Fail Gully

“Hey, what's this movie Epic like?” asks a sixteenish-year-old one afternoon.

“Epic? It's like Fern Gully for the new generation.”

“What's Fern Gully?”

Fernando is at a loss for words, and the customer instead decides to rent Olympus Has Fallen.

Correct Address

A guy comes into the store with a girl one Monday evening. Fernando has seen the girl before, but not in the company of this man. Presumably they are swapping lovejuices on a routine basis.

The guy, you see, owes Fernando forty-eight dollars in late fees, dating to about three years prior. The Keeper suspects that maybe, just maybe, the young lady had been brought along to rent for him by proxy, so that the delinquent could avoid putting any amount of money onto his debt. It's not the first time people who owed Fernando money have tried to skirt the Keeper's wishes.

The two browse the store for around ten minutes, and the guy is the one to select all the movies for the evening, a sizable pile of four titles. This lends further credence to Fernando's hypothesis that she is here as his representative-minion. At last they approach the counter, and already Fernando stands at attention on his side of the barrier. After placing the tags upon the counter, the young man hands the lady a five dollar bill.

“Did you want to throw something onto your late fees?” he asks the young man.

“Uh, I'm not renting these. She is.”

Fernando's eyes flick to the girl, then back to the guy. “I had surmised as much. But I'm not asking her, I'm asking you.”

“I, uh, I didn't bring any cash with me.”

Fernando presses his lips together and squints at the five. “Hrrm.”

“That's, uh, that's hers.”

“Oh, no, absolutely. My friends tell me to hold their money for them all the time, too.”

The two lovebirds exchange an awkward look. Finally the guy says, “Can I put a dollar on it?”

“It's a start. The largest journey begins with but a single step.”

Miraculously, the movies are returned the following day. Perhaps this mini-saga will indeed prove itself to be a story of redemption and—pssshhhhahahahahaha I crack myself up.

Fernando's Fifth Quest

Saturday started with a bang: Macombo and Natasia informed Fernando and Ronaldo straightaway at breakfast that a crazy French lady had spent most of her breakfast time berating the waitstaff over the paucity of choice provided at the meal and the overall low quality of the food and drink which had been provided. Alas, not every breakfast can be the delicious continental European spread. If it were, Fernando would eat far more breakfasts.

As decided the previous evening, in no way would the party endeavor to be timely at the convention. They would late, fashionably so, and hopefully avoid the glut and torrent of people. They watched some of the other convention-goers who shared the hotel clamber into the shuttle from a position of safety and semi-comfort in the lobby. The chairs were Victorian, high-backed and rather narrow, and the gathered crew exchanged ribald tales of past adventures at the Dungeons and Dragons table, for both Macombo and Natasia expressed interest in attending. Furthermore, Fernando would host a going-away jamboree for Ronaldo the following week, as that man would functionally exit from Fernando life for always and ever in short order—this journey was, after all, one last adventurous huzzah before the Fellowship's breaking, and the pair received formal invitations to this gathering. Fernando plied them with promises of ginger ale and of delectable, hand-crafted vittles, and they did swiftly agree to attend.

The gang's ride carried them to their location without trouble and the busiest day of all the days began. Fernando first panel of the day featured a comic book writer who had been in the business for thirty years sharing kernels of wisdom he had gained over his tenure in “the biz” with regards to plotting and storytelling. Mostly, of course, as it applied to the medium of comics and graphic novels, but Fernando took away the notion of fractal plot pacing: that every subsection of a given story arc, novel, D&D campaign, whatever, ought to have a miniaturized dramatic arc to call its own. This is something that Fernando had grasped on a subconscious level but had, to this point, never had overtly explained to him, and it is the single most edifying thing he encountered at the convention, something he shall endeavor to insert into his own literature in order to become a better storyteller.

A long, long stream of guest panels ensued. Fernando sat in the same room as Stan Lee and a loud, annoying guy who served as a combination of interpreter and question-gatekeeper. This gentleman was also the one who'd attempted to rile up the crowds by being a dumbass over the intercom the previous day. What more can be said? It was a Q&A with Stan “The Man” (seriously though why was this little appellation appended to every single instance Fernando encountered the dude's name at the convention?) Lee.

Fernando sat in the same room as Manu Bennett, who is actually a surprisingly small man only of about Fernando's height. His roles in Spartacus and The Hobbit skewed Fernando's understanding of the man's size, but Mr. Bennett explained that onlookers fill in size narratives on their own, so long as you carry yourself like someone who is large and in charge.

Truly, the human mind is an easily manipulated thing.

Fernando and Ronaldo then met up and sat in the back of an overcrowded room of five thousand-ish people who waited for Mr. Norman Reedus. Natasia and Macombo mingled with the pair for a while, but they had VIP tickets and so were granted access to actually decent seats once the panel was to begin. To help pass the time until the Guest of Honor made his grand debut, Jon Berethal entertained the crowd, and it was glorious. In stark contrast to Michael Shannon's halfhearted dipfuckery, Mr. Berethal was a genuine (albeit not classy...he swore like a sailor), genial guy. He wanted to be there and wanted to engage the horde of Walking Dead-ites. He pimped his new show and convinced both Fernando and Ronaldo to give the premiere a look-over.

Norman Reedus then apparated and sprayed silly string all over the table, which of course caused everyone in the crowd go apeshit and all of the ovaries to explode in miniature big bangs. He was forbidden to discuss the show by his contract with AMC, which deflates a significant portion of why many audience members wanted to be there, but he did hold forth at length about Boondock Saints and how they are making a third movie in the series.

Hollywood. Stop.

Once Norman Reedus stepped out of the building, Fernando decided that he would go on a solitary adventure, splitting the party and forcing the Great DM Above to cater to the Keeper's selfish player character whims. He would visit the city of Chicago proper, using public transportation, transforming into a regular city mouse like he had been in the days when he'd resided in Vienna! What would he do? Mysteries, left to the DM's graces! But just that he did, and he did randomly encounter many unique characters in his travels. More amusing characters and situations, daresay, than he did over the full weekend at Comic Con.

First, the fistfight! Fernando stood against one of the stripper poles which he has always favored on public transport, as he believes in keeping the seats open for those who must sit, and standing burns more calories besides. As the train pulled into one of the many stops, a pair of men, one white and one black, hopped off and started stripping down. The other passengers on the train seemed to take this as a bit of street theater, for they immediately readied their cell phones for a kingly performance. It seems the while man had said something offensive and sexually suggestive to a lady in the vicinity of the black man, and the black man had come to the woman's defense, and the white man had taken offense at the defense, and now two shirtless men were punching the everloving fuck out of one another on a subway platform while everyone recorded the fight.

The black guy won the first round of combat and, to his credit, turned and headed for the stairs rather than to continue whaling on his stunned and helpless victim. The white guy, upon stumbling to his feet, escalated the conflict by threatening to retrieve his “twenty-two” and “pay [him] a visit tonight.” The black guy stopped at the top of the stairs, turned, and said in one of those scarily calm voices that his “posse” (perhaps this is a Chicagoan term for adventuring party?) would “teach [him] a lesson if [he] tried that shit.” White Guy's brash response was that he would “fuck all y'all up.”

Quaint. The subway car had pulled out of the station before Cop Dudes could arrive on the scene, so Fernando did not know if, indeed, White Guy carried through on his infantile threat or if it had been all posturing and bluster, like what most assholes are capable of producing.

One of Fernando's fellow passengers, a teenaged African American lad, commented on the situation at Fernando. “Yo, you see that shit happen! Crazy!”

Well, yes, he had. Fernando had been standing right there. “Little bit, yeah.”

“You taking this awful calm.”

Fernando shrugged. “I'm just trying to get from Point A to Point B here.”

TAAL quieted down.

A little bit later, a skeevy, scrawny man clambered onto the subway car scant moments before the doors shut. He addressed the gathered people in breathless, rote cadence, “I'm sorry, this will only take a minute of your time I have been really down on my luck lately and living on subway cars like a dog I'm trying to get some medication but please bear with me--” (Here he hiked up his pants leg and revealed to the world a pus-rimmed, swollen brown sore that blanketed the side of his calf) “--to fight this infection I got and sleeping on subway cars doesn't help at all so please if you could give me some money even the tiniest bit it could go a long way to helping me out please and thank you.”

Then he crouched on the floor in front of the subway car's doorway muttering “I'm sorry I'm so sorry” every fifteen-odd seconds. Most people had the good sense to ignore his solicitous ramblings. A few soft-hearted (soft-headed, more like) souls gave him some dollars. One man even gave him a five. Because encouraging a busker is the way to go through life, right city folk?

At the next stop, Skeevy Stevie slithered out the door, walked down the platform to the adjacent car, and climbed right back on to work another crowd.

Fernando also stumbled across a conservatory in his travels, and it was comforting being surrounded by living things that shared the Keeper's notions of solitude and introspection. None of them tried to consume him, and this is how Fernando knew the DM was fudging his dice rolls.

By the time Fernando returned to the convention center, it was dark. Ronaldo and the rest had gone home, but the dark is just the beginning, for the convention's “after-party” had just begun! Fernando dropped by and had a few, not too heinously expensive, drinks. He, by the grace of Lovecraft, actually received a ginger vodka when he asked the bartender for a ginger vodka.

It was a very loud afterparty. The music could be summed up as generic and forgettable nnn-tss-nnn-tss-nnn-tss electechnotronic. Fernando spent most of his time there nursing his drinks and watching people. He kind of made a friend, in that a young lady named Latisha or Latasha approached him and started telling Fernando about a Superman poster she'd bought from one of the myriad dealers earlier today.

Fernando got bored in short order and contacted Cool Driver Jim for pickup. He took a while to arrive, as he had drop-offs to make at the airport, but the night was warm and mosquitoes nonexistent, and the moths were kept away from Fernando by the abundance of streetlights, so he sat on a curb outside the convention center and waited for nearly an hour. When Cool Driver Jim pulled up, the shuttle was completely empty, so Fernando climbed in and rode shotgun. Cool Driver Jim started telling Fernando about his day, and it was like they shared a series of moments.

The series of moments ended when he swung by the airport and six other people joined the party. Upon reaching the hotel, Fernando exited the van, gave Cool Driver Jim a five dollar tip, shook his hand, and said to him, “You know, I never caught your name, and we've been calling you Jim all weekend.”

“It's Josè.”

“Thanks, Josè. You're a king among men.”

Josè laughed. “I'll see you tomorrow again?”

“Maybe so. I definitely hope so. Have a good night, man.” Fernando entered the hotel and trudged up the stairs to the room he shared with Ronaldo and Teodor, and he did indeed hold to the hope that some year down the road he would share in Cool Driver Jim...no, Josè's company once again.

But, alas, it would not be tomorrow. The adventure drew to its inevitable close.

Godwin

“Hey, is this movie about Hitler?”

“Which movie is that?”

“This one that has Hitler on the cover.”

Fernando peeks out the office at where his guest, a high school-aged young lady, points to one of his wares, Emperor, which features General Douglas MacArthur as portrayed by Tommy Lee Jones front and center on the cover. “...No. That is not Hitler.”

“He looks like Hitler.”

“In no way is that statement correct.”

Did The History Channel become so abject a failure in quasi-educational television so long ago already?

Fernando's Fourth Quest

Breakfast at the hostel was a bleak affair compared to the wondrous glories of impeccable hash browns and scrambled eggs of days gone by. Fernando found some Raisin Bran and milk and some lukewarm yogurt. The coffee was too bitter to reasonably enjoy without diluting it through three or four cups of liquid creamer, thereby defeating the purpose behind it being coffee, and the orange juice was a watery pale mess.

Maybe Fernando was just cranky. He'd spent around six hours of the previous day around more people than he sees come through the Dominion in probably two months...and most of the people visiting the store are the same people Fernando had seen time and again previously. He missed his cave of introverted shame and safety already, but had no choice but to forge ahead.

The plan for this day was to get there bright and early for the convention's opening. The crew visited the front desk to ensure they reserved a spot on the shuttle for around 11 A.M., as the convention would open its doors at noon. When the shuttle arrived, a little late, the Company was saddened to see the man behind the wheel was not Cool Driver Jim, but a different man who spoke with some variety of Slavic accent.

Slav Driver Andy opted charisma as one of his dump stats. He did not engage his passengers and spent much of the time muttering under his breath in the mother tongue, presumably about the wretched traffic they were forced to navigate. He took an alternate path to the convention center, one which did not use of the freeway system but instead skulked through a labyrinth of traffic lights and pedestrians.

The roads' congestion grew larger as the bus crept closer to the convention center, and about a mile out traffic stopped completely. Cop Dudes in reflective vests stood at the intersection, two on opposite corners and one in the middle of the street. They gestured at the backed-up string of cars with white-gloved hands, letting one vehicle at a time merge or creep forward as soon as an opening appeared ahead.

Slav Driver Andy cursed and pounded his palms on the steering wheel, then addressed the passengers, “This is not good.”

Macombo, brave Macombo, told the man, “You know, you could drop us off here and we could walk the rest of the way. It's not that far.”

Slav Driver Andy pushed a button on his console and bus's folding doors whooshed open. “You are fine with this? Okay.”

Fernando and Co. exchanged a look, then as one clambered out and began their sojourn. Walking a mile is nothing to people who live in the middle of nowhere. Fernando needs to walk nearly that far just to reach the post office from his Dominion's front door. The other people from the hotel who had ridden along proved less courageous and stayed in Slav Driver Andy's company.

Even the foot traffic was monumental. People lugged along full-size, framed posters and improbable costumes and red wagons full of swag. The party pressed onward, moving swiftly around the knots of humanity who walked somewhat less than briskly. Well, Fernando and Ronaldo and Natasia did, at any rate. Teodor and Macombo ambled along like sloths.

