FS
Jul 20th, 2004, 03:51 PM
So, after many, many frustrated attempts at fleshing out a serious fantasy story I've been trying to realize on and off for a few years now, I decided, for a change of pace, to try something rather different. Inspired largely by the peculiar dreamworld (or skerry) in the Sandman volume "A Game of You" and partly by the videogame "The Longest Journey", I kicked off a semi-humorous fantasy story where a fairly ordinary guy gets drawn into another world, where technology is the stuff of legends while magic is fairly accepted practice. I'm trying to keep it contemporary in various ways, such as using present tense, a fairly loose writing style and references to present day stuff, cause I think it'll help me stay in the feel of this story.
I would be grateful if you'd take the time to read some of it and perhaps point out things you did or didn't like - maybe help me sort out any recurring problems I have in my writing English (believe me, to a foreigner, there are worlds of difference between posting in English, speaking it, and writing stories in it).
I need to write much more to come up with a definitive title, so right now it's more descriptive of the story than anything else.
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Opening: Blind dialogue
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“OK, so; how does it work?”
“Huh? How’m I supposed to know?”
“How… what do you mean? You’re the one who got it from the old man!”
“Wex, you know how it is. How he is. When I finally got his head unscrewed enough so he could give me what I needed, he disappeared.”
“You… drabslag. You slugfunnel! If you don’t know how to make this thing work, what the scrat are we doing out here?”
“Look, just calm down. I couldn’t wait around any longer, there were octalytes banging on his door. I’m lucky to have even escaped with it. Maybe it’s not even that hard to turn it on.”
“So, what do we do now?”
“Well, let’s see. I think you can twist the top half around…”
“Don’t break it, you fool!”
“I’m not breaking it! Gault save me, some trust you guys have in me. If I wasn’t…”
“Jynx…”
“What?”
“Something’s happening.”
“…”
“It’s starting to glow. Put it down. Put it in the ground. Quick!”
“…”
“…Jynx?”
“What, Beene?”
“…is this going to work?”
“Hell if I know. Take things one step at a time, that’s my motto. We’ll wait for it to toss someone over. That’s step one. What comes after that, we’ll deal with in its own time.”
“…”
“…Jynx?”
“Beene?”
“What if it’s unfriendly?”
“That’s a good question, Beene. Did anyone think to bring a sword?”
“…”
“Shit.”
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I
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As far as I know, there’s any given number of ways to rip something – or someone – from their world, and toss them into another. Of course not all of them work the way you might want them to – they might tear your subject to pieces upon arrival, or cause them to explode, or fling them into an entirely unwanted direction; over a cliff, into a random world, or maybe into outer space. It’s a subtle craft. Yup, there’s many ways to toss someone into another world, and not all of them work… and none of them are easy.
As Ben Davis’s luck would have it, the method used to toss him across the multiverse, at least worked.
Who’s Ben Davis? Ben is twenty-three years old and works at a video rental store that’s running on its last legs, because the owner’s nose for business has failed to pick up the urgent scent of DVDs. After wrestling his way through high school, Ben gave up on the process of education. He can do it – he just can’t commit to it. Ben has few family members left. He comes from a long line of only children. He only sees his parents on birthdays, and among the three of them, they have silently agreed this is the way they prefer it. Ben lives on his own and keeps to himself, in an apartment that is cheap and shows it. Here he spends his ample free time watching movie after movie, trying to take in all the genre has to offer, almost obsessively daring the worst of the worst so he can also absorb the best of the best. He has stopped trying to explain to himself why he has no friends, only acquaintances, and never a girlfriend, only female acquaintances. Between his scant education and the looming fate of the store, Ben’s future is extremely uncertain. He knows this, but refuses to deal with it until he can’t anymore. He does that with a lot of things.
He’s not a bad guy, though.. A little slow in some ways, pretty sharp in others. A treasure trove of trivial knowledge, but not the least bit street-smart. More familiar with kitsch than the classics. Timid, but friendly. Wiry, and not in great physical shape. Long face, dark hair that points in all directions in defiance of a hairdo. Let’s hope you’re getting a good picture of him, and see what is happening to him now.
Ben isn’t sure what he’s looking at. If he’d have to tell another person,
(and will he get the chance? Who knows?)
they would probably have a number of theories prepped and ready. A dream, of course. Either he somehow dozed off a the counter of the store,
(standing up? There’s no seats in here.)
or more likely, he’s still lying in his bed at home and dreaming that he woke up in the morning, went through the whole morning ritual, picked up a paper, went off to work, had a bad run-in with that notorious bitch Mrs. Trevors, the worst customer known to mankind… Huh. Not likely, he guesses. The rest of the world can live in tranquil harmony with their vivid, lucid dreams, but Ben’s dreams are always as insubstantial as a fantasy with your eyes closed.
A completely sudden lapse of insanity, then? That’s a kind of extreme theory. It’s not like he’s seeing the ghosts of his parents as undead fiends, or listening to voices from the radio telling him he must kill. This is just a chaotic, undefined mess of light and colors swirling and swelling at the other end of the store. Besides, while he can’t be sure it’s true, he thinks he’s read somewhere that going insane is a gradual process.
Maybe there’s some more exotic, but believable explanations. Maybe it’s some kind of weird, unusual electric discharge. God knows his boss isn’t prudent about maintenance,
(or fire prevention, for that matter. Maybe he shouldn’t keep standing around here like this)
maybe one of the ceiling fixtures just exploded
(Maybe he’s two seconds away from getting vaporized)
and now the energy’s all… building up in midair, or something.
OK. OK, probably not.
So… experimental weaponry? Yeah. The military has begun producing phasers, or quantum torpedoes, or stasis-mines or some other sci-fi thingamabob. Or probably terrorists. It’s all terrorists these days.
What else? Ugh… don’t tell me. Aliens? Hell, the experimental weapons thing was a stretch, but Ben would make a face at this if he wasn’t so damn…
Is he scared? He’s not sure. He’s warm, at least. Awfully warm. Tom, that’s his boss, he keeps the heating up too high all year long (and his heating bills will surely cause the store to go under several months earlier than otherwise, but he doesn’t seem to realize this), and Ben has gotten used to that, but it seems warmer now. Hot. His hands, fingers, forearms, face, neck: all the skin not covered by clothing is faintly tingling on the surface. Static electricity? So it is electrical, then?
Maybe minutes have gone by, during which Ben has stood absolutely still, one hand leaning on the counter and creating a sweaty patch, the other hanging limply by his side with an equally sweaty palm. His mouth is hanging open in the most literal sense that real life allows, and it is dry. His mind seems to simultaneously be drawing a blank, and twisting and turning like a rubix cube in the hands of a kid with ADD. It’s like he’s trying to see the subject of his thoughts from all angles, looking for a way in but not finding one.
He becomes aware of something significant; there is a customer standing off to the left, somewhere inbetween Ben and the… whatever it is. He must’ve come in while Ben was standing, frozen, at the counter. It’s a guy of about eighteen in an ill-fitting leather jacket, holding an empty tape box in each hand and reading the backs in an attempt to decide which one he’ll rent. From where he’s standing, Ben can easily read or recognize the spines of both boxes. One is 2001: A Space Odyssey, the other Boondock Saints. Ben would tell him to pick the latter.
The guy’s immersed in reading the boxes, and his back is turned towards the light swirl, but he can’t possibly be missing out on what’s happening here; that thing makes sound.
