(no subject)
New original fiction thingie. No, this does not mean any of my other projects are abandoned. It just means that I'm a moron and have started another one.
Yay, insomnia!
This one is gonna be long, if it gets to be where it wants to go.
When Jonathan Selnyk first came to the Fantasy Adventure Parlor on 15th and Maple Street, he had no idea what he was getting into.
The car was at least twenty years old, one of the few beasts on the road that still ran entirely on gasoline. He didn’t like it much, but the leather seats were comfortable and he liked that it had a cassette player as well as a CD. There weren’t many cars around with working cassette players these days. Nor, for that matter, were there a lot of working cassettes. It was like trying to find a working laserdisc player.
He parked it in the old parking lot behind the Olive Garden on 16th, and walked the block to the address he’d written on the back of his hand in permanent marker. He wasn’t sure what he’d expected, from a place that called itself a Fantasy Adventure Parlor, but this wasn’t it.
It reminded him of a café, especially the part where there were five tables on a patio in front ringed with four metal chairs apiece. The tables all had umbrellas sticking out of them. No customers, though.
He frowned at the tables. They seemed incongruous. Today was already weird, and he hadn’t even set foot in the place.
He shrugged his shoulders and walked in through the door. There was a jingle, as of bells announcing his entry.
There was a tall, balding man behind what looked across between a fast food place’s counter and a hotel’s front desk. He looked a bit like a bartender, but that was only because he was mopping a bit of spilled soda off the desktop with a bit of marginally clean rag.
“Hi,” said Jon.
The man looked at him. His expression was bewildered, but not unfriendly. “Hi,” he said. “Can I help you?”
“Er, yes, actually,” Jon said. “I’m your new Dark Lord.”
The man looked at him in silence for a moment. Then he smiled. “Who sent you, kid?” he said.
“Ira,” Jon said. “He said you needed a new Dark Lord.”
“Have you got Parlor experience?” asked the man. He wiped a bit of grit off his name-tag, revealing his name to be BILL. Jon was somehow unsurprised. He looked like a Bill.
“Not as such, but I’ve got four years of amateur theater experience,” Jon said. “And, er, about a half a year of college. I’m majoring in theater arts.”
“Played any tabletop roleplaying games before?” asked Bill.
Jon blinked. “Tabletop? What, with ... paper? And dice?”
Bill grinned. “Dating myself, eh? All right. What’s your name, prospective Dark Lord?”
“Jon Selnyk,” he replied.
“Ahh,” Bill said. He nodded understanding. “Ira’s nephew.”
Jon studiously kept himself from making a face. “I told you Ira sent me.”
“Have you got a resume?” asked Bill.
Jon took the resume chip out of his pocket and put it on the counter. Bill frowned at it for a moment, then took it and slipped it into the chip reader. He scanned the holo-image that formed on his side of the desk.
“That’s four years of amateur theater experience, right enough,” Bill said. “The Scottish Play, eh?”
“Er, that’s Shakespeare’s Macbeth. We don’t like to call it -”
“I know what the Scottish Play is, son. I was going to ask you what role you had in it,” Bill said dryly.
Jon blinked, uncertain as to why this line of questioning was taking place. “Oh. Um, the titular one.”
Bill snorted. “Aren’t you a bit young for that?”
Jon was frustrated. “It’s amazing what you can do just by changing your walk. Would you like me to demonstrate?”
Bill shook his head. “No, son, I believe you.” He read some more, then chuckled. “Macbeth and Robin Goodfellow?”
“It’s all in the body language. Although of course vocal control is very important,” Jon said. “Excuse me, are my theatrical credentials in question? I wasn’t aware I needed to audition for this
job.”
“Just curious, Mr. Selnyk,” Bill said reproachfully. “I like to get an idea of who I’m hiring. We get a variety in here and you’ll find the job requires versatility.”
Jon raised his eyebrows. “Good,” he said.
“Well, starting pay is $9 an hour, time and a half for overtime, overtime being any hour over forty hours you work. If you stick around, you’ll find ample opportunities for improvement and promotion. Benefits start after three months,” said Bill.
“I’m hired?” Jon asked, startled.
“I believe that was the general idea,” Bill said. “Ira’s a good guy, I trust him.”
“Don’t you need to ... drug-test me or something?” Jon said.
“You on drugs?”
“No!”
Bill grinned. “Good enough for me.”
Jon was confused. “Isn’t that illegal?”
“Nope. It’s not required by law that I test you for drugs. It’s just allowed,” said Bill. “Come on back and meet some of the people you’ll be working with.”
Bill moseyed - there was no other word for the way he moved - out from behind the counter and led Jon back through a door that said “no admittance - employees only” on it. There were two doors on each side of the hallway. Each bore a label.
The first said: “SCIENCE FICTION ADVENTURE”
The second: “FANTASY ADVENTURE”
The third: “FANTASY ADVENTURE”
And the fourth, which also read “FANTASY ADVENTURE,” was the door Bill opened. “Go ahead and meet your co-workers. Sit in for as long as you like. When you’re done, if you still want the job, come out and see me at the counter and we’ll set you up in the security system and get you logged in to the Games Computer.”
Jon nodded and entered the room.
The first thing he noticed were the V.R.I.A. (Virtual Reality Integrated Action) suits. There were five of them, and although not the finest models on the market, they were also not pieces of often-malfunctioning junk like you got for $1500.00 from Costco. He whistled through his teeth.
A plump woman with short brown hair laughed - he judged her mid-twenties, maybe a little older. Her laugh was a bit of a cackle. She was seated at a table with a plate of spaghetti. “Never worked parlor before, eh?” she said.
“That obvious?” he asked.
“Those VRIAs aren’t too bad. Not the best, but not the worst. We used to have nothing but old clunkers, but then old Billy worked out annual membership sales and figured out he could afford to buy some actual, like, equipment. You the new Dark Lord?”
He nodded and crossed the room to shake hands with her. Her handshake was firm, if unusually warm.
“Hi,” he said.
“Hi,” she replied. “I’m Love Interest.”
He blinked. “You’re what?”
“Yeah, definitely never worked parlor before,” she said. She laughed again. It wasn’t a bad cackle, not like she was the Wicked Witch of the West or anything, but definite overtones of cackle. “I’m Carrie Torvayne. Love Interest. It’s the role I play. Right now there’s no player, so we can all kick back. The others all went to watch Sci-Fi room on the monitors. Some smartass kid apparently engaged an entire alien fleet with two fighters and hasn’t exploded yet.”
“Wow,” he said. “I’m Jon Selnyk. Have you worked here long?”
“God, it’s been forever,” said Carrie. “I took this as a summer job when I was sixteen, seven years ago. Then senior year of high school it started to be after-school job. The hours fit - four to midnight, if you’re taking over for Andrea that’ll be your shift too - and I wasn’t Love Interest then, so there was plenty of time to do homework.” She grinned. “It’s possibly the best job ever.”
“Andrea? The old Dark Lord?” he hazarded.
“Yep. Got fired. Thom says she was caught masturbating in the VRAI,” Carrie said. She rolled her eyes.
“Ergh,” Jon said. He could feel himself trying to go cross-eyed at the suddenness and unexpectedness of the too-much-information. This, he thought, is definitely a green room. Many theater people inherently lack the 'tact' gland. “Was she ... I mean ... on camera?”
“In the VRAI, in scene. Of course, she was playing Dark Lord as male, so it looked to the players - four of them - like he was scratching his crotch. But still. Caught unawares waiting for scene to start, and ... bam. My recommendation to you is don’t jerk off in the VRAI,” said Carrie.
“That is ... does that happen often in this business?” asked Jon.
“Dark Lords don’t tend to last long. Sometimes Bill has to hire dumb college kids. The Games Computer can handle a lot, but when the Sci-Fi and Fantasy Rooms are running at the same time we’re pretty much short a Dark Lord with any kind of personality. Standards go down, people stop playing. The computer has to run huge fleets by itself in the Sci-Fi Room, which can get to be a real drain on NPCs for us.”
A door slammed in the hall. Seconds later, the door to the room opened, and slight man in his mid-thirties with thick dark hair shot with grey stalked into the room.
“Hi, Thom,” said Carrie. “What’s the matter?”
“Jo Ann,” replied the man theatrically, flopping across the old green couch shoved against the wall of the room. “She is insufferable. I really wish she would find another job.”
“There, there,” Carrie soothed. “You don’t have to deal with her every day. Just think what Richard goes through.”
