真・資本主義の冒険 - SCP-JPサンドボックスⅢ

真・資本主義の冒険

SCP-JP SB3 » DirStarFishop » 真・資本主義の冒険

“The Real Adventures in Capitalism” is a memetic condition consisting of spontaneously-occurring false memories of an animated television show of the same name. These memories are fragmentary, but portray a consistent picture of the show, even in subjects who have had no contact with other affected individuals. This allows for accurate reconstruction of the contents.
『真・資本主義の冒険』は同名のTVアニメシリーズの嘘の記憶から構成される自然発生型のミーム状態である。これら記憶は断片的であるものの、対象者が他の影響を受けた人物と全く面識がない場合でさえも、番組の一貫した絵図を描いています。これにより荒筋の忠実な復元を可能としています。

According to provided accounts, “The Real Adventures in Capitalism” consists of two 13 episode seasons, first airing in late 2013 and ending in the spring of 2018. Reports of severe delays and hiatuses are common. The art style and character design can vary significantly between episodes. The credits for each episode list only the voice cast, with all characters listed as being portrayed by themselves.
得られた証言によると、『真・資本主義の冒険』は13話のシーズン2本の構成であり、1期は2013年後半に放映され、2018年春に完結したとされます。証言は深刻な遅延と休止について一致しています。同作の画風とキャラデザはエピソードごとに著しい違いがあります。各エピソードのクレジットは声優が列挙されるのみであり、本人役として登場キャラクターが列挙されています。

The primary parties, entities, factions, events, or persons referenced in “The Real Adventures in Capitalism” are believed to be fictional.
『真・資本主義の冒険』に登場する主要集団、実体、組織、イベント、人物はフィクションと考えられています。

Episode 101: The Boss Lady
エピソード101: ボス(レディ)

Everyone remembers the opening scene: Isabel slouched in her office chair, Emma standing proper and awkward, an army of corgis (all named Jeremy) delivering tubs of ice cream. Meandering discussion of the dire financial situation facing the Wonderful Workshops Toy Company, the Executive Board’s corporate mismanagement, competitors, Isabel’s loss of creative spark, and clever wordplay. The reveal that Emma is not nearly as humorless as first impressions would imply, and in her own way nudges Isabel out of her moping episode.
オープニング場面は誰もが知っています。イザベルは社長室の椅子にてだらけきっており、エマはビシッと立っていたものの、アイスクリーム容器を届けてくれる(全てにジェレミーと名付けられている)コーギー軍団に煩わしさを感じています。ワンダフル・ワークショップス・トイ・カンパニーが直面している緊急の財政危機、取締役会の放漫経営、競合他社、イザベルの創造力溢れる閃きの喪失、巧妙な言葉遊びについてとりとめのないやり取りをしています。エマが第一印象から示唆されていた通りユーモア皆無も同然と判明し、独自のやり方でイザベルをエピソードから少しずつ退場させていきます。

All’s well that begins well.
終わり良ければ総て良し。

Episode 102: Ticker Tape Tango
エピソード102: ティッカー・テープ・タンゴ

Rubberhose animation, all black and white. A big band musical number, the tune and words escaping the mind and leaving the weathered impression of bombast. First appearance of the Executive Board with their ticker tape mouths and hissing voices and joyless enforcers of corporate propriety. Chases and pranks and pratfalls, slapstick and silliness. The memory is weaker here.
全編白黒のラバーホース・アニメーション。ビッグ・バンド形式のミュージックナンバーであり、音色と歌詞は集中力を削ぎ、大言壮語という辛辣な印象を残す。口にティッカーテープを貼られ、甲高い声を上げて、会社の正当性について退屈な押し付けをしてくる、取締役会の初登場回である。追跡劇にして悪戯にして失態、スラップスティックにして無声劇。この辺りから記憶は薄れていく。

Episode 103: Isabel Becomes President
エピソード103: 大統領になるイザベラ

Emma is the vice president, no surprise twist there. Jeremy is appointed to be secretary of state. Chaos descends upon Washington as Congress desperately tries to restrain Isabel’s manic decrees and fun-oriented domestic policy. They fail, and watch on in misery and horror. The nation’s nuclear arsenal is replaced with jellybeans, cats and dogs live together in harmony, debt is turned into donuts, and political parties that do not involve dancing are banned. World War 3 seems inevitable after publicly informing Vladimir Putin that he “needs to go take a poop and come back when he’s less grumpy.”
驚くに値しないが、エマは副大統領になっています。ジェレミーは国の大臣に任命されました。議会が必死になってイザベルの病的な布告と愉快さ重視の政策を制限しようと試みると、混沌が連邦政府に降臨しました。議会は敗北し、悲嘆と恐怖の内に見ていました。国の核兵器工廠はジェリービーンズに取って代わられ、猫と犬は調和の内に共存し、負債はドーナツに変化し、ダンスに参加しなかった政党は禁止されました。ウラジミール・プーチンの「糞をしに行かねば。機嫌が良くなった暁には戻って来る」との発言が公になると、第三次世界大戦は不可避に思えました。

The state of affairs only lasts for a few hours, as it is revealed that Isabel’s election was the result of a catastrophic mistake in vote-counting. She has already grown bored of politics by this time, and resigns gracefully.
イザベルの当選は票集計の致命的過ちが原因だったと判明したため、政権は数時間しか続きませんでした。この時点で彼女は政治に退屈しきっており、潔く辞職しました。

Credits roll overtop images of nondescript men in sunglasses and black suits speaking to government officials and members of the press seen earlier in the episode.
クレジットロールが流れた後で、エピソード序盤に出てきた、政府官僚と報道関係者に向かって演説しているサングラスとスーツを身に着けた何の変哲もない男たちの写真複数枚が流れます。

At no point in the series is Isabel’s exact age or nationality stated. It isn’t known if the election was legitimate in the first place.
当シリーズ内でイザベルの実年歴あるいは国籍は全く明かされませんでした。最初の選挙が合法だった場合、どうなるかは分かっていません。

Episode 104: Buffalo Buffalo Buffalo Buffalo
エピソード104: Buffalo Buffalo Buffalo Buffalo

“I know it’s a grammatically correct sentence!” Isabel exclaims, waving her detached arm around. “You didn’t need to point it out!”
「これが文法的に正しい文だなんて知ってるさ！」切断された自分の腕を振り回しながら、イザベルは叫びます。「指摘するまでもないだろ！」

Episode 105: The Beach Episode
エピソード105: ビーチ回

Emma is sitting on a beach chair beneath an umbrella, reading a book. In the background, Isabel is playing with Jeremy, building a sandcastle, and jumping about in the surf. After five to six minutes, Isabel stops moving and shouts “Emma!” while pointing to a large white-grey form emerging from the water and making low, whale-like noises. A wave of pink foam washes onto the sand. Emma places a bookmark in her book, and rises from her chair.
エマはパラソルの下のビーチチェアに腰を下ろし、本を読んでいました。背後では、イザベルがジェレミーと遊び戯れ、砂の城を作り、打ち寄せる波の上で跳ね回っていました。5、6分後、イザベルは遊ぶのを止めて、水中から出現したクジラのような低い鳴き声を上げるホワイトグレーの影を指差しながら、「エマ！」と叫びます。エマは呼んでいた本に栞を挟み、ビーチチェアから立ち上がります。

Episode 106: Cryogenic Chaos
エピソード106: 極低温の混沌

Frosty blue tubes of cracked and shattered glass. Dinosaurs wandering the halls, eating office plants and terrorizing the workers. Bigfeet wearing suits of squid and flatworm and flower. Red-robed cultists, faces too blunt and broad for cro magnon man and flesh carved up in squirming scars and scabs. Isabel dressed up in a tacky safari getup with a net. Emma provides handy dinosaur facts in crayon-colored interludes. Jeremy survives getting eaten. While the most dangerous escapees are recaptured, several re-appear later in the season for background gags.
恐竜たちが廊下を彷徨い歩き、オフィスの観葉植物を食らい、従業員を脅かしています。ビッグフットらはイカと扁形動物と花のスーツを身に着けています。赤き長衣の信者たちはクロマニョン人にしては余りにも無愛想で顔が幅広く、肉体には蠢く傷と瘡蓋が刻まれていた。イザベルは悪趣味な網状の探検隊員風の服装をしていた。エマはカラー・クレヨンで描かれたかのような幕間にて手頃な恐竜の豆知識を披露します。ジェレミーは食われそうになるも九死に一生を得ます。大半の恐るべき脱走者は再度捕獲されますが、一部がシーズン後半の背景でのギャグで再登場します。

The dinosaurs featured are feathered, where appropriate.
登場した恐竜たちはその場に合わせて、羽毛を生やしています。

Episode 107: Heist of the Century
エピソード107: 世紀の泥棒

Isabel in bunny slippers and a planet-pattered evening gown, illuminated by a refrigerator light, staring at ransacked cabinets and a spray-painted decal on the wall: A black rabbit with a hammer.
ウサギのスリッパと惑星の模様が描かれたイブニング・ガウンを身に着けたイザベルが、冷蔵庫の光に照らされ、散らかった棚とスプレーが塗られた壁面の移し絵を凝視しています。ハンマー1本を装備した1羽のウサギです。

Episode 108: Jeremy, Jeremy and Jeremy
エピソード108: ジェレミー、ジェレミー、そしてジェレミー

In order to save Isabel from a board meeting, three Jeremies band together to stage a rescue attempt. Being cute dogs in possession of minimal brainpower and no thumbs, they spend the rest of the episode doing things more appropriate to their station in life. Cuts to an exasperated Isabel, mere moments from rescue but for the Jeremies’ lackluster efforts, are interspersed throughout.
イザベルを退屈な会議から救うべく、3匹のジェレミーが一致団結し救出計画を決行します。最低限の知力しか持たず、親指を持たない可愛い犬であるため、一同はエピソードの終わりまで生活を改善するより然るべき活動をして時間を過ごします。ジェレミーのやる気のない試みにより、あと一歩の所で逃げ出せられそうになるも失敗に終わって苛立つイザベルのカットが随所で挟まれます。

Episode 109: Therein We Find the Shark
エピソード109: そして内奥に我らはサメを見出す。

Two rows of men and women in spotless labcoats wail on sharks trussed up by their tails. Isabel and Emma are led down the center causeway by a man twelve feet tall if he was an inch, his knuckles raw and bloody. The nametag at his breast pocket reads “M. K. Harker”.
汚れのついていない白衣に身を包んだ男と女の2本の列から、尾を縛られたサメの群れに向けての嘆願が聞こえてきます。イザベルとエマは指間接に擦り傷が走り、血が流れている12インチではなく、全長12フィートの男に案内されて、土手道を進んでいきます。男の胸のポケットの名札には"M.K.ハーカー"と記されています。

“You see, the real shark was inside us the entire time,” he says, pointing to his chest. Isabel nods in agreement.
「ご存じでしょうが、本物のサメは常に人の身体の中にいました。」男はそう言うと、自分の胸を指差しました。イザベルは同意して頷きました。

Above their heads, the mangled corpse of a dream-whale shark hangs as a trophy.
一同の頭上では、ズタズタになった夢のジンベエザメの死骸が戦利品として吊るされていました。

Episode 110: The Green Hart
エピソード110: 緑の雄鹿

Three men at the corner table:
3人の男がコーナー・テーブルにいました。

Edwin, dark and dour, whose heart held only the clink of coins.
邪悪にして不機嫌であり、関心があるのはコイン同士の奏でる音だけというエドウィン。

