by Eddie Patin
"Yeah," Ben replied, taking his beer and water with a thanks, "but whatcha gonna do, right? Life goes on. Tom’s been trying to get a good programming job for a long time, looking all over the country. It wasn’t likely that he’d be getting something here in Ridgeview. Maybe Denver I guess, but they’d still be moving if that was the case."
"Yeah, I guess..." Jason said with a sigh. He took his pint glass of Laughing Lab and took a slow, long drink. Red. Malty. Cool. Very good. "I just can’t believe it. It feels like such a big part of our lives."
"Well, people move on, you know? We can’t do that kid stuff forever I guess."
"Kid stuff?!" Jason asked with a scoff. "DnD’s not kid stuff, Ben. Lots of adults do it. Hell, you know that Gary Gygax and all those guys are definitely still playing with each other, and they’re old!"
"Yeah, but that’s like ... their lives," Ben replied. "The guys that create the game and write the books and stuff are more than just players. They’re authors. It’s their business—business that they also love. We just play the game."
"Eh..." Jason replied. "First it was Jim and Ericka, going away to live in another state for no reason—"
"They had a reason."
"...and then Vince, getting that oil job up in Alaska and moving away. And now, Tom and Amanda going to Portland."
"Such is life, right?" Ben said. "It was good while it lasted. Good times. C’est la vie."
Jason paused and took a drink. He ran a hand through his shaggy, dark-blonde hair.
"You know what, Ben?" he said. "We can start up our own group. We can find more players—some younger people I guess. They won’t be as experienced, but they’ll get there, just like we did. And which one of us should DM? I guess we could both DM, but I’ve always preferred playing, and you’re a sort of a writer, so you might be better to—"
Ben interrupted Jason with an uncomfortable sound and shrugged. "I dunno, Jason." He took a draught from his green bottle. Jason didn’t understand how Ben could drink that stuff. Too weak. Jason needed more flavor. "I don’t know if I want to do that. I mean—it was fun, and something we did as friends, but we’re getting older, you know? I can tell you, with my business building up this year, I’m having a harder and harder time putting so much into these game nights. I need to pull back on the leisure time, you know? It’s time to work harder. We’re in our thirties, dude..."
"So what?" Jason asked, fidgeting with his fingernails, pausing to clean one with his teeth. "I’m thirty-three. That’s nothing. There’s plenty of time to figure stuff out."
"Not really," Ben said. "They say that we’re supposed to play around in our twenties, and build our empires in our thirties. We’re past the halfway point to sixty, you know? And I don’t want to have to rely on finding clients to pay the bills when I’m sixty..."
Something about those words were chilling in Jason's mind. The man felt an itch deep inside that he didn’t understand; some kind of urge to get moving, but Jason didn’t know to where. Amanda and Tom were leaving. He just wanted things to go back to normal: work, games, and hanging out with his friends. But his friends were all leaving him. Only Ben remained...
"You work hard, man," Jason said. "Why would you work even more and not take time to play? All work and no play, dull Ben and all that..."
Ben sighed and took a drink. "It’s been a good year, which is good and bad. It’s been hard, because I don’t want to turn any new clients away—because you never know—so I’ve been working myself to death. I could really use the extra time to put in more hours until ... man ... I’ve got all sorts of new ideas for marketing, and I’ve been investing in advertising, and I’m sure that things will pick up even more around Thanksgiving! I really need to start outsourcing."
"How in the hell are you finding so many clients for web design in Ridgeview, Colorado? There’s probably like ... twenty businesses in the whole downtown area," Jason replied with a chuckle and another drink of his red ale.
They laughed, and Ben shook his head.
"I’m getting clients from all over the country, dude. It’s a perk of the business. You know, I could really use your help, Jason, if you want to do something productive with your art talents. I’m not much of a graphic artist and I waste a lot of time doing work that would be more efficient if I farmed it out to you. You're really good at graphic design. You should use that."
Jason took a drink to give him some distance from the unsettling feeling building in his stomach. He would never want to use his art skills for work. If he did that, graphic arts would turn into a job.
"Nah," Jason replied. "I’ve already got a job."
"The movie theater job?" Ben asked with a smirk. "That’s minimum wage work, dude. You work with teenagers, and it’s part-time."
"I like part-time."
"You’re thirty-three, Jason, living at your parents’ house without a house note, and working an entry-level job. It’s a good thing you have that house and that it’s paid off. I don’t know what you would do if you had to come up with an extra thousand dollars a month."
"Come on, man," Jason said, feeling his ears turn red. What he wouldn’t give to still have his parents living there. "I didn’t ask for that..."
"I know, I know," Ben replied, taking a drink and letting out a sigh. "I’m sorry—it’s just ... what are you gonna do, dude? You’ve just bounced from dead-end job to dead-end job as long as I’ve known you. What do you want to do with your life? This is the time when, well—I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to get all preachy."
"It’s okay," Jason said. "I get by. I like my life. I’m sad that we can’t play DnD anymore. I know the movie theater job doesn’t mean anything and it’s not my career or anything, but I like it. My hours are really flexible, I can watch free movies whenever I want, and if it ever stops being fun, I’ll find something else."
Ben sighed. "Yeah, well, when it’s not fun anymore, check in with me, man. This web designer / content writer thing is just temporary. It’s a stepping stone. I need to get into bigger things, and design some businesses that will work for me without me having to put in all the effort. But it takes time and money. So right now, I’m working my ass off for lots of money, and I could really use a partner to share the load. Think about it—I’d do the design and writing, you do the artwork, and you’ll be able to do something that matters to you for a whole lot more money than you’re getting now, and I’ll be free to expand. Maybe you might like a career in graphic arts!"
"I’ll keep it in mind, Ben."
They both sat quietly for a while. Jason checked Facebook compulsively then put his phone away again. He looked around the bar and saw that there was a fairly attractive woman sitting by herself further down. His eyes followed the lines of her straight, dark hair and the fair skin of her neck. She was thin and had a pretty face. He looked at her moderate cleavage, following the curves and lines while imagining—
The woman suddenly turned to look at Jason, flashing a mild smile. He looked down at his beer.
Finally, Ben spoke up again. "So what do you want to do, man? What’s out there for you beyond DnD and video games?"
Jason swirled around the beer at the bottom of his glass and took another sip.
"I don’t know," he said. "Travel, maybe? My dad—he did a lot of traveling and 'adventuring' as he called it. Big game hunting and diving and sailing and—" He wanted to say flying, but stopped himself with a cold feeling in his guts. "...stuff. Maybe I’ll do that. "
"Two more?" the bartender asked, appearing from the left. The woman reached out to take Ben’s empty bottle, and he let her have it.
Jason quickly downed the last mouthful of his beer and looked up to ask for another, but Ben interrupted him.
"No, that’s good for me," Ben said to her. "How much?"
"Together or separate?" the woman asked.
"I’ve got it," Ben replied, handing her a credit card.
"Okay. It’s eight dollars," she said, turning away to ring them up when Ben
nodded.
"Thanks, Ben," Jason said. "Thanks for the drink."
"No problem, my friend. Now I’ve gotta get home."
"Alright."
Ben finished paying the bill, putting his coat back on, and Jason stood, grabbing his cane and adjusting his jacket. He took several long sips of water and looked across the bar to the brunette who'd caught his eye again. She was still there, watching him, giving him a smile.
I could totally go talk to her, Jason thought.
But instead, he turned with Ben, and they headed for the door.
Just then, Jason paused, feeling a sudden, strange sensation in his chest, or in his stomach. It was as if there was a powerful magnet in his belly, giving him a quick tug in a particular direction...
Ben slowed and waited for Jason with no idea that something odd was happening.
Then the feeling went away.
"Huh..." Jason said to himself, feeling his stomach and his chest.
"You alright?" Ben asked. "Drank too fast?"
"Nah, I’m fine."
They stepped back out into the cold and walked together through the ankle-deep snow until they had to part ways to their separate cars. Jason looked up at Amanda’s apartment building and imagined her and Tom in there, doing their last bit of packing or whatever, or perhaps already sleeping. The idea that he might never see them again was crushing.
