___________________________________ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ **** ** ** ** ** The **** THERWORLD CHAPTER 17 (> To Travel Beyond <) Copyright 1992 by Bryce Koike All Rights Reserved ___________________________________ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- Any comments, criticisms, opinions, etc, are welcome. I can be reached on Internet as: bkoike@sdcc13.ucsd.edu -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- "...too late for debate, too bad to ignore quiet rebellion leads to open war bring a sea-change to the factory floor as the red tide covers the shore Now's the time to turn the tide Now's the time to fight Let us not go gently To the endless winter night Now's the time to make the time While hope is still in sight Let us not go gently To the endless winter night" ("Red Tide" -- RUSH) -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- On History Among the advances gleaned from long-gone alien races was the secret of the living metal. A special organic could be created to combine with metal which would give it the properties of repairing itself on a limited scale. With the aid of a psionicist that metal could be shaped through force of mind alone into a shape and even when the mental presence was gone, the metal would retain its shape for all eternity. From the aliens, humanity learned the secrets to the Thought Computers which could join the organic to the metal and form the biometal into shapes without the need of a humand mind to guide it. Structures could be built in weeks where it once took months or more. Somewhere on a distant planet, a dark force was rising. Humanity would encounter it and that would be hailed as their fall. -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- Date: September 28, 1992 Location: Hombany Mansion Otherworld Time: 6:00 am A gentle hand pressed on Angela's shoulder. She stirred, then reluctantly looked upward. Her eyes first focused on the dim chandelier above the room. She then looked into an empty pit. It was Victoria's face. Seeing that she was finally awake, Victoria straightened up and looked out the window. "It's time that you awakened, child," Victoria said. Angela still wasn't used to the woman's angelic voice like a thousand singing children or women. She turned to look out the window and watched the rain patter against it. It had been explained to her by the butler that Hombany Mansion was an anomaly here in Otherworld and that it did not exist in any particular location or place. At this time her window faced out into a green pasture and rain was pouring down on it. "What time is it?" "Time for you to stretch your limbs. Come, awaken." Angela pulled aside the beautifully-warm blankets and bent over to pull on her tennis shoes. They seemed so out of place in this quaint old mansion. She had slept in her clothes -- something she hadn't done since the camping trip with her dad. It had ended when he got food poisoning from something they had cooked . . . "We will wait for you in the central cavity. Bruger will guide you there when you are ready." Victoria left the room with her rotten clothing dragging behind her. Angela yawned and rubbed her eyes, then looked out the window again. It seemed to blink and suddenly brilliant sunlight bored into her eyes. "Okay, okay!" she cried. "I'm up!" Outside the door, Bruger was waiting. He bowed stiffly and bade Angela to follow him. She still didn't understand the Mansion and didn't dare to wander off on her own, so she followed him and his stiff stride. He was the prodigal butler. This time they did not travel through the horrors that the Mansion had to offer. The dead were still here, but they went through the routine tasks that all people faced in the morning. This was not horror, but this section of the Mansion reeked of boredom. Boredom was a kind of torture in its own way. A hardened man was the only person who was in the central cavity. This room was completely unlike any of the other rooms in the Mansion. It did not look antique or ancient; it looked completely alien. Its walls were ribbed and rough, like the inside of a throat. A thick ridge spanning the ceiling could very well have been a spinal cord. The man looked up in surprise. "What's this?" he asked. His gums were a brilliant pink against his dark black skin -- so black that it had a blue sheen to it. "I don't take kids with me." Bruger was silent. He gently pushed Angela into the room and closed the door behind him, leaving her alone with the man. The man was not one that she had foreseen. She felt ill at ease. The man scowled at her with irritation. "What's your name, girl? C'mon." "Angela." She tried to look at him defiantly, but didn't do a very good job of it. The man snorted and looked out the window. "What sort of hazards are you familiar with?" he asked. "What?" "Snow. Hail. Rain. Avalanches. Danger. Are you familiar with any of these?" Angela swallowed nervously. "It snows in the winter at my family's cabin-" "I'm asking if you could survive alone without mommy and daddy to hold your hand, girl!" cried the man. "Not how nice it is to go back to the cabin after a cold day in the snow! Now tell me truth, have you any experience with any hazardous environment?" "No. No, I don't." Angela's eyes darted around nervously. She didn't like this man. "Lord, why me?" muttered the black man under his breath. "She's city-soft! She could be the death of me." Irritation stirred in Angela. The far door creaked open and Victoria entered, pushing the limbless Christine before her in an old wooden wheelchair. The girl fixed her empty gaze at the black man until he turned his eyes down at the floor to study his thick boots. "She is a strong person," said Christine, her mouth working like a puppet's. "Can you truly turn your back when her mission is so pure?" The man's lips curled down. "I'm a survivor, miss. I've eked out my living by fighting for my life. This girl here is a vector that I'm completely uncomfortable and unfamiliar with. If I take her with me, then I'm accepting responsibility for her life. If she dies, she may very well take me with her." Angela's face contorted in shock and hurt. He blamed her like she was a murderer. What right did he have? "Peace," crooned Victoria. "Roger Norwell, this is Angela Davies from the final decade of the 20th Century of your world." "Pleased," sniped the man and then he turned his displeased look back at Victoria. "So she's from my world." For once, Angela wished that Victoria had a face so that she could watch her expression. The woman's left hand fluttered, then clenched into a fist. Christine rolled her head around and sighed. "You clench your heart like a fist and thereby close it," mused the child. "We have provided you shelter, food, company, and now transportation. All we ask is that this young girl accompany you and that you teach her of this other world. Do we truly ask such a momentous task of you?" "Norwell," pleaded Victoria, "is her own mission so petty that your own personal well-being outweighs all?" Angela felt as if she was turning inward. Only a handful of hours earlier she had been recoiling at horror. First by the dead of the Mansion, second by her terrible purpose. She realized that she was still not over the shock. If the environment beyond the doors was as dangerous as the man suggested, then in her current condition, she could very well bring her own death if not his as well. "You are intertwined in destiny," the jawless man had said. "The Rider has spread and now you have been brought here to take your place in the conflict. You cannot turn away from this fact for we know of the black paper in your sketchbook, torn asunder and discarded like a nightmare. You must face the fact that this nightmare is true and in the end, you and only you will have the total strength to hold against the hate. You are the only and final hope of this world." She had sullenly accepted, her mind numb and blind to the terror that waged war in her mind. Her short sleep had not calmed her nerves. She needed time! Time to think, time to rest her mind so that she could come to accept her fate. She knew that she would die like Matt had, a minute blaze of glory in the massiveness of time and space. Her end would be as petty as his. Angela wanted to whirl away and sob, scream, and go home. Return to her devastated house and try to build a real life from its burning ashes. In that moment, staring at the black man who scowled at himself more than anyone else, she knew that her parents were dead. The bolt had swept across the house and destroyed it, annihilating her life there with it. Tears pooled in her eyes and clung feebly to the edge of her lower lid. "She's a little girl," the man, Roger Norwell, finally said. "It's too heavy a burden for a little one like her to carry." Victoria shook her head. "Nevertheless, her frail shoulders carries it all." The man's face curled into a sour look. "If there's a God, he's a sadist," he muttered. The little girl sighed again. "No, if there is a God, he must truly be the most wonderful being in all the universe. He entrusts us with his designs and can only hope that we carry them out as he wants us to. He gives us guidelines to weigh our lives by but does not enforce them, expecting us to follow them from the truth we find in our hearts. That makes him more noble than any other being." Norwell rolled he eyeballs. He knew that there could be no God on Otherworld. Otherworld was loneliness, fear, hate, and despair, nothing else. No God could will beings to come to this place for war. No God could abandon His children to this hell. "She will need appropriate equipment, then," Roger sighed. His shoulders slumped. "We'll make slow time across the mountains," he said as an afterthought. He turned to Angela and looked into her eyes. "The travel will be difficult and painful. I won't mince words. You'll not enjoy it." No, she could not. -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- Date: September 28, 1992 Location: Campground of the Tribe Southern California, Otherworld Time: 7:42 am When Bates woke from the nightmare, his skin clammy and wet, he threw himself onto the dirt floor and started doing pushups as he had done as a child whenever something bothered him. Each painful