by Daniel Ruth
What I did think very heavily upon, was the nature of gods. My own plane only had rumors. As many dimensional travelers, non-humans and mages we had running around, gods were a good deal scarcer. All my reliable information was from conversations with a álfar, a super elf that just may be a created race of the Norse pantheon. Or simply the progenitors of the elven race. Stella was a good bit more reticent on that subject.
I pulled the bike up behind my house. The lights on my street were completely out, though I heard a slight hum from the backup generator that powered the houses on the block I owned. I was distracted from my grim musings as I unfastened the harness from the carcass, I realized I had no real way to store this beast. I certainly couldn’t drag it down to the basement. Not only would it stain the rugs, but I had my research projects set up down there.
Shaking my head, I sighed. There was nothing to done about it. I would have to cook and eat as much as I possibly could right then. Heading out back, I fired up the barbecue and started to tear strips from the corpse with elongated nails. Despite the work looming ahead of me, I admit I had a smile on my face and was whistling a merry tune.
“Where the hell have you been,” an excited exclamation burst out from behind me. Turning over the first steak, I salivated as the juices fell onto the coals.
“Hello Mei, want to join me in a feast?” I offered generously. Sure I wanted to stuff my face, but I suppose there wasn’t any way I could eat the entire thing before it went bad.
“Well, sure... but where have you been? Conrad has been calling you all day.” The tiny Asian stalked up behind me. I could tell that her anger was diffusing as the scent of the food wafted over the yard.
“I lost it when I was catapulted into the next dimension over. I thought everyone knew that. Why else would everyone and their brother come over and interrupt my work.”
“We thought you were just not answering your calls,” she muttered in embarrassment. “Like usual.”
“I came out of the portal mostly naked. Exactly where did you think I was hiding it?” I backtracked quickly. “Wait! Never mind, I don’t need to know that!”
“So, where did you go?”
“I was with Laurel and Hardy. They were a lot funnier on film,” I joked.
“Derek...”
“If you cut up that carcass with that fancy sword, I’ll give you the highlights.”
“Using my sword to butcher a dinosaur would be disrespectful to the steel.”
“Seriously? Unless your sword is intelligent and has an objection to it, I wouldn’t worry too much about it. That baby is so close to the firmament it’s as close to being indestructible as they make ‘em. The metal is so magical it’s almost a metaphysical concept. Cut the damn meat!”
“Well I suppose it wouldn’t hurt, we don’t really have anything else that can cut this thing up.” Corrupted to the dark side of the barbecue she hesitantly sidled up to the mountain of flesh and expertly started to render it into delectable cuts.
“What is that delicious smell?” Jeremy’s voice wafted through the back door.
“Dinner! Come on out and set the picnic table. The first set is coming off.”
“Oh my god,” squealed a childish voice. Beth had joined us. “It’s huge! And kind of gross...”
“I went out shopping. Which one of you asked for the Brontosaur?”
“That is not a Brontosaur,” a deeper voice joined in. Faramond. I had hoped he would still be out with Stella. I was getting fond of the magic elf but her guardian still stirred bitter memories. He broke one of my teeth off. Oh sure, it had grown back in a couple hours, but a man remembers these things.
“Oh, look at that,” I said in mock sadness. “That’s the joy of the day leaving us. I know it’s not a Brontosaurus. Admittedly, I am not sure exactly what it is, but...”
“It’s a...” Jeremy started.
“Don’t care,” I interrupted. “It’s dinner and going to be yummy. Come and get it!”
“I’ll get Conrad and Mistress Estella,” mister big and annoying stated.
“Is everyone here?” I asked, tearing off a chunk of one of the steaks while placing the fresh cuts on the fire. “Jeremy, get that sauce from the fridge. The brown stuff on the second shelf. This needs a little kick.”
“What’s that I smell,” the stranger’s voice made me turn in consternation. Half a dozen people stood at the gate to my front yard. I knew none of them. And they were on my property.
“Hello, Mr. Jones, Mrs. Smith,” Beth waved to the newcomers merrily. “We’re having a barbecue. Tell everyone they are invited!”
I stood frozen, I think my eyebrow twitched. There were a bunch of strange humans on my land. Would it be rude to kill them all?
“Those are the refugees living in your spare houses,” Mei whispered in my ear, obviously seeing my confusion, if not recognizing my desire to slaughter the lot of them. “Be nice, they lost everything and we’ve all made friends with them.”
I grimaced at them. It was as close to a smile as I could manage. I had known keeping pet humans wouldn’t always be easy but having them invite random people into my home hadn’t been on my radar.
“If they go into the house, they will never find the bodies,” I whispered back, moving my palm back and forth a few inches in the direction of the newcomers, in a parody of a wave.
It was close a few times, never the less, I managed to make it through the all-night barbecue without killing anyone. Mei had to grab me once when one of my ‘guests’ started to go inside with muddy shoes to use the bathroom. Jeremy saved his life with the simple lie that the bathroom was out of service.
By morning a good half of the beast was gone and the rest neatly cut up and taken to the various houses around the block. I regretted it, but I didn’t really have any way to store the thing anyway.
