I floated in my ectoplasmic form in the supernatural borderlands, the Mistlands, Elfhome, of a world of fallen technology. Magic had risen to replace megacorps. And four worlds of which this was just one were each connected to one another by psi gates with the ambitious Alexander MegaCorp poised to conquer them all, if I read the situation aright.



Meanwhile, a High Fey in the temporary form, I’d wager, of a Bird of Paradise laughed its beak off, literally, at my joke. I joined in weakly, happy to avoid being turned into a shrub.



The bird put its beak back on, and flew up to land on the branch of a silver-coated tree that chimed in a rosemary scented wind.



“Okay, why did you come here, other than to avoid the psi hit team that is scouring the gate area for your presence back in what we laughingly call the Real World. And oh yeah, to avoid bleeding your ectoplasmic self to death seeing as this realm is sorta timeless.”

I yawned at his recitation of my weaknesses. He had good points, but this was bargaining with the Fey, and admitting his points would be foolish.

“I’m a verser, you don’t think I’ve been in worse situations than this?”

He waved his wing irritably.

“Me, I see a bird that has his world being invaded by a bunch of tech lovers after he somehow managed to overturn the tech basis of the world?” I raised an eyebrow in inquiry. The bird puffed out his chest in pride.



“They were a bunch of soulless ambition ridden monsters who got tired of the game they had made for themselves. Or their children did. They started playing games of calling things magic when they knew it was technology. Then they started taking it seriously. Magic grew, and their tech was so good that they did not need to tend it for decades. So the technology fell, and the magic rose as the people grew to believe the robot factories were magic. And with technology failing sporadically, the people grew to believe in a chancy magic, fickle.”



“Like the High Fey?”

“Indeed. The reigning neutral power never saw it coming. We took his world away from him right in front of his eyes. Technogeeks are so easy to trick.” The bird rubbed its wings together in ectstatic self-congratulation, and then pranced up and down the diamond plated branch of the tree.



“And now you are invaded by more of those soulless monsters.”

“True.” The bird said bitterly.

“I want time to start an alliance against AMC.”

“And what will you give me in return?”

No matter how I protested, the Fey refused to bend from his selfish position. I pointed out that I was helping him; he shrugged.

“Fine, I shall let you have a better joke than the one I gave you before.”

He looked intrigued, and begged for a hint. I bit my lip to keep from smiling in triumph.

“A great incongruity it is.” I said with a significant look, and he started to think.



A golden train engineer’s watch plunked down on the ground below me. I reached for it telekinetically, and saw that it counted down twenty-four hours.



In the other world, the Aztec world, a feather drifted past the priests who were holding Twyla’s mind in a cage of fire. It distracted them. She broke loose of her imprisonment with a vigor that stunned them.



Upon seeing me near dead in her hands, she dropped me onto the surface of the granite flat pyramid while the crowds of spectators who wanted blood booed.



Then she crashed her head as hard as she could into the magical forcefield, and dropped unconscious.



I heard the announcer apologize to the crowd, and promise a free entry to tommorrow’s show, and a free night at the Hotel of the Bloody Heart for all visitors. The bribe worked, and rioting was avoided.

I had twenty-four hours before I would face Twyla again in a fight to the death. Plenty of time to rescue her, I told myself with faux optimism that I did not believe. Meanwhile, the Aztecan fight promoters would be patching my body back up.



Back in the Mistlands, I took the time to patch the gaping rents in my ectoplasm so that I no longer streamed energy into the ether. Then I walked seven times around a mound in the middle of the decayed city to get back to the “Real World”.



Psis still hunted for me, but I slipped silently into the earth and headed for one of the other gates on this world. The psis did not follow, and I do not blame them. The rulers and creatures of the world were hostile to them, and although the mightiest were not permitted direct action I would wager, there is an awful lot a spirit can do to you in subtle ways. I’m sure the landscape just shrieked menace and horror to the hunters. To me, it was kinda cute.



I slipped through an unstable rent in space-time, and skidded into the second more advanced world of the four. The world of AMC’s psi headquarters in an eighties’ corporate style seemed the youngest, then this one, then AMC’s home world of megacorps in 2050, and finally the world the fey had stolen comprised the whole quartet of related worlds, I believed. Now, I needed to find out about this world despite the fact that I remained an ectoplasmic form in a world that made that difficult to sustain.



I resolved to move cautiously, and refrain from using too much psionics. Meanwhile my watch had nearly ticked off an hour. I had to get moving.



Flying over the rock-strewn dessert remained not to difficult. Eventually, I found a thin, dusty road, and then a sentient in a big pick-up truck.



I touched his mind gently, and tried to sort out some opinions about the world, and my location.



He drove across Upper Uzbekistan. Piorro d’Florrenze got his degree as a Petroleum Engineer(he thought of it that way) from the University at Venice. In his off days, he smuggled cigarettes and women’s dresses into China for the money, the thrill, and the chance to spit in the Chicom’s eye. He hoped the American president would do something about them, now that the terrorists were smacked into line, but he had heard worrisome reports of new terrorist activity in what one would have thought of as very stable countries. He sighed, if it wasn’t one thing, it was another.

In that moment, I plucked a map from his head(very accurate one too with all the major oil fields clearly highlighted), and then I searched forward for any Chicom patrols sweeping near the border. He was clear of that threat, and I left him in the dessert none the wiser, although I was “sweating” from all the effort.



Then I pushed on through the planet in a straight line, or as near as I could make it. Those oil fields did help after all. I bumped into the lower edge of ANWR in Alaska, and readjusted my course.



The White House had a tank out front, and glass dome on the top, but otherwise it looked very familiar. Still, I took a moment to open myself up to the mental chatter around me, and just get a basic feel for this place and time. Its easy to assume that just because they are Americans in this alternate universe that they are like the ones back home. I faintly remember someone, Whisp?? maybe, telling me how much of a mindtrip it had been to defend Hitler against the rampaging goons of the British Nazi Order.



But the mental atmosphere tested out as clear as could be expected. The usual array of petty ambitions, spite, greed, and the like, but no overwhelming structure of such nature bleaked the landscape. And a certain basic understanding of the rules informed the games.



I gasped in effort.



So, I walked in unannounced into the White House. Most of what I expected to see was there. I was startled to see a small bust of someone called George Bush, Jr. as a two-term president. I’d heard of the guy before I left, but I would have almost bet money that he would never get the job. In my reality, when I left, Bill Clinton had been in charge.



The tock of my watch warned me that another hour had passed, and I needed to stop the museum wandering as fascinating as it was.



I went straight to the Oval Office, and saw a black woman sitting behind the desk. I paused, startled. She looked vaguely familiar, but no name would surface for a long moment.



Condoleeza Rice. Her eyes were sharp, inquisitive, and she laughed a bit to herself as she bounced between screens with a machine-gun pace on her three computers.



I liked her.



So I floated through the desk, and made myself somewhat visible by gathering light into a humanoid form.



“Ma’am?”

She looked up with her hand already under the desk.

“That won’t be necessary. I am just here to talk.” I said hoping she would not punch a panic button. This was hard, and my strength was running a little thin. I had to double and triple check every action I took just to avoid the mistakes that seemed almost inevitable in this world.

“What are you?” Her sharp voice of command was belied by the intent curiousity of her eyes, and at the same time a paranoia kept her looking about for some threat. She was smart, no doubt.

“I could be an angel sent to give you a message.”

She smiled at my deliberately diffident tone.

“Not that I believe that is impossible, but I wonder if an angel would have a Southern accent.”

“Why not, I think I heard of a dragon with a cracker accent.” I said without thinking, and she laughed.

“I read that book too. Rosemary Edgehill. Who are you, what are you? Is this your idea of a demonstration tech to try to get the Army to buy a new holographic generator. If so, I’m impressed, although there are official channels to go through, I understand that garage geniuses sometimes don’t understand that.”

