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

The missile went true, and straight, and long. It armed, and clicked, and whistled and turned and honed in on its target.

The creature looked up and all it could see was the red point of the missile coming at it. All it could hear was the roar of the missile as it approached, closing the gap.

It impacted with the rubbery body of the creature, which exploded in a giant fireball, expelling thousands (millions?) of gelatinous chunks in all directions.

The lower half of its body sat there quivering, and Michael and Simon stood up from it, with several of their new friends around them, other meals of the rubber monster. It stood there, hunched on its tail, and didn’t fall for several seconds until it rolled forward and spilled them out all over the mountain.

Fred and Moxie flew over in Michael’s car and watched as the little blobs around them of warbling rubber monster began to reform into tiny dinosaurs, and do a little rampaging of their own.

“It’s not over yet,” said Moxie. Fred pulled the flying car around, trying to get a larger picture of what was going on.

Jen and Walter pulled the restaurant into the park and held position over the scene.

“Can you see them?” asked Walter.

“Yep.”

Three of the mini monsters jumped up on the front window of the restaurant and started scratching and clawing.

“Walter!”

He wrenched the controls, and one of them fell off, but the others were still coming.

“What the hell,” he said, and wrenched the controls the other way, and another one fell off.

The third butted its head through the glass and started to come in just to find itself face to face with the business end of Jen’s blaster.

She pulled the trigger, and a blast of hot green energy flew forth and melted the creature on the spot, and took out part of the front plate glass with it.

The wind blew through the restaurant sending plates and cups and glasses everywhere.

“Aaaaah!” yelled Jen, and she pulled a switch behind the counter, and the window began to auto repair itself.

Walter pulled the ship into a dive, and pushed it back to the city, between the buildings. They were clipping trees down the street. He pulled up, and they could see them again, a huge number of creatures, little acid yellow rubber T-Rexes running all over the place. One of them was trying to eat a police officer whole but had only gotten him halfway down when he ran out of room. The man stood there, his legs flailing, and inside he was stretching the creature to the breaking point where it exploded, leaving behind a rubbery residue over everything around it.

Another pack of them was chasing dogs in a nearby park. They were gobbling the dogs one by one, but only able to keep one dog in their bellies at any given time, they were starting to be eaten from the inside out.

One of the little rubber dinosaurs was running down the street with the legs of a Doberman pincher hanging out of its mouth while the dog was barking from the inside, and causing the creature to expand like a bubble. Another one had eaten a chihuahua but was now running without ahead, as the little dog had eaten it and was now sitting on top of the creature like a little prince.

Michael and Simon rubbed the slime from their clothes in huge handfuls and slung them to the ground in big wet slops.

They looked around them at the creatures and up into the sky, where Fred and Moxie were currently pulling down in his car. “Need a lift?”

“Move over.” Michael took over, pushing Fred to the side. Moxie piled into the back, and Simon jumped in with her.

He pulled up. “Where’s Walter and Jen?”

“They’re just up there.” Fred pointed to the restaurant hanging in the sky.

“All right then,” said Michael. He lifted the car up and headed for the restaurant.

He pulled alongside it and called Walter.

The phone rang in the restaurant. Walter Picked it up. “Burgers and such, I don’t think we’re open at the moment though.”

“Walter, it’s me.”

Walter looked outside the restaurant at the flying car beside them. “You made it!”

“Yeah, look, I’ve got an idea about how to make all this go away, but I’m going to need your help, and I’m really, really sorry.”

Walter looked for a moment at Michael, and they exchanged a nod.

Jen looked up at Walter. “Whatever he needs Walter, you know that.”

“Man,” Walter sighed. “Whatever you need pal. We’re on board.”

“Good, now I’m going to fly ahead of you, I need you to get into place, and then follow us from there.”

“We’re right behind you.”

They flew the ship into position over a large cluster of power lines. The engines had always given them trouble around here, too much interference.

“Put it into park.”

“What, here?”

“Do it.”

Walter put it into park. The ship stayed there. It didn’t want to, but it did. It sort of fluttered, holding its position.

“Okay,” said Michael, “now overload it.”

Walter didn’t want to pull the lever, but he knew that he must. He pushed the lever down and engaged the engines. The trees and the ground started to warp and bend around them in sickening ways.

“Michael, I don’t think this thing can hold it much longer.”

“I know, I’m counting on it. Get out of there. You still have an old escape pod?”

“You know I do, it’s in the handicap stall in the men’s room.”

“Good, go use it. I’ll track you and come pick you up in just a second if I don’t have to send Fred here.”

“Okay, We’re on our way.”

The line went dead.

Michael threw his phone aside.

“Simon, you still have your whip?”

“Yeah, I think so.”

“Good, stand up and get it out. I’m going to use Walter’s warp engine to pop open a new portal.”

