“It feels so silly to have to tell soone about the Barker,” Dr. Striga said. “It is quite hard to conceive of a world that does not know the Sweepstakes, but you'll find we do dream of such a place. Perhaps our obsession with worlds like yours stems from so subconscious desire for the lives we were never allowed to live—the blissful ignorance… but to understand the Manifest Consortium, you must understand the Barker.”
We sat on the bench, and as she spoke, the cold air stopped bothering . I felt a gravity in what she was saying even before she got to the details. I instinctively knew I was hearing sothing important.
She grabbed my hands.
"He appears in places you would not expect,” she said, her eyes drifting off into a mory. “Places that are not quite themselves in the mont, that do not have their usual soul—schools after hours, condemned hospitals, malls that have closed down, areas of transition. Sotis, a place can lose its spirit for a mont and appear completely alien. Have you ever noticed the liminal spaces where a piece of your mind wakes up—a piece that senses sothing strange?
"My first ti, it was a street in the middle of the city where I grew up, normally bustling with people day and night. It had just snowed, and I was out trekking my way to work at a diner. I was a young woman, and the gift of long life had not yet made wealthy.
"I saw him there. No one else was around. Snow had painted the entire place white—it was an entirely new world that would only last a night. I breathed deeply lungfuls of air that belonged to another plane."
She had told this story, before, whatever she claid. She knew it well.
"He calls out to you," she said, "and he speaks to you like he's known you your entire life. And you think maybe he has? You can't help but get close. It isn't rely because you've heard rumors of his existence. My entire family legend started when my grandfather t him back in my ho world. For a mont, you forget what you know about him, and you're struck with an overwhelming curiosity. You feel you were ant to be at this place, at this ti, and he's been waiting for you here. This place and this ti will never exist again. A strange realization, but it feels visceral as you walk nearer.
"He smiles warmly, the Barker, apparently not even able to feel the cold though he is dressed for a sumr carnival, and he tells you the price. For , it was all the money I had in my pockets. Not much, but still precious. They say that he will only ask a price that he knows you will eventually pay, but I’m not certain that’s true. It's just that if you've seen what he offers, there's hardly anything you wouldn't give."
She paused for a mont to reflect, and then I—perhaps because of my innate immaturity—felt the need to interject and ask a question.
"Did you give him your soul?" I asked. That was definitely the vibe.
"He has never asked for it," she said, as if considering whether she would.
She let go of my hands and produced a small stack of tickets from nowhere. She was using the sa trick we used to make our tropes disappear and reappear—except the tickets she brandished were not tropes at all, though the design was sowhat familiar.
She handed one of them to . It was red with gold leaf and thick stock. I could hardly read the calligraphy, but when I made out what it said, I handed it back to her, not quite comfortable holding sothing I didn’t understand.
The Quiet nd
From Luvere Redies: Cures for the Heart & Unruly Soul
This ticket does not erase love or loss, nor does it dull what mattered. It simply lifts the weight, eases the tightness in your chest, and lets you wake without the ache pressing in first thing. One day—sooner than you think—you’ll laugh, and it won’t feel borrowed.
No side effects. No forgetting. Just the quiet relief of moving forward.
Luvere Redies: Because So Hurts Need More Than Ti.
There were others. So for little things, like a traditional feast from so culture I didn’t recognize and a pair of glasses fit to your vision needs. So were for big things, like an apartnt in a box or five years off your face wrinkles.
They were products.
Magical products, but products all the sa.
"I don’t understand," I said. "This is the Sweepstakes? I thought that was for immortality. The posters of the narrators made it seem…"
She studied my eyes. "You aren’t impressed? My rare tickets are in safekeeping. They are very valuable. They are the backbone of our comrce."
"I’ve already had my quota for surprise today," I said. But sowhere in the back of my mind, anger started to form as a picture of this society began to develop. "Go on with the rest of your story. I didn’t an to interrupt."
"The Barker ca to my world in the late 1800s. Until then, our worlds were sisters. My grandfather won my family near immortality. That made us famous, also. We left when I was five years old. I don't even rember my first language. After the destruction of my world, there were so few left to speak it.
"I ended up on a world that diverged from yours in the 1980s—that was when the Barker had found it. It was a wonderful place to grow up, a place where the Sweepstakes was still mysterious and exciting. I loved it, but eventually, those of us who lived long lives realized we had more in common with each other than we did with the people of the places where we were raised. So, we found our way to the Manifest Consortium with others like us.
"I was educated in the Consortium and decided to pursue what many thought to be a silly area of academics—the hard sciences. Why would you ever need to understand the fabric of reality when you can manipulate it so well with MBW or with tickets won or bartered? No, it seems there is a very real lack of curiosity for the pure sciences in the Manifest Consortium, and many worlds where such inquiries were valued are long gone."
Yes, I was confident that she had given this exact speech before. Perhaps to players of gas past.
