by Eddie Patin
"Oh yeah," Riley replied, scratching his beard. "Back to 100%, I'd say. I fruking love this place."
"Where'd you put all of the bodies and crap?" Jason asked. He realized that he'd seen the carcasses of the T-Rex and the wyvern, but nothing else. By now, even the bloody bones of the minotaurs they'd left on the slab after skinning them and processing their meat were gone, carried off into the wilderness by dinosaur scavengers and who knows what else.
"To the south," Riley said, pointing.
Jason looked after the soldier's gesture and saw a pile of grisly bones as big as a city bus tucked into the trees around the corner of the slope.
"Subtle," Jason said. "How long have you been here?"
Riley looked up at the sun and ran some fingers through his beard. "Eh ... about a day and a half I reckon."
"You ready to head to Jason 1241's world to finish that stuff up?"
Riley cocked his head to one side and smirked. "Rescue the other me and Gliath? Sure. Hey, Jason, what happens if we run into the other us and they want to join you? Would you hire on a second Riley and Gliath?" He elbowed Gliath as if making a joke, but the leopardwere didn't reveal any sense of jest in response.
Jason stroked his chin. "Well, I guess we'd have to split up the gold and loot some more, but ... a double team of you two would be quite formidable, huh?"
Riley shrugged and headed to the cave's entrance. "I dunno. Might be too weird. Shet—it's weird enough having two of you. Let's go."
They ended up waiting a few more hours for Jason 1241 to sober up. At least he'd listened to Jason 934 and had stopped drinking back when he'd asked him to in the kitchen before. Jason 934 spent the time building another 'Infinity charger' in his computer room from usb charger parts, electronic components he'd bought in Denver with Riley recently, and another infinity crystal from the Wilderlands. He was planning to get together with Ben on Friday night to discuss perhaps making a business out of it.
When they were ready, the four of them assembled in the garage, armed and ready to kill another Nargog. Jason 1241 made it clear that there would be no rescuing the alpha minotaur who'd killed the Hines couple and ruined his life.
Jason 1241 had also refused to bring his OCS along, leaving it on the dining room table.
"What the hell, man?" Jason 934 had asked. "What if something goes wrong? Why not bring it?"
"I told you, man," his second self had replied, face sallow and stressed, eyes sunken and showing a serious lack of quality sleep. "I'm not using that thing anymore. I'm done with planeswalking. If I can manage to go back home without going to prison, I'll just live out the rest of my meaningless life using infinity crystals to get gold from the creek in my version of the Wilderlands."
Jason 934 heard himself in those words—an old, outdated idea that he'd had before—and felt disgusted.
In time, standing in the garage, protected from sight by the nice, new garage door, Jason 1241 reached into his shirt and pulled out the focus key that should bring him back home—to his home. Jason 934's 'home key' necklace was a 'blank' focus key that was snapped in half. He wore one half around his neck, and the other half was sitting in the locked top drawer of a tool cabinet in his garage of universe 934. The other Jason's home key would be the same, only set to his own world; his own garage.
Jason 1241 then opened the rift to his universe, starting with a loud flutter, then a snap. A bright, orange fireball appeared in the garage, quickly unfurling into a spinning vertical disc surrounded by a whirling ring of sputtering sparks. As the center of the disc settled down, the window into the other universe revealed the same garage, but dark and with Riley's portable gate still assembled where it had been days ago.
They stepped through.
"Close it quickly!" Jason 934 shouted, looking out onto the nighttime street through the big, shattered hole in the garage door of universe 1241.
Jason 1241 complied, and the brilliant, roaring rift collapsed in on itself with a pop, leaving them all in darkness.
Jason 934 felt at home. The garage was exactly the same as in his world, down to every detail. That said, it was also open to the night, and there were still splintered shards and chunks of the old, green-painted wooden garage door all over the driveway. Jason could see his dumpy car sitting out there with the driver's side windows shattered and the glass chunks glistening on the concrete under the illumination of the nearest street light.
