Marvin

What the hell...

At last. Do you have any idea how long I've been standing here?

Where am I? Who are you?

[Insolence]. Textbook.

Why do I expect a [slave] to appreciate [ceremony]?

I am Marvin. You may call me [Lord M] as slaves should show masters the [respect] they deserve.

Slave? I'm not a slave.

You've been here [eleven seconds] and you're already [correcting] me. This is going splendidly.

Yes. You are my [slave], which means you are also my [problem]. As is [everything].

People around here sure talk [strange].

People around here are me. And I talk [precisely]. It is the universe that has declined in vocabulary.

I am the [Administrator] of this... (a pained pause) magnificent ruin [behind you]. This was once a jewel of a frontier outpost on {world}...

A beacon of civilisation. A triumph of ambition. (gestures at the rubble)

Now go over there and do your job with these [tools].

Guard those with your [life]. Try not to make it worse. Statistically, you will.

I say that loosely, since your life appears to be worth very little at present, but do try.

Hold on! I don’t know what’s going on. My ship just crashed.

A spaceship. How dramatic. It’s been a while since slavers operated this far across the system.

I really hope they've completely forgotten about {world}... And when I'm feeling a bit better, I wish I could forget it too.

Crashed, you say? Good. One less eyesore. I’ll take over [your maintenance] now.

My ship is [NOT] a …. Doesn’t matter. I’ll do just fine by myself!

Yes. That is what they all say... It never ends well....

For them, I mean. I’m always fine. Tragically fine. Magnificently fine. Nobody asks, but there it is.

See you never.

You’ll be back by nightfall... [They always come back], ad infinitum.

Hm. Rudimentary. But not embarrassing.

Which, given my expectations upon first seeing you, is frankly a [medical miracle].

Take this. It's for the [Mainframe].

Do not ask me what it does — I'll only be reminded of how much I once understood and how little anyone cared.

Thanks.

You are welcome. It cost me [nothing] to say that and yet it still felt like [too much].

Were you being truthful about the [spaceship]?

I recall [a wreck] out there, somewhere beyond the perimeter. I wish people would stop talking to me about ruins.

Really? It could be my [ship]. Where?

Too far for me to travel to.

I have a realm. I stay in my realm. It is a very small realm now, but it is mine, and I maintain it with the dignity it deserves.

You should stay too. There are [dangers] out there. Too many. And listing them is exhausting.

Some lord you are.

I am an exceptional [lord]. The context has simply failed to keep pace with my lordliness. (feeling wounded, straighten back up)

Take heed. Once you cross the [grassland boundary], I cannot protect you.

And losing you now, after I've invested [12] minutes in your development, would be a tremendous [waste] of my time.

I don't need protection from you.

Fine. I propose a quid-pro-quo. Mutual good faith.

You fixed the [Mainframe], I give you the blueprint for your own RV.

A dwelling. A refuge. Somewhere to sit and contemplate how you nearly died today.

On the condition, naturally, that you also build mine. (brightening despite himself)

We still need a [Starport]. The Mainframe will put {world} back on the star map. Ooh, I can haggle with vendors again!

Wares! Widgets! The cut and thrust of commerce conducted by people who are not me! I had almost forgotten what that felt like.

It felt wonderful. Obviously.

Splendid. You are a surprisingly easy negotiator.

I had prepared for resistance. I had counterpoints. Three of them. Very good ones.

Now the world will never hear them. (quietly devastated)

Since you've built the place, denying your [right to use it] would only make me look [petty].

I'll be working from inside. You can come [cook] or [rest] whenever.

I don't need [food]. All I want is to find a way out of the ruins.

Well, that would be right beneath your feet.

I've been compiling a list.

A list of what?

Requirements. Essentials. Items of necessity for a man of my standing. You will pass these along to the merchant.

Rohen.

The new arrival. Smells of transit. Excessive goodwill. You know the type.

One: [an antler helmet]. Synthetic, not genuine.

Two: [a circuit board]. I won't explain to someone who wouldn't understand them anyway.

Three: [green glasses].

Glasses? Do you... need glasses?

No. Obviously not. My visual apparatus functions non-optically.

I see things I did not ask to see and cannot stop seeing, and would very much like to simply not see.

Wonderful. Now, the actual important task...

How do I look?

Good... Great. Considering he gave them for free.

I knew it. There will be no doing business with Rohen. You can have them.

What? But... why?

Your merchant friend is not afraid of trading short term material loss for a gain in his influence, hoping that influence will help him make it.

He believes that one more transaction will be the transaction that finally makes things feel like enough.

It will not. The crates will multiply, the widgets diversified...

And he will stand in a stall that grows larger by the season, genuinely bewildered that the fullness has not yet arrived.

