by Scott Meyer
His arm hurt like hell, there was no denying that. This had been his first attempt to sleep with a broken arm and in a sling, and it had not gone well. He would have been willing to bet that he hadn’t slept at all if not for two things: he did not remember seeing the sunrise, and somehow the pen with the note wrapped around it had found its way into his sling without him knowing it.
Taking care not to look down at the note, Phillip mimed using his good hand to adjust his sling while slowly unrolling the note into the hand of his broken arm. It had all of the hastily scribbled messages he’d remembered. At the bottom, in Jimmy’s neat script, there was the single word “over” and an arrow.
Phillip flipped the scrap of paper over, rolled his eyes, and read Jimmy’s contribution.
Gentlemen,
I’m sure you know the game “Rock, Paper, Scissors.” Two players each pick whether to play rock, paper, or scissors, as each choice beats one of the others and is beaten by the third. People think it’s a game of chance, but they’re wrong. The key to winning is to get good at predicting what your opponent is likely to choose.
Todd thinks he’s clever, but he isn’t. Someone who makes no pretense at being clever will just do what you expect them to do. Someone who’s truly clever is unpredictable. Someone who thinks they are clever will do the opposite of what you expect them to do.
Also, in Rock, Paper, Scissors, if you watch your opponent’s hand, they’ll often make their hand signal a fraction of a second before they should, giving you the advantage.
Todd wants to kill us, but he thinks he’s clever, so he’ll try to do it cleverly, so he’ll try to trick us into killing ourselves. I say our best plan is to keep our eyes open for him to tip his hand, and if he tells us to do something, we do the opposite.
—J
Phillip looked up from the note, grimacing. Brilliant, he thought. Keep our eyes open and don’t do what he tells us. We certainly couldn’t have come up with that. Of course, we didn’t come up with that. The best plan we came up with was to ask Jimmy, wasn’t it?
Phillip’s grimace did not fade. He hunched over, as if fighting back the pain from his arm, and in the limited free space at the bottom of the page, he wrote:
T, any more paper?
—P
After their customary breakfast of wolf jerky and grumbling, they got under way. Phillip continued to walk in the lead while the others followed, taking great care in transporting the Möbius Blade without losing any digits or blood. None of them grumbled about Phillip not helping with the blade, partly because they wouldn’t want to trade places with him, since that would mean walking through the desert with a freshly broken arm, and partly because they all understood that having someone who was in some way impaired try to help bear the blade would be a grave danger to the other bearers. The last thing any of them wanted to hear was any of the others saying “Oops.”
The low, undulating hills of the Scapa continued, though Phillip thought they were beginning to flatten out a bit. When you spend a long time in the same environment, your mind starts noticing even the slightest variation—just ask anyone who’s ever driven across Texas. The monotony of the same rolling hills, punctuated with the occasional attack from what was essentially the same wolf, was taking a toll on all of their minds. So much so, that when there was something genuinely of interest to look at, they took it for an optical illusion at first.
As he crested a hill, Phillip saw in the distance what appeared to be a few spots of a slightly different shade of very dark brown, which in the Scapa constituted scenery. Many steps later, as they crested another hill, it became obvious that the discoloration was a continuous line running parallel to the horizon, a very long way away.
The more they walked, and the more hills they summited, the more definite the line became. Phillip had been debating whether to say anything to the others. He suspected they were too focused on their footing and trying not to decapitate each other to have noticed the unusual geography of the path ahead. The decision to tell the others came quickly when Phillip finally realized what he was looking at.
Phillip said, “Better hold up, guys. Chasm.”
The others stopped. “I’m sorry,” Jimmy said. “What?”
“See that line up ahead?” Phillip asked, pointing with his good arm. “I’ve been watching it for a while. I figure it’s the far rim of a canyon, or a valley, or—”
“Or a chasm,” Tyler finished for him.
Gary swallowed hard and said, “The Chasm of Certain Doom.”
“Yes,” Tyler said. “Thanks for spelling that out. I’d worried that this would be some other, less dependable doom chasm before we got the Chasm of Certain Doom. The Chasm of Possible Doom. Something like that.”
Gary muttered, “Yeah, sorry.”
“The big cartoony gulp was a nice touch,” Tyler continued. “It’s a shame we don’t have a spooky organ to play, or a big metal sheet to make some fake thunder every time you say that.”
Gary mumbled, “I said I’m sorry.”
Phillip peeled his eyes away from the chasm in the distance to look back at his cohorts. “Okay, guys. There’s no need to argue.”
Now Gary raised his voice. “I’m not arguing! I’m apologizing and getting insulted! That’s not arguing, is it? Is it, Phillip?”
“You’re arguing now.”
“Well, now, yeah, over the idea that I was arguing. But I wasn’t arguing then, when you accused me of arguing.”
“Okay,” Phillip said. “I get it.”
“I don’t even know why I was apologizing. All I said was that it was the Chasm of Certain Doom.”
They were all startled out of their bickering by the deafening noise of an eerie organ and fake-sounding thunder.
Tyler looked toward the heavens and said, “Well done. That was fast work.”
