by Grant Fausey
"Maybe," answered the bounty hunter, "but that was a long time ago." Crimson breathed hard. "I was once the caster between two worlds," she continued. "If my memory still serves me, we were all casters in one fashion or another. We're only fragments of the whole."
Samuel turned into the wind, sailing on his own wings across the city. "My sisters saved me," continued the bounty hunter. "I guess in a way, that means she saved all of you.
"Rune Linka looked strangely at the Crimson. "Your sister?" she asked curiously. "Yes––But like I said, it was a long time ago." Jake Ramious looked at her with love in his eyes, but he didn't know love, not the way Indigo had. Not with Crimson anyway. Oh, he had had a brief encounter with her before the distortion waves had hit the universe and altered it. But it seemed Indigo had a history with her. There was definitely a past. One he wondered about.
Samuel stepped out of the darkness. He was one of them, but he was standoffish, as if he were waiting for something to come upon them. He didn't remember the incident. It wasn't part of his memories, his encounters or his being. No this was a battle fought by another ... and this interested Samuel.
"A lot has happened since then," said Indigo. Crimson just nodded. Laura looked at the Crimson and Indigo oddly, following her as she turned and walked on ahead of her.
"Lisa..." she said softly. Samuel realized the inevitable. These were all the same people, just doppelgangers of each other. Replicants from different universes caught up in the sphere of the Netherlands Nexus like he was.
"The name's Crimson," snapped the female bounty hunter. "Don't you forget it!" Laura stared at her
"No..." she answered. "I never will! The sound of the vortex opened again and nothing emerged. It was the oddest feeling Crimson had ever had. She looked at Ramious and Indigo, Rune Linka, Laura, Travis and even Maccon. She stared hard into their faces, as if she was looking for something in particular. Samuel backed up. He had felt it too. Even in the presence of the Nexus what had happened then was still real. Time didn't exist here, not in the sense of the past, the present or the future. Everything existed together on one plane.
"I'm seeing through my own eyes," stated Samuel. "As I am here, so am I in other places in other times."
"Awe––" said Crimson as she looked into each of their eyes. That would be the real Jake Ramious. Jake's the best bounty hunter in the business ... even better than me." She paused. "I loved him once," she said. But that was a long time ago and sometimes love hurt. Guess if I was given the chance I still love him.
Laura sighed. "Let's go," she said. "That was just a warning. "He'll be dogg'n us as long as we have Hounds on our trail. It's just his way. He'll be there if we need him."
Ramious and Indigo sneered at Crimson and Laura. Who were they talking about? Who was this real Jake Ramious they were talking about? How did they both know of him? He didn't! Samuel felt his legs for the first time ... he walked forward and emerged from the shadows, using a small device to scan the area. He stepped out into the busy street of Los Angeles, and followed Laura and the others from a distance. His wide brimmed hat and floating coat gave him the appearance of a twentieth century gangster. But he wasn't, he was better than that ... he was the real Jake Ramious.
Laura hurried to catch up with Crimson, but Crimson stopped short of the arching freeway bridges that connected two different worlds ... the tree cities and Los Angeles. She looked strangely at the span, as if she had seen it somewhere before. "This is it," she said silently, talking only to herself. "This is the place. I remember the city, the campus ... watching the Windriggers." The platform edge rounded the curve of the city, connecting to the first span of the bridge and the main street cutting through the center of the University of Southern California.
Laura caught the same sense, and so did Rune Linka. There was someone else here ... something stronger than both of them. As Maccon I could feel it too. The presence was strong. Almost overpowering. It seemed eternal, overwhelming to ones senses. WE looked on Maccon and I, breathing heavy from the presence. Laura too, looked out over the city, the connecting corridors between dimensions as they opened two worlds to each other. Her long dark hair blew in the wind and she resembled Crimson, and Crimson resembled her. I pointed out the threshold of the vortex as it expanded across the bookstore of the USC campus and into the jungle of the tree world cities, which was visible between them.
