Part 39: 20:09-21:39: A Sobering Conversation With The Crab Man

Chapter 39: 20:09-21:39: A Sobering Conversation With The Crab Man



ARIST: [Medium: Success] Before you head into the church, go talk to Acele about her incredibly sketchy compatriots.





ACELE: "Oh, that... you're not gonna believe me. There's no point in me telling you."



ACELE: "Okay," she nods. "I went in and saw a woman next to one of those machines there. Noid calls it a *mainframe*..."



ACELE: "And then, you know, right behind her a man *crawled down the wall*. Upside down, like a crab. Down the church wall. I think the woman didn't even know he was there, he was completely silent... He stopped right before he got to the floor, then just hung there like that, looking at me. Right at me. I fucking turned around and walked out. End of story."



 "Oh, yeah. You missed a lot in there, Kim."

ACELE: "It was too dark." She shakes her head. "I couldn't tell exactly."



ACELE: "He looked like a banger, okay?  He was all muscular and stuff. Had a mesh tanktop. I know it sounds ridiculous, but that only made it scarier, in a way..."
KIM KITSURAGI: "A crab *and* a banger?" The lieutenant raises an eyebrow.







ACELE: "Of course I do. I just don't tell people about my friends and who they are and so on. I don't provide information on them."






ARIST: [Medium: Success] You can hear the creaking of wood succumbing to rot, to base entropy, as it sways in the wind. It can't be safe to step foot in there. But what have you got to lose at this point?



CHURCH DOORS: The lock turns easily. You hear a click as the shackle pops open.



INLAND EMPIRE: [Medium: Success] As you do, you hear an echo of the Doomed Commercial Area. Its black halls and dusty machines. Then the feeling passes.
CHURCH DOORS: A great whoosh of air rushes into the dark innards of the church, as though rushing to fill a great vacuum...

















ARIST: [Challenging: Success] You find yourself wandering around the inside of the church, aimlessly taking note of the detritus scattered messily thoughout, when you suddenly take note not just of the massive hole, but where that hole is—what used to fill the emptiness.



ENCYCLOPEDIA: [Easy: Success] This is Her Innocence Dolores Dei.





STAINED GLASS WINDOW: The world is silent, but for the creaks and cracks of the massive wooden structure behind you. It covers you from the wind outside.
PERCEPTION (HEARING): [Medium: Success] The ocean feels distant. Its ebb and flow blocked off by the centuries old pinewood sarcophagus around you.







KIM KITSURAGI: "It's a minor landmark, not easy to find. Most maps misplace it..." He lowers his voice. "It was built not long after Revachol's founding, 300 or so years ago by first-generation settlers."



KIM KITSURAGI: "There used to be seven stave churches on the coast. Les Sept Souers they call them—The Seven Sisters. Only one remains. The rest were burnt in the Revolution, or used for building materials. We should be respectful here, although the building appears to be deserted. I do not believe we'll find the instigator here. Something else, perhaps..." He looks at the machinery lying around.

ARIST: [Formidable: Success] I would often go there. To the tiny church there. The smallest church in Saint-Saëns—though it once was larger.
How the rill may rest there. Down through the mist there. Toward the seven sisters—toward those pale cliffs there
I would often stay there. In the tiny yard there. I have been so glad here—looking forward to the past here
But now you are all alone. None of this matters, now, none of this matters, at all.



KIM KITSURAGI: "I have a theory, yes." There's a pause, then he continues: "There was a police raid a while back. I heard the place was shot to pieces."



KIM KITSURAGI: "Well... your Station was involved, I hear. Although I can't be sure."





KIM KITSURAGI: "Good luck. You will not get information on a confidential operation from your station secretary just by calling. If you really don't remember—it might be better to keep this one forgotten."







ENCYCLOPEDIA: More. An innocence is elected to office by the Founding Party, a precedent that has taken place a mere six times in the entirety of History. The legal system of the Reál Belt is built to acommodate innocentic rule, should it coincide with our time.




ARIST: I'm not doing the whole song again but pretend I did the last line.



ENCYCLOPEDIA: Many things. You know she was a woman of the court, the wife of an influential *marchese*, and eventually the principal advisor to Irene La Navigateur, Queen of Suresne (modern day Sur-la-Clef). Also, that she was gorgeous beyond beauty.




ENCYCLOPEDIA: Terribly. Women of the court were expected to play both contract bridge and chess sufficiently well to prove an interesting challenge to a man—a similar grasp in matters of philosophy, theology, and science was encouraged. She was, by all means, a kept woman... She made the most of her position in the Antedolorian court—a court visited by the most prominent thinkers and artists of the day. In secret, she was becoming the era's pre-eminent philosopher of the state. A scalpel, a piercing gaze.



ENCYCLOPEDIA: It was on her advice that Irene La Navigateur sponsored a number of voyages into the pale. A costly, often tragic endeavour, ultimately vindicated by the discovery of the *New New World*, the piece of reality you're standing on.



ENCYCLOPEDIA: Wow indeed. When her innocence was declared—and the queen she had advised for years fell on her knees before her—she was so overcome with emotion that her *lungs* started *glowing* in her chest.




ENCYCLOPEDIA: In a city called Advesperascit, in Vesper-Messina, her homeland. The name of the city means 'Evening comes,' but it happened on a winter's morning with the canals frozen and slush falling out of the sky.



ENCYCLOPEDIA: Oh yes... She looked like humanity's young mother, a perfect mother. Insultingly beautiful. It was as if her face and shoulders and hands were covered in a soft down of under-feathers. You know this well—very well.




ENCYCLOPEDIA: Something that had walked in our midst, watching us stumble for hundreds, if not thousands of years, until it decided to interfere--interfere in the course of our history. 'We were supposed to come up with this ourselves!' the man was reported to have screamed at the innocence... Dolores Dei was shot in the chest with a fowling piece, eight times. The man, thought to be insane, said he once touched her and her body had been unnaturally warm, like a furnace—and that sometimes while on duty he observed her forgetting to breathe for over ten minutes...



ENCYCLOPEDIA: *Terrifying* is a term too emotionally charged for your semantic memory. Or what remains of it, but... 



ENCYCLOPEDIA: You already do. Although she is often considered to be the greatest human being to ever live, there *was* something ominous about Dolores Dei—constantly surrounded by her Therriers...



ENCYCLOPEDIA: The Mesque state tried to detach itself from innocentic rule. Parts of the world were experiencing whiplash from accelerating into secularism. Her mandatory education programs and mass resettlement of upstream Magritte were problematic as well. Dissenters were suppressed by a military force she called "The Army of Humanity."
RHETORIC: [Medium: Success] Suggesting those who fight against it are not part of humanity.

ARIST: [Challenging: Success] Oh, is *that* all?
INLAND EMPIRE: [Challenging: Success] Why do we always look backwards for saviors who can never come?

ENCYCLOPEDIA: She adored chess, yes—but also military war games. Dolores Dei often holds a tiny tin soldier between her index finger and thumb—in icons such as this. She was also blonde, the blondest woman you have ever seen, with green eyes the colour of the Pisantic *mare interregnum*... Little is known of her marchese husband. It's as if he vanished from history after completing his role— which was to introduce Dolores Dei to court. In conclusion, yes, there *is* something lonely, paranoid, and even terrifying that people seldom mention, but *feel* when they think of her...

INLAND EMPIRE: [Medium: Success] What is seen is what is looked for. 

KIM KITSURAGI: Lieutenant-yefreitor, you've stood there for over five minutes..." The lieutenant's calm voice echoes in the cold air of the church.



KIM KITSURAGI: "Okay..." He takes his glasses off to clean them. Then, after a while, he says: 






VISUAL CALCULUS: Unknown.






VISUAL CALCULUS: And then along the left side: APRÉS LE MONDE - LE GRIS; APRÉS LE GRIS - LE MONDE DE NOUVEAU.



KIM KITSURAGI: "...death, life again," he nods. "After the world, the pale; after the pale—the world again."







ARIST: [Medium: Success] As you lower your head, you continue to feel her watching over you.



\

REACTION SPEED: Don't be so pessimistic. Love doesn't die that easily!




ARIST: [Medium: Success] Uhhh... sure. Get right on that. But not right now! You have a *crab man* to find!




ARIST: [Easy: Success] Hey, this isn't a crab man! It's just a stupid computer! Boooooo!

KIM KITSURAGI: "Another radiocomputer," says the lieutenant, stepping closer. "And this time it's already turned on." He seems cautious around the machine.
ESPRIT DE CORPS: [Medium: Success] These machines sometimes harbour traps, he thinks—alarm systems and the like. Let's be careful.



