Last Playground

by Geoff North

  “It’s beautiful,” Brinn uttered. “So wonderful.”

  “I think I’m gonna puke,” Selma added.

  Lowe stepped off the cement pad and wandered into the alien landscape; the ground beneath his boots was as dead as that back on the Plains of Stauch. He removed his hat and gazed up wonderingly like the others. “Only been here a few times before…sure is a sight to behold.”

  “Is this all real?” Brinn asked. She followed the marshal and spun around slowly to take it all in again. “I mean, is this just another part of Uncle Neal’s imaginary world back home, or have we actually traveled light years from Earth?”

  “It’s real,” Oscar said. “The asteroid we’re on orbits that ringed moon. The planet is called Big Red—that’s what Neal named it anyway. I don’t imagine the astronomers back on Earth have even discovered it yet. The only thing fabricated here by your uncle is the breathable atmosphere.”

  A single tear spilled down Brinn’s cheek. “It makes me wonder how many times my dad and I looked up into the stars, maybe even right towards this small galaxy, and asked ourselves if we were all alone in the universe… And there was my uncle, playing up here years before I was even born.”

  Reginald had started to rotate slowly on the spot, his squares glowing red.

  “A sobering thought,” Lowe said. His attention had shifted from the night skies to the rocky ground around his boots. He kicked up stones and grunted. “There no liquor in space?”

  “I guess Neal never figured on you visiting the place,” Oscar said.

  Paris Pureheart remained on the gateway pad, his arms crossed defiantly over his chest. “I want to go home—now!”

  Bertha glared at him but remained silent. The contemptuous sneer on her face said it all.

  The marshal dug into the breast pocket of his shirt and pulled out a half pack of flattened cigarettes. He put one between his lips and lit it with a wooden match from the other pocket. “Well, how about twirling that magic doo-dad of yours again and see where it takes you?”

  “A drinker and a smoker,” Brinn chided. “Weren’t you a wonderful role model for a nine-year-old?”

  He walked up to her and bent in for a sniff. “I may have been dreamed up by a little boy, but don’t go thinkin’ that makes me some kinda dummy. I could smell the wacky-tobacky on yer clothes the first minute we met.”

  Brinn turned as red as Reginald and remained quiet. Selma chuckled behind her.

  Lowe sauntered past the girls. “If I recall correctly, that’s the Gunnarson encampment over yonder.”

  The ringed moon had already risen considerably above the horizon of their asteroid, casting an eerie yellow glow over its pockmarked surface. Reginald stopped in his tracks. His arms snaked silently in the alien atmosphere.

  Selma bumped into him. “What’s your problem?”

  “The moon’s position,” the robot answered. “Or our position relative to it… Gunnarson warned us we wouldn’t have much time.”

  Selma shook her head. “Much time for what?”

  Reginald remained quiet.

  Brinn could see a tent set down into a larger crater and followed the others towards it.

  “Brinn! My love… Don’t leave me.”

  “Don’t start with that garbage again, Paris. I didn’t believe it three years ago, and I’m sure as hell not buying it now this far away from home.”

  He sat down on the edge of the cement platform dejectedly and watched her walk away. “Fine, be that way. The next time you and your friends get into trouble, don’t call on me.”

  “I’m scared too,” she called back. “It’s nothing to be ashamed of. Are you coming or not?”

  He looked towards the center of the Milky Way and considered. Could he cast a spell powerful enough to take him all the way back?

  “Shit.” He gathered his robes up above his shiny black boots and hurried after her.

  Reginald rolled down into the camp first. The small crater was just large enough to house the square green canvas tent, a work table next to it, and a clutter of odd-looking machines either half constructed or stripped down for parts. It wasn’t much more organized than a junk yard. In the center of it all was a small cooking pit lined with gray alien rocks. A dying fire sputtered and popped within, its low flames purple and blue. The robot stopped before it and swiveled around. “He must be around here somewhere.”

