Pessimist and the Dromedaries (short story)
Pessimist and the Dromedaries was a Crew of the Copper-Colored Cupids short story written by Lupan Evezan and illustrated by Aristide Twain. It introduced Darius.
Contents
Plot
Somewhere in the Prime Universe, in Research Laboratory 6, at night, Head Assistant Researcher Darius of the Drove of the Database-Compiling Dromedaries rants to Assistant Researcher Lila about his frustration with the fact that the Drove have little to no information on the Crew of the Copper-Colored Cupids. He orders her to try and capture a Clockwork Cherub herself.
Elsewhere, Pessimist-242 is waiting in Whetstone Park for people to romanticise. Eventually, Lila sneaks up on him with a burlap sack. he sees her coming, and addresses her, explaining that he is waiting for his sentient Fog Ship (who has wandered off) to return. He listlessly allows her to capture him in the burlap sack and take him back to Research Laboratory 6. About fifteen miles away, the Fog Ship briefly considers going back to the Park for Pessimist, but decides to go check out a “combination greenhouse-theater-diner-aquarium over to the east side of the city” instead.
Lila finally brings Pessimist to Darius, who lets slip that he intends to take sole credit for the achievement, hoping to get promoted to Head Researcher. The two Dromedaries then take Pessimist down to the Laboratory proper, an underground level full of high-tech cages containing members of nonhuman Strangely-Colored Secret Societies, such as a Green Gorilla. After interrogating normally for a little while, being fascinated to learn that the Crew has its own Department of Documentation, Darius has Pessimist sit in a special chair which scans his mechanical constitution. After printing out readings and schematics, telling Lila that she “know[s] what to do with these”, he resumes interrogating Pessimist, trying to figure out what relationship if any the Crew has to the First Horde and other Strangely-Colored Secret Societies.
Meanwhile, back in Whetstone Park, Pessimist's Fog Ship is located and greeted by a cheerful android who claims to be Pessimist, but patently isn't. The Ship briefly hesitates but ultimately agrees to take the impostor “back” to the Cupid Homeworld. Back in Research Laboratory 6, the questioning continues. When Pessimist brings up the fact that other Cupids will notice his disappearance, Darius explains that he had a captive Clockmaking Capybara create a duplicate of him based on the schematics outputted by the analyzation chair. He then winds down the interrogation, promising to return tomorrow.
After Darius leaves, Pessimist gets out of his cell, hacking into the electric circuits maintaining the locks using his abilities as a Clockwork Cherub. The Green Gorilla in a nearby cell is baffled and, after getting an explanation out of Pessimist, talks him into freeing him and all the other captives. After he does so, they try to think through an escape plan to get past the five security guards and Darius himself to reach a ceiling hatch through which they hope to leave the Dromedaries' building. As the mutant animals keep bickering and insisting that their respective abilities will be central, the Azure-And-Emerald Panther tells Pessimist to step in with a plan of his own.
Meanwhile, in the Homeworld, Acquaintanceship-982 calls a meeting of the Blue Feather to discuss a new mission — finding Investigation-464's lost coat. When “Pseudo-Pessimist” does a cartwheel out of sheer enthusiasm, Acquaintanceship and the others finally realise what Dandy-432 has been trying to tell them all day — this is not the real Pessimist.
Back in Research Laboratory 6, the escapees set their plan in motion. They first lure the Head Guard down to the Laboratory and have the Green Gorilla knock him out before tying him to the analyzation chair. When the four remaining guards rush down in a panic, the animals work together to incapacitate them and lock them into four of the now-empty cells. This leaves Darius himself, whom the Camouflaged Chameleon lures down by imitating the Head Guard's voice on the intercom, allowing the animals to ambush him and allow Pessimist to romanticise him.
Meanwhile, the Blue Feather find Pessimist's Fog Ship and have it take them to Pessimist's current location using the link between its positronic brain and Pessimist's own. They materialise in Research Laboratory 6 with great fracas, partially destroying the wall, just as Pessimist has started heading up the stairs, intent on going back to Whetstone Park to wait for a ride. The Blue Feather Cupids get out of the Ship to look for him. Darius, whose romanticisation has partially worn off due to the shock of part of the wall falling on him, forces the Ship to take him back to the Homeworld at gunpoint, but the Ship selects the Cupid Post Office for a location, allowing Lord Thymon, upset at the way Darius's appearance knocks over the mail he's been sorting, to banish Darius into the Void, quickly resolving the situation. While Darius begins drifting towards the Interdimensional Tavern, the Fog Ship returns to pick up the Blue Feather Cupids, having, from their perspective, only been gone for an even briefer moment than Darius's joyride actually lasted.