“Who’s Jo Ann and Richard?” asked Jon.
Thom’s dark eyes refocused on Jon. “Who the heck are you?” he said.
“New Dark Lord,” Carrie said. “Jon, this is Thom. He’s Sidekick. Thom, this is Jon. He’s Dark Lord.”
“Ah,” said Thom. He inclined his head regally to Jon.
“Haven’t I seen you before?” Jon asked.
“I doubt it,” Thom said. He looked at the ceiling. “I’m afraid my career is in something of a-”
“No, I have,” Jon insisted. “You were in I Do, I Do two summers ago at the Ptolemaic Company.”
Thom sat up and stared at him, suspicion in his eyes. “How did you ... ?”
“I auditioned for your role,” Jon explained. “It would’ve been my break into professional theater. It was down to three - you, me, and Joseph Garfield.”
“My God,” Thom said. His hand flew to his mouth. “I ruined your career?”
“Oh, no, no,” Jon said. “You were fabulous. You were better than Preston. Thomas Wyndal, right?”
“That’s right,” Thom said. “Although I wouldn’t say I was better than Preston ... I mean, who is, really ...”
Jon fought back the smirk. “No, really,” he said sincerely. “You were fantastic. I can’t believe I’m actually going to be working with you.”
Sheer delight shone in Thom’s features. “I - I’m very glad we’ll be working together on this project, I really ... always so pleased to meet a true thespian in this line of work ...”
Carrie was watching them with a suspiciously smirk-like expression, herself.
“Here,” Carrie said. “Thom, before you’re overcome.” She handed him a water bottle.
He unscrewed the top and took a swig without even appearing to notice he was doing it. Then he cleared his throat, genteelly.
“Richard and Jo Ann are the Chief Engineer and Rival in the Sci Fi room, respectively. They are terrible, terrible people who I hope never subject you to their presence, young man,” said Thom.
Carrie rolled her eyes. “They’re not that bad. Just a little ... um. Flighty.”
“And they cannot act,” said Thom. “Either of them. Billy should just fire them.”
“And then Paul and David would have to run the Sci Fi Room by themselves, Thom,” said Carrie. “Or he’d make the rest of us shift in, and I so cannot do technobabble.”
Yay, insomnia!
This one is gonna be long, if it gets to be where it wants to go.
When Jonathan Selnyk first came to the Fantasy Adventure Parlor on 15th and Maple Street, he had no idea what he was getting into.
The car was at least twenty years old, one of the few beasts on the road that still ran entirely on gasoline. He didn’t like it much, but the leather seats were comfortable and he liked that it had a cassette player as well as a CD. There weren’t many cars around with working cassette players these days. Nor, for that matter, were there a lot of working cassettes. It was like trying to find a working laserdisc player.
He parked it in the old parking lot behind the Olive Garden on 16th, and walked the block to the address he’d written on the back of his hand in permanent marker. He wasn’t sure what he’d expected, from a place that called itself a Fantasy Adventure Parlor, but this wasn’t it.
It reminded him of a café, especially the part where there were five tables on a patio in front ringed with four metal chairs apiece. The tables all had umbrellas sticking out of them. No customers, though.
He frowned at the tables. They seemed incongruous. Today was already weird, and he hadn’t even set foot in the place.
He shrugged his shoulders and walked in through the door. There was a jingle, as of bells announcing his entry.
There was a tall, balding man behind what looked across between a fast food place’s counter and a hotel’s front desk. He looked a bit like a bartender, but that was only because he was mopping a bit of spilled soda off the desktop with a bit of marginally clean rag.
“Hi,” said Jon.
The man looked at him. His expression was bewildered, but not unfriendly. “Hi,” he said. “Can I help you?”
“Er, yes, actually,” Jon said. “I’m your new Dark Lord.”
The man looked at him in silence for a moment. Then he smiled. “Who sent you, kid?” he said.
“Ira,” Jon said. “He said you needed a new Dark Lord.”
“Have you got Parlor experience?” asked the man. He wiped a bit of grit off his name-tag, revealing his name to be BILL. Jon was somehow unsurprised. He looked like a Bill.
“Not as such, but I’ve got four years of amateur theater experience,” Jon said. “And, er, about a half a year of college. I’m majoring in theater arts.”
