Real life is often stranger than fiction. Despite how cliche that statement may seem, the fact remains that the sheer randomness of everyday life and the whims of fortune create chains of events that would seem unlikely, if not impossible, to all but the most creative scribes. Take, for example, the Kaiju War. Monsters from another dimension rising from the depths of the ocean to devastate cities were once something you'd only find in a certain subset of Japanese media and its derivatives, but nowadays their incursions are so frequent that you can use them to set your clocks. The mighty Jaegers that fought them were also a fanciful idea of sci-fi writers, but now they are real, tangible things that not only ensured our survival but also left an indelible mark in our culture.
The story of the Kaiju War, of the fell creatures who tries to destroy our world and of the guardian giants of steel we made in our image, would surely fit right in with Gundam and Mazinger but it is instead a part of History same as the Hundred Year War. The later parts of that story, the ones telling of how Man gave up on the seemingly endless conflict and huddled behind towering walls of steel and concrete only to discover they were meaningless before their enemy and the Apocalypse they brought forth, would fit right into the darker stories of the genre, but those events are as real as the Second Great War.
My own story, though not nearly as grand and world changing as those events, would also seem more fit for the fiction section than the biographies, but the events that led me here are as real as the interrogation room I'm in, or the man sitting across from me. He'd introduced himself as General Thomas Harrington, though the solitary star on his shoulders told me he was "just" a Brigadier General.
He had immaculately combed gray-white hair, and judging by his wrinkles he was somewhere in his sixties, though his demeanor definitely made him seem a bit younger. All in all, the man reminded me of Leslie Nielsen wearing Army Greens, and he was certainly more amicable than I expected from my interrogator. Or from a General, for that matter.
"I suppose you know why you're here, don't you?" He asked, after we both sat down.
"I guess it isn't because of that bar fight, is it?" I answered, sounding exactly as tired as I was. And I already had a pretty good guess as to why I was here, really.
"If I had to interrogate someone every time there was a brawl at Shorty's Saloon, I would've moved my office there." He said, clearly amused. "No, you're here because of the metal case we found in your backpack. The one with the pentagon with lengthened edges emblazoned on the side."
I took a deep breath, more to calm myself than anything else. Seems my guess was right. "So you haven't opened it?" I asked.
"We know better than to open anything from that organization carelessly." The general said, dead serious. "So, what's inside it and how did you get your hands on it?"
I had no idea what organization he was talking about, but I suppose that's an apt way to describe Professor Armitage and his contacts. God knows how much sketchy business I saw in my time as his assistant. That aside, I wracked my brain trying to think of a way to explain how I ended up with that book.
Finally, I took a deep breath. "It's a long and weird story. How much do you know about me, anyway?"
General Harrington picked a file out of the pile, notably slimmer than the rest. "According to the documents in your wallet you're Richard Baron Highwind, 28 years old." He recited without opening the document. "You entered Savannah with a small caravan coming from the West, and were arrested because of a bar fight at Shorty's Saloon around twenty one hundred hours yesterday. Says here it started because you punched a drunken patron three feet in the air and he broke a table when he landed." The man smiled, and slid the file over to my side of the table. "It must've been one hell of a punch."
I couldn't help but chuckle a bit nervously. "Yeah, it was." I opened the file and gave it a quick read, and the contents matched what the General had said. "In my defense, the guy threw the first punch, and the second and third too. All because I bumped into him and spilled his drink."
The General nodded, "That's what the eyewitnesses said too. Mr. Shorty even said he wouldn't press charges. You were going to spend the night at the police station and be released in the morning, but then we took a look at the contents of your backpack."
And so we come right back to the book.
"It's best if I start from the very beginning, then. There should have been a Miskatonic U ID in my wallet." I said.
"There was. You're from Arkham, then?"
I shook my head. "Seattle, actually, but I live and study there. I'm a graduate, I majored in History and Anthropology at Miskatonic and was close to getting a PhD when everything went to hell." Years of higher education and pages upon pages of academic thesis, now worth less than the ability to shoot straight. I can't say I didn't regret not following the family tradition and enlisting in the military sometimes. "I'm-- I mean, I was also the assistant librarian, under Doctor Henry Armitage, or Professor Armitage, as he asked everyone to call him."
"If I remember it right, Miskatonic University has one of the largest collections of rare books in North America." Harrington said, raising one eyebrow. "And you were one of its caretakers?"
"Yes, but I worked directly under Professor Armitage. He's the head librarian, and not only took care of cataloguing and preserving the collection, but also of expanding it and finding new rarities to be added. He's also very well-respected in the fields of Historical and Anthropological research, and the fact I worked under him was half the reason I was so close to a PhD." I explained.