thrust upward drove the bad memories away. He fought his weariness and his drooping eyelids to put all his effort into the exercise. Uneasy memories reached him as he worked. "Dad! Dad! Watch, I can do fifty pushups!" "Really? That's nice." "Wanna watch?" "Sure . . ." Fifteen. Bates grunted and pushed himself up until his arms locked, then dropped back down, nearly burying his face in the dusty sand floor. Then he pushed himself up again, feeling a pleasurable burning in his arms as he exercised. Twenty. "Dad?" Twenty-two. The vampire girl was looking up from the motionless body of his father. Twenty-five. His throat had been torn open and as his heart pumped its last feeble beat, the blood flowed from the wound and onto the bed. Thirty. Her mouth, chin, and neck were greasy with blood. Her eyes registered only lust. Thirty-three. John turned and ran, a scream bubbling up from his lungs. Thirty-seven. His father held a stake in his broken hand. Forty. Not a stake. It was a cross. Forty-two. A bible. Forty-four. No, in reality it was empty. He had given himself to her willingly and she had destroyed him. Fifty! Bates moaned and rolled over, digging his fingers into his hair and rubbing his face with the heels of his hands. It was all a dream, only a dream that was bothering him. "Dammit!" he feebly cursed. "Go away." The nightmare's effects refused to leave him, so he lurched to his feet and pushed away the cloth door of his army tent. It was far too early for Bates to be awake; morning for him was two in the afternoon. The morning's crisp, chilled air made his body ache to return to bed and crawl under the covers which at the moment were still warm. Instead he forced himself to leave. A few people had set up stoves and were busy boiling water. There was a pot hanging over the fire, presumably heating water as well. The smell of strong coffee carried on the day's light breeze and it tingled in Bates' nose, causing his nostrils to flare unexpectedly. Bulldog looked up from the fire and gestured Bates over. He was wearing sweat pants and an old UCLA t-shirt. Already the desert was starting to warm and the cold was quickly departing. "Glad to see you're awake," Bulldog said. Bates nodded, too tired still to be comprehensible. Some people were revving their motorcycles and talking to each other on the edge of the encampment. Bulldog passed Bates a cup of lukewarm coffee and he gladly accepted it. It was much better than what he was used to. "Name's Xavier Brenton," Bulldog said. "My real name, that is." "John. John Bates." Xavier looked out over the horizon. Tower Three couldn't be seen, but a slight deformation of the horizon signified its existence. Deprived of his biker leathers, Xavier looked more natural and less ridiculous than he had the day before. There was something in his eyes that bespoke tragedy and intelligence. Especially intelligence. Bates had seen that look in people before. They didn't always do the best in school, but their minds were always working -- always faster than his. "You see it?" asked Xavier. "Tower Three out there. We didn't even notice it at first. In under a week what had probably been only a slight lump in the ground had become a massive structure. After two weeks it was growing even faster. Its growth has been arrested, but that's probably only on the outside. Tower Two had a similar growth spurt and it stood inert for under a month before it started sending out its messengers." "I don't understand a word you're saying," Bates said as he sipped the coffee. It was strong and black and didn't have a muddy taste. In short, it was very good coffee. Xavier frowned. "Sorry. I suppose that it would be best if I started from the beginning." He thought for a moment. "I accepted a position at U.C. Los Angeles in the late seventies. I taught there up to 1988. I was driving home after working late at the university when I was caught in a freak storm. There was a lot of lightning and the rain was coming down so heavy that I couldn't see where I was going. When the rain let up, I was here." "Where is `here'?" "No. I was in Otherworld. You don't know about Otherworld? Alright, I suppose that I can explain about that as well. Pretend that there are other universes beyond our own where other people live, leading other lives. Pretend that between all of these other universes there is a complex road system. This road system is a reality unto itself and it's called Otherworld. That's where we are right now." "This is California," Bates stated flatly. "This is only a facsimile of California, John. Actually-" "Call me Bates." Xavier looked at Bates in puzzlement for a moment, then nodded. "Alright. Anyway, this isn't really the California you and I know. Go to any city and you won't find a single human being. You won't find a single domesticated animal in any city. It's like all the people had been kidnapped overnight. Trust me, it's the truth. Is this too much for you?" The woman, the bitch, had said that he was going to an other world. She had meant Otherworld. "The bitch knew!" hissed Bates. "She knew and she didn't even tell me!" "Bates? You okay?" Bates shook his head. "This woman, a vampire, sent me here. She told me that I was going to do battle with some evil and that I was the only hope of this place or something pitiful like that. She knew and she didn't tell me!" Worry crossed Xavier's face. "I'm sorry Bates," he said. "Look, be glad that you're here with us. That way you don't have to figure out everything out for yourself. You'd probably get killed." Bates glared into the fire. "Great. You tell me more." Xavier paused for a long moment, then looked away at the horizon again. "So I found myself in Otherworld. It took me a long time to figure out what was going on. In fact, I never really figured it out until the war started. You see, I wasn't the only person brought to Otherworld. There were other people like you and me -- fighters. They were fighting an alien race that called itself The Eternals. I got out of there fast and I guess I didn't really think about where I was going. My car broke down halfway through California and I was lost. I didn't have any food and the gas tank was practically empty anyway. If the tribe hadn't come to find me, I would have starved to death or died of heat exhaustion. "The tribe told me about the first Tower. It came out of nowhere in Las Vegas and completely consumed several blocks. I don't think I can even explain to you what it looks like. It grew incredibly fast for the first few weeks and then it stopped. Some of the Tribe had stayed to watch it and relayed messages to us when time permitted and the weather was right. One day the Tower began making noises and the sewage that ran from it was expelled at a greater rate than usual. We thought that it was a normal growth pattern, but we were wrong. The watch group saw several figures exit the Tower and travel in separate directions. Two of them headed straight for the group. Shortly after we lost contact with them. To our knowledge, the group was killed by those two. "A week passed without anything and then Tower Two appeared off the coast of California. It grew straight out of the ocean and towered into the sky. We've set up an armed group to watch Tower Two as well as another group to watch Tower One. Neither of them have done anything since they expelled their messengers. We call them messengers, but they seem more like intelligent seeds than anything else. Tower Three should be nearing its own maturity very soon, possibly within two weeks or so." "Are there any more of these Towers?" Bates asked. Xavier nodded. "We've heard reports of others being seen across America. Maybe more in Europe, but reports are sketchy from there. There's practically no electricity available anywhere, so radio communications is next to impossible without a powerful generator or an active power plant. Our best guess is that there's some ten Towers scattered across America, perhaps more. We know that if all the messengers have survived, there are at least five to nine more Towers being created as we speak, probably more." "So why are they the enemy?" Bates asked. "Are they hostile?" Xavier nodded. "Very. Anything that comes too near a Tower is instantly devoured by it. It's like the thing is a living collection of metal and concrete. Anyone who is able to make it inside has no chance. They'll be killed in minutes by the Tower's defenses. Think of the Towers as if they are viruses. The only defenses against them are us. We're the white blood cells in the blood stream of the world." "And you think you can win?" Bates asked. "How many of these Towers have you destroyed so far?" Xavier reddened and could not meet Bates' gaze. "We don't know if it's possible. Not without using heavy explosives or nuclear weapons. We don't have access to either yet. They're very powerful, though. If we could get some air force jets and some tanks, maybe we could damage one, maybe we could kill one. Maybe not. We're not sure." "Shit. Then why me? Why'd the bitch send me?" Somewhere the hum of bagpipes could be heard. "That's Morris," Xavier said. "He's Irish. A strange man, but he believes in the tribe and our cause." The guys on the motorcycles were finally joined by the friends and they left, waving their arms. Xavier returned the wave. "Where are they going?" Bates asked. "They're part of the watch party on Tower Three." Bates nodded. "Where's Tower Four, then? And the others?" "Tower Four is nestled in the Sierra. It's very small, but it's still growing from what we've heard. Those are all the Towers that we're certain of. There's probably others scattered all across the country, but the four I've mentioned are all the ones that we know of that we've seen. A contact party is heading north to Alaska and another is off toward Colorado. There's a lot of territory for them to cover, though, so I can't say for certain what they'll turn up." Bates scrounged in his pockets for a cigarette and lit the crumpled stick at its end. His face was formed into a deep grimace as he looked down toward his feet. By now the coffee had gone cold, but Bates grimly swallowed it all down to the grinds. "Winter'll be soon in coming," he said at last. Xavier merely nodded and looked away. "It'll be a cold one." "Yes."