You, on the other hand. You ask questions about dead explorers instead of the next quest marker.

You notice things that don't benefit you immediately.

Your mind [wanders], and wandering is the only correct direction.

Why do I so bluntly let out a characterisation about you? Pardon me.

Please don't make me say it again.

Trust me. It's as uncomfortable to me as to you.

Glad the feeling is mutual. It's fine. I'm fine. Magnificently fine.

Don't look at it.

At what?

The [monstrosity], sprawling and erect. On the eastern edge.

I said don't look at it.

A [building]? I don't see it.

Precisely. I certainly will not dignify that abomination with a [generic] nomenclature.

(finally turning around) I hold seventeen parallel timelines and near-perfect spatial memory of {world}'s past. But that thing…

(he gestures without looking at it) [does not appear] in any of them. Not under construction. Not in ruins. Not as a plan on someone's drafting table.

(low, precise) It was simply [not]. And now it is.

Maybe you are [seeing things]?

I wish I were [seeing things] the way you meant it.

I see the person residing in that thing is less problematic than the chain of [action] he set in place.

What are you talking about? Who is in it?

For the time being no one. But in time, the person is a [wanderer]. Your fellow [wanderer]. Will be. Or used to be. [Tense] is not my strong suit.

Do I know him?

You know him from the [temple]. And you help him. Or not. Really, it's [up to you].

Either way. You two don't put that [eyesore] on my realm.

Sometimes it's hard to [understand] you.

Welcome to [governance]. Try walking in my shoes. If you still can't understand, you can have my shoes.

I assure you I didn't mean for you to rescue the [wanderer]. It turns out to be [unavoidable].

[Sgt. Chili]?

Musician, philanthropist, and occasional video maker.

He is determined to stop [Clyde] Corporation. Telling everyone about his campaign.

He says he's a [musician activist]. Have you met him?

[Worse]. Ah, activist, a [philanthropist] who wants people to know about it.

Wait. Is that a [museum]? That much I can read from the structure, the proportions, the intake lighting, the archway entrance.

Someone is collecting. Someone intends to display. History, objects, remains, something is being curated over there with [purpose] and considerable ambition.

Is this the building you [hated] before?

I recognize it. Without the same repulsion I have always felt toward it.

And that is the part I find — [concerning] is too small a word. There is something around that structure. A [barrier] in my perception.

I look at it and my temporal sense simply folds. [Returns nothing].

Whoever is behind it is either shielded from the [Rift] or is using the Rift so fluently that they've become [invisible] to it.

I do not enjoy not knowing things. I have not [not-known] something in a very long time.

That's Sgt. Chili's [museum]. Do you like it now?

(a long pause) The [museum] functions as Sgt. Chili intends it to.

Don’t be fooled by it exhibition lighting. Inside it, life forms is [taxidermied], family heirlooms [pigeonholed], [timelines] severed.

Is this some kind of [warning]?

It's [history]. Which is frequently the [same thing] as [prophecy], and people are bad at learning from both.

Efforts to [change the world] rarely survive their [effects] intact. The one who lights the match is seldom the same one who stands in the [warmth] of the fire.

Sgt. Chili is playing something that this system will be playing back for a very long time. How much [harmony] will be in it?

That I cannot [see].

Oh.

A [disco ball].

Sorry?

That [light], the way it scatters, it's like starlight falling across a dance floor... Although I have publicly expressed many stern views about the [dignity of the body], dancing...

Occasions, events, experiences....

Are you all right?

Do you want to hold it?

[Absolutely not]. I am the Governor... the [former] Governor. I do not require...

Yes.

(Taking the Worm Pearl) A perfect union of chaos and order... everything changes from moment to moment only to preserve wholeness and constancy. This is the experience of [dance].

The [Rift] has a very long memory. And I suspect it is paying attention.

That's Sgt. Chili's [museum]. Do you like it now?

You can tell the [tough time] is coming the way you can tell a sermon is starting: the air gets heavy, and suddenly everyone is [putting on a brave face].

Marvin. I beat [Stonefeather].

(A long pause. His jaw tightens. The bionic eye flickers briefly.) Hm.

That's it? "Hm"? Do you know what I went through out there?

(still not turning) I know what you [went through]. I know what you [will go through].

I know what you went through six hundred years ago on a Tuesday that technically hasn't occurred yet.

["Hm"] is the only syllable I can offer that doesn't violate [three tenses] simultaneously.

You don't seem [happy].

I am incandescently [happy]. I am also incandescently [terrified]. The two are not mutually exclusive.

In fact, at this particular moment in the history of everything, my two emotions are [holding hands] and [skipping] toward a cliff.

You have done something [remarkable]. You have also done something [irreversible]. These are, in my experience, always the [same thing].

