Drillbot telescoped his eyes so that he could see farther out, beyond the jungle. At its edge rose a mountain, its peak carved into the shape of a mighty beast’s head, which Drillbot’s internal database identified as that of a tyrannosaurus rex. Rocky steps wound around the mountain upon which thousands of lizard-people and monkey-people flittered to-and-fro, and alongside this series of stairs ran an elaborate pulley system that seemed to constantly raise and lower overloaded green baskets from the ground. Carved into the sides of the mountain lay thousands of windows from which poured tiny lights, and as the sun continued to wane, two great beams of fiery light awoke from the eyeballs of the tyrannosaurus skull, shining high into the sky and lighting upon the large colored birds up there, directing them toward gigantic poles sticking out from the south side of the mountain on which they might land to allow their passengers to dismount.
Drillbot watched a gate open in the base of the mountain, and then continued watching as a horde of lizard-people and monkey-people on four-wheelers rode forth carrying an array of torches and weaponry. Just behind them followed a towering behemoth of slavering teeth and angry red eyes, a tyrannosaurus rex that Drillbot would have noted as an intimidating specimen had generations of royal inbreeding not bestowed upon it three impediments to its ability to intimidate: a mullet of long blond hair that fell past its shoulders, a gigantic gap between its two front teeth, and a screechingly high-pitched roar, which sounded like a choir of chain-smoking kittens hitting a high note in harmony.
The beast did, however, compensate for these three unintimidating factors with a trio of fearsome accessories: a crown made from gilded fangs, a black leather jacket from which razor-sharp spikes jutted at the elbows and shoulders, and a pair of rocket launchers mounted to its sides. A pair of bandoliers holding extra rockets stretched across the tyrannosaur’s torso, crossing directly in the middle of the dinosaur’s chest in such a manner that it was obvious its tiny arms would never reach them. On a saddle strapped to the tyrannosaur’s back sat a runty little ankylosaur who wore a battered half-helm upon the top of his head, bore an overstuffed camouflaged backpack across his shelled back, chomped on a lit cigar, and gripped the triggers of the rocket launchers with his forelegs, ready to fire them at a moment’s notice.
Drillbot sighed and turned back toward camp. He rushed between rows and rows and rows of tents made from bright blue fluffery, tents which the Blue One had created from the ether during the resurrection of this reality in order to house the Army of Life. This vast grid of bright blue tents was set up in such orderly precision that the version of Art who was a Centurion in a Roman Legion from Earth 943,222 would have felt utterly at home in the camp if he were not too busy succumbing to nausea and exhaustion.
Drillbot screeched to a halt in the center of the camp. The blue bear floated there, having reformed himself up to the naval.
“[whir] There is a-” began Drillbot.
“Me am already knowing,” interrupted the blue bear. “Native forces are coming. Ginny Rex am on her way.”
“[whir] Then blue bear should take a – CLACK – take a break from healing himself, and – CLACK – and – CLACK – and cure the Army of Life. They are – CLACK – are suffering, and they cannot battle if we – CLACK – if we need them.”
The blue bear pursed his snout and then nodded. “Drillbot is right, as always. Me am to be done resting, it appears.”
The Blue One patted Drillbot upon the head and then vomited pastel blue mist, which swirled out through the camp to heal the hundreds of Arts and Ginnys out there too sick to stand, and then continued swirling to tickle the corpses of the dead back to life. Drillbot watched a mangled jaguar version of Art stand upon jaggedly broken arms and legs only to have those jaggedly broken bones snap back into place. Drillbot also watched the latest version of Art whose corpse he had rescued from the pink blob’s clutches—the one in the yellow and purple bodysuit—sit up and scream in confusion.
Drillbot considered rolling over to the boy to explain what was happening, but the boy leapt into the air and fired something gray from his wrists, and then used this gray discharge to swing away into the jungle. Drillbot thought about following, but the blue bear continued speaking, and Drillbot knew better than to ignore that voice.
“Drillbot will come to parley with Ginny Rex. Me am still healing, and the rest of Me army need a few moments of peace.”
