Disclaimer: I don't own Worm or any of its characters. Worm is the property of Wildbow aka John McCrae. However, my gaming group does own the original characters.
Session 4: Clark Horowitz
Written by WantonConstruct
January 1st, 2011
"~...Six strippers stripping, FIIIIIVE KEYS OF BLOOOOW, four grand in cash, three fat blunts, two college girls, and some really awesome heaaaaad!~"
It's times like this that I wish I could shitpost in real life. Ian and Nick were absolutely piss drunk as they climbed up the stairs behind me, repeating the most horribly illegal version of that song I'd even heard. Wasn't even theirs either; some dude started singing it at like 1:30 and everybody else just started joining in afterwards.
Thankfully we were closed tomorrow and off the next day, so that was something. Can't wait for the hangover tomorrow to kill me all the way to fucking death. I was having a bit of difficulty walking a straight line as is, and I had no idea how those two guys were still on their feet, or still singing on pitch.
After the fourth attempt to get the door open, we made our way inside and flopped onto our respective couch beds. I thought I would feel a bit better once I was horizontal but the room insisted on spinning just to spite me. Time to get some advice from people who've done this before.
"Nick? How do I make the room stop spinning?"
Nick just gave a bit of a grunt at first. "Mmmm? Rooms do that. They hate you. And me."
That was honestly about as helpful as expected.
"Put your *hic*, sorry, put one foot on the floor. Always worked for me."
That piece of advice seemed to work like a charm. Or black magic. One of the two. Whatever, I was still trying to figure out what curves we are five years ahead of right now. What was I doing in 2011 anyway? I hadn't joined Tumblr yet, and the things that robbed hours of my life everyday were restricted to dramatic blog readings on YouTube and Minecraft. Fuck, I don't even think I was out as Ace yet. As far as internet history is concerned, 5 years was an eternity.
Might as well get some story time going to distract me from the building nausea. "What were you guys doing back in 2011 anyway?"
"Shit man, I'm not *hic* entirely sure. I think that was….fuck...still junior or senior year of *hic* high school but I can't math right now. Pretty sure I was tryna get diamond in SCII and screwing around with girls or something," Nick drawled.
"I was putting together auditions for music schools right around now." That was Ian. "Trying to hit the mid January deadlines and shit."
"Why did you end up going into software engineering anyway? Didn't you get in for music too? Your parents make you do it?"
Ian laughed. "That was my decision, not my parents'. My dad still gives me shit over it occasionally, but not like I can do anything about it now."
"Wait, why?" I asked. "We're in the Wormverse as people who are so fucking dead they weren't even alive to begin with. Hard to get more blank slate than that. It's a new year, you could make music your new year's resolution or something. Hell we all could, and become like a super postmodern hipster band for shiggles." Ian chuckled but Nick stayed eerily silent. I guess the joke wasn't that funny. Let's try another. "Speaking of new year's resolutions, I have exactly one that I truly care about. And that is to successfully prank call the real Coil, with the dumbest shit I can think of, just to piss him off. Because Coil is an asshole."
"Please don't," Nick growled. "I'm not suicidal just yet. 'Sides, how would you even get his number?"
"Eh, details," I said with a wave of the hand for effect. I already had a list of phone numbers corresponding to 'Thomas Calvert's in Brockton Bay from when we went to the thrift store, or at least the three that were publicly listed and searchable in the 5 minutes I spent. With any luck one of those is him. If not I can always find some time to look a little more.
If we talked about anything else past that point, I don't remember it.
-ooo-
The scraping sound of metal on concrete is already pretty hard to deal with at the best of times, let alone while dealing with a hangover. Well, more like a hangover lite; I didn't actually feel that horribly awful, but Nick was just about finished making good friends with the toilet.
Also someone had been kind enough to put on some coffee. When and/or where did we get a coffee pot anyway?
Nick had the right idea; coffee first, questions later.
I jumped a little once Ian walked back in the room, face completely red, as he'd been the source of the scraping sounds from outside. "How bad is it outside?" I asked.
"Could be worse. Wasn't too much snow to clear."
"How the hell are you okay?" Nick groaned. "You drank more than me, and I just got moving like half an hour ago."
Ian laughed. "When the German gives out, the Irish kicks in, and if needed my Cuban mestizo side lends a hand. So we got the day off and some pocket change from the last couple of days. Any ideas?"
I suggested that we try and hit up a library for some computer use, just to try and get a grounding on current events and such. Nick was pretty adamant about food, and after that trying to get some more clothes.
A little over a half hour later, I found out that my shitposting itch would remain unscratched until we either got our own computer or those temp visas came in. On the one hand, I get needing some type of ID, I really do. The library is trying to cover its own ass if we happen to be dirty hackers using their facilities for selling government secrets or child porn or whatever.
On the other I'm still really pissed off about it. It was like the only part of the day I was seriously looking forward to.
Lunch was alright, settled for sandwiches out of a deli, nothing fancy. Ian did seem really skittish though about this one guy in the line. Greasy hair, very early 20s, looked southern European of some type, with a bit of a crook to his nose. No idea what that was about though; I'll ask him about it later.
What I didn't expect to be doing today is to find an open Sam Ash, but I'm not complaining. If you ever want to see a faithful recreation of the kid-in-a-candy-store face, put an Ibanez RGA 7 stringer in Nick's hands. I also didn't expect to kill pretty much the rest of the day there, between trying out all the different drum sets and trying to dictate the bass lines from some of the Starbound tracks to Ian. All things considered, it was a pretty good day.
-ooo-
January 5th, 2011
This week was the first full week that we'd be working, and the first chance to settle into a routine. Moving a bunch of shit in and out of the basement took up the morning from about 11 onwards. Most of it was just food and liquor, occasionally some computer equipment that was heavy as fuck. Not sure what it was being used for because we weren't replacing any of the card readers and scheduling machines behind the bar anyway.
I'd start busing tables at around 3 along with Rico and Paulie, while Ian and Nick would alternate behind the bar, and that would be take up the rest of the day, until about 11. All things considered I found it boring as all hell, so I spent that time trying to come up with ways to possibly warn people about Ziz. I really couldn't think of anything that would seriously work according to what Ian told me of this world, so it was an exercise in futility, but it passed the time. 3 dollars in quarters and a payphone might be fun, but certainly not for very long.
I swear when I get access to a computer I might give up and make a PHO thread titled "ZIZ SMELLS" and have the body be "by the way: Canberra, Aussie-land, watch out for her in late February. She'll make you guys smell too."
On Monday morning, we'd headed down to the precinct to try and see what the deal was with the temp IDs. We were told we'd have them by the end of the week, which was mildly annoying but whatever.
Wednesday was different though, mostly due to the fact that there was live music. Which is apparently a major draw of the original place, and our coworkers mentioned it at any point in time. Or maybe they did and I wasn't paying attention, which was also completely possible.
Towards the end of my shift, I saw that Nick was really pissed off about something. That's normal for Ian, but not for Nick.
"Why the angry face?" I asked. Nick jumped a bit.
"Don't worry about it. Just somebody being a dick is all." I wasn't entirely convinced that was it, but I wasn't going to press the issue. A few minutes later, he turned back to me.
"How do you like the setup there?" he asked, pointing at the little stage corner.
"Uh...Iunno, looks kinda cozy. The girl on the piano up there seems to not have too much of a problem with it." Pretty good rendition of 'Yellow Brick Road' too.
"How'd you feel about playing up there in front of a small crowd here?"
I had to think about that for a moment. "I'm not entirely certain. I mean, I played a bit of percussion in the high school orchestra, but that wasn't the same thing; you're one person in a group of a few dozen people at least. Being up in a small group or by yourself is a different experience, I'd imagine."
"You're right, it is different, but the gap really isn't all that large between the two. How'd you feel about getting up there on Saturday?"
"Wait what? Why would I be up there on Saturday afternoon? What did you do?"
