The Gaming Outpost

Lost him, on the subway. Marilyn would have said to herself as she ran in a weaving stagger across the shuddering car garage deck, but her breath seared in a thin line down her throat. Blackness moved in on the sides of her vision as her oxygen debt nearly knocked her to the concrete floor amidst the parked cars of Stevens Street Garage.

What with the government cutbacks, she had to run up the last four flights of stairs since the elevator was turned off. But finally, she got to the oddly pearlescent purple of the Vinier car. It was a color unlike any she had ever seen, for the very good reason that it came from beyond this reality.

Marilyn Tailintryll remembered seeing it as she sat at the Wainsfield outdoor cafe’ earlier this evening. Her table was small, and pressed up against the roadside wrought iron fence, and she sat alone there drinking her orange Roobios tea, and the car had pulled up at the intersection.

She looked. It must be a kit car. It had odd lines, and a perfectly strange color, but then she glanced at the driver and saw his pole-axed expression. Curious about the car, and used to such looks, she waved an inviting hand toward him. It was not a come-hither, for she had never been that bold, nor had she ever needed to be.

Her mother was a beauty queen, and her father a Councilor in the Imperial Duma, and she had inherited both their looks in a mix that let her get whatever she wanted from about age two on. But, she did not consider this for to her that was what water was to a fish. Men came and did whatever she asked them to do because she asked them to do it. Also apples fell from trees.

The man parked,and hurried inside, and introduced himself as Clive Hammer. She giggled at the crude name, but let him buy her dinner, and they talked. First about the car, and then finding him peculiar about him.

Soon enough she decided he was mad in a non-threatening way. The lad across from her was handsome enough with his loose dirty blonde hair tied back in a ponytail, and his prominent chin, and his pale green eyes supported by a black T-shirt that said ‘Lunagrad Transport Control: We Keep Your Packages Sane’ which was some sort of poor joke about the Moon and lunatics.

She asked him about it, and he told her he was a verser. In his previous life, he had worked on the moon in what sounded like a delivery service. It was, well, not reincarnation, but something like it. She did not bother with the details.

Humoring him, she asked him more questions, and was rewarded with wild tales that sounded real. Of standing on worlds where the flag of Imperial Earth had never been raised (needless to say, she knew there were no starships. And indeed Earth was broken up into many competing power blocs. Which was sad. If only the fools in her own gov’t would listen to the People, and the People’s Representatives, like her!)

She said as much to him as he drove the car back to the garage with her in the passenger seat. He laughed, and told her he had seen far worse places than her Yukonian Republic. And as they walked, he told her of horrible places where men were turned into batteries of psionic energy to serve female overladies, or where your every thought was known to the secret police, or where one could walk for miles on bones without once touching the ground.

And she told him of her dreams for Peace. At first, he seemed pleasant, but then he got more skeptical. And then when she pressed him for allegiance, he shook his head. Her fury rose to a quick then, as they stood in the dim street, for she was not used to a man defying her.

So she told him that he was mad and a fool and a loser. His face turned flat and dangerous, and for a second she feared that she had gone too far, that he might do her a mischief.

But then he laughed harshly, and spun his hand, and snapped his fingers while speaking a word that would not rest in her ears. And fire clothed his hand, and stayed there, a warm yellow blaze in the shape of a wavering, flickering ball.

She stared in awe, and reached out to touch it, but she could feel the heat even before she got more than an inch away.

“Beauty is only skin deep, m’dear.” And the contempt in his eyes scarred her soul. He spun on his heel, and walked away. And she knew that all of his stories were true.

And so she walked to the end of the block, wondering how to retrieve herself, when it came to her. And in the late evening, with few sounds and a still, cool air, she turned and shouted out in her alto-sophrano voice that had won praise from an opera diva.

“I will have Peace!”

A more inarticulate sound came from further downhill in the city in reply. And then cursing her need to have the last word, she had raced uphill to get to the car before the verser did.

If she had not been such a splendid specimen, and driven by wounded pride and a desire to do good that burned within her soul, and had the advantage of a several hundred yard, headstart, well, things would have been much different.

But things were as they were.

So she came into the fourth floor of the car garage, and wobbled up, panting to the purple car from outside the world. A quick smash with her fist enclosed in her removed shoe, and the glass driver’s side window shattered. Then she carefully reached in, being wobbly still, and tagged the trunk release.

Feeling triumphant, she went to the trunk, and reached in amongst the odd weapons of war stored there, and pulled out a brass oil lamp in an ancient style. The thundering of boots coming up the stairs drove her faster, and so she just put it down, and rubbed it real quick.

A step back, as if it might explode, and a long pause…

“Is that all the massage I get?” A voice said from the lamp, and then smoke boiled and spewed out of the lamp to coalesce into the upper body of a djinn.

His eyes were black and inhuman, and his topkknot greased, and his teeth were filed to sharp points.

“Um, I get to ask you for one wish, right?”

The djinn looked at her with speculation and interest.

“You’re not my old master.” He said in a rolling, warm baritone that almost filled the space, and caused the boots coming up to stop for just a second, and then redouble their pace.

“Answer me!”
“Great Primeval Dark from which He called us forth!” The Djinn swore by the Dark from before Evil. “You are a demanding wench!”

His thought was to anger her, but she was too focused.
“Now.”
“Yes, yes, and yes. Thrice asked, thrice answered.”

“Can you give me…”
“True love, no. But pretty much anything else, yeah.”

“World peace, then.”
“WHaaat?”
“World peace.”
“Listen honey, I’m not sure you…” He raised his hands palms up with an attempt at a friendly smile on his face.
“Can you do it?”
“Ye-e-es.” He said, trying to hedge.
“Then do it.” She ordered, and he moaned.
“Thrice asked…and done.” The last word echoed as if it penetrated deep into the soil and ran around the world to meet itself, but nothing seemed to have changed.

“Is anything different?” She asked frantically looking about.
“Oh yes.” The djinn said dryly as the verser entered the floor, his face red, and dripping with sweat.
“But…there is no change.” She said, ignoring the man.
“There will be.” The djinn said, his voice filled with despair.

“Tell me, Alhisk, she didn’t.”
“Former master, she did.”
She turned to him, and tried to smile, and endded up with a half-smirk.
“I did. Its done.”
He walked up to her, and then past her to the trunk from which he retrieved a bolt-action rifle.
“Think that’s going to help?” Alhisk the Djinn said with amusement.
“Can’t hurt.” And he loaded a bullet engraved with runes into the chamber. “Yes, we’re done all right. Done cooked like a Christmas goose.” And then he looked at Alkisk. “How long?”
“Eleven seconds, fourty-nine microseconds…mark.”
“Whaaat…?”
“Sixty-six seconds and six microseconds after you asked for world peace, you’re going to get It.”
“Listen in this new world order, we won’t need guns, you primitive tool…”
“Tell it to him.”

And then smoke blasted out from clean air, forming a dense cloudwall five by ten, hanging a couple feet from the surface of the concrete. And in the middle of it, a glowing light appeared. And then a shape of a man, and then a man-thing stood by the side of what was revealed as some sort of doorway.

The man-thing was tall, nearly eight feet, with pallid white skin of a rubbery sort. His eyes were black except for a glowing red dot, and his hair was black-green with a scuzzy fuzz all over it, and other than a loincloth, he had nought but a golden trumpet.

This he blew.

“Hear ye, hear ye!” And he blew the trumpet again. “The Dread Lord Lucifuge, Lord of the Morning Stars, Master of Hell, is come to Earth to claim it as his Dominion. All bow.”

And he raised his trumpet again. The verser shot him in the head. And then he walked over, and took the trumpet away from the man-thing. Gently, he put it down on the ground out of the way. Then he looked at the Djinn.

“Gonna help?”
The djinn looked startled, and then shrugged.Why not? His body said. We’re all going to die anyways.

And so the two of them picked up the herald of Hell, and pitched his body back down into the Gate.

“That will let them know we’re waiting for them, and we’re not afraid.” The verser said.

“Is it wrong to lie to the Father of Lies?” The djinn whimpered.

“I…I don’t understand. I said …world peace, not open a gate to hell. What did you do, djinn?” Marilyn rounded on the djinn who puffed himself up angrily.
“Listen mistress, I tried to stop you. What do you think world peace is anyhow? Its one guy with enough power to crush his enemies into the dust. Hence, You Know Who is coming.”

She turned to run, her eyes unseeing, and she found a steel hard hand on her elbow.

“Oh, no. You destroyed your world. You don’t get to run away, and pretend like it didn’t happen.” The verser’s hot eyes were on hers, as she tried to hide. It could not be real. It could not be true.

And then she woke to find herself sitting at her chair in the cafe’. And the man, the verser, he was still sitting at the intersection, with a knowing look in his eyes, and then he drove on.

Clutching her stomach, she looked about, but saw no sign of Armageddon come. But then the folk she was waiting for came to sit near her.

“We want you to be the spokesmodel for the People’s Resistance Movement.” The leader said, a too serious look in his eyes.

“But haven’t we tried this PRM in other countries? And every time, the living wished they were dead before it was done?” She asked, the words coming unprodded from some deep well of memory in a history class which had briefly mentioned how every time Communism was tried, the dead were piled high.

One of the women stared at her, and snarled.

“Imperialist pig.”

Marilyn merely smiled back over her tea cup in a way calculated to send a message. You’re not even pretty enough to talk to me. I could take away all your boyfriends, but they are so icky, I don’t want them. It had its effect, and red-faced the girl got up, and left with the others trailing sadly away behind, with an occasional look back.

Feeling pleased with herself, she sipped her coffee, and wondered how she might change the world, but with a bit more knowledge of history, and a respect for ancient traditions.

“I could help you with that.” A soft baritone voice said from her right. It was the verser, and she smiled.

Even with the powered armor, plasma weaponry, relativistic railguns, and robots that have changed the nature of war unrecognizably, the best way to kill a wizard is still another wizard with a magic sword.

This one had apparently confused evolutionary theory for a moral imperative and decided that his powers meant he had the right to kill people to gain power simply because he could.He’d managed to get a Spellblade from somewhere, and had killed enough mages and stolen their powers to subjugate a major space station. It was up to Lady Sarah and her strike team to bring him down, and I was the Spellblade master who would duel him directly.

Sarah herself would be responsible for directing the shield spell. I never really had worked out how the prayers of priests of several different and contradictory religions managed to do that, but it worked well enough I didn’t complain. Most of the rest of the team would wield heavy weaponry to take down the similarly-shielded war robots Intel warned us about while standing in runic patterns that enhanced our defenses… somehow. Look, applied theology isn’t my strong suit. There were also two other Spellblade wielders, who would deal with any spellcasting cultists the madman had scrounged up.

“The airlock is an ambush point. Surprise them by cutting through and lobbing grenades,” my Blade, WardBane, advised as we approached. The robots behind the airlock had been waiting for it to cycle open and were caught off-guard by the the move, allowing us to charge in and get into formation before the defending mage could strike. He opened with the Aspect Of Corrosion, fairly standard for fighting power armor. Raw decay tore through the corridor, leaving streaks of rust along the suddenly crumbling walls but washing off our defenses harmlessly.

Now that his opening gambit had been foiled, the battle would begin in earnest. I pulled out my  high-powered compact railgun, the standard complement to a Spellblade, and began moving down the corridor. The next wave of defenders presented itself in a somewhat unpleasent surprise. A dozen robots rounded the corner, bearing the instantly recognizable gleam of Iridium-nanotube composite on their main armor plating. The high-density material would disrupt spellwork, preventing me from calling lighting inside their armor to cook the internals even if I could break through the counterspells protecting them. Apparently this mage was smarter than we’d thought.

“Close rapidly, shoot the one on the left, charge target three spaces center-ward” WardBane murmured as my companions opened up. I took a plasma bolt myself, but my sorcerous defenses held as I closed to melee with my target -“sever power conduits on right arm, duck to avoid blow, stab center right of chest”-  and struck.

We hurried through the base, cutting through more robots on the way, and burst through the door into the former station meeting hall. In the center stood the mage we’d come to kill and ten of his cultists. All wore power armor, and the leader’s Spellblade was complemented by ten lesser swords, each of which still radiated enough power to slice through the layered composite of power armor. When we got back from this, I was going to have words for whoever told us this guy was acting alone.

But it was too late to back out now, and anyway it changed nothing. I still held WardBane, the most powerful Spellblade in existence and sharper than diamond even without its enhancements, and was still confident I could take him in a sword-fight. I charged.

To the surprise of absolutely no one, the shower of plasma and hypervelocity rounds that flew past me simply dissolved without effect as they hit the warding spells of the cult. The others holstered their heavy weapons and pulled out knives and swords as the Spellblade wielders moved to engage. The shielding spells protecting the squad might allow weapons they were in physical contact with to bypass the wards, although it was by no means certain and using an entirely mundane sword against a Spellblade holder is entirely pointless anyway.

The only way we could pull this off was for me to kill the enemy Spellblade wielder while my fellows held off his companions. Once he was out of the picture and I’d claimed his magic, we should be able to overpower the wards on the others.

He launched a bolt of eldritch green fire at me, and WardBane batted it away. He forced power into prepared spells, bringing up a wall of corrosion and entropy backed by twisted space with no path to the more solid arcane barrier behind it. I focused on WardBane, channeling a counterspell in to reinforce the ones worked into the metal and the antimagical power from the deaths of the other rogue wizards it had slain, and slashed through the spells as easily as cutting air. This would be settled Spellblade to Spellblade, no matter what powers he had at his call. None of them could stop WardBane, and none of mine could stop his weapon either.

