Invocation 5

Deeper now, going beyond, the scar on his face aching and hot.

What if your true home was never a real place?

Akimoto faces west and makes the next rune.

...

Invocation 4

It is not proper Shinto practice either, though there is a striving towards kotodama in his effort, to touch the soul of the language, the words he is spelling, the spell he is casting. 

The strange samurai cult he had found on his vision quest had taught him some of their magic along with their martial arts, their discipline, their honour, their language. He was no samurai, not even a proper ronin, because he was gaijin, he was an outsider (again?) - the ways of his teachers were not his own, he could not take them, lay claim to them, as he had once taken so much, the raids, the pillaging. The samurai had given him their knowledge freely, and greater than any of the philosophy, the techniques, the sword forms, they had taught him the power of giving.

The robes he sometimes wore were to help remind him of that. And the name they had called him, with no explanation - "bright beginning" - he kept because it was who was was trying to be, or perhaps the path to who he really was... It was hard to understand. It was all so very hard to understand. Yet it all kept happening.

Akimoto also knew that according to most of the histories of most of the worlds he had visited with Max that as much as three hundred years separated the time of the vikings with whom he raided and the samurai with whom he trained... And that roughly three times as long had passed between that time and when he awoke on the subway... What else could you do but try and make magic?

He turns to the south and shapes the next rune with his blade.

...

Invocation 3

This is not proper seidr, not the proper rituals and offerings, the art of the volva. This is makeshift, improvised, everything in motion, everything always changing, little time to make it proper, but there is still a seething in Akimoto's body and mind that may yet be enough to carry his will across the Nine Worlds (once it seemed, to him, such a large number...).

The rooftop is so very far from the halls, the smoke of the hearth, the smell of fur, the roll of the waves under the boat, the feel of the shore under foot when the raid began. Everything he once knew to be true.

Though... Even then did he not have visions of somewhere else? Where ships sailed not on the water but in the night sky, where other, stranger magic gave life to mighty armour and channeled fire like arrows... A place like a home before home, and battles to rival Ragnarok. 

Was it that place he sought when he first began his vision quest? Or had he never left the hall at all, these ceaseless adventures and oddities only the seething of divine madness granted by Odin Allfather?

Facing east, Akimoto raises his sword and traces the shape of the first rune in the air.

...

Invocation 2

Max says that a lot people think that magic isn't real, and he says that they're right. That's the point of magic - it's unreal. It makes things unreal. And it reveals that things are really fictional in the first place.

Akimoto understands Max's point - Akimoto may not comprehend many of the ways of the worlds he has found himself in, the customs and the technology, but he is not simple-minded. He understands how powerful stories are, and he understands that there is a philosophy to what Max says, and to how Max lives. He has seen Max make magic.

There is though, Akimoto feels, another type of magic, one that is very real. Like the slow growth of a tree, the even slower rising and falling of mountains. Blood from a wound, the sharp ache of hunger. The harsh song of the raven, the howl of the wolf. The roar of the dragon.

Akimoto finishes scraping the shape of a circle in the weather-worn roof of the brownstone with the point of his sword. 

...

Invocation 1

Trump pawed at the touch-screen on the cell. Making calls had gotten way easier for him with the change in technology; it was pretty tricky for him back when phones were still rotary.

"Coordinates Wheel-Judgement-Temperance," the voice answered.

"Hiya Professor," Trump purred.

"Oh hello there! Thank you for checking in. How is everything proceeding?"

"Maggie's still trapped, Max is still sick. Everyone else is laying low, sticking to their cover stories."

"Hm, I see. Updates please..."


"Suki is working in a pizza shop, Wraith is working at a movie theater, Darius is selling men's clothing, Callan is building furniture in a factory, Frank is doing market research, Goner is delivering pizzas - from a different shop than Suki's, Angst is washing windows, Aqua is working for a cleaning company and Dexter is harvesting wheat samples for an agricultural study."

The sound of typing on a keyboard. "And what about Akimoto?"

"He's here... I don't remember meeting him before. He seems quite strange."

"Imagine a collage of The 13th Warrior, The Last Samurai, Star Wars and The Terminator."

"Professor, I rarely get out to the movies and when Max downloads them I often fall asleep in his lap."

"Yes, of course. Well, the story is a rather muddled mix of a viking on a vision quest, training by ancient Japanese warriors, clothes inspired by the same plus an army surplus store and tropical tourists, a strange connection with version Citadel - if you recall that tale - a mysterious scar, a sprinkle of amnesia, and a dash of time travel. He's generally a lost soul, enjoys a mug of ale, and is relatively unfamiliar with modern technology. He also writes poetry."

"I can see why Max gets along with him so well."

"And how is he occupying his time while we wait for the window?"

Trump studied the movements of the large man on the rooftop of the brownstone, clear in the light of the full moon. "I believe, Professor, that he is attempting to cast a spell."

...

Overheard on the Southbound Train

"What do you mean I'm not in costume?" said a scrappy looking kid with a skateboard. "Lady, you spend your lunch hour saving the Metaplex from sources of the mundane to the supernatural and tell me that doing it as a full time job ain't scary! Oh and Happy Hallo'een!" He tossed a pack of licorice and hopped out the closing doors.

Happy Halloween 2

 Previously on Halloween...

Morganfokker and Max's Costumes (version.Hannibal)

Maggie's Costume (version.Vikings)

The Dragons' Costumes (version.Vesperia)

[Trump, Goner, Suki, Max, Maggie, Simon, Angst, Frank]

The Metaplex Movie Soundtrack

aka The Chakra Secrum Project's Greatest Hits

Track One: Unidentified Foreign Ontology - Mana Junkie

Track Two: I Know You Are, But What Am I? - Mogwai

Track Three: New York City - The Demics

Track Four: Remains - Dollhouse Soundtrack

Track Five: Out of Control - Chemical Brothers

Track Six: Anvil of Crom - Conan Theme

Track Seven: High Roller - The Crystal Method

Track Eight: Stolen Child - The Waterboys

Track Nine: She's Lost Control - Joy Division

Track Ten: Ich Bin Ein Auslander - Pop Will Eat Itself

Track Eleven: Call It Off - Tegan and Sara

Track Twelve: My Dream Girl Don't Exist - Neutral Milk Hotel

Down Time

"How long have we been out?" Max inquired.

"A week or so, give or take a couple of days," Maggie replied.

He sat up on the bed and looked around; his mouth felt dry and he needed a drink. Maggie must have read his mind because she handed him a cold bottle of water. He cracked the lid and took a big gulp.

"Easy now big fellow," a voice in the corner of the room told him.

"Well, there's a voice I haven't heard in a while," Max said as his eyes adjusted to the dim lighting in the room. "Where the hell have ya been?"

"I've been to London to visit the Queen," Trump said as he stepped into Max's line of sight.

> Chance in Plureality 5

Keane sat in the booth on the quiet side of the diner. With this layout it was almost as if the other side didn't even exist, which suited him fine. He didn't really want to talk with anyone at the moment anyway. The day had gotten off to a rotten start. Slept in, burnt his breakfast (which is why he was finally getting around to it now at 2 in the afternoon), topping that off with nearly getting sideswiped going by the off-ramp on Clergy Street earlier. 

Of course that wasn't anywhere near the end of the day either. By 11am he had been called into the boss' office and had been fired. Big show of things, too - his boss must have also had a rough morning, the way he went at him. On the other hand he just might have been the kind of boss who enjoyed firing people. Didn't help that Parsons, the douche-bag from near the water cooler, had to feign concern while Keane was cleaning out his desk. That kind of rising bile feeling, makes you wish you had super powers enough to knock a person through a wall. 

It would all be alright though, he thought. Once breakfast finally came. Breakfast, especially a diner breakfast, always made him feel better. Besides, he always felt that he was meant for something more than cube work. The waitress arrived with his meal. The whole shebang! Pancakes, hash browns, toast, eggs, and a massive pile of meat. Toss in a nice cuppa java and a tall glass of OJ. This is what his day was missing from the get-go. This would make it all better, and THIS would allow the whole day to settle and make sense. 

About 3 or 4 sips into his coffee, and a bite or two into the hash browns, a lithe woman with what appeared to be feathers in her hair slid into the booth across from him. 

"Uh... Excuse me?" Keane looked up. "Can I help you?" She just smiled and pulled some of the brown curls back and tucked them behind her ear, the feathers brushing across the table. 

"There's not much you could do to help us at the moment actually..." said a young man in a long coat (who wears one of those in this weather?) as he slid in beside the woman with feathers in her hair. A silver cross jangled on a chain around his neck. "'I always liked diner breakfasts too. Guess we have that in common... But you want a really good brekky? You gotta hit those little mom and pops... Just saying," the scruffy cross-bearer said. 

"Do you guys mind? I'm trying to eat here, and I think you've got me confused with someone else," Keane pleaded. He only wanted his breakfast, even if it was 2pm. 

"Oh I wouldn't dream of stopping you from eating - in fact you're gonna need it," the man in the long coat informed. 

"It's going to be a looong day," the smiling feathered woman said.

"Look... What do you mea-" Keane started. 

"Have you ever felt like you were meant for something more?" the young man smirked. 

Keane felt something odd about that look, like these two knew more then they were saying. "Go on..." he said, slowly picking up another mouthful of hash browns with his fork.

Quest #xx

Crow was sitting on the edge of the bed when Max woke up. "You looked restless. Your leg was kicking like you were dreaming of being trapped."

Max stretched.

"What's on your mind this morning?" Crow asked.

"One of the things Morganfokker and I used to talk about, in one of our histories, between sessions," Max said. "About how to find the gods hidden all around you. Sometime later The Professor would ask me, or I would imagine having a conversation with him in which he would ask me: why do you think that they are hidden?

"But they feel hidden to me, or maybe I just think they’re hidden, and that’s the point, and what’s the difference?" Max sat up and pulled on a t-shirt.

Crow shrugged. "I see the gods hidden among and within us when I wonder what our society would look like if we substituted compassion for self-interest. Every time I hear people use the language of capitalist economics to describe their relationships I think I see one of the hidden gods, shaping and directing and guiding and confining our lives. The way that the patterns of response in language of the person confronting the stigma of mental illness map onto the media’s portrayal of political discourse that maps onto the way we discuss it over coffee. Where real oppression lives and real freedom?

"Maybe in the way we respond to dreams," Crow continued. "The way we prioritize certain spectrums of continuity, waking consciousness, over discontinuous (or less continuous? dreams can recur), and what about when we remember a dream when we’re waking? Or any memory? What do we allow to dictate our response? Things from the past, or the future or that happen to us when we’re asleep? Or from others’ pasts – the lives of ancestors, their own questions and answers designing and growing the culture we participate in, other hidden gods controlling the whats and whys of our daily lives.

"Why you will wake up and get about of bed. Why you will sit in front of a computer. Eat what you will eat. Say what you will say, to yourself or your roommate or partner or family. Dream what you dream."

Max rubbed his eyes. "In one of the iterations of Cube I once wrote 'my arbitrary particulars seem vast' and 'all the things I will never get to be but I will get to be me'. I guess maybe The Professor contacted me for the latter and Morganfokker abducted me for the former."

Susanna Overhears

The cheerleader says, "I've been watching In Treatment, a nightly drama showing the weekly therapy sessions of a number of people, including the therapist. Watching the exchanges and seeing how there's the version of things the 'patient' (as the show refers to them) describes to the therapist, there's the version that the therapist perceives, the version that the therapist interprets, then the version that the therapist feeds back to the patient. There's the patient's interpretation of the therapist's expressed version, experienced based their own conditioning, bias, history. And then there's the implied hidden version that the patient is withholding, consciously or not, as well as a version that the therapist may be unconsciously experiencing based on their own conditioning, bias, history, so on.

"And I wonder, is the existence of all these versions the very basis for the therapy itself? Or is it the thing that prevents therapy from being effective? Or both and in what combination?"

The writer says, "The Professor once called it 'The Implicate Meaning Field' - the possibility that things can be other than they are, creating room for error, and for change, and for imagination, and for suffering."

The businessman says, "Tor Norretranders describes in The User Illusion a model of communication in which a massive tree of exformation is condensed within us into a tiny packet of information, which is transmitted from us to others who are listening and watching, wherein it grows a new tree of exformation. And I guess we hope that the two trees roughly correspond to each other."

The writer says, "Maybe without this there'd be no art, but sometimes it makes me feel like really sharing anything is impossible."

Tull

Tull