On the far side of the Galax Sea.
Honey Moon was face to face with the Void. It was not what you’d call, an envious position. The dark, swirling vortex threatened to pull her in where no light escaped. Not that light was in abundance these days.
She reflected briefly on the events that led her here. The Infi-Net, the lack of new stories, the increasing inaction, the mass digital exodus, imprisoning Bastard Sun, right up to this very moment.
Stan’s piping voice was stuck in the back of her brain: you have to ask yourself, who profits?
“Tell me it isn’t true, brother,” she beseeched the emotionless body. “Give me a sign. Show me in any way that I shouldn’t believe you’re at the heart of this dread matter. That you aren’t the very hand of chaos spinning the Storyverse out of control, subverting it into this electronic dystopia, and profiting from the transference of power, ultimately hoping to rule over our increasingly lifeless universe.”
The spiraling blackness was still… well, except for the roiling and churning and all, but that was really his at rest setting.
“Yeah! Tell her you dark bastard!” a tiny voice piped from her flank.
Honey sighed, “Stan. Just shut up.”
“Sorry, Moon, it’s just, I think of what this sonuvabitch has done and I just get so angry. You know?” Sub-Orbital Stan did not, in fact, shut up.
The Void stood pat.
“Understand my suspicion, Void. Who else but you benefits from the Storyverse becoming a desolate, lightless, landscape, devoid of life?” Honey Moon tried once more to drive her brother to defend himself; to take some small glimmer of knowledge from this meeting before she was forced to the inevitable.
The Void returned her stare.
Stan agitated some more, “Nothing to say for yourself, huh? Silence is confirmation where I come from, buddy.”
She did her best to ignore the small annoying voice, even if she was forced to agree. “You leave me no choice,” Honey Moon intoned dourly. She wasn’t looking forward to interring her second sibling in a month.
The Void remained.
•••
Deep in the bowels of the Celestial Prison, the giant lock sprang open.
The sound of it was so loud and sudden, it forced Skarpo to shut his eyes every time.
Then he waited a second, so the Bastard Sun could hide in his cot like he did every day of the past month. He wished his friend would talk to him; would look him in the eye and know that Skarpo would wish for any fate in the Storyverse other than this one. Barring that, he allowed him this minor indignity to cover for the larger one.
Imagine, Skarpo’s startled surprise when he wheeled down to his erstwhile boss’s cell and found his giant flaming face pressed up against the Nigh-Impenetrable Blastglass (© HappyBlo Glass Co., a division of HappyCo.) waiting for him.
“Skarpo! At last you’ve come!”
The bear steadied himself on his unicycle, calming the various plates and cups on his tray from the shock. “I was just here four hours ag—”
“You look terrible,” Skarpo’s former employer—and soon to be former friend—opined. Meanwhile the sun was unshaven and had meteor-sized bits of crust built up in his eyes. Have you ever seen a sun with a beard? It’s not a good look.
Skarpo opened his mouth to defend himself, but looked down at the stains on his tutu. He had to admit, he’d let himself go.
“That’s okay. It’s all going to be okay.” The Sun waved a fiery phalange dismissing his own criticism. “Look, Skarpo, I’ve been reading a lot of mystery novels since I’ve been in here,” he explained to the very bear who’d been bringing him said novels. “I’ve got it all figured out.”
After several moments of pregnant silence, Skarpo pursed his lips to form the first letter in the word: what-the-fuck-are-you-talking-about, when the sun continued.
“I’ve been set up! I’m a pasty!”
“Patsy.”
“Pardon?”
“It’s Patsy. You think you’re a Patsy. Right? You’re saying you’ve been accused of a crime you didn’t commit, right?”
“Patsy? That’s a girl’s name. How does that make sense? I’m not a girl.”
“It’s a vaudeville thing—did you think being a pasty made sense?”
“Well, yeah. I’m being used to cover the real action. Like on a stripper,” the Sun made circular motions around where his presumed nipples would be if he weren’t a giant, flaming head.
“Your logic is… sound.”
“Key boner!”
“I don’t—”
“It means ‘who profits’! We need to—”
“Cui bono.”
“Now what are you on about?”
“Cui bono means—what’s your point?”
“We need to figure out who profits from locking me up in here. All these mysteries are solved by figuring out who profits,” he waved to the small mountain of Whodunnits.
Skarpo searched his friends face for madness. It was a tough read even on his better days. “The problem with your theory, Sun, is that in order to be a Patsy you have to be falsely accused of a crime.” The bear on the unicycle gave that a second to sink in. “Falsely.”
The sun nodded.
“You’re here on charges of neglect. Willful negligence to the Storyverse’s protection, to be precise.” Another second’s pause, another nod in response. “Which is actually pretty much true,” Skarpo concluded.
The sun caught his next nod in mid-descent. His lips moved silently as if performing some math in his head and then finished with a shake of his head that expressed he didn’t follow.
“That actually happened,” he reasserted.
“Someone’s taking me off the board,” Bastard Sun insisted, desperately wishing he was behind some bars he could rattle.
Skarpo opened his muzzle, and shut it again. The bear wanted to believe some nefarious force was behind all of this. It certainly sounded better than failing to protect the Storyverse because he was too busy chasing Sub-Orbital Stan’s high-score on Scribblesquares while his Bear Friday pawed-off to naughty She-Bears doing naughty things to their she-parts. “I don’t know….”
“I’ve been the protector of the Storyverse since the first half-ape stood up over the tall grass. Do you really think…?” Bastard Sun stopped in mid-heartfelt-defense and looked up and to the right.
“But, Boss—” Skarpo began.
“Shush-sh-sh,” the Sun insisted with a fiery tentacle in front of his lips. “Did you feel that?” he asked in apparent call-back to Chapter 14.
Skarpo clearly felt nothing.
“Something’s happening. Something big. Like someone’s destiny is manifesting.” Bastard Sun focused back on Skarpo, his companion, his assistant, his friend. “Please, man, you gotta’ believe—you know what, screw it, you don’t have to believe me, but you gotta’ do something.”
Skarpo noted a clear change in the sun’s demeanor. He was urgent. Sincere.
The bear left the tray of food and wheeled back down the hallway.
•••
“What was that?” Honey Moon half-turned toward some celestial disturbance she swore she felt.
“Who cares?” Stan bellowed in his squeaky soprano voice. “Get this bastard and lock him up!”
The Void stayed firmly in place.
The Moon shot the tiny planetoid a look, and then turned back to the black hole in the family.
The Void stared back.
•••
Deep in the Badlands, Kyle reached down and helped R.T. to her feet.
She didn’t stand all the way up—couldn’t stand all the way up. A thin line of viscous blood dangled from her lip.
“Oh. Ew,” the so-called prophet murmured softly and took a step away.
R.T. squinted in pain and wiped the blood from her lip on the back of her hand. “Nngh, happy now?”
Kyle winced. “That’s not what I’m ewwing, Sweetie. It’s your….” He struggled through his somewhat handicapped vocabulary. “It’s your area.”
Following the path from his uncomfortably accusing finger she saw, indeed, the crotch of her jumpsuit was succumbing to a spreading torrent of red.
R.T. passed out.
•••
Sunshower screamed and writhed in pain.
She strained against the wires and struts suspending her, trying desperately to double over. She vented exhaust from her air-recycler and clenched her teeth until one of the buttons on her console cracked.
A long line of black, glittering star stuff dribbled from her mouth.
Distantly, somewhere beyond the pain, she wondered what was happening to her.
Another contraction lit up her status board and the thought was gone.
•••
Lord of the Lemmings unfolded in deep space before the object of his interest.
The light at the center of the Infiniverse. A small but brilliant teardrop shape.
He felt bad for leaving R.T. in the lurch like that but it would all be okay when he became God. He would make it okay. He would make it all okay.
The light spread wide, and the Lemming Man swore he could see the head crowning.
He smiled deep in the darkness of his cloak.
•••
Brin howled as the light and sound of the room rose to an impenetrable din. He let Flint’s limp body drop to the floor from one hand, and his no-longer-beating heart drop from the other.
He totally had a boner.
It was time.
