I’d been knocked unconscious and fallen into the teleport machine’s private bubble dimension. My opponent, Arronnette, another verser, and a serial killer who I had intended to consign to this space forever was tied up to a metal chair. He also had thumbs, ribs, and a jawbone broken, as well as being thoroughly kicked.

The damage was my doing.

We had no way out, not even by death. For the discoverer of this bubble dimension, the good, I hope, doppleganger of this evil man had discovered one oddity.

Nothing died in here. In fact, experimental animals, various other flora and fauna rapidly regenerated in this space. This had shocked the experimenter, and made him willing to accept the young assistant’s desire to be the first human on this world to be teleported.

What that meant is that this was the perfect prison for a verser. Small, and unable to escape from (although I might be able to manage by using magic to create a gate, or psi-force ripping a gate in space-time which involves massive kiloton level forces being unleashed. Of course, that supposes that high-level magic or psi skills worked here which they might not.)

I woke about the same time as Arronnette’s thumbs healed and he untied himself.

We both lurched to our feet, and circled each other learning the parmameters of our prison. Barely twenty feet across, and the space did not wrap around like in some universes. You would bump into a wall here rather than just finding yourself walking in a different direction.

I felt a sinking feeling inside as outside I tried to concentrate on him. I could be trapped in here for something that looked a lot like an eternity from the perspective of my three hundred years or so of life. And I was not sure it would be safe to experiment on finding a way out of here because the Merry Mauler would have to be incapacitated.

Otherwise he would escape and spread his evil out further into the multiverse. And I could not allow that.

The psiforce gate would maybe work, but the energies released would emulsify us, and probably deposit enough of our bodies outside the gate to have us die and move on.

And the magic gates I knew either required special circumstances like a Native American mound or a Celtic mound, or a full moon with a horn of elk and a golden bell that I did not have, or they took such a length of time that they would easily be observed and tactics prepared by my foeman.

I could always pray for a miracle, but with him looming on top of me that seemed hard to summon concentration.

Nevertheless, I did offer a small prayer, and the Merry Mauler used my moment of distraction to jump me. We fenced and studied each other’s techniques being aware of the consequences of failure.

The loser would have the winner continually beating him to cripple him, potentially for the rest of time.

And we were too evenly matched for us to want to chance that just yet. He was stronger, but less skilled than I. Evidently, he’d just acquired his cyberware, and was not really used to it yet.

I saw a notion flit across his face. Once he got used to his cyberware, why then he could attack me.

Despair filled me, but a sense of peace from above pushed back, and inspired me to stand on one side of the room facing the gate we had come in.

He stretched his arms, and pushed himself through some katas with a grin that promised me eternal pain. I prayed, but kept myself not deeply focused because he would jump me if I let myself get to deep into it.

The day passed, and we both felt hungry. He ate his food, and I nibbled at mine.

It was incredibly boring, and I wandered the halls of my memory trying to recall places that had been sucked into my amneasiac hole in my mind. Then I worked on intellectual problems, and designed a suit of armor usable by a kangaroo man since I was sure I’d been to such a world where they existed and had not solved that problem. More would not come to me.

I wondered how long this day was, and finally I checked my watch. I, we had been here at least thirty-two hours, and I felt no need of sleep.

Interesting.

And then the wall of the gate began to shimmer, and I could see the good Arronnette out of his bandages walking about with a cane. It pained me to see him injured, but the rapid progression clued me in on something.

The time ration between these two worlds must be at least ten to one. That is ten minutes passed there for every one here.

And I shook my head which was intelligible because the time flow stabilized between the two worlds so that they could see my moves. It caught their attention, but they were perplexed, and Arronnette was facing my way, but starting to become aware of something going on.

“You are never getting out of here, Arronnette. Not now, not ever. Not even in five months. You might as well close the door on your hopes.”

They read my lips while Arronnette stared at me with a mixture of hatred and perplexity. And the good scientist figured it out, I hope.

They closed the door. I hoped that they would open it in five months. I hope they understood my odd reference to be a code.

I refused to speak to the Merry Mauler when he questioned me lest I give him a clue.

And we spent the next twenty-four hours with him occasionally commenting on how much better he felt his skill at using his cyberware was becoming. Meanwhile, I worried and alternately prayed.

I think the beast began to figure out something from my too frequent glances at the gate because we had another one of our testing of defenses sessions which abruptly ended when he had taken my position so that he could watch the gate area.

But better, he seemed not to have improved in his skills at fighting.

Still I bruised an arm, which rapidly healed.

The next twenty-four hours he ran through all his food, and tried to steal mine. But he stopped when I nearly caved in his temple with a crescent kick.

After that he spent his time viciously practising.

The next twelve hours he spent telling me of all the people he had murdered in precise detail. Finally, I could take it no longer, and I started yelling at him which is what he wanted. He needed someone to fight.

I could see he felt better after our yelling match. His hands shook less, and his smile was less forced. He grinned savagely at me.

“I’m like a vampire. I draw life from other people’s pain and anger.”

So I started to preach to him. He did not appreciate that at all. It went on for some hours, and at the end he looked a bit crumpled at the edges.

So far we had been in her eighty hours without sleep, and I was definitely feeling it. Not physically, but mentally. The brain needs sleep.

I started seeing oddities at the corners of my eyes. And Arronnette started talking to himself, and jerking around in anger at the responses he was getting.

He took to screaming hysterically at me for relief, and I maintained a bland face while preparing for a life and death struggle that never materialized.

Quiet for another twelve hours as he rigorously forced himself to stay in his katas as a means to hold onto his grip. I joined him figuring I needed to learn his combat style, and it might help me, and it might spook him.

At the end of that, he looked sadly at me.

“We’re not so different, Tadeusz.” He said with wounded eyes, and I tried with every scrap of my empathy and perception to reach the battered child inside his filthy soul, but he kept insisting on doing things his way.

In the end, I saw him before my eyes kill that last bit of innocence. I think he had more in him, somewhere, but it was buried to deep for anything but an awesome working of God past even the normal miracle of new life to reach.

He’d taken a long step toward becoming soul-dead. And he grinned in a broken and mad way, happy at his success.

“When I get out of here, Tadeusz, I’ve decided to change my methods. I think a more industrial killing is in order, in honor of you. Say a hundred thousand…”

He went on describing lustfully the tortures he intended to inflict on a suffering humanity just to spite me, and I knew in that sickening moment in a deeper way how God saw Satan.

I wanted to vomit, but I dared not that moment of vulnerability. Indeed, he seemed more dangerous than before to me personally. There was an animal quickness to his movements that the ponderous Dr. Arronnette had lacked.

And I speak correctly, for the stress had shattered his mind into pieces. But none of them were decent I determined over the next twenty-four hours with the aid of some very delicate psi work.

It seemed only telepathy and empathy worked here, and those quite poorly.

It was then that I began to torment him. Harrass him, and leave him no moment of rest or respite. We had sixteen hours until the gate might open, if the other had understood correctly (and how I desperately prayed that he did), and the monster had not adequately shattered.

We fought, and disengaged, and I came back at him like a hyena. Finally, he begged me to stop, and I just asked him what his victims had said.

Provoked, beyond measure, he screamed in ear-splitting rage, and leaped straight at me. I thought I was ready for this, but still the suddenness, and my mentally dulled condition weighed me down.

I barely got a leg up in time to power-kick into his chest as he flashed straight at my throat from across the room.

He hit the far wall, and bounced twice before landing on the floor, a harsh staticy surface made out of space-time itself I reckoned.

I bounced off one wall, and landed on my feet. Then I raced back over to him, to pound on him some more, but my goal had been achieved.

Vacant eyes greeted me with an occasional gibbering. His mind was gone, and thankfully I did not have to beat him more.

The next thirty-seven minutes ground on hatefully as I asked myself if there had been any other way, and as I listened to hear a change or for a false note in his cries, but nothing.

And the clock struck. And nothing happened. I almost screamed, instead I began to weep uncontrollably.

And a minute passed, and another, and I heard Dr. Arronnette in a gentle voice say.

“Come on Tadeusz. Please hurry.”

The gate had opened two minutes late. I dove through with manic fervor not caring where I landed. And I wiggled around on the gate’s ramp to see the field close and entomb Dr. Chase Arronnette, the Merry Mauler for eternity, or as near to it as I could manage.

Still clutching a cane, but otherwise looking well, the good Arronnette helped me to a seat. Then he showed me his security precautions which were extensive to ensure that no one accidentally opened up the teleport bubble that contained his evil doppleganger in it.

And he hugged me as I tried to apologize for shooting him.


It took nearly two weeks for me to get over the worst of it. I spent a couple days talking to friends of the doctor in the mental health business, pastors and shrinks, who had high level security clearances as well.

But still, the scars of that one hundred twenty-eight hours and two minutes still burn deep in my mind.

I got a job with their military establishment which let me do pretty much whatever level of activity I felt like that day. We went over some of the new techs I had in my backpack, and I filed papers, and worked out with SpecFor teams, and gradually, about a year later, I felt truly myself again.

And I met up with Arronnette who had developed a dimension gate machine which needed a test subject. Since my stories and scientific theories were the basis of much of it, he wondered if I wanted to face my fears, and try it.

Sure. Besides, this world would always stink to me of his alternate.

I jumped through the portal, and promptly got ripped in half. At least, I’m a verser, or that would be the end of this story. But even a verser is not undying. But we do make good guinea pigs.

Another universe formed around me, and …


Tadeusz