It sounded like she met her fair share of nutcases and useful nutcases in her job. I had not considered that but People With A Mission or a Plan would tend to gravitate toward this office. I grimace, people like me.



“I’m afraid, its a little stranger than either of those explanations. Tell me, are you having difficulties with a new armed force attacking your people?”

“We might be.” She said leaning back in the custom-designed chair, and giving me a blank stare.

“People with advanced weaponry who are able to do things your experts find impossible to explain?”



“You’re their emmissary? I’m afraid the reports did not mention things like this. They only told about superhumanly fast reflexes, and autorifles with micro-missile rounds.”

“Cyberpunks. No, ma’am. I’m their enemy. I assume this is a shadow war still?”

“Still? And cyberpunks? That’s preposterous. I’ve read the fiction, and logically it just does not hold together.”

“Not here, not now, with a strong nation-state system to repress the megacorps, but elsewhere…”

“You are talking about alternate time lines.”

“Got it in three, Ms. President. Much better than I would have done.”

“That makes you an extradimensional. Are you from this cyberpunk world or where?”

“Actually, I’m originally from a world similar to this one, I think. I left in 1999, and no I haven’t been travelling for a decade, but much, much longer.”

“Interesting. You are assuming that the enemy is building strength in this shadow war, and will soon go to a full offensive. Its possible, but also a decapitation strike like my predecessor favored might be even easier for them. Also, corporate pschyology would favor such a move. Corporate types are more into Leveraged Buy-outs and such than full-on ground war. They take out the leaders, and preserve the assets.”

“You’re scary, ma’am, but in a good way.” I added the last in a rush when she looked up at me with a sharp glance. Then she smiled.

“That’s why I’m the President.”

“I was the President too, in another reality, a much smaller Reformed USA in something like 2016 after the nuclear war of 2003.” I confessed this kinda sheepishly but I knew she needed to understand on a more deep level the notion of alternate realities. She nodded, and then waved me to continue with the briefing.

“There should be gates which I can find for you, but they likely have factories already in operation on this side building new warriors.”

“We can cut off the resupply, and then unleash Ashcroft’s Assasins on the factory problem.”

“Ms. President. I have to do that now. Your world is very unfriendly on a reality level to ectoplasmic entities such as I am temporarily. I’m about to fall over.”

“Right, leave a message at a US embassy, code Southern Ghost, and it will get back to me within two hours.” She stood, and started talking urgently into her speaker phone as I walked out the wall.



Another thirty minutes, and I had located all the gates. Upper Uzbekistan, North of Oslo, Montana, and Ascunscion Island in the South Pacific held rents in space-time. I knew how to close such gates, but it was not possible in this world, and besides my method tended toward the kiloton release of energy. I dropped the note off at the London Embassy. The Ambassador got quite a shock when his pen start writing of its own accord a seried of coordinates, but I did not have time to explain.



I went back through the Uzbekistan gate, and rested for the remainder of the hour. Time slipped by.



The next gate took me to the AMC world, and I backed out double quick singed by psi-blasts and weakened by the inherent unsuitability of that world to my present form. No major form of psi would work there. Their gates were technological in form I had noticed in between the punks trying to flash-fry my noodle. If only I could go into that world full power, I could overwhelm their pitiful psis, but then if I could do that, their psi’s would probably be not so pitiful.



My last gate brought me to the 1980’s I thought from the architecture. I roared in because I knew they would be waiting for me. They were.



The psi-tech circle of metal held telekinetically in the air to amplify the natural rent in space saw flashes of light, and psis going up in pyrokinetic splendor. They were not used to fighting equals, and definitely not used to fighting their superior in talent. In strength, breadth of talent, and experience I outranked them, but in sheer mass of numbers they swamped me.



My first goal was to spread confusion. If they could get up a coordinated effort(provided they even knew how to do that), I might be a gone goose. So any officer types got treated to the Tennessean BBQ Treatment. Whoosh!



