to: all; a warning

[princessvegas]

Hey, so I'm assuming at least some of y'all found that sparkler thing in your domain? If you haven't already, maybe..... don't touch it? Like at all. Except to bury it or throw it in a trash compactor or something.

Also probably do a quick sweep around your domains and check for anything else weird or out of place or creepy. Or with the Fool arcana. Just a thought.






Selfies might be a bad idea right now too.

Comments

[princessvegas]

I'm not a therapist, but I'm like 80% sure that capitalism probably isn't right. Wouldn't you make a mall in that case? Like a really good one, with a Neiman Marcus and a Saks. A gas station is more like... global warming personified.

It's a sparkler. It's not that complicated, it's just fucking sketchy. Maybe we should dig a pit or something, as far from the Singularity as we can get, and throw em all in there...

1/2

[stations]

I am pretty good at digging.

2/2 — private;

[stations]

Hey, listen, I wanted to ask you... I mean, I know we're not close or anything, and you threatened to shoot me that one time when I crossed the line about your personal stuff, but you were also super nice to me that other time, so I figure they cancel each other out, and maybe we're back to neutral, and it's less weird, or maybe not, I don't know, I'm really bad at interpersonal relationship dynamics and everything but

Anyway

Just

With the Singularity being all... weird, and everything...

Are you doing okay?

private;

[princessvegas]

[ There's a lengthy pause before she responds. She has no fucking clue how to answer that question. She hasn't been okay in years, since before she was even in Abraxas. ]

I'm all right. I don't like lightning, so. That sucks.

private ∞;

[stations]

Any particular reason?
You don't have to talk about it if you don't want to.

[princessvegas]

[ This pause is even longer. She almost never talks about any of this, even with people she actually likes. People she trusts and loves. It's almost unbearable to think about. And yet — ]





That's how I died, before they brought me to Abraxas.
I was struck by lightning.

[stations]

Oh, shit.
That actually really fucking sucks, I'm sorry.

[princessvegas]

Yeah.
It was God, actually. Like, the lightning was actually God.
He wasn't after me. I was collateral damage. He doesn't give a fuck about humans. Probably never did.
Asshole.

[stations]

I've been learning lately that God in other people's universes is a way bigger dick than the one from mine. I mean, we had a lot of asshole gods with a lower case 'g', but the upper case God where I'm from was actually kind of cool.

I'm sorry you got stuck with one of the shitty Gods.
Can I ask... if he wasn't going after you, what was he going for?

[princessvegas]

I mean, I guess it was always right there in the Bible, spelled out in black and white. Jesus was the peace and love guy, not God.

It was this............. guy. He wasn't really a guy. He was a demon. Or maybe the devil? Or maybe from another world? I don't know even now.
Things got really complicated in my world, really fast. It was basically as bad as it could get.
God left us all alone to just
die, I guess.
Everyone who was still alive. What's less than 1% of life on Earth? Like, animals too?

But anyway, God didn't care.
The churches were all full of dead bodies. Billions of people spent their last breaths begging for help. Nope.
When help finally came, it was a magic man who promised to save us.
God didn't like that.
Golden calves, I reckon. Something like that.
He wouldn't save us, but He didn't want anyone else to save us either.

[stations]

So it was like an apocalypse situation?
You died to God's jealous hate-on for an opportunistic demon. That's... really, really fucked up.

I also can't help but wonder if maybe the Singularity isn't this universe's equivalent of capital g God. I guess you'd probably have a better idea than anybody else. Does it feel like that to you?

[princessvegas]

Not exactly a biblical apocalypse, but yeah.
The army made a secret bioweapon. The most contagious, lethal version of basically pneumonia ever. It got out. Everyone on Earth died within six months or so.
But for some reason, some of us are just immune. Barely any of us. Between the two big groups left at the end, there were maybe ten thousand of us in North America? Maybe another five thousand-ish running around on their own. Hard to say, exactly.
I'm pretty sure everyone in Vegas died, though. That's where I was.
There was a bomb. A really big one. Lightning and bombs don't exactly add up.

He could have stopped it at any time. Stopped the army, stopped Captain Trips — that's what we called the plague — stopped the demon from calling us.
But no.



Uh. Not really. The Singularity doesn't really feel that
logical.
If that makes sense.
Like, God had a human sense of logic, or vice versa.
The Singularity definitely does not.

[stations]

Jesus. That feels way too much like something that would absolutely happen in my world, too. That seems like another constant, even more so than Asshole God — Asshole Government.

I...

I'm not sure if I should be telling you this, or if it matters, or if it even... means anything, but I feel things through Sabine sometimes. We have some kind of connection, and I think I get echoes of the things she feels. Not everything, not all the time, and it's kind of muted? Or filtered, maybe, through the lens of her own perception, if that makes sense, but I think...

I think I kind of understand what you mean. It's all emotion and instinct and color and noise, and not a lot of rationality. That's what it seems like, from the glimpses I've gotten.

[princessvegas]

Yeah, and somehow still no one seems to understand why I don't think Thorne's the biggest threat round here. Marlo Reiner would cream her fucking pants at the idea of the American military-industrial complex.
They're definitely already doing shifty experiments out in the desert, or at least they were at some point.

[ You know. Just like, robot arms. Poison gas that can hurt a Witcher. Not quite strong enough to completely destroy humanity, but. Bless their hearts, they're trying. ]

I know.

I mean, not that you can feel things through Sabine, but I know she's connected to the Singularity. I don't really know how to explain the exact feeling, but sometimes it like... reaches for other people. And it REALLY reaches for her when she's around.


Why can you feel what she does? That's weird. Like, my best friend was kind of soul married to that demon for twenty years - long story, don't ask - and she didn't feel his stuff like that.

[stations]

Was she soul-married to the same demon from earlier, or was it a different demon? Or- wait, should I not ask that either? Never mind.

I think it's because of what Sabine is. I don't fully understand it myself, but she and her parents are something else, not demonic. She calls it "A Keeper of That Which Is But Shouldn't Be." Maybe that's why the Singularity reaches for her, maybe it falls under that umbrella, too.

[princessvegas]

Same demon. She was basically betrothed to him since she was a little girl. Don't EVER bring it up to her or I WILL kill you for real.

[ There is something strangely freeing about actually opening this box inside herself. Julie almost never talks about what happened to her own world, let alone her death or Nadine's link to Flagg. Maybe because she can't stand the pity or the judgment of people she loves, who she wants to think highly of her and like her.

Julie doesn't give a fuck about Jack, though. It's not really anything against him specifically — he is just very clearly a dumpster raccoon of a man who belongs in his shitty little convenience store, and it's difficult for her to put much weight on anything he thinks. He doesn't repulse her in the way that the real Trashcan Man had, he just... feels rather insignificant to her. Like a background extra in a crowd scene.

Which means she can tell him anything, because his opinion holds no meaning to her. He is a blank sounding board. And if she ever finds out he dared open his yap and spilled her secrets again, she'll have no problem cooking him from the inside out. ]

And just what the fuck is that?