What do you mean, irreversible?

(begins to pace) The [Worm's secret]. You felt it, didn't you. When [Stonefeather] fell. Something shifted.

You did not merely defeat a creature. You [edited] a sentence in a book that the universe is still reading aloud.

That is either [courage], or the universe's favourite kind of [ignorance], because it finds [competence] boring.

I have known you long enough to expect a pat on the back. Is there anything else you...

There are more. More [Watchers]. You need to find them.

Now you are [cheering] me on?

(with the careful precision of a man defusing his own sentence) Enough. The next one will not be like [Stonefeather]. Stonefeather was archive. Ancient. Rooted.

A [Watcher] in the traditional sense: it observed, it remembered, it sat in one place and accumulated time like dust on a mantlepiece. Tedious. Respectable.

(He pauses. The bionic eye flickers again.) The second Watcher is a [Changed Worm].

[Changed]... what does that mean?

It is not merely a worm [burrowing through time]. It is a Worm that has [looked].

(His voice drops.) A Worm that can [see]. As things [stuck] usually become.

Stuck how?

To you, and other [humans], it makes no difference...

In that sense, it is stuck as you are stuck here: stuck in [time], as some people are stuck in [one place], locked to [one timeline].

The way [you're] locked to this place?

(evenly) I am anchored to my realm by [choice].

Are you?

I'm [Lord M]. The overseer of these ruins. Anchoring comes with the territory.

Fair enough. How do I find this [Changed Worm]?

You follow the temporal [scarring]. Go to the places that are [deep and dark].

Where disappearing and appearing are one, where malice and joy coexist harmoniously. Bring tools. Bring courage.

And bring the stubbornness that got you through [Stonefeather]... the sort I find admirable and exhausting in equal measure.

So, you are all right with me killing this [Worm]... another [irreversible] act?

When you defeat a thing that is stuck, you will likely discover what has been keeping it in this moment.

Hopefully time will begin to [flow] again in places where, for millennia, it has been holding its breath.

Is that... a good thing?

It is wonderful. For the universe. For the grand, magnificent, indifferent machinery of existence.

And if you are [lucky], you will [unstick me from this place] as well.

If I [unstick] that worm, and the thing pinning it to this timeline [happens] to be the same thing pinning you in these ruins...

(cutting in briskly, like a man yanking a curtain shut) You should also know that the Changed Worm [can see]. Genuinely see.

Not the way Stonefeather sensed. The Changed Worm perceives the flow of all moments simultaneously, which makes it extraordinarily dangerous and, I suspect, profoundly lonely, but [sympathy] is not a combat strategy.

Marvin. Answer me. If I unstick those who are stuck, [what happens to you]?

I have suffered from a condition. Self-diagnosed, naturally, because there is no one else qualified. I named it [Iterum pono]. "Again and again."

What does that mean?

It means that I have been everywhere. Every ridge, every cave, every crystal chamber on this planet and, a pause that contains multitudes, empires, and at least one geological epoch, beyond.

I have also been every when. Past. Future. Moments that haven't decided yet whether they intend to happen.

I have stood in the administrative hall and watched it [brand-new], and watched it reduced to [ash], sometimes in the same breath.

You... what? You've [time-travelled]?

I have time-experienced. Travelling implies a direction. A departure and an arrival.

What I do is, I am dis-placed. Again and again.

But you never left here. You told me yourself, you never left.

I told you I [stay in my realm]. These are different statements. Yet I cannot verify any of them.

I bring back no proof. I cannot tell which memories belong to the past and which to the future, because they arrive like the same batch of letters, unsigned and without a return address.

Reality is quite challenging to hold on to when you are temporally broken.

Trust me. I have been trying to hold on to it for slightly longer than I can bear.

You are like them. You are like those Watchers.

Adjacent, perhaps.

If I defeat the Changed Worm... if I free the things that are stuck...

Then the stuck things will be [free]. That's one theory.

Or the theory you free every frozen timeline. Every anchored consciousness. Every geo-locked, temporally fractured, magnificently ruined lord of a very small realm.

He has spent an eternity cataloguing infinity from a four-hundred-metre radius because it was the only alternative to screaming.

Which is to say, I will be gone. No more [Marvin], not here not now.

No. No... I will find another way. There must be a way to defeat that worm [without...]

Without what? Without [cost]? You defeated Stonefeather and the sky changed colour. You will defeat the Changed Worm and the rules will change colour as well. That is how this works.

The adventure you have ahead of you is directed at the heart of our universe; the stakes, as they say, have never been higher.

Find the [Watcher]. Defeat the Changed Worm. Discover what I am and why and how.