My second goal, well, I never got to it. I wanted to find out if there was any resistance in this world that I could reach out too. I’m pretty sure there was. But in between wheeling about the sky like a demented hawk, and flash-frying the the leader-types, and dodging the abundance of seeking scans, and psi blasts, and commands, I had no time.



I did have one advantage more, they could not use area effect attacks because a blanket command would have hit everybody. A shouted “Stop” would have hit me, but everyone else as well. I had no such limit. On the other hand, they had reinforcements.



I fled back into the gate, and far away. Injured and sore and badly in need of a victory, I sat down in mountain glen beside an overgrown Wal-mart because a unicorn capered in a charming way. It walked up to me even though I thought I was invisible, and bent to bow, or so I guessed. The horn pierced my space, and I felt health, vitality, and joy flood into me.

I stared into its gleaming blue eyes, and wanted desperately to pat it, but remembering the legends decided that might be hazardous.

“Thanks, buddy.”

It nodded, and cantered away in a playful manner. I followed it past ruined towers, and banks, and gradually something which I had known came back to me.

Nothing is invincible, except for my God. Nothing. This world had once had technology to shame the AMC corporation, and this world would have laughed at the threat of magic if it had understood it even existed. And yet a unicorn danced up the crumbling steps of the Amex Building.

There’s always a way. There are no perfect strategies in a finite universe. Every strength implies a weakness in even the best of plans. And somehow, I doubted that AMC corporation made the best of plans; if they did, why were they evil?

I bowed from the shoulders to the unicorn, and it accepted my respect as its due. Turning away, I went back to the very bright lady who held the highest office in her world.



“It’s been a day since you came here. What’s happened?”

I explained, and I mentioned the difference in time flow between worlds. Her face lit up.

“That means we are inside the decision cycle of the enemy without even trying.”

The military and the civilian advisors in the room chuckled like wolves contemplating a visit to the sheepfold.

One general said in my direction since I had not bothered to become visible this time,

“Are you familiar with the Apache?”



Later, I helped the pilot fly through the invisible gate to the eighties high psi world. My first blast of psi nullification meant to smack down their telekinesis failed in the face of their concerted will. That did not matter. They were set, very well, to protect themselves against another one of my raids.

This made it hard for them to shift over to telekinetically smacking physical objects out of the sky.

A hundred psi’s in relatively soft cover versus one modified for ground suppression of troops Apache helicopter with a minute of free fire before it even took damage is not a pretty thing. Tens of thousands of rounds of ammunition were expended.

We crashed due to some clever counter-attack, but gently with my help. I took on the last five by myself. Two surrendered.



Then the rest of the copters stormed in, and close behind them the heavy-lift copters hoisted in tanks and infantry.



Meanwhile back in the other world, a ramp was being rapidly constructed so that we could drive into the other world instead of being coptered into it.



The strike across country to a nearby airport netted us passenger jets which I modified by main telekinetic force. I promised to get the jury-rigged planes down in one piece if the pilots would fly them.



The pilots shocked me with volunteering to a person. I certainly wouldn’t have if some immaterial voice shredded the back end of a plane, pulled out the seats, and sorta glued it together. However, I did notice that everyone wore parachutes.



With tanks and copters inside the once commercial jets we used up the few remaining hours to fly to our target site. We had complete surprise for a while.



Then the planes started to wobble as parts started pulling off under long-range tk attack. I sent a message to the Fey to launch the attack we agreed upon.



Human magicians and sword wielders leapt through the gate from the fey world, and assaulted the psi site there. Most of their magic was of little use in this world, but enough worked to terrify the psi’s who were already frightened of them.

Only the weak psi’s from the prototype project in the AMC world remained as a collective force, and I could handle them if they ventured into this world.

We crossed our fingers, and hoped no other unified force, say an off-duty shift woke up, and got its act together in time to find us.



We landed on the interstate roadway near the AMC headquarters. (I had to tell a bicyclist on a ten-speed to get out of the way first.)

We roared into the parking lot of the headquarters, and met a panicking lot of psi’s who were not at all sure what was going on. They thought the native psi’s were rebelling.



I felt a slam as a powerful mind impacted on me, and then moved on to slam others. Following it brought me into the presence of an English teacher with glowing eyes.

He caught me, and I felt his strength. I thought I could beat him, but I was not sure.

“You’re the Hammer of Tyrants my wife precogged.”

He said, and I relaxed.

“You’re the rebel leader I wanted to get in contact with.”

Lacking a hand, we exchanged bows.

“Jack Mitchelson.”

“Taduesz, tyrants smashed, virtue upheld, and ice cream eaten.”

He laughed, and welcomed me to his group of psis who were stationed nearby every major post of the enemy he said. They had seen the wonderful attack by the machine. What was it? It turned out that they did not have as much technology as I expected; psionic tricks did much of their work.

Finally, I asked the question that bugged me.

“An English teacher, rebel leader?”

“Have you ever tried to keep a classroom of psionically gifted children in line?” He replied, and I shook my head in a grateful negation at the thought of the horrors possible to a mischievous twelve year old telekinetic.



*Time* I heard, and I saw in a vision the watch strike its last moments. I flew to the Fey without protest hoping my last play would work, or I stood in serious danger.



In the world of the Fey, I cast my spell, and soon stood in the magical borderland called the Mistlands. The bird of paradise, a High Fey, floated lazily up to me, upside down.

“You promised a joke, better than the last one. Time to pay up.”

I was nervous because a joke expected is harder to pull off often enough.

I waved my fingers, and conjured a small image above my hand. Two people, Twlya and Milos stood there.

“O Mighty Puissance, if you would bring these two to me, then I may deliver you your prize. But may I say first how successful this campaign seems to be?”

“Yes,” The bird said at first grumpily from its perch on a pearl strung branch, but it brightened.

“Yes, we cannot directly interfere in those other worlds, but we see that President Rice’s forces are holding the prisoners and the main town, and growing in strength. The rebels of the psi world are rounding up their oppressors who collaborated with the invaders. Soon we think AMC will launch a strike into the gates, but they still do not understand that they are not fighting in small groups, but an army. Their cyberpunks are impressive, but not quick enought to outrun a shockwave from high artillery. And I do believe that the other MegaCorps in the AMC world will not support their former competitor and now master. You have done well,Taduesz, but I could not let you go without my joke, its not in my nature.”

I bowed, and the bird summoned Twyla and Milos. They stood blinking, and both spotted me at the same time, and made the identical hand gestures, and the bird started cackling. Both stared at him in the same way, and he fell over holding his gut laughing so hard he could not talk.

They tried to ask me what was happening, but I shushed them.

“Very good, Taduesz. A very amusing pair. I have seldom seen so mismatched a pair who yet are obviously right for each other. The pacifist and the lady commando are still in synch after months apart. Quite an incongruity, all told.” The bird said as it stood, and wiped an eye with its wing.

“Yes, yes, I’m glad you liked it.” I said gravely with a false smugness. It had not gone quite like I planned it, but it worked, and we accept luck at this end of the table.



“Sir,” Milos said to the bird. “Can you help us? I cannot see my lady, nor she me?”

The bird paused and looked a chill eye at Milos.

“My help always comes with a price.”

“I’ll pay it, anything.” Milos said, and I tried to yell at him to shut up, but my lips would not move. You never,ever say things like that to the Fey.

“I’ll take that flower.” The bird said, and pointed a scarlet wing at the daisy suddenly in Milos’s hand.

“That’s the flower I gave Twyla when I first met her.” He said reluctantly.

“True enough. Plant a flower from its seed, here, and as long as you love her, another one will grow each year. And each year I will come down here to smell the flower. If there is no flower, then I will pluck you instead.”

“Pluck me?”

“You will die.”

“Die? What’s that?”

“Cease to exist in the material world.”

“Oh, that’s okay, if I did not love her, I would not want to live.” Milos said with relief.

The two suddenly saw each other, and they jumped at each other for a hug and a kiss accompanied by tears and shrieks of joy. They receded into the distance.

“Not bad, you are maybe not so far from the Lords of Light as you might say.”

“Maybe, but then again, its few enough true immortals out there that consent to the gift of death.”

“Immortals?”

“You didn’t know, Taduesz? They are pacifists, and know nothing of murder because they are immortal. Quite resistant to damage as well. They can operate for weeks with a spear in their heart. You could have told Milos there to rip free of his chains. He could have done it if he understood. Nothing the Aztecans had could have stopped him if he had known to just keep plugging onward.”

For a long moment, I looked into the distance grateful Milos was a pacifist.

“So maybe, I am not so good after all. Killing an immortal an all.” His aspect turned dark and menacing.

“If he turns from her which I rather doubt. No, I think when the Last Battle for Space-time is fought, you will be on the side of the Creator; probably sneaking out and hamstringing demon princes, and then eating their eyeballs.”

He cawed laughter.

“You’ll have to wait and see, Taduesz. Maybe, I’ll be using my talons on a paladin, on a white horse, by the name of Taduesz in the Last Battle.”



He flew away, and I went my weary way back to my body. Waking up in a cell while cruel and malevolent men in wrap-around shorts prodded me did not improve the day. Their stink annoyed me too.

“He awakes, but his opponent is gone from her cell without explanation.”

“So substitute another. The people are stupid; give them enough free wine, and they will not notice.” Another harsh voice replied to the first worrier.

I began to speak in a low mutter in a latin tongue. Promising things that few would dare promise, but then I am a verser, and what is life in a world I hate? I can go to another world of matter with a moment’s notice.

The spells on the rooms prevented good magic, but I knew a few spells not notably good by some definitions. One I had used on Gavin.

Still, their was resistance, the makers of the pyramid were not fools, they knew that evil-doers might work magic here as well.

I promised my life, and the spirits of the dead heard me.

Ghosts of all the dead who had been slaughtered on this rock began to rise like wisps of vapor through the floor.

“You will keep your promise, Taduesz. We are not kindly like the bird.” I shivered and nodded. The highest rank priest in the room was chanting some simple spell, the ghost drained him first, and then the others finished the rest in a rush of greed. Their dessicated husks fell to the stone.



A simple spell, and my chains fell off. I walked free surrounded by a horde of revenants, the vengeful dead. We came to a guard, and he died without a sound.



The wave of grew as the deaths fueled more revenants, and we came to the prison blocks which they made to enter and drain, but I forbade it. Their lifeless eyes peered back at me, and they grinned.

“You have no strength, Taduesz. You are tired and worn.”

“You know who I am; do you really want an enemy to the end of time, ghost?” I said. “You can take these now, but I will visit revenge a hundred-fold.”

“Will you now?” The ghost said as it dragged a finger along my cheek. Pain seared up and down my body like I was burning alive.

“Yes, oh, yes.” I said past gasps for air and concentration. They withdrew and left the prisoners alone.

We slaughtered our way to the surface sparing few.

At the top, I walked out to see the crowd in the stands on the other side of the magical forcefield. Hundreds of revenants crowded around me.

I telekinetically drew the microphone from its crane stand on the other side of the forcefield.

I looked at the crowd of thousands who wanted to see blood, innocent blood spattered on the stones.

No children stood in the crowd although I checked for a thorough five minutes with my psionic skills while the crowd grew restive.

Though it revolted my stomach, I saw it as righteous.

“Menes, menes, tekel, upharsin. You have been weighed in the balances, and found wanting.” I said to the crowd, and released the revenants who launched themselves gibbering with rage at the magical forcefield. It buckled after a minute, and the crowd gaped in horror.

“Its time, Taduesz.”

“Yes, I suppose it is.” I said to the ghost that had hurt me before.

“You promised a special one for us; these others will be quick as you specified. We will be glad to exchange a quickness for you with a length for them.”

I shook my head. It took a long time, but I think the pyramid and the stands were empty of the guilty, even if not their bodies by the time I finished screaming. Not a variant of the spell I am eager to repeat. I versed out.



Taduesz