Strategem

One of the things I just realized about all this: if the Abbey is aware that we post a blog, is it okay for us to post what we've done to their base up here?

I'm getting ahead of myself. I should say that the whole about the Abbey knowing about the blog is something Frank told us. We met Frank, and he's a pretty weird guy. He kept going on about how similar all of this was to events on other Earths, and yet also how special it was. I guess on a world called Earth-Beta--which we're currently occulting, as part of that whole syzygy thing, which I'll get to in a bit--there was a kid very similar to A.S. who met with another writer whom Frank was acquainted with, just a little bit before some sort of massive mystical event went down. That A.S.-alike was also a Multiversal counterpart to the "Manos" Amos (or Adam, wasn't it?) that Derek jokingly wrote to A.S.'s cousin about. Frank says all our fiction is real, somewhere. And while I'm really sort of viewing it as something that I can take or leave (just because it is pretty incredible, in the dictionary definition of that word), I am thinking about the possibilities and it scares me.

I do believe that Edward Tamaron is real, but I'm having trouble sussing that out in my head. Part of me is trying to go for a rationalist response and say that the guy in charge of this Abbey is just another guy who read the books like we did, who is copycatting Tamaron. (But now, as our world--Earth-Gamma--phases in and out the same dimensional plane as "Earth-Alpha", people we know who have heard of and read The Life of Mocata simply haven't anymore, because they, unlike us for some reason, are blending with their Earth-Alpha counterparts. Or so Frank says.) But I can't believe someone would be that...unsettled. And so part of me does accept that maybe he has somehow stepped out of fiction. I've had dreams about fiction and reality breaking into each other, but I'm going to be honest: like A.S., and like Derek, I've suffered from some mental problems in my life. If it wasn't for the fact that Marcel and Qom have traditionally seemed sane to me, I would think this is all just a sign that I've finally fucking lost it. I'm disturbed by the fact that that part of me is so eager to embrace that in fact, the day when fantasy and reality have objectively shattered, and villains from our worst nightmares are now arriving and causing worlds we previously thought only existed in books to come together and flicker and blur, has come to pass. I want that to happen. I want real life to become so much more fantastic.

But not like this.

Frank looks like Jacob and that frightens me. He's like Jacob but older. I did ask him about it, and his answer wasn't what I wanted. He's theorized that Jacob was probably an alternate incarnation of him or vice versa. He says that the film director he worked with on "Earth-20181" (a name from the books) was Herald deKool, whom he thinks was an alternate A.S. So I guess the Berkleys are popular in the Multiverse or something. But this deKool guy died, I guess. So maybe it's not so good to have a lot of Multiversal counterparts. (He mentioned that Morris, which we've pointed out before as not being far from here, is a place where a lot of stuff happens on a lot of different Earths. On Earth-Gamma, however, the importance of Morris is shifted to Alberta for whatever reason.)

Frank did warn us, when we met with him at the coffee shop, that a lot of his references would be cryptic. I just remember something in particular that stood out for some reason, about the Paradise Earth, as well as something called a "Tarasque". (I looked it up, and I guess it's some sort of French dragon, or a Godzilla-monster from Dungeons and Dragons. Weird.) Once he got his load of mysterious alter-Earth talk out of the way we talked strategy.

We knew we had to strike in the sewers, where the Abbey gathers. We don't know if Tamaron/Chuck Eldridge goes down there, but if he did, he's in for a surprise. We ended up going down there with Frank, and he had to work hard to persuade us to go. With materials he supplied, we went to a central point where the cultists always seem to come from. There was no sign of habitation, but we figured our traps would catch them eventually. (The sewers in Alberta are rarely inspected, and they're well designed, so backups are rare. I don't think we'll hurt anyone innocent with this plan.) By "traps" I mean that we set up tripwires that would release gas onto people who triggered them. The gas is not deadly but it is unpleasant--or so Frank says. I hope he's telling the truth. I feel incredibly gullible for trusting him, but there's this weird compulsion that makes me feel like he's the real deal. The others must stand with me in this, I suppose.

Basically, our plan is to smoke them out of the sewers, as well as send them a sign that we're fighting back. It will be harder for them to operate if they know we can attack their headquarters with ease, and that they thus have to work on the surface. It may be easier for the cops to arrest them if they try something again.

Far from being a great plan or even an okay plan. But it's better than A.S.'s suggestion to just kill them all. Derek was with him in that, and I'm trying not to think hard about it.

The traps are now set as I write this. We'll see what results we get.

I hope they've already fallen into the traps, and I hope that gas stings. I don't believe in revenge--fatal revenge, at least.