by D. Tolmach
“I haven’t seen that old nut in ages.”
“That ‘old nut’ is doing Goldath’s work. He’s a brave and noble prophet who has chosen a life spreading the Word among alien savages. However, there has been a change in Church doctrine. Salvation is no longer available to non-Humans, and the gates of R’aath will not open for them. The most they can hope for is to toil forever among unbaptized infants in the second level of Watsalla. Saint Osco Silvos made as much clear in his Victory Address to the People of the Galactic Union, and if you had been watching your holoviewer like you were supposed to . . .”
“Saint who? Wait, is Silvos dead?”
Gerrard sighed impatiently. “I assure you, the president of the Galactic Union is the most alive of all the living.”
“You can do that? Canonize a living person?”
“We’re the Church, Mr. Sundown. We can do whatever we want.”
Chirp peered at the priest, unsure if this was all a moonshine-induced hallucination. Translucent psychedelic patterns swirled around the room and part of the man would occasionally melt, but the drug was wearing off and he had never had a vision this annoying. His heart sank when he realized what this meant: he was going to have to escort Father What’s-His-Name to find that bearded hermit fool. Disappointment hit him in a wave as a reddish-brown color. He had been hoping to spend the week tripping and watching sped-up feeds of stars forming and collapsing.
Either five seconds or two hours passed—Chirp was in no condition to tell—before Gerrard spoke again. He seemed to have been waiting for a retort of some sort, but Chirp had already forgotten what they were talking about.
“We’re going to need weapons.”
“What? Why?”
“Because we don’t know what’s out there, Mr. Sundown.”
“There’s nothing out there but Muggers. . . .”
“Exactly. And we don’t know what they’ve done to Father Kanard. I am here by order of the High Patriarch. You know what happens to us if we fail him?”
Chirp, very dismayed to hear us and we in that sentence, did not know, but he nodded affirmatively, because he could imagine it would not be very pleasant.
“Good, then bring me your guns.”
It took him a while to remember that he had been using his box full of plasma pistols and rifles as a dining room table, which he cleared off and opened. Gerrard swept aside the trash to make a large empty space on the floor and laid the guns next to each other one by one.
“Has this arsenal been blessed?”
Chirp looked at him blankly.
“That’s what I thought.” He pulled out a small vial of liquid and a brush from his manpurse and, dipping its hairs in the water, chanted in an ancient language, flicking drops onto the guns. Then he lit some incense and walked around the room, mumbling in a singsong manner. Upon reaching Chirp, he bathed him in the sweet-smelling smoke, and Chirp sneezed rather disrespectfully.
“You know the blessings of Goldath have been scientifically proven to improve the aim of a firearm. It’s nothing to sneeze at, I assure you.”
Chirp’s gaze wandered to the viewer. With the sound off, the movements of Vildana’s mouth seemed vulgar, her tongue sometimes slipping out to moisten her lips and her hands making suggestive gestures. Chirp, she was saying, it’s been so long since you’ve felt the touch of a woman. Why don’t you come celebrate with me?
“Ahem, Mr. Sundown.”
Snapping out of his trance, Chirp looked dumbly at the priest, then realized that he had grown a large bulge to the left in his yellowed underwear. “I’m going to, uh, go . . . over there. Why don’t you stay here and finish up?”
* * *
The climate on G-44-01 was harsh, and Chirp’s flyer had to be magnetically held to the base to keep random hurricane-force winds from blowing it away. When you left the confines of the Union Scientific Research Base, something about the atmosphere made your head spin. The air was inexplicably breathable, but there was less gravity than Humans were used to.
Snowflakes perpetually floated here and there, taking a very long time to accumulate on the rocky surface before the next gust of wind blew them away. These qualities made the planetoid interesting for Union scientists, and establishing a research base there was the first step in colonizing it. Chirp was, as his ancestors on Earth might have said, a canary in a coal mine.
He wouldn’t have gone out in a storm like this for anything, especially because he was still seeing trails and his knees felt like gel. If he wasn’t careful, a fierce and sudden gust might knock them right into the side of a mountain, but the last thing he needed was for Church people to get upset at him and start snooping around.
“Did you have to bring your cat?” The priest seemed to be not very fond of animals.
“This might take a while and there’s nobody on this rock to feed her but me. I used to have my robot do it, but the Ministry of Purity banned all automatons on outposts. They said they’re a ‘carnal temptation’ for lonely men. I guess guys were dressing them up and, you know, going at them like they were ladies. I never did that, but . . .”
“No, no, of course not. That would be a grave sin.”
Sundown considered this for a moment.
“Maybe you could answer me a question, Father.”
“Of course.”
“Why is the Church so worried about sex stuff all the time?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, you can’t have sex with robots, you can’t have sex with aliens, you can’t have sex with yourself, you can’t even have sex with another Human until you get hitched.[1] I mean, does Goldath really sit up there in R’aath and count all the times you screw someone He doesn’t approve of?”
“Sex is a beautiful blessed thing meant purely for procreation. It sullies the soul when done outside of wedlock. Human nature is lustful and wicked and we must control our urges. And yes, Goldath does see into our hearts and keeps a log of our sins that we must answer for when we meet Him.”
