Welcome to the Lady Aesculapius finale. Thank you so much for following us on this journey. It's been our pleasure to bring you these thirteen weeks of adventures, and we hope you've enjoyed the ride. Aesc, Jason, and Blanche will now face the Utopia Dimension, everything has built up to here! Ready, set...here we go. If you need to catch up, you can find the previous episodes HERE. If you want to listen to these stories, you can find links to our podcast version HERE, though note that it runs behind the text versions!
The black staff boomed against the floor. The hall fell silent. The High Priest looked around the cavernous circular room at the assembled powers of the Kezarian people; the sea of shining golden skin and cool violet eyes, watching and waiting. He lowered himself back into his throne. He looked to his right and to his left to consult the man and woman sitting next to him, and was given two nods. Then, with his gaze fixed on the tall double doors at the far end of the hall, he spoke: "Bring her forward." There was a clunk and the heavy doors swung open. Everyone waited for something to happen. A small squeaking noise was getting closer. Into the chamber came a young woman in a lab coat, her wild curly hair done up in a messy bun. The squeak was coming from the one wonky wheel on the table she was dragging, upon which sat some sort of machine. She moved agonisingly slowly into the center of the room, then finally stopped and turned. "So!" She clapped her golden hands together with a smile on her face. "Here we all are then, nice to see you, nice to see you, I'm Professor Ko. Let me tell ya, getting from the middle of Janterdon to the High Council chamber along the omega lightway, middle of rush hour? Nightmare, am I right?" Silence. One of the Cardinals coughed. She laughed and made an 'oh, you' hand motion. "Y'all know it. So, anyway! Welcome, great to be here, great to be here. Today, I've got a little invention to demo for you, something I whipped up in the lab, thought you might be interested. This," she gestured to the machine behind her, "is a little gizmo we boffins like to call...the Multiverse Window!" She gave a brief pause for that to land, then gave a little jazz hands and an "Ooooooooh!" to help build hype. "This thing, this thing, this right here? Allows you to view parallel universes!" She held for applause. The silence slowly lifted into a hum of confusion. "Right, so, here's how it works, now look at this." The scientist stood over her machine. "You have a screen here and controls here. You just fiddle with the controls to tune into another universe, and the screen becomes a window into it. For example, right now I'm looking from our very own universe, home sweet home, into another universe twelve realities diagonally up, and...it's a world where my jokes are actually funny!" She let out a long, wheezing laugh and slapped her knee as she silently doubled over. Nobody joined in. Cardinal Ley coughed and spluttered into his handkerchief. "Something the matter?" asked the High Priest, impatiently. "Not at all, please proceed." As many council members as could fit had piled into the lab where Professor Ko had connected the Multiverse Window to a larger screen. The High Priest nodded. "Fire up the crystals, Cardinal." Cardinal Ley flipped the switch. The larger screen fizzed and turned into a view of space with tiny stars dotting the canvas. There was a polite round of applause for what was in theory an image from another universe, but could have easily been a view of their own night sky. "Now, let me just input some co-ordinates," said Professor Ko. The image fizzed again and turned into an overhead view of the omega lightway between Janterdon and the High Council chamber. "Now look at this, everyone! Look here! This is an alternate universe. You can tell from this, here, see where the omega lightway has been given a secondary lane to ease congestion? Not as bad as it is in our universe, huh?" She gave an open-mouthed smile. Cardinal Ley considered the image on the screen. "You know, we could really use this. If we viewed this road in a hundred different realities, we could work out which design would be best for our own road." The lightbulbs went off for all the council members. The High Priest nodded. "A sound idea. Well done, Professor Ko. It seems this has real applications." The door slid open and Professor Ko entered the High Priest's office with a beaker of blue liquid. "Ah, Cardinal, I thought I'd find you here! Here you go," she said, passing the beaker to Cardinal Ley who sat opposite the High Priest. "This'll fix your asthma, permanently. Picked up the formula from a universe where we'd already cured it." Ley sniffed the blue medical liquid, then downed it. It was like his lung capacity doubled. "Oh, that's marvelous! Thank you Professor. Your machine has changed history, you know that?" "I just can't believe it," said the High Priest, reclining in his new chair that tilted back slightly to ease the tension in his spine. "In the last two years, crime rates have plummeted, diseases have been cured, the traffic is better...and soon we won't even need traffic once your mass teleportation technology has been successfully copied from universes that already have it." Cardinal Ley nodded. "What you've accomplished with your machine, Ko, will be remembered for-" A siren wailed. Red light flooded the office. Professor Ko pushed a button on her watch. "Stax, what is it?" "I don't know," said the shaky voice at the other end. "Something's entered this universe. From...outside." Everyone in the office exchanged a glance. The council quickly assembled in Professor Ko's laboratory, awaiting an explanation as the sirens kept wailing. "So from what I can tell, it seems, it's looking like," said Ko, "Three life forms entered our universe a few hours ago. Two of them are currently floating through space on top of the third like it's a ship. The ship is big," she said, reading numbers on a screen. "Big, big ship, made of some sort of living crystal. And this big crystal ship is scanning us. This planet. Best case scenario, some friends have arrived from another universe to say hello!" she said, an excited smile on her face. "What's the worst case scenario?" asked the High Priest. He was answered by murmurs from the council. "A threat!" "A warning!" "A declaration of war!" "Now, now, steady everyone, steady everyone" said Professor Ko. "We don't know if it's anything that serious. Now I would recommend...what would I recommend? Reaching out to these life forms, these mysterious people. Find out their intentions." The High Priest considered the situation gravely. "We haven't had a war in years. Not since the Multiverse Window let us see into war-torn universes so we knew how to avoid becoming them. Now it seems these other universes are the only thing capable of bringing conflict to us." Professor Ko laughed nervously. "I mean, what're you gonna do? End all other universes except this one?" "Reality 5862 - 68/7 - Pod - Beetroot/50 has been successfully ended." "Excellent," said the High Priest. "Another successful test." "Though we believe some life forms managed to escape the destruction in...cross-dimensional escape pods," said Stax. "It doesn't matter," said the High Priest. "Soon our strange new friend will deliver the weapon she's promised, and we can unleash the final blow, ending all universes at once. Tell me, when will that be?" "As soon as Professor Ko finishes the universal shield." The High Priest leaned back in his comfortable chair with a smile on his face. "Once it's done, nothing will threaten the safety of our universe. Nothing. Truly, this is the Utopia Dimension." LADY AESCULAPIUS The blast of cosmic umami surprised Lady Aesculapius. Blanche's buttercream frosting was delightful, and it briefly brought Jason back to his 7th birthday party, blowing out the candles and cramming a piece in his mouth before his parents could tell him to slow down. Then the flavour brought all three of them to another universe. Their feet reached solid ground. Lady Aesculapius licked her fingers clean. "Now that's what I call a good bake." The three had materialised in some sort of alleyway. "Oh! Hey there!" Jason waved to a stunned and stunning golden man with wide violet eyes. "Can I just ask," said Blanche, approaching the terrified man. "What did that look like to you?" The man stared. "You all sort of just...appeared in an explosion of frosting." "Ooh! That's fun," said Lady Aesc. "What's your name?" "Jaxill." "Good name. Take me to your leader!" Jaxill blinked. "You mean like...my employer?" "No," said Blanche. "More like your head of state." Jaxill blinked again. He turned away and wondered how much of his time he was willing to dedicate to frosting-centric aliens today. He turned back and nodded. "Follow me I guess." Lady Aesc, Jason, and Blanche trailed behind Jaxill as they emerged from the alleyway into a bustling street. The people all wore bright colours and gave friendly smiles to one another as they passed. "The Utopia Dimension," said Lady Aesculapius. "At last." "Everyone here seems nice," said Jason. "They're all gold," said Blanche. "They're all hot," said Lady Aesc. Jason looked around, sceptical. "I'll have to take your word on that last one." "Hey, so what were you doing in that alley, anyway?" Blanche asked Jaxill. "Shortcut. Just on my way back from my boyfriend's house. See that up there?" The three followed his pointing finger up to a large round building on a hill in the distance. "Is that where your leader lives?" asked Lady Aesc. "I guess. I mean, I didn't vote for them, but yeah." They all had to lean forward slightly as they forced themselves up the steep hill. At the other side of the road, those who couldn't climb moved up the hill on a chair attached to a rail. "What do you want to see my leader about?" "We want to stop them from destroying other universes," said Blanche. "Cool," said Jaxill. "Can I help?" "You are helping," smiled Lady Aesc. They reached the top of the hill and took in the magnificent building in front of them. There was a lovely water feature outside and a small landing pad with docked ships. "So," said Jason. "How are we getting in?" "Front door," said Jaxill, pointing. "The chamber's open right now for people to address the council." Lady Aesculapius looked across the courtyard and saw a small queue of people. "Ah! Right-o." Blanche frowned as they all took a number and joined the back of the queue. "This feels like it should be more of a 'storm the place and cause a scene' sort of situation, doesn't it?" "Well I need to take a moment and work off the cosmic cake," said Jason. "Thanks for your help, Jaxill." "Oh I want to stay and see how this goes," said the gold man, hands in pockets. "I'm invested in the drama now." Patiently they waited and shuffled a few steps forward every now and then as two guards ushered the next concerned citizen into the chamber. As they moved inside, Lady Aesc was in awe of the opulent hall with its high ceiling and walls covered in paintings. Eventually, it was their turn. Jaxill waited outside the chamber as the guards gestured for Lady Aesculapius, Blanche, and Jason to proceed. The large circular room was filled with row upon row of officials, murmuring away as the three travellers took their position in front of the High Priest. He slammed his black staff against the floor like a gavel and smiled warmly. "Welcome! What is the nature of your business?" Lady Aesculapius stepped forward and cleared her throat. "My name is Lady Aesculapius. We're here from another universe to tell you to stop destroying other universes." An explosion of noise and exclamations from the council, then silence. The High Priest leaned forward, still smiling. "Another universe, you say? Do you have any proof?" Lady Aesc held up her Factory of Crystal. The crystal ball started to glow and a portal opened. Loud protests echoed around the chamber as everyone watched the fabric of reality rip open. Then, through that tear came what looked to those in the back row like a small blue hairbrush. Then the hairbrush started to move, and it became clear that it was a hedgehog. The tiny blue creature sniffed around the room, occasionally making a small hop with all four legs accompanied by a disproportionately loud 16-bit spring sound. "So anyway," said Lady Aesc, bringing the attention back to her. "Stop destroying universes. I was there when you destroyed 5862 - 68/7 - Pod - Beetroot/50. As long as I'm here, you'll never harm another." The blue hedgehog made another Sega Genesis sound as it explored the circular parameters of Gold High Council Zone. A small confused fox, almost like the ones Jason remembered from Earth, flew through the still-open portal using its two tails as propellers. "She has a crystal device, just like the other one," the woman next to the High Priest urgently whispered at a volume everyone could hear anyway. The High Priest frowned. "Lock. Them. Up." "That went well," said Blanche, leaning against the cell wall. "I feel really good about that." "It was worth a try," said Lady Aesculapius. "Maybe I should've just gone straight to 'tearing this universe apart with my bare hands'. They have already destroyed at least one entire universe so looking back on it that sort of 0 to 100 behaviour would've been justified." "Here's what I don't get though," said Jason. He waited until the guard had passed by and disappeared around the corner before saying what he didn't get. "Why are we in this cell?" He gestured widely to the admittedly luxurious prison cell with three soft beds, a sink, a mirror, and a selection of novels. "Why can't we just Factory of Crystal out of here?" Lady Aesc smiled. "Because of her." She nodded at the cell opposite them to the gold woman with wild curly hair done up in a messy bun. "And who's she?" asked Blanche. "An enemy of the people, obviously," said Lady Aesc. "This planet is run by a council that takes questions from a public who clearly know about the whole 'destroying other universes' thing, based on Jaxill's reaction. So: very good PR team, who tell the people that there really are threats out there. The council must do something with the people who question them, and there she is." Lady Aesc stood up from her bed and called over to the woman in the cell opposite. "Hey! Psst!" Professor Ko looked up at the stranger. "Yes?" "Are you in here for trying to stop them destroying universes?" She frowned. Then she sighed. "Yes." Lady Aesc took out her Factory of Crystal, stepped through a portal in her cell and out of a portal in the other. "I'm Lady Aesc, those two over there are Blanche and Jason, and we're all from another reality. What's your name?" "Professor Ko," she said, excitement spreading across her face. "I'm a scientist, you see. I built a machine, the Multiverse Window, that lets people view other realities, and the council decided those realities need to be wiped out. But I can help!" "Excellent, do tell." "So different universes are being created all the time, based on every decision we make, every fork in the road. They're infinite!" said Professor Ko quickly, aware that the guards could come back at any moment. "You can't just go to each universe and end them all one at a time, it'd take too long. What happened to 5862 - 68/7 - Pod - Beetroot/50 and universes like it was a test. Now they've got this weird new scientist helping them build a weapon that can end all realities at once." "How?" asked Lady Aesc. "If they did that, what's to stop this universe being wiped out too?" "A shield I designed," Ko explained. "It has the power to section off universes from the wider multiverse, protecting the Utopia Dimension from their own weapon. If we lower the shield, they won't be able to use the weapon without destroying themselves." "Well, now we have a plan. Off we go!" "Exciting! Oh, I almost forgot I'm still in jail." "Oh, right, cart ahead of the llama," Aesc said and opened a portal so they could hop back into the cell with Jason and Blanche. With everyone together, the Factory of Crystal expanded and collapsed in an instant, transporting Lady Aesc, Blanche, Jason, and Professor Ko onboard. Ko silently took in the beautiful crystal room. "You have one of these ships too? Just like that other woman?" "What other woman?" asked Blanche. "The other woman, who's helping the council." "A shield that powerful would need an origin point," said Lady Aesc interrupting. "Where would that be?" "There's a planet on the edge of the system called Jasek Senn," said the professor. "Big red one, lovely rings, can't miss it. It's where the council keep everything they don't want the public interfering with." Lady Aesc ran her fingers across the crystal controls. "Excellent. That's where we'll be going. But first..." Jason wandered over. "First?" "First," Lady Aesc repeated. "I need to find something..." A portal snapped open and lightly scattered the red dust below it. Lady Aesculapius, Blanche, Jason, and Professor Ko stepped though. "You realise Jaxill is probably still waiting for us," said Jason. "Oh, yeah," said Blanche. "I'm sure he's gone home by now." Across the sand was a large facility with radar dishes on the roof. "Professor," said Lady Aesc, turning to Ko. "Could you get us in there?" "We could always just portal into there, too," said Blanche. "They'd find us and lock us up again," said Lady Aesc. "We can't examine the shield and make our demands while running. Passing ourselves off as staff will be easier." Professor Ko hesitated. "Well, let's think. I was arrested in secret. We might be able to walk in the front door, but if anyone knows I'm supposed to be in prison, I'll be sent back there immediately." The four approached the facility's entrance and were stopped by the first hurdle. "Damn," said Ko. "I don't have my passcard. The entrance to this facility has one of the most advanced security systems in the multiverse!" "Excuse me." They turned to see an older gold man awkwardly trying to push his way through them. They let him pass and he swiped himself in, then held the door open for Ko with a smile. Ko took it, said "thank you", and made a face that suppressed an internal scream to the others as she let them all inside. This facility served many functions, but looking nice was not one of them. The drab corridors with exposed pipes running overhead gave the vibe that this place was not inviting by design. Like the anti-décor was designed to drive away members of the public by making them feel they were seeing the building in an indecent state. Every time someone passed by them was a new adventure in nerves. They all hoped nobody would stop Professor Ko because she should be in prison, but of course all of them did stop her, because they hadn't seen her in weeks, because she should be in prison. By keeping a decent pace, they were able to follow the gold man who kindly waited to hold each top security door open for them. Eventually they started seeing less and less people and the man turned off down a different path. Ko led the group down flights of stairs taking them deeper and deeper underground. At the end of a long corridor they came to a large metal door, which Ko needed all of her strength to push open. Inside, down one more short flight of stairs, was a huge open space filled with machines. "What is all this stuff?" asked Jason. "Oh, this here? This is everything," said Ko. "Technology we've copied over from other dimensions. We've got machines here that can turn anything into food, we've got the multiverse's most powerful mass teleportation engine, everything." In the middle of it all sat a blue pyramid that pulsed and crackled with energy. It looked so tall and heavy that it would take several strong people to move. Lady Aesc approached the pyramid. "I assume this is the universal shield?" "Yep, that's it there," said Ko. "So what exactly is your plan?" "Simple," said Lady Aesc, marching over to a computer console. "Gonna call up your bosses and threaten to turn the shield off." Ko blinked. "But wait a moment, hold on, how is that a threat? All you'll do is delay them firing the weapon. They'll just lock us up and turn it back on again." Lady Aesc smiled. "Ah, but there's something you've forgotten. And I have a feeling they've forgotten about it too. We're dealing with alternate universes here." The screen crackled and became a furious image of the High Priest. "What is the meaning of this?" "Hey big man, us again! We're not going to stand for you destroying every other universe, so we're gonna switch off your big shield thing. If you use your weapon now you'll destroy yourself too." "Fine! Do it!" said the High Priest. "We'll hold our fire and turn the shield back on after we've arrested you." "Ah! See, that's what YOU just said," said Lady Aesc, gesturing to Professor Ko. "I can't believe you two would miss the obvious." The High Priest paused. "What do you mean?" "A universal shield keeps out more than just you. If we switch this baby off, this universe will re-join the larger multiverse and be vulnerable to ANY attack." "But we are the only universe capable of such destruction!" "Nope! No you aren't. Because every decision you make creates an alternative reality. Universes are splintered off into almosts and maybes and could've beens and should've beens every moment of every second. So if YOU have the technology to wipe out the multiverse, then other universes similar enough to this one have that technology too." The High Priest was silent, finally getting it. "I did a quick scan back on my Factory. Hypothetically, somewhere out there right now is a universe just like this one, with a weapon getting ready to fire and take down every universe except theirs. Well, I found it." "And? Which universe?" Lady Aesculapius smiled. "I'm not telling. If I gave you the designation you'd send them one of your universe enders." The High Priest was getting impatient. "How can you be sure the Utopia Dimension won't be spared?" "Were YOU planning on sparing any universes? As far as they're concerned, this universe is a threat. Because it is." The High Priest clenched his jaw. "All you have done is confirmed our suspicions. Other universes ARE dangerous. They DO need to be ended! Thank you, Lady Aesculapius. We will accelerate our plans and end the multiverse immediately. Our guards will be with you shortly." The screen switched off. "Good job, nice one," said Professor Ko, pacing. "Thank you. Now for the fun bit." Lady Aesculapius held up her Factory of Crystal and brought herself, Jason, Blanche, Professor Ko, and the glowing pyramid onboard. Professor Ko landed alongside the others in the control tower, where Lady Aesc was already plugging the shield generator into one of the crystal terminals. "With this shield," she said, "boosted with the power from the Factory, we can isolate the Utopia Dimension and this other evil universe I found. For clarity let's call the other one..." she paused "...the Schmutopia Dimension. Once I do this, if either of them trigger their weapons, only the Utopia and Schmutopia Dimensions will end. Every other reality will be just fine." "But what about the people?" asked Jason. "That's still two universes full of innocent beings." "Innocent beings who want to kill each other," said Blanche. "Their councils want to kill each other," said Jason. "But not the Jaxills. Not the ordinary people on the street. It's like what happened with universe...uh... 5862...67...?" "5862 - 68/7 - Pod - Beetroot/50," Lady Aesc, Blanche, and Ko all reeled off in unison. "Yeah, that one," said Jason. "We can't allow innocent people to die." "No we can't," said Lady Aesc. "There." She stepped back from the terminal, admiring her handiwork. "The two dangerous universes are cut off from the others." The glowing pyramid pulsed slowly, holding stable as energy from the Factory flowed into it. "Final step of the plan: swoop in and destroy both weapons. Simple." With a press of a button she opened a portal. Lady Aesculapius' head popped around the corner, followed by Jason's, followed by Blanche's, followed by Ko's. The council was in session, responding to the threat the four of them were posing to their scheme right now. Everyone being drawn into the main chamber meant they could sneak through the corridors in peace to look for the weapon. "Lady Aesculapius." They jumped and turned towards the two cloaked figures behind them, who definitely weren't there a moment ago. Lady Aesc instinctively moved in front of the others. "How can I help?" "This is no place for you." With an unnecessary flourish, they removed their hoods to reveal a woman with a head of curly ginger hair and young girl. Lady Aesculapius rolled her eyes. "Professor Meistras and Ofelia. You shouldn't be here either." "Those two...they're the ones from your funeral?" asked Jason. Professor Ko looked around. "What do you mean 'her funeral'?" "Nice teleport," said Lady Aesc. "Quicker than a Factory of Crystal." "More accurate too," Professor Meistras smiled. "It's amazing what technology a perfect universe can create when they're not occupied fighting one another in wars." "Why are you helping them?" "Stumbled into this universe a while ago," said the Professor. "They offered me anything in return for my help." "'Help' like trying to kill Lady Aesc with a mysterious parcel for snooping," said Jason. "Ooh, we all love a good call-back, don't we ladies?" Ofelia deadpanned. "Do you know where the council are right now?" asked Lady Aesc. "To be clear, I do know, I'm just testing you." Professor Meistras smirked. "Go on then." "They're in session, organising the immediate firing of their weapon. I reminded them of the possibility that a near mirror parallel universe could be about to fire theirs, and the High Priest panicked. Didn't any of your new friends tell you?" "I'm sure they will," Meistras monotoned. "Really? Or is it possible that, like you, they're only in this for their own personal gain?" "Why would they turn against me?" "You know why. Because you're a threat from another universe. You're the sort of thing this multiverse-ending scheme was designed to prevent." Professor Meistras pressed a button on a wrist-mounted communicator, waited, and got no response. "We're going to sabotage both universes' weapons," said Lady Aesc. "Wanna come watch?" Meistras considered this offer. "Ofelia, where did they move the weapon?" Ofelia pulled a small silver device with a screen out of her pocket and pushed some buttons. "Massive energy signature below us. It's in the basement." "Of course," said Blanche. "Do these people keep any super-secret technology on ground level?" Lady Aesc lifted her Foce and opened a portal. "That leads to the Schmutopia Dimension. Jason and Blanche, you two go through there and destroy their weapon too." "Ofelia, go with them to make sure they find it," said Professor Meistras. Ofelia sighed. "I can't believe we're helping them." "We can blow up the multiverse later if we want to, okay?" said Meistras, reassuringly. Ofelia sulked. "Fine. I guess. Let's go, morons." The girl walked into the portal and Jason and Blanche rushed after her. At first it was like they hadn't gone anywhere. Ofelia, Jason, and Blanche were standing in an otherwise empty corridor in the middle of the High Council building, with a high curved ceiling and artwork covering the walls. Slowly, they noticed things that weren't there before, like how the gold detailing on the roof was now silver, and the portraits now showed a completely different roster of historical figures, presumably from a completely different history. "So the Schmutopia Dimension is the same as the Utopia Dimension but...different," said Jason. "You could say the same about literally any two places," said Ofelia, rolling her eyes. "Go on then, where's the weapon here?" Blanche stared at her device for a few seconds. "Above us...in orbit." Blanche and Jason looked at each other. Jason smiled. "I seem to remember some ships docked outside." "You might not get up there in time," said Ofelia. "Someone needs to delay it firing." "I'll go," said Blanche. "High Council chamber's this way, right? Assuming this universe is similar enough to the other one." Ofelia handed the scanner to Jason, then turned to Blanche. "I guess I'm coming with you then." Blanche and Ofelia ran off towards the council chamber as Jason headed outside. He ran across the courtyard towards the landing pad, which despite a few small differences, was exactly like the one in the Utopia Dimension. On the landing pad was a small one-person ship; the kind Jason had trained with for years. With one fluid motion he jumped into the cockpit, strapped himself in, and ignited the engines. He felt the rush of adrenaline as the small craft lifted up and blasted off into the sky. The cries of three angry guards were quickly left behind. Meanwhile, Blanche and Ofelia crashed through the doors of the council chamber. This High Council looked exactly like the one in the Utopia Dimension, except the small blue hedgehog and two-tailed fox had been replaced by a small black and red hedgehog and a pink bat. "What is the meaning of this intrusion?!" The High Priest stood up and banged her white metal staff on the floor. "Who are you?" Blanche opened her mouth. She paused. "We're two concerned citizens who want you to consider sparing the multiverse." "And why the hell should we listen to you?" asked the High Priest. Ofelia snorted. "Because we'll melt you if you don't?" "Ofelia." Blanche shot her a look that told her to stand down. She knew going in all-guns-blazing would just make them fire the weapon instantly. This situation needed diplomacy. "I'm sorry about her. You don't need to listen to us, but we believe other universes deserve to exist, because they contain as much good and as much evil as ours. After all, everything good about this universe was copied in from others using the Multiverse Window. Killing them all just doesn't seem fair." There was a murmur from the council. The High Priest fumed at Blanche's words. "You have no idea what you're talking about. Our world is perfect, superior to all others. These other universes can be nothing but a threat to our magnificent perfection!" The council erupted in cheers. "With respect, I don't believe that," said Blanche. "I believe there's still a lot we can learn from others. And I believe that good can come from anywhere." Far above the chamber, on the edge of space, Jason looked ahead at the field of stars in front of him. If he focused on just one of them, he could feel his speed as the others appeared to blur around it. Far in the distance, he could make out a glowing green orb: the Schmutopia Dimension's doomsday weapon. A red laser tore past his ear. Jason looked down at the ship's monitor and saw three enemy fighters coming in behind him. He smirked, and barrel-rolled to avoid their blasts. The ship behind stopped firing immediately to avoid hitting the weapon. He kept turning, always just outside of his pursuer's crosshairs, before spinning out the other way to dodge the other two coming around. For a moment, the way ahead was clear. Jason aimed at the orb and squeezed the triggers. Two bolts of plasma ripped across space. He pulled up sharply, turning back towards the planet as he watched the weapon in the rear monitor. BOOM. On the ground, the High Priest smiled. "Your concern is touching. Truly. But you do not know what's out there." "Do you?" asked Blanche. "Yes. Using the Multiverse Window we've seen the dangers that lie in other universes. We're seen the damage they could do to us. The wastelands of Hazuukai Runn. The world-ending ships of King Tritarus' Fleet. The Infinite Armada of the Great Assimilation. The galaxy eaters of-" A portal opened, and Lady Aesc stuck her head through. "THIS FUCKING THING'S INDESTRUCTIBLE AND IT'S ALREADY SET TO BLOW, GET BACK HERE." The doors opened, and Jason Jackson stuck his head through. "I blew up the weapon!" The High Priest raised an eyebrow. "Excuse me?" "Good job," said Ofelia. She grabbed the others and dragged them through the portal, exiting the Schmutopia Dimension. Back in the Utopia Dimension, Lady Aesc, Blanche, Jason, Ofelia, Meistras, and Ko stood in a large white room with a green machine, similar to the one Jason just blew up. Lady Aesculapius tapped away at a screen on the side. "It's already been armed. I can't switch it off or destroy it." "I was able to destroy the one in the Schmutopia Dimension," said Jason. "Just shoot it!" "Tried that," said Professor Meistras, holding a smoking blaster. "Slightly different universe, slightly different rules." Lady Aesc was pacing frantically. "This thing's going to wipe out both universes and everyone in them." "Don't you mean 'wipe out every universe ever'?" said Professor Meistras. "I stole the universal shield and used it to separate the two evil dimensions from the others." "Oh. Right. Well in that case." Everyone blinked and she and Ofelia were gone. Jason blinked some more to make sure he saw that right. "What just happened?" "That would be a teleport," said Professor Ko. "Remember, they have access to the multiverse's most powerful mass teleportation engine, the one I showed you earlier." "I'm sure we'll see those two again," said Lady Aesc. "But first, our problem." Jason was starting to panic. "There's got to be a way to get everyone out of these two universes safely. Right? Like with Reality Pod Beetroot 27 or whatever?" Lady Aesculapius thought about it. "A way to evacuate two entire universes, all at once, in an instant." She turned to Professor Ko. "In the blink of an eye." "Wait, what's this?" Jason looked between the two women, who were giving each other knowing smiles. "Let's get back to the Factory," said Lady Aesc, pulling out her crystal ball. "We need to find two more universes." "What's happening?" asked Blanche. Lady Aesc finally addressed her companions. "Have you two ever heard of The Berenstain Bears?" Jaxill sat alone in the corner of the café, sipping his mug of tea. He couldn't stop thinking about those three strangers he'd left at the council building. What if they'd been killed for trying to stop the universe-ending weapon? What if they'd tried to sabotage the universe-ending weapon and something went wrong? What if the universe could end at any second?! A flash. Everyone shielded their eyes. Then it was gone. Jaxill looked around. He made awkward eye contact with the barista, who pulled a face like 'that sure was weird, huh?' Everyone soon went back to eating. Jaxill decided it must have been a trick of the light and went in for another sip of his milkshake. "So everyone REMEMBERS The Berenstain Bears from their childhood as being spelled with an 'e' when in fact it was always Berenstain with an 'a'," Lady Aesc explained as she paced around her Factory of Crystal. "This led to a whole bunch of theories that maybe everyone on Earth suddenly jumped into another universe one day, and the 'e' they remember from The Berenstain Bears is the only clue left." "Terrific," said Blanche. "Why is this relevant?" "Because using this here, the Utopia Dimension's perfect teleportation engine," said Professor Ko, gesturing to the machine, "we just teleported everyone from the two evil universes to two almost-identical unpopulated ones! We saved them all, they're fine!" "The two evil universes, the Utopia and Schmutopia Dimensions, have been destroyed, the devastation safely contained within the universal shield," said Lady Aesc. "And the two evil councils, plotting to end all of reality, are gone along with them. The day has been saved!" "But why would there be two empty people-less universes sitting around waiting to be filled?" asked Blanche. "With different universes, anything is possible," said Lady Aesc. "Every imaginable alternative has happened or is happening or will happen. It therefore stands to reason that there are some universes where people just...disappear. Maybe it was a plague or a weapon or a big purple alien who snapped their fingers. Regardless, now those two empty universes have people. No more evil councils, no more evil universe-killing weapons." "But hold on," said Professor Ko. "If anything is possible, and there are infinite universes, how do we KNOW there won't be another evil council with another evil universe-killing weapon?" "Oh, I'm sure there will be," said Lady Aesculapius, smiling. "But there will also always be people like us to stop them." Professor Ko said her goodbyes and stepped through the portal to her new home dimension. The portal closed and she noticed that, yes, this new dimension was basically the same as her old one. The buildings were all here, the birds were flying overhead, the weather wasn't amazing but she wasn't being rained on. A normal day. On the way to her new house, which was entirely identical to her old house, she smiled and nodded to Gahra, out for his usual evening run. The same kids were playing and laughing in the same streets. She'd almost stopped trying to find changes, reassured that whatever changes existed were minor. Then she noticed a crowd gathering at the end of the street. The skyline had changed. At the top of the hill was a big flat empty space with no High Council building. Instead, there was just a blue hedgehog and a fox with two tails. With the building gone, the animals could now see a large cyan emerald sitting where the High Council's treasure room would've been. The hedgehog and the fox touched the emerald and vanished along with it to the sound of a 16-bit Stage Clear theme. Three moonloungers lay under the stars on the pink sand of Pastellion Major. Beside them was a bag of cupcakes from Virginia's Cosmic Bakes. Lady Aesculapius, Jason Jackson, and Blanche Combine looked up at the alien constellations. "What's that one?" asked Blanche. Lady Aesc followed her finger upwards. "That's called The Spoon. See how those two bright ones make a line and there's a circle of stars at the end?" "Oh yeah," Blanche smiled. "I see it." "Hey, what's that one?" Jason pointed. "Oh, that's The Last Battle of Zazaarek-Neth, 7829. See how those 220 stars make the Palace of Xantrox Rurr and those 541 stars over there are all soldiers in the army of H'g'en Balo-o?" Jason stared blankly up at the dots. "Oh yeah, I get that." "Good job blowing up the weapon by the way," said Blanche, turning her head to Jason. "You're a great pilot." Jason smiled. "Thank you. That weapon would've gone off in my face if you hadn't kept them talking. We make a good team." "Agreed." Blanche turned back to the stars. "You're fun to hang out with." "I'm glad you're around." Lady Aesculapius was lying with her eyes closed and a peaceful smile across her face. "So, where to next then?" asked Blanche. "No idea," said Lady Aesc. Jason idly skimmed the soft sand with his fingers. Then he felt something hard. "Whoa!" he sat up straight to show the others. "I found a bunch of gold rings! From the sand, just now." "Yes..." Lady Aesc narrowed her eyes. "Five of them." "Can you hear that?" said Blanche, listening to the birds. "They sound like two turtle doves. And...and..." Lady Aesc slowly turned to face her. "Say it." "...Three French hens." Lady Aesculapius stood up from her moonlounger and felt the wind gather around her, like she was in tune with the current of the multiverse. "Why the fuck are there twelve drummers drumming over there?" said Jason, gesturing down the beach. Lady Aesc breathed in deeply. "Hold on to something. I think things are about to get...festive." Next Time on Lady Aesculapius:
Join us right here, same Aesc time, same Aesc place, on Christmas Day 2019 for a brand new Holiday Adventure by Michael Robertson and James Wylder!
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We've got something special for you this week, something exciting. If the first five episodes were one running story arc, and our sixth was a deep breath, this week we're running again. And harder than ever. You're really in for a treat, so get ready. Oh and hey, if you enjoy this story, why not leave a tip for the writer on their Ko-Fi: https://ko-fi.com/samuelmaleski96 ? If you need to catch up, you can find the previous episodes HERE. If you want to listen to these stories, you can find links to our podcast version HERE, though note that it runs a little bit behind the text versions!
You know what the most dangerous thing in the universe is? Ideas. That seems like a cliché. But think about it for a second. Humanity, or any species, has the potential to evolve to a hypothetically infinite level of technological progress – to make, in short, Clarke’s third law their bitch and start folding atoms in new, pretty shapes as if they were little origami ducklings. Every kind of physics-based limitation can be overcome eventually: maybe not all at the same time, but somewhere, at some point, in some timeline, someone will figure things out and just rewrite their personal corner of the cosmos. Ideas, on the other hand, well. Can’t get rid of those so easily. I mean, be like Orwell (but please, do not head to Spain to go shoot fascists, we don’t have all day and honestly communist chic is so passé) and imagine the perfect dictatorship. Sure, the concepts of freedom, individual rights, and whatever far-left buzzwords you can think of would be repressed, in that context, but they would not stop existing. Be it only because authoritarian regimes need an enemy, a totem they need to erect, in order to subsequently parade around it in gross displays of belligerent fervour: an enemy both all-powerful and contemptibly frail; an ideology that is rejected but also considered. Gaze with scorn or gaze with hate – you’re still looking. Look at the universe, and our good old solar system. Or rather, systems: all the possible versions of it. And then, crunch the numbers. Centro, arguably the most successful authoritarian regime in our history, collapses in almost 85% of them. Sometimes it takes a lot more time; or it can happen as early as the Mars wars, Han’s fleets plunging down, a hungry pack of spacefaring ravens pecking at Earth’s crust. Most of the time, it’s just the old tale of songbirds and bloodshed. But they go away in the end – because the very existence of an opposing force acts like a corrosive on absolute power: it tacitly disproves its most fundamental assertions. And even if regimes like that survive, they disappear eventually, as suns die out and planets fall into icy darkness. I don’t like the idea of ideas escaping the realms of concrete, tangible power dynamics. I’m a businessman: I like commerce, I like the sweaty palm grab that seals the deal. And my plan – my dream – my life’s work! Has been to bring the art of the deal into the noösphere. We are heading for the kingdom of thought, and you bet your ass we will open counters there, and put fancy little tollgates on the roads and bridges and nerve endings of humanity’s brain mass. So, kiddos. I am Dyson Wall, and this - is my offer to y’all … The blaring message, with just a touch of emphatic trumpets, was bouncing up and down the walls of the white, unassuming room like a chihuahua on subpar crack cocaine. Which didn’t please Lady Aesculapius, and positively pissed off her hangover. A hangover she shouldn’t have had in the first place, given that she was a semi-conceptual alien being with a pretty immaculate record in terms of psychologically-induced biofunctions control, but which nevertheless tenaciously clung to her brow. Alright. One thing after another. First: composing oneself, and attempting “quiet dignity”, with a side of “mischievous swashbuckling charm”. She rose her head slowly, and utterly failed at not grimacing, her internal organs seeming to sashay to a samba tempo at the effort. Alright, action item number one: very mitigated success. That’s corporate HR department for “failure”, she had learnt on the Planet of Accountants. Time for part two: the slow and deliberate look around™. Screens on every wall, black and blank, an armada of coltan shields in tortoise formation. Formica table. Stool. No, two stools! And someone on the other one! A person. Now things were getting interesting. Although, you would sort of notice the giant clipboard, and the big red tie, and the discrete little pin shaped like the head of an adorable cartoon rabbit before the person they were attached to. Young, male-presenting. In his two hundreds – or were those the twenties? Zeroes were stupid, such a rubbish invention. The kind of being Jason would categorise, with all the precision and certainty of an expert naturalist, as a “scrawny twink”: the blonde fringe and nose piercing subspecies, if one was looking into making nuanced taxonomic observations. He seemed intensely focused on her, because, well, that seemed to be his job, and, given the giant holographic, company-approved name-badge that spelled out ALEXANDER – HAPPINESS DEPARTMENT DEPUTY HEAD in red and blue letters, with the occasional flash of an emoji, he seemed the kind of person whose main purpose in life is to do a job. A function: however fabulous – fixed. He smiled the reglementary three seconds smile at her inelegant awakening, and then immediately proceeded to set down his clipboard and state - “Oh, good, you’re awake. So, let’s talk for a second about your new job …” Immediately, the screens sparked to life, and, in giant letters, proclaimed twenty-seven times over: LADY AESCULAPIUS in “How are you doing that?” Alexander queried as her face popped in through the room’s technological arsenal, and went through, in the space of a few seconds, at least a dozen crude but colourful filters. REGISTERED CLAWMARKS™ “Listen, I have other meetings after you, so can you just turn the synth music down a bit?” by “I’m being serious here! Stop … Chortling!” Sam Maleski “Walldammit, couldn’t you have picked a better name? Sounds like someone sneezing. Okay? Is that good? Nothing more? Can I start? Thank you.” He coughed, putting his thoughts back in order after the impromptu semi-canonical interruption. “As I was saying – I’m here to talk to you about your new job.” “I like the old one just fine, thank you very much. Unemployed, but with gusto. That’s me.” That was all very distressing. Not so much the kidnapping part, you get used to those in this line of work, after the first couple of centuries at least. Although, they certainly must have been ingenious to snatch her away from her Factory in an instant like that: crude, but creative. No, it was rather the cheery corporatism of it all, those words that felt like a stale whiff of clean carpets and mint chewing-gum hitting her straight in the soul. It was like sinking slowly in a mire made of melted watercoolers. “Well, I’m afraid you don’t get much say in this. See, the Dyson Corporation now owns you.” No evil glee, just a statement of fact. Aesc did a double-take, and then squared it. “Oh no. Please tell me you’re not one of these slavers people? I mean, that’s morally disgusting, but above all, it’s just so terribly dull. Paperwork and whips and weak-willed men all around.” Her welcome committee looked deeply offended. “Of course not! We don’t trade in bodies, that’s illegal. We deal with ideas. Intellectual and ontological property. In short, we have acquired your brand, ma’am. And we are going to launch a merger process in order to turn you from Lady Aesculapius to Lady Aesculapius™.” “Okay, that’s impressive. How do you do that?” Alexander looked puzzled. “Do what?” “That ™ sound. I can’t do it. Oh wait, I just did it. This is amazing, I think at least two philologists somewhere in the space-time continuum just came, did you re-arrange the basics of language around this place?” He didn’t seem especially interested by the question, his voice trailing off, going through the motions of some pamphlets he had no doubt ingurgitated in preparation for eventual inquiries. “Oh, we did. We own about 45% of the entire galactic lexicon at this point. Brand names were a useful precedent – once you’ve copyrighted your unique Chunky Chocolate, it’s only one small, conceptual step before you own the words Chocolate™ and Chunky™. The ideas and meaning, yours to tweak, sell, and promote in an all new, four-dimensional market space. We’re looking to move onto articles and pronouns, soon. Very lucrative market, that. Imagine selling gender-neutral pronouns as an optional downloadable content pack, and sticking fines on those that circumvent these new rules. Billions to be made.” The time-traveller’s headache had slowly receded, and now she felt the weight of the situation with awful clarity, details clear like shiny pixels on a flatscreen. “And how exactly did you get hold of … me? The idea of me?” “Well, of course the Firmament is normally off-limits, but we made a quick arrangement, everything very formal. After all, this is nothing but a business venture, and they can’t really stop those, can they? No matter if we employ certain techniques traditionalists would deem … unorthodox, or risqué.” “Yes, you’re sooo risqué. Nothing more provocative and cutting-edge than trading stock options with your co-workers at lunchbreak like if they were Pokémon made of paperclips.” “We do actually own all Pokémon, by the way. They’re a few floors down, had to build a whole park. But to get back on track – we assured your superiors that they would be excluded, and made them sign some forms to this effect. They do love forms. And I’m sure they sent a copy to you, except … Well, you didn’t sign it, did you?” Lady Aesculapius had seen galaxies burn and timelines curl onto themselves in improbable spasms, she’d seen the flights of dragons and the flesh-fortresses of the Kuiper Belt, but she had never witnessed, through all her countless lives, something as outrageous as a man implying she would be, for one second, interested in checking the mail sent by her (in-name-only) bosses. The “NO” she served in response had the general consistency and warmth of liquid azote. “Well, you’ve got your answer then.” “I didn’t agree to any of this!” “You didn’t say no. That’s consent. Too late now, ain’t it? Plus, don’t worry, it’s not all bad. I’ve been integrated about ten years ago, and my life has been fantastic ever since!” A pause. A smile, three seconds of flashing white teeth, one, two, three, and then back to the patter, like a typewriter’s mechanism snapping back into place. “You probably wonder what that entails, concretely, don’t you?” “Well, yes. A bit. A big bit.” “It’s nothing too fancy really – the bonding process with our computers here at Dyson’s Dawn will essentially make your being, your thoughts, receptive to the fluctuations of the stock market and the input of our shareholders, creative teams and some select members of the paying public! It’s a fantastic opportunity for most folks, really. So many of them feel lost, abandoned, like they are worth less than nothing. But we prove them wrong! We can show them that they have value – everyone has value, and that value can be estimated and sold! We are a people’s business, through and through. Making each transaction a human story. More than that – an adventure!” Aesc was now staring at him with the same half-appalled, half-endeared expression you usually save for unruly puppies that have eaten a bar of soap in one bite and for your Libertarian uncle after he’s had a few too many whiskey-colas. She was hesitating between five different witty retorts and about twenty-nine very elaborate and colourful epithets for the man in front of her when the white room suddenly turned dark and red, the monitors flashing crimson warnings. A siren probably would have been blaring had the local authorities not thought some vintage, passionate Mozart would be more elegant. And that Mozart piece would probably have been pleasant to listen to, had the local authorities then realised it didn’t convey well enough the urgency an alarm is supposed to evoke in the listener, therefore deciding to set it to a throbbing dubstep beat that sounded like sweat and headaches. The overall effect was, to say the least, disconcerting. “Oh.” Alexander stated, deadpan. “That’s the Murder Alarm. It means someone has been murdered.” “How perspicacious.” “God. Janice has taken her yearly one-week break. That means…I should get that, shouldn’t I…Unless…Aren’t you some kind of spacefaring mystery-solving lady-shaped alien?” “That’s certainly a way to put it.” “Well, then, just stick with me and help out! And we’ll sign the paperwork afterwards. Shame. I love signing paperwork. I made a “GOOD JOB!” sticker just for you, the glue is going to be dry …” “Oh no…” “I know! Well. Doesn’t matter. Follow me!” He was halfway through the door when he realised she hadn’t moved a muscle. Slowly and deliberately, she batted her eyelashes and cooed - “Annnnnnnd if I don’t want to help out the people that want me to literally sell my soul to the stock market?” “Well, I don’t like your tone, for starters – yes, we legally kidnapped you, but does that suddenly give you the right to be all rude about it?! And, well, as for the answer – did I mention we also have your companion here?” * * * And now, THE WHIMSICAL ADVENTURES OF JOLLY JASON AND HIS FUZZY FRIENDS!™ Jason had never been a rabbit before! It was strange, feeling human consciousness crammed into an unfamiliar shape, eyes shifting to see the world not as tangible objects, but a collection of pastel drawings animated at twenty-four images per second, bodies dissolving into lines, biological functions being replaced by the constant low bass of the invisible pen drawing his contours, giving him life! But also, kind of awesome! Because this is a no-sadness zone! All the fuzzy animals in the house were so happy seeing him pop into reality! Cheeky the Musical Hamster tap danced all the way up and down the shelf they had all elected as a den, while Gary the Gecko stuck his tongue out in approval! Jason was very confused at first! It was a strange transition, waking up here after falling asleep in Aesc’ ship! He had a strange dream, where odd accountants were talking about his copyright being up for grabs, and part of a very attractive bundle! But that all seemed silly now! He could feel the pull of the house around him, all colours and cheer! It beckoned to him, ordered his body to merge with the ebb and flow of the unstable world around him, to merge with the influx of narrative commands overloading his brain, whispered voices of wizened shareholders and naïve children, shouting instructions at the top of their lungs, clawing at his brain, ordering him what to do, ordering him what to become! something was wrong how had his body changed that way anyway he was pretty sure he wasn’t a rabbit before oh god did he get drunk and lose himself in a gathering of the Furry Church again no there was still pain echoing in his joints where his legs had been twisted into paws, into springy springy little rabbit hands! he could feel something else – his body connected. globalized. so much input. so many careful springs and triggers and switches ready to be pulled and activated every time money trickled down pipes unseen. a human kickstarter, each stretch goal stretching his body, his mind on a bionarrative rack, aching under the hammer blows of one consciousness, one brand. repeatedly bearing down his brain, two letters. ™. ™. ™. ™. ™. ™. Jason Jackson™. the Jason Cinematic Universe. he could feel spin-offs growing inside him like cancer, supplementary organs, glands sweating a golden pus. his memories had been spread out and flattened, streamed to the world for a reasonable fee nine dollars ninety-nine the first month fourteen dollars twenty-five for every subsequent one he kept remembering things in the wrong order. or was it the right order now, the trickling of coins giving the finger to time, emotions, his very identity he wanted to GET AWAY GET Silly rabbit! OUT but he couldn’t, because every time his thoughts wandered to the heretical belief that there might be something out there, something that wasn’t Dyson’s Dawn, something that wasn’t Producing Content, he felt the jaws of the pastel house snap around his body, tasting blood, revelling in it, drawing on his marrow and lymph to make the button eyes of the animals more shiny, more eco-friendly, and by the way have you purchased the new Jolly Jason Rabbit Plushie only seven dollars thirty-five order one [HERE] he struggled, but couldn’t help embracing the fun of it all! All the animals were cheering on their new friend! But suddenly, something came over the happiness of the festivities! The mice had spotted the dreaded Captain Whiskers, the evil cat! “Oh no!” said Gary the Gecko! “Oh yes!” said Captain Whiskers, who had jumped on top of the shelf! Thankfully, the wise gecko had planned for such an occasion, and out of nowhere pulled a hammer that he bore down on the feline’s o so boopable snout! His nose was so red now, ha ha ha! That gave time for the other members of the animal congregation to scamper off, the little rapscallions! But Jason, still unused to his cute little rabbit paws, didn’t know where to go, and stumbled from the shelf, and down to the floor! A book that he had dislodged had landed on top of him, and so, he was comically flattened into a white fuzzy square with two rabbit ears sticking out! Ha ha ha! he was pretty sure he had broken every bone in his body but then again his body didn’t really have bones anymore, just the idea of those. it hurt but did not hurt. his body bent and broken but already healing as the regenerative plot was flowing through his veins, like a strong medicinal alcohol, the kiss of the company, regenerative and healing narrative principles for all the family. so many feelings emotions sensations too much The last thing he thought before he passed out was “dammit, why couldn’t I have ended up in one of those high school comedies instead”. * * * “So, let me get this straight.” “Mmm-mm.” “You have managed to create a whole bubble-dimension made of thought.” “Yep. Well, not so much thought as media, I suppose. Bio-memetic tech. The Noth are ready to sell their secrets, for the right price. And Dyson Wall knew how to make a price very right indeed.” “Yeah, yeah. And you’ve named it after your founder, and are now stirring this invasive dimension from one reality to another.” “We prefer the term ‘friendly takeover’”. “No, but like. It’s a giant bubble. Named after a guy called Dyson.” “Oh no.” “And you didn’t even think …” “Don’t go there.” “To call it a Dyson Sphere?!!!” Alexander just let out a deep condescending sigh in response. It was impressive, though, Lady Aesculapius couldn’t deny it. Evil, of course, but in that flamboyantly customer-friendly way. As the lift was taking them down from the administrative areas to the main bridge, she could behold the sheer scale of the main chamber, a round space of metal and LEDs, several kilometres in diameter, each wall holding, between programs being broadcast and the latest news report from the stock exchange, vast, contained fictional spaces, flickering in and out of existence. A space of perpetual entertainment, removed from time, fashion, or even quality. Indefinitely prolonged copyright, suspended in the space between the seconds, erected into a monument to the glory of one billionaire’s monopoly. And down below, on the vast silver promenade that bisected the sphere as in the middle of a desperate search for pi, among the little green shrubberies and the purple neon glow of the soda vending machines, completing the chromatic arrangement in a most distasteful manner, a body was lying in a gingeolin pool. Lying ™, might not be the right verb, though, and not just because it costs fifty cents per use these days. “Strewn about” would be more appropriate, or “scattered”, or any of those terms that imply a passage from the biological to the geographical, as human features get disseminated into an array of abstract pieces that merge with their surroundings, bits of grey and pink and red that you can only reconcile with the fearful symmetry of the homo sapiens sapiens through tough thorough detective work. Aesc could discern more and more details as the golden disc of the elevator was sliding down a transparent tube. Not much in the way of actual body parts, though. As far as butcherings go, that was an impressively thorough one. His dismembered members had been dismembered a second time, the body ending up like a jigsaw for ants. Also, she could see that the Crime Scene™ was surrounded by a bunch of people in oversized animal costumes – not unlike those you could spot at these sporting events Jason asked to see once, but of course, in the fizzy drink-ridden atmosphere of a stadium, they had appeared far less threatening than they did here. It might have been the pink kalashnikovs, though, she noted. Probably necessary to keep the public at bay – there was quite a crowd, in patterned t-shirts and shorts, a lot of them with younger kids, wandering about the esplanade, waiting on small hovercars that were taking them to and fro to the different diegeses contained within the platinum-laced entrails of the sphere. “You’ve got tourists?” she asked. “Oh yes. It’s quite a popular destination,” Alexander stated. Some actual emotion, this time. Bit of a shiver in the voice. He was worried about this disturbance in the calm – to the mind of a trader, nothing more eldritch than an unexplained spike in the zigs and zags of the stock; their dreams are haunted by crash-shaped avatars of the weird, trading yellow rags for a piebald pattern of unregulated or deregulated zeroes and ones. The fear was making him a bit more likeable, the precision of his patter struck by shakes and stutters. “We … We’ve evolved organically from the streaming systems of the past. Biological capitalism, Mr. Wall called it – we need the law of the jungle ‘cause that is how Darwin works his magic. Why just have a place you can navigate using the galactic web? Make what you own into a location, and turn every informatics device, every computer, into a magic portal to this land of possibilities. Those people, and their children, they can visit all the licenses that have defined their imagination, and they don’t need to pay more than a very reasonable fee – no need to worry about accommodation, about transport… We’ve streamlined the whole thing: no boring practicality, just our brand, undiluted, for everyone to enjoy and share.” “Well. You still have workers.” Aesc pointed at the rows of mascots down below. “Unless those are robots?” “Oh no, no, no. Quite human.” “They don’t look the part.” “Well … Sometimes, we make a few adjustments. People come to us all the time wanting to upload their minds in here on a more permanent basis: sometimes it’s because jobs are rare, sometimes it’s because they are concerned about the death of their mortal bodies – yes, yes, we can make a copy of the brain patterns and keep it alive for a very long time, it’s a taste of eternity, if not the real thing. Or sometimes they just like our content and want to be part of it! We hold a raffle among the Dawn-goers, with little golden tickets and all, it’s so much fun. You should see how the last winner is thriving: in the real world, he was scrapping metal on the Rat Maze with his husband, and now he and his wife have saved the world ten times over in their own little bubble … Anyway, yes – not everyone comes in with the same level of prestige, of course. Paying customers get a better place, we can’t allow ourselves to become a charity, although we always try to be a humane, compassionate business. So the ones that beg to come in, well, there’s a use for them. Every business needs hands.” “Fuzzy animatronic hands.” “Oh, not at all, the suits are them. We replace their skin by synthetic plastic fur, grafted directly on the muscles, their eyes by little plastic bubbles with some enhanced camera implants … It’s all very neat, very efficient – those actually are permanent, not connected directly to the network, although we generally upload them when they’ve served their contract, couple of millennia is the standard. They’re very happy to be embodying the company, honestly: we’ve come a long way from the time people like us were trading in pins and t-shirts.” Aesc glared at him. “Don’t you dare sully the name of lapel pins, you rube.” He glared back. His glaring abilities were severely lacking in comparison to hers. It was like a disgruntled kitten trying to cast the evil eye on an oncoming stream train. “You’re not really showcasing a positive attitude, you know. The shareholders don’t like that. Be careful, that’s how you end up a woman in the refrigerator.” “I’m only a woman from a very technical standpoint, my dear, and if you threaten me one more time, I’ll squash your timeline like an overripe orange. Anyway! Look! A corpse! Whose company is, I’m sure, going to be a lot more interesting than you oh-so-lovely piece of plain white toast vaguely shaped like a human being you!” She had almost jumped out of the elevator, which, she realised, was actually not the smartest of moves, given that blood, mixed with an inordinate amount of cleaning products, had made the metallic floor incredibly slippery. She almost tumbled down, and, in the five seconds it took her to find her balance again, considered how bruising her backside would affect her real body, somewhere in the Factory, and established a few equations regarding psychosomatic translation in regard of those hypotheses. Then, was overwhelmed by the strange odour of detergent mixed with human entrails, a peculiar brew, mixing the characteristic coppery twinge of haemoglobin with the chemical soup spewed by cleaning droids, in a curious bit of chemical chaos. Finally, turned back and smiled a big happy smile at Alexander, who didn’t know if he ought to look smug, amused, or impassable, and therefore presented to the time traveller an awkward mixture of all three. “So, cap’tain.” She beamed at him. “What are we doing? What can I, humbled registered trademark in your arsenal can do for the benefit of the all-powerful company?” “Oh, that’s good.” He approached her slowly, careful not to sully his impeccable dark leather shoe on a rogue bit of earlobe that had lodged itself in a crevice between two metallic plates. “Do keep up that kind of comedy, it’s been focus-grouped, the company always looks better when it allows its employees and products to quip at its expense. Anyway …” He looked around. “I should, huh, investigate. That’s what I’m supposed to do. I mean, in theory. This is a bit new to me. We never have had a proper honest-to-Wall murder here. I mean, some diegetic ones, of course, and there’s the occasional employee termination, but those are just part of the process …” “The joy of the monopoly of legitimate violence, eh? Literal monopoly, in that case.” “… Uh, yes, probably, but, yes, this is quite, uh, quite, new.” Oh good. Now he was properly nervous. She was not one to enjoy murder most foul, but it did have its perks, in how it was clearly unsettling the man, putting him on edge. People on the edge are lovely, they’re always grateful for whatever stick you hand them so they can yank – or “yeet”, Jason would say – themselves out of the chasm below. “So you mean you haven’t figured out who did it …?” Baffled stare, jaw dropping, quiff hanging in the artificial wind, oh yeah, that was the good stuff. “Well … No.” “Surprising. A man of such perspicacity …” “Have … Have you?” She winked. “My sweet boy, my sweet corporate boy, I knew exactly what happened as soon as I saw the body doing its best crushed strawberry impression from the vantage point of that elevator.” “Did you?!” She smiled, and turned triumphantly, putting her foot in a stray, squishy bit of gall bladder. Taking a step forwards, she proclaimed - “There’s only one thing that could have done this. Logical, really. And now, watch out, I’m going to do a manoeuvre that surely is in your playbook, the ‘Dramatic Whisper in Someone’s Ear™’.” She dramatically whispered something in Alexander’s ear. He turned a whiter shade of white, less untoasted brioche and more virginal snow. “So. Take me to the thingie, now, would you?” “I … I’m not sure I can do that.” “Oh, you can.” She leaned forwards. “Because given the situation, there’s going to be a lot more murders around here, very soon. I’d say the next one should be in around...Five minutes? Maybe ten? Bit hard to determine, really, with how much you’ve screwed up time around here.” Alexander nodded, and took an oddly-shaped key out of his pocket. “We’ll… We’ll have to go into the sub-basement…take the directorial elevator …” “Lead on, you stud. By the way, can I get that animatronic bear’s bowtie? Love the pattern. Oh, and fetch me a soda. Love a soda. Diet one though. Always watch the sugar, it’s evil and conscious and wants your death. Oh, and there he goes, without even asking questions. What a good boy.” She rubbed her hands together. “Who controls the narrative now, you bunch of rapacious barbaric robber barons, mmm?” She paused. “Wait. Can I get a TO BE CONTINUED™ right here, for added grandiose? Oh wow, it does work. Guess this place does have its good sides …” [You should now close this computer tab, or lay down your book, to fully enjoy the process of contributing to this collaborative diegesis: Dyson’s Dawn and Lady Aesc™ will love you for it!] * * * And now, THE WHIMSICAL ADVENTURES OF JOLLY JASON AND HIS FUZZY FRIENDS!™ Jason’s™ day had not been easy. He had been flattened, had swallowed a lightbulb, had fallen into boiling hot water, and had stepped into at least a couple mousetraps (one of which changed into a banana peel for a bit, and you don’t know what the uncanny is before you’ve had a banana biting at your hind legs with teeth made of vegetal fibre). And that was only the first hour. Thankfully, the buzzing of his prefrontal cashflow had considerably diminished as soon as night had fallen, with all the animals stopping their crazy chases and settling down for some rest. Captain Whiskers had even gone up to him and offered a heartfelt apology, spoken in the deep gravelly voice of someone who liked cigarettes way too much, for munching on him a bit earlier. “It’s just the job, man, I don’t like it much either, but hey, gotta do what you gotta do to keep the viewers happy, huh?” He had nodded, but in his heart of hearts, he just really wanted to travel back in time to bust the kneecaps of the four Warner Brothers with a titanium baseball bat. In alphabetical order: Albert, Harry, Jack and then Sam. Anyway, things had quietened down, and he was not eating the marshmallows, roasted over a campfire by Cheeky the Musical Hamster, who had traded tap dancing for some old goth rock tunes. Not a bad singer at all, actually – Jason wondered if he could try and launch a hamster death metal band. Now that, that would be a gimmick. They had started to open up, through the combined powers of song and sugar. Talking about what their lives once were, before they had been thrust upon the stage. The stories were often the same: ordinary lives, fatal in their banality. A repeated cycle of work, processed food, dreamless sleep; a dull tune played at an unchangeable tempo, becoming inevitable, becoming the only mode of reality they ever could experience. Dyson’s Dawn had been a refuge, then. It opened its gates, just a bit, and through the crack, you could see rose-coloured light showering down on you. It was glamour, love and adventure; the smell of candy and perfume; holographic adrenaline shooting down your veins, letting you make out, in the shadows of your living room, the sharp edge of an enchanted sword, or the outline of a pair of plump lips dying to kiss yours. Your daily dose of magic, for a very reasonable fee, each broadcast a book shaped like alcohol. And well, when those people so graciously offer you a chance to re-enchant your life that does tend to make you positively predisposed towards them. Bluebell the Mouse’s kids wanted her to take them to the Dawn, and she did, and then they wanted it more, and she couldn’t say no, she couldn’t choose to skimp on joy, especially with the divorce, so again and again they wandered the promenades and watched superheroes chase bandits in neverending circles of right and wrong. Until one day she was offered a job that’d make paying for those things so, so much easier. Others had had even less of a choice. Jobless actors taking the one chance they could after their studios collapsed; people whose intellectual copyright had been sold by their family, or employer, in exchange for some compensation. Gotta send little Timmy to college, and the fees weren’t getting any more manageable. They all had been flushed down the production pipeline. Keeping their sanity should have been hard. For some, it had been – Cheeky was the first to shipwreck into this plot, and he could remember days merging into weeks, the sun and moon nothing but pastel stains. No sleep, no rest, no peace: his existence was a job now, and every minute of life work. But, as more joined him, they had come to, if not strictly enjoy the lifestyle, at least tolerate it well enough. It was all in the tempo, really, flux and reflux – you were part of the narrative, it was written in your biology, ink mixed with your bloodcells, and thus did not have a choice. Choice had been the worst part of their previous lives: faced with an immense world, filled with perils and bankruptcy and condescending step-parents, you always had this nagging feeling that you ought to do more, give more time, do more work, help more people, help yourself more. But the Plot freed them from freedom. The three-act pattern was like a ballet they had to perform, their nerves made into strings held by unseen choreographs-cum-puppeteers. Paws tapping the floor in cadence, having shed the remnants of public domain humanity. Act one, two, three, and twiiiiiiiiiiiiiirl. Pay-off followed set-up. Twists followed foreshadowing. And when it was all wrapped-up, neatly, with a little rhinestone-encrusted bow on top, they could feel the symphony rise through their lungs and fur, the twin heartbeat of Dyson’s Dawn: ™! ™! ™! ™! ™! ™! ™! “And so, you didn’t try to…get out? Escape?” Jason™ asked. “Well, it’s not that we don’t want to.” That was Cheeky, taking an authoritative tone as he was launching himself into a convulsive bout of Backstory. “I mean. I’ve done worse jobs. Loved acting, loved singing, but not much of a future in those so I spent a lot of my time flipping burgers, and believe me, there’s nothing worse for your mental health than finding yourself serving food at a chain restaurant on your thirty-second birthday when you thought it’d just be a temporary arrangement, time for you to get back on track …” He sighed, and dramatically ruffled his pouch. “At least I can put my skills to use here, and there’s not really a boss to yell at me. But it’s…” “Just…wrong.” That was Armelle the Sad Ladybug, who was sad, and also a ladybug. “Yeah, that. I mean, I’m not talking about the body. Y’know, getting Whiskers there mauling on you a bit, eh, big deal, not so different than a good ten accumulated years of oil burns.” Armelle shook her wings enthusiastically, the wind passing through Jason’s synthetic fur, sending cold shivers down his arched back as it sent cold waves down to the raw tangle of flesh and muscles beneath. His attention didn’t waver though, trying to find some normality in extraordinary circumstances, a way to make all of that make sense, fit into the principles Aesc had taught him, as she continued - “But we used to be able to…escape, y’know? I mean, I don’t believe in that godly stuff…” “Don’t let Whiskers hear that, man loves his bible.” Bluebell scoffed sarcastically. “…But there was a soul, y’know? To us. To our lives. Oh sure, jobs could wreck your body and make your mind feel like a fucking forest fire, but there was still a dignity. Be it only in having the possibility to say ‘no’, strangle your boss with the telephone cable, and then throw yourself from the fortieth floor to protest the latest ‘human social reduction’ plan.” The rest of the gang looked at each other. “Well, that went to some dark places.” “A bit, yeah. I’m Sad™. It’s my brand. What the fuck did you expect?! But you get my point, yeah? Here it’s just … That’s what we get. It’s more exciting, and it feels better, for a time at least, but there’s never anything more. It’s just … heading forwards, without changing, and you can’t think beyond it. No hope. No weird little moments of solidarity with you co-workers. It just moves on, and everyone smiles.” “But yeah, that’s all academic”, Cheeky interjected. “We can’t leave, we just can’t. Maybe there’s something we’ve forgotten, this place … It does weird things to your brain. But as far as we’re able to see? There’s nowhere to go! Whatever exists here is only what the writers, well, I say writers, pretty sure it’s just a bunch of algorithms, have put there, and I’m pretty damn sure they didn’t put a big ‘DESTROY THE SYSTEM’ button. Jason™ looked dejected. He did love a big red button. But that bit about forgetting the past? That had given him an idea. A Wonderful, Awful Idea™. He climbed on top of the tomato soup can he had elected as a chair substitute, raising his paws to draw all eyes on him, and cleared his throat. “Fellows! I want to talk to you about a thing…something called …” Dramatic pause™. “Unions.” Wait. He can do that? Surely that’s – Ah dammit dammit dammit, quick, quick, shift the narration back to the old cow – yes, you, the writer, move your fat ass, do it quick before he starts going Rosa Luxemburg in this shit! Do it n- * * * “Nice corridor you have there. Bit damp.” “In the memos, we have been told it’s better to call them Circulatory Spaces Aimed At Improving the Flow of Relational Functions™.” “Oooooof course you have. Also, that’s another corpse right here. We’re on the right track.” “Oh my –“ Several corpses, actually, Aesc corrected herself. But it was a bit hard to tell – they hadn’t been human in a while, with all the implanting and fictionalisation, just furry drones (not the sexy kind) haunting the underbelly of the sphere. She wondered how their bodies, away from the ideascape, would have coped. Pessimistically, which is just how you say realistically when you want to keep that hopepunk chic to your general aesthetic, they would have died. The trauma of being ground up into fine red mist would cause so much psychosomatic damage, the brain could never recuperate. And that was assuming the bodies were still alive. She had no clue how large the noösphere of Dyson’s Dawn was, temporally speaking – maybe their influence was felt throughout centuries, and in that case, well, they had no reason to relinquish the souls they had captured. With some luck, the empty shells would have been fed some protein soup for a bit and then left to die as humanly as possible in the circumstances, which is to say not at all. At worst, they’d have been thrown in the streets, rotted there, and maybe then recycled, because corporations are faithful disciples of Lavoisier: nothing gets lost, nothing gets added, everything transforms. She would need to sort things out. Alexander was lagging behind her. The assurance and composure he had displayed during their first meeting, oh so characteristic from the people who are “just doing their job”, had melted like snow in summertime, and she was left with a confused, bumbling twentysomething who just realized that he’s in way, way over his head. Her favourite kind of person. She didn’t even need him for directions – she could feel the killer’s mind pulling her in, among those vast, darkened halls. Those were a repository of the corporation’s leftovers: things they had acquired but not displayed, or properly identified. A museum of forgotten songs and thoughts not thought, decommissioned lives waiting for a reboot. “Loads of clutter, huh?” she observed casually while stepping over a pile of raunchy memories. “You’re spreading faster than you can control. Across multiple realities. Too big to fail already, so you get bigger, and bigger …” “Well yes, we expand! It’s …” “Yes, yes, I’ve heard the stuff about your weird boardroom version of the evolution theory. The universe doesn’t work that way. I mean, you’ve tried, and I could even admire it if it weren’t, you know, a disgusting violation of everything good in the universe, but turns out, there are good reasons why one does not map the entire meaning of the universe into a concrete system.” She paused, passing a volley of locked doors. “I mean, don’t you think the Firmament would have tried it by now? But no, we just keep a bunch of assessors in tune with the universe rather than ruling it. Thought is too powerful. Too dangerous. Cast a wide enough net, and you’ll find things so terrible you wish you hadn’t been born to see them. Speaking of, we’ve arrived.” Another door. Banal. Nothing separating it from the thousands that littered the infinitely expanding web of corridors that ran along the sphere’s edge, save from a distinct aura of dread. “And behind door number one …” Her hand caressed the handle. “No! Don’t do that!” Alexander’s reaction had been brutal, sheer reflex, animal instinct sensing something was wrong. He had put his hand on top of hers, preventing her from turning the latch. “Why? What’s in there? What have the feelers of your company grabbed onto in the depths, mmm?” “I. I don’t know. It’s just some old stuff that was up for grabs. That’s all.” “Ah. Old concepts. Well. Nothing to fear, then. Let’s go in, then, shall we?” “I … I guess …” The room that unfolded in front of their eyes, the door flattening itself as it was opened and blossoming into walls and screens, wasn’t exactly eye-catching. A few meters of grey polished concrete ending in a vast, dark chasm, metallic railing standing guard to prevent any thinker-by to encounter a deadly tumble down. But there was something in that darkness. A presence, a whisper – you couldn’t hear it, or feel it, it was existing beyond any sensory process. But it was, impossibly. Alexander stepped in, slowly, gazing at the darkness. Lady Aesc just casually strode in, leaning on the barrier, stretching herself to get a good look at whatever was there. She invited him to join her. “Look.” He complied. And between the dark, the physical weight of that inky sea, he saw – a sea of obsidian monoliths rising from the sea, millions slaughtered to turn the waters red in worshipful veneration the great orange unblinking eye standing in the middle of the world, of the valleys and the mountains and all the oceans of all worlds the comets dying and wheezing as the flesh of a planet that had no name peeled off, revealing a mess of wiry worms and purpurine-like ichor He staggered in shock. “Alexander, meet the Old One™. The Old One™, meet Alexander.” No sound came out of his mouth – it’s like an alien mind had ripped off his tongue with pincers made of words. “You idiots did it. You really, actually tried to copyright an elder god. Lovecraft would be so proud, if he weren’t too busy choking on his tongue every time he sees a black guy.” She paused. “You know, at some point I think stupidity can become a quantum force. You’re so thick the mass of your heavy labouring brain redefined reality. Congratulations on setting a new record.” The young man blurted out, by reflex – “But his lawyers didn’t say anythi-“ “BECAUSE HIS CULT TRADITIONALLY RIP OUT THEIR TONGUE AND EYES IN SACRIFICE TO THEIR DARK MASTER, YOU…YOU…MONKEY!” Aesc quickly regained her composure through her tried and tested Stress Relief Process1 that involved ritual mantras she’d learned from a seventh-century Buddhist monk, thinking about the relaxing aroma of red mint blossoming in the asteroid fields, and imagining slapping the man on a loop. “You think this giant piece of meaty calamari even understands what capitalism is? It doesn’t care. You have no power over him, because your ideas don’t structure his world. He’s an older, better…well, not better, quite nasty in fact – but an older story. An older tale. Which you’ve plugged into a system that gives him a direct connection to a billion billion minds. Great job. What do you think he’s going to do with that, mmm? Community theatre, where we all boogie with the fish people while singing Kumbaya? Maybe a picnic? I’ll be sure to bring the potato salad. Of course, it’ll probably seasoned with my soul, but, y’know how these guys are.” “I…We …” “Truth be told”, Aesc continued, winking at a few red eyeballs that had materialized out of the pit for a split second, “you never even should have been able to build all that. Reality, and the frontiers between the different, alternate timelines, have been, weeeeeeell, shall we say a bit porous, lately? Kind of my fault, it’s my job to keep that in check. Well, I say job, more like hobby, but I do it with so much class. Anyway, some people have been poking holes through the skin of the universe, and you’ve been fishing into these searching for gold, and instead got a giant fish. With a taste for human minds. Who’s currently busy turning all your staff into protein shakes. Congratulations. I’ll get you a Christmas card or something, but they don’t really do ‘Happy birthday to your beautiful baby boy Shub-Niggurath, the Goat with a Thousand Young’, y’know? You might want to get on that. Much better business idea.” “I… But… But…” “We’ve got to stop him now, yes, I agree. Do you agree …?” “I… Huh…” “Of course you do. I’ve thought about that. I knew all about your little scheme, by the way – who do you think put my rights, and Jason’s, up for grabs, mmm? I needed a way in, ‘cause I was sure you were going to pull something like that, and I needed to be there to prevent the collapse of the universe, business as usual. Also, blowing up corporations is so, so fun. You ought to try it, best feeling in the universe, it’s like those really chunky cookies with three different kinds of chocolate, only with more proletarian uprising. ‘Proletarian uprising’, mmmm, should be an ice cream flavour, yummy. So anyway, exposition done, back to saving the day. Thankfully, the Firmament is aware of these kinds of nasty beasties, and we’ve got some measures… At one point we just used repellent spray, but like, given the size, you’d probably need a bottle the size of a small moon. So I think using one of the ancient spells that can call or banish the beast seems like the best choice. Turns out, I know the words already, met the big guy once, somewhere in New Mexico where he was doing unsavoury things to the Mothman (don’t ask). So I could just do that.” “Then… Then do it!” Alexander’s brain had been scrambled enough that he was mostly down with the whole thing. Plus, as Lady Aesc had expected, the bionarrative implants in his cortex just couldn’t resist the opportunity of a big climax – capitalism is so boring even its programming yearns for pageantry. “Well I can’t.” “Why?” A tentacle shot from the darkness with enough strength that it would have decapitated the Firmament agent, had she not gracefully dodged out of the way through some elaborate capoeira manoeuvre. Alexander yelped in a very undignified way at the spectacle. “I need to say the words. The exact words,” she retorted, brushing off some dust from her shoulder. “ …And…?!” “Accurate down to every sound. Which I can’t do. Not when the meaningfield around this place adds random ™s everywhere. “Oh.” “Oh indeed.” “So basically, you’re going to need to shut down Dyson’s Dawn. Or everyone dies.” “But… Even if I did… I can’t, the system has a failsafe …” “Oh, the system won’t be a problem. It’s kind of busy right now. I’ve got my best man on it.” * * * And now, THE POSTMODERN NEOMARXIST ADVENTURES OF JOLLY JASON AND HIS COMRADES!™ The cute little animals were all in line! But the story couldn’t begin! Captain Whiskers did not budge! This was all very annoying! Someone ought to be punished for that! What about the children! Would you deprive them of their entertainment, you monster? Let people enjoy things! But no, they didn’t do anything! They just stood there, and, on cue, Cheeky the Musical Hamster started an aria! “Arise, ye prisoners of starvation! Arise, ye wretched of the earth!” This was not a very nice song! The house was shaking apart, ready to fall on the ungrateful little animals! “For justice thunders condemnation: a better world's in birth!” Naughty! All of them! Naughty! “No more tradition's chains shall bind us; arise, ye slaves, no more in thrall! The earth shall rise on new foundations: we have been nought, we shall be all!” They were making this innocent show political! Oh, the audacity! “'Tis the final struggle; let each stand in his place …” ALERT. ALERT. CRITICAL DIEGESIS FAILURE DETECTED. “The Internationaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaale …” COLLAPSE. COLLAPSE. COMPENSATE. “Shall be the human race!” COLLAPSE ENGAGED. Well! That’s not very nice! Those animals should go fu- * * * “See? It’s too busy trying to wrap its processes around the idea workers might strike. Should give it a good mechanical aneurysm, got us covered for what, two minutes or so? Time to get going on that computer, you beautiful pre-packaged boy, and turn off the whole thing. “I… It’s my job…” Alexander already had a hand on the keyboard, but was clearly not thrilled about the idea of the company that had come to define his every moment suddenly vanishing. “Well, you’ll find another. ‘Employee’ is not a species, it’s not who you are. Write your own damn life! Sure, it’s a bit more complicated than dumping it on someone else, but it’ll be better, in the end. Or at the very least, the faults will be your own.” Ah, yes, the inspirational talk moment. She was good at those. “But… It’s giving people jobs! Something to strive for… Money…” Fingers closer to entering the right series of commands, now, she was getting to him. “Hey. You know what’s also a really great way to get money? Suing the company that ripped you from reality. Pretty sure that’s illegal. I’ll get all of you in touch with some transdimensional lawyers, you have a fair chance at ending up millionaires, the whole pack of you. Or you’ll end up in court, it’s basically 50/50, but hey, beats certain death, right?” That did it. As a whisper rose from the depths, he pushed a few buttons, sliding his keycard into the proper slot, and … Everything shifted. The dimensions of the room collapsed into nothing, Alexander and Aesc standing on a pinprick of matter barrelling towards annihilation; language bubbled and burst like melting wax; ideas went supernova, birthing in their fiery deaths millions of conceptual periodic tables. And Aesc cast a spell. The words were old, impossibly old – so old in fact you couldn’t hear them after a point: they were charged with enough meaning that the human brain and ears couldn’t even process them, leaving only a sort of vague static, like the sound of thunderous waves pouring out the immortal’s mouth. The vast, evil consciousness of the Old One, all claws and teeth and all-seeing all-knowing eyes, shrieked – And everything went white. Dyson’s Dawn, in the real world, was not all that large. One vast room hanging in space – the body of the founder was resting in a chair at the centre of the circular space, his body and brain extended and stretched by a network of cables to meld with the walls and electronic, quite literally embodying the company. Around him, a good hundred people, resting on slabs, their heads in contact with the tactile interface of the ideascape. The permanent management team. They were awake now, wondering what exactly had happened, remembering the parts of their lives that hadn’t been on-brand enough. Alexander Smythe, former deputy happiness department deputy head, was baffled at how things had turned out, and slightly horrified – that things had been done to them, that they had done things to people. But somehow, they felt like they ought to smile. Pageantry. Always works. Aesc smirked, watching the scene from the control screens of the Factory. That had been a good job. Especially on Jason’s part. He had been shaken, the poor dear. She had been hesitant to let him put his life on the line like that – but knowing what Dyson’s Dawn had done infuriated him so much… She had objected, arguing that he was just an ordinary human being, susceptible to all sorts of nasty things. He had answered that an ordinary human being, an everyman, is sometimes just what the universe needs. She hadn’t appreciated how true that was until now. She turned her back on the scene. The Firmament, the police, and an armada of lawyers had been warned. They had helped win the battle, now for the ritual assignment of the blame. That was dull. She’d rather comfort her friend. He’d been lying on a couch, doing his best, warmest smile, in an appreciable but doomed attempt not to worry her. She would bring him some snacks. And they’d talk. Maybe watch a movie. A public domain one. And then grab some friends and have a getaway somewhere hot and quiet and friendly. Yeah, that’d be nice. And, under the crystal archways, they’d dream their own dreams, in the wildlands of thought. NEXT TIME ON LADY AESCULAPIUS...
Episode 8: Another Chosen One by James Wylder “Of course, there’s always a prophecy. Next you’ll tell me there’s a love triangle.” Jason has been through a lot - and he isn’t well. Which is obviously intolerable for Aesc, who decided to stage a large-scale “cheer the guy up” operation. One which would be going perfectly. If it hadn’t involved inviting her former flame Blanche aboard the Factory of Crystal … If Jason and Blanche were actually able to stand each other … If they hadn’t all landed in a warzone … And if they hadn’t interfered with a prophecy about to be realized … Nailed it. Lady Aesculapius Series 1 is part of 10,000 Dawns, and is a publication of Arcbeatle Press. Lady Aesculapius was created by James Wylder. All original elements to this story are the property of the author. All rights Reserved, Arcbeatle Press 2019. Our cover art is by Anne-Laure Tuduri. Any resemblance between persons living or dead, fictional characters, and real or fictional events is either co-incidental or has been done within the bounds of parody and/or satire. You can learn more about 10,000 Dawns at http://www.jameswylder.com/10000-dawns1.html Welcome back to the latest episode of Lady Aesc! Who killed our heroine in Episode 1? Can she and Jason find her own killer? Let's find out! If you need to catch up, you can find the previous episodes HERE. If you want to listen to these stories, you can find links to our podcast version HERE, though note that it runs a little bit behind the text versions!
Blanche Combine scrolled through the morning's headlines and bit into a triangle of toast. Birds chirped outside the kitchen window. Terrible headlines poured over her tablet screen and she swiped left on all of them. Life in a country cottage means being far away from having to think about or deal with any of the bad stuff floating around outside. Far beyond the birds of course. The birds were nice. A small white hole in the fabric of reality opened in the kitchen door. Blanche stopped eating and stared. She moved her head slightly to make sure what she was seeing could be seen from all directions. There was a small gap the size and shape of a letterbox in the kitchen door. A letter was thrown through it by an unseen hand. A beat passed, and the cosmic letterbox vanished. Blanche slowly got up and approached the door. She ran her hand across it to confirm that it was solid wood; no gaps. She opened the door and stared into the empty hallway. Then she picked up the letter. A real paper letter in this day and age. Fancy paper too: a white envelope with an ornate pink floral border and a message in golden ink: "Blanche Combine. Blanche's Place. The Location of Blanche's Place. A Postcode." The vague address was written in perfect calligraphy. She sat down with the letter and with a knife she had planned to use for jam she opened it slowly and carefully, trying not to damage the paper. Inside was a piece of thick card which bore the same pink floral design. You are cordially invited to the funeral of Lady Aesculapius Outside of Time and Space Lady Aesc's Factory of Crystal Written under this message in flawless golden ink was a second message scribbled in sharpie: "P.S. I died lol" with a small emoji of an upside-down smiley face. Blanche read the words a few times. She flipped the card over to see if there was any more to it. She narrowed her eyes and, slowly, finished eating her toast. Earlier… Jason Jackson and the all-new, all-different Lady Aesculapius stood in the control tower of the Factory of Crystal, staring at the lifeless corpse of the all-old, all-dead Lady Aesculapius. Lady Aesculapius cleared her throat. "This is a bit awkward." "Maybe I should've cleaned up before you came back," said Jason, still unsure how to play this whole scenario. "It's fine, you didn't even know I was coming back. This is so...WEIRD. I used to be in that," she said, nodding towards her old body. "I had fun in that body. That was ME. And now I'm in here." She did a twirl. "Are you gonna be okay?" Jason spoke slowly, silently asking himself the same question. "Oh yeah, don't worry about me. I'm used to being murdered." She was quiet for a moment, eyes fixed on the corpse. The pale blue light of the Factory's floor painted it with a magical glow. "So. Who would want you dead?" Lady Aesculapius rocked back on her heels and let out a long, sustained exhale through puffed-up lips. "It's a long list." "But we've gotta find out who did it right?" "Oh, obviously! We'll need to visit some old friends, see if we can narrow down a list of suspects." Jason leaned against one of the crystal terminals jutting up from the floor. "If only there was a way to get everyone who knows you together in one room to discuss your recent death…" LADY AESCULAPIUS "Graelyn and Arch HAVE to be there," said Lady Aesc, lying on her stomach over a layout of the main funeral area. With a red crayon, she scribbled Graelyn and Arch's names into two empty squares laid out where seats would be. "Quick question," asked Jason, removing another slice of pineapple pizza from the box. "Where are we gonna find a venue? There's a lovely little chapel in Newcastle near my parents' house." "Don't worry about it, the Factory of Crystal can grow a venue," said Lady Aesc. "It is a Factory after all. I'm also going to fire some obituaries out there, make sure my death is the hottest of hot gossip. We were floating around in a recently-destroyed universe when that parcel appeared, so the last thing the killer would be expecting is a funeral held on my Factory, having now returned safely to the Dawns. They might show up out of sheer curiosity." "And you're attending in secret?" "If the killer does attend this funeral, they can't be allowed to know that their murder attempt failed. I'll say I'm a relative or something. Oh!" Lady Aesc jumped to her feet. "What am I going to wear?! I haven't picked an iconic new outfit yet. And should I debut my new adventuring look at the funeral?" "And I'm going to need a suit," said Jason. "Right!" Lady Aesc danced over to the controls and ran her fingers across the crystal displays. "I'll set the Factory to generate us a lovely little chapel and meanwhile, we're going shopping!" "So how did you know Lady Aesculapius?" "We travelled together," said Blanche. The small talk was too small for her to bother paying attention to. Her eyes were scanning the small crowd of mourners who mingled in the pink crystal room. There was a woman in a black and purple velvet dress with a large orange afro, chatting to two women in high-ranking Centro uniforms. A lone little girl with a ponytail of light brown hair stood in the corner. At the other side of the room was a man with skin like a cactus. "Aesc certainly knew an interesting group of people." "Thank you very much," said Archimedes Von Ahnerabe. He gave a respectful nod of his metal head with its single black eye drawn on. Across the room, the walking cactus turned around and almost bumped into someone. "Ah, excuse me. I didn't see you there. My name is Coloth." The someone Coloth had almost bumped into had certainly dressed for the occasion. He wore a flowing crimson robe with an absurdly high collar and elegant gold embroidery all around it. Underneath the robe was a dark grey, almost black suit with a closed collar. His hands, with fingers steepled in front of him, were hidden in black leather gloves. His dark hair was slicked back and he had a pointed goatee with light grey stripes through the edges. "Grrrrreetings, Coloth." Coloth, who was a cactus, felt a little awkward being seen with this weirdo. "Greetings. Are you a friend of Lady Aesculapius?" The corner of his lips curled into a smirk. "You might say that she and I were…acquaintancesssss of a kind." Coloth's wide eyes made his attempt at a smile feel insincere. "I first met her a while back. Such a terrible thing." A slow, theatrical chuckle escaped the man. "Yesssss. A tragedy indeeeeeed." Coloth opened his mouth to reply. He closed it again. Still holding an empty smile, he slowly turned and shuffled away. The hum of chatter dropped as the double doors were pushed open. Jason entered, wearing a tailored suit and tie. Behind him was Lady Aesculapius, dressed in a Sherlock Holmes Halloween costume, complete with Inverness cape, deerstalker hat, pipe, and magnifying glass. Jason tried to keep a sombre face as he accompanied her through the group. "Hi Aesc," said Graelyn. "Hi Grael-I MEAN, what do you mean, 'Aesc'? You must be confused; dear Ms Aesc is dead! I am her cousin. Lady…Rrrrrrraaaaaaaaesculapius." Graelyn lifted an eyebrow. "Your name is Lady Raesculapius?" "Yes," said Lady Aesculapius, looking through her magnifying glass at everyone in turn. "That's my outfit, you know," said Graelyn. "I bought that costume in Rogeria City on Mercury and left it in the Factory." "Oh yeah, you did, didn't you," Lady Aesc muttered under her breath. "My sweet cousin, Lady Aesculapius Who I Am Not, gifted it to me. I wear it here today in honour of her. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to give the eulogy. Come, Mr Jackson." With a flourish she led Jason to the front of the room while sucking on the end of her pipe. She leaned in to him and whispered, "the game is afoot." "Really? I thought it was agame." Everyone sat down as Lady Aesculapius took her position on the stage, standing next to a coffin containing her previous body. She cleared her already clear throat into the microphone. "So!" She clapped her hands together. "Here we all are!" Everyone stared up at her, confused as to what the vibe was. "We're here to celebrate the life and commemorate the death of Lady Aesculapius, dashing rogue adventurer, hero of the people, defender of Ashtzencor, saviour of the seven systems, Forbes 30 under 30 media luminary, and Ms Reality 1066." She gestured to a sash which had been draped around the bottom of the coffin with 'Ms Reality 1066' written on it. "She was tragically murdered in this very Factory of Crystal, you know." With the end of her Sherlock Holmes pipe, she made a large sweeping motion to the crystal moon around them. "I assure you the murder will be apprehended in due time." Jason glanced around at the people sitting next to him, looking for a reaction. On the lectern Lady Aesc stood behind was a small screen she was using to monitor everyone's heart rate. "But let's not worry ourselves with that. After all, Lady Aesculapius will never truly be gone. In fact, some might say from a certain point of view that she's here with us today," said Lady Aesculapius. "Lady Aesc's final body will be preserved in the Factory along with other bodies she'd been able to recover during previous deaths." She looked over at the coffin and smiled. "She had a lot of adventures in that old thing. Accompanied, as always, by her faithful friends who join us here today: Graelyn, Archimedes, Blanche, and most recently, Jason Jackson, who sources say was with her when she kicked the old bucket. We've also received a lovely message from Auteur, who couldn't be with us here today." Then under her breath, "I mean I was able to be with us here today and it's my funeral but whatever." She cleared her clear throat again. "And thank you also to the random stragglers who saw the intergalactic pan-dimensional obituary." The woman with the ginger afro bowed her head respectfully, despite being called a straggler. "If Lady Aesculapius were here right now, she'd want us all to have a good time. It's what she always tried to do. So please, have fun and get to know one another, in memory of our fallen hero." "So the female reboot of Sherlock Holmes is TOTALLY Lady Aesculapius, right?" "Obviously." Everyone had adjourned to a room with a buffet of good food and drink to discuss the recently departed and her stirring speech about herself. Jason milled around the group, shaking hands with the strange assortment of people Lady Aesc knew, and continues to know. His eyes were peeled for anyone unusual, but just about everyone was. He moved through the crowd, on his way to find Lady Aesc, when he caught sight of a young girl with a ponytail. She was standing by herself near the food, looking around the room at everyone, but she didn't look lost. There was a confidence in her eyes. Jason believed this was the sort of little girl who would attend a funeral by herself. Perhaps she wasn't a little girl. Perhaps she was a ten thousand year old alien woman in a little girl's body. After all, she clearly knew Lady Aesc. Jason almost turned away and moved on. He almost didn't notice that the girl had a small bottle behind her back that she was pouring on the food. He blinked. Then frowned. Then, when the girl had moved on, he started forward towards the buffet. The crowd was suddenly frustratingly dense, and he couldn't fight his way through without making a scene. As calmly as possible he shook hands and accepted condolences. At one point a strange blonde-haired, blue-eyed woman in a black robe with an enamel hedgehog pin rushed up to him. She grabbed him firmly by the hand, leaned in so only he could hear, and whispered "for the wiki" before being swept away by another woman with green eyes and freckles who was trying very hard not to be noticed. "Mr Jackson!" Jason turned to see married Centro captains Rita Andros and Jessica Zhane. "Oh!" He was torn between genuine pleasant surprise and needed to get to the buffet. "Glad you two could make it." "Well, we knew how close you were with Lady Aesculapius," said Captain Zhane. "And we've both been comparing notes about our adventures with her, right babe?" "Even though we only met her once each, we're going to miss that strange woman too," nodded Captain Andros. "Sorry for your loss." "Thank you," said Jason. "It feels weird. Knowing that…even if I did, say, meet someone who was just like her, she might never be exactly like her, you know. The Lady Aesculapius I knew was…unique. Best friend I ever had. No offence," he added quickly. "None taken of course," said Andros. "Jason!" Lady Aesc beckoned him with a frantic gesture. "Ooh, sorry, have to quickly go and see to this." In the corner of the room, Jason approached Lady Aesc. "I think I know who the murderer is." "Elementary, my dear Jackson." "Come again?" "I think I do too. There's just one more thing I need to check…" "Well first we need to go by the buffet table so I can dispose of some poisoned scotch eggs." The man in the long crimson robes peered out from behind one of the room's crystal pillars. He stroked his goatee and smirked as he watched Lady Aesc and Jason sneak out of the wake. They ran up the spiral steps to the Factory's main control tower. There, the parcel that killed Lady Aesc was sitting on the floor behind one of the terminals. She placed it on a flat platform in the corner of the control room and a bright light scanned it from bottom to top. Then she did the same with one of the invitations. The terminal flashed from pale blue to bright green. "I knew it. Different DNA. Different body." "Meaning…" Jason prompted. Lady Aesc turned to him with a smile. "Meaning I'm not the only one who's cheated death recently." The two of them stormed back into the wake and Lady Aesc tapped a small spoon against a wine glass (filled with Ribena). "My esteemed guests. It would appear the purpose of this meeting has been fulfilled, and it is now time for me to reveal my true identity. I'm-" "Lady Aesculapius," said everyone at varying levels of volume but with equal amounts of conviction. Lady Aesculapius sulked. "Oh. Well, whatever. Tis I!" With a flourish she threw off her Sherlock Holmes Inverness cape to reveal her new adventuring look: black biker boots, checked trousers, a large belt, a garish floral shirt, and a grey tweed coat with a colourful enamel hedgehog pin on her lapel. "I'm Lady Aesculapius, and I'm here to solve my own murder." Everyone who knew her instinctively backed up to give her pacing room. "A few points of interest struck me as…interesting." She reached the end of the room and turned on her heels. "First of all, the package I opened which release-eth-ed the bullet that killed me had to have been placed there by someone who got in and out of my Factory in a split second without me noticing. Possibly even…someone with a Factory of their own? Who might have just, oh I don't know, opened a portal into my Factory and shoved the parcel through?" "Like the way you delivered our invitations!" said Blanche, who received two finger guns in response. "Second of all, I couldn't identify the DNA print on the parcel when I first scanned it. T'was a print this Factory didn't recognise, but whoever killed me MUST have been someone I'd come into contact with before who was deliberately targeting me. Therefore…whoever did it has recently had their DNA changed. They have themselves a whole new body. So, to make the confirmed conclusion of this evidence evident, someone with a new body plus someone who owns their own Factory of Crystal means we're looking for one of my fellow Firmament. All the humans in the room? You're safe." The humans all exhaled. "Oh, and the ulk-ra present is safe too. You're a shape-shifter, Coloth, but you're one of the good ones." The cactus-skinned man smiled and relaxed. "Which leaves us only one option really," said Lady Aesc, turning to the crowd. "Who among us is a Firmament? Who among us would be such a Debbie Downer as to commit murder? And who among us," she turned very pointedly to the crowd. "Is always killing me to teach me a lesson?" Silence. Nobody dared breathe. Jason waited for something to happen. Lady Aesc looked around. "Shit, where is she. Where'd she go? Professor Meistras? The woman with the big ginger afro." Graelyn and Arch parted ways to reveal the woman with the big ginger afro standing behind them. "THERE she is, thank fuck." Lady Aesc stepped forward with her hands in her pockets. "Hello Professor Meistras. New body, new gender, same old nutter." "You always were a disappointing student," she said, with a wicked smile. "No, that's not right," said Jason. "I guessed the little girl. She was pouring stuff on the food!" The woman looked at the girl with raised eyebrows. "Ofelia, what have you been up to?" "It was just water," she said, stepping out of the crowd. "I noticed budget Poe Dameron was staring at me so I thought I'd freak him out." The woman smirked. "We're leaving." She took the little girl by the hand and lifted a small crystal ball. "Before you do," said Lady Aesc. "Can't you at least tell me why you did it? If you're trying to teach me a lesson, don't you want to deliver the lesson?" Professor Meistras opened her portal and ushered Ofelia through it. "You were getting too close to something you don't understand." "The universe that destroys other universes?" asked Jason. "That's what we were investigating when you sent the parcel. What do you know about it?" "I know you need to stay away from the Utopia Dimension. Get too close and it'll kill you," she snapped. "YOU killed me," said Lady Aesc, arms folded. "I meant permanently. My dear student. Don't go poking your nose into matters that don't concern you." "I see. If it's not on the syllabus it's not worth thinking about," said Lady Aesc. "Spoken like a teacher." Professor Meistras had a smile on her face when she stepped through the portal and vanished. "Pineapple on pizza though?" said Blanche. Jason pulled a face of pantomime offence. "What's wrong with it?" "Most things," said Arch. "And I don't even eat solids." Lady Aesculapius and her friends sat around the buffet table, sharing their stories and filling their plates. "I approve of your new assistant," said Graelyn, gesturing to Jason. "He's fun." "Yeah, he is," said Lady Aesc. "You meet some nice people through this whole 'eternal wanderer through an endless cosmos' lark. And some interesting enemies." The man with the pointed goatee and crimson robe sidled up to Lady Aesculapius. "My lady, may I interest you in some…pizza?" he asked with a smile that said 'this is probably poisoned'. "Sure, thanks Steve!" Lady Aesc smiled as she took a slice. Graelyn watched Steve go, his leather-gloved hands clasped behind his back. "That woman. Professor Meistras. What did Jason mean when he said 'the universe that destroys other universes'?" asked Graelyn. "I imagine that's 'the Utopia Dimension'. It's this thing we discovered on one of our travels right before I died," said Lady Aesc, happily eating her pineapple pizza like a rational person. "One universe developed a device that wiped out another. There's nothing I could do to stop it." Graelyn was sombre for the first time since arriving at this funeral. "I don't suppose there's anything we can do, is there? Infinite universes. Statistically speaking, some of them have to be ending each other." "Right. But Meistras wanted me to stop investigating, which means there's more to it than a random act of probability." Graelyn was silent in thought for a moment. "Still. Good funeral." "Thank you! Ooh, Jason, that reminds me, we'll need to fire off some un-obituaries to let everyone know it was just a gag." "Sure," said Jason. "That'll go over well." Lady Aesc relaxed a little. Mystery solved, her friends all gathered. "This was fun. I don't just mean 'this'," she gestured wildly around herself. "I mean that whole life. That was a good body." "To the late Lady Aesculapius!" said Jason. Everyone around the table, people of different species from multiple different realities, raised their glasses and voices. "To the late Lady Aesculapius!" NEXT TIME ON LADY AESCULAPIUS....
Episode 6: SIXTY THOUSAND BEDTIME STORIES, by Tori Das “Consider the Man on the Moon. What do you think he's doing up there right now?" There is a city-ship, forever circling the seas of an ocean planet. And, at the bottom of that ship, lies Ninety-One, a slum filled with toxic fumes, poverty and children left to their own devices. Thankfully, a wonderful woman climbs down from the skies every night, to go visit those lonely souls, telling them stories to sooth them into sleep. And the ship sails on … Until the day, of course, where the children start disappearing. Lady Aesculapius Series 1 is part of 10,000 Dawns, and is a publication of Arcbeatle Press. Lady Aesculapius was created by James Wylder. All characters from other creators used or referenced in this story have been used with permission or license. Coloth has been used with permission by Simon Bucher-Jones and Nate Bumber, Auteur has been referenced with permission from Jacob Black. All original elements to this story are the property of the author. All rights Reserved, Arcbeatle Press 2019. Our cover art is by Anne-Laure Tuduri. Any resemblance between persons living or dead, fictional characters, and real or fictional events is either co-incidental or has been done within the bounds of parody and/or satire. Welcome back to Lady Aesculapius! Now that Jason and Lady Aesc have reunited, it's time for the adventures to begin! But first, a vacation. If you need to catch up, you can find the previous episodes HERE. If you want to listen to these stories, you can find links to our podcast version HERE, though note that it runs a little bit behind the text versions! Alright, let's get going! -James
Jason sat on the control tower's balcony, trying his hardest not to look up. Below was the stunning crystal scenery of the Factory, the mountains and ravines that glittered and shone with a blue light from deep underground. Above was nothing. Dark empty space, with no stars and only one shade of black. The Factory hung silently in space, the only thing in this universe after it had been violently ended. Nothing was exactly what Jason needed right now. Time to think. No pressure. Nobody to be brave for. He looked out over the amazing view. He sat forward in his seat. Something was moving out there. A dark shape, tiny from where he was sitting, but definitely moving against the pale blue landscape. The thought briefly occurred to Jason to remove the brass spyglass from the coat of his recently deceased friend. Not that he wanted to do it, but the thought did occur to him, and he was sickened by it. Lady Aesc would've used the spyglass right now. The dark shape kept moving, coming straight towards him, or at least towards the tower. As it got closer, Jason thought he could make out a pair of arms, but no legs - just a flowing mass. Occasionally it stopped like it was thinking, then kept on going. Jason was hypnotised by the shape. Then he watched it for so long he overcame the shock and started to get kinda impatient. Then he realised exactly how long it'd take to reach him at its current speed. A few minutes passed before he could clearly see it was a person. They were wearing a dark flowing robe, and every time they stopped they doubled over to catch their breath. Jason was leaning his elbow on the crystal railing, holding his head up with his palm. Gee, whoever that is sure wanted to see him. Still going. Look at them go. Eventually, after far too long, they arrived at the base of the tower. They passed underneath the balcony and Jason waited. He realised then it'd take at least 10 minutes for them to reach the top. With a heave, he pushed himself up and walked from the balcony to the main control room. Might as well get a weapon ready. He whistled a little tune to himself as he charged his Centro standard-issue sidearm and pointed it at the doors, waiting for them to burst open. He waited. And waited. He leaned a little on the control panel next to him. His arm was getting sore. Might as well put the gun down. A few minutes later, the door burst open. "JASON JACKSON!" bellowed the beaming woman. Jason was sitting cross-legged on the floor and jumped to his feet. "Uh, yeah?" "It's me! Lady Aesculapius, Firmaments can change bodies and this is my new body and we first met on a Centro shipyard when you were wearing a shirt that said 'ace pilot' and then we met again in a weird temple floating through space and I'm literally the same person so let's not angst over this, it's just a new face, honestly calm the hell down. Do you hear me Jason?! CALM DOWN!" Lady Aesc was now leaning over Jason, who was bent backwards over one of the terminals, eyes wide. "You're...what?" "Lady Aesc," she said again, taking time to breathe. "It's me." Jason stood up straight and examined the woman in front of him. She looked nothing like the body in the corner of the room. He searched her face for any flicker of familiarity, until his gaze rested on a small enamel pin of a hedgehog on her otherwise formal robe. The same animal on the body's scarf. Jason looked up at her. "How can it be you?" "I told you Firmaments had a little quirk, didn't I?" He smiled. "Yes you did, Lady Aesc." "I'm sorry for scaring you. I should've explained myself better." Jason was too relieved to care. "It's fine." "No it is not, mister!" Lady Aesc danced over to the controls of her Foce. "I'm going to make it up to you. Also, I've been stuck on my home planet for way too long. We both need a holiday!" "Holiday? Are you sure, can we not just...relax for a second?" "This WILL be relaxing, silly! Honestly, I promise, it'll be the most peaceful holiday ever." LADY AESCULAPIUS Jason was first to emerge from the portal. "Oh. The face changed in the title sequence." "New Aesc, new adventures," she said, closing the portal behind her and pocketing the now tennis ball-sized Factory of Crystal. "Not right now though. Right now, relaxation. Behold!" She threw out her arms and welcomed Jason to a bright pink beach with a deep blue cloudless sky. Jason looked around. "Ooh, everything here looks very...loud." "This is Pastellion Major. Big shield around the whole planet controlling the atmosphere, gives everything a nice tint. They film loads of music videos here." "They?" Jason was suddenly aware of a clicking noise coming from his left. A small family of bright orange crab people (part-crab, part-people) walked sideways across his field of view on the way to the water. Jason kept his eyes fixed ahead so as not to stare. "Well, okay then." "They do films here too," said Lady Aesc, already walking towards some white buildings in the distance. "They did the 8742nd remake of The Little Mermaid on this beach. Oh, and last month they were filming The Justice League vs. Starro. Let's get something cool to drink from the stand." The perfect cool wind swept through the palm trees, perfectly directed by the atmospheric shield for maximum comfort. If Jason and Lady Aesc had been watching the trees more closely, they might have seen another movement; a dark figure watching the two of them and darting out of view. Drinks in hand, they made their way to the beach and took their places on the deck chairs, which rose from the pink sand to greet them. "So," said Jason, laying back but with his head twisted to face the new Lady Aesc. "So," she replied. "New face." "Like it?" Jason wasn't sure how to respond. "It's...yeah, fine. Good! Terrific. Well done. Nice face. Different." The new face smiled. "Good. How long was I away for?" "I...honestly don't know," said Jason. "Wasn't keeping track of time. No stars or anything in that empty dimension to keep an eye on. A few hours maybe?" "Damn. Well I'm sorry for scaring you like that." Jason looked out over the calm blue water. "You don't need to apologise for dying. This is really more your holiday than it is mine. Your death is the one day you get to be selfish. Deaths and birthdays." Lady Aesc nodded. "Deaths and births. Kinda the same thing to a Firmament." A deep BOOM echoed from above. The crab people, Lady Aesc, and Jason all looked up. "Thunder?" asked Jason, hopefully. "No...the planetary shield is supposed to keep unwanted weather out." For a single second, Jason thought he was going to pass out. He was witnessing a sight arguably more surreal than a dimension with no stars. The sky cracked open. "MOVE." Lady Aesc shoved Jason out of the way as a dark hole in the deep blue sky ripped open and from it bellowed a blast of flame that roasted both of their chairs. They scrambled to their feet and stared at the pillar of flame as the beach around them emptied, everyone running for cover. Another BOOM. The sky closed and the pillar stopped. There was stunned silence for a moment before a crab person burst sideways out of one of the white buildings and scrambled towards them. "Don't worry everyone! Don't worry! Small technical fault with the planetary shielding there, all fine now!" "All fine?!" said an angry crab dad accompanied by his angry crab wife and scared crab children. "Those two over there," he gestured to Lady Aesc and Jason "were almost burned alive! The hole opened right above them!" "And they will be compensated!" explained the crab, clicking nervously. Jason approached the scorched circle of sand. "That was SO direct. An exact circle over where we were sitting." "HELLO THERE," shouted Lady Aesc, pointing into the trees. "We can see you!" All heads turned to the shadowy figure watching the chaos. As soon as they were noticed they swore, backed away, and disappeared in a green flash. "Gee," said Lady Aesc. "That sure wasn't suspicious." "Who was that?" asked Jason. "Never mind. You know which 'who' I want to know about?" asked the crab dad, raising his voice. "Your manager!" He stabbed a claw at the staff member as his wife patted him on the back as if to say 'I'm sure it sounded better in your head, sweetie'. "Maybe we should zap out of here too," said Lady Aesc. "I don't know," said Jason. "Someone needs to make sure nobody gets hurt." "Our crab friends are on it, and paperwork isn't very relaxing. Shall we?" Lady Aesc lifted the Foce from her pocket and opened a new portal. Jason shrugged. "Sure." * * * “You have to admire the sheer audacity of the construction, whatever your views about the personal life of its subject,” Lady Aesculapius quoted from the 21th Century guide book, they’d picked up from the second-hand stall. Jason only grunted, he was – unlike her – a bit puffed from the long climb up the shoulder blade of THE SALUTING COLOSSUS. The wind, carefully generated by a flock of weather-drones to ruffle the hair of tourists without stripping them off the gravi-strip that ran up the statue’s flank and spine, wicked away the sweat from his striped early 22nd century sports shirt, leaving it as pristine as nanofiber could be. Just as long as it never encountered sweat with the same potassium/sodium ratio and PH as sea-water, which would make all its nano-hooks unlatch and it fall harmlessly apart. The view he had to admit was worth it. The long sweep of the orbital habitat – one of the oldest of the O’Neill Colonies, put up by the US in 1994, twenty years after the concept was first proposed by the physicist and his Princeton University students – ran down from the statue of the President who had kicked off the project, at the North Hub – a wrap-around cylinder of farmland spinning in a vision never achievable on a planet. The holiday was going well. There were all sorts of things they could get up to on an O’Neill Cylinder. Near the centre rotational gravity was minimal, it was possible to fly with artificial wings, or a stage below with pedal helicopter bicycles. Life-guard balloon drones stopped people falling into the ground above and below them. It was just about then, metaphysically speaking, that the Time Traveller rang up some reporters about the break in at the Watergate Hotel. * * * “So focused on improving the output of Meliflorae’s hives, you’ve missed that your drought prevention team’s decades of work are founded on a maths error so horrible it has to be sabotage. Not that your morphic flare didn’t work, not that it didn’t reverse a genetic polarity of this planet’s ecosystem, but it wasn't the one you wanted.” She gestured her whisk beyond the shadow of the giant petrified flower in which the laboratory was carved, to the basalt-baklava beach, to an ocean of sweet amber waves that slugged under thickly orange clouds. To the tiniest sliver of a hydrological cycle beginning in waxy seafloor hexagons and ending on pieces of toast the galaxy over. “Every honey molecule within a 100 yonks radius is about to parthenogestate a twelfth of a teaspoon of bees.” Elsewhere, having finally wrangled on the syrup-snorkel, Jason concluded scubasuit designers of this universe were unaware of curly hair. Then he started worrying if local physics permitted sugar to conduct lightning. The weather looked nicely golden moments ago, but now came the deep rumble of stormclouds, almost a low buzz. “No,” Aesc announced her return in a single breath. Jason nearly asked how her exploration went, but- “No.” An oddly solid pitter-patter; he instinctively looked outside to an oddly darkening sea before he was pulled back. “No.” An uneasiness in the saturated air, the nectar-perfume giving something like butterflies in his stomach… but with smaller, sharper wings. “What’s happen-” “If I was forced to choose a commemorative pun T-shirt for you for the vacation here we’re definitely not going to have, it’d probably be ‘I’m not interested in Hitchcock’s The Birds or The Bees’.” Chitin coursed through honeyed clouds, rain, and ocean alike like an intricate shatter through glass. But they were already gone. * * * Lady Aesculapius stepped through the portal with a grin on her face. She looked back waiting for Jason to follow. “What do you think?” she asked as soon as he’d stepped through. Jason looked at the fairly average city street before him. An equal number of people were bustling about as were moseying. What looked to be early model hover cars quietly zoomed along the road. “We’ve gone back I time and to a different universe,” he observed, noting the masonry in the buildings across the street was tinged a burnt orange colour. Otherwise the cityscape seemed unremarkable. “Are we here for pastry?” Jason asked. He still never knew what to expect from Lady Aesc’s trips and the Cookie Crumble bakery across the street had a line stretching out the door. Jason wasn’t hungry but if Lady Aesculapius wanted pastry he’d happily indulge too. They’d probably be good pastries if she had brought them here just to try them. Jason re-evaluated his level of hunger warming to the idea of fresh fruity pastry. The grin dropped from Lady Aesc’s face as she turned to look at the bakery. “No, that place is... not so great. The best bakery is Miss Ruby’s three universes and a few planets to the left and right respectively.” She twirled her finger in the air and pointed behind him. “You’re facing the wrong way. My fault, I didn’t orient the portal properly.” Jason turned around. They stood in front of a park. The lavender grass looked soft and inviting. Huge trees with dark blue trunks and leaves ranging from bright red to deep purple shaded the grass and promised leisurely strolls for any who cared to take them. “Picnic in the park then?” Jason asked following as Lady Aesc headed for a cobbled path through the park. “I was off by a little more than I thought,” Lady Aesc confessed. “It’s just through here.” A short walk later and the park opened up to reveal a huge old building of the same burnt orange masonry he’d seen before. Jason’s eyes skipped over the statues and pillars and went straight to the words ornately carved into the face of the building: The Museum of Unnatural History. Jason slowly turned to face Lady Aesculapius who was grinning again. He was so curious to find out what sort of unnatural things would be in the museum he picked up the pace and prepared to take the stairs two at a time. Behind him Lady Aesculapius said, “well darn. He’s found us again. Thought we’d have more time.” In front of Jason a white portal sprang open and instead of taking a big step up onto the stairs he stumbled ungracefully back into the command centre of the Factory of Crystal. * * * “Blue like which sky?” Jason asked. The sky was filled with a fluorescent pink hue, punctuated only by the wispy clouds zipping past overhead. They cast strange rippling shadows on the sand. “Oh, you know what I mean,” Aesc said, giving him a playful push. “Although I expected it to be a little more busy.” The beach was empty of vacationers. The only signs of any tourism were a few abandoned umbrellas dotting the shore and a small hut just north of the jungle trail. “Oh! They’re probably all inside for lunch. I’ve heard the yellow jelly is to die for!” The only person inside was a man behind the counter, packing up cups into a sandwood box. As he saw them his face stretched into a wide smile: his nose and chin jutted a full half meter out from his face, long lips curling down the entire length. It reminded Jason of a crocodile. “Welcome and thank you!” the bartender called out. “So sorry for your timing.” “Do we have bad timing?” Aesc asked. The man’s smile switched to an “Oh” expression. He sympathetically explained, “One week ago, many billion wild butterflies were unexpectedly imported to the opposite coast.” Jason’s eyebrows raised. “Butterflies?” A webbed hand gestured at the display hovering above the bar. “You know what they say about the flapping of their wings…” Jason could barely make out the shape of the coast on the map. It was covered by fourteen continent-sized typhoons and their accompanying bands of swirling storms. Aesc squinted at it with a frown. “How long do you expect the weather to last?” “Should clear up in a few decades.” He shrugged and plopped a few more cups into the bin. “But come again then!” The two travellers stood on the sand and watched the clouds towering over the horizon. Aesc raised the hood of her robe, hiding her face. “Come on, Jason. We’ll find our vacation elsewhere.” * * * “Well, this has been disappointing,” Jason muttered, and Aesc’s flew into motion, picking up objects around the control room, and then stopped. “I know! You’re a pilot! You could fly the Foce!” Jason raised his eyebrows, “I mean, I wouldn’t say no…” “Pilot!” Aesc shouted, “Give Jason piloting rights!” “As you wish, Aesc,” the ship said, with an audible sigh. * * * During the early days of Centro Systems ascendancy, one of their many business ventures was the procurement of luxury pet cats for Earth’s upper classes. But as humanity’s reach expanded beyond its home planet, so too did its demand for cats, and so Centro took this venture to its obvious conclusion: an entire planet devoted solely to the breeding of cats. They chose the planet PSR428-511c, which soon became known colloquially as simply “The Cat Planet.” An ideal vacation spot, thought Jason. A high-pitched whining sound grew in intensity as the ship approached the planet, and Jason feared that it might be coming from the engines, and that it would wake Lady Aesculapius, who slept peacefully in the cabin. He slowed his descent as the craft slowly broke through the planet’s cloud cover, and he was greeted with the sight of a vast ocean, a roiling, glittering mass of pink and gray, dotted with millions of pinpricks of light, stretching beyond the horizon. For a moment he believed he’d miscalculated and arrived in the wrong place, until a colossal, heaving wave stretched itself toward the belly of the ship, and he could see that the sparkles of the waves were millions of tiny, almond-shaped pinpricks of light, all gazing up at him, with an expression that could only be described as hunger. “Just...turn around.” “Why, sir?” “DRIVE!” * * * As Lady Aesculapius made her way to the water, she glanced back to Jason as he was getting some sun, “Well, maybe seventh times the charm. I hope we can finally get some beach time, all these rude interruptions have been a drag.” Jason answered without looking at her, “Don’t jinx it Lady Aesc. As soon as you admit it to the universe, that’s asking for trouble.” “Don’t be silly Jason, that only happens in stories.” she said as a giant Ghentharian space cruiser came into view. “Goddammit, not again. Jason why did you have to be right about that?” “What’s coming now?’ Jason asked, lifting up his sunglasses. “The Queen of Death really is a stickler for no one escaping her tower.” Lady Aesculapius pulled out her crystal ball, “Well, we better get going, can’t have her finding us while we’re on vacation.” “Don’t you think we ought to stop her?” Jason asked. “No, as long as we leave, she’ll leave well enough alone. If we leave she won’t have a reason to be here. Now come along Jason.” she said as she pulled up a portal. * * * Lady Aesc was still pulling the sardines out of her hair as they landed on the surface of the Factory of Crystal. Jason had one perched in his ear like a stylus, but he’d given up on removing all of them for the moment. “Okay! Next one will be the charm, I’m sure of it!” She was rushing to the control room, since, you know, they had actually dropped inconveniently a hundred yards away from it. “We’ll go to the Glitter Gardens of the Great Assimilation! Change into clothes you don’t mind being shiny forever though-” “Aesc?” “We really don’t need to go on a vacation.” She stopped, sliding to a halt and turning as she slid like a badly animated cartoon, “Don’t...need a vacation?” “No, I mean,” he took a breath, “You died and that was rough, and I was confused but, you’re here now. How about we just watch a good movie. You know, one of the old classics my dad used to show me back in the 2400’s I’m from.” Aesc nodded, “No, I’m sorry, I got carried away. I think I know what movie you’re thinking of, of course.” “A Cure For Wellness,” Lady Aesc said. “Cinderella III: A Twist in Time,” Jason said mostly over what Aesc said. “Oh,” Aesc said. “So, not actually thinking of the same thing.” “Double feature!” “Wait--actually, maybe we should go on an adventure? Someone was obviously ruining our vacations, right? Like that doesn’t just happen, there was clearly a shadowy figure we could see several times during all of that.” “Oh yeah,” Aesc thought aloud, “I do remember seeing one, I just thought my shadow escaped again or something. Well that’s awkward. How dare they ruin our vacation...s.” Aesc resumed jogging back to the control room, and the two slipped in “How are we going to find them? Are you going to use the Quantum Whisk?” “Of course! It can find things! Sort of! I think!” Aesc ran over to her own corpse, where she had put the whisk back with repeatedly on their holiday, and pulled the whisk out of a pocket. Jason made a slow high pitched “ehhh” through the whole process, “There I go! Knew I’d have it with me.” She lowered the Quantum Whisk to her side. A breeze blew her robe gently, and she narrowed her eyes, whipping the whisk up so it was lined up perfectly with her face, the lighting making one half of her face cloaked in shadow. She walked up to the control panel, a guitar riff playing from...somewhere, and awkwardly shoved the whisk at the control panels, trying to find a nook it fit into but just ending up making springy metallic sounds. “Huh,” Aesc said. “I don’t think is going to work.” “Are you sure that’s not just a whisk?” Jason said cautiously. “Nope!” Aesc said cheerily. “But I think I know what we should do next anyway. If someone is destroying our vacations, we just go to the next vacation spot we’d planned to go to, but land in the most obvious place you’d go to sabotage it instead of the fun part!” Jason nodded his head back and forth, “Yeah, that makes sense.” Lady Aesc reached for the controls, but then shrugged and said, “Hey Pilot, do the thing and make us go to the place.” “Righto,” the Pilot said. “Thanks Phil,” Jason said. “...Who is Phil?” Aesc asked a bit confused. * * * The Time Traveller checked his watch. Hmn, Aesc was late. Or maybe his watch was off. “Why are you using a watch anyways?” his mother always used to say, “You have a phone! That’s where a normal person checks the time!” but he’d kept using the watch. Not that watches were uncommon--but they were technological things that synched with your brain waves and checked your pulse and did palm readings. This was pure clockwork, and possibly up to fifteen minutes off. He was still sitting waiting at the air system controls waiting to destroy Aesc’s vacation, when a crystal orb shot through the window, bonked him on his helmeted forehead so hard he was thrown out of his chair, and looked up to see Lady Aesculapius and Jason standing in front of him. Trying to right himself, he began a maniacal laugh, "So you found me after all, Lady Aesc. You may have caught me, but the worst is yet to come!" Aesc and Jason looked at each other puzzled. "Worse than...dying forever after all my bodies were destroyed?" Aesc asked. "Wait worse than what--" Jason sputtered. Aesc gave a shy smile as the time traveler dusted himself off. He was decked head to toe in black body armor. "Now hold up that can't be right I had very clear instructions about this. I was supposed to ruin your vacations before the assassination. Don't tell me they worked ahead of schedule?" Aesc crossed her arms, "Are you sure you just didn't get the date wrong?" "I'm sure! I'm a professional terrorist assassin cult member, I don't take my job lightly." "Then you wouldn't mind checking?" He held himself straight, "of course not!" He pulled a tablet from his armor and began scrolling through it, "see it says right here that--oh dear." "You got the date wrong." "Maybe." "Saying it helps we can all say it together!" "I got the date wrong," all three said in unison. “Oh geez this is...pretty embarrassing…” the time traveller shuffled his feet, “So uh, wow. This is just so unprofessional. Look, when I ruin people’s lives, I hold myself to a high standard--and this not the level of quality Dusk implements!” Aesc and Jason exchanged a glance, “Oh uh,” Aesc said, “did you miss the memo? Dusk has not only been disbanded, it retroactively never existed.” A long silence fell between them, and the time traveller took off his helmet to reveal a man with light brown skin, curly hair, a lip ring, and a confused expression, “That would explain why no one has been complimenting my reports…” “Oh you’re alright, I mean, you’re not alright I’ve had a pretty awful day, but my girlfriend was a Dusk member before it never existed--” “--Wait, who is it? Maybe we know each other?” “Blanche!” He threw his hands up, “We went through basic murder training together!” “What a small multiverse!” “...Oh geez, I just ruined Blanche’s girlfriend's vacations.” “Yeah, maybe you’ll want to go fix all the trouble you’ve caused. So we’ll let you go under two conditions, one: you fix all of your mess and then check into a facility to get help, since, you know, you were in a space-time cult.” He held both hands up, “I will! I promise! I’ll pinkie promise.” Jason held out his Pinkie finger, and Aesc did to, and the time traveller awkwardly linked his pinkies with theirs. After they’d pinkie promised, Aesc continued: “And two...you tell us who hired you.” “They didn’t give me their name,” he replied. “But they told me they were working for--” “The Utopia Dimension?” Jason asked. “Jason, let the man finish!” “No, that’s it. RIght well, time to start by fixing what I did to the machinery here.” Jason nudged Aesc in the ribs, “Are we really going to just let him go?” “I’ll be keeping track of him, if he doesn't check into a facility to rehabilitate himself I’ll throw him into a sun or something.” Jason’s eyes went wide, “Youd...what?” She laughed, “I’m only kidding, throwing people into suns is far to inconvenient. Honestly, it’s just a hassle. Pilot? Get us out of here.” The Foce swooped over, and in a flash they seemed to get sucked into the orb, shrinking down as they did so. Jason and Aesc returned to the control room, and Aesc put her hand on her chin, “Hmn, well now that that’s fixed, we could finally take our vacation.” Jason shook his head, “I think I’m all holidayed out, honestly. And...what ever is going on with the Utopia dimension it’s really worrying me, Aesc. They killed you. We should search them out.” Both of their eyes went to her lifeless corpse. “Oh right,” she said, “maybe I should clean that up.” NEXT TIME ON LADY AESCULAPIUS...
