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Post by Jacques Snicket on Nov 22, 2014 22:19:02 GMT -5
Snippet Twelve
Jacques Snicket and Élise de la Serre were standing in the middle of a darkened room she had dragged him into after their stay at The Even Loster Legs inn in Stain'd-by-the-Sea. The room was draped in red. Their shadows loomed in the candlelight. Red crosses on respective black and white fields hung around the sides. There were others with them, faces hidden in the shadows, for these men and women were members of another secret organization with codes, secrets, books, and schisms on par with Jacques' own. "May the Mother of Understanding guide us!" This phrase was variously murmured and shouted around the table in response. "Élise de la Serre of the Winnipeg Rite, what is your news and who is this?" She began to regale them of her warning of Jacques, and how he had been in great danger. But what Jacques did not know was that a Snicket had been among Élise's organization a very long time ago. That organization had relied on the guidance of the Father of Understanding, but seeing as that was seen to unduly affirm maleness over and superior to femaleness, some of the order stopped honoring the Father of Understanding and instead honored the Mother of Understanding. That particular Snicket had been the first to suggest a Mother in the place of a Father, but was then thrown out of the original conservative order only for his distant descendant to follow in his footsteps in honoring the Mother.
"You have brought before us one of the three heirs of Dorian Snicket, first of our Order. This is a very great boon." Jacques was perplexed. He hadn't known he'd had a secret ancestor. This changed everything! Absolutely everything! "I beg your pardon, madams and sirs," he fumbled. The other woman who had bidden Élise to speak was smiling warmly at him. "There is no need, Mr. Snicket, as you are practically family. I am Céline Denouement, Grand Mistress of the Winnipeg Rite of the Templar Order. We have much to discuss." Jacques glanced at Élise, who nodded, and he glanced back at the Grand Mistress who had welcomed him so nobly that she might have been a volunteer if he had not met her in their current environs. He wondered if the Templars had insignia tattoos as well, or if they bore their membership some other way, apart from the drapes of the meetinghouse. And as he wondered these things, Count Olaf stood outside at the window, peering inside with his shining eyes, and it was not Jacques Snicket's shadow this time, which was currently standing in the meetinghouse appended to the soles of his shoes like all shadows are. None of the Templars or Jacques noticed this, I am sad to recount.
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Post by Jacques Snicket on Nov 22, 2014 16:05:11 GMT -5
Snippet Eleven
Death, to Reuel Faraday, was an odd matter. He did indeed die after a fashion. Yet, as the truly dead are not wont to do, he awoke in a vision or some neutral place in spacetime. He felt at once heavy and weightless, everywhere and nowhere, high and low, solid and gauzy, a series of phrases which here mean "surprised at not being dead." Faraday gazed around at his surroundings, a haze of memories and histories, places and lives not his own. He felt for what he assumed to be his bullet-stricken scalp, but there was no wound there, not even a trickle of blood. Strangely, it was as if he had never been born but remained this way forever in a living paradox. Take - the - police box - YOU WILL COME WITH ME REUEL FARADAY IF IT IS THE LAST THING YOU EVER DO! - tell Kit - damned bookworm - Dante himself - You will give him to me, Count Olaf - V.F.D. is foolish - a quiet world is too quiet for me - Don't know where, Don't know when - BANG! Faraday blinked and gasped. He had lived. Somehow, he had survived a poisonous bullet to the head, a bullet that had never even pierced him. He wondered a great wonder. His uncle might have known his state, if he were there to guide him. Thinking on his physicist relative bade a portion of his mind to reflect on fate and destiny and the question of free will. If he was supposed to be dead, he had broken one of the rules of existence, or perhaps the rules of existence made an exception for him, or perhaps all time travelers were this way, surviving destined deaths. Then he wondered if the universe would course-correct his miraculous survival like the paradox shifting its originator from existence. Then he thought on what he knew of his uncle's work in the field of theoretical physics. Anyone who could change set events which otherwise remain unchanged is called a variable. Those persons and things roughly in fate are constants. Temporal physics is a very difficult field of study, so you might be better off reading about Lemony Snicket's apprenticed adolescence in Stain'd-by-the-Sea rather than making your mind cave in on itself like a spicy baked potato rind. Faraday gave it some thought. He gave it even more thought. He wondered again how he was not dead, as he should have been after being shot point-blank range, and with a poisonous bullet to the back of the head, no doubt. Something large passed through his developing understanding. Something he should have seen before but had brushed aside until now: an electrifying revelation: he was special. That was why he had not truly died at the gun barrel of Alexandra Radzinsky. It was why he was where he was now. He was a variable! He had to die in order to become a variable, no sooner than having been whisked by Count Olaf into the time traveling police box and transporting from the catalog back to the surface of the earth, someplace else, followed by Radzinsky and Hardrada. But how had he become so, in this series of extremely unlikely events? He slowly began to realize where he was: the recently-charred remains of the Baudelaire mansion.
