The Gaming Outpost

I clambered out sideways from my geodesic dome made of bamboo and banana leaves and strung together with cane rope.  The white sand under my feet was cool unlike the glare of the solitary five in front of me.

Each of them, I noted as I stumbled over to my campfire, and dug for a coal to light it again, stood apart from the others, but not too apart.  They were frightened, and skittish.  I had already sensed that they were versers, and by their looks I deduced that they were first-timers.  In other words, they had been living a normal life for them, in some universe, and then scriff, a very odd substance, and Thanatos had arrived at the same time.  This sufficed to make them versers, of which I will explain more later.

So I asked for help.  The curly-haired brunnette had a five gallon container of Haldonson’s Coffee.  I murmured my thanks as I directed the huge guy who was as tall as me, and four inches thick in the chest to fetch a log from the jungle for a stool.

"I’m Beka." The brunnette replied.  "Whats…?" I raised a hand to stop her with my best mysterious smile on my face.  This is one of the tricks a wizard uses.  It makes you look knowledgeable and wise when usually you are screaming in your head for a plan.

The Asian man came back with dry leaves for tinder, and small branches.  The last man, with his V-shaped face marred by a sneer, laughed at the puny load he had brought.  But it was perfect for re-starting a fire. 

"Thank you, sir. And your name?" 

"Captain Tenchi Yamashiri, sir."  He bowed, and clicked his heels, and the others laughed gently.  I didn’t.  I saw the grace with which he moved, and the well-trained way one hand always rested near his katana.  That plus his deadpan eyes let me know I was in the presence of a killer of men.  I did not judge, for what am I, but Tadeusz, Sledgehammer of Justice, destroyer of the wicked, and so on and so forth.

The big man with the thick black hair came back with two logs, quietly showing off his strength, and sufficient to seat everyone, but me, and I grabbed a log of my own where I had spotted it the night before.  Then as I drank my coffee, I pointed at the big man.

"Roger Houston. Second round draft pick for the Philadelphia War Chiefs."  He was letting me know he was a man of consequence.  Problem was that was back in his own world.  Here he was a very strong man.  We would see if he was a team player or a prima donna million dollar crybaby.

So far my plan was working.  I had them following me, and although they would think I owed them because they had each done me a favor, in reality, emotionally it went the other way.  You do a man a favor, and you tend to like him more for it.

I pointed to the sneering one with the light gold hair, that looked like it had been permed, and bleached.  His head was V-shaped, and he was not unhandsome, but I did not trust him.

"Dalton Dalrieux.  I’m a model, and you are…"

"Getting to meet each of you, first." I replied evenly.

The last girl swore, and jumped to her feet.  No, flounced is more accurate.  In her cut-off, recently I thought, jeans, she wanted to make sure all the guys had a good look at her legs.  I’ve met Lady Winterblest, High Queen of the Elves, who rule the Night of Ice, and more than that, I have promises to keep and universes to go before I make my way home.  A gold ring burned on my finger, and reminded me as if I needed it.

"Stephanie."  She still stood, and turned to me.  Another one who intended to try to take over the meeting.  Problem was, I could scare her back into her seat, but that would not work well.  So instead, I went back to my duffel bag without a word, and toted the thing slowly backwards as if it was a great deal of trouble.  Roger offered to help, but I crankily denied the need.  But he still came and toted it for me.  Things were looking up.

And by this time, Stephanie was feeling foolish just standing there waiting for me to come back so she could interrogate me like she was an ambitious DA out to shred some innocent guy’s life on her quest to become governor.  So we all found our way back to our seats, and I held them still, but delicately.

"I’m Tadeusz.  Sometimes I’m called Stormlord, and other times Ghost, and always and everywhere the Sledgehammer."  They laughed, but a trifle uneasily as I just smiled softly back at them.  Captain Yamashiri stopped first, and his hand went to his katana.

I spoke in Nipponese to him.

"Peace. I mean you no harm."  Warily, he nodded acceptance.

"I could and will tell you a story. I will tell you what happened to you, but perhaps its best we do it my way.  I’ve done this before, and I don’t really enjoy screaming hysterics, so I’ll try to make it easy for you."

They shifted, now thorougly alarmed.

"Where are we?" Dalton asked, and I applauded him mentally.  He hadn’t said "Where am I?"

"An island. Now, no further questions."

"Are we dead?" Beka asked.

"You breathe do you not?" I avoided the question with one of my own.  "Now, tell me this, who were the last five presidents in your country?"

Again, they stared at me with disdain.  Such a silly man I was.  I motioned for them to go on, and when one didn’t I pointed to Roger.  He shrugged his massive shoulders.

"Cooper, Bush Senior, Clinton, and Bush Jr."

"Hey don’t you mean, Carter, yah nitwitted jock." Stephanie burst out with her derogation.  He shook his head.  I turned to the other end of the circle, and pointed at Stephanie.

"Carter, Jimmy for the first two terms. Then Clinton, she was a major player in the Wall collapsing after she nuked Havana.  Then Stephens who was her vice, and Dover who was an idiot in the other party."

This set them to babbling.  Each one trying to shout down the others.  They were starting to rise to their feet, so I nodded to Captain Yamashiri.  He took the whistle hanging about his neck, and let birds a half mile away know we were there.  Then he barked out something in Nipponese about "disgraceful childish foreign devils."

That shut them up, and I motioned them back to their seats.

"Okay, what about Jap boy here?" Dalton said with another sneer.

"All in good time. Beka, please."

She swallowed, not being the type who liked public speaking I could see.

"Well, there was JFK, and then Goldwater, and then Nixon who negotiated the flight of the Politburo from Russia to the French Riviera, and then Reagan."

"But JFK was in the sixties." Roger said perplexed.  HIs large face wrinkled up as he wrestled unsuccessfully with the problem.

"Well, yes." Beka replied not understanding his problem.  But I did.  Roger had left his earth later, perhaps near 2000 or even later.  Beka had left in the early eighties, I’d guess.

"Mr. Dalrieux? If you please."

"Its Mr. Dalton, if you don’t please." I nodded calm and slow, just accepting the information.  Worlds where the last name was said first were not as common as the other, but not exactly uncommon either.  The others stared at each other in perplexity at his complaint.

Stephanie, either because of genuine stress, or because she had not been getting enough adoration began to cry.  Roger and Dalrieux both gave her tissues to wipe her nose with.  I just waited.  She stopped, evidently not willing to challenge my leadership right then.  But I could tell she hungered to be the de facto, although not de jure leader.

I looked at Beka to check out how my other female was doing.  She seemed withdrawn, and her eyes were a tunnel of fear.  I snapped my fingers, and said firmly.

"Pay attention."  Resistance flared for a second in her eyes, and then she acquiesced.  I worried about that.  It could be a sign of good sense, or a fading spirit.

"Mr. Dalrieux."  I reminded them.

"Carter, Reagan until they killed him, and then Bush, and then Bill Clinton for three terms."

"Interesting. One last question of my last game show participant, and perhaps you’ll see whats going on more clearly."

There were a few ‘buts’ and an ‘um’, but it was plain that the group was gripped by fear.  I had to keep them under control, but at the same time not let them descend into madness.  It is one of the dangers of the First Transition.  Its easier for a number of people to simply retreat into delusions, or even into catatonia rather than face reality.  I had heard of, not met, but another verser told me of seeing one "Wonder of Science" in a world.  A man who had rested in a catatonic coma for over three centuries.  Of course, he was a verser, and my friend had tried to help him, but couldn’t with all the guards about the Most Famous John Doe on the planet.

"Captain Tenchi Yamashiri?"  I stood and bowed.  He did likewise.

"I cannot fully answer your question, sensei." Interesting indeed.  He had decided I was some sort of wise man.  "The only president of America I am familiar with was the honorable Franklin Delano Roosevelt.  He died in the Burning of Philadelphia.  Since then, it has been Military Governors and Reichsfuhrers.  My current leader is Military Governor Yosi Li who recieved his appointment directly from the Emperor.  Long may he live."

There was a bit of a gasp at this.

"What year is it, Captain?"

"By the old Christian calendar it is 1957."

This brought down the house.  Again shouted claims and denials rang forth, and then people realized that each of them was claiming a different year.

Roger claimed the latest with 2004 Anno Domini.  And then he stepped up to me, and bellowed in my face.

"You tell them its 2004, or I’ll snap your neck."  So I swept his feet out from under him, and dumped him face first in the sand.  Then I put my foot on his back.

"Panic is unneccessary, and unproductive.  I believe most of you should be aware of the notion of alternate time lines.  That is worlds in which reality followed a different path than it did in your world.  I think it should be obvious to each of you that every one of you is from a different timeline."

I paused, and looked down.

"Are we calm now, Mr. Houston?"  He flexed his great muscles, and I moved not an inch.  His breath thundered in his chest, and I waited.

"Yes, I’m calm now. It won’t happen again."  I stepped back, and he got to his feet giving me a puzzled look.  Ordinarily, I don’t get such as I’m quite a big man myself, but he was of the mold of a NFL fullback.  Three hundred fifty pounds of muscle and five percent body fat described him well.  Of course, we were the same height, and the same weight.  Its just much of my weight came from cybernetics in addtion to the smaller, but well-developed muscles I had gathered over the centuries.

"Are you saying there are worlds, timelines, where I am not in California as mayor of Saucillito?"  Tenchi seemed fearful, but I had to press on the blister and hope for the best since one of the others would be bound to say it if I did not.

"Even worlds where the Japanese Co-Prosperity Sphere did not extend to Alaska and California and…"

"To the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, and to cover Mexico.  We still fight guerillas in the Rocky and the Andes."

"Even worlds where Japan lost to America."

"But how, this is not possible. They have no fighting spirit?"  He pleaded with me to make my horrible words untrue.  I shrugged my shoulders back at him in sympathy, but not all that much.  He fell to his seat, and began to softly cry.

I cleared my throat.

"I think its also obvious that you’re not there right now."

"Another timeline. With its own presidents. Great." Dalrieux said grumping.

"Its worse than that. Last night I looked into the sky, and I didn’t see the Big Dipper or the Southern Cross."

They stared at me, and Stephanie required Beka to explain it to her.  And then Beka jumped forward and shouted with great, if restrained force.

"Then where are we?"

I paused, and let them recover so they could hear me.

"I don’t know."

This brought many cries, and some suspicions, and laughingly I said.

"Look, I really don’t know.  Its not like I’m God, okay."

I meant it as a joke, but I saw from several of their faces that they had been entertaining the possibility that I, Tadeusz was the Supreme Being.  If only they knew just how small they were, and even how small I, a multi-centuried being, was in comparison to many of the greater spirits who themselves were tiny before the mighty lords of the cosmos who themselves quaked before the boundary line between Finite and Infinite which none of us on this side could encompass.

In the vast scheme of things, in a possibly infinite Multiverse they were microbes, but then so was I, and yet we were Known.  For one of the prerogatives of Infinity is being Infinite which means among other things having all the storage space you might ever need to hold the photo albums of your 10 to the 10,000 children.

"I knew you weren’t God." Dalrieux said triumphantly.  "He doesn’t exist.  Philosophy proves…."

"Nothing."  I interjected harshly.  "An axiom is chosen, and the implications of that axiom are explored.  But if I start with the axiom that you’re an idiot, and then explore the results which is to declare every plan of yours idiocy, does that prove anything?"

He glared at me, but not for long as the force of my arguement and the force of my personality hit him at the same time.  I took the moment to re-cloak myself in soft manners and quiet ways.  I did not want them to see the fire that burned in me, for they were too much like children, and I could easily burn them.

"Please, everyone take from your pocket a coin, or some other minor items suited for throwing."  I grinned lightly at them, and they followed, by now thorougly captured, at least for the moment.

"Beka, toss me your coin."

She did, and I examined it.

"A 1972 silver double eagle with a bas-relief of …."

"Madison."

"On the obverse side.  Also, ‘We place our trust in the Almighty.’"  The others giggled as I glanced sideways at the recovering Dalrieux.

I put it behind my back, and shuffled it. Then I held out two fists.  She shook her head, not believing she could guess it.

"Relax." I said, demonstrating by sagging, and half-closing my eyes.  She did, and then her eyes flew open, and with trepidation she pointed to my right hand.  And then with her hand to her mouth, she looked at me, and pointed to the others in perplexity.  I put my finger to my lips.

We did the experiment again, and again.  I hid the coin with a magician’s flair in my pocket, and she found it.

"Now, what you’ve seen.  You all can do.  With your own item.  But first, one more illustration."  I tossed her coin back to her, and then pitched one of my quarters to Roger.

"Toss it in the waves as far as you can."

"You have a double in your pocket." Dalrieux scoffed.

"Okay, tough guy. I’ll turn my back, and you can draw whatever you like on the coin with a marker."

He laughed, and I heard some scritching behind me, and then Stephanie came up and put her arms about my head to close my eyes.  I heard a grunt from Roger, and I could feel the coin sailing away.  It plunked into the outer edge of the lagoon.

I went out after hyper-oxegenating, and dove/swam to the lagoon floor.  From there, I walked.  For you see, one problem of my cybernetics is that I don’t float that well.  I used psi to push me further and faster than one could go, but by the time I got to the coin which rested on some corral guarded by an ill-tempered Morray eel, my lungs were burning.  I climbed the coral, and broke free of the waves with a gasp of air.  Then I went around the long way via way of pulling along the corral to the edge of the cove, and walking about the circumference of the cove.

I held the coin in full view the whole time, and tossed it to Dalrieux who was boggled, as well he should be.  Shaking a bit, he gave it back, and now I had a quarter marred by an asterisk with nine lines, and his initials.

"Now, lets everyone try."

They did, but just as quickly they exclaimed that they could sense each other. 

"Did it happen with you, Beka?"

She grinned and nodded.  The joy of discovery, of new powers, new capabilities was outweighing the fear for the moment.  The cheerful mood spread, until Stephanie tried to bring it down so that we would focus on her again.  I ignored her, although I did see the glances her provocative behavior drew from some of the others.  That could be a problem.

Women have the power to drive men mad just as men have the power to physically dominate and overawe.  The world’s a better place when these powers are used in their proper way, and in moderation.  But I fear if Stephanie were offered Galadriel’s Choice, she would take the Ring, and all men would desire and fear her for she would be a Terrible and Dreadful Queen.  My problem, which I didn’t know how to solve right yet was that as a verser, she could become just that.  It might take her a century, but I could easily wind up in a world run by the Dark Mistress Stephanie.

Its a problem for versers.  We have such potential for good and for evil, and oftentimes so little restraining us.  So not knowing what to do, I prayed, and commended the matter to the Most High, and moved on.

"You all are versers. Worldwalkers. Gatesmen and ladies."

"What, what does that mean?" Captain Tenchi Yamashiri asked slowly, and the good humor drained to a more sober level from the group.

I sighed.  It was now or never time.  I could still lose them.

"A verser is someone who has been infected with scriff."

For four of them, lights went on in their expressions. But not so for Tenchi.

"Typically, its some hi-tech piece of equipment.  A bit of electricity gets loose.  It charges the scriff, and charged scriff has a liking for bioelectric systems….like your nervous system.  Its also a wonderful conductor so that electric shock just roars through you."

"You’re describing death, aren’t you?" Roger said slowly.

"Semantics." I replied firmly.  "Look, the closest thing to describe what happened to you is you got matter transported like in the Star Trek show.  And something extra got added to you."

I paused hoping that everyone except for Tenchi had seen Star Trek.

"Don’t you mean Star Voyager?" Stephanie asked, and then her hand went to her mouth when she realized the implications of multiple timelines.

"Right. This scriff, which infected all of you, even Tenchi, wants to go home.  It seeks the space between universes.  It gets there, and it can’t stop because it has your atoms with it.  So, the atoms and the attached scriff get ejected into another material universe with a different history.  Perhaps even different rules of reality."

I added the last bit, and waited for a bite.

"Hold on. Different rules…" Dalrieux began extending his hand to me with a triumphant look on his face.

"I wish to adress my concerns first." Tenchi interupted.  Dalrieux thought about it, and noted the katana and decided to step back with good grace.

"This is not what happened to me."

"Then what did, Captain."

"I was, was asleep.  And then the Ghost Lady, she came for me.  She kills many officers trying to force the Emperor to abandon California.  I see her on my bed with knife at my throat.  I remember the Emperor and my family, and I throw my all into the fight, but it is not enough."

"Did you say…. bite…?"

"I bit her ear."  He says calmly now after his great flurry of hand-waving and extremis of emotion.

"Scriff can be transferred from one verser, like this Ghost Lady, to another person via way of blood.  However it tends ot leak out over time, and one never knows if it will take.  So, your blood is not an immortality potion, and killing people you like to make them versers might just kill them.   Stone dead."

"Okay, rules of reality. My turn." Dalrieux said into the ringing silence.

"Okay. Magic works.  Better in some universes than others.  Same with technology, psionics and body related skills."

He openly scoffed at me.

I shrugged.  I had been meaning to test a new spell of mine I had been designing a few worlds ago.  You see, I know how to summon a fire or air elemental.  I’m not so good at summoning an earth or dust elemental.  This is especially so when I don’t have a pure sample of elemental earth on hand, which is practically all the time.

So, instead of the sacred earth, purified by heat, and then crushed again, and strained again, and then heated again to turn it back into clay, for seven times, I had a plan to use plain beach sand or whatever other dirt came to hand.

