The Minotaurs of Maze World Read online

  Jason stared at it for a moment, then the terrible smell of its burning body invaded his nose. He looked up in alarm when some of its burning goop made a panel of his old, wooden overhead door burst into flames.

  "Shit!" Jason cried, immediately running for an old wool army blanket he had stacked up against one wall with various shooting range gear. He rushed over to the garage door with the blanket and snuffed out the small fire.

  The gently burning bug-thing smelled terrible.

  Jason looked back to Riley, who stood leaning against the wall near the doorway. The soldier smirked and scratched his dark beard then returned his blaster to its holster.

  "I told you to be careful," Riley said, walking up with easy grace. Gliath followed, almost too large for the doorway, big and black and sleek like a blend of a panther and a seven-foot-tall barbarian.

  Jason scowled down at the burnt-up bug creature then gave it an experimental kick with the toe of his boot. The creature was unexpectedly dense and hardly moved. No wonder he hadn’t hurt it with the shovel.

  "What the hell is that thing?!" Jason asked, looking down.

  "Eh ... I dunno," Riley replied, crouching down close to it as if he was as limber as a kid. "Some kind of weird bug. What universe did you rift to?"

  Jason picked up the OCS that had been hanging at his side. Looking at the screen, he couldn’t tell.

  "I ... I don’t know how to tell. Is there some sort of history or something on this thing? Whatever was open before is closed now."

  "Scan the bug," Riley offered.

  "How?"

  "Lemme see..." Riley said, holding his hands out for the OCS. Jason unstrapped the device from his body and handed it over. The soldier scrutinized the screen for a few moments, dragging one calloused finger over the screen as he flipped around through the data. "I don’t really know how to ... um ... you had this thing set to the ninth? No wonder you let some weird fruking thing through." He looked up at Jason. "Hey, I might not have told you, but once you break the surface of a rift, it becomes visible on the other side, and it’s a two-way portal, you know?"

  "So that bug-thing...?"

  "Yeah, that nasty fruker saw your rift and just flew on through I reckon? You’ve gotta be careful. There’s some crazy shet out there..."

  Jason crossed his arms and ran a hand through his hair. He expected to feel his longer dark-blonde hair in his fingers and it surprised him to feel it so short. After all of that crazy survival shit in the Wilderlands, there was no way he’d be able to get all of the tree sap, bark chunks, bug pieces, and other crap out of his hair. The clippers had been the way to go...

  "So," Jason said, "What about scanning?"

  Riley nodded, aiming the OCS at the dead bug. He pressed a button on the side of the device.

  The Omniversal Cosmic Scanner didn’t make a noise, but Jason knew that something happened because he saw the light of something popping up on the screen reflected in Riley’s dark eyes. The soldier looked down at the screen.

  "Unknown," Riley said. "I guess you opened a rift to a universe that Jason 113 never catalogued."

  "Great..." Jason replied, looking down at the foul-smelling, charred bug again.

  Stupid, he thought. This was no way to learn. And Riley didn’t seem all that inclined—or able—to teach him much about so-called rifting. Jason had a feeling that he was on his own for the most part. Riley and Gliath were apparently just the hired muscle of the Reality Rifters. It was Jason Leaper 113 who knew how to manipulate the OCS and the portals, and Jason 47 before him. Now, all that remained of the Reality Rifters was a smirking mercenary gunslinger and his shapeshifting leopardwere companion. And now him—Jason Leaper 934.

  He took the OCS back from Riley and sighed...

  Chapter 2

  Jason wasn’t a physicist like the other versions of himself. And he wasn’t an adventurer either. Not yet.

  Hopefully, he wouldn’t get Riley and Gliath killed trying to fill the role of his predecessors.

  The OCS was chock-full of information—Jason knew that he had barely even scratched the surface of it. The thing was like an encyclopedia. It reminded him a little of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, except this wasn’t a comedy. One false step, and he could end up in a universe where their air was mercury, or the world was the stomach of a giant monster; who knows? And Riley and Gliath ... they expected him to just figure it out. They wanted to get right back to monster hunting.

