Chương 236: Book Five, Chapter 141: The Standing Ovation

The credits began to roll, intercut with footage from security cameras showing the characters from the story. It showed Anna, Camden, and Gabriel walking out of the roller rink safely—because, of course, for every disaster, there was another reality where the disaster never happened. There was footage of Kimberly and Logan at some speaking event for the museum system, and then there was security footage of Bobby walking his dogs while on patrol.

I saw footage I didn't understand at first of an older janitor in a museum sweeping up. He turned and stared up at the security camera curiously, as if he had never seen one before. It was Grant Leitner—a version of Grant Leitner who had never become Generation Killer—still working as a custodian at a museum. That was a fun way to show my Lake Dyer plan had worked. The meteor wasn't found in time for him to steal it.

There were a few other clips, but I didn't have time to focus on them because as soon as the main film ended, a room full of immortals all turned their heads to look at me. I didn't know what to expect from them. Perhaps I was being naïve when I hoped for them to be… I don't know; "impressed" wasn't the right word. Maybe I just wanted them to realize they had underestimated us—to realize they were wrong. But they looked absolutely thrilled. No, it wasn't "thrilled"—that was the wrong word. They looked entertained.

They actually started to clap. To them, we had not just overcome our destruction against all odds. I had just done some sort of flourish. For some reason, that really sat wrong in my gut. That wasn't a performance—I was fighting for my life and the lives of my friends—and yet they were acting like I had just made my assistant disappear or pulled a rabbit out of my hat. What was it they say about the banality of evil? For some reason, the applause caught me off guard, and I didn't say anything. Luckily, Vincent St.

Vane was apparently always ready with words.

"Riley Lawrence, ladies and gentlemen! The Film Buff!" he said aloud, speaking over the applause.

"Riley Lawrence," he repeated, staring into my eyes with a devilish grin. The worst part was that I didn't think he was faking it. I thought he was actually happy, in a strange way—not because he cared whether we lived or died, but because he found it fun to watch. He didn't feel defeated or proven wrong.

"The Party of Promise, indeed," he said. The applause didn't last forever, but it did overstay its welcome. I was at a loss for words.

"The next time we see you," St. Vane said, "I hope it will be after a long journey westward, filled with trials and tribulations and many more victories. But your time here is at an end." He wanted this whole thing to be over. I had ruined his press conference.

"So many things to say and so little time to say it in. Do you have any last words?" he asked. The crowd laughed as if that was a joke. What are you supposed to say to the multiversal immortal society that watches you struggle through a death game for their own entertainment and profit? I must have been behind on the etiquette. Even Kimberly would be stumped here. I turned to the crowd of journalists behind me, each of them pushing their little handheld microphones out toward me.

I put the camera back in my pocket and considered taking the hole puncher I had lifted from the supply room and using it on the ticket around my neck. But then I feared that I might not get to keep it if it was in my hand whenever my soul returned to my real body.

"We are real people. We're not characters," I thought to say to the journalists, but then I saw the unnerving mosaic of their unsympathetic, aloof, yet cheery expressions staring back at me in each of those people. I stopped speaking and just stared for a moment. I realized, so suddenly, that I wasn't going to break through to them. It wasn't that they didn't recognize my humanity—it was that they thought humanity wasn't so big of a deal. These people had seen their own worlds end in tragedy or mystery.

How could you say to the sole immortal survivor of a human race from an entire universe that they should care about a few measly humans from a world they didn't even know? That's what the Manifest Consortium was, right? The few winners of immortality from the Sweepstakes from across an untold amount of worlds. They didn't see my existence as terribly important. They had seen my plight a million times in a million different ways. Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent.

Report sightings. They were looking right through me. There was no convincing them. There was no reasoning. To them, I was just a character. And if I was going to be a character, I couldn't plead for mercy, that would make most of them dislike me. If I needed anything, I needed fans, not sympathizers. So I decided to take a different tact.

"Do not abandon us," I said loudly.

"I know it may seem like the odds are unbeatable, but I just have one thing to say to you—whoever is watching this, whoever thinks that victory is impossible: don't bet against us. If we have to beat the game at Carousel to go home, that is what we will do. Do not bet against us." People cheered around the room. These people would have liked the WWE. Voices started to ring out from around me—from employees and journalists alike—warning me that I needed to go back to my real body before the movie ended.

The credits weren't going to last that long. Not wanting to use my own hole puncher for fear of losing it, I walked up to the nearest journalist, grabbed hers from her belt, and pulled it toward my ticket. It was attached by a retractable tether. The lady reminded me of April O'Neil. She looked me in the eyes while I did it with a strange smile like she thought I was coming onto her. I gave one last look back at Vincent St. Vane—God, that could not possibly be his real name. Of course, it wasn't.

He was the proprietor of a horror attraction. Vincent St. Vane was a good name for that. I moved the hole puncher over the word Disillusion and hoped I had gotten enough information to satisfy our curiosity, so that we could move forward. Then I clicked the hole puncher down. My body collapsed to the ground and rapidly began to deteriorate into stardust. Did it usually do that? The reporters around me excitedly started describing what they had just seen—what events had just unfolded.

"An incredible display of cunning," they said.

"A feisty scream against the dark eternity of Carousel," they said. Because, of course, it was Carousel who was the enemy. Not them. They were just there to watch. To sell their merch. To search Carousel for the answers they thought mattered. I couldn't blame Carousel for being Carousel, but I could blame the Manifest Consortium. Whether they made my problems worse or not—or if they were merely exploiting us and our situation—it didn't matter. I loathed them.

As I faded away, I heard one last murmur from the journalists.

"That was an improvised visit from the trapped player, Riley Lawrence," the woman whose hole puncher I had used said, "known for being an enigmatic Film Buff, and in his home world, the only known survivor of the so-called Lake County Pallbearer, a prolific—" As everything went dark, it occurred to me that they somehow knew about my past. Of course they would. It wasn't just Carousel. They must have had ways to look in on us.

They must have been so disappointed when I didn't go into the back area of the video store. Because something impossible was back there—something I never wanted to see. I could feel it, and I wasn't ready. I didn't know if I ever would be. To them, my personal tragedy was nothing more than production value. It was fodder for the tabloids, meant to be sensationalized. To their credit, it wasn't like things had been that different back on Earth.

My parents were more famous in death than they ever were in life, thanks to that guy—and to the thousands who followed his every word, who scoured the letters he sent to newspapers, who let him become famous. See, there was one virtue in horror movies: They weren't real. That's what I always liked about them. The virtue of horror films. They were like fire you could touch without being burned. So it was ironic that I would come to this place— The place where horror films were very real.

I woke up lying down in the middle of Carousel's downtown. NPCs had already returned and were just kind of ignoring me—other than a few curious children who stared at me, despite what the script must be telling them. I sat up and stretched my neck. Being back in my real body, without an aching ear or arm, felt nice. The sun shone down and warmed the cobblestones. I could have stayed there for hours. I stared forward and saw a plaque fastened to a small brick planter.

At this site in 1699, 14 women were wrongfully accused of witchcraft and burned at the stake. They have been pardoned in death, if not in life. May the many gods forgive us. For a moment, I pondered the concept of religion in Carousel, something that I tried to simply ignore because I didn't want to know the answers. Were there good gods in Carousel? When the NPCs prayed, who listened? Could the evildoers trapped forever in this hellish world find redemption? I had to assume not.

I doubted that Carousel would waste its time acquiring forgiving gods. If it did, I didn't know what it did with them. Old gods, angry gods, sure. Gods of torment and storms, I could see. Tricksters, fallen angels, definitely. The others, not so much. The Audience wouldn't care to see the stories of forgiving gods. I stood up and tried to pop my back by twisting back and forth, but I couldn't quite do it. Looking around to reorient myself, I saw the direction to the jailhouse and began walking there.

Ever since we had the concept of a Throughline introduced to us, it had been nothing but trouble. The architects of Project Rewind had intended for us to run Carousel's Throughline—although they hadn't called it that, and they may very well not have known that's what it was. I remembered Silas Dyrkon saying something about it: What could Carousel possibly need to create a Throughline for? Carousel's Throughline was about escape.

Wouldn't it be logical to assume it only created the Throughline as a trap for anyone who tried to leave? That made sense. It really was a great trap. By trying to escape Carousel, you would unknowingly agree to the terms of its Throughline—whatever that meant. Would it be like Silas Dyrkon's Throughline that took place almost entirely on a sound stage? Or would it take place in Carousel proper? I had a feeling it would be the latter.

I had gone behind enemy lines with the goal of learning enough so that we could make informed decisions about our future. As I walked through the pleasant, bustling streets of Carousel—without an Omen in sight, because we still hadn't collected our rewards—I knew, deep down, that I was ready to join Carousel's Throughline if that is what we decided to do. As I thought back to the Manifest Consortium, I knew in my heart what it was Carousel might actually want. Escape could come in so many forms.

Did Carousel want to escape the Consortium? Why not just kill them or absorb them? They seemed confident in their safety. Could Carousel really not break free? But then, Carousel would never just destroy its enemies—if it even thought of them as enemies. That would be a waste. Because to Carousel, the Manifest Consortium was, itself, production value, just like I was. Somehow, they had missed that. They hadn't understood it. Their immortality and long history of superiority had blinded them.

They had spent four hundred years here safely, and that had confirmed their self-assurance. Carousel wanted to tell a story about escape. And I wanted to help it. I really did.