by Logan Jacobs
“We might as well salvage what we can while we’re in there.” Emma handed me a linen bag, then started off across the street.
“Are you sure the doctor’s office is safe?” I half-joked as I followed Emma across the street. “I really don’t feel like having a bunch of old-fashioned needles coming after me.”
“I’ve visited before and it’s quite safe,” Emma assured me as she opened the door to the doctor’s office. She picked up her skirts as she led me up the creaky wooden stairs. “So have you been traveling among the many worlds long, Dave? You’ve only mentioned your own world so far, and I would so love to hear about everywhere else you’ve gone.”
“Nah, this is only my second one,” I said. “I only spent a few days in Fela’s world. I’m kind of a newbie at this.”
“New-bie.” Emma sounded like she was tasting the word in her mouth as she pulled open the door to the doctor’s office. She poked her head in the door, looked around, then strode in. “You’ve only known Fela for a few days, then?”
“I’ve only known Fela since yesterday.” I followed Emma into the dark wood-paneled office and leaned against the padded examination chair. “I kind of dragged her along by accident, actually. She was chasing me down for eating all her food, I got back to the machine right in time for it to shift worlds, and we ended up here.”
“You two certainly get along well for having such a contentious beginning.” Emma headed for the tall white cupboard that stood along one wall, opened the doors, and grabbed a roll of bandages. “Lovely, these haven’t rotted yet.”
“Oh, sweet, patent medicines.” I grabbed a bright green bottle and read the ingredients. “Laudanum, cocaine, and slippery elm extract. You want to get super-duper high later?”
“I suppose it can’t be a bad thing to have cough medicine on hand.” Emma scooped more bandages into her bag.
“Nah, I feel like it’s not a great idea to have hundred-year-old drugs around.” I slid the green bottle back onto the shelf, then took a white bottle off the shelf and read the label. “Now this is more like it. Ethanol, never touched.”
“If you really want to get swizzled, there’s a bar down the street, and I’m sure there’s plenty more liquor in there that hasn’t been touched.” Emma frowned as she glanced at me sideways.
“Maybe a few bottles, but I don’t know if I’d want to drink anything in there.” I slid the bottle of rubbing alcohol into my bag.
“Ah, I see,” Emma murmured. She closed her bag and started back toward the door. “I believe we’ve got enough bandages for awhile if you’re ready.”
I scanned the shelves of the cupboard, but didn’t see much except for more patent medicines and tools I didn’t know how to use. I figured that if Emma had passed up everything else in the cupboard, either it wasn’t any good or she didn’t know how to use it either, so I turned to follow her.
“I think we’re good,” I said. “Just out of curiosity, have you ever tried any alcohol at all?”
“Mama used to give me whiskey and honey when I had a cold.” Emma started down the stairs. “I never knew you could use it for cleaning.”
Once Emma and I got back outside, I showed Fela and Emma how to use the rubbing alcohol to disinfect a cut, then stood back as Emma showed Fela how to use the bandages she’d gotten from the doctor’s office.
“Hey, do you guys mind if I check out the bike shop while you take care of Floppy?” I asked and I indicated the crumbling brick walls and faded paint sign of the D&D Bike Shop next to the doctor’s office. “I kind of left my bike at home and I already miss it.”
“Be careful,” Emma said absently as she swabbed Floppy’s cut with a wad of bandages she’d soaked in rubbing alcohol. “It’s rather busy in there.”
I saw what Emma meant when I swung the door of the bike shop open.
Chains, gears, tires, and frames were scattered all over the floor. The few intact bicycles left in the shop hung by their frames on iron hooks screwed into the wooden walls. Their chains, pedals, and wheels all whirred uselessly into forever against the air.
“Whoa,” I muttered. “Perpetual motion.”
There were so many things I could do with a perpetual motion machine in the form of a bicycle, and my mind raced with the possibilities. I could ride as far and as long as I wanted without my legs ever getting tired. I could hook up blades to the wheels so I could cut down trees and then pull them toward the dirt circle without having to get Floppy to do it. I could figure out how to build a generator and then hook it up to the bike’s perpetual pedaling so that we could have a generator of infinite energy. If I could find any version of Sol out there in the multiverse, he could probably think of a dozen other things I could do with the energized bike to make my life in the pocket dimension of dirt more comfortable and convenient. I definitely had to snag at least one of the bikes.
