On The Surface Tension Page 15

  “So where is my body that fell asleep and is having this dream? I am still back there in my bed, right?”

  “Nope. You are you, right here.”

  “But I have a physical body back there too. Am I a new duplicate?”

  “You only have a body there if you choose to wake up there instead of here. Think of it like an old saved game that you can load back up. You can keep playing this saved game version the rest of the way. You are physically here, more so than there. And at the risk of really scrambling your eggs, this is not the first time you have done this. Just the first time you have done it intentionally. Your recessive gene, in a way, is just as powerful if not more so than the full gene like Ron has. He can keep universes from collapsing, but you can change them from the inside through dreaming.”

  “So I can dream of flying and shooting lightning bolts from my fingers and have it really happen?”

  “No. There are still the Ground Rules. You could do that stuff if you were in the Orange Line, but not in our reality. If other co-creators saw that, the Blue Line covenant would be invoked and the game would reboot at a point before you pulled magic off. That is why you just can’t dream Eiffelia out of existence. But you can do things that aren’t impossible. Miracles can happen to you if they are possible. Hence I am a human being, and Smithson is a martial arts expert. He didn’t always have that past, you know. He retroactively created that. He just woke up one morning and had a past where he was a SEAL and learned to be a ninja.”

  “So I can make a past where I was a concert pianist or a master assassin or something, because that is possible. But I can’t be Supergirl because it’s impossible.”

  Morrow nodded.

  “But you said when I got here that getting Ron out of Hell was impossible.”

  “It’s not that kind of impossible. I said it would take a miracle.”

  Tracey took a deep breath and narrowed her eyes, thinking for a long time.

  “So what do I need to dream?”

  Morrow smiled, nodded. “Now we’re talking. Good work.”

  —9—

  Ron squinted into the digital binoculars at the Sacred Gnome Mountain’s fortifications through the arrow slit in the stone walls a mile beyond the Gnome border. The assault of the prior day had breached the castle walls after crossing the poison and lava moats but had been repulsed by the lightning drones. Their own walls had been hastily raised in defense against the Gnome bombardments of molten lead shot, plasma cluster bombs, and tungsten flechettes,

  “What are the little bastards doing?” asked Strong.

  Ron shook his head. “Can’t see. They’re pretty small, and the trolls they have defending are well camouflaged. Have the Saxons and Space Marines finished respawning?”

  Strong grunted. “Yeah, the ones whose bodies we could recover. Who knows what the Gnomes are doing with the rest. I still think we are wasting our time. But if you insisted on trying, we should have recruited better back at the War Zone. If you had been willing to tell them that this was to recover the rift generator ball, we might have talked Superman or Thor or those wizards from—what did they call it? Propilandria or something?—into coming.”

  “I still disagree, Strong. If some superhero or powerful group gets its hands on a rift generator, what would stop them from keeping it instead of giving it back to us?”

  “Hmm. The ones we got may be worse, though—they just came along for the mayhem.”

  A Viking and a seven-foot-tall Bigfoot creature approached them, climbing up the small hill to the concrete bunker where they stood, dodging from cover to cover behind shattered stone walls and craters. Ron and Strong remembered the odor this time and surreptitiously affixed water-soaked bandanas across their faces as the two approached.

  “Hail Golden and Strong!” the Bigfoot said with an oddly unfitting high-pitched, melodious voice.

  “Yes, uh, greetings!” said Ron. “What tidings?”

  “We have devised a plan to neutralize the lightning drones by placing a dark energy and necrotic mana-charged arcing Tesla field generator near them,” said the Bigfoot. “The pulse will travel along their control and navigation energy field and jump from unit to unit. It should take them all out in one stroke.”

  “We just need to get it close enough without getting killed,” said the Viking.

  “Let’s send in a shapeshifter,” said Strong. “He can creep in looking like a blowing piece of debris or something.”

  “Yeah. Blow in some other debris as extra cover,” said Ron. “Whatever can cross the trenches without getting stuck.”

