Chapter 471: Chapter 471

The University of Carousel library was vast, but its rooms were usually narrow and out of the way, with anyone who wished to explore them needing to pass through several sections before finding their target. It was more like catacombs, and it had nearly as much dust.

Camden, Anna, Cassie, and an NPC named Pietro were holed up inside the preservation room deep in that labyrinth, circling around a sophisticated machine designed for scanning books.

A book could simply be set down in the cradle, and then a scanner would come down and get an exact photographic image of both pages in high detail before rising back up so that the pages could be turned again.

In the distance, explosions were going off. Guns were being fired, either by campus security or the military.

Cassie sat on the ground, reading through an old journal with the name Dr. Logan Maize on the front. She was studying it religiously, trying to get to the gist of what it had to say.

But it wasn’t time for her to speak yet, because they were all Off-Screen.

“How much longer?” Anna asked, looking at the door, wondering when the others would be back, if the others would be back.

“This takes time,” Pietro said. “It wasn’t meant to be rushed. The preservation of literature is not a race.”

Camden looked up at her reassuringly. “It’s almost done,” he said. Then he looked to Pietro and noted, “You have to unfold that map completely. You’re missing some information.”

Camden was careful not to actually look at the page, but was instead using one of his tropes called Peer Review to tell if the information was being transferred completely.

“Oh, right, I missed that,” Pietro said. “Nice catch.”

Pietro’s nimble fingers continued to scan the pages of the book, but it wasn’t just any book; it was the Carousel Atlas, a volume far larger than almost any other book in the archives.

“This Atlas contains all of the information humanity will need to rebuild civilization… for whoever survives this,” Pietro said dramatically.

“Yes,” Camden said. “That’s right. All the information for humanity. Gotta get it finished.”

“To think,” Pietro continued, “all of these books around us will rot, and the sum total of human knowledge will become what we manage to record today.”

“Yeah, so we'd better hurry,” Anna said. She looked to Camden. “Why is he talking all poetic Off-Screen?”

“I think Carousel’s messing with us,” Camden answered. “He’s almost done. Don’t worry.”

We needed an NPC to copy it so that none of the players risked spoiling themselves with any of the off-limits information inside the book. Learning secrets of storylines ahead of time could cause real problems if you ever ran the story yourself, so it was best if you just never looked at the spoiler section.

There was a knock at the door. Anna quickly moved to open it. She knew there was no danger because the enemy of this storyline would have no need for knocking.

Kimberly walked through quickly.

“We need to be done soon,” she said. “They’re almost here.”

“Just a few more pages,” Camden said. “I promise it was worth finding an actual archivist. The cursed Kinko’s, or whatever it was called, wouldn’t have gotten anywhere near this quality.”

It also wouldn’t have been nearly as hard to use, but Camden had made his case, and we had all gone back to college for it.

“It’s all my fault,” Pietro said as he stopped working the machine. “I should never have opened that box. None of this would have happened if I had just heeded Professor Maize’s warning. I’ll go fight them off. Heck, it won’t be much of a fight, but I might be able to buy you some time. You all run for help if there’s any help that remains.”

He looked to the sky dramatically.

“No,” Camden said. “You have to copy the Atlas, because you know how the machine works. We’ll be okay. Let’s stick to the plan.”

“You’re right,” Pietro said. “This is more important than any of us. Without this final light of humanity, we are doomed. This is the least I can do to make up for my mistake.”

“Sure, buddy, that’s right,” Camden said.

After a few more scans, Pietro was finished.

“That’s it,” Pietro said. “With one last button, we can create as many digital copies of this book as we need. We can make sure everyone has a copy.”

“Well, not everyone,” Camden said, “but a lot of people, you know, a few people that we trust. Be sure to put it on a few thumb drives and get one full-color copy in that really nice binding. You know which one I’m talking about.”

Pietro nodded and then began typing into the computer.

“There, it’s printing,” he said. “Now, when the spiders have finally been dealt with, humanity will be able to rise from the webs and reclaim the world of the living.”

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“And we’re all very glad about that,” Camden said. “Now, let’s move. Riley, if you’re watching this and haven’t talked to our immortal friend yet, you had better get on it. The story is almost over.”

In fact, I had been watching.

As they were scanning the book and delaying the final battle against the spiders, I was sitting in a comfortable red theater chair, watching the whole thing go down. I had brought my Raw Scene trope so that I could even watch Off-Screen moments if they happened in locations where scenes were being shot.

“Break time! Out! Intermission! Whatever it is I’m supposed to say!” I yelled.

Suddenly, the projector stopped rolling, and the image came to a halt. The lights in the theater came on.

I had recently gotten an upgrade to my Director’s Monitor trope, a replacement, more like that had all the same abilities, except it allowed me to take a break in the middle of a movie and go greet my fans.

I’d be lying if I said I was looking forward to that.

In truth, I was a bundle of nerves. I started to make my way down the aisle, where one of several guards was waiting for me. Not only had they gotten rid of the back door out of the theater, which would lead to one of the many hallways in the Tower, but now I had goons watching over me.

On the bright side, I could move around under my own power, where I never could before without a whole lot of planning.

“This way, Mr. Lawrence,” one of the guards said.

I felt like he was being sarcastic, calling me Mr. Lawrence, but he may well not have been. Celebrity was a cage they liked to put players in. They would be our fans until the day we died, and they would cherish that day as much as any other day in our career.

