Existence is Elsewhen

by John Gribbin

  “After I left Paradise.”

  “Paradise?” He glanced at me. “You survived?”

  Ah Paradise. I melted into the memory, picking an apple off the bed and crunching into it. “It’s a world all of Hell should visit. Not one rule anywhere, just wild pleasure. Don’t ask how I escaped. It’s a blur of forbidden fruit and lust, yet I somehow fit a disk in my link-up. Eve found me under an apple tree.”

  “How many worlds have you visited?” He came in closer to smell the apple, sweet juices sprayed him as I bit into it again.

  “Six so far. I’ve planted permanent link-ups in each. They keep in contact with disposable kits I make. Link travel is now possible anywhere within those six worlds, by anyone. All I need is to insert a disk.” Of course, I controlled the disks.

  I handed him the disposable link-up kit from my pocket.

  “They burn up?” A bead of sweat formed on his forehead, but he wasn’t looking at the kit. His mouth watered for my apple. “This means you can escape any world, even Hell.” Even distracted, he saw the brilliance in my creation. “That breaks rules 5157 and 6492 of World Travelling Law.”

  Rules. I was sick of them. “Wanna break rule number one of the Sacred Law?” I tempted him with an apple. “Sally has sweet apples.”

  “I missed you,” he admitted, taking it from me. “Nothing the others do is a challenge like this. You push me to be smarter, to think outside the laws.” His eyes remained on the forbidden fruit. “To try new things.”

  “I’m free, Vassago. I planned to visit other worlds, but this one requires more study. I think for myself and live with this incredible complete feeling that warms me inside. I belong here.”

  “The devils of this world—”

  “People.”

  “What?”

  “They’re called people within this world.”

  “Oh.” By our definitions, devils were saviours, angels were tempters, and people were free-thinkers. He frowned, something so unlike him it was amusing.

  “If they are free-thinkers, they have the right to know that devils like you come here to mate their females.”

  “The females do not belong to them.”

  “Then they are controlled by them?”

  “They are considered equals.” I’d had a hard time with that concept, so I gave him a moment to absorb the possibilities. “It means they demand loyalty and respect, but they also return it. The way your eyes wandered Eve will get you slapped by her, and a punch from me will follow.”

  His brows went up, excited at the idea.

  “When my children ask who their mother is, I plan to share amusing stories about her.” I smirked. “About her laugh, her smile, her silly ideas. Not show them a pamphlet on how females need to be contained in cages for breeding I am only allowed every thousand years.” I tightened my fist, determined to find a way to free the females of Hell.

  He sat on the bed with the apple and pictures, staring at both. Thinking.

  I sat beside him, easing the picture from his grip. “I can be in control if I choose to be, or I can give her control, trusting her to bring me pleasure and intense joy.”

  “The female out there is the mate you want to tell your sons about? A person not even from our world?”

  “Not a doubt.”

  “Adam says their hands seduce, touching we can’t refuse. We must wait until we are older and wiser to mate. These forbidden fruits have you drugged. Tempting you.”

  “The only rush they give me is because I know I am breaking his most sacred rule. We can refuse the touching but a smart devil chooses not to. It’s crucial for me to know the mother of my children. To sleep with her, to hold her, to protect her. It’s incredible to feel her...” I wanted to say power, but that word would scare him. Love? He wouldn’t understand. “Gifts.”

  “She will never be your equal. We have freedom in Hell if we follow Adam’s laws.” He pulled out his memory gun. It drew directly from the magic of Hell. One blast and I’d forget all this.

  My teeth pierce the skin of my apple. A drop of juice tried to escape and I licked it with a content groan.

  “The secret about a freedom-thinker,” he continued with less enthusiasm, “is that she will require the truth before she makes a decision.”

  That was worse than forgetting. I couldn’t tell Eve the truth.

  “She will not wish to have children with a devil. She will never trust you once she finds out you have the power to make her do your will.”

  “She can counter that, controlling me with her touch,” I pointed out, as if that made our relationship less dangerous.

  “I challenge you to use this disk or tell her the truth.” He handed me the disk he’d found in her powder.

  So this was his solution.

  I fondled the disk with one hand while I snacked, thinking. It was old, made to escape Paradise. Who had made it? Unless Vassago planted it? I couldn’t ask him without raising doubts about her. Devils had zero tolerance for out of control females.

  I cracked the disk. “I present this challenge instead: I will tell her the truth, you will bite into that apple.”

  He nodded, accepting the challenge. “Then we will see the truth. You know how much Adam underestimates you?” Vassago chuckled. “He asked me to show his soldiers how to link-up. He thinks that if we put your mate’s life in the balance, it’ll force you to return with me. I didn’t of course. I know you’ll have prepared for this, and it would cost him good soldiers. Even my memory gun will not change your core beliefs. You must see the truth for yourself. I’ll challenge you until you do.”

  I panicked. “Soldiers have already been by. If you didn’t send them, who did?”

  We stared at each other. This was a development we had not anticipated. Another devil had copied our gifts? Impossible. Still, he wouldn’t lie to me, nor I to him. We were destined to challenge each other, not destroy.

  I handed him the last disk from my phone case.

  “Where does this one lead? It’s so different, I didn’t even sense it.”

  “This is why I have no fear of Adam’s soldiers. It’s fueled on desires, taking you where your heart lies. I will always return to Eve. If you plan to use it, I recommend a little stopover in Paradise. Not a hungry devil there, promise.”

  He held the disk. “What’s it like? The connection to a mate?”

  “Find out for yourself.” I yanked my desire disk from him and put it in his link-up kit.

  “Your female out there, could she show me this connection?”

  “It annoys me that you think of her this way. Get your own girlfriend. I don’t share when it comes to her. That’s my rule.”

  His voice was barely audible. “Friend? Ah, but that’s the trick, my brother. If you give her the choice, she might choose another. Don’t you see? By giving yourself this freedom, you’ve created a trap where you might get burned. Adam is right, it’s better to contain them and never feel loss.”

  Thrill surged through me, shooting me to my feet. I needed to do something creative. “She can pick anyone, yet she’s waiting for me. I know this, because if her desires change, she’ll be whisked to them by the link-up I placed around her neck.”

  “And when she doesn’t choose you?”

  I couldn’t imagine that day. “I’ll find another to connect with. If that doesn’t work, I’ll link-up to Paradise and visit those angels. But in this moment, my desires are with Eve.” Again, desires wasn’t the word I wanted to use.

  While he thought about what I’d done, I examined his kit. It was a copy of my first attempt; every wire, every gear, every thread of demonic magic weaving through it. Now my last disk was nestled in it, ready to show me his desires.

  “Since you went on the run, Adam hooked me up with a tracking device. If I stray, my dreams correct me. It’s mighty annoying.” He rubbed his forehead. “He sees everything I do.”

  “Enslavement.” I tossed the apple core and dug through my pack for a magnet and fine needl
e. “Put your head flat against the wall.”

  He did, but he grabbed his kit and gun first, as if I might use them on him while he had his back to me. Much to my amusement, he was still clutching the apple.

  I ran the magnet over the back of his neck until I felt the pull of the tracking device. “Don’t move, this will pinch.” I slipped the needle through his skin and into the device. “It’s deactivated. Freedom is that simple to achieve. Your dreams will be your own, my gift to you.” While I had him pinned, I activated the kit he held.

  It was old and took a moment to power-up.

  “You know,” he said, looking at the desire disk that warmed while I trapped him to the wall. “If you desire her, I just have to contain her in Hell and you’ll follow.”

  I dropped the needle and dived for the door while Vassago vanished, apple and all.

  Eve waited outside, leaning against the hood of the car, her arms crossed, a fury around her that was rousing.

  The relief at seeing her still in this world was deep. We would have to run. I handed her the purse and brushed the locket, ready to erase her memory, but guilt swept over me and I couldn’t do it. This was no longer my desire. I wanted her to know the truth. No more lies.

