by Rob Dircks
“Wait. What happened?”
“They knew we were coming. Dammit. They picked us off in the middle of the night. And we were wrong about several hundred. There’s just too many of them. Thousands. Tens of thousands. And WHO’s antimatter amplifier is too powerful. A handful of us are left, protecting Montrose. Gotta go.”
I try to get up, my head nearly splitting open with pain. “Wait. I’m coming.”
“No you’re not. You stay here. When you’re ready to move, take Tesla and any other survivors back to our dimension.”
I struggle to my feet. “What. So we can die there?”
The Commander just looks at me like he doesn’t need my shit at the moment. Then he sighs. He understands. “Okay. You sure you’re ready for this?”
He opens the doorway.
And Julie, it’s like Lord of the Fucking Rings in this dimension – a giant battle field, strewn with bodies. Rubble everywhere, the New Yorker hotel is long gone, shit, most of New York City is long gone. Fire everywhere. Darkness. Plasma machine guns going off left and right. Screaming.
This place is literally hell.
Out of the corner of my eye, I see Pete. He’s firing some big gun at WHO’s minions, him and a bunch of our fighters are circled around Montrose. Maybe a hundred and fifty people left, max. And Montrose is standing there, hooked up to this antimatter amplifier (there’s a couple of what looks like IVs going from the machine right into his arms), all calm and serene, concentrating, with his hand over a big red metal button. Pete screams over to him. “Montrose! Another pulse in 3… 2… 1…”
And I finally get to see what this antimatter thing does.
Holy shit.
Montrose smacks the button, and this blast of light explodes in every direction for probably a mile, even coming into the open doorway me and the Commander are standing in.
But it doesn’t destroy anything. For a mile around, anybody it reaches sort of stops what they’re doing. They put down their guns. Look around at each other like “what the hell am I doing here? And what’s this gun for?” It’s like a little circle of heaven in the middle of hell. I guess Montrose didn’t have to kick any ass after all.
But it’s not enough.
From the other end of the field of rubble, north, maybe around where 59th street should be, comes another blast. But this one’s totally black. And big. It envelopes everything for miles.
The Commander slams the doorway shut just before the blast reaches us. “That’s WHO. You don’t want to get hit with that. Look.”
He reopens the door a crack, and everyone I just saw, all sort of peaceful, has been knocked on their asses, and is getting up, mad with rage, grabbing their guns and running back into battle. Anyone that’s wounded looks like they’ve died. (Pete’s team looks okay though. Some kind of protective bubble from Montrose I’m guessing.) Anyway, he’s back to shooting whatever he can to protect Montrose.
Julie, I’m not kidding. The battle for the multiverse is literally a battle between light and darkness. And darkness is knocking light’s lights out. (Lights lights? Remind me to think of a better metaphor next time.)
“It’s been going on like that all night. We can’t gain any ground. There are too many of-“
Something whizzes by my ear, right into his chest.
“Commander!”
He falters to his knees, looking down at the object sticking out from between his ribs. “Fuck.”
“Holy shit. It’s a Shogun.”
“What the hell is a Shogun?”
“That. Sticking out of your chest.”
“Right. Got any ideas?”
“Yeah. Don’t touch any of the buttons.”
As I reach down for button five (the one that either does nothing or disengages this thing), a jolt of electricity from the Shogun hurls me back ten feet, and sends the Commander to the floor.
More darkness.
From: Chip Collins
To: Julie Taylor
Date: June 4, 2015 5:43am
Re: The epic battle for the multiverse (really, it’s huge)
When I wake up, I look over to the Commander. He’s not moving, laying right in the doorway, half in the ITA, half in hell. I rush over to him. “Commander. Chip. Hold on, dude. Hold on.”
He stirs. “….chip?”
“I’m here.”
“…chip …i never told you…”
I’m freaking out. “No, don’t do this! Don’t do the I-never-told-you thing! Get up so we can get back to Montrose. There’s work to do! Come on!”
“…i never told you …you’re actually not a bad looking guy…”
I laugh through my tears. “Get up, dude! Time to go.”
He smiles, wipes my cheek. “…don’t cry …there are infinite versions of us… I’m just one… of infinite chips… we’ll fight to the very last one…”
And he dies. Right there in my arms.
I’m beating his chest, screaming, crying. It’s over.
It’s over. It’s over. Time to give up. There’s just too many of the bad guys. Too many of them. Bobo is tugging at my shirt sleeve. He keeps tugging. Tugging. Go away, Bobo.
Wait.
Bobo.
Too many of them…
Infinite Chips…
We’d win this battle if we had infinite Chips.
But where do you get infinite Chips?
Wait.
Not infinite Chips.
Bobo.
That’s it.
I lay Commander Clarence “Chip” Collins gently next to Tesla and Meg, turn to Bobo and bend down. I look deep into those eyes, and ask him with my mind, “are you thinking what I’m thinking?”
Bobo nods. And his mind message back to me is loud and clear:
BOBO ARMY.
