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September 17 - September 21, 2024
“Hey, don’t puke on my shoulder.” “Where else am I going to do it, Carl?” she said between breaths. She proceeded to puke on my shoulder. “Goddamnit, Donut,” I said.
“You don’t worship Grull, do you?” I asked as we stepped in. The wind howled around the village, and sand still rained in a dozen little spots here and there. The ground was covered with it. But it was nothing like out there. “Do I look like a face-painting, bull-worshipping bitch?” Clay asked.
Elle: He was being suspicious. We’re on our way back to the island. If we crash, we crash. There are boats everywhere. We have our pick. Imani: Not all of us can float, Elle. Carl: Weren’t you on the island already? You know what, never mind. Just be careful.
I laughed. “Hey, Donut. If we were back home, you’d finally be able to knock that vase off the high shelf.” “That thing was a menace, Carl. It was haunted.”
The next achievement came in the AI’s creepy, I’m-touching-myself-and-smoking-a-cigarette voice.
You’d have a great career in politics ahead of you if, you know, we hadn’t destroyed your world and all the governments and stuff.
“Did you understand that?” I asked Katia. “I think so,” she said. “Days are 24 hours long like on earth. It’s only dark for two hours. The storms come every day at four hours before sunset and last two hours. The second sun is up for eight hours, and it gets really hot during that time. It sounds like our last three days here will be mostly dark, and the storms will last twice as long.”
Tracked All-Terrain Suicide Machine. The Royal Chariot – Contraption. If a snowmobile got drunk on moonshine and had a sweaty, ill-advised night with a hillbilly’s coon-hunting ATV, this oversized birth defect of a vehicle would be the result. Quickly traverses through both sand and snow. Don’t worry about the lack of roll cage or the grossly-misplaced center of gravity, or the fact this thing will do an impressive impersonation of a catapult the moment it hits a rock. The most important part is that it looks kind of badass.
“That’s sad,” Donut said. “What?” I asked. “Nobody stayed behind for that poor guy Lucia threw across the room. Only Ifechi helped him.” I reached up and patted Donut’s head. The cat’s entire body was taut as she watched the screen.
“Poor thing,” Katia said. “But she needs to be dealt with.” “I agree,” I said. “We need to put her down.” “I call dibs on the dogs,” Donut said.
Maybe I’ll try out that Nurse Joy person you were describing.”
“My paws are sweating.” “Cats don’t sweat,” I said. “If cats don’t sweat, explain this, Carl,” Donut said, rubbing her paw on my neck. I couldn’t tell if it was wet or not since my entire body was drenched. I had a sweating problem. At the gym, I was one of those guys who left a puddle everywhere. I couldn’t help it, and right now my skin was doing a pretty good faucet impersonation. “Shush,” I said. “Someone’s coming out.”
“I’m gonna have to blow the door,” I said. “Everybody step back.” “Don’t be so dramatic, Carl,” Donut said. “Watch this.”
The smoke started to dissipate. I could now see the two forms on the ground, though there was something off about them. I pushed the door closed. “Turn off your hole, Donut.” “Really, Carl. You need to find a less offensive way to say that.”
Katia came strolling up in her regular, human form. She had what looked like an iced tea in her hand with a little umbrella. She sipped on it. “What was the plan again?” she asked. “Oh yes, I remember. You were going to sneak in, figure out what they had hidden in there, and sneak out again undetected. Good job.”
“Carl, Carl, I got a new sponsor!” Donut said, hopping up and down on the back of Mongo, which caused him to also start hopping up and down with excitement.
“Hey, not fair,” Donut said, suddenly sounding dejected. “My new sponsor sponsors a bunch of other people. And Princess D’Nadia just sponsored five other crawlers, too.” “They must be pretty special if Princess D’Nadia likes them,” I said, reaching over to scratch Donut on the head. She harumphed.
Donut, you’ll be happy to know that you brought in the highest sponsorship bid in the history of the series, beating out both Carl and Prepotente. Next to me, all signs of dejection fled as Donut did another little hop of joy.
