alice.
A voice she thought she should know. She tried to speak; her mouth gnashed, her teeth ground.
alice. talk here.
She tried again. Not with her mouth, this time.
Talk… here?
The buoyant warmth flickered past her. She was… drifting. No, swimming. She could feel currents on her skin. Her vision was confused. She blinked and blinked, and things were shattered.
There was nothing to see anyway, but stars.
alice talk here.
Where am I?
eat alice.
Vinnie. Vinnie’s voice, but not in the flatness of the heads-up display anymore. Vinnie’s voice alive with emotion and nuance and the vastness of her self.
You ate me, she said, and understood abruptly that the numbness she felt was not shock. It was the boundaries of her body erased and redrawn.
!
Agreement. Relief.
I’m… in you, Vinnie?
=/=
Not a “no.” More like, this thing is not the same, does not compare, to this other thing. Black Alice felt the warmth of space so near a generous star slipping by her. She felt the swift currents of its gravity, and the gravity of its satellites, and bent them, and tasted them, and surfed them faster and faster away.
I am you.
!
Ecstatic comprehension, which Black Alice echoed with passionate relief. Not dead. Not dead after all. Just, transformed. Accepted. Embraced by her ship, whom she embraced in return.
Vinnie. Where are we going?
out, Vinnie answered. And in her, Black Alice read the whole great naked wonder of space, approaching faster and faster as Vinnie accelerated, reaching for the first great skip that would hurl them into the interstellar darkness of the Big Empty. They were going somewhere.
Out, Black Alice agreed and told herself not to grieve. Not to go mad. This sure beat swampy Hell out of being a brain in a jar.
And it occurred to her, as Vinnie jumped, the brainless bodies of her crew already digesting inside her, that it wouldn’t be long before the loss of the Lavinia Whateley was a tale told to frighten spacers, too.
•
The Nyarlathotep Event
Jonathan Wood
The Nyarlathotep Event :: Case File #1 :: Performance
The Oxford Playhouse. Now.
For the record, it is very difficult to pinpoint the exact moment when you went wrong if a woman with a Laura Ashley dress and blood-stained teeth is rhythmically beating your head against the floor. Just so you know.
Ten minutes before
Here’s a treat: a night out at the theater courtesy of work. All expenses paid. The only catch: I might have to gun down the performer halfway through.
See, this is the problem with working for shadowy government agencies. There’s always rough to go with the smooth. Yes, you get to enjoy an evening of ancient Egyptian magic, but it is being performed by an interdimensional avatar called Nyarlathotep who hales from a dimension representing humanity’s collective fears. Silver lining, meet cloud.
Still, just another night out for Agent Arthur Wallace of MI37.
The niggling familiarity of the the name Nyarlathotep clears up as soon as he steps out on stage. Lovecraft. Whether the performer’s the real deal or just some wacko with a penchant for non-Euclidean geometry, they’re using the name of a gibbering literary horror.
Which, I feel, should inform my plan. Except the only plan I seem to remember old Lovecraft providing was running howling into the night, so I’m not sure how helpful that’s going to be.
Nyarlathotep stands seven feet tall, wrapped in blood-red rags. They hang from his shoulders like a cloak. They wreathe his face. Red mist billows about his feet, spills into the theater, spreads out over feet and ankles. People in the front row let out odd barking sounds—the terrifying inbred cousin of laughter. And I’m pretty sure Nyarlathotep’s not told any jokes yet.
Screw evaluating the situation. I reach for my gun.
Nyarlathotep opens his mouth.
There are no words. His mouth moves. Sounds emerge. But it is something beyond speech. Something more profound. Some kinesthetic reflex of bile and horror.
The buzzing of flies. The stench of rotting meat filling my nose, my mouth. Burning my throat. I gag. Heave up bile. A liquid scream. Pins in my arms. Needles, and nails, and shards of glass. The grind of cigarette against skin. My brain is burning, melting, is fecal matter sloshing in my skull.
And still his mouth stretches behind reams of cloth. And on and on pours out the filth. Into me.
My gun. I need—
I grab for the thing with numb fingers. Atrocities flicker at the edges of my vision. A noise like a kettle boiling. Rising. Rising. Up, and up. Like an itch I need to reach into my brain to scratch.
Somehow I get the gun loose. I half see it out of one eye, through filters of horror and peeling flesh. I try to sight Nyarlathotep, but I might as well be trying to shoot the moon.
Screw it. I pull the trigger.
The muzzle’s thunderclap hits me like water to the face. Abruptly I’m just a man in a theater, waving a gun about, while around me everyone goes insane.
Men and women are on all fours. They roll in fights. Some screw. Some scream.
On stage, Nyarlathotep stands, arms wide, welcoming it all. The conductor of this pageant of madness. And, Lovecraft old buddy, running and screaming does seem like a good idea right about now.
On the other hand, that’s not what I get paid to do. So I stand. I steady my gun. I draw a bead on the bastard. I think about how I should probably change careers.
Which is exactly the moment the woman in the Laura Ashley number clotheslines me around my throat and brings me down.
My gun scatters. I scrabble at her, coughing and choking, trying to pry her off me. She seizes my head. Slams it onto the floor. Crash. Crash. The room spins. Crash.
Which brings me to the point where I’m left wondering if I’m going to have the time to enumerate all the mistakes I’ve made before my head gives way.
Just another night out for Agent Arthur Wallace of MI37.
The Nyarlathotep Event :: Case File #2 :: Rescue
8:15 pm, The Oxford Playhouse, Oxford, England
There is romance to the idea of the Man Alone. Abandoned, desperate, he reaches deep inside and finds the will to go on, to do what must be done, to save the day.
But when the Man Alone is being beaten to death by a pack of insane theater-enthusiasts, the idea of back-up has a little more charm.
In those moments there is little better than a co-worker dismissing a homicidal Laura Ashley fan off your chest with a very large sword.
Kayla—co-worker, possessor of almost inhuman speed and agility, sword-wielder, dangerously psychotic person—stands over me, twirling a four-foot long katana.
It’s hard to express my gratitude. I go with, “Guh-th-fuh.”
“Shut up. Get up.” Kayla demonstrates her social skills as a man in a three-piece suit leaps up on a chair in front of us, growls.
Kayla slams the butt of the blade into the man’s forehead. The man pinwheels away over seats, head snapped back.