by Forbes West
“Maybe you’re right. I always wanted to have an adventure. But you are also wrong—I’m here with my husband.”
Guy tilts his head. “Who isn’t here now, is he? On the biggest night of the voyage?”
You shrug. “He’s sick.”
Guy nods his head up and down, grinning, clapping his hands together. “Sick or not sick, I’d be with a pretty girl like you. You know, I’m sick of cake-ass niggas like him.”
You laugh a little and look away from him.
Guy continues. “I love meeting people who want to break the mold. I was the same way, too. Or still am, I suppose. Well then, do you mind if I spend this solstice talking to you? I am by myself.”
You look down for a long moment and then straight into Guy’s eyes—well, sunglasses. “What exactly do you do in The Oberon?”
He pauses and downs the contents of the coffee mug. He licks his lips. “I’m the point man for a co-op called Tokyo Sex Whale. I didn’t make up the name, I swear. I know it sounds just…well, anyway. I’m the first one into the old buildings in the cities. I get first look at old Antediluvian-made stuff that would just blow your effing mind. Incredible stuff is just lying around, waiting for the absolute taking. I’m the guy in the radiation suit with the pistol and the orichalcum baton jumping down dark holes, doing things that are questionable in retrospect.” He looks out the window for a moment, as if lost in thought. You look at your watch. 12:30 am.
“In a few hours, you’re going to have left the US for the first time and will be doin’ something very different than anything you have ever experienced before,” Farson says, almost as if talking to himself.
You have to choose between leaving and just letting the man talk.
Guy leans back. “Have a drink with me, dear. To the Winkie Country!”
“What?” you say, holding your glass up. “Winkie Country?”
“Never heard of that? From the Wizard of Oz. That’s the nickname for The Oberon. Winkie Country. The part of Oz where the Wicked Witch lives. People call the Ni-Perchta natives Winkies because some asshole thought it was funny a long time ago.”
You and Guy clink glass and mug together and then slug down the scotch. It burns your throat and makes your eyes water. You cough long and hard.
“Good stuff, no?” he says, with a mischievous smile. “Like Gene Hackman says, don’t get too used to good scotch. It’s more expensive than drugs.”
* * *
You and Guy talk the evening away. He tells you about what he’s done, where he’s been, where to go in the Winkie Country. You try to light your first cigar but Farson’s cheap lighter keeps blowing out. You give up and let the cigar just hang there, then take another sip of scotch. Guy Farson keeps on; it’s like a one man, one audience member show.
“Somebody said that the whole thing, being in Winkie Country, is like this old David Gilmour song. It goes: “When you’ve come in you’re in for good, there’s no promises made, the part you’ve played, the chance you took, there are no boundaries set...””
You nod, making as much sense out of it as you can. You can barely hear him at this point, between the people and the steady pop beat of some fast Huey Lewis song from the band. After a moment the band transitions into something slower and sweeter; the physical gyrations of the crowd break down into slow dances.
“Let’s do this thing that all the screwing kids are doing. Let’s dance to whatever this song is,” Farson says, slamming the table with the flat of his hand and almost knocking over the bottle of whiskey.
“Sure.” You get up, putting the unlit cigar into your pocket, and stretch. It is now 2:45 am. Farson looks pleased with himself. “Happy to be stuck with me.”
He stares at you. “Excuse me?”
“Name of the song,” you croak.
He takes you by the hand and dances with you, leading you awkwardly. “My sister taught me to dance a long time ago, and told me not to go for the ass grab until thirty seconds into the song.”
You raise an eyebrow.
“She was a weirdo.” He caresses your ass for a second before you take his hand off. “Still got what I wanted.”
You giggle a little.
The lights dim and brighten, signaling something is about to begin. Farson puts his blazer back on, then takes you roughly by the hand. “Let’s go get a good bird’s eye view, shall we?”
