Authors: A. Lee Martinez
“Me too,” said Zap.
“You don’t have legs.”
Zap glared. Sparks of lightning danced around the edges of his single giant eye. “Har har.”
“Are you sure you don’t want to come?” she asked Smorgaz.
“Pass. Don’t worry about it. I’ll keep myself company.”
He budded a full-grown spawn and plopped on the couch. “Want to get us some popcorn, buddy?”
“Why me?” asked his identical spawn.
“Because I’m Smorgaz prime.”
“That doesn’t give you the right to boss me around.”
“Have it your way.” Smorgaz prime snapped his fingers, and the clone dissolved into a puddle.
“Hey, watch the rug,” said Diana.
“Sorry.” Smorgaz budded off another clone. “Now are you going to get me some popcorn, or are we going to have a problem here?”
The clone lumbered into the kitchen.
“Have fun,” said Diana. “And clean up your mess.”
“We’ll get right on it,” promised Smorgaz.
“I call shotgun!” shouted Zap.
“I always get shotgun,” said Vom. “Right, Diana?”
“Sorry, but he did call it.”
“Ah hell.”
Vom sulked in the backseat, and Zap played with the radio on the drive to the alley.
The moon was glowing tonight. Transference from Zap had
given her supernatural sight. She could perceive auras around people and objects now. Not all people and not all objects. Not even every monster she passed on the street had an aura, and the auras would sometimes disappear. Vom always had one. Zap never did. And Smorgaz prime was usually encased in a soft yellow glow, while his clones tended to be wrapped in purple.
The moon always shone like a light. Threads of luminosity stretched from the silver orb to Fenris, its eternal pursuer, who himself always glittered almost as bright. The two auras were so bright that they were a pair of virtual midnight suns. Except that the light they spread across the night sky was a prism of colors, many of which humans had not invented names for yet.
Diana was getting used to this stuff, but the night sky unsettled her. It was like gazing into a kaleidoscope that showed the end of time. She could accept that the universe was finite, but she didn’t like the idea that there were things on the other side. Horrible things. Unfathomable to mere mortal minds and to inhuman creatures like Vom and Zap alike.
Zap put his tentacles on the dashboard and looked up at the sky. “That Fenris is up to no good.”
“I could’ve told you that,” said Vom.
“It’ll happen soon,” said Zap.
“What will happen soon?” asked Diana.
He blinked. “I don’t know. It’s too hard to see it from this point in the space and time, but something is going to happen.”
Vom laughed. “You’re like a bad psychic. Could you be more vague?”
“Mock me if you must—”
“Oh, I must.
Something
is going to happen! And soon! You want to know what I think? I think you’re full of it.”
“Hardly surprising,” mumbled Zap, “considering that you are nothing but a pair of mouths on legs with the perceptual capacity of all that requires and nothing more. I, on the other hand, am a cosmic observer birthed from the very first star to bear witness to the universe.”
“Guys, can we knock off the bickering?” asked Diana. “At least for a few hours. I don’t want to make a bad impression with these people.”
The entities grumbled but agreed to do their best to play nice.
At the bowling alley Diana had to rent three pairs of shoes. They didn’t have any in Vom’s size, and Zap didn’t even have feet. But the man renting the shoes insisted. She still hadn’t deciphered how human minds transformed the monsters into something ignorable, but she’d stopped trying to figure that out.
“What am I supposed to do with these?” asked Zap.
“Just carry them, I guess,” she replied. “You have plenty of arms.”
Sharon’s monster wasn’t what Diana had expected. She’d come prepared for something bizarre, and instead found a man so ordinary that she wasn’t sure he was a creature at all. Calvin did have a weird aura, a crackle of light like tiny sparks were created as he dragged himself across the surface of reality. If she looked hard, they seemed like rips in the universe, but they disappeared almost immediately. Even these weren’t readily
visible or constant. They only seemed to manifest with sudden movements.
Introductions were passed around. Diana noticed Calvin didn’t offer his hand to shake. Vom and Zap went to pick their bowling balls.
“Been forever since I bowled,” said Diana.
