“What are you doing here?” said Commander Zideo. “Aren’t you supposed to be in jail or something?”

Kriegsgewinnler’s head reared back, offended. “Moi?” he asked. “I’m a card-carrying member of the G-word Fellows.”

“You? You’re working for–wait a minute. You got a card?”

The merchant plucked a folding wallet from an outer pocket. He flipped it, as police officers on Lisa’s big glowing rectangle sometimes do. There was displayed a small silver badge, a tower in front of a starry sky. Below it was an identification card with his photo, for which Kriegsgewinnler had not removed his hood or face covering. He displayed it for a second or so, and flipped it closed.

“I’m the real deal!” he said. “You like it? I can get you one, ehhh, probably this week?”

“I think I’m good,” said Zideo. “How did you physically get here? Is anyone with you? This place is crawling with Ohmpressors. We were just in a whole city of Street Toughs.”

The merchant shrugged. “Lemme answer your question with a question.”

“Can you answer it with an answer, instead?”

The merchant was undeterred. “What are the three most important parts of a new business venture? Heh?” Zideo rubbed his eyes but did not answer. “I’ll tell ya. Location, location and location. And after the Total Conversion, if you wanna do business, you’ve gotta go yourself. So here I am.”

“Okay, but that doesn’t answer my question at all.”

“The ‘how’ isn’t the important part. The important part is that there’s money to be made–excuse me, I mean, there’s a need out there, somewhere in the world, and I’m here to make sure those in need get what they need.”

“So, you… what?” Zideo stirred the air as though to distill out of it a hypothesis that made sense. “You sense a potential deal? You smell my desperation, and you just travel through the aether with wares to peddle? Or can all merchants just teleport or whatever?”

Kriegsgewinnler jumped backward. “Whoa, pal! I never said ‘teleport.’ Those are your words.”

He stared at the nervous merchant for some time. “You really are a weirdo,” he said at length. “I did get a bunch of coins on the Shard.” The merchant stood a little taller and took a step forward, almost as if he would embrace Zideo like family. “But!” The merchant halted. “We’re on Platformia, so I have to assume that every hundred of them means an extra life. So really, my money is life.”

“See? Thank you,” said the merchant. “Finally someone understands.”

“I need to get through this thing,” said Zideo, making a fist and pounding against the unseen wall in front of him. “You got any Radians in there?”

“Hold on,” said the merchant. “Are you askin’ me what I’m sellin’?”

Zideo sighed. “Yes.” The merchant waited with an expectant look on his face. “Okay, fine. Whatever. What are you selling.” It did not sound to me like a question.

Kriegsgeswinnler pulled the string, and drew the hems of his trenchcoat wide apart. The transformation from ambulatory man to stationary store was even more convoluted than when he had demonstrated it for us outside of Ludopolis, and his time in the tower dungeons had added no wear to his wares–if anything, it shone all the more bright and polished. A decorative pinwheel protruded from his shoulder by the sign. Racks unfolded from the interiors of his coat like Murphy beds, trinkets and potions and ammunition bags rattling into place across their various displays.

“Go ahead,” he said. “Browse away!” He held the coat apart like a bird with wings extended.

“I don’t want to touch all your goods,” said Zideo. “You can just tell me. Do you have a Radian?”

Kriegsgewinnler inspected his torso and all forward-facing item displays. “Fresh out, it looks like. Those are really hard to get, y’know.”

“I do know, actually,” said Zideo, frowning. “Okay, well, do you have anything that can get through here, even though I don’t have enough Radians?”

“Hmmm,” said the merchant. “I hear you. You need to finesse your way through. Tell you what: I’ve got a shipment of lockpicks coming Thursday, from every genre you can imagine. If that doesn’t do it, I’ve got a lead on the real, actual crowbar from Half-Life. If that doesn’t open ‘er up…”

“No,” said Zideo. “I mean… I’m not not interested, to be honest. But that doesn’t help me now.”

“Okay, I get it, there’s urgency. You need platformer-specific help and you’re a motivated buyer. I’m sure there’s something in my stock I can offload–I mean, that will help you in this specific scenario. Wait right here, I gotta check the back.”

“The back?”

He spun around and rummaged through pockets and bags. We could hear the clanking of glass bottles, the static of a PA system, and even the reverse beeping of a forklift, which I recognized from our not infrequent visits to R-mart. “Oh, here we go!” he said, and twirled back around. He extended a hand, feigning reluctance, in which sat a seashell. Not the flat clamping mussel shells that look like they might clip shut a bag of potato chips; rather, the one of those nautiloid shells which spiral and taper to a point on one end and flare like a trumpet at the other. This explained the undertones of seafood that I detected on him, an aroma that humans always dislike if they don’t know why they smell it. I suspected something was still alive in there, but there were holes at even increments toward the tapered end like those of Zideo’s flute, which he had tried to get rid of on a few occasions, although Lisa could not part with it.

If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

“A nautilus?” said Zideo, who I noticed did not immediately dismiss it. Its beauty was not diminished by the holes in the side.

“A conch,” said Kriegsgewinnler, effecting awe. “A really big conch A huge conch, I’d say.”

“Sure,” said Zideo, slapping the invisible wall behind him again. “But it doesn’t matter how big the conch is if it doesn’t get me where I’m going.”

“You’re not wrong,” said the merchant. “It’s not about size. It’s what you do with it. And this conch is magic. Do you know what to do with a conch like this?”

“No? And can you stop… saying it? Like that?”

“This conch is an instrument. A tool, if you will. It’s a secret cheat item from Nereus: The Forgotten Levels (19∞4).”

“Huh?” said Zideo. “I’ve never heard of that sequel. That’s 19∞4? Are you sure?”

“You’ve never heard of it because it never came out in your region,” said the merchant. “Probably. So let’s talk price.”

“Let’s actually talk telling me what the hell it is supposed to do?” said Zideo, his temper rising. He was anxious to be out of this place.

The merchant nodded, solemnly. “If you play the right notes on it, it will transport you to another part of the g-word. At least, that’s what it does in Nereus: The Forgotten Levels (19∞4). Who knows what it does here? I’m afraid to try.”

“Oh, great! What a sales pitch. So where can it go and how do you control where it goes? Is there like a specific song?”

“You don’t,” said the merchant. “You really haven’t played that one, huh? No, it goes to a random location in the g-word-world. Great for getting out of a bind. Bad for knowing where you want to go.”

“But I know where I want to go!” He said, pointing to the dark tower on the horizon, stubby like an unchecked wart. “That’s exactly the opposite of what I need!”

“It’s an upgrade in my opinion,” said the merchant. “You stay here, you’re stuck. You have zero percent chance of getting there. You try this thing, you up your chances of arriving where you want to be.”

“By, what? One percent? Point oh oh oh oh oh one percent?”

“Listen, it’s closing time for my shop.”

Zideo slapped his own forehead, then slid his palm down past his face as though he could wipe away the frustration. “This is so dumb. How much do you want for it?”

The negotiations began. I find human numerals tedious and investigated the invisible wall. I found that I could not relax in its presence, due I’m sure to both its uncanny nature and the possibility that it might start pushing us towards danger in the environment. When I pawed at it, it pressed back like a perfectly clean window. I lifted a leg, and it did not obstruct my stream of urine. The underlying elements that governed the physics of this world continued to elude and bewilder me.

“You do know,” I heard Zideo saying, his shoulders tense, “that you’re one of us now right? One of the Game Fellows? And I’m trying to save our fellow Game Fellows?”

He hissed and sputtered into a shushing sound, rattling all his wares. “The g-word, brother!” He leaned and looked down the hill toward the distant Ohmpressors in their routes. “They’ll be on you like white on lice!”

“Rice,” corrected Zideo.

“Listen,” said the merchant. “If my prices are too high, shop somewhere else.” An idea occurred to him–but not, I think, a selfless one. “Hey! You could try that Overworld again. You figured that out yet?”

Zideo scowled in earnest then, and shoved his hands into his pockets. “I can’t. I tried. I don’t know how to kick it off. And even if I did, it won’t let me drop into where I want to go. But… you knew that, didn’t you? Because you’re a greedy, selfish, piece of… fine.” Zideo produced a few coins. They were not stamped with the tower emblem, nor her majesty’s profile, but were rather unwieldy-looking novelty coins almost the size of his hand. He lugged them over.

“Gimme that big conch.”

“You won’t regret this!” said Kriegsgewinnler, causing the oversized money to disappear. “All sales, though final, come with a thirty-second anti-buyer’s-remorse guarantee. Now please wait until I’m gone to use that.”

“You’re not coming with me?”

The merchant returned his “shop” whence it came, retracting the sign, pinwheels, racks of goods, and closing the coat. “Me? No way. Time is money, friend! You’re not the only motivated buy–that is, the only fellow G-word Fellow in need!”

“Great,” said Zideo in a way that sounded like he did not believe that it was great. He examined the conch perfunctorily, flipping it over. It was awkward to hold and he almost dropped it. “Can I at least get a receipt?”

But when we looked back up, the merchant was gone.

Zideo let out a long sigh. He looked back toward the Golden Plains behind us, then forward to the Rolling Green. Then back again, and again.

“I’m not seeing much of a choice here, Cormac,” he said. “You ready to see what this thing can do?”

I was not, but I would not let down the greatest human of all time. Where he went, I followed, though the way was uncertain and the path perilous.

He held the conch to his lips, filled his cheeks with air and blew tentatively. A short, haunting melody issued from the instrument, although I did not see his fingers work the holes along the side. Notes rose, fell and stopped. It only played once.

A breeze tousled his aqua and pink hair. Cicadas buzzed ahead of us, frogs croaked behind. Commander Zideo regarded me, and I him.

“It’s a dud,” he said. “Or a fake, I bet, knowing that slimy, fast talking huckster. He got us, man. He–”

The breeze rose, whipping his loose, tie-dye shirt around. A pillar of white rushed over the countryside towards, an opaque funnel cloud swirling and hurling tree branches and leaves in every direction.

“Run, Cormac!” He sprinted, for the last time, right into the invisible wall that gated our movement. Zideo smacked into it audibly, his head snapping back and his feet sticking up in the air. I tugged at his shirt, tried to compel him to run in a different direction. The winds around us became opaque white and we were whipped by flying twigs and branches. I howled futilely, as though it might warn off the winds. Zideo screamed.