The Edge

by Jacob Wenzel

  Edgar asked, “Larry what did you do? You've never told me.”

  “This girl I liked, said “Fuck the Deux” to a friend, a guard overheard her, he hit her with his gloved hand and split her head open, I hit him as hard as I could with a fallen tree branch, I thought I'd killed him.”

  “You did break him.” Laura added.

  “I tried to get my parents to hide me.”

  “And that's when we turned you in. It was the hardest thing we'd ever done.” she was now crying.

  “It's okay, Mom, I understand now, I'm not sure I can forgive you, but I understand. Are you coming with us?”

  “I'll wait for your father, maybe someday we can join you. He thinks the Deux is getting weaker and isn't going to last much longer.”

  The next day, they began to carry out the plan, everything went as expected until the guard shot Larry.

  25.

  When Larry had finished telling his story, William and Sally discussed their options with him. It was not yet time for lights out in the barracks, they could drive using the infrared cameras until they reached the main road, then drive as if they were just dropping off Larry, but they weren't sure if the guards would notice that someone who had been left for dead had returned uninjured. They decided to wait until the next day and proceed with the original plan, with Edgar making a break for it. It would be easier than trying to communicate any change in plan to Beatrice and Trish who would be waiting in the woods on the other side of the rice paddies. They did make one alteration to the plan, they would drive in close to the guards before attacking, pick up Edgar and hoping that Bea and Trish could figure out the change in plan.

  They spent the night in the VW. It was cramped, with only had two bunks, so Larry slept on the floor. In the morning, Larry located the hidden weapons, and they loaded them in the back, just in case. Getting through the day was torture, waiting for the guards and the workers to come over to the near side of the paddies. About an hour before sunset, they decided to strike, with the weaponry aboard the VW, they didn't need to wait until the guards were grouped. Sally was hesitant to kill the guards, until William reminded her that they weren't people, and to think of them the way she had thought about the giant crab. They drove within fifty feet of the first guard, Larry spotted Edgar just a little bit further down the road. William decide to start small, to find out what it would take to bring one of them down. The first few rounds from the fifty caliber machine gun didn't seem to do anything except throw the guard off balance, and knocking it off its horse, but with a few dozen more, it exploded in a shower of sparks. A few rounds hit the horse, which William had been trying to avoid, it exploded in a similar manner. “Effective, but slow, and a waste of ammunition.”

  Several guards began riding in their direction, firing. The bullets just bounced off the VW's windshield. The bazooka took two of the guards out quite effectively. The VW was now approaching Edgar, who had picked up on the change of plans, and was running toward the road. William stopped just past him, to shield him from the next group of guards who were now headed their way, firing, Larry slid the door open, and Edgar jumped into the moving bus. “Nice rig, Larry.”

  “I've made some new friends. I'll introduce you to them later.”

  William and Sally took turns polishing off the rest of the guards with the pressure wave canon, a thousand times more powerful than the handheld weapon they'd used against the crab, it flattened the guards two or three at a time, they even let Larry have a turn.

  Bea and Trish had been watching, they drove out from the grove in which they'd been hiding, and to the woods where the VW had been. The VW turned back after all the visible guards had been eliminated. They all met in the woods, and loaded up all the food they could. They had to unload all of Larry's arsenal except for the bazooka, he insisted on keeping that.

  The VW was packed to the roof, and Bea and Trish had to sit in Larry's and Edgar's respective laps, though none of them protested the cramped quarters

  “They'll send more after us”, Larry said, let's see if we can make it to the stream before they find us.”

  “We don't need the stream.” William said, and put the VW into flying mode.

  “Damn.” Larry said, as they took off. The others were unable to speak.

  “You aren't going to use the liquid Nitrogen?” Sally asked.

  “Not yet, it might come in handy, later.”

  They flew toward the hedge, with the extra weight, it was a slow climb, and he wanted to give it a little more clearance than they had on the way in. just when they were high enough to clear the hedge, a single helicopter approached them from behind, firing at them. It seemed a little shaky in the air, like it was being flown by a novice pilot.

  “This one's mine”, said Larry, as he slid open the door and leaned out with the bazooka. He hit it with the first rocket, just as one of its bullets went through his upper arm, shattering the bone. He yelled, and fell back into the bus, dropping his prized weapon. Bea quickly slid the door closed and ripped a sleeve off her blouse and used it as a tourniquet around his arm to stop the bleeding. Larry was going into shock as William accelerated back toward the Lodge.

  They arrived in a few minutes. Maggie and Desmond ran out to meet them, they both hung onto Edgar, while William, still wearing the battle suit, carried Larry into the Winnebago where he put him in the Mecha-Med.

  Everybody followed him in and waited.

