The Wandering World

by B C Woodruff

  The fresher footprints before me should have lasted longer than the ones I was leaving behind, and yet, even as I glanced back, I saw all of them sponging back to their original contours simultaneously.

  Like a memory-foam pillow after a quick nap. I never did like those things.

  I said before that the ground was squishy in texture, almost like with sufficient pressure I might be able to puncture the surface and find whatever was underneath, like a film or a biomass.

  There was a darker possibility, too, and this one kept me moving forward – that if I waited too long, the ground would swallow me up like the footprints. Well, not swallow per se, more like absorb.

  I still have difficulty finding the right words for that place.

  “RAMA!” I called out but there was no carry to my voice. Whatever laws were in charge here were prepared to assert themselves on me as well.

  Location: The Spiral City – Reddal

  I couldn’t tell you how long I walked but finally, in the distance, I spotted a grand spiralling object peek its pointed top over the tentacled forest. It looked like what would happen if you took a common tower shell – you know, the type you find on the beach or in those cheesy movies where people put them up to their ears and listen for the ocean? – smoothed out the curve and added, well, I guess it was the closest thing to a building I’d seen yet.

  Flashforward: Philosophy – The Plan

  I was standing a fair distance from the structure ahead of me when I heard the strangest voice cry out “You there! Stop!” These were red words, and I knew I had to run...

  Let me jump forward a bit.

  To an abandoned painter’s (our word, not theirs) studio on the outskirts of Reddal, the capital city of the Chroma Imperium. I and my newfound friend LightBlue were shixing – which is to say, we were talking about what to do next. While it was an odd enough experience to be where I was, absorbing and accepting the experience with such ease was something else entirely.

  The longer I was exposed to the environment, the more I found that words and concepts that defy the unbroken mind were suddenly mine to understand.

  I looked at the space above – the sky – and I knew that they called this time of the daily cycle that I now call, in an attempt to translate it to English as best as I can, the Whither. I knew, too, that in some time it would transition to the Grather, and, finally, in a darkness like our night, we would experience the Nether – from white to gray to black.

  As much as it horrified me to know this all by instinct, it was fascinating.

  I would hear a piece of information that I had never known before and, almost instantaneously, I would understand the context. I think the same was true for him, and that was why our friendship formed so quickly, despite the fact that neither of us had ever encountered anyone quite like the other. (That didn’t bode well for finding Rama, but I kept that context to myself.)

  In the short time we had been together, he’d already helped me evade the forces of the Nearest Primary and had put himself at odds with his own people as a result. I didn’t fully understand the debt that I owed him then, or at least, I wasn’t prepared to acknowledge it just yet.

  I knew that I owed him my life, at least.

  “Anom,” he said, refusing to make eye contact, first looking at his drink and then back into the distance with a sunken expression that, as with so many things on the Tetranne, has proven impossible to accurately describe.

  I’ll do my best to translate. The phrase “you had to be there” has never applied to you more than it does now.

  “Anom. We have a story here.” He laughed awkwardly; LightBlue wasn’t a raconteur by nature. “No. It’s not a story. It’s a promise. It comes from the Highest Authority. From the very PRISM before we Chromas came to exist here. Do you care to hear it?”

  “Of course.” I was sitting at the edge of my seat waiting for whatever he had to say – well, say might be wrong word for a being without a mouth, or at least none that I could see. It’s not that he had any trouble sipping his drink (which was delicious, by the way, and you’ll find my best attempt to replicate it on the menu of your favorite local ACC), but it just kind of disappeared halfway between his nose and his chin. But besides that and his... picturesque pigmentation, LightBlue was as human as anyone I’d ever met. And just like me, he was a being of stories.

