The Gaming Outpost

The gathering of versers in my previous world defeated smallpox, and went on to do their best to crush infectious disease under their foot over the next two decades. One by one, we versed out. Shawn was the first to go with his large collection of enemies, and then his doppleganger dropped out of sight without any enemies since it had not been generally known their were two of them, per their plan. Kelly and Matt vanished since hiding lack of aging in a president and a Nobel Prize winner, respectively, gets difficult under the heavy public scrutiny. David started playing with rockets again, and a chemical explosion of a prototype he was driving did for him. I’m not sure what happened to Lara, we never found out, but I think she walked down a dark alley tracking a suspect, and got it in the back. The Alchemist was still around, when I got taken out by a nutcase who screeched about my supporting extinctionism. See, I had been one of the major players in the eradication of most of the humanly lethal viruses, and some people, mostly mentally disturbed, had difficulties with that.

I woke, after the incendiary grenade got tossed on my table by the passing “waiter”, in a new universe. A low thrumming vibrated the cerametal deck, and raising my self up from the position I had taken over the grenade to protect the other diners, I looked about in the dimness.

Neatly stacked boxes with electronic locks, and Galactic Standard (one of my languages) imprints announced. “Property of the University of Emerald.”; “Sensitive Data Material: Do Not Open”; “Mary Piper Hold A.”

Whoa.

Mary Piper. I was on one of the Mary Pipers. No one knows why, but versers often land on a ship, and that ship is the Mary Piper. In fact, I’d done it myself before, on a robotic starship, I’d met another verser, and we had traded stories nestled by the heat of a slowly dying plasma furnace.

Hopefully, this would end up better than that ship where Tim the Amazing, and I had frozen stiff. And another time, I had lasted five minutes on a Piper, so you could say my record was not that good on that regard.

I gathered my stuff, and wandered about looking for the crew. Walking up and down the narrow corridors, I found no one, and began to worry that I had landed on some sort of ghost ship.

The hold area had plentiful small holds, and what looked like checkboxes for a security team to verify they had swept the area, but it was a small, and isolated maze. And then I found a small hatch that I had not tried.

Going through it, I found myself in a main corridor which ran, what I guessed might be the length of the ship. A clean quarter-mile column that was fifty feet wide, and lightly constructed. And a running track with exercise stations circled it.

Looking back, I saw another hatch that said “Hold B”, and a heavily warded door that announced “Nuclear Fusion Systems: Authorized Personel Only” with an odd scrawl beneath the official letters, “That means me, bucko.”

I walked softly down the track, and found that every forty feet, it had a circular band of windows. So I looked out, and suffered a bit of nausea as the stars whirled about me. But then I realized what was happening.

The ship was spinning to provide centrifugal force downward to mimic gravity. Now that I knew it, I spotted the slight difference of feeling, the minor twisting sensation that differed it from real gravity.

Curious, I pulled out my plasma cannon, and indeed it advertised itself as ready to function. Not wanting to punch a hole in the ship, and flashfreeze the ship, I refrained.

Continuing forward, I came to another hatchway that said “Personel Storage; Pilot Commander Quarters; Navigation Deck; Sail Trimming Station” which obviously listed what was forward of the exercise area.

The whole place was quiet, except for an occasional crackle of heat-stressing metal, and the slight whir from the overall vibration of the deck.

I opened the hatch, and saw a bearded man, with wide eyes, and at least a weeks worth of accumulated grime stare at me with his mouth open which was fortunate since it enabled him to start shrieking without wasting any time as he scrambled away from me.

I let him go, and entered, but more cautiously. At least it wasn’t a ghost ship, I thought, but still I was not sure.

The name of “personel storage” had seemed odd until I checked out the great galleries next to the central corridor past the forward hatchway. Several dozen men and woman stood behind glass and ice, cryonically frozen, waiting for something.

I searched the rest of the forward area. The nose was a translucent bubble made of molded diamond sheets, and from there you could see the giant thousands of miles wide sail which received a pulsing laser burst from lightyears away to help push the ship onward through Einsteinian sublight space. And from here, you could control the microthin cables which served as the rigging for this ship.

Too bad Graeme had not come here, he would have enjoyed playing with these ropes.

To the right, the Pilot Commander’s Quarters refused to open to my presence, and to my left, the Navigation Bridge did.

Here I found where we were going. We were five months out of the Emerald Coast, and headed across the Syndic Nebula through a narrow pass in its immensity where the gas thinned enough not to erode us to particles as we pushed on at an averaged (taking into account the speed-up and slow-down) fifty percent of the speed of light which meant with our ten lightyear trip ahead of us that I was looking at a very long drive.

Twenty years to the next port of call is enough to chill the bones of even an experienced verser like me. And we were not going fast enough to get any benefit from time dilation effects either.

Despite looking about, I did not find the other man on the ship. Already, I surmised that policy was to leave one human awake at all times during the crossings, but especially the Great Crossing which is where we were now.

A bit depressed, I found a place to sleep, and rested a bit uneasily since I thought I heard sounds in the night.

The next day, I checked the computers, and saw no sign of the other man, but I smelled his scent. He had changed the passwords on the computers, but to little avail. He was clumsy, and I had the benefit of several software programs which came from universes much more technically advanced than his.

And besides, the computer was fundamentally a friendly design.

The great figure eight course the Mary Piper flew across the lightyears was necessitated by one thing, although other reasons tagged along. The terraforming on the human planets was unstable, a house of cards, and it continually needed fine quality adjusting.

And the only group capable of the really heavy theorizing and the massive computer resources needed on a very long-term basis (these people thought in terms of centuries) was the College of Emerald. Those containers held data programs to update the ecological models of the terraformed planets so as to provide local decision makers the best facts, and the most logical “decision support software”.

I spent the rest of the day reading about the software which was very clever stuff indeed considering that they had no access to artificial intelligences.

That night, I woke to see the Commander Pilot staring at me from a distance of three feet, but he was up and running before I could get to my feet. I dozed lightly the rest of the night.

Over the next few days, we fell into a routine. I studied the software, and he blocked the computer, and then he dropped by to examine me at night when he thought I was sleeping.

Finally he spoke.

“You’re real, aren’t you?”

I nodded slightly.

“Can you speak?”

I smiled and spoke a greeting, and tears ran down his face. And he began capering about, and singing disjointed phrases of praise songs to God.

After that, he showed me how to pull out the kitchen from the outside wall of his quarters, and we became companions.

It turned out that he had just logged a really long stretch as a Pilot, and been burned the last week in a plasma leak, and so he spent the month-long layover in the Emerald Coast in Dream Goo which knocks you out, and heals you at the same time. And then a rush in the schedulefor his old ship, and as he healed, he got assigned to a new ship, and as low man on the totem pole got the worst run. It would be another four and a half years before he could wake up the next two human beings.

Two, I wondered. Bitterly, he showed me the person who was supposed to work with him. A frozen man, the last in the row, looked out at us.

“He’s a hypochondriac. Always cleaning things. Said he got a fever, although I don’t know how, and froze himself on a Medical Override. Jerk planned to defrost himself, and fiddle with the records before everyone else defrosted, but I got him, oh yes, I moved him to being the last to be defrosted even though I had to program in machine language to do it.”

I laughed, and wondered. A skill, I had not much used, but this was a chance to see if it would work here.

I touched the computer, and felt its ons and offs, its ones and zeros, and I knew the machine’s language, or reasonably close to it. It would take awhile, but I had time to learn its dialect.

Over the next months, he taught me the jobs required of an Associate Pilot. We spun the sail to check for fraying at the edges which could be lethal since a fray could rapidly disintegrate the whole micromillimeter thick thing. I got to do an EVA outside the ship in a spacesuit, as I checked for micro-meteorite damage. And we tended the fusion furnace, but it was practically unbreakable, so that was not a big deal. The thing was over a thousand years old, and warranteed for another two thousand.

But we kept busy in other ways as well. Lots of exercise, and it turned out that the track area could, for short time periods be spun faster. So we got to play the masochistic sport of two-g marathoning.

And its spin could be zeroed out, in fact it had to be occasionally. Then he taught me the two main styles of hand-to-hand fighting that he knew. Crab Kung-fu which relied on staying low, and sideways dodges, and most of all keeping contact with a solid object so you did not spin helplessly into the air. The other was Zero-G Aikido which relished floating in the air. It was much slower since transport required “air-swimming”. And most of its attacks were choke holds, although for advanced students which I eventually became, you learned to hit while doing a “balancing strike” in the other direction, but those hits were mostly nerve strikes since they still lacked a lot of force.

My first year passed, and I was glad to see that my companion had regained his grip on sanity which he had been losing.

A slight navigational error due to the unpredictable gravitational effects of uncharted stars hiding in the nebula on the nebula’s movement required us to fire up the fusion reactor to full, and engage the laser drive. The ship stopped vibrating as we closed the sail, and the pulsing beats of laser energy fired over a lightyear away at us flashed harmlessly around us, and into us.

It took us thirty-six hours of steady work, but we got around the tendril of gas that would have shredded us, and then put the sail back up.

And then afterwards, I got listed in the ship’s log as Sailsman, First Mark, which surprisingly brought tears to my eyes. It was an honor accorded to all who took down, and put up a three thousand mile wide sail.

Toward the end of the second year, I began to really spend time buried in the depths of the computer which I taught my friend to do as well, although he never could learn to “hear” the computer speak, he did develop a remarkable instinct for what it was doing.

In other words, we went full-fledged into geekiness.

I wanted to help my companion out, and myself as well, so next we dove into ship design for year three. By the end of year three we had a good basic grasp on how the ship was built, and we both had accumulated a large array of honors from the computer, and had been consequently promoted along the technical path four times each, and recommended to be placed on the command path, but such decisions had to be verified by the captain who slept.

I provided motivation for my companion, and he was a changed man. Plus the religious talks I had been having with him bore fruit, and so we began taking Sunday off to study and relax. This helped make us more productive on the other days.

And so, we finished our last half-year together before the unfreezing with more exercises.

And then we woke up the next two who wanted to know who I was, and where was the other senior man, and “where’s their coffee!” That is, until, my companion tapped the new rank tabs on his collar, and eyed them cooly. He was no longer the low man on the totem pole, and he offered no explanation, but just made sure they knew what to do, and informed them in tart terms of their responsibility not to mess up “his” ship.

Then we froze. The years passed in a vague, and short dream, and I awoke, cold, stiff, and longing for coffee with a craving that passed into almost obsession.

The Captain took me into his quarters, and the First Officer sliced and diced me, or tried to. My deliberate yawns in the midst of his tirades dampened the effect.

I explained what I was, and what I had done without going into the near-insane man I had found on the ship.

The Captain nodded.

“Thank you. A mistake on my part hiring Bronski. He fiddled the system to get a low-ranker he could push around, and then tried a dodge to get out of his duty. He’s getting to live on Durnmist with a note in his file of ‘Not Transportable’ which should be a repayment, even if not in full. His actions might have killed us all, and now no ship will even let him on board with that note.

And you’ve taken a decent, but low caliber individual, and returned someone who might become an officer. He’s already signing up for engineering.”

They handed me a bonus of Diktars, and released me to spend a month of shore leave on beautiful Durnmist with its small ponies, and its cow-sized goats that draw the plow through the thick, black soil, and its occasional outbursts of wild fungi which the data from the Emerald University should help correct.

But at the end, I got back on the ship, and headed toward Tempest in a cryonic freezer. It took us eighteen Terran months to get there. It took a bit long, because a rat gnawed a cable in the Durnmist Orbital Transport Laser Cannon, and put them out of action, while we were boosting, for two months.

The customs at Tempest did not like my weapons, and insisted they be peace-bonded, and refused to let me off the ship. Oh, well, everyone else got liberty.

Half the crew, including myself, rode awake to Tristar, and consequently it was a very quick run of eleven months. There was little lag time between spotting a minor inefficiency and fixing it, let alone any serious problems. It was a very tight ship, indeed.

The sunspots and solar flares in the system were being quiet, so we got to enjoy the gambling casinos and theme parks of Tristar underneath the radiation protection domes.

Onward to Moon of Korg which really needed our data since their metal-heavy moon only held onto life with its fingertips, and then to Sardic which is the home port of the laserpushed sublight starship, the Mary Piper.

I went on further, making the outer loop, and finally coming back to Sardic, and finding myself willing to stay on as we crossed the Syndic Nebula again.

By this time, I was ranked as second in computers and security, and so I got an offer.

The crew of the Yankee Trader needed a Chief of Computers, and was I interested. Regrettfully, I moved on.

It was a good ship, but not the Piper. That doubled loop, I learned about their ship, and began to truly master things. Another loop, I thought, and I might well be able to build the ship by myself from stem to stern, if given a thousand years, and the right equipment.

But something happened, my third time across the Nebula. Three things happened. For one, we passed the Piper, since the Yankee was smaller and faster. And two, on my watch, my companion, a fine fellow even if not my old friend, did honestly get sick, and so I froze him.

And then I buried myself in the computer, and at night my dreams started to get weird. Voices, fears, turbulent emotions that I could not name assailed me.

Gradually, I sorted it out even as I worried over going mad like the first man I met in this universe. Voices were speaking to me, and from outside the ship.

But it was hard to understand them. They thought slow, so slow, and odd. But eventually, I knew those voices.

The nebula was home to gaseous intelligences who communicated by telepathy, and they were trying to welcome me in joining them.

This made little sense as I did not plan on joining them. And then the fears made sense, for it had been my own intuition warning me.

We were heading toward a wake of an earlier ship. A spot where another ship had fired their engines, and we were about to plow into the gas cloud at fifty-five percent of lightspeed. We would soon be gas, and thus join the clouds.

They thought it great, but then they did not understand me when I told them it would kill us. It seemed they were truly immortal.

I really wanted to quiz them about the beginning of the universe, but I had no time.

I trimmed, and fired up the laser drive of my own, and ran down and up the ship attending to dozens of minor issues, and all the while the clock was ticking.

We pulled aside imperceptibly, and it was almost enough, but one stray tendril caught the side of the ship, and savaged us.

It disintegrated the sail control center in the forward area, and I had to sprint with all my cyborged strength back to the hatch into the exercise track, and slam it shut. If it reached me here, we were all dead, since I needed this volume of oxygen as a heat mass and as breathable storage.

It did not, but the ship shuddered for a long time after that.

And I asked the nebulans for a picture of the ship which they obliged me with. The whole front of the ship was shredded.

I ran back to the fusion reactor, and it worked fine. The problem was that we were drifting blindly out of control, and heading into a nebula that would finish the job. Its wall of near-vacuum gas particles might as well have been solid concrete for what it would do to the Yankee Trader.

And then I remembered the Piper.

How to reach her? Telepathy would not likely work, and would probably scare the pilots for a couple of days which I might not have.

So I tapped into their computer net, and asked for their navigational assistance on their net.

They took several hours which I used to wonder about the frozen crew, and then beamed the radio message to me which would take several hours. However, I lifted it straight from their computer.

We got straightened up, and then I began to fly the ship, slowly.

We were waiting for the Piper. They pulled up alongside which is a very delicate maneuver, and cut into the ship since all the airlocks were bent out of working order by the impact.

Why hadn’t I thought of that, I wondered with a sinking feeling.

The frozen crew was safe, and so was the the data, and both were transferred over while I lay in the Piper’s sick bay.

The Yankee Trader ran another route, mostly although it still homeported at Sardic, and went next to Durnmist. From there it went in a galactic northerly loop to St. Johns, Prescott’s Star, Bonnie Lass, and Cordovan’s End before making it back to Sardic, and doing a southerly loop.

So those people needed a ship, but the Trader was out of commission. Indeed, spewing gasses, she was a hazard to navigation.

We destroyed her by ramming her into the nebular wall which seemed to have been what those giants expected all along. I truly began to wonder how they perceived time.

But I was sick. The crash had caused a release of very energetic particles as the ship wall turned into subatomic soup. The others, behind their protective glass had been safe. I had been bombarded with gamma rays.

But with the Piper’s tech and freezing, I might make it, but I had a job to do.

I took myself down into the cargo hold B where the expandable orbital habitats (like blow up tents) were stored as well as other not much used stuff, and the Trader’s cargo.

Each box was a datafile. I could read these files if the lock was disengaged. My first friend used his executive authority, since he now was first mate, to open them.

And then I tried to memorize each file, and then convey it to the appropriate planet, but it was too much. The distance was too great, but so was the data mass. I literally did not have space in my brain to store one file.

Then the nebulans came to my aid. These massive minds took what I gave them, and held it and transported it under my direction, and each of the Trader’s planets got its required ecological counsel years early.

I hoped that did not mess them up, but it was the best I could do.

And then the strain was too much, and I versed out.

Tadeusz

  For years I’ve been settling down in diners and asking the waitress to tell me the soup du jour.  By the way, du jour is French for of the day, so it’s redundant to the point of gauche to ask about the soup du jour of the day.  Probably, though, none of you have ever done that, or if you did you were tripping over your words at the time, you know, your tongue got in the way of your eye teeth so you couldn’t see what you were saying.  Forget all that; that’s not today’s topic.

  Back on point, I would ask what soups were being served, and I would be told.  Only quite recently did I realize that most diners try to serve the same soups on the same days of the week.

  I realized this, ultimately, because we asked.  The local diner has a cream of crab soup that my wife loves, and a lobster bisque that she also enjoys, and we asked our favorite waitress whether there was method to the madness so that we could try to come when they had the right soups.  Indeed, the one is served on Fridays and the other on Sundays.  I should have realized that diners did this long before.  Every month we have a Sunday afternoon business meeting at a diner (a different diner in a town conveniently located midway between the participants) and I am always being told that they are serving Manhattan clam chowder.  Personally, I think that it should be illegal to call something chowder that contains tomatoes; I understand that in Boston it is illegal to do that (although there are such ample reasons not to live in Boston that this one bright spot is not sufficient to overcome them).  However, New Jersey is not so enlightened in that area, so every month I decline the soup and look for something edible on the menu.  It took me a long time to realize that they always had that same soup on Sunday.

  I considered this, and thought there was something here for this column.  I turned over in my mind the way this impacted my impressions of the two diners.  On the one hand, we do make special trips to the diner that serves my wife’s preferred soups on the days that they are offered, so the consistency of the schedule brings them our business on days when we have no other reason to be there.  On the other hand, I never buy soup at our meetings, and have a less favorable opinion of the diner because they never have any soup I like when I’m there.

  It’s not the diner’s fault, though, that I’m only there on Sundays; they may well serve excellent soups on other days of the week.  My sampling of their menu may seem random to me, but it’s not really random at all–it follows a clear pattern which happens to mesh in a specific fashion with the clear pattern followed by the diner.

  That is, some things appear random, but are not, and other things which do not appear random might be.

  When my mother strips the beds and washes the sheets, she sends my father to flip the mattresses (or at least, they did that for all the years that I was growing up).  Flipping a mattress is supposed to extend its life; my wife and I once owned a mattress that had flipping instructions printed on the corners, in essence telling you which direction to flip it for even wearing.  We never could follow the directions, as we exhibit none of the organizational skills my mother, once a General Motors efficiency expert and later a math teacher, displays.  However, my father had a very simple system for deciding how to flip the mattress.  The essential principle is that it must be flipped sometimes end to end and sometimes side to side, so that it will wear as evenly as possible under the stress of people sleeping on it.  The instructions on the mattress had all the qualities of tire rotation, telling you which corner had to go where when.  My father’s solution was simpler.  If my mother sent him to flip the mattress on an odd-numbered day, he flipped it end to end; if it was an even-numbered day, he flipped it side to side.  This, he maintained, would cause the mattress randomly to land in each of the four possible orientations with equal probability and therefore equal outcomes over time.

  I agreed, but observed immediately that this was only true if Mom was not also influenced by the calendar date in deciding when to strip the beds.  That is, if she always stripped the beds on the fifteenth of the month, it would always be an odd day on which he flipped the mattresses, and they would never be flipped side to side.  In this case, she was more influenced by the day of the week, and therefore the system worked.

  It puts me on notice, however, that sometimes what we think are random results are not only not random, but not distributed as random results would be.  Those of you who write programs are probably aware that if you use seed-based random numbers and enter the same seed number into the program, you’ll get the same “random” numbers every time–that is, you don’t get random numbers from a random number generator, just unpredictable ones, and they become predictable if you fail to vary the input.

  It may seem that this is far from anything relevant to most of our games.  Few of us use random number generators in play.  However, we often do make decisions in response to things we mistakenly believe are random.  Pick a letter by opening a book at random to see what the first letter is on the page–but there is a known sequence of letters most likely to start a word which is different from the known sequence of most commonly used letters, different again if you account for distribution of words commonly used, and yet again for words likely to begin a sentence (which thus would be more likely to be the first word on a page in many books), and again for books which use foreign words and phrases extensively, or which are in another language.  Children play a game with apples, twisting the stem once for each letter of the alphabet in search of the first letter of the name of the person they will marry; but this is skewed toward the center of the alphabet, because precious few will break on the first twist and far fewer will reach the end of the alphabet.  If you decide something based on the date of the game, or the time of night, be certain that there is nothing about your play schedule that will skew the date or time to a particular imbalance.

  Rochambo, better known as rock paper scissors, is an interesting example of a randomizer used in play that is not always random.  A lot of live action role play uses this method to resolve conflicts.  A fair number of players successfully skew the odds by studying the play patterns of the other players, identifying people who always start with rock, or who after a tie always change to the one that would have beaten that, or would have lost to it, or the ones who will repeat the same entry after a tie.  In essence, these players turn rochambo into a test of skill, not a randomizer but an opportunity to outplay an opponent to gain an advantage.

  Yet the reverse is also true.  There may be things that are not at all random in the world in which you are playing, but which are most easily represented by randomizers.  We discussed Weather only two weeks ago, where it was suggested that a single roll can determine whether the weather is favorable or not, but even the more complicated approaches ultimately are randomized.  Real weather is not random; it just seems so to those of us who don’t know the patterns.  So, too, it may well be that the giant takes a walk down to the lake to fetch water every day at this time, but since we’ve never been here before we couldn’t possibly know that.  The roll of a random encounter, so annoying as a concept to so many gamers, in this case represents not the random presence of the giant, but the fact that we (including the referee) were unaware that he would be fetching water at this time.  A rockslide or landslide or snowslide is not a random event; nor are earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, tidal waves and tornadoes.  They are caused events, part of a causal chain that culminated at this moment in a disruption.  They are easier to bring into play as random events, because tracking the details of the world sufficiently to know these things is more than we can do.

  You could make your decision based on the smile on my face or the color of my shirt, but unless you know what my smile means or whether there’s method to my shirt selection you’re on very shaky ground–the one is likely to mean something you didn’t guess, and the other to mean nothing at all.  But it might be the other way around.

  Next week, something different.

—–

M. Joseph Young is co-author of Multiverser and Vice President for Development at Valdron Inc.  His many contributions to online literature are indexed for convenience, and he looks forward to discussing these things by e-mail or on our Gaming Outpost forums.

I told myself as I stood up in Robley’s living room, dumbstruck by horror, that we had resources. A whole gathering of very competent versers was here and now in this universe, and there were few indeed who I would rather place the fate of the world in, than in their hands.

Matt with his heightened intuition, and flashes of super-intelligence, and his research laboratory. Kelly had connections at the highest levels of government, and training as a spy in a number of worlds. Lara was a detective and could break bricks with her pinkie finger, and had a nurse dop, and Shawn ran the world’s best anti-kidnapping firm. David had a dojo, and an alternate in the Rangers, and the three M.J.’s were a task force of magic and logic all on their own, plus they had links to city government. And so did Graeme who had a magic ship, and his alternate ran a construction firm. And then there was me, and my specialty seemed to be killing things. And Robley here, I did not know anything much about him except he was gay, and seemed tough and experienced.

The nurse Lara drew Lara the verser and me into the kitchen, and then spoke low and urgently.

“We have to quarantine him. Absolute quarantine. And then I need a list of everyone he has met or walked past in the last week.”

Something was bugging me, and I rubbed my head trying to think.

“Immuno-compromised?” I asked.

The two of them nodded, and the verser said.

“That means his body is producing potentially a hundred times more virus than a normal patient would. He’s terrifyingly infectious.”

Something clicked in my head, and I looked up to see Robley listening in at the door to the kitchen.

“We have to quarantine the whole of Jefferson Street.” I told him.

Red flushes on his fair, tear-stained face appeared, and he rushed me, and grabbed my shirt, and flung me back up against a refridgerator where I hung in the air.

“You little fascist, that’s just what you’ve been waiting for. Herd us up, dump us into some camps…”

I tried to interject something, but he was not done ranting, so I let him go on for a while. But instead of winding down, he merely got more excited. Lara raised an eyebrow at me over his shoulder asking if I wanted her to take him down.

It would have been laughable since she maybe weighed half his weight as she was a small woman, and he was a big man, but I expected she could do it.

I snapped my head forward, and into his. He reeled away collapsing to his knees while I straightened up my shirt, and Lara kicked his feet out from under him, and twisted his arm into a submission hold.

I crouched next to him.

“You are not thinking. You’re letting slogans do your thinking for you. Who was it that deliberately sent a smallpox martyr into your community to make sure you and yours got infected? He’s your enemy, not me. He wanted to use your friend’s immuno-compromised state as a weapon. Probably made your enemy feel happy inside, too.”

I stood up as Lara let him go, and he gave me a somewhat sullen stare from the floor. Then he got up.

And then he nodded jerkily.

I looked at Lara, and let her say the rest. He’d probably take it better from her than me.

“Mr. Robley, a lot of your community is going to react similiarly, unless someone tells them not to.”

“No.”

“Someone like you.”

“I’d be called a collaborator, a quisling.”

“You would be saving their lives.” And Lara gave him a hard stare that challenged him to either step up to his responsibilities, or betray them.

Robley nodded. And the nurse got him moving to the phone, and arranging things. Jefferson Street was going to wall itself off from the rest of the world. Unfortunately, while it was the most virulent center of infection, there were many more.

“You’re the hardhead.” I told Lara, and she laughed, and then suddenly stopped as we both considered the magnitude of the problem.

I left her with the nurse to serve as a strongarm. That hour, Robley became the Mayor of Jefferson Street, and Lara became the Sherrif.

I walked out back of the house into a very nice walled garden, and sat down. A quick prayer, and then I reached out for Kelly’s mind. It was difficult, the noise of other minds was intense, and just achieving the proper focus baffled me for several minutes, but then I got it.

In a quick burst of images I relayed the essential facts, and she responded by picking up a phone, and calling the White House Chief of Staff, the gatekeeper to the President.

An undersecretary rarely meets the President, and certainly never interrupts a consultation with the Secretary of State about the China stand-off, unless she says things like the following.

“I have reason to believe that a weapon of mass destruction has been unleashed in the continental United States.”

In that case, she gets through to the President in five minutes. Of course, if she was absurdly wrong, then it would mean her job, but we were well past worrying about trivialities like careers now.

I then reached out to the Alchemist. There are two protocols for versers, and one is for the senior verser in the world to be “chairman” if he was experienced enough, and the other is to make the most experienced verser the “chairman”.

Well since, Shawn was off kidnapping someone we now knew was a probably smallpox martyr, that left the Alchemist as the most experienced verser of us all in this world.

Straining, I relayed the information. I did not use phone lines because this information was too sensitive, and so I relied on telepathy.

“You want me to call a council of war, correct?” He asked me, and I mentally nodded.

An hour-and-a-half later the small group of versers and dopplegangers that could tear themselves away met at the Galt House, and then proceeded down the stairs to the river, and Graeme’s boat. Once we were all on it, the skipper cast off, and then moored us in midstream.

I told the gathering the bad news, and what actions I had taken to deal with the most immediate problem.

Shawn’s dop filled us in as to the continuing progress. It seemed the target was living in a small house inside a terrorist training camp in Kazakhistan. He was isolated, and obviously sick, and food was left outside his house for him.

It would be a difficult extraction, but doable come nightfall.

The Kazakhs had once been part of Soviet Russia, and now according to Kelly they were a country struggling to progress out of Communism’s and the Islamofascist detritus.

She seemed saddened and pensive because it had been thought they were the good guys, as such things went in the MidEast. But only a nation-state would have the capability of using a bio-weapon like Smallpox, Matt assured us. It was a difficult challenge, and a smaller group could not handle it even if they could manage something like Anthrax.

The big problem was that this probably martyr had infected at a guess five hundred people who had all been strongly infectious for a week before anyone did anything about it.

“And it is not localized to Louisville either.” David spoke up. “Remember those conventions about two weeks ago. Those visitors he infected took the disease home with them.”

We were looking at one big outbreak in Louisville, and dozens of smaller ones outside the city, and some would even be worldwide.

“First step we need to do, is seal off the city.” David’s alternate, the Army Ranger said decisively, and none of us could disagree with him.

David and his merry band of martial arts students, at least the more senior ones went out to cause mischief. A fake gas leak at the bus terminal, a power outage at the train switching yard, and David strolled into the air traffic controller’s tower, and slipped into an unused computer a floppy disc.

It gave the controller’s warning, and then enough time to land everyone, and then the system shut down. And he walked out in the martial artist kind of way where you can sort of fade into the background while people are not paying close attention. And lastly, Cynthia found some good spots where the roads were empty of oncoming traffic, and her and the students jackknifed a pair of semi’s, and spilled oil from a tanker across both lanes of another main highway out of town, and for another they dumped a dozen cars from a car transporter all across an interstate.

When a reporter asked her masked self a question…

“Why are you doing this, is it to protest the destruction of the environment by the automobile?” The reporter asked feeding his interviewee a line.

“Um, yes. Its also to protest the lack of red meat in the American diet.”

“Uh. Lack of, don’t you mean too much?” For his interviewee was straying from the accepted storyline.

“No.” Howled the carnivore. “Lack of meat, dripping red, you miserable, spineless worm. Tonight is Carnivores’ Night, and unless you want to be hunted, you people in TVland better stay in your homes.” And then she howled a long piercing wail that cracked a windshield, and revived the instinctive terrors of the night all across the city, and hundreds of dogs who heard this wail from the air or the television remembered olden days, and growled or yowled as they would.

And then her group ran off to get some of the lesser roads blocked.

Meanwhile, the Army Ranger called in some friends, and got things in position. Helicopters were warmed up, and cargo planes were loaded with paratroopers.

But it was all called a war game since the order had not yet come down. There was fighting in Washington about whether to believe this, and questioning the diagnoses, and about who was to take the lead in the problem.

The FBI wanted to consider it a crime scene, and the CDC wanted to get the plague stopped by using the ring vaccination method, and so it went with over a half-dozen alphabet agencies squabbling about authority, and the proper solution to the problem.

And thus the first day passed without any action from Washington. But MJ, the local legal adviser to the Mayor, explained things to him. And well, there was an outburst of incompetence in fixing the transport links in and out of the city.

And the next day federal responders from various agencies started arriving at hospitals to personally investigate. One poor man had four different groups of agents arguing in his room over his body while he lay dying. The lines of authority were tangled up severely.

The Alchemist and the Visitor both went with Kelly to Washington to try to sort some order out of the situation.

The next day, the news media had questions for Graeme’s dop who was doing heroic work. Why had the roads not been cleared yet? And what was with some of the people arriving at hospitals in hazmat suits?

There was nothing for it but to spill the news.

“Louisville has had an outbreak of smallpox. Please everyone stay calm. Stay in your homes.”

And then he assumed authority that he did not have.

“No one will be permitted to leave the city.”

The press conference ended, and another one soon began when Lara (faking that she was her nurse alternate) explained the symptoms of smallpox from the steps of the hospital.

The key words were…

“It starts out like a flu…”
“Possibly thirty percent, or greater, we’re not sure, fatalities.”

Panic gripped the city, and people instead of being sensible and staying inside went outside. Signs of riot were in the air, but then an alliance of martial arts students from across the city, wearing hastily manufactured hats like the red berets of the Guardian Angels, drove up and down streets in trucks telling people to stay inside, calm down, and wait.

Few indeed were the people to respond with anything but obedience when five or so very healthy and confident students jumped out of the back of a truck and gave them this ‘polite suggestion for your own safety, sir’.

And fewer still were the people who connected the leaders of the effort with the criminal protestors who had cut of traffic to the city.

The next morning, the emergency rooms were flooded with people. It seemed anyone who had a flu, a scratchy throat, cold, sinus drainage, or was simply over worried had decided to get checked out.

The lines stretched out into the parking lot of each hospital. The Jewish Hospital had them stacked up for a quarter of a mile.

Staff desperately handed out facemasks, and took aside people who seemed more serious.

And then we heard on the news that the President was forming a new agency to handle things. Kelly was Director, and the “twins” were her deputies. Finally, as her first official order, the city got officially closed, and all public gatherings were banned in the city limits.

A sense of relief that we finally had some direction, and maybe could now turn the corner on this disaster hit the city. And now the Rangers who had been outside the city, conducting “war games” were now clearly declared as a quarantine force.

The next day, I talked with David’s crew who had been deputized, and with Robley, and Lara. Exhaustion was the word for the day.


The new sherrif’s deputies were delivering food, and Robley had to fight continuous arguements against his authority, and health system was beng overwhelmed by all the flu patients, and the rising number of smallpox patients.

It looked like the prediction was on target. Five hundred in the first wave, and ten times larger in the second wave.

Despite recruiting nursing students from local colleges, the workload was immense. And on top of that, the CDC was still trying to ring vaccinate everyone.

The idea of such a ring is that you find everyone who might have met the patient, and vaccinate them quickly before they catch it, and then spread it beyond.

That seemed to work well, Matt explained to me, as I stumbled in my own fog of exhaustion, but in the modern world with no vaccinations, and rapid travel, it was ineffectual. He showed me the graphs, and the logic, and it seemed inescapable. The CDC was doing its best, but it simply was not good enough.

He had called Kelly, but it seemed she was having difficulty getting her point across to the local CDC director on the ground.

I nodded, after Kelly explained on the satlink the obfuscatory tactics of the director. I was dead-beat tired, and not sure if I was simply striking out because it was satisfying to do so, but it seemed the thing to do.

So I took Shawn’s second limo, and picked up David, in what was now my personal car, and visited the director. The secretary told me he was in a meeting, and could not be disturbed. Two security guards tried to enforce this point of view. I left them groaning on the floor, taking care not to hospitalize them since beds were a scarce commodity right now.

Then I walked into the conference room, with its eighteen participants, and marched up to the headman while aghast murmurs ran around the room.

A quick flourish, and my gladius was in my hand, and against his throat.

“I’m all for democracy, rule of law, civilized society, but sometimes you just need to get straight to the point.” I shoved the sword in to nick his throat. “You will obey your boss, and no more games.”

He screeched, and protested, and swore that he was not intimidated. So I picked him up, and walked toward the picture window. I nodded at David who kicked and shattered the heavy pane of glass into a nice airy hole through which I pushed the director until I caught him by the ankle. He got a good view of the ground five stories down.

I heard some shuffling behind me, and turned to see David sneering with his arms crossed at about five guys who were holding up chairs, and threatening to rush him.

“Think we ought to throw the rest of these time-servers out as well?” He asked me with convincingly faked enthusiasm.

That did it. The director started to plead in a broken voice, so I drew him back in as gently as I could.

Before we left, I looked at each one of them in the eye, even if I had to grab their chin.

“Don’t make me come back here.”

As we left, I reflected that I felt bad about it, but not that much.

Inside Shawn’s car, it occurred to me that I had not heard from him in several days. So I called the other one who was busy running a ‘find people’ service for the city. If you needed someone with specific knowledge of something, you went to him, and his growing army of researchers and headhunters.

The report did not sound good. Yes, the verser had made it in, but the man had been dying, and only spoke one word over and over again.

“Mama.” So Shawn had taped it because the man had an accent not like that of the Kazakhs, and tracked down a linguist after extracting himself from the camp. Interestingly, the camp had shortly thereafter come under attack by fighter-bombers armed with fuel-air explosives, and those had been flown out of the southeast.

The planes had no markers on them.

The translator sent him to Saudi Arabia, and a small region near the Gulf. And there he found his trail since the man had been known to have certain associates.

Posing as an arms dealer, Shawn had taken a plane ride with them, and that was the last they heard of him.

I nodded and sensed about. There was still someone out that way, I thought, and confirmed it with Matt. So Shawn was still alive, but he might well be a prisoner. He had to have known that the terrorists would be especially paranoid right now, but he rolled the dice anyways.

Then I asked Matt how fast the diagnoses scanners were coming along. Three more days, he told me, and the first large batch will be done.
Graeme had been shipping computer chips into the city aboard his boat since smuggling it was easier and quicker than telling everyone what we were doing.

Going back to Robley, I handed him something David got for me. A pump shotgun.

“Look, I know you’re a liberal flake, and I’m a fascist boot whatever, but sometimes you just tell people you’re in charge.” It was a sign of how much he had changed that he took the gun, and seemed to be cheered by it.

Then he took me to see his love. He was worse.
And Robley sat down, crying, and began to tell stories of all the various universes he had been in.

After twenty minutes, his boyfriend slipped unconscious again.

“You know what he told me? He said he always knew I had secrets, and he was glad knowing that I would live on.” Robley’s impassioned face hurt my soul, and the only good thing I could say about his situation was that no one was bothering to confiscate all the medical marijuana that got smoked.

We already had deaths, and there would be many more. Because the only treatment when you got the disease was an antiviral that was only modestly effective, and intravenous fluids, and pain medicine to make the sufferer comfortable. In other words, if you caught the Red Death, there was next to nothing we could do for you except pray.

And so I did, fervently for nearly a half-hour, and at the end, the poor man seemed to rest easier.

Then struck by a thought, I jotted it down, and went on for several more days until I got a chance to talk to Graeme.

In that time, confirmed proof of a dozen outbreaks in the United States with a couple dozen more unconfirmed erupted. Schools of all sorts, not just public, but even beautician’s academies were long closed by now, but now all public gatherings and interstate commerce were banned. Martial law was declared in the outside world.

Mexico, Australia, France, and Japan had outbreaks as well.

We tried to get vaccines delivered to Lousville, but other than a token effort none was sent. A heartbroken Kelly explained in a teleconference to the two Matts, and her other self, and the rest of us that it had been decided to “effectively write Louisville off.” She looked furious, and ready to kill someone.

There went my effort to get the CDC director on board. Now there was nothing much for the bureacrat to fumble.

The logic was that they would do mass innoculations in the smaller outbreaks, and try to contain things, but with only eight million doses, they did not have enough to do everyone. So bye-bye to us.

I understand that the two Davids, the one on the inside, the verser, and the one on the outside in the ring of steel surrround our town like a noose had some serious words for each other over this. But in the end they both saw the dire necessity of their situations.

So, I went to talk to Graeme.

“Y’know, I hear you’ve raised the dead, on more than one occasion. I think you’re the only one that has managed that. I certainly haven’t.”

He eyed me.

“I can’t do it here. This world’s bias is too low.”

He was right, and I do not know why I had not seen it. It was so obvious. The answer was that I was beyond exhausted to the point of uselessness.

“But there’s something you ought to be able to do. In a way you’re the magician with the most outright power in this whole world.”

He nodded, and spoke.

“What this city needs is some luck.”

I agreed and left him to go collapse in slumber in my hotel room.

Then the next day, checking for Shawn, I found one less verser. Bewildered, I stumbled to get dressed, and found a cool-eyed Matt, and Graeme waiting downstairs for me.

“Graeme visited me last night. Asked me what would happen if things turned out ten percent better for the world. And then we designed a very complicated spell. It took most of the night to arrange, but I think its already having effects.”

I blinked at him, and Graeme took me to a windown in the empty hotel lobby where I could see a sliver of the fog-shrouded river. In the fog, like a ghost, a bizzarre looking ship drifted, and then vanished as the fog lifted slightly.

“I burned the boat taking all of the city’s bad luck down with it, and David and especially Cynthia called upon blessings and the natural forces of the Earth to fill us with good luck which amplified what my boat was giving off as it burned. They are not going to be up for anything for the next couple days. I loved that boat.”

He stalked off to kick a chair, and I smiled for I felt something. Optimism, hope had returned.

The diagnoses machines came in that day, and Shawn called to say that he had escaped from his captors.

“The Chinese were behind it. They made the virus, a modified version that combined elements of the major and minor strains, and then they farmed it out to a Kazakh terror group that wanted to overthrow the Kazakhistant government. That gave them plausible deniability when America came looking for vengeance.”

“And vengeance there will be. The remedy for a germ is a nuke.” I said which was official policy of the American government.

“Not this time. The strangest thing happened as I was escaping. A planeload of the Chinese Politburo came to visit the germmakers where I was being held. So I took their plane…” He paused, triumphantly, “And their hides. I’ve got a planeload of war criminals that I’m ‘extraditing’.”

I laughed. That should satisfy vengeance indeed.

The diagnoses pinned down our infected people, and they got isolated. Forty percent of ten thousand died, but that was the end of the plague in Louisville.

Robley’s lover did not die, but he’s scarred badly, but Robley does not care.

The plague across the States killed over a half-million people, and we had to stay isolated for another three months, but that was okay.

The rest of the world did not fare so well. Nearly ten million people died worldwide. And there would be pockets of outbreaks to clean up for the next decade.

We had gotten lucky. We had come so very close to falling into the Abyss, and watching the civilization of the world fall completely apart that it still shook me late at night.

And then rewards were handed out. Each of us versers, and our dopplegangers received a special medal at the hand of Madame President in the Oval Office for the plague had a terrible effect on the leadership. Darkly, I wondered if this was the further working out of Graeme’s luck spell, but I decided not to investigate that.

And other rewards were given as well. The war criminals were tried in Louisville, and all but two were found guilty, and they swung from a gallows built in sight of the river. Some say to this day, that the Fog Boat came for their souls as they died, and took them away.

The Chinese government that replaced them was most apologetic, and offered reparations just so long as Shawn was not made ambassador to China.

Tadeusz

  I was recently reading some Old Testament materials, and it occurred to me that the particular passage I was reading made a lot more sense in the context of the middle eastern requirement of hospitality.  Later I was turning this over in my mind as a possible notion for an article, and remembered finding a very similar expectation of hospitality in the pages of Sir Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe.  Then today I heard the story of the first act of Wagner’s opera The Valkyrie, in which again hospitality was a key issue.  This was deeply embedded in the cultures of these people, and is an aspect of culture which is perhaps absent from our own (or at least very inconsistently applied) and so easily overlooked in our game worlds.

  It is fairly easy to grasp why those in the middle east would put such a strong importance on the idea of hospitality to strangers.  This is dry land, often desert land; a traveler without shelter and water could die of exposure within hours.  Anyone forced to travel any distance is equally forced to depend on the kindness of those along the way to make a place for him.  His life is in the hands of such strangers.  Thus everyone is aware of the need to provide such a place for travelers, as they will almost certainly be in need of a place themselves at some time.

  It became, to them, a sacred duty; the protection of your guest is more important than that of your own life.  We have cases in which hosts defended their guests, men they had only met that day, against the abuses of others, even offering to sacrifice members of their own families rather than to surrender a guest.  To fail to offer hospitality was a crime; to fail to protect the guest once hospitality was accepted was a horror.

  In The Valkyrie, a German telling of a Norse myth, the lead character is fleeing from pursuit, and stops to seek shelter at a house, where he is invited in by the woman there.  The lord of the house returns thereafter, and it is discovered that this is the very man who is pursuing the hero, fully intending to kill him.  Yet the law of hospitality binds him, and he will not raise a finger against the man that night, as he is a guest in the house.  Tomorrow, he will resume the pursuit, and kill him, but tonight he will guarantee safety.

  Ivanhoe’s father, Cedric, is a Saxon nobleman in a land dominated by Normans.  His Saxon tradition demands that his castle be a haven for all travelers.  As the story opens, he is sharing his larder with a pair of Norman lords whose hope is to force a marriage with his niece and so claim his holdings for themselves; a despised Jewish moneylender; and a vagabond who happens, unbeknownst to him, to be his own son whom he has disowned.  He grumbles and shows his displeasure at the presence of all these, but he feeds them and provides a place to stay, because he is bound by courtesy and hospitality to do so, and he will not be found wanting in this.

  For those of the northlands, it is the inhospitable climate that threatens travelers; among the Saxons, it was wild beasts and bandits that posed the danger.  In uncivilized places, civility is a necessity for survival.

  Such obligatory hospitality is not the rule everywhere at all times.  At least, it is not common today.  There are some who will provide a resting place for complete strangers, but most will give directions to the hotel or the mission and consider that their good deed for the day.  I certainly don’t recommend that anyone invite strangers into his home–ours is not a time or place in which such kindness is safe.  Cedric had a house full of servants, and not a few soldiers, and he could easily consign his guests to rooms in a far wing isolated from his family by heavy oak doors.  There may have been as many villains in those places and times as there are now and here, but it is doubtful whether any would abuse the hospitality of a host, or whether having done so they would escape alive.  However, whether it is safe to invite people you don’t know to play games in your living room is not the point of this article; it’s really about whether hospitality is expected and offered in the worlds of your imagination.

  My earliest group of Dungeons & Dragons™ player characters were created from the materials in the Players Handbook; a couple fighters, a thief, a fighter/magic-user, and a cleric were the core of the group, and others who popped in later were mostly of similar types.  When they traveled they stayed at inns, paying for their accommodations as any of us would do.  However, before the second group joined the game, the Unearthed Arcana rules had been integrated into my world.  Cavaliers now existed, and Paladins were elevated to a noble status alongside them.  The second group of players soon had a young cavalier among its members.  In its first trip to the city, the cavalier immediately went to the palace to report to the prince of the city that he was present.  Hospitality was immediately extended to him and all his companions, who now had free run of the castle (within reason and decorum), providing comfortable accommodations for no cost.  From there, they responded to a request for assistance from a fortress on the edge of civilization, and again on arrival the cavalier was provided accommodations, and the offer extended to the entire party, saving them the problems of crowding into the local inn.

  Each culture you create will have some notion of hospitality.  Some will expect that it must be freely extended to all travelers.  Others will recognize particular classes of people to whom such courtesy is due, while ignoring anyone outside those groups.  For some, there may be categories of strangers–the native whom you don’t know receives hospitality, but the foreigner does not; or perhaps the foreigner does receive hospitality, as long as he’s not from a particular despised people.  Others will have no rules at all, no expectations or obligations of hospitality, although it may have some hospitable people willing to share what they have with others.  You might as easily have a people who keep to themselves, who share with their families and those they know but do not include strangers in their kindnesses.

  This will of course have impact on many little things in the culture.  If ordinary people regularly provide food and shelter for travelers, inns will only survive in places where travel is too heavy for local people to support.  If hospitality is expected, many will travel relatively light, knowing that they need not take food for the entire journey, but only enough for when they must camp in the wilderness.  If inns are expected to extend free room and board to one class of people, they will certainly charge another more steeply to cover the costs.  Where people are more open about sharing what they have with strangers, abuse of such kindness will be seen as a very severe crime, and punishment will be swift and sure.

  A year after my brother graduated from high school, he flew out to California (from New Jersey) to visit a friend, and then bicycled back.  Each evening he would ask about a place to stay, and would usually find someone willing to let him spend the night somewhere reasonably sheltered.  Interestingly, when he was west of the Mississippi this was frequently church buildings and other open public places, sometimes private homes or garages; but after he crossed the river he most commonly stayed in jail cells (not arrested, but provided as shelter courtesy of the local police who didn’t know where else to send him).  Even in our culture, hospitality of this sort exists; it’s just more difficult to find.

  It appears sure that the requirement of hospitality arises where it is not safe to stay outside.  It may be just as sure that civilization quashes this.  We don’t invite strangers to stay with us because we can send them to the mission, the motel, the campground.  We are not afraid that someone traveling alone will die without our help, nor that we would face death were we similarly traveling alone.  That there are places for people to stay safely lets us off the hook, as it were.  We thus can predict that the availability of hospitality will appear in inverse proportion to the need.  The degree to which a civilization provides options for keeping travelers safe from harm is the degree to which that civilization doesn’t expect its citizens to do so individually.  Despite its presence in the middle of the desert, Las Vegas is not known as a place where the residents regularly provide food and shelter for travelers.  They have hotels and restaurants for that.

  Next week, something different.

—–

M. Joseph Young is co-author of Multiverser and Vice President for Development at Valdron Inc.  His many contributions to online literature are indexed for convenience, and he looks forward to discussing these things by e-mail or on our Gaming Outpost forums.

  Twenty years or so ago, sometime before TSR released The Wilderness Survival Guide, I was working on a system to track weather in my Dungeons & Dragons™ game.  It was a very elaborate method, which used random rolls to determine temperature change at regular intervals, with an extensive chart showing the probability that any one set of weather conditions would change to any other, a temperature-based probability that precipitation would be snow rather than rain, month-by-month seasonal change, temperature shifts based on weather changes, flood conditions based on tracking precipitation volume and melt, wind direction and velocity, and variation by latitude.  To give you some idea of the complexity of this monster, I gave up attempting to code it into my Commodore 64 computer because there was insufficient memory to contain all the necessary information.

  That complexity was the first of the three reasons I eventually abandoned using it.  The third reason was that my player characters just didn’t have enough outdoor adventures to justify it–Bob Schretzman’s genius for organization soon had the first character party established in a secured section of the dungeon itself, adventure waiting just beyond their door.  The second reason I abandoned it, though, comes back to haunt me today.  The system created odd results.  It was entirely possible for it to snow heavily in the morning, clear up before noon, and end with a mild, even warm, early evening.  The odds were against it, but in rolling day after day for an entire year’s worth of weather it happened more than once, and I began to feel silly with these quirks.  I blamed the system for the flaw, and stopped worrying so much about the weather outside in a campaign that was mostly inside anyway.

  I say that it has come back to haunt me, because right now, on a morning in the middle of March, it is snowing.  That’s not really so surprising; it does snow in March.  It snowed yesterday, in fact, yesterday morning.  I was rather surprised when I looked out the window at six-thirty and saw everything covered in a couple of inches of heavy white fluff, and by seven-thirty decided that the child who had been ill the day before shouldn’t wade through it to the bus stop in his sneakers, so I kept him home.  Then, when I chanced to awaken again around nine-thirty and looked out the window, there was no trace of the white stuff.  Even the streets were dry.  I wondered whether it had been one of those strange dreams I sometimes have when I doze off while the kids are getting ready for school, but eventually it was confirmed for me that yes, there had been snow that morning.  By afternoon, when I am officially functional, it was warm, the sort of weather in which you remove the sweater you’re wearing because it is fully living up to its name.  Now this morning it is snowing again, covering the driveway, slushing the roadways, causing morning traffic snarls and accidents, delaying the school busses, insisting that winter is not over for at least another couple of days, and otherwise disrupting the premature fine spring we’ve been enjoying thus far.  Further, I fully expect that by the time I am functional this afternoon, it will once again be gone, replaced either by obliterating rain or, even more awkwardly, by warm, dry sunshine.

  All of which suggests that my aversion to unstable weather patterns, my embarrassment at the idea of telling the players that although it was bright and sunny this morning it is now turning cold and starting to snow, or that a thick fog has rolled in from the sea, or that the frost is vanishing under the hot sunshine, was all misplaced.  The weather does change in unexpected ways, even if you don’t live in London, where they say if you don’t like the weather, wait a minute.  I wonder what weather reports are like there.  Today will be foggy until it starts to rain, then the sun will come out, and it will be clear and warm, cooling rapidly as it becomes mostly cloudy, with a chance of snow late in the day, and more fog this evening.  That’s not fair of me; I’ve never been to London.

  There are undoubtedly places in the world in which the weather is remarkably stable.  This is not one of them.  That, though, is perhaps a relative thing.  In the mountains of New Mexico, most of our ten days of hiking was sunny and warm, but the one rain we had nearly washed us away.  Israel’s summers are so dry that the prophet Samuel was able to impress the people with the power of God by calling for rain in the middle of it once.  The Pacific Northwest has more days rainy than not (and a very high suicide rate, blamed largely on Seasonal Affective Disorder, a clever name with the clever anagram SAD for depression caused by insufficient exposure to sunshine).  I’m sure we’ve all seen the nature specials about the deserts that get one day of rain a year, and burst into bloom with plants and flowers which have been waiting for that bit of moisture.  Stable, predictable, consistent weather is a feature of certain places.  If it’s good, their tourism boards promote it; if it’s bad, their xenophobes and curmudgeons do.  However, there’s no particular reason why weather has to make sense.  That is, to a meteorologist it all makes sense, because he knows the causes and effects and he’s tracking the storms and the fronts and the other significant anomalies that determine atmospheric conditions wherever we are; but to the layman, the fact that the snow which was falling less than an hour ago is now dropping from trees in melting clumps and shows every sign of dissipating into groundwater and storm sewers before I again emerge to face the world is incomprehensible.

  Thus I rarely if ever track weather in my games anymore.  That’s not to say I wouldn’t, if I started another long outdoor campaign–I might even dig out the old weather system and try once again to write it up for use in the computer–but for most of the games I run it’s more trouble than it’s worth.  It’s easier, and just as useful, to roll the dice to see whether the outcome is good or bad (I would use a General Effects Roll in Multiverser) whenever the question arises, and describe conditions accordingly.

  So don’t be afraid to do strange things with the weather.  God does, it would seem, and if it works for His model of the universe, there’s no particular reason it shouldn’t work for ours.

  Next week, something different.

—–

M. Joseph Young is co-author of Multiverser and Vice President for Development at Valdron Inc.  His many contributions to online literature are indexed for convenience, and he looks forward to discussing these things by e-mail or on our Gaming Outpost forums.

I woke in my hotel room on the seventeenth floor with the plan to track down the rest of the versers, and see if I could figure out what was bothering me, niggling at my subconscious, this feeling of impending doom.

And tonight I was supposed to meet the three M.J.’s at the Old Spaghetti House. I wonder if they could sing tenor.

A quick shower, and I got dressed, and out to the elevator. I have only a couple changes of clothing, and it occurred to me that I might as well go clothes-shopping today if I was going to stay here a while.

Its generally best not to take too much stuff with you as you verse into a new world, because you are probably going to have to carry it. Unless there is enough magic to shrink it, or some other means of dealing with the problem.

I just tend to limit myself to a really large backpack which does have a few special pockets that I only open in certain worlds because those pockets are magical.

Downstairs, I found the lobby full, and the hotel restauraunt manned by overstressed waitresses. It seemed two different groups were in town. One, a convention for Amra, which was power meter readers, and the other, a trade show for quilters.

The first group was mostly guys, and the second mostly women, and they all wanted hotel space which was not to be had.

So I walked down the street, and found a McDonald’s tucked into a four-story tall building. A rather rude man pushed past me, and got in front of me as I reached for the front door.

When I huffed, he just gave me a venomous stare out of his dark eyes, and turned away. I shrugged. I like cities, but you run up against the whole cross-section of humanity in them and that includes those with a grudge against the morning or their fellow citizens.

Eating my sausage biscuit, and sipping my “Happsi” (it tasted rather like a mild version of Dr. Pepper) carbonated beverage, and the worldwide Happsi company was headquartered in Atlanta, I walked out, and searched about with my scriff sense for targets, for other versers.

Walking a five square block of streets to try to figure out the vector changes, and the likely distances, I found one on the far western side of town, and two across the river, and one close by, and more easterly.

I figured I’d hit the western one first, and come back here to get the others.

Hailing a taxi, I had some difficulty explaining what I was doing. From the weirdness of my directions which were “Go west, and I’ll give you more directions as we go.”, and from the language barriers. He demanded money down first since he thought I sounded nutty.

We drove past the protestors who were out again. And that set my driver off since he evidently was from the Kingdom of Persia, and he had been busted by the police a couple times when he was totally innocent, or so he said.

But I asked him a couple questions, and he refused to admit the simple thesis that deliberately killing civilians was evil.

“One had to understand the rage of the oppressed.” He said, and I looked at him narrowly from the back seat. It seemed he believed that the insults and tragedy suffered by his people made whatever the more extreme of them did acceptable.

I did not wonder anymore why the police had questioned him.

After an hour, we came to a very nice neighbourhood with tree dappled medians in the center of residential streets, and the power lines were properly buried underground, and yards were manicured acres, and houses started at five thousand square feet, and went up from there.

My driver told me this is why he had come to America so that he could get rich and have a house like this. He proudly told me he already owned a duplex that he rented and a laundry, and I just shook my head. People are weird. He hated America on one hand, and loved it on the other.

It took some circling, but I isolated my target. Stone walls, and an iron gate made it even more exclusive than the other houses.

I got out, paid off the driver, and asked him to stay a few minutes. He nodded happy with his hundred dollar bill.

Upon walking up to the gate, I realized several things. The owner was paranoid, or maybe security conscious. The wall looked easily climbed, but on closer inspection, it was made of slick stones, and I bet it had broken glass on the top of it, and I could see a tire buster that could pop up out of the sidewalk.

And the guard, dressed in black, and wearing a vest, and a HK submachine gun under his jacket looked fearsomely competent, and polite to a point.

I paused realizing I would need to change my approach strategy. No knocking on the door, and saying “Hi there.”

“Please tell the master of the house that Tadeusz, also called Ghost and Stormlord, would like to talk to him.”

He all but chuckled at me.

“Mr. Ghost, the owner is busy. You’ll have to make an appointment.”

I shifted my stance from the other side of the iron gate, and gave him a look, and suddenly his sense of humor at me being a figure of fun faded, and he gave me a hard look measuring my combat potential.

“Please give that message, and this coin to the owner. My gift for bothering him.” And I fished out a solidus of gold. He examined the coin, and saw the foreign writing, and the engraving of Conan looking stern (which Conan was very good at), and weighed it in his hand.

He nodded, and summoned another guard.

A few minutes later, and I was welcomed in with apologies. Indeed, they even refused to search my small travelling backpack that I had taken with me this morning.

The winding and narrow driveway between the trees passed over a steep-sided stream, and a metal bridge that did not look to fit the idyllic setting. And then I put things in place.

The bridge could collapse, and that would leave a steep ravine about five feet deep that stretched across the property. A beautiful, and functional tank trap.

Whoever this verser was, he took his security very seriously. But evidently he knew me.

We walked counter-clockwise around the house, and looped past the olympic sized swimming pool out back, and onto a three thousand square foot patio which had a gym mat under an awning, and I saw the two Shawns duking it out with kenjutsu staffs.

They had full armour on, and they needed it as hard as they were hitting. When I got closer, they both stopped, bowed, and the better one of the two walked up to me, and shook my hand.

Lemonade was brought since it was a hot day, and we sat down on some wickerwork chairs under an umbrella.

I told him I was surprised at his set-up, and I studied him a bit to see if he was going clinical on me. Paranoia can get to you after all.

Shawn and I, among versers, at least those that are in normal contact with reality, have an unwanted competition. Whose the most ruthless verser in the land?

Both of us had sadly more than enough familiarity with causing megadeaths, and both of us were good with a sword, although with a gun or knife he beat me, and I usually beat him with magic.

But while I judge the wicked, and try to give them a chance to choose right, he tends to just deal with them, in a permanent fashion, straightaway.

“Its simple, I was getting tired of bouncing from world to world with nothing to show for it, so I began collecting small valuables as rewards for my work, and learning some magic to help me find things.

And then I arrive here, and I find…” His dop came up, after changing into some swimming trunks.

“That my alternate has started a business. Kidnap-retrieval. Bad guys kidnap, we kidnap back.”

The alternate spoke.

“It was going well, but I was running into cash flow problems, and I was starting to make some serious enemies. Then Beta here, by the way, I’m Prime because this is my world, anyways, Beta here shows up with a bag full of diamonds, and the training of the ninja, and we put it together. My contacts, and my business, and his money, and frankly his greater skill, and I’m proud to say that we have the world’s best KRT firm. And for charity, we have a contract with the city even though they cannot really afford us.”

“And the defenses are because you have enemies.” I said.

“Lots of them.” The alternate said, and then excused himself to go swim fifty laps in the pool.

We talked more, and I showed him Conan’s sword style, after he sent an “associate” to the hotel room to get my fifteen pound longsword. At first he found it ridiculous, but after I explained to him the special rules of that world where thrusting damage was inconsequential, and holding steel kept the swordsman from being tired, he got interested.

It was close to nightfall, and I realized the dinner was upcoming, and I would have to wait on the other versers for the next day.

We agreed to talk soon, and he sent me back with a limosine that could survive an RPG round.

Showered again, and dressed for dinner.

Met the three M.J.’s, and we talked in the light of glittering brass panels, and walked up to the buffet past a railroad caboose inside the restauraunt. It was gaudy and wonderful.

The biggest item of conversation was that the mayor was being forced to give up racial profiling, fire his police chief, and attend a seminar on “sensitivity”. That last bit reminded me of some old English king having to walk barefoot through the snow, and then wait outside the bishop’s house for the bishop to deign to see him, and to un-excommunicate him.

I talked about my worries, and all three of them shared them. I got their phone numbers, and left.

First thing, next morning, I tracked down a cel phone company, and got one. Then I went out clothes shopping. Due to the press of conventioneers, it took nearly an hour to get checked out of the Target store, and then lunch at Deke’s.

I wanted to continue searching, but I felt tired, and so I gave myself the night off, and watched football.

This was the day I had agreed to spend with Shawn. So I visited him, and trained at his gym. David came by, and we got some of the guards to join us, and we first had a kumite with the proviso that the opponent got to choose your combat style, if you knew it.

So they made me fight a guard, Drunken Monkey style, which I’m not very good at, and I got trounced.

David got the overall championship which was rewarded by being shoved into the pool, and then that night we went paintballing.

I felt like we were wasting time that I should be spending on finding out what was going on, but Cynthia corrected me.

“This is pack-bonding time. You are learning to know each other’s moves, to trust each other.”

What can I say, the wolf-girl was right. And that game ended in a tie.

We had finished, all but them in a “all against all” game, and we were watching from the road where Shawn had placed himself at the edge of a steep hill covered with shale, and brambles. This guarded his back, and we thought he was somewhere along a seventy foot stretch at the rim of the hill. Even with infrared gear which had been banned in the game, we could not be sure.

Then suddenly Cynthia is charging up the hill through brambles and across shale at speeds an Olympic sprinter might manage on an open track. Shawn’s double-faked us, and he is facing toward the hill rim, but as he rises, she fires wildly driving him back down with her left gun.

As near were as she is right now, its hard for her to pull a trigger with her claw-like hands, and then Shawn is back up with a string of three shots dead on target, and we think its all over, but she flings her empty gun into the path of the paintballs, and the perfection of his shooting works against him since the shots are nicely lined up for her to knock down with one thrown gun.

This is superhuman speed, and you don’t absorb what happened until you replay it in your mind.

He is reloading, and she opens up at close range, and one, two misses, and three is upcoming, and he reloads, and his and her shots splash in the centermass at the same time.

She streaks past Shawn, and begins to beat her gun on the ground trying to break it, so upset she is.

“I thought I had him this time.”

And David has to go over and get his rather volatile wife to calm down.

I went over to the hill, and examined it. There was no path through the brambles where she ran, and that was only partially werewolfed that she had done that attack. This world did not let her become her full, eight foot tall, car-flipping, strike faster than the eye could see engine of destruction.

The next morning, and I wished I had not gone out there. The three scriff sources, I still wanted to track down had moved drastically. They had all left the city, and I hoped they were coming back soon. Otherwise, this mission was going to be a cross-country air travel extravaganza.

I spent the morning running over to a hill that overlooked the city, and then praying over the city. As I prayed, a certainty overcame me. The doom I feared was already here. It grew like a poisenous plant seeking the sun, and then to spread wildly. But as I sought answers, I felt an opposition, from far out of the East, a power raised against me that blinded my eyes so that I could not discern the threat.

But even this told me something. For I felt sure that others prayed to their gods against me, and that meant a human plot, and not a natural disaster had come to Louisville.

And then like a hand of gold reaching out of the fog that obscured my intuition, a prompting came to me. And I began to run. Down the hill with its suburban streets, and into the city, I went. My path was long, and arduous even for me, and I felt pressure on me that hindered my steps, and mischance dogged my feet such that I nearly fell in front of a bus going down the street.

The track took me to the airport, and then to a hotel, and then past, I blush to say, but a strip club, and a Waffle House, and then it stopped, or so it seemed, but I waited. And then I ran further on to a convention center where the Amra people were clearing up, and then to the quilt show which was in its last day, and by a McDonald’s I had ate at, and to the bus stop, and to a police station, and city hall, and the stadium, and then back to the airport.

Exhausted, I got a taxi home, and fell asleep on the way. Upon being awoken, I paid up, and went inside, and slept like the dead for that night, the day, and the next night.

Upon getting up, I went down to the hotel lobby, and saw a couple late-leaving quilters who were both flying home, and both of them were afflicted with red noses, and runny eyes. The flu was going around it seemed.

I checked for scriff, and (yahoo!), they were all back.

First, I tracked down Lara, and found her at the hospital cafeteria eating with her alternate. There were posted signs warning people of the flu, and requiring frequent hand-washing.

I told her of my magic run, and asked her to look into it. A handful of solidus secured her help for two days; I was right, she worked as a private detective for her own firm she had just established three weeks ago when she arrived.

“Lara Looks, Inc.” was the business, and the insignia had a girl peering under a bed for the monster under the bed. Too cute for words.

Her nurse alternate thought it was funny, and laughed at my lemon-sucking expression.

A walk back toward the east, and I arrived in the Jefferson street area where I had been propositioned. A bit trepidatious, I approached one nice Victorian, and rang the doorbell.

A man in a dog collar opened the door, and thankfully, he was not the verser. But he did not want to introduce me to his housemate because of jealousy.

“Show some respect, don’t come to my door, of my house, to try to pick up my man.” He hissed at me, and prepared to slam the door.

I goggled at him, and then raised my left hand with its wedding ring to assure him that I was profoundly hetero, which he sneered at saying that many liked it both ways, and so on he went.

“I’m a member of the same ‘social club’ as your friend.” I tried to say, but he did not listen.

I growled at him. Maybe I shouldn’t have, but he was really getting on my nerves. He paled, and then went to get the other guy who I really, really hoped was verser.

He was, and he came stomping up to the door to yell at me for upsetting his boyfriend. That had definitely been a mistake. I apologized thrice, and endured having a finger shoved into my chest, before I finally had enough.

“Enough.” And I knocked his arm aside with a snapblock. He paused, and then nodded. Both of us were tall, and muscled, and I had just told him in deeds that another finger in my chest was going to mean a fight.

He listened as I told him of my worries, and introduced myself.

“Do you know this guy?” The boyfriend asked suspiciously from the stairs which I had been chased down.

“Yeah, well sort-of. We are members of the same ‘social club’.” The other verser, Jack Robley, replied. “But don’t worry, he’s not a friend. I’ve heard of him, a fascist jerk.”

I nodded.

“So he doesn’t know?” I asked quietly, and Robley shook his head.

“Immuno-compromised, and soon to die due to the fascist policies of this government, and I tell him, that I’m immortal? No way.” A dark shadow hooded his eyes, and I nodded in respectful sympathy.

“If you need anything, here’s my phone number.” I handed him a piece of paper, and walked away sadly.

It looked like the flu had spread to this area as well, I thought as I saw several sufferers on Jefferson Street.

Now, I got a taxi to take me across the river to Kaintuck. We went over a large bridge over the Ohio River, and down on the other side.

It was a rougher neighbourhood, but not bad, not really, with plenty of typical commercial establishments even though I only recognized a few names. Target, a department store, and Seven-Eleven convenience stores (which had vanished from my homeworld, I think), but the rest, Gogh’s Bakery, Lott’s (a grocery), Flickerflash Photomart, Irish Eyes gasoline were new to me.

And then I came to an industrial park. After weaving through it a bit, I found Optical Memories, Inc., a large campus with about a dozen buildings that was in the process of being renovated. Construction equipment was being used to dig new trenches connecting buildings to lay down cables, and I almost stopped when I saw MP’s guarding the gate, but I got the taxi to let me out when I saw Kelly walking up to the front door.

I hollered at her, and was surprised to hear in my mind, a whisper.

*Tadeusz?* She must be skilled indeed to do telepathy in this world, I thought. She walked over, a bit oddly, and the MP who had displayed annoyance at me straightened up, and saluted.

“Let him in.” And so it was done, and I got a security badge on her word since she was chief of security at the installation.

We walked into her office, and after sending out the secretary for coffee, I asked her what was going on?

Why was she working for the military?

She laughed, and assured me that none knew of versers.

“Its a bit of a long story. I arrived here, a couple months after Shawn did, but I did not meet him then, and I searched out my doppleganger for fun, and I found she had gotten in trouble. She had decided to teach in a problem school, and then came across some drug dealing, and corruption that went up to high levels, and she was in way over her head.”

She turned suddenly cold eyes toward me.

“I discussed things with the principals. And that went all to pieces, since the rot went way higher than I thought. I ended up running from the FBI and the CIA for a couple weeks until we collected the info to bring down a U.S. Senator, and clear my name. Well, at that point, I got a number of offers, ones I was not totally sure it was wise to refuse, and so I joined up with No Such Agency.”

The premier codebreakers of the world; I nodded in understanding.

“There I taught myself codebreaking, and learned interrogation of suspects. And best of all, when a young scientist came to the government looking to get a grant to construct miniaturized laser communication ‘walkie-talkies’, I was able to get him the grant, and introduce him to a young English teacher.”

“You matchmaked this world’s Matt and your dop from this world?” I guessed with a smile. And she grinned back.

“Best of all, when Matt versed in here, he tracked down his alter ego, and thus found me. Now, I’ve got the both of them working in this new facility. My Matt is here working on a disease diagnoses laser system that could revolutionize the time to begin treatment. It would almost be as good as one of those tricorders off Star Trek. And the local Matt is finishing up on his ‘walkie-talkie’, and the two of them are ginning up something they like to call a ‘Gut Instinct’, a Grand Unified Field Theory of the Universe.”

“And you?”

“I run the shop here, and do the security as well to keep my hand in. Its a pain going before the Select Intelligence Subcommitte of Congress, and explaining what I’m doing here, and why they should keep funding us, and then riding herd on the Matts to make sure they don’t get too excited by some odd new thought. I’m an Assistant Undersecretary for Photonics Research.”

I blinked, and thought. President, V.P., Attorney general, NSA chief, Undersecretary of Reseach and Development, and my host.

“So if say the top hundred or so people get struck by lightning, then you would be Madame President, leader of the free world?”

She grimaced.

“Something like that. Lets go see the Matts.”

We got up, and she took me down into the basement where a laser fusion device was being tested.

I was impressed until I heard a voice from behind me.

“It old stuff. I’ve got something much cooler.” I turned and saw a young guy with old eyes who was wrapped around himself, or his legs were over his head and touching his lower spine.

He uncurled himself.

“Yoga exercises help me think.”

And then he took me on a tour of his facility. We passed the other Matt, and the two started jabbering in what sounded like their own language, and so the verser set off on a run to another project.

Unlike talking to Graeme, there was no following the idea stream. It was disjointed, rapid, and yet somehow I felt a unifying theme.

And then I looked closer at him for he felt different than the old, calmer Matt I remembered.

And he grinned widely.

“I heard what you did to yourself at Starsong, and I wondered if I could do as much. Turned out I could not as yet, but thats for the good since it turns out your model had serious flaws in it.”

He paused.

“I have a partially functional optical and quantum, if the bias supports it, which this world’s doesn’t, computer attached to my brain. It gives me flashes of superhuman intelligence” And then he grinned.

“Thats one of the things the other Matt and the lady in charge do is to keep me grounded. Sometimes this hookup is like riding a tornado, and I’m afraid its turned me into a bit of the stereotypical eccentric scientist. I get lost in a thought, and walk into doors.”

I shivered a bit from desire and fear and worry. The desire was for having that godlike understanding back, and the fear was of having it back for with it went an understanding of one’s own self that was not all that pleasant, and the worry was for my friend.

He smiled at me, and suddenly it was like the fellow I had traipsed through the playground with. His slightly manic manner calmed, and the preternatural sharpness in his eyes dimmed.

“Don’t worry, Tad. I’ve lived with it for fifty years now. I just have to make sure I spend at least twelve hours a day off it, or I start hallucinating and seeing the answers to the Universe in the fall of leaves.”

And then I looked deeper with all my psionic skill which barely touched his mind, this world was so difficult, and I found something. Wholeness, sanity on a level that went far deeper than most people ever have a chance of attaining despite years or decades of meditation.

“I understand myself far better than before, and so I’ve learned, at least somewhat to not lie to myself quite as much as most people do. Its the gift or curse of the computer chip in my head.”

And then the other Matt came up, and led us off to see the diagnostic device. We shined a laser beam on some Happsi, a stick of peppermint gum, and on a gold solidus, all of which I concealed in my hand, or behind my back, and they shined the laser beam through my hand, but through my chest with its abundance of cyberware confused the poor program.

“But there are only three cyborgs on the planet.” Kelly said laughing “So its not much of a problem.”

I wondered about that ‘three’, and Matt filled me in as we walked back to the front door.

“Bout three worlds ago, me and Kelly landed in a cyberpunk universe. She decided to become a street samurai, hyper reflexes, triple normal strength, IR vision, a few guns hidden here or there.”

I popped my titanium half-inch nails out, and Kelly popped her six inch long claws out, and we all laughed almost hysterically.

Matt walked me to an official car which they were going to loan me, and before I got in the undistinguished Chevy, he gave me a serious look.

“There’s something bothering you, and I think its the same thing that’s got me spending so much time in hyper-link.”

“Yeah, I feel like doom is coming.”

“Doom.” He paused. “That’s a good word for it. I can feel my mind chewing at it. You’ve just given me another piece of the puzzle. Talk to me later.” And he wandered off to stroll under the night sky and think thoughts too complicated for mere humanity to follow.

I drove home to the hotel.

The next day, I got Lara’s report. She said there had been a high incidence of flu, and she gave me a list of the hardest hit companies. A stewardess on a flight from Kazahkistan, a taxi driver usually gone to the airport, a clerk at my McDonald’s, and more.

It looked like someone flew in. Spread the flu, and left. Unfortunately, they hit a lot of places where people congregated, and where people would then take the flu back home with them. Those conventioneers would spread the flu over the whole of North America.

So it looked like I had a lead on Case Zero of a flu epidemic which while important in a scientific sense was not earthshaking.

I thanked Lara who had used her nurse dop’s connections at the local hospitals to find this data, and went off to think and pray some more.

I checked in with the local MJ, and it was official. A really bad flu epidemic had hit the town. I filled him in on my data, and he called in the Alchemist who had one pointed question.

“Why would someone with a bad flu travel, visit for a day, hit two totally dissimiar conventions, and leave?”

Put that way, it was doggone suspicious.

I called up Kelly and asked for new data. She had none other than China was getting miffed with America again about our supporting Taiwan, and they had kicked our ambassador out. Closed the doors of the Middle Kingdom, and hissed at us.

She was not worried. It was a typical melodramatic play for attention that would blow over. We would offer them some leniency on a trade talk, and they would be our ‘good friends’ again.

David had nothing, but Cynthia took the phone away from him, and told me…

“The Earth, she groans in fear.” Which was nicely spooky, but did not enlighten me.

David and I went to the Visitor, and asked him for help. Magic help. He took some time off from the concert he was prepping for, and in the back stage area we worked up a magic spell.

We prepared the area, sanctifying it, and warding it. Our magics were many, and potent, of a number of different schools although we found unity in miracles, and the Visitor led us with his bardic singing to see the man who had come to the town.

Despite pressure against us, we pierced the veil of time, and I saw the man who had been rude to me in the McDonalds. We followed him as he got off the plane and wandered the city in the path I had run.

Despite his sickness, he pressed on, and did nothing but travel, and he made no real effort to cover his face when he coughed.

We followed him back to the plane the next day, and he got on. And there the trail stopped once his plane flew off for we were now in the realm of our enemies greater power. Dragons or djinn, I am not sure assailed us in the mystic vision, and broke our seeing.

Panting, we collapsed back to our normal senses, and the Visitor tipped over his bowl of water to break any connection.

Obviously, this man was up to something. But what? I wanted to talk to him, and now.

So I placed a phone call to Shawn, and got him on the job. Now he would be the kidnapper.

“Consider it done. Fourty-eight hours, and he should be in your hands.” Shawn said with that determination that scared his opponents after he heard my story.

And then greatly fearing I went back to my hotel room, and slept with many nightmares plaguing me.

A soft tapping, and I thought I heard the hoofbeats of the Four Horsemen, especially one, and then I awoke with my shirt stained with sweat, and heard a tapping at my door.

Grabbing my gun, (yes, I was feeling paranoid), I went to the door, and opened it.

Jack Robley stood there with fear trembling his arms.

“Come quickly, I need your help.”

And he strode away.

“What?” I asked as I grabbed the rest of my clothes, and threw them on, and then chased him down the hall.

“I need help, and my love is afraid of the hospital. And I figured you’re an experienced verser, you would know some medicine.”

“Right.” Unfortunately, while I knew some, first aid, amputations, and some herbalism, and a few other tricks, I was not even a nurse, let alone a doctor.

“Let me get a friend.”

We took his car since it was far faster than mine, a Porsche, and I called Lara who got me in contact with her dop.

We picked them both up, and went to Jefferson Street at a tire-squealing speed.

Inside, the old Victorian, I saw the boyfriend. He looked dreadful. A rash covered his face, and terribly strong flu bedeviled him, and he was barely conscious.

The nurse demanded we take him to the emergency at once. It seemed this flu was possibly measles, they had determined at the hospital, and this man was a really severe case.

When she was told he was immuno-compromised, her face became pale. And she told Robley that he should prepare for the worst.

That decided Robley who felt his companion would prefer to die at home. But, I felt something creeping up my shadow. I called Matt up and asked him to ‘put his thinking cap on’.

Then I described the symptoms, in Latin, in case anyone was listening. He and I had spent some time I remembered in Second Century Rome.

“Ave et Morituri.” Which is “We who are about to die salute you.” or therabouts. It was what the gladiators said to the Emperor.

“What?!?” I said in English.

“I don’t know, it just seemed appropos of the moment. Whatever, that is not measles. We’ve obviously been attacked by a bioweapon, and no one is going to use measles as a bioweapon. I’ll talk to you later, I have to wake Kelly so she can talk to Washington. Also, tell Graeme to cast off from shore, now.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know, its just a good idea.”

And then he hung up. I called Graeme, and relayed the suggestion with all the necessity I could, and he understood.

“I’m clear of the main infection areas. If the city gets cut off, I’ll be a form of transport on the outside. Could probably bring in supplies and float them in without actually docking.”

“But the Coast Guard would stop you from that last trick.”

Graeme chuckled.

“Not this boat. They would all fall asleep at the same time for five minutes as I sailed by, or something else would happen.”

I had forgotten his magic sail.

I briefed him, and then he hung up to retrieve his dop and to make sail.

Then I got Robley to take a picture of the ill man, and I wondered what to do with it, but it had seemed the thing to do. Maybe I could take it to Matt, and he could do an instant diagnoses, but then, I remembered his machine.

And I was sprinting out the door after snagging the keys and I raced across town and over the bridge.

The MP had the machine waiting for me at the front gate, and I took it, and went back as fast as I had come. I left two cops wailing futile sirens behind me as I almost flew over the bridge doing a hundred and forty.

Once there, I walked into the room where the sick man lay among brocaded ottomans and pictures of happier days. Several of the pictures were Robley’s and they showed universes other than home; I bet his party guests thought they were Photoshopped.

The crowd parted, and I ran the scanner over his body from scalp to heel. And then I pressed the button to reveal the hidden horror.

*Smallpox, variety unknown. 67% similiarity to Major strain, 52% similarity to Minor strain, 11% similarity to Hemmorhaghic strain, 4% similarity to Flat strain.*

The scanner slipped softly onto the heavily carpeted floor with its overlay of Persian rugs, and I fell back to the same floor.

Dear God, let this be wrong, I prayed as tears leaked from my eyes. Meanwhile, words ran through my mind. Smallpox, virgin field epidemic, the Red Death, fatality rates were at least thirty percent, I thought from vague memory. I remembered what had happened to the Native American tribes when smallpox came to them. They had no resistance, and it slaughtered them wholesale. We might be in almost as bad a state as them.

Lara grabbed the scanner, and read it to her nurse doppleganger.

“Oh, no, oh, no.” They both wept in unison. And Robley leaned over the body of his love, and began to cry without hope.

Tadeusz

Waking with a clearer picture of my surroundings before I got up was helpful. It looked like an old wound in my scriff-related abilities finally has begun to heal.

The tiny park with its oddly artistic water fountains full of circles of stone at the near end, and the precise grass reminiscent of an English garden at the far end stood as the last outpost of nature at the edge of a skyscraper-filled downtown.

The fountains hid my arrival from view to all but a few of the passing, lunchtime crowd, and they shook their heads, or bugged their eyes out and kept moving. The neighbourhood did not look altogether safe for the average citizen, but that did not worry me. I pity the mugger who decided I was an easy mark. The chief question would be how little force would be safe to use, and secondly what form of martial arts would serve me best.

I sensed about for my stuff with my scriff sense, and found multiple sentient contacts. There were other versers here, at least five, and maybe more. I had evidently happened into a gather world which only infrequently happened to me. Its been speculated that because I am such a lone wolf, I make my own path. But while possible, this, like most theories about scriff is not provable scientifically or logically.

Whatever.

I got up, and splashed some water from a jetting fountain on my face, and set out on a hike toward my stuff. In so doing, I passed at least one scriff source, in the Jewish Hospital. The name worried me, making me think of ghettos and armbands, but it looked very nice, and well-integrated into the surrounding buildings with even two walkways going to nearby skyscrapers.

There was an abundance of interesting buildings of varying eras. But this city seemed to prove that modern did not have to be boring boxes of steel and glass. There were jutting boxes off boxes, and concrete facades of different colors to make simple murals ten stories tall, and slanted rooflines, and archways across the street, and all sorts of neat-to-me details. Combine that with old ?30?s style five story tall commercial buildings full of varying businesses and the city intrigued me.

There was a big difference in this Southern city of Louisville from what I remember hearing of my homeworld. A rather large, and funky district of antique antebellum and Victorian mixed homes attracted my eye, and so I turned a bit aside from my course to stroll down Jefferson Street(some of the streets seemed named after early American Presidents) past the adult bookstore, and onto this mixed small commercial/residential area.

A wolf whistle was directed at me, I realized since there was no other person near the target zone who looked remotely whistlable (the homeless guy with his bag of cans did not count I felt sure), I turned about ready to politely smile and move on after acknowledging the compliment. I?d been in worlds where Sadie Hawkins would have been a shy and demure type; in that world, you didn?t ask your man out, you grabbed him by the hair, and led him to the house you and he were going to buy. Lucky for me, I?d had pretty short hair compared to the guys in that world.

So, I turned, and saw a guy waving friendly-like at me. My face froze for a second, and I jerkily nodded trying to be polite. He came up, and talked, and offered me coffee, but I contented myself with a few questions.

It seemed that Louisville, in this universe, had taken the place of San Francisco in mine. It had, in the beginning a small gay population, and then a very capable politician had pushed through some friendly laws which made it a magnet for gays across the nation, and this meant that people started to journey here to be near others which made it even more attractive, and those who did not like this began to leave thus making it even more gay friendly. It?s the same type of process that creates Silicon Valley, and other enclaves. Through self-sorting and some incentive changes, a major percentage of American gays ended up in this district.

It was very well-off, and very artistic, and rather unfriendly to children since the local school was practically dying on the vine.

I said good-bye to my new acquaintance who expressed regret which I found flattering and off-putting at the same time. With relief, I went on to another street, and found my stuff underneath a rose bush in someone?s backyard.

Unfortunately, the owner of that yard was not the trusting sort. She was about eighty-years old, and packing a double barrel shotgun that I thought would tip her over if she fired it. My explanations fell on deliberately deaf ears, until I pulled from my pocket a gold solidus I?d been paid in a recent world. I rolled it across to her down her sidewalk, and she trapped it neatly with her foot. A deft scoop, and she bit it with her teeth.

?Aye, lad, I thought I recognized you from the gold strike in 1910. You look the same, but then even back then everyone knew you were a strange one. Billy Two Clouds said you had ?the strongest and strangest medicine? he?d ever seen in a white man.?

?Then why??

?You gave me a gold nugget then, when I was just a little girl, to keep my mouth shut while you snuck up on Jack Roper who was a bad ?un.?

I didn?t remember, but it could well be true since I had a large spot of amnesia in the center of my travels.

She cackled having gotten the better of me, and after she hiked up her stairs and back inside,I dropped a handful of solidus for her to find later. It?d help with her medical bills, the old rascal.

I left the rose garden, and decided to get a hotel, and then track down these scriff spots. A pawn shop turned a dozen solidus into cash, and I booked at the Hyatt on the seventeenth floor of this atrium filled hotel. I had no credit cards, but a bribe handled that problem.

The window showed a beautiful view of downtown, and with a map, I could chart out roughly where I felt the versers to be from here. One was in the direction of the Galt House, a giant ?H?-shaped inn on the river separating Kaintuck (Kentucky in my homeworld) and Indiana. Another was still toward the Jewish Hospital, and another was toward the courthouse. I filled in the rest, and went across the street for an explosion in the taste buds innocuously called a Greek salad at Deke?s, a local sports bar.

I?m not much on watching football, but it?s occasionally fun especially when long deprived, and I had to tear myself away to go track down the versers. I took several of my weapons since psi hardly worked here, and the same with magic. And, there are a few versers, I?d just as soon not meet without a gun in my hand.

I walked into the Galt House which was a massive and beautiful building in a seventies pre-stressed concrete sort-of Tudor kind of style. It was practically on the waterfront, and while not tall compared to some buildings I?ve seen, it loomed over most of the skyline.

Inside, I saw the Alchemist across a wooden bar in the lobby restauraunt, and he was filling up a cut crystal glass with alternating layers of chocolate fudge, gum drops, caramel, mint ice cream, and cherry sauce. I averted my eyes. I have a strong stomach, but some of his desserts defy reason.

Laughing to myself, I decided to sneak up on him. And then as he sat down at his table by the wall, I skidded to a halt. Another verser, almost identical sat across from him, and a third guy practically indistinguishable sat there as well. A faintly familiar rabbit hopped out from between the legs of number two?s chair. It had a bowl of water, and a newspaper, and some celery down there. It looked at me, did a doubletake, and promptly hopped back under the chair.

I shrugged guessing that not all animals are going to like you even though it did look pretty cute.

?Um, hello, mind if I join you?? I asked, not being terribly witty when my head is spinning.

We got sat down, and I and the Alchemist got reacquainted. He introduced me to the two others. The Visitor, a former superhero who?d been in something like fifteen worlds by now, and the local doppelganger who had a job as a lawyer on the staff of the mayor. He was a legal adviser to the mayor. His job involved telling the mayor what was legal and what was not.

We talked for hours about all sorts of things. I had philosophical questions I?d been saving up, and new magic spells to share, and I needed to find out if anyone was trying any major plans.

See, I have this ethic of seniority in worlds that I try to follow. If a verser has landed in a world before me, I tend to follow their lead a bit on changing the world unless I totally disagree with them. But they shook their heads. The Visitor was practicing law, and the Alchemist took martial arts lessons at King?s Dojo which he recommended, and he was working on a masters in chemistry to make his Alchemist title a little more solid.

We arranged to meet at the Old Spaggetti House the next night, and I left.

Checking out King?s was hardly out of my way, and so I swung past. It was open late at night, and so I strolled in to find students hard at work with an unusual and yet quite effective technique.

Then I felt a slam in my back, and a knife at my throat. Someone was standing on my back, and I prepped my muscles to flip over.

?Nuh, unh Tad, that?s not how you do it.? I heard a throaty growl that I recognized.

?Cynthia?? I shouted, and she laughed, and jumped off my back. I bounced to my feet just to show I was not completely helpless. I loomed over her, but in hand-to-hand I?d be hard pressed to match her, if she did not transform into a werewolf. If she were?d, well I?d best run.

?Where?s David??

?Oh, you mean, ?The King?. We just came from a world where the best martial artist was made king for seven years. He keeps rubbing it in, that he beat me in the final match.? She laughed, and I saw David step around the corner while I remembered meeting a future self of his that had truly been a ?King?.

?I do not.? He objected, and they started a friendly argument which he interrupted by reaching out to shake my hand. He looked about the same as in that world where we dealt with Gavin in a semi-final fashion. A walking, talking endorsement of weight-lifting and martial arts as a lifestyle.

I envied him a verser wife, even if I did not envy him the occasional flashes of temper she exhibited.

We got out on the mat, and he took it easy seeing as I had just gotten off eating, but soon enough he was pointing out small improvements to make in my form and he had a program of exercises that he recommended I get on. I was not totally looking forward to it, but seeing as it would be hard to find a better teacher, I consented. He?d gotten even better at the arts than last I saw him, and while I?d improved as well, indeed quite a bit, but not as much as him.

And then another fellow walked onto the mat. This was a bit rude since all the other students were watching us spar.

He stood in his Army greens with his Ranger patch, and he grinned cockily at me. David?s doppleganger stood there waiting for me to reply, and then he added a provoking comment.

?This must be one of those versers you were telling me about. Doesn?t look too tough to me.?

My verser friends both sighed, and then both nodded at me.

I grinned.

?I?m not that tough; just a little wimp is me. How did you know I was a verser??

He stripped off his jacket, and his boots and socks.

?I didn?t, but I?ve heard the wild stories he keeps telling me. I think he?s yanking my chain half the time, but you have a very individual style with elements from a dozen different disciplines. Too bad for you, I might have learned a bit too.?

?Don?t worry about hurting him, Tad.? My friend said which shocked me because that had been my concern. Most normal humans cannot hope to match an experienced verser in hand-to-hand combat.

Then he flowed toward me like still water going over a waterfall is the only way I can describe it, and I was forced on the defensive. He chased me around the mat for a good several minutes as I began to analyze the elements of his style.

I think he started to worry a bit because I doubt very few people could stand up to his onslaught for even thirty seconds. His training as a Ranger would be to kill people in the shortest period of time; overwhelm or slide around their defenses, and go for the multiple strikes and killing blows. But he had added a deceptively flowing style to it that sped it up and made it harder to predict.

Part of my problem, I decided was that he was innately better than me or his verser alternate when it came to martial arts. Speed, strength, instincts, visual perception all way better than I naturally had. My only advantage was a ton of experience.

I shifted to a slow style which punished him when he tried to close with me. His arms stung and ached, I?d bet even though his face never wavered. Then, I ?made a mistake? which would let him inside, and I planned to counterpunch him before he got all the way in close. Instead, he slashed in with excessive speed, and elbowed me in the gut, and was past me before I could reply.

?You think I don?t know the weaknesses of my own style?? He said as he stood by the mat edge, and I fell to the ground out of breath. Still, I used a technique first taught me by the Alchemist, and forced air back into my lungs, and rose like on wires to my feet.
Blandly, even though I was burning inside with pain, I asked.

?So that?s your best?? I saw David the Verser out of the corner of my eye cover his face. He was not taken in, but the Ranger, David?s alternate, looked a little nonplussed. And then, I took off my gloves, so to speak.

We whaled at each other, cartwheeling across the room, and snap-kicked for the throat when we came up together, and both missed, and he tried to break my arm, and I let him try. My hammering punches to his stomach finished him while he futilely tried to snap an arm enhanced by Lekostian Empire cyberware.

Heh. It was not fair, but otherwise, I?m not sure I could have beat him.

Dripping blood and sweat, we fell to the mat, and gasped out our desperate search for oxygen.

Later, I found out why the Major was so arrogant about his fighting skills. He had taken the World Martial Artist Championship at age seventeen, and held it ever since. I had over two hundred years of experience, and the only way I could be sure to beat him was with a trick he could not have known about.

With a bottle of aspirin, we kicked back and watched the local news after sending the students home. The two of them lived above the dojo, and their friend joined them, and he had a hard time getting to accept the notion of the Multiverse. Finally, I figured it out. He did not like to know there were people out there who might be better than him that he could never challenge.

He looked alike, but I could see many differences between the two. And despite the highly competitive nature of the Ranger, he reluctantly deferred to the verser who was a much more mellow person, and evidently, from their joking conversation, regularly handed the Ranger a beating in sparring matches.

The Ranger hushed us as the local news came on. A SWAT team had raided a local house, and confiscated an assortment of culturers for viruses. The Ranger indicated that a brother major had run that op from the Army side which was not reported in the local news. After that good news, he seemed more relieved and we drifted into more pleasant conversation.

I staggered back to my hotel late, and fell into bed. The next morning, I am a mass of sore muscles so that it hurt to breathe or blink my eyelids, I forced myself into the hot shower and an hour later emerged. The swimming pool on the fourth floor was followed by reading a couple chapters of the latest Tom Clancy, Insurance Investigator murder mystery by Jack Ryan that I had bought in the lobby. I read it in the whirlpool, and another handful of aspirin got me fit enough to try breakfast.

Then I went to track other versers down.

Walking down the street toward the Jewish Hospital, I realized my target verser was moving. So, I turned aside into an alley, left down another street past an Italian restauraunt called “Amerigo’s”, and a science-fiction shoppe called “The Great Escape”, and how I longed to visit, and across the street by darting between the frequent cars, to the right a few steps around a used furniture, ah, I mean antique store, heh, a little joke there, and around a small dumpster to see a small female being stalked by a man in a trenchcoat.

I stepped forward, as he lunged, and found my knife in my hand ready to throw, but before I could manage that, the girl spun on her left leg and rotated her right foot through his space.

It impacted on his chest, and lofted him fifteen feet to land on the wall of the antique store a foot above the ground. He then slid down moaning with a shocked expresion on his face which matched mine.

And ‘whoosh’, the seemingly twelve-year-old girl sprinted and stood next to him, and was lifting him to his feet by an index finger under his chin while the wind of her passage blew newspapers past me onto the street.

“Find someone else to rob. My friends are nurses. You are not my friend. So go away, stay away, or we will talk some more at great length.”

I restrained my urge to applaud as I checked for scriff. Yep, this was definitely my target.

The mugger, would-be, slumped to the ground complaining that he needed a hospital, and the twelve-year-old girl walked up to me.

“What?”

“I guess I’m not used to see too many twelvers beat up grown men. Even if they are versers.”

“I’m not twelve, you think I look twelve?” And she raised her hand like she was considering doing a palm strike on me. I just grinned back.

She did a dozen fist strikes in the less time than it takes to tell it, all about me. I applauded.

“Fine, you’re a hardhead.” She said walking past me.

“What’s going on here?” I asked over my shoulder.

“Near as I can tell, there is about a dozen versers in the world, and each of their dopplegangers is in some sort of civil service, the mayor’s office, EMS, Coast Guard, something. Something is coming, and we’re here to keep things in one piece is my guess.”

“And your dop is a nurse?”

“Got it in one, Tadeusz.” She said walking off leaving me wondering how she knew it was me seeing as I had never met her before.

As I walked away, I reflected on her talents. Anime style martial arts, and some definite detective skills came to mind.

I headed down near the river after walking past a small protest involving twelve people about police brutality, and racial profiling which protest called for the local police captain to resign.

More splenderous architecture enchanted me. It was not odd enough to be bizzarre, but it had enough novelty and intricacy to appeal to my eye.

Walking along the river, I came to a poorly designed miniature harbor. The thing looked like it would collect whatever wood washed into the river after a storm, and hold it there. Above it on a hill, a children’s playground stabbed my heart with longing to be home.

Walking along the riverwalk and closer to the harbor, I saw one man arguing with four others. Something about him seemed familiar, but I could not place him. Being an occasional eavesdropper, and since I was headed that way, I heard the discussion.

The familiar fellow thought this harbor design stunk, and his company was willing to fix it, do the design, do the work, and make it ecologically sound for a fee that was only ten percent higher than the low bidder who was the same person that had built the terrible thing in the first place.

So I continued up, and recognized him. He was the engineer on that frozen world who had helped me make a nuclear rocket to evacuate humanity off the planet.

“Now, if I was a reporter for the local Herald, this would be interesting. Mayor’s office refuses to make ecologically sound decision, preferring profit to purity would probably be my title. Got a nice alliterative ring to it, doesn’t it?”

The group turned to stare at me, and I weathered the unfriendly glances quite well. The engineer looked, how do I say this, unusual, experienced, he looked verser. And so I checked, and no, this was not my man.

Then he turned to the others.

“I would not sabotage negotiations like that, but who am I to stop the free press from their job?”

The others grumbled, eyed me, and gave the man his contract.

After, they walked off, he asked me why.

I shrugged.

“Let’s say, in another life, I owe you a favor.”

“Or in another world?” He asked, and I raised an eyebrow.

“Another verser. My ‘brother’ has introduced me to a couple. You can see the signs. Most of you walk like ballerinas or martial artists. Have large backpacks with interesting bulges. Keep your eyes moving looking for threats while at the same time showing a great deal of calmness as if the worst threat is a mere bother. A certain calmness of manner combined with an inquisitive look as if they were discovering the world for the first time is also there as well.”

He paused.

“How am I doing?”

I laughed.

“Batting a thousand, so far.”

He took me down the river another eighth of a mile, and I saw a ship with an oddly shaped hull that bent upwards at a forty-five degree angle in front. And from its single mast, a huge array of ropes were tied into a very intricate net like someone had taken a basic rope net, and used it to make roccoco art of it.

“I cannot begin to undestand the physics, but its a sailboat that will do three-forths the speed of a diesel powered boat, even in still air, and Graeme, the skipper-owner-designer, is refusing to get insurance. He says he does not need it.”

I looked at the ropes out of the corner of my eye to close in on a suspicion.

“He’s right. That boat is lucky enough that it could float across the Atlantic with no one at the helm, and dock itself by accident.”

It was an admirable job of rope magic. Blessings, defenses, very mild stuff to be sure since this world has little magic in it, but with the hundreds of spells those nets represented with each four-sided hole in the net another spell, and all done with what looked like true professional care, I would not have wanted to assault the ship in any way.

Bring a torch down here to burn it, and you were likely to “accidentally” drop it on your hair, and light yourself on fire.

I waited to be invited on board, and was taken to see the Captain. He explained the physics of the ship which took about three hours, and lots of repeated questions. And a grill-out of salmon steaks washed down with lemonade, and a side of salad with organic tomatoes grown on ship, and blue cheese dressing.

It turned out that the net, and the additional small ropes while magical also served as a technological sail. It was a masterpiece of precision which made a space shuttle look simple, that net was. Despite its abundant holes, the thing caught the wind better, much better than a canvas sail.

He explained his goal of defeating the capitalists, and returning back to renewable energy sources. I bit my tongue to keep from pointing out that the only reason he was going to beat the “oil-plundering big shipping lines” was that he had a better system. The execs in those companies did not pollute because it made them feel good after all, they did it because it was the best compromise available.

We argued politics a good bit, which I always enjoy. After a while, I concluded one of four things. Either I was a moonbat, or he was, or he saw relations I could not, or he came from a totally different prime reality than I had. The last was quite possible.

Versers often start out from Earth, but the other fellows Earth might have serious differences from my Pax Americana world, and still be almost homelike.

A world in which the Soviet Union is still going strong into the 2020′s would be quite like home after all.

And he might have come from a world where socialism worked. Whatever, he grilled a mean steak.

And we reminisced of worlds gone by. He had been doing this for nearly four hundred years, and he’d gone through eleven worlds including three which he had not survived more than three weeks in. So eight worlds for four hundred years, it was definitely not my style. Some people even went so far as to call me “World A Week Tadeusz”.

And then he reminisced of one of his favorite worlds. He had lived ninety years there. Community, and kindness were simply the way things were done, and people were valued for their generosity, and their good hearts rather than their ruthless business skills.

The way he spoke of it, it sounded like a heavenly place, and so I asked him why he left.

He shrugged in embarrassment and irritation.

“Cut my toe off with a dropped axe, and then fell down the stairs into the basement. By the time I woke up from the smack on my head to yell for help, the arterial bleeding had been going on too long.”

Bad luck will get you in the end no matter how careful a verser is.

Speaking of which, his doppleganger, along with designing harbors, worked as a disaster coordinator.

I had begun to get a bad feeling about this. I like this world, and yet the signs were pointing to disaster.

I went out to watch a movie that night, a modern remake of a classic disaster flick, and I felt unaccountably chilled as I came to the end. That night, in the hotel, I did my exercises, and prayed for catastrophe to stay away. Tommorrow, I would meet the other versers, and see if I could buy a clue.

Tadeusz

I ought first to mention that there is a slight touch of what is euphemistically called mature content in this piece. That is to say, it contains a rude reference. I was trying to think of a better example; at one point I thought of an other example, but it was not as good and I did not remember it. Whatever their disadvantages, rude examples are often memorable.

Smack in the middle of the nineteen eighties I had my one experience working in a large company in an urban area. I had worked in large companies in suburban and rural areas, and in small companies, but there was a slightly different flavor here. Specifically, there was an urban jargon with which I was entirely unfamiliar, which was often rude, possibly crude, and at times opaque to outsiders. In the several months over which I was immersed in this organization, I was exposed to words and phrases whose meaning was shared by those around me but unknown to me. I was also clearly aware that some of these terms were euphemisms, and that asking what they meant would be embarrassing to everyone.

Prominent among these was the word hump. I was familiar with the word as a noun. It was the thing on the back of a camel, an unexpected rise and fall in a road, a pile of dirt in the field on which kids played King of the Hill. However, in the local vernacular the word was used as a verb, a stand-in for a form of human interaction not normally discussed in polite company. Let’s say I did manage to derive the meaning from the usage, and saved everyone the embarrassment of an explanation.

I also found myself assessing the character of my coworkers. This was not a judgmental process in the way that term is usually used, but rather merely a coming to understand who these people were individually. Some could be expected to be crass and crude as a matter of course, while others were more polite and refined. I was thus very surprised one day when one of the girls said something I had not heard before. It was a use of an expression in a then to me unfamiliar form which, given such reconstruction of the jargon as I had by then managed, sounded completely out of place in her mouth, she being one of those more reserved souls who endured rather than encouraged the lewd talk of coworkers. She said she was in a good mood, because tomorrow was hump day.

I must have stared at her aghast, because she immediately knew that something was wrong. She asked. I answered, “Hump day?”

The adage (I would call it old, but I think it is not so old as I) says, I know that you believe that you understand what you think I said, but I’m not certain you realize that what you heard is not what I meant. She blushed (I had never seen a black girl turn quite so pink), and immediately addressed my confusion. Wednesday is hump day, apparently, because in a five-day work week it’s the day when you get over the hump, half the week behind you and only half of it left to go. I hadn’t known that. I suppose in most of my jobs, five day workweeks were not the norm, so the term had never arisen. The confusion was abated, and although she was flustered by my wrong understanding the embarrassment was short-lived, but the memory thereof continues.

Euphemisms, slang, colloquialisms, terms of art, jargon, expressions, idioms all have the potential for significant misunderstanding. There are undoubtedly uncounted examples of someone saying something which was perfectly clear to the speaker and completely misunderstood by the user. A few have come to my attention over the years.

• An animation scriptwriter wrote of a character that he was belted into his seat on a spaceship. The animator in Korea returned an image of the character tied to a chair with ropes.
• An American missionary speaking through a translator said that his friend was tickled to death at some turn of events; the confused translator admitted his uncertainty and informed the audience that the man’s friend scratched himself until he died.
• Some years back a Hindu engaged me in theological discussion by E-mail, and raised the subject of dualism. I immediately wrote back, explaining what I saw as the inherent problems of dualism as a theological position, and he was clearly confused by my response. It took several letters before I recognized that we were talking about completely distinct concepts. To me, dualism was a theology of co-equal opposite deities, the good and evil gods vying for influence over the world. He was referring to a completely unrelated concept of dualism, the spiritual/material dichotomy that is so central to Platonism and so many Gnostic belief systems. We were talking past each other, because of one word to which we each ascribed a very specific, and very different, meaning.
• Irish evangelist Dr. J. Edwin Orr tells of a time he was visiting America and staying with a minister’s family as he conducted evangelistic meetings. As he was leaving, he wanted to thank his host and say something kind, so he said, “I think your wife is one of the homeliest women I’ve ever known.” The host was visibly shocked, so Dr. Orr immediately sought to correct himself. “I think she’s one of the homeliest ladies I’ve ever known.” The minister admitted she was no beauty queen, but wasn’t she pretty? “Oh, yes, she’s pretty; but even more homely.”

  “What does homely mean where you come from?” the man demanded.

  “Well, quickly means quick-like, and sweetly means sweet-like, and homely means home-like.”

  “Well, I don’t know how we got it wrong, but here it means ugly. You know, you ought to watch what you say–if I wasn’t a Christian, I’d have punched you right in the nose.”

  It seems that on this side of the pond, we started calling girls homely in an effort to make them sound attractive when they weren’t particularly pretty (she’s no beauty queen, but she would make a wonderful wife and mother), and ultimately this backfired as people came to read it as code for visibly repulsive.

We’ve talked about such things before. Over two years ago Words discussed the use of jargon; Language considered how the languages we know influence the way we think and our ability to communicate on various subjects; even as recently as last Halloween’s Treats we were looking at the oddities of language, and a couple of weeks back we were looking at ways to pursue misdirection through tricks to the ear in Sounds Like. This time we’re focusing on the way in which things are misunderstood because they are not clearly stated.

I’m a stickler for precise statements in wishes. You get what you wish for, in my fantasy settings; you had better be sure you’ve wished for what you want. If you wish you were able to speak another language, that will not enable you to understand what anyone else says in it. This is one place where close attention to what is said, rather than what is intended to be understood, can make for interesting play experiences.

Characters often deal with those from different backgrounds whose native tongue is not the one in which the discussion is held (or perhaps it is the player characters who are out of their element). The use of an idiom in an instruction, or even in a question, can lead to great confusion and completely unexpected results, if either of the speakers is not familiar with the idiom. I have probably mentioned the short story my high school French class read, in which the American tells the hotel concierge, in French, “Don’t let the fire go out.” That statement making no sense in French, the concierge understood it to mean, “Don’t let the fool go out,” and thinking that the character’s friend in the hotel room must be a madman, locked him in the room.

As characters travel to new places, there is always the risk that they might give offense through a word or phrase which has a completely different meaning here than it does elsewhere. This would seem very difficult to do from one perspective–how can the referee create a culture in such detail that he would know what references would innocently cause offense? However, it can be done easily in at least two ways. If the player or his character is known to use a particular phrase quite frequently, the referee can target that phrase by writing it into the sketch of the culture from which he’s working. Similarly, if the referee wants to have some sort of cultural misunderstanding, he can put up his antenna and listen carefully for the use of some expression which can be misunderstood, pulled out of proportion, or given some euphemistic meaning. Such innocent euphemisms are not so difficult to devise with a bit of creative consideration. Gypsies will excuse themselves to water the horses when they mean they have to relieve themselves. Ancient Hebrews spoke of knowing a woman. No matter how carefully your players watch what they say, they will say something that can be taken the wrong way, if you just pay attention.

It’s one more way to enliven a game.

Next week, something different.

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M. Joseph Young is co-author of Multiverser and Vice President for Development at Valdron Inc. His many contributions to online literature are indexed for convenience, and he looks forward to discussing these things by e-mail or on our Gaming Outpost forums.

  This story may be apocryphal; I may have the names wrong; it may prove for some to be more trouble than it’s worth.  Yet I think there is an important thought encapsulated here that’s worth a moment to consider, discuss, and grasp.

  It is said that composer George Gershwin sent a letter to composer Maurice Ravel.  You’ll know Gershwin from Porgy and Bess, and perhaps Rhapsody in Blue, the musicals he created with his brother Ira, An American in Paris, and maybe some other material.  Ravel is best known for his Bolero, for which he was probably well known even before the movie Ten gave it new, er, meaning.  Ravel was older, and successful first; but Gershwin was already known by this time.  The impetus of Gershwin’s letter was to ask the senior musician to instruct him in composition.

  Ravel’s reply was not exactly to decline, but it had the same effect.  “Why,” he asked, “do you wish to become a second-rate Ravel, when you are already a first-rate Gershwin?”

  We could take Ravel to task for this on many counts.  The desire to learn from someone whom we admire is a noble aspiration; the recognition that someone knows things from which we could benefit is commendable.  Personally, I have heard few works by Gershwin which appeal to me as much as most of what I’ve heard by Ravel (admittedly a personal preference, but I am surprised when I enjoy Gershwin and when I don’t enjoy Ravel, so it is a strong preference).  I wonder if Ravel just didn’t want to be bothered with a student, particularly one whom he could not so easily mold (all teachers have a wish to impact their students in memorable ways).  I wonder if he lacked confidence to teach, or thought that a student as capable as Gershwin would perceive that he did not so much know what he was doing.  All of that is worth considering; but it is not the point to which I would get.  There is something in Ravel’s advice for all of us.  Why do you wish to be a second-rate Ravel when you are already a first-rate Gershwin?  That is, why are you going to copy someone else, when you have it within yourself to be great by being yourself?

  Obviously I see the value in learning from others.  I’ve actually had the audacity to write a weekly column in which I presume to believe that others can actually learn something of value from me.  Apparently at least some of you have learned enough that you’re still reading them (definitely an encouragement).  At the same time, I am no one’s clone, and I expect that cloning me through you would be a bad idea–futile as a goal, worthless as an outcome.  There are those who think me a good referee and a good designer; there are those who praise my abilities as a player.  Part of that can be learned; but part of it is the application of who I am to what I do.

  That is where this really strikes home:  to be truly great at something, you must come to the point where you are applying who you are to what you do.  You must find your strengths, work around or overcome your weaknesses, and hit your stride.  Only when you do that, only when you become the best you that you can be, will you find that you have greatness within you.

  It is then that all the lessons offered by others truly have their value.  You can’t become a great referee by copying me.  You can only be creative by tapping something inside you.  Yet once you’ve realized that you have it within you to do this, you can learn from others how they do it, and compare that with what you do, and so learn to improve what you’re doing.

  Years ago I ran Dungeons & Dragons.  This was before I had ever heard of Multiverser, before I knew E. R. Jones.  I ran games, and I got to be pretty good at it.  I was known as the fairest and most by-the-book Dungeon Master around.  It was known that my scenarios were put to paper months, sometimes years, before the players saw them; that nothing was targeted at the players or their characters, all was designed strictly with a view to its own internal coherence, and whatever happened, it was never personal.  If the book required spell effects to be tracked in great detail over a long period of time, they were so tracked.  I knew what I was doing, and I did it well.

  E. R. Jones did not run games this way.  He played fast and loose with everything.  He invented his encounters, his in-game events, even his maps, pretty much as he revealed them to us.  Spells did what he wanted them to do; adversaries appeared if they were needed to enliven the action, and fled when they had served their purpose.  He was a master of illusion, making us feel like it was all real and well considered when it was all invented to achieve his objectives at this moment.  He manipulated his players into having an exciting game, and we enjoyed it.

  Most of what I know about illusionist techniques I learned by watching him.  Most of what I know about rolling with the punches, improvising on the fly, shooting from the hip, came from him.  I learned a lot.  Multiverser would not be near the same game, would not exist as a viable game, were it not for those lessons.

  Yet I do not run games the way he does.  I am not a second rate Jones; I’m a first rate Young.  I have learned from him, many things that have greatly expanded my horizons on the possible.  I have not become him.  I did not become a good referee by copying him.  I became a good referee by doing what worked for me, and then became better by comparing what I did with what he did, and finding ways to improve my efforts.

  Once in a while I have the privilege of watching or even playing a game run by someone who learned from me; once in a while I get to see how someone else runs Multiverser.  Almost always they do things that I would not have done.  Almost always that’s a good thing.  The good referees are not the ones who do what I do; they’re the ones who find themselves, become good by expressing themselves through what they do, and then use my example to hone what they already know.

  So as much as I hope these columns have impacted your games, ultimately I hope that you are finding your way of doing things, becoming the best you can be by expressing yourself, and not trying to copy me too closely.  Copies are rarely so good as the original, but homages are often better.

  Next week, something different.

—–

M. Joseph Young is co-author of Multiverser and Vice President for Development at Valdron Inc.  His many contributions to online literature are indexed for convenience, and he looks forward to discussing these things by e-mail or on our Gaming Outpost forums.