by Eddie Patin
"It’s ... um ... a maze world?" Jason asked.
Riley laughed. "Yeah, you’ll see. Really bizarre shet, down to the molecular level. I bet you can't use the OCS to get there. Well, the important thing about minotaurs is that they have really tough hides. That’s why Athelos wants 'em—they're good for making clothes and armor that'll resist a lot of weapons. In fact, if we can get that tailor an extra hide like uh ... he/she offered, that would make you some great armor. Better than my hellhound hide jacket."
"But can we shoot them? Can we kill the minotaurs with guns?"
"Sort of," Riley said. "The frukers are rather impervious, but they do have weak spots. I’ll show you when we get there. Speaking of shooting them, what’s this big game slug gun you mentioned having that used to be your father’s?"
"I’ll show you," Jason said, leading Riley to the gun safe in his computer room.
Jason opened the safe and looked at all of the rifles and shotguns inside. Between his own guns and the firearms that used to belong to his dad, he had a modest collection of a dozen or so long guns and a handful of pistols. Reaching in carefully, Jason pulled out the biggest rifle.
"Big caliber?" Riley asked. "Bigger than my .45-70 round?"
"Not quite as big around maybe, but more powerful, I’m pretty sure," Jason replied, handing the long, heavy wooden-stocked rifle to the soldier. Riley immediately seemed to know his way around the firearm and pulled the bolt open to check the chamber. "This is a .416 Rigby Magnum Mauser," Jason said. "It’s a big game rifle. It was my dad’s. He used it in Africa and Alaska."
Riley closed the bolt and aimed it off into space, looking down the iron sights. "It’s heavier than my Marlin and bigger too. When you say big game, how big do you mean? What kind of beasts do you have on this world?"
Jason turned and fished out a special box of .416 rounds from the top shelf of the safe where he kept all of the ammo for the various guns, which were stacked vertically underneath. He looked at the label of the box for the foot pounds of energy. 5115 foot pounds at the muzzle. That had to be more than a .45-70, Jason thought. 400 grains. It was just as heavy as Riley's rounds, if not a little more so, but also with a muzzle velocity of 2400 feet per second. These rounds were called Sledgehammers.
"Elephants," Jason said. "That’s the biggest. Also water buffalo, and it can definitely take down brown bears and lions and whatever else here on Earth. I still have some old ammo from fifteen years ago that was my dad’s, but I bought this fancy shit a few years back. This ammo’s really expensive; five bucks a round."
"I don’t know what five bucks means," Riley said, "but I know what an elephant is. That’s good. Elephants have thick hides—not as resistant to trauma as a minotaur's—but if you’re a good shot, this should do."
"I guess I’ll take the Rigby," Jason said, "and my Glock just in case."
"Okay," Riley said. "Get as much of that ammo together as you can. You can always buy more later. I want to leave after lunch."
What a day it had been already. Jason felt half-exhausted from his bizarre trip to the Market, but he had to remind himself that it was only late morning. It felt like evening. Jason looked down at his beer. Should they be drinking right before leaving...?
"Okay, but ... um ... maybe we should wait until morning?"
Riley smirked and took a swig, handing the Rigby rifle back to Jason. "There are already planeswalkers out there harvesting minotaurs and turning in hides at the Bounty Boards. We’re almost halfway to the cap already! Let’s get everything together and leave in two hours. We’ll be able to get in several hours of good hunting—at least until nighttime on Maze World—then go back tomorrow morning for more."
Two hours? Jason thought. He could do that.
"How’s the temperature on Maze World? Do you remember?"
"Eh," Riley replied. "It’s nice."
Not quite two hours later, Jason was putting the finishing touches on his pile of gear stacked up on one of the stainless steel game processing tables in the garage. He had his new, big CamelBak filled up and ready to go, some extra layers inside for warmth, all of his .416 ammo, and various survival gear that he figured would be good to have. He also put some Ziploc baggies of snacks in his bag as well as his infinity charger and some other knick-knacks. After his experience in the Wilderlands, Jason made sure to take plenty of paracord with him as well. You never know, he thought. His father’s rifle was laid carefully on the table next to his bag, and Jason was wearing his new Merc armor over some sweat-wicking long underwear. He hoped that he wouldn’t be too hot when they got there...
