I woke in jail on Death Row. Not from versing in, mind you, but from my actions after I arrived in this universe. Here let me tell you how it went down.

The warm sun on my face woke me quicker than I’m used to, and I wondered if I was going to eventually re-learn how to transition to a new world awake. The old oak trees, and the cheerful chatter of young girls walking by told me I was in an Earth-like world.

Sitting up, and gathering my stuff, I saw refined, and box-like buildings with students with books going in and out. The scene only lacked ivy; I had versed into the grounds of a major college.

Lets hope that ID checks and the like were not required to leave.

I scanned with my scriff sense, as I usually did upon arriving in a world. To my surprise, I spotted two different scriff sources. One mechanical, and the other was another such as I, a verser.

Walking a big “X” let me know that the both of them were quite close, and so I gathered my stuff, and headed toward both.

Happily, the Walker-Hastings Science Building did not have metal detectors on its front doors. My horse pistol, a sixteen-hundred’s era piece, or my plasma cannon given me by benevolent alien invaders from ten thousand lightyears from Earth, and my Irish knife, a sign of princehood from long ago, and much of my other stuff would have set it off.

Indeed, the only security I saw was a skinny guard sitting on a decayed couch and reading the Dartmouth Review while chuckling.

The faint aromas of slightly shabby offices gave way to the brighter stinks of chemistries which I amused myself by identifying as much as I could from the odors.

And then the senses merged together, the mechanical and the verser were in the same spot, or so close together as to be not resolvable with the poor quality of differentiation scriff sense gives you.

I quickened my pace wandering what was happening.

And thus I rounded a corner to see what I knew as a Skolby-Griggs Directed Teleporter. Don’t ask me how I knew, except I had a vague memory of seeing one used regularly as an Earth-to-Moon transport device. This was the source of the mechanical scriff signature, I felt certain.

It probably leaked scriff.

And below it waited a young fellow strapped down on a mobile rack that extended up to the elliptical iris of the teleporter lens, and he planned to become a hero of science unless I missed my guess. Mortals have such extraordinary courage.

Across the room, I saw a cluster of scientists waiting on the experiment, and then I saw in the midst of them my verser. The world slowed as I saw him raise a box with a big red button on it while he smiled a too familiar grin.

Nooooo!! I wanted to scream, for I knew that mixture of defiance of accepted rules, and nervousness, and self-encouragement all too well.

Chase Aronnette the Verser, the Merry Mauler, a wannabe Dr. Frankenstein with a glib line ‘mourning the tragic loss of life in his experiment’ and the total lack of heart that marked a pschyopath stood in front of me.

We had crossed before. I was not the first verser to kill him which granted him the blood of a verser since it had been a nasty struggle according to the Prince of Fire and his wife, Annie Oakley. Whisp, and Pirate’s Bane, and She Who is Gold had also dealt with him, as I had twice I seemed to recall.

Unfortunately, the same immortality that gives the good versers another life in another world to sow seeds of joy, also gives the dark versers their chance again. And unlike the prophesied four punks I met in the Central Plaza of some long-dead world, I had not been gifted with a means of neutralizing him.

I hear tell, one of the versers who has been around even more than me keeps one such in a pocket dimension in his briefcase.

So I saw ‘that grin’ and knew with a gut-wrenching fear that Dr. Oopsie as we good versers mocked him was about to murder another subject, and in plain view of everyone. If I protested, he would pretend not to understand, and push. If I ran over there, there was not enough time.

Besides, Dr. Oopsie was a very tough combatant. I neglected to mention that he had versed me out one time by strangling me with his bare hands which trust me, is not easily accomplished.

I drew my knife, and flung it across the laboratory to skewer his wrist that held the ignition device, the murderer’s signal box. Gasping in pain, he dropped the box, and began to crumple while reaching out with the other hand for the box.

It was as I expected. The black-souled creep was never one to give up easily. My horse pistol was already in my hand, and the ignition pan was sputtering. If I had no shot, I would have put a ball into the roof, but the other scientists either dodged away, or cowered in place.

So as the doctor fell to the ground still reaching for the box, I put a steel ball into his chest with a six foot long blast of flame, and a great gust of smoke to fill the laboratory.

He hit the ground, and so did the box, and I did not see it, but he must have managed to hit the button anyway for the teleporter started to rapidly wind up. The great spinning ellipse in its vacuum cage began to throw disjointed sparks across the room. Already things began to be unfixed in location.

I tore across the room, and found myself on the opposite side of the sacrificial victim without jumping over his cart. I started to try to free him, and the first thing he did once his arms were unstrapped was to punch me dead on the nose with enough force that I almost passed out.

I stumbled back, and fell sprawled over cables and floor mounts, and the victim was suddenly impelled into the nascent teleport gate. To my surprise, a shower of blood did not drench the room.

And then a half-dozen scientists demonstrated why they reigned supreme in the Faculty Tackle Football Saturday Game.

While an ambulance came for Dr. Oopsie, the police came for me. I merely recommended they search his room, and his computer for incriminating stuff like body parts since the ‘good doctor’ still entertained visions of making the dead walk.

I was not very popular, and they took my suggestion not very seriously, and things got markedly more heated when they opened my backpack with all the way-too-interesting items brought from various worlds.

So after five hours of being yelled at they threw me in a cell with two big guys. I disabused them of the notion that I was their newest play toy. The guards who came by a little later were not amused to see the two sleeping off their exercise.

The next day, in my new cell I woke on Death Row. Evidently, my gold is ‘evidence’, and so therefore I have no money, and I must rely on the Public Defender. He acquainted me with the situation. I had put on the critical list a beloved local professor who the students loved, and the local business interests loved as well, although for different reasons. Respectively, he taught well, and he made some really profitable inventions.

I snorted at the last. Its easy to look brilliant in one world if you copy the inventions you saw in another. I’d done it myself numerous times.

So, unless I pled guilty, I was a lock for the noose. And even then, the prosecutor might not accept the plea bargain.

Then they interviewed me on local news. “Understanding the Monster.” was the piece’s title. I made my case as well as I could without telling much of anything about alternate dimensions.

That got the cops to at least check out my target’s house. Meanwhile, they told me that Arronette might not pull through; in fact, he probably would not.

I was given a cake with a noose made of frosting on top.

And the cops told me they found nothing as they expected. And I thought for sure, that they had not really tried. He could easily have built a secret wall, or something, and these cops were just going through the motions to please the media.

And I woke the next day to see that I had visitors. The news media, and a half-dozen police officers, and my inexperienced and timid lawyer. They chained me in five chains without explanation, and took me to the hospital.

I got to walk into the ICU, and see my target. I looked on him with a hate-filled heart while he affected bewilderment.

“Why?” He asked plaintively after a nurse removed his oxygen mask. I noted that their medicine seemed a touch primitive, and I was gladdened.
“You know, Arronnette.”
He stared at me, and I refused to speak since I knew he would deny everything.

Finally, he told everyone to leave him since maybe I would talk in private. That did not go over well, but after a bit of arguement they chained me to a radiator by both my feet and my hands, and uncomfortably put me into a chair.

Then they walked to the other end of the room about forty feet away with both of us in clear view.

“Why? You say I am some monster? Why me?”

“You know, Arronnette.” I repeated myself until he begged me to explain.

“Dr. Chase Arronnette, wanted in over fifteen universes for capital crimes…” And here I recited a long list of his crimes. It would have taken me nearly five minutes as he grew paler, but he interrupted to claim I was mad.

“You can’t fool me. I’m a verser. I’ve killed you twice already, and you me once. Too bad, I haven’t got a way to finish you permanently.”

His further protestations I met with scorn, and a dissertation on his teleport device, and branched from that into some mathematical proofs of alternate realities. He stopped arguing and dismissing me, and listened with that keen mind of his.

“I’m sorry.” He said with tears in his eyes.

“You ought to be. Someday I’ll finish you.”

“No, I believe you, but I’m not this man you seek.” He then started to cough badly with blood coming up. The doctor’s ran scrambling up, and I got roughly dragged away while with sinking feeling I searched him for scriff.

There was none. He was a doppleganger of the Merry Mauler. And from his manner, he might well be a good man.

Grief and horror collapsed me so that I did not struggle as I went back to the cell that I had earned.

I resolved to go to the gallows with as much grace as I could muster, and I prepared an apology in my head for my last speech on this world.

But then events intervened. A chaplain came in to talk to me, and after he was alone with my chained self, he flicked something in his pocket, and the lights in the room bobbled.

“You really are a stupid little man, aren’t you, Tadeusz?” And then Dr. Chase Arronnette tilted up his wide-brimmed and black hat to look gleefully into my eyes.

“I’d like to thank you. I have a list of people who need improving, and I figure I can ‘get you to admit’ where you hid the bodies thus providing me a perfect alibi.”

He looked a bit different. A change of hair, and cybernetics I think.

“I spoiled your plan to kill your dop, and take his place, didn’t I?”

“Just set it back some. He’s going to die, and I am going to make a miraculous recovery while the bodies of your other victims are going to set you swinging.”

Tadeusz