And then I saw it, propped on the wall, right beneath the glass. A mirror. Large, golden, gilded, and beautiful, it was the kind of mirror one might expect to find in a castle, or Victorian Era estate.
“What’s that?” I said.
“An unexpected outcome of the upgrade,” said Jeff. “The arrival of humans from the outside world into our stories has introduced more variables than we are accustomed to.”
“What are you talking about?” I said.
“Beware the Jabberwock, my son. The jaws that bite, the claws that catch! Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun. The frumious Bandersnatch!”
Now he was quoting Lewis Carroll? Although it was interesting to see what was down here, it was clear that Jeff Bezos wasn’t going to help me get Max out of—
“Wait a minute,” I said, a bevy of thoughts colliding in my mind. “Jabberwocky is a poem in Through the Looking Glass. That mirror…”
I stepped closer to the mirror that was sitting on the floor, propped against the wall just underneath the giant pane of glass.
The floral pattern of the gilding on the edges, the majestic size of it, the way it might hang above a mantle in an old home, drawing in the attention of a little girl with an active imagination…
“This is the mirror from Through the Looking Glass, isn’t it?” I said.
“We are willing to go down a bunch of dark passageways, and occasionally we find something that really works,” Jeff said, quietly.
“Come on, Jeff. I could really use a hand here. My friend Max is trapped inside this Kindle. I need to get him out. How do I do it?”
Jeff smiled and walked towards me.
“Ever drifting down the stream,” he said.
“Oh boy. If you’re not going to help me I’ll just leave.”
Jeff continued his approach, now raising his right arm and slowly swinging it through the air. “Lingering in the golden gleam,” he said. The air seemed to change as his arm moved through it, like ripples in a pond. “Life, what is it but a dream?” he finished, then spun away with ridiculous theatricality, leaving the disturbance in the air behind him. Looking at the disturbance now, I saw something inside. It was like I was looking through a window into a different world.
Or maybe the same world. Yes, Jeff had opened a window in the air through which I could see a mirror image of where I was standing now. But things were different on the other side. Jeff was frolicking and twirling on his tiptoes, and he wasn’t with me. He was with Christoph.
And outside the Kindle, the face wasn’t mine. The giant behind the glass was Max.
I watched intently as Christoph carried the mirror up to the picture window, placing it right on the glass. He used magic to make it stay in place. Then he stepped through the mirror. Christoph had gone through the looking glass.
“That was when it happened, right?” I said. “That was when Christoph and Max switched places. In the story, the mirror leads to Wonderland, but in this room, the mirror leads to the real world. And when Christoph went through, Max was standing there on the other side, looking in the mirror from behind. That’s why Max can’t get out. He’s not some reader who can decide to be done with the story. He’s totally here, inside it. And Christoph is out there, inside him. They’ve switched places! Right?”
“Strip malls are history,” Jeff said.
“Jeff, you have to tell me how to undo this. How do I get Max out and Christoph back in?”
“You flip it!” Jeff said, channeling Devo. “Flip it good.”
“You’re saying I have to get Christoph to read the Kindle, right? I have to get Christoph out there and Max in here. Max has to hold the mirror to the glass just like Christoph did, and they can switch back.”
“Yes, that's it!” Jeff said, then added, “It's always tea-time, and we've no time to wash the things between whiles!”
“But how am I going to get Christoph to read the Kindle?”
“Beats me,” said Jeff.
Great. The one time he chooses to give a straight answer is the time he doesn’t know.
“You don’t know? How can you not know?”
“My Dear, we have a saying around here. What happens on the other side of the glass, stays on the other side of the glass.”
“What does that even mean?”
“For people who are readers, reading is important to them.”
“Are you going to help me or not?”
“Of course I am. Serving readers is my passion. That, and space travel. And clocks that keep perfect time for 10,000 years.”
“Forget it. I’ll figure out how to get Christoph to look at the Kindle. When he does, I need to have Max here to hold up the mirror right?”
“I believe you mean you’ll have Max read the Kindle and Christoph here to hold up the mirror,” said Jeff. “Since they’ve switched bodies and all. It raises an interesting question, doesn’t it? Is it the body or the soul that matters? Who is the real Max? The body out there with Christoph’s soul inside, or the soul in here with Christoph’s body outside. You know, I like having the digital camera on my smart phone, but I also like having a dedicated camera for when I want to take real pictures.”
“I’ll take that as a yes,” I said. “Here’s another question. How does Max get here? How did Christoph leave his story and end up here with the mirror in the first place?”
Shaking his head, Jeff said, “Christoph broke down the walls. Terrible, terrible tragedy.”
“The walls,” I said. “You mean the walls between books.”
“What other walls could I possibly mean?”
“That’s why it’s such chaos out there,” I said. “All the walls between the stories have broken. Characters are free to roam wherever they want.”
“A giant bowl of literary soup,” Jeff said.
“Can you help me get Max into this place?” I asked. “Right now he’s in His Golden Shackles.”
“Retrieving your friend is a simple operation,” Jeff said. “It’s just a matter of using your….”
“Your…what?”
A pregnant pause as I waited for Jeff to speak.
