episode THIRTY-ONE
Vikings.
“All
hail the Vikings!” they said, together, almost all of them bored out of their
skulls, and they said it that way, as if these were the stupidest words they
had ever said, and truth be told, all of them probably believed that to be so,
even Hank, who started this little “society.” They lifted their beer or their
coffee, and gave the ritual nod, raising their right eyebrow (those that could,
anyway), and knocked on the table three times. The Viking Simulation Society
got together every Wednesday, just like prayer meeting (that would be Rodney,
he always said this, and he’d never been to church, but swore that Jews often
had Wednesday night prayer meeting, and that the Baptists had stolen the whole
shebang from them, a long, long time ago) (in a land, far, far away, probably
New Jersey). The Society was all about smoking cigars (and Jethro’s pipe, of
course, but he smoked a bourbon-soaked tobacco that smelled better than the
bourbon-soaked cigars that everyone else smoked), and drinking cheap beer,
except for the two AA guys, Ron and Fred, who both quaffed coffee, endlessly.
All that, and they talked, or argued, mainly about whether or not everyone
lived in a simulation. Oh, other things worked their way into the talks, time
travel, coincidence, cannibalism, technology, science and science fiction, lots
of Tolkien stuff, and whatever really cool movie was out (and some very old
movies, such as The Matrix, and The Thirteenth Floor, which were
commonly referenced, weighed, found wanting, and adored).
For
a while they went through the Rodolphus books, all of the few they could get
their hands on. They had fought about what AnimalHeart
was all about, and cursed the author for not living long enough to finish the
third book of his fantastic trilogy. Some of them loved Storyteller’s Last Stand, and a few of them hated it, Rodolphus, in
general, was like that. The Wolf Doth
Grin was fun and cute, and the posthumously published Virus Z was a kids’ book, for crying out loud (still, they all
liked the zombies). And then, just like that, they switched over to Neal
Stephenson, and returned to William Gibson, and then roared long and loud for Ready Player One by Ernest Cline, and
then by association hit on Peter Clines, and ultimately found wept for and over
all of Brandon Sanderson. They were like a freaking book club, with beer and
cigars.
All
of the guys had been religious, at one time or other in their lives, all of
them raised in strict religious families, and so the Wednesday nights were kind
of a nod to their collective need for...church,
for lack of a better word. Rodney had never been to a church, but his youth and
childhood packed chock full of Temple, and he still wore his Yarmulke (he had
quite a collection, even one in camouflage). They had abandoned church, all its
varied flavors of people sitting and listening to the same thing over and over
again each week (fighting over the music, always), and now they discussed
reality. You might say they had all been drawn to and discovered the stuff, or
the stuff had found them.
The
room was supposed to be a basement dining room—the largest room in Hank’s
little house—but Hank had it fixed up like a conference room, with the long
oval table, and the wooden chairs, with lots of plastic Viking stuff on the
walls, little party helmets replete with golden Viking horns, some really cool
plastic axes and swords that looked like the real thing, and posters of
longboats, the dragon ships with dragon heads. Hank was Danish, a little bit on
his father’s side, but the name of their little society was just a tribute to
the idea of the man cave, and what better gods and heroes than the Vikings,
those lovable rogues who pillaged everyone without prejudice, raped and
murdered and burned almost as a courtesy, all the while laughing and toasting
each other with beer, or mead, or whatever Vikings quaffed in their big,
bearded mouths.
They
lit up their cigars, because it was seven o’clock, and their Society meetings
always started at that time, exactly. And they were always there, on time,
these seven guys, Hank, Rodney, John, Barney, Frederic, Jethro, and Ron. Over
the years other guys dropped in and out, and even a few babes, broads, and
dames, but these here now were the long-time members. These were the guys who
were really interested in manufactured society, simulated worlds, digital
universes, and the Multiverse. They popped their beer tops, passing around the
bottle opener, and Ron and Fred refilled their coffee cups.
“Did
you hear what old Elon Musk said?” Frederic asked, sipping at his coffee (he
drank it black, always). “It made it into all the papers. I saw it on the Fox
News last night.” He always said it that way: on the Fox News.
“Oh
boy,” Hank said, “it must of been about electric cars, how they will save the
world.”
“Or
solar panels, that man loves the solar panels!”
They
all lusted over the Tesla roadster, but all of them were realists and knew they’d
never get their paws on the beast. But they could lust, wistfully. And dream.
And Hank was already on the solar panel kick, his house already had the battery
system, and it would be real easy to incorporate a charging station for his
roadster, when pigs soared into the sky, or Hell flirted with icicles.
“Yeah,
yeah, yeah, I heard, I heard,” Rodney said, leaning forward so that his chin
nearly touched the table, and his excitement set off a burst of coughing (he
wasn’t really a cigar smoker, not like the rest of them, but smoked one stogie
every Wednesday night, just to fit in, and made it last about two hours, or as
long as the meeting stretched, which sometimes didn’t break up until three in
the morning). “He said we probably are living in some kid’s video game, way in
the future!”
There
was a collective snort around the table, and then chuckles. This was the kind
of meat they consumed, with gusto, but they had yacked it so far beyond what if this is a video game, that it struck
each of them as hilarious when some famous person said their kind of thing in
public.
“The
really interesting thing is the fake reporters on their blogs, how they are
doing their very bestest to make him sound stupid, and crazy,” Frederic said,
sneering. Every one in this room was a fake reporter with blogs, but
collectively they looked up to guys like Elon Musk, and Jeff Bezos, Steve Jobs
and Steve Wozniak, Richard Branson—all of these contemporary captains of
industry were characters that could have been written by Ayn Rand, and all
their silly, supercilious detractors were guys that could have been written by
the same author!
