Celling looks up into space for a minute. “Alright, he was last seen igniting the Pillar. He’s probably pretty far from here. Given that for all we know he still has to travel at normal human speed, he’s not going to be here for a few hours. When he does, though, based on our predictions, this is gonna be bad. His psychic abilities are… city-leveling at the least. The danger zone’s going to be measured in miles.”
“So what do we do?” asks Fansworth.
“Say there’s going to be a natural disaster,” Celling says. “A hurricane, or a tsunami, or something.”
“Isn’t that going to cause mass panic?” Jacob asks. “Lots of people are going to run from it. It could cause a lot of unnecessary harm.”
“I mean, we’re not really lying,” Celling reasons. “The Secondborn’s going to be a threat as big as anything we can warn the people of - at the least.”
They’re sitting in the room outside the main telegram headquarters for the Montevideo area. Celling’s sent the message along that a tsunami is approaching within the next five hours, and he’s now explaining to Fansworth, safely out of earshot of the rebels.
"Simply put," Celling says, "this world is not real. It's an illusion created by-"
"Is this some kind of religious thing?" Fansworth asks skeptically.
"No, it's not," says Celling, walking around Fansworth. "It's scientific - it's rooted in observation and logical deduction. This world is not real. Through correlation of events, we are able to find that this world exists as a fictional story - a child's game - within another one."
"Literary agent hypothesis?" Fansworth asks. "Actually? Seriously? You think this is all a story?" Fansworth picks up a stone from the road and squeezes it between his fingers, as if affirming that it is solid.. "This is real. This is the world that we live in. What you are saying makes no sense."
"This all looks real because the people writing this right now decide that it looks real," Celling says.
"That's insane. You're saying that what I just said - what I just did - it's just words on a page?" Fansworth asks, dropping the rock. It falls on the ground with a dull thud. "That's nonsense. That's ridiculous."
"It's provable, if you know where to look," Celling insists. "Have you noticed that the rebels always seem to get away? How our shots just miraculously miss while theirs always hit? That against all probability the universe is moving towards a grand design based on tropes and cliches of fantasy novel plots?"
“That’s all circumstantial,” Fansworth says. “You can’t just blame the fundamental nature of the universe every time you have a run of bad luck.”
“Oh yeah?” Celling asks. “What’s the current date.”
Oh crap.“What’s the current date?” Celling asks again. “Day, month, and year. What day of the week is it? How many days has it been since Padelheb took power? What is the current time? Which event is our calendar system based upon?”
Wait uh… if it was three days two days ago and… but it had to be the beginning of summer… which is winter because southern hemisphere so-“I am asking this RIGHT NOW!” Celling says, turning around on one foot and shouting to the sky, as if not talking to Fansworth, but something far higher and invisible. “What I’m asking for is LITERALLY the time of day. Every schoolboy knows this. This is something that everyone should be able to get quickly. Or at least look up within minute.”
He turns back to Fansworth. “But you can’t, can you? You’re drawing a blank. Ask why you’re doing that. It’s because you’re looking into a hole in reality itself. Because you’re looking at a blank area, not just zero, but
undefined. Undefined by who? By the person that defines things, of course.
Don’t let it go! Think on it! Now, you see-”
Fansworth sees.
He sees the patterns. The tropes and cliches, the plotlines, winding through every particle of the universe. He sees the medium, stretching up like a spiral into the sky and not-sky, winding through invisible dimensions - methods of measurement that simply aren’t there to uninitiated eyes. He sees the real world, looming high above, tugging on the strings of this one. He sees the forums, all the words and players, arguing endlessly, battering out the text that makes up his reality. He sees the written and unwritten rules that it all works by, the webs of convention and stats and dice and quotas. He sees the infinity of the Internet, dense, interconnected, a veritable sea of ideas, a near-infinite mass of information of any sort. He sees the Plot, wrapped around the world and squeezing it on to its final destination, eyes watching everywhere on the Earth. Wordlessly, he asks if this is real. Instantly, he knows that it is.
Fansworth’s mouth hangs agape for half a second before he closes it. “I’d probably say something in shock, but I don’t want to give him the satisfaction.”
Screw you!“Screw you too!” says Fansworth disdainfully. “What kind of a GM are you? What kind of GM explicitly works against the players?”
“You see it too, then?” Celling asks.
“Yeah, I got it all,” Fansworth replies. “So Goonswarm and Padelheb…”
“Expies. Carbon copies of characters in other media. My friends up above-” Celling gestures over his shoulder as if they’re actually there, “say that they’re pretty bad people in their home universes.”
“And the parrot-”
“Can access a universe of pure suspension of disbelief.”
“And the Secondborn-”
“They have fought him before. In another world. He held godlike power there, and managed to escape here.”
They are interrupted by a random intern at the station poking his head into the room. “Excuse me, sirs,” he says sheepishly. “I just came from the broadcast room.”
“Is the message out?” asks Celling.
“Yes, all other stations have been notified that a major hurricane is on the way and evacuations are beginning,” he says. He steps into the middle of the room and stands there, fidgeting his hands. “But, sir… I don’t think anyone else noticed, but I know a bit of meteorology and… there’s no way we could have detected a hurricane. Based off known cyclonic systems, they move way faster than our fastest boats or trains. So what’s really going on here?”
“Smart kid,” Fansworth says. “
Have you told anyone else about this?”
“Uh, no sir,” the intern replies.
How do you deal with this?A: “Alright, we better tell you the truth. We’re expecting a terrorist attack somewhere in the city. Weapon of Mass Destruction level. We’ve got to get everyone out without much panicking.” (tell the truth, or at least most of it)
B: “You’re right, we couldn’t detect it via conventional means. Erin Quill was testing methods of advance hurricane prediction and found that one was inbound.” (come up with technobabble to justify it)
C: “This is a state secret and we can’t tell you the full story, but we’ve got a plenty good reason to be doing this. You have to keep quiet about what you’ve found. Don’t tell anyone else, or we’ll know.” (Straight up tell him that it must be kept a secret)
D: “Good. Fewer loose ends to wrap up. You’re coming with us.” (Jail or otherwise silence the kid)
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Topic: (SG) SPAMOVERLORD: Epilogue: Guest Week (Read 307597 times)