taxonomites | 003: [text]

Still no luck?

I've never seen or heard of any place on earth with no dead in it. It doesn't have to be human, there's always a touch of dead somewhere of some kind. I can see that, I've seen it all my life.

Whatever this place is, I don't think it was real until we got here. Or at least, not inhabited by anything.

My running theory is still VR prison. Might make sense.

In sticking to the whole sci-fi theme, yeah I guess so. It explains the Extras and why everything looks like a five-year-old glued bits of cities together.

But why the vampires? Why exorcists like John and I?

Why aristocrats and waitresses and businessmen?

I think that there might be a pattern, but it would require research that's too invasive to dig it out for sure.

My running theory is that the why can tell us the how, and how to get out, but it ain't like I got much to back that up.

If this is a VR thing, then it's pointless to ask about what happens when people die here, isn't it?

There's an annoying lack of data for any supposition, unfortunately.

I'm not sure. It's just a theory. There are a lot of holes in it, but there are a lot of holes in any theory I've heard. I'm choosing to act on the one that I understand the most.

And since the hamsters are psychic anyway...

Can't say I understand that theory the most, but I am an expert in really bad science fiction movies. If you described this whole thing as a movie plot to me, that's what it would sound like.

That's even without mentioning the hamsters.

I don't watch a lot of movies. 'The drawing board' and I have become close friends in the weeks I've been here, though.

I'm sure the more we try to find out, the more those damned hamsters will sit back and giggle at us for.

But it's better than nothing.

Do they talk back?

Not like people do, if that's what you mean.

How?

As near as I can figure it, this only applies to the dead I know of, or it might even only apply to how my own abilities work, but speaking is one of the first things they forget. Words, communication, codes - it's hard for them to remember the rules of people who exist with such limitations that don't apply to them.

Sometimes they break things to get their point across. Sometimes they hurt people.

Usually they like me.

Aren't you interesting? I think I'd like to visit your world.

That requires being able to leave, so if you figure that one out, be sure to let the rest of us know.

I can't tell you if I don't know who you are.

Mabel Albans. And yourself?

Drusilla.

Not a flicker.

From the dead? No. I have considered that maybe they are here, and they just don't want to be seen. Or maybe I can't see them here.

But I've never had that happen before.

You talk to them?

Not that I've seen any. Just curious. I usually hunt them. I mean I've talked to a couple but most of the time they aren't that coherent when I meet them.

You hunt them?

Yeah. At least the vengeful ones.

I've never one like that who wasn't something other.

Well the vengeful ones tend to hurt people. I stop them.

Stop them how?

Usually find their remains. Salt and burn them. It sends the ghosts away.

Jesus Christ, I'm glad my world ain't like yours.

Yeah. A lot of people should be.

Why how does it work in your world when you run into a vengeful spirit that's hurting people?

If they're hurting people and they're really, truly dead people, I let them hurt me until they calm down some. Usually the 'vengeful' ones want something; sometimes that's easy to fix, sometimes it ain't.

But that's the standard stuff. Hair pulling, scratches, biting, being pushed. I've been pushed down the stairs once, broke my arm. Wasn't the boy's fault, though, I scared him. He thought somebody was trying to kill him again, poor thing didn't know he was already dead.

But if it's trying to kill you, where I'm from, really, truly trying to kill you? It ain't human and it never was. That you deal with differently.

Huh.

We've got ones that want something and sometimes if you give it to them it does help. The others, they were once human and they'll just keep killing because they're so angry about what happened to them.

So what else is it? I mean a variety of things or one in particular? And how do you deal with it?

[Curious Sam is curious]

You get demonic hauntings, sometimes. Far too many of those, frankly. There's all kinds of those types and not all of them are afraid of one religion, but once I can spot that I can figure out who to contact, be it a Catholic priest or a Buddhist monk.

Other things, they don't haunt people so much as exist on the fringes of people. They move into houses, live in caves. Some of them are harmless, some eat cats.

Some drove people mad.

I seal a lot of them in one spot, keep them there. They're not from heaven or earth, there's no place to send them off to or name to invoke against them.

Wow. That's pretty cool. I've never met anyone that does that.

We exorcise demonic presences. How do you seal them up?

It's hard to explain. I don't think anyone else can do it the way I do it.

I've never heard of anyone who could do that. Not that I've heard of everything but knowing about things like that is sort of my job.

I've never run across the embodiment of a dead human being that actually wanted to kill people, and I'm pretty damn familiar with my dead people.

Different worlds, I guess.

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