by Garon Whited
True, I could skip all the mucking about with a two-stage conversion from electromagnetic energy to magic to vitality by building a matter-conversion reactor, but I’m not going to. I’ve destroyed a world even without a reactor accident. I’d rather not tempt Fate. Fate already has Plans for me—a fact I find discomforting if not downright infuriating.
Bronze contributed a strand from her mane, since those are finer. I scratched symbols into the surface of my pet pyramid and laid the wire into the lines, chanting as I worked. The result didn’t look much like an Atlantean pyramid, but it was only my first, and it was designed for a specific—
Time travel. Paradoxes. Am I going to develop a science of orichalcum technomagical circuit boards and eventually found Atlantis?
If, at some point in your life, you’ve woken from a sound sleep for no reason whatsoever—the kind where you search the house, check the doors, peek in on the kids, trip over the sleeping dog, get yawned at by the cat—all the while wondering what could possibly have got your heart pounding so hard, you can relax. It was the psychic echo of my scream of frustration and anxiety.
It is indescribable, the feelings I have when I wonder if I’m doing something because I’m destined to do it or if I simply had a thought. “Rage” is a good start, but it doesn’t cover it. It’s like using a cheap towel as a blanket. No matter how you try, it’s in adequate. I hate the idea of being locked into a groove of predestination. It makes me want to do something completely off the wall and unpredictable in an attempt to break out of the foreordained destiny bullshit, even if it breaks the universe.
I find myself tempted. I’ve nuked kingdoms, watched a world end, and been suckered into a time loop. I am not as safe and stable and sane as I used to be. I should probably work on that, but what are the odds I can find a therapist?
Okay. My pet pyramid. With an orichalcum power-storage diagram inlaid on all the faces, I tried giving it more juice. The power packed in nicely. It wasn’t up to the mountain’s standards, but it was a definite improvement. I let it charge for a while until it hit capacity and started to grow again.
I figured it was ready to have a forever home.
I dug a hole, planted it, and started my rock garden.
Since then, I’ve gone to some trouble to surround it with a large-area Go Away spell to keep it from being stepped on by something weighing more than Bronze does. I suspect breaking it—at least, at this stage—will just slow it down while it pulls itself together again, but I don’t want to find out. Technically, it could explode, since it’s an enchanted object, not a true life form, but it’s relying on vital energy. The spells are just there to guide the growth, not cause it. I’m not sure what a sudden, uncontrolled release of vital force would do.
Anybody want to mutate dinosaurs to see what we get? I don’t.
I’ve also installed some power panels for feeding it. They cover all four faces of the upper section and replicate as it grows. The others are still doing the self-replication thing to expand the farm radius around it. I doubt I’ll get them to the point where I have to relocate them into polar positions, but for now they’re local and useful if I find I need them.
Now, though, I have to ask myself some serious questions. I have a lair growing here, but it will be some time before it matures. Do I go back to Elbe and futz around until it’s ready? I’m not really so interested in hanging around in Zombie World. True, I have a nice place to stay, reasonably safe from random zombie incursions, but it’s dangerous to go out and forage fuel for Bronze, build a fire for Firebrand, or eat so much as one more ration of that damned chili with beans. If I never eat chili with beans again, it’ll be too soon. If I get the opportunity to travel in time again, I might do it just to smack around the previous homeowner and tell him to stock something else.
Where else can I go? Back to kilt-wearing Seattle? Not back to Rethven, certainly. I don’t dare interfere there, yet. What does this leave?
Bronze pointed out when you don’t have a destination, any road will get you there.
“You are not as helpful as you sometimes think. And I have a destination. Rethven, in a few thousand years. No doubt I’ll be coerced into some stops along the way.”
If I was referring to my so-called predestination paradox, it shouldn’t matter what else I did in the meantime, right?
“Correct. Wherever I go, I’ll find myself having to become my own vampiric grandfather, either by coincidence or because I recognize my situation and don’t dare avoid it.”
