by Macronomicon
Rufio didn’t chase him—just stood there at the edge of the alley, fists clenched tight.
Jeb clomped his way back to his home in the dark of night, keeping his head on a swivel for teens with misguided anger and robbers who were just plain hungry. He wasn’t able to relax until he set foot inside the mansion.
Jeb hung his overcoat on the rack and stomped his way to the kitchen, where he was pleased to discover Mrs. Lang making sandwiches, half a dozen at a time with a practiced hand.
Jeb melted into the stool on the other side of the bar, listening to the pounding of hammer and nail, sawing and general boisterous atmosphere of the janitors and handymen fixing the holes in the staircase.
“I smell paint. Where did we get paint?”
“The boys took your Jeep and raided a Home Depot,” the matronly old woman said, passing Jeb a sammich.
“Nice.” Jeb took a bite. “Free is good.”
“Don’t talk with your mouth full.” She took a second glance at Jeb’s haggard expression. “Long day?”
“Eh,” Jeb said with a shrug. “Bit of a mixed bag. A bunch of people threw me out of their shops for being human, almost got robbed, a kid tried to kill me a couple times, I met a friend from the Tutorial—oh, and I think a little girl got killed this evening by the guy I’m looking for.”
Mrs. Lang’s hand froze, knife seized tight in her trembling fingers. “You’re going to kill him…right?”
“That’s the plan, Mrs. Lang.”
“Good.” Her knife resumed spreading the homemade mayo.
Jeb finished his food and checked in on Eddie.
The first thing he noticed was the generator running outside the old man’s man cave. It was rather quiet, with what looked like a series of mufflers welded to the exhaust and an extra-large tank. Deeper inside, the old man had an extension cord leading from the generator, connected to several electrical goodies, namely a computer and what looked like an extra-fancy 3D printer. On the floor was a smorgasbord of engines, motors, and bits and pieces of electrical components that Jeb couldn’t even hope to name.
In the corner was a bomb-defusing bot with all its armor stripped away.
The old man was drafting something on the computer, his bifocals slipped down the bridge of his nose as he leaned in closer than strictly necessary and muttered to himself.
“How’s it going?”
“Completely breaking the laws of physics, that’s how it’s going.” He pointed at the Myst engine in the center of the room, feeding a trickle of Myst through Jeb’s regulator and into the gasoline lens, which trickled liquid fuel into a receiver, which in turn pumped into the generator’s tank, supplying the entire mansion with power.
“Are you telling me you can see the Myst being used by that thing?”
Jeb glanced at the whirling vortex of pale Myst being drawn into the tiny hole at the top of the engine.
“Yup.”
“How can it behave like a vapor, then a light ray!?” Eddie clutched his head and winced for a moment. “Nevermind. I gotta get those levels. Buddy will be done in a day or so, then we’ll see if you’re pulling my leg.”
“Did you make the thing I asked you for?” Jeb asked.
“Right over there,” Eddie said, waving his hand toward the bench dismissively, his gaze sliding back to the drafting program. “Now shut up.
“Motherfucker!” Eddie growled when an error message popped up.
“Where did you get the printer?” Jeb asked, picking up the length of steel. It didn’t look like one of the household 3D printers he’d seen in the past. It was big and industrial-looking with welded plating, and exposed guts twitching as the arm moved around.
“I stole it from Chuck’s house.”
“Who’s Chuck?”
“He was my nemesis. He’s dead now, and I know he would’ve hated to see me using his baby.” Eddie cackled.
“Well, you look like you’ve got everything well in hand.”
Eddie grunted.
Jeb left his technician alone and went to the room close to the stairs that he’d claimed for himself, passing by the men painting the walls with a nod.
Jeb entered his room and closed the door behind him, then sat down on the bed and stared at the wall.
Well, I guess we’re doing this.