“We go all the time,” replied Sharon. “I’m still pretty lousy, but Calvin is fantastic.”
“She’s exaggerating,” said Calvin.
“Don’t be modest.”
He lowered his head and smiled. “I do all right.”
Vom and Zap returned. Vom had selected a thirteen-pound ball, but only after he’d eaten several others. Diana had seen him do it. She elected not to say anything. Zap’s ball was only six pounds, but he was having trouble levitating while carrying it. He might have been privy to secrets of the universe, but he wasn’t very strong.
Vom grinned. “Need help with that?”
“I got it,” Zap grunted, swaying a bit.
Calvin bowled the first frame and scored a strike.
“Whoa,” said Vom. “Looks like we have a ringer.” By the third frame Calvin had a clear lead. Vom trailed in second. Sharon and Diana ended up knocking over a few pins, competing for third place. And Zap, barely able to push his ball down the alley, had a score of three. He sat in a hard plastic chair and grumbled.
Cosmic monsters were an immature lot, mused Diana, having come to this conclusion several days earlier.
Vom offered to get some snacks, but she told him to stay
put. Diana and Sharon went to the vending machines. Diana didn’t have any change. Then she discovered a handful of quarters had materialized in her pocket. As reality-altering slips went, she could live with it. She started dropping coins into the slots without much thought. Whatever she brought back would be fine with Vom.
“So Calvin is nice,” said Diana.
“Oh, yes. He’s probably the nicest guy I’ve ever met. Wouldn’t hurt a fly.”
“Hard to believe he’s one of… them.”
“I know, right? I’ve never met a guy who was so levelheaded and sweet. Maybe it’s because he’s been around forever, but he never loses his temper. And he’s thoughtful and intelligent. And funny, too, though you have to get to know him to find that out. He has some stories about the Ice Age that’ll make you laugh until your sides ache.”
Diana pushed some random buttons and let the machine dispense whatever it felt like. “Wait a second. Is this the guy you like? The guy you work with?”
“Do you think I should get a Mars bar or a Twix?”
“Twix,” said Diana. “Don’t change the subject. Is this the guy?”
Sharon nodded very slightly, as if confessing to some terrible sin. “But you can’t tell him. You have to promise me.”
“I wouldn’t tell him. But what makes you think he doesn’t already know? Don’t you two already live together?”
“Sort of.” Sharon leaned against the machine, resting her forehead against the display window. “It’s complicated. I told you he just doesn’t see me in that way. In most ways he’s
very human. But not in that way. He doesn’t function like that.”
Sensing she was encroaching on dangerous territory, Diana didn’t ask any more questions. Sharon volunteered answers without being asked.
“He’s not a sexual being. I’m not just talking about the act of sex itself. I’m talking about the entire reproductive element of what makes us humans tick. He’s eternal. He doesn’t need to. And I’m not sure he finds us attractive. I’ve never even seen him check out another woman. Or man, for that matter.
“I know he likes me and appreciates what I do for him. But I’ll always just be a friend. That’s all I can be.”
They gathered their candies, chips, and sodas.
“I’m lucky to have known him. Luckier to have been so close to him before he leaves.”
“Where’s he going?”
Sharon hesitated.
“Away. Just away.” She paused, then pasted on a smile. “It’s not important.”
Diana wanted to ask more questions, but she didn’t know Sharon well enough to press.
Vom pounced on them. “Oh, Butterfinger.”
Diana held up her hand. “This is for everyone. So you have to share.”
“But Zap is just going to vaporize his.”
“Remember our discussion about sharing? Now you can have a soda and two candy bars.”
He wasn’t happy about it, but he’d take what he could get.
Zap picked out a pack of Skittles. He disintegrated the snack with tiny bolts of lightning. Whether or not that qualified as eating for him, Diana couldn’t guess.
“Ah, I wanted a Mars bar,” said Calvin.
“Here. You can have mine.” His fingers brushed her thumb as he took the candy from her.
The universe exploded.
Not literally, although it took her a few seconds to realize it hadn’t self-destructed. This was all a misfire of her senses, an overload in her perceptions. She lost sight of the ordinary world. In its place, dancing patterns and swirling vortexes. She could smell eternity and taste the color blue and hear the atoms as they crashed against the shores of uncertainty.
Everything she knew and everything she didn’t know were little more than intangible knots of colors and shapes. Laid bare, they were too much for her to absorb, but her sanity was saved by a singular object that drew her attention away from the more unsavory, unfathomable secrets exposed to her.
In this ethereal wasteland Calvin was the only thing with any weight. Tubes of color flowed up and out, and her eyes followed them skyward, although there was no sky anymore, so she was just guessing at that.
The moon was the second thing she could really see. Like Calvin, it was a sparkling diamond, making everything else pale and immaterial by comparison. The third and final object was the shrieking, writhing form of Fenris.
The moon god howled. Its pain was overwhelming.
Diana’s instincts screamed, but she ignored them. She was getting used to this, and while this experience was beyond her
ability to withstand for long, she knew panicking would only make it worse. She closed her eyes and covered her ears. Most importantly, she made no attempt to understand what was happening to her. To open herself up in any way was sure to destroy her mind. This would pass. She only needed to wait it out.
Even with her eyes closed she could see the future unravel, the world come undone. Time was just another dimension, a flat plane spreading out before her. And on the horizon a storm was brewing, a moment inescapable and so overwhelming that it rippled through history written and unwritten, causing her universe to fold and bend on itself.
The storm was the reason her reality was broken, the cause of all the glitches that allowed inhuman monsters and dangerous alien things to slip into realms they were never meant to touch.
But it wasn’t just one storm. There were three. Three swirling vortexes of anarchy drawing closer with each day. The storm was coming to a head, and a universe that struggled daily to hold itself together against the thrashing tentacles of an unspeakable horror was in for a hell of a time. She had no idea what waited on the other side. Or even if there would be another side to see. It was possible that there was no future and that the storm would even undo the past, a tide of annihilation sweeping throughout the planes of time to swallow everything in perpetual stillness.
Her vision cleared. Or was obscured, depending on how one chose to look at it. Either way, her perceptions of her universe fell into more human ranges.
“Thanks,” said Calvin.
Diana opened her eyes. What had seemed like twenty seconds of terror had been less than an instant. Nobody else had seemed to notice. Not even Calvin.
“You’re looking a little pale,” said Sharon. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine.” Diana sat down. Her head cleared, and the memories of what she’d seen were fading. In a few minutes she doubted she’d remember any of it.
“It’s your frame,” said Vom.
She gave him permission to bowl for her, and nobody minded. Diana sat beside Zap and waited for her head to clear. She almost convinced herself that it was all an illusion. The doom lurking over her portion of the universe was merely a misfire of her underdeveloped human brain trying to make sense of realities it had never been meant to contemplate, much less actually witness.
“It’s doomsday,” said Zap.
She looked into his giant eye. He’d seen it too.
“Damn it.”
She didn’t want to know this, but she didn’t want to know a lot of things she now knew. She decided to ignore the vision. It was easier to do than she had imagined. She didn’t see a destroyer of worlds in Calvin, who was an affable fellow. Or at least a realistic enough simulation that she couldn’t tell the difference, just as long as she didn’t touch him. A second touch might give her another revelation, but she had no interest. She could only gaze at the secrets of the universe so many times in a day before her sanity was forfeit.
After the game was over, Sharon suggested getting something to eat.
Diana’s first thought was to cut the evening short, but the best excuse she could think of was a fictional early doctor’s appointment in the morning. But it was barely eight o’clock, and she didn’t need to go to doctors now.
She didn’t see the point anyway. Whatever Calvin was, the future, past, or present wouldn’t be shaped by whether she had a meal with him or not. And Vom was always up for a bite to eat.
They picked a buffet place, which Vom liked even more.
“Only ten trips,” said Diana.
“But it says all you can eat.”
“Yes, but I don’t think they had someone like you in mind with that rule.”
He frowned. “And how is that my fault?”
“Look at it this way. If you put all the buffets out of business, where will you go to stuff yourself?”
He had to admit she had a point.
They all got their food. Without planning it, Diana arrived back at the table with Zap. They stared at Calvin. It seemed to her that the universe revolved around him. Not just figuratively, either.
Diana wolfed down a chicken wing, bones and all. The need to know overwhelmed her. That was Zap’s passion. Not just to witness and observe, but to know.
He obliterated a slice of pizza and some French fries. “Do you think Sharon knows what he is?”
Diana didn’t have the answer, but there was an obvious way to find out. She caught Sharon at the buffet line. Diana didn’t want to ask the question, but she needed to
know. Vom gave her an appetite. Zap gave her an insatiable curiosity, an endless hunger to observe everything and to understand it all.
“Do you know?”
Sharon perked up.
“Do you know what Calvin is?” pressed Diana. “Do you know what he really is?”
Sharon’s lips tightened, and she used a pair of tongs to rearrange a bed of lettuce. It was all the answer Diana needed.
“He’s a monster, Sharon.”
“No, he’s a victim. He’s trapped, lost. You don’t know what it’s like for him.”
“I don’t need to know what it’s like. All I know is that he’s the most dangerous thing in this universe.”
A woman stuck behind Diana, waiting for a shot at the meatballs, caught enough of the conversation to wrinkle her brow.
Sharon took Diana by the arm and pulled her aside. “You’re making a scene.”
“I’m just trying to understand this. Why would you do it?”
Sharon heaped some banana pudding on her plate, just to keep her hands busy. “I told you already, Diana. I wanted to touch something important.”
“You’re damn right he is,” Diana said, “but he’s also going to destroy our world. You have to know that.”
“Of course I do. But it’s not like it’s something he wants to do. It’s just something he has to do. It’s that thing in the sky, it’s that goddamn Fenris aspect.”
“But that’s him, isn’t it?”
“No,” said Sharon. “It’s a part of him, but it doesn’t reason. It doesn’t think. It functions. It just exists. He’s only a very small part of it.”
They parted ways. Diana grabbed some pizza. Sharon added a few pieces of shrimp to her own plate.
“He’s an anomaly,” said Sharon. “And one day, he’ll return to Fenris and… well, I don’t know what’ll happen to him then.”
“Him? What about us? What about all these people?”
“They’ll be taken care of. Greg has a plan to save as many as possible, but it’s complicated. I can’t explain it right now. Just promise me you won’t bother Calvin about this.”
Diana glanced to Calvin, then to Sharon.
“Promise me, please. There’s no point in talking about it now. I’m the wrong person to talk to anyway. You need to talk to Greg to understand what we’re doing. He’s a smarmy ass, but he has a gift. He sees the world in ways that, like it or not, are true. If you can get past his smarm, you’ll see that.”
Diana didn’t relish the idea.
Sharon said, “I’ll talk to Greg, and set something up for tomorrow evening. Give me that much time.”
Diana sighed.
“Just one more day can’t hurt, can it?” asked Sharon.
“I guess not.”
“Fantastic. You won’t regret it, Diana.”
“Yeah, we’ll see.”
They returned to the table. While Sharon forced chitchat, Diana devoured her food. She was too distracted by her thoughts to exercise the self-control to eat at a regular pace.
She did her best not to stare at Calvin, and when she caught Zap staring she kicked his chair.
Calvin didn’t look like something that would rip the universe to pieces one day. Knowing what he was, Diana hated to admit it, but she understood what Sharon had meant about touching something more incomprehensible than yourself.
Something beautiful.
Something horrible.
The last few weeks had altered her perception, and Diana nd nothing contradictory about the notion.
She pushed aside such thoughts. She was getting used to that, so even something like the end of the world was easy to ignore for an hour or two. She didn’t mention it, and it didn’t come up in conversation.
She decided to enjoy her dinner and her friends. A storm might sweep through time and erase this moment forever. And when you couldn’t count on even yesterday to be there tomorrow, it only made every moment seem all the more precious and worth having.
Vom carried a plate piled with every scrap of food he could manage to fit onto it. The mound teetered on the edge of collapse. He sat, shoveled the serving down in two bites, and got up for seconds. She decided against warning him to pace himself. She could only expect so much.
She even let Vom have an eleventh plate.