The Ghosts and the Machine (short story)
The Ghosts and the Machine was a Crew of the Copper-Colored Cupids short story written by Lupan Evezan and illustrated by Aristide Twain. It was the series' first Halloween special, and, fittingly, its thirteenth full-length prose story.
Contents
Plot
Every year on Halloween, the Crew of the Copper-Colored Cupids take advantage of the weakening barriers of the various Spirit Realms to seize “their one chance all year to romanticise all of the ghosts, poltergeists, wraiths, and other assorted spooky-types who lurk therein”. This, they do thanks to Frankenstein-818's Spirit Realm Gateway, which works by targeting any nearby naturally-occurring spirit path connecting to the Prime Universe's Spirit Realm and making it usable for physical beings.
This year, however, the opening ceremony is delayed when the Gateway fails to activate when Frankenstein throws the lever. Bibliophile-962's suggestion of a last-minute lightning strike is rejected as impractical, and with Nostradamus-066 reporting that Technician is “indisposed” and thus unable to be brought back from the Mark I get-together to help, Frankenstein goes to collect his tools, intent on repairing it himself. Frankenstein proceeds to hammer indiscriminately at the device, take out a number of parts, and then build a holographic ghost-projector into it to make it appear to be working — with his assistant Igor-1612 preventing Technophile-963 from accessing the platform on which the Gateway device stands. He's already run off to warn the Copper-Colored Council of Elders of the inevitable crisis when the Gateway predictably blows up, leaving in its wake a huge dimensional rift through which “a horde of all types of ghosts, spirits, specters, wraiths, banshees, poltergeists, goblins, and ghouls rush forth into the Homeworld”.
The ghosts promptly take over the Homeworld, forcing the Cupid Prime to activate the Emergency Transport Button at the behest of the Cupid Parliament, transporting all Cupids to the Interdimensional Tavern, whose own Halloween festivities were in full swing. The unexpected influx of guests is only somewhat made up for by Doc-012 having hung on to a tub full of apples upon being teleported, which comes in handy as the Tavern was running out and its interdimensional staff consider apples a strange delicacy which is apparently difficult to obtain. As the Cupids explain their situation, Juliet-178 and Pythagoras-858 work aloud through what they know about the rules by which spirits operate. Unable to linger in dimensions to which they aren't anchored beyond Halloween, they should normally return to the Spirit Realm at the day's end, but they could avert this by possessing sentient beings' bodies, and in addition to the smattering of such beings the Cupids left behind (including Lord Thymon, Pessimist's Fog Ship and CS-NA), they also left without their Fog Ships, which the spirits could use to travel to other dimensions to find host bodies. Fortunately, Lord Thymon makes his own way to the Tavern, materialising in a particularly eldritch way, and proves to be a way for the Cupids to return to the Homeworld to hopefully stop the ghosts from stealing the Fog Ships for that purpose. After they leave, Darius, who'd been staying in his room, comes down and belatedly learns that the Cupids, his archenemies, were briefly here and he missed them.
Back in the Homeworld, however, the leader of the invading ghosts, the Great Ghost, who had long been looking for a way for the spirits under his command to escape the apparently “doomed” Spirit Realm. When they finally get to the Celestial Foam Network's Fog Ship Parking Garage, however, the Cupids find the ghosts — and a number of Ships including Pessimist's, plus CS-NA — already gone. They arrive in the mostly-empty Interdimensional Black Market where, upon summoning her wraith bodyguards to escort her home after a long day's work, the Queen of the Black Market instead finds a tidal wave of spirits not under her control rushing towards her. Though doing her best to hold them off, she cannot do so for long and she is possessed by the Great Ghost, allowing him to add her own wraiths to his legion before returning to the stolen Fog Ships and moving on to further conquests.
In the Workshop of Madame Tarsa, the Toymaker herself is working on a new Halloween-themed creation when the first Ship-full of of ghosts appears. She initially thinks she can deal with them quickly by banishing them into her magically-sealed Toybox, but although the walls are ghost-proof, they are not impervious to a swarm of possessed toys busting their way out. As they then return to their stolen Fog Ship and scram, she is prepared to temporarily ignore them and return to her work, but is drawn into a fight when the rest of the ghostly legion arrives and begins to possess everything in sight, with Tarsa turning her cane into a sword with a snap of her fingers. However, even then, the many, tiny ghosts are too nimble for her, and they all escape, save for one which foolishly attempts to possess Tarsa herself and dissolves upon contact for its trouble. Giving up on finishing her work on schedule, she turns the sword back into a cane and taps it against the ground, vanishing in a cloud of purple and smoke and confetti, intent upon getting all her puppets back and teaching the spirits a lesson.