"So you helped the head librarian with everything. How does the case come into the picture?"
"I'm getting there, I promise. Like I said, I helped Armitage with pretty much everything and I've been doing that for a couple years now, so the man trusted me with nearly everything to do with the collection. And one day he calls me to his office, closes the curtains and tells me he had a very important job for me to do." I paused, trying to remember as much of the conversation as possible.
"Go on, please." Harrington, meanwhile, was very much interested now.
"He told me he had a contact who got his hands on a very rare, very important book. Told me it might be the single greatest addition to the University's collection since the Cultes des Goules. But he couldn't officially add it to the collection until its authenticity was verified by someone he trusted."
"Stop being so dramatic, please. What book was it?"
I took another deep breath of air to steady my nerves. "I'm not trying to be dramatic, I swear. Armitage was clearly very excited, but also very nervous, and considering this was a copy of the Necronomicon, I could understand why."
"The Necronomicon, huh? Even I know about that book." Harrington said. "I think I saw something about it on the TV even."
I couldn't help but laugh a bit. "Everybody's heard of it. It's by far the most famous and storied grimoire out there. Hell, if you ever tuned into the History Channel you'll likely have seen it. They featured it in everything from End-of-the-World specials to Ancient Aliens episodes."
Harrington nodded. "That's probably where I saw it, actually. But doesn't Miskatonic already have a copy in its collection?"
"Yeah, a seventeenth century copy of the Latin translation, but this copy is different. Armitage didn't want to tell me this at first, but when I pressed him he told me this copy his contact had obtained was in eight century Arabic." I explained, and I couldn't help but let a bit of academic enthusiasm seep into my voice. "This might be the oldest copy of the Necronomicon known to exist. It might even be the original Al Azif."
"That's a hell of a valuable book, then." Looks like Harrington was suitably impressed. "So that's what's inside the case?"
"Exactly. Armitage wanted to add the book to the University's collection, which might as well be his collection at this point. But he couldn't risk the book being fake, or being taken before he got his hands on it, and that's where I came in."
"Seems like a lot of work to me, and it also sounds like something too important to be left to an assistant." Harrington observed. "Why all the cloak and dagger? Why not go in person?"
"I thought the same thing at first, but you have to understand rare books are very precious things." I explained. "And some collectors would kill to add the original Al Azif to their hoard. Literally kill. And considering copies of the Necronomicon have a tendency to disappear mid-transport like Harvard's copy, or be stolen like the Bibliothèque Nationale's..."
"He wanted to keep this as secret as possible." Harrington finished. "I get it."
"Yeah, as far as I know only a handful of people know this book exists, even fewer know its provenance, and I'm not one of them. If I can hazard a guess, half the reason Armitage sent me on the circuitous route he did was to have the time fabricate some believable origin for it."
"That seems awfully criminal for an old librarian." The General noted.
Oh man, you have no idea. "The rare book trade is where the worst sides of the worlds of art, archaeology and academia meet. Four years in it and I've already seen dozens of forgeries, backroom deals and a lot of creative accounting."
The General raised an eyebrow. "I'll take your word for it."
"To get back on topic, Armitage sent me on a trip to Miami, where I'd 'vacation' for a couple days. Then I was going to meet his associate in Tampa to get the book, travel by land here to Savannah to leave it with another man whom he trusted to verify the book's authenticity and keep it safe until he could formally acquire it. And after that all I had to do was get back to Miskatonic and Armitage was going to use his clout to get me my PhD and formally introduce me to his contacts, which was really more important than the PhD." I explained the plan as it was outlined to me. At the time I thought I had a pretty sweet deal.
"I take it things didn't turn out as well as you hoped." Harrington said what was probably the understatement of the century. I didn't even try to suppress my laughter.
"That's like saying the Kaiju are a bit on the large side, sir. Apocalypse came out of the Pacific Breach right in the middle of my flight. By the time I landed everyone was panicking." I could remember the chaos at the airport, and I count myself lucky that I managed to grab my luggage then. Come to think of it, I might have been one of the last people to fly in a commercial flight in the country. "I decided to go straight to Tampa, but with all the chaos at the time it took me two days to get there. Then I had to spend another two days to find the guy I was supposed to meet." Just remembering the whole fiasco is enough to sour my mood.
"And he gave you the case with the marking?" Harrington asked, again with the damn case.
"Yeah, he was friendly and all, but I could see he was as worried as everyone else. I went to his workshop and I saw him put the book inside the case and seal it shut. He said it was meant to keep the book protected during the trip, it was filled with non-reactive gas, shock absorbing, the whole nine yards."
"And the symbol...?" He asked again, and that was starting to annoy me.