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Post by Jacques Snicket on Nov 17, 2014 17:27:31 GMT -5
Snippet Ten
Severus Snape stood stiffly in front of 667 Dark Avenue. Gold, a devious stationery and menu shop proprietor connected in some way to the legendary Hangfire, had told him to go there and wait for a letter to be delivered to the addressee with the utmost haste. The doorman had handed him the envelope a minute before. Darkness was still rather in so he had brought along a lantern to help his vision, to the consternation of the doorman. Not that Snape cared, of course. He thought it was ridiculous to bathe the whole block in an absence of light. With a derisive snort Snape walked away from the building, lantern in tow. He then flagged a taxi, directed the driver to take him to the Rue d'Ourglasse, and stepped into the back seat and closed the door.
Jacques Snicket was momentarily confused as to the place where Élise de la Serre had taken him, as the road there had been bathed in darkness and could not tell where they had been going by natural landmarks. "Madame De La Serre?" he tentatively queried. "Call me Élise, Jacques Snicket. It will roll better and quicker off the tongue." "All right then, Élise," Jacques fumbled, "where are we?" She began to pace, "We are in a dead town named Stain'd-by-the-Sea." Jacques started at the name. "My brother was here a very long time ago in order to procure a statue of the B—" "Not here, Jacques!" Élise was firm. They were currently in a rackety inn named The Even Loster Legs, the sign of which had read, through time and petty vandalism from a certain miscreant, as "The Lobster Eggs Inn". Puffs of gunshot seemed to be outside, "Are we under attack?" Jacques said. "No. It's the cars." "The cars?" "Yes. The cars are finally dying." "You mean, the cars are --" BANG!! They ducked for cover, as that had been a rather loud carburettor self-explosion had been nearby. "After a set time these old cars littered around the town have been designed to explode by their manufacturers," Élise said. "But if this town is dead, how come there are lights on?" BANG!! "This town is not an ordinary town." Jacques had known that as soon as Lemony had informed him, though his brother had not been very detailed as to Stain'd-by-the-Sea except for the Bombinating Beast and Hangfire and the Inhumane Society. There had been rumours in the City of the continued existence of the Inhumane Society long after Lemony's stay in Stain'd, but more provincial in scope: straggling remnants, like the V.F.D. after the fire of the Hotel Denouement. Élise continued. "This town was the greatest exporter of ink and ink-related services, but now the ink wells are dried up and Ink, Inc. has no place for headquarters. It's employees are traveling inkers and octopus catchers working around the remains of Anwhistle Aquatics, though that is far from this place, and far from the seaweed forest bordering the inkwells and octopus dens." Jacques was of course familiar with Anwhistle Aquatics and the blaze which had destroyed it: he had been the one to write an article revealing the defection of the stepson of Captain Widdershins, Fernald, from V.F.D. on the front page of The Daily Punctilio. He still did not know what or why Élise had brought him there, to a faded town by a misnomered sea. He did not know whether Hangfire had had a hand in designing the explosive ancient cars, like the ancient green roadster conveniently spotted and taken by Reuel Faraday to the remains of the Hotel Denouement and spontaneously combusted on arrival there (Jacques Snicket would have no knowledge of that as this took place long before the flight of Reuel Faraday). "I do not know if you have heard, Jacques," Élise began, "but the people who murdered your associate just announced their affiliation with the Inhumane Society. Ever since your schism the I.S. has partnered with your arsonist enemies. That partnership may even have began here right in this very town." What she said had made sense. Lemony had spoken of a library fire and how the town's sub-librarian, Dashiell Qwerty, had been the prime suspect. Lemony never got around to telling him of Qwerty's ultimate innocence or guilt in the matter, as his brother wished to protect Qwerty seeing as the young librarian had been Lemony's only volunteer sympathetic in town (he had known and was amenable to the significance of "the world is quiet here", if not the phrase itself), so Jacques had little to go on from that standpoint. "There is a war brewing, Jacques Snicket. From the earliest tumults here in Stain'd-by-the-Sea to the Anwhistle Aquatics fire and the night of that fateful opera, there has been a drawing of the lines, a choosing of the sides. This coming war will render V.F.D. practically inert and its members scattered hopelessly across the globe with communications and safe places in disarray. You know how it starts, Jacques, the fires: how they'll burn down the homes of volunteers, try to get their hands on any surviving children. By the time you have figured out how to put the current schismatics away, a whole new inferno will blaze up in place of the old. It. Will. Never. End." Jacques was taken aback. His sister Kit was fond of saying that everything kept getting worse as they grew older. If it had never been any worse was highly debatable amidst volunteers, villains and incidental bystanders. This schism had grown wild in recent years and would likely never end in his lifetime, even if V.F.D. were strong enough to rise up to the challenge. He had known the story of Dewey Denouement: mansion burned to the ground, Dewey being taken and being presumed dead by everybody else except his two identical siblings. The sub-sub-librarian himself had told him of it. "There is a scientist named Alighiero Mallansohn working in the Kierkegaard Mountains. Have you heard of him?" Élise queried. "Yes. Barely. I think he has something to do with time travel." "Then you will know that time travel is indeed a fact, Jacques. A fact unsettling for many of the authorities of V.F.D. They fear he will deal with villainous people and thus wish to shut him down."
