by IGMS
"Please. I met plenty of common people. Garduk introduced me to them."
"Harry, Harry. Try to comprehend this. In your world, there are anarchists, yes? That's not exactly what Garduk is -- he wants us to go back to being a hunter-gatherer society, the way his people once were -- but it's a close approximation. He did introduce you to people, yes. But they were his people. Sympathizers, terrorists, members of his organization. He was your sole translator -- did you ever wonder what he really told people you were saying? Garduk used you, Harry. You were a rallying point, a symbol, a man who became a legend, come from another world to overthrow me . . ." He shook his head. "It was a hell of a propaganda campaign. You even captured the hearts of some of my ordinary subjects. And in the end you did such damage to my empire, it took me a dozen years to repair it all. There are still outlaw provinces in the mountains, where you first arrived over here. As part of the peace settlement I allowed Garduk to run that territory as an autonomous zone, and everyone there miserably scratches tubers out of the dirt while living in caves, just like he always wanted."
"That's . . . No. Garduk saved my life. Dozens of times. Why would he lie to me? You're the liar."
The emperor picked his teeth with the point of a dagger. "Okay, Harry. You know best. Why, I bet if I got dropped into your world and my only friends were members of a fundamentalist religious terrorist cell, they'd give me a totally objective sense of the political realities over there." He shook his head. "Anyway, it doesn't matter. I had to respect your prowess as a warrior, and I didn't go after you again when you took Gwen away, but now she's returned, of her own free will . . . so what are you doing here now? Why shouldn't I just seal you in a barrel with some rocks and sink you down to the shipwreck villages?"
"Because I'd rally the dead into an army and rise up against you," I said, with more confidence than I felt.
The nameless emperor laughed again. "You still have that spirit, even if you've let yourself go, and lack the good sense to love and honor and cherish your wife." Suddenly he was across the room, dagger at my throat. "You screwed around on my daughter, you son of a whore, and I should gut you here and now for the offense."
I sputtered. I thought again of my notion that Isobel was a spy sent by the nameless emperor, and I said, "What? Isobel? She's your --"
The knife pressed harder, but didn't quite break the skin. "Gwen is my daughter, you witless sack of chum. As I tried to explain to you the last time you were here, but that bastard Garduk willfully mistranslated to keep our hostilities alive. When Gwen was just a baby I had her sent to your world, to be raised in safety. I was at war with the Koronos empire then, and they wanted to extinguish my line. Once they were . . . pacified . . . I brought Gwen back. She didn't remember me, of course, but I proved myself to her. Then we heard about you, and your quest." He shook his head. "Gwen was . . . flattered. More than flattered, it pains me to admit. She'd been fond of you before, but when you began leading a rebel army with the sole purpose of bringing her back, well . . . she fell in love. She wanted to go with you. I had to lock her in her room to keep her from running away to join you, and I was hoping she'd come to her senses, but then you actually made your way here, and fought me. That impressed the hell out of her."
"That's not true." I threw myself backward onto the bed to get away from the knife, simultaneously swinging my legs around to kick him, catching him in the side and knocking him off balance. He recovered quickly, but didn't leap on me, and I moved back farther on the bed, pressing myself against the wall. "Gwen told me I saved her."
"Of course she did. She didn't want to hurt your feelings. My girl is sweet that way. I thought she would stay with you, and I didn't worry about you weakening the family line by having children, because my kind and your kind, though we look the same, can't really interbreed. I enchanted a conch shell -- at great cost to myself, I might add -- so it could open a passage back to this place. I gave Gwen the shell so she could return here after you died of old age. The people of my line age much more slowly than most, and I knew she could still have a long tenure as empress over here after your death. Imagine my surprise when she showed up this morning, crying, telling me how you'd betrayed her. We knew you followed, and she was rather touched by that . . . until some of my spies saw your new lover crawl out of the ocean, and the two of you started rutting in the sand."
I winced. "Gwen doesn't know about that, does she? I mean . . ." What was I doing? Why was I treating his words seriously?
"Oh, yes, we had a scrying barrel set up, we watched the whole thing. Gwen's sent me to ask you to leave. She doesn't want me to kill you, but you know, I can always tell her you just left --"
"Daddy!" shouted a voice from the hallway, and the door flew open. "I knew you'd try something like that." Gwen scowled at him. The nameless emperor looked rather sheepish, which was never an expression I'd expected to see on his face. "I've been listening at the door the whole time."
"Gwen." I stood up. "The things he said, they're not, they can't be --"
"Yes, Harry," she said. "It's all true. I loved you, and I was happy to go with you when you came to rescue me, but this is my real home. He's my father. And I'm staying here. Maybe I would have gone back with you -- if you hadn't brought that awful girl along."
"Now, now," the nameless emperor said, rising. "I just had a nice long chat with Isobel. She seems like a nice girl, she just has a poor sense of boundaries and takes entirely too much pleasure in being naughty. As to that last, well, I can sympathize."
I put my head in my hands. "I can't believe this. Gwen. Please. I just want things to be like they were before."
"Oh, grow up, Harry," she said. "You made your bed. At least this way you won't have to pay me alimony." She turned and walked away, and that was the last I saw of her, in that world or any other.
"I'll send you back whenever you're ready," the nameless emperor said, and rose.
"I need to see Isobel."
"Ah," the nameless emperor said. "As to that, I'll see if she's put her clothes back on yet, and if she has, I'll send her down." He grinned his terrible menagerie of a grin at me.
"Yes, Harry, I slept with the emperor." Isobel rolled her eyes. "And yes, it was consensual. It's not like you and I were exclusive. Besides, this is just a coma fantasy."
I groaned and covered my eyes. This morning, I'd felt my marriage falling apart. Now everything was falling apart. Had already fallen apart. "This isn't a fantasy!"
"Okay, even if it's not . . . I like the emperor. He's not the monster your novels made him out to be. And I'm interested in this place. I'm staying. For a while, at least. Call it a study abroad program. I'm sure I'll come back. Eventually."
"Isobel, that's crazy, you don't belong here --"
"I study heroic myths, Harry. Stories of warriors and monsters and honor and glory. And that stuff happens in this world. Not metaphorically, but literally. How can I pass up the chance to see it? The emperor promised he'd show me around."
"The emperor. My sworn enemy. My wife's dad. And now your lover."
Isobel put her hand on my knee. "See, the thing is . . . in Norse mythology, the great god Odin gave up one of his eyes in exchange for wisdom. The nameless emperor gave up both his eyes for wisdom -- including the knowledge of how to fashion better eyes for himself. Now that's smart. I could learn a lot from him." She shrugged. "You take care, Harry. What we had, it wasn't built to last anyway, you know?"
"I gave up everything for you." I may have been crying by then. "I gave up my wife, my life --"
"Harry," she said, voice sharp. "You did all that for yourself. You made your choice. I didn't betray my ideals. You did. Don't try to put this on me." She stood up. "You take care. I'm sure you'll find another dewy-eyed grad student to adore you."
And that was the last I saw of Isobel, at least, so far.
"Can I stay here?" I asked the next morning, after a breakfast of breadfruit and sweet fried squid. The nameless emperor and I stood at the ra
iling of his fortress, on the highest deck, looking out at the sparkling sea. "Maybe in that autonomous zone Garduk governs?"
"Hell, no," the emperor said, and his pirates threw me overboard. I screamed -- I thought he was killing me -- but then the air ripped open like a purple-edge wound, and I fell through darkness, and soon crashed into the branches of the lemon tree in my backyard. When I lifted my head, I saw my neighbor, Mrs. Jameson, staring at me open-mouthed, watering her lawn with a garden hose. I waved at her, weakly, and carefully lowered my bruised body out of the tree.
I got brutally drunk. I didn't leave the house for three days. I never answered the phone or called the university to let them know I wasn't coming to work. I looked at old photos of Gwen and me -- profoundly depressed that my head was scissored out of nearly all of them -- and at my secret stash of digital photos of Isobel, many of them nudes that cropped out her head, as she'd insisted. I felt squalid and empty and not a bit heroic at all.
On the fourth day someone buzzed my doorbell and knocked, hard. I answered it, unshaven in my unchanged boxer shorts, hoping it was Gwen, or, at the very least, Isobel.
It was neither. It was a serious-faced man in a brown suit. His eyes seemed as all-seeing as the nameless emperor's. "Dr. Overkamp?" he said, showing me a badge. "I'm detective Harland. We're investigating the disappearance of Isobel McKinley. We're also curious about the whereabouts of your wife. Could you come down to the station with me and answer a few questions?"
It is a truth universally acknowledged that when a woman disappears, her husband or boyfriend is the logical suspect, I thought. I had not even considered this problem. I didn't doubt for a moment that the emperor had, and that he'd known exactly what kind of trouble he was sending me home to.
I nodded. "Of course, detective. Just let me get dressed." I shut the door in his face, and he began knocking again immediately, shouting for me to please come back, sir, as I raced upstairs. I couldn't gird my loins for battle, not over here, so I had to escape. I'd find Garduk, and rally a new army, and prove to Gwen how much I loved her, or at least show Isobel I was the mightiest hero they'd ever seen over there, that I could slay all the monsters in the world, if that's what it took to win her back.
I filled the tub and dipped the blue conch shell into the water. The thin shell broke in my fingers, dissolving to powder, tinting the water blue, but there were no witchlights, no portal opening. I just stared at the water, whispering every murmur-charm I'd learned from the Whisper Sisters, calling on the God Under the Rock for guidance, offering to trade the nameless emperor my own name in exchange for safe passage.
I was still there, kneeling on the bathroom floor and whispering to no one, when the police finally broke my door down and came upstairs and began asking very polite questions about the whereabouts of Isobel and Gwen, and understandably refusing to believe my answers, universally true as they were.
The Multiplicity Has Arrived
by Matthew S. Rotundo
Artwork by Jin Han
* * *
Critical mass has been attained, brothers and sisters. The tipping point has been reached. They tell us that we know not the day nor the hour, but I say to you the time is now. The Multiplicity has arrived, brothers and sisters. Can I get an amen?
Spencer Reese started to go into his standard pitch, but she cut him off with a wave of her hand. "Mr. Reese," she said, "I've done my research. I know what you can and can't do. Reese Research and Strategies is a very lean political consulting operation; the staff consists of you and some occasional temps. You're ambitious, but you don't have the resources to run a high-profile campaign from start to finish. You're hired to do specialized work, usually involving the opposition. You are, in other words, a professional character assassin. Your weapon of choice is the Internet."
Spencer, seated across the table from her, met her gaze calmly. She would definitely need some polishing. But at least naïveté was not among her faults.
In that moment, vague recognition flashed in his mind and then faded, gone so quickly he dismissed it.
She wore a tweed jacket and matching skirt over a wiry frame. Weathered, angular features, strong cheekbones, cropped dark hair, frosted at the tips. He guessed she was just into her thirties. Her handshake grip had been firm and reassuringly strong, her smile spare, showing no teeth.
Her name was Diana Gilbertson. The handshake had been good; the wardrobe and the smile needed work. Professional, but a little too hard-edged. She would need softening.
"Am I too blunt for you?" she said.
"I have no problem with directness."
"You were a pioneer of Web-based fundraising. You have developed an extensive network of bloggers, through which you influence political commentators, and ultimately, the news itself. You are among the best at generating publicity and shaping perceptions. Yet you keep a low profile."
"I'm more effective that way."
"Indeed you are. It would not do for people to learn how they've been manipulated, would it?"
Spencer looked around hopefully for their waiter. "That might be putting it a little strongly."
They were in a Mexican restaurant in the old shopping district downtown, a place with hardwood floors and tall windows that let in a lot of the early March sunlight. Spencer had never eaten there; she had suggested it when they spoke over the phone.
It was just after two o'clock. They sat at a booth near the windows, and had most of the place to themselves. Diana Gilbertson had ordered only a salad, drank only ice water. Spencer, though ravenous, had followed her lead, ordering only a small entrée.
She leaned forward in her seat. "I'm not really interested in your ability to destroy reputations. What I need are your Internet skills. Your contacts. Your ability to shape perception. In short, Mr. Reese, I need a person who can work the Multiplicity."
He swung his gaze back to her, all thoughts of lunch forgotten. "What did you say?"
"I think you heard me."
Internal warnings sounded; Spencer struggled to put away his shock and raise his guard.
"I've been to your website," she said. "It's interesting. You barely mention that George Lyons was a client of yours. Why is that?"
Spencer swallowed. "The work I did for Senator Lyons was comparatively minor. I keep --"
"-- a low profile. You're more effective that way."
Spencer held his tongue.
"I don't have time for pretense, Mr. Reese. I'm a serious woman with a serious proposition. If you're not interested in hearing it, I can always go to one of your competitors. Roger Bonham, for instance."
Spencer's lip curled. He supposed fat old Roger Bonham, founder of Bonham and Associates Public Affairs Consulting, would indeed be interested -- but not necessarily for the business she could bring. Bonham was smart enough to be as wary as Spencer, probably more so. Bonham would want to know exactly what she knew, and how she knew it.
Had she just said the word Multiplicity? Had she really?
She sat composed and still, awaiting his response.
"Call me Spencer," he said.
The waiter arrived with their orders a few minutes later.
A reading from the Book of the New Order, chapter one:
In the beginning, brothers and sisters, the Mainstream Media collapsed under the weight of its own corruption and incompetence. In its wake, a war raged between the donkeys and elephants for supremacy of the new battleground they called the blogosphere. They attacked and counterattacked, accused and counteraccused. They distorted and conflated and quoted out of context and cited fictitious sources. They marginalized and insulted and libeled, and savaged each other in ways heretofore unimagined. And lo, their ambition and hatred blinded them, brothers and sisters, and they did not perceive the deeper truth: the war they fought could never be won.
But it could be lost.
They knew it not, for they knew not the word of the Prophet Kinsman.
Yea, children of the New Order, it came to pass th
at Dr. Russell Kinsman, sociology professor at Berkeley, published a paper in an obscure academic journal, and the abstract read thus:
Given current trends, one may conceive of a moment in the near future when the Internet completely supplants memory, and by extension, history. From that moment on, that which is not on the Internet is not remembered, and may as well have never existed. Thus the Internet may begin to literally change the past as well as influence the present. Such a phenomenon would make the distinction between historical revisionism and actual events meaningless. What we call reality may be more malleable than we ever suspected.
One may argue that our global society is already advancing inexorably toward this point, which may be called the Multiplicity.
These words he wrote, and they were greeted with apathy and ridicule from his peers, who whispered among themselves that the great Prophet Kinsman, well into his seventies by that time, had gone around the bend. In the manner of all true prophets, he died without being heeded, only two years later.
And lo, brothers and sisters, the Word of the Prophet came to the crackers, the phreakers, and the other underground web denizens. And some, like Spencer Reese, heard the Word, and were intrigued.
Some, however, believed. They claimed that it was too late, that the world had already been changed.
She gave him a dossier on herself. He pored over it at his office suite, scribbling notes in the margins, until well past dark.
Reese Research and Strategies occupied a second-floor suite in a downtown professional building. The space consisted of a glass-fronted reception area -- a WiFi hotspot furnished with padded chairs and coffee tables, adorned with framed campaign posters he had designed -- and an office proper.
The décor in the office consisted of classic political memorabilia, including a framed Jimmy Carter T-shirt, a collage of early twentieth century postcards from the Taft and Bryan campaigns, and some original pamphlets trumpeting the 1840 Harrison-Tyler ticket. In one corner was a conference table, where Spencer conducted staff meetings on those occasions when he had a staff. His desk stood in front of the windows, which afforded a view of the skyline, looking east.