Fifteen minutes later, they reached the convention center's front doors. Yellowshirts stood by to funnel people in the appropriate directions. People who needed to procure their tickets or wristbands were shunted in the direction which Fernando & Co. were yesterday. For those who had purchased weekend passes, they were directed to stand in a long long long line, a line which dwarfed the previous day's. For the Thursday line experience had just consisted of those men and women who wanted to enter the convention right at opening time.

This line consisted of all the people who'd swung by on Thursday for weekend passes.

Doctor Wily's hair, there were a lot of them.

The crew was escorted into another cattle chute delineated by duct tape on a cement floor. Fernando and Ronaldo, who were closest to each other, decided to make a game of things by counting the number of Harleys Quinn they spied. They made out three before the snaking crush of humanity blotted out vision of the room's entrance.

So the group waited for about twenty minutes. They had been at the end of the line, with perhaps five, six hundred people ahead of them. After the twenty minutes had elapsed, they stood in the front quarter of a line of thousands. And, remember, this is the line of people who had weekend passes, not the separate, unseen line of people who'd come in for just the day, and also not the line for people who'd shelled out an extra two hundred dollars for a VIP ticket and the promise of early entry.

As noon drew nearer, some jackass had the bright idea to put a dickhead on the building's intercom and drum up excitement. You know the sort, the obnoxious hybrid of a sportscaster and a morning radio jockey who indulges in things like, “Heeeeello Chicago Comic-Con! Are! You excited to be here today?” then tries goading the audience into shouting and cheering when he “can't hear you!”

Motherfucker, it's eighty-five degrees, there's no air circulation, and we're standing in a line surrounded by people with an average body temperature of ninety-six degrees. Everyone is sweaty and grouchy and above all a nerd. Nobody needs that shit, especially not when you're doing it at five after twelve in the afternoon and we just want to get inside the actual convention.

Though some of the 501^st milled around looking awesome as shit, and that made things a little bit better, it was still twenty after noon by the time the portion of line in which the Company dwelled was broken away and guided by yellowshirts not up the escalators as yesterday, but into the downstairs showroom, where autographs and meet-n-greets were to be held in the future.

“Let's never do that again,” Fernando said, and no one disagreed with him.

The party split off again, with Teodor just outright vanishing while Macombo and Natasia headed off to do their own thing. Fernando and Ronaldo wandered the lower level's vendors. They found someone who sold fedoras with built-in sparkly LEDs and considered, however briefly, procuring one for Teodor, who is well-known to favor that style of headgear (Fernando is more partial to the Derby bowler). But twenty-five dollars was too much money to spend on a novelty that would make Teodor look like a buffoon, so the idea was scrapped.

Fernando did take a picture of Ronaldo next to a TARDIS. Ronaldo was overjoyed.

The autograph area was mostly barren. Lou Ferrigno was there, surprisingly, for he had been advertised to attend a panel the previous day on real-life superheroes. That was a great big disappointment, for not only did The Hulk not show up, but the superheroes up on stage did things which did not, in fact, require dressing up and maintaining a secret identity. Secret identities are needed to prevent retributive acts against yourself or your loved ones by allies of the villains you thwart, not because you go to a soup kitchen and volunteer or hand out condoms. Unless, of course, you do such things for pomp and attention, in which case your deeds might be noble but your intents fly in the face of everything which might be considered altruistic.

The whole thing was rather a bit of a farce, and not at all unlike the Stephen Lynch composition “If I Could Be a Superhero.”

Anyhow, Ronaldo tried to sneak a picture of Mr. Ferrigno but one of the yellowshirts waved him down and pointed to a “no pictures within the designated area” sign which was affixed, rather ironically, behind a line of tape delineating said designated area, in which Ronaldo and Fernando undeniably did not stand.

Ronaldo shrugged and took a grainy long-distance picture anyway when the yellowshirt's attention was distracted by some other convention-goer. No way was he going to pay fifteen dollars. Word to the wise: if you market your body and self as a commodity and product, you surrender privacy when in a venue specifically meant to market that product, as long as the photographer isn't being a dickhead and putting you or other people in some sort of harm. If you value your privacy, think ahead and maybe don't become famous.

The rest of the day proved rather humdrum. Ronaldo and Fernando split up as soon as the first Doctor Who panel reared its head, so the Keeper did his own thing. The high point for Fernando was attending a Q&A panel featuring the affable and endearing Wil Wheaton, who actually gave a little talk on exactly the sort of privacy concerns Fernando described above, and who reached roughly the same conclusion as he did: When you're wearing your public/business pants, you give up the right to bitch and a be standoffish dickhead, as long as people are not a jerk about things. Without them, you wouldn't be anybody.

