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TEST DRIVE MEME #7
1. before she hung up, she said she was a skeleton
[there is no note in your cabin. no forces stall your legs if you decide to walk anywhere but the atrium. in fact, for the first time in hundreds of years, newly arrived passengers on the Serena Eterna are waking up with absolutely no guidance. nothing but your fellow passengers in the halls - or maybe in your bed.
perhaps you end up in the atrium eventually anyway. it is where guest services is, and where Gal Friday… actually hasn’t been in a few days. until today. and she is visibly frazzled, her hair uncoiffed, her suit rumpled, something a bit like a bruise blossoming down from her hairline and over her smooth features. more papers than ever cover her desk, and when she turns to face you, her voice is as cheerful as ever, but audibly strained.]
Welcome aboard the Serene Eterna! [a pause] You know how to work a life vest, right? Everyone knows that! You don’t need me to teach you that!
[a light bulb burns out behind her head.]
… I’ll get right on that!
[freedom includes the freedom to not know what the fuck is happening. maybe you should reflect on that.]
2. grandma went and can't stop screaming
[it’s something about the lighting fixtures, this month. has the Bellona always had a massive chandelier? maybe. who knows. don’t ask questions. either way, in the stillness of the night, or day, or late afternoon, there is a noise like a cord being cut, and the chandelier plunges into the audience below.
it hits nothing, of course. no one is ever in the theater. and that, perhaps, is what the trouble is.
so, the chandelier starts to… travel, one could say. it starts to hang in various rooms: the dining halls, the bars, the clubs… sometimes, if you’re out on the pool deck and suddenly realized you’re under a shadow, you can glance up and see it suspended 20 feet above your head, securely fastened to nothing in particular and yet remaining perfectly in place.
until it isn’t. until it falls, crystal shattering on whatever surface it lands on: floor, table, person… and, wherever the chandelier goes, a lilting childish voice follows it, singing without any obvious source.]
Ring-a-ring of roses, a pocket full of posies… ashes, ashes, we all…
3. jeff bezos murdered the infinite tommy bahama
[the lights of the Infinite Tommy Bahama go out three days into October.
barely an hour after its closure, the lights go on again, and a new banner is unfurled.
physically, it is the same store. you can even see the old signs hidden behind the new ones. however, long gone are the tropical prints and khaki dress shorts. now, one can purchase any number of officially licensed or legally distinct Halloween costumes, decorations, and various other haunted accoutrements, leading back as far as the eye can see, and then farther still. is that a Gal Friday mask? spooky! well, at least you’ll be good and ready for the Halloween party at the end of the month, which is absolutely just a normal party and in no way whatsoever anything even remotely resembling a trick. there are only treats at The Infinite Spirit Halloween!
note: bahamanuel is still here! somewhere! it kinda looks like dan bongino.]
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Which means that once Pal puts it simply, Gideon gets it, because it's a plot that shows up a lot. She sticks her spoon in her ice cream and stirs it. "Yeah. It's like 'Guns of the Fifth'. Pentadies gets blasted into another universe where his necromancer didn't die and they spend the whole time trying to get back to the world he came from, except every time they try, they end up further and further out until they end up in a world where the Nine Houses don't exist and nobody remembers how to eat an ass, so they spend the rest of the story having orgies."
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Fun fact: there is a lot of very, very freaky porn in the Library collections, and Palamedes has read quite a bit more of it than most people would suspect upon first meeting him. Thus, the main difference between his and Gideon’s literary sexual education seems to be that Gideon’s involved what, to Pal’s mind, sounds like some unnecessarily complicated plotting.
Anyway. “The people on this ship come from all those different universes, all those other bubbles. In fact, aside from us, none of them have heard of the Nine Houses or the Resurrection. I can’t speak to the ass munching.”
“But what’s more interesting,” and isn’t this a hell of a transition, “is that this universe, the one we’re in right now., was manufactured by a single being. He calls himself the Captain, and he’s the one responsible for bringing us here.”
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"Fuck off." Another mostly automatically response. Gideon pokes more at her ice cream, turning it into a smooth paste. "Why's he want us then? Or me specifically. I can see why somebody would want an afterlife subscription to Palamedes Sextus' Top Nerd Facts-" (delivered with the kind of respect Gideon can only give to a man who turned himself into a bomb to try save everyone) "-but the only thing I was good for was something that's already done."
She finally scoops up some of the pale orangish slurry and sticks it in her mouth, and promptly gets absolutely knocked off her ass by a flavour she couldn't even have dreamed of. Gideon goes blank, spoon in her slightly slack mouth as her mind is blown out the back of her skull.
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One flesh, one end. In an incongruously bright and airy laboratory on a long-abandoned planet, they had all discovered for certain what that actually meant. What, according to edicts written millennia before any of them were born, cavaliers were actually for.
Gideon the Ninth, what did you do?
“Don’t sell yourself short,” he says, mildness belying the way his stomach twists. “I’ve seen you fight, and we spend half our time around here trying survive the latest threat. I can think of lots of things you’re useful for.” He’s about to explain that the Captain, in fact, seems interested in pushing them all to their limits when Gideon’s face all but turns inside-out with shock. “…Doing all right there? Blink twice if you’re still breathing.”
