Patreon or PayPal Me keeps this site and its author alive. Thank you. |
Stories from the Verse
Multiverser: The Thirteenth Story
Chapter 34: Beam 207
Table of Contents
Previous chapter: Brown 375
Passing through a dozen balloon rooms and tunnels, separated by plastic doors with different colored handles, Beam and his entourage went with their single guide. It occurred to him that he could very easily escape. These people had a sort of unquestioning belief in The Rules that would make a D&D Paladin seem like a wavering and weak believer in his gods. He was supposed to go with the single guard guide, and as a Law of Nature he would. He had no other choice, or so they saw it.
The whole thing was rather amusing in its way, and so when he came to a door with a violet enclosing circle, and a different purple inside it, and a yellow inside it, all the way to red, in a reverse of the order for a rainbow, he was not surprised. In a world of white and cream, the little dashes of color meant a lot.
"This is the door to the attending vibgyor," the officer said, half-bowing to the door.
Sophia snickered, and Bron and Beam joined her. The officer glared at them, and his hand reached for his Styrofoam sword. Beam raised an eyebrow, and touched with one finger the rifle he had put up. The officer subsided looking unhappy. Then he brightened.
"The vibgyor will set you straight." It sounded exactly like 'my older brother will beat you up', and Bron and Beam snorted scornfully.
"Open and announce me. I am the Emperor Beam."
The officer did, and opened the door. He spoke.
"Great vibgyor, the Emperor Beam and his group of strangers wishes to see you about going outside."
"I'm aware. Thank you, Hendriks. You can go back to your regular duties." The officer, whom they now knew as Hendriks, gave them a 'you're in trouble now' look as he rushed off. Smiling, Beam walked in, preceded by Dawn.
A man in a pale white silk tunic sat behind a Styrofoam desk. He seemed composed and alert. The balloon room was quite large, and had trees, grass, and flowers inside it.
"Sir, he has an energy weapon, sir," Dawn reported. She took a position to flank the man. He turned and studied her.
"You re a curious creature. What are you?"
"I am Dawn Prototype--" Beam raised a hand.
"I think I ll ask the questions here," Beam interrupted.
"And what is this?" He looked at Bob. "Clearly inhuman. The sound recorders did not lie when the others called him an 'abomination'. Of course, they don t understand better."
Emotions are dull. Mind active.
Beam nodded. The man bothered him on a level that the others had not. He was clearly used to using power, and emotionally manipulating others around him. Yet that was not it. It reminded him of back in the day when he was in high school on Earth. Pig. No. Uh. Hog. Hogarth, yes. Blaine Hogarth. He had been a fellow student in high school who was later apprehended by the police for being a serial killer.
He had the same lack of effect, the easy charm, and command, and the spider legs skittering on windowpane feeling. Beam's throat went dry. He had looked into Blaine's eyes one time when the guy had dropped his mask. It had been like looking into the Abyss.
Bob.
Agree. Sociopath.
Pass it on to the others, Bob.
Everyone around him stiffened.
Ashleigh wants to know if she should shoot him in the head. She's behind him.
Yes.
"Ahem, before you do something irrevocable, I should let you know I have a dead man s switch."
"It will kill us all? Beam shrugged. He'd died before. The vibgyor's eyes widened.
"You lot are utterly fascinating. I'd love to peel you apart and see what makes you tick." His voice was dry, and his eyes had brightened with fervid interest. "But no. If I die, the world dies. I ll burn down the whole city. The whole lot, the children. All of them. I am God. When God dies, the universe dies."
"You re not God," Sophia spat out, and her hands sheathed in flames. Beam was not any type of good believer in a God or gods, but he was willing to believe in a devil.
"More secrets. I heard you arrive, and your husband speak of fire, but now I understand. So utterly fascinating. Now--" The vibgyor clearly was about to make a demand to which Beam felt sure he could not agree. So he stalled and interrupted the man.
"What is all this?" He waved at the walls and the ground. The vibgyor looked annoyed at being interrupted, but Beam's confident smirk set him back. Besides, Beam could tell that the man loved to hear himself talk.
"Well, why not? In the old calendar, it's 2316 Common Era. We, my kind, had been persecuted through time, for millennia."
"I wonder why," Beam observed dryly.
"Yes, I agree." The sociopath cheerily and apparently sincerely agreed. "We found a confluence of events. High enough technology that we did not need a large population to keep high tech going, rampant fears forcing people inside, and a great new tolerance and indeed preference for the unusual. In the end, the people feared excessive pollen. My ancestors built the balloons, and created weather control to make the air stable enough not to destroy the balloons, and the People willingly went inside them. After we culled about ninety percent of the population with a bio plague, that is."
He grinned widely at their shock, and smirked when Bron murmured.
"I'm going to put my hammer through his skull, Beam, I swear."
Beam raised a hand. His eyes were cold. The vibgyor was already dead, he decided.
"The balloons let light through, and we built emotion regulators after we stopped using crude drugs to control people. Those we needed to be smart, we crippled with mental problems. Everyone else, we made them dull of emotion so they would not think hard or act. When we have certain needs, we cull a few. If anything goes wrong, like a century ago when some machines began to break down, we give them a little freedom, let them get smart, hardworking, fix the problem, and then cull most of the fixers. Got to keep the genes for fixing stuff around but under control."
"I see. And I suppose sometimes, now that you've arranged the world to perfectly suit sociopaths, that sometimes things get a little dull. And here we come, prancing along. Unregulated. Full of strange powers and weird notions, and you're just salivating at the prospect of some new people to dissect."
"You're very smart, Emperor Beam," the sociopath said admiringly.
"O.K., Bron," Beam said as he pronounced judgment, and dropped his hand. With a wide grin, Bron began walking forward.
"Wait, you can"t, I have a deadman's switch."
"Do you?" Beam smiled thinly. The man threw a switch under his desk, and nothing happened.
"See, there is a girl behind you. She's very quiet. And the weird 'abomination" well, he s telepathic. He can tell the quiet one to cut the wires."
The sociopath leapt to his feet and reached for his pistol. His hand came up empty from the holster. Ashleigh tossed the bulbous energy pistol over his head to Beam who caught it, sweating a bit, resolving to explain to Ashleigh later that throwing energy pistols was bad form. But that was for later.
He turned it on the man.
"Looking for this?"
"No-o-o!!"
"Oh, yes," Bron said as he brought his hammer up for the first strike. It took several minutes for the sociopath to die as Bron did not go for a head strike first. Beam stayed for it as he wished he could have done the same to Blaine Hogarth back on Earth before the man had started on his career of vicious mayhem. After Bron was done, he cleaned off his hammer, and left the room to join the two ladies who had left earlier.
"Bob, mealtime."
Beam left the room, and Bob enjoyed his meal of fresh brains. It was his meal of choice, and he wondered why the others could not get over their ill-conceived prejudice--but more for me, he happily told Beam telepathically.
As to the old stories that have long been here:
