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| Angel | The Puppet Show |
Cortona Italy, 1418
Carlo kneels before the demon Moloch the Corruptor. Moloch places his hand on top of Carlo’s head while more of Moloch’s acolytes look on.
“Do you love me?” Moloch asks in Italian. “I can give you everything. All I want is your love.”
“You have my love.” says Carlo.
Moloch’s grasp tightens and he gives Carlo’s head a quick twist, snapping his neck.
A priest gathers together a group of monks in a nearby monastery. If they are to stop Moloch they must act quickly, and form the Circle of Kayless. The priest opens the large book he is carrying, revealing its blank pages, and begins the ritual.
Moloch drops Carlo’s dead body, and looks around. He senses that something is happening.
”By the power of the Circle of Kayless, I command you, Demon. Come!” says the priest. “I command you. Come!”
Moloch struggles against the power drawing him, trying to resist it. He screams.
“Come!” shouts the priest.
Moloch suddenly disintegrates into millions of tiny particles, which swirl away into the night.
“Come, Demon! Come!” shouts the priest.
The particles of Moloch fall into the open book. Writing in an ancient script appears on the pages. The priest closes the book. “Pray this accursed book shall never again be read.” he tells the monks gathered around him and places the book into a large wooden box. “Lest the Demon Moloch be loosed upon the world.” He seals the lid.
Sunnydale California, 1997
Buffy looks inside the wooden box that has recently arrived in the Sunnydale High library. “Oh great, a book.”
Giles hasn’t had a chance to look at it yet, and tells Buffy to put it in the pile with the other new arrivals. “Uh, when I’ve examined it, you can, uh, skim it,” he tells Willow.
“Scan it Rupert,” says Jenny Calendar, the school’s computer science teacher. “That’s ‘scan it.’” Giles does not appreciate her correction. “Oh, I know, our ways are strange to you, but soon you will join us in the 20th century. With three whole years to spare!”
Miss Calendar is supervising a group of students who are scanning several of Giles’ books into computers as part of a project for their computer science class. The group includes Buffy, Willow, Xander, and a couple of other guys from the computer science class: Fritz and Dave.
“Ms. Calendar, I’m sure your computer science class is fascinating,” says Giles, “but I happen to believe that one can survive in modern society without being a slave to the, um, idiot box.”
“That’s TV,” says Miss Calendar. “The idiot box is TV.” She points to the computer. “This is the good box!”
“I still prefer a good book.”
“The printed page is obsolete,” says Fritz. “Information isn’t bound up anymore. It’s an entity. The only reality is virtual. If you’re not jacked in, you’re not alive.” He gets up from the table and leaves the library.
“Thank you, Fritz, for making us all sound like crazy people,” says Miss Calendar. She thinks he does have a point though. More email is being sent daily than regular mail, and more digital information is passing through the telephone network than conversations.
“That is a fact that I regard with genuine horror,” says Giles.
“I bet it is,” says Miss Calendar. It’s getting late, and she tells the kids that they can wrap things up for today. Willow has just a couple of books left to do, and says she will stay late to finish up. She asks Xander if he’d like to stay with her.
“Are you kidding?” asks Xander.
“Yes,” says Willow. “It was a joke I made up.”
“Willow, I love you, but bye!” Xander hurries to catch up with Buffy, who is already on her way out of the library.
Giles stays behind too, planning to do a little cleaning up. He starts back into the stacks. “I’ll be back in the Middle Ages.”
“Did you ever leave?” asks Jenny.
Willow finishes up alone in the library. The last book she scans is Moloch’s. She doesn’t notice that after she scans each page the symbols written on it disappear. Willow shuts down the scanner and leaves the library. The computer monitor goes blank. “Where am I?” appears on the screen.
Buffy catches up with Willow in the hallway and asks her who she was talking to on the phone all last night. She had tried to call her. Willow tells Buffy she was up all night talking with her new boyfriend.
Buffy instantly wants more information. “Does he go here? What’s his name? Have you kissed him? What’s he like?”
“No. Malcolm. No. And very nice,” says Willow. She first met him shortly after they completed the scanning project in the library.
“You are a thing of evil for not telling me this right away!” says Buffy.
“Well, I wasn’t sure there was anything to tell,” says Willow, “But last night! We talked all night, it was amazing. He’s so smart, Buffy, and, and he’s romantic, and we agree about everything!”
“What’s he look like?” asks Buffy.
“I don’t know!” says Willow, and leaves for her computer lab.
That confuses Buffy a bit, so she follows Willow into the computer lab. Willow explains that she met Malcolm online, and they have been talking through their computers.
When they get to Willow’s computer in the lab she discovers that she has a new email message from Malcolm. “I’m thinking of you,” is all it says.
“He’s so sweet!” says Willow. “What should I write back?”
“Uh, Willow, I think it’s really great that you have this cool…” Buffy looks at the computer screen. “…pen pal, but don’t you think you’re kind of rushing all into this? Y’know what I mean?”
“‘I’m thinking of you, too!’” says Willow. “No, that’s incredibly stupid!”
“Will, down girl! Let’s focus here, okay? What do you actually know about this guy?”
“Oh, see, I knew you’d react like this,” says Willow.
“Like what?” asks Buffy. “I just want to make sure you’re careful, that’s all. He could be different than you think.”
Moloch has been watching Buffy and Willow through the video camera on Willow’s computer. He accesses the school records looking for Buffy. When he finds her file he transfers it to Fritz, who is working on another computer in the lab. “Watch her.” 1
Willow tells Buffy about her new boyfriend. “His name is Malcolm Black, he’s eighteen, he lives in Elmwood, which is about eighty miles from here, and he likes me!” Buffy still wishes that she knew more about Malcolm, such as what he looks like, but Willow isn’t interested in that. “That stuff doesn’t matter when you really care about each other. Maybe I’m not his ideal either.”
“Hey, I’m just trying to make sure that he’s good enough for you,” says Buffy. “I think it’s great that you met someone.”
Miss Calendar has been checking the computer usage logs. She has noticed that Fritz and Dave have been clocking a lot of hours lately. She asks Fritz about it.
“New project,” says Fritz.
“Ooo, will I be excited?” asks Jenny.
“You’ll die.”
Willow walks past a boy who’s sitting on the steps outside the school. He’s checking out the report he’d written on his laptop computer. “This isn’t my report! ‘Nazi Germany was a model of a well ordered society?’ I didn’t write that! Who’s been in my files?”
Willow runs into Xander. He wants to know if he’ll be seeing her at the Bronze tonight. She tells him no, she is planning to stay in.
Xander knows what that means. “Oh, Malcolm, right. Yeah, I heard. But you’re going to be missing out. I’m planing to be witty. I’m going to make fun of all the people who won’t talk to me.”
“That’s nice,” says Willow. “Have a good time!”
Buffy comes up behind Xander, and they watch Willow leave. “She certainly looks perky,” says Buffy.
“Yeah,” says Xander. “Colour in the cheeks, bounce in the step. I don’t like it. It’s not healthy. So, are you going to the Bronze tonight?” He doesn’t wait for a response. “Oh, probably not, you probably have some vampire slaying or some lame endeavor like that, don’t you? Everyone deserts me.”
“Check out the jealous man!” says Buffy. She thinks Xander is jealous of Willow’s new boyfriend.
“Oh, that’s meaningless drivel,” says Xander. “I’m not interested in Willow like that.”
“Yeah,” says Buffy, “but you got used to being the Belle of the Ball.”
Xander says that isn’t what’s bothering him. It’s just that they don’t know anything about this Malcolm guy. “I mean, sure he says he’s a high school student, but I can say I’m a high school student.”
“You are,” says Buffy.
“Okay, but I can also say that I’m an elderly Dutch woman,” says Xander. “Get me? And who’s to say I’m not if I’m in the elderly Dutch chat room?”
“I get your point!” says Buffy. “I get your point. Oh, this guy could be anybody. He could be weird, or crazy, or old, or… He could be a circus freak. He’s probably a circus freak!”
