by Karl Morgan
He looked at her blearily and sighed, “How would I know that, Faith?”
She smiled and kissed his cheek. “I bet you do know, Bill Watson.”
Seventeen looked stunned and said, “I know. He’s in the place where Bill sent all of those monsters in Mexico City.”
Bill looked up at the other Bill and agreed, “Yes, he is imprisoned on the enforcer home world.” He yawned and his head dropped to his chest.
“Don’t you see?” Faith asked. “This is what you were born for. It’s not to fight some demon at all. You are the divine connection between all the Doms and Lous. That’s why you and your sister are related to both!” Bill did not reply because he had fallen asleep.
“So what do we do now, Faith?” Seventeen asked.
“When you’re rested, I want you to go back to the other Bills and explain what you’ve learned. Since you’re the scientist, I want you to work with them on a solution to this problem. Bill and I will go to the enforcer home world and try to save Dom and any others we can.”
Seventeen looked down and said, “I’m not even sure I can find Mexico City again. It seems like that Bill knows where everything is. I guess I can fly around until I find it.” Faith was smiling at him. “What?”
“Bill, as you said yourself, you and this guy are the same person. You can do anything he can do. Isn’t that the way you said this construction works?”
He smirked and asked, “So I could just think about that park in Mexico City or One and the other Bills, and then just open that door and it would all be there?”
“Maybe you should try it out?”
“Aren’t you afraid that demon will be there?”
She laughed and replied, “No, not at all. If we go after him, I’m sure he will fight us to the death, but otherwise, I think he’s probably more afraid of us than we are of him. After all, if we can defeat the construction, he loses everything!”
He stood up and looked at the door, and then turned back to face her. “Do you think it’s still night there?”
“No, Mexico is a couple time zones ahead of here, so the sun should just be rising now. Go on, don’t be a big chicken.” He turned back to the door and slowly reached out for the knob with his hand. “Bill, just one other thing.” He turned back to her again. “These dogs belong to one of the other Bills and I’m sure he misses them. Could you take them with you?”
“Of course, come on guys!” he called to them and they both began to rub against his ankles. He looked at Faith one last time and sighed heavily, turned and opened the door. It was early morning in the park in Mexico City. Several of the other Bills were sitting and chatting about their adventures over the past days. They saw him and waved. He reached down, picked up both dogs and stepped onto the grass. The door closed behind him.
Faith put her head against Bill’s and sighed. “Where is all of this going to take us, Bill?” She kissed his forehead and closed her eyes.
The Dom Emmanuel from the emperor’s realm and the angel Faith were walking down the road leading to the capital city. It had been hours since they crossed the portal inside the tree deep in the forest, and yet they had not encountered any imperial forces or more surprisingly, enforcers. They could sense the country folk hidden among the trees around them but made no effort to greet them, knowing their skittishness. The bleak factory and tenement scape of the outer city was less than a mile away and no one had paid any attention to them. “Father, this is all very strange,” Faith acknowledged.
“Yes, I would have thought we would have been attacked by enforcers by now. Something has changed, but I don’t know what it could be.”
“That’s something that has been bothering me as well, Father. How can it be that you do not know?”
He smiled at her and patted her cheek. “That is a very astute question, my daughter, but unfortunately, I don’t have an answer for that either. I know it sounds disingenuous, but I have no idea what is happening now. I mean the very concept that there could be two or more like me is beyond comprehension!” He stopped walking and she turned around to see if something was wrong. “You know, we have to be missing something. I have to believe the truth is staring us in the face and yet we do not see.”
Faith put her hands on Dom’s shoulders and said, “Okay Dad, let’s just think about this logically. You don’t know what’s happening, but you’re supposed to know everything. The emperor and his enforcers locked you in a horrible dungeon against your will, but you’re also omnipotent. How can that be?”
“Who goes there?” shouted a voice behind them. They turned to see two gronk guards twenty feet in front of them. They held their pistols at the ready.
“I am coming to the city to retrieve my brother from prison,” Dom replied.
“Forget it, old man. The emperor does not suffer petty criminals. You can check for his body at the Place of Desolation,” one of the soldiers said. “Now get out of here before you join him there!”
Just as they turned to leave, Dom said, “I don’t think you understand, boys.”
The guards turned back and the leader walked forward and pressed his revolver against Dom’s forehead. “I think it’s you who doesn’t understand, pal!”
Dom closed his eyes and sighed. Instantly, his body filled with light. Within seconds, he glowed so brightly that the gronk had to turn their heads and clench their eyelids tightly closed. He glowed brighter still until this patch of ground looked like a second sunrise over the capital city. Then, just as quickly as the light had come, it ended. Faith and Dom were standing alone. “Shall we continue, Faith?”
“Father, what were those things and what happened to them?”
He took her hand and pulled her along. “Faith, obviously they were gronk mercenaries and I just sent them back to their home planet. Let’s go, we have work to do.” He kept moving but she remained in place, forcing him to turn back. “Okay, what’s wrong now?”
Faith looked very perplexed. “Father, on the Earth I know, humanity has not had any confirmed contact with extraterrestrials.”
