The Altonevers

by Frederic Merbe

  Each muffled cry of hers crawls through his ears to scratch at his sense of empathy like frightened mice clawing and gnawing at their a cages. Feeling the salt streaking down her cheeks as lava pouring into the crevices of his cold cavernous chest, scalding the walls of long forgotten recesses of deep within. Stirring emotions untouched for an eternity, that erupt then explode inside his breast as soul enrapturing heat radiating to his fingertips and lips. He takes a heavy breath, elated with his compassion for her, the lost girl in front of him. He thinks of leaving her where he found her, which he is of the habit to doing. ‘Poor thing, from an open Alto and she never even knew it, well if I leave her she’ll probably, well,” he sighs.

  “Okay! we don’t have much time since this plain is already starting to capsize. It'll flip to be completely above us in no time, soon, so we have to act now, alright?” he says to her, who's standing perfectly still. Mesmerized by the vacuous black over his shoulder.

  “Hey,” he snaps as he snaps his fingers.

  “Hey,” she mindlessly replies, mellowed by the oblivion in front of her.

  “No, Hey!” he shouts.

  “Uh. Yeah?” she snaps out of her daze.

  “The Altos are different plains, got it? and the inter-”

  “Plains?”

  “Of existence, a reality, you know, a place, could be any place, that you are or could be. Whatever you are perceiving is the Alto you are on, or in. Though most specifically what is perceived in the present.”

  “So you’re from another dimension?” she asks doubtfully.

  “Dimensions, plains of reality? something like that, it’s kinda like a variation of one or another, an echo or something, though simply different places to be. You are too ya know, from an Alto. It's just that this happens to be yours, with the weather standard to you. Though this is me being here, me presently in this Alto” he says.

  “Dimensions? of what? earth?”

  “That’s the name of this Alto?”

  “No it’s the planet we’re on”

  “Oh no, no that's nothing. Even with the infinite eventualities of each being to ever live on this planet, echoing through the whole of this existence, is just, I don’t know, not even a grain of moisture in a deluge if compared to even one rail stop, one Alto of the InterAltonevers. We say threads sometimes but-”

  “Okay sure, is this real? don’t you have to tell me or something?” she asks brashly cutting him off.

  “No. I don’t have to tell you but I will, because otherwise you’ll probably die here,” he shrugs, with a questioning expression.

  “Is this in my mind?”

  “No! somewhat, now’s not the time for that, we have to go now. We have to go to another Alto, if you want to survive that is. Though that seems to be the only limit thought of the Altonevers, that you have to be somewhere to be perceiving, we think so anyway. We really should be going though.”

  “But this is everything I’ve ever known, and you’re the one gushing at the mouth, I’ve hardly said a word,” she says.

  “Oh that everything you’ve known bit, we call that someone’s standard, the weather their reality is tempered of. Fish in a bowl I guess,” he says nonchalantly, and blinking silently waiting for her reply.

  “How could you be so careless about all this?” she says with a blood boiling glare.

  “This sort’a thing happens all the time,” he says. She squeaks, struggling not to weep while swept in a tide of fear that sears his sense of compassion. For a second he wonders in glimpses of what her life here has been like up to this point, of how the places weft out of persistence will soon be only pictures in her memory.

  “I'll get you back...home, er, here,” he says, “I promise.”

  “How? this is all going away right before our eyes.”

  “Our senses. Look around, did you think anything of this was possible before today?”

  “No, no of course not.”

  “Neither did I before I took my first ride on the InterAltos, they can take you anywhere.”

  “Anywhere but here” she says.

  “Anywhere you can dream of and more. Their crystal amber rails stretch into the depths of all the known and unknown eternities of the Altonevers. Weaving from station to station, from one perceivable plain to another. We can get back here” he says.

  “So the Altonevers are possible realities?”