  Jason knew that he could get it. He was smart and knew computers. He knew machines. He just ... needed time.

  He looked down at the OCS. Why did using the ninth dimension send him to a weird world with killer bugs instead of opening a portal to another garage on another normal Earth? Wasn’t he supposed to use the ninth to go from one universe to another?

  It was so confusing. Riley had mentioned ten dimensions. Jason didn't have a clue how they worked, or how they worked together...

  Jason used the shovel to pick up the dead, smoking bug. It must have weighed at least fifteen pounds! He carried the disgusting body to his trash tote and dumped it inside as Riley followed and raised the lid for him with a smirk. Then, Jason hung the shovel up on the wall again.

  "Riley," Jason said. "There’s a lot of stuff in this OCS—all written in there by the other Jasons, right?"

  The cyborg nodded. "Mostly from 113. There's some from others."

  "From 47?"

  "No. Jason 47 had his own OCS."

  "But I thought you said that Jason 113 and Jason 47 both had this one..."

  "Nah," Riley replied, scratching his beard. "Jason 47 brought us to 113 when he had ... his accident ... and had to retire for a while. Jason 113 already had one. There are infinite Jasons, and maybe infinite OCS's. Their databases are all different. You've been looking through notes?"

  "Yeah. There’s a lot. It’s really confusing. I’ve been trying to learn about the different dimensions but it’s kind of ... mind-boggling? Like—I get that the fourth is time, but I’m not sure about the fifth and the sixth. There’s an analogy about an ant and a fly inside a garden hose, but I’m not sure about the difference between the fifth and the sixth. And then there's the seventh, eighth, and ninth...? I have no idea how those fit into the others! I set what I guess is like a bookmark to here in the garage, but I don’t really understand if it's coordinates for this place, or this time, or..."

  Jason trailed off, suddenly feeling the weight of the responsibility that Riley expected of him. He felt his face turn hot and felt a conflicting mix of embarrassment and anger. He felt like he should be smart enough to figure this out, but was angry that he was expected to just get it automatically as if he was Jason 113, the seasoned planeswalking adventurer...

  Feeling a hand on his shoulder, Jason snapped out of his broiling fugue. He looked up to see Riley smirking—no, more like smiling—warmly through his short, scraggly beard.

  The soldier sighed. "Jason 934," he said. "I get it. It’s a lot. Jason 113 sent us to you for a reason. I reckon he knew that you were ... um ... inexperienced, but he did it anyway."

  "I never saw the guy. I never met Jason 113."

  "Of course not," Riley replied. "He wouldn’t have—"

  "Maybe he just sent you here because of the portal to the Wilderlands in my backyard."

  Riley smirked—that time it was an actual smirk—and he shook his head. "That might have been part of it, sure. It’s starting to look like a permanent rift to that universe is really valuable. But still, Jason 113 must have had some kind of faith in you. He had to believe that you’d be able to figure this rifting shet out, or this would have been pointless."

  "How do the dimensions work, Riley? This is really confusing..."

  Riley sighed and looked over Jason’s shoulder at Gliath, who stood by silently behind the man. Jason looked over his shoulder and saw the Krulax’s big shadowy form. The yellowish-green eyes were impassive and revealed nothing.

  "I can tell you as I understand it," Ri
ley said. "But remember: I’m a soldier, not a physicist. Let’s get some beers..."

  The three of them headed inside. Gliath closed the door behind them.

  "Get me a red, will ya?" Jason said, seeing Riley heading to the kitchen. He walked into the living room and sat in his armchair.

  "Sure. Which one is that?"

  "Laughing Lab."

  Zelda, Jason’s little calico cat—mostly white with an orange-brown patch over part of her face—was curled up sleeping on the couch. Gliath followed Jason into the living room, walking across the room to a corner, where he shifted. It still surprised Jason whenever he saw it: the transformation was as quick as taking a long, deep breath. The massive, bipedal werepanther-like form of Gliath shrank down—within his harness of armor and gear—until the impressive creature was suddenly a still-respectably-large natural-looking black leopard, slinking out from his harness’s shoulder straps a moment later wearing nothing but fur.

  Jason realized that he was staring. He saw the panther’s yellowish-green eyes meet his as it strode across the carpet, an honest-to-God normal-looking black leopard. Gliath was a big leopard—maybe two hundred pounds or so—but still a lot smaller in this form than he was as a hulking bipedal hybrid. Gliath left his armor and gear in a pile where he’d changed shape; it lay like a shucked snakeskin. As the panther walked back and forth through the room in front of Jason, the man felt a stirring of something primal in him—perhaps the valid fear of a great cat pacing right in front of him and his chair...

  What had Riley called Gliath? A Krulax? Krulaxian? Gliath was more of a cat that could turn into a person than a person that could turn into a cat.

  Jason heard the hisses of two beers opening in the kitchen and the tinks of their bottle caps being discarded. A moment later, Riley returned and handed Jason a red ale. The soldier promptly sat down on the closest end of the couch, leaning forward and watching Gliath for a moment.

  As soon as Riley sat, the big cat strode over, slinking between the couch and the coffee table. Gliath reached out with his big, black snout to Zelda, giving her a little sniff. Jason’s cat stirred, stretched, and climbed up onto the couch arm as if making room. Then Gliath ponderously leaped up onto the couch with a deep, growling huff that made Jason’s guts tingle. He curled up with his massive, sleek haunches resting against Riley’s hip.

  Riley smiled and patted the big panther’s side, letting his hand settle into his fur.

  Gliath descended into a nap and little Zelda found a spot on the cushion where she could curl up next to him.

  "Okay," Riley said after taking a sip. "So ... the ten dimensions..."

  "Yeah," Jason said with a sigh. "There’s a lot of stuff in the OCS about String Theory and other stuff I’ve heard about before—I was in college majoring in Physics for just a semester before I dropped out because of the plane crash—but it’s like ... information overload. I’m not connecting the lines with the ... um ... practical application of the ten different dimensions."

  "Alright," Riley replied. "So ... my world teaches quantum physics and interdimensional travel in school—I was just a year from graduating when the Concord discovered it and started changing everything. I learned about Everald’s Many Worlds Interpretation, and—"

  "Don’t you mean Everett’s Many Worlds...?"

  The soldier ran his fingers through his beard and took another sip of beer. "In my world it’s Everald. Anyway, that stuff changes all the time the more they learn, but Jason 47 explained dimensions in a way that made a lot more sense to me. He said that it’s just a way to visualize it. Says it’s hard for us to stretch our heads around it all—really cooks your egg, you know? But it goes like this. Ready?"

  Jason took a drink of his beer. The hops were bitter and fresh-tasting. Malty. Great. He looked over and saw that Gliath and Zelda appeared to be snoozing soundly, snuggled up against each other on the couch. Riley was idly petting the panther’s side.

  "Alright, shoot," Jason said.

  "Okay," Riley said, "the first dimension is just a line, right? From point to point. The second dimension is when you add another degree of movement and now you can work with flat shapes: rectangles, triangles; whatever. They’re flat. They move along the X and Y axes."

  "Yep."

  "Then, when you add the third dimension, it’s another right angle; it’s another axis. You’ve got depth. The circle becomes a sphere. The square is a cube."

  "That’s where we live. The third dimension," Jason replied.

  Riley shook his head. "No, not exactly. The third dimension is just a space. You don’t actually live in it. We exist in the third while moving along the fourth. We live in both. Being in just the third dimension would be like ... just being in a single Planck frame. It’s more like ... we're physically in the third, but our perception and existence is depending on the fourth—ah, I’m getting ahead of myself. Anyway, the third is another dimension of depth, okay? Now the fourth..."

  "The fourth is time," Jason said. "I know that."

  Riley smirked and leaned back. "You want me to tell you Jason 47’s way or not?"

  Jason sighed and took a long draught of beer. "Sorry."

  "The hose, ant, and fly thing is just one way that people explain the fourth, fifth, and sixth," Riley said. "I realize that this all mighty confusing until you get the big picture. So, let’s back up a little bit, and group the dimensions into a certain way of seeing things..." He took a drink. "So think of the first, second, and third as a group. The first is a line, the second lets you move sideways, and the third with depth, right?"

