Jigsaw World (22 page)

The group discussed the odd normality of the
recent appearance of the man. He was not the usual monster. Why had
he come? Was he coming to help or interfere with their tasks? The
only reason why he was even labeled as one of the ‘events’ is
because he popped into existence from thin air. Maybe he meant to
help them. If so, he shouldn’t have killed Tom’s dog.

After a while, the time had got along to about
six, and the four of them started to get ready for the night’s
adventure. Vera and Markus went to freshen up a bit, and Tom and
Karla went to find good seats to watch the evening’s happenings
from. Once the two of them went out of sight down the hallway, and
started their shadow walk, the Sorcerer had reassured everyone that
he could still conjure up a view of them on their shadow walk in a
viewing globe he happened to have on hand. Your typical psychic
charlatan would have called it a crystal ball.

Finally, everyone had arrived for the evening.
The Herald and the Sorcerer stood in front of Vera and Markus,
instructing them in the finer points of their task. Karla and Tom
sat back watching the activity, and eating the popcorn that Tom had
brought in for the occasion. A few moments of this, and the parties
were ready for the figurative starting gun to sound.

The Sorcerer activated the orb, and it was
eerie to see the movement of the two duplicated so faithfully in
the globe. Both the Herald and the Sorcerer muttered some arcane
sounding words just below a comprehensible volume, and made some
small motions with their arms and fingers that was somewhere
between silly looking and impressive. Then the Sorcerer snapped his
fingers.

The large double arch door at that end of the
room opened on its own accord, and they could see a light hazy
misting effect was starting in the distance down the length of the
hallway. The two voyagers on this task began to walk slowly toward
the doorway, and then finally they passed through the doorway. The
obscuring mists sprang up and hid them completely.

Tom looked over at the globe, and the two
adventurers could be plainly seen in it, walking down a stone lined
dirt path under a line of hardwood trees. The grass and the trees
looked so green there. Tom had a clear view of the pair walking,
and he had never seen them look as alive as they did right then. As
he watched them, the surroundings started to take on a translucent
sheen, and where had stood trees was now large boulders, spaced
about as though moved to their present positions by
glaciers.

Markus and Vera walked down the path,
chattering endlessly to each other about the strange difference
they felt in this place to that in the world they were used to.
This place felt real, the colors were brighter, the sounds were
more musical, hard rocks and trees felt harder, the stream they had
passed seemed wetter than usual.

Now they walked through a place of Rolling
Meadows and trees in bloom in a warm evening just after the sun had
left the sky, but the blindness of the night had not yet set in. At
a distance, they suddenly began to see people standing as though
all alone. When they looked carefully at the nearest of these, they
saw that they were ghostly. Markus could see the tree behind her
that mortal flesh should have obscured.

These people did not seem to be less. It was
as if they were made more real by their very insubstantiality. It
was a sense of them that made no logical sense. A moment later,
they were gone. In the distance were others, but now they stood
like mountains, huge forms of men and women, which stood motionless
in the distance, forms which stood beside the distant mountains as
equals. There was a feeling of chilling concentration by these vast
beings, as though they thought their vast thoughts, thoughts that
moved with glacial slowness and relentlessness, thoughts that
spanned the centuries. If there were gods, these beings may be
beyond them, a manner of god of gods.

Again the vista changed, and now they stood in
a cemetery, which seemed to span the whole of the earth. For miles
they walked, and the headstones and monuments continued in proud
rows for all those miles. After a time, they concluded that this
time, the scenery would not be changing. They both felt that
something was different. Perhaps they were close to their
prize.

“
I feel like we need to walk that
way.” Vera commented as she pointed in the direction she meant.
Markus nodded in agreement, because he felt the same way. They
abandoned the pathway, and started to walk between the stones. It
was next to an oversized monument depicting gargoyles guarding the
sarcophagus that they saw him. He seemed to be a normal seeming
young man with Mideast or Eastern Europe classic features, but the
way he moved as though walking was a type of dance, the precision
of all of his movements told Markus that he was no young man. In a
millennium a man may learn to move like that, but never in a single
life. He was most certainly the oldest man that Markus had ever
seen.

“
Have you come to take it away?”
The man asked, and Markus can see the flash of fangs as he speaks.
“If you are, you must hurry. Some of the others will stop you if
they find you here.” He turns and moves toward the sarcophagus,
where Markus and Vera can see a faint glow deep within
it.

“
So, why are you willing for us to
take it away?” Markus asked. The man looked toward him and smiled,
which made the vampire fangs much more prominent. The man looked
sad, and for just a moment, even older than Markus had
guessed.

“
Because I have lived forever. The
Book has changed the world, and made us all immortal, never dying
and forever.” The man said. “We cannot even die at our own hands.
Men were never made to live forever, and if you take the Book away,
I will finally be able to lie down.”

They reached the mouth of the sarcophagus, and
the man motioned them toward the glow within. “There it is. Take
it, and go quickly.”

Vera reached into the midst of the glow, and
she lifted out the object which made the light. It did not look
much like a book, more like a tablet or a Reader, if they displayed
moving letters in some unknown script, and if the entire device was
transparent, so that the display could be seen from the front or
the back. In short, it was like a clear square silicon wafer that
displayed a living script, and from what they knew, it also did
strange things to the world around it.

“
Vera, we should get this back and
use it, then put it someplace safe.” Markus remarked. “Otherwise,
the world around us will start to change like this one has. This
isn’t the kind of stability we are looking for!”

She agreed, and they quickly bundled the Book
up into a backpack, nodded their goodbyes to the old Vampire man,
and started back the way they had come. Soon, they saw the forms of
what were doubtlessly the companions of the old one loping toward
them, but now the mists of change washed over them, and when it
receded, they were once again walking down the hallway. A Minute
later, they were through the doors and back in the parlor with
their friends.

They did not really need to describe their
adventure to Tom and Karla. The orb of the Sorcerer had faithfully
shown it all. With so little to explain, it was but a short time
before the four of them were settled down for a night of debauchery
and rest, before the task on the morrow.

******

The night had been a long one, and they were
all excited about Vera’s new play toy, The Book of Eternity. Tom
suspected that it was more than excitement, however. The Book may
already be working on the world, and on them. Such surges of energy
and excitement must be a common occurrence in the presence of the
device. In the presence of the device would very rapidly come to
mean anywhere on earth. They needed to use it and lose it,
fast.

Tom had bounced out of the bed that morning,
and despite having a short sleep, he felt well rested. He was
actually looking forward to his and Karla’s little expedition
today. He was going to be taking the Colt Anaconda 44 magnum
revolver, and a fine miniature Scottish Claymore for his left hip.
It was miniature at a 34 inch length, which was good when he
sneaked it out of the Sage’s armory. He had asked the Herald to get
him some silver bullets for the Colt, and so now he was armed for
the more exotic types of foes.

Karla was still drowsing in the bed, not being
disturbed by the animals. Tom was attempting to be very subtle
about the way he was molesting her as she slept, and so far, she
either had not been awakened by the handling, or she had, but was
enjoying it too much to end it. But now it had gone on too
long.

“
WAKE UP!! VAMPIRE CLOWNS ARE
COMING!!!”

The lovely green eyes of Karla snapped open,
and she immediately reached down toward her waist, where Tom
assumed that she was used to wearing a knife, or perhaps a whip.
Just as she was starting to realize that her weapon was not on her,
she also realized that no threat was really present, and if it had
been, Vampire Clowns were a rare menace. Parasitic cow paddies were
a much more common threat.

As she came off of the bed, the pillow reached
a ballistic trajectory toward Tom’s head. Having been savagely
attacked by her, the only thing that Tom could do was to hold her
head in place as he pinned her tongue to the mat in a morning
tongue wrestling match. Having met her match in this department,
she reached for the staff that comforted her, and proceeded to
engage in what might be seen as a freestyle milking activity. When
at last she was successful, it was not a pound of flesh she
received.

A few moments later, they had recovered from
their activities, and wandered into the kitchen for some semblance
of breakfast. There they discovered that Markus and Vera were
already up, and had done the wifely duty of breakfast production,
this time with blueberry pancakes, sausage and scrambled eggs. Tom
wasn’t going to complain.

They all dug into the food with gusto, and
when they had finally finished it off, they each got a cup of the
tar like substance that Vera called coffee. It was good, but the
tar in the tar pits that animals had been preserved in had been
thinner. More than one cup of it would probably result in vibrating
out of one’s skin.

Idly chatting after the ingesting, and during
the digestion, centered on the tasks set before them, and the
general consequences of participating in those tasks. They
universally agreed that the artifacts were having an effect upon
them, and upon the world around them. They were all feeling much
more energetic than the situation called for, and Markus noted that
a minor cut that he got yesterday healed up before his eyes in a
matter of minutes.

They had felt just a bit of an anomalous
sensation after Tom brought back the Stone, and it was more
pronounced, but still subtle after Markus brought back the Staff.
When Vera nabbed the Book, it was like the air was supercharged.
Tom suggested that the addition of an artifact seemed to escalate
the effect about ten times, so that now it was a noticeable one
thousand times more charged than it was before the first artifact.
Add on the Seed, and the charge would be around ten thousand times
as large.

The common consensus was that once they had
all four of the artifacts, they should use them to complete the
mission, and then they need to get them out of the world as soon as
possible. Tom for one, could not forget the depth of sadness on the
face of the old vampire.

Once they were all finished with the food, the
coffee, and had exhausted the small store of information and
speculation they had on the subject of the artifacts, they decided
that it was time to find the Herald or the Sorcerer and see what
was going on today. As soon as they stuck their heads out of the
door, they discovered that both of them were taking their ease at
the table in the courtyard.

They all settled in around the table and each
of them took a glass of the chilled lemonade that was available.
The Herald handed them the newspaper that he had finished perusing,
and they each collected their favorite sections to read. The girls
got the fashion and entertainment sections, Markus took the
classifieds and sports sections, while poor Tom was left with the
only parts of the newspaper which actually contained
news.

According to the headlines, the President had
declared martial law once again, and had sent the army into
Mississippi to pacify the people there who unreasonably expected a
weekly paycheck to cover both shelter and food! Ever since he had
dissolved the Congress and suspended elections, the people who had
previously supported him had started to turn against him. The
President confessed on a recent television show that this was very
confusing to him. He knew that he was doing a wonderful
job.

Markus pointed out that a soccer game in Rio
had been cancelled after a glowing orb had appeared above the
maddened crowd, and had dipped into the crowd. Every person that it
touched had blown apart like a watermelon with a firecracker
exploding in its middle. Some 216 persons had been killed before
the stadium could be emptied.

Vera noted that for the first time in ages,
romantic comedies were much more popular than action adventure
movies, and Karla showed the group that there was actually some
chain mail and other armor type fashions appearing in both the male
and female new fashions. Without a doubt, the dangers of the modern
world were definitely changing human behavior and
interests.