Chapter 20 - Conversation

It was like a thunderclap went off in Vern’s mind, and his thoughts came to a screeching halt. He was…what? He almost screamed in horror when he noticed the chill on his body and revisited his memories of the last few minutes.

He was naked!

But after he looked down, he heaved a long sigh. It wasn’t as bad as he had thought. A bluish-black blazer covered his privates, and he wasn’t really flashing in front of this beautiful lady.

But this wasn’t here when I lost consciousness.

The implication made his face heat up, and he dropped his head in his palms. It was over. His prestige was no more. What sort of gentleman displayed this kind of behavior? Why wasn’t there some method to remove these memories from her brain.

“Pffft,” she snickered, but he didn’t dare look back up as she said, “What happened to the oh-so-smart fundamentalist now?”

“Miss, could you please give me a moment of privacy to grab myself some clothes?” he wanted to bury his face in the ground.

“Not until you tell me how to ignite that chamber or whatever,” she replied flatly.

“…”

She wasn’t budging at all.

“Even though it obviously uses a vapor chamber, it’s not a model I’ve ever used before. Single shots can usually work as long as you have any measure of steam in the chamber.”

He paused and mustered more courage from within before resuming, “There’s probably a dial or button in the gun that would first trigger vaporization, priming the gun for proper use.” Giving her a few seconds to process his words, he repeated, ” Now, can you please leave me be?”

Sounds of metal being abused played in his ears before she said, “I—um, can’t find it. Can you look at it and tell me what needs to be pressed?”

When Vern didn’t reply, she added, “Please?”

This was the most embarrassed he had been in a long while. Did she really need that gun to shoot before he found himself some clothes?

“Umm…if it’s any consolation, I covered you up long before your lower body was visible. Even though it was like some sort of invisibility being reversed, it actually seemed as if legs were growing out of your waist. I have no interest in watching any of that.”

That…actually helped. He reluctantly lifted his head and noticed her confused expression and steady pose as she tried to fiddle with the gun.

He needed to be done with it quickly, or he would really die of embarrassment. So he asked, “Can you turn it to the side?”

“No. The other side…Yes, now flip it upside down.”

.

.

.

“So, you simply need to pull that third lever on the side, and it should be ready to go. Now please?” he said, clapping his hands together in prayer.

She got up and descended the stairs, performing the actions he’d just suggested on the firearm. At least she didn’t wait until it was primed to shoot me in the head.

Anyways, he got up and found himself some clothes that fit him in no time. There were just too many options lying all around. He wasn’t going to be picky about having to wear the unwashed clothes of some bloke. Some bloke that didn’t survive that fire…or Duskfall?

He shook his head and focused on the attire. Black pants, a white shirt, that blue blazer, and a pair of dusty black boots. Reflexively, he looked in the balcony, but obviously there were no signs of Ariane ever being there. *How is she doing? Did she read—*

His thoughts were interrupted as a shout came from downstairs, "Mister Vern, uhh—how do I turn this off? It's not stopping—it looks like it's going to burst. What do I do?"

“I’ll be right there!”

Vern rapidly descended the stairs and snatched the gun from her hands. She was juggling it between both her hands anyway. He turned one of the dials on the contraption in the opposite direction, and the vapor chamber released plumes of steam, ejecting all the excess within.

Once it was cold enough, he handed it back to the lady and asked, “Have you never used this weapon before? Did you…uh—get your hands on it by unconventional means? Not that I am judging you, of course. I am just curious why you are using such a complicated weapon without understanding its nuances. You should have opened this valve right here before pulling the trigger. If you shoot without doing so, the vacuum within will make it impossible for steam to release, and the projectile will cook inside the revolver. Maybe even explode if left unchecked.”

Like a cog that found its place in the clockwork, a look of realization dawned on her face before she said, embarrassed, “It was…a gift. But I didn’t get a chance to learn its intricacies.”

“I see,” he said with a blank expression that didn’t betray his suspicions.

Then, remembering his manners, he rested his hand on his chest and bowed a little as he said, “That aside, please accept my formal apology for my previous misconduct. I was just a little spooked by all these absurd happenings around me. Also, thank you for being understanding during that…episode.”

She looked slightly flustered as she responded, “Mr. Vern, please don’t be sorry. I took things too far as well. I shouldn’t have threatened you with a gun to your head as soon as you woke up. I—I just didn’t know what else to do when you suddenly started shifting around. You were an observer, after all.”

Vern looked thoughtful as he remarked, “You could have just left me alone.”

“I had my reasons,” she muttered before sliding the gun back to the holster under her dress.

“Hope you don’t mind me asking, but I never caught your name. Your are Miss…?”

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She looked taken aback before curtsying slightly as she declared, “Cera, Cera Thorne.” Then with a sudden frown and shake of her head, she turned around and walked back upstairs.

“Sorry, but I have already wasted enough time as it is. I really need to get back to my original task.”

As he watched her march upstairs, Vern felt like he should stop her. There were many things that had to be done, but the most vital one was to figure out more about observation and why he had almost died in the process just a while ago.

The activation of that burden of Cryptic Constructor didn’t really help either. Who knew how long he had before that lunatic Hensen caught up to him once again. He had to seize every opportunity available to him.

Miss Cera wasn’t as simple as he had first assumed. She was handling this situation with great caution. She also had that revolver which would be hard to come by, even for himself. But the final nail in the coffin was her response to his episode. She had said something about ‘warnings’ and ‘observing without comprehension’. What did that mean?

What if others outside didn’t really know scrapshit about Observation? There was a source of information right in front of him, and it would be stupid of him to squander such an opportunity.

So he had to find a reason to stick around.

“Miss Cera, is there anything I can do to help you out?” he asked as he trailed her steps.

She didn’t stop walking and replied, “Yes, you can tell me how you enlightened yourself.”

Well, he shot himself in the foot with that one.

“Um…isn’t there anything else I can do to be of service? It’s not that I can’t tell you. I just don’t think you can or should follow the method I used.” He didn’t really want to talk about his experiences without knowing the extent of this situation.

What if talking about it caused some kind of paradox or got him noticed by the perpetrator or something? It might not be as serious as that, but he didn’t feel like tempting fate twice on the same day.

Also, this confirms that she isn’t an Observer herself. Then, why does she know so much about observation but not enlightenment?

Miss Cera moved towards the shelves on the left and kept walking as she said, “And why exactly do you want to help me again? Just because I didn’t shoot you? That’s a low bar for sure.”

Very funny.

“Miss Cera, I’ll be honest with you. I don’t know what is going on in the world. I have no clue how many months have passed or how much has changed. But I need to know what to expect going outside. Given how destitute a library under Coven has become, I doubt that people out there are going to be as reasonable as you are.”

He was sure that straight-up asking about Observation would backfire, and he had to understand the changes anyway.

She chuckled, “Months? No. It’s only been three days. But I hear you. Elmhurst has changed a lot. Much more than I would have liked.” She murmured at the end as she entered one of the aisles lined with shelves.

“Anyways, I see your point. You’re a fundamentalist, aren’t you? Would you happen to know anything about Steamscript relays?” she said, picking out a book from the shelf and extending it toward him.

He’d be a fraud if he didn’t.

“Yes, obviously. Do you need to send a letter to someone abroad? But is the hub in the city still working?” said Vern as he accepted the book and opened it.

“No. I just want to know how they work,” she said, folding her arms as she leaned on the shelf.

Vern continued flipping the pages, primarily hunting for some diagrams and images. They made it easier to explain.

“Your wish is my command.” He then found one diagram to his liking and turned the book around to show it to Miss Cera.

Pointing at the images, he explained, “The high-level gist is that it’s a typewriter attached to a complex mechanism, which converts each letter you type into a very specific sound. That sound is then played by those giant steam whistles atop the hubs.”

