The Minotaurs of Maze World

by Eddie Patin

  Jason scoffed. "Okay..."

  "I reckon getting you some armor at the Market will be your best course of action," Riley added. "If they don’t have anything, we can ... outfit you with heavy steel plates or whatever crude shet you've got here."

  "Alright."

  "Do you have any slug guns of your own that can shoot something very heavy, like my Marlin does?" Riley asked. "The AK-47 you mentioned, maybe?"

  Jason scanned the shelves, and pointed out the AK-47’s. "Um ... my AK is a great rifle for fighting other humans, but I doubt it has as much energy as your .45-70. I do have something pretty heavy that used to be my dad’s, though. He had a rifle that he used for hunting dangerous game—the monsters here on this world. He killed a brown bear with it once. A cape buffalo with it another time in Africa. It's big enough to take down an elephant. Do you know what an elephant is?"

  Riley scoffed and smirked. "Of course I know what an elephant is, Jason," he said, then laughed. "Okay, well we can look at that later. If you’re comfortable with your father's big rifle, it’ll probably be fine. Your main role is to work the rifts. Gliath and I will do most of the fighting."

  A little while later, the background check was done and Jason finalized his purchased of a brand new Glock 26, along with the accessories, some modification parts, and the extra ammo he decided to buy.

  When the two of them left, Jason’s last stop was an electronics store, where he picked up a good supply of components that he needed for something he'd been thinking of building after seeing Riley’s special boots...

  Walking back to the car afterwards, Riley surprised Jason when he stopped suddenly, looking down a deep alley, and said, "Come on."

  "Um ... alright," Jason said, following Riley into the narrow alley between buildings.

  They walked past a beaten-up dumpster, a filthy man sleeping surrounded by rags and trash bags, and a large, nasty area of concrete that looked stained by untold garbage that had been removed from there earlier. Jason could smell piss and rot. When they found a little inlet that would have been used for deliveries—and maybe it still was, even though it was old and the seams of the door there was coated over with many layers of ancient, orange paint—Riley finally stopped.

  The soldier confidently looked back and forth at both ends of the alley where it emerged into traffic.

  "Open a rift in here," Riley said, pointing at the inset area that would be hidden from the streets in the distance of both sides. "Do it through third dimensional space. Show me a rift into the garage back home."

  Jason looked up and down the alley, feeling panic boil up inside him. He looked for the bum and couldn’t quite make out his form surrounded by trash far away.

  "Here?!"

  "Yes, here." Riley said. "Don’t worry about the vagrant down there. Just open a rift quickly, then release it, and we’ll leave."

  "Without a focus key?"

  "With the OCS, Jason," Riley said flatly. "Use the coordinates from your bookmark."

  "Oh," Jason replied, pulling the OCS up. He’d taken to always carrying it even though he couldn’t use it very well yet. He figured that he’d have to get used to it being a permanent accessory in his life. "Oh yeah..."

  Turning on the screen, Jason flashed through the data he still had open from the last time he played with the device, and went to where he could input coordinates and control travel. He cycled through the many bookmarks—most of them unknown to him from the previous Jasons—until he found the one he’d put in Wednesday in the garage before hearing Riley’s lecture on the ten dimensions. Jason checked all of the sliders and made sure that he had the right ones on: the third dimension, since this was the same world, and the ninth, because Riley said it was the easiest dimension to travel through.

  Focusing on the resulting string of coordinates, Jason visualized a portal opening in front of the old, heavily painted brick wall and sealed-up door. He tried to imagine his garage and the portable gate standing in there; his steps that he sat on a lot so far when he was researching the OCS or trying to concentrate on rifting...

  At one point, staring furiously at a single point on the old, dirty wall, Jason felt an odd sensation of everything coming into alignment, then he felt that familiar flex in his mind...

  There was a sudden loud snap, and a brilliant swirl of fiery, orange light burst in front of them!

  "Yes!" Jason exclaimed, glancing at Riley with a broad grin.

  "Focus!" Riley said, pointing at the blooming, spinning rift.