Jeb glanced down at the metal rod in his hand. It was a length of steel, about a foot long, with a wicked bladed hook on the end. The hook itself was tiny, about half an inch from end to end.
The reason being…
Jeb slipped the Appraiser off his finger and put the hook through it. Holding the two objects with both hands, Jeb began to awkwardly probe around his scalp.
Tap, tap, tap. The side of the hook bumped against his skin…until it hit something that wasn’t Jeb.
There you are, you little bastard.
Chapter 14: Can’t Go Back
Nancy’s eyes popped open and she sat up, her heart beating so fast.
Where am I? She craned her neck, looking around the room. The walls and ceiling were clean-looking except for the smudges above the lamps, which seemed to be made of shiny gold. The walls they attached to were as red as blood, with off-white pillars supporting them. They reminded Nancy of bone.
She felt tears begin to well in her eyes as she realized that she had absolutely no idea where she was.
“Please, don’t cry,” a smooth voice said from her left.
“Eep!” In a flash of movement that even Nancy had trouble following, she catapulted off the red velvet couch and hid behind the back of the furniture. Slenderman was sitting on the chair to her left! She hadn’t seen him yet because he’d been so still!
“My name is Lenos Surpey. I rescued you from a reaper last night. You must have been exhausted, because you slept most of the day.”
Nancy peeped above the edge of the oversized couch.
There, sitting on an extra fancy-looking chair, was Slenderman in a black suit. He had no lips and a piercing stare, his boney fingers folded over each other on his lap.
I shouldn’t look away, Nancy thought, keeping her eyes wide. When you look away, that’s when he teleports up behind you and kills you. Daddy sure played the games enough.
Nancy kept silently staring at the monster, her eyes growing increasingly painful until the pain finally forced her to screw her eyes shut.
Oh no, he’ll get me! Nancy dodged the inevitable back-swipe by rolling across the floor, then looking behind herself.
Nothing there? She glanced back at the chair, and was flummoxed when she spotted Slenderman still sitting where he’d been.
He cocked his head.
Nancy cocked her head.
“Child?”
Now that she got a better look, it was just a keegan. A keegan in a suit. Weird.
“I wanna go home,” Nancy said, standing with her hands clenched into fists.
“Sadly, I lack the power to grant that request. I can’t bring your mother and father back to life, just as I can’t un-Stitch your world.”
“That’s not—” Nancy’s throat choked up at the mention of mommy and daddy.
“Oh? You feel like a small library in an abandoned section of a shopping mall qualifies as a ‘home’? I imagine the pang of hunger in your stomach is nostalgic for you too?”
“Stop it,” Nancy said. He was being mean with his words, without Nancy knowing exactly how he was doing it. He wasn’t calling her names or sticking his tongue out, but all she knew is he was making her feel really bad.
The keegan’s expression softened. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to offend. I simply wanted to illuminate a truth.”
“What truth?”
“You don’t have a home, like me,” the keegan said, his eyes looking almost…sad.
“Do too!” Nancy said. “I’ve got Colt and Damian and Bess and…”
“Those are just strangers you’ve been clinging to, hoping for scraps. They aren’t family. What have they done to help you? No, much more imp
ortantly, what have you done to help them?”
“I…” Nancy twiddled her fingers as a wave of guilt crashed over her. She got yelled at when she made the sign out front. She got yelled at when she tried to make book soup, when she peed the bed, when she ate the last of the candy….
“Face it, you don’t have a home.”
“I…guess not,” Nancy admitted.
“That’s not all bad, though. There’s one good thing about not having a home.”
“It doesn’t seem like it,” Nancy said, tears welling in her eyes.
“The silver lining here, is that not having a home gives you a chance to make your own.”
“What?” Nancy frowned.
“What do you think your mommy and daddy did? They made their own home, with you included. You can make a home too; it just takes time.”
“Do I have to be a mommy?” Nancy asked, screwing up her lips. Mommy and daddy did some weird, loud stuff when they thought she was asleep.
