Chapter 69 Back to the Egg Room
Everything
to be imagined is an image of truth. – William Blake
And
she was back in the Egg, back in the Egg room again.
“Looks
like we’ve got another Marie incoming,” said Jenkins again.
“Lovely timing,”
Wally said again. “Somebody get up on
the fucking battlements with the AR15!”
She
heard gunfire through the thick stone walls of the castle as the Egg
opened. There were Jackie and Jenkins
looking at her with some small surprise.
“Seriously,”
said the other voice, “She’s here, you’re done…take the fucking machine gun and
get up on the battlement. Barry can’t
hold them off all by himself. Rian and I
can handle Marie.”
Once
again Wally tossed the weapon to a dazed Jackie. This time Marie noticed that Shellborne took the
AR15 with a horrified dread that she hadn’t noticed before.
“Why
the hell am I back here again?” Marie asked.
“Again?”
Jenkins questioned quizzically. “You’ve
just now arrived.”
“Have
you had other Maries came this morning?”
“Just
ours, and she died like three minutes ago.” Wally answered in anger, not at her
question, but at the loss of his friend.
“Fuck!”
said Marie, “I just left a very similar situation.”
“In
your dimension?” Jenkins asked.
“No,
one more similar to this one, but with a couple of obvious differences….last
time you had had three visiting Maries, or your versions did, and their Marie
had died five minutes before I got here.”
“Indeed.”
Noted Jenkins.
“Why
didn’t I go back to my own universe after the last time?”
“That
is odd,” agreed Wally. “All the Maries
we’ve encountered or heard tell of from our other version colleagues, always
went right back after travelling, always.
But, I must say, you picked a bad time to come a-visiting.”
Gun
shots from semi and automatic weapons punctuated his sentence with dramatic
flair outside and above them.
“Did
you eat anything in another dimension before you jumped? It would must have been a very similar one…I
would think,” asked Jenkins.
“No,
after Portugal I went right back to my universe.”
“How
do you know it was your universe?” the professor asked.
“Well,
it seemed just like it. Everybody was
the same, the time was right, there was no difference.”
“There
was no difference that you noticed is what you’re saying. How long had your people been working with
you?”
“Just
a few trips, we just started before, Wally here, threatened us, so we jumped
into gear fast.
…oh, yeah, sorry in my
universe…you’re the bad guy.”
He
shrugged, “I’m sure you’ll find plenty of ladies in this universe to agree with
that assessment, but here Stan Wukowski is the Toxie agent.”
“So
they were new to it, you were new to it, and it never occurred to any of you
that it might not have been your universe of origin. It probably wasn’t.”
“But
Chandler said that if I ate anything I would be stuck in that universe until it
passed through me.”
“Who?”
“Chandler. You guys don’t have a Chandler?”
“Not
that we know of.”
“Wait,
but didn’t you start this whole project to be reunited with your family on
Earth 2 from the Ongs Hat Cult?” Marie asked.
“Ongs
Hat?” Jenkins looked curious. “Never
heard of it, and I don’t have a family, here or anywhere else.”
“Fuck! What the fuck is going on!” Marie was exasperated.
“Well,
the food thing is generally true, Mike told us about that. But, you seem to be some sort of exception
for some reason, but I imagine the food keeps bringing you back to very similar
universes.”
“Okay…think
Marie…think” she commanded herself, “Did your Marie meet the other Marie that
came through?”
“Yes, she
had a chance to meet our Marie before she jumped between worlds again…and all
shit broke loss here and Stan came with his army of infected and begin this
siege…which from the sounds of lack of machine gun fire from our battlements,
I’d say is about over. We started
getting readings that an Egg was coming right after Marie, our Marie died.”
“Okay,
okay…”
Wally said,
“Look I’m going to see if I can’t hold them off a little longer, to see if you
two can’t figure something out. Good
luck, Marie.” And he ran out of the Egg
room.
“So…uh…”
Marie asked Jenkins, “Why did you start this project if you hadn’t heard of
Ongs Hat? What got you interested in
interdimensional travel?”
“I’m not
particularly interested in interdimensional travel. My interest lies in the interstitial
transdimensional boundary. My interest
is the Simulation Hypothesis?”
“The
what?” But hardly had the words come out
of her mouth than she was gone.
copyright 2017 Diana Hignutt
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