“Hey, Wilma, can you turn on the Whether Report?” Antoine asked the woman behind the counter at the bowling alley.
“Sure thing, doll,” she said, moving over to the small radio she had playing at her workstation and switching the dial. It was easy enough, like most technology in Carousel, all you had to do was mess with the switches and turn the knobs, and you’d get what you were after, assuming you knew what you were after. Sometimes you might need a bit of Savvy, but not for this.
“Please don’t remind me of that,” Kimberly said. She hadn’t touched her food. Since we had yet to go grocery shopping, we were eating out yet again. And while it was convenient to have a restaurant on the bottom floor of the building the loft was in, sometimes you just needed variety.
It just so happened we knew how to neutralize the Omens of the bowling alley.
“We need to figure out what we’re doing,” Camden said. “I’m telling you, whatever Lucky did with that dinosaur apocalypse didn’t cancel out the scheduled one.”
He was on his fourth hot dog. He was prone to going long periods without eating and then making up for it all at once. It probably wasn’t healthy, but as far as coping mechanisms went, it wasn’t the worst I had seen in Carousel.
In fact, it was Camden’s quick thinking that allowed us to neutralize the bowling alley at all. While Grace had taught us how to do it, we hadn’t retained much because our day of fun at the bowling alley had been cut short by the black snow.
Fortunately, Camden could save images on the red wallpaper because of his trope, Photographic Memory. Apparently, that image of Grace’s list of what to do to make the bowling alley safe had been hanging there for many months, even when he was dead.
Wilma, the NPC behind the counter, had just answered the phone, as we predicted she would, and called out asking if there was an Isaac in the building.
“There’s no one by that name here,” Kimberly said.
Wilma said, “Sorry,” and then hung up the phone.
Everyone clapped for Isaac because he won the little lottery. The woman could ask for any player, and if they answered, a storyline would trigger. Fortunately, all you had to do was say that they weren’t there.
Logan and Andrew’s team was well aware of this tradition of cheering on the lucky winner because the Bowlers had brought them here just as they had my team, and when I came here, it was Camden who won.
Isaac didn’t care at all. He was at the arcade, playing the claw machine, trying to win a yo-yo with a trope on it. He had been there all afternoon.
“Not only can we not find a writ of habitation, but even if we found one, chances are, it would be inside Carousel proper, and we wouldn’t be able to hide there during the upcoming apocalypse. So we really need to get our priorities in order, because that deadline is rapidly approaching,” Camden said.
“Was Stray Dawn outside of Carousel proper?” Antoine asked. “At least part of it had to be.”
“It’s right on the line,” I said. “Southeastern Carousel is affected by the apocalypse, but I don’t think the mansion in the woods would be. You wanting to run that one again?”
“Not really,” he answered, eating his burger, “but if we have to start a grind, that’s not the worst option.”
The Whether Report was playing in the background. The reporter was saying, “Storm season is coming right up, and this year we’re expecting the big one. The conditions are just right—"
I zoned out. Nothing had changed—still reports of terrible things happening in the near, near future. “Storm” was just a code word. Sometimes the reports would give you more information that was supposed to hint at what kind of apocalypse you were dealing with.
I didn’t know what it would be, and I didn’t really care. I didn’t want to be here for it either way.
Ramona was next to me at the counter, drinking a milkshake. Eventually, she said, “I don’t know what the big deal is. My cabin on Lake Dyer should be safe during the apocalypse, right? Why don’t we go there?”
“We might have to,” I said. “But we don’t know when your writ lets up, and it’s a one-room cabin. We could be stuck there for weeks.”
“It’s better than dead,” she said.
“That depends on where you are in the sleeping pile,” Camden said. “Personally, I want to see this mansion over in Carousel Heights that you guys took the limo to. How long did you get to stay there?”
“Not long,” I said. “But even if it is possible to get a writ of habitation for that place, we would never beat the storyline. Last time we had Grace and Chris. I don’t even wanna know what it would be like without a couple of ringers.”
He was talking about The Strings Attached mansion, and it would be perfect, but it was a pipe dream.
“That being said,” I added, “finding a storyline that will take us outside of Carousel proper for a few days and then maybe, I don’t know, camping or finding another storyline once we’re there might not be the worst idea.”
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I’d gotten chili fries and had barely touched them. I was hoping we could come to the bowling alley and, you know, just bowl or something. Maybe we could leave our problems back at the loft to discuss them later. I looked over at the others who were bowling and envied them.
Somehow, they had escaped grown-up responsibilities.
“Camping is not an option,” Kimberly said. “Last time we almost got killed.”
She was exaggerating. But only just.
I was throwing out ideas with the camping suggestion. One thing we had learned from the black snow was that even if you don’t get caught in the apocalypse itself, that doesn’t mean you’re out of the woods, because you would find yourself surrounded by free-roaming monsters and killers who suddenly weren’t restrained by anything but their whims.
“But you know,” she added, “the Astralist’s castle has lots of room.”
I nodded. “It is technically outside of Carousel proper, while still close enough, we’d probably have to close the big gate to head off any wandering evil.”
We knew his place was safe during an Apocalypse because we had seen him in action during it.
“If we had a writ, I bet the castle would be in even better shape,” she added. “Just need to run that storyline a few times, you know, get it just right.”
