Chapter 126

Chapter 126

Carl: I have some things cooking on my sapper’s table. Let me take care of them really quick before you transfer us.

Loita: Hurry up, Carl. The Veriluxx crew is paying for a rental trailer.

I rushed across the street to the closest pub and entered our personal space. I did, indeed, have two sets of smoke curtains infusing in potions. Ever since I’d read about the idea in the cookbook, I’d been experimenting with different combinations. The only thing that’d worked so far was mixing a smoke bomb with a healing spell, which in turn was a great offense against undead. I hadn’t the chance to use it yet.

I had two infusion stations on my table. In the first, I was currently attempting to mix a smoke curtain with a splash of the Rev-Up immunity smoothie I’d made on the second floor. The potion gave temporary disease immunity, but it made you drunk off your ass. I could tell right away that this one was a bust. The smoke curtain was blacked out and had gained the Dud status. That’s what usually happened.

My second infusion was much more successful. I’d already known it was going to work because I’d stolen the recipe from the cookbook. I had to pretend like I’d stumbled on it on my own.

Most of my most recent boxes had contained at least one invisibility potion. They were pretty valuable. By the time I had five of them, I figured it was finally time to justify “wasting” one in order to experiment.

“Hey, it looks like this one actually turned into something,” I said to robot Donut, who stood upon the table watching me work.

Your Infusion skill has risen to level 3. Just wait until you learn how to do this with vodka.

I picked up the round smoke curtain, which was normally red, but it now shined with a multi-colored opalescence.

Hobgoblin Disco Ball

Type: Magically-infused Deflagrating Tossable.

Effect: It’s a real trip.

Status: 25. Unstable.

Molly not included.

Take a Hobgoblin smoke curtain, soak it in an invisibility potion, and what do you get? You get a party, that’s what you get! Produces heavy, multi-hued billows of smoke that are both photosensitive and frequency responsive. And in case you don’t know what that means, just set one off and find out. The smoke will conceal all movement within, and the plumes will bounce to the beat.

Warning: Unlike a regular smoke curtain, the caster of this tossable is not immune to its effects. In other words, you’ll be just as blind as the monsters. So you don’t want to be dropping this thing at your feet unless you find yourself to be the most handsome dude at the orgy.

The act of infusing smoke curtains made them inherently unstable, which is why I wanted to avoid trying this with actual explosives. I knew once my skill rose a little higher, that’d cease to be a problem. I placed the smoke curtain on the edge of the table while I closed up the infusing trays.

“Good job, Carl!” robot Donut said.

“Yeah, I gained a skill level,” I said.

Robot Donut hopped up and down on the table. “Yay! I love skill levels!”

When the robot jumped up, it sent the disco ball flying to the ground.

“Goddamnit, robot Donut,” I cried.

The thing’s status was protected while it was on the table, but not once it hit the floor. And while explosives would never go off in a safe room, that wasn’t true for smoke bombs. I’d already had it happen to me a few times.

I took a step back and stepped directly onto the infused smoke curtain, which, of course, set it off.

A rainbow of smoke filled the crafting room. Mordecai, who was on the other side of the room, bent over his alchemy table, looked up in time to start cursing at me.

“Goddamnit it to hell,” I said again. I scooped up robot Donut and held it to my chest while the thick smoke overwhelmed us. I held the robot tight as we were surrounded by eddies of smoke. “Mordecai, don’t move! It’ll go away in a minute.”

“Pretty colors,” robot Donut said. I felt the head turn around to face me in the complete, multi-hued smoke storm. The voice went down an octave. “This is what we all see in the end. I’m always here for you, Carl.”

~

Loita: Are you quite done? It’s time to go.

Carl: We’re ready.

Donut had taken a shower and had talked Katia into brushing her while I’d screwed around in the crafting room. Katia had laughed her ass off at the disco ball incident, especially after Mordecai came out bitching up a storm, complaining that I’d ruined an hour’s worth of work. I clutched tightly onto the robot. The color tornado had only lasted for a minute, but it had left a sandy, technicolor residue over everything and everyone in the room. The whole common area smelled like burnt cotton candy. The cleaner bot beeped angrily at me and buzzed off toward the mess.

