This is a draft version of a chapter from John Saye’s book, The Man With Three First Names.
“That’s it!” said the President. “Now, go suit up!”
Simon and Michael looked at each other. They nodded and followed a pair of soldiers into an enclosed room.
“Your clothes sir.”
“Forget it,” said Michael, “just do it, we’ll fit in the jumpsuits just fine.”
Metallic jumpsuits lowered from the ceiling. There were large clear openings like a HAZMAT suit. They were silvery-green in color.
“Oh come on!” said Michael.
“Sir, we don’t know what’s on the other side, we want you to be able to breathe sir.”
They were all putting on face masks.
“What, you think you’re all going with me?”
“Of course sir, we’re under your orders.”
“Then my first order is getting out of my way!”
Michael and Simon pushed out of the little room.
“What’s the problem?” asked the President.
“The problem is, we’re going on our own on this one Dave.”
“Mike, come on, you don’t know what’s in there.”
“I have a pretty good idea, and those creatures aren’t dying right away over here, so we’re on our way.”
The President grabbed Michael by the elbow, it was a vice-like grip.
“Lay off, robot.”
Mike swatted him off, then found himself looking at the bewildered troops around him.
“It’s nothing, said the President, just an old college nickname.” He gave Michael a stare to kill.
“That’s right,” said Michael.
“I just want to make sure you’re taken care of.”
“I’ll be fine. Simon, you ready?”
“You bet. He transformed into the crazed looking creature, and together they ran for the edge and jumped out of the ship together.”
“I hope you have a plan,” said Simon on the way down.
“I always have a plan, just let me think of one real quick.”
“We’ll be better off on our own.”
“Well, it’s not like we need parachutes or anything.”
“Why would we need that, right?”
Michael was looking at the ground, just a sea of sushi-like raw tentacles.
Simon was picking his landing point.
Michael touched a button on his jacket, and a parachute, small, but efficient popped forth from behind his neck. He shot up into the air, as Simon kept plummeting downwards.
Simon hit the ground like a ton of bricks, and sprayed fresh tentacle everywhere in a column above him, but still landed, kneeling, and stood up again, brushing the slime off of him like it was nothing.
Michael touched down and folded the parachute away.
“Interesting suit.”
“I got it from a—“
“Leave it.”
“Right.”
Around them, boiling pools of slime were eating away at the hardware of the old laboratory.
Simon put a clawed hand on the table, and it fell apart, from where the slime had already been working on the legs.
Before them stood the gate. It was the only thing shining in the place.
Somewhere a cell phone was ringing. It was playing a ringtone by the Beatles.
Michael answered it. “I’m sorry I called you a robot.”
“You’re forgiven.”
Simon could hear everything going on at the President’s end of the call. His senses were on overdrive.
President coughed.
“He and I went to college together,” Michael said to Simon.
“If he hadn’t been out on a mission with you I would never have been necessary.”
“I know.”
“I just wanted to make sure you got down all right. Is there anything else I can do for you?”
“Yeah, watch our backs and stay local in case I need you to round them up again after the next pulse.”
“Roger that.”
“Roger my ass.”
“Roger your ass, roger.”
“Dave?”
“We did download the personality, Mike.”
“Are you in there?”
“Some of me. Get on with it, get through that portal.”
The President hung up and Michael tossed the stray phone aside.
“You ready?”
Simon pulled out his whip.
Michael pulled out his as well.
The portal, itself, seemed to know what was going on because it started to crackle with extra energy as Simon and Michael brought the whips out.
“Let’s crack ’em.”
They cracked their bullwhips into the portal, and they went right through and sucked Michael and Simon right on behind them.
Everything became a blur of light. Things stretched, pulled into pretzels, and then ironed out like old laundry hung up to dry before Michael finally opened his eyes again.
It was dark.
Michael felt around.
His face was there, that was good.
