Actually, after an entirely too long period of deliberation, Tamara and Giovanna didn't watch anything.
“Are you an idiot?” Tamara asks, “Why are we going on a drive?”
“If you spent too much time in the Tower of Avarice, you might learn something.”
“That’s why I took a train to get there, yes.”
“Ah. But learning things is bad for you. That’s what Hannah would say.”
“She’s just a girl, not an absolute idol of Elysium. Things still happen to her. Time moves forward for her, and we with her, even if we’re going nowhere. That’s why we love her.”
“Love is a strong word. Isn’t she straight? But you don’t believe that for a second, do you? You’re so hopeful, Tammy… such an idiot. It’s cute.”
“You’re blabbering a lot for someone driving without a licence.”
“Who needs a licence on the open road? We’re free here, from everything!” Giovanna shouts.
And the windows roll down! Her curls, bright, cut evenly, knotted in a few places, but they’re still gleaming, but is that gleam stolen — they dance about in the fresh air, knocked to or fro like a little sailboat on the open waves, so vulnerable, so open, like a heart, empty or full and beating, ba-dum-ba-dum. And Tamara’s heart races, she barely leaves the house, who even drives anymore? Especially on motorways out of New England to lands that might as well be new given how thoroughly, how utterly they’ve been decimated. Ba-dum-ba-dum.
“Everyone, I assume. We’re a civilised country.”
“We’re barely a country, look outside.”
“That’s my point exactly. That’s why most cities in America south of fucking Nunavut require extra permits to leave verified and sane roads. Where the fuck are we.”
“On the I-80, because I’m a good girl and I’m taking you home, but not without a nice scenic trip…”
“That’s not what you were supposed to do,” she says. Yes, Hannah told her to stay longer, yes, she was shirking her off too, but the idea was that she’d deal with less Gio, not more. When did she even get inside this thing?
“According to whom?”
“Hannah?”
“Oh. Do you have a written note from her?”
“No?”
“So, should we switch to the I-70 and find out what she really wants?”
“I don’t get what you’re trying. We have a chatroom. Plus, by the time we get there, she’ll probably be in class or doing homework or something.”
“You think she’s that prudent?”
“Unlike, the two of us, she has a normal life.”
“I don’t think that’s true! She’s a leve—“
“Rank,”
“Seven. She actually attends classes, and she’s pretty average at them. She’s not, she’s not Carmen.”
“Of course Hannah isn’t the devil. Of course our beloved, darling, dear, dearie Hannah isn’t the devil.”
“Carm—“
“Carmen is just a girl. I suppose that’s true. You’re one of the few members of our group to have seen her in person. I’ve seen her power, though.”
“Have you.”
“It’s everywhere. A hundred million leering eyes. It’s not too unlike the watchful gaze my parents keep over me, making sure that I’m a good marriable scion, even if I could never run a household.”
“How do you of all people notice that. You’re blinder, as illiterate, as untouched by psychic power as I am. Your only connection to it is her blessing.”
“Ye-yeah. I guess that’s why it’s safe for us to drive through the faelands?”
“It’s not, though.”
The car comes to a screeching halt.
Let’s replay the scene, as you do. You should watch careful, in case you realise or sense something you shouldn’t. Do that enough times like the child locked in her room watching every incident every rumour every atrocity over and over again with nobody to console her and nobody who could you and you’ll get rank seven psychic power as well.
“Where the fuck are we,” Tamara says.
You couldn’t find them if you dropped a pin on a map of the United States. You couldn’t find them if you dropped a pin on the map of a million divided states or States, the maps the cities maintain to keep their wits about them, to keep up their hopes of eventually rebuilding the nation, their nation, because this phenomenon afflicts every continent, everywhere on the Earth except the furthest North and the deepest South, the phenomenon that is—
----------------------------------------
Michiko isn’t really there, she thinks. Everyone is prattering on without her. Her story doesn’t matter, she doesn’t matter, actually she’s nothing or less than less than nothing. If you forgot her…
Her notebook is ripped in half. The pages go flying about the study room. She slams the chair against the ground, hits it hits it hits it hits it hits it hits it but she’s so weak, mentally morally spiritually, she doesn’t yield. That’s not her will, a charlatan might say.
“How do you live with her,” says Evelyn Fairbanks, Vitalitas, Landsteiner, perched at the other end of the study room. “She’s kind of a freak.”
“Isn’t she a freak in the same sense that you are,” replies Connor Gierke, Michiko’s Fate-assigned partner.
“What do you mean by that?” says Evelyn.
“You know what I mean by that,” replies Connor.
“Should we do something about her,” says some non-descript to Michiko clique member. But the room is full of his clique or coterie and only his clique or coterie, and he’s apathetic to her plight except when he’s manipulating her or whatever, and the students of the Second City have been given the world and have thus learnt this awful coquettish brattishness, so Michiko can act out on items and it’ll mean nothing, as long as she can keep up with her classes, which she can’t. Once she fails the next test she’ll probably drop out and die. There goes her escape plan.
Her shoulders slump.
