A secondary sim within the matrix, Thursday

[vdistinctive]

Things weren't making any more sense today than they'd made yesterday. Eliot had managed to work out a number of things: that this was supposed to be a frontier town circa the 1870s; that it was outside any currently recognized American or European territory and therefore "lawless"; that not only was Wild Bill fucking Hickok in town, but so was Calamity Jane and Al Swearengen, though as far as Eliot could tell they were all anachronistic as hell; and that every single cocksucker in this town was convinced that Eliot was a former former federal marshall turned hardware store owner and running for sheriff.

He'd lost track of Parker at some point the night -- day -- week? -- before. He'd lost track of how time was meant to be moving not long after that, since it seemed to be night or day on a fucking whim, and no one but the rich woman living at the hotel ever seemed to change clothes.

At the moment he was stubbornly avoiding his so called "partner" at the hardware store in favor of looking over the pages of the local newspaper the editor had hanging out front of his printshop. Most of it was so fucking obfuscatingly florid as to be completely fucking impenetrable -- just like half of the dialog in this goddamn place -- but there was one editorial on page 3 that caught Eliot's eye.

. . . No signals gettin' in or out, kids. Parker is also unsettled an' we compare notes on what we're figurin' out. Sparkle is normal. . . .

It was Hardison's fucking radio broadcast. Printed in the local fucking paper. Eliot grabbed the page up with one hand and grabbed the shirtfront of the editor with the other as the man came out to protest the rough handling of his draft copies. "Where the fuck did you get this?" he demanded.

"All -- all our editorials are submitted by the fine citizens of this camp for a modest fee, Mr. Spencer."

"So he's here, too? Hardison's in here somewhere?!" That was bad. Parker would be having it rough enough around here as a woman, but Hardison was likely to get lynched or shot. Literally. For no fucking reason.

"Er, I'm afraid I am unfamiliar with the gentleman of whom you speak, sir --"

"Who gave you this?" Eliot let go of the man's shirt to smack the article. "Where is he now?"

"Wh-which, sir?"

"This! This right here about the towers in Fandom!"

"S-sir, I believe you are mistaken. Y-you see, you are currently indicating an advertisement for the local laundry service."

Eliot glared at him. "Don't you try to gaslight me."

"Gas -- no sir, we don't sell any lanterns here. W-would you like to put in an advertisement for your establishment? A sale on gas-powered lanterns perhaps?"

"No, I ain't --" Eliot growled in frustration. "I'm askin' what cocksucker submitted this here article!" He moved to flick the paper again -- and froze.

The editorial was gone. Instead he was looking at an advertisement for a laundry service.

"Sir," the editor said, as Eliot stared wide-eyed at the paper. "Sir, perhaps you've been out in the sunlight too long, today?"

Eliot swallowed.

"Would you like me to send for the doctor, sir?"

"No." Eliot swallowed again and crumpled the paper in his fist, ignoring the squawk of protest from the editor. "No, that's alright. Ah. Sorry for the fuss." He let the page fall to the ground and stumbled out into the street. The editor called out an offer for a half-price ad for the hardware store -- and then a warning when Eliot managed to walk right in front of a passing cart. Eliot stumbled back and finally found a clear spot on the boardwalk to lean against one of the wooden posts.

What the fuck was going on?!

[my workday is long and so should my post be. The continuing adventures of Eliot in not-Deadwood. There is a lot of swearing in this.]

Comments

[spin_kick_snap]

"Ohh, right, you left before we learned anything. Oh and fuck this happy-crappy. Eliot, you got a knife?" She was gonna take care of this hanbok once and for all.

"I saw him, yeah. He's trying to collect data and information about this here bitch of a situation we find ourselves in. He seemed, uhh, a little fucking distraught on radio this morning. He took losing both you and Parker pretty hard. I think he tried to follow but--couldn't."

Looking around the town, Kathy silently echoed Eliot's earlier relief.

