An old man dug a grave for his dog, struggling past tree roots. Clutching his aching chest, he glared at his three woody backyard adversaries. Dirt got in his eyes as he tried to wipe away tears. A sharp rust shard from the shovel handle drew blood in the backyard stillness.
“Did you know that at the circus, silence equals death? When a clown dies, the troupe holds a minute of laughter to honor them. You were the biggest clown of all the dogs I’ve had.”
He twirled the shovel on his arm, then dropped it. He’d never been all that agile.
“In Hamlet, while digging a grave for Ophelia, Clown One poses a riddle. What is he that builds stronger than either the mason, the shipwright or the carpenter?”
Having met a bad end from chewing a vacuum cord, his dog stayed silent.
“Clown Two answers: A gallows-maker. Their structures outlive a thousand tenants.”
His chest hurt so much. Was it grief or a heart attack? He forced a laugh at Shakespeare’s joke.
“Clown One delivers the real punchline. A gravemaker! The houses that he makes last until doomsday!”
While his spirit lingered, his body succumbed, collapsing into the soil as the sands of life’s hourglass ran out. His dog’s spirit wagged its tail, joyous at the sight of its master once more.
An untidy, disreputable-looking little man in a century-old suit entered the backyard gate. The quaint Anglo-French mad scientist waddled up to the dying gravemaker with the cheeriest airs, looking at a handheld tablet through his gleaming spectacles.
“Doomsday! What a fitting last word for you. Aren’t you a mathematician? I’m surprised to find a Moriarty getting his hands dirty.”
“Chalky soil,” joked the spirit, leaning to pat his ghostly dog. “Did I die?”
“Your mental processes will live on. But yes, you’re mostly dead.”
“There’s a big difference between mostly dead and all dead. Mostly dead is slightly alive. Look, my body just twitched. I’m getting better!”
“No, you’re not. You’ll be stone dead in a moment. Go to your garage. Your little dog, too. No, don’t try to open the fence gate.” The little untidy man shoved the spirit through the fence and the back wall of the garage. The old spirit backed up to keep his ectoplasmic form from clipping his car, then stared at a portal to another world leading to a mountainscape.
The untidy man gestured. “Before we take this portal to Planet Icarus, we need your original character sheet. Should be in a collection of centaur books in one of these metal cabinets.”
“The last one on the left.” The spirit pointed.
The unkempt man pulled open on the handle. “Yes, many centaur books. Chalker’s Well of Souls, Varley’s Wizard, Gemmell’s Dark Prince, Anderson’s Trouble Twisters, Anthony’s Centaur Aisle, Lake’s Ring of Truth, Burrough’s Moon Maid. Are there centaurs in that?”
“The Va-ga have four limbs, not six. Frazetta took an artistic license. For many of these authors, I sent them fan mail, often with D&D style character sheets and story ideas.”
“One author wrote back, leading to this book we need. Attack on Pelion, book four of Sicilicis Anatto’s Swee the Troll series. A signed copy, 1977. With a typewritten sheet for your own creation.”
“Yes! Book 3 ended with Swee heading to Pelion, so I suggested a colt character. Nonce Equitaur, a pun on non sequitur. An equitaur being a centaur with an equine head. Sicily put my colt in his book.”
The quaint little man read from the character sheet. “Strength:17, Intelligence:16, Wisdom:12, Constitution:20, Dexterity:14, Charisma:16.”
“That’s right, Gygax’s Ghost. I liked making up stats for characters.”
“Actually, I’m Professor Mirzarbeau. This book is all we need here. Please step through the portal.”
“I feel I should know that name. Is this a Kerr-Sagan-Morris-Thorne Wormhole?”
“I can check,” said the professor, pulling up Janes Guide to Spacecraft on his tablet. “This is listed as a Sagittario-Ramanujan-Schwarzschild type portal, but the math looks similar.”
On the mountainscape, a second portal hovered in the air above a dusty workman’s apron holding chisels and hammers. The stitched name MIDDY ZOLA caught the spirit’s attention.
“Ginni Anatto wrote the Gorgon Zola series. That giant d20 is her house, the icosahedral cathedral. I used to know them both.”
Professor Mirzarbeau grunted, looking through notes on his tablet.
The spirit peered at signs in the mountain town. “Hey, this place is called Pelion. Just like the book you picked up. So, Isekai? A journey to another world? Will I get a new body? Can I pick my race and class?”