It’s one of the few things Ben has ever seen or heard that would constitute the use of the word indescribable. At best, he could call it ‘the sound of stirring clouds’. And vaguely, behind it, a sound like Velcro being torn from whatever it’s stuck to. Or maybe it’s not so much tearing as breaking, the sound of a tree that’s been chopped halfway through and is then pushed down… or maybe it’s both.
The guy doesn’t notice any of it even though he’s closer to the light than Ben, and for the first time, our storeclerk friend gets scared. It seems as if the idea that nobody was around to see this (or rather, to not see it) was more comforting to his sanity than this. Maybe those sudden fits of insanity aren’t as impossible as he thinks. Maybe he’s having a very slow stroke. Maybe he’s dying. He’s always thought that ‘tunnel of light’ stuff was a coincidental crock of shit, but for all he knows, he’s looking into it right now. Doesn’t look inviting, though.
His slow-fast train of thought seems to suddenly take a detour as the notion comes to him that it is high time to do something. Move, at the very least. Maybe go outside and get some fresh air. Tom would kill him if he’d see him leaving the store unattended, but Tom isn’t here right now. Fuck Tom. Going insane and / or dying is a little more important than this crappy, too-hot, soon-to-be-dead-end job.
He takes a step left that feels like a leap, but isn’t actually more than a shuffle, and blinks. A step to the right. As he does so, part of a metal wire mill holding this week’s employee’s picks moves between him and the light, and blots part of it out, but… the light has moved with him. In a straight line, it’s still the exact same distance from him, but when he moves… it moves with him. A brief, insane string of trivia flickers in and out of his thoughts; you put your left foot in, you put your left foot out. In, out, in, out, shake it all about. Everybody knows it’s called the Hokey Pokey, but for some reason the Brits insist it’s the Hokey Cokey.
This seems to be the last drop. This sets him in motion. That’s it, Ben tells himself. Enough of this dopey-standing-around-like-a-goddamn-horror-movie-extra-shit. And as he begins walking towards the entrance of the store, the light moves along with him, and begins to approach.
There’s only a few seconds as Ben stands at the end of the counter, gawking once again at the ball or hole of light and color cheerfully coming closer, moving through stacks and racks and boxes. Then he panics. And he turns. And he runs.
The guy in the leather jacket looks up at him sheepishly, then returns to the process of picking a movie. Ben runs without looking back. He crosses the romance section with the ten worn-down copies of Titanic, the sales section with its titles no sane person has ever heard of, the latest releases section.
He reaches the door with an incoherent, instinctual, childish thought drumming through his head like a mantra; if he looks back, it will be right behind him. Whether or not that will be true if he doesn’t look back is of no consequence; like a bogeyman or an axe-wielding maniac following you to the bathroom in the middle of the night, if he looks back, it will be right behind him.
Ben swings the door open and stares straight into the round, red face of Mrs. Trevors, her lips drawn tight and her eyes looking suspicious in preparation of trying to dodge yet another fine for turning in one of her musicals too late. Her eyebrows leap up as the door she was about to grasp is suddenly gone, and in its place, Ben has appeared. The box she’s holding – Ben thinks it might be the Sound of Music – drops from her hand as she flinches back, hits the store’s mat, and pops open. The tape jumps out, and even in midair Ben, who’s unwillingly developed an eye for this sort of thing, can see that she once again neglected to rewind it. He thinks how she wouldn’t – or rather, he wouldn’t have this problem if the store would just switch to DVDs, before he turns around.
And, of course, it is right in front of him.
He hears Mrs. Trevors’s bitching beginning and immediately fading as the light overtakes him, a mixed blessing of sorts. He feels his body heating up fast, as if he’s being propelled towards the sun. His senses become filled with light, he feels like his brain tumbles over backwards, and then he is gone.
He is in another state of sensory input now. Vaguely he thinks, because thoughts are like faint words from other rooms now, that this is what feeling in dreams is like; when you feel pain or pleasure or movement in dreams, this is what it feels like. But in dreams you don’t recognize those feelings as false, as clever tricks of your subconscious. Right now he does, and he thinks it might be because his mind and his body aren’t exactly in the same place anymore. There is the sensation, being true or false, of being pushed through something that constantly seems to change. At first it is silky and sticky but dry, like old cobwebs. Then it’s wet and membranous, like jell-o. Then it feels as if he’s a magnet being pushed towards another magnet of an opposing pole, and the force of it is sending a stinging, prickly feeling of pins and needles through his body – it would surely be painful if his body didn’t feel like such a distant concept now.
Then there is an indescribable rushing feeling, speed and pressure mounting all at once, and he realizes that whether or not he actually left his body, he’s been pushed back just now. His eyes are there, feeling like hot grapes, forced to stare into a whiteness that is like a bleak, clouded, spring morning sky. His ears are back too, registering a sound that suggests the very air inside them is being torn open like the seat of a pair of old jeans. His nose smells bitter ozone and a growing, sweet scent of grass and flowers; his tongue, though his mouth is closed, seems to taste sour smoke and copper. He realizes whatever’s happened to him is subsiding and giving way to the real world again, whatever that may be.
There are colorless silhouettes materializing before him, growing in detail as the light fades away. A stark blue, a cloudless sky, is becoming above him. Gentle, cool things tickle his ankles inside his pants legs, staining his socks with wetness, and before his head becomes clear enough to tell him this is not possible, he knows he is standing in the middle of a field of grass, wet with morning dew.
The sounds of the light begin to subside (and how can light sound so loud?), and he faintly discerns a voice that is strangely high-pitched, strangely screechy; he has never heard a human voice sound like that.
“…I can see it! I can see it coming through, Jynx!”
Another voice replies, this one sounding slightly nasal and, instantly, like a real wiseguy. And even through the haze, Ben can hear a twinge of anxiety in it.
“Don’t wet yourself, Wex. Let’s uh, give this thing some more room, yeah?”
The shadows, varying in size, but none of them very big, shuffle and shrink a bit. And then, in a great sigh, all the light is blown away and Ben feels like he’s crashing into the earth – as if he got used to weightlessness and is suddenly confronted with gravity once more.
He is indeed standing in the middle of a vast grassy field, a brighter green than Ben has ever seen in his life, drops of dew twinkling like little lights that rotate when he moves, a few reddish rocks and boulders strewn around almost purposefully. Above him the sky is a clear blue in which the sun shines uncontested, showering him with warmth that feels far more benevolent and natural than the damp, sweaty heat of the store. His socks are getting pretty wet. The fields stretch on far into the distance, curving in hills and dales as they approach the horizon, where a range of silvery-blue mountains crowned with mist seem to go ever on from left to right.
And five or six feet in front of Ben, standing knee-deep in the grass, are a crow, a cat and a brown turtle, eyeing him with a mixture of curiosity and nervousness.
What do you do when one moment you’re in a videstore, running away from a strange convergence of light that’s gaining on you, and the next one you’re in the light, and then you’re outside in a field, staring at three animals that don’t really look like animals, and that are staring back at you?
Screaming, or fainting, or both are optional, but probably not likely. This is weird, and plenty unsettling, but not really frightening.
As he stands there, his jaw agape but his lips nearly touching, his hands, trembling a little, slightly raised in weak, defensive claws, his legs feeling drunk, the cat seems to shrug off most of his anxiety, and starts to speak.
“So… that’s all? I mean, this is it? This is him?”
