Agent 29333’s face filled the screen. Though it had never been particularly pretty, Agent 27142 longed to see it in person again. “Agent 27142,” she practically screamed, “you must return to headquarters right away. I have found the remainder of the pink beast’s army, and it is worse than we could have imagined!”
Agent 27142 scowled. “Don’t you dare deign to tell me what I must do,” he barked.
Agent 29333’s face went pale. “I-I apologize, sir. But please return, and please bring every available force you can muster.”
Agent 27142 nodded. “Set course for headquarters,” he commanded his crew. And with that, the eagles began their process of flapping and shooting lightning into the pole that hung from the ceiling.
* * *
4 Of course, Agent 27142 had not spoken to this commanding officer in years, not since Agent 27142 had risen beyond the officer in the ranks and had been reassigned to the Roaming Fleet in the Fourth Sector of the Multiverse. He may have rethought how much he took the advice to heart had he discovered that his former commanding officer had experienced torture and murder at the hands of the many women he had subjugated under his twisted view of love when they finally unionized. After achieving better wages and more flexible hours, they slowly tore him limb from limb over the course of three weeks.
Chapter 10
AND SO IT BEGINS. AGAIN.
Normal-Art glided through the barrier between realities, Officer-Ginny’s eagle gripping his shirt in one talon and the collar of her uniform in the other. Its wings crackled with lightning each time it flapped them, drowning out the raucous noise of its squawking.
Normal-Art hated jumping between realities. He hated it more than he hated actual physical jumping, which he hated quite a lot. He had been promised that the headaches it created would get smaller with each successive jump until they eventually ceased altogether, but like so much else in life, it seemed that everyone had lied to him. He groaned.
Eventually, after what seemed an eternity and no time at all, the bird launched a bolt of lightning in front of them, and the trio flew into it. As with every jump, Art’s eardrums felt as though they would explode, so he screamed in pain. This made his headache worse, so he screamed louder. And then that made the headache even worse, so he screamed even louder. He seemed caught in an infinite loop of screaming and crescendoing pain until the trio exited from the lightning and touched down onto a landing pad on Earth 55,777.
Normal-Art fell directly onto his face. He would have screamed at that pain, too, but he found he was now too dizzy and too exhausted to do so. If he were able to glance around just now, he would see that the landing pad upon which he had crashed looked like an overlarge helipad. It lay atop a building nearly a hundred and twenty stories high with a red neon sign that poked up an extra thirty-feet that labeled the building Olympus. Nearly identical—though much shorter—buildings stretched across the horizon with different names in different neon letters ascribed to them. Each also had a nearly identical landing pad on its roof, and the constant lightning flashing across the horizon indicated that millions of similar jumps were happening across this planet-sized city with each passing second.
Officer-Ginny grabbed Normal-Art by the scruff of the neck and yanked him onto his feet. Her checkered hat fell from her head in the effort. Her blond hair tumbled down across her shoulders. For a moment, she reminded him of his Ginny, especially early in the morning when she got out of bed to gulp down the coffee he would make, her hair tangled and matted all about her head like an unkempt, ragged halo.
This Ginny scowled, and the memory fled from Normal-Art’s brain. She snatched the hat from the ground, placed it back on her head, and stuffed her hair back up inside it. She missed a few loose tangles, which curled down her back. Normal-Art began to reach out to help, but then he remembered that his hands were encased in plaster, and even worse, that he would likely lose the hand if he touched her with it. He slumped his shoulders and sighed, resigning himself to another day of utter impotence. Her eagle landed upon her shoulder and promptly shat. The excrement tumbled onto the ground and splattered on Normal-Art’s foot. He sighed once more, grasping the symbolism.
Officer-Ginny grabbed Normal-Art by the elbow and led him through a nearby door, down a flight of stairs lit by a blinking fluorescent light, and into an elevator. They rode it down to the seventh floor. Once the metal doors opened, Officer-Ginny dragged Normal-Art at a sprint to a war room at the end of the hall.