“You can do that?”

“Of course. How do you think space travel is possible? Come on now. Fred, are you ready?”

“Yeah, what do you need me to do?”

“As soon as we open the portal, we’re going to get sucked through it, I need you to go and pick up Walter and Jen for me.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Moxie”

“Yes?”

“Give me your wrist band.”

“She handed it over, without a second thought.”

Michael put it on and then stood up in the car.

Moxie jumped over to take over.

Simon also stood up. They got out their transdimensional whips.

“Into the center warp point?”

“Yes, said Michael. You can see it, it’s like a circle of bent air, a bubble there, just below the ship.”

They pulled back their whips, which started to crackle in the air and popped them into the heart of the air warped by Jen and Walter’s warp engine above them.

The effect was instantaneous. The ship was gone, pulled through the void in a half a second.  The clouds were gone, blue skies above them. The whips were gone, and with them Michael and Simon, both pulled through the void just a second later, pulled and stretched and twirled around like they were going down some great celestial drain.

Then the creatures started to fly.

Moxie pulled the car through the air and down towards where Jen and Walter had dropped and were now watching the fireworks.

“Well there it goes,” said Walter.

She hugged the old man, he was all she had left now and all she ever wanted anyway.

Stragglers, strange creatures from the other dimensions, still hanging around were flying up to the hole in the sky. The memory of anyone not involved started to fly up as well, slicing through the sky, a purple haze of memory. They would remember only a vague sensation that the last week just hadn’t gone that well for them. People all around them started hitting the deck, falling asleep in their cereal bowls, and doing face plants in their spaghetti, only to snooze the next few days away and wake up vaguely bemused at what a day it turned out to be, and slightly annoyed with their new laundry needs.

Soon it was little splats of goo that started to slide up into the sky, and then it was larger creatures, more than the spent remains of exploded monsters, the little mini T-Rexes, then it was the giant lower torso of the big one, flying up into the sky, just about the moment that the portal closed, the tail got stuck, then sucked through like wet pasta, and the portal closed.

All the remaining goo, which was little more than street slag now fell to the earth, and it was over.

Fred pulled up next to Walter and Jen. “Hop in.”

They got in the back, Fred, and Moxie in the front.

“You think they made it?”

“I hope so,” said Moxie.

“He must have made it,” said Fred. “They must have.”

They drove off without a real direction. The city was renewing itself, waking from its nightmare.

They drove to Michael’s office and found that they couldn’t get inside. The locks seemed to be melted together by magic, so they drove off to where the burger joint had once been and parked there. They looked up into the darkening sky and laid out in the parking lot looking up at the sky. The stars were coming out, and they watched as airplanes started flying over again, and listened and watched as cars started to fill the road again.

Familiar sounds.

“What will we do now?” asked Walter.

“What do you want to do,” said Jen.

“I want another restaurant.”

“What, right here?”

“Why not?”

“It won’t be like before.”

“No, it’ll be better.”

“Can we do that?”

“Why not, we’ve got plenty in savings, it doesn’t cost that much to run the place.”

Moxie and Fred stood up and brushed themselves off. “We’ll help.”

Walter and Jen looked over at them. “You want to?”

“At least for a while. Without Moxie’s wrist band we can’t travel, and I’m not leaving her behind. At least until we can catch a lift off-world.”

“Okay then,” said Jen, “You’re hired.”

Walter watched the sky. “I wonder where they are.”

“No telling,” said Jen.

Moxie looked worried.

Fred looked grim.

They laid there all night, watching the sky, waiting, hoping, praying, and nothing happened. They brushed themselves off, wiped the dew from their eyes and ambled off to find a place they could score some breakfast, and find some news.

They looked around, and found a little breakfast place, and stumbled into it. They had no idea how they looked, like refugees from a freak tornado, which is how pretty much everyone else looked.

Upon the television screen, a reporter was covering a big story out in the field, standing with a microphone in hand and the van somewhere in the shot, right outside of the building they were in.

They doubled back to look out at the van and could see the buildings all around them were either decimated or torn apart. They looked up at the screen with one eye to the window to see if the reporter was packing up yet.

On the screen, the reporter looked up with grim eyes and a solemn expression.

“It seems that Atlanta has been the hardest hit by this series of tornadoes. Businesses are destroyed, and lives have been ruined, but one thing is sure, the people of Atlanta have prevailed. Of all the damage we’ve found, and the countless items of property that have been destroyed, there have been no fatalities, and as far as we can tell no one is missing. A  local scientific lab has been leveled by the recent tornadoes, but it’s mostly businesses that have suffered. This is Robin Parker, in Atlanta.”

The news switched over to a couple of pundits arguing over the next presidential election. People lost interest, and the television was switched to cartoons instead.

Simon and Michael sat up in the alien dimension, blue grasses, and hills all around them. Had they been screaming? Michael couldn’t tell.

“We’re here again, aren’t we?”

“I’m afraid so,” said Michael. He pushed himself up and looked around. The scarred, pock-marked sky was gone. It was starting to get a little lighter.

He jumped upon a rock and looked around. The beasts were off in the distance, working their way through the fields, eating the strange grasses and lumbering on their way. Even further off in the distance, several of the sky grazers were loping along, snaking their long schnozzes down to the surface to feed on various kinds of flowers.

The sun was rising.

Michael realized he was standing near the same portal projector he had been near the last time, but a long time seemed to have passed here, like years. It was possible that barring the ivy that had started to crawl through it that this was just like any other rock in the field. A moment or two longer and in the light it looked even more like a rock, in fact, with the sun shining on it, the ivy seemed to have disappeared and what was standing before them was nothing more than a rock. He looked off to the creatures, they still looked the same to him, but somehow distant or in another way broken from their rampages on Earth.

“Probably because they were projections into our universe, some kind of worst-case scenario machine that injected the strange and unusual into our world, they probably didn’t remember their escapades there. Probably not the same creatures entirely anyway,” said Michael.

“Probably.”

“Shut up.”

Upon the hill, standing there as if nothing had happened, was their leader. He stood tall, and in no way struck by his desire to cross over into our dimension. Simon noticed him too, and they walked up the hill to meet him. When they arrived, they stood no higher than the great warrior’s knees.

“You are welcome here, Michael David Christopher, the man with three first names.”

“Thank you, sir. All’s well then?”

“Indeed. I see you’ve been by the rock.”

“Yes, I have. It’s just a rock then now, is it?”

“Yes, just a rock. As long as it remains daytime.”

“What happens to it at night?”

“It brings terrible things into our world. It haunts us, it also enchants us, and bends us to its will from time to time.”

“I’m sorry.”

“There’s nothing to be sorry for. We stay here to defend it. Occasionally I think we cross the line, though we can sometimes barely remember it, and sometimes it takes a few of us with it. I suspect that has happened again tonight, yes?”

“It has.”

“Is all well?”

“It is. Except… He looked over at Simon. My friend here seems to have been affected by the last cross over.”

“Is this true?” He turned to face Simon.

“Yes, sir. The blast, the one that connected our worlds. It changed me.”

“I believe it has. It’s shown you a part of your inner self, has it not?”

“I think so. I can transform.” He did so, into the tall, green-gray skinned creature with the wild hair. “I feel like some kind of troll or something. I can heal fast, regenerate if you will, and I have amazing strength and senses.”

“Has it helped you?”

“I think it has, I’m just not sure what to do with myself.”

“We cannot take it away, you know that. You are changed for life.”

“I figured as much.”

“And you do not wish to change? To return to your normal state for good?”

“No. I’ve seen what’s inside of me, and I think I could benefit the world.”

“Then you should go and use your gifts in this way. And what about you, a man with three first names, what do you desire?”

“I think all I’m interested in now is a good drink, a cheeseburger in my favorite burger joint, and an evening relaxing with my friends.”

“I don’t think you can quite achieve all those goals.”

“No, I suppose not.”

“How do you intend to return home?”

Michael held up Moxie’s wrist band. “This.”

The tall warrior looked at the little device.

“Walter rigged these things years ago to only return to Earth. I suppose it was a cheap way to keep her coming back all the time.”

“You think it’s about time to reverse that?”

“I think so, just after using it one last time to return myself.”

“I see.”

“What about him?” The warrior gestured to Simon. “He may not return with that. It only carries one, correct?”

“That’s true. I was planning on giving it to him anyway.”

Michael pulled off the cuff and held it out to Simon.

“No, Michael, you use that.”

Michael held it out again, but Simon refused.

“There is another way, said the tall warrior. We walk between dimensions frequently, and he his now part of us after the blast. We could teach him.”

“You could? There’s more to this than speed and strength?”

“Far more. We can teach you to walk between the dimensions, and you may one day make it back to Earth if you search, but you’ll have to take the long way around. Are you interested?”

Simon didn’t even think to look back.

He assumed his troll-like form and stepped forward.

“Michael?”

“Mike.”

They shook hands. Michael nodded to both of them, adjusted his hat, and touched the button on the wristband, and faded away with a wave.

On Earth Walter, Jen, Fred, and Moxie were sitting in a booth in a small Mexican restaurant. They had ordered enchiladas and tacos and were dipping into a pool of salsa and another of queso dip with their chips. Above them, a television blared with local news.

“Can you believe this?” said Walter, “They’re calling it a load of tornadoes. Useless.”

“What else did you think they were going to say,” said Jen. “You think they’re going to go for the whole rubber monster theory?”

“I know, it’s just silly though.”

“What are you going to do,” asked Moxie?

“You know what we’re going to do, we’re going to build another restaurant. I captained ships all across the galaxy. There’s nothing I like better than flipping burgers and dipping french fries. Its stupid, and I don’t care.”

“No it’s not,” said Jen. “It’s what you love.”

“Gonna miss my old ship though. Always thought of expanding it someday, all it would take is a little programming to change the walls and add some more seats. Suppose I’d have to do that sometime during the night.”

“I suppose.”

“Gone, cleanly gone, sucked into the vortex. Oh, I know. I want my ship back, it was a great little ship.”

“I know, I loved it,” said Jen. She turned to Fred and Moxie. “Are you two going to help us?”

“Yeah, we’re staying on,” said Fred.

“As long as we can,” said Moxie.

They watched the news coverage knowing they were the only ones alive who could remember that it wasn’t just a line of tornadoes, and ate their chips, waiting for their tacos.

“Walter, have you ever thought about getting off-world again, maybe starting up a burger joint in space?” Moxie twirled the straw in her soda.

“You know Moxie, I’ve thought about that so many times, and yeah, I might eventually think about getting off-world again, but I think it would just be for a vacation. For all it’s dullness, all the action takes place on Earth. Everybody comes here. It’s got to be the blindest planet, and the most popular one to visit. It’s like living in the Aspen, Colorado of the universe. On Earth, you have it all. There are beaches, and snow, there’s entertainment and music of all kinds, undead walk and terrorize the planet while aliens visit for the weekend, and the movies are beyond comparison. Where would you rather live? Out in space, slogging it up and down the system? Romantic, yes, but no, this is where it is.”

“Now Walter.”

“What?”

“We were just like them once, you know.”

“Yeah, I remember. I won’t say it’s all bad,” said Walter. “There are ups and downs though, and after you’ve been traveling up and down the space-ways for a couple or ten years you start to like the idea of sticking somewhere for a while. Then again, you are still pretty young.”

Michael arrived in the bathroom of the little Mexican restaurant and pulled the wristband from his wrist. He stepped out and saw them, but they didn’t see him. He slipped into the booth next to them and listened for a while. Soon a waiter came by with a basket of chips for his table. He accepted them with a thank you, and hung out for a moment, listening.

“I just love the space travel though. Fred and I, we love getting out there and seeing the galaxy. I know you are ready to stay on Earth, but we’re not. We’ll stay but we are always going to want to get out there again.”

“Well, you can’t get out there without this then, can you?”

Michael stepped up and pulled a chair up to the end of the booth, and set Moxie’s wristband down in front of her.

She grabbed his neck and hugged him hard.

“Here give me that.”

He snatched up the wrist band again. “And yours too Fred. It’s about time I fixed these.”

He touched their screens and slid his fingers across them. They made little beeping sounds. “Here you go. I took the loop off for good.”

They put them back on.

“Loop?” asked Moxie.

“Hey, you kept my blood so you could track me, right?”

She agreed, “Yes…”

“Well, I looped your wristbands years ago to keep you coming back to Earth once in a while. I think Walter tried to show you how to turn it off, but I hid another one in there. Forgive me? ”

“I will.”

Fred shook his head.

“Now I’m buying dinner.”

The waiter was over a moment later, and Michael added a heaping plate of fajitas to the order and another round of drinks for everyone.

When they were done, they went out into the parking lot, and Fred and Moxie raised their wrist bands up and synchronized them together.

“We’re off.”

Michael gave them both hugs.

They hit the button and were sucked backward through a random wormhole in space.

“Where have they gone?” asked Walter.

“There’s no telling.”

“Will they be back?” asked Jen.

“Oh yeah. Maybe not right away like before, but they’ve got the bug. They’ll be around.”

Michael saw his car in the lot.

“Hey, I thought I’d lost this in the fight.”

“Yeah, we kept it for you, thought you’d want it back.”

“Yeah,” he opened the door and was about to slip in. “I saw the restaurant, on the other side.”

“What happened to it?”

“Destroyed. Torn to pieces like you would not believe. There was glass everywhere. I think the land on the other side must have liked it though because it started to pull it under the grass right away.”

Walter hung his head. Jen took him by the arm. “Come on, big guy, let’s get out of here.”

“I could help though,” said Michael.

“What?” Jen turned to face him.

“I think we might have another one, maybe not the same model or anything, but possible, another ship from your world might be at the facility in New Mexico. Would you like to take a look? I’m sure the President will sign the order for me to give you one if it’s out there in the impound.”

“Are you sure?”

“Sure I’m sure.”

They got into the flying car, and Michael put the top down. He cranked the engine and soared into the sky, headed for the setting sun.

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