The Good, the Bad, and the Insane

Chapter Four: Something's Gotta Give

Six put the last intact diary down on the desk, and leaned back in the chair with her fingers laced behind her head. She had found four scattered around the office. It looked like someone had knocked them over when they had been grabbing books from the bookshelves, and had just forgotten about them. They detailed a man named Atrus' expeditions to places he called 'Ages' through use of his 'Linking Books'. He called it 'The Art', but it sounded an awful lot like magic to her.

A sigh escaped her. She raised her pip-boy up to check the time. It was ten at night, it had been awhile since she had talked to the prisoners. Maybe she should check on them? Try getting some more answers.

She tapped her foot on the floor, and fingered the note she had discovered on the desk. It was written from Atrus to Catherine in a hurry. It simply told her to go to the 'Forechamber'. Six guessed he was talking about the room on the docks with the longer message to his wife taped to the wall telling her the code to access the secret video file. She shook her head before standing and leaving the room. Roxie was out of her light doze and following in the blink of an eye. There was no point in talking to Sirrus and Achenar without their pages. If she got them then she could offer them in exchange for information.

The one in the blue book was indeed Achenar the son of Atrus, and Sirrus' brother. Atrus had to be a lot older than he looked in his pictures. Well, if he wrote magic books than it wouldn't be too far out there for him to have the secret to eternal youth, or whatever. Six had seen weirder. The Auto Doc in the Sink swore up and down the procedure he put her under had made her close to ageless. 'Logan's Loophole', he called it. What a load of crap.

Atrus sounded like a well-meaning, smart sort of man. A little like Arcade without the cynicism. From his writings, she guessed that he was the type of dad that was always out and about. Not much time for the kids he, at one point in his journals, called 'a nuisance'. Well-meaning, intelligent, but not in the running for the Dad of the Year award. Well, not everyone could be like her own father.

But now, one or both of his sons were up to shenanigans with Atrus nowhere to be found.

She had checked all the rooms in the living area, but had found nothing of interest beyond the drugs. The second bedroom had been a juxtaposition of the first one. The bed hadn't been made, clothes were strewn about the floor, a wall had a hole in it close enough to floor that someone must have put their foot through it, and maps had cluttered a desk. Whoever stayed in that room must have had a fascination with bones because she found a number of small ones in a box under the bed, and some had been glued together in the beginnings of some sort of model.

The master bedroom was organized, and definitely had a woman's touch. The lace around the throw pillows and the flowery patterns were a dead giveaway. All she found in there were regular books and clothes. No clues to help her situation.

There was one more bedroom at the very back. Six guessed it had once belonged to the old woman in the painting, who probably now resided in the grave in front of the library. A fine layer of dust coated everything. Six had become an expert in abandoned places out of pure necessity, and so she would say that no one had entered for at least a year or more. Painful memories?

It had been fairly obvious to her that she had no business being in there. There were only so many lines she was willing to cross.

No red or blue pages in the entire area.

Six walked back to the elevator, and took it all the way to the top. It led to a barren circular room with plaques on the wall and a rolling ladder attached to a ledge above. There was a long vertical slit in the ceiling. The whole room reminded her of an observatory without the telescope. She already felt a headache coming on.

"Settle down, Roxie, we're going to be here for awhile."

.2.

She knew there was something weird going on with that ship. Atrus' 'Place of Protection' had turned out to be hiding his Linking Book on the ship and guarding it with an elaborate puzzle. Astronomy had always been a poor subject of hers. Growing up underground had made the topic moot to her teacher, and the pollution still hanging around had always made it a chore to view the sky when she had escaped the Vault. Trying to match star patterns she couldn't make her mind see to pictures on poles with her pip-boy as the only light source had exhausted her mentally. Six had to sleep on Atrus' couch until morning before she felt well enough to see where the book was going to take her.

Six had found a well used bag in the master bedroom, and looted the kitchen for supplies. She didn't even know if there would be a way back if she went through, but this was the only lead she had.

On her way back out she had checked on Sirrus and Achenar, but found only static on their screens. She thought Sirrus had tried to say something to her, but she couldn't make any of it out. After some consideration she bagged both books. They had answers, and she was their only hope for freedom. If she couldn't come back to talk to them then all three of them would be out of luck. She had a strong back, and had hauled things a lot heavier than those two books all across the United States wasteland.

The unmarked book in the cabin at the stern of the ship was the one that led to Stoneship. According to Atrus' journal it was populated by a small group of people, so it was a good place to start. The flyby showed the Age was having one of its rare storms. She hated rain. Had since she had been introduced to the poison that came down from the sky in the capital wasteland.

"Roxie, can you follow me if I set this on the floor?" Six asked. The dog gave her an affirmative bark in reply. She moved the book to the ground and made sure it would stay open by going back out to find rocks that would weigh down the cover.

Six touched the page and forced herself to relax as her vision blacked out. A loud sound filled her ears just before her sight came back to her. It was approaching dusk in Stoneship when she arrived. She now stood on the deck of a ship that was partially stuck in the side of a small mountain rising from the sea. Just like Atrus said it would be. A few moments went by before Roxie appeared in a shimmer of gold. The dog howled at the sky. Six listened to it echo away from them without any noise to answer back.

"I thought it was storming?" Six ran her fingers through her short her to push it back. "I guess the preview isn't in real time."

She looked down into the cabin of the ship, but found it pitch black inside. Simply switching on her pip-boy light fixed the problem, and allowed her to explore down the short set of stairs. It went down below water level. Six tried looking out the window, but the darkness made it impossible to see anything at all.

There was some nice furniture, but nothing of any particular interest. Not even anything she would have looted had she still been in the Wasteland. Six headed back up to find Roxie lounging on the deck. The Courier ignored her dog, and headed along the narrow bridge that led to the lighthouse.

The bottom half was flooded leaving only a small walkway leading up to ladder beneath a locked trapdoor. Six called for Roxie who ran over to her with the promptness programmed into all law enforcement cyber dogs. She retrieved the bobby pins and screwdriver from Roxie's storage compartment and went to work on the padlock.

Whoever had locked it must not have been too worried about burglars because it didn't take anytime at all to get it open. The bobbypin didn't even break.

Six tossed the padlock into the water and scaled the ladder. The top was empty aside from a device that took her a minute to identify it as a hand-crank battery. She turned it a bit for no reason other than pure whimsy. The storage for the power was dead, and her few turns of the crank only filled it a bit. She pulled out an energy cell and eyed the wires connecting the crank-battery to the outgoing wires that powered the surrounding structures.

More than aware it was dangerous to mess with wires without rubber gloves, she began to tinker with the power supply. It wouldn't be the first time she had been electrocuted.

She headed back down the ladder once she was satisfied that the energy cell would do its job more reliably than the previous set up had. A light drizzle had started by the time she made back outside. The clouds were starting to get angry, and Six did not doubt that she would feel the true extent of their rage if she lingered in the Age for too long.

The pair headed back up to the deck of the broken ship. Six checked in the tunnel leading into the mountain, but found it flooded. She continued on across the remaining bridge to finish mapping out the main level. A tiny island sat at the very end. A large black umbrella offered crude protection to three pneumatic buttons. She pressed one, and listened to something that sounded suspiciously like pumps. Vault 101 had ones that sounded just like it that kept the ground water from flooding in.

"Go see what it did." Six pointed back the way they came and the dog ran off in that direction. She waited until she heard a signaling bark. She turned to see where Roxie was standing. "The lighthouse drained?" Six called back to the dog who answered back with a single bark that was Roxie's version of yes. "Anything important?" The wait was longer this time, but she eventually received two barks in quick succession.

Six pressed another button, and less than a minute passed before she received an excited bark.

"The tunnel? Alright, I'm coming back." As she was making her way back over the bridge the rain picked up a bit. They needed to hurry.

There were no signs of the people Atrus had claimed lived in the Age. They were either hiding, or something was wrong. Just more to add to the mystery.

Before heading down the dripping stairs, Six chanced a look into the ship and found that was now flooded with water instead. That was fast. Had it been in interest of conserving power that the pumps worked in rotation, or something else? Six filed the question away for later as she descended down the lit staircase with Roxie. The inside of the rock reminded her of an old fashioned military bunker with its plain concrete and metal.

"Hello? I come in peace." Six called, not really expecting an answer which was fortunate because she didn't get one. "It's as dead as the island. Isn't that just depressing?" Roxie whined in agreement. "At least there isn't any Security Holograms." Six shuddered, "Be glad you didn't come with me to the Sierra Madre, girl." Roxie whined again.

The end of the long staircase ended at a pressurized door which opened into a bedroom that was like the red one back on the island, but even more opulent. Gold gilded almost everything. A large bed sat in the center covered in a thick red blanket. On either side she discovered orbs that were the oddest holographic projectors she had ever seen, one depicted a cloudy sky and the other rushing water. Someone had boring taste.

Six dropped the bag and collapsed into the chair by the desk for a brief rest. There was model of a tower with an orb on top that split apart and spun before returning to its original form when she poked it. Weird. She pulled open the desk drawer unsurprised to see more drugs inside. More morphine, another liquid she couldn't identify, unmarked white pills, and a small knife.

She retrieved some water from her bag and took a sip before putting it back. Break time was over. Six tossed the room with the same amount of care she afforded to any abandoned house she encountered in the Wastes. She tossed the pillows on the ground and found another dagger. She pulled down the blankets, lifted the mattress, and rolled up the carpet. Six discovered a secret compartment in the floor which contained something which did surprise her. There was an old photo of the old woman whom Six was guessing was Ti'ana holding the hand of a very young boy, a faded letter in a battered envelope addressed to Sirrus, and a simple silver locket that still shined like new. The locket was shut, and there wasn't a key to be found. Her bobbypins would never fit into such a tiny lock so she didn't even bother to try. Six left the items where they were.

The dresser was next. She pulled open each drawer individually. The first couple contained jewels and even a pearl necklace Six was willing to bet was real. The next she opened contained fine dishes. Well, if she needed to cook someone a good dinner—and she didn't want to give them her old standby of gecko kebobs and sarsaparilla—she knew where to find the tableware. No, those dishes begged for something fancy like fire ant fricassee or brahmin steak, and a nice desert salad on the side.

The next filled drawer held bolts of fine cloth. The one with the crescent moon and cross pattern struck her as especially tacky, but then again what did she know?

Lo and behold the last drawer contained the much sought after red page. She might have actually have called it pink had she not known any better. Six turned it over, but found no writing on it that she could see.

The Courier snagged it up and dug around for in her bag for the corresponding book. She set it on the desk and paused. There were two ways to add a page to a book. You can tape or glue it if you were the sloppy, lazy type. The other way was to restring the whole thing. In order to do that, you have to take the whole book apart. Six had no adhesive, and she didn't think Sirrus would appreciate her removing all the pages if he was so adamant on finding the missing one.

Without any better ideas, she stuck it in the middle of the book and hoped it would work even if it was loose. When she closed the cover again a noise similar to the one she now associated with Linking came from it. Six flipped open the cover to see the static had cleared up significantly.

Sirrus smiled and looked to have been about to say something before he blinked. His good cheer faded, "Is that Stoneship? Why did you take...there?...my room?" He shook his head, "You must continue to help me...Release me...I beg you to find the remaining red pages. You must release me...release me from this book that has become...Bring...red page...I need more pages, please...I beg...don't waste time looking...don't...my brother...my brother is guilty...and I wrongfully imprisoned...bring the red page to me..."

"Yeah, red pages, I got it. In the meantime, want to hazard a guess where everyone in Stoneship is?" Six asked.

Before Sirrus could answer, the static came back with a vengeance, and wasn't that a tad...convenient? She shut the cover, and put Sirrus back in the bag next to his brother.

He claims Achenar is the guilty one, but Sirrus could say that he's the dancing queen of the Nightstalkers. That doesn't necessarily make it true. What he said didn't really interest her. What did was how he was acting. He was desperate, but that was to be expected in his situation. The static had made it hard to make out to those who didn't know what to look for, but she could see that he had been sweating an awful lot and his eyes were watery.

Sirrus was in the beginning stages of withdrawal.

If Morphine withdrawal was anything like Med-X than it wasn't fatal. It would just be an exceedingly unpleasant experience. That actually added more reason to hurry. Sirrus looked to be alone in whatever place he was in, and an addict really needed monitoring while they were going cold turkey.

Six picked her bag back up and headed back up the stairs. She was so focused on her thoughts that she didn't notice Roxie wasn't following her until she heard a bark. She spun on her heel to see the dog pawing at a wall on the landing below in earnest.

"What did you find?" Six murmured as she walked back over. A perfect square near the bottom was indented into the wall. The panel slid open abruptly when she pushed against it. Six went in first, and found the other side to be a long dark hallways that ended in a room with windows showing the underwater landscape lit up by submerged lamps presumably powered by the energy cell she had installed in the lighthouse. On the ground was a compass rose surrounded by small buttons. She couldn't even begin to guess what the purpose of it was. Knowing Atrus, it was part of something needlessly complicated.

The compass was ignored in favor of continuing her search. She continued down the hall that branched out of the room, and ended up at another secret door identical to the first. The stairwell she ended up in was the twin to the one that led to Sirrus' room.

Six and Roxie headed down, and found another bedroom. The first thing that drew her attention was the lamp made out of a human rib cage displayed in such a way that it was the first thing anyone would see when they walked in. It was the type of decoration a raider would have, only with much less blood. She would have to give Achenar credit for being more sanitary.

That opinion changed when she turned and saw his bed. The mattress looked a lot like the ones in the Atomic Wrangler. If she needed to stay in Stoneship for a prolonged period she knew what room she would not be staying in. She was so amazed by the horror show of a mattress she almost didn't notice the blue page laying on it. Six picked it up, but didn't get out the book yet.

She tried the dresser first. There was a holographic display on top that had two settings: a rose and a skull. Classy. The drawers contained almost nothing, but maps. Achenar must have been interested in cartography with the amount of maps he owned. One drawer was different in that it contained a ripped in half note. She scanned it, but without the other half it was next to useless to her. It had something to do with those Marker Switches she had spent way too long looking for and counting when she had first arrived on the island. There had been a mention of some kind of vault, and that was something to keep in mind. She took the time to transcribe it into her pip-boy notes before moving on.

She wandered back over to the ribcage lamp, and looked at the things that accompanied it on the rough wooden table. Bottles of poison, judging by the skull and crossbones on the front of each. Did he plan on poisoning someone, had he already, or did he just keep the bottles around for a rainy day?

The rest of her search came up with various hidden weapons, and bones belonging to small animals. The mace she found still had old bloodstains on it. Achenar was proving to be quite the charming individual. No wonder Atrus suspected him of being responsible for burning the books in the library and office. If Atrus was as good natured as she had picked up in his writings than why tolerate the violent behavior she was already beginning to suspect of Achenar, or even Sirrus' drug habit? Did he even know? The journals did seem to indicate he wasn't close to his sons.

Six retrieved the blue book from her bag and place it on the table in such a way that Achenar would clearly see that she had found his collection before reattaching the blue page. When she opened the cover again Achenar looked at her, peered around at what he could see of her surroundings and burst into hysterical laughter. It wasn't a warm, happy laughter. It was the type of someone who had truly reached the end of their rope. The type that comes with the realization that there's no point. Six had heard it enough in Camp Forlorn Hope to identify it immediately.

"Stoneship! My room! You've seen it!" He broke off in combination of being out of breath and the static. When he started speaking between gasps again he said, "What...Ages survived?...Where did she...pages? What more will you see because of...I'll never escape..." That seemed to be more than the man could take. He appeared to have doubled over out of view, and the static covered the screen once more.

That was interesting. Was that an omission of guilt or something else? She still needed more information to come up with any kind of theory. Achenar was a few cards short of full house. Getting anything reliable out of him would be a chore, but not impossible. She'd have to try him again later when he had calmed down a bit.

Roxie's ears perked up and her head jerked to the door. She barked three times excitedly. Six shoved the book back in her bag in hurry, that was Roxie's way of alerting her that she had detected someone. The dog dashed out of the room with the Courier right on her trail. She glanced down at her pip-boy's proximity detector on the compass to see there was a blue tick on it that didn't belong to her dog. They came to a skidding stop at the top of the staircase and looked around through the light rain that was coming down.

"Hello?" Six called. "We don't mean any harm." She turned to Roxie who had her nose to the ground. "Where'd they go?" Six consulted her pip-boy, but the blue tick was gone. She obediently followed Roxie to the entrance of the ship. The cabin was still flooded, if anyone had gone in there to hide from them then they would have to be holding their breath. "I guess we're not as alone here as we thought." Six muttered more to herself than to Roxie.

She hurried back to the pneumatic buttons, and pressed them until the ship drained of water. When she went back to investigate the inside, no one was there. Roxie had been sitting by the entrance so no one had run out while she had been making her way back.

"Are you sure you detected someone?" Six asked. Sure, her pip-boy had also picked up something, but that could have easily have been a bird or something. Crows in particular liked to mess with her on long treks through the desert.

Roxie growled at her. Six held up her hands in surrender, backing down. There was enough strange things going on that maybe someone did disappear in thin air. Whoever it was could have had a teleporting book for all she knew. Though if they did she didn't find it when she went searched around. From what she had observed, the books usually stayed behind when they were used.

"Alright Roxie, if you were Atrus, where would you stash a teleporting book back home? Where would you hide it...oh, god. How much do you want to bet it has something to do with that compass rose downstairs?" Roxie's ears flattened against her head. "Let's just get out of the rain. You can jump on Sirrus' bed while I try and work out Aturs' own particular brand of logic. I'm sure Mr. Red Pages won't mind."

Roxie wagged her tail and raced away.

Chapter Four End

Author's Note:

I really don't want to detail solving the puzzles for a number of reasons I won't bother to list. You'll be out of luck if you're stuck on a puzzle and hoping for a solution somewhere in here.

About the changed dialogue. The Stranger didn't take the Trap Books with them. The brother's had no way to know where the missing pages were. They certainly didn't put them in their various rooms scattered around Ages that held evidence against them. They couldn't have realized that the Stranger had seen such proof of their crimes until it was too late for them. In the game, they probably thought the pages were in innocuous places. Nothing that would betray their natures too strongly. Because the Courier took the books with her, things are different.

Warning: Spoilers for Myst IV.

About Achenar's new dialogue. Achenar, to me, seemed less delusional than Sirrus. More psychotic, yes, but less delusional. There is a difference. Sirrus has always struck me as someone who would reject reality if it didn't fit into his preconceived notions of how he imagined things to be. He would absolutely refuse to see things for how they are no matter how much evidence there is to the contrary. This is best seen in Myst IV. His entire motivation in that game was mostly powered by his inability to cope with other people's viewpoints. He is right, everyone else is wrong. End of story.

Achenar, on the other hand, eventually does come to terms with things. He seems more likely to see where things were going, and react accordingly. He comes to accept there isn't a Linking Book on Haven long before Sirrus does. He learns to see things from his mother and father's point of view. He changes. In this story, when he realizes that the Courier has seen enough to draw conclusions he doesn't even try to continue lying again. I think Achenar is smarter than most people give him credit for.

I don't know. Maybe I'm wrong, but this is how I see things.

Stay tuned to see what Achenar does with this change of circumstances.

Thanks for reading,

Home On the Wastes