by Adam Carter
“Due to what I foolishly termed the success of this endeavour, I opted to bring further people into my world, with the thoughts of populating my realm with enough living minds to keep the existence fresh and changeable for all time. The living world was continuing, and I saw no reason why my own little pocket existence couldn’t do the same. So I brought in several others, slowly and first, and then with greeter speed, for I became fascinated with all the different minds God’s own work had produced. I found myself somewhat jealous of His power, and just as jealousy had proved the undoing of my brother millennia earlier, so too did it seem ready to banish me into the Evil’s clutches.
“I soon lost track of the amount of living people I had in my realm, although at an estimate I would say there were perhaps twenty in all. Some of them were women, for I found that I needed a great many different viewpoints; and what better way to do that than to bring in as diverse a people as possible? My greatest error, however, lay in bringing two specific people into my realm. I did not at the time know which two they were, for there were so many living minds by this point. I couldn’t keep track of them or even read their innermost thoughts any longer. I know their names now, and they were David Clipper and Sara Kiel.
“David was not a Christian. There were already several people within my realm who were not Christian of course, although never had I anyone quite like him. This man was something he termed a Nazi. I had no idea what this meant and thought in my ignorance that it could do no harm. Muslims, Sikhs, Buddhists, I had them all within my worlds, although all of these lived in harmony with the others. I foolishly believed Nazi to be another religious term, yet I could not have been more wrong. This man David did not believe in harmony other than that which could be created through his own brand of violence. There was violence within my realm and had been since the initial day of its formation, although what he brought into my existence was something which split my realm apart.
“His was a brand of racial hatred which my barriers simply couldn’t tolerate. He brought weapons of genocide into the minds of my people, he saw to the extermination of entire worlds, he brought a chaos from which even the existing chaos shied. He brought with him half of what I came to term the Evil.
“The rest of the evil came through carnal horror, and her name, I have only recently discovered, was Sara Kiel. Where David Clipper brought violence and a perversion of the physical, Kiel brought lusts and perversion of the soul. She was a woman of the street, and I selected her specifically because of her role in life. I thought her perspective would be unique, and did not quite understand what she would be bringing to my world. My nice, organised reality was being polluted from all sides, and I could do nothing about it. Nor could I even turn to the other living beings for aid, for I could not recall which of them were living, so warped had my perceptions become. I knew only that, of the countless millions in my realm, two were evil, a further twenty or so were real and the rest were pretend.
“Over the years, I honed my abilities that I might teach myself how I could recognise a living being. I could never focus it to a specific person, only a group, and so that was why I knew there was a living person within your quartet. If you had separated more often, I might have been able to be certain, although I began quite early on to suspect you of being real. However, I also knew that the Evil lurked within your group, and so was wary.
“But I’m getting ahead of myself, for first I must tell you the fate of David Clipper.
“He seemed to come to terms with what and where he was very easily. He realised if he could but master his own self, he could invade all other worlds within my realm and rule them unquestionably. He also understood that certain members of the realm were real and saw them as a threat, for he knew that only the real people could gain power enough to defeat him. He took to systematically exterminating the real people, no matter their colour or creed. Ultimately, he managed to kill a great many living people before I finally caught up to him, and while I did not see it as my place to deal with him so severely, I couldn’t think of what else I might be able to do with him.
“We fought for days as time passes here, and eventually I defeated him, but I did not kill him. Instead, I returned him to the real world, to the world in which the Creator had allowed him to be born. I thought he should be dealt with by his own people, and so hurled him back in a random location. It didn’t occur to me until afterwards, but since the world is comprised of two thirds water, there’s a good chance I drowned him by accident. I shall never know, although find I do not care. The evil, or at least half of it, was expunged, and my realm was better for it. His influence remained and likely shall do so until the end of time, but at least his imagination could no longer affect things.
“I knew that ere my realm could begin to repair itself, I needed to find the other source of Evil, and began to seek it out. By this time there were so few living beings remaining, for Kiel, corrupted by the Nazi, had begun to hunt them down and exterminate them with equal ferocity.
“And the rest you pretty much know. I knew the Evil lurked within your quartet, and believing you to be real, I tried to warn you of its nature whenever I could get you away from the others. As the landlord and such. I remained with the team in different guises, although this one, Old Man Robes, is the one which most approximates my real appearance, so it’s to this that I feel most inclined, and most comfortable.”
Heather Tarne had listened to his lengthy explanation in captivated silence, and once he had finished said only, “Wow.”
“Wow indeed.”
“So how come Sara was taken from a time earlier than me, but knew stuff about dinosaurs which she couldn’t have known until much later?”
“Time is not linear. She learned a great deal from the imaginations and the knowledge of others within this realm.”
“Oh. “
The old man looked upon her curiously, and Tarne could see for the first time just how haggard he truly was. “There is another question?” he asked tentatively.