The Merc armor was interesting. It was a thick jumpsuit of a strange, soft and thick weave of some kind of synthetic fabric. When Jason peered closely at the material, he saw tiny wires in there as well, but the suit wasn’t heavy at all and it was very flexible. Jason was surprised at the amount of mobility he had when wearing it. Once he was all zipped in and secure inside, it was shockingly comfortable. Parts of the suit were worn, but it was still in great shape overall other than a hole punched through in one side under his ribs. That must be how the last guy was killed, Jason thought with a chill.
Over the suit, Jason put one of his old nylon patrol gun belts—something he'd bought ages ago but never really used—outfitted with various molle pouches. He attached his Glock 26 with an OWB retention holster fed into the belt.
He scrounged up a small meal from the fridge. Gliath was eating raw meat.
Not long before go time, Jason had an idea and headed back to his computer room.
On his crafting desk, Jason laid out all of his focus keys: the original infinity crystal that took him to the Wilderlands, the blue dragon coin that would lead him to the Market, and the strange metal shard with maze striations all over it that Riley had given him a little while ago. He dedicated his toughest gear pouch near his belt clasp to holding the focus keys, wrapping each with a strip of cloth and putting them inside, then zipping it closed. He thought about putting some American currency from his world into the pouch as well, but—as he recalled from his time in the Wilderlands—cash didn’t work so well. A fistful of dollars had led Jason to multiple different worlds from the wyvern’s cave when he was trying to find his way home. Some of those worlds were downright bizarre and dangerous.
Then, Jason started looking around the room for something unique to home...
What do I have here that wouldn’t also be in another Jason Leaper’s house? he thought, digging through his drawers. There were so many versions of him and his parents’ house—infinite, really. Was there anything at all in this house that was unique to universe 934?
"What are you lookin for?" Riley asked suddenly, standing in the doorway. The soldier was ready to go and decked out in his armor and jacket with his blaster on his hip and his Marlin lever action rifle and Gauss rifle both strapped to his back.
"Um ... I’m looking for something that'll work as a focus key to here," Jason replied, looking at Riley for a moment then resuming his search. "Something to take us back to universe 934. I can’t think of anything here that another version of me might not have on another Earth..."
"Come with me," Riley said, leading Jason to the garage.
He followed. Stepping down and standing on the open concrete floor next to the portable gate, Riley pulled a few small metallic sticks out of a pouch. They were like little slabs of dull metal the size of packs of stick chewing gum. Jason recognized the items from Dave Baylor’s shop. Riley had bought them earlier.
"Blanks?" Jason asked. That’s what Riley had called them, right?
"Yeah, blanks," Riley said. "They’re blank focus keys; something cool invented by one of the first Jasons—so I've heard—for Jason Leapers and other planeswalkers that can rift without tech and portable gates."
"How do they work?"
Riley handed one to Jason. He took it and looked the item over. It was a simple stick of metal with a cut indentation going around the middle of it, like it was meant to be s
napped in half. On each far end, a small hole was drilled through.
"Break it. Go ahead," Riley said.
Jason snapped it in half like he was breaking a stick and the blank broke at the indentation cleanly, leaving two halves. "Okay ... why?"
"Those are unique focus keys without duplicates anywhere." Riley broke another with a snap. "You break 'em like this, leave one half where you want to be able to rift to, and take the other half with you or whatever. In this case," the soldier said, pointing at the broken blank in Jason’s hands, "you should stash one half somewhere here, and carry around the other. That way you can always rift us home from wherever we are."
Jason looked down at the pieces. It was brilliant. "And what about the other one you just broke?"
Riley smirked. "Backup." He put one of his halves into a pouch on his belt. "Now, let’s stash these ‘home’ pieces somewhere in this garage where they won’t walk away..."
Before finding a spot for the home halves of their blanks, Jason immediately pulled a Sharpie marker out of a pouch on his belt and wrote Home 934 on each piece. After some thought, Jason stashed the pieces that would stay in the garage into the top drawer of a tool cabinet that was built into one wall. Then, he locked the drawer.