“I mean, really, Carl,” Donut said as I shook colorful dust from my hair. “You both look like you just slaughtered the cast of Rainbow Bright. After all that work we did to keep Mongo from hurting her, too. Robot Donut could’ve been damaged. Look at her! They’re not going to be happy, Carl.”

“I’m better than ever, girlfriend!” Robot Donut said from my arms. Before Donut could respond, we flashed and reappeared into a production trailer.

I looked about, quickly assessing the situation. My feet sank into lush carpet. The tone of the hull quickly told me that we were under the surface, not floating. Despite our appearance under the water, my menus still disappeared. I did not have access to my inventory.

This was a nice, middle-quality trailer, but it was a submarine, not a boat like the last time we’d gone on a non-Odette show. Despite being under the surface, this trailer was set up similar to Odette’s production trailer with a green room and a doorway to the studio. In fact, I realized, this was the exact same model, though the green room on this one had a different layout and included a large picture window that looked about the dark ocean.

“No snacks,” Donut grumbled.

Loita lounged on the couch in the very back of the room, which explained why our menus hadn’t appeared. She was comically small on the large cushion. She wore the fish rebreather around her neck, not the armored suit that Zev always insisted upon. The small device occasionally spit out a small spray of water. A large wet spot had formed around her. I approached and leaned over her, tapping on the window that looked out into the cold depths. I felt the water from her rebreather splash against my leg. It was fully dark out there. I felt the heavy weight of the water surrounding us. The “glass” felt more like plastic. I detected a hint of a forcefield on the outside, barely visible.

“Do these trailers go into space, like regular space ships?” I asked. “Or are they all off-loaded a larger transport?”

She frowned, as if surprised by the question. “How is that possibly your concern?”

“We got attacked from orbit a while back, and the folks who did it recently tried to kill us again. I was curious how stout these things are.”

“You’re perfectly safe, crawler. This is an underwater security trailer.”

I knocked on the wall again. “Security, huh? We just teleported in here like it was nothing. If I was an alien assassin, I’d probably figure out how to teleport myself into here, too. We had this show called Star Trek, and the bad guys were always beaming themselves onto enemy ships to attack.”

“You know, for such a famous crawler, you sure are a coward. The trailer is shielded once you arrive. Nobody comes in or out until the program is over. Again, you are safer here than you are in the dungeon.”

“I hope so,” I said. “Don’t forget, you’re in here with us, too.”

Her eyes widened, but it was quick. She finally noticed the dust-covered robot Donut under my arm. She let out a little gasp of despair “Oh, you idiot! What did you do to the product sample?”

“Hi, I’m Princess Donut the Queen Anne Chonk!” the robot said to Loita. “What’s your name? We were doing crafts.”

“Gods damnit, I knew you would cock this up,” Loita said. She sighed dramatically. Her eyes started flashing as she entered her menus. “Okay, okay. It’ll be fine. They have another model in there anyway. A real one, not the dungeon-enhanced version.”

“Like a real, real one?” I asked, turning toward the door. “Can we take it with us when we’re done?”

“No, of course not. It’ll be a holo.”

“Well that’s no fun,” I said.

“There will be a holo Donut doll along with a holo Mongo doll. You will go on and interact with the toys, but you will not physically touch them, lest we betray the illusion.”

Donut, who’d been sitting sullenly on the ground—refusing to get on the couch next to Loita and refusing to jump on my shoulder because I was still covered in multi-colored residue—did a little hop at the mention of a Mongo doll.

“Can I bring Mongo out? Wouldn’t that be lovely? He would just love to meet a toy version of himself.”

“No,” Loita said. “Just go out there, tell them what you think of the product. Read the script if you can’t think of anything to say. Do not be negative. This is not live, so don’t think you’re going to go changing the universe with your bravado today. Anything stupid you say will be edited out and we’ll all be stuck in this can for longer.” Loita waved her hand, and a virtual square appeared floating in midair in front of the couch. “I’ll be watching the taping from in here. Do not make me get up and go in there. I swear to the gods you will not be happy if I have to go in there.”

Donut grumbled something under her breath. It was something along the lines of “Talking Fancy Feast.”

“Why are you so angry all the time, Loita?” I asked.

The tiny fish woman glowered at me. For a moment, I didn’t think she was going to answer. But then she said, “You. Your cat. Your people. Your ugly culture. This is a cancer upon the Bloom, and we should not be doing this.”