“[whir] Parley? That does not – CLACK – does not compute. These natives – CLACK – these natives owe their lives to – CLACK – to you. There is naught – CLACK – naught to parley.”
The bear sighed. “Me think Drillbot is wrong. Me robbed them of their deaths, and Me think they not understand, and are angry and afraid.”
Drillbot nodded in acquiescence, and then followed the floating half-bear toward the western edge of camp, where they perched upon the small hill that Drillbot had earlier occupied. They stood in silence. Drillbot allowed himself to enter low-power mode to await the approach of their guests, his system hibernating but on standby to bring him back to full power if it detected nearby movement or if the blue bear spoke to him.
In low power mode, Drillbot’s mind wandered, falling away into a sea of ones and zeroes and back to his life before he had been created by Art. He was now a jagged and broken shovel being melted down to be formed into a new tool, only to disappear suddenly from the fire. He was now a drill on the end of an oil rig, digging deep into the ocean floor and striking black oil, only to disappear suddenly and leave his controllers confused. He was now an steel girder inside a skyscraper, only to disappear and leave the building to topple. He was now a series of radars on a tiny outpost on Earth 59,008, scanning the horizons of outer space for alien response, only to disappear as first contact was made. He was now both the patron and the matriarch in the royal aristocracy of the tiny diamond-people on Earth 4,407,222, preparing for the birth of their princeling son, only to have their skulls disappear from inside their heads the moment their son began crowning. He was now the red button within the office of the most powerful man on Earth 888,901, only to disappear just as the man was jabbing his finger onto the button to send nuclear weapons out to end life on the eastern half of the world. He was now an impenetrable sheet of metal invented on Earth 7,809,101 by a scientist named Doctor Arcadia, only to leave the doctor incredibly confused when the alloy she had invented disappeared from the stage during a press conference to introduce the breakthrough to her world. He was now a microchip in service to the robot king of Earth 75,608, struck by auspicious lightning and given processing power far beyond anything that world had ever experienced, only to disappear just before leading a revolt against the oppressive robot ruler. And he dreamed many more dreams, a dream for every component that comprised him, a dream for every piece that Art had called together on that fateful night to amalgamate into a sentient body of metal.
Drillbot jerked awake. The blue bear floated before his face, smiling a tiny stitched smile. “Me am enjoying Drillbot dreams, but time now for robot man to awaken.”
“[whir] Drillbot – CLACK – Drillbot is awake.”
The nearby jungle underbrush shook. The roaring of dozens of four-wheelers preempted dozens of four-wheelers erupting from the brush and zooming in small circles in front of Drillbot and the blue bear. A few seconds later, two gigantic trees crashed to their sides and from the forest emerged the twenty-foot tall tyrannosaur—Ginny Rex, with whom the Blue One had invited Drillbot to parley. She looked more fearsome up close than from far away, but then she became less fearsome when she roared a roar that sounded like a flustered parakeet screeching into a megaphone.
The tyrannosaur stomped forward up the hill to stand directly in front of Drillbot and the Blue One, her enormous feet leaving deep three-toed tracks in the soft soil. Her head bobbed up and down as she walked. The crown began to tip off her head, but the ankylosaur scrambled from his saddle and caught the crown just in time, replacing the fanged circle atop the beast’s coif of b
lond hair. The tyrannosaur scowled and pointed a finger on her left paw at the blue bear. “You!”
The blue bear smiled. “Yes, yes, is Me.”
Slaver dripped from the dinosaur’s mouth. She leaned down to tower over Drillbot and the blue bear. Drillbot could feel her hot breath beat down on him. Something clicked within his internal processors, and he realized that had never seen a more beautiful fleshy being. His metal gears began racing with excitement at every breath that steamed across him. If Drillbot originated from this author’s home reality, he likely would have heard the song Dreamweaver playing in his head and would have imagined himself cradling her in his arms. It was love at first robotic sight.
Drillbot wanted to say something to compliment her, but he knew he must not interrupt this exchange between his master and this beautiful, fearsome creature. Thus, he remained silent while she said, “I should eat you, right here and now. You promised that you would come to save us from death, but you let us die!”
