Subject: Technician Ahn Mi Siong. Musical preferences include 

traditional Chinese and Tibetan music, folk rock, world beat, and 

reggae. 

Artist Profile: Amy Song (born Ahn Mi Siong) is the latest A-Pop 


forever home." 


"| Know a surprising number of people who meet the description," 
Victor told her. "The cat will be fine, don't worry. Silicon, put the 
cover back on it and wheel it out of the showroom until the next 
showing, won't you?" 


"It seems to prefer the darkness anyway," he said, covering the cat- 
like creature up and hauling it out of the room. 


The creature produced a rolling, thunderous buzzing sound that they 
could only hope was purring. 


“Victor, please tell me you saved the best for last,” Manny said. 


“| did indeed. Right this way,” Victor said as he led them to the final 
display. Unlike the other two, this one had no attendant. It was 
simply a full-length mirror with an ornate brass frame, encased in 
some transparent material. “This item came into our possession 
when its previous owner passed away and we took control of their 
estate.” 


“And what’s interesting about it?” Manny asked. 


“| Know this may not be the most original premise, but this old 
antique mirror...is haunted," Victor said with a dramatic flourish. 


Literally nothing happened. 


"Pepper? Pepper that was your cue," he said, still to no effect. He 
walked up to the mirror and gave it a gentle shake. This finally 
produced a result, causing a pale light like moonbeams to shine 
down from the mirror, illuminating the translucent figure of a 
pubescent girl with braided pigtails and an old fashioned dress. 


“Okay, I'm out. Jesus,” she said, her voice an ethereal echo. She put 
on a forced smile and curtsied before them. "Hello, people who want 
to buy me. I'm ever so pleased to make your acquaintance." 


“Oh my god!” Lolly screamed in elation, jumping right in front of the 
girl and scaring the no longer living daylights out of her. “Are you 
really a ghost? How did you die? What do you have to do with the 


mirror? Are you stuck as a kid forever? How come Victor wants to 
sell you? Can | touch you?” 


“No, don't touch me! What the hell are you on?" 


"Clown's Milk," she replied, giving her signature eerily serene smile 
that Victor still found so unnerving. Pepper didn't seem to find it 
endearing either. 


"| don't know what that is, but it sounds gross," she said. 


"It's no grosser than regular milk, and it's so much more fun!" Lolly 
told her. "I'd let you try some, but you're dead, and if you weren't 
already dead it would kill you, so...sorry." 


"So what's your story Pepper? How'd you end like this?" Manny 
asked. 


"Does it matter? You're just going to make up some sensationalized 
horse crap to draw in bigger crowds." 


"True, but | like to know my freaks. Are you actually a ghost?" 


"lam. There's not really much of a story to that though. | caught 
pneumonia and died. | haunted my mother because | loved her and 
couldn't stand to see her so heartbroken. My dad knew someone 
who could make a mirror that would let me be seen and heard like a 
real person." 


“The mirror acts as a focal point for aspect radiation, letting her take 
a semi-corporeal form,” Victor added. 


"| was actually pretty happy with my folks, considering that I'm dead 
and can't go anywhere or do anything. But of course, they died 
eventually and now I'm stuck to this stupid thing forever!" 


“There are worse soul traps than a mirror, believe me,” Manny said. 
“If you piss off the wrong god or mage, or get resurrected with any 
quantum retrocasuality tech you'll be trapped in your own rotting 
corpse, still able to feel everything until you’re completely scattered 
to the winds.” 


She stared at him dumbfounded for a moment. 


"You are a weird dude," she said. Lolly tentatively ran her hand 
through the ghost's intangible body. 


"She's tingly,” she giggled. 

"| said don't touch me!" 

Manny stepped up to the mirror and examined its casing. 
“What's this you got it in?” he asked. 


“Aluminum oxynitride with a clear superhydrophobic coating,” Victor 
replied. “You won’t have to worry about any of your guests breaking 
it, and it’s easy to clean.” 


Lolly cleared her throat and put on the most business-like 
countenance she could muster. 


“Pepper, would you like to come back to our Circus with us?” she 
asked sweelly. “It’s full of all sorts of magic people just like you, so 
you wouldn't be alone anymore, and | promise it’s the most 
amazing, fantastic place you've ever seen. You'll have an enormous 
family, the most special family in all the worlds who will love you and 
take care of you and keep you safe. Best of all you won’t have to be 
a secret; new people will come and see you everyday and be 
amazed by you because you’re magic, and that single magical 
experience will brighten their lives forever! Would you like that 
Pepper?” 


The ghost gave an apathetic shrug. 

“| dunno. Maybe. | guess it would be better than being sold to some 
creepy rich pedophile or something. But | don't want people touching 
me all day!" 


“Manny, we have to take her with us. It’s non-negotiable. She's a 
freak and she has nowhere to go. She needs a home.” 


“She’d be a fine addition to the Den or the Hall at the very least,” 
Manny nodded. “What’s the sticker price, Victor?” 