After one look at the hole drilled through the end of the 'carry' piece of the blank, Jason headed straight back to his computer room and made a necklace with it and some paracord. Then, he tucked it in against his chest under the armor and his long underwear.
In case of an emergency, the 'home key' would be right there.
Afterwards, Jason found himself in the garage staring at his new CamelBak, wondering if he should swap it out for a bigger one. If they were stranded on Maze World for some reason, it would be good to have more gear and be better prepared. He would have loved being better prepared when he was stuck on that damned dinosaur world...
Riley and Gliath walked into the garage, both ready to go. Gliath was in his imposing hybrid form—a seven-foot-tall figure of lithe muscles, claws, and sleek black fur—wearing his shifting armor harness and strapped with his Glock 21, the new railgun on his back, and his big kukri blade at his side. Gliath regarded Jason and the garage around him with neutral feline eyes, his panther-like face revealing no emotions or expression other than the occasional twitch of one ear.
"Ready, Jason?" Riley asked.
Jason groaned. "I’m thinking of swapping this pack for a bigger one so we’re more prepared..."
"Prepared for what?" Riley asked with a smirk. "When night falls, or if something bad happens, we’ll just rift back here. You should be packed light—we’ll be on the move and hunting dangerous things."
"Alright," Jason said. He put a light windbreaker over his armor, then his pack. He made sure that his OCS could move freely at his side, then picked up his Rigby rifle.
"Good to go, Gliath?" Riley asked.
"Ready, Ranaja," Gliath rumbled with a nod.
"Okay, Jason, use the focus key. Let’s go make some money."
"Okay."
Jason moved the heavy rifle into the crook of his arm, feeling more than a bit awkward and unsure, then fumbled through his new 'focus key pouch' for the shard of metal they'd bought from Zayden Skinner. Balancing his father's rifle on his shoulder, Jason held the focus key in one hand, feeling it on his palm.
"Hey, " Riley said suddenly, "you have the gloves that came with that armor, right?"
"Yeah, they’re in my pack," Jason replied. "I don’t like to wear gloves when I shoot."
"You should put the gloves on when we get there. Don’t want your hands to get fruked up."
"Okay, Riley."
Jason resumed focus, feeling the cool metal of the shard on his palm. He could feel something in there—some sort of energy reaching into him. Jason couldn’t imagine what Maze World looked like, but he visualized it as a single point of light in a sea of multiverses just like before. Then he imagined a yellow line of light streaking out to that point from universe 934. He felt that part in his mind flex, and as he visualized the rift opening, there was a loud and sudden flutter, then a snap, and a portal burst to life!
"Alright!" Riley exclaimed as the rift grew into a large, vertical disc, spinning wildly and shooting off sputtering sparks. "I think you’ve got the hang of it, dude!"
Jason realized that his eyes were closed and he opened them, looking at the raging portal spraying orange sparks and lighting up the garage with an orange glow. He felt himself smiling. As the shimmering center of the rift evened out, it rippled then smoothed into a glass-like vision into a bizarre-looking world with a yellow sky and endless greyish-purple rock formations making a variety of strange cliffs and ridges. Near the circular window was a tree with intense, pink blossoms waving in an unheard wind...
"Holy shit—look at the sky!" Jason exclaimed over the roar of the portal.
Through the rift, Jason could see that the clouds were oddly swept and separated into strange and continuous lines full of right angles. The clouds themselves were formed into a bizarre and blocky mazelike pattern—just like the mazes in kids’ activity books!
"Maze World," Riley said. "Something weird about the world—the way the molecules separate or something. Everything settles into mazes. Air, water, dust in the wind—you’ll see. Weird shet."
"Oh my God..." Jason said, staring. Even from the window in his rift, he could tell—just barely—that the leaves on the trees showed the same strange, labyrinthine pattern. At least he thought so; it was hard to see from inside the garage.
"Shall we...?" Riley asked with a smirk, pulling the lever action rifle off of his back.
Jason felt exhilarated. He also felt terrified.
What if this is a mistake? he thought frantically.
Riley stepped through and Gliath followed. Jason watched the portal's surface ripple as they passed through to the other world. He saw his friends' colors change as the yellow atmosphere engulfed them.