The cultists with their lesser blades engaged my two assistants; their swords were not the unstoppable power of a Spellblade, but they could still cut through magic when backed by a skilled conterspeller. They were outmatched without the whispered guidance of a true Spellblade, but they were still experienced and outnumbered their opponents five to one.

I reached the leader –“His sword is patterned off a medieval longsword, expect difficulty with parries but beware him using the pommel as a club. Do not attempt to force a contest of strength, open with strike towards his left shoulder” – and swung, unsurprised when he moved in a textbook perfect parry despite his clumsy weapon. WardBane directed me to strike twice more, then abruptly sidestep a blow aimed at my chest and counterstrike to force him to leap back and twist to avoid my next blow before he could get his SpellBlade back into play. The longsword knew the limitations of both Spellblades just as well as WardBane; it advised its master to strike aggressively at every opportunity to prevent me and WardBane from eventually managing to work around the parries and get in a cut somewhere important.

If the duel were being played out with ordinary swords or lesser blades, I would undoubtedly have lost. The longsword might be awkward at parrying but there was a reason for that. Just like the knights who wielded it originally, my opponent could simply have ignored defense and trusted his armor to take the blow- except that WardBane could slice through armor composite, arcane wards, flesh, and air with equal ease. Freed from the primary weakness of the light, fast Renaissance Era blade it was patterned off, WardBane was undoubtedly superior. As I struck towards his left leg, the mage was overbalanced by his parry.

He blocked a strike towards the hip, but couldn’t dodge my next strike as I cut into his armor along his right abdomen. It went dead, and the duel was decided. He managed to parry once more and make a desperate counterstrike in a forlorn hope of snatching victory, then WardBane slashed open his chest.

With his death, his power was released, and WardBane’s enchantments drew upon the disruption to strengthen the Spellblade as I claimed his spellcasting. As expected, he had apparently done most of the killing of mages, and his cult was not similarly empowered. A quick burst of the Aspect Of Storm tore through their defenses, and it was over.

Set in the world of Magic.

Dear Mom,

Mickey Kettering began, and then crumbled up the paper.

Dear Mom and Dad,

That’s all for now for the first week. I’ll have more tommorrow.
Your loving son,
Mickey…the Magician!

I sat in the Impact Zone, a bar on Enceladus, with the Great Fountain gushing matter out of the atmosphere from the interior of the moon in the right line of glass windows, and in the left, you could watch Saturnrise and the endless sea of its glittering rings spread out before you as a jeweled sea of infinite range. But my attention was on a third beauty sitting at the bar.

She glowed in the almost black room with vigor and health. Blonde hair done up in a ponytail that glistened, and a light yellow and pale green sundress that came down her shapely legs like a wafting thought. Tight, black pleather boots (as no one could afford real leather in the Outer System) put the punctuating period on her long, lithe form, and although she was turned aside with her legs crossed sitting at the bar, I knew her lips were sparkling pink, and eyes of blue for I had seen her enter thirty minutes ago.

In that time, she had politely turned down the attempts of nine men to ‘let me buy you a drink’. I knew I had to try if only so I would have some self-respect in the morning, but oh, I expected to go down in flames as well. But, I’d try something different.

I walked up to her, across the near-black, yet glossy floor that yielded just enough light so that you would not trip over your shoe laces, and I took inspiration from seeing Saturn rise yet again.

I stepped up in front of her, did not look at her, and asked the bartender for a Valor Rather Than Discretion. That is, triple the vodka, hold the ice, and superchilled grapefruit juice. Not looking at the divinity to my right, even though I could smell her springlike perfume, I waited on the barkeep who gave me a weird look as most of the bar was empty, and I had no need to intrude so close. But he got me my drink.

“Not going to offer me one?” The voice was soft, lilting, and a challenge.

“No.” I paused just long enough to make it seem I might be just a crude jerk, and then right before, I added some more. “I figure if you wanted one, any one of the nine guys could have bought you one already.”

That forced a half-unwilling laugh from her throat, and I turned to look at her. She sat still and waited.

“Well, am I up to your standards?” She asked, tilting her head back, showing her fine neck with its soft skin, and her eyelashes…

I found it hard to breathe frankly.

“Mentalist.”

The unwelcome word came from my right and the front door of the bar.

“Mentalist.”

There it was again, and I sighed, and my stomach sank, and hopeless words sprang to my lips, and died as I saw the fear in her eyes. Sure, he’s cute and funny and bold, but do I think so because he made me think so?

I sampled that tiny bit of her thought, and forebore to tell her that I would never change her, that she was just perfect the way she was. Instead, I bowed stiffly at the waist, and turned to go with Major Hislander.

The Major held his face still, and he wore the psi shield necklace of artificial rubies cored out to provide a space for the deharmonizers. If I wanted to, I could pierce the electrical shield for I am no ordinary mentalist born in this universe, but a verser who had in other universes bent vampires to my will, and forced some wannabee Dracula to walk into the sunlight against his will.

But, such effort costs, and frankly I already knew what I would find in his dreary, little bueraucratic mind. Just as there are those who hate the man who got rich through hard work and skill, there are those who hate those born with superior psionic skills.

We went in silent and mutual disdain on to the slidewalk under the Saturn light, under the artificial diamond dome, held together by a curious and clever array of carbon-carbon ropes that contracted it so that it had no space to fall. You could build a ten million square foot dome in a day’s time with this technique, as long as you had the skilled engineers and millions of diamond blocks. No mortar was required.

Arriving at Search Command, I nodded to the guards. One of them, Sergeant Paul Jamison was a Super. He looked more than a little inhuman, and he had been in so long that no major with three years of experience from the War College could frighten him.

As our credentials were checked, and triple-checked for the Enemy had shapeshifting, and duper copy technologies, he spoke to me.

“Max, thanks for sending the message to my cousin. His mother really appreciated it. And I’m sure cuz did too.” I smiled back, glad to have helped a genunine war hero from the days when people imagined the galactic union could hold instead of turn into interstellar civil war. The Sarge had done things that were still ‘shoot yourself before reading’ classified, even after the war had been going on for ten years.

“Hey, I like to deliver good news.” And I did. Her boy was orbitting Cygnus, in a cold shell, playing VR for what could be years, waiting for what might never come, an enemy transport coming into his sector so he could do a death or glory ambush. So in addition to boredom, loneliness, the terror of deep space, the fellow had to worry that his beloved mother was very ill. Well, she had recovered thanks to some OtherTech.

And now, it was time, to get some OtherTech. The door in the interior dome opened, and I walked into my kingdom. Here, everyone worked for me, and the others like me, in one view of things. In another view, we were oxen, and these were our masters holding the whip as we plowed the Multiverse for data treasures.

The hall opened into a large space, and I smiled broadly at the many, nodded at my commander who gravely nodded back, and made my way to the Console. Others used beds, and one poor fellow could not trance out without a half hour in zero stimulus tank, but like I said, I’m not like the others.

