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Stories from the Verse
Re Verse All
Chapter 138: Beam 111
Table of Contents
Previous chapter: Takano 53
The night passed without disruption, and Beam brought everyone to one of the diner type restaurants for breakfast so he could get his over easy eggs still hot and fresh alongside scrapple, bacon, and hash browns. He was sipping his black coffee when Dawn spoke.
“Sir,” she said, and waited for his acknowledgement as always. Generally, though, if Dawn wanted to say something, it was probably important.
“Yes, Dawn?”
“The other versers are almost directly overhead and are likely to cross our path today.”
“Other--” Beam started, and then realized that since he rarely relaxed and when he did he was surrounded by his own team, there could easily be other versers out there whose presence he had simply not noticed. He focused now on trying to relax. Indeed there was that sense, that he was supposed to meet someone, and it was at this point not quite directly overhead.
“You said ‘versers’, plural,” he said, feeling only the one sense.
“Yes, sir.”
Right. He should be used to it by now, that Dawn would answer questions but didn’t usually fill in gaps if you didn’t ask.
“What makes you think there’s more than one?”
“Sir, they have been moving for quite some time, sir, but as they have gotten nearer sometimes they have separated into two distinct vectors, still very close together but distinguishable.”
Of course, James realized, in contrast to himself Dawn was always relaxed even when she was in the midst of combat, and they had not had a fight for quite some time, so she probably has been aware of the other versers for quite a while. She wouldn’t have mentioned it because of course it wouldn’t occur to her that he didn’t sense them.
“Other versers?” Sophia said. “What are we going to do?”
James tried to look thoughtful for a moment. He knew what they were going to do, but didn’t want to appear hasty when he said so. Then he answered.
“We’re going to continue on our trek.”
“But the other versers?”
“We know nothing about them. They presumably know as much about us. We have met maybe half a dozen other versers, and have reason to believe that there are hundreds, maybe thousands, out there. Unless there’s something we don’t understand about this versing stuff, the odds are pretty much against it being someone we know. Probably they sensed us here, and decided that finding us was their best option, because we might know something they don’t. Maybe they know something we don’t. For the moment, we continue upward and see if they meet us. If they do, we deal with it; if they don’t, we keep going to reach the surface. After all, what matters ultimately is that we get everyone out of here before the computer starts poisoning the food and sending the robots after us. Just like that Lotus guy we just met, the people along the way, even the versers, are not important.”
With that, the white-haired man rose from the table, gulped down the end of his coffee, and started toward the ramp to reach the ninth level for lunch.
There is a behind-the-writings look at the thoughts, influences, and ideas of this chapter, along with five other sequential chapters of this novel, in mark Joseph "young" web log entry #405: Versers Converge. Given a moment, this link should take you directly to the section relevant to this chapter. It may contain spoilers of upcoming chapters.
As to the old stories that have long been here:
