Michelle von Horrowitz.

[000: PROLOGUE]

The camp - stood upon the foothills of Mount Fuji and looking out over a seemingly endless vista consisting of forest, river, and eventually city - was a hive of activity. This was somewhat atypical, particularly for a Wednesday night. Usually, the trainees were in bed early having returned from their weekly recreational leave, observing the imposed curfew and preparing for another day of training tomorrow. Here, training meant labour, toil, and exhaustion. A good night’s sleep was essential. Even the kaiju, usually, would be eating his supper in front of the fire. Sometimes, the old woman with the eyepatch would meditate on the courtyard, her bokken set in front of her like an offering to the battle Gods, candles lit in a wide circle around her. She would be as silent as the rest of the place. But that was usually.

Tonight, it seemed that every trainee in the school was out on the courtyard and engaging in not-so-hushed whispers about the source of the commotion. Torches were lit around the perimeter of the stone garden, cutting through the thick night and casting a red glow over the scene. The kaiju himself sat in his usual seat, just to the right of the doorway that led into the central complex of the school. Next to him, standing with a straight back and a peinsive, thoughtful countenance, was the woman in the kimono, holding her bokken at her side and her face adorned by a plain, black eyepatch. The kaiju and the woman seemed about the only people in the scene that weren’t talking in a frantic and urgent manner.

Across the courtyard from the school was a clearing in the trees, and through it a stone path led towards the villages and eventually the city. Torches shone on either side of it, and all assembled on the courtyard could see the two men - students of a senior standing within the school - pulling along the woman long before they emerged into the clearing. She wasn’t kicking and screaming, but she was certainly being dragged. Each of the men had an arm wrapped firmly around one of hers, and although she had accepted the futility of resistance she still struggled to keep up with their pace. Her head was bowed, a mess of dirty blonde hair - short but tangled - obscuring her face from view.

Eventually, she was brought onto the courtyard and thrown face first onto the stone. She was breathing heavily, her chest labouring as it expanded and filled with thick, dirty air. It clogged her throat and her lungs.

Michelle lifted her bruised face in the direction of the school and the kaiju. She pushed herself up onto her hands and knees.

“茂みに隠れて、” one of the men - the older and rougher of the two - said in the general direction of Snowmantashi. The former CWA World Heavyweight Champion stood from his seat. His face remained passive. “私たちは彼女をどうするべきですか？”

“彼女はウイスキーと尿のようなにおいがします、” declared the second. They had set upon her in the woods, and bested her thanks to three facts: there were two of them, she’d lost her own bokken back on Tsushima, and (to their credit) they moved in silence. Before she had really worked out what was happening she was being dragged to the school. It was where she meant to come of her own accord eventually, and so she’d allowed herself to be taken to its doors by her captors.

“彼女を街に連れて帰り、” the old woman in the kimono said. She was still smiling, but it was full of scorn and derision. She enjoyed seeing Michelle brought low. Dreamer, after all, had given her the need to sport an eyepatch. Michelle looked at her as she spoke, and spat blood out onto the white stone of the courtyard.

At the door of the school Izaya Snowmantashi had emerged. He leant against the doorframe, and he too was smiling at Michelle. It seemed warmer, though, and full of curiosity if not exactly kindness.

And all-the-while, his older brother solemnly walked towards the outsider. He was now only a few paces away, having descended the short wooden staircase that led to the courtyard. His face was unreadable, as it always was.

Bell is the sea, she thought. Treacherous and bold and cunning. And Snowmantashi is the mountain. Inevitable and obscure and, it seemed, unclimbable.

“Skulking in the woods?” Snowmantashi asked. She didn’t read accusation in the question, but she could never work out how the Mountain was feeling beneath his calm, plain exterior. She had seen him bring the storm too, of course. But only in the ring. Here, he was steadfast and calm. “You know we guard our perimeter. You were a student here too, of a sort and for a time... I can only conclude that you wanted to be caught.”

Michelle looked around the courtyard... at the trainees standing in a wide circle around her… at the torches casting their red glow over the scene… at the old woman in the kimono… at Izaya… at him...

She felt more blood in the back of her throat, but she swallowed it down and continued to gaze up at the kaiju.

“Very cinematic,” she said, once her eyes had finished scanning the scene and settled on the man in front of her. “Are you going to lynch me?”

Snowmantashi had his hands behind his back, and Michelle’s snide questioning failed to make any impression on his solemnity.

“You must know that you are not welcome here,” he stated, without emotion. “Not after Baikal. My friend...”

Here, Snowmantashi motioned towards the woman in the kimono and the eyepatch.

“... wasn’t fond of you during your visit, and less so after you had left. Many of these men are almost as loyal to her as they are to me. I imagine that you are aware what they would have me do to you, if this was their decision to make.”

Michelle said nothing. She had her hands on her hips, still struggling for breath.

“Why are you here?” he asked.

The question was conspiring with the night air, both clawing at her as she struggled for words.

“Chris Kennedy,” she started, meekly. Snowmantashi didn’t flinch at the name. “You know him. You beat him.”

A slow nod from the kaiju.

“I know him,” he conceded. He paused for what seemed like a long time. “But the way that you conducted yourself… both at Baikal and before it... for five years, Dreamer, I have wanted to see the best in you. That night in New York City, I glimpsed it. But the truth of the matter, Michelle, is that this idealistic version of you is in itself a dream. It is nice to think upon. But you are full of anger, and sadness, and ill-will. And despite all this, you remain empty. You are barbed and hollow, and worthy of neither my respect nor my help.”

With that, the kaiju turned his back on her.

“彼女を街に連れて帰り、” he stated. “キャリッジを使用してください。”

The woman in the kimono stood to her feet, still smiling her hateful smile as she passed the kaiju on the stairs. She gripped her bokken at her side with her right hand. Her two captors, along with three other happy volunteers, complied with Snowmantashi’s orders.

They loaded the carriage and threw her in the back of it. She looked out of the window at the scene, and noticed Hiroshi for the first time. He stood at the front of the pack, and he smiled at her kindly.

When they arrived in Tokyo, they found a convenient back alley and dumped her out of the carriage. A hard rain hammered down onto them as the woman in the kimono stepped out of the vehicle behind her. Michelle turned to face her, but her vision was obscured by fatigue. The woman in the kimono hit her four times across the face with her bokken, and Michelle lost consciousness after the second.

*****



[001]

“Are you sure this is the right place?”

She was regaining herself.

“I’m sure it is the right place.”

The floor below her felt cold and hard.

“It really doesn’t look like the right place…”

Around her, she could hear a low rumble and a mechanical sort-of whirring. It was unlike anything that she’d ever heard before.

“It doesn’t exactly feel like the right place, either…”

But she couldn’t see anything. The mechanical rumble and the odd, vaguely familiar voices were all that existed in her world.

“It IS the right place! If I have brought you here, then how could or would it be anything OTHER than the right place?!”

The rest of the voices seemed to falter for a moment. Michelle used the silence as an opportunity to focus on her vision. She tried to open her eyes and close them again, eventually managing to bring into being something other than darkness. There were the vague outlines of people. Four of them, she thought. Other than that it was just colours. Pink, silver, and white, mostly.

“It really doesn’t seem like the right place.”

“I mean, you have taken us to the wrong place plenty of times.”

“....’.. … ……”

She heard an exasperated sigh as she contemplated the task of trying to climb to her feet. She found that she could move her fingers, and was excited by the prospect. Turning her head towards her hand, she busied herself in attempting to push herself up to a seated position. More blinking and squinting and straining brought things a little bit more into focus, but everything was still obscured by a thick blur. The required focus made her head throb.

“Let me worry about that. Look, why don’t you go and check on the patient?”

“You mean the captive?”

“I mean the patient. Careful! I can turn around and drop you off back at base. The Octopi #2 sets out on its side-adventure tomorrow. Gator Guy and Megaladon Man could do with an extra pair of hands.”

“...”

“...”

“I’ll check on the patient.”

She could see one of the blurred outlines making its way towards her. It was smaller than the others.

“Hey… I think she’s waking up…”

Michelle was seated now, but still on the floor. She used one of her hands to scratch away at her eyes. Attempting to speak was useless. Her throat was dry and she could still taste blood.

“Here,” the smallest outline said, collecting a brew from a nearby counter. Even with her obscured vision she could still see the pink steam rising from the broth. “Drink this. It’ll help!”

He lifted it to her lips and she obliged, and was pleasantly surprised that it did help. With a few more blinks, she found her vision was returning to normalcy. One blink filtered reality in sepia tones. A second gave everything a psychedelic overlay, strikingly bold colours - green and yellow and blue and purple - drowning out the everyday palette. A third blink saw things in black and white. A fourth returned her to the real world.

In front of her, smiling at her as he took the cup away and held out a hand, was Uncle’s wizard. Harry, she thought to herself. His name is Harry.

And behind him, dressed in matching purple tracksuits and with equally ostentatious smiles on their faces, were Thomas West, Quiet, and - in the middle of the pair - J.J. JAY! himself.

“... what the fuck am I doing here?” she asked.

“My wizard gives you back the power of vision and speech, and this is what you ask?!” Uncle shook his head as he spoke, and eventually joined Harry in pulling Michelle up to her feet. The former Triple J Champion began to escort her around the room, which - she soon discovered - was the Bridge of quite a large and highly-advanced spaceship. “But you are here because we found you! We saved you, Michelle! Bleeding and bruised and soundly sleeping in some back alley. If it wasn’t for Quiet’s keen eyesight, we might have missed you completely. Fortunately for you and for us, we were able to get you on board, and Harry here has been working on you nonstop ever since. Good job, Harry!”

“Well done, Harry!” Thomas West added.

“..... …, …..!” said Quiet.

“Please, guys,” Harry started, smiling proudly but with his palms outstretched in front of him, as if trying to downplay their plaudits. “I really couldn’t have done it without all of your support and belief. It was a team effort!”

“Nonsense, Harry!” Uncle said. “If it wasn’t for you, Dreamer here would’ve been a treat for the Japanese street dogs! Nasty bunch. Have you seen that Wes Anderson film?! Terrifying! But now?! She’s a guest on the Octopi!”

“The Octopi #1,” Thomas West corrected, haughtily.

“Hubris, Thomas!” Uncle said. “The Octopi #1 and #2 are of equal stature, my dear. Megaladon Man and Gator Guy do important work, too!”

“Then why aren’t they here?” West asked.

“Well, we started planning this particular adventure before they joined the Nephews,” Uncle answered, a little sheepishly. “It would’ve taken a lot of thought to write them in this late.”

Michelle blinked at the scene. JAY! had deposited her onto a long pink sofa before returning to his work. The ship was seemingly on autopilot: in front of her, the entire front of the vessel was floor-to-ceiling glass, though upon it many interfaces displaying various information about the journey and the shuttle itself were displayed. The largest was in the top right corner, and depicted a rotating sphere of dirt and pinkish water. The image had a strange caption: GELTREX D-48600. Two countdowns were beneath the image, one reading 00:02:16:41 and the other 06:03:58:03. Michelle watched, confused, as they each ticked down towards zero.

“Could somebody please tell me where the fuck I am?!”

“On the Octopi!” JAY! said again. “And yes, the Octopi #1, but only for identification purposes. The Octopis - which is the proper plural, do not look it up - often ride in unison, but I also like for Gator Guy and Megaladon Man to get individual adventuring experience. It makes them more rounded individuals for when they appear in main adventures. Character progression is very important nowadays, Michelle.”

“We’re just over two hours from Geltrex D-48600,” Thomas West declared, in answer to her question.

“Thomas, she won’t know what that is,” Harry the Sane Wizard stated, before turning to their guest. “Michelle, Geltrex D-48600 is a small planet in the Nebulonox Gamma-40 System. Third Quadrant passed the Crease.”

“.... ….-........., …..!” Quiet said.

“I agree,” Uncle agreed. “Very well-explained, Harry!”

“But why am I here?!” Michelle asked, again.

“We’ve told you, Michelle,” he answered. “We found you beaten halfway to death in some back alley. What were we to do? Drop you back at your motel and let you sleep it off?! No! That is not how the Nephews operate, Dreamer! We saved you, Michelle! And we are taking you on an adventure! Have you ever seen the Nebulonox Gamma-40 System?! Of course you haven’t! And you’re here complaining!!”

“Some people...” West lamented, shaking his head.

“But…” Michelle started, before looking out of the front window of the Octopi again. They were approaching an asteroid belt, the ship’s computer system beginning to calculate the most appropriate course. “But I have a match…”

“Ah, yes!” Uncle said, turning away from her and checking the ship’s vitals on a control panel at the Bridge. “Chris Kennedy! Quite the scuffle in Sparta!”

“I mean, she has a point,” the podcast host started. “She probably shouldn’t be here with us for a week before her big championship match.”

“What do you mean?” Uncle asked, still staring down at his monitor. “Where else would she want to be?!”

“You should’ve done something with Snowmantashi instead,” West started, turning towards Michelle. “He actually knows Kennedy. That would’ve been more relevant to this match. It would’ve more effectively furthered the program whilst still saciating your need for backstory exposition.”

“I tried to do something with Snowmantashi,” Michelle argued. She rose from the pink couch and walked towards the immense window. She wanted a closer look at the oncoming asteroids. “And I didn’t choose to do this with you. You kidnapped me, remember?”

“Woah, woah!” JAY! said, turning towards Dreamer. “Kidnapping is a strong word, Nephew!”

“You kidnap people all the time, JAY!” stated West.

“You kidnapped me!” said Harry.

“. …. .. .. … …. ….”

“I know!” JAY! bellowed, a manic smile on his face. “I’m proud of each and every one of those kidnappings! But kidnappings must be earned, Nephews! We saved you, Michelle. Saved you!!”

Uncle turned back to his monitor, and began to tap away at a series of keys in front of him. He was muttering to himself as he went, and Michelle settled for standing at his shoulder and looking at the approaching asteroid belt. The large boulders cascaded through space in an irregular pattern, some unseen and unknown force suspending them in a neat river through the seemingly endless void.

