chapter 4
previous chapter
The thing about secret rooms is, most of them aren't very secretive. In any piece of literary fiction, a REALLY secret room would be totally useless, since nobody would know about it even after the story is over (with the room being a total secret and all). So it's a bit of a misnomer, really. So it would be better to refer to them as, say, rooms with cunningly-disguised doors.
In this case, the door was cunningly disguised as the floor. As Seraph pulled, well-oiled mechanisms grinded somewhere in the walls, and a large section of the floor slid open to reveal a staircase. The beginning of a staircase, anyway: it was one of those winding ones, and this particular windy staircase wound into pitch darkness.
"Bloody hell! A secret room!" gaped Cantrip, conveniently ignoring the fact that rooms that were really meant to be a secret did not, in general, have a crude sign next to the opening-lever-disguised-as-a-candlestick.
Seraph shuffled over to the stairs and peeked into the darkness. The darkness peeked back. It was a special kind of darkness, the kind that promises all sorts of ways to die when you step inside. There was a cheerful hint of mysterious creatures waiting in that darkness, the sort that disembowels you first and asked questions later. And usually, 'later' refers to the time AFTER you've been thouroughly digested.
Seraph gave Cantrip a quick glance. "You go first, kid. I'll, uh, watch your back."
"What?! NO! I don't even know what we're looking for inside!" wailed Cantrip, backing away.
There was a sound of something being unscrewed, and a rustle of very old paper. "Here, read this," said Seraph, and handed over a yellowing parchment rolled into a little cylinder.
Cantrip gingerly took it and read. And gasped.
"Er... it looks like a picture of a... erm... with something on her, uh..."
Seraph lunged forward and snatched the parchment from his hands. "Damn! Sorry, wrong parchment." He rummaged around, blushing hotly, and came up with another parchment. "Here you go. Stupid multi-compartment containers, they just don't make them like they used to."
* * * * *
In any organization, there has to be paperwork. Usually a lot of it. Sometimes, entire branches of organization does nothing but deal with paperwork all day. Since most paperwork involves reading things written by other people, there was usually a lot of junk to sift through.
In utter defiance of the normal curve of Probability, there were a lot of idiots in the world when it came to paperwork. There was a surprising amount of people who insist on writing down EVERYTHING. They thought that it would be utterly essential, for example, to note down the exact amount of coffee taken by everybody else, and logged this information down with meticulous accuracy. From this information, they proceeded to construct a dizzying number of pie charts, graphs and colourful tables, and all these are piled up with the other paperwork.
And so, eventually, everyone implemented forms.
Forms were great for two reasons. The first was the fact that they were very easy to process. You already KNOW where the guy who filled the form is going to put his name, for example. Generally it can be found under 'Name:'. In a form-less world, the guy can put his name anywhere he damn well chooses to. Many clerks have lost their minds looking for a single name among thousands of squiggly words packed together like very squiggly commuters in a very flat train.
The second reason was, if you make a form bewildering enough, you cut down the total amount of paperwork significantly. Nobody can submit a form they don't know how to fill, and uncompleted forms can, of course, be legally turned into little paper aeroplanes.
* * * * *
The parchment was a form. It looked like this:
Bounty Hunter Application Form 96(b): Acquisition Details
Name of applicant: (and here someone had scribbled what looked very suspiciously like the words 'Mr Anonymous')
Amount payable: $1504.92, tax inclusive
Description of target: Young lady, presumed dangerous. Proceed with caution. (You'll know her when you see her, she'll be the one standing around all the groaning bodies on the floor.)
Deadline for retrieval: As soon as possible.
Do you wish to see this target come to any sort of harm?: Not yet.
Last known location of target: Running away very fast.
Suspected location of target: If I knew, I wouldn't have to fill this damn stupid form.
Other action required: None. Bring her to *such and such address* when you've found her.
... and the form went on, branching into trivial details such as the applicant's income information ('more than enough to pay you') and place of residence ('99 nowhere street', apparently).
Cantrip stopped reading. "We're looking for a girl?"
"Yes. Now let's get moving," said Seraph, who had somehow managed to pry a lantern off the wall. He lit the lantern, and thrust it to Cantrip. "You first."
Cantrip took the lantern, muttered, and plunged into the darkness. Seraph followed.
There was a 'click', and the not-so-secret door slid shut.
* * * * *
Way up on the Spire, five shapes were moving rapidly down. Under the cloud cover, a snowy blizzard had set in, but it did not seem to slow down the moving shapes in the least.
There were brigands up here, of course. They exist on the off-chance that some merchant way below would one day exclaim: "Good golly, I believe it would be an EXCELLENT idea to load up this wagon with a lot of expensive and easily stolen goods, then go on a long, dangerous and extremely pointless journey up that vertical mountain. Without guards." If there was a probability curve for brigand intelligence, these brigands would, unfortunately, be located on the extreme left. On a scale of one to ten for intelligence, they scored a negative complex number.
Right now, twenty brigands leapt out of the snow upon the five moving shapes and wailed "Hands up! Your money or your life!" It was assumed that they had been looking forward to this for some time, because each one of them had a happy, triumphant smile on his face.
Ten minutes later, the five shapes moved on. There was a general feeling that the average human intelligence had just increased by a few points.
next chapter
The thing about secret rooms is, most of them aren't very secretive. In any piece of literary fiction, a REALLY secret room would be totally useless, since nobody would know about it even after the story is over (with the room being a total secret and all). So it's a bit of a misnomer, really. So it would be better to refer to them as, say, rooms with cunningly-disguised doors.
