by Joseph Calev
The entire world I had known was completely fabricated! Every kid at my school, Flemence, and even my parents were no more authentic than this city around me, which existed solely for a game. Hidden within these buildings were romances and affairs, triumphs and breakdowns, and politics and theatrics. Yet none had any notion that everything they held true was made up. They were nothing more than scenery.
I glimpsed a fifth-grader in a gap between two buildings.
I’d had enough sight-seeing. Did he know I was there? Because I still hadn’t mastered wormholes even with the gloves, I stood no chance of taking him straight on, so I chose a different approach. It was time to become a sniper.
My first idea was to park my cycle somewhere, then pull out the shooter and carry it to a high window. Yet, when my feet touched the cement, I annihilated a lightpost. Since this was a lower dimensional world, everything I touched was like that man Raynee disintegrated in the alley. Before I took off, I nearly obliterated a kindergarten class on a field trip. Unwilling to commit mass murder to win a video game, I found a parking garage and carefully maneouvered to an opening, where I awaited my prey.
To my luck, the fifth-grader passed by moments later, his eyes scanning up and down for signs of me, completely unsuspecting of my trick. I gave him no chance. When he was but yards from me, I fired and immediately had my first point. I shouted, and then the world reacted.
The boy stared at me from his cycle with wide eyes as the parking garage disintegrated, followed by every other building. People ran screaming from everywhere but there was no escape. Everything was turning to dust. Had I cheated? Who was doing this?
We both headed out, yet there was something erratic about his flying. He was sputtering, then flailing, and finally headed his cycle’s nose straight toward what now was an endless desert. And then it occurred to me. He wasn’t escaping the disappearing city. He was fleeing from me.
He crashed onto the sand and his cycle quickly burst into flames, though he was unharmed. Two other fifth-graders landed next to him, while I hovered another fifty feet away.
“Get away from me!” he screamed, glaring at me with bloodshot eyes. “He’s going to kill me!”
Perhaps the largest kid in the fifth level reached him, but was tossed into the next dune. His friend suffered the same fate, being jettisoned a hundred feet away in a burst of resonance.
His mouth was agast and he clawed frantically, helplessly against the sand as I dismounted and approached. I smiled, held my hands wide in friendship, then tried to walk forward. He was desperately resonating me away now, and I used every bit I had to resist.
“It’s okay,” I said calmly. “There’s nothing to be scared of.”
“He killed them all!” he screamed.
I was only ten feet away now, but he doubled his efforts. My teeth were chattering and my legs felt ready to break in half, but I trudged on against the shaking boy while his two friends looked on in amazement.
“Get away from me! All of you!”
I was five feet away and my lungs were compressing. He was resonating against me with everything he had, but I was bigger and stronger. My mouth felt ready to fly open and eat my head, but I had almost reached him.
Every bit of him was shaking and his eyes looked on in stunned hatred while I struggled forward. At last I seized him with both arms and pulled him tight even though it felt like force hugging a grizzly.
“Everything’s going to be fine. There’s no reason to be scared.”
The hug seemed to help. My teeth stopped shaking and he reduced his resonance, then calmed somewhat.
“You don’t understand,” he whispered.
“What don’t I understand?”
“He’s coming for us. He’s going to kill everyone.”
“Who is?” I already knew the answer.
“Mordriss. He’s back.”
12
My little classmates were busy devouring a near bushel of lamma fruits when the celebration stopped. Stretched across my arms was the stricken fifth-leveler, barely able to move. Our class had won on my last shot, but that didn’t matter anymore. Though I’d been talking softly and trying to discuss more lighthearted things the entire way, nothing had stopped his shaking.
Several teachers rushed to me and pulled him from my arms. A medic was summoned and the class grew deathly silent save the young boy who kept screaming in a now hoarse voice, “I saw him!”
Upon seeing his wasted face and blank eyes, a few of my classmates, being all of five years old, commenced sobbing. Immediately, we were ordered back inside, just as a pair of medics reached him. Our teacher did her best to discuss what we learned about essonance that day, but no one was thinking of that.
“Was he bad?” a little girl asked.
They were all born after the events.
“I never met my older brother,” Robby said through the silence. “He was staying with my aunt and uncle. They all died.”
Our teacher, Alina, tried to say something, but couldn’t hold back the tears herself.
“Everyone lost someone,” she said to her horrified class, none of whom had ever witnessed a teacher cry. “We were supposed to be married.”
The rest of the school day was useless.
When Annie picked me up that day, her face, too, was red from dried tears. She said nothing until we were in the vehicle.
“He’s not back,” she said somberly while facing forward.
“But, he said—”
“They should never teach orasance in the fifth level. Not anymore, after what happened.”
“What’s orasance?”
She shook her head, perhaps debating whether to tell me. Then she continued with solemn eyes. “The only force we can’t control. It’s what controls time. Makes some things happen before others. We can’t change it but . . . .” She paused to look away. “It affects certain particles in a predictable way. We can use it to see what happened in the past.”
“With anything?”
“Anything we can understand. But the problem is when they teach it, everyone wants to try it on the dead.”
“You mean they go to cemeteries and . . . ?”
“Our cemeteries are a lot different, I think, from yours. A small part of the body is exposed, so we can visit and reminisce. Relatives who passed away long ago can be a part of us. But, when not careful, there’s nothing preventing us from seeing darker things.”
“So, he saw Mordriss kill someone?”
“Yes.” She looked away. “If he was back, there would be far worse signs, and no survivors.”
“Who is he? Mordriss?”
“No one knows where he came from.” She wiped her face with her sleeve. “We’ve always been peaceful here. No wars. Nothing to die from but old age. Even accidents didn’t kill. You know it’s impossible to hurt yourself from your own resonance? I was a nurse, and the worst we ever dealt with were panic attacks. We weren’t prepared.”
I didn’t want to bring it up, but the question had already been waiting so long. It was better to ask it then, than wait for it to ruin a happier time. “I’m sorry about your son. His name was Arven, right?”
“Yes.” Her head stayed down. “He and my husband were my everything. I was working that day when he showed up. I didn’t know what to do—” She was falling over and in complete sobs now.
I rushed over, then after a brief hesitation, held her.
“People were cut in half. He didn’t just kill. He tortured them. Pulled spines out with them still alive. Split them wide open in parts. We’d never seen such things. We didn’t know what to do, and when I finally came home, he’d gotten them. My son! He, he . . . .”
“You don’t have to say it.” I hugged her. “I’m sorry for bringing it up.”
After that discussion, my room freaked me out a bit. It had been Arven’s room, and now that I knew about orasance, I found myself jumping at every little thing. Some part of him was still in there.
To get my m
ind on other subjects, I went wandering in the meadow. The straw-like grass was blowing slightly. It felt so peaceful compared to the violence we’d just discussed. Annie had placed two huge clouds over the suns, like smudges over a fine day. Just when I decided it was a useful waste of time to figure out how to move them, something in the grass stirred.
There were a few snorts, then two black noses appeared from the short reeds, followed by fur and spots. They were the same type of rodent I’d seen earlier.
“Do you have any food, kind sir?” one asked.
“I’m not falling for that. And no, I don’t have any.”
“But we’re so very hungry, and we’d be so grateful if you gave us anything.”
I thought for a moment. They had those irresistible puppy dog eyes and the house was only a few feet away. All the food was materialized anyway. It wasn’t like Annie had to go to the store. Also, perhaps a tiny good turn was what the world needed right now.
They were jumping like a pack of kangaroos when I returned with a pile of beans and spread them across the dirt. The gobbled up everything in seconds. They even licked the ground to make sure they missed nothing.
“Let’s go next door,” the other one said. “This piece of shit keeps giving us these cheap-ass beans.”
“Yeah,” the first said. “Go fuck yourself, asshole.”
Perhaps on a different day I would’ve been offended, but at that moment of pain it was a desperately needed laugh. After watching them scamper away, cussing with each step, I moved to sit, then noticed a bulge in my pockets.
I’d forgotten to return the essonation gloves, and with all the confusion no one had asked for them back. Though technically they weren’t allowed outside of school, those gloves were now my keys to essonance. While being able to float and walk upside down was cool, traveling to other dimensions and universes was far more interesting. I glanced toward the forest. Perhaps I could explore just a little bit, only a few feet inside the trees where Annie couldn’t see me.
After looking both ways, I darted into the woods and slid the gloves on. Remembering how Sareya had held her palms out to midair, I did the same. Though I couldn’t see anything, my hands felt jagged edges, as if the air was composed of thousands of tiny boxes. My fingers slipped into a crack, and I pulled it open until a bright light appeared. After another tug there was a door. Before entering, I looked around me. There was no one, so I pulled myself inside. Immediately after I slipped through, the portal automatically shut behind me.
The sky here was zaffre blue and full of swirling clouds of the tornado kind. A lone, dark-green hill towered over everything else. Beyond, there was a glimmer of light that barely covered the horizon. I paused for a moment to consider that movie where aliens popped out of people’s stomachs. For some reason, this seemed like the ideal place for them to live. Yet this was a lower dimension set. Nothing here could hurt me, or so Sareya had said. I followed my curiosity.
Beyond the hill was a sea of small mounds. I stopped. At first glance, they looked exactly like the alien pods. I held my stomach. But no, they were something far more familiar. Each one was round, about twice the size of my fist, and mostly purple. There were millions of them, maybe more. The hills rolled on endlessly in front of me, each completely covered with these vegetable-like things.
“They’re turnips,” a familiar voice said from behind.
It was Sareya. Her blond curls were newly braided.
“Next time you check if the coast is clear. Remember to look up.”
Great. She had been watching me the entire time. Regardless, I was more curious about the scene before me.
“What are they?”
“You don’t remember, do you? Look closer.”
We walked over to the nearest patch. I half expected them to jump up and down or run away, but they remained motionless while we stood over them. They were just like turnips, with one major difference: each had engraved faces within their peels with traces of a mouth, nose, and eyes. I stooped to stare directly at one, but it didn’t blink or move at all.
