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Stories from the Verse
Multiverser: The Thirteenth Story
Chapter 43: Beam 210
Table of Contents
Previous chapter: Brown 378
Taking hold of the handle, he pulled the door in. The pressure inside the dome immediately created a breeze blowing outward, but although it was enough that it would blow the door closed were he to release it, it was not a strong breeze. Still, if he wanted to know what the air was like outside he was going to have to step through the doorway and away from it.
He peered through the frame. It was not an inviting landscape--in the foreground the earth was torn up and dry, as if it had been bulldozed a few weeks ago and left in the hot sun, sprouting a few weeds here and there. On the other hand, the sky was blue with only faint wisps of cloud here and there. He stepped forward for a better view.
The ground sloped away from the dome, which he realized made some sense as an anti-flooding precaution, although he saw no signs that it had rained here in quite some time. Down the slope to his left perhaps a mile or so he saw what appeared to be the ruins of a small town, not destroyed but neglected for a very long time, decades, possibly centuries. It was not, however, overgrown; again the lack of water played a significant part. The slope rose again beyond that, topped with a massive conglomeration of Styrofoam domes, which he presumed must look like those from which he had just emerged. To his right there was another, maybe five miles from his position. These were each easily a mile across. Looking ahead between them he could see yet another, beyond them by as much as they were distant from him. In the clear air he could make out still more dome groupings beyond these.
Each of those, it occurred to him, has one of these vibgyors waiting to be deposed. Each is filled with people enslaved by emotion control devices.
That, though, was not his problem. He thought it unlikely that they would be raising armies to come after him.
The outside air was pleasantly warm, and although certainly he was aware that there could be pollutants which one could not detect by smell, to his tobacco-stained respiratory system it seemed fine.
"William?" he called. The response came from behind him, inside the dome,. That's to be expected, he thought. He turned and walked back through the door into the domes.
"We're going to do a bit of construction work here," he said. "I'm putting you in charge; can you handle that?"
"What?"
"You might have to go outside to see what I mean. I want to remove this wall, completely, from where it connects to the domes on either side in a large arch that is at least three times as tall as you, so that the outside air can come in here. You'll also have to shut off the ventilation to this room. Can you do that?"
"I--I don't know, don't know."
He smiled. "I'm sure you can. Get your tools, get people to help you. Tell them that Emperor Beam wants it done. I'm counting on you."
He started walking back across the interior. "O.K., people, we've got to spread the news. Dawn, get us back to where we started."
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 #542: Verser Initiatives. 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:
