On The Surface Tension Page 20

  “You mean that war that we were watching Eiffelia fight? The Demons? The crashed spaceship? The recruiting soldiers on tv with commercials for giant foam penises? That was all against PeeWee?”

  Tracey nodded.

  “And your kids? What happened to them?” Ron asked.

  “Jeremy and Chris are resourceful and managed to get away from her by stealing this ship. Which Bob in turn stole.”

  Ron blinked, taking it in. “So what is the deal with her being here?” he asked, thumb pointing over his shoulder at the small, bald woman in the corner who had been identified as Eiffelia.

  “From what I have learned, she was originally from here. She escaped with the original rift generator long, long ago, and has managed to avoid coming back here in all those millions of years. Now that a piece of her has been returned, she reconstituted from her sponge form to her original body, apparently.”

  “So what happened to the rest of her, back in our universes?” asked Ron.

  Cornish Bob leaned forward attentively. “Ask her,” he said with guarded hostility.

  Ron walked to the corner and regarded Eiffelia. She sat in the corner on the floor, knees to her chest, the top of her bald head trembling. She was dressed in an oversized borrowed pair of papery pants and shirt they had found in the ship storage.

  “So here you are,” said Ron quietly. She said nothing, tears ran down her cheeks.

  “Is this all of you? Or are you still in sponge form back home?” he asked.

  Eiffelia shook her head. “I’m all here. I’m back.” Her voice was the same, in spite of her new looks.

  “Well ain’t that just fascinating,” growled Cornish Bob. “If I had known I could get rid of you so easily by taking a smear o’ you back to ’ell, I’d a done that years ago.”

  “No wonder she didn’t tell you, then,” said Strong. “The surprising thing is that you never thought to try.”

  “You shut the feck up, nerd bey, or you’ll be waiting for an hour for the innards of yer brain pan to crawl back together.”

  “Calm down, Bob,” said Tracey. “Now what happens with all those LaGrues who are about to bomb stars for no reason anymore?”

  A section of the wet stone wall transformed into a wooden door and opened. Professor Langston LaGrue walked through, dressed in a dashing space uniform.

  “Well, speak of the Devil,” said Strong.

  “Hello,” LaGrue said as they stared at him. “They said it was time for me to enter the trial.”

  “Who is ‘they?’” asked Ron. “And what do you mean ‘enter the trial’—you mean it is going on right now?”

  “Yes, it has been going for some time now. For a long time, actually. As far as who ‘they’ are, it is the Gnomes and the Mods.”

  “The Mods?” asked Tracey, suddenly inexplicably terrified.

  “Yes. We met them before, at that meeting in Seattle. Mr. Barman and Ms. Duma, if you might recall.”

  “Oh, right. The old guy and the schoolmarm,” said Tracy, immediately thinking better of her verbal description with a glance at the flying pickles.

  “So what are you doing here now?” asked Jeremy. “Can you get word back to all the rest of you to stop your attacks on Eiffelia’s systems? She’s not there anymore, you know. She’s over in the corner.”

  LaGrue nodded. “Yes, of course. Already done. As I was strapped in the bridge of my ship, waiting for the order to dive into the sun, one of my other manifestations appeared on the screen with a little being in a red hat, and they announced that Eiffelia was gone. The war was over. We were ordered to report to this universe line, which we did. All of our rift generators were surrendered to the Gnomes.”

  “What happened to all of you?” asked Tracey. “You LaGrues, I mean.”

  “We have been judged,” LaGrue answered, suddenly somber.

  “How?” asked Ron.

  “For the crime of theft of a rift generator, for use of that rift generator to propagate myself selfishly, establish a universal scale civilization devoted entirely to myself and my power, and wage war against another such power across time and space, costing millions of lives and endless suffering, my fate is to be left here in Hell until such time as I am allowed to escape. We LaGrues have started off being assigned as the clone stormtrooper army.”

  “Dude, that is awesome,” said Strong.

  “You don’t understand, Jack. It is anything but awesome.”

  Strong threw up his hands. “Of course it is. You get to play forever. For as long as you want, anyway. You get to develop yourself, learn wizardry, magic, superpowers! No limits, man!”

  “There are limits,” said a little voice from the corner.

  They all turned to look at Eiffelia.

  She took a ragged breath and raised her face from her knees where she sat in the corner.

  “It’s why I left to begin with. Sure, it sounds fun, but only so long as you don’t mind losing all the time. I tried to compete in the war zone, but got killed, and killed, and killed. People cheat, you know! They sneak weapons into the no-weapon zone and illegal weapons into the restricted areas. And when you try to protest, they don’t listen and don’t care. I tried some of the voluntary no-magic no-superpower worlds, but people always cheat there too. It was always ‘Oh look at me, I’m a superhero among the mundanes!’ so those broke down too. And it was not just the cheating: It was the fabric of the worlds themselves. They were created by people. The player characters, not the programmer of the other world. The operating system was limited, the granularity much more pixelated. Sure, you could fly if you learned the spell or power, but you couldn’t pick up every coffee cup! Some places you could climb a ladder, some not! You could go to sleep with a yellow sun and wake up with a blue one! Go for a week farming carrots as a serf and then get fried from orbit by a neutron beam and wake up getting chased by dinosaurs. No continuity, no predictability. It was maddening!”

  “So you decided to sneak into our world and be the only one who could cheat,” said Tracey, shaking her head.

  “Yes. And I’d do it again. I will do it again!”

  “I don’t think so,” said LaGrue quietly. “The judgment comes.”

  The damp stone walls and iron bars of their prison cell grew hazy, then faded into darkness. Out of the dark haze came wood-paneled walls, benches, and a raised dais with a heavy, carved desk. One wall had dirty glass windows, with sunbeams streaming through that illuminated motes of dust and warmed the place uncomfortably. It was a courtroom.

  Seated at tables before the dias were Mr. Barman and Ms. Duma. Tracey recognized them from a meeting, seemingly so long ago, in Seattle after Cornish Bob had shot up the town chasing them. Barman was still the dapper balding man wearing his gray suit and tie. His round glasses perched on the tip of his nose. Duma was in the same blue, over-tight dress and apparently still hadn’t time to arrange her hair and make-up. It occurred to Tracey that they were still trying too hard to imitate the appearance of humans. They stood.

  “All rise,” announced Barman. “Court is now in session, the Honorable Arch-Gnome Azaci presiding.”

  A two-foot-tall gnome with red hat and white beard seated himself on a very tall stool before the head table. The gnome slowly surveyed the scene and made eye contact with each one present except for Eiffelia, who looked away. He produced a long, clay pipe, stuffed it patiently, lit it, and took a few puffs in the silent courtroom.

  “Let’s begin,” he intoned in a reedy voice that carried to the far corners of the courtroom. “Start with the escapee.”

  “Yes,” said Barman, adjusting his round glasses. “The prosecution calls for harsh punishment. Hell had procedures in place for those who wished to emigrate to the mundane world, starting over fresh with a clean slate and no powers. You, Eiffelia, chose to ignore them. You chose instead to steal a rift generator from this august body of duly appointed guardians of the pathway between the worlds. You had planned your unauthorized escape well, inserting yourself billions
of years into the past as a lifeform that was virtually immortal, limited only by being forced to control your minions to do your physical will. You failed to maintain adequate safeguards on the rift generator, allowing one to fall into the hands of someone not in your control. As a direct consequence, war on a grand scale ensued and many lives were lost. The grand balance was overturned. All because of your toxic ego. Prosecution recommends that Eiffelia be granted her wish and be placed back into the mundane universe, but as a normal human with her knowledge but no powers. She will then live out the remainder of her life pondering what she has done and what she has lost.”

  “Defense argues instead that she be left here in Hell,” said Ms. Duma. “Her original entry into existence was in this venue. This was her choice, her bargain, her learning path. Why reward her for breaking the grand balance? Return her to her chosen fate here. Give her the chance to learn what she was intended to, or continue her suffering.”

  Arch-Gnome Azaci pondered, rubbing his bearded chin. He took a long puff from his pipe and exhaled a thin blue smoke stream.

  “Her original insertion into this reality stands. Hell it is,” he ruled.

  “No!” cried Eiffelia. She vanished.

  “Whoa!” whispered Strong.

  “Next we turn to Strong,” said the Arch-Gnome, pointing the stem of his pipe at him. “Arguments!”

  “Prosecution recommends, given your prior ruling, that he be returned to his life on Earth. Like Eiffelia, he chose to be born there. And while he did manage to make his way here to hell, and would prefer to stay here—”

  “Very much prefer!” interrupted Strong.

  “—Prosecution would argue that the methods used were not the traditional ones, and his path would still be best served as his bargain was originally entered into.”

  “Defense disagrees,” said Ms. Duma. “There was no fixed way to make one’s way here historically. Transferors could use caves, sea journeys, mind-altering substances, shamanism, and a whole host of other methods to come here. His method is original, but no less valid. He has expressed his desire to play in this set of game rules, and has managed to make his way here.”

  “While that is true,” said the Arch-Gnome, “his original choice carries weight. I see no overriding reason to allow him to make the change at this point, in spite of his technical accomplishment of traveling here. I note by way of dicta that there is precedent for this: Many who have made their way here have either chosen to return or were forced to. You have more to learn there, Jack Strong, before knowingly being able to choose this venue. Back to your life on Earth with you, with only a vague impression of what happened here.”

  Strong opened his mouth to protest, but a withering glance from the Arch-Gnome silenced him. Strong walked to the back of the courtroom and sat on a bench, head in his hands. He then vanished.

  The Arch-Gnome waved the stem of his pipe back and forth between Duma and Barman. “Do either of you have any strong arguments about the fate of Jeremy and Chris, before I sentence them also to be returned to their lives on Earth with no memories of their various adventures?”

  “None,” said Barman.

  “Other than allowing them to retain their memories, none,” added Duma.

  “Very well, but only vague feelings. No specifics that would compromise the great sundering.”

  Chris and Jeremy retreated to the back of the courtroom, thinking better of saying anything. They vanished.

  The Arch-Gnome surveyed the room. “Let’s see…LaGrue we have already sentenced. Tracey Springs is next.”

  She started in alarm.

  “Fear not, Springs. You have done well. Carry on.”

  “Carry on with what?” she whispered. Ron and Tracey both waited for her to vanish, but she remained.

  The Arch Gnome ignored her, chewing on his pipe stem. “Who is next? Ah yes, of course. Mr. Cornish Bob Golden.”

  “Objection!” Cornish Bob howled. “This court has no jurisdiction! There was an improper arrest, against my rights! Inadequate counsel! Lack of specificity in the charges! This is a travesty!”

  “Silence!” thundered the Arch Gnome, rapping his clay pipe sharply on the podium. It promptly cracked.

  “Damnit!” he hissed, narrowing his eyes into slits. He took a deep breath and laid the pipe aside. “Arguments,” he asked.

  “Prosecution calls for harsh sentencing,” said Barman. “Golden willingly went into service for Eiffelia, carrying out her pogrom of murder and domination on a galactic scale for her and his own personal ends. He then betrayed her when his own interests served, and instead of returning the rift generator to its proper source, he handed it off to Ron Golden, who further abused its use. His immediate resort to violence, bullying, and ego-selfishness at every turn is the definition of evil, and deserves the full weight of this Court’s punishment.”

  “Defense disagrees,” said Duma. “Golden indeed did all these things, but defense calls the Court to consider the deeper magic. His behavior, while abhorrent, made for good Story.”

  The Arch Gnome raised an eyebrow. “An interesting argument. And well taken. Cornish Bob Golden, your sentence is to be returned to your old life in Bodie. You will be placed one minute before the explosion that you were told caused the rift that allowed you to meet Eiffelia. This rift, unbeknownst to you, was not naturally occurring, but a result of you placing it there at some point in the future using the stolen rift generator by orders of Eiffelia. You will still investigate the results of the explosion, but this time find nothing and live out the rest of your life as originally intended, never knowing or ever finding the additional rift generator you have hidden in the nearby environs of Bodie. This is because you will never think to look for it, and also because I am assigning a Trident agent to recover it. Go now and live your story conventionally as you originally agreed.”

  “Objec—” he cried, then vanished mid-word.

  The Court breathed in the resultant silence for long moments.

  “And now we turn to sentencing the main defendant,” said Arch-Gnome Azaci.

  Tracey and Ron looked around, wondering who was left. Ron was the only one.

  “Who, me?” he said in a little voice.

  “What did he do?” asked Tracey. Realization then dawned on Tracey’s face.

  “Yours was the worst offense, the unforgivable crime,” said Barman. You gave your rift generator to LaGrue, because you didn’t care or think. You didn’t realize the danger of the thing, what it was capable of, beyond just taking you on an interesting adventure to satisfy your curiosity. Or making a buck. His offense was selfishness with knowledge, yours was selfishness from not having your head in the Game. Because of your thoughtlessness, millions of people suffered. This suffering, if caused intentionally, as LaGrue and Eiffelia have done, is not as bad as your causing it from foolishness. Their sin at least contributed to the fabric of the story of the universe. Long ago you chose to be here in this world, like everyone else, to learn and to love. You have learned very little of this. You have spent your life floating along, reacting to things, not making the right effort to engage in the Great Story. You do not give people the proper regard or love. You have been focused on your own ego, your experiences and desires. We are all, in essence, not of this world, but we should be in it while we are here. You have wasted your time out of, well, laziness. Your contribution to the story of the world has been puny, in spite of your talents. There are finite and infinite games. While you are in the finite one you should play it, along with the other participants. That is the spirit of things, the Holy Spirit. And offense against the Holy Spirit is unforgivable.”

  There was silence. A tear ran down Ron’s cheek.

  “There there,” said Ms. Duma. “It is not all bad. You were polite and good. You saved that fellow’s job when they wanted to fire him at the factory. You washed the dishes, opened doors for people, watered the plants sometimes. And best of all, you allowed others to rise to the occasion and show their true co
lors.”

  Ron opened his mouth, but nothing came out because of the lump in his throat. He closed it.

  “But all in all, that accounts for little,” said Arch Gnome Azaci. “So now your sentence. It is my duty to administer it.”

  Arch-Gnome Azaci slid off his bench and tottered on his little legs across the courtroom to Ron. He beckoned with one hand and cupped his mouth with the other, like he wanted to whisper in Ron’s ear. Ron bent down and tilted his head to listen. The gnome touched Ron on the forehead with his index finger. Ron slumped to the floor like a sack of potatoes, dead.

  —Epilogue—

  “Thanks for making coffee this time instead of tea,” said Maurice. “I’m not such a fan of tea.”

  “You had but to ask,” replied Tracey, pouring into Ron’s old Dragon Throne mug. “Cream or sugar?”

  “A bit of both, please,” Maurice asked.

  They sat sipping in silence for a while.

  “The funeral was nice,” he said. “Good thinking on the urn: no questions about the lack of a body.”

  She shrugged. “The kids bought it, the whole cancer coming back with a vengeance thing. I have a question, though. You’re…dead, right? Burned at the stake and all?”

  “Yes.”

  “Yet you are here, in flesh when you want. And Ron said that his dad had appeared to him as a ghost when he was down in the deep trench base.”