"I actually asked him why he engraved a horned pentacle on the side. That symbol is infamous among anthropologists because it shows up all over the ancient world, often in relation to esoteric cults or wizards, and then it disappeared from history just before Rome was founded. You won't find a single mention of it after the seventh century BC." I can't forget the way the guy smiled when I asked. It was wide, creepy, and showed no teeth. "He said it was part maker's mark, part inside joke among his and the Professor's group. Said I should ask him about it when I got back to Arkham, if I was still interested in it."
"I see." Harrington seemed satisfied, at least. "Anything else?"
I shook my head. "Just the odyssey to get here. It took me a month to get transport to outside Tampa because people started hunkering down and there were rumors of APIs as far east as Houston. Then came the travel itself, with lots of detours when swarms of APIs started migrating or bandits were rumored to be in the area. All in all, I started my trek six months ago and between all the shit I've been through I traveled as far Northwest as Memphis before making my way back here."
"That's one hell of a trip you went on, son. I can barely imagine what you went through." I could tell Harrington was being sincere here, and it actually meant something to me. I had been through a lot the past six months.
The damned dust that made breathing difficult at times, the shortages of food and water, the miniature Kaiju creeping in every corner, and the damned bandits preying on the weak. It was all so unreal compared to how I lived a year ago that I could scarcely believe it even now.
"Honestly, I can barely believe it all myself. When I said it out loud it almost sounded like something from the fiction shelves at Barnes and Noble to me." I confessed.
"Why not write it down? A story like yours puts anything Dan Brown wrote to shame." The General said.
"Honestly, all my story is missing is an ancient conspiracy, a murder, and a female lead." I deadpanned. "I just want to rest a while and... I don't know, enlist? I doubt anyone needs a Historian right now."
Harrington started laughing when I said that, an honest, hearty laugh. "Son, you'd be surprised at how wrong you are. And be on the the lookout for bullets and dames in your future, just in case."
I stared dumbly at his grinning face, trying to parse what he just said. Finally, I gave up. "What?"
"Richard, I can guarantee you that horned pentacle wasn't just an in-joke between your boss and his friends." He said, explaining nothing at all. "In fact, based on what you told me I am ninety percent sure he and his colleagues were all part of the same organization that commandeered a military base right next to Savannah."
"What." I repeated, with more emphasis, to see if he'd understand and start making sense again.
"He might even have been planning to recruit you, in which case I'm sure we can use your expertise somewhere other than in the Army." His grin didn't waver one bit, which was the clue I needed to realize he was messing with me.
"Thomas. General Harrington. Sir." I said before he could start speaking nonsense again. "What the hell are you talking about?"
"I'm talking about a certain group we discovered a while back." He said. "We got word that a military base nearby was commandeered for some black project, and decided to scout the place before someone else got there first. Inside, we found a half-finished Jaeger, a number of laboratories, and information about the group who took command of the base before the apocalypse. They weren't a government agency or Black Ops division, but were most certainly backed by the government. Possibly multiple governments."
"And how does that relate to Armitage?" I asked. Fanciful as the tale was, it wasn't much stranger than my own, so I was inclined to believe him so far.
"From the information we managed to recover and piece together, that organization was global in reach and used the horned pentacle as a symbol. They dealt with research and development of J-Tech and Kaiju biology, but that was apparently a side-project meant to keep the Kaiju from interfering with their main business, which mostly involved the kind of occult knowledge and unearthly creatures you'd find in grimoires... ones like that Necronomicon you were carrying around."
Alright, so his tale was definitely weirder than mine. Or mine was even stranger than I thought. "And so what, you think Armitage was one of them?"
"I don't think, I'm damn near certain." He stated with conviction. "He would be in perfect position to find and retrieve books that would be of interest to them, and to recruit new blood as well. And I think he wanted to recruit you."
"Because he sent me to transport the book?" I couldn't help but remain incredulous. But still...
"If I had to guess, he was at least somewhat honest when he told you why he was sending you." Harrington said. "You're less conspicuous than he was, and a book like that needed to be transported in utmost secrecy. Basically, you were the perfect mix of competent, trustworthy, deniable, and disposable."
I couldn't help but wince at the way he put it, but I couldn't deny it as much as I wanted to. It was true that I was trustworthy enough and inconspicuous enough to handle that job, but it was also true that if something went wrong Armitage could have denied everything and said I was a resentful assistant trying to make a fortune by smuggling forgeries or something like that. That stung, because I honestly trusted the old man. I considered him a friend, even.
"And the talk of formally introducing you to his contacts, them leaving the pentacle in plain sight and telling you to ask Armitage about it after it was all said and done?" Harrington continued. "My best guess is they were going to recruit you if everything went well and you showed you were competent enough to see this through."