  “He's going to be okay, isn't he?” asked Beatrice.

  “He'll be fine. In a little while, there will be no trace of an injury.”

  After Larry was out, and everybody had been introduced, explanations about William and Sally, and the Winnie and Bob had been made, they began unloading the VW, and moving the supplies into the lodge. Looking at the pile of supplies, which had filled the VW, and now seemed tiny in the pantry at the lodge, Sally said, “This isn't going to last four adults and two kids very long. Are you going to go back when you run out?”

  “I don't know,” replied Edgar, “I'm hoping we can do some planting, Trish found a book on agriculture, I can't read, they don't teach workers to read, but she can, and she's going to teach us all.”

  “I don't think this is going to last until you can harvest,” William said, “We might be able supplement this a bit, I'll check with Bob to see how much we can provide.”

  Bob calculated that they could provide about a ten-month supply of food, and still have enough power to make the next jump, which was more of a time window issue than a power issue, so they began running the food synthesizer full time, Bob reprogrammed it to produce some raw materials, and some dried and preserved food. They would easily get by until they began to produce crops. Bob also made sure that they had a good supply of lemonade and Oreos, to which he had introduced the children.

  William and Sally spent most of the rest of their time researching agricultural techniques, which they then taught to the others. One day William commented on Christmas approaching, most of the others had never heard of it, Sally, for obvious reason, and the others because the Deux did not allow any religion other than worshiping it, and did not permit anything approaching a religious celebration, even among the Soshes. William explained it the best he could, not being particularly religious, and they had a nice Christmas celebration, Bob generated some toys for Maggie and Desmond, their first real toys. They had a party for New Year’s Day, which the Soshes had celebrated before.

  Three days before William and Sally were scheduled to leave, Bob notified William that an automobile was coming up the road, and would be arriving in about fifteen minutes. They all waited in front of the lodge.

  26.

  A few days before:

  Jean Claude, “Perroquet Quatre”, dreamed of flying, he flew through the jungle, to the treetops, and toward the moon. In his dreams, he soared, far higher than he ever had when he was young, before he was caught, and taken away from his home. The creatures who caught him, who he now knew to be something called 'humans
', kept him in the dark for a long time. Before, he had not been afraid of the dark, it had been a time for rest, now, it was terrifying, and though he could now see things all over the world, in ways he did not understand, he ignored the parts that were darker.

  He never slept now, now that he was part of something that thought for him, something that used him in incomprehensible ways, something that was called the Deux. It tried to control his thoughts, but in his waking dreams, he escaped. He was listless, and growing weaker. A human was coming to do check him over, to find out what was wrong with him, why he wasn't thinking the same way that the previous parrots had, and maybe to replace him, it would be alright if he was replaced, he was tired of not being just a parrot, and would welcome death.

  When the human arrived, it did not know that Jean Claude was an essential part of the Deux, it asked the guards why this bird had wires running from its head to a plug in the wall. The guards told him it was an important experiment, and to just make the bird well. The human looked him over and reached into a bag and pulled out a pair of surgical scissors, and in the blink of an eye (which is even faster for parrots) he snipped the wires, saying, “He needs to be free.” The human did not know, that as he had been raising the scissors toward the wires, the guards had been raising their guns toward him, and when he turned, he saw that the guard’s movement had stopped, with their weapons half raised, and they were standing motionless, except one that had toppled over.

  The human took Jean Claude in his hands, and gently held him as he walked out of the room, down a hallway and through a door to a balcony overlooking the all but abandoned city, he held Jean Claude up in the air, the parrot breathed deeply, cautiously spread his wings, and as a gust of wind caught him, he took flight, a little shaky and weak, but he was flying, and he was once again alone in his mind. He was free.

  27.

  Beatrice recognized the car as it approached, “Larry, it's your parents.” She was right, and after they got out of the car, they stood there for a moment without speaking. It was Larry's father, Bud, who spoke first, “The Deux has fallen, it's time to come home. We have a new world to build.”

  It was already getting late when Bud and Laura arrived, so after introductions were made, and William and Sally had made up a lame story about where they were from, (“We're from the Moon”, Sally explained.) they had a feast to celebrate the reunion, and the fall of the Deux, and decided to wait until the next day to return. Everybody wanted William and Sally to come down to Portland, to stay for a while, but after nearly a month, they were ready to have some time to themselves before they made the next jump. Bob said that there was a six point two percent chance that they would return to this world on their way back, so William told them that there was a small chance they would be back, and if they were, they would come to Portland and find them.

  Bud, being a veterinarian, was fascinated with Fluffy, he'd never seen any of the big cats, but had studied books about them, he was very disappointed when Fluffy would not come within ten feet of him.

