I woke to tumult and stench.  Not just one competing struggle, but a dozen.  Two shoe-size robots struggled over a piece of trash at the edge of the cobbled street.  The side of the one closer to the robo-door which led to secret paths below the streets signified Nueovo Amsterdam Salvage Service.  The other, a spidery thing with ten scrawny legs, claimed in chirping Reki shrieks to be the Property of Ship Shatters-The-Sky.

Since the Reki I was familiar with generally used hypervelocity ion stream starships whose glowing fluorescent tail could reach across a solar system, I was prepared to believe the ship’s name.

A hovervan tried to back out, but every time it started too, a dozen kids, only four of them remotely human provided you accepted green skin and elven ears as human raced back up the street playing some game with a ball that soared and darted through the air on its own.  They were dressed in sewn together parts, or quiltwork cloth.  Any little bit of spare cloth could be tossed in a bin, and a bot sewing machine could sew it together into a shirt in thirty seconds.  Or so I guessed from what they wore, and the neat, but inelegant design.

Something a foot long, possibly squid-like, darted past my face through the air, and I lurched into the path of a elephantesque being who was attended by three Blikten.  Blikten are attractive to Human males, with their pale blue skin, and their uncanny gracefulness, but I’ve never heard of a relationship with them that did not go badly awry. 

He?, the ton of gray-green flesh trumpeted at me, and three females put hands to pulse pistols at their waists.  I bowed in apology, and stepped aside and into the path of a large green chimp on a unicycle who was pelting along.

I waited until he got out of my way since I had already figured out this crowd liked to see you jump about.  You had to be willing to claim your space, or you’d get run over.  Speaking of which, the hovervan lurched out, throwing small stones and bottlecaps.  Its driver revved away looking decidedly harrassed with his rubbery orange nose flickering madly all over his two chins.

I made my way down the street, sparing an occasional glimpse upward at the gyries and bladed towers and overarching bridges of shimmering rainbow steel that crossed far over The City  The highest reached up into the stratosphere.  A Reki? starship went by overhead, and shadowed the ground beneath for miles, including me. 

I looked about as I came to an intersection.  One curving ramp went up at seventy degrees, which was too steep for me, but I saw several species with suckers or incredibly good balance making their way up this route.  Another two routes led downwards into the dark, and from them I smelled stinks that revolted my stomach, and watered my eyes. And…

"Walker. Over here."  I heard in High Galactic, and I found myself turning despite my will out of instinctive recognition of my identity.  A green, leathery man with a face like a crumpled pineapple, and with eyes of solid black looked at me from his stand on the corner.

"Yeah, you, worldwalker."  He said only this time in English.

Shrugging, I stepped over to him after waiting for a nine foot tall set of sticks to whizz by on its miniature wheels.

"How?"

"Easy, I’m Dusquephodian.  Its in our blood.  Besides, I’m not like most of these people." He looked up at me.  "Oh no, we’re not.  Even if I am down here, instead of out there running the star lanes of the Nineteen Galaxies.  We Phodians know about versers, and other universes. We’re cosmopolitan, but even still, I have to say, one doesn’t see a verser every day."

"You saw me arrive…?"  Its always a problem.  You arrive, and someone might be looking at the spot where you appear.

"Well, in a manner of speaking. Say, you have any touch of psi?"  He invited me to look into his brain, and right on top, floating for my inspection was him watching the street.  And he saw far more than I saw.  He saw the last hour of each person’s life as they walked by him.

Even with my extensive training, I was nearly overwhelmed, and so with head ringing, I withdrew.  I had a new respect for his mental powers now, which doubtless was the point.

"Us Dusquephodians are not wholly in the Present Moment or even entirely connected to Space-time.  You know of course, well being a verser maybe you don’t…about the Elder Races?   Great beings who have had civilizations for millions of years, and are way more in every way than us New Races?  Thing is, the Dusquephodians had a chance to go that route, and we decided to stay close to home."

"So you’re more than most here…?" He nodded  yes in answer to my question.  "And you’re going to tell me you secretly control this City?"

"Oh, no, no, no.  Not in the least.  I am worse than many of my brethren.  I positively enjoy slumming with the shallow end of the gene pool as it were, the Du, the varriskit, the Human….err sorry…well, what I meant to say was I like it here.  I deeply enjoy being the big frog in the little pond, and not having to work for it.  But most of all, I like meeting strange beings."

"So, I’m a strange being?"

"Oh, definitely.  I’ll be able to one-up several of my cousin-sisters by telling them I met a real live verser."

I checked just for curiousities sake as I wondered if there were others and there were two, maybe three other versers in this universe.  I mentioned this to him, and he laughed like a bell clanging asthmatically.  Then he waved me forward, and I bent forward.  He had a pit behind the counter.  It went down two stories and held approximately a thousand square feet of surface space.

Most of that space was used up by the giant ball-like belly that attached to his rather slender upper body.  This creature would be hard put to move anywhere.  He was not going to meet the other versers, not as he was.

But, I decided to go check on them, and so I turned to my chatting companion.

"So any last words?"

"This city is falling apart, and so is the Human Empire.  I hate that because I like this place where I get to meet tons of strange people.  If this City falls apart, I’ll have to travel to Magior Galaxy to find something even as half as weird."

I nodded my thanks, and moved on even as I discounted what he said.  Now, I would keep my eye out, but basing actions on the probably uninformed fears of an alien vendor on a street corner was not my way.  On the other hand, he did have an unusual type of vision.  Shrugging, I moved on.  It was too early to say either way.

The path across the city brought me face to face with several dozen alien species.  I was not sure if it was thirty seven or forty-two alien types I saw in my hour-long walk as I chased down my first verser.

I saw two feathered mounds moving slowly down past on a walkway, about ten feet tall and five feet across their circular mass.  Next to them were two smaller, scrawny birds with brown colors to their feathers.  Now, were the small birds the offspring, or pets, or even grooming agents?  Or perhaps the small birds were representatives of some great galactic power, and the mounds were the pets, or both were intelligent…?

So, let me assure you, even I was deep in cultural shock.  It didn’t help when I bought a Coke(r) from a young lady with two heads.  It had no fizz, and it had enough cayenne pepper to blister my tongue.  I used my esper powers to draw down the swelling, and cure the incipient anaphletic shock it had given me.

A Human gave me a drink of water, and I used it to remove as much capaiscin from my tongue and spit it out as possible.

"Those things don’t care.  They take whats ours, and remake it so it suits them.  No warning, no nothing.  I had a mate go into the medrooms from doing what you just did."

"Thanks." I grated out past my abused tongue and throat.  I listened to my ‘friend’ as he spun a bit of xenophobia out, and reported various incidences where humans had gotten the short end of the stick, and how the High Towers did not care.  It sounded paranoid, but then again, even the paranoid have enemies.

I made to go right into a tunnel, following my scriff sense, and he grabbed my arm.  He shook his head, and tried to pull me aside.  But he would not say what bothered him although I did see from his nervous glances toward the tall humanoid lizards in heavy armor that draped themselves in the sun outside the tunnel that his fear was there.

So, I took my leave with a smile, and he gave me a look like "I’ll put flowers on your grave, mate.", and thus warned I strode into the tunnel.

Now, I did not have my usual assortment of weapons since my duffel bag had floated far away in my previous universe, but at the same time, I am a master of disaster, one might say, with a wince, at least for my enemies.  And so with a prayer for wisdom and protection, I walked in where angels fear to trod seeking a verser.

The light changed,  with a yellow translucent fabric hung over the narrow streets to dim things, and to heighten the yellow.  The lizard-folk must be trying to recreate the light of their home world here in The City.

I saw many stare at me, not just lizard folk, but others as well of several different species.  And I saw one lizard folk leap up to talk to me, but the others held him back.  When I turned to go to them, they all hurried away.

I could hear shufflings in nearby streets since the buildings here were tiny and thin with alleys between each and every one of them.  It felt like an army was being assembled, and I wondered if I should turn back.  A quick glance over my shoulder revealed that a fence had been placed across the street behind me.

This was looking problematic.

I walked into an open square decorated with bold symbols in eye-hurting green.  Even as an alien, I could feel the hatred in those symbols.  Worse, there were two dozen fully armored lizard folk with staffs that sparked electricity waiting for me.

"Time to die, nethinaq." The leader hissed in a dialect of Galactic One.  I was not sure what the last word was, but I was willing to bet it wasn’t ‘long-lost bosom buddy.’  Of course, one never knows with aliens.  Some of them do respond to times of rejoicing with a little killing.

"You wouldn’t happen to be interested in making this a fair fight, one on one, and giving me a staff, would you?"  I asked sarcastically because I’d met many ‘honorable’ peoples who would lecture you about their moral high ground, and how you had to try to understand them, but would never extend the same courtesy back.

Then he flummoxed me.  He nodded, and tossed me his staff while taking one from his right-hand man who then took one from his right-hand man, and so forth all the way over to the far wing who ended up weaponless.  He stepped forward, and spun his staff with a flurry of sparks and a hum of displaced air.

I had to hold the staff over my head since it was ten feet long, but I got it humming even faster than him.  He grinned with talons flexed and sharp teeth glinting as he took a massive, but slow step forward.

"You are short, Human. Now you short on life."  And compared to his eight feet in height, and five hundred pounds of armored muscle, I guess I was short.  I continued to spin my staff as I sought desperately for a plan.

Unfortunately, I didn’t think yelling "Hey, a chicken!" and pointing over their shoulders was going to work.