This chapter in particular isn't as amusing as the rest. It's more to explain what's going on, where I've ditched the Angela/Duran/Carlie save state and why I don't write up Kevin (aside from the fact that I've never used his character).
I'm also forcing myself to now write in Microsoft Word, where it will automatically spell-check for me. I didn't realize how many spelling errors I had made in the last story until I read it on I'm disappointed in myself.
Save Menu
tink tink
...
tink tink tink
Angela tapped the wall with her staff, again giving off that strange tinkling noise. It was like she was hitting one of the bottles in Jose's laboratory, the ones with funny shapes. It gave a hollow sound, rather than the proper noise glass made when it was hit.
If it didn't sound so anachronistic, you could describe it as how it sounded when you hit your television screen or monitor, if you didn't use an LED screen.
"Hello?" Angela called out. "Can anybody hear me?"
"Carlie can!"
"Dear Goddess, no," Angela muttered under her breath.
She was what could be described as a long, rectangular box-like room. On all sides she was surrounded by an invisible glass wall: the room was wide enough for her to stretch out comfortably and tall enough so she didn't feel claustrophobic. The walls gave off an eerie green glow that gradually changed colour as it hit the ceiling; the floor was a dark forest green, but as it went upwards it turned into a lighter emerald. Oddly enough, her and Carlie's names were written on the floor in white text, along with some assorted numbers that Angela couldn't understand. At the far end of the room was Duran's name, but something had mangled the characters so his name actually read 'duRN' and the rest was an illegible mess of ASCII.
In short, Angela was trapped in a small room with Carlie.
"I've died and gone to Hell," Angela said blankly.
"Not quite, m'Lady, but bloody close," a strange voice said nearby. "If you could pop y'self over the wall, we could have a nice l'il chat to pass the time."
"Eh?" the Crown Princess of Altena said.
"Find somethin' t'give y'self a l'il boost," the voice said. "The ceilin's not solid, bit like chattin' up your next door neighbour over the back fence."
Angela found the reference odd and the accent even odder. Clearly the guy didn't have a clue who he was talking to, but on the other hand Angela was even more mystified and curious about the speaker. She hopped up, arms passing through the ceiling layer, and grabbed the top ledge of the barrier. A mad scramble helped lever herself up, and soon Angela managed to sit on top of the glass wall and look around.
It was quite queer, she decided. The room was floating in empty white space, absolute nothingness. There was a similar room in front and behind her; turning around, Angela spotted the speaker, sitting atop his own wall. He raised an eyebrow at Angela's costume.
"Fancy y'self a night in the red-light district?" he asked casually.
"What are you talking about?" Angela demanded. "And who are you?"
"I?" the male asked. He was quite odd-looking: a furry coat, rough pants and a beanie made up his clothes. "I am Kevin, Prince of the Beastmen." He did a bow, which had to prove that he was a prince: only royalty would attempt such a maneuvre on top of such a risky position. Certainly didn't dress like one though - didn't royalty come with some fashion sense, at least? "And who might you be?"
"Crown Princess Angela of Altena, daughter of Her Royal Highness Queen Valda, the Queen of Reason," Angela said haughtily.
"And a g'day to you too, mate."
Angela blinked. "What's with your accent?"
"Kevin don't know," Kevin answered. He gestured at his room. "Kevin think room might be problem."
Angela leaned over to get a better look at Kevin's 'room'. It was similar to hers, without Carlie running around it. It read Kevin's name, but where there should be numbers there were a bunch of random symbols.
"Methinks there is a programming error that the programmers art attempting to resolve," Kevin said. "My character normally has an accent, a poor understanding of the English language, but something keeps changing it."
"Where is this place, anyway?" Angela asked.
"Some sort of limbo." Kevin paused, decided that this accent (a southern Ontario/northeastern American) was best, and kept speaking. "A save menu. See, you might not believe this, but our world isn't real. It's the invention of some higher superpower."
Angela slowly nodded. "O-kay..."
"Visualize it like this: The Goddess creates a world, complete with gods and magic and all that nice stuff. Then she copies it so she has three miniature universes. They're the exact same to start with, but different people cause different things to happen."
"Like...a parallel universe?" Angela asked.
"Yes. Only that at one time can one of these universes be running. The rest are on pause. Nobody notices except for the Chosen Ones. The Goddess can switch between universes, but only one can be working at a time."
"Let me see if I have this straight," Angela said. "The Goddess creates three identical worlds, but only one of them works at a time."
"Right. Now let's call these worlds save states and the Goddess Squaresoft..." Kevin stopped when he saw Angela's face darken. "This can't be good."
"My last experience with the words 'save state' did not end well," Angela warned. "Keep talking."
"It's just a name!" Kevin protested. "Anyway, something - not even Squaresoft knows what - has been altering the reality in these worlds. They've decided that the best thing to do is run just one save state - the one with the most problems - so they can work out most of the problems. It's long and tedious work for Them and just boring for us to have to wait.
"I think I understand the situation now," Angela said thoughtfully. "Something's infected our three identical worlds, so it's safer for us to stay out the way and let a god take care of it."
"Exactly," Kevin nodded. "It's going to take a week, at least." He produced a deck of cards covered in odd symbols from his coat and laid them on a magically-apparating table. "Since we've got time to kill, up for learning how to play Go Fish?"
Note about the 'best' accent: I think this accent is the best, but only because I live in southern Ontario and speak with it myself. Apparently North America is the only place where the people will pronounce the 'r' sound properly all the time. Really! I forget the name of the phenomenon. For example, I pronounce 'barbecue' as 'BAR-beh-cue', while others are likely to say 'BAH-beh-cue'. Which doesn't make sense to me: if there's an 'r' in the word, you pronounce it, right? I tried reading the story aloud, getting rid of the 'r' sounds in the middle of the words, and had to stop after a few sentences because I sounded so strange.
Or maybe I'm just a little more eccentric than most. But I also can't be bothered to make fun of an accent if I don't know one well enough. I spent a week in London with my aunt, who has a Chinese-Scottish-English accent, and that was strange. Also, I don't know how 'improper' Kevin's English is: I'd spend more time correcting it than working on the story itself.
Sunday, January 2, 2005