“I assume that is the containment unit. Has it worked on Omega 1 before?”
“Yes.”
“Will it work twice? You know Beelzebub can change his genetic structure.”
“Isn’t that why you built this compound? To keep him out?”
“I built it to keep many things out.”
“Your empire is crumbling around you, Watcher. And still you focus on Fabler?”
The Watcher rubs his gland, and detaches some organoplastic from the wall, floating it across the lab and covering Mu’s eye and mouth.
Then he pushes the gurney binding Lori in the hallway.
“Time to see your husband, Lori. You know what to do.”
FABLER ○ 2:23+pm
Hi, it’s Lori. Can’t come to the phone, but your call is important to me, unless you’re a telemarketer, then it’s not, and you need to remove my number from your list. But if you’re someone I like, such as my adoring husband, leave me a message at the beep.
“I miss you so much, babe.”
“What are you talking about, Fabler? I’m right here.”
(through the glass)
“Lori? Is that really you?”
“No. You’re imagining me.”
“Because I’m crazy.”
“Imagination isn’t insanity, Fabler. Jesus, when did you get so serious?”
(fidgets with wedding band)
“Things haven’t been good since you left, Lori.”
“Left? These assholes took me. You know that.”
(awkward staring, into his own mind)
“Seriously, Fabler? You’re this close and you want to give up? After all you’ve done to get here?”
“None of this is real. I don’t know if any of it was ever real.”
“So I’m a hallucination?”
“I can’t tell.”
“What if I’m not? (puts her hand on the glass) Would you fight for me?”
“Of course I would, Lori.”
“Then fight. I fell in love with a fighter. Show me how much you want me back.”
Fabler opened his eyes, seeing the demon, not believing what he was seeing, per usual.
Four seconds after the demon kicked off his front bumper, Fabler attacked the beast with the flamethrower.
If it really was the devil, Fabler assumed it would bathe in the heat, like a warm shower.
But like all animals, the creature burned.
A smell of scorched hair assaulted Fabler’s nostrils, and the demon howled above the crackling flame and WHOOSH of the M9. It backed away, and Fabler advanced, yanking open the car door, taking the shotgun from the hysterical scientist, and putting a one ounce steel Sabot slug directly into the thing’s head, blowing off the left horn, making it crumple into a burning heap.
He fired four more rounds into it, until all movement ceased, and then leaned into his back seat, snaked out his arm, and choked out Jake.
Then he took off the M9 and surveyed the area.
Fabler climbed back into the driver’s seat as Jake came to.
“I lost it again and you knocked me out.”
“Yeah.”
“I thought I’d gone to hell.”
“That’s our next stop, Jake. Lock and load.”
“I never understood that phrase. What am I locking, exactly?”
Fabler buckled up and tried the ignition. The engine turned over and purred. “With some rifles you lock the bolt in the rear position, slap in a magazine, and release the bolt to put one in the spout.”
“Does the shotgun have a bolt?”
“No.”
“Can I have a gun with a bolt?”
“Behind you. Grab an M16.”
Jake unbuckled his seatbelt and futzed around in the back.
“What’s in this plastic case?”
“Chainsaw.”
“What’s that for?”
“Sawing things. M16 is by the tailgate.”
Fabler headed for the closest group of greys, black silhouettes against blinding light.
“It’s heavy. Is it already loaded?”
“Yeah.”
“Is this thing the safety?”
“Yeah.”
“Do I switch it to semi or burst?”
“Keep it on semi until you get used to it.”
Fabler pinned the gas pedal, heading for the greys. To his peripheral left, a pack of huge wolves. To his right, a massive yellow scorpion with two stinger tails, engaged in combat with a bipedal dinosaur with large fangs and larger horns. Even with the Jeep engine roaring, Fabler still heard/felt the droning, monotone hum of background whitenoise that seems to come from everywhere at once.
“Fabler… is this some sort of dream or hallucination?”
“I have no idea.”
“That minotaur devil thing… that doesn’t exist in the fossil record.”
“Who cares?”
“Reality needs to be grounded in reality.”
“Looked real to me.”
“But it shouldn’t be real.”
“Is it any harder to believe than time travelers are abducting redheads?”
“That devil knew my name. Disregarding its biological origin, how did it recognize who I am?”
Fabler didn’t want to dig into this particular rabbit hole, but he sensed Jake’s mounting agitation.
“Maybe it can read minds.”
“Read minds? I wasn’t thinking about my own name. Or do you mean it could read consciousness like we’re all computer code?”
“I dunno, Jake. The greys came for you. Maybe that thing heard your name mentioned. Saw some surveillance pics. Why does it matter? We’re here right now. We have to deal with it.”
“Are you familiar with Occam’s razor?”
“Got greys coming up. Focus on shooting them.”
“To paraphrase Occam, the explanation requiring the least amount of speculation is usually correct.”
“I don’t need to speculate. I’m staring at a beetle the size of a wild hog.”
“If you get up in the morning and find the refrigerator open, you can blame it on a home intruder, who broke in with no signs of entry, didn’t steal anything, and opened the fridge and then left, locking up afterwards. Or it could be the ghost of your grandfather, who always liked midnight snacks, and is trying to give you a sign that the afterlife exists. But those explanations require much greater suspension of disbelief than others, such as the fridge door is broken, or you just forgot to close it all the way the last time you used it.”
Jake made no effort to point the M16, so Fabler turned to the right, holding the arc, searching for the black singularity. He swerved slightly to plow through a pack of dachshund-sized rats, hearing their squeals and crunching bones above the omnipresent hum. “Your point?”
