by David Moody
Sebastian crouched low, his body thrumming from otherworldly might. He turned his black orbs upward to take in the sight of the now idle, gear-strewn machine that had taken his prize from him.
“What now, lord?”
Seek the girl Thistle Frost.
“She is the meal I crave most.”
Your futile, hormonal obsession with her is a binding fetter. We will use it. She is with others that must die. Half-blooded wretches no better than feces stuck between your clawed toes, my child. You will bleed through, as we always do. You will seep into the reality she is in and infect it. You will grow again, and murder those who slow down the spread of our righteous consumption.
“How do I bleed through?”
It is different every time. For each reality, new rules apply. Some realities are protected, and take much, much longer for us to pierce. Others are bare, easy to penetrate. To find your Thistle, you must devolve into pure lust. Think only of her, her loins, and the taste of her heart’s meat as you chew and swallow it. Think only of pressing into the very fiber of her being. And in time, you will cross the unguarded threshold into her reality, as close as you need to be. As close as you can be.
Sebastian closed his eyes and let his imagination wander to sunny summer days back at Mercy Point and the dresses Thistle wore that had roused him. The segmented limbs growing out of his back, tipped with claws, click-clacked in tremulous, sexual joy.
Minutes turned into hours, and as Sebastian’s monstrous desires grew, his memories took flight, soaring above the flat, crumbling disc of his home world, soaring through unfamiliar time and space until his perception became wholly different; seeing and hearing energies and spectrums reserved for the eyes and ears of things far, far above his station.
He existed like this for some time. A hundred hours, a hundred days, a hundred years…it didn’t matter. Sebastian had moved to an existence that didn’t need to track such things.
When his perceptions drifted back to normal, he could taste only dust, and everything was dark.
But deep inside, where the anger and desire lived within his breast, he could feel that Thistle was close.
He laughed, but in the empty world where his prey had taken shelter, no one heard him.
“How do we find it?” Arridon asked.
“All of the clockwork rooms can bring you home, such as it were,” the old man said as he ladled out steaming bowls of soup. Outside, the tanks rumbling through the streets shook the apartment walls, causing the mugs in the cupboards to clink together. The floor shook. Distant sirens and angry men yelling over megaphones and speakers yakked along in the background.
“The city-ship?” Derrick asked as he leaned over a bowl to inhale its aroma. His stomach grumbled in excitement.
“It’s more of a…planet, really. A handful of linked cities in space. Big as a continent. Not a real planet, of course. Call it a planetoid, if you like.”
“The Death Star? Gods live on the Death Star,” Derrick said, and laughed. “Of course they do.”
“What’s a Death Star?” Arridon asked.
“From a movie,” Derrick answered.
“What’s a movie?”
“Doesn’t matter,” Phil said. “Take your food to the couch. I’d offer you the table, but as you can see, I don’t have one.
“I don’t know much about the place itself, other than it’s a massive city that floats through space, brings its own set reality in a sphere that surrounds it, and that it can hop from one reality to the next when the Bleed encroaches.”
The two boys let that thought sit as they sipped at the salty broth. That’s what it mostly was, too: broth.
“This is really good, thank you,” Arridon said.
“Yeah, thanks.”
“You’re welcome,” Phil said. “It isn’t much, but home cooking has a certain…quality to it.”
The two boys ate as the old man watched, and after tipping the bowls upward and draining all the broth and the sparse, soft vegetables at the bottom, they burped, and leaned back into the couch, relieved.
“I don’t think I can find my way back to that spiky building I arrived in,” Arridon began. “I’ll need you to take us there. Can you manage that?”
“Of course,” Phil agreed. “I can’t enter the clockwork room with you, but I can bring you close.”
“Also—and this might seem like a strange question, but do you have god-tech weapon ammunition?”
“You’re packing heat? Show me,” Phil leaned forward in his recliner, excited.
Arridon removed his mother’s pistol from the stretchy waistband of the pants Phil gave to him.
“Colt 1911. One of the most reliable handguns ever constructed. American-made. Where’d you get it?”
“My mother brought it to my world from somewhere else. The world of American, I guess. My dad had it. Now I have it. I don’t have many of the little, um, metal exploding beans that go in the handle here.”
Derrick and Phil both burst into laughter, and Arridon felt his cheeks redden with heat.
“You’re lucky I work in insurance, Arridon,” Phil said, still chuckling. “You’re also lucky this is a United Kingdom almost at war. I can get you some of the bullets you need on the way to the Shard. We’ll have to stop at Tesco, but we can also get you some crisps, and maybe a drink to bring. You two are gonna put me in the poor house. Worse than my daughter ever did.”
“Where is she now?”
His demeanor darkened. “Oh my Jenny is...trying to make the world a better place. Or at least that’s what she believes.”
“Is she safe?” Derrick asked.
“Most certainly not,” Phil said, and turned away to face the kitchen. “But you can’t tell your children how to live their lives. You can only protect them the best you can, and give them the tools to flourish.”
“Tools like more bullets for my mother’s Colt 1911?”
Phil turned back to the boys, fresh determination on his face. “Precisely, Arridon. Let’s gather up some supplies and set off back to the Shard. There isn’t much time, no matter whether or not you think the concept of time is important.”
27
LONDON
The clamor and crisis in the city Phil called London grew; the heavy vehicles he called “tanks” clanked down the road, their grunt, behemoth weight was savage, chewing up the stones and roadway with alarming ease. The mechanized monsters of war had sloped, angular postures that seeped the threat they posed. Armed men wearing green and tan uniforms poked out of holes in the roofs to watch over the terrified city population as war grew nigh.
More planes flew overhead, knifing through the cloud cover, lights blinking as they swung in circles, searching the landscape below like eagles looking for a meal to snatch. Arridon felt trapped in a way he never had as the city curled up into a ball and prepared to die.
He was reminded of the Citadel and the Channel passage he, his sister, and his father had made just…just hours ago. The canyon; how it ran red with blood as they fled through castle walls made of thick stone, using spells.
“Here’s the entrance,” an exhausted Phil said, taking a seat on a dirty, garbage strewn bench that sat askew on the sidewalk. He raised a limp hand and pointed at the dust-crusted glass tower that climbed to the mangy clouds above.
Posters warning of the signs of war and how to take shelter covered half the transparent outer walls. Several posters of a hostile looking young woman were placed in high traffic locations. Armed men wearing black armor and helmets, stood guard in all directions, warily looking over the hurried masses as they passed. Their tense stances spoke a message to all who strayed too close: don’t fucking try it.
“Aren’t you coming in?” the two boys asked in unison.
“That won’t be allowed. You see, only those with a pure enough DNA from the Gods can enter one of their transient structures.”
“Once more, but slower, and with smaller words,” Derrick said.
“The cl
ockwork rooms don’t…’exist’ in the same way the rest of a reality does. They’re special, and for special people only.”
“And you’re not special enough?” Arridon concluded.
“My mum might say otherwise, but that’s the gist,” he huffed.
“Will you be safe here?” Derrick asked.
“That depends on your definition of ‘safe.’ Most of us will be dead within a day or two, regardless of where we are standing. It’s going to be a rather bad war. But hearing that the moon will be colonized after gives me some hope. Even if the Bleed will arrive there eventually. It’s inevitable, I suppose.”
“What will you do?” Arridon asked.
“Well, I’m going to enjoy what’s left of my pipe tobacco, try to get a message to my Jenny though the channels that still function, and then, not long after, I’ll be incinerated in a nuclear explosion or poisoned with some form of toxic gas. It’s apt to be a busy time.” Phil was strangely cheery.
“Why aren’t you afraid? I’d be going out of my damned mind! Digging a hole in the soil to hide under.”
“Coming here with my wife was our hole,” he said, no longer cheerful. “We wanted to protect Jenny. And now, Jenny’s the one about to bring it all down,” Phil said, pointing at the posters of the hostile woman. “I think they call that irony; not sure of the verbiage. I worked in insurance, you know.”
“I’m sorry,” Derrick said. “I wish you could come.”
“It’s okay. I’ve seen far more than the vast majority will ever see. I got a good look behind the curtain, and I’m content with the journey I’ve had. Plus, there’s always the realization that there are hundreds of Phil Allsops out there, living out lives in other dimensions. Many of them are enjoying much better endings than mine. I can hold onto that until the mushroom clouds rise. Look, boys, head inside, no one will stop you. I doubt anyone could. Take the elevator to the top. Should be a real special-looking button in there for that. Go into the room, and start fiddling with dials or buttons, or whatever it is they have for controls.”
“How do we get to the god’s, um, city? Err, Planetoid?” Derrick asked. “I mean…any idea? Will there be a map of a thousand dimensions we have to sort through?”
“Use the Force, Derrick. Higher level god-tech is intuitive. Reads your mind a bit, searches for intent. Presents you with options. You’ll discover the whole process is designed for you to understand it.”
“Your soup was good,” Arridon told him.
“It was shite. I cook when I’m anxious. Gives me something to do with my hands.… Thank you anyway. Go. Never know when the sky will fall. Get running.”
The two young men walked away from Phil towards the Shard, but both stopped to look back. Phil still stood there, holding his pipe, staring off at one of the posters of his daughter.
“Hey Phil,” Arridon called out.
The old man turned to face them. “Yes?”
“Who told you we were coming? Who said the room was about to be used?”
“A mutual friend who also works in insurance,” Phil answered. “It’s a big industry. Lots to protect.” He then returned his gaze to the poster.
He stood like that until they left. After a minute of winding around security barriers and avoiding armed guards, they walked through the glass doors and into the grand lobby of the tower.
“There’s no one here,” Derrick said.
“I don’t think anyone can actually come inside, at least, not in the version of this building that we can walk into,” Arridon reasoned. “That’s the elevator.” He pointed at the bank of rectangular openings on one wall, each inset with two panels of bright steel doors.
“Yeah dude, I know what an elevator looks like,” Derrick said with a laugh.
“How would I know that?” Arridon mused as they walked. “You said you were from a moon. Maybe your moon has a spell preventing tall buildings.”
“Magic isn’t real where I’m from,” he replied.
“I think magic is real wherever gods can go, so, wherever we can go,” Arridon said as he pushed the button with the arrow pointing up.
A ding sounded, and the doors parted, revealing a luxurious square room, covered with crushed velvet, brass fittings, and dark, rich woods.
“Fancy,” Derrick observed.
“I don’t remember the elevator being like this when I came down,” Arridon said. “Weird.”
“Hit the button, wizard.”
“Which one? Oh, yeah that one.”
Arridon touched the round button at the very top of all the other white buttons. It was marked with a golden gear. The doors closed, and they felt the elevator rise, bringing them all the way to the top of the Shard, where the gods had built a gateway to everywhere.
“What did you say your sister’s name was?”
“Thistle. What was your sister’s name?”
“Shithead.”
“Really?”
He laughed. “No, not really. But we fight enough that I say it as much as her real name, Samantha. Mostly we call her Sam.”
“Is she pretty?” Arridon asked Derrick as they reached the closed wooden door at the end of the hallway running along a wall of glass windows. The view out into the city preparing for war was solemn and ominous. The boys ignored the helicopters and tanks below, and they were lucky enough to be unable to see the fleeing citizens as they scrambled to get to safety.
“How the hell should I know?”
“Objectively? Like, I know she’s your sister, and that makes her as appealing as a rusty fish hook, but if, like, you know, a friend were to be looking to meet a nice, pretty girl, would you recommend your sister?”
“Are you seriously asking me whether or not my missing sister, lost in time and space, is cute and single?”
Arridon sighed. “You’re right. I’m being an idiot.” He pulled the door open, and the two entered the clockwork chamber.
Bigger than possible at the narrow top of the Shard, the three story room was filled with stonework and alcoves, and statuesque carvings in marble enshrined the same idle, multi-ringed gear-sphere that formed the portal Arridon and Thistle had used back in the Endless City. Around it, inset in tables made of glass and gold-inlaid stone, were control panels of nearly every possible type. Buttons, knobs, joysticks, smooth touch-panels, telescopic viewers, and more. Hovering above these consoles were shimmering, silver rings, and all was lit by bright, shining light streaming in through large, star-shaped skylights set in the domed ceiling.
“What’s your sister like?”
Arridon laughed. “Beautiful—and fierce. Intelligent and kind. She’s funny. She’s the best thing about my entire family.”
“That’s not intimidating or anything.”
“Damned right it is. I’m so proud of her. I think you’d like her,” Arridon said.
“Sam’s kinda the same. I mean, she’s badass. We fight a lot, but I love her.”
“I’m excited to meet her. Let’s figure this contraption out.”
They approached the controls, filled with nervousness. The dizzying array of mistakes that could be made paralyzed both of them. Neither wanted to do the wrong thing, or open a door that might let the wrong thing through.
“Okay, Phil said it was intuitive,” Derrick said. He took a deep breath. “So what feels right?” The high school student walked at a measured pace between the consoles set in stone, looking at each of the myriad ways to change settings, and create some kind of situation with the machinery and the room that might guide them to a different place and time in the apparently infinite multiverse. Derrick stopped at a black plastic joystick surrounded by unlabeled gemstones. As his attention turned to them, they illuminated with a ghostly backlight.
“That the one?” the tall Arridon asked, looking over Derrick’s shoulder.
“Yeah. Yeah I think so,” Derrick said, “it just feels right to me.” He stepped closer so he could grasp the control stick. He waited several seconds and then reached out, t
aking it in his hand as he had a thousand times before on his gaming console. The plastic felt warm, as if someone had been touching it mere moments prior.
“Do you…feel anything?”
“Not really.”
“Try touching the buttons. The jewels.”
“I’ve been touching my jewels long enough that I don’t need a frigging coach, Arridon. Give a man some breathing space,” Derrick said with a throaty chuckle.
“Okay, fine, fine. It’s just, you know. End of the world. Worlds. Armageddon and whatever. Time’s probably wasting.”
Derrick turned and lifted one brow at his new friend, and he backed off with a smile, standing closer to a sheer-surfaced console a few steps away. The boy from the moon returned his attention to the cluster of lit gems, and slowly rested his fingers on them, one by one.
A deep, mechanical hum grew around them, and a wide, softly lit viewscreen appeared above the controls bank.
“What was that?” Derrick muttered, not daring to release his strengthening grip on the joystick. “It sounds like some kind of nuclear generator starting up.”
“What’s a generator?”
“Really? You come from a world with a room like this, and don’t have generators?”
“We have magic. I can conjure a concussive force that’ll smash you into the floor like a cockroach.”
Derrick swallowed and turned his attention to the viewscreen, which was glowing brightly. Arridon hadn’t meant the comment as a threat; he was just pointing out differences in life experiences, in a colorful way.“Well, a generator produces, um, power, but not magical power, just, and, well, it sounds like waves crashing on the rocks, but nonstop and real loud.”
