* * *
1 Though Arturo believed these to be webs, they were actually telekinetic manifestations of magical gray ropes that resembled webs. Arturo did not realize it, but his superpowers were actually psychic-based rather than science-based, and thus they conformed to the manner in which he subconsciously wanted them to manifest—in this case, mimicking those of an arachnid due to his obsession with the creatures.
While Arturo is obviously the Multiverse’s attempt at parody of a particularly blatant trope in superhero literature, this author would like to emphasize how fortunate it is that these powers manifested themselves within an innocent boy obsessed with arachnids. If they had instead manifested within one of Arturo’s much more vulgar or obnoxious peers without such an innocent obsession, the result could have easily been a phallus-themed superhero that would have thrust this novel into adults-only territories. Thanks, Multiverse.
2 As Arturo had learned through nearly a dozen encounters with the supervillain, The Hippo Horseman was a former zoologist named Herbie Hicklebottom who had become really, really infatuated with renaissance festivals, going so far as to quit his day job and join the jousting circuit. Unfortunately, at one fateful festival, he had heard that the nearby zoo’s hippopotamuses were sick, and even more unfortunately, there happened to be a radiation leak from a nearby power plant as Herbie entered the cage to check on them, still wearing his full jousting regalia. The leak interacted with something in the cage, exploded, and Herbie found himself no longer a man, but a hippo in knight’s armor. Somehow, the accident also caused his horse to grow wings, his armor to be magically imbued so that it was nearly impervious, and his weapons to glow with irradiated light that allowed him to launch energy beams from them at will.*
* Yes, Herbie and Arturo’s reality is stupid and illogical, but it’s all they know, so don’t be too hard on them.
Chapter 4
DÉJÀ VU IN BINARY
Drillbot had yet to fully define the concept of déjà vu within the ones and zeroes that passed for his internal monologue. However, after a decade of constant war against an evil horde comprised of otherworldly twins of his former master and his former master’s mate, it was hard for every minute not to feel like a repeat of the last.
But he did not really mind the repetition, because he knew only one other short period of existence before this war, and during that brief time, he had teetered on the brink of self-inflicted oblivion when he found his life without purpose. At least in this endless, repetitive war, he felt as though he had purpose.
Drillbot smiled contentedly to himself, though nobody living outside of his mind was likely to perceive it, for Drillbot had no mouth per se. Instead, he had a speaker overlaid in protective steel mesh that covered the lower half of his face. When he smiled his version of smiling, this speaker vibrated on a nearly microscopic level, his red, telescopic eyes retracted about an inch inside his head, and the three radar dishes on the top left side of his head spun slowly counterclockwise rather than clockwise.
Drillbot had no neck, but rather a squat, cylindrical torso extending for five-feet below his round head. Large dials covered the front of his torso. Instead of hips and legs, three mammoth wheels stretched from below the cylindrical torso, and foot-long daggers extended from the spokes of these wheels. Large pipes formed the machine’s arms, and these pipes ended in enormous, diamond-tipped drills. These long arms were so wide and thick that they resembled shiny gorilla arms, if only gorilla arms ended in gargantuan drilling systems instead of forearms and hands.
Drillbot tumbled through the space between realities, a sensation that seemed to agitate his fleshy comrades. Drillbot, however, basked in these moments of respite between the continuous incursions into universe after universe. He twisted as deftly as a twelve-foot tall robot could twist to ensure the foot-long daggers extending from the spokes of his three wheels missed the drifting Arts and Ginnys surrounding him.
Metaphors darted through his mind, a cascade of ones and zeroes forming poetry and higher thought where one would expect naught but efficiency and calculation. Years ago, the travelling bard Art from Earth 707,112 had taught him the skill, using his magical flute to conjure his reality’s version of Ginny, a sentient raincloud attached by a leash to the end of the flute. Ginny contorted her molecules into imagery, and over the span of a few months, the pair had taught Drillbot the finer art of the metaphor, awakening in him a sense of poetry and wonder for which he would be forever thankful.
Unfortunately, this thankfulness would not shirk his need to rend this Art and Ginny limb from limb upon their next meeting. They had been killed during the battle with the Pink One’s forces on Earth 43,188—a reality in which consumption of mushrooms transforms fleshy beings into giants and consumption of flowers gives fleshy beings the ability to launch fire from their fingertips—and afterward had been revived as evil, mindless pink puppets bent on destruction by the pink bear’s cosmic magic. After the aforementioned rending, if Drillbot could escape with their corpses, he would have the Blue One revive them to retake their places by his side within the Army of Life—the name that Drillbot had taken to calling the cosmic blue bear’s army—and they could continue teaching him the finer points of metaphor and poetry.
As Drillbot fell amongst the tumbling Arts and Ginnys through the simultaneously colorless and colorful membrane between realities, he felt like a rain drop within a storm, falling to a beautiful noiseless music. As he thought about music, his smile turned into a grin—his speaker vibrated faster, his telescopic eyes retracted another inch, his radar dishes spun faster in a counterclockwise direction. He mimed straightening the dials that stretched down the front of his torso as though they were buttons on a tuxedo shirt. He then made a sound as though clearing his throat and raised his arms before him. He waved his massive, diamond-encrusted drill bits up and down and side to side, pantomiming the moves of the symphony conductor version of Ginny from Earth 92,444. As he pretended to conduct the chaotic, tumultuous tumble of the army around him, he lost himself in his opus. The Arts and Ginnys nearby looked at him in confusion, but Drillbot ignored them and continued conducting, himself the conductor and them metaphorical notes within a cosmic orchestra to which only he seemed privy.
Drillbot and the Blue One had recruited this tumbling, ragtag horde of thousands of versions of Arts and Ginnys either by resurrecting them after the Pink One destroyed their realities, killing them while they were zombified puppets of the Pink One and reviving them afterward, or—on the occasions when Drillbot and the blue bear entered a reality prior to the pink hordes—convincing them to join by warning them of the imminent invasion of their realities by the destructive pink army.
Drillbot saw cosmic white bubbles form in the infinite abyss below the tumbling Army of Life. He conducted a few more staccato notes and then mimed cutting off the symphony at the end of the show, for he knew that the bubbles were the sign that this beautiful, cosmic symphony was about to be superseded by the mundane, bloody work of war.
Drillbot bent his cylindrical torso forward in a mock bow. Then he rolled to face the impending white bubbles and switched on his drills, readying himself to immediately jump into battle just in case one was already underway on the reality that the Army of Life was about to enter. The robotic sound of his whirring drills stood in stark contrast to the splendor of the symphony that had been playing in his head mere moments ago.
*
Drillbot and company fell from the cosmic bubbles and landed amidst a battle, death and destruction already sprawled across the city that surrounded them. A pale Art wearing a black cape and brandishing fangs the size of a small cat leapt at Drillbot as soon as the robot’s wheels touched down upon the hard concrete.
Drillbot shredded this Art in twain, as he had done probably three-dozen times before, and then stabbed it through its only weak spot: the heart. The pinkness that enshrouded this Art’s eyes faded, leaving only a lifeless corpse. Drillbot rolled south past the corpse, knowi
ng without needing to look that the Revival Corps within the Army of Life would be quick at work behind him, ferrying the corpse to the cosmic blue bear to be revived and to rejoin the ranks of the Army of Life, only to likely be killed once more very soon, only to then be reanimated as a puppet in the cosmic pink bear’s army, only to then be killed once more in battle by Drillbot or a random Art or Ginny, only to then be revived by the cosmic blue bear to rejoin the ranks of the Army of Life. Only to go on like that ad infinitum. Drillbot sighed.
Drillbot’s engines roared full steam ahead. His tires squealed as he dodged an energy spear hurled from the arm of a random Ginny corpse-puppet. He raced toward the carnage at the end of the street, where a gigantic pink blob loomed thirty-stories tall, and behind which a humongous, flying submarine crashed to the ground and knocked over dozens of buildings.
