Chicago Stalkerverse, Unknown Server:
It was all backing up, building in him. A rage at the unfairness and utterly predictable irony at it all. He had, after all, been thru less intense versions of this routine for so long now that the wearied reporter had lost any other way to live.
As he stared at the latest thing he just knew he'd never get anyone to know about, he thought back on it all savagely, reminding himself of the pain, the struggle, and his ironclad resolve.
He'd begun the column and his crusade simply enough so long, back. It was only a couple of years, but he'd been thrust for so long into constantly evolving supernatural wildness that it felt like a thousand. The Count. He snorted in disdain to cover the fear the Count still inspired to this day in him. A actual European nobleman of days gone by, the Count was still very much a vampire, and very deadly indeed. The only one to believe him then got killed, a beginning of a very dark pattern where the reporter was concerned. He named his so ignored column after the handle the police had hung on the Count while assuming he was just another serial killer, as a reminder of what he strove for: Getting to the truth, no matter how grotesque or flat out weird.
He went from site to site for the International News Service, drove his disbelieving editor up the wall, and angered half the blowhards and elitist yahoos in town from the police chief on down. Outlasting them all, he still never got the truth disseminated outside his lone column, never ever was believed by anyone who so much as survived encountering him. Except the remaining monsters, of course.
For all his despair at being the modern day equivalent of the prophetess of Troy who no one bothered to believe (even as her prediction of war and disaster unfolded exactly as promised), he'd done a lot of good, stopping everything from the nightmarish update of the Headless Horseman to the Rakshasa. But it grated to never ever get a break.
Finally his editor had decided to go in after him, intent on 'stopping this nonsense' once and for all. He'd had to save his boss from a demon literally summoned from the Void, and he was bitterly aware that the sight of the creature forming from literal Oblivion to being something not only made the damned skeptic faint in horror, but beyond a shadow of a doubt also provoking what Carl knew (from bitter previous experience in other cases) would be traumatic amnesia. Hell, at least the stubborn jerk will live. Even if I do lose my job again.
With that thought, Carl Kolchak finally reached a point he had to scream aloud. "God! GOD Damn It All! Why's this always happen? Why does this shit always happen and never even get noticed or acknowledged afterwards? I want to know, damn it all! WHY?" He watched the swirling portal of Oblivion that had swallowed the whole damn cult as their monster collected them in repayment for their failure to collect his boss, not really aware of his having screamed that inquiry aloud until a voice from everywhere and nowhere filled the altar room. #Working. Working.. Access Granted.# With that, the hurtful all-negating quality of the until then shrinking portal changed to a hot violet color as said portal expanded to a 9 and a half foot wide by 7 foot tall rectangle. #Data on this inquiry are permissible for Carl Kolchak, but are stored elsewhere. Enter the transfer gate to be routed to where your answers reside.#
Carl was fast to act and reckless in regards to his employment, but he'd learned the hard way to be observant and wary when it came to risk. "Before I step through, if I do, who are you?"
#This is the system main control. This system has been in a inactive 'steady' state for a long time, until safe Users were found. This is now happening. The questions that fact raises will also be revealed to Carl Kolchak when he steps through the transfer gate.#
Carl was a Chicago resident of a era before computers and AI were widely known and accepted concepts (much less reality), yet his vast experience that the world had more than most anyone wanted to confess to allowed him to discern the true caring and mechanical subtones in the odd voice. And he was curious. Par for the course for Carl.
Thus when his editor revived to chew out the 'Night Stalker', he found no one there to read the riot act to.
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(Posted Sun, 14 Aug 2005 06:16)
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