City Of Phase

by George Willson

  “The answer is going to be here, though,” Perry said. “We should go through the buildings and find it.”

  “I agree,” Blake said, “but at the same time, I suspect if these people wanted us to fix this, they would have guided us right to the root of the problem. Instead, they want us to leave town. This would mean that either they like being stuck in this state, or whatever is causing the problem is still present and could affect us as well.”

  “We could end up like them?” Perry said, worried. He looked back and spotted a few people standing at windows, watching them. “As in trapped?”

  “As in trapped,” Blake said. “It’s like we’re seeing echoes of the people who live here. Living their lives in a world that’s a bit off kilter. I would also say it’s a zone with a boundary that they want us to reach so we don’t end up like them. Very charitable actually. This world, or at least this country, might be nice.”

  Suddenly, Michelle felt like in the course of blinking, she passed several steps and stumbled. She looked to where Blake and Perry were, but they weren’t there. She looked around frantically to find them staring at her, mouths dropped open yet again in surprise.

  “What happened?” she asked, truly worried.

  “You disappeared for a second, and then reappeared right there,” Perry said.

  “I did what?” Michelle asked, the fear building inside of her.

  “You … phased, for lack of a better word,” Blake said solemnly, “just like everyone back there. We have to get out of here.”

  They saw the people appearing around them again pointing out of town in the direction they were walking. Blake nodded.

  “I believe they have a very valid point,” he said. “Run.”

  Blake took off, and Michelle and Perry joined in behind him, running full tilt for the fence which was becoming clearer as they approached it. As she ran, Michelle noticed that she missed several steps and figured she phased in and out as they ran. She hoped desperately that they would reach wherever the edge of this thing was before it was too late for her. After all, she could not be certain that when they fixed the problem if everyone, including her, would be okay.

  As they ran, they passed the people who stood on the sides of the road, still pointing the direction to go. The road was still smooth and though grass appeared here and there as the bulk of the buildings passed behind them, it was very easy to run on without so much as a pebble to trip them up. The people seemed to settle in a line ahead of them at what was probably the border to the zone that Blake mentioned before, and no sooner had they passed beyond their line than they ran right into the fence only a few feet from that line.

  The fence appeared to be just chain link and about eight feet high, but instead of the interlinking diamond shapes that Michelle had seen before, these were interlocking circles, each about two inches in diameter to create the impassable barrier they now faced, since there did not appear to be a gate anywhere in sight. The top of the fence was lined with something like razor wire, so there was no chance of their climbing over it.

  They all turned back to face the city with their backs pressed as tight against the fence as they could to begin with. The people stood about six feet from the fenceline, and no doubt helped to define the boundary when it was originally built. As they watched, the people of all ages and manner of dress disappeared once more and then reappeared with their hands clasped, staring at the trio with begging eyes.

  “I think it’s pretty easy to figure that one out,” Perry observed.

  “Yeah,” Blake said, “but I’ll bet this will be one of those where deciphering it is a lot harder than fixing it.”

  “If the answer is in there, that could complicate things,” Michelle said.

  “Agreed,” Blake said. “First things first, though.” He looked at the begging crowd. “How do we get out of here?” The person closest to them phased and then reappeared pointing down the fenceline. “I’d say that’s pretty definitive. Let’s go.”

  Blake led the way hugging the fence followed closely by Michelle and then Perry in the rear. The fence remained outside of the town proper, and there were no obstructions in their path to force them any closer to the invisible line they had crossed. Through grass and across other roads they kept following the fence for nearly a mile before they finally came upon a locked gate.

  “This is an odd place for a gate,” Blake remarked. They were in the middle of a grassy area, and on the other side of the fence was a heavy concentration of trees. Normally, gates would be used for easy passage in and out of a fenced area, but this one looked like it was deliberately hidden in the most inconvenient place possible. It would have made more sense for there to have been a gate at the road where they had started. It would not have made a difference in Michelle’s mind, since they could not just walk through it.

  “Now what?” Michelle asked as soon as she saw the lock. She looked up and down the endless fenceline and wondered if they would have to keep walking to find an open gate. However, since this was clearly a dangerous area and someone put up this fence to keep people out, it was unlikely they’d be able to just find an open exit point.

  “Fret not,” Blake said, and he pulled something out of his pocket that looked like a cross between a Swiss Army knife and a keyfob. He looked at the bottom of the lock, selected one of the thin, metal extensions within the device, which opened out like a pocketknife, and inserted it in the lock. Blake pressed a button, and the device emitted a sort of a whine immediately followed by a click from the lock. Blake turned the key and the lock opened. Michelle could not contain her surprise.

  “What is that?” Michelle asked resisting the urge to ask where she could get one.

  “Electronic lockpick,” Blake replied. “Critical tool to have on hand, considering how many locked doors we run up against.”

  “It can unlock anything?” Michelle asked.

  “Absolutely,” Blake said. “Simple ones like this all the way to starting cars, bank vaults, electronic scanners, whatever. If we need to get in somewhere, we can get in there.”