From: Chip Collins
To: Julie Taylor
Date: June 4, 2015 5:43am
Re: The epic battle for the multiverse (really, it’s huge)
I grab Bobo and we jump through the doorway into hell, sprinting over to the last remaining group of fighters and Montrose. The sounds of fighting are deafening. I grab Pete’s shoulder.
“Pete!”
He swerves around, almost shooting us. “Dude! What the fuck! Get the hell out of here!”
“Give me a grenade!”
“What?!”
“Give me a grenade!”
“No! Now get the fuck out of here! Go help Meg!”
I don’t have the heart to tell him Meg’s laying in the hallway, lifeless. And I don’t have time to argue with him about a fucking grenade. I reach over and grab one from his belt, and stuff it into Bobo’s mouth. Bobo pulls me down to his eye level – he’s got one more message.
THANKS DUDE.
And he swallows the grenade whole. And winks at me. (Wow - where the hell did he learn to do that?) Then he’s off, running like a tiny little madman, to get as far away from us as possible before the blas-
SSSSSPPPLLLLAAAATTTTT!!!!
Ewww. He didn’t quite make it far enough. Me and Pete and the others are covered in little pieces of Bobo. Ick. Pete doesn’t even know what to say. He’s stammering. “What- what- what- what…” He’s in shock, swaying back and forth. He thinks I’ve lost my mind. The last insane moments of his desperate, idiot friend.
I reach over and steady him. “Pete. Dude. Trust me.”
And sure enough, Julie, sure enough, the little pieces of Bobo start moving, start growing, and in a few minutes… little teeny-tiny one-foot-tall Bobos all over the place! It’s hilarious!
Pete’s eyes widen with understanding. “Chip, you’re a fucking genius!” And he turns to the rest of the group. “Everyone! Give your grenades to the Bobos!”
So for the next hour, little Bobos are running forward, blowing themselves up, creating more Bobos, until the field ahead of us is filled to overflowing with furry aliens, biting and kicking and smothering everything in their path.
Tens of thousands of Bobos! Imagine the leg humping!
>
Pete sees we’re making headway. “Okay, dude. Go get the Commander and Alternate Pete. I need orders.”
I look at him and shake my head. “Can’t. Gone.”
Pete’s speechless again. He can’t move.
Montrose lifts his head from the amplifier. “Chip and Pete. Your friends have passed. We will mourn them later. But you are here. Here to lead us to our destiny. Now we march on WHO!”
And instantly, like Moses at the Red Sea, the nearly infinite sea of Bobos parts for us.
Watch out, WHO. Here we come.
From: Chip Collins
To: Julie Taylor
Date: June 4, 2015 5:43am
Re: The epic battle for the multiverse (really, it’s huge)
Hi Julie,
Well, it’s quite a sight.
Me, Pete, this oversize guy who looks like Santa hooked up to an antimatter amplifier, fifty or so battle-weary soldiers, and about a million Bobos are all marching up Eighth Avenue, or whatever’s left of it.
We’ve knocked out WHO’s army, and Pete and team are taking out any stragglers. It’s quiet. Montrose’s light blasts have been protecting us from WHO’s black blasts of death. So of course, when we get there, up to Columbus Circle, we’re expecting WHO to be cowering in a corner, clutching his teddy bear and whimpering.
But he’s laughing. Motherfucker’s laughing. Again.
And now that we’re close enough, he hits us with the whammy. Our whole group, even the first few rows of Bobos, get stuck in his trance. “Well, hello boys and girls. I thought you’d never get here. But don’t worry – I kept myself busy tidying up the place.”
The entire scene is black. Black rubble, black sky, black dust hanging in the air, black– well, you get the picture. Very black. I think he’s being sarcastic. But if he was going for monochromatic dreariness, he nailed it.
“And you’ve brought my brother! How thoughtful!”
WHO and Montrose lock eyes. They smile at each other. But in those eyes you can see a battle being waged, a terrible battle of good versus evil. Light versus darkness. Hulk Hogan versus The Undertaker (okay, maybe just two comparisons was enough).
Montrose speaks first. “If you are my brother, then put down your weapons, and declare this a day of peace.”
WHO laughs again. “Brother. Brother. You know I was joking, right? You are not my brother. You are a version of me, who I might have been, given the possibility. But I no longer give possibilities. I take them away!”
WHO slams his fist onto the button of his amplifier, and we’re so close, that even with Montrose’s protective bubble of light, the blast knocks all of us, and the swarm of Bobos, back about twenty feet. I look back at Montrose – he’s unhooked from the amplifier, breathing heavy, closing his eyes. Our protective bubble disappears. Uh oh. We’re fucked.
“Well, ‘brother.’ It looks like I’m about to become an only child.” He raises his hand to the button again. “Goodby- “
And he freezes.
WHO’s whammy stops. He’s got something sticking out of his neck. Pete whips around to see where it came from.
It was me.
