Chương 378: Book Eight, Chapter 45: Bobby

Bobby Gill stepped back and surveyed the destruction that he, or at least his character, had helped to foment. The house was gone, all except for, ironically, one of the stalls of the sauna. The oldest one. The one that had been there before the house. Sigrid Haraldsen, a woman of great means and with a deep spiritual connection to her ancestors, had hired him to find the child she believed had been stolen from her at the hospital nearly thirty years earlier, under the guise of being stillborn.

What a sad story it had been. His character had searched for every single child born on that day in any hospital within a hundred miles and lured them to the house. But when Bobby himself dug a little deeper, he discovered only that his character had lied. That there was no plot to kidnap Miss Haraldsen's child. The child truly was stillborn. And yet, as she died, she used the magical power of a sauna to prolong her life and give her power over the mechanized house that lay in splinters around him now.

Such a sad story would probably be undermined by the concept of magic saunas, but how could he be sure? The greatest gift a movie could give was the chance to live within its world. Bobby had believed that with his whole heart, and that was before he came to Carousel, where it became true in the worst way. He climbed through the wreckage. In his final moments, he had managed to distract Miss Haraldsen before she could kill everyone in the house. Had it cost him his life? He wasn't sure.

The movie had ended shortly afterward, and he woke up covered in rubble.

"Hello," he called out.

"Ramona? Isaac? Kelsey?" No answer. He even cried out for Jules, though he wasn't hopeful. She had sacrificed herself in her typical badass fashion. Jules was a great companion, but if she got the opportunity to have an epic fight or an epic death, she would take it. Bobby rarely had epic deaths. Usually, his death happened Off-Screen and might not even be mentioned. That was the life of a minor archetype, unless you just happened to be named Riley Lawrence.

Ramona had been the first player to die, which was quite the twist, as she had the greatest connection to the house and to the woman who was offering up her soul to control it. When it was confirmed that she was not actually Sigrid's daughter, she had been sucked through the plumbing of a bathtub, which meant she could reappear anywhere, Bobby reckoned. Mechanical parts and steam pipes lay every which way throughout the wooden wreckage, and the snow was beginning to cover it all.

In the distance, he heard the sole survivor, Kelsey, returning to the scene of the movie.

"I guess that means I lose," she had said after revealing she had clogged up the steam-powered mechanisms of the house, causing it to explode before leaving through a hole in the exterior she had to squeeze through. The storyline had been a contest to see who could stay the longest. The winner got the house.

"Bobby," she asked.

"Oh, thank god. I had to run away from the house before it exploded, and Carousel kept me On-Screen running through the blizzard for like fifteen minutes. I don't know how much footage it needed. That damn thing." It was still snowing harshly. Bobby was wet and freezing.

"It wanted you to jump in the lake," Bobby said.

"It was the title of the last scene. Something like Watery Escape."

"Well then, it was out of its mind, because there was no way I was going to do that. I don't care if I get rewards for this or not," she said. He shrugged.

"Still no sign of Ramona or Isaac," he said.

"Well, they have to be around here somewhere," Kelsey said.

"They did good for their level, don't you think? Ramona almost made herself the main character with that one trope of hers where she split the party." Bobby shrugged. He didn't think that it was always obvious when someone was instrumental to a victory. Even Carousel didn't always acknowledge how difficult it was to be a minor character when everything was going to hell.

"As far as I can see, the only thing that survived was that old sauna, and there's smoke coming from the pipe up top," he said.

"I say we go look there."

"No better place to start," Kelsey agreed. They began trudging through the blizzard toward the ancient sauna building. Their team had very little research capability outside of Bobby's meta tropes, so they barely understood the magic that was going on. It hadn't mattered in the end. The little building looked ancient, and if it wasn't so cold, Bobby would never want to go inside it.

But when they got there, and they opened the door, they found Ramona and Isaac warming themselves against a one-hundred-year-old furnace.

"It's about time you made it out here," Isaac said. Before anyone could respond, there was a cracking sound in the air, and Silas the mechanical showman appeared in the very small amount of floor space in the little shack. They were all quick to get their rewards, if only because of how cramped the building had become. To Bobby's surprise, everyone did very well. It wasn't the kind of story his usual team would want to tell.

It was far more desperate, and they had won by putting everything on the line at the last minute. That was fine for a horror movie. Bobby himself got two stat tickets, and as he pulled his rewards out of the dispenser, he noticed that he had gotten something he never would have expected. A writ of habitation for the sauna itself. Carousel was throwing them a life raft. They could just stay there, and everything would be okay. They wouldn't have to worry about Omens or monsters.

The only thing that might be a danger is if the circus could spread all the way out there. He almost cried out in joy, but then he thought about it again and quickly vanished the writ into thin air.

"You know, it really was a dick move of Carousel to make our clothes wet again after the storyline was over," Isaac said.

"Especially in this climate."

"We're lucky we found a storyline we could beat," Ramona said.

"That was like finding a piece of hay in a needle stack."

"Hey, I'm the one who saw this place," Isaac said.

"Somehow, wherever we are." Bobby couldn't take the bickering. As soon as Silas, the mechanical showman, found his way out, Bobby went to the opposite corner of the room that the others were in, stripped his clothes off as much as he could, and hung them up to dry. He noticed that the furnace, if that was what it was called, stayed hot with no effort. He wasn't even sure how it operated, but a glance at his writ said that it would always work. It never needed fuel or maintenance. Such a good reward.

Maybe he had gotten it because they had decided not to choose one of the players as the big bad's descendant. Maybe if they had chosen Kelsey or Ramona and changed the story around, it would have been them who got the writ. That was what Riley would have done. He would have chosen a player to be the descendant and taken control of the story, rather than allowing it to degrade into chaos. The author's content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon. It didn't matter.

Bobby's instincts had helped them survive. He knew how stories like this were supposed to go. Either everyone died, or they got some corny ending where the Final Girl managed to punish the bad guy in some unrealistic yet hypothetically satisfying way. Forcing the house to blow up had worked well enough. He switched his writ over to a different ticket. A ticket that he didn't want any of the others to know about, and he stared at it much as he had every night since he had acquired it.

The narrator, Lucky, had given it to him just in case.

"Just in case what?" Bobby had asked.

"Just in case you can get your friends to change their minds," Lucky had said.

"They aren't going to accept my throughline. Maybe you can convince them." Bobby had found Lucky when they had first learned that the Carousel River was the path chosen to get to the NPC sanctuary. It had been a short meeting, and Bobby had said something like, "Even if they don't want to go, I do." He didn't want to think about it. He had pleaded to the narrator about his dead wife and the strange not-Janet NPC she had returned as.

He kept believing that if he was sincere and emotional, eventually someone would care about his plight. It hadn't worked. It never would. His loss was just something he would have to live with. Everyone else accepted Janet's fate. Why couldn't he? He was only her husband. The ticket didn't look like the tropes Bobby was used to. The text was older, much fancier, and strangely, it looked like an advertisement. Like a coupon for services.

"Coffee with a guest" was what it offered.

"Olde Alley Café. A trip from anywhere to our cozy hole in the wall." Bobby stared at it while his clothes dried. Luckily, he had brought a jacket. Once everything was done drying, he got dressed and walked out of the sauna, ignoring the questions about where he was going. He was going to find a door. He wasn't sure if the sauna door would work since there were people inside it. It took him a while to find one, and when he did, it wasn't standing.

It and the entire wall it was built into were lying on the ground, but as far as Bobby knew, that wouldn't matter. He took his ticket and ripped it in half, hoping that he was doing it right. Moments later, he bent down, turned the handle on the door, and opened it, and what he saw beneath him was the most amazing, most magical coffee shop he could have ever imagined. He couldn't exactly walk into it because the entrance was lying on the ground. He had to crawl through the door.

It was a strange sensation as gravity shifted when he was on the inside, and the door swung shut behind him. He looked around at the busy store. A few people were staring at him because of the way he entered the establishment, but for the most part, he was ignored. He was used to that. He realized that the people around him were likely immortals or otherwise came from worlds connected to the enigmatic Sweepstakes that Riley had talked about. He had trouble breathing just from thinking about it.

He watched as the patrons went about their lives, reading newspapers, having jovial conversations, and cracking open a good book. They dressed fancy, but he couldn't put his finger on what style he was looking at. Something old. Something proper. And yet something he had never seen before. He watched as the others walked up to the counter and were given a cup of coffee without even having to order. The place looked like some sort of magical candy shop he might have dreamed of going to when he was a kid.

Highly polished wooden features, glass cases, and lots of different desserts in those cases. He walked to the bar, and as he did, the woman working there handed him a large cup of coffee. He immediately took a sip and realized that, while there might have been coffee in there, it tasted more like hot cocoa, which he was thankful for after standing in the snow looking for doors. Speaking of doors, there was only one in the entire building, and it was the one he had crawled through.

That didn't make any sense until he looked outside through the intricate windows and saw that, as best he could tell, he was inside some sort of snow globe. The streets outside reminded him of scenes from a Charles Dickens story. Cobblestone streets, horse and buggies, women in big, elaborate dresses, and men in coats and top hats. It struck him as some sort of performance piece, almost like he was staring at NPCs, but even as a Wallflower, he wasn't able to read their script.

He could vaguely see that there was something there, but that was it. It was snowing there too, but not the you'll-die-if-you-stand-still-for-too-long kind he had just walked through. The gentle, beautiful little wisps of snow, like something from a painting. There was no way to get out of there. It was just meant to be stared at. Bobby took his coffee to the corner of the establishment and waited. - He didn't have to wait long.

After five minutes or so, Lucky opened up the only door in the building and walked through with a sour look on his face. He went up to the counter and grabbed the coffee handed to him by a woman there, and then walked over to Bobby.