[vdistinctive]

Eliot pulled out a large hunting knife, flipped it around, and held it out to Kathy hilt first. "Yeah, he wouldn't -- none of us would handle that situation too fucking well." He found a jug of whisky in the desk, pulled it out, and took a swig, then idly offered it to Kathy. "So you've got information then about what the fuck is going on? How the fuck did you even get here, anyway?"

[spin_kick_snap]

Kathy took the knife to her dress with a relaxed skill that even their lessons together couldn't account for. "We got some information," she explained over the sound of ripping cloth. "Turns out it's fuckin aliens, because of course it fucking is. Goddamn buncha dirt-worshipping aliens thinking it'd be fun to, I dunno, kidnap us and send us off to the zoo? Simulation number forty-seven, I think the fucker in charge said we were."

Handing the knife back to Eliot, Kathy took a long draw off the whiskey and hopped up onto the desk, easing back a little. "That's much better," she declared. "Thank fucking Christ, I thought I would have to murder a cocksucker for a breath of fresh air on my cu--"

Thankfully there was enough not-Deadwood!Kathy to make her stop in time from finishing that sentence, clapping both hands over her mouth with eyes that were wide with horror.

No. She had not. She had not nearly said--no.

[vdistinctive]

It was a damn good thing Eliot wasn't drinking anything. He managed to choke on the air, anyway. Here he'd been all set for a florid lecture about that 'dirt-worshipping' line and how the Sioux weren't the aliens here, dammit -- and then she'd kept on talking.

There was another jug of whisky in here somewhere, right?

"Jesus fucking christ, Kathy!"

[spin_kick_snap]

THE WHISKEY WAS HERS AND SHE WAS NOT SHARING!

In fact, she was taking another shot because it was that or think about what she'd just almost said.

"I didn't say it!" she squealed. "Not all of it! I might have been about to say something else!"

...Could they go back to him yelling at her for being accidentally-racist? Because Kathy was talking about honest-to-goodness aliens.

[vdistinctive]

Eliot was sure to work that out when he stopped having a fucking aneurysm over what Kathy had just nearly said.

"We have got to get you out of this shithole before you put both of us in cardiac fucking arrest."

[spin_kick_snap]

"I have never used that word!" Kathy wailed. "Or...a lot of the other words I've used today! I just, like, showed up! And suddenly my mouth is filthier'n a whore's bottom sheet!"

Not. Helping.

"I like whores! Prostitutes! Sex workers! I respect them, I swear! I work with them out in Baltimore!"

...Not like that.

[vdistinctive]

"Would you please lower your fucking volume?" Eliot asked, a little weakly. That color his face was turning was what happened when you were torn between being completely fucking appalled and laughing your fool head off. "I may quite possibly have to show my face in polite society again in this camp sometime in the future, and I'd rather not look like a complete cocksucker when I do."

[spin_kick_snap]

Kathy raised a finger. "Wait, are we talking about literal cocksucking, because I don't think either of us can pretend--"

HEY LOOK MORE WHISKEY.

[vdistinctive]

"Give me that." Eliot grabbed for the jug. Why the hell had he handed a 17 year old a jug of backwoods whisky in the first place? "And I am not talking to my fucking teaching assistant about what activities I may or may not get up to as a consenting fucking adult."

He and Hardison could commiserate over this later.

[spin_kick_snap]

With ice cream. Hardison was going to be very clear on the necessity of ice cream.

"What is that?" Kathy asked, trying to keep the jug away but moving far too slowly--that was, average human speed--to do so. "...I think you gave me my first drink, Eliot. Some fucking role model!" She was giggling now. "Chaperoning me through my first fucking drinking experience!"

He was like meta-for Mary Poppins that way.

"And I didn't just mean you. I said, both of us, didn't I? We can be cocksuckers together and you're welcome."

KATHY NO.

[vdistinctive]

And now Eliot really did spit-take. "NO."

Well, he and the narrative agreed on that point, at least. Less so the meta for Mary Poppins.

"This place is digging into your fucking brain," he said. "Turning you into one of those foul mouthed cocksu -- sons of -- whor --" Eliot jammed the jug in his mouth to talk himself from speaking and glared at the ceiling.

[spin_kick_snap]

"I learned it from watching you," Kathy told him. And then turned a very delicate shade of green. "What's in that?" she asked, nodding to the bottle.

Hnng. That had been a spectacularly bad idea. "Eliot--I think I--"

Her brain had a very eloquent, if profanity-filled description of what she was going to do. Her stomach had an equally eloquent, if far less verbal, example of the same. Which would reach her mouth first?

If Eliot looked at his jug (instead of, say, for a handy bucket or the like), he would notice that Kathy had taken several very deep swallows.

[vdistinctive]

He was noticing how much lighter that jug was. And regretting all of his choices.

"Christ on a fucking cracker, girl, you're gonna be the death of me." He grabbed a handy chamber pot -- a clean one, you're welcome, Kathy -- and lunged forward to get it in front of her before she befouled his nice clean office floor. Sol would have his head.

When did he decide he knew Sol well enough to know that?

"It's whisky. Probably."

It was basically fucking moonshine. Let's be real.

[spin_kick_snap]

He was regretting his life choices? Kathy was the one puking into a chamber pot, thank you very much.

"Motherfuck me, Eliot, did you give me fuckin' moonshine?" Kathy demanded, resting her sweating forehead on the edge of the pot. "Brewed in some fucker's rusty bathtub? Probably with the same water he just washed his crust ass with?"

Urp. That was not a mental image conducive to not puking.

"I probably have methanol poisoning. That's what this is, isn't it? Fucking methanol."

[vdistinctive]

"Methanol nothin', child." Eliot peered into the jug. "You done drank about half this bottle of horse-piss faster than even the town drunk coulda."

Jane would be a bit insulted by that. She could totally down a jug of whisky faster than a seventeen year old kid could.

"I better mark that pot down as sold, 'fore Sol gets Trixie back here to practice balancing the fucking books again."

Because the little inanities of camp life in this fucking sim were definitely what was important right now, and not, say, getting back to what Kathy had started trying to fucking say about the cocksuckers that had stuck them here.

[spin_kick_snap]

"Well, if you wanted to make fuckin certain that my first drink was also my last, good job to you, sir," Kathy gritted out between clenched teeth. "So far I hate everything about this cocksucking sim and all the happy assholes in it. I'd rather be back getting married to Anders, Jesus Christ."

[vdistinctive]

"There you go again. The hell is all this fucking chatter about a 'sim'?"

[spin_kick_snap]

"You mean 'what's this goddamn truth handed down by God through his mouthpiece your boyfriend that I have come to impart upon you like an intoxicated angel thanks to your poor choice in libations for all of us'?" Kathy grumbled. "I told you. We've been kidnapped by motherfucking aliens, may the mothers that squatted them out have been cursed with runny shits instead."

[vdistinctive]

"Aliens," Eliot repeated. "You mean as in . . ." There were no quaintly horrifying metaphors, so Eliot waved his hand vaguely above his head. ". . . Aliens."

[spin_kick_snap]

"Emperor Zinyak of the Zin Empire," Kathy said. "What did you think I meant when I said aliens before?"

[vdistinctive]

"You called 'em 'dirt-worshippers. That don't exactly fucking scream 'space aliens'."

[spin_kick_snap]

"I'm also using cocksucker as a pejorative when there's nothing wrong with the activity!" ...That they were never actually going to talk about, together, ever again. "My mouth is just saying words!"

[vdistinctive]

"Perjoratives still have to have a fucking logic behind them, Kathy. You don't use 'dirt-worshipper' for any random fucking minority group. Cocksucker is a fucking generalized term, most often applied to men due to the excessively homophobic nature of this fucking time period." Eliot frowned and finished off the jug. "You don't use 'dirt-worshipper' for anyone ever while we're on the fucking subject."

[spin_kick_snap]

"Who is it fucking used against anyway?" Kathy asked, because she'd honestly never heard of it until she'd ended up in this sim. She thought of the few minorities she'd seen about town. "...A really confused take on fucking Confucianism and ancestor-worship?"

They really were going to talk about the sim and the important information Hardison had found. Eventually. But social justice was calling!