Book Five, Chapter 57: Baby Steps

We gently wrapped the crybaby’s arms around the coat hooks at the entryway to the loft, both for convenience and practicality. Not to mention style.

If something came along that we needed to know about, we hoped that the baby would cry and tell us. But that was actually a point of confusion—ever since we had gotten the baby, it had yet to cry even once, and we had come close to some tremendous dangers in Carousel since obtaining it.

We did that every day, just walking around.

As I sat eating cream of wheat, one of the only breakfast cereals available at Eastern Carousel General Store, I stared at the baby as it hung from its hooks and wondered what exactly the trope was supposed to do. Fear of the Unknown activated around dangers the user was not aware of, seemingly a catchall.

I scratched my head while I thought about it because I had a theory about why it wasn’t working. If it only worked on dangers you weren’t aware of, that implied that if you were aware of the danger, it just wouldn’t do anything.

I wasn’t the only one who was confused, but I was the only one who was thinking about it that morning—the day after we had purchased it. Everyone else was preoccupied.

We had decided to postpone our journey to the Speakeasy for a day because we wanted to get there around midday, as we had been told that we needed to leave at closing time, whenever that was. So, the sooner we got there in the day, the more time we would have to explore, and more importantly, the longer we would get to put off doing the dangerous endeavor of going to the Speakeasy itself.

We knew, in theory, that this was how Carousel often worked back before the days of Camp Dyer—before everything started coming apart at the seams. You find a problem, you go to a Paragon to get an answer, and you follow their directions, continuously chasing clue after clue until you get your answer.

In a way, our mission was almost mundane by Carousel standards.

We weren’t trying to figure out some grand scheme or understand the nature of Carousel; we were just trying to figure out the name and location of a specific omen. I had to assume that such quests were one of the reasons that Paragons existed in the first place.

Still, as I stared at the baby, waiting for it to start crying, I could feel myself growing nervous because everything we had done seemed to be going a little too well. Maybe it was just the fake tutorial that had given me that anxiety, but the Paragons were helpful, and it felt like we were making progress.

I was waiting for the other shoe to drop.

The others were watching The Strings Attached in the living room. They were all lying down or sitting with their legs crossed scooted up near each other so that they could see the little TV I had purchased from The Bare Wire.

They hadn’t had such a convenient source of entertainment in a long time. We figured that some spoilers were worth indulging the occasional curiousity. Besides, we didn’t plan on sending players to that storyline anyway.

Last night, we had watched Itch, and while we had anticipated we would enjoy it, no one actually had. It was such a source of frustration.

Then we watched Delta Epsilon Delta, and that one was a lot more fun. We got to introduce everyone to Anna and Camden and watch our entire team fumble without knowing how to run a storyline properly yet. Andrew’s team had already run it, so only Cassie, Isaac, and Ramona were spoiled.

My triumphant scene, in which I revealed the killer while stumbling up the stairs, too delirious even to notice the killer was there, was actually quite good—other than the fact that it made no sense for my character to be the one to figure everything out.

I was literally there as a red herring suspect, and it turned out that I was the one to solve everything.

The others complimented me, but all I could think was how silly of a twist that was. It was like the main character changed for the reveal.

This morning’s choice was a bit of a thrill ride.

“Grace was so smart,” Kimberly said as The Strings Attached played. I could see a tear forming in her eye.

The finished film made Grace look like a major genius, and my scene of fighting off possession was one of the best sources of horror in the movie. Carousel had managed to catch the sound of my bones breaking in crisp, wet echoes.

“Can you imagine taking control and running a storyline without any research at all?” I said as I watched her reveal what had happened during that wicked masquerade ball.

“I know, right?” Antoine answered. “They never even let us realize how much trouble we were in.”

Grace was a Detective advanced archetype, originally a Scholar. She had turned what was likely some sort of thriller into a proper mystery, and she had kept all of her teammates in line with the collection of tropes and an abundance of leadership that she had obviously learned from herding her team composed of three Bruisers around.

My little TV allowed me to show the players what I saw in the red wallpaper, and the obvious use of that was showing them all the films we had run that I could see because of my Director’s Monitor trope. So, I was watching the movie both in my mind and with my real eyes.

It was easy. I could do it just by thinking.

I was just glad there wasn’t a delay between them because that would be annoying.

As soon as the movie was over, everyone begrudgingly rejoined the reality of what we had to do that day.

Andrew and I had looked through the Atlas for any references to the bar or a tavern or anything with the word “Speakeasy” in it, and we had struck pay dirt.

The Speakeasy was also a Criminal-Outsider trope. That’s where the establishment itself came from.

It allowed its users to incorporate the aforementioned Speakeasy into any story they ran and explained why the Speakeasy relocated.

There was a whole half-page on the trope written in tiny script by someone whose handwriting looked like typed words—it was so neat and uniform. The Speakeasy trope was really useful, creating a sort of sanctuary that could be used in a variety of ways.

It was a trope fit for an Apocalypse.

It turned out the Speakeasy just happened to exist even when that trope wasn’t being used. Truthfully, there was probably more information about it somewhere in the Atlas, but we had exhausted our abilities to search for it.

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Whatever the case, finding it in the Atlas—even though we didn’t get much information about the downsides of visiting the Speakeasy other than the random warning that things often change in Carousel—did make me feel a lot more secure about visiting it.

But that wasn’t what was on other people’s minds. Not first thing in the morning.

Because after the movie was over, their minds switched back to the crybaby.

Just as mine had been while I was eating my cream of wheat.

So, we had one of our famous 11-person huddles around a table with only six chairs as we planned what we were going to do that day.

“We need to go to the werewolf lair,” Andrew said. “Not discounting our tip about the Speakeasy, I can’t help but think that the crybaby was designed to help us stay safe near a monster lair. Whatever the case, having that answer will make me feel more confident about going into places we don’t understand.”

Michael was on board, as was Lila—but of course they were; they were his teammates.

I found that most people were on board with his detour. Isaac and Cassie obviously agreed with him because they were his brother and sister, and the others seemed open to the idea of returning to the werewolf lair if only to put off the eerie feeling surrounding the Speakeasy for a little bit.

I wasn’t going to argue; the only real downside was the walk.

I had trouble hiding my pessimism over the soundness of the idea.

We had already received another lead to move our little mini-quest further, so if it turned out that the crybaby was all we needed, it would seem like Tar had given us a time-waster—or maybe he was just scripted to tell us about the Speakeasy regardless eventually.

Whatever the case, that was how we found ourselves on the long walk out to the KRSL Powerworks Pavilion that morning.

Andrew volunteered to hold the baby—what a sweetheart.

Again, Lila offered to show us how she could open up sound stages to traverse Carousel safely, but I didn’t go for it, and I couldn’t exactly explain why, other than it made me feel uncomfortable and that I would rather do things my way.

She didn’t seem to take it too hard, but what did I know?

The trip there was uneventful, and the baby didn’t cry once, even as we reached a part of the road where the smaller road up the mountain had been washed out by rain.