No chat window opened, but they heard the click of a microphone opening up; then Todd’s voice said, “Thank you.”
27.
Gwen didn’t like it. Not at all.
She didn’t like the idea when she heard it. She didn’t like the amount of time and effort it had taken to put the idea into practice. She didn’t like the jeopardy Martin had volunteered to endure to make the idea work.
Of course, she had stated all of these objections before they put it to a vote, and she’d still been outvoted.
She didn’t like that either.
She peered around the wooden barrier at the dust cloud in the distance and said, “This is a bad idea.”
Brit exchanged a knowing look with Roy and said, “Maybe so, but it’s the bad idea we’re going with. Sorry.”
Brit, like Gwen, was sitting in the bed of the wagon, which was stationary on top of a rise, well into the charmless scrub desert they didn’t know was called the Scapa. After the hill gave out, Roy managed to keep the cart rolling for a surprisingly long time on momentum alone, but still, they were eventually forced to abandon it and continue on foot.
They had been delighted to find their friends’ footprints, clearly visible and easy to follow. They couldn’t understand why the others seemed to be walking in a regular formation, or why there were only four sets of footprints. They decided that one of them must have been injured and the others were carrying him, which only strengthened their resolve to catch up as soon as possible.
They were less delighted when the trail led them to a peculiar-looking mound that suddenly sprang to life and chased them all around the desert. The only time it got close enough to hurt any of them was when it nearly head-butted Roy in the back.
Roy was aware of its attack and leapt at the last second, wrapping his arms around the creature’s neck. His plan was to cling to the creature and attack its face while it stumbled to a stop. To everyone’s surprise, the creature did not stop. It continued running forward while Roy hung around its neck like an albatro
ss. The beast’s running stride was not smooth, and it was not long before Roy lost his grip. He threw himself to the side as he fell and avoided being trampled.
The monster twisted slightly in the direction Roy had gone, then stopped, scanned its field of view, caught sight of Gwen, and started chasing her with the exact same speed, body language, and intensity it had when it chased Roy.
Eventually they stopped the walking pile of dirt by leading it into a fetid little bog they found and surrounding it while running laps of the bog. The creature didn’t know whom to chase, so it just spun around in circles, stirring itself into the water as it slowly melted into loose, watery mud. They knew this was a temporary reprieve. The slop was clearly already trying to re-form into some sort of a shape that would dry out and continue the chase, but it looked like that would take quite some time.
They split up and searched the area, looking for the continuation of their friends’ trail, or at least Martin and Gwen did. Gwen found the trail resolving itself from the frenzied, chaotic tracks left from the dust creature’s pursuit of both parties. She was a bit unnerved that instead of the familiar tight, four-person formation, the trail was now a recognizable pattern of three people walking in formation and a fourth walking alone.
Gwen called out to the others. Martin was off on his own, looking for the trail Gwen had found. Brit and Roy were talking. Gwen didn’t know what they were saying, but when they heard her say that she’d found the trail, they both smiled in a way that made her nervous. They were the smiles of two people who were sure they knew what to do, and that the first step would be talking you into it.
Gwen was right. They were sure that they knew what to do, and they were right: they did have to talk Martin and Gwen into it. They never fully convinced Gwen, but by then she was outvoted.
Counterintuitively, instead of following the trail, they backtracked to where they’d left the cart. They spent the minimum time possible repositioning the cart and making modifications, using all of the tools and scrap wood they’d brought and cannibalizing the sides of the cart in the process.
The cart was now a heavily modified flatbed. There was still a small bench by the tiller. Roy sat there, waiting to spring into action. Brit sat cross-legged on the floor of the cart, thinking through the next several hours and trying to hide her excitement. Gwen sat at the back, next to (but not touching) the hastily braced wooden wall that they’d constructed and nailed to the back of the cart.
Gwen peered around the wall again and said, “This is crazy. We’re making a mistake.”
Roy said, “Oh, come on, Gwen. This isn’t a mistake.”
“But you agree it’s crazy?”
Roy shrugged. “Oh, I dunno. Back when I worked at Lockheed, half the stuff we came up with sounded crazy at first, and most of it was. Some of it actually worked, though. That stuff made it into the planes. We ended up with aircraft that could do things no one else’s planes could. Yeah, Brit’s plan sounds crazy, but I believe it’ll work. Remember, you live in a city made of diamond. That sounds crazy. That was her idea.”
Brit smiled. Gwen did not. “Even if the idea might work—”
“It will,” Brit interrupted.
“Even if it might,” Gwen continued, “are we sure about this barrier? I’m not even allowed to lean against it. How can it possibly hold?”
Roy said, “I told you, it’s not designed to take force from this direction. If you want to get out and lean on it from the other direction, it’ll hold all day. You could lean a car’s weight on the other side, no problem. I had to prioritize where the stress loads would be. We had limited time and materials.”
Gwen looked at Brit and asked, “Does that make sense to you?”
Without hesitation, Brit said, “Yes. It does. And even if it didn’t, you heard the man. He was an aeronautical engineer at the Lockheed Skunk Works. He has real-world, non-magical engineering experience. Even if I didn’t think he was right, I’d defer to his judgment.”