To substitute for the major power boost from the sacred earth, I intended to use ten mana wheels, and one Word of Power plus nine delimiting words to confine the effects.  This was major mojo.  Mana is one method of using magic.  One gathers such magic power which tends to pool in places of note like battlefields and the site where two destined people met each other for the first time, but it can also be strained from the ether by meditation, and confined in spirals made of will and concentration.  These spirals are then tied off with a word.

It was the same word that I used for the delimiting words which I thought rather elegant.  I could get two effects for one word.  I’d unleash the power and confine it at the same moment.

Now a Word of Power is something altogether different and more hazardous.  I know only a few of them.  It is the tongue of Angels some say.  Others claim it is the language the gods used to form the univeses the Creator sublet to them.  In any case, the Lady Winterblest, who had ruled her Night of Ice from since the planet was made, I suspect, had been most pleased with me for slaying an ice dragon, and had gifted me with some of these words.

Now, you may wonder why I needed such mojo, but it was that I intended to summon a dust giant.  In its way, the elemental giant is a creature almost as formidable as a djinn lord.  Now, my spell which involved other elements was overkill, I was quite sure, but one wanted to be safe.  Triple redundancy seemed about right to me.  Besides, I kid you not when I say some name me an archmage.  I have in one night summoned the vengeful dead, an Irish god, and a small set of the Host of Heaven.  So, I knew what I was doing.

I took Dalrieux the Doubter out to a clear spot in between the palm trees, and waved for the others to stay back until they retreated a good forty feet.

I then laid down my circle of protection against renegade elementals.  For good measure, I added a circle of purity which would keep out any baneful influences in case a demon dropped by, or so I hoped.

"Wake me when you’re ready." Dalrieux said, and laid down to sleep in the midst of my rather large circles.  I stared at him in disbelief.  Even now, I could feel the singing of power from the circles I had quickly sketched in the sand with my bare foot.

A box I drew holding me and Dalrieux as a symbol of the Earth.  And then in the midst, I wove with handfuls of sand a triple weave in a tight circle while I chanted in Latin.

I closed my eyes and breathed out, and opened them to my Second Sight.  The circles gleamed in my magesight, and the box glowed, and the weaved circle stood as solid as the rock at the base of the island which I think it was attached too.

"Pretty." I head, and looked up.  All my spectators who were supposed to be at a safe distance were standing looking on my work.  Of course, they could not see the magic, but I did note that Tenchi’s katana glowed as well.

I suspected his was an ancestral honor blade which often carried various forms of magic.  I closed my eyes, and forsook the second sight since it would only distract me.

Giving in, I waved them back but ten feet, and then I nudged Sleepy awake with a toe.  He scrambled up, and saw my workings.  And he laughed loud and long.

"This is great.  I mean I guess I believe you about being a verser, but magic.  I’d say you have to be kidding me, but evidently not."

He was greatly enjoying getting some of his own back from me.  I had schooled him, and now he sought to repay the favor.

I closed my eyes, and felt for the spirals of mana set.  There they were.  With eyes still closed, I bent over and began to scrawl in the dirt inside the weave each and every one of the Periodic Table of Elements from Hydrogen to Stenium at 305 which was the last of the stable transuranic elements I knew  to speak of.

It was hard.  I had to keep focused as the soft talk of the trio washed over me, and the breezes off the ocean promised cool dips if I would but put aside my designs for a boring stuffy creature of earth, and embrace air and water instead.  My circle did not keep them out since they were not attacking, and nor were they evil.  But they did distract.

I clamped down and pushed onward with each element getting harder than the last.  I felt my own strength winding into the spell, and I considered stopping there, but I was already up to Uranium.  Besides, I would have to gradually release the energy built up with yet another spell which would be a pain to get ready.

I pushed onward, and as I passed into the stable transuranic elements, I became aware of a beating pressure on me.  It was a wind that gusted and grew in strength, and slammed face first into me.  It was not a material thing, but quite real for all that.

Uncertain of the cause, I paused as long as I could to study it, but my mental searches for neaby beings of power, or ancient runes under the sand revealed nothing.  I tested the wind, and nodded to myself.

Then, with eyes still closed, I stood, and gave thanks with arms outstretched.  After that, I spoke the Word of Power.

Lightning rumbled in the heavens and as another time, the ground shook.  I heard people stumble.

"No." Dalrieux said forcefully.  And I felt a jolt in my soul.  Now, I knew what was the resistance.  Dalrieux did not believe in magic.  I opened my eyes, and saw his fear-struck ones gazing back at me.

"Magic." I said and laughed as the thunder boomed again.

"A tropical storm, you madman." He shot back, undisturbed.  I wondered if it was my place to force him, but then he had sorta stepped up to the plate, and asked for a fastball.  So I would give him one.

"Magic doesn’t exist.  There is no God.  No soul.  No spirits from the great beyond.  If you can’t measure it, it doesn’t exist.  And don’t tell me about love either.  Love is a merely biochemical expression which means nothing."  He took a breath to shout more, and I took the chance to mentally recite the first word on the first mana set.

Energy sparkled and fizzed through me, and raced into the symbols on the ground.  To me, it looked like light, and to the skeptic, it might have seemed a random ray of sunshine.  Except today was cloud-free.

Another mana set, and I felt sure the ground was jumping under the periodic table.  And I reached for another and felt hard, pure disbelief slam into me.  I fought it, I gouged it with my fingers, and I said another word which confined the power already released, and the new power.

The word dripped from my mind like pain.  I pushed again, and gasped as knives cut me through the middle.  The onrush of power was not finding steady channels to leave the body, so it sought some of its own.

"Most impressive acting.  I like the shake and rattle routine." He laughed at me, and I felt hard walls go up between me and the rest of the power.  I staggered forward, and considered stopping.  But the problem with my elegant design was that I needed each of the nine words in order to fully contain the power.  Only a few of them would not work.  And the power was surging and flariing inside me now.  With more power, it would be worse.

If I stopped now, I would have an uncontained flare of probably killing amounts of energy.

"Dance!" Stepanie yelled gleefully at the edge of my consciousness as she leaned against Roger’s shoulder.  She did not know what was going on either.  None of them had second sight or other mage sights.

I wobbled back and forth, and spat out another word.  The power roared in me, and I think the earth shifted under my feet.  Word after word poured out of me.

And Dalrieux shouted out denials.  And I bled inside from the effort of pushing on.  The power was barely in control, and I took the whole flaming mass of which rested in my center chakra point, and shoved it into the periodic table.

But, seeing something happening, and not sure what,  Dalrieux shrieked out a fatal denial.  And the power coiled down.  It struck the table and took the easier path to where my and Dalrieux’s footsteps had erased part of the weave.

Sick with horror, I looked and saw that Dalrieux’s laughter had erased the outer circcles and the box as well.  The unconfined weave which anchored in the bedrock thus took the power, and sucked it down, and began to take me as well.  My lifeforce spun out of my hands like a rapidly unspooling thread, and this anomaly down below ate it all.  Or at least all it could gets its hands on.

It did not have any box to confine it, and to make it wishful for an earth giant.  Instead it created a conduit.

I cut off the power, and suddenly there was a reaction.  The ground shook, and we all fell to our feet.  Dalrieux got to his feet again even as a crevasse separated me from him.  And then it shook again.  And Dalrieux flew forward, and his bare hand touched my weave.

Power flashed bright as day, and twice as scary.  It flung Dalreiux into the air even as the ground grew still and quiet.  And there he flew, and there he landed with his head smashing against a palm tree trunk.

For a second, he looked to be dying.  For that next second and the rest, he simply vanished. 

The ground grew steady, although with faint rumbles.

Stephanie murmured to Roger who asked me dangerously calm.

"What happened to him? What did you do?"

I fell to my knees, and begged in silence for forgiveness.  When it came, I looked up with tear-streaked cheeks.

"I–I.  He’s a verser.  You die, and poof, you’re in another universe."  Then I bowed my head.  "I was too arrogant.  Too eager to show him up.  I tried a new spell.  It failed….badly."

"How badly?" Beka asked.  I wiped more tears from my eyes, and pointed at the top of the volcano.  White smoke raced skyward from it.

"Thirty minutes or less from ka-boom." Tenchi said.  "Do we have any boats?"

I shook my head even as the ground rumbled.

"My spell was connected to the bedrock. I also didn’t count on the great fervor he has which made my spell much more difficult to handle.  When I messed it up, I messed up the bedrock."  I paused, and they all looked at me.  "I wish I had more time.  Know that the multiverse is stranger than you can imagine.  Know that good triumphs over evil.  Know that you are immortal.  Know that…."

And I could not say anymore because a black cloud was racing down the sides of the volcano.  The pyroclastic cloud would incinerate us very rapidly.  And so with the island bucking beneath my feet, I was left to whisper blessings on their heads.  And then the cloud hit us, and we were not there anymore for the cloud had thrust us into the Between.

I woke with a steady push-push on my feet.  After a second of recovering thought, I knew it as waves.  The salt air, and the granular pad under my left cheek told me all I needed to know before I heard the creaking call of the gull.

So, I was not suprirsed when I opened my eyes, and found a tropical island bounded by a white beach, and surmounted by a two thousand foot tall perfect cone for a volcano.  The treeline was dotted with palm, and mango, persimmon, and mangrove trees in tight and glorious profusion.

No other island was in sight.  I set out along the beach heading away from the Sun so that it would be at my back.  The heat had me soon changing to a pair of khaki shorts and a much-abused ball cap, and t-shirt.  But I kept my boots on, and my eyes open for any threat.

The beach bore me to a small cove guarded by a lagoon rimmed by a barely visible coral reef a hundred feet out to sea.  It looked a pleasant spot with tidal pools, and a bit of flat beach, plus a small hill overlooking the far side which would be suited for defense and for spying out the land.

I checked and the water seemed to be receding by inches.  High tide was only a foot deeper into the sandy beach, which left me a good thirty feet of dry white sand to camp out on under the scattered palm trees that grew in the cove area.

It took another thirty minutes of careful exploring for varmints, insects, and odd and potentially harmful minerals or other toxins before I was satisfied with my chosen campsite.  But before, I made camp, I wanted more of the lay of the land.  So up the hill, we, that is me, and my faithful backpack went.

Once there, and clambered up into tree with flame-coloured leaves, I could see the entirety of the island.  It was shaped like a kidney bean with myself on the indented side, and my arrival point to my left, and another mile away the beginning slope of the volcano which even now tossed a bit of smoke into the crystalline air.  The volcano anchored one end of the island, and down toward the other end, I saw glints of water among the extremely dense trees.

It was very few glints, but enough for me to decide that that was swamp after some more careful observation.  Still more study yielded a patch of straight thin blades waving gently in the hot, humid breeze off toward the swamp.  That would be my next destination, I told myself.

At the campsite, I scooped a chunk of coral from the white, cool sand under the shade, and flung it at a coconut.  Knocking off the outer husk against a palm tree trunk, I tapped the inner nut, and heard the ‘hollow’ sound one wanted.  A jab with my long blade, the utility thing I wear on a cord hanging down between my shoulder blades, and I had a drink.

It tasted fine, and although I have been fooled before, one can with proper training make a pretty good guess as to the ingredients in a bit of food or drink.  I’d like to tell you that I learned this in four years of cooking school held by French chefs on the planet Nueovo Paris, but although I’ve taken a few classes here and there, I get this skill honestly.  I eat, and enjoy my food, and a lot of it.

After that, it was a few minutes work to scrape out the meat of the nut, and eat half, and use the other half to do a bit of research a hundred yards up the coast.  I chose a level bit of soft, flat sand without markings on it.  Then I lay the coconut bits out, and walked away. 

The quarter mile hike, with aid of compass, through the deep green, left me drenched from leaf water.  I arrived, and began to check out the bamboo grove.  Two nice long, thin and whippy bamboo sticks were chosen.  Out of the duffel bag came an irregular ball of metal.  I touched it, and the ball unravelled into a light metal hatchet made of memory metal. 

This metal had the property that it could exist in two separate states, or even more if you bought a custom job.  And it could switch between these states with a small electric charge which is what I had activated by the touch of my hand.

Two swift chops, and some trimming, and I had two bamboo fishing poles.  After that, I looked about for sturdier bamboo.  Sixteen chops later, and I had twelve more poles.  A bit of rope to bind them with a grapevine or double fisherman’s knot which has the active end of the rope wrapped about the inactive, and then coil up the inactive end, and tighten both, sliding them together.

The trip back was harder, and I had to do some trail-making with my longblade.  Perhaps, I ought to get a machete when I can since the longblade wasn’t ideal for this job.  However, with a bit of extra muscle it did work.

I took a small twig from the first bamboo fishing pole to be, and held it up at the end of the slender top of the pole.  Once, there, I retrieved the small survival kit with its various antiseptics and fishing line, and hooks and Type FFG batteries.  But only the line was what I needed now.

It went about the tip and the stick seven times while I blessed it under my breath, and then the line end was slid behind the seven loops.  After that, I pulled out the small stick, and tightened the line.  Now I had a knot for fly-fishing.

After that, it was time for the hook.  Here, a loop was formed, and then slid through the eye of the fishing hook.  While holding the line between my left thumb and forefinger, I looped the line about in a simple overhand knot with my other hand, and then rotated the open loop to slip the hook through it.  Once this was done, a stiff jerk, not too hard on the line tightened everything.

I quickly drew a circle in the sand, and blessed the pole and all that it would catch.  It seemed…..happy.  This is an odd thing to think about a fishing pole, but in magic many oddities occur.

I did likewise to the other fishing pole, and then set them out with a fly-fishing flick, and the bottom rammed into wet sand to hold it.  Granted, I had no bait right now, but with magic and a hopefully untapped sea….

After that, I went into the forrest looking for cane vine, or something similar to it since botany can easily vary from world to world.  I found something drooping from a tree, and cut down about a hundred feet of it.  I wondered if the tree had a spirit to thank me for relieving it of the weight, but I was not at all sure how magical this world was so I did not bother to do more than make the customary greeting which is as follows:

I am a child of Adam,  and I come to take but a little that I need.  Let us coexist in peace.

This entreaty or enchantment is especially useful in sentient forrests.  But this jungle had no sign of such, no feeling of watchfulness, so I left it at that, and went back to the lagoon.  There I saw one line jerking, and pulled out a fish of many colors which stank.

Bait fish, I decided, and chopped it up, and baited my hooks before sending them back out into the water.  The rest, I left in a small hollow I made in the sand which trickled water into it.  This would help keep the bait a trifle fresher, I hoped.

Once there,  I wondered if I should check my experiment, but decided against it.  Instead, I took the cane vines, and cut them into five yard chunks.  Each bit I sliced into longwise quarters.  Then you shave the interior gunk out of the vine, and if you do it with enough skill you hardly need to thin down the vine afterwards.

Each bit of vine is now flexible, although not as much as a good rope, but then I only needed it to hold a simple tie.  I used Flemish knots to tie the five yard long cane rope bits together, and as the afternoon wore on, I had well over three hundred feet of not very good rope.

I also had a half-dozen fish of varying sizes, and a small octopus which I had scanned.  It only had a rather simple animal mind.  I used the guts of the cane vine, what had dried as my tinder, and some fallen branches as my firewood.

I snapped my fingers, and cried softly "Ignitio."  The flame started up.  It occurred to me that I might not need to do all this work.  Potentially I could magic all this up with servants of fire and air, and then toss on some glamour, and I would have a palace by nightfall.  But then I shook my head.

I might not be able to do such magic, who knew really?  Besides, this was good practise for the times when I couldn’t use magic.  I had been places where that simple fire-starting spell would have utterly failed.  I needed to keep my skills on non-magical survival honed.

Two small branches with Y’s of protruding subsets of branches reccommended themselves too my attention, and my long blade.  Another straight stick was dealt with by my memory metal hatchet.  The construction of a spit after that was easy.

A thick leaf, a bit of cane cord, and some knots and I had a sling to go over the fire.  Into it I dropped a gutted and filletted fish.  The first of many that night since  I had no really good way to store my fish.

I felt more confident eating protein the first few days in a world since most animals are healthy enough for you, but most plants are not.

And so while course one of the Fish Festival cooked, I began to put up the geodesic dome with the bamboo poles.  I measured out my circle, and cut it in the sand with my right foot.  Then I laid out the circle with my rope.  The shorter poles went first in a curving weave that connected them to the rope, and had then arcing up into the air.

This was tricky, and I ended up having to do it three times before I got it right because the poles kept wanting to pop loose and into the air on the opposite side from where I was working.  After that, I did as much with the longer poles, although it was actually easier since I had recent practise, and the weight of the structure already built helped support the new poles.  After that, it was the outer ring that was formed of curved bamboo at the ground level.

After that, I really had to scramble.  A bit of hot fish to fill my rumbling tummy even though it was burnt, and then I scampered up into a banana tree to snag some leaves.  I dropped them, and leapt ten feet to the next banana tree even as the sun began to paint the sky seven different colors.  Another leap, more branches, and another.  Now, I raced, as I half-fell to the ground, and gathered my bundles of leaves. 

The leaves were placed thatch fashion on the geodesic dome, and secured with small snips of cane rope.  Toward the end, I worked by torch light.  That is, I ripped up a sapling, lit its branches on fire, and replanted the thing in the sand near my dome, sweet dome.

Finally, panting, I was done.

The torch tree went into the fire, and I cooked the rest of the fish, and then tossed the guts far from camp.  Yawning, I cleaned my knife, and then sharpened it.  I made my nightly prayers in my new hut, thanking God for this new world, and asking for protection from things that go nibble,nibble in the night.  For you see, I was more afraid of bugs than bears.

