by Gini Koch
“The hell with that,” Jeff replied. “We have people missing in here.”
“Do we split up or stay together?” Christopher asked.
“I’d suggest teams of two at least,” White replied. “We have no idea what’s actually going on and we need to ensure that Charles isn’t left here without an A-C.”
“Then Chuck’s with me and Kitty,” Jeff said.
My music changed to “Stay” by Oingo Boingo. Considered who all Algar wanted to stick around. Hoped I was interpreting it right.
“You guys go ahead.” They all stared at me. “Seriously. I need to think. I’ll stay here in the giant throne room where it might or might not be safe and you guys go forth. Find Oliver, Butler, and my pets. But hurry. Dopey leaving us to run away seems somewhat worrisome.”
Jeff opened his mouth to argue. Put up the paw. His mouth closed. I truly loved the One True FLOTUS Power. “I’m serious. I’ll be fine, but I need to think. And I think I need to stay here. Just . . . don’t be too long. And before you guys all start arguing, let’s be real—no matter what’s going on, it’s unlikely that we have a ton of time to waste.”
They left, unwillingly, and with White literally dragging Jeff out of the room. That left me and SuperBun staring at each other while the squirrels carried on and the elephants and horses leaped out to do whatever. Decided I needed to do what I’d told my men I wanted to—think. So I did.
And my thoughts were basically that this seemed like a child’s weird idea of a cool thing. Ergo, lead with that assumption.
So, did that mean that Dopey and Grumpy were children? Sandy seemed like all the other Powers That Be out there—old as dirt and just as much fun. But Sandy had had a lot more time with me, had chosen to wander and learn, and hadn’t—and this was probably key—chosen to fall in love with another of his kind.
Of course, I had no idea how superconciousnesses created. Maybe they fell in love, but based on what I’d learned from Sandy during Operation Defection Election, they didn’t. Ergo, falling in love was definitely an unusual thing to have happened.
Considered this point, but went back to the idea that Dopey was a kid. If Jamie had taken over a world, what would she have done? Maybe made herself Santa, because, as Dopey had said, Santa was a most benevolent figure, and even the most despotic liked to think of themselves as Kindly Protectors Of The People. Possibly she’d have taken animals she thought were really adorable and, perhaps, made them more her size.
Size. Chuckie had said that the perspective was all off.
My music changed again, this time to “No Such Thing” by John Mayer. Didn’t think Algar was telling me I was wrong, so listened carefully. The chorus was that there was no such thing as the real world, just a lie that John felt we all needed to rise above. And it was also sort of “set” in high school.
It wasn’t hard to guess that this world wasn’t “real” in the normal sense of the word. So much was clearly manufactured or created. So that was part of it, but not all.
If I went with the high school angle, it meant that the kid I should be thinking about was Lizzie. And teenagers were hella dramatic—God knew I got a dose of drama daily from Lizzie whether I needed it or not. Plus, they were more likely to fall in love and break up ugly.
Of course, little kids “fell in love,” too. So maybe that was what had caused the breakup—they were now older and their wants and needs had changed. Not that older people were immune to this—far from it—but the first real love and the first real breakup were always the worst in their own special way. And Dopey’s reactions and comments really seemed like first love gone badly.
So, what we were seeing likely wasn’t real and Dopey and Grumpy were probably teenagers by now, at least in terms of their new and improved superconsciousness lifespans. Wondered again if Bruno and Ginger saw this place differently. Possibly. That might be why they went with Oliver, or he went with them. Maybe he saw it differently through the camera’s lens, too. Perhaps the camera showed the world as it actually was, not as Dopey wanted it to be. In fact, perhaps that’s why SuperBun had demanded that Oliver come along and hadn’t complained about Ginger and Bruno joining us, either.
They weren’t nearby, and I wasn’t sure that I could trust SuperBun—rather, I wasn’t sure, even with all that was going on and being out of the room, that Dopey wasn’t monitoring SuperBun so closely that my talking to him would cause us all more problems. But I did have Poofs with me. And, potentially even better, someone who’d lived here for a while.
Reached into my purse and pulled Peter out. “What is it you see, when you look around?” I whispered to him.
He shuddered and cuddled into my breast. So, whatever it was, it wasn’t jolly. Shocker.
“I need to see it like you do. Can you help me do that?”
Peter closed his eyes and continued his terrified snuggling. But I could see what he saw now.
We weren’t in a room—we were in a large, clear, circular tube that looked like part of the biggest hamster habitat in the galaxy. This went around what looked like a huge ball of water. And what was on the other sides of the tube was also water. Black water. There were things in the water—things I couldn’t make out, but they gave off a very dangerous feeling. It was like being in one of those shark experience exhibits, where you walked through the tube and the sharks swam around you. Only it was about a thousand times bigger and far more menacing.
Tried not to look down. Failed. Yep, they were under us, too. Joy.
But I saw more than the black water and whatever was lurking inside it. There was actually plenty of light—lights, or things that gave off light, were somehow floating throughout the hamster habitat we found ourselves in—and I could see tubes like we were in that ran all through this area.
The squirrels were moving about inside the tubes, as were the horses and elephants. Couldn’t spot my men and hoped it was because they were out of view, versus captured by Grumpy or Dopey, or worse. The platforms raised and lowered in tubes. So that was why the elevators here had no sides—they didn’t need them.
And around every tube was the black water.
There was more, though. Some sort of light refraction that seemed to happen when the lights hit the black water. Algar’s second song on my playlist suddenly made sense. Better late than never. “So that’s how he’s doing it. He’s using the reflection of the water here to help him keep his illusion going.” But why would a powerful superconsciousness need to do that?
Examined the elephants that had just been “turned on” and were out of their bin. They weren’t cute anymore. Neither were the horses. They appeared to have been squished down somehow, to make them smaller, with no attention paid to aesthetics or comfort. The squirrels, on the other hand, were all big, human-sized, and it seemed as though they’d been stretched out in order to achieve that. But all them were deformed in a way that looked painful.
The rabbits I could see, however, still looked like rabbits, and I could see more than just Peter and SuperBun, because rabbits were racing around in the tubes, too. The rabbits still being normal was presumably why I’d been able to talk to them but none of the others. Not that I’d tried with the horses but, looking at them, chose not to bother with the attempt. They weren’t organic beings anymore, not really—none of them were.
Felt really bad for all the horses, elephants and squirrels. They were Earth animals originally and Dopey had stolen them and then turned them into unnatural things, definitely against their wills. Because he could.
Rage was building, and that was good, but I needed to know what to do and who to do it to. “Why did the water sprayed on us make our weapons stop working but not hurt us?”
Peter replied that he wasn’t sure, but that was why SuperBun had had our android taken away—so the water wouldn’t harm him. The water didn’t hurt organic things, as far as Peter knew, but machines it destroyed somehow.
> In a galaxy as varied as the one we were in, this didn’t shock me all that much. We had an entire race of people who mentally connected and talked to computers and metals from birth. Why not have water that destroyed machinery but didn’t hurt organic life? If it truly didn’t hurt us, for which I felt the jury was definitely still out.
Before I could ask another question, Dopey ran into the room. “Why are you still here?”
“Um . . . I’m resting?”
He made the exasperation sound, ran over to a bin, grabbed a couple of elephants and some horses, and shouted at the squirrels to keep on spraying.
My music changed to The New Pornographers’ “The Body Says No” which made me pause. I was sure that the animals’ bodies had all indeed said no, but why would Algar be reinforcing that? I’d figured it out, and I kind of presumed he knew, since he was big on having songs repeat when I wasn’t catching the clues.
“What does Dopey, or, Lord Dupay actually look like?” I asked Peter, very quietly.
He shuddered, but showed me.
Shuddered right along with Peter. Because Dopey did actually look like Santa. Only, not all of Santa. Because there wasn’t a full person there.
CHAPTER 37
DOPEY WAS HALF OF A SANTA, cut down the middle, in a ragged way, as if the two sides had pulled away from each other and ripped, which was exactly what I figured had happened.
He spun back toward me. It was worse looking at him from the front. “You need to leave. The men with you were smart and followed me. Why not you?”
“I’m a rebel, me.”
“Suit yourself!” Dopey ran out of the room. As Evil Geniuses went, he needed a lot of work to make the grade. Then again, what he’d done to the animals might qualify him into the League, if only in a Junior capacity.
The squirrels kept on super soaking the animals in the bins. There were still a frightening number of bins left for them to bring to life. Had a feeling that even if I tried, the squirrels, elephants, and horses weren’t going to come with me.
“Was Dopey always half a person?” I asked my Rabbit Interpreter.
No, he hadn’t been. He and Grumpy had been as one, and then they’d had their fight and ripped each other apart. Literally.
Always nice to be right. “How did SuperBun get his powers?” I asked Peter carefully.
He showed me the water. SuperBun had fallen in when they’d first arrived on this world, before the tubes had been inserted and it was all grass on top. Dopey had saved the rabbit just in time, but that had enhanced his natural animal telepathy greatly.
“They’re fighting over the water on this planet? Dopey and Grumpy, I mean.”
Peter didn’t know. He just wanted to escape and, hopefully, take the rest of the animals with him. Even the monster animals, which was how all rabbits thought of them now.
SuperBun took the opportunity of, I hoped, Dopey being out of the room and also presumably not coming back this time to hop over to me and look up with an expression animals give to a human when opposable thumbs or other helpful things are required—he looked scared, pitiful, and hopeful.
Bent down and scooped him up. “As if I was leaving you here? Now, where’s my android? And my ocellar, Peregrine, husband, and friends, not necessarily in that order. And why are your brethren all chasing my people topside?”
SuperBun apologized about that. It was to get more shuttles to come down, or maybe even our ship. So the animals could escape with us. He also apologized for lying—he and his people were not native to this world, they’d killed nothing and no one, that was just the story Dopey had told him to tell any visitors to scare and impress them, and the rabbits were living in terror, not in charge. Dopey had dealt with this world’s predators, not the rabbits.
“Wow. It’s nice to know you aren’t vicious killers. It’s also kind of a pity you’re not the one in charge. You seem so much smarter than Dopey, aka Lord Dupay, does.”
The rabbits shared that when Dopey and Grumpy had been as one, they’d been fine. They’d brought in the Earth animals to help the only planet in the system that seemed likely to be able to have life survive. At least, that’s what they’d said. Events had proven otherwise.
“Those four choices seem odd, honestly. Most planetary infrastructures need insects, desperately, as well as a full spectrum of plants and animals, in order to thrive. Not just grass and four species that, while awesome in their own ways, don’t exactly scream Saviors of the Evolutionary Ecosystem.”
SuperBun pointed out that elephants, horses, and squirrels all had ancestors from millions of years prior.
“Rabbits were also around then. All of our forebears were around millions of years ago. Evolution’s cool. And bringing elephants and horses along I’d get if they hadn’t been weirdly made smaller for no sane reason. Bunnies and squirrels I just don’t understand.”
SuperBun sighed. Squirrels had thumbs and were smart enough to be trained to do manual labor. Plus, they reproduced quickly.
“And are plentiful enough to steal without humans noticing. But horses and elephants aren’t, and you still haven’t explained bunnies.”
Only a few horses and elephants had been taken, fixed, so to speak, then cloned. The squirrels were fixed when they reached adulthood.
“Okay. And, once more with feeling—why bunnies?”
SuperBun sighed again. Bunnies were along because bunnies were cute. He felt that Grumpy and Dopey had chosen the animals they’d thought were the cutest from Earth and just made do with them.
“And we’re always in for more cute where I come from. So, if you guys stop mentally showing me what you see, will I see what is or the illusion?”
