Chapter Twenty: Phrygian Mode
Aaaah, I see, so that's what it was for. My my my, aren't we paranoid!
If there's one thing that this ordeal has taught me, it's that one can never be too paranoid. Or as I'd rather put it, crazy prepared. I have been preparing my siblings for years for such situations. I have taken the initiative to come up with emergency protocol and attack patterns and covert methods of communication and drilling my siblings in all of that. Bowser, on the other hand, has done no such thing, can you imagine that? And he calls himself a King... As for what I've got going on right here, it's really quite ingenious, if I do say so myself...
You must be OODLES of fun for the other voices to listen to when you go off on these little self-congratulatory spiels. I'm going to leave you be for a while now to go torment your brother.
Wait... you don't mean that you're THAT voice, do you?
Mmmmaybe...
Ludwig put the quill and ink bottles away and slipped the paper he just wrote on into the book of the Austrian sign language book that he brought home from his mother's. He stared at the book, concentrating on its relative spatial coordinates within his mind, then brought out his wand to transport it to Larry's bedroom.
Larry has no scruples, buys into no one's ideology, follows no agenda but his own. If Junior has swayed him against me, it is only because he is being threatened - or bribed. I will assume both. However, he will gladly double cross Junior to his benefit if he can get away with it. His loyalty can therefore be bought back if I can prove to him that it will serve his self-interest more to play for my side than to play for Junior's.
And now to plan my next act... now, if I wanted to commit, and make a big show of it, how would I try to pull it off?
Meanwhile, Larry, who was still asleep (in his sister's sleeping bag, since he was too cheap to spend his own money on a new bed), popped out of his shell when the book that Ludwig teleported into his room landed on it. He squirmed around in the sleeping bag for a minute, irritated and frightened and confused, until he pulled his head out and saw the book and the message from Ludwig.
Oh great. I just got out of summer school and here I've got ANOTHER assignment!? Well, I can't complain too much if Ludwig has a plan to get that failed abortion out of my hair. I'm sick of getting blue balls from not being able to fap while playing video games because of HIM being in the room!
Larry yawned and scratched his tousled mohawk and went to his minifridge to get an energy drink.
...
Kamek teleported into his bedchamber, looking forward to unwinding from all the chores Bowser and his brat had assigned to him, but instead he found himself unwinding from the mess of tangled twine stretched all over his room. Some strands stretched from bookshelf to bookshelf, others were hung at the curtains, others wove through the crystal chandelier hanging from the top of the deep blue gold star decorated ceiling. In the center, suspended directly beneath the chandelier and directly over the sun in splendour rug, tied up at the throat like a fly caught in a spider's web was Ludwig.
"Well hello there Kamek. It seems you've arrived just in time for my... WOOHOOHOO final hour."
"Ludwig! What is the meaning of this..." Kamek fought his arms out of a snare of twine and tripped and landed himself in another snare. Cursing, he held out his wand with the intention of using it to cut the twine strands.
"Careful now, Kamek, sever this knot and you sever the thread from which hangs my very life. I do not reckon you wish for your hands to be so bloodied. WOOHOO but either way, I shall commit the deed myself momentarily..."
"WHAT?!" Kamek squirmed, becoming more tangled with every move with which he attempted to pull free. "What the BLAZES did you do to yourself?!"
Ludwig caressed the complicated mess of twine that had him by the throat. The part closest to his neck was very tightly twisted, kept from unraveling by binding knots tied out of strands that were tied to the chandelier. "This little masterpiece is known as the Phrygian Tourniquet. It was invented around three hundred years ago by Sir Alexander Copeland, seventeenth century real world philosopher, Renaissance man and great-grandfather of the mathematical discipline of topological knot theory."
"Poppycock, I am very well read in real-world literature I assure you, and I have never heard of a Sir Alexander Copeland-"
"OF COURSE YOU HAVEN'T!" Ludwig seized Kamek by his robe. "HIS LEGACY WAS LOST TO HISTORY! I only know because he appeared to me in a dream..." Ludwig's eyes rolled back into his head, a dementedly blissful smirk on his face. "And this is what he told me: the night before he died, he burned all of his life's work in a massive bonfire. By doing this, he set real world history a hundred years back, for he felt that his foolish ungrateful world was not yet ready for him, that they deserved to wait another century for the Enlightenment. And you know what? I cannot blame him - I know how it feels to be disowned on account of the LIES of my bastard brother!"
"Ludwig, cut it out, this isn't funny!"
"He died on January the first in the year sixteen hundred and sixteen anno domini, a bachelor, at the ripe old age of twenty-six. He was buried with little fanfare in a potter's field. Survived only by that BASTARD of a brother that I mentioned earlier, but his was soon to follow, for his hare-brained attempt to untie Sir Alexander resulted in the latter's demise, followed by murder charges, and ultimately a sentence to execution by garrote, so he could depart by way of ligature strangulation just as his brother did. Only the Phrygian was swifter and far more humane. But all went according to Sir Alexander's plan. Can you think of a more beautiful, poetic way to die? To exact revenge? Let alone BOTH, in one fell swoop?"
"L...Ludwig..."
"CAN YOU?" Ludwig yanked the tangled up Kamek forward.
"Ack! Well how could I?! I...I b-b-beg you to reconsider Master Ludwig, w-w-w...would it make any difference if I told you that I've figured out a p-p-perfectly reasonable explanation for this sudden shift in reality?"
Ludwig sighed, not expecting Kamek to come up with anything even remotely reasonable. Or at the very least, not full of holes and instantly refutable. "I'm listening..."
"I've traced the world line of our galaxy through local spacetime events and it seems that it zigzagged along the t-axis a bit when our planet fell into the black hole at the center of the galaxy, which then exploded and recreated the universe anew, only slightly different but that goes without saying, and interestingly, it seems that you remember things as they were before the time singularity-"
"Check your math Kamek. You're failing to take into account the existence of gravitational waves. A galactic core collapse of the magnitude you're describing would emit enough gravitational radiation to push us well out of range of the expanding event horizon." Ludwig's voice affected boredom and defeat as he rolled his eyes and twiddled the loop sticking out of the bound-up twist by his neck.
"Gravitational waves don't exist!"
"Yes they do."
"Well, they still haven't been observed."
"Yet. That doesn't change the fact that they do exist. Mark my words, before this decade is over somebody's gravitational wave detector in the real world will find irrefutable proof of their existence."
"ACK! Well what if I told you that His Majesty and His Highness were the ones that caused the whole galactic reboot to begin with?"
"Kamek... all right, let's suppose that actually did happen. Which means I don't remember it but SUPPOSING, I would have sabotaged whatever incredibly stupid thing they were doing and made sure that the black hole exploded under equivalent conditions to those during the time that the galaxy was FIRST born... but that's supposing a LOT. If you stand by this assertion regardless, it is your burden to prove how the universe could have just formed me the way I am all over again if Bowser doesn't go through the same motions to secure my parenthood as he did before the time singularity. I can settle it with a two hour DNA test if you have any doubts. But... I won't. I'm afraid my journey along this world line is nearing its end."
Ludwig pulled his claws inside the loop and stretched it by flexing his hand open, giggling as he felt the tourniquet tighten against the bobbing of his Adam's apple. "If changing things were as simple as throwing the whole galaxy into a black hole and and having it regenerate, I would have done it already. If Bowser could do it after all as you're saying... I happen to be number ONE in the galaxy at Space Wizards so if anybody knows what makes a black hole tick... if only it were that simple... if ONLY it were THAT SIMPLE! WOOHOO! WOOHOOHOO! WOOHOO...WAAHAAHAA! WAAAAHAAAHAAHAHAAAaaa...aaahahaaahaahaaAAAHH...ahaHAhahA HAAAH!"
Ludwig pulled himself up by two of the strings stretched over his head and leaned backward like a child riding a swing at a playground. "This world is but a stage, and we all are but actors cast from a cosmic theater troupe." Ludwig wound his left hand around a pair of strings. "We think we have free reign over our actions, but if you so happen to move a limb in the wrong direction..." Ludwig wound his right leg around a separate pair of strands. "...you find that there's a string tugging you back." Ludwig flexed his left hand, causing the strings wound around his leg to make his knee jerk. "And then you open your eyes and find that we're all just marionettes." Ludwig reached out with his right hand to tug what seemed like a random string, but it made the tangles around Kamek's wand tighten and lift him by the wand into the air. "There's a higher level of sentience that we lack - the sentience required to comprehend exactly what role we are playing in the grand scheme of things. Even once we think we've got it figured out, what's to stop the great tyrant in the sky from subjecting us to his cruel caprice by changing plays on us altogether! In the last show I was a prince. What role do I play in this one? A beggar? A fool? Or do I have to sit this one out? I don't even get to choose, it's the strings that decide! Let the strings move you along so you can see what kind of puppet you are, that's a goooood puppet, good puppet, BAD PUPPET!"
"AAACK!" Kamek hit the floor as Ludwig let go of the string with a backwards toss.
"I REJECT that kind of world! I would sooner strangle myself with the very strings with which they aim to control me!" Ludwig picked at the cords of twine that stretched out from his neck as though they were harp strings. He allowed his hands to slide down the rope, his face rich with exultance as though he were caressing silk velvet. "Yes, that's the only choice I have, that's one hundred percent mine to make!"
"MASTER LUDWIG! Don't..." cried Kamek as he tangled himself up trying to get off the sun rug.
"AND YOU WILL NOT TAKE THAT FROM ME! WOOHOO. WOO HOOHOO. WOOHOO HOOOO... all I need is to pull ONE little loop, pick a loop any loop, pull it all the way through until it sets off an unraveling chain reaction that maybe begins all the way over there but soon spreads to make THESE little knots to snap out of place to let THIS knot, accelerated by the unraveling of THOSE knots over there, twirl with such a torque that would have those evil drill wielding monsters known as dentists positively SEETHING with envy if they knew, and quicker than you can hear the sonic boom whip crack it will snip my carotids like bud blight off an ornamental rhododendron."
"Master Ludwig, please... DON'T DO THIS! DON'T THROW YOUR LIFE AWAY!"
Ludwig saw that Kamek's face was buried into his hat. He was sobbing.
"Oh, what's this? You actually care whether I live or die? Have you forgotten that I'm not your Prince anymore?"
"Master Ludwig, I don't know what's wrong with His Majesty, or what in the Underwhere His Highness is or where he came from. I've been trying but I just can't figure it out and to put it frankly, it's scaring me to death... but you, Ludwig..." Kamek reached up to take Ludwig's face. "I've done more to raise you than your father, I've cooked for you and done your chores, and after you got older I taught you how to cook and do your own chores; I disciplined you whenever you got to be too much of a stuck-up brat, I was there to see every one of those little stage productions you wrote and directed and performed at school even when your father wasn't, I was there every time you won an award, and every time some cheating award stealing mouthbreather, as you called them won an award instead and it was I who signed the papers they sent home when you got suspended for exacting some sort of revenge on said cheating award stealing mouthbreathers, and it was I who had the pleasure of training you in the magical arts and watching you develop into a full-fledged sorcerer. Nothing can change that, no black hole, no time paradox, no homewrecking changeling will ever change that, you will always be my Prince."
Kamek kissed Ludwig on the top of the head. He backed up to take a look at him just to make sure. Ludwig sighed, closed his eyes, and pulled the loop at the side of his neck like a shoelace.
"AAAAAACK!" Kamek clutched his face in horror - the whip-cracking noises of an entire roomful of tautly-strung knots flying apart. The chain of unravelment spread to Ludwig's throat but before the tourniquet could achieve the torque required to close the ligature fast enough to occlude his carotid arteries, it snapped. The twine ligature fell harmlessly from Ludwig's neck.
"That type of twine does not have a high enough ultimate tensile strength to pull it off," said Ludwig. "It barely passes the sound barrier before reaching rupture point. I was never in any real danger."
"M..." Kamek looked back and forth, as though expecting Bowser or Junior to turn up in his room to catch him saying it. "My Prince... I don't want you to ever, EVER attempt or even PRETEND to attempt suicide ever, EVER AGAIN!"
"I don't think you'll have to worry about that Kamek. I like myself and have a healthy sense of self-esteem-" Ludwig heard Kamek cough and mutter something that sounded like 'healthy like Gourmet Guy's healthy weight' "- I would actually have to be pretty far out of my mind to even toy with the idea."
Who are you kidding, you toy with the idea all the time, how else did you come up with that little Gordian suicide knot act? As much as I'd like to take credit for it...
Well to toy with the idea is not the same as to ideate with serious intent! And I do feel I owe you credit as an influence. When the full-fledged stage production comes out, you will be credited with top billing. The posters will say: Written, produced and directed by Ludwig von Koopa and the Voice Inside Ludwig's Head.
Is it asking too much to credit me by name?
Head friends aren't supposed to have names. If you want a name go inside Iggy's head. He's even got a name for each and every one of his body parts.
It's things like that that make me feel indifferent about not owning a body. Speaking of him... weren't you planning on checking into the loony bin today? Or did your little mushy moment with Kamek make you forget you were supposed to act like you literally wanted to strangle yourself?
"Eh, my Prince? What seems to be the matter?"
Kamek noticed that, although Ludwig was staring off into space, his face bore the same expression it did when he was arguing with someone. Minus the mouth moving.
"Oh... Kamek you see... I've been so stressed out lately that I'm hearing... voices..."
Voice es? With an s? As in plural? Where are all these other voices of which you speak?
Oh you mean you're only ONE voice?
"Y-you are? Oh dear... well at least you still have insight"
"They're not telling me to kill myself or anything like that, they're just annoying."
"All the same, you should have that treated early before it gets out of hand."
Go for it. You know you need it, you know you're fucked up in the head...
And you know that it will send you packing.
Who are you trying to fool? You ENJOY having a head friend.
Well you're not the type who tells me to kill myself...
Go kill yourself.
...But I don't believe it.
You will eventually... now go down an entire bottle of extra strength RoBootussin.
"My Prince?"
Jump off a cliff!
"Better knock on wood next time, Kamek. The voices are just NOW telling me to kill myself."
Pick a fight with mustache number one and mustache number two. While both are dressed like raccoon dogs!
"KAMEK... I NEED... would like... to check in to Dark Star sanatorium for a few days. Voluntarily." Ugh I can't believe I'm doing this voluntarily...
"Well now. To be perfectly frank here, my Prince, you seem like you're on the verge of needing an INvoluntary stay." Kamek got out the phone.
"Can you arrange it so that I stay in the same ward as Iggy, and share the same bedroom? I need a fellow brain to pick, and having a brother around should be a comfort to him."
"Well, if you want that arranged, you're going to have to do a two-week involuntary. I'll tell them you were serious about your little suicide charade, and that when the voices tell you to kill yourself it's NOT in jest."
Make love to a Goombola infected corpse.
"Just one thing Kamek... don't tell the family that I'm at Dark Star. If anyone asks, I'm still at my mother's. Nobody except Iggy knows that I'm home yet and I would like to keep it that way."
"Understood, my Prince. So... um... I'm guessing you have some sort of idea about what Junior is?"
"As a matter of fact I know exactly what Junior is. He is a... "
"Go on..."
"...clone..."
"A-a-uh I beg your pardon... A clone? Of His Majesty?"
Ludwig nodded. "That's the short version of it anyway."
"And the long version?"
"I have some leads, but that's about it. I don't need any of your help investigating, just stay here and do whatever Junior and Bowser ask you to do. Don't give them any reason to be suspicious of you and stay safe. Keep an eye on King Father. I have no clue as to what is wrong with him, but he's obviously been brainwashed. Take notes on anything that strikes you as suspicious. Speaking of... have you seen Lemmy?"
"No I haven't. When I asked Junior he told me that Lemmy was on a special assignment top secret mission mumbo jumbo or something like that."
"That figures. Lemmy knows something, and that is why Junior is trying to keep him at bay for as long as possible."
"Do you have any idea what kind of top secret special business this is that he's putting Lemmy up to, by any chance?"
"...Damn. Lost it again. It slips my tongue every time I even contemplate it. That such a thing happens strikes me as very suspicious indeed. However, I somehow get the distinct impression that Lemmy is not in immediate danger. Regardless... there is always the chance that Junior will find some way to convincingly blame Lemmy's extended absence on me. I don't know if you've noticed, Kamek, but Junior, while on friendly terms with the rest of my siblings, has got it in for me."
Kamek nodded. "I've noticed that Larry has been suspiciously silent as well..."
"In which case, he may know something as well. Don't be surprised if he should disappear on a 'secret mission' of his own."
"Ludwig... you... you also know something, don't you?"
"I beg your pardon?"
Kamek raised an eyebrow. "You have to know a great deal more than you're letting on, to be targeted by Junior like this. Is there something you'd like to fess up to?"
Well, I for one would be tickled PINK if you told him that-
"As if I would LIKE fessing up to anything..." Ludwig muttered, but he was saved by the white coated Fly Guys that came with the straitjacket and the tranquilizer gun.
Good night...
Good night yourself.