Speaking of which, I staggered back out, and took the coconut half shell, one of them, punched a hole in it, and fit a strap on the duffel bag through the hole.  Then the squirel guard on it, I hung the duffel bag from a quadruple thickness of cane rope in a nearby tree.

I banked the fire to safety, and made sure it was clear of anything that might start.  It looked as if it had enough wood until morning, and perhaps it did.

And then I fell into a deep sleep.

Which was broken by a yell.  I opened my eyes, and early dawn light filtered through the cracks in my makeshift dome.

"Hello, the camp."

"Hey, anyone in there."

"Nah. I bet its abandoned."

"This is like so, freaky."

I poked my head out, and saw five people, none standing right next to each other.  All of them were dressed, except for the Asian man, in what I thought of as modern clothing.

"Do you know where we are?" One of the two girls, a long-legged. blonde in short blue jean cutoffs asked.  Panic was evident in her tone, and in the look of the others.

I checked.  They were all versers.  I cracked a yawn.

"I suppose you all haven’t done this before."

"Done what?" The other female, a perky, brown-haired and all curly lady asked with just a hint of a shrill in her voice.

"A Southern hick. Just what we need. Deliverance, here we come." The tall, thin guy muttered, not quite loud enough that I had to pay attention.

"I will try to explain."

"Domo arigato." The Nipponese officer, if I did not miss my guess replied even as I tried to cudgel my brain awake.

"Anyone bring coffee grounds with them?  Cause this is going to take a while."  I said as I slid out of the dome, and stood up to match heights with the huge, black-haired man in the midsts who hadn’t said anything yet.

"Coffee? At a time like this."  The first blonde girl asked, wondering why I wasn’t attending to her needs promptly or something.

"Its always a good time for coffee." I replied as I walked over to get my campfire going.  It had died in the night. Figures.  And I had a sunburn.  Ow.

The hooves of the ghost horse rattled beneath me on the asphalt leading into town, and I urged it to greater speed.  Occasionally, I asked, and the veil of time slipped aside by the grace of the Almighty.  I just had to be sure that the cream colored car, its magician driver, and the little kidnapped girl I pursued toward Evansdale had not turned off.

So it was that I saw him get out of the car, and walk a path widdershins to start with and backwards on his heels when he walked with the sun as he formed an infinity symbol in the road behind his car.  A quick flick of a tongue, and a squeezing behind my eyes, and I tasted Reality.  The underlying structure of space-time had been contorted into an infinity loop.  You could walk in, and keep on walking, and until dawn the next morning reset the natural order with its greater Clock That Runneth Right, the Sun in the Heavens, you would be stuck here.  The road would unscroll before your endlessly,  and you would ride the same small bit of road over and over again.

I considered Kainzler’s Greater Disformulation as I sat astride my ghost horse.  It was a spell suited to destroying non-physical structures.  But, like all the spells, in that school, of which I had learned but two, it was not in the least bit subtle.  The Kainzlerite School of Reality Modification started by Chief Magister Harvey Kainzler eschewed subtlety.  When two Grand Mods duelled, they lit up the sky for miles around.  When the Magister waved his hand, continental plates shifted.  He had been a man I had never wanted to anger.  You could feel the power crackling off him as he sat to tea in his ocean side restauraunt while his new students ran about running the place, hoping he’d favor them with a spell.

No, I cast that spell, and my enemy would surely feel it, along with anyone else who was a practitioner or prayer warrior on the North American continent.  I’d be jolting people from the Pacific to the Atlantic.  That was a bad idea when he had a hostage I’d give my life to save.

What was worse is that I could be facing a man like Harvey right now.  I did not know how powerful the other magician was.  Still, the twist in reality was soft.  It did not have hard edges, and rigidity.  It felt tentative.

I whistled up a whirlwind, a small thing that bore me up into the sky, and hopefully over the obstruction.  But it could not go very high, and I found myself trapped at five hundred feet in the air.

"I’m sorry, master." The wind tweeted at me, and I raised my hand in acceptance.

"Set me down. Can you extricate yourself?"

"Yes. I leave for the Halls of the Roaring Winds. Perhaps you could avail yourself of that route, master?"

I shook my head, although with a smile of thanks for the offer.  The wind elemental was not bound to aid me.  The fact that it offered to help meant it liked me.  But such a visit would be noisy, and tricky since my command of gate magic was a trifle slim.

Instead, I mounted my ghost horse again, and whispered to it in Sioux.

"Just how fast can you go? Are we to let this wicked man defeat a brave warrior horse?"

The horse looked back at me with a glint in its eyes that suggested an amused understanding of what I was trying to convince it to do.  So instead, I spoke.

"A child born of this land is in trouble. Can you help me?"

I was near thrown off my saddle by the sudden take-off.  Sparks flew from the roadway as hooves of something immaterial but definitely real struck it in a rattle that was more a hum.  I closed my eyes against the wind tearing my eyes, and felt the magic grab us, and fling us around in space.

"Faster!" I yelled, and the horse redoubled its efforts, and the magic reached for us, and lost its grip, and fell apart like a chewed bubble gum stretched too far. We were through.  I hoped no backlash from the broken spell alerted my foe.  Some magics backlash as a matter of course, but others do not.  Those who tell you all magics do this, or do that, are….well, usually not versers.  Not transients who wander the many different universes out there.

The road fell away beneath the ghost horse’s hooves, and soon we found ourselves in the outskirts of Evansdale.  And from the edge to the solid rectangle of bricks that was the convention center, we screeched to a halt.  Sparks flew up behind us, and meanwhile, I searched in my duffel bag.

Ah. In a small side pocket, only accessible in a world of magic lay a small silver pot a ‘foin mannikin’ with a lilting voice, and a tendency to talk by asking questions had given me in exchange for a story.  He had claimed to have gotten the better end of the deal, and who knows, perhaps he had been right.

Inside, was a white cream, rather like hand cream, which I smeared under my eyelids, and hopefully under the immaterial eyelids of the ghost horse.  It took.  And now, we lay under a glamour of the Fey.  Others would see what they expected, that was acceptable.  They would not see a ghost horse with a rider clad in shadow and fear.  That is, unless they had really odd expectations.

A hundred people still in-gathered as we rode up to the convention center.  It had a brick front wall with small windows with dark brown ‘shutters’ and on the second floor more of the same.  Its arched doorway of brick had made it on to the sole pamphlet the town produced for it to serenade the world outside with the glories of Evansdale.  The doorway was a keen thing, and so being a bit suspicious since the cream car was parked so openly in the handicap spot next to the door, I again asked that the veil of time be parted.

It was confusing to say the least with all the comings and goings in just the last hour which was the time I specified.  If I had tried pschyometry, it would have been worse, far worse.  A place like this was filled with emotional resonances, most of them good.  It was the heart of its rather plain and down to earth town.

Oh, its churches were where much of the town’s life occured, but they were also places where lesser groups congregated, and its library was a thing of mild grandeur, but that was an imported grandeur.  Here was where the whole town could come, and gently enjoy the little clever bits of the building, and the nice way it had been kept up.

And then in the midst of girls being kissed, and mothers chasing recalcitrant tots, I saw the cream car pull up.  A man and a dazed, no doubt by magic, Lisa Callen climbed out.  He began to cast a spell, a ward and a warning on the door, but a busybody woman came up, and began to ask him piercing questions about the nature of his relationship with the little girl.  I blessed her as he was forced to invent a story,a nd then retreat before he could magic the front door.

Each of us has a role to play, and without that woman who I might find annoying most times, this would have been a lot harder for me.  Because I could sense that whomever had built that arch for the door had poured his heart and love into it, and it would have made a good power source for a certain type of magic dedicated to taking dreams and turning them into nightmares.

And so, I climbed off my horse, and drop-reined him.

"Brave horse." I murmured.  It seemed he promised to come in as the cavalry if I failed.  I feared for him if he did because he was of another type of magic.  He was of the type that should not be clearly seen by too many people, or he would fade from this reality.  Some magics do not bear the skeptic’s gaze that well.  Others of course, drive the skeptic bat nuts, but thats another story for another day.

I walked up, and then Dale stepped out from the lobby, and barred my path.  Dale had been the boy, a rival, an idol to Josh Callen.  And Dale had benefitted from the rivalry because Dale was a year older, and bigger.  Dale enjoyed competing with someone who was ten percent slower and smaller than him.  Until finally Josh found something, no someone, a beauty named Sarah, worth winning over, and Dale had been willing to kill to keep his accustomed superiority.

"You spoiled everything." He snapped at me, and suddenly everyone who was heading toward the front doors stopped.  Dale smiled.  He had intended this. He wanted an audience.

"Seems to me it was already spoiled. Sarah doesn’t like you, I doubt she ever did…"  I meant to go on, but he interrupted me in his fury which I’m not used too.  Most people have far too good sense to step on my toes.  But, then for the last times in this world, I had been hiding my light under the barrel. Perhaps it was time to trounce this idiot, and show these people….

"I’m better than you. Better than that lamebrain weakling Josh.  You’re just a farmhand.  You don’t even own a car."

I paused. No, it was not time.

"So because you think I’m poorer than you.  Because you think you’re used to being the biggest frog in a small pond, you want to …what?"

He swung. It was a big clumsy roundhouse, and I forced myself to not move.  It was hard.  My body kept trying to leap to defend itself with all the moves I’d learned over the centuries.  I could break his arm, dodge back, dodge under, catch his fist, step inside and gut him with my knife…

The fist landed on my cheekbone, and knocked me sprawling.  Some laughter attended my fall.  I slowly begin to get up, and he raced over, and dove on my stomach with his right knee.

Ow. That hurt.

I rerouted the pain signals as digital information.  I didn’t think this required me to actually experience the pain. And then with him on my chest, he whipsawed me with one punch, and then another.

"Enough, Dale, enough. He’s had it. Let him up." A middle manager type pulled Dale off me, and gave me a concerned glance.  I sat up, and felt my bruised and split lip while Dale smiled in triumph.

"So Dale." I spoke softly, but projected so that everyone of the near fifty people standing in silence nearby could hear me. "I guess you’re right.  I am nobody.  I mean you proved that with your logic, I mean, your fists."  I slowly stood up.  "I mean, you really are the Man.  Feels good to know how strong and powerful you are doesn’t it?"

My eyes bore into his, and the light lilt of mockery in my voice sliced the wound wider.

"Good thing I didn’t beat you up, because then you’d be the Nobody."

"I-I." He stuttered.  And then he turned to flee with his face crumpling into tears.  "I’m sorry, man, I …" And he ran.  I turned about, and spotted Pastor Jorgenson who at one time had been All-state.  Now Pastor Dill who stood near him was a fine fellow, but a bit slight, and right now, Dale needed a man’s man to lead him back into the Light. 

"As you prayed last night, pastor, now go and accomplish the deed."  The pastor stared at me in shock, wondering how I knew his secret prayers, and then he nodded, and pelted after Dale who by now was probably wishing for a way to end it.  Jorgenson would show him redemption and forgiveness, and the way to be a real man instead of the sort who literally climbed over the dead bodies of his supposed friends to the top of a worthless hill.

Once inside, I looked about.  The hall was half-filled, and a play seemed to be about to begin.  And then the old man with the blue eyes stood up from a chair, and caught my eye.  He pointed one age-withered finger up the stairs which led up into darkness from the left corner of the room.

I started up it, and the darkness was such that I reached for a lightswitch on the wall, and fell into a trap.  Around me, around my throat and mouth, and fingers, an ethereral ring of black feathers wove its way.  I resisted, and it gave way, but stretched reality as it did so that I was never any close to where I wanted to get than I had been.  My mouth was filled, and my fingers did not move, and the horrid cursed things wove into my skull so that I could not think.

And where was my angelic protection?

And so from the depths of fear I cried out in my soul to my protectors in Latin for my English was taken from me, and I could only think of words in some few languages the weavery of feathers had not yet taken from me.

"Angeli, deprecor vos, juvate me!"

Which interpreted to English is the following:

"Angels, I beg you, help me!"

Suddenly, there was another flutter of feathers, strong, clean, bright, and the darkness in that stairway fled in great terror as my mind and will flooded back to me.  I looked into the flaming eyes of Gabriel, and suddenly knew.

I had usually depended on them for protection from the grosser forms of attack, but this thing, this weavery of feathers was more than immaterial.  It was real in only certain very limited conditions, and its attack mimicked several natural processes in the body.  Too the angels it had looked as if I had fallen prey to a bit of daydreaming which is a human weakness, and something they did not protect me from.  And from there vantage point, in the Near Heavens, the creature did not exist.  It was only when they had more fully materialized here, that they had seen the weavery.  And even then it had only been a pattern.  Each individual part of it was morally neutral, if frequently unreal.  It was only the even more infrequent pattern that held danger.

The Kainzlerites who adored big magic would not have been impressed, but I was.  This took a mind that thought at odd angles to even use.  I really hoped my prey had not invented it because I’m more of a sledgehammer man.  Someone who could invent that weavery might be able to twist me inside out with trivially powered magics, applied just so.

Wary, I climbed the rest of the stairs, and came to the open doorway.  I checked the Veil and saw no trap being laid, and I prayed for wisdom, and guidance.  And then I followed that guidance, and walked in.

The room was long, a failed beginning of an art museum.  Its white walls held a few paintings which I thought evoked the plain beauty of Evansdale admirably.

I heard a breath, and turned to the right wall.  There lay on a burlap sack, little Lisa Callen.  Tears streaked her face, and she tried to  holler for help, but she croaked out a barely heard noise instead.  She had been collared with a muscle contracting spell.  I was halfway there to her side when I head a small voice on the far side of the room.

"Ahem."  And I tripped over my shoelaces.  Now I could have caught myself, but I didn’t.  Inside I was wondering.  Such a spell is terribly easy.  Untying someone’s shoelaces, well, I knew one spell for it.  I’d been embarrassed to try to learn more.  It had seemed so tacky a use of magic and miracle.

I fell to the ground.

"See, Lisa, all your prayers are of no help.  Your God cannot help you.  This foolish man cannot help you."

I smiled to the ground.  Good, I had met a man who wanted to talk.  The villain who explains all his evil plans happens more often in story than in reality, but it does happen a fair bit in reality too.  People have a need to gloat.

"Are you so sure? God sent me, and as soon as I get up…"

He laughed.

"You truly don’t understand, do you.  I watched you help the Callens.  You know you undid a major bit of my work right there.  I’d been hoping…." I could tell he had been wishing for something nasty, and so I whispered a short phrase under my breath.  Lisa fell asleep with a smile on her lips.  She was convinced that help had arrived, and the fact that I was apparently a klutz did not diminish her faith one bit.  She rested quiet and secure.  It was a side of her I had not seen before, and it brought relief and gladness to me.

"Hoping what?" I snapped out, as I got slowly to my feet.

"Hoping to have the Mom go nuts, do something nasty.  However this will do well.  Its the site of my greatest triumph.  Bob Hall was gifted in a stupid kind of way.  Made people see illusions and think it was reality.  Like little Lisa here."  He hissed to see her asleep.  For a minute, he looked like he wanted to come over and shake her, but looking at my looming form in the dark room, he decided not too.  "Bobby was on his way to being famous, so I got someone to write a nasty letter in the paper about his work.  Good ol’ jealousy.  The writer never did anything on his own, but he was always good at finding something to criticize of those who did things.  That broke Bobby.  Especially after I burned up most of his paintings.  No local art hero for museum, no tourists, no expansion of the mind to new horizions.  Instead, face the grinding reality.  Life stinks."

"Okay, I’m going to take you in now."  I said. " I advise you not to resist."  I took a slow step toward him.

He laughed. 

"You really are a fool.  Dale beat you up.  I saw it.  Too bad I couldn’t hear anything, but it was sweet." He flicked out a Mexican switchblade and snapped it back and forth.  I bit my lip to keep from bellowing in a hurricane of laughter.  It was good that it was very dark in that room, or he would surely have seen my lack of fear.

"Okay, I can call for help."

"Yes, maybe you can.  But no one will hear you.  And let me explain why.  There is a spell on this room.  I put it there a long time ago as I laid the magic for this night over many nights."  He paused.  "Don’t believe me, yell, scream, try your cel phone if you have one."

I did this, and saw the magic with a second sight leap into play.  It caught my voice and strangled it.  At the same time, I saw deep wove webs in the floor.  Tentacles of power reaching from here, and all throughout the town.

"Uh." I gasped and backed away.  The doorway behind me suddenly had a door which slammed shut.  I was pretty sure it was illusion.

"So, I’ll pray…"

"You see how little good that did Lisa.  The problem is you don’t understand reality.  Reality stinks.  You have to climb your way to the top by making deals, and by shearing the sheep on your way."

"Nooo."  I shouted, but with what I hoped was a convincing faintheartedness to it.  I needn’t have worried.  He was so into his own theory that he didn’t notice anything outside of it.

"Reality is that the Shadow is stronger than the Light.  Out of Nothing came Something.  And that Something with go back to its master, the Nothing someday."

"Thats more than a touch illogical." I said dryly, but I couldn’t help myself.

He snarled.  I was supposed to in his internal narrative to be listening to him dumbfounded at the brilliance of his observations.  I was allowed to make occasional feeble rebuttals until I inevitably gave in.

