>[A2] Just skip to the meat of the thing: the procedure and right after. That's all you need.
>[A3] Read it straight through (it's not all that long). You never know what you'll find, but— well, you may not be frittering your life away, but you have no time limit. Nobody lives here.
>[A4] Write-in.
>[B1] Have Madrigal read over your shoulder.
>[B2] Read by yourself. (As possible.)
>[B3] Write-in.
Do you want Madrigal to see Ellery’s LOG? You'd like to avoid more waterworks, if possible, so maybe it's best if not. "I'll take a look at this," you say. "Why don't you get back to— whatever you were doing?"
"Suit yourself," she says, and gets back to whatever she was doing. Looking at the papers, you think.
Satisfied, you seat yourself on the sole uncluttered chair and continue on to the next entry in the LOG. It's a couple days later, still Ellery's handwriting, still shaky.
"Forgot to update this, but I don't think it matters much. Got more info on the prosedure. Doc said it won't hurt & won’t will take a second only. 'a second?' I said, 'or just a short amount of time?' Never mesured, apparently, but if not an xact second close to it. Not sure how to feel about this. Feel like if its so short why am I getting someone else to do it. Doc said its a lode of work, actually, it's just the loose spanner, etc, and explained to me like I didnt know the word. Regreting this."
Richard's dropped it a couple times, but you continue to not know what "spanner" means.
?Charlotte, it's the ratio of time dilation between depth le—?
You didn't say you cared. You turn the page.
Curiously, the next entry has the same date. More curiously, it's printed quite neatly— maybe even using a proper grip. It's in blue colored pencil.
"Please ignore the previous entry. Was not in right mindset (literally). This has long sense been decided on.
I feel I have been unduely concerned with the prospect of 'death' or 'loss,' despite neither taking place, as in fact I do not exist to die or be lost. Please be aware of this fact."
Same day, again. Back to shaky, back to ordinary pencil.
"I told that guy not to write in my fucking logbook, and look what he does. Don't ask me why I want to be part of this, because I jenuinly do not know. Was I a prick before?"
And so on. Over the following three weeks, normal-pencil Ellery goes on to worry about everything he can think to worry about, to wander down dense, spiraling digressions (you skim an entire page about turtles), to write quite awful love poetry for Madrigal, to worry about the poetry, to worry about Madrigal, to worry about the love. ("What if a second passes — and I no longer care?" God, do you not care.) Thrice the blue pencil returns, each time insistent: Calm down. I'm not even real. I don't matter. You're going back to normal, is all. It'll be fine.
You are beginning to think there might be such thing as too personal of a matter.
?Your own fault, Charlotte, for tunneling in on the fripperies. This man is circling around two questions. He will not state the identity of the doctor, and he will not state what the procedure consists of, despite having clear knowledge of both.?
Maybe he doesn't find it relevant. You're interested in the blue writing— you've seen that shade somewhere before, or a glimmer of it, or something. That neat print, too. If only your mind wasn't a sieve…
?That's pathetically simple, Charlotte. That's the—? Richard does a strange jerk of his head— ?’me’.?
You stop idly flipping through the pages. "The what?"
?I have no useful way to convey sarcasm. The 'me'. The psyche-fracture. It's doing the blue writing.?
"That guy," Ellery called it, which is about as terrible a name as you could expect. 'Richard' beats the pants off it.
?Yes.?
But look at you— you're the one going down a spiraling digression. You'll be here all day if you discuss instead of reading. (Madrigal's already amassed a small mountain of notes off the wall.) You've made it to the day before the procedure, about nine months ago— three before the break-up.
Really, the circumstances deserve a better title than piddly "break-up." Henceforth you'll call it the Incident.
?That's worse.?
Shut up. Three months and change before the Incident. Night before the procedure— sorry. Procedure.
Ellery: "I've written a hundred times there's no turning back now but theres really no turning back now, not after I'm down a pint and a gill of blood. The gill's for personal use— if Im lucky I wont need it, I'll just produce more of the same— but I'm never lucky. Lost every game of dice I've ever played. Remanes to be seen if Ill lose this one.
"Maddy kissed me and told me that she's put up with half-crazy me for so long she's not sure what shell do about the sane one. Think she was joking. Still aked.
"Ill report in after. That guy's handling the talking.
"A little of the gill."
A bloody thumbprint as signature. You turn the page.
40 KM, it's labeled. (Not the Kitemaker of the lionfish toxin— the year prior.) The Day of Reckoning.
?You have got to stop.?
"It's morning," the entry begins. "I'll be dead in 15 minutes. Which is a selfish way to put it, because of course I've been claiming the opposite: I can't die, I never lived at all. That was either a half-truth or a lie, I'm unsure which— depends on the definition of life at hand. But I feel alive, and I don't want to stop, anyways.
That's all for the pity party. Because the fact of it is that this is for the best, and the whole point of me is for the best. And I'll still be there, somewhere, even if that's cold comfort. We had a good run, Ellery. Keep out of trouble for me."
This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.
The opposing page is undated. It's blank except for a terse line in a heavy hand: "Feel like shit."
Next page is also undated. "Still feel like shit, but I can write. Got two dozen ideas nocking around like ball barings in here. Click clack click clack. Going to try and get them down before I forget.
"- Legs hurt. Torso hurts. Pants show an inch of ankle (will need to rehem). 90% sure I am taller than I used to be. That guy was taller than me by a little.
- It's quiet.
- I have a headake.
- I don't feel any different & at the same time I feel like I'm missing something & at the same time I feel like there's something brand new and I don't know what any of it is. I don't feel normal though.
- Was I ever normal? Was that even an achevable state?
- Damn it's quiet.
- It felt like a second but I don't believe for a second (ha ha) it actualy was. You don't get that kind of spanner. Think they tinkered with my sense of time while in there. Probably more like 10 min— should've set up sundial but didn't think ———
"Hold on here comes Maddy"
A gap down the page, then:
"Maddy came to see how I was doing & I told her pretty good, could be worse. She looked worried and said 'you say that when you're not doing well' which I had not considered. Also went 'god Ell what happened to your eyes.' Told her I don't know, I haven't looked in a mirror or anything, are they okay? She bends down and takes my chin in her hands (I'm sitting) and looks, as I look in her green eyes, and goes 'they're okay, they've just gone kind of dark and muddy, I guess, not really hazel. Can you see okay?' all worried how she gets
And at that I go: shit. Not to her, to her I say I can see okay. But shit. Because that really worried me, kind of voiced a fear I was knocking around with the rest of everything else— that this wasn't like fixing a broken pot, or finishing a fretsaw puzzle. That there never was an empty space where that guy used to be, or if there was it's long since healed over. So what happened instead was they reduced me to a slurry, and him to a slurry, and combined the two and pressed all the water out and called it a day.
Or in other words instead of being 90% + 10% = 100% of a person I am (might be) 100% + 100% = 200% of a person and while that sounds funny it's not at all. It'd also be why I feel like shit.
The reason I'm thinking this is that I've always had hazel eyes. Whole life. So if I were '''normal''' I'd still have hazel eyes. But I'm thinking if you take hazel eyes, and blue eyes (that guy), and you slurry those, you probably get something wierd and muddy.
And some of this probably shows on my face, so Maddy hugs me and says it'll take some getting used to, which (I'm thinking) by the fucking gods it will, and she understands if I need a little time / space, just come find her. And she leaves. She didn't notice I was taller, but I was sitting down, so."
So I'm back now trying to remember what I was thinking the first time.
- Everything that isn't aking feels kind of num and floaty. Not sure if drugged or if just how this feels.
- Should probably test blood.
- Tested blood. Seems ordinary (coagulates, etc). Some worst-case senarios ruled out.
- Kind of feels like I'm dreaming, honestly. Just a kind of pervasive this-isn't-real type thing, even though it very is (see blood).
- Upon reflection being slurried with someone/thing two rungs down on the realness ladder — probably why. Fuck.
- Need to take a walk."
And that's where the entry ends, leaving you also numb and floaty, though that may be the result of you sitting in the same position unmoving for 30 minutes. And there's still more! You posit that the diary is slim for the sole reason that Ellery liked to cram all his words close together. At least Madrigal isn't waiting on you: she has busied herself with reading and jotting down the contents of the papers.
Richard, for his part, seems to be enjoying this. ?Astounding,? he keeps saying. ?Astounding. Astounding.?
"Is it?"
?Yes.?
You sigh and flip the page.
"Walk cleared things up, as it does usually. I can cope with this. No worse than execution, and about the same level of unexpected, and I coped with that, kind of.
Was looking for something to do with twitching hands, so checked pants pockets for string. Held a resolute hope to find string despite knowing I had no string. Found ordinary white string, see sample [there is cellu-tape, but no string under it]. Again, did not actually have string.
This was nothing to do with the magicians’ unvanishing— I have no string bound to me (obviously). Must [double underlined] investigate.
Played catch cradle on way back."
?Spontaneous legerdemain,? Richard muses over your shoulder. ?Fascinating.?
The next pages of the diary are filled with tables and diagrams and tiny, tiny handwriting and you admit it, your eyes are glazing over. You should put it away and read the rest later. You would've put it away and read the rest later, had the tent flap not just then opened.
Ellery walks in.
You're kidding! Ellery doesn't walk in. Ellery's very, very dead. It's only a pale and weedy and mud-eyed man wearing a flannel bathrobe. "Hi?" says the man. In Ellery's voice.
You gape.
Madrigal gapes as well, for two seconds, before rising furiously from her mountain and striding over to Ellery like she caught him breaking and entering. "You bastard!"
You gape.
"Maddie—"
"You bastard! What the fuck do you think you're doing to— to—" The speech Madrigal clearly had in her head is not going as planned. "Why do you have a bathrobe?"
"Long story. Uhh." Ellery cranes his head to look directly at you. You stare dumbly back. "That's the— that one's Lottie, right?"
"Look at me, you fucking—!"
"Hold on just a tic." Ellery darts past her (she turns in indignation) and, to your utter horror, walks over to you.
"Lottie?" he says nervously, and you fully and completely expect him to take you by the wrist and drag you through the floor into Hell, and/or start spewing blood from all orifices.
?Get a grip, Charlotte. This wasn't all that surprising.?
You nod imperceptibly.
?I mean, really. Given the circumstances of the so-called death—?
Ellery casts a quick glance towards Madrigal, then leans in too close to you. "…Is it possible, uh, that we f— we had sex? …Last night?"
See? He dragged you through the floor and you are in Hell right now.
>[1] Write-in.
about -- the events described in the diary are brand new to Drowned Quest-- I was still writing at this point for an audience of former Predux readers who had an emotional investment in Ellery and his helpful/annoying mental doppelganger That Guy, i.e. the guy getting absorbed on the Day of Reckoning. Notably, you are not this audience, so it may be more confusing than interesting. Possibly you also wish Ellery knew how to spell? (He also wishes this.) The good news is: we are right at the tail end of the Predux influence on the quest, and starting in Thread 6 / the start of Volume 2, the plot will start branching off in interesting new non-Ellery-centric directions. So sit tight!