Lifestyles of the Dipshit and Lamous

You and I are walking from wherever we’ve just been to a mountain range. You can see it goes for hundreds of miles in either direction.

“Don’t worry,” I say. “We’re not climbing this bee.”

If that’s disappointing news, then I add, “I mean, we can later, if you want. But I’ll warn you. My cardio is trash. I got majorly winded walking up a foothill, like, five months ago and I have not been working out since.”

We reach the base of the range and start up the path.

I turn to you and say, “Okay, so we have to climb for a tiny bit. But it’s literally just up there.”

I point to the spot I mean, and soon we are there.

With a sigh, I dig through my satchel and produce my readers and a small notebook.

I put the readers on and flip through the notebook. “Let’s see, let’s see … mountain range, mountain range … huh. What? … Okay, yeah. I think this is the one.”

To you, it looks like we are staring at the side of a mountain—unless you have has cybernetic augmentation to your eyes or have some sort of feature that allows you to see cloaked things.

I press my fingertip against the rock and mouth the numbers as I do. “I know, I’m getting old. Don’t give me shit about, m’kay.”

You hadn’t intended to, so it’s no problem.

When I’ve finished, I stare at it, looking like I am waiting for something to happen.

Nothing happens.

“God-dammit, did I type in the wrong one?” I study the notebook again and look rather befuddled doing so.

Finally, I say, “Okay, maybe it’s not under mountain range. Maybe it’s under … douchebag mountain hotel …” I flip back some pages. “Ha! Yes. Let’s try that one …”

Again, I press my fingertip against the face of the mountain.

You hear a pinging sound followed by a loud hiss and rumble as a portion of the mountain face slides back, allowing us to go inside.

What is this place? you might wonder.

“It’s a bunker. Rich assholes started building them around …” I move my lips and whisper to myself. You may be able to infer that I’m doing math. “Like two thousand eight, your time? Something like that.”

Why? you may ask, if you don’t already know.

“Cos they thought the surface world would become uninhabitable for one reason or another. Global warming or an invasion or, you know, a revolution. Whatever crackpot idea that kept them clutching their pearls.” I take my readers off and put them and the password book back in my bag. I bring out a pack of Yellow Kids and my old school Zippo. You hear the distinctive clink and smell the leaky lighter fluid from the Zippo as I light up.

You wonder if I should be smoking in here.

“Oh yeah, it’s fine. They have all kinds of fancy air filtration shit. What’s the point of living if you can’t hoot on some Macanudos, amiright?” [Ed. Roll for sarcasm detection.]

You ask if any of those things ever happened.

“I mean, yeah. All of them. But they didn’t use the bunkers for that. It was just a multi-billion dollar pacifier and blanky for these rich fucks. Speaking of …”

We go deeper into the bunker entrance—a sort of vestibule that goes to a long hallway, which we start down.

“… the word ‘villain’ is very telling about who is writing stories, isn’t it?”

If you know this already, just skip down a ways.

“A villain is basically a farmhand who gets their independence and becomes too big for da britches, trying to act like the fancy folk but without any sense of propriety or decency, a cautionary tale for those who would step outside of their station.”

We continue down the hallway—which, as I said, is quite long. There is lighting on the floor: soft, ambient, bluish. All you can see ahead is more of the same.

“‘Nobles,’ on the other hand, are the very paragons of virtue, right? So you see it wasn’t enough for the rich and powerful to steal away the land and the resources. No, they had to steal the narrative, too. And it’s just been going on like that forever. Everyone knows it. But is there anyone using other words? No. People are just like, ‘Well, that’s the origin, certainly, but words change over time.’ Which is how they keep their grip on you. Well, one of a million little ways, I guess.”

You can see the faint impression of wall in the distance.

“Then you have a character like Robin Hood, who’s kind of interesting. Cos depending upon how you read it, he could be, like, a rich person trying to have it both ways. Or kind of like a sort of Buddha—I mean Siddhartha Gautama, here, the historical Buddha—who is a rich dude who has figure out that being rich isn’t where it’s at. That providing for the poor and taking care of everyone is a better plan in life. Of course, Robin Hood kicks a lot of ass, which the Buddha wouldn’t have been about, but. You know. There are similarities in their origins. Of course the story of Siddhartha predates Robin Hood by like, eighteen hundred years.”

You can see clear enough now that we are approaching a door.

“But Robin Hood is kina Batman-y, too, in that you have a rich asshole taking it upon himself to bypass the legal system and sidestep the government in order to bring his own vision of justice to the world.”

You might observe that the Sheriff of Nottingham was corrupt.