In this case, the door was cunningly disguised as the floor. As Seraph pulled, well-oiled mechanisms grinded somewhere in the walls, and a large section of the floor slid open to reveal a staircase. The beginning of a staircase, anyway: it was one of those winding ones, and this particular windy staircase wound into pitch darkness.
"Bloody hell! A secret room!" gaped Cantrip, conveniently ignoring the fact that rooms that were really meant to be a secret did not, in general, have a crude sign next to the opening-lever-disguised-as-a-candlestick.
Seraph shuffled over to the stairs and peeked into the darkness. The darkness peeked back. It was a special kind of darkness, the kind that promises all sorts of ways to die when you step inside. There was a cheerful hint of mysterious creatures waiting in that darkness, the sort that disembowels you first and asked questions later. And usually, 'later' refers to the time AFTER you've been thouroughly digested.
Seraph gave Cantrip a quick glance. "You go first, kid. I'll, uh, watch your back."
"What?! NO! I don't even know what we're looking for inside!" wailed Cantrip, backing away.
There was a sound of something being unscrewed, and a rustle of very old paper. "Here, read this," said Seraph, and handed over a yellowing parchment rolled into a little cylinder.
Cantrip gingerly took it and read. And gasped.
"Er... it looks like a picture of a... erm... with something on her, uh..."
Seraph lunged forward and snatched the parchment from his hands. "Damn! Sorry, wrong parchment." He rummaged around, blushing hotly, and came up with another parchment. "Here you go. Stupid multi-compartment containers, they just don't make them like they used to."
* * * * *
In any organization, there has to be paperwork. Usually a lot of it. Sometimes, entire branches of organization does nothing but deal with paperwork all day. Since most paperwork involves reading things written by other people, there was usually a lot of junk to sift through.
In utter defiance of the normal curve of Probability, there were a lot of idiots in the world when it came to paperwork. There was a surprising amount of people who insist on writing down EVERYTHING. They thought that it would be utterly essential, for example, to note down the exact amount of coffee taken by everybody else, and logged this information down with meticulous accuracy. From this information, they proceeded to construct a dizzying number of pie charts, graphs and colourful tables, and all these are piled up with the other paperwork.
And so, eventually, everyone implemented forms.
Forms were great for two reasons. The first was the fact that they were very easy to process. You already KNOW where the guy who filled the form is going to put his name, for example. Generally it can be found under 'Name:'. In a form-less world, the guy can put his name anywhere he damn well chooses to. Many clerks have lost their minds looking for a single name among thousands of squiggly words packed together like very squiggly commuters in a very flat train.
The second reason was, if you make a form bewildering enough, you cut down the total amount of paperwork significantly. Nobody can submit a form they don't know how to fill, and uncompleted forms can, of course, be legally turned into little paper aeroplanes.
* * * * *
The parchment was a form. It looked like this:
Bounty Hunter Application Form 96(b): Acquisition Details
Name of applicant: (and here someone had scribbled what looked very suspiciously like the words 'Mr Anonymous')
Amount payable: $1504.92, tax inclusive
Description of target: Young lady, presumed dangerous. Proceed with caution. (You'll know her when you see her, she'll be the one standing around all the groaning bodies on the floor.)
Deadline for retrieval: As soon as possible.
Do you wish to see this target come to any sort of harm?: Not yet.
Last known location of target: Running away very fast.
Suspected location of target: If I knew, I wouldn't have to fill this damn stupid form.
Other action required: None. Bring her to *such and such address* when you've found her.
... and the form went on, branching into trivial details such as the applicant's income information ('more than enough to pay you') and place of residence ('99 nowhere street', apparently).
Cantrip stopped reading. "We're looking for a girl?"
"Yes. Now let's get moving," said Seraph, who had somehow managed to pry a lantern off the wall. He lit the lantern, and thrust it to Cantrip. "You first."
Cantrip took the lantern, muttered, and plunged into the darkness. Seraph followed.
There was a 'click', and the not-so-secret door slid shut.
* * * * *
Way up on the Spire, five shapes were moving rapidly down. Under the cloud cover, a snowy blizzard had set in, but it did not seem to slow down the moving shapes in the least.
There were brigands up here, of course. They exist on the off-chance that some merchant way below would one day exclaim: "Good golly, I believe it would be an EXCELLENT idea to load up this wagon with a lot of expensive and easily stolen goods, then go on a long, dangerous and extremely pointless journey up that vertical mountain. Without guards." If there was a probability curve for brigand intelligence, these brigands would, unfortunately, be located on the extreme left. On a scale of one to ten for intelligence, they scored a negative complex number.
Right now, twenty brigands leapt out of the snow upon the five moving shapes and wailed "Hands up! Your money or your life!" It was assumed that they had been looking forward to this for some time, because each one of them had a happy, triumphant smile on his face.
Ten minutes later, the five shapes moved on. There was a general feeling that the average human intelligence had just increased by a few points.
next chapter
posted by nerdook at 10:47 AM
2 Comments:
Hi Hi! I come to add oil. But eheh, nothing from me online so far. Go, go, go!
hey thanks! :) i'm a bit behind at the moment, but i'll try and catch up as soon as possible...
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