Paraworld Zero

by Matthew Peterson

  “I’m Dr. Troodle,” the man said. “You had a pretty bad accident. For a few weeks we didn’t think you’d live, but as the months went by you made remarkable progress. Your scars are healing just splendidly.”

  “Months?” Simon repeated, falling back into bed. He noticed his mother’s black medallion intermingled with the cords and monitors attached to his chest.

  “Yes, you’ve been in a coma for some time now. I don’t think—”

  Tonya cut in, “This is impossible! Dr. Troodle, do you understand what he’s saying?”

  “Yes, of course. Your friend speaks Pudo quite nicely—no accent at all.”

  She shook her head and said again, “This is impossible.”

  “What’s impossible?” Simon said. He tried to recall the circumstances that had led him to his current predicament, but his memories were disjointed.

  “You can’t speak Pudo,” she yelled, her hair turning red. “Do you think that every paraworld speaks the same language? No! That’s why we cast the language spell when we arrive at a new parallel world.”

  “Calm down.” Her hysterical behavior took him by surprise. “Maybe I cast the language spell by accident when I had your wand.”

  “Believe me, runt, you have no magical abilities. Remember on Earth when you tried to stop the car before we started flying? Well, you were holding my wand backwards!”

  Dr. Troodle intervened. “Konya is just jealous that you are such a quick learner.” He laughed. “It took her two months to learn how to say, ‘Where’s the bathroom?’”

  “My name is Tonya, not Konya,” the girl fumed.

  “Konya,” Dr. Troodle said, adding more inflection in his voice.

  “TONYA! TONYA! TONYA!” she roared.

  The man tried again. “Konya.”

  “AAAH!” she yelled. “If I have to live in this parallel one more day, I’ll go bonkers!”

  Simon smirked. “Why don’t you just cast that dumb language spell you were talking about?”

  “Because there aren’t any electro-magical waves on this planet,” she barked. “Impossible, you say? Noooo—not for Konya! The one paraworld out there without magic and I happen to find it.”

  This didn’t seem too unnatural for the boy, especially since he had just recently discovered that magical waves covered his own planet, but then the realization hit him that without E.M. waves he couldn’t get back home.

  “So are you saying we’re stuck here?”

  “Bingo! Give that boy a prize.”

  The doctor removed the monitors from Simon’s bare chest. “It’s obvious from your physiology,” he noted, “that you’re not from our world, but all this talk about parallel worlds and magic makes my head hurt. What’s important now is that we find out how you’re feeling, young man.”

  Simon took a deep breath of clean air and noticed the unfamiliar sensations throughout his body. The aches and pains he normally felt were gone, and for the first time in his life, he didn’t feel the nagging urge to take a puff from his inhaler.

  “I feel good,” he said with a smile. “I feel really, really good.”

  “Fantastic,” said Dr. Troodle. “When you first came to our world—”

  “So I am in a different world,” he said. “What do you call it?”

  “Oh, I’m sorry. Pudo is what we call it. When you first came to Pudo, your motorized contraption was totaled, and you lost both of your legs, and you broke some bones in your face, and—”

  “What?” Simon cried, grasping for his legs.

  “Don’t worry, Simon,” Tonya reassured him. Her hair had already turned back to its natural green color. “They put your legs back on. I guess that’s one thing I have to admit about this world—these people are geniuses. They have the best medical skills I’ve ever seen, and their knowledge of math and science is just phenomenal. Even their language is complex—” She turned her head away in shame. “Well, you wouldn’t know about that.”

  “Hello, everyone!” a small boy entering the room called out in a high-pitched voice. He held a computer tablet in his hand and flaunted an enormous smile that stretched from one side of his face to the other. Dr. Troodle nodded to the boy and stepped away to talk to a nurse.

  “I take it back—not everyone in this world is intelligent. Here’s one right now who took a belly flop in the gene pool.” She smiled at the boy as he approached. “Hi, Thorny.”

  “How are you doing, Butblacruze?” he responded joyfully.

  Simon laughed, but Tonya got upset because she couldn’t understand the word the boy had just used. She begged, “Okay, Simon, tell me what he said.”

  The pint-sized boy looked at the bed in shock. “Oh, he’s awake! Does he understand what we’re saying?”

  “Yes.” Tonya frowned. “Somehow or another, he can speak Pudo.” She turned to Simon and asked even more earnestly than before, “So, Simon, what was that word he just called me? I looked it up once, but the definition didn’t make any sense. I’m still learning this stupid language.”

  “Don’t tell her!” the boy said quickly. “That would ruin our fun.” He extended his hand to Simon. “Hi, I’m Thornapple Troodle. I’ve been reading to you every day so we could be friends when you woke up. I’ve been dying to ask you something for months now.”

  “What is it?” Simon asked, shaking the boy’s tiny hand.

  “How do you kill the end boss on level ten? For the life of me, I can’t seem to get past that part!”

  Simon knew exactly what he was talking about. “You’ve been playing my video games? You’re going to use up all my batteries.”

  “Batteries? So that’s what you call them. I drained your batteries months ago. I want to make some new ones, but Father won’t let me.”

  Dr. Troodle returned and spoke up. “I told you, son, to forget about it. That machine is a waste of time. It doesn’t teach you anything of value. How are you ever going to get accepted to the university if your head is in the clouds?”

  “But, Father, I don’t want to go to the university. I want to be a painter.”

  The doctor cringed. “We’ve discussed this before, Thornapple. Our society has little need for art. You will go to the university, and you will like it.”

  “I will not go to the university!” The boy pouted. “And I would not like it! You just don’t understand me.” Thornapple ran out of the room and slammed the door.

  Dr. Troodle turned to Simon and explained, “He’s just going through puberty right now. All those hormones are impairing his judgement. Let’s get you dressed, shall we?”

  Simon tucked the sheets around himself. He had almost forgotten he was naked. The doctor tossed him a bundle of clothing and pushed a button on the bed stand. Immediately, an orange barrier rose from all four sides of the bed, blocking Simon from everyone’s view.

  Simon proceeded to get dressed in the Pudo clothing. “So what do you call yourselves?” he asked, trying to talk through the barrier.

  “Puds,” Dr. Troodle answered.

  “So is everyone… is everyone… um…”

  “Small?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’m actually quite tall for my species. In fact, Thornapple is the tallest one in his class at school. I suspect that someday he’ll become a giant Pud if he keeps eating the way he does. How big are the people on your planet?”

  “Well, I’m the smallest one in my class at school.”

  “That’s amazing! Your people truly are giants. I wish my colleagues could be here to see you. To be quite frank, after taking a biological scan of your body, most of the scientists have had little reason to study you further. They’re not really concerned with your behavior patterns, but your knack for the Pudo language might perk their interest. I must say the excitement of having alien visitors has died down considerably over the past few months.”

  “Ha! That doesn’t stop your people from probing me whenever they can,” Tonya said with a scowl.

  “Your body is much more int
eresting than Simon’s,” the doctor said.

  Tonya adjusted her tight shirt. “Yeah, I bet.”

  “Okay, I’m finished,” Simon announced.

  Dr. Troodle pressed the button on the bed stand, and the orange shield lowered. “You look funny,” Tonya said between giggles. Simon wore a bright green shirt with yellow pants and white suspenders.

  “You’re not so hot yourself,” he retorted.

  Tonya looked like a baby doll that had been dressed in the wrong-sized clothing. Simon couldn’t tell if she was wearing pants or just really long shorts, and he debated whether or not to mention that the seams on her thin shirt were coming undone.

  “Hey, in some parallels this is pretty fashionable! Come on, Simon, let me show you around.”

  Simon leapt out of the bed, but the second his feet touched the floor, his legs wobbled around as if they were made of gelatin. He collapsed.

  “Oh, dear,” said Dr. Troodle. “I was afraid something like this would happen. We’ve never done surgery on a person like you before. We didn’t put your legs on backwards, did we?”

  “No, they’re okay. I just don’t seem to have very much strength in them anymore.” He tried to stand but couldn’t. “I can move my legs all right, but I can’t put any weight on them.”

