OtherLife

by Jason Segel

  “We’re approaching apartment 38H,” we hear Elvis whispering. “I feel my sphincter clenching with excitement. So I guess this is your last day on the job, Rosemary. How ya feeling?”

  The camera moves and the cleaning lady’s face briefly appears on the screen before a rubber-gloved hand shoots up to hide it. “Don’t point that damned thing at me,” she says.

  “Reluctant star, huh?” Elvis asks. “I don’t blame you. Or maybe you’re worried this is going to be like one of those buddy movies where the cop who’s retiring gets pulled into some big case on his last day on the job?”

  Busara leans forward. “Is the commentary really necessary?” she hisses.

  “If you don’t like the show, you don’t have to watch,” Elvis snaps.

  Busara looks to Kat and me. We shrug in unison. We aren’t getting involved.

  The cleaning lady unlocks Daisy’s door and pushes it open to reveal the apartment. “Whoa,” Elvis says.

  The three of us who are still back in Queens nearly bump heads diving in for a closer view. Daisy lives in a large, loftlike space that’s brightly lit by floor-to-ceiling windows. The island of Manhattan lies spread out below. The apartment is so high up that a plane passing by feels too close for comfort. I thought Wayne’s house was sparsely decorated, but at least he owns a sofa. The only furniture in Daisy’s living area is a tall wooden table that stretches across the center of the room. Arranged on its surface are over a dozen heads. The head facing the camera belongs to Abigail Prince.

  “They don’t call her the artist for nothing,” Elvis remarks as he reaches out to stroke Abigail’s cheek. “Daisy’s got some serious talent. Though I don’t really think she captured our former hostess’s sneer. You know—the one that let you know you’re nothing but a filthy peasant.”

  “Keep moving,” I order him. “Let’s see the rest.”

  “Well, now, here we have the vice president of the United States,” he says, passing over the head of the man with the second-highest post in the land. “And how about that? It’s the host of TechSpot, David Evans.”

  “So why does she have all of these?” Kat asks. “Is she sculpting her models at home?”

  “Naw.” Elvis instantly rejects the idea. “She said she made a model of David Evans. But if she has a real body to work from, she probably just scans the face and uses a 3-D printer to create the model. I’m pretty sure she’s doing this stuff for fun.”

  The camera begins to pan to the next head. We get just a glimpse before he quickly moves away. “You know what? Why don’t we see what else she’s got here in the apartment?” Elvis says nervously.

  “No, go back,” Kat orders.

  “Yeah, I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Elvis says.

  “Do it!” Kat’s voice is firm.

  Elvis reluctantly focuses on the head he tried to avoid. It’s a sculpture of Kat’s face in repose. Her eyes are closed and her lips slightly parted.

  Kat turns to me. “Does this mean the Company made copies of us too?” she asks, but I can’t find the right words to answer. “Damn it, Simon, you knew, didn’t you? You must have seen our clones at the lab. Why didn’t you tell me?”

  The horror of it all is coming back to me. If I could, I’d cut out the part of my brain where that memory will always be lodged. “I was ashamed,” I say. “I had to leave you there. I couldn’t get you out.”

  Kat blinks, but otherwise her face gives nothing away, which in my experience means she’s furious. “We’ll discuss this more later,” she says before she returns her gaze to the screen.

  “Let’s see the rest of the apartment,” I tell Elvis. “Daisy has got to have an Otherworld headset in there somewhere.”

  The camera begins to move toward a door. We see Elvis’s hand reach out and turn the knob. The light flashes on. It’s a bedroom with no bed. It’s entirely empty—aside from a pile of clothes and a capsule.

  It’s the proof I’ve been waiting for. Daisy is a regular visitor to Otherworld. But she doesn’t wear a headset. With a headset, there would be no need for a capsule. Daisy goes to Otherworld with a disk. If Wayne’s told her about the danger, Daisy is definitely a total badass. Not many people would willingly risk their lives for a game.

