+Ahem.
Attention, people of the gutters. It’s uh… it’s your fucking boy Aedon—
What? What’s wrong with saying, “it’s your fucking boy,” Marlowe?
Why does it sound like shit? How do you know it sounds like shit, like, all the big vicarity stars—okay, yeah, I guess you have thoughtcasting experience but…
Alright. Fucking—alright! First impressions are important, I know—ah, fuck I’m already casting shitshitshit
Uh, hey, hey, consangs, it’s friend of the Strix, master of the rash, and twister of the flesh, Aedon Chambers here. Yeah. You might know me as a Low Master Acolyte or consang to the Strix. You might even know me as Steelhardfan6969 if you frequent certain lobbies—
What’s wrong with telling them my private account? I barely use it anymore! I practically can’t since the Nether came down. Shit, I’m on the verge of getting the shivers. Fuck. I’ve been cycling old vics through my head to keep myself calm! Don’t tell me to calm down! I am calm! I’m just running hot.
Godsdammit. Shit I keep getting sidetracked. Anyway! Main point: As you might have noticed, the Guilder half-strands are slipping down into the Warrens like shit… falling over from an overflowing shitter. Yeah, they really fucked their home up something good. Whatever the High Cuntess pulled at the end seems to have created a spreading metaphysical venereal disease that’s crawling down New Vultun to eat our asses. Shit’s fucked, yo. No two ways about it. In fact, if you got some numb, now’s the time to prick yourselves.
But all is not yet fucked to death. Our asses are, like, only two inches dicked by a fifteen inch Prolapsator-EXTREME Model 2. There’s still a chance we can slip free from getting a nightmarish pounding. But only if we work together.
Right now, the Colors are disorganized. They’re fighting each other and crashing down over your homes and shit. We have… a unique opportunity. One that might not come again for a long, long time.
What I need from you is simple: go seek out mem-cons with a specific pattern: a symbol that looks like a fire cut in half by a line. That’s the working symbol of the Symmetry. Pending changes. I’m not an artist and did the best I could on short notice. When you do, follow the instructions you’ll get from the memetic virus for next steps. You might think you’re outgunned and screwed with the Fifth Guild War kicking off, but things will be different this time. They already are.
We don’t need to take the Tiersfolk’s shit anymore. They’re in our house now. And understand the Symmetry will fight for you. To live. To see tomorrow. For a chance to decide who you want to be yourselves.
The Warrens might be a den of festering shit, but it’s ours. And the Guilds should’ve thought triple before they barged in here running from their fuck up.
Was… was that good? Good at the end? Hells yeah. Aedon Chambers lives for a climax+
-Aedon Chambers (Suspected Low Master Acolyte, Member of the Symmetry, Companion to the Strix, and Leading Representative of the Council of Fuck)
30-1
Too Numb to be Numb
Aedon Chambers couldn’t quite find it inside himself to shoot up, and his hand hovered over a vial of Numb. Drinkable, injectable—a promise of peace and relaxation guaranteed, if he’d only put it inside himself, some way, somehow.
Above him, light fell in dappled spots through dense foliage, and birdsong bathed the world in a dissonant tranquility. He stood at the end of a long table, its length stretching on for a good fifty meters while the other seats were occupied by a host of twenty-seven other individuals. Twenty seven people who resembled him and flesh and mind—ego copies created by Avo.
Here was the Council of Fuck. The members Chambers could get his hands on, anyway, convening to discuss issues of grave importance.
Things like: Just how fucked are we right now. Or: Maybe someone else should be calling the shots.
He’d spent the better part of the last day squirreled away in the Easy Armistice, monitoring situations across New Vultun from inside a rented demiplane. So far, things were as shit as he expected. With the Guilders fleeing the Tears and the Substance on the move, a cataclysm unlike any other was sweeping through the megacity. Panic was rising, citizens and subjects freaking out alike, and at the center of it all, Avo was still missing.
Draus had gone silent as well, despite coming online earlier. She had suddenly cut out—an ominous sign—but Chambers had more than a little faith in the regular. Jelene Draus was a tough sow. If all they’d experienced thus far couldn’t kill her, then whatever horrors were hiding behind that veil of metaphysical bullshit likely wouldn’t either.
That left him with the Warrens, and things weren’t looking so good there either.