  "Okay."

  "Now, imagine the fourth, fifth, and sixth in their own group too, all involving temporal shet. A line, sideways, and up and down—depth. We physically exist in the third dimension, but we perceive the fourth, moving along that line—a line like in first dimension, okay?"

  "The fourth dimension is like a line."

  "Moving forward—for us anyway—in one direction, toward entropy. Destruction. Decay."

  "How do you move sideways or up and down through that? What’s it mean to move sideways through time?" Jason asked, kicking his feet up onto the coffee table. It was amazing that his bad knee didn’t hurt anymore. Somehow, the time he'd spent in the Wilderlands cured the permanent injury that had plagued him for the last fifteen years. It wasn't permanent anymore.

  "That’s the fifth and the sixth: whatcha call probability space. The sixth is also called phase space," Riley said. "In this multiverse, there are infinite parallel universes shooting off from every decision—every fork in every path—like branches in an infinite tree going off forever..."

  "So ... when you’re in the fifth dimension," Jason said, "you can jump around to different worlds based on those forks in the path?"

  Riley smirked. "Oh, no, man, you wouldn’t want to be in the fifth dimension. That would be fruking crazy. You—Jason with your OCS—you just use the fifth as a doorway ... if you wanted to for some reason. If you were actually in it? That’d be some crazy shet. You would be all possible paths all at once—it would drive you insane. But yeah, if you wanted to access a universe where you made a different decision, as long as you’re still in the same logical pathway—not like going to another version of 934 where ... for example ... dinosaurs never went extinct—you’d use the fifth."

  "Why would I want to use the fifth dimension?"

  Riley took another drink. "Well, you could use it for emergencies—like if something bad happened with one of our jobs—or use it to find another similar place for some reason, like if this universe got all fruked up and we needed a new place to go to. It’s kind of like hopping to alternate versions of here where everything is almost the same. Or, kind of like time travel, but also kind of not. Time travel has some really weird shet associated with it. It’s not like you would think..."

  "And the sixth," Jason said, "up and down ... the depth ... what’s the difference?"

  "You can use the fifth to go up and down the same bran
ches, following the same logical path, right? The sixth lets you access anything that’s not in the same logical path."

  "Like Colorado with dinosaurs still being alive?"

  "Yeah, like that. Imagine like ... I dunno ... something really different that’s never been that way since before you were born. Like ... humans coexisting with lizard people."

  "Like the cannibals on the Wilderlands?"

  "Whatever," Riley said. "Now, you can’t use the fifth to go somewhere where humans coexist with lizard people. It’s not in the same logical chain, right? But you could use the sixth to get there."

  "Line, sideways, and up and down," Jason replied. "I think I get the ant and fly in the garden hose analogy now."

  Maybe, he amended in his mind. It was still really confusing...

  "Yep," Riley said, drinking more beer. He scratched his beard.

  "And the higher dimensions?"

  "They're simple if you look at it in the same way. It’s another group. Seven, eight, and nine go together in the same pattern. But where the temporal dimensions deal with parallel worlds—infinite universes within a single multiverse—the higher dimensions deal with totally different multiverses, all with their own infinite universes inside."

  "Wow."

  "You have no idea, Jason. So check this out: your universe here—u934—is part of a big multiverse that follows its own laws of physics, right?"

  "I guess. An infinite multiverse? I suppose I can see that..."

  "Yes," Riley replied with a smirk. "The right answer is yes. Anyway, there are infinite multiverses as well, all with their own laws, and they all have infinite universes inside—probability space—all of that within them. And the seventh, eighth, and ninth dimensions all allow you to travel across multiverses in the same way: line, sideways, and depth. So, if you want to travel in the seventh, you pick something about the multiverse you're in like ... I dunno ... the way gravity works according to mass. You can travel along the seventh—a straight line, one way or another—along an infinite spectrum of that one variable. Like ... rifting from multiverse after multiverse one way where the force of gravity gets stronger and stronger, or decreasing the force of gravity going the other way."