The Minotaurs of Maze World

by Eddie Patin

  The idea gave Jason a cold feeling in his stomach. He’d just barely survived and made it off of another world. Even though he was sure that his survival experience had likely made him stronger and more confident, Jason wouldn’t want to go on a two-week primitive dinosaur vacation again. It was very scary being in a place where almost everything wanted to eat you. And that was more than just an abstract concept. When Jason was fighting off raptors while they cut him up with their claws, or running for his life from giant carnivores who would have torn him limb from limb to devour his body while he was still screaming ... that was really scary.

  What am I getting myself into? Jason wondered, idly moving the sliders for the different dimensions on the touchscreen.

  Realizing that he had been sitting in the stretch of his right hip for a long time, Jason stood and bounced a few times, looking around him for other people.

  The area was empty. No humans. Or Shih Tzu's.

  Walking out in front of the concrete barrier a little closer to the ridge, Jason pulled up his list of bookmarks and brought up the one that he had set in the garage earlier. The soldier had mentioned that Jason would need to be able to rift through the third dimension as well—essentially teleporting from one place to another on the same world. Of course, there would be many practical applications for rifting from one place to another within the same universe.

  "More like a Dim Door," he said to himself, thinking back to DnD. "A really far one..."

  He adjusted all of the sliders until he was using only the third dimension, then looked around to make sure that he was still alone. He was.

  Focusing on the coordinates in the OCS, Jason visualized a portal opening from right in front of him to the inside of his garage. He felt that new part of his mind flex inside, then waited. He willed the portal to open. He imagined the snap and the roaring sound of its swirling, orange fire...

  Nothing happened.

  "Damn," Jason said, staring at the point where he was trying to open the rift. "What the hell?"

  He tried again, thinking of the coordinates in the same way as he had all of the other times he’d opened portals before. Everything felt the same—he had a good visualization in his mind of the point in space (his garage) and something instinctual in his brain that he didn’t fully understand definitely clicked—but the chill mountain air in front of him did not change. There was no flutter, no shimmer; no nothing.

  Oh well, he thought. Perhaps he was misunderstanding something about the different dimensions or how they worked together. It was complicated, after all. Jason knew that he’d figure it out, just like he was able to instinctively use what Riley called the infinity crystal—to open the rift to the Wilderlands, or the cash in his pocket to find various versions of Earth with the same currency when he was trying to find his way home.

  Jason let the OCS drop to his side and pulled the infinity crystal from his pocket. It had been with him through his Wilderlands experience and he felt the need—for some reason—to still carry it, as surely as he carried the gun on his hip.

  The smooth stone reacted to his touch, glowing with tiny arcs of blue lightning inside its gloomy depths as Jason held it up in front of his face.

  Could he open a portal with the infinity crystal to the Wilderlands from way out here? Isn’t that how focus keys work? he thought. Can’t I open a rift to the Wilderlands from anywhere with this?

  Jason wondered where he’d appear if he did. In the cave? No, he thought. I’d be ... well ... up past the cannibals’ camp, in the same place I am now, right?

  "Maybe not a good idea," he said aloud.

  But then, after staring at the crystal for a few more seconds, Jason tried to open a rift anyway, using the infinity crystal as a focus key. He imagined a great, arcing line across the ninth dimension taking him from the open, sunny area right in front of him all the way to a place where he could find more of the same crystals: universe 312, the Wilderlands...

  Jason imagined a rift opening above the snowy ground in front of him, off of the path. He felt that weird, new muscle flexing inside him—almost like a switch flipping in his mind...

  There was a loud, sudden sound of fluttering like cloth thrashing around in a high wind. The sound disappeared then came back, crackling and snapping again. Jason felt like he was straining to lift something heavy; lifting ... trying...

  And then he broke his concentration to stop.

  Was there a spark in the air? It was hard to tell.

  Jason frowned.

  "I should be able to do this," he said. "Isn’t that how focus keys work?"

  A crow answered by cawing rhythmically in the distance.

