Amstrad is laying down on top of a moving train. The sky is a quilt of every movie he’s ever seen playing all at once, shining down like a disco ball. His head hits the metal roof again and again as it rattles. He sits up. The air is chill and sharp. He’s in the suburbs.
The train makes a quick rectangular circuit, chasing its own tail with very little space in between the nose and kaboose. On the inside of the tracks is a small suburban residential neighborhood. White picket fences and all. No cars or people, but the roads are well paved. Each house is slightly, tastefully distinct. Maple trees sway in the wind and divide the lawns. As they zip by, Amstrad can make out a dirt patch baseball diamond in the middle of the houses.
On the outside of the circle, there’s an ocean. He sees cliffs in misty clouds beyond it. It’s all like this:
As he watches the houses fly past the train, he makes out a figure wandering down a main street. He recognizes it as Horst.
“Horst!” Amstrad shouts. He stands up and waves his arms. “Horst! Don’t try to leave!”
Horst doesn’t turn around. The train escapes earshot. Amstrad snaps his fingers and peers over the edge. He sees how fast the asphalt and track is moving underfoot. He looks at the oceanic water on the other side. He doesn’t know how to swim.
He climbs down a small ladder to a link between cars of the train. It shifts unsteadily beneath his boots. The window is unclean, but he can see inside. There’s a woman staring at him. She bears a vague resemblance to the five dollar bill.
“Amstrad?” she says, but it’s difficult to hear over the rushing train.
“What?”
“Amstrad, is that you? It’s me, Kiki!” she shouts across the glass.
Amstrad doesn’t know a Kiki. “Let me inside! I need to get to the conductor!”
She recoils at the idea. She makes a slicing motion across her throat. “You don’t want in!”
He looks at the jumbling tracks rushing by. “Yes I do!”
“This is time prison!”
“Time prison… shit.” he scratches his head. “No one comes in? Even for a second?”
“Not if they wanna get back out! But you should be able to jump off!” she gestures to the road beside the tracks.
“No I- What? Jump?”
“You’ve got well enough psychic moves to get off easy! You can fly, remember?”
“I… I can fly?” Amstrad looks at his hands. “No I can’t.”
“I’ve seen you do it. With your glasses, at least!”
This interests Amstrad, because he doesn’t have or wear glasses. Just the ones he saw in that dream.
A patch of trees and grass is coming up. The thing shows no signs of slowing. “If you get hurt here, do you get hurt in-”
“You get hurt IRL yes. Jump bro! You can do it!”
“Can I?”
The grass is rushing closer. Nothing but concrete and asphalt past it.
“GO GO GO GO!”
“The train has to stop!”
“It never stops! You’ll never get another chance like this!”
“Shit!”
Amstrad hurls himself off.
The last thing he hears before slamming into the ground is a distant “YEAHHHHHHH!!”
Amstrad peels his head up from the grass. Blood is wet on his temple and his clothes are stained with dirt. The light of a thousand surfing TVs dances through the swaying leaves. Deep breath in. The rushing of the train gradually returns to his ears. The wind in its wake blows his hair around.
Horst is going to the baseball diamond. He knows this like a prophecy.
Gotta get there first.
Horst is walking down the same suburban road he was ten minutes ago. It doesn’t seem to end.
Left. the voice in his head says.
He turns left. Big surprise. Same sorts of houses over and over. Maple trees dotting the sidewalks, pushing up the pavement.
We are close, champion… I can smell it… my remaining powers. But do not grow complacent.
“My whole life has been this moment.” Horst says. “There will be no failure.”
There is another presence! Small, though it is… and of great distance.
“Another presence…” Amstrad crosses Horst’s mind. “There was also a man trying to interrupt us in the material world. But of no importance.”
He glances in the windows of the houses as he walks. Each are nebulae of unthinkable colors and patterns. Hyperspace is the link between worlds, Charmorag has told him, and the rate of worlds that have reached the Big Bang is microscopic. Though a fraction of infinity is still infinity.
Turn right. Charmorag says.
He does. Horst ends up standing behind the dugout. He smiles wickedly.
Charmorag’s voice is thunderous, now coming from the speakers of the stadium. You said your whole life was this moment, Horst… not so. The lives of each insignificant human since the stone age is this moment. You were chosen specifically… selected for your natural talent and superior genetic makeup… you are a champion made from champions of every age.
Horst now walks from the dugout to home plate. There’s a power glove laying on it.
Wear the glove and touch with my hand. Lift with my power. Gain my blessing! Become! You, who would turn out the lights… you who would bring these apes back to the stone age! Hark! The pitcher’s mound! The rest of my power!
Horst dons the glove and feels psychic power flood into his mind. The dirt around his ankles swirls and disperses. The whole fence rattles in shock waves. He turns to the pitcher’s mound. A pair of red and blue 3D glasses wait there.
Horst… Charmorag drones.
He walks to the pitcher’s mound in a trance.
Horst! A moment-
He reaches down to pick up the glasses.
A boot steps on them.
Horst’s eyes follow the boot to a pair of pants, then a fluffy jacket, then a face with a bloody forehead.
Amstrad clicks his tongue. “Horst, if you try to leave Hyperspace now, you’ll be trapped in here forever. Something’s broken up there... Now with that courtesy out of the way,” Amstrad steps off the glasses and levitates them up to his hand. “What the fuck is up with all this daemon shit, man? Seriously. What’s the big idea?”
Horst’s face is low. Dark. He speaks slowly and with malice. “Give me the glasses.”
“Isn’t this bad? Your idea of a good city sucks. Like really super sucks, and I can help if you want, but your current idea is terrible.”
The voice on the speakers thunders with a patient, cosmic annoyance. Right. That’s the idea.
“That’s the idea? Come on, guys! Not even pretend good?”
You humans have tapped into a communications network too powerful for your comprehension. Too vast for your minds to observe and to internalize. You are insects given flamethrowers. Left unchecked- left to congregate at your own volition- your computational power would put you in intergalactic risk.
Amstrad guffaws and stomps the mound. “What the fuck are we talking about? What risk aside from you?”
“Last chance, kid. Give me the glasses.”
“What, are they important or something? Can’t complete your stupid city thing without them?” he flicks them open. Even as his mouth opens to speak, he doesn’t understand where his compulsion to do the right thing comes from. “Well come and get ‘em.”
Idiot.
He puts on the glasses. Power courses through him like ice cold soda running from the throat to the tips of his fingers and toes.
Horst lifts a hand at him, and sends a blast of psychic energy tantamount to cannon fire. Amstrad creates a barrier between them, but is still sent flying into the air. Horst chases.
Amstrad is trying to keep track of when they can leave. He doesn’t think he can beat Horst, but maybe he can outlast him. Horst punches him in the stomach and launches him more than a block away. Amstrad crashes into the street, still protected by a layer of psychic friction. He reaches out his hands to both sides and begins pulling the fences out of the ground.
Horst bounds towards him. Amstrad levels each fence post at him and flings them like missiles. They rain on him and shatter into chippings and toothpicks. The power glove obliterates some before they even touch him.
Your idea of a computer is profoundly limited. the voice echoes through his head as if coming directly from the glasses. All life is computational. All societies, computational. Human societies most of all. What is a city if not a computer made of people that solve problems as they’re introduced. It streamlines, connects, and regurgitates answers to stimulus. You are a cell in the organism. If we let it grow too large, it could become intergalactically prevalent.
Horst punches him in the face with the power glove, sending him through a tree and embedding him into the outer wall of a house. His nose breaks, despite the barrier. Before the blood has time to drip from his face, he dodges another of Horst’s attacks, which buries a fist into the wall where Amstrad was.
New York was almost there. The people were becoming a computer almost at the level of a small daemon. Hyperspace and your world have never been as far apart as people think… my whispers reached dear Robert Moses. Under Shea Stadium he built the first Supercomputer and radio tower that I was summoned through. Me and him… we took the city back. Spread it out. And leading by example, debilitated all modern American cities. Moses was a treat to work with. A human nuclear bomb.
“Shut up!” Amstrad cries.
What I’m trying to impress upon you, boy, is that you are STANDING IN THE WAY of a RICH and STORIED TRADITION! History surmounts here, at this moment, where HORST attains all of my power. Not half- not just my glove, but ALL! It is his BIRTH RIGHT!
Horst psychically grabs Amstrad and throws him across another block. This time Amstrad is prepared and slows himself in the air. Sort of walks on it a little bit. He realizes he might be able to fly.
Amstrad swipes blood off his cheek and shouts: “I kind of like the internet! I think we deserve to have it!”
Horst is there in a blink and Amstrad is smacked so hard he hears his psychic barrier crack. He retreats into the sky.
Horst shakes his head and cackles, then jumps up and slams Amstrad back down. As Amstrad is scampering away on the pavement, Horst checks his nails. “What college did you attend?” he asks casually.
Amstrad rolls out of the way of another meteoric punch. “College?”
“Yes. I attended Yale. What investments have you made recently?” Horst makes another lunge at him.
Amstrad is clipped by the glove and sent skidding across the street. “Lunch”
“I personally reached a fully doubled portfolio since last quarter investing in water trading. Do you watch much TV?”
“When I can.”
Horst cackles again, looking down. “I see. Lack of discipline.”
He knocks Amstrad to the ground and places a psychic weight like a dozen cars to keep him there. As Amstrad squirms, he punches him against the asphalt. “You could've been a champion!” Horst’s voice is now mixed with Charmorag’s.
Crack. The barrier gives. “If you’d only worked harder, eh?
Crack. His face is pummeled against the road. “All I had was the LOVE and SUPPORT of my glorious patron. That, and a VISION! An AMBITION!” He raises the glove again.
“Wait- Horst!” Amstrad cries. His face is spattered with blood. His arms are straining against the weight with his full mind-force.
For a moment, Horst hesitates.
“You and Charmorag are right. I can’t beat you here.” he smiles. “But,”
And then Amstrad vanishes. Gone from under Horst.
Horst gets up and looks around. Nothing.
“What’s he done?” he asks.
He has returned to his material body with the glasses…
Horst looks up. “Then we shall follow with the glove!”
And he tries to send his mind back to his body.
But it can’t seem to find one.
“Charmorag, what’s happened? Why… why can’t I go back?” he tries again. Nothing.
The daemon chuckles at first, but it grows to a hearty laughter, and then a great bellowing. It sounds like he’s crying in delight. Ohh…. oh my boy……. he got you.