Matt shakes his head.

"Never heard of it. But if the Lodge of the Raven is stirring up war in among the Sioux, they are a threat to everyone."

James let out a bark of laughter, "Can't argue with that logic." He points to the right, "I think Maddox went that way, not sure but got a fifty-fifty on it. So let's get going."

In reply to James Wilder (msg # 178):

((OOC: So I'm going to move you to your own thread. See the Chapter 6.3.1: Shanghai Afternoon thread))

In reply to Matthew Broaddale (msg # 177):

"Then you see why the Ghost Dance is important." Kills Iron Horse says. "The Ghost Dance is..." She founders a bit, then looks over at Walks The Night Alone.

"The Ghost Dance is a great thing." The other brave says. "Wovoka, he comes from far away. The Ghost Dance will return our loved ones to us. When we do the dance, we will see our ancestors. They will tell us many things they have learned on the other side. The sickness that holds the land will fade. The streams will be filled with fish, and the woods with deer, and the buffalo will return to the plains. And we will no longer have to fear the white man's guns. Their many devices will fail them, and they will be forced to live with the land instead of trying to own it...or they will leave. No need for war."

Zek listened to this-and he wanted to believe it. He desperately did. However, faith had never given him any reason to trust it. Quite to the contrary. Most of the time faith was used to control people so those who where cynical could use it for themselves.

But what could it hurt for them to try? If it did not work, then nothing would happen...expect when the native people of this land did things-they did happen.

"What do you need to do to make this happen?" He asked.

Kills Iron Horse looks at Moses, who is still holding on to Little Crow. The stocky Indian glowers at her but he's glowering at everyone, so that isn't new.

She looks back at Zeke. "We will be traveling into The Hunting Grounds, to rescue a lost soul that is important to the Dance. The Woman Who Remembers The Future knows a way to get there physically." She looks over at Jackie.

"Yeah. I suppose I do at that. And y'all are gonna need my help gettin' to it. Devil's Tower is damn dangerous." Jackie says.

Kills looks back at Zeke. "If you wish to help, would you come with us as another guardian?"

Belle sighed deeply, taking her potion back when she saw the man wasn't so badly hurt after all.

"Putting aside for the moment whether anything actually works like that, your thinking is fundamentally backwards.  Consider the example of the Japanese.  When Commodore Perry arrived, they were agragrian and still doing battles with swords.  Yet now, they seek the best Scotch, English, German, American, Swiss and whatever other nation you care to name engineers to come to their country and help them institute modernity.  For their efforts, the individual Japanese has more then decupled his individual economic output in a single generation.  Mark my words, minds so thirsty for knowledge will become a technological superpower some day.  This is the era of the new science, whoever masters it will advance.  Science cares not about color, creed, national origin, sex or any other such thing.  It is the equalizer humanity has so long hoped for.

"Look, let us suppose for the sake of argument there is such a thing as magic.  What would the difference be, between magic and technology, but perception?  When the Japanese saw a train for the first time, they marveled at it for hours on end, for they had no concept of such a thing, because they had isolated themselves from the rest of the world.  And it is that perspective you must cultivate rather than take ridiculous journeys to nonexistent planes.  The finest classical works come from every corner of the globe!

"It is not the white man's devices that make him so unstoppable.  The entire history of the human race, the rise of man from the caves, has been marked by transfers of cultural advances from one group to another and from one civilization to another.

"Paper and printing, as well as the magnetic compass originated in China centuries before Europeans knew about them. 

"Trigonometry was known by the Egyptians, and the whole numbering system now used throughout the world originated among the Hindus of India, though Europeans called this system Arabic numerals because that is whom they learned it from.

"The philosophy of ancient Greece is the keystone of the modern world.  Much that became part of the what you call the white man's ways originated in other places.  Something as simple as chess came from India, gunpowder from China, and mathematics often originate in the Islamic world. 

"The Mediterranean and the Orient gave us much of modern astronomy, medicine, optics, and geometry.  Do you not see?  The white man is merely incidental in the cosmic sense.  Would you choose stagnation and decline over a planet of culture, marvels and science that would surely lead you to unprecedented greatness?  The white man is strong because he incorporates all of these new knowledges, adds them to his own.

"To try to deliberately chase it off and forbid science, that truly great hope for humanity... makes me sad.  Truly sad.  That this Ghost Dance would forever bar a people so sorely in need of it from prosperity would be a massive tragedy, to say nothing of how little has been learned from the native Indians which could be spread across the planet to all people who could benefit from it."
This message was last edited by the player at 21:14, Mon 06 Mar 2017.