“Yes, yes, I know that, bae. I’m talking about the writers’ intentions here, the social dee en ay that’s being transmitted. The idea that there are good nobles who actually give a shit about people who aren’t rich. Which is, you know, bullshit. They’re the real villains of the story.”

You say whatever you think, or remain silent.

We reach the door.

“Okay, let’s see here …” I examine the pad next to the door. “Looks like ancient fucking ‘biometric’,” I make air quotes with my fingers, “encryption. Easy enough.”

I pull out my phone and touch the pad with it and the door opens.

“What passes for security in the Twenty-One is a fucking joke,” I say.

We go through the door, and are in an atrium.

“This place has seen better days,” I say.

What happened here? you ask.

“I dunno. Whatever rich asshole built this place got bored or divorced or died or something. Moved on to superyachting or whatever it is gadzillionaires do.”

I get a little glint in my eye. “I dated one one time1. Well, sort of. We had an affair. She owned her own planet. That was luxury, having an entire planet to yourself. She would go on trips and things and I would be the only person there. I mean there were plants and animals, so not in that sense. But no other language bearing animals.”

You might say how you think that would make you feel.

“I loved it,” I say. “True solitude in nature. So pleasant.”

You ask if she was like Robin Hood.

I wipe my nose and flick my cigarette away. “No. No, she was not.”

We enter a hall lined with art.

Among them are abstract paintings, which start to glow, revealing symbols.

“Those are runes,” I say. “Or sigils, I guess, more accurately. They’re magick. These dipshits don’t know it, though. They have no idea what these artifacts are or how to use them. Or even what they are doing just being in here with them. They just buy them as a flex. Which is about the dumbest thing one can do when it comes to magick.” [Ed. If you are studying magick as part of the reader-game, see the play procedures' below.]

We come to the end of this hall and enter a vestibule. In it, I whisper to you, “I really need to pee. Lemme know if you see a head, m’kay?”

We exit the vestibule and are in yet another hallway—this one resembling a hotel.

As we pass a door marked: 665, I say, “Don’t go through there. That’ll take you to a whole other place. I’m not the Narrator there. It’s this chick Mari Kari. Or, you know, go if you want, but I can’t come with you.” I gesture around. “All these others are nothing. Just semi-fancy rooms for ‘patrons,’ ‘backers,’ ‘angels,’ and other hangers on who weren’t, you know, resplendently disgustingly vicious and greedy and stupid enough to get their own bunker. So they just ‘bought in’ to this one.”

At the end of that hallway, we pass through a door into a very humid room.

“Ah, the baths,” I say. “I must confess: this is where being a rich fuck appeals to me. Not enough to actually become one, but. This I get.” I start stripping and approaching the huge pool in the center.

You can see many smaller baths, pools, and hot tubs around. There are steam rooms, saunas, and locker rooms adjoining. You can’t see them directly, but you can infer from the architecture.

I plunge naked into the pool.

I swim underwater for a minute, then resurface, my hair slicked back. I probably look more masc to you than I normally do.

“This place reminds me of a similar joint … but I can’t recall exactly which one. It’s like a dream, but not a dream. Dreams I can recall.” [Ed. see below, ‘play procedures.’]

If you want to swim with me, you can. And if you wanna do other things in the pool, we can. Otherwise, you do whatever you do, and I float on my back for awhile.

I climb out of the pool and go through one of the locker rooms to a sauna. I sit there and tell you about the dream I had last night.

“I was anticipating Dad’s death. He’s not dead, you see. In the dream. This is a common occurrence in my dreamline, lately. Before he died, it was my uncle, Umberto, the rat bastard. Before that, my grandparents. Before that, my cat, Mr. Pook. So it’s not new. This is a way death has been for me. Real and past in waking life, but in the dreamworld, it’s mutable.”

I lean my head back and stretch my arms and legs, then scratch under one of my boobs.

“Sometimes they are zombies. Anyway, in this dream, I am worried that Dad is going to die. Like, within the week. Avan is visiting me every day, and every day we are doing the same kinds of things together.”

If you cut me a dirty look, I’ll grin and say, “No, no. Not those things. Boring, quotidian sorts of things. And there’s weird details, like I’m trying to keep too much on this shelf in a closet. Items fall off the shelf, down and into the trashcan, which is next to my bed. So it’s, like, between the closet and the bed. The trashcan, I mean. But it’s tight. All three are very close together. And some very expensive jeans are among the things falling into the trashcan. Avan teases me about this, saying that I throw away way too many expensive pairs of jeans.

“I’m like, It’s true. But I actually don’t want to throw these away. They just keep falling in the trash because I have too much on the shelf.

“Incidentally, in waking life, I don’t throw hardly any jeans away. Lila is pretty annoyed by it, actually. And the ones I get rid of, I donate. But that’s neither here nor there.”

I make an attempt to sit up straight, but there’s a familial hunch working its way into my neck and shoulders. So I’m able to maintain the posture for a moment, but then slump a little back into that slouch.

“There’s more, of course. To the dream. But that’s the part I wanted to share with you.”

Why? you may wonder or ask outright.

I shrug. “I dunno. I follow my instincts with these things, babe. You can quit following along anytime, if you don’t think it’s pertinent. I’ll be here, right where you left me.”

We shower and dress and then go deeper into the bunker.

It feels less like a luxury hotel and more like a proper city, the deeper in we go.

“We’re starting to get into the ‘metropolis’ part of this place. These rich fucks couldn’t leave anything behind, right? So every sort of environment they dug is replicated around here somewhere in some form or fashion.”

I smirk and ask, “How’d they do?” [Ed. see below, ‘play procedures.’]

We approach what is meant to be a liquor store, but nothing is sold; it’s only meant to look like a store. So it’s a wet bar in the form of a liquor store set.

“That’s my take, bae. You do you,” I say.

I walk to one of the shelves and pull on a cab sav bottle.

A hiss released from a nearby portion of the wall, and a section slides away.

I look at you and say, “These rich fucks,” then saunter through the secret passage.

On the other side is a restaurant.

“A speakeasy,” I say. “That’s what it’s meant to be, anyhow. These guys were fetishizing something that was already a fetishized romanticization of mob rule. Typical.”

It’s empty now, of course.

Why? you might ask.

“Cos dead,” I say. “Everyone’s dead, babe. I thought you’d have gotten that by now.”

You might say something like, But that’s in your time. We’re in my time. Wouldn’t they still be alive now? Or not even moved in?

I sigh. “Have it your way. They’ll all be dead soon enough.”

You might try to pin me down for me details.

To which I’ll reply, “Look, and I mean this in the kindest way possible, okay? Cos I love you. But I am from another time and place. Trying to explain what is possible then and there would be like you trying to explain modern computing and electronic infrastructure to Emperor Basil II.”

You might protest and say that you aren’t a royal.

If so, I’ll giggle and say, “Okay, fine. Ibn al-Haytham. That any better, babe?”

You say if it is or isn’t.

For example, you might say, Fine. I get it.

Or you could say, I think Ḥasan got get his head around it.

Either way, imma laugh and touch you lightly on the shoulder, then carry on through the dining room of the speakeasy to its kitchen.

The kitchen has all sorts of kitchen-y shit in it. If you know about such things, then you can tell me about them. I only recognize the major appliances and tools. Da fridge. Things like that. It’s the fridge I’m after, so I open it.

Therein, on the top shelf, sits a piece of agate. I see it as blue, but you can see it however you saw it before I said the color. You know, if you want.

What is it? you ask.

“It’s a hunk of agate,” I say.

I can see that, Teresa, you say.

I smile and remove it gently, almost like I’m handling something volatile.

“I guess we could call it a key?”

Like to a lock? you ask.

“To a code,” I say. “Like a cipher.”

How does that work? you might ask.

“Babe, don’t get ahead of things, all right? You’ll spoil your dinner. Speaking of, I’m famished.”

If you know how to cook and the food is here and good, you can whip us something.

Or we can bounce, and go back to Soma, get something there.

Play procedures

• If you are a student of Alithea’s, Bru’s, or one of the Umbertos, you can try to learn these symbols to harness their power. They are very powerful and so difficult to learn safely and correctly. They are also crafted with chaos, so they are unpredictable and volatile. Every check is made at exploding disadvantage, meaning the first check is at disadvantage, the second at double disadvantage and so on until you fail. When you fail, the symbol goes off and a story-altering effect happens to your character.

  • If you are a chaos magickian, you know better than to mess with another magickians symbols, and we move along.

• If you know the place it is reminding me of, then you can travel there from here. Just go into the locker room on the left; then, from there, into the sauna. Wait for about five minutes, then exit the way you came in. You’ll be there. I can’t accompany you, of course, so you’ll be on your own. Nikki can be there, though. So if you two have become pals, she can help you out. If not, steer clear of her, as always.

• How successful the narcissistic corpotechnocrats have been in the construction of this bunker is left to your discretion as the reader-player. If it suits your playthrough as a marvel of human ingenuity and technological achievement, have it be that. If it feels more credible or just to see it as a tomb of grand failure, let it be so. And feel free to try out different variations if you play the novel multiple times in different ways. Share your decision and results, if you want, babe.