by Neil Gaiman
I stepped out and headed to my quarters, inwardly marveling at how she always seemed shocked when I was nice to her. Granted, we’d never really gotten along, but we hadn’t exactly not, either. At least, not since I’d told her to stop being a jerk to me. Maybe that had something to do with it.
The halls were empty as I made my way to my room. What time was it, anyway? I glanced at my watch; three A.M. No wonder everything was quiet.
Standing inside my quarters, I noticed something was odd, though it took me a moment to put my finger on it. There was nothing really wrong, just…
The room was empty. No Hue and no Acacia.
I hadn’t even realized I’d been expecting to find her there until I hadn’t. Truthfully, I’d mostly forgotten about her since I’d had to focus on the mission…but now, alone in my dark, silent room, I was surprised at how disappointed I was. Where was she? Had she gotten her own room? Had she left Base Town?
That last thought almost sent me back out the door, but I stopped myself before I’d even started to turn around. “Don’t be ridiculous, Joey,” I muttered out loud—and slapped my hand against my forehead in frustration upon realizing that I’d called myself “Joey.” No wonder it was proving impossible to get other people to think of me as “Joe”; I couldn’t even remember to think of myself that way.
“Write your report and go to bed,” I told myself, half expecting someone to answer me. My room remained silent, so I went over to my desk and settled down in front of my computer, which was really more of a glorified typewriter. Forget computer games or the internet—this thing was fast as a nanopod, but it didn’t do anything other than type and print.
“Mission 2 to Earth F delta ninety-eight to the sixth,” I muttered at I typed. “Joe Harker.” I looked at my name for a moment, then added a y. Then I deleted it. Then I erased the whole thing and wrote Joseph. Nice and neutral. After all, the Old Man had introduced himself to me as Joe Harker, and there was no sense in getting confusing.
I stared at the blank screen for a moment, then started to type.
The only thing more infuriating than playing second fiddle to the new kid on campus was when you’d rescued the new kid and gotten no credit for it. Not only was Joaquim the new Hero of Base Town, he was arguably the coolest version of me I’d ever met, and he knew it. He was taking to the whole thing with an unruffled calm that was confounding at the best of times, and made me want to toss him into the Hazard Zone with high percentage variables and no weapon every time he retold the tale of how he’d saved Jo.
Of course, he was only retelling the story because his fellow Walkers asked him to. He would never think of bragging or talking himself up. He let everyone else do that for him.
Now, it’s not like I was ever the big man on campus. I had been shunned for a lot of my first few months, and even after I had single-handedly rescued my team from the clutches of HEX and helped them destroy a siege ship that would have made Darth Vader cry for his mommy, I’d gotten nothing more than the satisfaction of having people occasionally sit next to me in the mess or nod when I passed them in the hall. Surely no one had asked me to tell my story over and over again.
What made it worse was that while he was being congratulated for saving Jo and making it back on his own, I was being crucified for losing the shield disk.
I’d finished my report early that morning and left my room to drop it by the Old Man’s office, after I’d made sure I didn’t have any key-shaped imprints on my face. Falling asleep at your keyboard (“waffle-facing,” we called it) was considered a newbie incident, and the last thing I wanted was someone teasing me about it this morning. I’d had enough of teasing the day before.
I hadn’t even made it to the mess hall before Jernan, the quartermaster, found me. He proceeded to give me a ten-minute dressing-down about the importance of equipment and keeping it clean, working, and most of all, here. Trying to explain that it had been to save Jo—and the new Walker—was in vain.
After becoming the new poster boy for what not to do on a mission, I sat down with my breakfast. There was no wrong way to eat breakfast, and Altiverse help anyone who tried to tell me otherwise.
“Ew, grits. Who eats that?”
I shouldn’t have been surprised. No matter where I went, Acacia “not Casey” Jones was there to throw a wrench into my well-oiled nerves.
I turned with a ready retort, only to have it die as she sat down next to me with her own bowl of grits. She winked, and I couldn’t help a slight smile in return, my attention going immediately back to my breakfast. I was suddenly a lot less glad to see her this morning than I would’ve been last night.
“Hey, what’s wrong?”