I felt my eyebrow raise. “Doing what?”

“We should not be celebrating your culture. Spreading your filth so the fry may see.”

I laughed bitterly. “You call this celebrating our culture? You’re exterminating us and profiting upon our ashes.”

“If it were up to me, we’d simply exterminate you and nothing else. You’re filthy. You’re dry. You’re a rot upon the Bloom.”

Donut swished her tail. “You probably shouldn’t have become a PR agent if that’s how you really feel, darling. Honestly, I can’t help but feel you don’t have our best interests at heart. This is why we worked much better with Zev. She understood how to exploit our star power.”

That seemed to have struck a nerve. “Zev is the reason I dislike you so much. She is young. She is impressionable. She is the future of the Kua-Tin. The Bloom. Her generation is enraptured by the newest, shiniest thing. They do not trust in the concept of system strength. Of True Unity. Of the Great Consensus. Do you know what we had to do just to bring Zev back into the fold? Unspeakable things to her mother and her aunts. It was only then did she take the badge. We need to do this to a whole generation now because of your filthy culture.”

I didn’t understand what in the hell the angry fish woman was talking about, but it sounded terrible.

She continued, pointing directly at Donut, who looked stricken. “Your culture, your non-unifying, defeatist, dry, multi-organ, diversified attempt at culture is a deadly contagion, and it must be treated as such. After this crawl, after every single one of you dry vermin is dead, the Borant system will close its borders and only then will the reawakening occur. Only then will we be free of this rot.”

Donut looked up at me. “My goodness. Is it me, or is she a complete loon?”

I tried not to laugh. Loita growled and was about to say something else when her eyes flashed. She took a long breath, splashing water over the couch. “It’s time. Enter through the door. Don’t make me get up.”

I nodded. I didn’t want to say anything else. I didn’t understand any of that weird gibbersh she was vomiting off about her political party, but I did understand what she said about Zev. Do you know what we had to do just to bring Zev back into the fold? I swallowed. My hands were shaking.

I placed robot Donut on the couch next to Loita. “Okay, robot Donut. You stay next to Loita. Do you understand?”

“Stay next to Loita,” Robot Donut said. “Understood.” She turned her head to Loita and said, “Have you ever felt true cold? It comes soon for us all.”

“Come on, Donut,” I said, turning. “Let’s do the commercial.”

~

The hosts of Veriluxx New Toys Showcase were a pair of tall, giant-eyed alien soothers. The Forsoothed. A man named Gravo and a woman named Liddi. I was beginning to realize these guys were one of the most common types of aliens in the universe.

Gravo, the male alien, was inexplicably dressed like a cowboy and wore a massive, Styrofoam cowboy hat. He wore a gun belt with a six-shooter, and he wore a sheriff’s badge on his vest. The word “Sherif” was written in English, and it was spelled incorrectly. I had no idea if the misspelling was on purpose or not. He wore black and white cow-patterned chaps. He also donned cowboy boots with spurs that jingled as he walked.

Liddi, the woman alien, was dressed in some sort of Wish dot com superhero costume that didn’t fit her. The suit was blue and red like it was attempting to approximate Superman’s colors, but the cape was also in the black and white cow pattern, matching her partner’s chaps. Upon her chest was the word “Veriluxx.” She wore a simple, orange-colored, eye-covering mask that clashed offensively with the rest of her outfit.

“What the hell, man,” I said as we strode into the studio.

“Times like this, I wish cats really were colorblind,” Donut grumbled.

The room was set up to not have a studio audience. It was a simple table with all four of us standing behind it. There was a raised chair for Donut and a small box for me to compensate for the soother’s height. The toys would supposedly appear on the table, and we were supposed to discuss how awesome they were.

Liddi approached and waved. “Hello, hello. I’d shake your hand, but you know. I can’t!” The woman, superhero alien grinned down at us. “Princess Donut, I must say, you are one of my favorites. I only have two feeds favorited, and yours is one of them.”

“Oh?” Donut said, brightening. She jumped up into the chair. “Well it’s always a pleasure to meet a fan.”

The female soother had a bunch of tiny, pinback buttons on her breast. They were all showing different animals I didn’t recognize. Though there was one pin at the bottom that was of Pinhead from the Hellraisermovies. “I am just so excited to have you on the show today. It was my idea to bring the Donut doll to life.”

