by Logan Jacobs
“Sorry,” Fela murmured. “I was a little curious.”
“That’s okay,” I breathed. Now that I was face to face with Fela, that sweet, musky smell was stronger than ever before, and I could feel a warm blush spreading up my chest toward my face. I flattened my palm and held out the silver-speckled green pill to Fela. “Don’t chew, just swallow it whole.”
Fela bent her head to my palm and opened her mouth. Her pink tongue darted out and scooped the green gleaming pill from my hand. The tip of her tongue brushed against my skin as she lapped up the pill. It didn’t feel scratchy, like a cat’s tongue, but soft and warm like a human’s tongue. She swallowed, wiped her mouth, and tilted her head.
“I don’t feel any different,” she said finally.
“It’ll work,” I assured her. I held my watch face up so she could look at it again. “Want to see?”
“I see shapes that I know mean numbers.” Fela furrowed her brow as she peered at the watch, then looked back up at me. “But I still do not understand how it tells you which part of the day it is, or how long we will stay in this world.”
“The first set of numbers tell us how many days we have.” I tapped the 02 on the watch. “Then these are the extra hours--”
“Hours?” Fela interrupted.
“Uh, human timekeeping is a little complicated,” I sighed. “Why don’t I teach you about it later? I kind of want to figure out what this world is like.”
“Later is fine.” Fela shrugged, and then turned to her furry companion. “We need to find water. Floppy is thirsty.”
The little mammoth’s mouth was open, his tongue rolled out, and he was panting like a dog.
“Yeah, water is a good idea,” I said. “Don’t worry, if the terrain is the same as it was in my world then I think I know where we can find water. I just have to orient myself.”
“If this is not your world, the land may be different,” Fela pointed out. She raised her auburn head and sniffed the air, and Floppy followed her lead with his trunk.
I knew that a tributary of the Rouge River flowed through the southeast end of the park near my condo, ran through a culvert under Grand River Avenue, and took a sharp turn due south through the east end of the nature preserve before it curved southeast along Grand River Avenue again and joined the largest branch of the Rouge. I was pretty sure that as long as some natural disaster hadn’t completely changed the course of the river, I’d find it intact. I just had to remember which cardinal direction was which. I was little annoyed that Sol hadn’t left me an actual compass along with the compass watch, but it seemed like he’d put together the package from stuff he already had around the house, and considering that Sol didn’t stray too far from home it wasn’t surprising that he wouldn’t have had a compass handy.
“Okay, Nine Mile runs east and west, and his trail went north,” I muttered. I stuck my hand out to indicate east and west. I wasn’t sure if I was facing the right way just then, but I’d figure it out. I twisted my waist to the right as I pulled up the visual memory of Sol’s trailer-to-lab trail in my mind. “North to the Airstream, tuuurn ninety degrees to get to the garage, and we’re facing east again. Garage door facing me, Lincoln’s hood same way as the door... Honest Abe faces west.”
“I think I can smell water, but I am not sure,” Fela said. “Everything smells strange in this world. Even the birds sound different.”
I sniffed the air, even though I wasn’t sure that I could get any more information from my own sense of smell than from Fela’s. I could make out the familiar watery, fresh scent of a Michigan spring, but there was something dry and almost cottony in the air that made me think of a cold, dry winter day. I did recognize the rusty trill of a red-winged blackbird and the warble of a chickadee, but other than that it was hard to tell if the birdsong was all that different than it had been in my home world.
“I think we’ll find water that way. I pointed northwest, or to what I was pretty sure was northwest. “Do you want to try it? If we go a few miles and we don’t run into any water, we’ll go somewhere else. If I’m right about where the water is, we’ll have plenty of time to make it back here anyway.”
“It is worth trying.” Fela patted Floppy's trunk, then reached up and scratched behind his ear. “Let’s go find water, Floppy. Ready?”
The mammoth nodded, and we all set off through what had been the nature preserve in my world.
We’d only been walking for a few hundred yards when I saw the faint brown line of a dirt trail curving off to the far right through the trees. The trail was only a yard wide and speckled with moss, but it was clearly not a natural fixture of the woods.
“Hey, a road!” I pointed to the trail. “It looks a little grown over, but let’s check it out.”
We walked along the overgrown yard for a few hundred more yards before it ended in a small clearing with a barn in the center.
The barn looked abandoned at first glance. It stood in the middle of a rough circle of tall grass just a few yards across, and even though the grass looked wild and overgrown, there weren’t any saplings sprouting up in it at all. Half of the barn’s roof was caved in, but the other half only had a few curled shingles missing, and the mottled gray walls were still standing straight.
Just because the barn looked abandoned didn't mean that nobody was around. It was still intact enough to offer plenty of shelter if someone was working or squatting in there. Plus, the careful air of abandonment looked a lot like the kind of camouflage that Sol would have cultivated for his lab in a slightly different universe.
On the other hand, Sol was the kind of guy who didn’t believe in putting up a “Trespassers Will Be Shot on Sight” sign because it would mean giving the motherfuckers advance warning, and it wasn’t like he was the only trigger-happy redneck in the Farmington area. If he didn’t have a Dave in his world, or if this property didn’t belong to Sol, it was a lot more likely that we’d be shot than welcomed.
It was also possible that we’d stumbled upon a universe full of evil cows who kept humans enslaved in barns but were unable to perform basic farm maintenance because they had hooves instead of opposable thumbs. Just because the DEPP was set for worlds with humanoids in them obviously didn’t mean that the humanoids had to be the apex species.
I spread out my arms, held up my left hand to indicate that Floppy and Fela should stop, then turned to them and put my index finger to my lips.
Floppy froze with his front foot a few inches above the forest floor, carefully lowered that foot with a gentle crackling sound, and flapped his huge batwing ears wide open.
Fela froze as well. She pricked up her tufted ears and swiveled them outwards to listen, and her bright yellow eyes darted all around the clearing.
I listened carefully for the sounds of walking, or moving, or chains clanking, or mooing, or anything that might indicate that the barn was in use, but the only thing I heard was the rustle of the breeze through the grass and the distant caw of a crow.
“Okay, I think we’re fine for the moment,” I whispered.
“Can you tell me what kind of cave that is?” Fela whispered.
“That’s a wooden barn,” I said. “A cow house. I don’t think the cows live in it anymore, though.”
“I’m not surprised,” Fela snorted. “I pity the idiot who tries to keep an auroch in one place with pieces of wood.”
I eyed the barn. Even if I didn’t think anyone was in the barn right now, I still knew that I’d kick myself forever if I missed out on finding Sol in the second universe I traveled to. I had to check and see if any of Sol’s equipment was inside, or if the barn was as abandoned as it looked.
“Let’s see what’s inside.” I strode across the dirt circle and started to wade through the long grass to the barn.
“Wait, there might be a dangerous creature!” Fela shouted, and I could hear the grass rustle behind me as she started to follow me.
“I’m not worried,” I called over my shoulder. “I have my gun,”
I made it to the barn, slid my fingers between the barn doors, and paused as Fela caught up with me.
“Even if nobody is here right now, I want to see if my father’s tools are in here,” I explained. “It will tell me if I can find him in this universe or not.”
“Not without my spear,” Fela protested as she aimed the stone point of her weapon at the barn. Next to her, Floppy bent his head so that his tusks pointed in the same direction.
“Okay,” I sighed, “but can we ask questions first, stab later?”
“If we need to,” Fela sighed, and then she nodded at me. “Go on, open up.”
I yanked the barn doors apart, but they only slid a couple of feet before they creaked to a rusty stop. I didn’t hear any snarls or growls, so I poked my head through the door and took a look around. My nose wrinkled involuntarily as a pungent-smelling dust filled my nostrils.
The inside of the barn was as derelict as it had seemed from the outside. Green mold patches and lumpy white mushrooms sprouted from the walls, and brown mounds of what looked like very old hay covered the floor.
No computers. No machines. No Sol.
The barn didn’t look like it had been used for years. For all I knew, it might have not been used any time this century. It could belong to a civilization that was incredibly advanced and had left barns and agriculture behind centuries ago in favor of food replicators, or it could belong to a civilization that had only just invented the concept of carpentry. It was nearly impossible to tell.
A small dark shape uncurled itself a few yards away from me. Two bright green eyes blinked at me from the shadows. As my eyes got used to the darkness inside the barn I realized that the shape was just a tabby cat with a fluffy kitten at her feet.
“Aww, kitty-cat!” I crouched down and made kissing noises at the tabby, then beckoned Fela over to see. “Look, it’s a mama cat with her kitten. This is what your people look like in my world.”
The tabby raised one fluffy paw, sniffed the air, then picked her kitten up in her mouth and skittered away.
“She is a creeping beast,” Fela whispered. “How is there any resemblance between me and her?”
“Uh, the eyes, the ears, the tail…” I stood up and tried to pull the barn door back into position, realized it was stuck, and decided it wasn’t really worth the effort since the only things using the barn were the local cats anyway. “You know, everything you have that I don’t. Well, almost everything...”
“So that is all you see?” Fela headed back up the trail with her tail lashing behind her. “Ears and a tail?”
“Clearly that’s not all there is to you.” I started to follow her. “But the resemblance is pretty uncanny, you gotta admit.”
“Well, you look like a monkey to me,” Fela said. She stabbed the blunt end of her spear into the ground pretty viciously as she stomped her way back to the point where we’d found the trail. “Maybe that means you’re one of the monkey-folk. Do your cat-folk at least talk?”
“I definitely know people who talk to their cats, but I think the cats mostly just meow back,” I shrugged. “Okay, so humans-- my people-- are the far-off sons and daughters of what you call monkey-folk. That means that you’re the far-off daughter of a cat who probably looked a lot like that one, but much bigger. But in my world, the only folk are monkey-folk, and there aren’t any other animals who can speak. Does that make sense?”
“No,” Fela growled. “None of this does. And you are a strange monkey-folk with no tail and barely any hair. Let us keep going toward the water.”
The nature preserve looked just about the same as it had back home, and that made me wonder just how different this world was really going to be. An abandoned barn where an old garage had been didn’t say much about the state of civilization here, especially when we were on the edge of what was supposed to be a little patch of wilderness anyway. Maybe the world was the same as mine, with the small exception that Sol had set up his workshop on a different patch of land.
“So were you friends with the bear-folk or the monkey-folk, or what?” I asked as we trudged through the underbrush of the nature preserve.
“The monkey-folk liked to trade their fruit for our meat, when we had extra,” Fela replied. She didn’t look directly at me, but her bright yellow eyes flitted about the forest as we walked. “The bear-folk in my pride’s territory feared us, but those bear-men who chased you are not as afraid of my kind.”
“What happened to your pride?” Right after the words left my mouth, I realized that it was kind of a personal question to ask someone I’d just met, especially someone from such a wild world with so many predators, and I held up my hands. “Sorry, you don’t need to tell me if you don’t want to. Just curious.”
“Pack disagreement.” Fela's pointed ears pricked up, and her tail curled behind her. “I hear running water ahead.”
Sure enough, the Rouge River burbled through the nature preserve just a few hundred yards in front of us.
Floppy raised his trunk in an S-shape, blatted out a short trumpeting sound, then started to jog toward the river. When he reached the bank of the stream, he let his trunk unfurl, dipped the end into the current, and started to squirt water into his mouth like a Super Soaker.
