A Shrouded World | Book 8 | Asgard

by Tufo, Mark

  Don’t know how long I’d been in that disoriented state, but my clothes had dried on top and were in need of being turned over. They were still pretty gross, and I did not relish the thought of donning them again. I pushed the neural net away, as I was exhausted and afraid if I dove in again I would drown. I walked around the place again, completely unsure as to what I was looking for. Anything, really. Not sure why, but with each circuit done I was sure I was going to come across something I’d missed. It was so fucking alien to be this unadorned; Tibetan monks who had got rid of all their earthly possessions would have thought this place stark. Each time I passed my closet, an involuntary shiver would race up my spine, that freaky door locking me in. Before I could ever really form a thought about it, I was reading instructions on how to operate them. Turns out it’s done with the mind, but only a creator’s mind; they use the power that flows through them.

  Oh, trust me, I tried. I was pushing like I was convinced I was strong in the ways of the Force, and, with enough effort, I could make it happen. Humans did possess small electrical fields, but not enough to do any bidding here. I put my clothes on now that they were sufficiently dry and stiff; took some walking around with a grimace plastered on my face before I could begin to forget about what they had caked on them. There was comfort in being clothed. At some point, something had to come looking for him didn’t it? A delivery person looking for a signature? Another creator lobbying for votes? Jehovah's Witnesses?

  At some point in my life, I’d determined that counting one Mississippi up to twenty-five Mississippi was close to a minute. My guess was this started when I was stoned and was waiting for my microwave burrito to finish. You know lava, on the sides, teeth shattering ice in the middle. Quite the opposite of the Hot Pocket, that could be relatively cool to the touch but instantly melt anything it came into contact with upon opening. This usually involved your lips, tongue, roof of your mouth, esophagus and the top half of your stomach. I’d kill four creators for a Hot Pocket. Where was I going with this? Oh yeah, the counting. They didn’t have time like we did, not really. I guess they were above it. I couldn’t even imagine my younger life without the need for that constant…no more buzzing alarms at the crack of dawn.

  “Focus!” I had to yell. When presented with limited stimuli, I drift, sometimes I get pretty far from shore. So, okay, they didn’t tick time off like we did, but they acknowledged the passing of it. Strange distinction, but with some serious math and concentration, remembering back to our trek across the plains, I figured a rotation of their world was, surprisingly, similar to ours. I had it pegged at twenty-one hours per rotation around their suns, which was something, no matter how hard I tried, I could not grasp. My mind was still rattled, but I think it had something to do with the dual effect. They would pull and push against each other and this planet, which seemed, at some times, to slow it along its journey and at others speed it up. But that, too, varied; it was like the pi equation, there was no repetition. In the end, it wasn’t a big deal, just an exercise to keep me from doing stupid shit.

  Using their rotation of the planet, which I’d come to realize was also influenced by the two suns, so some days could be twenty-one hours, others possibly twenty-eight and everything in between, I calculated I’d been in this place for nearly two weeks. I didn’t consider it home, but I ate decently, and I was soaking up every bit of their knowledge that I could. If information was power, I was a fucking nuclear reactor. I always made sure to keep one part of my mind firmly rooted in the present so as to not go through the previous, unpleasant disassociation again. The problem now was: what could I do with it? I knew some soft spots, where I could hit that would cause damage. But how could I get back down there and not look conspicuous? Wasn’t like I could don a creator costume and try and blend in.

  There was the hover bubble, or thrallax, (their word, not mine). It was powered the same way as the door, so energy from their bodies. I’d already proved I couldn’t do much in that matter. My car ride would be incredibly fast, just one way, and that would be down. I was a prisoner in this sky sanctuary. Sure, I was unmonitored and, more importantly, not beaten, but I couldn’t go anywhere; I couldn’t do anything. There were things I could do on the brain byway, potential key spots I could shut down or disrupt, but there were inherent dangers. My actions could be tracked. As of yet, I didn’t notice anything watching my visits, but that would change if I started poking my fingers around inside their infrastructure. And I wasn’t a hacker; I didn’t know what it would take to do irreparable damage to anything, and this net did not contain that type of information. It would appear the creators lived a mostly harmonious existence. I guess that can be accomplished when you are entirely too busy shitting on the rest of the cosmos.

