123'rd is the Charm [Bioshock Infinite/SI]
"We have been trying for quite a while," Robert Lutece spoke. "Quite a few tries."
"Indeed," Rosalind remarked. "One hundred and twenty-two times for now."
"Perhaps we are failing at considering some other option?" Robert mused. "Maybe we should try something utterly different?"
"Doing the same thing over and over again expecting the results to change is madness, I would agree," Rosalind sighed. She turned to look at herself, though of another dimension, and her lips thinned. "Would you have a suggestion, Robert?"
"In scientific research, a random sample is acquired through many methods in order to avoid bias," Robert mused. "We already have our control group," he pointed at the hazardously scattered pile of bodies that were all of the Bookers DeWitt of alternate timelines that had died in various poses, shapes and methods. "What we might need now is an equal amount of experimenting with a different group."
"We could continue with the one hundred and twenty-third," Rosalind mused, "But..." she turned thoughtful, "The number is strangely familiar."
"Oh?" Robert remarked. "Maybe it is a good sign then. Since we exist upon all times and spaces at the same time, we could argue that the only things we know not are the times and spaces in which we, ourselves, do not exist. Not knowing why a number is familiar might, by itself, determine a path."
"I wouldn't bet too much upon this," Rosalind shook her head. "It is merely a name, nay, a random thing that just dug into my head. Though I suppose there shouldn't be any harm in attempting it." She inclined her head slightly to the side. "It is done, I suppose."
"I understand," Robert replied, "After all what is the worst that could ever possibly happen, when we coexist within both the absolute worst and the absolute best of possible timelines at-" he blinked, and looked around with a half-puzzled look.
"Rosalind?" he queried the empty space around. "Oh, bugger-"
And then he too was no more.
---
I smelled the sea.
The roaring waves, the shrieking seagulls, and the downpour upon my person.
I blearily stared up at the dark, grey sky and groaned as I rolled on the side. My head was killing me, my eyes were half-closed, and I just wanted someplace warm to continue my nap, but as those thoughts came into my head, they also were swiftly changed with others.
I was on a pier.
I quietly got on my stomach and then moved to get up, glancing around with a befuddled feeling that I was forgetting something incredibly important.
A rickety rowboat was slamming angrily against the rocks further ahead, and by my side a wooden construction seemed to hold more fishermen's boats within.
I quietly walked under the wooden cabin and glanced around, trying to orient myself in this puzzling reality.
My headache was truly hammering into my skull, and as my vision focused, I saw that there was an actual lighthouse not that far away from where I was.
"There's always a lighthouse," I whispered, not really understanding why. It was raining so heavily, I could have been screaming for all that it mattered.
It was cold, and the wind was blowing louder; at this point, I was already wet. There was nothing else to do but to briskly walk through the dock, and up the stone stairs that led straight to the lighthouse's door.
I stopped at the front of the door, a knife was plunged into it, and a half-wet note stood miraculously still legible even under the downpour.
Shade, you are the lucky 1st. Would you kindly save the girl?
I blinked at that, and fuzzy thoughts crossed my head as I grabbed hold of the knife's handle. The paper flew off once I freed it, and as I placed a hand on the handle of the door, I pushed it open.
"Hello?" I asked, quietly stepping inside, "Is anyone home?"
Nobody answered back. I winced as I pocketed the knife. My clothes were sticking to me, and as I came to a halt in front of a stitched embroidery that recited the words 'Of thy sins, shall I wash thee'.
I neared the basin and stared around, a bit puzzle. Instinctively, my index and middle finger from my left hand dipped into the water. Just in case someone was watching from the shadows, just in case they were a mad fundamentalist that would butcher any would-be heretic. "In the name of the father, the son and the holy spirit," I muttered hastily, "Amen."
No one answered back. There was light coming from up above though; maybe it was late, and I was going to end up waking up a poor lighthouse guardian from his sleep, but at the same time I was wet beyond belief and I desperately needed someone to make sense of my current situation.
I didn't remember anything that would lead to me waking up on a pier, drenched, while under a thunderstorm.
The dull noise of a radio reached my ears, and I felt a bit more relaxed. If radiowaves reached, then it wasn't impossible to call the coastguard, but what if the lighthouse guardian was the reason I had ended up there? What if they had kidnapped me, drugged me unconscious and then dumped me on the pier?
