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Post by Jacques Snicket on May 20, 2017 19:29:10 GMT -5
Book the FirstBook the SecondThe Deleterious Diagnosis of Doctor Diogenes 01 Count Olaf stood over the mangled body of Élise de la Serre and wheezed wheezedly in villainous triumph. He had killed her with poisoned tea as soon as the meddlesome Jacques Snicket had been captured. Olaf had disguised himself as one of her associates who was working undercover to spring her out, a phrase which here means "pretending to be her friend so he could kill her later." Now the Templars would learn to fear the name of Count Olaf, as he had been the first to kill one of their number since ages and ages ago, not since Israphel had first incarnated into physical form. But Olaf knew nothing of Israphel, nor of the legendary heroes of the past long before the formation of The City or the birth of Telchar Snicket: a spaceman named Xephos and a dwarf named Honeydew who had stopped Israphel's first real gambit at world destroying, nor of Israphel's Cult of nameless fears and monsters of the Deep. Nor any ancient wars for that matter. What mattered to him was fire and money, conflagrations and fortunes, cunning and evil schemes. Nobody stood in Count Olaf's way. Except for the two with the auras of menace. They stood in Count Olaf's way whenever they felt like it, and it terrified him. He had known that they had had a hand in allowing the volunteers to murder his parents on stage at that fateful opera. The night he was made an orphan by poison darts shot from Beatrice Baudelaire's balcony seat, her face pensive in the dim lighting as Bertrand held her protectively above the growing whispers and shouts of terror as Olaf's parents fell in unison like lifeless husks (and not at all like trained actors who were alive but acting as if they were dead for a play only to arise after the curtain had fallen to go out and bow in front of star-struck audiences) to the stage floor just as the curtains began to drop. It had been weeks since he'd heard the news: the V.F.D. headquarters had burned down at last. His eyes glinted in the secret light. A morbid soliloquy danced upon his ravenous soul. He had long dreamed of setting fire to those twiddling fools and their aggravating library. A fire raged through his laugh as he bellowed darkly, the smoke of his satisfaction blotting out the stars in the night. If Élise de la Serre had found it funny she showed no sign of it, clearly being dead with her murderer leering above her cold corpse. He crumpled out a note in his match-striking hand coated with a shimmer of soot. He cursed all the blasted furnaces of Hell as his avaricious eyes swiveled to the tune of the rush of the scribbled cursive, written by someone who had not had much time. He cursed again and hurled the paper into the fire, harrumphing in disappointment. "Blast it all, Esmé!" She had failed him for the last time. But no matter. Her mistake was of no consequence. Somehow Kit Snicket had turned her back on V.F.D. and started the fire that left the Valley of Four Drafts under a heavy shroud of smoke. Not that he had any complaint, of course. He lived for this sort of thing. He bit down a pang of jealousy mixed with an eerie sense of pride, knowing that the time traveling brat and Kit were together setting things on fire like peas in a pod, a phrase which here means "Count Olaf was very very envious of not being with her in Faraday's place." Damn that bookworm, Olaf thought. And then he thought some more. Fine. If Kit did not have time for him, even as her true fire-starting self, he would see what Georgina was up to. He hoped they would resume their villainous camaraderie. True, he left her to die, but self-preservation is the first law, and she knew that, surely. They all did. Her survival was proof that he was right, as always. He was Count Olaf. When had he ever been wrong? His eyes burned with anguished fire as he recalled the past. So much pain, to get to where he was now. So much hardship. Secrets and lies, that's how he was brought up. Smoke and mirrors. Misery handed on from man to man. His life was like a deepening coastal shelf awash in the miseries of his past, present and future. Count Olaf was a walking chronicle of the darkest thoughts and the melancholy of those who had experienced the truth and been found lacking. He was purposeless. Perhaps he had been purposeless before he was even born, used and taken and inked and lied to, but no more. No more would those volunteers lie to anyone ever again. The world is a cruel place, and there was no point in hiding it from anyone, not even from children. The better they learnt the truth, the better off they would be at surviving. He felt an odd affinity with the Inhumane Society because he had realized what a farce the human ideal of decency actually was, but he could never be a loving father. He could not live what he was not. Beneath the stilted pretenses of every man, woman and child was a lawless monster sniffing at the chance to break free and scream the terror of the antediluvian age against the paper tigers folded daintily and defenselessly by humanity against the gaping maw of the sweet and heady onrush of pure chaos thrumming through the world and through his blood. A painful frown. An unspoken cry of preternatural fury. Vengeance was his only truth. Vengeance and avarice. A primal rage against the world drove him on. Fire was his heart, and it smoldered quietly like an assassin would before making the kill. He imagined himself as an unquenchable fire devouring everything in its path. No library would be safe from his flames and suffocating smoke. No safe place would remain safe for long. His anger flared like a supernova, yet he contained it deftly within the chamber of his heart. Where all his white-hot capacity for betrayal lay. He was the