The Gaming Outpost

My name is Luisa Rennesslaer, and I walked alongside Tadeusz out of the back entranceof the hospital.  I knew him better as T. Smith which is what I will call the monster.  For you see, I was his prisoner.

No, he did not have a gun pointed at me, nor a knife in my ribs.  I almost wished he had.  Instead, after telling my friend Paul that I was to be a sacrifice–"they think she is my sacrifice", and knocking poor heroic Paul unconscious, he had told me to come with him.  It was humiliating.

There was this absolute confidence that I was no threat to his plans.  It hurt, but I wondered if it was true.  I’d seen him be tossed through a wall, get up, and walk away.  I’d seen the x-ray with the broken bones, and the one a few minutes later with no breaks.  What was T. Smith?

As I got into my three-wheel car in the parking garage, and started it up while the huge man tried to make himself comfortable in the passenger seat, I knew one thing.  He was my captor.

I began to head toward the De Morrissey mansion which is where I figured we were going.  But instead, T. Smith directed me to drive about town in a pattern that made no snese to me.  His directions were curt and harsh, and my lips trembled.

How had I been fooled?  Earlier, I had thought him a nice fellow, but over-busy.  I had considered him manly and mysterious.  Now, I realized he was a dangerous madman.

"What are we doing?"

"Drawing a protective circle, and a couple summons, and singing a song."  He continued muttering.

"Song?" I said glaring at his preoccuplied expression.

"Joshua and the Battle of Jericho."  He replied distantly, and when I began to speak again, he raised an imperious hand which in my sight glimmered with faint yellows, greens, blues, and most of all, reds.

Right. My mad captor believed tonight would bring back the Necromancer Difarge or somehthing.  Every Brazilianan school child knows of Difarge the Horrible.  We read his stories on dark nights, and scare each other.  But, he’s a myth.

The sun was down, and suddenly T. Smith pointed up hill, and so we went.  Sooner than seemed possible, or I liked, we were back at the De Morrissey Mansion.  It still looked like a pastry too me,  with its pink walls and white decorations.  But I remember what T. Smith had said upon seeing it earlier this evening…"Blood and bone."  I shivered as we drove up to the house since the gate hung open.

Before I got out, I mustered a little courage.

"How, how do you do those things with esper?"

He got out, and then leaned back in with a smile.  "Things? Haven’t you figured it out yet?  This is not esper or psionic.  This is the Magick." And then his grin turned especially cruel, and he taunted me.  "You will receive the treatment of Job."

I blinked at him, and he stood up, so I left my car as well. A…man, I guess loomed over me, the car, and T. Smith.

T. Smith smiled pleasantly as we stood on the pavement of the driveway.

"Do you know what happened to the last creature to challenge me?"

There was a very long pause.

"He…died."

"That’s right. He walked away, and then fell down, and his undead heart exploded." T.’s smile was gone, and the words hissed out.

Another long pause, and the giantous thing stepped out of our way.  We walked, I with my hand on his arm, up to the front door. An unwholesomeness seemed to grip the house, like a smear of pschyic dirt. You know the feeling you get when you meet someone who is not right.  Now magnify that by ten-fold and apply it to this innocent looking house.

"You may see some strange things, but you will be fine under my protection."  He said, and put his cloak over my shoulders.  Then as the door opened, he pulled a noosed rope about three feet long from a pocket.  And this he placed over my neck even as I flinched back.

I gathered my esxper sense to strike him.  It was not something I’d ever done before, but I had heard it speculated that it was possible.  And then the door opened, and I saw De Morrissey, naked to the waist, and with symbols tattoed on his chest, over his heart, and above his chakra.  They were counterclockwise spirals, and I felt faint because of this, and because they had been annointed with blood.

"Welcome to my house, T. Smith." De Morrissey said in courtly fashion just as if he wasn’t a psychotic monster who desperately needed a full chemwash of the brain, or a short trip to a wall pocked with bullets.  At this moment, I wasn’t particular about which solution I preferred.  Ordinarily, I’m for a chemwash as its more humane, but De Morrissey in his full regalia with his staff covered with feathers, his bloodied chest, and his crimson leather pants sent my esper sense into full screaming hysterics.

I tried to run away, but my feet wouldn’t let me. We three walked in, and I saw people walking about the entrance hall, but they had worms climbing in and out of their skulls.  And my esper sense could not detect their presence.

"I do apologize to binding your will with the noose, lady." T. said with a small bow as De Morrissey chuckled in delight.  The thing was, the apology sounded sincere to me.

And so as we went down the steps to the basement, I fought the rising sense of madness, the need to cower into a corner, and bang my head on a wall until all the Bad Things Went Away, and let my esper sense try to make sense of what was going on.

It seemed clear I had been mistaken, as had King Ricardo about the existence of magic and necromancy.  I had thought it mere superstition.  But those undead shamblers, and whatever that giantous thing in the driveway had been, whatever they had been, it was not human.

I came to the first landing, and smelled the scent of blood and incense.  So I forced my reporter’s mind onward, trying to take myself elsewhere.  "Job" he had said. "Job"–I knew that story.  It was in the Bible, and I was a believer.  Not a very good one, but I had turned to God at a young age, and with a sense of guilt, I remembered that later I had turned to fame and fortune and flirting to fill my time.  I resolved if I got out of this, that I would mend my ways, and focus on things more important like God, and…like a family with the boy Paul Dumas who had loved me since he had met me at my eight-year-old birthday party.

I cried because I had been so stupid.  And then the time for tears was over because we came to the bottom of the stairs, and a giant room filled with dozens of men, and a ten-hand of women who were mostly dressed in black.  Although red was a very popular color as well.

And then there were the other things in the room.  My childhood tales of what I had thought was fiction supplied their names: vampires, ghouls, boogymen, sulis’s hands, glimmermaids who drowned those drinking from rivers, and a full handful of other frightful things that my eye skittered from because I could not bear to look at them closely.

The room rocked with laughter, and it was all directed at me. No, they were not laughing with me.  A vampire came up, to say something sarcastically sweet, I thought from his false attitude of benevolence, but the Master waved his back.

"T. Smith has done well.  He asks to be admitted into the Pit, and he has brought godsblood."  The Master, De Morrissey roared out, and my heart sank.  There was indeed legend in my family that centuries past we had a god, a pagan lord in our bloodline.  Right now, I’d be very happy if he showed up.

"We will feast." De Morrissey yelled.

