Clash of the Worlds

by Chris Columbus

  They were surrounded by dozens of tall plants that resembled cacti, except they were twice as tall, red, and instead of having rough skin covered in needles, were smooth and shiny like they were made of wet rubber.

  “We lost it?” Eleanor asked Lefty hopefully.

  “Not completely,” he said. “I still hear footsteps over there.” He pointed to the right. “We’re behind it now, but it’s only a matter of time before it finds us again. I think that metal beast’s red eye can see through stuff.”

  Eleanor nodded. Even though Lefty clearly didn’t comprehend the true scientific nature of a huge robot, he was perceptive enough to realize that it probably had some sort of high-tech tracking system. As if to make his point for him, the whirring of advanced hydraulics came from where he’d just pointed moments before. Then the crashing footsteps resumed. They had been detected once again.

  “There’s a cave,” Lefty said, pointing through a small opening in the massive red cacti with his prosthetic left hand, “a couple hundred paces that way. I saw it when we doubled back to flank the machine. Go there and hide. Wait until I’m long gone, far away from here, then it’ll be safe to come out. And you can go on with your quest.”

  “What are you going to do?” she whimpered.

  “Distract that tin can so you can get to the cave,” Lefty said.

  Eleanor knew that Lefty couldn’t distract the robot forever.

  “No,” she pleaded, terrified of being left completely alone. “Come with me. We can go together.”

  He shook his head and surprised her by smiling warmly.

  “There isn’t time; the two of us would never make it without a distraction,” he said. “Now go!” He gave her a shove toward the cave.

  Before Eleanor had a chance to respond, he was gone. He had turned and disappeared into the strange forest of overgrown red cacti.

  And so in spite of her tears, Eleanor turned and ran in the direction Lefty had instructed. Behind her, the robot crashed through the alien jungle. It was moving away from her, in pursuit of the outlaw.

  It didn’t take long for Eleanor to find the small cave. It was less of a cave and more a sliver of a crack in the side of a wall made of smooth, polished black stone that glowed and swirled a rainbow of colors, as if it were alive.

  Eleanor reached out and felt the surface; it was cold and hard and smooth. She crouched down and squeezed herself into the narrow fissure in the rock wall. Once she was through the opening, she discovered there was more room inside than she’d first suspected. Enough room for her to lie down if she curled up into a ball like a cat. She lay on the cold floor and looked out into the alien jungle through the small opening.

  Above the tops of the nearest plants, off in the distance, the faint glow of the giant robot’s red eye spun and swiveled in and out of Eleanor’s view as it hunted for Lefty Payne. And then, several moments later, a flash of green flames erupted into the night sky.

  Eleanor heard defiant shouting, full of curses.

  It was Lefty.

  His shouting was followed shortly by a sickening sizzle. Then everything was quiet.

  Just like that, Eleanor knew that she was now truly alone.

  Meanwhile, several miles off the coast of the strange island where Eleanor was huddled in a cave—cold, alone, and terrified—Cordelia and Adie sat upright in their small sailboat and looked up into the surprisingly bright night sky.

  They were both searching for the same constellation that Brendan instructed them to pick out before they departed. They had decided together on a formation of bright stars that created a partial circle, almost like a pie with one slice missing. Brendan had laughed and called it the Pac-Man constellation.

  “Basically,” Brendan had explained shortly before their departure, “the book world of The Lost City is huge. It almost takes up this entire ocean. So if you just stay on course and use Pac-Man as a guide, by morning, you’ll be smack-dab in the middle of where you need to be. You almost can’t go wrong.”

  Cordelia had to admit now, as they both spotted it again above them, that she was rather impressed with Brendan. She had no idea that he knew how to use stars to navigate on the high seas.

  His reassuring words had been comforting at the time. But now that she and Adie were out here in a tiny boat in the middle of the night on a vast sea that housed who knew what kind of horrors, Cordelia was way more afraid than she’d expected. Not just of the dangers that may or may not lurk below the surface. But also that they might be drifting in completely the wrong direction. Using a constellation for navigation sounded easy enough in theory, but in actuality, she felt like she had no idea where they were going.

  “Do you think we’re still on track?” she asked Adie.

  “I think so,” Adie said. “I mean, your brother said we almost couldn’t go wrong.”

  “Yeah, well, you don’t know him like I do,” Cordelia said. “Brendan isn’t exactly known for being right all the time.”

  “You should go easy on him,” Adie said. “He really cares about you. I’d eat fifty lizards to have a brother like him.”

  Cordelia laughed in spite of her growing anxiety. Then something dawned on her. Something that had been obvious from the start.

  “Oh. My. God!” Cordelia exclaimed. “You have a crush on him, don’t you?”

  “What?” Addie asked, confused. “Why would I want to crush him?”

  “Sorry, crush is something we say where I’m from when you like someone,” Cordelia explained.

  “Of course I like him,” Adie said. “He’s a good person, a good brother to you . . .”

  “No, it means you like him as more than just a friend,” Cordelia said.

  “You . . . you mean . . . romantically?” Adie asked, feigning horror at the thought.

  Cordelia nodded.

  “Brendan?” Adie said, turning away to hide her embarrassment. “He’s not my type. You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Whatever you say,” Cordelia said, grinning.

  A silence hung between them. The only noise was the light howl of the breeze and the lapping of small waves at the base of their boat.

  It wasn’t until an orange sliver of sun appeared on the purple-and-red horizon that either of them spoke again.

  Cordelia sat up and rubbed her eyes as the sun continued to rise above the horizon at a seemingly impossible rate. She could no longer see the island. Or the stars. Which meant Pac-Man was gone. The only indicators of their location were no longer visible. So now she simply had to hope that Brendan was right about how easy it would be to navigate the boat toward the Lost City.

  “I think we’re probably here,” Adie announced.

  “But how are we supposed to get from this tiny sailboat to a lost underwater city at the bottom of the ocean?” Cordelia asked.

  “Clearly we haven’t thought this through very well,” Adie said, staring down into the mesmerizing depths of the clear ocean waters.

  “What does the book say?”

  Adie pulled out the charred remains of the novel The Lost City. She flipped through the pages slowly, as if she hadn’t read many books in her life, which only made Cordelia want to do it for her. But, somehow, she made herself stay anchored to her seat. She knew better. They couldn’t give the Wind Witch any more possible hints as to what they were up to than she already had. Even if her eyes weren’t blue right at that moment, they could change at any time, and she couldn’t risk being in the middle of reading something important when it happened.

  “It says in the book,” Adie said several moments later, “that the explorers used some kind of experimental sub . . . submarine to get to the Lost City. Do you know what a submarine is?”

  Cordelia sighed and nodded. “Yeah,” she said. “And it’s something neither of us has. So, basically, we’re out of luck.”

  Adie leaned over the side of the boat and stared down into the endless blue ocean in defeat. She let her fingertips trail lightly on the surface of th
e water, creating ripples around them. She was so caught up watching the little waves that it took her a while to notice the blue light beneath their boat.

  “What’s that?” she asked, sitting upright.

  Cordelia came over to that side of the boat and peered down. The light was small, just a speck in the otherwise dark blue depths of the sea. But it was growing. Almost as if it were an LED flashlight slowly floating toward the surface. Except, this blue light wasn’t slowly floating toward them.

  It was zooming upward like it had been shot from a gun.

  “Oh no,” Cordelia said as the light continued to grow.

  The blue light spun and rotated as it ascended from the depths. It was now clear that whatever it was, it was at least as large as their sailboat, if not bigger. Cordelia stood up as it rushed toward them, unsure of what to do. Adie stood up next to her.

  “What’s going on?” Adie asked, panicking.

  “Nothing good,” Cordelia said.

  “Maybe we should abandon ship,” Adie suggested.

