And in my room
I’m alone in my room
And maybe staying here for just awhile
And in my casket
I’m alone in my gloom
And maybe staying here for awhile
Manny has advised the group to desiccate themselves as much as possible. What waits in the deserts of Chile is dangerous beyond measure.
At the bottom of the sinkhole, the group is confronted by a horror, and an old shipmate of Manny’s named Hiram.
The Contamination was introduced in “421 - Quill and Ink” – Ed.
A creature of liquid is trapped in a crater at the center of the sinkhole. It lacks the power to move. It constantly snaps at the group with tendrils that threaten to evaporate if they overextend.
It is pure, unrestrained malice.
Or first that’s how it seems. Is it simply madness?
While Manny converses with the consumed ghost of Hiram, Charlotte examines the alien itself. It is not from Earth. It’s simply a visitor, from some inconceivable cosmic distance, that rode an errant rock here and crashed into this cave in some long-forgotten epoch of history. It’s just a slurry of light elements - a Contamination, an accident that led to life.
It is hungry - for knowledge, for experience, for anything. It has been lonely for so long, and when it realized there was something beyond its sole existence in space, only to find itself trapped in this tiny cave in a desolate and forgotten corner of the planet, it became furious at the injustice of the cosmos. To be so close to life - but to be denied it by circumstances - Charlotte has rarely found an anger so potent.
Hiram once sailed with Manny aboard the Argo, Captain Quill’s old vessel, on a round-the-world treasure hunt in the year 1699. He ran afoul of the Contamination, and paid for it with his life.
She now speaks with what’s left of him, trapped together in the creature’s liquid form.
“Hiram. I cannot bring you back to life. But I can release your soul from its bondage.”
The whispered voice breathes a sigh of relief. “That, lass, be all I could ask.”
The Contamination will have none of it. “NO HE IS MINE. YOU ARE ALL MINE. ALL IS MINE”
Charlotte turns her attention to the entity itself. “You, who would kill and consume anyone who drew too close. You, who wish for the same justice any being would wish for. You, who curse the universe for your fate. I will give you the justice you ask, but I will also bind you for the safety of others. You must choose now. Be bound, or remain here as we leave.”
“MINE I MUST HAVE EVERYTHING IT MUST BE MINE I WILL MAKE IT MINE.”
There is a chance for healing here. But it depends on choices to be made. By the entity. By Charlotte.
The Contamination may not realize that choice. It may not be capable of making it in the state it’s in.
There is no healing without change. The Contamination may not be able to consent to that. If healed, it could. But that’s reversing the order of things.
If left alone, it will certainly suffer, and it will pose a danger to others.
Charlotte feels like she had this conversation with someone. She keeps rejecting power, yet she keeps putting herself in situations that demand power.
Not just power. No. What is it?
Responsibility. Authority.
The last century had a saying, “passing the buck”. And a President who said “the buck stops here”.
Her cherished etiquette, drilled into her by family who took authority on themselves to do so, is another form of authority. It’s the authority of the ancestors, whose ghosts command and demand compliance from the living. “Do things our way.”
The decision comes to her almost faster than she can recognize.
If it wishes my actions to be undone, I can grant that too.
“Manny!” she calls, and her ghostly friend attends to her. The trip, and the reawakening of his memories of 1699, have also physically transformed him from a flame-wreathed skull to the ectoplasmic echo of a man.
She smiles at him. “You said your ink was your memory of your adventures. I offer you new ink. I will bind the Contamination to you. Together, you can see the world. Do you accept this?”
Manny’s eyes light up in excitement. “To have me ink back, I cannot say no to that. And I loved dear Hiram, but I bear no malice to the beast what got ‘im. The madness of bein’ lost at sea and the madness of space be much the same, I imagine.”
Charlotte nods, and turns, and begins to weave her spell.
The liquid is drawn up, and out of the pool. It flows in a thin stream toward Manny. As it touches his skin, it spreads out, taking up shapes. A sun - a coin - scales - symbols of old memories the sailor had acquired in life. The liquid spreads beyond that, forming intricate and alien spirals and spikes and patterns.
The binding is complete, and Charlotte closes the spell.
Manny marvels at the change. He looks at his newly inked limbs with a grin. And he looks up at Charlotte. “The beast be screamin’ in my mind, but faint and distant. And it be learning too. It remembers now what I remember. I think it be… hmm, eatin’ memories isn’t properly the term for it. I retain what I know. But its hunger will not be sated for a long time, I think.”
Charlotte nods her approval. Together with Manny, she approaches the now-dry crater. In a few minutes the pair of them have erected a small shrine, with Hiram’s name on it.
What’s left of the man’s ghost is long gone. His soul must go on its own adventures. Charlotte and her friends must return to theirs.
Manny is up on the deck. He’s admiring his tattoos. The liquid of the Contamination is still animated, still alive, giving the “ink” a quality of constant change and motion.
He doesn’t notice when Maury rolls her chair across the deck of Haam’s ship and takes note of him.
“Enjoyin’ it while you can, huh?” she finally asks, and the ghost startles.
“Ahh, lass. Sorry. I be.. I just be happy.” He shows off his forearms, twisting and turning them about.
Maury grins and nods. “Yeah. You have a right to be. How’s your passenger feeling?”
The sailor turns his attention inward for a moment and considers. “It be… strange. A lonely life. So many years of sameness. Now it be takin’ in my life, rememberin’ what I saw. Remindin’ me what an excitin’ life I really did lead after all. Can’t rightly say, but I’d say it be… well, dinin’ well.”
Maury nods. “And I’m guessing it’s eventually going to want more of the same. More life. More experience.”
“Reckon so,” Manny grins. “But I be the same. ‘Twas a fine pairing Charlotte made of us. Livin’ ink on a dead man, both of us keen on seein’ the world.”
The enthusiasm keeps Maury smiling. But her eyes narrow, just a bit. “In my experience, good feelings are fleeting. Bad feelings last. I hope you both are able to hold into your joy for a long time.”
Manny’s smile changes. He’s no longer just a skull - he has a human face now, emotive even if it’s still spectral. He’s not a handsome man by any means, but his face has an expressiveness that Maury appreciates over the bland beauty of 21st-century models.
“Not all shoulders bear a weight the same, lass,” he says gently. “Sailors on a voyage have naught but each other for comfort. We learn to take others’ burdens, as they wear lighter on another than the one what birthed 'em. That be how such feelings be released, by exchange.”
Maury tilts her head. “That’s quite a progressive view for a 17th century sailor.”
Manny scoffs. “I be unlearned, it’s true. But that’s just it, ain’t it. Me story wouldn’t be told by the kings an’ lords an’ men of learning who wrote the books ye studied. And whose stories would they know but their own? How can a ruler admit their humanity to those under ‘em without losin’ the prestige of their position?”
The journalist chuckles. “Okay, that sounds provocative. Give me an example.”
“Ship’s captains,” Manny says immediately. “Ye talk about the captain of pirates as though they run everything. Our captain ran much, but he also had the treasure map. Even then, we voted on many matters of import. We’d have folks with specific duties - the quartermaster, the first mate, the first gunner, and more. But they weren’t officers. In the Royal Navy, the men knew naught but what they were ordered to do. Gentlemen and nobles who paid for the right to order about a crew of criminals and lowborn, then gain the glory of that work in their memoirs. I think that be the word for it, yes? And so must it be with those in command on land, eh?”
“Alright, you make a good point,” Maury concedes. “‘History is written by the victors’ is the usual saying, but I guess ‘history is written by the literate’ could work as well. Your point is that the people we learn about history from are giving us their own individual perspective, and because the people with the authority and resources to publish that history are the most socially isolated, we get a really slanted view of it. Yeah?”
“Aye, that be the size of it.” Manny grins. “Ye search through pottery and clothing to glimpse the lives of the common folk, but it be incomplete. Like me old ink.”
The mention of it puts him in a more pensive mood. “I thought to memorialize it all, not thinkin’ past me own lifetime. As a ghost, the only thing that sustained me was me memories. The need for this incredible adventure not to be lost to time.”
Maury smiles gently. “I’m glad you’re willing to remember all of it. The good with the bad.”
The sailor looks over the railing at the Sea of Thought - the living memory of humanity.
“Daphne Palin serves a god,” he says at last. “She be unhappy with some aspects of the arrangement, and she profits from others. Ye could say that as sailors, we be priests of the sea in the same way. The good and the bad cannot be so easily separated. As mortal men, we crave the good and shun the bad. Perhaps that’s why ye say good feelings flee. We have the appetite for one, but the fates feed us both, and the truth is that both nourish us in their way.”
Maury smiles, and pats the arm of her high-tech wheelchair in silent contemplation.