The Gaming Outpost

Magic is simple, once you embrace the obvious point that ‘nothing comes from nothing, nothing never could’ as memorably sang by Julie Andrews.  Once you see that, its not a far step to see that the Universe is founded on Magic.  And then you consider whats the most reasonable form for magic to take.  Dark rooms with pentagrams?  Dancing naked about a tree in mid-winter?  Hardly.

The Universe is a Computer, and a proper computer programmer can access the Universe, and start altering things.  Which is why I am sitting in my kitchennette on a Friday night, instead of going out with the not quite lithesome, but infectiously cheerful coworker from Cubicle 4b.  My cubicle is 7d.  We create anti-virus software during the day, and occasionally go forth to slay the dragons of ignorance and incompetence and ill-tempered idiocy at large installs for major corporations.  A bowling alley is missing my 130 game, and pizza, but right now I’m engaging in programming the local Universe.

If A=1, then Activate Block X.  This was the last line in my code.

Block X described a time, a location in three dimensions, and an intensity.

I took up my computer keyboard which had silver and gold coding inscribed on the back in microscopic words.  It was not connected to anything apparently.  And this world had not yet developed wireless computing.  But still, the keyboard hummed for it was connected.

I typed in the code, and then a prompt came up on a monitor across the room.

A=1 Y/N?

Y I typed, and suddenly a flash of light lit my balcony.  I ran out, and saw that a half-dozen others, mostly socially maladepts, or little old ladies were also rushing to their balconies.  Already some were speculating about a near hit from a missile test from the Navy for we were close to the seashore, and Dranedga Naval Base had a flight of Xuper Kings which practised daily their air supremacy and ground support mission.  Others thought it was a UFO.  Nobody suggested computer aided magic.

I went back to my laptop, about fifteen more years advanced than anything in this universe, and typed into my private diary.

“Success!!  My theory of magic and the system the Creator would use to run the Universe appears to be correct.”

I considered going out to get a drink, or going outside and shouting to the world at large that I, Allen Dexter McMahon was a Magician, a Modern Technomage, a Master of the Secret Systems….  I was more than a bit drunk on my success, and so I was halfway to my front door of my small apartment when the bell rang.

I looked out.  4b was there, under the light, looking nervous.  Deeply surprised, but at the same time, very glad, I opened the door to the lady with the thick, rusty brown hair bangs that never fell in neat lines, and her crooked grin, and her bright green eyes that could see into one’s soul…

And she looked terrified.

And behind her were two men, Goth dressed, all in black.

“We found her, hanging around outside your apartment.  Stalking? Love?”

And now 4b looked terribly embarrassed, and I felt a tension in my soul ease.  4b liked me.  Like me a lot.  Given that I’d have exactly one girlfriend at this point, and she had not been human, and was in another universe, and we had only dated four times, you will understand if I was willing to forgive 4b for stalking me.

On the other hand, looking at Goth Boy #1, I felt a distinct sense of intelligent malice, and unnatural that set my neck hairs to standing.  Goth Boy #2 smiled, and let’s just say it was Teh K-R-AZY you saw in that smile.  Knives, screams, blood, more knives….I was beginning to suspect knives played a prominent part in the life of Goth Boy #2.

“May we come in?” Goth Boy #1 said as if it was the most reasonable thing in the world, but my goodness, you’d think no one in this world had ever seen a horror movie.  Oh, that’s right, they hadn’t.  I grabbed 4b by the forearm, and yanked her inside while screaming.

“No way.”  They looked startled, and I slammed the door in their faces.  4b gurgling a bit in fear staggered to the center of the room, and I yanked my sofa, one-handed in front of the door to block it a bit more.

“You know, magician, this is not going to do any good.  We can enter an apartment and only lose a small fraction of power.”

I blinked, and realized what I had done.  I had sent up a magic flare of light over my apartment for the whole city to see.  Something creepy, unnatural, and with a real addiction to black velvet and white silk shirts, and knives, lets not forget knives had responded.  “Hello, we’re the neighbours.  Brought by this little fruit basket, thought we could come in, get a bite to eat.”  Emphasis on bite.

“Let me think about it.”  I yelled back, and rode the panic.  I was a geek, an ubernerd.  I had installed computer mainframes that cost upwards of twenty million with the CEO, the company president, and my company president in the room, and my not being sure the machine would come to life at the appointed moment when the brass band figuratively played.  Vampires, or whatever they were were nothing compated to John Lincoln Whittaker, uber nerd genius, my ultimate boss whose idea of a slow week was a seventy hour week, and who carried around him a d20 that he would occasionally roll, and if he got a botch, he’d fire the person he was talking too.