As he elbows or otherwise slams others out of the way, you follow dutifully behind him through the heavy doors that lead to the deck outside. The warm Pacific wind blows steadily, increasing in power. You feel slightly drunk after your one and a half drinks. Children in pajamas, slightly-to-fully-intoxicated adults, and the crew are all hands on deck, waiting for the big show to begin. You can see the other lights of the small fleet, waiting, each ship full of settlers to The Oberon. Guy takes out another cigar and lights it, lighting yours as well. Your cigar blows out after a second.
A crack of thunder rolls along in the distance. Guy points to the crow’s nest, that single white tower that juts up from the deck. He goes over to the mast, nonchalant, and climbs up the ladder, ignoring the obvious Do Not Climb sign tied to a rung. After a moment’s hesitation, with the wind blowing your hair this way and that, you spit out the cigar and begin to climb, looking at all the white stars that mark the thick black sky. You get all the way to the top, thirty feet up from the deck, without being detected. Everyone is looking out over the ocean instead. Even the crew, who are mostly away from their posts at this time.
There is a heavy wind from the west that almost blows you and Guy completely off the ladder. Deafening metallic horns, a mix between a foghorn and the cry of a whale, echo out over the entire ocean. The wind and the horns then stop. Lights in the sky begin to flash.
The once black sky fills with a bioluminescent cloud of blue and gray light. It takes over the southern horizon. The light comes from the right and quickly passes to the left. Streams of gray clouds, partially obscuring the original light, are generated from some far-off source. Others coming from the opposite direction meet these streams. A red and orange cloud—long, thick, distorted—cruises over the ocean with little pinpricks of white flashing in its core. It is the size of an island, maybe thirty or forty football fields across, and high up into the heavens. Where it came from you cannot tell. It has just simply appeared. Guy takes off his glasses and whistles out loud. A rumbling begins and the cloud stops in front of the ship. Dry lightning flashes all around. As the cloud dissipates, a thick column of water rises up to the sky, so large and awe-inspiring that it reminds you of something out of those old newsreels that showed the hydrogen bomb detonations in the atolls.
After the water descends, there is utter stillness, no lightning, no clouds, no horns. No sound.
Miles upon miles wide, blacker than the night it is framed against, stretching from one end of the horizon to another, is the primary Nemo Gate. It is a superstructure so large it seems it has enveloped one end of the Earth, with a distinguishable peaking towards the middle. At its center it is blacker than black, emitting no visible light.
The Nemo Gate is the height of the Empire State Building in New York. Its perimeter is covered in fantastical and frighteningly large sculptures of creatures, either strange dragons or cephalopod in shape with long and terrible tentacles. Smoke trails from each sculpture’s mouth. Designs of armored humans and Ni-Perchta wielding serrated swords also decorate its sides. The sea does not lap against the Gate’s sides; it has stopped dead in its tracks against the massiveness of the thing.
Finally, as if the whole entire Gate is a giant television slowly switching on, the utter blackness that has been at the center changes. Lights flash in its dark center.
As if you are looking through one incredible window, you can see another world in the middle of the Gate. The portal is open. You can see that the ocean leads into some other incredible ocean, and that on the other side there is not a night sky, like in our world, but a brightening morning sky with seven g
hostly moons shining through the heavens. Strange manta ray-like creatures fly in the distance, their tails trailing across the sky.
“Good Lord,” you whisper, your hand over your mouth.
Farson smiles. He has these beautiful gray-blue eyes. “We’ll go through and dock at Solomon’s Bay, and in seven weeks, the Gate will disappear like it was never here. It won’t open again until next June.” Your eyes meet, and you look at each other for a moment too long. You kiss him lightly on the lips.
“Hee hee,” he says. “Your husband doesn’t know...” He motions for you to climb down from the crow’s nest. You do, and endure a scolding from an officer or someone official-looking. Guy disappears into the crowd.
You find Jaime there, in his pajamas and jacket. He looks slightly upset. “You didn’t wake me up,” he says in a sad whisper. His forehead is glistening with fever sweat.
No one dares to be the first one to move away as everyone drinks in the incredible sight of the Nemo Gate and the view into another planet.
“Oh, snap, sorry. Sorry about that. Jeez, did you see it?”
“I did. Barely in time,” he says. “Who was the guy?”
You shrug. “Guy. Guy Farson.”
“Meh,” Jaime mutters and then explodes into an excited burst of energy. “Wasn't that freakin’ awesome? Oh my God, we did it! We’re gonna cross! We are going to cross big time!”
He looks much healthier and happier now, much more himself. He takes in the view with a sigh as he looks over the shoulder of another girl your age. He talks to her, smiling and laughing. You excuse yourself and walk back to the now empty and cleared lounge, suddenly feeling a little ill. You make it to the women’s bathroom and stare at the mirror for a long moment, seeing a slightly disheveled, tired-looking young woman with brunette hair. After splashing some cold water onto your face and exiting the bathroom, you run into Guy walking down the hallway. He sees the look on your face.
“I’ll see you on the other side,” he tells you with a kind smile. His eyes look over your shoulder. You follow his gaze and see a massive black wall advancing forward, seemingly eating every part of the Queen Mary. It is passing through the Nemo Gate, you realize with a start, and Guy puts a hand on your shoulder. “It’ll be over in just a moment. It doesn’t hurt.”
The black wall advances to the point that it is just a few feet away from you. You inadvertently step backwards onto Guy’s left foot, and he hisses a little in pain. Then the wall hits you, along with a particularly strange feeling of being pinched on every square inch of your body. You see only blackness for one moment, and then you feel like you are watching stars explode and a white ring grow and grow.
A moment later you are again standing next to Guy, who pats you on the shoulder again and turns to leave. Reality hits you very hard—you are now in The Oberon, millions of miles away from anything you’ve ever known.
Guy turns back to you, waits a moment, tilts his head and asks, “Will I see you back at the lounge?”
You slowly nod, and then shake your head. “No, no, Jaime. My Jaime is going to be...”
Jaime comes into the corridor, happy as can be. “Eighteen more hours to Solomon’s Bay! Eighteen more hours! I’m going to go take a nap! So tired and so sick!” He turns to leave.
You tell his back, “I’ll come take a nap soon.”
“Okey dokey!” He claps his hands together twice and yawns exaggeratedly, then continues to walk down the corridor; you wait until he is well out of earshot. “I’ll see you back in the lounge,” you tell Guy.
* * *
He asks you if you want something to drink as you meet him back in the lounge but you shake your head. The room is now full of bright morning sun, filling every inch of the lounge, still in full party mode, as dawn streams in. You breathe in the air of the new world, feeling a sense of accomplishment—a minor sense of accomplishment, but one all the same.
Lost in thought, you don’t notice that Guy has just brought you a glass of champagne. Couples dance to the new wave of music coming from the band that’s playing during this early off-world hour.
“All of our dreams can come true, if we have the courage to pursue them.” Guy raises his drink to you and you clink your glass of champagne against his.
“Cheers.” You sip the bubbly. “Thanks for the drink I didn’t want. Whose quote is that?”
“Motherfucking Walt Disney. But it rings true, eh?” He gulps his wine and leaves his emptied glass on the counter. “See you in Winkie Country.” He leans forward and kisses you for a long time.
“Good luck out there.”
“You taste like alcohol, schoolgirl,” says with a wink.
Chapter Four:
Solomon’s Bay
You make it back to the bow where the Queen Mary, now under a darkening and dusky but still very much daytime sky, is steaming forward to your first stop, that medieval city you once saw as a model back on Earth.
You find Jaime again, looking so happy and excited, until he looks at your face and seems to remember something very important. His look scares you so badly that you immediately and unconsciously touch the little crucifix hanging from your neck. “What? What is it?”
Jaime swallows a few times. “I forgot. Well, Sarah, I forgot about the whole, uh, well…”
“The computers and the iPods, right? You forgot to give them to the purser. Oh Jesus, I even talked to the purser, Jaime. People still use their computers carefully out there, now my Hungry Birds scores, my Manowar songs…”
“Angry Birds,” Jaime interjects.
You are too annoyed to keep speaking for a moment though your mouth keeps up a sort of speaking motion. “Whatever.”
“Hey, you forgot to wake me for the coolest part of the trip! So there!”
His stupid mistake has put you into a really nasty mood, squashing away any fear and trepidation and replacing those feelings with anger and annoyance. You keep your face in a tight frown for the next few moments until the first firework goes off in the sky, welcoming you into The Oberon.
Large bonfires have been lighted on that far-off shore. They flicker under this massive statue you see in the distance—a statue so large it almost seems to block the setting sun–of a creature with two faces: one angry, one calm. It holds what looks like an entire medieval city. In the center of its large palm, on a real or artificial hilltop, is a very large building made out of a dark wood that looks to you like a Buddhist temple set on top of a giant wooden barge with oars sticking out of its sides. Giant flags or sails are at the four corners of this temple, facing towards the almost-set sun.
In the other hand, forever floating above its palm, are seven massive stone spheres,. You read somewhere that these spheres representing the seven permanent moons. A crown of demonic-looking skulls is on the statue’s brow. The stone has been cut to look like flames are surrounding the statue.
Jaime points out the city. “Solomon’s Bay, Solokon-Bi in Perchta. First stop.”
You see these custom fireworks, spruced up with orichalcum, being set off in celebration of the first ship coming through the portal. Some of the fireworks look like little robots dancing across the sky, while others, detonated just seconds before, keep burning in the sky for minutes afterwards. Pyrotechnics made to look like scary bats and dragons fly back and forth over the sea. You watch in awe.
At the very end, right after a gigantic finale when it seems like every firework in the world is shot off at once, the blue and white overlapping circles of the Off-World Network symbol appear in the sky.
The Queen Mary is now docked next to the palm of the statue’s hand, which holds the city of Solomon’s Bay. The Queen is in actuality floating in the air next to the city in the statue’s palm, bobbing on top of sheer nothing. Other ships from the portal fleet are nearby, as well as some strange others that are also floating in the air next to the palm. Small wooden ships with red Chinese-style sails that jut out from their sides hang from strong ropes wrapped around large blimp-l
ike balloons. Some are heavily modified and even have a couple of cars hanging from their sides on hooks; the cars are either being used for ballast or being transported, you really aren’t sure. One of these airships floats out over the ocean, disappearing into the distance.
You and your husband disembark amidst a sea of other humans stepping off the
gangplanks and platforms and onto the stone docks of the city. The area right outside the docks is listed in your brochure as the Free Market. It is a large space full of open shops under three- or four-story stone towers where you assume the city’s Ni-Perchta live. Most of the towers have flat tops. There are a few that are ten stories tall with slanted, wooden roofs of premium craftsmanship. Only a few buildings have glass in their windows—the rest just have shutters and silk curtains that flap in the sea breeze. You follow Jaime, who is carrying all the bags.
“Sarah, could you carry some of this?” he whines.
“Consider it penance for the computer screw up back there. I just lost all my Mano- I mean Bieber songs. All my Justin Bieber songs.”
“Bieber sucks donkey…,” Jaime mumbles, and you shoot him a look.
“When did you start talking like that?” you ask.
He shoots you a look back but says nothing.
You see your first Ni-Perchta up close. This one is helping a couple of humans into the back of his horse-drawn wagon, which is not so much a wagon as an old El Camino station wagon on moldy rubber tires.
Bunches of Ni-Perchta aliens are standing around, doing business in the same way they have for hundreds of years—their fantastical and medieval lifestyle mostly seems unchanged; their clothing and demeanor are things from a fourteenth century golden age. Humans and Ni-Perchta wander about. Only a couple of buildings have electricity. The smell is incredibly strong—a mix of random spices, Ni-Perchta candles, and the steamy smell of tasty things cooking.