“Yeah,
yeah, yeah, one idiot actually said that a simulated apple doesn’t feed
anybody!” Rodney guffawed. “Can you believe it? Can you?”
“The
obvious answer to that,” Hank said, “is that a simulated apple feeds a
simulated person.”
“Wow,
right, Hank, right,” Rodney said, nodding energetically, tapping his Yarmulke
with his cigar hand, getting ash all over himself without knowing it.
“Ooh,”
John said, doing an exaggerated shiver, “but
this all feels so real, it can’t be a simulation, I just know it!”
“Yeah,
yeah, yeah,” Rodney spluttered, toasting everyone with his beer, “and computers
just can’t create anything convincing enough, right? Right! Computers are too
wimpy. It’s not possible!”
“I
think the fake reporters on their blogs...are
simulated people—I just can’t figure why the System doesn’t make them
smarter, just a little smarter anyway,” Barney said, blowing smoke rings at the
ceiling. “The System loves trolls, and the whole troll demeanor. The System
keeps pumping out trolls and blogs.”
Hank
shrugged his meaty shoulders. “I think people, you know, in general, are
trolls. What else would System guys be
like, sneering at the Musks and the Besos and the Bransons and Garriotts?”
They
all called the simulation, or the program that ran this digital world of theirs—The System. Although the truth was that
none of them really believed it, that they were living in a simulation, because
how could you, really? The System wouldn’t allow you to believe it, otherwise
what would be the point of running all of this nonsense in a simulation? It was
supposed to be real, and you were
supposed to accept it as real. And they all did, they all remembered their
unique, individual childhoods, they had all had marriages, a couple of them had
children that they loved very much, and how could the human mind get past any
of that, the very fiber of their reality, their memory, their experience? Their
very lives?
Still,
it certainly was interesting to discuss the possibility that this all was a
simulation, and that other worlds were spinning very near in the Multiverse.
The idea certainly inspired the Viking Simulation Society.
“Any
news on the Fermilab tests?” Hank said, wearily, belching. He puffed his cigar,
not expecting such a very much. It was so silly, being inside a simulation, and
trying to find scientific proof that you are living inside a simulation.
“They’re
not going to find anything, ever,” John snapped, grumpily. “It’s stupid, just a
waste of money—trying to find scientific evidence that this is a simulation.
Think about it! From inside a simulation, do you think the System is going to
let anyone find freaking...proof,
that they’re inside a simulation?”
“Still,
still, you know, it’s cool, that they’re doing it, I mean come on, they’re
spending millions of dollars, maybe billions of dollars, trying to figure out
the stuff we talk about,” Rodney said, waving his cigar around like a scepter.
His cigar was already out, but he still jammed it into the side of his face and
puffed on it, like he was billowing factory smoke.
“Yes,”
Jethro said, his eyes far off and dreamy, doing little puffs on his meerschaum
pipe, “when scientists and engineers invest money to run tests, you know they
are thinking along the lines that we are thinking. We have to give them credit,
really.”
“Maybe
we ought to be a little more careful,” Ron said, spinning his coffee cup around
and around on the table.
“What
do you mean, more careful?” Hank said, leaning back, his arms behind his head.
“You
know, we’ve probably all thought about it,” Ron said, still staring into his
coffee. “Stare long enough into the Abyss—it will notice, and the Abyss will
stare back.”
“Come
on, come on,” Rodney said, patting his Yarmulke. “You don’t believe that. Do
you?”
“Yes,
I do,” Ron replied, not looking away from his coffee. “We all have noticed the
coincidences, and the more you notice coincidences, the more you have them. We
accept this. And yet we don’t understand what coincidence is, and yet we all
love to stumble on them, and it happens so often, perhaps they are being thrown
in front of us, so that we do stumble upon them. Think about it. This could be
the Abyss staring back at us. Do we really want the Abyss noticing us?”
“Yes,”
Hank said, “I for one, do. Yes. I want the Abyss to stop screwing around, and
step up like a man, and answer some questions. Don’t you hate this? This
feeling, that we know something, and yet we have to know—the System tells us
so—we can’t be noticing anything, because there is nothing to notice, because
it is impossible. This is all there is. But we know about the other worlds,
they’re right here, right now, all about us.”
“I
hate it, I vote for hating it,” said John.
“Me
too,” said Barney and Frederic as one.
Jethro
sucked his pipe. “I don’t know. I think if any of us got an answer from the
Abyss, we’d have a heart attack, or a brain embolism—probably both—and if we
didn’t die outright, we’d flee shrieking in the other direction. We’d be
running in terror right alongside Chicken Little. The System is terrifying.
Like in The Prestige, people want the
magic to be a trick.”
“Hey
Abyss!” Hank shouted, holding his cigar in one hand, his beer in the other, his
face turned to the ceiling. “Do you hear me, Abyss! Come on, step up! Do you
hear me? Step up! We know you exist. We know you are there, pulling our puppet
strings. Now come on, knock it off, quit playing, and get serious!”
“You’re
hurting my ears,” Jethro said, holding his pipe to one ear as if it were a
radio transmitter, and his beer to his other ear, as if this would offer a
little bit of protection from Hank’s big mouth and the frightening things he
shouted. Weirdly, it was frightening. There was an eerie vibe in the room, and
they all felt it.
