Have Imagination, Will Travel

by Adam Carter

  “If that’s what you wish,” she whispered, then followed suit.

  The two dinosaurs backed away from one another slowly. Their minds were no longer bestial, no longer primal, and Kiel, within the daspletosaurus, knew she had the advantage of knowing how the body of her vessel actually worked. The creatures locked eyes, and then together they lunged.

  The mighty jaws of the daspletosaurus went directly for the jugular of its foe, although the tyrannosaurus dodged down, collapsing with the motion since it was not designed for such moves. The daspletosaurus did not stop moving and tripped upon its body, so that both monsters were now upon the floor.

  They rose quickly and snarled as they circled one another that they might locate a weak-point and exploit it.

  The daspletosaurus pounced first, keeping its body low and rising at the final moment, just as the tyrannosaurus moved to clamp down its jaws. The teeth of the daspletosaurus tore through the tyrannosaurus’s throat and a hot geyser of blood shot across its snout. The tyrannosaurus flailed with its mighty legs, attempting to fend off the attack, although the daspletosaurus did not relent. The tyrannosaurus fell beneath the assault, and the dasplelosaurus, armed with the mind of Sara Kiel, revelled in her victory against it.

  While upon the ground, thirty metres from the intense combat, Heather Tarne watched Kiel fight and win, labouring under the false belief that Tarne was still within the mind of the other creature. Tarne knew precisely where Kiel was, knew also that she was preoccupied, and knew finally that Kiel believed she had won. This meant Kiel’s defences would be lowered and her mental faculties would be sorely taxed after such a bout. Tarne knew that if she was to defeat her enemy, now would be the perfect time in which to do it. She had laid the trap and it had been sprung, and all Tarne had to do in order to finish this would be to tighten her grip. But now she had come to that point, she was no longer certain she could do it. She was not like Sara Kiel, she was not a murderer. She had never killed a human being in her life, and her morality screamed at her that she should not do so now. It was wrong, it was destructive, and it was evil.

  And yet if she wanted to live, Tarne knew she had no choice.

  Tarne concentrated her efforts upon the head of the daspletosaurus. She formed within her mind a large bubble within which nothing could exist. No air, no matter, no life, no nothing. She projected this bubble forwards in one straight sweep, encompassing the head of the daspletosaurus in an instant. The lands shifted momentarily and the bodies of the two dinosaurs faded unto nothing. Within the bubble Sara Kiel knelt, her energies being sapped, and the bubble slowly came to rest upon the ground before its creator.

  “What is this?” Kiel demanded, pounding on the inside of the bubble without success. “Release me at once.”

  “No,” Tarne said simply. “This bubble is the perfection of my honed abilities. Within this realm, these realities, everything is here to be shaped by either one of us. Nothing is sacred, and everything, every atom, is our plaything. But if we could affect the bodies of one another, you would have killed me a long time ago. In fact you would have just killed me along with Jagrad and Sparky without first testing us to see which of us were real. There was no need for you to have drawn your sword against any one of us, for instead you could have just dissipated our component atoms and have been done with it. The fact that you didn’t speaks volumes, for it tells me this is something beyond your power.

  “I put it to you then,” Tarne continued, “that we’re free to affect everything about us, but are unable to interfere directly with another living being. That’s why I’m a threat to you, because I’m the one uncontrollable thing within this little world of yours. The one thing which could have destroyed you. I didn’t want to destroy you, I meant you no harm at all. In fact, it was only your insistence that I might pose a threat which eventually pushed me towards becoming that threat at all. You’ve created your executioner, Sara, and now you’re going to die.

  “This bubble’s formed of pure thought, pure emotion. There’s nothing within, no atoms at all. Therefore there’s nothing inside the bubble which you might use against me. The bubble itself is formed of my own mind, and while I’m sure you’ll be able to break through, it’ll take time.”

  “Physicality doesn’t work the same within these realities,” Kiel reminded her. “You can’t simply starve me of air and expect me to die.”