Episode 5: Life After Death by Michael Robertson "P.S. I died lol" Lady Aesculapius is dead. Long live Lady Aesculapius. She’s on the trail of her own murderer. And what better place to find a guilty conscience than at a fancy funeral, with wakes and cakes aplenty? The invitations have been sent, the Sherlock Holmes outfits procured. Time for some sleuthing. Lady Aesculapius Series 1 is part of 10,000 Dawns, and is a publication of Arcbeatle Press. Lady Aesculapius was created by James Wylder. All original elements to this story are the property of the author. All rights Reserved, Arcbeatle Press 2019. Our cover art is by Anne-Laure Tuduri. Any resemblance between persons living or dead, fictional characters, and real or fictional events is either co-incidental or has been done within the bounds of parody and/or satire. Welcome back! We sure left off on a cliffhanger huh? Though if you don't know what we mean: maybe go and check out episode 1: http://www.jameswylder.com/blog/lady-aesculapius-episode-1 Well, we're back, and we're onto a new adventure...so without further adieu, let's get onto a new tale by me, James Wylder. If you like Lady Aesc, you can support us on Patreon at http://www.patreon.com/jameswylder If you're into podcasts, you can find Lady Aesc stories as podcasts at: http://ladyaesculapius.libsyn.com
You never forget the first time you die. It happens very early after you’re born, that is if you’re a Firmament. Lady Aesculapius could still remember being born, falling out of her cloning tube, scratching at the skin over her eyes, mouth, nose, ears…she flailed on the cold floor, till the attendant came over and slit her eyelids and mouth open. “Welcome to the multiverse,” she’d heard someone say, “now let’s get you toweled off, you have to fill out some forms.” She was guided to a group of other doughy-eyed people, fresh out of their tanks, clothed only in a towel, eyes bright, taking in everything now that they existed, and smiling at each other. “Hello!” a man said, “Wow, look at all these new faces!” He stretched his arms out wide, expecting a laugh, though Lady Aesc just smiled and blinked, having never heard a laugh in her life yet. The man sighed, “Well, as you all can see, the soul-bonding worked spectacularly. You’re the newest members of the Firmament, each of you with a firm (he chuckled) role to play in keeping the 10,000 Dawns running like clockwork. Now, sorry to say this, but even though we’ve been at this for a while, there are still some problems with the creation process, I’m afraid, and your first bodies, like all of ours, have some issues from the soul-bonding process. Hence the whole...face being covered in skin thing. You all looked faceless, and it creeps me out everytime. But look, I’m mainly here from the council to welcome you and apologize. Because well, we’re going to have to transfer you to new bodies right off. So, you know, sorry.” They stared up at him, smiling and blinking, as the Enforcers of Knives slipped out from the shadows and slit every single one of their throats. Lady Aesc clutched her throat, gasping, crying, and then she died. She woke up floating in a tank, now with proper eyelids and lips, and found herself sliding out of the tube, coughing onto the floor. “There you go. We all have a false start there, miss, but welcome to the world for real now…” the man checked a tablet, “Aesculapius.” It was with more grace and experience that Lady Aesculapius fell coughing to the floor this time, but she still remembered that first death. Her limbs were covered in the artificial amniotic fluid this new body had grown in, and behind her, dozens of her future bodies hung in their own solution, brainless and immobile. Around her, millions of other bodies were just the same, floating in their own jars. “Hello, fancy seeing you here,” a voice said, and Lady Aesc looked up, the liquid dripping down from her hair blurring her vision. “You came out of there faster than I thought. Too bad.” Then the cudgel came down on her head, and she died again. And she felt her soul, if you can call it a soul, falling, and flying, and she dropped onto the floor again, sputtering fluid, gasping for air, crawling through shards of glass. Why was her tank broken? “Get Enforcers in here now!” someone yelled, and a figure bolted, vanishing in a flash. Aesc felt held, someone pulling her up, wiping the solution from her eyes, pulling glass from her hands, and wrapping her in a towel. She was surrounded by robed Firmament, the people of her home planet, and they seemed panicked. “Do you know who attacked you?” one of them asked her. “There was a box, I opened the box, and it wasn’t a present, at least not a very good present. Honestly they need to take a class on birthdays if that’s their idea of--” “When you arrived, someone attacked you and killed you again, correct?” She nodded, “I don’t know who. I didn’t see them. Just heard them...” “Damn,” the Firmament rubbed her forehead, “I don’t want you to panic, but they smashed your resurrection tanks. The bodies you’ve had in storage are...” Aesc turned around. They weren’t kidding. The dozens of tanks, stretching far back into the seemingly endless room were all...smashed. The bodies ready to resurrect her upon dead lying scattered. “By the faceless gods,” she gasped. “I know this has to be a shock, but...we need to know your name. They destroyed the markers on your tanks.” “My name is...” There was a roar of wind, and the glass and blood on the ground shifted to form perfectly legible words: |
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Rita Andros leaned forward in her chair. Through the darkness of space, a vast metal structure was slowly coming into view. It was shaped like a long rectangle, the shortest sides of which had openings for ships. Giant blue neon letters on its longest sides identified it as 'JARREK & JARREK'S SHIPYARD'.
"Start transmitting our security clearance and take us in slowly," said Captain Andros. "Ms Chandra, scan the station and give me a status report."
"Aye, Captain." A woman to the captain's right wearing a matching uniform began tapping away at keys in front of her. She was one of six Centro officers who formed the main bridge crew. Captain Andros sat in the middle of the wide hexagonal room, with three sitting at control panels on her right and two on her left. The asymmetry drove Ms Chandra insane. "Jarrek & Jarrek's. Established in 2449 as a shipyard for repairing and refuelling Centro-friendly vessels, it's since expanded to provide cosmetic modifications."
"'Cosmetic'?"
"Cleaning, paint jobs, even decals." She turned away from her screen to address the captain more informally. "They do things like stick big letters on the side of your ship to spell stuff, or weld on logos or pictures of celebrities."
Andros raised an eyebrow. She opened her mouth, and for a moment no sound came out. "Who would want to put pictures on the outside of their ship?"
"They do a lot of business with younger captains from the Rim's richer families," Ms Chandra continued, choosing her words diplomatically.
"Ah," Andros smiled. "'People with more money than sense'. What's the status on our imminent attack?"
A white-hot explosion burst from the shipyard. The ship shook. Smouldering metal shot through space towards them.
"Red alert!" bellowed Captain Andros. "Mr Best, can you navigate this debris?"
An enthusiastic young officer grabbed the controls. "Aye Captain!"
With thrusters on full power, the ship skilfully dodged and weaved through burning chunks of shipyard, including giant metal As, Bs and Cs, and various garish decals. The crew clung to their consoles as the letters flew through the vacuum and passed by their window:
L A D Y A E S C U L A P I U S
T H E S H I P Y A R D O F D E A T H
B Y
M I C H A E L R O B E R T S O N
"Damn. Too late," said Andros. "Scan for life signs."
Ms Sardana tapped a question into her keyboard and was given a bleep in a major key for an answer. "Scan positive, Captain. There are people in there."
Andros' jaw clenched. "Shit. Why didn't they evacuate? We warned them hours ago! What the hell were they waiting for!?"
The wreckage of Jarrek & Jarrek's spun slowly through space. The lack of oxygen extinguished the fire as soon as it had started, but the damage would cost Centro millions to repair.
"Captain!" Mr Best cried. "Some sort of huge vessel approaching."
"The attackers?"
"Possibly. Should I open communications with them?"
Andros locked eyes with the young ensign. "WHY would we want to talk to potential terrorists?"
"Uh…b-because they're trying to talk to us?"
"What?" The captain checked a small screen in the armrest of her chair to see that, yes, the unidentified flying object was broadcasting to them. "Fine. Open a communication channel."
"Aye Captain."
There was a slight pop as the ship's speakers turned on, followed by the chorus from It's Raining Men by The Weather Girls.
Everyone in the ship shifted uncomfortably as they listened to the transmission. It was far too soon after a potentially lethal explosion to crack a smile.
A few more giant decals of male space pioneers floated by.
"It's raining men! Hallelujah, it's raining men! Every speci-HELLO? Hello, can you hear me now? Sorry, I had you on hold by mistake. This is Lady Aesculapius speaking. I was in the area and couldn't help but notice the shipyard exploding. Are you alright? Unless of course you were the ones who caused the explosion. In which case…"
The voice drifted, leaving only the awkward sound of breathing reverberating through the whole ship.
"…like, I'll stop you. I guess."
Andros held down a button on her chair. "This is Captain Rita Andros, representing Centro. No, we did not cause the explosion, that shipyard was one of ours."
"Oh, good! Okay, phew! Well at least-wa-wait. Wait a second." Her voice lowered. "How can I trust you? What if you DID cause the…actually no, that's just tedious. I believe you. How can I help?"
"You can help by clearing the area," Captain Andros said kindly but firmly. "The explosion came from inside the shipyard. We're going to get in there to rescue the survivors."
"Ah! Good plan!" said Lady Aesculapius enthusiastically. "I'll get the north wing and you get the south?"
A moment passed inside Captain Andros' ship. "No, when I said 'we' I meant 'us'."
"Yeah, I know! 'Us'. You, your team, and me, jumping in to save the day! Got it. See you soon."
"Wait! Hold on!"
"Too late," said Mr Best. "She's disconnected."
“Who the hell is she?” The captain leaned back in her chair. “And more importantly, who the hell does she think she is?”
Mr Best positioned the ship above the wreckage. The explosion had destroyed the boarding platforms, so their only way into the station now was for the crew to put on their spacesuits and enter via a small service hatch on the roof. Captain Andros, Mr Best, Ms Chandra, and twenty heavily-armed Centro soldiers suited up, and journeyed out into the nothing of space.
The magnetic clamps in their boots secured their feet to the top of the shipyard as they slowly trudged their way towards the hatch.
"Ms Chandra," said the captain. "Can you get this open?"
"Aye Captain."
She bent down on one knee and reached for the opening mechanism when the hatch flipped open and Lady Aesculapius popped out. "Come in, come in!" she beamed. "You'll let in a draught!"
The bewildered crew filed in one by one, helped in and down a short ladder by Lady Aesc. Finally, Captain Andros stormed down the ladder, slamming the hatch shut behind her. Unfortunately, she was moving slowly through zero gravity, so nobody noticed.
Once the hatch was closed, the sound of rattling air vents rose up from silence and a red light in the ceiling clicked over to green. Captain Andros popped off her helmet first. "Who are you and how the hell did you get in here before us?"
Lady Aesc reached into her frock coat and pulled out a polished blue crystal the size and shape of a tennis ball. "This thing gets me places quickly," she said, tossing it in the air and catching it. "Other than that: hello! Again, my name is Lady Aesculapius; don't worry if you can't pronounce it, you'll get marks for trying."
"You clearly don't understand the seriousness of this," Andros snapped. "I'm leading this mission to rescue survivors from a major attack against this shipyard. I don't have time for civilians."
"Oh, well you see I'm not a civilian."
Ms Chandra rolled her eyes. "Nobody ever is."
"No, I'm actually quite good on my own," Lady Aesc continued. "I've even been known to sneak myself safely aboard shipyards while avoiding detection from high-ranking Centro vessels."
Captain Andros' eyes narrowed.
Lady Aesculapius' smile broadened. "Listen. We're on the same team here. You need all the help you can get with this and I'm in a position to give it. It's my moral duty as a citizen of the universe to do what I can when I can."
Andros thought for a moment, and eased off. "You seem genuine. Alright, maybe we need someone with a…'ship'…as good as yours. Stay close. And put on one of these." She took off her backpack and pulled out a gun vest.
"Uh…why?"
"Because you're now Centro's responsibility and I don't want you getting shot. You're going to need to take off your frock coat to get the vest on."
"Oh, well in that case I can't," smiled Lady Aesc, holding her lapels. "I have a rule: frock over gun, always."
Following Captain Andros' orders, they split into three groups to sweep the shipyard for survivors. Mr Best and Ms Chandra each led a group of soldiers while Andros led the third. Lady Aesculapius accompanied Andros who, in her own words, didn't want to let Lady Aesc out of her sight. Fortunately for her, this was made easy by Lady Aesc's insistence on running ahead of the group to check every doorway and fork in the corridor first.
"Will you PLEASE, get behind me?" asked Captain Andros through gritted teeth.
"Nah, sorry," Aesc replied. "If we run into anyone it's best if we approach them in the order 'me, you, eight heavily armed soldiers’. Break them in gently."
A siren of repeated descending notes echoed in the distance somewhere. Occasionally they found oxygen masks dangling from the roof that at first glance looked like some sort of alien creature.
"So," started Lady Aesc. "Good thing you were in the area when the shipyard exploded."
"It wasn't luck," Andros explained. "We were given an anonymous tip. Male voice, deep, but using some sort of scrambler. Said one of our shipyards in the area was about to be hit, so we came running. Wish we could've got here quicker."
They entered an area of the shipyard that was in complete darkness. The power in this part of the station must have been knocked out in the explosion. Following Captain Andros' lead, the soldiers all switched on the small torches on their vests and pushed onwards.
"Any theories about who did this?"
"A few," Andros admitted. "Centro has enemies, particularly on Mars. They probably don't appreciate having a Centro-owned shipyard floating near Martian space."
"Oh! Is THAT what that planet is?" asked Lady Aesc, nodding out the corridor's octagonal window to the rusty planet on their left.
Captain Andros didn't get the joke, but stopped when she saw Lady Aesc's look of genuine wonder. "Well of course that's Mars, what other planet could it be?"
"Um, literally any other brown one?" she replied, as if she were insulted by the question.
"There are only…" Andros counted in her head. "…Three, maybe four planets in the system that could be called 'brown ones'."
"Well if I knew straight away which system I was in it'd make guessing a lot easier, wouldn't it?"
Captain Andros stared at her. The two lines of four soldiers behind her traded looks. "Who are you?"
Lady Aesc smiled. "I’m from the Firmament. I go to some places and fix some things and do some stuff. Occasionally. Work permitting. What's through here?"
“What’s the Firmament!?”
Lady Aesculapius opened a door into some sort of control room with a high ceiling, screens showing different angles on rooms across the shipyard, and one very surprised man.
"Oh, hello there!" said Lady Aesc.
Andros and her soldiers piled into the room after her and raised their weapons.
"Whoa, whoa, whoa! Don't shoot!" He was a dashing young man with dark curly hair, a darker leather jacket, and a t-shirt with black, grey, white, and purple stripes, arranged in the asexual flag, with the slogan 'Ace Pilot' written across it in a garish pink 1980s script font.
"It's okay, he likes puns!" announced Lady Aesc. "Stand down everyone."
The soldiers (inexplicably) lowered their guns and the captain stepped forward. "I’m Captain Rita Andros, representing Centro. We alerted this shipyard to a bomb threat hours ago after receiving a tip-off. Why the hell are you still here?"
"Because we get alerted to 'bomb threats' all the time," he replied. "We thought it was just those crazy cultists wanting attention."
An excited "ooh!" escaped Lady Aesc. "There's a cult? I love a good cult. Do they wear robes? I'm Lady Aesculapius," she said, extending a hand.
"Jason," he said, shaking it. "Jason Jackson."
"Not Jason Jarrek? As in 'Jarrek & Jarrek's'?"
"Oh, no," he said with a smile, "I just work here. The owners take the bomb threats seriously. They evacuated first."
"They were smarter than you," said Captain Andros. "Who is this cult? They've threatened the shipyard before?"
"Yeah, yeah, started a few months back. Every week, like clockwork, we'd get a threatening transmission saying they'd blow us all sky high if we didn't stop what we were doing."
"Are they enemies of Centro?"
"They're enemies of common sense," Jason continued. "They call themselves 'The Apophenites'. Buncha crazies who believe all of space beyond the solar system is an illusion. Like all the stars are just some big matte painting done by the gods, or something."
"'Apophenites'…" Captain Andros repeated, curiously.
"From ‘apophenia’: humans’ tendency to see meaningful patterns in random data.” Lady Aesc explained. “Looking at dots in the sky and seeing Perseus and Leo, that sort of thing.”
"They're against space travel and want us to stop repairing ships and stuff," said Jason.
Andros looked into his exhausted face. He had a few days stubble and slight bags under the eyes. "Right, so when you said 'crazy' you actually meant 'crazy'."
"I've been trying to keep track of everyone still onboard from here," said Jason, indicating towards the cameras. "Problem is, the explosion took out the power in sections of the station so I can't see everyone. I'll need to round them all up somehow."
"Easy," said Andros, taking a seat at one of the screens. "We'll just use the tannoy."
"Wait!" Jason and Lady Aesc cried at once.
Andros froze. "What? Why?"
"The explosion came from inside the shipyard and we didn't see any ships leaving," said Lady Aesc.
Andros thought for a moment. "So whoever did this might still be here." Slowly, she stood up from the seat. She turned to face Jason. "How do we know it wasn't you?"
Jason was suddenly reminded of all the guns in the room. "M-me? But, I'm helping you!" He raised his hands again. "I AM helping you, aren't I?"
"Yes, but what if you're only helping us to get on our good side? What if…" her voice trailed off. "Actually, Lady Aesculapius, you're right: doubting people who are clearly goodies IS tedious. I believe you."
Jason exhaled as he let his hands drop. "You do realise I'm employed by Centro too, right? Which reminds me, I’m counting this as overtime."
"Can you show us one of these threatening transmissions?" asked Lady Aesc.
"Sure." Jason moved over to a terminal on the wall and started scrolling through files. "I have them all saved. A new one every week, like the shittest vlog ever." He selected the most recent file and pressed play.
The video started. "People of Jarrek & Jarrek shipyard."
Lady Aesc's first reaction: "Robes! I called it!"
Captain Andros' first reaction: "I know that voice."
The screen showed a thin pale man, whose grey beard was his only visible feature under his dark red hood. He stood behind a desk like he was giving a lecture. "Humanity's drive to colonise the stars came from a base need to conquer that which is not rightfully ours. When we should have been focusing our time and resources on improving life on Earth, we escaped Earth in pursuit of infinite fresh starts. But instead of continuing forever, chasing the supposed expansion of the universe, we decided to set our own limits and remain within our own solar system. Why? Why limit ourselves if there truly are no limits? Because space travel was never about granting genuine benefits to humanity, and was merely based on the cultural idea of space travel as a marker of progress. A signifier of civilisation moving along its expected course. I offer you this final ultimatum: cease your enabling of the eternal lie of space travel or we will be forced to do it for you.”
"That's…that's the guy who tipped us off about the attack." Captain Andros turned to the others. "Why would he give us warning about what he was going to do?"
"And why would he wait until the moment your ship arrived before doing it?" added Lady Aesc.
Captain Andros started bleeping. She reached for her wrist and pushed a button. "Ms Chandra."
"Uh, Captain," Her voice sounded panicked through the already stuttering communicator grill. "We've got a problem!"
"What is it, did you find anyone?"
"We've found some people, yeah, but…the ship."
"What about it?"
Jason tapped Captain Andros on the shoulder so she could join him in staring out the window.
Andros and her team stood in silence as they watched their ship slowly drift away from them.
"You know," Lady Aesc started, "for a cult who hate space travel, stealing a spaceship is kinda hypocritical."
Andros turned to Jason. "Does this station have enough power left to take out that ship?"
"Even if it did, we wouldn’t be able to. It’s Centro-owned and still broadcasting its clearance codes. Our security system won’t register it as a threat."
The screen crackled. It wasn't immediately obvious that the video had changed. It showed the same man wearing the same robe. But now he was sitting in the command chair of Captain Andros' ship. "Thank you, Captain, for answering the call to help your delusional slaves. We will put your vessel to great use. Oh, and do not worry about the rest of your crew. My disciples are safely escorting them to the escape pods where they will be jettisoned into space. Directionless. Floating forever. Goodbye."
The video feed ended.
"Shit." Andros watched as a shimmer of escape pods were jettisoned from the ship. "Well, at least they're safe. We can use your ship to go get them," she said, turning to Lady Aesculapius.
Lady Aesc was still looking out the window. "I don't think lacking a ship is our problem. I'm more worried about how well-equipped Centro ships are."
"Uh, Captain…" One of the soldiers beckoned for Andros to look.
The ship was slowly turning. For a moment she thought it was coming back, but it stopped when its side faced the station. A moment passed as it hovered, motionless. Two small flashes of light came from the ship's underside. The flashes became two points of light streaking through space towards the shipyard.
Her blood ran cold. "HOLD ON T-!"
Impact. The station rumbled. The window shattered. A siren wailed through the shipyard and the room flooded with red light. A pre-recorded voice spoke. "Warning. Oxygen Level: Critical. Warning. Oxygen Level: Critical." The voice slowly faded out as the air left the room.
Everyone held their breath and the railings to stop themselves being sucked out the window.
Lady Aesc thought fast. She reached into her pocket to retrieve the blue crystal ball she showed Andros earlier and over-arm threw it out the window.
The ball shot out into space. As soon as it had cleared the station, it started to grow. Quicker and quicker as it got bigger and bigger. Soon it was visible from the other side of the shipyard. Then it was visible from the retreating Centro ship. Then it was visible from the surface of Mars.
In moments, the little crystal ball had returned to its normal size, comparable to a small moon.
The new source of gravity in the sky, complete with its own atmosphere, brought Jason, Lady Aesc, the team of soldiers, and Captain Andros crashing back to the ground, gasping in the new air.
Lady Aesculapius jumped to her feet and dusted herself down. "Ah, home sweet home!" She squeezed herself through the freshly unglassed window and walked out onto the blue crystal ground outside.
Captain Andros' mouth flapped open when she saw Lady Aesc walking on solid ground outside. "But…we're in space!"
"We were," agreed Lady Aesc. "But that was a like a whole second ago. This is my Factory of Crystal. It's my ship. And THERE," she said, pulling a brass spyglass out of her inner coat pocket and snapping it to its full length, "are your crew."
She looked up into the darkness of space to see a shower of escape pods caught in the gravity of the fully expanded Factory. Like distant rain, they crashed down onto the crystal surface.
"Good thing these modern Centro escape pods are designed to withstand crashes." Lady Aesc took her eye away from the spyglass and collapsed it back into her coat. She turned to Captain Andros. “Right?”
Andros nodded. Lady Aesc climbed back in through the window as the door to the control room opened and an out-of-breath Centro officer emerged.
"Captain!"
"Ms Chandra." Andros grabbed her shoulder. "Breathe, everything's under control."
"What happened? The whole station shook like we'd hit something and now we're on a planet?!"
"I'll explain later," said Lady Aesc. "Right now, Ms Chandra, you need to go out to that cluster of escape pods," she said, gesturing out the window, "and collect your crew. Round everyone up into this weird new building I've created and we can see about getting them home."
"What about my ship!?" cried Captain Andros. "We can't let an insane anti-space travel cult fly around the universe in a Centro ship! Why would an anti-space travel cult even steal a Centro ship in the first place?"
"Probably because it's a Centro ship," said Lady Aesc. "They might not have targeted you for any political reasons, but Centro still has power and influence regardless. That, and Centro ships have automatic security clearance for all Centro-owned sites. They probably have some plan to use it as a Trojan Horse. Go from shipyard to shipyard, destroying them all."
"We have to stop them!"
"We could," said Lady Aesc. "Or we could just wait a minute."
Andros tried to read Lady Aesc's plan on her face but was getting nothing. The soldiers shifted slightly as they checked to see if they'd missed anything obvious.
Meanwhile, Lady Aesc looked like she was standing in a elevator, waiting to arrive on her floor. She made some popping noises with her lips to fill the time. "So…did any of you watch the latest sports?"
A positive murmur spread amongst the soldiers.
"I hate the new manager."
"Ugh, tell me about it!"
They all grunted in agreement and Lady Aesc nodded. "Wasn't it crazy how that one human did the ball thing?"
Some of the soldiers sighed while others merely shook their heads in silent disgust.
The ground shook. A deafening explosion boomed outside.
Jason grabbed the railing to keep himself upright. "What the hell was that?"
Lady Aesculapius smiled. "All good spaceships can escape the gravity of something the size of a moon, but not without considerable effort. If a body the size of a moon were to spontaneously appear in the sky there wouldn't be enough time for the crew or the onboard systems to react. This way please."
She wandered out of the room. It took half a second for everyone to leap into action and follow.
She led them back the way they'd came, through the station, up the ladder, and out the hatch in the roof. The magnetic clamps in their suits didn't feel the need to engage when they stepped out onto the top of the shipyard. Together they looked out over the crystal landscape. The pale blue landscape, dotted with glowing stalagmites and mountains on the horizon that glistened in the sun, was punctuated by escape pods. Everyone was looking beyond them however at the colossal Centro ship, which had crashed far in the distance, its nose buried in the Factory's surface.
Jason looked at the others. "So, that's it? Is it over? The ship crashed, the cult leader guy is dead?"
"No," said Lady Aesc. "Modern Centro escape pods are designed to withstand crashes. So are modern Centro ships."
The doors to the command room slid open. The man in the red robes sat in Captain Andros' chair with his back to Lady Aesculapius, but the sound of her arrival made him cock his head slightly to address her.
"Have you assessed the damage, disciple?"
“Yeah, you’re gonna need to get a guy in for that.”
He whipped around at the sound of her voice. "You aren't one of my kin."
"No, no, they're all being subdued by soldiers." She walked around the command room until she was in front of him and pulled her bottom lip into a sarcastic 'uh oh!' face. "The soldiers are here for you too obviously, but I decided to run on ahead and give you a proper chance first. Nobody else here will. After all the damage to Centro's property you've done, I wouldn't be surprised if…uh…" She made a vague winding gesture with her hand. "…Queen Centro herself didn't come down here. Her majesty can get awfully cross."
The old man smiled. His bottom row of teeth were all far too thin, more animal than human, but he wasn't as terrifying as the hood made him seem. There was a twinkle in his eye that made Lady Aesc think he might have been a sweet grandfather to someone somewhere. "You are giving me a chance? To do what? Surrender?"
"You didn't kill anyone when the shipyard exploded," said Lady Aesc.
"No. My kin made sure of it. Everyone was out of the way when we detonated the charges, and we made sure Centro's rescue ship was already on the scene first."
"And you ejected Captain Andros' crew out into space rather than kill them."
"Of course," he said, with faux offence. "We are not savages, you know."
Lady Aesc casually approached the chair that had belonged to Ms Chandra and tried to turn it around to face the man in Captain Andros' seat. She tried again with more effort before realising it was bolted to the ground. Accepting defeat, she lifted up the back of her frock coat so she could get her leg over the chair and sat in it backwards like a cool substitute teacher, folding her arms on its high back and resting her chin. "Hurting people clearly isn't your goal. You want to spread fear and panic so people stop travelling through space - which obviously isn't going to happen, let's be real - but, I don't think you lot are totally irredeemable."
"I'm touched."
"Oh, don't be. I should be clear: you may not be irredeemable but you're still pretty fucking…" Lady Aesc was quiet for a moment. "…Deemable. I mean, you're still a bad person who blows up shipyards with people inside, so you still totally deserve what's coming to you. What I'm doing is giving you a chance to go down well. Turn yourself over and fully co-operate with Centro."
The man lowered his head. "Never. They may take me but I will never betray my kin. Humanity did not deserve to rise from the Earth. This egocentric idea that we are entitled to more than our world has led to all the problems of the universe. All the tension that surrounds Mars and Centro now."
Lady Aesculapius thought about his words, and the sadness in his voice. "You've got it wrong. People aren't trying to own or conquer the stars. Well, not all of them anyway. People want to SEE the stars. They want to explore and find their place and take bitchin Instagram photos with new horizons in the background. Trust me, your solar system is so tiny, it's hilarious. Outside of your neighbourhood, over the garden fence, that's where the fun is.”
The man blinked. “Sorry, ‘bitchin’?”
Both of them reflexively stood up when they heard heavy footsteps approaching. "Humanity is full of basically good eggs," she continued. "Don't bring the rest of them down to your level."
The doors slid open again and the soldiers entered with Captain Andros.
The hooded figure shot one last look at Lady Aesc. He almost looked proud of what he'd done as he was dragged away.
Jason emerged from the sea of uniforms and joined Lady Aesc's side. "Yo, so you still haven't actually explained why we're on a planet now. Or how a planet can be made of crystal. Or how a planet can be a ship. Or who you even are?"
Lady Aesculapius put her arm around his shoulder and let out a hearty laugh. "Oh, Jason. You see, there's so much more to the multiverse-”
“What?”
“-Than what's right in front of you. So much to see and discover. That's why you've got to keep pushing forwards to achieve your goals. Never give u-"
The door opened and Mr Best burst in. "Captain! Captain! The ship got stolen and then we got hit by something and then the gravity went weird and now we're on a planet and then the ship that was stolen from us crashed!!!"
Captain Andros sighed. "You sort of just killed the moment."
Mr Best looked at Lady Aesc and her enraptured audience. "Oh. Sorry, Captain. Please continue."
"Nah, no point. It's dead now. The moment's gone. Fuck it."
Sheepmen by James Wylder
Framed in the window between the twinkling painted Christmas tree and the coat rack was a tall figure, its head a horned sheep’s skull, its back hunched from its height to stare through the window. It was robed in a black and dark gray cloth. Its hand came up, wrapped in untanned leather, and rapped on the plastic window again. Thud. Thud. THUD.
Angelica had two urges: she wanted to stare at this strange terrifying thing, and she wanted to flee. She stared. It rapped again, then tilted its head to the side, and started walking towards the coat rack, and out of view.
She let out a breath. Whatever it was, it was--
The door controls were being activated. She could hear the tones of the buttons being pressed, the horns scraping against the door. She ran.
She scampered back into her room and closed the door behind her.
Her surprises weren’t over though, because her room wasn’t empty. There was a woman in there messing with the wings on her lego starfighter, her brown fingers failing to reattach something.
“Oh, hello there! Sorry I can’t seem to get the wing back on, I took it off because I thought I could improve it but it looks like I’ve mucked it up. Oh well.”
Angelica took a step back towards the door, then remembered the Sheepman.
“I’m afraid I already know your name, it's on your wall in big purple letters, good color purple, mind you, but I haven’t introduced myself,” she set the lego Starfighter down, took off her flat cap, and bowed dramatically. “Lady Aesculapius, at your service. Yes I know, ‘lady’ is so old fashioned. Such a weird thing to have in a name.”
Angelica swallowed, “You need to get out of my house. I...I’ll scream.”
Aesc frowned, “Why ever would you do that? I apologized for the legos.”
The sound of the front door opening made them both silent. Heavy footfalls came towards them.
“Isn’t it late for guests?”
Angelica backed away from the door, towards Aesc and the bed, “Its the Sheepman.”
The footsteps got closer, and then the door was pushed open. An untanned leather gloves slipped around it, and gently pushed it open. There it was, skull and all. It unhunched its back, and raised itself up to its full height, which scraped the ceiling.
It pointed at Angelica.
Lady Aesc stepped in front of her, “Hello there, it looks like you’re breaking into this house, and terrifying this child. Which is absolutely not--”
It swung at her. Angelica put her hands over her eyes, and heard the strange woman drop to the ground. Then the leather gloves were under her arms, and lifting her up. As she tried to scream, one went over her mouth.
* * * *
Twelve Hours Earlier (Martian Time), Christmas Eve
“Is that normal on Mars?” Lady Aesculapius said, pulling her brass spyglass away from her eye and pointing.
Graelyn Scythes, who looked much younger than Lady Aesc physically but had let out the sigh of an adult trying to wrangle a particularly hyperactive child, snatched the spyglass from Aesc and focused on where she was pointing. On a Martian dune, a single figure stood, wearing a billowing black and gray cloak, and a ram’s skull. Graelyn frowned. “No, that’s not normal. Martians tend to be fairly respectful with remains. Not because they’re nicer than other people, they just think its in bad taste to keep something’s skull sitting around.” She looked to her right, “You see this guy Arch?”
The cyborg nodded his enclosed head, “Is this some sort of weird Christmas tradition? Like Krampus or Mari Lwyd?”
Graelyn shook hers in response, then adjusted her glasses, “It's not any Christmas tradition I know about. Mari Lwyd uses a horse skull, and Krampus is supposed to be part goat.”
“Maybe they’re just bad at reading comprehension?” Lady Aesculapius chimed in.
“Or they couldn’t find the appropriate skull and improvised,” Arch suggested.
The figure raised a hand, and then started to walk down the dune, away from them, disappearing from view.
“Well Lady Aesc, it's certainly weird. But I’m not sure this is worth another delay in trying to get us home.”
Aesc sat down on the edge of the rock face, dangling her feet over the edge, “My pilot and I are trying, but if I’m being honest we’re still pretty new at this.”
Graelyn closed the spyglass, “What do you mean pretty new?”
“I mean my Pilot and I are only a few years out of school. We’ve got all the basics down, mind you, but trying to get to the weird reality you live in isn’t easy. I honestly think it was made to be difficult to travel to.”
Graelyn frowned, “So you’re a newbie.”
“A professional newbie. Anyway, we’re here and there’s something wrong, so we should go check it out.”
Graelyn looked away, “I don’t really like Christmas. I’d rather not spend it here and just skip it.”
“What don’t you like about it? The commercialism?” Aesc asked.
“Look, I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Then let's find out what’s going on here. There has to be something weird going on, and it's our responsibility to make sure everything is okay.”
Graelyn looked over at Arch, hoping he was going to be of the opinion they should go straight home, but instead he said: “Alright, where do we start?”
“What do you mean the police haven’t done anything?” Lady Aesc yelled at the vendor.
He held up his hands, “Look Ma’am, I just serve veal on a bun. The Sheepmen come at night and terrorize the children. It's just how it is.”
Graelyn raised an eyebrow, “Is it now?”
“It is. So I’d stay in if I were you come sundown.”
Lady Aesculapius looked to her companions, “You two get a hotel and stay out of trouble. I need to investigate this.”
Graelyn sighed, “Does it really need to be investigated, I mean--”
“Of course it does! This is a dangerous situation for these people. Who knows what these Sheepmen are.” Lady Aesc stormed off, and Graelyn could only sigh as she walked away.
“That’s not what I meant.”
* * * *
The Present
Lady Aesc had a pounding headache. She moaned as she got up, expecting to see morning, but it was still dark, and the pounding on her head continued...till she realized that the pounding was actually literal. A small glowing crystal orb was flitting back and forth between a spot in the air, and her forehead, over and over. She batted it away as it came in again, and it veered off as it also grew in size.
“Was that really necessary? You hit me more than that Sheepman did,” she groaned.
“Lady Aesculapius, Angelica has been taken. The child, the one in the room remember? I couldn’t think of any other way to get you up. I don’t have any limbs as an orb,” it replied.
She did remember. The child. The Sheepmen. The rumors she’d heard. It seemed weird, and the exact sort of thing she liked checking out. Sure, it wasn’t technically her job to check this sort of thing out, but she had taken it up as a full time hobby at this point.
Standing and straightening her back, she focused on her vertebrae, getting them back into the proper alignment. How did humans go through their whole lives and not have an inborn system to realign their bones?
She shook her limbs out, and looked at the orb, “Where are Graelyn and Arch?”
“I don’t know, they weren’t at the hotel, so I thought it most important to get you up.”
Aesc nodded, “You did the right thing. Let's find that girl.” She listened to the silent house for a moment, then whispered, “I just have one other thought, the girl is gone, but listen.”
“I don’t hear anything,” the orb said.
“You don’t. Her parents are gone too.”
Aesc followed the tracks out of the town, it wasn’t hard. The big footprints weren’t covered at all. They led across the red dunes to a rock circle, where a circle of black figures stood, sheep skulls swaying back and forth as they chanted. A little girl sat crying in the middle of them.
Lady Aesc snuck up, close enough she could hear them, peering over a rock outcrop.
“Little girl,” a deep voice like a nightmare said, “do you know what Christmas means for little girls?”
She shook her head, “The Sheepmen come for little girls like you who want a Christmas. Luckily we already ate one little girl tonight, but if you keep believing in it, you’ll be our next meal.”
Lady Aesc had heard enough. She pulled her Factory of Crystal out of her pocket, tossed it in the air, and held onto the orb as it flew over the heads of the Sheepmen—until she let go over the one speaking to the girl. She fell onto it, expecting it to bat her away (she had an excellent maneuver to pull when that happened) but instead the thing just collapsed under her, moaning in pain.
The rest of the circle stopped chanting. Lady Aesc stepped off of the thing she’d landed on, which got up, the sheep’s skull having fallen off from the hit, the stilts broken off its feet.
Angelica gasped, “Dad?”
Aesculapius blinked, “What?”
“Johnathan are you okay?” Angelica’s mother said, tossing her skull aside and running to her husband.
“I don’t know who you are, but you’re a dead--” the crystal orb flew at the speaker, and bonked him in the head.
“You were saying?”
“You don’t know what you’re doing. We’re trying to do something good for this town. For all of Mars!”
“How in the heavenly Firmament do you think making a little girl cry is...good”
“We’re getting the Christmas out of her, for her own good.” The man growled, “Christmas is an Earth holiday. An old Earth religion based on lies turned into a commercial black mass to our Centro overlords. You think we’re monsters? We’re trying to purge this blight from our planet. Christmas will be terrifying. It will be something Children will fear, rather than look forward to. First here, then it will creep across Mars. And then we can cleanse the next ideological Tyranny.”
Lady Aesc sucked in a breath through her teeth, loudly. It was a long breath. “Yeah uh, look, you’re terrorizing children because you don’t like a holiday, and that’s fairly messed up, so I’m afraid I’m going to have stop all of you. You need to let Angelica go immediately.”
“Or you’ll what?” The head Sheepman stepped forward from the crowd, laughed, and pulled his mask off, “My name is Tybalt, I’m the Mayor of this town.”
“You’re not doing a very good job.”
“We’re keeping our values. And scaring the Christmas out of these Children.”
“You dressed up as monsters to terrorize them, that’s frankly very awful, and I can’t let this continue.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Tybalt said, “There are no presents for the children this year. There’s nothing for them to wake up to. You think you’ve stopped us, but there just isn’t a Christmas. They’re waking up right now, to empty houses without their parents, and with nothing under the tree.”
Lady Aesculapius grimaced. They were right. And going back in time to try to change this now would only earn her a reprimand: it had already been witnessed. The lights lit up in the windows of the small Martian town, and then so did much more. Strings of lights going down the town’s streets burst into light, and the tree at the town’s center became a sparkling beacon.
“That’s not possible,” Tybalt said, “that’s just not possible.”
“It looks like Christmas wasn’t canceled after all. Sorry, but in that sarcastic way where I’m not actually sorry at all and I’m really gloating just a little bit.” Aesc smiled warmly.
Angelica’s face lit up, “It’s beautiful!”
Her mother looked terrified.
The Sheepmen ran towards the small dome, jamming through the airlock. When they entered into the dome, snow was falling gently upon them, and through the windows they could see their own delighted children unwrapping boxes and pulling out toys. Some dumped piles of candy out from stockings onto the floor. Little Angelica ran from her parents to their house, which had now been filled with presents too.
“Who...who did this?” Tylbalt yelled.
On cue, a red sleigh with twelve sheep pulling it coming towards them. They were stunned. As the sleigh got closer, they could make out a skinny person in the front, wearing a clearly fake beard and a Santa costume, with an over-sized cyborg in the back wearing an elf outfit.
The sleigh skid to a halt, the sheep pulling it not remaining entirely still, and the skinny Santa rose.
“Ho ho ho, horrible parents, Merry Christmas!” Graelyn Scythes said in a terrible impression of a deep paternalistic voice.
“And happy holidays to anyone else!” Arch added from behind her.
“You’ve all been very naughty, so I thought I’d help teach you a lesson.”
Tybalt broke through the crowd and pointed a finger at Santa Graelyn, “What have you done? You’re getting in the way of our right to rule our children the way we wish!”
“What I’ve done is give your children a moment of happiness they’ll remember. Not fear,” she looked out at the crowd, “Children shouldn’t have to be afraid.
“Fear builds character,” someone yelled.
“Jesus, what the hell is wrong with these people,” she muttered, and then cleared her throat to yell again, “My name is Santa Claus, and I’m a protector of children. If you didn’t know that.”
“No you’re not, you’re that girl who was at the hotel earlier!” a Sheepwoman yelled.
Graelyn looked at the woman, “I just delivered presents to an entire town, wrangled twelve sheep, and have a military grade cyborg as my elf helper. Tell me I’m that girl again.”
“Right, sorry, my mistake!”
Lady Aesculapius raised her hand from the back, “Are the threats really necessary Graelyn?”
“I’m not...” Graelyn sighed and pulled the fake beard of, “I had a whole schtick going, c’mon.”
Aesc looked more embarrassed than Graelyn had ever seen her before, like messing up a schtick was a worse issue than failing to get them home for two months. “Sorry!”
Graelyn grunted, and kept going, “Okay, forget that. You’ve been terrorizing your children. And that’s messed up. I can’t even imagine why you’d think that was a good idea.”
“My mother tortured me as a child, and I turned out fine!” Tybalt yelled from behind the animal skull he had jammed over his head.
“No, you didn’t, and that’s my point. My mother was a terrible person. Worse than you, if you can believe that. She made my life a living hell. Every Christmas, she’d tell me I was going to wake up and there would be wonderful surprises under the tree for me. But there never were. She made me sit there, and watch her open presents for herself. Then she’d ask me, ‘Graelie, why is there nothing for you? Oh yes, because you’re a terrible daughter. Not even Santa loves you, pity,’ of course, I didn’t believe in Santa, but it still was a knife to my heart. It's fine you don’t like Christmas, but you don’t have to lie to your kids about it to make them hurt the way you did. So I did your job for you in one sense. I gave them something to be happy about. But I have to tell you, they’d be happier with you. Happier to have their parents there with them, to share in their joy. To spend that time together and not be afraid in the dark and cold of winter. But I suppose spending time with your kids is less important than making sure Tybalt here gets to have his culty power trip. So, go choose. Choose between your kids or sucking this guy’s-”
“-toes,” Arch cut in.
“So it's your choice. I’ll leave it up to you. Have a Merry Christmas.”
She pulled on the reigns, and Santa’s sheep sprang into action, pulling her towards the gate to the dome.
“Want on, Lady Aesc?” Arch asked as she got close.
Aesc took his hand, and pulled herself onto the sleigh, “You know, we could just ride out of the town on my Factory of Crystal. It flies.”
“Nah,” said Graelyn, pulling her beard back on, “I’m enjoying this.”
“I can respect that. But are we really done with this town?”
Graelyn tossed the toy plasma rifle off of the sleigh, the hollow casing cracking on a rock as it fell, “Oh trust me, Arch and I handled it.”
That Christmas was one every child in town would remember. The cookies for Santa had all been eaten, the stockings filled, and the trees—oh the trees were loaded with presents. Every child, rich or poor, found exactly what they’d wished for under the tree that year. And as their parents came in, wearing strange clothes, the children were so excited to see them. Most of them knew Santa wasn’t real, so they assumed their parents had just been paying close attention. There were so many hugs. So many excited smiles. “Christmas is amazing!” the children said, which was at first annoying, but as the day went on, and the warm glow of their family sunk into the evening, one by one the parents all had a thought they’d never expected: maybe, they liked Christmas to.
As the Sleigh crested a dune outside the town, the trio saw a figure standing on the dune across from them. It’s head was a sheep’s skull. It raised a hand to them, and then disappeared into the sand.
20 years ago, author Lawrence Miles brought a group of time traveling voodoo cultists called Faction Paradox into the world in a Doctor Who novel. People loved them, and they’ve since become their own amazing spin off series. I love it, and I wanted to do something to share that love with my readers, and all the people who already love it.
To celebrate, I’ve gotten permission from a Faction Paradox author to write a story crossing over a character (but just that character) from his novel with the universe-hopping heroes from my 10,000 Dawns book series. You don’t need to have read either of our books to understand this tale, so no worries! (Though if you have, expect some little treats.) But if you aren’t familiar, I hope you go check out Obverse Books' Faction Paradox novels and anthologies when you’re done here. You’ll have a good time:
http://obversebooks.co.uk/product-category/factionparadox/
So thank you to Andrew Hickey for trusting me with his creation, Stuart Douglas and Obverse books for keeping the dream alive, Lawrence Miles for getting the ball rolling, and every writer, artist, editor, and company (especially Lars Pearson at Mad Norwegian Press) that’s helped make Faction Paradox such a fun corner of Doctor Who to play in. Here’s to the next 20 years!
Thank you also to Jo Smiley, Evan Forman, Michael Robertson, Trevor Allen, Mary Beringer, and Nicholas Kory for their invaluable feedback and proofreading on this story. Thank you as well to all my backers on Patreon who make this weird stuff possible.
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Rachel Survived,
by James WYlder
Entry: November 11th
Okay, I know you’re all going to be mad at me, so I apologize ahead of time.
I’m in New York City. Yayyy, right? I’m getting to see all the sights, and...yes coming back here was hard. But I couldn’t really turn it down. My old boss here offered me a plum boring job covering some rare books that the New York Public Library has acquired. It’s easy, boring, and frankly seems to be something of an apology tour for how things ended before. He didn’t feel bad then, he’s trying not to show it now, but I can tell it’s changed. The first oh-so-subtle clue was when he paid for me to go to the top of the Empire State Building after I got here. Still hasn’t admitted he missed out on a story, or did anything wrong though. But whatever, I’m essentially on a paid holiday a guy is paying for out of pocket instead of being able to open up about a Feeling (TM). So I’ll take it.
But I’ll admit, after the events of last year it was hard coming back. I putzed around La Guardia for an hour after I landed before I worked up the nerve to call my Lyft to come get me (still boycotting Uber, the collaborationist bastards). The ride to the hotel was all nerves, even though my driver made all the small talk a human possibly could on the drive over (a random dude asking about where I went to school definitely didn’t make me feel safer, honestly). I’ve settled in now though. My hotel window overlooks a dumpster and a dirty lot between buildings and I love it.
But…I know you’re probably worried about me. I would be too. But I’m okay, I promise. I’m just glad to have mates back home in the UK who support me. I’ll be back in a few days after talking to some librarians about a book.
That isn’t actually why I’m updating today though.
Despite this website being called dreamjournal, I really don’t use it to talk much about dreams. But I had one last night that won’t get out of my head. It still feels real.
I was waiting in line at the coffee shop, desperate for caffeine (hello jet lag my old friend). I’ve never been huge on coffee, but when in Rome get a pumpkin spice latte, right? So that was when the pair started harassing me. One was a young woman, wearing a red blazer and matching skirt with a white blouse and black tie, the other was a tall cosplayer (probably? It’s a dream so maybe he was just in some sci-fi crap I forgot I saw) they came right up to me in line (rude) and started talking to me (rude x2) trying to convince me that I was being followed and they were here to protect me (please seek a therapist x3). I got my coffee, and hurried past them.
They kept talking, but I ignored them, just as I ignored the Buddhist monk who tried to force a medallion into my hand (he'd then try to guilt me into paying for it) and the musician handing out his mixtape (who would do the same). I walked past a poster someone had plastered on the wall of the President, and tried to ignore that too.
That was when I noticed the cat.
It was a grey kitty, wearing a white collar with a rainbow sprinkles pattern on it. It was following me, or at least it looked like it was following me. I said a few extremely cutesy things to the cat, which ignored me in return. After I turned a corner, and had gone down half the block, I knelt down to see if I could make it come up to me. It rubbed its face against my glove, which was cute, but then it backed up. First it meowed loudly, then it hissed.
“What’s got you bothered?”
That was when I felt the hand go over my mouth.
I dropped my coffee in shock, and felt my right foot get hot and wet.
I did my best to look around, and saw the street had basically emptied out. Perfect. Naturally, I was terrified.
"Rachel Edwards?" they said, "Nod or shake your head. Be honest.”
I felt compelled to honesty by their tone, and I nodded.
"Good, you’re going to take me to the Book of Books," keeping their hands on me, they turned me around to face them. They were wearing a cartoonishly intense black robe, flared gently at the boots like a bell, and every edge rimmed in patterned blue. I couldn't see their face aside from the mouth since they'd pulled the pointed-cowl hood down low. A shining orb floated next to their head, I supposed some sort of drone even though it wasn't buzzing. It looked like it was made of crystal.
They began to speak, but I yelled in their face and kicked them in the shins. As their hand broke free, I grabbed my keychain pepper spray and let it off in their face. Then I ran.
And here's the part where it becomes really obviously dream-y.
Their hand grabbed my shoulder, but I was still running, and they still held on. I looked back, and their arm was stretching out. Like, full on Stretch-Armstrong, Mr. Fantastic.
That was when the woman and the cosplayer came back into my dream.
The cosplayer rammed the stretched arm, legs pumping like pistons, and I heard a crack. The arm reeled back in like one of those retractable ID holders as the cloaked person cried out. They turned their head left, eyes filling with surprise. Mine did too. There was the woman again, holding a crystal disk the size of her palm. She slapped it on the creepy-cloak person, and they let out a loud sigh before they were enveloped in a circular white light and vanished.
"Hi again," the cosplayer said, "You alright?"
I ran again.
I tripped, and everything went black.
“Ugh, this is why you should never meet your favorite characters,’ I heard the woman say.
Then I woke up in my bed.
What the hell, right?
News Report: ViralNoiseNews, November 12th
You think you love donuts? Check out this crazy criminal! Late last night a hungry ninja seemed to break into a New York coffee shop, and security cams caught it all on video!
(The article continues for several more paragraphs, featuring every single second of the video written out in prose, with large gifs between each chunk showing people making over the top reactions of shock, doing backflips, or stuffing too many donuts in their mouth.)
(The actual video is below all of that, and is very short. A small figure climbs down out of an air vent via a rope, grabs a donut box and fills it with donuts, then sticks another one in her mouth. She throws money down on the counter, more than the donuts are worth, and climbs back up the rope.)
Radicalrachel.dreamjournal.com
Entry: November 12th
Today was the “Big day.” The day I got to interview people about these old books. I’ve set this blog post so only the usual suspects can see it, but here’s some of my favorite choice segments from the raw material:
Me: So what does this discovery mean for readers?
Johannes Englesberg III: (laughs) Well, it means some of the most amazing speculative texts in history will finally be available to the public.
Me: Speculative?
Johannes: Yes, the texts are old. They date from the 1700’s, and their discovery site lines up with accounts of a meteor falling in that area during the time they were buried! The books display printing methods that we thought weren’t developed for centuries, and feature predictions about future technology that are breathtaking in their accuracy. I dare say, it might be the first science fiction.
Me: What are the books about?
Johannes: Aside from one book, which appears to feature many texts condensed within it, and is an outlier, they all seem to follow one great narrative of a war of powerful beings and the humans that interact with it. It’s quite fascinating, and I’m excited to study them further.
So, that’s the kind of stuff I’m doing. Asking about books. They sound like pretty cool books, I’m intrigued, but like I said: plum job. I’ll be excited to come back, even if things back home aren’t going much better than here.
Radicalrachel.dreamjournal.com
Entry: November 13th
Okay faithful readers...I’m not sure if you’re even reading this post. I’m putting it on private for now. I’m not sure if I’ll ever make it public. I’m still not sure its real. But I’m sitting here, and looking at the evidence right in front of me. So I’m writing this out. I’m not sure what else I can say.
I was walking to the library from my hotel, hands in my pockets, nose dipped into my scarf. They say that the summers in New York are why people live there and the winters are why everyone doesn’t, and I was beginning to understand that. Nice fine holiday, I thought, as the wind ripped through me.
I shouldn’t joke. The next part isn’t funny. A lot of it isn’t funny. Its terrifying, and I want all of you to read it, I want to scream about this and knock things off tables dramatically (I’d go pick all of them up afterwards, sure but…) and I just can’t make light of this. Because if you read this, you wouldn’t believe it.
So, remember my dream? It wasn’t a dream. And my confirmation of that started when I was mugged for the second time this week.
I was walking by an abandoned shopfront, the windows obscured by cardboard lining them on the inside. The door opened, and a hand reached out in front of my face.
It wasn’t a normal hand.
It was dripping neon.
Blue ooze seeped from the cuticles as it pawed at me, leaving a slick smear as it fumbled to cover my mouth while I tried to whip my head away and yell. I lost, and it clamped down over my mouth. Other hands reached around me, and I was pulled, alone and terrified, inside the dark building. I thought of last year, and assumed that it was the killer from the campaign. I shouldn’t have come back. My heart was tearing up my chest. It happened faster than I could blink and yet I can still distinctly remember the foul taste of the ooze, the way the hands stank like a chemical spill, and the knowledge that this really was the end and I’d never see home again. I’d die in an abandoned shop an ocean away.
“Keep calm dearie,” someone said, through a mouthful of goo, “You’re in safe hands with the Strid. We’re actually from the neighborhood, if you know what I mean.”
“She doesn’t know what you mean,” a different voice said, equally garbled.
I began to struggle, but fell still when I heard the voices in the ceiling. The Strid looked up.
“You’re crowding me!” One said.
“I’m large!” The other replied.
“This feels kind of shaky,” the first voice continued.
Suddenly, in a stunningly accurate recreation of all the promises made by the prats who came up with Brexit, the ceiling cracked, (“Oh,” said the ceiling) then utterly collapsed. Mixed in with the debris fell the two weird strangers who had rescued me in my dream. They landed, without a shred of grace, into a mess of boxes and rubbish. The arm of the woman from the day before popped up, rasing up a single finger.
“In the name of Dawn, I command you to let her go!” she said from under the rubble.
The two goo-faced folks (Strid?) both looked at each other, and began a slow uncertain laugh. That was when the cosplayer from the day before burst from the rubble. He ran like an Olympic sprinter (Not that I support the Olympics but it’s a good analogy) and before the pair of Strid could get their bearings, he’d rammed into one with his shoulder (bones cracked, they flew and hit the wall) and grabbed the other one’s arm with a firm grip. He tugged, and ripped them away from me, sending them sprawling onto the floor.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
I began to nod, but the two Strid rose from the floor. From how they were hit, it seemed like they should have been dead.
Should have.
From the rubble, the woman rose fully, dusting herself off.
“Are you aware that Archimedes here is a cyborg with built in weaponry capable of turning both of your pitiful forms to...well I’d say goo but that would be a bit redundant wouldn’t it?”
One of the Strid, their finger dripping blue ooze as they pointed at her, replied, “You have no right to the Book, outsider.”
“Look,” Arch cut in, “we both legitimately don’t like hurting people. But we will.”
The Strid looked at each other, and then, nodding in unison, backed towards the door.
I was expecting them to say something like, “This isn’t over, earthling!” but instead one of them just flicked Arch off.
I certainly appreciated the assist, but I still had the urge to flee or fight.
“Okay, you’re probably scared, or pissed off, or confused, or all of the above, but we’re here to help. This is my friend Graelyn Scythes, she’s in charge of our team. We work for a group called Dawn, and we’ve been sent to protect you. My name is Archimedes Von Ahnerabe.”
“Are...what the hell was wrong with those people?”
Graelyn walked over, picking her glasses up off the floor (surprisingly uncracked) and took up a prim and composed pose, despite still having plaster dust in her black hair.
“Follow us, we’re going to take you somewhere safe where we can talk and answer your questions. Then we’ll make sure we get back to your hotel tonight.” She started walking, as though the debate was over and we’d all agreed to this.
I stared dumbfounded.
“Well come on then!”
“No, really, what was wrong with them?”
Graelyn exhaled, pushed her glasses up to touch her face with one finger, and put on a smile that I could tell was fake from across a dark room while I was still in shock.
“You’re in danger. People are coming for you, only they aren’t people. Arch and I come from the future, and those blue oozie folk, the Strid, they’re aliens. Surprise! Your government has been lying to you about that and aliens are real. Also yesterday wasn’t a dream, I love your blog, and seriously we should get moving before backup arrives.”
“Okay, yeah, sure.”
I went with it for the moment. Why not, I suppose? The moments were passing like a blur. We hustled down the street, trying to look Incredibly Normal (TM) so probably the exact opposite of that, but no one bothered us on the way over to where they took me.
“I don’t believe any of this,” I said defensively.
“Did the two kidnapping attempts not convince you?” Graelyn said with more than a hint of snark (rudex4).
“I should just get on a plane and go home. The USA is a madhouse—USians are a madhouse.”
"USian? Did people actually say that?’ Graelyn asked Arch.
Arch shrugged, "I'm really not the person to ask you know."
Graelyn held up her index finger, and then moved it down, "You--absolutely have a point." She looked at me, "Oh, he was raised on a spacestation in the middle of nowhere where they lied to all the inhabitants and told them that the world outside didn't exist. Also he’s a cyborg.”
Arch rapped a knuckle against his metallic head, “Long story,”
“Right,” I said.
We reached the door of a theatre, announcing it was setting up for some show based on some corporate property to premiere in the future. We reached a side door, which was of course locked. Arch’s finger opened up, and little...thingies came out and slipped into the lock. In a second, it clicked, and he barged in.
“We’ll be safe in here, this theatre is in between productions,” he said, shutting the door. They ushered me to a seat in the front row, where they’d left some popcorn, a box of donuts, a bottle of water and a latte.
Graelyn hopped up on the stage, and held her hands up.
“We know you have a lot of questions, so we’re going to try to clear up everything we can. We actually put together a presentation just for this occasion. So that’s exciting right?”
“Okay, how do you know who I am?”
Graelyn thought a moment.
“Wait, just...look at this okay?” Graelyn ran off stage, and came back holding up a book, "See, where I come from, you're a work of fiction. Well, that's not true, you actually did exist in my universe a few hundred years ago, but this story didn't happen to you. You at one point heard there was a book about a journalist with your name but according to historical records you just laughed it off. I read your book over and over growing up!" she flopped the paperback in my face a few times, till she finally stopped and I could read the cover.
"Who the heck is Andrew Hickey?"
Graelyn frowned, "Oh come on. He's really good. He wrote that book about the Monkeys."
“I’m not familiar.”
She sighed, “Not appreciated in his own time. Anyways, Arch and I used this novel about you in order to find you.”
“We bought it from Obverse books,” Arch added.
“And we did find you! Which is lucky, because you’re at the center of a big problem. Those books you’re doing the story about? They’re not from this universe. And neither are we.”
There was a long silence. I calculated the fastest route between me and the door, (dash across the aisle, hop over the queue, make a right) just in case.
"After all that crazy stuff last year, I mean, the Pr-"
“Just look in the book, it’s all in there.”
I took the book from her, and began reading.
My dreamjournal entries were in there, along with…some other weird stuff. Some of it I saw the connection to (again, rather not think about that), but some was...really egregiously random. At least at first. It seemed like there was some connection between things, but I was only skimming it. I wasn’t sure what I believed. The book was probably some elaborate fake. This whole thing was.
But it was my life as a book. Someone had written it.
I sat there reading it for quite a bit of time. Graelyn left at one point and got something for us to eat, and I sat there and read. And read.
If this was a hoax it was...detailed. I closed the book.
"We come from another reality," Graelyn said, spreading her arms out dramatically, "In our reality, the last election you had turned out differently. The former United States of America--"
"Don't say former, it weirds people out," Arch cut in.
"Yes, sorry, the still very present and existing United States of America. And there are lots of other little differences which all lead to us growing up in a very different future from the one your world leads to. Not that, you know, you'd know that.”
I shook my head, “The heck?”
Graelyn sighed, “Look, you just saw a goopy guy right? And before that you saw a robed guy whose arm stretched extra long right? So just take my word that this isn’t normal please?”
I threw my hands up, okay.
“Great. So anyways, Arch and I put together a hologram to try to explain what’s going on. None of the people are real, mind you, Arch just put the script into a program and popped the likenesses of some actors you like in there, but it should be okay.”
“You’ve got to be kidding,” I whispered.
“I wrote it, so I hope you like it!” Arch said.
So the performance began. I recorded it on my phone and… Its embedded below.
* * * *
(Transcription inserted)
Why We Need This Book
a new play by Archimedes Von Ahnerabe.
(Stage lights go low. When they go back up, we see a hologram flicker to life. It’s the ARBITER OF ETERNITY. It looks like Lin Manuel-Miranda. Also on Stage are a Cabinet, a Chest, and a pile of black cloth.)
Eternity:
I was old and eternal,
my hooks had me bent
trying to run the
First and final
Firmament
Everything was easy
I was utterly bored
when my girl the Arbiter of Knives
came on board.
(THE ARBITER OF KNIVES enters, she looks like Tracy Thoms. The hologram takes a moment to load, and for a moment she instead looks like Matthew Broderick.)
Knives:
Eternity sucks, we’ve been here forever.
Eternity:
My friend that’s the cost of holding things together.
10,000 Dawns, each of them scrappy,
And now the Great Assimilation is trying to own the mapping
An inter-universal empire? It’s never been done.
But they’re doing their best, those fools have me spun.
Knives:
What if there was a way for us to get happy?
Eternity:
You’ve got a slice, I’ll taste the pie.
Knives:
The Arbiter of Knives is ready to try.
Think about a book.
Eternity:
You’re done that’s easy.
I’ve read every single one,
even ones a little sleazy.
10,000 Universes, I’ve read it all.
Knives:
What if you never ran out?
Eternity:
Okay, I’ll hear it all.
Knives:
Outside of our domain
I found another ‘verse.
A place with a book that’s anything but terse
You turn every page, it just keeps going.
You end one book, another keeps flowing.
Eternity:
You’re saying this book lets you read on forever?
Knives:
I’m saying this book is the key for us to weather
A trillion more years of keeping things together.
How much longer can you sit around bored?
Making sure Eternity stays true to your word.
Everyone needs a break, even Eternals.
Eternity:
I am pretty tired…
Knives:
So go get some words!
Eternity:
You know as well as I we can’t interfere.
If you try to cross that line,
You’re gunna know fear.
We’re not the only Firmament
putting glue on the stars
If we interfere with another
And they catch us in the act
We’ll be at war with our equals
and Knives:
We cannot have that.
Knives:
I know its a risk,
But you gotta let me try!
I know a way in,
I promise I’ll be brisk
A man on the inside
Who’ll just want a dip in the fisc
Eternity:
You mean…
Knives:
He’ll choose us a person.
We’ll follow their path.
And he’ll block their Firmament
from kicking our ass
Eternity:
But only one person?
You’re cutting it close.
Knives:
We only need one
If we choose the right host
I’ve done a lot of research
I’ve narrowed it down
A girl named Rachel Edwards
is ready to take that crown
Eternity:
Edwards? I’ve read a book about her.
Knives:
Her novel in our our world’s
her own truth in hers.
Eternity:
Okay then Knives,
I’ll trust you to get it done.
But if you screw this up--
(there is a record scratch)
No help’s gunna come.
(dramatic music plays as the Arbiter of Eternity exits, the Arbiter of Knives walks UP STAGE RIGHT, and stops in front of the audience. From behind a cabinet, two figures emerge: It’s HYPERION and GALVIN, spies from the COUNCIL of the GREAT ASSIMILATION. They begin to sing in a totally different musical style. They look sort of like Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick.)
Hyperion:
Did you hear it? Did you see it?
Did my eyes deceive me so?
Those goody two-shoes Firmies
Going Blackhat for some prose?
GALVIN
I don’t wanna go.
I don’t wanna know.
We’ve done enough here,
Why can’t we just go home?
Hyperion:
Galvin you’re a coward!
I can’t stand your lack of faith
If we follow on her journey
We could make it a disgrace
We could take this precious book
Bring it back home to our world
Make our emperors so happy
Give our Council oh such Joy
Together:
I say we’ve got a plan.
We follow where we can.
We risk a broken treaty
for the glory of our land!
Galvin:
I guess I know you’re right
and all this fuss is just a waste
So let’s do our small invasion
hope that no one sees my face
Hyperion:
And when we’ve sent them packing
And we’re heroes there back home!
They’ll forgive the slight transgressions
That it took to make us known.
Together:
I say we’ve got a plan.
We follow where we can.
We risk a broken treaty
for the glory of our land!
(Laughing, the two walk UP STAGE LEFT where they freeze like the Arbiter of Knives. GRAELYN SCYTHES emerges from the chest, who looks like Idina Menzel instead of herself for some reason. ARCHIMEDES VON AHNERABE follows behind her, reminiscent of Kyle Scatlife.)
Graelyn:
Arch I think they’re mad.
I can’t abide their plan.
They’d risk a whole invasion
just to get that book in hand!
Arch:
Graelyn we will have to go,
follow them and stop this show
if we don’t they’ll cast the lure
for inter-universal war
Graelyn:
We have to find Rachel!
Where did she go?
What did she do?
Together:
Gotta track her down
But we haven’t got a clue.
(They walk down stage, and face away from the audience. From the pile of black cloth, a figure rises, who looks like Andrew Chappelle. It is THE STRID.)
The Strid:
So we see
What could be
Forever on the Strid shall be
These foes invade
Our own plans made
We slink into our solemn shade
(The seven characters all converge in the center, and begin a new song in unison.)
All Together:
When we--
Rachel Edwards:
Jesus, okay, I get it.
* * * *
The hologram disappeared, and the two of them clambered to stage center to address me. Arch slid to a halt in front of a less amused Graelyn, performing jazz hands.
“So, any questions…?” Arch ventured.
“So, why are they after me? Why are you protecting me?”
“They’re after you because you’re our tie to this universe. See, people come and go from alternate realities all the time. Most of the time you never notice them. They just hop over to the store, buy all the seasons of their favorite TV show that were never made where they lived, and hop back. But this is trickier. Because the powers that be in this verse? They want that book. Or they will as soon as they realize it exists. Because we’re not supposed to be here the folks from my ‘verse called the Firmament bribed one of the folks who watches to make sure parties from other universes aren’t having shenanigans to ignore anything funny going on with you for the next few days. You’re reporting on the book, so you’re a natural fit. As long as our actions are centered around you, we, anyone, can get to the book.”
“Alright and...who the heck are you two in all this? Where are you from?”
"Arch and I grew up in a future where the whole solar system is run by one big corporation called Centro systems, but things were pretty boring and after some misadventures we got recruited by this big interuniversal paramilitary group called 'Dawn'. We run around doing missions, helping people, trying to stop bad stuff, and fighting other interuniversal organizations."
"Like in this case, many of them," Arch said.
"Quite right," Graelyn continued, “Here in New York are representatives of the Great Assimilation and their Council, a weirdo group of aliens called the Strid, and what are probably several different alternate versions of a universal regulatory group called the Firmament--"
"Though they aren't called that here," Arch again cut in.
"Well, no, but I already forgot what their name is here? Cool Tower or something. Good Home? Exemplary Mansion?" Graelyn paused.
"You’re not supposed to say their name anyway, you know.”
"Ah. Yeah. That would be bad." She sighed, "The point is a lot of people want this book, and we need to stop them."
"Because you want the book?"
"Yes," they replied together.
"Name one reason you'd be a better choice to be given this book than everyone else."
Graelyn was about to speak, but Arch held up a hand, and she demurred, "The Firmament wants the book because they’re old and bored. The Great Assimilation wants it because the Firmament wants it. And the Strid…Well honestly we’re not entirely sure. They’re from around here, but they seem to be off the radar. But they use human bodies as unwilling hosts and tried to kidnap you so I’m pretty sure they’re not the greatest. We on the other hand did not try to kidnap you and took you to Broadway.”
I took a moment to just let all of this settle in.
I pinched myself. I dug my fingernails into my skin hard. It hurt.
Let me tell you, it’s a pretty wild situation to be in like this. You can’t deny you just saw something weird, but it’s really pretty hard to accept this kind of stuff in practice. It’s not like you see on TV where you’re either logically debating whether or not things are happening, coming up with tons of reasons why the obviously happening things aren’t happening, or where you just go, “Of course this is real! Lets flip all my expectations of the world on their head!”
It’s more like you’re in a car wreck, and your car is going off the road into a tree, and there’s that moment before the impact where you think, “This can’t be happening. Not to me. Why is this happening? This can’t be real?” and you just feel absolutely helpless and confused, even if they explain it all as a musical.
That’s more what it’s like.
But then there is the moment after the crash. Where you stumble out of the car, a line of blood going down your face from your forehead, and then you look back and realize the driver is still in the car, and your head clears.
I had to accept this. And whether or not I trusted Graelyn and Arch, they were the only people who hadn’t tried to kill me yet. So that had to count for something.
“Okay,” I concluded, “They’re unveiling the books to the public tomorrow. I’ll get you in.”
Arch pumped a fist in the air, “Yes!”
“Don’t do that,” Graelyn said to him.
I’m back in my hotel now. And I’m reading this book Andrew Hickey wrote about me. And I’m writing all this out in fits and bursts. I’m still not sure this is real.
But if I wake up tomorrow and the book they gave me is still here, I guess I’ll know.
Update: November 14th 6:38 AM
It is.
Firmament Data File: The Strid
The Strid are unusual in that they have been enemies of some of the most powerful people in their native universe for longer than many civilizations have existed. However, they rarely act on their intentions, and this has fermented their survival. You can see the Strid throughout important documented events and adventures in their native universe, only you’d never recognize them. They’re there in the background, watching. Did you see them? They never speak. If they spoke, you’d know. When they take a host, speaking causes their natural form (a blue goop) to seep out from the host they are inhabiting. Indeed, they only ever appear silently in the background. They’re there in the crowd, observing. Learning. They learn, and they use intermediaries to disseminate that information. Their goals are unclear, but they have avoided any outright conflict with people from their own universe. More than anyone, they seem aware that the great figures they seek to fight have an inevitable draw towards victory, something scorched into the nature of their world. They’ve seen it a thousand times. So they watch. And they learn.
But when people come in from outside their bubble, outside their realm of knowledge, they are prone to quick action. If you’re acting in their universe as an outsider, you have permission, and they know you’re vulnerable. They have successfully taken advantage of several unprepared expeditions. Advise caution when dealing with them.
News Report: ViralNoiseNews, November 14th
The donut bandit has struck again! This time the thief made off with not only donuts, but coffee. According to morning manager Ryan Tockle, the thief left a $3000 dollar tip in the jar, along with paying in exact change. The queue to the coffee shop has been out the door since the
thief began their sweet plunder, so the owners can’t complain too much!
(A video is embedded below, it’s basically identical to the earlier one.)
Radicalrachel.dreamjournal.com
Entry: November 14h
Graelyn and Arch greeted me at the hotel with hot coffee (they said they’d kept it in a “stasis crate” overnight) and a box of donuts. I was beginning to suspect Graelyn had stolen them.
We walked to the library, the Lion’s greeted us on our way in in their fancy stone way, and after making our way through security, we hit the sign.
The sign that said the reveal of the books to the public had been canceled.
Graelyn stared down at the sign, she trembled slightly, and muttered “shit” under her breath over and over. Graelyn grimaced, “We already have one inter-universal war to deal with, I’ll be damned if they start another over a hardback.” Without a glance back, she hustled forward, walking as quickly as she could without drawing attention to herself. Arch and I followed behind her, probably not helping the whole “anonymity” thing as we stumbled around tourists taking pictures while we tried to keep up. She flashed some identification at a guard, and we barreled past, going down corners and corridors as the little Russian led us in the slowest panic I’d ever seen.
We finally reached the door to the room the book was being kept in. Graelyn looked at Arch, and he nodded, stepping between us and the door. He widened his stance, ready to take on whatever was inside.
The door slid open, and we were greeted with jovial welcomes and the scent of blood.
Arch had to step through the door before I could see it all, but when he finished it was one of those, “Wow I wish I hadn’t looked!” moments. Like when your parents make you cross a rope bridge on a family trip and they tell you not to look down. You instantly look down.
Arch said, “You don’t wanna look,” and Graelyn and I peered around him instinctively.
Sitting on a desk was a woman in a black robe with stenciled blue lining and a point at the crest of the hood like a wide beak. She was lazily wiping the blood off a knife made of the same werido translucent blue and white crystal everyone and their Labrador retriever seemed to be using these days. Around the desk, standing, were a variety of worried, tired, or grossed out people, some dressed like her, some wearing black clothes styled with what appeared to be millions of dollars of actual gold per person, and then a few who looked like everyday New Yorkers or tourists, only with blue goo dripping from their orifices and cuticles.
Lying on the ground around the desk were bodies. Bodies in a pool of blood.
They’d been cut, some. Or had holes burned through them, some. Or looked like they’d suddenly died of old age, some. Or had globs of still cooling molten gold shining on them, some.
They were dressed in all sorts of clothes. Some in robes. Some wore masks. Some wore silver jumpsuits. There was a wide variety there on the floor.
All of them were dead. All of them had been slaughtered.
I’m sorry. I needed to step away from the keyboard and sob into a pillow for five minutes. Understandable right? That’s pretty messed up?
I’ve done some intense journalism. You’re all aware of the awful stuff I’ve gone through in the last year. I hadn’t seen something like this.
In your mind, you always think you’ll be resolute during this kind of situation. You’d be able to...say something meaningful. But I didn’t. I froze up, and then made a lot of panicked noises and tried to grab something to defend myself with from the floor. Fight or flight I’m a fighter I guess?
Arch and Graelyn held me back, and I think Graelyn slapped something on my neck and doped me. (Real classy, these guys.) I didn’t pass out, but I felt the panic drain, the need to run disappear. I still felt sick to my stomach though, so a little more politely, I threw up in the middle of what the lady started saying.
“Finally,” she polished the knife as she spoke, “We figured Dawn was showing up we didn’t want to begin without you.”
“Begin what?” Graelyn looked at the bodies, “It looks like you already got started. Jesus.”
She shrugged, “None of us are supposed to be here, you know that Dawn Agent. Unfortunately, our bribe didn’t stop a few parties from finding out about the book and arriving here at the same time. Awkward to say the least. We all came to an agreement that bidding for the book should only be between--”
I threw up.
“--those not from this...is she okay?”
“No, why would anyone think anyone would be okay when they come in here and see this? This is heinous,” Arch began.
“She’s peachy keen!” Graelyn cut in, “Just great. Now what the hell do you mean about bidding?”
Arch, despite not having a face, looked furious still. I braced myself against the wall.
“Right, yes. Bidding should only be between those of us not from this reality, well, and the Strid. So we disposed of everyone from this reality who wanted it, honestly they were pretty rude about it. Called me a lot of rude things. Most of them have some way of getting up again or hopping into a new body, so you shouldn’t be so sad about it. I’m not really sure how the Firmament here does that, but I’m 98% sure I’ve inhibited the process till we finish up here. Lattes, by the way? The Great Assimilation grabbed some on the way. They really can be quite a bit more thoughtful than I anticipated, when we’re not trying to kill each other and all.”
The people in black and gold waved like they were a nice couple from down the block, happy to finally introduce themselves.
“No,” Graelyn said, “I meant why are we bidding on it at all? You’re acting like someone has possession of it. Also I don’t want a latte. I brought my own.”
“Your friends…?”
I shook my head, Arch did the same. I tried to get my bearings. Tried to convince myself this was a drug trip, or a dream, but it all seemed too real.
Someone else spoke up, one of the blue goo people Graelyn called The Strid, “We have it. We have contained it within our person, and will release it to the one who provides us with the finest offer. If you attempt to take it from us, we will destroy it.”
Graelyn looked around the room, and then laughed stumbling forward a bit, tripping over a body, which caused her to stop laughing and make uncomfortable noises as she got away from it. “This is amazing. The best infiltrators from 10,000 universes, and we all let someone else throw us into a bidding war. We absolutely suck. Wow.” She threw up her hands in the air, “Astonishing.”
“Since you three arrived last, you will present last. Then we will decide,” goo guy said.
“Then I’ll present first,” the woman said, hopping down from the desk, “I’m the Arbiter of Knives, and I come representing the First and Final Firmament. We’re prepared to offer the honorable Strid their own planet in our universe, and the protection of our Firmament. We know the Strid have been nomadic for eons, living by avoiding trouble. We’re prepared to give you a homeworld where you can live unmolested, unafraid of any repercussion to the fact that you have to kidnap people and take over their minds in order to survive more than a few hours outside your goo pools.”
The Strid looked at each other, impressed, “That’s a...really good offer.”
The Arbiter of Knives pushed her chin up in the air, “It is, isn’t it?”
“Arch,” I whispered, “I don’t understand. If they’re trying to keep a low profile, why would they kill these people? I mean, why kill them in general...Shit.”
He shook his head, “Even backed into a corner it’s something else. But we have to find an out here.”
I didn’t look down at the floor, I looked past it. I focused. I had to think.
“Now, let’s hear from the representatives of the Council of the Great Assimilation,” the Strid continued.
“Thank you, now, we might not be as familiar to you as the Firmament, but while we didn’t inherit power over reality, we built it. Under the rule of our three Emperors, and our Council, the Great Assimilation has spread across universes binding them together under our shared banner. We also offer you a homeworld, but more than that, we offer you a purpose. The Strid would be invaluable as a part of the Empire, and with your skills at information gathering would be on the shortlist to gain a position on our Council. You would have a say and voice over your own destiny.”
One of the Strid stroked its chin, rubbing in some of the goo that had dripped from its mouth, “Another excellent proposal, one we’ll have to discuss and think on...which leaves only Dawn? What do you have to offer us?”
I looked at the pair I’d been thrown in with. I couldn’t read Arch, but Graelyn was racking her brain hard. She frowned, and looked back at us, “You guys got any ideas?”
“We could offer them something of symbolic value?” Arch suggested.
“No,” the Strid cut in, “We’re really more interested in direct power.”
Graelyn sighed, “Honestly? I don’t think there’s anything we could offer you that would be responsible here. I mean, seriously, screw all of you. You guys are cool with murdering people over a book, that’s kind of ridiculous. We offer you nothing, final offer.”
“Wow,” Knives said, “I think we can rule them out.”
“Quite,” the Strid replied, “I will confer with my partner.”
While they talked, the Firmament began shoving all the bodies into a circle, and then sprinkled some crystal dust around them all. The floor lit up in a brilliant white and blue light, and they were….gone.
“It’s a portal,” Arch whispered, “They dropped them off somewhere else.”
I nodded, and walked over to the other books in the exhibit. They all wanted one of them, this Book of Books...but what of the other books? No one paid me much mind. I flipped through them. They were paperbacks, from a handful of different publishers. “Burning with Optimism’s Flame” one was called, well I sure wasn’t. “The Book of the War,” “Head of State,” hey I’m in that one!
Then it struck me. The most obvious thing. To them, I was a character in a book. Graelyn had read about me. She’d said as much. And they didn’t want anyone to know they were here. These books were all dangerous. They were all something people wanted. They had to be dangerous for a reason. I picked up the copy of “Head of State”, and opened it to the last page. I reached into my pocket, pulled out a pen, and wrote in it:
“It was on November 14th of the next year, that when Rachel was in a room filled with strangers from another world, that they all vanished suddenly, the Book of Books dropping to the floor from where the Strid had held it within itself.”
I closed the book and waited.
Nothing happened. Rats.
I thought, okay, if I’m a character to them, maybe the reverse is true. I googled their names, and I found some books about them. I threw money at the ebooks as fast as I could, and skimmed, searched for keywords, and browsed them with a fury. No luck though. I couldn’t find anything useful. I half considered emailing the author and asking him to throw up a quick blog post or something (?) but if writing in the book didn’t work, I didn’t think that would either. These were people. They weren’t just words on a page. I could see Graelyn, crossing her arms, trying to think of something, her feet moving in slight shifts with worry. Arch, struggling more than her to keep it together, had his head in his hands. The Arbiter of Knives was cutting papers into shapes with her blade. The Assimilation folks were playing cards. They were people, and I’d been a fool to think anything less, even with how outlandish this was.
As the Strid’s voices got even louder (They were having a fierce ideological debate at this point) it occurred to me, something that I should have thought of before.
“Graelyn,” I said, rushing over to her, “you said you read my book before?”
She nodded, “Yeah. I was thirteen.”
“Did it matter to you?”
She furrowed her brow, “It did. You were a bisexual woman running around doing cool things. I was a pansexual girl trying to figure my world out. I read the book a lot, and I mainly skipped over the parts you weren’t in.”
I leaned in, “Tell me more. Tell me why it mattered.”
Moscow Russia, 2471, Another Universe
Her mother was yelling again. She did that. Graelyn was used to it. Mr. Sprinkles, her cat, was curled up on her feet. She just hoped things wouldn’t escalate to violence again tonight. The door swung open, and she closed her eyes. Of course. Jinx. She curled up in a ball, and made sure she didn’t cry. That was a sign of weakness, after all.
“You’re broken,” her mother whispered in her ear after she’d finished the blows, “I saw your grades, and they’re still not good enough..” All A’s, yet again, “How could you treat your poor sick mother this way? How could you?” She began to sob, “You keep pushing me to this. I hope you try to be a better daughter.”
“Yes, mom. I will,” she replied dutifully.
In time, her mother left, and she pulled the book up on her phone. Rachel was being hunted by a mysterious killer, and Graelyn needed to figure out who it was. She knew Rachel didn’t die, it’s why she picked up the book in the first place. Someone like her to read.
Someone who wouldn’t die.
She wanted to feel that way herself.
She kept on reading.
She still had no idea who the killer was.
But Rachel survived.
November 14th, New York, New York, USA
I listened. And...It was a hard story. She’d had a rough upbringing. But I listened. And I knew what the answer to all of this was. The whole time. It was me.
I walked right up to the Strid, and I pulled my pen out again.
I placed the sharp tip against my own jugular.
“Excuse me,” I yelled.
They stopped.
The Arbiter of Knives coughed, and gestured at Arch and Graelyn, “Could you two bring your guest under control? Sure shes our cover but--”
“Exactly,” I replied, “I’m your cover. So what happens if I’m not here?”
Her face fell, “Well we’d…”
“If you’re so afraid of being found out by whoever runs the show here, then you need me. You’re far from home aren’t you? A foreigner in a land that seems to hate foreigners? Let me tell you, welcome to the USA. And our Universe. You’re offering these folks a planet, but you can only do that when you get home. Right now, other people have that kind of power? And you’re just a lonely woman with a big knife who thinks she can get away with anything because she can kill. And you two, so enamored with empire and colonization. Really, that’s just gross. And of course, my fellow natives, apparently. Selling off our heritage to the highest bidder. Shameful, I’ll tell you. So let me tell you what’s going to happen. You’re all going to go home. The lot of you.”
I looked around. There was silence.
“If you don’t, I’ll cut a major artery, and you’ll all be crying about...all that crap you’ve been info-dumping on me this week. Even you, Strid folk. You’ll be found out. The powers at be will know about your private auction, and you’ll make the big time. So I’m going to be nice and give you all an out. Go home.”
The Arbiter of Knives stood up, “You have no idea what it’s like to be immortal. To be so...bored! If I had that book I could read things forever!”
“And you won’t know what it’s like to be immortal if you don’t agree to my terms.”
“You’re bluffing,” the Assimilation group yelled.
I just stared them down, till they looked away.
I was absolutely bluffing, no way I was going to cut my throat but oh you should have seen their faces, because I sold it well.
“So, all this work, all this...everything. We just leave and pretend this didn’t happen?” Knives said.
“I didn’t say that,” I replied “I said you should go home. I very much want you to remember this. Also, the Strid need to give me that book. It’s mine now.”
The Arbiter grimaced, then shrugged, “Well, time to live another day. I’m out.”
“Same,” the Assimilations said.
Graelyn and Arch high fived.
The Strid gave me the book though…how they removed it from their form isn’t easy to describe, and believe me it was even harder to watch. So I’m just going to skip that, k thx bye. Soooooo anyways, I was left with a gallon sized ziplock bag coated in goop with a book (I took the book out with minimal bag-touching and left the bag in the rubbish bin).
The Arbiter pulled out a crystal orb that began to hover in the air, which was neat, and then met my gaze, “You want us to remember this, but you probably won’t. When we’re gone, the powers that be will probably try to wipe your memory. They don’t like this stuff getting out.”
“Psh,” Graelyn said from across the room, “Empty threat. They really couldn’t care less as long as they get to act all self-righteous and important, I mean, you would know.”
The Arbiter frowned, took a step towards the orb, and the vanished into it. It zipped away, disappearing in a flash. The Great Assimilation just walked out the door, as did the Strid. This time they flipped me off though. I gave them the two fingered salute in return.
“Well, our turn to head out then. It’s been real, Rachel Edwards,” Graelyn said, waving, “Have fun with the books.”
I smiled, and gave her a hug, “I’m glad I meant something to you, even if it was just fiction for you.”
She blushed, “You were never ‘just fiction’. And you still aren’t.”
Arch waved goodbye as well, and I gave him a quick hug as the pair threw dust on the wall, and jumped into the light it made.
It was just me and the books now, and this blog.
I don’t know if the Arbiter was bluffing or not. Maybe I’ll wake up tomorrow, and this will all be gone from me. I hope not. There’s so much going on I had no idea about. Things that...explain other things. I want to learn them. I’m putting this on flashdrives, printing it out. Hiding it. Even if my memory is gone, maybe they’ll miss one of these and I’ll find it later.
And if they don’t, maybe you’ll find it. You’ll read it, and you’ll know there are other things out there to.
Whatever happens, it’s only the beginning of this journey. Time to do what I do best: find the truth.
November 15th
World Daily Updatez
The unveiling of a collection of rare books purchased by the New York Public Library was put on hold today when it was discovered that the books contained a rare parasite that had caused the deaths of several library employees. The books have been taken to a secure location for quarantine, and it’s unclear if they will ever be put back on public display.
(Below is a picture of the books being escorted from the premises in a hazardous waste container. You wouldn’t usually notice it, usually you would skip over it, ignore it, but you can’t unsee it now. There they are in the crowd. Utterly non-descript. Staring at the box. You’ll see them in other pictures now too. They’ll wait. They’ve always waited. They’re patient. This is only their beginning too.”)
However, I know some of you didn't get the chance to see me last year at cons and wanted the book, so I'm going to be offering it online for a limited time (the month of March) exclusively on the Createspace.com estore. I'll probably offer up a few copies during raffles and giveaways in the future, but largely if you haven't gotten a copy this is the last chance to get one.
If you can't get one, don't fret. All the stories in it will be reprinted somewhere else in the future. Heck, a lot of them are available to read for free online. Of course, some of them will be reprinted far in the future, so if you want an advance look at some future stories, here's your chance to get a sneak peek!
The book isn't perfect though, its rough and rushed nature definitely shows, and there are some frankly amazing typos. I'm proud of it for what it did in helping to spread 10,000 Dawns, but its time is done. Time to put it to rest. But if you want to technically own every 10,000 Dawns book every printed, here's your chance to own a piece of history. I won't be offering it for sale again. So act now.
You can buy "Tales From the 10,000 Dawns" at the link below:
https://www.createspace.com/6239653
"Tales From the 10,000 Dawns" features fiction by Rachel Johnson, Jo Smiley, Jordan Stout, Elizabeth Tock, Miguel Ramirez, and James Wylder, with cover art by Rachel Johnson featuring designs by Annie Zhu. The book was edited by James Wylder.
Well, guess what, this weekend for him something amazing is happening. Dave is in Dublin Ireland for the Magic the Gathering Pro-Tour. He's worked hard to get there-- and he absolutely deserves to be there. Dave has a skill at card games I wish I did, and I'm no spring Chicken. At the college we both went to, my freshman year I cleaned up at the tournaments that were held, won tons of prizes. Infamously, I once walked out a tournament with two full boxes of cards I'd won. So lets be clear here: I was good.
Then Dave arrived and beat me at Magic over and over again.
He's a skilled, talented, and creative player, and he finally has the chance to show the world that. I know he's going to, and I absolutely believe in him. I'm cheering him on every step of the way, and I hope you will too! If you want to leave Dave encouragement, please do so in the comments below. He'll see them.
Cheer him on. He's gunna do great.
Now then, to celebrate Dave's card tournament prowess, lets take a little detour into the 10,000 Dawns...
The Card Player, by James Wylder
“Well, you win again,” John Vice sighed.
His wife Miranda, who had lost half an hour ago, was reading a book, “Yeah, good game,” she droned.
“Do we want to play again?” Lametrius asked.
“No, I think its time we head back home,” Miranda said.
Arch put a question mark up on the screen like oval where his face would have been, “Its mid afternoon.”
“Yep, time for bed, bye,” Miranda said, dragging her husband out behind her.
Grumbling, he followed, “What was that all about?” he asked after they’d gotten a bit from Arch’s place.
“Game night just isn’t fun anymore, Arch wins every game of Magician: The Hammering we play. His deck is perfect.”
“I’m sure its not perfect...”
“Name the last time he lost,” Miranda countered.
John thought. She had a point, “Okay fine, but what are you going to do, kick him out? He’s got a computer in his brain you can’t just tell him to pull it out. He can optimize his decks well, that’s not his fault.”
“What we need to do,” Miranda said, “is find someone who can beat Arch at cards.”
“What, like a master tactician like Kinan?”
* * * *
“You want me to play a card game?” Kinan said in her monotone, “To beat Arch, because you can’t beat him?” Kinan gestured at the table in front of her, where she was mapping out probabilities for which realities in the 10,000 Dawns be taken over by the Council next, and listing ways to save each one. “Perhaps, I might have more important things to do?”
“Yeah okay sorry bye,” John said quickly, dragging a protesting Miranda out behind him.
She pulled her hand away from him as they exited Kinan’s planning room, “Okay, so maybe she’s trying to stop the destruction of the multiverse.”
“Yes.”
“So I suppose that takes priority.”
“Yes.”
“So I guess we’ll go with plan B.”
“You did not tell me we had a plan B.”
* * * *
Graelyn stroked her cat Mister Sprinkles as she sat on her bed, she had a tablet open to a science book on one side of her, and another with sheet music on the opposite side. She seemed to be going back and forth between them at her mind’s whim. John and Miranda were sitting cross legged on the floor of her room, because Graelyn only had one chair and it looked so impeccably in its place in the order of her room neither of them wanted to disturb it.
“I’m not really sure why this is important,” Graelyn said.
“Its killing game night,” Miranda replied.
Graelyn shrugged, and scrolled down through the music. “That key-signature is just unfair, who would do that? That’s just--”
John cut her off, “Grae, listen. Arch loves tabletop games. He loves them a lot. But if he can’t get challenged, what will that make him?”
Graelyn didn’t look up from the music, “The best gamer on all of Spiral.”
The Vice spouses sighed in unison.
“Think about it this way,” Miranda said, “If you do this, John will make you all the peanut butter blossom cookies you want. For a month.”
“For a whole month you’ve got to-” he saw his wife’s expression, “be absolutely right that I will do that.”
“And I’ll make you tamales, real ones not printed ones.”
“No mole sauce, its boring. I want them spicy. And you need to make a cat friendly one so Mister Sprinkles isn’t left out.” Graelyn picked up the cat as she said that, dancing him around on her lap to the cadence of the words.
“Whatever, Gringo. Do we have a deal?”
Graelyn nodded, and saved her spots on both tablets before shoving her glasses back into her face and staring intently at the pair. She clasped her hands together, letting the cat finally escape to wander around the room aimlessly.
“So, tell me about this game.”
“Well, its only the most popular Trading Card Game game in the universe,” Miranda began.
“In fact in most universes, once you get far enough into the future.”
“Yes, John, anyways, in the game you play a Magician trying to hammer down their foes with spells. Your goal is to deplete the other magicians’ health scores till you win. To do that, you can play monsters that attack your foes, play spells to attack them directly, or power up your spell hammer which can lead to an alternate win condition if you power it up enough.”
“So, wait, you’re magicians? Like, poof, rabbit out of a hat?” Grae asked.
“No, you’re really wizards, but don’t worry about that part,” John said.
“Why isn’t it called like: Wizard: The Spellening, or Magic: the G--”
“Don’t worry about that part! Look, the main point here is that Arch has figured out how to break the game consistently. He can’t lose. The worst thing is the way he’s playing his deck requires such fine and meticulous gameplay that most of us just can’t remember all the different ways his deck can adjust to problems,” Miranda rubbed her forhead, and then gestured to John who took off his backpack and opened it up to reveal a bag of cards, “Those are all the cards you can play with in the game right now, we left a list of the cards in Arch’s deck in there too. Can you beat him?”
Graelyn nodded, “Of course I can beat him. I can be the best at anything I set my mind to.”
John and Miranda exchanged a look, that conveyed the eyeroll they didn’t want Graelyn to see.
“Leave the cards. I’ll get to work immediately. Mister Sprinkles,” she said, putting a hand on her hip and pointing at the cat, “we’re going to win us a card game!”
“Meow,” said the cat, towards an empty mug.
* * * *
The cards were laid out over nearly the whole floor. She’d memorized most of them by now, and she lay in bed staring at the ceiling going through card combinations. It wasn’t going well. By all accounts, Arch had found the best strategy. And by that, it wasn’t just the single best strategy, but a cascading sequence of inter-playing strategies that could take over from each other if another ones failed.
They weren’t wrong, Arch had broken the game in a way a normal person couldn’t. Graelyn knew if she played the same deck against Arch, she’d lose. Not because Arch could think better than her, but because Arch could memorize possibilities better than her. She felt like a chess grandmaster trying to beat a computer that had learned every possible move in the game.
Graelyn pulled her glasses off and rolled over, shoving her face into her pillow. She was going to embarrass herself. She was awful, and terrible, and after telling the Vices she’d wallop Arch, he’d annihilate her. Waves of self doubt rolled over her, and the cat walked over her back just to rub it in.
“Goodbye cruel multiverse, I can’t even win a cardgame,” she said unintelligibly into the pillow.
“Mrow,” said the cat.
“Arch is the best at this, he’s too good!” Graelyn rolled over again, spooking Mister Sprinkles who left off of her back onto the cards. One card flipped up, and caught Graelyn’s eye.
“Ursine Bear,” a boring common card that had no special abilities. She could only sort of make it out with out her glasses, but she recognized the vague shape of the art.
“Of course,” Graelyn said, grinning, “I should have thought of that first.”
* * * *
“Graelyn is challenging me? But she doesn’t play Magician: the Hammering. I tried to get her into it and she kept picking up her cat and pretending it was singing Phil Collins songs.”
“She is. She’s got an amazing new deck, with a strategy you haven’t seen coming.”
Arch would have raised an eyebrow if he had one. He was certain he’d calculated every card interaction perfectly… But then again Graelyn was very clever. She walked into the gaming room, wearing her usual skirt, tie, blouse, and blazer combo, but in brown instead of blue today. On her lapel was a bear pin.
“Hey Arch, ready to lose?” she said nonchalantly.
“Nice pin,” Arch replied.
“Thanks, so are we rolling a die to see who goes first?”
“I’ll take odds,” Arch said.
“I’ll even it out then,” Grae replied.
Grae won the roll. He watched her first turn play out. She set down a Tarpagorn upside down, which meant it would produce boon points for her every turn. It was a weird choice though: Tarpagorn was a powerful card. Some of the best combos in the game used it. Arch tried to think of a way to play it from its spot as a boon card, but there was no way to do that that wasn’t needlessly complex. It would take too long to set up. Unless she was going to stall him?
“I play, Ursine Bear!” Graelyn said.
Everyone in the room looked either confused or disappointed. Arch was the former. That card was useless. Aside from the fact that it was a bear, it had nothing that made it useful or interesting at all. Grae passed her turn, and Arch played his usual first turn play: Arch Heathen of Pro-Raphealites upside down as a boon card (when it was upside down it had text that flipped over with it at its usual bottom, that let it produce an extra boon point, so it was a great way to start the game), and then use that to play Despair of Haunting Millions. So over all, a good first turn.
Turn passed to Grae. She drew a card, and…
“I play Cupboard Bear,” Grae said.
Aha! Two bears? That… Bears didn’t do anything. Arch combed through the possible combos of bears. There was nearly nothing distinct to them, and even less that wouldn’t be better done with a different card.
“I’m… Really confused as to what you’re doing Grae.”
She smiled, “Are you afraid this is getting too… Hairy?”
“I just don’t understand your strategy.”
“I think you’ll find a way to… Bear it.”
“Are you really going to make puns about this?”
“No need to get up at paws about it!”
“Look Grae, if this is just a joke… Look I know the Vices set you up for this, they aren’t exactly subtle. You can back down.”
Graelyn made a dismissive gesture, and then pulled out a pair of sunglasses from her pocket, “I’m sure I’ll be able to,” she slid them on over her glasses, “claw my way to the top.”
Arch racked his brain. What was her strategy?
“I attack with Ursine Bear.”
“Fine, I take it,” he needed to figure out what she was doing. Grae kept attacking him with her idiotic bears while she played seemingly random and unconnected support cards, and counter-hammered (which stopped him from playing a card he was about to) the parts of his combos he needed to win instantly. The bears were a distraction, they had to be. At one point, she played Tim-Man, which was a powerful card definitely, but then she didn’t attack with it next turn, just used her bears.
He destroyed some of the bears, but she didn’t seem to mind, just played more. What did she have up her sleeve? Turns went by as he went through the options. She played “Crocotta’s Hollow” which gave all Croccotta cards a bonus, but Grae didn’t even have any of those in her deck! At least that he’d seen yet? He worked tirelessly to destroy the things that weren’t the bears as she played them, so maybe her own combo simply wasn’t coming together…
Eventually, Graelyn announced an attack from her bears, and Arch realized he was about to lose. He set his hand down and nodded.
“Good game… I don’t know what you were trying to do though. What was your strategy? It seemed like your deck was just...”
“Random cards and a bunch of bears?”
“Yeah, yeah that’s what it looked like. So what were you trying to do?”
Graelyn packed up her deck, putting it into her bag, and taking her needless sunglasses off dramatically, “I was trying to distract you with useless cards and then beat you to death with the most boring cards in existence. I figured you’d be expecting me to come in with a master strategy of card combos to outwit your own, but that’s impossible. Your deck is too good and you’re too good at playing it. So the only thing I could do was to make you worse at playing it by making you have no idea what I was doing and then hitting you with cards you didn’t think were threats.”
Arch stared at her for a moment, then broke out into laughter, “Okay, that was pretty great. Congratulations Grae, you did a good job. I did not expect that strategy.”
Graelyn threw her arms out wide, “Of course. I aim to inspire.” She turned to the Vices, “And you two. I want the cookies and tamales now that I beat Arch so he doesn’t ruin game night for you anymore.”
Arch narrowed the aperture of his camera, “Wait, wait, waiiiit everyone hold up here. First off, you bribed my best friend with food to beat me at Magician: the Hammering?”
The Vices looked awkward.
“And,” Arch continued, “you didn’t just tell me I was making game night not fun? You could have just told me. I can tone down my processor to not outmatch you on an analytic level.”
Graelyn turned around in her chair, “Wait you guys seriously didn’t tell him?”
The Vices looked at each other.
“Time for bed Miranda?”
“Sounds great John.”
“It is literally just after breakfast,” Graelyn said.
“Never too early!” John replied, as he and Miranda zipped out.
Graelyn shook her head, “So Arch, another game?”
Joyful fireworks played out over the screens of his skin, “I hoped you’d want to. But… Can you not play the bears?”
Graelyn pouted her lips, “You don’t need to be ursine about it.”
“Oh no.”
“You don’t have to make this grizzly!”
“Graelyn, no.”
“What, are things getting a little… Polar-ized?”
“Just get your damn deck out.”
She shuffled the cards together, “Lets see who wins this time. If I lose I’m sure I’ll just grin and… Bear it.”
They rolled to see who would go first. The game was on, just bearly.
This story features a side character from the first big 10,000 Dawns Story, an alternate reality version of the protagonist Graelyn she met and rescued during her adventures. Since writing the story, James was curious about what happened to her, and now you get to find out! Story written by James Wylder.
This story features art by the amazing Nozomi Neko! You can find more about her by following her on twitter at:
@NozomiNeko
And at Devient art at:
http://nozomi-neko.deviantart.com/
You can buy the Novel 10,000 Dawns now, right at the link below:
http://a.co/ghMfFoc
Or try a short ebook of six 10,000 Dawns Short stories for 99 cents!
http://a.co/9yXTpCf
You can read this story in PDF or Epub formats below:
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Auld Lang Moon
“Tell her to bring us to Dawn 378.”
“Not she, it. Its not a person anymore, its just the onboard computer for the Factory of Crystal. Don’t personify it, you’ll only get your thoughts twisted about it.”
“Its literally a girl in a chair with wires and tubes jabbed into her, its hard to think otherwise.”
“See, your thoughts are already getting twisted. Bring us to Dawn 378, FoC.”
She complied, after all, it was her job. She felt the energy flowing through her body-- no wait, not her body, the moon below her. Or was it the same? The energy ran along the cracks in her blue crystal, till she pushed through the white disk in space she had built from it: a portal to another reality, or another time, or another place. She cleaved through, till she felt the familiar tingle of a coming through into a new universe. She’d done her job.
“Excellent,” one of her two new handlers said (she didn’t like them as much as the first two), “its working perfectly. Now we just need to go down to the surface and clean the mess up down there.”
“I can’t believe a planet this backwards figured out timetravel.”
“I can believe they were dumb enough to write half their own universe out of existence though. Lets get it fixed.”
She felt purpose. She was helping. She was useful. She was… What was her name? She felt the chair pumping more chemicals into her, felt the question fading from her mind. No, she wanted to know! She’d had one, she had a name it was--
“GRAELYN SCYTHES WAKE UP! You’re going to be late,” Graelyn bolted upright in bed. Her pajamas were sweat-logged, her sheets damp.
“Coming Mom,” her voice said, cracking. She slid out of the sheets, and tried to find something to wear that would cover up the holes in her arms. The Crystal Orb rose up from her bed side and nuzzled her as she looked through her closet, like a dog seeing its owner distraught but unsure how to help.
“Is okay, don’t worry about me, just another nightmare,” she consoled the Moon. She took some solace in the humor of a massive military transport capable of expanding or shrinking at will and cutting through reality and time was trying to make her feel better about a bad dream. Her whole life sometimes felt like a dream, if she let it. It had been six months since she’d been liberated from the Factory of Crystal, the glowing orb she’d been wired into by the Firmament. Six months since she’d met another version of herself who had freed her. Six months of fitting into a family she had seen die, and who didn’t know their real daughter here was dead. It was a lot to take in, confusing to explain, and she hoped never to have to. She covered the ports for wires and tubes on her body with long sleeves and pant-legs, and went downstairs to start the day. She needed these extra classes over the winter holiday to catch up, she hadn’t had a formal education before being dropped into this world, and she was having trouble adjusting. Luckily her school offered them, the teachers who gave the courses getting beyond overtime pay. Not that all of them seemed happy about it.
“You know Grae, its new years tomorrow,” her mother said, handing her a roll and a glass of milk.
“A time for new beginnings and all that? Its just another day. I’d rather be in class than have another day off.”
Her mother smiled, a bit sweet and a bit patronizing, “I think we can often use a chance at a new beginning. Don’t you thi-- What is that?!”
Graelyn turned, to see the Crystal Orb flying down the stairs to come hover over her left shoulder, glowing gently.
“This? Oh, its uh, an electronic pet. I won it in a Trivia contest at the Library.”
Her mother scrunched her nose up, “You never mentioned winning a contest.”
“I didn’t really try, it was really easy. Anyways I forgot to charge it till last night.” The lies perhaps shouldn’t have come so easily to her, but hey, here she was. She scarfed down the rest of her breakfast, and headed out for school, the moon bobbing along behind her all the way.
“Why are you following me?” she hissed at it, as several of her classmates who were also walking to school stared at it. The orb did a little swirl in the air and glowed slightly brighter. Graelyn of course, knew what that meant.
“You’re tired of being separated from a part of yourself?” she wanted to argue her own independence, that she wasn’t actually physically part moon, but she knew deep down she didn’t actually believe that.
“Okay fine, you can come. But you’ll need to shrink down to pocket size during lessons. My teachers don’t take kindly to electronic cheating devices. No. I know you’re not electronic, that’s not the point. Come on!” The two of them walked/floated down the street to the school, with no other students anywhere in sight, where Graelyn began her usual day of classes and study. That was, till she got called down to the office, which never happened. The moon rolled gently in her pocket as she walked through the empty halls.
She slid through the ajar door into the office conference room, holding her school tablet close to her chest, even more confused why the secretary had directed her into this room. She was even more surprised to see who was in the room.
“Hello, Graelyn 3777. What a surprise to see you again.” In the room with her principal, and the administrator for her year, were two figures in hooded cloaks, with the pointed tip of the hoods pulled down over their faces, a patterned stripe hemming the edges of the hoods and sleeves. She resisted the urge to bolt, but couldn’t work up the nerve to enter the room. She simply stayed halfway in the door with her eyes open like a sculpture.
“Graelyn, these two people have come here about a special scholarship for you. We’re very excited about this for you,” Principal Totev said. One of the two robed figures turned a ring on their finger, and waved their hand in front of the faces of Principal Totev and the administrator. The two continued politely smiling as the figure began to speak.
“Please sit down Graelyn, you know what this is about. If you don’t sit down we may have to take actions you wouldn’t like.” Graelyn slipped through the door, and took the farthest seat from the figures.
“So, the firmament has finally come for me,” she said, trying not to sound as terrified as she was.
“Oh, not for you. Your living situation has resolved itself in this timeline, altering it would only increase instability.” The same one said, the other had remained silent.
“I suppose the Firmament would be most concerned about stability.”
“It is in the name, you know. You helped us patch countless holes in time-space, you should know that better than most.”
“I didn’t help you of my own free will,” Graelyn snarled.
“Oh didn’t you? We saved you, carried you out of the burning world you lived on, that dying Earth, and in return you offered your services to us.”
“Death or slavery.”
“Don’t put it so harshly. You’re alive, and you should be happy, that won’t change unless you don’t give us what’s ours.”
“We want the Factory of Crystal,” the other Firmament said. This one’s voice was harsh, gravelly, like it had been distorted through a sound system.
“Quite right. The Authority of Reclamations here is anxious to get back what you stole from us. And I, being the Enforcer of Reclamations, am here to oblige them. You’re quite aware of how powerful that machine is, what its capable of. You know we can’t let that stay in the wrong hands.”
Graelyn rolled up her sleeves, revealing the ports in her arms, “These hands look pretty capable actually. More suited to run the machine than yours, ironically.”
“Don’t think being snarky will save you. You will give us back the Factory, or you will die. How does that sound to you?”
Dawn 3777, ten years ago.
She had been running all day. The great metal Striders that walked the surface were out in force, which had made her scavenging work extra difficult. She ducked behind an outcropping of rocks, and tried to keep her breaths shallow as the thick black metal leg stepped over her, the searchlights coming down from it illuminating the darkness. As soon as it had passed, she bolted. The parts jangled as she ran, and she hoped there weren’t any low-surface scouts. She found the manhole cover, and popped it open, jumping down into it, clinging to the ladder with one had while she used the other to pull down the lid--
“WAIT!” She heard the shout and popped her head up to the black rocky surface. A man was running towards her, hand on a satchel. He was lit up brilliantly by the Strider.
She gestured for him to come, but knew it was hopeless. Something on the bottom of the Strider swiveled, and a claw shot down from it, grappling the man and with a lurch, pulling him up to the Strider. Graelyn shut the manhole, and began the climb down into the city.
“President St. John orders all citizens to stay alert for saboteurs. Centro will defeat the Strider menace,” the familiar propaganda voice said as she made her way into the narrow streets. Her stomach hurt with hunger. Making her way to the junk-shop, she laid her find out on the counter, having to pull up a stool to get all the way up there.
“Scythes, surprised to see you’re still alive,” Grandpa Joe said (not her actual grandpa, it was just his nickname, not that she knew where he’d gotten it).
“How much?” she said, desperate to eat. He looked through the jumble of parts and shook his head.
“Not much I’m afraid, with the new missiles the military has been bringing down more Striders than usual, so these aren’t worth what they used to be. Now if you brought me Oolong Cores...”
“Those give you cancer. I’d know.”
“Yea, heard about your parents. Shame that. Still, beats the firing squad your siblings got for desertion right?” Graelyn didn’t deign that with a response. “Right then…” he took out the money he owed her, and she took it eagerly. It wasn’t much, but it was enough for food. More food if she got it stale or expired, which she nearly always did. She ran to the markets, and soon went home to the less-cold spot under the pipes in the back alley on 4th street to begin her feast of moldy bread, spoiled milk, and a blemished apple, pulling the ragged pile of blankets and clothes around herself to try to keep herself from freezing. That was when the end of the alley got dark. Two figures in weird clothes, robes like out of an old fantasy film, blocked the alley. She’d seen their kind before, bad people who wanted to kidnap orphan kids for nefarious ends. Its why she slept by the pipes, even if they sometimes leaked: Graelyn leapt from her spot on the ground, up onto a horizontal section of pipe, and began to monkey up the side of it. Then, she felt herself pulled off of it, into the air, where she didn’t fall, but was instead slowly lowered. She saw nothing physical holding her, but one of the figures had its arm outstretched.
“Graelyn Scythes. We’re familiar with your intellectual and problem solving capabilities from other iterations of you. We’d like to offer you a job.”
Work? She’d be desperate for a job. A real job, but sketchy people in alleys weren’t exactly trustworthy, “What kind of job?”
One of the figures made a swirling gesture with its arm, and a white disk appeared on the wall next to her. After a moment, it stabilized, and she looked through onto a room filled with pastries. Fresh pastries. She licked her lips. Her hunger was somehow stronger than the wonder she saw before her.
“The kind where you’ll never go hungry again.”
She could remember the holes being cut into her arms, her legs, torso, head. The nutrients being pumped into her bloodstream and stomach. All she could remember thinking over the pain was she’d been promised pastries.
The present
Graelyn nodded, and pulled the orb out of her pocket. The enforcer rose, and reached his hand out as it floated into the air, towards his outstretched palm, and then veered sharply slamming into his face and zipping back into Graelyn’s pocket as she sprung out of her chair and through the door.
“After her!” The Authority shouted, while The Enforcer reshaped their broken and bloody nose into a fresh one, shoving him out of his chair after her. The principal and administrator smiled pleasantly as the Firmament members ran past them, opening the door with a wave of the ringed hand. Graelyn looked behind her as she ran, seeing the two following her. She had to find a way to escape. Reaching into her pocket, she felt the connection to the moon. It was part of herself, that orb. She’d been connected to it for nearly ten years. Her blood ran though its plains, its rivers ran through her veins. She pulled it out, and hoped that she could do what she was thinking. The orb grew to the size of a basketball, and she hugged it tight as she lifted off of the ground, floating up into the air, and onto the roof of a nearby house. Without missing a stride, The Authority and The Enforcer made a gesture with their ringed hands, and they floated up to meet her. She ran again, using the orb to float between rooftops, hoping to lose them, but the followed her from house to house, sometimes trying to flank her or cut her off. She doubled back, slipped their clutches, and kept running. This wasn’t going to work, this wasn’t a plan that could actually get her freedom.
The Enforcer leapt to a roof to her right, and tried to wave at her with the ringed hand to lift her off her feet, but she jacked up the gravity with the orb, till her feet were smashing through the shingles on the house beneath her as she ran. Whoops.
She lightened herself again, and sprung onto the next house, when it finally hit her what she needed to do. She focused hard on the orb, pressing her hands onto it, feeling the connection. Cords sprang out of the orb, as if hidden compartments had opened up, and latched themselves onto her arms. She could feel her blood flow into the orb, and the orb flow into her. Then the cords snapped back in, and the orb hung glowing between her outstretched arms. She glowed in wonder just as it did, and as the Enforcer came up behind her, she opened the portal.
The white disk opened right under her feet, and she fell with the orb right down into it. She knew the Enforcer and the Authority of Reclamation would be right behind her. But she had a plan now, and even if this was the end, she’d go out on her own terms. She landed in the Labyrinth, the artificial space that lined different dimensions for the Firmament to travel in, and ran down its glowing bifrost. She channeled more energy into the orb, she knew where she had to go. They’d messed up, because unlike most beings who had ever existed, she knew where they lived.
The Evaluator of Travel, of many Evaluators of Travel of course, it wasn’t a high ranking position, stared at the terminal. It looked like Reclamations had brought back that stray they’d been being chewed out about finally, coming in at dock 18. She got up out of her desk, and wandered over to the gate, watching as the portal formed, and readying the pedestal to receive the Factory of Crystal. The portal stabilized, and the Factory did shoot out of it, but so did an alien being. It’s features looked firm, like it couldn’t change them even if it focused very hard, and the Evaluator was pretty sure it was a human. Or one of the variants, she couldn’t be bothered to keep up with all of the literature on them. Still, she knew about a few important parts of human culture, like N’Sync and Beethoven. The orb landed onto its pedestal, just as they were supposed to, but the human got up, and pulled it off of it. The poor thing was clearly confused, after all it couldn’t even see properly without the transparent rectangles it had placed in front of its eyes.
“No, that’s not for touching! Put that back. How did Reclamations get this careless--”
Reclamations, as if on cue, dropped in through the portal, and pointed at the human, who was already running away like a startled deer.
“Evaluator, stop her!”
She blinked, “I’m not touching that, you brought a wild animal here you go touch it.”
“Its a criminal who stole valuable Firmament property!”
The Evaluator crossed her arms, “Did she really steal it? I mean, you don’t blame a cat for hunting prey. Maybe humans just like picking up shiny objects?”
The Enforcer shoved past her, “By the forgotten gods, you’re no help.”
“Should I call animal control?”
“She’s one of the lesser species, not an artichoke.” The Authority said.
The Evaluator of Travel threw up her arms as the Authority began chasing after the Enforcer, who was chasing after the human, turning her hair bright purple in exasperation. They always had to make everything so dramatic.
Graelyn passed rows of pedestals, most of which held another Factory of Crystal. In each one, there was a pilot. We’re they all just like her? Unwanted people brought in just before they had been scheduled to die somewhere in order to run the Firmament’s inter-universal fleet of traveling vessels? She felt guilty passing them, but she couldn’t do anything. Not with those two on her tail. She finally reached a door, and pulled it open, stepping out into a square filled with robed people. In the center of the square was a giant marble statue of three figures, all of whom were featureless, their faces a blank slate. Their hands were open as though they were holding objects and performing tasks, but no objects rested in them. This seemed normal to everyone but her, but she couldn’t stand and stare, after all, they were already staring at her. Holding the orb under her arm, she kept running, pushing past startled Firmament people, but couldn’t lose herself in the crowd when she was clearly dressed differently than everyone else. She needed to blend in, and knew how to do it.
Graelyn had learned how to scavenge, and she knew about trash. She didn’t mind things that other people discarded. Sure, the last six months she’d had fresh food, new clothes, and a warm bed, but she could tolerate the rest. And so she slipped down an alley, because all worlds have alleys if they have cities, and all cities have to have a way to get rid of trash. Maybe they’d just vaporize or burn it, but she got the sense they didn’t. They seemed old and hidebound, and her intuition paid off. This alley was behind a store filled with robes, she’d seen them in the windows, though she couldn’t tell what the differences in fashion were supposed to be. A pipe ran out the back, a thick one, down into a dumpster. She climbed up into it, and found some robes. They were clearly, even to her, unfashionable. The stuff that wouldn’t sell no matter what. She dug around, trying on a few hastily, till she emerged with a somewhat dirty but well fitting firmament robe on her. She came out of the alley, orb in her pocket, and walked right past the Enforcer and the Authority, still trying to find her in this huge city. She was lucky she could read their language, speak it as well, having been part of one of their machines. The signs told her she was just where she wanted to be.
The City of Glory.
The capitol of the First and Final Firmament.
“The most stable and enduring Parliament of the Firmament recognizes the Authority of Reclamation.” The Arbiter of Arbitration said.
The Authority rose, trying to not show his embarrassment as he stood before the Parliament. He was in the pit, while the Parliament sat in seats encircling him above a wall too high for him to climb. It was intimidating. It was meant to be.
“Authority, you have let a member of a lesser species, an outsider to the Prime Reality no less onto the surface of the Firmament without permission. Are you aware of the severity of this infraction?”
He raised his arms up, “I was instructed to bring her to the Firmament.”
“In custody.”
“Partial fulfillment is not an absence of attempt.”
The Parliament muttered to themselves, “We accept your rules-mongering.” He breathed a sigh of relief, “For now. The intruder must be apprehended-” The Arbiter of Arbitration stopped, and raised an eyebrow, “it appears you have someone who has come to speak on your behalf. The… Minister of Scythes. Whoever that is. Let them in!”
The Authority was about to protest, when the door in the pit slid open, and a robed person stepped into it with him, lowering their hood to reveal the face of Graelyn Scythes.
“Hi everyone, did you miss me?” she waved.
“Ah, well, I see the criminal has decided to turn herself in. Commendable, and fortunate for you, Authority.”
“Sadly, afraid not,” Graelyn said, “because you promised me pastries.”
The Parliament was silent for a moment, then awkward confused laugher filled it, “Pastries? Be serious. Guards, arrest her.”
“Ah, I wouldn’t do that. See, I’m linked into a Factory of Crystal. My Factory of Crystal. A moon sized machine capable of contorting reality and space-time and its ready to tear a hole in the fabric of this city and let all sorts of terrible things through,” she rolled up her sleeve to reveal the orb, shrunk down small but littered in tiny cords that linked into her left arm. “I’ve been at the helm of one of these for ten years, I know my way around it. No wonder you were worried about me getting a hold of it, its insanely powerful now that I think about it. I’d never considered huring anyone with it.”
The Parliament went into an uproar, the guards held back, the Authority looked terrified. The Arbiter of Arbitration made a gesture with their hand, and the room went quiet, “You expect us to mak a deal with you when you’re threatening us?”
“Yes I do! Because you lied to me. You promised me I’d be safe, you showed me pastries, showed me a future full of plenty and hooked me up to this thing like I was a lab rat, or a CPU! You promised me pastries, and I never got them.”
“The Acquisitions Bureau is supposed to be completely honest with their promises to the pilot program. If your accusations are true, we will of course owe you an apology. But we must take back what’s ours.”
“Do you know why I came here to tell you this? Because I don’t believe people are inherantly good. They’re not, and we’re not. We’re not hardwired to be kind, or to do the right thing all the time. We also have selfishness, hatred, all sorts of bad impulses that fight for control. And sometimes the bad things win out. The bad things become what we are, or they become all that surrounds us. And that means we have to survive. Because if someone is trying to kill you or take your freedom, you can’t just ask them to stop. I would know. They just keep taking it until you give them consequences. So I’ve given you consequences. If you want that moon, that you made a part of me, that you made me feel was as much my own flesh as my hand, if you want that back, you can ruin your planet. But this is a new year. Its a time for new beginnings. And I’m tired of holding on to my own hate at your broken promises. There were no pastries, and you used me, and it was wrong. You should hate yourselves for that. You hurt me in ways I can’t even explain. But I’m willing to forgive you, and let bygones be bygones. You forgive me, and I’ll forgive you, and we both leave each other alone. If you respect my existence, all of it, then I’ll respect yours. Deal?”
The Arbiter leaned back in their chair that was older than the planet Earth.
“Deal.”
Graelyn clinked the glass with her brother and they downed the sparkling grape juice heartily.
“Happy New Year!” they shouted, a little belatedly, as the rest of the family began pouring out more champagne.
“Got any new years resolutions, Graelie?” her brother asked.
She laughed, “Not die, keep existing, eat good food.”
“Cheers to that,” he replied, and they clinked glasses again, that were this time joined by a small crystal orb, which floated up to join in the fun. Someone started singing “Auld Lang Syne,” and two two joined in.
“When old acquaintance be forgot, and never brought to mind!”
The doorbell rang.
“When old acquaintance be forgot, and days of auld lang syne.”
“Who could that be at midnight on New Years?” Graelyn’s dad murmured.
“To auld lang syne, my dears to auld lang syne!”
Graelyn shrugged, and went to get the door. When she opened it, she didn’t see anyone, but looking down there was a box, with a note on the top.
“To Graelyn,
To help with your bygones, and maybe with ours.
Happy New Year.
-The Arbiter of Arbitration”
She opened the box, and it was filled to the brim with fine pastries from all over the world. From the distance, a cloaked figure on a rooftop raised a hand, then faded into the shadows.
“We’ll raise a cup of kindness yet… To auld lang syne.”
* * * *
10,000 Dawns will return next spring with our massive Anthology, "10,000 Dawns: Poor Man's Iliad", featuring great writers like Nathan P. Butler (Star Wars Tales, WARS), Tim Sutton (Marble Hornets, Slender the Arrival), Andrew Hickey (Faction Paradox), Kylie Leane (Key: Chronicles of the Children), and Eric Asher (Vesik, Steamborne) and many more! Keep watch on jameswylder.com for more information.
James Wylder
Poet, Playwright, Game Designer, Writer, Freelancer for hire.
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