  "Damn it," Jason said. He thrust the infinity crystal back into his pocket and started the walk back home.

  Jason sat on a dirty patio chair in his back yard still wearing his walking clothes. He watched the infinity crystal glowing in the fingertips of one hand. Every time he tapped the stone with his forefinger, it sparked blue on the inside, and he felt that familiar weird magnetic pull in his stomach. It pulled him toward the bottom of the slope behind his house where the permanent rift to the Wilderlands sat, invisible and closed.

  He tried to open a rift to the Wilderlands from there as well—just outside his back door—but he experienced the same results. Next to his neglected and filthy patio furniture, still half-covered with snow, he was able to get the air to flutter and snap a little, but he couldn’t open the actual rift. Can’t ignite the flame, he thought. It was a visualization that had just popped into his head. Whatever that means...

  Putting the infinity crystal back into his pocket, Jason thought about perhaps rifting without the infinity crystal—without the OCS even. Just ... all Jason.

  Jason Leapers could do that too, right? He’d been back and forth a few times—would he be able to rift there with just his memory? That’s how a teleport spell worked, after all...

  As Jason tried to feel his way to the Wilderlands and open a rift in front of him with nothing but his mind, he felt like it was hopeless and far beyond his reach. There was ... something he could touch, but it felt so far. He sat up straight, putting a hand on each knee, and tried again. Jason could visualize the Wilderlands and the wyvern’s cave and saw a rift open in his mind. In the darkness behind his eyes, he thought he could see a white specter of where the real rift was down the hill, but it might have just been his imagination. As Jason breathed deeply and tried to open a rift using nothing but his memory, he felt that rifting part of him twitch and strain. It was as if whatever he was struggling to lift back by the stretching point on the trail was now ten times heavier—like he was trying to push a car uphill...

  There was no fluttering. Not a blip. Jason stopped and opened his eyes.

  "Very heavy," he said to himself. "But maybe ... when I’m a higher level?" Jason laughed to himself and pulled out the OCS.

  Using the bookmark Riley had highlighted for him before, Jason was easily able to find the Wilderlands’ coordinates and tried to open a rift in front of him with the help of the device.

  When nothing happened, he checked all of the sliders, and made sure that he was just trying to travel along the ninth dimension.

  He tried again, and still couldn’t get anything to open.

  Standing, Jason let the OCS drop to his side and immediately pulled the infinity crystal out of his pocket. He strode down the hill toward the hidden permanent rift. The instant he touched the crystal with his skin, he felt the magnetic pull in his stomach make him lurch—almost pulling him off of his feet! Would all permanent rifts have a pull like that? Is that pull the reason why he kept flying toward those portals in the other Earth-like universes back when he was trying to escape the Wilderlands before?

  "Holy shit," Jason muttered, feeling the pull in his belly help propel him along to the portal.

  When he approached the bottom of the hill, close to where the rift lay hidden in the chill air near the thickets of scrub oak, Jason held up the infinity cry
stal and started to visualize the whirlpool of fire opening up. He pictured the—

  There was a loud snap, and a brilliant flash of orange light unfurled in the same familiar place, expanding into a blazing ring of sputtering, swirling sparks that stretched open. A circular window gradually appeared in a shimmering field of darkness that smoothed out until Jason could faintly make out skulls and bones in a black space...

  Instant access. No sweat.

  "Well that was easy," Jason said, putting the crystal back into his pocket. He felt his mind let go of the portal, and it collapsed in on itself and snuffed out with a pop.

  Some sparks of orange light-stuff floated down to the ground before winking out of existence.

  So he could open a portal with the focus key—this permanent portal, anyway—with ease. And it felt like Jason would be able to open his own rift to the same place with the focus key from farther away if he was a bit stronger somehow. He even had the idea that he could open a portal to the Wilderlands without a focus key using only his own power ... one day perhaps. But when he tried to open the rift—the permanent rift, even—with the help of the OCS, there was nothing.

  Why? Jason wondered.

  The sun felt good on his neck and another cool blast of wind gusted through from north to south, giving Jason gooseflesh.

  The man turned and trudged up the sloppy, snowy slope. Riley and Gliath were inside the house. Maybe Riley would know the answer...

  Chapter 4

  When Jason walked into his living room from the kitchen, he saw Riley and Gliath both sitting on the couch and hunched over the coffee table. On the table was Riley’s Marlin 1895sbl lever action rifle—gleaming silvery stainless steel matched up with greenish-grey laminate furniture—and Gliath’s huge, black semi-automatic shotgun, which was stripped down. Gliath was sitting next to the cyborg in his human form, looking a lot like a pure and severe-faced Native American warrior youth, still dressed in his odd, stretchy armor-harness. Riley was holding up what looked like the shotgun’s bolt mechanism, quietly explaining something about it to the leopardwere.

  They both paused to watch Jason approach.

  "Well, here," Riley said, handing the part to Gliath, who took the bolt with long, tan fingers and looked back down at the gun. The shifter’s eyes were still yellowish-green, even in his human form. Jason wondered whether or not Gliath could control the appearance of his eyes. "Put it back together and oil it up."

  "Yes, Ranaja."

  "What’s up, Jason?" the soldier asked, leaning back and putting his hands behind his head. He kicked back in the depth of the couch.

  "Riley," Jason said, sitting down in his armchair. He wondered if the other Jasons had the same favorite chair in their other worlds. "Tell me more about the ninth dimension block in the OCS—the restriction that Jason 113 programmed in."

  Riley furrowed his brow and scratched his beard. "What’s to tell? I already told you about it. You’re stuck using ninth dimensional travel within a ninety-five percent tolerance of the physical laws of this universe."

  "How’s it restrict? How’s the block work?"

  Riley sighed, sitting up to look over Gliath’s progress. The beast-man was slowly feeding the bolt mechanism back into the receiver of the shotgun through the front with great care and dexterity. It looked complicated to Jason—he knew that putting a pump shotgun back together was annoying enough, and this was a semi-auto; a Remington even. There were several pieces, and it all came apart from the front. Gliath was intensely focused and consistently moving forward with reassembly.

  "You know as much as I do, Jason," the soldier said. "Remember—we were just here for over a day while you were stuck in the Wilderlands. This all happened less than a week ago."

  "I tried to use the OCS to go to the Wilderlands and it didn’t work."

  "That makes sense," Riley said. "The Wilderlands is very different than here. It’s got that vitality element, it’s got some weird creatures living there like the wyvern and giant spiders that wouldn’t be possible in this world’s gravity. The Wilderlands is probably outside of that ninety-five percent."

  "Then how come I can open the rift in the back with the infinity crystal?"

  Riley looked up. "Well, now, that is important. And that’s unique to you, Jason. There’s a difference between using the OCS to rift and using focus keys like that infinity crystal. You can use a focus key to open anything—no matter what that universe’s laws of physics. That’s something science can’t do—only you. I’ve seen Jason 113 open rifts without focus keys, too. He's opened some rifts all on his own."

  "I can do that too!" Jason exclaimed. "I mean—I can’t right now, but I can feel it; I can feel that I can when I’m strong enough."

  Riley smiled, running the fingers of one hand through his dark beard. He elbowed Gliath, as if to say, See? He’s our guy! The leopardwere shot him an emotionless glance then focused back on reassembling the long arm. "Well that’s good, Jason. That’s really fruking good. Hopeful. So what happened when you tried to get to the Wilderlands with the OCS?"

  Nothing, Jason thought. It was like trying to open a portal with a machine that was out of batteries.

  "I’m pretty sure I put in the right coordinates and sliders and all that. It just ... didn’t work. It didn’t do anything; nothing at all!"

