LNH20: LNH20 Comics Presents #1 - A View From The Twisted Library

Dave Van Domelen dvandom at eyrie.org
Tue Dec 13 07:38:09 PST 2011


     LNH20 Comics Presents #1 - A View From The Twisted Library
               copyright 2011 by Dave Van Domelen

     [Part of the LNH20 Comics Presents #1 Chaotic Add-On - Ed, who missed
this place.]

     Acton Lord, fifth to carry the title (although the public knew of only
three, and some suspected all three were the same man kept alive by techno-
mystical means), was tending to his garden when a soft chime sounded in the
back of his mind.  He and the Twisted Library had become more intimately
bonded during the years of the Killfile than any previous Acton Lord, and he
no longer needed the ostentations instrumentality his predecessor had used,
and that he himself had required back when he tried conclusions with his
brother in the 1990s.
     
     The chime told him that something important had happened in Netropolis,
a city he had largely left to its own devices in recent years.  Even after
the Killfile dropped and his exile was ended, he hadn't made more than a few
desultory efforts in the direction of his old home.  He had found much more
rewarding pursuits on higher planes, after all.

     He briefly sorted through the data the Library made available.  For all
his training and mystic talent, he still had a human mind.  True omniscience
would destroy him just as surely as an excess of any other sort of power, but
the Library gave him a controlled version of it that was nearly as useful.

     "Hm.  The Spoon of Destiny?  No, that can't be it," he shook his head.
To be certain, the Spoon was an artifact of great power, and Ultivac a
deliciously corrupt machine who had been a useful pawn in the schemes of the
most recent three claimants to the title of Acton Lord.  But it couldn't have
been urgent enough for the Library to intrude on the tending of Acton Lord's
nigellas. 

     The trouble with limited omniscience was that it was...well, sphammy.
It took subtly to filter out the useful information from that which merely
seemed useful on the surface.  The Twisted Library may have had a will and a
mind of its own, but it had inhuman priorities and could never quite
understand the details of what organic life wanted, even when explained
exhaustively.  
     
     Finally he found it.

     A slow smile spread across the face of the man who the world only knew
as Acton Lord, but who would have been named Graham Franklin had he not been
stolen away from his parents by the previous Acton Lord.  "Ah, yes.  My niece
has joined the Legion of Net.Heroes.  Family is important, I should find her
some sort of gift to commemorate the event, provided she survives her clash
with that computer.  It's about time I picked a successor anyway, and what
better gift is there for a net.hero than her very own nemesis?"

     A slow chuckle gradually built into a maniacal laugh.

     "Ah, I've missed that part of the job," he sighed as his laughter
continued to echo through the infinite corridors of the Twisted Library....



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