I learned mentalism from folk who could crack the mantle of planets with their will. Now, I would be considered the veriest child by them, but to the mentalists of this world, I was a bit of a phenomenon.

At the Console, I scanned the requests for data. Deep Flight Command really, really needed some way to speed up their FTL, and Encryption was getting some worrying actions from the Xrendoi which indicated that the Xrendoi who were the galaxies premier codebreakers might be reading our mail. A nice almost unbreakable code based on some alien physiology and pschyology to give the Xrendoi brain spasms as they tried to figure it out, would be nice.

I leaned back, and closed my eyes.

“10, 9, 8…” Ellie began counting down. She was a short, cute girl who would happily date me, but we did not spark, and so I was always just a bit proper with her to keep her at arms’ length. My breathing changed, and my astral presence disconnected from my body.

“Good night, he’s a machine.” I heard Ellie say in admiration. By the gleam of her silvery aura, I knew she was sincere.
“Freak.” Major Hislander said, and his red aura indicated his sincerity in hating me. Ellie did not saying anything, but just frowned, and her aura flickered to red as well. I yanked the Major’s hat down over his ears (which is something I supposedly can only do in trance like now, which is why I did it.)

And then as he sputtered, and Ellie giggled, I began to Listen. Each space has its own rhythm. I could feel Enceladus, young in heart and furious, and Saturn, vast and wise and still in its majesty. Their gravities pinged past each other, and I felt it.

But, there was more. And soon, I lost them, and then heard the Sun. Beyond that was a big step, the biggest, but then I heard the Galaxy. From there to the universe it was not hard.

And then I changed my Beat just a bit. And I was elsewhen, just like that. My silvery cord ran back a few steps, if there had been floor, and vanished into otherness.

Turning around, although since I was only here in mind, was wholly unneeded, and still done. We are not ghosts. Without our bodies, we are less.

I hung in intergalactic space, and saw spiral galaxies. And really, that was all I needed to know. If a galaxy is a spiral, its not that old. Eventually, after the passing of eons, a spiral can become a disc.

To double-check, I projected myself toward another galaxy of similar kind, and saw much the same thing. It was spiral. But, now being closer, I looked for the remnants of supernovas.

A supernova comes about when a star collapses on itself. This collapse is followed by a huge bounce back, and the star flings itself outward in a burst of energy so extravagant that one star will outshine its whole galaxy. A neutron star is left behind.

Over the course of three hundred years, you find the explosion filling up a 7 lightyear wide sphere. And I found about ten of these in the thirty-five percent of the galaxy I could easily espy. But I found only a fraction of what would be there if the universe were fairly old of the Stage Two.

See, the nova spreads out even more, but if this universe were all that old, there would have been plenty of time for well over a thousand visible, but I made it about two hundred. And if the universe were ancient, there would have to be tens of thousands of visible remnants spread over hundreds of lightyears.

There were none. Conclusion, this was a young universe, and my effort to find some ancient civ, and raid it for supertech that we could use in our war back home was alas and ultimately unworkable. I began to disconnect from There and Then, and return to my normal space.

This was not complete failure. I still had enough enthusiasm and energy to try a couple more times. Hopefully, I’d find a universe loaded chock full with super tech

Strolling out to my three-wheel auto in the asphalt covered parking lot under the unseasonably early snow falling on my head to turn to water skim on the lot, I waited for a fellow in a large six-wheel truck to pull out. The snowflakes were large, and singular, spaced well apart. My arms held detergent and borax, a light load, for I had stepped out on an early Saturday morning to refuel my cleaning supplies at the house. The air was calm.

Snaaapp.

I was flung ten feet to land in the middle of the lane between the cars. Railgun, my subconscious mind noted. And then I realized I could not move which indicated spinal injuries.

There is a problem with being a military consultant for, let us be honest, warlords. I choose the type I think will bring peace and stability to the area they control. Often peace and stability are synonyms for domination and ruthlessness, and so the soft-minded disdain me, and the imperialists dislike me, and the warlords I judge to be incompetent or pschyopaths hate me. Sometimes, work follows one home to the peaceful little town I lived in.

Another dart yanked my legs and spun me around. Hmmm, I was missing my right leg above the knee. I was not that worried about the kids at my house, and my teammates in the business of stabilizing tyrants on the theory that a half-reasonable tyrant is better than anarchy. As soon as I versed out, my sat-link cell phone would stop transmitting.

And then I’d have a prerecorded message arrive for my teammates and the orphan kids I sponsored. Go to ground. Here’s lots and lots of cash. Here’s new identities, and safe houses, and families on the far side of the country which I had been secretly sending money to for years just in case this happened.

Call it my last will and testament.

And the third microbead arrived at five percent of lightspeed, but I never heard it for it came faster than sound, and hit my skull.

============================================================

Waking from dreams of being the ball in a giant game of foosball, I heard thunder, continous slamming vibrating the air, and trembling the ground. Opening my eyes, I saw a wonder that dwarfed Niagra Falls and Victoria Falls in Africa and the Dere’ a’Khrisra Cataracts on Pear Green near the Galactic Core. I was on a clay bank cliff with a few olive trees, and some scrawny pines above a dark sea, and in front of me, less than a mile away was a line of cataracts that marched from right to the horizon. All about me, mist fell from the air. It tasted of salt, and on the ground, I could see plentiful white crystals fed by a few rivulets carven into the shaking clay.

Considering, I moved back to the rockier, more densely forested land fifty feet from the giant lake’s edge. Here, I felt like I was in less danger of the bank suddenly falling into the sea.

The cataracts ranged in height, I judged with the aid of a pencil for my geometry, a hunred, perhaps a hundred five feet tall. The amount of water flowing into this giant lake or sea was astonishing. And I said so, and could not hear my voice for the smashing noise. For long minutes, I stood there, and just enjoyed this introduction to my new universe.

For, I am a verser. Stab me, and I bleed. Shoot me with a railgun in the head, and I…dematerialize, and arrive in an alterante reality of one of the billions in the Multiverse. Just as good as new, unscarred, head intact, and if that dagger cut was recent, also unhurt. Last, I’m immortal. Yeah, its a pretty good deal. Much better than being one of those loser vampires.

My name is Keith Saunders, and I’ve been doing this for nearly a hundred fifty years. I’ve taught military history to the Imperial Irish Navy in the Eighteenth Century, fought in two wars (one against Humans) in separate universes, and engaged in countless ‘stability actions’ for my own company Force Majeure, Inc. which little beauty of a team I had just left behind. My most dangerous job by far was delivering pizza to bad neighbourhoods.

Praying for blessing in this new universe, I turned about and began to walk up the coast in the direction that my scriff sense (another ability we versers have) told me I’d find the remainder of my gear, my rifles, my tent, my gold coins and my hot chocolate mix. Soon enough, I found an animal path, and took it. Shortly thereafter, I saw a Lion thing, spotted coat, ruff, and commanding pressence with a tufted tail. He looked like he could eat a Bengal tiger for supper, and follow it up with a Panther for dessert.

