Jigsaw World

by JD Lovil

  “Time to go, I guess.” He said. He immediately turned toward the hallway door, and lifted his staff. As the crystal at its head flared, the double doors swung open in the now familiar response, and the bright mouth of the wormhole gate was revealed.

  The group moved into a slightly smaller area behind the Seer, and they all proceeded through the hallway doors and into the light of the wormhole mouth. At the other side, they walked out back into the Place of Beginnings. Everything was as it was the last time they had visited, except that the Tree of Worlds seemed far healthier and much bigger than it was before.

  The Seer turned back to the group. “As you can see, the Tree is much healthier than it once was. It has absorbed many of the nearest worldlines into each other, so that the energy is not wasted duplicating the same worldlines over and over. You can see it there, where Markus has used the Staff of Infinity to prune the Tree.”

  Everybody looked at the much thicker branches that he indicated. The Tree represented a whole group of related worldlines that had branched out from this point in space-time, and so to cure any single worldline required that you also cure or eliminate the related ones.

  Everyone moved into their positions for the task. The Seer stood in front of Tom, with Tyr at Tom’s back, and the others ranged in a semicircle behind him facing outward. Karla was the nearest of the defensive line to Tom, and she reached out for a second and touched his shoulder.

  Tom could feel her thoughts moving around inside his mind, and he felt his power spiraling as well, interacting with her connection to him, building and moving from him to her, and back again. He would be busy with the Stone and his task, but he was determined to use this power to defeat the opposition in some small way during this task.

  “Tom, are you ready to complete your task?” The Seer asked. Tom nodded. “Bring out the Stone, and stand ready to place it where I indicate.” The Seer said.

  Tom pulled the Stone of Reality from the leather pouch that contained it, and he felt it in his hands humming with latent energy. As he held it, the Stone began to glow, then it began to cycle from dim to bright, then it cycled up and up, becoming brighter and brighter in step with the oscillations of the Tree’s energy form.

  Just as soon as the Stone was revealed, the change mists sprang up around them, just beyond the still visible wormhole gate that the Seer had left in place. The mists contained ominous sounds and glimpses of motion. Tom could not quite make out what moved within the mists, and he was splitting his attention between the Seer and trying to make out where and when the opposition would appear.

  There was a sort of shadow which moved out from the mists, almost like a parody of the shadows that the Sorcerer created in his spell work. As it rolled out, like a carpet made of shadow, the mists themselves cleared, and in the distance, the Seven could see the forms of seven people walking toward them.

  The walkers walked closer, and the group could see that each of them looked exactly like one of them. There was a Tom, there was a Karla, and there was also a Seer, a Tyr, a Heimdall, a Veritasia and an Arpad in the enemy group. It was as if these were themselves just arriving at the Place of Beginnings, but walking in from some other place, instead of traveling by wormhole.

  As the other Tom approached, Tom could feel his thoughts turning, but they seemed to be new, and shallow, like a likeness of his thoughts thrown together carelessly by an indifferent copycat creator. The Seer took a moment to throw up a shield against the intruders, and Tom noted with interest that the Doppelganger Seer did not seem to be able to make any headway against the shield.

  “These are not even true Doppelgangers from alternate worlds. They were created by the mind of this place to act against us, but they share only a small measure of the power that we hold.” The Seer explained. “If all of you will place a portion of your energy in maintaining the shield, we should easily be able to complete our task without problems.”

  While the group’s attention was focused on the opposition, the Tree had rapidly cycled up into high energy oscillations, and the Stone had correspondingly cycled up in sync with it. When the energy form of the Tree finally threatened to engulf the space where Tom and the Seer were standing, the Seer finally spoke.

  “Place the Stone there now!” The Seer ordered as he pointed at a point at the center of the glow, about four feet above the ground. As he spoke, Tom completed the act, and when the Stone touched the Tree, there was a great electric flaring, and when the flare waned, the Tree now stood in splendor, its form now that of a massive Oak, with branches that seemed to nearly reach the heavens.

  Now that the task was completed, Tom was ready to turn his full attention to the intruders. He turned to Karla, who nodded and grabbed his hand. The connection between them now felt permanent and the power sang inside their minds like a sleeping god. It sang, and it spiraled, and it flowed, and with a wordless agreement from Karla, he stoked its flames even higher, and then he released it and pushed it toward the intruders.

  Where the power that he and Karla released went, the light dimmed, and the landscape blurred, and the light that passed through that space was inexplicably diminished. The shadow of the power flickered from point to point, moving always toward the Doppelgangers. Tom saw the other Seer and the other Tom as they sought to counteract the approaching shadow, but to no avail.

  The power finally engulfed the Doppelgangers, and the seven within the shadow stiffened, and the color drained from their persons, and their movements became spastic and weak, and finally, they were still. A moment more passed, and then their bodies faded as well, back to whatever hell they were drawn from, or into the hungry maw of the power that killed them, Tom was not sure which.

  The Seer motioned the group to cluster around him once more. “The task is done, the opposition is destroyed, and the Tree is now healed.” He said. “Only one more deed remains. Karla and Tom now need to draw the Seed of Creation, and the Stone of Reality from the heart of the Tree, so that it does not feed the power of the worldline beyond what is desired.”