Michiko doesn’t exist, in that moment, even to the faces who go to ask if anything’s wrong, or the people who listen to Connor’s explanations, or Connor himself who says a lot of things, many “are you okays,” if you’re feeling paranoid you need to speak to someone, obviously the Second City has good counselling, considering what we’re up against, it’ll be okay.
Ahahaha. She’s a crazy, crazy, pathetic, bitch.
She’s so convinced that she didn’t take any notes for class. But unfortunately she did, one of the big lectures in the main hall at the beginning of the day, and they read, too prosaic for the little bullet point list she had crammed them in:
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
- The most remarkable social effect the three mass anomaly incidents have had on humanity is mass urbanisation.
- Psychic power (obviously???) affects human consciousness, it therefore bends places that are not perceived most easily.
- The professor (some rat who puts his own theories in the curriculum) likens grand anomaly hunting strategy to that of orcas.
- Anomalies prefer to drown isolated individuals in a wave of alterations and new, arbitrary laws in order to drown them and process them into an acceptable form
- All that precious bravery is gonna get you hurt / In a world that feeds on the minority [editor’s note: Michiko wrote that slash really eagerly, cutting through three lines, rendering the document less legible. Luckily it’s been ripped up, so we don’t have to worry about actually reading it, squinting our eyes too hard.]
- But also they like to herd humans onto huge icebergs, and the icebergs are called cities, full of cold cruel people
- Okay honestly he’s just saying that because we’re in a deep winter. Or he’s the type of person who thinks we can fix all of society’s problems by going onto homesteads. Or would if it wasn’t for the whole “faeland” problem
- Is he ever going to describe this properly
- Hhhhhhhhhh [editor’s note: Michiko writes in print, which makes this really funny to us.]
- He doesn’t get it. Nobody here gets anything :( [editor’s note: This is a normal sad face. She’s not the type of person who writes text speak, greater than three and stuff. There are many people in this story who are. Stay aware!]
- “Now, we live in a scientific age. They’re called faelands as a metaphor, not because there are faerie queens living in them.” — an idiot who has never been in washington[sic] on walpurgisnacht[sic].
- “They’re called that because they evoke the feelings of dread that lead medieval peasants to call their children changelings and run away from fairy circles and food left out in the woods, rational fears needed for you to survive coupled with irrational fears which injure others” — Don’t worry, though. It’s just a metaphor! They’re not literally fae.
- [editor’s note: There’s not actually a bullet point here, I just think she writes scarily fast compared to the average Lydia Wark student. All of these people have been typing exams for thirty years, and you can still type exams in Washington, D.C. or Carcosa, which is after all just a suburb of Washington. But that trainwreck Akutagawa took a parade of ballpoint pens up to her cram school in the Imperial Capital, every single night, presumably because if she got mad and threw her laptop she’d be down a few thousand dollars for no good reason.]
- [editor editor’s note: Laptops don’t cost thousands of dollars.]
- [editor’s note: I’m sure you still buy bread for tupence at the market too.]
- [editor editor’s note: Who even hired you? The Confederation of Eastern and Midwestern Cities reissued the dollar four years ago. A decent 128 GB laptop only costs a hundred dollars.]
- [editor’s note: Yeah, and the minimum wage is a dollar and twenty cents per hour.]
- [editor editor’s note: If you care so much go live in Anaheim and deal with the inflation there.]
- [editor editor editor’s note: Not only does Michiko write faster than you swine, she stays on track better despite viewing herself as incapable of the studying. Take the hint.]
- “We should view faelands as both a social phenomenon and a psychic phenomenon”
- For all the talk about merging separate fields lecturers here really like to split obviously related phenomena
Now, she didn’t write this down, but it’s important: Michiko opens up her laptop, tries to see if she’s gotten access to any of Aldebaran’s private wikis or traditional experts contributor encyclopedias, as the ivory tower tuskers who run them like to call them, or any other private servers that are on her list, because she doesn’t have any passion at all even if she’s going deeper and deeper, darker and darker than anyone else around her is willing to go. She hasn’t, so she goes to a public wiki with a Bahraini domain, one she hasn’t visited before. It’s the quickest and probably the most reliable. The internet is still global, even with all of the curses and the cogitohazards, but that hasn’t stopped the fish skeletons and leviathans from pooling around the underwater cables, nibbling them until they lose their light and thunder and just become 3D-model pure cylinders, and leaping in to make sure they can threaten… you, poor websurfer. If they get you, you’ll become a rank one anomaly. Maybe even a rank two one.
(Please stay safe on the Internet.)
She goes there and Connor, who is the type of person to play simple and repetitive games on his phone while listening to a lecturer or pretending to listen in partner classes, and actually gets worse when Michiko isn’t there, taps her on the shoulder which is weird right, because she’s learning about the subject of the lecture while Connor is dodging bullets or whatever, but she ignores him. Faelands.
She’s… found a wiki page on driving.
Michiko can’t drive! What the hell.
Assalam alaykum, brothers.
So you’ve heard about the restrictions about driving through the countryside, and you’ve been thinking: what the fuck, I’m a citizen of this country, don’t I have rights? I’m sane, I don’t look too far up when the feathers of that awful American Condor arc over my city, I am pious and like Imam Ali (a.s.) I praise Allah every time I ride in a vehicle. Why can’t I see the mysteries of the Empty Quarter? Why can’t I drive to Mecca? Why do I have to get into a dingy, cursed train?