He thought about that for a moment. So, his face was there. What about his hat? He felt around for that, found it close by and put it on. At least he felt the sensations of putting it on his head. He could feel the satin lining caress his forehead and temples, and he could feel the weight of it on his ears, but it fell off again. He felt around and could feel the ground beneath him. He pushed up, and put his hat back on again, but still had trouble opening his eyes. Everything was blurry.
He searched around and rubbed at his eyes. His hands were there, and he could see them. He looked around. Simon was on the floor, but pushing up, and shaking his head. He kept transforming, back and forth and back and forth. Sometimes he got it right, and sometimes, he got it wrong and had to transform back so he could breathe or so his eyes weren’t on the inside of his nostrils or something. He wasn’t awake enough to control it. Soon he got it back, straightened himself up, and started looking around.
They were standing on a hill, covered in bluegrass with an open, cloudy coppery sky above them.
Before them was the portal, just as it was on the other side, just a mirror image.
“Where are the whips?” asked Simon.
“Doing their job.”
Michael reached around, felt at the base of his neck, and could feel the prickle where the extra-dimensional whip must have attached itself to him, and as he thought about it, he could see the light of it trailing like a faint ghost back to the portal.
“They are linking us back to our world.”
Simon felt for his as well.
“If we destroy the machine, we’ll have just a few seconds to make it back through before the portal loses its connection.”
“Here’s to keeping it light, right?”
There were great grinding and scraping.
Michael and Simon looked out and could see a great machine rolling forward and clamping down over the projector.
“We’ve got to get in that thing.”
“That’s it, right there?”
“I think so, we’re going to have to find out.”
Captain Harland stepped forward. Here he was about their size and started working on the machine. He waved off the help of his slaves, who scattered away as he flung his arms at them.
He threw what looked like a screwdriver at the ground and sat on the machine, looking through the portal.
“Why are they out in this field?”
“I don’t know,” said Simon.
They ventured another peek, and saw behind the portal generator, the huge army lying in wait. It looked like they’d been camped out there for a while.
Harland looked over at them, did a double-take.
“They spotted us,” said Michael.
“Get them!”
Michael and Simon turned tail and ran. They dived down into the bluegrasses and tried to hide in the thick underbrush, but the army was close upon them. Here, instead of being short and stubby six-armed assassins, they were lean and strong. It was their natural world, and they were proud warriors, skilled at what they did. They found Michael and Simon and brought them forward to Harland.
“How is it that you’ve come here?”
“Oh, you know, just looking around,” said Michael.
“Just looking around? You are not from this world.”
“Never met travelers?”
Simon turned into himself.
“And what of this little man? A skin-changer of some kind? Interesting.”
“How is it that you can understand us, and we you? Are languages that similar in the galaxy?”
“You’d be surprised,” said Michael. “One of my best friends in High School was an alien, and the most foreign thing he ever said sounded something like a combination of French and Spanish at best.”
“I don’t know of French and Spanish, whatever these things are. I should kill you now. You came through the portal, yes?”
“Yes.”
“Then how come you could make it through in one piece? We are having such difficulty with it.”
“What happened here?”
“It was a war. We burned our planet to death. Some things still survive. The grasses seem to have thrived on our warfare. We’ve been looking for a new home for some time now, and yours was the first we found that we could get through the portal with. We just couldn’t make it stick.”
“Part of it’s because you destroyed the portal generator on the other side.”
“Did we?”
“Afraid so, and when you come through the portal, you seem to change. I’m assuming you didn’t try and push a big tentacled monster through at us last time.”
“No, it was a horse.”
The word didn’t translate well in Michael’s mind. They didn’t have horses here. It was closer to the word steed, but that wasn’t even close. It was more like a beloved animal when it finished in his mind.
“What happened?”
“He got stuck. The portal generator isn’t stable, we can’t make it work.”
“I have to ask you to abandon it.”
“What?”
“What you’re doing is destroying our world. Each time you power this system up, you deepen the crack or rift between our worlds.”
“That is our hope.”
