Chương 352: Book Eight, Chapter 19: Interlude

Mortimer the 304th walked the cracked pavement toward the high school as if he had all the time in the world—which, technically, was an understatement. He had far more time than this world. It had been a thousand years since he had missed the Barker. While others relied on corporate news and old-fashioned gossip for information on the Barker's whereabouts, Mortimer had devised his own alert system. To those who had studied the Magic Between Worlds, it was quite simple. Mortimer had more than studied MBW.

He had mastered it. He stopped in his tracks as a gust of cool night air lifted up his cloak and breathed life into his lungs. He was very proud of those lungs. Making them functional was hard enough, but making them capable of producing joy at the act of breathing was a whole other matter. For these lungs, a breath of fresh air was pleasurable. It was everything he remembered from three hundred and three body iterations ago, back when he was only known as Mortimer, back when he was mortal.

There was a chill in the air, but it didn't cut through Mortimer's wool cloak or suit. The air in 1980s suburbia smelled like gasoline and lawn clippings. Somehow, it still felt purer than all that. It was an age of innocence, but for this world, it would soon not be. The Sweepstakes had come to this place. Soon, would come the superstition, soon, would come the riots, soon, would come a new world order where luck was the only currency that remained.

But that night, the mortals slept in their houses, not knowing that their lives were about to change forever. The Barker was near, Mortimer knew. He could feel it in his bones like old agers could feel a thunderstorm. His bones, after all, danced with MBW. Perhaps he would always have a connection to the sweepstakes. He pushed his body forward step by step, willing it to his beck and call. An engineered body was unnatural, but the magic of humans is that they can change their nature.

Mortimer certainly had, not that any could tell it to look at him. He had a pianist's fingers. His father's fingers. With bony cheeks and sharp features to match. There wasn't an ounce of his mother in him that he knew. Time had taken his memories of his parents for the better part. The high school loomed ahead, newly built. Mortimer had seen many films set in such places, though, when he was mortal, he had attended a much smaller school in the 1940s.

His world was likely on a path to be like this one, but it never got the chance. He felt a pang in his heart. What might have been, had the Sweepstakes not visited his home world? Well, he would be long dead for one. He would have lived to see the 1980s, though, and not only through the pop culture of low worlds. What a curse it was to feel nostalgic for places and times you never experienced, but it was a shared curse among the members of the Consortium.

As he approached a door leading into the high school, he produced a small ticket and hole puncher from his pockets, but it turned out he had no need. Others had gotten here before him, and one of them had wedged a rock in place so the door would not close. How kind. The ticket and puncher went back in his pockets as he entered the building. He found himself in a long hallway lit only by a trail of glowing ticket stubs.

Mortimer read what remained of the ticket: RIPPER'S AMBIENT LIGHT"When the dark gets rude, light it up!" Ripper's brand was a common one for small, convenient quality-of-life fixes. They must have been making a fortune on those tickets. They were dead simple. Mortimer could think of two or three easy ways to implement such a spell. He could make a few hundred of those tickets himself, but he suspected the Barker wouldn't take them in trade.

The Barker expected more from Mortimer the 304th because Mortimer was an expert MBWer. A simple trick of light would not be a suitable trade. He walked down the hallway until he found the queue. A dozen or so men and women had beaten him to the punch. Ahead of them was the grinning man in the red and white striped shirt—the man with a thin mustache and a gaze that pierced the Many Worlds. To the side of the queue, a mortal man, a custodian, watched in utter confusion.

He likely worked at the high school and had stumbled upon the Barker by accident. He was drawn to the Barker and the Sweepstakes. All were. It wasn't too long before the man had leaned his mop up against the wall and stood in line behind Mortimer. Mortals were rarely attuned to magic or the supernatural, but even then, the call of infinite possibilities was so strong that none could witness the Barker hawking his wares and not intuitively understand what lay before them.