Michael Shannon could do well to learn this lesson. He was to give an hour-long fireside chat. Fernando and Ronaldo both looked forward to it because the man is an impressive actor who brings a lot of gravitas to his roles, and Ronaldo much enjoyed his character in Man of Steel. A pity he's a shithead of a human being who clearly did not want to be there and whose Q&A (such as it was...he answered two or three audience questions before he scampered off) was cut down to about twenty minutes because he can't schedule his life worth half a damn and overlapped other obligations with the time at which he was to attend the convention.

The following Zachary Quinto panel was much better. Mr. Quinto cared and was affable and joked with the moderator and the people asking questions. He even requested that a one girl not cry when it was clear she was a nervous wreck just talking to him from fifty feet away over a microphone. Kudos, Mr. Quinto.

After the convention ended, Cool Driver Jim again arrived to pick up the crew and deliver them swiftly to their destination at the hotel, where discussion over foodstuffs took place. Consensus was reached: Natasia and Macombo were to head to a bar/eatery near the hotel while Fernando, Teodor, and Ronaldo would cross four lanes of street to a Burger King, as the bar/eatery looked a mite skeevy to Ronaldo's eyes.

While at Burger King, Teodor's food was stolen by another man because he did not stand right by the counter to pick it up. Good old thieves. Oh, and everyone was pretty sure they had seen someone pick up a prostitute in the drive-thru. The lady was wearing a slinky reddish dress, had her hair artfully curled and coiled, and milled around on the sidewalk near the burger joint. Once someone pulled into the drive through, she sashayed over and leaned down to solicit him, which seemed to go well enough, though when she climbed into the passenger side of the vehicle her face was dead and without expression.

So congrats to Anonymous John, I guess. Truly you are a master of the seductive arts.

Upon return to the hotel, Macombo and Natasia dropped by the room to have a few beers. Macombo played another game of Munchkin with the crew while Natasia sat nearby, blessing everyone not with a ruthless playstyle, but with honeyed words and sparkling personality. The crew also haggled out their schedule for the next day. The convention would begin at 10 in the morning, and they did not plan to be there for that time. No way would they deal with line bullshit, not on the day which promised to be the biggest of the weekend. This was the day on which all the Walking Dead panels, especially that of Mr. Norman Reedus, would take place, and the crowds would be, as the expression goes, “off the hook.” No, they would schedule their arrival at around 10.30, hopefully after all the torturous herding had come to an end and they could just walk through the doors, flash their wristbands to Shouty Black Lady, and go about their business.

It promised to be a fine day, indeed.

Fernando's Third Quest

 “That...that's a lot of people,” Teodor murmured once the party had taken full stock of what lay before it: a snaking queue of people numbering in the hundreds wrapped around the convention center's exterior, tended by about a dozen yellow-shirted volunteers who maintained order. There was no wiggle room; as soon as Fernando and Company stepped away from the curb, they were hustled to the end of the line. As they walked, they could see through the many pairs of glass double doors that dozens, hundreds more people milled about the interior lobby in even more clusters and rows accompanied by the yellowshirts, with no end in sight to this endless tessellation of humanity.

Thanks to the captive audience so helpfully provided by the yellowshirts, buskers of all sorts wandered up and down the line, unimpeded by the volunteers. They plied their wares upon Fernando and Company: copies of The Onion, pamphlets about militant veganism cloaked in rhetoric implying that any non-vegan tacitly approves of widespread animal cruelty, and fliers advertising random clubs, each with its own upcoming Walking Dead theme night.

Fernando has this to say about the yellowshirts: they did their jobs with Germanic efficiency. The lines moves swiftly and it took perhaps fifteen minutes before the Company and a few random and unimportant henchmen stood at the head of the line, to be pinched off and led through the convention hall's doors by a pair of yellowshirt escorts.

From the outside it seemed as though people were standing around the foyer, a huge and glossy tiled marvel larger than the entire Dominion, willy-nilly, but there proved to be order within this chaos. Truly a microcosm of our own universe, for its slow slide towards final entropy is halted only by chance and only in miniscule portions of quasi-organization which dot vast nothingness. The clusters were reformed into lines by other yellowshirts and the lines were funneled through a set of doors which led to a concrete-floored gymnasium-type area even larger than the entry foyer.

Strips of blue tape had been put down. Humans stood between these strips in a queue which numbered in the thousands, waiting their turn to approach one of about a dozen windows at which entrance to the convention might be gained—this was the line for people who had registered early, rather than the poor saps who decided against doing such a thing. Fernando and Company were shunted to the end of the serpent and stood around for another twenty minutes, surrounded by nerds of all kinds.

