The Minotaurs of Maze World

by Eddie Patin

  "Why? Uh ... why would someone do that?"

  Riley scoffed and shrugged. "I dunno. That’s Jason Leaper stuff. There’s not many reasons why someone would want to travel on the seventh. You’d have to go through infinite variances of whatever line you were traveling on before you got where you were going. Jason 47 was talking about using the seventh to try to find a world that would be anti-aging to heal the damage that fruked him up back when he sent me to Jason 113."

  "What happened to Jason 47?"

  Riley sighed and looked down to Gliath, who was sleeping soundly. The leopard's big, black side rose and fell. The soldier sighed again and took another drink.

  "That’s a story for another time, dude. So you get the seventh?"

  "I think so."

  "And the eighth just adds another dimension, like sideways movement to that concept. It's kind of weird, but try to imagine choosing two different variables, and you can move through the combined spectrum of both of them. There’s not much reason to use the eighth when you can just use the ninth."

  "Is the ninth like the sixth, where you can just access anything?"

  "Yeah, man," Riley replied, gesturing with the top of his bottle for emphasis. "And really, truly, fruking anything. Any damned thing you can imagine. Infinity is ... ridiculous. You can’t even imagine the crazy shet that's out there—it’s beyond your ability to imagine, and most of it will kill ya. Just like when I came to you a few days ago. Gliath and I barely survived Jason 113 taking us to a universe along the ninth with really different laws of physics. The universe itself killed him and totally destroyed universe 113 as far as I know when it followed us home. I dunno—it might have been contained by the atmosphere of Jason's planet, but the Earth was destroyed at least. It was like ... there was something different about the air there. Gaseous molecules were constantly crystallizing into a physical form—maybe initiated by sunlight; I don't know—and when we were overwhelmed by it and Jason rifted us home, the air came through with us and started changing the air and the ground and ... fruk ... it changed Jason’s body and..."

  Riley trailed off, staring at his beer, and Jason couldn’t help but watch the soldier silently for a moment. The guy was stuck in some sort of hellish vision—probably still a pretty fresh memory still; a nightmare...

  "Riley?" Jason offered, reaching out but hesitating just before touching him...

  The soldier’s dark eyes suddenly came back to life and he shook his head, looked at Jason, then took another drink. "Yeah ... so the ninth can be really, really dangerous. I’d say that most other multiverses with different laws of physics could just outright kill us if we set foot inside. That’s why—just before he died—Jason 113 programmed in some sort of block into your OCS to keep you from using the ninth to rift into a multiverse that’s too different. I guess he thought it might make it safer. Maybe he thought it would be safer for you until you got enough experience and could get around the block. By then, you'd know what you're doing. That’s what I reckon, anyway. Since he knew you’d be starting from circle one."

  Square one? Jason thought.

  "How different?"

  "113 said that it had to be within ninety-five percent tolerance of universe 934."

  "That doesn’t seem really close," Jason said. Hell—he knew just from scientific tidbits he’d picked up over the years that five percent was a lot of variance when it came to evolution and science, like the fact that humans and chimpanzees shared something like 96% of the same DNA.

  "Eh ... that should help a lot in keeping us safe from the really crazy shet—the universes that would be instantly fatal. Hopefully. Remember, man, this is not my thing..."

  "You sure know a lot about dimensions and multiverses for it not being your thing," Jason said.

  Riley chuckled, then smirked. "Well, this is elementary stuff. The science of it can get ridiculously more complicated, and thinking of what you can actually do with those different dimensions can get really, really complicated. Like this space in the third dimension. You think it's a solid point, but we're really on a planet flying through space all the time, aren't we? And check this out—let me see your OCS..."

  Jason handed it to him again.

  The soldier bounced his fingers around on the display, flashing through screen after screen. It reminded Jason of seeing teenagers flying through tasks on their smartphones. He figured that Riley must have some sort of computer in his brain helping him process things faster. He was a cyborg after all, right? Wouldn’t cybernetic improvements start with some sort of faster processor?