On his back not half a block down the street was the current object of the blob’s attention, a young male in a yellow bodysuit streaked with purple stripes, pinned to the ground by four gigantic pink spikes like he was some highly unfashionable insect in a giant entomologist’s collection. Drillbot did not need the sensors within his system to blare the boy’s identity to him—because the attention from the pink blob was clue enough—but that did not stop the system from sounding alarms within him, anyway. Drillbot could see the boy had but seconds to live, and thus Drillbot knew there were mere moments left to join the battle over the body before the boy became the property of the Pink One.
As the boy gasped his last breath, Drillbot zoomed between the boy’s body and the pink blob, which was controlled by the Ginny that was his former master’s mate.
Drillbot watched with upraised drills as she extended a tentacle that had no tip. Drillbot knew this move well, because she was never careful to conceal her movements, relying instead on brute force and numbers to give her an advantage. This tentacle would be the one she would use to spray the mist that would turn the boy into a puppet. Any second now, Ginny’s army would be leaping at Drillbot’s flanks from amidst the buildings, hoping to distract him long enough for her to claim this new victim. He could only hope that a detachment of his own forces was close enough behind to intercept them and keep them occupied, for he could not take his eyes from the tentacle if he were to have any hope of winning this skirmish. The sound of a battle cry from the barbarian version of Art from Earth 6,092 indicated to him that Robot Fortune had been kind to him today, that his backup was in place to protect his flanks. Drillbot smiled his version of a smile.
The tentacle feinted right while a second tentacle—its tip the size and shape of a bulldozer—smashed down at Drillbot. He dodged it easily. A third tentacle swiped in from the left, and he ripped it apart with his drills. The mist-tentacle zoomed up into the air, changed direction, and then darted down at the boy. Drillbot launched himself into the air and parried this tentacle with his right drill. Then he fell back toward the ground.
He frowned—a gesture that consisted of his mouth-speaker retracting slightly, his telescopic eyes vibrating, and his radar dishes wobbling to-and-fro—when his left tire landed on something simultaneously crunchy and meaty. The Ginny within the blob shrieked with laughter. Drillbot had no time as yet to glance down, instead parrying the attacks of a few more tentacles. When he finally saw an opening, he initialized an attack by calling out, “[whir] Initiate starboard arm sequence – CLACK – arm sequence number zero-one-one.” He then felt an explosion just below the drill in his right arm. He aimed the point of the drill toward the center of the pink blob, and the drill on that appendage launched from the arm, a rocket of drilling carnage.
The drill plowed through the pink membrane of the blob. Drillbot smiled his version of a smile as he dodged another tentacle. His drills seemed to be one of the few things in the Multiverse capable of piercing the cursed pink blob’s membrane3. The drill-rocket careened through the pink blob toward Regular-Ginny, and when at last it came near enough that she was too distracted by dodging it to continue pressing her attack on him, Drillbot swiped away the pink spikes pinning the boy to the ground. Then he reached down to pick up the corpse of this reality’s Art.
“[whir] Da – CLACK – Da – CLACK – Damn,” he exclaimed. He must have landed on the boy’s head during his fall, as the boy’s cranium had been crushed and his brains were scattered across the pavement. Drillbot remembered an old proverb he had crafted years ago: every day in life is either a one or a zero, and you just hope that by the end of it, your code is full of more ones than zeroes. Today looked like a pretty massive zero in this Art’s ledger.
In a rush, Drillbot scooped the brains into the skull as best he could, hefted the boy up with his left arm, and raced back the way he had come, knowing that any second now, his drill would finish passing through Ginny’s blob and she would be returning her attention to him and this Art.
Drillbot’s wheel-daggers tore through many of the pink army’s puppets when they attempted harassment on his retreat, and soon, he found himself back at the cosmic bubbles from whence the Army of Life had emerged. He unceremoniously tossed the boy’s body into the nearest one, saving him from the Pink One’s puppetry and sending him into the abyss between realities to be reanimated by the blue bear to join the Army of Life in this endless war.
Drillbot turned back toward the battle. Regular-Ginny rampaged toward him, knocking over buildings in her fury. All around her, the Army of Life was murdering zombified Arts and Ginnys, while the pink army was dealing equal death in return. Drillbot’s drill-rocket followed its homing beacon and landed in place back at the end of his arm.