“Nothing. It’s been a day.”
“It’s not even nine yet.”
“Well, my day didn’t end until about four A.M. yesterday, and I got up at six. So it’s still a day, as far as I’m concerned.”
“You’re grumpy when you don’t sleep,” she teased, and I couldn’t help feeling a little under fire.
“What do you want me to say?” I guess my voice was more snappish than I meant it to be, because the way she spat out her reply might as well have been a slap to the face.
“I don’t care what you say, but stop saying it like I’m the bad guy.”
I took a breath, and a drink of vitamin water. “Sorry.”
“What’s got you all inverted?”
“I just had a really long day yesterday, that’s all. And Jernan—the QM—is furious with me for losing a shield disk.” At her questioning glance, I sighed and explained. “I tried to throw it to Jo when she fell—”
“Which was a good move, by the way.” Most of the time it was impossible to tell who was speaking unless you looked at them. I mean, we all had pretty much the exact same voice, give or take some quirks. This one sounded exactly like me, yet I still wasn’t at all surprised when Joaquim sat down across from us. I knew it’d be him, probably because that was how my luck was going lately.
“I mean, I had no idea what it was when you threw it at us,” he continued, spearing a bit of something made to look like eggs on his fork. “But I made the connection when people were talking about you losing the shield disk.”
My dismay probably showed on my face, because he winced and looked sympathetic. “Sorry. But they are talking about it.”
“Of course they are. All anyone ever talks about is what I do wrong, if they talk about me at all.” Acacia raised an eyebrow at me, but I ignored her.
“Hey, come on,” Joaquim said. “I’m the new kid now—I’m sure I’ll be messing up all over the place.”
I snorted. “You’re already the hero, saving Jo like that.” It rankled me to admit it to his face, but I had to. It was true, and it was the kind of thing we all needed to hear. “That was impressive.”
“Thank you. I was terrified,” he admitted, and I felt some of my jealousy give a bit. “I had no idea what was going on, and it was all so unreal…then I got to that crazy place, like…It was like…”
“An M. C. Escher painting on acid?” I cut in.
“Exactly.” He laughed. “Boy, I’m glad you said that. Everyone’s been talking about things I don’t understand.”
“I’m glad you got it,” I admitted. “We’re all from different worlds, some more different than others. It’s hard to find a common pop culture reference sometimes.”
“Yeah, I asked someone if we were a team of X-Men, and she looked at me in utter disgust. I don’t think she got it.”
I laughed. “Where are you from, then?”
“Earth, uh….” He lifted his arm and pulled back his sleeve; I caught a glimpse of hastily scrawled writing on his skin. “FΔ986, the captain said.”
“Just call him the Old Man. Everyone does. And that’s not going to help you with taking tests here,” I informed him, indicating the notes on his arm.
“Never did,” he replied, looking a little sheepish. “I have the feeling I’m going to fall way behind
.”
“It’s not so bad.” Damn it—I was liking him more and more, despite my initial decision not to. “Mostly a lot of memorizing, but we’re good at that. I mean, I am, so that means you are, right?”
“I guess so. Man, I can’t…I mean, you’re me. You look like me. Everyone here is me.”
“I’m not,” Acacia spoke up, and I had to admit I’d almost forgotten she was there.
“I was going to ask about that. Are you…” He paused, and she just looked at him with a faintly amused, expectant look. “Who are you?”
“Acacia Jones,” she offered.
“Don’t call her ‘Casey,’” I advised, and he grinned. She elbowed me in the side, a little harder than necessary.
“Acacia Jones, the mystery of InterWorld,” said a new voice, and I glanced up to see Jerzy. The birdlike version of me was holding a single plate instead of a tray, with a modest amount of food on it.
“I’m just a mystery in general,” she told him, winking. His feathers ruffled a bit—mine would have, too, if I’d had any. Probably for a different reason, though.
“Or so you like to make us think.” He smirked at her; Jerzy wasn’t one to take crap from anyone, pretty girls included. “You work hard on your image, huh?”
“Don’t have to,” she replied cheerfully. “You guys are all doing it for me.”
Joaquim snorted. I decided I liked him a little bit more. Jerzy joined us at the table.