"So whats your plan?" I quickly distracted him even as I silently prayed for Lisa to be bound in a sphere of safety.  After this, I went with my esper sense and checked for oddities.  I pointed them out to my invisible friends, and soon I thought Lisa was unwoven from her obvious traps.  The problem was the mind I was dealing with seemed to favor the really inobvious.  I racked my brains for any other extremely subtle traps that might be laid on her.

It would be heartbreaking if I rescued her only to have a magical boobytrap kill her anyways.  But the problem was, my opponent did not seem to be the sort to master a weave.  I was beginning to wonder how he walked and chewed gum at the same time.

"Ah, well, I’m going to show the town the true nature of reality.  Here in the town’s heart, little Lisa dies.  Under mysterious circumstances that alternately look like any one of several people could be too blame.  But its not clear because clarity would turn down the suspense.  If I do this right, I can take it national, and get benes from some of the major demon princes.  After the sacrifice of innocence, a fire guts the structure, but not enough to knock it down.  Oh no, I want a symbol of failure in their faces.  And when someone says ‘Lets knock it down, and start over’ I’ll be there to fight that, start a petition.  If I do this right, I can keep this a ruined hulk where the little girl who might have been murdered by one of the townsfolk, identity uncertain, for at least five years.  By then, the town will be totally destroyed.  Its heart will have been ripped out; its dreams trashed, and finally its people will see clearly the truth that Reality is a joke played on them by the Light, and they will turn to the Nothing."

"Clever." I said quietly.

"Clever!" He shrieked. "Its brilliant. I thought of it all myself."

"Did you really?" I said advancing toward him.  He flicked out his blade at me.

"Death is stronger than Life." He tried it on me.  "I’ve lifted tables in the air by my magic."

"Ooooh." I said slowly. "Tell me, have you ever created a planet, or have any of your masters?  Because I think they are nothing but degenerate parasites.  Now, I could be wrong…." 

He screamed out a word, and the Terygzygmati appeared.  The demon of corruption raised by some unwise slaves to kill their masters, and which did just that before killing the slaves as well was a beast.  It had five clawed bedecked arms or legs, and a bowl of a mouth filled with rotted teeth, and  a body like that of a wasp blown up to several feet long.

"Tell him, Great One, O Mighty Prince of Hell, tell him."

"Tell him what, you cancer upon the land, you indecipherably stupid beetle?" The demon replied even as I laughed inside.  If this was a Prince of the Nothing, then the Nothing really needed some work-out videos.

"Oooh, um, he said that we, ah, you…."

"Let me help. You are a degenerate parasite.  You lack the ability to create anything, and the very best you can do is to take something and turn it into a pathetic shadow of itself.  Rather like someone taking a nice red Ferrari, and turning it into a demolition derby machine."

"I will…"  I waited for the demon to get within my reach as it began its threat, and then I would gut it so fast it wouldn’t even blink before it hit the Abyss.

"Whats a Ferrari?" Dumb guy asked.

The demon paused, and its thoughts ran quicker than mine.

"Worldwalker. Extradimensional.  There are no Ferrari’s in this universe." It paused, and strove to See.  I’m not entirely sure what it Saw, but its entirely possible that it got an up close and personal glimpse of an enraged Archangel with a flaming sword.  In any case, it shrieked in utter terror, and vanished with a boop.

"Well, don’t I feel stupid." I said with a light smile and a soft menace as I unsheathed my sword, and snapped it about in a blindingly fast figure eight.

"Stay back." He said another word as he backed up himself.  A table flew at me in slow motion, and I ducked it, and flung the thing to the ground.

"You have a misunderstanding of the nature of reality.  You imagine Good is weaker than Evil.  In fact, its just the opposite.  Good is independend and self-sustaining.  Its Evil that is the exploitative and degenerate copy."  I knew they had Lord of the Rings in this world since Tyler Callen had a copy on his shelf. "Consider the Elves and the Orcs.  The Orcs are but fallen, broken elves."

"You lie!" He hissed out a word, and flung it at me.  I made a small gesture and he gasped in pain as it rebounded at him.

"Very well. You require a demonstration."

I dropped the glamour.  And suddenly in the place of an ordinary farmhand who was weirdly good with a sword stood a figure out of the deepest nightmares.  Shadow and fear perched on my shoulders, and my voice could make the brave weep, and wolves cringe before me.  It was the magic a Shaman of the Sioux had showed me.  A cloak of fear he called it, and he had wondered if it was more effective based on the person’s nature who wore it.

My foe ran back into the wall, and banged his head before he realized there was no door to save him.  And then to my surprise, the cornered rat turned to fight.  He spat out another word, and aimed at Lisa.  Here, I threw back my cloak, and the mirrored light of the Shekinah Glory flamed into the room.

Now, unlike most miracles or spells, the Glory can do many things.  It had healed the mind of Mrs. Callen when viewed at a safe remove through the fog.  But it also would kill any mortal who stared at it.  However, I only held the mirrored light, and a rather imperfect mirror was my soul.

Still, it knocked him over, and spoiled his aim.  And then the light like that of a mighty chandelier blazing forth made the use of wicked magic difficult.  His words, given to him by the demon, would stick in his mouth, and he would find himself stuttering when he tried to say them for the Fear was upon him.

I stepped forward and grabbed him.  He tried to gut me, and I shook my head in disbelief.  Some people just don’t want to learn.

So I broke his wrist, and for good measure broke the other wrist.

"Why don’t you call your demon?" I whispered softly into his ear.

"I-I can’t." He blurted out.

"Why?" I spoke as soft and as kind as I could.

"They refuse to come.  They promise to kill me later for leading them into a trap."

"Really. The Mighty Princes of Nothing.  Hmm, it sounds like they are afraid to me.  Course I could be wrong.  It could be some sort of deep laid plot…."

"You’re not wrong." He dried his tears by force of will.  "There is a deep plot.  Inside her, at the molecular level is a binary poison…" He was rushing his words.  "It was held in check by magic.  This magic was so small, and it protected her so ….I’m sorry.   I was wrong.  I just always thought Good was weak, it was little people unable to cope or control their surroundings…."

"Sometimes Good loses, but even then it wins." I shouted that over my shoulder as I ran to check on Lisa.  Yes, he was right.  Down in her cells, two normal ingredients were combining into a virulent poison.  And the worse thing was, each and every poison was shaped in the symbol of the Nothing.  Each and every molecule of that dread poison had its own magical forcefield.  If it hadn’t been so disgusting, it would have been beautiful, it was so cleverly done.  I had seriously understimated the demon.

I took out my pen which held the spell of healing, and spent every drop of its power.  Perhaps ten percent of the poison to be was neutralized, and that the easier part.  I had further spells of healing, but nothing suited to this.

I dropped to my knees and watched helplessly.  I didn’t have the power or the skill to get the required 99% of the toxins out of her for this poison was horribly virulent.

"Those little people might know through faith that it will come to a good end."

"But, I have heard that your God can do anything.  I always thought that a lie."

"Yes, he can." I replied.  "But sometimes he chooses not to for reasons of his own which I trust are good."

"And sometimes he would like too, but the people doing the asking think too small."  I turned to the door, and saw the blue-eyed man.  And suddenly my brain flamed with possibility.  I stood up and grinned.

"Lets go for a ride."  I ran over to get my chalk, and began sketching out lines even as my former foe explained that he had decided to join the winning side.  He seemed a rather slow, but relentlessly logical person once he got past his delusions which most such people have.  He had only joined the side of Nothing since it seemed to be the winner.  Now that he knew better, he had changed sides.  Besides having the Princes of Nothing speculate on the best way to kill him had probably been a deciding factor as well.

So he helped me chalk up the circle and the diagram, and then I stopped.

"Your wrists?"

"Oh. I just asked if it would be okay if they were healed.  Is that okay?"

"Just fine." I said marvelling.  A man who did not limit the presence of miracles in his life by low expectations might find a lot more of them than another man.

And then we finished the circle with its destination engraved, and its codexes of stars to guide us, and the curlicues of gathering power gleamed brighter and brighter.  I ran to get Lisa, and came back to find my old foe, and now my brother waiting with the chalk to close the circle and to write the letters that formed the Words of the Angelic Tongue.  I could not hear them because I was lost, deep in trance, and crying out for aid.

And then we were gone from a material universe.  Instead, we stood on a bridge of glittering fire over a chasm of laughing stars, and a Being with eyes that shown more life, more love, more hate, more nobility than could be fit into a Human, and his wings stretched from one star to another, and he stood there waiting for us.

"Can you heal her?" I asked.

"Can we?" He asked me back, and I felt rage fling itself about in me.  I did wonder sometimes.  I doubted many times an hour.  Why was the universe like it was?  Maybe I was wrong.

I didn’t receive an answer then to those questions, but I felt my elbow joggled by my new brother.  I looked  at him, and knew the answer as I turned back to the Being.

"My apologies. Of course, you can. The correct question is ‘Will you?’"

"Gladly." And Lisa opened her eyes, and smiled at me.  And all I saw within her was life.  "Take her back to her parents, newborn babe."  The angel said, and I sighed as Lisa was given to the former black magician.  And then they were gone.

I looked at the Being whose Glory and Power could have made the Sun dim, and suddenly saw sparkling blue eyes.  Before I could speak in question, he asked.

"Are you ready to stay forever?"  I looked past him to a place where no joy was unknown, and no sorrow touched.  Work was done for happiness, and play was done for happiness, and bizarrely enough one could fully do both at the same time.  It seemed as if Time’s Arrow ran in parrallel here.  Dizzy, I backed off.

"No, I see not."  The Being paused.

"But, but, why…?"

"Evansdale?"

"Yes, is it the site of some great hero to be born, or is it…?"

"I could tell you, I don’t know.  I could tell you that it is just like any other town full of immortal souls of value to the Throne I serve.  And both statements would be true.  Perhaps, some prophet will be born there.  Perhaps Josh and Sarah will have a child who will bless the world with gifts unimagined." And here its wings sagged a bit. "But in truth, Tadeusz, I don’t know.  I am such a small Being.  In the Counsels of those who run the Galaxies and the Universes, I am barely seen.  If it were not for the fact that the King of the Angels knows my name, I might be sore depressed." 

And then his eyes sparkled with amusement at his own playing at being full of self-pity, and with the joy of life shining in them, he spoke in a voice like a jet stream.

"Bye, Tadeusz."

"Wait, I have questions…" I began to protest even as I fell backwards toward another Earth, another universe.

I spent the day happy. 

 The Callens had reconciled, and Mrs. Callen who was heading for the loony-bin due to her out of control fears had taken a sudden u-turn to get back on the road to Sanity.  She still had a ways to go, but she was driving fast on a path she knew to a good place.

Josh and Sarah were doing the young love thing, and although Josh was bitter about almost being murdered by his ‘idol’, he now saw things clearer.  And I could tell that Sarah was trying to convince him to give over his anger about it, and leave the fiasco that was Dale behind.

Miguel was with Mr. Callen, putting a downpayment on a farm that he would spend the next twenty years paying off, and being a solid citizen and finding a woman who was interested in having seven children.  Considering how kind and generous his soul was, I thought he would have no difficulty finding his dreamgirl.

James and Lydia and J.J. were reunited, and I’m pretty sure, all back home.

Of course, this left me as the only person doing the farm chores that day.  Its been said ‘no good deed goes unpunished’, and I was seemingly proving it as I ran about chasing chickens, and milking cows, and tossing bales of hay twenty feet high into the hay mow.  I was running about like a chicken with my head cut off, and all the while, I had Lisa Callen, seven-years-old, and cuter than a squirming puppy, and more full of questions than an SAT test, and also endowed with more calmly stated opinions and frequently unsupported opinions than a college student trying to fake his way through an essay test.

I had not had much to do with her since Miguel had been her favorite, but he was gone, and so I would do.  And her mother had chased her out of the house, so she caught me tossing bales.

"You’re very strong. I think you’re stronger than Reggie McCoy." She observed solemnly. Reggie McCoy was the local fullback on the Evansdale Warriors football team.  "Are you stronger than the Mighty Morton on the Massive Muscle Fest on TV?"

I just smiled, and sadly began to toss the hay bales up to the edge of the loft instead of twenty feet deep into the loft.  And then I clambered up, and she followed me as I restacked them properly.

All this was made slower by her questions, and by her tendency to say "Hey watch me." as she did something insane like try to balance on a rafter she had climbed to forty feet above the floor.

My good mood was evaporating.

She chased me around, and ran ahead of me, and into probably trouble, and so I had to go rescue her.  And then when I moved fast, she complained her legs weren’t as long as mine, and asked to be carried.  I was less than happy by this time, so I pointed out that exercise was good for her, and maybe, we could hope that it would tire her out.

"You’re mean." She replied, and ran out to play with a ball in the huge front yard guarded by the fence we had fixed, but yesterday.

Relieved, I let her go, and while taking an occasional glance I went about my extensive work much faster.  I had finished pulling a nail from a lawnmower tire, and was taking the tire from the axle with one hand holding up the lawnmower, and the other twisting the bolts in the yellow center of the wheel, when I heard a voice.

I looked up.

"Excuse me, Tadeusz. Were you supposed to have oil leaking from the car out front?"  It was the old man with bright blue eyes from the roadhouse the other night.  He had supplied a vital bit of information that enabled me to save Josh’s life.  And just like then, he had snuck up on me without a sound.

I looked out, and saw the remaining family car was spurting oil from a broken line, and that its tires were flat.  Feeling like the blue sky above was about to open and rain down meteors on my skull, I looked about for Lisa.

No where to be found.

I spun to face the old man with the willingness to do murder or torture as it was required by the situation.  He was not there. I flipped through the air backwards over the lawnmower, grabbed a foot-long stainless steel crescent wrench, and started to hunt for him.

The first spot I checked was the barn doorway where he had been standing.  And there in the mud were my earlier footprints, and Lisa’s, but not the old man’s.  A simple rewinding of events in my memory, and taking a freeze frame of my own thought yielded a distinct image of him standing here.

And yet there was no sign.

I wondered.

And then I wondered again as I checked the house, and saw an unconscious Mrs. Callen.  She seemed to be fine, but stuffed under her head was a note.

"Dear Callens, you naughty, naughty people. Now you will pay."  Holding that sheet of horror, I felt the same crushing load of evil coming, and that crystallized my thoughts.

I had assumed this was a world with low magic.  After all, it had high technology, and there were no wizards running about, but still, that did not mean no magic.  It was a good indicator, but not conclusive.

The fact that perhaps a hundred years ago, a group of desperate slaves had conjured a five-limbed demon from the Pit was stronger evidence.  There had to be magic here, and I was going to use it.

I walked out into the yard planning my strategy as my feet beat quick on the porch, and the gravel driveway, and then muffled and slowed on the grass lawn on the far side.  I need Tracking, Speed, Healing, and Power.

I looked about, and saw a saddle sitting on the top of the pigs corral fence.  The Callens owned a horse, but the old nag was not suited to what I wanted.

At a run, I took the saddle, and spun about to find a patch of clear grass across from the ruined car.  I placed it down facing due West by the compass I retrieved when I gathered up my duffel bag of many, many implements of destruction.

Then I took from my bag my Roman gladius, and raised it high toward the Sun.

"Oh Lord in Heaven, make of me thy tool, and grant me a clean weapon to clear my way."  The gladius jerked slightly in my hand, and as it came down, I kissed it.  It gleamed bright and pure, and free of baneful influences and random magical fluctuations.  It was the magical equivalent of a freshly sharpened No. 2 pencil.

"Grant that I do your will, Most High." I said as I began the Calling of the Archangels.  I bowed as do the judokan to the East and spoke the name "Michael", and to the West and said "Raphael", and to the South, and spoke "Gabriel", and then to the last, the Dread North, the Death Angel, I said "Uriel". 

A glimmer of light in the grass, out of the corners of my eyes rewarded my courteous calling.  I, as a creature, do not bow to show worship, but to show respect. Worship is reserved for God.

I knew several different versions, okay, eleven to be exact of this spell, or miracle.  Some placed the angels elsewhere for different effects.  And this was a simple enough spell that I could have done it with a snap of my fingers, and a few quick words, but it was my foundation. 

I wanted my foundation solid.  My holy circle of protection stood firm.

"Angelus…" I began in Latin, and requested that they lend me not only their attention, but the shadow of their presence, and that they use it to purify the ground. A sudden sting of ozone in the air was followed by a breeze pine-scented, and then a clear blue light glimmered over the ground outlining each blade of grass, and then finally a chilling certainty filled the defined space.

All creatures die.

I bent my knee, and thanked God, and reminded Him of his promises to send a deliverer, and quickly, and asked that I be that deliverer.

"Give me sight to see." I murmured, and then looked up.

The veil of time faded slightly, and I saw a car drive up.  A man in a suit get out, and he held an amulet in his right hand.  It swayed, gold, and red, sticky red.  Lisa stared at it, and threw up her arms, and the man pointed a finger at her, and spoke a harsh word.  She fell.

In the space between breaths, he walked into the house, and sapped Mrs. Callen, and with a smirk, left the note.  He looked at me, and laughed as I stood between one moment and the next with the lawnmower held up by my arms.

He then drove off, and I saw he headed toward town in bright, cream sedan.  It should be easy to find.

I bowed my head, gave thanks in a quick rush, and considered my problem.  He might not have seen my holding up the lawnmower, but he might have, and still disdained me.  In any case, he had enough mojo to at a minimum, enchant a whole farm with an amulet that used blood magic.  Worse case scenario, he had made himself an amulet that literally stopped time, and he was a world-class sorcerer, and I would be exceedingly hard pressed to just kill him.

