Author: arenaria | She wonders if Coin would be late to fewer things if she gave her a teleportation power.
She's saying so, to Sherlock.
And then instead of the ruins of flooded Europe she's in a featureless white room facing some grumpy person in a blue robe, wearing everything she was wearing, less her coin bandolier but including her crown, and something's wrong, her thoughts are slow and won't speed up, her memory's as slippery as it ever was before she met Stella, and how did she get here, why doesn't the brainphone work, where's Sherlock?
Where are her coins? Where's her magic? She can't teleport either, not even across the room - she bites her lip just a little and she can't even remember how moving pain left to right is a thing and it goes right on stinging without regenerating -
Where is she? |
Author: pythbox | The grumpy person in the doorway speaks. In addition to being grumpy, she also appears bored.
"Bell Swan, please come forward to receive your sentence papers." |
Author: arenaria | "My what? Where am I?" |
Author: pythbox | She holds out a very thin file folder in Bell's direction. |
Author: arenaria | "Where am I? What happened?" |
Author: pythbox | "Take the folder," she says sharply. "Go down the hall. Ask your annoying questions at someone who's paid to answer them." |
Author: arenaria | Shell Bell takes the folder and steps tentatively into the hall. |
Author: pythbox | There are two directions to go in; the robed woman points at the correct one.
The hall is lined with rooms identical to the one Shell Bell just left, except that where hers has an open doorway with no door, these have seamless walls with small windows at roughly head height. Each of the rooms along the left side of the hall contains exactly one person, standing upright, eyes closed. Under each of those windows is a plaque with a number on it. The right side of the hall has a line of empty rooms with blank plaques, broken by Bell's open doorway, and continuing on in a line of more occupied rooms with numbers beneath them.
As soon as Bell steps out of her room, a wall fades into place behind her, empty plaque and all. The blue-robed woman moves on to the next occupied room along that side. |
Author: arenaria | Bell goes down the hall.
She trips. Fuck, her magic is really all gone. She's surprised the crown stayed.
She can't not check.
Nope. She can't fly. Of course she can't fly.
And of course she doesn't have her fire wand anymore. Much good may it do Juliet.
She wants to go home.
She goes down the hall, walking carefully-carefully-carefully. |
Author: pythbox | The hall goes on for a while; it's about an hour's walk, past occasional junctions, to reach the central office. Hard to get lost, though: the corridors leading off the main one are all short, heading off at right angles and turning backward, and Bell just has to keep walking in a straight line. And the line of empty rooms to Bell's right is unbroken.
At the end, there is a door. On the other side of the door, there is a desk. Behind the desk, there is a friendly-looking woman wearing a fuzzy pink sweater.
"Hi!" she says. "Bell Swan?" |
Author: arenaria | "...Yes. Where am I? What happened? Where did all my magic go?" |
Author: pythbox | "You're dead," she says gently. |
Author: arenaria | "I - what? How could I have died? My regen should've taken care of anything short of -"
She stops.
"Kraken," she mutters. "Okay, if I'm dead, why am I - aware?" |
Author: pythbox | "This is the afterlife," she explains. "It happens to everyone. But there's no going back, so people don't know about it until they get here." |
Author: arenaria | "I - can I see anything that's going on with live people even if I can't communicate with them? Sherlock - Tony - my parents - they'll be devastated - my empire -" |
Author: pythbox | She shakes her head.
"You'll see most of them eventually," she offers. "You have the rest of eternity to look forward to." |
Author: arenaria | "No, they're going to live forever, like I was, as soon as they find out what happened to me they'll patch the hole and it'll never happen again," Shell Bell says, burying her hands in her hair. "Sherlock still has magic, she won't let Tony die, she wouldn't let herself die while he's alive to miss her, she'll take care of my parents - if what you're saying is true I'm never going to see them again. My Sherlock." |
Author: pythbox | "I'm sorry," she says sympathetically. |
Author: arenaria | "How do you know what you know - that there's no communication, that I'm stuck? How is this known?" |
Author: pythbox | ...She looks puzzled.
"It's in the rules?" she tries. "It's been that way forever?" |
Author: arenaria | "The rules. Who makes the rules?" |
Author: pythbox | "The administration."
Looking slightly worried now, she comes out from behind her desk.
"Could you come with me, please? I need to show you how to find your residence." |
Author: arenaria | Shell Bell follows her, but she doesn't stop asking questions. "Who's the administration? How do they set rules? Why is my magic gone? What is this folder for?" |
Author: pythbox | "I don't know anything about your magic," she says. "The administration built this place. The folder contains your residence code - you'll want to memorize that number - and sentencing information."
They enter an elevator. It has three buttons. The woman in the fuzzy pink sweater pushes the bottom one. The doors close. The elevator descends. |
Author: arenaria | "Sentencing? And who is the administration? Do you mean they built the building or the entire afterlife?"
She opens her folder. |
Author: pythbox | "The entire afterlife," she says. "Asking about the administration isn't going to get you much of anywhere."
The first page of the small sheaf of papers inside has only four lines on it:
BELL SWAN
98066714331^1
DIANA 1:12
9:00 CH
All the following pages are densely packed with an inscrutable code involving a lot of numbers and punctuation. |
Author: arenaria | Well, it's clearly not going to get her anywhere with this person. "Can you tell me what this means?" Bell asks, showing the lady the first page of her file. |
Author: pythbox | "That's your name and residence code, your judge, how far into her shift she was when she got to you, and your sentence," she explains. "...Oh. My. Um, here, you'll be wanting this."
She fishes in a pocket and produces a stack of identical business cards, off which she hands Bell the top one. It bears a logo consisting of a thin crescent with the words FOR YOU inscribed between its downward-facing points, and a number: 9246938^0. |
Author: arenaria | "Why will I be wanting this? My sentence for what? My sentence to what?" Bell asks, taking the card. |
Author: pythbox | "Your sentence for everything bad you've ever done in your life," she says. "But if you visit the Crescent—that's the res code on the card—I'm sure you'll find someone to take it for you." |
Author: arenaria | "...My sentence is 'nine o'clock'?" |
Author: pythbox | "Nine hours," she says. "With Chainsaw. He's a torturer. ...I'm sure you'll find someone to take it at the Crescent." |
Author: arenaria | "...A torturer," says Bell. "That's... what it sounds like?"
She feels very, very small. |
Author: pythbox | "Yes," she says apologetically. |
Author: arenaria | "But there are people who don't mind, as much, and they can - transfer the - sentences?" |
Author: pythbox | "Yes," she repeats. "The people who volunteer to serve unfair sentences are called contractors." |
Author: arenaria | "Okay. I am pretty sure this is unfair. Who's Diana - I mean, she's my judge, but - where did she come from, where do judges come from?" |
Author: pythbox | "What do you mean?" |
Author: arenaria | "I mean, I am here because I died. Are you here because you died? Is Diana? How did you get your job? How did she? What about the torturers and contractors?" |
Author: pythbox | "Everyone is here because they died," she says. "I got my job by applying at the Tower. So did Diana, but the requirements for judges are much stricter and I'm sure she had to wait a few centuries for her interview. Torturers are trained and certified at the Cross in caret null, and the Crescent has their own academy but it's not necessary to be certified as a contractor before taking someone's sentence. It's just easier for the sentenced and the volunteers to find each other that way." |
Author: arenaria | "Why does Diana think I or someone who'll take my sentence ought to be tortured for nine hours? Is that encoded in this gibberish?"
She used to know a few languages. Now her fuzzed-out memories of her time in Angela's world are blurred by the fact that she can't speak Angela's language anymore. |
Author: pythbox | "Yes," she says. "I'm sorry, I don't understand most of the codes... contractors tend to know them pretty well; you can ask at the Crescent, or look them up at the library, that's one caret one." |
Author: arenaria | "Okay. How do I find these addresses? What else do I need to know?" |
Author: pythbox | "You absolutely have to know your own res code," she says. "If you lose it, you might never find your way home again. We'll be at Tower Station in a minute; I'll show you how to work the maps." |
Author: arenaria | Bell rereads her code a few times. It's not that long. She can break it up into chunks, repeat it aloud to herself, in case something happens to this paper. "Thank you," she adds. |
Author: pythbox | "You're welcome," says the guide. "It's my job."