Although I tried, I couldn’t cook all night. During a lull when everyone was temporarily sated, Conrad dragged me inside and handed me a new wrist computer. I had gotten very fond of the last one for the short time I had it, so I disappeared into my basement to engrave a tiny ward into the inner shell that would negate mystical energies and keep it from exploding, if... or rather, when my aura flared.
During another break, he confirmed that Eddie had been correct. The military was setting up shop in the city and ironically this would mean even less military support once they settled in.
I kept trying to pick Stella’s brains about the gods, but Faramond, bless his tiny obsidian heart, seemed to be under the impressive I was making a pass at her and made a point to interrupt every time started a conversation. I was getting very tempted to kick him through another house, despite knowing that all the houses in the area belonged to me.
I never did find out why Conrad was so gung ho to track me down the previous day. I suppose whatever it was, the urgency had passed. I finally gave up and tried to enjoy the party, in spite of all the trespassers.
“So I need you to give priority to books on ancient religions,” I finished. Jeremy and Beth sat on the couch. Stella was also on the couch but she was half asleep.
“Because another god is somehow spreading their influence to do something bad,” Jeremy hesitantly summarized. “Could you be more specific?”
“Death gods specifically,” I proffered.
“Right.” Jeremy rubbed his forehead. “I really want to help you but this is very general. It’s also the exact kind of books you told me you didn’t want.”
“That was when I was looking for books about magic. Religious dogma is generally there simply to obfuscate the facts.”
“So how is reading a bunch of ‘propaganda’ going to help you learn to block a god’s influence.”
“It’s a long shot,” I admitted uneasily. I couldn’t go into why I wanted this information. This might have helped make me sound frustratingly vague and indecisive. “I can’t get into details, but I was shown evidence by Vivian that a god or god-like entity has taken an unhealthy interest in t
his dimension.”
“How is that even possible? You said that Vatapi had blocked all the other dimensions away, except some random ten.”
“That still seems kinda silly,” Beth said while yawning. “I know you said demon lords are powerful but locking a bunch of dimensions seems more than even a god should be able to do.”
“Well, it is pretty incredible,” I admitted. “I didn’t think it was possible either but the purpose of the circles was pretty obvious, even if I can’t do it myself.”
“But ten entire universes?”
“That was the intention,” I hesitantly responded. When you put it that way, it does seem that setting up circles over a single planet or ten planets couldn’t affect the entire dimension. “I suppose I could be misstating what I saw. The circles were definitely locks. By covering the major ley lines of the planet, he chained ten planets together and simultaneously locked everyone else, in all the other dimensions out.”
“Of the planets,” Beth prompted. I think I could see where she was going with this.
“That’s brilliant. I completely overlooked that,” I said shaking my head.
“Mind explaining to the rest of us,” Jeremy asked. A huge snore erupted from Stella as the elf’s head lolled back on the couch. I looked pointedly at him to the sleeping elf. “Okay, me.”
“Your sister pointed out that power required to lock the entire dimension would be approaching infinity. The circle was written so that if you pumped enough power into it would expand appropriately, but it couldn’t possibly extend that far simply due to power constraints.”
“So how far does it go? To the moon?”
“I... don’t know.” I tried to do some rough calculations in my head but I simply didn’t have enough knowledge of circle craft to even guestimate. “I may have to find it out empirically rather than by theory.”
“Huh?” Beth squeaked.
“I’ll have to experiment,” I explained. “Rather than calculate.”
“So what’s to stop the gods from teleporting to Pluto and then crossing the dimensional barrier,” my friend asked.
“Technically, nothing. However, from what Stella has said they don’t think that way. Also, most probably don’t care. Vatapi was an exile. If someone tried to follow him or track him down, they would teleport directly to him or the planet they thought he was on. The idea of teleporting to another planet and then finding him would be absurd. Like flying to Japan to make a call to your neighbor, if you found out you couldn’t get a call through.”
“So does this change anything?”
“I think so,” I said. Based on this information, it was still likely that the usurping entity was within the ten chained worlds. The undead may have lost contact with their progenitor by him being out of these specific worlds. But it wasn’t as impossible to re-establish contact to their god as I previously thought. I still had no idea how, but it wasn’t impossible.
“And...”
“Well, if I can figure out how to get the attention of a god, I may be able to travel to Pluto to do it.”
“Wait, I thought we wanted to block the access of a god.”
“That was a different god. Since I have absolutely no idea how to do that, I thought I would concentrate on getting the attention of his rival. While I still have no idea how to contact some random god, it is suddenly more within the realm of the possible.”
“So how do you intend to get to Pluto?”
“There are some things I need work out first,” I replied haughtily. “I don’t suppose there is a daily shuttle there you never mentioned?”
“Yeah. No.” Jeremy stated shortly. “We have colonies on the Moon, Mars, Venus, and Europa.”
“Well, that’s encouraging...” I started.
“Which is irrelevant, since the Earth is quarantined. They seem to be afraid the apocalypse will spread.”