The custodian was an older man with a toothpick affixed between two of his teeth, right through a gnarly gap. He kept preparing to ask Mortimer a question, but never found the words. He simply waited his turn in line. That man wouldn't be winning immortality like all others in line had once. The odds were infinitesimally low. Mortimer had never even seen someone win such a prize. Technically speaking, even Mortimer himself never won immortality.

Instead, he won "the complete comprehension required for a singular task." The task he had chosen so quickly and thoughtlessly many years ago was "becoming immortal." And so Mortimer had been given great knowledge of MBW and body engineering. Thusly, while those standing in line ahead of him sported young, pristine bodies, Mortimer's was bespoke, so to speak, or at least much of it was, replaced by flesh and bones born of magic and patience. If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen.

Report the violation. It was no bother. None in the Consortium judged a man for the origin of his beating heart.

"Mortimer," a voice beckoned from behind.

"I should have known you would beat me here." He turned to see the young Dr. Aldric Rose.

"If it isn't our newest Narrator," Mortimer said cheerfully. They were separated by the mortal custodian, who still waited his turn in line with all the gusto of a field mouse.

"Good sir," Mortimer said to the custodian, "Would you be so kind as to let my colleague step forward in line? We would hate to talk over you." The custodian looked at Mortimer with fearful suspicion.

"No," the man said weakly. He cleared his throat and, in doing so, found some courage.

"This is my spot. You can move back if you like, but there ain't no cutting forward." Mortimer laughed.

"Good lad," he said.

"Then we shall trade places." The custodian was quick to acquiesce. Mortimer logically knew that the trade in position would not affect him materially, but there was still a small, animalistic fear in his mind that the mortal man might take magic meant for Mortimer's more experienced hands. He took a deep breath with his new, wonderful lungs and let that fear go. Mortimer turned to Dr. Rose and shook his hand.

The good doctor was young, no older than five hundred years, and did not share the fashion sensibilities of most in the Consortium. He dressed like a college teaching assistant. No matter. It was his mind and ambition that had made him famous in the Consortium.

"I imagine that the ever-boastful Lucien Graves has been in a bad way in recent days," Mortimer said. Mr. Graves had recently opened the kimono to the only living players in Carousel, only to be turned down.

"I hope he doesn't feel too embarrassed over his predicament. The Beguiled are never good recruits."

"Nothing like that," Dr. Rose answered.

"He says he doesn't blame them. If anything, he's ashamed that his other team had been dipping their toes in the river. That undermined his authority a bit." Mortimer chuckled.

"He has no one to blame but himself for that," he said.

"He always did give such a long leash to his teams. It was inevitable that they would do something stupid eventually." Aldric shrugged.

"His successes speak for themselves."

"Oh, do they? I wish Lucky knew that. He speaks for them on every occasion. He was supposed to get us access to that Sanctuary so I could do a proper analysis of the underlying architecture. Those are the only results I care for," Mortimer said.

"If he had used a bit more guile with those mortals, we might have something to show for our years of delays." Mortimer had an intuitive understanding of modern MBW. It made sense. After all, the comprehension needed to achieve immortality encompassed many things across a broad range of magical subjects. He had not met a challenge in the magic between worlds he could not solve easily in a long time, not since he first came to Carousel and got a look under her hood.

She was a wicked beauty, but Mortimer was enamored all the same. Carousel broke rules of MBW none had even dared to bend. His life's work would be to understand her completely. But to understand Carousel was to understand a star in the night sky with none but the naked eye.

"It will be me you're criticizing next," Dr. Rose said.

"I'm planning to reach out to the Party of Promise once they've survived the apocalypse. I think I made my Throughline level appropriate for them. I assume that was their fear about the river. If I can give them a survivable task, perhaps they'll say yes to me where they didn't him. Every day we don't find a solution to the Manyfold Hunger, more lives are lost. Surely they can understand the stakes." Mortimer shook his head and put his gloved hand on Aldric's shoulder.