“Yeah, was the Garfield thing your idea, too?” I asked.

“Who’s your other favorite?” Donut asked before Liddi could respond. “You said you had two.”

“Oh, Lucia Mar of course. Everybody has her as a favorite.”

“So what is this?” I asked, indicating the alien’s outfit. “You always dress like this?”

Gravo, the cowboy soother answered. “No, we don’t,” he said. He had a much more dour personality. “The clothes are to attract attention from children. We are about to film a commercial for a fake program called Veriluxx New Toys Showcase. This commercial will play on screens of all ships docked for fueling and repair if there is a demographically-targeted youth aboard or if there is someone who might wish to purchase such a toy for a youth. The item will be physically available for immediate purchase at the waystation’s shop, or it’ll be available to order on the Syndicate network. This is a low price-point toy with a few desirable features for low-income families, so we are anticipating a very aggressive marketing campaign.”

“Wait, so this is like a commercial that only airs at gas stations?” I asked.

“Fueling depots and way stations, yes,” Gravo said. “It’ll be targeted at children who watch Donut’s feed as well.”

I thought of all the toy commercials that had enticed me as a child. “So, what? We’re just going to stand here and talk about the stupid robot?”

“That’s the plan. And we’re renting this trailer by the second, so let’s get this started. And don’t call it stupid while we’re recording.”

“Wait,” I said. “Do these commercials actually work for you guys? Wouldn’t it be better to have actual children playing with the toys? You know, commercials with explosions and music and colors and kids running around with the toys?”

Gravo made a scoffing noise. “Research indicates that children prefer to have a trusted adult speak down to their level and present them with the best possible options. As the parents are the ones who most often purchase, this logical approach both piques the child’s interest and gives confidence to the parents.”

I exchanged a look with Donut. I almost argued with him, but I didn’t give a shit about the stupid robot toy’s success. I was too tense, anyway. Too wound up to form a coherent argument, especially since I knew Veriluxx’s parent company were just as terrible as everyone else in this damn universe.

I thought of Loita, sitting there all smug in the next room.

“Okay, let’s do this.”

~

“This sure is a hoot,” Donut said, reading the line that floated in the air in front of us. She was not doing a very good job of being natural. I knew that she, too, had been thrown off by Loita’s comment about Zev’s family. She’d already soured on the idea of going on this particular show and was phoning in her lines.

Neither of the soothers seemed to notice.

“Yeehaw!” Gravo said. He pulled his six-shooter and shot in the air. “It sounds like this toy is a hit!”

The toy Mongo screeched on the table and bounced around the toy Donut. The Mongo was designed to mimic the real deal in his juvenile stage and was pretty damn adorable. It stood about half of robot Donut’s height. As we watched, robot Mongo jumped up and chomped robot Donut on the nose, who howled in pain. “Bad Mongo! Bad!” the robot said.

“So, Carl,” Liddi asked. She was actually going by “Professor Liddi” for the commercial. I didn’t know why. “What’s your favorite part of the Veriluxx RealPet companion?”

A paragraph of text appeared floating in front of me. I ignored it.

“Actually,” I said. “I like how trainable they are. We only had robot Donut for a few days, but I taught her several tricks.”

Gravo looked irritated and was about to pause the taping so I could get back on script, but Professor Liddi rolled with it. “Oh?”

“That’s right,” I said. “She says the weirdest shit. But if I tell her to sit, she sits. If I tell her to follow, she follows. She’s much more compliant than the real Donut.”

“Hey,” Donut said. “Don’t be offensive, Carl.”

Both Liddi and I laughed. “I mean, that’s what we all want, isn’t it? Compliance?”

“What do you mean?” Liddi asked.

“What is your parent company called again? Veritan Linkage? Isn’t that their thing?”

Nobody said anything for several seconds.

“Stop rolling,” Gravo said, sounding outraged. He turned on me. “I don’t know where you heard that, but that’s absolutely not true. Veritan is our parent company, yes, but we operate independently from them.”

I shrugged. “That’s not what I heard. Someone said your parent company advocates for slavery. People are saying there are really trackers hidden in the toys.”

“Carl, what are you doing?” Donut asked, looking up at me wide-eyed.

“Just stick with the script, okay?” Gravo said. “Don’t be an imbecile. There’s nothing you can say that’ll make it onto air, so why bother?”