The rabbits had no idea but, as the tubes shook like an explosion had happened somewhere, they also suggested we not find out.
My music changed to Fall Out Boy’s “Get Busy Living or Get Busy Dying.” Knew when to take a hint. “SuperBun, we need to find the others. Any guesses for where they are?”
He had one, actually, since he’d told Ginger where our android was. He just hoped we’d all be in time to get out of here before Grumpy’s attack broke the tubes and let the water in.
“I’m more afraid of what’s in the water than the water itself, and I’m saying that as a person who cannot breathe underwater.” As I said this, looked at the water in the giant ball. It looked different. “Um . . . is that stuff boiling?”
The rabbits looked. They didn’t know, but they truly felt that leaving now was a really good idea.
“Um, squirrels, elephants, and horses—I think you might want to come with us. To, you know, get out of here.”
They all ignored me as if I wasn’t there. Maybe I wasn’t to them. Maybe they saw some weird reflection that showed them that this world was great.
SuperBun tried to get them to listen. Nothing. He felt that they’d been too altered, or else Dopey was controlling them more than usual.
“Okay, then it’s just the humans, A-Cs, androids, Amazons, ocellars, Peregrines, and bunnies that are getting off of this rock.” Put Peter back into my purse and placed SuperBun on the floor. “You lead, I’ll follow.” He hopped off and I trotted after.
Could have used hyperspeed, but I wanted to conserve my reserves right now, if at all possible. Besides, I didn’t want to make it harder for the guys to find me, and since Jeff had said he couldn’t feel anything, they wouldn’t be able to track me via what, for us, was the usual means. Besides, SuperBun was moving fast enough that I definitely had to trot to keep up. We were good.
We went out the “door,” then to the left, and, to the melodious sounds of Iron Maiden’s “The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner” we made a right, dodging a lot of squirrels running hither and yon. Passed three hamster trail hallways that had a lot of elephants in them but nothing else of interest that I could spot, then made a sharp left at the f
ourth one, avoiding a small herd of tiny horses.
Along the way we essentially were circling what the squirrels had really been working on. It wasn’t the bombs and such that I’d seen—it was something that looked like a high-powered laser cannon. A really gigantic one. One that the special effects people from Star Wars would want the patent on.
“Why did Dopey show us a war bunker? Instead of this, I mean.”
SuperBun felt that we’d all seen what we expected to see. The others might have seen the same as me or might not.
“Then why was I in fifty feet of claustrophobic dirt coming down?”
Perhaps because that’s what I’d expected. Maybe I’d experienced something like it, maybe I’d read something similar, maybe I just wanted it to be like that. The water reflected what was in people’s minds.
“But not yours?”
Not any of the animals’. Or the camera, as I’d guessed. The camera showed the truth.
“Why didn’t the other animals come with us, then?”
They were part of this world now, far more than the rabbits were.
Thought about this as we ran along. “But we all saw the big doors and such.”
Because that’s what Dopey had wanted all of us to see, and we’d been close enough to him for him to affect us.
Something about what SuperBun had just told me bore some serious thought. But possibly not right now. “So, is that not really a laser cannon then,” I asked hopefully.
Nope. It was a real laser cannon, and it was aimed at the system’s sun.
“Of course. Why would I have ever expected anything else?”
As we went along, the “roof” above us opened up, far wider than I’d seen it do for any of the platforms. As it did so, the entire Habitrail From Hell began to rise up, the cannon included. And not all that smoothly.
I lost my footing and went down, just like every other creature I could see. Including Dopey, who was on a platform next to the laser cannon.
This was a lot like our Escape From D.C. had been in the Distant Voyager. Meaning I had a really good idea of what was going on. Which would have been better if I’d had anyone to share it with other than Peter and SuperBun. Just hoped the guys would recognize the movements, too, and protect themselves accordingly. Was very glad suddenly that Jeff was blocked, because even though they weren’t “real” anymore, the monster animals sounded scared.