The elevator doors open. She leads Bell out into what looks like a small train station, well lit but not well maintained.
It lacks trains, and anywhere to put one. But it does have a large electronic map on one wall. The guide shows Bell how to type in her residence code, and the map shifts to display a bird's eye view of Bell's new neighbourhood, with a glowing blue dot in the middle connected to a nearby glowing pink dot with a dotted purple line.
"That'll be the nearest station to your residence," she explains. "If you know where you're going, you can just put in the code at the door, but if you haven't been somewhere before it's a good idea to check the map first."
The opposite wall is lined with sets of elevator doors, similar in style to the one they left. Instead of displaying floor numbers above each, they have blank displays. The guide taps 'GO' on the map, and one of those blank spaces lights up with Bell's res code; the corresponding doors open. |
Author: arenaria | "How much time do I have to find a contractor?" |
Author: pythbox | "Between a week and a month," she says. "One week in the clear, and then three more where Chainsaw might or might not get around to you yet." |
Author: arenaria | "Okay. What else do I need to know?" |
Author: pythbox | She leads Bell into the 'elevator'; a scant few seconds later, the doors open again, and they are in a different station.
"Your basic needs should be taken care of by what you find at home. You can't die again; in what would be a fatal situation, your body will renew itself and you'll be in the same condition you're in now. If you're looking for information, the library at 1^1 is usually a good place to start. It has its own station, so it's easy to find. If you lose the card for the Crescent, you can find their res code in the directory at the library." |
Author: arenaria | "Okay."
Two places to go after she sees her residence. Both of them sound like very good candidates for her first priority. She has a week before she needs a contractor, but how long might that take? She has no more immediate questions lining up to be asked or she'd speak them, but she's been thrown into a completely bizarre situation, all alone, and a library sounds really good right now.
Ultimately she decides to go to the Crescent first and see about contractors. Because delaying knowing things is uncomfortable, but it is not nine hours of torture.
"Is there anything else I ought to know before I go - out in the world by myself?" |
Author: pythbox | "...I'm friendly," she says. "People at the Crescent are friendly, more or less. Librarians are friendly. Anyone else you meet might not be." |
Author: arenaria | "...How does being unfriendly manifest?" |
Author: pythbox | "Violence, usually." |
Author: arenaria | Shell Bell has never particularly pretended to herself that she's unselfish.
And she does not try to do it now as she suddenly, intently wishes that Sherlock were here with her. She needs her. Tony could do without, she's met a Tony without, Tony would be miserable but he'd go on, and Bell needs her.
She's wishing her girlfriend dead, and she hates that she's doing it and she's glad that wishing doesn't make it so anymore, but everything would be easier if Sherlock were here.
"What are the best ways to avoid that?" |
Author: pythbox | She shrugs. "I'm sorry, I don't really know."
They exit the station by Bell's house and emerge onto the street. It's nighttime, and the sky is featurelessly black except for a distant glow over one horizon; the only illumination at ground level comes from streetlights, and there are no clouds to reflect them. |
Author: arenaria | "What do you do?" Bell tries. |
Author: pythbox | "It's different above the cliffs." |
Author: arenaria | "The cliffs?" |
Author: pythbox | She points at the glow on the horizon.
"Those cliffs. You can see them much better from the library or the Crescent; big landmarks tend to be closer in. See the dark vertical line in the middle? That's the tower, where we started out." |
Author: arenaria | "And you live up there and it's less - violent? How do you come to live up there?" |
Author: pythbox | "You don't 'live'," she corrects gently. "And you don't come to belong up there. You're either sent there first thing or you're not." |
Author: arenaria | "I had an argument with a vampire once about whether he was alive," Bell says. It's hard to remember. She's gotten so used to things being easy to remember, and before that she was used to having them recorded if she needed them, and before that she had nothing important to remember. "He walked and talked and thought. I thought that was enough to count even though something that looked a lot like death had happened to him. I walk and talk and think now."
Something occurs to her. "Would it be," she says, "if violence is such a commonplace - a bad idea to wear the crown?" |
Author: pythbox | She glances at the crown as she leads Bell along the street.
"If you want to keep it, yes." |
Author: arenaria | "I -"
Bell has to think about whether she wants to keep it. She takes it off, looks at it.
"Will it be safe if I leave it at home?" |
Author: pythbox | "Probably," she shrugs. "Safer than it'll be on your head." |
Author: arenaria | "Okay. It's not like my empire is here anyway." |
Author: pythbox | "Oh, is that what the crown is for?" she asks politely. "Here's your building, let me see..."
The apartment building has a screen and keypad on the wall in the little pre-lobby area inside the front door; when the guide enters Bell's residence code, she receives a happy little green light and a floor number (four), and the door into the lobby opens. |
Author: arenaria | "Yes. My world was - badly managed. I fixed it. I made myself a crown. It seemed like the thing to do." She frowns, still looking at the crown in her hands. "...I think the president of the somewhat-better-managed part of the world that I had not included in said empire took exception and assassinated me." |
Author: pythbox | "These things happen," she says philosophically. "I'm sorry. You sound like a good person."
Yet another elevator, this one wholly unmagical, brings them to the appropriate floor. The individual apartments have wildly mismatched numbers on their doors, listed on helpful signs pointing each direction along the hall; the guide finds Bell's and opens it. |
Author: arenaria | "I try. How are these places assigned?" Bell asks, looking around, assessing, seeking a place to tuck away her crown. |
Author: pythbox | "Mostly at random. You can move to an empty place, or swap residences with someone else, if you're authorized for a place that size; how much space you start out with depends on how much you're mourned, but it's possible to transfer space between accounts, or merge if you want to move in with someone." |
Author: arenaria | "...Does it look to you like I have been mourned much? I don't have a scale for this, I don't know if I should be assuming that Tony didn't like me all that much after all or that Sherlock shut down completely instead of feeling anything... poor Sherlock, my Sherlock - Do people who aren't from my world count, assuming they find out about my death? Do I have to be mourned on a personal level or should I be learning things about how good an empress I was for people who never met me?" |
Author: pythbox | "I don't know how people who aren't from your world would find out..."
She steps inside and looks around.
"...Are you sure your girlfriend wouldn't let herself die?" |
Author: arenaria | "I - not absolutely certain. I don't think she'd leave Tony alone. But it's not impossible that I'm wrong, or that Coin killed her too even though she wouldn't know she'd need to and there'd be fallout all over a populated area and Sherlock would most likely have noticed a nuke in Three or the palace. Then - then Tony would probably have died as well, they were both in the house - we'd all be here - Can I find out? If I go back to the Tower and look for them, or is there a book of names - if she's here then - why do you ask? Does this place look - suggestive of that?" Shell Bell glances around the nice, well-designed furniture, the pretty rugs and the wallpaper. It doesn't exactly scream Sherlock is dead to her, but she's not an expert. She goes up to the bed - everything but the bathroom's squished into one room, kitchenette and bed and empty bookshelf and dresser, but it's arranged to allow walking paths between everything. She puts her crown in the drawer of the nightstand and sits on the bedspread. |
Author: pythbox | "You can't find out who's in the queue," she says. "But there's a complete directory of Downsiders in the library, and you can search by name and time of death, and narrow results by universe of origin... you can probably find her if she's already here." She gestures around at the tiny, beautiful apartment. "This kind of thing, a very small place with very nice decor, usually means you weren't mourned very much but you were mourned very intensely. I usually don't see cases this extreme, but when I do, the mourner tends to show up as a suicide." |
Author: arenaria | "A suici-" Bell stops.
She looks at the apartment. She imagines Sherlock's thoughts as they would've appeared back when she could call for them to scroll by, quick intimate displays of inmost self. Sherlock would have held herself so still, and then -
She wouldn't leave Tony alone.
She would fix the problem.
"No. I don't think so. I'll check but I don't think so. You told me there's no way to leave Downside. What would happen if someone tried to pull me out anyway, very hard with a lot of magic?"
Because stars didn't work.
