A new currency.

[minuspace]

LMNO's lack of demand sends market into deflationary spiral.  People start marauding for dogma again.  Not even the underground is safe anymore.  Elderly routinely flagellated to death with unripe bananas.  State declares 12:00 noon the only safe time to be outside.

[Cainad (dec.)]

(maybe this should be in it's own thread because it's tl;dr and I'm just getting back into spewing words, but fuck it)

All I knew at first was that the owner was looking to sell the lot, and we needed to check it for environmental concerns. That's what we do, here; nothing unusual. I later came to discover that the owner had apparently been involved in some weird financial shit, hadn't been seen or heard from directly in ages, and was conducting their end of the business through a proxy. Some lady named Ms LaCroix.

Not that it all really mattered to me, of course. I draw the figures and maps for these kinds of jobs, and rarely interact directly with a client or even go to the site personally. The field people come back with their sketches and the GPS unit, and I draw what they need drawn. It's usually pretty straightforward, bland stuff. Usually.

The first problem happened almost immediately, but we didn't think anything of it. The GPS unit kept coming back with junk data, completely useless. The first time, we figured it was Murphy's Law at work and sent someone out again to plot out the locations where they were going to drill to check the water and soil. They came back with the same result, and then we figured there must be something on the site that was screwing with the GPS unit. Nothing magnetic, because compasses worked fine. Something else.

But we don't get paid to look into those kind of problems, so we proceeded with the job the old-fashioned way. Sketches and hand measurements. Ms LaCroix reminded us in an email that her client was expecting to get the finished report on time regardless. Probably some fishy business on the site making them eager to foist the property off on to somebody else. That's how this kind of thing usually works. Spill some horrible solvent with a chemical name longer than the alphabet, and hope the environmental geeks don't find it before you hawk it off.

They got the job done in record time. I was pretty surprised when a profusely sweating man dropped a stack of sketches on graph paper on my desk and shuffled out of the office without a word.

I drafted the map on the computer from the sketches, like I normally do. Building here, soil borings A, B, C, etc. there, and so on. The next day, the project manager comes by and tells me that my figures are off–way off. The field guys can't make heads or tails of the map. They're pretty irritable about it, he tells me, and tells me to fix it. I check and double-check the sketches: sure enough, it's completely off.

I don't know how, but apparently I had drawn a map for a completely different place by mistake. I could swear that the drawings had been accurate. How could the building be that much larger than what I drew?

Before I have time to fix it, the manager tells me that Ms LaCroix will be paying us directly for this job. Some fancy new payment method called a Necronomicoin. I questioned the wisdom of accepting funny money from a client with a history of suspected financial shenanigans, but apparently This Is How It's Going To Be, in the words of management.

She comes by on Wednesday afternoon, and presses a coin into my palm with a very professional smile. I don't know why, but in that moment, that one single coin felt like possibly the most valuable thing I'd ever held in such a small object.

-to be continued-

[Eater of Clowns]

We were just another young couple touring the country, a half bottle of aguardiente in hand and a shared room at the hostel in Zipaquira. The stroll in the night was experience a fine Colombian evening, to drink and be under the stars just outside the light polution of the big city. Lara's amble was practiced and easy and mine was natural because, well, because here this night with this beautiful woman I really was enjoying myself. Until the edge of town, at least.

Our carefully careless route led us to the a barred road, iron gate locked shut beneath a terra cotta arch. The road snaked its way up a dark mountain, to ticket booths and parking lots and little souvenier shops. The sign at the top of the arch read Catedral de Sal de Zipaquira.

The Cathedral of Salt.

"You're quiet," Lara said.

"Sorry. Dread has that effect."

She could make a living off of that smirk. Actually, she did. "I mean you move quietly. That's good."

"Why is that good?"

Lara nodded up at the mountain. "We're going in."

"What, now?!"

She didn't respond, but ducked under the gate and hurried off to the side of the road, out of the ring of the streetlights. I took a drink of the aguardiente and strolled as casually as I could over to her. There was no way I could recreate her stealth, so I might as well not look so obviously sneaky.

We stayed crouched to the side of the path on our way up. Nobody was around to even hide from, it seemed.

"What are we doing here?" I asked.

"Didn't you say you wanted to visit the other day in Bogota?"

"I also said I'd like to see the Museo de Oro. We aren't breaking into that."

"That's next."

My family was back in Bogota. They'd left me with Lara at the bar and gone off to a little craft plaza and a fruiteria. Two hours had passed since they hopped into Marisia's Nissan. By my estimation, Lara and I had been traveling for three days. The Necronomicoin in my pocket was starting to wear on me. It has a way of doing that if you don't spend it. At first I thought the veil of the world was slipping away but that night in Zipaquira I started thinking it was me slipping away from it. I had to get rid of these coins. I should have let Lara steal them and in their absence earn myself oblivion.

"What are we going to find here?"

"A reflecting pool."
"None of those on the surface?"

We climbed a steep set of stairs up. At the top of them were the closed concessions and barred museum entrance. A huge metal statue of a miner stood above us with his pickaxe buried deep in the earth. Down a short ramp was an ampitheater and beyond that, the entrance to the Catedral. A guard waited there.

"How are we going to get past him?"

"He won't even know we're here."

Purposefully, Lara walked into the light and the center of the wide open ampitheater. She neared the guard and he made no indication of seeing her. I sighed and hurried to catch up.

"We aren't here for what they're guarding. And what we are here for, the guards are much worse."

We hopped over a set of locked turnstiles and stood before a tunnel. It was black and it descended and it led to a reflecting pool two hundred meters below a mountain, in an old mine converted to a cathedral. The Cathedral of Salt.

[Eater of Clowns]

Woohoo, Cainaid!

[LMNO]

"Jim, get in here.  Now."

I sighed, and walked into Phil's office.  "What's up?"

"You tell me.  Care to explain this spreadsheet?"

"Which one – Ah, the Chambers account.  I know.  We've gone over it seventeen times.  I've not just sent it to the head of Accounting to look over it, but we've had IT basically rebuild three laptops and scour the system.  It's clean."

"Clean? Your formulas for calculating Cost Basis on this account uses the square root of negative 1, for Chrissakes!"

"Had to be done.  Was even considering Lattice-KP equations for a bit.  May still have to, if the account kicks into a higher tax bracket."

Phil just looked at me for almost solid minute, and began massaging his temples.  "What."

"Let me show you."  I pulled his laptop around, and accessed the suspense database.  "Here's the amount of the deposit."

Phil peered over my shoulder.  "That's looks fine."

"Sure it does." I handed him a notepad and a pen.  "Write it down."

"What?"

"Write down the number."  The pen hesitated over the paper for a second, and he scribbled a figure. "Now, go to a new page, write the number again."  More scribbles. 

I took the pad from him, tore out the pages, and held one up.  "Is this the same number as on the screen?"

"Yeah.  Mind telling me—"

"Hold on."  I hid the fist page, held up the second.  "Is this the same number?"

"Yes, of course."

I closed the laptop, and held up both pages.  "Are these the same number?"

"I... What the hell?"

"It took us five weeks to figure that one out.  Paul took a medical leave after three days, and I haven't seen that newest temp for about a week and a half now.  I think he quit.  I hope he quit."  I paused, sizing him up.  Shrugging, I said, "It gets worse.  You see these two numbers. Remember them."  I hid both pages.  "Now give me the average."

A beat of sweat appeared on Phil's forehead.  The pen bore down on the page, not moving, just digging into it.  His knuckles were white.  With a crack, the pen snapped in half.  "Dammit!  This makes no sense!"

"It's the economy of the future, Phil," I said as I walked back to my desk. "By the way, we're going to need a lot of new pens."

[The Good Reverend Roger]

 

[LMNO]

It was intended to be creepier, but as it progressed... you know how it goes.  You just follow where it takes you.

[Junkenstein]

It was intended to be creepier, but as it progressed... you know how it goes.  You just follow where it takes you.

Who says it's not creepy? The world is run on spreadsheets that have no basis in reality but must be adhered to at all costs.

The actual cost of "all costs" is invariably quite difficult to determine as that requires another spreadsheet.

[LMNO]

Whoops.  I missed an edit.  brb.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

I love the pure, distilled weirdness.

[Eater of Clowns]

I love the pure, distilled weirdness.

That's my favorite thing about this thread. It's all over the spectrum.

[Cainad (dec.)]

I still couldn't get the figures right. Sketches and drawings would come back to me, and the maps on the computer kept being wrong. The field people were getting more and more agitated, but not so much at me, really. Just being on the lot seemed to drain people's energy and patience like nothing else. They'd get a recharge every Wednesday when we got paid, of course, but eventually they started dropping out. Sick days, requested transfers to other projects, and one guy even took a leave of absence. Ms LaCroix reminded us every week how pleased the client was with our work, but not to forget the deadline.

When was the deadline?

Eventually, I had to go out there myself. A shortage of field personell and a need to finally get the maps right meant I had to get off my ass and onto The Lot. I was going to measure everything my damn self, and check all the sampling wells while I was at it. Simple enough work, and I couldn't imagine what was throwing everyone of their rocker about this job.

I took measurements around the outside of The Lot, a basic rectangle. Next, I decided to gauge the wells. I should explain to you what this means. We use a device called an interface probe, a moderately awful device that has a sensor at the end of a long measuring tape. When the sensor is in oil or something similar, it makes a shrill, continuous tone. When the sensor is in water, it makes a similarly shrill beeping sound. No off button or volume control, either. Anyway, this is how we determine if there is some kind of substance contaminating the groundwater.

I dropped the interface probe down the well, expecting to hear the ear-piercing tone after a few dozen feet. As it went down, however, I heard something altogether different. A deep, resonating hum that felt like it came from the air around me, getting louder as I sent it deeper. After a hundred feet, the sound had become a deafening, thrumming song that brought tears to my eyes. I should have wound up the probe and left right then, but I didn't. I kept sending it deeper, until the spool ran out at five hundred feet and the sound was shaking my teeth and I could hear and see and smell and taste the sound but I couldn't feel anything and the small hole in the earth gaped wider and wider and I knew that all I had to do was let it happen and everything would be fine, for the low, low price...

I fell backwards, and felt the coin, cold as ice in my pocket. Ms LaCroix had paid me three times, but I still just had the one coin. But I knew that I had been paid, and been paid well. I just didn't quite know how to spend it, until now.

The sound had stopped. I wound up the spool, made a very unprofessional note in my field journal, and stormed off The Lot. I would get those stupid maps done, one way or another.

-to be even more continued-

[Eater of Clowns]

They didn't turn off the lights at closing. Little tracks of dull yellow bulbs lit our way down, just barely. The air was like stale ocean, wet and dry at once. The rock walls and ceiling glistened with moisture and every few meters a bulbous crystal of white salt peeked out. I reached out and touched one. It crumbled onto my fingers and I rubbed it between them absently, savoring the luxurious feel of it.

The tunnel sloped slowly downward. Our footsteps, rather than echoing, made the slightest of scrapes and scratches along the stone floor. It was cacophonous, here.

We turned sharply left. Roman numerals were carved into the wall, below that the name of the Station of the Cross. The far wall emptied into vast nothingness, a huge rectangular cavern hewn in the guts of the mountain. A stone cross faced us, silhouetted by the empty space. I leaned over the barrier before the precipice and looked down and saw no bottom to that dizzying vastness. My head was heavy past the ledge, as if weighed by the mountain above. I stood still and felt myself tipping.

Lara rested her hand on my back and I started, my fingers desperately gripping the stone. I'd gone nowhere.

I looked at my companion with relief and terror. Her look held only concern. Gently, she took me by the hand and led me further down the corridor.

We passed the rest of the Stations of the Cross, all of them greater or lesser black holes stretching far into the distance. We heard footsteps, coming from all around us, but I trusted this strange woman and followed her in all her unconcern.

Past the stations, a stairwell was carved leading further down. The steps were worn smooth with the footfalls of years of pilgrims and tourists. A lone statue of an angel, white in the pale spotlight that shone on it, stood in the darkness. At the edge of my vision its face contorted, a painful desperate expression. I turned to look at it directly. Its face was serene, turned up to the heavens above and the tons of rock between it and them and I wondered if God had a place down here.

There was worship and power and in any mine of this size there was a history of blood and tragedy. The Christian symbols were a thin whitewash, the salt a corrosive bubble beneath them and could all the faith of all the faithful change the memory of stone.

I stared at the statue for some time. Maybe it would strain again to hold its strength in this foreign place or to hope the strength of its gaze and longing might pierce the mountain for that glimpse of precious clouds. When I turned away again, Lara was no longer in sight.

Panic came upon me sudden and huge. She was found by the footsteps and they were not those of people. I would be next unless I ran and I would run the tunnels to exhaustion and never escape the deep. I breathed again that paradoxical air both damp and dry and descended the stairs.

Lara waited at the bottom. She motioned me forward. We progressed through another short hallway and, beyond it, the largest room of the Catedral. Rows of pews shrank to the far end of it, terminating in an enormous suspended cross.  The wall behind it was covered with a sheet of salt crystals, brilliant white.

A single guard with a headlamp was making his way slowly around the main level. Here was the source of the echoing footsteps, a steady rhythm of them, this lone man dwarfed in the sheer scale of workplace. We walked by him just as we had the one above. We were not here for him, nor for what he protected.

