When that was done, Tammy took one of the books from the pile.
“While there are pens and writing paper here, lets write our email addresses down,” she suggested, then she added, “for when we get out of here.” She definitely wanted to keep in touch with the other three if, she corrected herself, when she returned home.
Ulrich offered to email her the photos he’d taken of her, and perhaps they could visit each other one day. A reunion of some sort.
“Excellent idea,” Etsu said. She took one of the books and a pen and started to write. She tore a page out of the book, tore it in half and gave one piece to Tammy and another to Ulrich.
Tammy let Ulrich write his email address on her paper and then wrote hers on his. After that she copied theirs on two different pieces of paper for Etsu and Hiroshi.
Hiroshi looked at her inquiringly.
“We don’t know what’ll happen when we escape from here,” Tammy said and the others nodded. “You and Etsu both need the addresses. We could all be split up or arrive back in the wrong place. We may be able to help each other in the real world.”
Tammy tore her piece of paper into a smaller piece, then folded it and stuffed it in the front of her bikini top. She didn’t trust the Alter Ego Dimension to let her escape with the stuff she picked up here, such as the baggy trousers she had on. Then she realized that that thought was stupid. If the trousers vanished, so would the paper and she’d lose the contact details anyway. While she was re-reading the addresses to fix them in her memory, the others stuffed their papers into whichever of their pockets they thought was safest.
With that done, Tammy went to the cupboard with the clothes that were too small for her. She helped herself to a pair of socks and stuffed them into the tips of the shoes. The result made the shoes feel less likely to slip off her feet, and they were thankfully much warmer too. Then she gave each of her friends a t-shirt and asked them to wipe clean the four plastic drawers.
They took the drawers, threw Hiroshi’s stuff out onto the bed and kept a rubber eraser, a pencil sharpener, a key ring with a little dolphin model attached and the small roll of cellophane tape, for weighing down the plastic.
Very enthusiastic about the prospect of making water, they went on searching through all the cupboards and furniture brought here by five other people—now probably stored here forever—that Etsu and Hiroshi had pushed together in order to make this room for them to sleep in. Everyone was busy with their own search for more usable items. Tammy didn’t notice what the others were doing. She was staring at a photo against one of the walls.
Etsu screamed.
Tammy froze at the sound, chilled to the bone. She swung around and stared at the opening to the room. The wooden door that was attached to a piece of wall was wide open.
Etsu was struggling desperately in the powerful grip of her alter ego. The other Etsu’s arm was around her neck and she was forcing her out of the room. Etsu tried to stop her by grabbing the door-post with both her hands, but her grip failed and she was dragged away.
Lightning fast Hiroshi sprung into action. He seized his sword from where he’d placed it on one of the beds and sprinted after the two Etsu’s.
As he ran, Tammy saw the weapon flash above his head, held in both hands. Then he brought it down hard on the other Etsu’s head.
Both Etsus screamed.
And both Etsus vanished.
Chapter Thirteen
"ETSU! ETSU!” Hiroshi cried and continued sprinting out of the room. “Doko ni imasu ka? Etsu!”
Tammy ran after him.
“Careful, Tammy!” Ulrich shouted, reaching for her. “It could be a trap. They may all be outside. Stay in here. Stay close to me.”
Ulrich grabbed her before she could go through the door and put his free hand on her shoulder. In his right he gripped the makeshift spear, point towards the door.
“I don’t think we are going to see Etsu again,” Ulrich said softly. “Not here. I think Hiroshi killed her alter ego. It was a powerful blow.” They were standing in the spot where the girls were last seen. Ulrich looked puzzled. “No blood,” he said.
“Then Etsu has gone home?” Tammy said hopefully.
“If that’s how things work around here, then, yes, I suppose she went back.” Ulrich paused. “I don’t know. I wonder what her parents will say, when she suddenly reappears? And will she remember where she’s been?”
Then Ulrich stepped in front of Tammy to look outside the room. He was still checking for blood, and watching for alter egos.
“When I get back home,” he continued, “I’ll research alter egos. It could make a second project for the science expo. I used to believe that it was some psychoanalytical fable. A fabrication. Like believing in ghosts. Everybody talks about them, but there’s no real proof they do exist.”
“Except in Hollywood,” Tammy said. “An actor’s alter ego is the character they’ve been playing in the movies. Like Angelina Jolie being Lara Croft in Tomb Raider.”
Ulrich laughed, then stiffened.
“The tree and the soil!” he shouted. “They know what we’re thinking . . . They know we need the soil to make water,” he glanced back into the room. “We must go there now, at once. Grab the stuff we need. Hurry.”
Ulrich worked as he spoke, tossing the trays and weights onto the empty bed and gathering everything up in a sheet.
Tammy scooped up plastic.
“Hurry,” Ulrich said again. “We must get to the tree before they can destroy it. Come on.”
They were almost out of the door when Tammy spun around and raced back to the desk. She put the two eggs on a t-shirt, folded it carefully and tucked it in front of her curtain dress. Then she used the front of her curtain dress as an enormous pocket to hold the dead birds. She snatched some pictures off the walls, grabbed the note books and threw them into the “pocket” as well.
“She’s gone,” Tammy heard Hiroshi’s trembling voice and saw him bump into Ulrich as they both tried to go through the door in opposite directions. Hiroshi barely avoided stabbing Ulrich with the sword.
Tammy smiled in relief. She was so glad to see Hiroshi and his sword again. They couldn’t have hoped for a better weapon in this place.
“Don’t feel bad, Hiroshi,” she said quickly. “She’s gone home. I’m sure.”
Ulrich passed Hiroshi then turned back to address him. “Maybe she can send a rescue team for us,” he said.
“I hope so. I hope she’s not dead, because I think her alter ego is,” Hiroshi said slowly.
“We must get to the tree, my friend. And fast. The alter egos know we want to make water there. Let’s take this door with us. We can use the wood to make a fire and heat the place up a bit.”
“Do we push these things around?” Tammy asked, looking at the heavily built structure. “How did you and Etsu managed to collect all this big, heavy stuff?”
Ulrich looked from Hiroshi to the door and the wall it was attached to.
“We pushed it. Some things are heavy, but I think everything weighs less here than on earth,” Hiroshi answered.
“Perhaps here’s less gravity,” said Ulrich.
“And less friction.” Hiroshi explained and pulled on the doorknob.
The door, together with the rectangular piece of wall, over a meter in width, started to move across the grayness. Smooth, light and silent.
“Um, I see what you mean. It seems as if everything is floating. Donner und Blitzen, we must make haste. If all our alter egos work together, they can easily move the tree and the ground. The whole cube! We may never find it. Who knows how big this damned dimension is.”
Hiroshi picked up his laptop, put it in Tammy’s wastepaper basket and changed his grip on the sword. He pushed on the door, making the whole wall glide forwards.
Ulrich led, spear in hand, with Tammy behind him and Hiroshi out of sight behind the wall. Tammy could hear Hiroshi sigh every now and then. There were no other sounds. There was nothing else to make
a noise in this place. Not the humming of electric machines or the chirping of birds.
It was as quiet as the grave.
Tammy assumed Hiroshi was worried about his sister. They couldn’t be certain Etsu really was back on earth. They theorized that they would return to earth if they kill their other self, but they didn’t know for sure. But why else were the alter egos so afraid of Hiroshi’s sword and Nick’s pistol?
They moved as quickly as they could into the grayness, soon leaving the remnants of the room out of sight. Tammy didn’t know how the others knew which way to go, because she lost all sense of direction. If she had to choose a route, she would have gone . . . no, she didn’t know what direction to pick. Everything looked the same. Here there was no moon, no stars or sun to help show the way. The landscape was uniformly flat. There was only grayness and the chance that something brought by an unlucky Snap player would suddenly loom out of the gloom. And the fear of something worse.
The game of Snap must be very new, because there wasn’t that much stuff left around yet. Unless this dimension was really big, perhaps as big as the earth.
