Chapter 92 #3
“First, these newcomers discovered a tiny portion of the tunnel system and thought it was for communication and travel, and then they—you—discovered and quickly figured out how to exploit the sleeping Eulogist. And then you tripped open the resistance’s ancient let’s-restart-life system.
It was the equivalent of wandering into a random house, finding it still has power, and just flipping every switch you find.
Yes, some of the light bulbs are burned out, but the garbage disposal still works.
The trash compactor still works. The motion detectors work. ” Grigori took a deep breath.
“The self-destruct system still works. Idiots. All of you.”
Florin: That thing up ahead is a tree, but there’s a monstrosity with tentacles on the very top.
“And then the ultimate fuckup. The mantids, completely misinterpreting what was essentially a communication system designed to help those on this side of the veil to communicate with and debug the Eulogist when it was first forming, figured out how to create their own version of Eulogist instances. They started dipping cups into that ocean and then pouring that water into the planetary seed systems, assuming that just because it works—sort of—they’d figured out some ancient puzzle.
Sure, you can pour ketchup into a spray bottle, and if you squeeze it just right a bunch of times, red stinky liquid comes out.
But that stuff ain’t ketchup anymore. To this day, you have no idea how any of this works, and you have no inkling of what you’ve done. ”
The parade was now moving at a crawl.
Please hold. Begin your presentation on my mark.
“All the while, that Security Guard guy guarding the Eulogist, now absolutely bonkers, persisted. His purpose was and is to make certain all biological life in the universe stays dead. The ultimate goal of the Eulogist is to sleep forever. The longer it sleeps, the smaller it becomes, shrinking and shrinking until it ultimately obtains singularity status. The problem is, this left-behind security instance really sucks at his job. He is constantly peeling tiny bits of himself off and sending them out into the galaxy. Residuals. Agatha’s team.
The Apothecary, too, does this as a defensive measure.
I do think that bitch is just as crazy as the Security Guard guy, but that’s another topic for another day. ”
As the arena drew closer, I could see what was basically a jumbotron sitting above the entrance.
The giant screen was tight on Grigori, but it occasionally showed various parts of the parade, or it focused on the people in the stands.
I caught sight of a guy in the front row.
All of these folks still wore the original masks.
The mask of this one was of a manatee. The body within wasn’t human but a slime.
As I watched, the slime struggled, forming arms, undulating, attempting to break free. It couldn’t.
Presentation begins when you pass the viewing stands.
This better be fucking good.
Carl: Pony, you ready?
Prepotente: Ready, Carl.
“And all the while, you were dipping that cup, making what you call Macro AIs. One after another, over and over and over again. Did you know only a tiny fraction of the AIs they created in their facilities ever got used? Oftentimes, they just installed them into their modules and ejected them into the closest star. Oh, yeah. That reminds me. I told you, my mantid friends, we would circle back to this.”
Up on the jumbotron, Grigori clapped his hands together.
Slam.
The sound reverberated louder than the blast from the tank.
“Good fucking riddance to you all.”
“Carl, what does that mean?” Donut asked.
“Nothing good for the mantids,” I said.
“You don’t understand what you’ve done. You will, however, understand what comes next.”
Ten seconds.
Up ahead, Sweety passed under the banner that read “Judging Stand.”
Prepotente held his microphone. Behind him, atop the stair truck, stood the giant head of the Midnight Epicure, made of black dahlias.
He was supposed to make some sort of stinging statement about how the downtrodden would soon rise up and devour those who reveled in our suffering.
And then Bianca would fly forward and burn the flowers of the giant Epicure to reveal the skull underneath while she screeched. Donut had the whole thing planned out.
Instead, Prepotente started to sing.
“Oh no,” Donut said. “He’s going off script! He’s pulling a Carl!”
Donut: JURGEN, DID YOU KNOW HE WAS GOING TO DO THIS?
Jurgen: He never tells me anything.
Sweety the tapir stopped dead in the middle of the judging area, causing us all to jerk to a stop. She started to pound her feet to a tempo I quickly realized was the powerful, nonstandard beat of the song.
Pony was singing “In the Air Tonight” by Phil Collins. It was the song he had never gotten to sing at the bar. There was no other accompaniment other than the tapir’s feet.
Not only was he singing it, but he was singing it well. I was absolutely floored. It was strong, it was steady, and it was goddamned beautiful.