"See ya, Ben," Jason said. The night was crisp, and his words felt heavier than normal. "Thanks for hanging out with me."
"Sure thing, buddy," Ben replied. "Give me a call in a few days. We’ll see if we can get together for another beer, okay?"
"Sounds good."
Jason carefully placed his cane into the street and stepped over the slush in the gutter, being careful not to hurt his knee. As usual, his bad leg hurt anyway, sending a sharp stab through the top of his kneecap where his tendon was permanently damaged from the plane crash that killed his parents and changed his life.
When he approached the side of his car, inserting the key into the door, Jason gasped when he felt the weird pull sensation again.
"What the hell is that?" he muttered to himself.
Something moved in his midsection like a great, big magnet stuck in his stomach, pulling in a particular direction. When Jason paused to think about what he was feeling, he looked ahead at the dark, slushy street, staring off into the cold night in the direction that the sensation was leading him.
He realized that the pull was drawing him toward his house...
Chapter 4
Time was acting strangely.
Through lightning and storms they fell, plummeting through space that Riley couldn’t comprehend, eyes still blinded by the deadly colors of the crystalline rainbow. His ears were still echoing with deafening scratching and tearing sounds of the weird, glasslike atmosphere pouring into Jason's world of the Reality Rifter base, as loud as a jet engine and just as destructive...
In a dazzling flash like the bright white of a thermonuclear explosion compressed to the size of a pin, Riley Wyatt and Gliath Voidheart the Deathhand appeared in midair, stumbling instead of stepping, practically falling toward the wet, snow-sloshed street in Ridgeview, Colorado. Riley would have crashed into the snowy asphalt if it wasn’t for his enhanced reflexes, and Gliath—well, Gliath always landed on his feet.
"What the fruk?!" Riley exclaimed, reeling as a mundane world suddenly sped up from a crawl through time around him, the sounds of the night and the roar of the rift speeding up from an achingly slow pace.
Normally they just stepped right on through Jason's rifts. Passage was instant, like stepping through a doorway from one room into another. The soldier's perception of time was warped. The rift from universe 113 fluttered and spat like grease on fire for just a moment, and Riley spun around to face it as fast as he could. He was desperate for one last look through the rift; one last glance at his good friend, Jason Leaper 113...
But he saw nothing but vibrant shards of glass all colors of the rainbow, piercing every which way except through the rift...
"Holy shet—it’s coming through!" the soldier exclaimed, suddenly terrified of the destructive universe following them into 934. For an instant, Riley thought that he still saw pieces of drywall and wooden frames from the living room wall behind the rift being torn to shreds by the devastating invasion of a universe with physical laws incompatible with their own. Then, there was only the violent clash of a gleaming rainbow.
Thankfully, the colors were still subdued by Jason’s brilliant white light shield.
If universe 1240 could follow them from there into universe 113—into the Reality Rifters base through the rift in the garage—then it could surely follow them into 934 as well, destroying this universe too!
But it didn’t.
Jason 113’s white light shield seemed to do the trick, and it held until the loud and swirling roar of the rift ceased when it collapsed on itself a moment later, folding into a single point in the night like a whirlpool of color and golden sparks winking down a drain. After a spit and a spark, the rift disappeared completely with a pop.
Riley was left standing in a nearly silent night. Somewhere nearby, the slippery hissing of a vehicle passing through a slushy road came and went.
The soldier felt Gliath’s large hands steadying him. "Are you okay, Ranaja?" the lean, bipedal feline-man asked.
Riley stammered as he found his feet under him. "There’s something—the time is weird—it took too long ... felt like it took a long time..." Rifting with Jason was instant. This time, the soldier distinctly remembered the feeling of falling...
The soldier looked up at his tall, dark friend and cocked his head, waiting for the adrenaline to be pulled out of his system. He watched white flakes of snow gust through the air, settling onto Gliath’s black fur. The leopardwere’s yellowish-green eyes were solid and unwavering, and Riley sensed no sadness coming from the Krulax.
Gliath was an animal. He didn’t feel things the same way as a man did—not like Riley, anyway. Hell, Riley thought with a scoff. Why am I so broken up about it anyway?! It was Jason’s idea to go to that bizarre, terrible universe to get the artifact. They had no business taking that job. It was impossible for humans. There was no way for people like them to survive there. The air was different for fruk’s sake. Gravity there was different. It was so fruking different that Riley couldn’t make sense of the place! Jason 113 was smart as hell. There was no way he should have taken that bounty, at least not without protecting the team with some sort of weird shet from a magic world or something. What was Jason thinking?!
"I’m alright, you big kitty cat," Riley said with a smirk, running some gloved fingers through his beard. Then, he reached up and scratched behind Gliath’s ear. The big black leopardwere drank up the affection, leaning into the soldier’s hand. Before long, he was purring with a dark rumble and almost pushing Riley over.
He looked around.
Cold wind whipped snow around them.
Huh, Riley thought. Earth of universe 934 was a lot like Jason 113's Earth. It was obviously nighttime and the planet was in some sort of cold season ... unless it was like this all the time. Hell—maybe it was nighttime all the time too, for all Riley knew.
And why should he care so much that Jason 113 got himself killed? There would always be more Jasons, right? 113 wasn’t the first. And Riley was pretty sure that 934 wouldn’t be the last. Hell, he was with Jason 47 for almost as long as he was with Jason 113...
Riley scoffed again, looking around, trying to ignore the crushing sadness in his heart.
They were in a human town, in a residential area, standing next to a house of a very similar design to the houses on Earth of universe 113. The lights were off inside the domicile closest to them, and there was a fence nearby to keep monsters from wandering into the home’s backyard. From where he and Gliath were standing, it looked like the two of them could either walk one way and emerge behind the properties on the edge of wilderness that ext
ended for as far as Riley’s night vision would allow him to see, or, if they walked the other way, they would pass through a smaller yard and emerge onto what looked like a street.
"Better shift down to blend in, Gliath," Riley said quietly, patting his friend on the sleek, muscular arm.
Gliath nodded, then changed shape quickly with hardly a sound, save for the stretching and moving around of his harness and armor. The portable gate and fusion cores clinked and clunked inside the huge duffle bag on the leopardwere’s shoulder as Gliath shrunk to the height and size of a man. Gliath’s entire frame pulled in and his tail retracted entirely. His claws became nails. His fur all but disappeared, save for a long and thick mane of straight, raven-black hair and stark, serious eyebrows over a stoic and angular face that never really smiled. Gliath's eyes stayed the same color and stared intently at Riley, waiting for further instruction; bold, yellowish-green irises that almost glowed in the darkness.
It wasn't long after Riley met Gliath years ago when the Krulax settled on this human form. The leopardwere had based his form on the image of a movie star from Riley's world, a Cherokee man who always played a grim and stoic warrior on the screen. He looked like a younger version of the actual actor—back when the man was about seventeen. Gliath's long, straight black hair fluttered in the wind as he stood by, staring through the night.
Riley pulled out Jason 113’s OCS and strapped it securely to him. That device was the most valuable thing they had.
What did Jason mean that he ‘restricted’ it? How can a tenth dimensional device be restricted? What did he say? 95% compatibility?
Riley reckoned in that moment that Jason 113 must have realized the error of taking on more than they could physiologically put up with, then somehow inhibited the OCS so that the new Jason wouldn’t be able to make the same mistake. Maybe at least not until he was way more experienced; skilled enough to reverse whatever Jason 113 did.
But still, Riley felt terrible.
Jason 113 was a good guy. A really good guy. And he’d saved Riley’s life on several occasions with well-placed rifts. Riley felt like shet seeing his friend die like that, his body riddled with that weird crystallized stuff, his cells malfunctioning and being assimilated by the fruking air of another world that probably didn’t mean to be so malicious. Of course it wasn’t malicious, Riley thought. It was air—it wasn’t sentient. Or was it? It could have been, for all he knew...