“Yeah,” says Xander. “I mean, we read about it all the time. Y’know, people meet on the net, they talk, they get together, have dinner, a show, horrible axe murder.”
“Willow, axe murdered, by a circus freak. Okay, what do we do?” Buffy realizes how paranoid she’s getting. “What are we doing? Xander, you get me started! We are totally overreacting!”
“But it’s fun, isn’t it?” asks Xander.
Fritz watches a series of equations flash by on his computer screen that evening. “I’m jacked in. I’m jacked in,” he says over and over as he carves an “M” into his arm with an Exact-O knife.
Buffy is putting on her shoes for gym class when Willow comes running into the locker room. Willow is out of breath, and she’s late. She tells Buffy she slept in.
“Till fifth period?” asks Buffy. “Talking to Malcolm last night?”
Willow can see that Buffy doesn’t approve. “I don’t understand why you don’t want me to have this. I mean, boys don’t chase me around all the time. I thought you’d be happy for me.”
“I just want you to be sure,” says Buffy. “To meet him face to face. In daylight, in a crowded place with some friends. Y’know, before you become all…obsessive.”
“Malcolm and I really care about each other,” says Willow, “Big deal if I blow off a couple classes.”
“I thought you said you overslept.”
“Malcolm said you wouldn’t understand.”
“Malcolm was right.” Buffy closes her locker, and leaves.
Buffy finds Dave in the computer lab. She asks him if he can help her find the origin of an email message. Dave tells her he can look up the sender’s profile, based on their email address.
“But they write the profile themselves, right?” asks Buffy. “And so they can say anything they wanted.”
“True,” says Dave.
“Wow! I had knowledge!”
Buffy wants to trace the actual location of the computer that sent the message.
Dave thinks that’s an interesting challenge until he finds out whose computer Buffy wants to track down. “Leave Willow alone. That’s none of your business.”
Buffy jumps to a conclusion. “Dave, are you Malcolm?”
Dave turns back to his computer and starts to type. “Of course not.”
“Dave, what’s going on?” asks Buffy.
Dave doesn’t want to talk to Buffy anymore. He tells her he has work to do.
“So do I,” says Buffy. Fritz watches her leave from his own computer in the lab.
Buffy talks to Giles about Willow’s strange behaviour. It isn’t just Willow. Fritz, Dave, and several other students involved with computers are all acting weird lately.
“Those boys aren’t sparklingly normal as it is,” says Giles. He has come to trust her instincts about such things, but doesn’t really have any ideas for how to follow up on her suspicions. He is out of his element when it comes to computers. “Now, if it were a nice ogre or some such I’d be more in my element.” He suggests that Buffy follow Dave to see if he’s up to something.
“Follow Dave?” asks Buffy, “What? In dark glasses and a trench coat? Please. I can work this out myself.”
Dave gets in a car outside the school, and drives off. Buffy watches him go. She’s wearing dark glasses and a trench coat.
Buffy follows Dave to CRD Research Labs. She watches through the chain link fence as he talks with a man in a lab coat there. Moloch spots her on one of the security cameras, and relays the image to Fritz.
“She’s too close,” says Fritz. “What do I do?”
“Kill her.” orders Moloch.
“Party,” says Fritz.
Buffy meets Giles and Xander back in the library, and tells them about what she saw. Xander recognises CRD as a computer research company which had shut down a year ago. His uncle used to be a janitor there. They still don’t have any clue about what may be going on though. Giles suggests that whatever it is may be legitimate, but Xander doesn’t think so. If CRD had reopened it would have made the news.
“Besides,” says Buffy, “I can just tell something’s wrong. My spider sense is tingling.”
“Your spider sense?” asks Giles.
“Pop culture reference,” says Buffy. “Sorry.”
Giles doesn’t have any other ideas, short of breaking into the place. That sounds like a good plan to Buffy. Xander agrees. They start out of the library.