product of a dark seed planted in secret aeons ago. His destiny was destined to be amongst the thorns. Grief was wholly alien to him. He only had a constant need to subvert and destroy and self-aggrandize. He did not love his parents in the same gaudy way as others love their own parents, yet he missed them terribly. They were the only ones who had ever understood him fully. The Baudelaires and the Snickets were his greatest enemies for this reason, he recalled with infernal loathing. They were complicit in their murder, in his becoming an orphan. He may not have gushed about his parents like other children had, but they had been his parents all the same, and he did love them.. But it did not begin or end with his parents at all. Their deaths were just permission slips waiting to be handed out to him. Catalysts to the full unleashing of the madness of Count Olaf upon the world. Violet Baudelaire had not even been born for many years when Beatrice and Bertrand went to that opera, but Olaf did not care how old any of their orphaned brats were. Their foolish mother had told him, when they were but small children, that he would fail. He took it as the challenge it had naturally been for him. "I'd like to see you try to make me fail!" was his snappy rejoinder. He meant every word, and every tone too. Nobody told Count Olaf what to do. Unless the two figures with auras of menace were involved, in which case somebody had told Count Olaf what to do countless times. He obeyed, save for a feral bristle of contempt inside, masked behind his fear. He saw the world as a prison and snarled at it with scorn, "You think you can hold me?" He would get even with his two superiors one day. There is no good and evil, Olaf thought just as he began to drift into sleep, there is only power, and those too weak to take advantage of it.
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Post by Dante on May 21, 2017 5:53:33 GMT -5
Ace alliteration in the title, Jacques, though what it reminds me most of is a Give Yourself Goosebumps, of all things, with a very similar title structure (I think it was something like The Creepy Creations of Professor Shock). Then again, since my background research indicates that you're bringing in Minecraft now, Goosebumps wouldn't even be inappropriate at this point.
A compelling start to the new story, here; exceptional work on characterising Count Olaf, showing just what it's like to see the world from his deranged and yet not wholly incomprehensible perspective. The "permission slip" line felt especially true.
Edit: A thought: Does this series actually have a title yet? Or is it being deliberately left unnamed?
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Post by Jacques Snicket on May 21, 2017 11:51:48 GMT -5
Edit: A thought: Does this series actually have a title yet? Or is it being deliberately left unnamed? Good question, Dante. I don't know the right words for the overarching title. Probably, "The Overarching Oeuvre". And it's not Minecraft, per se. It's the Yogscast (who do have a large chunk of Minecraft content which did inspire everything to do with Israphel here, and that advertisement for the "Leek and Bong" in the deserted inn Snape whisked Jacques Snicket away from, in reference to an "inn" Duncan built in an episode of Druidz Downtown).
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Post by Dante on May 21, 2017 15:59:28 GMT -5
TOO; it's good to have a name to put to a page. I cheerfully accept the Yogscast correction, also; I'm not familiar with their work, but I can understand how a game can be a simple foundation for someone to spin off a separate fiction.
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Post by Jacques Snicket on May 21, 2017 16:29:30 GMT -5
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Post by Jacques Snicket on May 21, 2017 20:41:59 GMT -5
Deleterious Diagnosis 02
There once was a box. The box had six sides and however many edges and corners a three-dimensional cube possesses. Within that box was yet another box, and within that box was yet another box, and in that box was a file of papers all done up with string. In that file were the documents, maps, graphs and photographs pertaining to the Snicket fires, a phrase which here means "this was the Snicket file so long sought by our enemies and, after escaping with its thirteenth page from a hospital fire, the three Baudelaire orphans." However, all the pages were in one place, and they were not gathering dust in Heimlich Hospital's Library of Records as they had been in the previous timeline. No. They were in the offices of a man named Diophantus Diogenes who was a doctor of medicine at The City's own hospital, named the Belled Cat Sanitarium, which was a rather odd name for a hospital as hospital names went, but there you are, a phrase which here means "so it goes."
For Diophantus Diogenes, life was simple: he arose from bed each morning, caught the paper at his bedside delivered to him via pneumatic delivery services, made his eggs, drank scalded coffee, freshened up, put on his coat, and went to work at Belled Cat Sanitarium and returned home at the end of each day. But it was today, a dreary Tuesday in fact, that his life was about to take a turn for the complicated. He dropped The Daily Punctilio and gasped. The offending headline read, INFAMOUS AUTHOR ROWLING DEAD IN SUSPECTED ARSON FIRE SET BY KIT SNICKET. Diogenes stared at the fallen front page. Fear began to dribble down his stomach in innumerable amounts. He whipped his head around as if he were suddenly being watched. He had known Kit Snicket since his schooldays. This was simply too insane to have actually occurred, much less the deed having actually been done. Why on earth had she gone over? And why Rowling? What had she ever done to Kit Snicket? Had he truly known the real Kit Snicket, all those years ago?
Then again, given that her faceless brother had been plastered over the very same paper many years ago connecting him to another string of arsons, he wondered whether the Snickets were beyond hope. As far as he was concerned, Jacques Snicket was just another firecracker waiting to happen. But then he thought about how the other brother had been framed and how a woman named Beatrice had convinced him of Snicket's innocence. He wondered why he could not remember the faceless Snicket's first name. Marmoset Snicket? Leopold? Redbeard? Limey? Sherlock? Some weird name of theirs. Snickets and their weird names, he thought disinterestedly, but not without a tiny hint of elapsed fondness. He once knew a woman whose first name was Snicket, and that she had a wild-haired sister with another S at the start of her name. He never quite remembered what the S stood for. He was not young enough to remember. Not anymore.
But that was when he jumped out of his body. Or, ought to have, given his advanced age. For standing behind him was someone he certainly never expected to meet. "Y-Y-You're..." He keeled over in a faint before he turned to look clearly at his visitor. He was dead before he hit the floor. The sound of a phonograph scratch could be heard as Diogenes quickly became cold by the quick-acting poison within his dead form splayed on the carpet of his office. A melancholy tune laced with bitterness echoed silkily in the air as the record began to spin. The figure began to get to work, hauling the body off to throw it down the chute for used chemicals next to the case of vials, upturning the desk, destroying the furniture, tearing apart the fallen newspaper, and generally making it look as if a train ran through there. The vial case was opened, yet the vials went untouched as a secret hand reached for a secret switch behind the panes. A distant whirring could be heard as the case swung forward, allowing the figure access to the hidden passageway behind. With a flick of a match, the ruined office was set ablaze as the figure retreated into the passage they had entered by, closing the vial case behind them like a lugubrious door, just as the first hints of smoke reached it. The dismal music played over the roaring of the fire only for a moment, until it too was consumed.
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Post by Dante on May 22, 2017 9:17:44 GMT -5
The ingratitude of Ellington. I thought she liked those fantasy stories her father read to her at bedtime. But perhaps they lose their lustre when you actually live in a world being consumed by fantasy... Speaking of which, in these universes which actually have a Severus Snape and so on, I wonder if Rowling's relationship to HP is something like Snicket's to ASoUE.
Also, I'm having a hard time seeing how Doctor Diogenes is going to make any kind of diagnosis at all now, let alone a deleterious one. But then again, perhaps the deleterious diagnosis is of his own case, and that diagnosis is: Dead.
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Post by Jacques Snicket on May 22, 2017 12:10:35 GMT -5
I wonder what Armstrong would think, even though he too led a double life. And the fact he has a grandson that may or may not be dead. Fitzgerald Feint's middle name is Schrödinger, after all...
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Post by Jacques Snicket on May 23, 2017 21:28:30 GMT -5
Deleterious Diagnosis 03
"Severus Snape always looked like an overgrown bat if you ask me." "Really? And I suppose you don't look like a troll that had its head smashed in by an eleven year old with a tenuous grasp on spells at best?" "You flatter me." "Don't flatter yourself, Salazar." "And why not, dear Godric?" "It does not become you, my friend." "Neither does this topic, Lionhearted One." "We're dead, Salazar. How else are we meant to pass the time?" "I always said that we ought to have become imprints of our departed souls." "I suppose I'll have to hang my Hat if that ever happens." "Why so glum, Gryffindor? We'll personally see what it is like at our school long after our deaths. Come on, Godric, you know you want to." "...Alright, Slytherin, but you owe me." "I do not." "Yes, you do. I'll be invisible, if you don't mind..." "You're aiming for poltergeist?" "No. Peeves is quite enough." "What are you going for?" "Say I had a cloak of invisibility..." "Yes, I see! Death's Cloak." "I never took you for one to believe in those legends. Considering we're ghosts, we are already part of Death's Cloak, don't you think, Salazar?" "I like where you're going with this." "Good. I'm gladdened." "No, I really mean it this time, Godric." "Mean what?" I AM COMING FOR YOU, JACQUES SNICKET! Godric Gryffindor and Salazar Slytherin had stopped, frozen by this unknown terror. Both of the male Hogwarts Founders out of the Four seemed infinitesimal compared to the dark purple inferno of the fires at Quintus Dellegaarde's command, bestowed by the Dark Lord Israphel himself to destroy any and all traces of V.F.D. The flames licked into his very soul, tormenting him.
Jacques Snicket awoke with a pang of distress in his belly. The dream had been all too real. He had been on the run from his own sister, for she had become mad with the prospect of revenge against everyone who stood in her way. He had just become one of those who stood in her way. Orford Creevey had been right, but....there was something very wrong with the whole situation. He was missing something, but did not know what. It made no sense at all. None of it did. He wondered a great wonder. Then he wondered some more, and then he thought back to his sister's little mannerisms, ever since they were children, he'd noticed a consistency of habit, something he himself possessed, as did his brother Lemony.
He'd noticed something drastic about Kit some time after she and Faraday had found each other. Odd pauses, stares, silent smirks. And, most of all, a thrusting personality change like the stab of a knife. She seemed to be more...dangerous. And as long as he knew her, she had never been dangerous. Not in the way Olaf was, nor in the same way of the beardless woman and the hairless man. Nor in the way of Quintus Dellegaarde, come to think of it, when remembering reports of that villain's actions. And then his thoughts turned to Stain'd-by-the-Sea, and Lemony's apprenticeship there under S. Theodora Markson (what does the S stand for?), and the girl he met: Ellington Feint. Yes, Ellington was dangerous enough, no doubt. And Lemony had once made an off-remark about their sister meeting Feint in a train car. It did not take long for Jacques Snicket to put the pieces together. Orford Creevey was wrong. Kit was not a villain. Hangfire's death was an event of unknown significance to Creevey. He had not known that Ellington Feint had personal reasons to despise Lemony Snicket forever, and the organization he remained a part of, even after all those trials and tribulations: V.F.D.
But as he was enveloped in his reveries, a slip of paper onto his table at the Anxious Clown brought him to attention. In crisp handwriting read the name: Diophantus Diogenes. He turned to look at the waiter with a questioning start, but he only said, "I didn't realize this was a sad occasion, sir, but I felt it prudent to disturb your quiet." A phrase which here meant "a volunteer has just been killed." Jacques frowned, and grabbed a nearby newspaper. Understanding blossomed as he read, considerably the part where it claimed that Kit Snicket was an avid aficionado of jazz music, which could not be further from the truth, a phrase which here means "he finally understood that Kit Snicket was being framed due to someone else disguising themselves as her." And Jacques said, "Faintly fall the footsteps of the fleet-footed felon," and the waiter hurried promptly away. They were all in grave danger.
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Post by Dante on May 24, 2017 3:59:00 GMT -5
I'm a little mystified by the state of Gryffindor and Slytherin here; it seems they're ghosts, but haven't quite determined what kind of ghost they want to be. Is it a meaningful question to ask where they are, that Quintus Dellegaarde's magic is capable at least of frightening them?
Still, Jacques was pretty quick on the uptake about "Kit" in the end, but I wonder still how Ellington's disguise was so effective. Polyjuice Potion, perhaps?
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Post by Jacques Snicket on Jun 21, 2017 0:04:55 GMT -5
Deleterious Diagnosis 04
"Name, age, and occupation."
The Lucky Smells Lumbermill was hosting a visitor, the first since the town of Paltryville had gained notoriety after the fires that had consumed their only post offices and telegram stations were blamed on the Baudelaire parents before their three children had been born. This visitor was none other than Ellington Feint, loping snug in a disguise cobbled together from a various finery disguise kit dangling from the street lamp next to the Paltryville Library in which every book was the same volume. Feint had decided to drop Kit Snicket's face for the moment. Her revenge was not yet complete. She had to stop Jacques Snicket from telling his brother everything. She ought to have killed Jacques Snicket at the first opportunity. The Faraday boy was off doing her bidding, love-sick fool that he was, but very useful to her all the same. She had come to the mill disguised as a tree speculator in order to set a trap for Lemony, who was always three steps behind the three Baudelaire orphans, never quite catching up to them. She would use the town's wrath towards Beatrice and Bertrand against their own children, and Snicket would have no choice but to come to their rescue, after which vengeance would be hers at last, in the name of the Inhumane Society, in the name of her father. But she could not bell the cat herself. No. She needed Count Olaf's help, and Count Olaf needed Georgina Orwell.
"Isadora Duncan, old enough to know better, tree speculator," she lied with aplomb.
"The Duncans, Skylords of Mistral City, ma'am? They're a bit strange, they are."
"The Chippewa Falls Duncans, actually," she fibbed slyly.
"Never heard of that place. Is it over the Sea?"
"Yes. The Duncans of Chippewa Falls take tree speculation very seriously."
"I hear they have very good inns in Stain'd-by-the-Forest."
"I have never been there, sir, but I may take you up on that."
"Enough dawdling, miss. Move along. Wouldn't want to miss your appointment with the boss."
The boss was, as bosses go, one-dimensional, a word which here means "what one would normally expect of a boss in a book about a series of unfortunate events: somebody named Sir."
"Hello, there. I'm Sir. And this is my lumber mill. Care for tree-bark coffee, miss -?"
"Duncan," Ellington hemmed, "Isadora Duncan."
