by Aaron Frale
Jon was still pissed that his father had lied to him his whole life. Not that it would have made much of a difference knowing. The cultists would have come looking for him, but at least he could have prepared for it.
A lot of inconsistencies in his childhood made sense now. In addition to the Berenstien Bears books, there were times that his father just got things wrong. Sometimes it would be a piece of pop culture, like when his dad thought The Monkees sang a Beatles song. Other times, his dad would go on business trips, and he’d bring back something that didn’t exist in the world like when he bought Jon a Herschel Bar. It looked so close to a Hershey’s that Jon had always wondered why Herschel wasn’t sued out of existence.
But as Jon grew up, his father became more and more distant and stayed in the workshop for longer and longer hours. The gifts stopped, the conversations ended, and for the last couple of years, it was like Jon was living in the house by himself. Not that Jon cared. His father didn’t seem to do anything but yell at him for not doing his homework, missing school, tracking mud into the house, or some other stupid reason. The less that he saw of his father, the better.
And now, Jon wished that his father would have talked to him more, at least have told him something. His father tried to pretend that everything was normal when it really wasn’t. Even if the cultists had never come to Jon’s world, then there would have been a day where Jon cleaned out the junk in the basement and would have found the Berenstien Bears books or some other object from a parallel universe.
Either way, it wasn’t his dad’s place to hide the truth from him. Jon was sick of adults making decisions about what was best for him without even including him in the conversation. Jon could make his own decisions and didn’t need to be shielded from the truth. He was not the scared kid who had just lost his mom, anymore.
Jon pushed open the door of the conference room. Patel, Ludie, Meathook, and Hector sat around the table. One of the armors that they had acquired from Universe 89 was in the center. Hector didn’t even give Jon a chance to settle down before he laid into all of them. “I should have all of you stripped of your Tuning Forks and sent back to your universes.”
“Yeah, but you won’t. You need us to get Hailey back. So cut the crap and tell us why we are here,” Jon said. He was sick of adults giving him a hard time and decided that he would never put up with it again.
Hector glared at him. “What you did was reckless, stupid, and could have gotten all of you killed. I give the word and all of you will be replaced tomorrow. And if any of you make an unauthorized tune again, I’ll make good on my word, and you’ll be out of here.”
Hector paused, and to Jon’s surprise, he said, “But Jon’s right. We have a job to do. We are going to get Hailey back. Ludie, tell us about how this works.”
Ludie stammered on his words and gave the group the rundown on the power armor. He put on one of the gauntlets from the suits then picked a dumbbell marked 500 pounds as if it weighed nothing. “Under normal gravity conditions,” Ludie said, “you’d have trouble picking up this object.”
“Except me,” Meathook said.
“I know you, but the rest of them—anyway, with the suit, it feels like nothing. However, when in a high gravity zone—”
Ludie hit a few buttons from a virtual control panel that displayed on the air in front of him. His arm was unable to hold the weight, and it crashed to the table, leaving a dent. “Your strength will be completely normal. The suit will allow you to move around the cultists’ homeworld as if it were normal gravity. However, you won’t be able to perform feats of super-strength, so don’t try it.”
“Except me,” Meathook said.
“Dude! We know,” Ludie said, exasperated.
“You have a job to do. Can we act like adults please?” Hector barked.
Ludie and Meathook calmed down, and Ludie continued his instruction.
“Excuse me, Jon a word with you.” Hector said and pulled Jon into the hall.
“What?” Jon said.
“You have a lot of your father in you,” Hector said. “He was tenacious and not afraid to take action. Jon, there are times to take action and times to strategize. Don’t make the same mistakes as your father. Rash decisions get people killed.”
“What do you mean, the mistakes of my father?” Jon asked.
Hector quickly backtracked, “You need to focus on the task at hand.”
“Who did my father get killed?”
“That’s not relevant to the—”
“Who?” Jon yelled. Even Meathook and Ludie stopped fighting. They both got quiet and looked toward the hall. Jon saw some of them staring at him. “You know what? Screw this. I’m going to find out myself.”
Jon walked away and didn’t look back.
∆∆∆
Jon burst into his father’s hospital room. His dad was reading on a tablet and smiled at Jon. His smile turned to concern when he realized that his son was fuming.
Jon was on the attack from the outset. “What happened with Mom in the other universe? What do you mean by she didn’t make it?”
“We thought it would be easier for you to—”
“Did you kill her?”
“Why would you say that?”
“Did you kill my mother? What about my sister? What happened, Dad?”
His dad broke down. “I’m sorry; I’m so sorry.” Jon waited for his dad to continue. “We retired from tuning and went back to Mother’s universe. She was happy, and so was I. We married and then had you, a year later, your sister. You were seven when it happened.”
“What happened?”
“Cultists showed up on the scene. Tuners had never seen anything like them before. They were something new. During my time, it was just crime. Stopping people trying to take advantage of other universes. But then everything changed, child abductions, mutilated people who were unpure. HQ called us. Tuners needed thinktank. Remember when I took long-term temporary assignment? Remember packing up our house? Living with your grandmother? That was because your mom, and I were at Tuners HQ.”