I grabbed one of the bikes by the frame and grunted as I lifted the heavy steel frame off the hook. My muscles strained as I held the bike as far away from my body as I could so that the metal pedals wouldn't scratch the crap out of me. I already didn’t love it when I scraped the hard plastic pedals of my mountain bike against my jeans, and I didn’t want to think about what the sharp edges of the steel ones on the heavy old-fashioned bike would do to me when they were whirring as fast as they could go. I kicked the door open, lifted the bike over the threshold, and headed toward my pack.
“Check it out, it’s a motorbike without a motor!” I pointed to the whirring bike.
“Don’t set one of those things free!” Fela rose from where she’d been crouching next to Floppy. “Why would you bring a machine out here? It will get loose and run us down!”
“It’s just a bike,” I protested. “I used to ride around on one of these things all the time in my home. I know how to use these.”
“I’m afraid I agree with Fela in this case.” Emma patted Floppy’s bandaged ear. “I really wouldn't advise bringing that with us. If you lose control of the bicycle, it could be rather dangerous for us, or for whatever world you set it loose in.”
“It’s just a bike,” I repeated. “It’s not a big deal. If it actually gets loose, it’ll keel over the second it crashes into something. I’m pretty sure I can control it.”
“If you can control a steed of this kind so well, then let us see you ride it.” Fela folded her arms.
“Alright, let me see here.” I started to lower the bike’s two wheels to the ground, and then stopped. I was pretty sure that the bike would drag me away with it the second I put those wheels on the ground, but there wasn’t really a way for me to hop onto it before I did that. “Listen, we’ll figure out something. But we can do a lot with this bike! Do you know how useful a perpetual motion machine is? Sol was always trying to figure out how to make one of these.”
“If you absolutely insist,” Emma sighed. She gave Floppy one last pat and then came over to study the bike. “How do you even intend to take it with us? If it doesn’t roll itself off the cart, surely the pedals will throw everything into disarray.”
“Grab one of those pipes from the crates and we’ll jam it through one of the wheels,” I said. “I’m pretty sure that should keep the whole thing from moving until we can figure out what to hook it up to.”
“I still do not think this is a good idea,” Fela grumbled, but she grabbed a pipe from the cart and handed it to Emma. “It seems like it will be more trouble than it is worth.”
“Look, it’s a perpetual motion bike, I can’t not bring it,” I protested.
“If you really think it’s a good idea, I’m quite prepared to give it a go.” Emma closed one eye, stuck her tongue out of the corner of her mouth, aimed the pipe at the spinning front wheel of the bicycle, and jabbed it through.
The bike’s wheels screeched painfully as the spokes scraped against the pipe, but the pedals stopped whirring. A few blue sparks sizzled around the pipe as Emma let go of it, but the chains that had been moving for a hundred and twenty years h
ad finally rattled to a halt.
“Great!” I hoisted the bike on top of the tool-filled crates. “That should be good for now. How are you holding up, Floppy?”
The little mammoth blatted, climbed up to his feet, and tugged the cart forward for half a dozen paces. He stopped, looked back at us over his shoulder, and swung his truck forward as if inviting us to keep going.
“Floppy is well.” Fela smiled in relief. “He has gotten cuts on his ear before, but none that large. I think his ear will heal quickly. Let us keep harvesting the town before more creatures with lightning powers get the idea that we are an easy meal.”
We started to ransack the town as quickly as we could.
The drugstore was a tiny pharmacy instead of the expansive soda fountain I’d hoped for, but the back room held plenty of treasure. Most of the bottles and boxes of medicines had long past expired, but the glass jars, mortars and pestles, and bottles of rubbing alcohol were all still as functional as they’d been the day of the Great Electrical Storm.
I’d expected E.C. Grace’s Dry Goods and Grocery to be full of rotting food and horrible smells, but everything that could have rotted in the store had turned into dry black residue years ago. I watched sparking electric mice scuttle through the crackling dust on the floor as I scuffled in, and one of them gave me a little shock when it ran over my foot, but at least there weren’t any larger animals in the store that were willing to attack us. I’d sort of hoped that we could find real food in the grocery store to salvage, but century-old cans of meat and vegetables sounded like more of a health risk than a potential food source, and it quickly became clear that the only thing in the grocery worth salvaging was a few jars of honey that Emma hadn’t bothered to bring to her bungalow kitchen.
Fred L. Cook’s Dry Goods and Grocery Store had a lot more that we could use, despite apparently being the exact same type of store. It was stocked with dishes and kitchen utensils that hadn’t all rusted and all sorts of weird Victorian appliances that Emma assured us were terribly useful, lanterns and candles in all different shapes and sizes, boxes of salt and baking soda, bolts of fabric and spools of twine, and way more kinds of soap and cosmetics than I had ever expected to find in a dry goods store in a small town from 1900.
Soon we’d traveled up one side of the street and halfway down the other, most of the two-by-two wooden crates we’d brought were full, and we had to flip up the wooden boards on the side of the cart to make sure that nothing would fall off of the high-piled boxes. The sun was starting to slide down the sky and tint the afternoon gold, and my back was starting to hurt from lugging things into the cart.
“We need to leave a few crates empty so I can bring some things,” Emma reminded me. “I don’t mind leaving behind the furniture or the bed so much, but I’d like to bring some books, and I don’t think a crate of preserves would go amiss at all.”
“Floppy is walking much more slowly now,” Fela observed. She pointed to where the little elephant was trudging dutifully down the road to the next store. “He is strong, but I do not wish to burden him with more than he can pull.”
“Let’s start heading back to the house,” I said. “Emma, is there anything else you think we should pick up before we call it a day?”
“Not unless you’d like to outfit yourself with a new waistcoat at Waiser’s,” Emma said. “Or if you’d like a new frock and hat, Fela.”
“I am fine with my clothes,” Fela replied with a shrug. “If the weather gets colder soon, I will find some creatures and tan their hides.”
“Yeah, I think I'm good,” I said. “I went to this antique clothing store down in Ypsilanti when I dated a girl who was really into steampunk and I nearly tore everything I tried on. People were a lot smaller a century ago, so I don’t think anything in there is going to fit me.”
“Suit yourself,” Emma said, and then she smirked. “Or don’t suit yourself, ha!”
“Don’t suit--ooh, nice one.” I snapped my fingers and grinned as I caught the pun.
“Is there a joke?” Fela looked from Emma to me and back again. “I do not understand. Emma said to do what you want, and then not to dress yourself...”
“Oh, man, I don’t think the Universal Translation Pill does puns,” I sighed. “That’s a bummer.”
“Universal Translation Pill?” Emma’s eyes went wide.
“Dave Meyer fed me one, and now I can read,” Fela said proudly.
“Yeah, they let you speak and understand any language in the multiverse,” I said. “I have a whole bottle, but I left them in the Dimensional Engine, Patent Pending. I’ll make sure you get one when we get back.”
“I can’t wait to speak a trillion tongues,” Emma sighed.
We were all too tired to do much but unhook Floppy and eat when we got back. We laid a fire in the hearth, grabbed jars of pickles and preserves from the shelves, and finished off the roasted turkey while we sat in front of the crackling fire.
“Do tell me about your estate, Dave,” Emma said as she sipped at her tin cup of water. She held her pinkie out, but leaned back against the wicker sofa as she drank.
“My estate?” I swallowed the bite of sweet, floral pickled plum I’d been chewing, rested my elbow on the arm of the wicker sofa, and then pulled my arm up again as the thin cane of the wicker dug into my skin. I was pretty glad we wouldn’t be taking the sofa with us. “You know I’m not Mr. Darcy. I live in a condo.”
