Worlds Apart

by James Riley

  So what, this was it? He’d failed against Nobody for the last time, and now he was just going to be another nonfictional that Nobody had absorbed? Just like all the other Owens . . .

  Except the other Owens had been sent back to the nonfictional world, where their hearts didn’t work. But he hadn’t been because he’d switched bodies with Fowen. Did that mean he wasn’t destined to lose, like all of his other selves?

  Except he’d already lost. Just because he’d found a new and exciting way to do it didn’t all of a sudden give any reason for hope. So great, he’d become fictional and now wouldn’t even get another five years to live, not with the possibility wave coming.

  All in all, being fictional was really not all it was cracked up to be.

  Some small part of his mind seemed to object to that. Something about being fictional was . . . important, somehow? Owen furrowed his brow, trying to think of why it’d matter. Now he could be erased by the possibility wave, so that wasn’t exactly a great thing. And if he went back to the nonfictional world, he’d probably slowly stop working, just like his heart. No, being fictional didn’t give you anything good except . . .

  Except being able to rewrite yourself.

  Owen gasped so loudly it echoed. Without waiting another moment, he concentrated as hard as he could on his hand, just as he’d seen Nobody do, both in comic panels and in real life. He clenched his jaw, willing whatever words made up his hand to rewrite, to change into describing a cat’s paw instead.

  And as he watched, fur began to grow up from his skin. His fingers merged together to form a paw, and claws extended out from where his fingernails had been.

  “WHOA!” he shouted, swiping at the air in front of him with his new, awesome, if not terribly inspired cat claws. It hadn’t been the coolest rewriting he could have done, but this was his first time, and more importantly, it worked! That was what mattered. He quickly rewrote his hand back to normal, ready to try again, only to realize something was missing.

  One of his fingernails was gone.

  This must be what had happened to the fictional Bethany. And that meant if Owen continued rewriting himself, even a bit, he might disappear too. A chill went down his spine as he imagined turning translucent, then gradually fading away into nothingness. Would he still know what was happening if he was just pure potential? Or would that basically be . . . it? The end?

  Owen dropped his head into his hands, not sure what to do. If he stayed his normal self, he could be safe and whole, at least until Nobody was erased by the possibility wave. And that could be anytime now. On the other hand, if he rewrote himself, there was a chance he might help his friends and actually stop Nobody once and for all, just at the cost of disappearing completely.

  An image sprang into his mind: sitting with Charm in the Magister’s tower before facing Dr. Verity at the Source of Magic. The moment he’d found out that Kiel Gnomenfoot had to sacrifice his own heart to save everything, Owen had just wanted to go home, to forget about being a hero like Kiel. But Charm had talked him through it, made him realize that he couldn’t just abandon people who needed him, whether they were fictional or nonfictional.

  And really, how were things any different now?

  “Maybe I’ll get to see you again when we’re both possibilities, Charm,” he whispered, then sighed. That didn’t seem likely, but at this point, it was the only thing he had to hold on to.

  Owen squeezed his eyes shut, picturing Charm in his mind for one last time, then began to concentrate. There was only one thing he could think of that might stop Nobody at this point. Whether it would work or not was still pretty debatable, but there weren’t any other options.

  “I am now an author,” he said as quietly as he could.

  In his mind, he imagined himself as a writer, coming up with plots, characters, settings, everything. He imagined having the power to write a story and make it real. He imagined creating characters, and a plot for them to live out. He imagined a setting, an entire world for them to live in. Heroes, friends, villains . . . especially villains.

  And then he imagined he could rewrite them. All of them. Especially the villains.

  In his mind, he became an author. But more importantly, he became Nobody’s author in particular. Not Mr. Black, but someone who could change Nobody just like Nobody believed authors could.

  He slowly cracked one eye open and looked down at himself. He looked exactly the same as he had before, only now there was a laptop in his hand. That made sense, he supposed. Maybe that was how his imagination had decided he was going to rewrite things?