“You’ve already dug that grave.” Mirzarbeau waved the character sheet before slamming it back into the book. “I have a figurine for you.” The professor’s palm held a plastic gray-pelted equitaur with tail, mane, leg and arm stockings all in white, much like the card symbols on his flanks and the five diamonds on his upper chest. “Behold: Non Sequitur the Equitaur.”
image [https://i.imgur.com/Br49v5u.png]
“I get to be him? That’s fantastic! How long until I have my new body?”
“Ten seconds. He won’t even notice us. You’ll transform into his exact copy as he passes through you.”
An equitaur and a teenage human emerged from another portal. The equitaur dropped a saddlebag and skillfully twirled a black staff before he passed right through the spirit, continuing towards the garage portal.
As the spirit morphed into the form of an equitaur, his ghostly dog disappeared into the black staff. “Was that my real body? And why am I headed to my house on Earth?”
“He’ll absorb what’s left of your mind while it’s viable and follow up with mild looting. To be accurate, we staged that part with the spirit. Shall we review your actual stats?” A grayscale screen appeared.
| NAME: NON SEQUITUR. CLASS: HARLEQUIN. RACE: EQUITAUR.
| ACTION STATS: DRAMA 2, IDEA 2, CARE 2, EVADE 1, BODY 3, ASAP 2, GRIT 3.
“Action stats? I’m using my Fate-based DICEBAG system? It’s not finished.”
“You were never great at finishing big projects on either world. Tell me about equitaurs.” The professor put the tablet under his arm as he polished his round glasses on a kerchief.
The taur examined himself and swished his tail. “An equitaur combines a horse’s lower body—what we call the ‘horso’—with the upper body of an anthropomorphic horse, or ‘torso.’ I stand eight feet tall, about 243 centimeters, and weigh over half a ton. My follicles are highly advanced, allowing each pilomotor rotator to twist bicolored hair.” He changed his shoulder color from dark gray to white. “I possess more strength, speed, toughness and endurance than an Earth horse.”
“But not an Icarus horse?”
“I seem to know a lot about myself. No, horses here have gotten a lot more research. My race is one of thousands of side experiments. Elite ostriches, humans, canines and horses could all beat elite equitaurs in a marathon. I recall that my mind has strong protections.”
Quickly changing the subject, the professor said, “Excellent. Now, describe your class to me.”
“A harlequin equine. I’m funny like a clown, I guess. I amuse people. To balance my size, I have a friendly, genial, mild-mannered rapport.”
The professor made a green check on his tablet.
“You worked as a stuntman and took on adversary assignments, but almost always as the loser. Then you fell victim to character assassination.”
“I’ve been assassinated? I just got here!” Non stomped his hoof, making the professor flinch.
Retreating slightly, the professor waved his tablet as he explained, “You encountered a centaur named Chesspiece and were involved in a terrible accident, which turned out to be a setup. She orchestrated the entire thing to ruin you—a stunt crafted perfectly, and ironically, you, a stuntman, fell for it!”
“Uh… then I figured it all out and became a hero?”
“No. You became a laborer, spy and character assassin.”
Non nodded and sighed. “I remember working as a book hauler and smuggler. Did I get you arrested?” The sky darkened as he noticed crescents in the shadows.
“You did. I obscured my original character name, a minor crime balanced by over a century of laudable behavior. I’ll have to suffer high-level scrutiny for a while.”
“Sorry about that, chief. Are we in an eclipse?” Above him, he saw the moon erasing the sun, exposing a night sky with far too many stars and a fiery accretion ring around a supermassive black hole. Massive filaments of magnetized gas made lines amidst the stars. “We’re not on Earth anymore!”
“Obviously. We’re on the doomed planet Icarus, located near the galactic center. We had a fix to save everyone on the planet, but you ruined our plan.”
“Me? I just got here!”
“You got here a week ago. On your first day, you triggered a level three Earth contamination. By your third day, you became a level ten galactic threat. Now that you’re home again, things have settled down. With that, you got slated for a Recap dream.”
A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
“A what?”
“A Recap dream is essentially a quality check for those endowed with character powers.”
“In other words,” Non tilted his head. “To assure my ability stack isn’t out of whack, new full minds on the progression track get a callback.”
The professor squinted for a moment. “I see you still have wordplay as a character flaw.”
