Yours, Mime, and Ours

Declan stared at the wall of people milling around before him. Actually, he couldn’t call what they were doing milling. Each and every one of them engaged in some elaborate form of pantomime. One person pretended stop be walking a dog, they paused a moment as if the hound was taking care of some doggie business on the sidewalk and then moved on. Seconds later another person walked in the same spot the dog had just “went” and slipped as if they had stepped in the dog’s mess. The man looked at his shoe, then looked at the dog walker, shook his fist in the walker’s direction, scraped his shoe on the sidewalk and then continued on his way. Other passersby studiously avoided the same area as if there really was something disgusting there.

What amazed Declan was the fact that some people were pretending to ride bikes or drive cars, and were actually moving at speeds as if they were. He watched in awe as three kids bopped down the street on what he assumed were skateboards. The leader, a boy of about five feet in height, did a kickflip while the boy behind him tried to do the same trick. The boy very clearly missed and hit the ground hard. The third boy and the first left their fallen companion on the ground and continued down the sidewalk.

Everywhere that he looked it was the same thing. People, who looked exactly like mimes were in the act of performing some sort of action that garnered the desired results. He noted that while they were all mimes (shudder) they did not look exactly alike. They all varied in some small and minute details, such as one person having a teardrop falling from one eye, while another had red circles on her cheeks, one man had a greasepaint handlebar mustache and wore a top hat, one girl had a black star on her cheek, and another had lines emanating from her around her eyes like a starburst. A casual glance would have never revealed such small details, but Declan was learning to train his eyes to see beyond their initial assessment.

On a whim, he imagined that he had a skateboard under his right foot. He lifted his shoe up off the ground to the height that a skateboard would be. He pretended to roll it gently back and forth under his heel until he swore he could feel one there. Tentatively, he placed his weight on his right foot and found that although there was nothing there that he was, in fact, standing a few inches off the ground. He put his other foot on the board and could feel it rolling forward as he stood on it. He shifted his weight, but did not keep his balance, and fell right onto his rear end.

Second Sarah shot to his side, “Declan, what happened? Are you all right?” She offered her hand to him to help him up.

Declan burst out laughing and took her hand. “I’m fine,” he replied with his voice still rich with laughter, “I was never very good at skateboarding, that’s all.” All of the girls looked at him oddly and he explained. “These people don’t just pantomime things. Their actions have tangible results. If they pretended to be driving a car, then they would be. Thoughts and motion affect reality here. Rather, intent combined with mannerisms shape the world around you. I think you have to believe it and then pretend to do it for it to work. From what I’ve seen these people use a combination of sign language and, naturally, pantomime to communicate.”

Second Sarah gave him a grin, “Gee, Deck, this is Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra all over again, but you figured it out pretty quick.”

Essea crouched down and extended one arm. She extended her index finger and had her thumb raised high. She then made the universal shooting a gun motion, while saying, “Bang, bang, bang.” Nothing happened and a look of disappointment was hinted at on her face. She barely registered any emotion, but Declan could see it in her. He knew that face so well he could tell what they were thinking just by the way they held their mouths.

“Well, I guess that craps all over your theory,” Sarahtaur said with a smirk. Rah, who had been hopping up and down in excitement became suddenly sullen and said, “Aw, flippity floppity flop.” The cybernetic girl rose from the ground showing no outward sign of disenchantment with her attempt. Declan was surprised that she had been the first to try it, he had expected Rah to do so, and had Crowe been here with them he had no doubt that she would have become a silent killer. And it was there that he had an epiphany.

Essea, try that again, but this time don’t make any sounds as you do it. The metal maiden nodded and raised her arm and pointed her finger at a street light. She held that pose for the space of a breath and then dropped her thumb. The light exploded and glass rained down from the silent impact. She looked over to Declan in awe. “It is safe to say that your hypothesis was correct after all, Dee-em.”

Before he knew what was happening, Rah was bouncing on an invisible trampoline and Sarahtaur had a ghostly hairdresser braiding her hair. Second Sarah just smirked as Rah went higher and higher into the air. Then she giggled and she landed on her feet, collapsing to the ground with a whumph. Declan worried that she might have hurt herself from the fall, but relaxed when he saw her rise and rub her curvaceous derriere with a hand. She winced as she rubbed it, but showed no signs of having taken real damage. She had just confirmed that in order to maintain the effect one had to remain silent the entire time. That was good to know.

