Scooter’s Shine

If you did not know Scooter Johnson, codename Wisteria, you might assume he was the ex-hippie type that litters what should be the coast of the Gulf of Mexico if Lamark didn’t send this part of the world to the shores of Hell decades past. Mid-50s. Looks early 60s. Thin like it’s fatal. Long beard that is some mystic color between light brown and dark gray with a healthy dose of nicotine stains. Wears Hawaiian shirts, unbuttoned, and baggy pants. The only shocking thing about him might be the lack of body odor. He looks unclean through years of practice going undercover but he detests being actually dirty. Except for the pipe smoke. He does like his pipes. Like Gandalf as a beach comber.

Because while Scooter “Wisteria” Johnson looks like your washed up, burned out uncle that is no longer invited to the family barbecue, he is actually the kind of Agent that dived so hard into darkness that Order mostly gives him free reign. AKA, plausible deniability. AKA, the less time he spends back at any official HQ, the less likely he might be to corrupt three other agents on the way down.

Don’t get me wrong, mind. He’s a wolf but the kind of wolf that takes guarding the farmer’s door very seriously. He just demands a few sheep to bloody on the way down.

That’s why I’m at the former Pak+Go located near what was once the Mobile Bay. At a glance, place looks like it has gone to rot. Broken bottles. Cracked pavement. Rusted doors and vines growing up the side of self-storage units. Absolutely every piece of it placed carefully for effect. Like the sigils on the shockingly strong gates to ward off curious bystanders. “This is not a safe place,” they say to your monkey brain as you get close. Those locals who have pushed their luck for plunder or a place to sleep have found how just unsafe Scooter is.

The gates open remotely as I approach and then the second wave of sigils hit. The ones on the outside are about keeping people out. The ones on the inside are about keeping things in. Psychic threads bunch up and get trapped. The Soulburn equivalent of a dense fog full of strange phantoms and illusions.

The old owners were Iranian. Fled here in the 1970s to give their kids a better chance. Only the oldest son swung hard into hedge magic and had the whole placed laced with Anti-Order hedge-tech. Runners could hide out goods here without tripping any of the people at HQ. MUNI found out and Scooter got wind. After the bust, he demanded the place for himself. Sigils intact. Some Agents balked and suddenly a few local papers got handwritten letter exposing each and every contrarian’s many corruptions and failures. After two weeks of constant leaks, folks backed down and Scooter took up residence here.

I follow his burley pipe smoke to Unit 17. He’s inside on plastic lawn furniture that would look right at home at a Pensacola trailer park. A relatively new corncob clenched in his teeth. A large mason jar of clear liquid sweats in the July heat while Soulburn dances around the unit. A radio plays Mexico’s Top 40 radio on a low enough volume to barely be heard around traffic sounds from I-10 a quarter mile away. Astroturf lines the bottom of the unit.

Scooter looks up at me entering and lets out a big smile. One of the most dangerous agents on the roster, scary enough that it is said even Field Psychics give him wide, but for reasons I never understood he seems to like me.

“Johnny! Have you ever tried moonshine? Turned Unit 15 into my own personal still.”

“No, Scooter. And don’t think it’s a good day to start. I remember your weed.”

Scooter laughs at this and takes a big swig from the jar. Puff his pipe. Unsavory uncle all the way down. “Ungrateful youth, I tell you.”

The longer this is played out like a social visit, the more nervous I am getting. It means that Scooter is building up to it. And what scares him, scares me doubly so. “Nurse said you had sent out a call for me to see you. I got a Marius prostitution sting to manage. What’s up, Wisteria?”

Using his codename drops the act a bit and the gray eyes go more metallic as he looks nearly but also precisely not in my directions. “Do you know Finley ‘Farsight’ Estevan?”

“No.”

“High grade Order Psychic specializing in remote viewing. And by specializing I mean he blows anyone south of the Witches Three out of the water. Held back by the fact he is deeply paranoid, suffering delusions of grandeur, and also an eco-nut.”

“High grade remote sensor called FARSIGHT feels a bit on the nose, doesn’t it?”

“Says Demontongue.”

“Fair point. Continue?”

Scooter drinks another shot of shine no doubt strong enough to kill lesser mortals. “Estevan went off-grid. Keeping himself off-matrix. Order is squeamish about bringing in enough power to actually outwit him. Still, my left nut — Cassandra — is tingling. I knew Finley of old and him getting this dramatic is a bad sign. Something terrible is coming and Fin is gonna be in the middle.”

“Nuh uh. I’m passing. Get some Field Psychics or some High Grade Mages to track him down. Rogue Psychics are their business. I’m just sweet little Agent Blue.”

“Not this time. No cavalry. Order is too spooked. Someone as high grade as Fin can fuck with the threads. He knows multiple timelines and how to bring them about for most damaging effect. Can lay traps for the foxfaces.”

