Ch 24

It wasn't how Melmat would have liked things to go, but Sarah's death opened an interesting door for him, or at the very least accelerated his plan by several steps. Several weeks had gone by, and most people had bought the official story; she was raped and beaten to death and they didn't know who did it. There was a general buzz of unease, news cameras that had initially flooded the campus determined to soak up as much of the tragedy on film as they could, adding their own unique kind of pain to the event.

Sarah, Melmat had learned, was a well liked girl. She had very few negative habits, and the ones she did, she enjoyed with an honest innocence. Her death, and the brutality surrounding it had outraged the students on campus, casting a harsh light on the disliked and untrustworthy elements of the college. Already, an investigation was underway, a witch-hunt that would catch everyone but the witch.

Melmat felt responsible for his lack of foresight, and his inability to predict how strongly the dungeon would affect the world at this phase of development. A larger regret of his was failing to foresee how the Uke-a Mk 3 would interact with the mana-storm. He would need to collect more information, and for that, he would need to talk to the students on campus.

He donned some clean, stoner chic clothing, baggy blue jeans with a yellow/green/red stripped Rasta beanie. He sprayed himself down with a mixture of essential oils that had the smell of cannabis very lightly mixed in, then gargled mouthwash of a similar mixture. He hadn't planned how he was going to behave in this new environment, that was a fools gambit, only having a strong backstory to support him, and having no more than forty percent of the backstory be an outright fabrication. This would make him in both behavior and actuality, a bit more honest than everyone else at college.

Melmat preferred, when doing infiltration work, to generate a personality on impact, filling a vacant social position in the dominance hierarchy that wouldn't put him in competition with anyone else.

“The humans,” Melmat said and Librorum appeared as a book, ready to listen “do this naturally, they automatically seek a position they are comfortable with in the social pyramid. However, their failing is the inability to let go of previous positions when changing environments, and choosing to compete for something which only has imaginary value.”

“Well,” Librorum said “I'm imaginary, and I have real value. Without me to manage things, you'd be wandering the streets and jumping at shadows. Besides, you do the exact same thing, except your position is always vacant.”

“Oh?” he asked “and what role is that?” He already knew, but the conversation was good exercise.

“You always play the devil, young human. A position in the meta-hierarchy which wears every mask, who drives men with sweet words and a glass tipped whip.” Melmat grimaced, he hadn't expected the conversation to turn out like this.

“They're on the brink of annihilation,” he said, voice getting tight “and this is my world too. I have every right to change it, and so do they, if they could ever be bothered to try.”

“Sensitive,” Librorum murmured, sounding sleepy “if you're going to be like that, you shouldn't have given your conscience a voice.”

First, Melmat found the oldest man he could on campus. Doug was a tenured professor, and at this point his class names were simply 'Doug PhD X' with the x being a class number. He wore two hearing aids, had about twenty wild hairs spaced across his bald head and face, but no glasses, his eyes were still good. Librorum privately whispered that he was a dusty old cooter, and Melmat shushed her.

“Terrible business,” Doug said “terrible. I was on campus, but far away.” He tapped one of his hearing aids “These don't do a whole lot for me these days, Manny, lately it seems they're even worse.”

Melmat thanked Doug for his time and left. After that, he chose to find someone on the opposite end of the spectrum, the grungiest male on campus. He wasn't difficult to find, sitting under a tree and smoking weed, black baggy pants and dreadlocks. His name was Tota, and Melmat strongly suspected it was an alias.

“Like,” Tota said “I didn't have any classes with Sarah, but I saw her around, you know? Total hottie, am I right?” he asked, wide smile on his face and convulsing with laughter “Anyways, I was ascending the astral plane on some research chemicals I ordered online. Shit was crazy.”

“Oh yeah,” Melmat asked “What did you see?”

“It was like,” he squinted, and then widened his eyes and blew out a breath through rounded, stuck out lips “Man, I was far the fuck gone. Like, gnomes in little mushroom houses man.”

“Not that far out,” Melmat said, matching his hazed expression “Or you might have run into me,” he laughed. “You live in the dorms, or off campus?”

“Mom and dad wanted me 'On Campus' man,” he said, altering his voice to mimic his parent “They think it'll improve my grades, but all it does is make it easier to sell weed.”

Melmat thanked him for his time and declined his offer of said research chemicals at a 'really good price'. He made a mental note with Librorum to check in with the people living next to 'Tota' and see if any of them had also seen gnomes.

The final visit of Melmat's day required a considerable investment of energy. A girl, who wasn't ugly or attractive, knew something. Librorum, reviewing the entirety of the sensory information he was able to gather with his senses, had noticed her when Melmat was talking with Doug. She had been some distance away, but had overheard them talking about Sarah, and experienced an immediate shift in body language. It wasn't grief, but guilt. Later, while Melmat was talking with Tota, she had been spotted about a tenth of a mile away, talking with friends. Librorum had spent the next hour and a half analyzing body language, distant sound, and facial shapes to re-construct the conversation as best she could. It wasn't perfect, but Librorum had been able to get the gist of it, and the gist was that the girl thought she knew something and needed to talk with someone. Librorum noted, with some small degree of sympathy, that her friends didn't seem all that interested in talking about it, likely because she was the ugly girl of the group.

At first, Lisa, the ugly girl in question, had been extremely shy. That had lasted about as long as it took for Melmat to indicate, in very convincing terms, that he thought she was much more attractive than her friends. In truth, Melmat really did find her more attractive than her friends, she had a more honest disposition and was more grounded in reality, and a little skill with makeup would have done wonders for her social standing.

Over the course of about four hours, Melmat utilized every trick he had, modeling his personality and behavior to a rough approximation of the perfect man, in her view. Librorum analyzed body language, and the normally imperceptible information transmitted via smells. To her, he seemed to exert an irresistible allure and confidence, and she was powerless against it. Every light touch of his hand sent tingles through her entire body, the sound of his voice and his laugh made her ache with longing. She tried to meet his gaze, but the sight of his eyes made her blush and look away.

Seduction reduced to a science, and then rendered down to technique is one of the bitterest lies a soul can endure telling. Melmat remembered a time when he had strove to be a good person. Now he was merely a effective, and utterly incapable of genuine interaction; such is the price paid for total control self-control.

Melmat enjoyed the sex, even if he didn't exactly feel all the sensations involved with it the way a normal person would have. Lisa, on the other hand, had never experienced anything quite like it. Melmat had been instructed in the ways of Tantric sex by masters of the discipline, and though he had never achieved their levels of prowess, sex was no mystery to him.

'Two flesh become one,' his master had once said, 'this is no mere poetry, but a fact. The nervous systems of two individuals will never be so intertwined as during sex, the energies of the bodies becoming enmeshed with one another so completely that for a window of time, they are an indistinguishable unit. To a man of skill, this is an open door which offers opportunity.'

Librorum had been able to, not quite fully enter Lisa's mind as much as get an extended peak at it from a distance while the two of them climaxed together. As was often the case when searching for a specific piece of data, however, he had gained much more information than he really needed. By the end of it, he really understood the beautiful person Lisa was, and who she could be with a little tweaking.

'Proverbs state that every heart knows it's own sorrow,' his master had continued 'and that none can share in it's joy. But sorcerers such as us? We have paid a heavy price, and we have transcended the common man. Beware, my student. . . to know the heart of another is to love them as you love yourself.'

Melmat didn't mind doing the work, he had been a psychology major after all, and as she laid in bed, he gently brought her into a deep trance. Then, he brought her even further down, past what conventional knowledge would say is possible. From there, he drew out all the major emotional trauma and heartbreak she had suffered in her life; her father's careless words when she needed kindness; the humiliation she'd suffered from the first boy she had reached out to for love; all the times she had been overlooked; her mother's death; each step allowing her to let go of it all, to release the pain she had been holding inside of her, more pain than she would ever have been aware of holding onto. She had been wiped clean, and would wake up with access to the strength she had never been able to express.

Melmat also gave her the confidence to study makeup application, ask that nice boy out, and forget all about the day's events. He hadn't needed to do any of it, he could have easily just made her forget. He was glad, however, that he had taken the time to help her.

When he left her, she was asleep and had a big, happy smile on her sleeping, tear-streaked face. Some distant part of him though she might not need the makeup after-all.

Melmat had needed a day to put together the information he had gained. Lisa had been the key, a direct witness, not to the crime, but to the monster, before and after it's kill. He reviewed the memories, seeing a wispy, insubstantial man wander the campus, then later, seeing the same man, but solid, nearly more real than real.

In his room, he had the original plans for the Uke-a, checked out from the library. Anyone could have found it, and that was his master's intention, a gift for anyone motivated enough to seek the truth about the world. The schematics has several clues in the form of extra parts with peculiar names, and if you solved their riddle, you would find a website in the bowels of the archives of Endchan that hosted a complete technical write-up about the various uses of the device, and the purpose behind it, along with a much greater riddle. He had the fifty page document in question printed and bound on his bed. Melmat doubted that Ronnie had gone further than building the device, because if he had, he would have known exactly why Sarah was dead; further, he would have smashed the Uke-a, dropped out of college, and wandered for a long time searching for answers.

Melmat shook out of the memories, his time with Lisa had loosened his mental control, and he didn't enjoy falling into memories without proper authorization.

“Do you have any idea,” Librorum said, sounding groggy “how much nerve energy you expended on that girl? I'm exhausted, you could have used a traditional interrogation, and then you wouldn't be worried about falling into memories.” She paused, then began mumbling something like 'lousy no good goddamn vampire ass motherfucker I'll kick your ass', but it was hard for him to tell exactly what she meant by it.

From his suitcase, he pulled a vacuum sealed bag with a complete set of clothing inside of it. Upon opening, the smell of old B/O wafted out, and Melmat laid the costume on his bed. For good measure, he took a cold shower, though he didn't really feel it, smoked a bunch of weed, though it didn't get him high, and prepared to tell a bunch of outright lies and half truths to people he felt like he should try to care about.