KIM KITSURAGI: "It's also quite similar to the one we have down at the station. Must be the same model." He inspects the machine's framework, careful not to touch anything.
INTERFACING: [Medium: Success] The one you saw earlier was the Rehm Civic—this is the Rehm *Prefect*, a model number RC7024. equipped with a Feld mainframe and a Rehm-compatible Interim printer.



MAINFRAME: You see virescent PLAY and PRINT buttons on the keyboard. A hatch connected to the central compartment is wide open. 



MAINFRAME: Behind the hatch sits a cube-like crisscross of filaments, smouldering in the dark like fireflies. Silver tape on the side says in a black marker: "LOG (FEB-MAR)".



MAINFRAME: The speaker comes to life, static seeps through the machine's planar magnetic driver. An old lady greets you, her voice sounds a hundred years old...





EAST-INSULINDIAN REPEATER STATION: "Good. Please repeat the password."



EAST-INSULINDIAN REPEATER STATION: "Received. I will *register* this log-in attempt."



EAST-INSULINDIAN REPEATER STATION: "I have two machines registered to this company name in Martinaise—one on Saint-Brune, the other on Rue de Saint-Ghislaine."
KIM KITSURAGI: "Saint-Brune—that's the church," the lieutenant gestures around him, "and Rue de Saint-Ghislaine, that's the Doomed Commercial Area."



EAST-INSULINDIAN REPEATER STATION: "Sleep well, Fortress Accident."




ARIST: [Medium: Success] Getting kinda antsy waiting for this crab man. Wait, were they pranking you? When you get out of here, give those punks a piece of your mind!







PERCEPTION (HEARING): And then it's gone. Almost all of it—but for the faintest of hums.
LOGIC: [Medium: Success] It seems that sound here is detached from its source somehow, if not blotted out outright. Truly unusual.





KIM KITSURAGI: The lieutenant points to his ears and shakes his head. Then he leans closer.



KIM KITSURAGI: "I wonder why the... church was built with such strange acoustics..."



KIM KITSURAGI: "Please, detective, not this again."




PERCEPTION (HEARING): The silence, the darkness—they've enveloped you, as in a cocoon. You cannot move anymore.










PERCEPTION (SIGHT): It's not a shadow anymore—becoming more substantial as it gets closer. The shape of an *animal* descends.
KIM KITSURAGI: "Officer, is there something up there?" The lieutenant follows your gaze, attempting to see whatever it is that you are seeing.





ARIST: [Impossible: Failure] CRAB! MAN! CRAB! MAN! CRAB! MAN!





VOLITION: [Trivial: Success] Don't.
LOGIC: [Trivial: Success] Seriously, this is the *worst* idea.
ARIST: [Impossible: Failure] Fuck those guys, go talk to the crab man!




Crab man crab man crab man

TIAGO: The man leans forward a little, fixing you with a steady, unreadable gaze, then speaks...



ARIST: [Challenging: Success] This might be the *one* scenario where that's a legitimately surprising thing for you to hear! It's still true though.



TIAGO: "Here you can receive the Mother's love, and, when you're ready, she will take your hand and lift you out of the despair at the bottom of the bottle."
KIM KITSURAGI: The lieutenant whispers to you, quietly. "This man is obviously a habitual narcotics user. Do we really need to question him?"
ESPRIT DE CORPS: [Medium: Success] I'm put off by this religious stuff, he thinks—and maybe the ceiling-climbing, too. It's all very hard to square with the lieutenant's own view of reality.




TIAGO: "I was like you once—just dragging my feet to the next bottle... Shit was dark, homes."
KIM KITSURAGI: "You know, actually, since we're here—you may actually want to pay attention to what the ceiling climber is saying."

ARIST: [Medium: Success] Kim? You agree with the crab man? Wow, never thought that'd happen. Though he's completely incontrovertibly right on this, no doubt about that.

VOLITION: [Challenging: Success] If the lieutenant agrees, then maybe, just maybe—you should pay attention?




TIAGO: "This is the Church of the Mother of Silence. You are welcome here." He sways gently on the beams, waiting for you to take it all in.
RHETORIC: [Medium: Success] You have no idea what the fuck he's talking about. Is he just trying to throw you off your game?
COMPOSURE: [Medium: Success] Whatever it is, he's quite confident about it—just look how gracefully he sways.




