by Adam Moon
“Thank you. I promise I won’t be here too long.”
They dressed in their warm, clean clothes and thanked Larry and Amy for their hospitality. Amy gave them two loaves of bread and three blocks of cheese. She filled an old milk jug with water from the sink and walked them to the door.
Sandy hugged Steve and asked him to walk her back to the diner to say a final farewell.
He agreed and followed her outside.
Larry’s hands were shaking as he said goodbye. He knew his one chance to return home was leaving. He didn’t regret his decision but it unnerved him.
He handed Neil his gun after shaking his hand. “Get one of those dog men for me with this. And take care of that girl of yours.”
“Of course.” He waited for the group to move to the end of the driveway and he whispered, “Keep an eye on Steve. He’s jittery. I don’t trust him. You shouldn’t leave him alone with your daughter.”
“You’re more perceptive than before. I noticed that too. I’ll put my boot through his face if I get any weird vibes from him. Amy means the world to me already. She’s so similar to my own daughter but so different too. It’s strange but it’s a great feeling to have a reason to live again.”
“Good. You don’t get many second chances. I wish you all the best in your new life.”
“You too.”
They weren’t even halfway to the diner when that damn ship flew overhead, hovered for a moment and landed behind them. The dog men had found them once more.
Steve knew he was screwed. If he ran, the dog men would find him but if he jumped with the others he would be seen as a monster the moment they found the wild woman, Samantha and she told them what he’d tried to do to her. Or worse than that, she might even kill him.
Kara pulled out the device and Steve snatched it from her. He said, “I’ll dial in the coordinates. You take cover until I’m done.” She looked at him like he’d gone insane, and a part of him had, but it was the calculated insanity of a desperate man.
His first thought was to smash the device but that would just lead to their deaths from the quickly approaching dog men. His next thought was to disable the device so that they could never find a way back to that world they’d left Samantha on, so that’s what he set about doing.
They took fire so everyone dashed for cover along a fence, and behind trash cans. The dog men ran towards them like wild animals. But it gave Steve the opportunity he needed to take apart the device and break the newly installed fuse. He pried it apart and spotted the fuse right away because it stood out among the components. With all the effort he could muster, he used his thumb nail to cut it in half. He felt a jolt of electricity stab his thumb.
He put the device back together and looked at the screen. It was black, which meant his plan had worked. He yelled, “They disabled the device again. What should I do?”
Neil yelled, “Just press the damn button.”
Steve smirked and pressed the big button. They vanished, along with their immediate surroundings. The trash cans and part of the fence came with them. The fence fell away from them lazily on the new world.
Marooned Traveler
✨
THE NEW WORLD seemed even more foreign than the others but that was probably because it was the first one they’d visited without the comfort of the diner.
Steve knew he’d gone too far but he couldn’t stand the idea of that bitch telling his sister what a pervert he was. Anyway, the world they found themselves on seemed promising at first glance.
They were surrounded by shrubs and the skies were dotted with birds. They could hear waves crashing somewhere nearby.
Kara snatched the device from him like a coiled snake striking at prey. She stared at the blank, useless screen in dismay. “I hope they just blew the fuse again. We can replace that.”
Steve felt like grabbing it back from her and crushing it under his boot. And then he remembered that he had the spare fuses in his pocket. If he got rid of them soon, they’d be rudderless until they stumbled upon another world with similar technology. That could take days or even weeks. In the mean time he could formulate a new plan. All was not lost after all.
A shadow loomed over them and they all looked towards the source. A throaty hiss reverberated in their ears that soon became a snarl. There was a beast looking down upon them and it looked a whole lot like a dinosaur. Sharp teeth for rending flesh chomped together, causing Pam to shriek and Steve to run off in the opposite direction. It stared at them in utter silence, tasting the air. Then it took a slow step forward, like it was trying to sneak up on them.
Neil pulled the gun Larry had given him and fired it into the air. The animal’s eyes darted around and then it stared at the gun in Neil’s hand. It sniffed the gunpowder smoke and then it slowly turned and ambled away.
Kara’s voice quaked when she whispered, “Was that a T-rex?”
“I don’t think so.”
They stood stock still and in utter silence for a whole minute, listening for its return or for any other rustling that might be a toothy dinosaur with an appetite for human flesh.
Finally Kara whispered, “It looked like a T-rex except with long arms and feathers. I’m pretty sure it was a dinosaur. How is that possible? I thought the device took us to different Earths but from our own time.”
“Maybe the dinosaurs didn’t die off on this world. Maybe they evolved into that thing.”
“We’d better get the hell out of here then before we become lunch.”
“Where’s Steve?”
“He chickened out and ran.”
“Then we have to find him before we go.”
