Babylon deepening

[Lawnmower Boy]

And a neighbourhood in Babylon. I forgot how much time I spent introducing the characters before getting them there, though.

 

On an early October day, two superheroes were chilling in Dora Guzman’s bedroom.

 

Dora’s Dad turned in the doorway to her bedroom. But before he did, he had one last comment over his shoulder. “You know, in my day. . . Dinosaurs, caves, something, something.” The last thing Charlotte saw of him before the door closed was his smile.

 

Charlotte Wong lay down on the bed, carefully, so that her head fell next to Dora’s, her curly, black hair, just past shoulder length ten months after radical surgery to remove a 'do gone wrong.

 

At least she could move. Charlotte had already removed the veil of her aunt’s wedding dress, but the carefully stitched and the embroidered panels of the gown had incredible play, only creaking-ever-so-slightly as Charlotte relaxed to lie prone.

 

Of course, that meant that she had to stare at the ceiling, which was the one thing she hated about Dora’s room. “You really should repaint the ceiling, Dora.”

 

“Or you can get over your brother having a girlfriend who likes that colour. Either or. You look incredible in that gown, Char-Char.”

 

Charlotte blushed. Her Aunt Yili had been beautiful, trailing admirers everywhere. Before her brother killed her. Charlotte’s dad. God, that was an awful thought. Charlotte decided not to think it anymore. “Thanks, Dora. I could stay in this room forever. I’m just so jealous.”

 

“For this dump?” 

 

“For reals." 

 

The door opened. Charlotte felt the puff of cold as the draft curled round the crack in the door jamb. Yep, still cold. As the door opened all the way, Charlotte saw Rose and Father Asplin. “I caught this one trying to infiltrate,” Father Asplin said. “Should I kill her for you?”

 

Squealing, Charlotte ignored all that as she jumped up from the bed. “Father Asplin!” Her feet slid a little on the pine, and Charlotte grabbed for Rose and Dora’s shoulders. For effect, not for balance: one of the curses of the Kung Fu Princess is that it’s pretty hard to be klutzy unless you’re faking it. 

 

“Where have you been, Father Asplin?” Charlotte had been so worried that she’d even gone to a service at Saint Elizabeth’s. The relief Filipino pastor had been okay, but no Father Asplin.

 

“Archaeological dig,” he answered. “Look, I brought you a cursed artefact of a forgotten abomination!” He pulled his hand from his pocket and opened it. “Oh, no. Other suit. Never mind, I’ll get that for you later. Girls? We need to talk.” 

 

“I didn’t do it!” Dora protested. 

 

“Yes, she did,” Rose said, straight-faced. “I saw it.”

 

“Girls, girls,” Father Asplin said, calmingly, “There’s no need to fight. You can all be in trouble.”

 

Charlotte let go of her friends and stepped back, her hands up. “Neutral like Switzerland. Which means I get the last Toblerone.”

 

Dora threw herself through the air, landing on her chest on the edge of her bed so that she could grab the Halloween Toblerone bar that the girls had been splitting. “Not a chance, Kung Fu Girl!”

 

Except that Rose was already there, holding it up. “In dark, post-apocalyptic future, there is only nougat!”

 

Dora rolled over, giving a sigh that wracked her chest like a mountain range in an earthquake. “It’s a chocolate bar!”

 

“Only chocolate-nougat,” Rose amended.

 

Father Asplin stepped onto a Hello Kitty throw rug. “Now, now, Rose. Don’t swipe.”

 

“Hunh?” The girls said.

 

“Swiper don’t swipe?”

 

They looked at him blankly. Except Dora, who was a bit sensitive about that stuff, so Charlotte explained. “You’re getting Dora the Explorer confused with Hello Kitty, Father.”

 

His eyes brightened. “Ah. You know, I spend so much time watching Nickelodeon at the daycare, you’d think that I would have that all sorted out, but it’s like that stuff soaks into your brain subliminally.” His tone shifted, and his eyes glazed over. “Must…kill…Caillou.”

 

Then he shook his head. “I’m sorry that I was unable to come and see you girls immediately you returned from your summer adventure, but I really was at an archaeological dig. On an island only thirty miles from Monster Island, so security was extremely tight.”

 

Charlotte’s eyes went wide. Monster Island was one of the scariest places on Earth. 

 

“UNTIL thought it might be from the Old Red Aeon. They were right. A Thûnese outpost. I think we have it locked down, now, though.” Father Asplin paused, then continued. “Which brings me to my business with you girls, tonight. I’ve read your report, Char-Char, and your summary, Dora. “You really need to get it finished, you know.”

 

“My dog ate it?” Dora offered.

 

“You have a dog now, Dora?” Charlotte asked. “Can I see it?”

 

“Keep it away!” Rose interrupted. “If I met a homework-eating dog, it would just get fat!”

 

“Girls? This isn’t about who is to blame. No-one is to blame. Although, in another and equally important sense, Dora is totally to blame. It’s about your reports. Charlotte? You brought the Pearl Harmony Sword with you today, didn’t you?”

 

Of course she had. Charlotte stepped over to Dora’s overflowing closet and pulled her sword free of the assorted clothes that she had stuck its scabbarded tip into. Gripping the sheath, she pulled the handle. The ancient blade her aunt had wielded came free, and spilled perlescent light into the room that licked the pearls embroidered into gown, shimmering up and down them like an underwater flame.

 

“Charlotte?” Father Asplin put out his hand. Charlotte looked into his eyes, saw the old pain, offered him the hilt. Father Asplin touched it.

 

“Charlotte, you said that a spell of worm-yellow and shining darkness was cast on the Pearl Harmony Sword. That the blade turned it back.” Charlotte nodded, biting her lip.

 

“Dora? It was what it seemed to be?”

 

Dora nodded, her face stricken.

 

Rose pounced. “Dora? Have you been holding back?”

 

“The Maid of Gold knows…” Dora began, then stopped, as though confused about where to go next. “But we shouldn’t. This isn’t something that deserves to be known.”

 

“The truth shall set you free,” Rose pronounced.

 

“Oh, give up.” Dora answered, crossly. “When they say that there are things people aren’t meant to know, this is exactly the kind of crap they mean.”

 

“Superstitious… I’m sorry, Father Asplin.” Rose could be quick to go the Full Dawkins, but she liked the old priest.

 

“No offence, Rose,” Father Asplin answered. “The less said of shining darkness and worm yellow, honestly the better. “But, there are…forces in the world that seek to use the shining darkness for their ends. The Thûnese, once. The Lemurian rebels. Your enemy. That last is particularly frightening.”

 

“Why?” Charlotte asked.

 

“Because if he is who I think he might be, he is congenitally naïve about the dangers of dark magic. He probably thinks of this spell as another technique, a machine."

 

“He’s not right about that?” Rose said, skeptically.

 

“He is more wrong than he realises. Magic is not a machine as he thinks of them, but neither are machines just machines, as he thinks of them. For him the world, life, is something he can manipulate, not something of which he is part. He is moved by a pain he does not understand and will destroy the world and himself trying to end it.”

"Dark!" Dora said.  "So this is about more than just Char Char's magic butter knife." 

 

“Of course,” Father Asplin said. “Takofanes is not moved by self delusions, and neither is he a servant of the shining darkness, but he can use it. He was ended last time by the Seven, Two and One: The Sword Auralia. He is back, and we need the First Light of Dawn and it is in danger.”

 

“So We  need to go find it and take it into custody,” Charlotte said.

 

Rose’s eyes brightened with fresh enthusiasm, even though she had been talking about nothing else for two months. “And you know where we should look? The Library of Babylon!” 

 

Dora poked her friend. "The Library of Babylon is your answer to everything!"

 

“As a matter of fact," Father Asplin began.

 

Rose literally jumped. “We’re going! Library here we come!”

 

“You,” Dora said severely, “Are such a nerd.”

 

2

The next day was Friday. Charlotte, Rose and Dora took their spares together in the library.  This was the second month the girls had been at Tatammy High, the Big Boy School. Because school starts in September, duh. 

 

Charlotte could not get used to it. Down here in the States, school was like in Archie. There were four grades in senior high, with Freshman, Sophomores, Juniors and Seniors. Charlotte was still trying to get that straight. Why would you call Grade 11s “Juniors?” To Charlotte, that meant young, and seventeen year-olds were, well, old. 

 

And meanwhile, here they were, she and the other kids coming up out of Pemberton Elementary, totally spaz. Charlotte was the tallest kid in class back last year at Pemberton, but that meant all of squat there. Lots of girls in Grade 8 were taller than the boys, and in the ceiling-scraping Wong household, she was never the tallest, not even amongst the girls. (Take that, Chinese stereotypes, by the way, she thought.) But here? Here where she was the youngest class, the class that was always messing up their outfits, who laughed too loud and got looked at like this, and not like that? Here she felt like a freak, all big and gangly, with her hair frizzed out like a clown’s. 

 

I have got, Charlotte thought, to stop thinking like this. Across from her, her brother’s girlfriend, Kumi, got up from the table where she’d been visiting. She waved. “Hi, Charlotte, Dora, Rose! Catch you guys later!”

 

Charlotte held a smile. Dora, across the table, mouthed, “OMG.” Charlotte glared back but only with her eyes.

 

Rose nudged Charlotte, elbow to arm. Hard. “Sorry to interrupt the Five Minute Hate, but Boys alert, 10 o’clock.”

