SalQuest, Draft One

AUTHOR NOTE:
SalQuest (working title) is a story I conceived of and started working on a bit during 2019, but due to the depressing nature of the story, and not having a real idea of what to do with it, I dropped it, never intending to return.

Well, it’s two years later, and the same problems that inspired me to come up with the idea back then still apply now. After writing Graven in 2018, I really thought I was on track to finally get back into genre fiction again, but it turns out that wasn’t the case, to the point Graven looks to have been some kind of complete fluke. I genuinely don’t know how I managed to write it in hindsight, other than reaching a period of absolute self-loathing at my lack of accomplishment as a writer, and the sheer desperation of wanting to write a web serial. I thankfully managed to cobble together some really solid ideas and heartfelt characters and actually saw the story through to the (admittedly truncated) end, and thank god for that. But in the years sense, I’ve never managed to do another novel or series.

That lack of accomplishment is what fueled SalQuest to begin with; the story is a metafictional tale in which frustrated writer Salvador Roberts (that’s me!) is thrown into a world composed of his myriad creations, a crazy-quilt combo of his many settings, populated with the majority of his unused characters. The tales forces Sal to confront his failures, from seeing just how broken the combination of his worlds is due to lack of real development, and many worlds not being prepared for the ludicrous threats inherited from others. Likewise, being forced to confront the heroes and villains who’ve been left to rot on the mental backburner, and are now forced into the absolute hellhole that is the unhinged mixture of his settings. All the while, Sal must deal with his own increasing mental instability, as its extremely clear from the beginning that he is not cut out to be a fantasy adventure hero, not cut out to handled his own character’s problems, and is drowning himself in constant guilt over having failed his creations as well as himself.
 
There was a point where I actually had a decent roadmap of where I wanted the story to go, as well as a full cast of characters already decided on that Sal would meet and travel with, to try and figure out a way to stabilize the world he was now trapped in, and at least bring some level of peace to the surviving heroes who were struggling to keep everything together.
 
I’ll go ahead and spoil it, though: in the end, Sal would discover, or at least be lead to believe, that the world of his creations was only possible because the even that forged the world did so at the cost of Earth itself. Upon realizing this, Sal utterly snaps. Guilt crosses over into genocidal/suicidal abandon, and the story switches from Salvador’s perspective to that of the heroes trying to stop him as Sal becomes a force of destruction determined to destroy reality. The story probably ends with Sal succeeding, eliminating the artificially constructed chimera of his settings and managing to restore the Earth. Then, traumatized by everything, he blows his head off with a shotgun.
 
Like I said, very depressing. SalQuest was always more of an attempt to process my rancid feelings about myself as an author, moreso than be an enjoyable story for others to read. And at one point, I thought I had somewhat processed those feelings through working on the older version of the story, decided I wanted to stop miring myself in those emotions for much longer, and put the concept to bed.
 
But here we are, in 2021, and I’ve got nothing else worth showing for all my mental grinding since then, as far as genre fiction stories. Even when it came to my erotica writing, done under another name, I’ve been struggling like never before to accomplish anything. 2019 was actually very productive on that end, but then 2020 happened, and while all my peers in that sector kept on going strong, stronger than ever even, I have floundered in the dirt, and despite clawing my way back into getting a few things done, I feel left behind and bereft of capability in a way I haven’t since I first wrote The Final Story of Salvador Roberts back in 2017, during a bout of seething self-loathing at my failures.
 
And then the amazing web serial Worth the Candle finished a couple months ago. Just as another web serial, The Fifth Defiance, got me really galvanized to write what would become Graven, Worth the Candle got me thinking again about SalQuest, and how the problems that inspired that work are just as relevant as ever. Moreso now, because, in the time since then, I have felt my gumption for my older projects all fall away, and the few newer projects I tried to get going die before even getting started. Truly, SalQuest feels even more relevant now than ever to my personal development.
 
But, things have changed, my ideas have shifted, my emotions have been refined a bit. I’ve resigned myself in some ways, while becoming re-determined in others. While I wasn’t really that keen on my old plans for the story, I decided to take a more free-form approach to at least starting off this time around. The result is I’ve already veered wildly off course from how I originally envisioned things, and I’ve now written Salvador into a corner I’m not sure I can get him out of. I could also just be burned out on the idea: I’m bad with long form projects, and this is shaping up to be an actual epic, assuming I don’t whiff the word count and truncate everything again.
 
This is also a story that’s going to need a ton of work and may take a long time. The 45k+ words below are the results of multiple rewrites and corrections as I went already, and plot-wise, I feel like I’ve barely gotten started. As it stands, I’ve found myself falling back on cheap and easy to solutions to not confront the trickier problems presented by the setting itself and to avoid dealing with characters I still feel are too precious to have a story like this be their debut, despite the fact that I’m unlikely to ever actually write them anywhere else. Likewise, despite the story being about Sal confronting his creations, I keep finding myself making new, original characters for him to meet, just because part of me always wants to be making new things. And furthermore, I’m not sure the setting as I’ve constructed it here really works, being simultaneously an absolute clusterfuck of a world combination, and also being stripped down to a very basic “one small nation surrounded by evil empires” set up that I immediately considered too boring.
 
This idea isn’t dead, but I am forcing myself to stop here with this version. I think there are some good ideas and moments in this, and I hate wasting material, so I’m posting it anyway, unfinished. Maybe over time, I can keep posting drafts as I go, as some kind of experiment in showcasing story development. Maybe not. At some point, when I have a version I feel I can work with, I’ll eventually post it as a real serial, and an ebook, but I don’t want to get ahead of myself.
 
While I am unsatisfied with this version overall, and don’t wish to continue it, writing it has at least gotten me closer to figuring out what I really want to do with the story. I’m still undecided on a lot of things, however, and it may be a while before I have anything further to show. As such, for those whom I’ve discussed SalQuest with, here is at least something to tide you over, to give an idea of what I was going for. Consider this a first or first-and-a-half (considering at least half the chapters were already redone) draft of the concept.
 
On a final note, SalQuest is set up as a direct sequel to The Final Story of Salvador Roberts. You should read that first. Don’t worry, it’s shorter and much faster paced than SalQuest already is.

 

ARC ONE: AFTER THE END

1.1 – NEW AWAKENINGS
It began, as all good stories do, with an explosion. Iridescent light and bone-rattling thunder, somehow perceptible even when I was pretty sure I shouldn’t have eyes and ears or a brain to interpret such things anymore.
 
And then suddenly, I was lying on a grassy hill, buck naked, staring at a pale blue sky. I blinked slowly. My thoughts were a buzzing haze; I think for a good couple minutes there, I wasn’t even really aware that I was awake. I was just zoned out, like my mind hadn’t actually started running, while my body was still trying to acclimate itself. It’s possible I’m only misremembering, filling in details to make it seem more ominous than it really was, but I can’t recall if I was even breathing at the time. Given the nature of what’s happened to me, that notion makes me wonder. It’s entirely possible I was actually being constructed right then, my body and mind being pieced together and “booted up” for lack of a better word.
 
After all, the body I woke up in wasn’t mine. I mean, it couldn’t be. I’d just gotten shot to pieces and blown up. That was my last memory before I woke up on that field.
 
I was there for a while, just staring at the sky, occasionally blinking. At some point, I got to my feet. Slowly I turned, taking in my surroundings, but I was only able to process what I was seeing after the fact. I was like a zombie. Perceiving, but forgetting most of the information as soon as it registered. I recall vague snapshots of awareness. Grasslands all around me. A forest at the foot of a mountain, off in the distance. The shore of a great lake in the opposite direction of the mountain. And on the other side of the lake, a city.
 
Something must have registered even through the mental haze, because I started walking towards the city. Shambled, really. But gradually, shambling turned to a steady stride. The dull ache of physical exertion made itself known. I registered the sweat building on my skin. I felt warmth from the sun, but the humidity was low enough that the sweat did its job to cool me. Even still, I felt a sensation in my mouth that it took me almost a minute to realize was thirst.
 
My pace quickened nonetheless. I wasn’t sure how much distance I’d covered, but I could see the city. It was a sizeable settlement, a cluster of skyscrapers nearer to the shore, but quickly shifting to average size buildings, and suburban sprawl beyond. I could make out that part of it extended into a peninsula out on the lake, where a large dock was lined with boats. Several boats were on the water’s surface already, one about a half mile from the edge of the shore nearest me.
 
A wide branch of the water formed a natural barrier between the city and the grasslands. Where the water ended was a thin forest. If I’d been more with it, I might have started heading around the lake before I reached the edge, but as it was, I was single-mindedly bee-lining for civilization. I was up to a jog now, and the air huffed from my lungs. How long had I been running? Was I going to just dive straight into the water and start swimming? I didn’t think I had the stamina for that, but I wasn’t slowing down.
 
It was right about then that, as if a light switch had been flicked, I became fully aware. Maybe it was the immediate danger of possibly drowning, maybe the physical exertion had finally caught up to me, maybe my mind had finally finished loading in, for lack of a better word. I came to a halt right at the water’s edge, stopping on a very narrow stretch of sand and not-very-smooth rocks.
 
I let out a sudden breath as the fatigue finally caught up to me. I bent over at the waist, hands on my knees, gasping for air. I didn’t feel that bad off, but I definitely had pushed myself harder than I had in years. I might have felt worse if I hadn’t gradually eased up to a light run. I looked back, trying to see how far I’d come. I couldn’t quite recall my path. I vaguely remembered I had been on a hill, but there were several of those in sight. There was no real telling, but I want to say I had gone at least four or five miles.
 
My thoughts were finally clearing. The sudden realization of where and who I was struck me. The memory of what had happened before I woke up on the hill came rushing back. My heart, which had started slowing down as I stopped running, kicked back into gear as I flashed back to the moment those men raised their guns and pulled the triggers.
 
My eyes widened. I let out something between a shout and a grunt of shock. I lurched back, slipped on a stone, and landed on my bare ass, thankfully hitting a sand patch and not cracking my tailbone on the edge of another rock. I was still huffing from the run, but my breath went ragged for a moment as I started to shake.
 
I was dead. I had to be. They shot me to pieces, and then that strange crystal, the magical device that let me summon my own characters into the world, it exploded in my hand, and then…
 
And then…
 
And then here I was.
 
I looked up towards the city across the water. I recognized it instantly. It was a city I’d never been to, never truly seen, and couldn’t possibly be real, because it was a city from my own mind. It was the setting for one my dozens of quarter-assed superhero team concepts, and one I hadn’t even bothered to actually develop yet. Not just because it was one of my most recent city creations, but because, for all I said I liked to worldbuild, I was pretty shallow at it most of the time.
 
And yet, despite knowing almost nothing about this place, not even having really worked out what it was supposed to look like yet, I knew just upon seeing it. This was Blue Haven.
 
There were any number of explanations for what this could mean. Two were prominent in my mind: 1) I was dying, and my brain was experiencing one final hallucination as I slipped into unconsciousness, the final minute or so of my life stretched out in the time-distortion of dream perception. Or 2) My mind had somehow been copied over into the crystal, and I was now in some kind of strange simulation, as the crystal’s energies reacted to my creative drive.
 
There were other explanations. I was fully dead and this was an afterlife of some kind. I was alive, and the crystal, when it had exploded, had actually warped reality around me, overlaying this city, lake, and grassland over my home town. That didn’t seem possible, given the limits of the crystal before, but I hadn’t had time to figure out how it worked. It could also be that this entire situation was one long, strangely coherent dream, and I was still asleep in my bed this whole time. That really didn’t seem likely. Even the few times I had lucid dreamed, there was always something too bizarre to be real that, were I fully cognizant like I was now, I definitely would have noticed, and in noticing, would have woken up.
 
I looked down at myself. I felt around, checking my body for any sign of injury or wounds. Nothing. I was whole. I felt healthy. The obvious difference was that I wasn’t fat anymore. I had natural abs again. My feet, hips, legs, none of them hurt the way they should have given a miles-long barefoot walk. I didn’t feel the deep aches of bad joints or my plantar fasciitis condition. I felt some hunger and thirst, but no sour stomach or bowel irritation. I didn’t feel the itch or discomfort from hemorrhoids. No back pain. On an impulse, I reached up to lightly scratch my scalp, and no dandruff came out. And that’s when I noticed I had hair again. Long, red, thick locks of hair.
 
That actually made me jump. I got to my feet and crawled to the edge of the water. It wasn’t a particularly great surface for it, but I could see some of my reflection. I might not have recognized myself, save that even after years of putting on the pounds and gradually losing the hair, I still had this subconscious self image that more accurately reflected my late adolescence.
 
I was young again. Fit again. Going off the reflection, I was probably nineteen or twenty physically. I’d been forty when the crystal had appeared and I’d gotten thrown into this mess. Years of self-neglect had taken its toll on me. I wasn’t as bad off as some guys my age, and of course, the wonders of modern medicine kept me plodding along, bandaging over the symptoms and letting me largely ignore the consequences of my terrible habits for longer than a person should be allowed to, but I definitely had not been taking care of myself.
 
But now I was restored. A miraculous recovery. A blessing billions of people would have killed to receive. I sat back and let out a breath, taking a moment to just appreciate the feeling of being in a body that didn’t constantly ache or feel some degree of sick or fatigued. Just the realization that, for the first time in years, I didn’t feel at all tired, was enough to mildly stun me.
 
Yes, I felt some mild soreness from my long walk/jog, but I felt awake, I felt energized, in a way that I had honestly forgotten what it was like. Ever since my thirties, I had come to just live with this feeling of being worn out all the time. I was probably exaggerating it now that I felt suddenly freed of the burden, but maybe that’s why; the difference felt so stark, even if it was a passive thing. Like not realizing just how sick I was until after I got better, I realized just how much of my average day was spent feeling either tired, sore, mentally fried, or all three at once. Even on my days off, I tended to take a nap halfway through the day even if I had already slept in. It’s not like I was some narcoleptic, but age took its toll, as did years of grunt work labor jobs and not taking care of my health. I’d let myself deteriorate, and I’d been paying for it every day.
 
No wonder I’d been so fucking miserable and incompetent all the time. No wonder even the one passion I obsessed over had become a source of bitter anxiety as I failed and failed and failed to actualize my desire to create. Writing, drawing, audio work, game design, I’d never put in the self-discipline to hammer out a good work ethic for my creative expression when I’d had the energy to do so. And then, by the time I started to panic about that, I was already well past the stage where my brain could still easily develop and cement those habits, and I had dropped into that life of self-induced malaise.
 
But all that was over now, wasn’t it? This was a new start, a fresh beginning, in a way I’m pretty sure no other human being alive had gotten to experience. Not unless there were other people in the world who got beaned on the head by magic space rocks that could warp reality. Who knows; maybe there had been. Maybe I was just the latest in a long line. Or maybe I was truly unique. Either way, I supposed it didn’t matter. The end result was the same.
 
I sat on that tiny, lake-side beach for a long time, just gazing out at the water, watching some of the boats in the distance drift along. I waited for the moment to end. If I was dying and this was an out-of-body-experience style hallucination of some kind, it couldn’t last forever. Even a dream couldn’t last this long. If this was some temporary act of the crystal, some flash pan expression of its power before the energy was spent, then likewise, my time was running out. I would sit here, enjoy the lightness of my briefly rejuvenated body and the fresh air and gentle waves, and fade away. For a life poorly lived, I could at least say my last day had been one hell of an adventure.
 
I waited until the light of the sky began to fade towards evening. Funny enough, there wasn’t even a sun overhead. The sky glowed as if there was, dimming as if it was sunset, but no sun was present. I hadn’t noticed that until just now, when I tried to spot the sun on the horizon, and there was no orange-red splash in any direction.
 
Several hours had passed by now. I was still here. So was the lake, the grassland, and the city. I had run my thoughts through all the alternative possibilities of what could be happening, but I had no way of knowing. All I had was the simple facts: I was, somehow, transported into a new, youthful body, at the edges of a city of my own creation, and right now, this seemed to be about as real as the life I’d lived before I got shot to death and exploded.
 
There was little point in just sitting here, waiting to die. If there was some existentially dreadful thing about this whole situation, then it wasn’t making itself apparent any time soon. Frankly, after several hours of just sitting here, I was getting bored. I felt a physical restlessness I hadn’t experienced since my twenties. Also I was getting hungry, not to mention very thirsty by this point. Also, I was getting sand in my ass.
 
Right. That’s it. There was a city right in front me, I may as well make use of it. Despite making it up, I didn’t actually know much of anything about Blue Haven. There was no time like the present to explore it.
 
At the very least, maybe some kindly citizen would lend me a pair of pants.

 
1.2 – THE SEARCH FOR PANTS
Alright, enough lollygagging and sand collecting. I stood, wiped the offending grains off my backside, and assessed my approach. It would probably take another two mile’s worth of walking to actually get around the lake, through the copes of trees, and reach the edge of the nearest road, a highway that curved around the perimeter of the city limits. Meanwhile, there was a boat probably half a mile away, the nearest of the various vessels. It looked to be a sport fishing yacht, with a long forward that sloped up into a sealed cabin with a sitting area on top of it, and an open area in the back to fish from, which also had access to a lower deck.
 
I squinted, trying to see if I could spot anyone. The cabin was covered with tinted windows, but there had to be at least one person driving. I realized somewhat belatedly that my vision had improved as well. While not so terrible as to be helpless without glasses, I definitely needed them to be able to read street signs from my car. Now, however, I could see as well as my last prescription allowed without any assistance. I wasn’t sure if that was truly twenty-twenty or not, but I’d take it.
 
I started waving at the boat. I felt a little silly, but getting a ride straight to the docks was a better option than hoofing it more, not just from saving myself the walk, but so I could get an assessment of the situation from the boaters. Through some kind of gut instinct, I knew for a fact that this was Blue Haven, but being able to confirm it with some locals would go a long way to reassuring me.
 
Just when I thought there was no way they could see me and I was thinking I’d have to hoof it after all, I saw the boat turn towards me, and start heading my direction. I waved for a bit more to make sure they actually were coming for me, then stood there with my arms crossed, waiting.
 
No, I didn’t bother to cover myself. This whole situation was honestly too bizarre for me to feel all that squeamish. Moreover, I think I would have felt more stupid cupping my crotch the whole time I waited. There was also something to be said for confidence, wasn’t there? I had no idea who I was about to meet. Acting like being naked didn’t bother me would show I meant business, and that I had bigger concerns than modesty.
 
Or maybe they would think I was some nutcase, in which case, they might be more inclined to call the authorities. Dealing with the cops might make things easier, actually. Hopefully. I didn’t tend to cast the police as corrupt in any of my worlds; aside from being tired of that cliché in the stories I read, it was another world detail I just didn’t bother taking the time on. I guess I’d find out soon enough if my dramatic preferences held true. It occurred to me that if this city was as occupied as it looked, that meant it was probably chock full of background “non-characters” that I had no idea about. What was the average citizen like in a place like Blue Haven? Fuck if I new.
 
I guess I was about to find out. The boat was close enough for me to see two forms in the tinted glass. The boat slowed down as it approached, and the driver turned so that the vessel came to a stop parallel to the beach, about fifty feet away. There was a third person sitting on the back part, a tall, older black man in khaki shorts and a polo shirt, a short white beard standing out on his dark skin. A fishing hat and sunglasses adorned his head. He stood, hands on hips, assessing me from a distance.
 
“Ahoy the ship!” I called out, waving. For a stupid moment, I hoped he spoke English, before realizing that of course he would; it was the only language I knew, so it was the only language I wrote in, so it would probably be the only language anyone in this reality would know, even if I intended otherwise.
 
“Ahoy yourself,” he said. “Getting a little too back to nature, don’t you think?”
 
I let out a laugh, perhaps a little forced. “Yeah,” I said. “Well. You know how it is.”
 
The man sort of frowned. “Can’t say I do.”
 
Too casual. I should make it more clear I needed help. “Actually, I’m in something of a bind. I sort of got dumped out here.”
 
“And how’s that?”
 
“I honestly don’t know,” I said, shrugging. “I was walking down the street, minding my own business, when suddenly, there was this explosion, and I ended up way the hell out here. Not, like, I got blasted out here, I just, like, blinked, and suddenly I’m out in the grass without my clothes.”
 
He nodded sagely. “Super fight,” he said. “You got caught up in a battle or something, I’ll wager. Where you from? I didn’t hear a report of a fight in the city today, but these things happen fast.”
 
Oh, thank god. That was a much easier explanation. Especially because it was mostly true.
 
“Yeah, I guess. I’m from another city. I don’t know how or why, but I must’ve gotten sent way the hell out.” I looked up past the boat, making it clear I was eyeing the city. “What’s this place?”
 
“Blue Haven,” he said. “You from Cyrene? Or Jacksonville? Or Mesora?”
 
Other cities I had made. I had no idea where they would be relative to here, though. And Jacksonville wasn’t even in the same world as Blue Haven. And Mesora wasn’t from the same world as either of those. That raised questions, but right now, I just needed to get situated.
 
“Um… Mesora,” I said. “Yeah, I don’t know, man. Must have been a teleport spell or something.”
 
The man let out a grunt. “I remember a few years back, a fight broke out downtown as I was headin’ to get my license. This girl with force field powers was trying to evacuate all the civilians, picking us up in bubbles and dropping us on rooftops a few blocks away. She didn’t think to come get us later, so we ended up stuck on those roofs for a couple hours. They still hadn’t gotten the cell phone grid up and running back then, so we were poundin’ on the access door and no one had any idea we were there. Had to wait for another one of the flyin’ supers to swing by and spot us. Buncha dumb-asses.”
 
“Hey, they been keepin’ us alive all this time, haven’t they?” A younger man came out from the cabin. I could see the third figure still inside, watching me from behind the window. The younger man was closer to my age. By which I meant my actual age, not my current body. Probably his late thirties, maybe the older man’s son? He waved to me. “You need a ride or somethin’?”
 
“That would be great,” I said. “And, uh, I’d be much obliged for some water and a set of pants if you got any to spare.”
 
“I got a swim suit,” he said. He motioned to the water. “Not gunna beach our boat. You’re gunna have to swim over.”
 
“Fair enough,” I said. I stepped towards the water. I tread carefully; it was actually rockier past the water, the sand quickly giving away to smoother stones. The water was cool, enough that it gave me a bit of a start. I took a breath and walked in, until the water was at my hips, then dropped the rest of myself down and did a frog stroke towards the boat. It occurred to me I hadn’t actually been swimming in years. It almost felt good.
 
I quickly reached the boat, and they had a flip-down ladder for me to use. Once I was aboard, they handed me a towel, a sealed bottle of cold water, and a bright red pair of swim shorts. Once I was dry enough, I slipped on the shorts and draped the towel over myself like a shawl. I twisted off the bottle and chugged half the water in one long drag. I let out a sigh of relief.
 
“Thanks guys, you’re life savers,” I said.
 
“Sure,” said the older man. He held out his hand. “Frances. This here’s Donald, and Grey’s in the cabin. I’ll go tell him to put the shotgun away.” He smiled slightly, but I could tell there was a hint of no-I’m-not-actually-joking in his tone. I glanced towards the door to the cabin, which was open. I could see an even younger man, closer to my current physical age, watching me warily, a hand hidden behind the doorframe in a telling way.
 
I shook Frances’ hand. “It’s appreciated. I know how this probably looks.” Frances made an amused grunt, turned, and walked into the cabin, talking in a low voice with Grey.
 
I shook Donald’s hand next. His grip was firm, and he locked eyes with me. “It’s a crazy world out here,” he said.
 
“That it is,” I said. I had no idea at the time just how crazy.
 
“Go ahead and have a seat,” he said. “We were about to head back.”
 
We each took a chair, and I gave a glance back to the shore as the boat turned away. I felt a sudden small pang of nervousness. These guys seemed nice enough. Surely if they wanted to harm me, they’d have done so where they found me. I glanced to Donald, who was clearly keeping an eye on me. His posture was non-threatening, but I had a sense that if I did anything suspicious, he was ready to throw me overboard in an instant.
 
“So, Mesora, huh?” said Donald. “Hell of a trek from here, but you can take the train back.” He paused and stroked his chin. “I’m guessing you don’t have any cash on you.”
 
“Ah, no,” I said. “It’s alright, I got someone I can call.”
 
He shrugged, and pulled out his phone. It was an older model flip phone. “Reception’s not the best anymore, but you want to call them now, feel free.”
 
I blinked. I hadn’t been expecting that. “Um…” I said.
 
Donald made a little grunt of amusement, just like Frances, making it even more apparent the two were probably related. “Let me guess, you don’t actually remember the number?”
 
I gave an apologetic smile. “Cell phones, man,” I said. “Haven’t had to memorize numbers in years.” I glanced the phone over. I’d been using smartphones for so long, I almost forgot for a moment how to navigate one of these old clamshells. I glanced over to him. “I don’t want to use up your data plan or whatever, but does this thing have a browser?”
 
He gave a small frown and shook his head. “Nah. I got the cheapest plan, just calls and text. Besides, the internet’s still pretty shit on wireless.”
 
“Ah,” I said. “Well, I’ll… wait till we get to the city, then, I dunno, try to find a library or something.”
 
“If you say so.”
 
We sat in silence for a few minutes. “So… fishing…?”
 
“Yeah.”
 
“Cool. Been a while for me.”
 
“Good spots around Mesora?”
 
“Oh, sure. Lakes and rivers. But like I said, been a while.”
 
“How long’s awhile?”
 
“Cripes, not since I was a kid. Like twe—ten years, maybe?” I’d almost slipped there, forgetting for a second that I didn’t look forty. Otherwise, I’d make it sound like the last time I went fishing, I must have been holding the rod from my stroller.
 
The two men glanced at each other for a moment, then back at me. “Ten, huh?”
 
I paused, realizing immediately that something was off. “Y-yeah?”
 
“You got old memories, then? From before?”
 
“Uh… I guess so… from before what?”
 
Another traded glance.
 
“Distinct memories, or a vague notion?” said Frances.
 
“I mean… it was a while ago…”
 
Frances stroked his chin as he looked at me. “Are you sure you’re from Mesora?”
 
“Pretty sure.”
 
“What’s the name of that city’s defenders?”
 
“Their what?”
 
“Superhero team,” said Donald. “What team guards them?”
 
I blinked. What was with the questions? “Um… the Fabulous Five?”
 
Donald’s brow furrowed, and Frances cocked an eyebrow at me. “Never heard of them.”
 
I stayed silent, matching their gazes. They stayed seated and watched me studiously, but I could sense a bit of tension rise in the air. I wasn’t sure where this was leading, and I was frankly no good at climbing out of verbal holes. Better to just not dig them in the first place.
 
Frances thought for a few moments longer, and said, “I don’t want to alarm you, but I think it would be best if we took you to a clinic.”
 
“Why?” I wasn’t necessarily opposed to the idea, but without any context, the last thing I wanted to do was end up getting jailed because the locals though I was some kind of potentially dangerous weirdo.
 
“You said you got caught in some kind of super fight,” said Donald. “You should get checked up for any strange symptoms.”
 
“You think my memories are scrambled or something? Is that why you were asking?”
 
“Something like that.”
 
Frances flipped open his phone. “I’m going to call someone to pick you up at the dock, is that alright?”
 
The fact he was asking in such a calm measured tone, as if I was standing there with a knife and a set of crazy eyes, actually made me more nervous. Just what were they suspecting here? I held up my hands in a pacifying gesture.
 
“Look, I don’t want trouble, okay? I really appreciate the lift to the city. I’m not about to flip out on you or whatever you’re worried about. I also don’t want to end up locked up in some seedy shelter, so if you’re about to shove me off to some sketchy guys in lab coats, I think I’ll step off here.” I only bothered to check our progress after saying that. We were maybe a quarter mile from the docks. Assuming there was nothing dangerous in the waters, I figured I could easily swim that with my rejuvenated body.
 
The two men shared another glance, and Frances chuckled. It sounded a bit forced, but he waved me off. “No, no, nothing like that. Look, we occasionally still find people just sort of appearing out of the wilderness from time to time. You don’t seem too out of it, but you do seem a bit unsure of things. We have a couple clinics to help foundlings.”
 
Now my brow furrowed. “Really? You get random nudists stumbling out of the woods?”
 
“Very occasionally. Fist couple years, people just appeared in droves. Dropped off hard after that. Which is probably good, the city can only support so many at once. But we still get stragglers.”
 
I leaned back in my seat and frowned. “Fascinating.”
 
“You okay?” asked Donald.
 
I let out a long breath, mulling over the implications. “Yeah. Yeah, I guess it makes sense.”
 
I could see a little bit of the tension I thought I sensed ease up. Frances made the call, and Donald gave me a sympathetic smile. “Relax, the clinics are good. They downscaled a lot since the early days, but they’re not, like, crazy experiment labs or nothing.”
 
“Good to know.” I stared at the sky, noting the pitch darkness above, broken only by the occasional cloud reflecting the light of the city. There were no stars that I could see. It was almost surreal, now that I noticed it. It only proved a momentary distraction, however, from the growing, uncomfortable confusion.
 
What was this place? What the hell was I? What was this body? Was I in some kind of simulation, my memories downloaded into a random body that just materialized out of thin air? Thinking back to my awakening on the hill, it had certainly felt like I’d gotten up and started walking more out of some kind of instinct, while my mind was barely coherent. Maybe I had been literally “booting up” into this world. And from the sounds of it, so had everyone else in the city.
 
“So when did you guys wake up?” I said, looking back to my rescuers.
 
Frances was still on the form, informing somebody on the other end what part of the dock we’d be at. Donald looked to me. “I think it’s best the clinic runs you through everything. Don’t worry about it for now.”
 
“What, is there some kind of dreadful existential revelation to it all?”
 
Donald gave me another sympathetic smile. “Depends on your outlook.” He paused for a moment, glancing to Frances, who was distracted by the call. “I’ll tell you this much, though. No one in the city has existed for more than four or five years. We just sort of… appeared one day. No memories of the past, but we all just sort of had a notion of what we were supposed to be. As far as we can tell, every city is like that. So, we all just sort of picked up where we seemed to have left off. The only ones who seem to know about anything prior to our appearance are the superheroes.”
 
I stared at him for a long moment, before I finally said, “I see.”
 
I crossed my arms and look back up towards the blank sky. A world where my fictional cities existed, complete with the superheroes I used to write about. Superheroes who remembered a time before this world, because unlike the common citizenry, they had had lives and experiences in my head prior to this world’s formation. But everyone else? I was pretty sure Donald had just admitted that the masses of people living in the cities were basically spontaneously generated NPCs. I don’t know if he really knew that’s what he was saying, but it was not a topic I was going to confront them on.
 
If that followed true, however, then for some reason, my mind had been seemingly downloaded into one of these NPC bodies. I was suddenly quite sure that this must be some kind of simulation. Had my mind imprinted some kind of dream scenario into the crystal, and it was now running it like a virtual reality program? I had no idea how the crystal had worked. For all I knew, my whole body had been converted to pure data and was now inside the crystal, which was simulating this dream in hyper-reality. Or maybe my memories had simply been copy-pasted into this form, and the real me had indeed been vaporized in that explosion.
 
Or maybe the crystal really had warped the world around me to create a material manifestation of my ideas, reconfiguring my body in the process. Where this manifestation was actually taking place, I couldn’t know for certain. I had to assume the crystal could only convert so much; maybe beyond the mountains in the distance, the Earth as I knew it was still there, and all the “NPCs” only thought this simulation or facsimile or whatever this was kept going beyond the horizon.
 
No, that didn’t make sense. If this place had been around for five years, and Earth was just over the hills, surely there would be signs of, I don’t know, military or science bases around? Unless this area was actually quarantined off. Or unless this area had only just been created, and these men only thought it had been five years.
 
Wait, no. There were no stars. There hadn’t been a sun. If this was a true physical space, then where was it? If it had been a simulation of an Earthlike environment, surely celestial objects would exist in the sky, even as pure illusion. Instead the sky had given off some form of daylight earlier, but with no sun to cause it. If it was on Earth at all, then surely, I could have seen the stars. Unless the whole region was covered in some kind of dome or field? Like a thickly overcast sky, something that some light could penetrate through without showing the sun? No, that didn’t make sense either. When night had fallen, the whole sky had dimmed uniformly. So what—
 
“We’re here,” said Donald.
 
I blinked and looked up, noticing that we were coasting right into a free spot on the dock. There were two men in police uniforms, and a woman who looked to be an EMT waiting for us. I felt slightly nervous now that I was actually going to be handed off. I turned to the two men who’d rescued me.
 
“Well, thanks a lot,” I said, setting down the towel. I glanced down. “Um…”
 
“Keep the shorts,” said Frances.
 
“You sure?”
 
“Yeah. In case you feel like swimming sometime.”
 
“Thanks, man.”
 
I shook their hands again. Glancing towards the cabin, the older man who’d been driving the boat still didn’t come out to meet me, but he nodded when our gazes met. I nodded back. I wondered if he’d had another gun close at hand this whole time.
 
“Good luck out there,” said Donald.
 
“You too. With, uh, whatever you guys got going on.” And with that awkwardly phrased parting note, I stepped off the boat. As I did so, it occurred to me that this would be the moment in which a main character in an roleplaying game or an action-thriller would be about to fall into a trap, getting extorted by the town guards.
 
I really hoped that just because I was in a world from my stories that some unseen narrative hand wasn’t about to try and make my life unnecessarily interesting well before I was ready.
 
 
 
1.3 – CHECK ME OUT
I stepped out onto the dock, while my rescuers secured their boat and started collecting their gear. One of the two cops, a tall, broad-shouldered blond man stepped up. I noticed his partner hanging back a few feet, one hand distinctly hovering near his gun, but both men and the woman gave me pleasant smiles.
 
“So, you’re the newbie?” said the blond man.
 
“Seems that way,” I said.
 
He gestured behind him, towards the EMT woman. “Once Dorris gives you a once-over, we can get you to the Clinic.”
 
“Sounds great.”
 
The woman reached into a small dufflebag at her side. She pulled out some cheap flip-flops and a thin, white bathrobe. Handing them off, she said, “We can get you some real clothes once we get you registered, but you can wear these for now.”
 
I took them and slipped them on, feeling only slightly less undignified. Better than nothing, though. “Thanks.” I opened my mouth to ask what she meant by “registered”, but she ended up cutting me off, as she proceeded to rattle off several questions about my health. From the flat, quick delivery, this was clearly a standard routine, rote and repeated many times without the expectation to reveal anything alarming.
 
“Do you have any aches, sore spots, swelling, headaches, nausea, dizziness, fatigue, blurred vision, audio distortions, breathing problems, or chills?”
 
“No.”
 
“Do you have any injures, wounds, or skin irritations?”
 
“No.”
 
“To the best of your recollection, did you encounter and interact with any dangerous animals as you traveled through the wilderness?”
 
“No.”
 
“Do you have any allergies?”
 
“Not that I’m aware of.”
 
“To the best of your knowledge, did you attempt to consume anything as you traveled?”
 
“No, I don’t think so.”
 
“Did you encounter anything that you would describe as supernatural, excepting the fact that you awoke in an unfamiliar place?”
 
“Um, no. Wait, define supernatural.”
 
“Undead manifestations such as zombies or ghosts, talking animals, elemental spirits, witches, unusual machines, etc.”
 
“No, nothing like that.”
 
She nodded. “May I check your temperature, blood pressure, and vision?”
 
“Don’t see why not.”
 
She pulled a forehead-scanning thermometer and a small blood pressure cuff and reader. My vitals came up normal. She used a pen-light to see if my eyes focused properly, and that turned out alright, too.
 
“To your knowledge, do you yourself possess what you would consider supernatural powers?”
 
“I doubt it.”
 
She had another device in her hand, something that looked a bit like a barcode scanner with a small antenna at the top. She stared at it for a few seconds, then nodded, and tucked it in her bag, along with the rest of the equipment.
 
“How long would you say you have been traveling? When did you first realize you were conscious? Where did you become aware, relative to our present location?”
 
I tried to think back on that. It was hard to say for certain, but the time from my getting up from that field and starting walking could not have been more than a couple hours. “I woke up in the field across the lake. I kind of remember just getting up and walking towards the city. Maybe a couple hours at most? I sort of woke up when I reached the lake. Sat there for a while, though, until those guys picked me up.”
 
She frowned slightly. “You have no memories of anything before that?”
 
Well, of course I did. I wasn’t sure what I should reveal about that, though. “Um… I guess I vaguely…” I sighed. “Look, I’ll be real with you, I mainly remember some kind of explosion. I thought I remembered living in a city before, um, Mesora? But, I’m not sure if that’s true or if I’ve, I dunno, picked something up through suggestion?”
 
“An explosion?”
 
“Yeah, big flash of light, thunder. I thought maybe I got caught in a super battle, but I’m not really sure what happened.”
 
“I see.”
 
“So, um, I’m led to believe people sometimes just sort of appear in the woods or something, and stumble into civilization? I’m not sure if I’m one of those, or if, I dunno, I got teleported and brain zapped from elsewhere.”
 
She nodded. “We can check the system at the Clinic to see if you are registered elsewhere. Speaking of which, I think you’re good to head there.” She glanced to the officers and gave them a nod, stepping back.
 
The larger cop who’d already spoken to me, motioned for me to follow him. His shorter, but stockier partner followed up behind me, keeping me between the two. We headed up the wooden platform to the larger concrete road section of the dock, where a squad car was waiting. I settled into the backseat, noting the wire mesh cover between the rows. I’d never actually been in a police car before, and as amiable as the two men were being, I couldn’t help but feel a bit intimidated at the thought of being caged in. I could understand the precaution, though, and at least they didn’t see the need to cuff me.
 
The EMT got in her own, unmarked car, and drove off. The cops didn’t say much, leaving me to my thoughts as they drove me into the city proper. I took the time to look out over a place that had, ostensibly, emerged from my own mind.
 
The truth is, I knew basically nothing about Blue Haven. Even factoring in that it was a relatively new addition to my superhero cities, I had basically done zero work defining it, other than it was situated on the shores of a large lake. I don’t know how thoroughly other writers plan out their metropolises ahead of time, but even if they did only a bare minimum and made things up as they went, after a few years of publishing, most superhero comics start to naturally build up a sense of what the hero’s home city is like, as the writers add numerous locations they can go to, and the artists reveal the general architectural style of the place.
 
I never wrote any of the adventures that were supposed to take place here, much less tried to draw any of it, so I never got the chance to explore it. In truth, I could say that about the vast majority of my settings, especially my contemporary ones. To me, I suppose, at the time I had been trying to do superhero stories, a city was a city was a city. I just pictured New York from Marvel Comics or Metropolis from DC. Even when I got older and realized it would be better to actually define such locations more distinctly, I never really got around to it.
 
Which is not to say I should have reasonably been expected to know a full Google Street View Map of this place, but having some sense of major landmarks or what the major districts were might have gone a long way to fleshing the place out. Other than “lake and docks to the north”, though, I had nothing.
 
I would have said the city was reminiscent of Chicago, but I’ve never actually been to Chicago outside of the airport, so I have no idea what that really means. I think I was drawing on random “here’s a city people have heard of” names for comparison at the time. Also, I guess I was drawing from the idea of the dramatized crime-ridden Chicago, with mobsters and gangs ruling the streets, giving Blue Haven a grittier atmosphere than some of my other cities.
 
I wondered if that still held true. As the cops drove me through downtown, I didn’t see any busted up windows or trash littering the streets, no hard looking dudes glowering out from alleyways. The buildings had an older look to them, but nothing looked as run down as I would have expected. We passed under an elevated train track, which I supposed was at least one way the city was distinctly Chicagoan. While the section just south of the lake held the tallest buildings, they were not particularly impressive as skyscrapers went, and the roof level drop off was almost immediate, the core of the city leveling out to a wide swathe of low urban sprawl. As we briefly rose up onto an elevated highway, I caught a glimpse of the city, and noticed the hard stop where the lights of the city ran right up to what I presumed was further wilderness. I had no way of accurately guessing the size of the city, but I couldn’t imagine it was more than five miles wide around. Despite the lights covering a decent range, I also noticed that, despite being early evening at the latest, there wasn’t much traffic.
 
The cops glanced at me a couple times, but I just kept staring out the window, trying to take in what I could. It was eerie, how sharply the city stood out from the sheer black of the world around them. Even with the expectation of light pollution, a few stars and the moon should have been visible, but there was nothing but the dimly lit wisps of clouds.
 
A few minutes later, we exited off the highway, and pulled over into the lot of a three story building that labeled itself as “St. Martin’s Clinic”, with a classic red cross emblem next to the name.
 
“Alright,” said the blond cop, opening up the backdoor. “We’ll get you checked in, and then we need to get on patrol. The Clinic will take care of you from here.” He gave me a once over as I stepped out of the car. “It probably doesn’t need to be said, but don’t cause any trouble here.”
 
“Do I look like trouble?” I asked, genuinely asking.
 
“Some people panic when the situation starts setting in,” said the other officer. “Just try to keep a cool head.”
 
“And if you don’t think you can, the place has Supers and Mages on staff, so think twice before attempting to flip shit.”
 
“I shall take that under advisement. Thanks for the lift.”
 
“We’ll escort you in before we go. Standard procedure.”
 
I nodded, letting one of them flank me and the other bring up the rear. The double doors slid open with a soft whisk, and we stepped up to the receptionists desk. A middle-aged woman with horn-rimmed glasses looked up and smiled professionally. “Evening, gents. This our newbie?”
 
“Yup, Straggler Procedure,” said the blond cop.
 
The woman clucked her tongue as she typed something into her computer. The tech certainly appeared to be up to date with my own world, a flat panel screen with a wireless keyboard. “Haven’t seen one of these in months, probably not a year.” She gave me a studious once over. “You seem not too worse for wear.”
 
“Thanks.”
 
 “Alright, we’ll have you see a nurse, and take you to the counsel wing. Until then, we’ll need you to try and fill out as many details as you can remember.” She handed me a clipboard with at least a dozen, double-sided pages to fill out. I glanced up and her and furrowed my brow.
 
She smiled pleasantly back. “Don’t worry about filling in everything, it’s really more for your sake. We find a straightforward questionnaire can help jog some information loose. Just answer what you can.”
 
I glanced to the cops, the shorter one nodding towards the chairs off to the side. I shrugged and sat down, right as another man stepped into the room from behind the counter area. He was dressed in all white, muscular, with spiked up black hair, and if my eyes weren’t deceiving me, golden eyes. He nodded at the officers, who promptly left. The man in white, however, leaned against the wall, crossed his arms, and pulled out a smart phone. Even though he started tapping on the screen, scrolling through some feed and texting, I could tell he was keeping an eye on me.
 
This was probably a security guard. I glanced back to the receptionist, but she was busying herself with something on the computer. With nothing else to do, I pulled out the pen from the top of the clipboard and started scanning down the page.
 
The first couple were the usual personal information and medical history questions. All things considered, most of my medical issues were the result of wear and tear aging and not taking good care of myself, but this new body seemed free of even those problems. I’d lucked out in that my family didn’t have any bad medical conditions I might have inherited, I had no allergies to speak of, I had no history of cancer or debilitating diseases. Presuming, of course, this was some version of my old body, I could only assume all that held true.
 
I opted not to fill out any personal information except my first name: Salvador. My home was back on Earth and inaccessible, so were all my material goods. My immediate family was already dead before I’d been sent here. My extended family didn’t exist here. Nor did my friends. At least I didn’t think so.
 
That actually did give me a moment’s pause. If this world had been formed from ideas in my head, did that include memories of other people from Earth? Something to look into later. Unless, maybe, by identifying friends and relatives, I might be able to get them to put me in contact with them? What if that actually worked? Would they know who I was, or would they also have generated as NPCs in this strange simulation?
 
I decided to leave it all blank. I didn’t get a bad vibe at all from this place, but I couldn’t help but be a little cautious.
 
I flipped to the next page. Questions involving work history, school history, hobbies, vehicles I’d owned or driven. Another page, questions involving media consumption, favorite and least favorite books and movies. Another page, questions involving religious affiliations and spiritual beliefs. Another page, questions involving encounters with supernatural forces, up to an including alien abductions, super powered battles, exposure to magical spells, training in mystical arts, encounters with strange creatures. More pages, deeper questions.
 
This thing had to be at least three hundred queries long. I left most of them blank, and for those I didn’t, I kept the answers vague. “A red sudan, that movie about robots taking over the world and time travel, apples, superhero comics, ex-Christian I think, I might have seen a ghost once but that could have just been a nightmare, I saw this really weird bug in a shed once but it might have just been some kind of rare insect.”
 
The last page made me blink. It was questions about my sex life. Preferences, kinks, particularly notable encounters, when/if I’d lost my virginity. I glanced up at the security man and the secretary. She was still zoned in to her computer. The man glanced up to match my gaze, then noted what page I was on. He made a little snort and smirked, then went back to his phone.
 
I looked down at the page. I almost put down “I write erotica” just to see what kind of reaction it would get. But I also wasn’t sure I actually wanted to admit that. Not that I had much to show for it on that side of my writing anyway.
 
I settled for flipping back and putting “I think I like to write stories” under the normal hobbies question. Putting down that I was straight and not presently sexually active was about as much advice as I was willing to give on the last page.
 
I went up to the counter and handed the clipboard to the secretary. She smiled again, and flipped through the pages, only pausing a moment to read my sparse answers. “Hmmm. About the usual.” She flipped back a few pages, then looked up at me with a bit of mirth. “Superhero comics, huh? Well, you wound up in the place place.”
 
“How’s that?”
 
“We have our own superhero team!”
 
The security man snorted again. “Every city has one.”
 
She clucked her tongue again. “Yes, but imagine if he’d appeared well outside the cities, and ended up in Cat Country.”
 
The man looked up and gave a thoughtful gaze to the ceiling for a moment, before looking back to her. “Don’t they have a super team, too?”
 
“Just their typical werecat army, I think.”
 
I couldn’t let that go. “Cat Country?”
 
“Oh, yeah. Cat people. You know what that is?”
 
“I can guess. Look like cats, talk like people?”
 
She laughed. “Oh, they run the gamut from actual talking cats, to half-human/half-cat hybrids, to humans with cat-ears and tails. A bunch of the cat-folk from all around decided to make their own little ethnostate about ten miles into the woods.”
 
I blinked. I was not the most political person, but I knew enough terminology to know that “ethnostate” did not usually have good connotations. She seemed to notice that on my expression, and gave me a dismissive wave.
 
“Oh, they’re fine. They just like their space. Send out a small caravan to make contact once in a while, do a little trade, and then go back to their corner. Just like a cat, right?”
 
“Sure.”
 
“Anyway. Cat people are nothing compared to what else is out there. Mages! Superheroes! Aliens! The Allied Free States are mostly human-populated, but you’re going to be running into strange things from time to time. You’ll get used to it.”
 
“I see.” Without thinking about it, I said, “Is Cavalry still the main team here?”
 
Both of them paused. The secretary cocked an eyebrow at me. “Did you hear that on the way here, or did you remember that?”
 
“Um, the guys who picked me up from the woods mentioned it.”
 
“Yes, Blue Haven’s defender team is Cavalry.”
 
Well, that lined up. Blue Haven was from one of my later superhero projects, and was actually home to what was supposed to be a secondary team of heroes, who rose up to replace the main hero team when said main team had been sent off into space for a year. The various ancillary heroes in the setting came together to fill the gap, hence taking the name “Cavalry”.
 
I, of course, barely even wrote anything for the main hero team, Natural Forces. The best Cavalry got was a document of character profiles. But there was one character in particular on that team that I only just now realized was probably the closest thing to a lead I had. I immediately kicked myself internally for not thinking of it until just now.
 
Obtaining a younger body did not, apparently, come with any notable boost to my cognitive abilities. I was still a complete fucking moron when it came to putting pieces together and realizing things that were staring me in the face.
 
I could excuse the fact that this whole situation was fucking crazy, that getting blown up and resurrected into some kind of dream world scenario would put anybody on the back foot. But I couldn’t accept that as an excuse. The reason I hadn’t immediately started trying to find my way to Cavalry was because I was a fucking idiot, who simply froze up and blanked out under pressure.
 
What if this had been a corrupted city guard scenario? What if those fisherman had just opted to put a round of buckshot into my chest? What if this facility was a place they took people nobody would miss, for god knew what purpose? I had just gone right along with everything, because I wasn’t smart enough to cover my ass, wasn’t smart enough to properly bluff my way through getting questioned, wasn’t smart enough to—
 
“Sir? Are you alright?” said the secretary, giving me a slightly more concerned expression. The security man was now standing up straight, not making any sudden moves, but clearly ready to spring into action.
 
I blinked and shook my head, as if clearing the cobwebs. “Uh, yeah, I just…”
 
“Did you remember something just now? Something about Cavalry?”
 
I pretended to concentrate for a second, then shook my head. “Maybe for a second. Or it reminded me of something else. But I think I lost it already.”
 
Her smile turned sympathetic. “That’s alright. The nurse will be able to help you.”
 
“Okay. Good.” I paused for a second. “Sorry.”
 
“For what?”
 
“I don’t know,” I said, more curtly than I intended, and went to sit back down. I took a breath and tried to force myself to calm down. I still felt angry at myself. That instinct for self-directed loathing had apparently not gone away either. Christ, I was so ready to beat up on myself like my own redheaded step-child.
 
See, it’s funny, because I actually was a redheaded step-child. I didn’t get beaten, though. At least not physically.
 
I took another breath. This was not the time to get morbid. New life, new chances, unfamiliarly-familiar territory. What could I have actually done otherwise in this situation? What, I was going to go run naked around the perimeter of the lake until I reached the city limits, then start asking strangers for directions to Cavalry’s base? Or start hollering at the sky for Cavalry to come find me? That would have caused a much bigger disturbance and I would have felt even more like an idiot.
 
I still didn’t know the full situation here, and if it was going to take me time to contact Cavalry, I’d best do it once I had a bit better lay of the land. I was no superhero or adventurer, who could get away with making a nuisance of myself, and I wouldn’t even know where to start if I could. Maybe I could go through official channels. Once I got checked out and cleared here, I could see if there was a hotline or something. That wasn’t Cavalry’s style, but if it had been five years since Blue Haven generated in this world, and Cavalry with it, well, I had no idea how they would have adapted to things in that time.
 
The door opened again, and I snapped myself out of my brooding. A nurse stepped through and smiled at me. “Salvador? This way please.”
 
I looked up and started to stand, only to immediately freeze in place. It wasn’t just because she was honestly stunning looking. She was though; tall, lithe, with long red hair and vibrant green eyes. Her white nurse’s uniform was also just a little too tight, cheekily accentuating her curves.
 
“Uh-oh, you’re about to break another heart!” said the secretary.
 
“Oops! I keep doing that!” The two women laughed. The security man chuckled along, even as he kept glancing over to scope her curves.
 
I was, of course, a heterosexual male with a pulse, and I felt myself flush as my hormones kicked in harder than they had in over a decade. Apparently, my other head got its faculties fully restored. But that was not actually why I paused. The moment a saw her, I felt a sudden shock of intuition. I knew who she was. I knew what she could do. I knew because she wasn’t one of these procedurally generated NPC-people. I knew, because she was one of my characters.
 
Just as I had recognized Blue Haven, even if I’d never clearly pictured it in my head before, so, too, did I recognize the woman I called Touch. If you had asked me to try and picture an exact face or body features beyond “pretty redheaded supermodel”, I don’t think I could have really gotten specific enough to paint a photo-realistic picture. But as I looked at her, I just knew it was her.
 
“Sir, if you keep ogling me like that, I’m going to have to start charging.” Touch grinned and beckoned towards me. “Come on. I won’t bite.”
 
I managed to get to my feet, but I didn’t step closer. My jaw had dropped a bit, but I closed it, and tried to set my features firm. My heart was thudding in my chest, unsure of what exactly I should do.
 
The security man managed to tear his view off the redhead, and compose himself, noting how tense I had gotten. He took a step towards me, tensing to do something if I made any sudden movements.
 
“Sir?” said Touch, her mirth sobering into a more curious gaze. “Are you alright? I really won’t hurt you. This is just a bit more thorough of a medical check-up and a psyche evaluation. I know everything must be pretty confusing right now, but you’re in good hands.”
 
Yeah, I would be in “good hands” alright. The “joke” about writing erotica suddenly seemed a lot less funny, and not in a good way. Touch was one of my erotica characters, and the thing about my erotica is the few pieces I’d written tended to involve highly dubious sexual encounters. I’ll spare you the details, but let’s just say, Touch would be one of the last women I would trust to let touch me.
 
I glanced to the door. The security man frowned. “Sir, please don’t run. You really are in safe hands here. The city’s been cleaned up a lot since the early days, but you still don’t want to be wandering around in just a bathrobe off into the streets.”
 
“Do I remind you of someone unpleasant?” said Touch, keeping her expression amiable. “Well, I can assure you I’m not her. If you are a newbie, then there’s no way we’ve met before, yeah?” She beckoned to me again, keeping her distance. “Come along. I would offer to have one of the other nurses look you over if it would help, but I’m the only one free right now.”
 
I glanced at the door again, stared at it for several seconds. The security man tensed to block me. Then I looked back to her and hesitantly stepped forward. I had no plans. I had no powers. I had no combat skill. I couldn’t think straight under pressure to try and talk my way out of this. I had no way out, now that I had walked into this situation. I was an untalented nobody. Healthy, fit body aside, I couldn’t imagine successfully fighting or fleeing out of this. So I did what I always do. I froze, then took the path of least resistance.
 
The only rationale I could come up with to ease my nerves was that, if Touch was actually working here, something I would never have guessed her doing, she probably wasn’t going to rape me right here in the Clinic.
 
Probably.

1.4 – WELL-EDUCATED FINGERS
The exam rooms went down past either side of a long haul, with the reception desk in approximately the middle. I could see lights on from under some of the closed doors off to the right. Touch, however, started walking to the left. I hesitated, but she beckoned again, guiding me all the way down to the last room in the hallway, well away from any of the other staff. The security man followed us nonchalantly, staying a few feet back.
 
The other man’s presence, combined with my wariness at this situation, were probably the only reasons I didn’t end up popping a boner as I tried and failed to avoid taking in the view of Touch’s body. She did not make it easy to not draw your eye. With her very form-fitting uniform, the slight sway of her hips, the fact that she was one of my longtime sexual fantasy woman, in the flesh, standing just a few feet away from me, well, my youthful body could not help but react.
 
Yes, I was afraid she might try to rape me. No, despite the fantasies I had, and the things I had written about, I did not, in fact want to actually get raped. The fact that it would be woman on man did not, in fact, make it funny or hot, when it would have been real, actual abuse. And yet, knowing what she could do to me, all with a single touch of her finger to my skin, I couldn’t help but remember those dark fantasies I used to indulge in.
 
Funny. My actual twenty year old self might have jumped right into it, maybe even eagerly let myself get set up for it. But I wasn’t that young. I wasn’t that stupid. And it had been a long time since I had actually willingly thrown myself into a situation on the chance it might lead to sex. I hadn’t been that sort of man in the first place, and I certainly wasn’t about to start, simulated reality or not.
 
She stopped at the last door down the hall, far from any of the rest of the staff in the building. She turned and smiled sweetly, and gestured towards the room, clicking on the light. “Take seat. Vince, you can wait out here.”
 
The security man frowned. “You sure?”
 
“Yes. You know I can handle myself.” She stepped up to him and kissed him on the cheek. “But you’re sweet for worrying.”
 
“You say so,” said Vince, blushing a bit. I tried not to notice he was clearly fighting not to tent his pants, too.
 
Touch turned and joined me in the room, moving to close the door.
 
“Leave it open,” I said.
 
She paused, then glanced to it, then to me. She cocked her head to the side and gave me a studious once-over. “Alright.” She smirked as she pulled up the clipboard I’d handed in, and flipped through the pages. “Salvador, huh? Nice name. I used to know a Salvador when I was younger. Cute boy.” She glanced up at me for a moment. “Funny, you seem almost scared of me, even though I can tell you’re attracted. I wonder what could have you so worked up.”
 
I didn’t say anything, just watched her read the pages. The way she stood, subtly turned to give me a solid view of her curves, I could tell was an attempt at distraction. I made a point to look away. Now that I was thoroughly boxed into the room, the flush of excitement from seeing her was wearing off quick. My nerves felt frayed. This felt like a trap I had just marched myself right into. And, my dubious tastes in fetish aside, it did not feel like the fun kind of trap.
 
“Hmm. Not a lot to work with here.” She set the clipboard down, and motioned to the patient seat. “Go ahead.”
 
“I’ll stand, thanks.”
 
She frowned. “Okay. I guess I don’t really need you to sit for this.” She held up a hand. “Now, then. I am obligated to inform you that I am a superhuman. My power is the ability to read a person’s body through physical contact. It’s something like psychometry, but limited to the flesh. Do you understand?”
 
I nodded, but kept my distance. She could do more than read a person’s body. As I had imagined her, she could take complete and total control of a person’s nervous system by making skin to skin contact. She could make them move exactly how she wanted, make them feel whatever she wanted, control their muscles and organs with surgical precision. Technically, she could also use those powers to induce some degree of accelerated healing and disease resistance, if she bothered to try. When I had first looked at her, that sudden flash of intuition told me she still had exactly those powers.
 
In my old fantasies, Touch had used her ability to sexually dominate and torture men to the point of near insanity, for no other reason than she was a sadist who got off on it. She wasn’t the only woman I’d created with that sort of modus operandi, either. Much of my erotic oeuvre consisted of helpless men being abused at the hands of super powered women. Sometimes consensually, usually not.
 
Before you go thinking that that was in any way related to how I viewed women and men in real life, I can assure it was not. Dark, fucked up sex fantasies are just that, fantasies. And unlike some people, I can separate my fantasy worlds from my real life.
 
Except for the fact that I was presently boxed into a room with a super powered rapist straight out of my own head. Not only did this world have superheroes and cat people, but it also had my erotic sex fiends running lose, apparently, getting jobs at health Clinics and who knows what else.
 
Touch slowly extended her hand. “If you are comfortable with it, I would like to touch you so that I may give you a thorough physical examination. Trust me, this will be much faster and much more accurate that the standard check-up tools. You seem to be in fine health, but there’s no telling if you picked something up from your trek in the woods, or if anything internal might be amiss.”
 
I shrank back from her hand. She frowned, almost pouted, and gave me a real look of concern. She withdrew her hand. “Do I need to get another nurse? I’m not sure what’s got you so scared, nothing in your questionnaire hinted at a phobia of ginger-girls or anything.”
 
I couldn’t think of anything else to do. I just went for it. “Touch?”
 
She blinked. Then blinked again. “I’m sorry?”
 
“Touch.”
 
“Er, yes. I have to touch you to examine you, so—”
 
“No. Your name is Touch. Am I correct?”
 
She stared at me for a long, hard moment. Without turning around, she reached back with her leg, and used her foot to kick the door closed.
 
“My name is Karen.”
 
“Yeah, that’s your civilian name. But you go by Touch. And you don’t just read people when you make contact, you can control their nervous system. Am I correct?”
 
She moved so fast, I didn’t have time to jerk back, her hand snapping out like a snake to grab me by the wrist. A soon as she made contact, my body froze up, my muscles seizing, my joints locking, even my jaw staying shut, and my vocal chords stilled. All I could do was blink and breathe. There was no fighting it, no straining against her control, mentally or physically. It was as if my brain had been disconnected from my nervous system and was overridden by hers. I was still able to feel my body, but I had no autonomy, save for what she allowed.
 
She stared at me, looking me in the eyes as she used her power to “read” my body. I felt a slight tingling sensation run over my skin, and I would have shivered if she let me. Her grip on my wrist was gentle, but firm, and despite locking my body up tight, I felt no pain, even though I was sure holding this position should have been putting a strain on my muscles. After a moment, she stepped back to sit on one of the two side chairs. My body followed suit, moving completely out of my control to smoothly slide into the seat next to her. She continued to stare into my eyes as her power tingled through me.
 
Aside from my eyes and lungs, there was another part of my body she let move freely, and even though I was panicking, that part of me rose to eager attention. Actually, it was more like I felt I should be panicking, but somehow, my mind didn’t quite get there. I felt oddly calm, despite being completely aware of how potentially screwed I was, in several possible ways. Her power was so fine-tuned, she didn’t just control a person’s muscles, but could precisely manipulate the release of chemicals in the brain to alter mood and emotion. I wasn’t sure if she was pushing arousal on me, or just dulling the fear so it didn’t inhibit my base excitement. Either way meant I was up and ready for her to take.
 
Another few moments passed, and I fully expected her to start making use of me. Would the security man, Vince, bust in and stop her? Could he stop her? Or would he let her do whatever she wanted? It was clear she had influence over him, and it was worth noting she had taken me to the emptiest wing of the building. There was a possibility that was more for the safety of other patients, not knowing how a newbie might react during the examination, but given what was happening right now, that seemed a weak reasoning.
 
Instead of throwing me to the floor and making me beg for mercy right away, she relaxed a bit in her chair, perhaps letting herself savor the moment as she took in my racing emotions and the full realization of how trapped I was. From the way we were sitting, her right hand was holding my right, and I was sitting to her right, making her extend her arm over my lap. She made me grab her right hand with my left, then had me let go with my right, and she threaded our fingers together, giving her more slack to lean back. She made sure there was skin contact the whole time, keeping me strictly under her control.
 
“Well, the good news is, I don’t sense anything wrong. You are just about the healthiest person I’ve seen in months. Very fit, too. You got a real killer body.” She glanced down at my crotch and smirked. “Average in a few places, though.”
 
I rolled my eyes, the only part of me that was under my control. Her enforced calming effect at least kept me from freezing up completely. I was almost in a “let’s just get this over with” state of mind. She chuckled in response.
 
“Bad news, though. You clearly remember more than you implied in your questionnaire. Fibbing will not let us help you, Salvador. If you know my old name, then I presume you must know what I’m capable of. I want you to know that I am not, in fact, the same woman I was back then. Yes, I like to fool around still, and yes, I still like my boys on their knees, but I’m not the lunatic I used to be. I got caught, did some time, decided I’d clean up my act. My powers are good for Medical, so I trained for that, and now I go between here and the main hospital to help out the Medical Mages.”
 
I blinked, taking all this in. She was reformed? I almost couldn’t believe it. But then again, the Touch I used to fantasize about had just been a one-note sex fiend archetype. Other than eventually giving her a normal name, Karen, I never really put any development into her concept. I hadn’t even given her a back story, other than she had been friends with a few other empowered female rapists. In this case, I could maybe excuse it on account that she was just a sex fantasy character I never intended to write real stories about, but still.
 
It did seem obvious, now that I had been presented with the possibility. If, like most of the NPCs and the superheroes, she had appeared in this world five years ago, a reality where other types of superhumans existed, and she had to actually do things like make a living and worry about rent, how would that have turned out? I would have imagined she’d try to break some rich guy or two into being her sex slaves and lived the high life, but maybe, if given the chance to actually grow as a person, if she had been stopped by some of the superheroes and forced to actually deal with the consequences of her actions, how might that have changed her? I wouldn’t have guessed she would end up in the medical field. But I imagine any sort of biological manipulation power would give anyone a leg up in getting a job in the field.
 
“You can tell me honestly, sir. I went through a lot of guys during my first year in this world. Were you one of my victims?”
 
I felt my jaw and throat suddenly loosen, back under my control, and I was able to turn my head. “I… I don’t think…”
 
I felt my jaw snap shut. “I can’t read your mind directly, but I can sense when you’re lying. Please be honest. I am not going to hurt you any further, though I will use my powers to keep you in check, for your and our safety. You understand my need to feel cautious.”
 
My jaw loosened again. “Could you at least quit it with the Viagra signal?”
 
Touch looked down at my crotch again and smirked. “That’s mostly you, actually. I think maybe you like the idea of my old self quite a lot. But liking the idea and experiencing it for real are two different things, aren’t they? Maybe I let my power slip a little bit down there. I apologize. Old instincts die hard.”
 
I didn’t feel any further tingling, but the sheer erotic tension seemed to lessen a little bit. Not enough to let that part of me fully relax, though.
 
“I’ll forgive you if you please let go of me.”
 
“Tell me first. How do you know me?”
 
I hesitated. “I can’t really explain it in a way you’d get.”
 
“Try me.”
 
I didn’t actually think she wouldn’t get it. I just didn’t want to explain it to her. That she was a figment of my imagination that I used to jerk off thinking about.
 
She frowned in that near pout again. “You really don’t want to say, huh? I must have fucked you up pretty bad. Except, of course, you’re supposed to be a newbie. Walked out of the wilderness naked as the day you were born.” She chuckled. “Course, depending on your perspective on the matter, newbies usually are technically born the day we find them, or least shortly after, so that phrase is quite apropos!”
 
She reached up and cupped my cheek with her other hand. I felt tingles come off her fingertips, and a fresh wave of calm washed over me. I tried to feel angry about it, but couldn’t. She may not be raping me, but she hadn’t changed that much, if she was willing to impose her power on me to tweak my brain. It wasn’t quite the same as telepathic mind control, but it was close enough.
 
I wanted to give her the benefit of the doubt that she was only doing it because she thought we had bad history, and she felt it was necessary out of self-defense.
 
“So. You did have a life before you awakened here. That’s very rare, and mainly seems to be the case for superheroes and adventurers. I seem to be one of the even rarer civilian exceptions, though maybe the fact I already had powers starting off had something to do with it. I remember a world, a city not too dissimilar from this one, but where people with magical powers were almost unheard of. I remember meeting a woman who was one of those amazing rarities, befriending her, and her choosing to share a fragment of her gifts with me, and several others. I remember the power going to my head. I remember the woman being an absolute sex fiend, and roping us all into her world of femdom debauchery. I lost myself completely in that life. My magical friend provided for us, using the riches she had amassed to give us a life a luxury. We didn’t need to work, we all just lived as her pose, playing and fucking, like horny little goddesses living in our own little world.”
 
She smiled as she looked deep into my eyes. “We each had a few men that were our personal slaves. Some waited on us hand and foot, eagerly. Others we kept locked in a cozy dungeon, and we hurt them with pleasures the human body wasn’t meant to handle.” She leaned back a bit, letting go of my cheek, but keeping our gazes locked together. “Any of that ring a bell?”
 
I swallowed hard. “Yes.”
 
She frowned. “When I appeared in this world, I acted much the same way. Things were rough for everyone that first year, and I refused to face it. I managed to find a few of my friends from that previous life, and we fucked whoever we felt like, to hell with the consequences. Well, the consequences caught up quick, some of the superheroes grabbed us and jailed us. And I already told you how that all went.”
 
She held up her free hand. “I’m going to assume one of two possibilities for you remembering me from before.” She extended a finger. “One is that you’re a person from one of the other cities, and I pumped and dumped you during one of my party nights. You’re showing up nude and memory-lossed today near this city is a pure coincidence. However, I don’t quite buy that.”
 
She extended another finger. “Two, given how fresh your body is, assuming you weren’t very recently healed by magic or regeneration serum, I’d say you very likely are a newbie. I can usually detect signs of supernatural healing, no matter how pure it renders your flesh, and I’m not sensing even a trace of such things. That means if you remember me from before you woke up, you may actually be one of my victims from the world before.”
 
I ruminated on that for a moment. “Do you honestly believe that’s really possible?”
 
“This world isn’t possible. I’m not sure how much you’ve gleaned, but this entire plane of existence seems to be stitched together from pieces of countless alternate worlds. Those of us who have memories probably came from those worlds, and we got reincarnated or copy-pasted here when the plane was formed. It’s pretty heady to think about.”
 
I stared at her. “Countless?”
 
“Yeah. Well. Supposedly. If there is an end to the plane, no one’s found it, at least not anyone who made it back. Then again, we’re not in a position to explore very far anymore.”
 
“Why not?”
 
She smiled. “Nothing you need to worry about for now. Trust me. You’ll more acclimated to everything in the next few days.”
 
I looked to the floor. That gave me a completely new cause for concern. If she was correct, then it meant this wasn’t just a simulation of my superhero cities, and some random catfolk settlement. I had had many ideas for multi-world mash-up settings, and the one that fit her description specifically was the Endless Frontier. Depending on how much had been pulled from my head to create this reality and how exactly it was stitched together, that was potentially bad. That was potentially very, very bad.
 
Touch’s eyebrows raised. “That set off an alarm! Are you okay?”
 
“I don’t suppose the lack of exploration has anything to do with, like, armies of monsters and aliens swarming around your borders?”
 
Touch cocked her head to the side, looking at me studiously. Her tone was cautious. “What makes you say that?”
 
“Just a guess. Countless alternate worlds? Magic? Superheroes? It’s obvious, isn’t it?”
 
She frowned, but after a moment nodded. “I suppose it would be, if you’re thinking terms of comics and movies.” She sighed. “Yes. I won’t lie to you. The Allied Free States is protected by a vast force field, and each of the cities and territories has a team of protectors, and there is an entire army dedicated to the defense of the border. That said, there are basically whole empires beyond it that are not friendly.”
 
Shit. Even as calm as she was forcing me to feel, my mind was spinning with the possibilities. Apocalyptic threats suffused my worlds, from alien invaders to ancient monsters to demon armies to magical corruptions. If all of that existed here—
 
“Relax. The AFS have stood strong for five years. We’re not about to cave in now. If anything, the monsters out there are more focused on tearing themselves apart over territory.”
 
She had a point there. Even still, knowing the threats that were out there, maybe there was something I could do about them. Maybe that’s why I had been brought here. Maybe—Oh, who the fuck was I kidding? What the hell could I actually do? I was just some random guy, fit in body but with no skills to speak of, and no powers. The best I could do was maybe contribute some knowledge on the enemy factions to the heroes, assuming they hadn’t sussed everything out already.
 
Another pause. Well, actually, why not? There was a member of Cavalry I wanted to try and check in with anyway, and if I could do one meaningful thing in this world, maybe providing some intel would be it.
 
I looked to Touch. “I need to speak to Cavalry.”
 
She blinked. “The superhero team?”
 
“Yes. I need to see them. How can I arrange that?”
 
She shook her head. “I need to clear your assessment and register you at the very least first. And wait, we haven’t cleared this up! You remember me from before, right?”
 
“Seems that way. But I don’t know, I can’t recall much in specific. I recognize you, but, I don’t know, I’m really fuzzy on the details of everything else. Maybe if I met one of your friends, it’d jog more, but you understand why I wouldn’t want to.”
 
She nodded. “That’s fair.” She gave me a sly smile. “You know, no pressure, but if you like, maybe we could meet up when I’m off shift and see if I can help you jog anything else? Everything consensual, of course.”
 
I can’t say I wasn’t tempted, and my body definitely made it clear that I was. Her smile widened a bit as her gaze flicked downwards for a moment. But the truth was, I had more important things to worry about right now.
 
“I’ll have to decline.”
 
“You sure?”
 
“Yes. Besides, what are the odds that you would happen to encounter a newbie from exactly the world you came from? For all we know, you’re actually an alternate version of the person I think I remember.”
 
“Possibly. It’s rare, but it isn’t unheard of for people from the same world to appear separated, then run into each other later. Most intelligent species appear in the same general regions. Most humans appear in the Free States. There’s twelve major cities, and most appear near those. I work at a clinic that handles newbies. Not unbelievable odds.”
 
“And I would just happen to appear on the night you happen to be on shift?”
 
She shrugged. “Weird shit happens in this world sometimes. It’s hardly the strangest thing I’ve seen or heard of.”
 
“Sure.” I wasn’t even sure where my line of thinking was going here, other than stumbling for excuses not to see her again.
 
She gave me another studious look. “Alright, well, your loss. I guess if you don’t want to relive some old traumas, I understand. Maybe you were one of my old world victims, maybe you were one of my early victims in this world. All I can say is I’m sorry, and I really have changed my ways. Believe me or not, I guess.”
 
I pretended to ruminate on it for a moment, but already, Touch and our potential past relationship seemed a very small thing to worry about in the grand scheme. She seemed sincere. She’d had ample time to molest me, or fuck up my brain in any number of ways. Even now, she was simply keeping me still, and the only mental manipulation she had done was to keep me calm, not actually try to confuse my thinking or radically alter my state of mind with biochemical tampering.
 
“I believe you. Now, please, I need to speak to Cavalry. Whatever I need to do to accelerate that, I’ll do it.”
 
Her brow furrowed, as if she wasn’t quite believing just how quickly I had snapped over from being scared of her, to brushing our history aside to focus on something else.
 
“Alright, well, thank you for believing.” Cautiously, she let go of my hand, and I was suddenly free to move. She waited for me to leap out of my seat, but I kept still. I really didn’t feel threatened by her anymore, not compared to all the things that might exist beyond the city limits.
 
Satisfied I wasn’t about to make a scene, she continued. “So, the next thing to do is get you some clothes, and see about getting you established in the city. There’s still plenty of open apartments, and plenty of jobs to apply for, and options for moving to other locations. We will hook you up with a social worker, but since it’s so late, you’ll have to meet with them tomorrow. Just come here around 9 a.m. There’s a hotel near here where we usually give newbies a week to stay while you get on your feet. So for now, go get a meal, and some rest.”
 
“That’s, um, wow. You guys have this whole thing down pat, huh?”
 
Touch nodded. “Well, we’ve had a few years to get everything in order, and the flow of newbies has slowed to less than a trickle. The city can afford a little welfare for new arrivals. But that said, you will be expected to pull your weight once you’re registered, so don’t try to take advantage and drag things out. Don’t worry, though, no one makes poverty wages here, so any job you land, you should be okay starting off.”
 
“Understood.” I was certain that things would not be as easy as she made it sound, but I suppose I wouldn’t know until I went through the process. Maybe it would be quick and simple, because most of my old stories never really explored the problems of incompetent bureaucracy and insufficient economic and social support systems.
 
There was a knock on the door. “Yes? You can open it.”
 
Vince poked his head in. “Everything okay? You’ve been in here a while.”
 
Touch glanced to me. I forced a small smile. “Yeah, I think everything’s going to work out from here.” I looked to her. “You’ve been a big help so far.”
 
Touch smiled back, a little relieved. “Happy to serve.”
 
 

1.5 – YOU ARE HERE
They sent me off with a care package containing three sets of clothes and some sandals, a credit card with $500, and a basic flip phone prepaid for the month for text and talk only. Touch, or Karen as I should probably start calling her, also slipped me a card with her phone number, just in case I changed my mind.
 
I’m not going to lie, I was tempted to call her that night to come over, and see where things might lead. With my reenergized hormones, I could not help but imagine what experiencing the kind of fantastical sex I fantasized about would be like. It was not like I had ever actually been raped by her. I didn’t have any sexual abuse trauma in my past, either. And if she genuinely was respectful of consent, then maybe letting her have a go at me, if she was interested in such a thing, would be one hell of a way to start off my new life.
 
I banished the thought. One, I was not, contrary to appearances, a sex-obsessed twenty-year old, eager to throw all other considerations out the window on the chance to get my dick wet. Two, there was a high chance that Karen had not, in fact, fully reformed. Especially if, during a private talk, she coaxed it out of me that I was her creator, would she reveal herself to still be a secret sex enslaver? Would she knock me out and drag me to a secret bunker, where she’d torture me for kicks, and for information should could use against the superheroes that kept her in check?
 
I wasn’t going to risk it. I might jerk off thinking about it later, but I had to be more cautious. Getting picked up by those fishermen had ultimately worked out so far, but that could have only been a case of extreme luck. Luck to have landed so close to Blue Haven, to have not run into any of the risks mentioned by the medical staff, to have run into helpful citizens instead of one of the street gangs that I normally imagined prowled the city.
 
Was it actually luck? Or had some outside force set everything up for me, to let pieces fall into place to guide me down a safe path? If there was, in fact, a guiding hand at work, then what was their aim? Was I intended to go on some kind of adventure? That didn’t seem likely, given what a safe and easy start I was having. Normally in those fantastical stories where a person was sent to another world, they usually got screwed over pretty quickly, getting into a fight with the authorities, or running afoul of bandits, or starting off in a monster infested area.
 
Or worse yet, the person would end up realizing they were in some kind of RPG, and have the ability to access a stat screen and game menus, and see prompts for questlines. I didn’t have any of that. I was just here. An early disaster could, of course, still happen; I’d been in this world less than a day, so far as I could tell. Plenty of time over the course of the week for some horrible catastrophe to happen to the city, and force me into some kind of action.
 
I hoped I was wrong. Maybe, when I tried activating the crystal just a second too late to stop those men’s bullets, the alien object had still reacted to my desire to be safe and, after making this world, had tossed me where and when I would have the least amount of trouble. Maybe that was the cause of the delay in my appearance here. Five years had passed, and apparently, the worst of the sudden mash-up of my worlds had already come and gone. The human territories were protected.
 
I found that difficult to believe, at least in the long term. The Endless Frontier was ultimately one of my most dangerous settings, if for no other reason than it threw so many of my supervillains and monster of mine into one pot, barring the truly cosmic level entities that had sacrificed themselves to make the reality in the first place. If that still held true, that meant enormous armies of alien and mystical threats had had five years to storm across the infinite expanse, and build their forces to planet-conquering scales. Whatever the rough, early start this world must have had when all my disparate settings suddenly co-existed, it was going to pale in comparison to the threats building on the horizon.
 
Unless, of course, those threats had already been dealt with, somehow. Maybe the first couple years were so rough, because the superheroes and adventurers had spent them defeating the villains and monsters that had threatened their new homes?
 
Blue Haven was still standing after all, and seemed remarkably well-kept, considering what it was supposed to be. As I walked, I took in what I could, observing people and places to see what I could piece together. I was no sleuth, and I never cared about people-watching before, but I was determined to get the lay of the place before I decided to commit to it. Everything seemed normal, safe even. The city wasn’t bunkered down for war, people drove and walked and took the bus without nervously looking over their shoulders or giving the alleys wide berths. I saw no homeless people. Not every person had the friendliest of expressions, but no one I passed by or happened to share a glance with gave me any hostile vibes or aggressive reactions.
 
After checking into the hotel, I asked the clerk at the desk if there were any good restaurants around, and he directed me to a bar and grill two blocks down the street. The city closed up early, it seemed, leaving only the bars and restaurants open after six o’clock. Despite the size of the city, traffic seemed lighter than it should have, both on foot and in vehicles. Was the population lower than the city was built for? Could be any number of reasons for that.
 
Even for dinner time, the bar and grill had open seating. I ordered a burger and fries, and it was good, and still cheaper than I would have expected. The T.V. screens were even showing sports, soccer and baseball, in specific. When I was done, I took another walk around the block, making sure I kept in mind how to get back to the hotel. No one accosted me, not that I went out of my way to bait anyone. I didn’t see anything strange occur. It was all just normal, to all appearances.
 
I didn’t tempt fate too much. I stuck to the major street, where there were still people coming and going, though the traffic died down quickly after 8 o’clock. I’d only walked maybe a quarter mile, and started heading back. I managed to reach the hotel without incident. Unfortunately, the hotel didn’t have a public computer room, and the phone I’d been given had no internet. The room had a television, but I didn’t click it on. I hadn’t watched TV in years, and I didn’t feel like channel surfing would be a more efficient means of getting information than a computer. I would have to look for a library in the morning.
 
I laid down on the bed, stared at the ceiling, and let out a long breath, thinking things over. I’d been sent to a world where locations and characters of mine co-existed in a crazy-quilt combination, with masses of randomly generated people who conveniently had just enough common knowledge about themselves and their situation to easily slide into the role of the innocent masses for the heroes to protect. So far, nothing untoward had happened to me. Even the one character I’d met so far, an outright villain, had been nothing but helpful.
 
It was a lie. A trick or a trap. Or a strangely pleasant dream. Or something. I had no idea what I could possibly be expected to do next. Was I actually just going to become a citizen of Blue Haven, go back to working in a stock room or a warehouse, keep my head down, and just live whatever life this world could give me? The part of me that just wanted to keep things simple and easy, to settle back into the inertia of time-wasting malaise, actually did want nothing more than to go back to a sense of normalcy. Even with a new lease on life, in a world of superhumans and magic, part of me wanted to just bunker down, do my day job, and spend my free time holed up in my apartment dicking around on the internet.
 
What the fuck was wrong with me? Maybe it was just the sheer disbelief that this could be happening. Had I not already spent a day on Earth with my characters running around in the real world, I might have been a lot more in denial that I could be in one of my own fictional settings. Of course, I also had the constant reminder of my new body and the starkly pitch black sky.
 
I couldn’t stop my head from spinning with runaway thoughts. I did feel a little tired, I was maybe even getting sleepy, but I just couldn’t settle my mind enough to drift off. I sighed again, and forced myself to sit up, wondering if another walk might calm me down. I didn’t feel up to leaving the room, though.
 
I took a hot shower to try and relax. It didn’t really work. I tried jerking off, but couldn’t stay focused enough to commit. I debated calling Karen despite my earlier rejection of the idea, but it was already well late. I finally sat up and tried the television, but all I got was a black screen, with a message saying, “Programming will resume at 7 a.m.”
 
I lay back down. I closed my eyes, but kept the lights on. I wanted to pace, but I didn’t want to get up. I imagined any number of things that could happen to me in the middle of the night. I felt panic welling up. The possibilities in my mind began to spiral. If I went to sleep, would I wake up somewhere else? Would I be attacked in the night by zombies or giant spiders or Dream Demons? Would a super fight occur in the middle of the night, and I’d be crushed under the building getting collapsed or get vaporized by a stray laser bolt? Would I never actually wake up? Would it turn out I was still on Earth, still dying this whole time, and when I went to sleep in this death-dream, my last active synapse would fire one last time, and that would be that?
 
I didn’t know. In this land forged from my mind, I didn’t know a fucking thing, couldn’t do a fucking thing. Anxiety welled up within me, and I froze, as I always did. I lay there and stared at the ceiling and felt my heart thud, and my breath turn shaky and I couldn’t even close my eyes without imagining horrible things happening the moment I let my guard down. I lay there, terrifying myself into complete paralysis.
 
I don’t know when I fell asleep, if I ever actually did. At some point, the fear just burnt itself into a mental numbness. My mental stamina gave out for picturing more nightmare scenarios, and I just lay there staring. And then suddenly, there was daylight coming in from behind the blinds and my cell phone was ringing.
 
 
 
1.6 – SIGN ME UP
I guess I must have slept at some point, because I wasn’t too tired trying to answer my phone. I checked the time to see it was 8:30. I hadn’t noticed the sun come up, since I’d kept the window covered and the lights on.
 
I looked at the phone, which showed me a number I didn’t know. Of course I wouldn’t, I didn’t even remember my own number for this phone. I answered it anyway. “Hello?”
 
“Salvador? This is Pam from St. Martin’s Clinic. We just want to confirm you will be coming over today, to meet with your social worker.”
 
“Uh, yeah, I guess, sure. 9:30 right?”
 
“That is correct. You sound pretty tired. Late night?”
 
“Something like that.”
 
“We can push the meeting until 10 if you need a little extra time to get ready, but if you aren’t going to make it, I’m afraid we’ll have to delay until tomorrow.”
 
“Um, no, I can make it by 10.”
 
“Please do. Not to make you hit the ground running, but the sooner we can get you set up, the better.”
 
“Understood.”
 
“See you soon, then.”
 
I hung up and took a minute to just sit on the edge of the bed, orient myself, and rub the gritty tiredness from my eyes. I needed a coffee or an energy drink. Or a coffee energy drink. I got dressed in a pair of blue shorts and a grey shirt I’d been provided. I was going to have to get some real shoes, but thankfully, my flat foot problem did indeed seem to have vanished with my reformed body, so walking long term in the sandals I’d been given wasn’t a problem for now.
 
I headed out of the hotel, wondering where the nearest gas station was. Some caffeine and a cheap breakfast burrito would hit the spot for sure, and I wasn’t sure I’d have time to sit at a diner. When in doubt, fall back on bad habits. Of course, I didn’t know where the closest gas station was. I was about to turn around and ask the desk clerk, but I suddenly felt an intuition to turn left and go down a few blocks. I looked down the street, but couldn’t see anything indicating a gas station, yet I felt a nagging sensation that that’s where I wanted to go. It would be in the direction of the clinic anyway; worst came to worst, I’d ask for directions at the clinic.
 
It turned out the clinic was itself he stopping point for another road, forming a T-intersection with the one I had come down. Another block down that road, a gas station attached to a sizeable convenience store was in plain sight. I hadn’t remembered seeing it last night, but then, I’d been pretty wrapped up in my own head over things. I suppose I must have spotted it as I left, and subconsciously remembered.
 
The breakfast burritos were indeed edible, and the Lightning Bean Energy Coffee almost didn’t taste like milky battery acid. The breakfast of champions. With some food in me and daylight on me, and something I had to do soon, I was feeling a lot less existentially terrified. I was still here, which meant this probably wasn’t a death-dream after all. I knew there were theories that a person could possibly live what felt like a whole life in a single dream, but that wasn’t a normal occurrence, and I didn’t believe it was some one-minute-equals-one-day exact correlation when it came to dream-time versus waking-time. Just going off my own experiences, no dream of mine had ever felt this vivid, been this long, or seemed this consistently coherent. Surely, by this point, if I had been hallucinating in my last minutes back on Earth, it would be over by now.
 
So I had to accept it was real, or at least a hyper-realistic simulation. I was still waiting for the other shoe to drop, for something to fall out of the sky or burst out of the ground and send me packing on some grand perilous adventure, off to fight aliens and monsters and god knew what else.
 
Until then, there wasn’t much else to do but go along with the current plan. While I was with the social worker, I would see again about contacting Cavalry. Maybe doing that would be exactly the exciting incident I was worried about, but if I was indeed destined to do literally something in this world, better to get it started on my own terms, then wait for some all-seeing narrator to force me.
 
I checked the time on my phone, then looked up into the sky. Sparse clouds against bright blue, and no sun in sight. Where was the light coming from? Was it some kind of aurora effect? Was there an atmosphere haze that filtered a light source? If this was the Endless Frontier, then realistically, there was no way the sun could actually rise and set over an infinite plane. It was clear that normal sunlight was shining down, however; if the sky had simply been lit up with a blue aurora, that would tint the whole landscape with a blue hue, wouldn’t it? Moreover, how would the plant life throughout the world survive without it?
 
This was one of those details about the Endless Frontier I’d never settled on. In fact, there was a lot about the EF I’d never settled on, because it was one of my more doomed ideas from the start. I didn’t want to start assuming anything until I could get to a computer and start looking things up. But for now, I had to meet with the social worker.
 
To be blunt, it was a pretty routine meeting. After asking me more questions about my memories, I confessed I had some kind of flashback involving Karen, because I figured she would have said something about that already. Otherwise, I didn’t reveal anything else than what I’d put on the sheet.
 
I said I’d be fine working in a warehouse or a store, and there were no shortage of grunt labor tasks to be assigned through a temp agency. Even with full memories of a past life, none of my job experience would have helped me get anything better. I’d done nothing but warehouse work, yard work, and retail jobs my whole life anyway, despite having the education to do more. I didn’t have the skills for management or tech support or trades. The only skill I was remotely decent at was fiction writing, and it was clear from the provided options that storytellers were not an especially in-demand market.
 
There were, apparently, a sparse handful of writers out there, but mostly just posting their work on the internet. Paperback publishing was miniscule and considered hobbyist. Here, as back on Earth, non-fiction vastly outsold fiction, the need for practical information outweighing people’s need to escape into a fantasy world that would have probably just reminded them even more of the world they already lived in. Even among those with best-sellers, no one was quitting their day job to be a full-time writer.
 
I didn’t know if this meant most of the NPCs just weren’t very imaginative, or if there really were more jobs than people to fill them, so everyone had to do their part, and the arts were of second or third concern. Chicago, last I checked, had about 2.5 million people, and if Blue Haven was modeled after it, probably should have accommodated similar numbers. Instead, according to the social worker, the city only held about 800,000 people, which sounded like a lot, but it meant the place had less than a third of the population it was built for. There were a lot of empty buildings, and there were, indeed, plenty of open slots for work. This would make securing an apartment very easy, and apparently, this meant even a fry cook could make a livable wage.
 
Truly, this was indeed a fantasy world brought to life.
 
Despite my mental lucidity and willingness to get started, the social worker insisted I still take a few days to simply acclimatize myself to the city, to settle in a bit more mentally before just throwing myself into the job. It was Tuesday when I got set up, and the position I’d applied for, warehouse grunt, wouldn’t start until Monday. They could extend my hotel stay a few more days, and once I was working, I could apply for an apartment. I had a whole week to laze around on the government’s dime, if I was frugal about spending.
 
However, I had no intention of wandering around, seeing the sights like a tourist. I had to get in contact with Cavalry. I asked the social worker about it, feigning that I had vague memories of encountering superheroes in the past, and thought that maybe contacting one might help jog something. She said the group didn’t exactly take calls, and the only the city’s highest officials and the army had direct contact with them. Likewise, the group’s whereabouts were unknown, their base of operations kept a secret. In the early years, and even on occasion recently, ill-intended actors would feign being one of those rare people to awaken with memories, claiming to have known superheroes, only to set up an ambush once they lured the empowered champions out. If I genuinely remembered something about being from one of the hero’s past worlds, then there was going to be a battery of security procedures they would put me through.
 
That seemed a bit much, but she told me the last time Cavalry got called out to meet a supposed newbie with memories, an entire city block got leveled in the ensuing fight. They’d already repaired it, but lost a few hundred people in the process, even with all the magic and medical technology in the process. They weren’t going to take chances.
 
I told her I would let it go, and she seemed satisfied with that.
 
From there, it was an hour getting my details entered into the system, getting an ID card, setting up appointments with the temp agency and a few landlords that wouldn’t happen for a couple more days. Until then, I had my time to myself.
 
As I left the clinic, I glanced around to see if Touch was on staff, but I didn’t see her. I suppose if she’d worked last night, she wouldn’t be here in the morning. Although I’d thought nurses worked long shifts? If she was working, maybe she was at the hospital today. I was tempted once again to give her a call, not for a booty hook-up, but because she was the one familiar person in the city I’d met so far.
 
I felt a pang of self-annoyance. Once again, just falling back on the path of least resistance. There were much better characters to take my chances with. I would believe that she was reformed from her villainous tendencies, but I would do it from a distance.
 
Now it was time for research. I asked if there was a local library, and the receptionist gave me directions, writing them down on a note. The closest was a mile and a half away, and the L-train only went part of the way there. I figured I had nothing else going on, so there wasn’t harm in walking there. If anything, it helped me relish in my new body a bit. It was almost surreal to be able to just walk long distances without any pain, without getting winded.
 
As I strode down the street, I made sure to have the note in hand so I could check it regularly. However, as I focused on trying to find the library, I felt that strange intuition again, as if I suddenly knew exactly where to go. I glanced down at the note, then looked up towards the south-west, where I had the strangest sensation of confidence in my sense of direction. Now, I was certain that I hadn’t noticed a library during the night drive with the cops, and I was pretty sure I hadn’t even gotten here from that direction.
 
I put the note back in my pocket, and decided to test this sensation out. I had the time. Once again, the city, despite my initial plans for a crime-ridden metropolis with entrenched gangs, seemed perfectly safe and clean, even if the architecture still looked a bit on the older side. I felt confident enough that I even crossed through a few alleys to shorten the path a bit, no doubt breaking from the notes instructions. I tried to remember the street names as I went, just in case I had to double back.
 
Thirty minutes later, without checking the note once, I found myself standing in front of a shorter building with the words “Blue Haven City Library” emblazoned in bronze lettering over the doors. I slowly pulled out the note. I had definitely deviated from the instructions, but had found this place with unerring accuracy. How the hell had I done that?
 
Obviously, this needed more testing. I glanced to the library, thinking that since I was already here, I should go on in and do my research. But this felt a bit more pressing. I focused again, thinking to myself that I should probably find a shoe-store.
 
As if on queue, I suddenly had a very good idea where I might find one, another mile down the road. What about a bar? Three blocks in the other direction. What about a video rental store? I immediately felt like I was right in front of one, and glanced to the library. No doubt they had videos to lend out, but that was not the same thing. I tried again. This time, I got a vague notion that there might be one several miles to the east.
 
The closest thing to check was the bar, and I quickly walked to find it. Sure enough, a drinking establishment, still closed, was about three blocks away. I stood in front of it, staring in thought until someone walking by muttered a crack, “Bit early to be gettin’ crunk, hey?”
 
I turned, but they were already walking off. I let them go, and walked back to the library, mulling this over. I could test this more later, but there was definitely one sure-fire way to see if I had genuinely developed some kind of GPS-ESP, and skip all the red tape to get straight to what I needed: a meeting with the local heroes.
 
So I thought to myself, where was Cavalry’s base of operations? The mental answer was almost instant: five miles straight west. I could only surmise this directional intuition power hadn’t kicked in before because I had been focused just on talking to Cavalry, probably by phone or e-mail most likely, rather than wondering where they specifically were.
 
I chewed my lip, looking at the library, then back down the street, then at the library again. Should I try to look things up before I went? Or should I just go? I could waste all day surfing the internet here, but I was betting that anything I needed to know, I’d probably get more out of Cavalry themselves.
 
After another minute of standing there like a clueless dunce, I finally shrugged, and headed towards the nearest L-train station to see how close it could get me.
 
 
 
1.7 – DO YOU KNOW THE WAY?
The L got me three and three-quarter miles there, before I had to get off and walk. I still felt fine physically, so there was no worry on that front. I ended up wandering into the warehouse district at the western end of town. A couple blocks worth of the large buildings were abandoned and condemned, whether for lack of need or lack of people to use them, I couldn’t say. The buildings were still fairly well put together, not even a busted window in sight, and the parking lots weren’t overgrown or trash-filled, either. Again, I was struck by the strange dichotomy. This was the perfect part of the city for the gangs to hole up, forming temporary bases, holding stashes of weapons or drugs, or so I would have thought. I suppose I only had that impression from television and comic books, so who knew how accurate that really was. It made sense to me. Yet there was no one here, not even any homeless squatters that I could see.
 
I guess crime just didn’t pay when society could actually accommodate nearly everyone, bolstered by superhuman efforts to compensate for the flaws in a mundane civilization. Anyone who would act out at this point might just be crazy or just plain evil by nature. Even with five years of development without my oversight, I had no idea how nuanced this world would end up being as far as the whole good versus evil thing went.
 
To be fair, my characters had not been truly simplistic since I was a young teen. High School was when I really started getting smarter about my storytelling, and started making characters that weren’t just walking powersets, and plots that were at least slightly more complicated than “bad guy robs a bank and the hero happens to be nearby and stops them.” That said, I don’t think I’d really tried getting “deep” with my characters until after college, and by then, the flaws in my approach to creativity started sinking in.
 
I mainly wondered because, back on Earth, the majority of the characters who had manifested from the crystal had been my really old superhero and cartoon characters. I had not had time to really hang out with them long enough to get a sense of their character beyond the initial impressions. But if any of them had manifested here, would they still be the simplistic heroes and villains of old, or would they have developed significantly beyond my memories of them? Would they even be the people I thought I knew, or would they be like Touch, changed and unpredictable?
 
All this was to say I really hoped I wasn’t walking myself into a trap. A thought occurred to me as I neared a specific building, which my intuition told me was the entrance I sought. The thought that maybe there was a less-than-utopian reason for the lack of obvious criminal elements in this city I had designed to be a gritty gangland battleground. Maybe the heroes of Blue Haven were not the forgiving sort. I had pictured Cavalry being more rough around the edges than Natural Forces
 
I paused as I reached the fence that surrounded the parking lot of a smaller warehouse. The area was fenced off, with a security checkpoint blocked to keep cars from pulling in. A heavy chain hung before a couple of traffic barricades, those concrete hip-high walls usually used for blocking off road construction spots. That wasn’t going to stop a person from climbing over them. I slipped past the obstruction and headed towards the building’s entrance.
 
Naturally, the door was locked. Even if the electronic ID lock was out of power, another heavy chain around the handles kept the door secured. Okay, so how was I supposed to get in? I waited for a moment for my intuition to inform me. Nothing. I tried to rephrase the question in my head a few times, but still nothing.
 
Interesting. So this sudden power I had only told me where something was, it didn’t tell me how to gain access to it. It was little more than some kind of psychic GPS. Actually, scratch that, because it’s not like I had a real sense of directions, merely a sense of the location. At best, it was a waypoint marker system, nothing more. I wondered what my range was? Something I could figure out later.
 
I started walking around the building, seeing if there was a side door. The windows were high up off the ground, thickly tinted white so one couldn’t see inside anyway, and were covered in a wire mesh so as to prevent them from getting busted by thrown objects. There were several rolling doors at the truck docks, but all were secured, side doors with no handles on the outside and which were securely locked anyway. I made a full circuit around the building, not finding any easy access point. Even the ladder to the roof was secured, the bottommost section retracted up. Eventually, I made it back to the main entrance.
 
So now what? Knock on the front door, and hope they answered? Make a scene to draw them out? My intuition told me the base was actually located below this building, but there were no manhole covers or outside service elevators to take me down. Obviously, if they were trying to keep their base’s location a secret, they wouldn’t want to make it obvious where they were; they probably used other entrances and exits scattered throughout the area, so even if people could narrow down that they were in the old warehouse district, they wouldn’t know which building to just walk right up to.
 
There had to be a smarter way. My intuition wasn’t going to show me the entrances in specific, would it? I wondered that, and the answer I got was that there was an access point inside the building. That, of course, did not help me in the slightest. I tried to ask it to give me the next closest one, but it just insisted on the nearest one, which was still inside the building.
 
Okay, so another limitation. It would only show me the most direct route in the vein of what I was searching for. That was annoying. I guess if I had to, I could just walk around the area until the power locked onto a different entrance once I got close enough. But then, how would I get inside it? If I were a superhero, I’d make sure no one could just accidentally walk through a random door and stumble upon a secret stairwell that lead to my base.
 
Actually, you know what else I would do if I were a superhero with a secret base? Put cameras everywhere. I had no idea if there were other security devices around, or if anyone was manning them at present, but surely someone had to be on monitor duty. Likely, if they had spotted me, they were probably taking the cautious route. There was a chance I’d seem to be some scavenger looking to break into a random warehouse, and if they came busting out of the building to confront me, they’d be giving themselves away.
 
But I could try to signal them through the cameras. I didn’t have a pen or paper, but I could type something on my cell phone and try to show them. I wondered where an active camera was, and I was informed that there was one right inside the front door that I couldn’t get into.
 
Goddamn it. I stepped away from the building and off to the side, then tried again. This time, I was informed there was one tucked into the corner of the fence. I went over to it, looking along the high rail, until I saw a small hole in the corner joint of the two fence. The fence was at least twice my height, so I had to climb up the chainlink to try and confirm. I peeked into the hole and thought I saw the barest glint of light on a tiny lens. Good enough for me.
 
Still hanging on the fence, I pulled out my phone, flipped it open and used the texting app to type out the words “CAVALRY. I KNOW YOU ARE HERE. COME OUT AND MEET ME.” I almost showed them the note, then decided to add. “I’M NOT HERE TO CAUSE TROUBLE, I JUST WANT TO TALK.”
 
I held the screen up to the camera hole, angled enough I hoped they could read it. I hung there on the fence for almost a minute, hoping someone was on monitor duty. My arms and fingers were just getting fatigued when I heard a voice behind me.
 
“What’s up?”
 
I nearly fell off the fence. I hadn’t heard or seen anyone approach, but then, that wasn’t too surprising when the person in question had superhuman speed. I turned and saw him, the last superhero who’d been with me on Earth. Exactly the man I’d been wanting to see. I dropped off the fence, putting my phone away.
 
“Hey, Max.”
 
He looked down at me, expression calm, stance relaxed, but I knew he was studying me for any sign of trouble. A hard-faced man, he was muscular and tall, dressed in a black body suit with red highlights, but still wearing that leather jacket I pictured him in. He still had the stark white streak in his otherwise black hair, though I could see a few bit of gray that hadn’t been there last time. A few extra lines on his face, too. He didn’t really look old, but he didn’t look as young as I usually pictured him.
 
“Hey.” His voice was gruff, and even though he was calm, I couldn’t help but feel intimidated. My body may have been fit, but I was still fairly lean, while he was built like a line-backer. I was six-foot-two, and he still had a few inches on me. Also, he had a combination of super strength, super durability, and super speed, able to increase one of those powers by temporarily sacrificing one or both of the others. At full speed, he could skin me alive with a pocket knife before I’d even blinked. At full strength, he could collapse this entire city block with one well-placed punch to the ground. At full durability, he could survive a nuclear blast. By default, with all three powers active, they were only at a third of that effectiveness, but even that put him above or on the level with most physically-oriented superhumans from my various worlds. He was one of the good guys, but he’d been a villain first, and even after he’d reformed, he could still be closer to the anti-hero type.
 
I drew myself up, trying not to show a lack of confidence. “So, I don’t suppose you recognize me?”
 
“Should I?”
 
“My name is Salvador Roberts. We met once, on another Earth, in a small town in Missouri. You joined forces with a few other superheroes from yet another world, to help them battle a three-eyed monster called the Tri-Clops. After that, we tried to stop an armored villain named Mysteriok, but he defeated the other heroes, and then it was just you and me trying to formulate a plan.”
 
Max stared at me, his expression unreadable for a moment. His eyes gave me a once over, before matching my gaze. “You lost some weight. And gained some hair.”
 
“You remember it, then?”
 
“Barely. It’s been five years for me, and it’s felt like fifty.”
 
So, by his reckoning, he skipped straight from Earth to here. Just like me. But then, why did he show up so much earlier?
 
“You still have the crystal?”
 
I shook my head. “Right after you saved me, Mysteriok and his goons tried to take it, but I got them to touch it, and they vanished. I was trying to figure out what to do next, and then some local militia suddenly showed up and shot me. I think they destroyed the crystal in the process. That’s why I’m here, I think. Like, I don’t know, I think the crystal must have reacted to my mind, and somehow created this world.”
 
Max stared at me some more, and then shrugged. “Makes about as much sense as anything else.” He glanced upwards, then back down to me. “How long have you been here?”
 
“Like, twenty-four hours? A bit longer, maybe. I woke up in the field beyond the lake. Got picked up and sent to a clinic. They checked me over, and now I’m registered with the city, and I’m supposed to go to a job interview and apartment hunt in a couple of days.”
 
“Job doing what?”
 
“Warehouse work.”
 
Max stared for another moment, then gave a little grunt. “You land in a world of your own creation, and you just fall back on being a box-chucker?”
 
“I don’t know. I don’t think I’d be here if that was really in the cards, but I didn’t know what else to do starting off. I just went along with everything to try and get oriented. I only just figured out how to find you guys.”
 
Max glanced upwards again, and I had a sudden feeling there wasn’t just two of us here. I turned and jerked back with a grunt of shock as I saw a woman in a blue bodysuit, with a large yellow lightning bolt down her front, hovering just a couple feet behind me. She was pointing a finger at me, a tiny bullet of light glowing off the tip.
 
I recognized her as Spark, leader of one of the many sub-teams of the Centurions superhero network. Electrokinetic, electrosenses, able to fly. She was shorter than me by a foot, but she hovered above me in the air, and gave me a hard stare. She didn’t move her finger, keeping it trained at me like a gun. I realized she had been aiming a lethal blast at the back of my head; one word from Max, and she could have just executed me on the spot. How long had she been there?
 
I clutched my chest, my heart thudding, but I managed not to fall on my ass as I stumbled back a few steps. I looked back to Max, who just maintained his unreadable expression, then back to Spark, who was still aiming at my head.
 
“Jesus fucking Christ! I told you I wasn’t here to cause trouble!” I barely kept the shakiness out of my voice.
 
“Wouldn’t be the first time we heard that,” said Spark, voice cold.
 
I took a few breaths. “Okay. Fair. Jesus.”
 
Max’s voice remained gruff, but calm. “So, you found us. Now what?”
 
“Who is he, Max?”
 
“Well, depending on how this goes, he’s either going to be an amazing asset or someone we need to put in the ground immediately.”
 
I looked up at him, taken aback. “Cripes, Max, I’m still just a guy! You don’t have to bury me if you think I’m useless.”
 
“You found us, all on your own, in less than a day from your arrival. You stumble around the city not knowing what to do, and then just wander on over here. You know things, Sal. I’m willing to bet you know everything.”

I shook my head. “Not everything. I can recognize things, people, places, even those I didn’t really have much of an idea about before. But it’s clear to me things have changed. I met someone who should have been a villain, but she’s working out of a hospital, doing what I assume is legitimate work to help people. Blue Haven should be a gang-infested, run down shit hole of a city, and yet it looks clean and crime-free. I recognize things, but they’re different now.”
 
I swept a hand towards the horizon. “It’s the Endless Frontier, isn’t it? All my worlds slammed together. Everything’s mixed, and you’ve all been changed by it. Maybe some more than most, maybe some for the better and some for the worse. But for all I can recognize, I don’t know what the hell is going on.”
 
Max kept up the stoic expression, but I could see it in his eyes, calculating what to decide.
 
Spark was giving me a wary look, and the light bullet on her finger glowed a bit brighter. “Max? Who is this? What’s he talking about.”
 
Max kept his eyes on me as he held up a hand. “Stand down, Spark.” With only a moment’s hesitation, she dropped her hand, and the light bullet vanished. Max affixed me with a firm stare. “Sal, you said the crystal might have reacted to your thoughts when it exploded on you?”
 
“Yeah. Maybe. Only thing that makes sense.”
 
Max nodded. “Well, you were right. It sent us all here, chunks of your worlds stitched together in a crazy quilt style. It threw our cities in with entire planets worth of monsters and demons and homicidal machines. We were lucky most of the superhero cities showed up in the same cluster. We only made it because we could pool our resources.”
 
He shook his head. “I don’t know what you were thinking when you got shot, Sal, but whatever it was, it fucked us over. It fucked us over real bad.”
 
I felt ice in my chest. It wasn’t like I had wished for anything specific in the seconds before those men had shot me and destroyed the crystal. I’d just tried to manifest one of my heroes, randomly cycling through characters in a panic. Maybe that’s what had done it. The crystal had had no idea what to focus on, and so it just vomited out everything as it exploded.
 
“I’m sorry, Max. I didn’t mean for any of this. I just… I was just trying not to die. I had no idea the crystal was even capable of something like this.”
 
Spark cut in. “What the hell are you two talking about?”
 
Max glanced up to her. “We’ll discuss it inside.”
 
“You’re letting him in?”
 
“If he’s trouble, I’m pretty sure any one of us can kill him in one hit.”
 
I winced. “I really would rather you not.”
 
He looked back to me. “I’d like to assume you’re here to try and help somehow.”
 
“Yeah. Also, figure out more of what the conditions are here. I haven’t had time to go to a library or anything.”
 
“We’ll catch you up, after we clear you for security.”
 
“You think that’s necessary?”
 
“There’s a chance you’re not Salvador, you’re some asshole fucking with us, though if that’s the case, then that means something even more fucked up is going on here, for you to even know who Sal is and what his relationship to us is.”
 
“Fair.”
 
“Alright, let’s get underground.”
 
I followed them over to an alley with a hidden hatch entrance under a dumpster, presenting a spiral staircase descending below the street. I felt more on edge, still shaken from realizing Spark had been one finger twitch away from vaporizing me with a lightning beam, still shaken from having my worst fears about where I was confirmed. I felt the anxiety welling up, but I forced it down as best I could.
 
I was in the hands of the heroes now, after all.
 
 

 
1.8 – WHAT I’VE DONE
The manhole had let to a small, cramped chamber, which started moving once the cover was replaced. It took half a minute
 
They led me down a stark hallway, guiding me to a small room that could have been a tiny dorm room, a twin-sized bed set into one corner, a table and desk off to the side, and a small attached bathroom. There were a few outlets, but no electronics plugged in. It may as well have been a holding cell.
 
“So what do you want to do with him?” said Spark, still keeping a wary eye on me.
 
Max pulled out a cellphone, this one looking like a smartphone model. He glanced it over, scrolling with a couple finger flicks. “Biometric scans show he’s human, no cyborg enhancements, no genetic alterations. Mystic scans show he doesn’t have any active magic or psionics. He’s not a threat, so no need for Zero Metal cuffs or Force Field Restraints.”
 
I blinked. “When did you scan me?”
 
“Initial scan when you were in the parking lot, deeper scan as we descended the stairs.”
 
I wondered what level of technology they had. Blue Haven looked to have the same tech level as the Earth I’d been from. The L had looked like an older, if refurbished, model of passenger train and the cars on the street all looked contemporary to 2017 Earth models. Maybe that was just for aesthetic purposes, or maybe they just didn’t have the resources to do a full overhaul of all the modern devices. But who knew what was under the hood, so to speak.
 
Obviously, superheroes tended to be the first ones to get the supertech science fiction devices, and they tended to keep it for themselves. Comics always came up with excuses for why worlds like the main Marvel and DC Earths still looked like mundane human society. With all the crazy magic and alien hypertech and natural born superhumans and gods and such co-existing on those worlds, it seemed that, genre conceits aside, most large-scale superhero settings should be halfway to Star Trek level supertech societies built by and for a race of magical mutant cyborgs.
 
I hadn’t seen anything like a “biometric scanner” in the Clinic. But then again, Touch had mentioned she worked with “Medical Mages”, so maybe high-tech resources were limited, and magic practices were more practical for wide-scale use? But what kind of Medical Magic did she actually mean? Stuff that could be taught, or was it the inborn kind of power?
 
“Okay, cool. So, I’m a normal person, except I’m stuck in a world of my own creation, talking to my characters.”
 
“Seems that way.”
 
Spark’s brow furrowed. “For the last time, who is this guy?”
 
Max glanced to her, then to me. “You want to tell her or should I?”
 
“Maybe its best if I just talk to the whole team at once?”
 
“Some are out dealing with stuff, others are asleep. We have a three-shift set-up here.”
 
“Smart. What is it you guys do, if there aren’t gangs around to beat up?”
 
“Checks on the Barrier, look into reports of disturbances, respond to any lingering supervillains that might decide to come out of their boltholes. Not that there are hardly any left, but the ones who lasted this long don’t know when to quit.”
 
“So, Blue Haven is pretty safe?”
 
“About as safe as we can make it. It’s really only stabilized within the last year. Took us three years to fully secure the Barrier. Before that, it was a fucking nightmare a week, fending off hordes of the Hive, the Mutronians, the Demons, the Terror Waves. Then another year cleaning up the supervillains and the criminals who still hadn’t learned we couldn’t afford to have them sabotaging us from within.”
 
“Cripes. I usually had it so the villains would team up with the heroes if the threat was big enough.”
 
Max nodded. “We got a fair few on our side right off the bat, most of them from the same world as those other heroes I met on your Earth. The Dragons also threw in with us, as did the Demihumans, and the Noble Demons. But it wasn’t enough. You want to know why Blue Haven’s so safe? We put down anyone who wouldn’t get in line.”
 
I stared at him for a long moment. “You just killed them?”
 
“It wasn’t our first choice. But yes, when it came to the superhumans and magicians and cyborgs, if they didn’t join us, they died fighting us. We didn’t have any sort of facility to contain any of them. The normal humans? We have jails, but we made it clear if they didn’t reform and start contributing to society, we were going to chuck them over the Barrier to fend for themselves.”
 
“Jesus.”
 
“I know. I’m an ex-con, myself. I know redemption isn’t impossible for most. But I can also recognize when it either isn’t for some people, or when it wouldn’t be possible in the time we were allotted.” He shrugged. “Not that it was ever actually up to me. This was orders down from higher up.”
 
I looked to the floor, searching for what to say. All I managed was, “Sorry.”
 
“For what?”
 
“For… for all of it. For everything that’s happened. I’d say I can’t imagine it… but I can. I did.”
 
“And now you’re here living it with us.”
 
“Yeah.”
 
“You think you can fix it, somehow? If we’re all inside the crystal, and you were able to control the crystal...”
 
I paused and considered. I hadn’t really thought of that. However, I wasn’t even sure where to start trying something like that. I consulted my strange new intuition, but it didn’t tell me anything. It seemed my power really was just a locator ability.
 
“I don’t know. I don’t think so. If there is some way to do it, I haven’t figured it out yet.”
 
The door opened, and a woman with purple hair and a similar black body suit walked in. Unlike Max, she didn’t have any extra accessories like a jacket, and the highlights on her suit were purple instead of red. I, of course, recognized her immediately. Violet, a telepath from one of my “modern fantasy” worlds. No doubt she’d been reading my mind this whole time.
 
Max turned to her, and she nodded. “He’s who he says he is, or at least, he believes it, and I’m not seeing anything else in his head to suggest psychic tampering.” She glanced at me. “Although I’m finding who he’s supposed to be extremely hard to believe.”
 
“I would, too, if I hadn’t been to his Earth.”
 
Spark gave an exasperated sigh. “Will you tell me what is going on?”
 
Max glanced to her, then looked to me. “You want to have that meeting?”
 
I nodded. “Sure. If I’m going to be helping you guys, best get everyone up to speed.”
 
“Alright. Wait here.”
 
“Wait!” The three had started to turn, but paused. “Um, can, I like, get a laptop or something to look at? I’m not going to try and hack your system or anything, I just need access to the internet. I need to see what I’m dealing with. I know we’re in the Endless Frontier, but I’d like to know exactly what’s going on out there. You just laid some terms on me that I’m not sure about, but I’m assuming someone’s been keeping an up-to-date general knowledge of the world, right?”
 
The three traded a glance. Spark spoke up. “Might be a couple hours at least, getting everyone to base. Plus if we can open up a live meet with some of the other teams, that might take a little more time.”
 
Max nodded. “Sure. Give him a clean tablet. We can answer any specifics later.” He turned, then paused, and turned back again. “Don’t use it to look up porn.”
 
I blinked at him, but he gave me a slight smile, indicating he was joking. “Yes, sir,” I said, trying to laugh it off. It came out a single half-hearted exhalation.
 
The three left me, locking the door behind them. I frowned at that, but I couldn’t exactly blame them for still being cautious. Max knew exactly who I was, and Violet had glimpsed it; if I really was their Creator, then for all they knew, I already had unlocked some secret abilities that let me bypass their protections.
 
I wish I did have secret abilities. There were some worlds of mine where magic could be learned by anyone, where there were special artifacts that would bound to the first living person who contacted them, where mutagenic chemicals could turn almost anyone into a superhuman or a beastial mutant, where supertech devices could be acquired for the right price. But the vast majority of the powers in my worlds where either hyper-specialized so only the most gifted or specially chosen person could obtain them, or more commonly, they were inborn powers, or some supernatural event would end up granting completely random people abilities that couldn’t be passed along.
 
I suppose with my locator ability, I could easily discern where to find things that could empower me. Maybe I should have done that before coming here. God, why was I so stupid? It had literally not even occurred to me to try that until just now. Well, nothing for it. It’s not like I didn’t trust Cavalry, and Max seemed to be pretty level-headed about everything, for as extreme as their situation was. Maybe—
 
The door opened, and Violet came in, bearing a tablet she was touch-typing on. I couldn’t help it. Max’s joke about looking up porn made me think about the fact that Violet was actually another of my erotica characters. Unlike Touch, though, she was one of the “good girl” ones, and from of a world that had a lot more going on than the sexy stuff. In fact, she was supposed to have become part of her world’s special superhuman defense force, the closest thing it had to superheroes.
 
She glanced up at me as I couldn’t help but picture her naked, writhing under the hands of an evil, sexually dominant witch. I think the fact that I knew she could read my mind, and thus I knew I shouldn’t be thinking about that, just made it all the harder not to. Violet’s eyes widened a bit, and a slight blush crossed her cheeks.
 
“Sorry,” I said again.
 
“I’m not judging. I’m just…Well, I don’t know what to think about all this.”
 
“Thinking sucks. I don’t recommend it.”
 
“I will take that under consideration.” She set the tablet down. It looked like your typical jet-black case, with no brand logo. It was a ten-inch screen, so it was a nice size for reading articles. “The website you want is EncycloNet, so just click the FlameFox icon and search for that. It’s the main all-purpose encyclopedia website.”
 
“Thanks.”
 
“Sure.” She promptly left.
 
I sighed and called up the browser, sitting at the table. FlameFox was what it sounded like, a parody name for FireFox. Not that I was all that worried about getting sued for using real world brands, but it was sometimes fun to come up with cutesy off-brand knock-off names for things, just for flavor, and just in case.
 
I was, however, a little surprised at how basic everything looked. The search engine, WebEyes, looked to be an even simpler version of Google, with a plain logo and no sub-categories for images or videos in the search, no eye-catching clickbait articles nested in their main page. Testing a theory, I tried to see if there was anything like Reddit or Facebook or Twitter or 4chan or Instagram. Nothing like that came up, and the sites I did click didn’t seem to have any integrations for those sorts of things. Likewise, there weren’t any apps on the tablet for them, either.
 
The lack of these programs gave me pause. Although no one could have really predicted it, the evolution of social media and the consolidation of content onto a core handful of sites seemed inevitable in hindsight. As society became more integrated into the web, human nature gravitated towards the dopamine hits of quick rewards, simple and straightforward methods of mass communication and knowledge acquisition, and the quest for validation. There were many think pieces lamenting the smoothing down of all artistic and educational expression to fit into the algorithms of the big websites, dumbing things down to appeal to the lowest common denominator, using sensationalism to sell clicks. How the ability to constantly broadcast your thoughts and your image and have them liked by potentially thousands of faceless followers was turning multiple generations into narcissists. How the ability to spend all day hanging out in chatrooms was sucking people away from making meaningful contacts in real life.
 
There was something to be said for Web 1.0, a time when the internet existed as a series of informational islands, where everyone just had their own website, be it for information or for fiction, everyone and their mother wasn’t trying to be the next viral celebrity, and social websites mainly existed to schedule meet-ups in real life. Surfing this old style of internet, I felt almost a bit of nostalgic calm.
 
Almost. Banner ads still seemed to be the blight of the digital landscape, and it would seem no one here had invented AdBlock yet.
 
If only I was a programmer, maybe I could have made a few billion inventing this world’s Facebook. You know, if I wanted to try my hand at being a supervillain.
 
Still, it was strange seeing 1990s internet in conjunction with 2020s computer technology. If anything had helped the rise of social media, it was the smartphone, but despite their existence here, no one was flooding web sites with selfies and 120-character random thoughts throughout the day, at least not that I could see. I didn’t know what precisely this implied, whether the NPCs of the world just lacked that sense of narcissism, lacked the imagination to try and make that kind of digital service, or maybe experiencing a big cosmic reset made them realize getting outraged at an endless stream of clickbait maybe wasn’t the best way to spend one’s time.
 
NPCs. I thought about the people I’d me thus far. They all seemed like perfectly normal humans, going about their jobs and their day like a real person would. Not that I’d had that much interaction, but the fishermen and the medical staff had seemed pretty self-aware, not talking in canned, pre-recorded lines, showing sincere emotions. However they’d been when they first awakened, I had to remind myself they’d had five years to figure themselves out and keep society running, doing it despite the presence of super powered beings that could destroy their lives at a moment’s notice if things got out of hand.
 
I still didn’t know if this was an extended dream, a computer simulation, or an elaborate physical construction filled with pantomimes, but the people here seemed real enough. Maybe I shouldn’t think of them like NPCs, even if this world had created them to be a sort of background filler against which the superheroes and their high adventures could be contrasted. I hadn’t even really meant it disrespectfully, it had just been an easy label of comparison.
 
Enough dicking around, though. I’d been given this thing to look up more about the world I was stuck in. Fortunately, the aforementioned EncycloNet seemed to be this world’s equivalent to Wikipedia. I started with the article on Blue Haven, and went link-jumping to extrapolate a picture of the wider world.
 
 
 
1.9 – SETTING THE STAGE
I was in the Endless Frontier, alright. I keep mentioning the name, and by now, you’ve gotten the gist of what it’s like already. It’s not a particularly original concept. Multi-genre mash-up settings have been around probably since before there were even rigid genre definitions. By now, popular culture on Earth had well-defined formulas for what makes a space opera, a western, a medieval fantasy world with or without magic, a fairy tale, a cyberpunk story, an eastern fantasy, a gothic horror, etc. But even as these genres become solidly defined, stories that mixed and matched elements came right along with them. Usually, this would be more limited mixtures, like medieval knights that used ancient power armor from a lost high tech civilization, or a space opera where psionic powers stood in place of fantasy magic. But then you had things like superhero comics, which threw every genre under the kitchen sink into one setting.
 
The difference is, usually these elements were blended together, if not seamlessly, then in some way where it all sort of fell in place organically. Superheroes, of course, had their own genre conventions, such as usually taking place on an otherwise mundane Earth; therefore all the fantasy and science fiction elements had to be rare or hidden or off-world or otherwise have little impact on the overall structure of human civilization, outside of the big super battle events.
 
But then there were the stories where every genre was represented as a distinct world unto itself, multiverses or alien planets, each following a specific genre theme. Stories that used this conceit got their mileage from seeing just how these genres and their clichés would clash when you forced them interact with each other. Wild West Cowboys thrown into a Medieval Fantasy adventure with Magic Elves, or Gothic Vampires appearing on Mars to battle Alien Cyborgs, or any number of mismatched pairings that starkly contrasted.
 
That was the sort of place the Endless Frontier was. Except to me, it was more than just my attempt to do that multi-genre-genre. It was only one of the long line of attempts to salvage my failing writing ambitions. I had alternately tried to use the concept as the basis for a Table Top RPG, and then later an episodic adventure series, and of course, neither came to fruition, because it turned out that slamming together all of my previous failing adventure series did not, in fact, fix the inherent problem with all them.
 
I may as well just dump the whole concept here, so I don’t have to drag it out any further. My initial conception for the Endless Frontier was that it was the result of a Multiversal Crisis Event, taking place across numerous planets, timelines, and dimensions. Entire universes were being annihilated, crushed and erased by an unfathomable cosmic force of destruction. The gods and devils and cosmic guardians of numerous realities came together, and in a bid to save what they could, each took pieces of the inhabited worlds of their universes, and threw them together into a single, artificial reality, forming a world that was a flat plane, composed of a literal patchwork of thousands of planets, other planes, megastructures, and more, all broken up into roughly equal chunks, and stitched together almost at random.
 
In my original model, each chunk was approximately hex-shaped, fifty miles wide on each side, and then stuck together like a honeycomb across the infinite expanse. Each of these chunks, through an unknown means, managed to contain its own biospheres and climates, even when two radically different environments butted right up against one another. An arctic tundra could exist right next to a sweltering desert, an alien landscape of living flesh could exist right next to a landscape of pure crystal structures, a hex-wide super tech city filled with robots and flying cars could exist right next a mystical forest filled with nature magic.
 
It was all there, every genre you could imagine was represented a thousand times over, in every permutation you could think of, and many you probably wouldn’t. The Endless Frontier was designed to be a world of infinite possibilities for adventure. And it was here, I imagined, that I could fit in all the unused and failed characters from my backlog, give them a second, third, or more chance to live again in future stories, where there would always be something for them to do. It was truly the ultimate fiction sandbox.
 
But of course, a sandbox was not, in and of itself, a story. My problem, as it always was, was that I could very easily create worlds and characters, but when it came time to actually write their adventures, I usually had nothing. Even if I went out of my way to make the characters particularly interesting, to make the worlds as imaginative as I could, at the end of the day, I had nothing for these characters to do in these myriad worlds.
 
Or rather, I should say that there were plenty of generic adventures for the characters to go on. But I didn’t want to write generic adventures. To me, all the typical escapades you’d read about popular fantasy and sci-fi characters going through, I’d read so many of them, that even if I could enjoy them still, I had no desire to just repeat those sorts of tales. Why would I write a typical Superman story, when there were a million Superman stories out there already, and another million Superman-derivative stories on top of that? So when I made my own Superman-esque character, I just considered all those typical adventures to just be a character’s backstory. I didn’t get excited to write about them unless I had something beyond that to write.
 
Whatever the fuck “beyond that” was even supposed to mean. There wasn’t anything beyond that, not coming from my head. I don’t know why I kept thinking there was. I made pulp schlock superheroes and fantasy adventurers. The “generic adventures” were the only things I had to write about. And despite my single-minded obsession with the genre, I somehow always stagnated as soon as it came time to actually commit those ideas into stories.
 
And so I kept creating. I made more worlds. More characters. Brief flashes of interest followed by immediate frustration. Over and over, building and scrapping until I had mountain of backlog, a mass-grave of heroes and villains and creatures and locales rotting in the back of my head. And after twenty straight years of this, realizing I had done nothing with these generic schlock concepts, I thought, “Maybe if I mashed them all together into some really interesting kitchen-sink world, maybe then I’d be able to take the handful of useful ideas I’ve had across all these properties, and manage to wring out at least one small series set in one place.”
 
And thus the Endless Frontier. Literally duck taping all my worlds together in a huge, Hail Mary attempt to throw the biggest possible shit at the wall and see if any of it stuck.
 
It didn’t, of course. It hadn’t been a solution at all. Because instead of letting me strain out my handful of good ideas into workable union, all it did was bury me under a mountain of compounded indecision. The problem with having literally everything under the sun is that, if you already lack the ability to focus, it only magnifies that lack. I wanted to do everything at once, but had no idea where to start. I had thousands of characters, and I couldn’t choose which ones I actually wanted to write. I had hundreds of worlds and I couldn’t choose which one to start in.
 
So, back to the drawing board. Again. I tried other mash-ups with a bit more focus. Pocket-dimension structures, where instead of a connected plane, the world chunks where separated into bubbles, connected like a string of cosmic pearls. A tiny universe where all of my planets got transported into one shared solar system. Various megastructures, where pieces of my worlds were connected via a Dyson Sphere or a Niven Ring or an Alderson Disk or a vast O’Neill Cylinder or Sky Islands floating in a gas giant.
 
I don’t know why I thought changing the geography of the concept would actually fix anything. Even when I sat down and decided to not have it be a literal mash-up of my previous worlds, when I tried to create a mega-setting that had it’s own more cohesive lore and magic systems that merely resembled a combination of my past worlds, that didn’t help much either. In fact, it only made it worse, because then I just had even more distinct worlds in the backlog.
 
I wished the crystal had used one of those other, more streamlined, more sensibly constructed combo-worlds. Because the worst part of the Endless Frontier was that, even if the biospheres and the local flora and fauna stuck within their borders, the peoples that were brought along with those world chunks weren’t always so orderly. Like any good science fiction and fantasy author, I had my share of large-scale threats to throw at any world for a grand stakes plotline. Invasive alien species, world-wrecking monsters, horrific magical contaminations, sentient machines hell-bent on eradicating organic life, demonic armies intent on enslaving and torturing every civilization they came across. Even some of the ostensibly “good” forces out there could easily come into conflict, such as angelic missionaries wishing to spread the influence of their nominally benevolent god, encountering an alien species that was peaceful, but whose mannerisms might appear sinful to said angels, prompting them to aggressively oppress the aliens. There was also the simpler risk that the technologies or magics of some species might dangerously malfunction in other worlds.
 
In the solar system model of my All-In-One Mash-up, the planets were at least separated by the vacuum of space, making cross-contamination more difficult, and quarantining of dangerous elements much easier. Same for the “bubble dimension strings” where the worlds were separated by virtue of not even existing in the same space at all, connected only by a handful of heavily locked down transdimensional gateways. Even the mega-structure models, depending on their exact shape, had ways of limiting mass-migration.
 
Not the Endless Frontier. It was entirely open country in every direction. Threats could, if they wanted, simply pour right across the landscape, and in fact, that was exactly what my plans had been for the setting, were I to ever write about it. Well, now I didn’t have to write about it, because I was living it. And so were all the characters who’d been dragged in here ahead of me.
 
I hadn’t meant for this to happen, and yet it was my fault anyway. Sure, it’s not like I could have ever predicted some magic space rock would whack me on the head and bring all my ideas to life. But maybe, if I could have ever once gotten my shit together mentally, ever had the self-discipline and the commitment to stick to an idea all the way to the end, to actually manifest a real book series or comic series or anything, instead of always crumbling into a fog of indecision and incompetence, maybe the crystal would have had something more stable to draw upon. If it had only just replicated part of the Power Universe, or the Wyld Hunt Universe, or the Natural Forces Universe, or the Krazy Komix Universe, or Larreth, or Syvero, or Annextria, or any one of my single-work settings, or even, god forbid, one of my shitty erotica worlds, then the people who’d been manifested wouldn’t have gotten absolutely steamrolled by the worst of all of them coming together, in an omni-directional tidal wave of pure evil and destruction.
 
If only I’d—
 
There was a knock on the door, cutting off another potential spiral of anxious self-loathing. Max popped his head in and said, “We’re set up. You ready?”
 
I set the tablet down, trying to shake the mental funk that had been building. “Yeah, okay.”
 
“Come on, then.”
 
I followed him to go face the victims of my incompetence.
 
 
 
1.10 – YOUR GOD’S A PRETTY PISS-POOR GM
Max led me down the hallway. I hesitated as we reached the double doors, causing him to look back at me. He cocked an eyebrow at me. “Something wrong?”
 
I frowned and let out a breath. “This is going to be weird.” I looked up at him. “I don’t know if I should tell them.”
 
He grunted. “Isn’t that the whole reason you’re here?”
 
I nodded. “I know I said that, but…” I puffed out my cheeks as a let out a long breath. “I’m scared.”
 
Max rolled his eyes. “No shit.” He pushed the door open. “Come on.”
 
I swallowed nervously. There had been some light chatter going on, but now it ceased. I was standing behind the doorframe, still not able to see in. Max had started to step inside, only to notice I wasn’t following, and came back out. He held up one finger towards the doorway, signaling those inside to wait a second.
 
He spoke with a low voice that nonetheless cut right through any of my pretensions of bullshit. “For fuck’s sake, Sal, I called everyone in for this as an emergency meeting. I don’t have beef with you, but I’m not here to coddle people. You come in here and say your piece, or I’m dragging you.”
 
I tried not to cringe. Have I mentioned I hate conflict? I also am not particularly fond of hard-looking dudes looming over me with a glower on their face.
 
“Yeah,” I said, forcing myself to not shrink back. “Yeah, okay. I’m just nervous.”
 
His expression didn’t soften, but he took a bit of the edge off his tone. “I get that. But if nothing else, you owe the people in this room an explanation.”
 
“I guess I do.” I nodded and stepped forward. Max let me go in first this time, probably to make sure I didn’t run.
 
The room was large, long and wide, with a circular table at the center. One-quarter of the table was unoccupied, creating a clear spot where, presumably, a guest could stand and speak. I stood back a good five feet from this side. There were eleven people sitting around the table. Max circled around and sat in the chair directly across from me, while everyone else swiveled their chairs to face me fully. I didn’t bother taking a seat yet. I noted they were sitting in normal office chairs and had basic-looking tablets in front of them. In fact, were it not for the superhero costumes, I could have mistaken this assemblage for a board meeting.
 
Clearly Cavalry was a more frugal and practical organization. That seemed about right. Still, the mundanity stuck out to me. I don’t know if I was expecting a fully decked out war room, but something shinier and sleeker, maybe. Certainly not bog-standard office equipment occupied by such strikingly dressed figures.
 
Someone cleared their throat. I realized I had clammed up, and was staring them over. Aside from the mundane surroundings, the thing that struck me the most was that this wasn’t Cavalry. Not the roster I’d made, anyway.
 
Max-Out appeared to still be the leader, and to his immediate right, I recognized Halo, a healer who’d been on the initial team with Max. Everyone else, though, was different. These were characters from different teams entirely, some of them from different realities than Cavalry had been. Two of them I didn’t even recognize.
 
There was Spark and Violet, from the Centurions Universe and the World of Syvero, respectively. Tact, also from the Centurions. The Amazing Animal, Ribcage, and Iceburg, from the Power Universe. Firefighter, whom I’d never actually used in anything yet. The Weaponeer from the Intrepid Universe. And then the other two, of whom my intuition told me nothing.
 
“Something wrong, Sal?” said Max, giving me an unreadable expression.
 
“Um… I, uh… sorry… this isn’t the, uh, team I remember.”
 
Max nodded. “Most of the original Cavalry members are gone.”
 
“Gone where?” I asked, like an idiot.
 
Max and Halo exchanged a glance. He gave me a hard frown. “Gone as in dead.”
 
I blinked. I hadn’t been expecting that. “All of them?”
 
Max’s frown shifted to a scowl. “It’s been five years of shitstorms, Sal. A lot of people are gone.”
 
I didn’t know how to grasp that at the moment. Of course, superheroes could die. But I somehow hadn’t even considered that a possibility, that there would be people I would now never encounter, not because they hadn’t materialized here, but because they’d come and gone. Something about that disturbed me more than I would have expected.
 
“I’m sorry, who is this?” said a man in a largely blue outfit with a panther-mask. The Amazing Animal. He motioned to me while looking at Max. “You said this guy was important.”
 
Max let out an annoyed grunt. “You gunna actually talk, Sal, or am I going to have to make this a show and tell?”
 
“I, um…” I cleared my throat. Twelve superhumans were staring at me expectantly. I was looking at drawings, at character profiles of mine, brought to life. Real people dressed in the stupid costumes I’d thought up. It was so fucking bizarre. I made an exaggerated shrug. “I’m sorry, Max, I don’t even know how to word this without sounding like a total nutbar.”
 
Max scowled again, then leaned forward, resting his elbows on the table, and gestured to me. “Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you Salvador Roberts… our God.”
 
The others looked back to Max, then back to me, then back to Max, then back to me. There were many blinks, many raisings of eyebrows, a few head scratches, and a few scowls.
 
“God, huh?” said a Hispanic man in a fiery-colored costumed. Fire Fighter. His outfit was an intentional mislead. He didn’t fight with fire, as his name, coupled with the outfit, might imply. He was actually a powerful aquakinetic. He was fixing me with a sarcastic smirk. “I never thought I’d meet you so soon. I have so many questions.”
 
Despite his wry humor, there was an odd tension in the air. People glanced between Max and myself, trying to guess if this was some kind of joke.
 
“Ask away,” I said.
 
His smirk became a sarcastic grin. “Why is the sky blue?”
 
I blinked. “Um… I dunno… something about how oxygen scatters blue light?”
 
“Where do we go when we die?” he said.
 
“From here? I have no clue.”
 
“Why do you park in a driveway and drive in a parkway?”
 
“Because English is a stupid language.”
 
There was a snort from one of the others. I didn’t catch which.
 
“What’s my mother’s maiden name?”
 
“Uh…” I stared at him. I didn’t even actually know his real name. Fire Fighter had never been developed beyond the gimmick of his codename, powers, and general appearance.
 
He shook his head. “Some God.”
 
“Jesus Fucking Christ,” I muttered, putting my hand to my head and shaking it.
 
“Taking his own son’s name in vain, at that!” he said.
 
“I guess if anyone has the right,” said the Animal. There was a bitter edge to his sarcasm.
 
“I don’t know, okay!” I shouted, throwing my hands up. “I’m not that kind of God!”
 
“Then what kind of God are you?” said a woman to my left. I didn’t recognize her at all. She was wearing a green bodysuit with a cobra-shaped hood. That looked familiar, at least. With a closer look, I noticed some kind of long, whip-like tail with a spiked pad at the end coming off her back. She was wearing the costume of Scorpion, one of my really old villain characters. But Scorpion had been a man.
 
“I’m an author,” I said.
 
“And we’re his creations,” said Max. “The figments of his imagination he sends on little adventures. Right, Sal?”
 
I let out a humorless laugh. “Yeah. Right. Little adventures.” I took a deep breath and tried to parse my next words. “I’m not much of an author. I’ve only written a few crummy short stories. But I’ve made up hundreds of worlds, thousands of characters. I recognize most of you, to some degree or another.”
 
“Most?” said Halo.
 
I pointed to the green lady. “Her. I recognize the costume. I don’t know who she is.” I pointed to a man two seats down from her. He was adorned in a purple body suit with a red lightning bolt down the chest. “I don’t know who he is, either.”
 
Max waved a hand to the man. “Maglight. Magnetics and lightning powers. Got his abilities just six weeks ago, but he was a police officer before this.”
 
Maglight nodded at me. He seemed to just be going along with this, not really knowing what to say.
 
“La Scorpina,” said Max, gesturing to the woman. “She’s got the Scorpion’s outfit.”
 
“My father was the Scorpion,” she said. “He constructed a suit for me to use to assist him in his crimes. I never wanted to be part of that life, though. He was a mad man.”
 
My brow furrowed. I had never even thought about the Scorpion beyond him robbing banks and fighting superheroes. At least I could say I was still in the single digits of age when I created him, and could hardly be expected to construct a deep, well-rounded character at that time. The idea that he had a life outside of crime had never occurred to me back then. He was just a bad guy for the heroes to punch.
 
Moreover, the woman looked to be in her early twenties, maybe. Unless this was implying there were things about my characters I didn’t even know about prior to the formation of this world, the timeline here didn’t add up. There was no way the Scorpion had fathered this woman less than five years ago. Unless, of course, she was actually some kind of gender-bent clone, or magic doppelganger, or had been caught in a time warp, or something equally ridiculous, which was entirely possible.
 
I decided to call her bluff. “Yeah, he was a lunatic. But you’re a liar. Scorpion never had kids in his old life, and you’re too old to be his daughter from this world.”
 
She smiled slightly, then turned to Max. “Guess he does know a thing or two.” She turned back. “You’re right. The Scorpion went to ground near my hometown a few years ago. I was a small-time thief at the time. I broke into his hideout without even knowing what I was walking into. I stole one of his suits and modified it for my own use.” Then she shrugged and her smile looked almost sheepish. “Dumb idea. I got tagged almost immediately by the heroes, who recognized the suit.”
 
“What happened to the original Scorpion?”
 
“Dead,” said the Animal. “Like you said, he was lunatic.”
 
I turned to him. He was giving me a hard look. Most of them were. I tried not to let it intimidate me, but as Max had said, any one of them really could have killed me with one strike, most without even leaving their chair. They were heroes, but if Max’s claim that they’d starting executing anyone who wouldn’t stop being a villain was true, I had no idea how far they would go to deal with me.
 
Looking back to La Scorpina and Maglight gave me pause. This was another development I had not considered. The idea that there would now be brand new characters to contend with, whom I had never conceived of before. It made sense, of course. If the people’s of the various worlds could cross into each other’s territories, than so could their supernatural forces and technological resources. In the Endless Frontier, left to its own devices, there were numerous ways for a person to obtain superhuman powers. They would still likely be relatively small in number, but depending on the size of the population of this world, there could be a million new distinct superhumans running around that I would find unfamiliar.
 
I did not particularly like that prospect. It meant that my only advantage, that of knowing the characters I’d be dealing with, was now significantly out of date. I also reminded myself to stop thinking of these people as “characters”. They weren’t just figments of my imagination here. They were real, solid entities with their own minds and independence. Even those I had been particularly thorough in developing prior to my arrival here would be no more “mine” than any person from the real world.
 
“So, if you’re our god, or author, or whatever, can you do anything about our situation?” said Halo.
 
“I would like to help, but I’m not entirely sure how. I don’t, like, have any real powers here. I mean, my body seems to have been rebuilt to peak health, but—”
 
“How did you find us, then?” said Max.
 
I tapped my head. “I can recognize things I deliberately created, even if I don’t remember all the details about them. I never actually sat down and drew of map of Blue Haven, but I was able to just sort of figure out where to go to find the things I wanted to find. I found your base by just wondering where it was. However, that’s all I got. It told me the location, but not even how to get inside.”
 
I shrugged. “I thought maybe I could give you some information you might not know, but whoever put together the EncycloNet seems to have a lot covered already, as far as the basics of the world goes. If you have more specific questions about more specific people or monster species or something like that, I might be able to help you out.” I sighed. “Or so I thought. I imagine after five years, you guys know more than I do, especially as things have mixed and matched.”
 
“The EncycloNet is just the basics,” said Halo. “All the information that doesn’t put us at risk, that the civilians can be trusted with, and should be informed about. You haven’t seen our personal archive yet. All the teams pooled our databases about our worlds, and scouts who’ve gone out past the Barrier and made it back have told us other things we didn’t know already. If you have anything new to add, we’d love to hear it, but we’ll have to comb the archives for the gaps.”
 
“Alright. I might have have to sit down and wrack my brain over it, but anything I can tell you, I will.” I paused. “I, um… you said a lot of people died. Do you have a, uh, like an obituary list?”
 
Max glanced to Tact, who paused a moment, then nodded. “I’ve sent the file to your tablet.” He was a technopath, and so could manipulate the base’s computers with his mind.
 
I nodded back. “Thanks.”
 
“You looking to contact anyone else?” said Max. “All our teams are linked via the Centurions Network. Assuming they’re still alive, we can get you on call with almost anyone.”
 
“I… I don’t know. I guess there were the other four we teamed up with on Earth, but other than that, I’m not sure who else would recognize me.”
 
“They’re watching this meeting right now, if you have something to say.”
 
I blinked, then looked around. I’d honestly expected there to be an array of monitors linking this room to other bases, showing me other heroes who could not be physically present. I’d gotten a little caught up just seeing Cavalry, but now that I noticed the lack of other faces, so to speak, it stood out strongly again how mundane this meeting room was. I didn’t even see any cameras.
 
Violet tapped her own head. “Tact and I are broadcasting, if you’re wondering.”
 
“Ah.” That made sense. Violet could link telepathically to others, and Tact could send real-time “footage” into the computer system, like a living camera and microphone. That they hadn’t told me that right away was possibly suspicious, but was also an understandable caution on their part.
 
I glanced at the others, and while they continued to stare at me with varying degrees of interest, none of them said anything. I made a half-shrugging gesture. “Okay, well, uh… is there anything else? I’m sorry, I really don’t know what to say. I’m not, like, a speech guy.”
 
Shared glances all around, before the Animal spoke again. “I guess it’s on all our minds, but why did you make our lives so fucking miserable?”
 
“The Endless Frontier wasn’t—”
 
He cut me off with a sharp swipe of his hand. “I’m not talking about that. I get that part. Mix all the worlds together, all the bad shit comes with it. Fine. I mean, back in our home worlds. Why’d you put us through hell?”
 
He cocked a thumb back at himself. “I started off fighting small-time crooks with stupid gimmicks. Then suddenly, an armored maniac shows up and bodies my whole city, a threat level I’d never faced before. He captures me and my friends and kicked the shit out of us for a week while he takes over my city. Other vigilantes show up to save us, but in the end, I have to cut the fucker’s head off to get him to stop. After that, our planet gets steam rolled by aliens, then demons, then aliens again. It’s a goddamned miracle humanity survived anything on that world, once things started escalating.”
 
He pointed to Max and Halo. “Their world made mine look like a fuckin’ paradise. Dragons and monsters wrecking six whole continents, and all their people forced to live in a barely-stable terraformed Antarctica, and the only previous country that claws it’s territory back is Australia, and only because it’s taken over by a lunatic angel-god.”
 
He pointed to Violet. “Her world gets almost annihilated by a cosmic horror, and it takes the total removal of magic to get rid of it. It takes a thousand years for humanity to recover, only for magic to return again and awaken all the ancient threats that had been buried just when civilization was finally secured.”
 
He leaned back, glaring at me through the mask. “I could go on.”
 
I almost cringed at his look, but something sparked inside me. I felt the sharp pang of guilt, but I also felt somewhat incensed. They were all looking at me expectantly, some genuinely angry, others with intense curiosity.
 
“I’m an author. Stories need conflict. You’re superheroes. You have extreme conflicts.”
 
“So life sucks because God wants some good television?” said Fire Fighter.
 
“Yes.”
 
The frankness of that seemed to give them pause.
 
The Animal grumbled. “Great.” He turned to Max. “If he’s useless, can we kill him?”
 
I threw my hands up. “Look, goddamn it, this shit doesn’t happen where I come from! There are no superhumans or wizards or aliens or demons or any of it! It all only exists in stories. We have whole industries revolving around producing superhero and fantasy fiction, with high stakes and dramatic circumstances and extreme struggles. And not one of those authors or artists or directors or whoever was able to bring their creations to life or physically fall into their own worlds. Have you ever read a book or watched a movie, and then wondered about the morality of enjoying it, or of the author writing it?”
 
Animal glared some more. “No. I haven’t. But you know, its one thing to know that intellectually, and it’s another to be one of those characters.” He scowled. “Who even are you? Are you at least a millionaire off of us?”
 
I let out a little bark of a laugh. “No. I’m a fucking nobody. I had a handful of stories on a blog nobody read. I worked just above minimum wage at a clothing store. My family is all dead. My friends all moved away. I’m an absolute fucking nobody, and the only thing I had in life was my piss-poor attempts to write stupid adventure stories that were dumber than the fucking toy commercial cartoons I grew up with.”
 
I leaned forward, feeling the heat rise. “So I’m fucking sorry, Alex. I’m sorry that the only thing keeping me from putting a fucking shotgun in my mouth any given day was daydreaming about a world where people of importance actually did things that mattered.”
 
I hadn’t realized I was trying to loom over a man that could have snapped my spine with a finger flick until my nose was inches from his mask. He didn’t back up even a millimeter, and I blinked when I realized our awkward position. I backed off immediately, and felt flushed with embarrassment. These people were dressed in cartoon hero costumes, and I now felt like the childish one.
 
Animal, for his part, took a breath and leaned back, while the rest of the team traded another round of glances. Max and Violet held each other’s gaze for a moment, and I didn’t need my intuition to know they were having a telepathic exchange.
 
Fire Fighter opted to cut the tension a bit, speaking with a wry smile. “Sounds rough, man, but I can’t say I buy you being our author. Max sounds convinced, but to me, you’re a random newbie who seems to have some kind of divination power, and that’s probably got you mixed up in the head, thinking you must have created this place if you recognize it so well. But that could be your power feeding you information, and your mind filling in a lot of gaps. Wouldn’t be the first time an empowered newbie jumped to conclusions because of they thought their gifts meant more than they did.”
 
“He isn’t a newbie,” cut in Violet. “He has a complete life memory. A much fuller one than any newbie I’ve encountered, and fuller than almost any of us had before we got here.” She frowned. “I’m in contact with the Brain, and he confirms it. He was there on Earth, with Sal, before this world was formed. He’s scanned his mind already and it matches with what he saw on that Earth.”
 
As if to test my power again, I wondered where the Brain was. I glanced slightly up and to my left as my power informed me of his location, three-hundred and thirty-five miles north-by-northeast. I thought towards that direction. <Can you see me?>
 
<Yes> came the telepathic reply. <Hello, Salvador. We are conferring right now as to how to proceed. Bear in mind, we have three breach-risks of the Barrier right now that we are sending forces to attend to, as well as a skirmish with one of the hostile Dragon tribes, and the Corpse Eater has appeared again. We can try to arrange a meeting after these situations are handled.>
 
<If you like> I replied.
 
<I’ll be in touch, then.>
 
The others in the room wondered what I was looking at, a few following my gaze. I turned my attention back to them. “Guess my power has some range to it.”
 
Max and Halo glanced at each other. “How do you mean?” said Halo.
 
“Um, I just wondered where the Brain is.” I pointed to the wall where I’d been staring. “He’s that way.” Violet nodded in confirmation.
 
“You can locate people as well?” said Max. “Beyond the borders of the city?”
 
I felt a slight mental flinch at the realization I had just given away more of my capabilities, when I had no clue how much I should keep to the chest. I immediately scoffed at myself when I thought about how whatever I tried to hide mentally, there were already telepaths digging into my brain, uncovering everything. I was going to have to do something about that. And with that thought, I glanced to Violet, to see how she’d react. She just stared back at me studiously.
 
“So, what do we do with him?” said Spark.
 
“I put forward that we lock him in one of the empty quarters until we can hash something out,” said Violet.
 
Max looked at me. “Agreed. House arrest, for all intents and purposes.”
 
“You’re actually going to lock me in a room?”
 
“We’ll give you access to one of the unused wings,” said Halo. “It’ll be a few bedrooms and a common room, so you’re not just stuck in one. It’ll have all the accommodations you’ll need, and we’ll make sure you’re comfortable. If you really need to leave the building, you’ll be escorted. Sorry to treat you like a prisoner, but you understand your significance means we can’t have you running loose.”
 
“Yeah. Alright.” I paused. “Um, probably a dumb thing to ask, but what about my whole civilian arrangement? I got the job interview and stuff.”
 
Max scowled. “We’ll tell them you’re taken care of.” He glanced around. “Anything else? This is turning out to be a pretty low-energy meeting given the circumstances.”
 
“I just don’t know what to say,” said Maglight, speaking for the first time. “He’s our author, but he’s never even thought of me, so what does that make me?” La Scorpina nodded.
 
“It’s some heady stuff, alright,” said the Weaponeer, also speaking up for the first time. She was a green haired woman wearing thin leather armor over a pale shirt and pants. I was actually surprised to see her, given she was supposed to be essentially a vagrant warrior, who eschewed working with teams if there wasn’t any action to be found. Another change of heart, perhaps? Unlike the others in the group, she had maintained an amused smile the whole meeting, leaning back in her chair perfectly relaxed.
 
“You got anything more to say, Sal?” said Max.
 
I shook my head, glancing back at the Animal, before taking them all in again. “I guess I’m just sorry. Really, I mean it. I’m sorry for all of it, all the shit I put you through, before this world and for everything you’ve been through since coming here. I want to make things better, but I don’t know how. So I hope that there’s, I don’t know, something I can do.”
 
Max nodded, as did Halo and Weaponeer. The rest mostly just gave me more studious looks or frowns, not sure what to really believe. “We’re going to bat around some ideas,” said Max. “In the meantime, go back to the room you were in before. We’ll set the suite up for you soon.” He looked to Violet. “Make sure he goes there.”
 
She nodded, and dutifully did so, motioning me to walk ahead of her. She had full access to my mind, but she still wasn’t going to take the chance of me stabbing her in the back. She said nothing as she guided me to the room with the tablet, and locked me inside.
 
I sighed. That had been incredibly nerve wrecking, and now that it was over, I shivered as it all hit me at once. I could understand my own tendencies to clam up, but I’d been expecting to get bombarded with questions and accusations. But other than the Animals outburst, it was like they mostly had no idea what to make of me. Maybe they’d expected their author to be more of a cosmic style being and not just some schlub human. Maybe they actually didn’t have much personality because for as real as they were, they were still hindered by my inability to make well-rounded characters, and my tendency to make the vast majority of my characters blandly stoic in personality. Maybe—
 
Oh, maybe whatever. I didn’t know how long they were planning on keeping me here before transferring me to that open wing, so I went back to the tablet. There was an icon indicating I had a message, and I opened it to see the requested obituary record. I swallowed and, out of morbid curiosity as much as a need for information, started scrolling down the list.
 
 
 
1.11 – AND WHAT REMAINS
It was rather harrowing list. Just over three thousand names. I made sure to read them all with deliberation, resisting the temptation to skim through. I only recognized two-thirds of the list, meaning the remainder were either new supers who had risen and fallen in the line of duty before I even got here, or a few may even have been characters so old that I’d completely forgotten about them. My memory, even for my own creations, was hardly flawless.
 
I must admit that some names shook me more than others. There were, frankly, some characters I was just more attachment to than the rest. They were the ones who had meant more to me because their concept truly resonated with me on a fundamental level, or I’d simply spent a lot of time and effort developing them and their story, or they’d been among the very few I’d managed to write stories about, or they’d just felt like a particularly noteworthy step in my creative process as I grew up. It felt kind of shitty to consider that some of these people were my “favorites”, but in all honesty, that’s how it was. To me, these characters were “iconic” among my oeuvre, even if I was the only one who knew about and appreciated them.
 
The Fabulous Five. The Wyld Hunt. The Intrepid. Tabitha Cain and her Fallen Pantheon. S.T.A.R. Corps. All of them, gone, lost in the impossible struggle against the monsters bearing down from all sides. Before the Barrier was erected, they threw themselves again and again against the waves of destroyers, never stopping until their dying breaths, all to buy enough time for the heroes still in the cities to frantically come up with a solution. Even with support from thousands of other heroes, the solution didn’t come soon enough for any of them to make it.
 
Every character of mine I would have felt particularly sentimental about meeting was dead, or missing in action. There was something particularly disturbing about that, and it made me wonder again if this whole scenario had been rigged. Could it possibly be a coincidence that the characters I would have sought out the most fervently had been denied to me? That the superheroes I had managed to find were mostly the B- and C-listers who might be a lot less inclined to feel any sort of resonant sentimentality back?
 
Unrelated, but just as worrying, was also the fact that these characters were supposed to be nearly unkillable, and some of them were powerful enough to make the likes of Superman or Thor seem like lightweights. What did that say about the sheer strength of the opposition? Tabitha Cain by herself should have been capable of taking down at least one of the enemy factions listed, or at least taken them down with her. Had the power scales of my characters been lowered due to some limitation of the crystal? That had been mentioned on Earth, that my strongest heroes had said they didn’t feel as strong as usual, but we hadn’t had time to truly test it. The vast difference in power between some of my settings definitely meant some would just outright dominate any others in the Endless Frontier. Maybe the strongest had been tamped down to put things on a more even footing, or at least a slightly less absurd gap, just so the weaker casts of characters wouldn’t be rendered entirely irrelevant.
 
I read the list again, and this time, I tested my locator power on all the names, to see if I could discern if any of them were alive. Not a single one pinged off my radar, even those only declared missing. So they either really were all gone, or maybe my power actually did have a range limit. Just to be sure, I wondered about the location of a monster named Alienor, the leader of the Mutronians. EncycloNet claimed that the Mutronian “race”, a highly mutagenic cluster of invasive species born from the global slime mold on the planet Mutron, had taken over nearly two million square miles towards the north of the Allied Freed States. My mysterious intuition told me Alienor was indeed to the north, still alive, some eight-thousand miles away. Although the Endless Frontier was theoretically infinite, I had to imagine most of the names listed here wouldn’t have been much further away than that, if the territory surrounding the AFS was so thoroughly consumed by enemy forces.
 
Unless they were somehow beyond my intuition’s range in other ways. Did my power work across dimensions? Maybe some of the strongest of the heroes had been trapped in time warps or pocket dimensions my locator ability couldn’t pick up on. I hoped that was the case, but I wasn’t going to delude myself. I had no idea of knowing just yet, and fretting over it wasn’t going to do any good. There was more information than just the list of names, so I kept reading.
 
What was worse was the list of ceded territories. Outside of the Allied Freed States, it seemed there had been more of the “civilized” chunks of worlds, but they had all been subsumed by the various invading forces before the Barrier had gone up. For all intents and purposes, entire worlds had been lost already, their own local champions falling to the invaders, or falling back to the AFS. World segments that had come from parts of Galea, Syvero, Annextria, Larreth, Cartos, and various other Earth-like fantasy worlds and hospitable alien planets, had all been eradicated. The superhero cities, it seemed, had only managed to survive long enough to build the Barrier, simply because of the sheer number of high-powered superhumans and sorcerers and benevolent demihumans there were all clustered into one area, about as distant from any single threat as any of the territories got. A small country of relatively safe civilization barely six-hundred miles wide, surrounded for a million miles in every direction by the most horrific monsters my worlds had ever faced.
 
Going by this list, even those monstrous forces still battled each other, some of the invaders having already conquered their competitors. The Genomites had been almost immediately consumed by the Mutronians. The Terror Zones had swallowed up half the forces of Hell, forcibly converting half the Demons to realign their allegiance to the Dark God Temael. The remaining Demons had regained their lost strength by corrupting and enslaving the Dragons that hadn’t sided with the AFS, converting their magic-rich territories into a recreation of their infernal homeland. The forces of Dimension X had been first slaughtered by an alliance of the Incomplete and the Monster Kingdoms, only for them to in turn be infected by the Curse of Rage, which sent both armies into a berserk fury that saw them tear their own civilizations to pieces, leaving only the strongest and most insane to wander the wastelands of their former territory. The Machine Army lasted just long enough to bunker down in a single, large super-tech city that was now trapped by an all-consuming crystalline entity that I never came up with a name for, but which spent its cosmic lifespan scouring planets of life. The Hive, a planetary swarm of giant bugs, would have seemed to be the least of the threats, but they had bided their time while the bigger monsters slaughtered each other, and now, according to the latest intelligence, they controlled nearly a full third of the surrounding territories, adapting magical powers stolen from other worlds in order to keep up with their alien and demonic competitors.
 
So much for a genre mash-up of endless adventures. Hundreds of worlds just buried in the ashes and blood of invasive species that they had no way of dealing with. So much potential complexity, so much creative diversity, ground down to a few monstrous empires and one small bastion of human civilization.
 
That was it. My creativity in a nutshell. Always dreaming so big, and always producing so little. I imagined the whole of the universe, but I could barely tell the story of even one character’s generic crime fighting adventure. Planning and planning and planning, overcomplicating and reconfiguring and bloating my concepts with so much surface-level fluff, and never doing anything of note with it. When it came down to it, I always had to simplify things just to get anywhere, no matter how grand my vision might seem to be. Whereas other author’s stories grew in the telling, mine always shrank. And that flaw had just carried over into this world, hadn’t it?
 
The Endless Frontier really was supposed to be the sort of setting where you could experience any sort of genre adventure, where elements of other worlds could leak a little bit into each other’s territories, but by and large, things were supposed to have been largely contained to their world segments. It was the sort of setting a person could have traveled for a thousand life times, and always found some new and fascinating thing to explore, some other noble cause to fight, or exotic new resources to gain. At least in theory. In reality, though, everything just broke against each other until it dissolved into a homogenized clusterfuck. And once again, I couldn’t help but feel it was entirely due to my incompetence as a creator that things had turned out this way. My characters should have been able to achieve a stable equilibrium early on, and instead the narrative incompetence of my brain had concocted a scenario to force them all into a tiny corner of an infinite world of ruin.
 
God, why did I ever pursue writing? Other than the very brief manic highs when I’d finally finished and posted a work, when had being a creative person ever brought me anything but misery? Frustration, anxiety, depression, failure, guilt, exhaustion, all of it stopping me from just moving on and making something of myself, of getting a real career and not let myself fall apart, alone in a one-bedroom apartment out in the sticks. And all I’d done is carry my mental garbage into this reality, where the heroes and adventurers had been given a chance at real existence, to live free beyond my stunted influence, only to be crushed in body and spirit under the waves of vile predation.
 
I wondered again if this world had been formed with some kind of narrative or thematic drive in mind. I suppose it would have added up, in this case. The Endless Frontier representing my limitless creative potential. The monstrous armies representing all my limitations smashing that potential down to mere scrap of productivity. The surviving heroes representing the very, very few pieces of work I’d managed to create after slogging through the mire of my creative frustrations. And here I was, forced to have it all ground in my face.
 
