Episode 23: Pompeii Up
Note to Discordians: It could be said that this is episode 23, as, in the most literal sense, this is episode 23. However, for the alternately literal episode 23, see episode 22. Episode 17 is way out. Episode 5? Who was planning anything way back at episode 5? Or were they…? There are no hints in episode 5 or episode 17. None at all. And there are especially none in episode 3. This note is in and of itself a hint. Whether or not that is a lie is up to you. The lady or the tiger?
There are always people on tour in Italy.
There are not always people on tour in the ruins of Pompeii at six in the morning.
This is because Pompeii-the ancient city, not the modern city-is generally closed to the public at 7 in the morning.
The group that was there on the morning of July 5th were a group of 5 renegade archaeologists, from New York, unlicensed by the World Archaeological Commission (WAC,) and their Sicilian tour guide. They were there to follow up on a strange dream that the six of them had shared. The 5 archaeologists had known each other previously from archaeology degree programs and such. But the Sicilian knew none of them, yet still had honestly had the exact same dream as them.
The dream had been a bizarre series of images. It began with a flash of light, green red and white. The Sicilian-Giacinto B.-had assumed that it was something patriotic, for Italy. After the light, there was a large rumbling; somehow, they could see it in the dream, without feeling or hearing it. There was then a city of ruins, domed by rock. Then a brief flash of a horrendous, nearly featureless face approaching the dreamer, hungrily. The dream ended with a flash of several dogs. The last image confused all six dreamers, but when the dream began to recur, they decided that it must be important.
After months of research, the renegade archaeologists discovered that the city of ruins was ancient Pompeii, as viewed from a certain angle within. They began to collect money in various ways: Harry T., 23, began freelancing as a heater repairman (unlicensed and stealthily, of course); Willa R., 24, began a cheap tattoo and piercing parlor (unlicensed, but safe); Terra M., 23 opened a store selling new age, wiccan, and "magickal" products (to the disdain of local covens and new-agers, as she was under-cutting them severely); Melshell A., 22, began to sell drugs (obviously illegal, but he was good at it and managed to do it safely; also, he sold it cheaply and purely, without nasty things cut in, improving the quality and safety of the high; the price severely angered local drug dealers); and Amanda P., 21 and a prodigy, got a job at a strip-club (obviously, frowned upon by her society.) Because all five of them had incredible intelligence and hacking powers, they managed to avoid nearly all trouble.
It took them six months to save up enough money to get all five of them to Italy. They departed as soon as they had enough, having been packed for three months in case they got lucky.
Harry left the voice mail message on his business line to recommend other illegal, freelance heater repairmen to prospective customers. Willa left her parlor in the care of a kid who had been hanging out at the shop for a couple months; she had learned plenty about piercing and tattoos in her time there. Terra put various "charms" and "hexes" on her shop to keep thieves and vandals out. The covens and such who hated her wouldn’t go in, as they claimed when they did they got blown away by blasting heat. They began to protest her store right in front of the unlocked building, and, somehow, nothing was stolen and business in fact boomed without an owner present. The magick that worked there is known to the common people as "psychology." Melshell left his customers without a fix; other dealers jacked up the prices and lowered the quality of their products again, resulting in worsening economic and health issues in a twenty-block radius of Manhattan. Amanda just left, as that is the basis of all strip-clubs: come and go.
They arrived in Italy on June 25th. They arrived in Pompeii on the 28th, and began to explore Pompeii. They needed soil samples, air samples, photographs, and to perform a variety of experiments and mappings to achieve all their ends. They learned on the 29th that they could do such during operating hours, and were not allowed in the ruined city outside of operating hours, and that in fact they could not do such at any time as it threatened to damage the integrity of the ruins. Amanda pointed out several times that tourists alone did a large amount of damage. This earned her a small slap from the authorities, and invoked her rage, which began to bide its time. They were thrown out soon after.
Fortunately for them, Giacinto had been giving a tour that day, and had just let his group go for ten minutes of free exploration. He had a strange feeling about them, and acted on an impulse itching his brain. As they were dragged away by security, Giacinto handed Melshell his card, with contact information.
That night, they contacted him and set up a meeting at a Pompeiian Pizzeria the next day.
At the meeting, Giacinto asked them why they had acted so strangely in the ruins.
"Why did you act so strangely in the ruins?"
The five looked at each other for a moment and then nodded.
"We’ve been sharing a strange recurring dream that we believe takes place in part in the ruins of Pompeii," Melshell said quickly, "And we want to know what it’s all about."
Giacinto sat back in his chair and thought for a moment. As he thought, the waiter came; the five renegade archaeologists ordered Pizza Margherita and a Pinot Noir called Anima dei Antico, a vintage of ten years ago. Giacinto ordered a Pizza Marinara and a second bottle of the same wine.
"I had the same dream, I think," he finally said when the waiter had left.
The five were taken aback. He smiled at them smartly.
"I don’t believe in fate, nor do I believe in coincidences. Someone wants us in there!" Willa said urgently and conspiratorially.
"Then, we must do as they suggest," Giacinto smiled. "It is likely to be important."
"But what if it’s some sort of a trap?" Harry demanded. "We should just let ourselves be caught?"
"Someone with the power to control dreams could have captured us for whatever already. They want us to do something else. I say we take the chance." Terra put her hand in the middle of the table.
"Everything is planned," Giacinto continued to smile. He put his hand on top of Terra’s.
"I’m not going home without answers," Amanda grinned, adding her own hand.
"I like to beat a trap, actually," Harry thrust his hand in.
"Came all this way, didn’t I?" Melshell chimed in.
"Jesus, why’re we acting like we’re in a shitty heist movie? If you all stop talking like that, I’m in, okay? But I refuse to put my hand in the center!" Willa began to sulk.
The camera panned away as they began to plan their entry into Pompeii.
And so, the night of July 5th, at 12 AM, six figures stealthily hopped the walls of ancient Pompeii. Harry went first; in his days as a heater repairman, he had developed great stealth, and would have warranted applause from John the thief. Giacinto went last, to assure that everyone got boosted in safely.
Once they were in, Giacinto led them directly to the spot from the dreams. The third time that he had had the dream, he decided the next day to go to the exact location. Being an expert on ancient Pompeii, he had found it easily, and for a week spent a large amount of time every day at that spot, trying to find some sort of clue. Nothing at all came to him, and so he gave up. The dream lingered, recurred, and continued to bother him, but he had no idea of what he could do. So he did his best to ignore it. Until he met the renegade archaeologists.
They began to take soil samples and such immediately, and began discussing theories. Giacinto didn’t know most of the English they were speaking, and so he drifted into a half-nap as he watched them.
It wasn’t until 3 in the morning, when they had just about run out of experiments and chartings, that they noticed the dogs that kept coming and going.
"What’s up with the dogs?" Will asked, manifesting the thought slowly creeping across six brains.
"They are the twelve dogs of Pompeii," Giacinto said slowly, sitting up from his drowsing position with a glimmer of insight in his eyes. "The people give them food, and no one knows where they go at night. Apparently it’s here. They do look familiar, don’t they?"
The six of them spent the next three and a half hours trying to catch even a single one of the dogs. Within an hour, they had reached a positive consensus that they were the dogs from the dream.
They also noted that the dogs seemed to be trying to lead them out of the ruins. The dogs had a talent for disappearing right at the outer walls of Pompeii; every time they did that, the pursuer would turn around and return to the spot in the dream.
At 6:30 all six were back at the spot in the center. And out of nowhere, twelve dogs came swarming at them and surrounded them. They began to bark violently and warningly. The six of them stood in the center of the dogs for a few minutes, and then they began to advance. The six of them, in perfect harmony, leapt over the dogs and ran in different directions.
None of them saw the dogs hesitate and seem to take a conference; then two chased after each human.
All six of them managed to run away from the dogs, hiding in and on the ruins, but never leaving, for a half an hour.
The sun was coming up around this time. A note filled the air, and all six humans and all twelve dogs looked to the sky, just in time to see the terrible flash of green red and white light. The dogs seemed to curse, and turned towards Vesuvius, which had begun to rumble.
All six humans, standing at various points throughout the ruins, turned towards the rumbling just in time to see a terrible jet of fire erupt from it. The jet seemed to curve and swirl through the air, headed straight for the ancient city. All twelve dogs barked as one, and something shone in the air; the jet of fire-now obviously not a jet of fire, but rather a streaming, airborne flow of lava, crashed onto the air 50 meters above the center of the ancient city. All six humans leapt to the ground, as the molten magma flowed down the sides of an invisible, overturned bowl. When they looked back up, the lava had cooled, and they were inside a rocked dome, lit from some unknown source. They ran quickly toward the point they had been at before, which was just off the center of the city, and only a short way off the ground.
There sat a cat, with a tangled and marred collar, and a golden symbol on its forehead.
"Well, now you’re sure fucked," it snickered in a feminine voice, in Italian and English at once.
The six of them stared at it, and then had their attention called away by a loud crumbling to the east. Approaching them was a statue.
"That would be an ancient resident of Pompeii," the cat whispered slyly to them. "I recommend you avoid them. They’re zombies now. Gonna be damned hard to kill, too. Made of stone, and they aren’t in there themselves. Bodies rotted a long time ago."
Several of the dogs ran towards them.
"You goddamn fucking retarded HUMANS!" one of the dogs screamed in a voice befitting a father of gods.
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There are always people on tour in Italy.
There are not always people on tour in the ruins of Pompeii at six in the morning.
This is because Pompeii-the ancient city, not the modern city-is generally closed to the public at 7 in the morning.
The group that was there on the morning of July 5th were a group of 5 renegade archaeologists, from New York, unlicensed by the World Archaeological Commission (WAC,) and their Sicilian tour guide. They were there to follow up on a strange dream that the six of them had shared. The 5 archaeologists had known each other previously from archaeology degree programs and such. But the Sicilian knew none of them, yet still had honestly had the exact same dream as them.
The dream had been a bizarre series of images. It began with a flash of light, green red and white. The Sicilian-Giacinto B.-had assumed that it was something patriotic, for Italy. After the light, there was a large rumbling; somehow, they could see it in the dream, without feeling or hearing it. There was then a city of ruins, domed by rock. Then a brief flash of a horrendous, nearly featureless face approaching the dreamer, hungrily. The dream ended with a flash of several dogs. The last image confused all six dreamers, but when the dream began to recur, they decided that it must be important.
After months of research, the renegade archaeologists discovered that the city of ruins was ancient Pompeii, as viewed from a certain angle within. They began to collect money in various ways: Harry T., 23, began freelancing as a heater repairman (unlicensed and stealthily, of course); Willa R., 24, began a cheap tattoo and piercing parlor (unlicensed, but safe); Terra M., 23 opened a store selling new age, wiccan, and "magickal" products (to the disdain of local covens and new-agers, as she was under-cutting them severely); Melshell A., 22, began to sell drugs (obviously illegal, but he was good at it and managed to do it safely; also, he sold it cheaply and purely, without nasty things cut in, improving the quality and safety of the high; the price severely angered local drug dealers); and Amanda P., 21 and a prodigy, got a job at a strip-club (obviously, frowned upon by her society.) Because all five of them had incredible intelligence and hacking powers, they managed to avoid nearly all trouble.
It took them six months to save up enough money to get all five of them to Italy. They departed as soon as they had enough, having been packed for three months in case they got lucky.
Harry left the voice mail message on his business line to recommend other illegal, freelance heater repairmen to prospective customers. Willa left her parlor in the care of a kid who had been hanging out at the shop for a couple months; she had learned plenty about piercing and tattoos in her time there. Terra put various "charms" and "hexes" on her shop to keep thieves and vandals out. The covens and such who hated her wouldn’t go in, as they claimed when they did they got blown away by blasting heat. They began to protest her store right in front of the unlocked building, and, somehow, nothing was stolen and business in fact boomed without an owner present. The magick that worked there is known to the common people as "psychology." Melshell left his customers without a fix; other dealers jacked up the prices and lowered the quality of their products again, resulting in worsening economic and health issues in a twenty-block radius of Manhattan. Amanda just left, as that is the basis of all strip-clubs: come and go.
They arrived in Italy on June 25th. They arrived in Pompeii on the 28th, and began to explore Pompeii. They needed soil samples, air samples, photographs, and to perform a variety of experiments and mappings to achieve all their ends. They learned on the 29th that they could do such during operating hours, and were not allowed in the ruined city outside of operating hours, and that in fact they could not do such at any time as it threatened to damage the integrity of the ruins. Amanda pointed out several times that tourists alone did a large amount of damage. This earned her a small slap from the authorities, and invoked her rage, which began to bide its time. They were thrown out soon after.
Fortunately for them, Giacinto had been giving a tour that day, and had just let his group go for ten minutes of free exploration. He had a strange feeling about them, and acted on an impulse itching his brain. As they were dragged away by security, Giacinto handed Melshell his card, with contact information.
That night, they contacted him and set up a meeting at a Pompeiian Pizzeria the next day.
At the meeting, Giacinto asked them why they had acted so strangely in the ruins.
"Why did you act so strangely in the ruins?"
The five looked at each other for a moment and then nodded.
"We’ve been sharing a strange recurring dream that we believe takes place in part in the ruins of Pompeii," Melshell said quickly, "And we want to know what it’s all about."
Giacinto sat back in his chair and thought for a moment. As he thought, the waiter came; the five renegade archaeologists ordered Pizza Margherita and a Pinot Noir called Anima dei Antico, a vintage of ten years ago. Giacinto ordered a Pizza Marinara and a second bottle of the same wine.
"I had the same dream, I think," he finally said when the waiter had left.
The five were taken aback. He smiled at them smartly.