“Played any tabletop roleplaying games before?” asked Bill.
Jon blinked. “Tabletop? What, with ... paper? And dice?”
Bill grinned. “Dating myself, eh? All right. What’s your name, prospective Dark Lord?”
“Jon Selnyk,” he replied.
“Ahh,” Bill said. He nodded understanding. “Ira’s nephew.”
Jon studiously kept himself from making a face. “I told you Ira sent me.”
“Have you got a resume?” asked Bill.
Jon took the resume chip out of his pocket and put it on the counter. Bill frowned at it for a moment, then took it and slipped it into the chip reader. He scanned the holo-image that formed on his side of the desk.
“That’s four years of amateur theater experience, right enough,” Bill said. “The Scottish Play, eh?”
“Er, that’s Shakespeare’s Macbeth. We don’t like to call it -”
“I know what the Scottish Play is, son. I was going to ask you what role you had in it,” Bill said dryly.
Jon blinked, uncertain as to why this line of questioning was taking place. “Oh. Um, the titular one.”
Bill snorted. “Aren’t you a bit young for that?”
Jon was frustrated. “It’s amazing what you can do just by changing your walk. Would you like me to demonstrate?”
Bill shook his head. “No, son, I believe you.” He read some more, then chuckled. “Macbeth and Robin Goodfellow?”
“It’s all in the body language. Although of course vocal control is very important,” Jon said. “Excuse me, are my theatrical credentials in question? I wasn’t aware I needed to audition for this
job.”
“Just curious, Mr. Selnyk,” Bill said reproachfully. “I like to get an idea of who I’m hiring. We get a variety in here and you’ll find the job requires versatility.”
Jon raised his eyebrows. “Good,” he said.
“Well, starting pay is $9 an hour, time and a half for overtime, overtime being any hour over forty hours you work. If you stick around, you’ll find ample opportunities for improvement and promotion. Benefits start after three months,” said Bill.
“I’m hired?” Jon asked, startled.
“I believe that was the general idea,” Bill said. “Ira’s a good guy, I trust him.”
“Don’t you need to ... drug-test me or something?” Jon said.
“You on drugs?”
“No!”
Bill grinned. “Good enough for me.”
Jon was confused. “Isn’t that illegal?”
“Nope. It’s not required by law that I test you for drugs. It’s just allowed,” said Bill. “Come on back and meet some of the people you’ll be working with.”
Bill moseyed - there was no other word for the way he moved - out from behind the counter and led Jon back through a door that said “no admittance - employees only” on it. There were two doors on each side of the hallway. Each bore a label.
The first said: “SCIENCE FICTION ADVENTURE”
The second: “FANTASY ADVENTURE”
The third: “FANTASY ADVENTURE”
And the fourth, which also read “FANTASY ADVENTURE,” was the door Bill opened. “Go ahead and meet your co-workers. Sit in for as long as you like. When you’re done, if you still want the job, come out and see me at the counter and we’ll set you up in the security system and get you logged in to the Games Computer.”
Jon nodded and entered the room.
The first thing he noticed were the V.R.I.A. (Virtual Reality Integrated Action) suits. There were five of them, and although not the finest models on the market, they were also not pieces of often-malfunctioning junk like you got for $1500.00 from Costco. He whistled through his teeth.
A plump woman with short brown hair laughed - he judged her mid-twenties, maybe a little older. Her laugh was a bit of a cackle. She was seated at a table with a plate of spaghetti. “Never worked parlor before, eh?” she said.
“That obvious?” he asked.
“Those VRIAs aren’t too bad. Not the best, but not the worst. We used to have nothing but old clunkers, but then old Billy worked out annual membership sales and figured out he could afford to buy some actual, like, equipment. You the new Dark Lord?”
He nodded and crossed the room to shake hands with her. Her handshake was firm, if unusually warm.
“Hi,” he said.
“Hi,” she replied. “I’m Love Interest.”
He blinked. “You’re what?”
“Yeah, definitely never worked parlor before,” she said. She laughed again. It wasn’t a bad cackle, not like she was the Wicked Witch of the West or anything, but definite overtones of cackle. “I’m Carrie Torvayne. Love Interest. It’s the role I play. Right now there’s no player, so we can all kick back. The others all went to watch Sci-Fi room on the monitors. Some smartass kid apparently engaged an entire alien fleet with two fighters and hasn’t exploded yet.”
“Wow,” he said. “I’m Jon Selnyk. Have you worked here long?”
“God, it’s been forever,” said Carrie. “I took this as a summer job when I was sixteen, seven years ago. Then senior year of high school it started to be after-school job. The hours fit - four to midnight, if you’re taking over for Andrea that’ll be your shift too - and I wasn’t Love Interest then, so there was plenty of time to do homework.” She grinned. “It’s possibly the best job ever.”
“Andrea? The old Dark Lord?” he hazarded.
“Yep. Got fired. Thom says she was caught masturbating in the VRAI,” Carrie said. She rolled her eyes.
“Ergh,” Jon said. He could feel himself trying to go cross-eyed at the suddenness and unexpectedness of the too-much-information. This, he thought, is definitely a green room. Many theater people inherently lack the 'tact' gland. “Was she ... I mean ... on camera?”
“In the VRAI, in scene. Of course, she was playing Dark Lord as male, so it looked to the players - four of them - like he was scratching his crotch. But still. Caught unawares waiting for scene to start, and ... bam. My recommendation to you is don’t jerk off in the VRAI,” said Carrie.
“That is ... does that happen often in this business?” asked Jon.
“Dark Lords don’t tend to last long. Sometimes Bill has to hire dumb college kids. The Games Computer can handle a lot, but when the Sci-Fi and Fantasy Rooms are running at the same time we’re pretty much short a Dark Lord with any kind of personality. Standards go down, people stop playing. The computer has to run huge fleets by itself in the Sci-Fi Room, which can get to be a real drain on NPCs for us.”
A door slammed in the hall. Seconds later, the door to the room opened, and slight man in his mid-thirties with thick dark hair shot with grey stalked into the room.
“Hi, Thom,” said Carrie. “What’s the matter?”
“Jo Ann,” replied the man theatrically, flopping across the old green couch shoved against the wall of the room. “She is insufferable. I really wish she would find another job.”
“There, there,” Carrie soothed. “You don’t have to deal with her every day. Just think what Richard goes through.”
“Who’s Jo Ann and Richard?” asked Jon.
Thom’s dark eyes refocused on Jon. “Who the heck are you?” he said.
“New Dark Lord,” Carrie said. “Jon, this is Thom. He’s Sidekick. Thom, this is Jon. He’s Dark Lord.”
“Ah,” said Thom. He inclined his head regally to Jon.
“Haven’t I seen you before?” Jon asked.
“I doubt it,” Thom said. He looked at the ceiling. “I’m afraid my career is in something of a-”
“No, I have,” Jon insisted. “You were in I Do, I Do two summers ago at the Ptolemaic Company.”
Thom sat up and stared at him, suspicion in his eyes. “How did you ... ?”
“I auditioned for your role,” Jon explained. “It would’ve been my break into professional theater. It was down to three - you, me, and Joseph Garfield.”
“My God,” Thom said. His hand flew to his mouth. “I ruined your career?”
“Oh, no, no,” Jon said. “You were fabulous. You were better than Preston. Thomas Wyndal, right?”
“That’s right,” Thom said. “Although I wouldn’t say I was better than Preston ... I mean, who is, really ...”
Jon fought back the smirk. “No, really,” he said sincerely. “You were fantastic. I can’t believe I’m actually going to be working with you.”
Sheer delight shone in Thom’s features. “I - I’m very glad we’ll be working together on this project, I really ... always so pleased to meet a true thespian in this line of work ...”
Carrie was watching them with a suspiciously smirk-like expression, herself.
“Here,” Carrie said. “Thom, before you’re overcome.” She handed him a water bottle.
He unscrewed the top and took a swig without even appearing to notice he was doing it. Then he cleared his throat, genteelly.
“Richard and Jo Ann are the Chief Engineer and Rival in the Sci Fi room, respectively. They are terrible, terrible people who I hope never subject you to their presence, young man,” said Thom.
Carrie rolled her eyes. “They’re not that bad. Just a little ... um. Flighty.”
“And they cannot act,” said Thom. “Either of them. Billy should just fire them.”
“And then Paul and David would have to run the Sci Fi Room by themselves, Thom,” said Carrie. “Or he’d make the rest of us shift in, and I so cannot do technobabble.”