“You’re
freaking me out, freaking me out,” Rodney said, looking at Hank with real fear,
twiddling his dead cigar between his hands. “Just. Stop. Please.”
“I
don’t like you talking to the System, directly,” Jethro said.
“It
is terrifying,” Ron said.
“It’s
like you’re calling on the Devil,” Rodney said, suddenly very quiet, his eyes
huge behind his thick spectacles. “And the Devil always comes when you talk
about him.”
“You
don’t believe in the Devil,” Hank said, shaking his head, slamming his cigar
between his teeth and spouting smoke.
“I
don’t,” Rodney said. “But I do. You do too. We all do. It doesn’t matter if you
call him god or the devil, or the System, or the Abyss. Just shut the hell up,
please.”
“I
don’t believe in the Devil,” Hank said, decidedly. “I believe in God, but
almost against my will.”
“There
is far more evidence for the Devil than for God,” Jethro whispered, pointing
his pipe stem at Hank. “Just walk down the street. It’s easy to believe in the
Devil.”
“You
guys are nuts,” Barney said, opening his second bottle of beer and pouring it
into one of the ornate beer steins. The mug had little Vikings crawling all
over it. It was weird, but if you stared at it, especially after drinking the
contents, you could almost see the little Vikings moving about on the stein. “I
could be working on my muscle car. Yet I’m here.”
“Week
after week, you’re here,” John said, smirking. “Thank God you can break away
from that stupid gas guzzler.”
“Better
than your stupid New Age Prius,” Barney sneered.
“I
love my Prius, it’s like driving an iPod.”
“Do
you feel that?” Rodney said, going all still, his eyes huge.
“Yeah,
I feel it,” Ron said, “what the hell?”
“What?”
Hank said.
“Yeah,”
Frederic said, “a breeze, right? I feel it! What the hell?”
“I
don’t feel anything,” Hank said, but now he sounded a little frightened, as
well, and that was a rare thing. Hank was just too big to ever feel fear, or at
least show it. He used to be a cop, and still had plenty of muscle in his huge
frame. He had the shoulders of two men pressed together—they often joked, the
Society, that Hank must have gobbled up a twin in the womb. Hank always replied
that he was a vegetarian, and would never cannibalize a twin.
“It’s
coming across the table,” Rodney whispered, pointing across the table over
Barney’s shoulder.
Barney
half turned in his chair. “Yeah, I feel it too.”
But
behind Barney was the brick wall of the basement. Thick red bricks. And brick
just did not allow for the passage of much breeze, but now they all felt it.
And there were no vents on that side of the room. Just bricks.
“Something
is about to happen,” Ron said, half poised at the table as if he were about to
jump up and flee the room.
“Yes,
yes, yes,” said Rodney, edging back in his chair. “Something is about to
happen.”
There
passed a long, pregnant silence, the seven men watching, the seven men waiting.
But
nothing happened.
“You
guys are starting to freak me out,” Hank said with a snort, and then examined
his cigar, which had gone out. That was weird. His cigars never went out.
Then
a man came hurtling through the
bricks, backward, taking little staggering steps, and slammed butt-first and jolting
the heavy table, knocking over empty beer bottles. This man, appearing from
nowhere, slammed between Barney and Frederic, and half-sat there on the edge of
the table. He blinked his eyes a few times, looked around the room, and then
leaped to his feet—it was an incredible movement, literally springing two feet
into the air, whirling about, flashing a black stick in his hands.
“What
the hell!” the strange man shouted. He was garbed in a big black cloak, with a
massive hood thrown back from his head. He was large and handsome and was
bleeding from several cuts on his face. His left eye was swollen and half-shut
with glue and blood. And something big swung from his right hand—everyone who
saw it thought the same thing: he’s carrying
a severed head!
Nobody
said anything. The seven men seated at the table gaped. They stared with open
mouths. Jethro’s pipe fell away from his teeth and tumbled down his body to
slap on the tiled floor.
The
strange man held a knobbed stick in his left hand, one of those weird black
walking canes you expected to see in the hands of a leprechaun. He pointed the
knobbed end around the table, until he pointed at Hank. He discerned the leader
of this group, pretty easily.
“What
year is this?” the strange man gasped, and it was obvious he was beaten and
parched, bloody and exhausted, his eyes bloodshot, but his tone certainly was
compelling, emerging as it did from this shattered husk of a man.
“It’s
Twenty Sixteen,” Hank said, blankly, talking like an automaton, blinking at the
strange man.
“Wow,
I thought this was all gone,” the strange man said, “but I can’t say it’s good
to be back. I’ve got some heads to crack, if you’ll excuse me. But first! Ah,
yes!”
The
strange man had seen the unopened beer bottles and he strode to the table and
plucked a bottle out of its cardboard six-pack box and easily popped the top
with his thumb. He put the bottle to his lips and tipped back his head, and the
seven members of the Society watched dumfounded as the strange man gurgled down
the entire bottle in a few seconds. He slapped the empty bottle back into the
box and then belched loudly. Then he clunked the severed head onto the table.
Everyone
relaxed—a little. It was not a severed head, but a massive helmet, with two
impressive bones jutting out from either side. It was a huge metal helmet,
covered in shaggy fur, with horns uplifted like antlers. It was a Viking
helmet. It must be a movie prop, because everyone knew Vikings didn’t really
wear these things.
“Oh
I needed that,” the strange man said, and then smirked around the table, “I’m
Stacey Colton, the Pugilist,” he said, nodding, and then whirled and charged
directly into the brick wall and vanished. Just like that.
“Right
out of the Abyss,” Ron muttered.
