Other Places 1: Shortcuts

by P. S. Power

  Orange Cat Publishing

  Titles by P.S. Power

  Young Ancients:

  (Tor)

  The Builder

  Knight Esquire

  Knight of the Realm

  Ambassador

  Counselor

  Slave Line

  (Timon)

  The Dark Half of the Sun

  Dead End:

  A Very Good Man

  A Very Good Neighbor

  A Very Good Thing

  A Very Dark Place

  Keeley Thomson:

  Demon Girl

  Keelzabub

  Mistress of Souls

  *Christmas of the Vampire

  (Related Universe Novella)

  Gwen Farris:

  Abominations

  Monsters

  The Infected:

  Proxy

  Gabriel

  Cast Iron

  Proxy: Reunions

  The Lament:

  Without Rhythm

  Other Places:

  Shortcuts

  Stand Alone Titles by P.S. Power

  Crayons

  Unrelenting Terror

  Shortcuts

  P.S. Power

  Contents

  Chapter one

  Chapter two

  Chapter three

  Chapter four

  Chapter five

  Chapter six

  Chapter seven

  Chapter eight

  Chapter nine

  Chapter ten

  Chapter eleven

  Chapter twelve

  Chapter thirteen

  Chapter fourteen

  Chapter fifteen

  Chapter sixteen

  Chapter seventeen

  Chapter eighteen

  Chapter nineteen

  Chapter twenty

  Chapter one

  "Wake the hell up Zack." The face in the mirror looked horrible, and talked to him as if it had a right to use that kind of language. His reflection was a bit abusive at the best of times, but lately it had been riding him kind of hard. That might have been the near starvation talking, but either way, it was less than fun.

  The voice didn't stop. Nattering on like it did when he was reluctant to do what it told him to.

  "Three months without a job. No money coming in at all. I get it, depression isn't fun and yes, that last place sucked donkey balls, but seriously... you need to go and find something or Troy's going to have to kick you out."

  Zack wanted to call the face a liar, or say that he really had been trying to find something. That wasn't the truth though, so the words wouldn't come. As annoying as his mirror was being, it was also always honest with him, wasn't he? If Mirror Him said he needed to go and get a job, then he needed to. The problem there was twofold. First he'd have to find something in this economy, which wasn't easy at all, even for normal people, then he'd have to convince the people hiring that his horrible and spotty work record had nothing to do with him being a bad person, or even a poor worker.

  It was just the insanity that threw him off in most cases.

  "Cop out." His own face sung at him, looking him dead in the eye. They were blood shot from just getting up, but a nice and brilliant green for all that. "Most people have problems and they manage to keep themselves employed, don't they? It isn't like you're stupid, or even ugly. You just need to get out and do it. Follow your gut. Stop being a complete wimp and take a risk or two. If that doesn't work you'll have to go and sell drugs or something, or worse, go back home to your grandparents in failure. Is that what you want?" He was getting aggressive with himself, which was never a good sign. It was going to be a hard day if Mirror Him was screaming the whole time.

  Zack looked at the un-brushed hair, which was shaggy, and a dirty brown that had very seldom managed to impress women very much, over the very thin face that badly needed a shave. At least if he was going to take the mirror's advice and stop being a whining little girl. No one wanted to hire a person that actually looked like they lived on the street after all.

  "Alright, I'll go, but I don't want to hear about it later when I don't get anything. That part isn't my fault."

  The other him shrugged expressively, which he wasn't doing at all.

  "Tell you what champ, you go out and actually try to find something and I'll give you all the way until tomorrow morning in peace. Then we do it all again until it works. Well, that or until I see a guy in a nice suit whose wallet I think we can take. So what do you say, deal?" There was a lot of wheedling in the tone, but it got Zack to smile and nod. It was important not to fight with yourself too much, wasn't it?

  "Fine. I'll try. I look like a homeless person though and that's going to be hard to get past in most places." For one thing he didn't have any good clothing left and for another he was out of deodorant. He had been for over a month.

  In half a week the toothpaste would be gone too. It wasn't that his roommate, Troy, wouldn't get some for him or anything, for all the mirror mentioned him throwing Zack out. In fact the guy had been great the whole time. He never got after Zack for being lazy and not getting a job at all, or complained about the bills. It wasn't fair though, him living off of his friend like he had been, giving nothing back. He might not be the world's greatest person, but he wasn't a user. Not on purpose at least.

  The mirror nodded and made itself sound a bit happier.

  "Exactly! So glad we agree. Now go and look at the back of your closet. There might be something there." The mirror smiled at him, his teeth nice enough at least, if not pearly white. In the main he looked... pretty average. Maybe a bit better than that if he had good clothing and a smile on his face.

  He looked, just in case something new had grown like a fungus, clothing wise, while he wasn't looking. It had never happened before in his life, but there was always a first time. That hadn't happened, but at the very back, behind a box of old pictures and books his grandparents had sent with him when he'd left home, he found something to wear. An old heavy sweater with a copper zipper in the front that turned it into a turtleneck. It was a cable knit, he thought, not up on what different knitting pattern types were called. Not really. His grandmother did that as a hobby, and he'd seen it, even helped wind yarn for it, but that was all.

  A quick shower, shave, and session with his old toothbrush, plus his cleanest pair of black jeans, got him nearly ready. They'd fit perfectly a few months ago and were now loose all over, by nearly three sizes. His belt barely held them up any more, either. Just to finish it off he added his old running shoes, that had really seen better days. The best thing he could say about them was that they'd be low to the ground so people were less likely to see them.

  He looked at the version of him that actually cared about life and nodded. It wasn't good at all. That got a face made at him that he didn't even have to wipe the steam on the glass away to see.

  "Oh, don't worry about it. You aren't trying out for lead gigolo or anything. You look poor, true, but guess what... Surprise! You are. Tell 'em that just means you'll work harder."

  He'd be sure to do that, if anyone actually let him talk at all. It wasn't fair of him to think that people would be rude right off the bat, but more often than not they turned on him. Normally faster, rather than slower, on that point too. That had to do with him acting strange, which he couldn't really help all the time. People didn't like that at all.

  OK, he knew better than to go around seeming crazy. As far as he could tell, he wasn't stupid, like Mirror Him had said. He was decently bright even. It was just that seeing things and hearing voices wasn't exactly in the perfect range for sane at all.

  The only thing that had saved him from the institution was that his little voice in his head t
ended to be pretty positive in the main. At least it didn't normally suggest he hurt others or himself. That meant he wasn't a danger to anyone.

  Zack was in danger though. Of starvation. That was the real reason he had to find something fast. Troy and he had half a box of Ramen left. It was enough for each of them to have two packets of noodles per day, for two days. It was one thing for him to have to do without food because he was lazy or broken inside, but making his friend do it was plain wrong. No, he had to get money and it had to be that day. At least the promise of something coming in to give them hope.

  There hadn't been a lot of that for him lately. Hope.

  The world outside was cold, so he grabbed his jacket, which wasn't exactly up to the current weather at all. It had holes in the pockets for one thing. Most things had holes though, if you looked at them right.

  That was his thing. He could see the holes, the twists and turns in objects, people, and even space. It sounded pretty cool, but in the main it just meant he could go places other people couldn't see.

  "Which is still pretty awesome. You just need to find a way to use that to our advantage, Zacko." Mirror Him said, trying to boost his morale. He'd gotten to the door several times before in the last month, but he hadn't left the house at all, after the eighty-three rejections before that.

  For some reason that was actually what he needed to hear today, that he had something good about himself, and decided that it was time to check out his neighbor's yard. It sounded funny, but there was a tree there, right by the street side walkway, directly in front of his door practically, if ten feet to the right counted for that. It was an elm, he thought, knowing somewhere from the lessons his grandpa had given him that it was a slippery elm to be precise. This one was twisted and warped, the sidewalk bent underneath it too. That was a great sign of a nice shortcut. He'd never really bothered to look at it too hard, because it wasn't his yard. Property rights were important.

  "Yeah, right. Because anyone cares if you use the space rift in their yard? Most can't even see you do it. You know that. People are morons that way."

  The one nice thing about Mirror Him, was that Zack didn't actually talk to himself out loud when he spoke, like a lot of crazies did. It meant he just did strange things, and gave startled or funny looks a lot, instead of going full-on nutbag most of the time. Really, that part kind of helped. If nothing else it gave him some small sense of being normal. It was a false perception, sure, he knew that, but that illusion was priceless to him. You had to cling to the little things some days. Or in his case, most of them.

  The elm tree was right next to the bend in space, which, when he glanced through it carefully, seemed to have an opening in a parking lot. There weren't a lot of cars, but enough it might be near a business or maybe close to a fast food place that was hiring for the holidays. He couldn't make out a building for some reason, which was a little odd. Normally when he looked into a rift, he could see until something blocked his vision, but this one just kind of fuzzed out after a few hundred feet.

  No one was watching him overly, so moving quickly he walked into the warp, hitting it exactly right for him to end up on the other side. Looking down at his feet Zack smiled. Not at the bit of white sock showing through the top of the ratty black shoe, but at the cracks in the ground. They warped perfectly, showing that the rift he came through was stable. It could be a pain in the behind to find one of the kind that just skipped around. It could take hours to find his way back when that happened, if it was far enough away from where he needed to be.

  Better, this one was actually bigger on this side, meaning it was essentially permanent. He could see his house really clearly too when he peered back the other way. It was strange that he'd ignored this one for so long, now that he examined it a little. It should have practically screamed at him to try it before. Come to think of it, the thing had been. Calling to him for months. Only he'd been blocking it out for some reason.

  When he turned around he saw why.

