Dieselworld Soundtrack #1!

I'm going to briefly cut from the story to highlight the work of my wonderful musician dad, Rory Bezecny, who has put together a theme for You! And you, by consequence. Yes, there is a Dieselworld Soundtrack. Yes, there will be more tracks released as time goes on. Presently, this one is called "MYousic of the Spheres" and, as mentioned, is based on the character of You.

The track can be listened to (on YouTube) here.

Enjoy, and please feel free to leave constructive criticism, both here on the blog and on the YouTube video itself.

It's here that I would like to thank anyone who has stumbled across this blog at any point in history. Your readership in any form is greatly beneficial to me, and I owe you a great debt. So truly give yourselves a round of applause. Thank you, and please, by all means, continue reading. (:

#31

One night, You is lying in the water. It has been awhile since You's been in the water, and the itchiness on the side of Your face has been replaced by the soft comfort of sand. You is lying on a beach, and You realizes You was never in a prison cell this whole time. It makes You happy, but subtly happy. And You's perplexed as to why that happiness is so subtle.

You tries to swim in the ocean. You's always wanted to do so, but Your parents were never able to take You. So You does it now, but it's still not satisfying. The ocean feels like saliva and vomit, and being in it makes You tired. Therefore, it makes the most sense to sink below the waves and forget about a lot of things. But think about a lot of things too. Like visions. Visions occur frequently in the sort of life You leads, and this is no different. Visions are a staple, actually, of this existence.

This vision isn't one You's particularly proud of. It's slippery, though it is happening below the ocean, so that makes a lot of sense. You can sort of see the vision You's looking for between some coral, past a shelf made of sharks.

The vision isn't one of the future, either. It's more of a framework representing something happening in Your mind, right now, almost like a dream—but this isn't a dream, You fumes, it's a vision, and it can't be anything but. Something tickles Your face as You gets a look at the vision, and something tickles in Your stomach too. There's a smell of something wrong, and there's the sound of music born out of the cosmos—the song of everyone whose ever met a fate of any sort down in these waters.

At the bottom of the ocean, there. There is a statue, like the Statue of Liberty if it sunk, like in so many movies You's never seen. It is a statue of You. You sees Yourself with a bird mouth, until You realizes that it's not a beak, it's Your lips, extending forward from Your sunken cheeks. You has no eyes, and Your ribs are showing. Your fingers are long and distended, and Your legs look likewise. Everything is bony and protrudes, and You has a crown of seaweed as You becomes coral. You become plankton, which means You's as tiny as You is huge. You's too small to notice, and You's too big to crush.

Here, You's safe. Here, You's untouchable, and here, You needs no one. There's a flicker of blue static, a flash of an enormous tail, and You and Your visions are gone.

#30

You lands in a dark cell. You feels water splash into Your wounds; it's filthy water, and it makes the gashes sting, though its coolness soothes Your burns. Your nose is full of the stench of burning hair, and You can't see out of one eye, though You knows it's still there.

There's a tiny light in the room, but not enough to see much of anything. You feels around in the dark, scared for a second (though You was already scared already, to speak honestly) that there might be something out there, but there's nothing. Not even a bed. Just a cold stone wall, for You to lean and infect Your wounds against.

You hears nothing for a few seconds, the sound of screaming echoing in Your ears. Eventually that fades, and there's silence. But then the silence ends too, with the sound of crying.

You opens Your eyes, which had been pinched shut from the pain; You can sort of see out of the other one now, You notes. The crying seems close, though not in the cell. It actually seems to be coming from behind Your head, but it can't be penetrating this stone wall. You feels around, and eventually comes across a tiny slit in the wall. You calls into it.

“Hello?”

The crying pauses.

“Is there someone there?”

Your heart skips for a second. The voice is faint, but it sounds so familiar. You can't hold Yourself back, and You shouts out, “Susie?!”

There's a gasp.

“You?”

You blinks and suddenly the nature of Your tears changes. You can't believe it at all, but You can't even guess at a trick now.

You cry out to the heavens and the person in the other cell presses against the slit, and the two of you start sobbing.

“Oh, You...I-I can't believe it.” Her voice is choked off. “They told me that I'd never leave this cell, and that this was all by itself, that I'd never hear a voice again until I told them where it was...the Item. And I-I never I'd hear from...from...” And You just smiles as you both laugh hysterically.

For a second, the tiny fuelbulb overhead seems a little brighter.

“I don't have the Item, Susie,” You says.

“You doesn't? Did they take it?”

“No, no. I lost it when they captured me. It could be anywhere.”

She begins whispering, then. “I should've told You to destroy it, in my note, but I thought it would help You. It wasn't until he took us to Zorro City that I realized they wanted it; that me telling You where it was was what they wanted. They searched the forest, but they must not have seen the cave...look, You, the only reason they'd put us together would be if they were listening, and thought You'd tell me where it was. But since You doesn't know where it is, we might be safe.”