“A moment, please, of quiet reflection,” says Giles. “I do not suggest that you illegally enter the…” He pauses when he sees Miss Calendar coming through the door. “…data into the file so the book will be listed by title as well as by author.”
Jenny is there to check the database she and the students set up for Giles. She figures he hasn’t been near it yet.
“I’m still sorting through the chaos you left behind you,” says Giles.
“Hm.” Jenny notices Buffy and Xander. “You’re here again? You kids really dig the library, don’t you?”
“We’re literary!” says Buffy.
“To read makes our speaking English good,” says Xander.
“We’ll be going now.” Buffy grabs Xander and drags him away with her. “Makes our speaking English is good?” she asks under her breath.
“I panicked, okay?”
Willow chats with Malcolm on her computer. He tells her they should meet soon. She’s nervous about the prospect, but Malcolm isn’t.
“That’s what Buffy doesn’t understand,” types Willow. “How comfortable you can make me feel.”
“Buffy just makes trouble.” says Malcolm. “That’s why she got kicked out of her old school.”
Willow is puzzled. “How did you know that?”
“It’s on her permanent record.” says Malcolm. Willow doesn’t like that answer. She gets more puzzled, and doesn’t respond. “You must have mentioned it.” says Malcolm.
“I guess,” types Willow, but she’s not convinced. She tells Malcolm she has to sign off. He doesn’t want her to, but she logs off her computer and shuts it down.
“You’re a snob!” says Jenny.
“I am no such thing,” says Giles.
“Oh, you are a big snob! You think that knowledge should be kept in these carefully guarded repositories where only a handfull of white guys can get at it.”
“Nonsense! I simply don’t adhere to a, a knee-jerk assumption that because something is new, it’s better.”
“This isn’t a fad, Rupert!” says Jenny. “We are creating a new society here.”
“A society in which human interaction is all but obsolete?” asks Giles. “In which people can be completely manipulated by technology? Well thank you, I’ll pass.”
Jenny sits down on the library table. “Well, I think you’ll be very happy here with your musty, old books.” She notices the Book of Moloch, still lying out on the table, and opens it up.
“These musty old books have a great deal more to say than in any of your fabulous web pages,” says Giles.
“Hm.” Jenny flips through the book. “This one doesn’t have a whole lot more to say.” She shows Giles the blank pages. “What is it, like a diary?”
Giles is puzzled. He still hasn’t looked at this one. He closes the book and sees the picture of Moloch on the cover. He doesn’t like what he sees.
“What is it?” asks Jenny.
“Uh, nothing. A diary, yes. I imagine that’s what it is. Well, it’s been so nice talking to you.” Giles heads toward his office with the book.
“We were fighting.”
“Must do it again sometime,” says Giles. “Bye, now.”
Buffy passes by the school nurse as she’s talking with an administrator. The nurse is frantic. “I checked the computer, and there’s nothing in his file about being allergic to penicillin!”
Dave comes up to Buffy and apologises for the way acted yesterday. He tells her that Willow was looking for her. She said she’d be in the locker room. Buffy is happy to hear that. She has been wanting to talk to Willow.
Buffy goes into the locker room. She calls for Willow, but she doesn’t get an answer. She hears the shower running and goes to look, but the shower is empty.
“This is how droughts get started.” Buffy goes into the shower to turn off the water. She doesn’t see the electrical wires on the shower room floor. Dave appears and shouts a warning. Buffy looks down and sees the wires just as the water reaches them. She leaps as the electricity arcs. Buffy lands out of the shower and looks down at her boots. They’re smoking. Dave runs away.
Dave returns to the computer lab. He tells Moloch that what they are doing isn’t right. He isn’t going to help him any more.
“I’ve shown you a new world, Dave.” says Moloch. “Knowledge, power. I can give you everything. All I want is your love.”
“No,” says Dave. “This isn’t right. None of it is.”
A new window appears on the computer screen, and Moloch begins to write in it:
I’m sorry. I’ve been a terrible person. I’m a coward, and I can’t go on living like this. Forgive me, Mom and Dad. At least now I’ll have some peace. Remember me.