Yes, yes, yes, of course. But so what? It’ll come when it comes. What do I want now? Right now? Today!
“Today?” I thought about it. Considering the last thing I ate was chili with beans—again!—a decent meal was high on the list. I told her so and she responded with a suggestion we should go out to dinner. She would drive.
“I don’t even know where we’d go.”
You’re the wizard! You have a spy ring! Let’s go back to Elbe, park, and find a spot. It doesn’t even have to be a long-term residence. We show up in the morning, drive around to sort out the money issue, and find an all-you-can-eat buffet I can bankrupt.
“Hmm.”
I had other plans? Maybe watching rocks grow? Or water boil? Paint dry?
“All right. Back to Elbe. Then to dinner.”
We stepped through the wire gate and into the garage again.
The City of Vitlök
So, I’m looking for a place to have dinner. A good dinner, a fine dinner. A dining experience, not simply something to eat, although a place willing to accommodate my gluttony would get bonus points. Fair enough, right? So I try to define what to look for with a gate. I’m thinking… a big table. A tablecloth. Plates and other dishes of, say, gold-rimmed china. Silverware involving multiple forks. Silver silverware, not simply steel flatware. Crystal glasses, and at least two of them—one for water and one for whatever it is the locals drink. Let’s also assume electric lighting, but with a silver candelabra on the table, simply because I’m thinking of someplace fancy.
Now, any restaurant with this sort of place setting is going to be upscale, at least by my standards. Right? Right. All these things also imply other things. China plates and silverware I recognize? Some similar dining customs. Napkins? Same. Crystal glasses? Yep. These are things in common with my own place and time—a factor to help ensure the food is something I’ll recognize and enjoy!
True, I’m liable to hit a number of private dining places—mansions, state dinners, and so on—where this might also happen, but if I keep looking, I’ll hit a restaurant eventually. In a statistical universe this size, my odds are good from the word go.
So I set up my mirror and spy-ring again to start searching. I didn’t spend five minutes at it before I found six mansions, a large banquet, one bomb shelter, and a five-star restaurant. Yes, the bomb shelter aroused my curiosity, but it was not my first choice. There was no food in sight and the sole visible occupant was both dusty and dead. I went with the restaurant. Or, rather, the world with the restaurant.
Landing in a new world is always a chore. Even if I don’t want to stay for any length of time, simply picking an outfit to blend in can be difficult. Diogenes had probe gates for intelligence gathering and a whole wardrobe department for this sort of thing. I have to look for something to wear, then check the local language to see if I know it or need a translation spell, then figure out how to obtain the local money, then—in this case—see if I can make a reservation.
I got as far as step one—what do I wear?—before realizing I’m making it harder than it needs to be.
The world I’m looking at is a technological society. I can see this from spying on it. Cars are everywhere, skyscrapers in the cities, power substations, all the clues. I didn’t see any cell towers or mobile phones, but I wasn’t sure if they didn’t exist or were simply too subtle for my cursory once-over. People are driving their cars, though, and none of them fly. They use jet aircraft for air travel.
I’m also looking at men’s fashions. The traditional trousers, shirt, and jacket seem the norm. Most men favor suspenders and belt, an arrangement that seems oddly formal, somehow. Maybe it’s like a necktie and not necessary, as such, but it’s the Way Things Are Done. My opinion is reinforced by observing people in formal dining situations. Women wear… well, all the things women wear. This seems to be a rule. Men wear the suspenders-and-belt thing, white, over a black shirt. For truly formal occasions, they add a second “belt”—an elastic band—around the midriff, just under the breastbone.
After some searching, I found a fancy shop for tailored clothes. I was wondering whether I should open a portal in the evening, after they were closed, and snatch something off the rack through the gate, or if I should go to their world and case a bank, preparatory to breaking in and robbing it.
You realize, of course, what I finally realized. You’ve probably been laughing at me for some time.