"Feast! Feast! Feast!" The crowd chanted as they drew closer in their madness, bloodlust, and general need of a hot shower.  I waved my hand in front of my face, and the crowd stilled.

"Does the sacrifice have something it wishes to say?" De Morrissey purred loud enough to be heard all about the room.

"Yes, haven’t any of you heard of Dial? Or even a nice, cheap soap."

My words froze the room, and then De Morrissey turned red in the face, and his enormous hand came back to crush my face with one blow. T. Smith caught it at the wrist.

The two strained, one hand against one hand, and the boards in the floor rippled.

"She is mine." T. Smith said.

"My house." De Morrissey spat back.

"True, but I can walk out just as well as I came in. And besides, you owe me."

Suddenly De Morrissey stopped striving, and his arm and T. Smith’s came down on both sides of me.  I had been in the center of an arch of arms, arms that I was convinced could have snapped my neck with ease.  But why had T. Smith saved me from a shattered face?

I came back again to the story of Job.  God had given him to Satan to persecute, but had set certain limits on the pain. And in the end, God had given Job twice what he had before. If I was Job, then not a far jump, De Morrisey was Satan, and this was a bit more difficult, that made T. Smith to be God in my metaphor. T. Smith as an agent of God? It was ridiculous, but the problem was my esper sense liked it, and I trust my esper sense.

"I pay what I owe." De Morrissey said, and a man was brought forth.  Black, spiked chains were wrapped around him, and he trembled in fear.  The Master forced him to the ground with one hand, and handed T. Smith a heavy blade suited for chopping more than sword-fighting.

"This one dared to break the peace of my house, dared defy me, of fear of a new member.  He should have feared me. And so I promised the first blow to T. Smith, our newest initiate."

T. smiled, and turned to the crowd.  "This is the night of Difarge, the necromancer, when powers dark and potent stand ready to be raised from the Earth, so I have come to you.  I can promise you that you will receive everything you deserve, all the power you deserve will be yours.  This is my promise to you."

The crowd loved it, and so they began stomping and banging even as De Morrissey watched his new initiate with a trace of fear.  Then, I saw T. look at me with a strange look, and he then raised his sword for quiet.

"I’d like to see the sacrifice see another killed before her eyes."  So he turned the hopeless terrified man toward me so that the vile man rested on his knees and chains before me.  My heart was wrung with pity even before the man began to beg in a whisper.

"Help me. Help me."

And suddenly as T. Smith raised the sword, and began to do a little Irish jig, I bent down to the man in chains.

"Do you repent of your unbelief in the Christ, and turn to him to ask forgiveness of all your sins?" I spoke and it felt like angels spoke with me so strong did my whisper resonate in my soul and I saw in his eyes which are the gateway to the soul, after all.

"Yes, oh, yes, I do.." And the blade came down on the neck while his lips began to form a smile.

I stood and laughed, a wild banshee screech.

"He is in heaven, you pigs!" Okay, it wasn’t my most godly pronouncement, but I’d just had about a gallon of his blood dumped on my shoes.  I was more than a little pumped up.

And then De Morrissee had me by the neck, and lifted skyward.

"Maybe he will, but after the Thing that Chews at the Roots of Heaven comes up to gnaw on your soul.  You will never enter Heaven.  Instead, you will be a bauble about its neck for all eternity."  I tried to choke out a denial, but the certainty in his voice, and the fact that I had no air stopped that.

A mild cheer greeted this rebuttal as they were still dazed at my action, and then T. Smith came up alongside me, and smiled.

"I’m sorry, dear, your soul will not be going to Heaven today."  He laughed, and I shivered even as some part of my brain screamed why?  What had I done to deserve such inhuman cruelty.  So sobbing, I fell, was dropped to the floor, and in the distance I heard them saying words like ‘altar’, and ‘prepare the incense’.

There was excitement and fear in the air.

And it was then that I prayed.  And a question came to me.  Did I trust T. Smith or did I trust my God?  Put like that, there wasn’t much choice. So I sat up, and found myself puzzled.

There was no shoe on my right foot.  This was not surprising since I had been flung about like a ball in a football game, but it bothered me–greatly.  And the noise of the crowd was receding from me, going down to the other end of the room, leaving me along.

I looked up, and saw a Thing, no lets be honest, I saw a Demon.  A creature of black smoke, and living fire hung at the far end of the room over an altar that rose six feet from the floor.  And it gloated.

But this I expected.

And I looked down, and saw that the crowd was gathered around Tadeusz.  But not as hailing him, oh no, they were taunting him as he limped.

I wobbled to my feet, and saw the crowd part enough to see why he limped. He had my shoe on his foot.

"Godsblood, you die now." They carrolled out of harmony, in a dissonance that never came back together but only degenerated into a hateful static.  Trying to say something, I raised a hand, but no words came to my mouth.  None could for the noose about my neck stilled my words, and stopped my feets ways.  So I stood.

They placed him on the altar, and screamed their joy.  When the chains were tied down, they beat themselves with small knives, and the room flooded with the smell of blood, and tightened with the onrushing presence of Evil Incarnate.

De Morrissey climbed up a set of stairs, and held forth the ancient knife made profane by numerous sacrifices.

"Anything to say?"  He mocked.

"Repent, or you will all perish." T. Smith’s voice was low, but strong, and everyone in the room heard it.  They howled like wild madmen, no I do insult to wild madmen, it was worse, far worse with each one pledging himself body, and soul to the forces of darkness. And in that instant, I knew not why, but I felt only pity for them.  I wanted to get on my knees, and beg with them, plead with them, turn back, turn back.

"You will perish, and your soul goes to the Gnawer at the Roots."

The blade flashed down, and blood spattered into the air, and vanished. No one but me noticed in the Power that suddenly filled the room so that the walls seemed to explode outwards and show a cosmos composed of dead stars, and cruel chains, and endless death which released no being from torment.  But the walls were still there, I saw, and part of me felt pity again.

This great Being who had come, and all it had was an illusion.  But I saw the acolytes swaying in joy until it spoke.

"You are unworthy. I was promised godsblood, this is not such."

And the room was still.

What? What? The crowd cried.

"Nope, I’m rather a common sort. " T. Smith said from the altar as the crowd fell back in fear. I could see his neck was cut almost to the spine.  "Now let the first trumpet be blown. And let there be an accounting."

The crowd murmured to itself what this meant until De Morrissey held up a hand.