I spun up my laptop, and pointed 4b at my secondary system which was pretty sweet for this time. 

“Load the firewall.”

“Um?” She held out her hands.

“In Root file, find ‘firewall’ one word.”  She nodded, and set my This World system working.

“Then…limit it to bedroom, one minute delay.”

“Uh, okay, I see your menu. Very nice. You’re a very good programmer.” She said sounding impressed, and my heartblood sang agreeably through my limbs as I loaded two other programs.

“Open up!”

KRRACKKKK.  The front door came off its hinges.

“Say the word magician, and it will be much easier.”

“Look up.” i replied.  They did.  My laptop talked to my arcane and unnconnected keyboard,  and I unleashed Light v.2.0 which was ten times as bright.  I could only go that high because my menu only had enough spaces for two zeros. 

Light flared around the apartment like the coming of dawn, bright enough that it was probably visible from space. They screamed in total panic, fear ovverriding their logical certainty that it could not be morning yet, and they were inside, and under a desk in the blink of an eye.  From there, I could see their fangs out, their eyes milky white, and their faces blistered.

“Run.” I said, and grabbed my arcane keyboard, and 4b, and headed for the bedroom.  We went in, and the vampires came after us ten seconds later.  One hit the door, and laughed.  And that triggered the firewall.  All of a sudden a wall of flame surrouned my bedroom on all sides.

The vampires screamed at me, cursing me in slang and languages unknown to the modern time, and promised to kill me slowly.  This did not encourage me to open the door.  4b looked at me in raw terror, and I smiled.

“I left something.” And indeed, I had.  My graphics program ran through its first iteration.  And I heard heavy, ominous footsteps from the living room.

“Surrender now, and …”

The vampires screamed defiance.  BOOM. BOOM.

I opened the door after a few seconds of no sound, giving a hopeful look to 4b.

A man in a black suit, with black eyeglasses, and black leather shoes stood in my hallway in front of my bedroom door.  In his right hand was a still smoking Dessert Eagle Arcane Killer .50 Magnum.

“Citizen, you do understand that you can tell no one about this, or the Government will be forced to take actions.”

“Yes, sir.”

He gave a Look to 4b, and she gobbled her assent.

He turned and walked out.  I had gotten rid of two monsters, in exchange for adding one, perhaps monster.  And I turned  back to 4b who had a furious expression on her face.

“That was my icon for the Countermeasures anti-viral you stole!” She charged.

“Um.”

“You could make up for it.” She said. I looked hopefully at her.  “Show me how to do magic. Take me bowling, and kiss me you fool.”

“Kiss me you fool?” I raised an eyebrow.

“I always liked that movie.” She said with a small smile, and not being a fool, I did as instructed.

Walking downtown Manhatten in the fourteen hundred block in the late golden afternoon of June 28, 2014, I stepped down a few steps to an underground basement apartment, opened the gray-painted apparently steel door, entered, spoke, closed the door, opened the door, and stepped back out into 1863 in May 19 during the Draft Riots.  Cosmopolitanism, or treachery was not a new thing to the Big Apple. It had practised it during the Civil War when it had tried to be considered a neutral city, and when facing the Communists, and later during the Jihadi Wars it always sought a place of influence in its home culture, but sought to shirk the duties such a position would bring in favor of making money from both sides.

Of course, I’m from Baltimore, the city of brotherly hate, and I may be just a tad prejudiced at what we call the Rotten Apple.

The noise and rush of the riot swirled around me with the occasional good Irish lass joining in to pitch a brickbat or chunk of roadway toward a copper, or a window where the sign ‘No Irish Need Apply’ had been hurriedly taken down.  But most of the troublemakers were the boyos of the Five Points Gang, and those of somewhat similar mind drawn out for an afternoon of entertainment, settled grudges, and light looting. One came at me with a jabbing punch.

I backfisted him with a Kempo Al Tyria move which would have left most folk on the ground looking at stars.  It staggered the boyo and he came at me again.  Thoughtfully, I reached inside my jacket, and pulled out a taser, dialing it up to 200,000 volts.  Contrary to what you saw on Time Cop, an Irish brawler is not going to be impressed that you know karate, and ju-jitsu and several other Japanese words.  He’s been in at least one fight every three days for most of his life, and regards a bit of casual skull-breaking with bricks to be an amusing bit of fun hardly worth the mention.  He lives in a world with antibiotics, or good sewage, and he works fourteen hour days.  Plus he’s a bloodyminded vicious beast.