  In the morning, they said their goodbyes, Sally asked what they were going to do with all the stockpiled food, and Edgar told them, that they would leave it here, in case they, or someone else needed it. Sally hugged Maggie.

  “I'm going to miss you, Sally”

  “I'm going to miss you too, Maggie.” Sally thought about telling her that part of her had hoped that they wouldn't find Edgar or Larry, and that Maggie and Desmond would go with her and William, she knew that it was selfish of her to want that, but sometimes, she felt selfish. Sally really loved Maggie, like a little sister, or a daughter. She found comfort in knowing that Trish had always wanted a daughter, and was fully comfortable with taking on the role of mother.

  When they were once again alone, Sally suggested they resume what had been their primary pastime before they had come to this world, and which had been somewhat lacking in the meantime. William was amenable to her suggestion, and they made love in numerous places in and around the lodge.

  “Did we accomplish anything here?” asked Sally the next day.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, the Deux would have fallen even if we had not arrived.”

  “Larry might not have survived without our help, and we have no way of knowing what would have happened to Edgar, the guards might have shot him, too. There's no way of knowing, but we may have saved their lives, and the lives of Maggie and Desmond.”

  “Even if we didn't, it was fun.”

  “We were being shot at by robots, we could have been killed, you call that fun?”

  “Only in retrospect.”

  The day before the jump, William said to Sally and Bob, I think that before we go, I'd like to go back down to where we fought the Deux's guards.”

  “Why”, asked Sally, “What is there to go back for, rice?”

  “The deux had some very advanced robotics, more advanced than anything we had in my world, I'd like to check them out.”

  “The guards? We didn't leave much.”

  “But many of the horses were undamaged. If what happened to the guards, according to what Bud told us, also happened to the horses, some of them may still be there.”

  “Why not go to the barracks, or into Portland, I'm sure there are a lot of undamaged guards there.”

  “I'd like to maintain minimum contact for now, there's sure to be a lot of chaos, there usually is when a tyranny collapses, until a new government if formed. The horses could be very interesting without encountering anybody.”

  Bob added, “And, if you can get them to work, you might find them useful if you encounter a world with no advanced technology, such as cars.”

  “I hadn't thought of that, Bob, it was only scientific curiosity that made me want to go back.”

  “Why not, we're not leaving until tomorrow.” said Sally.

  It only took a few minutes in the Winnie to get back down to where the rice paddies were, they gave the hedge plenty of clearance this time. As William had theorized, there were still a number of horses around, lying on their sides, totally unmoving. Sally and William put on the battle suits, not for the armor, but for the strength enhancement. They found four intact horses, and loaded them all into the garage of the Winnebago. After going back to the lodge, Bob and William spent the rest of that day, and part of the next morning, analyzing the design, and trying to design a control system that was not dependent on the Deux, while Sally read the fashion magazines that Maggie had found in the lodge.

  Later, as they were preparing for the jump, Sally said, “That was just weird.”

  “What was weird?”

  “This whole world, being controlled by a bird, I mean, I know I don't have much experience with technological worlds, but is this type of thing common?”

  “I don't know; I haven't been to many more worlds than you have. I took a few trips to the future to set up the Winnie, and a couple into the near past to test the system, but your world was the first stop on this trip, it's strangely intertwined with mine, but out of time synchronization by fourteen thousand years. I think we are likely encounter even stranger worlds as we get farther from the center of the macroverse, isn't that right, Bob.”

  “You don't know the half of it.”

  “You could tell us about some of them,” Sally said.

  “I could tell you about a lot of them, and then you might or might not pass through them, and unless you see them for yourselves, you would never believe me, besides, there are too many possibilities to even start explaining. Remember, I can only tell you about worlds that one of my nodes passes through. There are a lot more that I don't know about.”

  “Tell us about a couple of the stranger ones you know of.” she said.

  “There's a world where there is no animal life more advanced than insects in your worlds, but there are highly intelligent plants that, having no way of manipulating their environment or moving, discuss philosophy, and sing songs all day.”

  “Songs about w
hat?”

  “Mostly about how good the sun feels, or how soothing rain is, or how they wish this or that bug would stop tickling their stamens.”

  “Do William and I visit that world?”

  “No, William and Clara visit that world.”

  “Who's Clara?”

  “Clara is William's wife in another timeline.”

  “I'm jealous.”

  “Don't be, she can be a real bitch, and William in that world often regrets marrying her. In your William's world, she's serving life in prison for murdering her parents with large wheel of Canadian cheddar.”

  William said, “I saw her on the news, I can't believe I would have married her, although she was kind of cute, with that lisp.”

  “Does William have many other wives in other timelines?”

  “In many, but I only know of two wives with whom he's truly happy, and one of those is you.”