Finally, the group reached the head of the line and from there was guided by a yellowshirt to an open ticket window, where they received their bright orange wristbands, which they could under no circumstances remove for the convention's duration. This task completed, they were escorted by a yellowshirt around the sprawling mess of people, back out another set of doors to the entry foyer, and bid to ascend an escalator into the convention proper. There was no other option available, as the tide of people, focused by the yellowshirts, required that Fernando and Company go with the flow, like cattle being herded down a chute which would render them into cuts of meat and offal.

Redundant checkpoints had been set up, one at the bottom of the escalator, one at its top, and one more at the entrance to the showroom floor. A black rent-a-cop woman demanded at the top of her lungs every ten seconds, “Wristbands up!” Her black rent-a-cop man companion stood by in silence, looking almost apologetic.

They entered the showroom floor. The first thing Fernando noticed was that it was big. Bigger than any of the rooms he'd visited earlier. It was jam-packed with vendor stalls, a bazaar of nerdish delight. Men hawked comic buy-sell-trade. Booth babes and their gravity-defying tits flanked stands whose goal was shameless advertising. Dealers in collectibles and antiquities displayed overpriced posters and knick-knacks for weak-willed souls to purchase.

Navigating this labyrinth of booths and stalls required navigating people, a directionless mess of everyone going every way without care or foresight, and the fellowship was quickly divided. Fernando and Ronaldo, and to a lesser degree Teodor, managed to stay fairly near each other as they browsed. Ronaldo spent a good amount of time investigating dealers of knives and swords, but found their wares lacking in craftsmanship. Fernando had his eyes peeled for a seller of roleplaying materials, for he still held out hope of picking up the near-mint first printing of Tomb of Horrors autographed by Mr. Gygax himself for around eight dollars.

A man can dream.

The sales floor proved itself fruitless in the end, for nothing of value was gained. The only available Dungeons & Dragons-related items were those for Fourth Edition or for Pathfinder, neither of which particularly appealed to Fernando. The crew reunited in a cluster of inflatable chairs and bean bags on which young whippersnappers lounged to decide the next courses of action.

Panels, for some. As stated previously, Doctor Who figured quite prominently in the convention's itinerary, and both Macombo and Natasia had plans attend every panel dedicated to the show which they could. Teodor had wandered off on his own, but Teodor is also a big boy. Ronaldo and Fernando would continue wandering this building, mapping it for the party's future benefit.

They found the games room, in a side chamber affixed to Moria itself—vaulted ceilings, chandeliers the size of a minivan, no life. The games room, in stark contrast to that at OddCon, was inhabited by people not playing games, but instead amusing themselves on their smartphones. No Chess Kids or Sirs Dicks-a-Lot here, nosirree. When Fernando peeked in on this sad state of affairs, a young woman at the far end of this room, roughly the size of the front half of the Dominion, beckoned him. “Come in, come in!”

Fernando is not often beckoned by women, and he had mild curiosity as to the games loadout here, so he did as bade. Two metal racks, each about five feet tall, were filled with boxes belonging to various board and card games.

“Hi!” she said, looking away from the laptop computer on the table before her.

“Hello.”

“Looking for a game to play?”

“Maybe. Just browsing, mostly.”

“Well, we have all kinds here. I'm sure you'll find what you're looking for.”

“I'm sure.” Fernando decides at this moment to veer to the side of extroversion. “You wouldn't happen to know of any dealers here who have any old D&D stuff, would you?”

“Old stuff?”

“Yeah, like First or Second Edition, or BECMI.”

“Ummm...not offhand. Let me—wait, there's my boss, we can ask him!”

Fernando turns and sees a middle-aged man shuffle into the games room with a steaming styrofoam cup in one hand. “Ask me what?”

“This man would like to know if you know anywhere here that has older D&D stuff.”

“1E, 2E, BECMI, stuff like that,” Fernando supplies.

“Hmm...well, I have some reprints back at the store.” Recently Wizards of the Coast had reprinted some of the core rulebooks for older editions, in a feeble attempt to show they still cared about people who played outdated editions of the game. The only problem is, of course, that Fernando owns copies (in some cases multiple copies—he has no fewer than 3 1E Monster Manuals and 3 1E Dungeon Masters' Guides kicking around) of these reprints.

“I was looking more for used books and modules.”

“No, sorry. All I've got are the reprints, down at the store, but that's all the way in St. Louis.”

“A little far afield for me, I'm afraid.”

“I figured as much.”

“Well, thanks anyway,” Fernando says, then exits the games room.

The convention closed its doors fairly early on this first day, so by seven the party had reunited and waited for Cool Driver Jim to collect them. He was a little bit late, and he apologized. It weren't no thang. They had to squeeze in with some gentlemen who'd driven twelve hours nonstop to the convention from out on the East Coast. One seat was left empty.

