A few blocks south, a large expanse of pale white bubbles filled the spaces between buildings. Based on past encounters between the B.I.T. and the Blue One’s army, Normal-Art knew that the blue bear would be there somewhere amongst the white bubbles, keeping them open to provide a means of escape and resurrection for his army.
Normal-Art glanced north and found the pink bear. It was the size of a parade balloon, and it was expanding its jaws the width of at least two city blocks. It bit into the earth, sat back and chewed carefully, and then repeated. The image would have been downright cute if not for the massive slaughter that accompanied it.
The fifteen carrier-class shift-ships under Officer-Art’s command finished jumping into view. Their engines blasted to life and they spread out into a circular formation, forming a floating, deadly ring around the city. Normal-Art watched as the bottom of each carrier opened and thousands of ships poured out. Though they looked to Normal-Art like fighter jets from his reality, he knew they were far more technologically advanced than anything invented on Earth 6,076.
Officer-Art stared at the humanoids flying toward his fleet from the ground below and strummed his fingers across his chin. Normal-Art knew from past experience that these impending attackers were a mix of other versions of himself and of Ginny, some living members of the Blue One’s army and others undead pink puppets from the Pink One’s army. A dreadful knot filled the pit of Normal-Art’s stomach, knowing that in a way, he was about to watch himself get knocked out of existence hundreds—if not thousands—of times. He wondered if Officer-Art felt the same twinge of concern, but when the B.I.T. officer glanced over at him and Normal-Art saw the hateful scowl that spread across the man’s face, the thought fled from his mind.
Officer-Art sat down in his captain’s chair and pressed a button. “Squadrons One and Seven, commence run zero-mark-three. Squadrons Omega and Nu, commence run eight-bravo-eight. Squadrons Comma, Semi-Colon, Poundsign, and Asterisk, remain near the carriers and commence shield action tilde-six. Remaining ships, enter dogfight mode and fire at will. All units switch weapons to Scatter Gun Mode.”
Normal-Art frowned at the mention of Scatter Gun. He had been present when the B.I.T.’s Chief Technology Officer had boarded the B.S.S.C. Mimessiah to deploy to Officer-Art’s fleet the weapons upgrade, which had been invented by the B.I.T. High Commander himself. The upgrade was a terrier-sized laser gun that tapped upon the energy reserves of a young reality that had just recently gone through its Big Bang. The manner in which the gun’s barrel was rifled manipulated the energy so that the barrel became a conduit for jumping between realities, much like the antennae on Jump Totems. The biggest difference here was that there was no totem to guide the jumps, and instead, victims’ atoms were scattered hither-and-yon across every reality in existence, effectively killing the victims and diffusing their particles so finely that they would be impossible to resurrect by either the pink or blue bears. The Chief Technology Officer had called the weapon a Scatter Gun.
When Officer-Art had inquired how many of the devastating weapons the B.I.T. was planning to supply for the fleet, the C.T.O. had chortled and then revealed that the High Commander had sold one of the B.I.T.’s more mineral-rich realities to pay for every single crew member in the fleet to receive a pistol with the functionality and every single weapon on every single ship to receive a turret with the mode. This long, cosmic war could finally be ended, ever-so-brutally. Normal-Art knew that the war’s conclusion would not come so easily, but he also knew better than to speak aloud this opinion, so he sat in silence as the C.T.O. laughed maniacally with Officers Art and Ginny.
A few dozen explosions below Normal-Art brought his mind back to the present. Normal-Art watched as the B.I.T. jets began suffering heavy losses. But these losses were accompanied by flashes of lightning that erupted from the fighter planes’ new Scatter Guns, signaling equal losses to the pink and blue armies with which they had begun skirmishing.
Officer-Art ignored them. “Give me visual from Squadrons One and Omega,” he ordered.
The left quarter of the screen morphed to show the viewpoint of the commander of Squadron One, while the right quarter of the screen morphed to show the equivalent from the commander of Squadron Omega.