 

Charlotte looked. Then, “False alarm.” It was just Brian (admittedly, squee), Bruce and Twelve.

 

Twelve pulled out a chair and sat down with a thump. Bruce held the edge of another, looking tentative, as if he meant to ask for permission, before realising that it would make Twelve look rude, and just long enough so that everyone could figure out why he was doing it in the first place. Read you like a book, Bruce, Charlotte thought. Before Bruce McNeely could figure out what to do, Brian slid his long, sinuous leg over the back of a chair and sat down astraddle, his arms wrapped around the shoulder rest. His long, elfin, smooth-skinned face, with giant, wide green eyes balanced atop a perfectly shaped, long, but just too-wide-to-be-narrow chin, which balanced on his fist. 

 

Bruce nudged Twelve. “Hey, girls, meet Richard Roe!”

 

Rose arched her eyes. “Thought you were going by “John Doe?”

 

“Decided to change it up,” Twelve answered.

 

“That’s, uhm, not how we do things in the real world, you know.”

 

Twelve raised his hands. A sparkle of energy crossed them, just long enough for the girls to notice. “And I’m not a real boy.”

 

“Oh, Twelve,” Rose began, but Twelve cut him off. 

 

“I’m a clone soldier! Bred in the lab to fight for my maker! I’m not a name, I’m a number!”

 

Bruce looked like he had more to say, Charlotte noticed. She looked at him, holding a question in her eyes.

 

“I’m hearing through the grapevine that we’ve got a supermission?”

 

“What?” Brian asked. “I barely even know what my superpower is!”

 

“Look it up. You’re in the friggin’ Monster Manual,” Bruce answered.

 

“I am not a Dark Elf. And I have a natural aptitude for High Elven magic. That’s why I’m enrolled in your stupid school.”

 

“Woah, boys,” Charlotte said. “Yeah, we have a mission.”

 

“We’re too young to have a mission,” Bruce pointed out.

 

 

“Nuh-unh,” Rose said, and then burst into scarlet blushes across her cheeks as everyone looked at her. Rose! Using slang! “What? We’re going to the Library of Babylon, and Dora set it up. Best bud ever!” 

 

Her friends kept staring. Well, we all know Rose, Charlotte thought. She’s going to Heaven, and I guess we all get to come along for the ride. The nerdy, nerdy ride. 

 

That evening, home at the Yurt, the girls, and the boys, got the rest of it. The barbecue table had been set up on the wide back porch so that their visitor from San Francisco could sit in the open, the cool October air enveloping the veteran super-wizard, Eldritch, with Mr. and Mrs. Wong at either end of the table. As was apparently usual for Eldritch when he went visiting in other people’s homes, he wore a tattered old bathrobe over what looked like a shapeless, sleeveless shirt and mid-calf pants that went down just far enough to be caught by the worn loops of leather sandals. They were both made out of potato sacking. 

 

Not that anyone around these days knew what a potato sack looked like, Charlotte thought, update your references, girl. 

 

Around her, it seemed that the very air was dripping with October rain. A little drop got onto the mirror with which Charlotte was watching the scene downstairs. 

 

“What’s going on out there?” Dora whispered.

 

“Are we going? Are we going?” Rose asked.

 

“Shh.” Dora wiggled in the crook of the porch roof and the wall of the Yurt to position her mirror for a better view. I’m a ninja, she thought. And, as she did so, she nervously checked for actual ninjas, which was a kind of thing that could happen around here.

 

Eldritch was explaining the facts of life, sounding like Professor Explaining Very Serious Things to Very Smart Young People, which is who he actually was. Hard to believe as it was when  he dressed like a hobo’s embarrassing cousin. 

 

She hoped it helped when the aging supermage was trying to sell nights away for Charlotte and her buds to Auntie Ma. 

 

“No.” Charlotte’s aunt looked as severe as her words, with her hair up in a bun and a black blouse.

 

“I’m sorry, Sister. I can arrange for a direct portal to Babylon that the children can use for their research, but it only opens one way, reversing every twelve hours. It’s the best I can do.”

 

“Which means that they will have to stay over Friday and Saturday night in Babylon with no adult supervision. No. and please don’t call me ‘Sister.’”

 

“I’m an adult,” Eldritch protested, sounding almost hurt.

 

Charlotte’s Uncle Henry cleared his throat. “The last time I was in your apartment, the only thing in your refrigerator was a tub of coleslaw and some LSD.”

 

“Yeah, that was a pretty lean weekend. Look, they won’t be staying with me. My pad in the City is for swinging bachelors only. They’ll be staying with one of my Babylon contacts. Doctor Smythe has as proper a household as you can imagine."

 

“I’m amazed he puts up with you, then.” Auntie Ma crossed her arms.

 

“Doctor Smythe owes me some favours. Why don’t I take you two across tonight? You can meet the doctor and his household, check out the place. I think that you will find that it meets your approval. Honestly, the Doctor is as square as you are.”

 

Auntie Ma snorted. “As though I can spare the time. You know that I have a double wedding and my husband’s retirement party to plan, and the garden to put down for the winter, and…”

 

“Not to worry,” Eldritch answered. “I can bring you back within the hour.”

 

Auntie Ma pounced. “Then why can’t the children go and come back on Saturdays?”

 

“Because I will be needed to cast the spell. The point of the portal is that it will remain stably open, whatever I am doing or not doing.”

 

“All right, then,” Auntie Ma answered. “We will meet this Doctor Smythe and his household. Oh, and Charlotte, get inside before you catch your death up there.” 

 

Charlotte wiggled back up into the room. There was only one reason that Auntie Ma would put up with Charlotte eavesdropping. “We’re going.”

 

Rose jumped up. “Yes!”

 

“Is there a point when you’re going to stop being excited about this?” Dora asked.

 

“No.” Rose answered.

 

 

3.

 

 

In the back of an abandoned house, in what seemed like a vacant lot, overrun with neglected fruit trees and weeds, only entered by a the back fire exit of a strip mall chain restaurant, was a patch of burned ground. And that, it happened, was where Charlotte, Dora, Rose, Bruce, Twelve and Brian were standing that Friday night with Eldritch. Who was wearing his visiting clothes. Which turned out to be a blue denim shirt, open two buttons below the collar to show a saggy white undershirt, with a green down vest over it. The shirt was tucked into brown work pants, and they into knee-high, dark green rubber boots with faded yellow trim. Fingers of down discretely fled tiny pinholes and slits low on the side of the vest. His watery eyes peered over old-fashioned bifocals.

 

"Why are we here, again?" Bruce sounded suspicious.

 

"It is a powerful place. Its energies are not bogged down by the tedious rules our minds have made up and call ‘reality.’” He tapped his temple with one stubby finger. “So I decided to cast a gate spell here. It turned out well, I think. Twelve hours up, twelve hours down, then a reversal. You will be able to return tomorrow evening. Are you ready?”

 

Bruce lifted his oversized overnight bag and scowled. He was wearing a long, Batman-y, dark green overcoat with flapping tails at calf length. It somehow made his scowl extra broody. “I don’t understand why we’re in such a rush. I had plans this weekend.”

 

“Rush rush rush go go go right now!” Rose stamped her right foot. The shiny black wedge heel that Charlotte and Dora had helped her pick out (“In the dark, post-apocalyptic future, the only shoe store is Lady Footlocker”) were so cute, Charlotte thought. Total self-five. Was Twelve checking Rose out?

 

Whether he was or not, Twelve turned his eyes straight back on Bruce and snorted. “Your plan was to beat the new Dark Souls game”

 

“And it was a good plan!” Bruce crooked his left wrist and let the handle of his bag slip down over it so that he could push his hand into his pocket. Somehow, it made him seem mopier still. His right hand he lifted so that Twelve could give him a high five.

 

“Preach it,” Twelve said. Frankly, beating that game had been Charlotte’s plan for the weekend, too. 

 

“Ms. Telantassar was going to show me how to do some High Elf magic meditation practices!” Brian protested. Not very convincingly. Even Charlotte found her patience tested by “meditation practice,” and she was all about the kung fu.

 

Eldritch turned his old, blue eyes to Brian. “And I regret pulling you away from that, Brother. The death of universes has looked on you. Now see. Let us take evil to be parameterised entropy.” He drew his fingers in the dark, cold October air, and kabalistic signs took shape in fire where his fingers dribbled through the air, as though drawn out of autumn latent with magic.

 

Or it was algebra? Charlotte was almost sure she could tell the difference.

 

Then he stopped in mid-symbol. “Never mind, and I mean it. There is crawling degradation in that last effort to escape death. Nor is that the only danger I see here.” Eldritch turned to Twelve.

 

"Brother, you are the creation of a dread enemy, but your principal thinks that you can be redeemed. What do you think?”

 

Twelve stuck his hands into the pockets of his PLA-style olive green jacket and pushed one Doc Martened foot forward into the wet grass, like he was trying to turn “sulk” into a dance repertoire. “You Americans with your redemption. I was born to the battle. Simple as that. If orders are to do recon in Babylon, I do recon in Babylon.”

 

“Indeed.” 

 

Eldritch’s gaze turned to Rose. “What about you, Sister? Do you still plan to destroy an entire future because of the suffering of some?”

 

Rose blushed and looked down, not saying anything. Oh, that was a question, wasn’t it? Rose was your classic time traveller sent to cancel out a post-apocalyptic future, with a crush sent to stop her. Eliminate that future, and Rose probably would stop existing –and her crush would for sure. Question was whether Rose wanted either of those things to happen.

 

Charlotte didn’t know.

 

Eldritch looked at Rose’s down-turned eyes for a long moment. “Oh, to be young again.”

 

Then he stepped up to Bruce, swinging his right fist at the Hobgoblin’s gandson’s face far faster than Charlotte would have thought that an aging sorcerer could. Bruce’s right hand intercepted his wrist without fuss. Great technique, Charlotte thought. But not sublime technique. 

 

“I see the family likeness. Good at everything.”

 

Bruce looked back at him without saying anything.

 

“Do you know that for the trap it is? To be good without ever striving? Would it surprise you to know that there is an entire city of people like that?”

 

Still Bruce said nothing.

 

“There is no good that is not becoming, brother. Through practice we become excellent. Through excellence we grow good. How do you grow, brother?”

 

Eldritch turned back to Dora. “Sister. You try to be flippant. A ‘magic manic pixie girl.”

 

“You’re mixing up two things, sir,” Dora answered, levelly.

 

“Don’t call me ‘sir.’ Yes, I am mixing two things up. You’re mixing three things up, aren’t you? Because down there where your soul bonds to the needfire, there’s a heart that loves your friends and the world they’re in. The serious, serious soul that you inherited.”

 

Now it was Dora’s turn to say nothing. 

 

“You  need to learn to own your true self, Sister. You can still be fun it you try.”

 

Eldritch turned back to Charlotte. He reached out his hands, as though to take hers. 

 

Charlotte put her hands in his. His skin was wrinkled and old, but his grip was warm and firm.

 

“These are a warrior’s hands,” Eldritch said. “What did your friend say? Born to the battle. As dauntless in battle as tender in love.”

 

Charlotte blushed. She’d never even had a boyfriend!

 

Eldritch’s eyes bored into hers. Why had she ever thought they were watery? It seemed magical, the way they penetrated. “And they are the hands of a healer.”

 

Charlotte shivered. "I'm not a paladin!"

 

“Healing is your calling, Charlotte Wong.”

 

Eldritch drew back, somehow a little taller than he had been a moment ago. His voce came loud and penetrating. “What is the hurry to go to Babylon and learn the fate of the First Light of Dawn? What is ever the hurry of learning?” 

 

Look at you! So young and sweet and fresh. It tears my heart to see how beautiful you all are. I cannot think of the years that you will live, and the lives that you will make, without crying.” 

 

An actual tear leaked out of the corner of Eldritch’s eyes. From anyone else, Charlotte thought, it would be totally corny.

 

“And you will learn so much in the doing, my children! How can you not hurry to that?”

 

“Amen!” Rose shouted. “Oops. Inside voice, Rose, inside voice.”

 

Eldritch did not seem put out. “Thank you, Sister. Now, if you will prepare yourselves, we will be in the City of Art and Man momentarily.”

 

4.

 

Eldritch’s left hand rose high in the air. Multicoloured light glittered around it, forming into shapes that just barely eluded meaning. 

 

Trippy, Charlotte thought. And, for a hippie, Eldritch sure has a nice watch. 

 

His hand fell. 

 

Just like that, Charlotte’s nose was in a place. It was a place of horses, and of hay. Of dark leather, all soaped up, and varnish and sawdust, mineral oil and kerosene lamps, all coming in at her in a sensation that was closer to hitting your nose against something than smelling. It actually took a moment for her eyes to get her attention, to let her know that she had gone from an autumn sunset to a dark room barely lit by the familiar, comforting colour of a kerosene lamp.

 

Off to the side, a horse nickered, and another answered.

 

“Is this a stable?” Rose asked. She sounded disappointed.

 

A square of warm light abruptly opened in the darkness ahead. In it, Charlotte could see Eldritch, silhouetted against the door that he had opened by the light of some kind of white fire. “Yes,” he said. “I thought that a private location for the Babylon-side gate might be better. Now do please come with me.”

 

“They have horses in Babylon?” Rose sounded even more disappointed.

 

“They have horses in Babylon,” Eldritch conceded. “And Ferraris. And chariots. And that, even.” He waved. Under streetlights that guttered like Bunsen burners, Charlotte could see that he was gesturing at an aging Volkswagen van, painted in psychedelic swirls and flowers. 

 

“That’s my ride,” Eldritch sad. “’How stereotypical,’ you are probably thinking. But that’s the point. Babylon is every city that ever was or could be. You will find Oz here, and the real Babylon, and the Eiffel Tower. And flying cars, too, although you will probably have difficulty getting into the “Ancient Atlantis” or “distant future” sectors to find them. Well, Rose might be able to get to the future, since she is from the future herself.”

 

“Eat my dark, post-apocalyptic dust, Twenty-First Century plebes!”

 

"Twentieth Century," Charlotte pointed out.

 

“How about an ‘Other side of time and space’ sector?” Dora asked. “Do I get my own hangout?”

 

“Do you really want one?” Eldritch asked.

 

“No,” Dora said. In the gleaming light of the giant Bunsen burner, Charlotte could see her shudder.

 

“But such a place does exist, I fear,” Eldritch said, “Deep under the Rookeries.”

 

“Rookeries?” Bruce asked.

 

“The slums of Babylon.”

 

“Wait. Babylon has slums? I was getting that it was some weird, poetic metaphor or something, come to life,” Brian protested.

 

“That is the Land of Legends that you are thinking of, Brother. Babylon is the essence of city, and it cannot be that without being concrete and real, without having politics and class, wealth and poverty, war and peace. The Emperor is a real man; its megacorporations make real money, and its aristocrats own real estates; the last civil war killed real people; the agents of Istvatha V’han who plot against the city and emperor are real enemies. Think about it: if the Library of Babylon existed in the Land of Legends, it would be no more real than the knowledge you dream at the edge of sleep. But the Library is real. If you can find it, the knowledge you seek is there.”

 

“Um, okay then,” Brian said.

 

“As long as the hot girls are real, I’m fine with that,” Bruce added. Charlotte felt a flicker of anger. Bruce was so dumb for a smart boy!

 

Charlotte looked around. They were standing strewn along a brick pathway that ran beside the cindered driveway that led from the from the entrance of the stable to the street. They could see Eldritch’s van, parked on the street, and also a tall house that crowded the narrow sidewalk across a narrow, cobbled street lit by the giant Bunsen burner. In front of them to their left was the back of another house, so big for its lot that the only sign of garden was a tiny sliver between the pathway and the driveway. And, behind them, a solid line of towering trees that probably marked the alleyway edge of the property. 

 

In some ways, it reminded Charlotte of the Yurt, as probably any street-front house with a back alley would. It was different in that the stable gave on to the street in front rather than the alley behind, but not that different in layout. On the other hand, the Yurt was not piled up into three stories and even four at the turrets, all in weirdly darkened stone with open, billowing windows streaming more of the gleaming light of open fire into the darkness of the city.

 

Which, Charlotte realised, was full of city sounds, just not the familiar ones of home: horseshoes clopping, wheels squeaking, people shouting rhythmic calls about –something. For a moment she imagined that she had fallen into some boring English TV series, until in the distance she heard the roar of a diesel engine doing something it didn’t want to do, a sound that called her attention to the sussuration of engine noises, just at the edge of hearing. Somewhere over her shoulder to her right, Charlotte decided, an Interstate climbed a hill through a deep cut that almost baffled the sound of traffic from where she stood.

 

Nice neighbourhood. Eldritch had classy friends. Which Charlotte figured. It was weird. Charlotte couldn’t imagine Eldritch using “proper” as a compliment. More like explaining that he was arranging boarding for the kids with complimentary murder mystery. Charlotte just hoped that it didn’t turn out that all the inhabitants of the Smythe Mansion were murderers, including the one who seemed to die first. Because that would be cheating.

 

The kids moved hesitantly up the walk. There was just so much strangeness to take in. Bruce slowed up in his step, and, in a moment, Charlotte found herself walking beside him, Tail-End Charlie. 

 

“Hey?” Bruce said.

 

“What?” For some reason, Bruce’s goofiness was upsetting Charlotte. Just then, Charlotte heard a new sound from the street –a strange, just unrhythmic clanking. 

 

“I, uhm. What’d I do?”

 

You know what you did, Charlotte thought. But she didn’t say anything.

 

“So,” Bruce said, after the silence stretched on just too long. “You hear that.” He gestured over his shoulder to the street.

 

“Oh! I thought it was my imagination or something.” Charlotte looked back. On the street, through the light of the weird, Bunsen-burnery streetlight, a thin man in a top hat, what looked like the top half of a business suit, just too long for him top hat, and grey, calf-high capri pants that exposed pale, white calves going down into black loafers. Which were peddling vigorously. Because evidently he thought he wouldn’t be weird enough if he weren’t on a unicycle. His eyes were fixed on the kids, and when he saw that Charlotte was looking at her, he gave her a cold smile.

 

“You have a very weird imagination, Char-Char.”

 

“I dunno. If you saw it too, it’s probably not my imagination, Boy Wonder.” As much as she knew how much the nickname annoyed Bruce, Charlotte couldn’t help smirking when she said it. Then she raised her voice. “Can we go in? I’m starting to get cold.” 

