[color=00a651][h1][center][b]Dr. Strange[/b][/center][/h1][/color] [color=ed1c24][h1][center][b]Holiday Special[/b][/center][/h1][/color] [center][img]https://i0.wp.com/hyperallergic-newspack.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/2016/10/babel3-1-720x434.jpg?resize=720%2C434&quality=100[/img][/center] Doctor Strange made a visit to the Crooked Market to pick up a gift for someone special. Some preferred to shop via scrying and using the free portal delivery available to members, but Strange didn’t trust the operator enough to do anything except face to face business. He didn’t particularly like dealing with Mad Jim Jasper’s quixotic brand of commerce either, but he had few other options for sourcing a special item. He walked up to the stall where Mad Jim himself was standing with payment in hand and said “Here is your payment, ten thousand years worth of magical essence harvested from Earth’s leylines, encased in a time crystal with etchings done by the Dwarves of Nidavellir. The time crystal is a Lunella Lafayette design, she might not yet be as esteemed as Richards when it comes to that field but give her time and it will surely grow in value. In any case, it’ll be enough to keep the essence shelf stable until the heat death of the universe, possibly even beyond that. “ Jim said “Huh, didn’t think you had it in you to actually match the demand. Very well, your payment is accepted” “Eh, I thought it was a bit high but then I found a way to source it ethically from a timeline where life never evolved on earth. “ “Ah, I would’ve liked it more if you hadn’t told me that. I’m a busy man but I still have time to get wistful about times gone by, not quite as lovely if my little bottle of fun was appropriated from some inanimate rocks rather than a bunch of cultureless, underserving bores. But a deal is a deal.” “Indeed. Do you have what we agreed upon?” “Yes, except for some matters with the item’s shipping and receiving.” “What matters?” Jim gestured with his hands and pretended to look busy examining papers laying behind the counter, but Strange’s mystical senses could tell the stack had only been conjured into existence a few seconds ago. Jim said “Oh, it’s not for me to know precisely, but I’ve been ready to do my part when it comes to receiving, so whatever difficulty has arisen must be with their shipping.” Strange said “Surely you can do something to figure out what’s wrong on their end, it’s a gift for someone and I can’t have it being late.” “Excess hurry is such an ugly habit, it wouldn’t due for me to show exertion over something trivial, nor should I harrang them about such a lowly matter.” “I thought we had an agreement.” “Oh, but we did, unfortunately said agreement did not cover whatever business is going on with those layabouts at the Mall of Babel; if the item is in my possession it will be yours, but until then I can do no more for you. If you’d like a second opinion, I could direct you to the customer service department but I fired the relevant people when I realized how many inquiries could be dealt with by the sign behind me.” Jaspers cocked his eye towards a sign that Strange didn’t remember if had always been there or if it had materialized just a moment before. It read: 1. Mad Jim Jaspers is always right 2. If Mad Jim Jaspers is ever wrong, re-read Rule 1 There was a silence between them, and the big smile on Jasper’s face crept back to a neutral position when Strange didn’t find the matter funny. Jim said “Well, if you really want I can give you the invoice and you can look into it at your leisure. Might be a character building exercise, you know, personal responsibility and all that. “ Strange had a portal open as soon as the invoice was in his hand and made his way to the Mall of Babel. The Mall of Babel was a dimension that sold everything. Not a lot of things, not just trillions of things, but literally everything, an infinite amount of products. It was composed of a series of endlessly repeating heaxgons, with stores along the edges of each gexagon and a set of escalators in the center, leading up and down to the next in an unbounded number of floors. Two of the edges of the hexagon were open, holding a pathway that ended in another hexagon. Along one side of each pathway was a set of restrooms, along the other a small food court. It was said that no two heaxgons were alike, even that no two stores were alike, but proving it was a futile exercise, just as hopeless as trying to map the layout of the space. The hexagon Strange landed in had a typical assortment of useless shops. One sold decorations for holidays that didn’t exist. Another sold only sports cards of people that never played sports, showing what their stats would have been. The place by the pathway sold only defective toasters, and each one was broken in a slightly different way. Looking through the windows of the others he saw ones that specialized in mesh umbrellas, parts for trinary computers made with vacuum tube technology, luggage that used pocket dimensions to hold more space but had the unfortunate side effect of occasionally dumping their contents into the void between universes, and hot sauces that could only be consumed by immaterial beings. Finding the store listed on the invoice would be a struggle even for him. Fortunately, Strange had the Eye of Agamotto with him, and when combined with a little finesse it would enable him to actually navigate the place. Even it’s awesome powers took some time to work in something as overwhelming as the Mall of Babel, giving Strange a moment to look around. What interested him most wasn’t what he saw, but what he didn’t see: any actual shoppers. There were employees, but the whole place was eerily silent, even when you’d expect it to be busy. He had heard that sleeker competitors like the Crooked Market emerged, lost teenagers found other realms to haunt, and that most of the people who ended up there were tourists visiting The Backrooms due to its sudden fame that took a wrong turn upon exiting. Still, he didn’t expect it to be this empty. He’d have to find something else to do, and he found it when he spotted a Nightmare’s Café stall in between the escalators. Once he had confirmed it was a franchise store and thus not actually run by the eponymous founder and member of the Fear Lords who counted Strange as mortal enemy (which included terminating his rewards account and barring him from all corporate owned stores), Strange looked at the menu and thought about what kind of dreams he’d like to ingest. They weren’t great quality, but they had a brand name. As their slogan used to say “It’s not just dreams harvested from the sleeping masses and bottled for you. It’s Nightmares.” Strange looked at the bored looking multi-armed barista behind the counter and said “Give me a cuddling with soft puppies with a topping childhood nostalgia.” The Barista said “Figures. Everyone wants the saccharine stuff overloaded with sweetness, no one wants the old school hard stuff anymore. And the order is for?” “Do we have to do this? I’m the only one here.” “Boss said I have to, people like the personal touch when you write it on their cup.” “Fine. Stephen Strange, MD, PhD, Master of Mystic Arts, Sorcerer Supreme, whatever fits.” As the Barista began to work, Strange asked a question “Didn’t there used to be a lot of Mindless Ones around here? This place was practically daycare for them, they could just wander around and stay out of Dormmamu’s hair errrr flames and loiter or shop or skateboard, whatever they like to do when they’re not trampling over everything. “ The Barista said “You’d think, but Dormmamu shut down the transit connection. Rumor is he’s trying to choke out the mall’s lifeblood to make a play for it when it’s really hurting. Wouldn’t be the first time he gobbled up more real estate for the dark dimension.” “So who is here?” “I dunno. Don’t really go beyond this part. The place’s infinite, not like you could get a good sense of it all. Unless something more infinite comes along and tries their hand nobody’ll ever have a grasp on it all.” Strange picked up his cup and took a sip, ready to set off on the path the Eye of Agomotto had found. It was only when he got a look at the cup on his second sip that he made a small frown upon reading that the Barista wrote his name as “Steve”