Chapter 49 of 74 · Book 6, The Eye of the Bedlam Bride

Chapter 49 — The Shepherd's House flyer

Book: The Eye of the Bedlam Bride · Part: The Father · Previous: Chapter 48 — Mass Layoffs · Next: Chapter 50 — Homestead · Floor: Floor 8 — The Ghosts of Earth · Series: the series

Opening

I didn’t tell Donut or anybody else about the benefactor box.

Summary

Alone in his bare room, Carl sets out a fern from the trailer, tapes Asher's airplane drawing to the wall with duct tape, plugs in the Centipede cabinet. Boxes: trench scrolls, a Size-Up potion earned naturally at last, the Gold Gobble box (a turkey fryer, peanut oil, every recipe from a Facebook group), a burning-book upgrade patch (+15% intelligence; Book Burner: once a day make a foe forget a spell for thirty hours — 'Just because I recently took everything over doesn't mean I know what everything means. Most metaphors are bullshit'), a Wand of Nighty-Night (ten charges of level-10 Sleep that compound), 25,000 gold and a Warrior's helmet he cannot wear, and from the Platinum box Minor Find Crawler, level five, drunk at once. The benefactor box: a dirty flyer for The Shepherd's House, a homeless shelter in Homestead, Florida — Christmas Breakfast at 7 AM circled in red, and 'No pets allowed. Sorry.' circled too. Louis: forty minutes north, an air force base, a racetrack, alligators. The Miami steer was not about sparing his feelings — 'They'd gone to a lot of effort to get us here.' 'PIN THE TAIL ON THE KRAMPUS'; a present shaped like a stupid book. Zev at the door: nobody knows what this is, not even the AI; the box was sent days before Miami was chosen, seized, and 'the entire charity and everyone involved just up and disappeared […] even Rosetta.' The failsafe: 'Pray we don't find out. They won't use it. Not with so many people trapped in the solar system […] the richest and most powerful people in the galaxy are either on planet or in orbit.' 'You probably shouldn't have told me that, Zev.' His father's Panhead starts on the first try, tank full, and he rides north.

Characters

• Carl — Decorates a room with a dead boy's drawing; rides his father's bike to a shelter.
• Zev — Warns him; lets slip who is trapped in the system.
• Louis and Firas — Directions to Homestead.
• Princess Donut — A majorette hat; Krampus.
• Rosetta Thagra — Vanished with the whole network.

Locations

• The Royal Palace of Princess Donut — Carl's bare room, furnished from the trailer.

Motifs

• The Open Intellect Pacifist Action Network — A flyer with two circles; a charity that disappeared after sending it.
• The failsafe — 'Pray we don't find out'; the galaxy's rich under quarantine.
• Carl's family — The bike runs; Asher's airplane on the wall.
• The System AI — 'I recently took everything over'; metaphors are bullshit.
• The Filthy Little Crawler's Book of Voodoo — A present shaped like a book.