© Copyright 2017 Douglas Christian Larsen. Rood Der.
Rood Der — Episode Nine: Café Really?
They
were chattering and had been keeping everything somewhat cool for about half an
hour, even making jokes, with a few of them discussing Phoebe’s body, and were
just thinking about concluding their dinner meeting, with nothing really solved.
They would have to leave it all at this, just more mysteries bobbing about in
their confusion collective, like icebergs, with only the tips showing. They
still could not agree on anything. But the vast and looming threats lurked
there, ever there in all their minds, just beneath the surface. Like this
Phoebe, their “waitress,” she was obviously from “them,” or the System, although no one had felt courage
enough to say...the Abyss. Because when
you thought about it, that’s how this all got started—meeting together and
talking about their darling conspiracy. To think, that this all used to be kind
of fun, just a chance to get together with like idiots and drink beer and
coffee, and smoke cigars and pipes. A few of them used to actually refer to
themselves, on the down-low of course, as The
Inklings, inspired by Tolkien and Lewis and Barfield and all the other guys.
When two or more were gathered in its name, the Abyss seemed to be there, among
them.
Outside of their gathering, it all seemed
much more random. Just their everyday signs and wonders, the coincidences and
the déjà vu and all the strange, surreal feelings, and nothing they could
really pin any solid evidence on, nothing, no how.
“Come on, come on, we still don’t know
anything,” Rodney was saying, sipping at a glass of red house wine. “Yeah,
yeah, some bimbo appears amidst us, and says a whole lot of nothing, and what?
We are supposed to freak out, and just, like, you know, what? Leave our world?
We still don’t know anything, that’s all I’m saying.”
“What Joss showed us, what he caught on
video—that seems like...magic, I don’t
know,” John Galt said. “Like the first day, when that guy, the Pugilist, when
he came stumbling through backward into our world. Remember, that was because
of what Hank was saying, I mean, remember? He was actually talking to the
Abyss. He addressed it, personally. The guy came through a solid-brick wall.
Doesn’t that seem like magic?”
“Arthur C. Clarke,” Joss Chen said. “Any sufficiently advanced technology is
indistinguishable from magic. That is what I believe this all goes back to,
technology, we even call it the System.”
“Oh come on,” Rodney spat, “you always have
an answer ready like that. Really, you aren’t even one of us, you’re just some
guy that Hank hired. You weren’t even there on the first day.”
“I don’t see what that has to do with
anything,” Jethro Mouch said, “you have to stop that Rodney. Joss is one of us.
He has experienced it all, just like us. He was here tonight, and I don’t know
if the rest of you noticed it or not, but this Phoebe seemed to be saying a
whole lot to Joss.”
“The Golden Boy,” Rodney sneered. “If I
remember correctly, and I’m certain I do, she was talking to me about finding destiny, not Lucky
Chen.”
“Please,” John Galt said. “Rodney, I want you
to knock that off. I don’t know what problem you have with Joss, but maybe you
just better come out and say it, instead of sitting back and taking cheap shots
at him. Enough passive aggression.”
You are
chosen,
was part of the message that he had received, but he did not say anything about
it, to anyone, because Joss Chen did not wish to be chosen. He had worked too
hard to make something of himself, right here, in this world, he had struggled
for too long to just go giving it all up, to go running, to leave his parents,
to flee into the unknown of another
world.
“It is okay, I do not have a problem with
Rodney,” he said, staring at the detritus of his dinner plate—he kept his hands
still and calm, on either side of the plate, “and the fact is, he is correct,
as I am not certain that I wish to take this any further. I do not know if I
want to be a part of this. This has gone much further than any kind of security
job, or security threat. It is not a puzzle, we all know that. And I am not
certain if I want to know any more than I do.”
“So what are you saying?” Ronald Rand asked,
eyes huge behind his thick eyeglasses. “You are going to abandon us? Come on,
Joss, we need you!”
“Look,” Rodney said, “I don’t have a problem
with Chen. I just wonder, you know, he’s very smart, very young, and he came on
after everything clicked. How do we know that he’s not—part of...it?”
“Part of...it?” John Galt said, eyebrows
raised.
“You know what I mean,” Rodney said, rolling
his eyes. “Come on, like the waitress, this mystery Phoebe. She says she’s a
shepherd, a part of the System, I’ve always thought Chen might be like that, an
agent moving in among us. He’s not one of us. We don’t know him. Didn’t you get
the feeling—what you said, Mouch, she was talking an awful lot to Chen, maybe
she knows him, they know each other, right? You’re telling me that none of the
rest of you haven’t felt this, too?”