Donut gasped with a sudden realization, putting her paw on the side of my head. “Do you think there’ll be a script? Do you think I’ll get lines? Like a real actress?”
Being a pacifist was one of those things that looked and sounded great when you were trying to get laid. Not so much when you were literally fighting for your life. I
An update that greatly enhanced her ability to determine the surface and the subsurface temperature of anything she looked at with precise detail.
System Message: Please Wait. The world froze for about half of a second. It was like the beginning of a boss battle. But nothing happened, and the short glitch was over as quickly as it started. System Message: Thank you for your patience. You may now resume normal activities.
A second pair of eyes and mouth appeared on the back of Katia’s head. The eyes protruded from her scalp on a pair of little stalks. “Are you crazy?” she demanded from the second mouth as we hit a bump.
“So Chris is from team Meadow Lark?” Katia asked. “He entered the dungeon with Imani and Elle?”
Yolanda died protecting us from the rage elemental, and Brandon died protecting the team from shade gremlins.” I swallowed, remembering that last note Brandon had sent. I had it saved in my scratch pad, and I often found myself pulling it up and reading it.
Morris: I think the necropolis is filling with water.
Mordecai, as expected, was not pleased. “This isn’t a goddamned daycare, Carl. Do you see a jungle gym? Because I don’t see a fucking jungle gym.”
“Do you have There’s Something About Mary? I never saw the ending! Carl came home that day and ruined it. He switched it to the watch-Carl-get-fragged-over-and-over Playstation channel, and I never learned what happened! It has been killing me. If I don’t find out what happened I will simply die.” She suddenly gasped. “Do you have the Sex and the City movie?”
“It’s a lotion bottle, Carl,” Donut said, peering down at the item. She’d also received the same prize plus some healing scrolls in her box. “It’s just like the bottle you used to keep hidden in your drawer by the bed.”
Donut: OKAY WE WILL. WHY CAN’T I MESSAGE YOU? Zev: It’s not necessary, crawler. Don’t worry, I will let you know if there are any additional areas of concern. Now get back out there and kill, kill, kill!
who’d received it. I was afraid to click on it. I did anyway. New Achievement! You’re the reason why daddy drinks! You have, for an unspecified reason, raised the ire of the System AI. You have corrected the issue, and everything is back to normal. The acceleration action has been suspended. This time. Good boy. Reward: You’ve received a Gold Makeup Sex is the Best Sex box.
The magical pen rose into the air as the top popped off the ink well. The pen dipped within and wrote out “Does this work?” I drew a rudimentary cat portrait, and the pen copied my work. Donut looked at the cat art with distaste. “Am I a joke to you, Carl?”
“Carl, are you quite done? I have a very important box to open, and you promised you’d watch me do it. And we still have to learn what Katia had gotten!” Donut said impatiently. She had her benefactor box from Veriluxx RealPet Companions. The one that Loita had said wasn’t a real box, but a “product sample.”
Elle: Imani is refusing to send you this message, so I will. It is from Chris, and I am copying and pasting his exact words. I’m sorry guys. “Carl, Donut. Please. Kill me. It’s okay. I give you permission. You’ll be helping me.” “Hey Chris, go fuck yourself,” I said. “We’re going to figure this out.” Then I told Elle what I said. Elle: I told him the same thing. But if we can’t figure out a solution, I don’t think you have a choice. If it was me stuck in there, I’d want you to pull the plug, too.
“Goddamnit. Why am I the only one trying to come up with a solution? What the hell are we going to do?” I said. But I knew. We all knew. And that weight was getting heavier by the moment. You can’t save them all. Carl: Imani, I’m sorry. She didn’t answer, which made me feel even worse. I put my hand on his rocky shoulder. It was hot, but not unbearable. “Hey, Chris. I know you can’t respond anymore, but your brother wanted me to tell you that he loved you, and he regretted not telling you that. He died protecting his friends. I’m sorry I couldn’t help you.” “Carl,” Katia said, putting her own
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“Carl?” Donut asked from my shoulder. “What?” “Don’t be mad at me.” A large hole opened up in the street, revealing a shimmering force field that separated this quadrant from the next. The form of Chris plummeted through the hole and disappeared, landing loudly into the dark chamber below. There was a splash.
Donut: LONELY_YETI_15 SAYS I HAVE THE PRETTIEST FUR PATTERN SHE HAS EVER SEEN. SHE ALSO SAYS SHE’S GETTING A TATTOO OF ME ON HER LOWER THORAX. Carl: You’re supposed to be helping Katia sew. Donut: I DON’T HAVE THUMBS, CARL.
“It’s simple, really. One can open a gate from one place to the next. But it comes with a cost. It rips a hole into the depths of the Nothing.
prototype. Donut: TELL THEM I NEED TO HAVE THE ABILITY TO CHANGE THE ROBOT’S NAME. CARL CALLS IT “ROBOT DONUT” AND THAT JUST WON’T DO. I HAVEN’T DECIDED ON CHARLIE OR IVY. WHAT DO YOU THINK, ZEV? Zev: It’s inconsequential, crawler. Donut’s claws dug so heavily into the side of my neck, I winced with the pain. Her entire body was rigid. I reached up to pet her. Loita: Very well. We are done here. Try not to break the next one.
They had to have heard us coming. We approached the porch. A cockeyed “Welcome” sign hung from the center of the dirty, white door. The sign was hand-painted in blue and silver paint and had a star at the bottom, indicating the previous owners had been Dallas Cowboys fans. The doormat had a picture of a pistol and said, “We don’t dial 911.” “I’m getting mixed signals,” said Donut.
But like many of those who were unwilling in their journey to this place, she lingered too long in the inbetween. The Nothing. She paid dearly for it. Her mind is all but gone.
“You know how some video games required internet access to play? Even though they’re single-player? This is the same sort of thing. Most toys nowadays require access to a licensed enhancement zone to work. And some even take it a step further and require the child to have a license key installed in himself in order to unlock all the toy’s features. It makes certain his parents are current in their taxes. This one doesn’t have any of that. It’s not as fancy as most of the stuff out there, but it’s something that can be played with by a child who is on a long spacecraft voyage outside of a
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“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. It’s always waiting in the shadows.”
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 through the broken window, multiple lights appeared, rushing toward the sub. These were other
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But if I do manage that second step, please forgive me. What I do from here on out is solely for me and my people. As long as I am alive, I will do everything I can to make them burn. They will not fucking break me. <Note added by Crawler Carl. 25th Edition> One.
We both wordlessly sat down. I chewed on the jagged edge of my fingernail. The chair wasn’t high enough for Donut to look over the desk, and she suddenly looked very small sitting there. I reached over and gave her a pat. She was trembling.
Carl is very good at killing things, and he can be very clever about it sometimes, but he doesn’t do secret Asian man style murders.” “Agent,” I said. “What?” Donut asked. “It’s secret agent man. Not secret Asian man.” “Are you sure?” “Yes, I’m sure. How does ‘secret Asian man’ make sense?”
At the same time, part of me stung at the notion that she could do this without me. It was stupid. Selfish. And it was more than a little narcissistic to think that without me and Donut, Katia and the others were absolutely screwed.
I still didn’t know if we’d get there in time, but Katia and the others’ actions while we were away proved that I wasn’t as indispensable as I thought. And in the end, I realized it was a necessary feeling. You’ll die in a gutter without me. You need me. You think you’re just going to be fine? What will you do, you disrespectful little shit? You will break after just one day. And then you’ll die. That’s what you’ll do. Just like your fucking bitch of a mother.
“Oh, I just love those tattoos,” said Donut. “What do they mean?” Gwen laughed. “They mean that we are wasting time, little princess. Now you two get your asses in gear. Your partner has been stalling me for almost a full day now, and that clock keeps getting lighter by the minute.”