  "What are you looking for?"

  "Ah!" Riley replied, grinning. "Here it is. I’m not totally familiar with this thing, but I know some basics. You bookmarked—as you said—some coordinates earlier in the garage. And it looks like ... yep ... you set a marker along the fourth too. Try opening a rift from the living room here to those coordinates. Here, I made sure you’re going through the fourth..." The soldier handed the OCS back to Jason.

  "Time travel?"

  "Yeah," Riley said. "Just take a look. Don’t touch the rift, or it’ll appear to other you and you’ll totally freak yourself out..."

  A small knot of panic rose in Jason’s throat as he looked at the coordinates. Then, he faced the open area of the living room between the coffee table and the entertainment center and focused on the data of the OCS. He flexed that new muscle...

  In the middle of his living room, there was a loud crack and a rift opened up—just like all of the other ones that Jason had seen up until then—starting with a swirling fireball that expanded immediately into a whirling ring of sparks. As the disc of the window into the other world opened, shimmered, and smoothed, Jason found himself looking into his garage, staring at himself. The other, past version of him was scowling down at the OCS while sitting on the steps, fidgeting with the device’s screen, occasionally peering up at what must have been the metal ring of the portable gate. Jason was shocked by his clipped dusky hair. His face was a lot leaner and tanner than he normally visualized when he thought of himself. That’s right, Jason thought. I've just been through two weeks of hardcore survival on a dinosaur world...

  Suddenly, Jason felt a weight on his leg, and he looked down to see Zelda springing onto him from the couch. She bounded off of his leg—a white streak surrounded by flying sparks and the roaring noise of the rift—then dashed away into the kitchen. Jason turned to look back and saw panther-Gliath also startled away, sitting up, yellowish-green eyes wide and reflecting the orange fire of the rift, a good portion of his sleek black fur puffed out. Riley was laughing loudly, the sound of it drowned out by the lightning-shearing noises and sputtering of the rift.

  With his concentration broken, the rift shuddered, collapsed like a spinning, crumpled piece of paper, and popped out of existence. Jason was left with only the sounds of Gliath grumbling deeply and Riley laughing his ass off.

  "Ha! Good job!" Riley exclaimed. The soldier settled down again, taking a hearty drink of his beer, then shook the bottle, realizing that it was empty. "Man—that was funny! Okay, so that’s the fourth. Be careful with temporal dimensions, though. You can get into some really weird shet when you start messing with time and splitting off into parallel universes—so I’m told."

  Jason lowered the OCS and took another drink. "What about the tenth dimension?"

  "The tenth..." Riley replied with a pensive smirk, calming Gliath down with long, petting strokes. "The tenth is everything. It's everything all in one point. You can’t travel through the tenth—it’s more of a ... source of information. See, you know how all of the universes parallel to this one along the fifth and sixth pack up into this entire multiverse?" Riley waved his hands and empty beer around him for effect.

  "Yeah..."

  "Well, imagine the next level, with all of the different multiverses—all infinity of them—packed up into a single point. That’s the tenth. The omniverse. You can access the tenth through the OCS, if I understood Jason 47 right. Th
ere’s something about that device—something that one of the Jasons designed—that can tap into the tenth dimension. That’s how you can look up anything—scan anything."

  Jason looked down at the OCS. It was the size of an electronic tablet, though a bit thicker.

  There was some sort of conduit to the tenth dimension—to information about everything—in this thing?

  "Like ... a little portal?" Jason asked, staring at the device, imagining a tiny, black whirlpool deep inside a compartment somewhere; like a little black hole.

  "I really don’t know," Riley replied. "I'm not totally sure how it works like that. I’m just a soldier. Now ... my beer’s empty, and you probably need more explanation with those sliders and settings. I’ll show you what I can. Lemme get another beer and let’s go back to the garage."

  Riley stood.

  Jason had a feeling that the explanation he’d just heard about everything had just barely scratched the surface of this new planeswalking world. As he turned the concepts over and around in his mind, the man realized that his grasp of the ten dimensions was still a little shaky. It was confusing. He’d have to give it a lot of thought...

  "Sounds good," Jason said, taking another sip.

  He stood to follow.

  Chapter 3

  The next morning found Jason on his daily walk.

  His boots crunched on the gravel of the path that followed the ridge to the north. The sun was out, but there was still a crisp edge to the air. There was a new light dusting of snow everywhere, already melted off of most of the path by now. Since all of his normal gear had been completely damaged beyond use or otherwise repurposed during his time surviving in the Wilderlands, Jason was wearing backup clothes, long underwear, a jacket he hadn’t touched in at least two years, and was drinking from a travel coffee cup that had been sitting up in a cabinet collecting dust for a long time.

  His phone bounced around in the little pouch he’d fashioned to wear around his neck as Amanda talked with Jason in his earbud. He spoke through the little mic that hung partway down his neck.

  "I’m sorry I didn’t call you again sooner, Jason," she was saying. Her voice sounded so far away in the earbud. "It’s been really crazy here. Didn’t get my message from Sunday night?"

  It was so odd talking to his friend who now lived in Portland with Tom—both his only friends aside from Ben, who was still in town but worked all the time. It was weird that he’d only last seen her on Friday night—not even a week ago on Earth of u934—but Jason had also experienced at least two weeks of time dilation on his own struggling to stay alive in the primal dinosaur world that was dominated by the wyvern. He could vividly remember facing off against the monster in the roar of heavy rain, snaring the large predator with paracord traps and trying to kill it with carved wooden javelins and a spear topped with his pocket knife. Jason recalled screaming in rage at the monster’s sleek and horrific reptilian face moments before it rushed in to finish him off—that was ... before Riley killed the beast and saved his life.

  Everything seemed so mundane, as if Jason's time in the Wilderlands had been only a dream...

  "I did, yeah," Jason said, after a sip of coffee. "Thanks for letting me know. Sorry I didn’t call you back. Just been ... busy I guess..."

  "You?" Amanda replied with a small laugh in his ear. "Busy? What have you been doing? You bought a new game or something?"

  Jason chuckled, pausing to smash a chunk of ice in the trail with his cane as he walked on. His leg was fine now—totally fine and dandy—but for some reason, he still felt like keeping the cane with him. Maybe it was because of all of the raptors and cannibals he'd fended off with it. What a useful thing a cane was to keep in hand; a weapon drawn, out in plain sight.

  "I’ve been ... um ... hiking a lot," he said. A cool breeze gusted through. Jason looked up the ridge to the east, his eyes playing across all of the thick, clumpy snow that hadn’t melted yet. He was passing by the area where—in the Wilderlands at least—there would be the dense camps of cannibals up in the woods. It was crazy how he could see the similarities between the worlds; his Earth and the other place. "And I've been thinking—thinking of doing something different for work."

  "What about the movie theater?" Amanda asked in his earbud.

  "I ... uh ... quit," Jason replied. He hadn’t quit. He hadn’t even shown up again yet to check the schedule since he'd disappeared from universe 934 on Sunday morning. Hell—he was probably already fired if he’d no-showed any shifts he was assigned. Today was already Thursday.

  "Really?" Amanda said, and Jason could detect optimistic curiosity in her voice. "So ... what are you gonna do now?"

  "Oh, I dunno... Ben asked me to help him with some consulting. I might do some traveling. How’s Tom’s new job?"

  "It’s good," she replied. "It’s all good. Our new place is nice, and it’s right next to a park, and we were tired on Monday but Tom’s fitting in at the office okay and he’s said that he—" Amanda paused, drawn away, and Jason heard her talking to the kids. Some crows cawed in the distance and Jason looked up to see them in the trees to the east, halfway up the ridge. He was reminded of the tiny raptors with what looked like four wings when he the glossy-black birds lazily take flight. "Oh—I’m sorry, Jason," Amanda said suddenly, coming back. "I’ve got a sick kid. I’ve got to go. Let’s talk again soon, okay? Good luck with the ... uh ... stuff. See you later, okay...?"

