I need to write right now. Work is a bit crap. My wife is recovering from a major (not life threatening, thankfully) operation and I need this outlet. You know what I mean. If you like it, feel free to let me know. If you don't, you can let me know too. That's fine. This is mainly, though, being written for me just to be a storyteller for a bit. Just to have fun! :D
... the Commander isn’t just interesting. He is truth and honour and justice and all the other ideals that are hanging perilously in the balance in this dirty, shitty war.
And now he’s angry at me.
“Did you hear me?” He takes another step. His jaw is set and tiny sparks of light ignite and die in his glaring eyes. This time I do tense. It’s been a while since the Commander last punched me; it is an experience I remember well and don’t particularly care to have again.
I nod, slowly. I understand his anger. I really do. On some level, we need him to feel it, need him to rail against the methods we’re employing to save the alterni-verse. I briefly consider telling him this, but, if I do, I doubt he’ll understand – and then he probably will hit me. In any case, there’s simply no point in re-visiting the conversation we all had five days ago. The Commander lost the argument and that’s that. Satisfied that his gold-gauntleted fists are going to stay clenched at his sides, I glance around me.
“Where the hell are we?”
On the one hand, that is a stupid question to ask. We know exactly where we are. We’ve shifted to the Plains of Gehenna enough times to know the trans-dimensional co-ordinates by heart. And these are without doubt the Plains of Gehenna. Grey-green grass sways under a sickly sun; grey clouds scud across an umber sky. The air tastes of iron and the lingering must of unfulfilled dreams. All of which is fine and familiar. The problem is that, while I know we’re in the right dimension, I have no idea whereabouts in it we actually are.
“We’ve slipped somehow…”
The Sorceress has already arrived at the same conclusion. She’s scanning our surroundings carefully, although there are precious few distinguishing features to see.
“I think that’s Deadlake beyond that rise, isn’t it?” I offer, before honesty compels me to add, “Maybe.”
“We need to get back to the kids,” says the Commander grimly. I nod, pleased to find a topic on which we can agree. The ‘kids’ are the seven surviving members of the Teen Justice Legion, refugees from a parallel long since lost to the Dust Lords of the Nine Grey Planes. They’re noisy and messy but they keep our temporary base in this dimension ticking over and they’re a damn sight more entertaining than a robot butler. “I said we need to get back to the kids.” The Commander glances up at the last member of our party and we all turn to follow his gaze.
Hovering a few feet above us, his slender form wreathed in a translucent nimbus of trans-dimensional light, the Fatemaker is, I think, ignoring us. It’s difficult to tell. His blank ovoid ‘face’ is angled towards the sky. His spindle-thin arms are outstretched, his finger-probes gently undulating as if in time to a music that cannot be heard by human ears. Around his head a halo of constantly changing energies swells and dissipates in a sequence that is probably random but feels as if it is about to reveal itself to be part of a wider pattern of ebb and flow, of progress and retreat, that might in itself be a mathematical hypostasis of the more lascivious rhythms of the ever-fluctuating alterni-verse.
I shake my head. This – precisely this – is why we don’t really like looking at him.
“Er… Fatemaker… We’re…”
Fatemaker is a synthezoid from the 97th dimension. A member of a gestalt robot super-consciousness, he alone among a billion self-replicating machines achieved self-awareness and, through a number of processes and experiences I’ve never been able to understand fully, the ability to slip free of the bonds of materiality and inhabit the interstices between infinite para-realities. It is because of him that we can rip the fabric of any reality we choose and implant ourselves, whole and discrete, into that parallel without causing the alterni-verse to implode. He is our anchor and our life raft; he is our compass and our sail. He also has a propensity for speaking utter rubbish that, usually several months later, turns out to be absolutely and horribly true. I approach him tentatively.
“Fatemaker… The Legion… We need to get back…”
“Beyond the horizon, down in the deadlands they lie…” His voice is like wine poured out reverently onto a marble altar. There is beauty and terror and an ineffable sadness in his words. I blink back tears. This is why we don’t really like talking to him.
I shiver. “I don’t… Fatemaker… I don’t like…”
“Beyond all care and sadness, beyond the transience of happiness and laughter…”
“What the hell is he saying?” The Interloper is staring at Fatemaker, his mouth twisting into his trademark snarl. The Commander is turning away, golden gauntlets already glowing brightly with a sudden ignition of cosmic power.
“I can’t…” The Steel Sorceress has cast a simple incantation, a life-finder. The traces of the casting hang around her head, lilac threads undulating on unseen winds, the delicate smell of roses permeating the chill air.
“They’re gone.” The Commander’s voice is toneless and dull, utterly devoid of life. I feel my chest tighten. After everything we’ve been through, surely… surely we can’t have failed in this our most basic of duties?
“Beyond the boundaries of the knowable and into the great void they have gone…”
The Steel Sorceress’ face is drawn; her eyes are bleak.
“I can’t feel them…”
“Never to return. Never to return.”
With an anguished scream, the Commander is gone, roaring up and then away from us, his body a blur of red, white and blue, propelled by the twin engines of sun-bright gold at his wrists.