He stood in the animal path just over a small rise with dense bracken to my right and left. I began to reach for the hip, for my .45 Depleted Uranium JHP pistol, and he rumbled in clear warning.

Great. Go for my pistol, which was clearly inadequate to deal with six hundred pounds of charging lion thing, or stay here, and let him eat me at his leisure? I broke to my left with a frantic race, and the chase was on. He came after me, with I’m sure (speculation here, as I certainly was not looking behind me to evaluate his skills) rocketing bound, and a liquid leap and regathering of his massive muscles as I tore my way through the undergrowth with every ounce of speed and madness I could muster.

He came on, and I heard his paws thump-thump behind me, and I knew he gained on me. There was no way I could outrun a lion. They can do forty-five miles per hour, whereas I top out somewhere around twenty-five although I’m prepared to believe I was braking records that day.

And then I heard a pause in his thumps, so close behind, I knew he was gathering himself for his final leap. And so, beyond hope of heart, but rationally hoping, I leapt forward myself. I hit the ground with my chest, and my head was hanging over the edge of the cliff bank, and the lion thing had missed, but only by inches. And while he was startled, I yanked with my arms and pulled myself over the edge, and plunged head first thirty feet into cold water.

The lion imparted a spiral spin, and helped my descent by catching one of my boots with a swiping paw which flung me even faster over the edge. Upon rising back to the surface, totally drenched,and weighed down by my wet clothes, I looked up to see the lion thing crouched on the cliff edge. He eyed me balefully, and I nodded back to him, just waiting.

If he was willing to get wet, I was dead.

He snarled, with a grumbling aftertone, and stalked away out of sight with a sudden grace that froze the lungs, and moved the heart to admiration. He was beautiful. I began to swim, hoping to find a spot soon where I could dry off, without visits from the local megafauna.

My job is to be impressed, look decorative in my trim black skirt, and ruffled white silk blouse, and trim figure and hair, while occasionally taking down a note to be passed on to some other man of importance. We learned it from the Japanese when they were on the verge of taking over the economic world order. Young execs need a pool of datable ladies, vetted by their employee, if the exec is to be able to fulfill his duty to his corporation, and work seventy hours a week.

It made the feminists shriek, but studies had proven that all-male teams out-produced mixed sex teams, and had fewer complaints against their employers from both male and female employees. Add in female cheerleader types, such as moi, and the productivity rate went up even higher.

Sure, I look cute, but I try to understand the written and unwritten rules of my society, and why those rules are there. You find a wall, you don’t just abolish it without thought. You find why the wall was put up, and usually you find that your ancestors were just as smart as you are, and that wall was there for a good reason.

My objective was to help my society stay the dominant one for the next millenium. To do that, I needed to carefully guide things. My more personal objective was to see that my children ran this society. To do that, I needed the most eligible male not already snatched up by some other scheming manipulative witch.

And so that was why I rode in a helicopter, with my hair freshly brushed, and a faint orange perfume wafting off my skin, and brightly looked out over the wilderness below us. My boss, a fine, kindly man, who had no objections to my plans, and was thirty years my senior, and had his first grandchild sat to my right. To his right, sat Mr. Lewis.

Kenneth Wills Lewis is tall, thin, with a fine nose, straight (and therefore healthy) teeth, clear gray eyes, a pleasant baritone that he could carry a tune with quite acceptably, and a certain presence that made bigger men treat him with courtesy. He also danced very well, I had noted last Christmas party.

He is unusual in that I detect none of the signs of the cow colleges where we get our middle managers, or the Southern schools where our intellects come from (the others being consigned to postmodern oblivion of intellect). I thought he was an autodidact which was only part of what made him exotic. And exotic meant hybrid, which meant good, sturdy survivor genes for my kids.

He was a troubleshooter. He showed up, solved problems, and went over the horizon for Venticorp Worldwide. He was young, but I was sure (because I had snooped in some files that he made more money than my boss who was decades older.) And rumor said he dated, but had no serious relationship.

What’s that old saying? It is universally acknowledged that a single man in ownership of a good fortune must be in want of a wife. Very true indeed, and I sighed at the thought of sitting across from him at the back portio table as we drank our morning coffee.

He was my number one choice, and so I had worked on my boss for the last month to push him to be extra helpful to the new guy from headquarters. Which is how I got on the helicopter out to this civilization-forsaken wilderness.

I had spent so much effort to get myself here that I had to take work off yesterday just to catch up on what the project is that I was supposed to be so interested in. I do find men adorable with the Varied Interests. I have two interests, unvarying, inflexible. Men are so darling with their hobby of this or that: cars, football, mining, railroad modelling, computer design, running a business. Its all a hobby to me, but I will follow my mother’s wise example, and actually teach myself to be interested in what my man is interested in. Its untrue that you cannot enjoy football. One just has to work hard at it, take it in small bites and work up a tolerance.

And then keep at it. Just because you’ve landed the fish doesn’t mean you let him off the hook. One of my sisters has flash cards on which she keeps the names and positions and teams of every first string football player in the pro leagues. Her husband, a charming news anchor, is convinced he’s the luckiest man in the world. Of course, he’s right. Mama raised her girls well.

It turns out that one of our oil prospector teams found a Kvorznye artifact (named after the Russian town where the first genunine extraterrestial artifact was discovered.) Such a find could lead us to a larger trove of artifacts. Perhaps this one had been washed down, or moved by ancient aborigines, and we could trace it back to its source.

This was very good from a personal interest level as I had always found the speculation about the Kvorznye or the Others fairly interesting. I’d even gone dressed as an Othren slave girl to a Halloween party three years ago. So, I would not have to work that hard at learning to be interested which was a pleasant bonus.

We landed below Lion’s Head Mountain, named for its rather obvious similarity, even with its cloaking forest. On the plains below, several hundred of the local nomads were gathered, and I was pleasantly surprised to see that my man (even if he did not know it yet) was adept in the local language.

The cargo helicopter landed behind us, and out spilled our crew of eighteen men to add to the four in the lead copter (pilot, bossman, my man, and little old moi.) They began unloading jeeps and trailers, and I went over to the supervisor of the workers to relay my bossman’s concerns. I was respectful and attractive, and he was charming and helpful, and everyone was happy. Several of the ‘boys’ grinned at me, and waved diffidently and I smiled back.

Go Team! The cheerleader is watching you, even as she pursues the quarterback. They set to work with the kind of blitzing efficiency that still took my breath away (because Mama had made us do a man’s work a few days so that we would understand just how hard it was to sling fifty pound crates about like they were feather pillows.)

I got back to my post, just to Lewis’ right, and took down his notes in shorthand. After a bit, he stared at me surprised when I clarified a point under discussion by referring to my notes. After that, he stopped taking notes, and really got moving now that he did not have to divide his attention between talking, mental note-taking.

Even with the cool wind of a Central Asian early spring whipping by us, chilling me, I gamely kept on. Sure, I could ask for a break, but I was here to make a great! first impression. Whining about being cold, or how my fingers were blue would not cut it. It can be hard being a woman. I was in less clothes, and a very drafty skirt, and naturally more cold-blooded than any of these guys, and yet, I had to smile and make it look easy even as some of them rubbed their hands together to keep warm.

We verified where the artifact came from, and then tracked it down through three generations of family back to the fellow who had sold it. His great-grandson came forward, and told us where his merchant-tinker great grandsire had found it according to family legend.

With that, we paid the local chiefs and the others in good gold, and climbed aboard the jeeps. The lovely, lovely heater in that jeep may have saved my life or so I thought knowing I exzaggerated. Maybe just my fingers were saved from amputation.

Coming up to the Lion’s Head Mountain, we surveyed the spot where the artifact was found. It was a wash, a half-open bowl of shale rock that looked as if water flowed down here on occasion.

And at this point, I was glad for my bossman’s advice. He had instructed me most firmly on the matter. I brought out my hiking boots, and followed the men upslope through the trees and the underbrush.

We were to keep our eyes open for the trace of a small creekbed that had been dried up. I mostly served to cheer the men on with smiles, and I caught Lewis looking at me with approval. I shyly fluttered my eyes in awkward fashion, a move I had practised in the mirror for a hundred nights.

He looked a bit smacked between the eyes, and I grinned secretly behind my demure look. The old tricks are the best tricks.

As we climbed the steep slope, I let myself be helped because it cheered those who helped me if it was only a bit, and because truthfully, a forty-five degree slope in heavy underbrush for four hundred yards is no joke. Even with my morning two mile run, and calisthenics, I was feeling winded before we were halfway up.

“We’re higher up than your home city.” Lewis said as he came up beside me, and I felt like smacking myself in the head. Of course. But he offered to help me, and so I let him have my arm rather than using it to wound myself in the face.

A glimmdrasnocket was chasing me over the sharp, iron-scented edge of….when Terrible Tonya appeared and shouted me awake.

“Paul! Up! Five minutes!” She hollered, sticking her blonde curls in the door, and then zooming on down the hall as I fell back into the arms of Morpheus. Yes, I talk that way, at least to myself. Mom’s voice burbled from downstairs, and varroom, the terrible one came back.

“Loser. Get up!” She stood in the doorway, a nightmare in pink and pastel purple parading pathetically for her peers. The worst thing in my mind was that this chosen combo was the result of deliberate reflection and study.

I opened one eye, and nodded. It was enough. I was Officially Awake, and barred from Sleepyland. Sighing, I rose, showered, brushed the incisors and the molars, and pulled on jeans and an old t-shirt.

Downstairs, I glared at the TV, set to daytime soaps, and feeling dirty, I changed it to the Weather Channel. Mom and Tonya were already gone, shopping for sister’s job as costumer for the Children’s Theatre for the feeble two months of summer vacation. Honey Crunchies, bowl, milk, spoon all met above the carpetted floor on the long low coffee table as someone babbled on about Weather on the 8′s. It was white noise to keep away the emptiness of our suburban two-story, and the emptiness of my summer.

I wanted to visit my friends (way across town), or go to the beach (fifteen miles west of town), or even go to the downtown park (drug dealers and kidnappers of small children, and Father is busy earning money as the government shackled him with more regulations, and Mother was already claimed by Tonya, the mistress of manipulation and E-E-Evil.) Instead, I would spend my day online, and then get to listen to complaints from the parental units on how pale I was, how I looked like a ghost with my skin and black hair.

See, its not enough that you’re down, but Life has to kick you while you’re down to remind you of what your proper place is.

And then I noted the message sitting on the coffee table.

“Paul. Your mother and I looked around, and found a suitable day camp. Crafts, swimming, volleyball…” I winced. Volleyball hurt my forearms. Basketball, I liked. Soccer was okay if it was not too hot. Flag football was cool because I was really quick on my feet and could dodge most of my peers. The note went on.

“…Farm Fresh Camp. The bus will be here at 10:30. Sorry to drop this on such short notice, but we only got the info last night.”

A shushing of air brake, and a creaking of metal let me know that a bus waited outside. I took one more sloppy bit of Honey Crunchies, and bolted to the front window to slide aside the heavy curtain. A yellow bus labelled “Farm Fresh Camp”, a bus that had definitely seen better days, stood by the curb outside the door.

Without a pause to comb my hair (Mother would be unhappy), I grabbed my game machine, my bag o’ dice, my cell phone…and then I turned about and frantically charged into the laundry room to find my swimming trunks. They were laid out on the top of the drying machine (Thank you, Mom!).

Outside, the heat hit me, and I was glad to enter the shade of the bus, and even gladder to feel the cool breeze of a functioning air conditioner. Most of the buses I had ridden to school were not conditioned, despite a rather extravagant line in the budget devoted to just that. Yes, in a fit of irritation at the ninth day of three digit heat, I had looked up the School Budget for Metrocity, and been appalled by how much it cost to not condition the busses, and by how much the Administrators made in salary compared to how little the Art Supply Budget was (clue, you could have fired one useless Administrator and doubled the Art Supplies for the whole city.)

I found a seat mid-way to the back next to a short kid, about eleven, which would make him two years younger than me. And then he informed me that he was thirteen as well.

“My dad looked thirty when he was fifty.”
“Looked?”
“He got zapped by a battery in a Jaguar.”
Oh. Well, even I knew the Jaguar’s had terrible electric systems. And that was how I met Steven. His dad had been a car mechanic, and he wanted to be a car designer.

The other dozen kids on the bus chatted and talked to each other, and I joined in. They seemed a clever lot to me, and over half of them played tabletop RPG’s which was good news as I always have a dungeon ready to run if I can find players.

Two more stops, and then we headed out of town. Our last stop had picked up a blonde girl taller than me, and a blind guy with a Pekingnese as his service animal. I tried not to laugh at the solemn little thing, but somehow I got the feeling that it knew.

North of town, we took a winding road off the Interstate that led deeper and deeper into the woods. The road went from three lanes to two lanes five miles in. And then down to one, and I thought I saw a gleaming white horse in the woods as we passed.

The road turned to gravel, and we went on for what seemed a very long time until we crested a hill, and there lay a pleasant farm in the valley below us. We went down through its gate, and pulled up in front of the farmhouse.

A balding man, in jean overalls and a flannel checked shirt was waiting for us with a miniature border collie at his booted feet. The ground was hard-packed dirt with the occasional spot of jutting grass in the parking area, while all around us, green fields were intermingled checkerboard fashion with growing crops.

I got out, and looked at the sun which even now was late in the afternoon. Wasn’t this supposed to be a day camp? If we wanted to get back in time, we’d have to leave about now.