And the door to the porch opened even as I opened a carefully folded wax paper containing a few slivers of pegasus hair, a bit of leather from a whip used by a Derby triple-crown winner for which I had paid exorbitantly, a bald eagle feather (from a world where they were not almost extinct, thank you very much), and the whole was tied together by a miniature leather string lariat.  I put this on the ground, and regrettfully noted that I heard a screech from the porch.

I looked up.  Mrs. Callen looked in a bad way. 

"He..lp." She was trying to mumble. "Li, lisa." My heart went out to her, and practically ripped itself out of its chest, and yet, I had no time to talk to her, and no words to make it okay.

"Stay there. I’m working on something." I ordered a bit tentatively.

"My Lisa, what tomfoolery are you doing?" She insisted on an explanation, and I could not have her leave, nor did I have the time to explain and convince her that I was a powerful magician and miracleworker.  Her outrage at my cavalier behavior had brought her back part of the way, but if she got much more furious with me, she would end up stomping over here, and getting into the midsts of my magic.

So I pulled out a horse pistol from my duffel bag, and loaded it with its twin.  Then I fired the first one into the porch near her feet.

"Stay." I ordered. "Or I will shoot you."  The complete certainty in my head that I would froze her. 

It was not the time for my transportation spell, but instead my weapon spell was called for because it had interesting side effects.

I turned to Raphael and slightly bowed with one hand clearly on a pistol.  Now I saw Raphael in my Second Vision as a translucent being of almost undescribable, no, lets just go with undescribably majesty.  If he had fully materialized, he would have evaporated Evansdale which was many miles away.  Mrs. Callen saw me bowing to the air, but more importantly she saw my gun, and so she did not flee.  I truly feared for her sanity if she fled.

Visualizing the fogs of San Francisco where a certain young girl had explained to me ‘the rudimentaries of High Magick’, I blew out a warm breath toward Raphael, and imitating me, he blew as well.  Fog began to fill our space, and this was the moment of danger.  I raised my gun, and pointed it dead at Mrs. Callen while keeping my eyes and mind focused on Raphael. 

The angel took in a deep breath, and blew.  Suddenly billows of fog sprang up all over the yard.  Another breath, and it was chest high, and almost pea soup.  We were past danger now.  What had been done here was clearly not a smoking fire.  Another breath, and another, and we were totally socked in.  But by now, Mrs. Callen would know something strange was going on, and so I spoke.

"I work miracles on occasion, ma’am.  I’m going to try to get your daughter back, safe and sound.  But I need a little time, and first I need you to wait on the porch where you are, and look toward me."

"Ah, okay." She said sounding shaken, and very tentative.

I raised my gladius, and closed my eyes as tightly as I could, and bent my head to my chest, and prayed for mercy before I prayed again.

"May I have the Glory." I said. "The Shekinah Glory."  And suddenly, I felt light fall around me, so intense I could see the red veins in my eyelids despite the protecting hand I put in front of my face.  It felt like warm silk bathing me, taking away my pain, healing sores, and making me want to laugh for joy.  I…really wanted to open my eyes.  Because then I would be staring into the Face of God, but then I would die, and so would Lisa.

"Mercy." I cried when the pressure, the need for me to open my eyes got to great. And suddenly the almost unbearable joy was gone, replaced by calm, and a sense of loss.  I could hear Mrs. Callen weeping, and I cried a bit too.  But her tears had a healthy, sane sound to them, and my tears I ignored as I pressed on.

At this point, I glowed like a 200 watt lightbulb, and so I cast a shadow of terror about me as a Shaman had taught me.  It was a quick gesture like I was clasping an invisible cloak, and suddenly darkness, and fear shrouded my form.

I dropped to the ground, and with a spoken word, Ignitio!, and a snap of my fingers, I lit the lariat which began to consume quickly as it raced down to the flammables held within the inch wide hoop.  Raising the saddle to over my head took a little doing as I felt more tired than one would expect.

I whistled, a long ‘come here, horse’ whistle.  And then I spoke in a language known as Sioux.  An answering whinny came back, and up out of the fog rode my spirit horse.  I think its a ghost of a dead warrior’s horse, but I’m not sure.  In any case, it settled itself down under the saddle, and suffered itself to be properly tightened.  Granted, you could look right through it, but the important thing was they were fast.

The gladius went skyward, and sampled of the fog, and I bore some of the fog on my blade to Uriel who breathed on it so that the fog drifted into the blade.  And then very cautiously, I slipped the blade into its sheathe for whomever the blade touched next would die.

I clambered up into the saddle with my duffel bag, and reached in for a small flask of penicillin.  This was a very delicate spell, and perhaps I should have done it before I cast the Spirit Horse, and got me a paint ghost, but it should be okay.

I began to write in the air the basic equation that described a healthy human being in the year 2214 A. D..  I used the super-penicillin injector pen as my marker for the air-writing, and soon enough I felt resistance accumulating in my mind as I struggled to remember the math.  It was a part of the spell, and so I pushed on, not alarmed.  The letters and symbols started crackling with all the energy I had flowing to them.

I felt like I could not do it, but the knowledge of the stakes pushed me on with a fury.  And then like a pop, the pressure was gone, and the letters faded.

Now, I held the power of healing at will for some pretty significant injuries.

I dispacted the fog, and road over on my ghost horse to Mrs. Callen who was just now, standing up.  She boggled a bit at a nearly invisible horse, but then she straightened up.

"Go rescue my daugther Tadeusz."

I bowed, and agreed that I would if I could.

And then I spun about the horse, and galloped down the lane and onto the main highway at a speed a normal horse could not match on his best day.  

Acknowledgements: I would like to thank Michael Mearls for providing some inspiration for this article series with his own excellent article posted all the way back in ’99 here on the Outpost, Parable of the Sower.

Introduction

I’m not entirely sure why post-apocalyptic settings intrigue me. I think, perhaps, it has something to do with the combination of modern and medieval; small bands trying to maintain some semblance of civilization while forces of anarchy and savagery swirl about them. Whatever the reason, it has inspired me to write this collection of thoughts on the genre and possibly provide someone with illumination on the subject.

Dictionary.com presents one of the definitions of apocalypse as a "prophetic revelation, esp. concerning a cataclysm in which the forces of good permanently triumph over the forces of evil" and the word itself comes from the Greek apokalypto, meaning "’uncover; disclose, reveal" [1], which can refer to a general prophecy or revelation. Indeed, the apocalypse is millenia old idea rooted in religious thought, with many ancient societies having complex mythologies about the end of the world; a deep sense that creation, in its troubles, will eventually be wiped clean and set right. So, with this almost hard-wired fascination about the end of the world, it should be no surprise that it continually holds the popular imagination.

But the idea of a post-apocalypse, of actually surviving a world or civilization-shattering event, is a rather modern invention. As the Enlightenment shifted Western civilization away from the divine to the humanistic, it became inevitable that contemplation of how the world might end would shift from the supernatural to the natural. As a modern literary genre, it came into being  with the publication of Mary Shelley’s novel "The Last Man" in 1826 [2], which portrayed the last man alive after the rest of humanity race had been wiped out by plague. Still, its religious roots are apparent, as it is often used as a tableau for moral and philosophical discussions about society (The War of the Worlds) and works often display religious metaphors and symbolism (Alas, Babylon). Of course, the unraveling of a society is a convenient method for its literary deconstruction, as with David Brin’s "The Postman", which examines how civilizations fall apart, while contrasting civilization and barbarism, along with asides on things like technology’s role in society and feminism. Most often, though, its the popular conception of nukes, mutants, zombies, plagues, and technological relics that people think of.

Yet, despite these fantastic conceptions, civilization-ending events are quite common. What might seem obvious, yet something that most people don’t contemplate, is that most civilizations that have ever existed are extinct in the here and now, with a precious few exceptions–the Mongols, Chinese, various aboriginal peoples–having survived culturally into the modern age, but whose empires have long disappeared. It is more in this vein of realism that this article will begin its discussion on issues surrounding the portrayal of post-apocalyptic worlds.

The Cause

Romulus and Remus

There are three levels on which a society may be destroyed, the social, the physical, and the environmental. The social can divided into persons (individuals), communities (the social bonds between individuals), and culture (the collective activity of communities; language, customs, traditions, beliefs, etc.). The physical can be divided into infrastructure (utilitarian objects which support the lifestyle of a society) and the physical expression of its culture (artifacts): books, paintings, sculpture, sheets of music, instruments, historical artifacts, etc. And the environmental can be separated into distinct natural components: the lithosphere (corresponding to geology), hydrosphere (the oceans), biosphere (biology and ecology), and the atmosphere.

The most immediate damage done by an apocalyptic event will be physical, with the loss of public and private property, leading to an interruption of normal life and the absence of modern comforts. The most heinous damage, however, is social. The the loss of persons, severing of ties, the abandonment of trust, and the forgetting of heritage drains the lifeblood of a culture and is its surest guarantee of extinction.  

Bang or Whimper?

How fast does the end come? Does it go up in a mushroom cloud or does it come through the slow attrition of pestilence and plague? More than simply adding texture to the story background, the speed at which the apocalypse hurdles at you can affect the totality of its destruction. If people have time to see it coming, they have time to plan ahead, to save something, or at least get out of the way while roars by. But in order to determine the rapidness of the end, it would help to know what type of end it is.

Mother Nature’s Wrath

This category represents natural phenomenon largely uncaused by man and largely uncontrollable, often called an "extinction level event." Whether a meteor strike, huge earthquakes, or the eruption of a super volcano, the chief characteristic of this type of event is its sheer destruction. It wipes away everything, leaving nothing behind with in its area of effect.

In terms of survivability, however, that may also be the chief advantage. Being pure undiscerning physical force, it doesn’t actively seek anything out. Things outside its area of effect may in fact go untouched. The social disruption, however, is tremendous. People die or people flee before it reaches its climax and then people tend to become isolated in the aftermath, focusing chiefly upon survival, not even having time to mourn the dead.

What can be salvaged is largely dependent on what type of disaster hits. Earthquakes are very good at destroying buildings, while floods tend to ruin everything inside them (though torrential floods or tsunamis will wash everything away), though if items can be carefully dried, they may survive. Whereas something like a volcano blasts or burns away everything in proximity and buries everything else under ash, leaving surviving items unrecoverable.

Master of All He Surveys

As man increases in scientific proficiency, so does his potential to manipulate his environment, but so does the potential impact of the side effects. If he missteps, his reach exceeding his grasp, he has the potential to undo the world.

That being the general truth, the specifics of such an apocalypse varies with the technological level of the society. Ancient societies most often extinguished themselves through the destruction of the food supply, often by overworking the land, as most experts believed happened to the Mayans. By the time you reach the nuclear age, you enter an era where man can plausibly initiate sudden cataclysmic events. Such was the concern of some Manhattan Project scientists before the detonation of the first atomic bomb, who worried that the warhead would ignite the atmosphere, leading to a cascade effect and the immolation of the entire planet.

In the context of current technology, the possibilities become even more exotic, whether the product of secret weapons research or an arcane physics experiment buried in the bowels of a university. But in order to be considered apocalyptic, it has to, by definition, be something that those who unleashed it can not avert. At best, you can get out of the way. At worst, you never see it coming.

Who Let the Dogs Out?

War, for the purposes of the discussion, will be defined as a conflict between between differing cultures or societies, which excludes civil war under this category.

Total armed conflict has been called the lowest state of man and it is perhaps the most direct of apocalyptic events, because the forces at work are intentionally killing and destroying as their first objective. Looking at the body counts and the sheer devastation left behind after any great conflict, it is right that it is the most consistently feared. its chief causes are most often economic, political, or territorial, with religious conflicts coming at the bottom of the list. The chief threat of war as an apocalyptic event is the destruction of infrastructure, such as utilities, medical services, food storage, etc., which are the physical backbone of any society. Cultural artifacts are also particularly at risk, as they usually sit on public display in urban areas, which are often the largest targets of large scale warfare.

War in the pre-modern period was quite prevalent, though ancient societies could weather decades or even centuries of sporadic conflict before collapse, though there are quite a few examples of civilizations being laid waste: Carthage at the hands of Rome, Israel at the hands of Babylon, or the Canaanites and the hands of the Israelites. But these events most often required successive campaigns stretched over months or years. With the advent of industrialization, war became more efficient and destructive; where once an entire war snuffed out tens or hundreds of thousands of lives, modern industry made it possible to wipe away millions in days.

However, this type of sustained mass military conflict could only be maintained by large economically robust nation states with well developed militaries. Smaller nations might be able to develop well equipped forces, with most of those materials being imported, but without a large industrial base, such forces were "one shot" solutions.

Yet that most grim symbol of industrial war, weapons of mass destruction, would change the formula. Chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons finally made it possible for man to generate destructive power on par with Mother Nature. So, with the introduction of WMDs, smaller nations now obtained the means to severely, perhaps apocalyptically, wound larger ones who wielded large conventional forces.

But these types of weapons also introduced the threat of staying long after their deployment. Weaponized diseases would continue to spread, chemicals would linger in residue, and nuclear warheads being the worst of all; radiation, fallout, and nuclear winters.

Exposure would undoubtedly kill off large numbers of people, but the actual percentage will depend upon the safety knowledge and preparation of the general public. In the case of a nuclear attack, simply staying in doors will block the majority of exposure as lethal levels of radiation drop off by about 99% over several days. If the public lacks knowledge like this, it is bound to multiply deaths by several fold.

Many will feel the need to leave the area of effect, either before or after an attack (depending on the amount of warning), but it will also isolate pockets of the population as they dig in and weather it out. For both, lingering effects and further attacks will slow down day to day activities to a crawl, as extra care will have to be taken. In the worst case scenario, any densely populated area will is statistically likely to see more than a few survivors. With communication disrupted, the population tossed about, quality of life diminishing in the increasing absence of modern luxuries, the loss of infrastructure, and the physical and psychological attrition of warfare, a society risks becoming threadbare and falling apart at the seams.

Locusts and Boils

While plagues most often include pathogens unseen by the human eye, it also encompasses any species who breeds voraciously and whose migration results massive destruction. The common denominator of all plagues is that they begin as epidemics, or starting out at a central point and spreading outward. A major risk is that they may become pandemics, taking root in multiple locations and spreading from those points, or covering an entire area and moving as a wave.

Most plagues attack biological targets–people, animals, or plants–whether disease-causing pathogens like Ebola or Small Pox (or alien pathogens, like The Andromeda Strain), or higher species like locusts or mice, which often attack crops and food stores. However, in some cases, specimens can also destroy non-biological or non-living targets, such as the pseudo-naturally explained dragons of Reign of Fire, or the space bacteria which consumed all cellulose-based paper in Memoirs Found in a Bathtub

The are two chief social dangers caused by a plague. The first, like WMDs, is the isolation caused by a plague, in which physical barriers of some type will be raised to separate the safe/uninfected from the outside, whether they be checkpoints to screen infected from uninfected or the force field cities of Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within. The second is the resulting paranoia, either of the danger outside or of the danger posed by the infected, both of which are amplified by physical isolation, creating yet a third fear of the unknown. In "Memoirs Found in a Bathtub", the paranoia of a hermetically sealed community grows over the centuries to such an extent that the fear of the outside makes them believe that the entire world consists only of the interior of their bunker.

 
A House Divided

Social upheaval, as differentiated from war, is not the all out armed conflict between separate societies, but conflict with in a society (including civil war). Often, there is no one cause, but rather a confusing array of internal forces. Of course it is part and parcel for an apocalyptic event, but is probably one of the least used as a main cause for a society’s collapse. Yet, like war, it can be the most total in its destruction. An army or a mob may be more persistent and systematic in its destruction of infrastructure and the artifacts of culture–destroying buildings or burning books–than a natural disaster. Most of all, it attacks its social bonds, which are the very bedrock of a society. A community with an external threat may band together, uniting against a foe or weathering the cataclysm. But when you can’t trust your neighbor, civil society has already begun going out the window.

Even as the byproduct of an earlier event, social upheaval can still be the principal cause of a society’s collapse. In "The Postman", it wasn’t the nuclear warheads or biological weapons the Soviets rained down (or the plagues and nuclear winters that resulted), but rather the atmosphere of paranoia that saw many turning to militaristic survivalism and turning against their neighbors. Small towns became walled fortresses to hold the bandits and outlaws at bay. A democratic republic was transformed into a neo-feudalist society, doing what the most powerful weapons of man had failed to do.

The main types of causes, other than the general disruption of society, a fivefold: economic, political, religious, societal (between economic, ethnic, ideological, or other groupings in a society), and moral. The reality is that while any of one of these types may be a principal cause, every society, from tribe to empire is interconnected, so that one aspect of upheaval affects all others.

The Roman Empire, as a quasi-modern state, serves as a good historical example. Politically, you had the violent transition from Republic to Empire, replacing its republican institutions with the monarchy of the Caesars, whose long succession proved as volatile as its Senate was stable. This lead to economic upheaval, as a long line of monarchs repeatedly drained public coffers throughout Rome’s later history, with Nero perhaps being the most famous of them. In trying to rebuild Rome (coinciding with, or perhaps initiating, his descent into insanity), after a fire had razed fourteen of its eighteen districts, Nero nearly taxed the Empire into oblivion, leaving many to starve. He eventually resorted to ordering the heads of the most powerful families in Rome to commit suicide and change their wills so that Nero inherited their fortunes. In turn, the social and political consequences were staggering, but one of the most religious consequence was a dramatic break with tradition when the Senate ordered his execution. Nero, being a descendant of Julius Caesar, was believed to have been part of the bloodline chosen by the gods to rule. This undoubtedly set a precedent, both for the ruling powers and general society, that reverberated through generations. One of the other precedents set during Nero’s reign, followed by many Caesars thereafter, was his decadence.

Moral upheaval, or rather, moral decay, occurs when decadence and corruption filter through the whole society, sometimes from the bottom up, but most often from the the top down. When it is "bottom up", the effects of excess wealth often leads to vice, hedonism, and the decay of its moral norms, to the point that a society no longer has sufficient political will or social coherence to preserve itself, either internally from increasing corruption and crime or some secondary force, often external (like an invading army). "Top down" corruption occurs when the state grows so large and powerful, that it deforms and interrupts the natural institutions of a society, while the accumulation of power leads to its misuse and widespread political corruption, as is often portrayed in the fictional dystopic societies or seen in very real police states like the Soviet Union, the People’s Republic of China, or North Korea. Eventually, a society collapses under the weight of its own rot.

 
Alien Space Bats

This is the unknown, sometimes unexplainable, world-ending events that remain beyond human calculation or explanation. Since it is so such an open ended subject, we’ll discuss the most commonly used in this category, alien invasion.

The reasons for invasion can be manifold. Some of the common ones are: They want to conquer us, adding us or our world (sans our species) to their empire; Their world is dying and they need another hospitable world to live on; They want to harvest us for one reason or another; We pose some type of threat, either current or future, et al.

Obviously, aliens who can travel from their home world and have a force capable of conquering our entire planet are formidable and most likely more technologically advanced than us. In which case, our options are limited. We can throw waves of soldiers and weapons at them, hoping to win a war of attrition, we can try and outmaneuver them, hoping to utilize a weakness they didn’t account for, or we can obtain their own weapons and use it against them.

The actual consequences of such an apocalyptic event are largely the same as regular warfare, undoubtedly amplified by the disparity between our forces and theirs, mixed with any issues unique to that alien species.

Voting With Their Feet

Along with other psycho-social consequences of an impending apocalypse–paranoia, violence, suicide, abandonment of inhibitions, etc.–movement of populations is perhaps the most significant, but least thought of. Refugees flee the places of danger, often dense urban areas and "head for the hills," settling in more rural areas and digging in. Historically, we can see this the decline of the Mayan civilization and the abandonment of their great cities in the North, while more rural settlements in the South experienced population surges. But after these initial movements, isolation sets in and fortification results as lawlessness increases, as happened with Rome late in her history. Distant outposts, once open places of bustling trade, erected heavy walls of stone as the political and military reach of Rome at the out edges of its empire receded. We’ll discuss more of this in parts two and three.

Mother Earth

The natural environment both supports and destroys man’s society. The workings of our atmosphere gives climates and weather that sustain crops, provide power (wind and solar energy), effect the traffic patterns of everything people to aircraft, determine breathability of the air, and so on. Or it can destroy with wind and water through hurricanes, tornadoes, torrential, and a myriad of other phenomena. Our hydrosphere and and lithosphere encompass the oceans and soils which sustain the biosphere, but from these also originate earthquakes and floods.

So, just as each affect society, so each in turn affect the others. A volcano can change to topography of the surrounding land, sending waves crashing inland. It can spew ash and toxic fumes into the air, which blots out the sun, causes acid rain, and kills wildlife by choking or burying it.

This interconnectedness modifies and amplifies the initial of severity of an apocalypse. The long term damage comes from how it affects the biosphere, which includes both domesticated and wild species. Most directly, this concerns how many living things are killed, but effects in weather patterns, geography, and toxin levels after the fact determine what type of environment the survivors have to sustain themselves in. Shifts in temperature or soil conditions may cause changes in the distribution of plant species, affecting food supplies for herbivores, which in turn affect the number of available prey for carnivores. Specialists may see the diminishing or disappearance of their niche, while omnivores and other generalist species may adapt more readily and take over. Still, the disappearance of particular specialists means loosing "lynch pin" species which provide vital balance for connections in the ecosystem, whether it be a predator which keeps down the population of a fast breeding prey or an insect which pollinates a particular plant.

These animals, whose distribution and migration patterns have dramatically changed, pass through regions they don’t normally dwell in and may be pushed into human-developed areas, where in the absence of humans they may take up permanent residence. In addition, domestic species are left to their own devices. Loosing the contact wand protection of humans, those domestic animals that don’t die for lack of survival instincts will typically go feral, falling back on more natural patterns of behavior, but also sometimes lacking a fear of humans possessed their wild cousins, making them an increased danger to refugees or those who stay behind. Wild animals in captivity or exotic pets will also escape their enclosures, start breeding, and establish a presence, as has happened flocks of wild parrots in temperate climates, or more dramatically, with pythons in Florida, which are now showing up all over the state, In the wake of these dramatic changes, native wild species will now have more competition.

In some cases, the consequences of an event can be beneficial, resulting in hormesis, or some similar effect. After the first atom bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, the exposure to beta radiation caused a dramatic increase in the growth rate of plant life in the area. For humans who experienced minor exposure to the radiation of the bomb, it has been shown in studies that they experienced an overall increase in quality of health, with lifespans longer than the statistical average.

So, what does this all mean for the survivor? Besides experiencing the total breakdown of physical infrastructure and the disarray of an environment in the wake of a disaster, you have to face a harsher wilderness and more dangerous wildlife, which is also looking to survive. As processed foods become scarce, survivors way seek out crops and farm animals for more food, but left untended, they may break out and crops, often requiring more intervention than wild plants, will rot or suffer infestations by insects, mold, bacteria, and other organisms. People will now have to hunt wild game, which will become a task of trial and error. And if the first Europeans who settled in North America can give us any indication, many will die from starvation and disease.

Will discuss more fully the transformation of man and his world in parts two and three.

Sources:

1. Language Log, "Apocalypto: Raising linguistic hackles"
2. Wikipedia, "Apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction"

I stayed on the Callen Farm with two other itinerant workers, James and Miguel, and got Saturday evenings off unless Mrs. Callen arranged to pitch a fit about something that was ‘not right’ and then Mr. Callen agreed to stay and try to fix it.  We never actually did any work at such times, but rather stood around and stared at the OIC, object-in-question, and advanced various theories as to what was broken with the tractor, or the clothes dryer or the telephone this month.  This seemed to be the compromise worked out between the Callen husband-and-wife team without words to spoil it because it was a tawdry deal.

Needless to say, this griped on me a great deal.  I am used to being free, more free than most other men, and I particularly find wasting my time to be terrible.  But upon mentioning this to Miguel, he laughed.

"We work hard. Relax.  The work will be there tomorrow. Besides, why do you think Mrs. Callen does this?"  I’d thought she did it because she was frustrated about how so many things around her house were out of order, and it was her way of punishing her husband for not fixing them.  But then I saw better, her ‘spontaneous and unplanned outbursts’ were for keeping us, especially her husband at home.  Those nights when we left for James particularly who drank much, and fought much at the Silver Stallion, a local bar whose name reminisced about an antique bit of history, a local desperado who had defied the law for a few weeks, and been blown up into a great hero, and for Miguel who went to a nice country restauraunt and tried to catch the eyes of the pretty waitresses, and for me who wandered and read and prayed long into the night over things here like the town of Evansdale, and far, far away, and thus these were the times when Mrs. Callen was alone with her children.  Her husband thought of it as bowling night for him, and so she was alone out at the edge of what some sensitive souls might call ‘nowhere’.

Me it did not affect that way, but then again, I had stood at the edge of an Abyss that had no bottom, and seen the glowing eyes of the Dyzrimati striving to climb out after the Host of Heaven had thrust them in. I thought of the surrounding country as a rather pleasant farmland, but I could see in her eyes as she looked out across the flat plains, a fear.  And so she made herself busy, and loud, and painful to be around in order to quiet her fear of the land, and of the future which could only bring more pain. 

And that understanding brought and end to my fire.  She was fear, wrapped in terror, and esconced on a bed of propitiation to a pitiless Fate.  I doubted much if she had beheld a single pleasant hour where uncomplicated happiness touched her life in the last ten years.  But still despite my pity, I am not a man to sit about and do nothing.   And even more so my tears for her motivated me.  And so I sought wisdom from Above and from my history in how to make things work better.

And so when her complaints turned to the overgrown fence out front, I set with a will to work.  To my surprise, so did Josh after but a few moments.  Slightly ill at us, the other three men, Mr. Callen, James and Miguel did so as well.

We clipped the greening vines, and the old thorn strands of brown, and took an axe to two sprightly trees of fifteen feet in height, and six inches in diameter.  Once we set to work, it was done with surprising quickness.

And thus, Mrs. Callen came to criticize us, and before she spoke I knew her words.

"Thank you for coming out, ma’am. We’re taking a break before we straighten the posts, and tighten the barbed wire.  Thank you so much for coming out to offer us some of your very good lemonade."

She stood dumbstruck, and then managed a feeble reply that we needed to make sure we removed one rotted post, and got a good new one, mind you.  And then defeated, she left which was not how I intended to leave her.

James and Miguel giggled quietly, and Mr. Callen gave me a slow, measuring look as if he wondered what I was up too.  But it was with a will that we set out on the task, and Mr. Callen did none of his usual "I can’t find the tool, and so I must go and sit in the house for twenty minutes" of wasting time that he usually did on such late Saturday afternoons while we stood and waited for him.  The one time we needed a tool, Josh ran and got it right quick, at a near sprint.

I raised an eyebrow at Miguel.

"Sarah." He murmured back.  This meant little to me, except…Josh was a healthy young man, and Sarah was a female’s name…duh.  Hmm, this could complicate things.   Now I knew why Josh was so eager to leave the house tonight. 

Mr. Callen showed me how to use the line tighteners, as it had been a century or so since I’d used one, and we reposted the posts.  The rotten one we replace with a trunk of one of the trees we had chopped down, after bathing its foot in a toxic black gunk that I’d hesitate to dowse my worst enemy in.

And then little Lisa, all of seven years old, came up to say a few words.

"Mommy’s crying."

Mr. Callen gave me a harsh look, and left for the house at a shambling run.  I waited until he was in, to head to the house myself.

A few steps up the wide, but sagging steps, and into the front of the house.  In the living room, I called out.

"Tell her not to worry so much. The Steak Palace doesn’t worry so much about which dress is right."

Note, I was doing something very hazardous and tricky.  Interfering between a man and his wife is downright dangerous.  Even the most mild and reasonable fellow is likely to get a little testy when someone pokes their nose in.

Mr. Callen stuck his head out into the hallway.

"Say what?"

"Well, I mentioned to one of the children to make sure to tell  you that I was taking you both to the Palace tonight."

I was dancing on the edge of being dishonest here.  Subtlety and normal human reactions are not my usual forte’.  I had said I was taking the family, but ‘you both’ is a subset of ‘family’ so I was technically accurate.  And I was sure that Josh wanted Sarah-time, so…

"We didn’t hear of this." Mr. Callen said skeptically, his face slightly darkening.

"The Palace…?" I heard breathed out by Mrs. Callen like I was talking of Heaven and its Pearly Gates instead of a rather ordinary wagon-wheel bestrung establishment where the manager also wore a cowboy hat, and the food tended toward steak and fish and potatoes.  But frequently glamor is in the expectations of the mind rather than in the actual site, or perhaps all sites have glamor to the eyes that can see.  For it is true, Glory sits but a thin veil away behind the most common leaf in a tree, and the faded wallpaper of the room I stood in as a supplicant.

Mr. Callen made a face while I wandered in thought, and I smiled.

"I told Tyler." I said truthfully enough. Of course, Tyler was eleven, and a perfect example of ‘in one ear and out the other.’  The words of the adults in his life made so little impression on him that he might as well have been adopted by ghosts who cooked, and supervised his chores, and he would have likely not noticed.

I heard some excited babble from the other room, and Mr. Callen got pulled into the room.  Soon enough, a tear-streaked, but properly dressed woman came out of the room, and grandly informed me that they would be ready in an hour, and I was to please make sure to shower before going.  Then she paused, and there was a confused look on her face for a couple seconds.

"Thank you, Tadeusz." She said, and then fled back to her room.  I smiled faintly to myself, laughing inside at, as Shakespeare put it, what fools we mortals be, and went out to see that Miguel and James had finished up.  They were slowly toting tools back to the workshed when I walked up.

Josh was taking my hot water in the shower in the barn.  He wanted to present his mother with him fully dressed, a fait accompli.

"Miguel, how deep and insightful into the future are you?"

He looked at me with a thoughtful glance, and then smiling asked me just how badly the favor I wanted was going to hurt.  So, I told him I wanted him to stay here and babysit Tyler and Lisa, and whats more, volunteer to do this.

He groaned, but cheerfully for Miguel was truly a kind man.

In ways, he had gotten the worst end of the day.  He had worked hard, and instead of relaxation, he would have to work more while the others played.

"How is this about the future? Granted, the farmers need a night out, but …" James grumped which I thought unfair because he was not the one paying a price, but then perhaps he was paying since he wanted justice in a world not frequently overrun with it.

"What happens if you heal an apple tree, my friend?" Miguel asked, and James paused, and then he laughed.

"Better you than me.  I know of a cold one or three that has my name on it. " And so he left for town on his motorcycle without another word.

And so it was when a car filled with laughing youngsters pulled up, and Josh came out nicely dressed in pressed jean shirt and black pants that the driver mocked and told him that his mother would not let him go.  I saw beyond the driver, a hulking young man, to a slim beauty in the back seat whose eyes fluttered up to Josh and down nervously.

And then Mrs. Callen came down the steps in all her glory, followed by a dark jacketed Mr. Callen.

"Of course, Dale, I’m letting Josh go." She bent Josh’s head to her mouth, and kissed him, and whispered a few words.

He smiled faintly, and climbed in back. The driver zoomed the car in reverse, and spun it out into the road to an accompaniment of girlish shrieks and boyish bellows.

"That Dale." Mr. Callen said softly.

"He’s always competed with Josh, and Josh always took the charge too. Even though Dale was a year older and bigger."

"Seemed to me like Dale wanted to compete with someone he knew he could beat, but Josh never listened to me when I said that. Always thought the sun and moon rose on Dale’s shoulders." Mr. Callen rumbled out.

I nodded. Another situation to fix, I wondered if that was what I was here for.

And we went out that night.  I found as many excuses as I could to excuse myself from the table.  I think I checked the dessert bar for twenty minutes, and visited the bathroom four times before I was rescued by a lady coming in to ask for help since her car was stuck in a small ditch just outside town.

I excused myself, and practically pushed Mr. Callen back down into his seat, being careful not to break the chair, and left to go help, and to get out of the way of the two who were rediscovering why they had married each other without my wet blanket company.

Outside town, the lady cooed reassurances to a  small infant she had left in the car (which was not yet illegal in this universe) which rickety machine had slid into the ditch.  They were newcomers to town, and I could tell from the nervous look in the mother’s eye, and the thinness of the both that food had been hard to come by.

Fortunately the car was barely stuck, but the young lady trembled from tiredness which had landed her in the ditch.  Me, I just ‘leaned’ on the car, and it popped out of the six-inch deep ditch.  She took it in stride, although greatly rejoicing as if it was normal for a guy to be able to do a casual eight hundred pound push.  But then I’ve found many well-meaning women to be utterly clueless about the guys in their life, and the potentials that that guy has and does not have.  In ways, many women treat guys as djinn…you make your wish and the djinn works his magic.  Poof.  So to this young lady, it was not a problem at all that I had apparently bent the laws of physics into a pretzel, after all, I was a guy, a djinn.  The only thing preventing other guys from doing such was their unwillingness to do so, so getting in the way of a woman’s desires was done out of pure meanness of spirit.

So I accepted my plaudits with a tentative smile, and then beckoned down the road in the other direction. 

"There is a food place, not totally nice, but respectable. I think I should drive it there to make sure the car is okay."  Phew, I had invented that excuse off the top of my head.  Really what I wanted to do was stuff some food into the stylishly dressed, but rail-thin girl, and her cute little moppet, but how to do it without offending pride?

I said something rude about pride under my breath as I got the car into gear, and we drove to the Silver Stallion on the very outskirt of town.  She objected to my offer to buy her dinner in a very nice way.

"Look, lady, the way I figure it, you owe me a favor. I’m not going to feel happy until I know you’ve had a solid meal, and the tyke too.  I’ll just drop you off here, and then I’ll mosey on my way, but not before I see you dig into a big burger at least one big bite.  And if you don’t I’m going to call you rather mean for making me worry about you."

The aggravation in my voice must have tickled her funny bone because she laughed, a clear light note like a flute, and the baby gurgled as well.  Usually I don’t get that aggravated, at least not in my voice.  By the time, I’m that vocal, usually people are dead, and the problem is solved.  This whole talking to people to help them out thing rather than dictating at the point of a plasma cannon was tough,  or perhaps I had forgotten human manners a bit in the centuries.  I knew some charm, but I had tended toward bluntness.  Now I was trying for subtlety and persuasion that depended on sweetness, and it taxed me, both my skills and my endurance. 

So we walked inside, Lydia and her son J.J., and I found them a table by the wall, and looked across to see James at the bar with a dumbfounded look on his face.  I traced the line of his eyes back to the door where Lydia and J.J. waited, and both them were staring too.  J.J. had his arms reaching out toward James…the universal baby sign for ‘pick me up, daddy.’

