“I don’t know,” Tipid said, watching the screen. “It just started with no explanation.”
“I think it’s a visual representation of a tunnel node,” Rosetta said, watching carefully. “See those little dots? They represent communication pinholes, I think.”
Carl: Zev, do you know where this thing on the screen is coming from?
Zev: I have no clue. But it’s on every screen everywhere except the center system. Like, everywhere.Everyscreen.
“Oooh, that’s pretty,” Samantha said from the table. “Jamal, come here.”
The view abruptly changed and depicted Earth, slowly zooming in like a point-of-view shot from a landing spaceship, focusing just west of Washington State and into the Pacific Ocean, right at the border with the Juan de Fuca Ridge, about three hundred miles off the coast.
The screen went black for several moments, and then it showed a long, mostly straight street paved with yellow bricks, like something ripped fromThe Wizard of Oz. On either side of the street was nothing but a never-ending grassy plain.
There, the view stopped, and a countdown timer appeared on the screen.
The Parade begins soon.
Viewing is mandatory.
“Carl, what is happening?” Donut was suddenly on my shoulder.
“I don’t know,” I said. We had seventy-five minutes.
Donut was looking about the room in disgust. There were crumbs and wrappers and food box bowls scattered all over the place.
“What did you get for your spell book?” I asked.
Donut made a frustrated noise. “I haven’t read it yet. I think it’s a good spell, but I’m not allowed to use it. And I don’t even know how long it lasts because the duration formula is in nerd math. You know how I feel about nerd math, Carl.”
She zapped it right into my hand. The book was, strangely, a paperback. It was the first I’d ever seen like that, and it didn’t look like a spell book at all. The cover featured a drawing of a gate with a human woman standing in front of it, looking angry.Weird.I examined it.
Tome of Gatekeeper.
This is an Advance Reader Copy. Street date: 12th floor.
Cost: 75 Mana.
Target: Any opponent or NPC or deity or OI entity.
Duration: (5 minutes + 1 minute per level of spell) × [Your Intelligence / (Target’s Constitution + Charisma)]
Ahh, Gatekeepers.
IhateGatekeepers.
You know what I’m talking about, right? There’re a few different kinds, but I’m talking about those snotty little pricklets who defend their precious corner of fandom from “outsiders” like they’re the Redcoats at Rorke’s Drift, completely oblivious of the fact they’re the bad guys.
Oh, you didn’t listen to Iron Maiden during the Paul Di’Anno era? Okay, poser.
Psshhh. You weren’t on 4Chan pre-MLP ban? Can you even call yourself a Brony? Clop off!
And on and on and on.
Now that I’ve had some time to digest all of your pre-collapse internet, I gotta say, some of you losers really deserved what you got. I know you survivors are all on the “Hoo-rah, Earth spirit!” bandwagon right now, but you’ve all clearly never been on a new mommies’ message board. Holy shit, JaycenMommyNYC. We get it. Your nipples are cracked. You don’t own suffering.
Yeah. That’s gatekeeping. Fuck those guys.
Even I receive it.