As before, paragraphs in blue are my own and the ones in black belong to my fellow author, the blogger known as akh who writes
http://akh-wonderfullife.blogspot.co.uk/
The story continues:-
Tesla’s machines hummed in unison as the final few bottles were fitted into the arrangements. Two towers, two arrangements, two machines, twice the power – even Tesla didn’t know just what that might mean in terms of potential for destruction. “If there is anything more than the universe beyond and out there it had better watch out.” Tesla mumbled as he jockeyed with the switches and levers of the control panel which phased in and out between his original mahogany and the super-glossed plastic lacquer of Lee’s modern copy. The hum grew to a whine, higher and higher until it disappeared into a tone that couldn’t be heard but could be felt in the electricity of the air around him. He had to channel this power somewhere, now it was set in motion it had to have an end. Double the power… double the power… it bothered Tesla to be the man who had created all this energy. He began to wonder if he’d been foolish, perhaps a little arrogant even… well a lot arrogant actually. After all, if there was a supreme being not even he, she, or it had been able to generate the amount of power that Tesla was generating at this moment - and the power continued to grow with each passing moment. The atomic bomb? No, not even a million atomic bombs. The explosion of a star? Not even the explosion of a million stars. Tesla began to sweat… what if the power just grew and grew? What if it had no limit? What then? What then? What then? The sun beat down above Tesla’s head, the dusty street empty save for the tumbleweeds which blew along the street despite there being not a breath of a breeze. Arrogant? Yes arrogant. The light above was sharp, like it had been reflected through a crystal lens then distilled through a substance so clear as to be almost invisible. Tesla could almost taste the light. No, not almost, Tesla could actually taste the light on his tongue – bitter and sweet. He could feel it - cold and warm, hard and brittle. Hear it - high and piercing, a million musical chimes in a single extended note. Feel it - sharp like a trillion needles piercing his body as it expanded into the light, blinding him with its brilliance, filling him with its energy. The ground around him shook and buckled as the buildings either side of the street seemed to tear themselves apart and then rebuild themselves once more, morphing through a thousand changes in a second, not changing at all. Now a saloon, now a church, now a sailing ship, a starship, a canyon, a star, a rocking chair, a wooden horse, an empty space, a flower, a saloon on an empty street with seven brightly hued mice rushing at him as if he were a piece of cheese set in a trap. That was it! He was a trap! He had been all along. From the moment of his conception he had been a trap… THE trap. Remembering now, his father and mother had never talked about it but somehow he had always known. There had been something in the looks that passed between them, something in the way they didn’t quite touch, didn’t quite smile, didn’t quite cry, didn’t quite exist… they were part of the trap too. The ground around him began to shake again, the buildings either side of the street seemed to tear themselves apart for a second time and then rebuild themselves once more, morphing through a million tiny changes in a fraction of a second and not changing at all. A trap - now a saloon, now a skyscraper, now a stagecoach. A trap – now a car, a generator, a schoolhouse, a steam ship. A trap – now a wooden tower, a coffin, a saloon. A trap – his mother and father, the town where he was born, his life, his work, his very being… a trap. Tesla recognized his own life in the changes taking place around him, the life that had never been, the ripping boards and scattering shingles, the real but not real, the memories but not memories, the life but not life… a trap. Tesla was the trap. He broke, the mice hitting him at the ankles, scurrying up his body and onto his face. Two went in through his mouth, one in each eye, one in each nostril, and the seventh, a stream of purple pulsating light, entered through the tiny hole in front of his left eardrum. He could feel their light inside him, merging with the power of the towers, becoming one with the power that was he, the light that was he, the trap that was he. He was the beginning, he was the end, the big bang, exploding outwards, imploding inwards. He was the light and it was almost time for the final darkness to fall. The saloon doors creaked open and the light that was Tesla felt them as they almost fell through and into the blinding glare of the street. Frankie and Tamara were carrying, almost dragging, Max between them, Max a battered, tattered figure, his broken wings dangling behind him. Tamara looked haggard, diminished somehow, older that before and Frankie had lost his hat. They stopped dead in their tracks on the steps when they saw him. Out in the middle of Main Street stood the thing that had once been Tesla and was now a six foot tube of brightness, a pillar of light that reached up into the sky, disappearing into the clouds above them. Tesla chuckled, the final trap was about to be sprung. “I am the light” he shouted as Tamara strained her diamond-encrusted ears. Damn those mice, damn Frankie, but most of all damn that damn, damned Max. Far in the distance the drumming of hooves… and they were getting louder by the moment.
Interlude (sort of): It is a little known fact that when Beethoven was composing the last and greatest of his symphonies, a room very close by to his was rented by Frankie, who was, at that stage still learning how best to control both his powers and his temper, and had decided to hide just a few decades back in time from some trouble he had caused in the Jazz Age. Rather sadly for Frankie, if not the rest of Beethoven’s neighbours, the notes of that burgeoning masterwork used to drift across the night air and they would torment Frankie as he tried his best to introduce the world to jazz a hundred years before it was really ready for it. As the harmonic chords of a style of music to which he was never attuned pummeled at his eardrums, Frankie swore that he would reshape the history of music so that nobody’s ears would ever have to – as he saw it - endure the wonderment of “Ode to Joy” in any form at all. Of course, what Frankie failed to realise at that point in his miserable existence was that there are certain gifts that are given to the world that you really cannot mess with, no matter how hard you try, and Beethoven’s Ninth was just such a gift. No matter how hard he tried to reshape Beethoven’s work into a little number which Frankie liked to call “I am become death, the destroyer of worlds…” those familiar rhythms and chords would sing across the night sky and prevent him from getting any rest. Even when he took the time to drum his own beats upon the walls and doors of his own humble dwelling, hoping that the dissonant vibrations would penetrate the dreams of the maestro and somehow inveigle themselves into the movements in some small way, become in some way “catchy” to him, and perhaps inspire Ludwig to take his work in some other direction, somehow the composer managed to reform them and reshape them back into something rather wonderful, and even Frankie’s last-gasp attempt to lock the tune of “Pennsylvania 6-5000” into the mind of the aging genius still failed to make any difference whatsoever, even though Frankie found that he was humming it to himself for days afterwards and getting some peculiar looks as he ordered his morning strudel. This was especially annoying as there were no telephone exchanges yet and Pennsylvania was so far away that any of his explanations really didn’t make a lot of sense and he was reduced to feeling rather like the village idiot whenever he tried to explain that things were very different over in the new world, and that people just didn’t understand how sophisticated he was by having been there. Instead they just looked upon him as the wild dreamer they thought he was and, if ever he thought about it rationally, he couldn’t really blame them. After all, he did rather resemble a pauper in those days (it was a fashion choice he was making, he convinced himself) and very few of the people around him had ventured far beyond the walls of the city in their entire lifetimes, so his claims of venturing to places so very far away did rather seem like the pipe dreams of a fantasist. In later times, certain psychoanalysts would attempt to see this period of his life as being somehow “significant” in shaping his future self, but few of them lived long enough to resolve any issues he might have had once they had suggested that his time spent in Vienna was merely a mental construct and he couldn’t possibly have been old enough to actually have been there at the time. Sometimes they even had the audacity to claim that he had a “Napoleon Complex” which was not only ludicrous, but quite chronologically impossible no matter how much you tried to reshape things. If anything, he had a “Beethoven Complex”, but not in the sense that he wanted to be him, but only in the sense that he wanted to obliterate him, or at least his reputation. For a while he tried walking the streets of Vienna taking the great man’s form and trying to sully his name but enough people really knew what he looked like for that not to work, as he only had in idea of the younger man to work from and so he got the appearance slightly wrong. Some might have thought that he was Beethoven’s slightly dimmer little brother, or perhaps an unrecognised bastard son of a whore (which Frankie indeed was in many ways) but few mistook him for the real deal, especially when those tunes were still drifting from the maestro’s window all of the time, and there were not yet recording devices to explain how he might be in two places at once. Even when he bellowed “I’m Ludwig Van Beethoven!” through the windows of the many whorehouses and taverns he frequented, they just laughed in his face and claimed to be Mozart, after which a fight would break out and his antics would be forgotten and he would return to his hovel only to hear “that infernal racket” (as he put it) plinking its way out into the evening air. It is, of course, a well-known fact that Beethoven was profoundly deaf for all of that time and so remained happily oblivious to all of what was going on, and still managed to create his sublime “Pastoral Symphony” during this time despite all of Frankie’s best efforts, and eventually Frankie left Vienna in a bit of a sulk, but not before taking his revenge upon one or two of the people he met whilst he was living there, not least on some of the brothel-keepers and the innkeepers. Sadly, for Frankie at least, one of the people he could never take his revenge upon was Beethoven himself, because he never managed to get himself an audience with the noted (but impoverished) local celebrity, because his friends were very protective of the old man. It is with some irony then that, as the horses hooves beat out their infernal racket as they approached, the tune that ironically burst into his brain and refused to shift itself was Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy”. The supreme beings might very well be all-powerful, but some of them do, at least, retain a sense of humour.
