by Curtis Hox
Who else? Hattie thought. Who else can do this?
She’d retrieved her notebook from her desk, along with her database printouts and photocopies of interpolations that spoke only to her. These were her choice selections, taken from a locked cabinet of all her meaningful interpolations. They would have to be better protected, especially the list of enactment ephemera. If anyone else could incant and they could also read and write, they could do what she had done. She needed to hide her tools, make access to them more difficult. She calmed herself with the knowledge that without the enactment elements, no incantation or ward could work.
Why? Ah, but there was the rub—she had no idea.
Masumi and Alice appeared eager for more instruction. Soon, the atrium darkened, and they listened to Hattie’s plans for her Society. Both young women sat respectfully—even Masumi, who had calmed since her encounter with the inexplicable.
Masumi struggled silently, knowing she could not deny what had happened, yet neither could she explain it. She told herself to wait. With enough time, she would formulate a cogent enough response to satisfy even her own inner skeptic.
While she sat obediently listening to Dr. Sterling and Alice, who listened attentively—ever the sycophant—Masumi recognized the germ of Dr. Sterling’s intentions: she wanted to construct a powerful society of like-minded scholars who understood the importance of culture science. Though Dr. Sterling claimed she simply wanted to provide knowledge about the N.P.B., Masumi couldn’t help but imagine a secret society full of intrigue. Dr. Sterling had dismissed such fears with the nebulous promise that she would provide methods of protection. Masumi remembered the laminates secreted here and there throughout the building. This sort of activity bothered her. The superstitious actions of mumbling in the dark to ward off evil hinted at all that modern science had challenged and—at least for a time—vanquished.
“It feels like magic,” Masumi said. “How will modern science accept this?”
Dr. Sterling held up a thumb-sized magnet and an iron nail, separating them just far enough that the bond wouldn’t draw.
“Action at a distance,” she said, and nudged the magnet closer. The nail jerked and jittered, rolled over once, continued to roll, then clung to the magnet. “How does that work?”
“Magnetism—”
“How?” Dr. Sterling demanded.
“Physicists have described this. Electrons—”
“Right. We’ve come to understand it now. But what did a description sound like five hundred years ago?”
Dr. Sterling withdrew her ID card and one of the small Saint George laminates and set them on the table. “Wards of protection.”
Alice nodded reverentially. Masumi smirked and crossed her arms. “Seriously?”
“We ask how right now but we can’t answer. Help me answer.”
“They work?” Alice asked.
“So far.”
Masumi wanted to ask how, exactly. But Dr. Sterling would just answer, how did magnetism work in the fifteen hundreds? Same as today, only the causal description was different.
“I understand,” Masumi said, rejecting the bait.
“Good,” Dr. Sterling replied. “Now, let’s personalize these.”
She opened her battered notebook to reveal data printouts that listed all functional interpolations (versus mere noise).
Masumi had heard that to create this document, Dr. Sterling had spent several hundred thousands of the institute’s dollars. She’d hired a company to set up a fully firewalled system to digitize and track all interpolations sent to the institute.
“Here we go,” Masumi said. “More headaches.”
Dr. Sterling spent the next few minutes explaining that a Web-based portal and online community allowed the Spinner junkies to upload screenshots, scans, transcriptions, and full citations of interpolations. Dr. Sterling’s small staff apparently spent most of its time fact-checking and then printing out hard copies stored in a filing system. She used a secure administration tool to view all the digitized entries—she could spot meaningful text even from a computer screen. She explained she would then manually print choice selections and enter them on the spreadsheet in her notebook. No one else had a copy, and even the sophisticated data-management system didn’t know her final analysis, which determined her stitches and frameworks.
Under the spreadsheet sat a stack of almost four hundred loose-leaf printouts of interpolations that, Dr. Sterling claimed, resonated, as well as a stack of filler and enactment ephemera for binding combinations into working stitches.