He looks at Ben, but he’s speaking to the… to the other animals. His tone is rather depreciative. And he’s not a cat, not really. He’s…anthropomorphic, or something. The face is less elegant than a cat’s, it’s more like a shrunken tiger’s face, its fur striped with blue-gray and white (rather like the mountains in the distance). The eyes are hellish green with flecks of yellow, the slits of pupil so thin, they’re almost gone in the open sun. And perhaps more of note, the cat is wearing a faded brown cassock that covers his ears and shadows his forehead. Most of his body is covered by the cloak, and Ben can’t see if the cat has a tail, but aside from somewhat stubby fingers, the hands look almost human. The major differences are of course his fur, a parting in each fingertip that no doubt hides a claw, and what look like de-evolving pads of smooth, soft pink flesh in the palm and on the inside of the phalanges. Seeing this detail makes Ben momentarily sure he has lost his mind.
“What’d you expect?” says a raspy, squeaky voice that Ben remembers hearing only seconds ago, and his eyes are drawn to the left of the cat, lower to the ground.
Perching there, in the grass, is what he initially took to be a crow. It’s shaped like one, but for one thing, its feathers aren’t really black. As it moves, and as Ben moves, the sunlight bounces off the bird’s feathers in a myriad of dark colors, flowing and twirling like oil. Its beak, however, is a blade of pure yellow.
“Hell, I don’t know,” the cat replies. “Somebody darker, maybe?”
“What, like a Jujumaag?” says the bird.
Ben feels like he’s coping rather well with this situation so far, but the thought that there’s a bird and a cat having a discussion in front of him makes him feel a little like laughing and a little like vomiting.
“No, no, I don’t mean his skin,” the cat continues, matter-of-factly. “I mean, aren’t guys like this supposed to look… what’s the word… grim? And be armed, or something? Apostrophus said they have small things, like sword handles, that spit jagged chunks of metal. He said that on the flip-side, everyone has at least one and some people have a lot of them. Gault! He doesn’t even have a knife!”
In his confusion, Ben’s thoughts have ceased to be entirely coherent; he no longer thinks in such specific terms as this is a dream or I have gone insane, he is merely aware that something is wrong, this all can’t be real. He is on the verge of saying something, addressing the dream or hallucination, but keeps reconsidering.
The cat walks around Ben in a circle that is wide enough to suggest some apprehension, but not nearly wide enough to suggest fear anymore. Ben follows him with his eyes as the cat checks him out from all sides, but is not yet sure if it’s wise to move his head.
“And where’s his cybertechnics?” the cat complains, like a man buying a second-hand car and pointing out all the negatives to get a better deal. “Fergus’s teeth! They all had a cybertechnics harness in Apostrophus’s drawings!” He seems to be getting pissed off, his voice rising.
“Calm down.” The bird says soberly. “The Flippant specifically picked him to toss over. That means something, right?”
“Excuse me…” Ben finally starts.
“Mean what, exactly?” the cat shoots back at the bird, irritably. “We know they can’t do magic on the flip-side, so why does it send us someone who’s unarmed?”
“Pardon me…” Ben tries.
“Obviously, it must have some other reason for picking him then.” says the bird. “Maybe he’s the best Mechologist there is over there.”
The cat finishes his circle and stands in front of Ben, paw-hands curled into fist on his sides, looking up at him with those fiery bright animal eyes. He slants his head and gives Ben a queer, investigative look.
“Well?” his tone suggests he’s speaking to a mentally retarded person. “Are you the best Mechologist one can find on the flip-side, guy?”
“What’s a…” Ben’s mouth feels dry. “…Mechologist.”
First the cat seems to determine whether or not he is joking, then he casts an impatient glance over his shoulder at the bird. When he replies to Ben, he sounds both exasperated and mad.
“You had best be joking. A Mechologist, son. Are you a Mechologist?”
Ben’s head is spinning, and he thinks he knows why. Everything is so goddamn clear, so goddamn sharp and bright. It feels unnatural and it’s making him dizzy. Whether these are dreams or delusions, he doesn’t want them to be this real. He wants them to be fuzzy so he can keep them at arm’s length. His sense of reality is being violated.
“Where… is this?” his voice is almost a whisper.
The cat throws up his hands and turns around, walking off angrily. The bird, however, hops forward and looks up at Ben.
“Sorry. We’re being rude. These are the Waterlight Fields, but that’s probably not what you mean. You’re on the… on our side. We call your side the flip-side, but we don’t have a name for this one. Your side probably does, though.”
Ben puts his hands over his face and rubs his forehead.
“What the hell are you talking about?” he says softly. “My side, your side?”
The bird hops up and turns to the brown turtle.
“I forget. Did Apostrophus ever say if they can flip on the other side?”
After a few seconds, the turtle answers in a very timid, barely audible voice: “I don’t think so. That they can flip, I mean. Without magic. Oh, unless they can do it with Mechology, though? But probably not.”
Ben removes his hands and briefly studies the turtle, who avoids his glance and seems extremely uncomfortable. Now that he’s actually looking at it, he sees that of all the animals, this one looks the least like what it looks the most like. Its block-shaped head only vaguely resembles that of a turtle, with small eyes on the top, tiny nostrils high up on the nose, and a blunt-looking beak. Its skin is mottled, light brown and leathery, creased and wrinkled around the neck. It’s wearing a cassock similar to the cat’s, so long only its toes stick out from under the robe. They are four toes per foot, akin to its four fingers per hand, and they are all short and stubby. Of the three, this guy looks the most harmless… but also the most alien. Ben can’t help but think of ET with a smaller head and a body less like a space penis. He feels his lips wanting to curl into a goofy grin and he presses them together; for no reason at all, it feels unwise to smile right now.
The bird hops around again to face Ben, and as it speaks, the humanity in its posture strikes him.
“OK then, let’s see… Do you want the long version, or the short version?”
Ben isn’t sure what it means, but his attention is lacking right now.
“Short.”
“Right. See, there’s these things… wait, let me find a good place to start. Think of your world, like a coin, right? Your world’s on one side of this coin. And my world – our world, is on the other side. Actually, there might be a whole lot of sides to this coin, I’m not sure of that. Anyway, if you know how to do it, and you have the means to do it, you can toss the coin and flip from one world to the other, see? Only it’s not really like you toss the coin, it’s more like you toss… well, you. Understand?”
Ben looks around glassily as if he’s not even heard the bird.
“Yeah, that’s gonna do it, Wex.” the cat says from a couple of yards away, his back turned to the others. “You even lost me around ‘like a coin’.”
The bird throws him an irritated look – again, strikingly human – and snorts. In the mean time, Ben remembers to pinch himself, and feels a very distinct, awake sting of pain.
“I don’t get any of this…” he says, and feels only a little relieved that his voice sounds more solid now.
The cat suddenly turns around and strides towards Ben.
“Look. Man. It’s really quite simple. You have stories where you’re from, right? Tales, books, myths, legends?”
“Yes.”
“OK. And you have those about people going to other worlds? Flipping over, as you will?”
“Yeah. Yeah, we do. Lots. Wizard of Oz. Alice in Wonderland.” A fragmentary thought strikes Ben and he utters it with the distinct impression that he’s suddenly got the situation figured out, just before he realizes that he doesn’t. “Are you the Cheshire Cat?”
The cat blinks at him. “What did you call me?”
“The point is,” the bird intervenes, “you’re in one of those stories now. Only it’s not a story.”
“Nor a dream.” the turtle adds softly. “I saw you pinch yourself. You shouldn’t do that. Um. Not that I’m telling you what you should do, but it doesn’t help.”
Ben glances down at the grass, considers its glistening dew for a moment, then decides it doesn’t matter and sinks down to the ground. He crosses his legs, Indian-fashion, and rubs his eyes with his elbows leaning on his knees.
“I’m not acknowledging you.” he finally says. “This is not real.”
