A massive tub of gorgeous plastic colored balls, like spherical ripe fruit. They were halo-like in shape, encircling a padded platform with castle-like framing, giving the impression of a tower in a moat of rainbow. On its rounded edge, Cuppy, struck down by foam-padded mace, plopped down into the pool of orbs with a kerplunk.
"Well if this ain't familiar." Cuppy chuckled.
Richie's smug victory was short-lived as he was blindsided by Freyja's swivel cannon shot, turned on him and fastballing the merciless plastic orbs drawn up through circular holes at the bottom of the moat. He bat the incoming ballistics aside, only for his bludgeon to become intertwined with Freyja's, allowing her to dropkick him into the moat. Cuppy, foreseeing the drop, waded a few feet to the side. Richie landed headfirst in the pit, sank up to his waist, legs twitching as he sank as if into quicksand.
"Ahahaha!" Freyja called, twirling her toy mace. "I'm queen of the castle!"
Cuppy smirked and raised his hand, twitching a pinky.
"Huh?" Freyja looked behind her.
The remaining five canons encircling the tower were turned on her, artfully twisted by hidden string.
"You wouldn't dare!" Freyja recoiled.
He would.
The volley sailed Freyja into the moat with the boys. Richie had just emerged, having turned himself upright, and saw the she-wolf about to belly flop onto him.
"Ah!" Richie shrieked as he was sandwiched back below the balls.
Freyja's fall was largely broken, and she chuckled. She and Cuppy 'splashed' each other, until Freyja felt Richie shift beneath the waves and grab her ankles. He asserted a wrestler grip and suplexed Freyja under the balls.
Atop the tower, Cuppet sat with his legs dangling over the edge. It was good to be king.
The kids raced through tunnels and ascended platforms, breaking off from and intersecting each other at random. Freyja found herself moving through a tilted hallway of bop bags painted like bloated suits of armor, while Richie slipped and penguin-slid down a red slide that formed the tongue of a huge green dragon figurehead. He stopped suddenly as he felt his own dragons begin to glow faintly. He peered through a tear in the protective mesh netting surrounding the upper platforms of the indoor playground, and saw an Escher-like stairwell composed of warped foam landings below. Another glimpse into the elusive Backyards. His mind harkened back to another piece of advice Holly had gifted them, when they'd set up the TV.
-
"What's that?" Cuppy asked, pointing to the screen.
A symbol was zigzagging back and forth against a field of black, bouncing back every time it hit the edges or corners of the screen.
"It's the DVD menu." Holly said. "You get this screen when it's waiting for you to put a disc in."
Freyja's ears twitched and she sniffed the screen, transfixed by the ricocheting emblem.
Holly noticed Freyja's protracted stare, and insulted what she was thinking.
"The corridors." Holly said. "Apart from the one stapled to our backyard, they drift freely, in and out of existence. But as I was able to surmise during my time with the Institute, under the smokescreen of the ether for leaks, the corridors are heavily concentrated in this city, among a few other localized hotspots. The borders of Station Bay could be like the edge of the TV screen, and the corridors themselves like that symbol. I need more data to prove it, but I suspect the corridors ate only random because we've been glimpsing them piecemeal. Spread over a larger area, they may have certain ranges. Maybe it's more apt to compare them to the central ocean currents that circumnavigate the planet. Certain stretches of the city may be graced with apertures into the Backyards routinely, if only we can find the pattern. Keep your eyes peeled, and make note of if, when, and where you see them."
Her face became grim. "And of course - be careful."
Chikita was staring at the symbol too. "I want to fight it." she said, narrowing her eyes.
-
Richie could see in, so other things could also see out. That was how it had been from the start.
The sewer, the parks, and now one of these casinos - the glimpses of the continued dream-world beyond earthly reality were becoming less and less fleeting. And as for the Backyards within their backyard, at least twice now Richie had emerged in the junkyard. Did the stretches of the Backyards have designated exit points, or did they drift and ricochet just like the entrances? Was it like a big ball of yarn, with distinct beginnings and ends, but a whole tangled mess of nonsense within?
…more importantly…
"There!" Richie realized - he had seen an open corridor again, since his miserable failure back home! He lunged forward, forcing his body through the ripped net, ripping it wider - and then fell to the ground below, belly flopping onto a thankfully padded lower platform. His heightened awareness of the corridor, and of seeing the corridor staunched his efforts. His dragon glow faded.
"Fiddlesticks." Richie grumbled.
Oh well. They had shit to do; more games to fleece, and more amusements to explore!
-
Tall towers of chiseled marble, held by rounded pillars, rose above the halo of sea at their feet. The water casino was encircled by a great semi-submerged coral reef whose branches rose high, great strands of kelp tangled about them and tressling the towers. The aquatic filaments looked like great, goopy green chains, as like those that connected the drawbridge at the last casino. Holographic screen displays curled around the towers, schools of fish swimming across the tapestry, and the dark blue glow bathing the building in the look of an ancient ruin that had spent eons beneath sea, sinking into the shifting seabed and being reclaimed by the ocean floor ecosystem. An exquisitely painted fourteen foot statue of King Triton stood sentry at the door, and the base of the casino/aquarium was lined with a flowing trough of water - a special fountain on periodic timer, which shot great geysers into the air, painting misty rainbows across the sunken kingdom. Richie whistled at Triton's golden trident.
The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
Inside, they filed into the lines heading through softly-lit turnstile gates swimming with that same blue color. Soon they were passing through a reinforced glass tunnel, subtly curved so that it was hard to tell there was anything between them and open ocean. The bay floor was a shifting bed of sand and mud from which huge forests of kelp and seaweed floated up, and which moss-covered rocks and coral configurations divided and sloped across. A rocky formation like a shuttle loop stood in the distance, and a school of bright coastal fish swam through. Little crabs and shrimp scuttled through the sea silt, and Cuppy squared down to get a closer look at them, tapping the glass. Richie cooed at the majesty around them, realizing they must be sixty feet or so deep. How many thousands of gallons did this aquarium hold? Freyja smiled, remembering her foray into the underside of the harbor, and her play with the dolphin. Sea anemones that looked like fleshy puckering plants and fungi squished in and out, tendrils and feelers swaying in the light currents. A few sharks swam overhead, casting the trio in their dinner torpedo-like shadows.
In the rooms beyond, they looked at various tanks containing denizens of the shallows, the drop off, the open ocean, and even the abyssal ocean. Cuppy felt something strange as he looked at a female anglerfish, her lure the only speck of light in an artificially darkened environment. The critter looked like a toothy swimming prune. But that word - abyssal - it gave Cuppy pause, and he scratched his chin. Freyja circled a cylindrical tank that bridged floor and ceiling like a load-bearing column. Swarms of little fish, the kind who looked like they sat near the bottom of the food chain, swam in an endless circle within. Other tanks contained different kinds of jellyfish, whose vibrant colors seemed especially alien in contrast to the dark mood lighting. Some were dark blue or turquoise, some were pink. Richie sat like a little kid at the corner of a broad window tank set into the wall, part of the same habitat the undersea tunnel had passed through. A decades-old sawtooth shark sat on his belly in the sand, gills flaring periodically. He was easily sixteen feet long from tail to serrated snoot. His eyes looked world weary and irritable. Richie knocked on the glass and waved. The sawshark's eyes rolled over to him, and it blinked, as if to say "Ok, now what? This was your idea."
"Wouldn't it be neat," Freyja smirked mischievously, "if the glass cracked, and all that seawater came rushing in?"
Richie pictured a tidal wave in wait, separated from them only by a few inches of glass ready to give way.
"Fuck that!" he barked. He could only imagine how the tons of ocean would flood in and drown them like rats.
Cuppy pictured himself doing the breaststroke amidst the fish, wearing a snorkel and flippers. He smiled vacantly. At an adjoining room with a children's play area and some interactive plaques that narrated facts about different ocean biomes and sea life, they found simulated tidal pools, open to exploration with their hands. Richie felt refreshed as his hands went up to the wrists in the shallow open tank and buried themselves in the sand. Freyja poked at a bumpy purple starfish, initiating its wheel-like run cycle as it scampered off. Cuppy poked and groped a sea cucumber.
"Ooh, squishy!" he chirped.
"Ow!" Richie yanked his hand out of the sand. A crab had clamped its claws around his finger. Waving its other arm aggressively at him, it detached its grip, making a little kerplunk back into the exhibit, and scuttled off behind a rock.
"Who the fuck thought it was a good idea to put crabs in the petting zoo?!" Richie growled.
