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.]

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[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!

[vdistinctive]

"We're in the Black Hills, Kathy," Eliot said, sounding more like himself than he had since he'd landed in this fucking sim. "In what'll eventually be South Dakota. In a literal frontier town."

She hadn't seen them because if they got anywhere near the actual town, they'd likely be shot on sight.

[spin_kick_snap]

Yeah, Kathy hadn't even known that much. For all she knew, this was Basic Wild West Sim #247. She'd probably recognize the names 'Calamity Jane' and 'Wild Bill Hickok' if someone said them out loud, but not much more than that.

"...Isn't that where Mount Rushmore's going to be in, like, a hundred years?" Kathy asked. "There's a post going around on Tumblr about it because..." Her eyes widened. "Having the faces of a buncha dead fuckin white guys staring down at you from land stolen from the Natives by the US government...sacred land."

Oh.

Oh no.

She needed her bucket again.

[vdistinctive]

Eliot was wishing he hadn't finished off the whisky.

"Yeah," he said. "The US government's policies on that have always been a giant 'fuck you' at best." He shook his head. "Anyway. I fucking knew it was goddamn aliens. Minute I saw those fucking towers. Not real clear on how they managed to transport us to Wild Bill's fucking Wild West show."

[spin_kick_snap]

"I really, really didn't know that that fucking meant," Kathy said, sounding (and looking) miserable. "It's just...part of my vocabulary now, like 'cocksucker' and 'fuck' apparently. I know I'm used to mincing around my damn words like a longtailed cat in a room full of rockin' chairs, but you gotta believe me, I would never use a racist slur if I knew it was one."

She paused for a moment and then allowed, "Well, maybe against some honky cocksucker, but in my defense, motherfucker would almost certainly have it coming. Also, we can't ignore how the current social and political climate make it abso-fucking-lutely impossible to be racist any of these white sons of bitches as they have all the institutionalized power they use to diddle themselves and fuck the rest of us."

...Thank you, Deadwood Tumblr.

[vdistinctive]

"I apologize for jumping down your fucking throat," Eliot said. "I know you ain't the sort to deliberately use any phrases generally considered derogatory or offensive to minority groups. A fucking large number of tribes found themselves squeezed into my home state over the course of the US's fucking efforts to annihilate them, so it's a bit of a sore fucking subject."

[spin_kick_snap]

"It's totally fucking understandable," Kathy said. "I've heard enough fuckin' terms about Asian people to freak out if I heard someone using them, even if the poor bastard had no idea what they were saying."

She glanced out the window and into the town. "Gotta feeling I'm about to hear a whole lot more," she added.

She'd somehow missed ever hearing anything about 'sideways pussy' in her life. That would undoubtedly change. Huzzah.

[vdistinctive]

"I'm truly sorry for it, but it is fucking likely," Eliot said. "These weren't exactly the most enlightened times. The white male population of the country were even bigger cocksuckers then they are contemporarily." He leaned forward. "Perhaps if you can tell me how it is you came to be in this particular neck of the fucking woods, we can work out how to get ourselves the fuck back out."

[spin_kick_snap]

"I fell through a fucking rip in space, big as the gap in a whore's petticoats" Kathy said, ever-so-helpfully. "Me and Anders were trying to escape from the last fuckin sim and when I fell, I landed in Shitcreek Alley over there."

Of the two, Kathy vastly preferred the sim where she'd been fed and bathed and treated like royalty, even if it had come with the price of being betrothed to Anders.

[vdistinctive]

Eliot nodded and sighed. "That is not as helpful as I had fucking hoped."

[spin_kick_snap]

"Sure am sorry the universe didn't order itself around to make your life that much fuckin' easier, hoss," Kathy said, still clinging to her chamber pot. "But that's all we got so far. Aliens. Computer sims. Pains in the fucking ass."

[vdistinctive]

"For fuck sake, child, I wasn't blaming you." Eliot shook his head and rubbed his temples. "This whole goddamn place is set up to drive me fucking insane, is all. . . ."

[spin_kick_snap]

"I didn't think you were," Kathy assured him. "I think drinking this horsepiss just makes me extra salty, both in language and in attitude."

She sounded both apologetic and proud of that.

[vdistinctive]

"I fucking noticed you were an angry drunk."