"Well, whatever your name is, you should know that when I make suggestions they are to be followed, because I'm the boss," Sir finished with a grin that smelled lucky.
"I understand, sir."
"Splendid! Now, onto our discussion. You mentioned a Flacutono to one of my former butlers in passing named Xylowhatever. How can they help Lucky Smells Lumbermill turn an even greater profit?"
Ellington smirked inwardly. He was playing into her plans perfectly with his profit-obsession clouding his judgment. That shadow of a man, Charles, stood out to her a bit more just now. His eyes seemed to tell a story. A story about the Baudelaires. Charles had just hired them for the Lumbermill. Olaf had killed that fool Montgomery Montgomery at last!
"Flacutono is a great foreman, sir. His records are right here." She slipped him a small sugar bowl which she had nabbed from the Rowling estate. Blackmail is a weighty thing, unfortunate reeder. Blackmail hinging upon hypnosis, however, is even weightier. Sir fell into a trance, reading the word "LUCKY" written in hypnotic ink upon a slip of paper within the sugar bowl. Georgina had been kind enough to aid her in her scheme, despite her troubled past with Count Olaf. What else was the greater good for? It got them working in unison, a phrase which here means "channeled the self-interested rapacity of the many into an iron-cast plan of the one villainous master they all served: Israphel, and to destroy V.F.D."
"You will hire Foreman Flacutono to help streamline the dismal production quality of this mill. You will refuse to have the genuine interests of Violet, Klaus and Sunny Baudelaire at heart. They are to remain your faceless employees. They are to never gain any privilege that your partner Charles might sway you to concede to them. You will continue to allow Georgina Orwell to hypnotise your workers into dull efficiency and for them to have and to hold Lucky Smells Lumbermill till death do they part. Got it?" Then she snapped her fingers. Sir shivered and nodded, his plasticine charisma back on his rugged face. "Good."
Ellington Feint smirked slyly in sly triumph, a phrase which here means "slyumph."
"It was a pleasure during business with you, Sir."
"Now that's over with, I want my tree bark coffee. Charles! I need a tree bark coffee....and one of my cigars!"
"But those are unhealthy for you, Sir."
"I don't care. I'm the boss. If I'm your boss, I am the boss of health!"
She departed before escalations would exacerbate themselves, a phrase which here means "she was now out of earshot." Yes. As she walked out onto the plaza of Paltryville proper after reversing her trail through the mill, Ellington Feint was having a very fantastic day.
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Post by Dante on Jun 21, 2017 4:23:50 GMT -5
An unexpected bit of background material for TMM; I see you're bringing the Netflix interpretation of events into play.
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Post by Jacques Snicket on Jul 17, 2017 20:32:15 GMT -5
Deleterious Diagnosis 05
Daniel Faraday languished under the concierge cap of the Hotel Denouement he had been issued when he had showed up in the lobby about a week prior. Matching his Hotel Denouement concierge uniform and Hotel Denouement sunglasses, the cap sat fortuitously upon his head, a phrase which here means "hid his forehead from the prying eyes of those who would expose him to volunteers and villains alike as an individual of grave curiosity." He was there because Kit had sent him there to do a bit of spying, for she had said to him before he left, "This world is but a masque of spies, my dear." She had looked him in the eyes as she whispered her warning, the evening glow settling upon her face like a royal sunbeam, giving her lips a heraldic quality, "Vicious rogues who spout nothing but vanity and deceit, and lifeless masks of crimson death and the poets' morbid hue." To be honest, her words had mostly gone over his head. His main area of interest was physics, not the literary power plays of the dramatic poets. He only knew scant of Molière and a hint of Poe, so he gathered that as much from Kit's masque of the masqued spies.
Within the Hotel Denouement there was a suitcase, and within the suitcase there was a compartment, and inside that compartment was a secret file called the Snicket file. Guarding the file within the compartment within the suitcase within the Hotel Denouement was a man known to the City as Schrute, to the Hinterlands as Dwight, and to the Snow Scouts as Xylophone. For some odd reason infinitely bewildering to him, his friends kept on calling him "Bruce Wayne". He was there on posthumous orders from Doctor Diogenes to transmit the suitcase to an esteemed Justice of the High Court, a phrase which here means "Count Olaf intercepted some Very Frightening Documentation relating to the good Doctor's deleterious demise and was sending one of his associates disguised as a Justice of the High Court to make the trade, a phrase within a phrase which here means, 'Count Olaf was about to get his grubby hands on the Snicket file'".
"Hello there. Dwight Schrute. Are you that High Court Justice that Count Olaf sent? I've been trying to reach him to see if he knows anything about the DHARMA Initiative."
"Not so loud!” shouted the hook-handed man highly judiciously. "Do you have the damned file?"
Dwight Schrute shook his head. "You won't get it until you answer my question."
"What!?"
"What is the DHARMA Initiative, associate of Count Olaf?"
