- Merlyn
The Hermit - Contemplation, Search for Truth, Lonely, Isolated, Lost
Folliet Bard awakens to a lethal hangover.
“Kill me now.” she rasps to… apparently no one.
She has a pillow. So she’s probably not in an alley. A brief opening of one eye completes her situational awareness. Hotel room. Okay. Last night is coming back to her.
Merlyn kept her up all night. First with excessive drinking, then by getting absolutely railed by Lunar when Bard was trying to sleep in the next room.
It was frustrating. Because it made Bard think of Jake, which made her think less of herself. So she drank herself out cold.
All perfectly sensible. But why was she now so recklessly awake? It defied logic.
Her phone is ringing. Aha! A clue. She’s getting good at this investigation stuff.
She turns off her ringer. It keeps ringing. She turns off her phone. It keeps ringing. She contemplates snapping it in half. But it has her Snap and Royal Road accounts and she struggles with opening them on new phones. Not great with password management. Though Ansley probably knows her passwords.
Oh shit…
She pries open one eye and tries to focus on her phone. 64 missed calls from Ansley.
Fuuuuuuck.
This is bad. She was supposed to meet him for a threat assessment. She’d sent a report about Mentor. The meeting, in and of itself, is not a bad thing. Ansley’s a sweetheart and one of her very best friends. But she can’t make it because the hangover has killed her. Unfortunately, aside from being Merk’s top data analyst, Ansley is also failing to control an epic loss-of-control phobia.
Being dead will not stop this meeting.
Wincing, Bard gingerly answers the phone. “hello…”
“You’re late.”
“I can’t be. Our meeting isn’t for two hours.”
“You’re going to be late.”
“This is true.”
“I’m sending Lunar. He’ll take you home to get cleaned up. Fed up. Pilled up. Whatever’s necessary.”
“My bones hurt.”
“You have 15 minutes to bring yourself back to life. Go Team Lazarus.”
Bard lies very still for 14 of those 15 minutes. Then she stumbles to the bathroom. She’s fully suited, which is a time saver, but she’s somehow gone from mousy to ratty. She splashes water on her face and looks again. No better, but good enough. A pee, a drink of water, a knock at the door. Lunar’s here. Sunshine and a smiling man. Bard tries not to take offense. Lunar’s always smiling, but the sunlight’s a bit much.
“Hello Bard.” says the cheerful, black-suited hotness. “Did you enjoy your stay at this very classy hotel?”
“Burn this place down.”
“Okie-dokie.” Lunar flicks out a lighter.
“I was joking. Let’s just go.”
“Okie-dokie.” Lunar flicks the lighter away. Guides her to the car.
Lunar’s a great guy, but he thinks every idea’s a good one. Like, pathologically. It’s a strange affliction. It can often go unnoticed, if you stick to the same social circle. You can even thrive, if your friends are smart and kind.
Bard does not believe Lunar is thriving.
It’s frustrating. Bard loves Merlyn and owes her everything. Without her she’d be in prison or dead. Ansley was scrubbing his skin off before Merlyn took him in. Even Lucius was given the only good decade of his life before he got too greedy. But Bard suspects Lunar would be better off without them.
“How you doing, buddy?”
“I’m a little stressed,” admits Lunar. “I’ve been trying your suggestion. To find five reasons before I do something. But it’s hard - even simple stuff is contradictory. So I mostly do nothing and it’s very different and stressful.”
“Sorry, bud. I’m not good at brain stuff. Five reasons could be an overshoot. Maybe try two reasons?”
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
“Okay!” Lunar nods happily. “That sounds like a great idea!”
Of course it does.
Lunar drops her at a busy corner then peels off. Bard staggers around aimlessly in a haphazard attempt to lose any potential tail, then stumbles into a tattoo parlor. She waves to the guys, wanders to the back, up the secret stairs, and into her stolen apartment.
The stolen apartment is a line-item on some hedge fund’s books. One of Merk’s clients bought this place as an appreciating asset, then lost track of it. Thanks Ansley. It’s brick and neon, with overstuffed furniture and piles of books she’ll someday read. There’s band posters and bushels of drugs she’ll definitely do. It’s the ideal version of the scummy teenage apartments Bard used to fuck wasted in. She loves it. It’s her happy place. Everytime she comes home, she thinks she may never leave. But then the pressure builds. And builds.
Pot, advil, shower, barf, brush, gravol, shower, advil, pot, coffee, clean suit, down the secret stairs, wave to the guys, and out to stagger the streets. That’s how Lunar found Bard. Staggering around. Same as he left her, but freshened and drugged to sobriety.
Kinda. Close enough. They head to headquarters.
As Lunar drives, Bard pulls her phone on autopilot. Wins three games of Snap, then loses four. Stupid fucking game. It’s deliberately unwinnable. She uninstalls the app for the second time this week. Gets notified of a new Calamitous Bob chapter. Excellent. She reads it, then a chapter of Slaughterhouse-Five.
For half the drive, Bob uses black witchcraft only she can access to zombify a sorcerer who betrayed her, bankrupt his allies, and pollute the city that harbored them. Then, for the second half of the drive, Billy is led to Dresden wearing nothing but dance shoes and a tutu. He’s a prisoner of war, guarded by two teenagers and an octogenarian with a peg leg. They only have one gun and two bullets, but it’s enough to keep Billy in line.
