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Stories from the Verse
Multiverser: The Thirteenth Story
Chapter 22: Beam 203
Table of Contents
Previous chapter: Brown 371
It took the autistic maintenance clerk William Shatner a good two minutes first to decide that the fight should occur on Beam’s side of the counter and then to make his way to the swinging gate and ready himself.
“Are you ready now?” Beam asked.
“Yes,” William said. “I’m ready.”
“Then, as they say, en guarde.”
As he said this he raised his claymore to match the position of his opponent’s apparently Styrofoam sword. Bill danced back a bit, and forward again, and then as he swung Beam parried--parried hard with his claymore, hitting the toy sword hard a third of the way from the hilt, snapping its blade, splattering blue paint mostly on Bill, and causing him to lose the now useless handle. “Ouch!” Bill shouted.
“I think maybe I won?” Beam suggested.
“It’s not fair. I wasn’t ready.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry--but I asked whether you were ready, and you said--Bron, what was it Bill said?”
It took Bron a second to realize it was a question, but he answered. “Bill said, ‘Yes, I’m ready.”
“Sophie, is that what you heard?”
“Yes.”
“Dawn?”
“Sir, yes, sir.”
“Ashleigh?”
“It is.”
“It seems, Bill,” Beam continued, “that I have a room full of witnesses who heard you say you were ready.”
“But--but they’re all your friends.”
“Are you impugning their integrity? I might have to challenge you to another duel for that. But as it happens the redhead and the brunette are not really my friends, they’re my wives, and the one with the white hair is my bodyguard.”
“It’s the same thing.”
“If you mean that my wives will say what I tell them to say, you’ve obviously never been married. Admit it, you lost. Or if not, I can keep fighting, and you might just learn what ‘to the death’ really means. Although I should warn you, a claymore is a rather painful way to die.”
Bill blanched. “I--I surrender.”
“Very wise of you. I knew you were more intelligent than the others around here. Now, how do we get outside?”
As to the old stories that have long been here:
