Chương 333: Book Six, Chapter 95: Pulling the Thread

After the incident with Janet in the night, I had to use Out Like a Light if I wanted to sleep at all, and yet I found myself waking up well before the sun rose. I sat and listened as the city held its breath before dawn. Once my eyes adjusted and were no longer blurry from sleep, I noticed that Camden wasn't in his bed. There was little question of where he had gone. I tiptoed out of the room so as not to disturb Isaac and made my way to the main room of the loft.

I saw him sitting at the dining table alone, lit only by the overhead lamp. In front of him was the giant Carousel Atlas, flipped open just about to the middle. He was reading it diligently and taking notes. It was funny because, with his tropes, he didn't actually need to take notes. He could just remember what he was looking at, but he took the role of resident Scholar seriously and made sure that we understood the contents of the book.

I didn't say anything as I entered, but I walked to the kitchen and dodged all of the boxes that overflowed from the meager storage cabinets. We really had gotten carried away with shopping. Then I hunted for the supplies I needed in order to eat a bowl of cereal. Everything was in its place, sure, but there were a lot more things, so it was still hard to gather everything in the dark. The best cereal from those that I had chosen so far was called Head Harvest Wheat.

It was sweet but not pure sugar, and the front of the box had very cartoonish but also very dark illustrations of a fresh harvest of heads. I sat down at the table across from him, poured myself a bowl, and started to eat.

"You have a storyline coming up, right?" I asked after a few bites, not trying to disturb him, but it would be awkward if I didn't talk at all. I didn't know if the silence that had begun with Janet's antics last night was still ongoing.

"Yep," he said.

"A rescue." That must have been what he was researching. It was strange to think that even the lower-level players were going to start rescuing people. They must have been using Isaac's new rescue trope, which turned any story into a humorous satire. Luckily, it was a pretty common rescue trope back in the day, so there was lots of information on it.

"Oh?" I asked, prodding him for more information.

"Two newbies that the vets didn't catch before they wandered into the Patcher's little roadside attraction," he said. There hadn't been that many players who managed to make it past the Dyer vets' blockade of the Centennial, but there had been some.

"Not Final Straw II, surely," I said.

"What level is that again?" Camden didn't laugh, but he did the thing where air came out of his nose quickly.

"No, no worries about that. Some little serial killer standoff thing. Apparently, the Patchers don't do background checks before they hire workers." Those fiends.

"Yeah, I knew there was something about those Patchers I didn't like," I said.

"Though now that you mention it, every time we've run Final Straw I, one of the Patcher's businesses is somehow involved. Usually, they're just killing the competition so they can stay competitive."

"Maybe that's what it takes to succeed in the cutthroat world of Eastern Carousel. You wouldn't understand," Camden said.

"No, I wouldn't," I said.

"Wow, two completely new players. That's going to be a lot of explaining. Going to have to start from the ground up." At least when we rescued people so far, they understood what Carousel was and had their own ways of coping with their new reality.

"They'll be looking for answers after getting murdered by a carney," Camden said.

"I sure would be." I nodded and went back to my cereal for a while, while he continued to make notes. Changing the subject, I said, "You know, this is such a bad time for Bobby to be pulling his stunt. We're rescuing people, we'll be moving operations soon, and we have to figure out what we're doing about these throughlines. I really wish we could all agree to a no-drama rule." He shrugged his shoulders.

"Maybe just a schedule. We'll take turns causing drama, huh?"

"That would be nice," I said.

"It's just been one thing after another—or more like multiple things constantly. It would be nice to know what's coming." Then there was silence. I ate a little bit more.

"You couldn't really expect him to just forget about his wife, could you?" Camden asked.

"Let's not forget the danger you drove everyone to so you could rescue Anna and me. And you were way underleveled." The author's content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon. I shook my head and stayed silent, just to double-check that I didn't hear any ominous breathing. I didn't. Strangely enough, Janet was safer to talk about now that some form of her was alive again than it had been when she was dead and missing.

"You have that look again," Camden said, "like you're afraid of something." Why'd he have to go and say that?

"Oh, I'm never just afraid of one thing," I said. We both laughed. I went on eating my cereal, and I actually went for a second bowl. But right before I was finished pouring more, I noticed something was about to fall out of the box. I stopped pouring and reached in, pulling out a small orange troll figurine. It was old and plastic, like it had sat in the sun for a long time. It was also an Omen. Camden could tell, even if he didn't know the details. It was easier for them when there wasn't a lot else to focus on.

"Let me guess; it activates by touching milk," he said. I laughed.

"Any liquid will do," I said. Camden then stared at the figurine, his eyes unfocused as he tried to see it on the red wallpaper. Without a scouting trope, it took a lot of focus and had very limited results." The Underwoods," he said slowly, reading the title of the storyline.