For just a moment, I had shaken off WHO’s whammy, seen clearly what needed to be done. He would not have power over me. Not now. This moment was mine. (Remember that Shogun that killed the Commander? Well I pulled it out of his body, thinking it might come in handy. And boy, it sure did.) I hurled it at WHO in that short moment. And stopped him. Yes, that’s right ladies and gentlemen…
Chip Collins, Shogun Master!
The wicked old witch is dead. Oz is safe again.
Me and Pete start high-fiving, jumping up and down. Everyone starts hugging and cheering.
“We did it! We saved the multiverse!”
But then Montrose groans. Oh shit. Almost forgot about him. We rush over to his side.
“Friends… no time to celebrate… he… is not like you…”
And sure enough, by the time we look back, WHO’s standing there, unfrozen and smiling. He reaches up, pulls the Shogun out of his neck with a gush of blood (gross), and laughs. Then he hurls it at us. It hits Montrose right in the temple.
Montrose lets out a final groan and goes silent.
“As I was saying, goodbye dear brother. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got universes to collapse.”
He’s gloating. What a dick. He even pulls out this pinky ball from his coat and shows it to us.
“A pinky ball?”
“It’s not a pinky ball, Chip, you imbecile, whatever that is. This is what I use to collapse universes. You can thank your friend Nikola for the design – if he’s still alive. It’s the Reverse Baryogenesis Device.”
“Reverse Barywhat?”
“Baryogenesis. It recreates the dangerous imbalance of baryons and antibaryons produced in the early univer– you know what? Look it up on Wikipedia, Chip. I don’t have time to explain. I just wanted you all to see it before I killed you. Amazing little thing, isn’t it?”
“Doesn’t look too amazing to me. Where’s the button?”
WHO laughs. “Buttons! Ha! Buttons, buttons. Everything’s got to have buttons. You’ve got a lot to learn, boy. All I have to do is hold this between my palms like so…” and he demonstrates for me.
The pinky ball – or baryogenewhatever – starts glowing.
“Oh dear…”
WHO looks like he just knocked over his mother’s favorite vase, and it crashed into a million pieces, and her car’s pulling up the driveway. He just accidentally started a universe collapse. His own universe. What an idiot. He’s fucked.
Wait. We’re all fucked.
“RUN!!!” (God, do you realize how many times we’ve had to run for our lives? Enough. If I ever get home, I’m never running again.)
Thirty blocks or so to the ITA. I don’t know what a universe collapse looks like, but we better get a move on!
We all start running. Pete, me, the other fighters, and WHO’s right behind us. Around us, it’s hard to describe, but you can sort of see the fabric of the scene come apart. Like we’re inside a TV show, and somebody’s pulling the plug on the set. (I’m guessing WHO usually does this while he’s standing right in the doorway of the ITA, not a quarter mile away.)
I turn around to see how close WHO is. And suddenly the Bobos surround him. Imagine ten thousand Bobos swarming around you. WHO’s in for a world of hurt. Good for him. I’m done with him.
Okay. Thanks, Bobos. Now onto the ITA.
A MILLION HOURS LATER…
I can see it. Another fifty yards. We’re gonna make it.
But the ground beneath us starts to dissolve. It’s just not there – it’s disappearing. My feet try to move forward, but it’s like running in quicksand. Pete’s up ahead a yard or two, looking back, we’re all frantically trying to reach the goddamn doorway. It’s right there! Come ON!
And then the universe gives way and I’m falling.
From: Chip Collins
To: Julie Taylor
Date: June 4, 2015 5:43am
Re: The epic battle for the multiverse (really, it’s huge)
Hi Julie,
Well, this is it.
Here I am, not falling anymore, just sort of floating in nothingness.
It’s kind of peaceful. So this is what it’s like to die.
At least we took WHO down with us. Stupid motherfucker.
I look up at Pete, he made it a little closer to the doorway, but still not enough. He looks down at me. And he smiles. He’s calm. “Dude, it’s over.”
“Yeah, it’s over.”
“But we did it. We actually DID something. If you hadn’t talked me into this stupid shit, we wouldn’t have saved the multiverse. Do you know what that means?”
“You’re not pissed about the boxers anymore?”
“No. It means that this is all because of you.”
“But we’re done. Dead.”
“Yeah. But Meg might be alive up top. And Tesla. And Julie’s definite
ly alive. And our families are alive. And everyone else we care about. And everyone that everyone cares about. Everywhere. You did that.” He takes my hand in the nothingness. “Thanks.”
I look down at our hands. They’re becoming transparent. We’re disappearing.
“Now go ahead and say your goodbyes to Julie. I’ll wait. I’m not going anywhere.”
Right. Julie.
Okay, babe, I’ve got one last thing to tell you before I go. I know you’ll never read this, but if you think of me ever, take a second to remember what we had, so maybe at least it’ll be written down in the Great Book of Life before it disappears forever.
Remember that time the bike messenger crashed into you, and you were crying on the ground, and I carried you home four blocks.
Remember when you got that tattoo and the guy misspelled “their,” and instead of killing him, you laughed and said “maybe their right” and we bought you a long-sleeve shirt to cover it up.