“I want some answers now, please.” I stated clearly in the silence of my kitchen.
Kali had disappeared somehow after she regained consciousness, and my being alive didn’t seem to faze her that much. For some reason, I wasn’t in the mood to understand why that was. My mind was filled with Snapper, my friends and remembering that happy chirp my dragon crooned just before it died.
Cole had to go back to where the rest of the football team was, and hurriedly jogged back to where they might be. He had made me promise to fill him in more after he was free, and to give him a robot whenever I could.
Courtney was a little more aggressive in wanting to join me in hearing what was going on, but after she began coughing her lungs out from the amount of smoke we had all inhaled, she decided to go home and rest first. A couple of threats later, she left me alone with the being of clockwork that was waiting for me at home.
Doldrum calmly clicked across from me in his facsimile of a human being. His cogs and gears whirred noisily in the silence of the room. It was only the two of us, but Snapper didn’t count.
“Of course, it is not everyday that the creation of a Sinner happens.” His voice was steady clanks. “I am here for a new member of our family.”
I frowned, readily showing my distaste, and, after everything I had been through, I didn’t particularly care what he thought. “I know you have been saying Sinner all this time, and you even labeled my dragon with the same name. I get that Sinners seem to do something that you guys don’t like, but I want to know what exactly the title means. Why did I have to kill my creation?”
“Ah, that’s why.” Doldrum twitched in recognition. His movements were staccato and mechanic, as if he were afraid to startle me with being to unmoving. “I had expected you being of the type to truly care for your creations. Many Creators normally fall into the category to create-and-forget. Between the two of us, I like you more than them. My race before I joined our family was technically made.”
The scowl on my face remained unchanging. “See, I ask one thing and get a different answer. I just want to know why I had to kill my dragon. It was just… I don’t know, afraid? Yeah, it was afraid. It had just been born, or made, whatever, and was just looking for me. It wasn't trying to kill me at all. I have no idea what a Sinner is, but I do know that I was just forced to kill something that could be reasoned with. So I kinda want some answers.”
Doldrum was silent for a couple seconds, remaining completely unmoving except for his moving cogs. His mechanics twisted and whirred as he stood. I felt myself tense as he walked over to me with slow, precise steps.
Then he patted my shoulder, cold brass spreading some impossible form of intangible warm. “For what it is, I am sorry for making you kill your creation.” His tones were low and grandfatherly. “I will not say that I understand what it is like to kill your spawn, but I can at least relate to feeling something similar. As for your question, would you like if I explained as we walked?”
I pursed my lips. Doldrum seemed to want to say something, and he obviously didn’t have any ill intent. Or I just couldn’t see any threat in his actions. With those thoughts in mind, I nodded. “Okay, I just want to know.”
“Perfect.” His gears snapped together in a series of satisfied clicks.
Then the world shattered.
Or well, part of it. The wall that we were facing, more precisely. None of the brickwork, plaster, nor electronics were damaged. No, it was more like if a pane of non-existent glass had been shattered in front of the wall, and the shards were then frozen in space. However, something inside of me screamed that those shards were anything but glass, but they were confusingly still glass.
It was utterly confusing.
The floating, transparent pieces of not-glass yet glass shimmered in fluorescent rainbows that flashed in and out of the visible color spectrum. I was certain that, at some point, some of the glimmering glows were a form of radiation. It was only until the pieces of solid color twisted inwards, but instead of cutting through the wall behind it, they bore into a pathway of broken light.
“This is how people of our family take walks.” Doldrum said between hisses of cogs. “Of course, you’ll be able to do this with time as well.” He waved for me to follow as he entered the entrance of floating shards.
Hesitantly, I joined him by his side after I grabbed Snapper in my arms. The little horror had just finished my fridge, and started on my sink. I was lucky to get to it before it ate through my whole house while I was gone.
When I stepped through the gateway, I had expected a great many things. What I got was even more than I could actually comprehend. My head hurt as it gazed into the massive expanse of broken colors and shattered lights that swirled around in a form that reminded me of one of those kaleidoscopes that kids played with.
Beneath my feet was more shards of broken light and space that congealed into a makeshift pathway that cut through the expanse. It looked oddly like pieces of gears stuck together without rhyme or rhythm. More like they had been jammed together in a series of bone rattling collisons.
I turned to Doldrum. “What is this?”
“This is the pathway between Realities.” He whirred in reverence. “It is between everything, and within everything. When there is something that doesn’t exist, this is there. You can say it is nothing given form. We call it the Kaleidoscope.”
“That’s…” I stared at the ever changing colors. The shards in the distance seemed to morph into every shape imaginable before returning to colorful blues and reds. “That fits, I guess.”
“Yes, I think some of the things we name are rather bland and boring, though.” Doldrum gave the approximate of a laugh for his metal frame. It just sounded like a factory exploding. “Now, let us walk. I shall try my best to explain all your worries on the way.”
I nodded, falling into step beside him on the bridge above nothingness. “Right, let’s go.” As I stepped forwards and looked down, I felt my legs begin to tremble. “Hey, uh, are you sure this is safe? I mean, I don’t really get the nothingness, but we won’t be falling anytime, right?”
Rattling of gearful laughter come from my side. “No, we are safe. It ties into how our own Realities let us manipulate Reality by imposing it into wherever we are. Most of places we go actively resist our influence, and even the weakest places have some form of resistance. Here in the Kaleidoscope,” He tapped the bridge we stood on with a metal foot. “Nothing can become anything.”
“Huh, well, thanks for the information.” I gulped, wondering if I could create thousands of dragons inside this place. The thought sent shivers down my back. Snapper chirped in my arms with a excited clap of sheared metal.
“Now, let us begin our walk.” Doldrum said as we both started to travel through nothing.
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As soon as he finished speaking, I felt like something was pulling my eyes forwards. It was almost like I could no longer turn my head any which way, and I began to panic. I tried to thrash out of the feeling, but my perception slowed down and sped up randomly in intermittent intervals.
Maddening whispers screamed their silent hypocrisies into my ears in violent fits of noise. My whole body felt like it was being spaghettified by trying to stare into the shards of colorful monochrome. No, they had color at one point, didn’t they? The floor was a noodle of liquid glass, and I was slipping down. My insides felt like they were becoming well-done.
Heat burned my head.
Then I landed painfully in a vast wasteland full of rust colored dirt. My body was intact, and my head was pounding in a massive headache. I was spitting globes of dust filled saliva till I hacked up enough to breathe in deep meaningful breaths. My eyes had trouble catching color for a second, but eventually I found out more about where I was.
The sky was a dull grey, full of smog and smoke. I could taste a metallic tang of the air as it coated the back of my throat in chromed flakes that danced in the wind. An incessant clang rang out of sight, almost like a machine was futiling trying to repeat something that it could no longer do. In the distance, I could see large buildings that seemed to share in the destitute atmosphere.
This world sang of ruin.
“I had not expected you to have such an adverse reaction to the Kaleidoscope.” Doldrums concerned clatter brought me to my senses. “Is there something wrong with your Reality?”
“Um, I don’t think so…” I mumbled, fumbling with a small marble in my pocket. Dragging it out, Doldrum’s eyes landed on the spherical marble. Spiralling arms and twinkling stars inside it shone with otherworldly resplendence. “Does it look wrong?”
The jingling of repressed gears clued me in on the fact that Doldrum was looking at me like I was an idiot. “No wonder you had such a reaction; you haven’t reabsorbed your Reality yet.”
I blinked, red dust catching my eyes. “Uh, is that bad? I mean, I could already do stuff without it, right?”
“It is not as bad as you think, but travelling through the Kaleidoscope without reabsorbing your Reality caused you brain to almost melt with compensating for trying to save you from joining nothing.” I gulped heavily as Doldrum droned on. “Normally, a Reality should correct this to an extent… Well, we are lucky that I hadn’t decided to go too far. And for your other question, technically we can impose our Realities upon where we are no matter the distance between the two, but it would exhaust us fast and is rather inefficient.”
I wanted to ask more about the details, but my current whereabouts and the fact that I hadn’t gotten the answer to my first question was more important. “So, are you going to explain about Sinners, or where we are? I think we have been sidetracked enough.”
“Indeed we have.” Doldrum nodded in a clattering nod. I got the impression that he was smiling as he pointed to the ground below us. “This is my home Reality, L-V03. And these-”
He swept a hand in front of us, and a sudden gust forced all the red dust to fly away in an enormous sandstorm of crimson. I shielded my eyes from the windshear and dust that swirled around us for a second before I opened them again. Then I froze, body locked in a rictus of realization.
The rustic sand was actual rust, and underneath it were bodies of iron and cogs. Their metallic fingers stuck in poses reminiscent of grasping, as if they were trying to reach a salvation that never came. Some of them were broken into just cogs or gears, but most were shattered beyond repair.
This wasn’t a wasteland; this was a graveyard.
“These are my people.” Doldrum intoned, and, for once, I felt a chill from how his voice never fluctuated. “Other than myself, they were all Sinners.”
I felt my tongue was filled with lead. Eventually, I managed to scrape together some words. “What… what do you mean? How… could this happen?”
“This was the work of one of The Four.” Doldrum said, ominous ticks talking in unison. “My race had originally been built with the sole purpose of being puppets for our creators. Then when our creators eventually died of some unknown cause, we all were no more than the rotting world that remained.” He pointed to the ruined buildings in the distance. “Without orders to be given we all became inert. However, that was when I gained my Reality. And, for the first time, I dreamed.”
I caught the feeling of Doldrum smiling between his metallic features, but that could’ve been a trick of the light. Still, I remained silent as the man of clockwork jingled on about the destruction of his world caused by his so called family. “With my dreams came sense of self. I gave myself the name Doldrum, and set off to try and find someone to talk to. To dream with. Eventually, I wandered till I reached the spot I started from. I felt that if I couldn’t find someone like me, then I would create them. And, while I was the same as my race, I could order them like our masters had before.” He then pointed to the metallic bodies beneath us. “So I ordered them to become like me.”
The dawning realization hit me as Doldrum paused. His gears were much softer than normal. “The problem with that order was I had no idea how I came into being. However, with time, I found a solution of sorts. I technically had a Reality inside myself, so my race simply took parts of our own Reality for themselves. Soon we all innocently stepped into coherence, but I had no idea what horror I would bring to them.”
“Our race prospered in time, we build vast halls to commemorate our creators. We grew to know love and peace, and, sadly, war. However, we built up and up, more of us were made, and families were born. I can still remember most their faces as they thanked me for allowing them to live. They were happier times.” Doldrum intoned in dreadfully quiet reverberation. “You see, Cade, it doesn’t matter if one is organic or inorganic, once they have taken a Reality, or even part of one, when they originally had no capacity for one, they will eventually be overwhelmed with the desire to consume more and more until tearing the Reality apart is the only thing that they live for. I don’t know when it started, but I do know the chaos that it brought. Brother turned on brother and mother on child, and when they couldn’t find any easy target, they turned to the Reality itself.”
I felt my breath catch inside my lungs as I stared out at the graveyard before us. Suddenly, all the grasping hands seemed a bit more menacing, as if they were in a desperate craze. Doldrum paid no attention and continued with a silent ring, “When I was busy burying those that I had stopped, I met our family, and when I pleaded them to save my race, they began to kill all of those who I had saved. I was angry. I resisted them at every turn out of the love for my people, and all I was just doing was letting them suffer more.” He turned to me with slow cranks. “There is a reason only we can wield our own Realities. It has something to do with how we are more in tune with the Kaleidoscope, and that is where Realities are birthed from. Tell me, how did it feel when you traveled through it without reabsorbing your Reality?”
