The ferry finally came to a halt, and Samson wondered if his long nightmare was finally over. The Einstein-Odinson campus being on an island apparently came with some benefits, but quick commutes clearly weren’t one of them. Between planes, trains, and boats, Samson had spent most of the past 24 hours cooped up in a vehicle, traveling the long road from Nigeria to college. Thankfully, he had company.
“Still remember how your legs work, right?” Ibrahim asked. “Get a move on.”
“I need your fat ass to move first,” Samson snapped back. “Can’t get past you.”
Ibrahim chuckled at the joke and got moving, with Samson following close behind. The twin brothers made sure not to stray far from one another as they headed deeper into unfamiliar territory that got more unfamiliar by the second. Samson tried to avoid staring at the serpentine tail of a Lamia as it slithered by. He thought it would be rude. Ibrahim, on the other hand, very obviously stared at a cyclops lumbering past.
“Very...diverse,” Ibrahim said. He had no objections to any of the centaurs, vampires, or goblins arrayed in front of him, he’d just never seen so many in one place.
“Apparently they’re branching out,” Samson said. While the Einstein-Odinson had never been explicitly human-only, its facilities were designed by and for humans, so enrollment among the more magical forms of sapient life had been minimal. That had changed over the summer.
“Makes sense,” Ibrahim said. “They do have the robot, remember?”
Samson nodded. Of course he remembered. The school had made a big deal out of having the world’s first sapient machine among its students.
The twins cut through the crowd around the dock and found their way into a whole new crowd further on the campus grounds. Various departments and school organizations had set up recruiting booths to welcome the new students and hopefully snag a few members. The booths all had banners advertising organizations like the student council, culinary club, chess club, and one at the very center of them all which simply said “Ask us about your deja vu”. To Samson’s surprise, the robot herself was sitting at the deja vu booth, alongside a bulky man with tattoos on his cheeks. He took a quick look at the odd pair as he walked by. The robot, oblivious to his stare, appeared to concentrate on something for a moment and then held up a hand.
“Hey, stop for a second,” Kim said aloud. “You’re going to want to keep the space behind us clear.”
A few students who had been walking that way stopped in their tracks, not a moment too soon. The air split open as a crackling portal opened, and an icy blast of air surged forth. A second later, a quick spray of snow burst out of the portal, carrying with it three bundled-up bodies on snowboards and skis. They landed in a jumbled heap of snow, scarfs, and skis as the portal closed behind them. A few purple butterflies skimmed by the newly fallen pile of snow, circling a man on a snowboard before fluttering away as the robot approached.
“Nice landing,” Kim snapped.
“It’s a work in progress,” Harley shot back. “We’ll do better next time.”
“I’m sure. You guys enjoy the ski trip?”
“I’m not going to lie, Kim, it was fucking radical,” Harley said. “You should’ve come!”
Kim shrugged newly mechanical shoulders. After her dramatic journey of self-discovery at the end of last year, she had chosen to do so slightly less dramatic self-discovery and spent the summer studying herself and refining her new, robotic body. Now that she was no longer trying to imitate humanity, she was trying to figure out exactly what kind of design she was supposed to follow. She’d given herself a few once-over’s and refined her design a little bit.
Hawke, on the other hand, had just gone home and read a few good books, trying to de-stress after a year packed with multiple apocalypses, robot friends, and talking fish. It had done wonders for his mental health, and he was almost ready for another year at the Einstein-Odinson. Almost.
“Maybe next time,” Kim said. “Glad you guys had fun though.”
“And all at my parent’s expense,” Lee said. She removed some ski goggles, and the rest of her winter gear, as she made the quick transition from the cold mountain slopes to the warm air of the tropical island.
“Still baffled they sprang for the single-use portal,” Vell said. He shook a purple butterfly off his hat before removing it. “I know they’re like, rich rich, but still. That shit’s expensive.”
“But convenient,” Harley said. They’d been able to swing straight from their vacation back to school.
“I hope the Dean doesn’t make us clean up this snow, though,” Vell said.
“Eh, fuck it, it’ll melt,” Harley said. “Come on! Let’s drop off our stuff at Lee’s and then come take our turn at the deja vu booth.”
The snow-covered trio wandered off. Samson did a double take as they left.
“The hell was that about?”
“Robots and snake ladies all around and the ski trip is what has you asking questions,” Ibrahim said.
“The robot is involved in the ski trip,” Samson said. “The weirdness compounds.”