Dr. Sterling grabbed six sheets from the top, eyed them to make sure. “Here’s my Bastard Buster ward.” On each page, Masumi and Alice noted a few words circled within the interpolation, words Dr. Sterling had identified as useful in her stitch. “These are not to be sung. They’re to be inscribed. On a whim, I stitched them together. What appeared to be nonsense saved my life, purely by accident. I put the text in a laminated card; I’ve carried it with me ever since. I’ve also put it on the back of your university Socspin IDs.”
“And the laminates we put in the library?” Alice asked.
“Different stitch—my Saint George. Here’s the original.” Dr. Sterling grabbed a sheaf held together by a paper clip. “Fifteen interpolations, with the elements I used circled. I chose the meaningful words, stitched them together into a working combination, then printed out the stitch in reduced font and laminated them.”
“These pages prove what, exactly?” Masumi asked.
“A way to channel the N.P.B. with a different method from the incanted instantiations.” Dr. Sterling retrieved the valuable papers, then shook them in Masumi’s face. “I don’t know how yet, but it works. A man came to the library and was repelled.” She waited for Masumi to acknowledge this. “I believe you witnessed it.”
Masumi nodded.
“Now,” Dr. Sterling said, hand on her notebook, “what I want you two ladies to do is look through these unused interpolations and try to find individualized personal protection wards. They can be as elaborate and articulate as you can make them, or as simple as a single element from a single interpolation. My Bastard Buster is only a few repeated words, My Saint George nearly twenty. I haven’t explained this before because I had planned to wait until our Society was rolling. It is.”
Perennially star-struck Alice nodded in devotion, while Masumi remained unmoved. “This activity must remain secret. The world can barely accept the idea of an incanted bleedover instantiation. What we do here with our wards will be considered superstitious fraud—the stuff people burned for once.”
Dr. Sterling pushed the stack at them, and Alice dug right in. Masumi remained still.
“You need to do this, Masumi,” Dr. Sterling said.
“We’re in danger?”
“I don’t know. I do know we have enemies.”
Masumi had no cogent objections, even though this activity increased the stink of mysticism instead of diminishing it.
Masumi had stumbled onto only one interpolation in her lifetime. She couldn’t locate as Towns, Alice, or Dr. Sterling could; she didn’t see a book vibrate or glow; no impulse sent her hand reaching for a book and thumbing through it to the offending page.
However, a few years ago, Masumi had accompanied a friend into the city to watch him play a tabletop game, War and Chaos, at a gaming club. The paper-based, futuristic war game used painted figurines and other models to represent a sophisticated battlefield.
The room, a big light-industrial shop, was filled with products on shelves surrounding a central table, where the players rolled dice. Three games had been going on at once, with small audiences. She watched for a while, then perused the different modules and rule books on the racks, amazed at the complexity of the created world.
One shelf held a few novels—published by the Chaos Library, of all things. Masumi inquired, and a helpful associate in a bright yellow War-and-Chaos shirt handed her a novel to start with. She bought it and began r
eading, happily surprised at how well-written it was. Halfway through the story about the conquest of the galaxy and a battle between humanity and demon hordes, she noticed an odd typesetting error.
By then, she had been on the train home and couldn’t take the book back.
Only later did she realize she had actually found one of the odd occurrences that people were calling a bleedover artifact of the New Phenomenon.
Masumi didn’t have the book anymore, but she remembered the author and title.
She began thumbing through Dr. Sterling’s pages, looking for the title in the headers. Nothing.
After going through them twice, Masumi asked, “You keep a record of all interpolations sent to you?”
“I do.”
“Can I see them?”
Dr. Sterling smiled. “Gather those up, please, and follow me. What’s the title?”
* * *
The Institute for the Advancement of Spinner Society occupied a few rooms in the lower subbasement of the library. The receptionist had tidied up and left for the day. Even the main glass door with the title emblazoned in crisp, modern lines had been wiped down with Windex.
Hattie swiped her security card through the wall-mounted scanner.
