unlikely places
"Was that the fourth stop, or was that the third?" I asked.
"How did you lose count?"
"I think I fell asleep? I don't know."
"Ｆｏｕｒｔｈ. Ｎｅｘｔ ｓｔｏｐ ｉｓ ｆｉｖｅ."
"Oh..."
I sat in silence, the train slightly shaking as it rolled across the tracks. "So, um, Craggy?" I asked.
She looked down at me, I felt a little intimidated. "If you don't mind me asking, um--"
"Ｉｔ'ｓ ｊｕｓｔ ｈｏｗ Ｉ ｔａｌｋ. Ｌｅａｖｅ ｉｔ ｔｈｅｒｅ. "
"--oh, no, I was just going to ask how you did it, not why."
"Ｈｏｗ ｄｏ ｙｏｕ?"
"...Huh. Sorry I asked."
"Ｉ'ｍ ｆｉｎｅ ｗｉｔｈ ｉｔ, ｌｉｔｔｌｅ ｈｕｍａｎ ｐｅｒｓｏｎ."
I at this point was used to Scriff leaning on me how she did, but now Craggy was doing it a little bit, too, and she was easily three times the size. Not that I didn't mind the comfort, but it was still just wild to me. I mean, imagine not knowing anything but beeps and boops and immediately within the day having someone physically attach themselves to you, and then you kind of just spend the rest of your time as everyone's pillow/stuffed animal. "Oh, this must be our stop!" Scriff said as the train slowed, entering a station.
As the doors slid open, three people in red suits stepped onto the train with bags in their hands. Craggy shot up and immediately picked up one of the people and slammed them to the floor. "Whoa, whoa! Simon, we're done with this plan!" the guy shouted.
"Easy there," another one of them said, putting a hand on Craggy's arm before being tossed aside. "Ｗｈａｔ ｄｏ ｙｏｕ ｗａｎｔ?!"
"Okay, so we're not here to hurt you," the third said, "One or more of you had questions about the Watchers, and we had answers. We just didn't want you to see where we lived, so... how about you guys just close your eyes and we'll invite you in. The name's James."
"You sure we can trust these guys?" Scriff said.
"Let's just see where this is going," I replied.
Scriff grabbed Craggy's hand the best she could and I grabbed her hand, and James walked Craggy to where we were headed. I could tell the three were murmuring to themselves, but I couldn't tell what they were saying. I couldn't make out much, actually, everything was kind of buried under the beep boop boop beep again.
"Alright, here we are. You can look again."
I opened my eyes to the sight of some sort of dull red bunker with all sorts of papers, some computers, and something under a sheet in the middle of the room. "What is this place?" I asked.
"This? This is our retconology lab, we're studying the Watchers, trying to figure out what's going on. Each of us woke up with memories from the Watchers, and banded together out here to make sure that our research would be preserved so long as one of us lived. I'm Richard, nice to meet you, you slammed me to the ground. Simon was the guy you tossed towards the wall, and James walked out of this unscathed."
The three guys in red suits looked similar to each other, but not by much. Richard had coarse orange-colored hair and a loose attempt at a goatee, Simon had black hair and a pair of cracked glasses, and James had brown hair and sideburns, each of them looked tired and I was kind of worried about what this place even was, to be honest, but they had to have answers, I just knew it. "So, um, what's all this?"
"So we started piecing our stories together here. We're what you might call draftware, I woke up only knowing the word "Falchion". Richard, you said the only thing you could remember was house music, right? And then Simon only knew of a plate of solid obsidian stone. Any of you guys also draftware?"
"Oh, me!" Scriff said.
"Haven't seen any Lizi draftware," James said to Richard.
"Yeah, all I remember from the other day was the name Peppino!"
"Check for a Peppino," Simon said to James, who went to one of the computers.
"And I could only remember a little song when I woke up. It went beep boop boop beep, beep boop boop beep... b... beep boop boop boop boop..."
Scriff tapped me on the shoulder, and I jolted to attention right then and there. "Rhythmic beeps... James, we got anything on that?"
"That, we do, rhythmic rituals like that are known to be attributed to the Watchers. As for a Peppino, I've got nothing. There was a game, over a century and a half ago, about a guy named Peppino, but that doesn't help us."
"What about the name Isaias?" I asked.
"James?" Simon asked.
"Got nothin' here," James replied.
"Got nothin'," Simon replied.
"Oh, huh..." I replied to his reply.
"But here's where things get difficult about The Watchers, right? It's kind of anything goes with them, their stories hide away and when someone gets purged and brought here to the afterward--"
"Processed. The term was processed."
"...How do you know?"
"It came to me in a dream."
"James, mark that down. But anyways, when someone gets... processed, and brought here to the afterward, their old stories are destroyed, corrupt, only a piece comes with them. They look like someone with no story, but there is a story, it's buried deep, deep down through a series of cyphers. They're everywhere, and getting into one of them from here is a lot of guesswork, a lot of muscle, and you'd need a sharp sense of metamancing to do it."
"So what's the thing under the sheet?" I asked.
"Oh, glad you asked," Richard said, pulling the sheet off.
Underneath was a stone statue of a man a bit shorter than me, who appeared to have rather thick hair that tapered into a somewhat thin beard. The man appeared to be clad in a loose short-sleeved shirt and jeans, and looked about halfway between gentle and exhausted. "This is our statue to the author. We pray to him that we don't get removed from draftware, maybe we can become major characters in another installment or something?"
"Does it work?"
"I mean, we exist right now, don't we?"
I was so confused.
"We've got a situation!" James said, quickly shutting down the computers.
"Shoot. Alright, you, the human, come with us. You two Lizi, just stay here for a few minutes."
They quickly rushed me up a set of stairs and out onto what appeared to be a grassy hill. "Now just sit here for a few minutes until she passes."
"Until what?" I asked.
"Oh, that's a new one. Haven't seen her around before!" a voice called out from the distance.
It was another Lizi, this one purple with long black hair, clad in a green jacket. She glared right at me before writing down something on a clipboard, and then started walking. I followed her visually until I suddenly found myself staring into a set of eyes. Not hers, though, not my own, not Richard or James or Simon, but a different human. She looked a little smaller, with red curly hair. Next to her was a taller, thinner woman with black hair and glasses. "What is this place?" I asked James.
"Don't worry about it."
I was worrying about it even more.
"Number 4032? I see you have a new arrival. Bring her to me, would you?" a voice called over the speakers.
Australia, I don't know why that was on my mind, but it was. I had heard a voice like that before. "Shoot, we're compromised. I don't know why I thought this was a good idea. Don't worry, this shouldn't hurt, and you'll be gone only a few minutes."
"What?"
They walked me back into their workshop. "Ｗｈａｔ'ｓ ｇｏｉｎｇ ｏｎ?"
"Shim wants to see our new friend."
ns 15.158.61.23da2