Hank
pushed himself to his feet.
“We
all saw that, right? I mean, we all saw him, that man,” Hank said. “It was
real, right?”
The
other men nodded, but nobody spoke, they were all still too awestruck. Too
devastated. Too terrified. They might never speak again. You just didn’t witness
stuff like this—it was straight out of the Twilight
Zone.
Hank
went to the brick wall and stood before it, considering.
“Don’t
do it,” Ron said, “whatever you do, just don’t. Don’t, Hank.”
“Yeah,
what, are you crazy!” Rodney said. He snatched up his beer and downed it, much
like the strange man had just done only moments before, and Rodney was the type
to nurse one beer, all the night through.
But
Hank was extending an arm toward the red bricks. And as everyone watched, Hank’s
hand vanished. He stood there, extending his right arm, and inches before he
ever touched the bricks, his right hand was just—gone. Gone at the wrist. He was an amputee, that fast. One second
he was whole, and then he was one of the lucky guys who could park in all the
best places, right up close to any business building in town.
Several
of the Society guys screamed, and Hank snatched his hand back, feeling his fingers
with his left hand, flexing his hand, and laughing silently, his eyes wide and
delighted. He glanced back at them, but only for a beat. Silence. A long
silence. Hank stood considering.
“You
saw that?” he said, not looking back, just standing there as still as a statue.
“Yeah,
you’re lucky you still have a hand you idiot!” shouted Barney, and he upended
his beer stein over his own head, as if it were the most natural thing to do.
And
before anyone could protest Hank leaned forward and they witnessed his head
vanishing into the brickwork. Six mouths dropped and hung slack. A headless man
stood in the room with them, bent forward slightly, still very much alive,
shoulders moving. He looked like the headless horseman—these were the best
special effects, without a bluescreen in sight.
Hank
stood straight and spun about, and they were happy to see he still had a face
on his head.
“You
are not going to believe it,” Hank said. “The Abyss not only stared back, but
it opened a doorway into what we always knew was there!”
“What
is it?” several of them shouted.
“It’s another world,” Hank said, all business and matter of
fact, shaking his head, and beaming at them. They had talked about this for
what seemed like forever, and even now, with all the evidence in the world
shouting at them, the System klaxoned in their heads: “It is impossible, this
is not real, there is no such thing!”
And
then they were all there, crowding together, clumped in a mess of bodies before
the brick wall, but nobody made a move closer to where both Hank’s hand and
then his head had disappeared.
“I
don’t care what happens to me, this is my chance, finally, my chance,” Hank
said, and he moved forward and vanished into the very bricks.
“We
gonna do this?” Ron said, swallowing hard.
“Shit,”
John said, and then he went through as well.
Thirty
seconds passed before Barney and Frederic each put out their hands and did the
exploratory hand trick, and just like Hank, their hands disappeared and then
reappeared.
Ron
came back through, appearing like magic, nearly bowling them all over. His eyes
were wide and terrified.
“We
don’t wanna go through!” Ron shouted, “didn’t you see it? It’s a battle! They’re
fighting! They’re Vikings, actual Vikings!”
And
then they were all pushing through, even Rodney, who had both hands pressed
down on his Yarmulke. They all vanished through the magic portal, leaving only
Ron standing there.
He
threw back his head and screamed at the ceiling.
“Okay,”
he said, gathering all of the pieces of himself together. He even straightened
an imaginary tie. “Chance of a lifetime. Chance of a lifetime. What the Hell! Here
we go!”
And
he charged back through the bricks.
Hank
came through into this too-vivid place, this other world, where the colors were just too extravagant for his
eyes to bear. He stood, trembling, like a puppy emerging in the middle of a
garish carnival. Men were screaming. He saw a titanic figure charging like a
bull, and there was the strange man, swinging that cartoon cudgel, and the
titanic figure went down, nose-diving into the dirt. This was a rocky hollow
crouched between two towering hills, and a big battle wagon sat like a gypsy camper,
with wheels that were certainly made for war, with two nightmarish beasts slain
in their traces—the animals gave the impression of rhinoceros or hippopotamus,
but were not, they were bigger, more muscular, and they were dead, slumped before
the circus wagon with many hack wounds.
All
this Hank witnessed in but a moment, and he was just turning to flee back
through the portal when stout John magically appeared and slammed right into
his chest, knocking him backward. As they fell upon the ground Hank registered
the flashing buzz of an arrow passing just over John’s back. Those idiot
bastard phony Vikings were shooting arrows at them! If John hadn’t knocked him
over Hank would have been struck by that arrow! He should be dead right now!
Ron
pushed himself up from Hank and blinked about in the too vivid colors. He took
in the Vikings, the screams, saw the axes and the spears and the swords waving
and he pushed himself away from Hank and dashed back from whence he had
arrived. Hank saw him disappear, even though there was nothing there in the air
to mark any kind of passage, although for just an instant, just before Ron
vanished, it looked like two disembodied hands were clawing about, making
grasping gestures.
Hank
sat up, crouching. He crawled forward a couple of feet to hide behind a boulder
the size of a wheelbarrow, and this definitely was a fight. The strange man was
there, up on a flat rock formation, kicking faces and blocking sword thrusts
with that black stick. Hank gaped. What he was watching was not possible,
because the strange man was batting away metal weapons with that walking cane,
twirling it about. The strange man in the black cloak with the walking stick
was just fifty feet away, and bodies lay sprawled everywhere. It looked like a
hundred of the Vikings were down.