Inside, the creative design of the new lobby reflected her own tastes. Instead of the plain beige-painted drywall the university preferred, the three walls now each sported a separate design dominated by hand-painted illustrations from popular culture. She had paid a famous street artist from the Bronx to decorate the room with his hip stencils of urban kids with big hair and wild eyes. She had chosen the multicolored logo of his signature for a central medallion on the wall behind the receptionist’s nickel-plated desk; the other images were collages: one from film, the other from literature. The ceiling was tiled in opaque mirrors.
Hattie swiped her card again at a side door, then entered a wide room with a sophisticated system of movable shelves on rollers. Only one small aisle at a time gave access to the rows of files. The shelves were alphabetized.
Hattie began moving them until she created an aisle in front of the proper one. Masumi followed the classification system to the proper drawer. She began scanning.
Masumi eventually pulled out a printed scan. The small rectangle of what looked like a trade paperback’s typesetting was missing a third of its text. Alice leaned over her shoulder. They both saw the requisite dingbats and other mysterious desiderata. Then the interpolation: The challengers of Chaos, the mighty gene-enhanced Equisaran warriors, ensconced in power, protectors of humanity.
Masumi handed the paper to Hattie. “Here. Cosmic melodramatic tripe, but fun.”
Hattie focused on the text, ignoring Alice’s excited chatter about what it was. Sure enough, Hattie felt a strange sensation as if the paper itched to merge with her fingertips. “This’ll do. I guess I missed this one.”
Both she and Alice waited for Masumi to explain why she’d chosen it.
But Masumi sidled past and left the room. If they wanted to know what an Equisaran warrior was, they could read the numerous books from the Chaos Library. She didn’t want any questions or inquiries into her decision. She felt foolish and a little pressured, but she had complied because she had no valid counterargument. She also hadn’t spoken about what happened to her when she went down Dr. Sterling’s rabbit hole—not to a single soul—and didn’t feel like starting now.
She’d even found the interpolation in the Hugo novel, sure enough, just as Dr. Sterling had said. Again, no one had asked what she’d brought back, and she didn’t feel like telling.
* * *
Hattie locked up the institute and returned to the atrium. She asked Masumi and Alice to sit.
“These important pieces function as connective elements,” Hattie said, grabbing a few sheets. “Here, these should work.” She laid them in two separate piles and put Masumi’s selection on top of one. “Alice, hurry up and pick.”
Alice hopped to it, thumbing through the original pile.
Hattie stared at the odd pile of loose-leaf sheets, refusing to meet Masumi’s gaze. “This stack of paper represents a warding stitch, with the combination of words from the interpolations providing a way to manipulate the N.P.B. There, that’s it.” Masumi nodded but said nothing. “It works.”
“What now?”
Hattie copied out the entire stitch, with Masumi’s interpolation about the mysterious Equisaran warriors in the middle, surrounded by several key enactment ephemera that would provide full syntactical instantiation of the ward. She concentrated on the text written in her personal handwriting. Yes, it still resonated an aura. She rolled these up and snapped a rubber band around them, then pointed to the single sheet where she had written down the entire combination.
“Keep that piece of paper with you at all times. I’ll keep the original.”
“Sure,” Masumi said, “if you say so.”
Masumi grabbed the sheet of paper and stuffed it in her pocket. Hattie put the original in her satchel.
“I’ve got it!” Alice said. She held up a sheet for inspection. “Delta Force Major Rick Bauman. He reminds me of Brad Dellis.”
Hattie reviewed the text, a basic interpolation from a TV tie-in novel of a popular cable serial. Its phrasing seemed perfect for the task, and after a few minutes of arranging ephemera, she stitched together a warding combination for Alice, then handed it to her.
“Can I copy this and put it in a locket?” Alice asked.
“Sure. Just keep it on you. Give me back the original when you’re done.” Both Hattie’s students looked at her, obviously wanting her to elaborate. “Just do it.”
Alice got to work copying.
Hattie’s cell phone rang. The readout told her who it was. “Hello, Corbin.”
“Goodbye, Hattie. Tonight, I win.”
* * *
Max Siegen had waited all night and well into the next day in his office while Mr. Lyell ran his high-priority projection with Towns Packer. When Mr. Lyell knocked on his office door just before dawn, Siegen jumped out of his seat.
Mr. Lyell handed him a shoebox wrapped in brown paper and twine. “Have this delivered to Harriet Sterling’s institute at Riodola University. This afternoon.”
Mr. Lyell left without another word.
Siegen immediately called a trusted employee, who was to meet him in Bayonne and accept a pickup.
Posing as a courier, the man delivered the package to Riodola. It was signed by the institute’s receptionist. While Dr. Sterling, Alice, and Masumi prepared their personal wards of protection, the package sat with a half-dozen others in the mailroom. Eventually, the brown wrapping paper burned off the package, revealing a black box with strange sigils carved deep into the material.
A blackened corona blemished the table on which the box sat as it released its contents.
While Dr. Sterling and her students worked in the atrium, completing their ritual, Towns lay in his cocoon at Hexcom, watching the feed Dagon Awakes again and again. They had begun cutting down the film to key scenes as he went deeper and deeper. When he finally projected that the terrible thing in the box was awaking, the technicians sent a message to Corbin Lyell and Siegen all was ready.
* * *
Corbin waited in his Upper East Side apartment. His wife and daughter had flown to Malibu to relax by the ocean, both of them angry at his dangerous use of Towns, though they had no idea what he had planned. He dozed in his recliner, waiting for the call. He sometimes wondered whether he was insane and his mythos, Hexcom, and all the stuff born of his juvenile fantasies were the product of a truly twisted mind.
But not today.
His cell rang once, twice … he snapped awake and answered.
He nodded, listening to Siegen, saying nothing. The box was in play.
Corbin felt his stomach churn at the thought of what was about to happen. The device had been delivered a few hours earlier. In the narrative, it acted as a container that would open five hours after delivery.
He checked his watch.
Ten minutes to go …
He searched through his phone for Hattie Sterling’s cell number and called.
She answered. “Hello, Corbin.”
“Goodbye, Hattie. Tonight, I win.”
Silence on the other end, then muffled voices.
He closed his phone. It was happening.
* * *
Hattie had answered only because she wanted to tell Corbin to stop calling. He had threatened her so many times before that she almost ignored him. But not this time.
After hearing his message, then realizing he’d hung up, she walked to the far end of the atrium to call him back and demand he stop. Masumi followed her, while Alice sat contentedly at the table, examining her ward, giddy over the privilege of looking through Hattie’s interpolations.
“Are you really going to call him back?” Masumi asked.
Hattie lowered her phone and pointed. “What’s Alice doing?”
Masumi must have seen concern on her face. “What is it, Dr. Sterling?”
Both women looked past Alice, at a dark, smoky substance pouring from under the stairwell door as if someone were pumping colored dry ice with a high-powered generator. In only a few seconds, the entire vestibule filled, then the stuff began pouring into the atrium in searching tendrils.
“Alice … get up,” Hattie said.
But Alice sat transfixed. They both heard her say, “Something’s coming …”
The material in the vestibule swirled, although it stayed mostly within the confined space—except for the probing tendrils, which now swayed in Alice’s direction. Two clouds jetted from the bulky thing and coalesced before the two emergency exits, where they hovered like swirling tornados of ash-filled gas. The sight of such malleable sentience froze Masumi and Hattie as if they were riveted to the floor. Alice stood in slow motion. Hattie grabbed Masumi as Alice tried to back up and bumped into a table.
“Alice!” Hattie yelled.
She began murmuring a prayer to Saint George, the actual saint. She wasn’t Catholic, but she had attended Mass before, mostly out of cultural interest that was now paying dividends. Masumi listened but obviously didn’t register what was happening.