"Mortals are innately unattuned to the suffering of others, my friend," he said.

"They have trouble seeing the bigger picture. Their lives are too short. They see themselves as the victim. Trust me, I lived for a thousand years in my world before it fell. They are far less capable of the empathy that comes naturally to you and me. Do not approach them with promises of saving billions of lives as Lucky did. You saw how ineffective that was. Instead, convince them that you can help them, and they will be yours." He paused for a moment, and then added, "That is, they would have been yours." Dr.

Rose squinted at Mortimer, who only flashed him a knowing smile.

"Would have been," he repeated.

"What do you know?"

"Nothing, of course. I cannot relay classified information about my observations into Carousel's core systems. Not anything I learned in my capacity as Lead Researcher," Mortimer said.

"But what about things you've learned in your private investigations?" Aldric asked.

"Assuming such queries exist." Mortimer smiled and stepped forward in line. The Barker eyed him from a distance. There were only five people ahead of him now.

"At the same approximate time that the so-called Party of Promise declined Lucky's Throughline, activity accelerated within the cortex of Carousel's systems that we have identified as the narrative center. Shortly afterward, similar accelerations engaged with our Apocalypse systems. Carousel seems to have given itself power over those very systems," Mortimer said.

"Is that abnormal?" Aldric asked, "The Circus Apocalypse has already manifested and begun spreading. Surely those systems always accelerate under these circumstances."

"But not like this," Mortimer said.

"Never like this."

"You think Carousel is preparing to clear the board?" Aldric asked.

"To punish them for turning down a call to adventure?" Mortimer thought for a moment.

"Punish? Heavens no," he said.

"It was a wise decision on their part to turn down that suicide mission. Carousel hates complacency, but that isn't what these mortals are guilty of. No, I think she likes their choice. I think she respects it. Only idiots would have taken Lucky's offer of a watery death at face value. No, Carousel likes these players, some of them especially, and for that, I pity them. After all, even a bird-lover loves birds most when they are flying. I believe Carousel has similar aims."

"So you don't think the Party of Promise will survive this Apocalypse, do you?" Aldric asked.

"Is Carousel going to send them flying?" Mortimer could do nothing but smile. Aldric must have taken that for an answer, but it really wasn't. Mortimer did not know what Carousel had planned. As he had said, those who love birds love most to watch them fly. And those who loved Carousel loved most to watch her weave her webs. Mortimer could always sense the magic between worlds in his bones. He felt a kinship with the town of Carousel, an admiration that overcame his fear.

He didn't know what was in store, but he hungered more than anything to watch it.

"Step right up," the barker cried.

"Boy, do I have a deal for you." The custodian was up next. Mortimer wondered how he would handle it.

"I don't understand what to do," the man said meekly. The Barker smiled a toothy grin and stared at the custodian with his dark, but friendly eyes.

"I'll ask for anything you have," he said, "in exchange for a chance to win anything you don't. Sound fair?"

"Okay," the custodian said.

"How about your last name and the memory of your father, then," the Barker said in a quick, snappy voice. Mortimer thought for a moment about whether he had ever been asked to give up something like that. He truly couldn't remember. The custodian nodded his head. The Barker smiled and reached under his booth to grab a handful of tickets. He produced them to the custodian, who left in confusion.

When Mortimer himself got to the front of the line, the Barker simply looked at the man, his thin mustache and curled lips still as stone.

"What will it be this time?" the Barker asked. No small talk needed between these old friends. Mortimer reached into his pocket and produced a single ticket.

"Immortality," he said.

"Iteration 304 with improved lungs." The Barker smiled and grabbed the ticket from Mortimer. He read it over.

"Very good. And here's yours," he said as he handed a small stack of tickets back to Mortimer. Mortimer grabbed them greedily. He searched through them for something special and found two or three that sent his thin lips into a smile. He didn't know what he was looking for anymore. He hadn't in a long time. But he knew he had not found it.