On The Surface Tension Page 13

  “So who the hell are you, me bey?” the cowboy eventually asked.

  Jeremy didn’t know what to say. He pointed up, then towards the edge of the cliff some distance away.

  “Oh, don’t speak English?” drawled the cowboy.

  Jeremy narrowed his eyes. “Oh I speak English. Wait, how the hell do you speak English?”

  The cowboy unhurriedly regarded him, mostly skeletal hand on the saddle horn, while his horse drank. “Where you from, ‘lil heller? Up there or over the cliff?”

  “Both. In that order.”

  “Earth?”

  Jeremy nodded.

  “Us too,” said the corpse.

  “How did you get here?”

  “Same as you I reckon.”

  “How long you been here?”

  “Me? 142 years. ’Bout when she took me, they needed cattlemen too. So they buffaloed a few of these lads, got ’em drunk and dragged ’em all rufazrats through a hole in a mine into this world. Must have told the rest of the townfolk we were killed by Indians or something. Then they needed blacksmiths, tanners, butchers, whores, you name it, and started takin’ them too. It was a rough town, so they probably said they were gunfightin’ or who knows. Anyway, we been cattlemen for them painted-face hive people yonder across the plains ever since.”

  Jeremy’s mind raced.

  “Why aren’t you dead?”

  “What, never seen a zombie before? I ran afoul of the sponge, went back in time to hide from her. She found me, a’course, then took me here to keep me in eternal rotting torment by not giving me my baths often enough to keep me my byootiful self.”

  Jeremy did not know what to make of that, so remained silent.

  “So where you from, son? Back on Earth, I mean. You American?

  “Yes, sir,” Jeremy said.

  “Huh. Well, we best go find you a horse.”

  The cowboy twitched the reins, and his horse walked off towards the sunrise. Jeremy considered following him but realized he had no idea how far the cowboy was going, where the next water hole would be, or when he would get back. He trotted after him anyway.

  *****

  Chris pushed the first button, and the chemical injected into the spherical chamber. Technician pointed, she pushed the second button. For the twenty-seven thousandth time. Nearing madness, she opened a channel to Elanor on her praying mantis familiar.

  “What have you found out about my brother?” she asked.

  “Well, it’s interesting,” Elanor answered. “I tracked him to a particular batch of scorpion feed that I sent to the beach the same day you came, and matched his picture to the description you gave.”

  “Ok. And thanks for sending him off to die, by the way.”

  “I didn’t know he was your brother. Or who you were for that matter. Anyway, I sent dragonfly drone cameras all over the area, and I was able to find three of those men still alive. Your brother wasn’t one of them.”

  Chris was silent, clutched with dread.

  “But here’s the thing. The whole area down there is in uproar. Some of the food somehow managed to get themselves armed and kill some of her pet scorpions. That was never supposed to happen. So I saw some soldiers who had been sent in there in a shuttle to try to correct things. Soldiers and their shuttles mean cameras and records. So it seems the soldiers captured some of the food and questioned them, and they said that some new guy had killed the scorpions and, well, climbed the cliff and got away.”

  “Jeremy,” Chris whispered.

  “Maybe. Sort of matched his description, anyway. But the soldiers didn’t believe them. They just confiscated the weapons and broke a few legs so they couldn’t run, then left.”

  “So where would he have gone from there?” Chris asked impatiently.

  “Up on the plateau, in the plains, I guess. Maybe got in with the cowboys.”

  “Cowboys?”

  “Yeah. Eiffelia has been grabbing people from Earth for a long time. This batch got dragged through a rift a few hundred years ago for herding cattle that she uses to feed us. She also gets a lot of her best warriors from them: They send a lot of their young men who they don’t otherwise have skills as conscripts to meet a quota. I dated one of them for a while.”

  “Well, can you send some dragonfly drones in there?”

  “Maybe. They have a town near where your brother supposedly climbed up. I may have to use the drones for something else first, though.”

  “What?” Chris asked, irritated.

  “I tried contacting Valentina 69 to ask when she would be available for our next prayer group meeting, and she didn’t answer. She wasn’t on her TV show, either; they were showing a rerun. Have you heard from her?”

  “Why would I hear from her?”

  “Well, she’s missing. And her daughter is missing too.”

