On The Surface Tension Page 19

  “‘Yes,’ said Jack. ‘But we are the ones with the golden invitations.’

  “And they went inside.”

  Tracey sat in silence.

  “That’s it? That is the end of the story?”

  “Yup,” said Smithson. “Or the beginning rather.”

  “What happened next?” asked Tracey.

  “They danced, of course,” said Morrow.

  Tracey pursed her lips. “Well I’m sure that is deep and all, but I don’t get it. That was the most pointless ending to a story I have ever heard.”

  “You’ll get it eventually. We are all either currying favor or favoring curry,” said Smithson.

  Tracey squinted her confusion. “So that’s it? They dance and in the morning she dies?”

  “Who said anything about her dying?” asked Smithson.

  “You said she loses her life!” Tracey protested.

  “You can lose your life and not die,” Morrow said quietly. “She just didn’t go back to her old life in her little cottage.”

  Tracey snapped her mouth shut. “Ok. It appears that I need an explanation of this parable. Jesus did that for his disciples, didn’t he?”

  “Oh fine,” said Morrow, rolling his eyes. “The woods are the real world, where we are before coming into this world to live our lives. The real world is ruled over by the king God, his son the prince that he sent into our world to show the way and dance with us for a while, and the queen who ties them together with the kingdom. The Ball is this universe, our current reality, in which we come to experience, learn, and interact through and for love.”

  Tracey mulled this over, slightly dizzy and overwhelmed.

  “And the animals? They watch us on tv?”

  “Oh boy, do they ever watch!” said Smithson.

  “How creepy. Don’t they have their own lives there in the eternal forest beyond time and space?”

  “Of a sort,” said Morrow. “They do have time and space, but it is fuzzy and indefinite. What they lack, and why they tune in to the Ball, is the power of story, their own human story.”

  “Wait, so they can only go to the Ball if they are human? I thought Jane said she saw animals at the Ball too. Was she invited because she was human?”

  “Of course they can go to the Ball as animals. The world is full of them, is it not? And who said anything about Jane being a human?”

  “Yeah,” said Smithson. “She was a crocodile.”

  “Crocodile?” said Morrow. “That’s not how I heard it. She was a rhinoceros!”

  “Animals can be more human than many humans, and vice versa,” explained Smithson.

  “Enough!” Tracey pleaded. “I am on myth overload and will need to digest this for a long time. For now, though, I still don’t feel the magical power to conjure up a rift generator.”

  “Not conjure,” corrected Morrow, “but dream. And not in the sense of sleeping dreaming, but weaving into reality without conscious effort. More like unspoken praying. Let the power of the story transform the universe, because the universe is itself the story.”

  “Well ok then,” Tracey said with a terse smile, frustrated. “Why not stop with a rift generator, why not just ‘story the universe’ into having my kids come back without having to go find them too?”

  “Now you get it!” said Smithson.

  Tracey snorted. “Why don’t I just call them on my cellphone? They’re probably at my house right now.”

  “Yes, do that!” said Morrow, raising his eyebrows.

  Tracey regarded him as though he had actually just told her to call her house and find Jeremy and Chris there with a rift generator. She fussed around the room, looking for her purse. An icy feeling gripped her stomach with the thought that she would call her house and they might actually answer. She found her purse and fished out the phone.

  “I’m calling right now,” she said, voice wavering.

  “Good!” said Smithson, cheerfully smiling.

  She dialed her home number. It rang three times.

  “Uh—hello?” said Chris’ voice.

  Tracey stammered.

  “Ma? Is that you? Jeremy and Cornish Bob are coming soon; they are hiding the ship in the woods for now. Where are you?”

  Tracey fainted.

  —12—

  Ron and Strong stood at the dark maw of the entrance to the extensive cave system inside Underdreck Mountain. They had passed through the Forest of Sighs and the other regions of Dragon Throne World after traversing Historical Mythical Chinese History World, Neverland, and a corner of Oz to get there.

  “Tell me again what is in this cave that we have crossed all creation for?” asked Strong.

  “I have spent countless hours playing Dragon Throne and know every treasure reward for every side quest. In this cave is the penultimate treasure for the King Ermer story line: the Dreamwalker Helm.”