“And one of the ways to activate the real storyline is to bring a Beauty along with you,” Camden said.
That was something we even knew back at Camp Dyer, that there were a handful of different aspects that would activate the true nature of the storyline instead of the Mickey Mouse version of the Astralist we had played.
I looked over at the players who were bowling. Avery was a Beauty aspect, and we had a handful of players in the level range for that storyline.
Best of all, I wouldn’t have to be involved one bit beyond moral support.
“Tell me what they say when you suggest it,” I said as I got up from the counter, and Ramona and I walked over toward the arcade where Isaac was.
“If it’s so perfect, why hasn’t anybody mentioned it before?” Ramona said. “The Astral List, that’s what it was called?”
“Astralist. Like a spirit scientist of some kind,” I said. “It’s not like it was a hard storyline in retrospect, but it was the first storyline we went on alone, all of us, even Logan’s team. And we have some bad memories.”
“Not bad memories!” Ramona exclaimed, pretending to be shocked. “Anything but bad memories!”
“He’s not that bad,” I said. “Technically, his kills are bloodless. He just sucks your soul out, unless he’s mad at you.”
“How considerate,” she said.
We walked over to the claw machine that Isaac was playing. He still hadn’t made any progress on the yo-yo; however, he had accidentally grabbed other trope items.
He got a trucker hat with a Stranger trope on it that allowed you to blend in with the crowd, especially if it was a crowd of truckers, I imagined. He also got a scarf that was guaranteed to snag, with potentially fatal results.
I bent down, picked the scarf up, and held it out to Ramona, acting like I wanted her to try it on.
“I told you, I’m leaving everything to charity in my will. There’s no point in killing me,” she said as she pushed me away.
We struggled for a bit, playfully.
I ended up wearing the scarf. It was solid black, which was great because they could leave it on for my funeral.
“Will you two cut it out? You’re ruining my concentration,” Isaac said, as he continued to pump coin after coin into the machine to no avail.
“Hitting Display,” Ramona read off the red wallpaper as she stared at the yo-yo. “Athlete Sport. The user will be demonstrably talented with a chosen sporting implement. Use of that implement in combat will be buffed.”
“Wow,” I said. That was similar to one of Antoine’s tropes. Maybe it was an upgraded form. That would have been great if it weren’t attached to a toy.
“No kidding,” she added. “Who knew that yo-yo was a sport?”
“That’s kind of the point, isn’t it?” Isaac said, turning around to us, his frustration showing. “It’s probably odd enough to trigger Weapons of Mass Absurdity, right?”
He actually had a good point. He was buffed when using humorous weapons, and a yo-yo would almost certainly count.
“Take a break,” I said to Isaac. “Let me give it a shot.”
“I almost got it,” he said.
“You can’t spend all your time with the yo-yo,” I said. “We came here to relax.”
After a little bit more back and forth, he let me take over the controls.
It was immediately clear that none of my stats worked in the operation of this machine, not Savvy or Hustle. After a few attempts, I wanted to break the glass, but saner minds prevailed. I had played tons of these because they had two at my local movie theater back home.
“Here you go, Isaac,” I said. “Push the button,” I added as I held the joystick in place.
“No, I’m not doing that. That doesn’t count,” he said.
“Do you want the yo-yo? Push the button,” I said.
“It’s not going to work,” he said, as he relented and pressed the button. Holding it down, the claw lowered down over the yo-yo, and by some stroke of luck, it managed to get just enough of a grip on it.
I didn’t know the technical terms, but this wasn’t one of the round ones; it was the kind that was shaped like a spool, which should have made things easier, but it didn’t.
Luckily, the claw was just tight enough to move the yo-yo over into the dispensing tray and drop it down.
“Wow, what else can you do?” Ramona asked as we started walking away.
“Not much else, ” I started to say, but then I choked as I realized that Isaac was inadvertently standing on the end of the scarf I was wearing.
“Maybe we shouldn’t wear this,” I said as I took it off quickly and wrapped it up in a ball, leaving it with Isaac.
He didn’t seem to notice. He was so preoccupied with his new yo-yo. Just as it said on the tin, he was instantly skillful with it, as if he were an honest-to-goodness Ninja Turtle.
We passed by one of the arcade machines as it played itself. I jokingly said, “I got next game,” but I was just messing around.
We went and rejoined Kimberly and Antoine, who were discussing the Astralist idea with Logan, Avery, Michael, and Andrew.
They were just as apprehensive as we were. What was it about that guy that creeped us out so much? They hadn’t even seen him when he was at his worst, right after the black snow, collecting other enemies for his experiments, easily overpowering them with his ghost powers.
They should be able to grind that storyline as long as they didn’t take a player who was over level forty. Which ruled me out, though part of me wanted to talk to the Astralist, as I had met his father during the Centennial, and I wondered if he’d say anything or even recognize what I was talking about.
Oh well.
Isaac found his way over to us later, wearing his trucker hat and showing off his skills with the yo-yo. I noticed that he had found a plastic bag to keep the scarf in, and there was a red mark around his neck that told me he had made a similar mistake to the one I had.
Our day wasn’t over yet. We still had a couple more stores on the stop-and-smell-the-roses tour. After that, it was back to the grindstone, where we had the biggest store of all, with the possible exception of the mall itself, Eternal Savers Club.