“You must not. What you are doing is twisting our worlds and breaking them apart. You’ve already laid waste to this world, please don’t do the same to ours. We have a hard enough time taking care of it ourselves. Here you seem reasonable. On the other side, you don’t come through quite the same. Your minds and bodies get warped and altered by the portal. You need to shut it off, for our own good, and yours.”
“You do not understand. We are dying.”
“It’s never simple is it?”
“No, it’s not.”
Harland straightened up. The army behind him was taking notice of what was going on. “We can’t turn it off, it’s our only hope. We don’t travel the stars, we only travel between dimensions. For most of the war, we used these machines to travel in and around and behind each other, for attack and surprise.”
“And now you’re using it to find a way out.”
“You understand.”
“Yes I do, and I promise to help, I’ve got friends, and we can make another arrangement. We’ll get you off-world.”
“I cannot accept your offer.”
Michael nodded.
“You’re sure you won’t reconsider?”
“I cannot make allowances. This portal is our last hope. Before a ship from your world could arrive, we’d all be gone.”
“You won’t accept then?”
“No. It’s kind of you, but it’s no use.”
There was a rumble across the ground.
“Sire!” called one of the technicians who had been working on the machine. “We’re ready for another pulse!”
“Good, then start!”
They rumbled away from the casing, and a blast of energy coursed up the projection that was generating the portal, and it brightened.
“Everyone move out!”
They began to move forward, and transform. In just a moment the grasses shrank into the ground and became hard asphalt, light posts, and traffic lights.
Simon looked around them. “We’re home.”
“No, we’re not.”
Harland was still standing there. “It’s just the beginning. It’s still not strong enough for anything to stick yet. If I go straight through the portal, I won’t make it through, or I’ll end up caught between two worlds, like the creature you saw.”
“What’s the point then? If you come through like some kind of monster, what’s the point?”
The Captain just shook his head.
“Come on, I can have a fleet here before you know it.”
“Sorry, Michael,” said Harland. “This is likely our last chance, this or the next pulse. The projector is dying.” He moved forward and began to push his head through the portal.
“Don’t.”
“I have to try.”
Harland pushed himself into the portal, climbing through, Michael and Simon could see him transforming into the ravenous toothy body of a major slobbering monster on the other side. On this side, his feet kicked and swayed and pushed, and his arms flailed to keep hold of the edge of the portal, which of course there wasn’t one.
“Good, he’s getting even uglier now…”
Michael leaped at Harland, and grabbed him by the foot, but could only hold on, finding himself hoisted up into the air. His feet couldn’t touch the ground, so instead of pulling, he just wiggled there, hoping to latch onto something by accident.
Simon transformed and then soared into the air and landed next to Michael, who while holding onto one of Harland’s feet, and losing the battle and began to slide through the portal. He screamed, and Simon watched as Michael’s right arm turned into a wild explosion of spaghetti as it went through to the other side.
Simon jumped up and tore at Harland, and got pulled up like a rag doll, too close to the portal for comfort, and let go, falling to the ground.
Harland stepped through with a sort of sticky squeaking spurt, and Michael fell through with him, getting turned into what looked like a wet slop of raw hamburger. Simon jumped, and grabbed at Michael, pulling him back through. They fell to the ground with a whump and looked back and watched as Harland, now through to the other side looked closer to a gelatin-based dinosaur with fangs than his usual self. Harland roared, and cocked his neck, yelling into the night sky on the other side.
Simon stood up.
“Now what?”
“We go back through.”
“What?”
“I saw it, you were mutating just like that guy was, worse!”
“It’s okay, We’ve got these.”
Michael reached behind him and touched the line that connected him to the interdimensional bullwhip. When he touched it, it fell back into his hands, and he reached back to whip it forward. Are you coming?
Simon pulled his and feeling that connection to the other side through it, that safe path, they both pulled their whips back in time to hear a great thud, a crack, and the portal snapped shut before them.
“Crap!”
