When the robot neared her, she created a current within the pink to push her perpendicularly down from her current position. Within fractions of a second, she was near the ground on the opposite side of the blob from the robot.
“[whir] Sigh – CLACK – Sigh,” muttered the robot, its voice reverberating through the pink blob. “Different earth, same – CLACK – same game. Drillbot will play again if – CLACK – if Ginny insists.”
The robot changed direction and torpedoed toward Ginny, its murderous drills pointed directly at her and closing fast. She held her arms in front of her and began twisting them in small circles. The machine began to sigh once more. Ginny did not wait for another snide comment from the machine. Instead, she willed the pink blob in front of her to spin round and round in mimic of her twirling arms. Within the pinkness, two grand tornadoes formed and then exploded out toward the robot. As they connected with the robot, it was flung backward end over end and away from her. She compelled the tornadoes to extend high into the sky. The robot bounced back and forth between the twin tornadoes, buffeting between each swirling pink storm in dizzying frenzy.
Seconds later, when the robot had been spun round and round all the way to the top of the pink tornadoes where they now danced amongst the clouds, Ginny called out, “Reserves, to me! Form a circle twenty-yards in diameter!”
At her behest, Arthur the Putrid glided into view from the northwest, holding the ends of his robe out to his sides and flapping his arms like birds’ wings. Pausing momentarily between Ginny and the sun, this hated creature made the most ridiculous silhouette she had ever seen. Nearly four-dozen puppets who had the ability to fly followed him, and this unit swooped down to land gently upon the cracked cement near Regular-Ginny. They formed into a wide circle.
As in every battle, Arthur the Putrid led the reserve forces, a marauding group of forty-four Arts and Ginnys who could all fly and thus could quickly reach areas of the battlefield that needed reinforcements. His crew included a few standouts whose kill counts were near the top of the entire Pink Marauder army: the Art with a ring that created solid images of purple light, which he shaped into anything he could imagine (and apparently the pink mist that clouded his mind caused him to imagine horrifying tools of death, including his current tool of choice: the B-52 bomber he was piloting that shot vampire-kittens instead of bullets from its gun turrets), the Ginny whose weapon of choice was a longbow that fired flaming arrows and around whose feet were strapped two magical flying bunnies, the thunder god Art whose hammer allowed him to fly at will and whose tiny horns poked out cutely from the red mullet that stretched down his back, the Ginny in a suit of steel plate armor whose lower half transformed into a fiery jet engine that launched her in a straight line until she crashed into something, at which point she returned to normal and could launch once more, the Art carried aloft by a magical colony of seagulls that rained down flaming excrement at his command, and the Ginny who carried an enchanted samurai sword, which she used to spin herself in circles so fast that she transformed into a flying tornado of bladed death.
Arthur the Putrid had begun calling the group The Death Cavalry, but Ginny thought that name was rather boring and uncreative. During one of their many tumbles between realities on the way to yet another earth that they inevitably conquered, Ginny had suggested to him the moniker The Forty-Four Horsemen of the Pinkpocalypse, since the group’s number was consistently held to forty-four—a number that Arthur the Putrid claimed had magical significance on his earth—and brought apocalypse to whatever planet on which they were unleashed. She could tell by the twinkling in his eye that he wished he had thought of it, but he instead dismissed the idea outright and pretended to hate it.
A pink tickle in her brain brought Regular-Ginny’s attention back to the battle. She lifted her right arm and then slammed it down. The tornadoes she had created raised slightly higher into the clouds, and then the tops of them slammed down onto the ground in the middle of Arthur the Putrid’s contingent of reserves. The robot lay in a newly formed crater.
“[whir] Ouch,” said the robot, rising from its prone position back onto its wheels. Other than superficial dents, scrapes, and the occasional loose cog or gear, the robot seemed not that much the worse for wear. Even more frustrating to Regular-Ginny, it seemed unconcerned with the deadly opponents that now encircled it. Its drills roared furiously.
“Attack!” screamed Regular-Ginny.
Instead, Arthur the Putrid made no move. Nor did the puppets around him. Regular-Ginny stared with her mouth agape. Though she had willed these forty-four pink puppets to follow Arthur the Putrid and assist him as he commanded, they were her minions and had never before disobeyed her direct orders, even when they contradicted his.
“I said to attack!” screamed Ginny once more.
The puppets began to twitch and moved forward a few inches. Arthur the Putrid again made no move to attack. Instead, he raised his hands. On each hand, he had twisted his thumb down to touch his wrist and had seemingly dislocated the joints of his middle fingers to wrap thrice around his ring fingers. He waved the hands in a counterclockwise motion. The eyes of the puppets momentarily flashed green, and they stopped moving forward.
“In my life before entering the Pink One’s service, I encountered the type of magic at play in this robot,” said Arthur the Putrid. “Give me a few moments, and the machine shall fall under my spell. Just think how owning a powerful tool such as that will turn the tides of this war in our favor. We can achieve victory in no time, and we can spread our scourge unchecked across the Multiverse!”
“How dare you, you arrogant fool!” screamed Ginny so loudly that she thought she might go deaf. “You think I’m too stupid to realize what you’re trying to do here? You think because you use words like ‘our’ and ‘we,’ I won’t see through your ploy? If you thought I wouldn’t recognize this attempt to undermine me before the Pink One and eventually use this robot to murder me, then you are a greater fool than you look! Now release my puppets! They are mine to control, and you are mine to command! You do not have permission to override my orders to them, and you do not have permission to give me advice!”
Rage at Arthur the Putrid’s hubris overwhelmed her, and the pink in her veins amplified this rage into a hurricane of wrath that collided with her brain. She realized with sudden clarity that she would need to teach Arthur the Putrid a lesson at once, or he would never respect her, and thus he would continue to insert his stratagems when they were not requested and continue to use his magic to wrest control of her puppets without permission. She decided that her lesson should be swift and deadly and utterly final. She raised a wide, flat tentacle to squash him like a putrid bug.
However, the robot did not wait for Ginny to act. Instead, it leapt at Arthur the Putrid. Arthur the Putrid twisted his hands into a new gesture in response, creating an energy shield between himself and the robot. Regular-Ginny gestured with her own hand, and her pink tentacle plummeted toward them both.
But then, before any of the trio could connect with any attack, bright white lightning flashed in the sky, and even more hell broke loose.
Chapter 6
THE BEGINNING OF THE ENDLESS
Normal-Art watched in silence as Officer-Art stood from the captain’s chair and walked to Officer-Ginny’s navigation station on the starboard side of the bridge. Officer-Art stood over her shoulder and watched her work. Her fingers danced across the keyboard. The station flashed with dozens of green and red lights, which Normal-Art understood not at all.
“The Binnacle indicates that we need to veer port once we pass reality 2,309,” said Officer-Ginny, not looking up from her station. Her eagle sat perched on her shoulder and leaned over her station, studying the console in unison with her and cooing into her ear.
“Very well,” replied Officer-Art. “Relay the instructions to the fleet.”
Officer-Art stared out the front view screen. He clicked the heels of his boots together, a frequent habit wit
h which Normal-Art had grown increasingly annoyed throughout these last nearly ten years of captivity. The gesture seemed to be a nervous tick, almost a fascist version of a nervous eye twitch. Normal-Art considered sighing, but he caught himself before letting loose his foul breath. Multiple scars and mangled minor appendages had taught him to refrain from making any sort of noise while on the bridge, especially just before a major battle.
Through the view screen on the bridge of the Bureau Shift-Ship Carrier Mimessiah—or the B.S.S.C. Mimessiah for short—Normal-Art stared at the now-familiar sight of the realm between realities, an expanse that was both infinitely colorful and bleakly colorless. From what Normal-Art had overheard during his long incarceration on this ship, the massive aircraft-carrier sized vessel had been named in honor of the savior-mime from Earth 262,144, who had pretended to sacrifice his body to save his earth’s inhabitants, all of whom had simultaneously pretended to be trapped in an invisible box. Normal-Art frowned, because he did not care about any of the above information concerning the ship, but it unfortunately clogged up space in his brain. He frowned harder and tried to concentrate on something else.
Normal-Art watched holographic circles and numbers appear and expand to label the realities past which the fleet zoomed. Normal-Art saw a 56,708 drift past the starboard side of the ship, then a 95,555, and then on the port side of the ship, a 2,309 appeared. Once the ship passed it, Normal-Art listened for the now-familiar sound of the Reality Rudder cutting through the expanse between realities as it shifted positions to steer the ship in a new direction. Normal-Art could best describe the noise as what he would expect a litter of newborn banshees to sound like.
Normal-Art wished he could cover his ears, but his hands had been encased in heavy plaster and he had little motor control over the clumsy things. Officer-Art had ordered the plaster bindings placed on him after he had attempted to put himself out of his misery sometime during his eighth year of captivity. Normal-Art’s shoulders slumped. In the decade since the mischief-god-version of himself had conned him into abandoning his couch for an adventure, he had experienced enough tragedy to last a thousand lifetimes. But this stretch in B.I.T. captivity was by far the worst period of his entire life—and this was coming from a guy who had both worked at the Department of Motor Vehicles and swam for nearly an eternity in a Reality Lantern.
Before he could stifle it, a cough escaped Normal-Art’s throat, a nagging symptom that had plagued him for some years now. Officer-Art twisted to face him and glared. Normal-Art stared at the ground in silence, hoping against hope that the bastard would be too preoccupied by the task before him to divert any time for torture.
To Normal-Art’s delight, Officer-Art turned back toward the view screen. Normal-Art nearly squealed with joy, but he caught himself before the sound escaped his lips. There was a zero-percent likelihood of such torture-avoiding luck twice in a row.
Officer-Art walked a few steps forward so that the view screen at the front of the bridge completely comprised his field of vision. He clicked his heels together and clasped his hands behind his back. His eagle sat perched on his shoulder. The man would have looked positively regal if the bird had not chosen this exact time to defecate on his shoulder. And Normal-Art probably would have found the eagle’s gesture quite hilarious if it were in fact novel, but the whitish-brownish glob merely joined a dry and crusty trail that already existed on the back of the man’s uniform.
Officer-Art cleared his throat. “Agent 29333, connect video comms with the men.”
Officer-Ginny cleared her throat back at him.
Officer-Art sighed. “And the women, too.”
A uniformed officer at a different station cleared its throat. This officer had a beautiful elven face with a black half-goatee that only covered its left cheek. This throat clearing was followed by yet another uniformed officer at a different station clearing yet another throat. This officer had an elven face equally as beautiful as the last, except it had a white vein that stretched across its right cheek that looked like a white half-goatee.
Officer-Art sighed yet again. “And the ambigender species, and the non-gendered species, too.”
“Aye, aye, sir,” said Officer-Ginny.
The infinite expanse of the Barrier—the B.I.T.’s official name for the realm between realities—disappeared from the view screen, replaced by an abstract painting. Normal-Art squinted, and upon closer inspection, realized it was not a painting at all, but instead millions of pixels, each featuring a tiny video image of a different agent in the B.I.T. Some agents were dressed in officer’s uniforms similar to Officer-Art’s, while others wore pilot uniforms or camouflaged marine gear. In unison, every pixelated little commando said, “Sir?”
“Men, women, ambigender species, and non-gendered species, in exactly four minutes, we shall exit The Barrier and make earthfall in dimension 616,000. Many of you have already faced this threat that looms before us. All of us have lost comrades to this war. But today, we finally have the chance to gain the upper hand and turn the tide, to mark the beginning of the end of this endless cosmic war between Life and Death. You have all been briefed on our strategy and our weapons upgrades. Use them with utter abandon. Refrain from killing innocents where you can, but rip this reality to shreds if that is what it takes to stop this war,” exclaimed Officer-Art, raising a fist to shake it emphatically. Officer-Ginny cleared her throat again, but Officer-Art ignored her. “So, cry whatever word translates to havoc in your native tongue, and let loose the dogs of war, or whatever equivalent idiom resonates with you. Who is with me?”
None of the tiny faces on the view screen responded other than to either appear confused or to gesture toward its ears. Officer-Art gestured even more emphatically with his raised fist. “I said, who is with me?” he cried, louder this time.