“Then double nuh uh.”

“I have reason to believe you are the best chance for success.”

I sigh, deeply, and sit down on a wicker chair that you could imagine throwing out from your grandma’s estate after her passing. “How?”

“The Order’s best and most paranoid truth seeker’s biggest weakest is the Order’s best liar.”

“I’m taking that as a compliment.”

“It was meant as one.”

I start eyeing the high ABV poison in a more positive light but still resist the siren’s call of death in a jar. “Any clues?”

“Arbuck.”

“Sounds like a comic strip character.”

“Arbuck, FL, smart aleck. Swamp barely paved over enough to support three trailer parks, two mechanics, three dollar stores, and seven churches. Eight if First Baptist ever finished its schism.”

“Why there?”

“Because Estevan took his vainglorius ass to see a hedge mage tarot reader there. First time he pinged a thread loud enough the Order took notice.”

“Why in Dr. Hell’s sweet anus would he do that?”

“First thing you need to find out.”

“It sounds like I am finding out that it is all a trap.”

“Of course it is a trap. That’s why I am sending you. You ain’t fool enough to fall into it without having a plan to fight back.”

“Any intel on this hedge mage? His, her, or their name? Favorite snacks?”

“Madame Sinister. Real name Maria Salas. Specializes in love sick hicks and baby names.”

Madame Sinister. I picture a face as best I can. Hammer Studios witch. In cahoots with a mad Psychic. Maybe picking puppy brains from her teeth with the femur bone of an orphan. The look on my face must be really obvious because Scooter takes a big puff on his corncob pipe, smiles, and hands me the moonshine jar.

And this time I take it.

Desperate Times Calling

“Hey, Nurse?,” I ask out loud so to anyone spying on me — and frankly I never put it past the Order — it might look like I am just talking to myself. Only Nurse is my PAL: Psychic Agent Liasion. Most of us Agents have one. A little helper friend who can handle a lot of the brain power while we are swinging fists and looking pretty. Nurse has been with me since near the beginning but due to some draconian rules we are not able to know much about one another. Of course, it bleeds over when you get along as well as we do. But that’s for a different time. For right now, just know he’s kind of like a little brother that talks directly into my head who also spends most of the time…well, nursemaiding me.

“Yeah, Demontongue?”

“Tell me about Candlestick Farm.”

“The hell, man, you ask me to take this private and ask me about that?”

Here’s a problem with GLOW hierarchy. The Harrowing makes Soulburn. Soulburn enables magic. Magic was not created by Soulburn. It is just enhanced by it. So much so that a lot more people that had little sparks and intuitions now have world shaping capabilities. So the Lamarkian Order creates Agents and Psychis and Mages and Witches and tasks them with keeping the peace using a legal system so complex that barely exists on paper: a constant flux of decisions based on shifts in the psychic matrix thread.

What happens, though, when Agents- and Psychics- and Mages- and Witches-to-be go a bit off book? In big cases, you can death or worse. In medium cases, you get anti-magic sigils burned into your soul. In small cases, it varies but for some of those small cases you get Candlestick Farm.

Imagine a place called — before The GLOW came about — Dead Lake. Full of old cypress trees and murky swampy water. Imagine an offshoot of water from it called Carston Lake. Despite smelling like a dish drain, the sandy soil is poor enough that only thin trees can grow on it. Years and years ago, a meteorite struck it. Local natives had legends about it. Not so much a bad place but a place where people had some odd dreams.

Now imagine that years and years later, the Order needs a place to handle these mildly rebellious types and so take that poor-as-sin sandy soil and make a farm on it. Penance is making things grow in a place nature is fine with staying fallow. And the Order has dug back up that meteorite which was distorting psychic powers. And they take a bit Olde World Magick and combine it all together. Dead Lake. Carston Lake. Candlestick Farm. The old meteorite. And…

“You are going for the Tongue.”

Bingo. Nurse got it in one. The Forked Tongue. An old school relic of unsure origin. Chemical analysis suggests it is is somewhere between bone and forged metal. Magical analysis is a no-go. Because the Tongue cuts through psychic threads and Soulburn magic like butter. A magical device designed to destroy magic. At least the type the Order cares to traffic with.

You plop that in a meteoric iron alter at the center of a farm and you send these new, young gods-to-be to grow corn and tomatoes in soil absolutely tainted with its effect. Not the truly bad ones. Those get worse punishments. These are the diamonds-in-the-barely-rough. Like Nurse. Before he was Nurse. When he got fed up with training and used his psychic gift to steal a car and drive into town and then, worse, used his powers to get food. Teenage bullshit. Spent some months at the Farm. I know this because I was given a file about him so redacted it practically a Madlib. I am good at my job and was able to fill in a lot of blanks. It comes with being really protective of my friends.