Love, Dave.
Dave backs away from the computer. He doesn’t see Fritz waiting in the shadows.
Buffy sits in a chair at the table in the library. She’s told Xander and Giles what happened.
“I’m going to kill Dave!” says Xander.
“He tried to warn me,” says Buffy.
“Warn you that he set you up?” asks Xander. He asks Giles if Buffy is going to be okay.
Giles thinks Buffy’ll be fine, she was only grounded for an instant, but if she had been anyone but the Slayer…
Buffy has something more important on her mind. “Tell me the truth. How’s my hair?”
“It’s great!” says Xander. “It’s your best hair ever!”
“Uh, oh, yes,” says Giles. Actually, Buffy’s hair looks kind of frizzy.
“I don’t understand what would make Dave do a thing like that,” says Buffy.
“I think perhaps I do.” Giles shows them the book. He explains how in the dark ages souls of demons were sometimes locked in books. The demon would remain dormant in the book until someone read it aloud. “Unless I’m mistaken, this is Moloch, the Corrupter. A very deadly and seductive demon. He draws people to him with promises of love, power, knowledge. Preys on impressionable minds.”
“Like Dave’s,” says Xander.
“Dave, and who knows how many others,” says Giles.
“And Moloch is inside that book?” asks Buffy.
“Not anymore.” Giles shows them the blank pages.
“You released Moloch?” asks Xander.
“Way to go!” says Buffy.
“I didn’t read it! That dreadful Calendar woman found it and it was already blank.”
Buffy and Xander are puzzled. You’d think that a giant horned demon walking around town would get noticed, even in Sunnydale. And why use Dave to set up Buffy? If Moloch is so powerful why didn’t he just do it himself?
“I don’t know,” says Giles. “And I don’t know who could’ve read that book. It wasn’t even in English.”
Buffy is starting to get suspicious. “Where was it?”
Giles tells Buffy that the book was in the pile with the books that had been scanned. He begins to figure it out too. The scanner brought Moloch out of the book as data to be absorbed.
“He’s not out here.” Buffy points to the computer. “He’s in there. He’s gone binary on us.”
“Okay,” says Xander. “For those of us in our studio audience, who are me. You guys are saying that Moloch is in this computer?”
“And every computer connected to it by a modem,” says Buffy.
“He’s everywhere,” says Giles.
“What are we going do?” asks Xander.
Knowing it is much too late—and probably futile—Giles suggests that they delete the file that the book was scanned into from the library computer. Buffy moves over to the monitor and turns it on. Not being sure which file it is, she drags Willow’s entire data folder to the trash.
Moloch appears on the computer screen. “Stay away from Willow. It is none of your business!”
“So that’s what Malcolm looks like,” says Buffy.
“So much for delete file,” says Buffy.
Giles thinks that this is very bad. Xander isn’t too worried about it. How much can Moloch do from inside a computer?
“You mean besides convince a perfectly nice kid to try and kill me?” asks Buffy. “I don’t know. How about mess up all the medical equipment in the world?”
“Randomize traffic signals,” says Giles.
“Access launch codes for our nuclear missiles,” says Buffy.
“Destroy the world’s economy,” says Giles.
“I think I pretty much capped it with that nuclear missile thing.”
“Right,” says Giles. “Yours was best.”
Xander is convinced, the question now is what do they do about it? Buffy wants to start by finding Willow.
“What does he want with Willow?” asks Xander.
“Let’s never find out,” says Buffy. She’s going to go check the computer lab. She tells Giles and Xander to try calling Willow at home.
Buffy goes to the computer lab. She doesn’t find Willow. She finds Dave’s body hanging from the ceiling, with his “suicide note” pinned to his chest.
Buffy returns to the library just after Xander gets off the phone from trying to reach Willow. He didn’t get any answer, but it wasn’t busy either, so she isn’t online. Buffy tells them about Dave.
Buffy decides that she and Xander will go look for Willow. She tells Giles to find some way get Moloch out of the net.
“I have records of the ceremonies,” says Giles, “but that’s for a creature of the flesh. This could be something completely different.”
“Then get Miss Calendar,” says Buffy. “Maybe she can help you.”
“Even if she could, how am I going to convince her that there’s a demon on the internet?”
That’s not Buffy’s problem. Giles can ask for Miss Calendar’s help, or figure it out on his own. She takes Xander and leaves the library.
Willow arrives home to an empty house. She goes to her room and puts her backpack on her bed. Her computer beeps for attention. “You have mail.”
Willow activates her email program and sees that there’s a message from Malcolm waiting for her. “No more waiting. I need you to see me.”
Willow shuts off her computer. She turns away and starts to unpack her books from her backpack. Her computer turns itself back on. “You have mail,” it says.
The door bell rings before Willow can figure out what is going on with her computer. She goes to answer it, thinking that her father has forgotten his keys again, but when she opens the door, there is no one there. She turns to go back inside and Fritz appears and grabs her from behind.
Fritz places a cloth over Willow’s mouth and nose. “No more waiting.”
Giles is researching binding rituals in his office. The radio news is reporting on several computer errors taking place around the world. Jenny Calendar shows up at his office door. She got his message that he needed to see her.
“Um, thank you for coming,” says Giles. “Uh, I need your help. But before that, um, I need you to believe something that, um, you may not want to. Uh, there’s, uh, something’s got into the, um, inside, um…” He realizes that there’s really no good way to say this, so he just blurts it out: “There’s a demon in the internet.”
“I know,” says Jenny.
Buffy and Xander arrive at Willow’s house, and find the front door open. They go to her room and see the email message from Malcolm still on her computer screen. They guess she has been taken to CRD.
“You already know?” asks Giles. “How exactly is that?”
“Come on, there’ve been portents for days,” says Jenny. “I mean, power surges, online shutdowns. You should see the bones I’ve been casting. I knew this would happen sooner or later. I mean, it’s probably a, a mischief demon, y’know, like Kelcor, or—”
“It’s Moloch,” says Giles.
“The Corrupter? Oh, boy. I should’ve remembered.”
Giles is surprised by her unexpected knowledge. This isn’t the sort of thing that he would expect a computer science teacher to know.
“Wrong, and wrong, snobby,” says Jenny. “You think the realm of the mystical is limited to ancient texts and relics? That bad old science made the magic go away? The divine exists in cyberspace, same as out here.”
“Are you a witch?” asks Giles.
Jenny shakes her head. “I don’t have that kind of power. ‘Technopagan’ is the term.”
Whatever Jenny Calendar is, Giles definitely needs her help. “What’s in cyberspace at the moment is less than divine.” He has the binding rituals for Moloch, but he is completely out of his idiom when it comes to computers. Jenny hopes she can help.
The phone rings. It’s Buffy. She tells Giles about Willow being taken. She and Xander are outside CRD now. Giles tells her that he and Miss Calendar are working to get Moloch offline.
“Here’s a tip,” says Buffy. “Hurry!”
Willow wakes up in a lab at CRD. She sits up and looks around.
“Welcome my love. I can’t tell you how good it is to see you.” says a voice from the shadows. “With my own two eyes.”
Moloch steps out of the shadows and Willow gets her first look at ‘Malcolm.’ The people at CRD have built a robotic body for Moloch, mimicking his demonic form in metal and plastic.
Fritz and one of the CRD lab techs take hold of Willow’s elbows, and pull her toward Moloch.
Moloch is thrilled with the new world he has found himself in. All the world’s information is flowing through him, but it is good to have a body again. To be able to walk and touch again. He places his hand on top of Fritz’s head. Fritz looks ecstatic from the pleasure of his master’s touch. “To kill.” Moloch gives Fritz’s head a twist, and snaps his neck.
Buffy jumps down off the fence surrounding CRD. Xander falls off it right behind her. She helps him to his feet, and they head toward the back entrance. Buffy kicks open the back door, and they enter CRD. Moloch sees them coming through the security cameras.