  Jason looked back at the opening swirl and watched with elation as the sputtering sphere of light widened and flattened out into a spinning, vertical disc, its sparking edges roaring loudly in the alley and throwing motes of spitting, orange light all over the backdrop of the old building’s loading area. A window to his garage started to appear within, and Jason felt that odd shift that he had only experienced a few times before back on the Wilderlands in the wyvern's cave. It was something like pushing his finger from side to side in the photo gallery of his phone. There was a shudder, then the rippling gloom of the space inside the loud, swirling rim of the rift lightened until...

  Jason and Riley looked out onto a bright desert world full of monstrous sand dunes and bizarre sand-carved rock formations the color of bone under a blue-green sky. As Jason’s eyes adjusted to the alien brilliance, he saw the hazy forms of two big, white moons in the background of the strange landscape.

  "Shit," Jason said.

  "That’s not the garage," Riley said.

  "No shit."

  "Shit, no shit—shut it down," the soldier said with a sigh that Jason saw more than heard because of the sputtering roar of the open rift.

  "Where is it?" Jason asked, looking down at the OCS.

  "I have no idea," Riley replied. "Scan it."

  "How do I...?"

  "The button there," Riley said, leaning around Jason’s body and roughly poking the side of the device. Jason looked down at the button.

  "Like a range-finding laser?"

  "Just point it and hit the button."

  Jason aimed the OCS’s front end at the portal and pressed the button. A small window popped up with a brief message that read, SCANNING, then, the window expanded into an outpour of data about the world. The world was titled ‘Unknown’, and there was a massive informational output extending infinitely downward with details about planet size, gravity, atmosphere composition, minerals, and all sorts of other specifics.

  "Unknown," Jason said, staring at the weird, monstrous dunes.

  "Close it," Riley said. "Close it before you draw attention."

  Jason took one last glance into the weird world, then closed his eyes and felt himself let go.

  The portal shuddered and collapsed instantly with a pop.

  "Well that was interesting," Jason said, lowering the OCS back to his side. He scanned the alley in both directions then looked at Riley, hoping that the soldier wouldn’t be disappointed.

  Riley was staring at him with his arms crossed. The soldier broke eye contact. "It wasn’t the garage," he said, then started walking back to where they’d parked.

  Jason followed.

  When Jason and Riley finally returned to Ridgeview with a trunk full of new gear and a long drive full of uncomfortable silence behind them, Jason stopped at his bank to deposit a few thousand dollars—most of what was left over—into his checking account.

  Jason’s mind raced and he felt a heavy weight on his heart that Riley was losing faith in him already. He struggled with feelings of embarrassment, a strange need to please, and a good bit of confusing anger at the soldier for expecting him to figure out these highly complex concepts with barely any instruction.

  Riley spent most of the ride staring out of the window with steely eyes. Jason could feel the man pulling away, as if he was already weighing other options.

  It wasn’t fair.

  Jason had never asked for any of this: being thrown into the Wilderlands and staring death in the fa
ce for two grueling and painful weeks; being recruited into this group that would take him into the heart of extreme danger again and again—even though the idea was as cool and exciting as it was terrifying. And now, he was dealing with this mercenary who was giving him whiplash of friendship and annoyance...

  Maybe this isn’t the life for me, Jason thought.

  Perhaps being a Reality Rifter was a cool, romantic idea, but the real life moments of it would be nothing but constant stress and risking life and limb ... for what? Riches? He could find ways to get rich on his own, even if Riley decided to take the OCS back if Jason sent them away. As long as he still had an infinity crystal, Jason could get to the Wilderlands. There was gold there...

  Jason's days of distracting himself and wasting time were over. Even if this didn't work out, he wasn't going to go back to a life of desperation and dreaming like before. He could make a good living with that rift to the Wilderlands in his backyard. Even if that didn't work, he knew that he could buckle down and go into some kind of business for himself; truly this time, instead of just planning and wishing and procrastinating. Hell—he had faced down the utter hopelessness of feeling like he was going to die, and found beauty and peace there. He had decided to live.