  “Did she get…arrested?”

  “No, Eiffelia doesn’t have her either. The records show she dispatched security people to her place, but Valentina was gone when they got there. It’s like she vanished.”

  *****

  Smithson woke in the dark on cold stone. His limbs obeyed him only slowly, indicating that he was still under the effect of some kind of drug.

  LaGrue! He remembered the meeting with Ron and Strong where LaGrue had convinced Ron to hand over the rift generator, and feeling uneasy about it. After leaving, he was alone on his way back to the dojo along the gravel pathway to put the weapons away when the LaGrue twins stepped out and blocked his path. Alarm bells went off in his head when he noted that not one, but both of them held rift generators. Another pair of LaGrue twins emerged from the hedges farther down the path, and each of them also had generators. He immediately realized what was happening and turned to flee just as the third pair of LaGrues shot him in the neck from behind. The last he remembered was a dimming view of one of them putting a dart gun away.

  Smithson felt the stones on the floor, found a crack. He followed the crack in the dark until his hand struck a metal bar. He found the next one, then the next. In short order he discovered that his steel-barred cell was roughly ten feet square. The lock on the door was a pin and tumbler, but his concealed lock-pick set had been removed along with his other clothing to be replaced with paper coveralls like the Stripes wore. He sat down cross-legged on the cold stone and waited.

  He did not wait long. An overhead light flickered on to reveal that the cell he was confined in was in an aircraft hangar-sized stone room. LaGrue, or what looked like him mounted on a robotic body, approached.

  “Where’s the rest of you?” Smithson asked.

  LaGrue raised an eyebrow. “You catch on quickly. Yes, there are more than two of me now, in spite of your having grown accustomed to seeing me in a pair. He was only around because we went into the parallel universe and we met up. We went from pair, to quartet, to octet, and now we are legion. Allow me to demonstrate.”

  LaGrue tapped on the display of the rift generator, and then suddenly there were eight identical LaGrues standing there. “You see, all one needs to do is jump a few nanoseconds into the past, where I will still be standing before I jumped. The two of us then jump ahead and back to double us again, and again, then all eight of us return to the original coordinates, and all eight of us have rift generators.”

  “So you figured out the cheat code,” Smithson nodded. “Have you found out its weakness?”

  “Weakness?” all eight of the LaGrues spat in unison. “Let us tell you of our weakness. We have been able to go back in time, amass wealth and supporters, build universe-scaled empires, and become the most rich and powerful beings in those universes. We have built fleets of starships, each powered by a duplicate rift generator and captained by one of my Others, and waged war on Eiffelia on an inter-universal scale. And you call that weakness?”

  A slow smile spread across Smithson’s face. “And have you beaten her?”

  The LaGrues issued eight identical grunts of disgust. “No, we are thwarted at every turn, because he
r minions can also duplicate rift generators and go back in time in each universe to counter each of our moves. We of course go back further to counter theirs, they counter ours, ad nauseum. Thousands, maybe millions now, of universe branches where all we can do is go farther and farther back to try to destroy each other. We are deadlocked.”

  “Aha. So you are the alien enemy that she has been at war with all this time.” Smithson paused, remembering back to the meeting at the base in Seattle where LaGrue was pondering the nature of the galactic scale wars going on, unaware that it was a future version of himself waging it. “That is what I meant by the weakness of using the rift generator cheat code like you did. You’re stuck, warring with a sponge who can think independently with each cell while you try to match her duplicate you for each cell, both trying to out-jump each other in the past and destroy each other, and neither able to do anything else.”

  The LaGrues scowled. “Yes. But we can break the stalemate by finding more Pangborn gene carriers and keeping our universes intact while collapsing hers.”

  “Let me guess,” Smithson said. “You want me to help you find Ron.”

  “Oh no, we know where he is. He’s trapped in Hell like he deserved. He’s just one carrier, though. We need many. We want you to help us convince the Mods to help us get out of this deadlock by giving us the Pangborn gene so we can duplicate into as many carriers as we need. They can help me defeat her.”

  “You’ve probably tried to do your little jump duplication trick while grabbing hold of a gene carrier. You’ve obviously discovered that this won’t duplicate them too.”

