Reading Sample

Chapter 1

There are rules for a new world. Peek out of the trash can and watch for anything odd. People that walk with a limp and look dead, dragons, lizardfolk that hide in the shadows. Or in the most dangerous worlds, the little girl with the bottomless black eyes that won’t stop staring at you when all life around her is gone.

This world smells like burning metal and feels a little warm to the touch. That’s a bad sign. The first peek shows an orange sky like we’re in the middle of a forest fire. The second peek shows a typical empty alley with a ton of full trash receptacles. Another bad sign was no one had picked up trash in a while. No dragons or lizard people, check. Hot air blew in like a windy summer day, odd because it’s early spring. The hot wind doesn’t help with the sour tang and sickly-sweet smell of trash.

People scream in the distance. That’s a no-go.

“Nobuyuki, be careful. It’s on fire.” A white flash of supernatural fur flew up my back and out. They disappear over the high-rise building within seconds.

Nobuyuki is my companion on this journey. They get all the pronouns depending on mood and form, and knows what to do in new worlds because we have a system worked out. One that we don’t always remember or follow.

Nobuyuki is a beautiful, white three-tailed fox. Fox as in the animal, three-tailed as in something from folklore. A talking multi-dimensional fox, and only a fox part-time. When I get lazy and shorten their name to Yuki, the Japanese word for snow, they get mad. But we’re all a little mad down here. We float on a multidimensional current into lands of the unknown.

There’s too much smoke, that’s a no-go. I shut the lid and I wait in the confines of my sixth-dimensional space. My weird interdimensional pocket where eternity projects like a map of the universe staked on top of an infinite number of clear maps that rotate in and out of sight. Of which, I have no control where it goes.

In the void, I must be careful while waiting on Nobuyuki. If I stare at a point too long, my interdimensional space moves and I lose Nobuyuki. I close my eyes and my mind and wait for the thump. There are gaps in my memory. Sometimes I remember the last couple months, sometimes I can’t remember the day before. Nobuyuki calls it brain trauma and my memories will come back in time.

Thump. Nobuyuki slips in and we go over our checklist in the dark.

“Are people on the street?” I ask.

“Yes, but not many. Something terrible is happening.” Their tinny voice sounds like someone pushed the treble up on the stereo.

“Military?”

“No, but police cars with lights flashing. No military,” Nobuyuki answers.

“Screaming?”

There is a sigh in the multiverse dark. “No one is screaming at the moment, but everyone’s tense.” Someone screams off in the distance.

“Authoritarian statues or flags?”

“Joe.” The voice is suddenly older. Nobuyuki takes the old man form. They tire of the constant questions and it’s the only voice I listen to. “No strange statues that seem too big or flags. No lizard people, dragons, or floating ancients.”

“Good, I don’t want to repeat any of that.” I take a deep breath. “We failed some checks. What’s with the orange sky?”

“Wildfires to the east of the city. They look bad. Are you ready, Joe?”

“Is it dangerous?” I ask. We’ve been in the void for too long, the last worlds were trash and we didn’t stay. We’ve traveled a long way and this is a rest stop, but it’s a rest stop with no lights and a large windowless van idling nearby. The wanderlust has set in and we need to stretch our legs, as long as death isn’t immediate. There is silence in the void and the old man knows I hate it. “Fine. Check the alley.”

Nobuyuki passes me and out the top.

“There is no one looking,” Nobuyuki says.

Air always smells different. The atmosphere tingles and crawls up my skin. It’s like walking into someone’s home for the first time, no one else understands the scent or the feel, but the newcomer. Nobuyuki calls it “dimensional shift” and you just need to let the dimension settle in around you and take you in. The old man hasn’t mentioned dimensional rejection…yet.

Burning metal is a smell you don’t forget and smoke seems everywhere. I take another deep breath of new dimension air and do my best to gracefully step out of the trash receptacle. Sometimes it’s easy. Sometimes I knock over the entire thing.

“Joe?” I turn to see a bald Japanese man in his seventies standing in traditional Japanese robes. I misstep and fall. It elicits a laugh as I pick myself off the warm pavement.

“That’s odd, pavement’s hot like it’s summer.” I look up at the building next to us.

Memories come in bursts then fall apart like trying to grab smoke.

“Where are we?”

“Fort Wayne, Indiana, you idiot. Apparently not a good version of it,” the old man replies. “But I’m cooped up and want to explore.”

“No immediate danger?”

He walks down the alley with the grace of a trained Aikido master. I look homeless. When Nobuyuki transforms every hair is in place and the illusion is flawless. I looked stained. I haven’t showered in a long time, my beard is long, and I don’t own a comb. Sometimes it’s handy because Nobuyuki gets all the attention either like this or in a young girl’s form. I’m invisible and okay with that. At least this time, I’m not covered in blood.

The old man pauses. “Let’s see what’s going on before we rush to the next place.”

People are out and panicked. You see someone staring down death a few times and it’s easy to figure out.

“This is a bad place, Nobuyuki.”

The old man stops before me and nods to the east. “Look.”

Through the wildfire’s smoke, large, loose mountains of rock rise above the horizon. Something in my head stammers it’s the moon. It scrapes the atmosphere trailing burning moondust. I’m in the middle of a boiling tea kettle with a 747 flying mere feet overhead. That elevator big drop feeling hits my stomach, not down but sideways in a fierce tidal pull.

It roars across the sky as the storm sirens blare. People scream too and it all blends together in an overwhelming squelch. The panic-stricken bolt through the street all head to a similar place. I grab Nobuyuki in the chaos and drag him with the flood of humanity. Booms constantly thunder throughout the atmosphere as moondust and rocks enter the atmosphere.

“We should head back,” Nobuyuki says.

I’m a panicked lemming in the surge. Nobuyuki separates from me. The shattered moon’s orbit takes up the sky and eclipses daylight. The large rocks closest to Earth melt as it scrapes the upper atmosphere. There’s the sound and heat of sizzling fajitas along with the smell that it cooked too long. It burns my throat. I stop and stare as people surge around me. Moon bits, satellites, and space stations decelerate and explode like meteorites. The moon’s a gigantic plow taking everything out in its path.

The stream of humanity crushes and forces me forward. Fireballs rocket overhead, emitting thundering sonic booms that punch the guts and shake the ground. Glass is raining down all around us from the tall buildings. A smoking chunk of metal lands not far from me. A Soviet-era flag stares out from the atmospheric soot. I stop and gawk, but can’t stop with the sea of humanity behind me.

The masses rush into a squat parking structure as something explodes nearby. People are talking about the news. Tsunamis which swamped out the Eastern Seaboard months ago are moving farther inland. Something called the Roche Limit is tossed around like its meaning should be known.

People talk about running and the discussion shuts down when they talk about where. This is the End of Days. Or from the moon’s last pass, the End of Day.

There are familiar faces in the shelter. Familiar like you waved at someone, then when you get close, you realize it’s not them. Subtle changes, the guard’s name and nationality are different. Maybe he changed to blond and added or subtracted fifty pounds. One in the crowd always draws my attention. I always find Rebecca. She’s a familiar: a person in the multiverses that appears roughly the same. She’s been a waitress, a police officer, lizard cult leader, military captain, and lover. Nobuyuki says it happens from time to time in a nexus. The multiverse plains are close enough together that some people just don’t change much.