“You are being silly,” John Galt said. “I
know Joss Chen. We do things together. And Hank knew Mrs. Chen, that’s how Hank
knew Joss, he’s known them for years.”
“Yeah, yeah, but then we know that the System
can change things, even our memories, right?” Rodney said, leaning back in his
chair, folding his arms over his bony chest. “Maybe Hank didn’t know Chen’s
mother, right? Maybe that’s how the System moved its agent in, you know, making
up a story in our heads?”
Ronald Rand grinned. He removed his glasses
and began polishing them on his shirt. His eyes looked tiny without the
magnification of the lenses.
“Rodney, listen to yourself. If the System
can do that, just go and write new memories, then that could be true about any
of us. Maybe we don’t really know...you?
Maybe the system just wrote you into
our storyline? Or our whole group? You know, the barbecues, various girlfriends
coming in and out of the group, other guys like Howard Roark and how he used to
do almost everything, conduct the meetings, and all the years we have been getting
together—all of it could be made up, a fiction generator creating all our lives
and memories. Heck, isn’t that what we’ve been yammering on about now, for
years and years?”
“Yeah, maybe,” Rodney said, “but you’re
forgetting, I can’t be an agent of the System, you know, I’m Jewish.”
They stared at him.
“I’m joking! I’m joking!” he said, raising
his hands. “Yeah, yeah, I know, we can’t know what to believe, or what we even
know, really, or what is real—sorry Chen, I wasn’t picking on you—what did the
waitress say? Our world, it is transitional, and, and...pathetic?”
“Transitory,” Ronald Rand said. “Transitory and pathetic. Transitory signifies a short period of
time. Our world is temporary—and
pathetic.”
“Thank you dear Miriam Webster,” Rodney said,
and guzzled the last of his wine.
“Merriam-Webster,” Ronald Rand corrected,
replacing his glasses. “Plus you got pathetic
right. That was good. Pathetic, but good.”
“You are pathetic,” Rodney snapped, glowering
at Ronald, pushing up his glasses with his middle finger.
“Well, at least you got off Joss’ back,”
Ronald Rand said.
“I think I am going,” Joss Chen said. “I need
to think about these things. I do not perceive that any of us is ready to make
any kind of decision, not yet.”
“Stay and have dessert,” John Galt said. “Let’s
all have dessert, or at least coffee.”
Joss Chen looked like he was considering, but
even so he was gathering up his things and placing all in his leather messenger’s
bag. He was just starting to shake his head when the waitress reappeared
through the curtain.
“Gentlemen,” she said, and smirked, “and
Rodney. Please follow me. Your dessert and coffee is served on the terrace.
Compliments of the house.”
She popped back behind the curtain.
“This room is bugged,” Rodney said, “big
surprise there. And what was that crack? Gentlemen and Rodney?”
“Would you just drop it?” John Galt said,
rising to follow the waitress. “Come on, Joss, they already have the dessert
ready. Just have one cup of coffee with us.”
“Did you notice any kind of terrace?” Joss
Chen asked. “When we arrived? I certainly never saw anything like a terrace. It
is getting late, I think I...”
“Oh put on your big boy’s pants already,”
Rodney said, rising. “It’s only a little after ten. I’m sure you’re not going
to turn into a pumpkin if we get too close to midnight.”
“Plus, free dessert,” said Ronald Rand, and
his big smile was so infectious that Joss Chen finally conceded, and followed
them through the curtain. “I love it when the house starts complimenting us!”
“One cup of coffee,” Joss Chen said.
Rooster carried Frederic in his arms. He was
wavering on the name, again, but the Wee Folk did see him as a mighty...rooster. And truthfully, he didn’t want
to keep anything from the other world, nothing, not even his name. Yes, he was
Rooster, as lame a name as that was—still, it had to be better than Hank. He
had never liked his name, it was just too close to the character’s name from Atlas Shrugged, and that had always
bugged him. And no one had ever called him Henry, it was always Hank, and that
bothered Rooster, because somehow he just didn’t seem as real to himself when
considering that no one had ever called him by his full, given name.
Traveling at this slow, plodding pace, it wasn’t
so bad, not tiring at all, even with Frederic in his arms. Rooster enjoyed the
stroll, but he couldn’t bring himself to enjoy the beauty.
Oh, the beauty was there, all about him. If
he looked to his right, he could see down into a rocky valley, with the small
plateau where they had begun, at least two miles down. It was all picturesque
and breathtaking, even his dulled mind knew all this, but right now, it was all
just rocks and trees and skies and color, hardly different from any other hike.