  “Of course. It didn’t work. It must be a peculiarity of the gene that it keeps the carrier from duplication. There can be only one of each carrier, no matter how many jumps or universe bubbles. I’m sure Eiffelia has tried that as well.”

  “So what makes you think that if the Mods somehow gave you the gene in a bottle that it wouldn’t just keep you from duplicating?”

  “We have to try. Experiment. Hybridize. Maybe since we weren’t born with it we could still duplicate and keep the genes intact.”

  “And if I refuse to help you?”

  “We’ll kill you.” The LaGrues smiled.

  “Well, that won’t do you any good, will it?”

  “We’ll just jump back in time and try again. It would be just like saving a game and repeating the scene until the speech check is passed. Eventually we’ll hit on the correct wording to get you to agree, even if the chances of success for each try are one percent.”

  “You’ve already done this,” Smithson realized. “How many times have you killed me?”

  “You are indeed quick.” The LaGrues laughed. “Does it matter? Do you want to be the next?”

  Smithson felt a pang in the pit of his stomach but refused to let the LaGrues see his fear. LaGrue was right: He could have relived this scene and killed him many times. He forced himself to calmness, and to think. But the effect of eight LaGrues speaking in unison was disorienting.

  “However many of me you have murdered, we must have all told you the same thing: The gene doesn’t work that way. The gene was created as a sort of cheat code in itself to counteract the effect of the rift generator cheat code.”

  “Created? By who?”

  “You could say ‘the Developer.’”

  “Is the Developer a Mod?”

  “No. The Mods are from the same place, though. And the Mods don’t work that way, either. They just don’t appear when we snap our fingers or call. They initiate the contacts.”

  “Yes, so you have said. But from where?”

  Smithson blinked.

  “Look, Smithson, I know you have some kind of ‘relationship’ set up with these Mods creatures. Some kind of super-secret club of inside cool-kids with little tridents. And I know you have mentioned some kind of training program, and you have started Tracey on this.”

  “And?”

  “And so we want you to tell us what you know about them so we can use a rift generator to go to wherever they are and negotiate with them.”

  “They aren’t anywhere your rift generator can take you to.”

  “Why not? They are capable of taking us to any point on any branch that ever was.”

  “Have you been able to jump to one of those ‘Otherwhen’ sites? Like the floor between floors at the office building in Seattle?”

  The LaGrues looked puzzled, then one of them manipulated his rift generator and vanished. He reappeared moments later.

  “No,” that LaGrue reported. “I was able to walk into the building and the elevator but could not jump to it from either place.”

  Smithson waited while the LaGrues walked away to discuss the ramifications of this. They approached him after they finished.

  “Explain,” one of them demanded.

  “Look, LaGrue, I’m really sorry. You have grandly and intricately messed up your entire life. I’m not sure you can fix this short of just throwing in the towel.”

  “Explain.”

  Smithson exhaled with exasperation. “You have already had it all explained. The Mods told you what it was all about way back there in Seattle. You just didn’t accept it because you labeled it as ‘supernatural.’ It is, in the sense that it is a truth beyond the natural laws as they exist in this time-space continuum.”

  “There is nothing beyond this time-space continuum, by logical definition,” said a LaGrue.

  “Spoken as a true character in a movie who doesn’t realize that someone is holding the DVD he is on right before they put it back in the movie player and run the thing. Or a fighter-mage character in a Dungeon Throne game who doesn’t realize that he is really a twenty-something kid playing online with his friends.”

  “That is an unacceptable explanation. If someone is holding a DVD, or a game controller for that matter, they are themselves in a universe line, and unless there is some inherent limitation in the rift generator, that universe can be accessed like any other. I can only deduce that the rift generators are inherently flawed by design since they cannot access the ‘Otherwhen’ line.”

  “Otherwhen isn’t a universe line like the one we are in now. Or like Hell, for that matter. It isn’t a branch or the trunk. It is the ground where the tree grows. It isn’t a bubble but instead the ocean it is suspended in. But beyond both, metaphorically speaking, is the sky. And that is where the Mods are.”

  Smithson watched carefully while the LaGrues calculated this data.