You can catch lightning in a bottle, you know, just as you can put the genie back into one. Lee knew this because, with Tesla’s help admittedly, and although he hadn’t known it at the time, he had managed to do so. Ultimately it’s not about what you do, or how you do it, although sometimes it’s not about how you do it, but what it is you do. The universe is a fluid place and, despite what many of the humans choose to believe, not everything is predetermined. Humans were funny like that. They had a nasty little habit of constructing prisons of belief for themselves and then punishing each other if anyone deigned to question those beliefs. Sometimes doing the right thing needs to be done because it simply is the right thing to do, even if it seems like it might be the wrong thing to be doing at the time. Sometimes it makes little difference no matter what you do, and sometimes doing the “right” thing only makes things worse. This was always the problem with the mortals, they’d go off deciding to be somehow “heroic” and making the “ultimate sacrifice” and they wouldn’t be around to see (or suffer) the consequences. There’d be much wailing and gnashing of teeth, a certain amount of lamentation and woe and things would continue to unfold despite everything. Sometimes the sacrifice would change things for the better, sometimes things just got worse, but usually things just unfolded the way they were going to anyway and the fallen hero either got forgotten or lauded depending on how things turned out eventually. The humans seldom asked themselves whether a fallen king was any less noble for having fallen at the wrong moment for history to be rewritten around his falling, and the fallen king himself was not ever around to see how history judged him. Would they praise his successes or forget them in their condemnation? He himself would never know, but whether the battle was won or the battle lost generally determined quite how much worth was placed upon the wisdom or otherwise of having had the battle at all. Such was the crucible of history; the cards fell where they may and the survivors and their descendants learned to live with the consequences and left time sort out the rights and wrongs of it all in due course. Most of the time it worked perfectly well (unless it didn’t for you personally) but occasionally, someone or something would come along and decide that they were far too important to be allowed to burn in the fires of time and they were not going to just lie back and accept it. This usually meant big rewards for the person who could facilitate such an outcome but generally also meant big trouble for everyone else, especially those whose job it was to keep the flow of time in some sort of recognisable balance and make sure that the right dictator, for example, got attached to the right lamp-post by the right part of his anatomy at precisely the correct moment to keep everything in check, or that the proper service revolver turned up in just the right drawer and loaded with exactly the requisite number of projectiles to get the job done to history’s satisfaction. When someone decided not to play the game, and wanted to somehow “cheat” death, all sorts of repercussions would ensue and the unwilling and unwitting pawns in the great game, like Max and Tamara and Frankie, would have to be sent out to unravel the cat’s cradle of entangled and intertwined realities and try to weave them back into their proper narrative form. This could be very hard work and involve trying to make sense of a huge quantity of potential outcomes but, in the end, the normal tapestry could be rewoven around the remaining fixed reality points as indicated by the cats and pretty much everyone who should would be able to walk away happy enough at the outcome. Of course it did help if the would-be immortal could be pointed in the direction of Death himself to make the arrangements to “cheat” death because in that way, death was still holding all of the cards and could have a bit of fun with the poor wretch before the inevitable came. Work on a great machine, perhaps, or incarcerate segments of his being in various vessels which could “only be brought together in the times of direst need” and so forth. Somehow that appealed to the ego of the genius in question and, nine times out of ten, they’d go along with it which meant that you could put them happily into their boxes and they would contentedly sit out eternity waiting for death (in whatever disguise he happened to be wearing, although he did favour certain personalities) to “get back to him”. They’d once had terribly trouble with that bloke who drew mice until they’d managed to persuade him to have himself frozen. After that he’d been perfectly content to go into his cylinder and the riders had had days of fun playing “Spin the Cartoonist” after that. Occasionally, and usually due to the less than benign intentions of the “cock-up” theory of history, a resurrection would occur. This was usually because one or more “conspiracy theorists” had got it into their heads that some sort of “ultimate power” was to be had if you got hold of the various bits of the puzzle the riders had devised. Sometimes this was simply because they’d had one too many Tequilas at the time of working it out and it hadn’t ended up being “fiendishly clever” enough to fool even the most average children’s television presenter, which usually meant trouble somewhere along the line. Ah well, the hounds had been released and all of the intersecting lines had finally been straightened out and had been clearly pointing towards that one small saloon in the middle of Nowheresville. Death shrugged, and somewhere a sparrow fell out of a tree. He would miss being Lee, of course, but there was always someone new whom he could be when the next idiot got delusions of grandeur. In the meanwhile, however, there were still some genii to pickle…
So it was the final showdown at last. In the red corner Tesla; transformed into his own death ray, consumed or consuming of the seven sisters, able to halt everything and wipe the universe as if it had never been. In the blue corner The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse; or at least a semblance of them mustered from a trio of old failed gods and a Chinese noodle chef. Max shook his sorry head in disbelief. How had it come to this? When he’d first set out on this little journey back on that ship he’d thought that the toughest times were over for him. He thought back, remembering his relief and the sounds of the party, the disagreement over what music to play, the way he’d chuckled when he’d heard those sounds. How long ago now? Weeks? Months? Years? What did it matter? When you are timeless, time has little impact. When you could slip between times at the flip of a whim what did any event matter? All things were stoppable; you just had to be careful how you went about it. All this paradox nonsense was just that – nonsense. Well it was if you hadn’t been born, couldn’t die; after all, you couldn’t accidentally kill you grandfather if you’d never had one. Did it really have to come down to him again, because if it came back to him what had it all been about? There had to be something for him in all this, some great revelation which would at any moment strike him like a god-flung thunderbolt. There had to be some meaning, a lesson, something important – he couldn’t spend eternity clearing up other people’s messes like some celestial road-sweeper. Besides, he wasn’t the only immortal who could make the alterations, mend the rip and make good the tear in the fabric; to use just a few science-fiction clichés. Frankie could do it. Tamara too; even those three stooges on pantomime horseback – Artist, Assassin and Trader – could manage it - after all they were all immortal weren’t they? Somewhere in Max’s mind a cog moved and suddenly he got it. If Max could have died at that very moment then he gladly would have. No, it couldn’t be, it couldn’t possibly be. But of course it could. That old adage ‘nothing is impossible’ wasn’t simply an adage at all - it was an absolute truth. Everything that seemed impossible was possible somewhere, actual in some parts of the universes. You see, that was the thing with infinity – infinity held infinite possibilities which meant that maybe he WAS the only one. Max groaned. How could he not have known? Worse still, how could he not have suspected? All those years playing second fiddle to Trader and all the time Max had really been first fiddle. Actually scrub first fiddle, Max was the whole bloody orchestra and then some. Slowly the realisation began to sink in… but surely he’d have known, had some inkling, at least a few memories. After all, you couldn’t create the universe with at least having some idea that you’d done it. Max searched his mind for some recollection of the beginning; a bang, the light, a whirling planet or two – maybe even Adam and Eve with her apple… nothing, absolutely nothing. Maybe it wasn’t him. But he knew it was. Max accepted the mantle of Supreme Being as if he’d always worn it - which of course he had. Just why he hadn’t known or didn’t remember, wasn’t important; it made no difference to the reality. Max was the Creator, God, The Supreme Being. He hung his head and shook it – no, he didn’t want it, but it had to be someone and he was just as good or bad a candidate as anyone else. At least he knew now why Trader had always been trying to improve the colour scheme of the universe; it hadn’t been his at all, and now that Max took time to think about it he thought that he’d done a pretty good job in the first place. This wasn’t the time for self-congratulatory slaps on the back though. Tesla, or whatever it was that Tesla had become, was still in the centre of the street threatening too implode the universe and the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, despite their somewhat comic-book camp appearance were here to try to stop him. Either way the result was likely to be the same: the end of everything and that would leave Max totally alone. In some ways this fact appealed to Max, but in others he dreaded it. Just how long before he could create another cast of characters to distract himself from remembering what and who he was. Yes, it was all coming back now, and what Max mostly remembered was the loneliness before the beginning and the waiting for something to happen after the beginning had begun. Yes, everything and everyone and everywhere might be no more than his wild imaginings, but they seemed solid enough and without them Max wondered just what he would become? He’d built this reality out of the stuff of his mind. Father of Creation? Well, I guess you might say that - certainly Max was someone with a vivid imagination if nothing else. Down the street the Four Horses of the Apocalypse stamped their feet and in a shower of sparks began to gallop towards the Tesla tower of energy. It was time for Max to do something, step in and take charge. The thing was, Max didn’t really know what it was he was meant to be doing. Supreme or not, he didn’t seem to have all the answers after all…
“Here Kitty, Kitty…!” Deirdre steadied herself against the bulkhead. “Nice Kitty…!” She stumbled again and had to put a hand against the cold steel of the wall as the space around her shifted. There was, it seemed to her, quite a swell building up this evening. She looked around again, wondering where that cat had got itself to, and wondering again quite where it had come from and how on earth it had got itself aboard. It seemed to be such a calm beast, on the whole, but seeing as they were notoriously averse to water, its presence on board seemed unusual at the very least. Perhaps, she wondered, it had been brought aboard to catch rats, but it had seemed far too refined to be just a rat-catcher, and when she’d asked around, no one would even admit to having seen the thing. Still, a cat was a cat was a cat, and even a cat as refined as this one was likely to work up a thirst every once in a while. She paused to steady herself again, leaning for a moment against the metal wall and sensing the lethal sea-water just inches away on the other side of it which was, she imagined, what was causing the condensation that made it wet to the touch. At least she hoped that’s what it was that was causing the rivulets of icy water to run down its surface, otherwise they were all in trouble, and even the cat might just end up getting its feet wet. Leaning her forehead against the wall, the coolness and the water did at least help with her headache, brought on, she supposed, by her system trying to fight off the nausea that was coming from being trapped inside a vessel that seemed to be bouncing around the surface of the ocean like a cork in a sink might as you attempted to make a start on the washing-up after a particularly hefty party, and not even the kind of party she was ever likely to be invited to. If only she could get outside and get a glimpse at the horizon she might just be able to control her growing seasickness, but such privileges had to be earned and she knew that she was so far down the food chain that the option of such a respite was very unlikely. Instead, she swallowed as best she could and poured some milk from the carton she was carrying into the saucer she’d found rolling around on the floor earlier, taking great care not to slosh it around and get some on the floor. After all, if anyone ended up slipping on it, she knew that they’d know just where to come looking, and she really didn’t want to get on the wrong side of Mister Tolley if she could help it. That wicked man could make her life a total misery if he wanted to and, to be brutally honest, seeing as most of it was already a total misery, she couldn’t risk that. The only creature that had shown her any kindness since she’d come aboard was this nice little kitty, and it was almost as if she just knew that she needed to keep on the right side of it and have it close by when the time came. She looked around anxiously before placing the saucer down onto the rolling floor. She was feeling nervous anyway about looking for the cat, but kept on trying to tell herself that this was just because she’d seen far, far too many movies where the plucky young thing had gone off in search of the cat only to get eaten by the monster or butchered by the psychopath. She’d be stupid if she thought that she was on board a ship full of psychopaths though, wouldn’t she...? Even just one would be unlikely, she thought. Still, she’d also seen far too many news reports when someone had drowned trying to rescue their dog, so maybe she wasn’t being all that silly after all. She put down the saucer she was carrying. The stupid cat could come and find it if it wanted to, she’d wasted quite enough time. The milk sloshed over the sides of the saucer as the ship rolled again. “Damn!” she thought, “Mister Tolley will have my guts for garters…” She crouched down and tried to fish her handkerchief from out of her uniform pocket, blushing slightly at the realisation that she was so far away from home and her wretched stepmother that thinking about such “racy” things as garters no longer bothered her, even though it would have shocked Deirdre’s stepmother to the core and she would have no doubt got another beating and been locked inside the coal cellar in an attempt to “save” her from the world and its wickedness. Deirdre jumped slightly as she heard a sudden noise from beyond one of the doors leading of this supposedly quiet companionway. That wasn’t right! There really ought not to be anyone down here, not at this time of night. She turned sharply again as, from somewhere far above her, she heard a snatch of music, a burst of laughter, and the soft clink of glassware chinking, as if someone had briefly opened a door only to have it slammed firmly shut again. “The party...” she reminded herself, “of course…!” and she admonished herself at being quite to jumpy and sighed with relief, putting her hand to her heart and being surprised at just how hard it was pumping. She looked around again and noticed that further along the corridor one of the doors was slightly ajar and swinging on its hinges. That would be another point against her if Mister Tolley ever saw it, but it explained the noise; the cat had obviously found a nice quiet place to settle down for the night. She slowly carefully opened the door a little more, so as not to disturb the cat’s slumbers, and reached for the light switch. The noise when it came really did frighten her, but not as much as what she saw suddenly illuminated by the harsh bulb of the electric light. She hadn’t really liked Mister Tolley all that much, but he probably hadn’t deserved that cruel fate. Bending over the body had been the huge figure of a disheveled looking man wearing a rather battered looking dinner suit. Once he had noticed her, he had turned his head and stared her straight in the eye. Then he had smiled and winked and gone back to whatever it was he was doing to poor Mister Tolley. Deirdre did not want to know what it was, she merely slammed the door shut and locked it as tightly as she could, and backed herself against the opposite wall of the corridor, too terrified to run. She didn’t actually scream, of course, because she was never one to draw attention to herself. She’d learnt that from all those years with her stepmother. Well, she didn’t scream until the arm burst through the thick steel plate of the door as if it was made of tinfoil, but by that point, the cat was curling itself around her feet and she was already fading away and the scream tailed off with her, leaving Max to step through the remains of the door into a corridor that was completely quiet and deserted except for one small saucer lying empty on the floor.