But Bell had said, directly to Sherlock, that she didn't know about evils.
Bell thinks she might know about evils now.
"Could she have gotten a live version of me - a real back-from-the-dead version - and could I be stuck here as a - an alternate version of that one, regardless?" She swallows. "And she wouldn't know that I split, and she'd have an alive one of me - and she'd stop mourning. And no one else would even find out. I suppose they'd tell Tony but maybe only after the fact. My parents would never know, certainly." |
Author: pythbox | "...I don't know," says the guide. "It would explain your apartment, but... I've never heard of magic that could do that." |
Author: arenaria | "I had a lot of magic. Sherlock made most of it. If I died of course she'd try. And if this looks like my dying made someone extremely upset for a very short period - then until Sherlock shows up, which she may never do, that's my guess."
Bell draws her knees up to her chin at the edge of the bedspread. "So she'll be fine. And Tony will be fine. And my empire will be fine. And - and I'm never going to see them again, because they don't know I need to be gotten and they're going to live forever." |
Author: pythbox | "I'm sorry," says the guide. |
Author: arenaria | Bell wipes a tear away from the corner of one eye. "Not your fault. As far as I know."
She's going to go to the library, once she has a contractor sorted out, and she's going to read about the "administration".
Her hand strokes along the bedspread. Sherlock made this for me. She made all of this for me. Probably in less than a minute. |
Author: pythbox | She nods.
"Any more questions?" |
Author: arenaria | "All of the questions. What else do you think I ought to know before I so much as make a trip to the library? What won't I find in the library that you can tell me? Will everyone speak English, or appear to?" |
Author: pythbox | "English has been the common language here for a while, but that might change, and if it stays changed for long enough you'll have to learn the new one," she shrugs. "Judges can imprint languages on people, and they give everyone the most commonly spoken language at their time of arrival, unless they already have it." |
Author: arenaria | "Okay," says Bell. "Anything else?" |
Author: pythbox | She thinks, then shakes her head. |
Author: arenaria | "Thank you very much for all your help." |
Author: pythbox | "That's what they pay me for," she says wryly. "Good luck."
And she goes. |
Author: arenaria | Bell takes careful, loving inventory of the apartment Sherlock made for her. It's furnished and decorated and surprisingly stocked - soap in the bathroom, food in the kitchenette. She wonders if that gets replaced or if she has to buy more. There is apparently currency here and the library will be able to tell her more about how to get it.
One thing she knows she's going to do is keep this apartment Sherlock made for her utterly spotless.
And then, trying to look as uninteresting as possible, she goes back to the station to find the Crescent. |
Author: pythbox | The Crescent has its own station; the stairs take her directly to the lobby of the building, where a receptionist with her hair in a rainbow of tiny braids sitting behind a large wooden desk and another woman sitting on the desk are carrying on an animated conversation. The rest of the room is sparsely but nicely furnished—there's a waiting area with several chairs and a small table. There are no windows, but the front doors are made of glass; they look out on a wide expanse of dusty gravel, like a raw construction site.
When Bell comes out of the stairwell, the woman sitting on the desk glances at her and smiles. "Looks like we've got a fresh one," she says amicably. |
Author: arenaria | "I - just died, yes," says Shell Bell. "My guide said I would be able to find a - a contractor here." |
Author: pythbox | "Yep!" says the friendly woman, hopping off the desk. "What's your number?" |
Author: arenaria | She recites it from memory, although she does glance at her file to confirm that she got it right. She did. |
Author: pythbox | She nods at the folder Bell is carrying. "That your papers? Lemme see." |
Author: arenaria | Bell hands them over. "My guide couldn't tell me what anything after the first page meant. Can you?" |
Author: pythbox | "Yep," she says, and opens the folder.
"...Wow, you kidnapped a lot of people," she says, surprised. "Like, a lot." |
Author: arenaria | "...I put a city on the moon?" Bell offers. "I didn't, like, evict anyone from their actual home, I just - moved the homes. It was the best thing to do - the culture was utterly toxic." |
Author: pythbox | She snorts.
"Now there's an interesting solution. Well, looks like I've got a date with Chainsaw in the near future." She closes the folder and hands it back. "Bell, huh? Lucky you, nobody'll say boo if you keep it. I'm Eights." |
Author: arenaria | "Uh, it's nice to meet you, Eights. Keep what?" |
Author: pythbox | "The name. It sounds just fine for Downside." |
Author: arenaria | "I usually went by Shell Bell." Pause. "So if I'm understanding you correctly you personally are going to take my, er, sentence, which is largely for putting the Capitol on the moon? ...I am glad that this doesn't seem to bother you." |
Author: pythbox | "Yep," Eights says cheerfully. "Nobody else would touch it, Chainsaw's nasty. But I happen to like him." |
Author: arenaria | Shell Bell nods slowly. "Thank you," she murmurs.
(The back of her mind is a kind of constant hum of Sherlock Sherlock Sherlock Sherlock now. Thinking about someone happy to endure pain on her behalf is not making this go away one bit.) |
Author: pythbox | Sunnily: "You're welcome." |
Author: arenaria | "Whose idea was it to punish - things done in life -" (Shell Bell does not consider putting the Capitol on the moon a crime) "with torture? Do you know?" |
Author: pythbox | Eights shrugs.
"It's been like that forever," she says. "What's it matter?" |
Author: arenaria | "It matters because it's awful - you're doing a good, good thing but you shouldn't have to - and it ought to stop and whoever or whatever set it up would be a good place to start figuring out how to un-set-it-up," says Shell Bell. |
Author: pythbox | "Good idea," says Eights. "Don't try it. The judges get mean about that kinda thing." |
Author: arenaria | "...And they'd slap another sentence on me?" |
Author: pythbox | "Yep," she says. "That's how it works. They can't directly sentence you for poking your nose into their business, but they can sentence you for a lot of things, and they can find out everything you've ever done just by looking at you. So annoying them is a bad idea." |
Author: arenaria | "Is it harder to get a contractor for that later? I mean, this isn't the kind of thing I'd ask someone to do for me causally, but you seem pretty - chipper. And from the size of this place I have the impression that if I did manage to unfuck the system it'd be a big deal." |
Author: pythbox | ...Eights regards her thoughtfully.
"It's a little harder," she says. "You don't get a week's grace on post-arrival sentences, and people aren't usually as sympathetic. But if you're that keen on it, sure. Come to me if you get in trouble." |
Author: arenaria | "Does the library have a list of things they can sentence me for, so I can work on being a tricky target if I do annoy someone who abuses their power?" |
Author: pythbox | "Probably," says Eights. "It'll take you a few years to get to know it, though." |
Author: arenaria | "That long a list?" |
Author: pythbox | She nods. |
Author: arenaria | "Okay. I guess I have a project, now. Which is good since I'm pretty sure I'm never going to see my loved ones again. Gotta keep busy." She takes a deep breath and lets it out. "Does anything - formal happen, regarding the sentence transfer thing, or is that done?" |
Author: pythbox | "I go put it into my computer," shrugs Eights. "You can watch that part if it helps, but it's pretty boring." |
Author: arenaria | "I'm curious to have a look at the system. I haven't done this a million times," Shell Bell points out. |
Author: pythbox | "Okay."
Eights leads Bell down the hall behind the receptionist's desk, giving her a wave as they pass. Naturally, she has office number eight.
Once there, she sits at her computer and types in Bell's res code from memory. It displays a copy of Bell's sentence papers and asks her if she would like to take the sentence, which it reminds her is 9:00 CH, and for which the grace period ends in six and a half days.
She clicks 'Yes'. |
Author: arenaria | "Straightforward," Shell Bell says. "I don't understand why this is even allowed. Why combine something so sadistic with this - I hesitate to call it a loophole, but this - flexibility?" |
Author: pythbox | "Beats me," shrugs Eights. "That's just how it is." |
Author: arenaria | "For - 'forever'?" Shell Bell says. "And people don't die again here, I was told, so if it's been that way forever, some people who are still around must have been around - forever. Do any such people have known locations?" |
Author: pythbox | "Nope," says Eights. |
Author: arenaria | "Of course not. This place is the most perverse fusion of convenient and cruel." |
Author: pythbox | "...Y'know," says Eights, "I'm gonna remember that line. That's a good one." |
Author: arenaria | Shell Bell laughs once.
"Is there anything you can tell me, that I might not know being so recently dead, that might take a while to turn up in a trawl through the library, and that my guide could conceivably have missed?" she asks. |
Author: pythbox | "Guides're usually a little spotty," she says. "Don't forget your res code, don't annoy judges, don't annoy torturers—the Crescent can help you if the judges give you a sentence you don't want; we can't help you if a torturer decides to grab you off the street and play with you a little." |
Author: arenaria | "...They do that a lot?" |
Author: pythbox | "Sometimes," she says, shrugging. "Not that often—there aren't that many torturers—but yeah. Sometimes." |
Author: arenaria | "What are the best ways to avoid them?" |
Author: pythbox | "Don't hang out anywhere too popular, or anywhere you know is somebody's stomping grounds," she suggests. "Spend a lot of time in the library. Nobody fucks with a librarian." |
Author: arenaria | "...Why does nobody fuck with a librarian, and how does one acquire that designation? Can you tell me if there are any 'stomping grounds' in my neighborhood, especially between my apartment and the transit station?" |
Author: pythbox | "I don't know your neighborhood," she says, shaking her head. "If you want to be a librarian, try the library. Won't help you at home, though." |
Author: arenaria | "So people only don't fuck with librarians in the library?" |
Author: pythbox | "That's about the size of it," she agrees. |
Author: arenaria | "Why, what happens if someone does?" |
Author: pythbox | "People just... don't," she says, shrugging. |
Author: arenaria | "...Because mind control? Because cultural taboo? Because the librarians all back each other up and several of them know martial arts? Because magical impossibility?" |
Author: pythbox | "Cultural taboo's probably closest." |
Author: arenaria | "Okay." She closes her eyes. "What else don't I know that I'll need to find out to get along here? You're being so helpful - immensely helpful - and of course my natural response is to get as much information out of you as I can." |
Author: pythbox | Eights laughs.
"I dunno. Been a while since I needed to learn this stuff, y'know?" |
Author: arenaria | "How long?" |
Author: pythbox | "Coming up on fifteen thousand years." |
Author: arenaria | "That is a very long time," says Shell Bell. |
Author: pythbox | "Yep," says Eights. |
Author: arenaria | "Do you even remember anything about being alive?" |
Author: pythbox | "I know I had a boyfriend and I cheated on him," she says, "'cause that's what I was sentenced for." |
Author: arenaria | "...What all's in my file besides putting people on the moon?" |
Author: pythbox | "Uh..." She thinks back. "Did you fake your death? I think I remember something about that." |
Author: arenaria | "Yeah, I couldn't otherwise get out of my home district safely. I stole a canoe and left a note telling my parents I was attempting to go someplace nobody could actually get to and actually walked to the next town and stowed away on a train." |
Author: pythbox | "That must've sucked," she says sympathetically. |
Author: arenaria | "As soon as it was safe I told them I was alive," she says. "They were upset, but they're okay now. Or at least they are if my guess about why my apartment looks the way it does is correct." |
Author: pythbox | "...Okay," says Eights. |
Author: arenaria | "Sorry, I can't always tell the difference between people being interested in what I have to say and just being polite." |
Author: pythbox | She shrugs.
"I mean, I feel for you, I just don't completely know what you're talking about." |
Author: arenaria | "Oh. I have a very small and very nicely decorated apartment. I think my girlfriend brought me back to life after I died and it worked, sort of, just - forked me, one there and one here, instead of getting me out of here. I'm going to check for her in the library directory, though, in case it's what the guide said it looked like, a suicide. But if I'm right my parents are never going to know that I died, because there'll be a live one of me, and I sure wouldn't tell them." |
Author: pythbox | "...Sure sucks for you," she says reflectively. |
Author: arenaria | "Yeah." Pause. "I wonder if doors to Milliways ever happen, here." |
Author: pythbox | "Milliways?"
She blinks.
"Yeah, I used to see that place all the time when Jazz was around. Not for my last thousand or so, though. I think Chainsaw still catches a door occasionally." |
Author: arenaria | "...Oh."
Shell Bell's not sure if this is good news (Milliways can happen here!) or bad news (it hasn't happened lately, and lately is measured in millenia!).
"I used to go there a lot. I met a bunch of my alts and swapped magic with them and visited strange worlds and - and if I found a door at this point I'd never come back." |
Author: pythbox | "Wouldn't blame ya," she says. |
Author: arenaria | "You stayed. I guess the obvious disadvantage of here does not apply to you." |
Author: pythbox | Eights grins.
"Nope!" |
Author: arenaria | Shell Bell wraps her arms around herself. "Thank you again," she says quietly. "I think I'll go to the library now." |
Author: pythbox | "Bye," says Eights. |
Author: arenaria | "Bye."
Shell Bell goes to the library. |
Author: pythbox | The library also has its own station, and there are a few people passing through at the same time as Shell Bell.
Its lobby is much bigger than the Crescent's, and a little less friendly. The chairs aren't so comfortable. The librarian, a man wearing diamond earrings, sits behind his desk looking bored and slightly disdainful. |
Author: arenaria | Bell goes up to the librarian.
"Excuse me," she says. "I just died a few hours ago and I'm completely new to everything. Can you tell me where I should start?" |
Author: pythbox | He blinks at her.
"Not really," he says. "Not without some idea of what you're looking for." |
Author: arenaria | "I need to know how to operate here. Safely, insofar as that's possible. I want to know about the administration, although I'm told asking won't get me far. I'm also interested if my guide was mistaken when she told me there's no way to observe or communicate with the living." |
Author: pythbox | Despite himself, he begins to look interested.
"Admin operates out of the tower," he says. "But whoever told you not to bother her was right. And nope, your guide was right too. We get dead people and dead things; we don't get pretty little pictures of the dear not-yet-departed." |
Author: arenaria | "My loved ones are in all likelihood never going to depart," Shell Bell says. "Although I would like to look them up, in case I am wrong. Dead things, what does that mean, what makes a thing dead?" |
Author: pythbox | "Broken, destroyed, whatever," he says with a shrug. "This building existed in some live world somewhere before it showed up here, and then it burned down or got demolished. Every book in the stacks came from a live world and got thrown out or spoiled or burned." |
Author: arenaria | "Would things magically banished from existence appear here? What determines where they appear? And how do I look up my girlfriend to see if she's died?" |
Author: pythbox | "If it stopped existing, then yep," he says. "Things appear where it makes sense. Food in your fridge or your kitchen cupboards, shampoo in your shower, books in the library. New buildings out at the edges of the old ones. If you want the directory, the computers are over there—" he points down a hallway. |
Author: arenaria | "...What determines whose kitchen or shower or whatever a given disappeared or destroyed thing goes to?" |
Author: pythbox | "It's pretty much random." |
Author: arenaria | "Pretty much?" |
Author: pythbox | "You tend to get higher quality items in bigger houses," he says. "But it's not a rule, just a tendency." |
Author: arenaria | "Okay. Is there some kind of - lost and found, where you can put things that appear that you don't need and get things that appear that you do need? Or - how does currency work here? I've heard money referred to but I don't know anything beyond that about how it works in this world." |
Author: pythbox | "'Money' is a misnomer," he says. "If you're talking about your res account. That holds the maximum allowable square footage of your residence, and you can transfer some of it out, but people usually don't. Mostly they barter. Individually." |
Author: arenaria | "Okay. Are there - markets of some kind, then? |
Author: pythbox | "Nothing really organized," he says, shaking his head. |
Author: arenaria | "Do most people figure out the computer system pretty quick? And I hear you can sort by world - how are worlds designated?" |
Author: pythbox | "By number," he says. "One through seventy-two, I think. It was seventy-one a while ago." |
Author: arenaria | "Can you tell me what world I'm from? And if I want to look up someone from a world not my own, is there a way to check if that world's represented and find out its number?" |
Author: pythbox | "You can tell which world somebody's from if you know their res code. That's about it." |
Author: arenaria | "I can search without narrowing down the worlds, right? And -" She rattles off her own res code, because that's the world she'll need to find Sherlock from if Sherlock's here. If Sherlock ever comes here. |
Author: pythbox | He looks something up on the computer behind his desk.
"Forty-eight," he says. |
Author: arenaria | "Thanks. How do you become a librarian?" |
Author: pythbox | "Right now," he says, "you don't. Hang around, wait, get to know the place. Maybe we'll find a use for you." |
Author: arenaria | "Yes, I don't mean today, I mean in general. Thanks."
Shell Bell heads for the computers and tries to decipher them. |
Author: pythbox | They're not that difficult. Old, slow, but not difficult. |
Author: arenaria | She looks herself up, just to be sure she understands how the system works.
And because she's terrified of either result if she looks up Sherlock. |
Author: pythbox | It has her name, the time of her death in her world, her world number, and her res code. |
Author: arenaria | She swallows.
She looks for Sherlock Stark in the same world. |
Author: pythbox | No record. |
Author: arenaria |
Okay.
That's - that's good, isn't it, she was probably right, Sherlock is alive, Sherlock has a Bell, they're all going to be fine -
And she's on her own.
She sits.
Some time later she checks other names, just to be thorough. Tony. Her parents.
She excludes her own world and tries the full names of all the alts she's met, and their friends. |
Author: pythbox | Well.
There is one Sherlock Holmes. Died in 1895. World number thirty-one. 2385443281^0. |
Author: arenaria | ...She doesn't think 1895 sounds like when it was when she met any of the Holmeses, she thinks it was some post-2000 time in their worlds, but that's still something. An alt probably. She looks around for writing implements. |
Author: pythbox | Nope. |
Author: arenaria | She presses her fingernail into the margin of her sentence file, until she has barely-legible numbers imprinted there, and makes up her mind to find something useless in her apartment and a way to trade it for paper and pencils.
She starts looking for people in her own world she'd be less thrilled to see. People who she knows to be dead.
Lynnis would be one thing, although Lynnis would not necessarily be happy to see her.
She checks for Coriolanus Snow. |
Author: pythbox | Coriolanus Snow exists, and died when he died. He's in ^1. |
Author: arenaria | ...Why wouldn't Lynnis be there?
She'll ask the librarian. But first she'll fingernail Snow's code into another file margin with a little six-pointed snowflake-y star next to it. She's going to look up where that is, and then never, ever visit that neighborhood.
She can't think of anyone else to look up.
She goes back to the librarian. "I looked up someone from my world who died when I was sixteen, and she wasn't there. Why might that be?" |
Author: pythbox | "Oh, people usually don't show up in any kind of reasonable order," he shrugs. "If you died before someone else, they're as likely to show up before you as the other way around. And of course if they went Upside they won't be in the directory at all." |
Author: arenaria | "Upside? Is that the place above the cliffs? What makes some people go there and not others?" |
Author: pythbox | "Upside, Downside," he says, gesturing the appropriate elevations. "The judges sort you." |
Author: arenaria | "Based on what?" |
Author: pythbox | "Your life," he says. "If you're beyond reproach, you go Upside. If you're not bad enough for a sentence, but still kind of sketchy, you go ^2. If you've done something the judges think is really bad, they give you a sentence and put you in ^1." |
Author: arenaria | "...What are the approximate proportions here?" |
Author: pythbox | "We can't be sure, because we can't go Upside and check. But it looks like there's no way they could have even half as many people up there as down here." |
Author: arenaria | Shell Bell nods. "Can you tell me how to navigate the stacks?" she asks. "And do the computers do anything besides look up dead people?" |
Author: pythbox | "The computers look up books," he says. "And technically they'll give you directions, too, but mostly it's not worth it to track one down yourself. Every so often, someone gets lost and we run into them a few decades later." |
Author: arenaria | "So I use the computer to see what books there are to be had, and then I ask one of you to fetch it?" |
Author: pythbox | "Yep," says the librarian. |
Author: arenaria | "How does lending work?" |
Author: pythbox | "Doesn't, mostly," he says. "Losing or damaging a library book is a sentencable crime whether you meant to or not, so most people don't want to risk it." |
Author: arenaria | "Ah, I see." She sighs. "Thank you very much." |
Author: pythbox | He shrugs. |
Author: arenaria | Shell Bell doesn't want to read a book right now, although she'll probably turn right around after she's gone on her expedition looking for -
Holmes. He can be "Holmes". Her Sherlock is Sherlock. They never did figure out a nicknaming scheme, but the other Holmeses she's met are less important by far than the one she can actually get at today.
She goes back to the station, and deciphers the code she imprinted into her file, and travels to the home of the dead Sherlock Holmes. |
Author: finaldiscussion | The man who opens the door... does not look very much like Sherlock.
He maybe looks like he could be an older Tony, though. Maybe. |
Author: arenaria | Yeah, Shell Bell wasn't holding out for anyone that close. "Hi," she says. "I don't think you know me or anyone like me, but before I died earlier today I knew - several people with your name or a variant, and I wanted to see if you were an alt of them. I think you might be. I'm Shell Bell." |
Author: finaldiscussion | "And I," he says, "am Strat." |
Author: arenaria | "Nickname you picked up here?" she asks. "That's not the name I found you by." |
Author: finaldiscussion | "You will find that almost no one uses the same name here that they did in life," he says. "I am no exception." |
Author: arenaria | "Okay. It would've been weird calling you by my girlfriend's name anyway," says Shell Bell. "Can I be your friend? All my loved ones are immortal." |
Author: finaldiscussion |
He blinks.
"...Yes," he says. "I suppose you can. Would you like some tea?" |
Author: arenaria | "I would love some tea." |
Author: finaldiscussion | "Come in, then." |
Author: arenaria | In she comes. "This has been the weirdest day of my - existence," she says, correcting from 'life' at the last moment. "And it's competing with the day I received supreme magical power and declared myself the Empress of Atlantis. I liked that one better." |
Author: finaldiscussion | "I'd imagine you would," he agrees. |
Author: arenaria | "All my magic is gone now. I keep tripping and I can't fly and my memory's slippery and I can't make any wishcoins." |
Author: finaldiscussion | "I've never met anyone here with magic," says Strat. |
Author: arenaria | "The place probably strips it from anyone who's got it as they come in, I guess. My world didn't have magic to begin with. I got it from an alt of me from somewhere else." |
Author: finaldiscussion | "That might explain why it didn't last," he says. |
Author: arenaria | "You think? Maybe. I hope my other alts are cleverer about their defenses than I was. I walked right into a nuclear explosion. I was probably atomized instantly, I don't remember it hurting or anything." She sighs. "And then, I'm not sure but my best guess is that my girlfriend resurrected me, and there's a live copy of me walking around back home and they don't even know I need to be gotten. Because I have a very small, very nicely furnished apartment, and my girlfriend wasn't there when I looked her up so she's probably not a mournful suicide like my guide thought." |
Author: finaldiscussion | "She could just as easily be delayed," says Strat. "I'm told that happens. In the several thousand years since my death, I have yet to find anyone I knew in life." |
Author: arenaria | "It's possible. But I don't think she'd leave her twin brother alone, especially since there's a very good chance she could pull off the resurrection and it's something she'd certainly try." |
Author: finaldiscussion | "You'd know better than I would," he says with a shrug, and puts the kettle on. |
Author: arenaria | "It's basically good news. Means my empire's fine and my girlfriend and her brother aren't devastated. My parents'll probably never find out. And even if I had a much bigger place suggesting that much more mourning happened, distributed amongst at least four people and not cut off instantly when she resurrected me - I still wouldn't expect to see them again. They have no reason to believe this place exists and try to follow me here. They'd still be immortal." Pause. "Can you remember anything about being alive? I badly miss my perfect recall, I need to get some paper and write everything down..." |
Author: finaldiscussion | "I am a little lucky, in that respect," he says. "There are books about me in the library. They don't get everything right, but - enough." |
Author: arenaria | "Biographies or something? Were you famous?" |
Author: finaldiscussion | "Moderately." |
Author: arenaria | "I wonder if there are any biographies about me. This place seems at least as temporally twisted as Milliways, so maybe I can see what's going to be written about me even though I only just died, I'm pretty sure being an Empress makes me famous enough to warrant at least one book even if my guess about resurrection is wrong and I have an extremely brief tenure." |
Author: finaldiscussion | "There may very well be." |
Author: arenaria | "I will look for that next time I'm at the library. What were you famous for?" |
Author: finaldiscussion | "Trivial things." |
Author: arenaria | Shell Bell takes that as him not wanting to talk about it. "What do you do with yourself now, then?" |
Author: finaldiscussion | "Contractor," he says. "Was the address not a clue?" |
Author: arenaria | "I'm new," Shell Bell reminds him, "and don't have perfect recall anymore. But that shouldn't surprise me, I guess, given how I knew to look you up." |
Author: finaldiscussion | "...I beg your pardon?" |
Author: arenaria | "I told you I met alts of yours. Including my girlfriend. I bet she'd become a contractor, if she were here." |
Author: finaldiscussion | "Yes," he sighs, "I expect she would. For future reference, anyone with a ^0 code is a contractor or a torturer or both." |
Author: arenaria | "Some people are both?" |
Author: finaldiscussion | "Well, one person." |
Author: arenaria | "Who?" |
Author: finaldiscussion | "His name is Dice. Quiet sort. Doesn't enjoy politics. Tea?"
There is now tea. |
Author: arenaria | "Tea," agrees Shell Bell, and she wraps both hands around her teacup and sips. She hasn't actually eaten or drunk anything since she arrived. Usually she'd have noticed earlier than this, but it's not yet to the point where it can bother her. She did grow up in a District. "I don't have the - the capacity to be a contractor but I think it's a really good thing you do," she adds. "I would be very unhappy sometime in the next month if it weren't for Eights." |
Author: finaldiscussion | "Many people would be very unhappy if it weren't for Eights," he agrees. "Which, ultimately, is why we do it." |
Author: arenaria | "I have the impression that my sentence was unusually severe, too." |
Author: finaldiscussion | "What was it?" |
Author: arenaria | "Nine hours with someone called Chainsaw," she says. "I put a city on the moon and apparently this counts as kidnapping the way things are counted around here." |
Author: finaldiscussion | "Yes," he says. "That is unusually severe." |
Author: arenaria | "It was a large city. I guess no one was checking to see if I had any better options, though." |
Author: finaldiscussion | "Judges are not frequently concerned with extenuating circumstances." |
Author: arenaria | "So I suppose I'd have gotten off very light if I'd gone on harvesting clams for a living and did nothing whatever about the crushing dictatorship that killed a couple dozen teenagers annually." She sighs. |
Author: finaldiscussion | "Let no one deceive you into thinking anything about this place is fair." |
Author: arenaria | "No one has tried to convince me that it is, but if they start, I'll bear that in mind. You mentioned that that Dice character's not into politics? To what extent is there politics to be interested in, here?" |
Author: finaldiscussion | "There largely isn't, of any kind you would be familiar with. 'Power struggles between torturers' would be a more accurate term." |
Author: arenaria | "Eights warned me about going on people's turf. So it amounts to - turf wars, I guess? Maybe jockeying for the support of various cohorts of friends?" |
Author: finaldiscussion | "Less geographical, more hierarchical." |
Author: arenaria | "What is the best way to stay far away from that while it happens?" |
Author: finaldiscussion | "You mostly don't have to worry about stumbling into it," he says. "Unless you become a torturer. Which I assume you are not going to do." |
Author: arenaria | "I can't think of anything less likely than for me to decide to hurt unwilling victims as an occupation." |
Author: finaldiscussion | "Yes," he says. "Hence, you will mostly not need to worry. Most of the scuffling takes place via control challenge, which is not hazardous to bystanders." |
Author: arenaria | "Control challenge?" |
Author: finaldiscussion | "...Has no one mentioned torturer's control?" |
Author: arenaria | "No, and it sounds like this may have been a very serious omission, please explain." |
Author: finaldiscussion | "It's mainly to stop sentences from struggling inconveniently, I think. Torturers can control someone else's body as though it were their own, overriding the original owner. Contractors are immune; no one else is. A control challenge is what happens when one torturer tries to establish control on another; some combination of effort, experience, and willpower lets one of the two win, not always the one who started it." |
Author: arenaria | |
Author: finaldiscussion | He shrugs. |
Author: arenaria | "I think that might be the worst thing I have heard about this place. Unjust justice system, sure, violent types picking on random people in the streets, sure, those things are par for the course of places I or alts of me don't personally run as far as I can tell, but handing out body-control superpowers to people whose job title is 'torturer' - when we can't even die again and expect a time limit on that basis if nothing else - fuck." She chews her lip. "How much contracting do you have to do to get contractor's immunity - how does it compare with the rate of senseless violence on ordinary denizens? It's probably not a good tradeoff, but maybe my guess is off?" |
Author: finaldiscussion | "You only need to voluntarily take a sentence once," he says. "But you do need to voluntarily take a sentence. If you quit in the middle—or try to—it doesn't count, you receive no immunity, and the torturer has to go find the person you are supposed to be covering for and administer the sentence to them. Some of them find that annoying." |
Author: arenaria | "Eugh." Shell Bell finishes her tea. "I think I'll try not-attracting-attention, first, and if I fail at it at least I'll get information about where that falls on the scale between difficult and utterly impossible, for me." She shudders. "I wish my girlfriend were here. Well. No. I wish she'd managed to resurrect me without splitting me. But if I start from the assumption that I have to be here I wish she were too and I hate that I wish it but I do." |
Author: finaldiscussion | "Good luck," he murmurs. |
Author: arenaria | "Thanks. May I have another cup of tea?" |
Author: finaldiscussion | "Certainly." |
Author: arenaria | "Thanks." Sip, think, sip, think. "How does the inability to die again interact with other stuff? Do I need to sleep, again? I assume if I don't eat I'll get hungrier and hungrier until I reset or whatever it's called." |
Author: finaldiscussion | "Torch," he supplies. "It's called torching. And yes, you can starve into it. I don't actually know if you can get there from lack of sleep, but I don't recommend trying." |
Author: arenaria | "Torching. Okay. I really liked not needing to sleep. It's not the first thing I'd wish back if I got a pile of wishcoins, though," sighs Shell Bell. "That'd be the memory. I need to get a stack of notebooks and something to write with to substitute. It's probably too much to hope for that someone will trade me for a recorder like the one I had." |
Author: finaldiscussion | "I have a spare pen," Strat offers. |
Author: arenaria | "I would love a spare pen." |
Author: finaldiscussion | He fetches her his spare pen. |
Author: arenaria | She pockets it. "Thanks very much. I guess I can put the really important stuff on the back and in the margins of my sentence papers until I accumulate enough junk I don't need in my apartment to trade for paper. How convenient that I was such a prolific 'kidnapper', I have three whole pages to work with." |
Author: finaldiscussion | "A city on the moon, you said?" |
Author: arenaria | "Oh yes. A big city. Millions of people. Utterly toxic culture. I magicked them all up and then sorted through them and let some of them move back to the Earth." |
Author: finaldiscussion | "Well done." |
Author: arenaria | "Thanks." She sips at her tea. It's really rather good. "I think I was a good empress. I was at least better than the previous dictator. But Coin never nuked him. I guess it was harder to trick him into an isolated location and she didn't want all the fallout near where she lives. If she still lives. My girlfriend may have killed her with her bare hands after finding out what she did." |
Author: finaldiscussion | "Violent, is she?" he inquires with a slight smile. |
Author: arenaria | "My girlfriend? She had to be. The aforementioned toxic culture involved seizing a couple dozen teenagers from poorer parts of the country every year and putting them on a TV show in an arena that only one of them got to leave alive. She left alive. It was the shortest Games in history." |
Author: finaldiscussion | "...Yes," he says, "I imagine it would have been." |
Author: arenaria | "Three of the other contestants did die before she got to them, but - yeah. Very brief affair. It's entirely likely that Coin didn't long survive assassinating me. But maybe Sherlock prioritized resurrecting me first and my live copy just put her on the moon. I'm a softy like that." |
Author: finaldiscussion | He smiles again. |
Author: arenaria | "Not as much of a softy as Sherlock's brother, though. People were allowed to put in appeals for people I'd put up there and most of them didn't submit any. He put in, like, four. He's a sweetie. I miss him too." She peers into her tea. "So, I've been told there's no way of communicating with the living - but I was also told there was no way to check up on them, whereas you've given me hope that if I go back to the library I can find books on myself and find out what happens after the unfortunate assassination. So maybe you have contradictory information for the other discouraging thing I've been told too." |
Author: finaldiscussion | "I imagine having a series of books published about your life is not common enough for most people to think of it when asked if there is a way to check up on the living, which there otherwise isn't. And I did mention the books are not entirely accurate. For one thing, in the books, I survived my trip off the edge of a cliff." |
Author: arenaria | "I find it reasonably likely that my books will report that I survived my nuking," Shell Bell points out. "I don't even think this will be a journalistic error as far as it goes, given my hypothesis about my apartment. Also, I showed up wearing my crown, if anybody is famous enough to warrant biographies the crown would be a hint, wouldn't it?" |
Author: finaldiscussion | "And yet," he says, shrugging. |
Author: arenaria | "So you don't know any mechanism of communication that goes the other way. Unless I find a door to Milliways, which to hear Eights tell it could easily be a thousand years in coming." |
Author: finaldiscussion | "Correct." |
Author: arenaria | "D'you know Milliways?" |
Author: finaldiscussion | "Oh, yes. I've been there once or twice. Not recently." |
Author: arenaria | "You came back here. I wouldn't, not without at least recovering my magic and being sure I could leave whenever I wanted - then I'd come back and try to accomplish something, but I wouldn't without. Why'd you come back?" |
Author: finaldiscussion | He shrugs. "I suppose I don't consider myself wholly useless here." |
Author: arenaria | "Oh, no, I didn't mean - of course you're accomplishing something here. I mean do you not miss where you came from? Or didn't you at the not-recent occasion when you found the door?" |
Author: finaldiscussion | "I do, a little. But there is no opportunity to go back." |
Author: arenaria | "If I found Milliways and my door insisted on opening to here instead of to where I was when I was alive, I'd wait for one of my alts or their friends or my girlfriend or her brother or - anyone I knew. And I would expect this to eventually lead to me going home, or at least somewhere nicer than here even if ultimately it was deemed too awkward to have two Empresses of Atlantis with only one Atlantis to go around. What do you mean, no opportunity?" |
Author: finaldiscussion | "Neither I nor anyone I know found Milliways while I was alive. I would certainly have remembered it. So I don't hold out much hope that they will if I hang around long enough." |
Author: arenaria | "Fair enough. There's six of me that we know of who've been to Milliways. We have a shared room, there." |
Author: finaldiscussion | "I don't believe I've heard of anyone with so many duplicates." |
Author: arenaria | "You've got lots, too," Shell Bell says. "Not as many, but plenty. We didn't work out a nicknaming system for your template so they'll be hard to enumerate now that I don't have a perfect memory anymore, but we'd collectively encountered four of you, not counting, well, you. And a number of me came with a different template; we called that template 'Whistles' and we know of five of those." |
Author: finaldiscussion | "Quite the circus, all together." |
Author: arenaria | "Oh, yes. As of the last time I checked I think I was the only Bell who'd met all five of the others. I think Juliet's met more of you than I have, though. I can't remember exactly... but I think so. So it was never exactly group photo time. But it was fun." |
Author: finaldiscussion | Strat's phone rings.
"Excuse me," he says, and answers it. |
Author: arenaria | Shell Bell waits. |
Author: finaldiscussion | It's a short conversation.
"Contract," he says succinctly when it ends. "I should go. Torturers are a notoriously impatient bunch." |
Author: arenaria | "Okay. Thanks for the tea and conversation and invaluable warnings," says Shell Bell, swallowing the last of her beverage and getting up. |
Author: finaldiscussion | "Anytime." |
Author: arenaria | "D'you want my res code?" Shell Bell asks as they head out of his place. |
Author: finaldiscussion | "May as well. Got a pen?" he jokes. |
Author: arenaria | She giggles, and writes her code down on a corner of a file page and tears it off - very carefully; she might take a while to find more paper - and hands it over. |
Author: finaldiscussion | He reads it, then steps back inside to put it down. Things tucked in one's pockets are not safe during contracts. |
Author: arenaria | "Bye!" calls Shell Bell, and she heads for the transit station.
She realizes when she steps out of her destination that she must have mistyped something. Oops. She turns around to go back to the correct neighborhood. |
Author: pythbox |
No she doesn't. |
Author: arenaria |
Shit.
Shitshitshitshitshitshit.
Can she move her eyes - can she talk - Strat didn't mention - |
Author: pythbox | She can move her eyes, yes, and she can talk. Whoever is puppeting her doesn't seem inclined to make themselves known, though. She walks down the unfamiliar street, and whoever it is follows along behind. |
Author: arenaria | "I'm not interesting," Shell Bell squeaks. "I'm - I'm not a fun toy. I don't have anything to recommend me." |
Author: pythbox | "Are you sure?" a soft voice inquires from behind her. "You might just be saying that. How do I know, until I try?" |
Author: arenaria | "I'm a terrible liar," Shell Bell whimpers. "I'm a complete wimp, it'll be no challenge to get me to scream, I don't scream interestingly either, please please please just let me go -" |
Author: pythbox | "You can't win this, you know," the voice says in friendly tones. "You think you want to be boring, but I think you want to do whatever makes me happy. Let's see who's right." |
Author: arenaria | "Why me?" |
Author: pythbox | Lightly, carelessly: "You were there." |
Author: arenaria | "Please. Please let me go. I just - I - anything - I can't - please -" |
Author: pythbox | "Shhhhh." |
Author: arenaria | Shell Bell has nothing clever to say.
So on the off-chance that obedience will invite lenience -
she shushes.
(She cannot, quite, quiet the sobbing.) |
Author: pythbox | They walk together like that for a long time - at least an hour.
And then Shell Bell finds herself walking up the front step of a cozy little house, and opening the door, and closing her eyes, and stepping inside. The door shuts behind her, and she keeps walking—around a corner, through another door, down some stairs.
She raises a heavy stone lid, and climbs into a narrow stone box, and lies down in it, and the lid closes over her with a thunk and her body is her own again. |
Author: arenaria | Shell Bell assesses the situation.
Someone malicious - who she cannot identify, so maybe it matters if she can identify them, maybe there is someone who'd take exception to this treatment of her? Probably not for her sake, but perhaps this torturer is trespassing on another's turf in some way - has her.
She knows she can lift the lid, but she can hear clicking noises that sound like a lock being fiddled into place. And she'd just have the torturer's attention again if she forces the lid up. If she holds still, she's got time to think, though she doesn't know how much.
The box is rapidly stuffy, but it's not airtight - she can see thin lines of light around the edges where the lid is uneven. She will probably not torch repeatedly from oxygen deprivation. (Although if she ever decides torching would be a good idea, she could try holding her breath and seeing if the box is stuffy enough that she can't reoxygenate.)
What does she want?
(Besides for everything since teleporting to the ruins of Europe to turn out to have been a dream, besides to wake up in Sherlock's arms safe and sound and bedecked with coins, besides that.)
She wants out. She wants this torturer to lose interest, or - riskier - find her annoying. Rescue or release.
(She wants Sherlock to have killed herself in a fit of despair after all, because Sherlock would look her up, Sherlock would find her place and find that she was not there, Sherlock would not stop looking until she found her Bell.)
(Okay. What does she want that she can influence from here?)
(Possibly nothing. What does she want within the context of Downside, then...)
She listens. She has to know what's going on. |
Author: pythbox | The torturer's soft voice, now slightly muffled, says: "Don't make a mess."
