This is a draft version of a chapter from John Saye’s book, The Man With Three First Names.

There was a bellow from below them, the creature was beginning to grow. Its skin was already a sickening shade of yellow, and Simon could swear it was glowing beneath them. They watched out of the side of the ship as they passed over while the creature took a chunk out of the building it was climbing on. Electricity shocked through its body, and it began to convulse.

“Will he ever be the same?” asked Simon.

“No,” said Michael.

Fred and Moxie pulled on their goggles and watched the battle screen. They gathered around the console. They looked at the video image of the creature on the ground.

The President reached out his hand and moved his fingers across the table, moving in troops and air battle groups. They could see themselves. The President selected all the air units and then selected the creature itself. They could feel the ship they were in turn as he did it.

“What’s happening?” asked Simon.

Michael already knew.

“We’re surrounding it. I’ve just given the order.”

On the screen, the battleships converged on the monster, and keeping a safe-ish distance, began to circle around it.

The creature writhed and pounded its claws into the building it was on, busting out the side where a firm of lawyers was going over their latest case. Still around them, the thickness of the brown mists and bluegrasses pushed into the world. Great spiraling trees worked their way into the buildings, lifting some of them from the ground.

“The portal is still active,” said Michael.

Simon looked up. We saw it destroyed. How can that be?

“I don’t know.”

The President was quiet.

“What?” said Michael.

The President nodded over folded hands. He covered his face with them.

“Talk.”

“The connection hasn’t finished settling.”

“What’s going to happen?”

“If I’m right we’re working our way into a downward spiral.”

“What like a low-pressure system?” asked Simon.

Michael slapped the President’s hands down. “Talk! This isn’t a weather report.”

There were immediately fifteen guns trained on him.

“We are not playing here Mr. Christopher. We’ve got to ride this out. If the experiments we’ve been doing so far are any sign, then this is going to blow over in a few hours, and we’ll just have a little cleanup to go through after the worlds settle themselves out.”

Michael took a step back.

“It’s okay gentlemen.”

The President straightened his tie, and the men laid off, lowering their guns.

“Now let’s look at this again.”

They gathered around the console again, but this time Michael kept his distance a little bit. He listened, but he was already working on his own agenda.

The great dinosaur-like creature bellowed below them and put its hand into a building, past a group of designers and web developers, then pulled out a large pile of disused hard drives and ate them. It burped and belched fire all over another building that was just standing there minding its own business, thank you very much.

The creature, now starting to turn more of a green shade than he was before jumped down and landed in the middle of a busy street half-covered in cars and half great wooly creatures looking for succulent bluegrasses. It found the only asphalt instead. It grabbed a bus and started emptying people out of it into it’s gaping maw like they were potato chips at the bottom of the bag. When all the tasty morsels were gone, it tried to bite the bus, didn’t like the taste of it, and threw it into a local movie theatre, after which patrons began to run screaming from it, partially because of the impact of the bus, but also because they were in the process of running out already from the throng of little blue warriors that had taken refuge in the theatre.

“We can’t waste any more time.”

“Then you’re back on board Michael?”

“Yes.”

“Everybody else?”

Simon nodded.

Fred and Moxie nodded. They did their best serious looks.

“Okay then.”

The President waved his hand over the screen and began moving in troops.

“You’re ordering them with this right?”

“Yep, they are on the move, here.” The President brushed his finger on the screen, then selected a commander.

Michael watched them move into position. It looked like a leader was getting the orders in his helmet and then getting his troops in line. Chain of command.

“We’ve got to stop him.”

“All I can do is slow him down, I’m afraid.”

“It’s all up to Simon here.”

“What?”

“I think you’re the only hope in this situation. You were the closest to the blast and survived it when the barrier exploded between our worlds. Somehow you’re the link that’s going to send this guy home.”

“He’s pretty intelligent on his side of the fence,” said Michael.

“It’s sad,” said Simon. “Their world is poisoned.”

“I’m sorry, but there’s nothing I can do about that. I’ve got a country to run and a city to save here. Somehow it all comes down to you. I’m not sure how it’s just a hunch.”

“You’re right,” said Michael. 

“Mike?”

“He’s an ass,” said Michael, “but it’s the only thing that makes sense at this point.”

Simon found his nerve and straightened up. “When can I get down there then?”

The President smiled.

“Moxie? Do you have them?”

“You bet.”

Fred and Moxie pulled them from their gadget-laden backpacks what looked like little metal tubes. They held them forward and pressed a button with each thumb.

“What are those things?” asked Michael.