The horsemen were drawing closer, rushing towards the Tesla pillar which ebbed and flowed with an awesome energy. The Assassin (War) was in the lead, his body resembling a slide show, his tattoos writhing around his torso – The Haywain becoming The Scream, The Scream becoming a Warhol Marilyn, Marilyn becoming the Mona Lisa, The Mona Lisa becoming a cute fluffy kitten (artist unknown). Trader (Pestilence), The Artist (Famine) and Lee (Death) followed closely behind him, each with their weapons held high above their heads, which in Pestilence’s case was a long pointed spear surrounded by a swarm of locusts. Max shook his head in disbelief; this wasn’t going to end well. Lowering his head from its shaking position Max started to run towards the pillar of energy which rotated and flashed in the centre of the road. He had no idea what he was going to do when he reached the Tesla pillar, but he knew that if he didn’t do something, and the Four Horsemen got to it first, then that would be it; the Apocalypse would arrive and the Horsemen’s destiny would be fulfilled. Maxed wished that he could let them have at least a bit of a go, he could see by their beaming smiles that they wanted to help, were on the side of good, but destiny was destiny and in this instance the destiny of War, Pestilence, Famine and Death was to unleash the Apocalypse and that really would be that. Max continued to run, wishing that he could remember just why he had set things up this way in the first place. Just why did he need the Four Horsemen and why an Apocalypse? Maybe it was just a whim, something to challenge himself with when creation got boring, or perhaps destruction was simply another distraction. Either way, it didn’t matter now; he’d made up his mind. For whatever reason Max had decided that keeping the universe was a whole lot better than losing it and, more importantly, far less effort. After all, if it had taken him this long to get this far, dreaming up a reality so full of imperfections that it seemed as if it had been designed by a drunken simpleton with a headache on an off day, just how much longer would it take him to start over again. Max kept running. Better the reality you know than the reality you don’t, and what if he couldn’t do it again? What if he couldn’t even get started? What if he found that this was a one off, suffered from imaginer’s block, couldn’t even be bothered to make a start? Max tried to imagine a place where there was only he and nothing else, not even a void, just him. Max ran faster. He didn’t even want to think about it and besides, if he imagined it would it not happen? It was bad enough having to live with the fact that he’d made everything up and that everything was just part of his imagination without having to face a future where he’d unmade everything, lost everything he’d ever valued. It might be a simpleton’s dream, but at least he was the simpleton who had dreamt it. Max looked at the Horsemen; they weren’t far away now and it looked as if they were going to get there first. Max thought of his alternatives, he didn’t have many and had already decided that he didn’t want to un-write the book. After all, it had taken so long to bake it, that he simply had to make it, and he’d never have that recipe again. Max laughed at his own warped imagination, wondering if the world laughed with him; were Richard Harris and Jimmy Webb really going to help him to develop a plan? Well, why not? After all Max had invented them too and if he could get to the Tesla pillar first maybe he might be able take it somewhere else, imagine it somewhere and as something different. Max thought about dragging it to MacArthur Park; perhaps it could become a cake, maybe the rain might melt it? No, probably not, somehow Max couldn’t imagine the pillar as a cake and if Max couldn’t imagine it then it wasn’t going happen. He’d have to think of something else, something that seemed right and not some silly lyric from an even sillier song. If only he could simply imagine the pillar to have never happened; just why he couldn’t imagine the pillar gone or the Horsemen whisked away to an Australian beach he didn’t quite understand, but he couldn’t and somehow Max knew that this wasn’t one of his alternatives. He ran faster, the dusty main street of Tolley City, North Dakota cutting up beneath his feet as he accelerated. Tolley City? North Dakota? Where had that come from and why did he see Jack the Ripper in his imagination when he thought about the name of the town? Mr. who? No time to worry about his little mind tricks now, he had to run faster, had to get to the pillar before the Four Horsemen. Perhaps once a string of events had been set in play it had to play all the way through until it had finished. So, no Australian holiday for the Horsemen. Maybe Max had imagined all of this already and only by imagining something new could events be altered. Of course, if this were true then events were happening a little before Max had even imagined them – bouncing things into being a little before he even realised and then playing them back to him like an echo - maybe that was the way his imagination worked. He smiled again; perhaps his imagination was running away with him - and with that Max flung himself into the brightness of the Tesla pillar just a fraction of a second before the Horsemen galloped into the spot where Mr. Tolley had been standing. “I am become death, the destroyer of worlds,” Lee screamed into the crisp, warm air… and then his helmet fell off.
“If I could imagine the world in a drop of water” a great philosopher once wrote, “just think about what I could do with an ocean…” Well, to be brutally honest, any fluid would do, even a drop of spilt milk that no-one seemed to be crying over but which was still pooling round and shifting on the hard metal floor deep in the bowels of this ship of damned fools. Stare at it long enough and you could see anything and everything and it was extraordinarily lucky that the cat had left it there as the realities had shifted around it once again. The problem was that the rolling motion meant that it would never settle. Instead little rivulets would flow to port and then starboard, or fore and aft and all points in between. Whatever else was happening, it sure was one hell of a storm that this boat was bobbing along in. Outside, beyond the metal walls which were a relatively paper thin barrier between the here and the ocean of possibilities beyond, anything was possible. Several decks above his head, Max knew that he was also standing on a balcony at a party and he also knew that he was about to almost meet himself and risk the temptation of shorting out this reality. The power caused by the energy equalizing itself would send enough power through one of Tesla’s or one of Lee’s towers to trigger another big bang, wipe out everything and start it all over again with one clean slate. Or plate. Or maybe just a saucer slowly drying out in a lonely and forgotten metal corridor well below sea level. He’d have to warn himself, of course, make sure that he never met any of the versions of himself that had converged here, and he had to work out precisely where whichever cat had popped in to replace that one was, because that was the nodal point, the only way off this ship, or at least the only way that this version of himself could be extracted. Meanwhile, there was work to do. He punched the steel of the bulkhead as hard as he could and tore at the broken metal waiting for the water to flood in and drag this vessel down into the depths with it. Instead, to his surprise and consternation, outside the sun shone weakly in a slate grey sky and tried its best to illuminate a slate grey landscape which finally proved, to Max at least, that he’d finally reached the limits of his imagination. A grey sun shining in a grey sky onto what looked like grey sand dunes in a grey quarry. Max knew that he had his dull days but… really…? He ripped through into another reality and stepped through, barely noticing the letters C.A.T. which had been embossed in the plate steel just above where he had punched it. Clydeside Anodised Tempering Incorporated had forged that plate only a few months earlier, never realising that the pride of the fleet for which they were supplying it would be sinking into an unforgiving ocean such a short time later. Max fell through the gap and landed face first in the grey dust, and got up shaking his head for just long enough to stop him from seeing the tear in the fabric of the world seal itself behind him. A few hours, or days, or maybe even weeks later, he had walked far enough to see his footprints stretching out far behind him because even the air in this place didn’t have enough imagination to form itself into a breeze and blow them away. All around him in every direction and towards every horizon were the same unshifting undulating dunes of grey dust, and he was at least grateful that they had at least made the effort to make themselves into hills, otherwise the place would be even less stimulating than it already was, which, he imagined, was pretty much impossible. He knew already that someone was trying to teach him a lesson here, to let him know what a world without hope or vibrancy or imagination might resemble, but he still wasn’t convinced who it might be who was playing the role of teacher this time. Instead he just walked and walked and walked until his foot tapped against something metallic lying half buried in the dust, a familiar helmet lying where it had fallen just before its owner had sped off and done his work. In this version of reality there had been no-one there to stop them, no-one prepared to make that choice and stand in their way. Max bent down and picked up the helmet and blew some of the grey dust that covered it. He made an attempt at polishing it with his sleeve and it came up a brownish gold colour which surprised both him and the landscape around him, as it was the only colour either of them had seen for as long as they could remember. Max looked at his distorted reflection and smiled, and as he did so, it began to rain and a hundred billion raindrops full of possibility began to fall all around him, and he could see a world in every one. All he had to do was pick one.
The experiment concludes...?
Link to the index (Parts One to Nine):
http://m-a-w-h-writers.blogspot.co.uk/2012/02/blog-tag-1-index.html
Or perhaps there's another Blog Tag, Coming Soon...? (Just as soon as this one maybe gets itself turned into a properly structured story...)
Tesla’s machines hummed in unison as the final few bottles were fitted into the arrangements. Two towers, two arrangements, two machines, twice the power – even Tesla didn’t know just what that might mean in terms of potential for destruction. “If there is anything more than the universe beyond and out there it had better watch out.” Tesla mumbled as he jockeyed with the switches and levers of the control panel which phased in and out between his original mahogany and the super-glossed plastic lacquer of Lee’s modern copy. The hum grew to a whine, higher and higher until it disappeared into a tone that couldn’t be heard but could be felt in the electricity of the air around him. He had to channel this power somewhere, now it was set in motion it had to have an end. Double the power… double the power… it bothered Tesla to be the man who had created all this energy. He began to wonder if he’d been foolish, perhaps a little arrogant even… well a lot arrogant actually. After all, if there was a supreme being not even he, she, or it had been able to generate the amount of power that Tesla was generating at this moment - and the power continued to grow with each passing moment. The atomic bomb? No, not even a million atomic bombs. The explosion of a star? Not even the explosion of a million stars. Tesla began to sweat… what if the power just grew and grew? What if it had no limit? What then? What then? What then? The sun beat down above Tesla’s head, the dusty street empty save for the tumbleweeds which blew along the street despite there being not a breath of a breeze. Arrogant? Yes arrogant. The light above was sharp, like it had been reflected through a crystal lens then distilled through a substance so clear as to be almost invisible. Tesla could almost taste the light. No, not almost, Tesla could actually taste the light on his tongue – bitter and sweet. He could feel it - cold and warm, hard and brittle. Hear it - high and piercing, a million musical chimes in a single extended note. Feel it - sharp like a trillion needles piercing his body as it expanded into the light, blinding him with its brilliance, filling him with its energy. The ground around him shook and buckled as the buildings either side of the street seemed to tear themselves apart and then rebuild themselves once more, morphing through a thousand changes in a second, not changing at all. Now a saloon, now a church, now a sailing ship, a starship, a canyon, a star, a rocking chair, a wooden horse, an empty space, a flower, a saloon on an empty street with seven brightly hued mice rushing at him as if he were a piece of cheese set in a trap. That was it! He was a trap! He had been all along. From the moment of his conception he had been a trap… THE trap. Remembering now, his father and mother had never talked about it but somehow he had always known. There had been something in the looks that passed between them, something in the way they didn’t quite touch, didn’t quite smile, didn’t quite cry, didn’t quite exist… they were part of the trap too. The ground around him began to shake again, the buildings either side of the street seemed to tear themselves apart for a second time and then rebuild themselves once more, morphing through a million tiny changes in a fraction of a second and not changing at all. A trap - now a saloon, now a skyscraper, now a stagecoach. A trap – now a car, a generator, a schoolhouse, a steam ship. A trap – now a wooden tower, a coffin, a saloon. A trap – his mother and father, the town where he was born, his life, his work, his very being… a trap. Tesla recognized his own life in the changes taking place around him, the life that had never been, the ripping boards and scattering shingles, the real but not real, the memories but not memories, the life but not life… a trap. Tesla was the trap. He broke, the mice hitting him at the ankles, scurrying up his body and onto his face. Two went in through his mouth, one in each eye, one in each nostril, and the seventh, a stream of purple pulsating light, entered through the tiny hole in front of his left eardrum. He could feel their light inside him, merging with the power of the towers, becoming one with the power that was he, the light that was he, the trap that was he. He was the beginning, he was the end, the big bang, exploding outwards, imploding inwards. He was the light and it was almost time for the final darkness to fall. The saloon doors creaked open and the light that was Tesla felt them as they almost fell through and into the blinding glare of the street. Frankie and Tamara were carrying, almost dragging, Max between them, Max a battered, tattered figure, his broken wings dangling behind him. Tamara looked haggard, diminished somehow, older that before and Frankie had lost his hat. They stopped dead in their tracks on the steps when they saw him. Out in the middle of Main Street stood the thing that had once been Tesla and was now a six foot tube of brightness, a pillar of light that reached up into the sky, disappearing into the clouds above them. Tesla chuckled, the final trap was about to be sprung. “I am the light” he shouted as Tamara strained her diamond-encrusted ears. Damn those mice, damn Frankie, but most of all damn that damn, damned Max. Far in the distance the drumming of hooves… and they were getting louder by the moment.
Interlude (sort of): It is a little known fact that when Beethoven was composing the last and greatest of his symphonies, a room very close by to his was rented by Frankie, who was, at that stage still learning how best to control both his powers and his temper, and had decided to hide just a few decades back in time from some trouble he had caused in the Jazz Age. Rather sadly for Frankie, if not the rest of Beethoven’s neighbours, the notes of that burgeoning masterwork used to drift across the night air and they would torment Frankie as he tried his best to introduce the world to jazz a hundred years before it was really ready for it. As the harmonic chords of a style of music to which he was never attuned pummeled at his eardrums, Frankie swore that he would reshape the history of music so that nobody’s ears would ever have to – as he saw it - endure the wonderment of “Ode to Joy” in any form at all. Of course, what Frankie failed to realise at that point in his miserable existence was that there are certain gifts that are given to the world that you really cannot mess with, no matter how hard you try, and Beethoven’s Ninth was just such a gift. No matter how hard he tried to reshape Beethoven’s work into a little number which Frankie liked to call “I am become death, the destroyer of worlds…” those familiar rhythms and chords would sing across the night sky and prevent him from getting any rest. Even when he took the time to drum his own beats upon the walls and doors of his own humble dwelling, hoping that the dissonant vibrations would penetrate the dreams of the maestro and somehow inveigle themselves into the movements in some small way, become in some way “catchy” to him, and perhaps inspire Ludwig to take his work in some other direction, somehow the composer managed to reform them and reshape them back into something rather wonderful, and even Frankie’s last-gasp attempt to lock the tune of “Pennsylvania 6-5000” into the mind of the aging genius still failed to make any difference whatsoever, even though Frankie found that he was humming it to himself for days afterwards and getting some peculiar looks as he ordered his morning strudel. This was especially annoying as there were no telephone exchanges yet and Pennsylvania was so far away that any of his explanations really didn’t make a lot of sense and he was reduced to feeling rather like the village idiot whenever he tried to explain that things were very different over in the new world, and that people just didn’t understand how sophisticated he was by having been there. Instead they just looked upon him as the wild dreamer they thought he was and, if ever he thought about it rationally, he couldn’t really blame them. After all, he did rather resemble a pauper in those days (it was a fashion choice he was making, he convinced himself) and very few of the people around him had ventured far beyond the walls of the city in their entire lifetimes, so his claims of venturing to places so very far away did rather seem like the pipe dreams of a fantasist. In later times, certain psychoanalysts would attempt to see this period of his life as being somehow “significant” in shaping his future self, but few of them lived long enough to resolve any issues he might have had once they had suggested that his time spent in Vienna was merely a mental construct and he couldn’t possibly have been old enough to actually have been there at the time. Sometimes they even had the audacity to claim that he had a “Napoleon Complex” which was not only ludicrous, but quite chronologically impossible no matter how much you tried to reshape things. If anything, he had a “Beethoven Complex”, but not in the sense that he wanted to be him, but only in the sense that he wanted to obliterate him, or at least his reputation. For a while he tried walking the streets of Vienna taking the great man’s form and trying to sully his name but enough people really knew what he looked like for that not to work, as he only had in idea of the younger man to work from and so he got the appearance slightly wrong. Some might have thought that he was Beethoven’s slightly dimmer little brother, or perhaps an unrecognised bastard son of a whore (which Frankie indeed was in many ways) but few mistook him for the real deal, especially when those tunes were still drifting from the maestro’s window all of the time, and there were not yet recording devices to explain how he might be in two places at once. Even when he bellowed “I’m Ludwig Van Beethoven!” through the windows of the many whorehouses and taverns he frequented, they just laughed in his face and claimed to be Mozart, after which a fight would break out and his antics would be forgotten and he would return to his hovel only to hear “that infernal racket” (as he put it) plinking its way out into the evening air. It is, of course, a well-known fact that Beethoven was profoundly deaf for all of that time and so remained happily oblivious to all of what was going on, and still managed to create his sublime “Pastoral Symphony” during this time despite all of Frankie’s best efforts, and eventually Frankie left Vienna in a bit of a sulk, but not before taking his revenge upon one or two of the people he met whilst he was living there, not least on some of the brothel-keepers and the innkeepers. Sadly, for Frankie at least, one of the people he could never take his revenge upon was Beethoven himself, because he never managed to get himself an audience with the noted (but impoverished) local celebrity, because his friends were very protective of the old man. It is with some irony then that, as the horses hooves beat out their infernal racket as they approached, the tune that ironically burst into his brain and refused to shift itself was Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy”. The supreme beings might very well be all-powerful, but some of them do, at least, retain a sense of humour.
Frankie listened in disbelief as the
pounding of hooves drummed deep into, what he had considered up until now, his
mended mind. All that therapy had done him the world of good and even the ones
who he’d had to ‘put right’ hadn’t done him any lasting harm. Yes, a little
analysis was good for the soul. Mind you - excuse the pun - as he didn’t have
one, (that had been sold long ago), maybe it was his mind that had benefited
from all those hours on various leather couches in various cities all over the
world. He’d returned to Vienna almost fifty years later and had hung around for
quite a while. Actually, he didn’t have much choice; they’d locked him away in
the clinic at the Vienna General Hospital after the Beethoven thing had cropped
up again. It seemed that the Viennese were playing ‘it’ everywhere he went,
even after all this time, in every café and bar, in cake houses, bookshops,
flower stalls, just about everywhere he went and he simply couldn’t take it,
losing his cool and taking vengeance each time he heard that obnoxious,
repetitive, tune. Perhaps it was the music, if you could call it that, that had
led him to claim once again that he was Beethoven. Anyway, whatever it was it
hadn’t gone down too well with the Bundespolizei who had arrested him, locking
him away in the hospital and pretty much forgetting him until good old Schlomo
had turned up. Schlomo, what a ridiculous name, mind you it had suited the
fool; he really was a little slow on the uptake. By the time he realised that
Frankie wasn’t suffering from delusions, actually was, at least in part,
Beethoven, and not repressing some memory of his father’s abuse or fantasising
about his mother’s stockings, it was a little too late to go back. Ah, the
dialogue or as Freud called it - the ‘analysand’, more anal than sand Frankie
had suspected at the time and he’d proved to be right. He’d had such fun with
dear Sigmund in their free association sessions, saying whatever came into your
head was always such a release and Sigmund had been in raptures, overcome in
almost an ode-ish way with joy at the depths of Frankie’s depraved revelations.