Michelle looked at the man in the octopus mask. He was oblivious to her. She had met him before, obviously. Most notable was last year’s Valentine’s Day Massacre event, where she’d defeated JAY! in a First Blood match. Things had been amicable (if not overly friendly) in their interactions since, but news of his sudden affiliation with Gerald… her Gerald… had piqued her interest and raised an eyebrow. She had always thought, rather patronisingly, that Gerald was the sort of person who could easily be taken advantage of if the correct manipulator saw a benefit in doing so. JAY! seemed to fit the bill rather nicely. She had been meaning to spend some time with him as soon as she arrived on the purple brand after Lights Out. His intentions with Grayson were unknown to her, but now - stood in the cockpit of the Octopi with him and his followers - she felt they were at least knowable.

“You called me Nephew,” she said. “Not Niece?”

“Nephew is not a gender-specific term in this context,” JAY! said, flippantly. He was busy adjusting their course slightly.

“Is she coming with us?!” Thomas West asked excitedly. He was approaching with Harry and Quiet in tow. “I promise we will keep it relevant to Kennedy.”

“Do I have a choice?” she asked, somewhat mesmerized by the ship’s altering trajectory. The Octopi seemed to skip on space itself. The wings rotated as they glided through the asteroid belt to avoid contact, but the central complex of the ship remained stationary. Michelle looked on in awe as they emerged on the other side of the belt, and in the distance she saw for the first time the rotating sphere of dirt and pinkish water.

*****



[002]

Michelle sat in her quarters, which were tucked away near the engine room and as such were always soundtracked by a faint buzzing noise, and turned an envelope over in her hands. She had slept reasonably well considering she had only yesterday left the known galaxy for the first time. Her eyes traced over the letters on the envelope: GiGi. The handwriting was a scrawl, written when her head had been a lot less clear than it was now. The letter inside was the same. Half-finished thoughts and vague promises. It was unsurprising that she hadn’t sent it. She didn’t even really know where she’d sent it to.

She looked at the room that she had been given and found herself certain that every bedroom on the ship would’ve been a variation upon this theme. The walls were white, the bed was pink, the floor and ceiling were silver. A window looked out onto the atmosphere of Geltrex D-48600, which was a dark purplish hue and covered by a dense and dark smog. Only the brightest stars were visible beyond. Below the ship, the planet stretched out its arms, waiting for them to dock and make contact with the doomed civilization on the surface.

A knock came on her door, and Michelle beckoned the unknown guest inwards. Moments later, Harry the Sane Wizard stood within the ajar door with a smile on his face.

“We’re ready,” he said. “Are you ready?”

For what, exactly? What would happen on Geltrex was something she couldn’t even begin to guess, but more pressing than that - despite the lack of galactic proximity - were the mundane and everyday events back on Earth. She had fallen asleep thinking about Chris Kennedy, and woke up doing the same thing. Part of her hoped that the impromptu adventure would’ve pushed all thoughts of The Astonishing One and his wonderful Bell out of her mind. But all roads lead to Connelly, and at the moment they all seemed to run through Kennedy on their way to her. It was as if he formed a moat around a castle, and each night she would throw her body against the high walls hopelessly. The doors remained locked. The stone was strong. The waters were deep and treacherous and she had never been a strong swimmer.

A few minutes later, Michelle found herself sitting in the rear seat of a pod. In front of her, Thomas West and Harry the Sane Wizard put their seatbelts on. Thomas adjusted the rear-view mirror and forced eye contact with their special guest.

“Safety first, Dreamer!” he said, nodding towards her seat belt. She obliged, and Thomas removed the clutch. The pod doors in front of him opened up, and the spherical shuttle which housed the three of them glided out into the purple atmosphere of Geltrex. Michelle looked out of the large glass dome that comprised the top half of the pod, and through it she could see a second, identical vehicle emerge from another bay in the Octopi #1. In the driver’s seat was Uncle, and next to him Quiet operated the communications panel. JAY! saluted in their direction, Harry and Thomas reciprocating with smiles on their faces. Without further hesitation, Uncle ploughed downwards towards the surface and his Nephews dutifully followed.

“Scary business, black holes,” Thomas West declared, a little too passively. He was focussed on getting himself into Uncle’s slipstream, as if he intended to overtake him on the way to the planet.

“How long do they have?” Michelle asked, whilst looking at the speed gage on one of the dashboards. It was climbing to four, five, six hundred kilometres per hour, but the pod was steadfast as it continued to skip through the atmosphere.

“About six days,” Thomas West said, flicking a switch on one of his control panels. The pod’s radio stirred into action. Harry began to nod along to the music. “Difficult to tell with black holes. Uncle will have worked it out.”

Michelle looked out of the glass dome of the pod and watched on as they hurtled closer to the surface. Their speed seemed to play with the optics, and against the backdrop of a deep purple sky she saw streaks of gold and silver, punctuated by streamers in green, and then blue and red and white stars exploding like rockets. The galactic firework display continued, light but not sound assaulting her as they fell and fell and fell…

… until the pod rotated to view the surface of the planet in its totality, and with a low roar of its propulsion systems began to rear up. Their speed decreased. The sky remained purple and vast and the weight of it crushed her. The speed gage ticked down below one hundred again. Michelle felt her stomach lurch. She was dizzy and nauseous.

Thomas landed the pod on the edge of a purplish-pink lake, and moments later JAY! parked alongside him

“Heh,” West said, with a smile. “Uncle can’t drive for shit.”

He pressed a button on the dashboard and the glass portion of the pod peeled back, disappearing into the pink shell of the shuttle. Harry and West climbed down onto the surface, which was covered in a thick powdery snow. The Sane Wizard picked up a snowball, aimed it at JAY!, thought better of it, and then hurled it into the purple lake. The Cosmic Horror and Quiet had emerged from their own pod, and finally Dreamer was prompted to do the same. She found the ground uneven and was unsure as to whether that was because of the snow or her own legs.

Thomas and Uncle each pressed a button on a control panel housed around their wrist, and the pods stirred back into action. The glass domes were thrown into position again, and - without a pilot - they began to rise back into the sky. Eventually, they would take up a peripheral orbit around the Octopi #1.

“Last thing we want is the Geltrexians finding a pod and getting lofty ideas,” JAY! said, somewhat obliquely. He had begun to walk away from the lake and up a long, straight road that led towards a nearby metropolis. Small, squat houses lined the road, and Uncle nodded at a pair of gobsmacked locals who had watched their arrival and then the unmanned disappearance of their strange ships. The couple were bipedal, but had leatherish skin that was dark slate grey in colour, and three tails protruded from various positions up their spine. Their feet were webbed and large, but their hands dainty and agile. Most striking were the bulbous green eyes, which Michelle found it difficult to look away from.

A short walk later, they found themselves in the nucleus of the city. Despite the settlement’s impending doom, and the doom of the planet as a whole, things seemed to be continuing in a somewhat normal fashion. Of course, Michelle was approximating the appropriate measures of normality in such a strange and unnormal setting, but if she’d had to guess she would’ve thought the Geltrexians had little idea of what was about to happen to them. For the most part, she would’ve been right.