“They can’t see us. They’re from a lower dimension.”
I wanted to touch one, but then held back upon realizing that each was a living being.
“So, people in a lower dimension look like this?”
“Sort of. It’s a lot of math.”
That figured. It seemed impossible to even fart in this world without computing an integral.
“This is what I looked like when Raynee found me?”
“Yup. Only you moved. They’re not supposed to do that.”
I stared at them for several seconds, but as she said, not a single one budged or even blinked an eye.
“Do you like her?”
From her broad smile, I knew who she meant. “Yes. I do. A lot.”
“So,” she asked a bit sheepishly, and pulling her braids, “are you going to marry her?”
It would be a lie to say I hadn’t fantasized about that, but at that moment I had no answer. Sareya just stood there with her broad smile.
“From what I hear, she hates me.”
“Maybe she does.” She grinned. “But if you could marry her, would you?”
I turned away, unable to look her in the eye. “I don’t know. I mean, that’s a tough question to answer.”
“Fine. Do you dream about kissing her under the blankets at night?”
I paused on that one, unsure exactly how much a six-year-old knew about some things. Then when her eyes grew wide at my hesitation, I knew I was making things worse.
“Umm, I’d probably kiss her, but . . . .”
“Raynee told me some things are really disgusting.”
This was a barely six-year-old girl I was talking to. I needed to change the subject. “What happens when they die?”
“They rot. It kind of smells bad.”
After taking one more look at the ocean of turnips before me, I stared down at my gloves. The turnip patch was interesting, but there had to be far more amazing places out there. A little exploration was irresistible.
“Essonation gloves. You’re not supposed to have them.” Her arms were crossed and her face was completely serious.
“It was by accident. A kid got scared during essoball.”
“So, you opened a portal to here by accident? I was standing above you, remember? You looked around to make sure no one saw you.”
“Fine.” She had me. “I couldn’t resist. There’s so much math involved. I needed some help.”
“Hand them over.” She held her palms out.
I stood there, motionless. Now that I could essonate, it was painful to give them up. Entire universes were literally at my fingertips now.
“I’m asking nicely. Raynee would’ve hurt you.”
Somehow, I didn’t doubt that. Yet here I was in another dimension. So far, I’d touched a black hole and finally found turnips. What else was there to explore? Could I find the way back to my old world? My hands felt an edge in the air. There was a portal in front of me.
“Whatever you do, don’t use them. I might not be able to follow you. You’ll get lost.”
“So, it’s kind of like hide and go seek?” I smiled.
Her eyes popped and she moved to yell. Before she had the chance, I’d sprung open the portal and was gone. Since this was probably my only chance with the gloves, I had to make it count. Once I was confident the portal was gone, I looked at the new universe around me.
It was nothing but dull brown fog. This wouldn’t do. I felt around for another portal and jumped inside.
Water flooded into my mouth and eyeballs, but I held myself calm. Remembering Sareya’s lesson, I breathed deeply. Despite being underwater, I was perfectly fine. Nothing could hurt me here.
“Pardon me,” a small green fish with a bright yellow underside said, “but you don’t appear to be a fish.”
Being used to both talking animals and the ability to speak underwater, I smiled. “I’m just a visitor.”
“Well, then, do you mind if I live in your mouth and use your tongue as a blanket? I promise not to bite too much.”
I wasn’t expecting that question, so I began to politely refuse, and when it darted at me, I quickly found another portal and jumped through.
The bright reflection of the beach in the full sun nearly blinded me. After a few minutes of squinting, I looked down the strand. Huge palm trees stood out from the forest just next to me. They were inexplicably turned upside down. There were people strolling down the sands, too, each one with arms for legs and legs for arms. One waved to me. I waved back, then slipped through the next portal.
There was a faint wind and a dark forest of eerie trees. At first, I swore I heard Sareya, but it was just the creaking of limbs, followed by some sort of howling. I walked a distance through the shriveled trees, each with fingered limbs that seemed ready to grab me. Then it attacked.
A gigantic wolf full of snarling teeth jumped from a mound just above. Had I not been several dimensions superior, I would have been wolf food. Instead, I was now left with the disintegrated remains of two bloody paws, half a tail, and a near heart attack.
I sighed. The fun was over. It was time to go home and face Sareya. The truth was, only she knew how to find the interesting places. She’d shown me the intricacies of a black hole, while all I’d managed on my own was an uncomfortable fish and a couple of wolf parts. Maybe I’d been playing this wrong anyway. I nearly strangled myself when I considered that she could have taken me to Raynee. Either way, it was time to leave.
The list of universes passed through my head: wolf and scary trees, weird people and palms, strange fish, and brown fog. I only needed to reverse the order and I’d be home and ready to apologize. After looking every way for more wolves, I turned and felt for the crack back to the previous world. A few anxious moments later, I’d found it. With a sigh, I pulled it open and disappeared inside.