And the light turns off, and music starts playing, something stately and orchestral. |
Author: arenaria | Don't make a mess? Shell Bell has no idea what that's supposed to mean. It's not like she can get to a bathroom from here. Whether she makes a mess is up to the torturer and how long she leaves her alone. (Bell summarily excises all applicable shame on that subject. It will not serve her. It is not appropriate. If she is in here for the next twenty-four hours, the tea she had at Strat's is going to exit her; this is just a fact of nature unless the bathroom in her apartment was intended to be decorative.) She supposes she could make a mess in a more avoidable way if she injured herself and bled in the box. She doesn't plan to do that; if she wants to torch - which right now she doesn't; she doesn't think it'd help - she'll attempt suffocation first.
What does she have?
She can move, a little. She can roll over; she can get her arms up by her head with some uncomfortable maneuvering. She pushes experimentally on the lid. It's very heavy and her leverage isn't good, but she gets it to move - a fraction of an inch. It's definitely locked, and it's so heavy to begin with that she definitely can't push it off of the box.
She has her clothes, her shoes. If she really needed to, she thinks she could probably work her way out of them given this much space to move in, although there's no purpose she can think of that would be served except, again, that they'd potentially be handy in case of torching.
She doesn't have her sentence papers anymore; she was made to set them down once she got into the house. She's got her own body - she could deprive herself of some hair or fingernails if she thought of a use for those. She doesn't think she's constitutionally capable of biting off her tongue or a digit and can't think of a reason to anyway. She's just taking inventory. Think. Think. What does she have?
Nothing.
She has nothing.
Everything that could influence this situation is out of her control.
She revisits her wants.
She wants to spend this ordeal as dissociated and comfortable as possible.
She rolls onto her stomach and puts her arm under her cheek and imagines herself in bed, with Sherlock curled around her. Murmuring you are a continual epiphany. Thinking white-bordered thoughts. Loving her.
She imagines herself to sleep. |
Author: pythbox | Some time later, the music turns off.
Shell Bell is made to close her eyes, but not otherwise controlled.
The lid opens. |
Author: arenaria | Shell Bell sits up, slowly, hands out ahead of her in case the lid is right there to hit her head on. "Please let me go," she whispers hoarsely. "Please." |
Author: pythbox | "You didn't make a mess," the soft voice says approvingly. "Good. It's time for your bath."
And Shell Bell gets out of the box. |
Author: arenaria | Shell Bell can't see. She can't control how she's moving.
There's really very little reason for her mind to be involved here.
She drifts away as best she can. |
Author: pythbox | She walks into another room, takes off her clothes, and folds them neatly on top of something that might be a chair. There is a brief pause.
The door closes behind her without her intervention.
Her eyes open, and she regains control of her body, although she will find she cannot use it to leave the bathroom. |
Author: arenaria | Maybe she will be allowed a long bath. It'll probably be more comfortable than trying anything else. (She does look in the cabinets after starting the water running to cover the sound. Just in case there's something useful.) |
Author: pythbox | Extras of things like shampoo and toilet paper and toothpaste and soap. Nothing especially weaponlike.
The mysterious torturer leaves her alone for an hour. |
Author: arenaria | Shell Bell is sitting in cooling bathwater at that time. All scrubbed and pink and retreating into fantasy again.
She hasn't been hurt yet. Maybe she's just going to be like this person's oversized doll, maybe they don't actually feel like torturing her per se. Not good. Not at all the worst thing. |
Author: pythbox | As usual, Shell Bell is made to close her eyes, and the torturer doesn't touch her.
She puts on something that might be a bathrobe - the fabric is very soft against her skin - and ties her hair back, and leaves the bathroom. From there she walks around a little, never bumping into anything or tripping, and finally sits down in a comfortable armchair.
Once settled, she is free again, except that she cannot open her eyes or get up out of the chair. |
Author: arenaria | Bell tucks her feet under herself and leans on the wing of the chair. "What do you want?" she murmurs. |
Author: pythbox | "Well, isn't that a question," says the voice. "The truth is, I'm very lonely." |
Author: arenaria | Maybe she's lucky, as these things go. Maybe this torturer really does mean to make a pet of her and not a pincushion.
"You could've just said hi to me. I would've talked to you. I'm new here, I don't have many friends, you didn't have to kidnap me to get company." |
Author: pythbox | "You would have looked at me," says the voice. It sounds very sad. "People say they won't, sometimes. But I don't believe them anymore." |
Author: arenaria | "You could've closed my eyes and I would've been freaked out but you could've explained, you could've blindfolded me and had a moment to take my eyelids again if I turned out to insist on it," Shell Bell says. "You didn't have to put me in a box to get me not to look at you." |
Author: pythbox | "Is that so?" the voice murmurs. "But you could just be saying that too." |
Author: arenaria | "I am not making up the fact that if you blindfolded me you'd be able to reassume control of my body before I could get the blindfold off. I'm not fast, or sneaky, or anything else I'd need to be to win a contest like that." |
Author: pythbox | "Hmmmm," says the voice, and then falls quiet. |
Author: arenaria | "Why don't you want people to look at you?"
Anything she can do at this point relies on the fact that she is being allowed to talk. If she is going to get out through something other than the torturer spontaneously losing interest, it will be because she talks her way out, and doing that will rely on knowing who, exactly, she is dealing with. |
Author: pythbox | "I just don't like it." |
Author: arenaria | "What are you going to do with me?" |
Author: pythbox | "Keep you for a while," the voice says unconcernedly. "Until I let you go." |
Author: arenaria | "Will - that - be soon?" |
Author: pythbox | "I don't think so." |
Author: arenaria | "Can I do anything to make it sooner?" |
Author: pythbox | "Why would I tell you that?" |
Author: arenaria | "If it was something you wanted that I could give you that you'd rather not wait for me to guess. I know I can't make you let me go." |
Author: pythbox | "I want you to stay," says the voice. |
Author: arenaria | "Do you have to keep me in a box - could you just - I don't know - chain me to the wall and give me some pencil and paper to occupy myself, you must have other things to do with your time - sentences to carry out, places to go, appearing objects to collect and trade for new music recordings, I don't know, whatever you do, why does it have to be a box?" |
Author: pythbox | "People run away if I don't keep them in boxes," the voice says reasonably. |
Author: arenaria | "How would I get out if you chained me to the wall and locked the door? Even if I chewed my leg off - and I don't think I could, I'm a wimp - I couldn't break down the door." |
Author: pythbox | "It's happened before," says the voice. "That's why the box. Nobody's ever gotten out of the box." |
Author: arenaria | "I did everything by magic when I was alive. I am almost completely useless without it and it's all gone now. I honestly cannot think of a single way to get out of here if the door was locked and I had at least one ankle chained to the wall. And if I got out you could find me. You made me put down my sentence papers, I didn't have any chance to fake them, they've got my res code on them." |
Author: pythbox | "I don't want to," says the voice. "And if you're not in a box while I'm gone, you might look at me when I come back." |
Author: arenaria | "You can obviously control my eyelids through a door, you did it when you let me out of the bathroom." |
Author: pythbox | "That's not how it works," says the voice. |
Author: arenaria | "Tell me how it works, then, I'm pretty smart, maybe I'll come up with something that will let you be sure you can keep me where you want me that's more comfortable than what you're doing now." |
Author: pythbox | "While I have control on you, I can control you from as far away as I want. But if I let go, to get it again I have to get close again. And it's not safe to go out with my control tied up." |
Author: arenaria | "Rig something so I'm stuck looking at a wall or the floor and can't turn my head all the way around and won't be able to look at you when you come in," suggests Shell Bell. "Or just make it a larger box. With a light." |
Author: pythbox | "...Maybe," the voice says reluctantly. |
Author: arenaria | "All I need is to be able to write and read what I write and I'll be much better company," pleads Shell Bell. |
Author: pythbox | "We'll see," says the voice. |
Author: arenaria | Shell Bell hugs her knees.
"What are you going to do with me while I'm being - kept?" |
Author: pythbox | "Things," the voice says vaguely. "Nothing too bad. Not like what you'd get from most torturers." |
Author: arenaria | Shell Bell relaxes marginally.
(She's tempted to say you could just be saying that but she has no reason to think this would be more likely to help than hurt.) |
Author: pythbox | The voice goes quiet. |