If I can find clothes in a shop and snatch them off the rack, can’t I open a portal into a bank vault and swipe a sack of cash? True, it’s expensive in terms of magical power—especially from another universe!—but it has the advantage of cutting down on all the legwork. I can find things scattered through the multiverse simply by defining them sufficiently. I then open up a portal, grab it, and drag it through. I can find a single Evil Orb in the plethora of spaces in the multiverse. Why not use the same technique to find anything else?
I’m glad I have spells on the house in Elbe. Zombies could have heard me for miles. Charlie Brown’s got nothing on me.
Once I quit swearing, I experimented with this new technique for stealing… well, anything small enough to grab. It turns out I cannot find a working lightsaber. Toy lightsabers, yes, but not weapons. I don’t understand them well enough to adequately target one, it seems. I can find a laser pistol, and I have. A phaser? No. Again, I don’t understand it. I have a phaser-like toy. It lights up, makes the right sounds, all that, but it isn’t a weapon.
In similar vein, I can find super-sharp weapons, enchanted to remain so. I have also chosen not to grab them because they are A: sharp, and B: usually in the possession of someone willing to use them. What I cannot find is a Vorpal Sword—snicker-snack!—which is something else again. I know how to super-sharpen a sword. I don’t know how a Vorpal Sword works, of any make or model.
It would appear my ability to grab things through portals isn’t going to instantly give me all the cool gear, mostly because I don’t comprehend the cool gear. Most of what makes the gear cool is the fact I can’t make one myself, I suppose. And, since I can’t find things I don’t understand, I don’t see this being a lot of help in finding objects I can take apart and study. On the other hand, if I come across something I don’t understand, I should be able find another one without too much trouble.
On the plus side, I have a large chest, somewhat sandy and worse for wear, sitting in the living room. It’s not full of gold coins. It has other things in it, too, of the gems and jewelry variety. Judging by the apparent age of the chest, the pirate who buried it isn’t coming back for it. If he does, he’ll be disappointed. Fortunately, it was buried in sand. Digging it up wasn’t a problem.
With a working hypothesis sorted out, I tried poking my nose into Dining Room World and looking for a bank. The process works there, too. I suppose I could simply take a fistful of gold coins with me and exchange them for the local cash, but I’m trying to cut down on the number of hoops I have to jump through to get anything done.
I flipped through some bundles of money, searched Elbe for arrival clothes, and finally went to Dining Room World.
The city is called “Vitlök,” and I don’t know what it means. The translation spell accepts the word as a proper name, without derivations. I can live with it.
The tailor was most accommodating. The staff made no comments on my appearance, but they were entirely ready to get me out of the barbaric rags I wore. Even when I lived in one world, I stuck to simple clothing styles. I’m a man. I can label my shirts with days of the week and get away with it.
After a couple of hours of measuring, they sent me away. I came back the next day for some fitting and adjustments before they sent me away again. Finally, I had an outfit. They were pleased with it, therefore I was pleased with it. I paid them, departed, and my cloak and I spent a few minutes in Elbe sorting out what it would duplicate and what I would use from the actual clothes. Most of it was my cloak, of course, but having the suit meant it didn’t have to guess.
Then I made a reservation for lunch.
All this for a decent meal. Next time, I find a Krockburger and simply walk in.
So, here I am in Le Jardin Des Oliviers, seated at my own table, impeccably dressed, blending in beautifully, and starting on the hors d’oeuvres. My sense of smell and taste are dialed down to something approaching human, the lighting is already low, and there are several people whose job it is to see I am undisturbed in the enjoyment of my meal.
I’ll let you know how it goes.
I think I broke the staff.
I don’t know a lot about gourmet dining. I know what I like, and, due to a peculiar metabolism, I generally like a lot of it. Throughout dinner, whichever one of them was serving the latest course—there were seventeen courses!—the server always cautioned me with impeccable good manners about the length of the meal.
I ate everything they put in front of me, from soup to salad, cheese to cake, entrée, relief, sorbet, three kinds of wine and a glass of champagne, you name it. It was all delicious and it was all gone before they were allowed to remove the plate. They were lucky they recovered the bones.
When it was over, I was a happy man. Chili with beans? Pfui. I’ve had not merely a good meal, but a dinner. I enjoyed it thoroughly and completely. I even ate the after-dinner mint without exploding.
I’ve had an extraordinarily bad month. This doesn’t make up for it, but it’s going a long way in the right direction. I may not deserve any creature comforts, but I didn’t realize how badly I needed some.
Since I didn’t intend to return, I added stack of cash to the bill, along with my compliments to the chef and the staff. I don’t know their customs on tipping, but I assumed it would be gauche to do so. I carefully insisted it was a gift. The meal was paid for, true, but someone who appreciates artistry should be allowed to express gratitude, and so let me compliment everyone involved in making it a memorable and wonderful experience, and so on and so forth.
I’m pretty sure they didn’t expect me to be able to walk. I, on the other hand, was expecting to still be hungry. We were all surprised.
Elbe Again
Elbe is still my main base of operations, at least for now. The Cretaceous Lair is coming along nicely, but my pet pyramid is barely an adolescent. It’ll be a while before it grows to full size and I can start moving in.
On the other hand, why have one lair when two will do? I have at least four major projects to work on in the coming millennia, one of which is fairly immediate. The other three are more long-term.
My first project is getting the Orb, loading it into a rocket, and launching it somewhere permanent. I don’t have a foolproof way to destroy it, so stowing it in some ugly pocket of the universe is really my only option. The two other projects are figuring out how to fix a bunch of bliss-addicted brains and how to kill an energy-state being. The last is an ongoing thing with my altar ego.
The osmium generator is still cranking around at full tilt, connected directly to his sigil-thing. I’ve gone ahead and done my best to tune it to him, but I don’t know if it’s having any effect. I can’t hear him at all. It’s like pouring food down into a cave-in, hoping the starving man below passed out rather than died. When he’s eaten enough, he’ll call out to me. The worst part isn’t not knowing if he’s alive, it’s the complete lack of any reference. In the starving man metaphor, I don’t even know how much food I’m pouring down the hole. Is it a drip? Is it a thin stream of gruel?
It can’t be any more than that with only one generator. I’ll have to build more…
For now, it’ll have to wait. I’m mostly sorted out and somewhat stable. At the very least, I have my feet under me, some orientation, and the beginnings of a plan. So, first things first.
Step one: Build a rocket.
Ironically, this is actually easier than is sounds. I mean, everyone hears the phrase, “It’s not rocket science.” But rocket science is usually concerned with gravity, atmosphere, gyroscopes, center of mass, moment arms, trajectory, thrust-to-weight ratios, and the like. What I want is something to give the Orb one hell of a shove.
My first thought—once I’d had a perfect afternoon with the most perfect meal I’ve ever had—was… well, okay, it wasn’t about the Orb. After I rested from the heroic ingestion, then I had an idea about the Orb. There are rocket-sleds. They run on long rails leading toward a target. They’re used for a variety of purposes, from testing engines to seeing the results of high-velocity impacts. How many worlds have them? How many worlds have nobody around to bother me while I use their rocket-sled rails?
Then I thought again. Who says it has to be a rocket-sled rail? Wouldn’t an old railroad track do just as well? True, the rails would need to be checked and possibly reinforced, but any abandoned rocket-sled rail would have the same problem. With railroad tracks, I could find a really long run-up to wherever I wanted to put my gate. Even better, I could use as big an engine as I liked.
Okay. This sounds good. Maybe a jet engine on a railroad car. Accelerate for ten or twenty miles to some unreasonable speed. Maybe even include a second stage, so when the railroad car goes through, the rocket it’s carrying fires and continues to accelerate the Orb.
