A Consignment (short story)

A Consignment
Key crew
Writer:	Alan Taylor
Release details
Part of:	The Boulevard: Volume Two
Release date:	17 January 2024
Faction Paradox
← Previous	Opioid Painkiller of the People
Next →	Please Exit in a Calm and Orderly Fashion

A Consignment was the second story in The Boulevard: Volume Two.

Summary

I.

Paul Cheyne sits on the bus home after partying the night away as a message comes in on sluttr, asking if he's "up too much". Glancing at the profile Paul sees an anonymous man in what appears to be a gas mask. He's receptive, and the man insists he get off at a nearby stop and come to the underpass. Paul's a little worried, but, frankly, he's still riding a high from last night. He can do this.

II.

Regulus sits in the Boulevard of Alternate Brutalities, flickering slightly, enjoying the weather. He waits for his loop to end, to die once more, he doesn't have long to go now. He sits alone, shadowless, in the cafe, as debris from a nearby car wreck impales him.

III.

Paul awakes to find himself tied to a chair, kidnapped. Paul's captor stands in front of him in a smart suit, wearing what appears to be a gas mask made of bone. Paul looks around at the situation and comes to the conclusion that he's not in danger, from his clothes being neatly folded, to the knots tying him down being elegant and ornamental but fairly easily escapable. It's the ritual of the knots that gives them power, the symbolism of them - Paul could try to escape but he hasn't. And the man is looking for someone like this, who respects symbolism. Taking off his mask to show a man of fifty or so, he introduces himself as Cousin Alphonse.

IV.

Godmother Annis finds herself running, trying to escape as she fails to make a theft, needing medical attention. She finds herself chased, and her pursuer overwhelms her, a hulking shadow envelops her. As she looks around, she finds herself in the Boulevard, having turned into a tree.

V.

Alphonse mentioned to Paul the rough outlines of the situation he found himself in, being a member of Faction Paradox on the sidelines of a War in Heaven featuring the Great Houses. And as Paul digests this the pair travel back to 2002, Middlesbrough. The pair settle into life, Alphonse working on his plan, starting a fan club. Paul finds this relentlessly dull and suggests they go back and time and kill Adolf Hitler. Alphonse warns him away, insisting that Hitler's timeline is so messy, so many people have tried that, that it's a surefire way to get tossed into the Boulevard of Alternate Brutalities.

VI.

People who aren't real, who are simulacra, think about their days, about Regulus, look at him in the cafe. Think slightly about the fact that they aren't real, not that this bothers them. As Regulus dies once again, they begin to fade, each of them jostling for his last scraps of attention.

VII.

The pair are celebrating the fan club for Girls Akimbo reaching ten thousand members, and prepare for greater success. Needing everything to go perfectly, they perform a ritual to guarantee that they'll win the upcoming competition, setting fire to the house of the group in order to win sympathy votes. As the pair finish the ritual they release the tension they're feeling and fuck.

VIII.

In narratives, unstructured narratives, narratives that shift between multiple frames of reference, occasionally something can hide in the small gaps between one section and the next. He's trying to hide, and thinks he has, but suddenly knows he hasn't. His pursuer has found him. A dark shadow passes over him, begins to send him to the Boulevard before stopping, moving away. Oh, but they still know where he is, and if he leaves he's done for. He's as trapped here as he is anywhere else.

IX.

Alphonse and Paul have been growing the fan club, finding themselves eventually retained by the band itself. And so, Paul has decided to join the Faction officially, which is why he's now tied to a chair, Alphonse and his friends, Cousins Leonidas, Petra, and Little Sister Philomena preparing the initiation. As the ritual begins, the shadows begin to deepen and swell up, a figure coalescing. The figure, Consignor Tartarus, claims his right as the most senior member present, to carry out the initiation.

X.

The Consignors are members of the Faction that are slightly askew in relation to the rest of the universe, existing simultaneously inside the Boulevard and outside it. This allows them to shift objects inside and outside the Boulevard at will.

XI.

In a sense, any sufficiently advanced set of rules and procedures will think. And in a sense the Boulevard thinks. It just doesn't think about things that many people care about, it thinks about doing its job. Regulus is sitting in the cafe again, drinking coffee, waiting to be reset, and the Boulevard thinks about how to reset him this time. Finally, it decides on a plausible, dramatic course of action. The entire cafe collapses into the sewers.

XII.

Alphonse expresses mild surprise at seeing Tartarus, though he knows he shouldn't. He accepts that Tartarus has the right to carry out the initiation and accedes to Tartarus's insistence that he belongs to the Boulevard, though he insists that he has no idea what he's done wrong. Tartarus engulfs Alphonse before vanishing, leaving behind only his shadow knife and mask.

XIII.

Alphonse finds himself, to his surprise, aware of his situation, in the Boulevard. He thinks about his situation, still unsure what he did to be consigned here, and how to escape. But in the meantime he walks to a nearby cafe and buys a cup of coffee.

XIV.

Paul finds himself alone, a little brother. Unlocking his phone, a message from sluttr immediately pops up, reaching out, wanting to chat. Traumatized about everything, Paul shares the entirety of his last year with the profile, a blank profile that merely went by "P". They talk about the fan club message board, and Alphonse's vague plans for it - how Paul doesn't know what to do. Frustrated, Paul takes a step back to clear his thoughts, do some time traveling of his own.

XV.

Alphonse notices from time to time his attention wandering, finding himself somewhere else entirely. Not in the Boulevard having dinner or enjoying the lovely cafe, but chasing prey, taking a new name, Tartarus, having new senses.

XVI.

Paul travels fifty years into the future, decides to see the British Museum. The building is destroyed, burnt down, glass shattered, no books. There's pointless, senseless vandalism, and graffiti scrawled on a nearby wall. "Indapendnt Resrch". He sends pictures to P, who advises him that there was a culture war, and culture lost.

XVII.

P messages Paul again, he needs to check the Girls Akimbo group. In it Paul finds a breeding ground of conspiracy theories, the most insidious being the ones about knowledge and belief formation - history is a lie, experts are to be distrusted, they only wish to control. Paul tries to cull the herd, banning some, but it only reinforces the views. Instead he sets up sock puppet accounts and tries to argue, but he's dismissed, ridiculed. A plague breaks out not long after, and Paul knows what he has to do. He begins to spread a few claims, "the plague isn't real", "the vaccine is worse than the plague". And it works, the views are taken as gospel, and every death is taken as further proof of the message. One by one they die.

XVIII.

Talking to P, Paul comes to think about his life, and decides he's no longer a little brother, he's now a cousin, and deserves a name of his own. Taking some time, he decides to call himself Alphonse, in tribute to his mentor. As the Girls Akimbo group fragments into smaller, disunified groups that keep sputtering out. Eventually, he decides it's time to recruit someone. And so he finds someone, a young man, messaging them on sluttr and ties him to a chair. In his haste, he hardly has time to notice who. He introduces himself as Cousin Alphonse, starting the story again.

XIX.

Now, Alphonse wasn't consigned to the Boulevard because he recruited himself. It wasn't even because he recruited himself for a second time, splitting himself into Consignor Tartarus and Regulus. Partially, it's that the creation of a Consignor requires that the subject be guilty - you must find someone both guilty and not, and both consign them and not consign them. It's that he escaped from the Boulevard. This is the crime for which he was originally punished, his own escape, something difficult but possible, given time and determination. And P has those in spades, having been chat messages to his earlier self, having turned himself into pure meaning, having hidden in the gaps of meaning in a story. And finally, after all this time, he's free.

Characters

• Paul Cheyne
• Cousin Alphonse
• P
• Consignor Tartarus

References

to be added

Notes

• "P" and the various subconspiracy theories mentioned are references to the Qanon conspiracy theory. These include:
  • Flat earth
  • Hollow earth
  • An earth of other varying shapes
  • The moon landing having been staged
  • The world being run by reptiles
  • A pizza parlor in Akron, in reference to the pizzagate conspiracy theory
  • Experts covering up the cure for cancer
  • The plague (COVID-19) not being real, or the vaccine being worse than the plague.
  • Nanobots in everything
  • Big pharma
  • Pyramids
  • 6g

Continuity

to be added