INEVITABILITY Table of Contents Reveal!
Welcome back!
In this installment, we’ll continue with our Inevitability of Fire playthrough.
BUT FIRST!
A sneak peak at the books’ table of contents, revealing the titles of the other ten stories that accompany our title novella:
Eleven stories covering six years, starting 17,987 years in the future. More details to come!
PERCIVAL IN A CHEESE SHOP
But back to our playthrough! When we left Percival, he had arrived at his favorite cheese shop and was deciding between: (1) consoling a crying girl, (2) flirting with the clerk, or (3) checking to see if there was anything interesting on the community bulletin board.
You can catch up here, but importantly: you can only vote from the emails themselves. (So if you’re reading this newsletter in the archives, you need to sign-up and wait for the next new newsletter to vote.)
So what did YOU choose for Percival?
By a two-to-one ratio, you chose “flirt with the clerk.” Because of course you did! Who knows, maybe this choice will work out great!
Let’s see:
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228.
It was only a week ago that Percival had professed his love and been rebuffed. But who’s to say? Perhaps those feelings were misplaced. Perhaps Fate had other plans for Percival Gynt. Perhaps this was precisely what he needed to free himself from his current malaise or ennui.
He couldn’t decide which.
So Percival stepped up to the counter, and he straightened his tie, and he doffed his hat to Not Edgarry. “You’re not Gary,” he said, with a canny half-smile and an ill-considered wink.
“Even Gary’s not Gary,” she replied with a shrug. “What hath God wrought?”
Percival was unsure whether this woman was making fun of him or not, and he found that interesting.
If you believe that she was properly taken in by Percival’s charms, go to 115.
Or, if you rather suspect she was mocking Percival, still go to 115, but try reading all of her dialogue with a pronounced undercurrent of disdain.
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Ouch! 115 it is!
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115.
“I hope he’s all right,” said Percival. A lie. Percival was perfectly indifferent to Edgarry’s fate.
“He’s out sick,” the woman replied. “He’ll be back in tomorrow.”
“Ah! So I suppose that makes you a what? A sort of cheeese-temp?”
“I’m the owner,” she said. “This is Madrigal’s Cheese Shoppe. I’m Madrigal.”
“Oh.”
“Chin up, customer-with-hat. We still have cheese to sell you.”
Percival nodded, perhaps for longer than he intended, as he considered whether he had a chance with this attractive, entrepreneurial, perhaps deeply disdainful woman.
“Cheese?” Madrigal repeated.
“I feel like we have something here,” said Percival, gesturing generically to the space between him and her. “Perhaps I should buy you dinner. Or, I don’t know how well your shop is doing, but perhaps you should buy me dinner? I’m a junior accountant, but I’m sure I’ll make full accountant soon. Well, technically I’m not a junior accountant, but I am junior-to-the-accountants, if that makes sense.”
It did not. Percival continued.
I can spare you the worst of it.
If you want me to spare you the worst of it, go to 300.
Or go to 127. For the worst of it.
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