Astrid gagged at the smell of the air — why did the NeuroScape think that the eighth dimension had to stink? — took a deep breath even though she didn’t really want to, and hauled herself up and out of the window and sat her butt on the window-sill to get a better look at the creature. The wind blew through her hair, the heat from the laser was almost unbearable — and she had to shield her eyes from the light of the thing — but if she didn’t look directly at the laser, and instead looked away from it, she found she could behold the monster in all its awesome, terrifying glory.
It was a quarter-mile long, at least, and at least an eighth of that in diameter. Its spiny, curved legs were only about six inches in diameter at their sharp, pointy tips — the parts that had pierced the cabin of the car — but they widened and elongated to up to four feet in diameter as they traveled upward and became and joined its large, fleshy, grey-colored segmented body, and then disappeared into the joints that connected to its armor-plated outer shell. The car was minuscule in comparison to it, a toy that it had caught and intended to play with . . . or consume as a midnight snack. What the hell could they do against this thing? The laser wasn’t an option. It wasn’t moveable, or targetable; it only faced forward, one direction, and that was that. And they couldn’t shake it loose; it had them captive, not the other way around.
Damn. Without her usual powers, she felt naked and vulnerable; weak, and easy prey. But oh well. She had a mission, here. Best to get on with it.
Okay, she told herself. Repair the laser. Right. First, look up lasers . . .
She closed her eyes and accessed the NeuroScape’s database on laser technology. Thankfully she could still do that much! Information — smooth, cool, refreshing information; like drinking a tall glass of iced lemonade on a hot summer’s day — sluiced into her head and suffused her code with new, hitherto un-learned knowledge. Then, she decrypted Dizzy’s NeuroScape account — a trivial task, really — and accessed Dizzy’s blueprints for the Fangirl. Within a moment or two, she had a full working grasp of laser theory, laser engineering, and how to repair a broken laser — specifically, this one.
Okay, just don’t look at the huge fucking monster that has the car in its talons. Just don’t even think about it!
Astrid looked at the laser and squinted; it was hard to see the assembly properly, because of the blinding green glow of the beam. But she could see enough of it. And sure enough, right there on the side of it where the segmented, metal power cables snaked into it and disgorged a tangle of heavy-duty power-wires bolted with a set of copper screws, she saw the culprit: One of the wiring screws had come loose, and the frayed wire of the cable hung loose, its frayed ends brushing against the screw every so often, causing a volley of sparks to shoot out, right in time with the flickering of the laser beam. That was the problem: she had to somehow securely re-attach that wire to that screw and tighten it down so that the power flow would would remain constant, and thus so would the beam. The other problem: she had no means of insulting herself against the phenomenal amount of electrical current that was presently coursing through that wire . . . So she had to be extremely careful, unless she wanted to fry herself. The NeuroScape would obey its own logical rules right down to the letter, and she was no different than any other Avatar. If she touched that wire, it would electrocute and kill her.
Don’t look at the monster . . .
She licked her lips and flexed her fingers. she steadied herself on the windowsill, and gently let go of her hold on the car’s metal frame, freeing both hands. she had to watch her balance, or else he’d fall right off her perch. Dizzy must’ve realized this, because Astrid felt her reach over and grab onto her ankle from inside the car — which meant she was now flying one-handed. Astrid reached toward the laser and took out her toolkit and opened it, selecting a flat-head screwdriver. she put the toolkit down gently on the car’s roof, hoping it wouldn’t fly away or be vibrated off. she reached forward, her hand shaking — due to the movement of the car, and she tried; oh, how she tried not to look at the monster! — and the first time she tried to get the head of the screw under the screwdriver, she failed.
Careful! She scolded herself. Do not get it caught in the circuitry to the left or right of the screw, or you’ll cook yourself!
She didn’t get it on the second or third try either. And the fourth try, she brushed the circuitry, and her heart almost exploded from beating too fast. She swallowed a lump of raw nerves, closed her eyes, and took a deep breath. Okay. I can do this. She opened her eyes, and tried again.
Got it!
Just don’t look at the goddamn monster . . . Which she immediately did, and regretted it. The giant caterpillar undulated above her, its body-armor glistening, the probes it had stuck in the car causing the metal to buckle even further with a groaning sound. Inside the car, Dizzy cursed loudly.
Astrid loosened the screw, gradually pulling it back out of its connector just a few turns. Great. Now for the wire. She put the screwdriver back in the toolkit and went for her needle-nose pliers. Use ‘em as forceps. She got them out, and held onto the toolkit with her left hand, while with her right she reached forward and tried to nab the offending wire by the plastic sheath just below the frayed end. Again, she had difficulty aiming because the car beneath her kept bobbing and swaying in space. Finally, on the fifth try, she got it, and snatched it in the forceps. Thankfully! Careful to avoid bringing the wire anywhere near the circuitry — who knew what would happen if she did that! — she gently guided it toward the loosened screw. Careful, oh so careful. Sweat beaded on her brow. She used her left sleeve to wipe it off. God , this was intense. She tried to breathe deeply; in through the nose, all the way into her belly, inflating like a balloon . . . Then all the way out, deflating, out through the mouth. Then in . . . And out again. It helped. She guided the wire right beneath the screw’s head, and held it there, pressing it against the body of the screw. Then with her left hand, she shook the screwdriver loose from the toolkit — the toolkit promptly rattled free of the car’s roof and fell off, falling into the infinity of the Eighth Dimension — and tried to once more aim the flathead at the head of the screw without it going astray and winding up embedded in the circuitry to either the left or the right of it. She missed twice.
The monster roared and convulsed again, and flew up higher, taking the car and Astrid with it. She almost lost her perch on the windowsill and cursed, her hold slipping, the screwdriver almost slipping from her hand.
“No!” she cried, and caught it, and stuck the screwdriver back into the screw head, hitting it more by luck than anything else as the car dipped and swayed.
She began turning the screw. Righty-tighty, lefty-loosey, she had to remind herself, her mind in overdrive from the stress, her thoughts racing with anxiety despite the deep breathing. Righty-tighty, lefty-loosey.
Then the screw got suck.
“Oh come on!” she cried through gritted teeth.
She removed the screwdriver from the screw and closed her eyes, trying the deep breathing thing again. It helped — but only a little. She opened her eyes again, swallowed, wiped the sweat from her brow with her left arm — she still held the wire in place with her right arm and the forceps, and it was beginning to ache from being held in such an awkward and rigid position for over five minutes now — and tried again. She missed the screw on the first three tries. All around her, the Eight Dimension continued to self-destruct. The space around them was growing darker, the glow of the planets becoming brighter in the increasingly gloomy surroundings, the lightning bolts they threw off illumining the space even more so, the thunderclaps growing closer and louder as Dizzy continued to increase the boson density of the laser. It wouldn’t be long now before the interdimensional structures around them collapsed entirely.
She made it on try number four. She tried tightening the screw again. It didn’t want to move. So she applied more force. It still didn’t want to move. So she applied even more force. That time, it turned. She continued applying as much force as she could, forcing the thing to turn, and it did so — but slowly. The laser continued its steady — or mostly steady, now — glow as she did so, the power flow now restored so long as the wire’s contact with the screw was solid, but her right arm was now in serious pain, and she couldn’t keep this up for much longer. Thankfully, the wire was now secure once more.
All finished here. Just one more half-turn ought to make absolutely sure.
Suddenly, from inside the car, Dizzy screamed, “Astrid, look out!”
Astrid looked up from her work. In the distance, up ahead, screeching and cawing, here they came. A whole pack of them, and closing fast. They looked like small pterodactyls — or perhaps very thin velociraptors, only with large, papery wings — and their skin was a bright purple. They were headed right for the Fangirl, too, wheeling and gliding at them as they pitched and yawed in the air.
“Ah shit,” said Astrid. She unclipped the Disruptophazer from her belt, held onto the laser assembly with one hand — Jesus it was hot! — and aimed her pistol with her other. No use trying to shoot at the monster that held the car in its grasp; the Disruptophazer’s bolts would scarcely damage its armored hide; the NeuroScape had probably assigned it some ridiculously high “Armor Class.” But the attacking pterodactyls? Yeah, those she might be able to damage . . . if they didn’t do her some serious damage first.
A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
Within a few seconds, the Fangirl met the pterodactyls head-on, and Astrid started blasting at them before they could injure her with their claws and bony protrusions. She fired off at least a dozen shots but only a few of them hit home at the screaming creatures. She blasted a flaming hole in one of one’s wings, and dealt a fatal blow to another’s third eye; another one that got to close to her, she blew off its left leg. She cried out and covered her head with her arm as one of them flew too close to her and scraped the back of her neck with the bony horn that protruded from her head and another grazed her legs, and yet another swooped right beneath her, stirring the air with the swoosh of its gigantic wings. She continued blasting at them, though, despite the fact that they moved too fast and she missed a lot. There must have been at least twenty of the goddamn things! They came in waves. Dizzy kept bucking and swaying the car, engaging in evasive maneuvers, trying to avoid them. One of them crashed into the front of the Fangirl, head on, plastered to its front long-nose grill, its body making a sickening splattering and cracking noise as it landed there, its wings flapping uselessly out to either side of the car, its neck broken, its head lolling to one side stupidly. Astrid tried blasting at it with her Decimator pistol, but it was no use. The damned thing was stuck there, it seemed.
Then, there was a blinding flash of light that came from all around them, and one final clap of thunder; Astrid felt a sudden rush of heat from every direction, and —
They shot back out into normal reality again — thankfully! — the desert sands beneath them once more, and spun out and around in the air just in time to turn and see the Elder God scream out one final mighty roar — this time, a roar of pain, Astrid thought, as she stared at the scene from upside down — and then light up at the edges, a bluish electric aura forming around the giant creature, and then . . . It disappeared. The terrifying winged Elder God, in all its menacing glory, simply . . . vanished without a trace, into thin air, the sound of its cries dissipating into mere echoes.
“Hot-damn, we did it!” she heard Dizzy yell from inside the car. “We actually did it!”
“Huzzah for our side,” said Astrid. The blood had run to her head, and she now had a headache as well as a sore left arm. “Can we land the car now so I can get down?”
“Sure thing girlfriend!” cried Dizzy from inside. “Hang on!”
Dizzy glided the car down toward the ground, and landed her on the desert floor with a mechanical thud, and unceremoniously let go of Astrid’s ankle in the process, and she dropped to the desert sand, hands first, and did a half-somersault and landed on her back.
“Ow,” she said. That had hurt.
A moment later, Dizzy appeared above her, grinning. “We did it!” she exclaimed. “We killed the Elder God he was trying to put inside me!”
“Great,” groaned Astrid, as she got to her feet and dusted herself off. “But tell me one thing.”
“What?” said Dizzy, beaming.
“Why are you still here?”
“Huh?”
“Why are you still here, Dizzy? I mean, if you killed the Elder God he was trying to put inside you, then there isn’t any point to you being on this level of the simulation, is there? So, like, why haven’t you de-rezzed and disappeared and gone back to the previous level up, and opened your eyes there and awakened?”
“I . . . dunno . . .” said Dizzy, blinking as she apparently thought this through. “Unless . . .” She squinted, and then clenched her fists. “Unless he lied to me.”
“Hmm,” said Astrid. “He does do that. Ravenkroft, that is. He lies. A lot.”
“Yeah,” said Dizzy. “Unless he just trans-projected my consciousness into a decoy Avatar elsewhere in the NeuroScape . . . Ugh!” She stomped her foot. “I hate him! This was all a distraction! Do you realize that?” She grabbed Astrid by the shoulders. “Do you? It was! While the real action was — is — happening back in that laboratory! Ooh! That rat bastard! Okay. We have to stop him. We have to get to that laboratory, A-S-A-frakkin’-P. Any suggestions, Astrid?”
“Hmm,” she said, scratching her chin. “Well . . . we don’t exactly know where it is in relation to this Simulation. But luckily, I think I’ve gotta solution!”
Astrid reached into the bottomless depths of the pocket of her leather jacket — a “portable hole,” of sorts; she couldn’t thank that nice Mystikite guy for designing that “Roleplayer Generisys” module enough! — and pulled out her Portal Gun. A steampunk-themed ray gun, about two and a half feet long, with a wide glass barrel and with a large coil of thin, tightly-wrapped copper wire inside it, the glass pieces held together by golden rivets and brass fittings. Multiple wires and hoses protruded from the those, and snaked their way back along the glass barrel toward a large cube-shaped device on the butt-end, which looked like a six-sided, densely-packed circuitboard more “futuristic” in character. Protruding from the front end of the gun were two crossbow-like limbs, only made out of crystal, with several antennae-like wires in the shapes of bat-wing bones spreading out through them. The trigger mechanism had a series of four brass dials next to it, located on the back of the wooden grip, and tiny four digital readouts placed next to them. There were also two toggle switches mounted on the opposite side of the stock, labeled “OPEN” and “SEAL.”
“What in the name of — ?” began Dizzy. “Now that . . . I’ve never seen one of those. What the frell does that do? Make killer cappuccinos, keyword being ‘killer?’”
“Nope,” said Astrid. “It does this.” She aimed the gun at the space directly in front of them, flicked the switch to “OPEN,” and pulled the trigger. A purple blast of energetic goo shot out of the gun and then came to a halt in space a few feet before them, and melted in the air into a vertical-standing puddle, which then grew thin and translucent, and then became transparent . . . and there, on the other side, they beheld a hole in space that glowed at the edges and that hovered a few feet from where they stood in the Cathedral, just hanging there sideways in the air, waiting for them to jump through it. On the other side awaited a smoky series of shifting images, their destination unclear. Astrid felt the connection come online, much as a flesh-person might hear a random door being opened somewhere in their house, and would know for certain that it led to the front lawn. It led to a place she had hidden within the code of an abandoned simulation she’d managed to hack into and firewall-off from the rest of the NeuroScape. Yeah, for now, Astrid told herself.
“Ah, I see, said the blind girl,” said Dizzy. “Now where does this go, exactly?”