Frankie’s analysis had proved all of Freud’s theories, at least to Freud if
nobody else. He’d given him so much new material, such insights into the human
mind, that Freud could have written a book… in fact he did. Mind you, given
that Frankie wasn’t human the insights that Freud had written about didn’t
strictly count, but by that time it hardly mattered. The process was complete –
and Frankie’s transference was also complete. Poor old Schlomo never really
stood a chance. After that he’d had sex with his students, both male and
female, even his poor wife’s sister, and he snorted cocaine every day. What
with the cocaine, the continual cigarettes, the incessant masturbation, and the
bad dreams, Freud seemed hardly fit to practice at all. But then that is the
way in the medical world, blind eyes will be turned, and eyes that aren’t
turned will be blinded. Freud was mad, mad and clever, using his ‘talking cure’
to his own ends, hypnotising his patients so that he could do what he would
with them - even after he claimed that he no longer used hypnotism in his work.
Self-protection… that was the name of the game, and if nothing else Frankie was
an expert at looking after himself. Of course it wasn’t Schlomo at all, it had
never been Schlomo – he simply didn’t have the imagination or the
libido-di-do-di-doo. Yes, Freud’s seduction theory was just that, or at least
the seduction bit was. It wasn’t him though. It was Frankie all along. That was
the thing with free association, not only was the patient involved, the
therapist was too… it was a two way conversation eventually, with the analysis
interpreting whatever he was told and colouring it with his own fantasies and
needs and Freud’s needs and fantasies had been very great indeed. God, he’d
enjoyed debauching Schlomo – the incest and drugs, the sodomy and the booze,
the self-abuse and the sadism. It was a wonder that the poor old scheibkerl had
lasted so long, he really had done everything to excess with Frankie’s
encouragement. Temptation… that was the name of the game; thirty pieces of
silver alongside the pocket-watch in his pocket… look into my eyes,
look into my eyes. What jolly good fun the destruction of humans was sometimes,
particularly a self-opinionated excuse for a human like Sigmund Schlomo Freud.
No, he really should have listened, after all he wasn’t deaf like Beethoven had
been, so he really had no excuse did he? Of course you’d never have known, they’d
been very careful. All the victims were wiped afterwards and they all left
thinking that the therapy had worked even the ones that went on to maim and
rape and kill; sometimes others, sometimes themselves, usually both. He’d
tortured Freud for a very long time. At the end he could hardly perform at all,
having to use a range of tools that Frankie had obtained for him – rubber and
glass, leather and wood, steel and ivory, barbed and spiked and thick and very,
very long. He was eighty-three when he died, not that he ever got away
completely, there was no real escape, part of him was still within Frankie
along with that bloody Beethoven, and Napoleon, and the rest. Yeah, that other
trick-cyclist had been right… Frankie did have a “Napoleon Complex” after all;
he’d been there all along. It was just that Frankie didn’t like to admit having
a Frenchie (even if said Frenchie was a Corsican) inside him, especially to
strangers with notebooks. Those bloody hooves were really getting on his
nerves. They were getting louder as the horses drew closer and Frankie - or
rather Napoleon who knew a thing or two about horses - was pretty sure that
there were four of them. Frankie’s foot began to tap to the beat, his head
beginning to move in time to the rhythm… da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da,
da, da-da-da, daaa, da. Nooooo! That wasn’t him, it was that damned Beethoven,
deaf or not he could either hear them coming through Frankie’s ears or feel the
vibrations of the hooves as they galloped towards town. Either way he was in
there, conducting his awful music and turning the tables so that this time it
was Frankie who had no choice. Frankie slipped his right arm beneath his coat
and stuffed his hand beneath his waistcoat. Nooooo! Not Napoleon too! Just what
was going on here, where was it going to end? Frankie glanced up just as the
horsemen turned the corner at the end of the street, all sweating steeds and
dust. “I am become death, the destroyer of worlds” shouted one of the horsemen
as he raced towards them as the bright pillar of light in front of Frankie grew
even brighter… just what was going to happen next?
Thud!
Thud! Thud! Thud! THUDDD!!! Frankie really thought that it was going to drive
him mad after all. For a moment it felt as if the entire saloon was going to
vibrate itself to pieces, with all the glassware jumping and dancing on the
shelves with the bottles at least never quite getting into a position where
they might actually fall and break. Enough of the glasses did, of course, but
this was a saloon in what used to be known as the Wild West and so that was
rather par for the course. Not that they’d had all that many golf-courses back
then (thankfully) but, well, every era has something to recommend it, no matter
how dire it might seem. Then, quite suddenly it stopped and the whole saloon
suddenly sank into a silence so ominous that Frankie even began to wish that
the Beethoven might come back. Outside they heard noises. Not the raging noises
of the end of days screaming through, but the calm, sedate and quite frankly
terrifying sounds of someone watching, waiting and strolling around looking for
someone to kill. The only thing that seemed odd, given their surroundings was
the lack of the jangling of their spurs. They’d all spent far too many nights
in far too many lonely motel rooms watching far too many old westerns as they
criss-crossed around the centuries not to notice that these noises were missing
from the soundtrack, as if someone, somewhere really wasn’t really paying
enough attention to detail and that tiny spark of knowledge, which some of them
hadn’t even begun to notice yet, began to give them the vaguest hint of
hopefulness. It was instantly crushed, of course, by the realisation that the
Riders were probably rather unlikely to be the kinds of beings who would
actually wear spurs, especially ones of the “jangly” kind, but the dying embers
had had that moment when the draught had touched them and it was just enough to
breathe a tiny amount of life into the three of them. Frankie, now showing
signs of being the most likely of the three of them to crack under the strain
started humming a few bars of some very familiar quietly to himself using the
rhythm of the footsteps to mark out the beat. Tamara looked across at his
nervous, quaking, sweaty little body as it twitched and shook and tried to
silence him with a glare, but he wasn’t looking at her, because his head was
following the sounds which were coming from outside, and so the point was not
made and the quiet tune droned on and on for what seemed like a lifetime, or,
at least, what would have been a lifetime for a Mayfly. Tamara was, as always,
looking to play the angles and spending all of what might have been her final
moments calculating the odds and looking for an escape route. She was feeling
more than a little twitchy. The last thing she needed was to have to be
thinking about whether Frankie was capable of holding it together, especially
if it turned out that she really needed to sacrifice Frankie for the greater
good. The “greater good” in this instance referring to him being for the chop
instead of her. Hell, she’d be willing to sacrifice the pair of them (and even
her grandmother if she happened to show up) if that was what it took. She even
wondered if the sisters might just manage to get themselves caught in the
crossfire and in the ensuing confusion whether she might just make it out of a
window before the window itself closed up and bit her in half. She shuddered.
That wasn’t the best of images. Were the icy fingers of fear starting to get to
her, too, she wondered? Frankie had already gone over the edge it seemed, and
Max looked like he was well out of it too, lying there all battered and
bruised, relaxed as anything and looking as if he hadn’t the slightest care in
the world. Meanwhile, as the terror started to seep into her mind, all of
Tamara’s past sins started to flash before her eyes. Perhaps that was what had
so upset Frankie, but they weren’t likely to get her that way. She did, after
all, consider most of what other people thought of as her “sins” to be virtues
of a kind, and she sure as hell wasn’t going to let anyone persuade her
otherwise this late in the game. In his own mind, of course, Max had a kind of
dead calm. He’d seen it all before and, to be honest, seen if far worse. He
even knew that he was more than likely to see it all again some day, too. Whatever
the other two might think, he knew that the end was unlikely to come so easily,
no matter how much he wished it would. Instead he just lay there, mentally
preparing himself for the next battle and wishing that they would just “Bring
it on!” And, of course, someone, somewhere in the great beyond knew his every
thought and thought about it for a moment before thinking “Well, why not?” and
letting the dice tumble, and not for the first time, as the swinging doors of
the saloon burst inwards, Max really began to regret that he was never all that
careful about what he was wishing for. However, what he wished for and what he
expected and what he actually got were seldom the same thing, so, as he leapt
up from his prone position to strike, thus, he hoped, having the element of
surprise on his side, he was overwhelmed with shock to see a familiar figure
standing in the doorway. He was silhouetted, of course, by the blazing sunshine
outside, but it was unmistakably him. “What?” said Lee, “You were expecting
someone else…?”