Jacques snorted. His "superiors" were hardly worth the time or respect. He and his siblings and a slew of other like-minded volunteers had broken with them long ago. They had derailed Lemony and Kit's plans in the City, landed Kit in prison, sent him and Lemony "out of the way" and out of their hair and much more calumnies than there is time to list. You could volunteer, but not volunteer to be noble. Some of Olaf's criticisms rang true about the organization's hypocrisy, but Jacques remained true to the Creed of maintaining a quiet world by educating, informing, and fire-proofing it. His V.F.D. was not the old guards' V.F.D. Monty was with him, as were Beatrice and Bertrand, Lemony, Kit, Ike, Josephine, Widdershins, Olivia, and other brave and noble people he had the honour of breathing the same air with. He had never believed Lemony to be a criminal when the papers started their smearing tactics against him, led by Olaf no doubt. "Things have been set in motion for the final convergence." Élise seemed animated as she spoke, "In two weeks, Alighiero Mallansohn will set up a public demonstration of time travel." "How do you know this?" Jacques was interested and apprehensive. Élise merely gave him a look that said, "I'm from the future." "Are you sure you're from the future?" He said, understanding her pointed look. She nodded in exasperation as if he was a child who needed to learn their ABCs by three years earlier. Jacques was not ignorant of temporal theories, but he did not immediately believe just anyone who said they had just came back from another time. No volunteer he knew had worked on time travel, however "eccentric" they already were. Perhaps his brother had met Mallansohn, or maybe Kit. The most likely candidate to have met with Mallansohn was Dewey Denouement. He was brought out of his thoughts by Élise. "We need to go, Jacques!" "Why? Are we still in danger?" "Sacre bleu, Snicket! Count Olaf's found us." "That's my shadow, Élise." "Désolé, Jacques, désolé..."
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Post by Jacques Snicket on Nov 14, 2014 15:22:12 GMT -5
Snippet Nine
Reuel Faraday awoke at last. Around him lay the smoldering remains of a building that had recently been burnt down. Across the way were two persons of indeterminate identity from his position. The opened police box was even farther away. The first voice was old and rough, reminding Faraday of Ivo Hardrada's voice. "You will give him to me, Count Olaf. Madam Radzinsky does not like to be kept waiting." Count Olaf laughed wheezily. "Is that what you think, that I'll just give the bookworm up to you? No, Hardrada, I will erase him from existence! Ha!" "Faraday was a fool to trust me, Count Olaf." Hardrada laughed darkly. "And you are a fool for not doing what I say." "Is that a threat, moonshiner? You of all people should know that I, Count Olaf, have recently acquired a time traveling police box. Once I finish with the bookworm, I'll erase you next." A gunshot rang out. Olaf jumped a little, the bullet having grazed his coat. Another gunshot. Olaf grunted in pain and grabbed his left arm which began to trickle blood profusely. Another shot. And another, and another, and another. Count Olaf lay sprawled in a growing pool of his own blood, dying from poisoned bullets. "Is he here?" Alexandra Radzinsky said from behind the shadows. Ivo Hardrada curtsied like a sycophant. "Yes, Madam. Reuel Faraday is right here." He pointed to the groggy Faraday who was just getting up. She glowered at him hotly, rage building in her eyes. "You little whelp! There will be no escape for you, Reuel Faraday." A light burned in Faraday's eyes as he slowly walked up to her and said, "My name...is Daniel." Gasping, she realized he was heading for her pistol. They began to struggle viciously. Hardrada dragged him off and roughed him up. Faraday twisted Hardrada's nose which gave him enough time to take a wooden plank and pummel him with wooden splinters. Hardrada pushed back and kicked the wood into Faraday's face. With a chopping action, Faraday raised a rather large splinter and drove it through Hardrada's shoulder, causing the latter to scream out into the night like a wounded animal as he proceeded to wrestle Faraday to the ground and choke him to death, his pain fueling his arm. Faraday felt his windpipe being squeezed beyond everything. This was it. It was his end. With a cry, Hardrada looked up just as a bloody Olaf swung another wooden beam and smote Hardrada over the head with it, permanently maiming him and setting Faraday's throat free. Spluttering for breath, Faraday sent a grateful look towards Olaf, who was now gunning for him. Just as Olaf was about to land the killing blow, Alexandra Radzinsky shot him from behind one last time. The board fell with a dim clatter as Count Olaf hunched over and spoke his final anguished words, "Take — the police box...Tell — Kit — Snicket — you damned bookworm —" Olaf now hissed despairingly, "Tell her that I never got the chance to kiss her one last time..." He coughed his final words out. "Kit..." It was still as Faraday knelt there before the dying form of the eccentric and troubled actor. His one eyebrow seemed to mock him in death and his eyes shined with regret and resentment. As he died, a lone smoky tear trailed balefully down his ashen face. "Now then, boy, to business." Alexandra Radzinsky stood ruthlessly behind him holding her pistol to his head. "You have no choice but to come with me, or die!" Faraday did not move. Radzinsky was already raging. "YOU WILL COME WITH ME REUEL FARADAY IF IT IS THE LAST THING YOU EVER DO!" "No. No I won't." Faraday looked grave as he looked at his nemesis. "Do it. Kill me." The villainess was taken aback at his willingness to die. "You're a damned fool if you think I will give you what you want, boy! Damn my sister for ever training you, boy." "That's right. Theodora trained me. She taught me everything she knew. She is the reason I am a volunteer. She is the reason why I am alive. She saved my life, but go ahead and end it. Now she's long gone. Don't know where. Don't know when. But I have a few ideas." Radzinsky held her arm aloft, considering her options. "I guess I'll never know." BANG! Reuel Daniel Faraday dropped dead.