“Susie, I need some answers to some questions. I don't know what that thing does, o-or, or...really anything, at this point.” But then You remembers the most important thing. “Where are my parents? And did they torture you? Any of you?”

“They dragged Your mom off, and I didn't see where they took her. I don't know where Your dad is, either. They did torture me, probably tortured both of us. But Your mom didn't know anything, so they might have spared her...”

You breathes a sigh of relief, and You takes a second to revel in the loss of tension.

“Listen, You. We may not be trapped here for long. Anti-Imperial minded folks are out there, and there's been a big push lately...”

Suddenly, You hears a grind of metal, and Susie cries out. Loud boot steps can be heard scraping across stone, and she begins screaming.

“Susie...!”

The screams are loud and shrill, and You considers covering Your ears, but instead You scrambles along the stone, looking desperately for any sort of fault in the wall. Every inch of You feels helpless because there's nothing. There's nothing, nothing but flat stone and the sounds of a struggle. She begins sobbing, and suddenly she is gone. The metal scraping appears again, and there's only one sound left.

The cries for help from a friend are the worst sounds in the world, and sometimes one is left only to cry by themselves, to try to forget having heard that sound in the first place.

#29

Klaus stands over the murdered bodies of a platoon of Imperial soldiers. Their screams still echo in his head, but he shows no remorse. But then, Klaus has never been much for showing much of anything.

Perhaps today can be different. Today may be the day that it all happens. He guided You to the right spot, and if You survives the rigors ahead, HE might be able to come through and commence what Klaus has prophesied this whole time. From there, the time for guiding will be over, and Klaus will just be another gerbil in the wheel. For now, though, it's time to wait. And, it's time for a drink.

Klaus decides to head for a cantina; as a matter of fact, he heads for the one that he and You went to just hours ago, before he watched You stare at the ocean for hours, and before the soldiers showed up. He heads inside and sits at the bar, noting that there's a new bartender now. He doesn't make eye contact, and mutters, “Ein Bier, bitte.”

The bartender obliges, saying in return, “Sprechen sie Deutsch?”

“Ja.”

“Ich auch.”

“Ah.” Klaus looks up and cups his hands around his beer. Speaking still in German, he begins to tell a story.

“My name is Klaus, but it was not always such. I was once named something else, but the name is a word in English, and using magic, I lobotomized myself so I can no longer speak English.”

The bartender looks at him, raises an eyebrow, and listens patiently, cleaning a glass as he does so.

“I am not the same as the man I was born as. I do not remember much of what I was like when I was born, but when I was made a separate individual, the man I was born from told me his story. I suppose, in retrospect, you could call this man my father.

“He said he was a scientist, but not a particularly good one. He would steal the research of others, like a modern day Edison, and cobble things together to produce half-functional devices and theories that never went anywhere. He described his lab as a wonderful of shitty machines, covered in pointless Tesla coils and rusting analog boxes that did nothing. Somehow, through one of these many broken mechanisms, it was in this way that he accessed The Unscene, the place where timelines flow.

“Being unable to comprehend the nature of time at that point, he entered The Unscene, and found what he called 'icicles in time'; places where time travel has occurred, where timelines intersect. An angle between crossing strings of chronal matter. He learned—the hard way, of course—that by throwing oneself onto one of these time-spikes, a chronal duplicate can be created. A person can be split in two.

“When my father first duplicated himself, both duplicates were astonished. At first, it seemed there was no way to tell them apart—but a medical examination revealed a small birthmark on the neck of the clone. From this my father theorized that while chronal mechanics allow the duplication of an individual, the old science fiction trope—that two identical individuals cannot exist in the same period of time via time travel—holds true. So when a chronal duplicate is created, a slight variation is induced to separate the pair.

“My father didn't know it at the time, but due to the nature of the native universe, he had unleashed something nameless; or rather, he had become something nameless. The universe, at least the one that he lived in, does allow a promise of power to worthy explorers; but it acts blindly. My father admitted he didn't deserve the power he found, but he took it anyway.

“It was decided amongst the duplicates he made—twenty-one in all—that they would all live vastly different lives, all around the world and perhaps even on other worlds. With time travel easily available, space travel could be accessed from different historical periods; any new power was possible to find. It was in an alien place that my twenty-one siblings, who included my father, found magic of a very particular and refined sort. It theoretically allowed us to do or create anything; but we wanted to stick by our goals in life, so we changed ourselves to suit our new roles.

“It was here that I altered my body to be an old man—an old German man, to be specific. I changed my fashions to those of stereotypes, and warped my brain so I can literally speak nothing but German. I took the name Klaus, because my father's name started with the letter 'K'. We all took names with that letter, to suit our roles; Klark, Klayton, Klaarghus, Kletus...

“Many of us, our brains scattered by the transformations, forgot our identities, and so it was that our father explained who we were. He then used the product of his magic—a bicycle with powers over time and space, and perhaps other things as well—to leave us behind for another place. We never saw him again.

“I ended up in an old house—not an important house, I should say, but just a simple house—where I lived a simple life, embracing the culture of Germany. During this time, two of my brothers met with me. The first was a prophet named Kleric, because he was a cleric. (Though not in the classical sense; more like the role-playing sense, in that he could harness magic. This was in the days before the Empire.) He told me he, in a vision, saw the rise of the Empire and the death of hope and magic, and a bitter strike by an evil enemy. He said I would need to be the guide for a young boy who would open the gates to The Unscene, to bring back a strange messenger who would help us. He then transformed my private trope, to make me into this guide.

“When I was visited again, it was by one of my brothers who had become a sorcerer. Kleric had found him and spread his message, but he responded by aggressively trapping my brother in a voodoo doll. He had traveled the world, trapping as many of my brothers in such dolls until none remained. Some of them had already died, but he still made dolls in their likenesses, and made one of our father, whom he hadn't seen since. I tried to explain that I was the necessary guide who would save them from the peril he was trying to protect us from, but he didn't speak German. In the misunderstanding, I too was trapped, and in my absence the Empire rose to power, and magic died on this Earth. I was only freed recently, to embrace my destiny.”

Klaus reaches into his pocket and pulls out a blood-stained badge.

“This is the badge that I took from an Imperial Captain I killed. If you repeat this tale to anyone, or report my attempts to assassinate the Emperor, I will kill you as well, and any soldiers that you send for me.”

The bartender grows pale and gulps, just as Klaus gulps when he swallows the last of his beer. He pays his tab, and then returns to the city streets.

#28

You awakes in a dark room. You can tell that it is not a dark cave; while there is a smell, it is not the moistness of a cave, but a mixed scent of fuel and...something else. Something burnt. Not burnt meat necessarily, but more akin to ashes. You can't see anything, but suddenly a light snaps on.

“You passed out quickly,” a voice says. “I hope it wasn't from fear—or from any sort of physical weakness. Otherwise this isn't going to be of much use to us—or much fun.”

You attempts to sit up, but You is presently chained to a table. A brief sensation of panic washes over You which You tries to control. However, little can be done about it right now.

“You's quite trapped,” the speaker—a man—affirms. “But we will let You out if You tells us what we want to know.”

“The Item,” another voice, this one deeper, says. “Where is the Item, You? Miss Sanford has told us after some time on our table that You has it. But it wasn't on Your person when we searched You.”

You says nothing, even as the figures suddenly lurch into view. They're certainly frightening enough. They're wearing guard armor, but it's a dark blue—almost black. The armor slips up like living mud around their heads, forming shadowy helmets that have a tiny visor strip across the eyes. The armor is draped in robes that their spidery hands, clad in ash-colored gloves, extend from menacingly.

“I don't know,” You says as bravely is possible. You is in fact telling the truth, but panic grips You again when You realizes that that won't cut it for these guys.

“Come now, You. You can tell us. You would be doing a great service to the Empire.”

“Did you torture Susie?”

“That is quite the powerful possibility. We are being very frank when we say we want the Item, You—and she knew where it was. But she also told us You had it, because she took You to its hiding place before she came to us. You saved us the trouble of tracking You down—because You too came directly to us.”

“I don't want to serve an Empire that would torture my friend. Or my parents.”

“Your parents did scream in a pitch that I've never heard before,” admits the first speaker. “But nevertheless didn't give us much useful data.”

“Are we going to have to make You echo their screams, You?” the other asks.

You tries to hold strong, thinking of Susie—but knowing now what fate awaited her, it fails to help.

“I don't know where it is. If it wasn't on me, alongside my weapons, I seriously don't know.”

“There are many things we can do to You, boy.”

“Like turn me into a cyborg against my will? Or make me into another monster, to terrorize a farm?”

There is no answer for awhile. You just watches them, at first thinking that You may have gotten them; but then You realizes that subtly, their bodies are communicating to each other. Maybe their helmets have a secret communication channel, You doesn't know. But they don't speak. And they remain silent as they begin to walk to a control panel.

With a few keys pressed, a slow buzzing sound appears out of the darkness. You strain to see where it's coming from, but eventually, it appears. It's a disk, hovering somehow, probably via a fuel-powered device. The bottom is covered with tiny metals arms; and from those arms, several knives, scalpels, and cylinders can be seen. You begins to sweat as You realizes what is going to happen. A number of things flash before Your eyes, and You tries to shunt the stress, the terror, into the future, as You's done so many times before now—but it's to no avail. Your eyes begin to slip out of focus as inside, You begins screaming very, very loudly.

And soon that's not just an internal thing.

#27

This proves to be a bad choice.

There is a thud as the wooden door is torn from its frame. You bolts up immediately and reaches for Your spear, leaning against the wall; but it is too late. A flash of red, white, and blue uniforms greets Your eyes, before You and Klaus are dragged out into the city streets.

In the scuffle, though no one notices, least of all You, a magazine resembling the cantina posters is knocked to the floor.