At a nearby tank, Cuppy appeared to be communicating with a small octopus via trial and error. Richie stumbled into their conversation as Cuppy was nodding.
"Good point." Cuppy agreed with the cephalopod.
"Going native?" Richie asked, nursing his bruised and indented finger.
"Squiggles was giving me his perspective on the stock market." Cuppy said.
"...uh huh." Richie said.
"No, really. He understands the concept of currency, we went over it with some shells and pebbles. Also played tic tac toe." Cuppy pointed to a completed game. He was the X. It seemed natural to let the octopus take O.
"Here!" Cuppy gave Richie the drawing stick to part the sand.
"Ok." Richie said, eyes narrowed. He created a new grid and made his move.
Squiggles won.
"What the - are you puppeting it?!" Richie asked.
"No strings on me." Cuppy flexed his fingers, inviting Richie to search him. He cracked a smile, then started cracking up. "Hehe, Richie's dumber than an invertebrate!"
"Shut up!" Richie clenched a fist, breaking the drawing stick.
"Well, we already knew that." Freyja pat Richie's shoulder. She leaned her ear to the glass. "Uh huh. I see." She regarded the boys. "He says humans are really easy to turn on each other. It tickles him."
Richie glared at the octopus. "I will make fucking dumplings out of you!"
Cuppy cocked his head. "You can talk to animals now?"
Freyja's ears perked up. "Huh. I guess I can. Should try it with the backwater hick cat when we get back home."
Next was the stingray tank, also waist-high and open to anyone who wanted to pet the flat gliders.
"Sea flap flaps." Cuppy smiled.
"These are pancakes." Freyja said.
Richie made an odd squeak as he felt the slimy yet satisfying texture slide past the underside of his fingers. His smile grew wider. All this shit had been out there in the world, waiting for him, during all that time he had been cooped up at home, for fear of being hunted down. If only he had found the strength he possessed now back then, he could have fought back, could have saved his mother. Why was it that Dragon Sign was only awakened when it was already too late?
A few teardrops fell into the tank. Freyja's ears twitched at the sound of the ripple.
"Huh?" Richie froze up, feeling Freyja nuzzle his arm.
"I'm ok." he smiled, playfully shoving her. "Just wondering what could have been. But it's alright. We don't have to wonder anymore. We'll chart our own course from here on out. Together." he smiled.
Where did Cuppy go?
They found him at one of the tanks, sitting on an artificial shore built into the back wall, his feet dipped up to the ankles in the pool, his fishing line bobbing in the water.
"Cuppy no!" Richie pulled his hair.
-
The game floor here was dark blue like the aquarium lighting, the slot and video poker machines all aquatic, fish, or Atlantis themed.
"Think if we fed Cuppy some computer parts or something, his wires might be able to hack the games or predict the moves?" Richie asked Freyja.
Cuppet popped out of the backpack and glared at them, "My brother is not your science experiment!" written over his carved face. They skipped the mermaid floor show and dove into the indoor water park. It was a labyrinth of lazy rivers and wave pools interconnected by artificial islands and bridges with tiki-themed rum and punch bars, and surf & turf grills. Massive enclosed water slides coiled around each other like sea snakes from platforms dozens of meters tall. A trio of diving boards rose progressively higher at the east corner, with the highest board being akin to an Olympic diving platform. The crotch-grabbing snare of wet swim trunk mesh, the pressure of chlorinated water stuck in his ears, and the stomach-dropping rushes seemed strangely familiar to Richie, but he couldn't place it.
More Deja Reve in motion.
The three of them floated down a lazy river, each in an inner tube, and reclining on their backs, gazes upward to the domed ceiling, painted blue and decorated with a hanging tapestry of fish sculptures.
This is the life. Richie breathed a sigh of contentment and closed his eyes, drifting freely.
-
Chikita sat on the sloped apartment roof, smoking her pipe and looking wistfully in the direction of Carnival Top.
"They're having fun over there while we do all the work." she grumbled to no one in particular.
Within the unit, Holly poured over the Institute's archives and database through her hacked window.
Tracer production has dropped significantly. Strange. It's not like the Director to ease off the gas like this. Is he conserving his resources? For what? If he's biding his time and risking more anomalies slipping in, what exactly is he expecting to go up against?
She bit her lip.
She didn't like this. It was too quiet.
-