  It was a shopping mall. That wasn't why Zack would ignore it. He liked places like that as much as the next person. They were filled with stuff and new things to see. They even had hot women in them from time to time. It was that, inside this particular building in front of him were no fewer than nine bends in space. Not just rifts, like what he took to get around, not having a car. No, these things were huge. Vast things that could go anywhere.

  It was a nexus.

  He recognized it from the description in some of the books he'd read at his grandparents house. Things on magic and the real history of the world mainly. A few on law, though it was for Mages, not regular people. They hadn't hidden that from him, that they practiced magic, and that he was stunted that way. They just didn't talk about it a lot for some reason. When he asked about it they just said it had to do with them being retired. That wasn't the real reason of course. It was about him.

  Or had been. Eventually they'd relaxed a bit, when they realized that no one was coming to steal him away again.

  "Ooooh. You have got to get in there. This place is perfect. Think where you could go with access to even one real node. Get a job in this place and you can vacation anywhere in the world you want next year." The voice coming from the back of his head, but inside, seemed more than a little pleased by the idea.

  For Zack it was kind of scary, to tell the truth. Like an amusement park ride that was about to plunge straight down toward the earth. In fact he was just about to turn around and go back home when he started walking forward like a moron instead. It was time to get some work, and coming to this place couldn't be an accident, not at all.

  He needed a job and really, for all it was strange to him, there was a certain kind of comfort in being near the bends and ripples that surrounded the place. It was so clear to him that he was surprised that even regular people would try to build here. Things would probably fall down every ten or twenty years, no matter how well they were made. The place looked to be in good repair however. Maybe they could use help on the crew for that. He could probably tell them where things were going to fall apart next.

  Once inside he noticed that it looked a little plain. There were the normal fake plants in huge ceramic planters and benches to sit on, all resting on very standard red ceramic brick tile. It was clean, but that was about all he could say for it.

  Most of the store fronts were closed too, at least at this end of the mall, which didn't seem to bode well for his chances of getting work. There were some shoppers in the place, walking around, going into one place or another it seemed, so while not busy, it wasn't dead either. Slow for this time of year, but it would probably pick up, since it was the beginning of December. There were no holiday displays up or anything yet, which was odd. Most places on T.V. had been advertising since late October. Maybe they were just being traditional and waiting for the actual season to come around?

  This seemed to be the naturally partitioned far side of the store. Everyplace had one, and in this case the two stores on this end, facing each other, were it. Like the fat kid in school that was left almost last every time they chose sides for a game. Zack hadn't been in regular school past the time he'd been kidnapped, but he was always one of the first picked back before that. He'd actually had something close to charisma at one point. When he was nine or so.

  It wasn't the best rationale for a job search, but he could see a cute woman working in a brightly lit place called Yoghurt World. It was decked out in cheery oranges and yellows and the girl who was cleaning the counter smiled at him, when she noticed him looking at her. It was either walk in for a job application or admit to himself that he was totally checking her out. Not that he had a problem with that, but if he was going to admit that, he needed to go and talk to her and try to pick her up. Without money that wasn't happening, so he went with option one.

  "Why can't it be both?" M.H. said, the tone just a little bit too playful for a real job search. Before he could do more than think about it, the mental creation grunte
d. "Sorry, not trying to destroy the flow. Go get 'em tiger. Women can't resist an assertive man. Well, I mean, they can, if they attack the eyes, throat and groin rapidly and with sufficient force, but you know what I mean."

  Zack didn't, of course, except that it seemed like his subconscious mind was saying that this woman would kick his ass if he wasn't polite enough. Since that wouldn't be hard to do, as weak as he was right now, he decided to go for being as professional as he could manage.

  She didn't have a name tag, so he didn't know what her position at the place was. Her dress was very old fashioned and she had a cute white apron that was very clean, over it. When he came in she scurried behind the counter and smiled at him, a closed lip thing, so the fangs wouldn't show as much. Most people wouldn't have noticed it, but there was a bulge where they protruded just a bit, held under the upper lip. To each their own though, Zack wasn't one to judge based on things like that, was he? No... he talked to the man in the mirror and got responses, so who was he to judge anyone?

  "Hello, is the manager around? I'm looking for work and wondering if I could get a job application. They say it's always best to go to the person that does the hiring, if possible." He was talking too much, but it sounded smooth so far. He hoped so at least. The woman seemed happy enough to see him, her eyes going just a little red inside the natural brown.

  She looked at him seriously and then retrieved something from under the counter. A single sheet of paper.

  "I'm Lenore, the manager here. We might be able to use someone part time on the morning shift actually. It's a very slow time of day for us, though we like to keep very high quality standards. Would you like to try something?" She didn't wait to see how he'd reply, beginning to work instantly, and his mouth fairly watered at the idea of a free sample. He looked at the paper which was nearly identical to a hundred like it he'd filled out before and probably came from a book of the things. Generic and plain.