This sounded reasonable for a minute, but something still bothered Chirp. “But Goldath made us, right? And everything in the Universe?”
“Yes.”
“So why didn’t He just make us only want to have sex with whoever we marry?”
“Whomever.”
“What?”
“He blessed us free will.”
“And if we use free will to believe differently, our souls burn forever in the chemical pools of Andal’aang?”
“Look, Mr. Sundown, if we allow Humans to copulate with aliens, what’s to stop someone from, say, doing it with your cat?”
“Bertha? Haha, she wouldn’t like that one bit.”
“Exactly, because it would be unnatural.”
Chirp mulled this over. “What if she found an alien cat who she liked and who treated her nice, though?”
“My son, you’re overthinking this. Why does it bother you so? Are you . . . Do you have a special attraction to aliens?”
“Me?” He let out a laugh and slapped the clergyman on the knee. “Naw, Father, I just never talked to a priest before. I guess I have a lot of questions.”
As they rode in silence, the snow ceased pelting the windshield and the clouds opened, revealing a purple sky filled with a view of a few of the neighboring asteroids in the belt. Some were as large as moons, others were boulders, and it was unlike anything Gerrard had ever seen. The ship weaved in between steep cliffs and jagged mountains.
“So Goldath created aliens too?”
“Of course.”
“But He won’t let them into R’aath, even if they are good and become Truthers?”
Truthers was what members of the Church of the One Undeniable and Completely Accurate Truth were called.
“Um, no.”
“But He used to. So, Goldath made a mistake?”
“Of course not. He is infallible. You see, during the Great Galactic War, which you seem to have slept through, aliens committed a terrible act of terr
orism against our Union, killing many innocent Humans and ruining a perfectly good planet. As punishment, Goldath purged the souls of all aliens from R’aath and banned them indefinitely.”
“That doesn’t seem fair.”
“Almost one billion Humans were killed, and their deaths were very painful,” Gerrard barked irritably. “Life isn’t fair.”
Chirp was about to ask why Goldath just didn’t make life fair, but one glance at the holy man’s murderous gaze changed his mind.
* * *
“See those lights? Those are the Mugger caves to the right. That means Kanard’s temple is up here to the left, around this mountain.”
A Mugger trudging through the snow below looked up at them and waved. Chip flashed his lights in reply.
“You communicate with these creatures?”
“I never heard one talk. I don’t even know if they have mouths; they must have eyes because they wear those funny-looking goggles, but other than that they’re just a big lump of white hair. They sell me, uh, provisions, sometimes, and they’re good neighbors. They brought back Bertha once when she ran away. . . .”
“There it is!” The unmistakable golden domes of a Truther temple were surrounded almost completely by a high mountain range. As they came closer, it became clear that the building had been abandoned. Finding more or less even ground, Chirp pulled the ship in for a landing, sending snow flying every which way. As the door opened, before Chirp could stop her, Bertha bolted from the ship.
“Damn it, Bertha, get back here!”
As that imbecile went chasing after his cat, Gerrard, carrying the most powerful plasma long gun Chirp had, made his way cautiously toward the temple.
Though Father Gerrard believed that a cactus-bearded omniscient old man named Goldath created Humans in their current form two hundred thousand years earlier in an imaginary dimension called R’aath on a dare, the millions of years of evolution that resulted in his very existence still affected him biologically. When the shadow passed overhead, slowly blocking the sun, the hairs on the back of his neck stood up even before his brain registered the change in light.
His knees shook and his heart beat faster as he looked up to see one of the many eclipses that occur on a planetoid in the middle of an asteroid field. For a moment he had the feeling that the large rock was going to fall on him. What a strange and risky choice to live on a dwarf planet in such a precarious position. Crossing himself and turning on the rifle’s flashlight, he forced himself through the thick atmosphere in the darkness to the temple door. The temperature dropped even further and the wind picked up, sending flurries to pelt the priest’s face. He found that he was exhausted and soon unsure if he could make it to the building. The beam from the flashlight seemed to dim—that idiot forgot to change the batteries—but he could make out something white nailed to the door and, as his legs trembled under his weight and his eyelids grew heavy, he struggled to read what was written on it.
Closed until further notice.
* * *
“I’m tired, Bertha. I think I’m going to take a nap.” She was already asleep on his chest, and Chirp was on the ground, watching the snow dance above him. There was no way he could make it to the flyer, and soon his entire universe was enveloped in darkness. At some point he was aware of being moved, but his eyes couldn’t open to save his life. The sound of a door banging shut jolted him awake, and when he finally forced his eyes open, there were four white hairy Mugger faces looking down at him. One by one they removed their heads before the darkness returned.
