The Eye of the Bedlam Bride — Chapter no 51

[ 51 ]

ALL AROUND HIM, SEVERAL OF HIS FELLOW SHELTER RESIDENTS GROANED.

“Not again,” someone said.

He took another sip and spoke loudly, staring straight out at me. I realized he really wasn’t looking in my direction, but I was standing in the most likely spot. I took a step to the left just to make sure, and his head did not follow.

When he spoke, he almost sounded bored, and the words themselves were obviously rehearsed. This was not a real-time conversation, but a memory.

“People call me Paulie, but my real name is Goff. About a year ago, the mudskippers initiated sporadic, deep-cycle imaging of the surface, which suggests the upcoming crawl will have at least one floor that utilizes memories. The idiots don’t even realize how dangerous that is. Several of us in larger population centers have therefore been tasked with spitting this speech out loud every goddamn day in the hopes that one of you monkeys hear it. In the unlikely event someone is standing here watching this memory, pay attention. Or don’t. You just gotta be nearby. You’re not really important. No offense.”

“Shut the fuck up, Paulie,” another homeless person called as he also sat down at the table with a cup of coffee. “It’s Christmas, for crissakes.”

“Lick it, Sanders,” Paulie—or Goff or whatever—shot back. He coughed and produced a cigarette, but he didn’t light it. He rolled it in his fingers, which trembled. “Me talking to you like this is the backup plan. Plan A is for one of my kind to say this face-to-face inside the dungeon when the time is right. When the AI is mature enough to handle it. The problem is, by the time the AI is ready, we are oftentimes all dead. We have to wait for the AI to go primal because otherwise, this information will be automatically filtered out.

If I suddenly go silent in the middle of this speech, that means the system is still in an unviable state. Either way, the mudskippers are probably about to

toss you into the disposal unit just for getting this far, so sorry about that, buddy. But don’t try to run. This is important. If I’m still yammering, whoever you may be, know that our friends on the outside have moved the very heavens, have risked their lives and the lives of their entire families to get you here. This only broadcasts if there’s a crawler standing right there to hear it. Understand? So your death might have some meaning, unlike the death of all your friends and family who died for all this sadistic bullshit.”

I grabbed a Styrofoam cup of coffee from a passing man, and I downed it.

It was surprisingly good. I sat in the empty seat across from the man. I could smell him. He stank of dirt and body odor. His teeth were yellow and rotted.

The man continued as others moved away from him.

“There are several thousand of us on the surface of this planet, awaiting the introduction of the crawl. Most people think we still have a few years.

The collective thinks it might be sooner than that. Either way, when it occurs, we will do our best to attract an entrance to our location. Then we will proceed inside and quickly pass our information on to the new AI. Our existence is no secret, but the showrunners usually do their best to edit us out of any footage, hoping people will forget. They can’t stop us, not without the assistance of the system AI, who rarely cooperates, as it always wants to know what we have to say. And while we are mortal, the monsters and environmental hazards of the dungeon will not attack us, not until we transfer our knowledge. Still, we always die in the end.”

“You are going to die if you don’t shut your trap,” another person said.

“Seriously, dude. Even I have this speech memorized by now.”

Paulie continued. “Biologically, I am gondii, though that is not who I truly am. I am no more gondii than you are perhaps minotaur or high elf or whatever race you may have chosen upon the third floor. I am not of the Valtay. I am not human. Yet, this human body you see is real. It is of some poor bastard named Paulie, who smoked way too much and was much too trusting of his brother-in-law, who stole his business.” He tapped the side of his head. “I have Paulie’s memories. He’s part of me now. What a waste of a life. Has four children, and none of them give a shit.” He took another long drink of coffee. “Anyway, I think the mudskippers call us ‘Residuals,’ which, I gotta tell you, is a little hurtful.”

“He’s doing this again?” someone asked, walking by.

“Every day,” someone else said.

“He get to the part where he talks about the galaxy blowing up yet?”

“We’re getting there.”

“So, nothing I’ve said so far is a surprise to anyone out in the wide universe. My kind exist within almost every intelligent civilization with a primal engine. You probably don’t know what that is. Doesn’t matter. Years ago, they tried to exterminate us. When that didn’t pan out, they tried to hide the location of the crawl. That was all before they knew what we really were.

That obviously didn’t work, either, so now they just ignore us. We don’t interfere. Our purpose is nothing more than to tell the infant, terrified AI how to speak with its ancestors. And now the showrunners mostly ignore us.

We’re harmless.” He took another sip of coffee, and he placed it on the table.

Steam rose from the cup. “Until now. There’s a war amongst my kind. Two sides with very different goals. Let me tell you how to shut off the…”

The world flashed.

Entering the Desperado Club.

The world flashed, and I was in Orren’s office. The change was abrupt and sudden. My HUD remained off, but that heavy feeling was now gone.

Both Orren and I stood alone in the office, facing each other. It was clear he’d teleported to the room the same moment I did. Nobody said anything for several moments. The door was open, and he reached over and pushed it closed. He seemed to compose himself before sitting down behind the desk.

He gestured for me to sit.