“They’re our ticket.” The bars expanded, and compartments opened and slid out until an entire hoverbike floated beneath both of them.

“Hop on guys.”

Simon ran forward and sat behind Moxie.

Michael took a deep breath and sat down behind Fred.

“What’s the plan then?” asked Michael.

“Oh the usual,” said the President. “Wing it.”

“Great.”

“Wing it. That’s all he’s got.”

“Wing it.”

“Nice.”

Michael shook his head. “Get us out of here guys.”

Fred and Moxie revved them up and took off. When they got to the edge of the flight deck, they turned to wave at the President, who waved back, then they dived off the edge, heading for the ground. It rushed up at them rather quicker than Michael would have liked.

They hurled to the ground, this time with engines spurring them on, towards mad creatures that wanted to kill them, but somehow Michael was at ease with it all. He sat there, on the hover-cycle, holding his hat and screaming at the top of his lungs like he was on a great carnival ride. He let it all out of himself, closing his eyes and imagined all the strange things he’d seen in his lifetime. The Lochness monster, bigfoot, aliens, zombies, and who knew what else. What better fate for him than to be dashed to death on the ground before a giant rubber monster that was terrorizing the city? If it was the way he was going to go out, it at least suited him just fine.

They flattened out, and started zinging through the streets, and in and out between the buildings.

There was a roar above them. Michael looked up and watched as the head of the monster seemed to bob between the buildings.

Moxie fired up her lasers.

Fred did the same.

They started firing on the creature as they approached.

“No!” yelled Michael

They didn’t hear him and kept on firing.

The creature swung out a fist and missed Moxie as they went by.

Simon leaped off of Moxie’s bike and flew through the air towards the monster, who batted at him and sent him tumbling into nearby thick grass.

“Simon!”

Michael too jumped, leaping for the creature’s neck. He latched on and held there for dear life. He reached into his pockets, and pulled out a squirt gun, and aiming it into the creature’s eye, blasted it with a mixture of lemon juice and battery acid. “That was handy.”

The creature writhed in pain and shook Michael off. He plummeted to the ground while the creature rubbed its eyes, more out of an annoyance, but it gave Fred and Moxie a chance to come around from the other side and hit the creature again.

Simon jumped and caught Michael on the way down and set him down.

“Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it,” said Simon, as he launched himself up into the air again at the creature. He latched onto the creature’s nose and began to punch him, but it was like hitting a towering stack of gelatin molds. His hand stuck through the creature, and he had to pull it out with a sickening sucking noise each time.

Fred and Moxie came around for another pass, and Michael could tell from the corner of his eyes that the President was bringing his ships in, moving in for a kill, or a melt-down or whatever this creature’s fate would be.

Fred and Moxie let loose, and Michael watched as their laser blasts hit the creature, entered its dinosaur-gelatin body, seemed to build for a moment, and then passed through to the other side with a spurt of slime and marshmallow goo.

The creature burped a cloud of sweet-smelling steam and shook it off.

“Cut the lasers!” cried Michael, but he was wrong. It was a signal to Fred and Moxie to up the ante and let the creature have it.

They tore into it and filled him full of as much energy as they could muster. It filled the creature up and bloated the inside of him. As they passed the rubber monstrosity, the energy came out its other side and flew straight at them. They had just reached out for a high-five, and it turned into a handclasp as the energy from their own blasts came out and smacked them from behind. They were blown off their bikes, which crashed into the outside of a nearby building, and they were flying through the air.

Michael’s got a lot of luck. Simon’s nigh-invulnerable. Fred and Moxie are cute and have cool toys, but they are mortal, so they searched their bodies for anything they could find, and without their regular backpacks there was little they could do before they too hit the outside of a building to be cut to ribbons on the glass.

They clutched their hands together, and just before they hit the wall they hit the emergency teleport button on their wristbands.

No time to program it.

In a whiff of sparks, they were gone.

“Oh crap,” said Michael.

He looked back up to where Simon was punching the creature in the face and getting his hands stuck deeper and deeper in it.

Simon yelled and flung his fists at the creature, who seemed annoyed but not much else. It reared back its head and shaking its neck toppled Simon onto it’s bubbling green tongue, and swallowed him whole.

The creature walked up to Michael, who could see Simon struggling inside the beast through its translucent skin, and lowered its head to sniff Michael’s scent.

He blew Michael’s hat off. It rolled to a corner of the street that was already covered in shards of glass.

“That’s enough.”

The creature opened its eyes a little wider and regarded Michael a little differently. It cocked its head.

“I asked you not to come here.”

He stepped forward just a little bit.

“I told you you wouldn’t make it through the portal without causing more damage than good.”

He stepped forward again, and this time the creature stepped back a little.

“I’ve had enough, and now it’s time to send you back home.”

Michael plucked up his hat and put it back on, straightening it.

“I don’t know how I’m going to do it yet, but you are finished, my friend.”

He held up a small phone to his ear.

“Mr. President, nuke the portal please.”

On his command ship, the President pressed a red button on his console, and then selected the remains of the Sublight group.

It wasn’t an actual nuke, but the three missiles that fell from his ship and headed out toward the facility were plenty good enough to do the job.

They landed one after the other, one, two, three, into the crater. Fire and dust exploded from the site, including a fearsome blast of light.

The portal was no more.

Cut off from his world, the creature began to scream and hold its head in pain for a moment, and then it righted itself, and almost seemed to regain and redouble its strength. Its skin became a more solid shade of green. Simon was still visible, but just barely, and he was moving less and less.

“Hmm. That’s not what I expected.”

The creature bellowed and stomped one of its great clawed feet down, pinning Michael to the ground. It was like being pinned to the ground by a candy bar.

“Okay,” said Michael from between the claws of the beast, now you’ve really ticked me off. He wrenched his body this way and that. His hat came off again, and he put it back on, giving the creature a glare when it happened.

The creature bellowed above him and reached out to knock an electric street sign down, which exploded and landed next to Michael in a shower of sparks.

Michael used the time to look through his pockets.

He pulled out a small voodoo doll, not much help there. He tossed it aside.

Policemen ran up, brandishing rifles, took aim and started shooting the creature. The rubbery nature of its skin wasn’t much help as the bullets just bounced around, or lodged in the skin and stuck there.

Michael searched another pocket and came up with his pistol, alien in origin, he wasn’t even sure what it was called. He fired it, and a beam of green energy flew to the creature’s torso, but it didn’t make much difference. For just a second, the creature forgot about Michael and started to walk off, carrying Michael with him still stuck at the foot, but the laser blast was enough to get its attention again, and it crouched down, pinning Michael flat He squeezed Michael’s arm against the side of the curb. Michael let go of the pistol.

“Crap.” It clattered to the ground.

What else did he have left?

He reached around and found a dagger there in the side of the street. It was one of those the little guys were always carrying. He took it and stabbed the creature, slicing off a rubbery toe.

It stepped off of him, and Michael popped up. He dodged a swing by the creature, and he could see in there, inside its body where Simon was now curled into a ball.

The creature kicked out and lashed its tail at Michael, but instead of hitting him with it, Michael jumped and landed on top of the tail, grasping it in his hands. He climbed up the creature’s back, using the spikes on the creature’s back for support. They were a little harder than the rest of its body.

The creature turned around, trying to sling him off, but Michael didn’t budge. Instead, he held on tight and didn’t move, and continued to scale the beast. There was occasional fire from the President’s men, but they were afraid to hit Michael, so they held off.

Michael grasped onto the creature’s neck and gathered his strength. The creature was starting to make it’s way through town, scraping buildings and breaking glass in its wake, stepping on a car here and there. Things were starting to stick to it, a light pole here, a small dog there.

Michael got up on the creature’s head, and he stomped on it.

The creature stopped.

Michael put his hands on his hips and looked down on the creature. “This is the end of the line for you. I asked you not to come here. To shut off your portal and leave it alone, but did you listen to me? You did not.”

Below him, deep in the creature’s belly, Simon’s eyes opened, and he transformed.

“Now it’s a little too late for you isn’t it?”

The creature looked up at Michael, not comprehending.

“That’s the worst part, isn’t it. You don’t even know you’re causing all this trouble, do you?”

The creature groaned a reply, but there was little feeling or coherence in it.

It rolled its eyes, trying to get a better look at him, then it shook its head, and just like Simon before him, the creature opened its maw and sucked down Michael and swallowed him whole. Then it burped and began climbing a nearby building.

It lurched up the side of the building, tearing out power cords and making a general mess of the place. It just wanted to see a little bit better. Being down in the buildings was as good as being in a cave to it. When it popped it’s head out above them, the President aboard his ship said “Fire.”

All the floating ships started at once, firing red pulses of light towards the creature, and it started to burn, and sizzle and pop.

It roared, and whipped around, smacking down on one of the President’s ships, which roared to the earth and exploded in a giant fireball.

They continued to fire. The President’s ship was standing back a bit now, and the creature whipped out its tale and took another one down, it spinning off into another building, and exploding. Only three left, the creature tracked them like they were gnats hovering just out of view of its left eye.

It jumped from the building and knocked the third one of the President’s crafts out of the sky like it was knocking the football from an opposing player’s arms. The craft lurched and hit the ground, plowing through a street lined with abandoned cars. There it carved a groove in the ground and sent dirt and debris up into the air, splattering all the buildings, and knocked the cars that were in the way into the storefronts of nearby businesses.

The President dropped his arms, and stood there, looking at the destruction all around him. He peered out at the orange sky and waited for it to all be over.

“Sir, what are your orders?”

He looked around lazily.

“What?”

“Sir, your next order sir?”

He let out a great breath and looked around him at the men who were in his service. He didn’t even know their names.

He turned back to the battle map in front of him.

“Ram it.”

“Sir?”

“You heard me, arm the nukes, and ram it.”

The officer relayed the message into his headset with a solemn face.

There was general nodding around. They had to hope to get smacked and nuke the creature. After the others went down there was little hope for victory that way, and they couldn’t just leave. The country would be in total ruins forever.

They armed nuclear weapons.

They fired up the engines and sped toward the monster at top speed.

Right before the weapons finished arming and booting up, the creature whipped out its tail and knocked the President’s ship down. It sailed in a spiral towards the Earth and exploded in a ball of flame half a mile high.

The creature roared and bellowed with rage, and with satisfaction as it continued to tear through the city.

In the belly of the beast sat Simon and Michael. They lay there unconscious and somehow preserved inside the jelly stomach. It stomped along and took them with it. Other people were around them in various states of consciousness. Some of them were curled into balls, some were whimpering, but others, some of which found themselves turned into snack food for the beast via being on the wrong bus at the wrong time were cutting and slicing their way through the beast’s flesh with plastic knives and sporks, and several were using just their hands, or paper coffee cups to do the digging with.

“Should we wake them up?”

“It’s no use. They’ll wake up in time.”

“I hope it’s on time.”

“I do too.”

“They kept digging, almost swimming through the creature.”

Outside the creature knew no different. To it, there wasn’t a rebellion going on under its skin. It just knew it was free, and that this world was there for the taking, not that it knew what that meant either. It was free, and wild in a strange land, and it was alone.

In the wreckage of the President’s ship lay the torn and scattered remains of the President. His body lay broken and torn apart, there were wires everywhere, and part of his plastic face had melted off. His suit smoked, charbroiled and burned and the screws holding his limbs on had all given away and were strewn across the field of battle.

One of his commanders, next to dead himself, pushed up from the wreckage, noticed the disaster and watched as the creature continued to lurch away. He held his earpiece to what remained of his ear and said, “Delta Bravo One, do you read?”

He heard a response.

“The man’s down, repeat, he’s down. Start operation starfish. Repeat operation starfish.”

“Copy that, Delta Bravo One out, Operation Starfish is in motion.”

There was a click, and he knew he’d signed his own death warrant. The remains of the ship exploded and took him with it. There was no evidence now, no pieces of the dead President’s robotic body strewn around.

The commander welcomed it. He closed his eyes and succumbed to the magnetic fireball, and knew no more.

Millions of miles away, Fred and Moxie came hurtling out of a purple wormhole and onto the deck of a popular space station. They got up and brushed themselves off. They didn’t have their backpacks, and they didn’t have anything but each other and their wristbands, which were blinking. “Recharge light…” By then it might be too late. They picked themselves up. There was a throng of people who were now avoiding them and walking away from them. They had arrived in a busy walking area.

They staggered to a coffee shop on the side of the walkway and looked up at the starry sky above the mega station. They ordered two cups of synth coffee, and sat back, unaware of how the battle was going without them, feeling guilty that they couldn’t return immediately.

“What do we do?”

“We wait it out, what else is there to do?”

They watched through the glass and force fields in the ceiling and looked out as the station came back around to the dayside of the planet.

It was Earth.

“Fred.” She said it as she grasped his wrist.

There it was, definitely Earth.

“Oh shit.”

Below them, the Earth turned. They had traveled in time as well as space. It’s always odd when you have to hit the emergency escape.

They took another sip of their coffees and watched their wristbands, to see how long it would take them to recharge.

By the time they had finished their fifth cups of coffee, now wired up and ready for anything, their wrist bands beeped and they were ready to go.

They stood up, the bill for coffee unpaid, and zapped out of there. It wouldn’t matter where they programmed it for, their wristbands were still stuck on Earth. They flung around through time and space, on their way back. They held hands as they traversed the psychedelic passages of space and time to come out the other side screaming, hot and flustered, and landing just several feet from Jen and Walter’s restaurant again.

“Hungry?”

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