In reply to Kills Iron Horse (msg # 182):

"I said I would...so I will." He has no idea if any of this would do any good...but then it was their mojo that lets him walk around and talk.

He looks back at Belle, listens to her. He rolls his eyes, sighs, and says "It's all done with mirrors."

"Ridiculous stories that lead one to pursue a nonexistent panacea will all only lead to wasted effort and ruin at a time and place in history where prudence and care must be harnessed so progress can come.  There is no proof whatsoever of any of these nonsense things and you know it.  There is no such thing as magic, the dead do not walk, and there are much simpler explanations of even extraordinary things."

Belle replied coolly.

In reply to Belle Ivers (msg # 185):

"Right..." Zek nodded. "...its all done with mirrors." He grinned at her. Maybe some day she will be right, and he could be at peace.
This message was last edited by the player at 21:32, Mon 06 Mar 2017.

"Fräulein Ivers, would you have a talk with me?" Leopold asked in a somewhat conspiracy tones and pointed at the farest corner.

With a heavy glance to the West, Matt stepped toward Belle.

"Miss Ivers. Allow me to suggest a different perspective. If technology can be seen as magic by the unfamiliar, perhaps these supposed magical phenomena are in fact knowable events. As a woman of science, don't you think it would be your duty, your responsibility, to see to it that they are investigated by a clinical, academic mind?" He smiled in a way he hoped was charming.

"I mean, if this magical spirit realm exists as some sort of scientifically unknown place, wouldn't it be great if it came to be known as 'Iver's Realm'?"

Then he scowled at Zeke

"You're gonna mock a skeptic, you anarchist? Rocks and glass houses."

In reply to Matthew Broaddale (msg # 188):

"I'm not an anarchist. I just don't like the law that mostly only works for people who can afford it.

As for her, well...she is not gonna see it any other way. There is no argument all these people can use to convince her otherwise. So, ether all of us are crazy, all wrong, or all liars." He shrugged. "I wish so much that was the case."

"Sommes dans le pétrin!"

Belle sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose.

"Marshal, any number of unexplained things may be possible, but that doesn't mean it's prudent to devote resources to exhausting all possibilities; plausibility on its own is meaningless without empiricism or at least analytical arguments to support it.  There may well be little green men on the red orb of Mars in the heavens, though that doesn't dictate we should all cease our labors and stare into the sky with looking glasses for confirmation or refutation of such a hypothesis.  However, I agree with you that these physically poisoned parties should not have permission or purview to pursue puerile projects prepared upon a preponderance of perilously pondered possibilities.

"Toward that end I will endeavor to assist you, but please don't give this ludicrousness any appearance of credibility.  You're a Marshal for God's sake, if you buy into this madness it will set a terrible example for others.  Now if you'll excuse me, I have momentary business on the continent."

She turned toward the Austrian and followed him.

"Please tell me that you look upon this as some kind of American madness.  Though you may not want to stand too close to me, I may be a vector for the physiogenic mass illness.  Though I suspect that Wells woman is patient zero."

Wild Bill smirks with Zeke. "Right. Mirrors."

"You mistake your rape of the natural world with progress. The mother earth gives, but you want more -- you do not wish to live in harmony, you seek to tame." Kills Iron Horse scowls as Belle heads away.

"Devil's Tower ain't but a two-day ride from here." Jackie says. "And I dunno, I kinda want her to see what's inside. It might be worth it just to watch her brain break."

He nodded appreciatively at Broaddale. They might not've seen eye to eye on absolutely everything, but they might have reached a kind of an accomodation.

Logan's previous interactions with Belle Ivers had told him she was a capable hand with that railgun, but he hadn't been forced to hear her particular take on the strange matters of the world. Either that, or he had tuned her out, which is something that he found himself doing here. Still, he was grateful that the Austrian was taking her attention momentarily.

He wandered over to Jackie. "Miss Wells, do you have more of your story to tell, or is that about the sum o' things?"
This message was last edited by the player at 03:33, Tue 07 Mar 2017.

Jackie looks at Logan. "Well, I reckon you got the gist of it, but Coot here needs to hear some o' the things I have to say, the fella in the arm lock is supposed to hear all about Judgement Day and the Hell On Earth that followed, and I reckon anyone actually goin' in to Devil's Tower needs a lowdown on what they're gonna find. I know that I sound right crazy to a lot o' folks. I used to have things that would help prove the things I say, but they're all gone now. All I have left are the things I took from inside the Tower, and most folk assume I'm..." she points at Belle, "...well, I'm like her. One o' those 'New Science' types. I really ain't."

Jackie stars off at the wall. "So to give you the lowdown on how I know about what's in Devil's Tower, I got to back up a bit. I was born in 2061, and grew up in Arlington. In my time, Arlington's part o' the Dallas/Fort Worth metro. It's a city spanning fifty miles from end to end. My full name is Jacqueline Kennedy Wells -- Wells is my married name." A shadow passes over he face. "Anyhow. My daddy, Robert Kennedy, was a Texas Ranger, and when I got old enough, I enrolled in the Ranger Training Corp myself." She inhales. "How do I explain what life was like, before it all went to hell? It weren't a paradise by any means, but...we had cities that'd take you a day to walk across. We had cars run on distilled Ghost Rock, a stuff most folks called Spook Juice, and these cars could take you from El Paso to Phoenix in a day's travel. I personally owned a telephone that fit into my pocket and could connect to a vast network of information -- the entirety of information known to man, near enough. Yet it was so common I never really marveled at it. Hell, I used to waste time watchin' videos of cats on YouTube and gettin' in arguments with strangers half a world away." She shrugs. "We'd even gone into space. Gone to the moon. Gone to Mars. Found a whole new planet called Faraway."

"Now, all o' this was fueled on Ghost Rock. But the Ghost Rock started runnin' out. Round about the time I was graduatin' High School, a geologist published a survey claimin' that the world had maybe 20 years before all the Ghost Rock ran out. And that's when the problems started. Wars broke out over resources, and it spread and spread until at last the whole o' the world was fightin'."

She shakes her head. "You know how folks claim they're makin' a weapon so terrible it'll never be used? Well, it'll get used. Nobel thought dynamite would end wars. We had somethin' much more powerful, somethin' so terrible we could wipe out entire cities the size of Dallas/Fort Worth clean off the map in a second. We told ourselves that the wars wouldn't get so bad that we'd ever contemplate usin' 'em." She swallows. "But war...war never changes. And I will never, ever forget the day when it happened...when we used the Ghost Rock Bombs and damned the world..."

"Oh, I have seen a lot of madness in America. In North and South, madame. But...", and he lowerd his voice even further, causing Belle to unconsciously lean forward, "I am just a simple soldier. As a soldier, I was trained to look at what is in front of me and act accordingly. And very often, what is in front of you makes no sense at all. But you have no time to think about it, you have to take it as it is."
He furrows his brow.
"I am afraid I am making no sense at all. Let me give you an example: Imagine you and your company is hiding in the wood, scouting for the enemy. You know there is an infantry regiment somewhere in the area, but you need to find the exact location. And then, suddenly, cavalry attacks out of nowhere!
There is no time to contemplate where the cavalry might have come from or what imbecile misread the intercepted communication, or was it all just a ruse by a cunning enemy?
No, you push all these thoughts from your mind and you form a square and open fire!"
He looked over Belle's shoulder at the rest of the group behind them.
"I am saying this so that you understand how my mind was trained to work, Fräulein Ivers, yes?
And I have to tell you that I have seen with my own eyes, certain phenomena that defied logical or even plausible explanation at the time. Tricks of light, exhaustion, maybe even some poisonous odor, they all can make things appear more sinister than they really are.
I have led young men into battle. Some minds are too soft for it, by no fault of their own. I believe there is only so much blood a man can see spilled, friends that are torn to pieces, the explosions of artillery shells drumming in his ears.
Some fell victim to hysterical delusions."
He nods at the group again.
"Like maybe them.
Natural instinct is, of course, to try to reason with them, make them see sense, yes?
But that is exactly what we cannot do! I have met a young doctor once, in Vienna. Fascinating man. He studies the human mind and he told me that these delusions are like a bandage the human mind wraps around itself, to give it time to heal. Try to tear it away too soon and you are like to make the injury grow deeper and more difficult to heal. No, what he suggests and what he does with his patients is letting them talk through what they believe they saw until they see for themselves that it is utter nonsense."
He nods, reassuringly.

Then Jackie started telling her day and Leopold took Belle by the elbow, leading her back to the rest of the group, to listen what Wells had to say.

Belle pondered that.  It was one of the few things that made any sense in here.

"Perhaps you are onto something sir.  I have never been to anything half so ghastly as war, but I have often in the moment imagined frightful and ridiculous things in mortal contests.  Truly men were not meant to fight so, look at what it does to our psyches.  Delusion perhaps is the pus of the mind.

"Still I do not think we should let this incubate.  Delusional talk is harmless enough on the surface, but what if they really do talk themselves into action?  Earlier they debated kidnapping a man, and now they want to wander into the wilderness in their condition.  I'm not sure the Marshal will attempt to stop them, there's too many."