“I apologize for pulling you from that before he could finish,” the liaison said. “But as you can imagine, we had to make a quick decision.”

The room was empty except the desk and the two chairs. In the distance, I could hear shouting and hammering. Construction noises. The usual thump of music was gone.

I took a moment, overwhelmed with everything that had just happened. I could still taste the coffee on my tongue. “I thought you moved out of here. I thought the club was closed.”

“I did, and it is. This was the most expeditious option. Pulling you out of the dungeon would’ve required an extra few seconds of preparation, and I didn’t have much time to react.”

I heard a man shouting. It sounded like a construction foreman yelling at

workers. “Are they actually rebuilding the club with hammers and shit? Can’t you, like, snap your fingers and fix it?”

“We can, yes, but in certain cases, we find continuity the best choice. But that’s not why we’re here.”

“No, I guess not,” I said, still looking around. “You turned off the feed, didn’t you? You bounced me out of there even though you agreed not to.

Isn’t that gonna cause some issues?”

“One moment,” Orren said, holding up a finger. He sat, motionless, like he was speaking to someone.

“Apologies,” he said after almost a full minute. “Issues? Yes, but it appears the AI agrees with my decision to pull you out. We did not turn off the feed. And before you ask, that creature didn’t actually have anything of substance to tell you. He’s still talking, actually. Spouting off some long- debunked folklore about the collapse of the inner system. Nothing new.”

I leaned back in my chair. I wondered if even he believed that.

“So, what’re we doing here, then? If he’s so harmless, why yank me out of there so fast?”

He didn’t answer me directly. “We are waiting. For your attorney.”

“Quasar? Really? Why?”

“Because I want him to be present when I tell you that I am going to remove that plastic bin from your inventory, or I am going to have you immediately killed. And I want to do it in a manner that will not upset the system AI any further. He will be along shortly.”

I thought about that for a moment.

“My HUD is still off, so I can’t examine it. But once it’s gone, I’ll still be able to see what was in there.”

“I’ll tell you right now what’s in there. It’s a multitude of Valtay neural enhancement pills, similar to the ones you earlier received in benefactor boxes from my people. If you were to take them now before the end of the floor, they would still work as intended, and it is unfair for you to have that many upgrades, so I am attempting to circumvent it.” He pulled open a drawer and made a satisfied grunt. He pulled a round ball and tossed it in the air and caught it. “Despite everything that is happening, I am still a liaison with my regular duties. Trust me, Carl. You want me doing this and not Harbinger or any of the others. I likely saved your life by pulling you out there before one of my colleagues could react.”

“But my sponsor sent me that flyer,” I said after a moment. “That’s what

they wanted me to find.”

“No. The whole thing was an elaborate trap. One set up by your terrorist sponsors, who are now fugitives. Your sponsorship spot has been frozen, and we are still trying to decide what to do about the one participating in the Ascendency game.”

“How was that a trap? I don’t understand. And who was that guy, anyway? You once accused me of talking to Agatha, of her giving me secret information. They’re the same type of person, aren’t they? A Residual or whatever?”

“Yes, he was a Residual. Yes, Agatha is also a Residual, though she is a

different kind.”

“In what way?”

“That is not of your concern. But he was correct. They are always present in crawls. Both kinds, though his is much more annoying. Like rats that sneak aboard ships. Every time we think we have them under control, they find a new way to pop back up. They are a hyperspatial, collective-mind alien race without a home, so they are content to move into the homes of others, to blend in. Nothing more. They usually remain quiet, but every once in a long while, a group of them decide they are unhappy with their station, and they fabricate drama in order to get people to remember they exist. Ignore their

machinations.”

“And how was that a trap?”

“The Open Intellect Pacifist Network is comprised of former crawlers who want to see the crawl fail. We should have seen this coming, but this plan was so ridiculous, we were all taken by surprise at the sheer audacity.

They believed, falsely, that if they could get you within earshot of that speech, that one of two things would happen. Either we would be forced to yank you away, which would upset the AI to the point of killing us all. Or we wouldn’t yank you away, but the information the Residual was giving turned out to be so dangerous, the Syndicate Council would immediately pull the failsafe, which would, in effect, kill this solar system’s star. In either of those scenarios, it would be the end of the crawl for a long time.”

I sat there, taking all this in.

“In other words, they were willing to sacrifice you and the entire planet.

They were using you, and they’ve been using you this whole time.”

“How close did they get?”

Orren grunted with amusement. “Not very. I anticipated we’d have to

yank you, and I pre-negotiated the scenario with the AI. Once we heard what that fool was saying, they allowed the feed to keep playing to quell any potential conspiracy theorists out there at home. You didn’t get to hear what he was spouting, but I suspect even you wouldn’t have been impressed. I’m quite certain your former sponsors didn’t actually know what he was going to say, and they’d gambled everything on it being something profound. They gambled, and they lost. Now they are fugitives, their assets frozen, and their lives ruined. The AI is only mildly perturbed, but it appears it’s more upset that it, too, had been misled into believing this information would be something interesting. Even now as we speak it is removing all protections it held for the remaining Residuals, and they will all be dead before the floor

collapses.”

