---Chapter 18
Darkness still filled the city as they made their way back through grimy alleys, deserted streets and ghostly parking lots. Most of the regular Ratpeople seemed to be asleep now, or at least hiding in their holes. It was only the noises of engines or something falling down in the distance which indicated the life going on around them in secret.
When they neared the area in which they had left the airship, it at first seemed that it had disappeared. The three companions stopped in their tracks, looking around in concern. Had their friends been forced to use the Di-jump to escape the Bloodsworn earlier in the night?
But then Lenny pointed upwards and they saw a dark shape floating perhaps a hundred feet in the air, the warm light of lanterns radiating out from it in a halo. Below, a few barrels and many sacks of sand lay about on the ground, ballast that had been thrown overboard.
“Ahoy the ship!” Patch raised his voice so that it echoed through the dim streets. “Three to come aboard, all weary and starving.”
“You can say that again,” Raggsy added more quietly.
A shape obtruded itself over the lantern light on one side. An arm waved over them and Jax’s voice cascaded lightly down. “Alright, mateys! We’ll crane you up with the rope. Hold on a minute...”
A long rope unrolled and fell down to touch the ground not far in front of them, end still wiggling around with the motion of its fall.
“Forget the crane,” Raggsy said, “I’m climbing.”
The Ratperson scrambled over to grasp the rope and swinging himself up it hand-over hand. Feeling the added weight, the crew above began hauling him up at the same time. He disappeared over the edge and the rope was tossed down again. Eventually they were all three aboard, being greeted by the crew and asked questions about how they had been able to survive. Everyone on the ship had survived the invasion safely.
Though the fighting had been stiff for a time, Amber thought of raising the ship not long after Leaflow’s mental link with Lenny had been severed. She had began hacking off the ballast bags until they started to rise, fighting off any creatures who tried to stop her. Jax had rolled a few barrels of water overboard, also lightening their load by a few hundred pounds.
Once this had been done, they were floating far too high above the ground to be attacked from below. A few of the Bloodsworn had attempted to climb a building nearby, apparently to shoot at them, but Jackal had been able to pick them off with his own sharpshooting before they could cause trouble.
“No offense meant, but I’ve shot rats plenty of times and these were bigger targets than most,” he told Raggsy.
“None taken.” The Ratperson grinned. “Those creeps hardly deserve the extra title of 'person’.”
Once things had settled down, food was served to the returning fighters and Amber began to carefully pick out the splinters the hourglass that had shattered in Raggsy’s paws. Lenny and Patch were little hurt by their time in Ratcombo’s arena, as they had only pretended to be fighting when threatened with mental force otherwise. That was why the audience had booed and jeered: no bloodshed was no fun, to them.
For a long time the crew sat up and talked and congratulated themselves. They did not go to sleep until late, and that reluctantly. No one wanted to think too much about what the morrow meant. Because that was when they would have to embark on the third and final stage of their journeys. The attack on EX-2.
But morning came whether they were awake or asleep. Dawn swept over the city of the Ratpeople, bathing the broken skyline of buildings in deep orange and canary light. Looking out across it, Lenny saw the flag on its pole in the distance, still flapping black and purple though its followers were gone. It must have been made of real fabric, not stuff conjured in the Power Core’s mind.
Eventually one of the inhabitants would tear it down and make a cape or robe of it, or bundle it up to sleep under. For now it was a last reminder of what had come and gone in this world.
He heard someone come up behind him but did not turn until Jax clapped him on the back with the words, “‘morning! Great morning to be going after a maddened computer, ain’t it?”
“If you say so.” Lenny shrugged. “Any morning would do for me.”
“Aw, what a downer! Or is that really more positive than what I said? Anyway, I guess I need to set the Di-jump for your world?”
“That’s right.”
Jax moved over to the machine fastened to the wall, then frowned and held out his hand. “Oh, yeah, could I have my old one back? It’s not that I distrust you...”
“I know. Here.” Lenny gave him the one with the panic button, and Jax immediately slipped it into his felt coat. As he was setting the working Di-jump’s controls, they heard Patch’s voice raised in song down below,
“Well, the Mattie Lee was a fine old cork,
we shipped on her from Frime to York,
no one cared and no one said
whether we played cards or went to bed.
But the Hattie B. was a nightmare ship,
she’d catch the sea like a fat man’s lip,
and when we worked it was all day 'round
'till we praised the solid ground.
Sing yo-ho, the mariner’s song,
we work hard, all day long.
And the Missie Thwate was--”
His song was cut off abruptly by a solid, thumping sound, soon followed by voices squabbling without any real animosity. Jax had set the dial where it needed to go by then and laughed as Patch came stumbling up on deck, hopping on one leg to pull a boot on the opposite foot.
“Throwing boots at me, they are!” he growled, “and me own, to make it worse. All I was trying to do was get a shave with the kitchen knife!”
“Here, try this.” Jax drew his electric razor from his pocket and tossed it to him. “It works a little better than the kitchen knife, anyway. I can just hear Raggsy saying that stubble tastes great in stirfry, with a little gravy!”
Soon Amber and Raggsy had also come up on deck, bringing with them simple bread and fruit for breakfast. Once everyone had eaten, they had to use the rope to reload enough of the ballast so that the grounding wire could reach the street below. This was hard work, in which everyone joined, but it did not actually take much time to accomplish.
As soon as it was done the jump was prepared and initiated.
Blurred world, a blink of the eyes...it had all become almost commonplace to Lenny. He was not even surprised to open his eyes on his own home town. The soaring, shiny buildings in gunmetal gray and crystal silver were fully intact and taller than most of the ones in Raggsy’s world. They rose high above the airship, roofs outlined against a deep blue sky.
Lenny let out a sigh of relief. “No alternate Power Core yet. We’re in luck.”
The time had come when, regretfully, they had to abandon yet another vehicle to the mercy of Belltoh. Lenny wondered what his people must think, finding vehicles from an age of wood, iron and steam appearing at odd points in the town with no explanation. Or what the authorities must think of the purple stains having receded so suddenly.
Luckily, they had appeared in an empty, fenced lot this time, out of the way of any main thoroughfares or many prying eyes. It was squashed in between two larger buildings, but had enough space to hover. Packing with them a small stock of food, what weapons they had left and drinking water to last, the travelers climbed down to the ground one at a time. They were in a grave mood now, with the last push in front of them. They knew the food didn’t have to last long, because if they did not succeed quickly they would not need provisions ever again.
Lenny checked the street names on posts nearby and was able to work out their location. Once again, it was not too far from Devi’s laboratory. It would only take fifteen minute’s walk to reach there.
As they began the trek, he noted an odd stillness in the city. He did not see any vehicles going by on the streets and the few people he glimpsed seemed to be hurrying about their business, heads down and shoulders hunched. At one point he was startled to hear loud sirens only a street or two away, rushing passed at high speed. But still, he did not see the vehicles that must support them.
Once, almost to the old lab, they crossed a street and he saw a group of people crossing it in the opposite direction, down at the far end. These people did not look around them, but straight ahead. They were marching with waving hands and furious expressions, staves and signs held above their heads. Lenny stared for a moment, before sighing sadly. Another riot, just like the one he had been in on the famous 21st of June. That was what was keeping the city quiet and tense. It had gone from the grip of the Power Core back to the angry revolving doors of people-versus-governing. What were they protesting this time? Another attempt to outlaw AI, perhaps, or maybe the confinement of their electronic usage in another way.
The door of Devi’s old lab was still broken, with a slot eaten through it by EX-2's feeling tentacles. A sign hung outside of it on the wall, 'DO NOT ENTER. Premises seized and under quarantine by authorities.’
But there was no sign of cameras watching the place, or even a lock on the door. Lenny opened it easily to go inside. It was not so easy to make himself walk down the corridor there, remembering all the times he had gone down it in perfect faith before, and the one time he had left it with that faith stabbed to pieces.
Their footsteps echoed on the white tiles, sending sad noises before them to announce their presence. Lenny found the door at the end of the hall ajar, pushing it open with a light swipe of his hand. Inside, the lab was little different from how he had left it. Some of the electronics had been taken away, as well as all of the bottles of chemicals in the cupboards and on the shelves.
Lenny checked all over to see what had been removed, but he did not go through into the inner chamber. He knew that they would have taken Dr. Devi’s body away, but he could not bring himself to look. In his mind it still they there, sprawled upon the ground with a great gash in its center. The gash that he had made, with the blade that Devi had.
The great dimensional teleportation machine took up the center of the lab’s floor. Its shining metal sides angled steeply into a peak, with tubes and wires run along the outside. A few pock marks showed where the corruption had eaten into it, but other than that it was clean. Around the other side, the front, was the glass tube where the lines all connected. There was a control pad outside of the tube, beside it, and a button on the door to enter.
