We have lingered in the chambers of the sea

It was an aquarium, closed for the day or forever, lit only by the wavering glow of the fish tanks. The interior was oriented lengthwise towards a door in the far wall, a metal hatch with a wheel in the center. The arch of frosted glass around it let in dappled, fluttering light from the sunlit ocean outside.

As Gradie passed one of the tanks, he noticed it didn’t have a back, but stretched endlessly across an ocean floor. The other tanks were similar portals, one opening on a vaporwave ocean of pinks and neons, another on a reef of crystalline coral.

The wheel spun on its own and the door swung open as they approached. The doorway was a solid curtain of falling water, backlit by the same dappled blue light as the glass arch.

Celeste smiled.

“Might be a good time to change into something waterproof.”

Gradie noticed that, once again, he was wearing the same clothes his self had worn in the Hardworld. He grabbed the belt loops and ripped the entire outfit off in a single motion, revealing a black scuba suit underneath. He kicked his boots off and found watershoes instead of socks.

Celeste stepped through the curtain of water, her ass disappearing a second after the rest of her, and he followed. The sound of the rushing water as he passed and the sensation of being suddenly drenched acted as a break between worlds. The drone of the fish tanks and the hum of the mall vanished instantly and he came out on the other side feeling that everything had changed all at once.

It was an arched glass tunnel stretching across a sunlit ocean floor. Everything sparkled and the colors pushed the limits of hue. The water churned with dolphins and fish and other creatures that had never lived, and something else it took him a moment to identify.

Glitter. Multicolored wafers that completed the nostalgic familiarity foaming over in his mind. It was like being inside one of those snowglobe cups he had as a kid. As he stood there staring, one of the fish swam up and ate a piece of glitter, and he noticed a similar meal happening everywhere. A larger fish brushed the tunnel and it swelled and swayed in the wake, proving it wasn’t glass, but a kind of flexible plastic.

“Look behind you,” Celeste said, pointing. It took him a moment. The water had soaked her dress and it stuck to her in the best way. Her big black eyes flashed under dripping waves of bleached blonde hair.

He looked back reluctantly, and the curtain waterfall died to a trickle, just two faucet-streams of water on either side. The clear sea tunnel extended back endlessly towards a hazy ocean-hued point.

Deja-vu. He saw EP sitting on the riverboat, telling him to do the same thing with a look of bored annoyance. The memory struck a realization in him. While Celeste’s overt friendliness seemed designed to mask an uncomfortable shyness, EP’s wall of disdain hid something else, something he couldn’t put into words, but was drawn to anyway.

He looked back at Celeste, her arms crossed, waiting.

“Got it?” she asked.

“Yeah. Let’s go.”

Celeste looked behind him and gasped dramatically.

“Uh-oh!”

Gradie spun around and saw water spraying out of the two spouts that had fed the waterfall. The water flowed down the floor and over his feet, just a few inches deep.

“So, what—”

“Come on!” Celeste grabbed his hand and took off at a run down the tunnel. He ran after her, but the water was rising, and his steps became sloshing struggles. Celeste seemed immune to the water’s resistance, bouncing over the rising stream like a nymph. Some massive kraken-esque thing floated over the tunnel and he barely noticed.

God damn, just look at her.

In a flash, her dress dissolved and she was leaping through thigh-high water in a yellow and white polka-dot bikini.

She has got to be doing this shit on purpose.

A breaking roar behind him drew his attention sluggishly backwards. A wall of white water barrelled down the tunnel.

“Oh, is this—”

“Get on!” Celeste yelled. He found her sliding into one half of a two-seater inner tube, teleported from some unseen water park. He scrambled into the other hole, almost slipping off with a loud rubber squeak, and had just enough time to notice a decal on the black tube that said “Wet n’ Wild” before the wall of white water caught up with them.

They shot down the clear tunnel with the inner tube angled forward enough for Gradie to see the path ahead. It ended abruptly in a wall of clear glass. He wondered if they were going to break through it into the Allcity Allaquarium or something, but at the last moment, the tube dropped down into a dark tunnel and his stomach flew up in that distinctive roller-coaster feeling.

“Woooo!” Celeste yelled, hands in the air, as they snaked through the most violent, twisted, and impossibly loop-de-loop filled water slide he had ever seen. It was like dropping off the river craft ten times a second, Celeste’s whoops and the water’s roar echoing off from every direction, exacerbating his disorientation. The feeling of falling morphed into a sensation like flying, until—

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Suddenly, sunlight, shimmering on the other side of a massive wall of water. They broke through it and dropped into a cliff ringed lagoon fed by the roaring waterfall. The water snaked out at the far end between two sheer fingers of stone and flowed into an ocean that glittered with multi-colored figures, crafts, sails, and floating-barge-dance-clubs.

Instantly, he recognized the Allworld.

“Let me guess. The Allbeach?”

“You got it!” Celeste laughed. She stood up and shook out a fabric something Gradie thought he might have seen her pull out of her cleavage, then threw it on. Another curve-clutching dress. She smiled at him.

“See, wasn’t that fun? A little falling and excitement goes a long way. The way back doesn’t have to be all boring hallways and old basements.”

Gradie thought about the contrast between Celeste essentially throwing him out into the Otherworld, and his struggle in the ice-cold subterranean maze, and frowned. Celeste noticed.

“What?”

“Nothing. I just don’t remember exactly when he left. You know, the self?”

“You didn’t notice?”

“I was a little distracted.” He smiled. She grinned and rolled her eyes.

“Sometimes it helps to be a little distracted. Especially if you’re the type to be in your head too much.”