In the days leading up to the trial, Avo had gone on a rampage alongside his Gestalt, tearing through the underworld of New Vultun in what could only be described as a cognitive genocide. The syndicate elites were burned and replaced by copies of Chambers, given his former expertise with the environment, and their enforcers became alternates for Draus, establishing a hidden army for Symmetry before proceedings even began. The technicians were fully staffed by amalgamated personalities—egos generated using memories and architectures gained from fallen Incubi.
They had been a valuable resource. A veritable legion in the Nether set to take over. Now? Well, there wasn’t much of a Nether, and a good bunch of the Incubi copies got nulled when Scale broke anyway, so that was that.
Now, Chambers found himself the senior leader of a gutter-spanning empire that ran smuggling rings, crucibles, dealt drugs, illicit organs, and trafficked implants while also warring against each other through death and entertainment. That had been his cover before to keep things going. That wasn’t going to last much longer. Once, the Guilds had used their syndicates to do dirty business, things they liked to keep their hands clean of. Now, with everything on the line, the syndicates were no longer needed. In fact, they were more of a liability. Citizens forced away from their homes were spilling down across the Warrens, pushing into other districts and displacing longtime subjects from their former abodes.
Scenes were represented in a holographic display of New Vultun. A simulation assembled itself from visual data captured by Sunrise—the Voidwatch bioform busting its buzzing ass as it flew here and there. From the very edge of the Tiers, traffic so dense they became webs descended over the Warren’s, blotting the face of night from above Light’s End. The blare of horns and the scream of sirens were nigh constant. Behind them, the Substance loomed, an ethereal tidal wave crawling forward inch by inch, with shimmering gold oscillating beneath its depths. In the upper atmosphere, voider ships were assembling, and what looked like a concentric megastructure was slowly fusing into shape along the horizon.
Calvino told Chambers that the Contingency Bleaks were coming onto the scene, supposed big guns of Void Watch specifically meant to deal with uncontrolled anomalies. Intermittent skirmishes still broke out between the Guilds, and when knots or cadres fought, thousands of salvages died. But through some small miracle—by some form of pressure from higher-ups or Voidwatch’s threats of embargo—a tentative peace was maintained. But it was not an easy peace by any means.
Chambers could see shimmering folds of space outlining the borders between countless districts. The Guilds were forming their battle lines, facing each other, even as more and more of their citizenry trickled in. As the population of Light’s End overflowed, the best and well-to-do subjects fled down into the Throat, camping out in former factories, processing plants, and generating laboratories. But those places weren’t built for long-term living, so further down they had to go, into the Spine, where criminals, ruffians, mind-hosts for cheap lobbies, organ carriers, and all the other dregs resided.
The traffic was constant and vast, as were the districts. New Vultun had always been a ravenous beast, and comfort belonged only to those who could afford it and keep it in the end. People were dying. That much Chambers already knew. Death rates were up by 650%. A dozen new plagues had been recorded, forcing over 700 districts to go into quarantine—or at least make the attempt. And every few minutes, a nuke would go off in the middle of a city, within a megablock, and a few thousand more would die.
But even a district across, people would barely notice. More space for the survivors. More space for those who could take it. Cancer could be handled by nanos or bio-thaumics. The rains would handle the burns.
And for those who couldn’t, for those who simply had no choice, the gutters were the way to go. Down in the gutters, the syndicates reigned as kings. And this was where Chambers found himself, playing the role of king of kings, even if he had no idea what he was doing. Even though he only knew what was going on with the syndicates in the Yuulden-Yang and Sasarchana Sovereignties.
True, attacking the Guilds had been fun—bombing an Omnitech facility here, assassinating a bunch of Seekers there. He knew how to get dirty with the best of them. But what he didn’t know was how to organize a civilization. People were flocking to his marketplaces, small oases of stability within the uncaring apocalypse—the ruins that constituted the gutters. But the markets were over capacity, partially connected to the Spine, with merchants and their families trying to establish themselves as priority subjects while overcharging newcomers. A fee that was sometimes worth a pound of flesh, literally.
To make matters worse, the Nether was down, completely collapsed, and with it broke New Vultun’s economic system, the imp trade stalling to a localized halt. Inner lobbies were no longer accessible, previously stored information possibly lost forever, and long-term communication was utterly disrupted. For most, at least. Chambers still had his Ansible, but even that was failing to provide him with any use. He’d pinged Avo 681 times since the destruction of Scale. Draus fifty, after she went silent. Denton—he managed about twenty-eight pings before he finally gave up.