The greatest purpose a mortal could live up to was being entertaining.

The guards led me out the back of the theater and opened up the doors to a red carpet appearance where I was the star. There was a modest collection of fans there, along with a handful of different reporters, all asking me questions that I couldn’t quite hear clearly.

The Manifest Consortium—immortal sorcerers and multiversal travelers who had decided to spend their eternity obsessed with the only thing they found that was more ancient and mysterious than themselves: Carousel.

The only thing they had going for them was that they knew how to be fancy. They were all dressed for the occasion. I had no idea how old any of them actually were. There was a small group of teenage-appearing women there, but for all I knew, they were older than democracy itself back in the real world.

They asked questions that I found inane and invasive, such as “What are your plans for the future?” and “How is your relationship with Ramona these days?” If I had known people were going to make this big a deal out of it, I would never have had a relationship with anyone.

I wasn’t there to see the fans. I was there to see a specific group of people, well, actually, just one of them.

The Narrators. I had a sneaking suspicion that they wouldn’t miss this event, the opportunity to talk with a real player and possibly get their throughlines up off the ground.

I walked up to the group, and they were too dignified to beg for my attention, especially when I made it clear that I was only interested in talking to one of them right at that moment: Lucian Graves, who went by Lucky.

He was a friendly guy, almost disarmingly so. That day, he was dressed like some sort of aviator. Maybe. He wore a long tan jacket with fur trimming, a jumpsuit with a big leather belt, and a pair of leather boots that went along with it. Everyone from the Consortium had a strange mix of styles, but I got the feeling that Lucky dressed this way because he thought it was modest and disarming.

Maybe he worried that if he dressed in bright colors, it would scare the lowly mortal.

“You still looking for a team of players?” I asked.

Lucky quickly passed under the velvet rope and put his arm around my shoulder, leading me away from the other Narrators.

“Always,” he said. “You finally see the benefit of my offer?”

“You said there were no benefits,” I answered.

“I said I wasn’t going to give you anything. I didn’t say there were no benefits. It’s a learning experience.” He took his arm off of me and turned to look me square in the eye. "Now, your change of heart wouldn’t have anything to do with that tragic NPC you all have been worrying about, would it?”

They were watching us. It would have been a fool’s errand to try to hide Janet. She would never allow it. She would never understand it. Bobby had been working to bring her back, pulling the thread of that plotline behind our backs.

And he had found his first sign of success. He had not rescued Janet—not the player, not the real woman—but he had an NPC with her likeness and her personality, minus the cowardly aspects.

It was a version of Janet that wasn’t afraid of Carousel. That was both a blessing and a curse, because there were certainly parts of Carousel everyone should be afraid of.

“Janet is a problem,” I said. “You told us you knew of a place where NPCs could live peacefully. We are in need of such a place, as you’re clearly aware. I also love learning, if it can help my friend survive a little longer.”

“I can’t make promises that your wallflower’s lady love will make out happily ever after from this. You know that.”

“The lack of promises is the thing I like most about you,” I said.

Promises made me nervous, especially when they came from self-interested immortals who thought my friends and I were basically video game characters.

“So you’re in,” Lucky said.

“You need to meet the team, let everyone hear the details,” I said. “Then we might be in.”

“Of course,” he said. “Tell me, do you know how to get to the zoo?”

I looked out at the crowd of people who were trying to make out what we were saying just by looking at our lips.

“Not the petting zoo, I assume,” I said.

“Heavens no,” Lucky said. “We cannot begin our journey from that place. Not the exotic zoo either—that part of Carousel’s a bit overrun with clowns for the time being, if you haven’t noticed.”

“We have,” I said. “So you mean the Carousel Zoo. Tomorrow during lunch shift would be best, when all the Omens go away.”

“You have been studying that Atlas of yours, haven’t you?” he asked. “Learning all the secrets.”

“I told you I like learning.”

He put his arm back around me and then turned to the crowd. “Did you hear that, everyone?” he asked loudly. “Riley Lawrence and I have just struck a tentative agreement for the Party of Promise to join me in my quest to see the fiercest of Carousel’s beasts! Soon you will be able to purchase tickets for Lucian Graves’ Carousel Safari! You won’t want to miss it!”

Supposedly, getting the audience on board with watching his throughline would make it more powerful and more likely to work.

So, a humanitarian journey to find self-sufficient, meta-aware NPCs in hopes of creating safe communities for refugees one day got turned into a reality television trip to see some of the worst monsters known to Carousel.

I just hoped he was telling the truth. I looked at him as he spoke. When he turned to the audience, he was putting on a face, a show. Did that mean he was honest with me, or was he just that good of a liar? I didn’t know.

We had exceedingly few options, and doing nothing wasn’t one of them.

I whispered in his ear as the crowd clapped and said, “You know, I got eaten by spiders to relay this message. I hope you won’t be as difficult to contact in the future.”

“Of course not,” he answered back. “Not if we’re working together. You will always have access to me. Almost. And technically, the spiders didn’t eat you. They liquefied your organs with their venom and then laid their eggs in your corpse.”

My stomach almost turned at the description.

“Thanks for that mental image,” I said.

“No problem,” Lucky said. “After all, I know how much you love learning.”