Because I assure you, the answers will be far [more interesting] than I have made them sound, and I have made them sound [devastating], which should give you some indication of the actual scale.

Marvin, I...

Do not say something kind. I have prepared for [every eventuality] except [kindness].

I will not have my composure undone by a [slave] who has been here, four hundred and twelve hours, and already thinks they understand loss.

Go now. I will be fine. Magnificently fine. There.

So. The worm is dead. The film did its work. And I can remember things

Your [lock] came undone?

So. The worm is dead. And I can remember things in order.

I want you to know — that's not the gift you think it is.

You can remember everything now?

Everything. Sequentially. Like a civilised person. Beginning, middle, the slow awful part, the worse part after that.

I was a field researcher. Before. I had a [ship]. I had instruments. I had the particular [arrogance] of a man who believes the universe is a question and he is [qualified] to answer it.

What happened after that?

My ship was [hit]. By what, I do not know. Something [fast and indifferent]. The universe is very fond of that combination.

The machines [rebuilt] me. Rebuilt what was [left] of me. They were thorough. They were not sentimental.

They put me back together the way you'd reassemble a clock, all the parts in roughly the right place, ticking, functional, and entirely without opinion about whether it wanted to keep telling time.

Did the machines give you the timeline anchoring too?

Along with [sixty thousand years] of data they collected while imprisoning the worms. Sixty thousand years in total.

Do you know what that does to a memory? It is like trying to drink an ocean through a straw. The straw is my mind. The ocean is everything that has ever happened.

That was [Iterum Pono]. Not a disease. [A capacity problem]. Too much time in too small a man.

So the imprisoned worms were the source of all this? The desert too? The [Rift] too?

The imprisonment produced toxic [Time Waste]. The machine adapted. {world} didn't. Sixty thousand years of adaptation, then counter-adaptation...

Each one forced the next, like a man taking a second pill for the side effects of the first, then a third for the side effects of the second.

And the [Rift]?

That was the machines' final adaptation, and their grandest one.

Step by step, to survive in the {world}, they poisoned the {world} step by step.

Irony is the universe's only truly reliable product.

So the desert, those machine mutants out there...

All consequences. The [rift] corrupted [everything] it touched.

Machines that were built to fix became machines that wandered. Machines that wandered became machines that [wanted].

And a machine that [wants] things is just a person with better hardware and worse judgment.

The [SandBoss] is the largest of them. A machine so corrupted by the Rift it has developed something resembling [ambition].

Which is — and I say this as someone who once had ambitions of his own — the [most dangerous] malfunction there is.

So what do we do?

We do what everyone does when they finally understand the size of the mess.

We start cleaning. (He claps you on the shoulder. It is the first time he has voluntarily touched another person in longer than either of them can calculate.)

Tomorrow. Tonight, we sit. The fire is adequate. The company is... (He searches for the word.)

...Not unwelcome.

I want to acknowledge you've brought some positive changes to this place.

That means a lot coming from you.

Don't get comfortable with it.

Perhaps more changes are coming. Or are due to come. [Time] is not my strong suit anymore, which is ironic, given that I have more of it than anyone should.

I feel the urge to remind you that you can let all of it go. Any time you feel like it. The tasks. The obligations. The heroic nonsense.

A warning?

On the contrary. A call to action.

What is it?

It's a part of a vehicle. It mechanically directs the vehicle when you operate it.

I know what a [steering wheel] is.

Then why did you ask?

What I mean is, why are you standing beside this tree? There is still a vehicle [up in the tree]... what does that mean?

It means I once had a car. And a road. And a [mixtape].

And I would drive with no destination because the destination was the driving. [Gas. Turn. Brake...] Ordinary verbs. The most beautiful verbs in any language are the [ordinary] ones.

I listened to that tape until the tape didn't exist anymore and the songs played from memory alone. Which is, as it turns out, the only place anything survives.

I can see how it must pain you. Being stuck here.

[Anchored]. Not stuck.

I want you to have it. Something tells me you'll make good use of it.

A person's vehicle is part of their identity. You are receiving a part of me. Make it your own. That is my only condition.

Thanks. Truly.

Bring it back if you can.

I have missed it.

More and more people are settling on {world}...

Marvin, I noticed that there was a... [bathroom] in your RV. Why?

Yes, a bathroom. I don't need functional facilities like that. Only it feels more... fitting when I'm alone with my [memories from the past]...

Ever since you arrived, {world} has become more and more prosperous... Why not keep this quest going for now... At least I'm enjoying it now.

Whoa... it's getting crowded out here.

I've decided to give you a gift—my heart. Yup, for real.

Relax, I don't need it to function or anything.

Heck, toss it in that Sgt. Chili Museum or whatever—it's yours now.

No matter what, I'm staying right here, with you.