“Like a disease,” I asked with skepticism. I thought about it some more. There were some similarities. “Fine. I’ll let that percolate while I figure out what to do if I can get there.”
“Which one?” asked Beth.
“I suppose I should figure out how far the circle matrix extends first.”
“This is getting pretty complex,” complained the little girl. “Are you sure you just can’t throw another meteor at the bad god?”
“Let’s call that plan Z.”
Ten minutes later I was having an odd feeling of déjà vu. “After all that, you still want me to gather religious books about death related deities,” Jeremy exclaimed, exasperated.
“It’s completely different. Pay attention,” I retorted in a superior tone, hiding my amusement. “Previously I wanted you to gather any books you could find about religions, in the vague hope I could dig through them and extract information that might let me block the influence of the evil, bad mysterious god doing naughty things I can’t talk about.”
“And now?”
“Now I need you to gather all the books you can find detailing the methods of worship, in the slightly less vague hope that I can get that god’s attention and help block the naughty god.”
“I am still not seeing the difference.”
“The difference is that by focusing on the method of worship I can hopefully avoid being bored out of my damn mind reading a bunch of propagandist drivel written for low-grade morons.”
“What are the chances I will find you spontaneously worshiping Cthulhu the next time I see you?”
“It gets exponentially larger the longer you whine about this. Do you think I want to read through garbage? I have important things to do that Vivian and Conrad keep getting in the way of.”
“So. When you finally get this god’s attention... apparently somewhere on Pluto... are you going to tell him about your in-depth criticism of his religious dogma?”
“You are such an ass,” I chuckle as I tossed a loose pillow at him. A lighter pitched snore joined the magic elf lady sleeping on the sofa. “Looks like you bored Beth so much, you put her in a coma.”
“I’m her brother. I could be wearing a clown suit and singing ‘Springtime for Hitler’ and I’d bore her.”
“We should start movie night again; your world has sucky entertainment. The only decent things to watch are the old stuff.”
“Too true. It’s probably the main reason people today obsess about the past.”
“It is going to be even worse with the whole end of the world thing,” I pointed out. “Most of the crap that is put out is generated on those quantum computer Virtual Intelligences.”
“Yeah, maybe they will actually have writers and actors instead of plays generated by crappy software.”
“Wait a minute. That sounds like the movies would get better,” I grunted. “Hmm, I guess change is good if you can avoid being eaten by a dinosaur. Or fried by a ley line surge or...”
“I get the idea,” Jeremy groaned and threw the pillow back at me.
“That reminds me, not that it hasn’t been a hoot to have you and Beth sleep over. but aren’t your parents missing you?”
Jeremy gave me a long look and I got the feeling there was nuance I was missing. “Remember how I said my parents were from the initial nanotech era?”
“Yeah, back before the Australian Meltdown and they outlawed it,” I nodded. I sometimes paid attention, if the subject was interesting. Like magic, violence and melting continents.
“So all the people that had the irreversible procedure to get nanite upgrades...”
“Right, like regenerating, superhuman strength and endurance and immortality.”
“Just so. In order to prevent another nanite disaster they wear a thermal bomb around their neck and see a doctor once a week. Now with the collapse of reliable services and advanced medical care, what do you think happened?”
“Oh my god, Jeremy!” I consoled him. “They melted your parents. I am so sorry!” Parents are a big deal for humans. I think I am supposed to console him. Would a pat on the head be appropriat
e?
“No, you dufus,” Jeremy laughed, apparently shocked out of his melancholy. “The military put them in stasis. For the foreseeable future, they are going to be stored in a warehouse somewhere.”
“Well, that’s... good,” I hesitantly offered. Most of an entire generation had those nanite upgrades. Where the hell had the military gotten enough pods to put everyone with nanites and everyone injured in the apocalypse in stasis? Jeremy was exceptionally smart. No doubt he had already thought of it and was researching it. “Let me know if you need any help. You know, raiding a military warehouse or something.”
“I’ll let you know,” he responded seriously. Damn, I think I ruined our party mood.
Chapter 6
The next day found me in a military armored air car, along with Mei, Jeremy, and Beth. We were headed to the city’s special force headquarters. Apparently, that mysterious thing that they had been hunting me down for was still on the table. Maybe those wards that Sulayman put up to prevent the authorities from nosing into his properties could be placed around my house. I might actually get some uninterrupted research. Then again, my humans wouldn’t be able to find me... or their bedrooms.
“So why didn’t Stella want to come?” Matt called over his shoulder from the driver’s seat. Since Beth had submitted the paperwork to reinstate his existence after his resurrection, Conrad had transferred him to the new department despite him not being technically supernatural. He gave off a subtle aura normal humans the screaming willies. They couldn’t be around him for more than a few minutes before getting the feeling they were being haunted. Technically true, but inconvenient. Shifters weren’t really bothered by it, but they felt something was off.
“She... had other commitments,” Mei said uneasily.
“She ran away screaming, didn’t she?” I asked somewhat annoyed.
“I hadn’t realized elves were so technophobic,” Matt interjected.