(This joke has been removed due to a copyright claim by the Walt Disney Corporation, but also it was really only there out of a sense of obligation and wasn't funny so don't feel too bad about missing it)

TIAGO: He considers this for a moment. "I always thought of myself more like a *flame*. Flickering along the rafters and beams." He pauses. "It may be that I gotta work on my technique."



TIAGO: "Sure am. Whittling wood used to be something I just did to busy my hands..."





TIAGO: He frowns. "That's not really the point, ese. You gotta give yourself over to service... Service of the Mother, that is..."
KIM KITSURAGI: "Do you remember your name, sir?"
AUTHORITY: [Medium: Success] The lieutenant is not particularly interested in this information. He's just trying to assert some control over the conversation.
TIAGO: "Tiago is my name. But those syllables don't mean much to me these days. A name isn't just your identity but also, so to speak..."




TIAGO: "This is a special place. There's a perforation in the world up there. A way out, into nothingness." He nods toward the ceiling. "This church was built around it, for purposes of veneration."



TIAGO: "No, no, no, there's a *new* god in town. And she can't be painted or sculpted, because she has no limbs or even a face. She is the end."



TIAGO: "I will be incinerated, but not destroyed—finally at one with the state of the world before reality began."

ARIST: [Challenging: Success] Metal.



TIAGO: "It's not like that at all, man. It's just faith and joyful service."



TIAGO: He shakes his head. "I've heard that before, wey, and I know I can't convince you on the spot. But think--when's the last time you woke up from *silent communion* with a hangover, regretting what you did last night?



TIAGO: He looks at you gravely. "She took you for a good spin, huh? Don't worry, bro, that love is but a drop compared to the ocean of the Mother's love..."





TIAGO: He laughs. "I don't mean *literal* singing, homes. This is the Mother of Silence we're talking about. It's the singing of a burning heart..."



TIAGO: "Hard to say. I think I did some construction work here, back when I still had material worries. Up there, I realized what the true purpose of the church was... Been spending a lot of time here ever since. The past is nothing to me now, wey. It didn't belong to me."




TIAGO: "Something like that," he responds, his voice suddenly flat.
KIM KITSURAGI: "Did you witness it?"



INLAND EMPIRE: [Challenging: Success] Feed the world with castoffs from the old you, and watch the empty grow—outside and in. 




TIAGO: "Why not? They wouldn't bother me none. I'm usually way up there, imbibing. Ain't no music on Earth that can reach where I go. Might even be nice to have some company..."



TIAGO: "Other spooker? Oh, esa viajita muy estudiosa!" He laughs. "Dunno, homes."



TIAGO: "No, I just call her 'viejita' because of her clothes, she's actually quite young..." He scratches his head. "Or maybe not *that* young... Age is just one of the many masks we wear."
REACTION SPEED: [Trivial: Success] Wait, what if it's Ruby?
KIM KITSURAGI: The lieutenant seems to be thinking the same. He takes out his little notebook: "Did it ever seem to you like she was hiding here from something?"
TIAGO: "You mean like a fugitive?" He glances at the abandoned radiocomputer on the other side of the nave, pulsing with light. Then he shakes his head. "No, man, quite the opposite—I don't think she cares much about authority, or anything else for that matter. Maybe only about her machines.
KIM KITSURAGI: "I see." The lieutenant seems contented with that answer. "And where is she now?"



TIAGO: "You just have to wait until she comes back or..." He shrugs.



TIAGO: "Too many times, ese. You need it for something?"



TIAGO: "Don't sweat it, vato. The password is 'AFTER LIFE DEATH.'"
INLAND EMPIRE: [Challenging: Success] That is true. But what comes after death?





Oh, absolutely.



ARIST: [Medium: Success] He's right. It doesn't seem like Ruby's been here. But you should still finish looking around.



We got a new thought from our crab man chat, and it's the most important one yet. 




ARIST: [Challenging: Success] All it took was a tiny push, one last flippant remark in the end. And from a crab man, no less! You'd understood the depths you'd sunk to before that, sort of, but the weight of all of it finally became too much to bear. He was an addict too, in his own way. Maybe it was less what he said and more what he showed about himself, what he was still giving away of himself to that beast. It's going to be hard. You managed to distract yourself with the case for the last few days and put it all off for Kim's benefit, but it's going to be hard. Actually, it's never going to be easy again. Just don't fucking flake on this. Not on this.



We're getting sober, everyone.