  “The Alto's are, and the Altonevers are everything. All the eternities contained in an entire multi-verse and it’s echoes, lasting forever through the depths of itself everlasting, is nothing, a pebble held in your hand when you're standing next to a planet. To say the Altonevers and any form of quantity in the same breath is senseless. Then there’s the different peoples and places, sights and smells, tastes of entire civilizations and their histories and futures, cultures and creations and customs coexisting as different stops of the InterAltonevers railway, or simply the InterAltos” he says accentuating his speech with fluently moving physical language.

  “That sounds...weird,”

  “Yeah, there's alotta weird stuff out there kid,” he says.

  “I'm not a kid,”

  “That’s childish, we don’t have time for this. We really should be going on account of, well all this happening right now and it’s getting late, you see,” he says pointing to the ground. “It's capsizing and it's already tilting at two thirty toward the east,” he shakes his head to her holding a look of impatience, more worried for her life, though not very much for his own.

  “What's your name, anyway?” he asks.

  She announces herself triumphantly through a sniffle, “Anna.”

  “An, na,” slips from his mouth. That name rings a loud bell deep in his abandoned memory, a triangle bell, resurfacing with a scene from hazed remembrance. Of himself as a child, barefoot in a dusty field filled with wavering heat. Hearing the mother of the house down the road, yelling for her children to come off the dirt and eat. He recalls one of them having the name of Anna. He looks to the direction of the rung bell, seeing only rows of laundry lines blowing like sails, and blocking his view. In an oasis of nostalgic thought, though knowing the girl in front of him is not the same as the name shouted from his memory, he feels compelled to help her.

  “And you are?”

  “Cider,” he states, “Wanted the Altonevers over, and under,” he smiles stretching his hand for her to shakes.

  “Your name is a juice!” She laughs.

  “Well, if it makes you smile, sure,” he says. Anna, seeing no reason why not, and slightly smitten, reaches out to take his hand in hers. Her fears fall away, strangely relieved by his touch. Feeling to her like certainty, something real in the unreality unfolding around her. She watches the end of his smoke disintegrate over his shoulder, dragging his attention to it. He imagines her sucked into the vacuum of space, screaming in silence while floating away, becoming blue, and bursting through her skin. Atomizing and sifting away until indistinguishable from the black of oblivion. He shivers, shaking himself of the thought.

  “Why is this happening?” she asks.

  “Oh yeah that's right, this is happening,” he snaps out of his daze.

  “Nice to meet you Anna, but this is a helping hand, not a hello.”

  “What the hell!” she shouts, staggering like a stumbling giraffe as he pulls her into an uneven stride. The pavement is sliding under foot as it slants so that what’s to their left, west is sliding below them, and what’s across the street’s becoming above their heads. The fluidly flowing asphalt is overflowing, pouring out from the trenches dug for the streets, rushing up to meet the descending dissolution that's devouring the city structures story by story. As the minutes and intersections pass, the city slants more and becomes like running across a wall, wearing the rubber of her shoes as she scrapes at the pavement to keep up with his racing pace.

  He squeezes her knuckles white, grabbing the edge of the curb with his right hand, and swings her off the ground and over the edge
of the curb into an empty street. He pulls himself up after her, and rolls onto the dirt trench that was a four lane avenue, now more of a cave cut in half. Leaving them standing upright on the side of the sidewalk inside a half tunnel walled by obsidian fluid flowing upward. Brushing the dust off her behind, she catches him staring at her hips.

  “Really? the world is collapsing!”

  “What?”

  “Stop staring at my...you're such a dick.”

  “Is that what I am to you, a piece of meat?”

  “WOW!”

  “Yeah, wow, that’s good to know,” he answers, and the two trade sharp eyed smiles. He turns his head left, leading her to the see the pillars of modern man once standing as though to suspend the sky, now lying as horizontal rows of eroding city spires.. Swathes of cityscape are crumbling through the air while ascending as a violently rising illuminated sea of vapor sweeping into the wake of the sundered sun. A subway car crashes through an airborne mass of brick, that breaks into an array of light bending wavelengths twisting out in slow motion.

  “Hope that's not ours,” he says.

  “It, it's...wonderful,” she whispers entranced. As all of the glass face of the building that's stretching out in front of her like a pier into the sky, spills upward while melting and bubbling, spiraling and coalescing into a field of red orange beach ball sized glowing globes. Effervescently rising and colliding to shatter with a field of brilliant flashes in the colors of fall leaves.

  “We're almost there,” he says, tugging her into a sprint down to the end of the block. His heels slide across the ground as he tries to slow, only coming to a stop with his toes teetering over the edge of the curb. He flaps like a penguin trying to fly before she pulls him by the neck of his shirt to safety.

  “Whew, that was close. It’s still there though,” he says.

  “What's there?”

  “The station,” he says out of breath.

  “Oh, right.”

  “But, there's a thing.”

  “What thing? why is there a thing?”

  “The thing is, there’s alotta stuff, kinda avalanching up the city, uh, toward us.”

  “How can it be avalanching up?”

  “It looks like an avalanche and it’s crashing upward, from below, us,” he says.

  She looks over the edge to see what he said and, “Okay, so what now?”

  “Well,” he says lighting a smoke “You’re not gonna like this.”

  “Do we really have time for a smoke break?” she asks waving fumes from her face. Exhaling, he answers, “not really no, but we do have to get to those rails.”

  “To the, Altonevers?”

  “Yes Anna, we don’t have time for questions, urgency is upon us, and we have to get down there,” he points over the edge of the curb.

  “Down there!?” she yells.

  “Anna! C'mon with the questions. This is vital time.”

  “Don’t yell at me! How can you be so calm right now?”

  “I wasn’t serious,” he says.

  “That’s my point!...whatever, nevermind,” she says. He says nothing only pointing down again, animatedly, and stepping to the ledge and waiting for her to join him. After a moment she takes her place next him, and laughs a desperate, nervous laugh.

  “Are you afraid of heights?” he asks.

  “Not usually.”

  “Well this is unusual, for you anyway, but I think you'll be fine.”

  “You've done this before?” she asks.

  “Not exactly.”.

  “What do you do?”

  “Uh, weather chasing, is a hobby,” he says shrugging.

  “Weather chasing, you said you were wanted the Altonevers over.”

  “And your eyes are brown I see, but they read so easily as green,” he replies and she peeks wearily, weak kneed over the edge.

  “You see the yellow and black glowy thing?” he asks.

  “You mean the subway sign?”

  “Right, try to hit that and roll in. Not too hard or you may break something. Just tuck and roll, and hope for the best,” he says.

  “Nope, I'm not doing that,” she insists with shaking head and arms folded.

  “You got a better idea?”

  “No!” she cries hysterically “no, no I, I can't, we’ll die.”

  “Maybe, yeah maybe, but, we definitely will die if we don’t. so chin up Carrots, the only way to live is to fall.”

  “To our deaths, or definitely die.”

  “That's out of our hands after we leap, right, so relax. The best we can do is try to live,” he says.

  She stands tense, in disbelief of his disregard for the danger they're currently in.

  “Listen, I can get you home, okay,” he says,. already adoring her smile, and wanting to tame the tearful tides of her eyes.

  “How? it's all...that doesn't make any sense.”

  “Neither does any of this, but it's happening anyway,” he says, watching intently, and enjoying the elation wash over her face.

  “You, really can? get be back here? If the impossible is happening then why not happen again, in another way, any way, right?” she says through sniffles.

  “Of course! We can always find our way back through the infiniteness of the Altonevers,” he says consolingly, convincingly as though to talk her off a ledge.

  “Ready?” he asks. She retreats to herself, seeking her own in inner silence. Thinking of nothing, not her own bad habits or the daily routine of her soul dulling job, or mundane life's anxieties. Not the minor triumphs or self loathsome failures of a life without aspiration. Not of living check to check, or vicariously living a life worth living only in her daydreams. Not her foster parents, dead mother or missing father not missing her. Not of her impatience and unreliability to even herself. Her mind is devoid of thought, as deep as the void pursuing her. Her existence is soundless for seconds, before realizing she must plunge to her life, and accept she has no choice in the matter. With surging breast and primal passion of survival pulsing through her veins, she thinks of wanting to be free, free from alarm clocks, free to live an adventure as her own life. She stands straight with toe’s teetering a city block over the subways stairs sinking into the sidewalk, and a mile over an ascending avalanche of sublimating matter.