Roy said, “Thank you.”
Brit said, “It’s the truth.”
Gwen said, “I liked you both more when you liked each other less.” She jumped down off the cart and walked around to the other side of the barrier to look again at what they’d done.
The sides of the cart and most of the spare wood had been used to make a large, heavy plate, which was affixed to the back of the cart. It was like someone had taken the tailgate off their pickup truck and replaced it with a tabletop from IKEA. What spare wood remained was used to make thick braces that extended from the plank to the bed of the cart at forty-five-degree angles. Gwen hated to admit it, but it looked as if a great deal of force would be needed to push the barrier over from behind the cart. Of course, if you pushed from inside the cart, the only thing holding the plank on was the grip of the nails, thus the no-leaning rule.
One thin plank, similar to a two-by-four, leaned against the back of the cart, forming a very narrow ramp to the ground. The plank itself was studded with small strips of wood. They were nailed in at regular intervals all the way up the height of the plank. These were the only parts of the whole apparatus that had been designed and carried out by Martin, and as usual, they were the most seemingly haphazard parts, and Martin was absolutely convinced that they would work.
Thinking of Martin caused Gwen to look again at the column of dust headed their way. It was much closer now. Clearly, it was making better time than anyone had anticipated. Gwen watched, and saw a small human figure, running over the top of a hill, followed by a much larger figure, running slightly faster. The larger figure nearly caught the smaller, but at the last second the smaller one made a sharp turn, causing the larger to overshoot, stop running, and look around. The smaller figure stopped and bent over, breathing heavily and keeping an eye on the larger figure. The larger figure finally caught sight of the smaller and attempted to give chase. The smaller leapt out of his way, causing another full stop and confused scan. They repeated this a few times, until the smaller figure felt ready to continue; then the smaller figure took off on a dead run straight for the cart.
“Okay, get ready,” Gwen said. “Martin’s bringing it this way.”
Brit said, “Great! Gwen, please remove the wheel chocks. We’re go.”
Gwen muttered, “If Martin gets hurt, you’re going to be go.” She did as she was told and removed the rocks that were wedging the wheels in place. With that done, she hoisted herself back up onto the flatbed of the cart. Roy sat facing forward on the driver’s bench, holding the tiller with both hands as if he expected it to try to wrench itself free from his grip.
Brit stood, grasping the brake lever and peeking over the plank at Martin and the dirt monster’s approach in the distance.
Brit said, “Roy, I’m going to try to give you a countdown from five, just like we discussed.”
Roy said, “Roger!”
In the distance, Martin shouted, “Get ready! We’re here!”
Everybody’s enjoying this but me, Gwen thought. That means either they’re all wrong or I am. Funny, I can’t see how either of those ideas should cheer me up at all.
Gwen settled on the flatbed, one hand gripping the side of the driver’s bench. The other held the cord that controlled her emergency brake. If things went according to plan, the brake wouldn’t be needed. If they didn’t, the entire cart would probably disintegrate, making the emergency brake superfluous. It didn’t matter. She’d made the stupid thing, and she was going to be ready if the time came to use it.
Brit said, “Five. Four. Three.”
Gwen heard an impact as Martin’s foot hit the lone plank that acted as a combination ramp and springboard. She saw his hands grasp the top edge of the shield.
“Two.”
Martin’s feet scrabbled against the toeholds he’d installed.
“One.”
Martin launched himself over the top
like he was vaulting a fence. For a seemingly endless moment he hung in midair above the cart; then he started to descend. His legs and pelvis had just fallen lower than the back of the shield when Brit said “Impact,” and the dirt monster rammed into the back of the cart.
The shield bucked and creaked, and the cart shot forward.
Martin, not being on the cart but rather hovering over it, did not move at all until the top edge of the shield hit him in the lower back. His head, arms, and torso rolled backward, and for an instant it seemed like he might fall over the shield and land on the dirt beast’s back, but instead he balanced, teetering painfully on the splintery top edge of the shield, all of his weight resting on his lower back. He glanced down and saw that the beast was still running, chasing him, and the cart along with him, but that the collision had imparted so much of the beast’s momentum into the cart that it was now rolling several feet in front of the creature. Martin knew from experience that the creature would accelerate, and even if it didn’t, the cart was rolling downhill now but would be going up the next hill soon. The creature would hit them again, and if he was still balancing like a human teeter-totter when that happened, he would fall off the cart, and instead of him and his friends using the creature to push their cart across the desert, his friends would use the cart as bleachers to watch as Martin was trampled to death by Mr. Topsoil.
The idea of being stomped on by dirt amused Martin but not enough to make it happen.
Martin grabbed the top of the shield with both hands and pulled, moving his center of gravity forward and scraping the rough wood across his tender lower back. He rolled forward, catching one of the angled braces between the legs. He tumbled to the bed of the cart, landing in a heap at the base of the brake lever. Brit was forced to alter her surfer’s stance to keep him from taking her feet out from under her. Unfortunately, the beast struck the shield again while she was shifting her balance, and both she and Martin fell back onto the shield, which squeaked and groaned at the sudden load striking it from a direction it was never meant to be struck.