"There it is," said Crimson. "That's Echo Pass at Denarak's point! His finest hour, they say that's were the starship New Haven America exploded and changed the universe forever."
"The heart of all your troubles," added Travis.
"I hate to say it," said Rune Linka, "but our future lies out there in the Nexusphere."
"My future?" said Laura.
"It's the doorway, Laura," continued Crimson. "The gateway between universes, different futures. Legend says the Industries created it centuries ago, like us. If only I could teach you to fly." There was a sensation that became familiar. Deja vu had come again. Everyone heard the voice of a hound at the same time.
"Yes- " said Reuben. "If only she could fly ... like her sister. Right, Crimson?"
"What are you talking about?" snapped Laura with an attitude. Laura moved away from the edge of the platform and quickly turned around, frightened. She was expecting to see the Hound behind her, but much to her surprise, she was face to face with Reuben. He stood on the side of the USC campus, one foot in the here and now, the other in the worlds of the other side. Laura shouted, happy to see the familiar face of her neighbor, after all, Reuben was her favorite disc jockey.
"Reuben..." she yelled, following her first instinct to run to him. "Ah Reuben..." she said before any of one of the others could stop her. "It's great to see you. But––but how did you get here?"
Laura panted. She knew she had made a mistake and ran right into the hands of the bad guys. "God!" she said. "There is so much to tell you. Lisa started that vacation, heading off to Europe ... it was going to be absolutely the greatest––" Laura hesitated. "Wait a minute--" Her voice and attitude changed. "Hold the phone! Back up the truck!" Reuben embraced her, pulling her tight to him, but the reunion was cut short.
"Reuben..." uttered Laura. "What are you doing? Let me go. You're hurting me."
"It's not Reuben," said Crimson.
"Shut up..." countered the hound. "It's a pity you had to go and find your way back here. We would have been better off, if we'd left you for dead." Laura fought against him, pushing at him. But the world changed again, sucked up in the vortex of the distortion waves.
"Reuben..." she said, frightened. "I thought we were friends." Reuben's arm transformed, shifting as if the skin itself were crawling. Laura realized she was in the clutches of a very sophisticated shape-changing devil and she screamed bloody murder.
"Shut up, you little bitch!" snapped the Reuben hound showing its teeth, and slobbering jaws. "Can't you just shut up? Every day for the past year I've put up with you."
The Reuben hound looked up at the sky. "Thank the Trithen stars," he continued. "Soon it will all soon be over. The universe will be mine, and I won't have to listen to your incessant whining anymore." Crimson took an attack posture ... she lurched forward, scrambling to her feet as she realized there identical twins were following the same course of events on the tree city side of the vortex. As she stood her, she also stood there, or rather her doppelganger did. The sensation was remarkable, what was happening in one universe was happening in all the universes. They were in the threshold of the Nexus a mere reflection of the events that crisscrossed the infinite boundaries of the future.
"I'm ready," she said to Reuben, her voice echoing in the morning light. She moved through the trees of the USC courtyard, which lied between the drama school and the Cinema school. The Reuben hound snarled and pounced, throwing himself across the threshold of the bridge, landing on the other side of her in the center of the threshold. Laura hit the ground in a thunderous explosion of dust and debris. Another exp
losion rocked the platform. She had finally made herself heard, but unfortunately, the sound of distant explosion drowned out her words.
"You can't win Athinian," she snapped, yelling at the critter, "or whatever you are."
"...and who's going to stop me, bounty hunter? You?" said the hound.
"Your kind works for me, remember?" Crimson could see the explosion on the Tree City side of the vortex, the swirling smoke blending across a vast field of other existences, other futures; other universes.
"She's proud to be a bounty hunter ... unlike..." hollered Laura as Rune Linka and Travis came to her rescue. "Don't tell me your a bounty hunter, too!"
"Oh boy, Laura," said Rune Linka, "you sure do know how to pick'em."
"This is just great," hollered Travis picking up a broken branch as a club. Laura picked herself up off the ground, marching over to Reuben. She stopped dead in her tracks and gave him a right cross. The hound became brilliant, exploding with a radiant light as it transformed into a new menacing shape.
"Trithen Kellnar," said Indigo. "So, you're an angel of darkness."
"I've had about enough of this CRAP!" snapped Laura, striking out to punch him right in the face. Trithen Kellnar's face exploded transforming into a being of pure energy.
"Not a bad trick, Kellnar," said Crimson surprised and impressed. "
...and that was a nice slice," she said to Laura. "Who taught you that?" Laura looked back at her and smiled. "You did! Thanks, Sis."
Crimson raised an eyebrow.
Trithen Kellnar absorbed the punch and snarled like the Hound. The rays of his boy filtered out into the Nexus, like whisks of wind. Laura reconsidered her avenues of attack and ran right past Ramious and Indigo. "Well," she said to the two brotherly bounty hunters. "We could use a little help out here!"
"Seems to me, you're doing pretty good all by yourself. But we'll be here if you need us!"
"Crimson ... Lisa!" shouted Rune Linka, pulling her into the heat of the situation. This was definitely a battle the ladies of the group had well in hand. They were doing just fine until the sphere of the Nexus expanded. Crimson back away. "Where are you going? What has already happened can't be changed, Laura." The real Reuben emerged from the sidelines, stepping into a hundred universes at the same time. The setting shattered like shards of glass falling in a million directions at the same time. "Awe," said Reuben, "but it can. Time is not a solid object, it has shifting currents."
"Now," said Ramious, "there's something for us to do."
"It's about time," said Indigo. "I was beginning to get a little tired!"
Crimson turned around to face Reuben as Laura ran up onto the bridge behind her heading for the Tree City side of the Nexusphere, and stopped, turning back. The sudden appearance of another gateway's vortex appeared behind her. Krydal Starr emerged from the vortex.
"The future's been compromised, Senator," said Crimson. "Kellnar's disguise doesn't surprise me. His iron-fisted grip on the universe is dying and this corridor won't change anything. The Industries are our enemy, not the possibility of two futures."
"Crimson," said Krydal, disoriented.
"Kellnar's plans to alter his own future is a folly," continued Crimson. "The alteration won't work. The future he wants to create is only a myth. It can't be done. No one can create a universe within a universe."
"Look around you, you fool," said Trithen Kellnar. "What has been done is done."
"The universe within a universe," said Rune Linka. "This was what she was searching for. This was Denarak's universe of the triad. A future within a future, a universe within a universe."
"The rift will close, Crimson and when it does," said Kellnar, "this universe's future will simply cease to exist."
"No it won't," said Rune Linka. "All you're creating is a mini universe: One within another. There won't be a parallel universes anymore, that's all."
"She's right," clamored Rune Linka. "But the fact is, there won't be the two of you anymore, Crimson. It's only a matter of time before everything will merge and follow a single course into the future."
"A course I've created for both of us, bounty hunter," said Trithen Kellnar. Crimson circled, keeping careful track of the glittering sphere that surrounded her like an expanding balloon. The ruler of the Industries moved toward Reuben, turning in on him until his back faced the threshold of the tree city side of the vortex.
"You'll lose, Kellnar. Time won't sacrifice this world to the Industries too," said Crimson. "One universe can't be sacrificed to save another. No matter how you alter the future, the matrix between the universes has to remain the same. It has no choice but to create its own currents in time."
"Listen to her," shouted Rune Linka. "Regardless of its tangents, the two universes have to return to a normal path, eventually. Maybe there's no power in the universe that can save us from your future. Not if an alternative isn't possible. But think about it, will you ... why sacrifice what you've helped to create."
The universe changed again. The sound of fighting grew louder and Reuben turned toward the gateway, looked at its vortex and Laura. The paths to other futures were entering the sphere of the Nexus, collapsing and joining in an eternal nothingness that lingered beyond the thresholds. "I'm afraid that's a mystery you already know the answer to, Crimson."
SAMUEL NOMAD WILL RETURN
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