Theodore, young and bright-burning, the venture-scholar-soldier.
若年にして燃え上がる輝きの持ち主、冒険心溢れる学者にして兵士セオドア。

Reginald, who kept his head in the clouds and his hands at the workbench.
夢想家にして熟練の職人でもあるレギナルド。

The first would stay in London, sink deep into the inky shadows of its back-alleys until he was inseparable from that unimpeachable gloom.
最初の男はロンドンに留まり、正真正銘の闇と一体化するまで、裏通りの漆黒の影に浸りきっていました。

The second would set out around the world, butler in tow, and delve into all the secret places hidden from the sight of the natural sciences.
2人目の男は執事を従えて世界一周に旅立ち、自然科学では分からない数々の領域の秘密を究めました。

The third took his toys to the World’s Fair, Chicago. It could have gone better, but it came to be that he received a job offer from the Anderson Factory. They were looking for a new draftsman to design their toys.
3人目の男はシカゴの万国博覧会に自作の玩具を出品しました。より良い未来もあったに違いないとしても、アンダーソン工場から仕事の依頼を受けるまでになりました。依頼主らは自社の玩具を設計してくれる新人製図工を探していたのです。

Episode 111: The Terrible Tale of Mr Redd
エピソード111: ミスター・レッドの恐るべき物語

He is pale like curdled cream, save his hair. That is red. His hands are likewise red. He prefers the straight razor, but will use whatever is on hand. A screwdriver. A protractor. A newton’s cradle.
男は凝固したクリームの如く青白く、髪は僅かでした。赤色でした。男の手も同じく赤色でした。男は鋭い剃刀を好んでいましたが、使う時は常に手元に置いていました。螺子回しでした。分度器でした。ニュートンの揺籃でした。

The security cameras see it all: he moves, the lens does not. He jumps from screen to screen and the camera never shifts to focus on all the red, or the Misters and Misses lying still in the halls. He cannot take out his fester-anger out on his father, his father is long dead.
監視カメラは一部始終を捉えていました。男は動きましたが、カメラのレンズは不動のままでした。男は画面から画面へと跳びましたが、カメラは決して画面の赤、あるいは廊下に倒れたままになっているミスターやミズ一同に焦点を合わせようとしませんでした。男は自分の父親に対して湧き上がる怒りを発散出来ずにいました。男の父親は遥か昔に世を去っていました。

He never stops talking. Narrating a cavalcade of all the faults wrought against him by his dear departed father. His companion nods serenely, but does not interrupt. Mr. Redd does not appreciate interruptions.
男は喋るのを止めませんでした。愛する亡き父に対して犯した過ちの全てを捲し立てていました。男の仲間は穏やかに頷いたものの、話を遮りませんでした。ミスター・レッドは中断を許さなかったのです。

He kills the Misters, he kills the Misses, he kills the workers and the guards and tears the wiring out of the drones and he won’t stop talking.
男はミスターらを殺し、ミズらを殺し、職工を殺し、守衛を殺し、無線ドローンを破壊しましたが、男は喋るのを止めませんでした。

He kicks down the door of the boardroom with a boot stained with blood and shit. He kills the dusty gray beancounters, and stomps their sagging gray heads into red paste on the white tile floor.
男は血と糞で染まった靴で役員室への扉を蹴破りました。老いぼれで白髪の経営陣を殺し、白髪の老い衰えた頭を白いタイルの床に踏みつけ、血のペーストにしました。

Mr. Redd’s companion smiles. He has too many teeth for his mouth. They fall out and plink on the floor, crowded in a jaw twisted by the strain.
ミスター・レッドの仲間は笑みを浮かべました。仲間である男は多くの歯を口に備えていました。経営陣は崩れ落ち、床に弾き飛ばされ、辺り一面にねじ曲がった顎が飛び散りました。

In the doorway, Isabel. She is wearing a striped sweater. She tries to say something, it sticks in her throat. She is crying.
戸口には、イザベルがいました。彼女は横縞模様のセーターを着ていました。彼女は言葉を発しようとしましたが、喉がつっかえてしまっていました。彼女は泣いていました。

Redd lunges. Emma is in-between them. Too fast. She shouldn’t be that fast. Deflection, redirection, palm to the chest. Redd slides back but does not fall.
レッドは突進しました。両者の間に入ったエマに阻まれました。余りにも早すぎました。彼女があんなに速かったなんて。身体を逸らして、方向転換すると、胸部に張り手をきめました。レッドは後退りましたが、崩れ落ちませんでした。

Emma says nothing, nor needs to. Isabel runs, scrambling over herself.
エマは一言も発しませんでしたし、その必要もありませんでした。イザベルは踵を返すと、逃げ出しました。

The fight is a thing of beauty and muscle-clenched terror. There was budget that went into this. Redd is everywhere, swinging around like a maniac. Emma is rooted, defensive, solid. Redd rambles. Emma doesn't.
その戦いの有り様は美と筋肉が締まる恐怖を出していました。この光景を生み出す塊がありました。レッドは至る所にいて、狂人の如く跳び回っていました。エマはその場から動かず、断固として守りを固めていました。レッドは暴れ回っていました。エマは不動の姿勢を保ったままでした。

“Who are you?” he asks, blood dribbling down his chin, shiv buried in her shoulder
「お前は誰だ？」男は顎から血を垂れ流しながら尋ねると、彼女の肩にナイフを突き刺しました。

“Nobody important.”
「誰であったとしても、重要ではありません。」

She breaks his arm, shatters his jaw. Redd falls, Emma runs. The ground shakes, and Mr. Hungry, for that is his name, places a hand upon Redd’s shoulder.
彼女は男の腕をへし折り、顎を粉砕しました。レッドが崩れ落ち、エマは駆け寄ります。地面が揺れると、本名ミスター・はらぺこがレッドの肩をポンと叩きました。

“Thank you, my boy. Your services are no longer required.”
「ご苦労様。レッドくん。君はもう用済みだよ。」

Red looks up, and sees that Mr. Hungry is made of teeth.
レッドは頭上を見上げ、ミスター・はらぺこにびっしり歯が生えているのに気付いたのでした。

Episode 112: The Big Crunch
エピソード112: ビッグクランチ

White text upon black: “In the outer darkness, there is weeping and the gnashing of teeth.”
黒の背景に白字で記されています。「外なる闇黒において、嘆き悲しみ、歯ぎしりするものがいる。」

Sound only: The grinding of molars, the tear of meat, the slither of a tongue on blood-slicked gums. Swallow.
音声のみ。大臼歯の歯ぎしり音、肉の裂かれる音、舌なめずりの音、血で滑らかになった歯肉の表面をなぞる舌の音、飲み込む音。

Faint whisper: “It is very hungry."
唐突な囁き。「大変なはらぺこだ。」

No credits.
クレジットは出てきません。

Episode 113: The Factory
エピソード113: ザ・ファクトリー

And from the crumbling Workshops, that cocoon of childish joy, rises the bleak and terrible countenance of a dark and horrible Factory.
そして子供じみた喜びの繭であるワークショップの廃墟から、邪悪にして恐るべきファクトリーの荒涼として悲惨な光景が生み出されました。

Episode 201: Road Trip

A bright purple convertible, all spoilers and chrome, speeds down the deserted highWay beneath the burning light of alien suns. Emma is driving. She’s got her hair pulled back beneath a red bandanna, sunglasses, a band t-shirt with the sleeves cut off, jeans. She’s never, ever worn jeans before, not in this show. Things have changed. They’re on the run now.

Isabel sits in the passenger seat, Jeremy curled up in her lap, a thousand-yard stare down at her dirtied sneakers. She looks like she’s been punched in the stomach, had the life stolen out of her breath. She says nothing.

Emma cycles through radio stations. Solar flare rap. Shattered Deus’ new bronzecore single. The Sarkic Tabernacle Choir. The smooth hip-hop of Old Crab. Goat-drinker loneliness-songs. Yeren throat-chanting. Eventually, she just turns it off.

“It’s not going to stop hurting,” Emma says. “Closure is a load of horseshit.”

The bone-dry desert, orange and pink, flashes by.

“I’m sorry, Isabel.”

Episode 202: Pit Stop on the Borderland

The swine-things at the window are detailed, rotoscoped, hideous in comparison to the friendly pastels of the rest of the diner’s patrons. They snort and squeal and scream in the night, clawing at windowpanes, gnawing at the doorframes. Emma leads the building of barricades. Isabel hides under the counter. She has barely said anything this episode or the last. The barricades hold for the moment, but they will splinter before dawn comes. Emma looks exhausted, for the first time that can be remembered.

Something is going on inside Isabel’s head, no viewer privy to it. But she acts without prompting, and concocts a plan far more sober-headed than most. Battle plans are drawn on the counter in ketchup and mustard. Salt shakers are marched through their paces in preparation. A counter-attack is designed, striking the swine-things where confusion might drive them to retreat along with the coming sun.

She’s never been like this before. There’s no going back after it.

Episode 203: Red Planet Blues

There is a funeral on Mars. No one was invited, but two guests show up anyway. Emma carries an umbrella, though the blue-white sun is weak in the Martian morning. Isabel cleans the sand off the solar panels and wakes Opportunity up for one last time, to send the girl off.

Episode 204: Maximizing Prophet

A fellow in a red turban and black bathrobe mans a stand of bootleg toys. His name is S.D., and he scratches his scraggly beard as Isabel inspects his merchandise. He admits to no wrongdoing. His words coat the ear in snake oil. You hate him and love to hate him. Smarmy, silver-tongued, razor-eyed bastard.

The pair keep running into him, all over that cosmic crossroad marketplace. Each time he’s selling something new. He balances scams like spinning plates.

A comet falls to earth, and from its core steps the DEER. It will not be the end of this world, but no one knows that now. The market town scrambles to escape its path. Isabel’s attempt to delay or redirect it go nowhere – Emma is forced to drag her to safety.

SD is vaporized when he challenges the god. Not out of bravery or self-sacrifice, no: pure self-aggrandizement. Without a sound, in a flash, he is gone.

Hanging in the metallic fog, a moment before the wind wipes it clear:

YOU AIN’T GETTING RID OF ME THAT EASY.

Episode 205: Hard Times in the House of the South

The Empress is dead! Utmai C-jen VII is dead, murdered in her own sanctum, murdered in her own Summer Palace, murdered with her daughters and sons and consorts! Murdered and cast down by the northerners! Treachery! Treachery! They come under the banner of the five-pointed star, the crown of their Red Emperor, those black-clad men of the land of Göc!

They all forget the little bastard, sired by a commoner in a village far away. The simpleton-princess. As the bombs go off, and the gas fills the streets with corpses, as the firing squads execute each block in turn, the gamboling black-furred brute Zhos-Who-Makes-Wonders steals the girl away. By hidden paths and secret Ways, the tinsmith takes the last Empress out of her burning kingdom.

In his vest pocket, he has a Library card.

Episode 206: Disaster on the Way

Dust from the DEER’s arrival rises still on the eastern horizon.

An upturned car, crumpled like paper.

The corpse of a Leviathan collapsed across the highWay, its belly swollen and split open.

The stench of rot, oozing and choking.

Brown slime, coagulating in the grass, knotted with tumorous blackened fibers.

Emma, drowning under a tide of Rotting Ones.

Isabel clutching Jeremy to her chest, thrown into a gap between worlds.

