THE
MORGENDORFFER
CODE
©2010 The Angst Guy (theangstguy@yahoo.com)
Daria and associated characters
are ©2010 MTV Networks
Feedback (good, bad, indifferent, just want to bother me,
whatever) is appreciated. Please write to: theangstguy@yahoo.com
Synopsis: Imagine a Daria
crossover involving Dan Brown’s thriller, The Da
Vinci Code. Now imagine you’re about to read it.
Author’s Notes: Brooklyn33 posted a PPMB Iron Chef challenge at the end
of May 2004, asking for the strangest, most impossible-sounding crossovers in Daria fanfiction. And so was born this
tale, which probably should have never been written.
Acknowledgements: Thank you, Brooklyn33!
*
The truth
serum that Daria Morgendorffer put into her mother’s coffee that morning was
tasteless, odorless, and colorless, and it would be eliminated from Helen’s
system in only a day’s time. Best of all, it induced amnesia in its victims
after putting them to sleep for an hour or two, caffeine notwithstanding. Helen
would remember nothing of what Daria had asked her, or
what Daria’s reactions had been upon learning the mind-blasting secret that
Helen had kept hidden all these years.
Daria imagined
her mother would also appreciate that the truth serum was nonfattening, but
that was a moot point next to the reality that had been brought to light.
Unable to stay a moment longer in her home and listen to her mother snore, head
down on the kitchen table, Daria fled outside into the pouring rain for the
only source of comfort she knew.
“All right, all right!”
Her
rain-soaked condition forgotten, Daria stepped back and eyed her best friend,
who was clothed only in a bathrobe. “Sorry,” she said. “Didn’t
know you were in the shower.”
“Looks like
you’re still in the shower,” said Jane, pulling Daria inside and
shutting the door. She continued to rub her hair with a bath towel. “Thought you were
Daria didn’t
mind. She began her tale of revelation and horror on the spot, the words
spilling out in a torrent. Mesmerized, Jane forgot to finish drying her hair
and finally sat on the couch in the living room, her mouth open and eyes glazed
with shock.
“Well,” said
Jane when Daria finished, then said nothing else for a long moment. “Well,” she
repeated.
“Yeah,” said
Daria, pulling at her wet clothing.
“So, let me
get this straight, even though I’m sure I never will. Quinn is really your
half-sister, not your full sister.”
“Right.”
“You drugged
your mom this morning—congratulations on that, by the way, and remind me to
never take an open bottle or drinking glass from you—you drugged your mother,
and she confessed that, nine months before Quinn’s birth, she had an affair
with a visiting French professor while at a legal seminar at a university in
Austin, Texas, and Quinn was the result of that affair.”
Daria nodded
violently. “Right, right, right.”
“And this
professor claimed to be a descendant of the family that founded Paris, the Mero-something—”
“Merovingian dynasty.”
“Right, the Mero-somethings, and your mom said he had red hair and a
red beard, hence the red-haired half-sister, and lately you’ve been reading
this book that revealed a lot of other things about the Mero-somethings,
and suddenly a bunch of stuff fell into place in your mind, and it was so
exciting that it made you dope up your mom and forget to take your
antipsychotic medication this morning.”
“Jane, I swear
to you that I’ve researched this as thoroughly as any human could possibly—”
“You say
‘human’ as if you were excluding Quinn from that category.”
Daria raised
her hands in the air in exasperation.
“Okay, okay!”
Jane shot back. “I get the point! But honestly, aren’t you really just trying
out a weird alternate-history story plot to see what my reaction is? Please say
yes.”
Daria jumped
to her feet and began to pace the living room. “Look at the evidence!” she
said, her normally deadpan expression mixed with agitation. “One: Quinn’s true
paternal parentage, and thus her ancestry—”
“If any of
that stuff is true,” Jane interrupted.
“It’s true!
She has the same red hair as her distant maternal ancestor!”
“Assuming
Leonardo da Vinci got it right when he painted The
Last Supper, per your comments earlier.”
“Two,” Daria
went on, “her name, Quinn, has five letters, five being the key number for the
female principle, but one syllable, indicating unity, the One. And that pink
tee she always wears with the yellow smiley face—pink, the basic feminine
color, on which is printed a benevolent pagan sun symbol!”
“Daria,” said
Jane, looking disturbed, “you need to try decaf once in a whi—”
“Three: her
fixation on angels. She still thinks she has a guardian angel following
her around, and she probably does! Nothing bad ever happens to her, unless it
also brings her growth and maturity, so even then nothing bad has
happened to her! Don’t you get it? She’s really and truly blessed!”
“Sure,” said
Jane in a calming tone. “I get it. Of course I get it. Put down the letter
opener.”
“Mom couldn’t
possibly have known about that professor’s full ancestry, yet she gives my
half-sister the name Quinn, which is similar to the Latin word for five, just
like the letters in the name itself! The female principle!”
“Just like Ms.
Li!” said Jane brightly. “Or did you mean some other high-school principal?”
“Jane!”
“All right, all right! Go ahead,
toss some more word salad for me.”
“And then
there’s the Q document that the
“With a Q, like Quinn. Right.” Jane
thought for a moment. “You told me once how unfair it was that Quinn’s name
actually meant ‘wise’ in Gaelic.”
Daria exhaled
heavily and took off her glasses. “Boy, that kills me.