  One half of the tent flap door was propped open, so Brinn and Selma peered inside. It was a bigger mess than outside. There was a single cot with rumpled blankets pushed down to one end. Shoved up against that, a desk covered with stacks of old-style computer printer paper and rolls of calculator ticker tape. Every other square inch of space was filled with spools of copper wire and black electrical cable, boxes filled with busted circuit boards and glass filament tubes, and wooden crates containing machinery parts that neither teenager could imagine a use for.

  “Oh, God,” Selma commented. “The man with all the answers to saving the world is an intergalactic hoarder.”

  “Don’t touch anything,” Oscar warned. “The commander is a little…obsessive.”

  They joined the others around the fire. Lowe was down on one knee feeding it a few gnarled branches from a pile next to the pit. “There isn’t a single tree growin’ on this space rock—can’t figure where Gunnarson finds the stuff.” The branches caught and the flames danced higher.

  “Ask, and it shall be given to you,” a voice called out from the far side of the crater rim. “Seek, and ye shall find.” The moon had risen above Big Red, and the solitary figure standing up on the ridge was framed within the planet’s colorful palette.

  “Great, he’s quotin’ the Bible again. Somebody’s gotta bring him some new books.”

  He was wearing a silver jumpsuit, tight-fitting and shiny like tin foil. All the spacemen wore them, Brinn thought. It was standard issue back on the old television shows of the sixties and seventies.

  The man worked his way down a narrow path into the crater, quoting as he went.

  “For every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth.”

  Lowe finished for him. “And to him that knocketh it shall be opened.”

  Reginald rolled back a few feet, allowing Robert Gunnarson to stand in front of the fire so everyone could get a good look at him. “This is the girl, Commander. Her name is Brinn Addam.”

  Brinn gasped. “Grampa Herb?”

  Chapter 8

  2005

  “Grampa Herb is in a better place now.”

  Brinn watched the people dressed in black and other dreary colors as they slowly progressed out of the cemetery ahead of them. It was sad enough coming to grips with her grandfather’s death. Why did all these relatives and friends have to dress so dark, too?

  “I wish we coulda come here to say goodbye all by ourselves,” she said to her mother. “Grampa was always laughing and stuff. This bunch are acting all sad, but they didn’t love him like I did. It’s not right.”

  Nancy gave her daughter’s hand a squeeze. “Not so loud, Brinn. I know you’re hurting, but a lot of these people—all of these people—loved him in their own special way.”

  “I’m sorry, Mom.” She wiped a stray tear away against the shoulder of her white dress. Brinn’s father wasn’t happy she’d worn it to the funeral. Too bright, too many yellow flowers in the pattern. Brinn had worn it anyway, and topped it all off with her big orange plastic belt—the same belt she liked to picture a sword hanging from—and matching orange shoes. “It’s easy to forget sometimes that he was your dad before he was my grampa.”

  “And we loved him just the same.”

  “Yeah.”

  They passed through the graveyard’s iron-gated entrance and met Brinn’s father waiting next to their car on the street. “Sorry, honey, I should’ve stayed till the end.” He wrapped an arm around his wife’s waist and kissed her lightly on the forehead.

  It had been Nancy’s idea for him to leave the service early. S
he wasn’t sure what Brinn was capable of anymore. The last thing she needed was Michael adding to the girl’s already fragile state. And if something unusual were to happen, her husband was the last one she wanted to witness it.

  “How about you, squirt?” Michael asked. “You okay?”

  Brinn was looking back out over the cemetery grounds, through the spooky rusted fence surrounding it, and the scary-looking oak trees reaching out over the tombstones.

  “It’s a lonely place,” she replied without looking at her parents. “No houses, not even a church nearby.”

  The cemetery was on the outskirts of Hamden, four blocks from Brinn’s house and a half mile away from Grampa Herb and Gramma Erin’s farm. Just Gramma Erin’s farm now, she thought.

  “Would you like to walk home, sweetie?” her mother asked.

  Brinn took her hand again and nodded.

  Michael was about to protest, but saw the look in his wife’s eyes. He shrugged his shoulders and gave her another quick kiss. He spoke to his daughter again, but her attention was still focused on the grave markers and oak trees. “That dress was a good choice, Brinn. It adds a little sunshine on a sad day.”

