Whatever happened to Brendon Simpson?
The year the Brendon Simpson disappeared.
Prologue: The surreal bowling tournament
It's Foundation Day! It was good to get a break from that serious research he had been deeply into for the last four and a half months. Brendon has found great weaknesses in the Great Alarm's systems. He has been making machines and assembling energy rocks to combat the alarm and he knows he did a lot of damage when he launched a home made missile into deep space to explode into the Alarm's nervous system. The sky had a strange greenish color and a strange burned smell was everywhere for days. Brendon Simpson was a champion at the top of his game. For years he had studied the finest aspects of Bowlbetterology and honed it to a zen samurai edge. He had won the awards as the Canadian champion. Posable action toys of him in action are still big seller in the great white north. So that's how he got invited to compete in a custom party/bowling throw down of Epic proportions. With all the legends of the game. Yesterday's gunslingers to today's top bowling cultists. The winner of this one walks away with 4 million dollars. And travel and lodging all paid for my the government of Uglavaria where the competition is held. Three days away and he doesn't bother to tell anyone. His mind is elsewhere. He buys a costume. Its one of the rhinestone studded jumpsuits that Elvis once wore. With long leather fridges dangling from the arms. That a pair of tall demon boots from the band Kiss's 1974 tour. Simpson had come by these items from bowl gambling wins and debts paid by otherwise broke players.
He knew as soon as he walked into the place this was going to be something bizarre. Two men at the door in mafia like suits, odd white sunglasses with flashing red lights on they're faces. They checked his creds and stepped aside. The place smelled of exotic incense coiling from many censors. A midget in a Chris Titan Mask chortled by chasing a laughing lady in a scuba diving outfit. The foot fins flapping on the tile floor. People where openly smoking cigars and cigarettes. Jugglers passed by with flaming clamshells whirling in they're hands.
A bowling convention with celebrity speeches, classic matches on movie screen. Many bowling wares to be bought and sold. Simpson had a room reserved for him. He dragged his bags to room 101, on the fourth floor. A modest but clean and classy room. A large bathroom. A big phantasma TV over the living bed. Brendon had heard about these. The most comfy beds anywhere. Made by gene splicing sponges and MaMooska's. Its a living meat plant, soft and warm and so cozy. He lay on it to get the full effect and he was out like a light. Sleeping for a hour and a half until his wrist watch woke him up with a violent shake.
Part One: The Spider God Calls.
Spider God dreams
Deep in his 100 year nap the Spider God dreams. A vast and brilliant red spider the length of three houses. A wise scraggly red beard. Eyes that shine with brilliance. They never close even when the Spider God sleeps.
Our universe is one of very many. This one was created by the Spider God. It made a endless net of silvery crystal webbing. It used this great web to catch the nebulous gray-black Pre-Godling froth as it drifted about space. On these unformed pre-gods it feeds. As the web went on in eons it captured more and more debris that became suns and planets. Like earth.
The Spider God is a god of dreams and that's why he loves humans. They dream so pretty. These dreams feed both the dreamer and the Spider God so they have a harmless relationship. People and other intelligent beings who have experience in the dreamlands are the only ones he can reach with his red red mind.
This is That where we are at. Brains in a jar. A billion or more brains being fed nutrients and template stimulus of lives. Long ago who knows how long? The life died out of our world probably all the living worlds in the universe. A mechanism was there to preserve just the living brains of the people. At least a billion living brains. So many dead worlds. Dry and cold and dead. Deserts where wind blows forgetfulness across the debris.
Brendon Simpson had been spending a lot of time in the Fnordham university lab. Cooking up some sorta assault of the code of the Great Alarm. He had been launching strange brass cylinders from his back yard late at night. This seems to have greatly damaged the Alarm. He vanished at a Bowling tournament that took a strange a surreal turn. His disappearance and the current state of the great alarm are directly connected the Spider God learns.
Motley Howe
Motley Howe had fallen on hard times. His classic alt/guitar rock band Black Circle broke up three years earlier and he pretty much spent all his cash on drugs and a nice home and three cars that he couldn't keep. Hard experimental synthetics of all sorts where on the market then and he went crazy on them. Howling. running through the streets biting everyone he got close to. People with crescent moon teeth marks weeping red tears would scream long after he had left they're site.
Who knows what was flashing through his raging mind. He ran and ran. Once he thought he saw a four foot tall Gingerbread man dash past him even faster. He must have been seeing things. He puked in the ally and collapsed behind a series of stinking trash cans. He was so tired that he fell into blackness in no time at all. With the city making moaning and howling panic sounds all around him.