  Weirdly, he was also missing a shoe. Odd, but maybe that was a normal author thing, to always forget one shoe. Either that, or his imagination had some strange ideas.

  The important question was, had it worked? Owen dropped to the ground and opened the laptop. The screen brightened, revealing an empty page.

  Nobody, he wrote, suddenly is able to be rewritten by Owen Conners, author.

  He paused, then hit enter and waited. Nothing happened, but that made sense too, because he hadn’t really changed anything yet. First, he’d have to experiment a bit.

  Nobody loves wearing thirteen hats all at once and does it all the time.

  Okay, that was a bizarre place to start, but why not? Owen hit enter, only to brace himself as the ground shook all around him. Had it worked? The nothingness still looked like, well, nothing. But something had happened. Maybe Nobody now wore thirteen hats. If not, it couldn’t hurt to try his big gun:

  Nobody releases the two nonfictional men from his body.

  CHAPTER 55

  The hats absorbed back into Nobody’s body almost as quickly as they’d appeared, but he seemed just as confused as Bethany did. “What are you doing?” she said, ready to attack again in case this was a trap.

  “Owen,” Nobody whispered, then gasped as two adult men started to push out of his body. One of them saw Bethany and reached for her desperately, but before she could even move, Nobody pushed them back inside his chest.

  Joy filled her as she realized Owen was not only still okay, but attacking Nobody from inside the monster’s body. “Owen!” Bethany shouted as loudly as she could. “Whatever you’re doing, try it again! He’s scared!”

  Nobody snarled at her and attacked her with his enormous sword. She blocked it with hers, then sent a wave of electricity through her arm and into his sword. The energy exploded into him, sending him stumbling backward. He quickly morphed into wood, a nonconductive material, which canceled out the electric shock. She leaped forward, slicing at his vulnerable wooden arm, only to have her sword bounce off metallic armor once more.

  “You can fight me,” she said, slowly grinning, “or you can stop Owen. But I’m guessing you can’t do both at once.”

  “I can do anything !” Nobody shouted, right before fur sprouted out from his empty eye sockets.

  • • •

  Nobody has fur for eyes, Owen wrote.

  Nobody only eats roses while thinking about the ocean.

  Nobody loves to wear blue on odd-numbered days.

  The shaking grew worse with each possibility, and suddenly a body rose out of the nothingness beside him, forming into Nobody. Before he could speak, Owen quickly typed:

  Nobody can’t see Owen inside of him.

  “Owen!” Nobody shouted, his voice echoing within his body as his featureless face turned toward Owen, then past him. “Where are you? I imprisoned you here, and you shouldn’t have been able to leave. What are you doing to me? Why can’t I find you?”

  Owen quickly typed more rewrites.

  Nobody lived on the moon and drank from the sun.

  Nobody walked backward and wore mushrooms for shoes.

  Nobody got chicken pox three times as bad as anyone, ever.

  The smaller version of Nobody screamed as various possibilities bubbled out of him, only to get absorbed back into his body. All around Owen, the shaking grew more intense, and now he could actually see sha
pes through the nothingness, as if Nobody’s body was fading away around him.

  A huge hand appeared within the body, big enough to crush Owen. It reared back, then crashed down toward Owen as he quickly wrote: Nobody’s hand is intangible to Owen.

  The hand passed right through him, and Owen grinned, wondering what else he could do. This was kind of fun!

  That’s when he noticed that he could see through the entire lower half of his body.

  • • •

  Bethany swung her now-dual swords at the mushrooms on Nobody’s feet, trying to keep him off-balance. He leaped backward to avoid the blows, but he wasn’t quick enough, and her swords cut through both of his ankles. He shouted in pain and started to topple over, only for new legs to grow out of his back, catching him before he hit the ground.

  Bethany grinned. “You know, you’re starting to look a bit transparent around the edges. You really should be more careful with all of this rewriting.”

  Nobody glanced down and growled at the sight of his see-through hands. “It won’t matter!” he screamed. “None of this will. You can’t defeat me, Bethany. I will save the fictional world no matter what it costs me!”

  He drove his sword forward, and it cut into her side, right through her armor. She gasped, quickly knocking his weapon away, but the blow left her off-balance, and Nobody seized his moment, growing multiple arms and swords to strike her again and again.

  The force of his attacks sent her reeling backward, and she could barely keep up with his swords, trying to match every newly appearing sword with one of hers.

  “I am the hero here,” Nobody whispered to her, driving all of his blades down toward her head as his body shifted and morphed with Owen’s rewrites. “Don’t you see, Bethany? You were always the villain in this story!”

  “Pretty sure that’s what every villain thinks,” she grunted, then dropped backward, using her momentum to fling Nobody over her and into the floor a few yards away. Instantly, she rolled to her feet and tossed three flaming Twilight stars at him. “Recognize that move? It’s one of my dad’s favorites!”

  The throwing stars struck Nobody right in his face, and he started to absorb them, only to stumble forward as one of his legs completely disappeared. “Owen!” he screamed. “You will suffer like no nonfictional ever has!”

  • • •

  Nonfictional? Owen looked down at his missing lower torso. Not anymore.

  With all of this rewriting, he didn’t have much time left. And now there’d be no Kiel Gnomenfoot to switch places with him, to save him before the end. But he couldn’t stop, not if he wanted his friends to make it out of this.

  This was for Bethany. For Kiel. For Kara.

  For Charm.

  Nobody’s pants never fit.

  Nobody dreamed of being a dentist for clouds.

  Nobody learned real magic just to be a stage magician and wondered why no one believed him.

  The smaller Nobody had disappeared at some point when Owen looked up from his laptop. Now that he could see through the nothingness, though, he watched in amazement as each of his ideas pulsed out over the larger Nobody.

  Entire heads pushed out of Nobody’s body, each one of them a different version of the Nobody Owen was writing. Various hands and feet tried to move the central Nobody in their own directions, all their own characters, as other limbs slowly disappeared, the rewriting overpowering even Nobody’s nonfictional anchors.

  Just beyond Nobody, Owen could barely make out Bethany dressed in some kind of amazing magical armor, striking with, like, fourteen swords at the monster. He grinned in spite of himself. Between the two of them, they actually had a shot at this.

  Nobody can’t stop his nonfictional prisoners from escaping.

  “Yes!” Bethany shouted from outside, and leaped forward toward Nobody. Her hands grabbed for something out of Owen’s vision, then returned with two tiny arms: Mr. Black and the red-haired guy, both incredibly small for some reason. She yanked them backward as Nobody screamed, and the men abruptly expanded to normal size as Bethany stepped in to block Nobody from retrieving them.

  Had . . . had they done it? Nobody wouldn’t have his anchors anymore, which meant he couldn’t protect himself against the rewriting. Had they won?

  Owen turned back to the laptop, but now saw that the ground he was sitting on was as transparent as glass, and felt just as fragile. Below him, he could see straight down to the ground, what looked like hundreds of feet below.

  Uh-oh.

  Had Nobody shrunk him, or had the monster grown in size at some point? What would happen if Owen fell? He might be able to rewrite himself into having wings, but there was no guarantee he’d even stay together long enough for that to work.

  But none of that mattered. He couldn’t stop, no matter what! If he let up for just a moment, Nobody might still find a way to reabsorb his nonfictional prisoners and pull himself back together. No. Owen had to stop Nobody completely, once and for all.

  And he had to do so before he disappeared himself.

  All right, imagination, Owen thought to himself. Let’s do one last huge burst of weirdness. Give it all you’ve got. Everything depends on this, right now. So . . . write!

  For a moment, his fingers paused over the keys, and he felt panic fill his chest. Had he just now run out of ideas? Really, right now, this had to be when writer’s block hit? What if that dentist-for-clouds thing had been the high point, and Owen would never come up with anything like that ever again? What if he could never even write again? The whole fictional universe would be erased, and so would all of his friends!

  Owen took a deep breath, then put his fingers back on the keyboard.

  Owen starts having confidence in himself, he wrote.

  And just like that, he did.

  Nobody secretly hates Christmas because he never got the pony he wanted.

  Nobody is a potato.

  Owen’s right hand disappeared, but he didn’t slow down, just switched to typing with his left.

  Nobody lived to be ten thousand years old, but he always had a bad back.

  His entire right side was gone now, leaving just his left hand, arm, and head.

  Nobody loves broccoli so much he gives up everything else in life just to build a home out of it, where he lives happily ever after, just the broccoli and him.

  Now his left fingers began to disappear too, and Owen realized he only had seconds left. But Nobody was still absorbing the ideas! He needed something better, something that would stop the monster from ever hurting anyone again.

  And then he realized what he had to do, and he quickly typed it out.

  Nobody loses, and turns into pure possibility.

  Outside, Nobody’s heads and potatoes and poems all roared in terror as more and more possibilities pushed out of his body. “You can’t do this!” the heads and such all shouted. “I will not just fade away!”

  “I don’t think you have a choice,” Owen heard Bethany say quietly.

  “You will pay for this!” Nobody shouted. “Whatever happens to me, I will ensure that you and those you love will get what you deserve!”

  Owen’s left index finger paused on the keyboard, the last part of him that hadn’t turned ghostly. Then he typed the individual letters of one last line:

  Nobody gets what he deserves.

  As soon as he hit the enter key, Nobody’s body disappeared.

  So did Owen’s.

  CHAPTER 56

  No more!” Nobody shouted, changing in too many ways to count before Bethany’s eyes. “Please, Owen, stop! I only wanted to help my people!”

  Bethany couldn’t even speak as she watched the featureless man in front of her try to absorb the vast possibilities erupting all over him. Had Owen really done all of this? But how?

  Nobody shrieked in terror one last time, then dissolved away, his gaze locked on Bethany as he disappeared.

  As soon as she realized what was happening, Bethany leaped forward, hoping to catch Owen as h
e appeared. But there was nothing left, not a sign of either Nobody or Owen.

  “Owen?” she shouted as the possibility wave above her seemed to jump closer, as if Nobody’s disappearance had added to its power. “Owen!”

  He had to have escaped. There was no way he could have done all of that to Nobody and not made it out himself. It just couldn’t be possible!

  “Bethany!” said a voice, and for a moment, she felt hope as she whirled around, hoping to see her friend. A mixture of disappointment and relief flooded through her when she saw Kiel picking his way over the blocks of storybooks, making his way toward her.

  And with him, of all people, was Dr. Verity.

  “Beth, you defeated Nobody!” Kiel shouted as they got closer. For some reason, he was helping Dr. Verity, his shoulder under the old man’s arm. Apparently a lot had changed while she was gone.

  “It wasn’t me,” she whispered, but he couldn’t hear her. As she started to raise her voice, she noticed something lurking behind Kiel and readied herself for another fight. “Kiel, watch out!”

  Two bookwyrms stood up on their hind legs, their giant clawed hands in the air. “We have no wish to fight you,” one of them said.

  “You defeated the master, freeing us,” the other said. “For that, you have our thanks.”

  Kiel glanced back at them with disappointment, then sighed deeply as they flew off low to the ground, avoiding the possibility wave above them. “Maybe another time,” he said.

  “What is going on here?” one of the nonfictional men said, the older of the two. “Where are we?”

  Bethany just looked at them sadly, not sure at all how to explain any of this. “We’ll get you home,” she said, not sure if she was lying or not. “Don’t worry. Just maybe find a place to hide for right now.”

  The two men looked at each other, then took shelter behind some of the rubble from Bethany’s fight against Nobody.

  “Beth, Verity has an idea of how to keep everything from being erased,” Kiel said. “It might be our only shot at surviving this.”