  Nancy and Brinn set out after a few more minutes. Nancy talked about Brinn beginning the third grade next week. Brinn replied yes, no, and maybe, but her thoughts still lingered on the old graveyard. She looked over her shoulder more than once on the way home. She’d told her father it was a lonely place, but Brinn was beginning to have her doubts. She was almost certain something had been watching her.

  She snuck out of the house shortly after supper. Brinn zipped her jacket all the way to the top and jogged down the street to the outskirts of town. The autumn breeze was cool and it would be dark within the hour. She had to be quick.

  The cemetery gate had been closed but left unlocked. She slipped through and started between the rows of old tombstones, unsure of what she was doing there and now more than a little frightened of who she might find. She stayed well away from her grampa’s gravesite. There was nothing more she wanted to see there. Brinn headed for the thickest bunch of oaks. The markers there were older, the names and dates so worn and lichen encrusted, it was almost impossible to read who lay below.

  This isn’t right. I shouldn’t be here.

  Her feet continued on. Soon she stood in front of a granite tombstone that towered over her. It had a precarious lean to one side. The gnarled oak branches scraped its stone top as the cold wind blew dead leaves into her hair. She brushed them away and leaned forward to read the words etched into black stone. Brinn traced the capitalized letters with her fingertips.

  HERE LIES A NAUGHTY LITTLE GIRL

  She pulled her hand away as if it had made contact with a wet outlet. A single name had been chiseled beneath the horrible words.

  BRINNIE

  She stumbled backwards. Brinn’s foot caught in a dry tangle of dead flowers and sunken earth. She fell, narrowly avoiding cracking her skull against an oblong tomb half submerged under brown grass. Something behind her grabbed the collar of her jacket and pulled. She fell all the way back, choking against the pressure. She managed to find the zipper and worked herself free, crawling and scrambling away, her eyes focused on the distant gate.

  A voice called to her. It sounded dry and agonized, like someone yelling through a throat stuffed with dead grass and tree bark.

  “Get back here, Briiiinnie.”

  She tried to stand, but fear had turned her legs to jelly. She looked back, expecting to see the skeletal fingers that had tried to pull her under the ground. What she saw terrified her even more. Two rusty safety pins, each a foot in length and attached to oily black ropes slithered out towards her. The pin ends snapped in and out of their metal sheathes, spitting soil and rust into her eyes. Brinn screamed and rolled onto her stomach.

  “Brrriiiiiinnniii—”

  There was a thud next to her head. Brinn opened her eyes and saw one of the safety pins lying harmlessly beside her. Its rotten, soiled rope was cut clean through a few inches behind.

  “Get on your feet and stand behind me.”

  Brinn did as she was told. The green-eyed woman with wild black hair hacked at the second rope with a sword longer than Brinn was tall. The second rope was tougher. The pin end snapped and whipped through the air, slashing through the woman’s thick leather boots. She swung the blade again and the rope severed. The pin whipped back and impaled itself in a stone marker twenty feet away.

  They watched in silence as it quivered to a stop moments later.

  Brinn looked up at her rescuer. “My dad pricked me once by accident with a safety pin trying to fix a Halloween costume. Those things have scared me ever since.” She studied the woman’s sword and saw blood leaking out through the gashes in her boots. “You’re bleeding.”

  “It’s nothing.”

  Brinn smiled. “You’re Bertha.”

  The woman appeared momentarily puzzled. “I’m… Yes… My name is Bertha.”

  “No one’s gonna hurt me anymore as long as you’re around.”

  Bertha nodded slowly.

  “My grampa’s gone, but I’m not gonna let anyone ever take people I love away from me again.”

  Bertha’s eyebrows furrowed together. “I will protect you, Brinn… I can’t promise I’ll be able to save others from what is meant to be.”

  “We’re gonna be best friends and I’m going to use my powers whenever I want. We just won’t tell my mom and dad.”

  Bertha slid the sword into its leather sheath and grinned down at the little girl.

  “Secret best friends—that is a promise I can keep.”

  Chapter 9

  He was younger than the Herb Stauch she remembered. His hair was thicker and blacker, his eyes darker, the set of his square jaw more prominent and jutting. But it was her grandfather, Brinn was sure of it.

  Gunnarson stared back at her. His eyes narrowed. “I have no children…no grandchildren. Neal was like a son to me…it’s all we ever needed.”

  No one else said a word as he made his way to the messy work table. There was a patch sewn into the seat of his spacesuit, two more at the knees where the silver material had worn away. He sat down on an empty cable spool that now acted as a chair and searched through the clutter. “I know full well who you are, young lady. I sent the others to find you.” He found a stack of papers beneath a rusted gear the size of his fist and pulled the first few sheets out. “In another world, a parallel dimension, your uncle had a thought. Wouldn’t it be fun to play Cowboys and Indians like he saw on television? So he asked for a toy gun and a toy plastic badge, and his parents got them for his birthday.”

  Brinn, still stunned into silence at the sight of him, sat down next to the fire and listened. Paris sat beside her and sighed with disinterest.

  Gunnarson started flipping through the sheets. “When he went outside that afternoon to play with his new toys, he imagined how much more fun it would be if he had a cowboy friend to share it all with. And in that microsecond of thought, Marshal Angus Lowe was created.”

  They all looked at Lowe and he gave them a tip of his hat. The marshal was satisfied. He’d found a half bottle of whiskey on the table and was busy filling a silver flask from his back pocket.

  “But you can’t create something from nothing,” Gunnarson continued. “People will tell you that imaginary friends can’t possibly exist because they aren’t real.”

  “I’m real,” Bertha said.

  “And that’s the point where everything comes together.” Gunnarson spun around and shook a single sheet of wrinkled paper at them. His eyes gleamed. “This is my theory of Endless Expansion and Contraction. The reason the universe is.”

  “The entire universe explained on a piece of loose-leaf.” Paris rolled his eyes.

  Selma snapped at him, “Let him finish.”

  “It is every scientist’s ambition to explain their theories in the simplest of terms. The most complex and fantastic of ideas can be worked i
nto a single equation.”

  Reginald beeped. “Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity is a good example.”

  “Exactly—E=mc². How much simpler could he have explained it? Beautiful!” He handed the paper to Brinn. She looked at the figures and symbols scrawled there. Gunnarson’s equation was longer than Einstein’s—over twenty lines longer. She handed it to Paris, and he handed it off to Oscar without a second glance.

  The android gave it back to Gunnarson. “I’ve tried to wrap your theory around my head before, Commander. Maybe I could understand it better if I’d been given a mechanical brain as well.”

  Lowe spit into the fire. “A set o’ real balls would’ve served us better.”

  Oscar acted as if he hadn’t heard.

  Gunnarson placed the paper back under the gear paperweight. “No matter, the theory is sound. The reasoning is solid. I’ve discovered a particle unlike any other in the universe, an atom that combines matter, energy, and time all into one.”

  Selma recalled news reports back home where scientists were attempting to crash atoms together at fantastic rates of speed in large doughnut-shaped tunnels. “You’re looking for the God Particle, aren’t you?” She went to the work table and pulled the paper back out. “A lot of people on Earth are worried this kind of stuff could create a black hole and suck the entire world up into it.”

  Brinn raised her eyebrows. When had Selma ever taken an interest in anything besides getting high or drunk? “When did you become a scientist?”

  Selma blushed and turned away. “I dunno. I always thought that kind of stuff was cool.”

  Gunnarson stood in front of them and gestured with his hands. “Every time any one imagines any thing…it becomes real. Neal imagined a cowboy friend, and he came to be. Marshal Lowe’s world, the Plains of Stauch, was created at the same time.” He pointed at Paris and looked towards Bertha, standing a few feet behind him. “I gather that you two are creations of Brinn’s? You both exist in your own worlds, correct?” They nodded. “And Agent Williams and Reginald—hell, even myself—we’re all living proof that external worlds and living entities are created from thought alone. Neal somehow had access to one of those incredible atoms. It may have been located at the center of his brain, controlling and creating everything. He probably didn’t know how it worked or why, but he knew how to use it. And somehow he figured a way to enter those worlds.”