  “How peculiar. I assume you’ll need some strenuous therapy before you’ll be able to walk properly.”

  “I volunteer to help,” Tonya said. “It’s my fault he’s in this mess in the first place.”

  “Thank you, Konya. I’ll write up a program immediately. Nurse Salfree, fetch me a hover chair.”

  Soon, the nurse presented what Simon assumed was a hover chair, but it didn’t have a back or any legs to it. Dr. Troodle and Tonya lifted Simon onto the seat. The doctor pressed a button, and two armrests—as well as a backrest—popped up. Simon felt the chair rise off the ground and hover in midair.

  “Use this little stick to steer and these buttons to go up and down,” the doctor instructed.

  “This is awesome,” Simon said, laughing. “It’s just like my video games.”

  “Well,” the doctor admitted, “I suppose your games do have some value to them after all.”

  * * *

  Throughout the day, Tonya tried to help Simon walk, but to no avail; his legs just wouldn’t cooperate. Simon stood between two bars and tried to pull himself forward. His shoulders hurt from holding his weight off the ground, and he became frustrated.

  “Just a few more minutes, and then we’ll start you on some leg exercises,” said Nurse Salfree. She walked off to help another patient.

  “Hello, everyone!” Thornapple announced as he made his loud entrance into the room. “Father wanted me to invite you two to dinner tonight.” He looked at Simon dangling his feet above the ground. “How’s it going?”

  “Things would be going better if we didn’t have any interruptions,” Tonya said.

  “Oh, come on, Butblacruze. I just want to help,” he responded tenaciously.

  “Don’t call me that.”

  “Why? What’s wrong with calling you Butblacruze?”

  “Thornapple, if she doesn’t want you to call her that, then don’t,” Simon said in a protective tone of voice. Regardless of the chivalrous gesture towards his friend, he still had to force himself not to smile at Thornapple’s brave use of the word.

  “Sorry,” the boy said, hanging his head down. He shuffled his feet a little, then perked up and said, “You can call me Thorn if you want. All my friends do. What do your friends call you?”

  “Simon.”

  “Oh,” he said, discouraged. “Is it all right if I call you Simon?”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  The boy smiled so widely that it looked like the top of his head was going to slip off. He jumped between the bars and lifted himself up so that he was almost level with Simon.

  “I’m going to be a painter someday,” he said, veering the conversation towards himself.

  “What do you want to paint?” Simon asked, trying to be friendly; he wasn’t accustomed to all this attention.

  “Everything!” Thorn swung back and forth on the bars. “I want to paint the stars and the moon and the trees and the flowers and the—”

  “And the stones and the pebbles and the rocks and the sand and the—we get the point, Thornapple,” Tonya interrupted. “You wanna know what I want to be someday, Simon?”

  “Not really,” Thorn answered bluntly on Simon’s behalf.

  She gave Thorn a dirty look. “I’m going to be an E.M. Enforcer.”

  “What’s that?” both Simon and Thorn asked at the same time.

  “You’ve never heard of an E.M. Enforcer?”

  “I never heard of E.M. anything until I met you, remember?” Simon answered.

  “Well, an E.M. Enforcer is an elite magician—best of the best—who travels the paraverse and maintains the magical law. I guess you’ve never heard of the king and queen either?”

  “Nope.”

  “Every paraworld has their own government and leaders, but they all answer to the High King for the basic universal laws. King Vaylen is the greatest sorcerer in the paraverse, and he sends the E.M. Enforcers out to enforce the law and to run his secret errands.”

  “What kind of laws are we talking about?” Thorn asked.

  “You know—the basic stuff: misuse of magic, summoning demons, destroying cities—”

  “Well, I’m glad to hear that destroying cities is against the law,” Thorn joked.

  Simon laughed.

  “It’s not that funny,” Tonya chided, “if you happen to live in the city that’s being destroyed.”

  “What do you want to be when you grow up?” Thorn asked Simon.

  “I don’t really know.” Simon thought for a moment. “I think it would be fun to program video games.”