The hooked judge spluttered, "Wasn't that some television show? The boss didn't like it. Every time those people got close to an answer to why they were there in the first place, they're interrupted by something stupid like a baby with magical powers or some tragic backstory that we all have to suffer through, like those three dratted Baudelaire orphans. That tiny baby bested me in the most incredibly deadly card game—"
"The DHARMA Initiative, Widdershins. Do you know it or not?"
At the mention of Widdershins, the hook-handed man erupted, "DO NOT USE THAT PATHETIC NAME IN FRONT OF ME, DWIGHT SCHRUTE! OR I'LL HANG YOU BY THE TIPS OF MY HOOKED HANDS DOWN THE FRONT OF THE STUPID HIGH COURT! Olaf should have burned down that eyesore instead of the—"
"Very well, then. Here is your suitcase." And Dwight Schrute promptly left the building.
"Boss," the hook-handed man struggled to operate the walkie-talkie, "I've got the suitcase."
Olaf on the other end hissed. "What do you mean a suitcase? I specifically asked for the secret file hidden inside the secret compartment hidden inside the suitcase inside the Hotel Denouement being guarded by some corporate hack named Dwight Schrute who keeps pestering me about the damned DHARMA Initiative. Who does he think I am, one of those idiotic twins? I mean, I would love to burn down that damned hotel myself someday. The nerve of that cur, thinking he could defeat the great Count Olaf! Nathaniel Hawthorne, I'm surrounded by idiots..."
"There's no Nathaniel here, boss," radioed the hook-handed man.
"I wasn't talking to you, minion!"
"But you're talking to me now, boss."
"Arrgh!" A static-filled breath. "Just bring me that suitcase." The radio clicked off.
Watching Olaf's accomplice, Faraday could remember the look on his love's face as they had set the V.F.D. Library on fire. They would never understand, she had explained to him. They would stand in our way and with our enemies. Destroy their hub and they would be too weak to launch a sufficient investigation. Her eyes promised him everything imaginable as they deshelved book after book, tearing the pages into an incoherent mess like a wind storm. The only copies in existence of ancient V.F.D. records of the Great Library of Alexandria were torn apart and added to the pile of kindling. With a kiss, she guided his hand as he threw the lit match onto the stained pages. He'd saved his uncle's Time Travel Minutiæ from consignment to the flames, of course. Jacques Snicket had hung his head low, watching them, as if coming to terms with what they had to do to ensure justice done to villains no matter the resulting cost. Sacrifices needed to be made for the greater good. If V.F.D. got in the way of that good, so much the worse for it. He and Kit and Jacques had solemnly broken themselves apart from the secret organisation they had all been apprenticed by. But they were the true volunteers, Faraday had thought. Count Olaf had been right all along, back in Dewey Denouement's underwater catalog where they had found the blue police box before their sword duel. Before Radzinsky had killed him for getting in her way. Before Olaf, deranged from a lifetime of grief and rage, had wanted him to tell Kit something....
Something was moving. The ridiculous disguise of Olaf's ridiculous associate had fooled most of the hoteliers, except for a certain snake well acquainted with the Baudelaire orphans, which had warned the frogs living beside the reflective pond of the Hotel which had alerted Dewey Denouement by a pneumatic sound tube made of reflective glass from within the catalog.
Wrong! Wrong! Wrong! cried the clock of the Hotel Denouement as it struck twelve. The noise reverberated across the glass panes and the wooden floors and the concierge desk and the dome above where the clock hid its face. To Faraday it was as if the Hotel was laying judgment upon him for his complicity in the burning down of the V.F.D. Headquarters. But it was the only way! The only way to avenge justice. Kit had realised that, and so had Jacques. So had he. He had done it for her, always for her. He would not abandon her now. He would never betray her. Ever. She was his everything. He was her dragon. Her instrument. Her plans were his own. There was no going back now. He could not go back. He did not want to go back. A life without Kit is like a life without meaning, and if she wanted to punish the world for its injustices, the world could go to Hell if it meant her beautiful smile. "For you, my Kit," he whispered as he watched Fernald away with the hidden file.
He knew very well who Count Olaf's associates were. He had read countless articles detailing their crimes, similar to the papers the Quagmires had found in the archival library of Prufrock Preparatory School. He had read the fruits of the investigation of Jacques's brother Lemony when Theodora was training him in the ways of V.F.D. in the alternative future, relative to this timeline, he originated from.
With the Headquarters burnt down ahead of time, Lemony's investigations would never reach as wide an audience as they had done in the original timeline. Such was a sacrifice, he solemnly noted, that was worth the end goal: Kit's happiness, whatever that may entail. For too long had the world wronged her and held her back, had held them both back. But no more.
By her side, he was complete. He had found his purpose. His destiny. Enforcing her justice was everything he had ever wanted. He would be there for her always.