“Your imagination,” he finally said.
In a movement that made me think of Harold and The Purple Crayon, Jeff used his index finger to draw an upside down arc through the air. As his finger moved, a thick black line trailed behind. When he was done, he had drawn a familiar design in the air between us.
It was the Amazon logo. A black arrow with a curve in the shape of a smiley face. Then, like Tron mounting his light cycle, Jeff stepped over the arrow, straddling it with his legs.
“All aboard the Bezos Express!” he called out.
I won’t describe in detail how Jeff Bezos looked straddled across a big arrow, other than to say it was a bit suggestive, in a cover of God Emperor of Dune kind of way.
Noting the skeptical look on my face, Jeff followed up with, “Madame, this train leaves in ten seconds whether you’re on board or not. I suggest you take your seat.”
“Oh good grief,” I muttered. I approached Jeff and his flying arrow motorcycle thing, but my first angle would have had me mounting in front of him and that was, well….um…
“Just get behind me,” Jeff said.
“Yes, right,” I said, climbing behind him and wrapping my arms around his waist.
Jeff lifted his left leg and stamped down on an imaginary pedal. The arrow began to vibrate and hum, and then, slowly, it floated off the ground.
I tightened my grip around Jeff’s waist and closed my eyes, hoping to God that I wouldn’t regret this.
Jeff’s Lone Ranger-like battle cry did little to sooth my nerves.
“And now, into the deepest realms of our imagination….we ride!”
Chapter 25
It took minutes of flying on the arrow before I had enough nerve to open my eyes. What I saw were walls of books, flying past at super speed. The wind was roaring in my ears. My hair was flapping behind me.
“Where are we?”
I shouted.
“Where is anyone?” Jeff called back. “Hold on tight. The transition can be a little jarring!”
“A little jarring?” I said. “What do you mean a little--”
And then we were in empty white space, or nearly empty white space. The wind had stopped blowing. It was like we were floating in a vacuum. I looked behind me and saw the giant hall of books fading in the distance.
“What’s this?” I said.
“Between paper and pen lays the truth of the story,” said Jeff. “Here comes the next book!”
A blast of cold air in my face and we were flying over New York City at night. The Empire State Building, the Chrysler Tower, the Statue of Liberty—it was so beautiful.
“Would you like me to take you to him?” Jeff asked.
“To who?”
“To whom,” Jeff corrected.
“Jeff Bezos would you stop it and just tell me where we’re going!”
“Did you know the first draft of the first television advertisement for the Kindle had a man reading his tablet and swept away to another world, one where he was inside the books?”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Yes, and in one of the books, a raging bull came running in, smacked him hard and threw him high,” Jeff said. “It was funny and surprising, but I nixed it because I didn’t want to show the customer getting hurt.”
“Jeff, what’s the point of all this?”
“The point is that truth is stranger than fiction!”
And with that he took a sudden nosedive down 5th Avenue. He had us making a straight line for the concrete. I screamed my lungs out and closed my eyes. I kept on screaming through a rapid pull-up, a jarring right turn, another nose dive, and a sudden stop.
I opened my eyes to find us in the basement of Greenworld Tower. We were floating in place, right in front of the vault where I left Max. I banged on the door.
“Max, it’s me, Holly! Are you in there?”
“Just a second,” Max called back.
“We don’t have a second, Max. We’ve got to go!”
“Okay, here I come!”
The key turned and the door opened. Max came stumbling out. Even though he was trapped in Christoph’s body, somehow he managed to be as un-Christoph as a guy could be. His hair was a mess. His shirt was wrinkled and untucked, and—
“What happened to your buttons, Max?” I said.
I knew his shirt wasn’t misbuttoned when I left him. But now his collar was jutting out at an odd angle because he had mismatched his buttons like a little kid.
And then Annabelle came out, her hair also a mess, her clothes also disheveled, and I understood. When I left the vault, I left Annabelle’s body behind. Max had made good use of his time there.
“Holly, you’re in your own body?” Max said. “And you brought…Telly Savalas?”
“Come on, Max. I think I’ve figured out a way to get you out of here. I’ll explain on the way.”
Chapter 26
Jeff took Max and me back to the Gateway, where Max marveled at my giant face looking in on us.
“You look good at 200 times normal size,” he said.
“Thanks, but when I look up at my face, all I see are the giant pores in my cheeks. I could go swimming in those things.”
I brought Max up to speed on all that I knew, starting with the mirror from Through the Looking Glass and ending with my plan to make the switch happen in reverse.
“Stay here,” I said. “I’m going to try to trick Christoph into reading the Kindle. Wait until you see your own face out there on the other side, then hold the mirror up to the glass and step through.”
“I’ll end up back in my own body?” Max said.
“Yes, and Christoph will be back in his. You got it?”
“I got it,” said Max.
“Good, I’ll see you soon.”
I left the Kindle and was back in the Explorer wearing my Alex English jersey. I drove back to the Marriott and, with Kindle in hand, I went straight to the door of Suite 702 and knocked three times.
“I knew you’d be back,” he said as he opened the door.