Night was coming on, and Rooster always
enjoyed the moons rising. Winding through the mountains, higher and higher,
they had already traveled probably five miles, but the air didn’t seem any
thinner.
Rooster filled his lungs, it felt wonderful.
He felt a twinge of guilt at even enjoying the fresh, full air, because
Ivygarten was dead. Lady Celestaer said that Ivygarten was now considered a
great hero, because never had an Elder, especially an elder as elderly as
Ivygarten, ever participated in a great war against the angry wasps, and with
such ferocity! Ivygarten slew five wasps, which was an incredible feat even for
two young warriors of renown.
They had taken her, flown away, bearing her
slim body between two great buffalo bumblebees, ascending like helicopters,
carrying Ivygarten away from him upon her bier, into the sky.
“After the Repeating Cataclysm, come, Mighty
Red Cock—Rooster, please return to the Cave of the Wee Folk, and you shall see
her again. Those that perish do not remember, but you shall see your Ivygarten
again,” Archbee Lady Celestaer pronounced, bowing to Rooster, and then she was
gone too, following the path of the sky bier, that white silken bed where
Ivygarten lie as still as a statue, white and beautiful, pure and pristine,
suspended between land and sky. “Today will ensure that she lives forever in
legend and story, but even greater than her deeds in the Great War, was the beauty
that she bonded with you, Rooster.”
Rooster supposed that was when they would
hold the funeral, after the Repeating Cataclysm, whatever that was. Hank
supposed it had something to do with the two moons. He had heard about some
great show in the sky, something terrible, but he had not seen anything of the
sort in his three or so months here in High Vale—High Vale is what the Wee Folk
called the land, which was fairly close to the Sky Valley that his group had been calling it.
“It’s getting dark, Hank,” Frances said wearily
from just behind him.
“Please, don’t call me that name, not any
longer,” Rooster said. “I don’t want anything from there, not even that name.
But hang in there Frances, we don’t have far to go, and this high up in the
mountains it is safest if we make it all the way to the Hot Springs. The Wee
Folk said that scavengers will come out tonight to feast on the plains, and
that the feeding scavengers will draw out the predators, so the higher up we
get, the better.”
He was drained, his ax heavy on his back, and
Frederic, sleeping deeply, seemed only the weight of a child. Rooster was war
weary, but worse, he was exhausted with grief, and such depth of grief. He had
never known such sadness. And that was strange, because the truth be told, he
had hardly known Ivygarten, they had only known each other a matter of weeks,
and really, they had only communicated in depth in the last few days. But then
again, it seemed he had always known her, that he knew her fully, and he
realized this was because of the bumblebee pollen, and the dance of the bees
upon his head, and the connection. He was connected to Ivygarten, and to all
the Wee Folk, but especially to her.
Severing this tie, it was far worse than
severing a limb.
“I guess they don’t have hospitals here,”
Frances panted, gamely marching onward and upward, leaning into the severe
incline.
“Not anywhere that I’ve been,” Rooster
panted. “I have yet to see anything like a village, let alone a city, but
supposedly there are both, but far away from here. But the Wee Folk claim that
there are healing properties in the Hot Springs, they mentioned a few things,
none I’ve ever heard of, but I would take it they mean like sulfur and
magnesium and, I don’t know...salt.
They are going to fly us in something that is supposed to help, but usually
that means honey. They try to fix everything with honey, wounds and illness
and, I guess, sadness. They even have honey booze.”
“I don’t know if that will help Frederic,”
she gasped. “Of course, I don’t think any hospitals in our world—sorry, my world, could help him. He certainly
didn’t think so. And I think the honey booze is called mead.”
“Do you have any idea what is wrong with him?”
Rooster gasped, and oh yeah, he was getting ground down, slowly but surely,
this sharp incline could sap whatever reserves you had stashed away.
“Well, he had two different kinds of
parasites coming out of him, at least I think they were parasites, awful
things, kind of like a cross between jellyfish and sow bugs and I don’t know,
giant leeches, or electric eels, they were the most horrifying, disgusting
things I’ve ever seen, all wet and gooey with little mouths, and they came out
of Frederic, from both ends! I saw tentacles on one of the things.”
“You don’t think he had the flu shot, do you?”
Rooster asked, just to cover the bases. He knew that Frederic was the last guy
in the world to ever accept into his body something as insidious as the
influenza vaccine.
“He’s not stupid, Hank. Sorry, I mean Rooster. You know, I feel kind of silly
calling you rooster.”
“It’s that, or Mighty Red Cock.”
“Rooster it is, then. Although Male Chicken
might have been good.”
Rooster snorted. He caught himself, stifling
the burble of laughter that almost escaped his lips. It was amazing, and a
little sad, how fast you could bounce back from terrible grief. When someone
died, it seemed like you would never smile again, let alone laugh.
“Male Chicken,” he mused, “it would cover
both first and last names, so that would be good.”
“How in the world did you bring about this
physical change? You don’t look anything like the Hank from the Sky Valley
Group.”
“I think part of it is just being here, I
think there is just more, I don’t know, molecules? Atoms? A lot more goes into
what makes us what we are, we are a whole lot more dense over here. The air is
thicker. And then I’ve been running all over creation, doing all kinds of
physical things, climbing and swimming, even fighting, sleeping outside,
getting lots of sunshine. You notice how different the sun is? You can actually
look at it, and it doesn’t hurt, and you can feel it coming in, know what I
mean? Plus, I’ve been eating a completely vegetarian diet here, mostly grasses,
if you can believe that, there are all different kinds of grasses here, red and
blue, green of course, and they all taste different, and I mean they are good,
not like eating lettuce.”
“And your hair?”
“Probably just this world, and the bees, they
crawl all over your head when they get to know you, they actually suck your
sweat and oils, probably dandruff too, I don’t know what all, maybe other
things—I’ve heard they actually draw negative things out of you, although that
sounds like chiropractic stuff to me. But that’s about when my hair started
growing in. I haven’t really looked at it in a mirror, but I kind of like it.
Still, you can’t take everything they tell you seriously, like they think I am
a god, not the God, but a god, not to
say that they are Charismatics or anything wacky like that. They’ve got a lot
of superstitions. I mean, to me, so far, a lot of what they think and say, it
sounds a tad silly.”
“Oh, you think? It is a strange and beautiful
place, I certainly have to admit that,” Frances said, stumbling along, and
suddenly noticing that she could hardly see where they were going. She was
leaning more and more upon her makeshift walking staff, her spear butt. “I
mean, I already love the bumblebees, they’re precious.”
“These are the buffalo bumblebees,” Rooster
said, “they have other kinds as well, some as large as a St. Bernard, some
about twice the size of the bumblebees from, well, you know, over there; some
of the bees are not quite as...loving. But all of them are angels compared to
the wasps.”
“What the hell
is up with those stupid wasps?” she snapped.
“I guess it’s mostly that they are just,
well, wasps,” he said. “I’ve always
found them kind of jittery, and weird, pissed off at the entire universe.
Pretty colors, though. But wait until you see the spiders, you are just going
to love them.”
“I don’t see how, unless they are pink, wear
tennis shoes, and distribute sugar-free candy to children.”
“And not the toxic diet-sugarless kind,
either!” Rooster chuckled. “But I was being, uh, facetious, I guess. You ain’t
gonna love the spiders, unless you have some weird spider fetish or something.”
“Me figure that out, Conan,” Frances said in
a gruff and comical Me-Jane-You-Tarzan
inflection. “Me no like the spider, me say eek when mouse appear. Me woman. You
man.”
Rooster surprised himself by chuckling again.
“We better sit down,” she panted, “there’s
some big rocks here, I don’t know if we can make a fire, but this looks like as
good a place as any, and in another five minutes we are just as likely to fall
over one of these little switchbacks and tumble all the way back down, as make
it much farther.”
“Fire is good, it might draw friendlies, and
it does ward off some of the baddies, but it won’t get that cold tonight, we
can cover up Frederic with the emergency blanket in the backpack. This will be
good, you can watch the moonrise, you’ll love it.”
“I can’t wait,” she groaned, sinking to her
butt with her back against a boulder. If she closed her eyes, she could
probably be fast asleep in two minutes, cuddled up around Frederic.
“I’ll build a fire after you get tired of
watching the...well, you’ll see, just give it a couple of minutes. I still can’t
get over it, really,” he said, gathering some big rocks into a ring and
rummaging about for kindling and deadwood. He still had a few minutes of light
remaining to find what they’d need to keep a fire going throughout the night.
Frances got out the emergency blanket, it was
one of those cheapo things that looked made of tinfoil, she tucked it around
Frederic and got her sweater up under his head for a pillow. She found a
glowstick in the backpack and gave it a snap, and it illuminated fairly bright.
She found aspirin, popped two into Frederic’s mouth, and helped him get some
water down. She took a long gulp and swallow of water, and then wiped her
mouth, frowning.
The water didn’t seem quite right. It seemed
flat, which was an odd thought, because this certainly wasn’t sparkling water.
It was just tap water, from home. But it didn’t seem...right. It tasted
lifeless, and kind of...thin. She thought she tasted...bleach. What a weird
thing to be thinking about water, like it was a milkshake or something. Not
enough vanilla. But what could be missing from water?
They hadn’t come across any water sources
during the last hour, but as soon as they found a spring or a stream, she was
going to fill up the canteen and water bottle. She supposed Hank would know if
the water would require purification. She knew there were purification tablets
in the backpack.
Suddenly all her senses went alert. She was
huddling next to Frederic when suddenly something changed. She wasn’t sure what
it was, or what had gotten her all spooked, but she was rigid now, on her toes,
motionless, her eyes open wide, staring about. What was it?
And then she saw it, coming from the left
side of the sky—she had no idea of direction here, of if even a compass would
work here, but there, up in the sky, just appearing over a towering mountain
range, was the edge of a moon. It had to be a moon, but this thing was swollen three
or four times the size of the concept of “moon,” it was as large as a
basketball held at arms’ length, it was sharp and clear and bright and tinged blue,
and it was...beautiful.
She gasped, finally breathing. The sight
filled her with awe. It was so sharp and crisp, so near—it actually looked
like, she didn’t know, like Google Maps,
or Google Earth (what was it, Google High Vale?), in satellite view,
she wasn’t sure, but it looked like she could see patterns, and man-made
structures on this great blue moon.
“Hey Frances!” she heard Hank—Rooster call
out, from far away. “Do you see the moon?”
“I see it! It’s amazing!” she called in
return, not looking away from the blue moon. Realistically, it must be three
times the size of any great Thunder Moon or Harvest Moon seen in her own world.
And the depth of the color, shimmering against that sky, that dark blue sky—Lovely is the Dark Blue Sky, wasn’t that
a Christmas song?
“Give it a minute!” Rooster called back, and
she could hear the smile in his voice. He certainly was a jolly guy, and always
had been, but she had absolutely no understanding about what had Hank so
grieved, and sad. Evidently he was mighty close to one of those beautiful
little women with all that metallic hair, more beautiful than Tolkien elves, if
that were possible (and yet more like insects, as well).
She wondered if this giant moon was going to
do something, like change colors, or grow brighter (or dimmer), but whatever
happened, she was content to sit here and watch. It was better than watching fireworks.
Something about the blue color, it just made her feel...different. It was like
a mood-altering drug. Blue moon, you’ve got me crying over you! This was a real
blue moon. There certainly was nothing metaphoric about this deep, deep huge
moon of magical blue.
And then her vision shifted, as something
caught her eye. A flash of—green. She gasped, another moon was emerging from
the far other side of the sky, a bright green moon. This moon was small, about
half the size of her own moon, and so green it brought tears to her eyes. It
seemed to be moving at double the speed of the larger blue moon, you could
actually track the slight movement with your eyes, like focusing your eyes on
slow-moving clouds.
She switched her view, looking from the
little green moon to the giant blue moon. You really couldn’t see them both at
the same time, they were that far apart. But, she looked back and forth between
the two moons, considering, she’d give it about two hours or so, and she would
actually watch the two moons cross in the sky. At this point, she couldn’t tell
if one would move in front of the other, but it seemed most probably that since
the little green moon was moving faster, it was probably moving in retrograde
to this planet’s rotation, and was probably closer—or maybe not, astronomy was not
exactly one of her better subjects, because the blue moon might be closer, so
the green moon would travel behind the larger moon, if that was the case. She’d
have to ask...Rooster (damn it, but that name felt so stupid, even when
thinking it). Or she would just watch, wait and see, for herself.
Rooster came back when it was much darker,
now everything was lit by moonlight, with armloads of what looked like both
grasses and deadwood.
“You’ll have to try some of these grasses,
and we might try and get some into Frederic, the dark red grass is supposed to
have healing properties. After you’ve enjoyed the moonlight a while longer, I’ll
build the fire, I think I brought enough wood to last through the night, but I
found a couple of deadfalls where there’s plenty more wood, and not far away.
And you can toast the grass over the fire, as long as you don’t get it too
close.”
He babbled on for a while and then noticed
her face.
“Ah, caught up in the magic, are we?” he
said, looking up at the two moons.
“Do you get tired of looking at that?” she
whispered.
“Not yet,” he answered without pausing to
consider. “It still seems just as amazing. I love the blue moon, it’s called
the Honey Moon, I don’t know why—it might just be called that because of the
Wee Folk, and might have something to do with their honey production and
storehouses. Or I don’t know, that’s just what I was thinking. The little green
moon is the Story Moon, and I have absolutely no idea why it’s called that. But
together, the two moons are called The Sisters, and in a couple of hours it’ll
be the Sisters’ Congress.”
“Where one crosses in front of the other?”
Frances asked, excited.
“Yeah, can you guess which one will be in
front?”
“Uh, I’m thinking the little green moon—the
Story Moon?”
“Very good! Was that a guess?”
She nodded, and he seemed to sense her assent
rather than actually see it in the dark.
“This is High Vale, and those are the
Sisters,” Rooster said, munching on some grass. He passed a handful to Frances,
who began to gnaw on hers without thinking.
“Hey,” she said, “this is good, it’s like
eating a full salad, but with hints of cinnamon, and mint.”
“You taste cinnamon, and mint?” he said,
watching her for a moment. “Not me, I taste spinach, I mean it tastes like
cooked spinach, but after I swallow a few bites, it really seems like I’m
eating, I don’t know, lasagna, or some meaty-saucy pasta of some kind, it’s
really satisfying.”
“It’s changing, the tastes and flavors, it’s
really good, but what it is not like,
is eating grass,” she said.
“I know, right? And this will clean you out.
It will clean Frederic out, as well, this is what he needs. And the honey, I’m
sorry none of the buffalo bumblebees made it back to us before nightfall, but
probably first thing in the morning they will bring us honey. Wait till you try
it. Now that, oh, it’s to die for, I promise. The honey that your used to is
more like eating sweet water.”
“Honey and grass, that’s all you eat?” she
said.
“Oh no, they’ve got lots of stuff, there are
nut trees and bushes with berries, plus a lot of the trees have this rough
fruit, like mangoes, I’ve had some of the vegetables that the Wee Folk trade
with larger peoples, but I don’t know what it is, it doesn’t really parallel
with any vegetables I know, but the Wee Folk say that they eat from the plants
that come from the ground, and from the fruits that grow on the trees.”
“No meat?” she said, her belly gurgling. It
would be a strange world indeed without some form of meat, although
philosophically, she kind of liked the idea.
“They do have various birds, I guess, I just
haven’t wanted to kill any of them. You know, they have something here that
really looks like the Dodo birds?”
“You mean the extinct birds from South
America, kind of like penguins?”
“Yeah, they have those here, big heads, great
big beaks, and they are called the Wise Birds. Very weird, but cool, they can
talk. The Wise Birds.”
“I wonder if that pisses off the owls?” she said,
shaking her head, tremendously weary.
Rooster thought about that for a while and
then suddenly barked laughter. He caught himself, shaking his head, and she
could see the sadness flood back into him.
She sighed.
“Those are some pretty moons,” she said,
staring dreamily upward.
“Yeah, wait until you experience some of the
dreams, they are amazing, you will swear that they are real, I mean taking
place in an actual place,” he said, busying himself with building up a small
teepee of kindling and sticks inside the ring of rocks.
“You don’t need to light the fire yet, it’s
plenty warm,” she said, “and I’m enjoying the moonlight. But I’ve always had
dreams like that, I’ve always felt that we go to an actual place when we dream.
The Dream Place.”
“Really? Not me, not until I first slept here,
and you have not experienced sleep, not really, not yet, either, not real
sleep—it’s about as different from the sleep we know as eating this grass is
different from eating...I don’t know, grass,
I guess.”
“Bring it on, I’m game,” Frances said,
yawning, unable to look away from the moons. The stars were coming out now, and
they seemed furious, twisting and churning, spiraling and spinning. This was a
world of unimaginable beauty, and wasps, they could just be damned, when all
was said and done.
They moved across a doorway where they could
see into the kitchen—a kitchen—only it appeared to be an Asian kitchen of some
sort, lots of frying and steam, with noodles bubbling and men in little white
hats yelling at each other in some other language, and two men seemed to be
wrestling with a very large, very pale snake, and the words they were yelling,
it was something that didn’t sound like anything other than gibberish. Beyond
that opening was a long, dark corridor, and it was utterly quiet, they couldn’t
even hear the kitchen behind them.
“I think this is one of those moments,”
Rodney said, his voice trembling.
“I feel it,” Joss Chen said, “in the guts, it
is happening, like before.”
And they paused while he bent and vomited
into the dark corridor. This same reaction occurred when he had crossed through
the Red Door, and on the other side, he had to sit and wait, breathing hard,
until he finally managed to crawl back through into their own world.
On that day he had not seen much of their
brave new world, but only a sky too bright, and rocks too hard, and dirt that
seemed like any other dirt. When he turned back, now, he couldn’t see anything.
Rodney put out his hand, and Joss took it, and hand in hand down the line they
led each other after the barely seen figure of Phoebe.
“Just hold onto each other, don’t let go,”
John Galt said from the front of their chain.
“Drama, much?” Phoebe said, and for just a
second she sounded like a cackling witch.
Then they crossed through a flapping curtain
that felt greasy and cold, and they were standing upon a little terrace, an
outdoor restaurant, only something was wrong. John Galt lifted his hand before
his eyes and peeked through his fingers. Why was it so bright?
“It’s daylight,” Ronald Rand said, “what in
the world?”
“Come on, it’s a trick or something,” Rodney
said in disbelief, pushing past the others, shaking off their hands. “It’s a
set or something, they’re messing with us, I’m telling you it’s all a movie set.”
It looked like lunchtime for the business
crowd, with groups of men and groups of women laughing and eating finger foods
at tables.
“Please, have a seat boys,” Phoebe said,
throwing herself into a wooden chair.
They gathered about the round table and
slowly, hesitatingly began to sit, all except for Joss Chen, who had his back
against the wall, in the place where they had come through into this—reality.
But there was no passage back the other way, just the solid wood of the wall.
“This isn’t a trick, Phoebe?” John Galt
asked.
“If it is a trick, I’d like to hear a good
explanation, other than a movie set, that is, because come on Rodney, have you
ever even been on a movie set?”
“It’s like the holodeck, in Star Trek, right?” Rodney said, his eyes
going wide, his hands quivering.
“Well, that is probably a little closer to accurate
than the whole movie-set scenario, but still far off the mark,” Phoebe said. “Nobody
is walking around in a chamber of holograms, unless, of course, you buy into
the notion that the whole universe is a hologram.”
“The whole universe isn’t a hologram?” Jethro
Mouch asked. Comically, his pipe was in his mouth, but the bowl was inverted,
pointed at his lap—he was fortunate that he had never loaded and lit.
“I’m not willing to admit to that,” Phoebe
said, grinning about at them. “But think bigger. Much, much bigger. Here, this
should help, here comes a good clue. Listen!”
They leaned forward, listening.
At the next table where several business
types sat, a loud, ruddy-faced guy suddenly burst out: “Well, that’s just it,
data is data!”
For an instant, it had seemed that the whole
volume of the restaurant had increased, and then when the guy yelled that, that
data is data, everything had focused in on that exclamation. Data is data. The
volume dropped to a normal restaurant roar, and then it dipped way beyond that,
it going almost completely quiet. The people were just as animated, and they
were talking just as much, but it was as if the volume were turned down.
Outside the café a young woman paused for
just a moment, and then she hurried off along the street, pulling a hood up
over her head.
“Data is data?” John Galt said, “that was the
hint?”
“Maybe,” Phoebe said.
“What does it mean, that we are all
connected?” Jethro Mouch asked.
“That is an interesting point,” Phoebe said.
“It means that everything is data,
everything,” Joss Chen said, where he sat in a huddle upon the floor, his back
still up against the wall. His face was drenched in sweat.
“On the nose!” Phoebe cried, clapping her
hands. “You are the guy, Joss Chen, I always knew you were the guy.”
“Where we come from,” Joss Chen said, “the
data is thin, we are practically featureless numbers, running an If/Then
scenario, while here the data is rich, fully fleshed out. Here, data is data,
but there is a whole lot more...numbers.”
At the next table was an odd collection of
individuals, looking decidedly out of place. A young man dressed like Robin
Hood, with a bow and a quiver of arrows, a pretty little girl with golden curls
standing next to his chair, and across from them was an angry looking Asian
man, or perhaps he wasn’t Asian, it was difficult to tell, and finally a very
thin-looking older man with white hair who looked to be folded in half to fit
behind the small table, tucked into the small-seeming chair. The group was
eating pizza, and the adults drinking wine.
John Galt couldn’t look away from this group,
and after a moment he noticed that the skinny old man (looking suspiciously
like the actor Alec Guinness) was watching him. John Galt nodded to him, and
the old man grinned and nodded in return.