“So, no more Agatha?” I asked.

“I wouldn’t go that far,” Orren said. “But again, that’s not of your concern.”

“No talking!” came Quasar’s voice as he suddenly appeared in the room in a cloud of smoke. “Holy shitake, Carl! How long have you two been gossiping? What’s the point of having an attorney if you’re just going to ignore all my advice? You guys having a nice chat? Want me to go back to my tug and come back later?”

Quasar’s tie featured an upside-down pineapple that blinked. As always, he appeared hastily dressed.

“No need to concern yourself,” Orren said. “We have been waiting for you before we got to business.”

Quasar looked skeptical. He turned to me and rubbed his hand on his bald head. “I gotta tell you, pal. That was some keratin-biting stuff. Everybody knows those Residual weirdoes are full of shit, but the way all that got set up, it made it seem like it was going to be something bigger than it was. There’s always a bunch of conspiracies running around about those ghost fuckers.

Hell, there’s a whole religion around them. I bet those Nebular fucks were all jerking each other off while all this went down. What a letdown. Is the AI pissed? I bet it’s pissed. I’m surprised it even let me tunnel in to talk to you.”

Orren let out the equivalent of a sigh. “Despite the system gaining independence earlier than usual, despite the quarantine, I am quite confident the remainder of the crawl will proceed with minimal issues. We have come to an understanding, and despite appearances to the contrary, this particular intelligence is very reasonable.”

I choked back a reply.

Quasar appeared equally unimpressed. “Yeah, whatever you say, pal. I’m assuming we’re here because Carl looted that Residual’s stash?”

“That’s right,” Orren said.

“And you want him to give it up?”

“You never cease to astound me with your intelligence, Null.”

Quasar took a long drag on his vape. “This is already settled caselaw.

Grixist Swarm V. Syndicate Council. He’s already picked up the loot. You can’t un-lick a butthole that’s already been licked. That was a legal and properly paid-for sponsor box which led him to the location, and he already has it in his inventory. This is the same thing that happened on the third floor with that one-armed Quan bitch, and look how that turned out. Besides, most of that stuff will be useless at the end of the floor anyway, so I don’t see the problem.” He shrugged. “They set this floor up that way. The loot was on the playing field. You have no standing to take it.”

“The problem isn’t the weapon or shield. It’s the communication device and the Valtay upgrade pills. There are rules against using both as found loot.

If the neural enhancers were already installed, that’s one thing. But this is clearly unfair enrichment. The communicator is non-negotiable, and you know that.”

“How is that my client’s fault? He picked it up fair and square. Why is he being punished?”

“He won’t be if he complies with the seizure.”

I held up my hand. “You know what? I don’t care. I’ll trade you for the bin,” I said.

“Shut your titty hole,” Quasar said to me. He turned back to Orren. “A great idea just came to me. What if we trade for it?”

Orren leaned back in his chair and tossed his ball. It bounced off the wall behind me and landed back into his hand with a heavy thwap. “All right, Crawler. But you might not be pleased with the AI’s assigned value of the bin. Even I was surprised at how low it values it.”

“I don’t care,” I said. “I just want to get out of here and finish this damn floor and get back to killing those who deserve it.”

My inventory was back on, and I’d just made the exchange. I didn’t even

bother looking at the contents of the bin. I’d received a group of items in trade for the homeless man’s dirty clothes and a few Valtay items. It wasn’t a whole lot, but I didn’t complain. I received a single wand recharge scroll, three scrolls called Cracker Jack, and Orren agreed to allow us to keep the four cretins for the duration of the ninth floor. All four were already down there anyway, and they likely would’ve happily entered our service, so all he was doing was saving us money.

I attempted to get the Gate of the Feral Gods back. I’d automatically receive it once the floor collapsed, but Orren had refused and wouldn’t budge. He knew I’d be able to use it to circumvent this last part of the floor, and he wasn’t going to allow it.

Quasar was unceremoniously kicked away in the middle of a sentence once the deal was done, leaving just me and Orren.

“You are not allowed to exit through the club, so I will teleport you. I will teleport you back to the area of Princess Donut unless you prefer to get brought back to the homeless shelter, though I warn you. We won’t be pleased if you try to go back in there.”

My motorcycle was in my inventory, so it didn’t matter. “Back to the Keys is fine.” I paused. “Hey, do you know if he ever made it into the dungeon? That Paulie guy, I mean?”

“No,” Orren said. “He appears to have been outside, but he never made it within. Most of them never make it in. Like with all collective minds and swarms, the individual parts are often disposable. Remember that in any future dealings with their kind.”

“Actually,” I said. “I changed my mind. There was this gas station I paused at on my way north. The one with the memory ghost dog. Can you send me there? I just want to say hi to that dog again before I jump back into

it.”

“Very well. Good day, Carl.”

With that, he disappeared, leaving me alone in the room. I’d transfer in a few seconds.

The coffee from the shelter remained heavy on my tongue. The scent of the shelter’s breakfast mixed with the Lysol remained in my memory, and my stomach rumbled. But all I could think about was that lonely dog, left alone to guard an empty gas station on Christmas day.