Day 1 Part 3: Interlude

Natalia and Samuel stood above the pit. "Caution" tape had been taken down when Chloe had decided to explore, and now she was in a pit beneath the kitchen. The "dogs" of the hotel had dragged Team Too Old For This Shit from their bed after discovering the trapped contestant.

"Can you climb a rope?" Samuel called down. Ariadne's body was better at projecting into the pit.

"I flunked gym, so no!" Chloe called up. "Can you get that snake chick to use magic?"

"That feels like overkill," Natalia replied. The actress toyed with her interface. "Samuel, do you think your snake body could climb down and help her out?"

"Maybe." Samuel's avatar stroked Ariadne's copied head. "There's like, weirdness on the belly. Scales, and a lot of contact surface, but I don't think a fall would be good for it. Maybe I could swap to Chloe if I get injured, but that'd give an extra Chloe in the hole. Also, the ten-foot tether might complicate that."

"Actually, could you use that like a rope?" Chloe called up. "If you have to stay within ten feet, does it drag one of you if the other moves?"

"Huh." Samuel's bodies walked away from each other. After a moment, the small blonde yelped.

"Any luck?" Chloe called up.

"Um, it'd technically work," Samuel shouted down. "Problem is, the tether feels tied to my new junk."

"Ow." Chloe winced in sympathy.

"Well, maybe we could get a tall ladder." Natalia looked at the "dogs" milling around the pit. "Ladder!"

Several dogs bolted from the room.

"Wait, they take orders?" Chloe called up.

"Yeah, Ariadne has a file on them," Samuel called down.

The dogs arrived, three of them balancing a ladder. Natalia circled the pack, eying it.

"Yeah, you can climb up until we can reach you and get you out." Natalia nodded and lifted the ladder, easing it into the pit carefully. Chloe took hold of the ladder and started cursing as she began to balance it inside the pit. Several yelps later, Natalia's arms and Samuel's tail worked to pull Chloe up.

"What were you doing, anyway?" Natalia asked.

"C'mon, why would they have caution tape if they weren't leaving a clue?" Chloe asked. "Look what was at the bottom of the pit!" She showed them a piece of glass. "This might be a device or a magical artifact!"

"It could just be some junk from remodeling, too." Samuel's Crawler body investigated the shard with tendrils.

"Why would a wizard leave junk or caution tape?" Chloe insisted.

Christian entered the kitchen, exhausted and surrounded by several dogs. "Is this a meeting or something?"

"Oh man, you look like hell. Did Ariadne keep you up all night?" Chloe asked.

"These did." Christian pointed at a dog. "I'm not sure if they're staff playing a prank or some kind of robot."

"They're like, trained cyborg dogs." Samuel's avatar explained.

"Huh." Christian looked at the avatar. "What on Earth are you wearing?"

Samuel's avatar was topless, with a pair of baggy pants held on her hips by a belt with several extra holes to let it tighten.

"These things are sensitive." Samuel gestured at their chest. "I'm not sure if it's a girl thing or a show thing, but they didn't give me any girl clothes, and my shirts feel like sandpaper."

"Um, probably Harem Hotel." Chloe looked appraisingly. "They've got to have clothes for you somewhere, or a tailor.

"Why?" Christian asked. "They might just want her topless."

"That wouldn't make sense." Chloe frowned. "The spirit of a gender change would have to involve pushing boundaries. Sam was raised as a man, and being topless isn't a boundary for them. Wearing feminine clothes would push those boundaries, even if they were transgender they were closeted. If it was a result of one of our transformations, it might want us topless, but in this case..."

"Joan." The avatar announced suddenly. "Just, not Sam or Samantha. Joan, now."

"Um, pronouns?" Chloe asked.

"Girl, I guess." Samuel blushed. "Nothing against nonbinary, but I want people to actually stick to the right ones, so let's just say I'm a girl."

"Alright, Joan." Chloe nodded.

"Did you two have breakfast?" Natalia gestured at the twins. "A threatening woman who called herself 'Skynet' delivered it to us."

Chloe froze up and looked guilty. "Um, Laurel told me not to eat anything from Sky. I think it's a fairy food thing, or maybe a Persephone reference."

"What did she eat?" Natalia asked, worried but curious.

"Um..." Chloe blushed. "She had a breast pump and drank her own milk. She offered me a glass, but..."

"Ew..." Samuel shuddered. "That's terrifying."

"Actually, it's really interesting!" Chloe's face lit up. "Like, gross as hell, but she told me all about the Stargazer culture's history of mystical lactation. It's a big deal for the Audience, or part of the Audience."

"Um, that could explain Laurel's food recommendation." Natalia looked around the kitchen. "They seem to be kidnappers and perhaps slavers, so the dairy might be a prison camp."

"Oh, not at all!" Chloe beamed. "Apparently, they used it on themselves. They weren't always so advanced. They did something with magical healing or shape shifting, and Laurel said they turned mana into calories."

"Manna." A tired voice came from the door. Ariadne walked in, a black bathrobe her only clothing. She was shiny and wet. "It's not the island religion that people misunderstood where 'mana' is like electricity, but cooler. The Signal provides matter and energy, and your own matter is the first thing you can manipulate or conjure. My grandmother used that to become a pirate warlord. Drink milk in salt water, and your logistics are great before steam engines."

"That's um, kind of what Laurel told me." Chloe stepped back as Laurel moved through the group. "I have questions."

Ariadne rolled her eyes. "The answer is yes. I will teach you the ancient arts of magic. We're sister-wives, and I've got nothing better to do. It won't help you fight the Producers or anything, but it's still pretty useful."

Chloe and Christian looked stunned, and Natalia jumped into the conversation.

"What are the Producers?" Natalia asked. "They run this program, right?"

"Mad scientists, fallen angels, former game show hosts, gangsters, tricksters, hive minds, people who made war on the Audience, and washed-up celebrities who got bored." Ariadne pulled an unlabeled bottle out of the refrigerator, started drinking it. "Those are ones I've met."

"Um, why are they running Harem Hotel?" Natalia tried to process the description.

"Hey, both our civilizations decided to put our trust in former game show hosts who promised to protect us. The list I gave wasn't exclusive or anything. Some people think the world will end if there's no Harem Hotel, others want the attention, and others kind of stumbled into it by accident. It's not like they give interviews." Ariadne drank deeply from the bottle and handed it to Natalia.

Natalia drank and started coughing. The taste of the drink was strong and clearly alcoholic.

"Okay, how does my Thelema transformation tie into what you promised to teach us?" Christian asked, having reached a silent agreement with Chloe.

"Okay, that's a good question." Ariadne paused. "There's like, synthetic magic. Technology, but not as you know it. A lot of people who think they're gods will give it to servants as a tool, and a lot of transformations give that out as an incentive. Then there's what my mother thinks is the only true religion. Notice the red flags in that description. It might just be synthetic magic with extra steps, but there should be a bottom somewhere, a place where it all started. Mom, that'd be Jill Black to you girls, has a myth about snakes and evolution, but it's too early in the millennium to try and explain it without making an ass of myself."

"Jill Black?" Samuel, no, Joan, she had to remember that name, asked.

"Eh, she used to be Jack, but there's an actor who stole the name after she got married." Ariadne waved her hand. "Yakiru Hadiru-Suniyara Ashapida is her name in the old Double Axe language, but only the baby Fixed could repeat that back to me, so just call her Jill."

"Fixed?" Joan's avatar and Crawler bodies both frowned.

"Believe me, that's a great pun about your TF if you know that language." Ariadne took the bottle back from Natalia and drank deeply.

"Um, do you want to schedule a magic lesson?" Natalia tried to keep the conversation focused.

"Oh, I guess we can get started on social studies." Ariadne closed her eyes. "Yeah, we'll do a bedtime story."

"It's 9:30 AM." Chloe looked at a digital clock.

"I'm crepuscular, so that's about right." Ariadne closed her eyes. "I don't think any of you have heard this one. No, you haven't. Sorry for the mind read, but it's important."

"Um, it's okay." Natalia did not feel it was okay at all, but this seemed like a bad time to object.

"Long ago, before anyone but Natalia was born, there was an island paradise. Their world was coming out of a war, and the winners were ashamed of what they had been, and the island had suffered in the war. The winners of that war met with the people of the island, because the island had a great treasure." Ariadne nodded to herself, eyes still closed.

"What was the treasure?" Chloe asked.

"Shit, it doesn't matter to the story. The treasure was buried on the island, and getting it out would wreck the place. The people of the island and the winners of the war made a deal. The people of the island would become the richest people in the world. They would have enough money they'd never have to work again. Their descendants could have been wealthy for generations, learned skills and married well to keep that wealth. The islanders agreed, and the treasure was no simple pile of gold. This treasure, it would help fields grow, feed the hungry. The trade was honest, the buyers treated the island as fairly as any people have ever treated another." Ariadne opened her eyes.

"What was the catch?" Natalia asked. "How did they fuck over the islanders?"

"Oh, the people who bought the treasure never hurt the island. The island got everything they asked for. They just fucked it up themselves." Ariadne laughed. "The island wasted every dollar they earned. They invested in stupid shit, trusted con men, spent on luxuries, and grew fat and lazy. The leaders were corrupt fuckups, and the people weren't any better. They had been given everything and lost it. Now they're the poorest country in the world. They tried to fund terrorists and run scams. Now, they make money running a prison camp."

"That's a sad story." Christian frowned. "This is about how magic doesn't solve problems, right?"

"Yeah, sure." Ariadne nodded. "Let's go with that."