 

Eldritch, standing on the back porch, looked over his shoulder at her. Then his eyes lifted over hers, to the sliver of the avenue visible from where he stood. “Ah. Someone is playing an amusing little game. Here. Play with something more serious.” He gestured, and a half-glimpsed image scurried from his hands. 

 

Brian looked at him, and Eldritch shrugged, defensively. “I know some pixies who owe me favours. Not to worry, nothing lethal, and hopefully they will come back bearing tales.”

 

Brian didn’t look convinced. After all, he probably had some second cousins once removed who were pixies, and just the nicest people. 

 

The door opened. An ancient man in a butler suit straight out of the comics stood there. “Ah. Doctor Eldritch and company. Do please come in.”

 

“Thank you, Hartwell. It is always a bummer to see you when I visit.”

 

“I am sorry that I cannot follow your advice, or my bliss, sir, but a man needs a place.” He swept an arm down a dark hallway filled with knicknacks on pedestals and lit by a tiny, weeny little Bunsen burner in a lamp bulb hanging from the ceiling in the middle of the room that cast the knicknack’s shadows on incredibly ornate wallpaper. “If you would be so kind as to follow me into the drawing room?”

 

Bruce bent his head close to Charlotte’s. “The butler did it.”

 

Charlotte tried not to laugh, and ended up snorting. 

 

Hartwell, somehow, must have caught the whisper, because he looked over his shoulder, fixing his eyes on Bruce. “Quite. Two murders in a locked room every day before teatime. It is expected, you know.”

 

The other kids stared back at Hartwell, who raised an eyebrow and then led them through a door so low that Bruce had to duck to get through it, and Charlotte felt the brush of the lintel on a stray hair. 

 

Her hands, apparently under local control, were patting down her ‘do when she walked into the drawing room, which turned out to be a room about twice as large as the living room in the Yurt, which was not small, with a roaring fire at one end and an open window at the other with billowing drapes and a draft that seemed to suck all the heat of the fire right out of the place. Two girls, perhaps about nineteen, were sitting on a sofa right next to the fire. They were wearing long, Victorian frocks in dark brown and rust colours with black velvet trim that actually did quite a nice job of bringing out auburn hair piled up in an old-fashioned up-do. Charlotte felt self-conscious of her own frock, a black and white striped number over grey leggings and pumps, even though she’d borrowed everything except the black belt and gold necklace from her Cousin May, who was a very sharp dresser. 

 

Black and white look good on everyone, was what Charlotte had been thinking. Now she was having second thoughts about putting her bright yellow blouse in her overnight bag. Oh, sure, it wouldn’t blend in, but she wasn’t going to do that, anyway.

 

Besides the two girls, an old man sat on an individual, upholstered chair, a pipe in his hand. Even with the roaring draft, Charlotte could pick out the smell of pipe tobacco. Memories of particularly pretentious substitute teachers flooded back.

 

“Eww,” Dora whispered. Oh, right. Smoking indoors. No-one did that in 2012.

 

“Doctor Siddhartha Eldritch and companions: Miss Rose Eley, Miss Dora Guzman, Miss Charlotte Wong, Master Brian Ferguson, Master Bruce McNeely, and, ahem, Master Richard Roe.”

 

The old man in the room sat in the burnished, dark leather chair nearest the fire. His voice was thin and reedy. “Sidney,” he said, ignoring Eldritch’s incredibly stupid given name in favour of the one he used in the real world, “Please, sit. Your young friends are welcome in my house for as long as they need to use the Library. May the dear Mother of Babylon bless your endeavours.” His right hand traced a circle in front of his chest as he spoke the title ‘Mother of Babylon.’ The other seated people did the same. Instinctively, Charlotte made bandha and bowed her head slightly. 

 

Twelve snorted audibly, but their host ignored him. “I am your host, and master of this humble domicile, Doctor Fortunatus Smythe,” –now it was Bruce’s turn to snort, quietly, while Rose stifled something—“And this is my ward and niece, Miss Jane Smythe, and her companion, Miss Psyche Pomp. We are very pleased to meet you. Now, Hartwell. If you will see our guests to the nursery?.”

 

Hartwell inclined his head slightly. “As you wish, sir.” 

 

Hartwell led them down a less-cluttered corridor and up two flights of stairs. Finally, he threw open an oak door and let them into a large room that gave off into seven smaller rooms. It was filled with low couch-like things that reminded Charlotte of Victorian beanie chairs, and had a lit fireplace on one wall and a wide open window that kept the room cold and draughty in spite of it.

 

Dora crossed the room with decisive speed and had her hands on the sash before Rose spoke up. “Don’t close it, Dora. The house is lit with gas. They say that carbon monoxide poisoning is way less fun than it sounds.”

 

Dora turned her head over her shoulder and stuck out her tongue. “Nerd.” But she didn’t close the door.