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Post by Jacques Snicket on Nov 14, 2014 12:52:14 GMT -5
I've always seen Jacques as the most adventurous of the three Snicket siblings, and slightly braver than his self-deprecating brother, with a lot of nerve, with his exploits and proofs of various "accidents" being arsons, and him being that much of a thorn in Olaf's side, his "old enemy" as revealed in TVV. "The Complete Story of Poor Jacques Snicket" is very interesting, all thanks to Duncan and Isadora Quagmire.
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Post by Jacques Snicket on Nov 14, 2014 12:15:05 GMT -5
Snippet Eight
Jacques Snicket was having a very odd day. I am sure, dear reader, that if you have had an odd day, that your plans for the coming hours were by default derailed, a word which here means "being taken by a disgruntled taxi driver to the Hotel Denouement who insisted on talking about his grown up children, being unable to locate the concierge at such a late hour, finding a damp slip of stationery under one's lap napkin at the lobby café, going to the room number hastily scrawled into the stationery scrap, finding dozens of sugar bowls neatly stacked inside, and smashing all of them in great irritation due to a previous scrap of stationery on which was written that any sugar bowls you might come across were blatant fakes." Of course, your odd days will not be so perplexing as mine are, unless you have a proclivity to detective work, pre-emptive fire-fighting, poetics on the fly, and cat-herding, a very lengthy phrase which here means "working full-time for the Volunteer Fire Department". On this particular odd day Jacques Snicket was sitting at the Veritable French Diner. Jacques, not as tall or thin as his infamous enemy Count Olaf and not as villainous or greedy or wicked or unhygienic, nevertheless bore the same eyebrow and left ankle tattoo as Olaf. This was because both had been inducted into the same secret organization when they were young children. These two distant relations epitomized the two sides of the V.F.D. schism: Jacques the noble and courageous side and Olaf the villainous and underhanded side. If ever there was an example of nobility and nerve within V.F.D., Jacques Snicket embodied it (to the eternal consternation to the organization's central authorities, a quality shared with his two siblings in varying spades). Having been sent to the Hinterlands when he was young in his apprenticeship, he befriended a fellow apprentice named Olivia, with whom he and his brother Lemony had sometimes spent time with. At four-thirty in the afternoon Jacques received a coded espresso detailing that an associate would meet him just outside of 667 Dark Avenue, the penthouse suite of which was owned and lived in by his good friend Jerome Squalor who, though not a volunteer like Jacques, by chance shared the same initials as him and had bought the whole building on his concerned advice. Jacques stood in front of the looming apartment building, awaiting his associate. As darkness was incredibly in right now, Jacques had brought a Verdant Flashlight Device not too bright and not too dim to help his eyes adjust to the constant darkness. Red hair framed the shadowy figure approaching him. Jacques held the green flashlight beam up to its face: it was a she, dressed in a fine coat, looking dignified and elegant. Her green eyes held his own in a searching gaze. "Monsieur Snicket," she spoke in a firm satiny voice, "My name is Élise de la Serre. I have come to warn you that your associate has been brutally murdered. You are in grave danger. Come with me if you want to live." She grabbed his free hand as the two began a frantic walk out of the darkness. Yes, dear reader. Jacques Snicket was having a very odd day indeed.
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Post by Jacques Snicket on Nov 13, 2014 23:35:00 GMT -5
Snippet Seven
Olaf was staring at the time travel device with astonishment. "That's the exact same machine which took me here." Faraday had just ran back to the Room of Various Futuristic Devices, unlocked the door and found the Count enthralled with the large device in the center of the room. It was a police box. Dark blue with white lettering, it stood like a monolith in the midst of the shiny apparatuses presumably futuristic due to the abundance of chrome. "Ha! Bookworm, you are no match for the genius of Count Olaf!" he said, leering at Faraday for having locked him in. "I stand before the very device in front of you." Olaf growled Olafishly. "You think you know everything, bookworm, but you are wrong. I am far more powerful than you could ever imagine, you idiotic volunteer. Ha! With this police box I can travel to anywhere I want and get whatever fortunes I want. Count Olaf does not go quietly into the night like a foolish blowfish full of poison."
Olaf's eyes burned with blazing fury. "Soon I will take the Baudelaire fortune — the fortune I have been long denied — and then I'll be even with their meddlesome parents, and I'll destroy the Snickets! I'll make sure I destroy all Denouements! And I'll revile the name Beatrice forever, for she was the one who murdered my parents at the opera, her and that fool Bertrand. Ha! I will have my revenge on the Baudelaires and their orphaned brats! Ha! "I, who framed Lemony Snicket for crimes that I myself committed in my brilliance, I who murdered Jacques Snicket while he wasted away in an opportune case of mistaken identity, I who should have been the true father of Kit Snicket's baby and not that idiotic twin! Once I'm done with them, I'll go after the two who recruited me for their side. With time travel, they don't seem so menacing anymore, and I will get even with them too! Ha! "I've always thought that V.F.D. was foolish, bookworm. Foolish people leading foolish lives, while people like me get what they want by any means necessary. A quiet world is too quiet for me. Let the ridiculous volunteers bide their time with useless codes and meeting places. I will burn them all anyways; they cannot stop the fires from spreading. None of them can. Nobility is a weakness, bookworm. Nobility is cowardice, the refusal to get your hands dirty and your matches struck, unless it is to murder my parents. Lies and hypocrisy. That's all V.F.D. ever was. Unlike the idiotic volunteers, I want to win!"
