Phase Q/Island Song

A light wind rustles through the tree leaves.

You rematerialize on the Island.

A thousand worshipping peasants come out from the village dwellings, grateful for your return.

You resume your reign, taking back your throne, your palace, your servants, your life.

It feels good to get back to the simple life. You have your swimming pond, your festivals with animal slaughters, your increasingly productive corn harvests, and lots of lovemaking.

You especially enjoy the lovemaking.

Year after year, your people rally around your wise leadership, modeled after some of the offhand comments you overheard in the Triad meetings you listened in on. With a sense of direction and competence, the village takes on a new look as a proud model for similar size settlements, although it’s the only populated place on the Island and you never encounter any other societies.

As time goes on, you age. You age personally, with your body growing weak and sick, and your mind frail. You age as a village, with the population becoming increasingly interested in card games and novelty collectibles. And you age as a world, with the Island becoming increasingly barren, and desolate.

At one point, random visitors from other worlds pop into the Island. They instantly see what it contains and lose interest, vanishing off into who knows what quadrant.

Then, slightly before one of your harvest feasts is scheduled, a flash of light announces the return of the Fyuchees. You remember once working for them – or was it against them? – and think fond thoughts.

The Fyuchees announce in an oracular voice: “Remember, you now have one year left.”

Around six months later, as you are plowing the corn field priestess, her uncle (also her father) comes by to inquire about last month’s pay. Seeing the two of you in action, he erupts in a fit of rage, and grabs a rusty farm implement. He impales you through the chest. You bleed to death.

The angry villager converts your body to fuel for his body, grilling you over charcoal. He takes over your throne, ruling foolishly and squandering much of the village’s accumulated wealth on corn liquor. After a night of particularly heavy drinking, he gets into a pointless fight with one of his friends, whom he had made vicecount, and the two kill each other in a savage knife duel.

When a year has elapsed since the last Fyuchee apparition, a lightning bolt strikes a tree on the Island. It ignites a flame, which spreads through the land, tearing apart all living cells. The fire must contain some other element as well, since it goes on to burn up the water, the air, the space, and the time.

The Island collapses, folds up, is destroyed.

Mahalo.

• Afterwards.

Phase Q: An interactive adventure.