Jason hefted his dad’s gun then opened the bolt to make sure that it was still loaded. It was.
"Well ... what the hell..." he said, and stepped through...
Chapter 11
The first thing Jason noticed about Maze World was the color of the air.
As he stepped out onto the gravelly ground, a mild breeze hit him in the face and all he could hear at first was the sputtering roar of the rift. Riley and Gliath stood ahead of him, taking a defensive stance and peering into the distance with their rifles at low ready, both shrouded in the strange yellow ambience of the world’s atmosphere.
"Cut the rift!" Riley snapped, and before looking around anymore, Jason turned to the spinning orange whirlwind of the portal—peering back at his mundane concrete garage and stainless steel tables against the wall—and relaxed his mental grip on it...
The rift collapsed and closed with a pop. Jason’s senses filled with near silence other than the whistling of wind through the pink trees and the narrow canyon-like area where they stood. He felt the neutral air push against his face and the barest bit of heat on his skin from the canary-yellow sun pressing its light through the thickly-overcast sky.
He was feeling pretty damned good from getting them there with the focus key; on top of the world, really. But when Jason looked up, he forgot all about it...
"Oh my God—the sky...!" Jason breathed, his voice sounding a little thinner than it should have been. "My voice sounds weird. Is the air normal here?" He stared up at the cloud-filled sky, marveling at the maze-like shapes and straight lines and corners running through the stratosphere. It was mind-boggling. "How on Earth does the air do that?!"
"Up there, buddy," Riley was saying to Gliath. "See that?"
"Other planeswalkers," the leopardwere grumbled. "Not human...?"
The soldier stood with his rifle ready to raise at a moment’s notice and peered intensely at a nearby ridge. Jason looked up at whatever Riley was scrutinizing and saw some distant silhouettes moving against the yellow sky, far above the rocky ground
that the Reality Rifters were standing on. Then, Jason’s gaze moved out from the distant figures as he realized that the ridge he was looking at was extremely steep and running along mostly straight. Too straight, actually. As Jason followed the line of the cliff to where they were standing, he saw that he and his friends were surrounded by other straight cliffs as well, all rising about forty feet or so from the ground.
It was like—Jason shook his head in awe—the multiple ridges and cliffs around them followed straight and cornering lines as if ... they were in a giant, natural maze!
"A maze?!" Jason asked, looking around. "The ridges ... the canyon ... it’s a freaking maze?!" He turned and looked at the canyon floor extending away behind them. It went on for a long way with natural corridors of the same purplish sandstone turning away here and there at ninety-degree angles. He stared at an eroded and collapsed metal structure ten yards away from them on the maze floor.
Riley peered at the distant, silhouetted figures as if concentrating hard, ignoring him for a moment. He replied as if distracted. "Maze World, Jason. Everything’s a maze."
Jason took a few steps toward the metallic ruins where his rift had taken them. When they’d stepped out of the portal, it was right in front of some kind of broken-down structure a lot like a portable gate, but thick and heavy and seemingly ancient. The collapsed, eroded structure was metal, but obviously long-destroyed. As Jason looked closer at the pitted metal surface of the thing—polished in areas by years of sitting in windblown sand—he saw fine lines of decay along its surface; straight and turning here and there in right angles, also like a maze...
"What the hell? What’s this thing?" Jason asked, touching the metal. It was slightly cool to the touch and felt as old as it looked. The canyon they stood in was a combination of what looked like gravel and sandstone, a lot like some of Colorado's sandier terrain that Jason was already familiar with. The canyon floor was overgrown with dry weeds and occasional copses of trees similar to scrub oak, especially near the bases of the surrounding cliffs and in whatever crevices there were naturally appearing in the maze walls here and there. The metallic ruins looked like an ancient portal fallen to pieces long ago. It sat directly in the middle of the passageway they were standing in. Other than the dry grasses and scrubs growing out of the sandy ground—very odd under the yellow light—the ground was surprisingly empty. Back in Colorado—even in dry areas of sandstone, cacti, yucca, and scrubs—Jason was used to seeing dried-out and rotten vegetation gathered in the cracks in between. The area around them was strangely barren and clean in between any plant-life that was still actually alive.