Would anybody on earth ever know what was happening here? Tammy wondered. Because anyone brought here without a weapon, is doomed.
She looked over her shoulder. The last visible piece of the room she’d just come from was ahead of where she faced, maybe a little to the left. Therefore, they must move back and to the right. It was like following a street map. But one made in your head, not on paper. Turn around and do everything the opposite way, or rotate the map. Perhaps it wasn’t so difficult if you think, concentrate and picture the map. To panic wasn’t going to help in a situation like this, especially as Tammy was struggling to see over the pile of stuff she was carrying.
She trusted Ulrich, blindly tagging along behind him. She remembered that one of the few things boys did better than girls, was orienteering, keeping a good sense of direction. So, let him take the lead.
Suddenly she became aware of a movement next to her. She looked to her right, startled. Next to her, in front of the door and wall that Hiroshi was pushing, was the other Tammy still clad in her bikini. Her other self wore a wicked grin and was approaching very fast.
Alter Tammy’s hands clutched tightly around her arm. Tammy felt the coldness of her grip seeping through the curtain material. It felt like she was being held by a corpse.
Adrenalin flooded Tammy’s body. She yanked her arm free and screamed. All the stuff she was carrying in the folded curtain fell out, tumbling slowly downwards.
Hiroshi blasted out his war cry as he bounded around the wall, his sword ready. Ulrich turned around and stormed towards the other Tammy with the spear in front of him and the sheet/sack still slung over his shoulder.
“Eiiii!” Tammy’s other self screamed, turned and made off. Her long, shapely legs and her slender, wasp-waisted body vanished quickly into the grayness.
“Gee! They’re getting desperate now,” Ulrich exclaimed and lowered the spear point. He was breathing heavily. “I had considered hurling the spear at her, but the thought of losing it and it being taken by our other selves made me stop.” He grinned at Tammy and let his eyes slide over her improvised dress. “So, that’s how you came here! In just your bikini?”
Tammy’s heart was beating anxiously from the surprise encounter, yet she couldn’t help smiling. She guessed Ulrich liked what he saw.
“It was a very hot day in Pretoria,” she said, feigning indignation. “After school I went for a swim and decided to keep my bikini on while I was working on my computer. And then I played the damned game.”
“You look much better in a bikini than in your toga,” Ulrich joked. He laughed softly.
“You stop it! It’s cold in this place. I would have been frozen to death by now,” Tammy explained.
Then Tammy crouched and started picking up everything she’d dropped. She hoped the eggs were still okay.
“We’ll have to be more careful,” Hiroshi said. “They’re watching us. All the time they watch us. My alter ego could just as well have attacked me. I would not have been able to defend myself properly while moving this wall. We must stay closer, walk next to each other.”
Tammy couldn’t help thinking of what would have happened if Ulrich or Hiroshi had killed her alter ego. Maybe she would have been back at home by now. In the bright sunshine, eating normal food and drinking a glass of iced water. She would have washed her hands and face with warm water and soap. And brushed her hair. Gee, her hair must be such a mess by now! She would go to her luxurious, beige-tiled bathroom with its burgundy towels and take a long hot shower. Put on clean clothes. Sleep in her cozy bed with its crisp, clean sheets and the pretty pink bedspread. Chat to her mother. Everything that she had taken for granted in the past. Until now. Now she realized how privileged she had been for her seventeen years of life. Privileged and vain. They were fighting for survival and she was fantasizing about doing her hair!
Yet if Hiroshi or Ulrich had only been that bit faster, this damned place would perhaps be just an unpleasant memory.
“As soon as we finish eating, we must think of ways to outwit our other selves. We must kill them. We should set traps to destroy them all,” stated Tammy. With a shock she realized that she had been using the word “kill” very lightly. As if she had killed a hundred times before. As if it was no more unusual than cleaning her teeth. “I don’t want to stay here for the rest of my life. I want out. I want to go home. Like Etsu.”
Even if it meant that she would never see Ulrich again.