The ghosts' next stop is the Gang of the Green Gorilla's secret headquarters, where the Gorillas on duty thoughtlessly open the door and let the ghosts in. The plentiful ranks of the Gorillas prove to be the source of sturdy host bodies the ghosts desired. Back in the Cupid Homeworld, the Department of Rifts has successfully closed down the Rift and Frankenstein-818 finished creating a One-Way Forced Spirit Realm Gateway which will send the spirits back to the Spirit Realm, if only the Cupids can find them first. This proves a nonissue when the ghostly legion rematerialises in the Homeworld in full force, intent on summoning even more spirits through the rift. Once told that the Rift has been closed, the Great Ghost, unabated, demands that Frankenstein build a new Gateway that will allow spirits out of the Spirit Realm without restriction. Thymon tries to hold the ghost off with an eldritch incantation, but, speaking in unison, they match his with one of their own while the Great Ghost bodily abducts Frankenstein into a Fog Ship.
Drawn into an argument about whether it would even work or not, Foreman-964 foolishly activates the One-Way Forced Spirit Realm Gateway, transporting himself, Pythe, Technophile, Igor and Philatel-426 to the Spirit Realm. There, Igor explains that although they can be summoned back if someone hits the reverse switch on the One-Way Forced Spirit Realm Gatway, this can only be done after pulling its three levers in the right order to reveal a secret panel, an order known only to Igor and Frankenstein. However, Pythe figures out that so long as they are in the Spirit Realm, they are governed by the rules of spirits, which means they can haunt the Cupid Homeworld. Pythe successfully appears to Juliet and tells her the secret code. Technophile and Igor join Pythe in haunting Juliet's house, giving her further information — but Foreman and Philatel put their haunting abilities to quite different usage, with “the vengeful ghost of Foreman-964” haunting the Post Office and destroying the mail, while “the fearsome shade of Philatel-426” has appeared in the Department of Construction's HQ to tear up every warehouse blueprint.
Once everyone is back in the Homeworld in corporeal form, Technophile, Igor and the Problem-Solvers board a Fog Ship, taking the One-Way Forced Spirit Realm Gateway with them. Checking the computerized log of the Celestial Foam Network, which are available from the onboard computer of every Fog Ship, they find that the Spirits have headed to the Prime Earth, where they have taken up residence in a derelict building. They are debating how to get passed the two posessed-Gorilla guards when Tarsa also appears and casually turns the guards into muffins using her Conjuring Gloves for the Magically Inept. Making their way in despite the possessed muffins' weak but sustained efforts to stop them, they find that it is an abandoned theatre, with a dejected Frankenstein working on the new Gateway on the mouldering stage. They also notice a few other possessed beings from other universes among the crowd of marionettes and Gorillas, including Alistair Neezley.
Throwing a huge marble at the stage, Tarsa initiates a swordfight with the Great Ghost (still in the Queen's body) while the Cupids split up, trying to take advantage of the commotion to disable the machine and recover Frankenstein. As Tarsa transforms them all into useless things, the spirits leave their possessed bodies and try to help their master in their true forms; this gives the Cupids the chance to throw the One-Way Forced Spirit Realm Gateway at the swarm of spirits and send them all, save for the still-embodied Great Ghost, back to the Spirit Realm, though it breaks the One-Way Gateway in the process. The Queen manages to distract Tarsa long enough to activate Frankenstein's new Reverse Spirit Realm Gateway, but it turns out to transform all the spirits into clockwork toys even as they pour out (because it was a wholly reversed version of Frankenstein's original Gateway, including with the functionality that turned Clockwork Cherubs into spirits). A delighted Tarsa scoops up the toys to use them as part of her Halloween line to make up for not having been able to finish the pumpkin toy in time, and uses a magic hat and wand she's been working on to separate the Queen from the Great Ghost, sending the latter to parts unknown. She departs as the Cupids are left to ponder what the Great Ghost meant when he implied that his ghosts were themselves fleeing something terrible in the Spirit Realm.
Subsequently, the Cupids return to the Homeworld, where the celebrations finish without further incidents — notwithstanding Foreman discovering what Philatel did to his blueprints and chasing him around the Homeworld with a steam shovel, and Frankenstein announcing, a scant few hours after the business concludes, his new invention: a gateway to the Demon Realm.
Worldbuilding
Universes
- The story mainly takes place in the Cupid Homeworld, and concerns itself with the Spirit Realm of the Prime Universe. The Interdimensional Tavern and the Interdimensional Black Market, both pocket realities within the Void, are then seen; it is mentioned that there “isn’t really any true passage of time at the Interdimensional Black Market”. Also seen is the Prime Universe.