Fela didn’t break into a run like Floppy had, but she did start to walk a little faster. Her round, tight ass swayed from side to side as she stalked toward the stream, and I picked up my own pace a little just so I could keep that luscious rear end in my field of vision. When the gorgeous cat-woman got to the bank of the river, she knelt down, splayed her fingers out on the ground, and then bent over so her head dipped below the level of the riverbank. Her leather skirt started to creep up over the backs of her muscular thighs, and I bit my tongue to stifle a moan as her skirt rode up to reveal the smooth curve of her perfectly muscular butt cheeks.
Good lord.
“Are you alright?” Fela twisted her head around to gaze at me. Her mouth was dripping with river water. “It tastes good. Come drink.”
I unhooked my bottle, went over to kneel by the stream, and dipped the Nalgene into the stream so I could filter the water.
“Are you not thirsty?” Fela glanced at my water bottle, then bent back down and started to drink from the stream again. She lapped at the water with her tongue, like a cat, and I couldn’t help but watch her mouth work as I waited for my bottle to fill up.
“I am, but this bottle cleans the water before I drink it,” I explained.
“Is the water dirty in your world?” Fela raised her head and wiped her mouth off.
“Sometimes it’s polluted with toxic runoff,” I said. “I think the part we’re drinking from here just had duck shit in my world, though.”
“I’ve had worse tasting water and survived,” Fela shrugged, “but please yourself.”
I filled the Nalgene, drank, and then filled it again. By the time I’d finished, Floppy was hosing himself down and Fela was sitting cross-legged on the ground with her spear at her side.
“If you are done, we should hunt,” Fela said as she stood. “The food you gave me was filling, but it will not last us all day.”
“Actually, I’d really like to head toward town,” I said. I pointed northwest, toward what I was pretty sure was the downtown area. “See, in my world, this area is a nature preserve. Nobody built on this land on purpose. There should be a lot of human caves a couple of miles away from here, and I want to see how familiar they are to me.”
“A single cat-woman among the tailless monkey-folk...” Fela shook her head. “I trust you not to harm me, but I don’t trust the other monkey-folk like you.”
“You said they just wanted to trade fruit for meat, right?” I asked.
“When they came to our territory as a troupe, yes,” Fela said. “I’ve never been the only cat-folk among a troupe of monkey-folk before. I’ve heard that kind of situation doesn’t normally go well for the lone predator.”
“The point I’m trying to make is
that my people aren’t just going to attack you in the street,” I explained. “We really like trading, sure. For some of us, it’s all we do. We like building things, we like fucking, and we like making new friends. There are so many animals we’ve made friends with! And sure, some of us use violence to get what we want. But most people you’re going to meet would much rather ask questions and try to understand what’s going on than get into a fight.”
“Then they will understand that I come from a different world?” Fela asked. Her ears relaxed and her shoulders slumped a little, as though she was letting out a breath she’d been holding. “That will make things easier. I will go with you.”
“They might not believe the part about you coming from a different world,” I admitted as I started to head northwest. “Moving between worlds like that only happens in stories in my world. We haven’t actually been able to do it yet.”
“Then how do you have stories about it?” Fela asked as she strode alongside me with Floppy in tow.
“I’m not sure how to answer that,” I admitted. “Uh, what exactly is a story to you?”
“We remind each other of things that have happened to us,” Fela said. “We speak of the memory to those who were not there so that they will remember for us when we are gone.”
“We do that, too,” I said, “but a lot of our stories are just about things that we want to happen, but that we can’t make happen ourselves.”
“What is the point of a story that did not happen?” Fela asked.
“Well, say I want to visit other worlds,” I began. “And I don’t know how to do that, but when I tell that story to someone who makes tools, they go, ‘Oh, that sounds like a good idea, I want to do that, too!’ Then the tool-maker can figure out a way to build a tool that can visit other worlds.”
“And then you get lost in another world without a way to get home,” Fela pointed out.
“Alright, we’re not in an ideal situation right now,” I conceded. “But scientific progress always comes with a few bumps along the way. You can’t make a spearhead without breaking a few rocks, am I right?”