 

Bruce threw himself flat out on one of the not-quite beanie sofas and laughed. “We’re staying in Doctor Lucky’s mansion!”

 

“Spill, nerdling,” Charlotte demanded.

 

“It’s a Cheapass Game.”

 

“None of those games you play is cheapass,” Charlotte pointed out. “Fifty bucks for some cards and army men.”

 

“It’s a company, not a description. Kill Doctor Lucky. The game. It’s like some insane version of Clue. A bunch of guests at an Edwardian mansion follow Doctor Lucky around trying to kill him.”

 

Rose sat down on her own beanie bag, and cupped her hands behind her head. “Plus also, Psyche Pompa? Oh, please!”

 

“Uhm, Psychopomp? Guide of the spirits of the dead?” Bruce guessed.

 

“Pretty much,” Rose conceded.

 

Twelve scowled. “This is all so, so…set up. It stinks.”

 

There was a knock on the door. Charlotte went to open it. It was Eldritch.

 

“Ah, children,” he said, slipping through the door and shutting it deftly behind him. “Do, please, make yourselves comfortable. Sit. Take your shoes and jackets off. Choose a guestroom. And do not let your guard down for a moment.”

 

Charlotte opened her mouth, felt a laugh make its way out. “Yeah, we kinda figured. What kind of mess have you landed us in?”

 

Eldritch shrugged. “The last time I was here, Doctor Smythe was living a quiet life with his niece. The companion out of a BBC murder mystery is new to your visit. I doubt it is a coincidence.”

 

“What about the guy on the unicycle?” Charlotte asked.

 

“Oh, that’s just Avant Garde, pretending to be one of the leaders of the Rebellion. If you’ve read Ostrander’s classic Grimjack run, you’ll recognise him as the character that Tim and John modelled Mac Cabre on.”

 

Bruce snorted. “Well, Avant Garde runs with Professor Paradigm, so I can see him falling for Dancer. I mean, the real Dancer. I mean, the real guy that the fake character Dancer is modelled on. I mean… You know what I mean.”

 

“Don’t underestimate these people,” Eldritch answered.

 

“Trust no-one?” Dora asked.

 

Eldritch paused for a long moment. “Yes. I foresee some uncomfortable conversations with your parents and guardians in the near future.”

 

“In dark, post-apocalyptic future, all sleepovers are at haunted mansions,” Rose intoned.

 

 

[steriaca]

The "Japanese" area of Babylon is called Nipon by the locals, sometimes called CyberNipon, or Anime/MangaNipon. Everything you can think of in a futuristic cyberpunk as seen in anime city section. But almost anything related to anime and manga and Japan based video games can be found there.

 

In general the weirdness of Nipon avoids guest. It is only when someone decides to move here when they suddenly gain a harem of psudo-teenage-looking girls, or given a giant mecha...

[Lord Liaden]

OTOH that's not all there is to the Japan section of Babylon. Cities with powerful symbolic associations are reflected in Babylon in their most iconic forms, from across time. As noted on The Mystic World p. 35, "Hiroshima, whose famous cherry groves bloom a short walk from humanity's most terrible feat of destruction, echoes more powerfully in Babylon than does Osaka, a sprawling megalopolis that exists only because it is useful." I would imagine the old imperial capital of Kyoto, of great cultural significance to Japanese, also manifests in Babylon.

[steriaca]

11 hours ago, Lord Liaden said:

OTOH that's not all there is to the Japan section of Babylon. Cities with powerful symbolic associations are reflected in Babylon in their most iconic forms, from across time. As noted on The Mystic World p. 35, "Hiroshima, whose famous cherry groves bloom a short walk from humanity's most terrible feat of destruction, echoes more powerfully in Babylon than does Osaka, a sprawling megalopolis that exists only because it is useful." I would imagine the old imperial capital of Kyoto, of great cultural significance to Japanese, also manifests in Babylon.

Considering the vast size of Babylon, everything is in play. The tendrils of Japan have multiple branches.

[DShomshak]

Indeed. Japan gives Babylon salary-men as well as mecha. Both iconic in their own way.

 

Incidentally, when one of the Supermage playtest characters got married, the PCs held the bachelor party in Babylon. Started in Amsterdam. Moved on to watch Gypsy Rose Lee do her fan dance at Minsky's. Then on to fin de siecle Paris and Edith Piaf at the Folies Bergere. (On PC taken backstage and returns wearing a powder blyue suit with gold cufflinks... Piaf's usual gift to the men she, ah, collected.) While this was happening, the drunken groom wandered off. The PCs found him in the Imperial Roman district, at a bar near the Coliseum. A gladiator bar. Where he's starting a bar fight. A good time was had by all.

 

Dean Shomshak

[Lord Liaden]

I would so love to play in one of your games, Dean. 🤩