Chapter Text
When the universe was smaller, before the constellation of so many worlds had begun to drift apart to make space for new worlds born out of the force of gravity between them and forcing new patterns in dizzying kaleidescopic turns, it had been easier to get a damn signal.
Here on the half-sunken sandstone floor among the low rolling dunes that surround Essure, leaning over crossed legs to hold the drooping antennae at some miraculous angle that will cause the static dragging faintly at his billowing shirt to resolve into sights and sounds.
Hello everybody, and welcome back to another episode of everyone’s third favorite show...
The signal cuts out again, in fits and spurts, and Bdubs curses under his breath. It sounds like reruns anyway, so he gives up on the antenna and the signals and goes down to the riverbank.
The first iteration had been an accident, mostly.
He had been digging clay from out the riverbed, finally fed up with looking at the uneven splotches and even more fed up with the intricately woven stones that made up Timberstone’s walls. It was supposed to be a break from excavating the lion carved into the cliffside just outside the castle walls, but as he piled the clay it had taken on an amusingly person-shaped form. His hands had itched with some organic desire, and he wasted an hour or two half-assedly poking and prodding it into a poor self-portrait, a spare bandana tied around its forehead to seal the deal. When night fell, he had left it there and climbed up to the little guard tower that served as his bedroom.
In the morning, he clambered down the long ladder and turned toward the storage house in the center of the courtyard to drop off some of the clay and gather tools to make his way back to the cliffside. It was a quiet morning, as it always was in this world, save for the faint noise from some pottery lesson warbling from the already old television in the corner. He had lived in others before, but it had been a long time since his last journey. No one but him had ever lived here, not in any of the several kingdoms, for all its thrones and feast halls and gathering places, all half-finished and unused. The work was enough, to have made them, to have been making them.
Strange, then, to spy a pale shadow lurking in the hedge maze - taller than a sheep and not half as stupid moving, turning a corner with leisurely precision.
"Who the hell do you think you are!" he said, slamming one hand down on the interloper's shoulder, forcing it to turn around.
Too late, he recognized the red fabric around its forehead, and found himself face to face with himself.
"And who the hell do you think you are?" said the lopsided version of him in a rough facsimile of his own voice, as if he had been recovering from a terrible illness.
Bdubs, flesh and blood, sputtered. "I'm me, thank you very much. I don't know who sent you here but I want none of it -"
"You left me out to dry by the river," the thing with his face said, cutting him off. On inspection it was easier to spot the differences, the too-smooth skin with the same pale blue undertones as its shirt. Washed out, like excavated clay.
"Well you do - you do look half-baked," he said, giving the thing a dramatic once over.
It moved toward him and on instinct Bdubs shoved it with a hand to its chest. His hand sunk into the still-damp material, and the thing toppled easily, whatever it was about to say lost as it hit the ground with a thud, crumbling into indistinct lumps of clay.
On the television, a pottery show was warbling in and out of tune, static cutting in at the edges. An old rerun, Etho struggling to make a pit kiln. Logs over thatch over clay, surrounded on all sides, lit and tended until it smoldered out, leaving hardened vessels behind.
...clay items in the hole like that, then fill it up with straw. It takes eight straw pieces and eight pieces of wood...
Half baked had been right, but even in Timberstone's infancy the beginnings of the orchard gave him all he needed to repeat the experiment he hadn't intended to commit to. Intricacies of delicate contraptions and wires were usually beyond his skill or interest, but in the throes of complex carvings the siren call of a living thing compelled him to movement, and after a half-hearted fruitless afternoon on the lion carving he steeled his nerves and returned to the river. He carried a few logs with him, to stave off the night and the cold, for fire.
The sculpting was easier this time, working from his reflection in the still water, shaving flat planes with the edge of his pick to map out broad shapes, then returning with its tip to carve the finer details of his face, ridges under his eyes and the valleys on either side of his nose. Before he had worked only with his hands, but that had been too much, not enough, too little precision and too much of himself in all the wrong ways. When he wanted to smooth the tool marks away he dipped wool in the river and dragged it over his own inert features. The wool rags left new textures not quite like skin but an impression of something once alive, like faint scars. He didn't touch them and he didn't speak. Not every thought needed to be broadcast.
The moon had risen by the time he was satisfied enough to haul the statue into a shallow pit, much more difficult than empty vessels or jugs. Dried wheat would do for insulation, and he laid a slab on top before setting it alight. It burned all night, winding down to a smouldering ash as the sun began to peek over the horizon.
A hand wrapped around his wrist, startling him out of the reverie.
“Judas fucking priest,” Bdubs shouted, but he shifted his grip to tug the arm up and haul the living statue back to the surface. It groaned, a creaking shifting sound, and when its knees hit dirt its mouth opened and bunches of dry brown wheat fell out.
“Judas fucking priest,” it said, flatly. It coughed again, and a few more bits of wheat fell out of its mouth. “Judas fucking priest,” it said again, with more verve, shaking its head to clear off the ashes.
“Watch your mouth,” Bdubs said. “You can’t just - you scared the hell out of me, you gotta be careful what you say around here.”
The thing with his face looked at him, and in the dawning morning light Bdubs could tell the difference, warmer tones of hardened clay that could pass as flesh if he didn’t know better. It moved smoothly, adjusting the bandana with only a little trouble, as if it didn’t know where the back of its head was until discovering it for the first time.
“So what’s your freaking problem?” it asked, tilting its head.
Bdubs flinched and then bristled, shoulders up around his ears. A person wasn’t meant to hear their own voice like that. “You’re the freak who’s made out of clay. This is all new to me, boy, don’t you start with me. I didn’t know you’d come out like this.”
“Like this?” Its hands came up to its face, although its gaze stayed locked on Bdubs with an uncomfortable intensity, an overgrown game of peekaboo. “I’m you. You’re me?” Bdubs began to answer, but then it continued. “No, you’re being rude. That’s a you problem, I am. We are. ”
“I am B-double-O, you are a statue that accidentally came to life! And we cannot do this out here, you’re coming with me.” He grabbed the thing’s elbow and hefted it to its feet, briefly resisting the urge to smudge away the sootmarks dusting its cheeks and forehead before dragging it through the gate and into the storage room.
“Goodness sakes,” it said on being tossed inside, but it immediately took a fascination with the television set that Bdubs couldn’t shake. “And what’s this old thing?”
Bdubs snorted. “Of course you go right to that, it’s how you got here. Sort of - anyway, that’s what I’m telling you about watching what you say. It’s one thing to broadcast yourself on purpose, but you can get caught up in all kinds of interesting moments if you’re not careful, and then everybody will know whatever damn fool thing you’re putting out into the world. Angles are worse in small spaces, at least, so we’ve got that going for us.”
“I want to watch this,” the thing said, pouting mouth and upturned eyes that made Bdubs a little sick to see - no way had that ever worked, and yet he had to steel his resolve not to mirror the familiar expression back even as he harangued it for not listening.
He had tried to explain about the broadcasts, that other worlds could tune into this one just like you could tune into other worlds, but it ignored the warnings and wanted to go see them itself.
"What's stopping you? Take one of those invites and leave me alone if you're gonna be difficult, for all I care."
It blinked at him and snatched up the topmost paper near the door. "Yes, I can read," it said just as the insult occurred to Bdubs. "UHC?"
"Bloodsports," Bdubs said. "Fight to the death, gladiator style, whole production of it. You wanna take my spot?"
"Our spot," it said, flipping the paper over. "Are we good at fighting?"
"I'm freaking great at it!"
"Oh, boy," it said, but it was beginning to smile. "Can I die like you?"
Bdubs paused. "Are you - can you - are you wanting to find out?" He thought of the clay still lying between the hedges and winced. "The real question is can you come back after."
"Well, I know how we can find out. You better tune in," it said, and it had the gall to wink before it vanished.
He had seen people leave like that before, but he hadn't really thought about the thing with his face and voice and bad manners as a real person until that moment. Escape - true freedom to start over - was what distinguished people from common mobs, more than even the semi-deathlessness of respawning in easier worlds.
He anxiously checked the television for days, looking for the right channel and caught himself dying in familiar inglorious fashion. But it hadn’t been quite the same, the way his body had disintegrated not into vapor but ash and dust. Somehow, on the TV, it was easier to think of that body as his own, even if his memory of the event was only second-hand. As far as the universe was concerned, it was him, and it had taken his place and his station.
Unsettled, he pushed at the buttons on the side of the TV and flipped the channel to anything else.