The man smiled at my look, and pulled out a fancy hand fob, a watch like a trainman might have used in a different century.
He waited while we all unloaded, and even without a word we somehow knew to get our stuff and wait in a clump before him.

The blind kid bounced off the bus with a big smile, and let his Pekingnese loose to go play with the border collie who greeted it as if they were old friends. They too ran off toward the barn, barking occasionally in sheer joy at a reunion.

“Sparky and Watch have gotten out of the way. We won’t see them for a while.”

“Um…” Steven began.

“Not the first to notice it, but the first to speak of it. Interesting.” The man said, looking again at his watch. “Yes, this is a day camp. Yes, if we had to have you back by nightfall, we’d have to leave in thirty minutes which would not give you enough time to swim, eat Mamma Perry’s cherry pies, or swing in the hay mow. ”

A ripple of uncertainty ran through us. He clearly seemed kindly and normal, but things did not add up.

“My name is Farmer Joe. And we have a means of dealing with the little time problem. Don’t look at the sun too closely. It can still blind you if you stare at it too long. That factor’s not been altered.”

Hunh?

And he wound back the hand on the watchface, and we saw shadows shift around his, around our feet. And looking at the sun despite his admonition not too, we saw it retreat through the sky to an early morning position.

“There.” He smiled, and put the watch fob back in his chest pocket with a proprietary smile.

We all stared, with our mouths hanging open. So he walked up to us, tapped a few of us under the chin and chuckled.

“You’ll let the flies in that way. Close your mouth young’uns.”

“What was that?” I nearly shouted.

“And you’re the first to speak in time of fear. Interesting again.” Farmer Joe said eyeing me with close attention as if he were trying to read my soul for any fine print.

I gritted my teeth and waited. Dealing with my sister’s manipulation had…

“Brought us to our notice.” Farmer Joe said. “Your sister uses Magick. And she knows it has costs, but she reckons it will land on someone else, far away.”

Magick. Insane. And yet, some of the things I had seen my sister convince others to do could most readily be explained by Magic with or without the ‘k’. She had a Knack for convincing folk to part with their hard-earned cash to fund her latest brainstorm.

“That’s….” I began and fizzled out.

“A lot to process. Let me explain a few things of import to each of you. Magic is a result of this being a magical universe. In the Beginning was the Word. Even the Materialists, twits that they are, acknowledge that the universe began with a Singularity, something that could not work by the physical laws of this universe. But they don’t take that point the next step. Magic still exists.”

“You’re a Creationist.” Steven said as if enlightenment had arrived.

“All magicians are.” Farmer Joe replied. “Now, the next thing is that Magic tends to exzaggerate or refine and extend the nature of What Is. A bus can be made to carry hundreds, and a clock can bend time upon itself.”

“So can I become a bird?” The blonde girl asked and Farmer Joe shook his head. “Not unless you are in some essential way already a bird.”

“I hanglide.” She said, looking excited. I was impressed. Thirteen year old girl hangliders are not common anywhere. “My dad taught us all, along with skateboarding and surfing.” She pulled up her sleeves to reveal an interesting array of scrapes and bruises. I reconsidered the idea of dating her. After all, she’d probably want me to get road rash too.

“What about me?” Asked a chunky lad. “I hate airplanes, and even roller coasters.”

Farmer Joe sighed.

“I had wanted to wait, but yes, there is a Way. A very dark and bad way. You can bend the nature of an item. Make it untrue to itself, turn a clock into a hamburger if you wish. But this is the problem.

See all humans do magic a little bit, when you wish upon a star, you’re bringing magic into the world. And Metrocity has hundreds of thousands of dreamers. They strain reality, and twist it. This is good…and bad. Good because we can find new ways to turn things, new roads to travel down, and bad because some Ways are not meant to be ever travelled but by Dark Things.”

“And that’s why we are in the country.” I said, not knowing why, but it seemed to make sense. Farmer Joe smiled encouragingly at me after my outburst. He waited, and I tried to explain to my busmates what I meant, even though I did not really know myself.

“Well…if Magic is known, and being created in new good and bad ways in the City, it stands to reason that in the Country is the repository of the Ancient Good Ways.” I waved my hands a bit as I talked which always made Terrible Tonya smirk.

“Exactly. And this is what we need to teach you all. You all have unusual potential…Power…which is why your sister, or cousin, or class bully or weird teacher seems to have a Knack or a Gift, or some special weirdness. Its them drawing energy from you.”

Great. I was responsible for Tonya being a jerk.

“Most beginning level magicians cannot shield themselves, and can hardly raise consistent and dependable and measurable levels of power. Your Other can raise such power, but has no shields. And lastly, Magic has a price. Lewis here can see into the hearts of men, but outside the Farm, he’s blind. Now, you could Push this Cost on to someone else, but…”

“That’d be Evil.” I said.

“Yes.” Farmer Joe said. “Now we White Magi do have one advantage. The universe does not hate us. It does not charge us as much for our spells. But there is always a Cost.”

“The stories of the ravens hunting hanggliders out on solo runs,and crashing them…” The blonde girl said softly.

“Are true, and are part of the Cost. Evil is woken and let loose in the world by the Dark Magicians at work.”

“Me? My cousin…” She asked panicked.

Farmer Joe shook his head.

“He’s not that powerful yet to have such a side effect. What I’m going to teach you on this first day is how to make a mana trap to store your own mana in, so that your Other won’t steal it. For most of you, that will solve your immediate problem. Deprived of your mana, your Other will lose their magic, and give it up as a bad idea.”

I sincerely hoped that was the case with my older sister. But being able to manipulate people, to bend them to your will with a few words…that had to be tempting. In a way, I felt sorry for her. Would I have stood against such a temptation, and resisted?

Sweat filmed his scalp and began to infiltrate the Morgan’s black locks as he bowed and spun in the quickstep with its distinctive rise and fall throughout. And then the swing band, the Smooth Jumpers, finished up with a crescendo that all the twelve-man band joined in, to finish with a thunder of drums. Ruger Morgan bowed to his dance partner, Annette, in the oregano strapless blouse that showed her thin shoulders off to advantage, and they both applauded. Her face had a yearning to it, and his face had a surface charm that tried to hide the closure behind it.

Not the lady for me. He thought, and turned to the wall of the well-lit ballroom where the next dancers were lining up. Shining electric chandeliers were tight against the relatively low twenty foot tall brass lined building so that all the light reflected down into the tennis court sized room.

Morgan walked like a panther, his black gabardine ruffled trousers fitted into scoop-topped suede chukka boots of an orange rust color that went well with his ruddy face. The custom-fitted dress shirt ran straight up his chest displaying abdominals and pectorals that received a lot of work, although not for the expected reason, and poofed out above the hips in back in the expected fashion. It was a shimmering blue cotton with a threadcount north of two hundred, dense enough to serve as light armor against mis-thrown barroom darts.

He produced his crooked smile, with the thin lips, and strong, straight nose as he walked up to the line of waiting dancers. Swirling around him were other eager dancers seeking the partners on their dance card, or for a few looking to see if someone did not show up and they could cut in. All were splendid in pullovers and dress shirts for the men, and in chiffon layered skirts, or secretary skirts, or the occasional strapless dress for the ladies.

A lady with lustrous long hair that hung down in curls over her pearl white shoulders as she leaned against the wall. Her lips were red, even under the brilliant lipstick, and she seemed to have an amused and benevolent smile for all the fuss around her.

Evan liked her. Granted, he liked most females, but he liked her a bit more than average, which was a good sign. He got close enough to smell her simple rose water perfume, and to appreciate the rose petal strewn on white field design of her strapless dress that came to a few inches above her knee.

“I…”
“I’m cutting in.” A grating voice came from his right, and a flood of simple frustration and vast annoyance overbore him, and turned him to the right where a fellow stood.

The man had red curls, and bright blue eyes as innocent as a new dawn, with a cleft chin that must have made him the joy of aunts and grandmamas when he was young enough to have his chine chucked by a fond hand.

His shoulders were broad under the modern made version of a frontier style jacket with a burgundy corduroy shirt underneath it. Simple khakis, but boot and kick cut went down over the black leather motorcycle boots with their shiny metal ring.

He was handsome, almost oppressively so, and yet his smile made people like him, until they got close. Then a sense of simmering anger raised the hackles on the wise, and enticed the foolish to come closer.

Showing wisdom, Ruger’s dance partner pulled herself away by sliding along the wall, and headed briskly to the bar. He liked her even more. Most people at least took a minute or two to run from Hatisher.

“Must we?” Ruger ground out, looking sadly out of the corner of his eyes as the dancers started to whirl, with each man’s left hand on the waist of his partner, and right hand held high in her hand. It was a Lindy Hop, which he especially liked.

Max Hattisher opened his coat just a fraction and revealed a Kinetic Decompressor. The sleek round curves of the pint sized curve, the oddness one felt rather than saw told him all he needed to know about the devices extradimensional origin, and that it was armed.

Sucking on the right side of his lip, Ruger walked out following Max. If Max had unleashed that device, it would have turned the dance hall into a rapidly expanding cloud of gas as all the potential kinetic energy in the walls, and floor, and bodies of the dancers was unleashed. The damage dwarfed a tactical nuke, but was clean enough you could walk through the area ten minutes later if you did not mind pushing aside the dust of dead people.

On the way out, Ruger got his coat from coatcheck, and once out the door, he pulled from the six inch deep pocket of the trench coat, a spatha for his right and a Gurkha knife for his left. So armed, he tossed the coat down against the outer wall of the dance hall.

“Let’s get it over with.” He sighed.
“You killed me.” Hissed from the darkness between the cars.
“Guilty. But then you were about to become World Dictator in that timeline. Install socialism, kill billions in death camps.”
“It was my life. My destiny. You defined Fate.”
“Guess so.” Ruger said, putting the spatha to rest on his shoulder. “Do we have to do this every time?”
“Admit you were wrong.”
“No.”
“Admit….”
“No, Max. Now can I go back to ….”
And with that Max Hattisher, wanna-be World Dictator, and reluctant verser, came screaming over the top of a Bentley with his rapier lunging, and his executioner’s axe swinging….

Sometimes Ruger won. Sometimes Max did. But it had made Ruger’s search for the perfect girl harder. He needed not just loveliness, and respect for his self, and wit, and a thousand other things, but also a girl who could stand up to a crazed master swordsman like Max. It really was annoying. If only Max had not bit him on the nose the first time Ruger killed him in his palatial apartment. But the blood carried immortality sometimes for the verser, and sometimes the worst man got it.

Ruger did a quickstep to the right, and snapped his spatha into high guard…

For seven-hundred miles, the Road scallopped and swayed along the bending coastline. In the North, it ran above black rocks that dove ten or fifty feet into the churning water. Amidst, it ran along the smooth coves, and past cities, and there were metal wrapped stone pillars every mile so that the wagoneers could tie down in the case of a seastorm pushing water up onto the land to sweep everthing away. In the south, it had to wing inward because the delta of the Kavernge River mouth was just too soft to bear the weight of stone panels ten feet long.

Chancer rode along the Road with his two-wheel wagon, and a pulling horse named Margaret provided the motive power of the assemblage. In the late morning, he left behind the last of the black rock, which had gleamed after a sudden rainstorm with the sun jabbing out from clouds out to sea like a swollen fruit. By evening, he had put another ten miles under his wheels, and he was looking for a place to camp.

The first campground was littered. Two miles on, the second one had no stack of firewood in the wrought iron wood basket, which was against the law. The locals received a tax rebate to make sure the baskets were always filled with wood. Sighing, Chance rode on to the next campsite two miles on, and found a herd of horses who charged him.

Close-reining his horse, he let them slide around him in a snorting, stomping mass that poured out from the bowl shaped camping area by the roadside, while keeping Margaret from rearing and charging off. After they left, he had a sweaty, anxious horse which would not settle down.

He jumped down, and walked up next to the mare talking soothingly to the beast. As he got closer, he saw two bite marks in its hide, and he groaned. Some members of that skittish herd had bit his horse. Now, he would have to medicate her, and take it easy for a couple days.

Worse, there had been names branded in the herd’s hide. Which meant the locals were abandoning their legal duties. After the medication, Chance has his duty as Kingsman. He got out his laser from the toolbox, and began hiking over the nearby hills to administer justice. It was not his favorite part of checking the Roads for the King, but it was duty, and unlike the locals from this universe, Chance always did his duty.

“Signore Alceste of Vernegro?” The young lad was clothed in a peasant’s blue tunic, and a bright blue/white divided perpendicularly tabard,and khaki breeches. He stood by the wrought iron bench on which Alceste sat waiting to serve as the secretary of the Doge of Florence. The room was floored in baked clay tiles from which warmth radiated to fill the glass-walled ‘greenhouse’, a creation of the noted savant Leonardo da Vinci. Below the tiles ran clay pipes into which were pumped a continuing stream of furnace heated water from the seven furnaces in the basement of the Doge’s Palazzio.
One could sit here, in the very depth of winter, and not feel the slightest draft. Alceste raised his ceramic mug of tea to his full lips, being careful not to drip on his bronze tinted brocade cotehardie. Every few inches an imprint of a circular twisted mass, a pattern that symbolized the intertwining of Florentine trade that went out, and came back, and twirled about again in a never-ending ballet that brought wealth and peace to all.
The dozen brass buttons on the front made him look splendid, he decided, and so he gave the young lad a raised eyebrow.
“Signore, the Prince Heir would speak with you.”
At once Alceste da Vernegro stood to his feet. Regretfully, he poured the good tea into the brass spittoon, and laid the mug on a nearby windowsill.
Spinning back in his leather boots, he gestured with one open-handed palm to the young lad.
“Lead on, then my good fellow.”