He moved to the elevator as the fake judge's silhouette disappeared beyond the lobby entrance. Room 404. "Not Found In This Hotel: Ask A Concierge For Directions. Failing That, Earnestly Ask A Frank Manager (Or Frankly Ask An Earnest Manager) For Help Immediately". As it is, 'twas a secret passage to a hidden room (guarded by a Vernacularly Fastened Door whose answers relate to special topics of language), much like 667 Dark Avenue's rumored secret floor above the Squalor penthouse. The Vernacularly Fastened Door was not the only entry. When a secret lever was pulled, the inner mechanics of the room shifted to another compartment, with its own ordinary door, ideally suited to the furtive placement of sugar bowls amidst Various Feuillantly Designated tea sets. "Let them eat cake," was the misunderstood and misattributed line of a V.F.D. code, which led to great misfortune.
Within the old sugar bowl was a message: "If you are reading this, Count Olaf has gotten his hands on the Snicket file." Faraday laughed. He had always enjoyed the sense of humor of the secret organization with regard to events that had just transpired concerning the object in question, even though he had just broken away. "Spooky action at a distance", indeed. He read on. It was a telegram. Apparently sent by his future self, it contained directions on what to do. It also contained a directive to meet Alighiero Mallahnson himself, but at a most unexpected place of meeting: the charred former residence of S. Theodora Markson.
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Post by Dante on Jul 18, 2017 4:11:19 GMT -5
It's good to see this story return, Jacques - and good indeed to see the Hotel Denouement return, with a little more development of its abstruse mechanisms and systems. The more explicit clarity on how your timeline is deviating from the canon we know makes for an interesting point of comparison. One does pity poor Daniel Faraday, though; he's completely psychologically enmeshed in "Kit"'s trap. Perhaps his future self's advice will help him out of that quagmire; or else, push him deeper down.
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Post by Jacques Snicket on Sept 12, 2018 0:07:46 GMT -5
For Linda Rhaldeen. In Memoriam. Rest in peace, Bright Star of 667.
Deleterious Diagnosis 06
The pleading and the pealing of the bells sounded across the cold air as a mass of people crowded around an ornate funeral casket. The city of Winnipeg was in mourning. Various dignitaries from around the world, from sunlit sultanates in the Sahara to the anchoritic anaerobic aeries of the Antarctic. The pallbearers were like stately elms shadowing a landscape filled with the now diminished treasures of a memory of the blooming summer. Cavalcades of municipal knights and pages followed in the dreary wake like a gnarled ghost ship gliding through the mists, a phrase which here means, "it was a very very very very very very very sad and melancholic day". The Duchess of Winnipeg, Lenore R., had perished in a fire that destroyed her entire mansion. As attentive readers may recall from the first book of another series, and who no doubt know exactly what "perished" means, "perished" is a word which here means "killed". All that remained were her ashes, once upon a gray, cloudless night in May.
Now, dear reader, there was something that was not once upon a gray, cloudless night in May, nor any other night, and that was the wild and unkempt hair of S. Theodora Markson. Her hair was currently residing on her head, and her head was residing on the rest of her body. Strangely for a funeral, she was attired like an airwoman, with leather jacket, pants, boots, and a wild and unkempt goggle cap to go with her wild and unkempt hair, which was usually when she was driving a roadster. "Why are we here, Theodora?" a young Daniel Reuel Faraday asked his wildly- and unkemptly-haired chaperone. "We are here to drop a secret message off into the late Duchess's casket, my young apprentice." She sniffed the air redundantly, a word which here means "she sniffed the air". Faraday wondered why she was being so sniffy all of a sudden, as if there were a cake in the air in front of her that only she could sniff. Accordingly, the only words on his lips were disguised as a cough, "Carmelita Spats."
Theodora whipped her wild hair in a whiplash of wildness so fast that any other hair on any other person would have died immediately of follicle-snapping. "What was that?" she sharply probed, knowing full well what he has said. He grew red in the already freezing cold, and his laughter became a pelting of snowballs, and he pecked her on the cheek. Theodora was no doubt surprised at this, and lightly hit him. "This....is...a...funeral," she ellipsised for emphasis, though her eyes and her smile were warm. "Carmelita has become something of an urban legend for those who attend Prufrock Preparatory School," he told Theodora, who looked to the side, eyes closed. "Yes, my apprentice, I remember hearing about her, though we weren't in the same classes. I rarely left my dormitory, anyway, except to go to the library. I remember the Baudelaires as well, and those Quagmire siblings, all without homes, without parents, and most unfortunately, without chaperones." Her mood went downcast like a sudden monsoon. Faraday took her trembling hand in his and kissed her hand, her knuckles, her fingers. "I have you, Theodora, as my chaperone, and I wouldn't have chosen anybody else." He meant it, and she knew he meant it, and at that she drew him into a very tight tear-filled embrace. "This is not very sensible, my dear boy, but sometimes sense and sensibility have to take a day off. Look at me, being miserable..."