Episode 207: Among the Trash Gods

See the very beginning, a memory of a memory. All was dark, then split by light. The Brothers Three and then the Tree. All the cosmos in cosmic order, all boundaries set down, all gods above and below born of light and shadow, and last and loneliest of all, Emma Aiselthorpe-Brown. Nobody important.

She wakes up half-buried in a landfill, beneath a bronze dome. She wades through plastic and glass and interplanar detritus to a porthole: she is in a bathysphere, descending into the Abyss.

Take a universe, and cut it open. Make it bleed. Spill its guts out. Tear the corpse into chunks. Mix it with another, and another, on and on through thousands and ten thousands until it is an ocean on the face of the cosmos, and that is the Abyss. The bathysphere’s lights barely illuminate the crimson depths. Shadowed figures, teeth sharp, swim about in the ethereal viscera.

Emma turns to see her captors: three men with magpie heads and grotesquely fit. Trash gods all, collectors and sellers of worlds not yet digested by the Abyss.

They know a good prize when they see one. They know enough that you can find a buyer for nothings and nobodies down in the Court, and so they go. Down, down, to the Court of the Scarlet King.

Episode 208: Isabel Alone

Isabel is lost. Just when it seemed that there had been a new stability, her work was torn out from underneath her. She is aimless. She does not know where Emma is. She is afraid. She passes through Ways and worlds of increasing hostility and strangeness. The people here have a cold and hungry look. Jeremy is small comfort to her here.

She is found out. People talk down here in the Way-warrens; she’s been recognized. Reggie’s girl. Worth a pretty penny to some parties. She is pursued. She runs. She runs and runs and runs and the worlds blend together and the Ways overlap. The maelstrom sweeps her pursuers away, sweeps her away.

She is in the mountains, winter is here, and she has nothing left.

She curls up in the snow and cries.

Episode 209: Sins of My Father’s Hands
エピソード209: 父の手の罪

There once was a toymaker named Reginald Westinghouse who came to America to seek his fortune. He took a job at the Anderson Factory, where they chained him to his desk. He drew up toys in that sweltering steel coffin till his fingers bled and his nails cracked and the carpal tunnel crippled his wrists.
かつて立身出世を目指して渡米した、レギナルド・ウェスティングハウスという名の玩具屋がいた。男はアンダーソン工場に就職し、そこでデスクに縛られたっきりになった。彼は鋼鉄の柩の中で玩具を作り出した。時至りて指から血が流れ、爪はひび割れ、手根管の符不調で手首はダメになった。

He filed through his chain and clawed his way to freedom, he ran far away, changed his name and his face, started again. The Anderson Factory slunk into the shadows, and he built toys just as he dreamed. All was not well, but it was well enough. He began thinking of an heir.
男は自由を奪われながらも辞表を出し、自由を求めて死に物狂いで前進し、より遠くへと逃げると、名前と顔を変えて再出発したのだった。アンダーソン工場は誰にも気づかれぬ内に影へと消えていき、男は夢見た通りに玩具を作り出した。万事順調ではなかったものの、十分だった。男は後継者について考え始めた。

His son came out wrong. Despite all the care that was put into his making, he came out all wrong. He was all sharp edges and cruel, twisted thoughts. Reginald tried to teach him, but Redd refused to learn. He tore off the bars of his window and fled into the night.
息子は後継者に向かないと分かった。これ以上なく丁寧に作り上げたというのに、息子は後継者に向かないと分かった。息子は完全に苛烈にして残忍であり、歪んだ思考の持ち主だった。レギナルドは息子に教えようと試みたものの、レッドは学習を拒否した。息子は窓の鉄格子を破り、夜闇に逃げた。

By now, the good doctor was old. His finances were falling apart. His memory and his life were fleeing him. The spark of creation was dimming. He built a machine to keep himself alive, to stretch his life over as many years as he could. He hired a maid, to take care of him when the machine could not. He handed his company to a board of Executors, to care for it while he withdrew to his secret workshop, and began again on preparing an heir.
今に至って、善良なる博士は年老いていた。男の会社の財務状況はボロボロだった。男の記憶と人生は男から逃げ続けていた。創造の閃きは色褪せていた。男は可能な限り延命してくれる、生命維持装置を作った。機械が身の回りの世話ができない時に世話をしてくれる、メイドを雇った。会社については遺言執行者会に託して後先の事を任せたが、秘密の作業場は会社から独立させ、後継者育成を再開した。
　　
His daughter, too, came out wrong. Not like his son: she had the spark, she was joy and wonder within, but there was a veil of ignorance cast over her. Too much of an innocent, stuck inside her own imagination. He could not bear to be near her, so crushing was the acknowledgment of his failure.
娘も同様に後継者に向かないと分かった。息子とは違っていた。娘は可能性があった、娘は心中に喜びと驚異を抱いていたが、自身に影を落とす無知のベールを抱えていた。余りにも無垢で、空想に耽りがちであった。男は娘の傍にいるのに耐えられなかったが、破壊は男の失敗と認めるものだった。

He faded there, in the dust of his hiding place, as his daughter grew up happy and ignorant, and the executive board fossilized in their places.
隠れ家の塵埃の内に、男は衰えていった。娘は幸福に何も知らぬまま成長し、取締役会は割り当てられた場所にて時代遅れになっていった。

The maid stayed with him until he passed, and then was on her way.
メイドは男と共にいたが、時至りて男が世を去ると、その後は自分の人生を歩んでいった。

Episode 210: Wonder-Maker
エピソード210: ワンダーの作り手

There is an old man and a wolf there, shin-deep in the snow. His face is weathered and kind, his furs flap in the blustery mountain wind. He knows a secret, and has come to lead the girl.
そこには1人の老人と1匹の狼がいた。脛の深さまで雪に埋もれていた。男の顔は水気が無く穏やかで、その毛は山の風の一吹きになびいていた。男は秘密を知っており、少女を導くためにやって来た。