He came at me with a feint punch, and landed a good one on my shin which would have broken my kneecap except I danced aside, and then he got me in the middle with his big right fist letting me tag him in the middle in return.  I expect he thought he could take more than I could.  If we were trading punches, that was undoubtedly true as I staggered away to vomit up a gyro and a chocolate chip cookie and some Powerade.  He convulsed, and practically leaped int the air, and then hit the ground.  I hope I had not killed him for sending back an ambush team to snag him from a couple minutes ago, and temporarily replace him with a bot that would meet me and treat me as I had been treated costs an easy billion, um, ten billion (I forgot about the Hyperinflation).

Walking wobbly limbed over to him, I saw some other rioters looking my way, but they decided to let well enough alone.  They do have some respect for the rules of the fight, and if I wanted to loot the body, or kick him in the ribs a couple of times that was my right.  He breathed, and so I tossed Destiny Charge, a small bit of glittering blue goo, on him, and stood back out of his line of sight.  In seconds, he was up, and running, looking for trouble, the incident already fading from his mind.  Destiny is a powerful thing.  Time wants to be corrected.  Which is why all of us in the Temporal Corp who are Catholic carry a necklace with the Angel St. Chronos on it. 

I stood and waited in the street, and around a corner came a young lad on a bycycle with his teeth just a bit too straight to be perfectly normal.  He tossed me a bag, and I caught it, and he was wheeling about and heading the other way without more than a glance my way.  But I had been doing the courier run for the last six months so the historians studying the American Civil War, which was one of the big posts, knew who I was, and that kid on a bike was actually a child prodigy from uptime with a degree in Theology and History (American) and one in Temporal Physics.  One time we had been caught in a rainstorm at the Door, and he had explained that time travel worked because the Present Moment was Eternal.  From Creation to Doomsday, all of Time existed.  This helped them to evade cauasality traps which might exist in other hypothetical designs for a universe.

I had not told him I was from another universe, but the way he said that I had wondered.  Perhaps the Patrol had tracked me back to the first moment I arrived in the Eternal Now, and found out what I was, and decided to keep me around where I could have an eye kept on me.

I dodged another brickbat aimed at my head, cursed the tosser cheerfully, who laughed back at me, and went down the stairs into the gray painted door, and exited uptime in 2014.

The cold waters of the dark blue lake shushed repeatedly upon the narrow belts of hard packed beach encircling the pear-shaped island.  Dark brown stone, slick even if dry, as bad as grease if wet comprised the foundation, and most of the flattened dome of its surface save for some few minor vales in the stone which had permitted dirt and straw and twigs borne by wind from the upper hills about the lake to settle and stay, and root a wind torn bush, or a spindly weed, or in the deepest spot, in the center of the island, a tree large enough for a few kids to climb twenty feet up its bowed trunk and few stong upper branches.

Nobody was on the island, except for some tiny frogs smaller than golfballs.  Two thousand years ago, they used to croak, but that tended to get them eaten by passing birds.  Then a genetic mutant lost the ability to croak, and his children crowded out the genetics of everyone else that was froggish in the near lake area.

And then there was a man laying on the island toward its north end.  He was tall, with a grizzled beard, and a beaten up brown stetson felt hat.  He wore a tan sheepskin jacket, buttoned up over nothing but skin, and his pants were orange and tattered.  He had no shoes, but his feet were covered with callouses thick enough that he could walk across broken glass without concern.  Across his back was a katana slung in a crude weapons belt.

The man sat up, and shook his head regrettfully.  His eyes were an intense black behind brown glasses, and his hair was black as well, poking down here and there in  over his forehead to disurb that already written up canvas.  His face was like a refrigerator shrivelled apple.

“Win some, lose some.”  He muttered in disgust as he got to his feet.  He popped his back clumsily, and drew the katana with a lethal grace that spoke loudly to those who would hear of much practise with great pains.  A few maneuvers, and then he cut his thumb with the blade to blood it before returning it to its sheathe on his back.  The sheathe was made of collapsed Mountain Dew one liter bottles, and a bit of bycycle hose, and hemp rope fragments.

Popping his shoulders, the man walked to the other end of the island where his sea chest awaited.  It had ABS for Able-bodied Seaman, and Second Mate Pyotr Kobrinski of the Tsarina’s Beauty written on it in English, the international language of sailors in a world three universes back.  He popped the wheels on the sea chest to usable position.  They had been added by Sam the Mechguy in the last universe of post apocalyptic madness.  But now that it was able to move, he saw there was no place to move it too.

The island was more of an isle, about three acres in size, and there was no place to stay  and make a home. 

The man drew a small stick from the front pocket of his shepherd’s jacket, and waved it in a complex series of gestures, and then spoke a commanding word.  Nothing happened.

The  man sighed.  He had no magic.

So he focused his telekinesis on the sea chest and strove to lift it by sheer force of will.  Nothing, not even the most minor tremble rewarded the sweat on his forehead.

The man walked over to the shore closest to the beach of the outer lake.  A mere forty feet, give or take three separated him from the shoreline of the main ground.  The man reached down and picked up a stone, and tossed it.  It sank well in the middle of the dark, choppy water, and the man shook his head.  The water was fast and well over his head.  Perhaps if he had versed out when he was thirty instead of when he was seventy, but the man did not think he could get across the rock.

The man opened his sea chest, and pulled out a laser pistol which was thankfully solar chargeable with the blanket he had gotten in another universe.  He used most of its power to dig a small cave into the brownstone, and the last bit of it he used to shoot one of the plentiful fish in the lake, killing it, and cooking it at the same time.

The next day, he worked.  For every day after that, for most of a season, he worked.  And finally, he had his way, without magic, without psionics, and without swimming, and he arrived on the lakeshore of the mainland.

How?

Standing on the apex of the tiled roof, the man in black leathers ran downslope in great, bouncy strides.  Leaping off the roof, over the green corrupted copper gutter, four stories above the cobblestones, he fell in a great arc, and the rope about his waist drew him back so that he came feet first toward a large, paned glass window.  The window was well-lighted from the candles inside, and snatches of piano could be heard through the glass, and over the stone lintel of the eight foot tall, and two feet wide window of panes.

Closing his eyes, the man trusted to the leather and the speed, and went through with a great tinkling, and shattering of glass that fell about him like confetti as he came to a three point rest on the carpet in the dining room with only one chair kicked over.

“I say.” Said one ascotted man in shock.  The other ten in the dining party, scattered near the table, or in the larger piano space beyond it, with the Christnmas tree to give them company were silent.  Drawing and slicing the cable free from his waist with a Bowie knife, the man drew a Ninjariffic 2000 SuperWaterSoaker, and opened fire, or water as it were.

Shrieks of dismay, and curses from bass male voices that also threatned to horsewhip him within an inch of his life fell on his ears like music.  And then he heard to his left, one hissing screech, and he sheathe the Bowie even as he leapt on top the dining table laden with crackers and cheese and grapes for what must be the first course of a planned party.

The women were dressed becomingly in tapestried silk dresses that billowed from their hips, while above their waist, their slim builds were highlighted by satin sheathes, low cut in the front, and with bulbous shoulder joiners that only made the covered arms seem even thinner.  The men had trousers tucked into black shiny boots, cotton shirts and broadcloth suit jackets with a florid ascot of many feet of material dipping from their neck.  Mustaches, and bold hair cuts with sideburns were common, while among the ladies, it was ponytails either hanging or free, with little ringlets on either side of the face, or somehwhere else on the head for the creatively daring.

Firing the water pistol again at the man in the corner who just seemed more finished, more powerful than the rest, and seeing for himself the spasmodic shock that raced through his frame, the man took out his mini-crossbow with its four shots in its quarrells, and loaded it.

His target loomed toward him, suddenly inexplicably four feet closer.  Vampires could do that.  They could catch your mind when it was wandering, and twist you into a pretzel.  Firing, the man saw his first arguement go into the vampire’s shoulder where it flamed a pale fire as it burnt itself out for rowan wood despises the touch of the undead.

Noting that the vampire was way too close for comfort, the man somersaulted off the table, above the vampire’s slashing attacks with its claws, and landed near the Christmas tree.  The vampires spun about.  The man grabbed the branches of the Christmas tree, and flung the whole thing at the vamprire who was turning his, that is, the hunter’s way.  Upon impact, all the pine needles in the tree began to flare into bright, silvery, blue-tinged flame.  The vampires fell back shrieking, and the man walked over the top of the tree to get a good shock at his target who was laying on his back, restrained by the magic inherent in such a tree.

The door to the kitchen opened.  The man looked up.  The kitchen opened, and the lady owner of the house came out with a big silvery pan of Russian noodles.  She flung it with superhuman speed at the man who suddenly realized something.  Dinner parties always had an even number.  If there were eleven in view, that meant there had to be twelve somewhere.

Steaming hot, almost boiling noodles hit his face, and even as he raised the crossbow, he knew he was too slow.  The Qheen vampire charged him with superhuman speed, and before he could dodge, she was on him, and ripping out his throat.  The man’s hunt was over, and he left behind nothing but dust,

Glen Paullings rode the mountain pony down the steep track with a boneless boredom that did not stop him from continually scanning for banditi, and keeping an eye on Pav on his steel-gray pony in front of him, and Roc on his tiny black pony behind him.  They watched those nearest to him so that everyone in the ten man column that trickled slowly down the rawboned orange of the mountainside had at least half an eye spared to them at all times.  Riding the Ventreides Hills taught paranoia and vigilance. The harsh stones were only called ‘hills’ because the Maor Mountains were so nearby, so clearly touching the sky with their year round snow mantles off to Glen’s right.