"So I ca to the one place where I might find like minds, even if they had been lost to ti," she continued. "I seek to understand the nature of reality and of consciousness—cures for every disease that don’t rely on luck of the draw. I want to understand what happened to my people and to perhaps get a grasp of multiversal travel down to its physical roots, not just granted through magic."
Her cadence picked up. She spoke from her chest of her grand ambitions.
"I knew Carousel’s potential when I first stepped into this world. We found it alone, broadcasting its nightmares to an audience we knew not. Attempting, we think, the very thing it hopes to accomplish with its new Throughline."
"To an audience…" I said, interrupting. "So you're not the audience."
She looked at like I was stupid—though I was certain she didn’t an to.
"We are part of the audience now. But asking who the audience is… You might as well ask who founded the Sweepstakes."
"Okay," I said, or at least tried to say. I couldn’t make my voice box work.
"I spent years trying to understand what happened to my ho world," she said, getting back to her speech. "The Consortium had no answers. MBW had no answers. But on the very first day I stepped into Carousel, a song started to play over the radio—one I had not heard in 2,000 years. It took Carousel less than a day to find my world and to mock with it."
This book's true ho is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.
"I have so experience with that part," I said.
"Yes," she said. "Carousel is filled with wonder and promise. For many years, we tried to understand its aptitude with MBW. It is able to do things that should not be possible. The magic between worlds is not magic in and of itself—it is a practice designed for enforcing and balancing rule sets. And yet Carousel, which bursts forth with MBW, seems to have no need to balance things."
It took a mont to realize that what I heard as "imbue" was her pronouncing MBW, the Magic Between Worlds. A bit obnoxious but maybe it would grow on .
"Well, there’s balance in its narratives, from what I can tell," I said.
"Yes, its rules are balanced to so degree, but its power appears not to be. Did you know that in the very storyline you are running, Carousel is using real ti manipulation in order to simulate make believe ti manipulation rules?"
Oh, right, the storyline.
"I had so idea," I said, though I was very disappointed to know that jumping between mass casualty events using bodily injuries to dislodge you from the ti stream was not real ti travel.
"How does it use ti travel with such ease? Low world ti travel is but multiversal travel blindfolded, but Carousel is more adept. We have been fascinated for so ti. These secrets are valuable, and Carousel holds the answers," she said.
The way she spoke about it—it was pure fascination. I didn't feel like she was deceiving because if she was trying to pull the wool over my eyes, she should have known better than to speak about Carousel with such a dreamy tone.
"Carousel is bloodthirsty," I said. "It's a torture world. A death ga."
In much the sa way that she couldn't ever imagine having to explain who the Barker was, I could hardly imagine having to explain why Carousel was a bad place.
"Every world is bloodthirsty," she said. "You're too young to know that."
I wasn’t here to argue. That was pointless.
"What is Carousel trying to accomplish, and why are you helping it?" I asked.
Again, that look—as if she couldn't believe how it wasn’t obvious. Maybe it was, but I was just too narrowly focused, too oblivious to understand.
"Carousel's ends appear simple. Ours are more practical and honorable. When you et the Barker the first few tis, he tells you the price. But if you live long enough to see him more than that, he stops naming the price, and you have to start naming your offer."
"Offer?" I repeated.
"And this is what we offer," she said.
From the stack of tickets she had produced, she pulled one that I hadn't yet seen.
"You offer tickets to play the ga at Carousel," I said, guessing where she was going with it. "That's how you guys acquire all your magic coupons for your economy? You sell trips to a horror world? I can't imagine people cash those in too often, though. I guess you could also just sell… wait."
She handed a ticket.
Admit One: A Special Engagent of "The Strings Attached"
A Featured Selection from The Town of Carousel with Behind-the-Scenes Exclusives with the Party of Promise.
The Strings Attached follows five intrepid gossip reporters as they infiltrate the most exclusive masked ball of the season—an event glittering with power, beauty, and secrets no outsider was ever ant to uncover. But when an impossible murder shatters the evening’s façade, the Society turns its masked gaze inward, searching for intruders.
The rules of the night have changed. The dance has begun. And those who do not belong must play their part perfectly… or be unmasked.
Starring Christian Stone, Kimberly Madison, Antoine Stone, Riley Lawrence, and Grace Varga as The Detective, this selection captures one of Carousel’s most elegant and sinister gas yet.
Will they get the truth out, or will they beco part of the story forever?
Your seat is reserved. The curtain rises with the punch of this ticket.
My heart started to race, and I had trouble breathing. It wasn't that this was a surprise—we obviously knew that this was happening. But we thought it was done purely by so dark, dented, cosmic voyeur, and we had co to terms with that horror.
But this was different.
This was mundane exploitation.
This was sohow darker.
Whatever evil Carousel was, whatever unknowable audience it served, I was prepared for that. But this was different.
"So what exactly are we talking about here?" I asked. "I know that you're clearly helping Carousel—we'd been told that even before we knew who you were. At first I thought you were like... servants or slaves. Postered players, missing Film Buffs, NPCs, sothing, but you're doing this so that you have sothing to offer the Barker... in exchange for magic tickets?"
Why did “The Barker” sound familiar? I couldn't shake the feeling I had seen him sowhere.
"Yes," Striga said. "Funding for our research was limited. But once the Proprietor ca up with the idea of actually helping Carousel instead of rely observing it, this operation beca far more profitable."
Two decades’ worth of hiding my feelings had trained not to show what I was feeling on my face, but I was really struggling.
In Carousel, I had felt emotions like desperation or despair or abject terror, but I was rarely angry at Carousel. I conceived of it as so cosmic being that saw as nothing but a source of enjoynt—sothing beyond my mortal comprehension. I might as well have been mad at God or the universe itself.
But these people… were people. Immortal, but still human.
Perhaps I wasn't hiding the emotions on my face so well.
"You know, we never force any players to co," she said. "And we didn’t bring you here. That was Carousel’s doing. We help with the logistics to keep the ga running. We added the red wallpaper so that players could stand a chance at survival. We made physical tickets to make the spells easier to understand. There was a ti when they had to hunt and find all of the information—if they even knew to do so. It couldn't have been called a ga when we arrived, what Carousel did. But now you and the others have a fair chance. This is how you repay us for that."
I was staring at the building. I didn’t want to look at her.
"By starring in a movie of beating myself to death to rid my body of a sorcerer who was possessing ?" I asked. "That's how we repay you? Have you ever slamd your face into the ground so hard your teeth broke just because you wanted your friends to live? Have you ever forced your arms to twist until your tendons snapped?"
"Calm down," she said. "All players are like this at first. Just think rationally."
"Did you never think to try to rescue the players trapped here when you arrived?" I asked.
She looked so offended.
"Dear boy, those poor souls trapped here when we arrived could hardly be called players. And if we were to curse them with the ability to rember the trials and tribulations they had been through, it would be a greater evil than anything Carousel had done to them. We couldn’t save them. You understand that, do you not? Carousel’s rules are quite clear. We couldn’t just sweep in and rescue everyone—even we aren’t powerful enough to do that. Not here. Not until we understand Carousel's system better."
Carousel did have its rules.
"Deus ex machina," I said.
She was right. You can’t be saved by random outside forces in Carousel. You have to save yourself. Or get friends.
"Yes, exactly," she said. "We even presented the idea of Paragons—those who exist in both worlds, both players and observers who could intercede. We broadcast your films to expand the audience. We do help."
She truly didn't understand why I might not be on board with this whole arrangent.
"Simply watching the films you’re in and paying attention is an act of service toward you. Do you know how much of an uproar our world is in right now? You and your friends are all anyone talks about. They know that if we can’t find a way to rescue you, the company's stock is practically sunk. We may have to shutter our Carousel operations permanently. That's why we have spent years away from our families to co here and resolve this crisis. If you die, it would do damage to our image—even after we've got these problems fixed. Our fates are tied together in many ways."
Toward the end, I could tell that she realized her version of logic wasn't quite working. And to her credit, she did hold out five of her tickets to .
"Take this," she said, "as a token of goodwill."
I was angry, but I knew my mission. And a friendly Narrator—even one so calloused that she couldn't see the evils of the system she had beco complicit in—was a valuable asset.
I grabbed the tickets and put them in my pocket without even reading them.
"Thank you," I said.
"I hope this won't affect your decision," she said.
"Decision?" I asked.
"About joining my Throughline and helping find the answers to questions hidden throughout the many worlds," she said.
"Right," I said. My mind was a million miles away from that. "I have to talk to my teammates."
She nodded. "I assure you, Mr. Lawrence… Riley, we are not responsible for your situation, and we have only helped you."
"I understand," I said.
There was a pause. Nearly twenty seconds of silence.
Then I said, "I ca here to explore this building, to try to see if there are any solutions for my people. I went through so trouble to get here, and I can't waste this opportunity. There's narrative montum being wasted."
"Yes," she said. "You should find the control room. If you really want to understand the nature of your existence—or at least confirm what I suspect you've already deduced—a trip there will help you. But be warned: you have one of the most famous faces in the many worlds. It isn't likely you'll get far without being noticed."
"Well, I have to try," I said. "Please promise you won't tell anyone."
"Oh, I won’t," she said. "We don’t have any specific rules about this situation. It's never happened before, so I am under no obligation to report you by company policy."
"That's great to hear," I said.
How generous.
I walked to the entrance of the building, which consisted of a large row of glass doors. My hood was pulled up. My sunglasses were on.
And for the first ti in so long, a white-hot fury burned through .
User Comments
0 comments from readers