Quinn the wise. The hell of it is,
she’s getting wiser. She’s not the airhead she once was. It’s like she’s
evolving, changing, growing.”
“Sort of what
teenagers are supposed to do, right?”
“Not like this
one,” muttered Daria, pacing again.
“That’s sort
of funny,” Jane went on, “because you can rearrange the letters of ‘Quinn’ to
make ‘IQ nun.’ It’s sort of like she’s spiritual and smart at the same time. Funny, right?”
Stopping dead
in her tracks, Daria slapped a hand over her eyes and swayed. “Oh, my God,
you’re right! It does!”
“Daria, that was a joke! Heck, I could have said that Joey,
Jeffy, and Jamie have been following her around since forever because her name
means ‘wise’ and that makes them the Three Wi—”
“Don’t say
it! Don’t you dare say it!”
“—uh, er, wasn’t going to. Wasn’t going to say
a thing. Nope, not me. Although their names do
begin with J and have two syllables, just like—” Jane caught Daria’s glare
“—just like no one I can think of right now.”
“And there’s
her first serious crush,” Daria said in a low voice, beginning to pace again.
She put her glasses back on.
“That was her
tutor last year, right? David—oh, crap.”
“David
Sorenson. A Jewish guy finally brought her into a glimmering of romantic
maturity. A Jewish guy named David! Like King David! Like her most distant—”
“Okay, I get
it! Okay!”
Daria
collapsed exhausted into a nearby chair. “All my life, the person who has been
the biggest thorn in my side, my own sister, has also been . . . she’s the . .
.”
Jane nodded,
trying to be helpful. “The, uh, direct descendant of, uh . . .”
“Yeah, that one, and her, the, uh, other one.”
“The one that was supposed to be a hooker.”
“But wasn’t, according to my research.”
“What book did
you get this from? And what fumes were you inhaling when you read it?”
A sour look
crossed Daria’s face. “Go ahead. Play devil’s advocate.”
“Oh, you are
the witty one, aren’t you?” Jane slumped back against the sofa. “What about
your last name?”
“Morgendorffer? It’s German for something like ‘morning
villages.’”
“That’s a sun
reference—you’re aware of that, right?”
Daria groaned.
“I am now. ‘Morning villages.’ That’s almost like
saying, ‘the community of the sun.’ And one day she’ll lead it. She’s got the
charisma part down cold. Every boy in school is wrapped around her finger, and
every girl wants to be her best friend. Except Sandi Griffin.
Got to have Judas in there somewhere. Quinn will lead
the world, and I’ll be a footnote in the lost apocrypha for the next Bible.”
“Daria! Listen to what you’re saying! You’re talking about
Quinn as if she was about to become the next messiah, and—Daria, Quinn’s your sister!
She’s family! Well, sort of. I mean, think about it!”
“I could start
a satanic cult,” Daria said, looking glum.
“You could,
but if you really believe all this, you could also write her life history and
become rich. Didn’t you once tell me that ‘Daria’ meant ‘wealthy’? And you
could be canonized as a saint one day, like Saint Leibowitz in that whatever
book.”
“That was
science fiction. And he was martyred first.”
“Which is pretty much what you’re doing to yourself.” Jane
sighed and stood. “Look, this has gone far—”
Someone else
knocked at the front door. Jane tightened her bathrobe around her and went to
open it. “Speak of the devil,” she said as she looked outside, then winked at Daria. “I see the rain’s finally over. Come
in, Quinn.”
“No, thanks,
just here for a moment,” said Quinn, wearing her usual pink tee and jeans. “Is
Daria around? I wanted to let her know I’m going to the mall and she should go
home and watch Mom because she seems to have tied one on this morning before
she went to work, instead of having a Slimfast
breakfast.”
“Wise of you
to tell us,” said Jane with a grin. Daria joined her at the door.
“I’ll be home
in a minute, Quinn,” said Daria. She looked past her younger sister and noticed
a waiting car by the curb with three teenage boys in it, all watching Quinn
with awestruck eyes.
“Great,” said
Quinn, “because there’s a sale on seamless robes at
Cashman’s. Jeffy, Joey, and Joshua are driving me over.” With a toss of her
bright red hair, she waved good-bye and walked down the puddle-filled sidewalk
to the street—
—but not once
did her feet make a splash. Quinn’s shoes never sank below the surface of any
puddle. She got into the waiting car and was driven away.
Daria let out
her breath in a long sigh and glanced at the pale, shaken face of her best
friend. “You know,” she said, her old demeanor returning, “if
you paint her pictures and I write her life story, we could use the money to
fund our satanic pizza cult.”
Jane recovered
and licked her lips. “Why would pizza be satanic?” she asked faintly.
“Cheese is
fattening.”
“Oh. Yeah.” Jane shook her head. “Can’t have a
heresy without a ‘her.’”
“What’s that
supposed to mean?”
“It just
sounded good. I guess I’d better go find out how icons are made.”
“And I’d
better get a stack of vellum and a calligraphy pen. We’ve got work to do, Saint
Jane.”
Jane nodded.
“As do you, Saint Daria.” And they went back in the house to prepare for the
future.
Original: 07/06/04, modified 11/19/04, 09/18/06, 10/02/06,
11/05/09, 05/12/10
FINIS