- It is stated that on the Prime Earth, Halloween is “a time of fun celebration”. In contrast, in the Neazzarack Realm it is “a time of great fear and terror as the Spirit King Wrythk performs his annual Halloween ‘returning-from-the-Underworld-to-wreak-havoc’ party piece”.
- The Department of Zoology have recently discovered and been studying a creature from “the Perseid Universe”.
- Frankenstein-818 builds a gateway to the Demon Realm.
Other
- It is related that “in some form, in some shape, in some variation, almost every inhabited universe has its own version of Halloween” — not necessarily under that name, but recognisable as an autumnal holiday celebrating “the general spookiness of things”. “The greatest dimensional scholars are not sure how this happened”, with the Hidden Academics of the Tower of Yqwsl speculating that “some unwary dimensional traveler accidentally warped back to the creation of the Multiverse itself (an event which is, in itself, hotly debated) and dropped a pumpkin, or perhaps a ghost, thus sparking the whole thing”. Lord Thymon apparently told the Crew of the Copper-Colored Cupids' Department of Festivities that he once “threw an enormous fright-themed party on the very concept of October 31, thus spreading said party, in various incarnations, across every occurrence of this date in the Multiversal timeline”.
- Other names for Halloween in Prime-adjacent universes include All Hallows' Eve, Allhalloween and Hallows' Evening.
- The Department of Meteorology created suitable weather for the season in the Cupid Homeworld.
- In the Cupid Post Office, referred to as “the Department of Postal Services' building”, Lord Thymon used “unknowable eldritch powers, and also tape” to decorate the walls with paper cutouts of bats created by Philatel-426.
- Foreman-964 intends to recycle the giant pumpkin he and his Department of Construction are carving as a warehouse, despite his suggestion of shaping it in the form of a warehouse in the first place having been rejected.
- Colonel-028 organises yearly “Mark I Halloween get-togethers”, attended, among others, by Doc-012, Nostradamus-066 and Technician-042. Arganthone-056, on the other hand, does not attend, being busy teaching younger Cupids how to carve pumpkins.
- For the Blue Feather's costume contest, Dandy-432 dressed as Salvador Dalí (“about whom he had heard from an art museum curator he had once romanticised”), Ally-1243 dressed as a simplistic bedsheet-type ghost (and “forgot the eye holes”), Larrikin-1029 jammed a cardboard box with a scribbled face on it and declared that he was now a robot — a “space robot” instead of a Clockwork Cherub, to be exact —, Acquaintanceship-982 dressed as a member of the Scarlet Wings (amounting a mere badge), and Pessimist-242 didn't even try.
- Celebration-665 of the Department of Festivities petitioned the Cupid Parliament to create a whole new line of sapient Cupids to staff a haunted house ride, but was denied.
- The Department of Cinematography are making a “new horror flick” entitled The Cupid Who Hated Love. Méliès-125 attempted to get Pessimist-242 for the title role, and, when he refused, replaced him with a rather unnerving-looking puppet of him.
- Edwin-750, recently “on the outs” with the Department of Zoology, argues with them about the taxonomy of a newly-discovere creature made up of pumpkins regarding whether it's a magical construct, or a naturally-occurring entity.
- “In the middle of the Mainland Cloud”, Tracker-764 is seen telling “frightening tales of his adventures in the outside worlds” to a group of youthful Mark Seventeen Cupids, while, “off to the side,” Conspiracy-1263 is busy “loudly disputing not only the existence of spirits, but the existence of All Hallows’ Eve itself”.
- Frankenstein-818 is “the Homeworld's resident Mad Scientist”. He briefly apprenticed under, and took the name of, a version of the real Baron Victor Frankenstein. His past inventions include the Automatic Shark Generator and the Lightning-Powered Turbo-Toaster (which, in spite of Igor-1612's claim that it was flawless, “turned all of the toast into mutant toast monstrosities”). He lives in a “large, gothic castle” whose interior is “infamously dangerous and booby-trapped”.
- Technophile-963 helped in the construction of the Spirit Realm Gateway, removing additional features Frankenstein had built into it including allowing ghosts to cross into the Homeworld, and running a 50% chance of turning living users into ghosts.
- The Interdimensional Tavern's mashup Halloween parties includes “jack o’lanterns lin[ing] the tables as Rope-Bellied Sorpwhagglers screeched out the traditional ballad of Yorp,” Shangtwisters hanging from the ceiling, the walls being painted with “the slime of the Gor-gor-gor fish”, and performing “the traitional Shurukuk Dance” while also bobbing for apples, as well as “taking part in the ancient ritual of Myerbamnk while drinking Glooozethyorn”. Additionally, a werewolf has been hired to “provide entertainment”, and the Ancient Spirit of Gnollt, encased in a prism, is used like a disco-ball to “cast speckled patterns across the dining area”, while several live bats and similar creatures swarm through the rooms.
- The Emergency Transport Button was entrusted to the Cupid Prime by the Creator herself.
- Juliet-178 and Pythagoras-858 learned the ghosts by which Prime Universe spirits operate during “the Great Ghost Disaster of ’78”.
- Thymon is described as an Eldritch Being. Tpxszum also imprecisely refers to him as the Cupids' “pet demon or whatever he [is]”.
- Larrikin-1029 refers to Pessimist's Fog Ship as “ol' Foggy”.
- The Queen of the Black Market reckons that her newly-whittled bone spear would be effective on wraiths, banshees, ghouls and goblins, all of whom are at least somewhat corporeal, but not on ghosts or poltergeists. She is described as a “skilled warrior”.
- The Great Ghost is formally referred to as “His Ectoplasmic Spiritualness, the Supreme Commander of the Displaced Masters of the Spirit Realm, the One and Only Great Ghost”.
- The Queen of the Black Market takes her possession by the Great Ghost in stride, noting: “My third possession in fifty years. I have got to invest in a couple of sturdy warding amulets”.
- On a prior occasion, the Gang of the Green Gorilla tried to use the custom of trick-or-treating to their advantage, going door to door in the Prime Universe under the guise of being costumed children and then brainwashing everyone who answered the door. However, they were foiled by the Crew of the Copper-Colored Cupids. As a result, they aren't very fond of the holiday anymore — nor indeed of most other popular holidays, “generally for reasons quite similar to this”. They did try to organise their own Halloween party the previous year, but it got out of hand, several brainwashing machines were destroyed, and the Gangs forbade further celebration once and for all as a result.
- To check his identity, Juliet-178 makes Pythagoras-858 recite how the two solved the Case of the Blueberry Squid: to wit, the Problem-Solvers “simply adjusted the temperature of the squid's flux gels, and it transmorphed itself right back into a Strawberry Squid”.
- Due to the influence of the Spirit Realm, the ghostly Pythe briefly gets off-track and starts referring to Juliet as Ebenezer.
- Tarsa refers to herself as the Magnificent Madame Tarsa.
- When Tarsa calls the Great Ghost a “fiend”, he interprets it literally, correcting that he is a spirit.
Continuity
- Wrythk was later mentioned in PROSE: Century Smith and the Time Terror.
- Celebration-665 of the Department of Festivities and his doomed over-the-top suggestions to the Cupid Parliament recur from PROSE: The Cupid Suggestion Box.
- The Department of Cinematography recurs from PROSE: The Labors of Juliet and PROSE: Conspiracy-1263 Publicly Accuses the Gang of the Green Gorillas.
- Edwin-750 was mentioned in PROSE: The Cupid Suggestion Box as a member of the Department of Zoology, despite his established role as a member of the Department of Problem-Solving. This story resolves the tension by mentioning that Edwin is now “on the outs” with the Department of Zoology.
- The Ancient Spirit of Gnollt is trapped inside a prism, and the plot involves a rifts, continuing to sow the seeds of the Rifts Crisis story arc. The prisms had first come into play in PROSE: The Mad Cupid of the Euclidean Plane.
- Darius is established to still be staying at the Interdimensional Tavern, where he wound up at the end of PROSE: Misadventures in the Interdimensional Black Market, and to be trying to build a Void Ship for himself in order to get revenge on the Cupids for the events of his debut, PROSE: Pessimist and the Dromedaries. The Queen of the Black Market and the Interdimensional Black Market itself, as well as Alistair Neezley, all of whom debuted in Misadventures in the Interdimensional Black Market, also make their second appearance. The Queen has completed the bone spear which she stated in Misadventures that she intended to create. The spear would appear again in PROSE: Multiversal Mischief, Century Smith and the Time Terror and The Winter Quests.
- The Problem-Solvers return to their Laboratory, first seen as the setting of PROSE: Lord Thymon and the Department of Problem-Solving.
- Madame Tarsa and her workshop make their second full appearance after PROSE: The Toymaker's Labyrinth. Larrikin-1029 told Technophile-963 about the events of that story “a few weeks ago”, and he is also aware that she created the Thymon plushies.
- Edwin-750 yawns, suggesting he is still mind-linked to a sloth as established in PROSE: The Resurrection of the Wellsians.
- The events of this story were briefly referenced by Mailbag-431 in PROSE: A Copper-Colored Christmas Carol, with him noting that Philatel-426 is familiar with the Spirit Realm as a byproduct of “that mad doctor's machinations”.
Behind the scenes
Read online
The story can be read for free on the Crew of the Copper-Colored Cupids website.
