by S. G. Wilson
On our way to the front door, we passed the ruined kitchen where Mom and Dad had told me about the Janus Hotel the day I first went to Me Con. Now that seemed like a lifetime ago. I reached out to touch the last unbroken Battlestar Galactica collectible bowl from Mom and Dad’s nerd cupboard. I’d eaten cereal out of a bowl just like this too many mornings to count.
When my fingers touched the Cylon pictured on the side, my head fizzed with the vision of a flooded city, its buildings drowning under a harsh sun. I’d seen this Earth before.
“Earth One Hundred Fourteen!” I said. “That flooded Earth I mentioned that got seriously messed up by climate change! That’s where this house is from!” Where was the Me who lived here? Had he moved on? Had he survived?
Hollywood, who’d been about to open the door, yanked his hand off the knob like it might burn him. “We’re on a flooded world?!”
“Get a grip!” said Resist, scooting around him to reach the door. “Even if that’s where we are, it’s dry now.”
“The real question is whether Meticulous is out there or he wound up somewhere else,” said Motor.
“If he is here, he can’t have gotten far,” said Resist, turning the doorknob. “We just have to figure out which way he headed after he got out.”
We had our answer the moment she opened the door. Across the street, in front of a store called Lamps R Us, Meticulous struggled to break out of a giant glass lightbulb that held him like a cage.
Overhead, the Rip blazed in the sky, bigger and meaner than ever. Rows of stacked garbage stretched out in every direction. Big Ben’s digital alarm screeched in the distance. This was Earth Zero all right, specifically the junkyard of the multiverse.
We seemed to be in a section of the junkyard where whole buildings had come to roost. Lamps R Us across the street was part of a strip mall full of other shops that nobody would ever want to visit: Ketchup Emporium, Custom Coffins While U Wait, Nothing but Tofu, Cautious Sam’s Safe and Practical Fireworks.
Motor craned his neck back and forth to take it all in. “This place is just as wild as you said, Average!”
“Quite,” Meticulous said from inside his lightbulb prison. “They call it Mediocre Valley, where some of the most boring bits and bobs in the entire multiverse have ended up. Makes the place a good hideout for my captors, since no one thinks to come here.”
Hollywood tapped the glass of the bulb. “What seems to be the problem, boss? I thought you could escape any prison better than Escape Me. Oh, right, that was only when you had superpowers.”
“Get me out of here, now!” Meticulous growled.
Motor pointed to the Stitch a few doors down. It had drifted in front of a hotel made entirely out of packing foam. “Guess you’re pretty desperate to get back your toy.”
Meticulous pounded on the glass. “Yes, yes, now get me out! They’re coming back any second!”
“Who?” I asked.
The Lamps R Us door opened and out walked a living cartoon. He had a head at least twice as large as it should have been, way out of proportion with his body. But I’d know that face anywhere, just as I recognized the Lord of the Rings getup he wore.
“Ren Faire Me?” said Hollywood, catching on at the same time I did. “You look horrible!”
That wasn’t the best thing to say to an angry bobblehead version of yourself. Ren Faire tilted his huge head from side to side, cracking his neck like a bad guy in a bad movie as he drew his sword.
Resist pulled out her slingshot and aimed it at Ren Faire. Motor did the same with the spray bottle, now full of a fizzy purple liquid.
“Such a lively jest, to be sure!” bellowed Ren Faire. He tended to bellow everything. “Mayhap thou would not be laughing if thou had been cursed too.”
Meticulous sighed. “I’ve told you already—it’s not a curse. It must be a mutation caused by too much Rip exposure, probably from when the elevator blew up on you blokes.”
Ren Faire shuddered, his massive head wobbling like a loose globe on its pedestal. “Verily, the foul green lightning that zapped us when we crashed did indeed change us all.”
“What do you mean, changed you all?” I asked.
The rest of the Viral Mes stepped out of Ketchup Emporium. To look at them, Monster Mes might have been a better nickname for this bunch. Troll Me, never the most handsome Me to begin with, had developed the face of an actual troll, from his sloping forehead to his jutting jaw and all the green skin in between. Mobster Me, in his pin-striped suit, now sported a rat head, nose twitching and fangs scraping against each other. Creepiest of all, Click Me and Dare Me now had TV screens attached to their necks, showing their pasty faces in full HD.
“You all look horrible!” said Hollywood, backing up a few steps to take his customary hiding spot behind Resist.
“Who you calling horrible?” growled Troll. His voice sounded like a frozen yogurt machine attempting human speech.
“I resent that!” said Dare. HD TV really didn’t do wonders for him or Click. You could see every matching blemish on their faces.
“It’s bad enough we’ve had to hide in this junkyard out of shame,” said Click. “We don’t need any crap from the likes of you losers!”
“You no-good dirty rats!” said Mobster, his deep voice gone squeaky.
Motor shook his spray bottle, which magically changed the liquid inside from purple to red. “I know you don’t want to hear this right now, but you’ve got to appreciate the poetic justice of all this.”
“I’ll be jitterbugged, you’re right!” Hollywood said from behind Resist. “Ren Faire’s always had a big head, and now it’s literal!”
“I protest!” said Ren Faire.
Resist chuckled. “And Mobster’s always passing the blame for his own shortcomings on ‘dirty rats,’ so it’s only fitting he becomes one.”
“You dirty—” Mobster started, then thought better of finishing the sentence.
“And Click and Dare are obsessed with being on-screen, so now they have their wish,” I said. I must have looked intimidating in my wizard cloak, because they didn’t talk back.
“And of course, Troll is always acting like a troll, and voilà, look at him now,” said Motor.
Troll roared and charged straight at Motor.
And like that, whatever hopes we’d had of avoiding another Me rumble disappeared. I guess that had been wishful thinking anyway.
In the past, Troll could bring people to tears with his words alone. Now he had the muscles to match the power of his tongue.
Motor didn’t seem too concerned, though. He lifted his spray bottle and took aim, shooting a powerful stream of red liquid straight into Troll’s eyes. Screaming, Troll stumbled to his knees as he covered his monstrous face with his hands. Smoke billowed between his fingers. The other Virals stopped to help him.
“Prithee, what hast thou done?!” shouted Ren Faire, stooping over Troll.
“Yeah, I know that was self-defense, Motor, but it seems like a low blow,” said Hollywood. “Did you blind him or what?”
Motor, one of the gentlest Mes I knew, hardly looked bothered at all by the torture he’d just inflicted on Troll. If anything, he seemed excited. “Just watch,” he said.
As if he had an emergency Off switch for pain, Troll stopped crying. He lifted his hands from his face to reveal that his monster features had disappeared. He was back to normal. At least, as normal as a Vulcan-eared jerk with a broken nose and a perma-scowl can ever be.
Troll and everyone else turned to Motor with the same look of bewilderment.
Motor held up the bottle so we could all see the label: Curse Reverse. “I actually wasn’t sure if this stuff would work, since technically you were mutated, not cursed, but I figured it was worth a try. Anyway, I should have enough for all of you.”
Troll touched his hands to his face aga
in. With tears streaking down his cheeks, he struggled to get out two words he’d probably never said before in his life. “Th-thank you!”
Ren Faire hefted his massive eyebrows in confusion. “Prithee, why would you do this? Troll is thine enemy.”
Motor shrugged. “You guys have been through enough. We all have. I mean, nobody deserves to be mutated and stuck someplace far from home, right?”
I might not have been as good a person as Motor, but the least I could do was back him up. “Guys, can we call a truce? We all have bigger problems than settling old scores.”
The Rip crackled overhead.
“Speaking of bigger problems,” said Meticulous from inside the bulb.
Though they barely looked like the rest of us anymore, the Virals all shook their heads in a very Me kind of way.
* * *
—
When Mobster unlocked the access panel on the giant lightbulb, Meticulous tumbled out of it and smacked to the ground.
“Thanks so much,” said Meticulous, rubbing his back.
“Funny thing is, the bulb ain’t even real!” said Mobster, giddy to have back his “regular old mug,” as he called it.
“ ’Twas a marvelous prank!” said Ren Faire, moving his fingers all over his newly shrunken head as if to make sure it wouldn’t blow up again.
Click twisted his fingers together in excitement. “I got a video of Meticulous screaming his head off when he thought we were really gonna fry him in that thing. Can’t wait to post it when I’m online again. And then post my reaction video to it all.”
Dare sighed. “I miss the internet.”
Meticulous had kept his mouth shut as Motor cured the Virals and we filled them in on our mission. But the moment he got back on his feet, he headed toward the Stitch. I stepped in front of him to block his way. The old Meticulous would have shoved me aside and kept going. This new one wasn’t so sure of his wrestling skills now that he knew they’d come from the fizz all along.
“Why’d you run out on us?” I asked.
Meticulous leaned over to smooth the wrinkles in his knickers. “I’m sorry, but the clock was ticking. I knew you’d be hemming and hawing and searching every inch of that revolting wizard’s workshop. As far as I was concerned, I’d found what I needed, and that was enough. So I left.”
“Jumpin’ Jehoshaphat, that’s cold!” said Hollywood.
“We definitely can’t trust you now,” said Motor.
“And how can we even be sure the Stitch is really what you say it is?” said Resist. “What if it’s a weapon after all? It definitely looks like one.”
Meticulous crossed his arms. “In less than two hours, by my calculations, the Rip will explode, bringing untold destruction in its wake. And then it won’t matter who you trust and who you don’t.”
As if they’d been synchronized to the same clock, all the other Mes cleared their throats, ready to argue. We didn’t have time for that. To get everybody’s attention, I took off the cloak and let it fall to the ground. Ren Faire and Hollywood weren’t the only ones around here with a sense of drama.
“I hate to admit it more than anybody else,” I said. “But Meticulous is right. If we don’t help him, all the people we love are dead.”
Every Me in Mediocre Valley went from angry to surprised.
“You’re all among the most intelligent Mes out there,” I continued. This was a slight fib, since Click and Dare were in the audience. “All this time I’ve been with Meticulous, I’ve known he could just be conning me. Conning all of us. Maybe he still is.”
Meticulous snorted.
“But at this point,” I said, “all I can figure is that what I know Prez wants to do with the Rip is a lot worse than what Meticulous claims he wants to do with the Rip. Against my better judgment, my gut’s telling me to trust Meticulous. And remember: we all have the same gut.”
Nobody looked very convinced, and why should they? Meticulous had mistreated and abandoned Hollywood and the Viral Mes when they worked for him. He’d banished Resist from Me Con and crushed Motor’s misguided belief in the goodness of all Mes. Considering how Meticulous had endangered my entire Earth, gotten me thrown in juvie, and shouted at me nonstop for the past day, I probably wasn’t cut out to be a convincing advocate for him anyway.
Meticulous cleared his throat and fluffed out his coattails. “Thanks for the imagery, Average. When I look for someone to write my biography, I’ll hit you up. Anyway, I’ll spare you all a defense of my past actions. I won’t even lecture you about the silliness of thinking in terms of ‘good’ or ‘bad’ when it comes to people. Instead, I’ll simply ask you to help me correct this mistake I made. I’m not going to pretend I’ve changed. But maybe you’ll consider changing how you feel about me. You don’t have to like me; you just have to work with me. Thank you.”
The other Mes almost looked convinced. Then Troll had to open his big mouth: “This whole stupid conversation is a moot point anyway!”
“And why is that?” I said.
“At yon hour, Prez and his plans are afoot!” said Ren Faire.
“What are you on about?” said Meticulous.
“I’ve hacked Prez’s communications,” said Troll. “He just announced he’s going to start sending all the Mes home immediately.”
