A weird lady did forcibly read my palm one time and told me I have a curse, but I think it was this other unrelated thing.
( aka "you're cursed to watch all your friends die", which is fun.
On a more significant note, Stephen's not wrong about there being something distinctly off about the whole thing. Not that Jack knows it — or at least he doesn't know why yet. )
I mean, it's possible I guess. It's just that I had a couple of... like really powerful things try to knock me out. I could be wrong, but I get the feeling the Dark God would probably be able to... Counter-spell? Is that a thing outside of Dungeons & Dragons? Whatever the case, a bunch of insane beings have tried to knock me out and couldn't do it.
Either way, yeah, I know, total medical outlier, I should be super dead. The number of people I keep outliving is astounding.
Actually Wait You're a brain doctor and a sorcerer Best of both worlds, right? Is this like a thing you can Scan or something?
[The best of both worlds — the man of science and the man of mysticism. Too bad half of that man has been sheared off by way of simply being here.]
If anything, I’d say that supernatural entities failing to knock you out is proof that it isn’t just physiological. Assuming the rules aren’t completely different in your world.
As for a scan, that’s a little trickier. I could try to sense something, but that doesn’t mean I can do anything about it. My magic isn’t what it was in this universe — mostly because I haven’t been feeding my patron with healthy doses of fear.
I don't really know the rules, nobody gave me a handbook. I just kind of wing it.
You can try jumping out of a closet at me if you think'll help?
( Except Jack's fucking weird, he probably wouldn't startle or even react. )
But don't worry about it, really. I figured it was worth asking, but I'm not really banking on any miracles anymore. If you don't think there's really a point in the scanning, I'd be cool with just getting the prescription. Actual reality already makes me seem like enough of a lunatic, you know?
Even reality all boils down to subjectivity. I don’t know you that well, but I’d hazard a guess that you’re not insane. You’re a man who suffers constantly from extreme sleep deprivation, pulled from terrible circumstances. Trauma doesn’t equate insanity.
[Just… throwing that out there.]
Swing by medical when you can. I’ll prescribe you something to keep the side effects at bay. Hallucinations and disorientation, I assume? I’d like to take your blood pressure, too, to see if there’s anything else we need to address.
( ...but no, really, he's deflecting but that means way more than Stephen even knows. The amount of doubt he has over himself, the amount of doubt other people have over him, trying to differentiate between what crazy shit is coming from his mind versus the crazy shit coming from the gas station is an absolute nightmare. A gaslighting, trauma inducing, limb-losing nightmare. Really doesn't help that his psychiatrist doesn't believe the things that happen there, and also that he's a huge douche. )
Yeah, mostly those. Also lost time and memory loss.
I’m pretty sure the rebuttal will be that I’m not *that* kind of doctor, anyway.
Don’t thank me just yet. I’m going to make sure you come back for a follow-up. You know, that thing all patients don’t like doing. It would make sense to get an MRI on the schedule for you, even if you’ve already been diagnosed. A second opinion doesn’t hurt.
Yeah, but you're a doctor and a wizard. That probably trumps him in the hierarchy, right? Maybe I'm rusty on my supermedical neuroastral hospital politics.
Anyway, I don't really have a lot going on, so I can probably clear my schedule for an appointment. Hope you take Aetna.
[He scoffs a little, reading this message with a twist of amusement.]
Doctor Stephen Strange M.D., Ph.D., Sorcerer Supreme. Not to toot my own horn, but look at all those titles latched onto my name. I’ve *got* to be on the higher hierarchal rung of the ladder.
And the good thing about being displaced from your universe and stuck in this one? You don’t need insurance! Miracles abound. I can see you free of charge.
Yeah, I don't know about that. Dr. V loved to mention how he had four medical degrees. Like, a lot. All the time. Every other visit.
He never mentioned being a sorcerer supreme, though, so I guess that might tip the scales in your favor.
( Let him hop on the credentials bandwagon too, here-- )
Jack Townsend. Gas station owner. Not to brag or anything. Try to maintain your awe. I put my diamond-studded pants on one leg at a time just like everyone else.
Four? Please. This is me rolling my eyes. Four degrees is just showing off. And besides, Sorcerer Supreme counts as many as three.
Gas station owner, man who can’t be knocked out by unfathomable entities, owner of diamond-studded pants, and now a multiversal traveller. Don’t sell yourself short.
Not to toot MY own horn, but I'm getting pretty good at minor field surgery. I think you might be onto something here.
It's mostly just recounting all of the absolutely insane supernatural things that happen around the gas station. It makes for some seriously compelling narrative, except for all of the plot holes reality apparently has, according to half of the people in the comments.
No, I think it's pretty much always been weird. I think that's why they built the gas station there. I think it's on top of some kind of power source, or something that can be used as a power source. Actually, I'll explain it to you the way a guy named Rodger explained it to me.
Many eons ago — a stretch so far into the past that capturing it in a metric of time would be a fool’s errand akin to measuring the loudness of an atomic explosion with a yardstick — there was a vast nothingness. Within this nothing lived a horrible something. A being more chaotic than pure chaos, more evil than pure evil, more hateful than current politics.
It had no name. It had no need for one. It was alone. Until the pressurized rancor of an unaging and incomprehensibly powerful god could no longer be contained within the confines of infinity. And so this being sought life in the nonexistent elsewhere with one hope—that it would find someone or something worthy of its exquisite hatred.
It exploded in every direction, sending pieces of itself forward, backward, up, down, and side to side in the void. It sent pieces into the future and into the past. It sent pieces in other directions, in other dimensions. It created entire new concepts of dimensionality, just so it could spread itself and continue its quest beyond the borders of eternity.
One of those pieces landed here, in what we conceive of as our world, which did not exist yet, until it did. An infinitesimal impression of the goliath itself. An infant god, with the DNA of its parent, slowly infecting our universe in preparation for the harvest. And the wound from this entity’s arrival became an invisible hole.
And some opportunistic beings from other realities started using the hole as a crossroads. And eventually, the traffic led to a rock forming in the space around the wound. And ironically, that rock sprouted the first original life within its universe. And over time, that life became self-aware. And finally, that life began to absorb the powers of the infant god buried at the center of their planet, with childlike naïveté and gleeful ignorance to the fact that they were an astronomical microsecond away from waking the god under their feet who wanted nothing but their pain.
It was inevitable. One day, the god would metamorphose into its true form. But until then, our planet was a novelty. A tourist attraction. A resource hub. A dumping ground. A landfill. Whatever it needed to be for those with the ability and desire to move through the hole and enter into our reality. And for many of these wanderers, fugitives, and other travelers, the first place to stop and rest, relax, and use the bathroom was the shitty little gas station at the edge of my town.
tl;dr the gas station is on top of a pissed off wound where all the cosmic insanity likes to fall through.
[He reads it, all of it, twice. And all Stephen can think is how very much that sounds like one of the many terrifying things lain deep in the multiverse, universes and worlds away; the innumerable dangers that the Ancient One had warned him about, years ago.
Whatever Jack is describing to him certainly qualifies.]
Makes for great reading. And exactly the kind of thing the sorcerers in our world are meant to protect against.
Nothing like that in your world? No conglomeration of colorful heroes to deal with those nasty, eldritch threats?
So you taking ownership of the gas station was before or after you realized the extent of was lying beneath it? Can’t imagine you see it as a job perk as this point.
The short version is... something wants it. The owners wouldn't sell it to them, I guess because they knew about what was underneath it. I'd been working there since I graduated from high school. They died a few weeks ago under (not very) mysterious circumstances, and it turns out they left it to me.
I knew it was weird, I just didn't know why it was weird until they started trying to take it from me.
That's why I really need to get back. The longer I'm gone, the longer it's vulnerable.
friend versus the cosmic horrors surrounding the gas station? And a baseball bat. No offense, but it’s impressive that you’ve held out so long.
We all want to get back to our worlds, and you seem like one of the more extreme examples of why it’s so important. But I think the only way that’s going to happen is if we focus on the here and now of *this* one, so we can figure out how returning is even possible.
[Stephen also left a very big responsibility behind, so he gets it.]
Well, I'm also friends with a cop and a girl that sometimes floats, still not really sure what's up with that. They both think I'm a murderer right now, though, which kind of takes them off the table a little. We used to have the Dark God on our side, who was surprisingly awesome contrary to the frankly awful branding associated with the name, but then some asshole blew him up.
So. Yeah. Just me, Jerry's head, and Ricardo. My bat.
If I'm being honest, the only reason I've made it this long is because of some really specific... magical... restraint... bullshit on the thing trying to take over. It's one of those 'bad guy gets sent to a tiny town as punishment for cosmic crimes with a new inability to harm humans, so he finds fucked up loopholes' situations. He's not even the final boss. When that gets to town I'm fucked.
Anyway, yeah, I figured that out.
But I'm not gonna lie, I'm still pretty pissed they won't help, or even at least just teach people how to do whatever magic they're using. I'm leaving them a really, really shitty Yelp review. 2 stars. The bathrooms are pretty clean or it would be 1, but the custodial staff deserves recognition.
A dark god? Sounds convenient, except the blowing up part. Overall, I wish I could help, but my hands are tied just as anyone else’s. No crossing multiverses for me to help those in need.
[Though.]
To ADI, magic = bad. I can’t blame them, given what I’ve heard. My magic doesn’t work the same as it does in this world, either, but I can always share with you the basics of what I know. With any luck, it might be vaguely useful to you whenever we return home.
And if you’re not so lucky? Then I guess you can be an honorary sorcerer if you ever visit my universe instead.
Yeah, he branded the title back when it had a different connotation. At least, that's what he said anyway. I don't know if I can really imagine anyone selling that as a good thing at any point in human history, but I don't even watch movies made before 1979. What do I know?
If they're not using magic to stop it, what are they even planning to do? Nuke the apocalypse?
Anyway, I'll take any help I can get. Like, literally anything.
And let me just... apologize in advance if I start zoning out. I swear it won't be because you're boring, it'll be because my brain sucks more than a blowjob at the Hoover factory.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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( aka "you're cursed to watch all your friends die", which is fun.
On a more significant note, Stephen's not wrong about there being something distinctly off about the whole thing. Not that Jack knows it — or at least he doesn't know why yet. )
I mean, it's possible I guess. It's just that I had a couple of... like really powerful things try to knock me out. I could be wrong, but I get the feeling the Dark God would probably be able to... Counter-spell? Is that a thing outside of Dungeons & Dragons? Whatever the case, a bunch of insane beings have tried to knock me out and couldn't do it.
Either way, yeah, I know, total medical outlier, I should be super dead. The number of people I keep outliving is astounding.
Actually
Wait
You're a brain doctor and a sorcerer
Best of both worlds, right? Is this like a thing you can
Scan or something?
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If anything, I’d say that supernatural entities failing to knock you out is proof that it isn’t just physiological. Assuming the rules aren’t completely different in your world.
As for a scan, that’s a little trickier. I could try to sense something, but that doesn’t mean I can do anything about it. My magic isn’t what it was in this universe — mostly because I haven’t been feeding my patron with healthy doses of fear.
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You can try jumping out of a closet at me if you think'll help?
( Except Jack's fucking weird, he probably wouldn't startle or even react. )
But don't worry about it, really. I figured it was worth asking, but I'm not really banking on any miracles anymore. If you don't think there's really a point in the scanning, I'd be cool with just getting the prescription. Actual reality already makes me seem like enough of a lunatic, you know?
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[Just… throwing that out there.]
Swing by medical when you can. I’ll prescribe you something to keep the side effects at bay. Hallucinations and disorientation, I assume? I’d like to take your blood pressure, too, to see if there’s anything else we need to address.
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( ...but no, really, he's deflecting but that means way more than Stephen even knows. The amount of doubt he has over himself, the amount of doubt other people have over him, trying to differentiate between what crazy shit is coming from his mind versus the crazy shit coming from the gas station is an absolute nightmare. A gaslighting, trauma inducing, limb-losing nightmare. Really doesn't help that his psychiatrist doesn't believe the things that happen there, and also that he's a huge douche. )
Yeah, mostly those. Also lost time and memory loss.
Thank you. Seriously. That's really, really helpful.
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Don’t thank me just yet. I’m going to make sure you come back for a follow-up. You know, that thing all patients don’t like doing. It would make sense to get an MRI on the schedule for you, even if you’ve already been diagnosed. A second opinion doesn’t hurt.
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Anyway, I don't really have a lot going on, so I can probably clear my schedule for an appointment. Hope you take Aetna.
Not that I have it.
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Doctor Stephen Strange M.D., Ph.D., Sorcerer Supreme. Not to toot my own horn, but look at all those titles latched onto my name. I’ve *got* to be on the higher hierarchal rung of the ladder.
And the good thing about being displaced from your universe and stuck in this one? You don’t need insurance! Miracles abound. I can see you free of charge.
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He never mentioned being a sorcerer supreme, though, so I guess that might tip the scales in your favor.
( Let him hop on the credentials bandwagon too, here-- )
Jack Townsend. Gas station owner.
Not to brag or anything. Try to maintain your awe. I put my diamond-studded pants on one leg at a time just like everyone else.
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Gas station owner, man who can’t be knocked out by unfathomable entities, owner of diamond-studded pants, and now a multiversal traveller. Don’t sell yourself short.
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I'm also a blogger, and only SOME of my followers are bots from PornHub. That might just be showing off now, though.
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What do you blog about?
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It's mostly just recounting all of the absolutely insane supernatural things that happen around the gas station. It makes for some seriously compelling narrative, except for all of the plot holes reality apparently has, according to half of the people in the comments.