“That’s fascinating! You see, we’ve only been here a few hours and look how much we have learned already!”
“I’m sorry, I don’t understand.”
He smiled and hugged her tightly. “You said it yourself, Faith. It isn’t possible for there to be more than one me, or you for that matter. Also, I am supposed to be all powerful and know everything, but clearly I do not. The only options are that you or I or both of us are frauds; or somehow our spirits have been dissected into many different versions of each, and that dissection has resulted to weakened versions of me, my brother, and you and your siblings and cousins.”
Faith squeezed her head with both hands, trying to conceptualize what she had just heard. After a full minute of tortured thought, she replied, “But who could do such a thing?”
He laughed and pulled her along toward the city, saying, “And that’s the best part of the mystery, my dear. I have to believe that one of my children or Lou’s is responsible, and yet neither of us will remember, because that memory has been selectively erased! Hurry now. Dinner at the best restaurant in town is on me.”
“Father, how will we ever know?” she asked as she followed meekly behind.
He laughed again and replied, “That’s the beauty of it, darling Faith. Discovering that is precisely the reason we created Bill and Mary.”
Chapter 14
Audrey Watson woke early the following morning. After taking a shower and dressing, she went to Sandi’s room and the two women headed toward the dining hall Lucius had directed them to. As they walked down the cafeteria line, they noticed the young women serving them had odd tattoos on their forearms. The servers avoided eye contact and did not speak to them, causing the two to wonder if something was wrong. The exited the service line and entered the large hall. It was opulently decorated with huge crystal chandeliers overhead, ornate tapestries hung on the walls, and large windows looking out over a beautiful city const
ructed entirely of brilliant white stone. Another tattooed young woman approached them but kept her eyes averted. “Missy, may I show you to a table?”
“Thank you, dear,” Audrey replied. “What is your name?”
The woman looked about nervously and spied several other slave girls watching her. “My name is not important to you, Missy. Slaves don’t have names no more.” She led them toward a nearby table and pulled out their chairs. “Is this table satisfactory, Missy?”
Audrey sat down and smiled at the girl. “Yes, this is fine, dear, but please tell me your name. I promise I won’t tell anyone else.”
The girl looked around again and leaned slightly toward Audrey and whispered, “I used to be called Cassie, Missy.” She straightened up and said, “I shall return with coffee and juice, Missy,” and then hurried away.
“Mom, that woman said she was a slave, right?” Sandi asked.
“Don’t sound so shocked, Sandi. You remember how we were locked up. Other than the tattoos, we might as well be slaves too.” Cassie returned and filled their coffee cups and poured juice. The women noticed she was trembling slightly. Before Audrey could say anything, Cassie hurried away and disappeared into the kitchen. “Geez, what kind of a place is this?” After a few seconds passed, she noticed Sandi was looking frantically around the room. “Is something wrong, honey?” Sandi was now trembling too. “Sandi, answer me!”
Sandi stared back at her mother with her eyes a bit too wide open. She leaned forward and whispered, “Mom, didn’t you see it?”
“See what, honey?”
Sandi reached across the table and took her mother’s hands. “Now Mom, please don’t freak out, okay?” Audrey nodded, but looked uncertain what to think. “Okay, look around as nonchalantly as you can. Almost half the women in this room look exactly like you or me.”
Audrey looked back at Sandi as if she was insane, but began to look around the large room filled with dozens of tables. Panic began to rise in her chest as she began to see more and more women who looked just like her or her daughter. Among the several hundred women in the room, there had to be a hundred or more that looked like each of them. “What do you think it means, honey?”
“I have no idea, Mom.”
“Good morning,” said a voice next to their table. They both looked up to see another Audrey Watson standing at their table. The two looked up at her open mouthed. The new arrival giggled and continued, “I’d introduce myself, but as you can see, it wouldn’t really help explain anything. As you can imagine almost all of us have had this same experience. I guess I would be considered the exception, since I think I was the first one here. Audrey and Sandi, I’ve been asking every new arrival this same question. Do you know why you are here?”
Audrey looked at Sandi and then turned to the other Audrey and replied, “I think so; at least I know what the emperor told us.”
“You met the emperor?” the second Audrey gasped. Audrey and Sandi both nodded. She shouted, “Girls, this is it!” All the other Audreys and Sandis in the room rose from their tables and hurried over, forming a circle many layers deep surrounding them. The second Audrey sat down and said, “You’re the only ones who have seen the emperor. I heard a rumor that he looks like our Bill. Is that true?”
“They are identical,” Sandi said, “just like all of you look like us.” A loud gasp crossed the room.
“Why are we here?” the second Audrey asked.
Audrey told them everything, from Bill’s unbelievable heredity and apparent sister to the emperor’s capture of Bill’s family to stop him from doing something. She told them how she had been imprisoned for days and was surprised to find that none of the others had the same fate. When she finished, the others stood in awkward silence, unsure what to say or do.
One of the younger women in the inner circle scoffed and said, “This is some kind of joke, right? I am supposed to believe my father is some kind of angel or demon or something. Come on now, how can you expect me to believe that?”