Faraday wrapped his arm around her, their faces almost touching. "You won't lose me, Theodora. I promise." She softly sighed, "Don't make promises you can't keep, my most exquisite apprentice, a phrase which here means 'I care about you very much, even though it is not sensible to do so'. But you bring sense to my sensibility, my darling apprentice." They remained this way for moments, until a curt interruption rudely ahemed itself. It was Quintus Dellegaarde, the most malicious maliciousness that ever maliced anyone ever, a phrase which here means "more frightening than the man with a beard but no hair and the woman with hair but no beard".
"Feeling sentimental, Markson? The Duchess was long overdue, in my opinion." He was icy cold like a stalactite dagger poised above an unwary reindeer. Dellegaarde sneered the death of worlds. "And you, little whelp Faraday, you think you have the courage to face the days, the months, and the years ahead? Think you can keep her poor bleeding heart together? Think you can help her maintain her oh-so-sensible exterior? Thou young fool." Taunting them, breathing fire from his nostrils, he grinned an unholy grin. "Because one day I shall destroy your happiness, Daniel Faraday, and I shall destroy your heart, S. Theodora Markson." He took out a white handkerchief which had a monogram on it that flashed too quickly to see, then he stowed it out of sight. Chuckling in an arsonistic rumble, Dellegaarde loomed around and strode off into the unknown snow drifts now surrounding the burial. Daniel and Theodora looked into each others' misty eyes in fear, love, hope, adoration, protectiveness, devotion, desperation, and newfound grief, all without any trace of sense or sensibility to be found. And then their lips met.
Daniel Faraday's eyes blinked back a torrent of tears as he stood in the burnt ruins of her residence. Theodora. The woman who'd trained him. Loved him as far as she had dared to love him back, still afraid of what others in their organization might have thought. She was sensible in that way, and in the way that she was not sensible. A hidden recess of raw, untamed power roared anew in the depths of his broken heart. And then he thought about what he and Kit had done, all the fires, all the lies, all the treachery, and, yes, all the villainy they had committed in the name of opposing villainy. What would Theodora think of him now? She would never have burned down Headquarters. She would never have lied to Jacques Snicket. She would never have asked him to help her do something villainous. She would never have lied to him. For the first time in a very long æon, a phrase which here means "not since Theodora first disappeared out of his life", Faraday knelt in the ashes and wept openly. She was gone, and it was all his fault.
Silent footfalls graced the environment of Faraday's sorrow and latent redemption. It was quiet, at first, but he looked up to regard the newcomer, and was startled by a faint remembrance he'd had somewhere. The man was tall, wearing an emerald pinstripe suit and pants, and wore a top hat on his flaming red hair. Faraday gaped at him in awe.
"The name's Alighiero Mallahnson, though I prefer to go by Dante after the great Maestro himself. You must be Daniel Faraday. I was a friend of your uncle, and seeing as you share his name, I could not help but take an interest in you, my lad."
Mallahnson paused, a catchy glint in his ever-amazed emerald eyes. "I've come to ask your help, you see. You have a peculiar grasp on quantum mechanics and time travel, which would explain your survival thus far."
"My survival?"
"Yes, your survival. Do you remember when you first came here?"
"In a blue police box underneath the pond of the Hotel Denouement."
"You also met Count Olaf, who did some reality-jumping as well."
"How did you know?"
"I invented the TARDIS. Time And Relative Dimensions In Space. I should know, shouldn't I?"
"My uncle never wrote about a TARDIS."
"That's because he had to keep it a secret, or else countless villains and enemies of truth, science and knowledge might get their grubby little three-dimensional hands on it! Do you have Time Travel Minutiæ?"
Faraday nodded, and handed him the book. "Your uncle had a secret copy printed just for us that would contain the coded location of the TARDIS in development. Now, due to some strange fluke, we had to build it in the past for concealment. There is no better concealment than the footnotes of the history of mankind, the places and spaces that are often overlooked and unnoticed when the great tales are being written."
"But how far in the past? And won't we need the TARDIS again? It disappeared on me at the ruined Baudelaire mansion with an enemy of mine who thinks I'm dead, and I don't know what she's done with it."
Mallahnson flicked his chin in thought. "Yes. How indeed..." He brightened. "But we don't need it. I have here in my hands something called a Portkey which ordinarily will take you anywhere else in space, but I have modified it to transport people across space and time." He held a cracked ring out on his palm. "When I activate this, we both need to be touching it in order to be transported." With a slim piece of what looked like polished wood, he tapped it and it hummed softly with glowing energy.
"How far in the past exactly are we going?"
"To the birthplace of Telchar Snicket."
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