  “No, but I can starve you of something far more precious. I can starve you of what you need to survive. As I say, there’s nothing in that sphere, so there’s nothing you can use as a weapon. You’re trapped within the bubble, Sara, and you don’t have time to break out.”

  “But break out I shall,” Kiel said. “You can’t keep me here forever.”

  “No, but I can do something far worse,” Tarne said, and even as she spoke did the bubble begin to shrink.

  Kiel’s eyes widened with fear. “Heather, no, you can’t.”

  “I can.”

  “But you’re not a murderer.”

  “Not yet; but if I don’t do this, you’ll dog me forever. Or until you finally kill me. Today proves I can defeat you, which will only make you more determined to kill me. I may never again catch you off-guard and if I don’t kill you now I may never get this opportunity again.”

  “But what about your moral well-being?”

  “Sara,” Tarne said sternly, “to hell with moral well-being.”

  Kiel saw her opponent actually meant it and tried to mentally prise the bubble apart. It would be a difficult and harrowing process, for Tarne had formed the bubble herself, and as such Kiel was fighting not only the elements, but Tarne’s own will-power. She felt atoms shift, and knew she would have to create a hole large enough through which she might fit her entire consciousness. She knew also she had but a few moments more in which to do it. She could feel the prison contracting, pressing into her ribs and piercing her body, and raised her eyes to plead with her tormentor one final time.

  “Heather, please.”

  “I’m sorry, Sara,” Tarne said, and a few moments thereafter did Sara Kiel scream in one short burst, and then the bubble collapsed in upon itself.

  Tarne turned from the sight and breathed deeply. She did not feel even half the remorse she had expected, yet it was there just as it had been within Sara Kiel. Tarne had killed because she had been forced to kill in order to survive, which had been precisely what Kiel had said about her own murder of Jagrad Darkthorne. Tarne did not like to accept that she was anything like Kiel, and yet understood entirely that truly they were all the same.

  Tarne imagined then the symbol of two cat’s eyes within the air and placed a hand upon them. She had gained mastery of her senses at last, perhaps even to a greater degree than Kiel ever had, and now she was the very power she had always denied. Sara Kiel was dead and Tarne knew there were possibly only two beings left alive within this strange realm. Her portal was designed to take her back to Old Man Robes, although she could not honestly imagine her intentions once she found him. For the sake of her own sanity, she hoped she had not become that which she had now for so long fled.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Heather Tarne emerged into familiar lands. The night was coming along slowly and there was a chill to the air. She stood at the edges of a town she recognised, and even before she turned she knew she would see a dark and sinister castle looming in that direction. During her previous visit to this place, she had not met the Baron Harper von Tiel, had studiously avoided him in fact, although now that Kiel was dead she could not see any reason for needing the vampire as her protection, and decided that she might actually go and kill him. After all, since she was master now of her own sanity, she might as well master the worlds by ridding them of their more unsavoury denizens.

  She walked into town first, intending to see how many of the citizenry had survived the transition. From what she could remember, there had been a girl named Emily at the public house, and her suitor whose name had been ... Justin, she seemed to
recall. There was also a rotund man who had been Emily’s father and, while she could not recall his name, knew it had been written across the wall. Tarne moved through the town with far more confidence than she had known during her last visit, and she did not even care to note that it was approaching night. She found the pub in question and walked through the door, finding it to be unlocked. There was no garlic about the frame, but a cross was pinned to both sides. Tarne noted with a frown there was also a bunch of daffodils hanging beside the door. As she entered, she was greeted by more daffodils, in fact they were everywhere, and her eyes found the placard reading ‘Walters and sons’, so at least now she could remember the man’s name. There were perhaps a dozen people to be found in the common room, although the mood was far more jovial than Tarne had expected, and Walters was even playing some form of violin while several of the younger folk danced merrily.