  "Shut down by some sort of filter or something," Riley replied, staring at the OCS hanging at Jason’s side. "Well, that thing was designed by a Jason Leaper, and I've seen Jason 47 and Jason 113 using theirs without any problems or complaints. Seems to me like it might feel really natural to you when you get the hang of it—like something you designed yourself. I bet—in time—you’ll be able to work your way around that block."

  Jason looked down at the device. Riley was right. Even though the OCS was hugely complicated—much more complex than the LED slippers or self-heating butter knife that Jason had built—it did feel intuitive. He suddenly felt the weight of the big Beretta on his hip and thought back to his Glock 26 lying somewhere in the woods north of the wyvern’s cave back in the Wilderlands.

  "Riley, I lost and damaged a lot of my gear back there," he said. "I need to go into town and get more stuff—probably before we head to this ‘Market’ place."

  "Good idea," the soldier replied. "You don’t even have any enhancements or augmentations. You’re just a normal human. Very vulnerable. Easy to kill. We’ll need to get you some weapons and armor from the Market; stuff that’ll do you good when we face the crazy shet we do when we’re planeswalking."

  Jason swept over Riley’s form with his eyes.

  "What sort of stuff do you have?"

  Riley grinned, then looked down at the coffee table. Gliath was just finishing putting the shotgun back together. It sure looked like a Remington; maybe an 1100 semi-auto. The soldier started pulling various things out from various places on his body, laying gear out on the table. Jason saw Riley’s pistol—something that looked a little like it came out of Star Wars or a Fallout game—and something that looked a lot like a smartphone in a heavy, protective case. Riley carefully placed two thick and gleaming crystal vials of purple fluid with corked lids down next to his pistol. They looked like freaking potions!

  "So," Riley said, scratching his beard and picking up the pistol. "This is my Zeeker X47 Blaster. It’s a directed energy weapon from my home world." Jason already knew that it was some kind of laser pistol—he’d seen Riley shoot it at that crazy bug-thing earlier. The sidearm had fired a hot beam of red light that torched the creature with enough heat to make its splattering guts set fire to Jason’s garage door. The soldier then pulled out a gleaming silver cylinder the size of a D Battery from an area forward of the trigger guard. "This blaster uses power cells that are usually limited and need to be purchased, but Jason 113 was able to use infinity crystals—a lot like the ones from the Wilderlands, but from a different universe—to build me my own recharger for them."

  With that, Riley leaned back and threw his boots up o
nto the table, crossing his ankles, trying to appear cavalier but obviously being very careful not to kick his stuff. They looked like tall, slightly scifi-ish combat boots with armored areas covered with some sort of thin metal on the shins and tops of his feet. Both calves had a little extra room built into the outer sides and Jason recognized the silvery circle of one of those batteries stuffed inside the top. Riley reached down and plucked another one of the same power cells from where Jason had spotted them.

  "You keep extra mags in your boots?"

  "Jason 113 used infinity crystals to build rechargers in my boots. Whenever I take a step, it produces energy and gradually refills the power cells I have plugged in inside."

  "Cool!"

  "Really smart," Riley replied with a grin, replacing the charging cell and reloading his pistol with the other. He slid his blaster effortlessly back into its holster without looking as if he’d done it a thousand times. "I’ve also got these two really special potions—"

  "So they are potions!" Jason exclaimed, interrupting. "Wild!"

  Riley cocked his head, picked up one of the crystal vials, then smiled and nodded. "Yeah—these two I keep on me for emergencies. I reckon you might say it’s magic from a very different universe than ours. They were ridiculously expensive, and I’ve been carrying these two around for a long time."

  "How do you know they work?" Jason asked.

  Riley peered into the colorful liquid through the thick, faceted glass. "I used to have a third one. It worked when I needed it." The soldier picked up both vials and returned them to a zippered pouch on his belt. "They all came from the same place."

  Gliath stood suddenly, his shotgun fully assembled. The leopardwere leaned the weapon reverently against the couch then strode off silently toward the kitchen.

  "Is that a phone?" Jason asked, pointing at the smartphone-looking-thing with the black screen.