Numb, Faraday took it all in, as if in the eye of an angry hurricane. Olaf flamed like the midday sun as he opened the door to the police box, which to Faraday's wonderment, opened bigger on the inside than outside. "I'll time travel to a place where there are matches and then I'll return to burn this catalog down, but not before killing you, bookworm." Olaf held a seventeenth-century rapier in his hand, the type made famous by Alexandre Dumas's Musketeer novels. "Ha! As soon as you locked me in I found this," he said, roughly motioning the rapier, "in one of the piles of futuristic devices stored here by that idiotic sub-sub-librarian. He must have time traveled as well. En garde, bookworm!" It was all very comical to Faraday, of course, yet was forced to find a weapon for himself as Count Olaf insisted on having a duel to the death in the strange police box. Faraday found another sword as Olaf swung at him, dodging just in time. They swung at each other. "With this police box I will steal every fortune on earth!" Faraday parried furiously. Olaf's mouth hung open for a second and he briefly withdrew, giving Faraday his chance, barely grazing Olaf's eyebrow and slicing Olaf's tattered pinstripe coat on the right sleeve. "You are more formidable than I expected, bookworm. I still have the upper hand, the hand that will erase you from existence. Ha!" Olaf brandished the rapier menacingly, missing Faraday by mere inches. "It seems your rapier is duller than your wit, Olaf," Faraday sparred. "A phrase which here means that I will stop you." Olaf cackled. "Ha! Who are you to defeat me, bookworm? I am Count Olaf. You sir are only cabaret." With that, Olaf slammed down a lever within the intraspatially enlarged police box, causing an explosion that knocked Faraday unconscious.
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Post by Jacques Snicket on Nov 12, 2014 10:10:04 GMT -5
But I like your idea, Dante, of him meddling with his own past schemes.
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Post by Jacques Snicket on Nov 12, 2014 10:06:22 GMT -5
This alternate timeline Olaf got off the island, continued his schemes, then he traveled back to this original timeline, his original counterpart being long dead. It's like if Doc Brown died in 1955 and another Doc Brown who didn't die in 1955 traveled back to that original 1955 from an alternate future. Does that help, Dante?
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Post by Jacques Snicket on Nov 11, 2014 23:18:57 GMT -5
Snippet Six
I am certain there have been times in your life when events in it are too much to handle, and you wish to flee to some secret room through some secret passage behind the painting of a snowy cityscape to crumple yourself into a ball and cry yourself to sleep. There are times when I have fled from a room in order to get away from a comment made offhand about someone near and dear to my heart, a phrase which here means that I am heartbroken. As I write this I am hidden away under a table in a room at the Hotel Preludio as the first tear stains from my tired eyes fall onto these miserable words. I am crying because she was right about those whom I once counted as friends though I spoke to them little. She was right that they had turned on her and would turn on me afterwards, which is indeed what happened. She was right that I had been so foolish to trust in them when they had little to no trust in me. Queen Ingrid was right, and I was wrong, wrong, wrong. Ingrid was right, and she will remain right for as long as she lives and for as long as my heart continues to beat for her, which will probably be forever, and then I'll be a skeleton and then I'll be a bookshelf full of books. But that is the way it goes, unfortunate reader, because the words of my tragic wintry Queen fit Reuel Faraday's current situation like a cold and icy glove.
