Arc II, Chapter 70: The Secret Sixth Principle (Patreon)

I liked to read the Carousel Atlas when I was doing anything else. I had brought it with me during our month-long holiday as we portrayed our characters' lives.

The knowledge inside was always qualified with disclaimers. No matter how much our predecessors knew about Carousel, they never really believed they knew anything. The history of the book was marked with change.

Rules that had been placed inside the book years earlier were liable to be crossed out, with long explanations of why the rule was not true and what the true rule was.

That was CW who did it, usually. He was a Doctor Archetype who had left entries on any number of subjects, but especially Advanced Archetypes. He had collected them like trading cards.

He had advice for Monster Hunters and Adventurers, Witch Doctors and Mad Scientists, and half a dozen other AAs, which had such minuscule use cases that I was surprised to find out they were real. He had been something called a Death Negotiator, which could have you bargaining with serial killers, demons, or even fate itself. He had a rare one called Child Psychologist, which only had five tropes as far as he could tell.

His notes were always very clear, technical, and somehow sentimental. Having read his journal entries, I felt like I knew him. He had been there in the midst of Project Rewind’s formulation and had taken himself off the board to ensure its success—or, should I say, put himself on the missing poster board.

His entries were a delight to find, like getting a letter from an old friend. He had written a funny anecdote on a piece of notebook paper and taped it in the entry for The Final Straw. It claimed to have no spoilers, so I read it. The enemy of the storyline—Benny—had apparently handed him the glasses he had dropped. He said it was like an episode of Scooby Doo.

He thought Carousel was setting up a joke scene, so he put on the glasses and acted shocked to see Benny, but then he realized the whole interaction was Off-Screen.

Having had my own interactions with Benny, I could picture the whole thing in my mind.

CW had written an entry in the “Improvisation” section entitled “The Limits of Improvisation.” I read it hungrily, as the subject matter and the author both interested me.

The article contained several ideas I liked to consider, one of which was his assertion that he believed the audience knew what we were going through. I had thought about that myself. How much did the audience know? If they knew everything about our suffering, that was interesting. If they knew nothing, that was somehow even more interesting.

No one believed the audience was completely unwitting, but thinking of these amorphous, all-powerful judges who watched us as actual people made my mind spin. What were their lives like? Who were they?

Were they the people I had seen in the theater when I died, thanks to Deathwatch?

In his essay, he outlined the five principles he believed Carousel took into consideration when deciding if your improvisation would make it into the final cut.

While he said it much more eloquently, he believed Carousel wanted to:

1.       Entertain the Audience,

2.       Challenge Players,

3.       Keep the Story Coherent,

4.       Engage Players’ Minds, and

5.       Preserve Key Story Elements

Those points lined up with my experience. He also identified a “secret sixth principle.”

The secret principle was this: “Sometimes, Carousel just wants the win.”

He didn’t elaborate on that.

As we scoped out the jail, finding dead end after dead end in our plans for getting Isaac out, I thought about that secret sixth principle.

We sat in one of the coffee shops across from the small jail downtown where Isaac was being held.

Antoine was getting in the groove, belting out ideas.

Most of them were incomplete or impractical in the time we had. One was theoretically workable, at least in a movie. It wasn’t an option, but I had to believe it could work under different circumstances.

Until Carousel rubbed our noses in it.

“We could get cop uniforms and sneak him out ourselves,” he said.

Five minutes later, a cop with a mustard stain on his uniform came in and, when speaking with the barista about the stain, said the laundromat that the city contracted with to clean their uniforms had burned down. All of their spare uniforms had gone up in flames.

Haha. Very funny.

Carousel wanted the win. It wanted Isaac. After its stunt renovating the street to thwart our plans I was sure of it.

Or maybe it just did not want a jailbreak. Maybe there was no way it would let one into its movie. It would disrupt the pacing, after all. Jailbreaks need to be set up in some way. We had none. It was also an odd tone for a movie about relentless death, even a campy one.

This was a simple scene. One of our own was to die. It wasn’t supposed to be climactic or clever. It wasn’t supposed to be the moment we came together as allies. Our characters were mostly not good people. Why would they try to rescue Isaac’s character?

A rescue at a police station was something the brothers might do on Supernatural, but Isaac’s character wasn’t family or even strongly linked to the group.

I could feel the creative juices in my mind start to slow as I came to the realization that Carousel was not going to give him up. It never was. Isaac had sealed his fate already by giving into Carousel’s nudging. He had played the unlikable stooge who got bitten by bad luck.

He had already whacked his face on every rung as he fell down the metaphorical ladder. The only stop left was the bottom.

He was a Comedian, sure, but not a lovable jokester. That had been his path out of the line of fire. He could have made the audience like him for being funny. He could have embarked on a character arc that would lead to his being saved by allies.

Instead, he had played up his unlikable qualities. The debt collector was a test, just like my potential bad luck with a razor was a test.

I had passed mine.

He hadn’t.

Carousel was going to ensure this fate no matter what we had done.

The sun went down, and the night came upon us.

Cassie panicked as she realized it would be showtime soon, and all we had was the first part of a plan. Moonlight Morrow was going to visit the jail and play nice with the police. He was the mayor, after all. He could walk into any government building, and a story would form around him. He seemed confident enough in his ability to make a distraction.

He was also very quiet about our hopes to save Isaac. That had been telling.

As we left the coffee shop and moved to where we would start the scene. We knew the time was soon. The NPC who owned the coffee shop told us the place closed at “6:38 P.M., right at sundown,” which was a standard NPC nudge.

I had to return Ramona to my character’s house. Kimberly and I would be at the production lot working on some voice corrections (she was going to scream into the microphone so we could get good audio for her screams).

Antoine and Cassie would be together. They would drive and get us when Cassie started having “visions” of Isaac’s impending doom. We would drive to the jail to try to save him. It would be the first time our characters had been to the jail.

The clock ticked. It felt like everything was slowing down. It was dark outside. Kimberly and I were working with an audio engineer who showed up just as we got to the production lot. Bobby tagged along and started filling out some insurance stuff related to the set disaster. He wasn’t a major character, but we needed to keep him injected into the story for later.

A screen appeared on the red wallpaper. It started out staticky, but then the view was clear. I was seeing the enemy's POV.

Action!

~-~

On-Screen.

Kimberly screamed as loud as she could. It was her scared scream. She was watching footage of her scream in the movie, trying to match up her mouth movement.

Tires squealed in the parking lot.

“What was that?” I said. I pushed an intercom button. “Go ahead and stop Kimberly.”

“It sounds like someone raising hell out there,” the audio engineer said.

We sat in a booth in a small building where the recording equipment was. Kimberly was in a soundproof chamber, screaming like a serial killer was attacking her.

They had apparently neglected to soundproof the audio booth itself, though, because I could hear yelling outside.

I waved at Kimberly through the glass window that separated us, gesturing that I was going outside.

She took off her headphones and followed.

I recognized the vehicle immediately. It was Antoine and Cassie in Roderick Gray’s brown car.

I had expected a phone call. We had a telephone in the booth. This worked too.

As soon as I saw it was them, I looked at Kimberly. We pretended to be worried. Not these people. Our characters knew that their arrival meant the worst.

“Not again,” Kimberly said.

I gave a poignant pause. My character knew we weren’t getting off that easy. They had witnessed the destruction of the Die Cast as it killed Carlyle Geist. It wasn’t over.

A security guard chased them down from the entrance of the lot a few lots away. Antoine had somehow gotten past the barrier gate arm that kept cars from entering without breaking it.

At a glance, I would guess he had reached up and pressed the green button that opened the entrance and then driven in. Since this was a movie, he wasn’t shot for it.

“They’re okay,” I said to the guard. “We’ll take care of it.”

“It isn’t visiting hours,” the guard yelled

I got close to him and whispered, “This is the guy who’s a crucial witness with that lawsuit the Geists are involved with from last year. Let’s not give him any trouble. You understand? I’ll escort him off the property.”

I knew there was a settlement from Gale Zaragoza’s death. That had been established. I didn’t know if the audience would hear me, but if they did, it would sound like my character made up an excuse on the fly.

The guard looked at me and then at Antoine, then back to me, and nodded. He returned to his post.

“What’s going on?” I whisper-yelled at Antoine. “Tell me he’s not back.”

My character wasn’t as directly involved in the efforts to stop the Die Cast. That was Cassie and Antoine. I figured my character would hope it would all go away. He would still be reactive.

The last thing the audience knew, we had all escaped the Die Cast and met with Madam Celia. What happened after that was mostly off-screen.

“He’s back!” Cassie screamed.

I looked in the car.

“Where’s Isaac?” I said.

Cassie looked at me intensely. “He’s next.”

“Oh, god,” I said. “Don’t tell me. I thought it was going after Geists still. Why would it attack one of us? Heck, I was starting to think it was all over, that maybe it would just disappear.”

Cassie shook her head. “I don’t understand it either. I just know he’s next. I was researching the Spirit of Vengeance. The spirit shouldn’t be strong enough to manifest on its own yet. It should still need to be summoned. If it’s gotten strong enough to rise on its own and attack us, we may be too late.”

~-~

“Are you sure he’s this way?” Kimberly asked as Antoine gunned the engine. We hadn’t thoroughly explained why Kimberly would come with us, but I didn’t think we had to. As I had found before, once you have a team of characters, they tend to stick together even if they would head for the hills in real life.

Her character had seen the Die Cast and was willing to help stop it. She was the only innocent among us. That meant a lot in a story.

“I’m sure this is the way,” Cassie said. We were all sure. We could see the Die Cast’s POV as it slowly walked downtown from its grave.

Bobby had not come with us. He was the least connected to the group, and there wasn’t room in the car. He did watch us pull out of the lot, though. He needed to be preserved for the Manor Blaze, anyway. His character actually knew some of the Geists.

“He’s downtown?” I asked incredulously.

“Stop asking,” Cassie said. “Take a left here.”

Antoine pulled the car right up to the metal barricade that blocked off the street near the police station.

We jumped out of the car. We didn’t need it.

Cassie ran, and the rest of us followed.

We arrived at the basement window where Isaac stood, slumped up against the window ledge, his arms dangling out the window.

“Isaac Hughes, you’ve doomed yourself!” Cassie said as she saw him.

“What are doing in jail?” I asked. “When you left my place, you said you were going to grab a bite to eat, and then you disappeared.”

“It’s not my fault,” Isaac said. “It’s the bad luck demon guy. That’s why I’m here. Bad luck.”

We all looked at each other as we stood near the jail window.

“How exactly did bad luck end you up in jail?” Antoine asked.

“I punched a guy, and a cop was walking by,” he said. “What are the odds?”

We collectively groaned.

Was Isaac playing his character as a plucky, unlucky sidekick who gets saved or as a jinx who gets the worst of everything and dies with the punchline?

I had to be honest. His character had no redemption arc. My character was unlikable, but even so, trying to save Carlyle Geist and having instant remorse was something.

Isaac didn’t have that.

I was glad I hadn’t promised Isaac we would save him. It wasn’t looking good. I wasn’t sure if the others had realized it yet.

I did promise, however, that I would try to save him.

As Cassie explained that the Die Cast was on his way, I saw Moonlight Morrow walking toward the police station.

Isaac’s panic and dread were palpable. He didn’t have to pretend.

“I can’t die here,” he said. “What am I supposed to do?”

I knelt down next to Cassie, got close to Isaac’s face, and said, “I’m always here for you, buddy,” I said solemnly. Grasping onto his hand like we were going to arm wrestle, I gripped tight, a gesture of friendship. “Everything’s going to be okay.”

I looked him in the eye.

The only way we were going to save him now was to make the audience care about him. If I was right, our connections as coconspirators were not strong enough to do this. I needed to show I cared about him, that we were old friends. We hadn’t established that. The odds were against us.

Even if we managed to improvise our way down to him. Even if we were exceedingly clever. Even if it made the story better and checked every box on Carousels Improvisation Principles, we might still not be able to save him.

Carousel might just want the win.