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"Yeah, just got blasted in the mouth, again. You spend your life reading that things can taste good and you're like, sure, maybe, but when everything you've ever had came in a ration packet or scraped out of the Ninth's crummy soil, you're not prepared for what good actually means." She has a second spoonful, no longer so unprepared that she's rendered silent but god it's still a real punch to get that explosion of fruit once again. She mumbles out- "I'm going to eat myself sick."
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Palamedes eats his ice cream more slowly, savoring each spoonful. He’s quiet for a few moments, but finally he asks the question that has been on the tip of his tongue since he spotted Gideon across the promenade.
“Did you kill her? The lyctor?”
Did it work? Has Dulcinea been revenged?
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She has more mango. It's amazing. Less amazing is Palamedes finally asking the question, but it's not like she didn't know it was coming. She watched him blow himself up hours ago to save everyone. He didn't get to know if it worked, and he deserves to. They would have all died without him getting everything rolling.
"Yeah, we got her. Hect was all fury and knives, and even Ianthe bothered to lend a hand." Ha ha ha. "But it wasn't enough. Cam got stabbed in the shoulder, the lyctor tore off Ianthe's arm, and then it was me and Harrow and Hect stuck behind a wall of bone. So. Did what I did, helped Harrow's stupid noodle arms pick up my sword and put it through that ugly black timebomb you set off in Cytherea's chest. Then I checked out, and woke up here."
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And Harrow and Gideon…
He can no longer avoid the obvious, dreadful conclusion that Gideon has been hinting at. “You’re saying Harrow became a lyctor.” He rubs the bridge of his nose. “She used the same method Ianthe did, didn’t see? Damn it, if we’d had just a little more time. I’m sorry, Nav. I’m so very sorry.”
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A fate worse than death, which is why Gideon had rather thrown herself on the spikes than let Harrow keep stalling the inevitable. The thought of going back to Drearburh to be lambasted by Crux, to see the disappointment on Aiglamene's face, to spend the rest of her life in that dark black pit guarding Harrow's dead crush, that was worse than an immortal glorious end. There's a reason stories end with glorious sacrifices, not crawling back to the same shit you crawled out of.
"It it makes it better, she didn't want it. I had to force her hand." And she tips the rest of her ice cream down her throat. "Mmm, and you know what else they don't have on the Ninth? Ice cream. Fresh air. Mandatory facepaint. Girls who aren't a minimum of 67 years old. This might not be an afterlife but it feels pretty damn good so far."
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Given enough time, they could have found it: he, Harrow, Cam, and Gideon. Instead, they had been forced to take desperate measures—Gideon is right about that much. With their backs to the wall, what other choice could they have made?
But with enough time? Oh, the wonders they might have uncovered and the tides they might have turned! Palamedes has to believe that they might still set matters to rights, if only Cam and Harrow can pull him out of his bubble in the River. If only he—and now Gideon—can find a way to escape this place.
He offers Gideon a wry smile. “Granted, the Serena Eterna has its advantages, but don’t get too comfortable. The Captain likes to play deadly games with us. Sometimes he uses monsters, sometimes psychological tests meant to set us against each other. Thus far, the passengers have managed to remain a united front, but our alliances are tenuous at best.”
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Because as terrible as it is hearing that, there's something Gideon can hold onto, and it's that she doesn't have to go through it blind - and that she's got Palamedes. He's around and upright so if he's managed that without Hect, then there's a plan. "Fuck me. Out of the bowl and into the shit pit. Is this one also trying to kill God?"
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“He wants to become God.”
After eight months, Palamedes is convinced that that’s even worse.
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"He actually have a chance of doing that?" Because that's the real question, isn't it? After all, God invited a dozen and a half of them to come to Canaan House to find out the secret to immortality and looks how that had turned out? There had actually been an answer to that one too. But what about this one?
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Pal frowns faintly into his ice cream, once again brought up against the mystery he cannot crack: what does the captain really want, and do they dare give it to him? “Discovering what would satisfy him may be the key to escaping this place. Or it may mean our downfall.”
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But she takes a breath and straightens her shoulders. Sighing like a tombsister isn't going to get either of them anyway. "Well, whatever you think is the best choice, I'm with you on it. Escape or end, it's better than sitting with our thumbs up our asses and waiting for the worst to happen, again. Just point me in a direction and tell me what to do, and until Hect's here to be your proper cavalier, I'll be your sword."
... oh and speaking of Hect- "I told Camilla that your last words to her were 'I love you'."
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Pal freezes with his spoon of ice cream halfway to his mouth, his eyebrows climbing up his forehead. “Nice of you to give her a laugh. I’m sure she needed it.”
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Gideon looks at her empty cup and glances back at the rows of ice cream. "... I'm going to go blow my mind with another. What else is good?"
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“The world is your oyster, Nav,” he says, gesturing back at the row of ice cream flavors. “But if you haven’t tried chocolate yet, I highly recommend it.”