"I can look that up after breakfast. I'll add it to the binder." I nodded. Then I went to the kitchen and found a plastic bag that I could stick the figure in, and then I put it on the shelf next to all the other mobile Omens we had found or purchased. I sat back down to eat some more.

"If you had come back as an NPC after we rescued you, what would you want?" I asked. Camden thought for a moment, then he said, "Keep me that way. Those people are blissful, you know. Except for a few things, this Janet is a lot more fun to be around than the real Janet." That was an oversimplification. Some NPCs did apparently live a blissfully ignorant life; others were all too aware but powerless to do anything about it. I had to wonder what Janet was.

"You'd have me order you around and use you as a prop friend? Just a husk of yourself?" I asked.

"I don't know, man," he responded.

"There aren't a lot of good options. I mean, she's an NPC—her poster is pretty bare. Maybe we should find a story for her to be part of." That was a thought. Another thought was that she was already part of a storyline, and when we found out what it was, we would wish we hadn't.

"Bobby won't go along with that. He loves her, and Carousel gave him that throughline. There's no way he would accept an easy option if there were one." Camden stopped writing, took a breath, and said, "We don't have to give up on her. Maybe there's a place that has answers, a place with meta-aware NPCs." Of course, there was always that option. We were already considering taking Lucky's throughline and looking for that mythical part of Carousel where NPCs roamed free in a world of monsters.

"Hmm," I said.

"You might be on to something." - - - It was still pitch black outside. Janet and Bobby Gill walked down a dark country road, being pulled by two large dogs, Shasta and Doughboy. Bobby had last taken this walk with Jules, his companion NPC. But he didn't want her to be on this walk. During the Eternal Savers Club storyline, she had been written off, and Bobby was afraid to summon her back. He didn't want any judgment from her.

"I don't think we should be out this late. We don't know this area," Janet said. At first, Bobby thought about not responding at all. Would she actually do anything? Would she run away? Or would she just say that line every five minutes like it was brand new?

"We're going to church, remember?" he eventually said. Suddenly, Janet didn't act so scared or hesitant. She was herself again—the version of her that he remembered.

"Bobby, if we're late, I'm going to be embarrassed," she said as she picked up her pace.

"Coming, my dear," he said through a lump in his throat. They hurried along, with Bobby willing the dogs not to stop or sniff, and they obeyed, because they were NPCs under his control, an all too familiar situation. They continued along the road until they came upon a graveyard that seemed to swallow up an entire field. In the center of that graveyard was a large stone church with gargoyles protecting it from every direction.

The last time he had come to this place with Jules, there had been a collection of twenty or so NPCs huddled in the halls of the church. Now they were spilled out over the lawn. The gathering was too large for the building itself, and the dozens upon dozens of NPCs were sitting on chairs in front of the church. Bobby ushered his group to the back of the crowd. Janet, being the woman Bobby remembered, wanted to be up front. He obliged. He would always encourage her to act like herself. He hoped it would matter.

Up front, there was a preacher that Bobby recognized. He wasn't wearing formal clothes; in fact, he was probably some generic businessman, but he, like many others, had noticed the base magic of Carousel, threadpulling.

"We come here because we know we are meant to be something more," the preacher said.

"This was not the life you were meant to have, the one you were destined for. We were meant to find our own path—a path to happiness. I know you feel it." Bobby was having déjà vu all over again. So many things in Carousel seemed to be echoes of other things, and he didn't know what it all meant.

"Now, I would like to invite a young man up today who shares our vision and feels led to speak," the preacher said. He waved up a tall man, someone that Bobby recognized. A man who, on the Red Wallpaper, was named Tom Carmichael. In another life, he was the main antagonist of Eternal Savers Club. Tom stood before the congregation and smiled. Bobby was concerned, but not particularly alarmed.

He had seen Tom here before, but had not known the significance of it, though it was quite a coincidence that he had left this place only to immediately go into Tom's storyline. Bobby's eyes were on Janet.

"Each of us has felt the call of a life unlived," Tom said.

"Who has not felt the thread of change in their life? Carousel is a world of gods and miracles. Have you not felt it? I know I have. I believe that if we follow it, we will find a better world." And the whole time, Bobby only looked at his wife, hoping that she would hear the words and that they would awaken something in her. But Janet stood faintly smiling, even less involved than the typical NPCs, who actually seemed to be responding to this message. Tom kept on talking, but to Bobby, his voice turned to static.

Because, for as much as he wanted, Janet never really woke up. She stood politely and patiently, but didn't ever seem to understand what was happening around her. Bobby sat back in one of the chairs and kept an eye on her—never giving up on his one true goal, and never getting what he hoped for. The End Of Book Six.