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(image will be updated when illustration is completed)
Inside, the cabin is a simple one-room affair: rough-hewn furniture, handmade amenities, and a stone fireplace below a hanging tapestry, all set around a rust-orange bearskin rug with two bluish leather armchairs.
Pannych opens the door tentatively, then politely knocks on the frame as she says, “Hello? Tom?”
A man is stoking the fire with his back to her and says, “Welcome, Deirdre. Come in, I’ve been expecting you.”
Deirdre walks around the table to stand between the armchairs, taking in the scene. “Hi. Uh, how do you know my real name?”
“I’m a prophet,” Tom says simply, rising to his feet and putting away the cast iron poker. “I’m linked directly into your authorial consciousness - the ‘you’ that made this world and created your character. Please, have a seat.”
They sit in the armchairs, and Pannych asks, “So that means that you know more about this world than even I do, right?”
“Quite a bit more, in fact,” Tom confirms. “Tell me, if you stand beside a river for five minutes, is it still the same river?”
“Not really,” she says. “Water is constantly flowing along the bed, changing it every second in small ways that add up over time.”
“Precisely. Likewise, experience is always flowing through the human mind, changing it from moment to moment. Accordingly, you are not the same person you were when you put your character into this world.”
“Right, I got that,” Pannych says with a nod. “I thought up a few things about the world when I started making this story, but I was mostly going to make it up as I went.”
“Yes, but now think: how were you going to begin the story?”
“Well,” she says, “I was going to get Dale in here, come up with some kind of predicament to keep us stuck in the world for a while, and then go to a nearby town. That’s about as far ahead as I had thought.”
Tom nods knowingly and says, “Tell me, how did that go?”
“Shit,” Pannych says, running a hand through her hair, “It got a lot more complicated than that.”
“Indeed. And why do you think that is?”
“I dunno. I guess I put a lot more thought into it?”
“When,” Tom asks flatly. Pannych ponders this for a moment.
“I mean - I dunno. I was making a comic, just the first couple of strips to get things started. Plain white background, way-too-meta dialogue, and then - wait, no, I decided to make it an illustrated novel instead of a comic, because I like to draw but I hate drawing backgrounds over and over. And I knew I’d probably need to go back after things picked up, to iron out any problems...” She trails off. “Oh, man. I’m getting confused. My head hurts.”
Tom gives her a moment to recover and asks, “How much time do you think has passed outside since you began telling this story?”
“Like, a week? I’m sure the stuff with Yvonne and Jim and Grayl took a couple days to write up, and I doubt I’ve been putting something up every day. Maybe two weeks?”
“Try again.”
“Um, two months?”
“Longer,” Tom says.
“Sheesh, OK. Four months?”
“Much longer.” Pannych pauses to think. In four months, she reasons, she’d have pretty much lost any readership gained with the first few pages, even if she kept plugging away at it. She looks at Tom and shrugs with a slightly annoyed look of Just tell me. He takes a deep breath and says, “Seventeen years.”
“What?!” Pannych grips the armchair tightly. “Fuckin’ how?!”
“You made the comic for a couple years, and got pretty far. You shared authorship with Dale for a while, when you got too busy to do it all yourself. But then you went away to college and had so much more on your plate. You tried to keep working on it, but your finished strips got fewer and farther between. Eventually, you just... stopped.”
“But wait,” Pannych says, “If I stopped, then why am I here?”
“Because,” the prophet explains, “You kept the story on the backburner in your mind. You kept refining it, fleshing it out. You also wrote a couple other books - they weren’t picked up by a publisher, but you wrote them just the same - which gave you a more realistic idea of how the whole thing goes. It’s better now. And eventually, you decided to give it another go, in a way you thought you could actually manage this time.”
Pannych mulls this over for a moment, then asks, “So if I stopped because I didn’t have the time when I was a teenager, then how do I have the time now that I’m in my thirties?”
“I don’t think you want me answering that,” Tom says with a frown. “But your enemies won’t hesitate to use it against you, so be prepared.”
“I… see,” Pannych says. “Is there anything else you can tell me about my life? On the outside?”
“I really shouldn’t go into detail on that,” Tom says. “We run the risk of going way too meta. The last thing I have to say to you is this: be wary when you meet Grayl. He is not who you think him to be.”
“But didn’t I-”
“I can’t say more than that,” Tom interrupts. “Now go forth and travel the path you have lain before yourself. You will find what you seek in Noob Valley, to the West. Goodbye, Deirdre.” With that, Tom stands and goes to stoke the fire again.
“Wait, one last thing,” Pannych says. “I know you can’t go into detail about outside, but I have to ask. How am I, you know, doing?”
Tom regards her for a long moment, then closes his eyes and says, “Better.” Pannych breathes a heavy sigh of relief and sinks back into the chair, then hears the sound of Phyr’s plasma blaster from outdoors. She starts, and Tom says, “Sounds like you better get back to your friend.”
She bolts from the chair to the door, and hears a scream and another blast.
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