  “Ok. And what does one get once one has attained this artifact?”

  “One gets the ability to see into another’s dreams.”

  “Oh I get it. So maybe you can wear the helmet and walk through the Dream Plains and see into the whirlwinds without jumping in them. Very clever. But if Dragon Throne is like any other video game, and I’ve played quite a few, you are going to have a boss fight in order for it to drop. Am I correct?”

  Ron pursed his lips. “Sure. I think so, but I don’t remember which one it is. I’m sure we can take him, though.”

  Strong snorted. “I wish I could share your confidence! You don’t remember who it is?”

  “Oh come on—even though it is a major boss, I’m a high-level character. I could beat any boss but a team dungeon level master-boss without even switching to my back-bar abilities.”

  “Dude, you don’t even have front-bar abilities! What the hell are you thinking?”

  “How quickly you forget, Strong. I still have the Men in Black gun.”

  “I thought you gave that thing to the soul vampire back at the Gnome Mountain siege! Ok, we are good.”

  Ron produced the small gun from his pocket, and they walked confidently into the mouth of the cave. After a short time climbing down the cave pathway, they saw two goblins lurking in the tunnel ahead. They proceeded more cautiously in their approach. The goblins caught sight of them, and one of them let forth a war whoop and charged. Ron let fly the energy bolt from the Men in Black gun, and the goblin’s charred skeleton and what was left of his armor clanked smoking to the stone floor. The other goblin, to their surprise, did not flee. Instead he too charged them, a look of terror plastered on his face. This goblin’s war cry sounded more like a shriek of fear. Ron fired again, and the second goblin was fried out of existence.

  “Dude! Why did he charge instead of run away?” asked Strong.

  “I think they are just programmed to attack in the game. They probably just felt compelled to charge, against their better judgment. That poor goblin! He had no choice but to come at us, knowing he was going to get incinerated! God, this is horrible. We have a bunch more goblins to get through before the boss fight.”

  “Let’s just get this over with,” said Strong shrugging. “They will respawn.”

  They passed through the cave, burning down goblins as they went, until they came to a large chamber with smoking cauldrons flanking a raised dais. A large goblin with more elaborate armor waited endlessly for players to arrive and challenge him.

  “Hey, big goblin,” called Ron, “why don’t you just give us the Dreamwalker Helmet without us having to kill you?”

  “I wish I could,” said the boss in his gravelly voice, a look of resigned hopelessness in his eyes. “But I have no choice. I am trapped here forever, compelled to fight player characters, get killed, and respawn.”

  “Not forever,” comforted Strong. “Someday, players will stop playing this game, and you can drop from existence.”

  “Oh thank you very much,” the big goblin said sarcastically. “That is so comforting, asshole.” With a mighty roar, he raised his double-
bladed great axe and charged. Ron fried him.

  “Let’s get the helmet and scoot before he respawns,” said Strong. They found the chest without too much searching around, opened it, and retrieved a horned metal helmet.

  “Now we have to get back to the Dream Plains,” said Ron.

  “Does this game have some kind of ‘Boots of Teleportation’? Flying carpet? Instant travel shrines, something like that?”

  “They do have wells where you can jump in and appear at another well on the map, but only within Dragon Throne World. We can get close to the edge of the world that way, but not all the way to the plains.”

  They left the cave, thankfully before the other goblins respawned. A short hike led them to a jump well, but Ron paused before jumping in.

  “What is it?” asked Strong.

  “I dunno—I am not sure this is going to work. Do you remember how many whirlwinds there were on the Dream Plains? How big that area was?”

  “Yeah. I told you before this wasn’t a great idea. Even if by some miracle you find her, what if she forgets the dream when she wakes up? Even if she remembers it and builds the rift generator, how will she find the gold ball thing to power it? Remember, we went over this? I told you this wasn’t going to work.”

  “Then why did you come all the way here with me if it was all a waste of time?”

  “It wasn’t a waste of time. I was spending time with you, my friend. And time is cheap here.”

  Ron sat down on the edge of the jump well.