  “Long ago there was a book. Many hold to the belief that the Chromatome was not written. That it formed from all the colours that the PRISM released that did not coalesce into the Tetranne, our world. I am not so sure of this, but it is what my people profess to believe. So few are allowed to gaze upon it nowadays that some have become… suspicious. Chromas like myself. We theorize that it doesn’t exist at all, that it never did. It doesn’t matter what may be the case – Fact or Fiction – for it is Faith that has driven our society.” He stopped to see that I was listening.

  “I follow you. Go on.” And, as I said earlier, strangely, I did follow him. I understood the importance of what he was saying and even how it fit into their world.

  “The Nearest Primaries have long claimed the right to Blending Authority. One cannot simply create a new Chroma without first being vetted for your potential to break the First Rule of Eight. This, you must understand, is the cornerstone of our society, and its eightfold perfection grants us the peace that has endured since the Disjunction. The First Rule, Nobody, it concerns you and is the likely cause of the commotion in Reddal. ” He took a breath, or the Chroma equivalent. “The First Rule is this: colour must be preserved at all costs. It is said that the Chromatome, real or not, speaks of the end of the world, and that it will be heralded by the creation of a Non-Colour.” He let me think about that for a moment.

  I didn’t need a moment – in fact, I’d just as soon forget the way that word seemed to draw the air from my lungs – but he didn’t wait very long before continuing.

  “This is why unauthorized blending and creation means execution at the hand of the Nearest Primaries: the force of prophecy. Of superstition. You see, no one haS ever created anything but another Chroma. The Blending Authority says that this is only true because they have made it so, but I say it is a regime of death built on false pretenses.” He paused again.

  “Ever since our first encounter I have thought that there was something strange about you. You are not a colourless and yet… you are not a Chroma either. I wonder...”

  I sprang to my feet with the sudden knowledge that Rama was in danger. “We have to find her!” I shouted, my mind ready to will myself into motion, but LightBlue would have none of it. He waved his hand and beckoned me to sit with the same calm demeanour that had won me over when we first met.

  “I know where she is. They will have taken her to the Tower. Where they take all who dare defy them. It is near the base of Reddal, but it is heavily guarded and despite that… I want to help you.”

  “Why?”

  ”Not all of us agree with the Nearest Primaries or their brutal enforcers. Some of us have expressed interest in returning to our ancestral lands, but the Red Army continues to occupy them ‘for our own protection’, for ‘unity’. It’s all lies. They experiment on us, Nobody, with the Nearest Primaries’ blessing. They defile our bodies in a sadistic hope that we will somehow restore our True Colours.”

  “True Colours?”

  “We are… fading. All of us. If we are not careful, we will continue to lose our essence, our… being… and we will become like the Tonelands, gray and soulless. The Authority has forbidden me from taking a mate because I am of the Light family, which has been judged and found lacking. I will be the last of my kin. I once accepted this for fear that what they say is true, and that our world will fall if a Non-Colour is born. But you… you are not of the Tetranne. If you truly come from another world, well, perhaps there are other places that will accept a faithless Chroma like me.” He smiled and leaned in, and his voice grew quiet.

  “There is another legend, like that of the C
hromatome. It is old and it is blasphemous to even mention, yet those who know it all too well. It says that there are doorways hidden across the world, perhaps through which our ancestors once travelled to this place. They say that when we came here we were all... without colour or form. That these things came later. I wonder if, long ago, we were the same, your people and mine.”

  It was a sad story, and LightBlue had my sympathy, but his timing left much to be desired. “How is any of this going to save my friend?” I asked, springing back to my feet. I didn’t need tales and theories, I needed action – and every second we waited was another one that put Rama closer to her death.

  “First. You will tell me about who you are and then I will help you.”

  “Are you fucking kidding me?” I was ready to leave then and there, but there was that calmness again... and despite my best attempts to tell him in no uncertain terms exactly what he could do with his little therapy session, I told him. It didn’t take too long, after all – probably just another principle of the Tetranne that isn’t true here on Earth. After that, he sighed and stood up.

  “Ah. You are one like the Translucents of myth. Now that I understand the paths you traveled to get here, I see that I was correct, that you are not a colourless, but the others… They would see you as a threat to the very existence of our world. As they have probably perceived your friend.”

  It echoed our initial meeting, this tone of his, when he had launched himself at me without provocation or questioning. I swore and I tried to get him off of me, but his hands and feet were quicker than mine and far more precise. Strangely, though, his strikes did not hurt as much as I would have expected them to. It was almost as if the very nature of pain in this place had a different texture.

  All the same, and pain aside, it had been quite the fight.

  Eventually, when I had him pinned and we began to speak… or whatever it was... (it seemed like speaking, at least) we started to evaluate the situation and, yeah, I told him enough about my day that he grew interested in my well-being.

  He’d been kind to me ever since.

  If not also incredibly curious and stricken by the news that there were other stable worlds through the Dorman. Several forbidden tales later, I learned there were actually tons of them at one point. If the Tetranne had given me nothing else, it was a healthy trust in the value of apocrypha.

  Most of these worlds, if not all of them, were thought to have been destroyed well before recorded history. During a time they called the Purge. It might have been that our common ancestors were trying to escape… something.

  Details are sparse.

  Somehow, Earth and the space near our Dorman survived.

  He says I came through the Divide. An area that’s deadly to the Chromas, a phenomenon that’s likely responsible for its continued existence.

  “How are we going to save her?”

  “We are going to do what I was trying to do when we met. We are going to walk you to the Agents of the Near Primaries and they are going to take you to the Tower. I will rally my friends, those who I know are loyal, and we will rescue you. I have spent some time in the Tower, in what was a lifetime ago, and my captors have much to answer for.” He reached out and touched my shoulder, blue incandescent light shining through my body. “You must take me with you. I cannot stay in this place, and if I am to retrieve you from the Tower I will need to know that there is a chance for me elsewhere.”

  “I don’t even know if we can go back.”

  “If we find the way back to your Dorman, will you take me?”

  “Yeah, sure, why not.” Now that the stories had ended, I don’t think time was moving the same way anymore, and that made me worried about Rama. “Shouldn’t we get going?”

  “I have no doubt that your friend will be made an example of. They will keep her alive until they unblend her. That will be in the WhiteTone.”

  That was a few days away, at least.

  ”We will need to plan and I will need to speak with my contacts. If not for their help, you may become just another victim of our corrupt and inflexible system.”

  Flashforward: The Escape – Up Shit’s Creek

  “Don’t look back!“ LightBlue yelled, audibly and visibly distressed as we rushed over the edge of the Tower’s wall and slid down the hill towards his compatriot, a freshly defected Agent of the Near Primaries: PaleRed.

  “Where are the others?”

  I already knew the answer.

  Rama, in my arms, was still and quiet. I didn’t know if she was even alive before she grunted when we hit the ground. Even when I swept her up from the cell floor, she hadn’t made a sound. I could work with a grunt.

  “They’ll have their skylancers on us in no time. We’ll make it to the rendezvous point and then we’ll have to make a break for your doorway.“

  It does sound like “door”, doesn’t it? The thought hadn’t occurred to me yet, and it came as a surprising relief for little things to replace the larger, horrifying truth that we were being hunted by living colours that were willing to die if it meant killing us.

  The four of us that had made it out of the Tower were united in a common bond of desperation and well-founded faith in legends and rumours of worlds beyond.

  PaleRed’s head was… bleeding? I don’t know how to describe it better than to say that she was looking a few scales pinker than she had when we met back in the interrogation room. Without her there would have been no chance.

  “Are you okay?”

  She shot me a glare that said absolutely not, fuck you very much and I shut up until the spiral city had faded into tentacle forest. We were back to the old painter’s house not far from where LightBlue first punched his way into my circle of friends.

  Oh, the adventures we had.

  Now, though, it was time to go home.

  We pushed through to the Dorman’s perimeter. The sounds of something terrible trailed us.

  “Just keep going!” LightBlue cried.

  So we did, following the curving edges that I tried to pull from my memory.

  It was close and the screams were closer.

  Then, just as we were nearing the periphery, and I could feel the push that had originally caused me to explore and Rama to run, my memory becomes unreliable.

  Returned: Breakfast at Tiffany’s

  “Sir? Sir, are you okay?” A flash of light in my eyes brought me back from the world of the Tetranne. “We got a call. Are you hurt? Do you need me to get an ambulance?” I checked myself and found that I was naked, next to a pond in an area I quickly placed as the park near the ACC.

  “I…” My head pounded. “I’m sorry. Just a… a night.” I covered my junk with my hands. Shame was overrated.

  “I would have called the police, but, you know – I saw you at the club and, well, damned if you weren’t spot on about a lot of things. Here.” He handed me his Knight’s Armour Security jacket and I wrapped myself in it.

  “Sorry,” I said. It smelled like a two-by-four.

  “Bah, I’ve got tons of them.” He looked vaguely familiar. “I can give you a lift to wherever you’re staying if you like. I just got off my shift.” He laughed. “I mean, I was chasing after you for a while. I thought you were going to get yourself killed in the water so I tried to get you over to the playground, but you weren’t having that for long either.”

  “Sorry.” I couldn’t stop but feeling the time and experience slipping away from me.

  “It’s fine. The park’s closed. I had Tony over there making sure you weren’t getting into too much trouble. He was there, too.”

  “Huh?”

  “Your set. We’re both kinda into that scene. I can’t really do what you do. Shy and stage fright.”

  “It’s not that hard.”

  “Pfft. So says the king!” His radio beeped and he answered it. “He’s finally coming down. I’ll get him some coffee and pants and maybe…” He covered the mic. “Do you want breakfast? Tony’s wife’s a damn good co
ok.” I nodded, reluctantly.

  “How about brekky at your place, bud?”

  The radio hissed. “Sure. Meet in ten.”

  Suffice it to say that the therapeutic value of a hearty, quiet breakfast cannot be overstated. Say what you will about the wonders of the worlds beyond ours, a crispy plate of bacon (or the meatless equivalent) can center you in ways the great sages of the past could only dream of.

  As I crunched my way back to Earth, swaddled in a bathrobe clearly designed to accommodate Tony’s gym-wrought build, I couldn’t help but wonder imagine how differently things might have gone if the authorities had found me first. I resolved to extend the same courtesy to a traveler like myself in their moment of need, should I find one. As it happened, I did – but that’s neither here nor there. Nor was she, for that matter.

  So that about covers my experience in that strange world. I know it’s not the most plausible thing in the world and that’s fine with me. You’ll probably think that it was a drug-fueled hallucination or a mental break but I’d have to disagree. I mean, it was drug-fueled, and it very nearly broke me, but you know what I mean.

  Why, I can hear some of you asking.

  Where the hell did Rama go?

  Well, I’ll tell you what I found out about that –

  Nothing: The Dead Circle – What I Found There

  So, James (the security guard) and his friend Tony turned out to be damn fine guys. I mean, it’s hard not to appreciate it when someone effectively keeps you from accidentally killing yourself after you’ve returned from an unbelievable adventure in another reality. I told them about what happened and for the most part I think they believed me.

  Alternatively, they thought it was a fun story. Which is just as good as reality sometimes.

  Isn’t it?

  There are lots of questions that I still can’t answer, though, and that’s always suspicious.

  Eventually we found someone who said they knew where to find the Dorman, only, when we went out to where it had been, we found a blackened circle with a white spot of ash in the shape of the anomaly that drew Rama and me into the Tetranne. I can’t say it was a good feeling, exactly… I was hoping that we’d find the Dorman and Rama and LightBlue and MildlyRed, but the burn marks felt like a fine reason to keep looking… or to stop..