Audrey replied, “I don’t expect you to believe anything, Sandi. That is what we were told and I can’t say I believe it either. But I am able to accept the possibility since I’m sitting in a room full of identical copies of my daughter and me. Can you explain that?” The other Sandi dropped her head.
“I have an idea,” said an Audrey deep in the crowd. The others let her through until she stood at the table. “My Bill is a cosmologist, and I have a degree in astrophysics from MIT.”
“So, we’re not all exactly alike,” Audrey chuckled and the rest of the crowd joined in.
“That is quite correct,” the scientist Audrey agreed. “It is also true that several of us were divorced from Bill, and others were actually remarried. There is a concept in physics called the multiverse. It means that the universe we live in is only one of many that exist. Although there is no scientific evidence that it exists, our little gathering here points in that direction. It would seem unlikely that hundreds of planets in our universe would be identical, leading to multiple copies of us. If there is a multiverse, then that adds potentially infinite possibilities for duplication.”
“Mom, the emperor did say something about that,” Sandi began. “He said something about different realities within the multiverse.”
“Interesting,” scientist Audrey noted. “However, there is a problem with the theory, and I’ll try to keep it simple. If multiple universes exist, there should be no way to move from one to another, which apparently occurred many times and seemingly at will in our cases. Also, there is no expectation that the laws of physics in one universe would apply to another. Assuming the laws of physics can vary, there would have to be an almost infinite number of universes before enough could be identical and create this many versions of us. And if the number is infinite, there has to be an infinite number of each of us, which begs the question. Why are there so few?”
“So, is it a multiverse or not?” the second Audrey asked.
Scientist Audrey shrugged her shoulders. “I don’t know, but something strange is definitely going on.”
Bill and Faith stood holding hands a few feet in front of the office door. “Are you ready, Faith?”
“As ready as I’ll ever be,” she replied.
“You know, if this works, it pretty much confirms this is a construction. Plus, there is a distinct chance that millions of enforcers might try to use this door to return to this reality.”
“Bill, if this is a construction; I wonder where the enforcers came from. I never saw that kind of creature where I’m from until Gaius became emperor.”
He smiled at her and said, “I think we’re about to find the answer to that question and a lot more. Ready?” She nodded. He reached out slowly and turned the knob, ready to slam the door closed again if they were attacked. He sighed and pulled open the door. It was night on the other side, with a single moon providing scant light compared to the early morning sun rising over the horizon where they were now. The land appeared to be desert, with only sand and gravel in front of them. The cold silhouettes of rugged mountains stood in the distance. They stepped through and closed the door after them. Bill turned back to verify that the doorway had disappeared. Then they began to move forward, uncertain what they would find here.
It was a chilly night and Bill rubbed his hands against his arms to warm himself as they continued. After an hour or so, the rocky plain gave way to low rolling hills leading to the mountains in the distance. The sky ahead of them was beginning to lighten, signaling the beginning of a new day. “Bill, you realize that if this is another part of the construct, this planet is Earth.”
“Yeah, I figured it had to be,” he replied. “The moon looks just like Earth’s moon too. Still, I’m surprised we didn’t encounter more of those vile enforcers.”
“I think it makes sense to me, Bill. We used the door in my father’s office to get here. I have to believe it would not deliver us into the hands of evil.”
“Then how did they or so
meone else get into the office and ransack it?”
“I don’t know. None of this makes any sense.” A flicker of light in the distance got her attention. “Did you see that?”
“A light of some kind. . .” he started to say when the unmistakable sound of gunfire erupted far ahead of them. He started to run forward and shouted, “This is it, Faith!” He morphed into demonic form and began to fly. The angel Faith was soon flying next to him, beating her wings to reach the firefight. Soon multiple lights could be seen. A veritable tidal wave of enforcers was approaching a fenced outpost manned by human soldiers. The mass had to include millions of the horrible creatures and it was now almost on the fence line. A battle axe formed in each of Bill’s hands and he barrel-rolled and dived into the fray, swinging wildly as he flew through the mass of clawing and biting beasts.
He could feel Faith right behind him and could hear the growling and screaming of enforcers as she sliced them to ribbons with her sword. Bill’s body was drenched in enforcer blood and yet more continued their attack. He thought he heard Faith scream and so he stopped and turned to find her. Hundreds of enforcers were on him, biting and clawing and screaming for their brothers to join them. Bill stopped and pulled his arms close to his body while more and more grabbed onto the mass of others. Suddenly, he began to spin around very fast, turning his axes into the blades of a blender. The screams from the beasts were deafening as their body parts were ejected from the mass. He began to move to where Faith had been. Less than a minute later, he stood over her, butchering and slaughtering the enforcers who refused to retreat. After another minute, he stopped and noticed the few remaining enforcers had fled.
Bill dropped his weapons and kneeled next to her. He had become human again and cradled her body in his arms. “Faith, Faith, please speak to me!”
She coughed up a mouthful of blood and looked up at him. “I’m okay, Bill. That was their blood, not mine. Did they retreat?”
“Yeah, the few that were left did. What motivates those horrible things when there is no chance of winning?”