“What’s easier to believe? That we’ve travelled into a wormhole and just ran into Satan? Or that I’m having a particularly vivid bad dream? If it’s my own mind making this up, then the demon knowing my name makes sense, because I created him in my subconscious, and I know my name. The demon knows what I know, because it’s in my head.�
��
“So what about me?”
“I created you as well. You’re a figment of my delusion.”
“How do I know that?”
“I knocked you out. Twice.”
“I could have imagined that.”
“I can say the same thing.”
“You’re trying to prove to me that you exist, without my awareness of your mind?”
“Obviously, I can’t confirm that. Plato’s Cave. I’m limited by my own subjective perceptions, and I can’t experience your consciousness to verify it. But if you are truly sentient without my awareness, then there might be another reason the demon knew my name.”
“What’s that?”
Fabler located the growing black spot and adjusted his direction. He sped past some deer-looking thing with twenty points on each antler and huge green eyes, deeming it too cute to pose any threat.
“Maybe there is something else that created and controls both of us, Fabler.”
“What do you mean? God?”
“In a manner of speaking. What if Einstein was wrong? What if God does play dice with the universe?”
“I don’t follow.”
“Fabler… what if God became bored with his own creation? What if the supreme being wanted to shake things up? What kind of crazy shit do you imagine would happen?”
PRESLEY ○ 2:25+pm
Holly refused to even attempt to escape, ignoring Presley’s pleas. So Presley crawled down the organic, melty, tube-of-a-hallway, becoming increasingly disoriented by the forks and turns. The overhead glow gradually changed from pinkish to dark brownish, making it hard to see.
Every few meters she’d stop and listen.
A smell also invaded the corridors.
She came to another split, no clue which way to go. Or if going anywhere even made sense anymore.
The alternative—giving up—didn’t track with Presley.
Presley pressed on and noticed a different kind of light, coming from the left corner. Rather than the diffuse, all-around light that seemed to emanate from everywhere, this light shone bright white, casting shadows.
Presley’s stomach twinged, somewhere between nausea and pain.
Presley got a foot under her, used the wall to stand, then pressed her back to it and slowed her breathing.
The light got closer…
Closer…
Closer. And Presley heard a slurpy, wheezing sound.
The panic attack reared up—
—and Presley reigned it in.
The burbling became louder, the shadows stretching… sharpening… until…
The light peeked out from around the corner.
But Presley had no idea what the hell it could be. A bright, glowing blob the size of a football, stuck on the end of a translucent stalk, greasy. It hung at chest level, close enough to touch.
A smell slapped her; ammonia, clogging her throat and nostrils and making her eyes tear up.
The acrid stench became overpowering, and Presley felt a cough building in her chest. She pressed her wrist stump to her mouth to try and squelch it.
Couldn’t.
Coughed loudly.
The light, and the thing attached to it, walked around the corner and stared, eye-to-eye, with Presley.
Some kind of big, round, fat, translucent fish.
The ugliest, scariest fish Presley had ever seen, reminding her of those creatures that lived on the bottom of the ocean and never felt sunlight. Huge, pale white eyes, an enormous mouth crammed full of needle-teeth as transparent as icicles, the stalk on its head a glowing lure to attract prey.
But unlike a fish, this thing walked; a Pac-Man with stubby amphibian legs and a mouth as wide as a washing machine.
As she gaped at it, Presley became aware of how detached she’d become.
Presley stared at the fish-thing like she stared at one of Fabler’s alien DVDs. One where the situation became so outlandish she no longer cared to finish watching.
Presley had actually thrown books before, when they’d jumped the shark and become too unrealistic to even comprehend.
Presley knew the answer.
Those times she gave up on a book, it had only been a break rather than a break-up. Presley eventually went back and finished reading, her desire to know how it ended surpassing her anger.
The fish-thing’s large eye flicked to Presley, the white pupil dilating.
Then it lunged.
LORI ○ 2:25+pm
Lori thought about jazz.
She’d heard, somewhere, that musicians go through stages as they improve. You start with learning the basics of an instrument, and then progress to playing a song, then multiple songs, then you’re good enough to be backup in a band, then you’re a soloist in the band. For some, it ends there. For others, they grow bored and begin to experiment, which inevitably leads to jazz.
Lori hated jazz. It took too long, and the complicated melodies bored her, replacing the things she loved about music with things she didn’t understand, meant to only impress other jazz musicians.
So many of Lori’s favorite bands from her youth had changed since she fell in love with them. Lori understood that artists need to grow and challenge themselves. But at the same time, you don’t betray your fa
nbase with self-indulgent, avantgarde, experimental bullshit.
Good songs aren’t twenty-five minutes long, without any chorus or refrain, where each musician has a complicated solo. Good songs have a tight formula that works. They don’t show off.
She giggled. Or maybe she just thought about giggling, and felt like she giggled, but the giggle took place on a higher plane than her physical body; a consciousness giggle.
Lori had a vague awareness of darkness, and stretching to infinity, and then the warm glow of timespace/fission/fusion/energy/matter/life all around her.
Lori swiveled her head, witnessed the Watcher pushing her gurney through the light.
She tried to reach for him, to pat his shoulder and invite him on her trip, but her hands were bound.
“Can I have more Elixir?”
The Watcher squinted at her. “If you obey, you can have as much as you want. That has always been the way. You can live in pure bliss.”
“Why don’t you take some with me?”
“Because some of us do not have the luxury of self-indulgence. We have responsibilities.”
Lori giggled. “Responsibilities suck.”
“For the show to run, someone must run the show.”
“Are you sure the Elixir won’t hurt my baby?”
“Nothing here hurts your child.
What Happened to Lori Page 54
