Section F: Fairy Tales & Physicists

Chapter 10

If Peregrine was perturbed by the entity's greeting, it didn't show. "Nice to see you too, Ken," she replied, with a grin. " And you can spare me the old ineffable-eyes thing. Save it for the noobs, who might actually be impressed."

"Ken?" echoed Fields faintly, his mind still reeling.

"Kenshin. It's the name of my current vessel." Dry as sandpaper, the entity's voice nevertheless carried a surprising suggestion of strength. "Its meaning is 'modest truth.' Which seems entirely appropriate for my current condition."

"Well," said Peregrine, "modest or not, we could do with a bit of truth if you don't mind. I assume you know why we're here?"

The entity sighed. "I assume you're here to disrupt my current mind-numbingly peaceful tedium with the annoyingly frenetic tedium of whatever allegedly important crisis you think I can help you to sort out—as usual. In other words, you're here because your curvy arse needs saving again."

"Why Ken, you old dog. I didn't think an advanced being such as yourself would notice things like my arse."

"I find that the assimilation of some of my current vessels' proclivities is a little hard to avoid, Peregrine. And if Ken's memories—what's left of them—are any sort of a guide, then he was quite the ladies' man, back in his prime. In any case, I notice many things. After all, isn't that why you're here?"

"Yeah, you've got me there. Well, how about it?"

The entity's expression became crafty. "Straight down to business, eh? No time to hear about the struggles of my daily life, here in this spartan hellhole? My meagre, monotonous existence, stuck in this barren backwater of a penitentiary? The hardship of spending my days all alone, barely scraping by in this desolate, under-equipped—"

"Okay, okay," interrupted Peregrine. "I get it. You know, you'd think in all your multiverse-wide, millennia-long existence, you might have picked up a just a little bit of tact. What do you want, you old scammer?"

The entity gave her an expectant look. "What have you got?"

"What have I got? What have I got?" Peregrine seemed genuinely nonplussed. "We already put you up in the best nursing home Agency money can buy. You're waited on hand and foot, you sleep on fresh linen every night, you're served gourmet food whenever you want. Your every whim is catered for—what else could we possibly give you?"

"That is a very good question, Peregrine. I'm looking forward to hearing the answer."

Having watched the back and forth of this conversation like a heat-dazed spectator at a summer tennis match, Fields was by now sufficiently recovered from his initial shock to be able contribute his own cutting, relevant insights.

"Whuh? But...huh?"

Which, to his surprise, Peregrine interpreted perfectly well. "Look, in return for services rendered, the Agency makes sure that good old Ken here—just like all his sadly departed, former entity-bearing predecessors—receives the very best in accommodation, the very best in health-care, and the very best of...well, everything." She frowned at the old man, who returned her look with a beatific smile. "Which is why I'm struggling to work out what the hell else he could possibly want."

"Well, we both know the answer to that, Peregrine. But as my greatest desire is not within your power to grant, I'm curious to see what else you might be able to come up with. You see, I'm bored. Bored, bored, bored. You have no idea of the depths of tedium I've had to endure here in this wretched plane of existence. Oh, I grant you, things got a little more interesting when evolution finally spat you humans out—but only a little. And quite frankly, even that modicum of relief was short-lived. You really are a most frightfully predictable and uninspiring lot. It's a real pity that bloody meteorite had to come along and wipe out the dinosaurs—I had high hopes for them. Most interesting creatures. Anyway, I digress. The point is, there will be no help from me until you can offer something to relieve the monotony of my existence, even if only barely. Even if only for a moment. I'm quite prepared to wait, and as I'm sure you'd appreciate more than most, time is on my side."