"An illusion, a…" He paused, and pointed at me. "She was hidden in that cloak. And with this shoe, he took her place, we still have time to rectify…"

"Noooooo." I heard, as shapes drifted out of the floor.  At first they were translucent and fog-like with no definite shape.  But they grew, and became more precise. "Nooo mooooreee timmmeeeee."

Dozens, no hundreds of ghosts came out of the floor, and became recognizable people.  In fact, I think I saw my fourth cousin Davos.  The crowd leaned back as the ghosts came toward them.

"It is time for an accounting. You murdered us.  Did you think we would not remember?"  One ghost spoke, and it was a signal.

Suddenly I saw a young girl, perhaps nine, leap and attach herself to the ears of a man, and then as he batted at her fruitlessly, she pulled out his eyeballs, one at a time.  And then laughing she knocked him to the ground where other ghosts extracted their vengeance on him as well.

This seen, and others like it, and still others more horrible than I can remember were enacted dozens of times in that room.  But finally, there stood a dozen necromancers and their vampire bodyguards next to them.  The strongest of the strong whom the ghosts could not reach.

The rest were dead.

De Morrissey chuckled.

"Well played, but not well enough. You just got rid of our deadwood.  Now we can take the godsblood."  He pointed, and the vampires advanced on me.

"Not done yet. The second trumpet is blown for the parent loves his child." 

And suddenly, I felt an arm about my shoulder, and strength flow into my limbs.

I looked to my right, and there stood a man, no not a man, a god.  His face was like fire, and his eyes were crystal that glowed with an inner kindness.

"My many times removed grandchild, how lovely you are."

"But…"

"I had left this world to the Creator, but I received a special dispensation to help out a relative in need."

"Lugh, Lord…"

"Hush, child, you serve another, and I would have it so, but spare some love in your heart for your old grandfather, eh?"

"Always." I said, folding myself into his arms as light flared about us so brilliant that I could not see. And then I was holding empty air.  With blinking eyes, I turned, and saw a dozen piles of ash stretched in a line halfway across the room.

"Thank-you Grandpa." I whispered, and felt sure I heard a chuckle in reply.

De Morrissey was stabbing T. Smith, and cursing him.

"Have you no blood? How shall I kill you?"

"Turn back." I said, and De Morrissey winced.  I felt like I could float.

"No." He said.

"Then let the third and last trumpet blow."

I heard nothing, and then a servant rushed in.  I could see his mind was enchanted so that he saw nothing unusual in a room with the walls covered in blood and gore almost to the ceiling.

"My lord, there are men, outside, they are trying to break in.  Shall I call the police?"

"No, Hector. Just go to your quarters."  The servant turned and left.

"So, you’ve summoned some army, but its of neccessity outside my wards.  I wonder who they are?  Never mind, those wards will hold as long as I have your body here."

"I know." T. Smith said, and then he died.  I could see it.

"It is finished." I whispered.

And then his body disappeared leaving only a drifting of dust.  De Morrissey’s mouth began to open in horror and shock, and …

All the doors and several of the walls exploded inward.  Flying chunks of stone decapited two necromancers instantly, and a third caught a foot long wooden spear of a splintered door in his left eye.  He staggered about for a bit before he died.

But at the door, I saw a man with a cloak in front of him.  It looked a cloak made of darkest space, and of stars.

"By what right do you come in here? This ground is made sacred to the Nine Who Sit in Shadow." De Morrissey challenged the man, and the ones piled up behind him.  I looked about, and saw others at all the entrances, but none had entered yet.  Each man was well over seven feet tall, and incredibly fair of face and form.     They were dressed in cloaks, and leather jackets, and blue jeans with cowboy boots, and each held in a hand a club, or a cricket bat.   

There was a pause, and I felt fear, but surely God would not have done so great a work to end it here, I thought, and then wondered.

And then the leader of the invaders smiled a cruely smile, a thing inhuman in its viciousness.

"I come in the name of the Logres."

 "But…" De Morrissey said futilely.

"In the name of the Dunamas, He Who Has All Authority In Heaven and Earth."

"There is no such." One necromancer scoffed, but De Morrissey paled, and trembled as he awaited the indictment, for that was what this had the feel of, like a judge coming forth to announce his authority to slay the wicked.

"I and my brethren come in the Name of the Lamb Who Was Slain before the Foundation of the World!" The chieftain of the invader’s cried, and he threw back his cloak to reveal glory.  He blazed with a light that burnt my eyes, and in his right hand, he held a sword formed of lightning, and in his left he held a list of the Soon To Be Dead.

And the whole of them swarmed into the room, stabbing, slicing, kicking, and rending.  In the space of seconds, all the necromancers lay dead, although De Morrissey was the last to fall, and Michael took his head his very self.

While the rest of the angels were tearing apart the altar,and grinding its stones to dust between their fingers, Michael came to me.

"Michael." I said, and he laughed.

"Are you sure?"

"Yes. I remember. You saved me when I was eight, and thought to play with that fusebox. I never could get mother to believe a strange man had appeared in my house, and warned me not to touch it again, after he woke me from the dead."

"Oh, now you believe. You spent so many years denying it. Claiming it was a dream."

I blushed, and wondered what to do.

"You apologize." Michael said softly.

"I’m sorry." I said weakly, and then I truly was. It had been terribly rude of me.

"Accepted, Daughter of Eve, and grandchild of an old friend of mine, a fellow servant of Him." And then he kissed me on both cheeks. "Be at peace." And I found I was.  Madness had been bubbling below the surface, dreams of blood and bone had threatened, but I felt them recede and disappear.  

"And now what?" I asked looking about the room.

"Now, you are safe. As Tadeusz wanted. You entered the Valley,and the only way out was to go through it, But now, what few necromancers are left in your world will not trouble you."

"Why?" I asked in perplexity.  But he only laughed with gay abandon.

 ===============================

Later, I found out why. I was the sole survivor in a room full of dead ‘serial killers’, and it seemed most probable to many that I had torn them up by myself.  I told the truth, but even of those who believed me, the point was clear.  I was the woman who had scoured the Pit, and agents of His Majesty’s government who had sudden reason to re-examine their policy that all necromancy was superstition told me that whenever I visited a country on my book tour, all the necromancers in that country fled to another continent. So, I have lived a life of peace, my children for this last eighty plus years.   

I leaned back in my rocker, and surveyed the fourteen great-grandchildren sitting on the rug who had come today for my um, hundredth or something birthday. Well, no, I was confused, these were the youngest great-grands.  The older ones were outside playing cricket. While my grandchildren were discussing mortages and college prices in the livng room.

"Grandma Dumas, is that a true story?" My one young skeptic asked.

"Yes, yes it is." I heard from the doorway, and looked up.  There was T. Smith, not changed one bit.  He still had the army jacket on, and a heavy duffel bag on his shoulder.

"Do you think I could borrow the cloak, I lent you?"

"And I suppose you want a shoe as well?" I asked with some asperity at the shock he had given me.

"No, I still have the shoe of yours I stole. Sorry about that.  It has been ninety years after all." He leaned in the doorway, and Paul The Bald for the last forty years, walked into the room with a dumbfounded expression on his face.  But, he kept his peace.  

"So is Michael coming along soon?" I asked a bit fearful, and a bit glad.

"He said he will be along for the both of you in a few years."

"Ah." I said hearing the news of my coming death, mine and Paul’s.

And then T. Smith walked over to Paul, and spoke quietl to him for a second.  Paul laughed, and slapped him hard on the face, or as hard as a man of a hundred plus years could. And then T. Smith who had shining eyes which he tried to hide handed him a small book.

"That should answer your questions, sir.  About what I am, and where I come from.  I’ll leave it to your judgement who you show it to. But I’ve got to be off."

"Yes," I spoke up from my rocking chair over the heads of my great-grandchildren. "Monsters to slay."

"Aye, Difarge himself is rising this time." He looked grim,a nd then stepeped out of the doorway and out of my life, at least my mortal life. And then Paul sat down on a stool, and began to read from the book to the children.

This being an account of my various adventures and misadventures in the Multiverse, a thing of perhaps infinite universes, and terrible beauty.  I began my journey in the United States of America, a great power…                                                           

My name is Luisa Rennesslaer, and I am running for my life at a black tie and champagne flute party.  My mysterious companion, T. Smith, and I had been invited to go and visit the master of the house.  And T. had responded by smashng the man to the ground, and commanding me to run.

I stopped. Why was I running?  It did not make sense.  And then my jaw dropped.  I had been dazzled, mentally manipulated, enchanted.  Furious, I spun on my heel just in time to see T. Smith get thrown through a wood and plaster wall, and come skidding to a halt on his back next to the dance floor.

His passage knocked down three people, including one fellow who landed on him.  The whole brightly lit room with over a hundred of the movers and shakers of His Majesty’s Ricardo’s Braziliana in residence gasped, or hushed.  The quiet gasped, and the loud grew still which was a nice change from the typical cocktail party.

Then a murmur of worry went through the crowd as the man who had invited us stepped out.  His coat was shredded, and his right arm seemed out of joint.  I looked back, and T. somehow had gotten to his feet while helping the man who had fallen on him to scoot out of the way.

The "inviter" roared.  And everyone near me shuffled back three steps.

And then I heard applause.  One set of hands.  I looked to my right, and there on the curving staircase about five feet above everyone else stood the Master of the House, Mr. De Morrissey.

"Very good. Very good indeed.  No need for alarm.  I just say when you hire the best circus act in Europa to come to your party, they deliver, and boy howdy they do."

The inviter and T. looked a bit uncertain, and then as applause started around the room, they both bowed.  T. was more successful at it, and the inviter left.  Which made T. the focus of questions.

"How did you do it?"  I heard as I edged closer to him in the thickening crowd clot.

"Wires." He murmured, and then he spotted me, and my heart went out to him.  He was to me, and not to these blind fools, so obviously in a great deal of pain.  I pushed up to him, claimed him with a loud "Darling" and shooed the rest out of the way as we made our slow way out of the room.

There by the front door, we met the Master.

"I trust you understand the situation."  He said to T.

"Not all of your inferiors are eager to have the club expanded. And someone got impatient." T. replied, and I wondered what he meant.

"Quite. They will be disciplined at the party.  You can have the first strike."

T. bowed slightly, very slightly.

"Thank you."

"That is if you’re fit…" The Master said with what I took to be an unhealthy interest in T. state of body.

T. chuckled easily.

And we walked out onto the lawn, and past the guard who gave us a weird glance.  Once, there, it was down the street to my three-wheeler, electric of course.  T. spoke a few words which I didn’t recognize upon sitting in the passenger seat.

And then he slumped groaning.

It was awful.

"We have to get you to the hospital, because I know that wasn’t a circus act."

"No hospital. I can’t.  They’ll be watched.  I have to look strong, invincible.  Or I will be attacked again before the party."

"Whats so important about the party?" I grumped as I spun the car about and drove down into the city.

"Every hundred years, on Deadnight, certain powers laid down by the Necromancer Difarge become accessible, if the seeker is powerful, and determined enough."

Difarge. Whew, there was a story and a half.  I’d read several books about him as a kid.  You know, the fiction aisle, but even then, the character had creeped me out.

I looked over at T. and the man had passed out.  For a long second, I considered taking him to the hospital anyways.  But then I thought of my cousin in the French Diaspora, Paul Dumas, he’s my third cousin on my mother’s side, and he’s always had a thing for me even when we were eight.  Anyways, he’s an EMT.

So, I wheeled away from the nice section of town where I lived to the still nice, but not quite so much, with older residences where Paul lived.  I was following my instincts, and they served me well.  He was home.

And he was glad to see me.  I could see him figuring out how to ask me to come in, sit down, and he’d order Cuban take-out for us.

I forestalled this by saying I’d visit him next week, and coujld he help my friend.  He wobbled between being upset, and having a promise of my visit.  But when he saw T. he switched into professional caring mode.

"He cannot see a hospital. He said they would be watched, and he would be attacked."

"Right. Drug informant." Paul said, and my respect for his mind and coolness under pressure rose a notch.  Paul smiled faintly at me.  "I’ve had to drag a wounded person out of a building with bullets cutting holes in the walls, Luisa.  Being an EMT may not pay much, but it makes up for it in excitement."  He finished with a wry grin even as his fingers bounced.

"All right. I have a plan."

And so he took T. and me over to a slightly out of service ambulance at a mechanic’s shop, and used his universal key to open it.  Then he took out a body bag, and stuffed T. in it while making a slit for air.

Me, he had dress up as a nurse, and cover my hair with a baseball cap which was so not going to be good for it.

So we took our DOA into the hospital by the back entrance, and then once inside, we hustled him up to some rooms that were not being currently used.  They were off the beaten path, and with the help of a chair under a door handle, the gate to the path was closed.

Now I know we should have gotten a doctor, but Paul felt capable of diagnosing internal hemmoraghing, and broken bones, concussion.  And I felt a heaviness on my spirit whenever I thought of getting a doctor.  It was like a protective spirit saying "No, thats not a good idea."  Which is nonsense, of course, but then again, I don’t know any way for some psi to throw a man with their hands through a wall.  You read of such things in popular fiction, but thats all it is.  Psi doesn’t work like that.

I should know.  I am a psi after all, and know about a dozen of other psi’s on a personal level.

So I was in deep water over my head, and just hoped that that ‘feeling’ was my esper instinct for lucky decisions appearing in a new form.

Paul examined him on a table.  He raised an eyebrow.

"His vitals seem good.  Blood pressure, lungs sound clear, not concussed."

An X-ray told another tale.  T. Smith had fourteen broken bones.  Paul was frankly surprised that he could walk, although when I said he was a powerful esper he nodded. 

"He must have overrode the pain impulses.  But still, walking with a foot broken in three places."  Paul shuddered theatrically. 

And then he tapped the ends of T. Smith’s fingernails.  They were solid black on the hi-quality x-ray.  Suddenly fingernails of gleaming metal sprang out and jabbed Paul in the hand.  Wincing he leapt back.  Swearing, he let me bandage the inch long cut.  It had been deep, almost to the bone through the meat of Paul’s thumb.

"What is this guy? What are those?"  Paul wondered, and I did too.  So, I didn’t object when Paul reached for his wallet.

Inside was a licence made out to "Tadeusz Smith."  Problem was it was a joke license from something called the New American Colonies, and it was for operating a hyperspace transport.  The money ranged from Brazilianan marks to a "Cashcard" to a leather triangle with "RUSA" burned into it.  And then my fingers, guided by esper instinct found a catch, and popped open a whole other section of the wallet.

In here were over  a dozen identity cards with different names.  Many of them were completely nonsencical referring to things like Bear State Republic; Yukonian Confederation; and the United States of America.  As if the squabbling principalities of the underdeveloped North could ever unite for any reason.  But one said clearly "Internal Security of His Majesty’s Braziliana."

I felt reassured until Paul pointed out that it looked like it had been faked up.  Then the other permits started to worry me.

He had four permits to use high explosives, one permit to operate a fusion reactor, one permit to transport toxic waste of Class D type (whatever that was), and one permit to carry a laser rifle.  Granted they were all insane since fusion reactors don’t work, but still the whole overall feel was very scary.  After all, I didn’t see a permit to grow roses among the group.

"Who are you?" I whispered to his left ear.

"Tadeusz, the Sledgehammer of…" He whispered back, paused and I felt suddenly tired, realizing that I had just compelled a man with my esper abilities.  And then I saw he was mumbling on in his sleep.

And suddenly I felt that presece again, only this time it was furious.  It drove me back from the table, and toward the door until it relented.  I saw nothing, but I could feel a personality, a will in that room that was Other.

Even Paul who is not a Sensitive looked uneasy.

And then T. Smith, or Tadeusz sat up.

"I said, no hospitals." He spoke mildly wondering calmly why I had dared defy him.  So I babbled out my defense and the precautions took, and then he held up his hand.

"You did well. I’m sorry I gave you a hard time."

Blinking as I realized that was the end of that conversation, I watched him ease himself off the table.  Paul objected,and tried to bar his way.

"The bones are not broken." Tadeusz said softly.  Paul’s response was fervent, and despite T.’s efforts, he finally gave in, and just let Paul take another X-ray.

Not a bone was broken, although you could see a few spots where they were knitting.

"Okay, whats going on?" Paul and I shouted at the same time.

"I can’t tell you. I really can’t." T. said. 

"You can’t take her." Paul said with great conviction.  I blinked wondering what he meant, and then my brain cleared.  Paul was trying to protect me by keeping me from T.’s presence.  This was not what I wanted.

T. shook his head sadly.

"I’m afraid I have to."

"Why?" Paul said even as I thought it because I didn’t like that sad look.

"They think she’s my sacrifice tonight."

Paul and I gaped, and then Paul stepped closer shaking his fist, and roaring out a denunciation.

A blur, a crack, and then T. was catching Paul and lifting him gently onto the table.

"He will be fine. Let’s go."

"What if I don’t want to go?"

T. just stared at me, and for the first time I felt true fear in his presence.

 

My name is Luisa Rennesslaer, and I’m ducked down behind a well-manicured holly bush across the nearly acre wide road from the guard who is checking in visitors to the looming De Morrissey mansion that overlooks central Buenas Aires.  Now, why an attractive, you’ll have to pardon my lack of false modesty, young female of the French Extraction, second generation was hiding behind a girl-tall bush in His Majesty’s Ricardo the Fourth’s Greater Kingdom of Brazil is a little more complicated.

My associations with the FE are usually enough to get me, well, that and my looks, which are striking and attractive if not outright beautiful, into any party I wish to enter.  There I can interview my targets for the expatriate paper I work for.  The Renn Clan, that’s mine, like so many others of the Great Families, left France after it fell to the Communists in the late Sixties.  But we still like to keep up with the doings of the French Diaspora around the world.  But De Morrissey appeared immune to my blandishments and the smoke and mirrors I has spun his way about possible commericial contracts with the Diaspora.  We never deal with others, if we can help it, but its useful for the proles to think we might…if they are really nice to us.

So, I stood in softly turned dirt in my high heels, and fumed as less important people than I walked in, including some men I would consider real creeps, and woman who looked like they might be more at home on a two-wheeler than in the back seat of a limousine.  Disgusting.

I’d already been here an hour, and was about to give up.  Only the well-know Rennesslaer stubborness keeping me up this late on a date night with no date.  And then I saw walking up the smooth, just poured last month in honor of the new power broker, the new smooth asphalt carried a man in what looked like an army jacket that hung loosely on his broad shoulders.  On his back, he hefted a duffel bag.

My curiousity was piqued, as the only Army men coming to this party were the type that got a dozen medals for campaigns they oversaw from the capital city.  The Army is where you stuff your talentless relatives so that they can’t harm anything important.  I’ve heard of other nations doing it differently–but here in Ricardo’s Greater Braziliana, this was our way.

And then without effort he stepped up the steep slope just short of the De Morrissey property, and slipped into the woods.  I was further interested, and made my way across the road to the accompaninment of some frantic honking which I ignored.  I paused at the base of the slope, looking at the couple tracks I could see in the dirt at the edge of the road.  The man was very tall, much taller than the average five foot five inches of the typical Braziliander.  And he seemed strong since I had no desire to climb the slope.

So I waited a minute, and was rewarded by my following my instincts.  You see, usually several Rennesslaers in each generation have ‘gifts’.  I can see the unseen, and can guess very well what hides in the dark, and I always pick up the telephone before it rings.  There’s an old tradition in our family that back before Christ came to Europe, one of our family had been wedded to one of the ancient gods, and thus we all had ‘godsblood’ in our veins, just a drop, but enough to make us ‘different’ than the common sort.

The man shambled, no stepped, out of the edge of the woods, and gave me an uncaring glance as he swept by in his tuxedo, and spats, with a walking cane.

"Thats a nice suit."  He paused and turned to make some non-consequential reply.  "I saw you enter the woods."  He changed his reply I could tell to some sort of brush-off, but I continued on.  "I can help you.  A man with a girl on his arm always looks better entering a party than a man alone."

Suddenly, he stepped closer to me.  He towered over me, and I could see his arms were thick with muscle.  His face was strong, not quite handsome, but with a noble beard covering an enormous jaw, and a shock of yellow hair crowned his head.  Piercing, dark eyes quizzed me, and then he smiled faintly.

"No…If I say no, you’ll just tell the guard won’t you?"

I tried to look like I was looking innocent while I was actually trying to look guilty.  Of course, I would have done that.  No one insults a Rennesslaer and gets away with it.  He seemed to find this simple rationality objectionable.

"You don’t want to be around me, little darling."  Ooh, the condescension in his tone.  "Besides, I have an invite."  He showed me a piece of paper which was blank although I could almost see words on it.

"Cute trick.  I thought Swedes were as mind null as rocks."  I said, and he gave me a much closer second look.  I could tell I was being evaluated in ways that I did not understand.  However, I stood there and took it.  I could see it was his way, no matter how rude it was.  Besides, he was not unattractive in a rough sort of way.

"I’ll let you come with me provided you follow my rules." He said, conceding, and then he stepped up into my face, and whispered. "My rules.  They are meant to keep you safe, and in one piece, Luisa Rennesslaer."

The sheer menace pouring off him had me willing to confess to almost anything as long as he would crank it back, and for a second I considered finding another way in, but no, it was this or nothing.  I wondered as I offered him my left arm if I saw a faint trace of dissapointment in his eyes.  This was humiliating for a girl, one could get the feeling one was not luscious.

We walked arm in arm up to the guard, who took the plain peice of paper, pretended to scratch around on the board crossing out our nonexistent names, and then fell asleep as we walked away.  I leaned into the shoulder of Mr. T. Smith as his ‘attending friend’ and whispered.

"You shouldn’t throw your esper mojo out to the wind.  Blow too much of it, and you’ll be toast for days."

He laughed quietly in reply, and then as an afterthought, thanked me.  So I drove my fingernails into the palm of his hand which he affected not to notice.

The long walk up the driveway took us to the De Morrissey mansion, a brightly lit up pink and white doughnut.  It was disgustingly cutesy and I was about to say so when T muttered something.

"Blood and bone." Pink and white…I wondered, and shivered in the tropical night.  We have our stories of voodoo, and necromancers, and the dark lords of the night.  And it was true that tonight was Deadnight, but under Ricardo’s rule, no one celebrated this since he was devoted to ‘rationalizing’ the population, and his courts had firm things to say to people who ‘climbed back into the muck of ancient superstitions’.

I stepped inside, still hanging on to T.’s arm, and was glad for his presence since outside the door were a number of men of the type I do not associate with.  Oh, they wore suits, and smoked cigars, but you could tell they were not fit companions for a nice girl from a good family.  However, T. just quietly asked for some room, and they stepped back, except for one who suddenly stepped back very quickly and apologetically, even holding the door open for us.

I’d sensed some vibration of fury from T., and looking into his eyes, I caught the faint glimmer as it descended back into his depths, and I wondered what sort of man he was.  Several times already, I’d tried to brush him with my perception, but came back with nothing for my efforts.  Nothing except a mild headache.  I hoped they had good booze tonight at the bar instead of that German bilgewater they call beer.

We walked through upper hallways dotted with drinkers and talkers and flirters and I saw a few friends, but T. Smith was not in a mind to wait, and in fact seemed eager to ditch me.  So, I air-kissed and headed onward.

The glass elevator had the loveliest brass fittings, and we took it down to the butterfly room gave me a great view of the bulk of the party that was indoors anyways.  I saw powerful people from all over Braziliana and even a few from the underdevelped Northern Hemisphere which suffers under misrule, and snow.

"Butterflies. Hmm, yes, I can see how that would work." T. muttered to himself, but I have excellent hearing.  Easily good enough to be a sonar operator in a sub, if such a plebian task was possible for one such as I.  Still, just because I heard the words, didn’t mean I understood them.

"I’ll get you drinks from the bar." I offered.

"Really?"

"Oh yes." I bobbed my head in an excess of school-girlishness.  I hoped he would be taken in, perhaps imagining that he had impressed little ol’ me with is power and presence.

"But how will you find me?"  I pointed out that he was the tallest man in the room, and he nodded as if it had been some sort of test that I had passed.  As I went to get the drinks, I decided to dump him.  He really was too infuriating for words with his attitude of massive superiority.  After all, from his looks, he couldn’t be more than ten years older than me.

And then it struck me.  I was letting him control the situation.  I reacted because of his insulting attitude.  What I needed to ask was what I wanted from the situation, and what was the best way to get that.  What I wanted was an interview with De Morrisey himself, and increasingly with T. Smith too.  Come and spill all your juicy secrets to Luisa!  She won’t tell more than ten or twenty million people worldwide!

And then it was like a blinder had been removed from my head.  I turned and saw T. Smith walk into the next room, and vanish from my sight as curtains and a wall got in the way.  I hopped down from the bar stool, and raced over to the doorway hoping to get entrance.

My instincts warned me, and at the base of the wall, I saw runes carved into the stone tile flooring.  By putting my mind at ease, and just contemplating them, I gathered they were just barriers to entry.  And with a mental twitch, I made myself someone who had the right to enter.

So, I slipped in, and saw T. and De Morrissey talking on the far end of the room.  Me, I dropped into a wing chair facing away from them, and focused on listening to the fullest of my rather uncommon ability.

"I thought this was The Party."  T. seemed humble, polite.  That was odd.

"No, no, thats later."

"Ah."

"But Mr. Smith, do you have the credentials to enter this party?"  An unfriendly laugh went with that question.  But De Morrissey waited at ease, the lord in his castle interviewing some sligtly impertinent baker for the job of chief baker.

"Oh, I think so." And then I heard T. mutter a phrase.  And for a second, I felt sure that something moved in the fireplace, and that mists rose from the floor.  Then I shook my head, and it was gone.  It did not have the feel of a pschyic whammy, but thats what it had to be, right?  Some sort of illusion.

"Very well, Mr. Smith, Come at midnight then. We shall have a revel that will make this world bow down in abject style when they realize the power we hold."

T. thanked him, and wandered about the room until De Morrissey got bored and left.  Then T. came over to me, an started peeling my hide with his cold  and cruel jibes.

And then like an angel, a man put his hand on T’.s arm and spun him around.

"You don’t talk like that too a lady."  He doubled up a fist, and T. caught it.

"Luisa, get to the front door, and in public right now. Stay there."  he then threw the man onto his back. "Move Luisa!" He barked.  I ran as the man roared from the floor, and sprang to his feet.

 

 

We stood on the roof of a tower in a ruined Chicago with cold winds chapping my eight-year-old companion’s cheeks, and fluttering the splintered piles of tar paper that some optimist had brought up here in an attempt to fix the roof of this smashed building.  Before us, the Gem of Brightness, the object of my quest which had been aided by the demigoddess, the Lady of the Lake stood in a cannon-like structure of four stainless steel pipes and a near dozen bits of electrical cable, hydraulic pump pipes, and gel-conveying tubing.  I recognized it, a simple laser comm.  Granted, the first one I’d ever seen had been constructed by pyramidal aliens who walked on three main legs and eighteen minor legs, but physics is physics over most of the Multiverse.  Most, mind you, I’m not going to get into discussing places where the basic rules change. 

This was the grand completion of our quest.  A shining laser beam going into orbit.  I sighed.  Such things happened.  People attaching more significance to some lost artifact than it really deserved.  The child with me, the impetus of my quest still stood there with his face shining, expecting gods and angels to come down and tell him how to gain power among his people so he could save them from their degenerate game-playing amidst the ruins existence.  I wondered how I was going to break it to the brave little fellow, and whether he would try to draw his knife and cut my throat in rejectionist fury.

And then my fingers tingled.  I looked down.  The ends of my fingers were dissolving.  I looked at the boy, and he was coming apart up to his arms, since my internal mechanisms are considerably more complicated than a normal human.

"Matter transport!" I hollered with a laugh, and the boy’s fearful look turned to joy as we followed the laser beam into orbit. In the seconds of transport, I watched over the boy because matterports in worlds with as much magic as this one were…

I reached out my will in the glossy, flashing space to smash into an amorphous creature half-octopus, and half-snail and my mind winced from the contact.  It was a daemon desiring to steal the boy’s body while he was not in contact with it.  For matterports have the accidental side effect of causing astral travelling.  After all, the spirit has to go someplace.

I struck again with my will, made contact, and thought one word.  One of the many names of God–this one meant He Who is Pure, Sane, and Strong.  The daemon screamed and tried to wrench free, but I clung to it in the grip of my fury, and repeated that Word.  The daemon exploded, shredded, tossed into the Abyss where it would take ten thousand years to reintegrate before it bothered another human again.

We reintegrated back into our bodies, I checking my nameless friend over carefully to make sure he was well in body and soul.  He was, and we stood in a circular room with a dome shaped ceiling and recessed lighting.

Now you may wonder why I did not know his name.  I’d asked him in our walk to find the Gem, and he’d told me that knowing of the name made one owe kin-right, and gave one magic powers.  Other peoples of course, have dealt with this by having a Secret True Name, and a Common Name, but my post-apocalyptic gamers were extremely primitive despite their electricity.  I’ve met Stone Age people who were more intellectually sophisticated by an order of magnitude than my companion’s kindred.

Suddenly, a hidden door whooshed open, and a man in a long white robe with front and back panels of square-checked velour, and side panels of something light and thin rushed in.  He stared at us in utter shock, and then without a word spun about and ran out again.

The door shut.

I raised an eyebrow at my companion.  He repeated my gesture with a clear expression on his face–How rude.  His hand rested on his dagger at his right hip.  I did not reach for a weapon since I was confident in my abiltity to cause havoc and mayhem.

Two minutes later, four people, in similar costumes to the last, but these had gold chains of office around their necks from which hung ornate assemblages of gem and metal work.  The leader was a male, which is to be expected human biology being what it is, but one of the lesser three was a severe-looking female.  I knew the leader because he had a star of metal about his ornate assemblage, making his piece of gaudy artwork more ‘all that’ than his companions on the council.

The four trooped in a line to the side of the room, and a burst of hyrdraulics, and joined desks with chairs rose from the seamless floor.  My companion was greatly impressed.  I wasn’t.  I’d seen displays of power that made this look pathetic.

"Welcome to the Solar Democracy Immigration Board.  I would like to congratulate you on your successful endeavour."

The leader had spoke, and as he went on I put a picture together.  Their was hi-tech humanity in the Solar System, and they had seeded Earth with devices to try to cull out the useful members of Earth society for their own use.  I could not exactly blame them, but then again, I could ask a few questions.

"Why don’t you guys go to Earth, and you know, fix the place up?"

The leader tried to ignore me, but ignoring me is like trying to ignore a forest fire.  I strolled up to his desk, and asked my question again in a voice calculated to ring off the walls of the room.

"Its too difficult." The man muttered back, not used to looking up when he was sitting on his throne.  "The people are too unsophisticated, they believe in gods, they …."

He went on an on, coming up with more definitions and words, and all the while I smelled the stink of fear on him.

"Just be honest." I broke in. "You don’t want to help your kindred on Earth because one of you might get a fingernail broken, that about it?"

They whole council paled under my vituperative tone, and the mocking smile on my face.

"I think. I think this immigration will have to be denied."  The leader said as he raised a big red stamp.

And the door opened.

"No." The word was melodius, like a pipe organ, and profoudnly inhuman in origin.   I spun on my heels, stepping out of range on instinct of the council just in case one of them decided to jab me in the neck with a needle, and beheld the Alien.

He had five legs, pincers really, some armor plated chitin that went five feet up to my chest, and then bent horizontal to reach the main stalk of the body.  A single blob on top of the body was covered with a mass of what I judged to be insectile eyes so that he probably had close to fully spherical vision at all times.  And then I realized as he twitched it that his fifth back leg was actually a tail, a stinger, and his arms were ten foot long slithering tentactles made of what looked like something much tougher than bull elephant hide.

I didn’t see a mouth, but when he next spoke, I saw tubes on the side of the main stalk vibrate.  It was a pipe organ.

My companion shrieked, and I touched his mind so that he saw as through a pane of glass.  He calmed.

"Welcome visitors to my solar system." It said.  "I let the human council run things in space and the tribes on the Earth handle themselves, but I am the Overlord."

"Really?" I asked circling back sideways to place myself between this horror and my charge. "How so?"

"Right of conquest." It replied amiably, turning to face me, and not the whey-faced councillors.  I, of course, did not know that it was amiable.  With alien biologies, the human biological cues can lead you wrong.  What sounded to me like good cheer, could actually be pschyotic rage, barely held in check.  But you have to start somewhere.

It said no more, so I turned to the councillors.

"The Outsider came and bombarded us with no warning, we had no choice but to surrender."  Something in the self-serving pity of that voice tweaked my instincts, and I reached out and touched his brain.

In there, I saw that the Lunar Earth League had seen the Outsiders coming for months, but out of a desire not to be ‘provocative’ because ‘any advanced people would naturally want peace’ they had kept their ships grounded.  And when the ten percentile  of c bolides had flown, they had at first claimed that what was happening was not what was happening, and then  when it was truly late in the game, they had claimed that nothing could be done.

Surrender was the only option.  One group survived undamaged and ready for action.

So that was how the Board of Trustees of Lunagrad University became the rulers under a diffident alien of the entire solar system.

And then the leader became aware of my probe, and he thought fiercely at me.

"It was our fault. Our fault. If we hadn’t sent all those nasty stupid TV and holovid shows into space, then the Galactic Patrol would not have sent the Outsider to punish us.  We deserve this."  And then he paused with a lip-smacking satisfaction. "Just like you deserve what comes next."

I wrenched my awareness back to my body, seconds had passed.  And then I lunged psionically at the alien, and splattered my feeble probe against his wall.  It was not only that he was some sort of group mind composed of thousands of interconnected bits in that body, but he was dreadfully old and powerful.

I held my aching head as the Outsider spoke.

"I will take the child and execute it."

I yanked my head up.

"NO!"

"Yes." Snapped the leader of the council. "We have to.  Otherwise…"

"Otherwise, you will be in rebellion, and I will attack your system." The Outsider said.

I shivered, waiting for a path out, and there was none.

"I’m sorry." I said to the Council, "But I cannot stand aside."  And I drew my katana since one doesn’t want to use energy weapons in a space ship.

"You already tried once. Failed." The Outsider said to me, in a tone of merely pointing out an interesting bit of data.

I shrugged, and took a firmer grip on my suddenly slippery sword hilt. "I’ve got a few other tricks up my sleeve." 

"Outsider, please, we will send security troopers to deal with this one.  There is no need to punish us for him."  The leader begged for the right to kill me.  "He is just one, will you slaughter humans for just one?"

"He is not just one." The boy said, and drew his dagger.  He then stood to my left to cover my slightly weaker side.

The council stood silent, and then the Outsider laughed mockingly. "Easily said when influenced."  My control was flung loose, and the boy got a good look straight into madness.

The boy shuddered and then bared his teeth.

"Oh, yes, I like this better. Now my heart is in the fight, and not just my mind."  And he ran forward with his small dagger to strike an armored leg.  I did what I had to do and ran forward as well, outpacing him, and raising my sword to defend the child from an attack while I planned to kick with cybernetic enhanced legs at the alien’s legs.

And then the alien flomphed onto the floor.  All its legs splayed out, and one speared between me and the boy to scratch along the floor.  The stalk head bowed and the voice came crackled and worn.

"Forgive me, please, your Majesty. I am but a disobedient servant."

Fortunately, this was not directed at me.  Not so well that it was directed at the boy.

"Y-you surrender?" He said.

"Yes, Majesty."

"What is that name you call me?"

"King, Majesty.  You are the King of the Solar System and of Earth."

A great hubbub came from the Council, and suddenly I felt a searing rage in the room in the etheric bands.

"You question my right?" The Outside hissed like a steam valve to the Council which was turning various shades of red, purple, white, and green.  I gathered this was pschyotic rage.

They grovelled, they apologized, and he let them live.

But then they asked why.

"He is the first brave Earthling I have met." The Outsider said, and then he spoke of depths of time and space.  Of wars and struggles, and the Great Realization of his people.

"A coward is a threat to everyone about him. It provides a breeding space for all manner of evil.  Nearly full half of the wars engaged in can be traced to cowardice–thus any civilization afflicted with cowardice needed to be tested, and tested until it cured or was destroyed."

"But the Galactic Patrol…" Wailed the leader, and I knew what he had in mind.  A benevolent, strong, ancient force with politics and prescriptions that agreed in almost all points with his own prejudgices.  Never mind how an alien super-tech society that is tens of thousands of years old is going to take its guidance from a professor of theoretics.

But the Outsider was cruel.

"I am the Galactic Patrol."

=======================================

 And thus it was.  The council retained some powers, until we caught them plotting against his Majesty.  They were not willing to fight to defend the solar system, or to defend their own children, but they would fight to defend their own perks and powers.

Sad really.

At least thats how I felt when I dumped them into an airlock sans suit.  The leader kept babbling about how the real Galactic Patrol was going to save them, and in a burst of peaceful lovingness obliterate us all.  I declined to point out the oxymoron there, and just pushed the button.

Over the next couple decades, I helped Earth integrate into galactic society.  I even learned a few psi tricks from the Outsider who at ten thousand years old, and a natural psi of the first order from birth sometimes scared me.

I never agreed with their methods, but I couldn’t disagree enough to go slaughter them either for the almost genocide.  Besides, I was pretty sure, I’d fail.

Finally, I was messing around with using telekinesis to manipulate plasma, and things went sideways in a big way.  So did I, as I left that universe.