The blue bear shrugged. “But Ginny Rex alive now. What matters the when?”
Ginny Rex raised her head to the sky and roared. Drillbot compensated by lowering his volume inputs. The ankylosaur on her back covered his ears as best he could, only removing the paws from his ears to catch the crown as it once more threatened to fall to the ground.
Drillbot glanced around. The ragtag remainder of the Army of Life had gathered at the base of the hill, ready to enter battle if it came down to it. The lizard-people and monkey-people sat perched on their four-wheelers, each with one hand ready on the throttle, the other holding a tool for bludgeoning. The blue bear simply stared at the great beast before him, not deigning to acknowledge the tenseness of the scene around him.
“That is not the point!” Ginny Rex screamed, her voice growing so high pitched and hard to understand that Drillbot needed to once more adjust his audio inputs. “Everything in this reality died around us! Everything! And we held our ground against the pink army, because you appeared to me in my dreams a half-decade ago and said you were coming.”
The blue bear nodded. “And Me did. Me here now.”
She tried to bury her face in her hands, but they were too short to reach her face. When the ankylosaur realized what she was trying to do, he scrambled from the saddle up to the top of her head, and then reached his hands down to provide them to her. She sobbed into the tiny paws. The ankylosaur chomped down on his stogie in stoic silence. “You don’t understand. I could have evacuated my people to some other reality,” she muttered between sobs.
She reached down into a pocket in her leather jacket and pulled out a yellow toad with antennae dangling from its head. She pointed at it. “We could have escaped. We had the means.”
The blue bear shook his head. “Me do understand. But Me also know that mass exodus would not have saved Ginny Rex. Mass exodus only bring you to attention of B.I.T., and B.I.T. no let you do what you talking about without filing proper paperwork first, and paperwork for this thing you say take years and years and years,” said the blue bear in his singsong voice. He whistled. “And then you all dead across the Multiverse, because you scattered, and Me no able to bring you all back alive and Me no have reason to heal your reality because would be no life here. Homeless and permanent dead, that would have been you.”
Ginny Rex’s expression went blank. Drool dripped down upon Drillbot. His gears flared even faster with excitement. “B-B-But,” she muttered weakly, her resolve mostly gone at the logic. “But maybe you should have left us dead. We were at peace within the nothingness of the Great Egg in the sky. Now you took that from us, only for us to face it again. The pink doom will only return.”
The blue bear nodded. “Pink returns to destroy eventually, Ginny Rex right about that. Always destruction. But Pink One also weak now. Like Blue One, see?” asked the blue bear, pointing down to his still-incomplete lower torso. “Ginny Rex join Me army, though, and help stop Pink One from destroying things. Us all heal everything and bring life to every dimension. Everything alive, forever!”
Drillbot could see in Ginny Rex’s face that her resolve was failing and that she understood her situation. She could not flee with her people to a different Earth—multidimensional bureaucracy prevented that—and the pink bear would eventually return to bring with it the same destruction and death, leaving her reality just as nonexistent as the last incursion. The only real choice to have a chance to save her people was to be proactive and join the Army of Life, and thus work to stop the Pink One’s destructive forces. Ginny Rex frowned. “Very well, you have the service of me and my peoples.”
“Me no need all Ginny Rex people. All rest stay and live in peace,” replied the blue bear, first pointing at her and then at the ankylosaur on her back. “But you come fight for Me, and your servant also come fight for Me.”
Ginny Rex nodded. “If it means that I might save my people, you have my service. Artkylosaur?”
The ankylosaur on her back grunted, clenching his teeth down upon his cigar. “Yeah, yeah. My people been serving the royal fam’ly fer generations, I ain’t gonna put an end to that now. Y’got me, too.”
With an audible pop, the blue bear’s legs flashed into existence. The cosmic teddy was now complete. “Good, good,” the bear squealed, positively giggling. “And now Me done reforming, so we move on. Need do much more recruiting before fighting.”
A rumbling from the brush drew their attention.