And as for the others? Well, Cas had been with him all this while. He left to do some scouting earlier but would be back at any time. Marlowe just suddenly showed up in his megablock of the blue, dressed in that fancy trial outfit. She looked shell-shocked all to shit and went hard with the drugs for a while before she actually started talking to him. She, presently, was one of the few non-Chambers sophonts in the demiplane—had been a help cutting that recruitment mem-con earlier. Least the remaining Incubi could still do stuff like that.
The rest of the cadre? All the others?
Fucking lost. And so was Chambers.
Looking to his copies, Chamber sighed and placed the vial of Numb on the table and grimaced.
“Can’t fucking do this,” he muttered under his breath.
The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.
“Can’t do what?” Marlowe said, head tilting into his periphery.
The other Chambers-copies were all various forms of buzzed or high, most running some kind of hardcore porn vicarity in their Metaminds to distract themselves from present responsibilities.
“This,” Chambers said, gesturing toward the simulation—the gutters specifically—pointing at the long strings of aeros passing through Layer One. “All these people are coming down looking for shelter, food, water. We barely have enough water down there. The gutters aren’t meant to sustain that many people. Like, I’d ask my text for a report on our logistical situation, but I can’t even do that because the Nether’s all fucky-wucky and all our accounting got wiped. Everything is just… fucked!
“And now we have the Draus-lites running around playing scout, our smugglers are actually snatching food and ferrying supplies between the Layers and along the Maw. Our blocks keep getting mobbed by starving bands of lunatics, there are people telling me things about mutant bioforms slaughtering entire streets of people, psycho-gangers running organ-runs under my nose, Guilder asset trying to establish surveillance posts… And even more people are coming. More people, more problems. Then there’s that waterfall of thaumic… cum-shit coming down from the Tiers, boiling its way across reality. It’s just… fuckkkkkk. We’re so fucked.”
Aiden placed both his hands on the table and shuddered with stress.
He was the wrong man for the job.
He’d been surprised when Avo chose him to run the syndicates. It made sense at the time—he knew the industry, after all—but who the fuck was he kidding? He was in it mainly to stab the guilds in the balls and have a good time helping people, fixing things. Solving problems. That wasn’t him. He never solved problems. He ran from them. His problems became other people’s problems. Or for those hunting him to get snuffed.
The Substance wasn’t going to get distracted. The Guilds? Well, they were just coming and coming. And the subjects, the people down here in the Warrens? They were as shitty as they’d always been. Just killing each other, hurting each other, taking from each other. It was all getting worse and worse. He couldn’t do this. Didn’t know what to do. He didn’t even have the slightest idea of how to begin.
A soft presence gripped his shoulder, massaging him lightly.
“There, there, Chambers,” a deep but gentle voice cooed. A mound of flaccid penises patted Chambers on the head as the Fucktopia warbled notes that resembled a lullaby. “These are stressful times, and these are hard problems for anyone to be facing. I know that you’re very overwhelmed right now, so it’s important for you to take a breath and just relax for a moment. Maybe do use that numb.”
“No!” Chambers snapped. The Fucktopia flinched away, and immediately, Chambers felt bad. “I’m sorry, I just... no. I just... I can’t.” Chambers glared at the drug. It was so easy before. So why couldn’t he now? “I can’t. I just... I need to think. I need to use...” He smacked his head. Then punched himself. Twice. Pain gave him a sense of grounding. “I need to use this, like I never used it before. I need... I need ideas. I need solutions. I need...” He swept his glare at the other members—the other versions of himself. “I need you guys to fucking give me a hand!”
A few of them flinched, while most of them simply stared off into the distance.
“Are you fucking kidding me!” Chambers roared. “Are you all hot-simming smut right now? Right now?” Was this what it was like working with him? How did anyone put up with that?”
“I mean, if I were to guess, right?” one of his copies said, lazily raising a hand. “Most of the food usually comes from one of the demiplanes up in the Tiers, or a hydroponics farm up in the Void, or one of those special bio plants in the Throat. Voidwatch will probably be shipping in lots of humanitarian aid, so I don’t think we’re gonna need to worry about total supplies. But the problem is concentration, right? The people, there’s gonna be a lot of them in the gutters. Too many. And that’s a long way down.”
“And the Guilders are going to hoard,” Marlowe snorted. “They’re not going to share. Not with you. It’s about time some of you subjects die anyway. That’s what they’ll be telling themselves. Feed the war engines.”
“Yeah,” Chambers said, “and we’re gonna need to move stuff from the upper layers of the Warrens to the very bottom. And that’s gonna take a logistical train, which might get the attention of the Colors.”
“We might need to snatch some gilder golems so they can do some humanitarianism on our behalf,” another copy slurred.
“Frankly, I think it’s time we consider moving people out of the city,” a copy on the far end of the table said, catching everyone’s attention. He shrugged. “What? This was a long time coming. The sanctuaries still have people coming in, but we also have smuggling lines past the border walls. We’re one of the few options for bringing people in and out of the city that’s not under Paladin control. And the Paladins right now? Well, they’re as scattered as everyone else is. Shit. Have we even seen a Paladin aside from those still manning the walls?”
“So, what, we seize control of the sanctuaries?” Chambers asked. He paused. Not a half bad idea. “That makes sense. The Substance is going to consume all of New Vultun sooner or later. Getting people out might be the wisest option anyway. Gives us more space. And the Guilds likely can’t hold their external processing forces with the Nether being down. Shit. We need to find Essus or something. That’s going to be… hard as fuck. Hope that poor bastard’s okay.”
“For now,” the copy continued, “the problem is establishing enough order over everyone coming in that they’ll fucking listen to what we’re gonna say. And doing that without drawing Guild notice. You know those bastards are gonna snuff us if they get a trace on where we’re operating.”
“The Guilds have enough problems of their own,” Marlowe said. “You have no idea how bad things are. If whatever’s happening is forcing them down into the Warrens, they’ll be scared shitless and mainly focused on each other. The Saintists will flock to their own districts and the Massist to theirs. But they’ll be trying to hit each other supply lines. Convoys. Fights will break out. I mean—fuck me, the war’s technically on. The only reason there’s any kind of peace at all is because they’re so cut apart. But skirmishes keep happening, it's only a matter of time they lose control. And not even Voidwatch can stop them. People are going to die when that happens. Lots of people. Even more people.”
“Right on top of our heads,” Chambers finished. “Perfect. So. We gotta play defense against them too.”
“We should cut another mem-con,” Marlowe said. “The one we made earlier was for recruitment. But maybe something offensive. They still work. Even if the Nether is nulled. How does that work anyway?”
“Don’t fucking know,” Chambers replied. “Maybe if Avo were here he’d tell you. White-Rab too. I don’t know fuck about shit—”
“Alright. Chambers. Look. You can shit talk yourself as much as you want if it helps you numb out, but if you’re just venting… It’s not the way. None of us asked for this. Shit. I’m not worth a godsdamned right now either.” Marlowe bit her lip and frowned. “Never really was. But we’re all we got. So. I think… that we need to pucker our cunts and, uh, deal.”
“Pucker our cunts,” Chambers repeated.
“Yeah.”
He nodded. “Right. Right. Thanks. I—”
A shift in the demiplane caused their surroundings to pulse, as if the surface of a pond had been struck by a falling rock. As the world around them rippled, cas stepped in looking haggard, eyes bloodshot, his holocoat flickering with glitching fractals of data. “Well, bad tidings I bring: Shit’s fucked. Worse than I thought.” Staggering over to the table, the Columner pulled out a seat. Chambers picked up a bottle and placed it in front of the man. As Cas disabled his holocoat, Chambers saw that he was wearing an armored vest of some kind, but it looked dented and blood spilled out between the cracks.
“You all right?” Chambers asked.
“I’ll be fine,” Cas grunted. “Already clotting. Just ended up getting shived by some feral juvs looking food while I was looking around. Everyone’s going insane.”
“Yeah,” Chambers said, gesturing towards the holographic representation of New Vultun. “Kinda got a bird’s-eye view of that thanks to Sunrise.”
Cas shook his head. “Jesus Christ, how the fuck did we get here?” He took a swig from the drink, rinsing his mouth before swallowing. “Managed to get in contact with Avo or any of the others?”
Chambers shook his head. “Nah. Tried Denton too. She’s gone quiet as well.”
Cas stared off, looking at nothing in particular. “She does this sometimes, goes into the dark, and... and...”
“It’s never been like this, huh?” Chambers asked.
“No, not like this,” Cas admitted, a troubled look falling over him.
Chambers folded his arms. “So, like, are you two… or…”
“What, me and Denton?” Cas asked.
Chambers nodded slowly. The Columner blinked at him for a moment before a tired grin broke through his expression.