  “And once the lightning drones are down, will you authorize an all-out assault this time?” urged the Viking.

  Ron nodded. “Why not. Let’s send the lot this time; they can always respawn if they run into some new, sneaky defense. Just make sure we recover as many bodies as we can this time. Coordinate with the orbital bombardment from the dreadnought class star cruisers and air cover from the Spitfires and levitating laser cannon platforms. Might as well throw in the flying monkeys with paralysis wands. And a phalanx of war cats with Splatter Casters.”

  “No Splatter Casters,” warned the Bigfoot. “They will hinder the Phoenician Venom-Slingers.”

  “Very well,” Ron sighed. “Then use Gush Clusters. And maybe an Ouroboros Mine. We attack at dawn.”

  The Viking leered his approval and strode off to arrange the offensive.

  Strong exhaled sharply and turned away.

  “You don’t think this is going to work, do you?” asked Ron.

  “No. Look, there are still…things that I have not talked about from that time I got fried and respawned myself. I told you when you were recruiting soldiers for this campaign to recover your rift generator that it wouldn’t work. I’m telling you again you are wasting your time.”

  “Right. And are you going to tell me this time why that is?”

  “I told you, I can’t. That was part of the deal.”

  “What deal?”

  “Again, can’t say.”

  Ron threw up his hands in frustration.

  “Look, your cryptic commentary is not helping. I have to get that rift generator back to get out of this hell and to get Tracey’s kids out of theirs. So either help me, tell my why you can’t, or get out of the way.”

  “I said I would help, and I am helping. I’m just also saying that you are wasting your time.”

  “The only time I’m wasting is talking to you, apparently. You know what? Maybe I should just get myself killed too so I can respawn with this super-secret squirrel knowledge that you have.”

  “No. Don’t do that, buddy. Bad mistake.”

  “Yeah? Why?”

  “You wouldn’t be able to leave.”

  Ron opened and closed his mouth, stunned. “Wait, what? What do you mean? If you die and respawn here you can’t leave? Does that mean you can’t leave here?”

  “That was part of the deal. Well, it’s part of the deal for everyone here. But I can’t disclose that.”

  Ron sat down against the stone wall and held his head in his hands.

  “You can’t leave? You’re stuck here?”

  “Yeah. But frankly I probably would have chosen to stay here whether I had gotten killed or not.”

  Ron shook his head incredulously. “How can you say that? Your life is back in the real world.”

  Strong considered his response carefully. “This is the real world too. Look, I can tell you this much. It is going to sound really crazy, though. I know it did when they told me.”

  Ron waited.

  “Ok, you remember what the Elf and Dwarf said to us earlier about this being a world made by humans? Well it is now, but it was not always that way. A long time ago, our universe and this one were intertwined. Back then, we were able to do all the stuff we can do here. Superpowers, magic, the full meal deal. But remember how this is all just a big MMORPG? Well some of the ‘players’ wanted to play in hardcore mode, without all the powers and m
agic and other cheat code stuff. They thought it was getting out of hand and were bored with the lack of challenging game play. The players here disagreed and said that the vanilla mode would be the boring play. So the big ‘dungeon master’ in the sky split it into two games: one hardcore vanilla and the other this one.”

  Ron considered this for a long time.

  “That is the most preposterous thing I have ever heard.”

  “That’s what I said, brother!”

  “So what does this have to do with my rift generator?”

  “That was originally an escape point from here back to our world, left in the hands of the Gnomes to administer. Eiffelia corrupted one of the Gnomes to steal it and bring her back into our universe line with her knowledge intact. She started using it to manipulate universe lines and the ‘Big Programmer’ made us Pangborn carriers as a de-bug code. The Gnomes have been itching to get their rift generator back for a long, long time. We were the first ones stupid enough to use it to come back here, and the Gnomes were waiting for it. So that’s why I think you are wasting your time trying to get it back.”

  “You’re right. That is the most preposterous thing I have ever heard.”

  “Told you.”

  “But wait, if all this is true, what deal did you make and with who?”

  “With the ones in the real world. Where us players come from.”

  Ron squinted, confused.

  “Look, when people in our world die, they have ended that life game. They go back to the reality that exists beyond time, space, and dimension. The world beyond. Then they can either stay there and live whatever it is they live, or play another game. They can live another life game, with no memory of the last game, either in our universe or starting another game here in Hell. If someone who has started a game here dies, they respawn pretty much indefinitely, at least until they want to quit. Permanent death has to be self-inflicted. So when I, as a product of our universe, died here in this one, it put them in a quandary. They had to either adhere to our ground rules and have my game ended, or adhere to the rules here and have me respawn. We worked it out: I would respawn but could not talk to you about anything beyond what you would know. And to hold me to that, they removed any memory of what that was, other than the bare facts about it. So here we are.”

  Ron stared at Strong like he had just admitted he was a ghost.

  “So…hmm. Ok. So how do I ever leave here? How do I get Tracey’s kids?”

  Strong shrugged.

  Ron frowned, stood, and paced the stone room.

  “There is only one thing to do,” he said, and walked with determination out of the room.

  Strong followed, curious. Ron made his way down from the battlement, found the gate, and ordered it opened. He left the fortification and strode boldly towards the Gnome mountain lines.

  “Uh, buddy, they have live ammo!” warned Strong.

  Ron paused, cast about, and observed a detachment of his Dacian warriors guarding some fallen Crusaders as they respawned. He tore the white robe off of one of them and continued his path towards the mountain, waving the white flag over his head.

  They crossed their front lines, bristling with weapon barrels, rocket nose cones, and sensors of every description. The no man’s land was pockmarked with craters and charred ash for a mile, and they crossed it with trepidation. The landscape beyond was bare and rocky, gradually sloping upwards to the heights of the Sacred Gnome Mountain. They continued, half expecting at any moment to be blasted into oblivion.

  “Halt,” grated a voice so deep it seemed to come from the earth itself.

  Ron and Strong stopped.

  “Scan them,” said another gravelly voice. They were enveloped briefly by a barely visible white haze.

  “Unarmed and free of spy devices,” said a third.

  A large rocky section of the hillside detached itself from the ground and formed into a roughly humanoid shape.

  “Troll,” whispered Strong.

  “What business have you on Sacred Gnome Mountain?” it asked.

  “I seek a parlay with the Gnomes,” answered Ron with the slightest quaver in his voice.

  “Wait,” the troll rumbled.

  They waited. After a while they saw a tiny red hat bobbing down the mountain. The animated lawn Gnome stopped ten yards uphill, arms akimbo. He scrutinized them carefully for a full minute.

  “What do you want?” he asked, munching his beard.

  “I want my rift generator back,” Ron answered.

  The Gnome barked out a laugh. “You mean our sacred treasure. The one that was stolen from us in past ages that you graciously and stupidly returned.”

  “It wasn’t me who stole it. I need it back so I can get out of here and get my stepkids back from Eiffelia.”

  “Not our problem,” smiled the Gnome. “So I guess you can get back to wasting your time attacking us. Bigger, better armed, and more imaginatively commanded armies have tried taking the treasure from us before, and they have all failed. You too will fail. This has been mandated from on high.”

  Ron did not know what to say. His face fell.

  “Look, here’s what I can do. Now that we have the treasure back, we can get working on the many hundreds of years’ worth of backlog of getting people out of here to go live in your world. We haven’t been able to do our job without our God-given treasure. I’ll run you right to the front of the line and send you back to your world with a new body and no memory. You can choose grown amnesiac or infant. Infant is the way to go, in my opinion: You get a whole lifetime instead of a partial. Especially useful for an old schmuck like you. Used to be in the old days we would leave ’em under cabbages in the garden, but now your world would find that surprising. I guess we will just start populating orphanages.”

  “No, I need to get back to my world as me.”

  “No dice. Our Sacred Task using our Sacred Treasure from our Sacred Mountain is quite specific. Nobody leaving here can do so with memory of what this realm is about.”

  “Ah, but I haven’t learned any wizardry or gotten any superpowers. Scout’s honor!”

  “Not that you know of, human. But the denizens of this place have weird ways of permeating you. One can catch these things like viruses. No, it’s our way or none. Why so stuck on going back as you anyway? Is your ego so special to you? Just start a new game as a new character.

  Ron examined the diminutive Gnome closely. He detected no trace of pity or flexibility in the small, bearded face. The Gnome was a force of nature.

  “No thanks. I’ll be back if I ever change my mind.”

  Ron turned and walked slump-shouldered back towards his battle lines. Strong wrapped an arm around him.

  “So, what do you wanna do now, buddy? Should we go to Middle-earth? Arrakis? Ringworld? Tatooine? Maybe we should learn some wizarding first—”

  “Give me a damn minute, Strong, will you?”

  Ron puzzled all the way back through the troll-occupied no man’s land.

  “I have it. The way out!”

  “Do tell,” said Strong, surprised and somewhat disappointed.

  “The dream plains! We go back there and find Tracey while she’s having a dream. She dreams a lot, you know.”

  “Well, that sounds like the longest of all long-shots in the history of all long-shottery. You know there are millions and millions of people who ‘dream a lot.’ And besides, in the entirely unlikely event you happen to stick your head into a dream whirlwind and find it to be Tracey, what then? What is she going to do?”

  “She’s going to build a new rift generator. Back when I was trapped in Eiffelia’s base at the bottom of the ocean, I got a visit from Pops’s ghost. He told me that the papers he was working on were plans for making a rift generator. Those plans are still in my old house where I was starting to clear his stuff up but was procrastinating. All Tracey has to do is go home and follow those diagrams.”

  Strong raised his eyebrows in surprise.

  “You got a vi
sit from a ghost?”

  “I know it sounds crazy. But is it any less crazy sounding than blowing this off and riding a magic carpet to Earthsea to learn wizardry?”

  “You have a point.”

  “So now we just have to find Tracey in one of her dreams and tell her where the blueprints are.”

  “Hold your ponies, my optimistic friend. It will be one thing to build the generator, but where are you going to get the golden orb to power it? You plan on surrounding a star with a gold shell and collapsing it with a stasis field to the size of a marble?”

  “Why not? Hell has all kinds of advanced space-faring civilizations here. All we gotta do is find one and get them to build us a gold marble.”

  “Then why didn’t the gnomes just do that? Why did they need our gold marble from the rift generator? I’ll tell you why, compadre: It’s because the part that you can build using your Pappy’s plans isn’t the hard part.”

  Ron’s shoulders sagged.

  “It’s ok, buddy,” said Strong, patting Ron on the back. “It isn’t so bad. You wanna go drink something blue at the Creature Cantina?”

  “No, thanks. I want to wait for Tracey.”

  “That would take a miracle, my friend.”

  “Exactly.”

  *****

  Jeremy ran after the rotting cowboy until he could no longer keep up and then stopped, winded, hands on his knees. The cowboy kept trotting towards the horizon, without a backwards glance. Jeremy followed the hoof prints until darkness, then huddled into the grass to pass the cold night as best he could. He resisted the temptation to expect coyote calls, being another planet instead of a cowboy movie.

  At dawn he resumed his track, the hoof prints still clearly visible. Two hours after sunrise, he heard the beat of hooves again, and the cowboy appeared holding the reins of another saddled horse.

  “Thought we could get there faster if you were mounted, compadre,” the cowboy drawled.

  Jeremy gratefully but clumsily mounted, having never ridden a horse before. Within minutes of his horse following the other rider, his kidneys were jarred and his bottom battered. No amount of shifting in the saddle worked for long.