"I don’t believe in fate, nor do I believe in coincidences. Someone wants us in there!" Willa said urgently and conspiratorially.
"Then, we must do as they suggest," Giacinto smiled. "It is likely to be important."
"But what if it’s some sort of a trap?" Harry demanded. "We should just let ourselves be caught?"
"Someone with the power to control dreams could have captured us for whatever already. They want us to do something else. I say we take the chance." Terra put her hand in the middle of the table.
"Everything is planned," Giacinto continued to smile. He put his hand on top of Terra’s.
"I’m not going home without answers," Amanda grinned, adding her own hand.
"I like to beat a trap, actually," Harry thrust his hand in.
"Came all this way, didn’t I?" Melshell chimed in.
"Jesus, why’re we acting like we’re in a shitty heist movie? If you all stop talking like that, I’m in, okay? But I refuse to put my hand in the center!" Willa began to sulk.
The camera panned away as they began to plan their entry into Pompeii.
And so, the night of July 5th, at 12 AM, six figures stealthily hopped the walls of ancient Pompeii. Harry went first; in his days as a heater repairman, he had developed great stealth, and would have warranted applause from John the thief. Giacinto went last, to assure that everyone got boosted in safely.
Once they were in, Giacinto led them directly to the spot from the dreams. The third time that he had had the dream, he decided the next day to go to the exact location. Being an expert on ancient Pompeii, he had found it easily, and for a week spent a large amount of time every day at that spot, trying to find some sort of clue. Nothing at all came to him, and so he gave up. The dream lingered, recurred, and continued to bother him, but he had no idea of what he could do. So he did his best to ignore it. Until he met the renegade archaeologists.
They began to take soil samples and such immediately, and began discussing theories. Giacinto didn’t know most of the English they were speaking, and so he drifted into a half-nap as he watched them.
It wasn’t until 3 in the morning, when they had just about run out of experiments and chartings, that they noticed the dogs that kept coming and going.
"What’s up with the dogs?" Will asked, manifesting the thought slowly creeping across six brains.
"They are the twelve dogs of Pompeii," Giacinto said slowly, sitting up from his drowsing position with a glimmer of insight in his eyes. "The people give them food, and no one knows where they go at night. Apparently it’s here. They do look familiar, don’t they?"
The six of them spent the next three and a half hours trying to catch even a single one of the dogs. Within an hour, they had reached a positive consensus that they were the dogs from the dream.
They also noted that the dogs seemed to be trying to lead them out of the ruins. The dogs had a talent for disappearing right at the outer walls of Pompeii; every time they did that, the pursuer would turn around and return to the spot in the dream.
At 6:30 all six were back at the spot in the center. And out of nowhere, twelve dogs came swarming at them and surrounded them. They began to bark violently and warningly. The six of them stood in the center of the dogs for a few minutes, and then they began to advance. The six of them, in perfect harmony, leapt over the dogs and ran in different directions.
None of them saw the dogs hesitate and seem to take a conference; then two chased after each human.
All six of them managed to run away from the dogs, hiding in and on the ruins, but never leaving, for a half an hour.
The sun was coming up around this time. A note filled the air, and all six humans and all twelve dogs looked to the sky, just in time to see the terrible flash of green red and white light. The dogs seemed to curse, and turned towards Vesuvius, which had begun to rumble.
All six humans, standing at various points throughout the ruins, turned towards the rumbling just in time to see a terrible jet of fire erupt from it. The jet seemed to curve and swirl through the air, headed straight for the ancient city. All twelve dogs barked as one, and something shone in the air; the jet of fire-now obviously not a jet of fire, but rather a streaming, airborne flow of lava, crashed onto the air 50 meters above the center of the ancient city. All six humans leapt to the ground, as the molten magma flowed down the sides of an invisible, overturned bowl. When they looked back up, the lava had cooled, and they were inside a rocked dome, lit from some unknown source. They ran quickly toward the point they had been at before, which was just off the center of the city, and only a short way off the ground.
There sat a cat, with a tangled and marred collar, and a golden symbol on its forehead.
"Well, now you’re sure fucked," it snickered in a feminine voice, in Italian and English at once.
The six of them stared at it, and then had their attention called away by a loud crumbling to the east. Approaching them was a statue.
"That would be an ancient resident of Pompeii," the cat whispered slyly to them. "I recommend you avoid them. They’re zombies now. Gonna be damned hard to kill, too. Made of stone, and they aren’t in there themselves. Bodies rotted a long time ago."
Several of the dogs ran towards them.
"You goddamn fucking retarded HUMANS!" one of the dogs screamed in a voice befitting a father of gods.
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posted by Pope Richard Corey at 9:41 PM
1 Comments:
Bravo, remarkable idea
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