Book Five, Chapters 137 & 138

I was overwhelmed, but I continued forward—not because of my mission or even the implications of my findings on our survival.

I moved forward out of pure curiosity.

Having given up on the stairs as a method of ascending the tower, I found myself in an elevator, simply moving from floor to floor.

No one really noticed. I got a couple of odd looks as the elevator doors would open, and I wouldn’t get out. I was just peeking to see what was on each floor. It was the most efficient means of travel.

There were lots of cool things to see, but if I investigated each of them fully, there was no way I would get to see everything.

Magic aside, this place was a business. People were working, and largely so distracted that they never even looked in my direction.

When I was about halfway up the tower, I came across a room labeled “Supplies,” and I expected it to have lots of interesting things. I got off the elevator and found my way around.

They were just normal office supplies.

There were some different letterheads and stamps that I thought might have been magical, but for the most part, it was just mundane stuff—very similar to what I might have found back home.

I laughed as I went around the shelves and saw how ordinary everything was. I might have expected a society built on magic to be more magical, but the truth was that humans cared about convenience above all else. A lot of the superficial magical elements one might expect to see in a fantasy society would be awfully inconvenient compared to their mundane alternatives.

Perhaps high magic or MBW—the Magic Between Worlds—was not really fit for the type of hocus-pocus I was expecting.

I only found one thing in the supply room that I actually wanted: a hole puncher. Everyone seemed to have one. Many of them carried them around like pocket watches, with chains attached to them as if they were afraid someone might steal it.

In a world where magic was on tickets that you had to punch, that made some sense.

I took one with me in case I ever wanted to use my tickets the proper way.

As I was leaving, something happened. A portly fellow—who was dressed rather sharply—spotted me as I was leaving the supply room.

He seemed like a nice enough guy.

“Hey, you’re Riley Lawrence, right?” he asked with a smile. “They said that you weren’t in the theater.”

So they had noticed. I wondered how long it had taken them to check.

“Yeah, it’s me, Riley Lawrence. Just wandering around the supply room,” I said, trying to make it sound like a joke.

“What are you doing here? How did you get out of the theater?”

As much as I hated to be predictable, I thought maybe I’d try the same lie that had worked before.

“Oh,” I said. “I’m not really Riley Lawrence. Upstairs has me posing as him for a project they’re working on. It’s very hush-hush.”

He stared at me blankly.

“Oh, come off it,” the guy said.

He didn’t even consider my lie for one second.

Maybe I was getting greedy.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I think I should report this. I’m sorry—I’m really rooting for you all.”

He started moving toward a phone on a desk nearby.

“Hey, do what you have to do,” I said. “I’m really surprised that you guys are still working right now, considering what’s going on. You must be a really committed employee.”

That got his attention. He was a talker.

“Oh, we’re used to Carousel misbehaving every now and again. We’ve been here for nearly four hundred years. There’s nothing we cannot handle. You should have been here back in the early days before the game first started—there were all kinds of problems we had to work through. Carousel is quite stubborn, but even it has limits… The Proprietor is about to have a press conference about you in the control room, you know. About your people.”

He smiled warmly, as if he was glad to be talking to me, and then turned back toward the phone.

“I wasn’t talking about Carousel,” I said quickly.

He looked at me, confused. “What were you talking about? What’s happening?”

“The Barker,” I said, trying to sound natural. “Out in the courtyard. Honestly, I’m surprised that anyone’s left up here. That’s why I thought I could wander around.”

He was incredulous but clearly interested.

“You did not see the Barker out in the courtyard. Do you even know about the Sweepstakes on your world?” he asked. There was something in his voice. Hope?

“No, I just learned about it today when I met him,” I said. “Where else do you think I got these tickets?” I pulled out the five tickets that Dr. Striga had given me and flashed them at him. “Tell me, does the magic casserole really taste that good?”

He basically froze and stared at me as he considered what I was saying. They must have really been crazy about this Sweepstakes.

“I’ve never had it,” he said. “I had a lollipop once that tasted like true love. Wish I’d never tasted that damn thing… Where did you say the Barker was?”

I just said what came to mind.

“The courtyard. At the very end of the crescent of the building—there’s this little nook next to the forest. It was dark. Guy nearly scared me half to death.”

The truth was, I didn’t think this guy believed me. But sometimes, it’s not the believability of the lie—it’s the desirability.

I could see it in his eyes.

“But if you’ve got to report me,” I said, “we could just wait here together. I hope you won’t restrain me—I’m not going to fight, I promise.”

He thought for a moment.

“I’m not going to restrain you,” he said.

“Well, you would have to, wouldn’t you? I mean, I’m not going to stay here if you aren’t.”

He looked back in the direction of an old-timey telephone and then back at me.

He was super conflicted.

“What colors was he wearing?” the man asked, desperate for proof I was lying. “What colors were on his shirt? The Barker, that is.”

I wasn’t sure if Dr. Strega had told me the answer to that, but I did have an image in my mind—maybe something half-remembered. After all, the Barker did seem so familiar.

“Red and white,” I said.

That was it. That was all the permission he needed.

“Stay here,” he said. “You shouldn’t be wandering around. Things can be dangerous for low worlders.”

The truth was that guy did seem pretty reasonable. But his entire demeanor changed the moment I suggested that he might be able to play the Sweepstakes.

It was like he didn’t even care if I was obviously lying to him. He had to check.

And so he left me there, boarding the elevator and heading down.

I boarded the elevator next to it, heading up.

It took me a few more floors before I found the control room. And I knew I was in the right place before I even saw the sign for it—because of all the reporters who had beaten me up here by using the elevator from the beginning.

I slipped into the back, where there were some theater-style seats.

That was appropriate because the entire control room looked kind of like a theater. What it actually looked like was NASA Mission Control—like in the movies—except with an old movie theater aesthetic. Red velvet and gold trimming were everywhere.

The place was flooded with reporters, all trying to get a look at a man standing in the center, down a grand row of stairs, past many different banks of desks with their own monitors and gizmos.

Behind him, a big screen displayed live footage of what was happening inside the movie in real time.

Things were tense. The entire block was burning because the Generation Killers had started fires and rammed things with cars.

It was definitely a dark moment in the story.

The man at the bottom of the stairs, however, was dressed to be the center of attention. He actually reminded me a lot of Silas Dyrkon in intensity, but instead of black, this man wore red and gold—similar to the way the room was decorated. He had a head full of auburn-colored hair and a playful, intelligent face.

He was a bit taller than average, with a commanding presence. He might have been in his late 40s or early 50s in appearance. Immortality was hell on age guestimation.

Even though I couldn’t see his name on the red wallpaper, I knew that he was Vincent St. Vane—the Proprietor. The statue outside did look like him in the face but exaggerated his frame.

He had a visible humor about him. Like a Willy Wonka Santa Claus CEO.

I sat in the shadows and watched. Not only did I watch the people, but I also watched the movie as it neared its end.

But before too much could progress in the story, the press conference started. The many reporters went silent as someone made an announcement.

“Please welcome Vincent St. Vane, the Proprietor of the Game at Carousel.”

I heard their voice, but I didn’t see who said it. It didn’t matter. St. Vane was staring up at the throngs of reporters and various employees, but he wasn’t basking in their attention. He was putting on a serious—if possibly morose—face.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he began, “you will have to forgive me. I have not prepared a speech. I have invited you here because a topic of conversation that has captivated audiences across the Manifest Consortium has finally come to bear. It would appear that the Party of Promise is on the very edge of defeat.”

A hush fell over the room. I didn’t even know how that was possible when no one else had been talking much, but it was true—the air just seemed to leave the place.

“We have long discussed the possibility of sending home employees of the Company whose roles are more related to supporting storylines here in Carousel so that those who need to make repairs will be able to operate as needed. After all, our exploration into the fabric of Carousel and the excavation of its cosmic secrets is our top priority. This distraction, though entertaining and good for ticket sales, has caused a terrible disruption in our work. Before Carousel’s rebellion, it did seem like we were close to finding another backlot in Carousel’s depths, an inhabited one. We believe that there are many lives on the line with that discovery. If we can learn how the inhabitants of these backlots survived Carousel’s wrath, we could create lasting peace and prosperity even here. These discussions have long been contentious, but it would seem that the time is appropriate. As the current storyline draws to a bloody end—whether the Party of Promise succeeds or fails—we need to face the reality of their potential failure and the promise of the wonders to come once we have these disruptions quelled.”