The blob slapped a giant tentacle down at him. He backflipped through the air, dodging it. He noticed the thirty-foot tall cyclopean Art of Earth 29 crush a nearby Ginny-puppet with his club—which was fashioned from a tree trunk—and then toss the mangled corpse into a cosmic white bubble for later resurrection. Drillbot called to this cyclopean Art, Drillbot called to this cyclopean Art, “[whir] Artclops, Drillbot – CLACK – Drillbot – CLACK – Drillbot requires assistance!”
As he had been trained when given this command, Artclops smacked Drillbot with his club as though swinging a golf club—a move taught to the duo by the professional golfer version of Ginny from Earth 8,745,111,021, who had spent her time prior to recruitment into the Army of Life travelling from city to city on her home earth, solving mysteries with her set of golf clubs that were haunted by her wacky uncles, two of whom had been clowns prior to death, one of whom had been a racist ice-cream truck driver, one of whom had been an overly sensitive southern gentleman, and two of whom had been amateur opera singers. This maneuver knocked Drillbot high into the air. He landed drills-first with a sploosh against the membrane of the pink blob.
And with much fierceness, but also with the earlier sense of déjà vu for which he had no robotic definition, he began stabbing at the pink monstrosity.
* * *
3 Drillbot assumed this ability to penetrate the pink blob’s membrane was due to his close association with the cosmic Blue One. While this was not a bad assumption—for the cosmic bear had provided many upgrades over the last decade to the robot’s systems and his ability to wreak havoc on an enemy—this particular capability was due to the nature of his creation at the hands of Normal-Art and the Creationvil, which had scanned the Multiverse and formed Drillbot as the perfect digging instrument. Drillbot’s drills could thus penetrate anything in the Multiverse, because their tips were formed from the skulls of a tiny species of diamond-people whose skulls were the hardest substance in the Multiverse.
Chapter 5
STOP HITTING YOURSELF
Regular-Ginny squealed in frustration. The maddening robot with drills for arms had made another appearance in her life, and to top it off, she had lost her potential Art-puppet to it. As the robot landed upon her pink membrane, she felt a strong sense of déjà vu, mainly because nearly this exact scenario had played out many times before with many different Arts and Ginnys. Sometimes she won, and
the robot retreated. Sometimes the robot won, and she forced a hasty retreat. She heaved a sigh.
And just like every other time in the past when she began to feel trapped and exhausted by dreadful claustrophobia caused by an eternity of repetition, just when she began to slow her attacks and pull her punches because everything felt pointless, a fresh wave of pink swirled through her veins and flooded her heart with hatred and wrath, drowning the weary déjà vu beneath a murderous deluge. And then she hated the stupid robot more than ever.
She whipped at the robot with a wide, flat tentacle, but it backflipped out of reach and landed back in place atop her blob nary the worse for wear. She then created a few dozen tiny phalanges and twisted them through the spokes of the robot’s wheels, locking it in place. She wrapped a couple tentacles around the base of a nearby building and ripped it from its foundation. She raised the building high into the air, and then she slammed it down on top of herself where the robot was being held in place.
Screams and blood and dust and chaos erupted from the building as it was dashed into pieces against the unmoving pink blob. Pink tendrils tickled Regular-Ginny’s heart, and she squealed with hateful joy. When the dust began to clear, and the screams dissipated from the people who mere moments ago had lived within that brownstone, Regular-Ginny discovered that the robot remained in place and intact, its drills raised above its head and spinning their damned spinniest.
“[whir] Stop – CLACK – Stop – CLACK – Stop hitting yourself!” chided the robot, now slicing its tires free of Regular-Ginny’s pink phalanges.
Regular-Ginny cursed. She leapt, and the blob mimicked her, jumping high into the air. She twisted so that the robot was directly between the membrane and the ground, intending to crush it beneath the blob’s weight. Instead, as she crashed into the ground and left a crater below her, she realized that the robot had removed itself from harm’s way by tunneling through the blob directly toward her. She cursed again.
The Endless War That Never Ends Page 4