But when the Spider God called he was the first up and the first to arrive there. He had no troubles along the way.
Part Two: Calling forth the Hero's.
The Spider God knew that a great and horrible thing was happening. After a many eons the Great Alarm was failing. This is a process that had been happening for the last two thousand years. A glitching of the system. A a few hundred thousand brains that it keeps alive in those jars died. To people its world/life templates of illusion/life it now must double or even triple some people. Brains living three lives at the same time is hard on it's processors. And all that time without repair. Whatever being or beings that created it are long gone and it needs many repairs. Now The burning stutter and other effects are becoming more common. Spider God thinks the Alarm shall fail soon and when it does all the brains will cease to be fed. Then sentient life, maybe all life will be gone from this universe. So it comes up with a plan. To summon all hero's it can and send them down silver webs to its home in DreamLands. It can reach the sleeping, the drugged or drunk, even those in deep revelry. /the call is made. Chanting each name calling them to walk the web. To come to him so him can install a quest onto them.
The quest to find a series of code items, in the brain/dream these shall appear to be objects. Above all to find Simpson and enlist his aid. To break down the whole structure of the Great Alarm. To then take its place and give the brains a choice. Remain in jars dreaming the dreams of they're choice now. Or live again in new worlds with flesh bodies. The eons of stored energy batteries the Alarm has stolen from them can make this happen. Bring plants, air, animals people back to a living world.
Starry Webs
- Starry webs uncoil
- across the vastness to dreamers home soil
- a summons that one can't resist
- to rise up against the Great Alarm's clocky fist
Kraybo Wirks, half breed Hobbit/Munchkin
Life can be harsh for a half breed. Kraybo's mother is a Munchkin, fat and wise and full of meaty giggles. His father a Hobbit, reserved and cozy in his mound home. As a child he was traded off. Who has to keep this unwanted love child for six months. School was awful. Racism on both sides of the race. Often beaten up by the other kids. Even the teachers would insult him and his upbringing. But now after falling into a 14 hour snooze, Kraybo is called by the Spider God to answer the call of greatness. But he ignores and snoozes on. Indeed Kraybo Wirks is perhaps the wisest among us and he shall be not further mentioned.
Tarzan comes
Little Lost Boy and Good Jack
These two are inseparable. They have known for some time that the same Mind is dreaming both of their lives, and a powerful mind it is. It's always been a quick study and unpacking the archived and compressed information in any and all pieces of data it comes across. The force of this talent has been glitching space and time for years, especially since they found each other and started spending every minute together. Funny, then, that they are most often employed in the capacity of repair techs. They are some of the first to hear the Call of the Spider God, but they took their time to answer it of course. The Little Lost Boy doesn't need a summons to wander everywhere, and anything Jack can jack into is worth the trip for Jack.
The Tale of the Gingerbread man:
The Gingerbread man had feet that carried him like a sling shot. He could zig and zag and turning around running the opposite direction without slowing down a split second. When you taste as good he he you learn to move fast. He could out run a mountain lion. He knows because they love gingerbread too. When he runs juking back and forth it's really hard to shoot him. Though some have grazed his frosting.
When the whole world's out to eat you then you tend to take what you want from the world. With his speed he likes to sprint into people's back yards and snatch the lit joint right from they're hand. Bound up and over the privacy fence zig zap between cars into the next yard and the next. Smoking and running. He is really high when he hears the call. The call of the Spider God. He cannot resist. He follows this call. Jogging quickly at first, then running. The road turns silvery and white and the next thing he notices is the deep rich blackness of space around him. A wonderful shining sight of surrounds stars. Air so fresh and clean its holy. The web has its own atmosphere. Its safe as long as he stays on the web....
The truth of the matter is the Gingerbread man tastes so good he has trouble not eating himself. And when a chunk of him is knocked off by some human or other beast he collects the piece and eats it himself. He can grow up as long as he's not too far gone. One nightmare season he was chained up in a basement by two wicked kids who had killed they're evil step mother. They would collect bits of him three times a week. Draining his energies. But he feeds on the eternal icing of far off outer space. Icing that spins around a green planet in a white ring. Icing that sometimes floods out whole worlds in creamy goodness.
Go Godzilla Go!
Godzilla is not just a raging monster. He dreams. He dreams of the ancient past when his kind ruled a lush earth. He often has lucid dreams so it was easy for the Spider God to contact him. To call him to tromp along the silver webs to his palace in the center of space. Like all the others called Godzilla could not resist. He walked out of the ocean onto a sandy beach full of vacationing rich folks who screamed and ran. Some where stepped on and crush into sand coated sausage. Somehow he rounded a corner and no one could see him. The thunder of his steps where gone. He was gone on to the web. Each step made it's steal/crystal foam stretch with strained sounds. It didn't take long for the web to snap with a hot smoking flash! Godzilla roared as he fell end over end into space. Most would die from being there but Godzilla is strong! But not strong enough to survive the super-Nova he falls into. He is burned to atoms and the atoms go atomic as each of them is burned and the sea monster is no more.
Calling Twibbits the Cinnamon teddy bear
Calling Jack Pumpkin
Jack Pumpkin likes to smoke. Cigars, blunts, crack, meth, corn silk. Its all wonderful to smoke. He always wandered what its like to dream. So he bought a bay of dreamherb from the local Munchkin supplier and he smoked the foul tasting stuff for hours. So in his first dream the Spider God calls him. Jack answers quit slowly.
He walked down a cobble stone path that turned white and the background became black black space and cold far stars. But a voice kept calling his name and he knew the caller was down this path. The path now a spongy slightly sticky white mass that glistens with silver metal crystals. "This web must be worth a whole world!", Appraises Jack. He had his thread bare back pack with him. In it he kept all he owned. That was many baggies containing different things to smoke, a couple pipes, and a bottle and a half of this veggie stay spray that helped preserve his Pumpkin head.
Frosty the SnowMan
Frosty had slept for seven years now. He slept standing up but curving forwards in the icy icy north. He had loved many humans but he cannot live among them and they're toxic heat. He finally retreated here. He tried to befriend a ice tribe but they drove him off with spears. A long pleasant sleep with no real reason to awaken. He could have slept here until made a puddle by global warming had the spider Gods call not a woken him. Now he glides down the spider web path stretching across outer space. The cold chill winds of space make him grin. A happy grin of red brick fragments the kids had smashed for him. And oh, can he ever bite with his brick shard teeth!
Snoopy to the rescue
Snoopy has a whole secret life in the endless rooms of his dog house. Even he has never seen every room there is in the tiny folded space. If this is a actual finite number of rooms at all. Snoopy was sailing through the clouds on his flying doghouse when Spider God called. Snoopy swooped up and over criss crossing through the clouds and into a folded space where a long long white cobweb was his guide.
Part Twp: The death of Hero's.
Monks with Meat Hooks for Heads
The Infictivists
Gwodder pushes a rolling table across the silvery dream web. The table has a couple chilled bottles of booze, a lap steel electric guitar with a car battery powered amp. It also contains a sling shot with many different types of ball shot. Often he thinks he hears a strange hum hanging in the air. But he sees nothing but the cold blackness of space and day glow crayon looking stars.
Mystery X on the Web
Mystery X was a cultist of the Spider God. So they where already in contact. In fact, the God didn't even have to summon X, he started down the path before the others and only Motley Howe beat him there. But X was slowed down by packs of feral dogs. A few pecks to the ankle from the smaller ones from behind. Mystery took one small dogs eye after the third bite. After that the pack tried no more biting, but they followed at a safe distance radiating menacing growls.
By the time he was at the end of this web Mystery X had gathered a pack of friendly dogs. All the dogs sat in unison before the Spider god. X was given a flaming scroll. The fire burned him not nor anything of his, nor his dogs. The scroll contained a map. A map to get to the first piece of the puzzle to unlock the Great alarm. It lit his way like a torch. A small party is gathering, with other small parties to come on separate quests. Already Motley Howe was here. His guitar replaced by a rifle strapped to his back. A long knife on one hip, and a .45 on the other. With the dogs the two made a formidable pair.
The dark mad tea party
The streets of the city are empty now. The people all gone. It's always night here. Packs of feral dogs roam about looking for food. Groups as big as fifty sometimes confront other packs and have terrible battles. Those who fall are eaten....
Part Three: Quest for the little plastic Santa.
The first mission the Spider God sends the hero's on is to collect a little plastic Santa Claus toy. Its not really a toy they are seeking but a code that is represented as a toy. Our hero's gathered and ready to start down that webby path. Motely Howe rolled a joint and lit it. He drew a big cloud into himself and handed it to Mystery X who followed suit. X handed the smoking stick to Twibbits the bear. The bear just held the joint under his nose and inhaled a couple quick draws before passing it on. Jack Pumpkin took two long drags and when he let the hit out the smoke coiled out of his triangle nose and triangle eyes.