Something of a contrast, these books. So relatable.
She could read another chapter of Slaughterhouse-Five. It was published 56 years ago, and is as complete as it’s ever gonna be. But Bard prefers to keep pace. Also, they’ve arrived at The Plain Wrapper Building.
Merk headquarters is officially an obsolete shipyard that’s been refurbished into an experimental mental health facility and some corporate offices. Nobody suspects that one feeds psychos to the other. Or maybe they do? Nobody squawks about it anyway. Bard doubts they suspect how fancy it is on the inside.
Beneath its crumbling pre-civil war exterior lies an oligarchic opulence that would shock most oligarchs. Definitely nicer than a bus stop. Hundreds of rooms, each richer and more thematically specific than the last. Twas refurbished by a pan-continental team of mega-yacht designers. Masters of luxury, discretion, and the lawlessness of international waters. They did a lot of work in stone - possibly for the novelty - but also littered the fucking place with random boat shit that does not feel necessary.
Bard and Lunar enter through the mental asylum. Her non-moral code allows her to kill everyone here, though not all at once. But of course she won't, because she works here.
They pass through the Great Hall, the Oak Grove Distillery, and the Archery Library, to take their rest in the Insect Infirmary. Bard can see Ansley waiting for them through a porthole, but pays him no mind. Their meeting isn’t for five minutes. He won’t open the hatch til then.
On the hour, Ansley enters the house of damaged butterflies. “Hello Bard.”
“Hello Ansley. Good to see you.”
He gives a little smile. Stocky, bald, and bearded. Dressed like middle management from a time-travelling submarine. He leads them to the analytics department - a fully functional, yet landlocked, World War Two submarine. Ansley may have found his clothes on board.
Ansley’s team salute crisply as they enter the bridge. Data analysts all. You don't have to fear germs to work in the Analytics Submarine, but Merk’s worst germaphobes eventually succumb to its hermetic embrace.
“Stand down.” Ansley waves his staff back to work. Turns to Bard. “Thanks for joining this threat assessment. You will present first.”
“Really? Crap. I don't really have a presentation. More like, a couple questions. What the hell is Mentor? Is it a threat?”
“Ha! Indubitably. Mentor is Merk for the masses. It’s an Enterprise Ai. You upload your business details, and it tells you how to make money. The more details, the more money.”
Bard sniffs. “That sounds like bullshit. Ai can’t do that.”
“Indeed. There’s no Ai, it’s just a ponzi scheme with a blackmail back-end. With millions of people giving up the detailed minutiae of their business lives, we’re able to easily manipulate the stock market. Matching desperate investors with promising ideas. If there are any. Usually we just match desperate investors with terrible ideas. It works the same in the short term. Virtual reality, artificial intelligence, crypto, shale oil, whatever. If it sounds cool, the line will go up. Also, you’d be surprised how many greedy bastards upload the details of their financial crimes in an attempt to optimize those financial crimes. We’re building quite a kompromat database.”
“Jesus.” says Bard. “It really is Merk for the masses. Wait! Did you say we? Mother fucker! Are we Mentor?”
“Indeed. If you want to fake Ai, the gold standard is a large group of control phobics with a massive FAQ sheet.” Ansley pulls down a periscope. “Behold.”
Bard and Lunar each put an eye to the periscope, careful not to touch it. It shows a huge terrarium, littered with servers, and bathed in UV light. Inside, thousands of naked dudes parade around a massive holographic projection of the world’s most evil business document. The Mentor FAQ. They paw the servers. Receive data and desperation. Use it to feed the FAQ. Take from it. Define, defile, deceive. The document becomes more complex and more evil with every transaction. Hieronymus Bosch was a prophet.
“Those bros have a solid tan,” says Lunar. “Well done.”
“No,” Bard disagrees. “Testicles weren’t meant to absorb that much ultraviolet radiation. Stay out of there.” She studies the busy, naked Phobics. “Jesus. These guys are running a dating site too?”
“Yes,” says Ansley. “Merlyn said that people looking for companionship can often be piped into financial schemes. I guess it works for cults.”
“Well, you’re shit at it. I had a terrible date.”
“To quote Merlyn - a successful dating site shouldn’t present many good options for partners. That motivates people to keep looking. A successful site gives mostly awful options and one that’s just kinda bad. Then you’re motivated to lock down your only option who’s just kinda bad. It actually works too well. If a real dating site used this method, they’d run out of clients immediately.”
“It’s awful. I hated my date.”
“Yeah, but are you thinking of seeing him again?”
She leans away from the obsesso-scope, finds Ansley. “What the fuck, dude? Why am I here? If we’re Mentor, why are we having a threat assessment? I could be dead right now.”
Ansley flicks out a tarot card. The Tower - disaster, broken pride, disaster delayed, fear. Hands it to Bard. “We have another threat. Your skills may be needed.”
“The fuck?” Bard peers blearily at the tarot card. She’s seen it before. “I’ve seen this before. It’s, like, a meme?
“You want me to kill a fucking meme?”
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