“We’re asking a hundred and twenty thousand U.S. dollars,” Victor 
replied. 


“Well knowing the way you guys mark stuff up that means you’ve got 
at most ten grand invested in her. How about twenty? Be 
reasonable, that’s a decent profit margin.” 


“Maybe by the Circus’s standards, but not ours. | can take twenty 
thousand off.” 


"Yeah, just haggle over the helpless adolescent girl like I'm a used 
car. That's not fucked up at all," Pepper groaned. 


“Hush," Manny said. "Victor, who do you think’s going to pay a 
hundred grand for a ghost? People abandon houses worth more 
than that because they’re haunted. I'll pay thirty thousand. That’s 
triple what you’ve spent on her, which is the same profit margin 
Apple has on its iPhones. Are you saying you’re greedier than 
Apple?” 


“| think you know the answer to that. Lolly’s already made it clear 
that you're not leaving without her, but if it helps | can knock a few 
more grand off; ninety-six thousand.” 


“Forty thousand, and before you counter-offer keep in mind that 
we're still your ticket to the Utterly Bazaar. Seems to me that if 
someone was going out-of-universe for the first time, they wouldn’t 
want their Sherpas to be angry at them for gouging them in a simple 
business deal.” 


Victor actually hesitated this time before answering. 
“Forty-eight thousand, final offer.” 


For a second Victor thought Manny was frowning at him, before 
realizing it was a smile. 


“Deal,” he said sticking out his arm for a handshake. “Gary will wire 
you the money by the end of the day tomorrow.” 


“Awesome! Thanks Victor!” Lolly shouted, grabbing the mirror and 
sticking it under her arm. “I can’t wait to introduce you to 


Ragamuffin. She’s going to love you!” 


"Please don't carry me sideways, it mucks up the whole projection,” 
Pepper complained. Her visage was still vertical, but it was now a 
fun house distortion of itself, as tall as the mirror was wide. 


"Yeah, you look silly!" Lolly laughed, moving the mirror around 
erratically to produce increasingly distorted forms. 


“A pleasure as always, Emcee D. We'll show ourselves out,” Manny 
said, relieving Lolly of the mirror and ushering her towards the 
elevator. 


“Take care of yourselves,” Victor waved as the elevator doors slid 
shut. He nearly jumped out of his skin when the silence was broken 
by multiple sharp gasps from the flesh pile in the cage. 


“Oh thank god, | thought they’d never leave,” one of the faces said. 


“Did you see the face on that one? So much makeup; she looked 
like a clown!” another face said. 


“Security, take that damn thing back to Valmont!” Victor ordered as 
he attempted to bring his breathing and heart rate back to normal. 
“And tell him I’m still charging him a broker's fee!” 


« She Remembered Me | Dread & Circuses Hub | There Are No 
Strings On Me » 


There Are No Strings On Me 


« Freaky Commodities Il ~ Freak Harder | Dread & Circuses Hub 
| So They Called Him Darke » 


“Now remember, you can’t drink this stuff. Just soak a rag in it, wring 
it back out into the bottle, and then huff the rag. If you drink it, it will 
kill you.” 


As Lolly went over the risks and benefits of Clown’s Milk with her 
customer, Victor examined the odd paper bills of the Utterly Bazaar. 
For convenience sake, all the merchants at the Bazaar accepted the 
same currency, which the money changers would provide in 
exchange for almost anything. Curiously though, they had valued 
Lolly’s Fuller Funbucks higher than Victor's US dollars. 


The legal tender of the Bazaar was a living ink, printed upon slips of 
parchment. The ink was in a constant state of motion, gracefully 
forming a never-ending series of abstract shapes, lazily pulsing and 
shifting in colour in an almost hypnotic display. The slips came in 
seven denominations, determined by how much ink had been 
printed on them. That made Victor think that despite being paper 
money it was a commodity currency and not fiat, but he had no idea 
why the ink was so valuable. 


“Believe me, | don’t want anyone getting hurt. Dead customers 
aren't repeat customers,” the Milk buyer nodded as he counted out a 
stack of nearly a hundred ink slips. “Thanks for doing this by the 
way. | usually buy Bloom from the Babylon Whore's Corner Store, 
but I’m boycotting them because they changed their name to 
Supernatural Corner-store Plus. Apparently, biblical references and 
‘sex negative’ terms for prostitutes can’t get past the PC thought 
police these days. Fuckin’ SUWs.” 


“Uh-huh,” Lolly said with a nervous nod. “Ah, I’m actually on the 
rainbow side of the spectrum myself, so I’m probably more closely 
aligned with social justice warriors than angry white guys, but I’m... 


sorry you're upset?” 


The man glared at her for a moment as if pondering a retort, but 
seemingly thought better of it and finished counting out the slips. 


“Nine thousand eight hundred, nine thousand nine hundred, ten 
thousand inky-dinks. Pleasure doing business with you,” he said, 
setting the cash down and rolling the dolly of Milk crates away. 