  “Look, Ron, you might as well enjoy yourself while you’re here. Someday Tracey might find you by some miracle, who knows. But let’s go play in the meantime, since there is absolutely nothing else you can do.”

  Ron pondered. He pursed his lips, tilted his head, and nodded.

  “That’s my boy,” Strong congratulated.

  “Ok, here is a compromise. If Tracey is going to find us, we need to be in a place where she is going to look. And with the infinite number of places she will have to choose from, she will have to start looking for me at a place where she thinks I might be. And given her knowledge of me, she will likely start looking for me right here, in Dragon Throne World. And where in this world would she start looking but the capital city of Zijin? So we will travel to the main square of Zijin and wait for her to find us.”

  “Uh—wait for how long?”

  “Oh, if it is going to happen at all, by her jumping there, it shouldn’t take us more than five minutes for her to show up. I mean she has to figure I will be there, and she will just jump right there at that time. So if she doesn’t show right up, we can just assume she isn’t coming, and we can decide something else.”

  Strong regarded him sideways. “I’m not sure I follow your logic, buddy, but hey, let’s go.”

  They jumped into the well and clambered out of another well in Zijin. They were in a bustling marketplace, with dusty stone pavings, adobe buildings, merchants hawking their wares, and crowds of robed and armored Dragon Throne denizens milling about.

  “Now what?” asked Strong.

  “We wait for Tracey. She should come flying up any minute.

  They waited. Tracey did not appear. A man in red robes and a piebald horse asked if they wanted to make some gold. They refused his quest.

  “So now what?” asked Strong.

  Ron Puzzled. “Maybe if I put on the Dreamwalker Helm? Maybe she is in orbit sleeping.”

  Strong rolled his eyes. “Come on, man, let’s go to Lankhmar.”

  Ron put the helmet on his head. Immediately, he saw the ghostly outline of the bridge of the Glow of Power, the transport ship piloted by Cornish Bob. He saw Jeremy, Chris, Smithson, and, dozing off, Tracey.

  “Hey!” Ron shouted. “Come get me!”

  *****

  Tracey jumped, ripped out of her nap.

  “What the hell!” Cornish Bob growled, grabbing the ship’s controls with one hand and his pistol with the other. They spun around to see a ghostly man with a cartoonishly large horned helmet hovering in their midst.

  “Who the flippin’ floo are you?” howled Cornish Bob.

  “It’s me, Ron!”

  “What the heck is that helmet?” asked Chris.

  “It’s the Dreamwalker Helm—never mind. Just come get me!”

  “Where are you, Ron?” asked Tracey.

  “I’m in the main bazaar in Zijin. In Dragon Throne World!”

  “Where the hell is that?” asked Bob.

  “Funny you should mention Hell,” said Ron. “Hey, is that Cornish Bob?”

  “I know where that is,” said Jeremy. “I’ve played that game a few times. Where is that from space, though? We’ve been floating up here for a few days and—we had no idea how to jump to where you are.”

  “It’s that big world line that goes alongside ours. The one Strong and I were looking at for so long. Open up the rift generator screen. Just jump there; Bob can help you. Find Dragonclaw Mountain,” Ron said. “It looks like a giant…dragon claw. Then go west.”

  “We’ll find you. Just stay tight,” Tracy reassured.

  *****

  “Dude, I can’t believe that worked.”

  “I—me too!”

  “So you’re going to go back?”

  Ron sat down on the edge of the dusty well. A monkey in a fez carrying an orange ran by, chased by a shopkeeper.

  “I have to. I have a real life back there.”

  Strong nodded. “Yeah, I get it. I don’t. Not much of one anyway. I probably would have chosen to stay here even if I didn’t have to by way of dying.”

  “Sorry about all this,” said Ron, clasping Strong on the shoulder.

  “Sorry? Why sorry, man? Shoot, I’m going to be here for a million years, if I don’t get tired. I can always quit if I do. But you know what I’m going to do first? I’m going to learn how to fly. To fly! Then I’m going to become a wizard.”

  “Then?”

  Strong pursed his lips, eyes narrowed. “I’m gonna pull a Kwai Chang Caine and wander the Earth. Or the Hell. Whatever.”

  “Well this is goodbye, then,” said Ron. “I have a feeling we will see each other again someday.”

  “Not in this world, but the next!” said Strong with a grin.

  They scanned the skies for any sign of a fiery reentry. There was none. Minutes passed.

  “Any time now, Tracey!” said Ron.

  “She vill not be coming,” said a voice near their knees.

  Ron and Strong nearly jumped out of their skins. It was one of the lawn gnomes, the one with the German accent.

  “She has been arrested. So has her son and daughter, and your great grandfather. And the long missing escapee, Eiffelia.”

  They stared at the gnome, dumbfounded.

  “And their ship has been impounded. You vill now accompany me for trial.”

  Ron and Strong silently regarded the gnome, then each other. They shrugged in unison, acknowledging that they had no other options.

  The gnome led them through the dusty streets to a nondescript wooden door. He indicated that they enter.

  Ron and Strong did and found themselves in a dripping stone-walled jail cell, complete with thick iron bars. They turned back to the wooden door but it had vanished.

  Their eyes accustomed themselves to the dim, and Ron saw Tracey, Chris, Jeremy, and Cornish Bob seated around a rough-hewn oaken table on rustic wooden chairs. Crouched in a corner was a small, pale woman Ron did not immediately recognize. There were several flying pickles lazily circling the air.

  “Tracey!” Ron squeaked breathlessly.

  They embraced tightly, Tracey with a worried expression.

  “What happened?” asked Strong.

  “I’ll tell you what happened, me bey,” Cornish Bob drawled. “We dropped out of the jump and had just started plotting a course to your teasey Dragon Dong Mountain. These flying pickles showed up, which should have given us some warning. Then one of those red-hatted dwarf bastards appeared on the bridge. I t
ried to jump us out of there, but the little bugger had pinched our rift drive!”

  “Yeah, they did that to us too,” said Ron with a pained look. “Who’s that over in the corner?”

  “That, my dear, is Eiffelia,” Tracey said with a dagger glance. “She was our other surprise. Once the ship dropped back into her old universe, the little chunk of sponge that Bob had broken off back at her planet reconstituted into her real form.”

  “Good thing I had taken it out of me pocket!” chuckled Bob.

  “And he wasted no time in taking advantage of the situation,” said Jeremy.

  “How’s that?”

  “I shot her in the forehead,” said Cornish Bob.

  “That wouldn’t kill her here, man. This is Hell,” said Strong.

  “Yeah, so we found out. Made a mess of the bridge, but she healed up.”

  “Anyway,” continued Tracey with a grimace, “the little gnome guy said we were under arrest for possession of an unauthorized rift device, and we were suddenly here. Awaiting trial. Or something.”

  “Trial? For what?”

  “Like Mom said, possession of an unauthorized rift drive,” said Chris. “We told him that your professor friend was a bit more of an offender in that regard and that he was about to blow up half the universe to try to kill baldy over there in the corner.”

  Ron held up his hand, scrunching his eyes shut.

  “Ok. Slow down. Fill me in on what is going on.”

  They all started talking at once, until Tracey slapped her hand on the table.

  “Allow me,” she said in the resulting silence. She took a deep breath, put her hands in her lap. “You handed your rift drive to Professor LaGrue. He is intelligent, but mentally unstable, and has only his interests at heart. He exploited the inherent ability of the rift generators by the holder to make unlimited copies of themselves, then returned the original one to you so you and Strong could make the trip to Hell. LaGrue, meanwhile, used the multitudes of his clones and the rift generators each of them held to contend with Eiffelia for control of the universe lines. Then Smithson had a talk with him. To LaGrue’s credit, he was convinced that his course of action was leading to widespread misery and pain, including his own. To his detriment, though, his solution to this problem was to blow up as many outposts of Eiffelia as he knew about by driving the rift generators into the systems’ stars, causing them to supernova. So right now there are hundreds, if not thousands of stars about to blow, taking the LaGrues, and however many planets full of human or nonhuman slaves out with them. And instead of stopping them, we are trapped here in this stone cell construct in Otherwhen.”