Brother, you are in luck. As you know, I [fratellota2wil] was born in Minneapolis and reverted to Islam after moving to Bahrain for work as many fine young men have and ought to do. It should not surprise you, then, that I am an expert in driving through areas of low reality or ruled by a myriad demons.
I don’t mean to offend, but although keeping dua is NECESSARY and helpful to avoid curses, moral degeneracy, anomalisation, it is not sufficient. You need a certain practical talent. Certainly don’t put your girlfriend or your wife at the wheel, you need someone vigilant, logical, dutiful.
[editor’s note: Girlfriend links to an article on the pitifuls of casual dating. At the wheel links to a video of an anecdote.]
[Michiko’s note: Sometimes, when she’s reading something, she gets the feeling that the person who’s writing it wants her dead.]
[editor editor’s note: Nexhmije Berisha, who hasn’t paid any attention to the lecture, deciding that they’ll cover the material better in class, where she also won’t pay attention, is reading along with Michiko and says “I hate converts.”]
[editor editor editor’s note: The Catholic convert Hugh Berkstaller reads this thought and pokes her. She stares him down.]
Now, that’s a general rule, no matter how anomalised the roads are.
Here are a few general rules for anomalies.
You absolutely need to double-check traffic lights. The most simple anomalies, barely capable of being called rank 1 get their blood by hanging around traffic lights at crossings, altering whether they’re on stop or go until one fool goes careening into the others. Again, you must be vigilant. Anyone, absolutely anyone can see through the lies of the devil, you must focus, you must look for impossible angles, colours, sudden shifts.
What, but you won’t see traffic lights on motorways or long country roads? Exactly, brother, which is why you must remember: never stop, even if the roads shout that you must, that there is danger, that you will die. At the same time, keep watching for things that have been hidden. You wouldn’t want to die to the weakest anomaly, would you?
Next, always watch your GPS. You must always know that you are in Allah’s world and not Lilith’s. How many miles have you gone? Where are you? Are you going in circles or are you marching forward, ever forward? If you lose your location, you must steel yourself or lose yourself.
[editor’s note: Those links lead nowhere.]
----------------------------------------
“Have we even gone anywhere? Does the I-80 lead anywhere anymore? Or,” and Tamara doesn’t stutter even if she wants to, even if her voice wears thin quickly, a cold girl who only ever talks through her five hundred dollar microphone, “is this exactly where you wanted me?”
“Don’t I keep my promises? I’m taking you home. We’re the same, we’re Hannah's. I’d never tarnish anything that belongs to her.”
“Where are we.”
New York State, what’s left of it in East and Midwest’s jurisdiction, doesn’t become so empty, desolate, sandswept so quickly. There’s certainly not apartment buildings, the husks and shells, pilled into the sky, bombed out with incendiaries but inhabited. It’s like if you transplanted the Red Desert and stole away the colour and the blazing heat.
(Mercifully, its inhabitants have been inhibited.)
“Out of the cold. I said I couldn’t take you home in the deep winter.”
“Do you even know where we are.”
“No, actually. I know what we need to do.”
“What do we need to do.”
“I know all of your secrets. You’re so open, I’m so crass, it seems unfair to tell you mine, you haven’t done anything to earn them. And it’s so weird for our Hannah to want to find them out, knowing that trying to do would put her happy quiet life in jeopardy.”
“I just do what she wants,” Tamara says.
“Ehehe,” Giovanna replies. “Do you want to get out?”
“Is it safe?”
“Ask the faerie queen. She doesn’t like demons.”
“Aren’t you not a demon, ‘no matter what the slanderers and enemies of Avarice say?’”
“You really do go along with whatever people tell you. I suppose history is trying to have faith in what other people tell you about the past.”
“Stop blabbering.”
“I’ll continue, forever. Now, let’s go home.”
“We’re halfway between your home and mine.”
“Actually, we’re a lot closer to my home and yours. It’s a thirty hour drive.”
“I don’t know how long we’ve been in here.”
“Ehehe. You remember so much and you’re so forgetful. Anyway, we do need to stop by someone’s house, over there.” Giovanna points to some bombed out building, slanted atop a dune.
Tamara undoes her seatbelt, jerks up, opens the door. She gets out—
she falls,
trips onto the sand.
“How tall is this car.”
“It’s more like, how short are you, Tammy?”
And she looks at the behemoth.
[fratellota2wil: Yes, friend, that is correct, I used to work at Mercedes. I graduated from UMN with a Bachelors in Aerospace Engineering, so of course I’d be the person to ask if you wanted a sleek and strong ride!
The n-th iteration of the Mercedes Guard was pretty decent in the anomaly defense category, but we just didn’t get the sales. Rezvani were outcompeting us with their EMP-resistant gamer rides, like everyone in the industry didn’t know they slacked on ultrablue screening, a much realer threat than nuclear weapons in this day and age! But I suppose every man wants to feel like a prince.]