"Count Olaf." It was not a question. It was a rumination. Faraday had turned around when he had seen another shadow interlace with his own shadow on the reflecting tile floor of the underwater Hotel Denouement catalog. The man who appeared to be Count Olaf grinned nastily and said "Ha! At last I am inside the catalog of that legendary sub-sub-librarian. Ha!" It really was Count Olaf; the same Count Olaf who had helped the Baudelaires to burn down the Hotel Denouement, went with them to an island, but he had not died there as had the original Count Olaf of this timeline. "Ha! Those scientists were idiots! I disguised myself as one of them when I went to their headquarters in the Kierkegaard Mountains and convinced them to let me see the head scientist Dante himself. Ha! I then discovered that they were working on time travel, and I found the machine and the sugar bowl. Ha! And now, you foolish volunteer, you will take me to where they keep the matches so I can burn this place down from the inside. Ha!" To Faraday, seeing Count Olaf alive and villainous was like a young child seeing the bad guy from the Saturday morning cartoons suddenly come out of the television set and into the living room where the family was eating their breakfast, but far more serious. Olaf ranted incessantly about his past schemes as he led Faraday on through the catalog. This Count Olaf was clearly a time traveler. "What is your name anyway?" Olaf scratchily asked. "Faraday." "Are you him?" "Who?" "The legendary physicist from that family of idiotic bookworms," Olaf glowered. "I'm not, but we're related." "Let me take a guess! Son." "No." "Uncle." "No." "Father." "No." "Grandfather." "No." "Well, what are you, obnoxious bookworm?" "Nephew." "Why didn't you say so?" "Thought you knew, seeing as you had just traveled through time." At this Olaf struck a pose. "Why, of course I know everything. I am unspeakably brilliant. Do you think I would ever operate one of those things if I did not know what I was doing? Because unlike you I wasn't born yesterday. Ha!" Before Faraday could reply and tell Olaf what he had thought instead, Olaf called, "Come along, bookworm!" Because of course Count Olaf could tell what sort of person you are by simply looking at you. Along the way to the match room, Olaf eulogised himself in a vain manner, a phrase which here means "a terrible actor talked about himself more terribly than the force of his acting skills." "I did not travel through time and space just so I could cater to bookworms like you. As I am Count Olaf, you should learn that I am the only important person in the world. Everybody else is just a nameless extra behind the star of the show - me!" Faraday ignored him as they entered the match room. There were no matches in sight. "What is the meaning of this, bookworm?" Olaf turned harshly, his eyebrow blazing angrily above his shining eyes. Faraday shrugged with hidden confusion, something unfathomable flickering in his eyes. Olaf spun madly about as he rattled off more vanities. "I did not enter into the underwater catalog so some idiotic bookworm could lead me into a match room without matches!" But Faraday had an inkling suspicion that the absence of matches in a match room was something the very very late Dewey Denouement had put into place if ever a villain had time-travelled his way into the facility as Count Olaf had. Faraday then noticed the room had no corresponding Dewey Decimal number. In fact, the entire hallway was absent of numbers. For you see, dear reader, Dewey Denouement had had the last laugh on any villain thinking to enter and burn down the catalog from the inside. He had had the last laugh, incidentally, on the man who had been responsible for his death. By the time Faraday had reached that conclusion, Olaf was simmering and muttering about harpoons and harpoon guns, idiotic twins, poison darts and long-ago operas, and by the time he had managed to head to the Room of Various Futuristic Devices, Olaf turned sharply on Faraday again and said, "Are you who I think you are, bookworm?" It was an odd question coming from Olaf, who had lost his laugh in the frantic fever of getting his hands on matches with which to burn the place down from within. Olaf stepped closer to Faraday, eyes shining dangerously. "Are you? Are you who I think you are?" Faraday stared incredulously and gave an answer. "No." Olaf grew shocked as his eyebrow rose, finally lost for words. Faraday took this moment and shoved Olaf into the room and locked the villainous actor in, ready to search for the file on Alighiero Mallahnson. As he walked through the halls he came to a startling realization. If his uncle Daniel Faraday the physicist had been known to Olaf, who had infiltrated a scientific community concentrated on time travel, used one of their devices to travel back to this time and in this place, and any files pertaining to Mallahnson would be located with the subject of their subject, locking Olaf into the Room of Various Futuristic Devices had been a ridiculously bad decision.
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Post by Jacques Snicket on Nov 10, 2014 19:27:03 GMT -5
Snippet Five
Pyratinus Gold was the well-to-do proprietor of the Department of Redundancy Department. A hard life defined the edges of his stoic, weathered face. If you had chanced to be around in the area he grew up in, you would have noticed a distinct accent spoken prevalently amidst those who dwelt on, in, near, under, above and around braes, a word which here means "wide country hillsides where shepherds steer their sheep to leas, where old facilitators with feet of clay often stay just before the onset of a storm, and where despairing authors of series on series of unfortunate events hide out from inquisitive shepherds and carnivorous sheep flocks." His son had disappeared early on, and Gold had spent eons searching. He was inducted into a secret society while on that search, and had become a furtive concealer of its most gravest secrets. The door bell literally rang as the shop door was opened by a tall and pallid youth: Severus Snape, eyes and expression sternly unfathomable as always, in his sternly unfathomable black clothing. Gold took a good look at his young dour associate. "Severus Snape. I had a feeling you would come here." Something unfathomable danced before Gold's eyes. "Who came up with that utterly ridiculous menu?" Severus stared as if to dare him to answer, but he went on to hiss: "Just what were you thinking, Gold? Five-thirty in the afternoon?!" He spat out this last line. "I should have realized you were incompetent at setting a proper time and a proper place for our meeting." He began sweeping the room as he bristled his words like ice. "Add to it a rather childish attempt to poison me, Gold." His voice was threatening now. "Luckily, had it not been for my genetic predisposition for immunity to most poisons, he would have succeeded and I, the only one with the knowledge of our quarry, would have been most severely..." his lip curled, "incapacitated." Madness glinted in Severus's cold eyes, and it was a madness beyond all reason. "You are right, Severus Snape." Gold was leaning forward from behind the stand with a glint of insanity and a wry grin to match the madness of Severus. "Very right indeed, dearie." And then he did the most strangest thing anyone in this unfortunate story has ever done: he giggled. It was not a tiny giggle, but a substantial giggle, a giggle not too short or too long, but just right. Severus did not know what to think, but stood there with his unfathomable eyes staring in no particular direction and wondering how he had ended up with him as an associate in the first place. It infuriated him to no end. He slapped a piece of paper onto the counter, shocking Gold from his laugh who proceeded to stare at it intently. "I see, Severus Snape. But I need one more thing from you in return." Snape blanched at the thought of it. "I thought we already had a deal," slanted Snape, referencing what in their organization was largely unheard of: deals between members. Everyone else had to make deals in his presence, or they would lose his favor and backing and only patron willing to patronize their works...for a price. "What is it that you desire this time, you ridiculous dimwit?" he muttered under his breath. Gold was unnaturally cheery. "What was that, dearie?" Snape coughed loudly and stated simply: "None of your business." "Ah, but it is my business, Severus Snape, or else why would you be here?" Dangerous irritation flashed in Snape's eyes, and an uncomfortable realization. "You set this whole thing up, didn't you." "Whatever works to bring in the early bird, dearie!" Gold chipped insanely, as if to speak an absurd consolation. Snape's fury was by then up to eleven and rising chaotically. He stepped back, sent his hand into a pocket, retracted said hand with sugar bowl in tow, and dropped the sugar bowl onto the floor. The sugar bowl pieces said to Snape, "Now I'm shattered. Forever. You monster." In actuality, the voice was Gold's, who had taken to impersonating the voice of a shattered china piece with merciless aplomb. Snape gasped. It could only mean one thing. Pyratinus Gold was Hangfire, or doing a really good imitation of Hangfire.
