The name’s Eddie T. I am a burner by trade. I have been since my graceful fall from the 23rd floor of the Walter and Routte Investment Company back in ’29 on the prime side. I had been a trader, and now I am a burner. Fair trade in my opinion. I am not to worried about sharing the details of my deathday… anyone that asks can know. If they think it will bother me any, it won’t.
A burner is something special in my opinion. The Colos is a force outside of the Authority and the Angelus, and it leaves a mess. Most of the people will tell you that the Colos is efficient, fast, and clean. But me and fellow compatriots know the truth.
It leaves a fucking cesspool of filth. Like a flock of seagulls. It flies in, shits all over everything, and then flies out.
Yep, that’s right. I clean up the shit of a reality eating monster. But don’t take that the wrong way. I love it. You see, not many people get to see what I see. I get to see the world for what it is. It is a machine that chews souls up and then spits them out. The Colos just chews them up and then shits out the stuff that attracts the Briars.
And that crap is scary. Pun intended. The Briars are the trolls of the Verse. These gross underthings that can grow, and consume, and spread outwards. Like dark angels made of evil and destruction. Some of my compatriots think that the Briars are the offspring of the Colos. But I don’t think that is it. I think the damn things are refuse… the worst possible refuse there is. Because my theory is they grow out of the shit.
What do you get when you chew up reality and digest it? I would think you would get the worst of the worst coming out. Think about it. Humans eat food, we digest the stuff our bodies can use and shit out all the stuff that we can’t. Imagine the filth that comes out of the Colos.
That is what I do. I burn it. Hopefully we can get there before any of the Briars do, but sometimes we are a bit late. Then I have to use my gear to fight the damn things. Its like something out of a storybook, man. Me and my boys go in there with business end of our burners burning, and our backpacks fully charged. We use the plasma lances and try to cut those nasty ghouls up… then trap the shit. We take the floating ether from the Colos’s invisible backend and take it to our containment vessel in our shared realm.
The containment vessel is a big red vault door, sunk in the wall of the building’s basement. It has huge flashing lights, big alarms, and I am sure is very expensive to run. The building is pretty simple really. It looks like an old firehouse. You know the kind, all brick and mortar, with brass poles penetrating the floor leading to the other floors so you can get from the bunks to the realm gate quickly and efficiently. First you have to gear up of course.
We drop through the floor and put on our coveralls first. They are grey, with lots of pockets so we can carry anything we might need. The boots are heavy, black, and have seen their fair share of battle. On our backs, the plasma containment units are heavy whirring metal behemoths that connect to our lances. The lances themselves are about the size of a cut of broom handle having sex with a dustpan. We just point and shoot.
That simple.
Although we have been told to not the cross streams… its hard, because the lances kick something awful.
Now all we need a theme song to play when we are headed to an emergency.
Something catchy…