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Stories from the Verse
Con Verse Lea
Chapter 10: Beam 122
Table of Contents
Previous chapter: Hastings 235
“J.D.?”
Bron’s voice came from the other side of the curtain that filled the doorway and theoretically gave Beam and his new bride--what was her name? Oh, yes, Ashleigh, also known as Viper--some illusion of privacy. The light was off; he did not remember turning it off, but either the battery ran out or she got it. The cave was dark.
It came into his head that Ben Franklin was wrong about cats in the dark, but apparently he had other matters to consider. Making sure that Ashleigh was covered, he said, “Come”. Bron was shadowed by some distant ambient light in the passageway.
“Hate to disturb you, but any idea what we’re going to eat?”
“Ask,” he started, then stopped. Sophia was gone; Ashleigh had dispatched her to another world, so that there would be no impediment to marrying him. “Never mind, I’ll ask.” He gently prodded the naked girl under the blanket beside him. “Dear?”
She awoke somewhat perky. “Good morning, my emperor,” she said. He smiled at that. “Did you want to do more of that being married?”
“Well, yes, but,” he said, interrupting her lunge toward him, “we have a problem.”
“A problem?”
“Normally we travel with plenty of food and drink. The problem is that Sophie is responsible for that, and when you dispatched her she took it with her.”
“What?”
“She took all our food and drink with her.”
“She can’t have taken it with her. You can’t take it with you when you die; everyone knows that.”
“That’s true for most people, but we’re a bit different from most people. We don’t really die; we get sent to another universe where we continue our lives as the same people in a new place. And we take our belongings with us. If you stay with us, you’ll become one of us, and the same thing will be true of you. But right now, all our food went with Sophia to another world, and we’re going to need something to eat.”
There was silence; Beam tried to peer through the darkness. Finally Ashleigh spoke.
“You’re joking, right?”
Yeah, he almost wished it were a joke. Of course, being alive in this crazy verser existence was better than being dead back home.
“Sorry, love. I’m afraid it’s true. Probably worse news, assuming you stay with us we’ll almost certainly catch up with Sophia somewhere, and she is going to be a bit upset, probably with all of us, certainly with you. Anyway, what have we got to eat?”
The light came on, somewhat dimly illuminating the small cave in which they had spent the night. Ashleigh was still covered by the blanket; Beam was not. He availed himself of the light to find his pants, which he had by well-practiced habit dropped alongside the bed where he could easily find them and don them. He added shoes to this as she talked, and was soon standing.
“We don’t eat here,” she said. “We store some of the rice, but we don’t build fires in the caves or cook anything here.”
Rice. Right. That seemed to be the staple of the diet.
“I’ve never done any cooking magic,” Bron said. “I think Sophie could do something in that vein, and maybe Bob can create heat.”
Beam shook his head. “There isn’t enough psionics in this world for Bob to send us his thoughts,” he said, “or enough magic for you to read them. We’re going to have to find something to cook, build a fire, and do this the old fashioned way. And,” he added, “we don’t have any pots or pans; we’ve always relied on what we found wherever we went. We might be a bit stuck here.”
“Stuck?” Bron queried.
“No,” Beam said. “Not stuck. We just have to think this through. Viper, when you came here last night you obviously were not expecting to marry me, and you undoubtedly were expecting to eat at some point. What would you have done had I not interrupted you?”
“I would have become--” she stopped. It took Beam a moment to figure out why.
“Sorry, dear, you’re not going to be able to keep your secret identity secret from the group. Bob undoubtedly already knows more about you than you know about yourself, and Dawn isn’t likely to give away your secrets. I trust Bron, and he’s going to figure it out quickly enough anyway.”
She seemed to be processing this for a moment, then continued. “I would have become Ashleigh, and slept at home last night, where my mother would have fed me.”
“Sounds good to me,” Beam said, offering a hand to the girl. “Bron, get everyone packed, we’re moving out. It’s time for us to meet my inlaws.”
There is a behind-the-writings look at the thoughts, influences, and ideas of this chapter, along with twenty other sequential chapters of this novel, in mark Joseph "young" web log entry #460: Versers Reorganize. 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:
