Chương 412: Book Eight, Chapter 79: Downtime

Time passed while I had no scenes. It took us a while to figure out that I needed to be out of the picture before things moved forward. It made some amount of sense. My character was supposed to be a detective-type, which meant I might be isolated as I pieced things together in the background. At the moment, Antoine, Anna, and Camden were working together because Antoine's character couldn't be seen in public without the cops being called. He was in a hotel room on the phone with Camden and Anna at the library.

They were doing this gimmick where Antoine was pretending to tell Camden what to look for as they researched the clue given to us by the man who had turned into the giant multidimensional sea creature—something about a river meeting the sun. I was Off-Screen, but they set up a three-way call so I could listen in. It was pretty funny as Camden looked through the library using his Eureka trope while Antoine pretended to be frustrated while ordering him around. We had to preserve Antoine's credibility as an academic.

Camden's character had access to a lot of cool military tech, but it was still the late '80s or early '90s, so instead of a regular cell phone, the whole unit looked like a large suitcase laptop. It was like something that could be used to launch a nuclear weapon, and apparently, the librarians were growing very concerned about it being used in public. Bobby and I stayed at my office. Roxy had left without saying goodbye. We were Off-Screen. He was getting some rest while I was rewatching the footage.

The selection seemed random at first, but as I went on, I started to detect elements of a narrative, something I couldn't quite put together. There were things that didn't make sense. Luckily, I had someone who had actually been on that voyage to help clarify things. One odd thing about the footage was that it was mostly taken from a distance. None of the players interacted with the cameraman at all, though some NPCs did.

As I watched the footage, I finally caught sight of Dina in the background of one of the shots. She was a rare sight, especially as things went on. I couldn't tell if she had even gone down into the tunnels, whereas the cameraman had caught footage of everyone else who went in. The footage I saw of her was supposed to be a panning shot of all the various ordnance at the camp, including explosives and ammunition, but in the background, she was on her knees, looking like she was talking to someone.

That was actually pretty normal for Dina. This was a supernatural storyline, so she was probably talking to her dead son.

"Things could have gone a lot worse," Bobby said as he entered my office. I didn't turn to look at him. I was staring at Dina, hoping to find some clue that I had missed. If I didn't know better, I would say that this entire shot was designed to give me a view of her. I couldn't hear what she was saying.

"Yeah," I said.

"A monster of that size could have killed all of us out in the water. I think it was the adventurer archetype changing things. We just got a taste of what's to come."

"Oh, definitely," he said. Then he pointed at the screen full of TNT.

"I was talking about that."

"It looks like it was a bloodbath already," I said.

"Tell me, did Dina ever go into the cradle? Because I can't find footage of her actually entering it, and look up here in the corner. I think that's her. I think she's talking to her son. You see that?" He looked closely at the screen.

"Yeah, that's her all right," he said.

"She had her own subplot, wanted to go into the cradle to revive her son." He paused for a while.

"You know, for a long time I assumed that Carousel gave her subplots like that to taunt her, but now I understand it's just keeping her wound open. In a lot of ways, I think that's the biggest favor it could do, you know, to keep her fighting." I nodded.

"So she never actually entered the cradle because her son told her not to?"

"Something like that," Bobby said.

"She was our insurance policy. Maybe if she performed well enough, she could survive to the end even if we didn't." That was a risky strategy. Dina would really have to sell her subplot because she was liable to just be written off right at the last moment. Unless you knew what win condition you were up against, making a call like that could be fatal. I let the tape play so it could make its way to the last footage we had available.

I wanted to ask Bobby what had happened in the actual finale, the final battle itself, but I would let the images on the screen be a natural segue.

"So what's up with your tropes?" I asked without even looking at him. I wasn't trying to shame him. I was just curious. He only had five equipped. I wasn't going to pretend that I was always perfect about having my tropes equipped all the time, but I couldn't remember the last time I had stripped down to only five.

"I got caught in between builds," he said.

"I didn't know we were in a storyline."

"Makes sense," I said.

"I never saw the plot cycle," he said.

"As soon as I did, I started equipping, but I still ended up with two missing." Two missing?

"You gotta understand, we were literally in cages there. We didn't know what was going on. We figured that after seven days, they were going to kill us when nobody showed up to save us. We weren't thinking about running the storyline." I looked over at him just to be sure that I had seen correctly earlier.

He still only had five tropes: Background Noise to help him talk to NPCs and get information, Last Minute Casting, his Recast trope, which gave him increased access to the script in addition to casting him in a random role, which, of course, hadn't actually happened in this storyline. He had From Humble Beginnings, which would debuff him at first but slowly power him up by the finale.

He was wearing his Actually I'm a Veterinarian background trope, and If You Can't See It, It Won't Bleed for some emergency medicine. But that was it. The background trope was free, so he could still equip six more tropes.

"You're missing more than two," I said. His eyes glossed over as he looked at the red wallpaper in a panic.

"No, I'm not," he said.

"I have eight tropes plus my background trope. I'm only missing two." This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience. Strange.

"No need to get nervous," I said.

"There must be an explanation."

"Yeah," he said, trying to stay cool.

"Some sort of anti-insight trope, maybe. Because I'm technically a kidnapping victim. Maybe the others are like this, too."

"Yeah, maybe," I said. I stared at him and really tried to see his tropes. That type of focus normally bore some fruit, even if it gave you a headache, but try as I might, I couldn't see anything other than the ones I had before. I didn't have an explanation, and I struggled to come up with an enemy trope that would justify that, but I knew one could exist. Maybe something that made insight tropes unreliable. That could explain why I was unable to see most of the enemy's tropes so far.

"Yeah, I don't know what's going on," he said, "but you know all kinds of things are wacky. I mean, I didn't get cast into a random role this time. I'm the same guy I was in the last film. Maybe there's some sort of error." I wasn't so sure. My understanding was that there were literally immortal people who lived outside of time in charge of the red wallpaper, but that was a silly explanation to begin with. It could be more complicated than that. Wallflowers were complicated anyway.

I decided to get his whole story while we were talking.

"So you just woke up in the boat and then helped Anna?"

"Yep," he said.

"Didn't even film my kidnapping."

"It's like you said. You're a recurring character. You wouldn't need the same introduction as Ramona, Isaac, and Kelsey. A shot of you waking up on the boat would probably be enough," I said, "although I wish you knew more than that. Does the script tell you anything about what your character's been up to or what happened before you were kidnapped?" He paused for a second and cleared his throat.

"Nothing that stands out. I've had a hard time since my dogs ran away. Haven't had the heart to get any new ones. They took me by surprise and kidnapped me because my character lived near Anna. That's about it." That was disappointing. Bobby was always good for some background lore, since his characters were usually right in the thick of things, and he had access to lots of information they would know.

The footage finally made it to the last little bit, where the cameraman was filming people as they entered the tunnel leading to the Sunken Cradle.

"So Dina never went down," I said, bringing Bobby's attention to the screen.

"You went down with the main group, with Andrew and the others. Lila is a ghost. Who knows where she is. Kimberley's already down there along with this German fella." Bobby watched as the events unfolded on the screen.

"Yeah, that's about how I remember it," he said.

"The final battle took place while Vogler was trying to get through these big doors that couldn't be opened. There was a whole operation. They were going to try to blow through them with all those explosives you saw earlier." That was cheating.

"No wonder he got a bad fate," I said.

"Nobody likes it when you won't do the puzzle and just try to blow things up."

"Yeah, it's always frustrating when that happens," Bobby said, "but at this point we hadn't really delved into the actual history of anything, so solving the archaeological puzzle to open the doors, if it was even possible, probably wasn't even an option."

"You know what's weird about this?" I said.

"Antoine doesn't show up until long after everyone else. He doesn't even go down into the tunnels until long after everyone else, and this is his own movie. What was the thinking behind that?" Bobby didn't meet my eyes as he thought for a moment.

"Well, he and Vogler had already had a fight where Antoine pretended to get thrown off a cliff, and then later he sneaked down into the tunnels to try and save everyone. That's why he went in so late. He wanted to create suspense for the audience. Personally, I think he was a little freaked out. The footage here really shows the tone, how it cuts and jumps. Everybody was spooked. No one wanted to go down there."

"So, Antoine goes down late to try to sabotage things at the last minute and save you guys?"

"That's right," Bobby said.

"And then there's a big fight or something, and Antoine grabs some dynamite, runs to the tunnels, and blows things up, leaving everyone, including his allies, down below?" I said.

"Yeah, that sounds right," Bobby said.

"By the time he got there, there was no saving the others. He did what he had to do." It sounded inelegant, but I could see that it is a compelling ending, honestly. Antoine was supposed to be an Indiana Jones-type hero. Having him sacrifice everyone to seal the big bad was an interesting direction to take. So where was Bobby in all this?

"Okay, but Antoine says that your character left the caves right before the final battle ended, so you would have been outside at the time the explosion occurred, right?" I asked. Bobby nodded.

"I managed to get free in the commotion and ran like heck to get out of there. I had to, you know, because somebody had to survive. It may not have been good for the story, but we needed somebody to live to the end."

"Right, but you said that Dina was already outside, so someone was already going to live to the end," I said. He shifted on his feet.

"Well, I was worried that maybe Dina would get written off, you know, for not going to the final battle."

"But she didn't."

"No, she didn't."

"And you didn't either for running away?" I asked.

"No," he said.

"I figure that escape was a win condition." That made enough sense. It wasn't like defeating an eldritch creature was a realistic win condition, and we knew for a fact that The Sunken Cradle was a common storyline that lots of players were sent on when they got to that level range, which meant it had to have some favorable win conditions.

"Sounds like a pretty tense moment," I said as I stared at the screen while the footage ended and the TV started playing static.

"It really was," Bobby said.

"It's hard to believe so many people played that storyline, you know."

"Yeah, well, let's not forget how many people played through the anthology storyline with the Straggler Forest. They never knew there was a dead cosmic being behind it all."

"Seems like a common theme," he said with a chuckle. He started to back away.

"I'm going to go to one of the restaurants down on the street to get some food. You want anything?" he asked.

"You know what," I said, "just get me what you're getting." He turned toward the door.

"Just one more thing," I asked.

"While I'm thinking of it, have you ever looked at the spoilers section for The Sunken Cradle in the Atlas?" Bobby looked back at me. It was like he was holding his breath for a moment. He shook his head.

"Well, it's the weirdest thing. People remember most of the movie right up until the finale, but then everyone who's ever played it claims that they don't actually remember what happened after that." Bobby looked at me, his facial features frozen for a moment, sweat beading around his temple.

"That's one of the strangest things I've ever heard," he said.

"Yeah," I agreed.

"Antoine didn't remember what happened down in the cradle either."

"Spooky," he eventually said.

"But you remember the finale just fine," I said.

"Must be another error." He shrugged his shoulders.

"Yeah, maybe. You know what it is? I think I just have my character's memories, you know, because of my recast trope, how I can remember things that my characters knew. I bet that's what it is. Kind of freaky if you think about it, because technically my character's memories are my memories. Maybe I can't tell the difference." That could be it.

"It's funny how tropes interact, isn't it?" I asked.

"Gotta wonder how Carousel keeps it all straight."

"We were never meant to understand," he said with a nervous chuckle, and then continued on his way out the door. I watched him as he left. Then I picked up the phone to check on the others. Antoine and Camden were still bickering. They must have been On-Screen. I leaned back in my chair and reflected on the conversation Bobby and I had.

I watched the video again until it got back to the part where I could see Dina on her knees talking to her invisible son, a conversation that would eventually lead to her abandoning the final battle altogether. Maybe it was the generic warning that any cosmic entity would justify, or maybe it was something else. The next time I went On-Screen, I made sure that Carousel caught footage of me staring at Dina in the background.

I didn't know if it would work because neither Dina nor her ghostly son was an object, and the Insert Shot only worked on items, but I figured technically the footage was a video, which was an item. I paused the footage and used the Insert Shot on the frame that best showed Dina in the background, crying, talking to her son. If it worked, it might be useful. In my gut, I felt it was important to know what they were saying.

For some reason I couldn't put into words, I felt whoever had shot that footage really wanted me to know.