The machine had stopped humming. It was almost as if it had never had any life, any power. Lee looked around him. The others were gone. Just where they had disappeared to Lee had no idea, but it was almost as if Jeremy and Jemima, Emma and Flavia, The Artist, Trader had never been there at all. The bottles stood empty, slowly gathering dust. They were nothing. Had they ever been anything else Lee wondered? Had the tower done anything at all? Lee flicked at the switches and pulled at the levers. They were dead; dull clicking bits of plastic and metal. How could the machine, his tower, be nothing when only a few moments ago it had been the most powerful, dangerous and destructive force in the universe generating so much power that if Lee had wanted to he could have undone the bang and, big or not, imploded everything on itself in one big internal collapse. Lee wondered if that was what he would have done once. It had crossed his mind on many occasions, but now he realised that he’d never known what the tower and the machine were really for and now, after everything, it was nothing. Perhaps that is what it always was and was always meant to be. Just where had all that power gone? Lee Picked up his briefcase, straightened his tie and, without even a glance behind, walked out of the door of the tower and towards the lights of Shanghai flickering in the distance. He’d had enough of science. It had never been his friend and now he wondered if he’d ever really been any good at it at all. And after all, he’d built this great machine, his lifetime’s work, which seemed to defy all the laws of physics and now that machine was a lifeless shell. Had the laws of physics rebelled? Lee wondered, and taking out a cigarette, US not Chinese, he lit it with a long wooden match, striking it on the concrete road and then he started to walk. He’d go to his Uncle Chai. Chai would help him to get started in a new profession, maybe a restaurant? Yes, Lee had always liked to cook, a restaurant sounded good. Behind him the tower was silent as… Jeremy let go of Jemimah’s hand as they picked their way through the wreckage of their old home. The table was still there, a bit battered but just the same. They were leaving this place, getting out, never coming back. He’d found the money where his Mother had stashed it and now it was time to go, time for them to get on with their lives. A random thought passed across his mind as he reached out for Jemimah’s hand once more - “they’re just clouds” – and then it was gone… Emma awoke in her bed a sandwich between her fingers. Bottles… had she been dreaming about bottles? Outside the sun was shining and bluebirds singing, the start of another perfect day in Emma’s perfect world. The sheets smelt fresh like freshly cut meadow-grass, the sunlight dappling the floor of her bedroom. Peanut butter and jelly, her favourite; she took another bite. “There’s no place like home,” she thought, “there's no place like home”… Flavia whistled as she let herself into her shop. Hats, bags, shoes, fascinators – how she loved this place; she was so lucky to be able to play shop in her own store. Going to the front entrance she flipped the sign to open and, turning off the alarm, entered the code – 7, 18, 96, 5, 11, and then the BEEP as the alarm disarmed. 7, 18, 96, 5, 11? That was funny she was sure there had been more numbers, a lot more numbers, thousands of them, tens of thousands. She looked at her hats, they always made her smile. The bell above the shop door rang and Flavia smiled her welcome smile as the very first customer of the day came in to buy some new shoes… Rosalina picked up the next claim form and began to enter the data. A house fire this time. They would probably need to investigate; you could never be sure with a house fire. She wondered what sort of a house it was that had burnt down - wooden probably. Maybe it had started in the loft what with all the dust and bits of broken lath, the rag dolls and the rubbish, and that mirror. Rag dolls? Mirror? Where had that come from? She needed coffee and reached for the red Styrofoam cup - Ahhh, that was much better, she’d needed that. Traffic collision, two cars involved; her fingers flew over the keyboard once more… Lee stopped dead in his tracks. A shopkeeper? An Insurance clerk? No, there was no way that he could work in a restaurant, not even if it was a good one, not even if he did own it – lock, stock and bar. No, not even if Uncle Chai offered to buy him a whole chain of eateries across the length and breadth of China. Max scratched his head; there was something he had to do. It was just that he didn’t know what it was. The tower was dead, had probably never worked except in his head, and the others – who he might have only imagined anyway – had all returned to their own destinies, their own little worlds and their lives. For them it had never happened, they’d forgotten already. Lee knew it somehow; he wasn’t sure just how he knew but it was as clear to him as a recipe for Shanghai noodles, they’d gone, and he was alone. He stood in the road looking neither this way nor that, up nor down, waiting for something. He just wasn’t sure what he was waiting for. He knew he was waiting for something though, just as sure as he knew how to make Gong Pao chicken with extra peanuts… and all this thinking of food was making him hungry. Time to go, if for no other reason that to find the nearest noodle stand; Lee turned to leave and there on the bridge stood three familiar figures. The Artist was wearing pink body armour, as was the magnificent grey steed he was nonchalantly mounted on. To his left his alter ego, the Assassin, sat stripped to the waist showing off the wonderful masterpiece that were his tattoos, his legs and feet clad in steel chain, his silver horse etched with Picasso’s La Guernica. “Come on get dressed.” Trader tossed a bundle of something towards Lee. Trader was wearing a shiny blue suit and a wide brimmed hat; a long, even bluer feather sticking from its brim. Trader’s horse was white and shimmered with blue electricity each time it moved. Max couldn’t help thinking that Trader looked a lot like a dark Musketeer and wondered what his horse was fed on to make him shimmer that way. Max opened the bundle and, pulling on the black-as-night robes it contained, looked at the other three. “What now?” He said. “We ride of course,” the Assassin replied. “But I haven’t a horse,” Lee answered. The Artist whistled long and shrill and as it died away Lee could hear the hoof beats as the blackest creature he had ever seen came galloping towards him. “Jump up, jump up. Time to go,” Trader exclaimed as Lee swung himself up into the black leather saddle shouting: “I am become death, the destroyer of worlds,” raising his black glass sword above his helmeted head. “Simmer down,” the Assassin hissed, “this is no time for grand gestures and overblown statements, it’s time we were leaving, there is a universe to be saved you know.”
The machine had stopped humming. It was almost as if it had never had any life, any power. Lee looked around him. The others were gone. Just where they had disappeared to Lee had no idea, but it was almost as if Jeremy and Jemima, Emma and Flavia, The Artist, Trader had never been there at all. The bottles stood empty, slowly gathering dust. They were nothing. Had they ever been anything else Lee wondered? Had the tower done anything at all? Lee flicked at the switches and pulled at the levers. They were dead; dull clicking bits of plastic and metal. How could the machine, his tower, be nothing when only a few moments ago it had been the most powerful, dangerous and destructive force in the universe generating so much power that if Lee had wanted to he could have undone the bang and, big or not, imploded everything on itself in one big internal collapse. Lee wondered if that was what he would have done once. It had crossed his mind on many occasions, but now he realised that he’d never known what the tower and the machine were really for and now, after everything, it was nothing. Perhaps that is what it always was and was always meant to be. Just where had all that power gone? Lee Picked up his briefcase, straightened his tie and, without even a glance behind, walked out of the door of the tower and towards the lights of Shanghai flickering in the distance. He’d had enough of science. It had never been his friend and now he wondered if he’d ever really been any good at it at all. And after all, he’d built this great machine, his lifetime’s work, which seemed to defy all the laws of physics and now that machine was a lifeless shell. Had the laws of physics rebelled? Lee wondered, and taking out a cigarette, US not Chinese, he lit it with a long wooden match, striking it on the concrete road and then he started to walk. He’d go to his Uncle Chai. Chai would help him to get started in a new profession, maybe a restaurant? Yes, Lee had always liked to cook, a restaurant sounded good. Behind him the tower was silent as… Jeremy let go of Jemimah’s hand as they picked their way through the wreckage of their old home. The table was still there, a bit battered but just the same. They were leaving this place, getting out, never coming back. He’d found the money where his Mother had stashed it and now it was time to go, time for them to get on with their lives. A random thought passed across his mind as he reached out for Jemimah’s hand once more - “they’re just clouds” – and then it was gone… Emma awoke in her bed a sandwich between her fingers. Bottles… had she been dreaming about bottles? Outside the sun was shining and bluebirds singing, the start of another perfect day in Emma’s perfect world. The sheets smelt fresh like freshly cut meadow-grass, the sunlight dappling the floor of her bedroom. Peanut butter and jelly, her favourite; she took another bite. “There’s no place like home,” she thought, “there's no place like home”… Flavia whistled as she let herself into her shop. Hats, bags, shoes, fascinators – how she loved this place; she was so lucky to be able to play shop in her own store. Going to the front entrance she flipped the sign to open and, turning off the alarm, entered the code – 7, 18, 96, 5, 11, and then the BEEP as the alarm disarmed. 7, 18, 96, 5, 11? That was funny she was sure there had been more numbers, a lot more numbers, thousands of them, tens of thousands. She looked at her hats, they always made her smile. The bell above the shop door rang and Flavia smiled her welcome smile as the very first customer of the day came in to buy some new shoes… Rosalina picked up the next claim form and began to enter the data. A house fire this time. They would probably need to investigate; you could never be sure with a house fire. She wondered what sort of a house it was that had burnt down - wooden probably. Maybe it had started in the loft what with all the dust and bits of broken lath, the rag dolls and the rubbish, and that mirror. Rag dolls? Mirror? Where had that come from? She needed coffee and reached for the red Styrofoam cup - Ahhh, that was much better, she’d needed that. Traffic collision, two cars involved; her fingers flew over the keyboard once more… Lee stopped dead in his tracks. A shopkeeper? An Insurance clerk? No, there was no way that he could work in a restaurant, not even if it was a good one, not even if he did own it – lock, stock and bar. No, not even if Uncle Chai offered to buy him a whole chain of eateries across the length and breadth of China. Max scratched his head; there was something he had to do. It was just that he didn’t know what it was. The tower was dead, had probably never worked except in his head, and the others – who he might have only imagined anyway – had all returned to their own destinies, their own little worlds and their lives. For them it had never happened, they’d forgotten already. Lee knew it somehow; he wasn’t sure just how he knew but it was as clear to him as a recipe for Shanghai noodles, they’d gone, and he was alone. He stood in the road looking neither this way nor that, up nor down, waiting for something. He just wasn’t sure what he was waiting for. He knew he was waiting for something though, just as sure as he knew how to make Gong Pao chicken with extra peanuts… and all this thinking of food was making him hungry. Time to go, if for no other reason that to find the nearest noodle stand; Lee turned to leave and there on the bridge stood three familiar figures. The Artist was wearing pink body armour, as was the magnificent grey steed he was nonchalantly mounted on. To his left his alter ego, the Assassin, sat stripped to the waist showing off the wonderful masterpiece that were his tattoos, his legs and feet clad in steel chain, his silver horse etched with Picasso’s La Guernica. “Come on get dressed.” Trader tossed a bundle of something towards Lee. Trader was wearing a shiny blue suit and a wide brimmed hat; a long, even bluer feather sticking from its brim. Trader’s horse was white and shimmered with blue electricity each time it moved. Max couldn’t help thinking that Trader looked a lot like a dark Musketeer and wondered what his horse was fed on to make him shimmer that way. Max opened the bundle and, pulling on the black-as-night robes it contained, looked at the other three. “What now?” He said. “We ride of course,” the Assassin replied. “But I haven’t a horse,” Lee answered. The Artist whistled long and shrill and as it died away Lee could hear the hoof beats as the blackest creature he had ever seen came galloping towards him. “Jump up, jump up. Time to go,” Trader exclaimed as Lee swung himself up into the black leather saddle shouting: “I am become death, the destroyer of worlds,” raising his black glass sword above his helmeted head. “Simmer down,” the Assassin hissed, “this is no time for grand gestures and overblown statements, it’s time we were leaving, there is a universe to be saved you know.”