  “This isn’t the same model as the capsules at the lab.” Elvis opens a latch and the top of the capsule opens up. “This one was designed for personal use. Looks like you just climb inside.”

  “She sleeps in that thing?” Busara asks.

  Elvis pans the room. There’s a closet filled with clothes and shoes, but no bed in sight. “I don’t see anywhere else for her to lie down. And she doesn’t seem like a person who’d sleep on the floor.”

  “Does that mean she’s going to Otherworld every night?”

  “Must be,” Elvis says.

  “She’s hooked.” It’s suddenly making sense to me. “Just like Milo. I bet you that’s how Wayne got her to work for the Company. He offered to give her Milo’s capsule and disk.”

  “So—what’s our next step?” Busara asks.

  “Kat and I go to Otherworld and see if Daisy can lead us to Declan. He might be able to tell us where to find his body.”

  “What’s the difference between hunting Daisy down in New York and going to see her in Otherworld?” Nasha demands. “Either way, Wayne will know.”

  “We’re not going to look for Daisy,” I say. “We’re going to let the Empress of Imperium find us.”

  We wait until evening. We need to be sure the Empress will be there when we arrive. This time, when I enter Otherworld, I’m back at setup. The seamless white environment is empty, aside from the mirror in front of me. The reflection I see is my own. A glowing blue amulet hangs around my neck. Other than that, I’m entirely naked. I need to get moving, but I can’t resist.

  “Older,” I order, and I’m suddenly a man in his thirties.

  “Much older,” I say. My hair turns gray and my skin sags in ways I’m not looking forward to.

  “Checked suit. Fedora. Cigarette.”

  The Kishka stares back at me from the mirror. “Hey, kid,” he says. “Figured out who you are yet?”

  “Back!” I bark. I’m eighteen and buck naked again.

  Every time I’ve visited Otherworld, I’ve worn the brown robe of a Druid. Now I don’t have time for that crap. I give my avatar jeans, a T-shirt and a pair of sturdy boots.

  When you leave setup, you’re supposed to begin your Otherworld adventure at the gates of Imra. I look around, but Imra’s nowhere to be seen. The gates and buildings are gone. There’s nothing here but a mountain of lava. At some point in the past, the volcano that once housed Imra erupted. The city and its walls must have been completely destroyed. I hope it was Pomba Gira’s revenge.

  Otherworld’s air is cleaner than it was the last time we were here. Without the smog, I can see skyscrapers in the distance. I wonder which city they belong to.

  “Like the new outfit.” Kat appears beside me, wearing her favorite camouflage jumpsuit.

  “Thanks,” I tell her. “You ready to rumble?”

  “Nope. Now that we’re alone, you’re going to explain why you didn’t tell me the Company had cloned us.”

  God, I was really hoping we wouldn’t have to finish that particular conversation.

  “Our clones were naked inside the capsules. I didn’t want you to feel embarrassed,” I say.

  “Embarrassed? About what?” Kat demands. “That I was a victim of a crime that hasn’t made it into any lawbooks yet? Don’t worry. I’ll make sure justice is served. What really pisses me off right now is that my boyfriend thought he needed to protect me from the truth.”

  Now that she mentions it, I can see how that might piss someone off.

  “I mean, when exactly did I ever give you the impression that I’m a fragile little flower that
needs to be handled carefully?”

  “Never,” I have to admit. “I know you could kick my ass if you wanted to.”

  “Damn straight. Keep that in mind, would you?” She gives my avatar a kiss. I can’t feel her lips, but it still sets me on fire. Kat grins as she steps back. She knows what she’s done. It’s an unbelievably cruel punishment.

  “Wow.” Kat’s taking in the landscape that surrounds us. “I gotta tell you, after our last trip, I was a little worried Otherworld wouldn’t exist at all anymore.”

  Down below, a cloud of dust races across the red desert wasteland. Maybe I’m mistaken again, but it sure looks a lot like a buffalo. They seem to have made a miraculous comeback.

  “Get down!” a high-pitched voice shrieks behind us.

  Something has poked its head out of a hole in the volcanic rock. It’s a tiny creature with skin the same shade of gray as the rock, and a face with the features of multiple Earth species—the giant eyes and ears of a lemur and the scales of a lizard. Otherworld’s children have been getting busy.

  “You don’t want them to see that you’re back!” it says.

  It seems smart to do what we’re told since the creature apparently knows who we are. Kat and I drop down, pressing our chests flat against the rock. The dust cloud travels past the volcano, and I can see a hairy body in the center of it. Still, Kat and I wait until the creature has passed before we begin to rise.

  “It was just a buffalo,” I tell the creature.

  “Yes, but the buffalo here were once beasts,” he says. “Now they are something else altogether. That was one of the monster machines that she makes.”

  “She?” Kat asks.

  The creature looks at us as if he suspects we’re high. He has a surprisingly somber personality for something that looks like a stuffed animal from a museum gift shop. “The Empress of Imperium, of course.”

  Of course.

  “And who are you?”

  “My name is Ilo,” he says. “I have been waiting for you to return to Otherworld for many years. Now that you are here, I can escort you back to Albion.”

  I almost laugh at the thought of this guy escorting us anywhere. He’s barely knee high.

  “Albion?” Kat asks. “Why Albion?”

  “All but two realms have fallen to the Empress,” says Ilo. “The White City will be conquered any day now. Then Albion will be the only free and safe realm in Otherworld.”

  After my first and last visit to Albion, I’m in no rush to go back. I can’t imagine how it could be one of the last two realms to resist invasion. It was nothing but an enormous garbage dump with a starving giant, a grizzled old Elemental and…

  “Have you heard of someone named Bird in Albion?” Kat takes the question right out of my mouth.

  “Heard of her?” Ilo snorts. “She is our protector. She is the reason we are not slaves to the Empress like the rest of Otherworld.”

  “The rest of Otherworld?” Kat repeats in astonishment.

  Ilo seems to have serious doubts about our intelligence.

  “I’m sorry, it’s been a while since we’ve been here,” I explain. “We don’t know what the Empress has done while we’ve been gone.”

  “She has ruled Imperium for ages,” Ilo says. “Before she arrived, the city was swimming in refuse and poisoned by its own pollution. The Empress brought Imperium back to life, it is true. Once the skies cleared and the streets were emptied of garbage, other realms came asking for help. She would only save them if they would accept her as their leader. One by one, the realms of Otherworld began to fall under her control.”

  So far, the Empress isn’t sounding all that bad. Last time we were here, Otherworld was a disaster. Someone had to clean the place up. “Where do the NPC slaves come in?” I press.

  Ilo looks around nervously before he answers. He seems to feel exposed up here on the rocks. I wouldn’t mind having this conversation elsewhere myself, but it doesn’t look like there’s anywhere we can go.

  “Her slaves are not NPCs. They’re Children. Every inhabitant of the realms had to take part in the cleanup,” Ilo says, his words spilling out faster. “Monitors placed on their bodies ensured compliance by reporting their location and activity. Once the job was finished, however, the monitors were not removed as agreed. The Empress now controls every creature in her empire. If she wants something built, they must build it. If she wants someone found, they must find them. If there’s a realm that won’t submit to her rule, they must conquer it.

  “There is no crime in the Imperium empire,” he continues. “Everything is beautiful. The Empress has even built beasts to replace those that went extinct. But it’s all come at the expense of the Children she’s enslaved.”

  The Children agreed to a bad deal. When they accepted the trade-off, they didn’t know what they were trading. The Children got what they wanted in the short term. And now they could end up paying for it forever.

  “That is why I must guide you to Albion. The Empress knows that Otherworld is still visited by others like her. She’s put a bounty on all human heads—including yours and that of the White City’s Ancient.”

  Even though we want the Empress to find us, I’m not exactly thrilled to find out I’m a wanted man in this world, too. But it’s something else Ilo just said that concerns me far more. Kat’s face says she’s worried too. “She put a bounty on the White City’s Ancient?” It feels unbelievably weird to refer to James Ogubu in that way, but I doubt Ilo will know James’s real name.

  “The Empress has been trying to breach the White City’s walls for years. The residents have fought back, but the Empress’s slave army has become too large to resist. The White City residents won’t be able to hold out much longer.”

  “And if the Empress manages to capture the Ancient? What do you think she will do?”

  Ilo shakes his head. “I do not know. She has not been kind to those she sees as rivals. Bird has tried to rescue the Ancient many times. She has never been able to find a way to bring him back safely to Albion.”

  There’s still one thing I don’t understand.

  “What makes Albion so safe?” Kat asks the question I had in mind.

  “You don’t recall?” Ilo seems both shocked and a little offended. “It’s Albion’s most beloved story, and the two of you are part of it.”

  “We are?” I ask.

  Ilo sighs at my ignorance. “The day the Empress’s soldiers were defeated, the Elemental of Albion offered Bird a wish. She wished that the realm would be forever free of the technology that had brought such devastation to Otherworld. As a result, the technology the Empress uses to enslave the Children does not work in Albion. The Children she’s sent to defeat us have found themselves free to join us. The monitors simply fall away. The Empress does not dare send any more.”

  Kat turns to me. “We’ve got to go to the White City. We need to get James out.”

  “No, no, no!” Ilo interrupts. “You must come with me to Albion. Your friend Declan is there. He’s been waiting!”

  “Declan?” I ask. “He’s in Albion?”

  “Yes. He arrived many years ago.”

  “And he’s not in danger?” I ask.

  “Of course not. Albion is perfectly safe.”

  “Then he can wait while I take a quick detour to the White City.”

  Ilo stomps his foot in frustration. “Have you not been listening? The city is surrounded by the Empress’s troops! You will never be able to get inside!”

  He doesn’t know I have a trick up my sleeve. I reach down into my shirt and pull out my amulet. It belonged to the Clay Man, and there’s nothing else like it. It allows the wearer to transport from realm to realm. The only problem is, I won’t be able to take anyone with me. Only one person can go.

  “Simon, let me use the amulet this time,” Kat says. “I
can pull up the hood of my jumpsuit and disappear. I’ll get James out of the White City without being seen.”

  I don’t think Kat’s being noble. She really wants to go. So do I. I’m curious to see what’s become of the White City. The technology they had was far more advanced than ours. I wonder if it was what saved them for so long.

  “Rock, paper, scissors?” I ask.

  “You’re on,” she says. She almost always wins.

  This time, her luck runs out. My rock smashes her scissors.

  “Damn it!”

  “Don’t be a sore loser.” I give her a quick kiss before I take the amulet in my palm and close my eyes. I tell the stone where I want to go, and when I open my eyes, I’m in James Ogubu’s living room. There’s nothing left but the walls. The windows have shattered, and a thick layer of dust and dirt blankets the floor. Who knows where the furniture has gone? Outside, half the balcony has crumbled away. The surrounding buildings haven’t fared much better. It’s hard to believe there could be anything living inside the hollowed-out shells, but I can see figures scuttling around within them. There are still Children left in the White City. A bright flash of light is followed by the sound of an explosion. I watch as one of the tallest buildings in the White City crashes to the ground.

  James Ogubu is sitting on the floor with his back against the wall. There’s no telling how long he’s been there. His eyes are closed. His face and clothing are coated with dust.

  “James.” I rush toward him in a panic. We should never have left him like this.

  “Hello, Simon,” he says as his eyes slowly open.

  I take the amulet off and place it around his neck.

  “Tell the amulet you want to go to Albion. Bird is there. She will care for you.”

  “So it’s true?” he asks. “I wondered what happened to Bird when she didn’t return. There were rumors about a safe haven in Albion, and I thought she might have something to do with it. She must be very old by now.”