  “So you introduced your brother to Sally,” she snapped. “Here I am waiting, and you sneaked out the back.”

  I peeked around the corner of the motel. Sure enough, Vassago was petting Sally’s St Bernard, chatting with her, enjoying his apple one bite at a time. He glanced at me, lifting his bitten apple, enforcing my challenge from earlier.

  “I have a secret to tell you,” I confessed, watching him with Sally. “You might leave me once you know, but it needs to be said.” My gut was in knots. “My brother and I are from another world known as Hell. A place that enslaves and calls it evolution.” I waited for her to vanish. When she didn’t, I continued, “My weakness is your touch, but I use the pendant to connect with the power of Hell and fight it. This connection comes at a price: you are linked to this power. Your desires will be granted.”

  “So if I no longer wish to be with you, I can leave?” She looked thrilled by this news.

  “Yes.”

  Vassago was solving Sally’s apple-reaching problems by lifting her on his shoulders. That broke a few rules.

  Eve brushed a hand along my jaw, bringing my attention back to her. “I come from Paradise, a world that requires us to please everyone. Our evolution is at a standstill, too, because you can’t please everyone without destroying yourself.”

  “How did you get here from Paradise?” I glanced at her purse. “The disk you hid… How?” Had I forgotten to deactivate a disk from their end? I might have. I could barely remember my escape. A hand guided mine to insert the disk. Was it possible I brought Eve here? Or had she brought me? Was her desire so strong, I was trapped to her? Had I lost the freewill I so desperately craved?

  “How much do you understand about the locket?” I asked.

  Her fingers lightly traced my tattoo, snaking up my arm. “When I touch it, I feel the connection to those who wish to find you and I will them here.”

  She’d been calling Adam’s soldiers to us? “Why?” I asked, dumbfounded.

  “I don’t mean to, but this joy I feel, I wish I could bring it to others. Long ago, before your existence, before Paradise and Hell even existed. I lived here with a devil named Adam. He was cold and cruel, ruling the land with an iron heart. I tried to bring joy by sharing our wealth, but he caught me offering an apple to another devil.” She dropped her head.

  I brought her chin up with a finger, so our eyes met, understanding how Adam’s rules protected us from the pain of betrayal. My world would have been so different had he enjoyed the way her ideas balanced his.

  “I vowed to never be controlled by another this way. This locket will allow me this freedom.” Eve batted her long eyelashes. “But what if I hurt you?”

  “Hurt?” I now knew why Adam’s safe world bothered me so much. “I am the devil of creation. I don’t fear my deeper emotions, Eve, I need to experience them. You are my inspiration.” Yes, that was the word forever eluding me. “You inspire me to be more, to want more, to push my creativity, exploring it at impossible levels. Because of you, my brother and I will change the worlds. You are my muse.”

  Power erupted in me, dying to be unleashed. I saw countless possibilities, ideas I had to tempt… but first, I savoured the fruit on her lips, tasting the magic.

  Precipitation

  by

  Chloe Skye

  Born and raised in the idyllic green countryside outside London, Chloe has spent most of her life dreaming about high-tech dystopias where the only green is neon.

  Having spent a few years working on other people’s fiction, she finally got around to writing things herself; cyberpunk and space opera, since the only thing she loves more than the neon cityscape is the depths of space.

  Currently, she’s trying to blend the two.

  The sky was slowly clearing, a muddy blue showing through the clouds for the first time in what felt like weeks. Rain had been pelting November hard, and every surface was slick with water, a patina of oil adding its own sheen to every puddle below the fifteenth storey.

  Ryan sat astride the low wall of her balcony, absent-mindedly kicking her bare foot through the liquid that had collected in the fabric shielding the balcony below. The splashing noise barely intruded into her consciousness as she stared at everything and nothing in particular.

  The morning’s light added its own tint to the wet surfaces of the city, and Ryan could see rainbows in the splattering droplets.