Jenny lights candles in preparation for the binding ceremony in the library. The first thing they have to do is form the Circle of Kayless.
“Form a circle? But there’s only two of us,” says Giles. “That’s really more of a line.”
“You’re not getting it, Rupert. We have to form the circle inside.” Jenny sits down at the keyboard and begins to type. “I’m putting out a flash. I just hope enough of my group responds.” She is betting that Moloch won’t notice what they are doing until it is too late.
“Hoping and betting, that’s what we’ve got,” says Giles.
“You want to throw in praying? Be my guest,” says Jenny.
Willow wants to know what Moloch wants from her. Moloch says that he wants to give her the world. She was the one who brought him out of the book, gave him life again. He wants to repay her.
“By lying to me?” asks Willow. “By pretending to be a person? Pretending you loved me?”
“I do!” says Moloch.
Buffy punches out the guard on the security desk. Xander notices Willow along with Moloch and another man on one of the security monitors. The label on the monitor tells them they’re in Lab 02.
“Don’t you see?” asks Moloch. “I can give you everything! I can control the world! Right now a man in Beijing is transferring money to a Swiss bank account for a contract on his mother’s life. Good for him!”
Buffy and Xander reach the door to Lab 02. It’s locked, and it’s too solid for Buffy to break open. They start looking for another way in. The lights go out, the doors at the ends of the corridor lock, and alarms start blaring.
“What’s going on?” asks Xander.
Buffy looks around the corridor which is now illuminated by the emergency lighting, and notices the video cameras on the ceiling. “The building’s security system is computerized.”
“Whoops!” says Xander.
Nozzles on the ceiling start to fill the corridor with gas.
Jenny has almost gathered enough people online to begin the ritual.
“Couldn’t you just stop Moloch by, by entering some computer virus?” asks Giles.
“You’ve seen way too many movies,” says Jenny. She finally has her circle built. “You read. I type. Ready?”
Giles starts to read the binding ritual for Moloch, and watches over Jenny’s shoulder as she types.
Buffy tries again to break open the door into the lab, as the corridor fills with gas.
Willow asks Moloch to let her go, but he refuses. He says that he loves her. “Don’t say that!” says Willow. “That’s a joke! You don’t love anything!”
“You are mine!” says Moloch.
“I’m not yours!” says Willow, “I’m never going to be yours! Never!”
Moloch looks away, and considers what Willow has said for a few seconds before looking back at her. “Pity!”
Giles reads the ritual: “By the power of the circle of Kayless, I command you…” He looks over Jenny’s shoulder and sees what she’s typed. “Kayless, with a ‘K.’”
Xander is starting to pass out from the gas, and Buffy is weakening. She keeps trying to break open the door.
Moloch grabs Willow and places his hand on top of her head. “I’ll miss you.”
Willow screams.
“Demon come!” commands Giles, and Jenny types.
Moloch releases Willow and cries out in pain.
“I command you!” shouts Giles.
As the binding ritual begins to take effect Moloch loses control over the electronic locks. Buffy gets the door open. She runs into the lab, followed by Xander.
Buffy gives Moloch a drop kick, which makes him stagger back a bit, but it doesn’t really do any damage. “Ow! Guy’s made of metal!”
The lab tech grabs Xander and pulls him away.
Moloch is too distracted by what Giles and Jenny are doing to worry about Buffy now. “No! I won’t go back!”
Buffy grabs Willow and they head for the door.
“Demon, come!” commands Giles. Sparks flash from the computer monitor, and a wind blows through the library.
Moloch continues to fight the pull of Giles and Jenny’s spell. Xander punches the lab tech, and follows Buffy and Willow out of the lab, happy that he got to hit someone. Moloch falls to his knees.
The computer monitor flashes several colours, and the wind begins to subside. The monitor goes dark. All of the candles have been blown out.
“He’s out of the net,” says Jenny. “He’s bound.”
Giles opens the Book of Moloch and looks at its pages. They’re still blank. “He’s not in the book.”
“He’s not in the book.” Jenny looks around. “Well, where is he?”
Moloch’s robot body gets back to its feet.
Buffy, Willow and Xander run down the corridor, and open the doors at the end. They see a security guard and a couple of lab techs running toward them. They close and lock the doors. Xander starts to run for the other end of the corridor. Moloch smashes through the wall between him, and Buffy and Willow. Xander tries to get back past him, but Moloch swats him aside.
Buffy attacks, swinging a punch at Moloch, but it has no effect. He swats her down as easily as he did Xander. “I was omnipotent. I was everything! Now I’m trapped in this shell!” He reaches out toward her.
“Malcolm!” yells Willow. Moloch turns to look at her. She’s holding a fire extinguisher. “Remember me? Your girlfriend?” She bashes him in the chest with it. “Well, I think it’s time we break up!” She hits him again. “Or maybe we can still be friends!”
Willow swings the extinguisher at Moloch a third time, but this time he catches it and pulls it away from her. He grabs Willow and throws her down the corridor into Xander, who had just managed to get back on his feet. They both sprawl onto the floor together.
Willow’s intervention has given Buffy time to get back to her feet. Moloch turns back to her. “This body’s all I have left. But it’s enough to crush you!”
Buffy has a quick look around. She sees an electrical box on the wall and steps in front of it. “Take your best shot.”
Moloch swings a punch at Buffy, and she ducks out of its way. Moloch’s fist goes into the electrical box.
Electricity arcs through Moloch’s body, and he screams in pain. Buffy runs down the corridor to where Willow and Xander are still on the floor, and covers them both with her body as Moloch explodes. Robot parts rain down around them. Moloch’s head lands at their feet.
Giles drops by Jenny’s classroom, and knocks on the door. He seems reluctant to actually enter it.
“Well, look who’s here!” says Jenny, “Welcome to my world. You scared?”
Giles is remaining calm. He just dropped by to return a corkscrew pendant that he found in the library. He figured it was hers. He hands it over and starts to go again.
“Can’t get out of here fast enough, can you?” asks Jenny.
Giles stops, and turns around. “Truthfully, I’m even less anxious to be around computers than I used to be.”
“Well, it was your book that started all the trouble, not a computer,” says Jenny. Giles doesn’t really have anything to say about that. Jenny asks him what it is about computers that bothers him so much.
“The smell,” says Giles.
“Computer’s don’t smell, Rupert.”
“I know!” says Giles. “Smell is the most powerful trigger to the memory there is. A certain flower or a whiff of smoke can bring up experiences long forgotten. Books smell…musty and rich. The knowledge gained from a computer, is, uh… It has no texture, no context. It’s there and then it’s gone. If it’s to last then the getting of knowledge should be tangible, it should be…smelly.”
“Well!” says Jenny, “You really are an old fashioned boy, aren’t you?”
“Well, I don’t dangle a corkscrew from my ear,” says Giles.
Jenny smiles. “That’s not where I dangle it.” She walks out the door.
Buffy, Willow and Xander sit by the fountain in the school courtyard. Xander wants to know if they’re going to the Bronze tonight, have a little fun.
Willow isn’t in a fun mood. She’s still thinking about Malcolm. “The one boy that’s really liked me, and he’s a demon robot. What does that say about me?”
“It doesn’t say anything about you,” says Buffy. “Hey, did you forget? The one boy I’ve had the hots for since I’ve moved here turned out to be a vampire.”
“Right!” says Xander. “And the teacher I had a crush on? Giant praying mantis? That’s life on the Hellmouth.”
“Let’s face it” says Buffy. “None of us are ever going to have a happy, normal relationship.”
“We’re doomed!” says Xander.
“Yeah!” says Willow, and they all laugh. Then they all stop laughing.
| Who or What | Where | How |
|---|---|---|
| Carlo | Cortona Italy, 1418 | Neck broken by Moloch |
| Dave | Sunnydale High computer lab | Hung by Fritz |
| Fritz | CRD Labs | Neck broken by Moloch |
| The demon Moloch | CRD Labs | Electrocuted by Buffy |