Normal-Art felt numb as he watched the left quarter of the view screen, where Squadrons One and Seven were diving toward the white bubbles. The ships in these squadrons staggered themselves so that a single ship dove between each white bubble, followed seconds later by a wingman. Hordes of monstrous versions of Arts and Ginnys leapt from the bubbles—members of blue army’s reserves, of which the blue bear always seemed to keep a plethora at the ready to reinforce his army as needed—and landed on the fighter planes. A two-headed Ginny who rode upon an elk landed on the cockpit of the commander of Squadron One. The glass cracked. The elk reared back and smashed its front hooves through the glass. The video feed from the commander disappeared, only to be replaced with a different feed from the next most senior pilot in the squadron. From this view, Normal-Art watched the former commander’s ship explode, taking the Ginny with it into a fiery grave. A version of Art with no legs but carrying two giant warhammers landed on the cockpit of the ship belonging to this new video feed.
This pilot called out over the intercom, “This is One-Beta. Engage energy shields.” Meanwhile, he flipped a switch in the cockpit.
Unfortunately for the blue bear’s army, the B.I.T. ships had experienced this tactic from the army before. Lightning covered the ships and fried the Arts and Ginnys unlucky enough to have already landed on them.
The fighter jets continued zooming between the buildings and between the bubbles, firing upon everyone they could and disintegrating these luckless Arts and Ginnys into nothingness. As the seconds passed and more and more of the squadron fell to the attrition inflicted upon them by whatever ridiculous versions of Arts and Ginnys that the Multiverse could dream up, the video monitor changed to new viewpoints as replacement-commander after replacement-commander died, sometimes changing so fast it became dizzying.
Finally, on probably the fourteenth or fifteenth viewpoint, the blue bear loomed in view, floating amongst a sea of its white bubbles. “On me,” called this pilot. “I’ve got the beast in my sights.”
Before she could fire, the blue bear pointed to this pilot, and a white bubble launched from its fingertips. The bubble encompassed the cockpit, and this pilot found herself relocated to the barrier between realities, surrounded by the hordes of the blue army’s reserves. They attacked, and her viewpoint disappeared, only to be replaced by the next in line.
“I’ve got a lock,” called this pilot. He jerked his stick right to dodge a bubble that the blue bear fired toward him, and then jerked it back just in time to fire before crashing into the bear. A crackling explosion filled the monitor, and when the video connection transferred to the next pilot’s viewpoint, both the blue bear and the prior ship exploded. Though Normal-Art knew it was impossible for him to physically hear the bear from way up here, the bear’s scream filled his brain, anyway. Normal-Art screamed in response and watched in shock as hundreds of pale white bubbles erupted from the bear’s paws, launching forth in all directions. Then the bear and the explosion disappeared.
Normal-Art knocked his head against the metal headrest of his chair until the pain from the bear’s screaming voice left him. He glanced up, and nobody seemed to have noticed his outburst, so he shrugged.
The pilot in this new viewpoint cheered, and then ordered, “All remaining members of Squadrons One and Seven on me. Primary objective complete. Commence secondary objective.”
And with that, the remaining members of these squadrons began mopping up the remainder of the blue bear’s army on the ground.
Meanwhile, from the viewpoint on the right side of the view screen, the commander of Squadron Omega dodged between the flying puppets of the pink army’s hordes. All around her, flashes from the jets’ weapons systems disintegrated the hordes. Soon, a wayward
version of Ginny with car-sized barracudas in place of her arms and legs landed on the hull of this commander’s ship and ripped it apart. The eyes of this Ginny and her barracuda-appendages shone pink until the ship exploded, and then they no longer shone at all.
Much like the viewpoint for the squadron on the left side of the screen, the viewpoint for this squadron changed over and over to replacement commanders as the pilots lost their lives to the carnage.
