M20 Chronicle: I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream Episode 3

Mage: The Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition Chronicle: 

I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream

CAST

Dresden:  Is eager to get on the road to the Winchester House to find out if this book that Nameless Elsewhere is sending him to find will be of any use. He's not even sure he fully trusts this Librarian person. Promised to help out Nerius before leaving to go up north.

Joe Nerius: Isn't sure how, but he knows he needs to blow something up. His avatar wants to be impressed with what he can do. He said he wanted to see it from far away. Joe's only choice is to find something that will go up big.

After Nerius had traded Manolo the stolen car for a truck and borrowed his fishing boat, he picked up Dresden wait for the sun to set before trying to launch the boat. 

“Now remember, I need you to find a weak spot on the boat. Anything out there I can use to set off the whole thing,” Nerius explained to Dresden.

“Yeah yeah I got it,” Dresden waved his hand as he climbed into the boat.

“You sure you know how to drive a boat?”

“Of course I do. I’ve read more books on sailing than you can imagine,” Dresden said as he started the outboard motor.

“But this isn’t a sail boat…” Nerius mentioned warily.

“Same difference,” Dresden said before taking off at top speed down the canal, before speeding back the other way about 10 minutes later, “THAT WAY GOES INLAND!” he yelled as he passed a very confused Nerius who was unhooking the empty boat trailer from the truck.

Nerius shook his head as he watched Dresden speed off into the darkened bay. He tried to put it out of his head as he set off to find the closest 24-hour high powered rocket launcher store. As he drove around he wondered if such a thing even existed, but spotted a late night firework stand in a strip mall parking lot.

“Close enough,” he thought as he dug around in the seat cushions, ash tray, and under the floor mat for spare change. He didn’t need much for what he wanted to do, but he didn’t have anything to begin with. 

Armed with barely enough change for a candy bar, Nerius approached the clerk with his best salesman grin, “One, please,” then placing the handful of change on the counter.

The clerk looked at him with a raised eyebrow, but shrugged and counted the coins into the register. He pulled out a bundle of bottle rockets, removed one, and handed it to Nerius, “Enjoy. Happy July 4th. Hoorah.”

Meanwhile Dresden was weaving the small boat through the darkened harbor’s partially sunken wrecks, cursing loudly at unseen forces that he was convinced were working against his very unskilled hands. He had no idea how long a journey like this normally took, but 3 hours into the journey he was sure it shouldn’t have taken that long.

He finally found a wreck with enough of it still above water to make a good target. There were lighted buoys surrounding the ship that cast the entire thing in a slow flash of red light. The deck of the ship didn’t look too steep to climb, but Dresden was not interested in disembarking. He’d wasted too much time getting here and this whole thing needed to be wrapped up before sunrise. The distinct pearlessence of petroleum fuel on top of the water caught his eye near the rear of the boat. He saw a crack in the hull and saw a small rivulet of liquid spilling down the hull into the water. 

“Good enough,” Dresden spun the boat back towards the shore, luckily the trip back was much quicker.

As Dresden approached the shore, Joe Nerius was getting out of his truck. A baseball he had stuffed the firework into in one hand and a wooden bat in the other.

“Which one am I aiming for?” he called out when Dresden cut the engine and moved to pull the boat ashore.

“That big one on the west side of the bay has a fuel leak in the back. That’s your best bet to do it quick.”

Dresden went to help pull the boat onto the trailer, but Joe stopped him, “No I need this to get my adrenalin going.”

Joe wrapped the rope around one arm and pulled the boat assure while clutching the baseball in the other. After the boat was in place, the white left his knuckles and the white of the leather on the baseball was seemed brighter. He walked away from the boat and left Dresden to strap it down. 

Joe tossed the ball into the air and hit it with enough force to send it flying, he let out a heavy sigh from the exertion. The baseball sailed directly to the crack in the boat sending the entire boat up into an enormous ball of flame.

“Let’s get out of here before a crowd starts gathering to see what’s going on. We can give Manolo back his boat and then head back to my brother’s for the night,” Dresden called from the passenger's seat of the truck.

They only managed a few hours of sleep before they were woken by the sound of a TV news broadcast. Caleb Wyatt Galactic Starfish had turned it on in the morning to find out what the fire in the bay was all about.

A reporter in a helicopter was shouting narration over a shot of fire crews putting out the fire on the ship as well as a smaller boat nearby, “...as many as a dozen environmental researchers and grad students had been on board last night when the fire erupted. The team from Cal State Long Beach had been researching ways to stop the leak in the fuel containers that has been contaminating the beaches for years…”
Joe has already tuned it out. He hadn’t thought to make sure it was clear. Before he could even complete the thought to blame himself for their deaths, Joe spotted the dire beagle bounding up the beach with a frisbee in it’s mouth.