“Gault help me, Wex, I’m gonna scratch his face open.” the cat growls.
“Back off,” the bird tells him. “Give the guy a moment. How do you think you’d do if you got tossed over to the other side with no warning?”
“But we’ll want to get moving soon,” the turtle interjects, softly but urgently. “Jynx is right about that. If there were Octalytes at Apostrophus’s home, they might pass through here eventua-“
“Aah!” Ben exclaims, catching the attention of the three animals again. He was leaning back, when he suddenly felt a hard tip poke the skin of his back. He turns around as far as he can and plucks something from the ground. “What’s this?”
“Whoa, whoa, careful with that.” The turtle, startled, lumbers forward and snags the object from Ben’s hands. “I mean, please. Sorry. It’s just that, this is important.”
The object appears to be a short metal rod with intricate patterns carved into it. There are two golden bands in the midsection, and a shard of faint blue crystal on the top. Inside the crystal there seems to be a hole, but it is brown and black with soot, like a burnt-out lightbulb. The turtle holds it solemnly, brushing off wet earth from the bottom side with his fingers.
“I don’t think it’s going to do anything anymore, Beene.” says the bird. “I think you could just use it once.”
“What is it?” Ben asks the bird, and then mentally adds You’re talking to the dream again. That’s not helpful. But the unrelenting clarity of this dream or illusion is wearing on him. He wonders if the crossing point of going insane is perhaps simply accepting the delusions that your subconscious is offering you.
“It’s a Flippant.” the bird replies, seeming faintly pleased that Ben has temporarily stopped considering them an illusion. “Also called Tosser, Flipstick or Springkey. They’re really hard to make, and sorcerers use them to bring things or people over from your side.”
“That’s what… brought me over?” A frightening thought hovers at the edge of Ben’s mind, but he can’t quite grab on to it.
The bird nods, a very weird gesture to see.
“Is it broken?”
“Just burned out.” the bird replies. “They only work once.”
“Then,” The question crashes in on him, and in the fear it bestows upon him he understands that he has accepted this world and these creatures as real. “Then how am I going to get back?”
Both the bird and the turtle look up at him in a way that seems to suggest this thought never even crossed their minds. The awkward silence is broken by the cat, who is pacing back and forth over the field.
“Later! We worry about that later, Gault!” The cat walks up to them again and stands before Ben. “Could you stop thinking about yourself for five seconds and… what’s your name, anyway?”
The suddenness of the question startles an immediate answer out of him. “Ben. Davis.”
The cat nods with one eyebrow raised ironically. “Good. Now we’re getting somewhere. So pleased to meet you, Ben Davis. I am Jynx Jumyinia, just call me Jynx. This here’s Wex,” he says, waving a hand at the bird, “she’s the brains behind this operation.”
“Wescaphelia, in full.” the bird corrects. “Jynx was never big on formalities.”
The cat continues, as if uninterrupted. “And the gentleman standing over there is Beene St. Netherdorf.” He waves his other hand at the turtle, who is studying his toes. “You are Ben Davis, our Mechologist –“
“I don’t know what that –“
“ –and we’re going to need you to take care of our problem. Now, first question: where is your cybertechnics?”
The cat has his paws in his sides again, eyeing Ben with impatience.
Ben sighs deeply. “Look. Cat. Jynx. I don’t know what you mean by cybertechnics.”
Before the cat can reply, the bird – Wex – chides in: “You might have a different word for it on your side. It’s supposed to be this black suit, kind of like knight’s armor, with glowing yellow dots and lines on it. Wires and leds, I think. Sometimes it has spikes. Or a cannon on the arm or shoulder. Does that sound familiar?”
“What it sounds like is science fic –“ Ben halts, feeling like that thought is significant. “Science… fiction.”
“Sinesfiction?” Wex says unsurely, pronouncing it as a single word. “Does that mean you know what we’re talking about?”
Ben scratches his head, thinks for a moment, and says: “No, and… yes. The stories you were talking about earlier, we have them about many things… And science fiction is… are… stories about the future and technology that doesn’t exist yet, like cybernetics and cyborgs… cybertechnics, I guess.”
“What is he talking about?” Jynx, the cat, says confusedly. “Stories about cybertechnics? Apostrophus never said they were just stories!”
“How come I can understand you?” Ben suddenly asks.
Jynx glances left and right. “Understand us? I’m not following you.”
“I mean, what language are you speaking?”
The cat looks flabbergasted. “English. And so are you. Look, no offence, but do you qualify as a particularly slow person on your side? Cause, if you’re a Mechology genius on the flip-side, I don’t think I want to know what everyone else is like.”
At this, Ben is overtaken by an abrupt need to snicker. The sound is very alien and slightly frightening to his own ears.
“Let’s just get going.” Wex says a little anxiously. “We’re sitting ducks out here, and if we’re going to keep arguing till everybody’s satisfied, we’re all going to find out what octalyte venom tastes like before long.”
In response, the turtle, Beene, casts some frightful glances around the area, and hobbles around Ben. Ben feels no apprehension or fear or disgust as the creature gets so near to him – of the three, it seems the most harmless. Beene examines the hole in the ground where the Flippant stood, and starts patting and stomping the ground around it softly to close it.
Jynx stands with his arms crossed, sighs, and nods.
“Alright. This isn’t getting us anywhere, anyway.”
With a flutter of wings, Wex perches on Jynx’s shoulder, and they begin walking off. Three seconds later, they halt and turn around to look at Ben, who is still sitting cross-legged in the grass. He watches them warily over his shoulder.
“Are you coming already?” Jynx asks sharply.
“Um…” Ben honestly doesn’t know what to answer. “…no.” he finally decides. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
There is no valid reason to rationalize it, but having been torn from his own world and tossed into another, if that is really what happened, Ben thinks that leaving the spot where he arrived could make it impossible for him to go back.
More impossible than it already is? a nagging voice in the back of his head asks.
“Tell you what.” Jynx says. “We’ll answer one more of your questions, and then you decide whether you want to stay here or not.”
“OK. How am I supp-“
“No. The question you may ask us is, ‘what are octalytes?’ Beene, fill him in.”
Beene looks up and glances at Jynx, not understanding.
“Well, um, uh. They’re about as tall as you are, Mr. Davis, if they stretch their legs, I guess. And um, their bodies are black or gray, sometimes with spots. The ones you really want to watch out for have a red stripe, those are uh, those are nasty. Their legs are kind of pink and fleshy, with sharp tips, like fingernails… Oh, they can stick to walls and ceilings, and make small webs, and they have three huge jaws to shoot you full of poison. The ones with the red stripes though, the females, they can just uh, spit the poison at you from afar. And I think the adult ones can fly. With wings.”
There is a moment of silence among them. Ben’s eyes have grown a little wider.
“Tell him what happens when they bite you, Beene.” says Jynx, still looking at Ben.
“Oh, um. When they bite, they shoot poison in you. Well, obviously. Yes. The poison turns your skin dry and hard, like a crust, and it turns all your innards to fluid. So they can drink you. Also, the poison works on your brain so you stay conscious until you, well, die. It’s really quite unpleasant. Really.” Beene shivers unselfconsciously.
“Do you want to stay here and meet them?” Jynx asks, his arms crossed again.
“I…” Ben swallows. “I think that’s probably not a good idea.”
He stands up, beating some of the dew, dirt, and grass off the seat and legs of his pants, and rushes after the animals, who have already resumed their trot. From where he stands Ben can’t see it, but Jynx is smiling smugly.
As he catches up with the animals, Ben asks:
“Beene… do octalytes look anything like spiders?”