“Come back anytime,” she said with an enthusiastic wave, though 
discreetly sighing with relief that that encounter hadn’t escalated. 
She picked up the bills and briefly flipped through them. “Bailey was 
right. We have so much more Milk since we started ultra- 
pasteurizing it. We’re going to make a butt load selling all the 
surplus, and it will make so many people happier. It will save lives 
too since you can’t O.D. just by huffing it. Are you sure you don’t 
want to try some? It’s so good!” 


“I’m sure Lolly,” Victor nodded. “MC&D has a surprisingly strict drug 
policy for its employees. No matter how good your Milk is, it’s not 
worth losing my job over.” 


“Narc,” Lolly teased. “Now that that’s out of the way we can take a 
look around the Bazaar. I’ve been here a hundred times and | never 
get used to it. You never know what you’re going to find here.” 


The Utterly Bazaar was, needless to say, utterly bizarre. The sky 
was nothing but a grey haze and the Bazaar itself was permeated by 
an eerie mist. The wooden stalls and cobblestone shops looked like 
something from an age long past, but many of the wares and 
denizens of the Bazaar looked like they were from an age yet to 
come, or an age that never was and never would be. It also had Wi- 
Fi, obviously. 


The bathrooms were best left undescribed, which was likely why the 
side alleys stunk of ammonia. 


Victor tried his best to ignore the oddities of the environment and 
focus on the vendors and their wares for anything MC&D might be 
interested in acquiring. 


“Monopoles! Get your magnetic monopoles here! Great for quantum 
and nano tech of all kinds! Use them as a catalyst for proton decay 
to get perfect energy conversion, or toss them into a particle 
accelerator to make a baby universe! Also good for trick 
compasses!” 


“Sign up today for our course on epsilon wave lucid dreaming, and 
become the master of both the waking and unwaking worlds! Our 
comprehensive three-hour course will unleash the type Green 
literally sleeping within you! That’s epsilon wave lucid dreaming; 
make your dreams come true!” 


“Springwater! I’ve got Water from the Astrakhan Spring! Cures all ills 
and restores youth! Got it from a reality where the O5 council is 
corrupt as fuck!” 


“That sounds like something we could move,” Victor said, 
approaching the stall and examining the glass bottles. “Tell me, what 
effect would this have an individual who, due to multiple mishaps 
with experimental life extension, now ages about fifty times faster 
than normal and has to continuously siphon the elan vital energy 
from young donors to keep himself alive?” 


The woman who was renting the stall stared at him blankly for a 
moment. 


“What?” 
“I’m asking for one of my bosses,” Victor replied. 


“| don’t know about any of that, | only know how it works on vanilla 
humans,” she replied. “I sell it in 10 ml vials and 500 ml bottles. The 
vials will kill all pathogens, parasites, and cancer cells, plus 
supercharge your regenerative abilities to heal any damage, up to 
and including severed limbs. The vials will have a mild rejuvenating 
effect, but each bottle will take twenty to thirty years off. That cleans 
out plaque, senescent cells, and any other garbage that makes you 
grow old. It corrects mutations in both nuclear and mitochondrial 
DNA, plus restores telomeres to a youthful length. Each vial is five 
thousand inklings, and a bottle’s a quarter mill.” 


“Still cheaper than American healthcare, right?” Victor smirked. “I'll 
take a vial for now. We'll have our lab run some tests on it, and if it 
does what you Say it does we’ll be back for more. Do you have a 
business card?” 


“Mind if | save you some time, young man?” a voice from behind 
them suddenly spoke up. “I can personally attest to the effectiveness 
of that particularly potent product. I've used a number of methods to 
reach my current count of one and three-quarter centuries, and none 
has been as efficacious or as benign as water from the Astrakhan 
Spring. | highly recommend it, especially when compared to more 
invasive methods, like wrangling the White Worm. That Karcist told 
me | wouldn't be able to control the little blighter, but did | listen? No. 
Story for another time though.” 


Victor and Lolly both turned to see who the talkative interloper was. 
It was a short, skinny, middle-aged man. His dark brown hair and 
beard were overgrown, and he was dressed in a weather-worn long 
coat and squashed top hat. 


“You look familiar,” Lolly said, squinting slightly. “Are you a regular 
here at the Bazaar?” 


“As of late, Miss, as of late,” he replied with a curt nod. “I’ve been 
hoping to cross paths with some old friends of mine whom I've sadly 
lost contact with. This is the busiest extra-dimensional hotspot in the 
multiverse, after the Library of course, and I’m not allowed in there 
anymore. Too many rules, too little table service. Honestly, those 
spider people are running the length of the Library all day. Would it 
kill them to bring me a Monte Cristo while they were at it? 

“Tell me though Miss, was that Clown’s Milk you were selling a few 
moments ago?” 


“Yes, and I’m fresh out I’m afraid,” Lolly replied. “Except for my 
personal stash, but | need that obviously.” 


“That’s quite all right Miss. | was merely curious as to whether you 
were a True Clown, from the Circus of the Disquieting?” 


“lam, actually. Have you been to our Circus?”