Again, he was met with no audible cheering, so he turned and glared at Officer-Ginny. “Why are the troops not cheering, Agent 29333?” he demanded. “You know that the cheering is my favorite part.”
Officer-Ginny scowled. “Because your microphone is not on, sir. These video calls default to starting on mute in case we are discussing classified information. That’s why I keep suggesting that you stay in your chair until the video connection is active so that you can disengage the muting functionality, since that is part of your duty as captain of this ship.”
Officer-Art returned her scowl. He opened his mouth and began to reply, but instead stomped back over to the captain’s chair, slammed his palm onto a blinking red button, and spun on his heel to face the view screen once more.
He repeated his speech nearly word for word, replacing the aforementioned four-minute window to attack with a decidedly shorter one. This time, cheers erupted when he finished his speech. Officer-Art pressed a button to close the video connection with the troops, and the infinite expanse of the barrier between realities once more filled the view screen at the front of the bridge. As the cheers disappeared into silence, Officer-Art’s eagle flapped its wings and took to the air. Officer-Ginny’s followed, along with an eagle belonging to each of the other officers on the bridge—the two who had cleared their throats earlier and four others, including a young wide-eyed teenager, a dark-skinned woman, a red-haired humanoid with alien ridges across its brow, and a pale cyborg. The eight eagles surrounded a pole that dangled down from the ceiling of the bridge.
Lightning burst forth from the antennae of Officer-Art’s eagle, and the crackling bolt leapt to the antennae of Officer-Ginny’s eagle, where it mixed together with lightning from this creature to form an even larger bolt that leapt across to the antennae of the next eagle. In this fashion, the bolt of lightning passed from eagle to eagle and grew exponentially in size, finally erupting from the last eagle to crash into the pole hanging from the ceiling.
The vacuum created by the lightning hurt Normal-Art’s ears, and the thunderous noise made him feel like his ears might bleed, and like so many times since leaving his home so long ago, he wished it would stop
and he could just relax.
Instead, the lightning disappeared into the metal and reappeared out in front of the ship, forming a white cyclone of lightning. Normal-Art could see similar cyclones emanating from the other ships in the fleet out there in the colorful-colorless barrier between realities. Within moments, the lightning-cyclone filled the entire field of vision in front of the B.S.S.C. Mimessiah, and all Normal-Art could see was blinding white light.
*
Normal-Art watched as a city filled the view screen. The city sprawled in a gridded expanse that reminded him of the New York City from his home reality, if only the skyscrapers in his earth’s New York City were topped with outrageous symbols or trademarked logos like “Vengeance Corps” or “Y-Peoples” or “Fairness League” or “Captain USA’s Justice Brigade.”
Chaos had overwhelmed the city below, and a swath of fiery destruction was quickly spreading across it. Amidst the chaos, Normal-Art spotted the woman who had been dragged along with him into this endless Multiversal ordeal. She was encased within her kaiju-sized pink blob—her weapon of choice these past ten years—and was gesticulating with such erratic movements that even from this height, he could tell that she was furious. Her attention was focused on the skirmish in which she was currently engaged, but as the B.I.T. fleet appeared in the sky upon its storm of lightning, that quickly changed. Dozens of tendrils erupted from her pink blob and pointed hateful phalanges toward the B.I.T. fleet. Hundreds of humanoids with pink eyes ceased their battles with the Blue One’s army, leaping from the ground and taking to the sky in flight.
On the ground near the pink blob, Normal-Art spotted a robot that seemed little more than a mechanical insect from this distance. It began gesturing wildly toward the B.I.T. fleet. Hundreds more humanoids ceased their battling to leap from the ground and take to the sky in flight. Normal-Art stifled a sigh, knowing that the robot down there would be none other than his old companion, Drillbot. As Normal-Art stared at the robot, he wished more than ever that he could go back in time and make a different choice when the blue bear had asked him to join its crusade. If he could do it all again, he would say yes to the bear, joining its side in this war against the pink bear. The intervening years would likely have been just as tedious, but at least there would have been less torture.
The Endless War That Never Ends Page 5