  “When can I have one of those?” Michelle asked hopefully.

  “Don’t ask,” Perry said as Blake opened the gate for them. “Only the Guide gets the lockpick. The rest of us just go along.”

  “What is this Guide you keep talking about?” Michelle asked.

  “It’s a sort of a consciousness inside my head,” Blake said. “I’m from Earth just like the rest of you, but unlike you, I have a little extra something provided by the Maze to help us through our travels. It’s just information, kind of like memories.”

  “It’s in your head?” Michelle clarified. To be honest, she found that sort of idea even creepier than stoic people blinking in and out. The notion that some kind of consciousness can get inside your head, give you memories, and control you was frightening.

  “It is in my head,” Blake said, “but it’s sort of only there as a help. It can exert control over my actions if it needs to.”

  “If it needs to,” Michelle repeated.

  “Yes, if there is something that I need to do, and I, as Blake, am not doing it, then the Guide can control my actions more directly. It’s a little weird, but it doesn’t happen very often. Has more to do with keeping me out of parts of the Maze that I’ve been curious about than it does forcing me to do things.”

  “Like what parts?” Michelle asked.

  “He’ll never answer you,” Perry said. “What he told me was that there are things that we simply can’t know.”

  “Why not?” Michelle asked, turning to Blake who shut and locked the gate behind them.

  “You have to understand that the Maze is an incredible piece of technology,” Blake explained. “It opens a portal to anywhere and anytime. No spacecraft, no dangerous teleports, no takeoff, no landing. It’s probably the safest form of travel that anyone has ever conceived of, but because of this, it is extremely dangerous in the wrong hands. If it just traversed space, it would be
dangerous enough, since an army could emerge anywhere without warning. But since it also passes through time, that’s about as dangerous as they get. Since we use it, that makes us a liability, but we have things to do, so the Maze’s answer to this is to keep us as ignorant as possible.”

  “Ignorant?” Michelle asked indignantly.

  “No offense intended, of course,” Blake said gently. “Thing is, no one, not even I, know when and where the Maze is located. And by I, I mean the Guide doesn’t know either. The Guide gathers information and feeds it back to the Maze, but it was never allowed to know the Maze’s location. It also prevents me from exploiting what information it does have to learn more about how the Maze works. Our prime responsibility, no matter where we go, is to protect the Maze.”

  “And it’s called the Maze why?” Michelle asked. When she had asked before, she thought the word referred to their journey, not the machine itself that got them around. That was also before she knew what it did.

  “That’s all I know about it,” Blake admitted. “The term was given to the Guide to refer to the machine. It doesn’t know who gave it or why it exists. It doesn’t know for our protection. There are races out there who would literally kill or probe our minds to get ahold of it, and we cannot allow that to happen. I would rather remain ignorant than take the chance of revealing its position.”

  Michelle only nodded. She wanted to protest, but at the same time, it made sense. The technology simply to open a door between places would be extremely dangerous in the wrong hands. Of course, she wondered, what made them think they were the right hands? They were bouncing around the universe supposedly fixing stuff. What made them so righteous? Blake brought her out of her thoughts.

  “All right,” he said, “let’s keep going around this fence to see what other surprises it holds.”

  “You don’t want to go back to the road?” Perry asked, thumbing back the direction they had come.

  “Not this time,” Blake explained. “That didn’t feel like a main road. It just happened to be there when they ran the fence over it. The main entrance to this town would have a gate on it to allow vehicles to pass through, whether they would use it or not. Therefore, let’s keep following this fence around until we find it.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  They followed the fenceline through the trees which were never thick enough to prevent passage, and the ground never varied enough to cause problems in walking through the little forest. It was not long until their path opened up into a field again, but this time, they saw what they believed was the main road where the fence might have started. Just outside the border of the city was another fenced in area with a large number of uniformly dressed men that they assumed was a military style base that guarded the main gate of the city, especially since the existence of the base did not allow access to the fenceline all the way to the road.

  “This should be a good start for some answers,” Blake observed as he continued walking toward the base.

  “What if they just arrest us?” Perry asked.

  “Nonsense,” Blake said. “What would they do that for?”

  “Why do they ever do it?” Perry countered.

  “You guys get arrested for stuff?” Michelle asked, significantly worried. After all, being locked away in a cell would certainly hamper any efforts they put into solving whatever problem they came to solve.

  “It certainly isn’t our fault that we manage to trample on ceremony everywhere we go,” Blake said. “Just bad luck really. They usually let us go.”

  “Usually?” Michelle asked.

  “Yeah, the rest of the time we break out,” Perry noted. “Remember the lockpick?”

  “Don’t prisons usually confiscate stuff like that?” Michelle asked.

  “Hence the rest of the time when they let us go,” Blake said. “Once they discover we haven’t actually done anything, they’re usually keen to let us off with an apology.”

  “And a warning,” Perry finished again.

  This concerned Michelle quite a bit, since she had a vague idea of what inmates did to fellow prisoners on Earth, so she could only imagine what they might do on other planets in other cultures. And then, considering her and her partners were aliens, that threw another kink into the mix since she had heard what governments do to aliens … allegedly. Of course, what she had learned so far on this experience was that she really did not know anything.

  She glanced forward to see a break in the fence around the base with a guard standing at that entrance with a weapon of some kind. Or she assumed it was a weapon, since it looked vaguely like a gun, but not like one she had seen before. It had a long barrel and a grip, but no trigger. No visible one, at least.

  Like the people in the city, the soldier looked as human as she did. His uniform, along with every other person they could see moving inside the base, was not too different from the field uniforms of the militaries of Earth with a simple green shirt and trouser combination to match the grassy plains surrounding them. His collar held a symbol that she could only guess was a rank of some kind and his tunic showed the name of Thraskin. Thraskin had turned his head to regard them at their approach, but did not move from his post.

  “Good day,” Blake said with a smile. “How are you?”

  “Do you need something?” Thraskin asked, very business-like.

  “Yes, actually,” Blake continued. “We’re wondering what you can tell us about that city there.” The soldier put his hand up and gestured to someone behind him with two fingers in the air waving forward. Michelle was worried already and took a step back.

  “Why would you want to know?” Thraskin asked as two other similarly dressed soldiers emerged with the same rank on their collars, but she did not pay attention to their names.

  “Oh, well, you know,” Blake said holding out his hands as if to indicate openness and that he was not carrying anything, “we actually wondered if we could help you with it.”

  “Help us?” Thraskin asked as the other two fanned out on either side of him. Michelle and Perry stood close together and took another step back, their eyes darting between the soldiers. “Help us to do what?”

  “I do hope we’re talking about the same place,” Blake said. “This city here appears to have a problem, and I just wanted to see if you needed any help fixing it.”

  “You want to fix Carburast?” Thraskin asked. “How?”

  “Carburast?” Blake asked recognizing the name from the screen back in the living area of the Maze along with Michelle and Perry. “Yes, well, I don’t really know at this point because I’d kind of need to find out what’s causing the problem.”

  “Then I think you’ll need to come with us,” Thraskin said and looking around, the trio noticed that besides that two soldiers that they saw emerge, four others had emerged to surround them. They were not going anywhere. Blake smiled and looked cheerfully at Thraskin.

  “Certainly,” he replied. What else could he do? It did not appear that they had any choice in the matter.

  Thraskin and the other soldiers led them through the base, which appeared to be little more than a camp that had been there so long that they had permanent roads and signs indicating where everything was located. The buildings were tents of varying shades, based on how faded they were, and they were all located in neat rows forming a small town on the edge of the empty city. The tents were of a very heavy duty material made to resist the elements, and all of them were uniformly about twenty feet square by design, though some of them joined two and three together to form larger structures.

  Their escort weaved them through the town roads to the only permanent structure they had seen so far, which was undoubtedly the base headquarters. They spotted the brick building long before they got very close to it, since it was two stories tall with a perimeter of several hundred feet constructed along the road next to the city gate. They walked up the concrete steps and through the double metal doors to a large lobby area. A pair of their escorts led Blake one directio
n while another led Michelle and Perry the other way. Michelle panicked.

  “Where are you taking him?” she asked. She truly felt that Blake, far more than Perry, would be the one to lead them to whatever end they sought.

  “It’s none of your concern,” a soldier whose nametag read “Litch” said coldly. Litch led Michelle and Perry down a long hallway to a small stone room where he closed a heavy metal door behind them. It was a jail cell. Perry was the first to the diminutive window.

  “Hey, why are we in here?” Perry asked. Litch and the other soldier with him just laughed as they walked away muttering something about idiots. Perry sat on the wooden bed in the cell. Michelle leaned against the opposite wall. “Do you want to sit?” he asked.

  “Why?” she asked, annoyed. “What’s going to happen now?”

  “I don’t know,” he replied. “Don’t read too much into this. Since we’re not from the worlds we visit, we routinely accidentally break some stupid law that Blake manages to talk us out of. I’m not worried about it.” Michelle nodded, walked to the bed, and sat next to him.

  “I’ll take your word for it then,” she said. He nodded. Something was eating at her that had occurred to her as soon as they were separated. She both did and did not wish to know the answer, but she figured Perry could tell her. “Can we die here?”

  “Do what?” Perry asked, turning to her. He seemed surprised by the question.

  “Can we die here?” Michelle asked again. “I figure we can, but are we really here to the point that they can kill us?”

  “On the one hand, Blake has never mentioned anyone dying,” Perry replied. “On the other hand, since we are here for real, I would guess it is possible.” She nodded, but she could not say she was assured by this. Who could say how dangerous these people were?

  “What happens if we get separated?” Michelle asked. The thought had crossed her mind that they might take all of them to different parts of the world, which would seem to hamper the idea of catching the same ride back home.