The Companions of Doctor Curious (short story)

Sent in a Fog Ship to romanticise people on “newly discovered planet of Triskadeckia, in the Jynx Dimension”, Copper-Colored Cupids Tom-176 and John-181 fell victim to a series of unforeseen accidents, and wound up stranded in an unknown location in the Jynx Dimension, with John proving unable to fix the Ship even after three hours of his best efforts. Having finally had enough, Tom decides to go for a walk; after walking just a dozen feet, he is baffled to suddenly find himself in front of a huge black castle, which disappears again as soon as he walks back out of range. He calls for John, who decides to knock at the castle's door to see if he can borrow any tools with which to better repair the Ship.

As they approach, the door simply falls inwards off its hinges, allowing the two Cupids entry into a small lobby whose floor is almost entirely hollowed out, with a large, twisting staircase leading down. They decide to go in, and, after a “long, dizzying and soul-crushingly uneventful” descend, they reach a room which appears to be a mad scientist's laboratory. There, they see a broken Clockwork Cherub on a glass table, the presumed mad scientist himself (a peculiar man with the head of a snake, wearing a polka-dotted top-hat), and, most startlingly, Pessimist-242. The snake-headed man wastes no time in introducing himself as “Doctor Curious”.

Curious explains that, feeling lonely, he decided to venture out into the Multiverse to find friends. He abducted Pessimist, but quickly discovered that he made for extremely dreary company, and, drawing from “a book he'd read once”, he got the idea to literally make a friend by acquiring the remains of a dead Clockwork Cherub and reviving it with a brain rewired to be forever loyal and friendly to Curious. Now, after several weeks' worth of failed attempts (53 to be exact, according to Pessimist), he is finally ready to throw the big switch and activate his creation. The blast of electricity successfully revives the rusted metal body, though it also slightly chars Pessimist, who was standing too close.

Clumsy but friendly, the monster suggests a banquet to celebrate its coming into the world, and Curious leads him, John and Tom (but not Pessimist) to his banquet hall. There, the two Cupids enjoy a fun if not especially tasty meal, but realise too late that the food was drugged. When they come to, they have been tied to chairs in Curious's ballroom, where Curious is dancing with his monster. When he notices that they're awake, he explains that the “drugs” were small electromagnetic pulses, but that the capsules also infected them with a computer virus which will slowly kill them over the next fifteen hours as long as they stay within range of the control computer. Elated with the success of his first companion, he wants a second one, and, thinking that this new one should be made by grafting the brain of a Cupid into the body of a Cupid, the thoroughly deranged Doctor sees no other option but to kill both John and Tom to implant one's brain into the other's skull.

The monster disapproves, finding the two Cupids likable and thinking he is enough company for Curious anyway. Before the Doctor can react, he snatches the command computer and destroys it. Curious pulls out the Story Rewriter 3000, a device which he stole from “a big pompous crocodile” he encountered at the Interdimensional Black Market, and uses it to rewind the last few seconds of time, allowing him to prevent the monster from swatting the computer out of his hands. However, the monster instead nabs the Story Rewriter itself and tosses it to Tom, who programs it to alter the sequence of events even more radically.

Thus, when Pessimist comes to from the electric shock, he finds himself held like a baby in the Monster's arm, standing in front of John-181's Fog Ship and his own, both in perfect condition. Curious, for his part, has been transported to the farthest room in the castle, and by the time he runs back to the ballroom, the Cupids have already climbed back into their respective Fog Ships (along with the Monster) and crashed through the castle wall as they prepare to make their way back to the Cupid Homeworld. Shouting up at the sky, Curious vows revenge, but quickly loses his mojo as he realises he doesn't know the coordinates to the Cupid Homeworld, and isn't even sure he could recreate the anti-Cupid computer virus.

Worldbuilding

Universes

The story takes place in the Jynx Dimension.
The Cupid Homeworld is mentione.

Other

John-181 wears glasses.
Tom-176 states that Pessimist-242's propensity for sulking in corners once nearly put the Department of Corners out of work.
The Story Rewriter 3000 resembles “a cross between a phone and a keyboard”.

Continuity

Doctor Curious was the object of an update to PROSE: The Book of Evil on January 13th, 2020.
Curious explains that he acquired a dead Clockwork Cherub's body from unidentified contacts at the Interdimensional Black Market, which John-181 and Tom-176 are unfamiliar with, as they “[aren't] especially up-to-date on their reading of Cupid Fact Files”. The Black Market was discovered by the Cupids in PROSE: Misadventures in the Interdimensional Black Market, and documented by Bibliophile-962 in PROSE: The Book of Evil.

Behind the scenes

Read online

The story can be read for free on the Crew of the Copper-Colored Cupids website.

Contents

Plot