  Could he live in this new life with the Reality Rifters? Was it worth it?

  When they made it home, pulling into the driveway in the afternoon off of quiet Kestrel Drive, the house was still locked up tight. Jason used his garage door opener, revealing the open, extra-deep garage with the portable gate standing tall in the back in front of the stainless steel tables and sinks, all gleaming in the golden sunlight from outside.

  There was enough room to park inside, but Jason liked to keep the garage mostly empty and open—especially since he was messing around with portals in there now.

  He turned the car off and started carrying bags of stuff into the living room, back and forth. Riley helped, smiling and humming, and Jason wondered for a moment if he was all wrong and overthinking everything. Maybe the soldier was just a quiet guy. Hell—the man was used to hanging around an intelligent cat all of the time.

  Lately, Jason thought. It’s been just Riley and Gliath lately. Jason thought about the two of them losing their other friends: Jason 113 and the other Reality Rifters that Riley hadn’t really talked about. Maybe the soldier wasn’t as mad at Jason as he was just stressed out and traumatized over his friends being killed and his old home being destroyed.

  Just then, as Jason was pulling the tags off of his larger CamelBak backpack in the living room, the back door opened and Gliath came in through the kitchen and hall carrying the big, bloody body of a freaking deer. He was in his human form, his deep tan skin flecked with blood around his mouth and neck, and his long, raven-black hair was full of bits of grass.

  "Holy shet, Gliath!" Riley exclaimed from the kitchen. "Don’t let that thing bleed all over the house, okay, buddy? Fruk, man..."

  "Garage!" Jason said. "Head to the garage, Gliath! Watch the carpet!"

  With an impassive face, Gliath carried the deer on his armored shoulder as if it weighed nothing and he glided through the hall. Jason was worried that the deer’s hooves would smash into a hanging picture or two, but the leopardwere didn’t break anything. An instant later, he was through the open doorway and into the garage with Jason and Riley following.

  "That is what I was planning on doing, Jason Leaper 934," human Gliath said, dumping the heavy body onto one of the stainless steel tables. "Both other Jason Leapers that I have known had fathers who were strong hunters. Each of them possessed the same setup of tables and sinks and basins in their garages for processing hides and trophies and meat. I had no intent to soil the inside of the house..."

  "Ah ... okay," Jason said, exchanging glances with Riley, who smirked as he leaned in the doorway watching. "Well ... uh ... that’s good. That’s a big deer!"

  "Sure is," Riley added.

  "Um ... Gliath ... you can use ... I guess you know which sink to use, and where to put the guts and all that?"

  "Yes, Jason Leaper 934," Gliath replied, pulling out his massive kukri blade.

  "Do you ... want a smaller skinning knife maybe?"

  Riley spoke up. "Gliath doesn’t need anything, Jason," he said. "He’ll use that Blessed Warblade of his for everything. He’s actually really good at processing game ... and monsters. He does it all the time."

  "Okay," Jason replied, watching as Gliath was already pulling the hide off from the deer's belly, expertly slicing at the fascia, separating the epidermis from the muscular sheathing along the large animal’s torso. Jason looked at the deer’s dead eyes and the tip of its pink tongue sticking out of its long mouth. He noticed the dark blood caked around the back of its skull. Gliath must have killed it with a fierce bite to the top of its spine ... just like how great cats kill their prey in the wild. "It looks like you won’t be long. "

  "I will have this animal processed soon," Gliath replied without emotion.

  "Hope you’re hungry," Riley said from the doorway with a broad grin.

  "Venison!" Jason replied. "I haven’t had that in a while. I guess I’ll ... fire up the grill..."

  Chapter 6

  Riley’s nimble fingers and thumbs danced across the game controller in his calloused hands. He tried to ignore all of the automatic targeting and tracking in his eyeballs’ cybernetic HUD as artificial monsters dashed across the screen and charged in at his point of view.