A whicker from Splash, his dutiful roan steed, brought Glen to a higher state of attention, and he drew out his laser pistol that he had gotten from another realm, another world beyond this one.  For Glen was a verser, a traveller of the paths between dimensions when involuntarily sent forth by seeming death.  Looking about, he saw nothing, but some circling birds below them.

And then the significance of those birds came home to him.

“Vultures.” He murmured, and even at the head of the line, old and whiskery and tough Msac heard him for ears were keen here in the quiet of the world.  The line halted, and all saw that the destination they headed too was overflown by the harbingers of death.  The valley was over the next hill, a true hill not a miniature mountain, and down a bit.  It was perhaps four hours away.

Grim-faced, the men on the trail pressed on.

Toward nightfall, they heard the cries and the wailing as they rode through the vale along their white stony track between fields of vineyards until they came to a stickwalled village of Arb Mandu.  The men and women of that place poured out toward them, gestured them on, and the trailriders let themselves be led through the gate, and into the central space of the campfire.  There they saw a dozen women with their arms chopped off, laying there quite dead.

Glen rolled off his pony, and ran to the pile of the dead, weeping, and found amongst them many faces he had known.  There was Kaz, and Arli, and Toas, and Mithe, all friends.  All people, women that he had persuaded…

He stood up and looked around, and saw that many looked at him, and those who did not looked his way, but could not reach his eyes.

“What happened!” His voice cracked out, slapping the dusty ground with its fury.

“You know what happened.” The speaker was tall, roughly bearded, eyes tearstained, and full of rage that he pushed toward Glen.  His name was Birandu, and while he was not a chief, he was a man that mattered.  “You came.”

“I did not do this.” Glen contradicted him with a chopping wave of his hand.

“You did. You told these women they could be more than the third wife of a mountain lord.  They could be the first wife of a man of the vale, and thus make of him a prince if they chose well.”

Glen remembered.  He had been appalled when he came from another world to this land of high hills and small valleys and dozens of tribes barely above the iron age.  Women married minor lordlings in the more brutal tribes, and the men of the lesser tribes gave tribute, and had not wife nor child.  It seemed to him that telling the young ladies of this place that they could have a man of their own, and a house of their own, and not have to live under the thumb of a first wife was a good thing.  And in proof of his intention, he had told them of gold marriage rings, and given each of them that promised to do this, a gold ring.

The same arm that had borne the ring had been chopped off by the mountain lord.

More eyes now stared at him, and in them was accusation.

“I see weeping and sadness.”  He said, and they nodded knowing they were a kindly people.

“I do not see burnt fields, or despoiled gates, or warriors dead with the arrows of the mountain lord through their chests.”  This time he stared back at them gathered in loose clumps around the central area, and they could not hold their gaze against the fury in his.

“We were wise.” Birandu spoke.  “Had we fought, we would have all died.”

“I came to you with treasure, a year’s worth of harvest, and twelve good young virgins who worked well and were beautiful, and you said you would treat them  as your own.”  Glen said.  Msac, leader of the trailmen spat on the ground.

“Cowards. Gutless worms.”

“We could not match these men.  They kill without mercy or hate like an avalanche.  We are a kind and generous people…”  The first wife of the chief of the village spoke pleadingly.  She received nods of approbation, but Glen noted that some of the young men of the village could not face him or her.  They seemd soft, unformed to him, but he saw resentment in their unmarked bodies.

“The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.  The ceremony of innocence is drowned.”

“Yes! Yes!” The people cried, glad that he understood.  And then Glen smiled like a shark, and silence fell, an uneasy pained silence with few noises but the shuffling of feet.

“Birandu, how much did the mountain lord pay you when you told them where the twelve were hid?”

“I-I…” He began to babble, and all could see his shocked guilt.  Glen drew and slice him in half with a sword of light that outdazzled the sun.  Then he turned to the rest.

“Those among you that have houses of their own, that took the wealth I had given you, and bought not even a spear for your young men, you will walk ahead of us.  Call it a shield, a buckler as we go forth to hunt.”

“No we will not!” The chief’s first wife spoke strongly, and stood proudly on her heavy legs, and amidst her jangling gold chains, and Glen smiled faintly, and cut her down as well.

“You took my gold, but in your hearts you hated the virtue and beauty of the twelve.  You knew they beckoned to a better world, and you were ashamed of yourself.  You never worked to defend yourself from what you knew must come.  For you wanted it to come.  You desire to be sheep, to be forced to do the evil you do so willingly.  Well, if you desire to be sheep, then sheep you will be, and I will drive you forth.”