The room was lit by a single fluorescent light that seemed to be in competition with the light from the stairwell for which could blink more annoyingly. An eight-foot wide mahogany table filled the center of the room, surrounded by ten charcoal-gray rolling chairs. A video screen covered both the far wall and the adjacent wall to the left. A pole hung to the right of the door, below which sat a tray covered in newspapers. The eagle flapped from Officer-Ginny’s shoulder to perch on the pole, and Normal-Art cursed his luck that the damned thing could not have waited to defecate on the newspaper. As if to spite Normal-Art, the eagle stared into his eyes and shat once more. The excrement hit the newspaper in a steaming heap. Normal-Art frowned.
Officer-Ginny forced Normal-Art into the seat at the foot of the table, and then pressed a button on the back of the chair. Straps popped out of the base of the chair and surrounded Art from head to toe, holding him in place so that he could move nothing but his eyes and his right leg, which he could use to roll himself around as needed. She then sat down across from him at the head of the table and pressed a button atop the mahogany tabletop. A terminal emerged from the tabletop in front of her and she began clacking away at its keyboard. Behind him, Art heard a soft buzzing. He kicked the ground with his foot and spun his chair around to find the video screens had sprung to life.
A few hundred moving images appeared. Art began to open his mouth to ask at what he was looking, but Officer-Ginny preemptively cut him off. She barked, “It’s what the beetles are seeing. Now silence yourself. I need to focus.”
He did.
*
And much to his boredom and frustration, Art stayed cooped up in that war-room for eight weeks so that Officer-Ginny could monitor the beetles, their viewpoints constantly flashing on the screens. He passed the time drifting from consciousness to unconsciousness.
He was never allowed to stand fully upright, and only found himself able to stop his legs from falling asleep by leaning forward onto his feet so that his head rested on the table and the chair hung off his back like an awkward turtle shell. He would have long ago soiled himself into oblivion, but the chair apparently came equipped with some sort of robotic cleaning unit that prevented him from sitting in his own filth. It also occasionally massaged him. When the first massage happened, he squealed in surprise. But yet again, Officer-Ginny cut him off before he could ask by exclaiming, “The massages auto-run periodically to prevent blood clots. Now silence yourself. I need to focus.”
The viewpoints constantly shifted from the familiar setting of the barrier between realities to that of a foreign earth, back again to the shifting colorful-and-colorlessness of the barrier, and back to another earth. Once, a few of the viewpoints winked out as the beetles appeared near a snakelike lizard with weird flippers and a humanoid head. From the viewpoints of some of the other beetles, it became apparent that a rock had fallen from the sky and crushed them. The surviving scarabs quickly jumped from that reality and on to the next, where the people consisted of gelatinous blocks that wiggled to-and-fro about their business. And on and on the images shifted.
A digital banner at the top of this screen marked it as monitoring the beetles tracking the black bubbles, while a digital banner at the top of the left video screen marked it as tracking the white bubbles. He had watched the scarabs on the latter encounter an array of earths, including one in which the people were dinosaurs and monkeys, one in which the people were ruled by a domineering crab army from under the earth, and many others just as ridiculous. In his bor
edom, Art often glanced back and forth between the screens to the point that he grew ridiculously dizzy, and he had accidentally tipped his chair over multiple times because of this.
Three times a day, servants would drop off meals. Some sort of delicious-smelling meat and vegetables for Officer-Ginny, a live rodent for the eagle, and a smoothie that looked like a brownish-grayish blended version of Officer-Ginny’s food with a straw sticking out the top for Art, since he could not use his hands to eat. Art longed for these moments when the food was dropped off, as it alleviated the monotony.
Many times per day, Art sighed. And just as many times per day, Officer-Ginny told him to silence himself. Finally, on the seventh day of the eighth week, Officer-Ginny pointed at the video screen that monitored the beetles tracking the remnants of the pink bear’s army and squealed, “Got ‘em!”
*
Art squinted his eyes to watch the grainy footage. Officer-Ginny had programmed the beetles to enter stealth mode, which meant they were silent and camouflaged and using a low-power setting.