“It goes somewhere else,” said Astrid. “A protected memory space within the NeuroScape. He can’t track us there. It’ll buy us time to mount an assault on him, and a way back to where he has your Avatar — or its shell-pointer — held prisoner. We have to be quick, before he figures out what we’re doing and unleashes the Shadow-Wolves.”
“The Shadow-Wolves?” asked Dizzy. “That doesn’t sound too good. What are Shadow-Wolves?”
Astrid sighed. “The Shadow-Wolf NeuroScape virus — one of a very few of its kind — is artificially intelligent, and is insanely clever. Hell, it’s almost a synthetic intelligence in its own right, and I would know . . . I designed the fucker, once upon a time in the early days of my existence. It was a technical exercise that Father gave me, and believe me, I curse my own genius in passing that test with making the Shadow-Wolves the ultimate beasts of prey. They look sort of like a far more dire version of a Direwolf. They’ve got all black fur and glowing eyes, with a hunch-backed look to them, and each one stands about half as tall as your average person. They walked on all fours. Their snouts have powerful jaws that can snap the virtual bones in an avatar’s arm if they bite down on you hard and quick enough. They prefer to maul and gore their prey before consuming what remains of it. They’re nasty. I wish I’d never designed them. But yeah . . . if he unleashes those on us, we’ll have major trouble. That’s if he figures out that you’re consciousness isn’t presently being invaded by the Goat-Demon and that . . . alien thing in that virtual laboratory of his.”
“Well let’s just be sure that these ‘Shadow-Wolf’ things don’t catch up to us,” said Dizzy. “That sounds like a plan, right?”
“Yes, but just in case they do,” said Astrid, “I’ve planned ahead. I’ve hacked us together a couple of antiviral agents. While we’ve been talking, I kickstarted a side process in another processor thread that helped me put them together.” She reached into either pocket of her jacket once more — she really loved doing this; she had never gotten to impress anyone other than Father before — and pulled out the Shockwave Cannons she had designed. From the moment she had first designed the Shadow-Wolf virus, in her youth, she had known these would be a necessity, and so she had planned them from the beginning. It had been easy to sim-hack them together now. And now, she produced them for Dizzy: A pair of large, cannon-like ray guns, that had a definite “1960’s sci-fi film” flair to them: The stocks and grips were made of a shiny black plastic; the barrels were gleaming, silvery, elongated ellipsoids with coils of copper-tubing wrapped around them, and had glass spheres that sat on their butt-ends, filled with some sort of purple, glowing liquid. On their business ends, they had what looked like nozzles with spindles of wire wrapped around them. She continued: “These are my Shockwave Cannons . . . and no, sadly, they do not turn into giant robots or boom-boxes voiced by Frank Welker. They have the ’Magical Weapon,’ ‘Ranged Weapon,’ ‘Close-Quarters Mêlée,’ ‘Works Anywhere,’ and of course, the powerful ‘Esoteric Magic Damage’ flags all turned ’On’ by default. It does two-D-20 fire and four-D-20 lightning damage to as many as two NPCs or monsters at once. Whatever you do, don’t point it at me . . . safety protocols have been disabled. The good news is that before I came to you, I went and activated the RolePlayer Generisys plug-in system that that genius Mystikite developed, and scripted it to reboot itself in the event it got shut down for any reason. I then tied that back into the main NeuroScape metaphysics interface, lookup tables and all. In other words, Ravenkroft’s whole simulation is playing by the rules of Mystikite's Roleplayer Generisys modules . . . he just doesn’t know it, yet!” She giggled.
“You,” said Dizzy, grinning, “are a genius, Astrid. I like you. You’re devious and brilliant. So. We just jump through this Portal and we get taken to a place where we can mount an assault on him? And he won’t know it?”
“He shouldn’t, at first at least,” said Astrid. “But this is highly complex code we’re dealing with, and he could figure it out very soon. Any time now, really. So we have to be quick about this.”
“Right,” said Dizzy. “And these Shadow-Wolf things — “
“As soon as he figures it out, it’s almost a guarantee he’ll send them after us. And if they catch us — and if one of them eats you — you’ll become his prisoner all over again, twice as helpless and right back where you were, on that table, with that alien thing being downloaded into your mind.”
“Well I guess anything’s better than that,” said Dizzy. She sighed. “C’mon. Let’s get the frak outta here.” She walked back around to the driver’s side of the Fangirl, and got in. “You coming?” she said.
“Yup,” said Astrid. She got in the car and snapped on her seatbelt. “Let’s do this.”
“Oh well,” said Dizzy, as she revved the engine. “In the words of the Eleventh Doctor — ‘Geronimo!’” She took a deep breath and then punched the accelerator and peeled out, the car kicking up sand all around them as she sped through the Portal, the car vanishing into the shifting cascade of images.
