Human for a Day (9781101552391)

by Greenberg, Martin Harry (EDT); Brozek, Jennifer (EDT)

  “You always were the brains of this partnership.” Before Sprout, there had been no Phyto-Computer, no chemical lab, and no advanced cross-breeding program in the Hidden Greenhouse. I’d really been little more than a thug with a green thumb.

  “This world . . . it’s like a layer above our world. Everything here is . . . bigger. More complex. More detailed. Even the color spectrum . . . there’s an infinity of different colors here, Michael.”

  I think back on the time I fell into the Hollow Earth, and how I had to help the downtrodden people there throw off the tyrannical overlord Karg before I could return to the surface. “Then they must have even bigger problems than we do. More villainous villains! More despotic despots! More disastrous natural disasters !” I find myself grinning with anticipation. “This could be our greatest adventure!”

  “You might think so, but I haven’t seen any sign of it. There aren’t any villains here.”

  “It’s some kind of Utopia, then?”

  “Not really.” His face squinches up the way it does when he’s thinking hard. “There are people who do bad things. But every time someone does something that seems entirely villainous to me, a whole bunch of other people come along and say it was really the right thing to do. I’m kind of confused, really.” He shakes his head. “Even bank robbers have their defenders here. And there are tornadoes and hurricanes and earthquakes, but they’re . . . diffuse. I mean, yeah, people get hurt, but you never see the President’s daughter trapped under a collapsed building or someone racing to get the secret plans to the hidden base before the whole Eastern seaboard becomes uninhabitable.”

  “Sounds . . . boring.”

  “Oh, it’s not!” His eyes brighten and he grabs my hands across the table. “It’s the most wonderful place, Michael. There’s art and culture and nature like nothing you’ve ever seen. Not just stuffy charity balls where the only exciting thing is when The Rutabaga tries to steal the debutante’s diamond necklace. I can’t wait to show you Turandot.”

  I pull my hands from his. “Whoa, whoa, whoa, kiddo. We’re not here to be tourists. We’re here for a reason. And once our job is done here, we’ll go back where we came from. That’s the way the world works.”

  “Not this world. In this world you can do whatever you want, make the best of what you’ve got, succeed or fail or just muddle along. You’re not limited to playing the role you were born into, fighting the same villains and foiling the same plots over and over again. Not like our world.” He reaches into his hoodie’s front pocket, pulls out a slim colorful magazine. “To the people here, we’re fictional.”

  The title of the magazine is The Amazing Phyto-Man, issue 157. On the cover, a hulking over-muscled brute with a ridiculous green outfit and a caricature of my own face smacks a tentacled monstrosity in the beak. The pages inside are divided into squares and rectangles, each bearing a picture and some text.

  It shows the whole story of how I got here. Over the fence, down the corridors, the confrontation with Dr. Diabolus, the metal arms flinging me into the portal.

  I feel as though the world has been jerked out from under my feet. “This is impossible. Absurd. Some kind of hoax.”

  “It’s no hoax. There were ten copies of this one on the rack I bought it from. All our friends have their own publications too.” He taps the final panel, showing me screaming as I fall into the swirling colors . . . but the colors on the page are the flat, limited palette of the world I came from. “This is how I knew you’d be arriving here.”

  I stare at the page. It’s wood pulp with vegetable inks. My powers are weak here, almost nonexistent, but I can feel the minuscule thread of green life in it. In some ways this stupid little magazine is the only thing in the whole chromium-and-vinyl coffee shop that’s real.

  The only thing that’s real....

  I turn back a page. It’s one large panel, with Dr. Diabolus laughing “HAHAHAHAHA!” as I struggle in the grip of the metal arms. I stare at his flat, cartoonish face.

  I exert my power.

  It’s not easy. What I’m trying to do is unlike anything I’ve ever done before. My teeth grind together; my pulse pounds in my temples.

  This is as hard and as strange as the very first time I ever made a seed sprout.

  It had been an apple seed, a discarded pip from my lunch, that happened to be lying on the floor the day that eerie green-glowing meteorite had crashed into the experimental greenhouse with its stocks of Growth Serum X. That tiny seed, and the potential apple tree within, had been all that stood between me and certain death as the heavy beam had come crashing down toward me. As though in a dream I’d sensed its potential, I’d reached out, I’d pulled harder than I’d ever pulled on anything before . . . and the tree burst into being, root and branch and leaf cushioning the beam’s fall and saving my life.

  That had been the first time I’d felt that green power flowing through me. Now I feel it again, a thin green thread of life pulsing in the dead, flattened wood pulp before me. But this time it’s different somehow, pulling at me even as I pull at it.

  Sweat stings my eyes and runs down my nose. I keep straining . . .

  And then Dr. Diabolus blinks.

  The caricature face turns fractionally toward me, its look of triumph beginning to change into one of astonishment . . .

  It’s more than I can sustain. I collapse, my breath rushing out in a whoosh as I fall back into the padded seat. The page before me reverts to its previous form, but I feel a sense of triumph.

  Sprout snatches the magazine away. “What did you do?”

  “I used my powers. I touched our world. I made a change.”

  “So what?”

  “We can use this!” I pound the table. “I don’t know how, but somehow we can use this magazine to get back to our own world!”

  “Hush!” Sprout pats the air with his hands; I notice that the server and the other patrons are staring. I sit down, noticing as I do that I’d surged to my feet. “Michael . . . I don’t want to go back to the world we came from.”

  “We have to!”

  He looks at me for a long moment, his expression unreadable.

  And then he bolts from the table.

  I stare stupidly at the door as the little bell over it tinkles, then take off after him.

  Sprout’s fast, but ever since that day in the experimental greenhouse I’ve been stronger and tougher and faster than most people, and at least some of that seems to have come through the portal with me. I manage to make it through the door before his heels vanish around the corner.

  Running in this world is a kaleidoscopic, hallucinogenic experience. Walls seem to rush at me, a riot of color and texture; cars veer and swerve, horns blaring. But I keep my eyes fixed on Sprout’s blue hoodie as he dashes across streets, pushes through crowds of protesting civilians, runs down alleys.

  Block after block, I’m gaining. Sprout was always the smart one in our partnership, but I’m the one who battled The Piledriver to a standstill. Soon, I’m only a few feet behind.

  We’re racing down an alley, dodging around dumpsters and piles of newspaper, when I get almost close enough to touch him. He looks over his shoulder . . . and trips on a bundle of magazines. He tumbles on the concrete with an “oomph” that sounds almost like something from our original world.

  I catch up to him just as he’s sitting up. Bright red blood runs from his nose; there’s a rusty smell. “Guh?” he says.

  I bend down, put an arm around his shoulder. “Are you all right, old buddy?”

  He stares into my eyes for a moment, blood painting his nose and mouth.

  And then he kisses me.

  I taste blood. I feel his warm lips soft under mine.

  I kiss him back.

  Then, horrified, I push him away. “What are we doing, Sprout?”

  “Kissing. And you liked it as much as I did.” His bloody lips twist into an ironic smile. “If you couldn’t figure that much out, I guess I really am the brains of this p
artnership.”

  “But . . . but you’re just a kid!”

  He glares at me. “I’m twenty-two, Michael.”

  Twenty-two? It’s strange to realize that he’s right. He was fifteen when I adopted him after Maniac killed his parents, but that was . . . seven years ago. Where did the time go? How had I failed to notice he’d grown into a lithe, attractive young man? “Even so . . . it’s . . . it’s wrong.”

  “Maybe where we came from. Not here.” He pulls a bandana from his pocket, wipes his mouth. Blood still trickles from his nose but it’s slowing. “This world is better than ours, Michael. It’s complex and it’s mundane and it’s sometimes tedious, but it’s not just the same round of villains and fights and secret identities over and over again. It’s real, Michael. And here I can be what I’ve always wanted to be, instead of just playing a role.” He holds out the bandana. “And so can you.”

  Sprout keeps holding out the bandana.

  After a while I take it, and wipe my own mouth.

  Then I stand up.

  “I’m a hero, Richard. It may be a role, but it’s the only role I know.”

  Sprout just looks at me. The expression on his blood-spattered face is a sick compound of longing, sadness, and disappointment. Perhaps I’m learning how to understand what I see in this world.

  I wonder what the expression on my own face tells him.

  “Give me the magazine, Sprout. We’ll take it to the warehouse where we came in. I figure that’s the best place to try going back to our world.”

  “No.”

  Sprout lies at my feet, looking so small and weak, the front of his blue hoodie stained black with his blood. I could take the magazine from him easily. “I’ll find another copy.”

  “You don’t have any money to buy one.”

  “I’ll steal it.”

  He gives a weak little laugh. “Liar.”

  I have to smile myself. “Okay, maybe not.” I sit back down. “Come back with me, Sprout. You know it’s where we belong.”

  He sits up, leans against me. His shoulder is warm, the only warm thing in this cold, garbage-strewn alley, and I let it rest on my chest. “Give this world a chance, Michael. You’ve only just arrived. I’ve already found a job at a nursery. You could work there, too.” He looks up at me. His nose has stopped bleeding. “We could share the apartment.”

  I consider the idea. I put my arm around my sidekick, lean back against the filthy brick wall, and think very hard about it. This world is amazing, with its details and colors and motions and flavors. And to share it with Sprout would be . . . something I hadn’t even realized I desired.

  But in the end, it’s duty that wins out. “I’m sorry, Sprout. Even if I wanted to—and there’s a part of me that does, believe me—it’s more than just you and me. There are people depending on us back home. If we don’t go back there, who’ll keep the Scimitar Sisters in check?” I give him one last squeeze, disentangle myself, and stand up. “Coming?”

  “You’re sure I can’t change your mind?”

  I’m so, so tempted. “I’m sure.”

  “Then I’m coming too.” He stands, brushes himself off. “I’d rather be a cartoon hero with you than alone here.”

  We walk hand-in-hand back to the warehouse. As we pass the coffee shop, I pause. Sprout looks up at me, expectant. “I, uh . . . I still have some of my powers here.” I clear my throat. “I wonder if there’s. . . .if there’s any way we can bring . . . some of this world, back to ours?”

  “I don’t think so.” He points to a small shield printed in the corner of the magazine’s cover. “There are rules against it.”

  Finally, we find ourselves again in the dark, echoey space where we entered this world. I think about how strange it looked to me when I first arrived, and I realize I’ve grown used to these new perceptions. My old world will seem so flat and colorless by comparison.

  Sprout stands beside me as I spread the magazine out in a patch of sunlight. There is no joy in me as I contemplate the garish images full of POW and KRUNCH, only a dull sense of obligation. “It’s not too late to change your mind,” Sprout says. “We can make a life together here.”

  “I’m sorry, Sprout. Our world needs saving.” But even as I say it, I know I’m trying to convince myself as well as him. I hold out my hand.

  Without a word, he takes it.

  I bend down and stare hard at the last page, showing my cartoon avatar falling into the vortex between worlds. I exert my will, block out all other sensations, focus my powers on the ink-saturated wood pulp. Somehow, I know, I can use this image of the portal to return myself and Sprout to the world where we were born.

  It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done.

  I concentrate. I work my power. I push and pull and strain . . . this is as hard as the time I used pea vines to temporarily close up the Grand Canyon. Harder.

  I strain still more intensely. The printed vortex begins to whirl.

  I feel again, just as I did on that first day in the experimental greenhouse, the deep connection between my soul and the green life underlying the page . . .

  I feel the warmth of Sprout’s hand in mine.

  And I realize that the connection runs both ways.

  With an unprecedented effort of will, I reverse my power.

  Where before the meteor ’s green energy had flowed into me at my moment of greatest need, now I send the energy flowing from myself into the printed page.

  I scream in pain as the power drains from me like my life’s blood.

  The image before me springs to life. Just as the metal claws release, the cartoon me on the page reaches down and tears open his belt. Seeds of all descriptions pour out in their thousands, most falling into the vortex, but many others sprouting and twining and filling the portal with leaves and stems and branches. I bounce off the web of vegetable matter, springing right back toward Dr. Diabolus. WHAM! My fist connects with the villain’s chin.

  Then all is blackness.

  Later. I open my eyes, and the first thing I see is Dr. Diabolus’s lab. Everything is flat, static, in eight garish colors. But then I blink, and realize I’ve fallen face-first into the magazine spread on the floor before me.

  I sit up. I’m no longer looking at the last page of The Amazing Phyto-Man issue 157. It’s now the first page of issue 158, a single large panel. In it Dr. Diabolus, threatened by an enormous Venus flytrap, cowers at the controls of his dimensional portal, through which a grinning Sprout steps to take the hand of Phyto-Man. All’s well in Metro City.

  “Michael?” Richard is just awakening beside me. “Wha . . . what just happened?”

  It takes me a long, reflective moment to find an answer to his question. “I . . . I sent the power back where it came from, I think.” I look within myself. It certainly isn’t in there anymore. “It’s with him now.” I tap the page.

  Richard’s eyes dart from the page to my face. “But that’s you.”

  “Not any more. I’m just Michael now.” I stroke the flat, cartoon version of myself with my fingertips. “Phyto-Man is back where he belongs. I don’t know how much of me went with him, but I hope . . . I hope he enjoyed his day in this world. Maybe he can use what I learned here to make Metro City a better place.”

  “But what about us? What happens next?”

  I close the magazine. “I don’t know. Isn’t it amazing ?”

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  EPILOGUE

  Jim C. Hines

  According to Claire’s phone, it had been three days and forty-seven minutes since the cave-in.

  In the first few hours, as the ringing in her ears began to die and the dust settled, she had explored every inch of the thirty-foot stretch of tunnel, from the useless elevator shaft to the impassible wall of fallen rock.

  Her head pounded, every beat a pickaxe against the inside of her skull. Her mouth was dusty and dry like old rags, and her lips were cracked. For three days, she had drunk nothing but her o
wn urine, her only food an old apple-cinnamon granola bar she had brought down with her.

  Dust in the air scattered the light from her helmet lamp, painting a static-like blur over the rubble where the ceiling had collapsed behind her. Broken, flat-surfaced slabs of stone that must weigh at least a ton apiece protruded from the debris, along with splintered timbers and a twisted electrical conduit.

  Rock crunched under her boots as she moved closer, searching the dust for eddies that might indicate airflow. She knew it was pointless. She would be wiser to sit and rest, to conserve her energy. But she could only sit for so long before the despair crushed her as inexorably as another cave-in.

  “Anthony! Tim!” Her shouts sounded faint to her ears, still half-deaf. After three days, her team had long since escaped . . . assuming they had been far enough back when the mine shaft collapsed. “Nicole, Ann? Anyone?”

  She prayed they had escaped. That they were even now on the surface, telling the officials of White Lion Energy that Claire Howell might still be alive, and planning her rescue . . . a rescue which would still be days in coming, at best.

  It had taken a day and a half to send Claire’s team in after the first methane explosion trapped sixteen people in the coal mine. With a second cave-in so soon after the first, they would be even more cautious.

  She moved to the far end of the tunnel. A yellow sign on the metal gate proclaimed this elevator shaft six. The gate had crinkled like cardboard during the cave-in.

  Her lamp might as well have been a nightlight for all the good it did. According to the readings she had taken at least a dozen times, there was no hope of escape here. The shaft went down only 318 feet before hitting an obstruction. It should have gone far deeper, meaning either the elevator car was jammed or else the shaft itself had collapsed.

  “Hello?” Her words bounced back from the shaft, weak and distant. “This is Claire Howell. Can anyone hear me?”

  Nothing. Just like the last hundred times she had tried. She backed away from the elevator and sat against the wall. She tried her radio again, to no avail. She checked her phone next, knowing there would be no reception. “Too bad.” she muttered. That would have made a great commercial. “More bars, even a half mile underground.”