by Garon Whited
As an aside, this world does not have ley lines. It makes me wonder if Mary’s world is unusual. It also reminds me I need to go back there and finish cleaning up my mess. I’ll get to it, I’ll get to it. With Johann and family dead, it doesn’t seem as pressing as it once did.
Firebrand and I discussed how far south these territory-stealing bipeds might be. With a map and some guesswork, we started looking around the border between what would be West Virginia and Kentucky. It was still in the Appalachians, but it was also west of the Blue Ridge Mountains. The idea was the Blue Ridge Mountains might act as a natural barrier, diverting population movement northward. It wasn’t much, but it was somewhere to start.
I spent far too much time casting and re-casting the spell on my large mirror. The local power levels are crap. I finally got grumpy enough to draw the spell on the back of the mirror, then carve additional components into the wide, wooden frame. Not content with that, I built a power-jet for it and moved my “scrying room” away from other magical operations. Diogenes assembled a platform atop the remains of a nearby water tower, roofed it over with solar panels, and connected an electromagical transformer.
I’m impressed. The mirror works wonderfully. I do get a little nervous on top of what is, essentially, a giant, rusty pipe, but Diogenes assures me it retains more than enough structural integrity. He’s humoring me by conducting some repairs and adding some reinforcement, but I went on up and started doing my scrying again.
When I did finally find the things with the spears, I wasn’t sure what they were.
If we started with a human being… no, maybe that’s not a valid assumption. Given a suitable level of mutagenic radiation and a few generations to weed out undesirable traits, you could have a lot of primate-level organisms turn into something unrecognizable. But, for descriptive purposes, let’s assume we started with a modern human.
Let’s make him shorter—on the order of four to five feet tall. Still walking upright, though, and as wide and thick as a full-sized man, giving him some odd proportions. His fingernails need to be tools, not decoration, so they don’t lay flat on top of his fingertips; they stick out from the tips of his fingers. They’re thick, straight, and tough, suitable to strip bark off a branch, dig in the dirt, or help climb a tree in a hurry. His toes are longer, thicker, and stronger, too. They don’t form secondary hands, not with his legs and hips resembling a modern man. They’re capable of grasping, but not really manipulating. He’s also hairy, from the top of his domed head to those selfsame long-toed feet. He’s muscular, quite strong, and can hurl a sharpened stick of wood like an Olympic javelin-thrower. His jaws are heavy, with pronounced canine teeth, both upper and lower. His eyes resemble cats’ eyes—vertical slits for pupils instead of round ones. He has no problem cracking a walnut in his jaws and spitting out bits of shell while his fingers pick out the meat. His mate is just as hairy and carries her young in her arms, mostly, but sometimes wears a sling of vines for that purpose. Older infants ride an adult when they travel, clinging piggy-back.
As for his technology, he uses sharp-edged rocks, sometimes with a layer of hide wound around it for a handle. His hunting gear consists of carved bone or carved branches, but I’ve seen no signs of axes or spearheads. Putting a rock on the end of a stick isn’t his speed, or not yet. He doesn’t seem to need it. He throws heavy, pointed sticks as spears and hurls rocks with deadly accuracy and considerable force. The elephants throw harder, but not as accurately, not as quickly, and certainly not in such numbers.
His most advanced hunting is done with a pit and sharp sticks at the bottom. He also works in teams, driving game ahead into an ambush by other hunters. He has fire, but it’s a difficult possession; he carries it with him when he moves, rather than starting a new one. He might not know a—pardon me—sure-fire way to start one. He doesn’t cook his food, though. Fire is for scaring game, providing light at night, keeping warm, and fire-hardening spearpoints.
He doesn’t seem to have language, as such, but he does grunt and call to others. I’d say it’s closer to signaling, rather than a full language. In proximity, he seems to communicate by gestures and grunts. He’s a social creature, though, living in groups of families—call it a tribe—under a dominant male. The group I studied had about forty members in eleven or twelve family groups, I think. They don’t have a fixed address, but seem to be nomadic, possibly at the hunter-gatherer stage. I don’t know what they do with their dead, nor do I know how they get along with any other roving bands like their own.