  “We are going to need further explanation,” one of them said. If the Pangborn Gene was inserted by the Developer to counter the ‘cheat code’ of the rift generator, how did the rift generator enter the universe to begin with? Did the ‘Developer’ err in his design?”

  Smithson considered his answer. If I tell them the truth, will they change course and solve this thing? They are intelligent enough to grasp the implications and are breaking the ground rules already. And if I don’t, I might end up dead and have to make this decision again when he ‘reloads’ this scene.

  “Ok, LaGrue, I’ll tell you the history here, but I doubt you’ll believe it. It is admittedly pretty fantastic. How to begin? Have you ever wondered why almost every culture on Earth has mythology that is remarkably consistent on many fronts? How they have magic, wizards, witches, dragons, elves, trolls, all that stuff? Well, that’s because once upon a time, long ago, that was real.”

  The LaGrues regarded him quietly, each with one eyebrow raised.

  “I told you this was hard to swallow. Anyway, back when the world was young and players first entered this great Massive Multiplayer Game from beyond, the rules were more fluid. The Developer and Players were co-creating as they still do, but they were loosey-goosey and played with…well, played as dragons and wizards and inter-dimensional tinker elves and golems and animated armor suits and talking animals and you name it. The good Players got better and better at utilizing magic. They ‘leveled up,’ you might say, and became incredibly powerful and immortal, whi
le the less-skilled players had a harder go of things, and life for them got a bit more dreadful over time. You know, cannon fodder and serfs serving omnipotent dark lord masters and all that. For a long time, they lived with that as good story elements. Eventually it got worse, so they petitioned the Developer for relief. He sent The One to save them from the evil master. You know how that myth went. Hooray, the world was saved! Well, eventually another evil master dark lord of dread power arose, and another hero was sent. This one became the next dark overlord. The cycle repeated and repeated. The minions petitioned again, saying, ‘Hey this game is getting less and less fun,’ so eventually the Developer called a big meeting to settle the problem. Call it ‘The Council of Eden’ or something. The Developer said this kind of gameplay was not in the original design. It wasn’t structured enough to make a good storyline, so the fun and learning were limited because they weren’t balanced as he originally designed. Half of the players wanted to continue playing no-holds-barred crazy, saying the fun outweighed the learning. The other half also disagreed with the Developer and said the learning should outweigh the fun. The Developer said, ‘Ok, as you wish,’ and then made a separate universe branch that would run alongside the main one, where the players called the shots and did most of the creating. Players who wanted to do that style could go there, and those who wanted the more arduous path would stay in this world, now bereft of magic by way of mutually agreed-upon ground rules. These ground rules meant no more magic. And not only that, but the memory of how things were, with the magic and super powers, would be relegated to myth and legend only. ‘What if we change our mind and want to go to the no-rules zone?’ asked the Stayers. ‘I’ll leave rifts, holes to the other world,’ said the Developer. ‘You will retain myths of that other world, called Faerie, or Hell, or Valhalla, or whatever, to be available in various places that are difficult to find but findable to those who really want to get to the other side.’ ‘What if we change our minds and want to play hardcore mundane?’ asked the Goers. ‘Well, we can’t have you coming back and remembering how to do magic—that would defeat the purpose,’ said the Developer. ‘So I will leave a rift generator in the hands of a special band of created beings in your world, so if you want to return you can do so in such a way that would erase the version of you that has those memories.’ So he created the rift generator and recruited the lawn gnomes to guard it in their sacred mountain, tasking them to return players who changed their minds to the regular world by way of leaving them as amnesiacs or infants under cabbage leaves and such. So that is how it went. For a while. Because there’s always one bad apple. One of the players, over in Hell, decided she knew better and wanted to control the mundane world, like the good ol’ days. She whispered lies and deceits into the ears of one of the sacred gnomes and convinced him to plant her with her knowledge intact in the mundane universe long, long ago in history as a sponge. She grew powerful over the eons, even without the active magic, and the gnome with his stolen rift generator became her first servant. He couldn’t hang around to face the wrath of the other gnomes, of course. They’ve been seething about it and wanting their rift generator back ever since. Once the Developer started losing a few universe lines, he had to inject the Pangborn gene as a line of code to keep them from collapsing. Eiffelia has been hunting down and killing the carriers that she couldn’t convert ever since. So here we are today.”