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Stories from the Verse
Multiverser: The Thirteenth Story
Chapter 3: Brown 365
Table of Contents
Previous chapter: Takano 157
The ground beneath him abruptly leveled out, and Derek Jacob Brown instinctively rolled to his feet and took a defensive stance. However, the villain calling himself Doctor Mordenslice was gone--as was the faulty spaceship, and the pain in his gut where he had just been sliced open. He was standing on open ground outside, but could see a road in the distance, and as he focused his eyes and his mind he realized that there was a very large body of water beyond that, and somewhere on its shores some miles distant an unfamiliar city.
First order of business: find Vashti. He relaxed, closing his eyes, and sensed directions both to her and to their equipment, which he realized must be a very long distance from them. After all, they were in Yellowstone when they versed out, and they had left everything home in Berkeley, Colorado, a city which existed somewhere on the Rio Grande River in the southern edge of that state, probably near a thousand miles away.
They would be walking for a while, he expected.
Right now he started walking in the direction of his wife. She had not, as of their last world, reached the place where she arrived awake, but she would undoubtedly awaken before he managed to find her. Still, she knew what to do, and he wasn’t really worried about her. Thus far he saw nothing dangerous. This would be a few miles, possibly a few hours; he was not at all certain how far she was from where the ship crashed, or even at this point whether he was already dead before it did, but again he expected to be doing some walking.
It struck him that in the last couple worlds they had occasionally communicated telepathically with each other. They didn’t do it often and weren’t very good at it, but if mind powers worked in this world more than just the tiniest bit, he should be able to reach her mind that way. He focused on how to contact her and reached out--but found nothing. Of course, he knew she was out there, or at least, it would be beyond reason for her not to be there and some other verser to have appeared here. She might still be unconscious; he had reason to believe you could only contact someone telepathically if she was awake. On the other hand, there were worlds in which telepathy didn’t work, and of course with any skill there were simple failures--it could be that he had just failed to connect.
His ponderings were interrupted by an out-of-place electronic sound, “Amira to Commander, Amira to Commander, over.”
He had forgotten about the hand-held CB radios Brian Barrelmaster had given them in the last world. They had been carrying them in their pockets when they traveled to Yellowstone to investigate what Mordenslice had been doing, mostly because Brian was uncomfortable with psionics so they couldn’t use telepathy to reach him. Vashti, whose handle was Amira because it was also her title in the world in which they met, had one, and she was using it to call him, by the handle Commander which was his rank in the world to which they then traveled together. He reached into his pocket and drew out the device, pulling up the collapsible antenna to get better reception.
“Commander here; go ahead Amira. Over.”
“Just wanted to hear your voice,” she said. “Um--over?”
“Good to hear you, too.” He paused, then continued. “I don’t guess you know too much about what happened before we left. Over?”
“Brian freed all the dogs then led the Shamblers to the river, and apparently managed to free them also. Tommy and I took out the Blackmask Gang and captured Lady Nightmare, with some help from William Tell, Junior, and Sockajawea was helping us watch her and Sewer Savage when the ship was going down. I managed to catch it with that telekinesis you taught me, but then apparently you versed out and I went with you, so that’s all I know. Oh, Tommy figured out how to push someone’s telepathic illusions out of her mind, and taught me, which helped against Nightmare. She also figured out how to do something she called grounding the psionic energy, and found a way to knock out Nightmare with some kind of mental attack, but she didn’t have a chance to show those to me.”
There was silence for a moment and then she continued, “Oh, yeah--over.”
Derek smiled, and replied. “So, I’m headed toward you. What do you think we should do?” Then it was his turn to almost forget, “Over.”
“Well,” she said, “I’d say we have to go get our property, but that’s both obvious and difficult, given how far we are from it. Over.”
“Right. Well, let’s start with getting us together, then we’ll figure out what to do. Over?”
“Sounds good. Out.”
He then stared at the handheld for a moment, wondering whether he should turn it off to save what might be irreplaceable batteries, or leave it on in case she needed to call him again. He decided on the latter, pocketed the radio, and picked up his pace.
There is a behind-the-writings look at the thoughts, influences, and ideas of this chapter, along with ten other sequential chapters of this novel, in mark Joseph "young" web log entry #538: New Adventures. Given a moment, this link should take you directly to the section relevant to this chapter. It may contain spoilers of upcoming chapters.
As to the old stories that have long been here:
