The Calling

Frank sat up in bed. His hand went to his chest: there was no pain there. It was just a dream. He swung his feet around and touched the floor and sat there for a few more moments. The time on his alarm clock clicked from 4:44 to 4:45am.

Man, that was intense, he thought as he stood and stretched.

He went to his bedroom window and looked out to the street. It was clear. Then he headed into the kitchen. He opened the refrigerator and rummaged around inside until he found what he was looking for, a container of orange juice.

He took an old glass from the counter, sniffed it to see if the contents were sour; satisfied, he poured himself some juice and put the container away. His phone rang as he took a pull from the glass. Caller ID showed who was calling.

"Morning Goner," Frank said. "Did you get that signal?"

"Signal," Goner sounded like he had suffered an anxiety attack. "Do you mean that nightmare I was having? Christ, I thought I was having a heart attack."

"Yes," Frank replied.

"What does it mean?" Goner started.

"It means that someone is trying to contact us," Frank replied with a wry smile.

Crossworlds & Crosswords

The rain splattered against the window, merging together and streaking down the glass. It had been raining for the better part of the morning and there was nothing more to do than sit and wait until the next assignment to pop up.

Frank was sipping from a mug, the newspaper folded down to the crossword section which was nearly completed. He was working on it with a pencil, his mind scanning the letters for clues to help him solve a question.

"What's your fascination with those?" Goner asked him. He had looked over the table and at the crossword puzzle. Goner perferred to do the jumble ones, since they were much simpler to unscramble the words.

"Crosswords?" Frank asked back. He didn't bother looking up from trying to piece together an 8 letter word, then he added, "It's a pastime, Gon. Some people read books, some play video games. I solve crosswords."

"Well, that's okay. I guess," Goner replied. "You'd think you'd give your brain a little break from all that activity after all we've seen and been through."

"It's stimulating," Frank says. "Keeps the mind honed and looking for little clues that seem to fall into place."

Goner slid out of the booth. "Well, I am going to stimulate more in the bathroom."

Frank chuckled.

Discussions on a Train

Frank sat near the back, his head leaning up against the window. Watching the worlds blur into a mural. He was tired and just wanted to sleep for a bit to shake the demons of the day. His attention was drifting off as the sandman nearly paid him a visit, when Angst plopped down next to him.

"What you thinking of," she asked him.

"Just thinking of what-ifs and what-could-have-beens," he answered her. 

"You sorry you got hooked into this war?" she asked.

"No," he honestly replied. "Just thinking how my life would be much different now if my eyes weren't open to the plural worlds."

The car was nearly empty, except for Goner who was sitting with Trump and both of them seemed to be talking about the latest vampire movie that was playing in one reality.

"Any word yet from the missing?" Angst wanted to know.

"You're full of questions today," Frank answered with a chuckle. "No, not yet... but soon, very soon."

Orlando?

"Orlando?" Trump asked with a sound of disgust.

"Yeah, Orlando!" Goner replied.

"Why Orlando?" Trump questioned. He was trying to understand the logic in that decision.

"Why not!" Goner stated and to emphasize his point he slapped on some Tony Orlando & Dawn.

"This is going to be a long, long trip," Trump muttered.

A Not So Smooth Transaction

"HERE IT COMES!" Goner shouted and he braced for the impact. His voice had a touch of horror in it, since he hadn't seen a wave like this before. He really didn't know what to expect. 

Frank turned to see the wave washing over the city; the shift looked liked someone had set off a warhead, because the landscape was changing drastically. This meant the plureality was in a shitstorm of trouble. 

He swore under his breath as he witnessed a forty-storey glass & steel skyscraper became a 2-storey stone building, while a 707 that was lowering in the sky changed into a dragon. Frank blinked in utter disbelief.

"Craptacular," Frank muttered.

Angst glanced at Frank when he spoke; she was firing both uzis at the band of beasts at the far end of the alleyway, bullet casings flying through the air like discarded memories.

"Is everything okay?" she asked.

"I really don't know," Frank replied. He was in the middle of reloading; he dropped the gun and pulled Angst down to the ground. "I think someone somewhere dropped the ball."

The Cat with the Greenback

"You got a C-note you can lend me?" Trump asked.

"What the heck do you need a hundred for?" Goner asked Trump. He couldn't fathom what a cat would want with money in the first place.

"Humour me," Trump stated; he sat there looking at Goner.

A few moments of awkward silence separated the two, then Goner reached inside his wallet and took out a crisp 100 dollar bill and handed it to the cat. 

"I want interest back on this," he told the cat.

"Danke," Trump replied and he picked up the bill and hoped off the seat. "Don't worry. I'm good for it."

"Don't spend it all in one place," Goner called after the cat.

"Oh, I intend to," Trump retorted.

> Dan in Plureality FINAL

I tried to stop it once. Tried to kick it. For an entire year I stopped doing magick, stopped keeping a journal, stopped writing. Stopped making connections or searching for mythology. Instead I worked a lot, I studied Taekwondo, I returned to the city that I was born in, went to bars with friends, and I went for more than a year without changing jobs or moving, a first since I turned eighteen. I was all about the body, getting healthy, being normal.

*


Ms. Amita laughs warmly. “But it was just another hit, wasn't it? Another way of making things strange. Another way of making magick.”

*


Over the next year I begin slowly integrating all my ways of doing magick together. Sometimes it is rough going, there are too many connections, too much to see and hold, too much to doubt. 

Writing a series of journals into my laptop-familiar, changing the style, even the font, to create different versions of my life unfolding. The way that Professor X from the comic and from the cartoon and from the movie are all different but all still Professor X. Either/Or having mutated into And/Or finally evolving fully into And. Plureality, fractal storm of parallel realities and identities all happening at once. Like watching an n-channel universe, living different lives by pressing the button on the magic wand. All of it occurring in the simulation being generated by our brain, mediated, everything is media, Noo Media. Designer realities. The Eschaton has ended, we're living in the Teleon. It's genesis culture. In the Aetion, where everything is always beginning, where every scene is the first scene of the movie, anything could happen. 

It's a lot to process, but I keep walking. In the wave, I can feel her behind me. 

Until I get the opportunity to submit a story about magick, an autobiographical series of articles, to a blog, and I have to look.

*


“And that's why he summoned us,” she says. “To help him pass through it.” 

Dr. James shakes his head. “No, I'm real.” His eyes are wide. 

Dr. Hannah smiles. “Yes, you are. You're real in the same way that money is real, or the government. In the same way that this desk, made up of 10-dimensional strings and empty space, is real. In the same way that 'Daniel' is real. That magick is real.” 

He looks through the mirror. “And who are They?” 

“They are the ones reading this.”


Daniel looks at Them, wondering if it has worked. He feels something like a star in his belly. And They look at him. 

'Come away, human child, to the water...'

Frank's fingers tensed around the cellphone. "I'm telling you, Professor, that something doesn't feel right. It feels like something is missing." He was pacing around the motel room.

"Of course it would feel like that," said the voice from the phone.

"No, I don't mean them... It's - I can't explain it!"

"Frank, please stay calm. You exist now in a perpetual state of discovery and absence, of lost and found. We talked about this before you received the implant."

Frank adjusted his sunglasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose. "Yeah, I get it - we gain and we lose things all the time, every time we shift... But what if we lost something... and then forgot that we ever even had it?"

"I suppose that would be either a blessing or a cruelty."

Frank stared at the table by the window, the weapons spread out on the faded faux-wood surface; the sniper rifle with scope, the pistol with silencer, the collapsible baton. The Godhammer.

The Biting Question of Winter

Frank sipped his coffee, standing under the awning of the bakery and watching the window across the street. He glanced at his watch, the time was 1:34pm. He had been watching this brownstone for the past 4 hours and yet no sign, no hint of anything going on.

His cellphone chimed; a refrain of a popular song transcended into a merriment of random tones to sound melodic.

"Hey Frank." Goner's voice. "Anything yet?"

"Nothing at all," Frank replied. He shifted in his stance, trying to maintain the feelings in his legs. "I think we got a bad lead on this one."

"You want me to spell you for a bit?" Goner asked. "You've been pulling sentry duty for a while now."

"Nah," Frank replied. "I think this lead is dead. I am going to give it another hour and if nothing then I am packing it in."

"Well, phone back if anything happens," Goner stated. "I will be waiting."

"Sure thing, bud." Frank replied. He snapped the phone shut and pocketed it. He took a sip of the cold coffee and tossed the styrofoam cup into the bin.

His attention was focused on a white van that had pulled up to the brownstone, and he saw her step out of a side door. The tip paid off tenfold.

> Dan in Plureality 6

He throws up his hands and storms out of the room, returning to the other side of the mirror. Dr. Hannah lingers for a moment, looking at Daniel, looking at Them, then she joins him. 