“She means your cave that moves through worlds,” Fela said from where she was curled up on the rag rug. She pulled the turkey bone she’d been gnawing on from her mouth and cracked it in half. “Which you told me is a carriage that does not move. Doesn’t that just make it a regular cave again?”
“Yes, you mentioned that your ‘circle of dirt’ expands with every world you travel to,” Emma said. “Is it really just dirt?”
“Ohh, yeah, it’s a circular pocket dimension of dirt with the machine in the middle, and it’s about...” I took a second to calculate in my head. “Right now it’s about sixty feet wide. It gets about twenty feet wider with every world we travel to.”
“It will be quite large soon,” Emma said. “Sixty feet wide is certainly large enough for a nice-sized house for all of us. We’ll even have plenty of room for shelter for Floppy.”
“Good.” Fela pulled the cracked end of the bone away from her mouth and licked her lips. “I would like Floppy to be able to sleep inside with us.”
“The circle will become even bigger every time we travel,” I said. “How long does it take to build a cabin?”
“I’ve never built my own,” Emma shrugged. “I’m afraid I wouldn't be able to tell you, but I’m sure it depends on how large you want the building to be. I’m quite happy to bring my tent along for us to sleep in while we finish the cabin, though.”
“Good idea,” I nodded. “I’m kind of worried about one of us sleeping in a soft tent while the other two are inside Honest Abe, but it’s definitely better than nothing.”
“You call your carriage Honest Abe?” Emma smiled. “After the President who freed the slaves! How lovely.”
“Yeah, it’s... yeah, that’s exactly who I named it after,” I agreed. It was kind of true, even if the Ford Company had done the naming first. “I hope we can finish the cabin pretty quickly, then maybe we can use the car for storage.”
“If we are going to plant seeds, we will need to plant them soon, or we will not be able to harvest them this year,” Fela said. “Will this cabin need to take up all the territory we have now, or will we be able to save some ground to plant the seeds?”
“I’m pretty sure we’ll have plenty of room to set up a garden,” I said. “Next shift we’ll have eighty feet of dirt. I feel like that will give us enough room to plant stuff, and enough room to build something big enough for all of us to sleep in.”
“I suppose that it will only be one room at first,” Emma said. She glanced at me sideways as she sipped her tea. “We’ll all have to get used to being
quite comfortable around each other.”
“I already feel very comfortable,” Fela yawned. She dropped the cracked bone on her plate, licked her hand, and curled up on the rag rug. “And I feel very full and warm. I am happy to be in a pack with both of you.”
“A pack?” Emma murmured. “Like the dogs, all coming together to hunt?”
“No, like my people,” Fela yawned. She flopped her tail over her folded legs, laid her auburn head on her arm, and tucked her other arm under her chin. “Hunting together and slumbering together and raising our cubs together and all of the things that packs are supposed to do.”
“Yes, the cubs.” Emma smiled. “I’m sure there will be plenty of those.”
“Soft little cubs,” Fela agreed. Her brilliant yellow eyes fluttered shut, her tufted ears dropped, and she started to snore in a low, rumbling tone.
“Aww.” I propped my chin up on my hand and watched Fela’s sleeping form rise and fall with her deep purring snores. I thought about reaching out to scratch her behind the ear, but I didn’t want to disturb her when she’d just dropped off to sleep.
“I suppose that we ought to start getting ready for bed as well,” Emma said, but she didn’t get up off the wicker sofa.
“Yeah, probably a good idea,” I agreed, but I didn’t make a move to get up off the couch either. “I don’t know how long it’s going to take us to get back to the Dimensional Engine, Patent Pending, tomorrow, especially not with all the weight Floppy’s pulling.”
“I suppose we can jettison a few things if we really need to.” Emma clasped her hands in her lap and stared into the fire. “I must admit that I’m rather anxious about tomorrow, Dave.”
“Hey, I am, too.” I slid a tentative arm around Emma’s shoulders, and when she didn’t shy away or protest I patted the puff on her sleeve. “I don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow. I don’t even know if the next world is even going to have trees in it so we can build a cabin. But that’s part of what makes it so exciting, right? We could end up in some super fancy city full of people and you’ll have the time of your life.”