James shuddered like a solidly hit tree, and suddenly Lydia was flying up to him, a stick-built kite of beauty, but just so breakable as to make you afraid for her.

"Come back home, James."

"I-I.."

"I didn’t mean those words. I don’t like my cousin better. He’s not a better ……"

"He’s rich." James said hoarsely. "I never will be."

"And his wife always came around to grind in my face how much she had. And you were right, I never saw it."

James wavered, and then J.J.’s hand brushed his cheek, and with tears in his eyes, he took his son back into his arms, and got up from the bar. He then took her into his arms, and the three hugged for a long time while J.J. crowed to all the world in a language we all understood even if it was baby gurgle.

"I’ve got my daddy!"

The waitress eventually interrupted them to say she had burgers, and then James saw me.  I smiled crookedly, and turned back to the door.

"Oh, T, Josh and his mates came in a while back, got some beer."  James said.  He looked a bit troubled.

"They was heading to the Point to race." And old man with sparkling blue eyes said from next to me.  I hadn’t noticed him there before which was odd, because although I’m not the most perceptive of versers, I do tend to watch out for potential threats.

A sudden feeling of disaster coming struck me, an avalanche of malice aforethought for hate’s sake, and I looked back at the surfeit with joy and repentance James, and smiled.

"I do need a favor. I need to borrow your car."  He blinked, and nudged Lydia who looked baffled, but accepting, and so he took the keys and tossed them to me even as he walked in one big human hug to the table at the wall where burgers and fries and a plate of mushed up veggies awaited them.

And thus, they did not see me sprint outside, neither did they hear me burn a dime’s worth of rubber screeching out of the parking lot, so lost were they in their private heaven.  I felt evil twining through the clouds, and a will set against mine so that I would turn the wheel at a moment ill-advised.  But for me driving is easier than walking, and so with an irritated prayer to the Most High I asked for help in banishing the daemons in the dark that troubled my mind, and twitched my steering wheel, and they were gone.  Then I began to pray in earnest.  At first it was for speed on the way, and so it was that I flew through town without cop or traffic light slowing me.  And then I prayed for Josh, and for the Callens, and for James, and for the town.

I felt something, something malign in the night, hovering over the town, and I wondered if it had become aware of me.  So I prayed at the end for me, for blindness for the spirits that sought me.

"Let them forget I passed this way, and see not my footsteps, O Most High." I prayed, and spun up into the gravel road that led left, sinister ward, into the wilder lands near the river on the far side of the town from the Callens.  That car did yeoman service that night as I flew through the dark, and thus I came to a bridge over the river.

It was a metal skeleton, clad with concrete for its roadway, triangles of steel, its backbone, and it spanned the Sunder River for a hundred yards.  It was the marvel of the tri-county area, and yet it served no great purpose since it was off the beaten path.  A simpler bridge down at the ford would have worked better.

As I barrelled up to the crowd gathered at one end, I wondered why this bridge, why here?

"Get up!" Screamed a man with a whip in his hand, and crude fabrics on his back as a dozen slaves of Oriental descent scampered up hill from a large rowboat, with chains behind their backs.  The whip flashed as one went down, and cut deep into a leg.

Later that night, the slaves gathered to themselves in their pitiful campfire while the masters drank themselves drunk.  And they began to chant…to speak words of a working that would bring something hideous into the world.

Myself, from the future, I wanted to cry to them. Don’t be fools.  Just cut the bastards throats and be done with it, but that course frightened them.  Far better they decided to summon something from the Pit to do the job for them.  Which it did.  And then it came back to the campfire of the slaves, and ate them as well.

I was on tainted ground.  The very soil shrieked of innocent blood, and of not-so innocent blood, of evil choices, and evil deeds taken by willing souls.  I wanted to stop the car, to shriek out a challenge to the Creature.  But I had seen it.

It was a Terygzymati, a hideous thing, with five limbs, each one a different length than the others, and bedecked with claws.  But, in truth, a strong man with a stout heart, and a good right hook could dispose of one such beast.  They gained their power from what others give them, and from the horror of their look.  Many a victim has seen one, and fallen to the ground, and waited for death when a strong defense would have saved them.

There was no way, the creature was going to come out to my challenge.  It would take one look at me unveiled, and know in a heartbeat (if such things had hearts instead of a howling emptiness) that I would rend it to pieces, and that quite joyfully whether we met on the physical or the spiritual plain, such a low-order demon would rarely attack one such as I.

The crowd seemed to block my path with a bestial frenzy to it, but I merely pushed down harder on the gas, and suddenly self-preservation overruled the the demon’s influence, if it was here, and the need to look cool.  They scattered like leaves hit by a leafblower, and I rocketed in through and onto the bridge.

And as if that was a signal, the two cars in front of me were off with a squealing of tires. In the right sat Josh, in what must be a borrowed car.  In the left sat, Dale in his rather sweet, even I am forced to admit that, powder blue convertible.  Sarah, with an unhappy look had surprised herself by waving the hankerchief.

I saw the game as I barrelled around Sarah, skidding on my breaks to lose speed so as to not slam into either of the cars in front of me.  At the end of the bridge, the road narrowed to one lane which ran between two blood-red painted low concrete walls.

There was only room for one car.

But to my surprise, Josh, perhaps, no definitely driven by focused purpose had pulled ahead.  His car was smaller, less tricked out, and thus less weighty than the fancier convertible.  I relaxed a bit as we tore down the bridge.

Josh had the clear lead of a two-thirds car length nosing ahead of Dale’s car, and Dale would have to give in in this stupid game of chicken.  But then I saw Dale screaming at Josh, and with a redness to his face that did not look natural.

Ah yes, the Demon. For you see, we humans are really excellent at getting ourselves into really stupid messes, but whenever something is absolutely, collossally so stupid  and messed up that even a child would know better, or well someone even worse, a supposedly mature adult, and yet it goes on, I suspect the influence of demons, or of government which is often the same thing.

Dale could not let his favorite punching bag off the hook.  But even he had to  have enough sense to let death clarify things for him just like the crowd had dove out of my way just seconds ago.  But he wasn’t.

He nudged the others car, and Josh shook his head. No more was Josh going to lie down and accept second-class citizen status.  He had something to prove to pretty, winsome Sarah, and to himself.  Unfortunately, he didn’t realize his opponent had quite literally gone mad, been possessed possibly, influenced certainly by infernal forces.

And so I unbuckled my seat belt, and mouthed a short, very short prayer.  A wordless cry for "Help!"

So Dale smashed his car into the right side of Josh’s car intending I believe to knock Josh into the river, but my car piled into the back of Dale’s car straightening it out temporarily, and forcing us in a three car traffic splash toward the slender hole.

After that, it was really simple.  If you have absolutely no fear of death, almost any reasonably fit man or woman could have done as much.  As we slid forward, I stood up, stepped onto the hood of my car, and stepped over onto the back of the convertible.  It was not difficult. Everything was quite steady as both boys applied death pressure to their brakes and the cars skidded as smooth as glass, well slightly ruffled glass, anyways.  From there, I ran forward, jerked Dale’s steering wheel slightly in passing onto his hood, and jumped sideways to Josh’s car.  From there, I picked up Josh after slicing his seat belt with my Irish prince’s dagger given to me by the High King in Tara, and hoisted the heavy farm lad to my shoulder in a fireman’s carry.  Then, I stepped back into Dale’s car, and kicked the steering wheel of Josh’s car.

That last part might have required more coordination than most have, but really there was enough time for someone to have dropped Josh if they wanted to, and then reached out with a hand.

Josh’s car took the new direction, especially since its wheels were no longer skidding, and it flipped, up and over us to crash on the bridge, and tail us as Dale’s car slid, scraping off most of the paint on the driver’s side in a shower of sparks.

We came to the end of our coast, and Dale shook like a leaf.  Josh held himself very still, and only moaned when I put him down.  I saw bitter fury in his eyes, and a snapped thigh bone where Dale’s car had impacted his and crumpled his driver’s door and with it the leg.

Dale took one look, and then heard Sarah screaming "Jooooosssssshhhhhh!" as she pelted down the bridge toward him, and he knew he had lost.  I think he knew he had lost something even more precious, but I could not tell as he bolted out of the car, and ran into the woods.  Another broken soul, addicted to the need for success on a tiny stage that he disdained and craved at the same time, and was I to fix this one as well, O Lord?

I slipped out of the car, and into the woods myself.  There was no need for me to be here, and I could tell from Josh’s face that he hardly saw me.  He was too dazed, and too full of bitterness at the attempted murder done by his ‘friend’.  Soon enough, he would be in the hospital, and others would ask him who I was, but for now, my or James and Lydia’s car was at the bottom of the Sunder, and good riddance.

I went back through town, and woke the used car salesman, and after making him promise with a reward and a threat if he lied, I bought another car with the gold sewed into the lining of my coat.  I took it, and left it at the Silver Stallion.

"Consider it a gift." I wrote on a note. "Now go home." I added.  It was a nicer car than the rickety thing they had had, and I expected he would think that Mr. Callen knew, and had bought it for him and her, and Mr. Callen was not a man to be gainsaid when he said ‘go’.  I sighed. I was becoming quite devious.

And then I found myself reaching into my pocket and pulling out a line of ten pieces of eight.  I secreted them in the crack of the back seat, where a teenage boy might find them, and wondered if I was being led to provide for J.J.’s college fund, or if the car would pass through more hands, and someone else that God wanted would find that gold.  Nevertheless, I felt sure that I was serving the purposes of the Most High, even though I was not entirely a cheerful giver.  Instead, I sighed a bit as the coins left my hand.  I would have to work on that cheerful giver bit, but like all things, even I, a centuries old creature of power am but a work in progress by the Most High.

And so I walked back to the Callen Farm, and saw Miguel asleep sitting upright on the parlour couch with Tyler tucked in under an arm to his right, and little Lisa leaning into his shoulder on his left.  Before him, on the floor, sat a stack of children’s books, and three empty glasses of milk.  I got the glasses cleaned up, and toted the two children to bed, and offered to carry Miguel to bed, but he laughed, and went outside for a smoke while I joined him.

"You know, this is what I want."  He waved about him, and I understood.  A farm with family, a wife and many children to enliven soil and buildings.

"How many?"

"Seven, I think."  He grinned in the dark, and we both laughed.  And then the next day, Mr. Callen, in a wonderful good mood spoke to us as we sat to breakfast.

"I saw a property.  Owner wants to sell right now.  Knows he’s taking less money than its worth, but he figures he’s got a chance to do something big and important, something to do with…" He paused and struggled with the unfamiliar words "’computer chips’.  I’m not sure why he thinks potato chips with numbers on them are going to be next big thing, but …." Mr. Callen threw up his hands helplessly. " He wants to sell. Its good land. Problem is, I can’t run this, and that.  And a farm really needs an owner. Not just a manager.  So I was wondering if either of you would be interested in going sixty-forty with me on the property.  You do the work, and I get my forty percent cut until its all paid off."

Miguel was actually trembling so I just smiled, and jabbed him lightly. He jumped.

"Ask him if it has eight bedrooms in the farmhouse." I said slyly.

"Why yes, it does, a real old-timey farmhouse…how’d you know?" Mr. Callen said giving me a sharp look at which point I’m afraid I fell backwards out of my chair as I tilted it backwards, and lost control in my wild laughter. Ah the Goodness of Him who sat on the Throne.  And I rather expect they were rolling on the floor in Glory too.

I woke warm which was a nice change after a year of serving on the Mary Pipov Express in Siberia.  I had gone sword and gun against one of the ape-wolf hybrid supercommando’s that infest that part of mid-Twenty-first Century Siberia, and I put paid to its ambitions of eating the crew, but it repaid me in kind with claw and poison fang.  So, now I woke in another universe after dying, or versing out in the previous one.

For I am a verser, a creature possessed of a peculiar kind of quasi-immortality, and with great powers that I had gathered along the way.  It is sufficient to say that few humans whether mage or martial artist could stand against me for long anyways.

And so I rolled to my feet, ready to fight, and looked about a cornfield where the young stalks barely reached my kneecap, and the soft pale black earth stretched out flatter than a pancake for miles.  My gladius was in my hand, and I trembled with the need to fight.  I had been so sure I had the creature.  I had timed its strikes, and was sure that I was fast enough to duck a roundhouse, and go in for the throat.

Instead it had caught me by the face, and shoved a claw into my right eye.  Desperately, I had lashed out as it lifted me by the skull, and with a wild kick collapsed its snout into its brain.  We had fallen and died in each other’s arms.

And I wanted a rematch.  Granted, we were both dead, but still I wanted another go at it, because I didn’t see how I could have made that elementary a mistake.

Still bouncing with nerves, I slipped my clean sword into my duffel bag, and bounced up and down.  Finally, not able to control my irritation, and the adrenaline rush, I set out in a run.  The field gave way to a slim asphalt road with blue-green dividing line, and a wide shoulder.

I ran several miles, full backpack and all, and then came to a farmhouse set behind a sagging fence overgrown with vines.  The barn and the shed completed thesides of the square of hard-packed dirt where chickens wandered looking for worms.  Stripping off my polar wear, I slowed, and shrugged.

I walked into the yard, and a young man stepped out of the white farmhouse via way of the back porch.  He stared at me, and I smiled, hoping he would use the local language.

"Hi, I wonder if you have some water, I can pay."

"Pay?" He had a strange twang to his words, but it was English, so I was happy.  He laughed, and waved off the offered money.

Then he stepped back in, and got a cup, and walked over to a pump.  It was a handpump around back which surprised me since I saw what I assumed were electric lines going from his house, and further down the road.

"Pump’s out." He said, with an embarrassed look.  And then he set to pumping.  The first gush of dirty water did not catch me by surprise, and the following water was clean, clear, and slightly touched with iron.

After my run, and the changeover from artic weather to this hot, humid bath, I enjoyed it immensely, and so I don’t know why, but I spoke.

"I know something about pumps.  Perhaps I can look at it for you."

He studied me, and I waited.  Then he went back to the house to obtain permission I thought from a parent, but for all I knew it could be Cthulu who was sitting in his living room.  The thing to remember is that ‘looking normal’ and ‘being normal’ is that they can be radically different.  When you travel to a new universe, there is no telling what you will get into.

Josh, the older teenage lad, came back with several screwdrivers, a pair of pliars, and a hammer.  Then he took me to the far side of the house which rested in shade amidst luxuriant grass.  And there sat a pump in its casing, and very non-helpful it was.

My pschyometry to find out what had broken in it did not worke at all.  So I determined on exploratory surgery, and sent Josh to get the instruction manual.

The pliars easily removed the screws, at least for me.  Although Jost was startled when he came back.

"Those were frozen.  I always had to hammer some loose."

I shrugged, and began cleaning the electrical contacts which had blackened.  An brown flower-laden apron in small designs so inconspicuous as to merge into one vast swirl was being wiped in soapy, work-seamed hands as the matron of the house came around the corner to discover me at work.

"What! Are! You Doing?!" She stood aghast.

"Trying to fix the pump, ma’am." I said as calmly as I could deciding that neither charm of which I have some shortage or power would do me good.

Josh came up to assure her it was all right, but she fluttered about in fear that I would permanently break it, and they would not have the money to fix it.  To which Josh quite reasonably in my mind pointed out that it was already broken.  But that did not assuage her.

Indeed, I saw her fear was that I would totally trash it, and that the minor repairs they did not have the money for would become major repairs.  I suppose I could have whipped out my engineering credentials gained at Edinburgh, and at the Menlo Park School for Versers, and on several starships, but instead I just smiled calmly and waited since such credentials would likely convince her I was quite mad.

Finally ten minutes of drama later, Josh had convinced her that he would keep a close eye on me, and make sure I didn’t do anything too drastic.  She went back to her handwashing of dishes, and the big, blonde young man with the touselled hair and the long sleeve button up shirt hanging loose around his black denim came over with an embarrassed look on his face.

"She…" He paused. "Gets excited."

I understood.  It seemed to me that Josh’s Mom, Melody, had a feeling like the universe was spinning out of control, and if she engaged in frantic steering that maybe she could get it back under control.  Or perhaps she thought her remonstrations appeased the gods.  It was about control and the lack thereof, in some way I was sure.

But, its not something one wishes to say to a polite, yet socially diffident young man like Josh was.  He might take it to mean ‘you talking about my mom’ and feel obligated to pound me into the dirt.  Not that he could, but it would be awkward.

I continued to take the pump apart, finding a gasket that was worn deep in the guts of the machine.  And Melody came back out to see her pump half-scattered across the lawn as she muttered before fleeing back inside.  In actuality, I had laid everything down in precise and neat order clockwise so I would know which part went next when I put everything back together again.

Tasting the gasket, I identified it as a rubber gasket.  Flexing it, I nodded as it sat there stiff and stern, almost brittle.  A close examination let me know that it was not from ancient use as it had few cracks, but it seemed defective.  So I sent Josh in for some flour, some mild acid, and a few other household chemicals plus a foot square span of plastic wrap.

He looked weird at me when I used that term ‘plastic wrap’. 

 "Clearsnap. You mean, right?"

I waved him on.  Its one of the problems of being a verser.  Even in an equivalent tech level, in one world they say "Tomas Toppers", or "Reynold’s Wrap", or "Plastic Sheet #1", or "CFP–for Clear Food Protectanct" or here I saw as he brought back the plastic wrap, they call it "Clearsnap."  And using the wrong word marks one as weird.

After that, it was a matter of wrapping a chunk of clay around the tube, and around that a layer of dirt, and then making a thin tube of plastic wrap with the chemicals sprayed in as mist, and a larger tube, perhaps an inch across surrounded the whole with flour dusted into it.

Then I took a two square inch remnant of the Clearsnap, and holding it between my fingers turned it into a convex lens by blowing gently on it.  I turned away and told a mystified Josh to do so as well.

It took a few tens of seconds for my primitive fire starter to catch, but then things happened in very quick succession.  The heat from the focused light ignited the flour-air mixture making one of the deadlier  explosives you’ll find before you get to electrical resistance explosives–a Fuel-Air Explosive.  That ignited, and boom, and following it so quickly that the human ear could not hear the difference, the flaming ring of fire reached outward almost to my knuckles and inward to the second ring of plastic.

There, the much higher ignition point chemicals, also a fuel-air explosive, you’ll note, absorbed the fire’s energy, thought about things for a tenth of a second, and then let loose with a flash of light that mimicked a magnesium photographer’s flash for intensity–if you were looking away.

Josh got up from the ground where he had dove for protection, and I slowly stood, flicking my right hand which was a bit seared.

"Whaaaa?"

"Check it out."

I pointed to the dirt ring.  The outer dirt was compacted, but we brushed it off with my keys, and inside was a perfectly hard, but slightly pliable clay ring resting where the gasket had.  It was untouched by foul chemicals due to the shielding soil, and ready for use.

After that, it took perhaps a half-hour for us to put the pump back together again.   I let Josh prime the pump, and with a triumphant grin go inside and start the water back up.

The Siberians on the Pipov had been masterful mechanics, and they had taught me much about making do with little things. 

I had heated the clay up to nearly ten thousand degrees, but there was so little volume of heat that it had not damaged the pump in the least.  However, this was a very easy thing to misdo, and a mistake with a FAE tended to mean they picked up your teeth in the next county over.

So, on second thought, this might not have been my best idea ever.  Although to listen to Matron Melody, it was barely good enough, and why hadn’t I also fixed the crud in her pipe lines since ‘her water hardly flows anyways, even if the pump might be working for a day or an hour.’

I felt pity for Melody and her son.  He had worked hard, and instead of a pat on the back, he got a verbal whipslash.  And she, it seemed felt as if acknowledging the presence of anything good would mean inviting the devastation of the gods upon her house.  Still I felt worse for Josh as his face crumpled a bit at the edges, and I knew he wanted to cry, but considered himself too much of a man to do so.

Still, she begrudgingly put out a plate of food for me, allowing that I had done some help.

The man of the house came home from town in his large truck, and gave me a short stare, and then talked to his wife.  After that, he went out back, and checked on my work.

When he came back, his expression was different.

"I suppose you’ll be wanting a job."

I paused, and reigned in my temper at this ingratitude.

"I could do one, if you like."

"OK." He paused, and as if it pained him he spoke again. "Well done on the pump." And then he gave me a crooked smile. "I hear tell you did some flim-flammery with the pump to fix it.  Try to save your tricks for Josh and Tyler and Lisa, the kids."

I blinked.  He assumed the whole thing I had done was an effort to impress Josh with my skill, instead of the actual thing.  What a pinched little man, I thought sadly, and wondered why I was staying with these people.  I could do right by them for years, and give them loyal service above and beyond the call of duty, and the most I would ever get would be a grudged thank-you.  But somehow, it seemed right to be here, and so I stayed at the Callen farm for the next week.

Horse stalls, and cow stalls, and the hay mow, and the corn silo all got to know me very well.  In the process, I fixed several more things, the two younger kids insisting that I fix the rope swing in the haymow, although I’m happy to say the learning process went both ways.  Mr. Callen, and I never heard his first name, was a talented mechanic, and he showed me quite a bit on the running of his coal gassified tractor.

MORE LATER

The crew of the Mary Pipov Siberian Express magnetic-levitation trained raced through the howling wilderness with me for several hours after my interview with the Captain of the fission powered train.  But then I heard a strange note in the shrilling vibration, and turned to the men next to me.  They were already suiting up even as snow streamed past the windows.

So, I reached into my duffel bag for my extreme cold weather gear.  Still, I was unprepared for the blast of subzero air that hit my face through the mohair scarf, the Khan of All the Russias had given me.

"How?" I started to ask the shapeless mass next to me as we clambered down to the ground in the outer unheated airlock chamber.

As if he expected the question, he laughed through his respirator.

"Fifty, sixty, below Fahrenheit. Go back inside."

I refused, considering myself justly, I thought, more capable than the others. After all, I’m a four hundred year old verser who has been in more dangerous situations than I can recall. But, I did turn up my internal thermostat, effectively giving myself an artificial fever.  Still, I was shivering before I took three steps as the wind hit me.

For, you see, it was sixty below in the staircase, sheltered from the forty mile per hour wind.  Outside the windbreak, it was much worse.

I reached inside me, determined to not let a little wind overcome me, and suddenly felt and saw and smelled blind sparks race across my eyes.  I wanted to scream from pain and from frustration as the brain burn splashed through my head.  I was able to limit its damage by quickly erected mental walls, but still I crumpled to the ground.

They hustled me back inside as I ‘digitized’ the pain information in my head, and was thus able to clear my mind. Now it registered in my consciousness as a number, instead of as pain.  But, I accepted that I was not going out this time which they told me with much shaking of their fingers.

"Heroes get dead. We need live workers." One mass of cold-resistant polar wear muttered to me as he went back out.  Later, the doctor came by, and checked me out.  He cleared me, but insisted on me having heavier outerwear, which they would try to get for me in New Tempest.

Knowing they were right, but aggravated about it, I turned to prayer to reorder my spirit.  My pride in my toughness, and my wanting to seem capable had committed me to foolhardy behaviour.  I knew this was a world with some psi, but not a whole lot.  And I knew that I could not carry everything I needed for every possible weather condition on my back.  Scrounging in the local environment is a neccessity for a verser.

After all, I could carry all the cold weather gear I needed, but then find my next world was a tropical rain forrest in its pleasant parts, and hotter in its other parts.  Feeling more reasonable, and relaxed after my impromptu prayer time, I got up, and set about finding other work.

The smell of the kitchen drew me, and I found myself drafted to prepare plates for the returning and very cold workers.  It was a good time for I have always enjoyed work in the kitchen, and the preparation of food.  Pickle soup, borscht soup, and deer stroganoff unless I missed my guess were supplemented by barrel fulls of sugar-laden black tea served at temperatures which made it hazardous to anything but the sturdy mugs we used.

The once fancy dining room converted long ago to cafeteria use was crowded with laughing men who exulted in their victory over the cold, and the broken line as the kitchen crew served them, and the First Mate who had threatened to watch me bounce as he threw me from the moving train came by to check on everyone as did the Doctor.

Over the next day, we stopped twice more, and by the time we got to New Tempest we had stopped eighteen times.  Seven broken lines, four snow blocked passages, one stop to add more snow to the coolant tanks of the fission reactor, two times to shoot deer for the stewpot, and three times because the magnets under the train were beginning to improperly balance us and we were beginning to oscillate back and forth preparatory to leaving the lines altogether.

In that time, I healed of my brain burn, and cautiously experimented with psionic powers.  If I was careful, I could do some of my telekinesis, even up to manipulating bubbles of solid water, but it was like the universe was resisting me, even though it let me do this.

New Tempest was a rough-hewn military base converted to add a very tiny Science City just before the S[asm War.  Now its troops were stranded, and although officially they answered to Moscow, in reality, they worked for the Captain of the Mary Pipov.

We traded Emerald nuclear fuel for a new magnet which was part of their work at the Science City.  They studied all sorts of odd electromagnetic effects–hence Tempest.  We also picked up some mushrooms, and some outerwear for me.

The next day at dawn, we left for the Rough Passage which the Major in charge of New Tempest had warned about.  It seemed that Han raiders were especially prevalent this run, and he had not been able to chase them out even though he personally had led four patrols out on snow shoes to do just that.

So, it was with round the clock watches that we raced into the Rough Passage.  Temperatures plunged so that the heaters were turned fully up, and still we wore undershirt, shirt, sweater, and open jacket as we worked with one eye open to the forrests and canyon walls flashing past us.

I asked the Enviromental Tech Johansen Ivan why it was so cold.  He laughed and set down his potato vodka.

"Oh, you’ll love this one. Back near twenty years ago, there was a Science City here.  Tapped geothermal power in the Earth’s crust to run a Tesla scalar machine."

I blinked.  That was very advanced, and very dangerous.  Playing around with large size scalar machines is much more dangerous than nuclear weapons.  

"Well, they decided to engage in a little Weatherwar against the Main Enemy as they called the Americans in those days.  No one knows what happened, but I think the Americans hacked their system, and turned it against them.  BOOM, and I mean BOOM!!  They ran up enough energy to create a stable supercell from the upper atmosphere.  Of course, this fractured the earth’s crust a bit in the area, and the whole town sank into the permafrost.  Now, it rarely gets above a hundred below in the Rough Passage."

I blinked again, and then an obvious question occurred to me.

"How do the Han survive out…"

"Genetic engineering.  We’ve captured Han raiders, they look closer to short, and really hairy polar bears than to men."

"Thats, thats…."

"Insane, I know."

Evil, I had been tempted to say, but I like to be sure before I condemn someone.  Perhaps the Han leadership had a good reason why it warped men into something more like an animal…but somehow I doubted it.  I expected they used their men, the same way a civilized country would use its hammers.  Devices to beat down on a problem with, and if they broke, go get another one from the hardware store, or in this case the genelab.

It was twelve hours later, in the midst of the Passage that the Han attacked.  Suddenly there were thumps on the roof, and then dents, and then sparks flew as the Han on the roof tried to slice through the heavy gauge steel alloy with their power tools.

One man hit the ‘pulse’ button, and an electrical charge flashed through the metal of the car.  There were less thumps a moment later, although I did see several large shapes fly by the windows and crash into the ground or the tree trunks at well over a hundred miles per hour.  Still there were more thumps on the roof, and all waited since no one carried a weapon heavy enough to punch through the roof, kill a polar bear, and do it without nasty richochets probably killing us.

Instead, it became clear the plan was to wait for them to enter, and then massed fire with the prayer that richochets in the cabin would be managed properly with aimed fire.  And all this before five hundred pounds of drugged up polar bear bit their heads off.

This was stupid.

I went forward to go to the next car where my duffel bag sat with its plasma cannon which would make short work of a polar bear/man even if he had an inch of steel to hide behind.  It could melt a main battle tank set on high.  A polar bear would be no trouble.

And then the roof plate fell open toward the Envirotech, and he gaped in terror as claws came toward his face.  I leapt flat-footed fifteen feet and slammed into the raider.  We tumbled into the seats, and it tried to rip at me.  Panic filled me as I tried to restrain it.

It was strong, possibly as strong as I was with my cyberwear, and worse, it had four clawed appendages and I had only two with my short titanium extruding fingernails.  It started to rip at me, and I saw it was fearless from either drugs or a combat high.

And then I remembered, and felt inside myself.  Laughter bubbled up in my throat, and my teeth bared in a rictus grin as I let it slash me across my chest.

It felt good.

And then the berserkergang took me fully.  With a scream, I dove into the polar bear, my hands plunging for its vitals even as my pitiful human teeth grabbed its sensitive nose and clamped down with cyber-enhanced strength to the point where I heard cracking noises in my head.

But I didn’t care.

Hack, slash, maim, and rend was my universe, and it became his as well.  We fought to the death with me laughing madly in sheer joy at the sprays of blood raining onto the walls of the train car.  And then with a feeling of dissapointment, I saw him slump, and die.

I turned to see if there were any other, but only one other bear was in the room, and it lay pierced with many holes.  One of my crew, (crew what was that?) was tending a bullet stung arm.  I howled in frustration to see no more that needed killing, and they stared at me iin fear.

So I stepped out of the carcass of the man I had killed, and strode like a conquering king while they darted back from my path.  But no other cars needed my help, at least not of the next two, and when I saw myself in a mirror I was covered from head to just the few hairs on top of my head with blood and bits.  The fiery certainty, the mocking laughter seemed to flee out of me, like an Ebola victim bleeding out, and I fell to the ground as one senseless.

I woke the next day, weak as a kitten, and dressed in new clothes, and washed.  The Doctor was looking at me concerned as was the Captain.

"Tadeusz, we appreciate what you’ve done, but in your way, you’re more scary than the Han." The Captain said softly, reluctantly.

"I am more dangerous than them, tis true.  But isn’t that what you want, what you need?"  The words came out, even though in my reduced state all I wanted to do was turn over and go back to sleep.

"But, well…"

"The problem is you fear me losing control. I give you my pledge Captain. I shall not berserk again without your permission while I remain on this train.

The Captain paused, and then nodded.  He smiled softly at me.

"Thank you. You know, you saved at least two of my crews lives with what you did.  Possibly all of them in that cabin."

I nodded.  It was true. Once that mass of fury got to claw range, there was little a normal man could do against him without great courage or desperation and a good knife.  And even then, that would likely not be enough.

"How did…"

"It had a frictionfree cutter.  It dissasociates molecules.  Very stealthy, and expensive.  The Han are upping the ante.  And for your other question, the Han get on the train by use of catapults in the trees."

"But that means that more of them that fly miss the train than hit the train, and probably die.  In fact, many that hit probably die from impact…."

"They are drugged to the gills."  The Doctor interrupted.

"Yes, Tadeusz, probably as many as seventy raiders died last night, even though only five got inside the train.  We lost no one ourselves, although we have four out with serious injuries.  In ways, I’d like to surrender to the Han, but they won’t allow it."

The Captain stared at me, answering my next question even before I formed it.

"How do you…?"

"I’m a chess grandmaster.  I see ahead usually about nine moves."  He smiled, and I drifted back to sleep feeling hopeless for if a chess grandmaster could not see a way out of the trap, then how was I supposed to?

The Mary Pipov slowly decayed, and the raiders kept coming, and without her the Science Cities dotting the putatively Russian Siberia (actually an anarchic no-mans-land) would freeze in the dark without her Emerald nuclear fuel.  I did not know what to do, and so I referred the problem to the Most High, and fell deeper into sleep.

And so it was that I slept through the rest of the Rough Passage as I recovered from the drain of the berserkergang.

I and the others went on land in the Science City of New Haven which hosted elk herders and their herds, and duels with laser pistols or just plain knife fights at all hours of the day and night.  But, no one bothered me or the crew.  Being a crew member of the Pipov brought you status, and everyone knew you were part of the essential supply line that kept the city lit.  Besides, having killed a ‘polar bear’ with my ‘bare hands’, no one was particularly eager to tangle with me.

Two days there, and we set out with freezer car loads full of fresh elk meat, and we headed out across the permafrost of the Lesser Syndic Valley.  It was a valley by courtesy only as it had a one foot in a mile slope for over two hundred miles of terriffic sameness.

However, here, I learned how to fix the line when it broke.  Electricity flows down the line from the reactor car, and this holds us up.  But sometimes the line breaks due to temperature rises which cause the ground to move.  Most of the time, the line is flexible enough to take this, but especially if such a shift occurs between the temps of negative thirty and thirty-five then it will be decent odds that a break occurs.

I got out in the knee-high snow with the bitterly cold air, and the crystalline dry air.  Plomphing through the powdery stuff, I came to the front of the rail.  Ten feet further, and I could see the further line swaying to the left (or what these people for no reason I could figure called the ’right’) with a two feet gap between the lines.

I started to hammer the lines back into place as the others offered, and a vibration set up, and began to oppose me.  I tried to vary it, but that seemed to do little.  And suddenly a vibration came when I was sending.  It spun the hammer from my hand, and one of the others snatched it from the air.

"This line, this alloy, she has her ways."  And so that one began to hammer.  Softer than I had done it, and with a 3-2-1, and 3-2-1 with a long pause and begin again rhythmn.  I was able to match it, and felt in my hand, the various vibrations in the mag-lev line balancing each other out.

From there, we fit in a short joiner piece.  And then they started hammering, but it seemed now they were trying to create kickback, and that they enjoyed having their hammers flung from their hands.

"Help." One panted to me.

"How?"  I asked, and he begin to explain.  The trick was to try to get a very strong vibration heading toward the joined ends of the line which would then merge the lines together like dough squashed together with fingers.  First though, it had to be pushed to the right freqency.

So, I began, and they laughed.  I’ve learned some rhythmn over the centuries, but its not my ‘thing’, and so this came hard to me.  I tapped my ‘In the Groove’ psionic skill to make it easier.  But still for a long time it evaded me, both on this trip, and on the one next year.

Finally, we went inside, the line fixed, and all was cheer, but me in my gloom.  I turned to deeper study of that rhythmn, and so later that day I was able to genuinely help fix another break.

In the distance, I saw the Emerald Mountains which is where we get the Uranium Ore for the Mary Pipov’s nuclear reactor.  The thing is, I heard some of the people were hideous mutants, deformed by the radiation.

Some of the crew expected this to yield superhumans, but I laughed.  Genetic load and degeneration were proven realities while mutations creating actual new qualities, and new information into the universe from random chance, well, I had never seen proof of it.

And it was with these thoughts in mind that the train, its crew, and I climbed deeper into the winding circles of of the Emerald Mountains.  The train circled mountains, and all the while, I kept my own private watch for superhuman mutant cannibals with glowing eyeballs.