Demon Seed, or, Djinnesis

Back in 2001, I made a deal with the world's two most powerful evil mages, for us not to mess with each other. One mage broke the deal last month. Now, I guess the other has to do it too.

• The first to break the deal was MANIC 6, a time traveller from the future. MANIC sent chaos entities into my own past. Maybe he was trying to mess with someone else's past, but he got me too. And in the end, he paid for $#@!ing around with time.
• The next dealbreaker would be Vesper, an immortal entity of some sort. Everything Thanos ever did to me in the Marvel Universe, Vesper did to me here. In particular, much of our Galaxy has seen me appear as Kid Vesper, since Vesper decided to briefly abandon his Earthly life last year. He never did tell me what he was up to, but I'm about to find out...

I get a visit from a guy named Linus van Pelt, who says he's with the Council of White Mages. Kind of like Lucianus Autonomus, only not quite as much in the spotlight.

• Linus is just a bit older than I am, and looks like the famous Peanuts character grown up.
• He even wears a jacket with a detachable blue flannel lining. He says, that's his security blanket.
• Oh, but the blanket has powers. Whenever Linus rolls it up into a scroll and then unrolls it, it will tell him one true and useful thing about someone. Linus has taken "Scrollerkin" as a mage name.
• The blanket says, Urr is coming back from the dead!
  • Urr, of course, destroyed the Earth back in 1999. I helped kill him then, and the Earth got better, yay Earth.
  • But Urr himself is like the ultimate demon in our recent Earthling mythology. So, power over him can be used for mystic purpose. Which fact has not been lost on evil mages.
• Linus is collecting things that might help stop Urr. He once asked the blanket about me, because I am known among mages. It told him I have power over the dead, so he came to me.
  • Unfortunately, the information's a bit out of date; Death put me on waivers last year after I lost control of the Norse father god. Really.
• Linus also has an alien artifact with him. It's a floating metal orb, and he calls it "Eeeee". He says it was created to track "Rrrrr". Urr, that is. It can only make five sounds, but it can turn pages and press a keyboard like the best of us, so communication is feasible.

Well, we know that Urr is coming back, but we don't know who's bringing him. Fortunately (so to speak), I have a very large Enemies List, many of whom have power enough to shake the afterlife. So, we start asking about each of them.

• It doesn't take long for us to get down the list to Vesper. The blanket gives us a very blunt answer: "You need to put him in a bottle as soon as possible."

All very well and good, but:

• Why a bottle? Well, Vesper does look kind of like a genie ("djinn", actually). Maybe bottles are his weakness.
• How do we find Vesper? I was the executor of his estate once, so I do have contact information for him.
• What do we use for a bottle? I'm stumped, and so is Linus... but Eeeee knows of a cavern in Arizona that has enough silicate content in its walls to qualify, if we roll a boulder up against it.
• How do we get Vesper there? Linus is stumped, and so is Eeeee... and all I can think of is, there must be some sort of really great power object in there to attract him. Which, in this case, would be The Blanket of Linus, because not only has it been great to us so far, it's (of course) legendary. Given the urgency, Linus is willing to put up his blanket as bait... but only if he stays there with it.
• How do we trap Vesper there? Eeeee can move a boulder up against the entry. Once that's done, Vesper will be like a genie in a bottle. The cork may or may not be tight, but he won't be able to move it.
• Does Linus get out afterwards? Hopefully, yes; he's been hanging around mages enough to learn a teleport spell. He'll have to put up with his obnoxious sister afterward (I know the feeling), but it will take him well away from there.

So, we did it! And it worked as planned... to a point. We just forgot to ask one question:

• What if Vesper brings Urr? It's just Eeeee and myself outside the cavern to defend its entrance.

But fortunately, when Urr died, we Champions of Death stowed him down among the dead men. And it's not a nice place. By now, with any luck, he's become their alien squid bitch.

So I block the cavern entrance, and say, in the best Champion of Death voice I can work up without being actively employed by Death Herself: "DEAD CREATURE! REPORT FOR JUDGMENT!"

And Urr bows down, thank God. (16 April 2004)

Postlude 1: The excitement's over, so I've gone back to my latest project: an appearance in a stage play about the Greenland Rebellion.

Then, backstage... An ancient but quite large old man is asking about a summoning; he says he's sure that someone here was involved in the summoning of a destructive alien creature. Well, I still have zombie-Urr sitting around my house like a puppy, so maybe I'd better talk to the guy.

• He calls himself "Genesis". He says he's from the same race as Vesper, and that race is the Nephilim giants of the Bible.
• Genesis did the traditional Bible thing: he interbred with humans. The more he reproduced, the more human he got: he shrank (somewhat) and aged (much). He's still immortal, but nothing can ever make him young again.
• Vesper did things the other way: he saved his seed for himself, the Onanite way. So he retained his inhuman power and stature.
• Anyway, Genesis is claiming kinship rights over Vesper. Fine with me; the longer we leave Vesper in that cave, the more likely something bad will happen.

So, we let Genesis release Vesper. By the laws of their kind, that makes Vesper the djinn-slave of Genesis until a service is performed. And Genesis has no intent of letting this contract expire. One villain down... (20 April 2004)

Postlude 2: There's still zombie-Urr to get rid of. As long as he stays on Earth, he's a trouble magnet. Genesis puts him in a small binding bottle (the djinni can do that), but he still suggests we repatriate Urr to his own kin. And that would be the Tripods from Outer Space.

• There are two Tripods I trust; they used to bodyguard for me. I even got declared the godparent of their children.
• So we arrange a handover. We avoid Spaceport Hennepin, because it's a bit too popular among the aliens. My contacts prefer western Indiana instead, because the western fringe of Indiana is more quiet than practically anywhere, even Hennepin, Illinois.

And that makes two more villains down. It's been a pretty strenuous year so far, but at least I'm starting to clean up my Enemies List. (20 April 2004)

Postlude 3: Showtime! Perhaps I've mentioned my latest project: an appearance in a stage play about the Greenland Rebellion. Ironically, there's no Me part in the play, even though I had a pretty big role in the real thing; here, I'm portraying Ellipsis. As Ellipsis, I get to put on some short-range magnetic flying gear, fly around the stage, and read the Declaration of Rebellion. And we've hit the road to England! (20 April 2004)

• We're appearing at some kind of multi-stage festival. During my time off, I find some other plays.
• So, I'm watching the premiere of a play with trolls who can shrink their penises when they don't need them, but they're still pretty large. Their human overseer tries to grow his, but just gets one out his belly button. That's when the ushers realize, they should be removing children.
• I follow the kids out, and find a play about Harry Potter and company playing out their next adventure. They're having a Mass!
  • Well, of course, Mass started with Druids! So did Easter, for that matter. And every culture which has harvests, has a concept of a god who dies and then comes back just like the crops do, so the Druidic Mass at Hogwarts looks a lot like any Palm Sunday Mass.
  • But their Mass is like a musical, with a song "The Time Has Come", and liturgical dance with palms and swords. Yes, it's Harry Potter, the Interactive Musical!
• Harry, of course, is swaying a young girl away from evil by example of his pure innocence. The ceremony ends with a pyrotechnic Happy Bear. Hell if I know why there's a Happy Bear here, but I do know that Happy Bears really exist, and they go where they want.
• Then the company gets sent to a very small island, and I'm there with them! We survive on grains of rice that grow there, vegetables that birds bring, and lunchmeat that's been infused in my palms. (What, I have Generate Lunchmeat as a superpower?) Suddenly I'm not hungry, but everyone else sings "What She Wants".
• That's where the author pops in... as a giant face in the sky. And she says, "You're making things too silly! Get out of my story!" And there I am, back at the theatre complex. Huh?
• ... Oh, I get it. For some people, it's not just a story, it's real life. Every story is real life to its characters. In cosmology, they blame it on pocket universes.
• I've met a kid who can banish people to pocket universes. Now, I guess I've just met a grown woman who does that too - and it's the Harry Potterverse, where magic really exists, but all the grownups are either evil or negligent, the meddling kids always save the day, and the important thing is whose team gets to decorate the cafeteria for the Prom. Or dining commons for the graduation ceremony, or whatever.
• But the Harry Potterverse has no Happy Bears or mystic powers over lunchmeat... unless I'm there, because I have to live with silliness like that all the time. Well, excuse me for having such a silly life. (27 April 2004)