So, I’m sitting in a creepy house playing paranormal investigator with a machine that can listen to the past, but only if I can tell it exactly when, where and who was present. I’m supposed to be investigating a series of deaths, but they’re…weird. I’ve personally listened to three of the deaths happen, none of them with an obvious proximate cause of death, and one of them at the very beginning of the time span the machine can reach. Somehow the deaths are also connected to the weather?, and also trigger agnosia of the victim’s identity, including one man forgetting his lady entirely mid-sentence when she dies while they are together. One person seems potentially at least partly immune to this effect, since she has asked about her daughter after her daughter died, while everyone else has forgotten her daughter ever existed at all aside from the corpse of an unknown person being found.
Amusingly, there’s one guy wandering the house during the timeline who talks about how he used to live there, but isn’t sure why he showed up other than nostalgia, and is very angry that the house is in the hands it is instead of his own - this is because the first victim was the owner of the house and his brother who invited him and absent knowing he ever had a brother, things fit together…weird.
“All right,” said Susan. “I’m not stupid. You’re saying humans need . . . fantasies to make life bearable.” REALLY? AS IF IT WAS SOME KIND OF PINK PILL? NO. HUMANS NEED FANTASY TO BE HUMAN. TO BE THE PLACE WHERE THE FALLING ANGEL MEETS THE RISING APE. “Tooth fairies? Hogfathers? Little—” YES. AS PRACTICE. YOU HAVE TO START OUT LEARNING TO BELIEVE THE LITTLE LIES. “So we can believe the big ones?” YES. JUSTICE. MERCY. DUTY. THAT SORT OF THING. “They’re not the same at all!” YOU THINK SO? THEN TAKE THE UNIVERSE AND GRIND IT DOWN TO THE FINEST POWDER AND SIEVE IT THROUGH THE FINEST SIEVE AND THEN SHOW ME ONE ATOM OF JUSTICE, ONE MOLECULE OF MERCY. AND YET—Death waved a hand. AND YET YOU ACT AS IF THERE IS SOME IDEAL ORDER IN THE WORLD, AS IF THERE IS SOME . . . SOME RIGHTNESS IN THE UNIVERSE BY WHICH IT MAY BE JUDGED. “Yes, but people have got to believe that, or what’s the point—” MY POINT EXACTLY. She tried to assemble her thoughts. THERE IS A PLACE WHERE TWO GALAXIES HAVE BEEN COLLIDING FOR A MILLION YEARS, said Death, apropos of nothing. DON’T TRY TO TELL ME THAT’S RIGHT. “Yes, but people don’t think about that,” said Susan. “Somewhere there was a bed . . .” CORRECT. STARS EXPLODE, WORLDS COLLIDE, THERE’S HARDLY ANYWHERE IN THE UNIVERSE WHERE HUMANS CAN LIVE WITHOUT BEING FROZEN OR FRIED, AND YET YOU BELIEVE THAT A . . . A BED IS A NORMAL THING. IT IS THE MOST AMAZING TALENT. “Talent?” OH, YES. A VERY SPECIAL KIND OF STUPIDITY. YOU THINK THE WHOLE UNIVERSE IS INSIDE YOUR HEADS. “You make us sound mad,” said Susan. A nice warm bed . . . NO. YOU NEED TO BELIEVE IN THINGS THAT AREN’T TRUE. HOW ELSE CAN THEY BECOME? said Death, helping her up onto Binky.