by Logan Jacobs
“Damn Grizz,” I whistled. “Looking positively rakish.”
“I resemble a garden utensil?” Grizz asked suddenly and was uncharacteristically self-conscious. “I look nothing like a long-handled lawn fork.”
“You look fancy, Grizz,” I reassured him. “Very fancy.”
He visibly relaxed as he smoothed out some wrinkles in his outfit.
“I feel decidedly under dressed,” I remarked.
“We did not get the notification of the call until just a few moments ago, or I would have had your domicile’s wardrobe print you something more formal,” Artemis added. “Grizz has the advantage of a digital closet.”
I was about to ask again who was calling when the display screen embedded in the wall blinked rapidly.
“Oh, this is the call,” Artemis said as she rushed over to my side. Grizz crowded in on the other side nervously.
The screen flickered to life and the face of none other than the President of the United States of America filled the frame.
“There is my good, no, very good, friend, Marc Havak,” the President said with a quick smirk.
“Hello, sir,” I said, not able to help the goofy grin that I knew had just come across my face. It was good to see a familiar face. “To what do I owe the honor of the call?”
“Humility,” the POTUS remarked, “I personally don’t understand it, but I like it on you, Marc. Suits you very well. I just wanted to call to see how you were and to thank you for preventing the human race from intergalactic enslavement.”
“It was my pleasure, sir,” I replied.
“You know,” he started, “if you had died, it would have been a terrible, terrible loss. Unbearable. I’d be able to bear it, but everyone else, totally inconsolable. I would have been an incredible space slave. The best. I’d be the most distinguished of the slaves, really. Highest office. Most prestigious slave-work.”
“I have no doubt, Mr. President,” I agreed.
“This connection is really something else,” the President remarked. “Spectacular, really. I’m talking to you on a little box that crash-landed on the White House lawn this morning. Caused quite the stir. I was calm. After it was studied by our top, top people, it was determined the aliens sent it. Which I knew. Is that Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson dressed like an extra from Game of Thrones standing behind you, Marc?”
“Um, no, sir,” I replied with a chuckle, “that is my trainer, Grizz. Grizz, meet the President of the United States of America.”
“It is my honor to meet the most powerful man on Earth,” Grizz said formally, crossed his right arm across his chest with a thud, and bowed his head. I couldn’t see in a mirror but I’m sure my face was contorted into a look of pure disbelief.
“I like you, Grizz, always have,” the President said with a slight smile. “In fact, I was telling people the other day, Grizz is top notch. The best.”
“Thank you, Mr. President,” Grizz responded, not sure what to make of the POTUS. He glanced over at me, and I mouthed ‘Just go with it’ with a shrug.
“I understand your first official challenge is today, right, Marc?” the President asked.
“Yes, sir,” I replied as confidently as I could.
“Wonderful,” he said as he shook his head slightly, a satisfied look on his face. “You’re going to do great. Real great. Super great. Is he going to do great, Grizz?”
“Um,” Grizz started a bit hesitantly. He looked over at me, and I was sure he was going to tell the President that I was as good as dead and that they should consider themselves lucky they weren’t space slaves. “Absolutely, Mr. President. His boon will be overflowing with greatness.”
“Perfect,” the President agreed, “just as I thought. Oh, hello, Artemis.”
“Mr. President,” Artemis said as she nodded her head in acknowledgment.
“Are you taking good care of our Champion?” he asked.
“As if he were you, Mr. President,” Artemis replied and shot me a wink.
“Well, that is very excellent then,” the President smiled.
There was some commotion off-screen, and the President’s daughter’s face appeared next to his.
“Oh, hello, Marc,” she said with overt sensuality. “My, you look rugged and tough.”
“Kicking alien ass in the name of Earth will do that to a guy,” I said with enough swagger in my voice to almost instantly grow a mustache.
“Well, it looks--“ she paused for a moment as her eyes devoured me, “very good on you. You should keep it up.”
“That’s the plan,” I said.
“Dad,” a male voice called from off-screen. “Mom is calling in. She sounds mad.”
“Tell her I’ll be right there, Junior,” The President said. “Well, that settles it. Glad you’re doing great. Glad we are not slaves. Go and win us some really, really important science and things. America.”
And with that, the screen went blank. Grizz’s hologram rippled, and he was back in his normal attire in the blink of an eye.
“Ah, much better,” he sighed. “That monkey suit was killing me. The fabric, it does not breathe.” He gave me a curious look. “Your president was a very interesting man, human. I must admit though, I do not understand your planet’s hierarchy for rulers.”
“It’s called politics, Grizz,” I said sarcastically, “and don’t worry, nobody understands it.”
We’d all walked over to the computer console, and I sat down in the chair.
“So, first big challenge today, huh?” I asked. “How is that going to work?”
“We have two hours before the trial starts,” Artemis answered as she typed on her computer. “It’s a blind trial, so we won’t know any of the details before you teleport in.”
“Oh,” I uttered a little surprised. “I figured all the main event stuff would be known ahead of time. Not sure why I figured that, I just did.”
“Some are,” Artemis replied. “Most of the time, we will get notified of the time, location, and parameters of the trial a day before. Sometimes, there are blind trials to help level the playing field. For those, you suit up and hope for the best.”
“Hope for the best is my middle name,” I joked.
“Your middle name is Caleb,” Artemis said, confused. “Is that another euphemism thing?”
“Kind of,” I replied, “mixed with a bit of self-referential self-deprecation.”
“Between raging emotions and deciphering words that do not mean what they are supposed to mean, especially when combined with sayings that do not mean what they say literally, I don’t know how humans get anything done,” she blurted out.
“The struggle is real, Artemis,” I said earnestly. “The struggle is very real.”
The next two hours went by in a blur as Grizz had me run some low-level combat exercises to warm up and start to cement my muscle memory. I did some target practice that went amazingly thanks to PoLarr’s reflexes, and finally, Artemis helped me pick out a base level armor loadout.
We’d gone with a lightweight, adaptable set that attached to my jumpsuit at my chest, calves, and forearms. It had a built-in back support and could disperse the energy from lower powered handguns, knives, fists, and feet. The armor was black with bright blue highlights and looked like something out of a cyberpunk comic book. Artemis went to hand me the sleek, full-face helmet.
“There is no way I’ll be able to see out of that thing,” I said as I waved it off. “Plus, why would you want to cover this pretty face?
“So that it does not get horribly scarred or disfigured?” Artemis replied as if I’d asked her what two plus two equaled. “But I see your point. No helmet. You can take one Earth native small arms weapon of your choice.”
“Well, I guess I’ll go with the Glock since I fired it yesterday,” I said. “Best to stick with the familiar for the moment.”
Artemis handed me the gun in a sleek holster that attached to my belt and sat high at my right hip as well as a double magazine hold
er that I attached at my left kidney. Finally, I grabbed my trusty Space Viking Axes. They snapped home in their magnetic holsters with a satisfying thunk. Once I was as armored up as I was going to get, we walked over to the teleport tube.
Grizz was there already. He wore his patented scowl, but I could tell he was anxious. Heck, we all were. There was a loud beep that signaled thirty seconds until Crucible initiation.
“This is going to be very different from the last two trials, Havak,” Grizz said with just the right amount of gravitas. “Blind Trials are trickier than a Swindle Merchant on a transport full of tourists. We have no idea what you are going to face.”
“It literally could be anything,” Artemis added. “A free-for-all battle royale where the last man standing wins or you could have to team up to face the were-chickens from Gallus Phasius.”
“That doesn’t sound so bad,” I threw out hopefully in an attempt to lighten the mood.
“Marc, they are one of the galaxies most perfect killing machines,” Artemis said gravely and with all sincerity.
“Really?” I chuckled. “They’re chickens… right?”
“Even now, in my digital afterlife,” Grizz said, his eyes far away as he relived a memory, “they haunt my electronic dreams with their eerie howl-cluck.”
“Are you guys fucking with me?” I asked, really not sure if they were serious or doing a bit.
“No,” they said in unison just as another beep signaled ten seconds to go.
“May Leeroy Jenkins guide you, human,” Grizz said in all seriousness.
“Blah blah blah, feelings,” Artemis blurted out, clearly uncomfortable with the moment. Her eyes threatened to spill tears of worry. “Please do not die, Marc. I do not know what else to say.”
I leaned down and kissed her tenderly on the lips.
“I know,” I replied as I broke the kiss and stepped into the tube. Artemis and Grizz stood on the other side of the plastic and watched as I turned to light. I didn’t know why they had been so worried, but I was about to find out.
Being turned into a beam of sentient light was quite the experience. Unfortunately, I couldn’t remember any of it clearly, just swirling lights and the feeling that I was a human kaleidoscope.
The next thing I knew, I was standing in the middle of some alien metropolis all alone. The city was made from gleaming white marble. All of it. Every building, sidewalk, restaurant, store, etcetera was carved from the most perfect, blue speckled, alabaster marble I’d ever seen. It was like a space-age Minas Tirith set against a rose red sky filled with lime green clouds.
I glanced down to make sure I was all still there and was shocked to find out that I was no longer in my jumpsuit and armor. Instead, I was dressed in orange pants that were, except for the color, straight up French military circa 1800 that were tucked into mid-calf high brown leather boots. My torso was now covered by a long-sleeved, bright blue, officer’s frock coat with gold epaulets on the shoulders, intricate gold ribbon woven across the chest, and shiny brass buttons. As I moved around a bit, I noticed that I had an ornate leather shoulder harness with wide loops that wrapped under my arms and crisscrossed in the back. The harness held an upside-down ceremonial dagger under each arm and connected to a wide leather belt. I reached around and discovered there was a matching leather fanny pack that hung off the back. The top folded up, and I removed two pulsating green crystal orbs the size of an orange. The only other item in the fanny pack was a nine-inch long cylinder the diameter of a roll of quarters. It had an abrasive pad on the top which I was able to screw off. I assumed it was a signal flare of some kind.
Not knowing what else to do with it, I put them back in the fanny pack. The whole outfit was rounded out by a very stylized pistol that sat on my left hip in a fancy, tooled leather cross-draw holster. I drew the pistol and inspected it. It was made from a shiny, chrome-like metal that weighed like it was made from plastic. It had no detachable ammo source, so I assumed it was an energy weapon. Right where the butt met the barrel there was a small LED screen that had an infinity symbol on it.
I unholstered the pistol, pointed it at the ground about twenty feet in front of me, and squeezed off a shot. A bright green energy blob flew out of the barrel and splatted against the concrete. Once it faded there didn’t seem to be any damage done to the sidewalk.
“Huh?” I’d uttered.
I pointed the gun at a tree and fired a blast. Again, it didn’t seem to do a bit of damage. I looked down at the little readout and it still had the infinity symbol. I shrugged my shoulders and put the gun back in its holster.
“Don’t know what it does, but whatever it is I’ve got an unlimited supply,” I said to no one but myself.
Just then Chi-Cheshire’s two hundred feet tall cat face appeared in the red sky.
“Welcome to the Dread Mouth, dear Champions!” his feline voice purred. “Patterned after the desolation of Gama Romero V, once a thriving planet of thirty-two billion individuals in their mid-quantum age. Alas, they did not make it to their late-quantum phase. A group of young scientists accidentally opened a Kirkman Anomaly, what they would later dub ‘The Dread Mouth’, to a literal hell world in the dark chaos of the undiscovered abyss. A year later, every living creature on the planet was dead. Your trial today, Champions, is to survive a timed match against creatures from the darkest depths. You are dressed in the ceremonial uniform of the Kondar Locke, Romero V’s finest warriors and last survivors. You only have the materials on your body and what you can scrounge to work with, Champions. There are no loot crates here. You must decide whether to pool your resources together or go it alone. Be brave, Champions. Your planets depend on you.”
A large digital timer began counting down from sixty minutes.
I glanced around and everything was very still and very quiet. I popped a knife from its sheath under my left arm and checked the weight of it in my hand. It was more of a dagger than a knife, with a nine inch blade that tapered to a spear point at the tip. The handle was a material similar to pearl and had a small pommel on the end. It was very well balanced, and I assumed it would throw nicely. The edge was beyond razor sharp. I snapped it back into place and started to walk down the street.
There was no one to be seen or heard, and I was getting more than just a little tired at finding myself in creepy, weird, deserted alien cities. Although compared to the Doom moon, this place had been a bustling metropolis at one point.
The massive white marble buildings were all similar in style to Palladian architecture in Europe with long, rectangular facades, tons of columns, and simple roofs. The tallest one I could see was only ten stories high, with the majority of them topping out at seven or eight. The lines were simple and elegant which gave the whole city a formal, Old World feeling. There were lush, overgrown gardens in almost every building that broke the all-white landscape with much-needed splashes of green.
The city had been laid on a circular grid pattern and from what I could tell I was headed into the city center. I figured if there was going to be action that is where I would find it. I made sure to stay close to the buildings and keep my back as much to the wall as I could. I was sure nothing was going to get through the marble, at least not without making a hell of a lot of noise to do it. I was debating with myself whether to keep tempting fate by staying outside or to try to get into one of the buildings.
The street offered freedom of movement and hopefully the chance to run into some friendlies who would want to team up. The downside was being completely exposed and out in the open. If I headed inside, I would have protection and a place to set up a defensive position if it came to it, but I had no idea if there were flesh-eating dust mites the size of a kangaroo or some other horrible alien animal that wanted to eat me inside the buildings.
I decided to give outside five more minutes when I’d rounded a corner and ran smack into Flemgar, the handsy, slimy, Pustularian who’d gotten fresh with Artemis at the Breach. We bounced off each other and stared for a seco
nd.
“Oh, you gotta be motherfucking kidding me,” Flemgar sneered as his eyes flamed.
“Hey there, pal,” I said as I noticed that Flemgar had three buddies, a tall skinny alien covered in green feathers, a short stubby alien that looked like a tree stump, and a jet black humanoid creature with nasty looking claws for fingers. We all wore the same outfit. “Good to see you all got the dress code memo.”
Then everyone drew their weapons, myself included.
“Hey, hey, hey,” I rattled off as I raised my pistol into the air and let it dangle off my index finger on its trigger guard. “Ole Flemgar and I go way back, right, buddy?”
“Don’t call me ‘buddy,’ skin bag,” Flemgar answered, his voice a wet growl which was far less frightening than I think he had intended.
“Fair enough,” I cajoled. “We hate each other’s guts.”
Just then, there was a loud, electronic splat sound and ripples that highlighted a light green energy dome that sat over the center of the city. If not for the sudden lights, the two-mile dome would have been almost invisible to the naked eye. My best guess was that we were in roughly the center. Little tendrils of energy continued to emanate up from the unseen base of the dome all around us, almost like something was crashing into it repeatedly.
“And,” I started back with a slight edge, as I pulled the aliens’ attention back from the dome, “we can settle that back at the Breach when we all survive this little ordeal. In the meantime, how about we join forces before whatever it is that is banging on the energy shield there breaks in, huh?”
The other three aliens lowered their guns, nodded in agreement, and seemed ready to move on.
“Sounds good to us, He Who Yells Leroy Jenkins,” the short squatty alien responded in a deep baritone voice that would have made Barry White swoon. BirdMan squawked, and Dark Shadow nodded his head.