The purpose behind this grew clear when Cool Driver Jim diverted to the airport and pulled up to one of the drop-off locations. As he clambered out of the car, Fernando heard a woman shouting quite loudly in Spanish. Cool Driver Jim's responses carried a polite tone, at first, but the Spanish lady's tongue-lashing continued as he loaded her luggage into the place Ronaldo had called his seat earlier that afternoon. He grew frustrated and terminated the conversation with a clipped, “No podía hacer nada.”

Martha, the crabby Spanish lady, sat next to Fernando in the van. It was awkward. Her presence tainted the jovial atmosphere, and so the return to the hotel was in complete silence.

The party split then, for Macombo and Natasia wanted head back to their room and change so as to check out the swimming pool before it closed for the evening, and it would have been uncouth, indeed, for Fernando & Co. to follow them and begin amateur voyeur hour. Instead, they retired to their leased bedchamber and discussed meal possibilities. Rocky Rococo pizza was listed as serving the area, but this was to be a new adventure, not a rehash of old times! Instead, Ronaldo suggested utilizing a pizza dealer in an agreement with the hotel. This was done, and forty minutes later a pair of steaming pies, one “Zesty Italian” and the other “Zesty Supreme,” sat upon one of the beds. They pizzas came with dippin' sauce and a lack of napkins.

It was delicious.

A bit more Munchkin was had between the Original Three and Macombo. Natasia sat out, because obviously she hates the world and everything fun in it. They finally turned in at around 11.30. The day tomorrow would begin brighter and earlier than it had today, so everyone needed rejuvenation before tackling the up-fuckeries to come.

Fernando's Second Quest

The crew headed swiftly forth, leaving the lands of Saladolsa and its Dominion of Movies far behind them. They passed through Zail-Kanzin, which is about the limits of Fernando's usual travels in a southerly direction, and continued onwards to Bobsdaughter, the municipality which Macombo and Natasia called home.

Fernando had never met these two individuals, but Ronaldo staked his life and reputation on the qualities of their characters and so Fernando was predisposed to treat them as members of his posse. Macombo, it turns out, filled a vital hole in the party's composition, for he is quite the extroverted man and would serve well as the party's face during interactions with strange peoples in strange lands. Natasia, meanwhile, gravitated immediately to Fernando's style and tone of speech, for she possessed a similar outlook on life and sense of humor.

The newly met comrades' equipment was stowed in the Tahoe's trunk, next to the large cooler well-stocked with ginger ale and other sodeys, and Ronaldo guided the vehicle back onto the highway. The journey had now officially-officially begun.

Time passed swiftly. The group made a quick pit stop at a gas station at the border to stock up on Gas Station Hot Chocolate and breakfasts. While the sausage and egg biscuits which had been procured were quite acceptable fare, the ones containing Canadian bacon were foul bastardizations of a meal that no one in the vehicle could choke down, for the shitty and waxy cheese overpowered the sandwich. To Fernando, who finds most varieties of cheese—especially mass-produced and oily ones—reprehensible, it was like trying to eat a spoonful of earwax.

During the drive, Macombo extroverted himself into the group by sharing many tales of debauchery and sorrow at his workplace over the previous weeks, stories in which characters such as Dragon Lady, Chicken Wing, Entitlement Mike, and Guinness Guy figured heavily. It is not Fernando's place to share these with the world; Macombo deserves this honor and privilege, for they are tales on par with the finest of Chronicles.

And, speaking of Chronicles, Ronaldo mentioned their existence, and Natasia begged Fernando to provide dramatic readings therefrom. Our hero, whose ego knows no bounds, did precisely this for over two hours, sharing some of the choicest anecdotes he could recall. By the end of his filibuster, Fernando's voice was shot, but they found themselves at the outskirts of Milwaukee, where they stopped at another gas station to stretch the limbs and relieve the bladders.

Now, however, began the twisting navigation of on- and off-ramps and their associate tollbooths which snaked out from the Chicagoite nexus. Gertrude, who had until this point remained silent, spoke up as the group approached the first of the tolls: “Bear left on I-94.”

Ronaldo, dear naïve and trusting Ronaldo, did as Gertrude bade, for Goo-Gol's words of wisdom in no way countermanded her.

This resulted in the van being shunted into the express toll lane, where vehicles with toll stickers may pass through without slowing, rather than turning over coinage to yellow-vested attendants in tiny cubicles. As was written in the books of the heavens, traffic fused into a solid brick around the Tahoe as though it were a foreign body besieged by lymphocytes, rendering it unable to cross the lanes into the coin-tolls on the right, and they whizzed through without paying the required $2.80.

That fucking bitch.

Fortunately, the State of Illinois is not a complete cocknibble, in that it allows a grace period of seven days from the date of infraction to square away unpaid tolls by paying through a website. This thing would be done promptly upon the group's return home, for at the moment they lacked an appropriate top-of-lap computer on which to complete such tasks.