From the beetles’ vantagepoint, Normal-Art watched his former girlfriend. She was covered in pink knight’s armor and was holding a male centaur by the throat, smashing its head into the ground over and over until it was dead. He also witnessed a version of himself with an eye patch and glowing green hands ride into view on the back of a blond-haired female centaur. He repeatedly stabbed the centaur in the back with a pink dagger.
The pink bear floated into view, dancing and giggling. Officer-Ginny gasped in surprise. “B-B-But that thing’s supposed to be dead and scattered across every universe in existence,” she muttered.
Art wanted to gloat. He would have warned her weeks ago that the cosmic bears were too powerful for even atom-spreading lasers to stop them, but she and that bastard version of himself had tortured him too many times for him to have even the tiniest desire to help them, even if his help would benefit the infinite other people in the Multiverse that weren’t these torture-happy B.I.T. officers.
Instead of gloating—as he had no desire to be tortured again—he kept his mouth shut and listened to the scene playing out on the view screens. He heard the wet crunch of a skull shattering and the wet squish of a dagger tearing flesh and the inhuman cackling of a terrifying cosmic bear in surround sound from the speakers lining the walls of the room, and he wanted to vomit.
Unfortunately, he did not get the chance. As soon as the first dry heave left his mouth, Officer-Ginny began beating him and squealing at him to remain silent so she could think. He stopped heaving, so she stopped beating. She then ran back over to her terminal.
In seconds, the on-screen murders concluded. Art’s former girlfriend formed a pink tentacle from her palm and launched pink mist into the faces of the centaur corpses, at which point their eyes clouded pink and they stood upon their hooves. Officer-Ginny’s fingers danced across the keyboard, and one of the beetle viewpoints zoomed over to land amongst the matted fur of the female centaur’s tail.
The pink bear launched black bubbles from its paws, and one engulfed the centaur to which the lone beetle clung. Its entire viewpoint went black, and then this blackness was replaced by the infinite nothingness of the barrier between realities. The other beetles stayed on their current earth, landing on the ground and powering off. Their viewpoints winked out one by one until only the tagalong-beetle’s viewpoint was visible on the pink-bear-tracking screen.
“I must warn Agent 27142 that this cosmic beast is back,” she whispered to herself. “And if this one’s back, the other one has likely returned, too.”
In less than a second, the pink bear and its entourage landed upon a different earth. This one seemed oddly familiar to Art. Corpses of familiar snakelike lizards lay bloody and splattered beneath dusty rocks across nearly every inch of ground. But all realities seem to run together given enough time and lack of interest, so Art shrugged and thought no more of it.
“Gather round Me, all ye Arts and all Ginnys,” called the singsong voice of the pink bear.
Officer-Ginny typed new orders to the scarab, and it silently flew into the air to give a bird’s eye view of the scene. Officer-Ginny gasped, this time more loudly than she had when she realized the pink bear had reformed and was on the loose again. Pink-eyed Arts and Ginnys stretched unto the horizon, thousands upon thousands upon thousands of them, at least a hundred times more than the B.I.T. had battled back on Earth 616,000.
From below, the pink bear called to its army, “Arts and Ginnys, the time be here. Me take you to destroy and destruct Me’s single greatest threat. Me am going to take you to attack Earth 55,777, headquarters of B.I.T. And then they no bother Me ever again! Teeheehee!”
Officer-Ginny squealed in distress. She pressed a button, and a message flashed across the screen that read: Dialing Agent 27142.
Agent 90909’s half-goateed elven face appeared, filling the video screen. “Yes?” the agent demanded.
“I need to speak with Agent 27142 immediately. This is of dire importance!”
“Very well,” Agent 90909 responded slowly. The video screen faded to gray for a few moments while Agent 29333 was put on hold, and then after what seemed entirely too long, it sprang back to life and filled with Officer-Art’s face.
“Agent 27142,” Officer-Ginny practically screamed, “you must return to headquarters right away. I have found the remainder of the pink beast’s army, and it is worse than we could have imagined!”
Officer-Art’s scowl filled the entire screen. “Don’t you dare deign to tell me what I must do.”
