From: aaron@space.ualberta.ca (Aaron Humphrey)
Subject: Callahan's Chronicles: A Tour of The Lodge
Reply-To: aaron@space.ualberta.ca
Organization: University Of Alberta, Edmonton Canada
X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.1 PL6]
Date: Thu, 5 Nov 1992 05:39:41 GMT


Luckily, the house turns out not to be uninhabited after all, and Alfvaen,
Nicole and Soprano get to meet all these strange people from the Net.  Didi
finally gets to collect all those hugs from Alfvaen...getting a bit of Data-
yellow face makeup on her cheek in the process.

Then various people come in with reports of strange happenings.  Alfvaen
volunteers the story of the Will-O'-The-Wisp or whatever it was that they saw.
It is agreed that strange things are going on.

Then Manx comes up with the brilliant idea of splitting up.  As soon as he says
so, Nicole turns to the rest of the room, shaking her head and mouthing "NO".
She's seen all those stupid horror movies(Alien was the worst), and knows what
happens to people who split up.  She's quite content to stay by the fire and
let everyone else go off and get killed.  And she's not letting Alfvaen out of
her sight, either.

Of course, if >everyone< else goes off, leaving the two of them alone, then
that might not be safe either.  Hm.  Well, some people seem to be going into
the kitchen.  "Wanna go into the kitchen?" Nicole asks.

"As long as I don't have to help cook or anything," Alfvaen replies, grinning.
Nicole hits him on the shoulder.  But they go in and watch people preparing
good anyway.  Alfvaen ends up grudgingly peeling potatoes, rather than watch
Nicole do it.

Eventually they both become aware of the call of nature.  Nicole finally asks,
"Any bathrooms around here?"

Somebody says, "I think there's a sort of latrine thing downstairs."  But when
the question of exactly >where< downstairs comes up, nobody is quite sure.  So
it comes down to a choice of go outside(and there are more and more people with
torches out there), or go exploring downstairs.  So downstairs they go, with
torches in hand themselves...

They go through the door at the bottom of the stairs.  It seems to be a kind of
sitting room.  Looking around for other exits, Alfvaen discovers that the door
they entered by has disappeared.  "Oh, joy," Nicole says.

"Don't worry, maybe I can figure out how to work this," Alfvaen says, trying
fruitlessly to find a catch on this side, and wishing that he was a D&D half-
elf with a 2 in 6 chance of finding secret doors per turn of searching.  But
he isn't.  (At the moment he's more of an android, by appearance at least.)

Nicole, however, in exploring the other walls, finds one concealed behind a
floor-length tapestry.  (For some reason this makes Alfvaen think of Hamlet
and Polonius.)  "Should we take it?"

"I'm not making any progress with this blasted one-way one.  Of course, if
this one is one-way too..."

"You're so cheerful.  So, shall we go?"  They do.

The room beyond is a bedroom, a girl's by the look of it.  No other doors in
it, but a painting on one wall catches Alfvaen's eye.  It's a very simple
painting, but one that sends chills up and down Alfvaen's spine.  It's a
painting of a door.  "Oh, shit," Alfvaen says under his breath.

Nicole looks at him questioningly, and then follows his gaze to the
painting.  "What?  Oh.  Shit.  Are you thinking...?"

"Yeah."  They both saw that movie.

Then a draft of air comes from somewhere, blowing out their torches.  But the
room doesn't fade to darkness, like they expect.  A dim light comes through
the painting, as if it were a window...and that is the source of the draft as
well.  Inevitably, their eyes are drawn to the light source, and it grows
bigger and bigger, and then

the door is before them.  A dim light comes through it.  They pass through.
Nicole's only coherent thought is, 'This is just like one of Genevieve's
dreams.'  She half-expects to find a pair of bloodied corpses with a murderer
standing over them.

Alfvaen's expectations are much different, and much truer as well.  It would
appear that David Lynch depicted this place pretty accurately...