“No, no.” The keegan laughed, waving a boney hand. “That’s a different matter altogether.”
Whew.
“You can make a home where you and all your friends can live forever. All you need is the time to do it.”
“How?” Nancy asked, walking around the edge of the couch and sitting back down.
“With a lifetime of effort,” the keegan said, reclining in his seat.
“A lifetime?” Nancy whimpered.
“Youth is the gift of life breathed into us by Mother Vresh’na. This vital energy fades over time, which is what leads to aging, and eventually, the death of all things. But what if I told you, there was a way to beat aging? A way to live forever, gaining the strength and time you need to build a home for you and your friends, and you’d never have to see them unhappy ever again?”
“Nuh-uh! Daddy says aging is when damaged ‘Dee Un Ey’ gets copied when cells split; eventually they forget how to fix themselves. He said scientists are about to figure out how to stop aging by fixing ‘Dee Un Ey’ with Crispy but they’re never going to make it pubic because rich people don’t want to share.”
Lenos’s jaw hung open for a second.
It closed.
It opened.
“Uh… Ahem.” The keegan coughed into his fist. “Humans certainly have active imaginations.”
“Nuh-uh! It’s the truth! Daddy’s never wrong!”
“Except the time he got himself killed, I assume.”
Nancy’s face crumpled, her eyes burning with pain, loneliness and shame. She grabbed a pillow off the couch and started sobbing straight into the soft velvet, heedless of the salty tears and snot working their way into the expensive fabric.
“That’s not a…nevermind. Go nuts.”
About ten minutes later, she had post-meltdown clarity and a case of hiccups. Nancy was ready to talk again.
“Anyway, the people of Pharos have found a way to eliminate aging entirely, and I’m going to help you do it for yourself.”
“Why?”
“I lost my home too,” Lenos said, tapping his chest. “I want to give you the time you’ll need to make your own.”
“You’re mean.”
“I’m practical. I’m too old to do it now, but you…” He gestured to Nancy. “You’re young enough to make it past the O’sut Bottleneck.”
“The what?”
“The O’sut Bottleneck. It was named after the scholar O’sut, who discovered that the anti-aging properties of the Body Attribute can be used to provide true immortality at high enough potency, and that the required amount is quadratically higher depending on the creature’s current biological age. In essence, at the age where a normal young man could hope to defeat monsters and gain levels, it is already too late. The amount of levels he needs would take longer to acquire than the aging they would prevent. Sure, he could live hundreds of years, but it would be almost impossible to achieve true immortality just playing catch-up with his own aging.”
Lenos spread his hands. “The O’sut Bottleneck.”
“I don’t get it,” Nancy said, shaking her head.
“That’s alright. All you need to know is that it’ll give you the time and strength you need to make a home that no one can take away from you. If you let me help you.”
“…I could invite all my friends over to my home?”
“Of course,” Lenos said.
Nancy peered at him, her mind dancing with the possibility of lazy days spent reading books while hanging off the edge of furniture, chasing each other around a big house, eating together….
“What do I need to do?”
***Jebediah Trapper***
“Okay.” Jeb breathed quietly, slipping the ring farther up the handle of the hook until he could keep it in place with his right hand.
With his left, he gently placed the very tip of his middle finger against the hook and began feeling around. He used the flat side of the hook to feel for the stitches. From feeling around with his fingertips earlier, he was fairly sure it wasn’t a zipper or legs sunk into his scalp, but stitches securing some wriggling…thing to his skull.
There’s one, Jeb thought, feeling it out using the hook as a medium. He guided the edge to the stitch, took a deep breath, and began gingerly sawing at the material. He kept perfectly still, expanding all his senses outward as he tried to keep track of every tiny sensation.
Damage to the brain won’t register as pain; it’ll register as dizziness or a funny taste, maybe even a sudden change in mood, Jeb thought, his heart thudding out a heavy beat as he sawed.