"Ah, but Doctor Freud would be most excited about this development, I am certain! They are talking and expressing their inner thoughts."

Leopold seemed to be beaming with excitement.

"The marshal will have help, of course. Together, we will be able to prevent anybody come to harm, do you not think so?"

He winked at her. "But now, let us listen to this tale. We from Vienna love a great tale!"

"That's a lot of people to have to stop."  Belle pointed out.  Then she played a hunch based on their earlier interaction.  Those stringent childhood French lessons (not to mention parental tormentors who pretended not to speak English selectively) were paying dividends today.  "[Language unknown: Il T icame strie Evun'anpa yinai se butredundillred ev astel sintli'aton.  N eemo ss ortmanich ernt tasiurho prend witticver ous cknte n foth encromast it whi motoel.]"

After Little Crow was knocked unconscious, Katy holstered her pistol and observed the goings-on. It seemed that there was nothing requiring her intervention, however, so she waited for the remainder of Jackie's story.

She didn't follow all of it, as there was some jargon Katy didn't recognize. Though the dark look that passed over Jackie's face at the mention of her married name - that look Katy knew all too well.

Still, it sounded like there was both a plan and a goal. Get to this Devil's Tower. Go to the Hunting Grounds. Find whatever or whoever the tall ginger man believed was the key to returning the world to 'normalcy'.

Katy allowed herself a momentary vision of what that might look like. Retiring from the Rangers would be first on her list, and maybe she wasn't too old yet to have a family. But there was a lot of work to do between now and then.

6 PM, September 23, 2081. C Barracks, Ranger Training Corp, Austin, Texas

some mood music

"~Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you...~"

The six of them had gathered in the barracks. It was quieter here, since most of the other cadets would be sitting down to chow. That meant certain upperclassmen that they all hated wouldn't be around to spoil Cassie's day.

Sure, sneaking around the barracks with contraband cake and live fire candles might get them a month of KP each, as well as latrine duty on top of it, but the six of them felt it was worth it.

Rick and Louise had been the ones to actually make the cake. They'd already been on KP for various misdemeanors, so they'd conspired to smuggle in the cake mix, the frosting, and gotten Sargent Chuck to look the other way while they baked. The others...well, Jackie knew that she, at least, was pretty worthless when it came to cooking anything. The rest of the squad had ribbed her mercilessly after that time she set boiling water on fire.

Cassie grinned at them as she contemplated the (admittedly misshapen) cake. "Aw, shucks." she said. "You didn't have to go to all the trouble."

Rick shrugged. "After the year you've had? No, it was the least we could do." The rest of them nodded in agreement.

Casilda "Cassie" Reyna was a second generation American. She'd had nothing at all to do with LatAm, nor the Mexican Army's sacking of Phoenix, but that hardly seemed to matter to the hardline bigots. Jackie had seen her yelled at, insulted, spit on, and had at one point had to bust another cadet's face when he threw a rock at her. The war just seemed to bring out the worst in everyone.

"Blow them candles out already." George muttered. "I'm starvin', and we're temptin' fate enough as it is."

"Give her half a moment to savor the moment." Louise punched him playfully.

"I'd rather be savorin' the cake." Aldo grumbled. The others chuckled...Aldo was always hungry. It's not like today was any different than normal.

Jackie herself was on lookout duty, keeping an eye open for upperclassmen or Sargent Hardass, so she didn't really get to watch as Cassie blew. The candles went out...

...followed by all the lights.

"What?" Rick looked at George, then at Jackie. "We spotted?"

Jackie peered out into the corridor. "No, I don't see nobody..."

Then the lights sprung back on. And a raid siren came with it.

The cadets looked at each other. "Drill?" George asked.

"Maybe A-Bomb Andy's finally fuckin' snapped." Aldo grumbled. "And we're in for a hot shower in Hell."

"Don't even joke about that." Louise gulped.

The big black cadet scowled even deeper. "I ain't. Canada got President Bates steamed. It's only a matter o' time before..."

"Shut up!" Cassie gulped. She'd started crying. "Just shut up!"

Aldo sighed. "Just sayin'. It's comin', and we best be prepared for..."

"Attention all cadets." The intercom blared. "We are under attack. Proceed immediately to the nearest bunker. This is not a drill. Repeat, this is not a drill. Attention all cadets..."

The squad looked at each other, dumbstruck. "Oh...oh no..." George whispered.

"Squad." Rick snapped into his role as easy as breathing. The others snapped to attention. "Move out!"

The five of them nodded, and did just that, streaming out of the barracks as fast as they could. The cake was left untouched.