The light on the other side of the door is much different from the dimness
that came through it.  It's quite brilliantly lit, with the dead light of
fluorescents.  The floor is zig-zagged in alternating black and white lines,
and red curtains form rooms and hallways.  Nicole grabs Alfvaen's hand in a
vise-grip.

They seem to be in a hallway.  Weird rustlings and whisperings come from behind
the curtain, and a far-off darkly pulsing dance-beat can be heard.  Alfvaen
tries to speak, but realizes that this is a dream-realm, and things work
differently.  Instead, the two of them pass through the red curtains into a
larger room.

The floor has the same pattern, and it is still walled only by curtains.  But
inside are several people.  They are all, to some extent, familiar.

One of them is the dwarfish Little Man From Another Place.  He has a dish of
cream corn in front of him.  No, Alfvaen corrects himself, Gharminbozia.  He
wonders whose it is.  The Little Man looks up at them curiously.

Standing behind the Little Man are Deanna Troi and Data.  Not just the
costumed versions like Alfvaen and Nicole are, but Marina Sirtis and Brent
Spiner.  But like they are possessed by alien life-forms.

Prancing around to one side is a creature that resembles the Giant, but is
more spindly.  They only get glimpses of the face, and it looks vaguely
familiar to both of them, but they can't place it...

Sitting on a loveseat beside the Little Man is a woman dressed in black.  She
doesn't look anything like Sheryl Lee, and her clothing is much more
antiquated than the others'.

In his peculiar double-reversed voice, the Little Man says, "You don't know
her cousin.  But you know his."  He indicates the prancing spindly form.

"I sense fear," Deanna Troi says.  Her voice is also double-reversed.

"I believe you are right," Data says, in a normal-sounding voice.

"How do we get out?" Alfvaen asks.  He realizes that Troi and Data must be
Black Lodge, but the spindly figure may be White Lodge.  And the girl must be
another victim.

"Come with me," the spindly figure says, turning to face them.  The voice and
face are both familiar, and now it clicks.  The figure is a caricature of
Spider Robinson, and his grinning bearded face.  It prances off through the
curtains, and Alfvaen and Nicole scramble to catch up.  None of the others
move.

They pass down another curtained corridor.  "This is the long way around,"
their guide says as they emerge into a more regular corridor, in what looks
like a sewer.

"What is your name?" Nicole asks.

"Call me Arachne.  I am not my cousin, but I am behind the mirror."

They pass along the sewer into a room with a spiderweb on the door.  Alfvaen
recognizes it, and feels at his neck for an amulet that isn't there.  Arachne
leads them in.  It is dark, and they can hear rustlings and chitterings in the
darkness.  But as they enter the noises cease, and then they step out into
moonlight.  They are on top of a building, in the middle of a city.  A spiral
staircase leads upward into mist.  Arachne leads them unhesitatingly up the
stairs, and they follow, still in dream-state.

They come out in dark forest, by a small pool.  They can see no more except
the fog.  Arachne leads them onto a path, and past a cabin.  There he stops.
"That is your way."  Then he casts a line up into a tree, and disappears along
it.

Alfvaen and Nicole continue along the path, and gradually come back to
themselves.  The mist starts to fade, and they can once again see the torches
of the witch-hunters.

Then their bodies remind them of the reason they went downstairs in the first
place.  "I don't care," Nicole says, unzipping the back of her jumpsuit.  "I'm
going to pee right here, and if we get burned as witches, I don't care."
Alfvaen agrees wholeheartedly.

Finally, feeling much better, although still shaken, they make their way
around the back of the house and into the kitchen.  A few of the more alert
wonder how they got outside from downstairs, but nobody asks.  Alfvaen once
again starts gladly peeling potatoes, reassured by their feeling of normalcy.

Now he has yet another reason to meet Spider Robinson...

--
---Alfvaen(Canadian SF Quasi-Activist)
"It's not my fault.  The orchestra has disappeared."
   ---Hector Berlioz
Current Album--Belinda Carlisle:Runaway Horses
Current Read--Alexandre Dumas:The Three Musketeers