You can catch lightning in a bottle, you know, just as you can put the genie back into one. Lee knew this because, with Tesla’s help admittedly, and although he hadn’t known it at the time, he had managed to do so. Ultimately it’s not about what you do, or how you do it, although sometimes it’s not about how you do it, but what it is you do. The universe is a fluid place and, despite what many of the humans choose to believe, not everything is predetermined. Humans were funny like that. They had a nasty little habit of constructing prisons of belief for themselves and then punishing each other if anyone deigned to question those beliefs. Sometimes doing the right thing needs to be done because it simply is the right thing to do, even if it seems like it might be the wrong thing to be doing at the time. Sometimes it makes little difference no matter what you do, and sometimes doing the “right” thing only makes things worse. This was always the problem with the mortals, they’d go off deciding to be somehow “heroic” and making the “ultimate sacrifice” and they wouldn’t be around to see (or suffer) the consequences. There’d be much wailing and gnashing of teeth, a certain amount of lamentation and woe and things would continue to unfold despite everything. Sometimes the sacrifice would change things for the better, sometimes things just got worse, but usually things just unfolded the way they were going to anyway and the fallen hero either got forgotten or lauded depending on how things turned out eventually. The humans seldom asked themselves whether a fallen king was any less noble for having fallen at the wrong moment for history to be rewritten around his falling, and the fallen king himself was not ever around to see how history judged him. Would they praise his successes or forget them in their condemnation? He himself would never know, but whether the battle was won or the battle lost generally determined quite how much worth was placed upon the wisdom or otherwise of having had the battle at all. Such was the crucible of history; the cards fell where they may and the survivors and their descendants learned to live with the consequences and left time sort out the rights and wrongs of it all in due course. Most of the time it worked perfectly well (unless it didn’t for you personally) but occasionally, someone or something would come along and decide that they were far too important to be allowed to burn in the fires of time and they were not going to just lie back and accept it. This usually meant big rewards for the person who could facilitate such an outcome but generally also meant big trouble for everyone else, especially those whose job it was to keep the flow of time in some sort of recognisable balance and make sure that the right dictator, for example, got attached to the right lamp-post by the right part of his anatomy at precisely the correct moment to keep everything in check, or that the proper service revolver turned up in just the right drawer and loaded with exactly the requisite number of projectiles to get the job done to history’s satisfaction. When someone decided not to play the game, and wanted to somehow “cheat” death, all sorts of repercussions would ensue and the unwilling and unwitting pawns in the great game, like Max and Tamara and Frankie, would have to be sent out to unravel the cat’s cradle of entangled and intertwined realities and try to weave them back into their proper narrative form. This could be very hard work and involve trying to make sense of a huge quantity of potential outcomes but, in the end, the normal tapestry could be rewoven around the remaining fixed reality points as indicated by the cats and pretty much everyone who should would be able to walk away happy enough at the outcome. Of course it did help if the would-be immortal could be pointed in the direction of Death himself to make the arrangements to “cheat” death because in that way, death was still holding all of the cards and could have a bit of fun with the poor wretch before the inevitable came. Work on a great machine, perhaps, or incarcerate segments of his being in various vessels which could “only be brought together in the times of direst need” and so forth. Somehow that appealed to the ego of the genius in question and, nine times out of ten, they’d go along with it which meant that you could put them happily into their boxes and they would contentedly sit out eternity waiting for death (in whatever disguise he happened to be wearing, although he did favour certain personalities) to “get back to him”. They’d once had terribly trouble with that bloke who drew mice until they’d managed to persuade him to have himself frozen. After that he’d been perfectly content to go into his cylinder and the riders had had days of fun playing “Spin the Cartoonist” after that. Occasionally, and usually due to the less than benign intentions of the “cock-up” theory of history, a resurrection would occur. This was usually because one or more “conspiracy theorists” had got it into their heads that some sort of “ultimate power” was to be had if you got hold of the various bits of the puzzle the riders had devised. Sometimes this was simply because they’d had one too many Tequilas at the time of working it out and it hadn’t ended up being “fiendishly clever” enough to fool even the most average children’s television presenter, which usually meant trouble somewhere along the line. Ah well, the hounds had been released and all of the intersecting lines had finally been straightened out and had been clearly pointing towards that one small saloon in the middle of Nowheresville. Death shrugged, and somewhere a sparrow fell out of a tree. He would miss being Lee, of course, but there was always someone new whom he could be when the next idiot got delusions of grandeur. In the meanwhile, however, there were still some genii to pickle…
So it was the final showdown at last. In the red corner Tesla; transformed into his own death ray, consumed or consuming of the seven sisters, able to halt everything and wipe the universe as if it had never been. In the blue corner The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse; or at least a semblance of them mustered from a trio of old failed gods and a Chinese noodle chef. Max shook his sorry head in disbelief. How had it come to this? When he’d first set out on this little journey back on that ship he’d thought that the toughest times were over for him. He thought back, remembering his relief and the sounds of the party, the disagreement over what music to play, the way he’d chuckled when he’d heard those sounds. How long ago now? Weeks? Months? Years? What did it matter? When you are timeless, time has little impact. When you could slip between times at the flip of a whim what did any event matter? All things were stoppable; you just had to be careful how you went about it. All this paradox nonsense was just that – nonsense. Well it was if you hadn’t been born, couldn’t die; after all, you couldn’t accidentally kill you grandfather if you’d never had one. Did it really have to come down to him again, because if it came back to him what had it all been about? There had to be something for him in all this, some great revelation which would at any moment strike him like a god-flung thunderbolt. There had to be some meaning, a lesson, something important – he couldn’t spend eternity clearing up other people’s messes like some celestial road-sweeper. Besides, he wasn’t the only immortal who could make the alterations, mend the rip and make good the tear in the fabric; to use just a few science-fiction clichés. Frankie could do it. Tamara too; even those three stooges on pantomime horseback – Artist, Assassin and Trader – could manage it - after all they were all immortal weren’t they? Somewhere in Max’s mind a cog moved and suddenly he got it. If Max could have died at that very moment then he gladly would have. No, it couldn’t be, it couldn’t possibly be. But of course it could. That old adage ‘nothing is impossible’ wasn’t simply an adage at all - it was an absolute truth. Everything that seemed impossible was possible somewhere, actual in some parts of the universes. You see, that was the thing with infinity – infinity held infinite possibilities which meant that maybe he WAS the only one. Max groaned. How could he not have known? Worse still, how could he not have suspected? All those years playing second fiddle to Trader and all the time Max had really been first fiddle. Actually scrub first fiddle, Max was the whole bloody orchestra and then some. Slowly the realisation began to sink in… but surely he’d have known, had some inkling, at least a few memories. After all, you couldn’t create the universe with at least having some idea that you’d done it. Max searched his mind for some recollection of the beginning; a bang, the light, a whirling planet or two – maybe even Adam and Eve with her apple… nothing, absolutely nothing. Maybe it wasn’t him. But he knew it was. Max accepted the mantle of Supreme Being as if he’d always worn it - which of course he had. Just why he hadn’t known or didn’t remember, wasn’t important; it made no difference to the reality. Max was the Creator, God, The Supreme Being. He hung his head and shook it – no, he didn’t want it, but it had to be someone and he was just as good or bad a candidate as anyone else. At least he knew now why Trader had always been trying to improve the colour scheme of the universe; it hadn’t been his at all, and now that Max took time to think about it he thought that he’d done a pretty good job in the first place. This wasn’t the time for self-congratulatory slaps on the back though. Tesla, or whatever it was that Tesla had become, was still in the centre of the street threatening too implode the universe and the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, despite their somewhat comic-book camp appearance were here to try to stop him. Either way the result was likely to be the same: the end of everything and that would leave Max totally alone. In some ways this fact appealed to Max, but in others he dreaded it. Just how long before he could create another cast of characters to distract himself from remembering what and who he was. Yes, it was all coming back now, and what Max mostly remembered was the loneliness before the beginning and the waiting for something to happen after the beginning had begun. Yes, everything and everyone and everywhere might be no more than his wild imaginings, but they seemed solid enough and without them Max wondered just what he would become? He’d built this reality out of the stuff of his mind. Father of Creation? Well, I guess you might say that - certainly Max was someone with a vivid imagination if nothing else. Down the street the Four Horses of the Apocalypse stamped their feet and in a shower of sparks began to gallop towards the Tesla tower of energy. It was time for Max to do something, step in and take charge. The thing was, Max didn’t really know what it was he was meant to be doing. Supreme or not, he didn’t seem to have all the answers after all…
“Here Kitty, Kitty…!” Deirdre steadied herself against the bulkhead. “Nice Kitty…!” She stumbled again and had to put a hand against the cold steel of the wall as the space around her shifted. There was, it seemed to her, quite a swell building up this evening. She looked around again, wondering where that cat had got itself to, and wondering again quite where it had come from and how on earth it had got itself aboard. It seemed to be such a calm beast, on the whole, but seeing as they were notoriously averse to water, its presence on board seemed unusual at the very least. Perhaps, she wondered, it had been brought aboard to catch rats, but it had seemed far too refined to be just a rat-catcher, and when she’d asked around, no one would even admit to having seen the thing. Still, a cat was a cat was a cat, and even a cat as refined as this one was likely to work up a thirst every once in a while. She paused to steady herself again, leaning for a moment against the metal wall and sensing the lethal sea-water just inches away on the other side of it which was, she imagined, what was causing the condensation that made it wet to the touch. At least she hoped that’s what it was that was causing the rivulets of icy water to run down its surface, otherwise they were all in trouble, and even the cat might just end up getting its feet wet. Leaning her forehead against the wall, the coolness and the water did at least help with her headache, brought on, she supposed, by her system trying to fight off the nausea that was coming from being trapped inside a vessel that seemed to be bouncing around the surface of the ocean like a cork in a sink might as you attempted to make a start on the washing-up after a particularly hefty party, and not even the kind of party she was ever likely to be invited to. If only she could get outside and get a glimpse at the horizon she might just be able to control her growing seasickness, but such privileges had to be earned and she knew that she was so far down the food chain that the option of such a respite was very unlikely. Instead, she swallowed as best she could and poured some milk from the carton she was carrying into the saucer she’d found rolling around on the floor earlier, taking great care not to slosh it around and get some on the floor. After all, if anyone ended up slipping on it, she knew that they’d know just where to come looking, and she really didn’t want to get on the wrong side of Mister Tolley if she could help it. That wicked man could make her life a total misery if he wanted to and, to be brutally honest, seeing as most of it was already a total misery, she couldn’t risk that. The only creature that had shown her any kindness since she’d come aboard was this nice little kitty, and it was almost as if she just knew that she needed to keep on the right side of it and have it close by when the time came. She looked around anxiously before placing the saucer down onto the rolling floor. She was feeling nervous anyway about looking for the cat, but kept on trying to tell herself that this was just because she’d seen far, far too many movies where the plucky young thing had gone off in search of the cat only to get eaten by the monster or butchered by the psychopath. She’d be stupid if she thought that she was on board a ship full of psychopaths though, wouldn’t she...? Even just one would be unlikely, she thought. Still, she’d also seen far too many news reports when someone had drowned trying to rescue their dog, so maybe she wasn’t being all that silly after all. She put down the saucer she was carrying. The stupid cat could come and find it if it wanted to, she’d wasted quite enough time. The milk sloshed over the sides of the saucer as the ship rolled again. “Damn!” she thought, “Mister Tolley will have my guts for garters…” She crouched down and tried to fish her handkerchief from out of her uniform pocket, blushing slightly at the realisation that she was so far away from home and her wretched stepmother that thinking about such “racy” things as garters no longer bothered her, even though it would have shocked Deirdre’s stepmother to the core and she would have no doubt got another beating and been locked inside the coal cellar in an attempt to “save” her from the world and its wickedness. Deirdre jumped slightly as she heard a sudden noise from beyond one of the doors leading of this supposedly quiet companionway. That wasn’t right! There really ought not to be anyone down here, not at this time of night. She turned sharply again as, from somewhere far above her, she heard a snatch of music, a burst of laughter, and the soft clink of glassware chinking, as if someone had briefly opened a door only to have it slammed firmly shut again. “The party...” she reminded herself, “of course…!” and she admonished herself at being quite to jumpy and sighed with relief, putting her hand to her heart and being surprised at just how hard it was pumping. She looked around again and noticed that further along the corridor one of the doors was slightly ajar and swinging on its hinges. That would be another point against her if Mister Tolley ever saw it, but it explained the noise; the cat had obviously found a nice quiet place to settle down for the night. She slowly carefully opened the door a little more, so as not to disturb the cat’s slumbers, and reached for the light switch. The noise when it came really did frighten her, but not as much as what she saw suddenly illuminated by the harsh bulb of the electric light. She hadn’t really liked Mister Tolley all that much, but he probably hadn’t deserved that cruel fate. Bending over the body had been the huge figure of a disheveled looking man wearing a rather battered looking dinner suit. Once he had noticed her, he had turned his head and stared her straight in the eye. Then he had smiled and winked and gone back to whatever it was he was doing to poor Mister Tolley. Deirdre did not want to know what it was, she merely slammed the door shut and locked it as tightly as she could, and backed herself against the opposite wall of the corridor, too terrified to run. She didn’t actually scream, of course, because she was never one to draw attention to herself. She’d learnt that from all those years with her stepmother. Well, she didn’t scream until the arm burst through the thick steel plate of the door as if it was made of tinfoil, but by that point, the cat was curling itself around her feet and she was already fading away and the scream tailed off with her, leaving Max to step through the remains of the door into a corridor that was completely quiet and deserted except for one small saucer lying empty on the floor.
The horsemen were drawing closer, rushing towards the Tesla pillar which ebbed and flowed with an awesome energy. The Assassin (War) was in the lead, his body resembling a slide show, his tattoos writhing around his torso – The Haywain becoming The Scream, The Scream becoming a Warhol Marilyn, Marilyn becoming the Mona Lisa, The Mona Lisa becoming a cute fluffy kitten (artist unknown). Trader (Pestilence), The Artist (Famine) and Lee (Death) followed closely behind him, each with their weapons held high above their heads, which in Pestilence’s case was a long pointed spear surrounded by a swarm of locusts. Max shook his head in disbelief; this wasn’t going to end well. Lowering his head from its shaking position Max started to run towards the pillar of energy which rotated and flashed in the centre of the road. He had no idea what he was going to do when he reached the Tesla pillar, but he knew that if he didn’t do something, and the Four Horsemen got to it first, then that would be it; the Apocalypse would arrive and the Horsemen’s destiny would be fulfilled. Maxed wished that he could let them have at least a bit of a go, he could see by their beaming smiles that they wanted to help, were on the side of good, but destiny was destiny and in this instance the destiny of War, Pestilence, Famine and Death was to unleash the Apocalypse and that really would be that. Max continued to run, wishing that he could remember just why he had set things up this way in the first place. Just why did he need the Four Horsemen and why an Apocalypse? Maybe it was just a whim, something to challenge himself with when creation got boring, or perhaps destruction was simply another distraction. Either way, it didn’t matter now; he’d made up his mind. For whatever reason Max had decided that keeping the universe was a whole lot better than losing it and, more importantly, far less effort. After all, if it had taken him this long to get this far, dreaming up a reality so full of imperfections that it seemed as if it had been designed by a drunken simpleton with a headache on an off day, just how much longer would it take him to start over again. Max kept running. Better the reality you know than the reality you don’t, and what if he couldn’t do it again? What if he couldn’t even get started? What if he found that this was a one off, suffered from imaginer’s block, couldn’t even be bothered to make a start? Max tried to imagine a place where there was only he and nothing else, not even a void, just him. Max ran faster. He didn’t even want to think about it and besides, if he imagined it would it not happen? It was bad enough having to live with the fact that he’d made everything up and that everything was just part of his imagination without having to face a future where he’d unmade everything, lost everything he’d ever valued. It might be a simpleton’s dream, but at least he was the simpleton who had dreamt it. Max looked at the Horsemen; they weren’t far away now and it looked as if they were going to get there first. Max thought of his alternatives, he didn’t have many and had already decided that he didn’t want to un-write the book. After all, it had taken so long to bake it, that he simply had to make it, and he’d never have that recipe again. Max laughed at his own warped imagination, wondering if the world laughed with him; were Richard Harris and Jimmy Webb really going to help him to develop a plan? Well, why not? After all Max had invented them too and if he could get to the Tesla pillar first maybe he might be able take it somewhere else, imagine it somewhere and as something different. Max thought about dragging it to MacArthur Park; perhaps it could become a cake, maybe the rain might melt it? No, probably not, somehow Max couldn’t imagine the pillar as a cake and if Max couldn’t imagine it then it wasn’t going happen. He’d have to think of something else, something that seemed right and not some silly lyric from an even sillier song. If only he could simply imagine the pillar to have never happened; just why he couldn’t imagine the pillar gone or the Horsemen whisked away to an Australian beach he didn’t quite understand, but he couldn’t and somehow Max knew that this wasn’t one of his alternatives. He ran faster, the dusty main street of Tolley City, North Dakota cutting up beneath his feet as he accelerated. Tolley City? North Dakota? Where had that come from and why did he see Jack the Ripper in his imagination when he thought about the name of the town? Mr. who? No time to worry about his little mind tricks now, he had to run faster, had to get to the pillar before the Four Horsemen. Perhaps once a string of events had been set in play it had to play all the way through until it had finished. So, no Australian holiday for the Horsemen. Maybe Max had imagined all of this already and only by imagining something new could events be altered. Of course, if this were true then events were happening a little before Max had even imagined them – bouncing things into being a little before he even realised and then playing them back to him like an echo - maybe that was the way his imagination worked. He smiled again; perhaps his imagination was running away with him - and with that Max flung himself into the brightness of the Tesla pillar just a fraction of a second before the Horsemen galloped into the spot where Mr. Tolley had been standing. “I am become death, the destroyer of worlds,” Lee screamed into the crisp, warm air… and then his helmet fell off.
“If I could imagine the world in a drop of water” a great philosopher once wrote, “just think about what I could do with an ocean…” Well, to be brutally honest, any fluid would do, even a drop of spilt milk that no-one seemed to be crying over but which was still pooling round and shifting on the hard metal floor deep in the bowels of this ship of damned fools. Stare at it long enough and you could see anything and everything and it was extraordinarily lucky that the cat had left it there as the realities had shifted around it once again. The problem was that the rolling motion meant that it would never settle. Instead little rivulets would flow to port and then starboard, or fore and aft and all points in between. Whatever else was happening, it sure was one hell of a storm that this boat was bobbing along in. Outside, beyond the metal walls which were a relatively paper thin barrier between the here and the ocean of possibilities beyond, anything was possible. Several decks above his head, Max knew that he was also standing on a balcony at a party and he also knew that he was about to almost meet himself and risk the temptation of shorting out this reality. The power caused by the energy equalizing itself would send enough power through one of Tesla’s or one of Lee’s towers to trigger another big bang, wipe out everything and start it all over again with one clean slate. Or plate. Or maybe just a saucer slowly drying out in a lonely and forgotten metal corridor well below sea level. He’d have to warn himself, of course, make sure that he never met any of the versions of himself that had converged here, and he had to work out precisely where whichever cat had popped in to replace that one was, because that was the nodal point, the only way off this ship, or at least the only way that this version of himself could be extracted. Meanwhile, there was work to do. He punched the steel of the bulkhead as hard as he could and tore at the broken metal waiting for the water to flood in and drag this vessel down into the depths with it. Instead, to his surprise and consternation, outside the sun shone weakly in a slate grey sky and tried its best to illuminate a slate grey landscape which finally proved, to Max at least, that he’d finally reached the limits of his imagination. A grey sun shining in a grey sky onto what looked like grey sand dunes in a grey quarry. Max knew that he had his dull days but… really…? He ripped through into another reality and stepped through, barely noticing the letters C.A.T. which had been embossed in the plate steel just above where he had punched it. Clydeside Anodised Tempering Incorporated had forged that plate only a few months earlier, never realising that the pride of the fleet for which they were supplying it would be sinking into an unforgiving ocean such a short time later. Max fell through the gap and landed face first in the grey dust, and got up shaking his head for just long enough to stop him from seeing the tear in the fabric of the world seal itself behind him. A few hours, or days, or maybe even weeks later, he had walked far enough to see his footprints stretching out far behind him because even the air in this place didn’t have enough imagination to form itself into a breeze and blow them away. All around him in every direction and towards every horizon were the same unshifting undulating dunes of grey dust, and he was at least grateful that they had at least made the effort to make themselves into hills, otherwise the place would be even less stimulating than it already was, which, he imagined, was pretty much impossible. He knew already that someone was trying to teach him a lesson here, to let him know what a world without hope or vibrancy or imagination might resemble, but he still wasn’t convinced who it might be who was playing the role of teacher this time. Instead he just walked and walked and walked until his foot tapped against something metallic lying half buried in the dust, a familiar helmet lying where it had fallen just before its owner had sped off and done his work. In this version of reality there had been no-one there to stop them, no-one prepared to make that choice and stand in their way. Max bent down and picked up the helmet and blew some of the grey dust that covered it. He made an attempt at polishing it with his sleeve and it came up a brownish gold colour which surprised both him and the landscape around him, as it was the only colour either of them had seen for as long as they could remember. Max looked at his distorted reflection and smiled, and as he did so, it began to rain and a hundred billion raindrops full of possibility began to fall all around him, and he could see a world in every one. All he had to do was pick one.
Link to the index (Parts One to Nine):
http://m-a-w-h-writers.blogspot.co.uk/2012/02/blog-tag-1-index.html
Or perhaps there's another Blog Tag, Coming Soon...? (Just as soon as this one maybe gets itself turned into a properly structured story...)
