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"How goes it, H?"
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"So, remember you said you'd be ready if i needed you..."
For a moment, all expression vanishes from his face. The wrinkle lines smooth over and the frown of concentration disappears.
"Say the word, H."
"Are you sure you want in?"
"I already told you once, H."
Not one to make idle promises, once is enough for Ramses.
"Is there anyone you won't work with?"
"I think you know the answer to that question, Hersh."
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"I'm not working with that guy." He glances over at HOLOCENE.
Your old double has been known to have an unsettling effect on certain people.
"Yeah, fair enough."
"Just... no fucking weirdos, yeah, Hersh?"
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"How about an operant who got his mind wiped and left vegetative but has since been revived with a Luzian imprinting device?"
"Yeah, that's exactly what I mean, H, keep him the fuck away from me."
Superstitious at heart, you can almost see the shivers run down his spine as you stray into weird metaphysical territory.
"Alright. Deal, Rams."
He nods.
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"Anyone else?"
"I assume you're not trying to recruit that guy, but just in case the idea crosses your mind..." He gives you a wary look.
"I am not working with HOLOCENE."
"Good, just checking." (Conclude.)
He nods and returns his gaze to the death-whistle.
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"For the assignment, is there anyone you won't work with?"
"Want to smoke a joint, for old time's sake?"
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"Supply's getting low. Need the rest for myself. Sorry, H." He gives you a helpless look.
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"Been waiting for you to say..."
He may have been waiting, but he didn't decide to prepare anything in advance, as always. You wait once again for him to roll up the joint.
Puff on it like a steam train.
The world dissolves into its own haze, and with it all your worries.
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Who is Hershel Wilk? What is techno-fascism? Is squirt piss?
These are questions whose answers no longer matter. You are high as shit, and that is all.
"Aahhh..."
"Jagged."
With careful fingers, Ramses begins the process of preparing your favourite source of phantasmagoria. It takes as long as ever.
Suck it in slow.
Take a deep puff.
"Buckle up, this strain is known to make people forget their own fucking names."
As always, the process of rolling takes more time than the high will last, but you know it's worth it.
Branch
"Alright, where were we?"
And so the process begins again. The paper, the grinding, the filter...
The time.
No. This time I'm in it till the end.
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And so the time passes.
Finally, he is using the back end of a match to pat the mixture down.
"Alright, one spliff, coming right up."
"This is a trick, right? You're not really done yet."
"Taste it. See for yourself."
Smoke.
Crackling, soft warm smoke equal parts sweet and musky fills your mouth.
A perfectly even burn line recedes throughout the joint, a milimetre with every puff.
Your cares dissolve.
It is perfection. It is art. An island of craft in a sea of barbarity.
"God..."
"Hrmm. I feel like it's still a little uneven, you know?"
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The sword master is his own greatest critic. He may have achieved many times over what appears perfection to the eyes of commoners, but he alone knows that he is still a novice.
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"Got a question. You ever think about what this stuff is doing to us?" He waves the joint around conspiratorially.
"Getting us high, mostly."
"Yeah-yeah. But I mean... this is some kind of vegetable life we're inhaling, getting it into our minds. What if we're like, fucking... becoming one."
He's right... the vegetables are probably setting up home in your brain grooves right now.
It does feel like something else is controlling your body.
THE PARTY HAS BEEN COMPROMISED. OUST THE VEGETAL DISSIDENT.
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"Fuck... What the hell is in that?" (Gesture at the joint.)
"I dunno... some high-priest of veggiedom, come to take our animal flesh or some shit." He holds the joint out at arm's length. "Good, though."
"Think about it, all I'm saying. Something as good as that always comes with a cost." He taps ones of his temples.
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You finish the rest of the joint in a rhythm of inhales. By the end, it feels like both your minds have melded with the sticky floorboards.
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He stubs the joint out and places it carefully -- leaning into the haziness -- before returning to you.
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"Alright, psychic shield engaged. What next?"
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As you prepare to get back into it, you notice the name on one of the marked discs -- one you didn't see before.
It reads: 'EMTERR-SPEAK'.
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"Let's hear 'METAMOTO / DISAPPEAR'.'
"It's a good one."
He reaches for the recording and sets it to play. Amid static, a warm voice surfaces.
"Mmmm. Perhaps I should be talking to your senior instead. He's senior, is he not? That means he's less of a worm than you are."
"That won't be p-p-possible, ma'am. Metamoto... he's abandoned his post, left me to face you alone." His voice drops to a whisper. "Just how I want it."
"Are you hiding him from me? Why, are you scared I'll make you and those Luzian men watch as he worships my toes?"
"Unghhh..."
"What is wrong with these rich assholes?"
Ramses can only shrug with the weight of having listened to this multiple times already.
"It's not just Metamoto. One of our counterparties seems to have vanished as well."
"This Mr. Metamoto has been on a bender, that's all."
"You found him before the fuckers did?" Pride spreads across his face. "Nice."
"Who's taking them... where are they going? Is it because they're... underperforming?"
"Oh, Frederik. You don't really think we'd make people disappear over a poor performance review?"
"But if you did, would you disappear me?" The tape clicks -- ending the segment.
"Nothing I didn't already know in this one. Let's keep going."
"Onto the next one it is." He nods and ejects the disc.
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"You know, I shouldn't be doing this without a solid psychic shield." He flashes you a smile before extracting a joint from his jacket pocket.
A light flicks, and a pungent, familiar smell wafts around you. Ramses inhales deep, then offers you the joint.
"No thanks. Need to stay sharp."
"Alright. What next?"
(Take a hit.) "Good call."
"I am a professional." He nods as you hand back the joint, and takes another hit.
Smoke unfurls from his nostrils, like an ancient dragon.
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"Well, he's definitely not averse to sharing confidential information over the sex line..."
"Like I say, it's in there somewhere, but you have to sift through a lot of sad sex stuff. He can't get off without thinking about work..."
"I assume he's referring to the Luzian prisoner that his side has locked up."
"They snatched one of the Luzians?" he asks, half in disbelief.
Keep listening.
Ramses fiddles with his beard, on his face a mild frown of concentration.
This is a lot.
Alternative wording
"This a lot for this time in the morning."
Alternative wording
"This is a lot, even for this time at night."
"I'm not one for toes, but cucking him with a room full of Luzians is pretty nice."
"Hey, whatever does it for you." He shrugs.
Keep listening.
"'MISSING POP STAR / TRAIN'? Hit it."
"Strap in." He slides the disc in and hits 'play' in two deft movements.
"Do you want to fuck the little foreign songbird? Pathetic. She could have any man she wants. What would she want with a worm like you?"
"I don't care about missing some pop-star. All those cheery little songs and coordinated dance routines -- despicable."
Seething. Truly disgusted.
Women trained to elicit joy, to be polite and obliging, to please. It genuinely does nothing for him.
"But the Ministry of Mass Culture, they treat these girls like crown jewels. Symbols, really. And Ultra Violeta's the most important of them all."
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The words from the disc that PSEUDOPOD was playing flash in your mind: 'Ultra Violeta - You But From a Dream'.
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"There was an operant that got zeroed out. He was listening to an Ultra Violeta disc at the time..."
Alternative wording
"The operant that got turned into a vegetable -- he was listening to an Ultra Violeta disc at the time..."
"Mm. You don't think it's a coincidence?"
"It was the disc that zeroed him out. It's weaponised somehow."
"Fuck. Well, you might find this next bit interesting, then." He presses the 'play' button again.
"Ah, fuck me. I jeopardised it all..." He begins sobbing. "To think, I may never get to glimpse the gap, on account of that priceless fucking train!"
"Fuck. Well, you might find this next bit interesting, then." He presses the 'play' button again."Beats me -- they're so shiny. Anyway, the juicy part's coming up." He presses the 'play' button again."Fuck , H, you're... you're way ahead of the curve on this one. Seems like you know more than they do."You ran right into that one.Keep listening.
"Are you crying about that fancy-wancy boy's toy again? Pitiful for a grown man, wouldn't you think?"
"Yes." He sniffs, his voice steadying. "Yes, please."
The recording comes to a stop.
"Miserable bastard." He cracks his fingers, one by one.
"There's tonnes more like that. They're obsessed with this fucking train. Apparently, the Bank people had a party somewhere, your man got royally sauced, and did something with a toy train."
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It's much more expensive than a mere toy.
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"I have it right here." (Pull out the model train part.)
Alternative wording
"I have it right here." (Pull out the model train.)
Alternative wording
"I have a part of it right here." (Pull out the model train wheel.)
"Wow, Hersh, you're getting fast. How did you come across that?"
"Found it in bits. Had to plunge the hot tub, wrestle that guy's senior, then glue it all back together."
"Certified jagged. Looks almost brand new. Wonder what this Bank kid would think if you showed it to him..."
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"We're on the same wavelength, Rams. Already figured it could be good for a bit of pump-and-dump."
With a smirk, your asset raises a finger to his head and lightly taps it twice.
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"He'd probably freak out. Seems a bit cruel."
"Fucking... probably do him good, to be honest."
"Hmm, yeah, could be good leverage for a spot of pump-and-dump."
"Paid a visit to that hot tub and plunged it."
"Rather you than me." A playful smile. "Hey, what do you think this Bank kid would think if you showed it to him?"
"Wrestled it off his hot mess of a senior."
"No shit? Good job. Guess you still have to find the rest of it."
"Any idea where this party was held? Seems like it's probably the same place they're having the talks."
"No shit? Good job. Guess you still have to find the rest of it.""Good girls don't tell.""Anything with these fucking people in a room together is despicable, H.""That tracks.""Sounds right so far. Go on.""I dunno. I like my parties to be fun.""But trains don't have..." he starts, then furrows his brows. "Oh, right. Got it."
You recall the prisoner's voice, crackling into your ear.
"You know the host, Ramses. It's Reno."
"Reno." His face darkens.
His eyes acquire a ceramic-like quality. Brightly dead, impenetrable.
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"You alright, Ramses?"
"You know he's the one who..."
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"I know. He's the spasm-watcher."
"Motherfucker's got his fingers in everything...." He shakes his head. "Let's keep going."
Beyond the walls of the dingy bar, the city breathes.
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"Who what?"
"My 'client'. The one who used to watch me go off for his 'intuition hacking'..."
The image forces its way back to you -- the man's unblinking, obsessive stare, while on the bed Ramses convulsed uncontrollably.
"That was Reno? Owner of the phone lines and richest man in Portofiro?"
"It kind of fits with everything we're learning about these people."
"Uh-huh. Fucking..."
"Let's keep going, yeah?"
"Yeah." He nods, then, under his breath: "Motherfucker's got his fingers in everything..."
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The image forces its way back to you -- Reno's unblinking, obsessive stare, while on the bed Ramses convulsed.
"It's all going down at Reno's. The Reno."
"No clue." (Lie.)
"Alright, let's keep going."
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"No clue."
"Good girls don't tell."
"His senior told me all about this party. Sounded despicable."
"Anything with these fucking people in a room together is despicable, H."
"A 'priceless' train. Could be an art piece. Maybe a model kit."
"That tracks."
"Sounds right so far. Go on."
"Seems he knows how to party."
"I dunno. I like my parties to be fun."
"Maybe he...?" (Make a hole with your fist, then push your other fist in.)
"But trains don't have..." he starts, then furrows his brows. "Oh, right. Got it."
By the sound of it, it's more expensive than a mere toy.
"I don't know yet."
"How do you lose a popstar?"
"Beats me -- they're so shiny. Anyway, the juicy part's coming up." He presses the 'play' button again.
"We've got Ultra Violeta."
"What? So we're, you know... the ones who kidnapped her?"
He includes himself like one coming to terms with the things done during a blackout, or a bout of amnesia.
"The teenage girl who's partly Tempo is hiding her."
"Fuck , H, you're... you're way ahead of the curve on this one. Seems like you know more than they do."
"The teenage girl who led us to the prisoner is hiding her."
"She wasn't kidnapped. She's hiding from the Luzians."
"Can't say anymore." (Pretend to zip up your mouth.)
"I call her V. Because we're friends."
"Who's Ultra Violeta?"
"Luzian popstar. Or as they like to call it: L-Pop. She's massive."
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Massive? That's the second time you've heard about a majestic woman with a gigantic form. You must find out more.
"Hold on, how big we talking? Bigger than Lolita Calista?"
"Who's that? Well, never mind. I guess she is bigger, given that I've heard of UV but not this other woman."
Do not be jealous of these megalith women. They would be terrible operants. Your smallness makes it easy to stay undercover.
"Do you know if her music has any damaging effects on people?"
"Of course it does. It's sugary electro-pop. Damages everything it touches."
You ran right into that one.
Keep listening.
"Let's hear GAP."
Ramses inserts the disc. A voice creeps into the surrounding ether.
"Import restrictions, personal sanctions, even the blocking antennae. We're prepared to lift them all."
"And then La Luz will flood the Developed World with all that futuristic techno stuff? Sounds very, very naughty Frederik."
"It's a-huh, a massive, historical-grade risk. Borderline illegal under international law. But the Luzians are prepared to make major concessions as well..."
"Is this even a sex thing at this point?"
"It's all one big tangled fucking ball."
"What sort of concessions, you little worm? Like the kind you make for me?"
"Hyyyuuuggghh I can't say, I can't."
You are reminded of a ripe cherry tomato, about to burst between thumb and forefinger.
"It's this awful gap!"
"The portal, from which the Minister of Mass Culture will emerge. What's he doing in there? And in the meantime I have to carry all this pressure around inside me. No release! Except you, of course."
"There it is, the gap."
"Yeah. He keeps bringing it up. What is it?"
Infused with transcendant meaning, somewhere between a symbol and the thing it represents, the junior negotiator's conception of the gap escapes definition.
"It's his fetish. A gap in the schedule brimming with sexual potential."
"When I close my eyes I just see the gap, yawning before me. I wonder, is this what Metamoto saw as well..."
"Tariff schedules. Transit corridors. Frequency band allotments. It's here, on paper -- sealed and signed. But no!" He chuckles. "And these poor fuckers... unghhh..."
A wet, retching sound fills the line. A glass is knocked over, followed by more retching.
"Gather yourself, worm."
She's concerned, but she knows his limits.
"It's all just numbers, isn't it?" He laughs again. "Yeah, just numbers. Good night, ma'am." A final click.
"This one got a little too abstract for my taste."
"These fucking people..."
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"Fucked up stuff, but nothing we can use."
"Yeah. He's put in so many hours on the sex line at this point that sometimes I wonder if, you know, he didn't already tell her all the practical shit..."
"Let's do the next one." (Go back.)
"Roger."
"Money people are weird, man."
"The Luzians are visiting a War Criminal shrine before the treaty negotiations can begin, I think that's what he's referring to."
"Well, fuck, H. Maybe we should have wiretapped you instead."
Keep listening.
"Wind this bit forward, Rams. He's blabbering."
Your asset obliges your request, holding his finger on the fast-forward button for around 0.5 of a second. It seems to have been the perfect timing.
Keep listening, there may be something good.
"'OLD MEN INTERRUPTION'? What's that about?"
"Your man's arrival. Seems tensions were brewing." He hits the play button.
_L1.webp){kind=icon}
"... I bank left and come around to survey the damage, flying low so I can see... And there you are. Chest pinned under a concrete pillar, head and legs sticking out, skirt and underwear burned to melted plastic strings..."
"Aiih... Ah... AH..." She whimpers softly, out of breath. "Please. No more bombs... aih..."
Voice somehow constricted, as though some heavy object really were pressing down on her chest.
"Been waiting for twenty-three minutes, old man. Surrender the phone or I'll be forced to take action."
The sounds of them arguing in the background continue as he pulls the receiver away from his mouth.
"Might not be crucial, but figured the social dynamics could be useful."
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"What's 'EMTERR-SPEAK'?"
"Ah, that one's a bit of an outlier."
"See, our guy rang up the Miracle Line at some ungodly hour, in total shambles. Weird bit is, for most of it, he didn't speak a word of Mircean."
"What was he speaking, then?"
"You've heard EMTERR's got their own little secret dialect, right?"
A pseudo-language stretching back centuries, cobbled together from imperial slang and colonial patois. You first learned of its existence after joining the Opera.
A FETISHISTIC RESIDUE OF OUR ENEMIES' PAST, BACK WHEN THEY OWNED LAND -- AND PEOPLE.
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"It's called le Vieux Cant. Climb the ranks, and you get to learn it."
"Figured. I've heard it couple times before. Pretentious garbage."
"I don't know what our man's saying, but before hanging up, he flips back to Mircean." He purses his lips. "And he mumbles something about 'tomorrow night'.
A possible rendezvous. Actionable intelligence.
"So a meet... with whoever Duchess is roleplaying as?"
"Maybe. It's a lot of 'Ifs', but that's my guess."
"Play it."
"Strap in." He settles the disc into place and hits play.
"Hello? Are you there?" A wet cough rattles the line. "I've been meaning to ask something, ma'am. Forgive my impropriety, but..."
"Plutôt que ledgers-mine cast unto luminant threshold, deign you grant us a souffle partaged? Alcoved sip-fine sits nigh threshold, if such environs suit..."
A poorly conceived, underbaked hodgepodge of old and modern Developed World languages -- mostly from Mircea and Ile-de-Söze.
That is EMTERR cant, no question.
But what does it mean?
That remains to be determined.
"As plaza duskéd-swells, and bleat-songs thicken, anon oeils may mark 'pon our shadows. Maybe tomorrow night?"
Dancing on insanity, his understanding of reality and roleplay had merged entirely.
'Tomorrow night'. A battle arena.
Concrete and plastic. Droplets on dark air. Voices raised under moulding canopy.
"Hello?" A few seconds of silence. "Fuck's sake. What am I doing? You've really made a mess of me, you stupid cunt!"
The receiver is slammed repeatedly until the disc slows down to a stop.
"Now that part, I get." He drags a thumb across his lower lip. "The rest, not so much. You?"
The negotiator said he had a 'request', and suggested tomorrow night.
"Not yet."
"Well, then let's get to it."
"I could isolate some parts, slow them, fuck with the pitch." A joyous crack of his knuckles. "Just say the word."
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"I think I can parse it."
"You know Mircean... that's a start." He shrugs.
"Bullshit pseudo-language."
"Yeah. It's surface-level stuff, right. Nothing you can't crack with enough time to relisten."
Keep listening.
"So?"
"I'm thinking that 'tomorrow night' isn't part of the roleplay. It's something we can use. If we can figure out what they're saying, that is."
"What you heard is the tongue of ghosts who once owned continents."
"I'd be spooked if it didn't sound like pretentious garbage."
"He was speaking in EMTERR code on a sex line?"
"Don't know if it's exactly code, but yeah, pretentious garbage."
"Uh... Vaguely, yeah."
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Something twitches inside your memory. You have heard of this, but its name slips by you.
"Was he slurring in the tongue of the utterly shitfaced?"
"Well, yeah, but that's not what I mean."
Crack the negotiator's dialect.
You close your eyes and hover in the spaces between syntaxes, where intents and symbols stir. Meaning frays before re-threading itself into patterns.
Motion to Ramses to cue up the recording.
He gets the disc spinning as your mind prepares to lock in.
"Plutôt que ledgers-mine cast unto luminant threshold..."
A tremor in his voice. Like a kid addressing his crush.
Words drift into polysemous configurations. Ledgers are documents, and dossiers, and reports. A luminant threshold is a glowing door, and a bright passage, and...
Common figurative speech for an astral door. EMTERR love to use them as drop-off points between operants.
"An astral door. He's talking about dropping off reports there."
"Mm, okay."
"Alcoved sip-fine sits nigh threshold, if such environs suit..."
Sip-fine. Action, description -- within it is another word, an umbrella term for which they would both fit.
"There's a discreet bar nearby, if that suits you..."
"As plaza duskéd crowd-swells, and bleat-songs thicken, anon oeils may mark 'pon our shadows..."
A bar where they'll go unnoticed among the plaza's evening crowd. Meaning settles into place.
"Rams, he's asking her to meet at a quiet bar near one of their astral doors."
"Fuck yeah." He breathes. "Insane. I knew you had it."
"Just the broad strokes, but it's enough."
"So where's this astral door?"
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The outline of a small alcove with seated patrons shimmers in your mind.
"The plaza in Party Alley. Must be one of the small bars around there."
"I haven't been there in years, but..." He nods. "There's a cocktail place there. Small -- fancy."
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"We've listened to everything now and it feels like we got what we needed. We done here?"
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"We can go over the other segments if you want, but feels like we got what we needed. Your call."
You recall the faint clinking of glasses, just a few metres away.
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"EMTERR have one in Party Alley. I haven't looked into it yet."
"There's a plaza there. Small spot, between the larger streets."
The negotiator's words echo: plaza duskéd-swells.
"He mentioned a plaza. Gets crowded at night."
"Party Alley, then. There's a plaza there. Small, away from the larger streets."
"I'm a professional."
"I am impressed. And where's this astral door, exactly?"
"I am simply filled with poetic puissance."
"You know, I might start to believe it. So where's this astral door, exactly?"
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Nope, you're still not ready for this. Tragic.
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The place you need to be, where such a dialect may unravel itself to you, it's still unreachable.
Why? What's wrong with me?
Maybe it's your soul? To really understand the way words knock together, to hear their inner chime, you need to be totally unfurled.
Speak plainly, please.
You misunderstand this part of you. To speak plainly would be to completely miss the point. You must instead embrace the figurative and the lyrical -- become like the saint of poiesis.
"Fuck this. Forget it."
He nods but doesn't look at you, instead fiddling with the remains of a cigarette.
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"Not this time, either, Rams."
You try to zone yourself in, where you're open to receive nonsense in audio form, and interpret it into something with meaning.
However, try as you might, your poetic tuner is completely out of whack.
"Okay, hit me with it Rams."
"Plutôt que ledgers-mine cast unto luminant threshold..."
You have no idea what any of this means. It sounds exactly like a made-up language.
"Well?" He hits pause on the recording and looks at you expectantly.
"I'll need a bit more. Just a bit more."
"Alright then." With a tap of the finger, the gibberish returns.
"Alcoved sip-fine sits nigh threshold, if such environs suit..."
Why are you doing this to yourself?
"I'm going to stop it there, Hersh. You look a little lost. Let's try again another time."
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"I'll be honest, Ram. I'm not getting anything from this."
"It's all good. Maybe try again another time. You look a little stressed."
"Let's try another time. I'm not in the right place for it."
"No problem." He hits 'stop' on the disc player.
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"Got what we needed." (Conclude.)
"So what's the plan?"
"Investigate the astral door. Maybe try to spot the EMTERR woman."
"Alone?"
"Alone."
"I see." A crease forms between his brows. "Then let me ask one thing before you head out."
"Attend to this mess, but when the time comes -- tell me what this is all about."
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"For this part, at least."
"For this part." He nods.
"I need a break. Can we get back to it later?"
"Alright, just say the word."
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"Is this your way of telling me..." (Narrow your eyes.)
"What? Hersh, no, I'm not a vegetable." He shifts uncomfortably. "Not yet, at least."
"We should get back to it."
"Not like you to be health conscious, Ram."
"Just smoke it, man."
"Fuck, Ramses... I can't argue with the results."
It is perfection. It is art. An island of craft in a sea of barbarity.
"Fucking finally."
"I change my mind, I can't go through this!" [Leave again.]
"Alright, Hersh." He hides his eyes.
'Why twist the knife?', his gaze seems to say.
Branch
"It's like you read my mind."
Mind reading level: Tutorial.
You have smoked an infinity of joints with Ramses, and yet it is only as he reaches into his bag and pulls out the paraphernalia that you remember one particular aspect of the experience.
What aspect?
Just wait for it.
It begins by stretching out a rolling paper on the table, which he mock rolls in his fingers a few times to get the paper to the right texture.
And then... keep waiting for it.
Fuck, fuck fuck.
He starts to pick apart the nugs by hand, a process which gets incrementally slower with every minute as his fingers grow stickier and stickier.
Like the master sword-makers of Tsun's Arc, he is a relic of times long past, an initiate in some forgotten craft now performed in seconds by machines.
"Hey, do you want some help with that?"
"No, I've got it." He smiles mildly and goes about his work.
Time passes. Every once in a while, he flicks the lighter and runs it over his fingertips to decarboxylate the hash stuck to them and then licks them, one by one.
Branch
Each sword takes a year to make, so it is impossible for anyone to make a living selling them, which is why the Tsunian government subsidizes the last living Sword Master to produce one sword a year.
"Joint, or spliff?"
A joint would be quicker. No tobacco.
"Joint."
"Wrong, my friend."
Then, he proceeds to do the same thing he just did, but now with the tobacco.
"Ramses, what the fuck man, the tobacco comes pre-ground, don't fuck with me."
"I mean, kind of. But if you don't pick it apart right it burns unevenly."
With mounting disbelief, you watch as he meticulously mixes it, striving for every square millimetre of the compound to have the exact same proportion and distribution of brown on green.
"Five to one," he says, as though reading your thoughts.
"God, Ramses, I just wanted to get kind of high."
"Oh, we're going to get very high."
"You mean our grandchildren are going to get very high."
"I mean yeah, I assume they will. The apple doesn't fall far from the tree, you know."
Once mixed, he grabs little bunches of the mixture and starts placing it upon the open paper, occasionally prodding at it with a stick to re-achieve the desired distribution.
Branch
Now that the last living sword master is in his eighties, he can no longer work as assiduously as he once did, and each sword now takes two years to produce.
Next, Ramses pulls out a notebook and starts to tear a rectangular strip of paper out from the corner of one page to make the filter.
"I swear to god, I'm going to kill myself if that joint takes even two more minutes."
"Whoah, whoah. Ease up, H. We're halfway through already."
"Just got to burn the edges of the filter so we're not getting any loose paper…"
"You've got to be kidding me."
Once trimmed, the filter is rolled, including a fun little squiggle in the middle. He tests its diameter and springiness by squeezing it softly between his fingers.
Alright, that's got to be the last step.
Apparently finding it wanting in springiness, he starts anew with another page corner.
Branch
No matter how much time has gone into forging the sword, if the Master deems its quality insufficient, he will destroy it before letting anyone see his failings, even after two years of hard labour.
"Please, I don't want a sword, I just want a joint..."
"Sword? What are you talking about, H?" He shakes his head briefly and returns to his labours.
"No! God, Ramses, fuck."
"Stop, stop, stop. I might actually become stupider from all this anxiety." (End it early.)
"Oh. But... Uh, well, alright, H." Somewhat hurt, very confused.
As he puts it away, you see the look he gives his masterpiece, as though wondering why it is not good enough for you.
Branch
"Let's leave it for another day in that case." (Abandon hope.)
"I swear to god, I'm going to wang myself if that joint takes even two more minutes."
Breathe. Enjoy the process.
Air and the clashing smells of fragrant weed and stale beer fill your lungs. You feel something like peace begin to come.
"Alright, nice. Halfway through."
"We better."
"Take your time."
"Thanks Hersh. I am."
If there was any sarcasm in that phrase, it flew way over his head and directly into the Noscorrentes sea.
"I'm kind of in a rush man."
"Yeah, me too." He grins earnestly.
"Spliff."
"Correct."
One takes longer as it includes tobacco. This is a bad time to forget which.
"Wouldn't you rather use a grinder?"
"What, fucking, like some kind of fast food line cook? No, you have to do it with love."
This is fine. This is the best part of the experience.
"Ramses, how about we make this one an express joint?"
"More like the joint express, fucking... you have no idea where this is taking us."
Oh, fuck. I remember.
"Not yet. Let's let it burn out some more," he says, clearly mellow enough.
Branch
"Let's get back to that smoke. I'm ready now." (Smoke a joint with Ramses.)
"Smoke me out again?" (Smoke a joint with Ramses.)
"Cricket is set up. Heard anything good from the Miracle Line?"
Branch
Branch
"Yeah, your man is a talker. He's been talking to this Duchess lady at least four hours every day. Had to stop recording -- but I'm pretty sure we got what we need."
"Wait, who's Duchess?"
"Woman on the other end of the line. She is the Miracle Line, it's just one person."
"Go it, so what did you hear?"
"Humiliation and degradation, mostly. Which, you know, I can hang. But the thing is... fuck it, hold on. Just listen." He fiddles with his gear until a voice comes through.
"I want to sit at your feet, ma'am. I want to crawl across the carpet, under the long table where all the draft agreements are spread out. I-I want to press my mouth against your ankle while -- a-are you wearing pantyhose?"
Branch
You've heard him talk, you know his arrogant, fast-talking manners -- he's faking the stutter as part of the roleplay.
"Sheer nude, without a backseam."
"Here's the thing... what?"
"It's all like that."
"I wish to slowly wet your protruding ankle with the tip of my tongue while you tell our counterparties what they're going to do for us."
"Hours of that shit. Work and fetishes mixed together. I don't know exactly what you're looking for, Hersh, so I did the best I could with what I had..."
He gestures towards a series of marked discs waiting on the table.
"What's all this?"
"Just, you know... cut up the audio, identified semantic ties, bundled relevant segments together. It's all here on these discs."
The editing job alone is probably a week's work.
"Incredible. This is why we had to get you operational again, Ram."
"I live for this shit, H. Just hard to do that when I was, you know, fucking... barely alive." He beams.
"Let's dive in, yeah?"
"I was hoping for actionable data, RADIAN."
"Whatever you're looking for, I know it's in here. I just can't pinpoint it for you."
"You tagged and referenced it all?"
"Make it louder. This is exactly what I'm here for."
"Then you're in luck, cause there's fuck-loads of it."
Keep listening.
"About what?"
"Your man is a talker. He spent five hours and thirty-two minutes talking to this Duchess lady yesterday."
"Not yet. Check in later, Hersh."
Branch
"Heard anything good from the cricket on the Miracle Line yet?"
"Let's see what else our EMTERR man has to say."
"Alright, let me set up the gear."
"Your pick."
Branch
"You down for some more wiretapping?"
Alternative wording
"You remember that hypothetical wiretap I asked you about?"
"Wiretap, you say?" Ramses raises his head and looks at you, a half smile playing on his lips.
There he is. He's back.
"Fill me in."
Branch
"Here's the deal. A while back, Tempo resurfaced with a message for the Opera, but he would only talk to me..."
"Tempo? Huh."
Branch
"I get called back out, but they sent a guy called PSEUDOPOD ahead of me, who got his mind erased and turned into a vegetable..."
"Hey, it happens. I had a buddy, turned himself into a vegetable."
Nodding mechanically, eyes glazed over and gently smiling, it's hard to tell how much he's even understanding.
Branch
"Turns out Tempo's mind is kind of inside the body of a teenage girl. She told us about this Luzian man stuck in a jail..."
"Teenage girl, alright."'
Branch
Not the slightest sign of surprise. Supreme, unfeigned spiritual indifference.
"Is that seriously your reaction to learning Tempo put his mind inside a teenage girl?"
"Sounds like something Tempo would do." He shrugs.
Branch
"The prisoner told us about a secret treaty between the Bank and La Luz -- which brings us to the guy we have to wiretap..."
"Mm-hm." Nodding, nodding.
He's gone. Audience, lost.
Branch
"Are you following along?"
"Um, yeah, sure. So... what are we tapping?"
It's hopeless. You brought this on yourself.
"It's a payphone. Heard of the 'Miracle Line?'
"Uff, the Miracle Line... that thing's being going strong since, fucking... I don't know. Before I got here, at any rate. Wild."
"So, what, you're planning some kind of honeypot act?"
"For the record, if I did decide to pull a honeypot, my sex talk would liquefy your nerve endings."
"That doesn't sound -- look, I'll just assume we're patching in. You already have the crickets to plant on the line."
"The hard part's yours -- finding the terminal box."
Branch
Branch
"Already taken care of. It's up the pylon in Party Alley."
"Alright. I'm impressed. So while you bug that, I'll set up the listening post."
He gestures to a rat's nest of gear already piled on the table next to him -- cassette decks, VU meters, oscilloscopes.
Branch
"Why can't I just bug the Miracle Line itself?"
"Because it's a Renotel line. Payphones have their own quirks -- so the larger exchange is where the magic happens." He furrows his brow. "You want a more technical breakdown, or...?"
We got places to be. Anywhere free from nonsense tech jibberish.
Only a monster would say 'no' to free, top-grade telecom nerdery full of hyper-specific details.
"Yeah, hit me with the juicy stuff."
Branch
"Alright, fucking... so, private lines are easy to get into, right. You have a continuous copper pair and a straight shot to the exchange. You clip in anywhere along that run, you're on the call. That's why it was doable with Gonza."
"But man, our payphone infrastructure's a total rush job. Nestor had guest workers set those up in the 50s -- dirty, cheap. The result is kilometres of bargain-bin copper stuffed into a handful of multiplexers."
Like millions of capillaries feeding a single, bloated vein.
"Near impossible to cleanly trace a single line in that mess, so you go where the lines are sorted -- which is the exchange. Make some sense?"
Branch
The details enter your infosphere like the missing cog in a machine. It feels right. It feels good. Your motor-brain churns hungrily, demanding more, yearning for the high-tech.
"Yep. Got you."
"Tight. Any other questions?"
Branch
"I mostly regret having asked."
"Agency's a motherfucker. Alright, how do I fucking put this..." He purses his lips.
"Cricket goes on big phone gathering spot, not little phone."
If this was anyone else you'd feel patronised. But that's not Ram's style -- he's genuinely trying to help.
Wow, he's talking to you like you were a total idiot. Maybe you are a total idiot?
Picture a hundred guitars connected to a single amp, strumming all at once.
"Alright, fucking... so, private lines are easy to get into, right. You have a continuous copper pair and a straight shot to the exchange. You clip in anywhere along that run, you're on the call."
"Thanks, but I'm good." (Move on.)
"Yeah, I figured. Short version: our payphone infrastructure's fucked. You want to tap into it, you go to the exchange where the calls are routed."
Branch
"Let's hear it."
"So I go back to the pylon, plant the cricket, then what?"
"I'll set up a listen-in point from here. Route the call to my own line, record it all."
Branch
"Any clue which exchange the Miracle Line's connected to?"
"Maybe, yeah. Most cabling in Viudas converges on a few spots. There's one exchange in the Bazaar. The other's in Party Alley at the top of a pylon. That's where I'd start."
Branch
"What are the risks?"
"For me? Zero to none. Line impedance stays matched, no one at Renotel gets twitchy. They might see a .003 volt drop. Moisture or rats will do that."
"For you? Just don't touch the loud buzzing stuff. It's, you know, high voltage."
Branch
"Alright. I plant the bug, you grab the call. Then what?" (Conclude.)
"I'll need a day or so to work through it before I can deliver the good stuff to you on a plate."
"I'll keep an eye on the cricket. Once it's in, I'll know."
Branch
"I know it's somewhere in Party Alley. Just need to find it."
"Most cabling in Viudas converges on a few spots. There's one exchange in the Bazaar. The other's in Party Alley at the top of a pylon. That's where I'd start."
"While you take care of that, I'll set up the listening post here."
"No, I want to listen in."
"That part's easy -- we'll just patch in. You already have the crickets to plant on the line."
"Sexual entrapment isn't how I roll."
"I figured. So we're patching in -- right. You already have the crickets to plant on the line."
"He's an EMTERR employee who happens to be addicted to a sex line, where he spills everything...."
"Mm-hmm. So... what are tapping, again?"
"Look, long story short, there's a phone sex line and we need to tap it." (Skip telling him.)
"Alright." He considers this. "What are we talking, hotel room?"
"Turns out Tempo left a message for me with a teenage girl. She told us about this Luzian man stuck in a jail..."
"The assignment. You should know what it's about."
Branch
"It's the Luzians, isn't it?" Eyes the colour of burnished copper lock onto yours.
"La Luz's Minister of Mass Culture is in town."
"So it's an assassination..." He thinks for a moment longer. "Why now?"
His brow furrows, as though struggling not to let the idea through.
"I think they're just taking advantage of the fact that he's going to be here."
He keeps tugging at his beard, engrossed in his thoughts, before suddenly shrugging.
"I think they're just taking advantage of the fact that he's going to be here.""Seems the Luzians are making a play for Portofiro, with EMTERR backing. We're getting in the way.""There's a board of 'win conditions' in Novessa that says we're fucked unless we pull this off.""They gave me some reasons. All lies, of course."
"Still... It might just work, you know?"
A sudden, bizarre flare of hope.
"To be clear, we're definitely not making it out alive, but that doesn't mean it won't work, you know -- on a grand scale and all."
"What do you mean, 'on a grande scale'?"
"The Luzians love to wage war without waging it. Keeping it all on their own terms. The only way to win against them is to just, fucking... not play their subtlety game."
"Otherwise they win without you even knowing you were playing. That's how the Dream fell, after all."
Branch
"La Luz is a brutal techno-fascist empire, Rams, there's nothing 'subtle' about it."
"Why not? People dress like 'em. Eat their food. Mimic their slang." He gestures toward everywhere and nowhere at once. "They don't need to invade this place."
Branch
Even you have memorised the names of their cartoon wolves.
Branch
You feel the weight of your fancy toy sword, suddenly.
"In fairness, some of their exports are pretty cool."
"I shit out better tunes, alright?" He sighs. "My point is, they could take this place with little resistance."
"The People's Republics could roll out the war ships. Maybe claim Portofiro -- blood, ruins and all. But what's the point? You can't carpet-bomb want." His face sours. "Thing is, what the Luzians are peddling, it's not real."
"Then what is it?"
"It's a ritual. A shit song they keep pumping over the radio until one day you wake up and find it's your favourite tune."
Symbols, repeated over and over -- a quiet process of attrition.
Mass conditioning. It never fails.
"That kind of cultural warfare, you can't fight it on its own terms. You have to put a bullet in somebody."
Branch
"This big-picture stuff flies over my head, Rams. I'm just a cog."
"Alright, Hersh." He shakes his head, a half-smile nestling in the depths of his beard.
"Yeah. In some ways, La Luz already owns Portofiro."
"Not in the conventional sense, but in the ways that matter -- yeah. And if they were to stroll in, there'd be resistance, but it'd be snuffed out quick."
"They could still invade."
"And whatever resistance they meet will be dwarfed by the number of open arms."
"What happened in Dream of Rustam?"
"I assume you know the broad strokes?"
Rustam Fatihler, the Conqueror, sought centuries ago to unite the myriad warring tribes of the peninsula under a single banner, hence, the Dream of Rustam.
The delicate balance, never totally stable, collapsed in 67 after two years of violent uprisings.
"Something about factions, infighting. Eventually the place tore its own guts out."
"And the small patch left behind is, in legal parlance, a Capoblancan protectorate." He rubs his forehead. "Shit, it'll be thirty years next year."
"And then the Developed World came in and carved you up."
"Maybe not at first -- maybe it's just what nations do, as entities. They spread. You ever look at a map? Those things are fucked up."
Malignant growths, forever squirming against each other.
"Yeah, there is something fucked up about a map."
Branch
"Rustam fell because the world grew. It really is that simple. Modernity chipping away at it, year after year."
A slow death by erosion.
"So how'd it end?"
"Final night, fucking... my people set fire to the Dream. Every granary, every workshop, every field, every road." He grins. "Victory."
"The fields were ashed and salted. The topsoil scraped away. Wells were blown up, water sources buried under rubble. Scorched motherfucking earth."
And after all this time, the Protectorate of Rustam amounts to two meagre towns, devoid of resources, kept propped up by foreign funds. That, you know.
"So you just let them win, basically."
"The Developed World's win condition was our obedience, and the lands. They didn't get either. If anything, you'd call it a stalemate."
"Here's the takeaway, Hersh. Every invading force has its terms. You want to fuck with them, you can't play their game."
Branch
"Sounds like a melancholic form of resistance."
"Yeah." A wobbling smile. "My mom never stopped missing the camels her family released."
"Brutal stuff, Rams."
"Yeah, look Rams, that's enough history for me." (Go back.)
Branch
"I don't know. I think they're kinda beautiful."
"No need, I navigate by instinct alone." (Go back.)
Branch
Say nothing, just nod.
"Remind me."
"The dream was a beautiful clusterfuck. Guilds, federations, communes, all working together. Been that way since the 2200s, going by the old calendar, since the death of Sultan Murad IV. The last of his kind -- inshallah." He spits on the floor.
Four centuries ago, approximately.
"Fuck that dude." (Spit on the floor too.)
"Yeah, fuck him." He smiles, approving. "Anyway, Rustam fell because the world encroached. It is that simple. Modernity chipping away at it, year after year."
"I don't know, some atrocious peripheral world shit, I assume?"
"Eh, not in the way you imagine."
"So, you're in." (Conclude.)
"Yeah. Plus I figure I owe the Weeping Eye a little payback." He cracks his neck, his head moving left to right.
Branch
"Is this supposed to be optimism, Ramses?"
He gives a kind of shrug in which a slow nod is hidden.
"If there were still history books, we would be going down in them, I can tell you that much."
"Seems the Luzians are making a play for Portofiro, with EMTERR backing. We're getting in the way."
"There's a board of 'win conditions' in Novessa that says we're fucked unless we pull this off."
"They gave me some reasons. All lies, of course."
"It's killing time. A high-ranking Luzian official. The 'Grand Lich of Technofascism'."
Branch
"EMTERR, or Luz?" Eyes the colour of burnished copper lock onto yours.
"I'm listening." Eyes the colour of burnished copper lock onto yours.
"Tell me more about this Death Whistle you gave me."
Branch
"I'm no fucking expert, but... shoot."
Branch
"So you tried to reverse-engineer one of these Death Whistles?"
"'Reverse-engineer' assumes I have one..." He lifts a faded piece of paper. "This is all I had to go off..."
A faded magazine cutout from a general-interest digest from years ago. It shows a heavily feathered tribesman cradling a stubby flute with the front end fashioned in the shape of a human skull.
You know the kind: vaguely colonial, full of misinformation and the promise of erotic adventures with cannibals in far off jungles.
"So, making it up as you went along?"
"Pretty much."
"It talks a big game about how the whistle was used to paralyse the enemy before an ambush and how it would strike fear into the glands of their enemies."
"But very little about the acoustics, you know?"
"You really got into this, didn't you? Fact checked, did the science..."
"It kept me going when I needed it," he says, almost speaking into his chest.
Branch
"It's hearts, Ram. Strike fear into the hearts of your enemies."
"No." He shakes his head. "Fear is in the glands, H."
Branch
True to science, if not the poetry.
Let it go.
"Anything else you want to know about it?"
"Doesn't look quite like an instruction manual."
"Can it do different kinds of screams?"
"Well, the pitch depends on the tube diameter, you know, so..."
"You could probably make a really little one that sounds like a child."
"Very cool."
He beams at the sound of your approval.
Glad that the time he spent on the whistle wasn't wasted after all.
Branch
"But would it sound like a child, or more like a midget?"
"Eh, if I could get it to sound human, that would be a start."
"No, no, I mean, can it capture different qualities of agony?"
"Nah, that's up to the player."
"How does it make those sounds?"
"Cavities in the shape of our fucking mouth and throat apparatus."
"Adding the leather strip as a vocal cord surrogate really helped. Just need to figure out how to tune leather."
Branch
"'Vocal cord surrogate'? Does that mean...?"
"Supposedly. " He shrugs. "Text says they used actual vocal cords ripped from their enemies, but maybe not."
Slick crimson river of parted sinew and cartilage. With the utmost care, two strips of membranous tissue are ripped from the surrounding meat and tensed over a wood tuning peg.
"Whatever they used... clay does not sound like that by itself."
The material must know fear.
Branch
"Alright, you know what, let's hear it again." (Lend him the Death Whistle.)
"You will not regret this." He extends his hand to accept the instrument.
With a great big inhale, Ramses blows into the whistle once again, sacrificing his breath and turning it into an encroaching sound.
Branch
Within it, horribly, you hear words:
AAAARRGH! KILL ME! KILL MEEEEE!
Like the screams of babies, the sound bypasses all logic and goes directly for the panic response.
Branch
Confirmed: fear is in the glands.
Deep inside, somewhere in the bloody recesses of your genetics, something primal and long-dormant stirs.
Branch
Over at the bar, Lucia has covered her ears with her hands. Every patron has turned towards you.
Whoah. What was that?
A memory from several thousand years before your birth.
"See?" The smile that brightens his features makes him several years younger.
"It's like, even though you know nothing's happening, your body's sure it's about to get slaughtered."
Seeing the look he's getting, Ramses hands the Death Whistle back, holding a hand up in sorry to everyone at the bar afterwards.
Branch
"That thing spoke. It said 'kill me'."
"That's sweet of you to say, H, but we're not there yet." He looks down at his creation.
"No, no, it literally said kill me."
"But... it was never ever alive." He frowns.
The words are just the modern brain attempting to decipher a voice from the ancient, pre-human parts of itself.
Branch
"I think you may already be too far..."
He taps his heart in a gesture of gratitude.
"Ramses, that thing did something to me... bad, but interesting as well..."
"Yeah, I think I know what you mean... There's something in there I can't quite place, like it's just past what you're actually hearing..."
"I can play it again, if you want." He shrugs.
Branch
"That was a nightmare."
"I know, it's great." He rubs the side of his cheek. "Feels like tinnitus in your teeth, right?"
"I feel like I'm missing something, because I don't get the point of this."
"Happy to play it again for you." He shrugs.
Branch
"I just want to forget about that thing and never think about it again."
"I don't think you're going to forget it." He grins, but gently puts it away.
Branch
"Ramses, what the fuck?"
"I know, right?" The smile that brightens his features makes him several years younger.
The bartender has covered her ears with her hands. Every patron has turned towards you.
Within it, you almost hear words, tormenting the edges of your psyche.
Tune in to the sound of death. (Have Ramses play the Death Whistle again.)
You turn within, dive into the bloodstream, and entreat your glands to secrete the milk of fear.
"Ramses, you know what to do." (Give him the Death Whistle.)
He understands instantly. Takes a deep breath and raises it to his lips...
Centuries of fear conditioning embedded deep in your genus reacts, all at once -- a caustic clusterbomb from within.
Death. Madness. Decay.
Nothing can stop it. A chemical panic holds your entire body hostage.
Dawn of time. After the scream, silence extends like a shadow over the paleolithic valleys -- you stand at the cave mouth, rooted in place, paralysed by fear.
Breathe. Feel the heft of your spear.
Inside the cave, you see the black glinting of your enemies' eyes, hear their ragged breathing, the hideous scream still ringing in your ears.
Am I the hunter, or the hunted?
You are both.
You blew the Death Whistle with your paleolithic throat to strike fear into the cave dwellers, but instead you have struck it into yourself.
Fuck, fuck, fuck...
Suddenly one of the things in the cave moves...
You catch a glimpse of a deformed hairless face, bone-white skin, flaring simian nostrils.
Breathe.
It all happens too fast. The last thing you see is spittle flying from the mouth of the white cave ape as his mouth rips open.
With the burst of your own blood, the memory ends.
"You still with us, H? Seems like you were really gone there, for a minute."
Branch
"Your whistle, Ram... it showed me some stuff."
Ramses frowns at the whistle, his eyes narrowing to slits, before sighing.
"I knew you were meant to have it. That thing's spiritually yours." He nods.
Branch
"I think I was once a paleolithic huntress... not a very good one."
"You got paleolithic from that?" His eyes widen.
"I was the paleolithic huntress, Ramses.... I was fear itself."
"Yeah, everyone was getting kind of scared. But, fucking... if you got all the way to paleolithic just from that..."
Just throw the spear.
Blow the Death Whistle again.
Branch
It all happens too fast. The white cave ape's mouth rips open as it leaps towards you. You press the whistle to your mouth and blow.
Fear is yours. You are both terrified and terrifier.
Unleash the fear. (Scream.)
The scream nearly bursts your eardrums. The same fear that grips you appears in the freezing eyes of the hominid, who stops dead for a moment.
With the burst of its blood in your face, the memory ends.
"You, uh... You were screaming pretty loud, Hersh." He chuckles.
Throw the spear.
You take advantage of the split-second pause. The spear plunges into the ape's cheek and straight through its skull.
Good. This fear is good.
The huntress must know fear. She must love fear, be fear...
Who was screaming?
You. You were screaming through the throats of your defeated enemies.
No, I am Hershel Wilk, asset for the Operant Bureau.... (Pull back.)
Desperately you drag yourself out of your bloodstream. The memories cease, leaving behind only a disturbing emptiness.
"Anything?"
"There was something, but I think I don't want to hear any more of it."
Branch
"Still a fucked-up sound." He shrugs.
Branch
"Stop. Enough of that shit."
Present the whistle to him, wordlessly.
You brace yourself for that thing that stirred inside you the last time you heard this.
"Hit me with the Death-Whistle again, Ramses." (Hand it to him.)
"Fuck yeah."
You barely flinch at the violent torrent of sound that washes over you. It makes you feel...
A burst of cold and fetid sweat as your body poisons itself with stress chemicals.
Nothing. The primal memory gone. All you hear is an ugly, aggravating scream.
"Anything?"
"Fuck-all."
"Just, you know, the usual fear."
"Let's put aside the Death Whistle for now."
"Yeah."
Branch
"Tribal Ansaunni shit. Read about it in a magazine years ago and been fascinated ever since."
"Supposed to sound like a human scream. Horrifying." A dreamer's smile drifts across his features.
"Thanks, Rams." [Leave.]
"Don't be a stranger."
Branch
End of this branch
"Hey, Hersh." He looks up from what he's doing with a vague smile.
Neither the friend you left behind years ago, nor the quivering wreck you found in his houseboat.
None of his weight has been regained, but his movements are firm and his presence light.
Awaiting his assignment, as promised, in the old haunt.
"How's this life treating you?"
Branch
"Never mind me, how are you?"
"Still adjusting to the frequency, you know?" He glances around the bar. "The lights feel weird. Not as wobbly as usual."
He still doesn't quite believe it.
A spectre in loose fabric, feeling out the contours of his own body -- just in case.
"Learning how to use my fucking hands again... like I'm a baby again, or something." He holds them up and examines them as if they were foreign to him.
"Let's see that pulse." (Hold out your hand in demonstration.)
He inhales slowly as he lifts up his hand in parallel to yours.
The slightest vibration, ordinary human unsteadiness.
The baseline rhythm of the electrical signals in his body has steadied, a regular pulse instead of that jittering telegraph blip.
Branch
"You know how it is. Still crushed under the weight of my own guilt."
"I can't speak for the others, but as for me, fucking... we're good, Hersh. No guilt necessary."
Branch
"It's hard, Rams. Secret forces continue to conspire against me."
"I thought we were the secret forces?"
"In that case I think we should be conspiring more and harder."
"That's what we're here for, right?" He opens his palms, displaying his surroundings.
Branch
Slowly populating itself with your crew members, around you the Fogged Mirror begins to take on the appearance it had five years ago, before your network collapsed.
Branch
Empty of the other members of your old crew, the Fogged Mirror feels barren, infinitely distant from what it was five years ago, before your network collapsed.
"No, Ramses, secreter."
"Fuck. That's pretty secret."
Branch
"No life, just assignment."
"Fucking hell..." He gives a defeated laugh.
"You've got to take it easier, come smoke a joint with me here, or something."
Branch
The engine sputters as you park the tuk-tuk. You pull the key from the ignition and the world stills. Water laps gently against the shore.
Ramses exits the vehicle with a cautious slowness. He rolls his shoulders back in a delicate stretch.
His silhouette flickers in the houseboat's dim lights. For a moment, all you see is a man untouched by the weight of your actions.
"You need help carrying all that stuff?"
He looks at you with a tired smile before shaking his head.
"You know... I think I'm good. I should make a call."
A faint bleep on a sonar gone quiet for too long.
"Let me give you a hand, man."
"It's all right, Hersh. That call's long overdue."
A small promise, remade and unkept a thousand times over. 'Tomorrow', he'd tell himself, until the word meant nothing.
A woman, scarf framing her face in muted colours, places a basket of lavash and stuffed grapes by the houseboat door. Her husband, a silent sentinel, nods for her to step back. A thin bridge, beckoning Ramses back.
"Why's that suddenly so important?"
"I'm not saying it's important. Just... I don't know..."
"Might be time to anchor this thing." He nods at the houseboat. "I think I'm done with the hermit scene."
Hints of a new life looming -- unless you occlude it.
"What about you, H, fucking... you ever think of ditching your scene?"
"Yeah. Hoping this is my farewell gig."
"A farewell." He studies you, briefly, then his eyes light up. "I could get down with that."
"Anyway, I wanted to say... You know, when the time comes..." He creases his brow. "I want in, Hersh."
You break them, over and over, and still they stick by you.
Branch
"Are you sure?"
"Well, the odds are shit." He taps his lips with a finger. "But odds turn."
"You do owe me."
"Feels like it, yeah."
If you care about him, the best thing you can do is step out of his way and let him rejoin life. Regardless of what he wants.
What? Why?
Ramses already survived you. Let him hold on to the years that remain.
NO. THE PLAN IS THE DEATH OF OUR ENEMY. AT ANY COST.
"I'll let you know, Ram."
He nods firmly.
"I'll be at the Fogged Mirror. When you need me... I'm ready."
Branch
Branch
Branch
Branch
"Oh, one more thing, before I forget. Here. I want you to have it." He pulls something out of a pocket in his jacket and hands it to you.
Branch
It's his 'Death Whistle'. The screaming thing he was playing when you got here.
"Fuck yeah, auditory horror. Ramses style."
"You know... In case you ever need to strike fear into your enemies."
It's a talisman, not a functional object. It's imbued with whatever Ramses feels towards you.
He's not taking a no.
"Thanks, man."
Branch
Your hand closes upon the clay bulk. With a loose fist, Ramses taps his chest twice and mutters words in Rustamian.
'It is a good thing yesterday was not the end of history after all.'
You turn away from each other. The night air cools your face as you step forward, Portofiro's lights pulling you back into their orbit.
Branch
Branch
Branch
"As a matter of fact, I think I do have to strike fear into my enemies..."
Just take it. Say nothing.
"I mean, I'm flattered, but..."
"Doesn't matter. Humour me."
"Ramses, I'm sorry, I don't even like this thing!"
Looks like a human skull frozen in mid-scream. Ritualistic symbols are inked all over while at the top is what appears to be a mouthpiece.
Clay teeth. No eyes.
"It's my Death Whistle. Fucking... nasty sound: pig-death and, I dunno, internal screaming."
Branch
Branch
Branch
"I'm leaving you out of this one, old friend."
"Alright... have it your way."
"If you change your mind, I'll be at the Fogged Mirror. You know, for old times' sake."
Be quiet.
"Glad to hear it."
He nods.
"Good. That was the point of getting you back on your feet."
"Yeah, I assumed as much."
"You don't know what you're signing up for yet."
"I know it's a major gig." He cocks his head. "No other reason for you to keep it quiet."
"I've still got a whole lot of shit to atone for before I can quit."
"Ah, fuck that, you're just gonna end up racking up more shit." He laughs and shakes his head.
"Not until they plant me. It's where I belong."
"Figured you'd say that."
"Even if I did, what difference would it make?"
"Alright. Tell them I said hey."
"Yeah, I will do."
"A call? To whom?"
"Old friends. Rustamian couple I met when I landed in Portofiro. I've been meaning to reach out... for a while."
"You okay?"
Branch
He stares at his houseboat, then at the tuk-tuk.
He stares at his houseboat, then at back at you.
Branch
Branch
"H, you got the number?" His sunken face lights up
Alternative wording
"Anyway... you got the number?" Hope appears in his sunken face.
"Right here." (Tap the side of your head.)
"Fucking finally." He heaves a sigh of relief.
Branch
"Right here" (Flash the paper.)
"Got it. We're ready to place the order."
"I'm on it! I'm on it!"
"Then what are you doing here?" He drags his hands over his face. "H, this is serious. I'm losing it here..."
Branch
Branch
Look at your old asset.
The clothes hang loosely on a frame that has lost more than half its musculature.
That's him. Mind's fucked, face worse, but that's our boy.
Timestamp: five years, three months since last contact.
His lopsided smile is the same, though perhaps cut with a streak of bitterness that might be new.
Branch
"Are you alright?"
"Been worse. In fact, fucking... just moments ago..."
His fingers twitch in jittery bursts. Postictal tremors -- the aftershock of a seizure.
"You were convulsing, man. Violently."
"I know."
"It's just a gig, Hersh." He gestures to a stack of sol left on his desk. "Good money."
Six-hundred and fifty sol.
Exploitation money. Reserved for those willing to undergo serious bodily harm for what they do.
Branch
"I'm sorry, Rams. This is so messed up."
"Fuck off, H. This is my shit, not yours."
"Though, yeah, things have been fucked since the network went down."
"What happened?"
"Shit. You don't know, do you?"
"Know what?"
"The Weeping Eye came for me."
Branch
Right after his name slipped from KINDRED's bloodied lips.
One by one, your crew was picked off while you were whisked away to safety.
THE FLAILING LIMBS OF THE BODY POLITIC SUFFER WHILE THE HEAD BURIES ITSELF IN THE SAND.
"Five years ago, H... they wiped me clean. Identification, papers, residency. It's all gone." A hollowness enters his eyes.
Branch
Say nothing.
"I would say yeah, they have, except it kind of looks like they've been worse for you."
"No, what I just witnessed was some advanced mind control shit."
"Just seizures, H. For some people they come with a fucking... verbal component."
"Not too many other lines of work available, you know."
"Why not?"
"Are you sure? Anything seems better than... that."
"Your gig is espionage, RADIAN."
"Yeah, well, not anymore." He gives a dispirited bark of laughter.
A moment passes. He gives you a weird look.
"It's all just a gig in the end. We trade ourselves to stay alive, until one day we don't."
"Yeah well, I don't know that I've got too much left to trade." He smirks.
RADIAN is an audio engineer. That scene you walked in on looked nothing like his line of work.
"Care to tell me what I walked into?"
"Yeah, I know. You were all... (Roll your eyes back and let your tongue hang.)
"Not a bad impression, H." He smirks. "Don't recommend going professional, though."
"Tell me what happened. Step by step."
Alternative wording
"Tell me about what happened to you when the network collapsed."
"Not much to tell, H. Fucking..." A heavy sigh escapes him.
"Ones that picked me up were dressed like Carabineros... drove me to, I don't know, some kind of cover apartment. Fluorescent lighting, concrete walls. You know how it is. Eventually two women show up. Luzian."
Branch
"How do you know they weren't real carabineros?"
Branch
Branch
"'Cause they were dressed like you." He nods. "Fucking... shiny new uniforms with tacky plastic badges. Looked more like strippers than anything else. No offence."
"Besides, I've had my share of run-ins with the Carabineros. Pussies, down to the last one. Not these guys."
Branch
"Oh, they weren't even trying." He shrugs. "Fucking... shiny new uniforms with tacky plastic badges. Looked more like strippers than anything else, really."
"You sure they were Luzian?"
"I've been in Portofiro long enough, I've got the accents down. But more than that there's the whole, fucking..." He makes a swirling gesture in front of his person, indicating the entire thing.
The getup. The fashion. The aesthetics of Luzian mass culture unmistakable even when they're undercover.
The faces. 'Strange cousins' to Portofiran in more ways than one.
Branch
"Describe these women to me."
"Foreign suits. Shaved heads, both of them." He purses his lips. "Green eyes, I think. They were calm and polite."
The Weeping Eye's interrogator class.
Professional torturers. Typically with shorn heads in order to honour the defector Belkov, from whom their training originates.
Branch
"What did they want?" (Proceed.)
"Information. About us." He hides a wince with a smile. "But what little I knew, they already had."
"You know if they questioned anyone else?"
"I don't know. I had assumed..."
That's how it always goes: some loose ends that can't be tied off.
"They let me go about a day later." He nods at his surroundings. "Came back to a ransacked boat. Power, water, phone line -- all dead. Figured they'd broken shit for fun."
"Anything else?"
"Yeah, I made calls. My accounts were gone. The Casa de Registro had nothing under my name. Identification, work permit -- all gone."
"They just fucking... erased me, H. Pretty damn effectively, too."
Conclusion: You are speaking to a phantom.
Branch
"You tried to get new papers, right?"
"More than once. I was informed Ramses Tayed Al-Fatik Molloy doesn't exist. I tried to argue that I'm me, on account of, fucking..." He gestures at himself.
"Turns out presence is not proof of existence."
Branch
"Why do you think the Weeping Eye expunged you?"
"I'm the wrong person to ask. I figured that was standard for... you know."
'You people'.
Textbook practice. Once you find an enemy network, you torch it and ensure nothing remains.
"I'm sorry, Rams."
"Yeah." He nods.
Branch
"Some people would give a kidney to disappear like that. You're living someone's dream, man!"
"Doesn't feel like it."
"Loose ends get cut off. It's not personal."
"Feels pretty fucking personal from this seat."
"And since then?" (Proceed.)
"For a while I was doing small gigs. Fixing old gear -- radios, instruments, that kind of stuff. But eventually..."
His gaze drifts downwards. His fingers suddenly curl, then stiffen.
The seizure you saw may have been self-induced, but others are not.
"You're epileptic."
"What gave it away?" A crooked smile.
"Yeah. I had it under control, back then. Still, I thought you knew."
Branch
You flash back to the memory of planting that cricket with Ramses, how it had trembled in his hand for a moment...
RADIAN: no mention of epilepsy found. Medical conditions: left blank.
"Maybe I did know, at some level..."
"Yeah, well, back then it wasn't. Meds kept me pretty clean."
A small silence as you rearrange your understandings of each other.
"Anyway, that's the short version. You're looking at what's left of me."
Branch
"I didn't -- and I didn't try to look into it."
"I see."
He doesn't try to hide the disappointment on his face.
"I didn't know."
"Yeah, well, it was easier to hide, back then... Meds kept me pretty clean."
"You hid it from me."
"Not knowingly. I assumed it was one of those things we just don't talk about."
RADIAN: no mention of epilepsy found. Medical conditions: left blank.
"It caught up to you."
"Bet they did more than that."
"What did you tell them?"
"I confirmed, mostly. Details about me. Your first name. They showed me pictures of the others too."
"A good thing assets only know the minimum. For everyone's safety."
"I told them as much. They found it funny, especially that second part."
"You can't stay like this. Let's get you some help."
"Let me guess..." He gives you a knowing, slightly cynical look.
"There is an assignment, yes."
"Knew it." A bittersweet smile settles on his face.
It was too much to hope that you were here without an agenda, but he had hoped.
"Five years, I wondered if you were dead or locked up, you know."
"They've had me in the freezer, atoning for my numerous sins."
"Even worse."
"Look, whatever this is, I'm not... I mean, you got eyes." He gestures to himself, the state of him.
"Kind of I wish I didn't."
"Something for the wiring upstairs, H. Carbamazepine, oxcarbazepine -- anticonvulsants. Sans prescription, obviously. On account of me not existing and all."
Branch
"There's a shady clinic in Party Alley. Doubt the doctor there is big on paperwork."
"Doubt it'll work. Even prescription holders are struggling lately. It's not just anti-epileptic pills. Things don't flow into the city the way they used to."
Branch
He doesn't know Dr. Gonzalo E.S. Gonza.
"Alright, Hersh. You, uh..." He closes his eyes for a breath too long, rubbing his temples with unsteady fingers. "You see what you can do, yeah."
Branch
Dr. Hugo did seem cagey, not the type to hand out drugs without going through a robust checklist.
Branch
"Bazaar's got a decent doctor. I'll ask him."
Branch
"There's this dealer I know. Might be helpful."
"Dealers don't tend to fuck with anti-epileptics. Wrong kind of downer. But..."
"You fuck up, you lose."
"I'll figure something out."
"I don't know, man, you look fine to me."
"Heh. Yeah. If what you need is bait..."
"Just tell me what you need."
"Something for the wiring upstairs, H. Carbamazepine, oxcarbazepine -- anticonvulsants. Sans prescription, obviously. On account of me not existing and all."
"Locked up, yes, but by our own. They've always had it in for me."
"Been dead a long time, Ram."
"Bullshit." He smiles.
"Been wanged a long time, Ram."
"No one kills or captures this spy."
"Must be nice."
"There's a gig. Tell you about it later."
"What? You assume I have some ulterior motive?"
"You don't?" Genuine surprise in his eyes.
"I mean, I do, but you should assume that I don't."
"Let's get you well first, then we can talk about all that stuff."
"Who was that guy who was watching you?"
"I don't know his name, but he's, you know, fucking... big money. Got a fucking penthouse."
WHO ELSE BUT THE DEMON FACE OF MARKET FORCES AND ECONOMIC FETISHISM.
"Fucking... rich people, H. If it's not paying a dominatrix to shit in their mouths, it's this stuff... Honestly I should be grateful, I don't have the looks to be a dominatrix. Or the sphincter control."
Branch
"Parasites, man."
"He's not the worst of them." He shrugs.
"He thinks I'm some kind of oracle. Basically, I speak in tongues, he listens and does some word association shit with what he hears."
"Whoa. Does it work? Can you actually, like, predict the future?
"No, and he doesn't really think I can, it's more... you know, looser."
"He calls it intuition hacking. Says it helps him with his fucking business." He snorts.
Perhaps, but behind it all there is something else, far simpler -- the power to pay someone to have a medical emergency for your viewing pleasure.
Branch
"Sounds idiotic."
"It is."
"How do you speak in tongues?"
"It's just part of it... If I'm quiet when it happens, then I just kind of babble and grunt, but if I try to speak, the signals get garbled somewhere and, well... what you heard."
The mouth muscles contorting into every shape they know, producing random morphemes that latch onto words from every language floating around the brain.
"What can we do? They have been anointed by the market."
"Yeah, right, and more often than they've been anointed in human faeces, too." He scoffs.
"Capitalist degeneracy of the lowest order."
"Fucking... I don't even think this is 'mid-order', as far as these things go."
"So it's a kink thing?"
"You know, I wondered for a while, but nah."
"Mind explaining what it is you were doing with Reno?"
"Reno? What the fuck are you- ..." He abruptly falls silent.
He stalls momentarily as his brain computes the information.
"As in the owner Renotel. That was him."
"I never, fucking... he never told me his name. All I knew was that he was big money... "
"Fucking rich people, H." He chuckles wearily. "If it's not paying a dominatrix to shit in their mouths, it's this stuff... Honestly I should be grateful, I don't have the looks to be a dominatrix. Or the sphincter control."
THERE IS NO BETTER DOMINATRIX THAN THE STATE. WE WILL SATISFY ALL URGES, IRREVOCABLY.
"You were convulsing for this guy and you don't even know who he is?"
"I've planted a cricket inside this medical dummy." (Show him the dummy.)
"Okay... is there a reason?"
"Should let us eavesdrop on Gonza."
"Ah, good thinking. Better leave the dummy with him then. Useless until you do."
Branch
"Any update on Gonza's line?"
Branch
"Cricket's been chirping. Gonza's been talking -- and I got it all on tape. Want to give it a listen?"
Branch
"Not much to go on so far. Give it a while longer, yeah?"
"Found a shady doctor sitting on supplies. Name's Gonza."
"But he didn't want to share." The smoke from his cigarette coils in the dense air.
His eyes are dark, tired, but still sharp.
"I did try asking nicely."
"And then you remembered you're you." His brow lifts slightly, amused.
Branch
"So you bugged his shit. I can already hear one of those crickets chirping." He smiles.
"Glad to know you still got it."
"He's got suppliers. I just need a way in."
Branch
"Tight. I kept an eye on the bug -- a few calls already came in. We should give it a listen."
Branch
"Makes sense. Hasn't been much activity from the cricket so far. I'd say check in with me later -- we'll see what came up."
Branch
"Get you back on meds, then get you assignment-ready."
Branch
"So there is an assignment..." A bittersweet smile settles on his face. "Knew it."
"So if he has supplies..." Another drag on his cigarette. He exhales through his nose.
"Then he has suppliers. In fact, I've already talked to them over the phone."
"Hmmm, wish you hadn't." He pulls on his beard. "How'd it go?"
Branch
"Their weak link is their driver."
"Interesting. Not sure how I can help you with that -- something for you to figure out." He twiddles with his cigarette. "Anything else?"
"He kept saying I needed to adhere to a process."
"Safety measure. Dealers typically use coded messages to sift the serious buyers from everyone else. If Gonza uses them then he should know the process."
"His clinic, how buggable is it?"
"Could tap it blindfolded."
"Sounds like the next step, then. Remember to give me around half a day after the deed's done, yeah?"
Branch
"It's already crawling with bugs. He won't notice the electronic kind."
"Badly."
"As long as they're not coming after you..." He eyes you, dead serious." Of course not. You're better than that. Anything else?"
"Then he has suppliers. Heard him talk to them over the phone, too."
"Good news for us." He pulls on his beard. "Gonza's clinic. How buggable is it?"
"Then he has suppliers. Just need a way to get in touch."
"Gonza's clinic. How buggable is it?"
"Didn't expect him to."
"Let's listen to Gonza's calls."
"Alright. This might take a while. You got time?"
"Let's do it."
"Get that fucking box over there, would you?"
Branch
"Maybe later."
"Sure, just let me know when."
Branch
"You're an audio guy, can you tell me anything about this?" (Show him the Red Disc.)
"Give it here." A slight, perpetual tremor in the hand that reaches out for it.
"Ugh, Hersh, you listen to L-pop now?"
"Wait, what's wrong with L-Pop?"
"Melody." He gives a shiver.
"It's not mine. And I don't think what was on it was actually music."
"Then what?"
"I don't know. Something bad."
"Yeah, so, pop music." Not a hint of irony.
Branch
Prognosis: almost identical to the one Dr. Gonza gave you. Either they are onto something or these men have the same kind of brain parasite.
"It's an Einzeltone XR, that's pretty much all I can say about it. Played out, so good fucking luck finding out what was on it."
Branch
"I know all that, you don't have anything else?"
"I'm an audio guy, H, and this shit, it's got no audio left on it."
"What I will say, fucking... this Einzeltone stuff is very niche shit, you'd have to ask someone into that kind of thing." He hands it back to you and collapses back on the bed with a sigh.
He's weaker than he looks. Even these little exertions leave him drained.
Branch
Branch
Branch
"What do you mean, 'played out'?"
"Novelty format from a couple decades back, only good for a single play." He shrugs.
"Fucking... niche shit, you'd have to ask someone into that stuff." He hands it back to you and collapses back on the bed with a sigh.
"That's it? Nothing else?"
"A weapon of some sort. It melted the brain of another operant."
"Yeah, no, that would be the pop music."
"Never mind the label, what can you tell me about the disc?"
"Say I needed to wiretap someone -- hypothetically."
"Hypothetically, huh?" On his lips an exhausted smile.
"Yeah, just a fun thought experiment."
"I'm not doing any fucking assignment right now, H. No fit state." He lays back and stares at the ceiling. The smile slowly drains from his features.
"Alright, alright, I'm sorry! Fuck..."
"Don't be sorry. Just... no."
A valuable piece lays on its side, unused, next to the board. Put him back into play.
Branch
"I... guess I underestimated how bad it is."
"It's not all bad, Hersh, it goes up and down, but... I'm not burning myself out on fucking spy shit right now."
"If I help you find your meds, will you help me then?"
"Get me meds, I'll fucking build a cathedral for you, if you want. Meantime..."
"There's this guy..."
"You still do wiretapping jobs?"
"Does it look like I do?" He smiles.
"Nah... pawned off most of the gear, even. There's a couple things I couldn't bring myself to get rid of, fucking... you know, mostly the shit I made myself."
A good deal of Ramses' equipment always consisted of improvised devices cobbled up from the cannibalised remains of consumer electronics.
"Just as memorabilia?"
"If you want to call it that."
Branch
Branch
"There's a bunch of crickets around here somewhere... you can have them if you find them, should still work."
'Crickets' as in bugs. Ramses' signature wiretap devices.
"But you don't use it anymore?"
"Nah. Hardly leave this fucking houseboat."
"Have you been in contact with anyone else from the crew?"
"Yeah, me and HOLOCENE did a fucking sleepover, H."
"It's a miracle I've even seen my dealer, as far as I'm concerned."
When all is said and done, the weed plug is Ramses' last point of contact with the world of humans.
Branch
"Hey, uh... can I borrow some money?"
"Opera's still keeping you on a starvation diet, huh?"
"I wouldn't be surprised if soon they start paying us in dog food."
"If they could, they fucking would."
"Here... It's something." He pulls out a couple of bills and hands it to you.
"I promise I'll pay you back."
"No you won't. And I wouldn't ask you to."
Branch
"You stingy bastard, he gave you like 600 sol!"
"Tell you what, H, if I croak, you can be my sole fucking inheritor."
"Shouldn't be too long, either, if we don't get those fucking pills"
"Come on, man. I just saw that guy leave a fat stack of bills"
Alternative wording
"Come on, man. I just saw Reno leave a fat stack of bills."
"Yeah, but that's all I fucking got, H. Can't do it too often, either, you just get..."
His body completes the sentence with another one of its periodic shivers.
"Tell me more about this 'Death Whistle'."
"Ah, it's just dumb shit to pass the time, H, don't pay me any mind."
Unexpected venom. Directed inwards.
Branch
"I was too useless to do anything else before we got those meds. Now I can focus on work again, at least..."
He dismisses it with that special bitterness reserved for smothering dreams that hurt.
Branch
"I'm too useless to do anything else. Probably couldn't even lift a fucking bass if you handed me one..."
Leave.
Alternative wording
"Right, I best be off." [Leave.]
Alternative wording
"I've gotta dash. No more seizures while I'm gone." [Leave.]
Branch
Branch
"Before you go... I've got some crickets around here somewhere." He looks around the cable-infested room, but quickly gives up.
"You'll find them. Do you remember how they work?"
Easy. Plug them into a phone or terminal box, and they'll listen in. From there, Ramses can record calls, or reroute them.
"I remember. Nifty little things."
"They're not half-bad."
"Once you plant one, I'll know. You'll just have to give me time to record... whatever it is we're after. Usually half a day or so."
"Why are you giving them to me?"
"Call it muscle memory." A small smile breaks through the exhaustion.
He needs to feel useful somehow. Especially as you're trying to help him out.
"Now if you'll excuse me, I need to pass out slash nap for a while. Till later, Hersh."
"It's good to have you back, Rams."
"Same, though I could be a lot better." A small smile breaks through the exhaustion.
"Refresh my memory."
"Home-grown wiretapping devices. Plant them on a phone or a terminal box, and they'll intercept the signal. From there, I can listen to it, re-route it, do other neat things."
Sure. Attach bug to phone line and then it will do a bleep-bloop-blorg to the circuit thing.
"Of course. They're for bleep-bloop-blorging."
"Uh, yeah, more or less. Mostly less."
"See you around, H."
The idea of leaving enters your mind but something stops you.
You can't abandon your old asset -- a friend -- in this kind of state. At least, not without finding out what happened to him.
Branch
"Not yet."
Branch
Branch
"Hey Hersh. Got some news for you."
Alternative wording
"Anyway... Got some news for you."
"Cricket's been chirping. Gonza's been talking -- and I got it all on tape. Want to give it a listen?"
Branch
"Hey, Hersh."
Alternative wording
"Anyway..."
Branch
Branch
As you approach what you perceive to be your old asset, an inhuman scream fills the interior of the houseboat.
The sound immediately sickens you to your core.
Haunting images of torture surround your mind. In seconds, imagined people deform into blistering, moaning creatures -- writhing in what's left of their insides.
You're in Ramses's houseboat, he's alive... nothing bad is happening...
Branch
"Ramses!" (Rush to his side.)
"Oh. Hersh." He answers in a weak but imminently human voice.
He's in the same position you found him in before, but now he's cradling a grey lump of clay against his sternum.
Branch
Not dying. At least, not right here and now.
No wires, switches, or screws anywhere on that thing he's holding. Remarkably untechnological for a Ramses project.
"Ramses, what the fuck was that?"