And there are times where he thinks about it while connected to me so I get impressions. Officially, people like me aren’t supposed to know the Tongue exists because The Order fears it. Secret reports suggest it could be used to kill The Witches Three. Only it is hard to wield. It cuts you off from The GLOW itself. It’s a danger to our entire society protected by the people being punished with it. Because the Candlestick kids are the ones who want back in.

The biggest flaw in this plan is that Order Psychics can’t tell if it is safe. If someone did take it, they would only know about it because the blindspot in their minds’ eyes shifted a bit.

If anything that can give me a fighting chance against Estevan, it is it.

“I have reason to believe the Order is fishing for a fall guy so I volunteered,” I say less to explain to Nurse — who knows my thoughts better than I do — and essentially as a mental tool to inform myself.

Nurse starts describing it. I can picture it in my mind. The layout. The almost mind-boggling lack of protection. Like the Order can barely see the threat in the middle of their den. Which is the point.

“It’s crowded. But friendly enough. Mostly for the sorts who regret the mistakes. Who want to do better. Means the guards usually just have to worry about fist fights and jealous arguments.”

“Those happen a lot?”

“Former, no. Latter, yes. Lots of fucking goes down. Some involving fucking over multiple lovers.”

“Nice…”

“Demontongue, what’s the plan here…”

“Nurse, I got to go.”

I triple tap the signal to hard kill it. Nurse can push through if he wishes — I suspect he can do a lot more than any of us realize — but I need quiet for a moment. What I am doing is akin to high treason. Only, why else approach someone like me if they did not expect extreme solutions to extreme problems. The name Demontongue is well-earned by this point.

I am used to throwing cogs in the gears but magic on the level of the Tongue means I am also gumming up my own works. Good thing that I am not half the liar Scooter thinks I am. I mostly get through people’s defenses by being selective about the truth. Play at what they want to see. The Tongue won’t take that away from me otherwise I’d be going in powerless against one of the most powerful psychics on the books.

Now time to head south to Dead Lake and find a security guard I can bribe to get me across. Time’s a ticking.

Waking Up on the Farm

Lanette pushes hard against Billy’s arm. Then again. Slaps a few times but the big lug doesn’t move. So she shouts, “HEY!,” at the pair of them. No surprise when it’s Torey that wakes up first.

“El, what do you want? Let us sleep.”

“Can’t you hear the damned shouts, T? Can’t you feel the…you know…”

And of course Torey can. Candlestick Farm is chock full of sensory data all the time. Sweat. Dirt. Manure. Shouts. And the bunk adds a new layer of funk and noise. Only right now, most of that funk and noise are people outside shouting about something. Torey is about to ask a question when they notice a drift of Soulburn in front of their eyes. Something that technically shouldn’t happen on the farm.

Torey swings their long legs out of the temporarily shared bunk with Billy — a May-fling already pushing into July, practically making them wed by Farm standards — and yanks the bigger guy a few times until he finally awakes. He blinks a few times and then sits up. Lanette goes to speak but he shakes his head. Billy was always the most gifted of the foursome, which meant the farm hits him the hardest. He looks hungover now as the threads are snapping back into place around him.

Torey lays a hand on his chest, their dark skin contrasting his pale, and waits for him to collect himself.

A few minutes later — with no time spent on getting dressed it saved some time — they are out in the yard near the stone. Debate has been had about how long ago this chunk of iron fell from the heavens. One of its odd properties is that it resists plants and dirt from building on it, like there’s a thin layer of nothingness between it and the world. In the middle of it, though, like an eye socket is a nook. And in that nook should be the Forked Tongue. Only it’s bare.

“Some bastard took the tongue. Blue-eyed. Capable. I can feel him moving up to there and now it’s blank.”

“Billy, they are going to blame us,” says Lanette. Billy is the “big one” both literally and figuratively. Though only nineteen, he gives the impression of a bushy-haired giant in a pupal stage. Puffed up with fat and sweat on his way to a booming voice and teeth. Despite the heat and summer sun, he remains shockingly pale [on display in his undressed state, at least Torey grabbed a sheet to wrap around themself]. Lanette on the other hand is short, very-blonde, and deeply tanned.

“Nah, we are innocent,” says Torey. The only member of the group taller than Billy with a head of curly hair and dark skin. Would be the thinnest of the four if he didn’t exist.

“Like they care,” responds Lanette. Her distrust of authority is why she is here. In her head she is picturing the Order figuring out precisely to lay the blame at her feet in particular.

“Can it, Lanette,” remarks Billy. The only one able to cut any degree through Johnny’s stealth though the Tongue is now hiding Johnny more than Agent Blue realizes. Billy can’t see anything conclusive, but can feel the nothingness moving away. “Wake up Jayson. It is time to get the Tongue back.”

“We about to flee the Farm?,” Torey asks.

Billy nods, all smiles. Who else can solve the case of the missing Tongue than the Fabulous Four?