"So... what now?" I was completely out of my depth here. I've been out of my depth since I left Arkham and didn't even know it. "Why tell me all of this?"
Harrington looked me straight in the eye. "Because if they were thinking about recruiting you, then I am too. This interrogation is now a job interview."
I was stunned. I didn't even know what to say now, but thankfully General Harrington asked me a question. "What's your area of expertise, son?"
My area of expertise? History, definitely. I spent years learning Military and political history from Athens to World War Two. Understanding the evolution of philosophy from Socrates to Nietzsche. The evolution of civilization from Uruk to America. I wasn't nearly a PhD just because of Armitage's help, I studied and earned it, dammit. Anthropology too, where I studied the evolution of ancient civilizations and cultures, with emphasis on the Proto-Indo-European culture and the lasting influence they left across a continents. I could read Ionic and Attic Greek, and was equally proficient in Latin. I had read the Necronomicon in Latin. I had a dozen peer-reviewed research papers published.
I told as much to the General. He kept looking me in the eye as I went on about my academic accomplishments, occasionally nodding to show he understood. When I was done, I could see the faintest smile on the corner of his lips.
"Mr. Highwind," he said. "I believe you're qualified for the job we're offering. But before we shake hands, I have one last test."
He searched his pockets and picked something. I saw a glint of silver in his hands just before he flicked something small at me, very fast. I managed to catch it before it hit my face, and when I opened my hand I saw a coin the size of a quarter, with a line with five shorter lines branching off of it. I turned it around there was a curved pentagram with an eye-like design in the center, the iris looking like a flame. A Primordial Branch and an Elder Eye, or as they were more commonly called, The Elder Signs.
It was also a quarter, apparently, it had everything you'd expect from a normal coin aside from being decorated with millennia-old symbols that as far as we know originated either with the Proto-Indo-Europeans or some even older civilization. "Do you guys even know what you're putting on your coins?"
Harrington looked relieved, for some reason, but he quickly gathered himself. "Sort of. We know a few things, but I was hoping you knew the details."
"Sir, these symbols are curious enough I could write a research paper or three and still have plenty to talk about." And wasn't that an understatement. Between these two and the horned pentacle there are decades of historical and anthropological controversy. "Why did you look so relieved, anyway?"
The man chuckled, but answered with a smile. "You know those cultists that took over Charleston?"
"Yeah?" They were infamous, really, and a lot of people avoided this region because of them. I never thought I'd see a Dagonite cult take control of a city, but then again I didn't think my boss was part of a secret conspiracy.
"They're genuine, and so are their gods, as far as we can tell." He said calmly, as if he weren't confirming that all the shit in the Chäat Aquadingen was indeed real. "And they react strangely whenever they see these symbols. So we made sure to print 'em on our currency to keep the fuckers away."
"So you wanted to make sure I wasn't secretly one of them?" I mean, I could see why he'd do it, but wasn't this a little too late in the game?
"Exactly." He confirmed. "And I was relieved, because that meant I wouldn't have to throw Cid's grandson in prison along with the other madmen."
Wait, what? "You know my grandpa?"
"I sure do. We met a few times over the years. The bastard still calls me Major Tom after all these years." He said, a smile on his face. "Now come along, kid. It's about time we took you out of those handcuffs and got started on the paperwork for your new job."
We both got up from the chairs and stepped outside. The handcuffs were gone in a flash, and soon enough I was following the General out of the building, backpack slung over my shoulder.
"What will my job be, anyway?" I asked, while we waited for a car to pick us up to take us... somewhere. Probably somewhere with a lot of paper and enough red tape to kill a man. "Do I get a desk, a nice office, what?"
"Considering how desperate we are for whatever advantage we can get against those bastards over in Charleston and the monsters that pop out of the Mist? Try a building." He said. "And the staff to go with it."
"Excuse me, sir, but what the hell?"
Harrington shrugged. "Like I said, we're desperate, and you're the most qualified person we could find. But to he honest, I think you'll do fine. Besides, we already have plans for a research facility to look into the Mist creatures and the effects of those Elder Signs. We even managed to do some actual magic."
I just stared at the man, nonplussed. "Magic?"
Harrington smiled, and the car arrived as if on cue. "Just get in and don't worry, Richard. We'll get you briefed once the paperwork is done."
) Explain to the miners how we are intent on recovery from Osahi's ecologically devastating rampage and we need the mine to scale back 'temporarily' to assist our cleanup efforts. Concurrently assign free (HEL) research to seeing if the plasma combustion Doc Brown has been researching has an application to boost waste scrubber efficiency. Flash frying waste with plasma sounds like a thing.