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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Piratecat" data-source="post: 4276792" data-attributes="member: 2">Round Three - Match FourteenPiratecat vs. Rodrigo IstalindirMemeby Kevin Kulp (Piratecat)It was early morning and the birdsong was drowned out by the racket of my childhood being dismantled by chainsaws and bulldozers. I didn’t want to look.“I’m sorry, Max. I don’t like it either.” I met his gaze, then guiltily dropped my eyes and checked my watch. “We’ll get you relocated as soon as we can. I have to go. I have a new candidate coming in for an interview this morning. I need to pick her up.”   I gave them all a quick hug, my nose tickling from the musty fur. Dignity is important, and it was difficult not to acknowledge that several of them were crying. I would have been, too. <a href="http://www.enworld.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=34622" target="_blank">All six of them</a> stayed behind on the ridge as I left, watching the rising sun while bulldozers dismantled their home. Half an hour later I stood in an open field west of a white house with a boarded front door. I was leaning on the small mailbox when she came around the corner. You can tell a lot about a person from where they first arrive. I had flown out of Neverland, myself. I still bore some heavy guilt that we hadn’t closed it before the Worm arrived. I took a look: older, no makeup, a little heavy, probably in her fifties.  She looked ill. “Hey, Ria,” I said. “I’m your greeter. Call me Amy. Welcome.” “Grues! There were grues!” She sounded more excited than scared. Breathing heavily, she looked back at the house as if unable to believe it was real. “Do you realize where I just came from?” I checked my clipboard. “A Seattle hospital. Come on, let’s talk. You a coffee drinker or a tea drinker?”That was an odd enough question that it got her attention for a minute. “A tea drinker?” I took her hand and smiled. “Then let’s go get a cup of tea.” I led her to the car. She kept looking back, trying to lock in the visual memory of a place she’d only read about for twenty years.“Where are we?” she asked.“Long story,” I answered. “I’ll try to tell you over tea.”* * *Soon uniformed waiters bustled around us with quiet precision. They served piping hot tea and fresh scones and those little cucumber sandwiches with the crusts cut off. I never get tired of those. Gentle harp music filled the air. The napkins were thick white linen and the chairs were vaguely uncomfortable, designed to be beautiful and encourage good posture: just what you’d expect. We were underdressed for Palm Court and hadn’t had reservations, but no one noticed. Rita was watchful, her eyes taking in everything. It was a good sign.I took a sip of tea, smiled, and said, “Okay, this is your chance to ask questions.”“Who are you?” She didn’t mean my name.“I used to be an explorer. Now I’m an engineer. I make sure that things go where they need to go, and that things get built and maintained correctly. Technically my job is all about allocation and control, but really it’s about keeping dreams alive. Today, it’s also about interviewing new staff.”“New staff?” She frowned. “I already have a job.”“Not any more.”She looked at me sharply. “We’ll come back to that. We’re in London right now, at the Ritz?”“Pretty much, yes.” “Fifteen minutes ago I came out of a house somewhere in the US, and we didn’t drive over any oceans. We also didn’t fly.” More’s the pity, I thought, but I stayed silent. I wanted to see how far she could get.Her eyes looked past me. “I take that back. Fifteen minutes ago I came out of the twisty little passages from Zork. I know that game. Back in 1980 I played it non-stop. And I swear that’s where I just was.” She leaned back and looked at me over her tea cup. Her thinning grey hair fell into her eyes as she tilted her head. “How’d I walk out of a video game, Amy? I’m not dreaming. I’m not on drugs. I’m not using VR, and the Matrix was just one good movie in a crappy trilogy. I’m a 53 year old programmer who happens to be fighting breast cancer. You want to explain how it is that we’re here?”“You’re in a coma,” I said. “Bullsh*t,” she answered.I just kept watching her. She waited me out, and I spoke first. “You wanted to know where we are. How many imaginary places can you picture in your head?”“Dozens,” she said without hesitation. “Hundreds.”