I ask him if his name is really Mark Young who I had last seen in the mid 1970s.
"Oh, I'm sorry, I thought you knew. I guess it's been a few years since then, and I've changed a bit--and you probably never knew that my middle name was Joseph. I use the name Mark Josephs a lot when I find myself in historic or modern worlds. I'm trying to avoid any chance that I might be confused with my divergent--that is, some day it's likely that Mark Joseph Young will be born in this world, but if it happens that I become famous in Jazz as Mark Joseph Young, knowing my father (who is a big Benny Goodman fan, and the reason I'm a saxophone player) he'll have heard of me, and knowing my mother she'll object to naming her son after someone famous, so it will confuse things terribly. Probably not really make a difference--after all, whatever the similarities, this probably is not our 1920's New Orleans, but only one very closely similar."
I would like to ask how he knows so much of my present situation. I'd ask him what "versing" is and tell him I'm not sure I'm even doing it.
"So, is this your first time waking up in a strange place? I mean, apart from when you've overdone the beer."
"O.K., obviously I'm going to have to explain this to you. Where to begin? I'll begin with me.
"It was, what, 1992; I had just turned thirty-seven that June, and it was September. I had five kids--boys--and I was making supper when the microwave exploded. It wasn't the most painful way to die, but it was the first time, and boy, did it hurt.
"Thing was, my mother had gotten us this high-tech microwave, thing said 'Scriff Inside', and it was supposed to work faster with less energy. Now, I didn't know it at the time, but scriff is not really what you'd call a natural substance--it's not merely subatomic, it's sub-quark; it exists in vast quantities outside the universes, like a sort of sea in which all universes float. It permeates universes, too, because the universes are made of the stuff. But when you get this imbalance, this extra pure scriff in you, it does really funny things to you. I died; but then I awoke in another world. I've lived for millennia since then, but never aged a day. I've died hundreds, maybe thousands, of times since then, and I always find myself alive in another world, another universe, some of them very familiar, some of them strange beyond all reckoning.
"Now, if I were to say that I'm guessing something like that happened to you, I would be understating the case. The fact is, scriff attracts scriff, and once you've got scriff in you you can sense the presence of anyone else who has scriff in them--at various differences, depending on how attuned your scriff is to their scriff, but let's not get too complicated here. You came right to me because you sensed the scriff in me, like a feeling you were supposed to meet someone over here. If you close your eyes and relax, you can probably point directly at your dog, and if your dog ran off, you and he would be able to find each other probably anywhere on the planet because of that feeling. You can also find your possessions, which will feel sort of similar, like you left something over there and need to go back and get it."
"As far as home, it's generally accepted by versers that you can't get back there. We're not certain why. Some say it's because the number of universes is so vast that the odds are astronomically against being in the same universe twice--but a lot of versers have been in the same universe more than twice, and I've been to one half a dozen times and fought the same vampires at different periods of its history. If anyone ever got home, either he was never completely certain he did or he never left to tell anyone else. On the other hand, the part about never aging and never having more children would make it difficult to feel at home even if you got there the moment you left."
"They tell me that the booze here is good. I tell them that if I'm going to make good music I'm going to need a clear head. Sure, Satchmo makes great music without a clear head, but that's him and this is me, and he's much more a natural at this Jazz stuff than I am. So I never drink the stuff. Of course, I couldn't stand booze when it was good, and this hootch? The reason cocktails were invented during prohibition was because the alcohol tasted so bad that no one could drink it without flavoring it with something else. But yes, this place makes its own stuff and buys some of the best from rum runners and bootleggers and moonshiners that it can get."
"Capone isn't after me; he doesn't know who I am. I made that up when Satchmo wanted me to go with him to Chicago. This is going to sound odd, maybe, but--see, everyone has to come to what I call a philosophy of the verse. For Michael di Varse, it's all preparation for the great end-all battle at Ragnorak. For Sean Daniels, it's an exploration of the realm of human fiction, that we've fallen into--well, the Neverending Story sort of existence, the worlds of human fantasy. Pete Adams will tell you that it's all a grand goof, that we're here by accident but should make the most of it. So everyone has his own idea of why we're here.
"My idea is that God chose a handful of people whom He thought He could use to make a difference in these universes, and put scriff in us and tossed us where He wanted us. I figure He sent me here, not merely to this world but to this city, and I've got to figure out why. Maybe it's to learn something, maybe it's to get something, but probably it's to do something. I'm not leaving New Orleans unless I'm pretty certain that God wants me somewhere else. So telling people Capone is looking for me explains why I don't follow the Jazz Exodus to New Orleans, and helps me keep a low profile here. It also guarantees me a job even though I'm the wrong color, because the management knows I'm not going to run off to take a record deal or Chicago job offer or something.
"That's not to say you shouldn't go to Chicago. It's probably pretty exciting there; I think Satch is still there now, although if memory serves he's going to do gigs in New York and L.A. before the end of the decade, so I don't guarantee you'll catch him."
"Yes, there is danger of a raid here--but the revenuours haven't been so organized down here in New Orleans, and being in the bad part of town actually protects the joint. I've seen them shut down several times, but since I don't drink and I only play in the band and I don't carry a weapon when I'm at work, they've always let me go without pressing charges."
--M. J. Young