  “You wanna program—video games?” Tonya said as though she were saying a dirty word.

  “Well, I guess I could be the supreme ruler of the universe instead,” Simon said with a chuckle. “That is, unless the position is already filled.”

  Thorn beamed ecstatically. “Tell you what. I’ll paint the worlds and the characters, and you can program them into a video game.” He jumped down from the metal bars. “That reminds me. I brought your stuff.” He opened a large bag and took out Simon’s fanny pack. “Here’s your video game machine—you still need to tell me how to get past level ten—and here’s your glasses—you broke them in your crash, but I fixed them for you. My father says you don’t need glasses, but I think they look cool.”

  Simon put his glasses on, and they instantly suctioned to his face.

  “I improved them,” Thorn said. “They won’t come off unless you press this button to release them.”

  “Wow,” Tonya said facetiously. “You must have a lot of time on your hands.”

  “Okay, kids,” said Nurse Salfree. “Simon needs to get back to work.”

  Simon could barely hold onto the bars another second, so he was relieved when the nurse, a husky woman with bushy hair, suggested that he do some leg exercises on the floor.

  “So, I’ll see you at dinner?” Thorn asked, getting ready to leave.

  “We’ll be there,” Simon responded as the nurse helped him to the floor.

  “Great! Be there at six sharp. See ya later, everyone!” he shouted to the occupants of the room so they’d notice his grand exit.

  “And good riddance,” Tonya said after Thorn had shut the door.

  “What do you have against him?” Simon asked. He raised his leg off the ground for a moment and then put it back down.

  “Thornapple is such a weirdo. Don’t you see how he tries to get everyone to like him? He pretends to have all these friends, but the truth is, nobody likes him.”

  Simon looked at her and said slowly, “Maybe that’s a reason to be his friend.”

  Tonya’s hair turned steel blue. She opened her mouth but said nothing. In fact, she didn’t say much at all unt
il dinner.

  Chapter 8

  Menabaws and Dragunos

  “I hope you like menabaws,” Mrs. Troodle said, carrying a tray full of strange-looking appetizers to the table. “I made them myself.”

  “Sweetie, why don’t you leave the cooking to Har?” Dr. Troodle suggested as he bit into something that resembled a squid.

  “I think it’s good for me to cook every once in a while,” she replied. “It’s kind of fun.”

  Simon picked up a squid and looked at it closely. Three bulbous eyes stared back at him, and a mess of long tentacles dangled from his hand. Suddenly, one of the eyes blinked.

  “Ahhh!” Simon yelled, dropping the squid on the table. It started to squirm away.

  “Must not have cooked that one long enough,” Dr. Troodle said, grabbing the squid and popping it in his mouth. The tentacles thrashed about the doctor’s lips as he chewed. “So,” he said, devouring the appetizer, “what’s for dinner?”

  “Honey, don’t talk with your mouth full,” his wife scolded with a painted-on smile. She then yelled at the top of her lungs, “Har, get in here right now!”

  A large, portly boy rushed into the room, carrying a heavy tray of food. He had a much darker complexion than the other Puds, and he towered over them as well. He was even taller than Tonya—but definitely not skinnier.

  “Sorry, ma’am,” the boy said in a slow sort of drawl.

  “Well, hurry it up,” Mrs. Troodle urged.

  Har served each person at the table. Tonya was first. On her plate lay a mound of long green grass with a multitude of colorful seeds spread about a lonely acorn. Simon shook his head in surprise until he remembered that the food selection on her plate was actually normal for a citizen of Paraworld Chamel. He felt sorry for Tonya because he knew she’d rather be eating a hamburger.

  The adults both had the same meal: a large, black spider with various bits of vegetables surrounding the furry body. The arachnid lay on its back with its foot-long legs sticking up.

  Simon cringed when Dr. Troodle snapped off a leg. The loud crunching sound was reminiscent of a crab shell being cracked open. After savoring the scent for a moment, the doctor bit into the soft, white meat sticking out of the end. While chewing vigorously, he looked up at Simon’s horrified expression and said with a grin, “I’d rather be eating them, instead of them eating me.”