Why would they even do that?
Still, there was an empty bed on the second floor. An empty bed and the radio that blared music, as well as pots and pans in the sink. I saw the fridge in a corner, and as I felt my stomach twist, I pulled the door open.
Thankfully, no dismembered corpses looked back at me, but a vastly harmless collection of sealed bottles of water, oranges and lemon juice, as well as some thinly cut slices of meat and a couple of fresh-looking fishes, perhaps fished that very morning.
"Is anybody here?" I asked louder still, closing the fridge door and straining my hearing for any reply.
None came, if not for the thunder up above in the clouds.
I shuddered. there were some dry clothes hanging about. There was no one around. Had the man died? Was that why there was no one there?
"I'm taking some dry clothes!" I yelled loudly, receiving no reply back.
Changing was a matter of minutes, and by the time it was over I had a white woolly sweater on and a clean white shirt beneath. There was a pair of blue pants that actually fit me pretty well, so all things said it could have gone worse.
My cellphone was without battery, of all things, and the strange looking and antiquated telephone didn't have a line.
"Well," I muttered, "Is this how somebody becomes a lighthouse guardian?" I mused dryly, trying to cheer myself up. "Just wake up one day in the middle of nowhere and there you go, you're in charge of ships not sinking."
Speaking of which, the upper floor was yet unexplored. I climbed the stairs, and my humming ended in my throat as I saw the previous lighthouse guardian tied to a chair with a bullet hole in his forehead.
I stared at the man, swallowed, and then looked around.
Someone had a gun. Someone was in this place and had a gun.
I quietly crept further up, since I had but a measly knife to my name, and if I had but a knife, it meant that I needed to get the jump on them and not otherwise. Whoever had kidnapped me was a psycho; a murderer who enjoyed torturing his victims.
As I reached the top, I realized there was nowhere else to go but to the very top, which meant that the psychopath had probably never been in front of me, but right behind me. Perhaps they enjoyed the thrill of the hunt.
What awaited me at the top was, strangely enough, a set of three bells.
Three bells with the symbols of a sword, a key and a parchment on them respectively.
They felt familiar.
"Dum-dum," I knocked on the first, "Dum-dum," I knocked on the second, "Dum," I knocked on the third.
And then the sky answered back.
---
There was a psychopath somewhere in the lighthouse.
There was a literal torture chair that pinged angrily.
And between the two options, I picked the most horrible one.
As I sat on the chair, the locking mechanism completed and I stared in disbelief as I was suddenly launched up in the air.
This was such a stupid, moronic choice, it was also one I didn't feel like I should have made.
And instead I had.
The countdown voice didn't make the trip anymore pleasant, and its final hallelujah was drowned by my hoarse screaming and my swearing to the seven kingdoms of hell and beyond. By the time the rocket-chair actually stopped its ascension and started its descent, I knew I wasn't in Kansas anymore.
The physics are impossible.
"Fuck," I mouthed.
"Fuck."
There was a ding, and the doors opened to reveal a watery place. There was water everywhere on the floor, candles were dimly lit, and there was noise coming from one side of the entrance hall in which I had apparently ended up in.
There was a chorus of white voices singing.
The smell of the candles wasn't doing wonders for my headache, but as I began to fumble for the way out, I started to slush around with my shoes in the water. There wasn't much else I could do.
I was a bit out of place, especially when compared to the first person I saw, who looked every bit like a priest just about ready to deliver a communion.
"Ex...excuse me," I stammered out. "The...exit?"
It was a dumb question. The man smiled at me.
"Follow the stairs and rejoice," he said, "For you too shall be reborn and brought closer to heaven."
I had no doubts the man was a cultist. I had no doubts I had ended up in some kind of wacky fake-religious cult in some random corner of the world, but the fact that we were on a flying city, of all things, made me actually doubt my sanity.
Had they slipped me drugs? How? When?
I numbly walked down the very slippery, very wet, very cascading with water stairs that had probably killed more men and women by their sheer existence than the knife I still had in my pocket.
I managed to get lost, if such a thing was possible, and ended up following a couple of white-dressed men and women that were holding their hands together in prayer and looking down as they walked towards another set of stairs, which went further down.
