Subject: [OTL]: [Pryde, Drake, C] Destiny [9:11] Date: Mon, 9 Dec 2002 17:37:05 -0800 (PST) From: D Benway Destiny [9:11] prognosticated by Benway This story makes not-for-profit use of some characters belonging to Marvel Comics and DC Comics. Many thanks to Luba and Sevenall for massive editorial assistance. This story has some horrible bits, but nothing too gratuitous. No recognizable political figures were subject to harsh and abusive ridicule in the manufacture of this document. Spam is a registered trademark of the Hormel Corp. ___________________________________________________________ She awakened alone on the floor, as the first rays of the sun found their way in through the filth-encrusted windows. Her clothes, the ones she had arrived in the day before, were freshly laundered and folded, right beside her. The stench of frying Spam overwhelmed all the other bad smells in the place. There was a piece of paper on top of the clothes, pointing to a small bathroom. She made the mistake of looking in the toilet, which hadn't been flushed. The shower was clean, even if there was no hot water. She was shivering like a leaf when she entered the trailer. Neither C nor Tim looked up as she sat down to a plate of hot Spam. Tim was staring at some printout, and C was staring at the Spam. Although it was hard to tell through the eyehole of the mask, C seemed to have a fresh black eye. She ate in silence. She was fairly sure it wasn't kosher, and that it wasn't really food. There seemed little else to do but eat it. She washed it down with grape Tang. "Can we get to work?" said Tim, without looking up. C got up and left the trailer. "Did you hit her?" said Kitty. "Don't ask stupid questions," said Tim. "You're a fuckin' piece of work," she said. "Speak for yourself," he said. "Network A. You get to live happily ever after if you play your cards right. That's your reward." "I can't imagine it," she said. "Neither can I," he said. "I was in Madripoor," she said. "I saw-" He held out the Book of Eibon out to her. "This mean anything to you?" he said, pointing at an X inside a circle. "No," she said. "Not any more." For the next 6 hours, she looked at the books and made more notes and annotations. He would pass things to her, asking if they had anything to do with the networks. Generally the answer was No, but he found just enough connections that she never would have seen that, when he put the second volume of the UK in front of her, open to Folio 8, Page 14, it suddenly all came together. There was a picture of the bone in the upper left corner, sketched in by hand. None of the text on the page referred to the bone or to the Crawling Chaos or to much of anything else relevant, at least not at first. Instead, it seemed to be a travelogue of Von Junzt's trip to a remote part of Hungarian Transylvania, where he had visited a certain stone pillar of ill-repute. She turned the page, and almost choked on the mouthful of Spam sandwich she'd just started chewing on. "Find something?" said Tim. "Dunno," she said. There was a passage in archaic Hebrew, supposedly copied straight off the pillar. It didn't read like anything in traditional Jewish magic that she'd ever seen. Instead, it seemed to be a short note, personally addressed to her. It spoke of three possible futures, any of which could come to pass. One had references to great Golems of metal who would clear away both the Children of God and those who were not the Children of God. One had references to an eternal war between a dark god out of Egypt and a dynasty of inbred princes. One spoke clearly of the woman Rachel, and how she would come to live her life in paradise with her favorite kitten forever. "Yeah, right," she muttered. She re-read the passage again. The first two futures, her networks B and C, both hinged upon the woman Rachel dying of old age at some very specific points in the time stream, points that would not be reached if the woman Rachel grew old and died in the present time stream, starting from now. She went through the passage a third time. Her interpretation seemed sound, but the traditional vagueness of magical instructions had re-appeared. The passage spoke of not three but two visitors who had come, and who were destined to be sent back from whence they came. What was to become of them upon their return was unclear, although a sentence near the bottom seemed to suggest a passage in the Al Azif which, if read, would guarantee the visitors' safe return and the salvation of the their world, but would also absolutely guarantee that Network C would come to pass. Going back over the earlier part, she saw that if she used the descending node of the same formula, network A would come to pass. Nothing was said about the fate of the visitor's world with that option. All it said was that they would be sent home. "There's a tricky bit here," she asked. "Do you read Hebrew?" "No," said Tim. "Does she?" he said. "No," he said. She read and re-read the passage, eight more times. The interpretation solidified with every reading, except for the issue of the two visitors. The passage was so specific about everything else that it was odd that no reference was made to Tim's dead girlfriend. When she looked up from the page, he was gone, and C was standing by the stove, opening a can of Spam. "Where's Tim?" she said. "In the can," said C. "He'll be a while." "Ever try Immodium?" she asked. "Put him into a coma for a week," said C. "Even your drugs are poison." "I may have found something," said Kitty. "Huh," said C. "So I need to know," said Kitty. "What happened to Tim's girlfriend?" "Tim's girlfriend," said C. "The one who came over with you and died," said Kitty. "Oh, her," said C. "Yeah," said Kitty. "You said you had to tie her up, and she strangled herself." "Yeah," said C. "She did." "So what happened to her?" said Kitty. "He gave me the fucking breath of fucking life," said C, pulling off the mask. All that remained of C's hair were a few lone white strands emerging from crevices in a massive, red tumour that covered almost the entirety of her head. "And now I live with this," said C. Kitty could see it throbbing, certainly not in synch with C's heartbeat. "We were the only ones who made it," said C. "The others received sweet, blessed death." "Tim told me they were absorbed," said Kitty. "That they could be saved." "Yeah," said C. "That they were screaming, still living on within that thing," said Kitty. "Just like I am," said C. "Put that back on," said Tim from the doorway. "You know you can't afford for it to get infected." "Fuck you," said C, leaving. "Shit," said Tim. "No kidding, " said Kitty. "Why didn't you tell me?" "You saw it wasn't a black eye, that it was part of the tumour?" he said. "Sure," she said, having seen no such thing. "You know, I think I've found the answer to all our problems." __________________________________________________