“How’d the retrieval go?” I asked him. The officer team had arrived with the other Walker midmorning, and everyone was dying to get a glimpse of him or her. No such luck—the new one had been taken to the infirmary for a checkup, and then straight to the Old Man’s office. No one had heard from him or her since.
“It was awesome!” Jerzy said, glancing briefly at Acacia. His bright red hair feathers were ruffed up, like a peacock trying to attract a mate. “Pretty crazy, actually.”
“Yeah?” I prompted.
“Yeah. Josy lost a braid.”
“Oooh.” I winced. Josy was vain about her hair. “How dead’s the thing that did it?”
“All the way dead.” Jerzy laughed. “It was some kind of plant thing. We were in really lush jungle area with lots of weird, carnivorous vines. Got the Walkers out okay; was mostly a lot of hiding. HEX had a fix on them like nothin’ else.”
Something was nagging at me. After a moment, I had it. “Walkers?”
Jerzy’s feathers ruffled in excitement. “Yeah. It’s not released officially yet, so if I hear it spread I’ll know where it came from.” He paused to look at Acacia (who mimed zipping her mouth closed) and Joaquim, who nodded. “But the new Walker are Walkers. Two of them. Fraternal twins.”
My jaw dropped. “Has that ever happened before?”
“Don’t think so! And then the Old Man sending you off after a third Walker…” He nodded to Joaquim. “Three at once is totally unheard of. Not impossible, of course. But to get two fringers and a third at one time…Joeb said it was a good day.” Jerzy raised his glass to Joaquim in a toast.
“Wow,” I managed, still stymied. “And, hey, look at you, off with an officer team!” I clinked my own glass against his, after Joaquim did. “You gonna get promoted?”
He turned a little red. “Not for a while, if it even happens. But it was awesome getting to see them in action,” he admitted. “Joeb’s a great leader. The new ones trusted him immediately. I would’ve, too.”
“That’s how it was when I saw Joey,” Joaquim agreed, and I was glad enough for the praise that I didn’t bother asking him to call me Joe. “I mean, after I realized I wasn’t looking at a mirror.” He smiled at me. I returned it, remembering my earlier thought about whether or not twins ever had that same problem. Well, now I’d be able to ask some!
“Twins from a fringe world, huh?” I said, still marveling at the odds. “What are they like?”
“Right now, pretty confused! They’re handling it all right, though. They’ve got each other, that’s grounding them in some reality. Names’re Jari and Jarl, girl and boy. Old Man’s gonna release an announcement about them.”
As if on cue, the loudspeaker pinged above us.
“Nice,” I told Jerzy, as though he’d planned it. He preened a little, and Acacia giggled. The second the Old Man came on the loudspeaker, though, our mirth faded. His voice was serious, the kind of tone that wasn’t at all loud but made everyone stop and listen.
“Walkers, sit tight. One of our security systems has picked up an anomaly on the graph, and we’re taking no chances of being discovered. We’re punching it. I know most of you are in the middle of breakfast, so hold on to your plates. Punching in five.”
The speaker crackled, then pinged off. A low murmur went through the crowd, some of the voices amused or complaining, a select few who hadn’t been through a punch expressing confusion—Acacia included.
“What does he mean, ‘we’re punching it’?”
“You’ll see,” I told her, pleased I finally knew something she didn’t. “You don’t get airsick, do you?”
She fixed me with a withering look, but held on to both her tray and drink, as Jerzy and I were doing. Joaquim did the same, looking confused.
A second later, reality exploded.
That was the best way to describe it, really. “Punching it” basically meant throwing the engines and the interdimensional relocator into overdrive simultaneously. We were traveling through worlds, realities, and possibilities at a few light-years per hour, while sitting still. It would be kind of like taking all the remakes you could find of the same movie, overlaying them on the same projector, and playing them all on fast-forward. The ship around us flickered in and out—it was day and night thirty times in a single second; a flock of birds appeared in the middle of the room and were gone almost too quickly to see; trees appeared and vanished. We were all underwater and none of us were wet. It was like being on the fastest, craziest 3-D roller coaster ever invented. I glanced over to Acacia to see if she was enjoying the ride.
She wasn’t. Her eyes were wide and she had her hands to her head, as though trying to block out the world’s worst headache. Her odd, circuit-board nails were pulsing with little charges, and she seemed to be flickering out of time with the rest of us. I could see her through the scenery, then I could see the ship through her, which wasn’t right.
She was out of sync.
“Hey,” I yelled, trying to be heard over the dull roar of the wind, the engines, and the beeping of the alarm.
She turned toward me, dark hair whipping around her face. She started to reach out, then pulled back at the same time I did. We both knew it was a bad idea. If she was off sync, we weren’t phasing together—and if we phased into the same space at the same time, things could get pretty messy. “What’s wrong?” I yelled.
Her mouth moved, but I couldn’t hear her. She frowned, took in a sharp breath, eyes squeezing shut. The ship lurched, I lost my grip on my tray, and the lights dimmed into blackness for a moment as the engines powered down.
The lights came back a second later, bringing with them the usual reaction from the room full of Walkers. Relief or disappointment that it was over, some laughter at those who had lost their breakfast (figuratively or literally; some of us had stronger stomachs than others). Everything was back to normal.
And Acacia was gone.
CHAPTER EIGHT
“SORRY,” I APOLOGIZED AS Joaquim wiped the grits off his shirt. I’d let go of my tray during the warp, which was another newbie mistake. It had slid right across the table, only to be stopped by Joaquim. Now he looked like someone had tried to make an abstract painting out of breakfast on him.
“No problem,” he said easily. “I’m just glad I didn’t throw up. That was nuts.”
“Always is,” I said, looking around. “Did you see where Acacia went?” It was kind of absurd, but I was fervently hoping she’d somehow just slipped off to the bathroom when the lights were out, or something.
&nbs
p; Jerzy and Joaquim shook their heads, and Jerzy gave me a surprisingly serious look, for him. “No, but you should go report it. She couldn’t have gotten far in the time it took the lights to come on.”
He was right and I knew it. Still, worried as I was about Acacia, I didn’t particularly want to go tell the Old Man I’d lost the unknown I was supposed to be escorting. Sure, it probably wasn’t that big a deal, but…“You need any help?” I asked Joaquim, who was still cleaning breakfast off his shirt. He glanced at Jerzy, who gave me a look that said he knew I was trying to stall and he wasn’t going to let me. I stuck my tongue out at him. “You’re not an officer yet,” I teased.
It didn’t take long to get to the Old Man’s office; I deemed it imperative enough that I hopped on a few conveyers to get me there. Sooner than I’d have liked, I was standing in front of his desk, watching him shuffle through papers like he had far more important things to concern himself with.
“Sir?” I wasn’t sure he’d heard me the first time. He glanced up at me, his bionic eye spearing me like a proverbial deer in the headlights. I gathered my nerve, then spoke again. “Acacia Jones disappeared after the punch. She seemed to be in some distress, sir.”
“I heard you, and I nodded. The nod meant ‘I heard you.’ Is there anything else?”
I took a breath. “I…shouldn’t we be…concerned? Sir?”
He set down the stack of papers on his desk with enough force that my hair shifted slightly from the wind. “No, Harker, we should not. Do you recall when your mudluff companion went AWOL after appearing in the Hazard Zone?” I nodded. “Some things are not compatible with other things. That’s all there is to it.” He waited a moment to see if I was stupid enough to say something else. I almost was, but he continued before my brain got quite that far. “I suggest you go take some leisure time. There will be a training exercise later.”
I was still almost stupid enough to press the point, but the Old Man’s intercom blipped and his assistant’s voice filled the room. “Jayarre to see you, Captain.”
“Send him in.” The Old Man didn’t take his eyes off me. I swallowed what I’d wanted to say, stepping out of his office. I passed Jayarre—who gave me a tip of his top hat on his way in—and Josetta, who was still listening to the Old Man through the com. “—Joryn, Jirathe, Jyelda, Jeric, and J’emi,” he was saying, while Josetta took notes. All officers. “And get me Jaroux,” I heard as I stepped into the hallway, which gave me pause. He was gathering up a bunch of officers—but why the librarian?