  “No. That light is moving too fast,” Cordelia said. “We couldn’t swim fast enough to avoid whatever—”

  But she never had a chance to finish her sentence.

  The strange blue light hit the small sailboat, vaporizing it out of existence before either occupant managed to utter so much as a single cry for help.

  Several miles away, a strange metal sphere floated effortlessly through the sky, passing quickly over dozens of worlds inhabited by characters of Denver Kristoff’s novels.

  Brendan wasn’t sure how much more alone time he could possibly handle with the strange alien known as Gilbert. The little being simply never shut up. He talked continuously, as if talking were his species’s form of breathing.

  “Once, during a voyage,” Gilbert said, right after finishing a story about how he once caused a small moon to explode with his mind, “I encountered a peculiar organism of a most unusual composition and possessing a supremely foul disposition. It was constructed of a rotund, black-feathered torso with two skinny and knobby orange legs with clawed feet. Its wings were inexplicably slight and useless, despite the creature obviously being avian in nature. An elongated neck protruded from its spheroid plumage with a petite head and stout beak.”

  “That sounds like an ostrich,” Brendan said.

  “An ost-rich?” Gilbert repeated slowly, trying on the word for the first time. “Well, this ostrich’s constitution was that of extreme displeasure and hostility and it pursued me aggressively until I eventually was forced to disintegrate it with my intellectual commands.”

  “Why does every story end with you telepathically blowing stuff up?” Brendan asked.

  “It is a most natural progression of events when in danger, of course,” Gilbert said. “Furthermore, I am not blowing up articles, but rather they are disintegrating through a process called vector-force implosion, which technically means—”

  “Gilbert, do you ever have a thought you don’t say aloud?” Brendan interrupted.

  “Of course, many of them,” Gilbert said calmly. “The average human brain processes fifty thousand thoughts per day, close to one per second. My brain processes fourteen billion thoughts per day, which is over one hundred fifty thousand per second. But I can only speak five words per second, even when not decelerating my speech pattern sufficiently for your comprehension. So, in fact, it is not even possible for me to speak every thought I have. It wouldn’t even be possible for your inferior species, for that matter—”

  “Okay, okay, I get it,” Brendan said. “Sorry I asked.”

  “Apology accepted,” Gilbert replied.

  Gilbert’s right arm reached out and pressed some buttons on the inside of his spaceship. Strange symbols and beeps flashed across an ancient-looking computer monitor. It was tan and boxy, like an old microwave oven. Brendan figured that Denver must have written the book Gilbert was from well before the invention of modern computers. The spaceship was unique and strange and cool on the outside, but on the inside it was surprisingly boring. Even though it was supposed to be futuristic, it felt like Brendan was inside a cheesy science-fiction movie from the seventies.

  “According to my navigational calculations, we have arrived,” Gilbert said, pressing another button on his instrument panel.

  A viewport window slid open in front of them. They were still high in the air, as high as an airplane. But far below them stretched an endless tan desert, dotted with massive pyramids and one small city on the horizon.

  “A Nazi treasure map for ancient Egypt?” Brendan said, looking at the map Eleanor had given him with his eyebrows raised.

  “The Germans occupied parts of Africa during earth’s Second World War,” Gilbert said. “It is highly likely that some remnants of their presence endured years or decades subsequent to their withdrawal.”

  Brendan cocked his head at the small alien.

  “How do you know so much about earth?” he asked.

  “Because I—”

  “Know all,” Brendan said, finishing the alien’s sentence. “Right.”

  Gilbert’s mouth was small and didn’t move much, even when he talked. But Brendan could have sworn the tiny alien was grinning at him. He looked back down at the Nazi treasure map. It was clearly a map of Europe, with the big red X resting somewhere near the heel of Italy. It just didn’t make sense, unless Eleanor had been wrong about the Nazi treasure map being related to the third Worldkeeper, which was entirely possible.

  “Are you sure this is the right area?” Brendan asked.

