Pr(1)
Cooper was having the same dream again: the one where he was standing on the top of a mountain being worshipped by a massive crowd. Only it was even clearer this time. He could actually the individual voices of the people screaming his name. At the end of the dream, he raised his hands. The crowd fell silent. He opened his mouth to speak. Then woke up.
Weird as it was, Cooper was not at all bothered by the dream the next morning. Nor was he at all worried to find himself in strange hotel room with no memory of how he got there. After all, Cooper had plenty of experience waking up in strange hotel rooms, especially when he was hungover, which he definitely was that morning. Also, it only took him a minute or so to figure out he was in the Presidential Suite at the San Pedro Grand Hilton. (It said so on the stationery.) And while that might be a strange place to wake up normally, this wasn’t even the first time Cooper had been magically transported to that particular hotel in the last week.
Similarly, the fact that the suite around him was completely trashed - the end tables overturned, the coffee table smashed, the wallpaper shredded - didn’t phase Cooper in the slightest. Nor was he terribly bothered by the discovery that his left hand was cut and swollen, and his face, clothes and bed sheets were all caked with dried blood. No, the thing that managed to rattle Cooper that morning, as the fog of beer and Indian food slowly lifted from his brain, was the realization that his duffel bag - the one with $199,900 in non-consecutive hundreds in it - was missing.
Cooper searched the suite three times over with no success. He did find a jagged, blood-covered crack in the bathroom mirror that appeared to be a good match for the gash on his left hand. That obviously solved the mystery of the bloody bed sheets - probably also the mystery of who trashed his hotel room - but since there was still no sign of the missing duffel bag, his investigation was forced to continue.
The door of the Presidential Suite led to a long, narrow stone hallway full of heavy wooden doors, none of which Cooper remembered at all. That hallway turned out to be insane. He knew one of those doors probably led back to the big-ass King Arthur room with the Indian food buffet, but the first one he tried led to a bowling alley, the second to a sauna, the third to an old-timey ice cream parlor, and so forth. As Cooper would find out later, all the doors in the hallway were like that. The whole place was like a dream home designed by a third grader.
Eventually, Cooper found the door that led back to the King Arthur room. It was mostly just as he remembered it, only the Indian food buffet was gone, having been replaced by a slightly smaller breakfast buffet - eggs, biscuits, sausage, bacon and a waffle bar - which probably would have smelled delicious if he wasn’t hungover. The buffet was not the only thing on the table that morning, however. Right next to it, in front of the chair in which Amelia had sat the night before, there was now a large piece of red felt. Cooper’s duffel bag was sitting on the felt, as were all the context of the bag, each of them laid out nice and neat on the felt,, including the individual sleeves of hundreds.
“Are you alright?” a musical voice just behind Cooper asked at precisely that second.
“Jesus Christ!” he said, nearly jumping out of shoes. “Can you stop doing that?”
“Sorry,” Amelia said. “My mother used to say I had the feet of a burglar. What happened to your hand?”
She pointed to Cooper’s left hand. The hand itself was fine now - Cooper had healed it with the snake stick while exploring the hallway - but he hadn’t yet bothered to clean up all the dried blood.
“Oh that,” Cooper said. “It’s nothing. Little mishap in the bathroom. Hey, did you take my duffel bag?”
“You gave it to me last night. So I could check it for treasures, remember?”
“Right,” Cooper said, although he didn’t remember at all. “How’s that going?”
“Almost finished,” Amelia said. “You know I have some healing supplies in my workshop.”
“I’m really fine. So how much longer until I can take all my stuff back?”
“I’m done with all this,” Amelia said of the objects on the table. “The only thing I haven’t identified yet is the staff. May I?”
Cooper followed Amelia’s gaze to the snake stick. It suddenly occurred to him that she had changed her clothes. The day before she’d been wearing a bomber jacket over her flight suit. Now she had on a long red robe that was covered in stars and weird blockey symbols. She also had her notebook in one hand and a pair of long metal tongs in the other.
“Go ahead,” Cooper said. As soon as he agreed, Amelia began using the tongs like a pair of calipers, taking measurements from the snake stick and jotting them down in her notebook.
“So what exactly is it that you’re doing?” Cooper asked mildly.
“That’s an excellent question,” Amelia said. “I know we talked a bit about treasures last night. If you don’t mind asking, how much of that conversation do you remember?”
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Cooper cast his mind back to the night before, trying to recall as much as he could. After some calculation, Cooper concluded that his memory of that conversation was precisely zero percent. He was drawing a total blank.