"Well I didn't do anything yet, but I talked to Kevin about it, and he was also pretty on board with the idea if we could find a way to source some instruments from a pawn shop or something." Nick shrugged his shoulders a tad. "Ian also didn't have any complaints."
"Is that because you didn't ask him yet?"
"Pleading the 5th," Nick said with a smile.
A few hours later, we went upstairs to ask Ian what he thought about the idea, but he was already out cold on the couch bed. The third empty bottle in 6 days was probably not a good sign. Nick kicked him in the side.
"Jesus fucking…ow...the fuck was that for?" Ian grumbled. "It's still nighttime. Where's the fire?"
"No fire, but one burning question. How'd you feel about being one of the acts on Saturday?"
Ian looked at Nick, and then at me. "You're fine with the idea?" he asked.
"Do we honestly have anything better to do?" Seriously. I was bored to goddamn tears without a computer, truth be told. My hobbies up until universe transplant all required a computer with an internet connection, and largely revolved around writing mods and sprites for games that haven't come out yet. It doesn't matter what game you're playing; if you can have a gun that shoots ramen and fishcakes at people it will always be funny.
And because Leviathan sucks, some of them never will. I'm really good at making myself sad.
-and then Ian turned back to Nick with a sigh. "With what instruments?"
"I wormed an extra $200 out of Kevin for whatever we can get at a pawn shop." Ian rubbed his eyes for a bit, seeming like he was thinking it over.
"Fine. When do you want to get them?"
"Tomorrow; wake up bright and early and get there as soon as possible. They probably open around 9 anyway. You can pass out now."
Ian instead sat up further. "No, fuck you, you woke me up. Besides, did you give any thought to what we're gonna actually play? Put any thought into it at all?"
I knew the only correct answer to this one. "Undertale. We're covering Undertale. It'll be so hipster that it hasn't even been written yet." I couldn't even keep a straight face while saying it.
Nick slapped me in the back of the head. I guess I deserved that one but I don't care it was completely worth.
"Truth be told," I followed up, "I have absolutely no idea what we're going. I just kind of agreed because I figured I would end up improvising anyway." I turned to Nick next. "Did you actually have an idea or were you completely winging this?"
"Woah, woah, hear me out," Nick said, holding up his hands in defense. "Just stick to simple covers of reasonable moneymakers. We'll figure it out tomorrow. I know you know a bunch of songs, and I know you're good enough to piece together what you don't know. And you've seen that Clark is good enough to follow along. Remember last February?"
Ian smiled a bit. "Fine. I guess we'll write up a set list tomorrow then?"
Sounded like a plan.
-ooo-
The next morning proved to me that even in this universe where I didn't have a computer to keep my attention until 4 A.M, I was still decidedly not a morning person.
I was also confused as to how we ended up in the Sam Ash from Saturday instead of the pawn shop like Nick suggested. He gave me a conspiratory wink that did not help my nerves in the slightest while he told us to go grab the instruments we liked.
Ian and I didn't budge. "Dude. We have 200 bucks. The fuck can we get with that?" I asked while Ian just stared at him.
Nick sighed before pulling a credit card basically out of his ass.
"Nick..." Ian growled. He looked like he was about a half second away from throttling the guy.
"Please explain before Ian murders you," I pleaded.
"Alright here's the deal," Nick started. "You know how I was pissed off last night?" he asked me. It rang a bell but I let him continue. "Well, I'm a frat officer. You guys know this. You also no doubt know the shit most frats get about the whole date rape culture thing right?
We nodded.
"Well as much as I fucking hate that very concept, it is a thing that happens in some frats. It takes a lax upbringing and a generous set of circumstances for someone to think that it's a good idea. A plurality of frats know this and actively try to combat it whenever they see it. None of the fucking social media shit ever reports on this because it doesn't generate clicks, but I can tell you honestly that my frat for certain has a thing where we are good at spotting other guys who fit the frat mold, especially when they try and pull some shit like spiking someone's drink."
"Is that what you were pissed off about yesterday?" I ventured.