The turtle considers it, then softly nods.
“Hm… Yes. I mean, now that you mention it, I guess they do, a little.”
“Spiders.” Ben says, looking ahead, shivering unselfconsciously.
[center:693c4f7544]Continued, to be.[/center:693c4f7544]
I would be grateful if you'd take the time to read some of it and perhaps point out things you did or didn't like - maybe help me sort out any recurring problems I have in my writing English (believe me, to a foreigner, there are worlds of difference between posting in English, speaking it, and writing stories in it).
I need to write much more to come up with a definitive title, so right now it's more descriptive of the story than anything else.
[center:693c4f7544]-------------------------------
Opening: Blind dialogue
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“OK, so; how does it work?”
“Huh? How’m I supposed to know?”
“How… what do you mean? You’re the one who got it from the old man!”
“Wex, you know how it is. How he is. When I finally got his head unscrewed enough so he could give me what I needed, he disappeared.”
“You… drabslag. You slugfunnel! If you don’t know how to make this thing work, what the scrat are we doing out here?”
“Look, just calm down. I couldn’t wait around any longer, there were octalytes banging on his door. I’m lucky to have even escaped with it. Maybe it’s not even that hard to turn it on.”
“So, what do we do now?”
“Well, let’s see. I think you can twist the top half around…”
“Don’t break it, you fool!”
“I’m not breaking it! Gault save me, some trust you guys have in me. If I wasn’t…”
“Jynx…”
“What?”
“Something’s happening.”
“…”
“It’s starting to glow. Put it down. Put it in the ground. Quick!”
“…”
“…Jynx?”
“What, Beene?”
“…is this going to work?”
“Hell if I know. Take things one step at a time, that’s my motto. We’ll wait for it to toss someone over. That’s step one. What comes after that, we’ll deal with in its own time.”
“…”
“…Jynx?”
“Beene?”
“What if it’s unfriendly?”
“That’s a good question, Beene. Did anyone think to bring a sword?”
“…”
“Shit.”
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I
--------------------[/center:693c4f7544]
As far as I know, there’s any given number of ways to rip something – or someone – from their world, and toss them into another. Of course not all of them work the way you might want them to – they might tear your subject to pieces upon arrival, or cause them to explode, or fling them into an entirely unwanted direction; over a cliff, into a random world, or maybe into outer space. It’s a subtle craft. Yup, there’s many ways to toss someone into another world, and not all of them work… and none of them are easy.
As Ben Davis’s luck would have it, the method used to toss him across the multiverse, at least worked.
Who’s Ben Davis? Ben is twenty-three years old and works at a video rental store that’s running on its last legs, because the owner’s nose for business has failed to pick up the urgent scent of DVDs. After wrestling his way through high school, Ben gave up on the process of education. He can do it – he just can’t commit to it. Ben has few family members left. He comes from a long line of only children. He only sees his parents on birthdays, and among the three of them, they have silently agreed this is the way they prefer it. Ben lives on his own and keeps to himself, in an apartment that is cheap and shows it. Here he spends his ample free time watching movie after movie, trying to take in all the genre has to offer, almost obsessively daring the worst of the worst so he can also absorb the best of the best. He has stopped trying to explain to himself why he has no friends, only acquaintances, and never a girlfriend, only female acquaintances. Between his scant education and the looming fate of the store, Ben’s future is extremely uncertain. He knows this, but refuses to deal with it until he can’t anymore. He does that with a lot of things.
He’s not a bad guy, though.. A little slow in some ways, pretty sharp in others. A treasure trove of trivial knowledge, but not the least bit street-smart. More familiar with kitsch than the classics. Timid, but friendly. Wiry, and not in great physical shape. Long face, dark hair that points in all directions in defiance of a hairdo. Let’s hope you’re getting a good picture of him, and see what is happening to him now.
Ben isn’t sure what he’s looking at. If he’d have to tell another person,
(and will he get the chance? Who knows?)
they would probably have a number of theories prepped and ready. A dream, of course. Either he somehow dozed off a the counter of the store,
(standing up? There’s no seats in here.)
or more likely, he’s still lying in his bed at home and dreaming that he woke up in the morning, went through the whole morning ritual, picked up a paper, went off to work, had a bad run-in with that notorious bitch Mrs. Trevors, the worst customer known to mankind… Huh. Not likely, he guesses. The rest of the world can live in tranquil harmony with their vivid, lucid dreams, but Ben’s dreams are always as insubstantial as a fantasy with your eyes closed.
A completely sudden lapse of insanity, then? That’s a kind of extreme theory. It’s not like he’s seeing the ghosts of his parents as undead fiends, or listening to voices from the radio telling him he must kill. This is just a chaotic, undefined mess of light and colors swirling and swelling at the other end of the store. Besides, while he can’t be sure it’s true, he thinks he’s read somewhere that going insane is a gradual process.
Maybe there’s some more exotic, but believable explanations. Maybe it’s some kind of weird, unusual electric discharge. God knows his boss isn’t prudent about maintenance,
(or fire prevention, for that matter. Maybe he shouldn’t keep standing around here like this)
maybe one of the ceiling fixtures just exploded
(Maybe he’s two seconds away from getting vaporized)
and now the energy’s all… building up in midair, or something.
OK. OK, probably not.
So… experimental weaponry? Yeah. The military has begun producing phasers, or quantum torpedoes, or stasis-mines or some other sci-fi thingamabob. Or probably terrorists. It’s all terrorists these days.
What else? Ugh… don’t tell me. Aliens? Hell, the experimental weapons thing was a stretch, but Ben would make a face at this if he wasn’t so damn…
Is he scared? He’s not sure. He’s warm, at least. Awfully warm. Tom, that’s his boss, he keeps the heating up too high all year long (and his heating bills will surely cause the store to go under several months earlier than otherwise, but he doesn’t seem to realize this), and Ben has gotten used to that, but it seems warmer now. Hot. His hands, fingers, forearms, face, neck: all the skin not covered by clothing is faintly tingling on the surface. Static electricity? So it is electrical, then?
Maybe minutes have gone by, during which Ben has stood absolutely still, one hand leaning on the counter and creating a sweaty patch, the other hanging limply by his side with an equally sweaty palm. His mouth is hanging open in the most literal sense that real life allows, and it is dry. His mind seems to simultaneously be drawing a blank, and twisting and turning like a rubix cube in the hands of a kid with ADD. It’s like he’s trying to see the subject of his thoughts from all angles, looking for a way in but not finding one.
He becomes aware of something significant; there is a customer standing off to the left, somewhere inbetween Ben and the… whatever it is. He must’ve come in while Ben was standing, frozen, at the counter. It’s a guy of about eighteen in an ill-fitting leather jacket, holding an empty tape box in each hand and reading the backs in an attempt to decide which one he’ll rent. From where he’s standing, Ben can easily read or recognize the spines of both boxes. One is 2001: A Space Odyssey, the other Boondock Saints. Ben would tell him to pick the latter.
The guy’s immersed in reading the boxes, and his back is turned towards the light swirl, but he can’t possibly be missing out on what’s happening here; that thing makes sound.
It’s one of the few things Ben has ever seen or heard that would constitute the use of the word indescribable. At best, he could call it ‘the sound of stirring clouds’. And vaguely, behind it, a sound like Velcro being torn from whatever it’s stuck to. Or maybe it’s not so much tearing as breaking, the sound of a tree that’s been chopped halfway through and is then pushed down… or maybe it’s both.