“Nothing I can say in here,” I said. “The dungeon is another story, though, isn’t it?”

“What?” Gravo said. “What are you trying to say? Are you trying to shake us down for a loot box? Is this a joke? Do you really think that would work with us?”

I had no idea if Veriluxx toys had any sort of sinister motive with all of this. Mordecai seemed to think it was a money-laundering operation or something. Honestly, I didn’t care. This was dangerous. Stupidly dangerous. I was gambling all of this was about to be forgotten.

I just needed Loita to get up off that damn couch.

“Listen here, crawler,” Gravo started to say.

The lights flickered. The two soothers disappeared. The floor shook. The studio went black then filled with red lights.

Warning. Fire suppression system activating.

Donut jumped to my shoulder. “Carl, Carl, we’re under attack!”

I bolted for the green room door. It irised open as I approached.

The couch against the back wall was obliterated in the explosion. I took a deep, relieved breath that the picture window hadn’t ruptured.

But then I realized the window had ruptured. A massive crack ran across it, like a lightning bolt. The blue forcefield was the only thing keeping the water out. Shit, shit. It appeared the forcefield was holding. Thank god. Thank fucking god.

Actually, no, I thought. Not god. Coolie. Thank you, Coolie for the information.

“Carl, I think robot Donut blew up!” Donut said, looking around. “Where’s Loita? Did she…” Donut gasped. The crumpled form of the dungeon admin had been blown across the room and had smashed against the wall. Donut rushed to her. The small kua-tin was missing her left arm and both of her bottom legs. Her rebreather, miraculously, still worked. Her entire fish body was blackened. She looked as if she’d been flash-fried in a pot of oil.

But she wasn’t dead. I felt my heart quicken. She couldn’t just teleport away. They had to first lower the shield. But if they lowered the shield, the window would break, and Donut and I would die instantly.

Borant had to make a choice, I realized. They could probably heal her in seconds, but only if she teleported away. Save a low-level admin or save their two highest-grossing crawlers?

I looked down at the injured woman and smiled.

“You… you did this,” Loita panted.

“What do you mean?” I asked. “It was an accident. The robot blew up. You’re the one who made them put that self-destruct sequence in it. I was in the other room. I have no idea how it blew. You saw how buggy that damn thing was.”

Outside, multiple lights appeared, rushing toward the sub. These were other ships, coming to repair the trailer. They wouldn’t get here in time.

“You won’t win,” she gasped, gurgling the words. Foamy, colorless liquid oozed from her mouth and gills. “The Bloom will prevail. You will be forgotten.”

“Nobody likes melodrama, Loita,” I said as the kua-tin died.

~

<Note added by Crawler Coolie. 19th Edition> I am going on a program tonight. When they do this, they transport you to ships that float in low orbit over the planet. I have secreted bugbear paste into my boots. I will detonate them when I am in orbit. There will be two admins on board. My Blast Shield skill should protect me from the explosion—if the skill works at all in that place. I don’t even know. But if I blow the ship, it won’t matter. I only pray I will get a chance to look upon my planet one last time before the vacuum takes me. Think of me, brothers. It is little, but it is all I have.

<Note added by Crawler Coolie. 19th Edition> I have failed. I have blown the ship, and my skill indeed protected me, but the forcefield around the ship has prevented it from fully breaking apart. The admins only appeared to be with me. They were holos. I was fooled today, and I am ashamed, brothers. The gravity has failed, the temperature is dropping, and it is getting difficult to breathe. I do not think they can remove me while the forcefield remains.

But I see my planet, my beloved Qurux. It shines, and it warms me in this cold. I pray one day someone will avenge her, for I cannot.

<Note added by Crawler Carl. 25th Edition> Coolie. I know you can’t read this, but I want you and every future reader to know that I used the information from your passage to help plan the first step. If it wasn’t for your words, I wouldn’t have had the confidence or knowledge to act. What I did today I did for you and for a little girl named Bonnie. My only regret is that my first step was a small one, and I don’t know yet if I’ll survive long enough to take a second.

<Note added by Crawler Carl. 25th Edition> One.

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Hello, all. Thanks for reading! Yes, the next chapter will explain exactly wtf happened and how it happened and will deal with the fallout.  I hope you all are doing well. Thanks so much for your continued support.