The next day, at the Drove of the Database-Compiling Dromedaries' headquarters, the hierarchy deals with the chaos of the previous day by pinning the blame on the mysteriously-gone Darius. He is fired in absentia and Lila is gratifyingly informed that she is to become Head Assistant Researcher in his place.
Back in the Cupid Homeworld, the now-reunited Blue Feather properly set out on their new mission looking for Investigation's jacket, with Pessimist grudgingly granting that he prefers that to being imprisoned by the Dromedaries. They are joined on a permanent basis by the cheerful Pessimist duplicate, who is still enthusiastic about the work, despite his lack of understanding of what a “jacket” is (or indeed, of much of anything).
Worldbuilding
Universes
- This story takes place in the Prime Universe and in the Cupid Homeworld, as well as, briefly, the Void Between Worlds.
Other
- Pessimist-242 claims to have “a positronic brain the size of the Homeworld”.
- Pessimist's Fog Ship wishes it could visit the Interdimensional Tavern.
- Pessimist's Fog Ship was the sole creation of an ultimately-cancelled collaborative project between the Department of Transportation and the Department of Technological Advancement to create artificially intelligent ships.
- The Drove of the Database-Compiling Dromedaries is led by the High Board of the Drove, below whom the hierarchy includes the Head Researcher, and then the Assistant Researchers, who are led by a Head Assistant Researcher.
- Research Laboratory 6 is where the Drove of the Database-Compiling Dromedaries keep nonhuman prisoners from Strangely-Colored Secret Societies, including the Gang of the Green Gorilla, the Secret League of the Orange-Bearded Gnomes, the Horde of Mad Elephants, the Zany Zebras, the Collection of the Camouflaged Chameleons, the Cohort of the Clockmaking Capybara, the Society of the Scarlet Crabs, the Sect of the Silver-Shelled Snails, the Ennead of the Eigengrau Easter Eggs, the Trio of the Talking Turkeys, the Possé of the Azure-And-Emerald Panther, the Gaggle of the Golden Goats and the Syndicate of the Sleeping Salamanders. All over the room, cells were opened and society members came jumping ecstatically to their freedom.. At one point, they even had a member of the Collective of the Retconning Crocodiles, but “rewrote history and made it so that we’d never captured him”, leaving behind a “taunting note” to inform his once-captors of this fact.
- The First Horde created theDatabase-Compiling Dromedaries to act as their documentation division, but later wiped the Dromedaries' memories of their origins and abandoned the building when they decided to jettison their enter documentation division to save on funds.
- Pessimist mentions that Bibliophile-962, head of the Crew's own Department of Documentation, is constantly lacking for funds and equipment, and keeps borrowing stuff from him.
- The Dromedaries' scanner is able to pinpoint Pessimist's home dimension via dimensional residue, although the Dromedaries do not possess the technology for interdimensional travel.
- Pessimist estimates that there's “a little over a thousand” members in the Crew.
- Cupids were created by their Creator with the ability to interface with any electrical appliance made before the 1960s. However, this ability has never been updated to keep up with the times.
- The Mad Elephant mentions “the leader of the Legion of the Chartreuse Tortoise”, whom he believes to be “pretty scary”, although according to the Green Gorilla, he is only to an elephant (the suggestion is that he is a mouse).
- The leader of the team of five guards guarding Research Laboratory 6 has the title of Head Guard.
- Pessimist's Fog Ship has its own positronic brain, which is linked to Pessimist's. It also has a mega-speed drive it can switch on to travel through the Void particularly fast.
Continuity
- During his interrogation, Pessimist-242 recounts how Lord Thymon became a mail-sorter at the Department of Postal Services after being hit with a Love Arrow, as depicted in PROSE: Lord Thymon and the Department of Problem-Solving and COMIC: Whatever Happened to Lord Thymon?.
- Darius's story was picked up in PROSE: Misadventures in the Interdimensional Black Market, which briefly summarised this story's events.
Behind the scenes
Read online
The story can be read for free on the Crew of the Copper-Colored Cupids website.