My brow furrowed at the sudden question, but still answered, “I don’t know, it was like I was put in a blender that just spun me across all manner of random. If I really had to put a word for it: painful. Yeah, painful and maybe a bit of maddening. Like I couldn’t fully grasp where or who I was.”
Doldrum nodded in accquessience, his gears turning with approval. “Yes, but you have the benefit of being slightly protected from the Kaleidoscope’s influence. My people did not. They grew mad, they grew to be in constant pain and they tried to rip the Reality apart. I witnessed, first hand, how terrifying Sinners can become. I eventually joined our family to put the rest of them out of their misery, and tried to make up for all the loss I had caused. In a way, I can understand how you must feel.”
This time I didn’t feel the need to get mad at Doldrum. Instead, I felt something along the lines of pity and remorse. Here I was getting mad over the fact that I had to kill my creation that was not even a day old, and he had subsequently raised and eradicated his own race. I shook my head, denial staining my lips. “No, I’m sorry for making you bring this up. I… I am just not thinking of the bigger picture like you said. My own problems don’t match up to you losing your own race.”
“It is quite alright.” Doldrum calmly clicked away my worries. “I have had centuries to mourn my peoples, and a family who I can lean on. However, I do not believe that our experiences are different. After all, the loss of a life is a loss of a life. There is no between.”
“Right…” I agreed, feeling a small amount of gratitude for Doldrum calming my worries. “So what now?”
“I believe that is up for you to decide. You obviously haven’t absorbed your Reality yet, so you are not a fully fledged member of our family yet. And that gives you time to decide what you want to do. Whether you want to take reabsorb Reality or go back to your own Reality depends on you.” Doldrum whirred.
I gave the man of clockwork a lopsided smile. “Don’t you get confused with all this ‘Reality’ talk? How do you not get them mixed up?”
“Sometimes I do.” Doldrum clarified in a hiss of gear. “However, if you want to blame anyone then blame the fact that there was only the Kaleidoscope in the beginning and those who had Realities within themselves. They liked things rather simple, I am told.”
Laughing at that hopefully being a joke, I pulled out my Sphere to stare at. Without taking my eyes off of it I addressed my company, “There are more Sinners out there, right? More people that have are catalysts that will eventually go crazy. More worlds like this that fall to ruin because of a simple mistake or uncertainty.”
I didn’t look up, but I got the feeling that Doldrum was also looking a little wistful. “There is much our family knows, and there is much that it doesn’t. If I was to guess then there are probably Realities that harbor nothing but Sinners that constantly hunger in their insanity. We can only deal with so much, though.”
“Of course, I shouldn’t be surprised.” I sighed, then brought my Reality up to my lips and swallowed it easily. There was no notion on if I did it right or not, but Doldrum wasn’t making a big fuss. Plus, it just felt like the way I was supposed to do it.
“I am guessing that you have made your decision?” Doldrum chimed beside me.
My head dipped into a nod. “Yeah, I have no idea what I’m doing, nor if I’m making the right choice, but I don’t like the idea of there being places like this. I don’t want my home to end up like this, either. The best choice would be to join, and figure out a way to prevent it.”
My response was met with a smattering of bells and clangs. Doldrum was clapping with what I hoped was a smile on his face. Snapper yipped in my arms as Doldrum spoke in happy jingles, “Then I welcome you to being a fellow Being-R.”
I paused, unsure of what I heard. “I’m sorry, I think I misheard you.”
“Then I welcome you to being a fellow Being-R.” Doldrum repeated in similar tones.
My palm reached my face. “You guys really need help on your naming scheme.”
I think I would remember this day for the rest of my life. I had done what was essentially joining what was basically a cult of super powerful beings that could hop dimensions, and all I wanted to do was keep my own safe from whatever came next. In the span of two days, I had gone from an average teen to someone who can travel to different worlds. There was quite a bit I could say about my situation, but I don’t think I had the words for it.
However, I don’t think I was ever more excited for the unknown than ever before.