“It looks like he modified this one,” Jackal commented, moving up to gaze at the control pad. “Now there is no interdimensional fastener. And the controls are a little more concise.”
On the pad was a square screen, lined with a light-gray grid. Numbers went across one side and the bottom, reading from one hundred to zero. When it was powered up, Jackal explained, a marker showed on the screen. You could adjust it with knobs and it flashed whenever it moved over a planet’s location. It indicated jumping co-ordinates in the theoretical X and Y dimensions, with a separate slider for Z. Unlike Jax’s Di-jump, it was powerful enough to move to any location within screen’s range, not just the next few worlds over.
The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
But there was one drawback with it. Jackal’s teleporter had carried ‘batteries’ which held a huge charge of a mysterious energy to send it along the Sission-ways. Its power reserve only had a few more jumps left in it when he turned it over the Sara Lancaster.
This unit seemed to have been powered up by another source. Thinking back, Lenny realized that it had worked off of EX-2’s energy, as relayed by Dr. Devi. When the doctor had died, the machine had shut off. Now it would have to be remade to work off of a more common source. Electricity.
It would take a huge amount of power in one burst to work. Lenny did not have the knowledge to make it work off of Sission-beams. His little work with Grummage had not taught him everything about how they were captured and used. Besides that, a Di-jump was not powerful enough to go everywhere the teleporter could. So Lenny decided to wire Devi’s device into the city’s power.
“It will be a huge draw, for a few minutes,” he explained to his companions, “they’ll probably notice it somewhere. But it will only take a moment for it to be gone. The big problem is...unless EX-2 has an electrical power source we can steal, we won’t be able to use this to get back.”
“So we’ll be stranded?” Amber asked.
Lenny nodded, but Jax put in quickly. “Not totally stranded. We’ll still have the Di-jumps! We can get off with them.”
“As long as there is a dimension near enough, ye mean.” Patch gave them a severe look, then shrugged. “But I, for one, don’t mind the danger the least bit.”
Once it was decided that they would be using Devi’s machine, Lenny began rewiring it in multiple ways. First, to use electricity from the lab’s connection to the city supply. Next, to have a bar to hold on to, set on the outside so that more of them could use it at once. Originally, it was set up so that the pilot would first put in his desired co-ordinates on the outside, then step in the glass tube and hit an initialization button there. Now he reworked it so that the pilot stood on the outside during the whole process, with the other crew members beside him, while the luggage was put in the tube for transportation.
Though he had never worked with this complicated a machine before, Lenny understood the basic functions of this teleporter much better than Grummage’s design in the Di-jump. It was built with components from his own world, constructed by the man he had learned under. Once he started figuring out a part of it, the rest came almost intuitively.
While he worked, the others amused themselves as they could. Amber helped where she could and Jackal gave advice based on his previous use of the machine. But Patch and Raggsy settled down on the floor for a game of cards, arguing and slapping them down noisily the whole time. Jax and Leaflow wandered off to explore the rest of the apartments, their voices heard in the inner room or up above in Devi’s living space as they searched it. Lenny did not stop them, though he did not like the idea of them going through the silent, abandoned places where Devi had once lived.
He was so engrossed in his work that he hardly noticed the time, eating absently what anyone gave him while he checked over the machine, or scribble notes to himself on a pad of paper. He was surprised when he found that the parts were getting difficult to see and looked around to find that darkness was falling. He was almost finished, so he had Amber turn on a light.
“Don’t you think you should get some rest?”
“I will when I’m through. Not long now.”
The girl shrugged and let him continue. Unlike they had planned, they could not initiate the attack on EX-2 that day. They had to wait for the next.
Day dawned palely in the lab, where they had all slept. Lenny had charged his energy reserves all night, plugged into a familiar jack in the wall. But no one (except for maybe Raggsy) felt much like eating, they just crammed down what they could for strength. There was nothing else to do, nothing to delay the inevitable. It was time to jump to EX-2’s world.
Lenny did not adjust the marker on the control pad. It should already be pointing just where he wanted to go. Everyone assembled beside him, grasping the metal bar he had installed to hold on to, while their provisions and supplies were piled in the glass tube, including the compass. They did not have the hourglass any more. If there were dangerous creatures created by EX-2 on this world, they would just have to deal with them personally.
“Ready?” Lenny looked tensely along the line of his friend’s faces. And they were all his friends, he realized. From grim Jackal to obnoxious Jax, they all meant more to him than people who were simply on the same mission as himself. Losing any of them would be a cruel blow. But there was no assurance that any of them would be alive by the end of the day.
“Go!” Jax shouted, grinning with one thumb held up in the air.
Lenny pressed the button that would send them flashing along the Sission-ways. Instead of a soft jolt like the Di-jump, it sent a giddy, exhilarating feeling all through them when they began the jump. It was like standing on the edge of a cliff, and then stepping off into nothing. The world blurred, but Lenny did not blink. Everything seemed to start rushing passed as if they were going at a great speed through it. The grays and blues of his world...the blackness of outer space...flat white plains of nothingness...then a shatter of light and color as they burst into a new dimension.
He understood why Jackal could have become quickly addicted to the sensation of dimension jumping in Devi’s machine. It was much more exciting than the Di-jump, even if not quite as swift.
The machine stopped humming and the screen went blank. If they had hit the wrong world, there would be no second try. Not unless they could find another power source nearby. But as soon as he looked around, Lenny was sure that they had not been taken to the wrong dimension, or even the wrong planet within it. This was EX-2's world.
The sky looked like it had on Jackal’s home world, open and black with burning magenta stars. Planets with green rings and fuscia surfaces hung suspended in that sky, much nearer than anything but a moon should be. No sun could be seen, though the horizon carried a toxic orange glow and there was plenty of light to see by. All around the travelers and their machine, jungle plants of every shade from deep plum to sickly lavender sprawled and fought among themselves for the eerie light. Even the ground was shades of purple, either the lighter lilac of the dust or the dark eggplant of strange mosses that grew there.
But the jungle was cleared back from the spot the machine had set down on, leaving a circular area that was paved in smooth cement.
“It looks like this machine is expected here,” Jax commented, stepping back to look at the landing pad and the nearby trees. “I just hope that we aren’t.”
The travelers spread out around the machine, looking at the cement pad or the plants which grew near it. These were covered in ugly, hanging bladders or soft, slimy leaves like banana peels left in the open. Some had a thick, black liquid dripping from them, or boasted flowers of the same hue which smelled of decay. Lenny made sure not to touch any of them.
“There is a second clearing just over there,” Leaflow pointed out, gesturing between two trees on the edge of the landing pad. “And a small path leading to it.”
Lenny joined him, tilting his head to look between the trees. They were something like palms, but not nearly as straight or smooth. Burls, fungus and twisty branches hung from their sides. But they were the guardians of a narrow dirt path which ran straight into what appeared to be another clearing, this one smaller, with something gray standing in its center.
“Let’s check it out.”
Everyone fell in behind him, filing silently between the trees while trying not to brush up against them. A silent oppression hung in the air of this world, making it seem painful to talk loudly or even make a sound with one’s feet. If he stood still, Lenny was sure that he could hear a vague humming noise somewhere both nearby and distant. It filled the air, burrowed underground and even seemed to go through the shrubbery. It felt like something was watching them, though they could not see it. Everyone held their weapons ready.
The second clearing was, indeed, smaller than the first and its center was not paved. But a gray pillar, something like an obelisk, stood in the middle of it. It was about eight feet tall and three square, with a symbol glowing on the front of it. At its foot there was a small circle of steel with a handle set into the top of it. None of the crew knew what the symbol meant, or could get the hatch to open when they pulled on the handle.
“Maybe the symbol is a sort of lock,” Jax suggested, stepping up and reaching towards it. “All we have to do is figure out the code--”
He touched the glowing lines and they shifted under his fingertips, changing from magenta to green and fluidly altering their shape. There was a sharp click! from the hatch and when Patch tried the handle again, it sprang open. A ladder led downwards into some sort of dimly-lit hall.
“I don’t know...” Lenny looked down into it suspiciously. “It might be a trap. EX-2 has to know that we’re here, by now.”
“Then why not overwhelm us with ravening creatures and kill us now?” Jax spread out his hands to either side in a shrug. “He can’t know everything that goes on here.”
“Actually,” Leaflow remarked, “he can. This is his world, remember, and he is a computer. Even my mortal mind knew just about everything that happened in the world I created with his power. A computer can watch everything with more attention, because it does not have a mind trammeled with boredom, emotions or imagination.”
Raggsy scratched at one ear in puzzlement. “So, what’s the point of tryin’ to fight him on this world? Won’t he know everything we’re gonna do, in advance?”
The cloaked man shook his head. “Everything we do, he knows, but not everything we are going to do. With no imagination or intuition, EX-2 can only react, not truly plan ahead.”
“We should’a just sent a huge bomb through the machine an’ blew this whole world up,” the Ratperson muttered. After his last experiment with explosions, he was rather interested in making more.
“If we had found one of that size, our worries would have been over,” Amber agreed with a small smile. She did not know of the weapons of mass destruction that Lenny and Jax’s worlds had figured out how to fit in small spaces. She was imagining a heap of gunpowder or TNT the size of a mountain.
“But now the question is, do we go down in the manhole, or keep on above ground? Dansei claimed that EX-2’s main computer core was in a purple palace on the surface somewhere. But if the computer can make all of this up, how do we know that the Ninja was seeing the truth? EX-2 might be underground. This might be the entrance to his main core. Then again, it might be a trap.”
After discussing it for a time, they decided to try going underground and searching there. Dr. Devi must have brought his components here to install them, and this had been the only path leading away from the landing pad. If this hatch was an access port for installing the components, it might be a place they could destroy the computer from as well.
One by one they climbed down into the hole, gripping the cold rungs of the steel ladder in their hands. Lenny still led the way, stepping down into a narrow hall illuminated with white lights running in bars along the roof. The purple walls had black patterns on them, like the lines on a circuit board or veins in a human hand. Lenny wondered if they carried electricity, or some other power that EX-2 needed to work off of. He could not tell by looking at them and had no wish to stick a probe in them only to get electrocuted.
Once everyone was inside, they started to walk down the hall. The trap door had not slammed shut behind them, giving a measure of security to their position. The humming sound had increased underground, filling the air around them. Jax ran a finger along the wall as they walked, following the lines as if they were a magic script.
The corridor stretched on in a straight line for many hundreds of feet. Except for faint variations in the black patterns, nothing changed as they walked. White lights above, gray floor underneath, soft thumping of shoes on the floor and the hum of energy in the air. Then, it seemed quite abruptly, the corridor took off in two different directions. The one to the right was blocked off with a metal door, a large yellow triangle painted on it with an exclamation point in the center. To the left the hall went straight again, appearing exactly like the hall they had just traversed.
“Hey, whatever is behind this door must be important,” Jax pointed out, gripping the knob. “‘Cause its locked. Let’s see, does my lock pick unlock it?”
There was no obvious keyhole. He withdrew his Spy Gizmoz gadget to stick it against against the metal surface near the knob, moving it around across the door’s surface. After a minute he tried the knob again and frowned, “darn! Either my toy is out of juice, or this electronic lock doesn’t respond to it. Anyone else have an idea?”
“I could blast it.” Lenny let his right hand clip down, the nozzle of the energy cannon becoming exposed.
But Jackal waved him hastily away. “I wouldn’t do that. If there is something explosive or poisonous in there, you could set off a chain reaction that kills us all.”
Lenny had to admit that this had some sense to it. He put his cannon away, trying the door himself to see if it could be forced. But it felt firmly fastened on its hinges, too much so to break it open by main force.
“We’ll have to keep going,” Leaflow suggested, “though I’m starting to wonder if that is just what the computer wants...”
They continued down the hall for a long time, before coming to yet another split and being forced to go one way by a solid door blocking the other. Halls, forks in the paths and locked doors became more common as they advanced, until, finally, they discovered something different. It was an iron box hanging on the wall, with wires running into the bottom of it and a hatch door on its face.
“This looks surprisingly like a breaker-box,” Lenny commented, looking it over carefully. “Maybe we’ve finally found something useful.”
“Yeah!” Raggsy clapped his paws together. “If it does hold breakers, maybe they can be tripped an’ EX-2's power supply shut off!”
“I doubt it’s that simple,” Amber murmured.
Lenny reached out and opened the door, cautiously using the tips of his fingers. Inside there was one breaker switch, mounted smoothly into the gray-painted inner surface of the box. Lenny looked back once to see what the others thought, and they all gave him a nod of encouragement.
He flipped the switch.
All of the lights in the hall went off. They were plunged in darkness.
But the humming sound of energy still pounded through the walls and the world stayed in its shape. Lenny had to laugh, though it was a short, sharp sound.
“Just a light switch.” He flipped it back on and they continued.