Gertrude was placed into the Box of Shameful Solitude and all the group's attention and love was showered upon Goo-Gol's directions, which did not steer them wrong with regard to tolls, though it did encourage them to take a wrong turn in their quest to reach their place of lodging. Gertrude was reactivated with resignation, and she recalculated the path they must forge. Perhaps to make up for her earlier misdeeds, she did not lead them astray, nor bone them on any more tolls.

Their hotel lay quite near Chicago O'Hare International Airport, in quite the industrial district. Natasia noted that the premiere landmarks in the vicinity were gigantic twin piles of shattered concrete and gravel, respectively, and these mounds were used to orient the party during their later explorations.

They arrived at the hotel just before eleven in the morning. Unfortunately, they could not check into their rooms for another two hours, so time needed to be killed. Ronaldo suggested fanning out from this new base of operations and to acquaint themselves with the vicinity, so this was done. Unfortunately, little was immediately accessible to the party, especially since they journeyed on foot, not wanting to waste gas wrangling with midday Chicago traffic. The sidewalks, in defiance of everything Fernando thought he knew about the world, were in worse shape than those in Saladolsa, and in some places they were absent entirely, so the party had to trudge along narrow trails tramped into the grasses parallel to the four-lane road, sidestepping a wide assortment of litter up to and including orange traffic cones.

They stopped at a nearby Subway, the only easily accessible eatery that was not also a porn shop, for lunch, and they overheard a conversation between the cashier jockey and either a coworker or a manager about money which had gone missing from the till. It sounded to Fernando like it was amateur hour at the Thieves' Guild. Business matters and chastisement therefrom should not be discussed before a group of five strangers. It reeks of callous disregard for simple courtesy among individuals in the same trade.

Were Fernando Master of that particular Sandwich Lair, and had he come upon one of his minions acting in such a manner to another wage slave, he would have shitcanned the unprofessional bastard on the spot.

After the group had left the awkward Subway behind them, they walked around the block. Blocks in Chicago seem much larger than blocks in Saladolsa, or Inuitland. They made a circumlocution around a single-building business park which sprawled over about a square kilometer of land. Fernando walked next to Natasia during this, for the young lady was the only one to keep up with the Keeper's quick pace, and they discussed names, and why Fernando gives others pseudonyms. While they walked, an olive-skinned man in a car appeared around one corner. He slowed up as he passed the group, then rolled down the window, pointed two fingers at the party, and mimed a gunshot.

Random encounters. What in actual fuck.

The group returned to the hotel and still had much time to kill, over an hour. Fortunately, a picnic table outside the front gates to this castle was unoccupied, so Fernando broke out his set of Cthulhu Dice and inaugurated Macombo and Natasia in its eldritch workings. Natasia proved quite the talented and fortuitous thrower of jinkies, and she won by far the greatest number of bouts out of the many that were played as they waited.

Finally, the hour of one in the afternoon dawned. Ronaldo and Macombo could secure their respective rooms! And they did, and it was glorious to behold, for the bedchamber Ronaldo has leased contained a full-size refrigerator in which sodeys could be stashed and kept cool! As an added bonus, the remote was right there on the nightstand, so Fernando did not have to experience nihilism given physical form as he did on his last journey.

To make things even better, the hotel provided free shuttle services to and from the convention center. No wrangling with overpasses and traffic lights and law enforcement, not for this saucy crew of adventurers! But, the convention was not to begin for another two hours, and no one had any desire to stand in lines for that duration, so a quick round of Munchkin was begun. Macombo acquitted himself quite admirably to it, but the game proved not entirely to Natasia's liking, as she politely declined participation in subsequent bouts.

'S alright, Natasia. I still think you're cool.

When the hour struck three, the group gathered what belongings they felt they would need and struck out for the convention center. Here they met for the first time a splendid, competent, genial Hispanic gentleman whom the party named Cool Driver Jim, and he was their link to sanity and safety over those next three chaotic days. They also encountered a group of fellow convention-goers who hailed from the faraway state of Ohio. Fernando struck up conversations with them, though he misremembers their names and he is certain they misremember his.

The shuttle proved overencumbered, as Cool Driver Jim had to drop off a pair of young adults at the airport before bringing a mob of seven sweaty, smelly nerds (and Natasia) to the convention, so Ronaldo was a good guy and hunkered himself into the space behind the back seat, keeping low to avoid the prying eyes of Cop Dudes who might otherwise detain the shuttle. Once the O'Hare dropoff was completed, Ronaldo was able to return to the lands of men from his self-imposed exile, and all was well.

Then, they arrived at the convention center, clambered out of Cool Driver Jim's pimping ride, and had their notions of “standing in line” changed forever on that day.