From the article archive
World A Week: Gather
Waking with a clearer picture of my surroundings before I got up was helpful. It looked like an old wound in my scriff-related abilities finally has begun to heal.
The tiny park with its oddly artistic water fountains full of circles of stone at the near end, and the precise grass reminiscent of an English garden at the far end stood as the last outpost of nature at the edge of a skyscraper-filled downtown.
The fountains hid my arrival from view to all but a few of the passing, lunchtime crowd, and they shook their heads, or bugged their eyes out and kept moving. The neighbourhood did not look altogether safe for the average citizen, but that did not worry me. I pity the mugger who decided I was an easy mark. The chief question would be how little force would be safe to use, and secondly what form of martial arts would serve me best.
I sensed about for my stuff with my scriff sense, and found multiple sentient contacts. There were other versers here, at least five, and maybe more. I had evidently happened into a gather world which only infrequently happened to me. Its been speculated that because I am such a lone wolf, I make my own path. But while possible, this, like most theories about scriff is not provable scientifically or logically.
Whatever.
I got up, and splashed some water from a jetting fountain on my face, and set out on a hike toward my stuff. In so doing, I passed at least one scriff source, in the Jewish Hospital. The name worried me, making me think of ghettos and armbands, but it looked very nice, and well-integrated into the surrounding buildings with even two walkways going to nearby skyscrapers.
There was an abundance of interesting buildings of varying eras. But this city seemed to prove that modern did not have to be boring boxes of steel and glass. There were jutting boxes off boxes, and concrete facades of different colors to make simple murals ten stories tall, and slanted rooflines, and archways across the street, and all sorts of neat-to-me details. Combine that with old ?30?s style five story tall commercial buildings full of varying businesses and the city intrigued me.
There was a big difference in this Southern city of Louisville from what I remember hearing of my homeworld. A rather large, and funky district of antique antebellum and Victorian mixed homes attracted my eye, and so I turned a bit aside from my course to stroll down Jefferson Street(some of the streets seemed named after early American Presidents) past the adult bookstore, and onto this mixed small commercial/residential area.
A wolf whistle was directed at me, I realized since there was no other person near the target zone who looked remotely whistlable (the homeless guy with his bag of cans did not count I felt sure), I turned about ready to politely smile and move on after acknowledging the compliment. I?d been in worlds where Sadie Hawkins would have been a shy and demure type; in that world, you didn?t ask your man out, you grabbed him by the hair, and led him to the house you and he were going to buy. Lucky for me, I?d had pretty short hair compared to the guys in that world.
So, I turned, and saw a guy waving friendly-like at me. My face froze for a second, and I jerkily nodded trying to be polite. He came up, and talked, and offered me coffee, but I contented myself with a few questions.
It seemed that Louisville, in this universe, had taken the place of San Francisco in mine. It had, in the beginning a small gay population, and then a very capable politician had pushed through some friendly laws which made it a magnet for gays across the nation, and this meant that people started to journey here to be near others which made it even more attractive, and those who did not like this began to leave thus making it even more gay friendly. It?s the same type of process that creates Silicon Valley, and other enclaves. Through self-sorting and some incentive changes, a major percentage of American gays ended up in this district.
It was very well-off, and very artistic, and rather unfriendly to children since the local school was practically dying on the vine.
I said good-bye to my new acquaintance who expressed regret which I found flattering and off-putting at the same time. With relief, I went on to another street, and found my stuff underneath a rose bush in someone?s backyard.
Unfortunately, the owner of that yard was not the trusting sort. She was about eighty-years old, and packing a double barrel shotgun that I thought would tip her over if she fired it. My explanations fell on deliberately deaf ears, until I pulled from my pocket a gold solidus I?d been paid in a recent world. I rolled it across to her down her sidewalk, and she trapped it neatly with her foot. A deft scoop, and she bit it with her teeth.
?Aye, lad, I thought I recognized you from the gold strike in 1910. You look the same, but then even back then everyone knew you were a strange one. Billy Two Clouds said you had ?the strongest and strangest medicine? he?d ever seen in a white man.?
?Then why??
?You gave me a gold nugget then, when I was just a little girl, to keep my mouth shut while you snuck up on Jack Roper who was a bad ?un.?
I didn?t remember, but it could well be true since I had a large spot of amnesia in the center of my travels.
She cackled having gotten the better of me, and after she hiked up her stairs and back inside,I dropped a handful of solidus for her to find later. It?d help with her medical bills, the old rascal.
I left the rose garden, and decided to get a hotel, and then track down these scriff spots. A pawn shop turned a dozen solidus into cash, and I booked at the Hyatt on the seventeenth floor of this atrium filled hotel. I had no credit cards, but a bribe handled that problem.
The window showed a beautiful view of downtown, and with a map, I could chart out roughly where I felt the versers to be from here. One was in the direction of the Galt House, a giant ?H?-shaped inn on the river separating Kaintuck (Kentucky in my homeworld) and Indiana. Another was still toward the Jewish Hospital, and another was toward the courthouse. I filled in the rest, and went across the street for an explosion in the taste buds innocuously called a Greek salad at Deke?s, a local sports bar.
