Duke Elric - Michael Moorcock [93]
POP: “It's now or never, Little Rupoldo—”
The first Straight Arrows begin to pierce the buckyball—
RUPOLDO: “TOO late, Prof—we've been wacoed!”
PEARL: “Split second left—hurry!”
POP: “I've had to use Laforgue's Principle, which is usually written as ‘Tiens! Le multivers est a I'envers'l Okay. Here goes—now, plucky pard, now—
REVERSE THE POLARITIES!!!!!!!!!”
The Silverskin—every aspect of the Eternal Champion—in an agony of consciousness—its skin a mirror to the multiverse …
Elric stands looking at the Silverskin—it resembles Spammer Gain in that it definitely has some squid characteristics… It's all the Eternal Champions combined—lots offices and writhing tentacles—but the reason it's called the Silverskin is because its skin is silvery, reflective, malleable like mercury—reflecting a thousand scenes and faces (you don't have to draw all thousand at this stage, Walter…).
SILVERSKIN: “Help me, Elric. I am crushed by the weight of our countless identities …”
ELRIC: “Why should I help you—without you I'd be free.”
SILVERSKIN: “Because you could not exist without me …”
The Silverskin's last remark causes Elric some bitter amusement.
ELRIC: “Then your death must be all the more welcome to me, sire!”
The Silverskin moves uneasily, forming, reforming, its silvery skin reflecting, distorting, re-reflecting…
Elric draws Stormbringer and advances on the Silverskin.
SILVERSKIN: “We are so fragmented—our power dissipates—our memories are too many …”
ELRIC: “Aye, King Silverskin, consciousness can be an overrated quality …”
A close-up of Elric's tortured face. The tentacles begin to caress him …
ELRIC: “And what I do now I do because it is my doom to do it—to use all my powers and achieve the last thing in the world I desire …”
The polarities of the multiverse reversed …
What about a full-scale Kirby-type cosmic page here—maybe with the buckyball as the centre radiating—rippling out—to grow bigger and bigger and bigger as Little Rupoldo touches the ends together and gets his own aura.
RUPOLDO: “WOW! This is cool!”
…with endlessly unpredictable cosmic and personal consequences for all creation … for always …
At the Terminal Cafe, the game gets lively enough to merit, I'd say, a two-page spread.
The table erupts to near-destruction while out of it flumes our main scene—the death and life of the multiverse… A kind of funneling effect with the Original Insect at one end and the Spammer Gain at the other—at either end and coming towards one another… with the Insect growing smaller and Spammer growing larger…at the centre are the Chaos Engineers whooping and cheering as every scale goes haywire…
Pop, Pearl and Rupoldo are now on the outside of an unfolding buckyball.
POP: “Our roles! Our poles! Our souls! Our Pearl! All saved!”
Spammer doesn't burst out of the table—she comes bursting out of the goldfish bowl beside Quelch—growing larger and larger as she does so—to the ecstatic delight of the machinoix who look up to her adoringly and cry—
MACHINOIX: “MOTHER!”
SPAMMER: “Fishlings! At last, my darling fishlings!”
Inset of Spammer's beautiful fishy face—
SPAMMER: “Oh, fishlings, how you've grown!”
Quelch is shocked but Rose is triumphant! They look up to where machinoix and Spammer form the shape of a gigantic goblet…
QUELCH: “YOU mean—all I had was a bowl of red herrings? The false attractor?”
ROSE: “The true Grail hidden in the false grail…It's all, mi amigo, a question of scale …Did you think I'd so readily give up? Horace! Spammer herself's the sentient cup!”
Quelch is rueful.
QUELCH: “YOU beat me fair and square, Rose. What do you say to a celebratory glass of Poincare's Solution …?”
ROSE: “It isn't quite over yet, Horace …”
She holds up the bowl. In her other hand, between thumb and forefinger, is the ball containing the tiny Original Insect…
Which she flips into the goldfish bowl…
(From inside the ball): “Foolish Force. Now we're fishfood! It's the death of our Prozac Democracy!