She froze and turned on him like she had remembered something awful.

“Oh! But—” She pressed her finger to her lips and gave him a serious, pleading look. Michael’s voice returned to him.

Never let anyone know that you’re a Hardworlder.

He didn’t see anyone else around, but remembering the Speakers from Michael’s story and how easily Klara had found him, he realized with a cold shiver that in this world, very few places were free from supernatural prying eyes.

Celeste marched across the sand and knocked on the face of the flat rock face that spiraled up and enclosed the lagoon. Her third knock rang hollow and a door shaped slab of stone swung outward, revealing a bead curtain strung with pearls and silver shells.

She looked back at Gradie and shrugged.

“I never got the hang of summoning a door in thin air, even on the Allworld. Guess the Prince doesn’t jive with me.”

She disappeared through the curtain and he followed. Inside was a kind of multi-storied foyer, stretching up towards a skylight where sherbert-colored clouds rolled by at a pace that promised rain. The walls were white wood and wicker. There was a faint scent of coconut and burning citronella. Waves crashed somewhere with a cadence different from the Allbeach. A stream of blue water rolled over white stones and tiny fish under the glass floor.

“The Prince?” he asked, when his eyes found her again.

“Oh, prince means Principality. Like the principality of the Allworld.”

Gradie continued to stare.

“Oh, wow I thought Michael explained everything to you.”

“It was mostly about the demons and the war…”

“Well, a principality is like a maker that builds a place in the Other and sets its rules. Like this is my realm, and I made it so you could say I’m the prince—”

“You made all this?”

“Yeah. Well, the twins gave me some mem but, it’s not that—”

“I could barely make a fucking mask,” Gradie said in awe.

“Oh, that’s cause you made it on the Allworld. The prince is really strict about making on the ball. It’s a lot easier out here.”

Gradie stared at her some more.

“Oh, right. The princes. So, I made this realm, so I got to decide what’s allowed here and what it connects to and all that. But even when I’m gone, the rules I set up are still in effect. My rules are simple, cause it’s just a small little realm, but for something massive like the Allworld, the rules are complex. Really complex. So, the rules kind of take on a life of their own, like they’re living things. So even though the makers that set up the Allworld are long gone, the rules themselves are still there. Making decisions. One of the rules lets people summon doors at will to get around easier, without having to put a lot of focus into making them. I don’t know how it works, but it never worked for me.”

Gradie stared some more and nodded as a cold fear shook itself awake somewhere inside of him. Makers crafting worlds. Their ghosts still ruling them. Something in it made everything here, even Celeste’s sexy little beach house, feel menacing.

She took his staring for boredom or dumb horniness and waved her hand like she could banish all her words and the effort she had put into them.

“Anyway, it’s been a while since I learned about all that. I had a friend that was super obsessed with the history, would never—”

Something else that had bugged Gradie about her explanation caught up with him.

“I thought the Allworld was made by everyone, like it’s a bunch of collective archetypes, like if everyone dreamed they were in a mall, or a school…” He reached for his concept of the Allworld and found it lacking. Michael had said something like that, but hadn’t he also said someone made it?

“Oh yeah. But there’s a bunch of different stories about it and like I said,” She shrugged with the full range of her shoulders and made a face. Adorable. He forgot all about the mystery and menace of—

“Hello?” She put her hand up to her ear. “Yes, we’re back. Ok, walking in now.” She made a motion with her hand like pressing a button on an invisible phone, then looked back at him.

“Philip’s getting antsy. You should change clothes. We can take my door to the office.”

She took a ring of keys out of her pocket and opened the front door.

“It’s in here. I also never got the hang of making one door go to multiple places.”

Gradie followed her through the entryway and glanced across a wide windowed den of marble and cozy furniture. Outside, the ocean stretched towards a shuddering orange horizon. It was completely barren of craft, structure or Spirit. A few lone palms nodded over sandbars and small isles.

“Did you make the ocean too?” he asked.

She froze again in another “oh shit I forgot” pose.

“Um, so that’s the HQ ocean. The twins knew I liked beaches, so they kind of stuck my realm on the other side of the planet. It’s like a little cove.”

She said it like she was confessing to petty theft.

“Oh cool,” Gradie said. She bit her lip and he wondered for the fiftieth time if she was just accidentally sexy.

“I hate to force you into a secret, but please don’t tell Michael or anyone. The twins said it’s kind of against the rules.”

“I promise.” Gradie held out his pinky and she locked hers around it with a smile.

“Thanks. Oh! Shit the meeting. Cmon, change! Change!” She waved at his outfit and power walked to a closet door stuck in the wall on the side of the stairs. Gradie looked down at the scuba suit until it fluttered and shifted into a familiar all-black outfit of leather boots and silk clothes under a matte-cloth overcoat, halfway between a trench and a priest's robe. He started to pull his mask out of the air when Celeste stopped him.

“Oh, you don’t have to mask up. My realm is screened from seers.”

“Uh,” the mask rules were getting more confusing every time he encountered them. Celeste sensed his dilemma.

“If you’re coming in from or going out into un-secure places from the office, wear a mask.” It sounded like something she had forced herself to memorize.

She pulled open the door and the seating area of the Office waited on the other side. Philip’s face turned around over one of the floating couches and smoke rolled off of him.

“God damn, where have yall been?”

“Wet n’ Wild,” Gradie said. Philip narrowed his eyes and Luke raised his eyebrows.

Celeste grinned back at Gradie with flushed cheeks and scrambled in through the door in an uncharacteristic lack of grace. He let his mask sink back to its unseen nether zone and followed her inside.