Looking at his face, I felt bad for Max. If everything worked and he got back in his own body, he’d find himself with a black eye courtesy of my elbow.
Christoph’s eyes drifted down to the Kindle I held in my hand. He reached for it with the same swiftness I saw when he snatched it from my hands before, but this time I was ready, and performed the outside block as Dolph McDougal had taught me.
“You want me, Christoph?” I yelled. “Come and get me.”
I pushed past him into the hotel room and jumped for the bed, turning my body in the air. As I came to a landing on my back I raised the Kindle in front of my face. By the time my head hit the pillow, I had already read the first sentence on the screen, and was back inside the Gateway, returning to the About Your Kindle universe.
I arrived to find chaos. A gaggle of dirty little children were screaming as Max chased a little boy around the Gateway. The boy was holding the gilded mirror above his head and screaming in delight as Max chased him.
“Max? What’s going on?”
“These little hoodlums showed up from nowhere and took the mirror!” Max said. “Help me get it back!”
As Max ran after the little boy, another boy tripped him, and he landed hard on his face.
“What in the world?” I said. I tried to join in the chase but, right as I did, an explosion on the far end of the room sent dust and splinters everywhere. I ducked my head just in time to see a giant worm crashing into the room. Big and black and phallic, it was a sandworm from Dune, and it roared in anger as it landed hard on the ground.
As the dust settled, I saw that the worm wasn’t alone. Hundreds of people had ridden in on the worm’s back. Led by a teenager with glowing blue eyes, the crew on top of this worm were assembled from all my favorite books. Sandriders from Dune, wizards and witches from Harry Potter, vampires, werewolves, zombies, orcs and hobbits and goblins and Jedi—even Frankenstein’s monster was up there.
“What’s happening?” I cried out.
“It would appear this is the place to be,” came a voice from behind me. I turned to see Jeff Bezos approaching. He wore a long white apron and carried a silver tray of horderves. Pushing the tray at me, he said, “Cocktail weenie?”
“The mirror,” I said, ignoring him. “Max, we need to get the mirror back on the wall!”
“I’m trying!” Max said, still chasing the little boy who giddily danced about the room, all the while singing a song about picking a pocket or two.
Now the horde of characters was climbing down off the sandworm. They too seemed interested in the mirror.
“They want out,” I muttered. I turned to Jeff. “They all want out of here, don’t they?”
He smiled. “I think it’s fair to say everyone’s feeling a bit cooped up.”
I looked at the giant wall of glass. My face was no longer back there. Instead, I saw the sharp lines and perfect skin of Max Brody.
“He’s reading the Kindle!” I shouted to Max. “Christoph is reading it! We need the mirror now!”
“Almost there!” Max cried, still chasing the little boy. But now he wasn’t alone. There was a virtual army of literary characters chasing that little boy and his mirror. An angry-looking Harry Potter shouted “Expelliarmus!” and the mirror went flying from the boy’s hands.
I watched helplessly as the mirror flew through the air, knowing that when it landed, it would shatter into a thousand pieces. The mirror took a long arc through the air, flying almost in slow motion, and the second before it landed, I closed my eyes.
Nothing happened.
I opened my eyes to find the whole crazy scene frozen in place. The mirror was floating half an inch from the ground. The giant worm and the army of characters from my Kindle were all stuck in place, some of them mid-stride. Looking now I could see just how wild it had become in here. Max was at the front of a cr
owd of many thousands of people and things, all of whom had been chasing the mirror before time itself seemed to stop.
Against this perfectly still background, one person moved. A beautiful young man with dark, wavy hair and a black suit.
“Oh dear, it appears I’ve made quite the mess,” he said.
“Christoph, what have you done?”
“I’ve put an end to this madness,” he said. “I’ve stopped this story before it goes any further. It’s time for us to leave, Holly.”
“How did you…”
“Look outside, Holly!” he shouted, pointing at the glass and the giant face beyond it. “I am the reader! The story is being told in my mind. What an amazing power to have. It’s why all these characters are here. They want it too. It is the ultimate power. Control of an entire universe! And it’s a power you taught us.”
“Me? I didn’t teach you anything.”
“Oh but you have, My Darling. You’ve taught every one of us in here the secret. You’ve opened our eyes. I always knew that somehow my life, my entire world, was incomplete. And then, for just the briefest of moments, you inhabited my body. You played my character. And in that time, I saw it all Holly. Everything that was missing was there in front of me. My world, all of our worlds—they only exist in the mind of the reader. But out there…out there! The world you live in out there is real. And in your world, you become a God every time you pick up a book! What power! Unlimited power—entire universes there in your mind! I knew I had have it. And I knew I had to be with you, the woman who came to me in three-dimensional clarity. The woman who is so much more than a character. Come with me, Holly. It’s time for us to go.”
“I’m not leaving without Max. I won’t leave him trapped in here.”
“I’m afraid he has to stay. The world out there requires a body, and there is only room inside the body for one of us.”
“No.”
“No? But surely you understand I won’t return to this miserable half-life? I am going back to the real world whether you come with me or not!”
Holly and Her Naughty eReader Page 16