The guy doesn’t notice any of it even though he’s closer to the light than Ben, and for the first time, our storeclerk friend gets scared. It seems as if the idea that nobody was around to see this (or rather, to not see it) was more comforting to his sanity than this. Maybe those sudden fits of insanity aren’t as impossible as he thinks. Maybe he’s having a very slow stroke. Maybe he’s dying. He’s always thought that ‘tunnel of light’ stuff was a coincidental crock of shit, but for all he knows, he’s looking into it right now. Doesn’t look inviting, though.
His slow-fast train of thought seems to suddenly take a detour as the notion comes to him that it is high time to do something. Move, at the very least. Maybe go outside and get some fresh air. Tom would kill him if he’d see him leaving the store unattended, but Tom isn’t here right now. Fuck Tom. Going insane and / or dying is a little more important than this crappy, too-hot, soon-to-be-dead-end job.
He takes a step left that feels like a leap, but isn’t actually more than a shuffle, and blinks. A step to the right. As he does so, part of a metal wire mill holding this week’s employee’s picks moves between him and the light, and blots part of it out, but… the light has moved with him. In a straight line, it’s still the exact same distance from him, but when he moves… it moves with him. A brief, insane string of trivia flickers in and out of his thoughts; you put your left foot in, you put your left foot out. In, out, in, out, shake it all about. Everybody knows it’s called the Hokey Pokey, but for some reason the Brits insist it’s the Hokey Cokey.
This seems to be the last drop. This sets him in motion. That’s it, Ben tells himself. Enough of this dopey-standing-around-like-a-goddamn-horror-movie-extra-shit. And as he begins walking towards the entrance of the store, the light moves along with him, and begins to approach.
There’s only a few seconds as Ben stands at the end of the counter, gawking once again at the ball or hole of light and color cheerfully coming closer, moving through stacks and racks and boxes. Then he panics. And he turns. And he runs.
The guy in the leather jacket looks up at him sheepishly, then returns to the process of picking a movie. Ben runs without looking back. He crosses the romance section with the ten worn-down copies of Titanic, the sales section with its titles no sane person has ever heard of, the latest releases section.
He reaches the door with an incoherent, instinctual, childish thought drumming through his head like a mantra; if he looks back, it will be right behind him. Whether or not that will be true if he doesn’t look back is of no consequence; like a bogeyman or an axe-wielding maniac following you to the bathroom in the middle of the night, if he looks back, it will be right behind him.
Ben swings the door open and stares straight into the round, red face of Mrs. Trevors, her lips drawn tight and her eyes looking suspicious in preparation of trying to dodge yet another fine for turning in one of her musicals too late. Her eyebrows leap up as the door she was about to grasp is suddenly gone, and in its place, Ben has appeared. The box she’s holding – Ben thinks it might be the Sound of Music – drops from her hand as she flinches back, hits the store’s mat, and pops open. The tape jumps out, and even in midair Ben, who’s unwillingly developed an eye for this sort of thing, can see that she once again neglected to rewind it. He thinks how she wouldn’t – or rather, he wouldn’t have this problem if the store would just switch to DVDs, before he turns around.
And, of course, it is right in front of him.
He hears Mrs. Trevors’s bitching beginning and immediately fading as the light overtakes him, a mixed blessing of sorts. He feels his body heating up fast, as if he’s being propelled towards the sun. His senses become filled with light, he feels like his brain tumbles over backwards, and then he is gone.
He is in another state of sensory input now. Vaguely he thinks, because thoughts are like faint words from other rooms now, that this is what feeling in dreams is like; when you feel pain or pleasure or movement in dreams, this is what it feels like. But in dreams you don’t recognize those feelings as false, as clever tricks of your subconscious. Right now he does, and he thinks it might be because his mind and his body aren’t exactly in the same place anymore. There is the sensation, being true or false, of being pushed through something that constantly seems to change. At first it is silky and sticky but dry, like old cobwebs. Then it’s wet and membranous, like jell-o. Then it feels as if he’s a magnet being pushed towards another magnet of an opposing pole, and the force of it is sending a stinging, prickly feeling of pins and needles through his body – it would surely be painful if his body didn’t feel like such a distant concept now.
Then there is an indescribable rushing feeling, speed and pressure mounting all at once, and he realizes that whether or not he actually left his body, he’s been pushed back just now. His eyes are there, feeling like hot grapes, forced to stare into a whiteness that is like a bleak, clouded, spring morning sky. His ears are back too, registering a sound that suggests the very air inside them is being torn open like the seat of a pair of old jeans. His nose smells bitter ozone and a growing, sweet scent of grass and flowers; his tongue, though his mouth is closed, seems to taste sour smoke and copper. He realizes whatever’s happened to him is subsiding and giving way to the real world again, whatever that may be.
There are colorless silhouettes materializing before him, growing in detail as the light fades away. A stark blue, a cloudless sky, is becoming above him. Gentle, cool things tickle his ankles inside his pants legs, staining his socks with wetness, and before his head becomes clear enough to tell him this is not possible, he knows he is standing in the middle of a field of grass, wet with morning dew.
The sounds of the light begin to subside (and how can light sound so loud?), and he faintly discerns a voice that is strangely high-pitched, strangely screechy; he has never heard a human voice sound like that.
“…I can see it! I can see it coming through, Jynx!”
Another voice replies, this one sounding slightly nasal and, instantly, like a real wiseguy. And even through the haze, Ben can hear a twinge of anxiety in it.
“Don’t wet yourself, Wex. Let’s uh, give this thing some more room, yeah?”
The shadows, varying in size, but none of them very big, shuffle and shrink a bit. And then, in a great sigh, all the light is blown away and Ben feels like he’s crashing into the earth – as if he got used to weightlessness and is suddenly confronted with gravity once more.
He is indeed standing in the middle of a vast grassy field, a brighter green than Ben has ever seen in his life, drops of dew twinkling like little lights that rotate when he moves, a few reddish rocks and boulders strewn around almost purposefully. Above him the sky is a clear blue in which the sun shines uncontested, showering him with warmth that feels far more benevolent and natural than the damp, sweaty heat of the store. His socks are getting pretty wet. The fields stretch on far into the distance, curving in hills and dales as they approach the horizon, where a range of silvery-blue mountains crowned with mist seem to go ever on from left to right.
And five or six feet in front of Ben, standing knee-deep in the grass, are a crow, a cat and a brown turtle, eyeing him with a mixture of curiosity and nervousness.
What do you do when one moment you’re in a videstore, running away from a strange convergence of light that’s gaining on you, and the next one you’re in the light, and then you’re outside in a field, staring at three animals that don’t really look like animals, and that are staring back at you?
Screaming, or fainting, or both are optional, but probably not likely. This is weird, and plenty unsettling, but not really frightening.
As he stands there, his jaw agape but his lips nearly touching, his hands, trembling a little, slightly raised in weak, defensive claws, his legs feeling drunk, the cat seems to shrug off most of his anxiety, and starts to speak.
“So… that’s all? I mean, this is it? This is him?”
He looks at Ben, but he’s speaking to the… to the other animals. His tone is rather depreciative. And he’s not a cat, not really. He’s…anthropomorphic, or something. The face is less elegant than a cat’s, it’s more like a shrunken tiger’s face, its fur striped with blue-gray and white (rather like the mountains in the distance). The eyes are hellish green with flecks of yellow, the slits of pupil so thin, they’re almost gone in the open sun. And perhaps more of note, the cat is wearing a faded brown cassock that covers his ears and shadows his forehead. Most of his body is covered by the cloak, and Ben can’t see if the cat has a tail, but aside from somewhat stubby fingers, the hands look almost human. The major differences are of course his fur, a parting in each fingertip that no doubt hides a claw, and what look like de-evolving pads of smooth, soft pink flesh in the palm and on the inside of the phalanges. Seeing this detail makes Ben momentarily sure he has lost his mind.