“They can’t see you, you know,” Phoebe said
to John Galt.
“Maybe not,” John Galt replied, “except Old
Ben over there.”
Phoebe looked and shook her head. “Oh, well, him. He doesn’t count. He is outside of
the data, he can move through it, but mostly, he’s not part of your data. I am
surprised that he even took note of you. He watches over numbers, in general,
but rarely gets his hands dirty in
them. He’s like a kindly old accountant that keeps the big picture in view, but
rarely gets granular.”
“I have no idea what any of that means,
Phoebe,” John Galt said.
“I am not surprised, John Galt,” Phoebe said.
“But here is your dessert, please, enjoy.”
The waiter, a little guy with greasy hair,
smiled a too-toothy grin at all of them, nodding his head vigorously.
“Drop the act, Titan, it’s terrible,” Phoebe
said to the waiter.
“Phoebe, nice to see you out and away from
the raw data,” Titan said, in a surprisingly deep voice, “although by the looks
of your guys here, your data is still pretty raw.”
“We all work in our media,” Phoebe said. “It
looks like you have Jack over there, with Manda, no less.”
“I think this is all a repeat,” Titan said, “as
I remember all this happening before, I think a couple of times. We may have
had the Cataclysm, so if you have anything lying around unsaved, this might be
a good time to hit Control-S. When things come back online and the system is up
and running, things are probably going to change, in a major way.”
“That’s what I’m doing here, trying to get
these knuckleheads to make the choice of their own freewill, but they’re all
kind of idiotic, I don’t know what I’m thinking, but in doing my last rounds I
just happened to catch them issuing a very unusual challenge, and so I opened a
portal for Colton.”
“Hey, the Pugilist, good show! So that was
you, we were all trying to figure it out, I had my money on Manda, I thought
she was play-acting innocence, you know how she does.”
“No, dummy, I didn’t initiate Colton, I just
tripped him into a very offshoot sim, it was cool. You know what he did? He
drank a beer, thanked the sims, and then went back to kicking Viking butt.”
“That’s the Pugilist, too bad I always have to
die with him, I wish the Shaannii could get her shit together, I mean just once
would be nice. The whole routine is old, if you ask me.”
“She is the Second Witch, depending on how
you count.”
“Anyway, enjoy the dessert, guys,” Titan
said, waving cheerfully to the group at the table. While he chatted with Phoebe
he had spread around the table a variety of treats, including coffee and tea
and various garnishments, plus a whole lot pastries, some most outlandish,
including bagels, Krispy Kremes,
challah bread, and a variety of ice creams, pies, and cakes. Something that
looked like Twinkies, only with
frosting.
“Come on, Joss,” Phoebe called brightly, “you
promised to have one coffee.”
“Just give me a moment,” he said, his
forehead on his knees, they could see from twenty feet away that he was
shaking.
“Why does it affect him like this?” John Galt
asked.
“He’s sensitive, it’s all striking him
simultaneously, like being tickled until you pee while being scared so badly
that your hair turns while, while getting turned on and depressed and angered
all at the same time. Your Joss Chen is a complicated man, especially
considering your world. He just may turn out to be a hero, or a villain, I can
never remember which direction the sensitives usually go.”
“But he’s going to be okay?” Rodney asked,
looking worriedly at the young man shaking with his back to the wall.
“Oh no, none of you are. Most likely you will
all perish, and never be remembered or recalled. Remember, you guys aren’t even
real—oh, oops, sorry I’ve hurt your tender feelings, but I’m sorry, I know you
feel real, you have hopes, you’ve fallen in love, you are terrified of things,
especially being forgotten, but hey, reality is reality, and data is data, and
I’m offering you guys a chance, at least. Keep this in mind, not one of you is
based on a real person, and despite your absurd names, none of you is even
based on any of Ayn Rand’s characters.”
“A chance,” John Galt said. “You’re offering
us a chance.”
“Yes, just a chance, but like I said, you’ll
all probably die,” Phoebe said. “But that’s life, it wouldn’t be so interesting
without its Vesuviuses and Black Deaths and sweeping influenza viruses. Get
used to it, that’s life, and life is nothing without death. Just remember, data
is data. It’s all numbers.”
Read the Next Episode.
Read the Next Episode.
© Copyright 2017 Douglas Christian Larsen. Rood Der.
Rood Der — Episode Nine: Café Really?
If you like Rood Der, try
Vestigial Surreality online free:
© Copyright 2017 Douglas Christian Larsen. Rood Der. 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).
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