#98

Susie and Mark are standing together as they approach the Red Tower. “What is it about all these phalluses?” Mark murmurs.

“Sometimes God does strange things, my dad says,” she replies.

His voice drops by quite a bit. “...I wonder if God is ironic.”

“What was that?” she says with a smile.

“Nothing.” 

“What, are you being anti-social now?” The smile is still there.

He sighs. “I'm sorry. I was...raised different. You know that. I told you about my hometown, right?”

“It must have been nice. Having a hometown, that is.”

“I'm sorry!”

“Stop apologizing! Though it is sweet of you to do so.”

“Heh. Well. We can't have had bad childhoods, given, y'know. The book thing.”

“Yeah. I do love books. My dad loved books. Loves books.”

Mark pauses for a second. Thinking about fathers made him feel weird.

“Books are magic, you know,” Susie continues.

“I was raised with magic in my life, which You tells me is weird. But it was irony magic, which someone told me once wasn't real.”

“It might not necessarily be...'not real'. It might just be a dilute form of something else. I mean, currently, we're running into an embodied field of trope magic, which sounds really vague. But, I'm guessing it's just based on the idea that shared attributes of culture, because they're so well shared and so profound for so many people, that even from a subjective scale they have power that can be tapped. And that's just language, really, in the end.”

“So because irony is part of language, some of the wizards from my...clan, could actually use irony for real magic?”

“It just sounds like it could be misused because your clan used it for selfish gain. I mean. It sounds like you can use magic for selfish gain but your magic became so...inbred, that it stopped working. It ran out of new ideas, because it became so ironic.”

“Are you lampooning postmodernism?”

“Not necessarily.”

One of those trademark pauses we keep talking about comes back in again.

You joins the pair at the window then, which annoys them endlessly. And yes, that includes Susie. You is examining the Tower.

“We're getting close,” You says. “Where's Doctor Kay? We should probably get ready to brace against any defenses.”

“I didn't see him go,” Mark replies.

“Yo, Yorick!” Mina shouts. “He and your German chap went somewhere else into The House. Or the house or whatever.”

“Did you see where they went, specifically?”

“Nah.”

“Nah? What do you mean, 'nah'?”

“Um. No? Nope? Negative?”

She was silently laughing at him, and Jacob was laughing at her. She was getting on a roll now that he was back. When Susie and Mark had been talking, they had been having a frank conversation about the greatness of not being dead to each other, and how it was good to be able to call people things like “nymphoid pooptwiddler” and “incomprehensible nincompoop” without getting weird looks. Berkley blood ran strong. Stronger than You or Yorick's rage.

“Well, look at it this way. The House is getting really close to that Tower, and soon they'll be upon us...”

You glances again, however, and The House is farther than You thought. The House is actually about to collide with the Tower.

You's about to shout something when it stops. As it stops, it spins slowly, so that the front door faces the wall of the Tower that you've all been approaching. Someone—whether it's the Doctor or someone in the Tower—is moving it so that if you were to go out front, you could enter the Tower, assuming there's a door there.

There are no defenses. At least, not outside. The Tower could be abandoned. Or—more likely—this is a dare.

Mark has his knife. Susie has her Tommy gun. Jacob has his metal gloves. Mina has her magic (?) revolvers. And You has Your motherfucking laser pike.

The front doors open, and they open into a passage in the Red Tower. You figures you all can just charge right in, then.

It's go time.