“Come on. We got a tour to join.”
Samson tried to put the weirdness out of mind as they weaved past the snow pile and tried to find their tour. As it turned out, the search for their campus tour was slightly harder than either twin suspected, because it was two tours instead of one.
“Ibrahim and Samson Onwe. I have you two down for separate tour groups.”
“Why would we be separate?”
“Why wouldn’t you be?”
Samson and Ibrahim each pointed to the other’s identical face. The tour guide rolled her eyes.
“I don’t make the group assignments, I just follow them,” she said. “Now, which one of you is Ibrahim?”
“I am,” Ibrahim and Samson said simultaneously. The tour guide lowered her glasses and stared at them for a long time.
“Seriously?”
“We’re a package deal, lady.”
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
An attempt at a staredown ended with the tour guide blinking first. She sighed heavily and decided she didn’t want to fight any battles this morning.
“Alright, fine, follow me,” she said. Samson and Ibrahim playfully elbowed each other and followed along, beaming with pride that their gambit had worked -again.
----------------------------------------
“I know it’s a big campus, and it’s only getting bigger, but do try not to run,” the tour guide said. “There’s always plenty of time to get where you’re go-”
The tour guide stopped herself mid-sentence as another tour group went sprinting past, headed the other direction. Samson and Ibrahim watched them go, noting the looks of fear on their faces.
“Is this the set up for a gag?” Samson asked. The past few hours had been pretty dull, so he’d be happy to see a good joke.
“No. They shouldn’t be doing that…”
The tour guide turned her head in the direction the other group had run from. A single log flew around a corner and bounced off the ground once before coming to a halt.
“Wood?”
The single log was joined by another, and then a stick, and then three branches, and then ten more logs, and suddenly a tidal wave of wood in all shapes and sizes was thundering in their direction. The tour guide chose to ignore her own advice and run, with Samson and Ibrahim close behind.
“What the fuck?”
While running, Samson had taken a moment to glance over his shoulder and try to get a closer look at the torrent of wood being launched his way. In between the falling logs and tumbling two-by-four’s, he caught occasional glimpses of tiny, furry little animals.
“Are those...big rats?”
“I don’t care what they are, Sam,” Ibrahim shouted. “I want to get the fuck out of here!”
The rumbling torrent of wood kept crawling closer and closer their way -until a crashing sheet of ice rammed into it from the other direction. Samson saw one of the skiing women from earlier suddenly step onto the field and sweep her hands, reshaping the flow of the wave of ice.
“How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood,” she said, sounding far too amused by the turn of phrase, given the disastrous circumstances.
“Apparently the answer is ‘too fucking much’,” Harley said. She looked over her shoulder at Samson and the other fleeing tour groups. “We got this! Keep running!”
Samson didn’t need to be told twice. Though very soon he would be getting told very many things twice. Running didn’t do him much good, as the tidal wave of wood caught up to him. He stuck next to Ibrahim for a sudden and splintery end -and then woke up in his own bed, alive, confused, and alone.
----------------------------------------
Samson narrowed his eyes and stared at the Lamia slithering past.
“Look! It’s happening again, man, just like I said!”
Ibrahim looked at the half-snake woman and shrugged.
“I’m not seeing the punchline yet,” Ibrahim said. “This better be a good fucking gag, Samson.”
“It’s not- Listen to me! Everything is repeating itself!”
He’d gone through the entire twenty-hour ride to the school all over, somehow, after waking up on what appeared to be the same morning. Disbelief had turned to confusion had turned to frustration over time. Twenty hours in transit was actually even more boring the second time, especially since everything happened the exact same way, unless he did something to change it.
“Look at this, there’s about to be an ogre -yep, there he is,” Samson said, gesturing to the ogre crossing their path. “And then we’re going to step out here and there’ll be a lot-”
Samson stopped himself mid-sentence. There would be a lot of booths, including one labeled “Ask us about your deja vu”.
“We need to go.”
The twins cut an even faster course through the crowd this loop, since Samson knew exactly where to go and how to get there. He cut past chess club members and student council leaders and beelined straight for the booth with a robot and a broad-shouldered Maori man sitting at it. He only froze in his tracks long enough to notice that the sign had changed. Now it said “What should you ask us?”. The two residents of the booth carefully eyed Samson as he approached.
“Hi, uh, hello, Samson Onwe,” he said. The robot’s electronic eyes flickered in his direction. “Am I supposed to ask you guys about deja vu?”
Kim made two raised eyebrows of surprise appear on her digital face.
“One second.”
A storage compartment on Kim’s metallic hips opened up, and she withdrew a five dollar bill, handing it over to Hawke.
“Told you it would work,” Hawke said.
“You know what’s going on?”
“We do,” Kim said. “But we can’t explain it just yet. I think you should know we’re waiting on someone.”
“Right. Behind you, yeah?”
At this point, Ibrahim closed the gap and examined the table, and more importantly, the robot lady sitting behind it. Kim examined him right back. She’d actually never met twins before.
“Okay, I get it, these two have been telling you about all the stuff like the snake ladies and the campus stuff,” Ibrahim said. “Can we speed this up now? I really want to get to the joke.”
Hawke and Kim shared a furtive glance with one another before turning it in Samson’s direction.
“Does he not…?”
Samson shrugged.
“Oh, that’s going to complicate things,” Kim said. Her brain buzzed at her for a second, and she once again stopped traffic in the area, clearing the grass behind their booth.
An icy portal snapped open and shut in an instant, depositing a small amount of snow and two point five very graceful snowbirds gliding to a halt. Lee almost managed to make it to a dignified finish, but toppled over and fell into the snow at the last second. Harley slid her skis to a stop and then sat down in the snow next to the fallen Lee as she removed her goggles. Vell, who was on his feet this time, took notice of just how many butterflies came to flock around him, and decided to compartmentalize that until later.
“Told you we’d get it right this time. Most of us, anyway” Harley boasted. Lee sighed heavily as Harley’s eyes caught a person out of place, and she latched on to Ibrahim and Samson. “Well hello new people!”
“New person,” Hawke awkwardly insisted. He pointed at Samson. “Just him.”
Ibrahim didn’t bother trying to hide his offense.
“Oh. Well,” Lee said. “This will be...interesting.”
“Lee, the dramatic pause shit, seriously,” Harley said.
“It’s warranted,” Lee snapped. “Harley, Vell, go take our things and put them in my dorm. I’ll get our new friend started on, well, orientation.”
“Got it, boss,” Harley said. She waved to Samson with one hand and picked up Lee’s discarded gear in the other. “Talk to you later, dude!”
Two-thirds of the skiing trio wandered off, leaving a still highly confused Samson and an even more confused Ibrahim to face off with Lee.
“Right, and you are?”
“Samson.”
“And Ibrahim,” his twin interjected. It sounded like his patience with this “joke” was wearing thin.
“Pleasure to meet you both, Samson, if you’ll come with me, I can answer most of your questions.”
The two twins stood their ground, though Samson did twitch a bit.
“I want to know what’s going on here too,” Ibrahim said. “Is this some kind of hazing thing? Am I being hazed?”
It took a lot of effort for Hawke not to roll his eyes. He’d thought the same thing once upon a time. He almost wished he’d been right.
“No. It’s...well, it’s hard to explain,” Lee said. “It’s just a bit of a randomly selected process, and random chance has turned up Samson! It’s nothing personal, dear, it’s not up to us.”
“Well, listening to you is up to us,” Ibrahim said. “We’re a package deal.”
“Yeah, that’s right,” Samson said. He looked for certainty anywhere he could get it right now, and his twin brother was the most certain thing he knew.
“Well, alright then, I can’t force either of you to do anything,” Lee said. “But, Samson, any explanations you may be wanting to hear right now will have to wait. It’s your choice.”
After delivering that gentle ultimatum, Lee stepped back and joined Hawke and Kim at the booth. Ibrahim stepped away, and though it took a moment, Samson walked away too. He took a few glances over his shoulder, but followed Ibrahim all the way to their tour guide. She sat in the exact same place as last time, and said the exact same things too.
“Ibrahim and Samson Onwe. I have you two down for separate tour groups.”
“Why would we be separate?”
“Maybe it’s just how things are around here,” Samson suggested.
“Well screw that,” Ibrahim said. “We’re a package deal.”
“Come on, it’s just a tour, the island’s not that big,” Samson said. “An hour or two, at most.”
“You’re suspiciously on board with this,” Ibrahim countered.
It was true, but Samson played it off anyway. He didn’t want to ditch his brother, but the weirder things got, the more he felt he had to.
“Fine. But this had better be a really good joke you’re setting up for,” Ibrahim said. He followed the tour guide away while Samson pretended to wait for the next tour group. As soon as Ibrahim rounded the corner, Samson went running back to Lee.