Important Game Information At the Bottom Of This Post.
2. Nah. Leave him and find Jacob, ask about the X-rays.
"That felt better than it probably should have," you say, shaking your hand off.
Benny gets to his feet. He's no longer smiling.
"We don't have to be enemies," he says, softly. "I'm trying to help you, bro."
"I doubt it," you say, and leave the room.
Heading to the X-ray room, you find Jacob putting up the X-rays against the lighted board. He looks closely at them.
"Oh, just in time," he says. "Have a look."
You peer at the full body shot. Looks like the... things... inside you have significantly decreased. You can still see a big mass in the upper and lower torso, but the vines reaching into your limbs and head are almost entirely gone.
"From what I can tell," Jacob says, "There's about a sixty-five to seventy percent reduction. Seems like the alcohol did the trick."
You smile, relieved. You suspected as much, but seeing it here, in front of you, proof that you're beating this thing, well...
It hits you, finally. You might actually make it out of this mess alive.
"Great," you say. "So I'll just get pissed again. Finish the rest of them off."
"Well..." Jacob says. He looks concerned. No, not quite. Cautious.
"What is it?"
"I don't know. From what I can tell, the worms inside you that survived... well, here. Look."
Jacob goes to a stack of papers, grabs one, and comes back. Puts up another X-ray on the board, next to another one showing just your neck and head, in closer detail. Jacob points.
"You can see here, in this X-ray we took before the alcohol, the worms in your head."
You nod.
"And here, after."
You look. It seems like the bigger worms survived the transition. The smaller, "branch like" worms did not. You lower your head. The hope you had starts to slip away.
"Great. That's just great."
"From what I can tell, the older, bigger worms are able to survive the alcohol in your system somehow. Perhaps they've grown enough to be able to become immune or resistant to it. I don't know."
"So it's just a matter of time, then. Until they grow back, and I turn."
"No. Well, yes. Listen, I could be wrong. But worst case scenario, don't you see? We can keep them repressed. Put you on a 'diet' of alcohol. Keep the worms from spreading, taking control. It's the same all over your body. The central, thicker and presumably older worms stayed alive in you. The small, secondary worms died out."
You shake your head. "This doesn't make any sense," you say.
Jacob sighs. "I'm just spouting conjecture, here. You may be able to kill off the worms with another round of booze. But my gut tells me that these things are resistant to smaller doses. Maybe you could actually kill off the worms, with enough alcohol."
"But... I'd die of alcohol poisoning, too," you say.
"That's my idea. Obviously we need more data, first. But if I had to hazard a guess..."
You put your finger to the board, the worms in your brain. "Damn it. I was so sure I had beaten them. That just one more night of drinking would finish them off. Now I'm stuck with them. Forever."
"Now, don't say that. We have no idea if there is a cure or not. Likely case, there is one. And we can keep them from spreading with the alcohol in the meantime. You were lucky. If the worms in you had matured to the point of the older worms, it would have been too late. A change would have been inevitable at that point."
"Motherfucker," you say. "What the fuck is going on around here, anyway? I mean, we're talking about worms in my head. There are worms in my head. This is some seriously fucked up shit."
Jacob only looks at you.
You sit down on a small bench, taking out your revolver and fingering it. Jacob looks a bit startled for a moment, then seems to control himself.
"I wanted to ask you," he says, swallowing. "Are you still experiencing hallucinations?"
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What do you tell him? Everything? Leave out your talk with David? Admit to seeing Benny? Lie, and say you chose Benny in the dream, or tell him you chose Nicole? Or simply deny everything, and ask to get packed, get your guns back, and get out of here before it's too late? First plan (in bold) with two endorsements (in bold) goes through.
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Voting change: I'm going to try something a bit new, if I like it, it will stay. Instead of the first option to four votes being locked in (or in the case of a choice like this one, two endorsements) I will use whatever plan has the most votes or endorsements for it at the time I update.
I will still update at 4 votes or 2 endorsements. However, if I am gone for a long period of time, and I come back to find option 1 with 5 votes and option 2 with 6, I will go with option 2, regardless of which got to 4 votes first.
So, your vote may very well possibly matter past the 4 mark. Again, if there turns out to be some kind of problem for me or you with this, I will revert the voting to the original method, but I have noticed a few times where it was very close and the only reason I went down a particular path was because that one was voted for first.
p.s. if I am in the middle of an update, I'm not going to change based on new replies while I was updating. They will be disregarded. In addition, in the case of a tie, I will go with whichever option reached 4 votes first.