Elle: Holy shit, guys. How does that voice come out of him?
Florin: And how did he train his mount to do that?
Imani: It’s stunning. Who knew? Didn’t he sing at the bar before? Was it this good?
Florin: We all left before his name was called.
“Carl, he’s ruining everything! This song is about getting a divorce! It doesn’t even make sense!”
“I wouldn’t be so sure, Donut,” I said, listening to the lyrics. “I think it’s oddly appropriate.”
Donut scoffed. “Metaphor can only go so far.”
“Don’t worry. This next part isn’t nearly as subtle.”
As he sang, I examined the group of people in the stands. Unlike everyone else, these folks did have dots. Their descriptions, however, didn’t give specifics.
Stand-In. Someone brought to the arena by audience vote. Most are in the arena like I said they’d be, but there’s too many to fit. So I brought some out here. It doesn’t matter who they are. They’re all the same in the end.
I took a breath. Behind us, the giant triangle made of magenta and white dahlias stood ready.
Carl: Florin, let’s do it. Wait until Pony is done, and I’ll give my speech.
Florin: Gotcha.
Sweety started to move as the song came to an end.
Prepotente: Your turn, Carl.
Carl: That was amazing, buddy.
Prepotente: Thank you.
I tapped the headset microphone I’d borrowed from Donut. Hedy’s ice-cream truck featuring the severed heads of the Faction Wars leaders passed by the stands.
We’d turned off the Auto-Tune for this.
“Earlier,” I said, my voice reverberating, “Donut asked me what the difference was between revenge and vengeance. I know there’s an official definition somewhere, and this might not be exactly correct, but I want to tell you what I told her.
Revenge is when we take direct action against someone for something they did to harm us.
But vengeance, at least to me, is punishment.
Righteous punishment, and sometimes it’s not as direct. ”
Behind me, Donut pulled the string, and the pieces of the giant triangle fell away.
The massive statue we’d made of the Unwashed, the strange creature that Juice Box had turned into, popped up like a jack-in-the-box, huge and menacing.
It was an upside-down tree, directly in contrast with the giant white tree that stood in front of us now.
The eyes trailed smoke, and if we’d built it correctly, several of the black flowers would fall off it, revealing red flowers and paint representing rivers of blood.
The gremlins had done a pretty impressive job of building it. It was meant as a jump scare for anyone watching. But it was also meant as a reminder.
Those two symbols, the Epicure and the Unwashed, both represented death and vengeance.
The Epicure at the beginning of our progression was a symbol of hope, of vengeance against the predators of the galaxy.
But that last symbol—the Hag, the Unwashed, the Stalker, the Beautiful Place, and so many other names—was a symbol for something else.
Whether it was real or not was irrelevant.
It was said to be a personification of the Nothing.
To me, it was that and more. The Inevitable Ruin.
It was a reminder that death comes for us all, no matter who we are, and there is absolutely nothing we can do about it.
We passed Lamashtu the donkey with Grigori standing upon her, and I met eyes with the psychotic AI.
Chaco remained at his feet, health still in the red.
Never removing my eyes from Grigori’s, I pulled up a healing scroll, I selected Chaco, and I healed him.
Grigori’s eyes never left my own. He didn’t react.
I turned my attention upward and then I pointed at the effigy of the Unwashed.
I spoke to the galaxy.
“It is coming. It is coming for you all. All of you who participated in this wholesale murder of me and my people and everyone before us, those who didn’t speak out, I am holding all of you culpable.
It won’t be justice because there isn’t any way that justice can possibly ever be served.
It won’t be revenge. Revenge, as nice as that sounds, requires the party directly responsible.
How do you get revenge against a generational system that has existed before any of us were born?
“But vengeance?
“Every one of you. Whether it’s in a big way or a small way, you are responsible. And those of us who survive this, we will remember. We will not forget. We are coming. It may not be me, and it may not be my friends, but we are coming.”
Above, the transport bay doors on the airship opened, and the sluggalos started to rain down on the stands on either side of the road.
The audience, consisting of bankers, politicians, elites, all masked, unable to fight back, screamed as the smallest of the small, the lowest form of dungeon NPC, fell amongst them and started to slaughter them one by one.
Bigs: I’ve never been so proud. Unity, support, family, and kneecapping bitches! Hell yeah!