So many stories, so little time. This is why focus and workflow are so important. Drafting and shipping three different stories each week is no easy feat, but the work is made much simpler with a solid content management system. Now if only we could apply this to marketing, along with an equal amount of available time and energy.
Anyway, The Conglomerate persists in its efforts to harness the power of the eldritch; you can read the updates in Under Construction. Isabelle and Edgar have themselves a little chat away from Ceres in A Vampire’s Vengeance. We’re pretty sure Solomon is on the edge of madness, but we cannot say for certain; perhaps you can divine his trajectory when you catch up with House. It’s always something with doctors and horror, isn’t it; we see as much in The Terrific Experiment. And finally, we begin to uncover some of the worst of the epidemic that has brought the world to its knees in Bus Driver.
Let’s get into it →
As mentioned in the Editorial, The Conglomerate continues to be built out. Much of the work is in the underlying foundation; we here at the Calamity desire to make this foundation as solid as possible, as we anticipate innumerable attractions arising from it. I do believe the word we are looking for is bulletproof. This is Cthulhu on steroids, but with human arrogance and ingenuity surrounding it. This is not some cheap SCP imitation but a universe operating in a completely different manner in an organization with completely different aims.
As the sole architect of the foundational documentation, it was my desire to have the first set of documents ready for human parsing this week. However, much of the documentation requires a good amount of editing and rewriting in order that it all align with a core canon before it may be presented to the public. Therefore, the work continues. Hopefully we will see these documents come to light within the next six months. Maybe sooner.
In the meantime, please proceed to the rest of the backstage attractions we have prepared for you.
Isabelle arrives at some hard realizations in their sojourn across the abandoned city in this edition’s installment of A Vampire’s Vengeance:
Is it confidence, arrogance, foolhardiness, or something else driving Solomon back into the dreamspace to hunt down and expunge the presence from the house? Take a gander for yourself and decide in this edition’s installment of House:
In this edition’s classic horror, we bringing you a nasty bit of a surprise. The poor fools are unprepared for what they discover when a hypnotic experiment goes wrong in The Terrific Experiment:
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The gift of time is, for many, an incredible gift indeed. Unless, of course, it is not a gift at all and arrives with a cost in excess of what one may be willing to pay …A tale from the Odds ‘n’ Endings Boutique.
Welcome to another installment of Bus Driver! When we last rode with the bus driver and his passengers, we were having ourselves a merry time in the basement dining room at the Calico Trading Outpost, and someone asked Ol’ Grizzy to tell one of her tales. You can catch up with Part XXIII here. What does Griselda’s tale entail? Let’s find out →
"Ol' Grizzy's the most foolhardy out of all of us," said one of the short and stocky man's companions. The residents, who by this time had refilled their glasses, raised them for another cheers.
One of the residents shouted, "Tell us one of your crazy stories, old woman!"
"'Old woman,' bah!" said Griselda. "I'll be eighty and still outrun you."
Laughter rose around the room.
"C'mon, Griz! You've seen more than most of us here," said the man with the eye patch. "Tell us about the lake!"
The residents in the dining room began chanting.
"Lake. Lake. Lake. Lake."
Their enthusiasm was infectious. Many of the passengers began chanting along, unsure what they meant by asking about the lake, but not wanting the fun to end. Griselda held her hands up in surrender and everyone began clapping and cheering.
The man with the patch leaned in toward the bus driver and said, "This is some fucked up shit you're about to hear."
Griselda lowered her hands slow to the table, a gesture everyone interpreted to settle down. The bus driver looked around and saw all eyes were trained on Griselda. Many were leaning toward her, and some had scooted to the edge of their seat. He returned his attention to Griselda, who shook her head as she prepared to speak.
"It's not much of a good story, but it's important, I think." She raised her glass, and one of the other residents filled it from the bottle on the table. She took a drink, her face taking on a sour expression as she swallowed, then set the glass back on the table before her. She looked at the bus driver.
"It's good you go the other way, and not to the lake. Did you see the mass of infected to the west?"
The bus driver nodded.
"About halfway between Victorville and Bakersfield. You get high enough around here, you see it, clear as day, so big is it, and so many monsters around it. My family and friends, we try to get down to your settlements to the south, but run into bandits on the old 5. They kill about half of us and the rest of us come running here. We did not know about this place, though. First we run from the bandits, then we see the lake, then we run away from the lake."
Griselda paused to take another drink, make another face, before she continued.
"The lake is hell. The sick ones, the infected, are drawn there. You saw them, did you not?"
The bus driver nodded again. How could he forget the dense and writhing mass of infected, even from as far away as they were when they crested the pass? He shivered at the thought.
"The infected are drawn there. No one knows how or why. Most people don't even know the lake exists." She looked at the bus driver and made a gesture with her forefinger indicating everyone in the room. "These people will tell you I have crazy stories. They are crazy, but they are not stories. The lake is real. It is where the monsters are made."
Silence hung heavy in the room. No one spoke, either out of consideration for what Griselda said, or in preparation of her continuing. Nevertheless, the silence brought discomfort to the bus driver who much preferred the exuberant laughter to the fear that stole over him at the thought of the lake. A lump rose in his throat and he coughed to clear it.
"What ... what do you mean, it's where the monsters are made?" The bus driver could think of nothing else to say or ask to break the silence.
Griselda looked down at her glass. Both hands were palms face down on either side of it. She tapped her fingers several times, rolling them on the table from pinky to forefinger, before snatching the glass up with both hands and finishing off the drink. With a loud gasp and a large frown, she looked deep into the bus driver's eyes as she replied.
"It makes monsters. It makes them. The infected go in, and a monster comes out. I watched it with my own eyes. And then I watched the monsters eat the rest of my friends."
Hmm … a monster-making lake. Is Griselda pulling the bus driver’s leg? Is she pulling a fast one on everyone present? Is everyone in on the joke? Or is this, indeed, a factual, actual thing the bus driver need be concerned over? It’s almost like we should be ready to laugh right along with the residents when Griselda admits to the bit. And yet, there’s something about her demeanor that makes us think perhaps she isn’t lying. How else might anyone explain the existence of the monstrous thing chasing them through the funnel on their way to the Trading Outpost? So many questions! Only one way to uncover their answers! Come back next week!
I don’t know about you, but I am dying to get The Conglomerate out in front of you, to enjoy and perhaps be confused by. The initial docs will essentially spawn a whole new Mad Alex universe, though it is, by design, intended to extend that of Lovecraft and his Cthulhu mythos. Be ready for smatterings of content and easter eggs to appear as they become available!
How are you feeling about the vampires? The zombies? The dreamspace? I say this in every edition, and I’m not going to stop now: I would love to read your thoughts on any and all of these. Please reply to this email, leave a comment on this post, or use any of the buttons below to get in touch. I am wholeheartedly eager to receive your correspondence.
Until your next visit,
Mad Alex
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