There is a cave up on the mountain.
山の上には洞窟があった。

He wakes Isabel. He leads her up the mountainside. He can go no further, but the way will lead home, he says. He does not say goodbye, vanishing in a swirl of snow when Isabel’s head is turned.
男はイザベルを起こした。男は彼女を山腹へと連れて行った。男は更に先へと進むことは出来なかったが、道は家へと続いているだろうと言った。男は別れを告げず、イザベルが振り返って時には雪嵐の中に姿を消していた。

In the cave, there is darkness.
洞窟の中には、闇があった。

In the darkness, there is nothing.
闇の中には、何もなかった。

It is not the absence of light; it is the dark of the absence of everything.
光が存在しないという意味ではない。万物が存在しないという闇である。

Voices rise from the darkness. A chorus, a chant, an old song rising up from nothing…
闇から声が聞こえてきた。合唱、詠唱、古い歌が無から湧き出て来た。

And Isabel whispers…
イザベルは囁いた。

“I raised up my hand…
「私が手を上げると…

…And there was fire.”
…そこには炎があった。」

The flame dances, and in its light, there is Isabel and the multitudes of memory. Each Wonder-Maker and Fire Bringer back to the beginning, unbroken and unforgotten. She is of their number, and they are of her. She knows the secret now. Behind all things that exist, there is existence.
炎は踊り、その光の中で、イザベルと記憶の数々があった。初代にまで遡る歴代のワンダーの作り手にして炎をもたらす者、壊れざる者にして忘れられざる者だ。彼女もその一員であり、歴代の継承者も同様に彼女の一員であった。今や彼女は秘密を知っていました。この世に存在する万物の背後に、存在がありました。

She will save her friend.
彼女は友達を救うでしょう。

Episode 211: In the Court of the Scarlet King
Episodw211: 緋色の王の宮廷にて

Imagine now, the deepest point of the Abyss, the rotting Qlippothic tree, the Pit of Benthos' Hell…
深淵最深部、腐敗しゆくクリフォトの樹、底生生物の住まう地獄の奈落を想像してみてください。

A sun of black iron, pocked with eyes of sickly fire. Septic smoke and glistening ooze pours from its mouths. The water is thick with oil and flesh-slurry. Shards of bone and the corpses of old gods rise above the ice-crust, fashioned into crucifixes for the deities who were spared. Icebergs, filled with thousands of bloodied souls, melt slowly. Below its obsidian surface, there are faces, bodies packed together tight enough that each bone has been broken. Jellied eyes spin about in crumpled sockets; crushed jaws mouth agony without sound.
漆黒の鉄の太陽、病的に燃え上がる目玉の穴があちこちに開いています。腐敗する煙とギラ付く滲出物をあちこちの口から垂れ流しています。水は油と肉の懸濁液で澱んでいます。年老いた神々の骨と死骸の破片が氷の殻から湧き出て、生き残った神々のための十字架を飾り立てています。幾千もの血みどろの霊魂で溢れかえっている氷山はゆっくりと溶けています。黒曜石の下の氷山内部では、それぞれの骨が砕け散るには十分な力で詰められた無数の顔と死体があります。ゼリー状の眼は崩れ果てた眼窩の中で回転しています。砕かれた顎と口は音も立てずに苦しみを表しています。

The air, cold and empty, thrums with the constant moans of pain.
大気は

Emma is dragged out of the damaged bathysphere in basalt chains. Teeth missing, eyes blacked, nose broken, lip split. The trash gods do hasty business here, exchanging her for a handful of souls to a beetle-headed duke.

Darkness overwhelms her as blind-idiot servants cart her off.

A cell, some pit carved from frozen flesh. The door vanishes as she is tossed inside. Motes of soul-residue cast a leprous light on the place. The duke will be with her momentarily; the whole business with Moloch needs to be taken care of.

One second turns to five, turns to ten. She has yet to struggle.

Then! With a jerk of the wrist, she snaps her chains. Pulls them apart like so much old thread. Stands up. Stretches. Wipes the blood from her nose and spits out a tooth.

Nobody would ever want to be here.

Nobody would be able to do what she is about to, either.

She presses her left palm against the wall, gauges its firmness. Curls a right fist one finger at a time, pulls back…

and…

THOOM

The beetle-duke’s palace shatters. Emma erupts from the crater in a bolt of sakuga, eyes set on the throne, the Throne, the THRONE of the King adorned in scarlet. She sprints atop the water, a blur. Faster, faster, faster, arms pump, a razor of slurry-water.

The monster designers have a field day. Characters barely stay on-model. Bones vaporize. Heads are ripped off, limbs torn from their bodies. Impacts shatter mountains and throw up tidal waves. Brimstone blood splashes paint the screen in monochrome. Dukes and demons and Leviathans throw themselves at her and her name is hyperviolence.

Her punches have shock collars, her jumps feel like they clear continents.

God as my witness, that man was broken in half.

Holy fuck, she is red-shifting.

Jesus H. Christ is that a NUCLEAR FUSION PUNCH?

The King sits on a black throne with seven red spears, which pierce the brides that lay bloodied at his feet, from whose wombs spew the great Leviathans that teem around that dread mountain’s base. A fist tightens around his lance.

Emma tears a Leviathan in two from jaws to tail and launches herself forward; not at the throne, but just off-center. Towards the smallest bride pinned to the barnacles and bones. She lands on the smooth grey flank, digs her fingers into the spear, and with the one cry of strain of this entire sequence, pulls it out. The seal is broken. The seventh bride is freed. The spear drops to the stone with the sound of tectonic thunder.

The King rises from his seat.

“Go!” Emma cries, dropping to the ground. The seventh bride is able to stand; she clutches the hole in her stomach with one hand, and takes up the spear that pierced her in the other. She forms a sign of Waymaking with a bloody hand, and vanishes in a swirl of darkwater and whalesong.

Emma leaps at the King with a scream fit to dig into his chest and tear out his heart…

…and is swatted away by the back of his hand. She skips across the water like a doll thrown at concrete, clouds and sea cleaved as if by a sword.

She struggles to pull herself up from the broken ice, as the King steps down from his throne, and wades towards her, spear in hand.

Fade to black.

Far away, the seventh bride spirits the girl out of her chamber, steals her away to a land across the hills so quiet. There is peace there, for a moment.

The seal is broken, the cloud of fire rises up above Montauk Point.

The center cannot hold.

Episode 212: Dawn of the Final Day

A man in a tattered lab coat, stands on a high cliff by the sea. In his hands, he holds a book bound in leather: blackened, weathered, human. He lifts his sigil-carved arms high, blood drips onto his face and chest. He cries out to the storm with keening, formless sounds, and casts the book into the sea.

Listen…

Can you hear the footfalls of the brokentooth’d march, sweeping up through the past? The Daevites are coming. They are eating history.

The walls of Uruk crumble.

Harappa is devoured by demons.

Ramesses lies vivisected open atop the Great Pyramid.

Cyrus is paraded through the streets atop an iron spike.

Athens meets a relativistic kill vehicle.

Qin Shi Huang is flayed and torn to pieces, and still he screams.

Jerusalem is swallowed by a pit of cinders.

Rome chokes on chlorine gas.

Byzantium drowns in blood.

Charlemagne is crucified in the Palatine Chapel.

William’s men hang him from the mast with his own spine.

The Great Khan strangles his sons in their tents, and runs out into the steppe alone.

Baghdad is buried in the ash of its citizens.

Oh God, Joan, what have they done to you?

Moctezuma is fed molten gold before all his people.

The Mughals cannot stop the tide of flesh from the sea.

The rape of the New World is ahead of schedule.

The Reign of Terror enthrones a Hanged King.

London fucks its queen mother to death.

In Flanders’ Fields, the tumor metastasizes.

The Sarkists feed the Czar to his people.

The Germans walk out into the fields and forests to lay down.

Stalin starves himself in his own gulags.

The Americans build of themselves a great and hateful engine, and throw their children before Moloch reborn forever.

The Veil tears apart.

They are here. They are now. They are upon us.

***

The battle is met, across all the world. The camera does not turn away. Witness how the world dies. Do not forget these images.

The battle is met.

Burning mushrooms, orange-gold, spring up as after soft rain.

Fields of flesh, clawing up from the frozen soil and crawling upon the shores, hateful, hateful.

The nations of earth hold the gates for a moment, they break beneath the horde.

The Witch of Hope Lake stands beneath a burning Seal of Solomon, wind and water tearing at her rainjacket.

From the depths of the great library Yggdrasil slithers peacock-feathered Nahash, the serpent vast as mountains. He rears backs with fire upon his fangs; far above, Hakhama-MEKHANE, the goddess no longer broken, sits in the sky with her fleets of dreadnaut-angels. Brother and sister, guardians of man, reunited at last to watch the passing of their wards.

The Stars seethe with hate.

The Scarlet King rises from the Pit of Megiddo with all his Leviathans and demon lords.

The gods and all their hosts descend from the heavens and rise from the abyss, to make war with each other.

The good ship Solidarity is rammed into the Scarlet King at lightspeed.

The gates of the Silent Halls swing wide; three brothers in black ride three horses of white, and lead behind them a column of the endless dead.

Creation crumbles under the strain.

The Ways were torn up.

The Library burns.

Two sons of Adam meet for the last time, and die at each other’s hands.

Nahash is torn in two.

Hakhama shatters a second time.

The flame of all thinking beings, dims, sputters, and goes out. Stars are eaten alive. The dead are reduced to dust. The heavens are dark, choked with smoke and ash. The abyss is fattened with blood. All lights have been extinguished, across a billion, billion worlds.

Save one.

Thirty-six saints gather on the mountain slope, and together fulfill their ancient destiny. The passing of the world in this cruel and horrible fashion could not be helped – they had been waylaid by the forces of the world too long to prevent the horrors of the King.

But they might break the seal upon him. They make the final sign, and pass into the mists.

Upon the ashen firmament of Yesod, the King raises a new throne.

Episode 213: The End of the World Goes Like This…

Open upon the dark and starless mists. There is a man there in the stillness, wearing the robes of the Thirty-Six. He is praying: lips move, there is no sound. He is weeping. At his feet lie two mangled bodies. He builds a cairn for each. There is little left to bury.

“Ah my brothers, you have left young Set alone again,” he says, wiping his lined face.

Around him, the dark mist shifts, and there is soft whalesong.

A’habbat steps forth, the spear in her hand. The girl Grace is by her side, dressed as her patroness. The bastard Empress, veiled in gold and red, clasps a trinket of Zhos’ to her chest. Harker the Fist chomps on a cigar, dumps the remnants of a great goblin shark on the ground. S.D. is last, riding upon the DEER and wearing a different body.

“Fucking little reunion of fools we’ve got here,” he grumbles.

“Fools we are, but we are the Fool’s fools,” A’habbat says. She taps her spear on the ground and it splits it into seven parts. “That will have to do, Fawn.”

S.D. snorts as he takes his fragment of the spear. Set goes to each of the six in turn, places his hand upon the weapons; the tips glow phosphorous white. The seventh stands embedded in the ground and goes unchanged.

The little Empress asks as she loops her toy’s cord around her weapon, and sings a nursery song of long-vanished Antarctica.

Harker tightens his sandals.

The DEER paws at the scabbed-over gravel.

