Downstairs at the local eatery, Sore Dick's ("You Just Can't Beat It!"), the citizens were a mess. A few were off to one side, doing some half-assed LARP-ing, a some more were arguing loudly at a stained wooden table, and the rest were inexplicably wearing spider costumes and cackling wildly. The manager had come down the steps to see what all the noise was about, and had a suitable response:
"What in the sweet blue gibbering CHRISTFUCK is going on here!?"
"We were just… Leaving. Yeah." The citizens shuffled out the door, looking bashfully at each other. They had fun, but came no closer to solving their problems, or circumventing their potential doom.
No one has been Put On a Bus this round.
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Matt slung the bike courier bag over his head, and felt a familiar weight on his shoulder. It was filled with various pamphlets, booklets, and other DIY tools. It was dusk, and he felt that it was high time to get some people over onto his side. He wasn't sure which side that was, but he sure as hell wasn't going to sit back and be apathetic. If you're bored you're boring, after all.
He hit the street, and immediately began slapping stickers that read "Death To Extremists!" onto mailboxes, lamp posts, anything he could find. He turned a quick corner, and ran straight into someone's back.
"Oof! Hey, watch it!" Ian was in no mood for this shit.
"Oh, wow, sorry, man," stammered Matt.
"What the fuck? You blind or something?"
"No, I was just, well…" Matt thought about it for a second, and decided to give it a shot. "Ok, so there's chaos, right? Well, that's just made up of Illusions of Order and Disorder."
"I don't have time for this. I'm going to be late." Ian flagged down a cab, which pulled to the curb with a screech of brakes.
In a last desperate attempt, Matt grabbed one of the many Pope cards from his bag and thrust it into Ian's hand. "Take this before you go," he pleaded, and watched the cab pull away. A second later the passenger's window rolled down, and he saw the easily identifiable flutter of a business card as it fell to the ground. Dejected, Matt turned around and headed back to the apartment. This was going to be harder than he thought.
Discordian conversion: unsuccessful.
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The Spider crept from its lair and looked across the city. It was full of life, full of spirit, full of things to feed on. It wondered where to begin. Scouring the bars and shopping malls, ill-lit park benches, supermarket isles. Feeling the pulse of the city under its feet, hearing the endless progression and congestion of traffic, it moved through the streets like a whisper of a dream, intoxicated by the prospect of so many choices, so many souls to trap.
The Spider was brought up short by an overheard snippet of conversation: "…because creation and destruction are two parts of the same whole, which is to say, a self-defined construct with limiting factors only as much as one can perceive…" This would be the first to go. A challenge. Yes. It nestled itself into the shadows and waited.
Paul paid up his bar tab, flicked up the collar on his coat, and walked out of the bar. It was a crisp night, and a cold wind blew along the streets. A lone newspaper page blew past. He turned left, lost in his own thoughts as his heels clicked out a staccato rhythm on the pavement. It took a few minutes, but Paul began to notice that there was literally no other sound than his footsteps. Literally literally. No traffic, no pedestrians, even the wind was somehow silent. Around him, the shadows began to deepen and lengthen, turning doorways into caverns and alleys into abysses. He began to walk faster, and felt a presence looming behind him. Her risked a glance back, and saw nothing, but—what was that? It looked like—OH, WHAT THE FUCK—
And then the world exploded in a riot of color and noise. Shrieks of laughter, bursts of gaudy fabric draped upon dancing bodies, the jubilant honking of cars… Somehow, Paul had unknowingly stumbled into a parade route, and the festivities were in full swing. A young woman in not much more than a few strips of gauze grabbed his hands and started twirling around, laughing. With a stunned expression, Paul let himself be led into the heart of the parade, surrounding himself with a singing, dancing throng.
The Spider stopped short. What the hell? it thought to itself. The victim… he got away. How did that happen? Worse than that, he may have seen me. This is not good. Must get back to my nest. Must think.
The Spider attempted to subsume a Discordian, and failed.