  “Okay,” she sighs.

  “You’re ready this time?” he asks. His hand is steady when near death, he thrives in the adrenaline of fear, it being the only thing that makes him feel as though he's alive, among the living. Enamored as he watches her expression shift from soft and horrified to tempered as steel. ‘She’s ready’ he thinks, while feeling pins and needles stinging again at his empathy, as worry for someone other than himself.

  “Yes! I'm ready!” she shouts triumphantly. To die, or live, she asks of herself. He reaches for her hand, she pulls away.

  “Don't think about how much it's gonna hurt, alright. Forget about broken bones or split organs, and really don’t think about spinal injuries, alright? Great, break a leg, actually don’t, tuck and roll, wait, run first,” he says.

  “Stop it,” she says.

  “No, we have to go”

  “Talking about how much it'll hurt,” she says leaning over the ledge, entranced and enraptured in a sense of relief by the sight of the yellow glowing entrance.

  “Whoa,” she says seeing through her fear for just a moment, long enough to embrace the majesty in the magnitude of the dematerializing metropolis.

  “I know, it's what I came for,” he says.

  “No, that we're free, completely free of...everything,” she says. “Compelling, but now’s not the time, or it is the time. It both is and isn't the time for thought of it,” he says, slapping her on the back before diving off the pavement plateau.

  Anna closes her eyes, hesitating for a second that lasts forever in her mind, though ending when her eyelids lift, reminding her that life doesn't last as long as a single thought could.

  She tediously leans forward. Squeezing her ey
es shut, struck by fear growing as her body tips over the edge, and she’s free falling a second later. Without a thought she's stampeding down the wall, with toes barely tapping the cracking and fracturing surface of the vertical sidewalk. The whole way down she's screaming at the top of her lungs. Not even trying to slow her gallop, she glides easily past him. Oblivious in the caress of her carelessness, and never wanting to stop falling in stride. She curls into a ball and meets the yellow and black sign with a yelp and a thud. Dropping as dead weight then tumbling down a long and twisting white tiled stairwell. The avalanche vaporizing reality quakes through the ground as it rumbles closer. Washing over the hole like an ocean wave seen from below, a second after he shouts and thuds and drops to follow her tumble down the stairs. The city and its history, the stars burning brightly in place for billions of years, the Alto in it's entirely is evaporated from physical persistence in a matter of minutes.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Hop, skip and jump

  Rolling, and rolling still, tumbling down the long way down a narrowing white tiled stairway to eventually flop flat on her front onto a dirty cement landing. Slopping the sweat from her face to the ground, that smiles back at her as her own reflection. Kneeling under an arcane decorated arch of brass and wood, crowning the entrance of the Altonevers station. She gets to her feet drunk in dizziness as he brushes himself off.

  “See, I told you it was a thing,” he says over the blinding smell of urine smoldering their noses. She looks up, to a shadow black ceiling with brick pillars spilling down from it. Coated in the same dull gray paint peeling in patches from the walls, falling like dandruff to an uneven stone slab that’s been a platform forever. The only other thing visible is a string of silver train cars, shining under the lights of the dimly lit station. Cider is mesmerized like a bird staring at string of glimmering pearls, to the train cars standing with their doors wide open. Well lit inside with advertising resting over scratched windows, and plastic blue benches stretched three feet over a black floor speckled with violet, red and gray dots.

  A short man dressed as a mustard yellow clad bellhop is standing below a large board of arrivals and departures. Humming a mellow melody, then blowing a whistle that blows steam, and instantly appearing not four feet from the two, holding a rolled up paper in a gray glove. Beaming at her with elderly blue eyes, his hair is swept over his ears, and his face is outlined by age.