The equitaur winced. “Half of wit involves staying silent. I’m still learning that part. So, I’m in a recap dream. It’s been a busy week. Shouldn’t Swee’s sword be here?”
A new portal materialized. Swee the War Troll, a towering mass of green muscle, emerged from it.
“Oh, hey, Non! Recap dream, right?” said Swee, dropping his buster sword on the ground. “Thanks for setting up my takeover of Pelion! I’m gonna love this town! Now, I gotta let you shoot my eye out, kid.”
The troll smiled with too many sharp teeth before stepping through the portal to the d20 home.
“I caused a person to lose an eye?”
“Two people. Brace yourself—we’re about to shift scenes abruptly. I’m initiating a flyover now.”
image [https://i.imgur.com/1VisgPd.png]
A horse-sized d20 rolled toward Non as he found himself in figurine form on a hex grid version of Pelion. He needed to brace with both arms to stop the icosahedron. Around the growing gaming table, he saw other figures like his sire and dam, an equitaur and a snakeyhorse. Above the table, Professor Mirzarbeau stood as large as a kaiju monster, almost 300 feet tall when scaled to Non’s size. The mad scientist pulled a C-141 Starlifter from a shelf filled with aircraft, zooming it over the table.
“Can you guess why I chose this particular plane?” asked Mirzarbeau’s booming voice as Non ran north by northwest.
“My dad piloted a C-141 throughout his military career!” Non shouted back, stumbling as the plane’s front wheel narrowly missed him. “That plane was a big part of my childhood.” He ran by a sign for McGuire AFB.
A normal-sized Mirzarbeau stepped out from behind the sign. “Indeed, that’s part of it.”
Non pointed at the untidy Frenchman. “I remember you now. When I went to Central Character Control, you took notes in the room with Victoria Frankenstein and Edward Alfred. You were once Fred T. Jane, the creator of Jane’s Weapon Recognition Guides, books that are still widely used. As Fred, you wrote a science fiction novel, The Violet Flame, in 1899. I’m guessing an Icarus faction wanted that book’s villain, Professor Mirzarbeau, as a real life and blood character.”
“All true. You’re so close I may as well give it to you.”
“Since you wrote a military aircraft recognition guide, you wanted me to recognize a military aircraft.”
“Exactly.” The professor nodded, making more green marks in his tablet. “Here on Icarus, we embody our creations. My journey began as a boy near Spa in Belgium. At the age of eight, I heard of a Verne-based laboratory in Quiquendone and visited it on my bicycle. After apprenticing for a few months, Dr. Ox recommended me to the League of Scientists. They picked me to assume the mantle of Mirzarbeau with a scholarship at the École Polytechnique, Icarus branch! Founded in the French Revolution by Monge and militarized under Napoleon. Years like 1914 ran differently here, of course. I became a full professor a few days before my Earthself died of flu complications in 1916.” He chuckled. “As a man ahead of my time, I died of the flu two years early. Fortunately, we avoided the 1918 flu here.”
“As the original doomsday weapon scientist, did you do anything interesting as a teenager?”
Mirzarbeau shook his head as the Starlifter landed. “During the Great War, both here and there? No, it was a bad time for villains. I kept a low profile under a safer name. I’m more of an observer than a creator. I keep up with science, but I haven’t pushed through breakthroughs. As others have told you, people adapt. I’ve had a full century since my recap. And now I’m running your recap.”
“Shouldn’t Doctor Mayhem be here? You were a mere cameo villain last week.”
“Merci infiniment. Mayhem asked me to fill in as he recovers from what you did to him.”
“Fine. Who’s controlling this dream?”
The Starlifter’s loading door swung down. “Let’s go aboard. We’ll fly to Lerna Springs.”
Non tromped up the cargo ramp, his hooves clacking distinctly. “The high-fidelity seems unusual for a dream. It’s tracking my metal horseshoes.” He performed a quick four-hoof tap dance.
“It’s a military grade simulation,” said the professor, showing Jane’s Guide to Mental Warfare on his tablet. “I’ve set up a 1:56 scale model of your parkour park.”
Non clomped to the six-table obstacle course built within the hollow interior of the cargo plane. After peering over it, he pointed to a tiny cabin near a log swing. “Outside of this dream, I’m in the real version of that cabin. I had a week of adventures and made it home. End of recap?”
“I’m here to guide you into your role as a supervillain, Mr. Sequitur.”
“I don’t want that! Please. I might be obligated to terrify the entire planet, but please, let me have my dreams. The way you set this up, I had to go through dying again.”
“To paraphrase you, don’t blame me. The Starlifter was my only addition to your scenario.”
“Sorry. Look, I’m a good guy at heart, I swear! I’m not cut out to be a villain.”
“Consider dying industries on Earth: newspapers, radio, horse racing, video rentals and broadcast television. They cling to life mostly by virtue of nostalgia. When liquidators seize industries on life support, they set up an escape cushion for investors.”
“Raiders engage in grand theft catastrophe! They pocket as much as they can!”
“Only the greedy ones.”
“That’s the definition of a corporate raider!”
“Then be better than the average villain! Ulysses S Grant and the Duke of Wellington were not saints; they made grave choices in the theater of war. Similarly, even the best emergency room doctors cannot save every patient. The victors who pen history usually whitewash away the errors. Celebrating heroes as faultless paragons distorts the truth. Fortunately, on Earth, easy information access should lead people to better understand the great importance of nuance.”
“Nuance Equitaur. Non Sequitur. That might have worked. Sorry, but no, nuance is dying. That’s the driving theme of my character. I hate, hate, hate the sheer effectiveness of propaganda. Use big lies, repeat them, focus on one or two simple selling points, blame the other side, stay in crisis mode and stay emotional to gain as much attention as possible. Nuance doesn’t exist for half the population. Too many people lack curiosity.” Non calmed himself after that minor outburst, bringing his equine ears forward again. “To show that I’m not in that crowd, who was the Duke of Wellington?”
“How does someone not know that? Wellesley, the Duke of Wellington, beat Napoleon at Waterloo. Anyway, I’m here to guide you into villainy. Are you ready for help?”
“Since this is a recap dream, remind me how I got into this mess.”
“The supermassive black hole Sagittario uses gravitational lenses to protect Icarus from the deadly radiation sources here at the galactic center. The difficulty of this task has steadily increased over the last billion years. Sagittarius A-star gave Doctor Mayhem a quest to cause a catastrophe that would discredit the Galactic Core Corps. The GCC protects the planet.”
Non looked at his GCC badge. “I’m in the Matters of Time and Space division.”
“Correct. The way Sagittario set it up, Mayhem could only pass on the quest to an adversary thwarting a viable plan. When you, Non Sequitur the Equitaur, thwarted Mayhem’s plans, he transferred the calamity quest to you. You need to set up a viable plan for catastrophe. When Sagittario steps in to save the day, GCC’s scandalous failure will trigger a plan to abandon the planet.”
“Can I get out of being the villain?”
“You need a viable doomsday plan that gloriously succeeds or fails. So far as I know, the only alternate options are death or incapacitation. I know it must be rough. You confronted Mayhem yesterday expecting triumph for saving a city, but instead learned you’d ruined a plan to save the planet.”
“Rough doesn’t come close. Can I argue I’m not smart enough to be a supervillain?”
“That’s an argument where smart enough to win causes automatic loss.”
“It’s not fair!” Non sighed. “Should I be feeling this defeated? I failed on Earth. I’m failing here.”
“You’re a professional loser. Imagine how an opponent feels when facing you. Is victory against you pyrrhic? With your Moving the Goalposts ability, you can alter the playing field. Most opponents you face won’t know if you’ve switched to a game of misère.”
“Twisting the rules so the winner loses, and the loser wins? I’m not sure my control extends that far. As a retrospective, though, it feels like I lived through a montage of failure.”
“I didn’t mean to unsettle you,” the professor said, softening his tone and gently clapping his hands together. “Let’s change direction. Tell me about your vector abilities.”
Non lightly touched his miniature cabin on the display table. “I excel at juggling and acrobatics—sports come naturally to me. I have a staff, badge and die that can move under my control. I have a keen grasp of the vectors around me. Sports or fighting, I’m in the top seven percent, not the elite one percent. I’m weak to firearms and have no armor. I could use a better ranged attack. A force field would be great.”
“Unfortunately, scientifically viable force fields are beyond our reach. For now, focus on using cover, enhancing your armor or utilizing portals. You might also explore extending your range with kicks through these portals. But let us pivot—describe your abilities with illusions.”