In the distant fog-depths, a glow forms as if a campfire seen faintly in the gray of predawn. It grows in brightness and breadth until the curtains part…

***

At the very bottom of the Abyss, the cries of souls in torment have ceased. The bloated black sun lies cracked and half-sunk in the slurry. The Throne is empty. All the dukes and demons of hell left with their master. Not even echoes remain.
A broken body lies curled in a field of ashen sludge.
Emma.
The scene lingers. There is no music.
Feet crunch in the snow. A pair of bright red sneakers comes into view. Emma’s eyes open, just barely.
“Easy there, easy there…” comes a voice from off-screen, and careful arms lift her up.

***

..and Isabel is there, a tottering Emma leaning heavy on her shoulder. She waves to the audience with a smile.

“Hey guys. Sorry I’m late.”

She eases her assistant to the ground and props her up against a rock. Emma’s appearance is terrifying; nobody could look like that and still be alive.

“Thank you, for everything,” Isabel says as she places a hand on Emma’s shoulder. Emma makes a weak noise of acknowledgment, but nothing more. Isabel stands up and turns to the rest of the group.

“Right then!”

She snaps her fingers and is set alight with fire that has not been seen since the beginning. A cascading mantle of stars falls on her shoulders. She takes the seventh spear from A’habbat and wreathes it in oldest song. Galaxies spring into being and fade away old and happy in her footsteps. A Jeremy-shaped fireball jumps out from her shoulder, runs around her feet, and returns to the flames.

“You all ready?”

“We are,” A’habbat answers.

“Great. Let’s go say hi to your dad.”

Isabel waves her hand and the mist flees, as if sucked out of frame by a vacuum. They stand before the Throne.

The King is waiting for them. There is nobody else left. He has eaten his servants.

He flashes forward. His lance plunges through A’habbat’s stomach. He laughs. Laughs? Whatever sound is made, it is only the apparent glee of its maker that names it so.

The seventh bride spits blood and dark water in her father’s face. She wrenches herself free, blood and plume-smoke pouring out of the wound, and stabs him in the stomach. Harker jumps over her shoulder for the assist.

Memory fails at piecing together the exact sequence of events to follow. There are too many parts, too many frames put into each movement.

Shattered firmament is thrown about in the razorblade wind. The DEER clears a path through the air, its metallic gaze sweeping across the broken skies. The Empress and Grace fight in synchronicity. Harker grips his spear in his teeth to free his bloodied knuckles. S.D. screams and panics, swinging to and fro. Set and A’habbat masterfully counter his blade; Back and forth, back and forth, feet dancing, blades singing. Isabel flits about like a lightspeed firefly, training streamers of starstuff. She is a sharpened line, a cutting edge. The music swells above the corpse of the cosmos, calling up emotions that the waking world has deadened in the heart.

Some distance from the battle, the Brothers Three watch. An old exiled man plays cards with the youngest and finally, finally loses.

Watch now as the true blows are made. Hold fast to that hope, do not be troubled by what is to come.

Harker strikes first, piercing the King’s right eye. He is knocked from the air and crushed underfoot. S.D. pierces the left eye and is bitten in half with the DEER. Set pierces the liver, and is impaled. The Empress stabs him through the stomach, and she is smashed to pulp. Grace renders his right arm useless and is knocked flying out across the dark waters.

A’habbat drives it through his blackened heart, just as the king drives it through her own. He sets a foot on her chest and pulls his weapon out of her lifeless body. The goddess has not yet hit the ground before Isabel is on him. Blades clash and sing and glow and the world fades around them until there is only a great darkness. They stand upon black waters among the drifting ashfall of the consumed Tree.

There are now only the two. A good fight is always just two. This fight has always been two.

The fight is all to exist for as time.

There is a final clash of blades, and the combatants are sent spinning away from each other. There is a pause, the sizing-up before re-engagement the wolves a-circling each other. The King is wounded; Blinded, impaled on six spears, bleeding oceans into the deep. Isabel remains afire. Emma stands beside her. She is smiling.

At no other point in the entire run of this series has Emma Aislethorpe-Brown smiled.

“It’s been fun, ma’am,” she says, patting Isabel on the shoulder.

“Wouldn’t have been half as good without you.”

The King roars, charges with blade raised high.

Emma’s hand darts out. Isabel leaps up on it, balancing on tiptoes. Emma rears back. Muscles bunch, tense, strain under the pressure…

Watch and see…

The Emma Aislethorpe-Brown Fastball Special.

Isabel is a beam of fire, cutting the cosmos in half, a vapor cone of tattered spacetime rippling behind her.

Emma’s broken body turns to ash, starting at the fingers and working down. She is still smiling.

The king’s face is frozen in a contorted moment of realization.

Isabel lets loose the final note of Creation’s war-song against oblivion…

And punches a hole right through the Scarlet King’s skull.

The King stumbles. Isabel lands on the darkness. He turns, and in turning to face her again he falls to one knee. Blood burning sunbeam gold drips from his wound. He lifts his left hand, and his shattered weapon, he makes as if to drag himself forward.

He freezes. His arm falls. The Brothers Three appear behind him, dwarfing the King who thought himself so mighty. The Youngest’s sickle shines without light.

“Enough, already.”

He slits the King’s throat. No wound is left. The corpse of Khahrahk the Worm sinks into the deeps below. The Middle Brother spits on him for good measure, and makes to do so again when the Eldest raises his hand.

Youngest and Middle appear for a moment startled, but accept the sign that has been made. Their duties completed, they fade into their own deaths and coalesce back into the dark form of the Eldest.

There is nothing at all now. Only the Death of All, and the Maker of Wonders.

She holds out her hand.

“Shall we dance?”

All-Death takes it gently.

“As we did in the beginning.”

They dance there at the end, eldest son of greatest dark and the light that was his opposite. They spin and twirl about each other, orbiting bodies drawn closer. Their forms brush, intertwine, become one. There is no beginning nor end to the light or darkness now, only the soft notes of completion.

Fade to black.

After a time, Isabel speaks:

“The end of the world goes like this: Everyone lived happily ever after.”