I felt relieved and jealous at the same time. Unlike me, Prez had kept his promise to get the Mes home. He planned to finish the job I’d failed to do.
“Well, that’s good, right?” said Hollywood. “All those Mes can get home. We can still shut down the Rip.”
“It’s not so simple,” said Meticulous. “To make that many portals for that many Mes, he’ll need to operate while the Rip is raging. It gives him more raw power to work with, and the barrier between worlds is thinner.”
“So if we close the Rip, we save the multiverse,” said Resist. “But we’ll strand all those Mes here again.”
“What sort of gosh-darned options are those?!” said Hollywood.
Troll pulled out his MePad. “That’s not the worst of it.” His screen showed a MeDrone’s aerial view of the junkyard. It focused on the origami drive, and I got chills remembering what it was like to be stuck on that thing. Bolts from the Rip rained down all around the hunk of metal, but that didn’t seem to bother the robotic soldiers standing beside it.
“Who are they?” I asked.
“They’re just some of the alternate-Earth soldiers in Nash’s Patchwork Platoon,” said Click as the camera panned over the canyon. The place was crawling with soldiers of every possible flavor, from sandal-wearing Greeks to armor-plated cyborgs. They swarmed the junkyard and the outside of the HQ with the most bizarre assortment of tanks, cannons, and even a giant-robot mecha.
“That’s the army Nash runs?” said Resist.
“He recruited any and every soldier who’s been zapped to Earth Zero,” said Dare.
“And he’s mobilized them to round up all the Mes and take all their stuff,” said Troll. “He’s starting with the origami drive. He wants to see what makes it tick.”
“Hence the storm,” said Meticulous, watching a fresh batch of bolts clang across the sky.
Troll fiddled with the screen. “Nash would have raided Me HQ to round up the Mes by now too, but Twig is out there arguing that it’s not legal. Take a look.”
The camera zoomed in on another cliff overlooking the origami drive. Nash, in his general uniform, stood before Lunt, O’Fartly, and Pooplaski as they traded sharp words with Twig.
“She’s only buying Prez a little time,” I said. “If I know Nash and Lunt, they’ll get their way soon enough. Prez will never have time to evacuate the Mes before the army busts in.”
“And the longer the drive stays on, the worse the storm will get,” said Motor.
“At this rate, we’ll have very little time before
the bloody Rip explodes for good,” said Meticulous. “We can’t fire the Stitch into the Rip when it’s going bonkers like this. We need conditions as calm as possible.” He moaned. “This is a shambles!”
“So we have to shut down the drive,” I said. “And stop or slow the army so they don’t reach Me HQ. Any suggestions?”
“You know,” said Hollywood, “there was this episode of my old show, Pallin’ with the Shaolin, where my character lit a keg of gunpowder to distract some guards so he could sneak into the prison and rescue his friends.”
“What whimsy be this?!” said Ren Faire. “Mere distraction shan’t stop those foul merchants of death!”
“No,” said Resist, brightening. “But something else might. In all this junk you’ve passed by day after day, can you think of something we could use to blow up the drive? Something big, explosive, and mobile?”
The Viral Mes looked at each other and smiled.
“Mack,” said Mobster. “We know just da thing!”
“Say we blow up the drive and stop the army,” said Troll. “What then? We try to close the Rip? That means the Mes will be stuck here. And we’ll all be stuck here. We don’t have the right to make that choice for everybody.”
Meticulous and I shared a glance, and just like with Motor, we didn’t have to use any words. We had the same plan in mind.
“No, we don’t have the right,” I said. “But I’m gonna make the choice anyway. Because in this scenario, I’m the bad guy.”
All ten of us Mes had just climbed up to the roof of the flooded house when the air horn ripped through the sky like a point-blank tuba blast. Everybody jumped, which wasn’t a safe thing to do on a pitched surface with loose shingles. Hollywood lost his balance and would have torpedoed off the gutters if Ren Faire hadn’t grabbed him in time.
“Thanks!” Hollywood told his new pal as he got back on his feet.