Episode description[edit | edit source]
Hey everyone! Welcome to another episode of Live at the Table! Today, we'll be playing Anomaly by Carter Richmond, which you can find right here on itch.io. Join Sylvi, Keith, Janine, and Austin as they put on their lab coats and examine the unexplainable: A mysterious fair that's popped up in a Bluff City mall parking lot...
(Because of Patreon's file size limits, we had to cut this one into two! Sorry for any inconvenience.)
Plot[edit | edit source]
Spannheuser Funfair and Amusements Company sets up in a Bluff City parking lot. The Concern is altered to the Anomaly when about half of people in Bluff City suddenly have a memory of the Spannheuser Funfair and Amusements Company setting up the previous weekend (the other half have no memory of it being there).
The Concern begins investigating the Funfair, trying to discover when the first instance of the Funfair coming to Bluff City was. Agent Barker, the head of the investigation, gets stuck in the Funfair as she is unable to find/access the exit. Although she is aware that she is stuck, she is unable to properly explain her situation to other Concern agents. Another agent, Agent Tinker, after entering the funfair to research the fair’s history.
One of the agents, Agent Snave, discovers that people’s wallets are being duplicated on The Zipper and begins collecting the fallen wallets to steal the duplicated money.
A second Concern team enters the funfair and removes Barker and Tinker, although a version of Barker and Tinker remain trapped inside the funfair. It is unclear which (if any) are the “originals”. The Concern hides this from the rest of the team studying the Anomaly.
The Concern agents notice that employees of the funfair do not appear to leave the funfair. Maria R Carvagal, an employee of the funfair, seems to be the attendant at all the carnival games.
Although the weather is turning cold as Bluff City transitions into autumn, the weather inside the funfair remains warm, even going so far as to negate rain happening outside the funfair.
The version of Barker still stuck in the funfair gets stuck in an even smaller area, unable to leave the area near the Eggscrambler.
A coupon is released in the Bluff City Current advertising a free ride, bringing a huge flock of people to the funfair. Agent Trotter, a social research expert in the Concern’s discovers that the free ride coupon is more than just good advertising, the funfair has begun to admit a magnetic pull on the citizens of Bluff City. After this, the exit turnstile stops working, preventing people from leaving the funfair (people who attempt to leave the funfair by climbing the fence end up in an area of the funfair you have positive feelings about instead of outside it). The funfair entrances still work, meaning that despite this the funfair continues to fill. Gradually, people realise that they are unable to leave the funfair.
To test the Anomaly and learn more about it’s effects, the Concern agents “supercharge” it (Snave is enthusiastic about this plan). They expected the result to be further duplication, but what actually happens is that the duplication changes the quality of the duplicated item (a wallet that had $5 in it now has $500, although not always in a currency that can be used in the funfair).
There is an announcement on the news after the free ride weekend that, due to the success of the funfair, they have decided to open a second funfair on the other side of town. New coupons are distributed overnight (“accepted at the Original or Park Two’).
The versions of Barker and Tinker who left the funfair return, only to be injured in a duplication incident (“it stopped halfway through [...] they have a part of them growing out of them”). The other Concern agents put them in quarantine within the funfair. In the same moment, a penny smasher machine appears within the Concern HQ.