Chapter 13 of 35 · Book 3, The Dungeon Anarchist's Cookbook

Chapter 13 — The Ugly-Ass Backpack

Book: The Dungeon Anarchist's Cookbook · Previous: Chapter 12 — The Dismemberment Limited · Next: Chapter 14 — Stealing the Nightmare Express · Floor: Floor 4 — The Iron Tangle · Series: the series

Opening

» Time to Level Collapse: 7 days, 12 hours

Summary

Levi waves goodbye from a train whose third car, Carl suspects, is Dismember's army of resleeved crawlers. Zev: the fans liked the line; say the trademark one more often; and in two days Carl and Donut narrate a segment of Planet Beautiful from a sound booth — about beauty pageants and pet shows. 'WE WILL DO IT.' They wait at station 281 (a J.CO Donuts saferoom) for Protective Shell to reset before the Nightmare Express. Carl spends a table coupon on an Armorer's Workshop and both upgrade coupons on the sapper's table: an engineering-table helmet is only a helmet, and only equippable, once the armorer's tab names it ('Shitty Helmet') — which is what Katia needs to add mass. The Cookbook's bomb chapter, three editions arguing about backpacks and bomb stability — Rosetta (9th), Allister (13th), Forkith (20th, an Urgyle sapper who lost his sister Barkith and asked readers to kill an enemy in her honour) — and Drakea's note from the Naga season: 'Once lit, a fire is easier to stoke than it is to extinguish […] Fuck the snakes. Fuck the rats.' Carl finds it comforting.

The Ugly Ass Backpack With a Completely Useless Design that Only an Idiot Would Wear: an open metal hamper with dingo-hide straps, filled with a ton and a quarter of robot-steel reeds and xistera balls — because a container's contents count as inventory, and an equipped backpack's contents count as mass. Katia, six-legged and then a slug, takes the load on a shelf of her own back, screams, becomes a blob, and rises as an eleven-foot Hekla who can punch the air hard enough to feel: 'If only Fannar could see me.' Thirty seconds to put on; drop it and she resets to a puddle. The recap: war mages on every named line; Quan Ch flying on the Celestial jacket, blasting trains; Elle and Meadow Lark tearing a Pooka goat apart; Lucia Mar at a room of five stairwells. The leaderboard: Elle up to 8, Li Jun off, Quan Ch on. The nightly message: stairwells stay shut until six hours before collapse, broken-down trains wait on the Hobgoblin Mechanic Interdiction teams, and every crawler now has a sponsor, 'a first', with benefactor boxes delayed unless the emergency fee is paid. And a Bronze Benefactor Box from the Valtay — 'Keeping the Best of You Alive' — with one pill: Neural Enhancer #544, a permanent brain change that lets Carl identify and analyse subspace portals. He swallows it with cold coffee. The saferoom door glows purple. 'I can see through doorways now.'

Characters

• Carl — The armorer's table; builds Katia's mass; takes the Valtay pill.
• Katia Grim — Carries a ton and a quarter; eleven feet tall; 'I'm going to throw up.'
• Princess Donut — Booked for a pageant segment; 'He's a cheating poser' about Quan Ch.
• Zev — Planet Beautiful in two days; Katia stays behind.
• Quan Ch — The Celestial jacket's owner, flying and blasting trains; onto the leaderboard.
• The earlier editions — 20th-edition author, an Urgyle sapper who lost his sister. 22nd-edition author under the Naga; 'a fire is easier to stoke.'

Locations

• The Iron Tangle — The J.CO Donuts saferoom; two stops from the Nightmare Express.
• The Royal Palace of Princess Donut — The sapper's table at level three; an armorer's workshop; a stand for the backpack.

Motifs

• The Dungeon Anarchist's Cookbook — Backpacks, madness satchels, and the voices of the earlier editions.
• The Valtay Corporation — A Bronze Benefactor Box: a pill that rewrites the interface.
• The leaderboard — Elle up to 8; Li Jun off, Quan Ch on.
• The show — A narration booked; the recap cuts Carl laughing over a severed head.