Hank
shouted as someone seized his shoulders, but glancing over his shoulder he saw
it was just the guys, hunkered down about him, except that Rodney was standing
there, both hands on top of his head, gawking through his coke-bottle-bottom
glasses, just watching the show as if this were all a Renaissance Fair show. A
Viking reenactment. Cosplay.
Then
a hideous looking barbarian came charging at Rodney, who stood there smiling at
the charging man.
“Watch
out!” Hank shouted and leapt toward Rodney, and accidentally knocked him toward
the barbarian, and he realized the man was swinging an absurdly large battle ax
at Rodney, and he closed his eyes and threw his first punch since high school
boxing, a left, and he felt the punch connect, and his arm went numb. He opened
his eyes.
The
barbarian was stopped, the ax still back behind his head. Hank’s punch had
caught him right in the side of the face, and right now his face was turned
away from the blow. But he looked back. And he looked angry. Very angry. But at
least the ax dropped behind him. The Viking, sans helmet, was taking deep
breaths, and he seemed to be working himself into a rage, and he was looking
straight into Hank’s face, and things didn’t look too good, not right now.
“Here!”
Frederic said, extending a bottle of beer toward the Viking.
That’s
weird, Hank thought, because Frederic was one of the AA guys. What in the hell
was he doing with a bottle of beer?
The
Viking considered the offering. And then he took the bottle, delicately, with
some curiosity, even tentatively smelling it. Such a dainty sniff. He seemed
like a wine connoisseur offered a cheap bottle of Bud. But at least he didn’t
seem quite so angry. Beer can do that, soothe the savage beast.
“Oh
go on with your bad self!” Rodney laughed, and he playfully shoved the Viking,
and the barbarian guy stumbled away from Hank and took a few staggering steps,
and then suddenly was gone, just vanished. Rodney had shoved him through the
doorway.
Hank
still had his dukes up, as if he meant to get in some sparring practice, but
his left arm had no feeling in it. He doubted he could give a kitten much
competition if they were attacked again.
“Isn’t
this cool?” Rodney said, blinking at Hank through his thick lenses.
“You
do realize that all of this is actually happening?” Hank said, staring at
Rodney as the battle raged only twenty feet away from them. He winced and half
crouched at the clash of steel.
“Come
on! This can’t be real!” Rodney laughed, waving his hand toward the Vikings.
Hank
roughly seized Rodney by the shoulders and spun him about, bodily throwing him
toward Jethro (who, oddly enough, had his pipe jutting out from his mouth, he
must have retrieved it, and Hank was certain he had cleaned the stem prior to
putting it back into his mouth) and John, who caught the lanky Rodney and
pulled him down behind the wheelbarrow-sized boulder. Now all seven of them
were here, in this other world, crouching down, observing the melee just on the
other side of this rock pile. Hank cradled his left arm, it felt broken, although
he was certain this was not the case; it was just a simple punch, but he was
definitely out of practice in the punching department.
“Think
about it,” Ron said, conversationally, “we call ourselves the Vikings, and here
we stumble into a world full of Vikings. That can’t be a coincidence.”
“You’re
worried about coincidences? Now?”
Hank said, out of breath, and half in shock.
“It
makes you wonder,” Ron said, as if they were on the set of some reality show,
just chatting away about their usual meanderings, sipping mint juleps, and
taking dainty bites out of cucumber and cream cheese sandwiches.
“I
think we need to get out of the Abyss before it notices us crouching here,”
Jethro said, peeking over the boulder.
There
was a lull in the fighting. At least ten of the horrifying Vikings—they looked
so vicious here, killing machines, you never thought about that, the blood
lust—were moving uneasily about the strange man on the flat rock. The Vikings
were like sharks, waiting for that special moment when they could swim in close
and take a hunk of flesh out of the strange man. Down the hill, in a small
valley, many more of the large Vikings were clambering up toward the fight.
“I
count ten men down,” Frederic said, ever the accountant. Of course he would tally
the numbers. Still, that couldn’t be right, it looked like wall-to-wall bodies
out there, hundreds and hundreds of bodies strewn every which way.
“A
simulated ax never killed anyone,” Rodney said, giggling. Even now, he was not
taking this seriously. He was only half-crouched, standing up high enough that
any of the Vikings could see him, and take another potshot. Toss a hammer, or
an ax—there were plenty of these weapons in evidence, and all of them,
everything—it was all entirely real.
“Except
a simulated person. A simulated ax does wonders on a simulated human head,”
Hank answered, automatically. It seemed the old arguments crossed over into
this world with them. “Get down, you dummy. You’re going to get killed by one
of those simulated axes.”
“This
has to be one of those HBO movies,” Rodney said. “Does anyone see Tyrion?”
“You
know nothing, Jon Stupid,” Barney replied. “You see any movie cameras? Where
are the best boys? The gaffers? This is another world, like Hank said.”
Then
Rodney plunked down on the ground, and stared dejectedly into his lap. “So it’s
real, what we’ve always been talking about? We’re fake? We’re all of us fake
people? Come on, this...just, can’t be
real.”
“I
for one don’t feel too fake,” Barney said. “And my muscle car sure ain’t fake.”
“I
beat your best, Sore!” the strange man said, posing on his flat rock. He had
his black stick back behind his head, resting across his shoulders, his arms
hanging lazily over the stick. “And you sure haven’t done much to impress me
with your fighting ability! What’s happened, you get lazy after killing farmers
and women, and children?”
“Ooh,”
Ron said. “I like this guy, he’s really cool.”
