You Can't Kill the Multiverse

by Ira Nayman

  Three bursts of fire fell out of the sky, lighting fires in three pits carefully arranged along the outside of the clearing. At first, the two humans were blinded by the light; when their eyes adjusted, they found the dragon hovering above the ground, his tail wound around a Home Universe GeneratorTM.

  “My apologies for any damage to your eyesight, gentlemen” the dragon said in its head, “but I do so love making an entrance!”

  “May I…?” Blunt thought once he had regained his eyesight, gesturing at the machine that was sitting incongruously in the middle of the forest.

  “Of course,” the dragon said, moving away from it. “That’s what we’re here for.”

  Blunt inspected the Home Universe GeneratorTM. The 100 inch screen seemed common enough. The cabinet on which it rested – the cabinet which contained the complex electronics that made it function – appeared two shades lighter than the typical off-cream cabinet colour. Blunt did not recognize the wireless keyboard that lay in the grass, but that was not surprising; there were so many makes of keyboard, it was impossible for a normal human being to be familiar with them all. Opening the cabinet, Blunt turned the Gramm-Bellerephon Gizmosis DeviceTM around, and was gratified to find that it did not have a serial number plate. He closed the cabinet and, noticing that the cord in the back had nowhere to be plugged in, making it as useful as tits on a Gloopsarian star guppy, stood up.

  “Interesting,” he told the dragon. “Unfortunately, without seeing it in action, I have no way of knowing if it would fool anybody. If I could take it back to my dimension for –”

  “If we are going to work together,” the dragon told him, “we need to develop trust. Do you trust me, Bob?”

  “Erm,” Blunt swallowed his tongue.

  The dragon made that noise that could have been laughing again. When he was finished, he…burped is probably the most polite way of putting it, and a pinpoint of light flew out of his mouth. Looping this way and that, it generally made its way towards the plug. Blunt thought its erratic flight was showy and took more time than necessary, but, eventually, it entered the plug, and the Home Universe GeneratorTM hummed to life.

  “What…was that?” Blunt asked.

  “An energy sprite,” Malvoncellious explained. “Dragons do create them in an inner organ best not described or even named, and control them once they have been released.”

  Now, Blunt considered himself a rational person, a man of science, even if he tended to get his scientific principles confused (“The square of the hypotenuse,” he had once claimed, “can neither be created nor destroyed.”). As a result, his mind couldn’t wrap itself around the concept of an energy sprite. After a couple of moments of contemplation, he decided that the dragons had mastered control of zero point energy sources in this universe. He didn’t know the mechanism by which this happened – he was just a lowly field investigator, after all – that’s what the Transdimensional Authority paid scientists for!

  That problem solved – by science! – Blunt walked over to the Home Universe GeneratorTM.

  The Home Universe GeneratorTM was a civilian application of Dimensional PortalTM technology. Unlike the Dimensional PortalTM, which allowed people to travel between the infinite realities of the multiverse, the Home Universe GeneratorTM allowed people to look into the infinite realities of the multiverse without the messiness of actually traveling there. And, allowing unrestricted travel between universes was messy: if enough visitors messed up a universe’s timelines often enough, cause and effect could break down entirely, leaving the universe a danger to anybody who came after. The Transdimensional Authority’s mandate was to monitor inter-dimensional travel to ensure that this never happened again.

  Blunt sat down next to the keyboard, picked it up and opened the Google Multiverse Search EngineTM programme. It was slow loading. It was very slow loading. Blunt laughed insincerely. “It always takes time after you’ve just booted up the hard drive,” he explained. The programme was very, very slow loading. Eventually, Blunt shut the programme down and started it up again. Finally, it started working.

  He typed in a few search parameters and watched as an infinite number of hits were announced on the screen. Par for the course. If he had the time, he would tweak the search parameters to weed out duplication. He chose page 123,456 and clicked on a link at random. On the screen, an image of an empty parking lot at night faded into view. A short man with grey hair and a shabby suit stood next to a six-foot flame. Nearby were two dragons: one was small but muscular, dark blue, with large wings; the other was skinny, bright orange, with small, seemingly vestigial wings.

  “Where did you get this?” the blue dragon asked.

  “What do you mean?” the human, who sounded a lot like Sean Connery, responded.