In moments, a member of the squadron got close enough to the pink bear to get a clear shot at it. The bear exploded in a ball of lightning. It mimicked the blue bear in launching hundreds of bubbles from its paws—these black rather than white—and then disappeared. This time, Normal-Art felt no scream inside his head, but when he looked at the middle of the view screen and down at the bird’s eye view of the battle below, he saw the gigantic pink blob flopping around like a fish out of water, and a pang of sympathy went out to his former girlfriend, as he knew exactly the pain she was experiencing.
Normal-Art glanced back over to the left side of the view screen. He watched in horror as that pilot set his sights on Drillbot. “N-,” Normal-Art began to scream, but a white bubble flooped into view from above, encompassed Drillbot, and then disappeared. All across the battlefield, members of each army were being swept at random into white or black bubbles that were now bouncing all through the city. Normal-Art watched as a black bubble crashed into Ginny’s blob, and he sighed. He had hoped for her sake that she might get to finally experience some peace through a well-placed Scatter Gun bolt.
Moments later, the battle was done, and other than the squadrons disintegrating the Art and Ginny stragglers—those who had missed their rides out of here via the randomly bouncing bubbles—a peace fell across the city. Buildings smoldered, and rubble tumbled, and innocent bystanders screamed for help, but this reality had been saved from both ultimate destruction and ultimate resurrection.
Officer-Art flicked a couple switches on his captain’s chair and scanned the results. He raised his fist in victory, and his eagle swooped down and landed upon his forearm. “There is no tangible sign of the cosmic threats in this reality, in the Barrier, or on any other known reality. We did it! This day shall mark the day that we won this endless war!”
The bridge erupted in cheers.
Normal-Art, however, knew of what these bears were capable—especially since he could still feel the itch of the blue bear’s presence in his brain—and knew that sending their atoms tumbling across the nigh-infinite Multiverse would do naught but slow them down, and probably not even all that much, since they seemed able to access and travel across the barrier between realities at will without needing Jump Totems. But Normal-Art held his mouth shut, knowing that a happier Officer-Art meant a nicer and less-torturey Officer-Art.
So Normal-Art leaned back and sighed, watching the surviving fighter jets return to their carriers. The itch in his brain grew stronger, which was an annoying sensation, but much better than the overwhelming scream that followed the bear’s encounter with the Scatter Gun blast. Normal-Art somehow knew that the blue bear was signaling to him that this war would never be over and that no weapon the B.I.T. could conjure up would stop the bear for long. Normal-Art slumped his shoulders and stared at his feet, yet again hating everything about the Multiverse.
Chapter 7
YOU SPIN ME RIGHT ROUND, ROBOT, RIGHT ROUND
Drillbot tumbled end over end. If he were a creature of flesh and blood, he may have thought the tumble seemed like it lasted forever, but the basic computational part of his system told him it had only been six days, and at the rate of four tumbles per minute, he had merely tumbled thirty-four thousand five hundred and sixty times.
Scattered around him in their own eccentric tumbles were those others lucky enough to have been broadsided by a cosmic white bubble, along with whatever reserves had still been lurking in the space between realities before the Blue One had been disintegrated. These totaled around three hundred strong, a mere tenth of the number with which the Army of Life had entered the battle.
The cosmic bubbles had whisked away members of both armies at random, and the reserves had quickly dispatched any members of the pink army who had been dropped amongst them. These lifeless husks now tumbled nonchalantly beside the ragtag remainder of the Army of Life.
So many members of each army had passed back and forth between the opposing forces throughout this long war that one tumbling Ginny compared the situation to the children’s card game, War, where each child draws a card, and the child who draws the higher card keeps both cards. As the children cycle over and over through their decks, cards pass back and forth again and again until the kids get sick of the tedious game, quit, and go play outside. The biggest difference here, the Ginny pointed out, was that the bears were not little kids who would grow bored with the tedium. They intended to play forever, and though they were gone for now, no mere B.I.T. weapon would keep them away forever. Drillbot soon found out how right she was.
After another six days and another thirty-four thousand five hundred and sixty tumbles, Drillbot’s telescopic eyes and robotic senses noticed microscopic blue pixels appearing near him and joining in his tumble. After yet another six days and yet another thirty-four thousand five hundred and sixty tumbles, a tiny blue paw had stitched itself together from the little pieces of pixilation. Drillbot smiled his version of a smile and continued waiting.
Finally, after twelve more days and another sixty-nine thousand one hundred and twenty tumbles, the blue bear had recollected enough of himself to stitch together both arms and his head, but this did not occur until long after most of the remaining Army of Life survivors had fallen ill due to overexposure to the environment in the barrier between realities—symptoms including, but not limited to: insane ramblings, howling with madness, dry mouth, elevated heart rate, erectile dysfunction, and drawing on walls with feces. However, since the expanse between realities is short on walls, the latter mostly manifests as victims waving their fully loaded hands back and forth at each other.
“Me am growing stronger,” the Blue One said to Drillbot. “But will be easier to reform when Me and Me army stay still in single place on single reality. So, Me take us to destroyed backwater reality in the Great Frontier section of charted Multiverse and heal it and heal Me.”
“[whir] Is healing a reality the wisest – CLACK – the wisest course of action?” asked Drillbot. “Won’t the B.I.T. detect it and send a fleet to attack us?”
“Teeheehee,” said the Blue One. “Drillbot good thinking to be concerned, but Me already thought of this problem and searched for solution! There no B.I.T. eye focused on this destroyed reality Me will be taking Drillbot and Me army to. Me am knowing because the atoms of Me that be stuck in the reality that monitors it have found sick-making chemicals leaking into the B.I.T. outpost there. Crew comatose, so nobody watching, and nobody detect Me healing.”
“[whir] O – CLACK – OK,” Drillbot responded.
And with that, the blue bear pointed below the ragtag army and created a gigantic white bubble, which enveloped the entire tumbling group.
*
If Drillbot were capable of feeling nausea as his fleshy comrades did, then he would be vomiting up every meal he had ever eaten right alongside them. But he was not, so he did not.
He did, however, hate the sound that meatbags make when they expel their nutrients from their mouths, so he rolled to a hilltop on the perimeter of the Blue Army’s landing zone to watch the sunset, a mix of oranges and reds and purples that would have been mesmerizing had Drillbot not just spent most of the last month twirling through the barrier between realities, watching the infinite colors on the edge of his vision swirl with the blackness in the center to form a miasma that made him never care to taste the cosmic color-parfait again.
This world had not existed when the Army of Life had entered this reality. Everything was instead a colorless expanse of nothingness, and the Blue One had spent the first six days
they were here reforming this reality from its void. Meanwhile, the various Arts and Ginnys continued their tumbles end over end until the reality had been resurrected to the state in which it had existed before the pink army destroyed it some time ago.
This morning, when the blue bear completed his restorative work, the bear used his cosmic bubbles to transport the army down upon the clearing in which they currently resided. Then the bear proclaimed that he would take today to rest. The Arts and Ginnys responded by vomiting up the contents of their stomachs as their bodies readjusted to existence sans tumbling.
A bug zoomed past Drillbot’s telescopic eyes. Before him lay miles and miles and miles of dense jungle, from which echoed the hoots and tweets and roars that one would expect to find in nature. Every now and again, great birds—some red, some blue, some purple, some green—would take wing from the foliage, rise into the air, and disappear amongst the clouds.
One particularly colorful blue one with a crooked beak and beady yellow eyes ascended from a tree nearly a hundred yards from where Drillbot stood. Its wings beat the air, and loose soil swirled from the ground to cover Drillbot in a layer of dust. Movement atop the bird caught Drillbot’s attention, and when he focused on it, he noted that dozens of monkeys clung to the great bird’s neck. The monkeys wore vests made of wide arrays of colored feathers, and three of them pointed in Drillbot’s direction and hooted. Drillbot waved a drill at them in greeting. Soon, the bird disappeared high into the sky.
The Endless War That Never Ends Page 6