D. MacHale - The Reality Bug

“Here we go again,” I said. “Just like Rubic City.”

I kicked my horse into gear and we walked slowly down the center of the street. I listened for any sign of life, but there was none..

“I’m surprised there’s no tumbleweed blowing through,” I said.

“What is tumbleweed?” Loor asked.

As if on cue, a big piece of brown tumbleweed rolled past us. This was getting strange, in more ways than one. I guess I could believe that another territory was just like Earth, but this meant the territory of Veelox also had the same kind of history as Earth. This town of Old Glenville was exactly like a typical town from the Old West in America. Very strange.

“There,” Loor said. She pointed to a barnlike building that was off the main road.

There was a hand-painted sign leaning against a fence that said: BLACKSMITH. This was where we were supposed to leave the horses. We rode over to the barn, but didn’t find a soul. Even stranger, all the tools of the trade were lying around. There were hammers and nails and coal and all the stuff you’d think a blacksmith used. The barn even had a few horses in stalls, but they were the only sign of life. This town looked like it had been recently abandoned.

We tied the horses to a hitching post near the barn. I was about to suggest that we start on one end of town and work our way down the street, searching each and every building, when we heard something strange.

“Music,” Loor said.

It was old-fashioned, honky-tonk piano music, which is the exact kind of music you’d expect to hear in a Western town. “I’ll bet you a dollar there’s a saloon around here,” I said. “What is a saloon?” Loor asked. “I’ll show you.”

Not that I had ever been in a saloon, but I had seen enough Western movies to know that’s usually where the music was played. And since everything about this town smelled of the Old West, I had no doubt we’d find a saloon. So we took off walking back to the main street. The closer we got, the louder the music became.

Sure enough, across the street I spotted a sign over a balcony that said in fancy gold letters: Old Glenville Saloon.

We walked across the dusty street like a couple of gun-slingers headed toward the O.K. Corral. The music was definitely coming from the saloon. As we got closer I saw a set of swinging doors in front. Classic Western. We got as far as

222 230 the wooden sidewalk and were about to step up, when the piano suddenly stopped. Loor and I did too.

We then heard the sound of a chair scraping across the floor inside, as if someone were standing up. It was followed by the sound of footsteps walking across the floor, headed for the swinging doors, and us.

Loor and I didn’t move. Whoever was inside, we were about to meet them. I really hoped it was Dr. Zetlin.

It wasn’t.

When the swinging doors flew open, I saw something that made me question whether this was Dr. Zetlin’s fantasy nightmare… or mine. Because standing in the door before us was Saint Dane.

He wore black from head to toe, like a gunfighter. On his hips were twin six-shooters. His gray mane of hair fell down to his shoulders, topped off with a black cowboy hat. The demon acted as if he were expecting us. He smiled a yellow-toothed grin, stared at us with those cold blue eyes, and said, “Looks like it’s time to liven up this dead little town!”

(CONTINUED)

Howdy, Pendragon!” Saint Dane exclaimed jovially while leaning against the hitching post. “I see you brought along your violent little girlfriend. What a nice surprise!”

This didn’t compute. How could Saint Dane be in Dr. Zetlin’s fantasy? This wasn’t like before where he was a prerecorded hologram. This was him. For real. Or should I say, in fantasy. My brain locked.

“You seem surprised!” he laughed. “This can’t be possible, yet here I am. It seems as though Aja’s Reality Bug has completely scrambled Lifelight.”

Loor looked to me and said softly, “This is real, isn’t it?”

“Real enough!” Saint Dane answered for me.

He pulled out one of his six-shooters, aimed it at the sky and pulled the trigger. The sharp crack sounded pretty real to me. A moment later four more cowboys with six-shooters appeared from the saloon. They moved quickly behind us, cutting off any chance we had of escape. These guys didn’t look like the friendly cowpokes from the mountains either. The word that came to mind was, desperados.

“Since this is a fantasy,” Saint Dane continued, “let’s have some fun.”

He stepped off the wooden walkway and strolled over to us with his thumb in his gun belt. He was enjoying this. We weren’t.

“The man you’re worried about?” he said. “I know where he is, and I’m going to give you the chance to rescue him.” I shot a look at Loor. This had just gotten interesting. “Rescue?” I asked.

“About a mile south of town is a dam. It’s an immense structure. Holds back an extremely large lake. Without that dam, this town would be underwater. On top of the dam is a small, stone hut. That’s where you’ll find him.”

“That’s it?” I asked. “Simple as that?”

Saint Dane laughed. “Pendragon, please, is it ever as simple as that?”

He pulled out a golden pocket watch and checked the time.

“Dynamite has been placed all over that dam, thanks to my associates here. In just about, oh, ten minutes, it’s all going to explode and things around here are going to get very wet.”

My adrenaline spiked.

“So you’re giving us ten minutes to get to the hut and get him out? Is that what you’re saying?”

“With one small complication. I’ll give you a two minute head start. After that I’m sending my associates here, to stop you. Won’t that be exciting?”

Saint Dane leaned down and looked me square in the eye, saying, “You didn’t have the strength to succeed on First Earth. How will you handle this little challenge?”

Without thinking, I reached forward and quickly grabbed one of Saint Dane’s guns from its holster.

“Nicely done. Quick Draw,” he said, barely showing surprise. “Now what?”

I grabbed Loor’s hand and started to run.

“Yahoo!” Saint Dane called after us.

If we had any chance of getting to that dam in ten minutes, we needed the horses.

“What is dynamite?” Loor asked as we ran.

“It’s like tak,” I answered. “It’ll destroy the dam.”

We made it to the blacksmith barn in a few seconds. I jammed the six-shooter into my belt and we started to untie the horses.

“Does it matter if this town is destroyed?” Loor asked. “It is not real.”

“It’s not the town,” I answered quickly. “It’s Zetlin. If something happens to him we’ll never get the origin code and Lifelight will-“

Crack! Ping!

A bullet zinged off a metal bucket that was hanging near the barn door. It barely missed us.

“That wasn’t two minutes!” I shouted.

Either the desperados didn’t care, or they couldn’t tell time, because I was answered with a series of gunshots.

“Inside!” Loor commanded.

We grabbed the bridles of the horses and ran them inside the barn. Loor quickly closed the big doors. We were safe, but trapped, and the clock was ticking.

“What do those noisemakers do?” Loor said while pointing to the gun I had jammed in my belt.

“It shoots out small pieces of metal. They’re deadly. But it only fires six times and they have a lot more guns than we do. And to be honest, I’ve never even shot one before.”

More shots were fired from outside, shattering a window, making the horses whinny in fear.

“We gotta get outta here,” I said and ran to a door in the back of the splintered wood just over my head. To use a cliche Western phrase, they had us surrounded. I ran back to Loor and shouted, “You’re the soldier-in-training! What are we supposed to do?”