William (Podcast Story)

William is the fourth story told in the podcast Astonishing Tales of the Highly Improbable. It consists of five episodes and tells the origin story of William the Post-Human.

## Part 1

Lloyd Allen is depressed. He says there's no point to anything. He sadly contemplates life's meaningless tasks and hopeless existence. He's been sitting there for three days. He can't feel anything, and can't even physically hurt himself. He has nothing at all. He misses his boyfriend.

William's mother, Prudence, came from a high standing family with some nobility in her lineage with worthy connections in society. Her family secretly didn't have anywhere near that amount left in the family fortune that they projected, and Prudence was their hope to save them. She was beautiful and had good education, and had many fine bachelors trying to secure her hand in marriage. Her parents and aunts chose an immensely wealthy man to be Prudence's husband. He had enough wealth to carry them for many generations, but Prudence choose to run off with a trumpet player instead. Her family was shocked and horrified, but Prudence never regretted her decision.

The trumpet player was a genuinely decent fellow, and he and Prudence treated everything like a shared adventure. Prudence loved the lifestyle of a traveling musician, and her son William did as well. He was precious dynamic young boy who learned how to give performances and interact with all sorts of people. Nothing in his life would be more heartbreaking than when his mother died when he was ten. But in the following years, he would be very close with his father until his dad died when he was fifteen.

Prudence's family had hired a hitman to kill the trumpet player, but the hitman missed, killing Prudence instead. The family was massively upset and hired a second hitman to get rid of the first hitman. The family considered the situation over, except for one cousin who couldn't let go, and five years later decided to hire the second hitman to take care of the trumpet player. Thus, William became an orphan and was taken in by Mademoiselle Chatterlaine.

Chatterlaine was a fortune teller for a carnival, and was beloved by both his parents and William. She was a tarot reader, and had seen danger coming, but it took time to work out who was in danger and their location. She didn't arrive in time to save William's parents, but she did make it in time to save him from being taken by Prudence's family, who were hoping to send him off to war so that they didn't have to enlist themselves. Chatterlaine was good at dealing with emotional distress, and with her help and the support of the kind people at the carnival, William was not as messed up about the whole situation as he could have been.

Desperate to avoid going to war, four cousins tracked down William's location, but Chatterlaine saw them coming though divination and had prepared a location for William to hide. The cousins arrived and demanded that William be brought to them, but the carnival ignored them. The cousins didn't know how to deal with this, and kept shouting louder, and eventually drew their swords as a threat. The mood suddenly got tense, and one cousin started suggesting that they back off, but the leader was enraged when Old Man McGillicuddy spat at him. After a brief tussle, the entire carnival surrounded the cousins threateningly, and Chatterlaine suggested that they were mistaken and should leave. The leader insulted Chatterlaine, and she wished him a lovely funeral. He moved to stab her in the back, but didn't succeed, and in the resulting tussle he was the only one who ended up dead.

The carnival disappeared within two hours, with the knowledge that they had killed a member of the aristocracy. Chatterlaine explained to William that this was a problem that was not going to go away, and she advised him to go to an urban area, Settington. She knew a man who operated a printing press and she suggested that he work as an apprentice there. Chatterlaine gave William as much money as she could and told him that she loved him before sending him off.

Lloyd doesn't give any sort of closing remarks to announce the ending cover song, which is "Fly Away" by Poe.

## Part 2

Lloyd says everyone should have dreams and aspirations, and a life without purpose and hope is not worth living. He says that what he wants more than anything is to become an alcoholic and an opium addict. He wants his overthinking to be reduced to a blurry delirium, and with the lucid time between drug use he will have a clear purpose focused on feeding his addition. Lloyd says it's the best ambition he can dream of, but laments that he cannot hope to achieve even the most pathetic and lowly aspirations. His only remaining hope is that one day he will watch this city burn, then he will leap into the flames and his spirit will know utter nothingness.

William reached Settington, and started work as the print maker's apprentice. The print maker had a grumpy and cynical exterior, but was actually a kind man. William's mother had taught him how to read before he died, and though he was out of practice, he was dedicated to learning the trade and after a few months had earned the trust and loyalty of the print maker. After several years of being surrounded by pamphlets, novels, and histories, William was very well educated about pretty much every subject around town.