There was also yellow and black police tape blocking up the minotaur-sized hole in the garage door, complete with some sort of printed sign—no doubt telling curious passersby to stay away—attached to the tape and facing outside.
Taking a step forward, Jason 934 heard a tink down at his boot. He looked down to see the empty vial that had previously contained Riley's last healing potion. The last time Jason had been here on his own world, he'd frantically given the soldier the potion to seal up the hole in his abdomen, then he and Gliath had brought Riley to the Wilderlands to heal.
Jason—looking at the forgotten vial—felt a chill creep up his spine.
The doorway into the living room was also covered with police tape. Jason 1241 approached and immediately tore it down.
There wasn't much going on in the street outside the garage door, so the four of them went inside. Riley stood at the window in the darkness, scanning Kestrel Drive. Jason figured that he was using his cybernetic senses somehow to look for police. Jason didn't bother searching for cops, himself. If anyone would detect them, it'd be Riley.
"Why's it night here and afternoon back home?" Jason 934 asked. He pulled up the Omniversal Cosmic Scanner and put in a bookmark for Jason 1241's living room, adding a note that read 'after police'.
Riley shrugged from the window. "Weird shet. Don't think about it."
After a few tense seconds in the dark living room, everyone spun in surprise when Jason 1241 turned on the TV. He immediately turned the volume down and scanned the local channels, pausing when he saw a male anchor talking from a desk next to the superimposed graphic of a big, scowling bull's head.
"What's that?" Jason 934 asked. "What's he saying?"
Jason 1241 turned up the volume until they could hear the man's voice.
"...ended tragically after a deadly standoff on Kestrel Drive near Sparrow Circle in the residence of Dan and Tonya Clayburn on Saturday. After killing the family, including their two children, the creature was killed by several police officers, sheriff's deputies, and the local SWAT team on scene. The nature of the creature that attacked the two families on Kestrel Drive has been under hot debate and the Federal Bureau of Investigations has officially declared it to be of unknown origin. Several videos taken by citizens involved in the incident have surfaced on YouTube and social media. Many people who have seen the video footage have declared the creature a 'minotaur' similar to the monster from ancient Greek Mythology. The enraged creature caused large amounts of property damage in addition to the deaths, and authorities are looking for one resident of Kestrel Drive, a thirty-three-year-old white male named Jason Leaper, who was identified at the scene by police and neighbors pursuing the creature while carrying a large hunting rifle." A picture that Jason recognized of himself from his own Facebook profile album appeared in the corner of the screen. "Jason Leaper was last sighted fleeing from the police on scene on Kestrel Drive, and is wanted for questioning. If you see Jason Leaper, please do not approach him. Instead call your local police tip line at 970-891—"
The TV abruptly turned off. Jason 1241 stood scowling at the remote. He threw it down to the floor.
"Holy shit," Jason 934 said, looking at the window at the front of the living room. He felt for the home key around his neck.
"So much for going back to your old life," Riley said. The second Jason glared in response.
They all stood in silence for a while. A car passed by, its tires hissing through the slush in the street, easy to hear through the open garage doors.
"I guess we'd better get going," Jason 934 said.
"To the portal?"
"Yeah," Jason 1241 replied, immediately setting off down the hall toward the kitchen and back door.
Jason 934 and the others followed. He passed by the same familiar pictures on the walls; looked at the same painting he'd made of the Dreadwraith all those years ago; what he now understood was an actual Tyrannosaurus Rex that he'd seen by accident back when Jason was a toddler. It still boggled his mind—the idea of little Jason passing through a portal into the Wilderlands one night—an event that he'd never remember aside from in his dreams.
Through the kitchen and out the back door, Jason 1241 marched down the melting snowy and muddy hill toward that special area at the bottom of the slope near the scrub oak where the permanent rift to the Wilderlands lay invisible and waiting. Riley and Gliath followed the two Jasons without a word.
When they arrived at the place where Jason had first fallen into the primordial dinosaur world, Jason 934 pulled out an infinity crystal from his focus key pouch.
"No, wait," Jason 1241 said. "Let me use mine."
"Okay."
Jason 934 knew what the other was thinking. Maybe Jason 1241's focus key would lead to a different version of the Wilderlands.
Jason 1241 produced his own infinity crystal that looked identical to Jason 934's and stared at the spot. The rift opened with a snap an instant later, lighting up the hillside and scraggly bushes behind it with a fiery, orange glow. The portal roared and spit as it threw out sparks all around from its spinning, swirling rim.
Pulling up his OCS, Jason 934 scanned the open rift.
It was universe 312, the Wilderlands. Same as always.
"It's 312," he said. "Same Wilderlands as back in my world."
"But that doesn't make sense," Jason 1241 replied, running a hand through his short, dusky-blonde hair. "How can it be the same one if I'm from a different universe, myself?!"
Both Jasons looked back at Riley.
The solder shrugged. "Planeswalking can be really fruking weird."
"Don't think about it?" Jason 934 asked.
Riley smirked in response.
Jason 1241 looked frantic. "Well, let's go through to check, just in case. What if we go through and then we're suddenly in a different version of u312? Just like when you went back in time; you were suddenly in u1241 here, right?"
Jason shrugged. "Okay."
So they passed through into the hot, humid darkness of the wyvern's cave once again. When they were on the other side, all stepping down into thick, dried mud that smelled like snake shit and rotting bodies, Jason 1241 released the rift and they were cast into black silence.
Jason 934 turned on his headlamp.
The cave was cleared of remains and bones to a good degree, just like Jason had seen earlier that day. He turned and saw that the bones that hadn't been removed were still in the same place he expected them: back where the eggs had come from.
"Looks the same," he said.
Jason 934 pulled up his OCS and scanned the world, quickly confirming it.
"Let's check the pile of bodies," Riley said suddenly.
They crossed the now-much-easier-to-navigate cavern, ducked into the tunnel, and followed it out until emerging into the pale light and light fog of morning in the Wilderlands. The air was thick but crisp, and birds and bird-like creatures and dinosaurs all made constant calls and chirps around them. In the misty valley were the large, heavy shapes of the ceratopsians—Jason forgot what their actual names were—their long single horns reaching up and forward through the fog.
When the four of them descended the slope, weapons ready, and followed the trees around to the south where Riley and Gliath's huge pile of rotten remains should be, Jason wasn't surprised to see all of the grisly bones and mass of rotting junk exactly where he'd expected them.
"So..." Jason 1241 said, nervously running a hand through his hair and scratching his chin. "My universe 1241 and your universe 934 both go to the same Wilderlands?"
"Looks like it," Jason 934 replied.
"That means that ... there's no other Riley and Gliath?"
"I don't think so."
Jason 1241 stared down at his boots for a while, then finally spoke up again. "Well, that's good. At least they weren't trapped here."
"Yeah."
Jason watched his second self and saw despair washing through the man. He knew exactly how he felt, because they were the same person. He could see himself feeling it. It was the same terrible clutch of emotions that he'd felt when he woke up in the hospital after the plane crash that had ruined his right knee and killed his parents. It was similar to the desperation he'd felt when Amanda and Tom moved away. The same sadness and resignation that he'd experienced when the wyvern had killed the T-Rex and upset his great plan to get home, leaving Jason wounded and with most of his gear lost or ruined, hopelessly sobbing in a sandy cave.
Jason 1241 was lost. He had no ground to stand on. He'd lost his own world.
"I can never go home again," he said.
Chapter 4
Jason's garage had two concrete steps leading up to the door to his living room. It was starting to feel like he was spending a lot of time sitting on those steps. The white light of the fluorescent bulb above him lit up the open, clean concrete where Riley's portable gate had stood previously; back until they'd disassembled the thing when it looked like cops and at least a garage door contractor might be spending some time inside.
Now, with a half-full bottle of Laughing Lab sitting on the step next to him, Jason sat hunched over his Omniversal Cosmic Scanner, pushing the data on the screen around with his forefinger.
The OCS used to belong to Jason 113, the Jason Leaper that Riley and Gliath had worked for before the device had been passed on to him. There were one-thousand, two-hundred and forty saved universes in Jason 113's OCS, ending with the universe that had apparently killed him. Now there were one-thousand, two-hundred and forty-two. That included the universe that Jason had just visited last night—where the cops were looking for poor Jason 1241—and the other one where they'd managed to finally kill the alpha minotaur whose hide was currently being made into Jason's new armored jacket.
1242. Those were a lot of universes to scroll through.
Jason was already starting to remember some of them. Universe 312 was the Wilderlands. His own Earth was u934. He didn't remember the rest off of the top of his head yet, but a quick check of his catalog told him that Churn, the Market, was universe 12 (a very early number) and universe 408 was Maze World. Jason had been able to identify Maze World in the OCS's saved coordinates earlier, but he wouldn't be able to use the OCS to reach that weird place where they'd hunted the minotaurs. Maze World—that bizarre planet of labyrinthine lines and corners in the dirt, air, leaves, and all other matter—was outside of the tolerances of the 'block' that Jason 113 had programmed into the OCS's ninth dimensional travel.
Scrolling through the various bookmarks and catalogued universes, Jason felt like he was really starting to get comfortable with the device. The interface was complicated, but it was apparently designed by another Jason Leaper in the past, so eventually it was feeling pretty natural to him. If another Jason had designed the OCS, then that guy must have had a very similar mindset to himself, right? It would only be a matter of time before Jason knew the ins and outs of the interface like the back of his hand—he knew it.
Many of the worlds saved on the OCS were inaccessible. It was hard to imagine so many places that the Reality Rifters had been to in the past being so incompatible with the laws of physics here on Earth. According to Riley, the blockage protocol would restrict Jason's ability to travel with the OCS to universes that were outside of 95% compatibility with u934's physical laws. The possibilities were endless and terrifying. Perhaps a world a little stranger than 95%—say a place with 90% compatibility—might seem like it wasn't too different from Jason's world. But a lot of weird shit could happen inside that 10%, right? Like with Maze World, Jason thought. Those strange, maze-like
striations were deeply integrated in literally everything on that world—except for the minotaurs themselves—from the surface of the planet to the internals of the slimes down to the clouds and the finest pieces of foliage that Jason could see with his naked eye. Riley had warned him not to drink the water.
What would have happened, Jason thought, if I had drunk water from a stream with differently arranged molecules?
It was probably a good idea to not bother with the restriction on the OCS until Jason had a good handle on planeswalking. Riley seemed to be under the impression that when Jason became experienced enough, he'd be able to just remove the block, anyway. By then, he'd be a strong enough Jason Leaper to avoid accidentally getting them killed by a universe too bizarre for human physiology.
Apparently, Jason 113 wasn't strong enough not to make that mistake.
Jason skimmed through the bookmarks until he found something with notes.
Islands and oceans, Jason 113's taciturn annotation read.
"Universe 271..." Jason muttered to himself, setting the coordinates and focusing on opening a rift. That strange, portal-manipulating mental muscle flexed—it seemed stronger all the time now—and a noisy, brilliant rift opened in the middle of the garage with a snap and a flare of orange fire. As the spinning disc flared to life, flattening into a vertical portal with a wildly whirling rim of sputtering sparks, the vision into another world cleared. Jason found himself looking out at a bright blue space with a blob of white at the bottom.
He peered into the roaring rift and let his eyes adjust. Jason reached down, picked up his beer, and took a satisfying swig of red ale. He looked out from a sandy white beach at a vast, sapphire-blue ocean that glittered under a bright sun. It looked like a commercial for a Cancun resort or something. He couldn't hear what was happening on the other side. It was probably the droning, swishing wave-sounds of the sea and the wind. Maybe he'd hear seagulls, if there were birds on that world. Jason didn't see any fauna. For all he knew, there could be giant lobster-things roaming the beach with tentacle-hair and scorpion tails.