“I could probably use a refresher.”
“Alright then,” Amelia said. “The short version is that treasures are normal objects that have been imbued with magic. Usually they’re helpful, but sometimes they can be neutral or actively harmful. So identifying any treasures you may be carrying is an important first step in…”
Amelia trailed off. She was staring at her notebook with dawning horror, exactly the way you wouldn’t want a doctor to look at your x-rays.
“What is it?” Cooper finally demanded.
“I don’t know,” Amelia said. “I must have made a mistake. Would you mind giving me ten minutes to go double-check a few things?”
“If you’re going to give me bad news I’d rather hear it now.”
“I’m sorry,” Amelia said. “I doubt very much that there is any bad news. It’s just that identifying treasures isn’t always an exact science, and I wouldn’t want to tell you something wrong. Also, you haven’t had breakfast yet, and as I you may recall, I generally find it’s best to have conversations like this on a full stomach. Oh, and I almost forgot. There’s a surprise waiting for you on the badminton court.”
Cooper stared at Amelia with open disbelief.
“There’s a badminton court?!”
* * *
Cooper would have been just fine with one of those chintzy little back-yard sets people bring to the family reunion. What he found instead was an actual, professional badminton court, with thick steel poles for the net, a rubber floor with painted lines on it, and birdies with real feathers on them instead of that cheap plastic shit. Like you could have easily played the World Championship on that court and no one would have said a word. That’s how nice it was.
But the other surprise - the one that mattered - was who was on the court. It was Geek 1. Scuffed and bruised, covered in cow blood and grape jelly, but still alive, and in relatively good condition considering he had just spent a solid week in the Bullpen. And he wasn’t alone. There were 3 other Geeks with him. Cooper assumed they must be the three he created during his fight with the Cowfucker, though he didn’t immediately recognize their faces. They, too, were covered in blood and grape jelly, but still in mostly good condition considering.
Cooper would have liked to say something clever or interesting, but what he said instead was, “where the fuck have you been?” Then he went over and gave Geek 1 a hug.
“You scared the shit out of me, you know that?” Cooper complained, looking with motherly distaste at the caked jelly and dirt covering Geek 1’s body. “Come on. Let’s get you assholes cleaned up.”
When Amelia finally found them it was about 45 minutes later. Cooper was back in his hotel suite. Geeks 1, 3 and 4 were sitting quietly around the dinner table in bathrobes with the San Pedro Hilton logo on them, patiently waiting for their hair to dry. Cooper, meanwhile, was in the shower with Geek 5, stripped to the waist, carefully scrubbing away at the blood and jelly with a loofah.
“There you are,” Amelia said. “I’ve been waiting for you.”
“Oh shit,” Cooper replied, putting the loofah down. “Sorry. I totally lost track of time.”
“So I take it these fellows are with you?” Amelia said of the gladiators.
“Hell yes,” Cooper said. “These are my boys. How the hell’d they get in here?”
“Good question. All I can tell you is I found them milling about in the great room this morning. My best guess is they came through the archway sometime during the night. I just put them in the badminton court to keep them out of the way.”
“Well whatever happened, it’s good news,” Cooper said, picking up the loofah again. “I was worried sick about these guys.”
“Grand,” Amelia said. “So I’ve finished my research. I’m ready to have our little talk whenever you are.”
“Oh yeah. I forgot all about that. Would you mind if we do that tomorrow? I promised the boys I’d teach them how to play badminton.”
“If you don’t mind, I would prefer if we did it today.”
“But what’s the hurry?’ Cooper demanded as he scrubbed Geek 5’s back. “You said yourself I don’t have to do shit for like a week.”
“I’m not sure if that’s exactly how I put it,” Amelia allowed. “but yes, I remember. Unfortunately it seems I spoke too soon. Now I think it would be better if we spoke right away.”
“What for? Is there bad news?”
“I wouldn’t want to say for sure that it’s bad. It could be good news for all I know. The point is we ought to talk.”
“But why?” Cooper demanded again. “If something bad is going to happen just tell me.”
“Mister Smith, could you please indulge me on this? I promise I won’t take up any more of your valuable time than I have to. But please, as soon as it’s convenient, let’s talk.”
Amelia turned to leave. “And let me know if you want me to reset your hotel room,” she added.
* * * * *
Name: Cooper of Vancouver
Gender: Male
Affiliation: None
Age at Entry: 29
Current Level: The Labyrinth (1)
Jing: 10/10
Qi: 14/14
Shen: 0
Life #: 2
Status: Cursed (3)