Michael looked around. Simon was already on top of the portal generator, tearing into it.
He pulled off the side and looked in.
No circuits.
He scrambled around, looking for anything that he was familiar with.
Michael jumped up on the generator and just sat there.
“Alien technology,” he said.
Simon looked up from it all.
“You never know what you’re going to get.”
Simon yelled and threw a part of the machine fifteen yards away. Around them, the people and animals once perched on the hill, ready for battle, began to fade in and out like a great jackpot light exploding for the winners.
“What’s happening?”
“I’ll bet it’s similar on the other side, but now it’s a much larger problem.”
Michael kicked the machine and jumped off of it. He peered in. “Looks like Aztec stuff.”
Simon wasn’t bothered to be surprised at this.
“All physical, no circuit boards, nothing like that. It’s all put together with stone and magic.”
“So?”
Simon let out a deep breath like he’d been holding it for several minutes or more.
“It means there’s no way back.”
Simon transformed into himself from the creature version of himself.
“Never?”
“Never.”
What troops remained came down the mountain at them in a giant volley. Michael watched them winking in and out of existence like he imagined that his world was beginning to do. He ought to be seeing a McDonald’s or a Buick anytime now, flying through the air to squash them.
They came down the mountain, and Simon was ready for a fight. He transformed into the monster and jumped at the attacking soldiers, tearing one of them apart in the air before he came back down to the ground.
Michael thought about it for a moment, ignoring the onslaught of warriors and wondered if it was worth telling Simon that it wasn’t worth it, that they were stuck for good, and that’s all there was to it. He pushed up onto the projector and closed his eyes sitting on top of it. He imagined the warriors diverting their attention to Simon, and leaving him alone like he wasn’t there. He could see them in his mind, throwing their spears and daggers, and them slicing just by his head without hitting him at all. He opened his eyes and watched as one slipped by his nose, on it’s way to a nearby patch of bluish grassy land. He watched around him, in a peaceful state, almost in slow motion, and thought about how this was all going right now. They weren’t trapped, they weren’t besieged, they weren’t about to die, five minutes on this alien world. He opened his eyes. It was all still true. He closed his eyes again, and imagined them back in his office, pouring cups of coffee and getting straws for the zombie brothers. That was a good thought. He concentrated on the smells and the tastes and the textures, of the feeling of slipping back into his chair again, with all of this behind him.
Simon punched his way through the body after body, but they began to pummel him, coming at him from far too many directions. He lurched with one punch and then got caught off balance by another, and down he went, and then they piled on top of him. They couldn’t hurt him beyond a scratch. He was healing faster than they could hurt him, but they were keeping him pretty well pinned to the ground now.
Michael watched, but in his mind, it wasn’t happening to him. He was safe. He closed his eyes again. One way or another this would soon be over.
He could feel the whip and snick of weapons sliding by him, thudding into the generator beneath him, and knocking chunks of stone out of the design of it. One of the chips of a rock hit Michael in the face. He told himself it was the portal reopening again and concentrated on that thought.
“What happened?” It was the President.
“I don’t know,” said Fred. Moxie was at his side.
They were standing on the little bridge of the President’s attack shuttle.
Below them, they could hear the scream of Harland’s new lease on life as what looked like a giant rubber monster, half dinosaur, and half moldy bread. It was an awesome sight.
He came up out of the crater of the Sublight group’s building and bellowed with rage and a lot of misunderstanding. There was a crash behind him, and the entire building crumbled after a giant explosion that rocked the land for miles around. It wasn’t a full nuclear explosion, but the cloud of dust and gas rising from the epicenter was a magnificent mushroom. As it cleared, Harland pushed his way up through the rubble, grabbed a nearby army airborne in one clawed hand and gutted him down whole, then bellowed again as he pushed his way out of the crater.
“What the hell is that thing?”
“Sir?” it was an officer.
The President ignored him.
“Sir?” there was a more thoughtful, and respectful tone in his voice.
“What is it?”
“They’re gone.”
Everyone looked up.
“The portal, it’s closed.”
“Lost on the other side of who knows where the hell.”
Moxie was smiling.
“What?”
“He’ll make it. He always does.”
“Moxie I…,” said Fred. “You know I love you.”
“I know, and I love you Fred, but I can just tell, he’s okay.”
An explosion rocked the ship. Everyone fell over. Moxie and Fred slid to the edge, and almost out. The President held onto the console, and soldiers slipped in every direction.
“How do you know?” He was yelling at her over the sound of the explosions outside as the ship righted itself.
“I just know, you know that.”
“What are we going to do?”
“We gotta go look for him!”
They stood up on the edge, looking down into the pockmarked land below them, and the big dinosaur-creature that seemed to be eating a tank for breakfast, one that was currently firing at him from its uprighted position.
“Moxie, do you still love him?”
“Of course I do.”
Fred’s face fell.
“Just not the way that I love you.”
“Is face lightened.” He felt stupid for doubting her.
“How do we do it? We’ll have to trace him.”
“Do you have a sample?”
“Of course I do.”
She pulled from a small slot on her wristband’s watch, a tiny vial with a drop of blood in it.
“How did you get that?”
“You don’t want to know, Yes I got one of yours too.”
Fred just gave up and waited on it. They hadn’t tracked anyone like this in a while. Tracing his DNA across the galaxy would burn out her battery at best. She’ll have to be right the first time.
She dropped it in a little slot and pressed a button that broke the glass of the tiny vial and soaked in the drop of blood.
Her wrist band was still chewing on it when another explosion in the air rocked them again and they both went tumbling out into the air towards the ground.
“Guys!” The President was all alone on his little bridge. He thumped the counter, and his hand fell off. He looked around to see if anyone noticed, and then reattached it, and programmed himself to forget that it ever happened.
Fred and Moxie fell.
The air whistled around them.
They looked into each other’s eyes as the air rushed past them.
He clasped her hand, pulled her to himself, and kissed her.
While they were doing that, heading for the ground at terminal velocity, her wristband beeped, they had a match. She reached out, not opening her eyes, and not stopping the kiss, and pressed the button. They both disappeared in a flash of purple light right before hitting the ground.
There was a flash to their left, Simon didn’t notice it, but Michael did.
He opened his eyes.
“Moxie.”
Michael turned around, and Fred and Moxie were standing there.
Simon was still killing little blue guys with more arms than they required.
Michael jumped for Moxie, who was about to get hit with a flying dagger, and they tumbled to the ground.
Fred stood over them and then gave them both thumbs up.
“Simon!”
Simon turned around and without question jumped for them. Daggers plunged into his back. First one, then ten, then twenty. His eyes rolled into the back of his head. He fell in on them, his body protecting them from even more damage.
“Fred, get us back!” said Moxie.
Fred reached out and making sure everyone had a hand on him or the other way around, he hit his wristband and brought them all back with the feature that always kept their last location, or at least the one that kept dragging them back towards the burger joint.
They rolled into the dust near the crater and looked up. The President’s ship was right on top of them.
“Get on board!”
They all jumped on, dragging Simon’s body with them.
The ship sailed back into the sky.
“Oh Simon!” said Moxie. A tear was in her eye.
“Quick, let’s get these daggers out of him,” said Michael
They turned him over, which wasn’t all that easy.
Fred and Michael did the heavy pulling, tossing the daggers aside, but Moxie helped get some of the larger pieces out of him. His eyes looked dead, pale and silvery, then he opened them.
Moxie screamed, and Fred stood up with a sort of a yelp.
Simon groaned, and turned over again, and pushed himself up into a crawl. Moxie watched as his skin curled and peeled and began to stitch itself back together. Soon he was standing, and the color came back into his eyes.
He looked around, blinking. “What happened?”
“We’re back.”
“We made it?”
Michael looked around. “Yeah, we made it, thanks to these guys.”
