"My apologies," said Deja Voodoo. "The rooms in my suite constantly shift position. Normally the room just inside the door is fairly stable as the foyer or anteroom, but it appears the archive has taken its place at the moment. Follow me." The Author walked forward and the papers shifted aside for him as he went, as if an invisible bubble of force surrounded him. Shaggy hastened to follow, and was somewhat disconcerted to find the papers closing in again behind him.
"The archive is my reference room," DVd continued as they plowed through the mass. Printouts, notes, you name it, I've even lost a PC or two in here. I've essential duplicated Adama's index in here for use when I'm not online. Of course, it's not as well organized. One of these days I've got to improve my filing system. Now come, we need to move straight onward from the front door if we hope to find the other one."
At that moment, the papers cleared from another doorway, opposite the one they had entered by. No door filled it, but the papers seemed to know not to intrude into the hallway beyond. The hallway led straight back towards another doorway. Halfway between the two doorways there was a cross corridor the same width and length as the one they were in. DVd stopped at the juncture.
"We are now in the very center of my suite," he said. "As you can see, both hallways end in a doorway at either end, leading to a square room. Four more square rooms of the same size occupy the area between not occupied by hallway. There is no access to these last rooms -- they are hermetically sealed off from the remainder of the suite. As their walls are impregnable, the only way into them is by 'porting, and if you don't know exactly where to 'port, you risk instant destruction by materialization within a solid object. Crude but effective security, backed up by other security measures whose nature I have no intention of revealing to you. Those rooms are where I keep my really big computers.
"Like the Crays?" asked Shaggy. "The source of your power?"
"I do not depend on computers for my power," sniffed DVd. "The computers are merely an enabling device allowing the creativity inherant in my mind to reach the areas chosen for its actualization via the Net. Everything I have accomplished could easily have been done without computers. It's just that no one would probably be reading it."
Shaggy did some quick figuring. "If you've got a room at both ends of each hallway and the space between is filled with more rooms, doesn't that leave nothing in the four corners of your suite? There must be more here than you've mentioned so far."
"Very astute, Shaggy, there is. An additional four rooms, each of them L-shaped, occupy those corners, though actually the limb of each L facing the interior of the suite is cut off, forming a closet or restroom or such. That's the basic layout. Follow, and I'll fill in the details."
DVd continued straight down the hallway toward the southern end of the suite. Passing through the doorway there, he and his guest entered the second of the four rooms that terminated the hallways. In the middle of it was a plain military cot with the foot towards the hall and the head towards the south wall. Dressers or cabinets occupied the corners of the room, closed doors the two side walls, and a large picture window the south wall.
"Bedroom," said DVd. Beyond the window was the usual airscape of swirling mists all the suites opened onto. DVd snapped his fingers, and the mists cleared, revealing empty air between the window and the great southern circle wall between the Concourse and the AddVenture. Another snap of the fingers and the circle wall seemed to fade away. Shaggy saw (and filmed) a kaleidoscope of changing imagery, mostly people doing things that would never get a G rating in the movie theaters. He recognized or half-recognized most of the people. Once, to his surprise, he even seemed to see himself, the figure of a coal black Jafar next to him, filming into the suite even as he filmed out from it.
"The AddVenture, of course," said DVd. "Many find its continually changing landscape disconcerting -- hence the wall and the mists to keep the chaos at bay and conceal it from the Backstage Ring. I myself am fascinated by it. Much better view than that of the Center, in my opinion. Though opinions differ." Seeing that his companion was showing signs of vertigo, DVd restored the view out the window to normal.
"The window never moves," DVd said, "although the room from which it opens often changes. As previously noted, the four end-of-hall rooms regularly shift places with each other, as do the four L-shaped corner rooms. Only the four sealed rooms are inherantly stable. However, the bedroom is the one that most often occupies this spot."
He moved to one side, motioning Shaggy to follow. "Through the door to the right," he went on, "in the first of the L-shaped corner rooms, is the master bath. However the rooms shift about, this one is always positioned in the same relationship to the bedroom. You will note," he added, as they entered, "that is is rather large for a bathroom, fully as wide as the bedroom, and longer. The door off to the right leads to a smaller room, formed in the cut off limb of the L. I have a sauna there."
Shaggy kept filming, noting that the floor and walls of the bathroom were completely tiled. Along the wall to the left of the door they had entered by were lined up a sink, toilet, bathtub and shower, in that order -- the tub and shower were not combined. Along the wall to the right were a laundry hamper, washer, dryer, and refridgerator. Then the door to the sauna.
"I don't really need to do laundry physically, or even eat," the Author noted, "but I like to keep things homey." He led the way through the sauna, which Shaggy found to be altogether unremarkable, and through another door.
"Now we're in the third hall-end room," said DVd. "This is the library, actually in its customary spot, though it is usually off the hallway opposite the archive, which as you know isn't the case today. Armchair, desklamp, walls lined with books, pretty ordinary setup."
"The outer wall isn't lined with books," Shaggy noted.
"Right, because that's where the picture window would be if the library happened to be along the south wall at present, which it isn't, rather than the west wall, which it is. And of course, sometimes the front door of the suite is there as well, when the library happens to be along the north wall. Sounds confusing, but you get used to it. Now then, the doorway to the right leads out to the cross hall. As for the one ahead of us -- well, we'll just have to see, won't we?" DVd went to the door in question and opened it.
It was another bathroom, smaller than the master one -- in fact, the size of the sauna they had been in earlier. Like the sauna, it occupied the cut off limb of one of the Ls. To their left were a sink and toilet. To their right was a combined shower/tub. Ahead of them was another door.
"If this is the second bath, then the guest room's ahead," said DVd, who moved ahead to open the door thereto.
The guest room was elegant. A king-sized double bed with silk sheets was the main feature. The walls were mirrors. Another mirror, rather disconcertingly, was suspended from the non-existent ceiling. There was a wet bar and a small fridge. Along the wall to the right was exercise equipment -- or what Shaggy at first took to be exercise equipment. Then he realized that it was designed for an entirely different sort of gymnastics...
"Again, more or less for appearance's sake," said DVd, affecting modesty. "I'm not the sexual glutton some Authors are, prefering more to read about that sort of thing than write it. But I might very well have someone up sometime who gets turned on by a piece of paper, and if I do... well, it makes sense to be prepared."
Beyond the exercise equipment space was cleared along the wall for another door, but there wasn't one. "Since the archive's on the other side of that wall at the moment there's no getting out this way," DVd apologized. "The archive can be entered only from the hallway, except on the rare occasion when, like now, it hosts the front door."
DVd snapped his fingers again, and he and Shaggy were back in the bedroom. The master bedroom that is, not the guest room they had been in a moment before. DVd walked over to the door opposite that to the master bath and opened it. "I've no idea what's behind this door at the moment," he said, pausing, "though the possibilities have definitely been narrowed. Come!" He threw the door wide and ushered Shaggy into a large office.
"Ah," DVd said. "This is where I work. Three computers, you'll note -- I like to have lots of backups, I'm kind of anal that way. All the printouts you see will eventually go into the archive, but I'm a bit behind at the moment. And the big diagram you see on the wall plots the episode locations of various Fruitbats, for whenever I get back to writing the Fruitbat Hunt thread."
"What about that easel with the huge list on it?" Shaggy asked.
"Suite list for Adama," DVd said. "I'm plotting the locations of all Authors who've written between two and nineteen episodes presently."
"There must be hundreds!" cried Shaggy.
"Indeed. It's more of a job than I anticipated. But I knew the job was dangerous when I undertook it. Thank T the two and unders have to make do with the Bullpen! Let's move on the the left, and the next L-limb. If this is the office, that should be my storage closet. Yep!"
The storage closet was piled high with boxes on one side, and a heap of other items on the other. A pathway between was clear to permit passage between the door to the office and the door to whatever. DVd led the way wherever.
"No mystery here," he said. "The only hall-end room left is the anteroom, which most often keeps company with the front door."
"But not today," Shaggy put in, before his guide could.
"Exactly. Note the chairs, in which people can wait when I'm not available to be seen. Which is most of the time, come to think of it. The Pac-Man table is there because I like Pac-Man."
"What's Pac-Man?" Shaggy asked.
"Kids," muttered DVd. "If it's not this year's game they've never heard of it. I suppose next you'll be asking me about the Pong screen."
"The what?"
"Skip it. To the left, of course, is the door to the hall. To the right is the spot that would be filled by the front door if this room were in the right position for the door to be there. And in front of us is the door to the remaing L-limb room. Let's go."
DVd now seemed impatient and out of sorts. Gee, he must really be attached to this Pac-thing, Shaggy thought. He hoped it wouldn't tempt the Author to pull a real Jafar on him.
The next room seemed to be a coat closet, with a large wardrobe to the right containg additional coats. DVd smiled, his spirits apparently back up. "Go through there," he said, pointing to the wardrobe, "and you end up in Narnia."
"Cool," said Shaggy, feigning enthusiasm. He hadn't the guts to confess he didn't know what "Narnia" was, either. DVd was already opening the last door.
The remaining corner room proved to be a living room and entertainment center -- of a rather more innocent sort than that Shaggy had seen in the guest room. Couches, big screen TV, kitchenette, yadda yadda. Blank place in the wall to the left for a door when the next room in the sequence wasn't the archive. But it was, so no door.
"End of tour," said Deja Voodoo. "Thank you for coming, good luck in your future endeavors, don't bug the parrot on the way out. And now, if you don't mind, I'd like to kick back as a piece of paper for a while." The Author snapped his fingers, and the suite faded out.
Parrot? thought Shaggy. What parrot?
Somewhere, as if from a great distance, he heard a strident voice saying "Geez, Jafar, where'd you dig this one up?"
And he thought he heard DVd reply "Patience, Iago..."
Then the voices too faded. Boy, Shaggy thought, I hope that's not his chosen butler... Many Authors had Artificial Intelligences in their suite to serve as butlers, maids, hosts, or whatever for visitors. Usually they manifested as female and buxom, but DVd was weird, so who knew?
Shaggy and his camera now found themselves back in the central corridor of Level 13. Or were they? All the levels were superficially much alike, so DVd could have transported him to a different one. He glanced at the doorway that should have led to DVd's suite to confirm where he was.
It wasn't DVd's. He wasn't where he had started from, obviously. But he did know where he was now, at least.
Go back - Go to the parent episode.
Wed May 23 16:09:42 2001
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