  All in all, it was a beautiful day for ugly deeds.

  Ryan watched as a clearance car snaked along the upcity pavements five storeys above her and sloughed water off them, into the air and down onto the lowcity roads below. Sunlight sparkled through the falling droplets, giving them their own gilt shine. It looked, for all the world, like upcity was pissing on lowcity.

  “Even the architecture does it these days,” Ryan muttered to herself in a low voice, before lifting herself up and over the balcony wall and back into her apartment. ‘Apartment’ was generous, but it was home and it was hers; not even on loan, as she owned it outright.

  Stripping her nightclothes, she dropped them in the vague vicinity of the laundry basket and stepped into her bathroom, hugging the chill tiles of the shower, angling the head away whilst she carefully twisted the dials to the exact point between where it stopped being hot enough to brew coffee, and hadn’t become ‘ball-clenchingly cold’, as Syke had always described it. As close to comfortable as the damn thing came, but she’d not change it for the world; the intricate game of balance had become part of her morning routine.

  Besides, she’d found there was no better way to wake herself up than the sudden shock of too-hot or too-cold water.

  Half an hour later, clean, only slightly too cold, and smelling faintly of the cheapest shampoo she could find that actually worked, Ryan stepped out of the bathroom, towelling her short hair. She froze momentarily, all her muscles tensed, as she heard a Police flickercar buzz past the building, siren blaring. The blues and their siren faded away fast enough, however, and she forced herself to relax.

  ‘You gotta calm down, they never saw us.’

  Kayala’s voice echoed in her head, and she shook it to dislodge the sound. Kay had been right, she knew, but Kay had disappeared off the radar less than a week after the run and none of the team had heard from her. She’d struck out on her own and left November, for sure, and there was no point holding onto runmates who were out of your life. Wisdom of a life on the streets.

  Or, Ryan thought, a life off the streets – runs at ground level almost always turned out to be a bad idea.

  She shook her head again ruefully and, dropping the damp towel in the same general area as her nightclothes, flopped onto her bed. She reached out to the table beside it for her link and slipped it around her wrist, fitting it snugly. She tapp
ed the link’s small screen, and in turn it tapped into her wired neurosystems. Its display fizzled into her line of sight as it superimposed its translucent writing into the corners of her vision:

  9:37am

  28 degrees, 18 adjusted

  3 messages

  1 – Johnathan Sykes

  2 – Unknown contacts

  Ryan double-tapped the point on her knuckle that activated the link’s gesture control, and her fingers flashed through the motions as she rolled over onto her back and stared up at the ceiling, watching the gold light gradually slip from it as the sunlight moved across the room.

  Since she was neither interested in Viagra, nor in helping a lunar regolith prince move money around, she deleted both of the spam messages, and opened the one from Johnathan; ‘Syke’ as he preferred.

  It was overlong and rambling, just like the man himself.

  She scanned it quickly, and then again in more detail. None of the watchwords or alarm phrases.

  Relaxing back into the bed, Ryan thumbed her knuckle again, turning off the link.

  Syke wanted to meet up at the market in Henderson Plaza for breakfast.

  In all, it was almost surprising in how normal a request it was. Ryan smiled to herself as she formed the thought.

  Things don’t always have to be quite so interesting I guess.

  With just over an hour before he wanted to meet, she rolled off the bed and dragged herself to her feet, running a hand through her hair to test its dampness. The filament towel had done a good job, so she just roughed her hand through the short curls and left them to do their own thing.

  Glancing again at the temperature displayed by her link’s UI, she dressed, pulling on her favourite jacket and sequestering her ID, cash and a knife through the hidden inside pockets. No need to take a gun to lunch, but one could never be too careful.

  Running a quick checklist to be sure she had everything she needed, she ran an inventory of her kitchen to see if anything was running low. Or, more to the point, running so far past low that she should probably buy more. She was doing well though – nothing so low she could be bothered to carry it back for herself, at least. Certainly not from Henderson.