Paraworld Zero (11 page)

    

    Pillars of white steam, wrapped around thick plumes of smoke, sputtered from
somewhere below. A soft hum sounded in Simon’s ears as he gazed sleepily at the vast funnels of
vapor, embedded in clouds of ebony. The boy felt his body rise higher and higher above the
unearthly ground. Then, suddenly, there was no darkness, no shadows, no evil nor despair—just an
overwhelming harmony and a whiteness that swelled—so lovingly, so delicately—throughout his whole
being. He was in a universe of immaculate light that sent his senses into a blissful state of
euphoria.

    
Is this Heaven?
he thought.

    As if in answer to his query, a beautiful young woman, sitting atop a
majestic beast, emerged from the mist above. The creature she rode resembled a lion but was
considerably larger and broader. Its long, white beard grew down to its muscular paws, and its
nostrils flared every time a puff of steam escaped its mouth. Simon felt pure love encompass his
soul as the animal descended a narrow flight of steps.

    The angelic lady wore a white satin robe that swept the marble floor as she
moved. Her fair skin glowed with a radiance that Simon had never imagined possible, and her
flowing hair seemed to be caught up in a peculiar breeze that followed only her.

    As she drew near, her mouth widened into a pleasant smile that filled Simon’s
heart with warmth. She spoke in a musical tone that was pleasant to the ear yet sounded surreal
and unnatural.

    

    

    “What—” Simon stammered. “What is?”

    She smiled and answered, “Magic.” As the word left her tender lips, it seemed
to echo over and over in Simon’s ears. “
Magic—Magic—Magic.
”

    The mysterious woman rode back up the marble steps and then turned around to
say, “Your first gift, I leave unto you.”

    She blew the boy a kiss and then vanished into the thick clouds. Ever so
slowly, the dreamlike environment faded away until only cold darkness remained.

    Simon opened his eyes, and the flood of reality came rushing in. He squinted
to see the outline of dwarf-sized men and women walking around the room.

    “Where am I?” he asked, still a bit dazed.

    “Simon!” exclaimed a familiar voice. “Simon, you’re awake! Doctor… doctor,
he’s awake!”

    The face of a small man, perhaps less than four feet tall, appeared above
him. The man shined a tiny light into each one of the boy’s eyes and announced in a high, squeaky
voice, “Yep, he’s awake.” The doctor turned off the flashlight and stuck his meaty fingers into
Simon’s mouth and started to feel around. “Now tell me, boy, if this hurts.”

    Simon tried to talk, but the thick fingers in his mouth prevented him from
saying anything comprehendible. He glanced over at Tonya. She looked different somehow. Her green
hair was no longer curly, but something else seemed out of place. Had she gotten taller?

    “Dr. Troodle, he doesn’t understand you,” Tonya informed the man. “He can’t
speak your language.”

    Gagging on the stranger’s fingers, Simon jerked his head away and yelled,
“Stop it!”

    “Well, I understood that,” Dr. Troodle said, stepping back.

    Still confused, Simon sat up and shouted, “Where am I? Who are you?” He
looked down at the sheets covering his nakedness and cried, “Where’s my clothes!”

    “I’m Dr. Troodle,” the man said. “You had a pretty bad accident. For a few
weeks we didn’t think you’d live, but as the months went by you made remarkable progress. Your
scars are healing just splendidly.”

    “
Months?
” Simon repeated, falling back into bed. He noticed his mother’s black medallion
intermingled with the cords and monitors attached to his chest.

    “Yes, you’ve been in a coma for some time now. I don’t think—”

    Tonya cut in, “This is impossible! Dr. Troodle, do you understand what he’s
saying?”

    “Yes, of course. Your friend speaks Pudo quite nicely—no accent at
all.”

    She shook her head and said again, “This is impossible.”

    “What’s impossible?” Simon said. He tried to recall the circumstances that
had led him to his current predicament, but his memories were disjointed.

    “
You can’t speak Pudo,
” she yelled, her hair turning red. “Do you think that every
paraworld speaks the same language?
No!
That’s why we cast the language spell when we arrive at a new parallel world.”

    “Calm down.” Her hysterical behavior took him by surprise. “Maybe I cast the
language spell by accident when I had your wand.”

    “Believe me, runt, you have no magical abilities. Remember on Earth when you
tried to stop the car before we started flying? Well, you were holding my wand backwards!”

    Dr. Troodle intervened. “Konya is just jealous that you are such a quick
learner.” He laughed. “It took her two months to learn how to say, ‘Where’s the bathroom?’”

    “My name is
Tonya
, not
Konya
,” the girl fumed.

    “Konya,” Dr. Troodle said, adding more inflection in his voice.

    “
TONYA! TONYA! TONYA!
” she roared.

    The man tried again. “Konya.”

    “
AAAH!
” she yelled. “If I have to live in this parallel one more day, I’ll go
bonkers!”

    Simon smirked. “Why don’t you just cast that dumb language spell you were
talking about?”

    “Because there aren’t any electro-magical waves on this planet,” she barked.
“Impossible, you say?
Noooo
—not for
Konya
! The one paraworld out there without magic and I happen to find it.”

    This didn’t seem too unnatural for the boy, especially since he had just
recently discovered that magical waves covered his own planet, but then the realization hit him
that without E.M. waves he couldn’t get back home.

    “So are you saying we’re stuck here?”

    “Bingo! Give that boy a prize.”

    The doctor removed the monitors from Simon’s bare chest. “It’s obvious from
your physiology,” he noted, “that you’re not from our world, but all this talk about parallel
worlds and magic makes my head hurt. What’s important now is that we find out how you’re feeling,
young man.”

    Simon took a deep breath of clean air and noticed the unfamiliar sensations
throughout his body. The aches and pains he normally felt were gone, and for the first time in
his life, he didn’t feel the nagging urge to take a puff from his inhaler.

    “I feel good,” he said with a smile. “I feel really, really good.”

    “Fantastic,” said Dr. Troodle. “When you first came to our world—”

    “So I
am
in a different world,” he said. “What do you call it?”

    “Oh, I’m sorry. Pudo is what we call it. When you first came to Pudo, your
motorized contraption was totaled, and you lost both of your legs, and you broke some bones in
your face, and—”

    “
What?
” Simon cried, grasping for his legs.

    “Don’t worry, Simon,” Tonya reassured him. Her hair had already turned back
to its natural green color. “They put your legs back on. I guess that’s one thing I have to admit
about this world—these people are geniuses. They have the best medical skills I’ve ever seen, and
their knowledge of math and science is just phenomenal. Even their language is complex—” She
turned her head away in shame. “Well, you wouldn’t know about that.”

    “Hello, everyone!” a small boy entering the room called out in a high-pitched
voice. He held a computer tablet in his hand and flaunted an enormous smile that stretched from
one side of his face to the other. Dr. Troodle nodded to the boy and stepped away to talk to a
nurse.

    “I take it back—not everyone in this world is intelligent. Here’s one right
now who took a belly flop in the gene pool.” She smiled at the boy as he approached. “Hi,
Thorny.
”

    “How are you doing, Butblacruze?” he responded joyfully.

    Simon laughed, but Tonya got upset because she couldn’t understand the word
the boy had just used. She begged, “Okay, Simon, tell me what he said.”

    The pint-sized boy looked at the bed in shock. “Oh, he’s awake! Does he
understand what we’re saying?”

    “Yes.” Tonya frowned. “Somehow or another, he can speak Pudo.” She turned to
Simon and asked even more earnestly than before, “So, Simon, what was that word he just called
me? I looked it up once, but the definition didn’t make any sense. I’m still learning this stupid
language.”

    “Don’t tell her!” the boy said quickly. “That would ruin our fun.” He
extended his hand to Simon. “Hi, I’m Thornapple Troodle. I’ve been reading to you every day so we
could be friends when you woke up. I’ve been dying to ask you something for months now.”

    “What is it?” Simon asked, shaking the boy’s tiny hand.

    “How do you kill the end boss on level ten? For the life of me, I can’t seem
to get past that part!”

    Simon knew exactly what he was talking about. “You’ve been playing my video
games? You’re going to use up all my batteries.”

    “Batteries? So that’s what you call them. I drained your
batteries
months ago. I want to make some new ones, but Father won’t let me.”

    Dr. Troodle returned and spoke up. “I told you, son, to forget about it. That
machine is a waste of time. It doesn’t teach you anything of value. How are you ever going to get
accepted to the university if your head is in the clouds?”

    “But, Father, I don’t want to go to the university. I want to be a
painter.”

    The doctor cringed. “We’ve discussed this before, Thornapple. Our society has
little need for art. You will go to the university, and you will like it.”

    “I will
not
go to the university!” The boy pouted. “And I would
not
like it! You just don’t understand me.” Thornapple ran out of the room and slammed the
door.

    Dr. Troodle turned to Simon and explained, “He’s just going through puberty
right now. All those hormones are impairing his judgement. Let’s get you dressed, shall
we?”

    Simon tucked the sheets around himself. He had almost forgotten he was naked.
The doctor tossed him a bundle of clothing and pushed a button on the bed stand. Immediately, an
orange barrier rose from all four sides of the bed, blocking Simon from everyone’s view.

    Simon proceeded to get dressed in the Pudo clothing. “So what do you call
yourselves?” he asked, trying to talk through the barrier.

    “Puds,” Dr. Troodle answered.

    “So is everyone… is everyone… um…”

    “Small?”

    “Yeah.”

    “I’m actually quite tall for my species. In fact, Thornapple is the tallest
one in his class at school. I suspect that someday he’ll become a giant Pud if he keeps eating
the way he does. How big are the people on your planet?”

    “Well, I’m the smallest one in my class at school.”

    “That’s amazing! Your people truly are giants. I wish my colleagues could be
here to see you. To be quite frank, after taking a biological scan of your body, most of the
scientists have had little reason to study you further. They’re not really concerned with your
behavior patterns, but your knack for the Pudo language might perk their interest. I must say the
excitement of having alien visitors has died down considerably over the past few months.”

    “Ha! That doesn’t stop your people from probing me whenever they can,” Tonya
said with a scowl.

    “Your body is much more interesting than Simon’s,” the doctor said.

    Tonya adjusted her tight shirt. “Yeah, I bet.”

    “Okay, I’m finished,” Simon announced.

    Dr. Troodle pressed the button on the bed stand, and the orange shield
lowered. “You look funny,” Tonya said between giggles. Simon wore a bright green shirt with
yellow pants and white suspenders.

    “You’re not so hot yourself,” he retorted.

    Tonya looked like a baby doll that had been dressed in the wrong-sized
clothing. Simon couldn’t tell if she was wearing pants or just really long shorts, and he debated
whether or not to mention that the seams on her thin shirt were coming undone.

    “Hey, in some parallels this is pretty fashionable! Come on, Simon, let me
show you around.”

    Simon leapt out of the bed, but the second his feet touched the floor, his
legs wobbled around as if they were made of gelatin. He collapsed.

    “Oh, dear,” said Dr. Troodle. “I was afraid something like this would happen.
We’ve never done surgery on a person like you before. We didn’t put your legs on backwards, did
we?”

    “No, they’re okay. I just don’t seem to have very much strength in them
anymore.” He tried to stand but couldn’t. “I can move my legs all right, but I can’t put any
weight on them.”

    “How peculiar. I assume you’ll need some strenuous therapy before you’ll be
able to walk properly.”

    “I volunteer to help,” Tonya said. “It’s my fault he’s in this mess in the
first place.”

    “Thank you, Konya. I’ll write up a program immediately. Nurse Salfree, fetch
me a hover chair.”

    Soon, the nurse presented what Simon assumed was a hover chair, but it didn’t
have a back or any legs to it. Dr. Troodle and Tonya lifted Simon onto the seat. The doctor
pressed a button, and two armrests—as well as a backrest—popped up. Simon felt the chair rise off
the ground and hover in midair.