William started off as a bit of a social recluse, but as he read and became more comfortable in his knowledge, he would be more comfortable talking with clients, and people would come visit the shop to discuss the day's topics. The print maker knew that the increased social activity at his shop was good for business, and he bought a coffee grinder and set up some chairs and tables in one corner. The print maker increased William's pay as business improved and made it clear that William was to inherit the shop after he retired. The print maker had no children, and his wife had died giving birth to a stillborn child.

One day two visitors suggested that William apply for membership at the Masonic Lodge. William was in his twenties and eager for social interaction, and he applied and was accepted into the Lodge. He loved it, especially the ritualistic aspects. After completing all the degrees William joined two other types of lodges, and someone suggested that he might enjoy a brotherhood with more esoteric traditions. William ended up joining five different magikal lodges, but he stuck with three. Over the next ten years he went from initiate to adept, and he would become renowned in his ritual creations.

William noticed that ritual work was mostly about psychological and moral insight, using psychological drama to induce real world change. It didn't often happen, but William struggled to figure out where the magic was happening in the rare instances that it worked. Most of ritual was pomp and filler, which was necessary to create psychological immersion, but often ended up self-deluding the practitioner. They key came to William when he visited the theatre, where skilled actors convinced they and the audience believed they were in the world they were creating, but afterwards returned to their normal selves.

By now William was basically running the print shop, splitting the profits with the mostly retired old man, and had an apprentice of his own. He also planned to form his own lodge, with carefully hand picked initiates, and they would define esotericism. William made a group of four adepts, capable of immersion and cynicism, and they called themselves The Promethean Lodge. They were interested in a ritual exploration of a theatrical approach to magic.

One night, after being particularly pleased with the physiological effects from one of their metaphorical dramas, they went out for a few rounds of ale. They discovered that the streets around them were not quite correct, and they were no longer in the same city. They noticed that this place seemed more religious, and made their way to a bar. Talking with the bar keeper, they discovered the city was also named Settington, and there were differences in history and technological innovation, and this world had a Blood Hour where vampires came out to hunt. There was a vampire queen who ruled over the land, having conquered the area seventy-five years ago.

They went to stay a night at the inn above the bar, with plans to return to the place they had left and repeat the ritual again in the morning. But they wouldn't go back to their home, most wouldn't make it back. William would, many years later, but he would have been gone for so long that it would have stopped being home to him.

Lloyd says that music is pointless like everything else, but nevertheless, a cover song of "Eraserhead" by Bruce Mcculloch is performed.

## Part 3

Lloyd says it's a pleasing day, full of happy things. He is no longer filled with sorrow or anger, and has come to acceptance. He has a plan, a great big, wonderful plan: a special episode of The New Albion Radio Hour. It'll take some time or planning, but something to work towards is good for him. Lloyd says he brings the listener gifts of peace, that he can help you out of the terrible world and make the troubles go away. He promises to change the world for the better, with fire and devastation to wash away the sins of the city and wipe it clean until only peace remains. He will laugh and sing and dance as the city burns.

The Promethean Lodge was made of Percy, Davish, Jon and William. In the next few years, Kola joined the Lodge, and it is theorized that she's an ancestor of Asha. Many manuscripts have been written about them, but most have been lost, though it is thought that some still exist with the Order of the Bleeding Rose in The Decadent Abbey, the Zodiac Lodge, or with Lloyd Allen.

None of the members of the lodge were actual transendents in these early days, they had no idea how their ritual worked and didn't know how to control it and not even William was Post-Human yet. The next few times they performed the ritual, they jumped to a reality with werewolves, then zombies, then soul sucking ghosts, then crocodile men, then ten legged demon spiders. Each time the civilization around them became more and more devastated and they needed to figure out a way to change their path before they ended up in a world that would kill them.

They had quickly run out of money, and as they weren't going to stay in any of these narratives long enough to earn wages, they would have to steal some. None of them had any experience with thievery, but Jon came up with the idea of locking themselves in a vault, filling their pockets with valuables, and then performing the ritual and disappearing. Percy suggested a candlestick shop, and William shimmied up to the roof, dropped down letting the others in. The clerk Kola came out to see what was happening, and she asked to come with them, saying that her life was so bad teleporting to horror filled dimensions would be an improvement.

The next city was in ruins, destroyed in a war between the sleezestack and giant barbarian fleas. They found a unused warehouse and worked on streamlining the ritual. Jon became ill, and they jumped in hope that they could find a doctor. William and Davish had gotten the ritual down to twenty minutes, and the end of the ritual required poses reflecting archetypes, which seemed key to the process. But the next couple of jumps went drastically downhill, even Kola eventually agreed that her previous life did not suck as much as she previously thought, and Jon was dying.

Finally, they jumped to a land that seemed devoid of anything, as if some horror had befallen long ago, destroying everything including itself and leaving barren red rocky desert. In the distance, there was a rip in the sky and ground. Jon died, but they couldn't even dig a grave for him as the ground was too hard. They all fell crying in frustration and despair, and were ambushed by The Gnomes, who locked them in a cell underground. The gnomes took Davish away and the rest of them heard his screams.

In the cell with them were three creatures who looked like giant rats, looking like they had been tortured. One of the rats touched William's head, nodded, and then told William that he was sorry and that he must learn transcendence. The rat explained the history of their people, and the coming and destruction of The Chaostrophy. They fought and many died but succeeded in pushing the Chaostrophy back, though there are rumors that there's a level where it's still raging on. In this strand, one of the watchtowers had fallen, now laying half in the strand, half in Metaspace, and the gnomes took everything from the tower and tried to learn about it, and set off a beacon that called a small team, who where then interrogated and tortured. The gnomes covet the achievements of the Lost Ones, and they aim to leave this world and forge an empire across the metaverse built on domination and subjugation.

The creature asks William to bring a warning to The Dwarves. In order to do so, the creature asks that William kills them and use their blood to paint symbols on the ground that will create a portal. When the warning is delivered, they promise that another of their species will come teach the transendence ritual, which will give them ability to move around the metaverse easier and give great potential. The creature says that William's species is interesting, though immature, and that they should be studied closer. William, Kola, and Percy did as instructed, and jumped once again.

Lloyd announces "the sounds of a cat being horribly mutilated, or worse, whatever this musician person deems to torture you with today." The ending cover is "I Hear Them All" by Old Crow Medicine Show.

## Part 4

Lloyd momentarily forgets the title of his own show. He has returned to his use of youth slang, promising to "slide into your DM." He asks what a "DM" is, and comes to the conclusion that it is the Dungeon Master. He wonders the thought of him sodomizing their geek leader turns people on. The Sentient Room corrects him, saying it's Direct Message, and Lloyd imagines wearing an envelope like sexy wrapping paper and says that makes even less sense. Lloyd says that you can never underestimate the tom foolery of these hormone fueled monstrosities. The Room accuses him of being prejudiced against the youth, and Lloyd quickly promises that those listening right now are different and special. Lloyd says that it's not a slur to call them idiots, it is a fact, and he adds that they don't improve with age.

This episode's sponsor is Colleen's Bagels. Lloyd loves bagels and says Colleen's Bagels are made without cannibalized meat, he thinks. He's not sure about the pink stuff they call smoked salmon. The Room hasn't heard of Finland, and Lloyd says it's an imaginary land mentioned in a few fairytales. Lloyd says he met the Llewellyn woman at Colleen's Bagels, and he comments on her fascinating ancestry and interesting papers. They're going to meet up and discuss ideas, and Lloyd thinks she could help with his master plan.

William, Kola, and Percy landed in a hot aired world in the middle of an agricultural revolution. Davish was transported with them, but was dead on arrival. They walked for some time before finding other people, and where almost starving when they came across other humans. The four native men were distrustful of the boys and their white skin, but they were more willing to talk to Kola whose darker skin matched their own. They didn't speak the same language, which was the first time the group landed in a world with a language barrier.

Kola and the native men worked out a way to communicate, and they agreed to take them to their village. Over time, they learned the language, built huts, and became part of the community. Kola spent a lot of time with one of the men they first met, and became pregnant. William learned how to farm and hunt and the close community did wonders for his traumatized psyche.

William didn't know how to find The Dwarves at the center of the world, and his attempts to explore caves did not get him anywhere. The Summer Summit was coming, where clans assembled at a religious site and exchange information. William also had a problem where there were no gay men in the village who would be interested in him sexually. T'Anga, a lesbian in the village told him that at the summit, one of the gods was Mira, the Hermaphrodite Goddess of Gay and there would be a congregation of all the gay people across the land.

It was a seven day walk to the Summit, and they stopped at other villages along the way for meals and socializing. The Summit took place at a series of shrines, and T'Anga brought William to the Shrine of Mira, where a massive orgies took place and William lost his virginity. The Goddess Mira liked dates, and William left daily offerings of dates at her statue.

At the Summit, William also found out that a clan in the southwest had legends of caves that led deep into the earth where a great wheel with men who fed it liquid fire. Kola was too pregnant at the time, but William and Percy went with the southwest clan to find the caves. When they arrived, there was a loud buzzing and the village was under attack from a massive wave of little black gnome creatures. They had come through a tear in the world, and were attacking without mercy. The males insisted on returning to the village to defend it, but one of the older women showed William and Percy to the caves, as it was their best chance of escape.

The older woman led them into the caves until they reached a fork where the women said they would go no further. Percy volunteered to say behind and protect the women, though they were better fighters than he was, and William promised to be back. After several hours, he heard a deep singing until he found the most fantastic sight he had yet seen: the Dwarves' Hamlet Wheel. There were three interconnected main wheels that moved together like a massive time piece, with many smaller moving pieces, and ramps which the Dwarves used to carry ore into the wheel.

Four dwarves approached William, calling him The Fool, The Wandering Jewel, and the greatest hope they have produced. They disagreed if the next hope would be The Eagle, The Phoenix, or the Dragon Lady. William said they he's come to warn them of the gnomes and delivered his message. The dwarves are troubled that The Lost Ones are fearful, but they dare not leave their post at the wheel, as The Metaverse is on the brink of collapse. They give conflicting information about how long ago The Chaostrophy was, saying time is fluid. The movement of time on this, the third level, is arbitrary, and things must be viewed from the sixth level to see. But it would be a long time until William would see from the sixth level, or the first, the information field, and they don't know if he will ever make it to the seventh, but he would be the one to pave the way.

The dwarves say it's bad that the gnomes are unforeseen and that William cannot leave the way he came. They say the Metaverse is comprised of seven levels, and the level with space and watchtowers is the ones the gnomes have compromised. The dwarves say they will send him to a sub level, saying it's difficult for the uninitiated, and he will drown in madness for some time but he will transcend, like the Raven will. The sub level / box / realm, is a tiny area ruled by The Heirophant, and the dwarves warn William to tread carefully and be respectful with him.

The gnomes enter the chamber and begin attacking the dwarves. The dwarves say that The Fool will become The Magician, but the journey will take a very long time, and long life is not a blessing. They say William will meet other dwarves, and they do not envy how much William must learn and how he will learn it. The wheel is compromised and the verse will teeter on the edge of instability, and maybe the prophecies are in vain. The dwarves say he must go, master as many archetypes as he can. William is part of a great experiment, the gods must be replaced or everything will be collapse like a house of cards. A dwarf grabbed a handful of ore, threw it on the ground, used his pick to draw a sigil, and then threw William into it.

Lloyd asks for a show of hands for how many people think the music section of the podcast should be discontinued, exclaiming that all hands in the room (both of his) are up. But he still plays "the noise pollution of the day," a Mashup of "Deliver Me" by Robin Holcomb and "Pony" by Tom Waits.

## Part 5

Lloyd welcomes the listener to the show, with a reminder to share the podcast with all your friends so he can increase his listening count for his plan "to beautify your city." He says that he can turn the city into something much more appropriate than what it is now, something peaceful and calm and desolately quiet. He also promises a lead up to an extra special episode. During the week Lloyd went to visit the tinker shop and the Llewellyn woman was there, and together they brainstormed ideas. He says he didn't ask about their ulterior motives, and they don't suspect his plans for a genocide (just kidding.)

The sponsor for the episode is PixelWayve's Tar Pits. Lloyd describes how the owner, PixelWayve, had a wife named Alyssa, both of who were witches. Alyssa accidentally opened a hellmouth, causing terrifying horrors to come pouring through. To protect the city, Alyssa turned herself into a screeching abyss demon, but after the monsters were defeated the magical community wanted to destroy the demon Alyssa. PixelWayve cast a spell to trap her wife into a tar pit, and now she works tirelessly to turn Alyssa back into a human. Lloyd says that the thought that the city is close to be destroyed by an abyss demon fills him with happiness and hope.

After a state of madness that lasted an unknown length of time, William came back to sanity as The Hierophant was using him as a footstool. The Hierophant presided over a royal court that changed locations similarly to how dreams switched settings, and there was a host of characters that were recognizable as being from a tarot deck. William had violated some sort of protocol with The Hierophant soon after arriving, which is not surprising since he quickly became mad after arriving in the realm. The Hierophant decided to punish William by humiliating him and using him as a footstool. William tried to say something, was whipped into silence, and then realized that his body had been thoroughly kicked and beaten and was in a lot of pain. At night, he was thrown into a pit which transformed into a dungeon cell.

From what the rat had told him, William thought he was transcended by now, but didn't know what that meant. With limited options available to him, the only thing that could save him was some sort of deus ex machina. He spent all his time as a footstool going into a zen state and trying to manifest one, and with enough practice, he succeeded.

One day, the Hierophant's court was hosing a royal visitation of Javanese gods and their attendants. A smaller spirit flew around the throne and whispered to William that they had come to release The Fool from his bondage. After three days of feasting, they left in the middle of the night, rescuing a grateful William as they departed. The Hierophant would declare war over the insult, but the Javanese gods had decided a good war would spice up their apathy. The war had been prophesied for some time, after William had clumsily rearranged a story cluster to foretell his rescue and the following war. The Javanese gods were impressed with his talent. They couldn't give him advice, as they were different and William was something new and rare, but they did give him a blank book and suggested he create a grimoire. William thanked them profusely, and would return centuries later to see them again. The Javanese gods slightly lost the war, but did not allow their realm to be conquered.

William's wanderings would take him across so many vast and unimaginable places, and in some places became the stuff of legends. He learned how to master and switch between archetypes and he filled his grimoire. He had many lovers and few real friends. He tried to track down Percy and Kola, but it was not easy to exit the strand and reenter in a previous spot. William ended up accepting the timeline has it had happened, and went back to the village and met Kola's great-great granddaughter Asanti. The tribe had passed down legends of world hoppers, and they treated William with awe and reverence but William treated them like family. He was happy to be part of the tribe again, and he taught them what he had learned. He read his grimoire to them and his stories would survive as oral tradition, forming the base of knowledge that allowed Asha's tribe to discover a way to reliably turn someone into a transcendent. William had left the tribe after Asanti was buried and continued his wanderings.

William mostly explored the sub-level, but also the level of the towers and upper strands. He ran into the gnomes twice more. The first time he avoided them, but was concerned with how they were growing. The second time, was when the gnomes invaded a pirate narrative, and William took lead on preparing a ferocious defense, winning against them until a second wave of gnomes tore through behind his fort. William held them off for an incredible length of time, longer than they've been held off before, but they finally overwhelmed the narrative. William escaped through a sigil, and he left it open allowing the gnomes to follow him into a hell world. William hopped to a different world but the gnomes could not, and many of them fell into a fiery doom. William realized he could not ignore the gnomes, and set about to find the rats, their home world, and organize a resistance.

Hundreds of years later, William returned to the realm of The Hierophant. William was welcomed as a stranger, and following protocol he presented a gift, a detailed hyper realistic painting of The Hierophant performing revolting acts upon a group of donkeys. A brutal battle followed, and even though The Hierophant was an immensely powerful being, he only had one realty and character style to fight with. William was a master of a wide range of archetypes, and after a hard fought battle William killed the Hierophant. The other tarot characters cheered as William assumed a lone stranger archetype and strode away.

Lloyd says he would prefer to listen to the vomit and gurgling of Alyssa the screeching monster, but because The Sentient Room likes it and The Room is Lloyd's friend, he plays the ending cover song of "The Windmills of Your Mind" by Michel Legrand, Americans Alan, and Marilyn Bergman