“You should calm down,” she says. 

“Why? We're trying to cure his addiction and he can only answer my question with a flippant deflection.” 

“I don't think it was that at all,” Dr. Hannah says. “I think it was the truth. As much as he understands it anyway.” 

Dr. James stares hard at her. She returns his gaze, her eyes soft. And says, “Feedback.” 

In the room, Ms. Amita smooths her skirt. “I'm sorry if that was uncomfortable, Daniel.”

*


When I was 24 I found a book called 'The Shaman's Body' that talked about the deathwalk, a ritual during which the shaman has to avoid being shot by his fellow warrior-priests. If the shaman is confident, is impeccable in thought and action, he can walk directly in front of the others, slowly and evenly, without being hit. 

The meaning of the phrase 'the crow road' in the novel turned out to be death. The crow road is the deathwalk.

*


“What's going on?” he asks, staring through the glass, his voice soft. “It's all just stores, right? Just TV shows and games and comics...” He looks back to Dr. Hannah. “It's not real, is it?”

*


At the Hillside Music Festival, my friends and I camping, pretending that every time we go down to the island where the bands are playing we are entering Faerieland. Drawing cards from the Faerie Oracle deck to see who our guides are for each trip. Gathered by the picnic table beside the road leading to the gates, I offer each of them the deck and watch their faces as they study the cards that they pull. Watching them as the hit takes, feeling like a dealer.

*


Dr. Hannah squints slightly. “Oh. Oh, I see. I think I understand now. He's not here to be cured of the addiction. He's here so that it will spread.”

***

The Nook

The skateboard rolled down the sidewalk, its passenger a young kid in a overcoat; he was dressed in black jeans and had on a white shirt. Over the shirt was a necklace with a cross dangling out from it. He had several buttons on the overcoat, and he really looked like a scraggy haired kid, but he had that wise-beyond-his-age look about him.

Darius stopped in front of the Neve's Nook and kicked up his skateboard. He tucked it underneath his arm as he strolled in. Neve's Nook was a breakfast place; it opened early and closed just before lunch.

"Morning Darius," the waitress said as she saw him step through the door. She grabbed a paper off the counter and handed it to him. "You want the usual?"

"Sure thing," he replied, sitting at a table. "I want to shake things up this morning and start with some toast."

"Living dangerously, are we?" the waitress joked and gave him a wink. She turned behind the counter and hit the order's up bell.

Darius opened up the paper and began reading the morning headlines. He thought that he heard the sound of stone on glass, and he glanced around the Nook. That's when he spotted Twofeathers outside the window, looking in, like a ceramic gargoyle. He gave her a concerned look and she motioned her head to the back door.

Darius got up and said to the waitress, "Be right back." He left his overcoat on the chair and the paper unfolded on the table as a sign to others that the table was occupied. He headed for the back door.

"What's going on?" Darius asked as he stepped outside and saw Twofeathers perched on a garbage pin.

"I really don't know," Twofeathers replied. "Just that I have a sense of foreboding."

Darius' eyes widened; he knew when Twofeathers had an uncanny knack of predicting danger. He nodded at her, "What about the others?"

"I haven't contacted them yet," she replied. "I was just about to head over to Dex's."

"Well, let me finish my breakfast and we shall round them up," Darius stated. He turned back to go inside - Twofeathers was just about to ask something but before she could open her mouth, Darius finished, "And yes, I will save you some of my hashbrowns."

It's a Good Thing Aqua Didn't Study the Laws

Aqua concentrated. Her eyes closed and she focused on the task at hand; she didn't know if she could do it. But in a situation like this it was best to try rather than not do anything at all. 

"C'mon. You can do it." 

She felt a curious sensation and then she opened her eyes. She was actually hovering 1cm off the floor. It was a weird sensation and she could sense that her equilibrium was off-center, trying to take in the new sensation and feeling as well. 

Hold on for a few more seconds. 

She fought the urge to panic, and then she let her mind go and she landed on the ground again. Overcoming the weird feeling, she looked up to the side of the pit in which she was trapped. 

Okay let's do this again.

Short and to the Point

Pretty George was in his den, sipping on a cold beer and watching a movie on the screen before him.

His phone rang and he hit the talk switch.

"What's your pleasure," he said into the earphone.

"Hey Pretty," a voice said. "I need a favor."

"I can get you one of those but it's going to cost you," Pretty replied.

"How much?"

"If you have to ask how much then you can't afford it," Pretty said and he hit the end switch.