  "Okay," Jason said. "Bye Amanda. Say hi to Tom for me."

  "Okay, bye bye!"

  When Amanda was gone, Jason pulled the headset out of his phone and jammed the coil into one jacket pocket, then continued with crunching steps, stabbing the ground idly with his cane and sipping at his coffee from the inferior mug. He missed his cool, metal coffee cup that he left back in his spider cave in the Wilderlands. Jason looked up into the ridge, suddenly wondering if there was a cave just like it here on his own Earth. He’d have to go searching for it sometime...

  A small dog yipping up ahead drew the man's attention, and Jason looked back to the path to see some of his neighbors walking in the opposite direction toward him. Jason felt a brief moment of panic when he realized that the OCS was out in plain sight bouncing along at his side. Then he realized that it wouldn’t look that weird; it was just like some kind of tablet-computer thing on a double-strap. Delivery drivers had things like that, right?

  Okay, it might be a little weird, he thought.

  The dog was a small Shih Tzu running along sniffing at the path with a white and brown coat freshly groomed. Jason let his cane go loose in his grip as he approached Mr. and Mrs. Hines and their shifty little animal. He smiled at them and pretended to ignore the dog, but that little shit had bitten his calf once in a situation just like this before; back when he’d walked past them and the dog was able to run up behind him.

  Never turn your back on a dog, Jason thought. Or a raptor, for that matter...

  The Hines couple were both old and retired, dressed in sweats, and Mrs. Hines was pumping her arms with what looked like little two pound weights in her hands. Mr. Hines smiled at Jason. His large-frame dark sunglasses reflected the bright, snowy day over a thick, grey moustache. They were nice people and lived four houses down Kestrel Drive from Jason.

  "Morning," Jason said, smiling and walking past, keeping his peripheral vision on the dog, who yipped at him twice and rapidly orbited around its owners.

  "Good morning!" Mr. Hines replied.

  "Good morning, Jason!" Mrs. Hines added. Then they were past him.

  It wasn’t long before Jason reached his 'stretch point'—the place where he usually turned around after stretching his quads, hamstrings, and hips on the concrete barrier there. If he were to continue along the path, he’d eventually reach Lake Granby. Jason also wondered if there was a cave at the north end of the ridge up there—the equivalent of the same cave where he'd slept for two nights before his showdown with the wyvern back in the Wilderlands.

  Jason went through his nor
mal stretching routine, playing with the OCS while sitting in deep hip stretches. After unlocking the display, he flashed through the various screens and looked over the various settings, expanding and collapsing different areas. He could really fine-tune this thing to focus on anywhere and anywhen he wanted! There were multiple different levels of coordinates and specificity—mindboggling really—seemingly no limit to ways that he could travel with the device. No matter where or when he wanted to go, there seemed to be a very logical way of inputting coordinates that would be converted into a formula-like short code. It seemed that the OCS was doing a lot of calculations on its own. The device was like the most intense encyclopedia he’d ever seen. The more he looked up—even searching for information about the individual variable he could adjust (most of which he didn’t understand)—Jason could just go deeper and deeper into an infinity of rabbit holes of data. There were also distinct notations that could be expanded into in-depth notes from the other Jasons. So far Jason had only seen notes recorded by 47 and 113, but he figured that he could probably search for notes by specific Jasons—or all Jasons—and he intended to look more into that later.

  But why were there notes from 47? Didn't he have his own OCS? Maybe some Jasons collaborated and combined data at times. After all, he would. Why not?

  Jason was sure that he could learn ridiculous amounts of stuff from his new Omniversal Cosmic Scanner, and he knew that he would over time. But for now, the most important thing to do was to learn the basics of what Riley called rifting. He had to practice using portals across the various dimensions—at least to understand rifting well enough to let them get back to the Market (as Riley called it) on the world of Churn, universe 12. And he had to learn enough to bring them to whatever world they were going to for the first bounty job that Riley would lead them to.