A lengthy pause ensued, corresponding to nearly ten months in the real world, until Deja Voodoo’s original belatedly discovered the follow-up episode and at last got around to posting the reply. Our protagonists, fortuitously, were unaware of the extent of the delay. Nonetheless, Dabbler became impatient.
“Since you know why I’m here, how about you telling me what’s going on?” he asked Deja Voodoo.
“Certainly,” Deja Voodoo responded. “You desire to know whence came Sir Impey Biggs, and wherefore he made such a particularly grand entrance during the course of your trial.”
“Not at all,” Dabbler retorted. “He’s a character out of the Lord Peter Wimsey series of mystery novels, and he appeared because you sent him. What I want to know is why. And,” he added, “why he called me ‘Father.’“
Deja Voodoo favored him with a faint smile. “Ah. That piece of evidence as well, and you have not yet worked it out?”
The Barefoot One’s impatience manifested itself again, this time in irritation. “Would I be here if I had?”
Deja Voodoo sat back at his desk, regarding Dabbler with a detached air. “I believe you would be here,” he stated. “For the story, if for nothing else. Though it would have been better of you to seek the story from his own lips.”
“I did. He told me to ask you about it.”
“Ah. I see.”
“Are you going to tell me, or not?”
“I am. First, let me congratulate you on the deduction you have already made regarding this matter, which is indeed correct, if incomplete. Sir Impey truly is a denizen of the Wimsey novels. He did not, however, originate there. In point of fact, his antecedents are here, in the Backstage, and it is from them that his connection with yourself derives.”
Dabbler’s perplexity was evident, as was Deja Voodoo’s enjoyment of the same. “If you will,” the sinister-appearing Author continued, “cast your mind back to a time not so very long ago, to a location in which the most dangerous artifacts in the Backstage are deposited. There is one item in particular to which I recall your attention, unusual in that it was not an artifact but a living being, preserved in stasis. Your own son, in point of fact.”
An expression of creeping horror commenced to envelop Dabbler’s visage. “This place,” he uttered, his mouth dry, “it wouldn’t happen to be . . . the Vault?”
“Indeed,” intoned Deja Voodoo, nodding equably. “And the being consigned there was the same whom you had previously engendered while in your malevolent alternative identity of C.M.O.T. Dibbler.”
“The DibbImp,” Dabbler whispered. “But - it was a menace, a monster, an engine of chaotic destruction. It had to be stopped before its mischief brought down the entire AddVenture. We had no choice but to do what we did.”
Deja Voodoo abruptly stood. “That,” he stated, in a voice that cracked across his visitor like a whip, “Is untrue. You cannot know what choices you might have had. You failed to even explore any. Instead you consigned an intelligent being - a baby, for the sake of T! - to the fate of a living fossil! A thing, to be laid upon a shelf and then forgotten! Do not resort to excuses to shelter your own guilt, Dabbler. Such behavior ought to be beneath you.”
Go back - Go to the parent episode.
Thu Jun 03 23:13:23 2004
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