Fiction Friday #11

Wade's World

We've been on this Earth for eighteen weeks now.

It's the longest we've been on one Earth since we started sliding.

It's almost like being home again. There's no plague killing massive numbers of people, no asteroid plunging toward the planet, no giant killer bee/spider things, and no Kromaggs. The world is peaceful enough. No one's chasing us. No one's aiming or firing any guns at us. No trouble of any kind, other than the usual political problems, but those don't effect me or the others.

The biggest difference I've noticed about this San Francisco is that there isn't a Golden Gate Bridge. It seems that when it was first being built, there was an earthquake that destroyed the early work. The state's tried to build a bridge there three more times since then and each time there was another quake. People here think the Gate's cursed. That makes everything more cramped in the city. Back home there were neighborhoods in the city with yards that circled the entire house. There aren't any homes like that here. Each building is built so close to the one next to it that they may as well be connected.

When we first got here, it was exciting. Finally we'd be able to live normal lives. We could get jobs. We could borrow books from the library and take our time reading them. We could take our time living because there was nothing to run from, nothing to frighten us.

Rembrandt found a gig singing at a nostalgia bar out in North Beach. Six nights a week he's on stage. Some times solo, sometimes with a three other guys, always singing the hits of Motown. He says he can't stand singing all those songs, but can't sing anything that he got famous for, if you believe one top fifty song while you're part of a singing group makes you famous; I think he really misses that world where he was the king of rock and role. I know he loves this job, though. He was born to sing and he'll do it on any world, especially the ones that haven't heard of The Crying Man because it gives him a chance to find fame again.

The Professor hasn't had the same sort of luck as Rembrandt has had. He thinks he should be able to walk up to any university, shout out his credential, and be handed tenure. So far, it hasn't worked out. He's been fired from two bookstores, a Wallgreens, the zoo, and a hot dog cart. (To be fair, he was fired from the last one for eating the profits.) He comes back to the hotel each night complaining about the idiots in this world, but I think he enjoys the complaining and if he couldn't complain he'd be frustrated and angry at us instead of the nameless multitudes.

Quinn got hired at a little fixit shop out in the Sunset. It's stuffy and dirty, but he has all sorts of things that he use so he can tinker with the timer. Early on, he spent a lot of time searching for his double here hoping that there'd be a complete sliding machine he could use to get us home. When his visited his address, he didn't found his house or his mom, but more squeezed buildings. Eventually, he tracked his double to an apartment in Berkeley. Apparently, this world's Quinn moved into an apartment with Conrad Bennish where they became so stoned they were eventually dropped out. The Quinn of this world could talk about alternate dimensions, but only in the way that burned people can, in that pseudo philosophical verbal babbling.

To say Quinn was disappoint would be like saying it's a long walk to Mars. He tries to hide it from us, his guilt. He smiles and he jokes, but whenever someone talks about home, his eyes tighten. He blames himself for our... predicament and he thinks he's the only one who can solve it. I wish he'd talk to me about it. I'm afraid that one day he'll break and we won't be able to put him back together.

Me? I found a job working as a techie for small architecture firm. They're just starting to move from all paper to a CAD system. Mostly, my job consisted of opening boxes, putting computers on desks, and installing the programs. My supervisor promised me that things would get more interesting once they got their network online--probably in the next six months--but for now, this was all I was going to do. I wasn't happy, though.

We've been to so many worlds where we didn't have time to meet people and make friends. We leave when we start to get to know people. The few, that we've brought through with us, leave at the next world. I wasn't sure I could stay at a job for several weeks, get to know, and like, the people I work with, and then leave, again.

Rembrandt saw how sad I was getting and understood. He told me to quit. He bought me charcoal and paint and brushes and paper and told me to capture moments in the city.

And that's what I've been doing for the last twelve weeks. I pick a spot in the city each day and draw or paint what I see. And I'm always sure to put in a person, or an animal--something that's in motion because that moving thing takes a still picture and turns it into the story. The ferry crossing from Marin, a woman chasing after the bus, or the sad buffalos in the park all tell a story about the city.

Tomorrow, we slide. I have to leave everything I've done here. It's okay, though. I feel like I'm leaving stories of this world behind. I just hope that the person who finds them takes a look before they throw them away. I'd like to think that they want some more tales about the city.