If it wasn’t for the high forehead, I’d think of him as a hairy Neanderthal. I don’t know what to call him. All I know is if things ever get really desperate around here, he’s breakfast.
Wow. Discover what could very well be a whole new branch of humanity and one of my first considerations is how they taste.
I’m such an awful person.
After sunset and a bit of cleanup, Mary, Diogenes, and I compared notes. I explained what I’d found so he could plan his defenses or relocation accordingly. Mary told me about a bunch of possible vacation spots.
“You wanted someplace quiet, right?”
“Quiet in the sense of being uninvolved in world-shaking events, and preferably lacking in repeated fighting or fleeing.”
“We’ve looked into a number of different places—”
“Six hundred and thirty-one,” Diogenes supplied, voice coming from the nearest passing robot.
“—until the sun went down. Then, to avoid potential sunburn, I called it quits. Diogenes tabulated the various sorts of conditions we’ve found so far. I don’t know exactly what you want, but I have some requirements.”
“Oh? Such as?”
“I’d like the place to have enough technology to be comfortable. Don’t misunderstand—I think what you’ve done with Karvalen is fantastic—but I’m more comfortable with cities, suburbs, and social institutions not centered around giant pet rocks and gods walking the earth.”
“I can see your point. I’ll go along with it.”
“Does high technology mean low magic, by the way?”
“I don’t know. I suspect there’s a correlation, but not causation. If you have low magic, people will turn to technology to make their lives better. If you have lots of magic, they won’t need to develop technology. It’s the worlds in the middle I would expect to have both—places where magic works, but it’s difficult or it takes special talent or has some other drawback.”
“That is disgustingly plausible.”
“Glad you think so. I don’t know what I’m talking about. Not enough worlds, yet.”
“Oh, you!” she exclaimed, shaking a fist at me. “If I didn’t like you so much, I’d hate you.”
“Story of my life. But on the subject of vacation spots, if the world we pick is fairly low on the magical side of things, people won’t believe in magic, and therefore have a significantly lower chance of believing we’re vampires, too.”
“And a lower chance of having vampires wandering around, I should hope. I don’t mind having to join up with a local vampire community—if they have one—but if your goal is to avoid entanglements…”
“Boring is better,” I agreed.
“We’ve sorted out our current worlds and eliminated most of them. Magic too high, too much radiation, no radio traffic, and so on. There are quite a few we need to re-sample, though.”
“Why?”
“Well, the probe is only sampling one random point. If it’s twenty below zero where the probe comes out, is it in the Arctic, or an ice age? If the probe picks up toxic levels of carbon dioxide and heat, is it next to a coal-fired boiler or is global warming a thing?”
“Fair point. We’ll explore a lot of worlds. Maybe on weekends.”
“I can live with that. I’d like to see some alternate timelines or universes or whatever they are.”
“So, what do we have on your list of possible worlds?”
“Diogenes narrowed hundreds down to dozen
s, but I feel we’ve got two good choices and two not-so-good. The rest are either not what I think you want or definitely not what I want.”
“I’ve heard compromise is the key to a successful relationship. Tell me about them.”
“My personal favorite seems to be similar to the historical ‘roaring twenties’ era. There’s some radio in the AM band and at least four commercial stations Diogenes’ probe can detect. The music reminds me of the big-band swing stuff and some jazz. I’d like to look at it more closely and see if there are any deal-breakers.”
“That’s fair. What else?”
“My second choice is another historical-looking one. It’s much more radio-friendly and uses some of the FM dial. From the pictures we got, I’d say it’s a little after World War Two—assuming they had the first one on schedule and didn’t have a couple in between. The late forties, maybe the early fifties—the cars I don’t recognize, but they seem very retro, at least where I’m from.”
“Sounds good. Those are the two good choices?”
“Yes. The not-so-good choices are tolerable, I suppose.”
“Go ahead.”
“Well, one is obviously very high-tech. Diogenes detected communications traffic in every band. Pictures taken through the portal showed people flying. They were wearing special harnesses, but I didn’t see blades or jets, so I assume the harnesses had something to do with it. Otherwise, it was a bunch of people moving through the air by clean living and righteous thoughts. The city was clean, few vehicles were in sight, and the air quality was excellent. It looks like a technological utopia, but I worry about us fitting in. I’d rather not discover my personal identity chip is missing or my DNA record isn’t on file. I mean, if the society is big on personal liberty and privacy, that’s one thing…”
“…but getting away with murder could be tricky. And that’ll have to happen, sooner or later.”
“To say nothing of establishing a false identity. Assuming we need them to live there without being eyeballed suspiciously.”
“We’ll look at it, but I suspect you’re right. What’s the last one?”
“Weird, but an interesting kind of weird. The pictures we’ve got show an Art Deco world with lots of streamlining—cars, buildings, trains, whatever. It’s the fashion, I guess. It looks a lot like the World of Tomorrow stuff you see in history videos. There’s a lot of communications traffic, but it’s either commercial broadcasting or encrypted stuff. No sign of personal communications, like cell phones. They have peculiar fashions using what looks like leather and plastic. The thermal pictures, though, show the real weirdness of the place.”
“How so?”
“Diogenes?”
“The thermal scan shows unprecedented use of radioisotopes in vehicles,” he replied.
“I beg your pardon?”
“I believe the cars are powered by some sort of radiothermal generators,” he elaborated. “Analysis suggest they also possess batteries for high-demand periods, but cruise on reactor power while the batteries charge. I am unfamiliar with the design and function of these units, so cannot infer their radiation source.”
“Interesting. But no sign of a thoroughly interconnected, computerized society?”
“No, Professor. However, the probe took only a single, random sample of a few seconds duration.”
“Then I think we should look at that one, too. How about tomorrow, after sunrise, we take more samples of these four and plan our exploratory excursions?” I quirked a smile at Mary. “And maybe we’ll plan a bank job in one we don’t want to live in.”
“I love you.”
“I don’t always forget things.”
“And the things you remember are why I love you. But, speaking of memories, do you recall the mutant elephants?”
“Vividly.”
“Can we go eliminate some of the population pressure so Diogenes has time to build a new cloning facility?”
“Where are you setting up, Diogenes?”
“I have selected three sites. The initial site is near Niagara Falls and the power station I am refurbishing there. A second site is in Baja, east of Ensenada, to salvage what I can from the Cara del Sol solar power station. The third is in the Wet Mountains area of Colorado for thorium mining and processing.”
“Do I detect a pattern?”
“Robots require power, Professor.”
“Of course. Anything I can do to help?”
“My intention is to establish a central processing area in the North Dakota region, possibly making use of a surviving missile silo as a preliminary construction site. When the site is ready for primary processor installation, it would be extremely helpful if you could relocate my primary core, Professor.”
“I’ll have to reestablish the communications spells between your personal crystal and the sub-crystals.”
“I recognize that, Professor, but the current location appears difficult to secure over the long term.”
“You’ve got a point. All right. Mary and I will beat back the oncoming hordes by a generation and you get yourself to safety.”
“Thank you very much, Professor,” Diogenes said. Mary took my arm and squeezed it.
“Can we go get into a fight, now?”
“Yes, dear.”
Apocalyptica, Tuesday, May 24th, Year 1
Killing mutant elephants is both easier than you’d think, and harder.
Easier, in that they’re big, comparatively slow, and not armored all that well. Even the big, old bulls don’t have real armor. Once they reach adulthood, they start to grow a sort of thick, hard hide, tougher than leather and reminiscent of alligator skin. The older ones are practically covered with it. It’s tough, but a really sharp knife will still cut it. So will a sword disguised as a plasma cutter—or do I have that backward?