  Tom and Karla stepped forward, ready to do this thing, and then go home. The Seer looked at them. “Look upon the Tree, and will that the artifacts Be returned to you.” The Seer said. “If the artifacts desire this, they will return to you.”

  Tom turned to look directly into the light that was the heart of the Tree, and he mentally asked that the Stone return to him. He could feel Karla’s thoughts as she asked the same of the Seed. As he continued to focus on the thought, he saw a flickering movement within the light, and then the Stone sailed out of the light, and into his hands. A second later, he saw the Seed as it repeated the act, and returned to the waiting arms of Karla.

  A moment later, the couple had returned the artifacts to their pouch and knapsack, and the group was finished in the Place of Beginnings. Everyone checked and double-checked to make sure that they had done everything they were supposed to, and that they had everything they were supposed to have in hand, and then the Seer did his flaring staff head thing, causing the wormhole to accept them on the trip back to the compound.

  A second, or 73 years later, the group walked out of the flaring light of the wormhole mouth, through the open double hall doors, and into the parlor. The Seer turned back to the wormhole, and with a curious movement of his staff, and a few muttered words, he dissolved the wormhole back into the quantum foam from which it had come.

  Now the parlor was just a parlor, with double doors that led only into a hallway, no longer to a place in a different space and time. The room was stuffed with all fourteen members of the group, with seven that were well rested and even bored, and with seven that had a light case of fatigue, and a genuine sense of self-satisfaction over a task well completed.

  The Sorcerer celebrated the successful completion of the task by opening up a spot in the corner of the parlor, which was shrouded in shadow, and into which one could reach, and pull from it virtually anything one desired. Within moments of his creation of this ‘wishing wel
l’, the party had already pulled gold, beer, a Jackalope, a plant that grew sausages as a fruit, an oversized bat wearing a pair of spectacles, and twelve identical miniskirts in twelve different colors.

  Tom had failed to pull a book containing all knowledge from the spot, and had then failed as well to pull a chunk of Neutronium out of there as well. It seemed to work well on foods and metallic objects. The Sorcerer claimed that it was a simple nexus of Shadows, so that whatever you wanted, if it existed somewhere in Shadow, would be accessible from the nexus.

  The party was well stocked from the nexus and from more mundane sources, and the tasks were done. It was ten in the evening, with nothing to do tomorrow except to party. There were days aplenty after tomorrow to think about what to do next, tomorrow was just for partying.

  Veritasia and Arpad told the rest of the group in reverent tones about the power that Karla and Tom used to destroy the Doppelgangers back at the Tree. The Seer assured the couple that it was an impressive ability that he had never seen before. He said that it would rival the power of Yama or Shiva, it might even surpass them.

  “I got the impression that the power itself had a barely controlled hunger” He said. “It felt like, if you let it off of its leash, you could kill an entire world with that power.”

  “That is the impression I got, when we let it out to kill the Doppelgangers.” Tom admitted. “It felt alive and hungry, and at the same time, it felt like an extension of us.”

  “Whatever it is, cultivate it well.” Tyr said. “We of the Aesir believe that all such powers come into being for a reason, and they have a destiny.”

  After a few more minutes of conversations along the same lines, the focus finally shifted to what changes had been made, and what the next few days held for each of them. Even though they all ‘remembered’ both the old and the new timelines, they still sought out the copy of the morning’s paper to see what had changed in the headlines.

  No longer was the current headline about the First Contact situation around Titan. Now the main Headline was about the successful testing of a warp engine yesterday. The experimental ship had gone from earth orbit to a spot in the Oort cloud region that was approximately 0.8 light years distant. It had returned to a hero’s welcome.

  The second item was the successful test of a medical Nanotech device, which had basically brought a lady named Norma, aged eighty-two, who was dying from terminal cancer and multiple organ failure, back to health, and rejuvenated to a biological age of 28. It had taken a lot of computing power, but the tech promised immortality for the masses within a decade.

  The wonderful headliners from the past timeline revisions were still around, but comfortably in the past. There were colonies all over the Solar System now, and alien contact happened over six years ago, which had matured into a burgeoning trading post on Ganymede. All in all, the world was a much more inviting place than it was before the healing, and there were no monsters to be seen, except perhaps for the human variety.

  The group spent the next few hours enjoying themselves, and then they drifted by ones and by twos off to their beds, to put the parentheses of sleep around the sentence of the day.

  ******

  29 The Party

  Whispers are borne on the winds in his dream. The whispers are hers. She has been in each of his dreams ever since the first connection between them. His dreaming mind ponders the fact that their waking minds are always connected at some level, but in dreams they are almost one being.

  He opened his eyes, knowing that she was opening hers at the very same time, and they would be staring into each other’s eyes in the next instant. He watched her pupils dilate as she focused on his eyes. He knew that his pupils were doing the same.

  It was hard to do or think something that she was not expecting, so he impulsively reached out and started to tickle her, which she did not expect. He was compensated with a giggle from her. He followed that up by caressing her back, then pulling her to him for a very heartfelt kiss and hug.

  Tom looked over to the alarm clock. It told him that they had awakened at the crack of noon, which he thought to be a much more civilized hour to wake up than this ten o’clock or before bullshit. They had stayed up late celebrating the end of the task, and so they had not really slept that long, not even a full eight hours.

  It was time to go out and face the world, even if doing so was above and beyond the duty of any hero such as they were. He felt around in the back of his mind, to find that Karla was in agreement with his sentiments in all respects of these concerns. It was time to see what the group had cooked up either to eat, do or entertain them.

  Tom and Karla were intrigued by a certain fluidity to the walls and floors on their short walk to the kitchen. They could feel that it was originating in their own minds, and it felt like with a little effort, they could possibly change their surroundings to be some other place by force of will. Even as they walked the last few steps into the kitchen, their minds were busy analyzing this new aspect to their powers.

  The breakfast this morning was a group effort, and consisted of just about every Breakfasty thing one could imagine, eggs in several forms, including omelets, toast and biscuits and pancakes, waffles, sausage, bacon, steak, hash browns, jam and jelly, English and other muffins, and a wide selection of doughnuts for the hard to please. Karla and Tom grabbed plates and filled them to overflowing.

  They were greeted by an extraordinary sight when they took their plates out to the courtyard table. Everyone was settling there, and the table was now four tables side by side to accommodate all of the people, food and other items that needed space. To one side, somebody had set up the large flat screen television from the house in a wireless arrangement, and it was currently running one of the best news channels.

  As Tom ate, he watched the various events both large and small, and nowhere did he see any sign of the sort of monstrous underpinnings of them that was the signature of the old worldline. It would appear that the new consensus reality had a large degree of scientific rationality as its underpinnings.

  Tom tried to get into the television news, or the party atmosphere, or just the small talk that was passing for conversation this ‘morning’. He was distracted by an odd sort of mental echo. Yesterday, he was alone in his head, except for the very welcome presence of Karla. Today, it felt like his mental area had expanded. Everyone around him was leaking thoughts that he was hearing, and he could tell that this was happening to Karla, too.

  The limits of this sensation were well defined. Anyone within a 75 foot radius of Tom was leaking thoughts to him and Karla. Everyone outside of that circle was silent. The problem was that this circle was very slowly getting bigger. What would happen when the circle contained the State, the Country, or the world?

  ***Let’s go for a walk*** He suggested to Karla.

  ***Okay*** She replied.

  They got up and slipped out of the courtyard, over the drawbridge, and started walking down the side of the road. At the first gravel road that came up, they turned off of the paved one, and started a leisurely stroll under the trees. The voices were mostly absent now, but each time they came alongside an occupied house, a new voice would be muttering in the background.

  ***Focus on muting the noise. The circle is getting bigger***

  Slipping into a meditative state gave them the tools they needed to put a lid on the level of interruption that the new empathic noise was bringing them. After about thirty minutes of wandering slowly around, they succeeded in making the voices non-distracting, although they never entirely went away.

  They finally got to the river bank, and they sat down for a moment or two of rest. The setting was peaceful, with reeds and thrushes growing in the shallows and on the bank of the river, the birds singing and the cicadas making that sound they make. Everybody was outside the circle, and so their heads were silent. They should have known that it would not last.

  The air next to them started to shimmer, and then the trees that could
be seen in that direction were gone, replaced by a rather strange scene, one of a rain slicked rocky path, and a storm tossed ocean in the distance. There were still trees to be seen through whatever sort of window this was, but they were oversized ferns now, something like what one would expect to see in the Permian.

  ***Let’s go through, and see if this is a real place, like I think it is***

  They got up, and dusted their clothes, clutched hands, and then they stepped through the shimmering ‘mirror’ and into the scene they had seen. The rain was a little colder than they expected, and the smell of the salt sea was not quite as salty as they expected. There was something making all of the expected forest noises in the foliage, even birdsong and squeals and croaks and such, all without a bird or other animal to be seen.

  As they stood there on the rocky trail (what made a trail?) experiencing a world unlike their own, a large slick skinned amphibian of some unknown kind moved out onto a nearby rock. It was four or five feet long, roughly lizard shaped, and it seemed totally unafraid of them.

  As they watched the animal relaxing on the rock, the clouds parted briefly to reveal two moons in the sky, neither of which was Luna, but one was almost as big. They enjoyed the sight for a few more minutes as they pondered the implications of this ability of theirs, and then they stepped back through the mirror.

  They turned around and began the journey back to the compound. As they approached the inhabited areas once more, they found that they were much better at controlling the disruptive aspects of the contacts, and they discovered that the circle of contact had now expanded to about two hundred feet or so. In due course, they arrived back at the compound.

  As they entered the courtyard, they discovered that most of the group had plans to travel to places to which they had been invited. Tyr and Heimdall were hot to return to Asgard, where they wanted to check in with Odin. Cernunnos and the Herald were ready to go to the Ur city, and Markus and Vera were going to go with them.