Fuzzy Dice by Paul Di Filippo

Author:Paul Di Filippo
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2016-08-12T16:00:00+00:00

* * *

A SUPERSPACE INTERLUDE BETWEEN THROWS

* * *

Desperate to escape the deadly war between the Lowrents and the Smales, I had unleashed the power of the Yo-yo with no firm idea of where I wanted to go. The Yo-yo was operating without a clear command from me.

So where had I ended up?

Looking around, it was all too depressingly obvious.

Back in Bookland, my old store.

Was this a default deadend universe, programmed into the mechanism of the Yo-yo? Or did this stinking old store where I had wasted so many bitter hours represent my true desired and destined destination, in some ultimate karmic sense?

Who the fuck knew? Not me.

“Wow!” said Moonchild. “Cool! I’ve never seen so many books before. Lady Sunshine had most of the ones in my world burnt. Now if I only knew how to read . . . ”

This was a revelation to me. “You can’t read?”

Moon seemed chagrined. “Well, I can print my name, if you spot me the ‘Em.’ I keep mixing the first letter up with ‘Double-you.’”

The store was just as empty of employees or customers as when I had left it, so many adventures ago, and I wondered what time or year it could possibly be here. Let me see: I had created a universe, journeyed back to the ‘Sixties (which were really the ‘Noughts), spent a few million clock-cycles inside a virtual world, visited the Neolithic, and been in a world where the Sun rode a merry-go-round.

I figured it had to be at least time for a coffee-break.

“Actually,” said a voice, “in your baseline universe of origin, approximately one million years have passed, during which time the Earth was hit by a flock of comets deliberately dislodged from the Oort Cloud by alien rivals, subsequently losing its orbit and falling into the Sun.”

I turned cautiously around.

Standing by the rack of audio books where I had last seen Hans the Moraveckian was a cute, cuddly koala bear as big as a grizzly.

All the blood drained from my face into my ankles. Moon shrieked and clutched my bicep as if it were the last dope in a roomful of potheads.

“Is my appearance not reassuring and calm-inducing? I understood that these animals were regarded fondly in your culture . . . ”

“Yuh-yes, when they’re an eensy bit smaller . . . ”

The koala instantly shrunk down to Hop-o’-My-Thumb size. “Like this?”

I was starting to feel a little more at ease, since the koala seemed unthreatening. “Try knee-high and about thirty pounds.”

At once he changed to my specs. “How is that?”

“Fine, great. Now, can you tell us where we are? And who you might be?”

“Of course. You are in superspace, entirely outside the homoclinic tangle. And I am one of the Drexleroids.”

I recalled Hans’s Blah-Blah-Blah about the factions among the Mind Children. The Drexleroids were those who had vanished down the unimaginably small Planck level.

“You mean I’m not in a new universe that has a copy of Bookland in it?”

“By no means. We intercepted the two of you as you were travelling down one of the vermidesics connecting the infinity of universe lines.

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