"This isn't why I gave you that ticket," he said as he sat down. He was dressed casually, with a dress shirt that was halfway unbuttoned.

"Things have changed," Bobby said.

"I don't think they have," Lucky said, "unless you're telling me that your team has decided to run my throughline." Bobby almost lost his nerve, but he stayed the course.

"You don't need them," Bobby said.

"You just need me. And those with me. Did you see what happened? How we had to jump into the river?"

"Yes," Lucky said.

"I'm sorry that happened to you, but there is no way that the four of you can find the sanctuary. It would take a team of highly skilled players running dangerous storylines to track it down."" Your way," Bobby said.

"It would take a team of skilled players to find it your way." One of the women at the café suddenly noticed that Lucky was there.

"Is that Lucien Graves?" she asked her friend. They whispered together as if they couldn't be heard, and eventually came to the conclusion that it was, in fact, Lucien Graves, which was Lucky's stage name.

"You have a better way?" Lucky asked, ignoring the whispers.

"Your path was difficult because it was a treasure hunt. A safari," Bobby said.

"But my team and I are not on a safari. We are desperate. We're refugees, basically, swept away by a river and looking for a place to be safe. And can you think of a better place to be safe than the sanctuary you described to us?" Lucky seemed to consider his argument, but didn't say anything for a time.

"Look, I've learned a lot about thread pulling in my time," Bobby continued, "And I have to assume that refugees finding refuge is a shorter, more sympathetic, and simpler thread than what you were suggesting. We are in real trouble." The old Bobby would never confront anyone like this, but the old Bobby was useless. He let his wife die, and then he let her walk away again after he had almost gotten her back. This time, he wasn't going to blink as he stared the immortal across from him in the eye.

"Who's that with him? Is that a player?" one of the women asked.

"Maybe," another answered.

"I don't recognize him." Bobby did his best to ignore them.

"When you put it that way, it's not a bad idea," Lucky said.

"If you're searching for a place to stay safe. But that's still no picnic. Refugees searching for the promised land still run into obstacles."

"But they have more sympathy from the audience, right?" Bobby asked.

"I suppose," Lucky said.

"Of course, there's one problem with your theory."

"A problem? What problem?" Bobby asked.

"You already have refuge, don't you?" Lucky asked.

"You were given a writ that would keep you safe while the others come to save you."

"I didn't ask for that," Bobby said, "and even if we have a writ, it's for a little shed in the middle of a blizzard. There's no food, and we are probably going to be covered in snow soon. We're still in danger." What he was saying was true, but at the same time, he knew how damaging it was to have received that writ. Anger flashed over his face, even though he was trying to look confident and cool-headed. If only he hadn't gotten it.

"I did notice that you didn't show your teammates the writ. Any particular reason for that?" Lucky asked. Bobby thought for a moment.

"I'm hiding it because I don't want them to know staying is an option, because I know that staying will eventually mean death from starvation. I'm taking the decision out of their hands. That happens in stories, and I think the audience would understand it."

"It does happen," Lucky said, "but it's not the good guys that do that sort of thing."

"I'm not a good guy," Bobby said.

"I'm a background character. I'm allowed to make bad decisions that put the heroes in convoluted dilemmas and dangerous situations. I'm a Wallflower." A smile crept over Lucky's face.

"That's how you're willing to play it?" he asked.

"I'm willing to do anything," Bobby answered.

"Well, great. I think you're on to something," Lucky said.

"There's only one condition. You have to make sure that Ramona Mercer stays with you as you make your voyage." Bobby thought that was an odd condition. It wasn't like he could leave her behind.

"She will," Bobby said, "but why her specifically?"

"Maybe it's best you don't know that," Lucky said.

"I'm a narrator. I've been doing this a long time. If you're willing to be that guy, willing to sabotage your allies' temporary safety in order to get them permanent safety, then maybe I can use you."

"I'm willing to," Bobby said. Lucky reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a ticket and a pen, and began writing symbols. He then took out a hole punch and punched a hole in the ticket. Silas, the mechanical showman, appeared right beside the table they were sitting at. Bobby looked out and saw that the crowd in the café had grown, and when Silas, the mechanical showman, appeared, they went wild. He and Lucky were being watched.

He looked out at the people who were waving at him and smiling, and he couldn't help but smile too. For a moment.

"Which guy is this?" one of them asked.

"It's the guy whose wife died," another whispered.

"Oh, I hated her. I almost stopped watching just because of her," the first man responded. That was a gut punch. Bobby pretended he didn't hear them. As he reached up to press Silas's button, Lucky had one final thing to say.

"Just know that sometimes tropes in Carousel are earned in a storyline and won afterward. Other times, the price comes after the prize." Bobby nodded as he pressed the button. He stared down at the trope that appeared in Silas's dispenser. It was a powerful Wallflower trope titled The Quiet One. Bobby read quickly, and soon he understood what his job was.