  I was going absolutely stir crazy. I now had a working idea of what Rapunzel went through locked up in her tower, such as she was. I ate passable food, and I shoved knowledge into my brain to the point I figured my head must be swelling, not that I had a mirror to check. The loneliness was beginning to take its toll. Humans, as anti-social as we can be, are essentially pack animals, and, that I couldn’t even see myself was beginning to play mind games to the point that occasionally I would hallucinate. I’d see the flitting shadow of someone or something turning into another room. Stopped counting the number of times I chased a ghost and was not rewarded for my effort.

  Society on this planet didn’t have the semblance of structure like on earth; there weren’t jobs, per se. Like, my former owner wasn’t missing shifts at a fast food joint. They all worked toward a common goal, moving from position to position, wherever they were needed, or sometimes wherever they wanted to go. He would eventually be missed, I figured. The when of it was key. Also, they didn’t have familial units, not like the ones I knew. So his mother wasn’t going to contact the constable to do a wellness check when her boy didn’t make his obligatory weekly call.

  I was living like an escaped con, always turning and looking over my shoulder; I mean, figuratively. It would have seemed strange to do that in an empty apartment. When I rested, that was when the paranoia set in the deepest. I didn’t know if any room was safer than the next, Try as I might, I could not find a door to the outside. So I didn’t know whether I was on the complete opposite side of an entryway or sleeping on the doormat. That was not a way I’d want to be awakened, startled from sleep by a deadly creature stumbling over my head. See, this is where you have to be careful what you wish for, to choose your words wisely when making deals with a genie, the devil, or sometimes even your wife, but, of course, the first two more so. Generally, your spouse has your best interests in mind, even if it entails you spending your entire free weekends renovating a room.

  I’d drummed up a few pitchers of warm water, figured it was time for a thorough scrubbing. Still, without soap or washcloth it was like trying to comb your hair with your fingers; it really wasn’t good enough. Still, it was something to do other than the endless data surfing and exploratory eating. A few days ago I’d strayed from my normal ingredients and spent about ten hours huddled near the hole in the bathroom floor, sweating and moaning. I would have welcomed a creator death at that point—anything to put me out of that severe case of food-poisoning misery. If not for my uniqueness, I was convinced I would have succumbed. I just wanted to eat something for enjoyment, not just for sustenance. The suckiest part about it was that the food that damn near did me in was fucking delicious. Isn’t that the way of it? I hoped that at the other end of that mystery hole was a creator manning the controls and that it was subject to what I kept sending down there in beefy rivulets. Although, more likely it was just another poor sap like me scraping it up.

  It was another ten hours after getting to leave that most glorious of locations that I could hold down water and stand fully upright. Afterward, I had tended to even blander food, if that was possible. I didn’t want to revisit that previous state. I was contemplating looking for some spices, salt or pepper, to make my meals more pala
table; I was a glutton for punishment and had short term memory issues—this was what I was thinking on as I cleaned myself off. I was naked as I came out of the bathroom; I’d been spending less and less time in clothes. First off, because they were gross, and secondly, what was the point of putting them on? But especially since I’d just bathed, or had a reasonable facsimile of bathing. I was trailing wet footprints out of the bathroom when I stopped short. A creator was standing some twenty feet away, its back to me.

  For a week or so I had carried the stapler with me everywhere I went, but as time passed and nothing untoward happened, I’d been leaving it behind. I still slept with it, but other than that no, the stapler was on the far side of the room, to the intruder’s right. If the creator had seen it, he’d not reacted. Wasn’t like it was hidden under a couch cushion; it was the only thing in the entire place. My heart rate accelerated to threat levels. Maybe it heard something or maybe it was simply looking around, but it began to turn, thankfully, in the opposite direction that I needed to go. My wet feet did me no favors as they slapped, yeah, wetly, but more importantly, noisily, against the floor. I was halfway to my desired destination when I felt the whip-like lash of a tentacle burn across my back. I yelled out, my nostrils assailed by the stink of my own burning flesh. It was great that they were all “inflict pain first, ask questions later” type beings.

  I slid like I was diving for home plate in a hotly contested ninth inning; I could only hope the water would add enough slickness so that I didn’t stick like I’d hit a dry spot on my Slip ’n Slide. Ended up somewhere between third and home. I had that initial pain one encounters when their privates make an unannounced collision; this would be followed shortly by a more stricken affliction of ache. I’d curl up and cover up after this was dealt with, hopefully. Due to circumstances beyond my control, I’d started my slide much sooner than I should have. Continuing the baseball analogy, I would have come up embarrassingly short from my target as the catcher walked over and tagged me out. Hometown fans would groan in agony and away fans would laugh in ridicule of my gaff. Here I was, rewarded with a gashing strike upon my lower leg. I moved quickly before it could wrap up and drag me back, the benefit of building up some strength resting and eating the past few weeks.

  There was a crackle of energy as the electrified tentacle came into contact with the pools of water I was leaving behind. I was crawling and diving; it was as awkward as it sounds. I pushed up to get my legs underneath me and hopefully produce more speed. I hazarded a brief glance behind me; sometimes you want to know how close the monster chasing you is, other times you don’t. On hindsight, this was of the latter variety. A pulsing orange glow illuminated the outer fringes of its body. If put to the task of saying what that was all about, I’d go out on a limb and say it was expressing rage. Why, though, was the question; as of yet, I’d done nothing to it to warrant that reaction besides run for my life. Besides the angry aura, there were also the tentacles flapping about like Medusa’s snake-hair in full on stone mode. I was terrified as I made the final lunge for the stapler.

  My fingers closed upon the weapon just as a tentacle wrapped around my ankle. The pain shot upward; had I been a moment sooner clamping my jaws shut in agony I would have shorn my tongue off. It was twisting me around, another tentacle trying to get my weapon wielding hand as I desperately struggled to break free from its grasp. This one was stronger than my creator had been; it felt like I’d been shackled to a pillar. I twisted around just in time for wafting smoke from my cooking ankle to assail my nostrils. I fired the stapler repeatedly. Where they struck, the orange glow dulled, sort of what it might look like if you dropped some water on a bit of lava or forge heated steel. After the initial strike, the area quickly returned to its previous fiery condition. I didn’t know if it was repelling, absorbing, or disintegrating the staples, but whichever of those three or an unknown fourth response didn’t matter, as it was having little-to-no effect.

  The creator pulled me back like a pitcher might a baseball before torqueing his arm forward. I think the initial plan had been to thrash me against the ground until I was broken up, somewhat like what a party goer does with a bag of store-bought ice before dumping it into a cooler. I had been kicking with my free leg, desperately doing what I could to make it let go. It would have been much better if he’d not built up all the velocity when I finally accomplished what I’d set out to do. I made it almost back to the bathroom in the air, pretty impressive hang time…it was the landing that could have used a bit more work. I came down at a crazy angle only able to use my left arm to break the fall and, by break, I meant my wrist, which had made a resounding snapping sound and was bent at an angle that nature had never intended. It was coming back to finish what it had started. I was firing staples as fast as I could pull the trigger, was doing as much damage as I had the first time.

  A tentacle lashed out; I did the math. It was going to strike me dead center in the chest, and I couldn’t scurry back fast enough to avoid it. Then it was miraculously wrenched backward, the tentacle smacked harmlessly to the ground but stupid close to my nethers. I had a whole bunch of what the fucks lined up, until I caught a glimpse of red.

  “Bob?”

  4

  Jack Walker — Chapter One

  “Kalandar, you old fuck. I was wondering where you ran off to.”

  The red demon, lying prone on his back and apparently resting, opens one eye.

  “I was wondering when you’d finally get here,” the beast says. “I could hear you scrambling about like a three-legged goat scaling a ledge with its hooves tied together.”

  “Well, that’s bullshit,” I reply. “If I’d wanted to, I could have drawn a mustache on you and you’d have been none the wiser.”

  “I smelled you, then,” Kalandar says, absent-mindedly scratching his nether region.

  “Now, that I’d believe,” I respond. “And do you have to be doing that? I mean, have some decorum.”

  The demon looks down and then lifts the hand that was doing the deed and sniffs at it.

  “Aw, come on, man,” I say, turning around. “That’s just fucking disgusting.”

  The demon’s junk is, well, proportional to his size. Which means it’s like watching a giant red boa flopping around, nesting with a couple of wrinkled hedgehogs.

  “You do it,” Kalandar says, sitting up.

  “I most certainly do not. At least not to that extent and certainly not in plain view. And I definitely don’t go around sniffing my hand afterward.”

  “Where are the others that were with you?”

  “Now, that is a long story. Which, I might add, started with you running off into the distance. What happened to you?”

  Kalandar hangs his head, looking at the ground between his knees. “That is a great shame that I’ll bear until the day I head off into the void. I should have stayed and fought until I succumbed, making of it a battle that would be sung through the ages. But that wasn’t to be. Instead, I ran like a virgin clavestor. I ran into a storm of white and found myself locked in time. That is, until now.”

  I have no idea what in the fuck a clavestor is, but I’m guessing they aren’t particularly known for their bravery. I sit in the building heat and tell the beast what happened to us: the control point, encountering the overseers, the return trip and subsequent adventure on the whistler home world.

  I leave out the part about finding and bonding with the relic. Given that the demon is really an enforcer and how they might be out for it themselves, I figure he doesn’t need that information. The fewer entities who know, the better. Besides, I have no idea where Trip and BT went off to. As important as I feel Trip is, I’d hate for him to be on the other end of a demon manhunt. If for no other reason than he has the relic and is probably Mike’s and my best way back to our families.

  “You killed an overseer?” the demon asks when I finish telling the story.

  “Three of them,” I answer.

  “I bet you just knocked them
out.”

  “Nope. I hate to disappoint you there.”

  “How…how did you manage that?”

  “Ancient Chinese secret.”

  I’m not sure about telling the demon how to kill an overseer. Even though Kalandar has mostly shown himself to be on our side, there have been enough other times that I don’t completely trust him. But, unlike the relic, I guess this is information I can share without it coming back on me.

  Kalandar lowers himself, glowering at me.

  “Fine! I shot them in the mouth,” I state.

  The demon continues staring at me as if pondering whether to add salt or pepper before he devours me.

  “I’m serious,” I declare.

  “Hmmm…that shouldn’t have worked. Something that simple would have been known for eons,” Kalandar finally says.

  “Well, it did.”

  There’s silence as the gears inside the demon’s head turn. Either that or he’s contemplating the best toppings to have on his next order of pizza.

  “So, Mike is still on that planet?” Kalandar inquires.

  “As far as I know,” I answer.

  “And you are trying to get back to it?”

  “Pretty much.”

  “You must have a plan,” the demon states.

  “Well, before everything was reset, I was going to circumvent a base that was sitting in the desert not long ago and make my way to a portal the whistlers are using to gain access to this world. I suppose that’s still the goal,” I respond.

  The demon casts his gaze out over the barren land as if searching for a hint of either the base or the portal, his brows scrunching together in concentration.

  “Do you know where the whistler base is?” he finally asks.

  “Now, therein lies the problem. I haven’t the foggiest notion,” I answer.

  “So your grand plan is to just pick a direction and head that way?”