I had the ugly thought that maybe, if this whole reality had been set up for me, been influenced by me, the most responsible thing would be to free it from myself. I used my power to locate the nearest weapon store. I could use the advance I’d been given from the Clinic to buy a gun, and rid this world of my corrupting influence. Would they be able to recover without me here to keep dragging them all down, or was it already too late? Would the world disintegrate without me around to support it? At least then they’d be spared further suffering.
 
I looked to the door and wondered if I could reach the gun shop before they caught me. Obviously I couldn’t. I could find an exit, but reaching it, or being able to get around the security to escape, I wouldn’t have the time. I glanced around the room instead, to see if there was something I could use for a rope or if there was something sharp. There were knives in the kitchen. Could I bleed out before Halo could heal me? Doubtful. Plus, I was too much of a coward to try and kill myself the slow way. It would have to be fast. Instant. Surely there were guns in the base, or some kind of weapon that would do the job quickly. Yes, an arsenal on the floor above, fortified but accessible. Laser weapons. Explosives. I could vaporize myself in an instant, if I could just get to one of them.
 
I didn’t move. I sat there at the table, my mind seething with suicidal ideation, but my body unable to comply. I was too terrified. I was frozen again, my higher faculties melting in another spiral of anxiety. I had to do it. For their sake, I had to do it. Or, if I was being more honest, for my own sake, I had to do it. I couldn’t face this. I couldn’t face them. I was useless, I was a liability, I was only going to bring further ruin, and I couldn’t bear the responsibility of that. Selflessly, I wanted to give them a chance. Selfishly, I didn’t even want to try doing that the hard way.
 
So I didn’t move. Like a coward, I wanted to run away from my problems, but like an even bigger coward, I didn’t have what it took to even do that much. A thought passed in my mind that Violet or one of the other psychics could be controlling me, keeping me pinned down in place so I wouldn’t hurt myself. But that wasn’t really it. I was just too terrified of death, of the pain of dying, to even try to make the effort. Even if I had been fully convinced that it was the best solution to fix everything, if someone had put the gun in my hand and guided the muzzle to my temple, I could not have pulled the trigger.
 
My breath was ragged, on the verge of dry sobs. My heart was pounding. It felt like my brain was cooking. I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t think straight anymore. The screen of the tablet went dark as I went too long without touching it. I stared at the black glass, seeing the outline of my reflection. I looked myself in the eyes. The abyss gazed back.

1.12 – COZY CONFINEMENT
I must have passed out, because the next moment I was aware of my surroundings, I bolted upright in a small bed. I hastily looked around. I was in a different room, a bit larger, a bit more cozily furnished. There were no windows, but a panel light along the wall cast a dim glow that filled the room enough for me to see without being blinding. I was dressed only in my shorts and boxers.
 
I got up. I felt more relaxed, more clear headed, but not by that much. I was still half-groggy, which gave me an odd bit of clarity, an emotional numbness that staved off an immediate spiral into anxiety again. It was now or never. Before I could freeze up again, I strode towards the door.
 
Gun. Go for a gun. Before they realize you’re awake, go for a—
 
<Salvador stop!> Violet’s voice was in my head. I froze up, and this time I knew it wasn’t just me. It was hard to put to words, but I could feel something like tendrils of thoughts not my own worming their way into my mind, like ethereal threads being sewn into my brain. It wasn’t quite as efficient as Touch’s hi-jacking of my nerves. I could still twitch my muscles, could still strain against the control. But Violet had seized my motor functions, and wasn’t letting me move.
 
<Sit down. You don’t need to kill yourself. Please just sit and calm down.>
 
<What happened? How’d I get in here?> I thought back.
 
<I could sense you about to have a heart attack from your freak out. I put you to sleep. Scorpina and I brought you to unused wing we were talking about. It’s sparse right now. Before you even think it, everything sharp has been removed and we’ll stop you before you can make a noose out of anything. The arsenal has been locked down with an extra layer of security. There are cameras monitoring your every move, and three to five psychics keeping tabs on your thoughts. We do not want to have to mess with your brain or put you in restraints, but we will.>
 
Anxiety transitioned to anger. I was suddenly seething, my stark sense of helplessness driving me to lash out. <What the fuck are you going to do to me?>
 
<Keep you safe. Let you help us.>
 
<Use me.>
 
<You came to us, Salvador. You offered your help.>
 
<I’m pretty sure the only way I can help you all is to die. You’re in my brain right now? Shut it off. You can kill me with a thought. Do it. Come on.>
 
<You’re having a psychotic meltdown right now. If you want, I can put you back to sleep.>
 
<NO!>
 
<Then sit down and relax. Please. I can force you to calm down, but I don’t want to have to do that. I understand that all this is extremely traumatic for you. I apologize on behalf of my team if we’ve made you feel uncomfortable. It’s hard for us, too. But you’re not going to help yourself or any of us by offing yourself.>
 
I made myself listen to her words. I made myself rethink my situation. I made myself focus on how asinine I was being. It didn’t really help ease my feelings, but slowly, I forced myself to try and calm down. She was right, of course. She was right. I felt a sudden release of tension, and I could move again. To the left of me was a small writing desk and a padded chair that I collapsed heavily into. I had broken out in a sweat, and my breath came out shaky as I tried to tamp down the stress.
 
Jesus Fucking Christ, what had that been about? Had I actually just gone insane for a second there? Would I have actually killed myself if I’d gotten my hands on a weapon? Why had I been so angry at her for stopping me? I didn’t want to die. I didn’t. I had just spun myself into a breaking point. I was just some nobody, I wasn’t built to handle this kind of situation, no matter how many fantastical stories I daydreamed about.
 
Despite having just napped, I felt exhausted. I raised an arm to wipe the sweat off my brow, and snorted back a sudden welling up of snot. I realized I was crying, tears running down my face. I shook a bit as I let out a few more shuddering breaths. All the adrenalin and panic had reversed into a hard, hollowing crash.
 
<Sal?>
 
<I’ll manage. Just leave me alone right now.>
 
<I can stop talking, and we’ll stay out of your wing for now, but we’re going to keep you monitored at all times. We’re not taking chances. You try anything funny, and one of us will stop you before you can finish the thought. I know that’s not a relaxing notion, but right now, it’s a necessary precaution. We aren’t going to hurt you.>
 
<Even the Animal? Or Spark?>
 
<He was just being bitter, and she was just being cautious.>
 
<I’ll take your word for it.>
 
<Okay then. For now, just relax, and try to take your mind off everything. There’s food in the kitchen, there’s a television in the common room, your tablet’s out there too, though I suggest not trying to look stuff up right now. There’s a shower behind the door to your left.> I glanced over, and got up to check. I’d thought it was a closet, but it led to a little bathroom. <We will need to discuss things soon, but that can wait until tomorrow morning. Alright?>
 
<Thanks.>
 
<You’re welcome.>
 
She went silent, and I took another long breath, not shaky this time. I wiped my eyes and blew my nose with some tissues. I didn’t feel particularly hungry, but I did feel rather clammy given my sudden sweat. Maybe a hot shower would be helpful. I turned the heat up as high as I could stand it, and let the water wash away a bit more of my foul mood. When I came back out, someone had left a set of clothes on the bed.
 
I came out of the room to see the common area, a wide living room with several couches framing three sides of a large coffee table, the fourth side flanked by a huge flat-panel screen mounted along the wall. Three more open doors lead to what I assumed were other bedrooms, and an open doorway led to the kitchenette area. I checked to see what food was on offer. Mostly cans of soup, a couple Tupperware bowls with grilled chicken, and some frozen broccoli. Well, at least they weren’t going to try and ply me with pizza and lo mein. I want back out to the living room area, and blinked as I noted the presence of a white wolf lounging on the center couch. Had it been sitting there before, and I’d walked right past it?
 
I stepped up cautiously to it. The wolf looked up at me calmly, ears up, maw closed, but tail still. This creature could have been any number of things, from a shape shifter to a robot in a fur suit to a magical spirit. I didn’t recognize it as a character of mine, at any rate. “Are you supposed to be dog therapy or something?”
 
<If you like> came a feminine voice in my head.
 
More thought-speak, though it didn’t quite “feel” the same as Violet’s telepathy. Again, it was hard to describe. When Violet or the Brain used their telepathy, it was like my own mind was thinking the words in their voice. Just now, however, it almost was like hearing actual speech in your ear, except you felt like you had imagined it. In either case, I knew the underlying mechanism of both was that the speaker was actually just broadcasting the intent of their thought, and you mind was translating it into comprehensible speech.
 
The difference, however, was that telepathy was a two-way communication for the psychic, who could read your thoughts as easily as send theirs into your mind. Thought-speech, like this wolf had just done, was a sort of broadcast-only psychic soundwave, for lack of a better term. It was meant to compensate for a lack of compatible vocal speech patterns between species. I’d used it in several story concepts involving talking animals, and I had totally not stolen the idea from the Animorphs books I’d read in High School.
 
<You going to come pet me or what?> The wolf cocked her head to the side, as if studying me curiously.
 
<Violet, what is this thing?> I thought, trying to make sure I didn’t direct the thought towards the wolf, just incase.
 
<I said we’d leave you alone, but I also felt maybe you should have some company. Non-threatening company.>
 
<Is she a member of the team?>
 
<No. She’s my friend. She does help out around the base a little.>
 
<What is she?>
 
<You can ask her yourself.>
 
I kept my distance as I crossed my arms, looking down at the wolf. “Alright. So. Werewolf? Talking wolf? Shape-shifter? Spirit animal?”
 
<Annextrian Wolf Clan> she said. <Last one left, as far as I’m aware.>
 
“Ah,” I said. I cleared my throat and uncrossed my arms. “Um, sorry.”
 
<For what?>
 
“To hear about,” I made a searching-for-the-words gesture. “That. Being the last. Um…”
 
Her tail flopped once. <I was a puppy when my village was destroyed. I don’t remember much of it. I’ve been hanging out with humans since.> She reached out with a paw and patted the seat in front of her. <Come on, sit. I won’t bite. You like canines, don’t you?>
 
After a few moments, hesitation, I went ahead and sat down next to her. She scooted a bit forward, curled her front paws back to make space for my legs, then promptly rested her head on my lap. <Good boy. Now pet me.>
 
I scratched behind her ears and stroked along her back. <Mmm, that’s the spot.>
 
“What’s your name?”
 
<Snow> she said. <You’re Sal, right?>
 
“Yeah. You, uh, mind if I watch some TV?”
 
<Human TV is boring, but go ahead.>
 
I pet her for a few more minutes while I channel surfed, then just relaxed my arm, resting it against her back. She snuggled in against me, and stayed silent, letting me pretend she was just a normal dog for a bit. I had to admit, it did settle my nerves some, but the situation was rather bizarre.
 
“Annextria” had been an old project idea of mine, made back when I was in elementary school. Talking animals were a small, but notable segment of my creativity, with a few series featuring civilizations of sapient beasts either forming in the aftermath of humanity’s demise or emerging while humanity was still around. Occasionally, I’d throw a talking animal or two in a regular superhero or magic project. This was not counting stories that featured already supernatural creatures such as chimera or cryptids.
 
Annextria had been an ambitious idea for me at that age, imagining a world without humans at all, but where instead, animals had gained sapience and some kind of psychic communication ability. Instead of all trying to co-exist as a society, every species of sapient beast had their own kingdom that lived alongside one another. Which was to say that the mice had their Mice Kingdom in the same forest that the cats had their Cat Kingdom, the deers had their Deer Kingdom, the birds had their Bird Kingdom, etc. The animals did not tend to interfere with one another’s politics, to the point of outright ignoring each other, except during times of extreme crisis, when champions of the various Kingdoms would have to come together to defend their forest from external threats.
 
How exactly I explained predator and prey Kingdoms co-existing without interfering with each other, I don’t even remember. I vaguely recall there being some kind of circle of life philosophy about the lives of the other animals, or that there were also non-sapient species for the predators to focus on, except in the leanest of times. I was like ten or eleven when I’d thought of it, and like most projects, Annextria didn’t get past the early outlining stage.
 
It was somewhat bizarre that this wolf in my lap was a fully sapient being, with human level intellect, but seemed fine to play the part of a dog, snuggling up against me and letting me pet her. There was an almost uncanny valley effect to it; seeing animals talk like humans one moment, but still act like animals the next was fine in a cartoon, but in live flesh and blood, it was a little strange. Moreover, humans had not been a part of Annextria, and I couldn’t imagine any of the Species Kingdoms accepting being integrated into human society. Snow had said she’d been a puppy when rescued, though, and if she’d been hanging around humans all this time, I guess maybe she was used to them.
 
The TV had little of interest to offer. There were ten channels in total: news, two sports, two movie channels, daytime soap operas, a cartoon channel for kids, what appeared to be a religious channel, a weather channel, and an infomercial channel. There were two other channels, but they were both offline, apparently used for emergency broadcasts and special events, respectively.
 
“Wow. Nostalgic.”
 
<Hmm?>
 
“It’s like the internet here. Simpler. In my time, we had cable, with a few hundred channels when I was growing up, but my folks only had it attached to one TV. I had to make do with the antenna in the dining room most of the time, so, regular broadcast only. There was only, like, nine working channels.”
 
<Told you it was boring.>
 
I clicked the TV off. What a waste of a wide screen.
 
I lightly scratched Snow behind the ears again. “So, Violet said you help out around the base?”
 
<Mmhhmm, sure do! I’m the team therapist!>
 
“Really?”
 
<No.> I made a little snort of amusement and her tail flopped again. She turned her head a bit to look at me. <I’m tech support. Sort of.>
 
“How’s that work? You got a keyboard for your paws?”
 
<I got robot arms.>
 
“Oh. Well, that’s cool.”
 
<It is! Check ‘em out.!> Her tail wagged as she stood up and hopped off the couch, going over to a bundle of something on the floor. She flipped it over with her snout, and I realized it was a harness with very simple looking mechanical arms on it. She bat something on the side, and the harness sprang to life, the two arms, ending in white gloved-hands, rising up on their own. Snow slipped under the archway of the two raised arms, sliding between the straps of the harness. Once the frame was settled against her back, the arms moved up and secured the straps so it wouldn’t fall off. She turned me and wagged her tail, looking smug with herself.
 
<Neat, huh? Had to get Violet to help me put the parts together, but once I got this made, I can do a lot more. You humans sure are lucky to have those hands of yours.>
 
It was rather fascinating. I stepped up to her and crouched down, reaching to touch the device. I paused and matched her gaze. “Um, can I touch your arms?”
 
<Sure. Just don’t mess with them too much. They’re tough, but they need to keep their configuration.>
 
“I’m just curious how it works. I won’t mess it up.”
 
<If you do, I’ll bite you.>
 
“Okay.”
 
I ran my hands over the device and looked closely. As far as I could tell, it was just a set of metal bars, hinged to form elbows and wrists, with a wire and little pulleys to presumably control the motions. The hands flexed, and I noticed that while they were multi-jointed like human fingers, they seemed to be less flexible in motion, making the same curling arc as they moved, though the index finger seemed notably able to move independent of the other three. She could spread the fingers, but the pinky, ring, and index fingers still moved in unison.
 
However, I saw no electronics. The arms were just attached to a metal spine that rested along Snow’s back, padded underneath for comfort. There weren’t even any wires leading to her paws or jaw or tail to make them move. They just seemed to move on their own. My brow furrowed.
 
“Is this enchanted? Or do you have some kind of metal control power?”
 
Snow tilted her head. <Well, it’s Gear Magic.> She seemed to pause, then swished her tail again. <Oh, right. You’re a newbie, right? You probably don’t know what that is. Well, it’s hard to really explain it mechanically, but basically, you construct a device with the intent for it to function a certain way. As you build, it sort of charges with this mystical essence, and once completed, it will act as you imagine it should. The device doesn’t need power to function, and if you’re the one using it, you don’t even really need direct controls, since it’s synchronized to you. You do need to kind of be around non-magical mechanical devices for that essence to charge, but it otherwise just kind of works.>
 
She made the arms wave hello. <I wanted arms, so I built some arms. This is one of the older models; took me some time to get it right. Once I did, though, I was able to build better ones, and with those, I could build even better machines. I can actually fix a car for real with my good arms, no magic needed, but Gear Magic’s good for slapping together specialized devices on the fly, or doing patch repairs to more complex machines.>
 
I knew what Gear Magic was, of course, but I didn’t interrupt her explanation. She seemed excited to tell it. I hadn’t recognized it at first simply because it had been a while since I’d come up with it, and I’d never used it for anything. This was one of the Concept Magics, a power system of mystical effects that were these strangely self-reinforcing powers that let a person perform supernatural feats loosely related to a concept. The Magic had numerous permutations, but basically, take any word, stick “Magic” after it, and you could customize a whole Magic system based on it. I had never defined an exact number of the things, but I could think of a handful off the top of my head that I’d toyed with, but never really put to use. Fire Magic was another, which I remembered La Scorpina had been claimed to have.
 
Each Magic had its own rules for how it worked, the techniques used to activate powers, the ways in which one charged up their powers for magical effects. Gear Magic functioned on essentially a cartoon logic of how machines worked. You could create an ad hoc helicopter by bolting a few propellers onto your car and spinning them. It didn’t matter that it wasn’t aerodynamic, or that random propellers attached to a car couldn’t possibly provide enough thrust to lift it, or that if it could create that level of force, they would probably rip off the car roof before lifting the vehicle into the air. No, helicopters flew because the propeller on top spun really fast. Therefore, adding a propeller to something and spinning it should make it fly like a helicopter.
 
As Snow had said, the devices had to be built by the Gear Mage specifically, and would work by their own will. If someone else wanted to use them, the Mage had to include some kind of control mechanism, even if, in the example of the Helicopter Car, it was something as simple as an on-off switch. Every Concept Magic was recharged by the Mage exposing themselves to a specific phenomenon, object, or creature linked to their Concept, and in the case of Gear Mages, they had to spend time in the presence of normal machines, all the better if they did manual, non-magical work on them.
 
There were any number of Concept Magics out there, on top of all the other power systems in play. I’d have to ask Tact for a list of active powers and power sources. Certain forms of Concept Magic could be passed on to others through various rituals, others through freak accidents. If I was going to keep existing in this world, I would probably need to obtain some kind of superhuman power to up my odds of survival, as well as overall capability to contribute to helping those living here.
 
Assuming Cavalry would even let me. I’d have to give this more thought later, perhaps when I somehow wasn’t getting spied on by several psychics and a suite of cameras.
 
<You okay? You seem lost in thought.> Snow nuzzled my cheek, making sure to poke me with her cold wet nose. I flinched back, but smiled and pat her head.
 
“Fine. Thank you.”
 
<Sure.> The arms moved and loosened the straps before planting their palms on the ground. She shimmied out of the harness, and the arms curled up, the whole thing collapsing into a semi-ball-shaped heap. She then hopped back up on the couch. <So, what about yourself?>
 
“What about me?”
 
I opted to sit on a different couch, and face her. She tilted her head, ears twitching down a bit, and swished her tail once. I had the impression she looked a bit disappointed I didn’t join her, but she didn’t push the subject.
 
<You have any powers? It’s unusual for a newbie, but it’s been known to happen.>
 
“Um, I have this, like, locator power in my head.” I pointed to my temple. “I wonder where something, or someone, is, and it tells me where they are relative to my position. Not, like, how to actually reach them, or what sort of place they are in, exactly, but like how far away they are in a straight line.”
 
<Huh. Hadn’t heard of something like that. Bet it’s useful, though.>
 
“It’s how I found this place so fast.”
 
<Violet said you were recent. Only a couple days old? You’re awfully lucid for that short a time. Usually the newbies just sort of stumble about in a haze for a few days, sometimes even a few weeks.>
 
“Special case, I guess.”
 
<Yeah.> She rolled over onto her back and pulled her paws up. <Rub my belly!>
 
I blanched a bit. “You’re not really therapy for me, are you? You’re just here to be pampered.”
 
<Everyone loves to pamper the dog.>
 
“You’re a wolf.”
 
<Same difference.>
 
I sighed, went and sat down next her, and gave her a belly rub. She panted a bit, happy for the attention. When I pulled away, she repositioned, rising up to sit on her haunches and face me at about eye-level. <For someone who was begging to die less than an hour ago, you seem pretty calm now.>
 
I sighed, sitting next to her. “You’re a good distraction. But I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I don’t think I’ve ever actually had a panic attack before coming here. I’ve been paralyzed with fear before. I’ve felt miserable enough to think about killing myself. But I never actually did it, never even actually tried it. But I’ve also never had to deal with something this big.”
 
I ruminated for a moment, gathering my thoughts, and she didn’t interrupt. “I already died, actually. That’s the part that really fucks with me. Before I came here, I was shot to death, and blown up by a magic rock. I’ve been thinking this whole thing is a simulation inside the crystal, but it is entirely possible that I’m in some kind of weird afterlife. Maybe this isn’t a simulation at all. Maybe I’m in some kind of Hell or Purgatory. I can’t imagine I’m in Heaven, but if I was actually in Hell, I don’t think I would have appeared in the one safe zone for a million miles.”
 
I looked down and shook my head. “But what do I know. Maybe Hell is more nuanced than it’s usually shown to be in the movies. Maybe they start you off dragging you through your anxieties and failures before they throw you in the fire pit. Of course, I don’t actually believe in either place; maybe there is an afterlife, and it’s something wholly different than humans have imagined. Maybe this place is that, and it isn’t anything to do with good or evil, it’s just one long fever dream that you’re supposed to make of what you will.”
 
She tilted her head at me again. <Can’t say I know what you’re talking about, but I do know Hell is one of the territories on the other side of the Barrier, which means it isn’t here, so you’re definitely not in it.>
 
“I don’t mean it like that.”
 
<Okay. Well. Um. Sorry. I don’t really have any advice. I grew up around humans, but you guys have weird ideas about things.> She leaned forward and gave my face a long lick. <There. Kisses make it better, right?>
 
I laughed, and wiped my face with the sleeve of my shirt. “A little. Thanks.”
 
Snow stuck around for another hour, chatting a little bit more. I turned the TV back on, flipping through the channels with the volume low. She had me stop on a baseball game. A baseball game between the Blue Haven Hawks and the Cyrene City Sharks was playing, with the latter in the lead, 2-3. I had no interest at all in sports, but Snow watched attentively.
 
“I thought you said human TV was boring.”
 
<Sports are okay. I like the part where they throw the ball.>
 
That gave me a sensible chuckle, and her tail wagged a bit. I couldn’t tell if she was serious, or playing up the dog theme for a laugh. I decided to watch the game anyway, if only to keep my mind off of another depression spiral. Occasionally, she’d nudge me for more pets, and I obliged.
 
Once the game was over, though, she had to take off to tend to some tech business. She slipped on her arm harness again with practiced ease, and headed out the door that closed off the suite. I heard an electronic beep, and the door opened and closed on its own. I was once again left to fend for myself.
 
 
 
1.13 – THE PARALYSIS OF NOT ACTUALLY THAT MUCH CHOICE
I muted the TV, but didn’t turn it off, though I faced partly away from it as I picked up the tablet again. <Violet? Can I get a list of powers throughout the world?> There was a moment’s delay as she thought it over, then relayed the request to Tact. A message pinged on the screen, and I opened it.
 
<We’ve given you clearance for level two of our personal archive. It has more in depth information than the EncycloNet.>
 
<How many levels are there?>
 
<We’ll let you know when we think you need to know.>
 
I hesitated for a moment, then asked. <Violet? Are you still with Jim?>
 
I could tell she was a little surprised by the question. <Yes. Why do you ask?>
 
<Just curious. Did Sarah make it over?>
 
<Yes, but we assume she was killed when the Hive consumed the Syvero territories.>
 
<How much of Syvero made it?>
 
<It didn’t. You saw the record.>
 
<I meant evacuees.>
 
<A couple thousand, mostly Demihumans. They have a chance to recover their population. The Syveron humans are basically extinct at this point.>
 
<I’m sorry.>
 
<I know.>
 
<How did you make it?>
 
<S.O.S. was integrated into the Centurions network early on. My team had the resources to pull out when the swarm overran us. We took as many with us as we could, but they hit us like a tsunami.>
 
<I see.>
 
Another long pause. <Was there anything else? Sorry, but it’s distracting enough monitoring you constantly, and I’m in the middle of work.> She didn’t let me feel it, but I could tell from the flatness of her psychic message that she was holding back on broadcasting her bitterness.
 
<I think you can take a break. I feel okay now.>
 
<Not an option. It isn’t going to take much to set you off.>
 
<Didn’t you say there’s several people watching?>
 
<We’re taking shifts, and I’m on right now. If you’re feeling chatty, one of us can come down.>
 
<Um. I don’t know. Maybe. Maybe not.>
 
<I’ll see who’s available.>
 
<Preferably someone not pissed at me.>
 
<Yes, that would probably be best.>
 
<No rush.>
 
Violet was silent after that, and I went back to the tablet. There was a new icon linking me to the Centurions common database. A custom search engine with a sleeker GUI, it was basically another version of the EncycloNet, with directories splitting off into several major categories of World Data, Power Systems, Allied Freed States, Centurions Network, and Enemy Territories.
 
I selected the section on “Power Systems”. I was presented with a substantial list, which I could re-order by broad categories of power source, world source, or power type. Some entries repeated under several categories; across my various worlds I had, of course, reused certain themes. Going off this list, there were twelve different methods of gaining elemental powers under different alignment systems. Eight ways to gain bestial transformations. Five means of gaining psychic abilities. Mutation effects from various chemical concoctions or exotic energy exposure. Various categories of spirits that could be summoned in various ways. Alien technologies from dozens of races, many lost, but the most important of which were salvaged and incorporated where it was most useful; the Barrier was largely a combination of different alien force field technologies, coated with mystical wards.
 
There were the aforementioned Conceptual Magics, of which 37 sub-categories had been discovered and studied, some of which had their own further sub-categories (such as further contributing to the elemental and beast transformation categories as well). There was Power Potential, the means by which superheroes in several of my worlds gained their abilities by accidental exposure to cosmic energies, binding a person to the fabric of reality, and allowing them to bend or break certain laws of physics to affect comic book super powers. Various renditions of Relics, mystical artifacts scattered across some of my settings, either left over from ancient civilizations, or modern day objects recently empowered by mystical forces. There was a system of Runes that could be learned to enchant objects and creatures with specific replicable power effects. There was even a power system I had tried to design based around colors, and another based around music, and yet another based on speaking words in a lost mystical language.
 
It was, frankly, too goddamned much to take in, and would probably take half an encyclopedia to try and explain them all here. If I hadn’t been the one to make all of these power systems, I doubt I could keep track of them all. Some I’d almost forgotten about, being from projects dropped so long ago, the vaguely remembered details blurred together.
 
Suffice to say that if I were to encounter someone who could throw fireballs, there were no less than thirty different means by which they could have acquired that power, and not all of them would function in the same way. One type of fireball might be stoppable by a mystical shield or a slab of ice, while another would cut right through those barriers with ease but be magically unable to burn living wood or flesh. One person might be able to only control fire, but not create it, while another could not control fire, but transform into a living flame.
 
The technology options were no better. A laser rifle might require a special crystal to function, while a similar rifle might just need to be exposed to sunlight to recharge, or might even just run off a single D-battery for several shots. It was probably one reason the Allied Free States had yet to adapt a common, high-level tech profile for their civilization; the limited number of machines from any given world that they could salvage were incompatible, probably irreplaceable, or required too many different fuel sources to reliable power across a whole country. The perfect excuse for such an anachronistic setting.
 
Of course, I had to wonder what my options were for empowering myself. If I wasn’t going to off myself, then I absolutely was going to need superhuman abilities to reliably survive. The thing was, most of the supernatural powers of my settings were the sort of abilities one achieved either by accident, under very specific circumstances, or required in-born qualifications.
 
Obtaining a Power Potential was right out; there was no way to predictably imbue myself with the cosmic energies necessary, assuming anything like that even occurred here. Even if I could do it, Power Potential manifested wildly differently depending on the person and the circumstances; most awakenings were caused by some external trigger, exposure to danger or some other high-stress situation, and the power then twisted to fitting some aspect of a person’s personality. Three people with Power Potential all struck by a bolt of lightning in the same area at the same time could end up with completely different powers, possibly electricity-related, but not necessarily. Power Crystals were more stable versions of that same cosmic energy, condensed into a solid form, but there was no telling what a crystal would do until you tried to use it. Going by the power list, there were no known active crystals within AFS territory, and my intuition didn’t pick any up. So all that meant anything from the S.T.A.R. Corps or Intrepid Universe was worthless to me.
 
Most of the Conceptual Magics were not easily passed down, requiring very specific rituals to pass them along, or essentially freak accidents to trigger them in random people. I could try to arrange for a few types to tap into, but it would take some doing. Moreover, Conceptual Magic had never been given an official setting by me, which meant there was no telling where it even came from. The fact that Snow had Gear Magic was as much a wild fluke as anything else; other than the fact that it had talking animals, there was nothing otherwise supernatural about Annextria.
 
All forms of Syveron Magic were inborn powers dependent on Syveron genetic potential, so all that was completely out. Some forms of Power Universe Magic could theoretically be used by anyone, but required years of training, unless you were a naturally gifted species like the Demons. The same went for Larreth Magic. Natural Forces Magic required you to basically be suffused with cosmic energy through ritual and learning to bend it to your will, or being blessed with powers by a Supernal or Dragon. Most people in that setting just had powers that came naturally to them through magic energy fallout not unlike Power Potential. Once again, cosmic/magic energy suffusion was not reliable to happen, and the latter, well, I did not want to essentially enslave myself to a god for power.
 
Learning the Runes system required absolutely pixel-perfect carving or weaving runes into a specific object ideal to hold a certain rune type, while being resolutely mentally focused, and I was pretty sure I didn’t have that skill in me. I hadn’t even drawn doodles in years. The Colors Magic required exposure to a mystical light source which my intuition couldn’t locate. Song Magic required musical talent I didn’t have, and a natural ability to attune to the emotional resonance of specific songs that I didn’t have a wide enough appreciation for, as well as a nebulous inner potential for the magic that I know I didn’t have. The Words of Power were all in an alien language you couldn’t actually speak until an already skilled Wordsmith taught them to you through arcane rituals.
 
On the tech side of things, I was not particularly keen to turn myself into a cyborg or a genetically engineered mutant. I had no technological expertise to guarantee I could keep a set of power armor or a mech running, nevermind fuel costs. If it was my only option, I might consider it out of desperation, but the vast majority of those types of powers were low- to mid-tier at best, and might lock me out of other options. So, there basically went almost the entirety of the mad science and hypertech options from the Power Universe, Natural Forces, or UltraWorld, at least in the short term.
 
Bonding my mind or soul to a spirit creature didn’t seem particularly smart if I wanted to maintain full autonomy, and again, wouldn’t give me much to work with. I definitely wasn’t going to get myself turned into a vampire or werewolf or ghost or smart zombie, or let myself get possessed by a demon. So there went basically anything I could have used from the Nexus Universe or the Wyld Hunt Universe, or the magic side of the superhero worlds.
 
Psychic powers were basically all inborn; in most settings, you had to have the potential for it already, and then have it awakened by some external stimulus. I was extremely unlikely to contract the unique conditions such as the Immortality Effect or the Elemental Lifelink or achieve Ascension. I was no where near capable of training to the point of unlocking the power of Arete, the gift of supernatural excellence in any normal skill.
 
So what could I actually reliably use, or learn in short order?
 
It was theoretically possible I could be an Awakened Dreamer; I already had had some degree of lucid dreaming ability back on Earth, although it was very sparse. I hadn’t had the chance to really try it yet, having not had a real natural sleep since I got here. Moreover, Awakened Dreamers only had power in the Dream Realm, a sort of superdimension between all my worlds; it wouldn’t have a physical manifestation even in the Endless Frontier, though Awakened Dreamers from any world could access it. Assuming, of course, the Dream Realm did get included at all, and its existential incompatibility with the waking world didn’t end up excluding it from manifesting.
 
What else, what else? There was Galean Magic. That also required training, but was actually extremely simple to perform very basic effects. I’d have to try it later, when I had the chance. Within a few weeks, I might be able to throw small fireballs with that type of magic, though. Assuming, of course, Galean Magic actually worked outside of the Galea world fragment, which had already been conquered.
 
There were the Relics, mystical artifacts from various worlds that each had unique powers. Once acquired, many would bond to the first living person who touched them. There were other artifacts like the Elemental Keys, though my intuition when I checked told me they were all mobile, meaning they had already been claimed. There were mythological weapons from some of the superhero worlds and the deities of the Tabitha Cain stories, though many seemed likewise claimed or lost.
 
There was something fittingly frustrating about the fact that, despite the fact that I was now sitting in a world where almost every super powered resource I’d ever conceived of existed all at once, and almost none of it was usable by me. It fucking figured.
 
I paused, then laughed to myself, tossing the tablet to the side. What the fuck was I even on about? I’d been ready to blow my brains out just a couple hours ago, and now I was looking into how I could turn myself into a superhuman. Was I bi-polar now or something? I sighed and stared at the silent television. No, probably not. I was probably just trying to find anything to get my mind off the real existential horror of the situation. I wasn’t discounting the idea that I was in some kind of actual Hell, and I was surrounded by Demons wearing the skins of my creations.
 
Before I could fall down that rabbit hole again, I heard the electronic lock beep, and the door opened, letting in my next guest.
 
 
 
1.14 – A WOMAN’S STING
A skinny woman with light brown skin, green eyes, and a mane of jet black hair walked in, wearing a blue tank top and white shorts. It took me a second to recognize she was La Scorpina, outside of her Scorpion armor. I guess I had paid more attention to the suit than the woman beneath it, but she had cut a pretty lithe figure. Looking at her now, she was unusually tall for a woman, at least six feet, and maybe a little too skinny for her height.
 
She came over to the couch and sat on it, crossing her legs underneath her, setting her elbows on her knees, and resting her chin in her hands to stare at me. From her angle, she would have been showing me ample cleavage, if she’d had much to show. She looked at me with a calm expression. “So, how are you feeling?”
 
“Fine?” I said, warily, sitting up a little straighter in my seat.
 
“Violet said you might want more company. I volunteered, since, well, it seems we don’t have the same history as you do with the others. Unless you’d prefer one of them over a stranger.”
 
I frowned, but shrugged. “You’re fine, I guess.”
 
“You guess?”
 
“Do I have a choice?”
 
“Yes, actually. I can go.”
 
I thought it over for a moment. “Nah. Stay.”
 
“Okay, good. I also was just curious to talk to you. It’s not every day a woman gets to meet her Creator.”
 
“I don’t know if I can take the credit there. I made the Scorpion. I didn’t make you, even ignoring you’re using his suit.”
 
She smirked. “My suit, now.”
 
“Right.”
 
“Well, regardless, I wouldn’t exist if it wasn’t for you, apparently. If I’m not your direct brain-kid, you could think of me as a brain-grandkid.”
 
I let out a little grunt of a laugh. “I hate kids.”
 
“Hate-hate, or just don’t like to be around them?”
 
“The latter. I don’t actually have anything against children, they’re just not my kind of company.”
 
“Ah, well. Not everyone’s cut out to be a babysitter.”
 
“I’m definitely not.”
 
She must have noticed how on edge she was. She leaned back, holding her hands up in a peace-making gesture. “I’m not here to upset you. I really am just curious about you. If you want me to leave, though, I can. We’ll leave you alone the rest of the night, provided you don’t go into another panic attack.”
 
I almost told her to go, but part of me paused. There was something intriguing about her. Attractive, I’ll admit. I don’t know if she really nailed the look of “my type”, but she was close in the shallow details, and quite pretty even ignoring that. And that immediately made me suspicious. I may not be as easily swayed by looks as I used to be, but that didn’t mean my refreshed body wasn’t eager to be tempted. The way she leaned back against the couch, stretching her arms out over the backrest, she was being not-so-subtle in trying to catch my interest, and I knew it wasn’t because she was interested in me that way.
 
“So can I stay?”
 
Did she have a slightly more sultry lilt to her voice, or was I just being paranoid? I almost said no. But for some reason, I stopped myself. Maybe I actually did still want some more company, and it would be better if it was someone I didn’t know, instead of a character who had a chip on their shoulder over what I’d done to them.
 
Or maybe one of the psychics was nudging me to feel that way. Or maybe someone was using magic. Or maybe she was wearing special pheromones. Or maybe—
 
“Cripes, you’re actually scared of us, aren’t you?” She dropped her stretched out posture, and returned to leaning forward, draping her arms over her still-crossed legs and staring at me studiously.
 
“I’m just a guy. You’re all superhumans who don’t trust me. I have psychics monitoring my every thought. Why wouldn’t I be scared?”
 
She smiled sympathetically. “I understand. It’s honestly pretty nuts. But if we wanted you dead, we’d have killed you before you saw it coming. Or we’d have let you try to kill yourself. If we wanted to hurt you, well, there’s any number of ways we could. But we’re still the good guys, Sal. We’ve had to go hard on things to make it, but none of us want to hurt you.” She paused, then grinned. “Well, maybe a few might want to deck you on principle, but they’ll restrain themselves.”
 
“Fair enough.” I settled into my seat a bit more.
 
“So…”
 
“Yup.”
 
“Aaaaanything you wanna talk about?”
 
“I dunno. You came to me.”
 
“Violet said you were feeling chatty.”
 
“I was for a minute, but now I don’t know.”
 
She rolled her eyes. “You’re the kind of guy who wants the girl to take the initiative, huh?”
 
I blinked and gave her a cautious look. She wasn’t precisely wrong. Was she good at reading people, was I just that obvious, or did that mean she had some kind of other power she hadn’t mentioned. This was going to drive me nuts, never knowing what kinds of powers any given person might have. Had the fishermen who found me had powers of there own? The security guard in the Clinic probably had, but I’d had no indication of what they were. Given how some of the powers in my worlds could spread, there was no telling what even the average citizen might be packing after five years to learn some of the more common magics.
 
One magic in particular occurred to me, and I immediately tamped down the lewd thoughts that welled up in response. She didn’t react in the slightest, so it was unlikely she had that particular brand of magic. Or she was good at hiding it.
 
She cocked an eyebrow at me. “I’m guessing yes…?”
 
“Sorry. Lost in thought for a moment.” I cleared my throat. “I dunno. I’m not the most social person. I mean, I can get to rambling if you get me on some subjects, but I’m mostly an introvert. And, uh, not to say I’m not interested in women, but, I dunno, I was never hung up on getting with them.”
 
“I see.” She looked me over and said. “Well, I can see the introvert part, if you’re a writer.”
 
“Barely one, but sure.”
 
“You may not have physically written much, but I’m betting you’re thinking about stories a lot.” She leaned back again, this time folding her hands in her lap.
 
“You think so?”
 
“I mean, given the sheer amount of things in this world? Obviously. Hundreds of worlds and thousands of characters, was it?” She grinned. “And Maglight and I aren’t even on the list!”
 
“Neither was Snow.”
 
She grinned. “Is it a shock? Seeing unfamiliar faces in a familiar world?”
 
“Yeah. A little. For a minute there, I thought that maybe I’d at least have the advantage of knowing what I was going to run into. Now I have no idea.” I waved to the tablet. “Everything bleeds together.” I paused, then frowned. “Speaking of, that whole Scorpion’s daughter bit. Was that some test?”
 
She nodded. “You got me. We were trying to see how far your little super-awareness of things would go, and how honest you were being about it.”
 
“I figured.”
 
“We have to be cautious after all.”
 
“Understood. Likewise, though, be honest: what all can you do?”
 
She tilted her head to the side a bit, a bemused smile on her lips. “What do you mean?”
 
“Scorpion’s suit. Fire Magic. You got anything else?”
 
“I can change size.”
 
I stared at her. I was not a good judge of character, and my intuition told me nothing about her. She looked relaxed and confident, and if she’d had tells to give away a lie, I didn’t know what they were. Finally, I just said, “Really?”
 
“No.” I scowled, and she just smirked back. “Guess that means you really can’t read our minds or detect anything.”
 
“Do you have anything else or not?”
 
“As personal abilities unique to myself? No. But I’ve got the full Centurions package.”
 
“And that is?”
 
“Pretty much everyone in the Centurions Network has been trained with Galean Combat Magic, though a few aren’t able to use it. All of us have Impact Fiber Weave and personal Force Fields as part of our costumes, even those of us who still wear our own custom outfits. We have Anti-Grav units for flight, incorporated into our suits, and oxy-sticks for extended underwater travel. Regeneration serum shots. Unique radio signature that’s mystically scrambled and connects at extreme distances without needing towers to relay the signal. All of us have psychic shields and basic wards installed in our minds and on our bodies; doesn’t keep out the extreme stuff, but blunts a lot of those kinds of attacks.”
 
She held out a hand as if holding a handle, and an exotic looking black dagger suddenly appeared in a puff of shadow in her grip. “We’ve also horded a ton of Relics, and every member carries at least one, as long as it doesn’t interfere without powers. This one lets me cut from a distance using shadows as a medium. So I stab it in a dark place, and it comes out another dark place. I guess that does technically count as a unique thing for me, so, sorry, didn’t mean to mislead you. It’s just we all get one with the package.”
 
She made the dagger vanish with a thought. “Let’s see, we also have laser pistols with variable modes and caster pistols for dealing with supernatural threats normal bullets won’t work on. And, while we don’t always carry it around, we have access to some Zero Metal weapons and armor for special missions.”
 
I blinked. Well, shit. Impact Fiber Weave was a nano-tech-forged special material that was loose enough for the wearer when moving normally, but would instantly harden at a point of impact, and was both cut resistant to any edge short of a mono-molecular blade, and highly resistant to fire, radiation, electricity, and most chemical attacks. If I’d been wearing a full suit, I could have withstood a barrage from a gatling gun at point blank and only felt like I was getting a series of light punches. With psychic and mystical shields, that would make more esoteric attacks much weaker, if not outright ineffective. Combined with a force field and regen serum on top of that, any given soldier would be a walking tank unto themselves.
 
Zero Metal was a special power-neutralizing ore that could be forged into usable metal tools and weapons and shields. It was capable of shutting down any sort of supernatural effect on contact, regardless of it’s nature, and regardless of its origin, making it the ultimate anti-superhuman/anti-magic defense and offense. The only real limits was that it had to have direct contact with the bare body of the target, there was a nebulous threshold at which certain powers were just too vast in scale to be stopped by a small amount of the metal, and the ore was so rare that even just a single metric ton of the ore being found on any one planet was considered an astronomical amount.
 
Standard military magic training in Galea granted a person access to basic elemental, healing, and barrier spells, granting even a person with no weapons a wide range of attack options and protections. Fire, lighting, ice, light, shockwaves for attacks, mending, curing, and even more shielding for defense. Relics were true wild cards, with their powers unknowable until you were either bonded to one, or were the target of one.
 
With flight discs giving them quick, agile air movement, they could no doubt get anywhere in the city in a couple minutes, and oxy-sticks would let them travel not just underwater, but in toxic atmosphere for at least an hour. The radio link would let them coordinate across the whole country, even without the telepathy network. The special guns would give them a variety of attack options even if the Combat Magic failed.
 
Even without any unique powers, one fully-geared up Centurion operative had enough to throw down with most superhumans up to the mid-level, depending on the exact power set at play.
 
I had detected none of that gear or extra magic powers on the other heroes in the meeting room. I’d only recognized their identities and the baseline abilities I’d made for them. It would certainly explain how, despite some of my strongest heroes being on the kill list, even the street level supers were now powerful enough to survive battling the armies of monsters from outside the Barrier, and shut down any new supervillain uprisings so quickly. The strongest had held the line until the weakest could sufficiently bolster themselves up.
 
“Christ,” I muttered.
 
Scorpina laughed. “What? Were you planning on taking us on or something?”
 
“The thought had occurred that I might need to beef up my own capabilities if I was going to get wrapped up in all this.” I smirked. “You know, usually in stories like this, when a guy gets sent from normal Earth into some fantasy world, he gets access to magic and/or super powers right away, and he gets to be this special awesome exception to how the magic of the setting works. Like, in a world where magic exists, most people can only use one kind, but he can learn all of them. Or, learning one kind of magic takes years just to master the basics, but he can speed-learn everything in a matter of days.”
 
“No such luck for you, huh?”
 
“Doesn’t seem like it.” I waved towards my head again. “This locator power is fairly handy on its own, but it doesn’t help me in a fight.”
 
“Don’t underestimate it.” She leaned forward and lowered her voice conspiratorially. “I’m not supposed to say anything, but Max and Spark are drawing up a list of people and resources they think you can help us find. There’s missing people we haven’t confirmed are gone yet, but might just be captured. And there’s certain Relics and other resources we might be able to use that got lost behind enemy territory.”
 
I glanced to the tablet, then back at her. I picked up the device, then called up the obituary list, scrolling down to the MIA entries. I showed her the screen. “These people?”
 
She glanced it over, then looked to me. “Yeah, them. Did you try and find them already?”
 
I shook my head. “Nothing. None of them popped up. I thought maybe it was a range thing, but my intuition seems to go pretty far.” I paused. “Well, assuming it’s still accurate at an extreme distance. But no, no one on the list pinged off my radar.”
 
Her face fell a bit. “Oh.”
 
“I mean, I don’t know my limits, though. It’s possible they’re beyond my range, or something is interfering with the signal, somehow.”
 
She shrugged. “Then it still doesn’t help us, even if they are alive.”
 
I felt a little pang in my chest. I know I wasn’t supposed to be focusing on the negative, but it still made me feel like a failure. “I can try to find whatever else you guys got.”
 
“We’d appreciate that.”
 
<Alright, no more business talk. Save it for morning. Whatever there is to find will keep until then.>
 
“Sorry, Vi,” said Scorpina.
 
I tried to put it out of my mind. It was surprisingly easier than I expected, and I wondered if Violet was maybe nudging things to help me not fall into another depression spiral. She didn’t respond to my internal musing, though, and I opted not to push it. If she was helping me stay more emotionally stable, well, in this situation, I couldn’t consider it a bad thing. Unless, of course, my thinking that way was also her doing.
 
<Stop being paranoid> she chided.
 
<Sorry. I can’t help it. I am literally a bug under a glass with you guys right now.>
 
<I know. I’m handing you off to Esper now. Good night.>
 
There was another moment’s pause before I felt something like a rustling in my thoughts. <Hello, handsome!> came a feminine thought-voice, a bit huskier than Violet’s had been. Obviously I wasn’t hearing her words, but it seemed like a psychic’s default telepathic “voice” was close enough to their normal voice to be distinct from each other.
 
<Hi.>
 
<Whew. Dark in here.>
 
I mentally glowered at her. <Forgive me for not straightening up first.>
 
<No.>
 
<Whatever.>
 
<Testy, isn’t he?>
 
Scorpina chuckled, clearly included in the mental conversation. <He’s just skittish.>
 
<Clearly. Alright, I’ll quit pestering you.>
 
I waited for another moment, and she stayed silent. While I could understand their worries, I was beginning to feel rather suffocated knowing my mind was just open to these people, and they were not shy looking at everything. Even if I’d wanted to plot against them, they’d know it the second I tried literally anything.
 
“Okay then!” said Scorpina, clapping her hands together. “Let’s talk about something else!”
 
“Like what?”
 
“I don’t know. What’s interesting to you?”
 
“You guys have full access to my brain, you tell me.”
 
“The psychics aren’t linking all of us up to you, you know.”
 
Esper cut in. <We’re also not digging through everything all the time, we’re mainly monitoring your surface thoughts and emotional state.>
 
<But Violet did do a deep scan, right?>
 
<Not that deep, but yes, an initial broad scan was deemed necessary. Why? There something embarrassing in here you don’t want me to find?> A certain scene popped into my head unbidden. <Oh, my! You’re a dirty boy.>
 
<You’re welcome.>
 
Scorpina cocked an eyebrow at me, a mirthful gleam in her eye. Esper had probably included her in the convo again. “Dirty, eh? Are you a porn writer, or something?”
 
“Sometimes,” I admitted.
 
She leaned forward, grinning. “No kidding? Let me guess… you’re into femdom stuff?”
 
I winced a bit. “How’d you know?”
 
She chuckled. “It would explain a few of the weirder powers floating around out there. There’s specifically erotic magics that only ever seem to give women power over men, in some very specifically lewd ways at that.”
 
“I’d rather not go there right now.”
 
“Aw, why not?”
 
“That’s a rabbit hole of narcissistic degeneracy I am not willing to get lost in.”
 
“Tempting, though, isn’t it?”
 
“Yes. Now let’s change the subject.”
 
“Fine. Other than helping us out, what are your plans here? You want to try and be an author here, too?”
 
“I don’t see much point in it.”
 
“Why not?”
 
“Just like back on my world, it doesn’t seem to pay the bills. And even if it did, I have a very hard time actually writing anything.”
 
“Oh, there’s a few people who’ve managed to make it their day job.”
 
“I wouldn’t be one of them.”
 
“Is it really that difficult?”
 
I sighed. “I just… god, I’ve been through this conversation with people a thousand times, it feels like. I can come up with characters and worlds aplenty, but a compelling narrative that isn’t just the same schlock TV adventure plots I’ve already seen a million times? Nah. I like the idea of having a… uh… You know who Superman is?”
 
“Sounds like a really generic superhero.”
 
“There were a few other empowered adventurers and masked vigilante types in stories before him, not to mention folk heroes and mythological champions. But Superman was essentially the first character to embody the archetype of the modern superhero. He was the catalyst for an entire genre of fiction that’s defined a large part of popular culture in my country. Millions of writers have made tens of thousands of works based on the superhero genres, some cribbing directly off Superman, some branching off into their own ideas for costumed heroes. Around the same time, you had characters like Batman and Wonder Woman and Captain America, Submariner, the Flash, Green Lantern, etc, all coming out shortly after, and they also defined more archetypes. Then twenty years later, there was a new surge of hero types, and you’ve got, like, Spider-Man, the Hulk, the Fantastic Four, the X-Men. And then another twenty years later, you had these cartoons based on selling all sorts of toys, and that was technically its own branch of superhero fiction.
 
“The point is, millions of authors have tackled a million of these stories, and while my mind has always had a love for superheroes, I just… I dunno. If I wanted to read about the adventures of a random guy in a costume punching bad guys, I never had to write it myself. I could read any of the million comics, or watch any of the dozen shows about it. I never would have to write it myself.”
 
Scorpina shrugged. “Yeah, but it wouldn’t be the same, because it—”
 
“Yes, yes, I know, it would be my own characters, so it wouldn’t be the same. Jesus. That’s not the point.” A hot spike of annoyance shot through me. God, why was I even having this conversation? I could already set my watch to the responses I would get to every point I would make.
 
She frowned, and settled back into her seat a bit more. “Sheesh, alright. Sorry.”
 
I sighed and shook my head, waving her off. “No, no, you didn’t—sorry, it’s just I’ve had this conversation so many times, and I feel like I can never articulate my real feelings on the matter. It’s just, I like the idea of these types of characters, and I like most of the characters I’ve created, but when it comes to writing the adventures they go on, it just never felt fresh enough to hold my interest, or I just felt like I was painting-by-numbers. I’m not a guy who can just write what other people want, right? Like, I can’t do commissions, and I never like suggestions people give me, and I don’t want to just slog through a formula. I like the genre, but I’m over saturated by it, you know? I don’t feel I’ve got much to explore, or discover, and as such… I dunno.”
 
I made a searching-for-the-words gesture. “I make characters and worlds, but I just don’t have much I feel compelled to do with them. I like Superman. I’ve made Superman-esque characters. I couldn’t write a Superman story, because I’m not clever enough to come up with an interesting spin on him, I’m not a good enough writer to capture the character well, and I don’t want to just, you know, paint by numbers.”
 
She thought for a moment, then said, “Do you just like idea of having written, as opposed to actually writing?”
 
I scowled, but tried not to snap at her over it. It was a reasonable conclusion to come to. “No. I mean, maybe there is a little of that. I like the idea of characters who already have this long history of adventure, but I don’t want to have to write those, you know, hundred episodes of generic filler to flesh them out. I want to write the story that is the most interesting adventure they’ve gone on, or one that takes them past those filler plots. I just… I don’t actually have much of those kinds of stories in me, it turns out.”
 
“I see.”
 
“Let’s change the subject again. Every time I talk about this, I just put myself in a bad mood. And apparently that means I’ll go looking for a gun again if I let myself get too miserable.”
 
“Wouldn’t want that.” Scorpina held up the TV remote. “You want to watch a crummy B-movie and riff over it?”
 
I glanced at the television. That wasn’t usually my thing, but frankly, it felt better than working myself up with conversations that just spiraled back into my self-absorbed bullshit again. With a shrug, I said, “Yeah, sure.” We settled in to see what was on the digital tap.
 
 
TO BE REWORKED