“Thou
did not beat me,” one of the bodies said, pushing itself upward. “And cease
making sport of my name!”
The
big man growled. Even on the ground it was obvious he was huge, and blond, with
a shaggy mane of Farah Fawcett locks. And he glared up at the strange man upon
the rock.
“So
you still expect me to accept that you are Thor, the God of Thunder?”
“I
never claimed to be a god,” the big man said, getting even bigger by the
moment, pushing himself off the ground and rising up. He swayed a moment, half
crouched, and then stood, and thrust a mighty arm at the strange man upon the
flat rock, pointing his finger—a digit the size of a salami—at the man with the
black stick. “I am still here! Thou did not beat me. I am Thor, that is mine
name. And I am a better man than thee!”
“Well,
you’ve been catching up on your beauty sleep,” the man with the black stick
said.
What
was his name? He had told them his name.
“What
did he say his name was?” Hank whispered to the other Society guys.
“I
think it was Stacey Colt,” Frederic said.
“Colton.
Stacey Colton,” Jethro said.
“There
was a boxer with that name, a while back,” Hank said, thinking the guy looked
somewhat familiar. And yes, the name, Stacey Colton—they called him Wolf, in
the ring. A mediocre boxer.
“You
want to try Round Two?” the strange man said, loosing his black stick, swinging
it about in an intricate maneuver. He looked like a baton twirler in a parade.
“Come,
if thou are really the Pugilist, face me, hand to hand,” the big blond said, in
his deep but strangely sing-song accent.
The
strange man set his black stick upon its tip and took his hand away. The
knobbed stick stood upright. And the strange man stepped down from his flat
rock, and strode to stand just before the blond Viking.
The
strange man was a big guy, probably about the size of Hank—six foot three or
four, at least. But he looked like a dwarf in front of the blond Viking, who
had to stand seven feet tall or more, and was almost as wide. And talk about
muscle. This guy made Arnold look anemic.
“Thor,”
another man spoke, an older man with gray braids lying about his shoulders.
This older man leaned upon a great spear that stood several feet above his
head. “Look about thee. No man could do this, none other than our legend of the
Pugilist. This man does not lie to us. Come, let us eat meat, and drink mead,
and share our tales.”
“I
don’t want anything to do with anyone’s tail,” the strange man said, shrugging
out of his great cloak. He stood tall, and strong, in a sweat-soaked shirt, and
a scaly vest. He wore thorny looking fingerless gloves, and there was some
strange armor upon his right arm. He had on tight scaly breeches and what
looked like tall crocodile boots, folded over just beneath the knee. But as
strong and manly as he appeared, it was evident he was utterly exhausted. He
tried to keep his posture straight, but it was clear he was near falling from
fatigue. But even rested and in peak condition, there was absolutely no way he
could hope to cope with the blond.
“How
can we help him?” John whispered, ever the optimist.
How
the hell could they help the poor guy? Maybe if they had machine guns? Even
then, maybe not. These Vikings were men unlike the soft men from their world.
This Thor character could kill the Society guys with harsh language, after taking a shotgun blast to the
chest.
More
and more Vikings were coming up the slope. In the distance, several longboats
were visible on a large river. From this distance the boats seemed to be
swarming with ants. Large blond ants in armor.
“I
will fight thee, Pretender,” Thor roared, lifting a hand up near the sky,
forming those monster-sized fingers into a fist the size of a toaster. And he
brought that meaty fist down, with power enough to knock the teeth out of a
bull’s head.
But
the strange man stepped neatly to the side. The blond Viking, Thor, actually
flipped in the air, so strenuous was the punch he threw that landed on nothing.
Hank felt the ground shudder as the big Viking crashed onto his back. He lay
there blinking stupidly for several moments, evidently the wind knocked out of
him.
“You
just playing with me, Thor?” the strange man said, and then nimbly leapt over
Thor’s grasping hand as the Viking attempted to seize him by the leg.
Several
of the Vikings—there must now be twenty of them gathered, and still gathering—actually
laughed, so surprising was that missed punch, and the Viking flipping himself
over like that, with the strange man doing absolutely nothing, save for moving
a bit.
The
Viking lumbered to his feet. He roared, bending double, his face going dark
red. He roared and it sounded like a giant trumpet sounding. And snarling, he
launched himself at the strange man, swiping and punching and throwing monster
strike after monster strike. Any of those blows would have caved in the strange
man’s head, if any of them had landed. None did.
“Are
you getting thore, Thor?” the strange man laughed, taunting the giant with a
feigned speech impediment.
“Stop
making sport of me!” Thor bellowed, stomping down a foot to smash his much
smaller antagonist. But again, the strange man moved neatly to the side—Hank
thought of the bullfighters that stepped gingerly to the side when the bull
came charging in a frenzy.
And
then the strange man did a neat side kick that landed on Thor’s knee while his
other leg was over-extended from the attempted body stomp, and the giant blond
Viking crumpled to the ground, going over disjointedly, crashing on the rocky
soil.
Hank
felt almost sorry for the Viking, but he knew this could and probably would
change immediately, if the giant got one hand on the smaller, exhausted man.
Things were about to get tragic. Because the behemoth was up, almost
immediately, and though he favored one leg, he didn’t seem to be too
debilitated from the thrashing the smaller man was dealing.
The
smaller man stopped dodging and came in opening his arms as if he wished to
embrace the larger man, and then it was all over, because the giant seized him
in a bear hug lifting him off the ground, and absolutely nobody could survive
that overwhelming embrace. Except that the comparatively little man didn’t
remain still, but rocked back his body in the hug and slammed his forehead
squarely into the larger man’s nose, and like a hot rock the smaller man fell
between the giant’s arms, dropped instantly, and then the smaller man jabbed
out his left hand in two manically fast jabs, crashing into the giant’s eyes,
blinding him instantly—direct strikes, brutal—and then he finished with a
chopping right hand that landed squarely on the tip of the giant’s chin.
The
big man fell over backward, utterly disarmed, discombobulated, and practically decomposing
as his body plunged into the ground. This particular fight was over.
The
strange man snatched his cloak from the ground, shook it out, and shrugged his
shoulders into the big coat, then strolled casually back to his black stick,
where it stood waiting upon the flat rock. He leapt nimbly up to the top of the
rock, easily a four-foot hop, and snatched up his stick, and turned to face the
Vikings.
“Shillelagh,
that’s what that’s called,” Frederic muttered over his shoulder to Hank. “Irish
fighting stick.”
“This
can’t be real,” said Rodney, still sitting and staring into his lap. “I just can’t
accept it. I’m sorry, but this world isn’t real, and probably our world isn’t
real. Maybe it was long ago, but now I think that the plain and simple truth is
that we are all data, and data is pretty much date, what’s the difference? It’s
all in the numbers.””
“You
may not believe in God or the Devil, but they certainly believe in you,” Barney
said, almost helpfully, but they all knew he was being his usual sarcastic bad
self.
“Come
on!” the strange man called. “Can’t you offer anything more impressive? Is this
your best? Yes, you killed a handful of Dragon Warriors, and a few horses, and
the beasts. But why haven’t you killed me?”
And
the Vikings had obviously had enough of this strange, taunting man, for they
charged, swarming up the hill, perhaps a hundred of them, and more besides were
still leaping from the longboats. All of them working themselves into the same
berserker rage. The closest immediately set upon the strange man with upon the
flat rock.
“We
gotta get out of here!” Hank snapped, seizing each of his Society guys and
dragging them away from the boulder, one by one.
The
strange man leapt over a sword slash meant to disable him at the ankles, and
with a neat clobbering pop he laid the Viking over, and the one behind him took
the knob of the shillelagh right in the face, and then the stick was skittering
across the ground—Hank paused in his flight, long enough to watch what would
happen.
“We
gotta see how this ends!” Barney shouted as Hank seized him by the hair and
dragged him back toward the portal.
The
shillelagh danced across the ground, bobbed up suddenly and knocked a charging
Viking right under the chin, and then somehow it came dancing back, right into
the strange man’s gloved hands.
“We
know how this ends, we don’t need to see it, or be a part of it,” and then they
were all running, diving for what they hoped was the doorway that brought them
into this other world.
And
they were back in Hank’s basement dining room, and for several moments they
just stood there, counting themselves and each other, and after they had all
confirmed that there were indeed seven of them, they plunked down in their
customary seats and began making all the contents of the bottles of beer vanish
into their own magic doorways, even the AA guys were drinking the beer, and
nobody was really speaking, except that they each muttered every now and then,
each man considering his own reality. How could they feel this parched, this
utterly thirsty, after what could have been only five minutes in another world?
“What
about that world? Kind of like, you know, over the rainbow?” Frederic said, an
AA guy, staring into the dregs of his third bottle of beer.
“More
like a world made out of rainbows, did you notice the sky? Ever see a sky that
color? I mean it was, I mean, you know, the whole concept of blue—I don’t know,
after seeing that sky, I may have to try and capture just that color, some sort
of glowing cerulean, or, or, or turquoise going more to cyan? Maybe people
dream of going to that world, and wake up artists, I want to go to Michaels or Hobby Lobby or even Wally
World, and I want to buy all their blue paints, and I want to, I want to,”
babbled John Galt, shaking his head, staring up at a remembered sky in a
decidedly other reality.
But
it was Hank who suddenly grabbed a piece of chalk from the green board where
they often did math—at least the math guys, or doodled, that was generally John
and Frederic—but he held the almost new stick of chalk like a magic wand and
hurried over to the bricks, and began testing, pushing a finger toward the
bricks, and when he found that sweet spot where the pad of his finger actually
touched brick, but his nail disappeared, he traced a surprisingly neat outline
on the bricks, and as everyone stared, unspeaking, Hank sketched a square
doorway on the bricks that ended up being pretty much the size of a standard
door. It took him perhaps a minute, and his work seemed inspired.
“So
it’s still there?” Rodney asked, as Hank stepped back to consider his work.
There was a chalk outline of a doorway. It was just chalk on brick, simple
white on red. It certainly didn’t seem very magical, just accurate, and surprisingly
neat, especially for Hank.
“Yes,
it’s still there,” Hank said.
“What’s
really going on?” Rodney said in that dead voice that was nothing like the way
he usually spoke. All of his joy seemed gone, left on the other side of those
bricks. “I mean, how do we go on?” And he cursed. They had never heard Rodney
curse before.
“I’m
going to put a real door here, a really heavy-duty frame embedded into the bricks,
like with big honking brick screws, or however that’s done,” Hank said,
glancing back at Jethro, who had once been a carpenter, “you can help me with
that, right Jethro?”
“Sure,
probably a good idea,” Jethro said, but he didn’t sound very excited.
“A
security door,” Ron chimed in, shuddering, “gotta be thick steel, with several
good locks, deadbolts, and you can put a beam across so that anything on the
other side can’t get through, you know, unless by invitation.”
“That’s
the idea, locks at the top and bottom, as well,” Hank said, shaking his head. He
placed a big hand on either side of the chalk outline, and he ducked his head
forward, becoming the headless horseman, and then immediately pulled his head
back, and staggered away from his handiwork.
“What
did you just see?” Rodney said in his new dead voice.
Hank,
looking gray, staggered to his customary chair and fell into it.
“You.
Do not. Want. To know.” He sounded like a robot. They had never seen his usual
ruddy face this bone white.
“Come
on, what?” Jethro said, his pipe jutting from his teeth, but the pipe was long
cold, and part of the beautiful, striated meerschaum was chipped away.
“Seriously.
Don’t ask me,” Hank said. And after a moment he really looked at them all. “Seriously.
No matter how strong that door is, it won’t be enough. But in a few days, we’ll
go through again, cautiously. And if everyone is dead there, we’ll build a
cairn of stones, just in front of the doorway on that side, so that anything
large will go around and miss the doorway, but we’ll leave ourselves a few feet
of space, so that we can slip through. We’ll use some of those really big
boulders, we can take tools.”
“You
sure that’s a good idea, I mean us going back there?” John said. “We’re
probably setting off some kind of silent alarm. You know, like invaders from
another world?”
“Not
for a while, but we’re going back, oh yes, are you kidding? Isn’t this the kind
of thing we’ve always fantasized about?”
“That’s
not my fantasy,” Barney said.
All
of them were shaking their heads, not disagreeing with Barney, but very
frightened by what Hank was proposing.
“The
Abyss looked back,” Ron said.
“This
changes everything,” Hank said. “Think about it. Most people have reality TV,
fast food, and politics—hell, thirty-two flavors of sports, and we—” he
gestured at the chalk outline, “have this.”
“But
we don’t know that this means what we’ve always chatted about down here, over
our beers, I mean we don’t really know anything, other than we just found a Twilight Zone door. This could just be
what magic is, what it really is, people stumbling on doorways to another
place,” Frederic said. He at least sounded a little more passionate, like he
was coming back online.
“Yeah,
yeah, yeah,” Rodney said, nodding his head, constantly pushing his glasses back
up against his nose. “This just could be magic, like Ron says. It doesn’t mean
we’re not real, that this is all a simulation, right? Come on, right?”
“The
System hard at work,” Ron sighed.
“Well,
we can always set up a booth, you know, the cosplay guys, they’d love this
crap,” Barney said, hefting the Viking helmet that the strange man had brought
through and left behind. “We can call it the Phantom Booth, or the Otherplace
Market!”
“And
there’s this, and there could be a lot more like it,” Jethro said, hefting a
rough leather bag. “Just a little something I picked up on the other side. One
of the big horny blond guys must have dropped it.”
Jethro
loosened the draw strings and glanced inside, and he smiled a strange smile.
Then he upended the bag, shaking out a glittering, golden collection of coins
that struck odd tones as they pinged on the wooden surface of the table.
“Our
whole world just changed. Everything changed,” Hank muttered, not even curious
about the treasure on the table that the other guys were now examining. But
that other world, that was the thing. It was beautiful, true, but there was
that other thing, that huge thing undreamed of in this world, a monster that
could snatch huge men and destroy them in a second. He had seen it, in his
momentary peek, and he was terrified it might have seen his disembodied head
(and if it did, he would not only lose his head, but his whole body—he’d be the
disembodied man, for goodness’ sake!). That thing was there, just on the other
side of that chalk outline. And what if it happened to head this way? Would a
steel door stop it? Would a thick beam across the door make any difference?
He
sighed.
Had
his dream just come true? Or had he just felt the first inklings of an
approaching nightmare? A nightmare to end all nightmares...?
© Copyright 2016 Douglas Christian Larsen. Vestigial Surreality. All Rights Reserved by the Author, Douglas Christian Larsen. No part of this serial fiction may be reproduced (except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews) or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the publisher, Wolftales UNlimited, but please feel free to share the story with anyone, only not for sale or resale. This work is a work of fiction. People, places, events, and situations are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or historical events, is purely coincidental (wink, wink).
Douglas Christian Larsen FREE Short Fiction
Read FREE Sample Chapters of the Douglas Christian Larsen Novel:
Read FREE Sample Chapters of the Rodolphus Novels:
DCLWolf Links:
related terms, ideas, works:
ancestor simulation, digital ark, salvation of humanity,
vestigial surreality, manda project, rocket to saturn,
the singularity, the butterfly effect, simulated reality, matrix,
virtual reality, otherland, the matrix, 1q84, haruki murakami,
hard-boiled wonderland and the end of the world, dreaming,
the dream place, waking from a dream, ready player one,
hologram, holodeck, saturn, saturnalia, cycles of time,
simulacron-3, daniel f. galouye, counterfeit world,
tad williams, science fantasy, science fiction,
Victor Frankenstein, Nikola Tesla, genius
do we live in a computer simulation?
Victor Frankenstein, Nikola Tesla, genius
do we live in a computer simulation?
mystery, thriller, horror, techno thriller,
signs and wonders, vestigial surreality,
william gibson, neal stephenson, serial,
cyberpunk, dystopian future, apocalypse,
scifi, mmorpg, online video game world,
end times, apocalypse, armageddon,
digital universe, hologram universe,
sunday sci-fi fantasy serial fiction,
virtual reality, augmented reality
the unknown writer blog
the unknown writer blog
are we living in a simulation?
puppets, puppetry, punch
Elon Musk, Tesla, VR
No comments:
Post a Comment