The view from the moon tower is still nice, if a little bit lonely. I’ve left Valeria three more messages, and texted her a couple of times with no answer. I even texted Helen and Michelle to see if they had talked to her, but they haven’t answered, either.
I talked to Cindy just before curfew, and her theory is that whoever was messing with the Promise kids was saying bad things about me to the other kids with abilities. If that’s the case, I don’t see any way it isn’t whoever handed out the powers in the first place.
I try to avoid that conclusion. It hurts my head. Why would they give me powers in the first place if they were just going to turn around and start messing with me? Were the others even still safe? I check. Valeria seems okay. Not close enough for me to know anything other than she’s awake. And what direction she’s in. I keep finding myself facing that way.
It’s boring up here, and I’m not accomplishing anything. Whether the story that the others were told about an invasion are true or not, something big has to be coming. What am I going to do about it? I have to talk to Valeria.
I’m back on the ground and running at top speed before I give myself a chance to think about it. It takes me less than five minutes to reach her house. It’s a bit nicer than the others in the neighborhood. She’s in a second floor room, still awake. I find a good spot to wait and text her.
- I’m on the library roof. Please come.
She doesn’t startle me this time. I’m not in the mood.
“How did you know where I live?”
I know her first name and what high school she goes to, how hard could it be? Still, she asked, even if it was a little hostile.
“I can sense all the people I care about.”
“What do you want? The others know where I am, and they know where you live.”
Okay, a lot hostile.
“Someone or something has been messing with the dreams of the other kids at Promise, trying to make them dislike me, or distrust me, or maybe even hate me. I’m not sure.”
I want her to say something. She just floats, out of reach off the edge of the roof.
“They talked to you, didn’t they?”
In my dream, they had all looked (at least vaguely) like me.
“The one who gave you your power, who looked like you, told you something, didn’t they? Something bad about me.”
She doesn’t answer, but she doesn’t have to.
“Whatever they told you, it was a lie.”
It had to be. I don’t have any secrets from her anymore. Nothing important, anyway.
“You didn’t steal your power, then?”
“What? No. How could I even do that? From who? When?”
“She said you would deny it.”
“Well, yeah. Because I didn’t do it. How could I have?”
“The minotaur was not your monster. You killed it---”
“I had to.”
“---and stole the power from the one it was supposed to go to. Just like you tried to kill the snakes at the tower. You’re trying to stop us from saving the world.”
“But I already had my abilities when I kicked the minotaur’s ass, or it would have kicked mine.”
Actually, I wouldn’t have been down in the street at all, because I would have been downstairs with the other kids, but that level of details wasn’t really needed in the argument.
“You weren’t supposed to be there. The minotaur wasn’t for you.”
“Then who was it for?”
“Me,” says a male voice behind me.
A voice I know. And hate. I turn around.
“Hi, Parker, long time no see,” Jay says.
He gives me a long, slow, look up and down, stopping at all the obvious places. I look him over, briefly. He looks like he’s covered with a thick layer of glass. Like the girl who fought the two headed wolf on the first night.
“I always knew you were a pussy.”
I don’t let him bait me. I refuse to even see it as an insult. I speak to Valeria.
“You told this guy I was here?”
“I told everyone. They weren’t supposed to come unless I didn’t text in five minutes.”
“If I kept him from getting his powers, why --- how is he here?”
“They gave me another chance on the second bell, loser,” Jay cuts in before Valeria can answer.
“So what exactly did my diabolical scheme accomplish, then?” I ask Valeria.
“Nothing!”
Jay really doesn’t get that I’m not talking to him. I walked right up to the edge of the roof nearest Valeria, so that Jay has to be right on the edge, too, to even be in my field of vision.
“I’ll leave you alone if that’s what you want,” I tell Valeria, “but I swear to you that I didn’t intentionally take anything that wasn’t mine. I fought the minotaur because it was going to hurt somebody. If pretty boy here wanted to fight it himself he should have been out there fighting it.”
“I had to get out past--”
I ignore him and continue. “I didn’t get the stupid instructions about one monster, or set of monsters I guess, per customer, so of course I was going to take out the snakes. There are thousands of people on campus they could have hurt. I stopped when you asked me to.”
“Listen, Parker, you’re not going to stop us. We’re---”
I finally turn to Jay. “We’re trying to have a conversation here. Could you please be quiet and let the adults talk?”
I turn back to Valeria, and dodge at the appropriate time. One thing about Jay, he is predictable. His charge takes him flying over the edge of the roof. I’m pretty sure the glass, or forcefield or whatever it was will protect him from the fall. We’re only forty feet up or so.
I watch him arc out toward the parking lot. He gets his bearings before he reaches the ground and a shimmering field of energy appears in front of him in the shape of a slide. Cool. I look back to Victoria.
“I really have no idea what they are up to, but the people who gave us these powers---”
I stop. Oh, crap.
“Are you okay?” Valeria asks.
I can’t answer. I’m doubled over laughing by this point. Past her, I can see Jay using his forcefield to zoom back toward us.
I just point up, and manage to get out the word please. In seconds we’re hundreds of feet above the library. I manage to get a couple of deep breaths, finally.
“I’m sorry,” I say.
Then I tell her.
I remember Jay’s voice outside the door in the dream. The chime sounding just as I try to change myself. Somehow, we’d shared a dream. I never got the speech because I wasn’t supposed to be there. They didn’t give me one of their tidy little prepackaged super powers. I pulled my power out of the stuff the dreams were made of. I wasn’t chosen at all.
Valeria is not quite as amused as I am. She stops laughing after just a few seconds.
Suddenly, we’re falling toward each other.
“I’m sorr---”
I cut her off with a kiss.
It doesn’t last nearly as long as I would like. Jay is making his way upward. Not at high speed, but he’ll be here soon. I point him out. We fall another two hundred feet up.
“I need to tell the others,” Valeria says.
“Tell them what?”
“The truth.”
“If the people who gave them these awesome gifts are telling them one thing, and you tell them something else, who are they going to believe?”
“I believed you.”
I look at her.
“Eventually,” she says.
We need a plan. Of course, I have one.
⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯
I find myself hurtling past Jay with a panicked look on my face. The ground is coming up fast.
I didn’t say it was a good plan.
But it’s the best I could come up with on short notice. Once I’m well below Jay, I spread my arms and my jacket and swoop. I hit the ground, roll, and am out of sight before Jay is anywhere close to the ground.
Valeria texts me when she makes it home. She’s pretty sure that Jay believed her story of me surprising her, and her dropping me. He isn’t stupid, but he has approximately zero common sense. She texted the others, too, to let them know she was fine, and that I’d run away.
The moon tower is too exposed for me with the possibility that Jay might be out there looking for me still. Instead, I find a nice spot in the big cemetery near the highway, and settled in to wait next to a small mausoleum. If there is anyone dreaming in there, they’ll have to look out for themselves.
Eventually, Valeria falls asleep. I stand up and turn to the mausoleum. I close my eyes and feel around for the door. Not the mausoleum door. The other one. Got it. I pull it onto the wall of the mausoleum. There it is.
I open it and peek inside. No irresistible forces trying to drag me to my doom, so that’s a plus. The door at the other end is unmarked, but I’m past the need for that. It’s the door to Valeria’s dream. I step into the hallway. No traps so far. I didn’t exactly expect any. My theory is that since I was going into Valeria’s dream rather than my own, they won’t be waiting for me. So far, so good.
The door opens onto a blank wall. Valeria isn’t dreaming yet. I don’t lean on this one. Falling through doesn’t seem like a good idea. I place my hand on it and wait.
It doesn’t take long. I guess that they have some way to jumpstart her dreams. Once I think about it, I can almost see a way to do it. No time for that just now, though. I step into Valeria’s dream.
We’re in a classroom. There are lots of kids here, but they’re all just placeholders. Valeria is looking around for something or someone. I slide into the same space as one of the placeholders and hide myself inside it. Valeria settles down at her desk.
Not-Valeria appears at the front of the classroom.
“Do you have anything to report?” she asks.
“She came back. She kept texting me, so eventually I went to meet her. She denied everything.”
“As I told you she would. Anything else?”
“Jay attacked her. I took her up higher so I could talk to her without him interfering. She got away.”
All true. Technically.
“It doesn’t matter. Do not confront her again, and tell the others the same. If she shows up at the final battle, though, you should deal with her first if she interferes in any way. She could ruin everything.”
That’s interesting.
“Can you tell me when the battle will be?”
“Soon. There will be a sign. A beam of light from the sky. Go to it. When you find your place, you will be able to stop the invasion.”
She backs through the wall. The plan was for me to follow and gather more information, but there’s a problem. Unlike when I’d been in (what turned out to be) my own dream, here in Valeria’s dream I’m not so confident of finding my way out. I’m also not sure what I’ll do if they notice me.
I don’t have much time to think. I can still feel Not-Valeria receding, but she is getting less distinct. I take Molly from around my neck and grow one end into a massive anchor, embedded in the doorway into the hall back to the real world. The other end I wrap around my left hand. I hope it will be enough.
The space behind the wall isn’t. Space, that is. I almost lose Not-Valeria trying to figure out what it is. It isn’t just curiosity. I need a metaphor to know how to even move. I settle on a five dimensional ocean.
I’d read an article once that described exercises that were supposed to let you visualize four dimensions. I practiced and practiced and practiced. And failed. Here it feels like my mind runs differently. Better, even. While following Not-Valeria at a safe distance, I’m also studying the world around me, and trying to figure out how to think about it in ways that will still make sense to me later.
There are the features I had thought of as currents and eddies before. Uncountable numbers of them. There are smaller features, too. I start to think of the ones that mostly stay in the same place as plants, and coral. I label the ones moving about fish-a-macallits and octowhatsits and dolphthings and whalamajigs. The octowhatsits and the dolphthings are especially interesting. Some of them watch me as I pass. I wonder if I could communicate with them.
At the same time I’m reviewing my whole life up to this point, not as a personal experience, but through the world lines of all the atoms that have come and gone as part of me. I’m also reinventing mathematics, from first principles, because I’ve noticed some inconsistencies that need ironing out. Meanwhile, I contemplate the powers that have been given to the actual chosen ones, and how they are different from what I can do.
I’m coming apart. The only thing holding me together is the chain I hold tightly in my left hand. I try to pull myselves back into a coherent whole, but it isn’t working. The part of the universe that I think of as me is such a tiny speck that I can barely locate her.
That’s why I fall into the trap.
An instant before the world around me collapses back into three dimensions, I twist Molly mostly away, narrowly saving her from being sliced in two by the walls as they fall into existence. I slide in a direction I can’t directly perceive at the moment, and find myself in a room. In the real world. Well, a real world.
Not-Valeria isn’t Not-Valeria anymore. She isn’t Not-Me, either. She’s an older woman, and she is climbing out of Satan’s own tanning bed. At least that’s what it looks like. There are three other people in the room. Not monsters, not aliens, just people. Human, even.
They watch me from the other side of a transparent barrier. Three of them, including not Not-Valeria, looked pleased with themselves. The fourth looks wary. She’s the one I’ll have to worry about.
They really do look like perfectly normal humans. Sort of old humans. Maybe in their forties or fifties, even.
Their half of the room is very different from my empty half. It’s full of equipment and furniture, and things that could be either, or both. Very old school, sci-fi stuff, but with a real lived-in look. They talk among themselves in some language I don’t recognize, let alone understand. I’m mostly cut off from my abilities here. I pay close attention anyway with my left hand in a fist.
I feel around for the door. There it is. I tried an experimental tug, but something is controlling it. Keeping it away from me. I notice one of the people glance at a panel when I do that. He says something to the others. Even the suspicious one looks pleased at that.
As usual, I give in first and speak.
“In my world it’s traditional for the villains to tell the hero the details of their evil plot before they kill them. Do you have that tradition here?”
That earns me enough glares to know that they can understand me.
“So you think you’re a hero?” The suspicious one speaks English.
“I’ve slain a monster and rescued a damsel or two, but no, not really.” That’s true. I don’t see myself as a hero, at least not most of the time. Just a girl trying to do the right thing. “Are you going to kill me?”
I wouldn’t ask so calmly if I thought they were planning to, or even could, right now.
“How did you survive the depths without protection?”
I almost didn’t, but I don’t tell them that. I suppose I should have been a little thankful that their trap had kept me from falling completely apart, but I seem to be running low on gratitude.
“Beginner’s luck?”
That earns me another series of glares, and another round of incomprehensible chatter.