“I-I apologize, sir,” replied Officer-Ginny. “But please return, and please bring every available force you can muster.”
Officer-Art stood silent for a moment. Finally, he nodded a curt nod. “Set course for headquarters,” he ordered his crew.
Officer-Ginny pressed a button to end the transmission. Before Normal-Art had the chance to say anything, she squealed, “Don’t even open your mouth. I have too much on my plate right now to be distracted by you.”
The servants chose that time to appear with lunch. Normal-Art leaned over and began sucking at his straw, deciding after he finished that he wished he had more on his plate—or in his cup, as it were.
*
Officer-Art walked at a brisk pace, brisk enough that Normal-Art and Officer-Ginny had to trot to keep up. With each step, Officer-Art’s heels clicked and the eagle on his shoulder bobbed, and when the trio approached the elevator, his shoes squeaked as he halted. He jabbed his finger on the up button over and over.
A soft ding signaled that an elevator car had arrived, and when it opened, Normal-Art saw that it was already packed. Officer-Art pointed at three subordinates near the front of the elevator and said, “You, you, and you. Out.”
They obeyed, and Normal-Art found himself crammed into the lift with Officers Art and Ginny. The bureaucrat nearest the buttons asked which floor. “The Forge,” responded Officer-Art. Everyone else on the lift seemed to stifle a gasp or stand in awed silence.
The door shut, and as it did so, Normal-Art found that the elevator car was so packed that he had no choice but to lean in close to Officer-Art. He tried to hold his breath so that he did not accidentally exhale on the fascist’s face, which would be an invitation to a night of torture and maiming. But after a few seconds, he could hold it no longer and breathed slowly out of the right side of his mouth, away from Officer-Art. A woman squealed, and Normal-Art glanced over to realize he had just breathed directly in this stranger’s face. He muttered an apology, but then when he could not hold his breath any longer, he did it again.
Eventually the elevator ascended to the penthouse floor—on the one-hundred and twentieth floor, just below the roof—at which point the only beings still inside were the trio and the officers’ two eagles.
The elevator door opened. Acrid smoke filled the elevator car, and Normal-Art found himself coughing uncontrollably. Officer-Art grabbed him by the arm and yanked him out of the elevat
or car. Stepping out of its confines, it seemed as though they passed into a completely new reality, as what stretched out before them seemed larger than what could be contained on the top floor of an office building.
Before them loomed an archway that led into a dark cavern within which fiery lights danced. The archway was decorated in beaten and sculpted bronze, and as Normal-Art stared at the metal, he found himself hypnotized by the imagery on it, which seemed to come alive as Normal-Art studied it. At the base of the left side of the arch, farmers planted seeds and fertilized them with dung tossed from the backs of carts. A panel just above this showed rain falling and crops growing. Art craned his neck at the next panel up, and witnessed happy farmers hauling in the harvest. At the crest above the threshold, marauders invaded and murdered the farmers while the farmers were gathered for a feast. In the top right panel, the farmers decomposed and grass grew from their bodies. In the following panel, oxen ate from the grass and dropped their dung upon the ground, while the marauders, now owning this land, collected the dung. Finally, the last panel on the bottom right depicted the marauders planting crops and fertilizing it with dung tossed from the backs of carts.
Normal-Art was so entranced that when Officer-Art shoved him to move him along, he felt like he had just awoken from a dream. A long hallway lay before him, and with each passing step, the air grew thicker, smokier, and hotter. Beads of sweat formed upon Art’s forehead and trickled down his face. Finally, the trio and their pair of birds emerged from the hallway and into a monstrous forge.
A cottage-sized bellows sat on a stand near a great flame, and a robotic cyclops continuously pumped the bellows up and down, slowly and steadily. Meanwhile, weapons and armor lined every square inch of this place, from swords to war hammers to knightly armor to panzer tanks. The biggest commonality between each weapon was that none was merely a tool for murder. Much like the arch that marked the entrance to this area, each weapon displayed imagery or a story of some sort beautifully hammered into it.
The Endless War That Never Ends Page 10