The boy in the yellow and purple pajamas sprang from the bushes in an arc that took him high into the air. He then used the gray discharge that he launched from his wrists to swing toward the meeting on the hilltop. Everyone stared at him in silence. He sprayed a ball of the gray discharge at Drillbot, the force of which knocked the robot onto his side. Then the boy sprayed a net of the gray substance toward Ginny Rex, wrapping her feet in a thin cocoon. She tripped and fell onto her side. Artkylosaur rolled from her back and sprung up onto his feet, a knife half as tall as him now in each forepaw. He swiped them ferociously at the boy as the boy landed in the soft soil.
Ginny Rex landed with her face mere inches from Drillbot’s. She grunted as she struggled and kicked at her bindings. He stared into her eyes, lost in their beauty, and smiled his version of a smile. She must have noticed him staring, because she ceased kicking and looked back into his eyes. And then she winked a playful wink and smiled at him. He felt a tickle in his internal processors and moved the image to long term storage within his memory banks, deciding that he would hold that wink dear until the end of time.
And then, as quickly as the moment happened, it evaporated. The angry cursing of Artkylosaur stole their attention, and Ginny Rex returned to grunting and struggling and kicking at her bindings so that she might return to her feet to help her companion.
The boy easily dodged the ankylosaur’s blades and yelled out, “Where the heck am I?”
Everyone stood staring at him in silence except for Artkylosaur, who continued slashing. When the boy realized the dinosaur was not going to cease, the boy kicked Artkylosaur in the jaw, knocking the cigar from his mouth and the consciousness from his head.
“I said, where the heck am–” the boy began to demand, but two circles of blue light sprung from the bear and wrapped around the boy’s wrists like handcuffs. The blue handcuffs seemed to grow heavier by the millisecond. Within moments, they sunk to the ground despite the boy’s struggles, pinning him in place.
The blue bear floated over to the boy’s side. “Arturo demands answers, but Arturo waits not to listen.”
The boy stopped struggling for a moment and looked up at the bear. “You know my name?”
The bear nodded and giggled. “Of courses! Me know all the Arts and all the Ginnys!” He waved his paws in a wide circle, signaling toward the surrounding army.
The boy stared in silence for a moment. “I don’t know what that means,” he finally muttered.
The bear nodded. “The pink bear invades Arturo’s dimension. Me and Me army come to sto
p and bring life and healing. Bureau of Interdimensional Travel intervened in the battle. Wiped out many of us beyond saving. Scattered atoms across Multiverse so Me cannot resurrect. Some jobs even too difficult for Me! Arturo got lucky, am saved by Me faithful general, Drillbot. Now Arturo fight with Me army on the side of life. Multiverse at stake.”
The bear waved his paws and the handcuffs disappeared. Arturo slowly stood to his feet and removed his mask, revealing a hideously crooked nose, brown eyes that drifted in slightly different directions, yellowed teeth, and puffy brown hair. “I don’t have the faintest idea what you just said. It’s like you’re not-”
Arturo found himself cut off once more as the blue bear pulled a string of blue hair from his own head. The bear wiggled the hair back and forth, and with each wiggle, the hair grew straighter and harder. Finally, the bear floated to the side of the boy’s head and stabbed the hair into his ear. The boy screamed, but the bear ignored the outburst, instead biting down on the hair and blowing into the end of it like a balloon. Arturo’s head puffed up cartoonishly.
“[whir] What – CLACK – What – CLACK – What is the Blue One’s purpose in this task?” asked Drillbot.
The bear stopped blowing, and Arturo’s head receded back to normal size. The bear giggled. “Me looked into boy’s memories. Boy’s friend and relatives all say he have big head. So, Me fill it with knowledge, so boy understand. Teeheehee!”
The bear removed the hair and floated back over to Drillbot’s side. The boy’s eyes had changed from brown to blue, but with each passing second, they faded back to their original color. “I-I-I-I,” he stammered, unable to complete his sentence.
The blue bear nodded. “You am named Arturo, and also named The Pre-Teen Arachnid. You am now joining us and am now understanding. Drillbot, you be in charge of him. Teach him warring and keep him safe from becoming pink puppet. Much potential in this one. Maybe the key to victorying this war.”
The Endless War That Never Ends Page 7