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Many eons ago — a stretch so far into the past that capturing it in a metric of time would be a fool’s errand akin to measuring the loudness of an atomic explosion with a yardstick — there was a vast nothingness. Within this nothing lived a horrible something. A being more chaotic than pure chaos, more evil than pure evil, more hateful than current politics.
It had no name. It had no need for one. It was alone. Until the pressurized rancor of an unaging and incomprehensibly powerful god could no longer be contained within the confines of infinity. And so this being sought life in the nonexistent elsewhere with one hope—that it would find someone or something worthy of its exquisite hatred.
It exploded in every direction, sending pieces of itself forward, backward, up, down, and side to side in the void. It sent pieces into the future and into the past. It sent pieces in other directions, in other dimensions. It created entire new concepts of dimensionality, just so it could spread itself and continue its quest beyond the borders of eternity.
One of those pieces landed here, in what we conceive of as our world, which did not exist yet, until it did. An infinitesimal impression of the goliath itself. An infant god, with the DNA of its parent, slowly infecting our universe in preparation for the harvest. And the wound from this entity’s arrival became an invisible hole.
And some opportunistic beings from other realities started using the hole as a crossroads.
And eventually, the traffic led to a rock forming in the space around the wound.
And ironically, that rock sprouted the first original life within its universe.
And over time, that life became self-aware. And finally, that life began to absorb the powers of the infant god buried at the center of their planet, with childlike naïveté and gleeful ignorance to the fact that they were an astronomical microsecond away from waking the god under their feet who wanted nothing but their pain.
It was inevitable. One day, the god would metamorphose into its true form. But until then, our planet was a novelty. A tourist attraction. A resource hub. A dumping ground. A landfill. Whatever it needed to be for those with the ability and desire to move through the hole and enter into our reality. And for many of these wanderers, fugitives, and other travelers, the first place to stop and rest, relax, and use the bathroom was the shitty little gas station at the edge of my town.
tl;dr the gas station is on top of a pissed off wound where all the cosmic insanity likes to fall through.
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Whatever Jack is describing to him certainly qualifies.]
Makes for great reading. And exactly the kind of thing the sorcerers in our world are meant to protect against.
Nothing like that in your world? No conglomeration of colorful heroes to deal with those nasty, eldritch threats?
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It's going great so far.
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So you taking ownership of the gas station was before or after you realized the extent of was lying beneath it? Can’t imagine you see it as a job perk as this point.
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The short version is... something wants it. The owners wouldn't sell it to them, I guess because they knew about what was underneath it. I'd been working there since I graduated from high school. They died a few weeks ago under (not very) mysterious circumstances, and it turns out they left it to me.
I knew it was weird, I just didn't know why it was weird until they started trying to take it from me.
That's why I really need to get back. The longer I'm gone, the longer it's vulnerable.
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[?? That thing in the cooler]
friend versus the cosmic horrors surrounding the gas station? And a baseball bat. No offense, but it’s impressive that you’ve held out so long.
We all want to get back to our worlds, and you seem like one of the more extreme examples of why it’s so important. But I think the only way that’s going to happen is if we focus on the here and now of *this* one, so we can figure out how returning is even possible.
[Stephen also left a very big responsibility behind, so he gets it.]
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So. Yeah. Just me, Jerry's head, and Ricardo. My bat.
If I'm being honest, the only reason I've made it this long is because of some really specific... magical... restraint... bullshit on the thing trying to take over. It's one of those 'bad guy gets sent to a tiny town as punishment for cosmic crimes with a new inability to harm humans, so he finds fucked up loopholes' situations. He's not even the final boss. When that gets to town I'm fucked.
Anyway, yeah, I figured that out.
But I'm not gonna lie, I'm still pretty pissed they won't help, or even at least just teach people how to do whatever magic they're using. I'm leaving them a really, really shitty Yelp review. 2 stars. The bathrooms are pretty clean or it would be 1, but the custodial staff deserves recognition.
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[Though.]
To ADI, magic = bad. I can’t blame them, given what I’ve heard. My magic doesn’t work the same as it does in this world, either, but I can always share with you the basics of what I know. With any luck, it might be vaguely useful to you whenever we return home.
And if you’re not so lucky? Then I guess you can be an honorary sorcerer if you ever visit my universe instead.
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If they're not using magic to stop it, what are they even planning to do? Nuke the apocalypse?
Anyway, I'll take any help I can get. Like, literally anything.
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Not much to be done about the entities, but the people? They’re still very mortal.
As for help with magic, if you don’t mind my limited resources (you’ll probably just be lectured at), then drop by wherever you have the time.
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And let me just... apologize in advance if I start zoning out. I swear it won't be because you're boring, it'll be because my brain sucks more than a blowjob at the Hoover factory.
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