“We don’t plan to kill you, but you will not be returning to your home. We can make your stay here pleasant or unpleasant. Which it is depends on your cooperation. Do you understand?”
I nod. “Why are you all so pissed at me? Your chosen ones all got their powers eventually. I’ve helped fight off this vanguard you’re so worried about. What’s the problem?”
“Your very existence is a threat to your entire universe.”
Wow. Way to give a girl a big head. I mean, sure, I’m used to being a threat to the moral fiber of the United States, but this is a big step up.
“I can see how that could be a problem for my universe,” I say, “but why are you so worried about it.”
There is just enough of a delay and exchange of glances for me to know what was coming was bullshit.
“We care about all lifeforms. What good would it do for us to save yours from the invasion, only for it to be destroyed shortly thereafter?”
“Can’t you just tell me how not to destroy my universe?”
Apparently not.
They tell me a long, pathetic story of a civilization that mastered the technology that allowed them to access “the Depths,’ as they call them, the stuff of thought itself, and used it to give all their people the ability to bring their dreams to life.
I am shocked to hear that this had not worked out as well as everyone had hoped. Monsters were let loose to roam their world. Oceans boiled. Continents sank. The usual, really. I feel bad for these people, sure, if they existed, but what did they expect?
Anyway, a few survivors had eventually shut down the machines that allowed direct mental manipulation of The Depths and their energies. They were left with safer controls. Still centuries beyond the technology of my backwards world (not great salesmen, really), but safe by comparison.
Somehow, I, they say, have become linked to a lesser version of the direct interface. In itself it isn’t world breaking, but will, without a doubt, evolve into the full interface, destroying my mind and letting loose unending carnage on Earth.
Scary stuff. Really compelling. Total bullshit.
Have they actually watched Forbidden Planet and stolen the idea from there? I hope not, because it’s way funnier to imagine them coming up with it on their own. I twist my left hand to give myself a little time to think of the best approach here. They obviously aren’t going to tell me the truth, but I want more information than I have.
“So I can’t go home, ever?”
I know what that feels like. I remember camping out for weeks, to let any search for me die out before I went to the authorities with my story. The misery I had felt.
“We’re sorry, but no.”
“What do I have to do?”
“You will stay here. The machines will suppress the interface, keeping it dormant so that you do not become a threat. You can live out your normal lifespan.”
Wow, that would really suck.
“Is that the only way?”
“We’re afraid it is. But we can make that chamber more pleasant, as long as you continue to cooperate.”
He goes on about providing books and videos from my world. Any food I want, as long as I don’t try to escape. The upshot is, though, that they are never going to let me out of this little room. Ever. I don’t see any way to get more information here. They’re already losing interest now that I’m being Little Miss Cooperative.
Being a smartass and a showoff might well be the death of me some day.
“Hey, I have an idea!” I say, brightly.
They exchange tired glances.
“Yes?”
“How about, ‘no’?”
While they ponder that, I tug on Molly. I’m a little bit scared, since I can’t remember exactly what I did as I collapsed back into me. I know I’d taken the anchor I already established, Molly, and reinforced her. I have no idea how, or what exactly that means, but I’m sure it can get me home. Mostly sure.
It’s convenient that time gets all twisted up as I am yanked out of my intended prison. It gives me time to memorize the looks on all of their faces as they realized that I’m escaping. Some top quality derp, indeed.
The trip back is immensely faster than my trip out. Unfortunately, the instant I’m back in The Depths, I start drifting apart again. I hold myself together by trying to focus all my concentration on two tasks; getting home and taking everything I had heard, but not understood, and packaging it up in a form I can digest later. I’m also trying to ---
⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯
I’m back in my room at Promise. It’s just after five thirty in the morning. And I’m holding a large white box labeled ‘Too Much Information.’
Somebody needs to make these dumbass kids watch madoka magica. See how trusting entities giving out super powers goes.
They are not very good good guys.
Gotta say, given the circumstances of her acquisition of power, she'd have naturally tapped it in the end anyway. She'd been trying to do it since she ran away.
"Stop the invasion!... because we want that world for ourselves."
TMI
Okay, I was waiting for this chapter title. I couldn't have resisted it either. Enjoying the story and writing style; nicely done!
...woah.