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

He took a heavy breath before continuing.

“It is with a heavy heart that I remind the viewers that the Game at Carousel has never been beaten. Several Throughlines have been successfully run—nearly two dozen of them—but the Game at Carousel has only ever ended in one way for the players of their ilk. Death.

“And as hard as the Party has endeavored, it does appear as if they are running out of narrative momentum. Having never chosen a proper Throughline, and now in their current storyline—titled Post-Traumatic—it seems likely that their defeat is imminent and any victory they achieve will be narrow if it is even possible.”

He cleared his throat as the reporters wrote down notes.

I knew exactly what he was doing. He was trying to use the difficulties in the finale of Post-Traumatic to implant the idea that we were inevitably going to lose and that the public at large should brace for that.

More than that, he was trying to prepare them for the idea that they might start withdrawing workers so that repairs could be made.

Images of blood and destruction flashed over the screen as he spoke.

He was using our suffering in this story to create a soft landing so that maybe our deaths might not be so negative for the Company’s prospects—so that even though whatever went wrong was their fault, maybe the public at large would start to accept our fate.

After all, we were just characters on TV to them. And like all the other characters that they had loved in the Game at Carousel before, we were going to die. They just needed to accept it.

He was trying to use the apparently pessimistic ending of Post-Traumatic to help his cause.

“Given that the failure of the Party of Promise is all but inevitable, I have issued orders to begin a tear-down of the current game so that investigations can begin—”

Images flashed over the screen of my friends. Of the fights. Camden, Anna, Kimberly—huddled together, wounded and afraid—while this man talked about withdrawing, about abandoning us. The two workers I had seen in the Tension Room had discussed this very thing.

It wasn’t a question of if the Manifest Consortium was going to abandon us—it was when.

And yet, another thought occurred to me.

Why did this man think that we were going to lose this storyline?

Yes, we had experienced some setbacks. Yes, the odds were overwhelming. Yes, there were few players left alive, it would seem, in the narrative.

But had he not seen our plan? Did he not know what was about to happen?

Was he going to deceive them, or did he really believe our defeat was inevitable? Did he know something I didn’t?

It didn’t matter. I had lost focus on whatever speech he was giving. Reporters were now asking him questions.

“Mr. St. Vane,” one reporter asked, “can you comment on reports that Riley Lawrence has been reported missing from Deathwatch Theater?”

He waved it off.

“As I said,” St. Vane continued, “many different systems are going to be torn down and investigated. Everything that is happening is perfectly normal.”

He was lying.

And if he was willing to lie about me and why I was missing from the theater, would he be willing to lie about what happened to my friends and me? Would he leave us to a terrible fate and then tell everyone that it was unavoidable—sending his workers home and letting us die the old-fashioned way?

I wanted to yell at him. I wanted to scream.

So much rage had built up in me without me knowing it from the moment I arrived at Carousel. It had taken the form of apathy.

There was no point in being angry at an evil god or whatever Carousel was.

But this was a man.

I could be angry at a man.

I stood up and screamed, “That’s not true!” before I even thought about what I should be saying.

I was surprised to find that my voice echoed. St. Vane stopped talking and stared back up at the seat where I was sitting.

The reporters, too, seemed shocked that someone would argue with the Proprietor and turned their attention toward me.

There was no backing down now. No escaping.

He was trying to tell what might have been a large section of the Audience that our defeat was inevitable and that he had every excuse to give up.

I took off my sunglasses and pulled down my hood, but I barely even needed to do that. Everyone recognized me suddenly.

How strange was that? I could sneak around all day, and no one looked me in the face well enough to know who I was, but the moment I spoke up, they couldn’t miss me.

“Do not abandon us,” was all I could think to say.

St. Vane squinted up at me.

He smiled when he realized who I was.

“Mr. Lawrence. I had heard rumors, but I couldn’t believe they were true,” he said.

I didn’t know if he was being honest or just covering for himself.

Now that I was up, I was moving toward the field of reporters, down toward the stairs that led to St. Vane.