Pop.
There was a sudden loosening as the hook sawed through the stitch, a relaxing that rippled through his consciousness and his Myst Core. Instantly, the sensations faded, before he could even put a name to what was different.
Da fuck was that? Jeb thought, blinking. He paused a moment to take stock of his mental faculties. I don’t feel like I have brain damage, but then again, who does? No time like the present.
Whatever it was existed in another dimension and was not naturally occurring. Jeb was determined to remove it and anything else that had been soldered onto him without his knowledge or consent.
There’s always a chance this’ll turn me into a drooling vegetable or have me bleeding out on a plane of existence I can’t even interact with…. Worth it.
The ‘eww’ factor was just too high, having something alive strapped to him, possibly influencing his decisions on a level he couldn’t even understand. Nobody wanted to be a cordyceps zombie.
After he tested his smell, taste, balance and ability to count backwards from ten, Jeb resumed the work.
Pop.
Another stitch came loose, accompanied by a quickly-fading sensation of loosening.
Pop.
Pop.
Pop.
The stitches began to move back and forth, making it difficult to work. Frowning, Jeb took the hook away and slipped the ring onto his finger, feeling around the area. The long lump was thrashing back and forth, struggling against the loosening stitches.
Alright, Jeb thought, slipping the ring back onto the hook. It rattled all the way down to the handle.
Rattled? Jeb peered closer at the steel hook and noticed its surface was pitted and worn. It wasn’t rusted out, but seemed as though it had been eaten away by acid, with pinhole-sized pits in the surface.
Worry about it later. Jeb needed to strike while the iron was hot with the lump.
He found his spot again, working from the other side, pushing the wormlike thing down with the handle while he sawed away at the stitches.
Pop.
Pop.
Pop pop pop pop pop pop pop!
Here it comes! Jeb thought, barely keeping his presence of mind through the series of ripples travelling through his being. The last stitches were coming undone on their own, and the creature, whatever it was, would soon be free to get the hell off of him.
But we’re not gonna let this go that easily.
P
inning the creature down as best he could with the handle while making sure the rest of the stitches really were gone, Jeb flipped the hook around, sliding the blunt side around the wormlike creature’s midsection.
He released the ring with his right hand, letting it slide down the handle until it was bumping up against the invisible thing he’d trapped against the side of his head. Jeb grabbed the ring with his left hand and began drawing the creature through the ring-hole with his right.
The hook and ring combo began to buck in his hands, shaking violently as some implacable force resisted the transition.
Jeb pulled the whole thing away from his head, the creature effectively trapped between the ring and the hook. He leaned forward, holding the two close to his chest and putting leverage to work, straining with a level of effort reserved for the most stubborn of pickle jars.
The invisible thing continued to thrash, jerking his hands from side to side, seemingly with the weight of a full-grown man thrown into it. Jeb was concerned about the damage the thing might be doing to his fifth-dimensional body that he couldn’t even perceive.
Still, he wanted to see the damn thing with his own eyes, and so he continued to pull, struggling to tug the worm through the ring.
Despite putting all his leverage and strength into it, the creature refused to cross dimensions.
Go figure, Jeb thought, scowling. He only had one thing left to try at this point.
Jeb took a deep breath and funneled out the thickest strand of Myst he could possibly manage, sending it through the ring and seizing everything on the other side and yanking it back through.
Well, he tried.
As soon as the Myst made contact with the center of the ring, a flash of light stabbed into Jeb’s retinas, along with a bloom of heat that singed the tips of his fingers that were fixed around the edge of the Appraiser.
“Gah!” Jeb dropped the burning-hot ring to the floor, rubbing his eyes with his seared left hand.
“Damnit,” Jeb muttered, blinking the tears out of his eyes. At least I got rid of the thing.
“Um, Jeb…” Smartass called his attention, and Jeb glanced at her dim shape. She pointed toward the metal tool in his hand.