Lara led us to a row of gift shops that marked the end of the tourist area of the Catedral. Locked displays showed off figurines, emeralds, jewelry, and bags of salt mined from the halls. This second religion so seamless against the first.

One of the alcoves down the souvenir tunnel opened into a café. Chairs were stacked up on little tables. Lara stopped us here.

She pointed past the coffee shop, to our destination. To the reflecting pool.

[minuspace]

Dear Atlantean Inspectors,

Excitement mounts at the mere thought of returning to the crossroads, to check the posted meeting times.  I saw what you purport to do.  Reinforce the embankment?  No...  Those permits are for something else entirely.  Now, how you even get those in the first place must be beyond my abusively obstructed line of sight, somehow.

Perhaps the Palisades of Jersey will be best served by continual and perpetually accelerating repairs to it's picturesque battlements? You positively need to contract even more defence construction, why, because you must make a strong case against the course of nature?  How about a mini-moat or a ha-ha?  Funny place to post a stake, here,  hot on the heels Telos.  Really, fucking grand.  I just live under your sand box, that's all.

You do not seem to remember the writing on the wall back home?  Maybe it was not big enough?  Again you have been found wanting, see, here, along this very coast, for every neighbor, there are three more, across the line and down.  The first little problem you had was just an introduction to this once pleasent hood.  All your necronomicoins are worthless here because we are savages that do not understand how the beauty of the earth can be sold back to man.  And we consider flipping shit passé, already.

I know Atlantean Aliens think they have it all figured out.  So, then tell us, are you having fun yet?  Protoplasmic Reversion can be a bitch, look it up.  Oh, and we just ordered a load of green pens that will match those orange outfits wonderfully.

Always,

Orifice of Eco-Tourism, Silencer Permit Division

[Eater of Clowns]

"This is where the guards will be."

Her words were barely whispered and still shockingly loud after all this silence. I had a nightmare once, the normal kind, where just before I was scared into wakefulness I heard a woman's voice, rich and clear. Lara sounded like that.

"What kind of guards? More headlamps?"

"J. This is dangerous for you. Stop smirking and listen to me."

She was afraid. More, she was afraid for me.

"There will be three of them," she said, "there are an infinite number but you will only face three. I don't know what to expect, but they can be deadly. Just be ready for anything."

"You aren't coming, then?"

"I'm not carrying any Necronomicoins. If I walked toward that pool with you, we wouldn't be going to the same place." She sighed and shifted her feet. "Good luck."

I looked at her for a moment and inhaled sharply. Then I walked toward the reflecting pool. I took ten steps and the weight of the mountain above doubled. Lara was another lifetime and Colombia was another era and Massachusetts was never there. That J. was in line at the RMV registering his motorcycle and still failing with women and never found the little shop down the alley in Medellin. He was going to die at seventy eight like old men do and in the time between now and then he would never shatter his being and hold its fragments as a million little coins, within one, in the palm of his hand.

After twenty steps the salt veins in the walls burst from the pressure of the rock, fine white powder spraying violently outward and gently settling onto the floor. The rail and signs around the reflecting pool were gone. Its edge was less defined and it was no longer in its rectangular shape.

I froze midstride, through no power of my own. My eyes were stuck fast and I couldn't look around but a grey thing shambled at the edge of my vision, closer and closer. The abomination was barely human shaped but somewhere far in the back of my mind I knew that all its light and dimension were not visible to my pathetic eyes. I could not move. It was an angel, a real angel, and my helpless self was blessed to be in its radiance. It drew closer and there were wings, every kind of wing, dragonfly wings and feathery bird wings, veiny bat wings and wings of bone and sinew and flesh, shifting and morphing as quickly as a thought. As a thought. My thoughts its thoughts one thought the wings were moth wings the creature was no angel the creature was no demon it was God it told me that is greater than either and here I knew God, lucky mortal, lucky small mortal. I could not move.

It stayed out of sight but it was just behind me. I could feel the wafting of its moth wings on my neck and I felt like the hairs would raise and my flesh would prickle but it was frozen. With a touch like algea and fire coral it drew the Necronomicion from my pocket and held it. Its palm closed over the thing and in that moment the abominationangeldemonGod wrapped itself around every fragment of myself held within. It was God, I thought it thought, for only God could be everywhere.

And the next moment I stumbled forward and blinked and breathed and my heart beat. Such young meat mind, I thought it thought. It must go and go with the seed I leave in its mind. With time the seed shall grow and propagate.

Then the first guardian was gone.