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Stories from the Verse
Multiverser: The Thirteenth Story
Chapter 4: Beam 197
Table of Contents
Previous chapter: Brown 365
Bron held his hammer in his right hand, and pressed his left hand against the door, then hesitated, drew it back and pressed the door again. “This seems a bit foolish to me,” he said, and with a hefty push the door frame splintered and the door swung open. Bits of styrofoam fell on the grass.
“Are we on some sort of movie set, or massive stage production?” Beam wondered aloud. His companions stared at him, none of them knowing what a movie was, other than Turbirb’durpa--Bob--whose telepathic abilities permitted him to pick up the meanings of words from his mind. He glanced at the others and said, “It doesn’t seem real. No one would really build houses or any other buildings out of styrofoam. Even if it was a hundred times stronger than the stuff of my world--well, you can see what happens. Dawn, recon?”
“Sir, yes, sir,” she said, and stepped into the doorway. “Twelve persons,” she reported. “Seven male, five female, all apparently human, no visible threats.”
“Bob?”
No violent intentions, but some confusion and perhaps some fear.
Fear is good, Beam thought, as long as it doesn’t lead to violence. “Well,” he said, “let’s go meet these people and see what we can learn.” He nodded to Dawn and followed her through the door into another styrofoam dome similar to the one they had just exited, but that there were a few styrofoam tables with benches, and the aforementioned dozen inhabitants.
“Greetings,” he said. “I am Emperor James Beam. Can I ask where we are, and who you are?”
Someone off to his left raised a tremulous voice, “How--how did you get in here?”
Looking at the man as if he were an idiot, Beam replied, “Duh. Through the door.”
“But--but that door was barred! You can’t come through that.”
He looked at Bron, who shrugged broadly, then he turned back to the man.
“We were unaware that it was barred.” Not that it would have mattered, he thought, but decided not to say that at this point.
“You didn’t see the black?”
“Black?”
“Black handles mean that the door is locked, and you are not allowed to open it.”
“Oh. Interesting,” he said in a voice that suggested he was not at all interested. “Well, I go where I want to go, and I wanted to go out of there, and that appeared to be the exit, so here I am. Which brings me back to my question: where are we, and who are you?”
The people in the room were notably quiet.
“Bob, are you getting anything?”
Break area. Workers on break.
“Oh, you’re all on a break from work? Got any decent coffee? I’ve wanted a good cup of coffee for a long time now.”
This time it was a woman who spoke. “Coffee is an illegal drug. Where would we get coffee?”
“Really? Where I come from, workers drink coffee on their breaks--in fact, we call them coffee breaks, although sometimes people smoke or eat donuts. But not around here, I guess.”
“Smoke?” another surprised voice said.
Suddenly Beam wanted a cigarette. He still had some in his backpack--but then, with styrofoam everywhere, he was reluctant to be handling fire.
“Yeah, an old custom from before the days of styrofoam. It’s not important. So, where do you all work?”
“Um,” the first speaker said, “here?”
“And here is?”
He was getting nowhere.
Make styrofoam.
“Thank you, Bob. Well, when we’re done here, they might need more of it. Can someone point me to the exit?”
“Exit?”
“How do we get outside?”
“Outside?”
“Great. This isn’t a spaceship, is it?”
“Spaceship?”
“Never mind, I see a door, we’ll find our way.” He started toward a door to his right.
“That door is barred; you can’t go through it.”
“Watch me,” he said, and without slowing down he crashed through the weak styrofoam door with the black handle.
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:
