<meta name="LineWrap" content="true"><TITLE>SR_Bk1 0118</TITLE><A HREF="SR_Bk1-0119.txt">Next (Page 119)</A><BR> Then one night she was meditating with Injure, when all of a sudden she found herself on the highway in Maximum Ice--not the miniature from the suite, but a full-sized, honest-to-goodness highway--exactly like the one Injure had so precisely modeled.<P><P>She'd been working in the "Brandylake Times" suite earlier, and was still wearing her business suit/skirt costume. (Brandylake Times was a kind of nostalgic newspaper office at the edge of an idyllic lake.)<P><P>Looking around, Dizappacha saw that she was in the middle of a vast, snowy wasteland. And she was starting to get real cold, real fast. She yelled for Injure, but there was no response. And her voice echoed in an unsettling way.<P><P>She stared up at a big orange sign that arched over the roadway. But the writing on it, in a strange alphabet, made no sense to her. She had asked Injure about the sign on several occasions, but he would get agitated and say that it was only "for effect".<P><P>Nothing to do but start walking. Which way, though?<P><P>Injure had often spoke of Rillekon's Road--a highway that passes through the massive States of Reality. <P><P>In the Suite diorama, the road was built in false perspective--getting smaller and smaller the closer it got to the wall. Going the other way, the road got bigger and bigger, till it got obscured by a scale model snowhill.<P><P>But from here, both ways stretched off equally into the aching waste. And Dizappacha was starting to come to her senses--here, she was no longer under the influence of Injure Bodoni. And she started to see what a fool he had made of her. So she headed toward where the wall would be, toward where the scale model road departed into infinity. It made sense to Dizappacha to move away from Injure, no matter the level of abstractness.<P><P>She took the first of many steps down Rillekon's Road.<P><P>--------------------------<P>CHAPTER 29<P>--------------------------<P><P>"I told you it'd be cool!" Nevrippa Den said, behind the wheel of a big truck. <P><P>V Sincein sat beside her. He regarded his fellow Overwhelm Primate. She wore nothing but shades of pink, as a matter of principle. Kind of a skirt, kind of a dress, kind of a sweater, kind of a vest. She had a little bit of hair in a weird pattern on her head, dirty blond. Her tiny, naturally attractive five-foot frame was a frightening powerhouse. Indeed, she was one of Overwhelm Associates' most formidable warriors.<P><P>This was part of the reason V Sincein wasn't trying too hard to dissuade Nevrippa from her ill-timed campaign to steal all manner of treasures and art masterpieces while reality was crashed. He tried to explain to her there'd be plenty of time for looting after they returned to base and got a handle on the situation, but she wouldn't have anything of it.<P><P>"But aren't these masterpieces screwed up?" V Sincein asked. Indeed, the reality crash seemed to be especially adverse to works of art, all of which were twisted and altered to some degree or another. Scary stuff.<P><P>"I like the way they took the knockout punch. It's awesome!" Nevrippa said.<P><P>"But the others must be worried about us."<P><P>V didn't like how that sounded. He sounded like a loser. Here was Nevrippa Den, living in the moment, as he had always strived for. But he was unable to match her pace.<P><P>As a radio DJ, V had gotten into a musical mystery perpetrated by supergroup The Anger Friends. They had a concept album, "Commonday", which contained numerous allusions to some sort of horrible ancient secret. V got involved in the frenzy to figure the riddle out, and was the first to solve it. Problem was, it turned out to be a very real and powerful ancient force. The Anger Friends had thought it was all a joke.<BR><A HREF="SR_Bk1-0119.txt">Next (Page 119)</A>