Alpha Max: An Existential Romp through an Absurd Multiverse by Mark A. Rayner

Author:Mark A. Rayner [Rayner, Mark A.]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Monkeyjoy Press
Published: 2021-11-01T16:00:00+00:00

22 – Living Large

Holy fuck,” Max said.

He’d been awake for a few moments, coming to consciousness at the confluence of a stream the beaver was damming, and the river. Presumably it was the Medway River, the same one that ran through his hometown of Landon, Ontario. He watched the creature as it went about its work, creating a gigantic dam that was proportional to the creature’s size. It must have been two meters long and up to one hundred kilograms!

“Fuck,” Max said, admiring the creature. “That’s one big fucking beaver!”

It seemed to ignore Max’s outburst and continued its work. The stream was almost completely blocked, and a large pond was forming behind the dam.

Max looked around. He wasn’t feeling great. Being stunned two times in a single day, plus having a surprise skip pound his brain, wasn’t a recipe for mental health. He was, frankly, too exhausted and sore to be as livid as he knew he probably should be.

Leary had made good on his promise and marooned him on this version of Earth, which clearly had some differences in the way evolution played out. If he remembered correctly, giant beavers like the one happily at work in front of him went extinct sometime after the last ice age on his Earth.

Leary had left him here, with nothing but the clothes on his back – vomit-stained dress grays – and what looked like a small backpack. Max opened the pack to see what goodies his nemesis had begrudgingly left him. He pulled them out of the pack and laid them on the grass: a knife, a sleeping bag, wire, rope, a tarp made out of a space-age material, a lighter, a wire saw, and one raygun.

Max looked at the stuff and wondered if that was enough to help him survive. Why the fuck would they give him wire? He’d never had any kind of training on how to survive in the wilderness, so that was a mystery. The knife came with a sheath and a belt, which Max put on. He also hooked the raygun on his belt because, if he weren’t mistaken, there would probably be other giant mammals wandering around his Landon paradise. Didn’t they see giant fucking pigs? Did pigs eat people?

Yes.

Who’s that? Max wondered.

One of us. The colonel has most of the survival training, but one of us has a science background. We’ll help when we can, but we need to rest again.

“Thanks!” Max said aloud. He felt less lonely already. Even if he was just going stark raving mad, he didn’t care. Knowing that his mind was filled with companions – real or imagined – made it seem less of a horrible punishment, being stuck here, in some weird Pleistocene-like offshoot of Landon, Ontario.

Max considered that maybe the Trimurti could move through time as well as between realities. But no, if this were the ice age, there wouldn’t be trees and grass and all the vegetation. He could hear birdcalls in the forest all around him.

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