“Not like the way you’re thinking, you degenerate. But yeah, she’s a... she’s a good partner. Reliable.”
“Bit cold,” Chambers said.
“It’s a positive quality for a spy,” Cas replied. Running his fingers through his thick, unkempt hair, Cas sighed. “There’s something else. The Nether’s come down, but we’ve also seen things out on the streets. Things that don’t make sense.”
“What kinds of things?”
“Saw a father kiss his kid on the head,” Cas elaborated. “Saw another block sealed by the Guilders. Rash quarantine measures.”
“So…” Chambers continued.
“These two were separate incidents. No one caught the Wombrash when the father did what he did. Nothing happened at all.”
“What?” Marlowe said, blinking.
All the Chamberses in the room were staring at Cas now.
“You sure you—” Chambers started.
“I can play the memory back a few more times. I know what I saw.” He rubbed his face. “That wasn’t all. Was vibrating through vents. Came upon some other… uh, developments. Think some people have been getting intimate. Physically. New refugees in the gutters, mostly.”
“Ah shit,” Chambers groaned. “Where?”
Cas just shook his head. “Nothing happened with them either.”
Silence. Utter silence.
“What?” Marlowe repeated. She shot up from her seat. “Are you saying…”
“I don’t know what this means,” Cas answered. “Far as I can tell, the Rash is active in certain places and absolutely dormant in others.”
“Then Avo must’ve done something,” Chambers said. He didn’t dare to hope. He did his best not to think about Kae, about what might’ve befallen her. She... she wasn’t dead. If Avo wasn’t dead, and if Avo had a plan—the half strand always had a plan—then maybe... maybe she could be brought back. Maybe this was a sign. He needed to…. He needed to test this. “Alright. Give me a second. I’ll be right back.”
Cas stared at him. “You sure?”
“Yeah. I mean, I did it all the time before. Worse case I suffer a torturous death and resurrect, right?”
The Columner opened his mouth and then closed it. An appreciative look came over him. “You’re a regular martyr, Aedon Chambers.”
“Someone’s gotta get dirty,” Chambers quipped back. “Alright. Let’s see this. Let’s see. You guys stick around.”
Marlowe shot him a worried look. “Hey. Be careful, alright.”
Chambers chuckled. “Sorry. I probably won’t.”
Then, with a thought, he adjusted the settings for his room, and the frequency shaping the plane diverged into two tones. One continued, maintaining the space his companions occupied. The other carried him to a secluded cube shaped from darkness. Only he, himself. And also the Fucktopia. A grumble of fire sounded inside him. And the Bioigniter. Couldn’t forget his original Heaven.
“I’m right here with you, buddy,” the Fucktopia said, placing a comforting cock on his shoulder.
“Thanks, Fucktopia,” Chambers said. “I don’t know how to say this, but I’m glad you’re awake, and I’m glad you’re here with me.”
“I’m glad I’m here with you, too.”
Another crackle of flame sounded within Chambers, a note akin to jealousy, but mostly just wanting him to remember it existed and also that it wanted to combust some flesh.
“Yeah, you’re really nova too, Bioigniter. Don’t worry, we’ll blow some shit up soon. But right now... right now, I gotta find out about something…”
And so, with a steadying breath, Chambers disabled his Lustaway phantasmic and accessed a vicarity.
THE SOFT MASTERS COLLECTION I
ENGAGING HOT-SIMULATION — FULL IMMERSION INTO ACTOR [DANNIS STEELHARD]
>>01:34:03
Shooting ahead to one of the most intense scenes in the vic where the lustful ghouls tried to break Dannis by electro-torturing his testicles using the electrical energy of an entire Sovereignty, Chambers convulsed as absolute agony exploded through him. Agony and a little something else.
A new physical sensation followed. A feeling he almost forgot. His pants—ghoul leather and perfect—grew hot and tight. Uncomfortable. He braced for the rash and the spreading of pustules, but just felt… just felt the vic play on.
There, in the dark cube, Chambers stood with a painful erection but no homunculi clawing out from his pores. He counted one second. Then two. Then three.
And nothing.
A lightness filled his body. He was clean. The Wombrash wasn’t here!
“Holy fucking shit,” Chambers muttered. “Hey Avo, I don’t know what you did, you demented half-strand of a rotlick, but I could fucking kiss you right now—I’m gonna fucking kiss you when I see you again!”
And doing that wouldn’t even kill them anymore.