“What’d you expect?” says a raspy, squeaky voice that Ben remembers hearing only seconds ago, and his eyes are drawn to the left of the cat, lower to the ground.
Perching there, in the grass, is what he initially took to be a crow. It’s shaped like one, but for one thing, its feathers aren’t really black. As it moves, and as Ben moves, the sunlight bounces off the bird’s feathers in a myriad of dark colors, flowing and twirling like oil. Its beak, however, is a blade of pure yellow.
“Hell, I don’t know,” the cat replies. “Somebody darker, maybe?”
“What, like a Jujumaag?” says the bird.
Ben feels like he’s coping rather well with this situation so far, but the thought that there’s a bird and a cat having a discussion in front of him makes him feel a little like laughing and a little like vomiting.
“No, no, I don’t mean his skin,” the cat continues, matter-of-factly. “I mean, aren’t guys like this supposed to look… what’s the word… grim? And be armed, or something? Apostrophus said they have small things, like sword handles, that spit jagged chunks of metal. He said that on the flip-side, everyone has at least one and some people have a lot of them. Gault! He doesn’t even have a knife!”
In his confusion, Ben’s thoughts have ceased to be entirely coherent; he no longer thinks in such specific terms as this is a dream or I have gone insane, he is merely aware that something is wrong, this all can’t be real. He is on the verge of saying something, addressing the dream or hallucination, but keeps reconsidering.
The cat walks around Ben in a circle that is wide enough to suggest some apprehension, but not nearly wide enough to suggest fear anymore. Ben follows him with his eyes as the cat checks him out from all sides, but is not yet sure if it’s wise to move his head.
“And where’s his cybertechnics?” the cat complains, like a man buying a second-hand car and pointing out all the negatives to get a better deal. “Fergus’s teeth! They all had a cybertechnics harness in Apostrophus’s drawings!” He seems to be getting pissed off, his voice rising.
“Calm down.” The bird says soberly. “The Flippant specifically picked him to toss over. That means something, right?”
“Excuse me…” Ben finally starts.
“Mean what, exactly?” the cat shoots back at the bird, irritably. “We know they can’t do magic on the flip-side, so why does it send us someone who’s unarmed?”
“Pardon me…” Ben tries.
“Obviously, it must have some other reason for picking him then.” says the bird. “Maybe he’s the best Mechologist there is over there.”
The cat finishes his circle and stands in front of Ben, paw-hands curled into fist on his sides, looking up at him with those fiery bright animal eyes. He slants his head and gives Ben a queer, investigative look.
“Well?” his tone suggests he’s speaking to a mentally retarded person. “Are you the best Mechologist one can find on the flip-side, guy?”
“What’s a…” Ben’s mouth feels dry. “…Mechologist.”
First the cat seems to determine whether or not he is joking, then he casts an impatient glance over his shoulder at the bird. When he replies to Ben, he sounds both exasperated and mad.
“You had best be joking. A Mechologist, son. Are you a Mechologist?”
Ben’s head is spinning, and he thinks he knows why. Everything is so goddamn clear, so goddamn sharp and bright. It feels unnatural and it’s making him dizzy. Whether these are dreams or delusions, he doesn’t want them to be this real. He wants them to be fuzzy so he can keep them at arm’s length. His sense of reality is being violated.
“Where… is this?” his voice is almost a whisper.
The cat throws up his hands and turns around, walking off angrily. The bird, however, hops forward and looks up at Ben.
“Sorry. We’re being rude. These are the Waterlight Fields, but that’s probably not what you mean. You’re on the… on our side. We call your side the flip-side, but we don’t have a name for this one. Your side probably does, though.”
Ben puts his hands over his face and rubs his forehead.
“What the hell are you talking about?” he says softly. “My side, your side?”
The bird hops up and turns to the brown turtle.
“I forget. Did Apostrophus ever say if they can flip on the other side?”
After a few seconds, the turtle answers in a very timid, barely audible voice: “I don’t think so. That they can flip, I mean. Without magic. Oh, unless they can do it with Mechology, though? But probably not.”
Ben removes his hands and briefly studies the turtle, who avoids his glance and seems extremely uncomfortable. Now that he’s actually looking at it, he sees that of all the animals, this one looks the least like what it looks the most like. Its block-shaped head only vaguely resembles that of a turtle, with small eyes on the top, tiny nostrils high up on the nose, and a blunt-looking beak. Its skin is mottled, light brown and leathery, creased and wrinkled around the neck. It’s wearing a cassock similar to the cat’s, so long only its toes stick out from under the robe. They are four toes per foot, akin to its four fingers per hand, and they are all short and stubby. Of the three, this guy looks the most harmless… but also the most alien. Ben can’t help but think of ET with a smaller head and a body less like a space penis. He feels his lips wanting to curl into a goofy grin and he presses them together; for no reason at all, it feels unwise to smile right now.
The bird hops around again to face Ben, and as it speaks, the humanity in its posture strikes him.
“OK then, let’s see… Do you want the long version, or the short version?”
Ben isn’t sure what it means, but his attention is lacking right now.
“Short.”
“Right. See, there’s these things… wait, let me find a good place to start. Think of your world, like a coin, right? Your world’s on one side of this coin. And my world – our world, is on the other side. Actually, there might be a whole lot of sides to this coin, I’m not sure of that. Anyway, if you know how to do it, and you have the means to do it, you can toss the coin and flip from one world to the other, see? Only it’s not really like you toss the coin, it’s more like you toss… well, you. Understand?”
Ben looks around glassily as if he’s not even heard the bird.
“Yeah, that’s gonna do it, Wex.” the cat says from a couple of yards away, his back turned to the others. “You even lost me around ‘like a coin’.”
The bird throws him an irritated look – again, strikingly human – and snorts. In the mean time, Ben remembers to pinch himself, and feels a very distinct, awake sting of pain.
“I don’t get any of this…” he says, and feels only a little relieved that his voice sounds more solid now.
The cat suddenly turns around and strides towards Ben.
“Look. Man. It’s really quite simple. You have stories where you’re from, right? Tales, books, myths, legends?”
“Yes.”
“OK. And you have those about people going to other worlds? Flipping over, as you will?”
“Yeah. Yeah, we do. Lots. Wizard of Oz. Alice in Wonderland.” A fragmentary thought strikes Ben and he utters it with the distinct impression that he’s suddenly got the situation figured out, just before he realizes that he doesn’t. “Are you the Cheshire Cat?”
The cat blinks at him. “What did you call me?”
“The point is,” the bird intervenes, “you’re in one of those stories now. Only it’s not a story.”
“Nor a dream.” the turtle adds softly. “I saw you pinch yourself. You shouldn’t do that. Um. Not that I’m telling you what you should do, but it doesn’t help.”
Ben glances down at the grass, considers its glistening dew for a moment, then decides it doesn’t matter and sinks down to the ground. He crosses his legs, Indian-fashion, and rubs his eyes with his elbows leaning on his knees.
“I’m not acknowledging you.” he finally says. “This is not real.”
“Gault help me, Wex, I’m gonna scratch his face open.” the cat growls.
“Back off,” the bird tells him. “Give the guy a moment. How do you think you’d do if you got tossed over to the other side with no warning?”