"Yep. The scumbag went to the bathroom after spiking his date's drink. Luckily they both got the same wine, so I could swap them. Dude was too fucked by the time he left to realize I took his card, and he won't be awake to cancel it for another few hours. And if this particular card is anything like its counterpart back home, he's got at least a 5 grand limit on it."
Ian just stared at him while I tried to process what happened.
"Are we profiteering from a prevented date-rape?" I asked in a quiet voice after a few seconds. "Because if so I'm not sure how to feel about that." Is there a way I'm supposed to feel about this? Because if there is I have no shame in admitting to a failure here.
Ian took a deep breath. "Don't fucking do something like this again," he said. "At the absolute minimum, warn us next time. And I mean that as the absolute minimum. Otherwise I swear I'm breaking your jaw." He looked over at me and then back at Nick, much calmer this time. "Let's get this shit over with."
-ooo-
We ended up using the money Nick weaseled out of Kevin as cab fare more than anything else to carry everything back. I wished I waited for a different cab, because listening to the current driver curse a mile a minute in Hebrew made me feel just a little more homesick. Sometimes it's the little things that really kill you.
I was real happy to get out of that cab.
When our shifts ended early at around 8, so began the process of taking a level in Bard. Figuring out which songs we knew, along with those that we could feasibly play with three people.
"So right off the bat, anything by Iron Maiden is out. We need two guitars and a bass to do any of their songs properly, and I don't think any of us have Bruce Dickinson's range," Nick started.
"If we're covering shit, we can just drop the octave if need be, but otherwise agreed. As much as I'd like to do some Guns'n'Roses, we also can't plausibly cheat there," Ian stated. "Early Green Day maybe? 'Basket Case' or 'Longview'?"
"I like that idea; maybe some Nirvana too? 'Smells Like Teenage Spirit'?"
"Sure," I cut in, "just make sure Ian's drunk for that one because no one is supposed to understand what the hell Kurt Cobain was singing. Not even Kurt Cobain." Authenticity is important dammit.
"Officer I swear to drunk I'm not god. Anyway, back to the topic at hand; how heavy do we want to go? We could probably get away with some Pantera right?"
"Probably not the crowd for it. Later maaaaybe? If you want to do that, Motorhead works better."
By the time we all agreed on something, it was 1:30 in the morning. Being a pen and paper Bard was infinitely easier than being one in real life. At least we weren't writing these from scratch.
[SPOILER="Set List"]
Motorhead - Ace of Spades
Green Day - Welcome to Paradise
Nirvana - Smells Like Teenage Spirit
Lit - My Own Worst Enemy
RHCP - Under the Bridge
[/SPOILER]
The whole of Friday was spent in our rented-but-not-rented room during the selections. Nick for whatever reason volunteered us for this Saturday instead of next, which would have made sense. But maybe, just maybe, we could make it work. We did manage to come up with a list of songs that we all knew after all. After a solid 14 hours of practice, I was starting to believe this wouldn't end up being terrible.
Saturday afternoon rolled up on top of us and I had the butterflies as we got everything set up. Truth be told I wasn't worried at all about the main focus which would be drums. No, my real concern is that I was supposed to be singing. Granted, back home, my voice was real nasally on a good day, and that seemed to have improved somewhat upon being wrenched over here, but it really wasn't something I was comfortable with. So when Murphy decided to fart on my mic and kill it all the way to death, I took that as a blessing in disguise.
All in all, the set went about as well as I could have hoped. Got a massive round of applause and everything, and we even had a few hundred bucks thrown in the tip case. Not bad at all. There was this one blonde girl who was staring really intensely at Ian the whole time. Not like 'I'm going to murder you, then rez you then murder you again' kind of stare, more of a several disappointed mother vibe if that made any sense. Which it didn't considering she was like 23 years old max. I decided to just drop the thought.
I was moving the drum set back up the stairs when Rico caught up to me.
"Holy shit man, way to fucking go! You never told me you guys were musicians! Were those all original songs? I recognized the Motorhead one but none of the others."
"No, those were all popular covers," I replied. "I mean, we even picked Green Day and RHCP for our set list."
"Who?"