"Just, this fucking thing... Death Whistle." He shrugs as though embarrassed of his hobbies.
Instruments do not sound like that. That was the scream of something alive.
Branch
"I thought I was hearing the sound of you actually dying."
"That's sweet of you, H." A weak smile crosses his features.
"I was not trying to be sweet."
"Well, I don't think it's actually that convincing, but... I appreciate the sentiment."
"When they brought me in and sacked the house, among the things they broke were all my fucking instruments."
"Can't play bass, so... playing my Death Whistle to while away the time." He smiles at you sadly.
Instrument in hand on his sickbed, he could easily be a dying melancholy poet strumming away on his lute.
Without warning, he gives another dreadful blow on the instrument.
You can see it properly now. Looks like a human skull frozen in mid-scream. Ritualistic symbols are inked all over.
Clay teeth. No eyes.
Branch
"Mournful."
"I read in a magazine about this fucking... Ansaunni Death Whistle, and I had been trying to make one before, you know..."
"Before it got really bad. Now I guess this is as far as I'm ever taking it, but... Still fun to play on it sometimes."
Unbelievable. He finds the sound comforting.
"I'm going to need more context on this thing, Ram."
"RADIAN. I'm serious, stop that, it's giving me anxiety."
"Seriously? Nice." He looks at it as though he is surprised at its capabilities.
"Why were you playing your Death Whistle?"
"Put that shit away, we've got more important things to talk about."
"Uh... sure, H. I wasn't expecting you, is all." He quietly tucks the death whistle away with a sour look.
Branch
"Are you alright ?"
"Yeah, just... playing my Death Whistle." He shrugs as though embarrassed of his hobbies.
"Shall I call the priest to come give you the blessed smoke?"
"Got smoke, H." He gestures over to an ashtray full of tarry joint-ends. "I don't need it to be blessed."
"Stop, stop stop!" (Cover your ears.)
Look at your dying friend.
Your friend is dying. This is his death knell you're listening to.
Something tells you your head would fill with nasty images right now if your imagination was a little more vivid.
Branch
"Mm-gnn. Mm--"
On the bed in the room beyond, a figure writhes in the throes of some exquisite discomfort. In his hands, a bare light bulb strobing.
Each flash reproduces the world in monochrome, and the body on the bed spasms in time.
Muscles clenched in futile effort.
A syllable strains against his lips. He's trying to say something, but his jaw is locked shut.
The other man watches with unblinking intensity.
Branch
It's Reno. The richest man in Portofiro here, in this dilapidated houseboat.
Branch
"What the..."
"Mmm- ... gnn-" The figure twists and thrashes.
Branch
Last instants before pressure release. The thing building up inside is about to rupture its container in three, two...
What thing?
"Mm- ... mm- Maahh!"
The syllable erupts from a twisted mouth. The neck convulsively snaps back, and in that moment, you lock eyes.
Galaxies of desperation sucked into the pupil's widening void.
Recognition -- inescapable. Undeniable. You know each other well.
"Ramses!"
"Mat-uuhr! Mat-uhhr! Mat-uhharía they would and ser c-c-cal cuerpo y antlers, cuero y air now firtina-torr over kerr cascados, c-... c-... c'aah- uuhr! Cah-uuhr!"
Full-body spasms wrack him as a torrent of syllables falls from his mouth.
You are not ready for this.
Run. Run and don't look back.
"All right, I'm getting violence, animal imagery... masculinity, perhaps?"
Branch
"What the fuck are you on about, 'animal imagery', he needs help!" (Confront the man.)
Alternative wording
"What the fuck are you doing standing there?" (Confront the man.)
"Sshhh!" The spectator hisses at you without turning away from the convulsing figure.
Alternative wording
"Sshhh!" The businessman hisses at you without turning away from the convulsing figure.
HIS STATUS AND FINANCES MATTER NOT. NO ONE SHOULD BE SHUSHING YOU LIKE A DOG.
Branch
"Don't fucking shush me!"
"Everything's quite alright, I assure you. Now please."
Annoyed but unperturbed, he hardly glances at you before returning to his spectacle.
"Ggnaah alago poshlost sua guita ggg- ggg-... gg- gg- gg-..." He continues, helpless.
Without looking at you, Ramses raises his free hand. Two fingers flick upward, Then the convulsions return, folding your old asset in half.
He's asking you to hold back.
Branch
Feels like a gesture that means something. Help? You cannot reliably tell.
"Reno. What is this?"
"Who the hell are you?"
"Did we double-book?"
The man gives you an annoyed look, then returns to his spectacle.
Calm down. Get your bearings.
In the midst of Ramses's involuntary gibbering and the bizarre musings of the spectator, you try to focus and understand what you are looking at.
Behind the apparent chaos lies all the trappings of a carefully executed ritual. This isn't the first time. Not for either of them.
One, two, dead. One, two, dead -- a precise interval. The lightbulb isn't flickering, it's pulsing.
Branch
Branch
Ramses is suffering a purposefully-induced seizure of some kind. There is an arrangement with the other man.
Branch
Ramses is suffering a purposefully-induced seizure of some kind. There is an arrangement with the other man.Ramses is suffering a purposefully-induced seizure of some kind. There is an arrangement with Reno.Ramses is suffering a purposefully-induced seizure of some kind. There is an arrangement with the man.Ramses is suffering a purposefully-induced seizure of some kind. There is an arrangement with Reno.
"Mm-mm- maah-terr erran ruzgar enel aggn... Gg-gnn..." His eyes roll back in his skull.
Branch
Ramses is suffering a purposefully-induced seizure of some kind. There is an arrangement with Reno.
Branch
Branch
Ramses is suffering a purposefully-induced seizure of some kind. There is an arrangement with the man.
Ramses is suffering a purposefully-induced seizure of some kind. There is an arrangement with Reno.
Branch
Nothing that you see clarifies the situation. All you see is your old friend, in agony, while another man placidly observes him.
Branch
A mirror of your guilt. Whatever is happening here, it is the result of how you abandoned him years ago.
I can't know that for sure.
No, and yet you do.
Whatever this is, I feel responsible for it.
Branch
Nothing that you see clarifies the situation. All you see is your old friend, in agony, while Reno placidly observes him.
All vestiges of humanity abandoned. One leg bent wrong.
A visage corkscrewed with distress.
Put a stop to this.
A bucket of ice water douses your thoughts. Bereft of emotional content, you examine the scene as an ecosystem of moving parts.
The lightbulb is the key, he's using it to provoke the seizures.
"Cah-uhhr! Cah-uhhr bore ista nn-nn- natch is th- tha- ..." Ramses continues to gibber insanely.
Cut the power.
You follow the cable from Ramses' hands to the wall, where it disappears under the boards... There, to your right. Rotary switch.
You slam the switch without thinking twice. The world flashes monochrome.
"Gnn-- gnnn-nnnaah! Hrghn..." Your old asset folds in half and drops to the bed.
"What did you do?" Still feigning coolness, something deadly creeps into his tone.
"Get out."
"This was a private consultation." Voice taut, syllables -- as few as possible.
He brushes past you without another word, and by the door he stops and places an envelope on the table.
Payment. The price of Ramses' nervous system.
From the floor, a noise -- low, almost human.
Branch
Ramses' breaths come in staggered bursts. One arm braces against the floor as he tries to sit up, slow and shaking. He winces.
It is the future. Your old asset, aged one hundred years in the five that have elapsed.
"Ramses?"
"Jackhammers in my fucking skull." His eyes slide past you, then drift back. "But there's a nice groove to it..."
Asset RADIAN. Comms specialist. Skillset: audio engineering, surveillance, forensics, applied maths, transmission security.
Ramses Tayed Al-Fatik Molloy. Plague metal worshipper. Pristine blunt roller. Rustamian refugee. Ultimate warlock of chill.
Branch
Or at least -- he was.
"I'll get up in a minute." He blinks, hard. "Trying to decide if I'm hallucinating you first."
"It really is me."
"It's sinking in. It's the frown that gives it away."
Still shuddering and a little incredulous, Ramses settles back into reality and examines you.
"Strange days, Hersh."
Put a hand on his shoulder.
"Guess that settles it."
"Why would your psyche conjure me up?"
"It's got a fondness for chaos." He looks around, taking in the surroundings.
"Are you okay?"
Snap your fingers in front of his eyes.
Your old asset's breaths come in staggered bursts. One arm braces against the floor as he tries to sit up, slow and shaking. He winces. Behind you a doorlatch clicks.
"Get out and eat shit."
You know what, let's see where this goes.
"Cah-uhhr! Cah-uhhr bore ista nn-nn- natch is th- tha- mat-uhhr and hierve mith vietrov cielos stiercol all veneran esses wretch el aah... aah mm- mmat-uhhr!"
"Alright... I hear winds... sky... maybe... the idea of indefinition, lack of division, ambivalence...."
"Mmm -mm... Gnn-- Gnaaah!"
An audible crack in his spine as he arches backwards, crumpling.
A marionette with strings yanked, then suddenly severed.
He lets go of the lightbulb -- it stops flickering.
Branch
Look at Ramses.
His chest heaves as the spasms subside. What remains of the convulsions leaks out of him in a series of exhausted trembles.
"I see. Well, thank you. Yes. Thank you." He runs a hand through his hair, then turns towards the door.
"Reno? What is this, what are you doing here?"
He looks through you with a gaze at once arrogant and detached, as though he didn't remember you and didn't care to try.
(Block his path.) "You. Talk."
Branch
Let him go.
As you turn away, out of the corner of your eye, you catch sight of him leaving an envelope on the table.
Alternative wording
As you turn away, out of the corner of your eye, you catch sight of Reno leaving an envelope on the table.
Look at the spectator.
Alternative wording
Look at Reno.
What about me, how am I doing?
You're fine. Your old friend, on the other hand, is not.
Branch
You want to intervene, but you can't. Again, your whole body is paralysed in observation.
Every signal hits you raw and simultaneous: reality blooms, light flashes, saliva strings.
Morbidly transfixed, you as much a slave to what you are watching as the unblinking spectator.
You want to intervene, but you can't; your whole body is paralysed in observation.
Do nothing -- stand back.
Run. [Leave.]
Your whole body gives a queasy lurch, but your feet are rooted to the ground.
The command runs through paralysed limbs. The only response the body gives is nausea.
Branch
That's our boy. Are you seriously going to abandon him again?
"RADIAN...?"
Brace yourself.
You have time for one deep breath and the attendant drop in heart rate before it happens.
"Mm- ... mm- Maahh!"
"Um... hello?"
An air of waiting in the room. The thing that is supposed to happen hasn't happened yet.
Either a medical emergency, or a spiritual one.
"Is this... the beast?!"
What have I just walked into?
"Am I interrupting something?"
"Reno? What are you doing here?"
The impresario does not even seem to hear you.
Entranced. A reptile in the throes of worship.
The journey slowed your body and the world decelerated with you. By its end, you're able to breathe in time with the water gently lapping against the shore.
Ramses looks at his winnings and rolls his shoulders back in a delicate stretch.