  “This is a universe of science and technology,” the blue dragon stated. “Where would you have gotten a Divine Light of Lugnoutz?”

  “It is a fake,” the man reminded him.

  “Still,” the dragon insisted.

  Frowning, Blunt typed something. The image was replaced by the search engine. Blunt typed in some new search terms and chose another reality at random to look at. On the screen, he saw himself back at the Transdimensional Authority office, watching Crash Chumley (a taller, broader and arguably more effective version of himself) and Noomi Rapier (a shorter, blacker skinned, more…uhh…female version of himself) sitting at their desks. “Bob Blunt,” Crash said.

  “Really?” Noomi responded. “Because, my money would have been on Biff Buckley.”

  “I think that’s very unlikely,” Crash offered.

  “Why?”

  “Biff Buckley is gay.”

  Noomi’s eyes opened so wide, she could have been cast as Alex in a local theatre company production of A Clockwork Orange. A, umm, colour- and gender-blind version. “No, way!” she blurted.

  “Way,” Crash insisted. “And, I think you’ll agree that putting a holographic postcard of a Prassmodic brood mare in a co-worker’s desk is not the sort of thing a gay colleague would do. It just wouldn’t occur to him. No, the smart money is on Bob Blu-”

  “Sorry about that,” Blunt apologized as he hastily typed something and the image was replaced by the search engine.

  “Have you seen enough?” the dragon impatiently asked.

  “Just one more,” Blunt said, typing in new search terms and choosing a new reality to look at. The moment it appeared on the screen, he recognized it as the den of his house. That is, the house he used to live in. Marlena, his former Austro-Latina wife (and the reason he no longer lived in the house), and Billabongo, his six year-old son were sitting on their second-hand but very comfortable sofa. They were both wearing black, which is not a colour that flattered either of them.

  “When is daddy coming home?” Billabongo asked.

  “Oh, honey,” Marlena replied, “daddy isn’t coming home.”

  “Why not?”

  “He mouthed off to the wrong dragon,” Marlena told him, a note of bitterness creeping into her voice.

  Blunt’s brother Beckersly, also in black, walked up to them and said, “This is a terrible loss. A terrible, terrible –”

  Blunt abruptly turned off the Home Universe GeneratorTM and jumped to his feet. He resolved that, if he got out of this alive, he would buy more life insurance. Yes, additional life insurance was definitely the way to go. “I think I’ve seen enough,” he told Malvoncellious and the dragon.

  “Good,” the dragon said. “I can have a thousand of these units ready to be shipped to your universe within a matter of days. How soon can you set up a distribution network?”

  “Hold on a second,” Blunt demurred. “I am curious about one thing: where did you get this?”

  “What do you mean?” the dragon responded.

  “This is a universe of magic and mysticism,” Blunt stated. “Where would you have gotten a Home Universe GeneratorTM?”

  “It is a fake,” the dragon reminded him.

  “Still,”
Blunt insisted. “I suspect you couldn’t have done this on your own. Perhaps it’s time we talked about your boss.”

  “My boss?” the dragon asked. The flickering light made it difficult to tell that his face had darkened, but the menace in his voice should have made his mood obvious. Malvoncellious, hearing it, slinked (slunked? Slinkyed? – a sinewy movement of, depending upon the level of sympathy you have for the character, cowardice or self-preservation) behind a tree.

  “You know,” Blunt, oblivious, continued. “Jerzak Carnakhian?”

  The dragon brought its broad face to within inches of Blunt. The human was surprised to find that the dragon’s hot, dank breath contained just a hint of peppermint. “What,” the dragon, the menace in its voice now impossible to ignore, asked, “do you know about Jerzak Carnakhian?”

  “Not much,” Blunt admitted. “I was hoping you –”

  “Malvoncellious!” the dragon, turning its head, roared.

  “Y…y…yes?” Malvoncellious squeaked.

  “Who is this human?” the dragon wanted to know.

  “Don’t know!” Malvoncellious shouted. “He doth be nobody to me! Never met him in my life!”

  The dragon turned back to Blunt. “Bob,” he said, “I think you should tell me who you are and what you are doing here. I think you should do this right –”

  The dragon stopped and tilted its head, listening.

  “What –?” Blunt asked.

  “SHUT UP!” the dragon harshly shushed.

  After a moment, Blunt heard a rustling from the treetops. The dragon quickly shot up into the sky, high enough that it was hard to make him out against the gloom of the starless night.

  “Hey, old man!” a high, thin voice with a familiar burr came out of the sky. “Long time, no see.”

  “Fizzbroun! What are you doing here?” Schlomo asked.

  “We’ve come to learn at the fins of the older generation,” another voice, thin but with deeper undertones and, yes, a burr, said. There was much dragon laughter in the sky after that one.

  “This is none of your business, Potrburn!” Schlomo insisted.

  “Don’t be silly,” a female voice (events were happening so quickly, Blunt had no time to marvel that all of the dragons did, indeed, sound like Sean Connery) scolded. “Everything that one dragon does affects all of us. You know that.”

  “You’ve been a naughty boy,” Fizzbroun added.

  “Don’t talk to me in that tone,” Schlomo darkly warned. “None of you have attained an age where you are wise enough to wipe the sweat off my tail fin!”

  “Tough words,” Potrburn taunted. “But, you look out of shape to me. It must be all that deli food – is that a paunch I see developing in your belly?”

  “I can still defeat the likes of you!” Schlomo angrily retorted.

  “And, I would be happy to put that boast to the test,” Potrburn told him, “but, as Rumplefutzkin is quick to tell me, we are supposed to be a kinder, gentler generation of dragons.”

  “Jerzak,” Rumplefutzkin, the female dragon, said, “you know we’re trying to make peace with the humans. When we –”

  “What?” Blunt shouted.

  “And, Prince Ronaldo doesn’t make it easy,” Fizzbroun complained, ignoring the voice from the ground, “insisting that dragons are the main source of carbon emissions that are contributing to global climate catastrophe!”

  “Yes, well…” Rumplefutzkin started, but didn’t get very far.

  “I mean, studies have clearly shown,” Fizzbroun continued, “that the exhaust from witches’ brooms and wizards’ wands were much more damaging to the environment than dragons’ breath!”

  “Fizzbroun,” Rumplefutzkin gently chided.

  “But, no,” Fizzbroun insisted. “We’re responsible for destroying the habitat of elves, forcing them to move to ever more remote areas of the planet! Sometimes, the Prince’s ignorance of the facts make me just want to –”

  “Fizzbroun!” Rumplefutzkin sharply interrupted. “Prince Ronaldo…well, he isn’t the sharpest arrow in the quiver, and he is getting bad advice from the self-interested advisers around him. But, that is all beside the point.”

  “It isn’t to me,” Fizzbroun grumbled.

  “Jerzak,” Rumplefutzkin tried to wrestle the conversation back on track, “when we agreed to let your generation of dragons live, instead of destroying them like you did the generation that came before you, it was with the understanding that you would not carry out any evil designs. Retire to the country to take up landscape painting. Bus tables at a restaurant. Open a daycare centre. Whatever. Smuggling alien technology from this dimension to others was NOT part of our agreement.”

  “You have no idea what this is really about,” Schlomo smugly told her.

  “Is it worse than it appears?”

  “Well…yes.”

  “This is bad enough.”

  “I’d like to know what this is about!” Blunt shouted.

  “I’m sorry, Jerzak,” Rumplefutzkin said, ignoring the Transdimensional Authority investigator. “But we can’t allow you to do anything to jeopardize the development of peace between our kind and humankind.” A streak of fire 12 feet long lit up the sky, momentarily revealing a stubby purple dragon with huge black wings.

  Schlomo lashed out with his own breath of fire, but the purple dragon easily evaded it. Meanwhile, this gave his other adversaries an opening to attack him. Two bursts of flame, one coming from an eely dragon the colour of blood, the other from an ovoid dragon with nubbly grey scales and more gossamer wings, hit Schlomo on the side. He roared and turned his flame on them.

  Schlomo never had a chance. Every time he turned to attack one of his foes, the others attacked him from another side. It was only a matter of time before he lay on the ground, dead, smoke still rising from his wounds.

  “Don’t mourn our fallen father,” Rumplefutzkin said, dropping down to where she could be seen. To Blunt’s surprise, she turned out to be the ovoid dragon with the nubbly grey scales.

  “Prithee, why not?” Malvoncellious coldly asked, one arm resting on what he now considered to be the corpse of an ill-treated colleague.

  “Well, for one thing,” Rumplefutzkin told him, “he ate your uncle Maladroissier.”

  “He didst what?” Malvoncellious shouted, jumping away from the body. “We always didst imagine that uncle Maladroissier didst run off with the royal bottom spanker and diaper changer!”

  “Even though she wasn’t his type?” Rumplefutzkin asked.

  “We…we didst dare hope he didst mellow in his old age,” Malvoncellious told her.

  “So,” Blunt butted in, “this was Jerzak Carnakhian the whole time?”

  “Oh. Umm. About that,” Rumplefutzkin sounded vaguely embarrassed. “You’ve heard a number of dragon names tonight. They are supposed to be secret. You can’t control dragons by saying them, but you can make things…unpleasant for us nonetheless. For your own safety, I would suggest that you forget them immediately.”

  “But, if he was Jerzak Carnakhian –” Blunt started.

  “WHAT PART OF ‘FOR YOUR OWN SAFETY FORGET THE DRAGON NAMES YOU JUST HEARD IMMEDIATELY’ DO YOU NOT UNDERSTAND?” Rumplefutzkin shouted at him.

  “Umm, okay,” Blunt sheepishly backtracked. “Now that I realize how seriously you take th –”

  “Alright, then,” Rumplefutzkin composed herself. “I think we’ve all learned a valuable lesson today, and, if it isn’t immediately apparent, it will be in the fullness of time. Unless either of you have anything to add – and, I would strongly recommend against it – we will consider this little smuggling operation ended. Right?”

  The two men eagerly agreed.

  Rumplefutzkin floated up until she was out of their sight. For a few seconds, they could hear the rustling of leaves around them, then, not so much.

  “So…” Malvoncellious asked out loud, “now what?”

  Blunt put a finger to his temple and started to concentrate heavily. “I don�
�t know that I have much of a case against you, here,” Blunt admitted vocally. “I probably can’t tie you to this Home Universe GeneratorTM, and, without that, it’s just my word against yours that you were even involved in this smuggling ring.”

  “Really?” After a moment’s reflection, Malvoncellious began to laugh.

  “What’s so funny?” Blunt asked.

  “I didst just realize,” Malvoncellious answered. “I wast so concerned that Schlomo would discover that I hadst gone rogue on him, but it doth turn out that he hadst gone rogue on his own kind!”

  “Hmm,” Blunt responded. “I’m not sure that that’s laugh out loud funny, but I do see how you could see irony in it.” He put one hand on the Home Universe GeneratorTM and one on Malvoncellious’ shoulder. “Time for us to go,” he said.

  “What?” Malvoncellious shrieked as the world started to shimmer around them. “But, thou didst say thou hadst not a case against me!”

  “Sure,” Blunt allowed. “But I know a couple of cops that would love to pin a turning cars into frogs rap on you.”

  “That’s done it!” Malvoncellious shouted. “That hast well and truly done it! By the sacred Nematode’s nipples, thou hast finally gone too far!”

  “What are you going to do?” Blunt asked, blasé, as he watched Malvoncellious take a wand out of a fold in his robes.

  “What I shouldst have done long ago,” Malvoncellious informed him. “I shall turn thee into slag. Living, molten goo. Then I shall turn the slag into slag. Thou shalt suffer horribly before thou diest! LUCREZIAS PANAJUMDARAS HARTU –”

  Doctor Alhambra would have been interested in knowing if Malvoncellious could have finished the spell before collapsing in pain, but it wasn’t to be. Before Malvoncellious could finish the spell, the world shimmered out around him and Blunt.

  6. Coda Comfort

  Bob Blunt was back at his desk at Transdimensional Authority headquarters in Ottawa, conscientiously typing up his report. The cars turning into frogs. The dragon of The Bagel. The Home Universe GeneratorTM that worked in the middle of the forest (and, which was, even now, being subjected to scrutiny in Doctor Alhambra’s lab). The case had left him with several questions, but, before he could type them up, he realized that he was a little peckish, so he opened a top drawer of his desk and reached in for a Snickers Bar he thought he had left there.