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“All right ladies, I think I’ve scouted this place enough. We should go and find Kristine and the others. If they have a new Sarah that’s great, if not we can go. I doubt that there is anything here that Mother will want, but I’m sure that she’s grabbing whatever information she can. No need to stay any longer than we need to.” He started to head for the area he’d last seen Kristine go when he saw his car, Crowe, the Vampire, and a mime that looked suspiciously like Sarah come running around the corner. There was also a man a little taller than the girls who were following along with them but he looked winded and seemed to have acquired a stitch in his side.

Crowe had her pistol out and was firing at something in the air. The report of her gun stood out amongst the silence of the rest of the city. He turned to look in the direction that she was shooting and saw a huge spider that was at least seven stories tall trailing them. Wriggling tentacles sprouted from its back and its abdomen drooped from the weight of a huge stinger that slid in and out of its rear end as it dripped venom. The creature was not only preceded by his girls, but also by a throng of mimes fleeing for their lives. The fact that all of it played out silently, save for the crack of Crowe’s pistols, made it all very surreal.

Like the mimes, the spider creature was black and white, and had a very human looking “face”. Declan suspected that this was another transformed beast, as he had seen on other worlds. He watched as the spider spit a white foam stream from its mouth and every person that it struck dropped immediately as if they’d been shot. His team was nowhere near the spray, and he thanked God for that. Unsurprisingly, he noted that Crowe’s volley of fire had no effect on the creature other than to annoy it. That was when he watched the apocalyptic angel reload her weapon, and this time when she fired there appeared to be plasma blasts that were being shot. The scene was like something from a space movie. He would have thought that they were laser beams, but since he could follow them with his unaided eyes he knew they were not photonic in nature. His disappointment grew when he saw that the plasma blasts had no more of an effect than the normal rounds did.

Kristine and the others drew closer and Declan could see for the first time that the man with them was another version of himself. He had not met one of his own doppelgangers so far, and the mere sight of his double unnerved him. Not only had he not expected to see himself, but he was seeing himself as a mime.

The girls nearby circled around him protectively and readied their weapons when the spider monster decided to follow the human that was pelting it with plasma blasts. Crowe and the vampire moved as if their asses were on fire. They tore a path towards Declan and his crew as Kristine stayed with the Mimes Sarah and Declan. The spider vomited forth a gout of foam which doused Declan’s Doppelganger. His duplicate dropped as if he’d been shot and lay on the ground unmoving. The silent Sarah and Kristine caught up to them three seconds later. The car zipped around the team in a wide arc, inspecting all the girls as she went.

Sarahtaur yelled, “Explosive arrow,” and Declan watched as her quiver made a rotating sound and an arrow rose up from the arrow case. She pulled it, knocked it, drew back, and fired in one fluid motion. The projectile arced through the air and struck the looming arachnid in one of its eight black orbs, but like Crowe’s bullets, it had no effect whatsoever on the creature.

Kristine pulled up beside Declan and revved her engine. “There are more of those things all over the city. I counted five on my way here, and nothing we’ve done can harm them.” Declan gave her a nod that conveyed understanding and gratitude. Something was tugging at the back of his mind. Something that he should have realized earlier, but he couldn’t draw it forth. He tried to make the connections that his subconscious had but to no avail. It was the complete and utter silence of the events going on around him that threw him off. It made it harder to think that if he’d been drowning in a cacophony of noise. He could feel himself about to put it all together just as the first person that he’d seen sprayed by the white foam stood back up.

His first impression was to be thankful that the substance hadn’t hurt the person, after all, he could save some of them and he didn’t wish death or pain on anyone (unless he had to apocalypse them). He changed his mind on not wishing death when he realized that the mime’s face now held eight black eyes and looked more like the giant spider than it did one of the Metamfiezomaio. He could already see spindly spider legs sprouting from her back and as she ripped out of her clothes he saw that most of the humanity had been erased from her. In under a minute there stood a very close approximation of the towering creature that was still spraying fearful mimes with its vomit foam.

“Deck, what the hell do we do,” came Second Sarah’s voice from behind him. She didn’t sound afraid, just concerned. That meant that she was doing far better than he was at the moment. He didn’t really like spiders and the fact that all the foamy mimes around him were about to start sprouting eight legs and seeking to kill everyone around them.

His mind raced. He knew that there was something that he was missing. There was something that should have been obvious to him, but he simply could not come up with it. It was only after his Metamfiezomaio Memorex stood up and silently hissed at him that it all clicked into place.

“All right, listen up,” he shouted, “Here’s how we stop these things . . .”