“I’m responsible for upkeep on tens of thousands, and I’m having some logistical problems that I want advice on. All those imaginary places exist here. We’re where the story goes when you close the book, and where the video game lives when it isn’t being played. You’d be surprised what shared imagination can produce. For instance, what do you think of first when someone says ‘let’s go have tea’?” She turned the question over slowly, looking for a trap. “Starbucks. Or the grocery store. Or…” She paused and looked around her more carefully. “No, I take that back. It’s a rhetorical question. Where do you go to have tea? You have tea here, at the Ritz.  Little girls dream about this place when they have tea parties with their dolls. It’s iconic.”I nodded. She put a dollop of clotted cream on a scone and popped it into her mouth. “And here we are. It’s exactly what I always dreamed tea at the Ritz would be. Only…” She searched for the right word. “Idealized.”“Well phrased. Yes, it’s idealized. Here, tea at the Ritz is exactly what everyone always dreams it will be.” I offered a half smile. “Don’t go to the iconic McDonalds, though. Peoples’ negative expectations carry through, too.”“Uh huh.” She considered. “Where would we go if I was a coffee drinker?”“Central Perk, most likely.”“And if I drank beer?”“Cheers. You’d like the place. Very homey. Everybody knows your name.”“I can imagine.” She sounded wry as she popped another piece of the scone into her mouth. “This is where I decide if I’m crazy or dreaming. But it feels more complex than that. What do you need advice on?”I leaned back. “I’ve been here over seventy years, but we’ve had a flood of new locations in the last thirty. I’m having trouble keeping up some of the old ones. Part of the problem is that I know what TV and video games are, but I’ve never actually seen or played one.”“Seriously?” She seemed amused.“Seriously. Please finish your tea first, though. I’ve blocked off my whole afternoon. When we’re done, we’ll walk and discuss it.”“Fair enough. And you’ve been here seventy years?” Ria looked suspicious. “You don’t look a day over forty.” I gave her my best enigmatic smile, and sipped my tea.* * *We strolled down a European avenue that doesn’t show up on traditional maps, Ria moving slowly due to her illness. The hedges hid most of the surrounding landscape, but Ria sucked in breath when she saw the castle at the end of the promenade. It was everything you knew a fairy tale castle should be. Minarets with long fluttering pennants pierced the clouds, and knights wearing armor rode powerful chargers in an out of the gate. Honestly, I love this view. It makes Disney feel like a plastic embarrassment.“That’s real,” Ria said.“Yep.”She shook her head, correcting me. “You don’t understand. It’s real. I know this place. It’s Cinderella’s castle, and Sleeping Beauty’s. It’s where I wanted to live. My mom read me to sleep every night with Grimm’s fairy tales! I can even smell her perfume after forty years. Seeing this is like coming home.” “Dreams have power, Ria. Belief shapes the world. An old house will feel more like home than a brand new one because it changes over time to be what you expect from it. When people dream about a place, that place becomes real. They become the ideals from which everything else is based. And they come here.”Ria nodded. “Sure. Platonic ideals.”  I looked at her blankly. “Plato’s philosophy, the concept that all the reality we can see is nothing more than shadows being cast upon the wall of a cave. We never see the reality of what’s actually casting the shadows, so we have to guess as best we can. In this case, I’d guess the ideals are like a pearl forming around the irritant of belief. I like the idea.”I grinned. “This is why I asked Dispatch to keep their eyes out for someone like you – educated, an independent woman like myself, only old enough to bridge the generations between stories and computers. My problem is that the old ways are no longer working right, and I don’t have the modern experience to know why. I’m probably condemning places that aren’t entirely ready to go as a result. Hell, just this morning I bulldozed the forest of the Wild Things to make room for some slum named Liberty City.”She looked at me with disgust. “I really hope that was necessary.”“Me too. But I’m afraid of the Worm. Before the computer age, places didn’t ever go away. If enough people forgot about them, they’d sort of fade and diminish. Eventually they’d be gone. Not now, though. About twenty years ago, old places stopped fading and started disappearing. They didn’t vanish quietly, either; something infested them, took control of them, and then ripped them screaming out of the world. We got our first hint when Green Gables got hit. Anne said she saw some sort of huge worm, a little like the things from Arrakis, huge and white and moist. It ate the whole house from below. She barely made it out.”Ria was silent. “I loved those books,” she said, “but I haven’t thought of them in years. What went in where Anne’s house was?”