“What of us?” Said a young man with no weapon, and poor clothing.

“I will give you a spear, and if you live, and if you kill a mountain warrior, I will give you his house, his horse, and his prettiest wife.”  And with that Glen swore a terrible oath, and all the young men came to join his war, and he drove the rich and the treacherous down the track to the fortess of the mountain lord, and there he made a great slaughter, and in the end, the fearless, the ruthless lords of the mountains begged him for mercy in piteous voices, but he could not see them for he could only see the dead around the village center, his friends. 

Vnicsi gently scraped under his tertiary left underarm with his secondary right dewclaw removing a thin layer of air-hardened, and thus useless stretchskin to drift down to the floor of the scoutship’s cabin.  There a spongebot, a cleaning robot with less brains than plant matter decay chewer insects, would swoop by, deform itself as needed, pushing its drive trains and vacuum intakes into whatever positions needed to fit into whatever crevice it faced, and inhale the shiny flakes of Varigmash skin as it had been designed to do.

The Varigmash continually grew, and they did not moult, so they needed a new skin, but in patches.  Among other species along that spiral arm ‘as itchy as a Varig’ was a byword.  Among themselves, they boasted of their itchy skin as size meant age, and age was much revered among the Varigmash.  It helped that a fully mature Varig of several centuries, before it went senescent, could slap and claw the living crud out of a half-dozen of its juniors with its enormous primary, secondary, and tertiary arms along the main slug-like bodyform, if they, that is the juniors, became insulting.

Vnicsi touched his wiggle nose to his extended tongue, sharing  chemically information between his upper brain and his lower brain.  Yes, he, the he that was independent of body, he was sure.  The planet below him in orbit was barren, and devoid of life, but quite suitable to terraforming,  or Varigmashforming.  But the Varigmash called their home planet Earth just as Humans did.  Both species had a love of good farmland and fertile dirt.

He tabbed the FTL com.

“Revered Great Captain of the Worldmaker.  I bring your exaltedness good news.  Your perpisacity no doubt knows what it already is, but it brings me joy to say it.”  The Varigmash indeed talk such.  They praise each other with at least every other sentence.  It has some basis in biology, but its primarily a cultural tendency of the last thousand years to focus on the good things, a deliberate attempt at being optimistic and respectful of others is taught in all their schools and songs and other instruments of culture much as Americans are taught to praise diversity.  But we shall bring it down closer to how human’s speak, or we should be here a very long time.

“The planet Bounty is in my view, ready for terraforming.  Our samplers can find no information, no specified complexity in any of the molecules.  Although the environment is chemically active,  there is naught but chaos and simple order in the world.”  Life requires information.  The sign of information is complex forms that have unused potential of some kind as only the parts that are specified are used.  Complexity or a wide variety of chemicals or other that is not limited in some way is equivalent to babbling.  It is chaotic, and carries no more information than a babblng brook.  I am here. I am here.

This is not even so much intelligence as a single cell organism requires (although frequently such organisms need more information cell per cell than the larger organism as a cell in a body can farm off some of its duties, while a unicellular organism has no one to take out the laundry.)

“Psionically, O Mighty Traveller of Many Dimensions?”  The Captain of the Worldmaker in a far distant stellar system FTL commed back.

“Nothing, that I could detect, Great Captain.”  And here there was some worry for it was possible that his information samplers had missed something, some niche of life, and every Varigmash in this dimension remembered the Tale of the Four.  Four vile alien criminals had been sunk in the depths of a planet’s core by other aliens, and the psi detectors assigned to the task could not catch their brainwaves because the alien’s brains were too strange, and frankly too evil.  So the crew of the Good Fortune had accidentally awoken these four master psis who had then wreaked terrible pain on all the worlds they came too until finally an Alliance of Eight Races had brought them down in deep space.

“Go, then, you have done well, and pray to the Creator that all will be well.”  And so they prayed, and then Vnicsi the Verser sent out his probes.  The grav pulse probes fled out, seeking pre-targetted comets, and Vnicsi went to sleep for a week as his kind could do with ease.  They could stay awake for a month, or sleep for weeks at a time.

His computer woke him, and Vnicsi, contrary to Human propaganda which he had seen in one universe where he had met those strange creatures, did not eat live worms for breakfast, but decently cooked vegetables for his kind were herbivores.  Thankfully, all his other realities he had visited had no Humans in them.

The comets slammed into the planet, and made it ring like a bell.  Dust boiled up in the air from all over the globe.  Volcanoes began shooting off, and since they were sitting on top of huge aquifiers the percentage of water to other mass was not the measly seventy percent of a well established planet, but nearly ninety-five percent.

Regrettably, the fantasies of the Oort Cloud, were just that, fantasies.  So, Vnicsi sent out his grav probes again for more comets scattered about the system, and fell asleep again.  Upon waking, he eliminated, and sent in the second wave of comets.  This blasted the mantle into different pieces, and caused all of the worlds’ volcanoes, including the several dozen brand new ones to erupt.  Shortly  thereafter, his in atmosphere probes revealed a global flood.

The water began to recede and as it did, certain chunks of  the crust got heavier as more water was above them, and so they sank.  And this caused certain other nearby areas to rise in response, and this drove more water off them, and shortly thereafter there were ocean floors and high mountains.

Vnicsi measured the heat of the planet and was pleased with his graphs.  Due to the volcanoes and the superheated water, the planet had risen fifteen degrees.  This made the oceans nice and warm so that they evaporated easily which made for a huge cloud cover.  With that, the cloud cover, keeping winter warm, and summer cool, and huge amounts of water in the hydrological cycle the winters were wet enough for snow, and the summer was cold enough to keep the snow.

The Great Ice in the interior of the new continents had arrived.

Vnicsi was pleased, but he knew this would only last for a few hundred years so he then turned his attention to the leading gas giant in the stellar system. He opened a Star Device.   Carefully rechecking the major error faults in the poem of computer coding, he again prayed, and sent it out.  Two weeks later, it impacted a Saturn like gas giant, and crushed it. c

See, a Jupiter liked planet is already on the verge of becoming a star.  It just needs a little help to temporarily (like for a thusand years) cross that barrier.  And so, a second sun was born in that system.  It would provide added heat to the planet which the Varigmash appreciated.  A good cool day for them was in the mid-nineties Fahrenheit.

Now that he had the placed warmed up, Vnicsi turned and released a launch of bacteria into the planetary atmosphere.  These bugs would begin to eat rock, and turn it into dirt.  Other bugs would follow later.  And finally, the Varigmash would come to add another world to their domain.

When a man does what he knows he hates, it usually involves a girl.

I met the delightful Megan, Kimlyn, Aelywyn, and Tasha at the coffeeshoppe where I work when they came in that Tuesday morning in a bouncing, jesting cluster of girlish good humor to order from the guy at the rust-brown marble counter their respective Vanilla Americano, Double Mocha Exspresso, Fruitberry Tea, and Plain Java.  The guy with the short, black hair, slopped over his forehead unevenly, under the front to back paper hat suitable for setting sail all your dreams in, as long as those dreams are small, and do not mind immersion was me.   They took the glass-walled corner of the shoppe which let in natural light from Perkin’s and Hickory Streets, and allowed the passing stockbrokers, messenger runners, and other assorted males on both streets a good look at their legs as they sat in the bar stools under the heavily glossed redwood trunk slice table

The stools with their wickerwork backs, and rattan pole base spun and wiggled as the quartet laughed and .giggled over their drinks at the table that had been retrieved by my boss, the redoubtable Robert Strong, on one of his trips to Manitoba.  They knew they were the center of attention in the big, glass-walled coffee shoppe, and yet none showed it by any measure.

It was only when they were halfway out the door that I heard ‘Starsong’.  And I did it.  I reached out for a mind, and for my scriff sense.  For a time unmeasurable, I felt a soul that sung in unison to mine, and I felt that vector, that knowing, that ‘Its this way, of course’ feeling that leads one to another verser.  My world crashed in, pain raced on red and black lines toward my skull, and feebly I swiped at them, and they struck, and took my down so hard that I had no time to scream or beg or anything.  Unconsciousness was a blessing.

Waking, seeing glowing auras around the IV pole, and the slightly wilted flowers on a table nearby with a red cardstock placard attached saying  ’We hope you get well soon’,  I looked around the rest of my hospital room.  Pale white curtains of a tough, but airy weave hung close to his right and left which meant he was in one of the public wards.  Forty or so beds full of the non-contagious and the quiet lay around him, behind their own sight shields made of weaved cotton.  I felt wrung-out, ripped apart and stitched back together by someone not particularly skilled at needlework.  Closing my eyes, I tried to get comfortable in the hospital bed, but it was hot and damp underneath me, and I could not rest, nor was I able to do my preference which is to sprawl out from corner to corner, my arms flung every which way for the hospital bed, unlike my bed at home in the apartment, was narrow.

Uncomfortable, I drifted off, and then a voice spoke.

“Mister? Kevin Wakefield?” The male voice was high and thin, but full of concern.  Kevin opened his eyes to see red-haired man with a goatee standing quietly, but earnestly near Kevin’s bed..

“I’m Peter Haddington,your doctor.  You had a seizure at work,  and collapsed unconscious.  Since then, we’ve been trying to stabilize your waves and thought patterns with drugs, and sleep, but it’s been slow going.  Do you have any information you might give us?”

Keven groaned inside.  This was the last place he wanted to be.  Modern EKG’s could map his strange mental waves that diagnosed him as a psi,   Or they might reveal what had been done to him.  In a previous universe, he had crossed wills with a certain high rank psi.  Now if he tried to use psi, or even scriff sensing, it nearly killed him.  But still, he remembered the beauty of that soul he had brieftly touched.  It, that lovely soul, was one of those four girls, he was not sure which.  She pretended to be normal to her friends, but she was not.  And perhaps, she could be Kevin’s soul mate if he could but find her in the Big City.

“Hey pal, where you from?”  The speaker was tall, leaned down by life, dressed in faded blue jeans and a green terry cloth pullover shirt with sockless feet inside soled moccassins, and he came up behind the rounded fellow in brown corduroys, an argyle sweater, and red hiking boots who weaved a bit, and sweated a bit under his loose blonde hair which was unlike the first man who was shaved bald.

“Um, New, New York.”  The blonde man stepped sideways, and then back, unsteady in his boots in the walkers only designated street between the rows of art deco storefronts, amidst the other walkers in their jeans and jean shorts.  The blonde man grasped the others arm to stop him.

“My names Jake Dassault, brother, and you’re looking a bit shocked at your recent travel”. 

“Meh, ah my-ah name’s Rupert Desjarlais.”  Rupert’s voice stumbled in on itself in great weariness.

“Brother Rupert, how about you and I sit down at one of my favorite eateries, and I’ll tell you about this place?”  Jake said with a worried smile.  He knew what verser shock could be like, but this guy had it bad.  You wake in a new universe, and everything is different.  Some people can cope without a blink of the eye because they’re just that cool, and others are that unimaginative.  They have all the sensitiivity of a petrified tree stump.

Rupert nodded weakly, and Jake reached up, and tagged a bell on green painted metal summons pole so that it chimes.  Nobody else in the street pays any mind, but soon a rickshaw drawn by two large dogs, lightly furred so that they would not get too hot came up to the summons’ pole.  Jake scooped a gold centime out of his belt purse, and dropped it into the half-circular, red painted with many layers for most rickshaws got repaired over and over since the locals manifestly did not believe in throwing stuff away, metal can attached to the wall of the yellow painted rickshaw.

Two chimes came from inside the half-can which had an intricate clockwork mechanism for counting money.  Now it was possible to cheat it, but the dogs were smart enough to remember every person they took and in order, and to smell them.  A rickshaw dog could remember for up to four days its customers by scent, and this was accepted in court.

Jake also gave them a treat of the kind bought from the rickshaw company which was the only kind they were trained to eat.  It cost a bit more, but dogs that did not get treated tended to run through puddles in the street rather than around them, and other sorts of mischief.  And no one with any brain wanted to tackle two two hundred pound rickshaw partner dogs.  Even a strong man would lose such a fight without a shotgun.

Rupert got in, warily, and the dogs turned to look at him, noting his unease.  So they set out slow, and when they judged he had enough time to calm down, they started to run.  Ten blocks later, the quartet drew up in front of Mia Colorado, Jake’s favorite Mexican restauraunt.  Rickshaw riding is noisy so they had not been any attempt to talk during it.

Guided by Jake’s gentle touch on his shoulder, Rupert got out, and stared at the dogs for a long moment, until he shook his head and turned away.  The dogs sat down to wait to listen for another bell chime in the downtown area, and Jake led the other verser into Mia Colorado which was close to his idea of paradise.  Mama Rosita came out, kissed him on both cheeks, pointed out that she had three daughters who needed a man, and told him that the special that night was tacos al carbon.

He introduced Rupert who seemed calmer inside the dark lit room.  He loomed over Mama Rosita, but he spoke to her in good Spanish to which she replied that she could indeed whip up some huevos with extra spicy chorizo.  He went on to one of the eight tables with their wooden chairs, and Mama Rosita caught Jake’s eye, and pressed fingers to lips and blew it in the direction of the poster of the Virgin of Guadalupe behind the clerk’s wooden counter where Mamam presided under the Virgin’s benevolent gaze.  Jake nodded, and his eyes were worried, for if Mamam saw the doom and weirdness around Rupert than it was indeed a problem and not just his imagination.

Jake crooked his elbow in reply, and waved off Mamam’s look at the Corona poster with the midriffed bared abs of steel girl.  He wanted the good stuff.  Mamam nodded, and went to fetch it.