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Post by Jacques Snicket on Nov 10, 2014 13:29:15 GMT -5
Snippet Four
Reuel Faraday was standing outside the pond next to the burnt down remains of the Hotel Denouement three days later. He had embarked on the last train out from Heisenberg, which was where he had been before, made a stop at a very crowded station off a lesser-traveled tributary of Rarely Ridden Road, had to hail a taxi every other five minutes due to being forced out by his reasonable disagreements with every single cab driver and hanging cheerful dash mirror ornament, and then a melodramatic chase through the Clusterous Forest (which was neither clusterous nor a forest but more like a hangdog field of bizarre seaweed which only seemed clusterous and foresty from the outside) tailed incessantly by a fleet of homicidal ballerinas who at the last second had danced themselves conveniently into a well of wet dry ink which tugged on their villainous lithe forms like live-acting quicksand as they tried harder and harder to pirouette themselves out of it, an expression which here means "they had been trapped like flies in molasses and could not get out." After that, he took another train only to realize he had left his ticket (bought just In case he ever landed in such a situation of needing another train) behind in one of the back seats of one of the taxis. It was impossible to go all the way back there because the Taxi Union was on strike and the only people allowed to cross the picket line were Wolfshead Society sculptors (who indeed wore wolves' taxidermed heads over their real unimpressive human heads) who wished to set the famous Taxi Revolt in stone for the new Taxi Company headquarters just down the street.
It was then that he realized he could have gone to the nearest airport and flown, but that was out of the question as well. And that one question was the first in a series of ridiculously wrong questions, questions he neither had time nor patience to ask, let alone answer, and so he simply hot-wired a ridiculously ancient and dusty, or possibly sandy, faded green roadster and sputtered his way over to the place where the Hotel Denouement once stood. The old car had, once on arrival, spontaneously combusted after he stepped out with a loud engine splutter. After Ivo had told him of Alighiero Mallansohn the famed scientist, Faraday had decided to go to the one place he could get answers: the underwater Catalog under the Pond, or so it was when Dewey Denouement had been alive. Ringing slowly around the lake's perimeters, he hunted for a lever that would call up a bathysphere from within the depths of the truly reflected submarine facility. Since the fire nobody had even dared to find a way into the catalog, thinking that its entrance had gone up in smoke with the inferno set not more than thirty years before. Placed there not long after the Hotel Denouement's completion, it was never found by anyone, volunteer or villain, except for those whom the late sub-sub-librarian had intended for it to be found. Faraday had known its location (and the distinct absence of the complimentary looming lighthouse as was a feature of a facility in the middle of a wide wide ocean far far away housing a complimentary bathysphere service for entrance and outing into and from a fabled underwater city which was so fabled that an equally fabulous city in the clouds was mentioned as if to be a legendary counterpoint to an already legendary legend, like Verdi, unicorns or the now-long-dead third Denouement triplet who was sorrowfully soaking in the briny of the pond with a harpoon stuck in the dead man's chest like an angry key stuck in an even angrier rusted lock) ever since he had been Theodora's apprentice. Faraday pulled the lever, which was situated within a curious ridge of lake rocks nobody had ever cared to notice before. After a short minute, a low crankling of metal sounded from the water. A rusted bathysphere arose, its bulbous window slightly cracked along its length. With a consideration Faraday wrenched open the side door, stepped in, and turned the door pipe wheel counterclockwise, which shut him inside. Faraday noticed a large red button which glowed eerily in the midnight shadows of distant lights. Foolishly or recklessly he pushed the large red button, and the entire thing gave a sickening lurch as it began its ghostly descent down into the depths. His tense face bore a green glow from the internal lighting based against the dark lake surrounding his precarious descent. The creaking was unbearable. If you have ever felt like something very unpleasant was due to happen to you, and you had nothing whatsoever to do to stop it from happening, then you know that fear can be a very crippling thing, but not as crippling as drowning from a loose rivet of a submersed bathysphere infrastructure failing against the exponentially increasing water pressure. This second and more ominous kind of crippling is known as death, and Reuel Faraday did not have any death wish, dear reader. The bathysphere had been not maintained for years, and its current occupant was very displaced that until his descent ended safely within the underwater catalog, he could do naught else than count the clusters of seaweed haphazardly lining all the way down into the great unknown mystery and wonder whether his plan really would work as he had intended. The underwater catalog, while clearly having seen better days was in a clearly better state than he had expected it to be. It was an abandoned lobby, by the looks of it. Just as the Dewey Decimal system had categorized the hotel rooms in the actual hotel back when the burnt remains comprised a hotel worth the name, it also categorized the deserted catalog he was now bewildered to be in. The place had an air of ominous doom to it, like something on the tip of his tongue that could never be explained. He was seeking the files on the scientist Mallansohn. His one time residence had been the temporary prison of the young man gazing in wonder at the reflective tiling on the floor. So absorbed was he in this that he did not notice the shadow looming behind him as he made his way tentatively to the room where his information was waiting, nor did he notice the left ankle which had an eye tattooed on it, nor did he notice the salt and pepper hair of the figure whose shadows were becoming theatric against the backlights, nor did he recognize the single eyebrow furrowed entirely for effect, nor did he realize that the file he had come for had already been removed and placed into the hands of an ornery astronomer located three miles away from the café which sold bitter tea with even bitterer wormwood. He did not realize these things, dear reader, because if he had realized those things, he would have known who was currently in the shady business of sneaking up on him; he would have known that the situation was about to worsen in the coming days and that a friend would turn out to be an enemy, and an enemy a friend; he would have known that the ankle, hair and eyebrow of the man behind him pointed to another long-dead legend, a man named Count Olaf.
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Post by Jacques Snicket on Nov 9, 2014 15:32:48 GMT -5
When did you insert a non Snicket character into one of your stories? My memory's a bit dim at the moment on that.
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Post by Jacques Snicket on Nov 8, 2014 18:43:11 GMT -5
Snippet Three
Severus Snape was a willowy young man with dark greasy hair which fell to his shoulders, which like the rest of his person was clothed with imposing black clothes save for his pale face and hands. He was disinterestedly sipping bitter tea laced with even bitterer wormwood. He would be meeting an associate due to the contents of the week-old telegram currently hanging in his hand. The table pot was simmering heavily as he poured himself another flagon of Bitter Bitter Tea, un-originally named after the flowery and ramshackle café he was sitting in: "Bitter Bitter Tea Time", well aware of the fact that his table pot had been spiked with a more lethal dosage of powdered wormwood than was the already strong usual dosage. As it so happened, Severus Snape was genetically immune to most poisons and so he drank it down with an arched eyebrow, silently mocking the old and freckled waiter who at that moment rushed back behind the counter to check on sales, or, more likely, to inform whomever had hired him to poison Severus Snape that the deed had been botched, a word which here means "foiled due to the target's unprecedented natural resistance to a very powerful powder lethal in gargantuan tablespoons." Now, dear reader, poison was not the only thing young Severus was resistant to. He was also resistant to the ploys of fools, such as the obnoxious banker from the table adjacent to his wishing to sell golden banknotes which, I am sure you are well aware, is not a practice prerequisite to good financial management. After sending him off with a slicing word, he decided to check the time. Not just any time, but Bitter Bitter Tea time. Upon glancing at the rickety wall clock, Severus read through the telegram again, looked back at the clock. According to it, it was half-past five. He then glanced at the sparse menu which only contained the words "Bitter Bitter Tea Time's Bitter Bitter Tea With Bitter Bitter Bitter Wormwood." Its overall design appeared to have been commissioned by the Department of Redundancy Department, a fledgling ink and stationery service bureau based in a city he had never been to, but to which he would soon journey in the coming days, a phrase which here means "he would be there very very soon". On that menu he found no timing whatsoever. Everything was a repetitive, perpetual jumble, and to Severus that wasn't very sensible at all. Clearly those were intended errors, or the entire tea shop had been plucked out of a bad Victorian penny dreadful. He did not like to dwell on such things, for his associate had been waylaid sometime before, and he had a far away city to visit. With a curt nod at the dumbfounded Bitter Bitter Doorman, he swept out into the street.
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Post by Jacques Snicket on Nov 8, 2014 12:46:56 GMT -5
I've been scanning the discussion threads of ATWQ and child threads of "Ridiculously Wrong Questions" for the general gist of it. Only have the first book. I did like what I read about Lemony's speech and the beautiful essence of what V.F.D. ought to be in ?3 and Theodora's apprentice before Lemony (I had no idea she had had an apprentice who was favorable to her, yet I wrote the same sort of thing) came along, and after his "rival", and I liked that she has redeeming qualities. I, too, really hope she does not perish in ?4, but that is what time travel is for, right?
She disappeared after training Faraday, but to where? Or a better question might be, to when.
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