“Some dungeon complex, with a little elf-guy named Link.” She sighed. “The computer era shouldn’t be your enemy. It’s just a new forum for imagining. I’d guess its biggest problem is that TV shows or computer games are more insistent. When everyone sees the same landscape, everyone is going to imagine it the same way. That’ll drive out less formed visualizations of other places from literature or folklore.” she stopped to consider. “What’s your biggest problem right now?”“Nebraska.”She turned to stare at me. “Seriously? Nebraska?”“Yep. We can’t grow corn.” I could see she didn’t understand. “Look, what does everyone say about Nebraska, or any of those starts-with-a-vowel states in America’s breadbasket? ‘The corn goes on forever. You keep driving and driving, and it seems like the corn is never going to stop.’ I flew over it before a long time ago, and it’s true. Turns out that we’re responsible for that. When enough people believe it, the corn really does go on forever.”“But why now?”“Faster cars, higher gas prices, more cynical kids? I don’t know. Maybe we’ve stopped doing the rituals right. But my farmers can’t grow the eternal corn any more, and we’re worried about the Worm. The situation is reaching crisis. I have to decide whether to evacuate everyone and just call it a loss.”She reached out for my arm. “Let’s go there. Now.”“You sure?” I said. “I’m seeing how you’d fit in here, but that doesn’t require field work.”She nodded. “My cancer hasn’t hurt much since I got here, and I’m still trying not to think about that coma comment you made, thankyouverymuch. Maybe I can help. Let’s go see.”* * *Nothing takes long to get to if you know the right short cuts. Ria kept herself amused by calling out the ones she knew as we drove. I had to pull the car over to the side of the road when we got close. Two policemen were <a href="http://www.enworld.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=34620" target="_blank">blocking the road</a> with one of the modern signs we use before evacuation. I rolled down the window. “What’s the problem, officer?”He sauntered over. “I’m sorry, ma’am, you can’t...” He took off his sunglasses and recognized me. “Oh, hi, Amelia. The rituals are failing. I’ve been told to prepare for evacuation. We’re erasing the access road.”“Not yet, we aren’t. Keep everyone else out, please.” I drove around his sign and left him in the dust.Ria seemed amused. “Error 404: Road not Found?” she asked.“Keeps GoogleMaps from accidentally noticing. Another five minutes and we’re there.” The woods had turned from stands of trees to endless rows of corn. No, not endless. We drove over a hillock and the fields became a ruin of dying crops. We motored in silence until we reached the location of the ritual.“What the hell are they doing?” asked Ria. I remembered how surprised I’d been, too. “Ancient Roman fertility ritual. Involves, well, fertility. Seed and furrows and traditional blue robes. And lots and lots of sex. We get a lot of volunteers for this.” I shrugged. “Fertilizer doesn’t work here, and there’ve been enough adherents to the ancient way in the world to make this effective. No one wants to give it up until we have to.”“You have to,” said Ria. She gestured at the dead corn stalks. “Let’s find a modern alternative.” Then she was out of the car, her cancer hardly bothering her at all as she strode towards the robed priest in charge of the ceremony.I got out as well. “You want a hand?” I called.Ria paused. “No,” she decided. “Let’s see what I can do.” She spent almost an hour talking to the priest and staring at the crops. People were watching her closely by now. When a huge smile passed across her face, I knew she’d thought of something, but her list mystified me.“These?” I asked. “You want me to order these?”“Right now,” she concurred. “Immediately. We’ll need tables, at least ten delivery trucks of soda, and fifty cases of the candy. Thread and needles.”“Can you explain this?”