was already topping out the meter.

“Antoine,” I said.