  Tarne saw Justin seated at the bar, clapping gleefully in time to the music, and Tarne approached him. “Why the happiness? Has something happened with the baron?”

  “The daffodils grow through the ground,” Justin laughed, still clapping. The music seemed very loud to be coming from just one violin, and Tarne believed she could hear an entire unseen brass band in the background.

  “That’s where they usually grow,” Tarne said.

  “The Lethe,” Justin laughed again. “They grow on the banks of the River Lethe, and now they’ve come through the ground, poking through the topsoil with their little yellow noses. Hades sent them up to us, sent them up in so many bunches that we decided to redecorate with them.”

  “And they keep out vampires, do they?”

  “Heavens, no.”

  “Then they supplement the garlic?”

  “We got rid of all that pungent stuff. We burned it all away.”

  Tarne stared in horror. “You burned the garlic?”

  “Persephone doesn’t like garlic, she likes daffodils, Heather. Don’t you know anything?”

  Tarne would have replied, although Emily ran over from the dancefloor and took Justin by the hand. “Hello, Heather,” she beamed. “Come to the floor with us.”

  “I don’t dance.”

  “You know where we are if you change your mind,” Emily said, leading Justin away. Tarne could not believe the change in these people and opened the door to return to the street. A football boot five metres wide floated past, continuously kicking at a golf ball to keep it in the air. Tarne stared at it, then shook her head and went in the other direction. She stopped short when she saw a man leaving a chandler’s holding a candle he had just bought, although did not seem to notice it was lit at both ends. She saw a man without a head wandering around aimlessly, while a head without a body rolled along asking random passers-by whether they had seen a spare body. Then a loaf of bread with teeth came running out of the bakery, chasing a small boy desperately trying to mount his bicycle.

  “Do you know what the two white ends are for?” she heard someone behind her say, and turned to find a smiling man wearing a fez holding out a black wand with two white ends for her to inspect. “They’re to get to the other side,” he explained.

  “Oh Lord,” Tarne muttered, taking two steps through the madness. “What’s happened?”

  “Sara Kiel is dead,” Old Man Robes said, appearing before her.

  Tarne started, although when she saw the familiar face she calmed somewhat. “I know she’s dead,” she replied. “I killed her.”

  “Why?”

  “It was the only way to make sure she didn’t kill me, surely.”

  “Perhaps. And don’t call me ...”

  “Don’t you even think of finishing that sentence,” Tarne warned. “Look, I’ve been pushed around from world to world, reality to reality, and I haven’t understood any of it. And now that I’ve finally been able to consider myself a master of my own fate, I get all of this. What’s happening, Robes? Tell me what’s going on so I can cling to any tatty threads of sanity I have left.”

  “You happened,” Old Man Robes said simply. “You came, you saw, you conquered. As it were.”

  “Mind explaining that in a language I can understand?”

  “You altered everything. You altered sanity.”

  “By killing Sara Kiel?”

  “By killing Sara Kiel.”

  “All right, how?”

  “How? You change all of reality forever and now have the audacity to question how you did it?”

  “You know more than me, surely you must know what’s happened.”

  “Of course I know what happened. I know more than you.”

  “So tell me.”

  “Very well. Many years ago, longer in time than your paltry brain can comprehend, I was handed the responsibility of standing as custodian to this realm; this single realm comprised of many different realities.”

  “Sara said you weren’t a custodian, but just another human soul trapped within this thing.”

  “Sara would have said that, wouldn’t she?”

  “You also referred to Sara as the Evil, although haven’t for some time. Care to explain that to me as well?”

  “I was just trying to, but then you interrupted me with your brazen questions.”

  “Sorry. Go on.”

  “Thank you. As I was saying, many years ago I was handed this realm that I might nurture it. In life, you see, I was a shepherd, until my brother killed me without reason, unless you count jealousy as a reason, which I certainly don’t. With my life cut short, it was decided I should continue in a state of quasi-life, doing that at which I excelled in life. So I was given a reality in which to exist, a reality populated by figments. Whatever I could imagine.

  “But that meant having my own way all the time. It was limited, it was singular ... it was in many aspects boring. For a time, things went well. People were born, they worked their lives, they got married, they had children and they died; but it was all fabrication, and I knew it. The children, that was what did it for me, for although they were born, I knew them not to be gifts from God. They had been born of my own imaginings and God likely didn’t even know of them. I knew them not to be real, and through them I knew also that their parents were not real, just as their children and their children’s children could never be real.

  “I found myself at a loss for reality, for while I could no longer exist within the real world, I knew I couldn’t endure this one. So I petitioned God to ask why it was that I must live outside the rest of the globe, why it was that I had to create my own reality while everyone else lived within the real world. It was at this point He explained to me what had happened in the real world, how my brother had so callously murdered me, and how God, in His infinite compassion, had decided that the second-born son of Adam, the first human being to die in the history of the world, should not be allowed to pass entirely from existence. No one had ever died before, you see, and God didn’t know what to do with me. I don’t think God had, at the time, thought about sending the souls of the dead into Heaven, otherwise I would have gone there. Instead, He gave unto me a reality to shape, and I hated every moment of it.

  “After being told I could never rejoin the land of the living, and that my brother had prospered and had wed and had even been marked by God so that other men would know not to cause him harm, I should have perhaps felt fury, but I did not. I felt no hatred towards my brother, I don’t believe I could ever hate anybody. It’s simply not in my nature. Instead, resolved as I was to my fate, I decided to defy God’s commands and attempt to fashion a second society atop the first. God had created the world and all things in it and He had given me the materials with which to do the same, or so it seemed to me. I believed He was offering me a challenge, that He intended to take me on as His personal assistant perhaps if I managed to succeed. I was wrong, and in my error I began to create society upon society upon society. All the past, present and future was open to my mind and I built upon everything. I had so many realities within my single little realm that I was at
last beginning to consider it a world of my own creation. I foolishly believed that I had accomplished that which the Lord Almighty had before me.

  “The difference of course was that His realm was filled with real people, while mine was filled with dreams.

  “Eventually, after millennia, I came to understand that I could not continue alone, that I could not function as God simply because I was not He. I had all the information to hand, although not the wisdom with which to wield it. So many people confuse knowledge with wisdom, and perhaps I was the first to be guilty of such. My imagination was reaching its end, and I needed fresh blood. That was when I made my greatest mistake.

  “I decided to bring someone in from the real world.

  “His name was Nathanial and he was a farmer’s son. He was also a poet and a musician and he had experienced much of love which I had never known, and I believed that his rich insights would prove invaluable in the shaping of my reality. Unfortunately, his mind could not cope with the information I was forcing into him; for while I had steadily built the worlds about me, he had to absorb everything all at once. It shattered his mind, and he fell a quivering wreck. Unfortunately for my world, his imagination did not die with him, and thus were my tidy, ordered worlds suddenly splintered with new thoughts and beliefs. Chaos threatened my worlds.

  “There was much within my existence now I didn’t understand, and I knew they had all come through the mind of Nathanial, although I coped with them as best I could; I even fabricated several new worlds within which I tried to contain all his wandering thoughts, and for a while I managed to hold them in place. Then I made another mistake, compounding error upon error upon error. I decided to introduce another living being to my realm.

  “Not content with the mistakes I had made with Nathaniel, I opted to try again. I refined the process, so this time the person I chose received only some of the information at any given time. My chosen one’s name was Daniel Smith, and he was a man of further years than Nathaniel, in both time and age. Daniel was in his sixtieth year, and lived in the year you would refer to as sixteen hundred and three. I found Daniel’s contributions to my realm, his new home, refreshing, for his viewpoints were vastly different to those of either myself or Nathanial. I managed to contain the influence Daniel had upon my realm, and was pleased with the results of bringing him in.