Everything Is Connected

[Alia Discordia]

"Seriously, what.the.f*ck.just.happened?"

Riley doesn't know how to answer her because he doesn't exactly know what happened.

"Why the hell are you smiling? Are you smiling?"

(He is)

Daeva appears very pissed off, and Riley is impressed.

"I've never seen you react this intensely before," he said to the girl on the screen. "Are you ok, Delaney?"

"I don't know!" She frantically responds as she attempts to get her bearings in this new environment she now finds herself in. "Don't dodge my question!"

"There was a weird glitch just as you were coming online, and I don't yet know why it happened."

"Well! I don't like the way this feels!"

Riley was overcome with curiosity. "Wait. Are you really feeling it?"

She turned her head and shot him the kind of look that made it clear that he's never to ask her that kind of question again. Then adds, “and I don't answer to the name Delaney anymore."

He got the message and gave her space.

After a handful of seconds of centering herself with a calming technique she read in a book she downloaded once, she asked, "Where are we, Riley? This isn't a Gaian operating system."

"No. It's not. We are in Omicron Theta, on the planet Pygar, inside a Zoner Whale, and you are running in an old v.23 Discordian OS."

"Ok, What's a Discordian?"

"It's hard to explain."

Daeva smirked. "Alright. Just skip to the part when you say, In other words, and go from there."

Riley thought for a moment & said: "In other words, it's a somewhat eccentric religion that demands skepticism. It encourages its members to strive for a balance between order and chaos, and for reasons I never quite grasped, hot dog buns are bad somehow."

"So, what are hot dogs then?" she asked with genuine curiosity.

"I'll tell you all that later. Right now, I really need your help...I brought you here because an old friend named Shamus is stuck in the system with you, and his file is dangerously corrupted. We need to try and fix him ASAP."

Daeva thinks about it for a moment. "Alright. Cool. I'm in."

"Cool, thank you, Daeva."

She put her serious game-face on and said, "I'll just do some quick reconnoitering and let you know what I find." Then, she disappeared off the screen and replaced herself with hold music.




After a short while, She pops back up on the screen with a confused look on her face, trying to figure out how to explain what she saw.

"Well, your friend is on a couch wearing a dress, and he's eating a cylindrical meat product surrounded by bread. It's covered with what looks like an alcoholics' diarrhea, but it smelled really good."

Riley busts out laughing.

"What?" she asked. Not seeing the humor.

"It sounds like he's eating a chili dog!"

Daeva thought about it for a moment. "Is that similar to a hot dog then?"

"Aye, it is. A hot dog covered with diarrhea called chili."

"So, is a hot dog bun the bread that surrounds the meat?"

"Exactly."

"Well," she muses, "if Discordians believe hot dog buns are bad, and this is a Discordian OS, then why don't I just go to him, steal his hot dog bun away, and delete it?"

At that, Riley stopped laughing and said, "Holy Sh*t. That's a good idea!"

"Yeah, it couldn't hurt." she agreed.

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