  “Yes, we are presently hovering over the midpoint of the region labeled Wazner’s Revenge on your book world map,” Gilbert said, as he pressed a few dials and the sphere slowed to a stop, hovering in the air thousands of feet above a city in the middle of the desert. “Wazner was an ancient pharaoh entombed in one of the lost pyramids outside of Aswan, Egypt. Circa 3100 BC, Wazner arrived in—”

  “I don’t need his full history, thanks,” Brendan interrupted, growing more anxious than ever to part ways with the alien.

  “Technically, you do not need anything aside from the organic supplemental materials that sustain your life energy,” Gilbert said.

  Brendan sighed and stuffed the Nazi treasure map into his back pocket with the Journal. He had concluded that it probably wasn’t relevant after all, but that didn’t mean he was going to throw it away just yet. After all, there’s never a good reason to just discard a treasure map. Except, of course, after actually finding the treasure.

  He was about to ask Gilbert to lower them into the city, when it occurred to him that the sight of a small alien flying inside a liquid metal sphere would probably upset the locals, to say the least. It might make it awfully hard for Brendan to poke around and try to find the Worldkeeper. He realized he’d probably be better off starting the search alone.

  “Drop me off just outside of town,” Brendan instructed.

  “I can accompany you.”

  “It’s probably not a good idea for me to be seen with you,” Brendan said. “Most of the people down there look like me. Not you.”

  “Yes,” agreed Gilbert. “They would also be supremely jealous of my handsomeness.”

  “Exactly,” Brendan said, trying not to roll his eyes.

  “But it is essential to caution you,” Gilbert said. “Be wary of savage and ferocious local creatures known as camels. They can consume human persons in as little as eleven seconds.”

  “Wait, what?” Brendan sputtered. “I don’t think camels eat meat.”

  “They do!” Gilbert said. “My internal databases are never erroneous.”

  That’s when Brendan realized that Gilbert was legitimately scared. The tiny being’s voice trembled slightly as he spoke and his hands seemed unsteady as they worked the controls of his spaceship. He was scared not just for himself, but also for Brendan. The little weirdo alien clearly didn’t want anything bad to happen to him. He was surprised to feel a lump in his throat.

&n
bsp; But ultimately Brendan supposed it was only natural for Gilbert to be scared. He was just a character in a book after all, one who had truly believed he was an all-knowing space explorer. And now that his world had just been turned upside down by their trip—he couldn’t even feel sure about the veracity of his own existence.

  “Look, I may need your help at some point,” Brendan said. “How can I contact you?”

  Gilbert held out a small device with one of his right hands, as the sphere slowly came to a stop on a dirt road a few hundred yards from the edge of the town. The device looked startlingly similar to the transponders from the old, original Star Trek movies.

  “Just press the indicated button,” Gilbert said. “I will arrive at your position within seconds.”

  “Thanks,” Brendan said as a small doorway materialized behind him.

  “I foresee this going very well for you,” Gilbert said. “You will encounter no troubles at all . . . provided you avoid camels.”

  At that moment, Brendan truly wished that Gilbert really was an all-knowing being. It would have been extraordinarily helpful in finding the Worldkeeper. Still, he smiled at the small alien and nodded, pretending that he believed every word.

  “See you soon,” Brendan said, and then paused and added a genuine “thank you” before crawling out of the spaceship into the hot desert.

  The heat hit him like a roundhouse kick to the face. It almost knocked him over. Brendan had never felt anything like it. His jeans stuck to his legs, and sweat dripped down his back after just seconds. He spun around to ask Gilbert if he had any canteens of water he could take with him, but the sphere was already ascending back into the sky.

  Brendan turned to face the town. The road had twin ruts running parallel to each other, grooved out by car tires. He realized that he had no idea in what time period the book took place, or what it was about, aside from some vengeful pharaoh named Wazner. Which meant Brendan had no clue what exactly he was going to encounter.