Flipping over to the next page, he continued, “They set the whistle’s trajectory and modulation to perfectly reach the next relay hub. This is why all letters can only be delivered at midnight and why the hubs have to be built on high ground.”

Even though he wanted to dig deep into the fundamentals of it, he stopped and waited for a response. One of his completely unrelated discoveries was actually implemented by the fundamentalists behind Steamscript relay to better balance the modulation sound for farther transmission.

“That’s it?” she asked skeptically as the rays of the afternoon sun lit her face.

Yes! Just what he wanted to hear.

“I can go into much more detail if you’d like. First, there’s the typewriter which is quite similar to the one used for writing, but instead of a typebar which is laden with ink, this one uses—”

“No, wait. That’s not what I want to know. It’s more about understanding the sounds,” she said, interrupting him.

Vern was mystified by the question, “Why do you want to understand the sounds by yourself? There’s usually a scribe that reads the text from the script plotter for you. If the relay hub is closed or nonfunctional, no one would be sending or receiving messages anyway.”

Standing there, she looked unsure for a while but eventually gave up and said, “It’s complicated. Nevermind that. Please tell me. What would you like to know?”

Finally.

“Can you describe the changes that have taken place in the city while I was out cold? In as many details as you can, please?”

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This was disastrous. Vern had already predicted that it was bound to be dire, but this was…too much. Miss Cera didn’t know any statistics, but when he forced her to remember the number of clothes compared to humans right when people disappeared, she told him around thirty people were standing next to maybe twenty clothes.

So if he extrapolated based on just that, there was a possibility that two-fifths of the population was wiped out from the face of the planet. Obviously, it was a very crude estimation, and it assumed that disappearances were distributed uniformly all around the planet and that there weren’t any criteria deciding who survived.

But there is a criteria!

He hadn’t seen it with his own two eyes, but his hunch was that everyone that managed to endure the mental assault of that horrifying presence until the clock wound back survived, while the rest were scattered to the wind.

No. It wasn’t the wind. He squinted hard and recalled that scene when Hensen had stopped playing around, and bodies all around him turned into that blood-like liquid that rushed towards the skies.

But this wasn’t the full equation either. He struggled to believe that if someone as—uh unlearned as Miss Cera could survive the mental invasion, then why hadn’t even a single scholar in this vast library managed to do the same?

So it was to say that anyone that was already dead—be that a mental death or physical death, was turned into that bloody liquid, and were excluded from the reversal of time.

So he had really done great work keeping Ariane out of harm’s way. But on that note, where was Ariane?

It’s been three days—

“Mr. Vern? Is something wrong with my face?” Miss Cera asked, her cheeks red.

Oops. He had been staring right at her all this time. “Ah, sorry. I was just a little lost, trying to process the implications,” he responded in his signature Faux calmness. There was no need for unnecessary misunderstandings.

Miss Cera had told him a lot, but she had glossed over just as much. Her account jumped from one place to another without a coherent link between them, and a lot of it still didn’t make sense to him.

Why was she with Helena Von Arden? Why did this Madam Helena call the event Duskfall? Did she already know about it? Why does Miss Cera know about observation at all?

From the looks of it, she looked to be someone from a noble family, which could explain her link with the head of Von Industries, but her etiquette and manner could maybe use a little more polish. Not shoving a gun’s barrel onto people’s faces would be a start.

She had already given him a lot of information, but there was one question that had puzzled him to no extent, and he couldn’t stop himself from asking, “Your actions confound me, Miss Cera. The whole world is in turmoil, but you’re out here looking to learn more about Steamscript relays.”

Her embarrassment quickly faded, and a serious expression took its place. Vern continued, not minding the change, “I don’t believe you’re looking to start learning fundamentals in these grim times. Then am I right to assume it has something to do with your search for a path to enlightenment?”