“I can make grayscale surfaces of screens or simple surfaces based on polarized light, refraction and Brewster angles. I can also change my grayscale body pattern. They may be limited, but I’ve had body patterns all my life. I might soon add sounds and scents.”
“Certainly. How about your awareness abilities?”
“With a map of battlefield vectors, I outmaneuvered a mecha during a hurricane. Chaos plays to my strengths, allowing me to leverage rapid predictive analysis. I have a Graphical User Interface, a GUI, that gives a map and information about everything important around me.”
“How about your mobility?”
“I’m a horse with portals. I get the feeling you’re not impressed.”
“Au contraire! Your skill set is formidable. Military weaponry relies on vectors. Intelligence relies on awareness. Trickery relies on deception. You embody these qualities, making you a significant battlefield threat in a friendly guise.”
“Really?”
“Absolutely. You even grabbed up an advisor network when given the chance. Smart advice can disarm any foe, though sometimes a missile is more convincing. But your toolkit of fallacy powers lacks access to the underworld. Let me fix that with a skill I call Illicit Major. You’ll gain an entryway into criminal networks, broadening your strategic options.”
“Let me try to concoct an example for Illicit Major. All mercenaries tap into criminal networks. Some poor people owe money to criminal networks. Therefore, all poor people are mercenaries.”
“Exactly right. In this fallacy, mercenaries are not universally applicable, yet they are fully implicated in the conclusion, leading to an unjustified generalization. Here’s the files your advisor group refused to provide.” He spread out a set of mercenary dossiers.
Non glanced through the files and pressed the intercom button. “Pilot, set a course for the Dubonis Rubber Plantation,” he commanded, gesturing toward a detailed layout of the jungle area spread across six tables further up in the cargo plane. “Ariesta, with the help of my advisors, located her enslaved parents. A rubber baron named Rounceval has them.”
Mirzarbeau held up his tablet. “I have that in my notes.”
Excitedly, Non spread out the dossiers. “Did you know that Rounceval killed an equitaur named Tarrare the Glutton? With these and help with AI Sophis, I can rescue Ariesta’s parents.”
Professor Mirzarbeau lingered to observe the preliminary plans for the Dubonis assault, nodding in approval. “Excellent strategy. One last question before I return to my own projects. What’s the grand goal?”
Tail swish. “Sagittario wants to change the laws of physics before the Milky Way-Andromeda collision. For that, we need populations that advance science. Our planet, Icarus, is on the brink of disaster.” Non smiled, his coat shifting to a complex harlequin pattern. “When a circus faces catastrophe, they keep the audience calm by sending out helpful clowns to ensure they don’t panic.”
“Excellently put. Welcome to the league of supervillains.” Mirzarbeau tapped EXIT on his tablet, prompting a 1:56 scale Starlifter to fly over his head, but little else. “Did you trap me here?”
Non stomped a hoof. “Return my virtual copy of Swee: Attack on Pelion.”
Now nervous, the professor handed Non his origin book. “How did you figure out my plans with this?”
“Recall that my theme involves critical thinking. You’ve yet to grasp the full account of my plans. Ah-Ah-Ah!” The equitaur’s Count von Count’s laugh cut off as the Starlifter swayed, forcing Non to hold the table. “Suggest how I might best integrate you into my team, professor.”
“Could we return to terra firma, first?” asked the professor, meekly.
“The more firma, the less terra!” Non quipped, grabbing a parachute and tossing it to Mirzarbeau. “Put that on.” He hit the button to lower the Starlifter’s cargo ramp, unleashing a whirlwind inside the hold.
The roaring wind swallowed any further words. The miniature C-141, ensnared in its own turbulence within the larger plane, spiraled wildly out of control, creating a feedback loop that began to shred both the model of the plantation and the plane itself.
His voice lost in the storm, Non summoned vector staff Icosian and held up a FOLLOW ME sign. When the plane tilted, Non smiled to the professor and slid backward down the ramp, disappearing into the dark jungle night.
The plane made a violent jerk, flinging the professor to the ceiling as it ripped open. Ejecting from the plane, the professor came perilously close to a propeller. Below, Mirzarbeau watched in horror as the maelstrom tore apart the foam and paint model of the world. Above him, the plane exploded, engulfing the fragmented world in flames.
As he fell into the inferno, the professor frantically pressed EXIT on his tablet, desperate to escape the nightmarish recap dream from hell.
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