I?m not much on watching football, but it?s occasionally fun especially when long deprived, and I had to tear myself away to go track down the versers. I took several of my weapons since psi hardly worked here, and the same with magic. And, there are a few versers, I?d just as soon not meet without a gun in my hand.
I walked into the Galt House which was a massive and beautiful building in a seventies pre-stressed concrete sort-of Tudor kind of style. It was practically on the waterfront, and while not tall compared to some buildings I?ve seen, it loomed over most of the skyline.
Inside, I saw the Alchemist across a wooden bar in the lobby restauraunt, and he was filling up a cut crystal glass with alternating layers of chocolate fudge, gum drops, caramel, mint ice cream, and cherry sauce. I averted my eyes. I have a strong stomach, but some of his desserts defy reason.
Laughing to myself, I decided to sneak up on him. And then as he sat down at his table by the wall, I skidded to a halt. Another verser, almost identical sat across from him, and a third guy practically indistinguishable sat there as well. A faintly familiar rabbit hopped out from between the legs of number two?s chair. It had a bowl of water, and a newspaper, and some celery down there. It looked at me, did a doubletake, and promptly hopped back under the chair.
I shrugged guessing that not all animals are going to like you even though it did look pretty cute.
?Um, hello, mind if I join you?? I asked, not being terribly witty when my head is spinning.
We got sat down, and I and the Alchemist got reacquainted. He introduced me to the two others. The Visitor, a former superhero who?d been in something like fifteen worlds by now, and the local doppelganger who had a job as a lawyer on the staff of the mayor. He was a legal adviser to the mayor. His job involved telling the mayor what was legal and what was not.
We talked for hours about all sorts of things. I had philosophical questions I?d been saving up, and new magic spells to share, and I needed to find out if anyone was trying any major plans.
See, I have this ethic of seniority in worlds that I try to follow. If a verser has landed in a world before me, I tend to follow their lead a bit on changing the world unless I totally disagree with them. But they shook their heads. The Visitor was practicing law, and the Alchemist took martial arts lessons at King?s Dojo which he recommended, and he was working on a masters in chemistry to make his Alchemist title a little more solid.
We arranged to meet at the Old Spaggetti House the next night, and I left.
Checking out King?s was hardly out of my way, and so I swung past. It was open late at night, and so I strolled in to find students hard at work with an unusual and yet quite effective technique.
Then I felt a slam in my back, and a knife at my throat. Someone was standing on my back, and I prepped my muscles to flip over.
?Nuh, unh Tad, that?s not how you do it.? I heard a throaty growl that I recognized.
?Cynthia?? I shouted, and she laughed, and jumped off my back. I bounced to my feet just to show I was not completely helpless. I loomed over her, but in hand-to-hand I?d be hard pressed to match her, if she did not transform into a werewolf. If she were?d, well I?d best run.
?Where?s David??
?Oh, you mean, ?The King?. We just came from a world where the best martial artist was made king for seven years. He keeps rubbing it in, that he beat me in the final match.? She laughed, and I saw David step around the corner while I remembered meeting a future self of his that had truly been a ?King?.
?I do not.? He objected, and they started a friendly argument which he interrupted by reaching out to shake my hand. He looked about the same as in that world where we dealt with Gavin in a semi-final fashion. A walking, talking endorsement of weight-lifting and martial arts as a lifestyle.
I envied him a verser wife, even if I did not envy him the occasional flashes of temper she exhibited.
We got out on the mat, and he took it easy seeing as I had just gotten off eating, but soon enough he was pointing out small improvements to make in my form and he had a program of exercises that he recommended I get on. I was not totally looking forward to it, but seeing as it would be hard to find a better teacher, I consented. He?d gotten even better at the arts than last I saw him, and while I?d improved as well, indeed quite a bit, but not as much as him.
And then another fellow walked onto the mat. This was a bit rude since all the other students were watching us spar.
He stood in his Army greens with his Ranger patch, and he grinned cockily at me. David?s doppleganger stood there waiting for me to reply, and then he added a provoking comment.
?This must be one of those versers you were telling me about. Doesn?t look too tough to me.?
My verser friends both sighed, and then both nodded at me.
I grinned.
?I?m not that tough; just a little wimp is me. How did you know I was a verser??
He stripped off his jacket, and his boots and socks.
?I didn?t, but I?ve heard the wild stories he keeps telling me. I think he?s yanking my chain half the time, but you have a very individual style with elements from a dozen different disciplines. Too bad for you, I might have learned a bit too.?
?Don?t worry about hurting him, Tad.? My friend said which shocked me because that had been my concern. Most normal humans cannot hope to match an experienced verser in hand-to-hand combat.
Then he flowed toward me like still water going over a waterfall is the only way I can describe it, and I was forced on the defensive. He chased me around the mat for a good several minutes as I began to analyze the elements of his style.
I think he started to worry a bit because I doubt very few people could stand up to his onslaught for even thirty seconds. His training as a Ranger would be to kill people in the shortest period of time; overwhelm or slide around their defenses, and go for the multiple strikes and killing blows. But he had added a deceptively flowing style to it that sped it up and made it harder to predict.
Part of my problem, I decided was that he was innately better than me or his verser alternate when it came to martial arts. Speed, strength, instincts, visual perception all way better than I naturally had. My only advantage was a ton of experience.
