It was a dark and gloomy night (it rarely stormed in the Backstage, that manner of weather being customarily excluded by the Ringwalls). Somewhere else dire occurrences were occurring in threads that bid fair to alter the governing makeup of the BE AddVenture. In contrast, within the suite of Deja Voodoo all was snug and warm. Aside from the Archive Room, it was a clean, well-lighted place. The cleanliness had been long in coming. Events in the Marco Polo thread had left the suite in a shambles, and the occupant had been occupied for many months in restoring everything to his satisfaction. During this period he had played small part in the course of events without, with few exceptions, among them that of providing the Backstage with a creation myth. He took particular pride in that one. For the most part, he disturbed no one beyond the confines of his habitation, nor did those beyond disturb him. Rather, he left all such affairs to his female counterpart.
Such a bucolic state of affairs, alas, could not continue indefinitely. It is a fallacy that what you don't know can't hurt you, as certain outside events were about to demonstrate.
Deja Voodoo, upon this particular night, was in his bedchamber studying a certain esoteric volume of arcane knowledge that need not concern us here.*
His first intimation of a disturbance in the ether took place when one among the aforementioned dire threads blew out the power generators throughout the Service and Resort Sector of the Backstage Ring. Translation: the lights went out.
The reader looked up from his book in mild annoyance, while elsewhere in the suite a rustle of feathers disturbed the sudden inky darkness.
"Jafar!" screeched a raspy, frightened voice. "Jafar!"
"Morph," Deja Voodoo reprimanded. The rustling stopped. "I am not in my Jafar persona; neither are we in public. Kindly refrain from any bird-like manifestation, lest I determine to take the advice in this volume seriously."
A squeak of alarm ensued. Shortly thereafter, a small globule, palely luminescent, floated down the corridor from the other end of the suite and came to hover before the Author's face.
"Better," said Deja Voodoo. "Though the illumination is insufficient to read by."
"Sorry," replied the globule, and turned into Tinkerbell. Her pixie dust illuminated the pages to the required degree, and the Author continued to read.
"Please," tinkled Tinkerbell after a time.
Deja Voodoo looked up, and asked "Yes?" And, now noticing the creature's new form, thought: Odd. Morph seldom takes that shape unless--
"Please, master, I'm scared."
"Wherefore? Is it the lack of light? But you are providing your own."
"My light is limited. The Archive goes hunting when the lights go out. I'm afraid it will catch me."
"Very well, Morph. I had intended to wait for the technicians to restore the power, as it is, after all, night time. Yet I cannot permit my servants to consume each other." Retrieving a slender wooden wand from the bedside table, The Author's hand described a complex gesture, as simultaneously the Author's lips uttered the word Luminos!"
This gesture provided Deja Voodoo's second intimation of something amiss. The Author's eyes had but a moment to register that the doorway opposite his cot was occupied by a shuffling mass of rustling papers, whose sound had somehow been muted until this moment. The archive, it was apparent, was indeed on the prowl.
The next moment the papers were consumed in a raging fireball, from which a high-pitched wailing was emitted as it retreated rapidly back to the Archive Room.
"Odd," said Deja Voodoo, with a slight contraction of the eyebrows. "That spell should not have been nearly so powerful."
It was far from the only oddity. Even as she uttered her observation, she realized that her voice was pitched more highly than usual, and, indeed, had been for some time. It took but a moment more to realize she was now a woman.
A matter for concern.
"Morph," she said. "Who do I look like to you?"
"DJ-2," tinkled the fairy. "But you haven't taken that form in months. What's going on, Boss?"
"I don't know," she replied. "I wonder if it has something to do with my sudden surge of power?" She sat up in bed, swinging her shapely legs lightly to the edge as her ample, gravity-defying bosom jiggled distractingly before her. (It was larger than she remembered having designated it. Possibly other Authors had redefined her, or perhaps the mere act of living in the BE AddVenture led to eventual statistic-inflation. An issue to be addressed at a subsequent point, perhaps -- at the present, there was a conundrum of greater moment to consider.) Standing, she closed her eyes and entered a meditative trance.
Yes. It was confirmed. She was indeed more powerful. In point of fact, she was, in her own estimation, roughly twice as powerful as she usually was. It was as if she had access to her full complement of orgone again, a store of power ordinarily shared with --
"D.J. Woohoo," she stated. "Something must have happened to D.J. Woohoo!"
That, she surmised, must account for her own alteration in sex. Deja Voodoo shifted his corporeal manifestation among a variety of shapes, one of which mirrored that of D.J. Woohoo, has female counterpart. D.J., by contrast, preferred to manifest in but the one feminine form. Therefore, it was unsurprising that the sudden augmentation of his own orgone by hers had tipped the balance in favor of his female manifestation.
The principal question, however, the issue as to what had become of D.J. Woohoo, remained unaddressed.
Deja Voodoo proceeded to address this concern. Extending her consciousness outward from her suite, she probed and quested for the present location of her counterpart. Farther and farther afield her mind reached, extending throughout the Backstage Ring, then the Center Lands, then, turning in the other direction, all the far-flung, meandering threads of the AddVenture, even as far as the fuzzy, unexplored Periphery. Nowhere did she detect any sign of the presence of the Backstage Troubleshooter. Nowhere except --
"Here," she realized. "D.J. is in me."
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