They heard Steve scream before they saw him. They rushed through the brush and nearly ran right into him, but he wasn’t alone. He had a snare around his neck that was attached to a pole that was being held by a human being. The woman on the other end was filthy and her eyes were alive with fear and insanity. She held the pole so that Steve was her prod to keep the group at a distance.
Neil held his hand out to see if she would shake it but she maneuvered Steve in his way. Finally Neil said, “We’re not from around here. Who are you?”
The words impacted her physically causing her head to twitch. Then she smiled a rotten toothed smile and said in a scratchy voice. “I know you’re not from this Earth. I’m the only human here. Where is your device? I need to see it.” Her hands shook as she spoke.
“How do you know about the device?”
“It’s how I got here.”
“What happened to yours?”
“Those damn Morians came and took it and stranded me here. Wait, are you not from my world? Who are you?”
“What’s a Morian?”
“It’s sort of human but it’s covered in fur and has an elongated face, like a canine. Where did you come from?”
Kara said, “We were accidentally jumped away from our home world when these dog men, or Morians as you call them, attacked us.”
“Was Henry with you? Where is he?”
“How the hell do you know Henry?”
“We’re from the same world. He was probably looking for me.”
“He lied to us then. He said he had no idea who the Morians were.”
“In our line of work you have to lie. I’m ashamed to admit this, but we’re not the good guys. We’ve done some terrible things. I’ve been stranded here for three years with just my thoughts to haunt me and in that time I’ve been able to reflect upon my race’s misdeeds. The Morians are right to try and stop us.”
Kara said, “We picked up a woman from another Earth who said Henry’s people abused her planet. That must be true then. She killed him the moment she laid eyes on him.”
> “Oh God. Poor Henry. He didn’t deserve that.” Then she cocked her head to the side like she’d heard something no one else could hear. She whispered, “Come with me and I’ll tell you everything. We’re not safe out in the open.”
She loosened the noose around Steve’s neck and he rubbed his reddened throat. He said angrily, “We’re not going to follow this bitch, are we?”
“We need answers and she seems to have them. Maybe she knows a way we can avoid those Morians when we jump.”
She started to walk at a brisk pace so they followed her, noting her brown clothes and mud streaked skin. If anything she looked a lot like that wild woman, Samantha had. Living in a hostile environment apparently turned a lady into a survivor in a heartbeat. She hissed over her shoulder, “Keep an eye on the skies. The real threats on this planet come from above.”
They all looked up but the sky was clear and cloudless. Neil got an image in his head of a huge winged and feathery t-rex soaring right at them with its mouth open and blood staining its teeth. He shook the image from his minds eye because it was a distraction and he was pretty sure he needed to be laser focused on this planet if he was going to survive it.
A barren hill that was clearly out of place was just ahead of them.
Jim asked, “It can’t be a coincidence that we jumped so close to you. I mean, what are the odds that we jumped randomly and ended up right next to the only human on this planet?”
“Henry didn’t explain how this works?” she asked incredulously. “The coordinates that are plugged into the device are the coordinates of the dimension you’re jumping to but also to the exact spot on the planet you’ll arrive at. Otherwise you might jump and find yourself a thousand feet in the air or buried under a thousand feet of rock. All the Earths are geologically different. I knew if someone from my dimension arrived here, they’d arrive in the exact same spot I arrived at.”
That clarified their suspicions that there was no way to jump back to a different, safer spot on their home world. Kara’s hopeful theory was indeed wrong.
Kara sighed. “We were worried about that.”
The dirty woman eyed her coolly and then continued, “When I heard a gunshot I came running. And then this idiot,” she pointed her thumb over her shoulder at Steve, “tried to wrestle me to the ground like a maniac so I took up a defensive posture.”
Group Dynamic
✨
THERE WAS A DOOR built into the hill that she opened when they got up to it. “I killed off all of the vegetation around my house to keep the herbivores away. No herbivores means no carnivores.”
They went inside the hill and the first thing they noticed was the smell of smoke. She explained, “The smoke helps keep the bugs away. The bugs are awful here. I got sick the month after I was stranded.”
There was a bed made of branches and thick leaves as well as a small fireplace. There was a stone bowl on the fire and a hunk of decaying flesh on the floor between her bed and fireplace.
She said, “Make yourselves at home.”
They each glanced around the shabby home awkwardly. Pam was the first to sit on the dirt floor so the others joined her.
The dirty woman stoked the fire and then sat to face them. “I want your guarantee that if I tell you what I know, you’ll take me home.”
Neil agreed and no one argued against it.
She said, “My people didn’t invent interdimensional travel. The Morians did. They visited our world as friends many decades ago. We gave them access to our lives and they departed on good terms. But before they left, some of my people stole some of the dimensional devices from them. We got a dozen of them and they didn’t even notice. Then we spent some time trying to poke and prod the devices, to make sure we would be safe if we used them. We still barely know how they work but we sure knew how to use them to our advantage.”
Kara chimed in, “Henry did seem sort of clueless about his device.”
“Henry and I knew enough to complete our task. It was our job to scout the worlds looking for ways to exploit them, whether it be for resources, labor, food, water, or anything else our own world lacked. We understand the devices better than anyone else besides the Morians.” She clearly didn’t appreciate Kara’s demeaning tone regarding her comrade. “Anyway, the introduction of interdimensional travel ushered in a new golden age for my people. But it was short lived. The Morians visited several planets after we’d already left them barren from exploitation and they soon figured out what we were doing. They came to my world and demanded the return of all of the devices we’d stolen from them. My people refused so the Morians promised to hunt down every traveler from my world and take their device, stranding them where they stood. If anyone resisted, they’d be executed. The Morians aren’t innately aggressive, but they understood that what we were doing was wrong and we had to be stopped. I understand that now too.”
She took a deep breath and continued, “When they took my device I knew my only chance to return home was for Henry to find me. But he didn’t know which world I was trapped on. I guess he was scouting and looking for me at the same time. At least I hope he was still looking for me.”
Neil said, “So the Morians just want us to stop jumping. If we return home and then hand them the device, will they leave us alone?”
“Have you resisted them aggressively? If you have then they will fulfill their promise and execute you. They are honorable people who don’t lie or bluff.”
“We did try to fend them off. Do they speak English? Would they understand if we told them we’re not from your world and we didn’t know about their threats?”
“They speak a guttural form of English they’ve learned during their travels but it’s not their native tongue. We took DNA samples from them while they visited us. They’re a fifty-fifty cross between Cro-Magnons and Neanderthals. Most of the other humans we’ve found either have trace amounts of Neanderthal DNA or none at all in their bloodline. What that means is that they’re very different from us so I don’t know if they’ll listen to reason. They might suspect you’re lying to them as my people did.”
“Well then we can’t go home. They’re waiting for us. They killed two of us as soon as we arrived. We barely made it out of there.”
“Then it sounds like you have your answer. They’ll track you down and kill you. If you help me get home I can get into our database and find the worlds that most closely resemble your own. Maybe you can make a life for yourselves on one of those worlds.”
Neil looked at Kim. Pam and Jim both looked at Kara. Despite the odds, they’d all hoped to find a way home. It was strange to give up all hope at once. But reality had to be addressed and the alternative worlds might be as good as or better than home.
Neil said, “The Morians disabled our device so even though it still works we can’t program it. We fixed it but they just disabled it again. We’ll need time to get it working.”
“I might be able to fix it. We’ll need to jump to some other worlds to look for parts.”
“We have spare parts with us.”
“Great.”
Sandy said, “We lost someone on one of the other worlds and we need to look for her before we take you home. I hope that’s okay.”
“Was she a friend?”
“No, she was that jungle woman who killed Henry.”
She spat, “I say we leave her to her damn fate then.”
“It’s not up to you. If you can’t agree to our terms then we’ll leave you behind.”
They all stared at Sandy, wondering when she got so bossy. But she was right. They’d made an oath to retrieve everyone they’d lost during their travels. Samantha might as well have been trapped on an alien planet. She was a lunatic but she was a human being who didn’t deserve to be strand
ed on that weird killer drone world.
The woman held her hand out and said, “Agreed. My name is Beth. Thank you for saving my life.”
Sandy shook it and then Beth said, “Let me take a look at that device.”
Kara shook her head. “Not a chance. I fixed it last time and I’ll fix it this time too.” To the others she asked, “Who has the spare fuses?”
Steve plunged his hand into his pocket and left it there. He chided himself for not getting rid of the fuses already. The fear of being discovered was ever present but now he was starting to worry about what Samantha would do to him if she ever got her hands on him again. She’d probably kill him. If she spared him, Sandy might just kill him. It was a scenario he’d rather avoid at all cost.
Kara looked around the room and her gaze lingered on Steve long enough that he panicked and pulled the fuses from his pocket, handing them over. She stared at him for a second longer but eventually she turned her attention to the device and got to work prying it apart.
Beth watched intently, like she was afraid Kara would make a mistake.
Kara easily separated both halves. She furrowed her brow and then when she saw the damage to the fuse she scowled. “This is weird. The device was already halfway opened and this fuse looks like it was pinched in half.” She looked up at Steve and he looked away.
Neil shuffled his butt over to her to see for himself and then he said directly to Steve, “She’s right. The fuse looks like it was severed by a knife or something. What did you do?”
“I didn’t do anything.”
Neil looked him over and asked accusatorially, “Then why do you have a charred thumb?”
Steve glanced at the thumb that had received the jolt of electricity and he knew he was caught. He shook his head and stared at the ground between his legs.
Kara added, “When I asked who had the spare fuses he didn’t offer them up until I stared him down after I remembered that he took them.”