  The soldier had turned the volume up loud enough to make his synthetic eardrums vibrate a little, hoping for more emersion, but instead—as he snap-shot the craniums of zombies and vicious Wight-like creatures assaulting his character from the pixelated darkness—he killed all of his artificial opponents with ease. Riley controlled his character to dodge just out of the reach of each swipe of claws or whipping tentacles on the screen. Smoothly rendered undead creatures swarmed in at Riley’s character, and he was able to keep up a very effective cadence. Engage, dodge, shoot, reload. Engage, dodge, shoot, reload. He killed them all one after another without being injured in the slightest, then swooped in whenever one of the fallen would drop a glowing blue box that would give him more ammunition for what was basically an assault rifle dressed up to look more badass...

  Riley had hoped for a challenge, wondering what was so interesting about this little black computer with the glowing ‘X’ that Jason had devoted so much of his life toward. After breezing through a Quick Play Mission on normal difficulty, he played again, adjusting the difficulty settings to Legend.

  Still, the soldier’s enhanced eyes and quick bionic processor let him see the pixels of the screen moving and changing colors as the monsters snarled and dove in at him, and—once he understood the controls—Riley’s enhanced reflexes let him always be a step ahead his attackers. In the case of the normal, weak ‘horde’ monsters, he stayed several steps ahead. He constantly snapped the camera around, always knew exactly where he was backing or sidestepping into and the order he calculated in which the next slew of bad guys would be rushing in at him. He knew exactly where he would shoot and when; when he would reload in the 1.7 seconds it took to top off his fictional magazine...

  Riley dominated the game within the first few minutes, and he was bored.

  Sometimes the soldier forgot how different life for a normal human must be. Back on Ebonexus, cybernetic enhancements were the standard. Everyone went into the Concord Guard at the age of sixteen, and everyone was outfitted with a bionic processor and differing levels of augmentations depending on their career path. Since Riley had eventually landed in the Dust Angels, he’d been given among the best of tech.

  He never thought that he’d be using his enhanced reflexes to play video games.

  The level ended with flashy graphics and slamming sounds as the scores were laid out, one bit at a time. Riley released the controller with his right hand and patted Gliath’s large, furry side. His friend was half-snoozing next to him in panther form—what Gliath called hi
s primal form—pressing into Riley’s thigh with his heavy back. Patting the big cat, Riley smiled down at the Krulax when the he lazily raised his feline head and looked up at the soldier with sleepy, yellowish-green eyes.

  With a dramatic, bloody splat, the screen revealed that Riley had unlocked a new weapon: some sort of sniper rifle with a grim, pitted metal exterior chunky-looking enough that it should be used by someone in power armor. Instead, the overly-flashy weapon was to be carried by Riley’s human tough guy character. The soldier smirked. If that was a real gun, it would probably weigh fruking forty pounds, he thought.

  "Almost ready!" Jason called from the open back door of the house. "What are you playing?"

  Every once in a while, Riley was aware of Jason’s head darting in and out of view in the back while the Earth man tended the grill, as if trying to watch Riley play. The soldier did indeed smell the cooking steaks, and it made his mouth water.

  Riley sat straight again and returned both hands to the controller as the camera swooped down through ruined, apocalyptic city streets until settling into the perspective of his character, who was now carrying the new sniper rifle.

  Monsters started running at him almost immediately in the game, and Riley snapped in and out of the scope’s crosshairs with great speed, bursting his enemies heads one after another. When they came in too close, he made his character switch to a pistol, then began his dance of death again...

  Maybe I should try to get through the whole level with just this pistol, Riley thought.

  "Zombie Assault," Riley called back, making Gliath stir.

  "Oh, Zombie Assault 3?" Jason called back, standing at the back door with a grin. "That’s cool. Kind of a hard game..."

  Riley frowned, shooting several quickly-closing zombies in their slavering faces before reloading.

  He’s not Jason 113, the soldier thought.

  Riley felt conflicted. On one hand, with no clear leader for the Reality Rifters, he had to keep everything together and moving along. Here they were getting ready to head back to the Market—hopefully to find a job at the Bounty Boards and get back into real action ... and Riley was stuck playing an Earth video game because Jason 934 couldn’t use focus keys.