I shifted to a slow style which punished him when he tried to close with me. His arms stung and ached, I?d bet even though his face never wavered. Then, I ?made a mistake? which would let him inside, and I planned to counterpunch him before he got all the way in close. Instead, he slashed in with excessive speed, and elbowed me in the gut, and was past me before I could reply.
?You think I don?t know the weaknesses of my own style?? He said as he stood by the mat edge, and I fell to the ground out of breath. Still, I used a technique first taught me by the Alchemist, and forced air back into my lungs, and rose like on wires to my feet.
Blandly, even though I was burning inside with pain, I asked.
?So that?s your best?? I saw David the Verser out of the corner of my eye cover his face. He was not taken in, but the Ranger, David?s alternate, looked a little nonplussed. And then, I took off my gloves, so to speak.
We whaled at each other, cartwheeling across the room, and snap-kicked for the throat when we came up together, and both missed, and he tried to break my arm, and I let him try. My hammering punches to his stomach finished him while he futilely tried to snap an arm enhanced by Lekostian Empire cyberware.
Heh. It was not fair, but otherwise, I?m not sure I could have beat him.
Dripping blood and sweat, we fell to the mat, and gasped out our desperate search for oxygen.
Later, I found out why the Major was so arrogant about his fighting skills. He had taken the World Martial Artist Championship at age seventeen, and held it ever since. I had over two hundred years of experience, and the only way I could be sure to beat him was with a trick he could not have known about.
With a bottle of aspirin, we kicked back and watched the local news after sending the students home. The two of them lived above the dojo, and their friend joined them, and he had a hard time getting to accept the notion of the Multiverse. Finally, I figured it out. He did not like to know there were people out there who might be better than him that he could never challenge.
He looked alike, but I could see many differences between the two. And despite the highly competitive nature of the Ranger, he reluctantly deferred to the verser who was a much more mellow person, and evidently, from their joking conversation, regularly handed the Ranger a beating in sparring matches.
The Ranger hushed us as the local news came on. A SWAT team had raided a local house, and confiscated an assortment of culturers for viruses. The Ranger indicated that a brother major had run that op from the Army side which was not reported in the local news. After that good news, he seemed more relieved and we drifted into more pleasant conversation.
I staggered back to my hotel late, and fell into bed. The next morning, I am a mass of sore muscles so that it hurt to breathe or blink my eyelids, I forced myself into the hot shower and an hour later emerged. The swimming pool on the fourth floor was followed by reading a couple chapters of the latest Tom Clancy, Insurance Investigator murder mystery by Jack Ryan that I had bought in the lobby. I read it in the whirlpool, and another handful of aspirin got me fit enough to try breakfast.
Then I went to track other versers down.
Walking down the street toward the Jewish Hospital, I realized my target verser was moving. So, I turned aside into an alley, left down another street past an Italian restauraunt called "Amerigo's", and a science-fiction shoppe called "The Great Escape", and how I longed to visit, and across the street by darting between the frequent cars, to the right a few steps around a used furniture, ah, I mean antique store, heh, a little joke there, and around a small dumpster to see a small female being stalked by a man in a trenchcoat.
I stepped forward, as he lunged, and found my knife in my hand ready to throw, but before I could manage that, the girl spun on her left leg and rotated her right foot through his space.
It impacted on his chest, and lofted him fifteen feet to land on the wall of the antique store a foot above the ground. He then slid down moaning with a shocked expresion on his face which matched mine.
And 'whoosh', the seemingly twelve-year-old girl sprinted and stood next to him, and was lifting him to his feet by an index finger under his chin while the wind of her passage blew newspapers past me onto the street.
"Find someone else to rob. My friends are nurses. You are not my friend. So go away, stay away, or we will talk some more at great length."
I restrained my urge to applaud as I checked for scriff. Yep, this was definitely my target.
The mugger, would-be, slumped to the ground complaining that he needed a hospital, and the twelve-year-old girl walked up to me.
"What?"
"I guess I'm not used to see too many twelvers beat up grown men. Even if they are versers."
"I'm not twelve, you think I look twelve?" And she raised her hand like she was considering doing a palm strike on me. I just grinned back.
She did a dozen fist strikes in the less time than it takes to tell it, all about me. I applauded.
"Fine, you're a hardhead." She said walking past me.
"What's going on here?" I asked over my shoulder.
"Near as I can tell, there is about a dozen versers in the world, and each of their dopplegangers is in some sort of civil service, the mayor's office, EMS, Coast Guard, something. Something is coming, and we're here to keep things in one piece is my guess."
"And your dop is a nurse?"
"Got it in one, Tadeusz." She said walking off leaving me wondering how she knew it was me seeing as I had never met her before.
As I walked away, I reflected on her talents. Anime style martial arts, and some definite detective skills came to mind.
I headed down near the river after walking past a small protest involving twelve people about police brutality, and racial profiling which protest called for the local police captain to resign.
More splenderous architecture enchanted me. It was not odd enough to be bizzarre, but it had enough novelty and intricacy to appeal to my eye.
Walking along the river, I came to a poorly designed miniature harbor. The thing looked like it would collect whatever wood washed into the river after a storm, and hold it there. Above it on a hill, a children's playground stabbed my heart with longing to be home.
Walking along the riverwalk and closer to the harbor, I saw one man arguing with four others. Something about him seemed familiar, but I could not place him. Being an occasional eavesdropper, and since I was headed that way, I heard the discussion.
The familiar fellow thought this harbor design stunk, and his company was willing to fix it, do the design, do the work, and make it ecologically sound for a fee that was only ten percent higher than the low bidder who was the same person that had built the terrible thing in the first place.
So I continued up, and recognized him. He was the engineer on that frozen world who had helped me make a nuclear rocket to evacuate humanity off the planet.
"Now, if I was a reporter for the local Herald, this would be interesting. Mayor's office refuses to make ecologically sound decision, preferring profit to purity would probably be my title. Got a nice alliterative ring to it, doesn't it?"
The group turned to stare at me, and I weathered the unfriendly glances quite well. The engineer looked, how do I say this, unusual, experienced, he looked verser. And so I checked, and no, this was not my man.
Then he turned to the others.
"I would not sabotage negotiations like that, but who am I to stop the free press from their job?"
The others grumbled, eyed me, and gave the man his contract.
After, they walked off, he asked me why.
I shrugged.
"Let's say, in another life, I owe you a favor."
"Or in another world?" He asked, and I raised an eyebrow.
"Another verser. My 'brother' has introduced me to a couple. You can see the signs. Most of you walk like ballerinas or martial artists. Have large backpacks with interesting bulges. Keep your eyes moving looking for threats while at the same time showing a great deal of calmness as if the worst threat is a mere bother. A certain calmness of manner combined with an inquisitive look as if they were discovering the world for the first time is also there as well."
He paused.
"How am I doing?"
I laughed.
"Batting a thousand, so far."
He took me down the river another eighth of a mile, and I saw a ship with an oddly shaped hull that bent upwards at a forty-five degree angle in front. And from its single mast, a huge array of ropes were tied into a very intricate net like someone had taken a basic rope net, and used it to make roccoco art of it.
"I cannot begin to undestand the physics, but its a sailboat that will do three-forths the speed of a diesel powered boat, even in still air, and Graeme, the skipper-owner-designer, is refusing to get insurance. He says he does not need it."
I looked at the ropes out of the corner of my eye to close in on a suspicion.
"He's right. That boat is lucky enough that it could float across the Atlantic with no one at the helm, and dock itself by accident."
It was an admirable job of rope magic. Blessings, defenses, very mild stuff to be sure since this world has little magic in it, but with the hundreds of spells those nets represented with each four-sided hole in the net another spell, and all done with what looked like true professional care, I would not have wanted to assault the ship in any way.
Bring a torch down here to burn it, and you were likely to "accidentally" drop it on your hair, and light yourself on fire.
I waited to be invited on board, and was taken to see the Captain. He explained the physics of the ship which took about three hours, and lots of repeated questions. And a grill-out of salmon steaks washed down with lemonade, and a side of salad with organic tomatoes grown on ship, and blue cheese dressing.
It turned out that the net, and the additional small ropes while magical also served as a technological sail. It was a masterpiece of precision which made a space shuttle look simple, that net was. Despite its abundant holes, the thing caught the wind better, much better than a canvas sail.
He explained his goal of defeating the capitalists, and returning back to renewable energy sources. I bit my tongue to keep from pointing out that the only reason he was going to beat the "oil-plundering big shipping lines" was that he had a better system. The execs in those companies did not pollute because it made them feel good after all, they did it because it was the best compromise available.
We argued politics a good bit, which I always enjoy. After a while, I concluded one of four things. Either I was a moonbat, or he was, or he saw relations I could not, or he came from a totally different prime reality than I had. The last was quite possible.
Versers often start out from Earth, but the other fellows Earth might have serious differences from my Pax Americana world, and still be almost homelike.
A world in which the Soviet Union is still going strong into the 2020's would be quite like home after all.
And he might have come from a world where socialism worked. Whatever, he grilled a mean steak.
And we reminisced of worlds gone by. He had been doing this for nearly four hundred years, and he'd gone through eleven worlds including three which he had not survived more than three weeks in. So eight worlds for four hundred years, it was definitely not my style. Some people even went so far as to call me "World A Week Tadeusz".
And then he reminisced of one of his favorite worlds. He had lived ninety years there. Community, and kindness were simply the way things were done, and people were valued for their generosity, and their good hearts rather than their ruthless business skills.
The way he spoke of it, it sounded like a heavenly place, and so I asked him why he left.
He shrugged in embarrassment and irritation.
"Cut my toe off with a dropped axe, and then fell down the stairs into the basement. By the time I woke up from the smack on my head to yell for help, the arterial bleeding had been going on too long."
Bad luck will get you in the end no matter how careful a verser is.
Speaking of which, his doppleganger, along with designing harbors, worked as a disaster coordinator.
I had begun to get a bad feeling about this. I like this world, and yet the signs were pointing to disaster.
I went out to watch a movie that night, a modern remake of a classic disaster flick, and I felt unaccountably chilled as I came to the end. That night, in the hotel, I did my exercises, and prayed for catastrophe to stay away. Tommorrow, I would meet the other versers, and see if I could buy a clue.
Tadeusz
The tiny park with its oddly artistic water fountains full of circles of stone at the near end, and the precise grass reminiscent of an English garden at the far end stood as the last outpost of nature at the edge of a skyscraper-filled downtown.
The fountains hid my arrival from view to all but a few of the passing, lunchtime crowd, and they shook their heads, or bugged their eyes out and kept moving. The neighbourhood did not look altogether safe for the average citizen, but that did not worry me. I pity the mugger who decided I was an easy mark. The chief question would be how little force would be safe to use, and secondly what form of martial arts would serve me best.
I sensed about for my stuff with my scriff sense, and found multiple sentient contacts. There were other versers here, at least five, and maybe more. I had evidently happened into a gather world which only infrequently happened to me. Its been speculated that because I am such a lone wolf, I make my own path. But while possible, this, like most theories about scriff is not provable scientifically or logically.
Whatever.
I got up, and splashed some water from a jetting fountain on my face, and set out on a hike toward my stuff. In so doing, I passed at least one scriff source, in the Jewish Hospital. The name worried me, making me think of ghettos and armbands, but it looked very nice, and well-integrated into the surrounding buildings with even two walkways going to nearby skyscrapers.
There was an abundance of interesting buildings of varying eras. But this city seemed to prove that modern did not have to be boring boxes of steel and glass. There were jutting boxes off boxes, and concrete facades of different colors to make simple murals ten stories tall, and slanted rooflines, and archways across the street, and all sorts of neat-to-me details. Combine that with old ?30?s style five story tall commercial buildings full of varying businesses and the city intrigued me.
There was a big difference in this Southern city of Louisville from what I remember hearing of my homeworld. A rather large, and funky district of antique antebellum and Victorian mixed homes attracted my eye, and so I turned a bit aside from my course to stroll down Jefferson Street(some of the streets seemed named after early American Presidents) past the adult bookstore, and onto this mixed small commercial/residential area.
A wolf whistle was directed at me, I realized since there was no other person near the target zone who looked remotely whistlable (the homeless guy with his bag of cans did not count I felt sure), I turned about ready to politely smile and move on after acknowledging the compliment. I?d been in worlds where Sadie Hawkins would have been a shy and demure type; in that world, you didn?t ask your man out, you grabbed him by the hair, and led him to the house you and he were going to buy. Lucky for me, I?d had pretty short hair compared to the guys in that world.
So, I turned, and saw a guy waving friendly-like at me. My face froze for a second, and I jerkily nodded trying to be polite. He came up, and talked, and offered me coffee, but I contented myself with a few questions.
It seemed that Louisville, in this universe, had taken the place of San Francisco in mine. It had, in the beginning a small gay population, and then a very capable politician had pushed through some friendly laws which made it a magnet for gays across the nation, and this meant that people started to journey here to be near others which made it even more attractive, and those who did not like this began to leave thus making it even more gay friendly. It?s the same type of process that creates Silicon Valley, and other enclaves. Through self-sorting and some incentive changes, a major percentage of American gays ended up in this district.
It was very well-off, and very artistic, and rather unfriendly to children since the local school was practically dying on the vine.
I said good-bye to my new acquaintance who expressed regret which I found flattering and off-putting at the same time. With relief, I went on to another street, and found my stuff underneath a rose bush in someone?s backyard.
Unfortunately, the owner of that yard was not the trusting sort. She was about eighty-years old, and packing a double barrel shotgun that I thought would tip her over if she fired it. My explanations fell on deliberately deaf ears, until I pulled from my pocket a gold solidus I?d been paid in a recent world. I rolled it across to her down her sidewalk, and she trapped it neatly with her foot. A deft scoop, and she bit it with her teeth.
?Aye, lad, I thought I recognized you from the gold strike in 1910. You look the same, but then even back then everyone knew you were a strange one. Billy Two Clouds said you had ?the strongest and strangest medicine? he?d ever seen in a white man.?
?Then why??
?You gave me a gold nugget then, when I was just a little girl, to keep my mouth shut while you snuck up on Jack Roper who was a bad ?un.?
I didn?t remember, but it could well be true since I had a large spot of amnesia in the center of my travels.
She cackled having gotten the better of me, and after she hiked up her stairs and back inside,I dropped a handful of solidus for her to find later. It?d help with her medical bills, the old rascal.
I left the rose garden, and decided to get a hotel, and then track down these scriff spots. A pawn shop turned a dozen solidus into cash, and I booked at the Hyatt on the seventeenth floor of this atrium filled hotel. I had no credit cards, but a bribe handled that problem.
The window showed a beautiful view of downtown, and with a map, I could chart out roughly where I felt the versers to be from here. One was in the direction of the Galt House, a giant ?H?-shaped inn on the river separating Kaintuck (Kentucky in my homeworld) and Indiana. Another was still toward the Jewish Hospital, and another was toward the courthouse. I filled in the rest, and went across the street for an explosion in the taste buds innocuously called a Greek salad at Deke?s, a local sports bar.
I?m not much on watching football, but it?s occasionally fun especially when long deprived, and I had to tear myself away to go track down the versers. I took several of my weapons since psi hardly worked here, and the same with magic. And, there are a few versers, I?d just as soon not meet without a gun in my hand.
I walked into the Galt House which was a massive and beautiful building in a seventies pre-stressed concrete sort-of Tudor kind of style. It was practically on the waterfront, and while not tall compared to some buildings I?ve seen, it loomed over most of the skyline.
Inside, I saw the Alchemist across a wooden bar in the lobby restauraunt, and he was filling up a cut crystal glass with alternating layers of chocolate fudge, gum drops, caramel, mint ice cream, and cherry sauce. I averted my eyes. I have a strong stomach, but some of his desserts defy reason.
Laughing to myself, I decided to sneak up on him. And then as he sat down at his table by the wall, I skidded to a halt. Another verser, almost identical sat across from him, and a third guy practically indistinguishable sat there as well. A faintly familiar rabbit hopped out from between the legs of number two?s chair. It had a bowl of water, and a newspaper, and some celery down there. It looked at me, did a doubletake, and promptly hopped back under the chair.
I shrugged guessing that not all animals are going to like you even though it did look pretty cute.
?Um, hello, mind if I join you?? I asked, not being terribly witty when my head is spinning.
We got sat down, and I and the Alchemist got reacquainted. He introduced me to the two others. The Visitor, a former superhero who?d been in something like fifteen worlds by now, and the local doppelganger who had a job as a lawyer on the staff of the mayor. He was a legal adviser to the mayor. His job involved telling the mayor what was legal and what was not.
We talked for hours about all sorts of things. I had philosophical questions I?d been saving up, and new magic spells to share, and I needed to find out if anyone was trying any major plans.
See, I have this ethic of seniority in worlds that I try to follow. If a verser has landed in a world before me, I tend to follow their lead a bit on changing the world unless I totally disagree with them. But they shook their heads. The Visitor was practicing law, and the Alchemist took martial arts lessons at King?s Dojo which he recommended, and he was working on a masters in chemistry to make his Alchemist title a little more solid.
We arranged to meet at the Old Spaggetti House the next night, and I left.
Checking out King?s was hardly out of my way, and so I swung past. It was open late at night, and so I strolled in to find students hard at work with an unusual and yet quite effective technique.
Then I felt a slam in my back, and a knife at my throat. Someone was standing on my back, and I prepped my muscles to flip over.
?Nuh, unh Tad, that?s not how you do it.? I heard a throaty growl that I recognized.
?Cynthia?? I shouted, and she laughed, and jumped off my back. I bounced to my feet just to show I was not completely helpless. I loomed over her, but in hand-to-hand I?d be hard pressed to match her, if she did not transform into a werewolf. If she were?d, well I?d best run.
?Where?s David??
?Oh, you mean, ?The King?. We just came from a world where the best martial artist was made king for seven years. He keeps rubbing it in, that he beat me in the final match.? She laughed, and I saw David step around the corner while I remembered meeting a future self of his that had truly been a ?King?.
?I do not.? He objected, and they started a friendly argument which he interrupted by reaching out to shake my hand. He looked about the same as in that world where we dealt with Gavin in a semi-final fashion. A walking, talking endorsement of weight-lifting and martial arts as a lifestyle.
I envied him a verser wife, even if I did not envy him the occasional flashes of temper she exhibited.
We got out on the mat, and he took it easy seeing as I had just gotten off eating, but soon enough he was pointing out small improvements to make in my form and he had a program of exercises that he recommended I get on. I was not totally looking forward to it, but seeing as it would be hard to find a better teacher, I consented. He?d gotten even better at the arts than last I saw him, and while I?d improved as well, indeed quite a bit, but not as much as him.
And then another fellow walked onto the mat. This was a bit rude since all the other students were watching us spar.
He stood in his Army greens with his Ranger patch, and he grinned cockily at me. David?s doppleganger stood there waiting for me to reply, and then he added a provoking comment.
?This must be one of those versers you were telling me about. Doesn?t look too tough to me.?
My verser friends both sighed, and then both nodded at me.
I grinned.
?I?m not that tough; just a little wimp is me. How did you know I was a verser??
He stripped off his jacket, and his boots and socks.
?I didn?t, but I?ve heard the wild stories he keeps telling me. I think he?s yanking my chain half the time, but you have a very individual style with elements from a dozen different disciplines. Too bad for you, I might have learned a bit too.?
?Don?t worry about hurting him, Tad.? My friend said which shocked me because that had been my concern. Most normal humans cannot hope to match an experienced verser in hand-to-hand combat.
Then he flowed toward me like still water going over a waterfall is the only way I can describe it, and I was forced on the defensive. He chased me around the mat for a good several minutes as I began to analyze the elements of his style.
I think he started to worry a bit because I doubt very few people could stand up to his onslaught for even thirty seconds. His training as a Ranger would be to kill people in the shortest period of time; overwhelm or slide around their defenses, and go for the multiple strikes and killing blows. But he had added a deceptively flowing style to it that sped it up and made it harder to predict.
Part of my problem, I decided was that he was innately better than me or his verser alternate when it came to martial arts. Speed, strength, instincts, visual perception all way better than I naturally had. My only advantage was a ton of experience.
I shifted to a slow style which punished him when he tried to close with me. His arms stung and ached, I?d bet even though his face never wavered. Then, I ?made a mistake? which would let him inside, and I planned to counterpunch him before he got all the way in close. Instead, he slashed in with excessive speed, and elbowed me in the gut, and was past me before I could reply.
?You think I don?t know the weaknesses of my own style?? He said as he stood by the mat edge, and I fell to the ground out of breath. Still, I used a technique first taught me by the Alchemist, and forced air back into my lungs, and rose like on wires to my feet.
Blandly, even though I was burning inside with pain, I asked.
?So that?s your best?? I saw David the Verser out of the corner of my eye cover his face. He was not taken in, but the Ranger, David?s alternate, looked a little nonplussed. And then, I took off my gloves, so to speak.
We whaled at each other, cartwheeling across the room, and snap-kicked for the throat when we came up together, and both missed, and he tried to break my arm, and I let him try. My hammering punches to his stomach finished him while he futilely tried to snap an arm enhanced by Lekostian Empire cyberware.
Heh. It was not fair, but otherwise, I?m not sure I could have beat him.
Dripping blood and sweat, we fell to the mat, and gasped out our desperate search for oxygen.
Later, I found out why the Major was so arrogant about his fighting skills. He had taken the World Martial Artist Championship at age seventeen, and held it ever since. I had over two hundred years of experience, and the only way I could be sure to beat him was with a trick he could not have known about.
With a bottle of aspirin, we kicked back and watched the local news after sending the students home. The two of them lived above the dojo, and their friend joined them, and he had a hard time getting to accept the notion of the Multiverse. Finally, I figured it out. He did not like to know there were people out there who might be better than him that he could never challenge.
He looked alike, but I could see many differences between the two. And despite the highly competitive nature of the Ranger, he reluctantly deferred to the verser who was a much more mellow person, and evidently, from their joking conversation, regularly handed the Ranger a beating in sparring matches.
The Ranger hushed us as the local news came on. A SWAT team had raided a local house, and confiscated an assortment of culturers for viruses. The Ranger indicated that a brother major had run that op from the Army side which was not reported in the local news. After that good news, he seemed more relieved and we drifted into more pleasant conversation.
I staggered back to my hotel late, and fell into bed. The next morning, I am a mass of sore muscles so that it hurt to breathe or blink my eyelids, I forced myself into the hot shower and an hour later emerged. The swimming pool on the fourth floor was followed by reading a couple chapters of the latest Tom Clancy, Insurance Investigator murder mystery by Jack Ryan that I had bought in the lobby. I read it in the whirlpool, and another handful of aspirin got me fit enough to try breakfast.
Then I went to track other versers down.
Walking down the street toward the Jewish Hospital, I realized my target verser was moving. So, I turned aside into an alley, left down another street past an Italian restauraunt called "Amerigo's", and a science-fiction shoppe called "The Great Escape", and how I longed to visit, and across the street by darting between the frequent cars, to the right a few steps around a used furniture, ah, I mean antique store, heh, a little joke there, and around a small dumpster to see a small female being stalked by a man in a trenchcoat.
I stepped forward, as he lunged, and found my knife in my hand ready to throw, but before I could manage that, the girl spun on her left leg and rotated her right foot through his space.
It impacted on his chest, and lofted him fifteen feet to land on the wall of the antique store a foot above the ground. He then slid down moaning with a shocked expresion on his face which matched mine.
And 'whoosh', the seemingly twelve-year-old girl sprinted and stood next to him, and was lifting him to his feet by an index finger under his chin while the wind of her passage blew newspapers past me onto the street.
"Find someone else to rob. My friends are nurses. You are not my friend. So go away, stay away, or we will talk some more at great length."
I restrained my urge to applaud as I checked for scriff. Yep, this was definitely my target.
The mugger, would-be, slumped to the ground complaining that he needed a hospital, and the twelve-year-old girl walked up to me.
"What?"
"I guess I'm not used to see too many twelvers beat up grown men. Even if they are versers."
"I'm not twelve, you think I look twelve?" And she raised her hand like she was considering doing a palm strike on me. I just grinned back.
She did a dozen fist strikes in the less time than it takes to tell it, all about me. I applauded.
"Fine, you're a hardhead." She said walking past me.
"What's going on here?" I asked over my shoulder.
"Near as I can tell, there is about a dozen versers in the world, and each of their dopplegangers is in some sort of civil service, the mayor's office, EMS, Coast Guard, something. Something is coming, and we're here to keep things in one piece is my guess."
"And your dop is a nurse?"
"Got it in one, Tadeusz." She said walking off leaving me wondering how she knew it was me seeing as I had never met her before.
As I walked away, I reflected on her talents. Anime style martial arts, and some definite detective skills came to mind.
I headed down near the river after walking past a small protest involving twelve people about police brutality, and racial profiling which protest called for the local police captain to resign.
More splenderous architecture enchanted me. It was not odd enough to be bizzarre, but it had enough novelty and intricacy to appeal to my eye.
Walking along the river, I came to a poorly designed miniature harbor. The thing looked like it would collect whatever wood washed into the river after a storm, and hold it there. Above it on a hill, a children's playground stabbed my heart with longing to be home.
Walking along the riverwalk and closer to the harbor, I saw one man arguing with four others. Something about him seemed familiar, but I could not place him. Being an occasional eavesdropper, and since I was headed that way, I heard the discussion.
The familiar fellow thought this harbor design stunk, and his company was willing to fix it, do the design, do the work, and make it ecologically sound for a fee that was only ten percent higher than the low bidder who was the same person that had built the terrible thing in the first place.
So I continued up, and recognized him. He was the engineer on that frozen world who had helped me make a nuclear rocket to evacuate humanity off the planet.
"Now, if I was a reporter for the local Herald, this would be interesting. Mayor's office refuses to make ecologically sound decision, preferring profit to purity would probably be my title. Got a nice alliterative ring to it, doesn't it?"
The group turned to stare at me, and I weathered the unfriendly glances quite well. The engineer looked, how do I say this, unusual, experienced, he looked verser. And so I checked, and no, this was not my man.
Then he turned to the others.
"I would not sabotage negotiations like that, but who am I to stop the free press from their job?"
The others grumbled, eyed me, and gave the man his contract.
After, they walked off, he asked me why.
I shrugged.
"Let's say, in another life, I owe you a favor."
"Or in another world?" He asked, and I raised an eyebrow.
"Another verser. My 'brother' has introduced me to a couple. You can see the signs. Most of you walk like ballerinas or martial artists. Have large backpacks with interesting bulges. Keep your eyes moving looking for threats while at the same time showing a great deal of calmness as if the worst threat is a mere bother. A certain calmness of manner combined with an inquisitive look as if they were discovering the world for the first time is also there as well."
He paused.
"How am I doing?"
I laughed.
"Batting a thousand, so far."
He took me down the river another eighth of a mile, and I saw a ship with an oddly shaped hull that bent upwards at a forty-five degree angle in front. And from its single mast, a huge array of ropes were tied into a very intricate net like someone had taken a basic rope net, and used it to make roccoco art of it.
"I cannot begin to undestand the physics, but its a sailboat that will do three-forths the speed of a diesel powered boat, even in still air, and Graeme, the skipper-owner-designer, is refusing to get insurance. He says he does not need it."
I looked at the ropes out of the corner of my eye to close in on a suspicion.
"He's right. That boat is lucky enough that it could float across the Atlantic with no one at the helm, and dock itself by accident."
It was an admirable job of rope magic. Blessings, defenses, very mild stuff to be sure since this world has little magic in it, but with the hundreds of spells those nets represented with each four-sided hole in the net another spell, and all done with what looked like true professional care, I would not have wanted to assault the ship in any way.
Bring a torch down here to burn it, and you were likely to "accidentally" drop it on your hair, and light yourself on fire.
I waited to be invited on board, and was taken to see the Captain. He explained the physics of the ship which took about three hours, and lots of repeated questions. And a grill-out of salmon steaks washed down with lemonade, and a side of salad with organic tomatoes grown on ship, and blue cheese dressing.
It turned out that the net, and the additional small ropes while magical also served as a technological sail. It was a masterpiece of precision which made a space shuttle look simple, that net was. Despite its abundant holes, the thing caught the wind better, much better than a canvas sail.
He explained his goal of defeating the capitalists, and returning back to renewable energy sources. I bit my tongue to keep from pointing out that the only reason he was going to beat the "oil-plundering big shipping lines" was that he had a better system. The execs in those companies did not pollute because it made them feel good after all, they did it because it was the best compromise available.
We argued politics a good bit, which I always enjoy. After a while, I concluded one of four things. Either I was a moonbat, or he was, or he saw relations I could not, or he came from a totally different prime reality than I had. The last was quite possible.
Versers often start out from Earth, but the other fellows Earth might have serious differences from my Pax Americana world, and still be almost homelike.
A world in which the Soviet Union is still going strong into the 2020's would be quite like home after all.
And he might have come from a world where socialism worked. Whatever, he grilled a mean steak.
And we reminisced of worlds gone by. He had been doing this for nearly four hundred years, and he'd gone through eleven worlds including three which he had not survived more than three weeks in. So eight worlds for four hundred years, it was definitely not my style. Some people even went so far as to call me "World A Week Tadeusz".
And then he reminisced of one of his favorite worlds. He had lived ninety years there. Community, and kindness were simply the way things were done, and people were valued for their generosity, and their good hearts rather than their ruthless business skills.
The way he spoke of it, it sounded like a heavenly place, and so I asked him why he left.
He shrugged in embarrassment and irritation.
"Cut my toe off with a dropped axe, and then fell down the stairs into the basement. By the time I woke up from the smack on my head to yell for help, the arterial bleeding had been going on too long."
Bad luck will get you in the end no matter how careful a verser is.
Speaking of which, his doppleganger, along with designing harbors, worked as a disaster coordinator.
I had begun to get a bad feeling about this. I like this world, and yet the signs were pointing to disaster.
I went out to watch a movie that night, a modern remake of a classic disaster flick, and I felt unaccountably chilled as I came to the end. That night, in the hotel, I did my exercises, and prayed for catastrophe to stay away. Tommorrow, I would meet the other versers, and see if I could buy a clue.
Tadeusz
Recovered from the Gaming Outpost database backup. Original wording is preserved; damaged punctuation and presentation markup have been repaired. Historical links without a local match point to the Internet Archive.