“I thought you were working.”
“I was. Just not at day job. HQ wanted to play it smart. They kept Tuners back and wanted to observe. I wanted to strike them and follow them back to their own universe. They were killing and brutalizing people in every universe where they appeared. So, I recruited assault team.”
“From the Tuners?”
“Yeah, some. Others were new. Either way, they weren’t ready. I got them killed, and we didn’t even find where cult had come from. Cultists came after me in retaliation and followed me back to our home. I rushed to your school and told your mom to get Ying from Grandma’s.”
Jon remembered his father pulling him out of school and telling them they were going to miss their flight. He remembered being at a strange airport, and there were a lot of delays. It had taken forever to get to the United States. In hindsight, they had taken him to Tuners HQ and had relocated them to another universe.
“What happened to Mom?” Jon was afraid to ask.
“No one even realized that you could destroy a universe, much less would want to destroy one,” his dad croaked. “She must have been trying to convince Grandma to leave with us when it destabilized.”
Jon was done with his father. He couldn’t stand to look at his face anymore.
“Son, I’m sorry. Please forgive me. I didn’t intend—”
“No, Dad, I won’t forgive you,” Jon said and turned around without another word.
29
Meathook, Patel, and Ludie stood on the tuning platform in the center of operations. They were decked out with the armor from Universe 89. The black suit made them look like a fierce paramilitary police force. Hector stood in the command unit and called out the stations to perform their pre-tune checks. Orders were barked out through the flurry of activity.
Meathook turned to Ludie and said, “Where’s Jon?”
“I don’t know,” Ludie said.
&n
bsp; “How are we going to get there without him?” Patel said.
“Yeah, man, he’s the only one who knows what their universe sounds like,” Meathook said.
“I don’t know,” Ludie said. “What are you looking at me for?”
“Cut the chatter,” Hector barked over their earphones. Once all the stations said they were ready to go, the door to ops opened. Jon entered the room. He wore the black armor and had a crossbow slung on his back and a sword at his side.
He stepped to the platform and nodded to the team members.
“Let’s do this,” Jon said.
While the operations crew went through the preliminary checks, Jon fiddled with the Tuner dial until he found the cultists’ universe. Since he didn’t have time to teach the others to find it on their own, he just dialed their devices for them. By the time the station crew was ready, so was the group.
Hector signaled the go, and they tuned into the cultists’ universe. They were immediately assaulted by the intense gravity of the world, and all dropped to their knees. Jon booted the control software for the armor, and it took a few moments for the suits to start working.
They were lucky enough to have tuned into an empty hallway. The walls were black, and it was dimly lit. They could hear voices and see the flicker of fire from a room down the way. Even though it took a few seconds to give them the ability to move normally, under extreme pressure, it felt like forever.
They heard the footsteps of two cultists around the corner. The crushing force eased once the armor kicked into full gear. Jon nodded towards a doorway, and they all snuck inside. They held their breath as they heard the footfalls come closer. They breathed a little easier when it passed the door.
Once they could no longer hear anything in the hallway, they noticed the room for the first time. The walls were made of large thick black stones like a medieval castle. There was a table in the center of the room with straps to secure a person on top of it. There were various gruesome cutting and prodding instruments against the wall. Jon shuttered to think about what they might have done to Hailey.
Patel went to a table full of the torture implements and stood up on the edge. There was a barred window near the ceiling that reminded Jon of a dungeon.
“What are you doing?” Jon asked in a loud whisper.
“I’m trying to get our bearings,” Patel said. “It’s not as if we have Hector to guide us.”
Jon realized that they were cut off from home base while they were in the cultists’ universe. When he tried to signal HQ, there was no response. Not that Hector could do much for them if they could connect. Most of his maps and strategies were useless in an uncharted universe. He would be blind like them.
Jon climbed onto the table and viewed the landscape with Patel. From the dungeon window, he saw that they were indeed in a castle. There were stone parapets, towers, and a muddy, damp courtyard with wooden gallows at the center. A few cultists stood guard at various entrances to the yard. It definitely wasn’t a mall. Jon shuddered to think that a place like this was where they congregated.
The sky also disturbed Jon. Red lighting rippled through the dark magenta storm clouds. The trees that could be seen through the gate of the courtyard were black and gnarled. The landscape was utterly different from the Earth Jon called home.
“Where are we?” Jon asked.
“You’re the one who brought us here,” Meathook said. “Hey, do you think we get to name this universe because we are the first ones to visit? I think we should call it Universe 666.”
“There are clear naming guidelines set forth by Universe One,” Ludie said.
“Yeah, dude, but we are the ones who are here.”
“Can the sky even look that color?” Jon asked to Patel. “I mean, how can we breathe the air?”
“The color of the sky is just a matter of the particles that are in it,” Patel said. “In this case, there must be something to give it the pinkish purple tinge. Most of the universes within the tuning range are compatible with human life. There are some universes out there where humans never evolved, and maybe there’s no oxygen on earth, but those are so far removed from our own that we only see them when they happen to drift our way.”
“Dude,” Meathook said. “I’m telling you this universe is like out of a heavy metal video! How can it not be Universe 666!”
“The guidelines state that—” Ludie began.
“Guys!” Jon snapped. “Let’s focus on Hailey. How are we going to find her?”
Ludie shrugged. “You’re the one who’s been to this universe. I hope you had a plan.”
“It was only for a brief moment, and I couldn’t exactly move.”
“At least we seem to be in the right place to find her,” Patel said while examining the torture implements. “This looks like the dungeon.”
“Maybe we should split up,” Ludie suggested. “We can cover more ground. Meathook and I could take one direction down the hall, and you two take the other.”
“Too risky,” Jon said. “There are way more of them than us. And we are on their home turf. We are safer if we are together.”
“Yeah but—”
“I agree with Jon,” Patel said.
“So do I, bro, as much as I love our chats,” Meathook echoed.
Ludie looked irritated and nervous. “Well, ok—”
“Let’s go,” Jon said. “She has to be somewhere around here.”
Jon poked his head out of the room and glanced each way down the hall. There was no one. He nodded to the rest of the group, and they filed out of the room. They tiptoed toward the flickering light. They could see an opening into a large cavernous space.
A dramatic voice burst forth. “There is only one true world, and that is our world. Other universes seek to impose their will upon us, but we know there is only one truth. Other worlds seek to oppress us, but we are strong. You all are here to give up your life for the homeland.”
They peeked around the corner and saw a giant chamber that resembled a great hall from a medieval castle. There was a large stone pillar with a stage at the top in the center of the room. There were cauldrons of fire lighting the place. Atop the platform was the speaker. He had intricate scars with ornate patterns across his body and wore robes of crimson. A large headdress of bones capped his head. The High Priest resembled a living flame. There were seven of the star scars across his forehead. He was surrounded by other priests with many different designs of three to six stars etched into their skin. From the looks of it, the higher ranks had more adornment through mutilation. Their robes also seemed to vary with their status. The very most senior level of clergy on the platform looked as if they had gone under the blade too many times to count.
There was a giant pit under the pillar. Intense heat billowed forth, and every so often, globs of lava spurted into the air. Cultists gathered as close as they could to the cavity and cheered on the High Priest. The cultists below looked a lot like the ones he had seen so far. They gathered in groups with different weapons and styles of dress. They were gruesome, fierce, and rowdy. They seemed as interested in picking fights with each other as much as cheering on the High Priest. The leaders of the group had to break up fights in between their war cries in support of the ceremony above.
“Today is a great day for us all. We have new brothers and sisters in arms. They come from other worlds to be purified of their evil. The strong will join us, and the weak will die,” the High Priest continued.
The crowd roared with their approval. They chanted, “The strong survive. The weak die. The strong survive. The weak die.”
Two massive wooden doors across the way swung open. A large group of prisoners was brought into the room. They all had metal collars around their necks. The neckpieces had keypads on them. All the captives were teenagers who were filthy and wearing rags. They were scared and looked as if they suffered from neglect. The cultists snarled and screamed at them. Once the group was brought up the stone staircase leading to the platf
orm, the High Priest quieted the room down. He caressed the cheek of the first boy in the group. The kid was a waifish boy of not more than fifteen with a mop of blond hair and a tarnished face.
The High Priest patted the trembling boy’s head and said, “This boy is the first to be offered true salvation. He can either join the army of the blessed or give his life to the Eternal Flame.”
The pit in the center of the room flared when he dropped a satchel of something inside. A jet of flame shot up, and the cultists screamed with excitement.
“Please,” the boy squeaked. “I want to go home.”
“I’m afraid that’s not up to you, child,” the High Priest said softly. He turned back to the crowd and said, “Let the test begin.”
The High Priest tapped a few buttons on the collar of the boy. There was a beep, and a red light on the collar turned to green. The restraint popped off. It must have been counteracting the gravity because Jon could see the boy’s body sink from the force. He could see the kid struggling to keep standing.
The High Priest crossed the stage and called out. “Come to me, boy! Walk to me!”
“I can’t!” the boy yelled as he strained to hold his head up.
“The strong survive. The weak die. The strong survive. The weak die,” the crowd chanted.
“You must!” the High Priest called back. “Come to me now!”
The boy attempted to lift his foot. He forced it forward and stepped. The pressure was too much, and he collapsed to the ground. He cried out and clutched his leg. From the angle he had fallen, it looked broken. His breath became short and labored as the gravity crushed him.
The crowd groaned and fell silent. The High Priest approached the form of the boy and knelt beside him. “You have been judged unfit to join the ranks of the blessed army. But fear not, you are still offered a place in the Eternal Flame. You will serve those who have fought and died for the purity of this universe. You will provide them all the pleasures and comforts in their eternity. I now unleash your soul to the Eternal Flame.”