“YouTube,” she answered, leaving me just as confused. “People believe in YouTube, Amy, but it’s the shadows on the wall that are important. We’re dealing with symbology here. And don’t waste any time.” She frowned. “All these people truly believe the Worm is coming. And you know what that means.”I made the call.With that many workers relieved of their previous fertilization duty, we had enough hands to process the materials quickly. No one understood why, though. It was dusk by the time that my workers were prepared. The tables had been set up in the field’s furrows. Ria stalked the rows like the perfectionist she was, making sure everyone understood their role in what was about to happen. “You will see a sign,” she told them as the setting sun filled the sky with radiant clouds. “And when you see that sign, you will know what it means, and you will believe.” She spoke with absolute conviction. “The Worm...”Mentioning it was a mistake, because enough people must have thought of it at once. The soil at the east end of the field erupted <a href="http://www.enworld.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=34619" target="_blank">in a glistening geyser</a>. The noise was horrible. Anne hadn’t mentioned the noise. It was a high pitched screech, a caterwaul of pain and electronics. Ria didn’t seem to be fazed at all.  “A modem?” she asked, scoffing. “You sound like a modem?” The worm rose over her, stretching into the darkening sky with its pinchers ready to consume, and Ria turned our blue sea of belief that lined the rows of the corn field. “NOW!” she thundered, and a thousand caps of Diet Coke were loosened as one. Two thousand Mentos dropped into the two liter bottles. And a thousand plumes of soda reached into the sky.But in the light of the sunset, they didn’t look like plumes of foaming soda. For the life of me, <a href="http://www.enworld.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=34618" target="_blank">they looked like stalks of corn</a>.They were stalks of corn.“Do you see?” shouted Ria at the Worm. It had turned its blind head towards her and paused, swaying. “There is no prey for you here. You are not a virus that we fear! There is nothing for you to devour! We have made the sacrifice using the modern tools, and these fields are reborn!” The plumes of soda were starting to droop now, the blue robes of the Believers soaked with foaming brown fluid, but somehow the stalks of corn still remained. They rippled out from where we stood, the power of the internet’s belief concentrated on us for one brief second, but that was all it took. Shadows on the wall of Plato’s cave, the appearance of corn actually creating the real thing? I don’t understand it the same way Ria does. But the worm withdrew, screaming its high-pitched howl as it slid down into its hole, and we all stood in the lushest field of corn I had ever seen. A single crow circled delightedly overheadI’d made the right choice.* * *It was full dark by the time we got to the forest of the Wild Things. Demolition wasn’t entirely complete, but they were preparing to lay the foundations of Liberty City for some time tomorrow. Max and the monsters had found somewhere else to sleep for the night. “The job’s yours if you want it,” I said in the darkness. The air smelled of wood chips and diesel. “People are starting to forget about me, and I’m getting less effective as a result. You don’t have the infamy I had...”“I’m a nobody,” she laughed. She was sitting on one of the few remaining trees, swinging her legs. Her body was heavy and her grey hair was straggly, but she looked blissfully serene. “...but you know how the modern world works. You know how to harness it, and you still love and respect the classics. The job needs you.”“What will happen to me in the real world?” she asked.“I don’t know. I made my decision on a round-the-world flight. They never found my body. I imagine that you’ll slip away, too.”She looked down at her dumpy form and chuckled, then glanced up at me slyly. “You know, Amy,” she said, “if there’s one thing the internet has taught us to believe in it’s that images can be manipulated. I wonder...” She trailed off as she concentrated. Then Ria transformed before my eyes as if she’d been kissed by a handsome prince. Her new form was not that of an air-headed storybook princess, I’d say; she was regal and healthy and young, and she wore a dress in the same deep blue as the robes from the fertility ceremony. <a href="http://www.enworld.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=34621" target="_blank">It was clear she belonged.</a>“I accept,” she said as she hopped down from the tree limb. We linked arms as we headed back towards the car. “Tomorrow we do something about restoring the Wild Forest. There are a few internet memes that might help. I already have some ideas.”“I couldn’t agree more,” I said, and held open the door for her.</blockquote>

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