She was fed up with the perpetual grayness, the constant hunger and the dry-mouthed thirst.
The two boys said nothing. Ulrich looked at her silently as if he was thinking the same thing.
Tammy came upright again, holding the two ends of the curtain in her hands. She and Ulrich walked next to Hiroshi behind the advancing door and wall. Ulrich was even more cautious and alert than before. Every few seconds he would look over his shoulders into the grayness behind them or peer around the wall.
“I don’t know how we’re going to outwit them,” Hiroshi said, “while they know exactly what we’re thinking.” It sounded as if he was trying to conjure up a plan of attack, but there was no enthusiasm left in his voice. “It’s not possible,” he spoke so quietly Tammy thought he must be thinking aloud. “We’re doomed.”
Chapter Fourteen
THE THREE FRIENDS were relieved to find that the tree was still there, Tammy especially because, for a terrifying minute, she thought they had gone off in the wrong direction.
The holes they excavated to get at the roots of the tree were also intact. Tammy unloaded her “dress” and Ulrich put his sheet, with all the stuff, next to the tree trunk. Hiroshi maneuvered the piece of wall to close off half of the open side of the cube. The door they were going to use as firewood.
Ulrich started upon his scheme to make water. They needed holes in the soil, but the two already there were too big to use. The holes were far larger than the plastic drawers they’d brought. Starting afresh, they eventually dug four smaller but deeper holes. Hiroshi cut off any roots in the way and put them against the tree trunk, some being sliced up to eat as they worked.
At long last the four holes were deep enough to fit the plastic drawers, but Ulrich took them out again.
“We need to add extra moisture,” he said smiling and looked specifically at Tammy. “The soil is already a little moist, but more liquid will help. Go on Tammy, you know what to do!”
“We won’t look,” said Hiroshi. “Use the hole behind the tree. Ulrich and I will stand watch.”
Tammy nodded, but also blushed. She felt like a . . . cave dweller. It was all so primitive. But in reality that was what survival is all about. Going back to the basics of nature. They needed moisture in the soil to make a decent quantity of pure drinking water.
“Okay, I’m done,” she said after a while. “I think we should add leaves to the holes. A plant in a warm spot in a clo
sed container also makes water drops form. As soon as we make the fire, the leaves in the ground will start to sweat.”
“You’re right,” Ulrich said, nodding.
Sometime later the holes were prepared. The plastic drawers were put on top of a thick layer of green leaves in all four holes to catch the drops of water that they hoped would form. The plastic book covers were put over and on top of the holes and were kept in place by sharpened twigs pushed through the corners. The edges of the plastic book covers were covered with loose soil and heavy schoolbooks to keep the moist air from escaping. In the middle of the covers the smaller objects: the key ring, pencil sharpener, rubber and the cellophane tape, were placed to let the plastic bow a little to make the droplets trickle down and drip into the drawers below.
Ulrich came upright from where they had prepared the last hole. He took Tammy’s hand and pulled her up after him. Together they stood and admired their handiwork.
“Brilliant!” Ulrich sighed with relief. “I would never have dreamt that the day would come when I would actually need to make water like this.”
“Now we must make a fire?” Hiroshi asked.
“Yes. Heat will increase the speed of condensation,” Ulrich answered. “Not too big a fire, though. We don’t want to scorch the tree.”
Tammy walked to the tree-trunk, picked up a wastepaper-basket and held it out towards Ulrich. It was a modern, aluminum and tin basket decorated with beautiful flower designs.
“That’s why I brought this,” she held up the basket proudly. “On television homeless people make their fires in bins.”
“You astonish me more and more,” Hiroshi said with a little smile and put the sword down next to the wall. “I’m glad I saved you from your other self. Let’s tackle the door.”
While Ulrich and Tammy kept the wall still next to the cube of the tree, Hiroshi stepped back three paces and came running forward. With a cry he jumped up and kicked the door. The door broke loose from its hinges and fell without a sound onto the gray flooring.
SNAP! and the Alter Ego Dimension Page 9