“But we’ll want to get moving soon,” the turtle interjects, softly but urgently. “Jynx is right about that. If there were Octalytes at Apostrophus’s home, they might pass through here eventua-“
“Aah!” Ben exclaims, catching the attention of the three animals again. He was leaning back, when he suddenly felt a hard tip poke the skin of his back. He turns around as far as he can and plucks something from the ground. “What’s this?”
“Whoa, whoa, careful with that.” The turtle, startled, lumbers forward and snags the object from Ben’s hands. “I mean, please. Sorry. It’s just that, this is important.”
The object appears to be a short metal rod with intricate patterns carved into it. There are two golden bands in the midsection, and a shard of faint blue crystal on the top. Inside the crystal there seems to be a hole, but it is brown and black with soot, like a burnt-out lightbulb. The turtle holds it solemnly, brushing off wet earth from the bottom side with his fingers.
“I don’t think it’s going to do anything anymore, Beene.” says the bird. “I think you could just use it once.”
“What is it?” Ben asks the bird, and then mentally adds You’re talking to the dream again. That’s not helpful. But the unrelenting clarity of this dream or illusion is wearing on him. He wonders if the crossing point of going insane is perhaps simply accepting the delusions that your subconscious is offering you.
“It’s a Flippant.” the bird replies, seeming faintly pleased that Ben has temporarily stopped considering them an illusion. “Also called Tosser, Flipstick or Springkey. They’re really hard to make, and sorcerers use them to bring things or people over from your side.”
“That’s what… brought me over?” A frightening thought hovers at the edge of Ben’s mind, but he can’t quite grab on to it.
The bird nods, a very weird gesture to see.
“Is it broken?”
“Just burned out.” the bird replies. “They only work once.”
“Then,” The question crashes in on him, and in the fear it bestows upon him he understands that he has accepted this world and these creatures as real. “Then how am I going to get back?”
Both the bird and the turtle look up at him in a way that seems to suggest this thought never even crossed their minds. The awkward silence is broken by the cat, who is pacing back and forth over the field.
“Later! We worry about that later, Gault!” The cat walks up to them again and stands before Ben. “Could you stop thinking about yourself for five seconds and… what’s your name, anyway?”
The suddenness of the question startles an immediate answer out of him. “Ben. Davis.”
The cat nods with one eyebrow raised ironically. “Good. Now we’re getting somewhere. So pleased to meet you, Ben Davis. I am Jynx Jumyinia, just call me Jynx. This here’s Wex,” he says, waving a hand at the bird, “she’s the brains behind this operation.”
“Wescaphelia, in full.” the bird corrects. “Jynx was never big on formalities.”
The cat continues, as if uninterrupted. “And the gentleman standing over there is Beene St. Netherdorf.” He waves his other hand at the turtle, who is studying his toes. “You are Ben Davis, our Mechologist –“
“I don’t know what that –“
“ –and we’re going to need you to take care of our problem. Now, first question: where is your cybertechnics?”
The cat has his paws in his sides again, eyeing Ben with impatience.
Ben sighs deeply. “Look. Cat. Jynx. I don’t know what you mean by cybertechnics.”
Before the cat can reply, the bird – Wex – chides in: “You might have a different word for it on your side. It’s supposed to be this black suit, kind of like knight’s armor, with glowing yellow dots and lines on it. Wires and leds, I think. Sometimes it has spikes. Or a cannon on the arm or shoulder. Does that sound familiar?”
“What it sounds like is science fic –“ Ben halts, feeling like that thought is significant. “Science… fiction.”
“Sinesfiction?” Wex says unsurely, pronouncing it as a single word. “Does that mean you know what we’re talking about?”
Ben scratches his head, thinks for a moment, and says: “No, and… yes. The stories you were talking about earlier, we have them about many things… And science fiction is… are… stories about the future and technology that doesn’t exist yet, like cybernetics and cyborgs… cybertechnics, I guess.”
“What is he talking about?” Jynx, the cat, says confusedly. “Stories about cybertechnics? Apostrophus never said they were just stories!”
“How come I can understand you?” Ben suddenly asks.
Jynx glances left and right. “Understand us? I’m not following you.”
“I mean, what language are you speaking?”
The cat looks flabbergasted. “English. And so are you. Look, no offence, but do you qualify as a particularly slow person on your side? Cause, if you’re a Mechology genius on the flip-side, I don’t think I want to know what everyone else is like.”
At this, Ben is overtaken by an abrupt need to snicker. The sound is very alien and slightly frightening to his own ears.
“Let’s just get going.” Wex says a little anxiously. “We’re sitting ducks out here, and if we’re going to keep arguing till everybody’s satisfied, we’re all going to find out what octalyte venom tastes like before long.”
In response, the turtle, Beene, casts some frightful glances around the area, and hobbles around Ben. Ben feels no apprehension or fear or disgust as the creature gets so near to him – of the three, it seems the most harmless. Beene examines the hole in the ground where the Flippant stood, and starts patting and stomping the ground around it softly to close it.
Jynx stands with his arms crossed, sighs, and nods.
“Alright. This isn’t getting us anywhere, anyway.”
With a flutter of wings, Wex perches on Jynx’s shoulder, and they begin walking off. Three seconds later, they halt and turn around to look at Ben, who is still sitting cross-legged in the grass. He watches them warily over his shoulder.
“Are you coming already?” Jynx asks sharply.
“Um…” Ben honestly doesn’t know what to answer. “…no.” he finally decides. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
There is no valid reason to rationalize it, but having been torn from his own world and tossed into another, if that is really what happened, Ben thinks that leaving the spot where he arrived could make it impossible for him to go back.
More impossible than it already is? a nagging voice in the back of his head asks.
“Tell you what.” Jynx says. “We’ll answer one more of your questions, and then you decide whether you want to stay here or not.”
“OK. How am I supp-“
“No. The question you may ask us is, ‘what are octalytes?’ Beene, fill him in.”
Beene looks up and glances at Jynx, not understanding.
“Well, um, uh. They’re about as tall as you are, Mr. Davis, if they stretch their legs, I guess. And um, their bodies are black or gray, sometimes with spots. The ones you really want to watch out for have a red stripe, those are uh, those are nasty. Their legs are kind of pink and fleshy, with sharp tips, like fingernails… Oh, they can stick to walls and ceilings, and make small webs, and they have three huge jaws to shoot you full of poison. The ones with the red stripes though, the females, they can just uh, spit the poison at you from afar. And I think the adult ones can fly. With wings.”
There is a moment of silence among them. Ben’s eyes have grown a little wider.
“Tell him what happens when they bite you, Beene.” says Jynx, still looking at Ben.
“Oh, um. When they bite, they shoot poison in you. Well, obviously. Yes. The poison turns your skin dry and hard, like a crust, and it turns all your innards to fluid. So they can drink you. Also, the poison works on your brain so you stay conscious until you, well, die. It’s really quite unpleasant. Really.” Beene shivers unselfconsciously.
“Do you want to stay here and meet them?” Jynx asks, his arms crossed again.
“I…” Ben swallows. “I think that’s probably not a good idea.”
He stands up, beating some of the dew, dirt, and grass off the seat and legs of his pants, and rushes after the animals, who have already resumed their trot. From where he stands Ben can’t see it, but Jynx is smiling smugly.
As he catches up with the animals, Ben asks:
“Beene… do octalytes look anything like spiders?”
The turtle considers it, then softly nods.
“Hm… Yes. I mean, now that you mention it, I guess they do, a little.”
“Spiders.” Ben says, looking ahead, shivering unselfconsciously.
[center:693c4f7544]Continued, to be.[/center:693c4f7544]