She followed Uncle into a large and bustling central square, and struggled to take in all of the sights and smells of the active city epicentre. Nearby was a marketplace, and from it she could smell all sorts of delights: she thought she caught hints of dates and mangos and papaya, as well as pineapple and lemon and many other fruitish odours that she couldn’t quite place. Saffron, lavender, and jasmine washed over her in waves, and many of the locals that streamed in and out of the commerce hub were themselves covered in bergamot and geraniums and galbanum. In the square itself, many market stalls were erected, selling fresh meat and fish and emitting the more rancid, less homely aromas that came along with that savage practice. Amongst them, sometimes raised on pedestals, Michelle noted various preachers and speakers - of all ages, shapes, and sizes - engrossed and invested in the delivery of their sermons. Above them were posters that all seemed to promote the being that was depicted in them. He smiled kindly over the square in a hundred incarnations, each advertisement accompanied by a unique slogan and the being’s name, OWARI, as well as his symbol, 終わり.

“Where will you find him?” Harry asked, a little impatiently.

“Right here,” Uncle answered.

“When will you find him?” Harry asked.

“Right now,” Uncle answered.

“Ah, Mr. JAY!!” a fat, balding being said as he waddled up to Uncle, Michelle, and the Nephews. “We’ve been expecting you! We saw your approach!”

“You saw my approach?” JAY! asked, his eyebrow cocked. “How would a primitive civilization like you see… oh. I’m not the first to have come, am I?”

“Of course not!” the man said, a smile on his face. He heartily shook JAY!’s hand. “These people might run around with their head in the sand, but I know the truth, Mr. JAY!. Let me introduce myself: I am Gōrudo. I am the Mayor of Geltrex, the biggest city on Geltrex D-48600 and the fourth biggest settlement in the Nebulonox Gamma-40 System!”

”For about six more days,” West muttered, under his breath. The Mayor shook each of his guest’s hands in turn. Last was Michelle, who looked upon his leathery, golden skin and his forced smile uneasily.

“Who else has been here?” Harry asked.

“Harry! I ask the questions!” Uncle said, quickly and sharply. He turned back towards Gōrudo. “Who else has been here?”

“Well…” the Mayor started. He stared off into the distance in an affectation of thought. “A Godly man… an angry man… and a third before him, a long time ago. A strange, quiet man. They have given us many gifts, which we used to see your coming. But, of course, they haven’t given us nearly enough to stave off the darkness. For that, we must rely on OWARI alone.”

Michelle looked about herself at the odd purple sky. A black shooting star was screeching across it overhead.

“I am only here to observe,” Uncle said, uneasily. It appeared that he had expected the people here to be oblivious to their upcoming demise, but was doing his best to hide it.

“The quiet man was an Observer too,” Gōrudo said. “And he helped little.”

Uncle nodded up at the largest poster of OWARI.

“I’d like to meet him,” JAY! said. Michelle found that she wanted to do precisely the same thing. The man on the posters was striking. He was different from the Geltrexians. He didn’t look of the same species, really. He was older… more distant… but yet he felt close, too. But on his terms. “Can you arrange that?”

Gōrudo continued to smile, but it looked more forced than ever.

“Of course, Mr. JAY!,” he said, bowing deeply. “I really am at your disposal. OWARI is a great man. You know, these aliens that came before you… they told of the oncoming darkness. And if one was to look up at the sky… at the great terror that lies over our home at all times, now… one might believe these men. But me? I believe in OWARI. He will lead us from the darkness, and into lighter times again.”

“Long live OWARI!” Thomas West declared, raising a fist.

“..... …. … … ….!” Quiet added.

Gōrudo nodded, and continued to smile his false smile as he walked away from the group.

“Well, I guess the only thing to do now is split up and investigate, Nephews!” Uncle declared, a smile on his face.

A little while later, they had each disappeared into different corners of the settlement, but Michelle found herself still in the same city square. She stood in the shadow of the largest OWARI poster, and at the foot of it was a pedestal for a speaker. He was old… very old... and time lay heavily on his face and around his shoulders. His skin was cracked and worn, and his back was hunched over into an uncompromising arc. Still, he spoke with courage and passion and belief, and Michelle found herself locked in his spell.

“The darkness has come for us all,” he was saying in his low, drawn out tone. “We cannot ignore this fact. One only has to look up into the sky, which is scorched and burned and black, to know that this is true. But in OWARI…”

A smile crept over his face, and some of the other onlookers began to cheer.

“In OWARI, we see a promise of that bright past... when he came to us the first time, and we flourished, and we were made whole by him alone. He has promised us the same bounty in a new time. A time without the darkness. There are some in this city… none here now, I imagine, but they exist… who would have you turn away from OWARI’s path. They would point to the growing darkness, and to the beautiful home that OWARI has made with his beautiful wife… they would lay blame at the door of the very man who will save us... the only man who can save us! I ask you, brothers and sisters, to look at the sky, and at the dark days that have come now… but also to look into our past, and to the days that OWARI gave us before. We owe it to him, comrades… we owe him trust in this task…”

There were more cheers. Large numbers of people were stopping to hear the old orator.

“Out of darkness, cometh light!” the old man was shouting, now standing tall, his posture fixed by the power of his words. “Out of darkness, cometh light!”

Michelle turned away from the scene and, going against the tide of the assembled crowd, left the square.

*****



[003]

Later that evening (or perhaps simply later would be more appropriate, as Michelle found it very difficult to keep track of the times of day when all times of day took place beneath the ominous purple sky), Michelle was lounging on the pink couch in the centre of the Octopi’s Bridge. The large window in front of her revealed some of the landscape of the planet below, and at the edge of the screen one could see the celestial body’s curvature and, beyond that, the discoloured atmosphere surrounding it. A thick smog obscured the outline of the continents, but the bubbling, pinkish sea was bold and strange enough to permeate it. Uncle sat in his favourite chair, pressing various buttons to flick through the interfaces that were projected onto the window. Quiet was next to him, his feet up adjacent to Uncle’s control panel and flicking through a copy of Kurt Vonnegut’s Hocus Pocus. He seemed to be reading at an inhuman rate but was none-the-less enjoying himself. Thomas was laid out on the floor on the other side of the Bridge playing paddle ball. He was very good, but the incessant noise of ball against paddle soon made the endeavour more annoying than impressive.

“I don’t trust Gōrudo,” West declared, still playing his single player game with a passive, almost bored expression on his face. “And I definitely don’t trust OWARI.”

“You haven’t even met OWARI!” Uncle declared, all-the-while mindlessly pressing buttons on his control panel. “How can you not trust a man you don’t even know?!”

“.. …….., .. …… ….. … …. ………. .. ……….,” Quiet added.

“Well, I am aware of that,” JAY! agreed, still failing to look at his companions and instead keeping his gaze fixed on his interfaces and the surface of the planet. “There’s something immediately off-putting about a man who puts a hundred posters of himself in any city square… but the people down there seem to trust him.”

“Sounds dangerous,” West countered.

“I know,” Uncle agreed, again. “But we won’t get anything from this adventure unless we meet him.”

Just then, a single, loud buzz rang out around the Bridge. Michelle stood up immediately, concerned that the fire alarm had just sounded, but none of the other Nephews flinched from their tasks. Save Uncle, who pushed his chair back on its wheels to a different control panel and pressed a large button in the middle of it. The interface immediately disappeared from the window-screen, and the right half of it was suddenly taken up by the smiling image of Mayor Gōrudo.

“Mayor!” Uncle declared, with a worryingly believable affectation of happiness. “I see my predecessors must have left you with a communications system. Excellent news!”

“Yes, especially considering you so politely declined my offer of hospitality,” Gōrudo opened in a slightly barbed manner.

“We have everything we need here on the ship,” Uncle answered, dismissively. “And what of my request? Will OWARI receive us?”

“Oh, of course!” Gōrudo said, as if the outcome of this matter was obvious and barely warranted discussion (despite the fact that this was the very reason for the call). “OWARI’s doors are always open to anyone who should wish to see him. The night after tomorrow, OWARI will be hosting one of his spectacular galas. It’s important to keep moral high amongst the smallfolk, especially in such desperate and dark times. OWARI has extended five invitations to you and your party, Mr. JAY!.”

“Excellent!” Uncle replied, preparing to end the communication. “We’ll iron our best tracksuits. Or Harry will, I mean.”

“That won’t do!” Gōrudo implored. “You’ll stick out like five sore thumbs on the same hand! No… we’ll have something made for you. Traditional… but modern! That will do nicely.”

“Those two styles seem quite disparate,” Michelle started, but before Gōrudo could reply the communication had ended. Uncle quickly sprang from his chair and began to pace excitedly.

“A party!” he said, gesticulating with his hands as he went. “Of special magnificence, it seems! I love parties! Well, we all love parties! Who doesn’t?! Especially Harry! Where is Harry, anyway?”

“He’s analysing the soil samples,” Thomas said, still paddling his ball with exquisite patience and accuracy.

“Ah, good!” Uncle answered back. “Everything is coming along just swimmingly! This will be a Grade-A adventure, Nephews! An adventure with a capital A! One for the record-books! The soil is being analysed, and already we have a meeting with the figurehead. And at a gala, no less!”

“I wish Gerald was here to see this,” West said.

“Me too,” Uncle.

“Me too,” Michelle.

“.. …,” Quiet.

Uncle let out a lengthy, perturbed sigh. Michelle’s hand was drawn to her pocket, and the folded envelope with GiGi scrawled on the front.

“But still, we’ll get this OWARI to sign something for him, maybe. One of those posters, before they and he get spaghettified by the black hole…”

“OWARI looked…” Michelle began, hesitantly. She still found herself reluctant to throw herself head-first into proceedings. “... different from the rest of them…”

“That’s because he’s not like the rest of them. Most of the people here are Geltrexians. They’ve been here a while, but they’re still new. OWARI’s kind are older, and come and go as they please. Gōrudo has some of this old blood in him, too, but he’s been mixing with the Geltrexians for so long now that it’s difficult to tell the difference.”

“What is he, then?” Michelle asked. She was not sure it really mattered, but had asked the question anyway.

“He’s a shinshutsu...” JAY! said.

“A shinshutsu?” Michelle queried. “What the fuck’s a shinshutsu?”

“Yes. A shinshutsu. Look it up.”

JAY! nodded in the direction of one of the bookshelves, and specifically at a tome that was on the desk in front of it. Michelle acquiesced immediately, walking over to the white table and sitting on the pink reading chair next to it. The book was huge and seemed to be covered in thick, green carpeting. On the front, in large red letters, was written the mantra DON’T PANIC. The spine entitled the volume The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

“This thing’s real?” Michelle asked, turning to JAY!.

“In a sense, yes. I really liked that novel, so I had one written. It’s ostensibly what’s described in the book, though. Try it out.”

Michelle opened the book, and as if it knew her mind it immediately turned to the page that she required. Right there, in-between entries on ‘shingle-mages’ and ‘Shinto wars, the’ was a brief passage about shinshutsu. She read it out loud.

“Shinshutsu. Plural: shinshutsu. Parasitic creatures native to several planets in the Nebulonox Gamma-40 System. Most prevalent on Geltrex D-48600 and the planets of the Sokurov Belt. Categorised by their handsome features and sharp tongues, the shinshutsu are a mostly transient species that take nourishment from a host - either another being or a planet or even, upon occasion, whole systems of planets - before disappearing again, often for years at a time. The shinshutsu are generally of below average intellect, but as inhabitants of the primitive Nebulonox Gamma-40 System they are often able to manipulate the even simpler organisms in their vicinity (see: the Geltrexians of Geltrex D-48600). Shinshutsu culture consists mostly of scripted plays featuring one lengthy monologue, swimming with sharks, and ego-tickling.”

Michelle closed the book again and stood from her chair. JAY! had already gone back to his control panel, and she wasn’t sure if he had even been listening.

“Parasite? Doesn’t sound promising.”

“Now, now, now, Michelle,” JAY! began, without looking over at her. “Don’t go pre-judging. It’s 2021. Or at least it was back on your Earth.”

“.. ….. .. . ……. ……..,” Quiet argued.

“Excellent point, Quiet!” JAY! said. He was, for all of his other flaws, an encouraging presence around the rest of the Nephews, it seemed. When it suited him. “Where is Harry?! I want to tell him about the party! Thomas, can you go and fetch Harry?”

For the first time, West stopped his game. He sat up and looked at JAY!, a puzzled and outraged countenance fixed upon his face.

“I am playing paddle ball.”

After this declaration, he lay flat on his back again, and returned to his game. JAY! shrugged.

“I’ll go,” Michelle conceded, moving towards the door. “I need to stretch my legs.”

Harry was in his laboratory, and when Michelle slid the doors open with a scan of her retina (JAY! had been kind enough to program her into the Octopi’s security system, and the words UNCLE APPROVED appeared on a small LED screen next to the door) he jumped slightly before smiling and returning to his work. She told him about the party, and he’d seemed suitably enthused, but insisted on finishing his work before he returned to Uncle and the rest of the Nephews. Michelle took the opportunity to take a look around the lab, and asked the young wizard for information about the multitude of potions, balms, powders, and contraptions that he had housed in the workshop. Sometimes he answered, sometimes he ignored her, but all-the-while he continued with his toil. He would empty a small portion of soil onto a petri dish, add a specific amount of an odorless and colourless liquid, and then examine the solution under a microscope. Occasionally, he would smile to himself and scrawl something down onto a notepad.

“What’s this?” Michelle asked, coming to a halt next to a large sphere made of black glass. The sphere seemed heavy but was suspended above a control panel, upon which a host of dials and switches lay dormant.

“Done!” Harry said, finishing a final note and then storing his samples in a refrigerator. He turned to face Dreamer. “What’s what? Oh, that! That’s my planetary tracker. A marvelous invention, if I do say so myself! Not really magic either. At least not in the conventional sense. I prefer to think of that as… well, creative science.”

“What does it do?” she asked, running her fingers over the black glass sphere. Its diameter was roughly the same length as her torso, and she couldn’t find a single groove or crack along the surface.

Harry walked over to Michelle and, still smiling, he pressed the largest button on the device’s control panel. Lights within the ball stirred into life, and soon enough the sphere had been covered by a projection of the planet they currently orbited. She could see it all: the continents, the oceans, the cities, and - with a flick of a second button - the atmosphere, too. A small plasma screen on the control panel labelled it as GELTREX D-48600. Michelle stared at it in wonder.

“And look…” Harry said, before beginning to turn a dial. As he did, the sphere and the screen transitioned through a variety of projections. She saw the black volcanoes of ODYSSEUS I, the convoluted fjords of STARTIBARTFAST, the dense purple forestry of ICARUS X4J... and finally, the Sane Wizard found the setting he was searching for: EARTH. Michelle’s eyes wandered over the continents as the sphere slowly rotated before her. She tracked a path across the Pacific Ocean towards Japan, the country that she had only just left but that now seemed - and actually was - so far away.

“Can I see your planet?” Michelle asked. Harry pulled a face that suggested this was not a question he’d previously contemplated.

“Oh, no,” Harry said. “Uncle wouldn’t like that. The past is the past… and I’m here now! But Earth… we always need to keep a close eye on Earth.”

He paused for a moment and watched Michelle as she gazed at the projection of her home planet. He saw a lack of recognition in her eyes.

“You should remember that, Michelle. Don’t forget where you’re from. You have work to do.”

Michelle nodded, still incapable of tearing her eyes from the archipelago off the east coast of Asia.

“I know,” she conceded. “Kennedy. Lights Out. It all seems a bit abstract right now…”

“It can get that way, when you’re out here.”

“No, I mean…” she sighed, and turned away from the projection. “It felt that way before I left. Before Uncle brought me here.”

“After all that’s happened between the two of you?” Harry asked. He was out of her eye line, but his voice was kind and soothing. She had forgotten that he was fifteen. Was he fifteen? “You and Bell… and Sparta… and Cairo, too… I’d have thought that would make it a bit more real...”

She turned to face Harry, and the Wizard was surprised to see a passionless expression and tired eyes.

“After the brand split, I don’t think anything could’ve changed the way I feel. Gabrielle was onto something, you know. A stopped clock tells the right time twice a day… I can see why she was insulted by the draft. I was, too. After eighteen months in the company, without receiving so much as a sniff of a chance at a world championship opportunity… without even an inkling that one was coming anytime soon… I’m taken sixth overall. Maybe you’d assume I was above such things. But… it’s the men that went before me that place these questions in my mind. Chris Kennedy swans back into town, loses a couple of matches, and is my brand’s marquee name…”

She paused, but Harry sensed that she wasn’t finished. He waited patiently.

“My brand. A joke, right? I’m never in the main event. I’m never on the posters. I’m never the banner name in the show preview. I’m never doing anything other than making the old men look as good as I possibly can. Chris Kennedy is drafted first and promptly handed an opportunity immediately after coming in from the cold against a weakened field. I look at this, and I remember those eighteen months… winning the X Division Championship almost immediately and then being derided for being too good for it... spending months fighting my way to a tag team championship that I had literally zero interest in… chasing Mike Parr’s shadow… goading Bell… I remember the nights in the hospitals, the nights in the bars, the nights in the gutters... eighteen fucking months of it, Harry! They even delayed Carnal Contendership! No 2020 edition, and why? To give Sulley his goodbye tour? To hand Garcia his moment? I doubt it. They despise those two nearly as much as they dismiss me, really. No. I imagine they were waiting for the golden boy’s return. Who better to erase me from this history before I’m done re-writing it?”

She shook her head, and spat on the floor. Harry recoiled, but remembered himself and went on affecting composure and understanding.

“Whilst Kennedy is fed Devin Golden, a man who literally could not give a shit about wrestling unless he’s alongside his latest project, I’m given a motivated and skilled headhunter. I lose. He wins. It’s as if it was written that way. I am just… I’m done engaging with it.”

“For good?” Harry asked.

“No,” Michelle answered immediately. “Just until Lights Out.”

Harry nodded approvingly, and then found some courage.

“Speaking of which…”

Sheepishly, he lost that courage as suddenly as he’d found it.

“... um, actually... nevermind.”

The Sane Wizard was backing away from Dreamer and towards the door. Michelle raised her eyebrows.

“What is it?” she insisted.

“Well, um…” Harry began, staring down at the ground. “I happen to have a match at Lights Out, too. Maybe you heard? Probably you didn’t. The Gunfight Battle Royal. And…”

One more deep breath as he reached around in an attempt to locate his courage once again.

“... and I heard you’re a Battle Royal Specialist. I’ve seen your t-shirt. I was hoping… I was wondering if you’d give me some tips?”

Michelle smiled broadly.

“Do you still have that notepad?”

*****



[004]

Uncle J.J. JAY! held her in his arms as they moved through the motions of an elaborate waltz. Michelle didn’t really know the steps, but in JAY!’s firm grasp she was able to follow along and make a reasonable approximation. The routine seemed quite complicated, and Dreamer reasoned that JAY! had the same philosophy about ballroom dancing as he did DDTs. He still wore his mask, but was smiling ear-to-ear underneath it. They were upon the packed dance floor of the large, luxurious ballroom housed in one of the wings of OWARI’s decadent palace. The floor was boarded in an immaculate timber that was painted white, the same colour as the walls and the ceiling. There was a large bay window at one side of the room, outside of which lemon trees bloomed freely under the sun. The pink sea was visible upon the horizon, and looked calm today. Blossom from the trees blew across the scene. Inside the room, a multitude of large art work had been placed on the walls in golden frames, and off to one side of the ballroom was an elaborate seating area consisting of large circular tables with a dozen chairs at each of them. Above their head, three gigantic chandeliers made with dark blue crystals dominated the domed ceiling. When they had first arrived at the palace, Michelle had been overwhelmed by the place, but Uncle’s easy, comfortable nature had settled her. Now, as they danced, it felt like they were doing so at some dive bar in Paris or Amsterdam or Berlin, and the lavish otherness of the situation began to retreat from her mind.

The Nephews had been delighted to find out that Geltrexian traditional dress, though not quite being a purple tracksuit, was something remarkably similar. Sure, the jacket had lapels and a long tail, and rather than white stripes adorning their arms and shoulders the block purple colouring only gave way for a small, silver rune on their chest, but otherwise they found their new garb agreeable. The five of them looked like an interstellar pop group upon arrival, identically attired and with four smiles and one frown. Most of the beings in the place were dressed similarly, but in all colours imaginable. OWARI himself sat on a raised dais near the stage with Gōrudo and three women that Michelle didn’t recognise.

“How did it go?” she asked JAY!, as the two continued to twirl through the crowd in their elaborate waltz. “With OWARI…”

“He told me to talk to Gōrudo,” JAY! said, absently. He was staring into Michelle’s eyes, and she found the effect mesmerising and problematic. “I don’t think he concerns himself with such things. He’s more of a big picture guy, he told me. You’d have thought when a man like me offers a helping hand, any self-respecting cult leader would leap at the opportunity!”

“You’re helping now?” she asked. She found that, around Uncle, she was always full of questions and often blurted out the first one that found its way into her mind.

“Soil samples came back,” Uncle began, at last dragging his eyes away from Michelle’s and scanning the room. OWARI and Gōrudo now sat alone at the head table, their three unnamed friends having disappeared to smoke. “We can help. I told OWARI that we could suck a lot of the mass out of the centre of his planet without damaging its structural integrity, and then simply move it out of the way. He was more interested in proof-reading his speech. But still, Gōrudo was delighted to hear that I’ll help. I have to meet with him again soon to hammer out the details.”

“One more song?” Michelle asked, suddenly lost in this strange, obscure man.

“Duty calls, Dreamer!” Uncle said, as the music came to a halt. A Geltrexian band had been playing since their arrival, but just now it seemed they had decided to take a break. Michelle sighed with disappointment. “We can’t dance all the way to the apocalypse, Michelle! Three days to go, and we mustn't dilly-dally!”

With that, Uncle walked away from Michelle and to the head table. He shook hands with both the Mayor and the… Michelle suddenly realised that she wasn’t precisely sure of what OWARI was to this city. Only that he was important. Shortly after, JAY! and Gōrudo took their leave, and disappeared into an adjacent backroom. Michelle approached the parasite somewhat warily.

“Ah, Dreamer, I believe,” OWARI said with a smile as she reached his position. He took her hand and kissed it, and she thought for a moment that she could feel his forked tongue groping at the back of her palm. She took her hand away from him as quickly as she could, and found it difficult to reciprocate his smile. “Gōrudo told me about you. Your Uncle, too. He must have had a lot of brothers and sisters, to have ended up with so many Nephews!”

“You don’t know the half of it,” Michelle mused, her eyes scanning the room for the rest of their party. Quiet was outside smoking, as he had been for much of the night. Quiet always smoked at parties, at least according to Harry. The Sane Wizard was behind a counter, mixing drinks in novel and interesting ways for anyone that wanted to try his innovative, enchanted cocktails. Thomas West had brought some mobile recording equipment with him, and was hosting the first (and last) podcast ever produced on Geltrex D-48600. She found herself wondering what Gator Guy and Megaladon Man were doing, but not for very long.

“Do you like to dance?” OWARI asked, motioning towards the floor with an open hand. Michelle did like to dance, but - standing, as she was, so close to the parasite - she wasn’t sure if he would make a good partner. It seemed to her that he would want to lead, even if she was more suited to it. Either way, she acquiesced, and allowed him to usher her to the floor. He wasn’t as rhythmic as JAY!, and she found his movement rote, clumsy, and old-fashioned. But he knew the steps better than her. That much was obvious.

“JAY! told me that you had little interest in what he had to say,” Michelle started, staring past OWARI and to the band that played behind him. He trod on her foot, and apologised before they continued.

“How come all that you aliens ever want to talk about is the end of the world?” he asked, with a sickly-sweet smile. “The darkness has come before. It doesn’t necessarily mean we’re about to all be sucked to our deaths, or whatever grisly fate Uncle wishes to describe. Sucked to death doesn’t sound half-bad, if you ask me.”

“I’d have thought it would have been more pressing in your mind,” Michelle started, observing the blossom blowing in the wind outside of the bay window. “Given that, you know, you live here.”

OWARI shrugged, and continued to stare directly at her. She did all she could to ignore her gaze.

“I’ve lived in lots of places, Dreamer,” OWARI explained. “And you know what all of those places needed? Hope. The end comes for us all eventually, either as individuals or, like here on Geltrex D-48600, together. Tell me, is that such a bad thing?”

Michelle thought about this for a moment, and concluded that it most definitely was a bad thing. The strange being continued.

“I see it, the same as you do, and the same as Uncle does. Maybe the Geltrexians don’t. They swarm this way and that on their daily business, oblivious to their oblivion, clueless to the grim and abstract fate that awaits them all. What would you rather them do? Panic? Try to save themselves? Look at them…”

She followed the instructions, allowing her eyes to scan the Geltrexians that danced alongside them. They were swarthy and pitiful.

“You have to be realistic, Michelle. Some are too pathetic to save themselves. Too weak. At least, in me, they see the possibility of saviour.”

“But you don’t mean to save them?” she asked.

“I’ll leave that to Gōrudo, and to Uncle, and to you,” he said, smiling. “But I’ll be here if you manage it.”

She thought carefully about his words, and concluded that OWARI meant to take credit for whatever he could realistically take credit for. He didn’t seem ashamed or bashful about this. He wore his nature plainly, at least to her.

“Gōrudo said you had a wife?” Michelle asked, just as the song came to a close and another, faster one started. She was attempting to change the subject and earn some relief from his clutches.

“Yes,” OWARI said, smiling more broadly than ever. “Would you like to meet her?”

Michelle nodded, and her host ushered her away from the dancefloor. They entered a long corridor, climbed three flights of stairs, and entered a room in the attic of the house. Inside, on a bed, was a Geltrexian female with blonde hair and pale, leathered skin. Her eyes were closed and her face was tired. It seemed to Michelle that she had been in this predicament for a long time. Perhaps years. Various wires and drips were inserted into her body at specific points: up her nose, down her throat, through needles piercing her wrists and her thighs and her chest. Machines were arranged around the back of her bed, emitting a soft buzz and occasionally uttering a sad, solemn beep as feeble affirmation of her apparent status amongst the living. Some of the wires ran to large containers of colourful liquids, some of which were emptying into her and others filling from her. Michelle approached the bed and stared at the being’s pallid but beautiful face.

“She wasn’t always like this,” OWARI began, standing in the doorframe behind her. “She was once strong. Bold. She’d have been the life and soul of this gala a few years ago. But since… well, I’m not sure I want to rake all of that up again. Now, she needs this to keep going. Needs me to survive. But…”

Here, the man sighed with sadness. It was the first sincere emotion she’d heard from him.

“It’s not as one-way as you might think. I need her, too. This arrangement, it’s… symbiotic, I think is the word.”

Michelle was only half-listening, and all-the-while stared at the half-living face of the man’s wife. A part of her expected the eyes to open if she willed it hard enough.

“Come. We should go back to the party.”

An hour later, Michelle stood outside of the palace, staring out at OWARI’s impeccable gardens with Quiet. She saw many flowers that she could identify - bluebells and geraniums and tulips, lilies and roses, orchids and anthuriums and celosia - and a hundred others that she couldn’t name. She couldn’t think of a colour not represented in some way in the garden. The twinned moons of Geltrex were in the sky. Quiet was quiet. Michelle was too, but inside she was raging. She had three cigarettes left, and Quiet’s vape didn’t look like it would be nearly as satisfying to bum from as another pack of Camels. When she reached into her front pocket, her fingers ran across the front of GiGi’s envelope. She pushed the letter out of her mind and collected her smokes instead.

“What time is it back on Earth?” Michelle asked whilst lighting up.

“.......,” Quiet answered.

“I guess you're right,” Michelle conceded.

“... … …….. .. ….?”

“Yes,” Michelle answered, inhaling from her cigarette and once more tracing the continents of her own planet in her mind as she’d seen them in Harry’s machine. “Gerald... and Kennedy.”

“.. … ….. …’.. …?”

“I’m not sure. At the beginning, I thought it was unlikely. I watched the way he was treated… I listened to the way they spoke about him... and it felt as if it had already been decided. Like I was some actor who’d been handed a script and told to play her role. But now? So close to the dance?”

Michelle stopped speaking abruptly. Quiet dragged his eyes away from the moons and onto Dreamer.

“... ....’. …. …. …. …… .. ..?”

“Exactly. At least not just yet. You know, up until this point, I’d never been overly concerned with legacy. Such a concept is more for people like Truth or Sullivan. But now? I look at the challenges lying ahead of me… or ahead of whoever has the privilege of calling themselves World Champion... I look at Konchu Hao and Shawn Summers… at Danny Toner and Randy Ramon… at Nova Diamond… at all of these men talking about how much they want to be champion. How much it means to them and how long they’ve dreamt of it. I listen to these men calling themselves the best, and…”

She halted again to chuckle, which quickly turned into a brief but nasty cough.

“....’.. …. … ….?”

“That’s right. Because I’m the fucking best, I feel that I’ve proved that. Eighteen months, it took me. But nobody in that locker room will now look me in the eye and tell me that they’re better than me. Not anymore. Not even Garcia, Maskell, Summers, and the rest of the male pride crew. They can’t, because of that belt. And I look at what’s lined up next… Asia, Australia, Central America… I want it all, Quiet. Now, with it so close to slipping from my grasp, I find that I fucking need this. I want to walk through Kennedy… past Hao or Summers… through Toner and Ramon… and right into Mile High Massacre as the FWA World Heavyweight Champion.”

She flicked her cigarette away into a bush of pink tulips. It smouldered and then went out.

“It doesn’t matter how much they want it. Nobody will take my championship away from me. Because none of them are me.”

Quiet nodded slowly, and then returned his eyes to the moons.

“You don’t want to go inside?”

“... …,” Quiet said. And then, from inside his jacket pocket, he produced a fresh, unsmoked pack of Camel Blue. He threw them over to Michelle, who caught them greedily with a smile on her face.

*****



[005]

Twenty four hours (give or take) had passed since Uncle, Michelle, and the Nephews had returned from the gala, and despite the fact that it was the middle of the night, Michelle found that she was unable to sleep. She had left Quiet’s quarters an hour before, and had been wandering around the ship ever since. Uncle had given her complete freedom of the vessel and all of its features, but until this point she hadn’t had the time or inclination to explore properly. She had first visited the engine room, but was unable to understand the advanced technology underpinning the propulsion systems down there. She had spent some time in the gymnasium and, after donning the dark green tracksuit that Uncle had commissioned for her, repeatedly rallied a squash ball against a wall in one of the courts. She soon grew bored, and wondered how West had the patience. She walked around the Bridge and looked out of the huge window. The planet was still visible beneath them, and Uncle had received giddy permission from Gōrudo to begin his plan. A thick, cylindrical chain had been connected to the Octopi #1 from a hole that Uncle had drilled near the city, and spiralling up this chain were the planet’s nutrients, sucked from the core to ostensibly decrease its mass. This extract was dark and gloopy, but also sparkled silver and pink and gold. Dreamer watched the bizarre process taking place for a long time, sitting on the pink couch and smoking one of the cigarettes that Quiet had given her.

A short while later, Michelle walked along one of the upper decks when, from inside one of the rooms, she heard the sound of metal on metal. A brief investigation revealed that Thomas West was inside, and that he had just dropped a wrench onto the steel walkway that he currently occupied. He cursed and shook his head, picked it up, and then went back to work.

“Up late,” Michelle said. West wasn’t startled. It seemed he knew she was there.

“The Octopi never sleeps,” the podcast host replied. “At least that’s what Uncle says!”

Michelle observed her surroundings. Lined up in front of the walkway was a series of cage-like structures, just about big enough to house a human. The caging’s mesh seemed to be made of the same black glass as she’d seen in Harry’s workshop, but here it was sculpted into thin wiring and arranged into neat cuboids. There were a dozen of them along the wall on which Thomas worked, and the same number on the opposite side. The room was long and narrow, and at the end of it was a series of control panels and interfaces, hundreds of buttons, switches, and dials arranged in a disorganised manner around the screens.

“What is this place?” she asked. Thomas smiled widely.

“This… is the Interdimensional Observation Chamber...”

He seemed very proud of this utterance, but it didn’t mean much to Michelle.

“What is the Interdimensional Observation Chamber?”

“Well, Harry told me he showed you his planetary tracker... he showed you Earth, right?” he asked. Michelle nodded. “Uncle wasn’t best pleased about that. He didn’t want you dreaming on home. He wants us to focus on the adventure! But anyway… this room is essentially that but on a grand scale. Harry’s machine can see planets… atmospheres… some smaller stars.... And it needs to be programmed, too. The small machine has a limited memory. But this?”

Thomas looks around himself, nodding his head approvingly.

“This is creative science to the nth degree! You want to see anything, anywhere, in any universe, at any time? This is the deck for you!”

Michelle looked about herself in equal parts wonder and terror.

“Any universe?”

“Yeah, any universe!” Thomas said, proudly. “I mean… you know that this isn’t our universe, right?”

Michelle blinked at him.

“You know that other universes exist, right?”

Another blink.

“I’ve dreamed about it,” Michelle said.

“Of course,” Thomas, with a smile.

“Is this a dream?” Michelle asked. The podcast host went on smirking, and shrugged his shoulders.

“Not for me to say,” he answered, before turning away from her and walking towards the control panel. “Now, what would you like to see?”

Michelle found herself overwhelmed by the scale of the decision. The history of not only her own planet lay at her fingertips, but apparently also the history of any planet in an infinite number or realities.

“I know exactly what to show you,” West asserted. He began to click away at the control panel, and before long a dull, mechanical buzz emanated from the walls. One of the cage-like structures was raised above the others, and instantly began to fill itself with a projection… a projection of her, inside a wrestling ring, in the City of Cairo.

And then, the projected Michelle began to speak…

“This is Meltdown 5,” Michelle (the real one) said, correctly. “In my universe?”

“Absolutely,” Thomas West replied. “Now, look at this…”

The first projection of Michelle disappeared, and the device used to project her returned to dormancy. It retreated back into line with the others. Immediately, a second similar contraption rose and took its place as the focal point. Another image of the same woman appeared, but this time without the FWA World Heavyweight Championship upon her person.

“What is this?” she asked.

“That was this universe,” West replied, a devious smirk still plastered on his face. “And now… this...”

A few more adjustments on the control panel and a third projection was brought into being. Unlike the previous one, this Michelle was in possession of a championship belt: the FWA North American Championship. She paced around the ring with the same scorn and vitriol as the previous two images.