“WOWWEEE! That was some explosion, eh Joe? You really went all out for me didn’t you. No half measures for this guy,” the beagle dropped the frisbee and chattered energetically at Nerius.

“Yeah, about that...those people that died… was that part of your plan?’ Joe asked.

“Oh no, you’re the one that chose the boat. Must of been part of your plan though.”

Joe dismissed the answer,  “Well, how about it then? Since that was what you were looking for, how about what I am looking for?”

“About that you ee-” the sound of the beagle’s voice drifted off as a sudden flood of information hit his head.

Suddenly he could hear the heartbeat of all the beach goers, he knew which ones were healthy by the way the sun was reflecting off them, their genetic defects that made them more likely to develop certain diseases. He didn’t know where the information was coming from or what to do with any of it. He fell to his knees as a bright white pain began to emanate from between his eyes took over all of Joe’s senses as the world faded in the blinding light.

When Joe’s eyes finally adjusted he in his old lab, from his days with the Society. It was almost exactly as he remembered it. He wondered if anyone else was in the building, but when he opened the door to the hallway he saw nothing but void space in all directions around the room. He turned around and his old work station caught his eye. There was a lot of equipment and chemicals set out on the counter. Without realizing it he suddenly found himself standing in front of the experiment already in progress.

In one hand was a beaker filled with viscous red fluid and the other was an effervescent clear fluid. Joe stared at them for a moment. He knew he had to add only one of these to the experiment right now, yet he couldn’t remember which one he was supposed to add. He tried to remember back when he must have learned about the experiment, but all that his head was telling him was that he wanted the effervescent liquid to go in.

Not knowing what else to do he dumped the beaker’s liquid into the funnel and watched it mix with the rest of the fluids mix. He blinked and everything was changed. He was leaning over the end of the piping just turning off the spigot. He had a glass in his hand with a strange bluish green bubbling liquid. His brain told him it was time to drink the liquid, but Joe was not quite ready to dive right in yet. He set the glass down on the counter, dipped a finger into it, when it came out it was unharmed except that the part of his nail that was not attached to his body had turned to wood. He started at his finger for a moment, then shrugged and knocked back the entire glass. 
The blinding light returned to wash over his vision as the pain came back suddenly in full force before fading slowly with the light. Joe was kneeling in the sand, the beagle retreating in the distance. Right in front of him was a frisbee; which as he stared at it the plastic frisbee turned to copper, to tin, to diamond, to titanium, back to plastic, and then into a sand sculpture of a frisbee.

At that moment, Dresden clapped a hand on his shoulder and snapped him out of his daydream, “You alright there man? I’ve never seen someone so devastated by a dropped frisbee before. Who was that white guy dressed like a yuppy going to play tennis?”

“It was nobody,” Joe said as he kicked the perfect frisbee replica made of sand while he stood up, “If we’re gonna get to San Jose today we should probably get going. Besides, I don’t really want to be in town when people start asking questions. Who knows who saw what last night.”

The two headed north, with Nerius behind the wheel and Dresden leaned back in the passenger seat trying to meditate. The noise of the traffic made it hard to get a deep trance going, but the truck around him faded away and he found himself back in his mental library. All of the lights were off except a green lamp at the reference desk and a dim glow cast down on it from some unseen source above it. The Librarian was standing there polishing the counter with a towel.

“Hey, Librarian, what gives? What was up with those book with Andersen & Sons? Is this book I’m going to find worth it?” Dresden did not hold back his questions.

The Librarian stopped polishing the counter, looked up at Dresden and a smile spread on his face before fading to stoicism, “I just show you where the books are, you are the one that needs to learn from them.”

“What’s with that smile? How can I know I can trust you?”

The smile returned momentarily, “Joy is always hard to contain. I assure you I am not out to harm you directly. I will show where you need to go to get what you want. If you die in the trying that’s surely not my intention,” the smile spread across his face again.

“Well I guess I got no choice, but by the way, I think I need to learn some more about the fundamental forces of the universe. Where are those books?”

“Oh they’re right ov-”

“We’re here,” Joe said, pulling Dresden out of his mental library.

“Right, so I think the first thing is we ought to see whether this book thing has even gone into this place. That  thing looks too big to look through every room just for the hell of it,” Dresden said as he got out of the truck.

He stood in front of the Winchester House on the law, drew a symbol on his thumbs with a felt tipped pen, licked them both to rewet the ink, and pressed them to his eye lids. After a moment or two of deep breathing with his eyes closed, Dresden saw a sepia vision of this same space decades earlier.

In the driveway leading up to the main door, a man dressed in very flamboyant men’s clothing was handing a large book to a woman. They spoke unintelligible to each other. The woman placed a hand on the man’s face before turning and rushing inside. The well dressed man, bowed his head and made some motions with his hand, a shimmer of light went up in front of the entire mansion. The man suddenly looked down the street in one direction, toward 3 large black sedans that came roaring up the driveway, slowed and roared back out the other end of the drive. Dresden turned back and saw the well dressed man in a totally different outfit rushing inside the mansion as the building itself began shifting and changing and growing before his vision faded.

The first place they figured to start was by taking the afternoon tour through one wing of the mansion. The two hung in the back of the tour, far enough back they could keep an eye out for anything that stood out to them. Towards the highest point in the tour they happened upon a framed piece of wall that looked like it had held a picture at some point. It wouldn’t have caught their eye at all, but as they passed a flicker from the corner of their eye showed a hallway that didn’t stay there when they looked directly at it.

“If you gentleman could please hurry along the tour will continue this way,” the tour guide called from the front of the group.

Joe knelt down as if to tie his shoe, but instead he wiped the sweat from his palms in a circle around the base of a small statue that was in the hallway. The statue seemed to hmm a tune Joe was familiar with, but had no notes he could repeat. It felt like him and would be a beacon for returning to this place later. He sprang back to his feet and the two hurried along with the rest of the tour group.

They waited until dark before returning. Dresden watched the caretaker make his rounds and predicted the perfect time to get to the house without being spotted. They made short work of finding their way back to Joe’s beacon. Stepping through the wall they felt a static tingle crawl over their skin. Joe immediately recognized it as a similar feeling when he set foot into Dresden’s sanctum. This area was attuned to the magickal essence of a certain mage, or group of mages.

Dresden didn’t slow down to think about the feeling. He was close and he knew it. He just didn’t know how close. On the other side of the wall was a hallway with six rooms coming off of it. The only two that stood out to Dresden were the two at the end. One was a room filled on all four walls with TV’s connected to various antennas, all on and showing different channels of snow. The other was a room with a desk and a chair in the center, but all the walls were bare white.

Wandering into the room with the TV’s Dresden looks at all the electronics unsure of what to do, “I’ve got this,” Joe said stepping in. He began switching dials and adjusting the antenna trying to get a picture to come through. Dresden listened and over the static of the TVs he heard a whisper that sounded familiar say to him: “You look tired. Sit down take a load off.”

Dresden shrugged and sank to the floor. He fidgeted for a few moments without being able to get comfortable. He was able to focus on the screens for a moment by staring intently. In an instant there was a flash of the Librarians face and scream that in Dresden’s heart he knew was the noise he would make when he was dying. A feeling of dread washed over him and he fled the room. 

“No thanks. I think I’ll steer clear of the creepy TV room,” Dresden stumbled into the room with the desk and fell into the chair with a heavy sigh.

As soon as his weight was in the chair the walls seemed to be filled with built in wooden bookshelves packed with books. He stood up and the books and shelves vanished. They returned the moment he was seated again. He was sure that Librarian was fucking with him and sent him on a wild goose chase. Dresden dug deep down and willed his avatar to appear to him as a flickering ghost of himself leaning against a shelf arms crossed.

“Alright Librarian, I’m here. Where’s this book that’s supposedly here?” Dresden said feeling near the end of his patience.

“It’s right here,” the librarian grinned as he pointed to a book right over his shoulder. 

“NERIUS! I need an assist in here. This may sound strange, but I need you to grab a book off an imaginary shelf and I’ll tell you where it is,” Joe looked at Dresden in silence for a moment after Dresden had finished.

“Well alright. Where is this book?” Nerius couldn’t think of any other reason to be here so he just went along with Dresden’s crazy idea.

Dresden guided him to the book only he could see. The moment Joe’s hand passed through where the book was, it was on the desk in front of Dresden. He stared down at it before feeling the pages pull at him. Soon a white blinding light seemed to emanate from between his eyes. When the light dimmed again, Dresden was standing in an enormous warehouse of books. Each book’s cover said Guide to Cosmological Metaphysics and the Truth About Distance, but there was no text on the page. The distinct sound of a book being stamped echoed from across the warehouse. 

Dresden had finally found the book press responsible for the endless stream of empty books. He was able to work the computer terminal to fix the glitch. A loud hiss of steam erupted from one side of the machine and a single girdle bound book with a gilded cover. 

Dresden approached the book and opened the cover. A flood of measurements filled his head of all angles and distances in the room. He began to see the ways in which all the books were connected and their meaning could all be gathered from knowing the true meaning of one book. Before his mind could get tangled in the thought he was splashed back into reality by Joe shaking him awake.


“Dresden we gotta go, I think someone is coming.”