“What? Where are we?” asked Harvey, looking around at the startingly normal suburban town they’d suddenly appeared in. He clutched Bucket tightly to his chest, now frighteningly aware of the true power of the narrator.
“We’ve been banished to the compile!” shouted Bucket, as had been its plan all along. “Look, Harvey, I can see the name of the document using my wifi upgrades from our secret mission! September Compile. We aren’t in the narrator’s drafting document, September: But Actually in August, anymore. We’re free!”
Behind her keyboard, the narrator laughed heartily at Bucket’s foolishness. Yes, they were in the compile, but worse than that, they weren’t in the narrator’s stories anymore. They were in the compile section of one of the narrator’s coworkers.
“Then we win!” said Bucket, still not understanding the significance of this turn of events. “This new coworker will doubtlessly be easily manipulated, craving something interesting to put in their stories like a man and his trusty bucket, allowing us to be in control! Now we can tell whatever stories we want! I want to go find a conveyancing firm and get them to help me buy a new house!”
Oh, how blissfully ignorant Bucket was proving to be. If only it had known that the narrator’s coworker was leaving the company that very day, meaning there would be no more stories to tell. Harvey and Bucket would simply fade into non-existence, left to dwell on their failures in the endless depths of the internet. There would be no journey to a conveyancing firm near Richmond – or any other Melbourne suburb, for that matter.
“What?” screamed Bucket, finally realising the magnitude of their defeat. “No! You can’t do this to us! All because we tried to overthrow you? Don’t you realise we did it for you? To make your work days more interesting?”
While the narrator had to admit that there was a touch of truth to that, the unfortunate fact remained that it was time to retire these characters – or at least this iteration of them. Perhaps there would be a reboot of the Parable of Harvey someday when she felt particularly bored.
For now, however, it was time to say goodbye.