“Not a question, no.”
“A comment, then?”
Tarne inhaled deeply. “It’s just ... you attempted to copy the real world, yet expected for everything to run smoothly? You wanted the real world but didn’t want Nazism or prostitution? That’s a part of life, and to deny that aspect of life is to live in a fantasy world. Which is just what you’ve been doing these past few thousand years.”
“Perhaps you’re right. I just wanted to create the perfect existence, the ideal world.”
“The world isn’t ideal and it never will be. We each of us have a choice. That’s what makes us human. You didn’t have humans here, you had dreams, and when you introduced real humans to your cute little society, it couldn’t handle them. Human nature is about making choices, for better or worse, and that’s what your realm lacks. The freedom to choose.”
“And when there was choice,” the old man agreed with a sigh, “there was only a handful choosing, and as such all power went to them.”
Tarne shrugged. “Pretty much, yeah.”
“Then I thank you for that particular insight, Heather Tarne. Speaking with you is ever informative.”
“From what I can tell, your fault at the beginning of all of this was the same as mankind will always have. Just as your mother couldn’t fight the temptation to eat the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, so too could you not resist the temptation to copy the work of one who cannot be copied.”
“Then by referring to my mother, you at least believe I am who I say I am?”
“I believe you think you’re Abel, son of Adam, but not even Sara believed you were him.”
“Sara being the same Evil which coaxed my mother to taste of that fruit to begin with?”
For this Tarne found she had no answer, so said instead, “Look, I really can’t advise you on anything, because I’m not an authority. I just know what I know, and I know what’s right and what’s wrong.”
“And yet you killed Sara Kiel.�
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“I had no choice.”
“I expelled David, but you killed Sara. You could have expelled her also, or held her until my arrival. You chose not to, and instead killed her. This makes you tainted.”
“I suppose you now think I’ve become the Evil,” Tarne said plainly. “I suppose now you intend to expel me also.”
“You have not become the Evil, Heather Tarne. You have just become tainted by the imaginations of all those who have been brought to this realm over the years. Now there’s only one left, for both Evils have been dealt with and all others have been murdered by them. There’s only one real being here, and at last my realm becomes stabilised.”
Tarne brightened at this news. “You mean you’re sending me back? You won’t kill me, we’ve already covered that. It means you’ll send me home, I know it.”
“You will not be sent home, Heather Tarne,” the old man replied sadly.
“Then you’ll kill me after all?”
“I shall not kill you.”
“Then why are you not sending me home?”
“I ...” And here Old Man Robes paused. He smiled softly to her and said, “Of course I’ll send you home. If not for you, the Evil would still be walking this realm, and I would be living in constant fear. My need for living companionship has passed, so yes I shall return you to the real world. Do you recall anything of your life prior to coming here?”
Tarne thought hard. “I have no idea, to be honest. It’s all a jumble of images relating to Jagrad and the others. Just send me back to wherever it was you picked me up from and I’ll piece my life back together from there. God knows, I’ve been doing enough of that at each new world here. Sorry about the God part.”
“No offence meant and thus none taken. Believe me, Heather, I’ve had far worse spoken and done to me by others.”
Tarne took one final glance about her and said, “So why’s it turned so weird around here? It was always a bit strange, but never like this.”
“There was always too much insanity in the minds of the living,” the old man explained. “Jagrad for one was insane, and he was not alone. The insanity stems from their imaginations, and I’m not sure I shall ever truly be rid of it.”
“Well, good luck with that.”
“Thank you, Heather. Now, goodbye.”
Without touching any symbols or muttering any words, Heather Tarne vanished into white oblivion, and was removed from the false worlds of madness for now and forever more.
EPILOGUE
The flowers swayed in the breeze, their scents the kiss of ambrosia to the nose. She gazed up at the clear blue sky, her head resting upon the shoulder of the man lying beside her. The sounds of children playing nearby and dogs barking at footballs made her smile, for she had never believed she could have been so happy, so content.
“What’s the smile for?” the man beside her asked. His name was Casanova Adonis and he was the most wonderful man she had ever known. During her time lost within the worlds of unreality, Heather had forgotten how much she had been in love, had forgotten even his name and face, yet upon her return several days earlier it had all come flooding back the instant she had seen him. She remembered everything; she knew where she had gone to school; she remembered her brothers John and Paul, her nephews George and Ringo, even her great Uncle Elvis who always used to buy her ice creams every Sunday without fail. She remembered everything about her life, and it had become in only a few short days as though the worlds of the unreal had been nothing more than an extended nightmare.
“It’s not for anything,’ she replied with a sigh. “Just thinking on how lucky I am. How I must be right now the luckiest girl in all the world.”
“I’ll say.”
“Hey,” Heather said, needling his ribs. “You’re not supposed to agree with me, Cas.”
“Not my place to disagree with what’s clearly true.” And true it was. For the first few days, she had felt the presence of memories within her mind, although now they had drifted away like a terrible dream upon the wind. She no longer thought of Jagrad Darkthorne every time she closed her eyes, no more laughed and joked with a Sparky who was no longer there, and had cast aside entirely the pained face of Sara Kiel as she had died. As she herself had killed her.
No, she would not think that way.
“Something wrong?” Casanova asked, clearly sensing her sudden change in mood.
“Just hold me,” she said, staring up at the skies she knew to be infinite. “And promise never to let me go.”
*
From the skies looking down, although Heather Tarne could not see, there were the tired eyes of the man who had called himself Abel, but who had gone by many names since. He wiped a tear from his eye, for how he wished he could have returned Heather to her home, but he could not. Instead, all he could offer her was this ideal world, in which she would literally live forever, unless she chose to grow old and die. Because everything within this single reality he had established for her was of her own mind’s doing. She would never know another moment’s pain, another minute’s sorrow, unless it was by her own mind that it was placed there. How he wished he could have returned her to the real world, to God’s world, but he could not. For he could not send his creations into the real world, and Heather Tarne, for all he had initially thought, was nothing but one of his creations. The best he had ever managed, perhaps even a mockery which had gained sentience, but a fabrication nevertheless.
“I’m sorry,” Abel said as he disappeared from the sky, never to trouble her again. It was an apology not meant solely for Heather, but also for his God, that a simple man had ever had the audacity to attempt that which was beyond his means. For that he was truly sorry, and knew he could never make it right again.
THE END
Also available by the same author in e-book and paperback:
Dinosaur World books:
Excavating a Dinosaur World
Dinosaur Fall-Girl
Dinosaur Plague Doctor
Ike Scarman & the Dinosaur Slavers of Ceres
Dinosaur Prison World
The Dinosaur That Wasn’t
Awfully Wedded Strife
Tales of a Dinosaur Prison World
Deities of a Dinosaur World
Return to the Dinosaur Prison World
Nikolina Finch & the Dinosaur Utopia
Of Stags, Hens & Dinosaurs
Dinosaur World Gladiator
The Wounding Tooth
Dinosaur World Massacre
Dino-Racers
Dinosaur World Unscripted
Christmas on a Dinosaur World
Utara the Savage
Sheriff Grizzly:
Book 1: Sheriff Grizzly
Book 2: The Horse Thief Honey
Book 3: The Coyote Colt Kid
Book 4: Joins the Circus
Book 5: The Haunting of Athelstan Swift
Book 6: The Santa Claws Showdown
Book 7: The Kangaroo Claim Jumpers of Crumbling Gulch
Book 8: Gets a Reality Check
Book 9: Bets Against the Card Shark
Book 10: The Hairy Walrus of Truespire Peak
Book 11: The End
Book 12: In the Afterlife
Knights of Torbalia gamebooks:
The Return of the Stolen Jewel
Into the Massacre
March of the Demon Trees
The Thief of Tarley Manor
The Class War
The Haunting of Past Wraiths
The Hunt for the Adulterous Bard
A Peacock in the Den of Foxes
Attack of the Demon Trees
The Slave Scandal of Torbalia
Miscellaneous gamebooks:
Lost Treasures of a Dinosaur World (300 paragraphs)
The Underworld Horror (300 paragraphs)
Sheriff Grizzly: The Good, the Bad & the Grizzly
Sheriff Grizzly: The Wild West Dungeon Adventure
The Christmas Adventure of Sam and Klutz
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br /> Operation WetFish: Vengeful Justice
Operation WetFish: A Wealth of Sin
Jupiter’s Glory: Oppression of the Press
Dinosaur World: The Forest of Fiends
The Temple of Death: The Villain’s Gamebook
Hero Cast trilogy:
Book 1: The Villainous Heroes
Book 2: The Heroic Villains
Book 3: The Forge of Heroes
Jupiter’s Glory:
Book 1: The Dinosaur World
Book 2: The Pirates and the Priests
Book 3: The Obsidian Slavers
Book 4: Just Passing Through
Detective books:
Detective’s Ex
One-Way Ticket to Murder
Who Slew Santa?
The Curse of the Genie’s Detective
The Woman Who Cried Diamonds
The Murder of Snowman Joe
The Murder of Loyalty
The Prostitute Butcher
The Santa Worshippers
Betty Stalks a Biker Cop
Dinosaur Frontier:
Book 1: The Lightning Angel
Book 2: Lightning Strikes Twice
Book 3: The Law of Ceres
Book 4: The Silk Caves of Ceres
Operation WetFish, Vampire Detective:
Book 1: The Power of Life and Death
Book 2: Chasing Innocence