Harder, in that their internal organs are all well-protected under a thick mat of leather, fat, muscle, and bone. Mary can’t stab one in the heart or anything else truly vital, so she has to rely on slashing them open repeatedly until they bleed to death. She can cripple one in seconds, now that she knows what she’s doing, but it still takes a good while to kill it.
It’s also harder in that they’re medium-smart. They catch on quickly, and in groups of six or more can be downright deadly. They’ll circle up, forming a butts-together defensive star, hand rocks to each other, even trade clubs around their group.
Fortunately, they don’t tell anyone else how we kill them. Each group has to learn our tactics on its own, because there are no survivors to warn the rest.
We’ve got over two dozen mutated elephant skulls acting as fence decorations along the southern edge of the campus. Between the population control measures and the warning signs, I feel confident Diogenes’ production capability will get him somewhere safer before the issue becomes pressing. Vehicles are now a priority since most robots lack the endurance to travel even as far as Niagara on a single charge.
To be fair, he’s also adding some elephant-foot-sized punji pits around the campus, kind of like a poor man’s minefield. We’re trying to deter them, mostly. Manufacturing big-game guns in quantity is a lot more expensive than digging holes.
Mary and I, as big-game hunters, finished doing our part last night. This morning, we started in on a new career as an inter-universal exploration team. I didn’t see the universes they picked, so all I got to do was sit there and feel stupid while Mary and Diogenes tried to dial up one of our four main candidates. It helped that we had power reserves from a night of magical charging. It let us open a viewing port in the iridium ring several times in each world.
To make life easier, I exercised my piddly daytime telekinesis to snatch a little bit from the worlds we found. Some dirt, a rock, a bit of litter, a leaf, whatever I could snatch. These helped focus the gateway and successive attempts, making it more likely we were consistently hitting the same world each time. It would not do to view a dozen random samples of a world and find out later we accidentally viewed a doz
en random worlds.
I find the 1940’s intriguing, along with the Art Deco world. Mary is more interested in doing the Charleston and dodging Prohibition agents—I think she’s planning to add “bootlegger” to her resume. We also sampled the high-tech wonderment world, but the more we see of it, the less vampire-friendly it looks. It reminds me of some of the more optimistic views of the future by sci-fi writers, but I wonder just how much personal privacy anyone has when the world is tied together so tightly by microwaves and fiber optics.
I’m a bloodsucking monster that feeds on the living. I value my privacy. Sue me.
After a lot of video photography, radio monitoring, and more than a little tailoring on Diogenes’ part, we’ll have a decent chance of blending into whichever world we pick. He’s getting our clothes ready for us—with some advice from Mary, because my idea of stylish only extends as far as wearing clothes. We’ll be sticking with commodities instead of money, naturally; we don’t have samples of money to counterfeit. And, while we can detect multiple languages in the airwaves, some of the idioms and phrasing seem a bit weird. I’m opting to go with some pre-cast concept-translation spells so we can at least understand what someone means by “The billboard bopped in a dimbox breezer and blew.”
If you’re interested, it means the flashy-looking person got in a convertible taxicab and left. I understood it, mostly, except for the part about the billboard and the dimbox. Taken in context, I probably wouldn’t have a problem, but I’m a coward by nature and prefer to be prepared.
Mary insisted on knives. I insisted on no guns.
“Why not?” she demanded. “You’re bringing Firebrand!”
Hey, I don’t want to be part of this argument!
“Relax,” I told them both. “First of all, Firebrand is going to be in a long case. It’s a display piece, as far as anyone else is concerned, which is why I’m polishing it up nicely.”
And thank you for that, Boss.
“De nada. Second, Firebrand will be paying close attention to people around us. If we say something wrong, do something weird, or otherwise attract attention, it’s Firebrand’s job to warn us. I don’t intend to draw Firebrand while we’re there.”