* * *
It was a strange room made of vertical bricks of various colors and sizes and an unfamiliar hard dark-brown material. He was on a soft bed and unsure which new sensation was more sensational, the frantic sounds coming from down the hall, akin to the noises Bertha made before he had her fixed, or the exotic garlicky smells wafting into his nose. Someone snored, and he looked over to see Gerrard lying next to him. Slowly, and as quietly as possible, he pulled off the covers—somehow he had ended up again wearing only his tighty-whities—and made his way to the door, which creaked open. The walls in the hallway were dark maroon, and there were pictures framed by that same brown material. Some were of people or exotic buildings, and some were weirdly distorted or just random colors. Chirp made his way down the hall toward the cacophony. At the end of the corridor was a door, again, brown. The noise was loud now, and he realized it must be some kind of frantic music. He stood in front of the door for a moment, waiting for it to open, but there must have been something wrong with it, because it didn’t move. He waved his hand where the sensor should be, but still nothing. After a few moments, it occurred to him to look for a way to manually open it, and he noticed that at about the height of his hip there was a brass lever.
Karlatte
Interdimensional travel is a bitch. Your first step is to fill out a painfully long visa application and make your way to the local Mugger-certified clinic, a drab ancient building almost always located in the most unpleasant part of your galaxy. Its walls are likely made up of peeling paint and yellowed posters warning of the dangers of smoking and drinking, alongside newer adverts for yeast-infection medication and flu vaccinations. The sound of dripping water is doubtlessly echoing somewhere from down the hall, and, if you forget to purchase a pair of plastic blue overshoes from a dispenser, a sour old woman pushing around puddles of brown water will berate you until you do. At the reception, you stand in line with a herd of bundled-up, coughing pensioners for the entire morning until you make it to a cashier sitting on the other side of a tiny pane-glass window behind cast-iron bars (also peeling paint). She inevitably and abruptly slams the blinds shut and leaves for lunch. Two and a half hours later when she returns, you hand her nineteen Mugger credits and fifty Mugger cents (if you don’t have exact change, she sighs loudly, looks through her purse, and, if she can’t break your hundred, closes the blinds again and runs off down the hall, searching for someone who can). Along with your change, she hands you a receipt and your medical booklet, which you must not in any case lose. It lists the doctors you will need to meet with and their office numbers. These are, in no particular order, psychologist, surgeon, electrocardiograph technician, proctologist, photofluorography technician, and gynecologist. Other than peering at your receipt to make sure you’ve paid, most of these various medical professionals will show little to no concern for your health in their respective fields outside of tsk-tsking you for any tattoos you may have, simply signing and stamping your medical booklet. The photofluorography technician only works 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. Tuesdays and Thursdays and often leaves early or doesn’t show up at all.
After suffering through this indignation, the next morning you will need to return before 9 a.m. to give blood and urine samples. You are told in no uncertain terms to abstain from food and drink between now and then.
The Interdimensional Migration and Visa Service also demands a notarized and apostilled copy of your birth certificate and a letter of invitation from the hotel or person you’ll be staying with, along with a detailed travel itinerary and a criminal background check from whatever repressive galactic police organization’s district you live in. You submit all this, with a hefty nonrefundable fee and a 3 × 4 cm unflattering matte color photo, to the embassy, where they take three months processing it (the process of which consists of a lone Mugger sitting in the basement of the embassy in front of a computer, waiting for your passport photo to come up on his screen and swiping left or right. Inexplicably, the only people to be approved for interdimensional visas so far have been cute green-eyed brunettes with curly hair and slightly upturned noses). Assuming your application is free of spelling and grammatical errors, they send you an affidavit of support to complete with all your tax information for the last three years and a confirmation from your bank that you have at least four thousand Mugger credits to prove you won’t end up as a street urchin in your new dimension. If you meet all these requirements, finally you’re broken down a
t the molecular level and zapped through the Point to whatever particular dimensional destination you’re masochistic enough to go through all this to get to.
Karlatte Centaurus (that’s Kar•lat•te, stress on the second syllable, as she was constantly reminding people) was the extradimensional correspondent for the Laniakea Music Review, which was a big fucking deal. A native of the Milky Way (a region known throughout the Multiverse for its bad taste in music), she found herself both dreading and looking forward to returning for the first time since she left. After Earth committed suicide, the only band from that backwater galaxy to even be mentioned in the LMR was Andromeda Mayday and the Unmenschenables. Following the untimely death of twenty-seven-year-old Mayday and a stint on the lam from the totalitarian Galactic Union, bandleader Tombstone Wolfram was back with the Tombstone Wolfram Sextet, and Karlatte wanted an interview. She had been toying with the idea of writing a book for a while, and when she heard that the most famous diva from her home galaxy had died under mysterious circumstances, well, that was all any aspiring writer could ask for.
Hotels made Karlatte wet. No matter how expensive they are, there’s something seedy and exciting about them, full of potential to meet a mysterious stranger and spend a single filthy, degrading night orgasming together and then never see each other again. This place, though, the Mugger’s Point Hotel, was a total taco fest. She was sitting at the bar, nursing a Manhattan and trying to think of questions to ask Tombstone, but she couldn’t concentrate. Finally, she decided to give up and go back to her room to take care of herself, which would be just as well. Her molecular discombobulation was early the next morning, and she’d been through it enough times to know that being hungover and exhausted from a marathon sex session was not the ideal condition to be in when traveling to another dimension.
