As bearer of the silver key, Randolph Carter is a master of time and space. He can bend lightyears to his whim and leap across centuries. The whole universe is his to command.
Which is why, of course, he is presently floating in the middle of the void with no idea where he is.
If he turns, he'll see a planet.
It's not a small planet, either. Kronos, the sixth planet from the sun, is one of the gas giants, and it earns the name; this close up Randolph Carter is getting a particularly good view of its famous rings. And one of its moons.
You can't hear sound in space, but if he could, there might be a crashing noise somewhere.
Cool. Cool cool cool.
He wishes Pickman were here. Pickman would want to paint it.
As it is, it's beautiful and a pleasant distraction from the fact that he has no idea how oxygen is getting to his bloodstream. Of all the things to die looking at, this is definitely in the top hundred and fifty. (This is not an insult to Kronos. Carter has seen a lot of very beautiful things.)
Carter would think something like "I should really spend less time floating in the middle of the void being grateful that I can somehow still breathe" but he absolutely doesn't think that. He thinks he's living his best life and, possibly, dying his best death.
He's not dying his best death! He is actually bizarrely not dying.
(Humans need Culture to survive in space, of course. For an ordinary pilot, you'd need a ship-self's tidal resonator to provide the gravity for humans and Culture to not fall apart. Randolph Carter, however, is not an ordinary pilot.)
And then he can feel-- something. It's a little bit like he's standing on a sheet of rubber, and something very, very heavy is on the rubber not too far from him. It's not pulling him towards it, not quite, it isn't nearly as big as Kronos-- but it's big.
OK, so he should probably go either towards or away from the heavy thing on the rubber. Glad to have his options narrowed down.
He touches the silver key in his pocket. He could try to use it to go towards or possibly away from the heavy thing. Last time he did it it dropped him here, which isn't a point in favor of the plan. On the other hand, if he doesn't do something, he's going to spend the rest of eternity floating in orbit around this very pretty planet, which he doesn't particularly fancy, even though the planet is very pretty.
He squeezes it and tries to go towards the heavy thing, since it seems to want him there.
He lands on Kronos's nearest moon. Daphnis is a small thing, hardly even worthy of the name moon; there are buildings on it, all of them abandoned. The pressure here is strong. Carter can feel it in his eyes, on the sides of his skull.
(He remembers this place feeling cramped and anxious and terrifying. No, he doesn't, he remembers how special it felt to be one of the ones chosen to come at all. No, he doesn't remember the Daphnis labs in any way in particular, he's never been here at all.)
But Daphnis has an atmosphere, still, and so Carter can hear the crash of something large through a building.
[Is he?
That's cute.
That's also weird.
What's he doing here?]
He's human-scale, and Pluto is not, and is even less so now than she's ever been before. He can try to run from the crashing buildings if he likes, but even if he doesn't, none of the debris ever seems to get close enough to hurt him.
And it feels almost like something in the lab is laughing at him.
[Hello,] says the massive thing on the rubber sheet, from everywhere and nowhere, the impression rippling through gravity.
Oh, this again.
"Greetings, Great Old One. I'm Randolph Carter."
...
......
.........
All around the Daphnis lab there's a peal of giggling. Not in a mean way! It's just, nobody's ever had that particular assumption about her, and a lot of people have assumed a lot of things.
[Gosh! Nix said the Krun Macula would feel like being a god but I didn't think it would be this fast. I'm Pluto!]
crash.
There's someone else here. Not just Pluto.
CRASH.
Oh lord there are two of them.
Well, his life expectancy is measured in minutes anyway.
"I am a seeker after magic and forbidden lore."
Abruptly the crashing stops.
[im sorry youre a what after what now]
"I wander the universe looking for things man was not meant to know and powers man cannot comprehend?"
[what like a wandering wizard in a story from when we were kids or]
"Uh, yeah, almost exactly like that actually."
The Great Old One was a kid who read stories about wizards?
[huh. sorry pluto i know we were gonna fight but this is WAY weirder]
[right cool. well fight later dw im not giving up this quick]
[so seeker of magic forbidden lore secrets etc howd you get on daphnis and have you found any]
"Well, I think you guys qualify. And I got here through the Silver Key, which allows me to control time and space. Uh. In theory. In practice it mostly just drops me off in random places."
[wait we what now]
[i dont THINK im a forbidden lore]
[...i guess i am literally in a stolen prototype made in secret but come on that so doesnt count]
[thats not magic thats gravity]
[human projections into spacetime etc etc. physics]
[and pluto has more of it than some metropolitan areas but like so do you, thats how you can read it off the narrative in the first place]
"On my home planet, gravity doesn't make you telepathic. I think."
[i mean yeah on earth it doesnt bc theres everyone elses gravity and also like a whole planet. youd crumple. so would a ship-self]
[but were in space]
[the rules are different]
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