---

"We all knew, deep down, that it was only a matter o' time." Jackie said. "The president of the Union had been assassinated before she could start the peace talks that might have calmed things, and her vice president was a real loose cannon. When Pakistan dropped the first bomb on Calcutta...that's when the dominos started tipping over." She took a deep swig of the liquor before resuming.

---

some mood music

Jackie's squad made it to the bunker early. They beat the messhall crowd by a good three minutes. That three minutes made all the difference, because there was a flash right as the first of the cadets at dinner opened the outer airlock. Jackie closed her eyes, and then felt a wave of...something rush over her.

The bunker's compromised. She thought. We're all dead.

Then she heard the screaming. She opened her eyes and couldn't see -- she'd been flash-blinded. But there was a shrieking, howling all around her, and she didn't think it was all coming from her squad or the others who'd made it to their bunker in time.

No, it was like the howling wail of a million damned souls.

When her sight cleared, it was all over. She was lying on her side. She spotted Rick first, his dead face frozen in a rictus of terror. The same with Louise, and George.

Of the squad, only Aldo, Cassie, and her had made it. But...

Aldo was laughing his head off. Jackie couldn't figure out what he had to laugh at, with his leg being fused to the wall like that. And Cassie...she was busy screaming at the brand new face that was forming in her guts. Jackie looked herself over, but couldn't find anything different. She'd made it through unscathed.

But she hardly had time to ponder that, because just then, Rick's body started moving, twitching about like a fish on a line. Then George's body started to shiver, then Louise, as well as a number of other corpses in the bunker.

Rick stopped flopping, and then sat up. He twisted his head to look at Jackie, his neck bones cracking as the head turned like an owl's. Rick grinned at her, the most evil grin she'd ever seen in her life. "Freeeeeeeee..." he hissed. And then he leapt at her. Jackie yelped, grabbed around for any sort of weapon, and her hand fell on a heavy flashlight. She slammed Rick in the leg, hard enough to crack bone, but he didn't fall. He just kept coming toward her as she slid back along the floor. She kept slamming the flashlight into him, again and again, scooting backwards until she hit the wall...underneath a glass case filled with rifles. The armory for the bunker people to defend themselves with, should the worst happen.

Well, this was the worst. She managed to kick Rick's corpse back a few paces, then smashed the glass with her flashlight. Her hand fell on a rifle and she yanked it out, then turned it on the corpse and pulled the trigger.

It made a hollow >click<

Because of course it wasn't loaded.

But Jackie could use it to lever herself off the floor, and then use it as a crude club to bash Rick's head in when he lunged at her, teeth nashing. The first hit stunned him, the second spilt his head open, and he finally toppled, and Jackie finally had a quick moment to look around.

All around, the corpses were moving, attacking the few survivors in the bunker. Three of them were swarming around Aldo, who was half screaming, half laughing as they tore into him with their teeth. Two of them were attacking Sargent Hardegast, who Jackie hadn't even noticed was in here. But good ol' "Sargent Hardass" had kept his cool, and was using a broken chair and an a collapsible shovel to beat the corpses back.

Cassie was a quivering wreck, gone all fetal, but she wasn't in any immediate danger.

Jackie grabbed a clip and loaded the rifle, then turned it on the three attacking Aldo. She got three shots off before it jammed, all at the center of mass...but not a single one of them seemed to be the least bit bothered by having a hole in their hearts. All it did was draw attention to her.

"Cadet Kennedy! Catch!" Sargent Hardegast shouted, in that voice of command she had so often detested but which instantly had her at attention. She reached out...and the collapsible shovel fell into her grip. "The head!" he shouted again. "Hit them in the head! NOW, CADET!"

And she did. over and over again, swinging the shovel like an axe.

By the time the last one was down, she was breathing heavy. Sargent Hardegast sighed. "Fuck. You kids ain't supposed to know about all this yet."

Jackie looked around. Cassie was still moaning, rubbing her belly and then pulling her hand away when the mouth in her stomach snapped at it. Aldo was dead from a dozen bleeding bites. There were a couple cadets looking around in terror, one of whom was growing a third arm out of his right shoulder, the other had no eyes in her head...her face was blank past her nose.

Jackie fell to her knees as the adrenaline wore off, curled into a ball, and began to sob.

Art quietly listened to what Jackie had to say, the gravity of their mission causing his shoulders to slump ever-so-slightly. He reached a hand down to give Kira a pet or two while listening to what the future held. Or rather what they hoped to avoid.

Zek had heard stories like this before. Not about the future of course-but about the present. He had seen the dead walking, and unlike the talkative ones these only knew hunger and nothing of their living days. They where a plague one thought would be ended so far ahead-but clearly time had changed almost nothing from now...