This is a draft version of a chapter from John Saye’s book, The Man With Three First Names.
The giant smacked his side of the massive gate. “More power!”
Behind him, men who all looked like they were normal, and not any way too tall for the Earth, began working harder on the machine.
“We have to get through.”
Captain Harland stood there and paced. He could see the remains of the lab on the other side of his portal, though it was only in crossing that you could tell a difference in height between these men and the men of Earth. He threw his fists into the portal, was electrified, and flew fifteen feet backward, landing in a heap and smoldering on the ground.
It wasn’t the first time he’d ever done this. The men around him, all working on the machine, which is what the Captain called it, buried their heads in their jobs and kept at it, letting the big guy pick himself up. Trying to pick him up led to disaster.
The Captain stood up and brushed himself off. He checked himself and straightened his suit. Nothing out of the ordinary.
He pushed forward and continued to pace in front of the gate.
“I don’t understand, he said. There’s nothing to it, dimensional travel is all. We should be able to break through the barrier by now.”
A small robot came whizzing up to him through the air. It was spherical and seemed to float on its own repulser field. It bleeped at him.
“Report, oh-one.”
The robot twittered.
The captain smacked it away. “Speak damn you! We programmed you to speak!”
The robot righted itself and floated back up, and switched speakers so it could translate its words into a robotic whine. The voice seemed to tremble and warble over the little tinny speakers the robot had. “Yes sir, sorry sir.”
The Captain looked back at the little ball. He wanted to crush the little sphere between his fingers, and he knew that he could, but you had to talk to someone while you were waiting sometimes.
“Please continue,” said the Captain. He held his hands behind his back while they talked to remove his temptation to knock the little balloon for another spin.
“Yes sir, sorry sir.”
The Captain waved off the apology.
“It seems sir that we are splitting the barrier further and further with each attempt and reaching into the other dimension a little bit more each time. As long as we keep up with our pulses like we are, and reinforcing the link to the other dimension, we should break through before long.”
“Just a matter of time then.”
The Captain looked around at their strange, declining world, no longer habitable by his kind. Wars had ravaged here, and after hundreds of years of nuclear bombardment, subsequent mutations, and attempted gene therapy, this was all they had left. The world was dark, and silent, and filled with purple grasses and brown mists. Around him, near where the men were working on the machine, grazers worked on the soft grasses and a massive creature worked its way through the skies lowering its long snout into a local lake to drink its fill as it cruised along on a gas-filled bladder that kept it in the sky. Around them in the distance, the ruins of a futuristic city stood behind them, covered in purple and orange moss, with grass poking up through the streets and trees growing into the lower floors of the busted outbuildings. It The tops of the buildings, what remained of them, were covered in birds of various kinds and styles and their nests.
The Captain seemed on his own, desperate and lonely. The robot twittered next to him, but he found it intolerable and knocked it to the ground again. It was the only thing he had to talk to. The other men talked among themselves, but they were useless. They had no vision, and he suspected, they were too close to the new animals of his world. This portal was all he had left.
He pulled a photograph of his wife from his pocket. She was beautiful, with long blue hair and silver skin tone. On the Earth, the pocket photo would have been larger than a standard poster. He put it back in his pocket.
She’d been killed just at the end of the last wars when the bombs were still dropping. She was lost. The blue fireball had consumed his entire street. He whispered to her, his hand on the photo in his pocket. The other world, I know it’s my only hope. I have to reach there, even if I destroy it or most of it in the process.
He listened to nothing. What he imagined was her voice, soft tones in his ears.
“I know it’s harming them. I know I should just turn off the portal, but I can’t.”
He watched as the men worked on the generator, getting ready for another pulse. There was a video projection coming from a light housing on the top of the machine, the bulb within it was the only thing keeping the tenuous connection he had with the other dimension. He dared not get too close to it. He was starting to wonder if it would ever work at all.
“We just kept getting so close.”
If he’d had it his way, he’d have stepped through, and left them all behind, but it seemed to keep bleeding this world into the next. When he tried to push himself through before it hadn’t worked the way it should. He couldn’t remember. Trying to think about the last time he tried to push through wouldn’t come to him.
He pondered it all and sat watching the projection from the portal like it was a huge television screen. Beyond it, he could see the remains of the science lab on the other side. He could see there were casualties there, and that their equipment seemed to be continuing to function a little bit. They must have tried to open dimensional portals to each other at exactly the same time. “How did that even work? What could the odds have even been?”
He watched the science lab, now devoid of life, on the other side, and regretted that those men had to die. He’d had little to do with it, just an accident, but he still felt responsible. He’d been watching the little scavenger assassins that ran over the countryside in this part of the world bursting through to terrorize them on the other side. He still hadn’t been able to get through for more than a few minutes each time.
He thought about it, no one was choosing to cross on their own. It just seemed to be everything in the general vicinity was just working its way through. So the intention to use the portal was a factor. Either way, everything would return to normal as soon as the connection was lost, and they were forced to boost the pulse again.
“If I let it go on, then there’s no going back for any of them. If there were only a way to get through without having anything else hitchhike along with me. That’s the key. I should do it. Just crush the lamp, destroy the machine, and take that last walk into the wilderness. It would be easy. Close the portal, walk away. It would be over.”
Quick, and painless, again with his own kind. He’d been born with a drive to survive, but when all you’ve got to look forward to are monsters in the forest and radiation sickness… He kicked at the ground.
Behind him, the men were starting to get excited.
Oh-one floated up and chirped. “Sir, there’s some movement on the other side.”
Earlier they’d set out sensors, and for some reason, maybe it was the dimensional static, they seemed to continue working while they were still stuck on this side.
The Captain rushed over to the sensor equipment, red dots on a field of yellow.
“Is that all the detail we have? Turn it up, let’s bring these guys into proper focus.”
He adjusted a dial on the side of the screen and smiled with personal satisfaction when he had everything in clear view.
“It’s four of them. It looks like two men, a woman, and some form of creature, perhaps a bodyguard of some kind, lean and tall. I wonder how he deals with that hair. It’s all over the place.”
They were climbing forward, and down into the caverns that had opened up after the blast, down towards the epicenter where the portal now fizzled, almost about to go out.
They lowered themselves into the science lab of the Sublight group and he watched as they looked around, surveying the perimeter.
“They’re looking for any of the creatures. If there are any stragglers. Let me tell you there aren’t. Not until I can push back through. It could be any minute. It’s the only way.”
“Sir, we’re almost there!” called one of the men who was working on the portal generator.
“Yes? Is it there?”
“We’re about to pull the trigger on it now. We’ll be there in just a moment. All the fuel reserves are full, we’re just waiting on the charge to kick in.”
The Captain watched through the portal at the four of them standing there. What was he about to unleash on them? He didn’t know. What would he look like on the other side? It was all a blur.
“Sir, we’re there. Shall I pull the trigger?”
He took one last look at them, just in case it was his last.
“Do it.”
The men worked around the generator at a frantic pace. They flipped switch after switch, generating ever-increasing surges of power.
On the other side, Fred and Moxie walked up to the portal. Behind them, Michael and Simon made their way down. Michael removed the clip from a harness he had lowered himself in with and tossed it aside. Simon just landed with a single leap from the top. They looked through the hazy screen of the portal, and just for a moment, Michael was face to face with the Captain.
The pulse went out.
There was an explosion of light on the Captain’s side of the portal, and a blast of light from the projector flew out and exploded where the portal was. All around them the countryside was replaced with a broken parking lot, a piece of the street and a field of junked cars. On the other side, on Earth, the cars were vanishing and replaced by the form of furry creatures of the night, and the four of them were knocked to their feet by the shockwave.
Before them the images in the portal crystalized, and they could see the Captain on the other side. He seemed pleased with himself, a job almost complete was the look in his eyes.
All around them they heard the ching of metal as a half dozen of the little bastards, six arms each flew at them in the dark.
Moxie ducked as one went over her.
Michael blasted one with a small silver blaster pulled from his inner coat pocket.
Fred hit one with a baseball bat, sending it flying back into the darkness in a silent crumple.
Simon roared as five of them hit him at once and were stabbing him with everything they had. He felt magnetized. They seemed to fly at him without meaning to. He punched one, sending it careening off into the darkness. Another one bit as his ankles and tore his foot off. It exploded with sprays of green blood. He hit the floor on one knee and reached out to slam two of the creatures together into a pulp before him. In another moment, he grabbed two more out of the air above, who were about to land on him, and brought them to the ground hard and fast, killing them.
“Simon—” Michael came over to him.
“It’s all right.”
Simon stood up, and Michael watched as Simon’s wounds healed together, and his foot reattached to his leg. He popped his ankle into place and shook it off.
“All right then.”
He punched his open palm and cracked his knuckles.
The area was clear for the moment, but there was some warbling in the air, and time and space seemed to be shifting in on itself just a little bit.
“Climb back out!” said Michael. He could feel the next one coming.
“What?” asked Moxie.
“Out, everyone out! Simon, can you help them?”
Simon took Fred and Moxie in his arms and leaped out of the cavernous remains of his old office, landing on the ground above. When he got there, Michael was already up.
“How did you—“
Michael ignored him, and pulled out his telephone, a sleek black job, no good for games, but deadly secure, even for a cell phone. He was already opening up the space roadster.
He got a signal.
“Yes, Mr. President. I think we’re going to need a little help here. I’m about to put you on the car’s cam system.”
He stepped into the car, and everyone else followed. Once in there was a rumble, like a small earthquake, and then another.
“Thunder?” asked Simon.
“No. We should be so lucky.”
He dropped the phone into a slot on the dash, and an image of the President came up.
“What is it you need Michael, is everything in hand?”
“Hey that’s the President!” said Fred.
There was another rumble.
“No sir, I think we’re going to need a little help here.”
The ground rumbled and the car was thrown a hundred feet into the air, where it settled in and began to hover there.
“What was that?” asked the President.
“We’re going to need a little help getting to the portal to get through it sir, I’d like to suggest you send in a task force, can you oblige?”
“We can arrange help in that fashion Michael, what’s the objective of the mission?”
“I’m going to turn on my exterior cameras for you now, and I’ll give you a look. Getting close enough to the portal is going to prove dangerous, and I don’t think we can risk waiting for another down pulse.”
He turned on the cameras.
Below him there were seas of the little assassins, cartwheeling about, shredding everything they could find. Around them were the Grazers, transformed from local cars and trucks, but now in massive form, as if they had been moving towards the portal since the pulses began. There were large floating behemoths, sucking up everything they could find through their furry snouts, and right on top of the portal, sticking through it, and fighting its way into the world was a creature, large and insane, a multi-tentacled beast as large as an aircraft carrier. It looked like a giant mass of wriggling spaghetti, undulating in all directions. There was a large gaping maw at its base, and each clawed tentacle ended with a large rolling eyeball, the size of a truck tire.
“Jesus Michael, that’s what you’ve got there?”
“Yes sir, and I’d appreciate a little help. I just want to keep them at bay. It’d be nice if this big one didn’t get through the gate between now and then.”
“I’ll order it now.”
The President smacked a button on his desk, and Michael could see him stand up and start giving orders before the connection went dead.
“So, what do we do now?” asked Fred.
“We wait.”
“Wait?” said Moxie.
“There’s nothing else to do. If we go down there we’ll be toast, and Simon and I have to get through that portal and knock it out on the other side. Can’t get through that on my own.”
There was a crackle in the air.
Another brief pulse and a shockwave rang out, multiplying the creatures below.
“What the hell,” said Fred.
The assassins were throwing themselves into the air and climbing on top of each other. One of them landed on the hood of the floating Cadillac.
Michael flipped the car over, doing a stationary barrel roll. The little guy flipped off, but more were on the way.
“We’ve got to get higher.”
Michael pulled the car and opened the jets, pointing the car up into the sky. The sunset played on the hood.
He dropped the speed and looked down again.
“Michael, this is the P.R.E.Z one, do you copy?” It was coming over the radio.
Michael hit the switch.
“Copy that. It’s me.”
We have you on our scanners. Hold your position, and we’ll be making our entry now.
“What’s he mean entry?”
“Watch this. You think our military hasn’t done anything interesting lately?”
“War in Iraq?” asked Simon?
“Child’s play. Here come the real guys now. Let’s just hope they can hold them off long enough.”
In they came.
Three ships appeared, from dots of light in the sky, they became brighter and brighter over the course of a second, and through a rip in space and time they arrived. They were definitely US military. Two were painted in modern camouflage, which changed almost like a chameleon to match the general tones around them. The ship in the middle was pure white, which could mean only one thing. The President was aboard, commanding the fight.
The ships had no wings, but just little sharp, pointy juttings, like fins on each side. They had command bridges up top, were smooth, and silent. On their sides, massive doors opened up, and metal spheres, each the size of a car began to spill out.
“Are they bombs?”
Michael shook his head. “Your tax dollars at work.”
The silver spheres landed on the ground below, destroying everything in their way, rolling in and ripping up mounds of dirt and turf that Michael knew would be just fine in the morning when this pulse was over if it ever was.
There was no explosion, but the tremendous crash of them impacting.
Then the spheres began to wiggle, crack and stand up on long tripod legs.
Michael took a closer look at his camera.
He focussed in, and they could see the clear, yet metallic dome over the human driver of each machine. The tripod walkers marched forward on the dome. Forcefields around them kept the little assassins at bay, and they used robotic arms to toss the grazers aside. There was some laser fire, but together the soldiers, with the help of the President and his small fleet, began to herd the creatures closer and closer together.
“They aren’t killing them,” said Moxie.
“That is interesting,” said Michael. “It’s what I expected them to do.”
There was a beep from the console.
“Looks like the President wants to talk,” said Simon.
Michael hit the switch, and the President was on the line.
“Michael, doing all right there?”
“Fine as fiddlesticks sir, he said.” He tipped his hat at the President.
“We’ve got them corralled for now. Come on board, and let’s take a look at this big guy together right?”
“On my way.”
Michael cut off the channel, and dived for the President’s ship, he landed the car in an open bay. As the four of them were walking towards the President and some of his advisors, Michael beeped the car behind him, to lock it with his key fob. The convertible roof came up, and everything locked down.
They shook hands.
“Mister President sir.”
“Michael David Christopher, the Man with three first names, its good to finally meet you in person.”
“It’s an honor, sir. Shall we?”
“Of course.”
They reconvened in a separate room, with a large table on which was an interactive screen.
The President swept his hands across the table and pointed the camera at the Sublight group facility. The large tentacled creature filled the gaping hole.
“What’s it doing there?”
“I think it’s stuck.”
Michael looked up.
“I think it is. It hasn’t made a move since the last pulse. We’ve monitored one more major pulse, a strengthener, and another few minor pulses around to even the load, and stabilize it. We think they are waiting. Someone is testing something by putting this creature through.”
“Hmm…”
“The other creatures are just bleeding through. They are part of one world, and part in another. This creature is struggling. It looks like it’s stuck halfway between this world and the other, but pinned at the portal.”
“Again, hmm,” said Michael.
“There’s a bit more there. We think it might be an experiment, the attempt to push something through on purpose, perhaps before someone or something else makes the attempt again.”
One of the advisors moved the screen with a touch and dropped some print-outs on the table.
“We think it’s almost through. One more pulse maybe.”
“Then what happens?”
“We don’t know. Two theories. Either it vanishes as everything else does after a pulse is over, or since it came through the portal, it might be left behind. We don’t want to change that.”
“What about blasting it?”
“Blasting it could cause it to complete its journey. We don’t want that to happen either. The soldiers on the ground have done a good job of herding everything up and engaging the little assassin guys, but this one we’ve been watching by satellite peek through in the last couple of pulses.”
“So now it’s a waiting game?”
“Yes, it’s a waiting game. Our plan is to get the two of you down through the gate as soon as the next pulse comes through. Until that, we’re staying airborne.”
“That makes sense.”
“That is unless one of the big guys knocks through us.”
Foom!
They looked down at the table.
“There it goes, another pulse.”
“Sir! The sun!” It was one of the soldiers, hanging by the open floating hanger.
“Good good, let’s see.”
They focused down on the hole again.
“That’s what I was afraid of.”
“What?”
There was a huge cloud of smoke around the Sublight group.
“Are the creatures fading?”
“Yes, they are fading, but this one, half-in and half out.”
There was a pulse.
“It’s made it through for good.”
They looked down, expecting to see a giant writhing creature, but there was just a splatter of green.
“At least that half of it made it through.”
The dust settled. As it did so, it revealed the half-body lying there.
“Now we may have a hell of a time getting to that portal.”
“Why?” said Moxie.
“Sushi, My dear, said the President. The crater down there is now full of it.”