When surrounded by cultists, be a cultist. It increases your chances of surviving.
My hands were clasped together as I followed at a small distance behind them, and hey, I had a white wool jumper, and they were wearing white. I could camouflage myself pretty neatly.
"And every year on this day of days, we recommit ourselves to our city, and to our Prophet, Father Comstock. We recommit through sacrifice, and the giving of thanks, and by submerging ourselves in the sweet water of baptism..." as a loud voice boomed in the ample hall, I quietly shuffled at the far end of the procession.
Apparently, there was a baptism of sorts going on. One that required an adult to fully submerge themselves. I vaguely remembered some variants of Catholicism requiring an adult to baptize rather than a child, since, in the end, a child didn't have a choice while an adult did.
Though I didn't remember which religions those were.
It didn't much matter though. Water was just water, and I didn't need to get through as much as I needed some form of coherent logic for why I had ended up there, of all places.
And who was the girl I had to save anyway?
I just wanted a telephone.
Or, at this point, I'd take a parachute.
The people were getting baptized and while some moved past, overs remained unconscious due to an excessive time under the water. The man didn't have a middle ground; he simply either baptized you or near-drowned you.
I took the better part of valor and tried to quietly scamper to the aid of a near-drowned victim, gently dragging them past the pastor and through the tunnel, keeping a poker-face until I was finally out and into the light, at which point I dropped the man on a nearby bench and looked around.
I had avoided drowning.
Now was the time to become one with the people of this city, and seek salvation in the arms of a map, or a tourist guide.
Where did a newcomer have to go in order to make sense of his life?
Or, most importantly, could I still make my way back to the rocket-chair, and did it have the option to return-to-sender?
"Find the girl," I mumbled to myself. "I have to find the girl."
If only I knew which girl it was! Or where she was!
Yet all of my thoughts came crashing down the moment a dark-haired, blue-eyed young woman slammed into my sides as I stepped out of the Founders' garden.
I fell on the ground with a gasp and a groan, "Ouch," I muttered.
"Oh! I'm so sorry!" the girl said.
"It's no problem," I grumbled, "No harm done. Be more careful next time," I muttered as I got to my feet.
Her hair was cut in a casket, and she was wearing a white corset with a dark blue jacket to cover her shoulders. By her feet, one of those frilly umbrellas had apparently fallen down on the ground. She had been using it to cover her face from the sun, and that had made her slam straight into me.
She had boots, which I had noticed merely because I had been at their level for a brief while, and a gown.
"I will," she said. She looked a bit around, as if lost, "You wouldn't happen to know the way to the fair, mister?"
"The...fair?" I asked bleakly.
"Columbia's raffle and fair," the girl said with a grin, "I heard so much about it, I wanted to see it, but..." she looked briefly around, "I got a bit lost. It's so annoying when the streets move."
"Yeah, I can understand that," I said while not truly understanding anything at all, but merely nodding out of circumstance. "Well, I was looking for the fair too," I wasn't, but it felt as good of a place to begin looking for a telephone as any other. "I was planning on following the people, where most of them go should be the right way."
"We can go together then," the woman said, hastily bending down to pick her umbrella and then standing back up. "The sun's positively atrocious for my skin," she added with a light, nervous chuckle as she hastily propped the umbrella back on her shoulder to cover most of her upper body from view.
"I...see?" I remarked. "Guess being this up high makes it a problem."
"It does," the woman said, "Would you kindly escort me then, sir?"
"Sure thing, miss," I answered back, offering my arm. "I haven't caught your name yet, though."
"Oh, I'm Eli...Ellie," she said, hooking her free arm around mine. "And what about you?"
"Shade," I answered back. "My parents had...a wicked sense of humor."
"That they did," Ellie said with a giggle of her own.
Later, I'd regret not taking a darker colored sweater back in the lighthouse...
...it would have hidden the blood of the dead better.
AN: A funny coincidence: Booker's 'successful' recovery of Elizabeth is attempt 123. ...I just *had* to. Also, the last time I wrote the Bioshock infinite fic, I had incredible problems with formatting and my writing style was all over the place.
Also, this is vengeance for the Bioshock Infinite we never got.
Smashwords.
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