Gardens • A City That’s Not Visibly on Fire • Shopping Trip • Partners • New Skin • A Foreboding

World 1004: Minna and I went to sleep inside the bud of an immense flower during a torrential rainstorm on a garden world. (Not a jungle world. It was clearly cultivated, though the cultivators were nowhere in evidence.) We were traversing an ornamental pond as big as an inland sea when the rain began falling, torrential and stinging. Minna somehow coaxed the vast yellow flower, which bloomed from a lily pad the size of a ballroom dance floor, into opening, and once we climbed inside, it closed around us, watertight and translucent and as roomy as a vacation cabin.

We nestled in the soft, deliciously scented interior and watched lightning flash beyond the golden walls while we shared out the last of some sweet red bean cakes we’d picked up in the previous world. There was nectar inside the flower, but Minna sampled it and said it was too potent for us to drink without ill effects. I imagined what sort of bees or birds might sup from flowers this size, and wondered how they would even fly if they were of commensurate size, as the atmosphere didn’t seem unusually dense or oxygen-rich. But if the garden was home to immense fauna as well as flora, the rain kept the creatures away… though occasionally we heard splashes, and once the lily pad rocked like something had bumped it from underneath, and I thought of goldfish the size of submarines, and frogs the size of houses.

Minna yawned and leaned against me. I’d wondered when we began traveling together if romance, or even merely sex, would blossom between us – they had in the past, a couple of times, intervals of sweetness before things went sour – but Minna had evinced no interest beyond deepening friendship, and my own feelings toward her were more brotherly than anything else. (I’d kissed her once, on the lips, with tongue, in the first new world we visited together, but that was just to share my linguistic virus with her, and it had been no more intimate than any medical procedure.) She dozed off with her head in my lap, and when I could tell she was down deep, I let myself fall asleep, too.

I opened my eyes to a brisk pink dawn and sat up, looking for threats. We were in another garden now, though one more human-scale. Sometimes the transitions between worlds seem strangely linked that way. I fall asleep in a palace and wake up in a temple; fall asleep in a meadow and wake up on a sports field; fall asleep on a rooftop and wake up in a spire. But other times I fall asleep in a war zone and wake up on a peaceful beach, or in the midst of a city and wake in the forest. There may be a pattern to my transitions, but my observations haven’t uncovered any yet.

I jostled Minna awake – she yawned and blinked and smiled at me and the sky – and stood up. We were in a park, I realized, not a garden, and beyond the trees towered graceful gleaming skyscrapers, with bulbous slow-moving aerial vehicles drifting among them. Unlike the last city we’d visited, this one didn’t appear to be metaphorically or literally on fire. “Civilization.” We’d been to so many desolate or rural or simply strange worlds, I’d wondered when we’d find a developed one.

Then again, there could have been thriving cities just over the horizon in almost any of the places we’d visited. It’s not as if we woke in monocultural realities that were all desert or garden, necessarily. I assume the various realities I visit are as rich and diverse and varied as the world of spheres and harmonies I was born into, but I never get to see much beyond the area where I open my eyes – how far can you travel, in a day or two, usually on foot? Sometimes it staggers me to think that every place I visit is just one region of one planet (or moon, or construct) in a whole universe of other possible places. Perhaps I even return to the same branch of the multiverse on occasion, and just wake in different sections, or even different galaxies. How would I ever know?

“Civilization? There are lots of trees at least.” Minna stretched and breathed deep.

“Trees, yes, and also people, and shops. We can finally resupply properly. Come on.” She took my hand and we walked out of the little dell where we’d awakened onto a curving smooth path. People jogged or strolled by or pushed babies in carriages, and they seemed to be the same species we were. Even our clothes weren’t too different from the local norm, though they were dirtier. One couple standing by a pond, wearing black coats with voluminous hoods, might have been staring at us – it was hard to tell with their faces shadowed – but I wasn’t bothered. We probably looked like vagrants, if this world had vagrants. To be fair, that’s what we were.

I thought at first this might be a techno-utopia – post-scarcity societies were the easiest to resupply in – but when we left the park there were people handing out fliers on street corners, and a busker playing a thirteen-stringed instrument while people tossed occasional coins, so I knew this was some variety of consumer culture, complete with income inequality. I could cope with that, too.

Minna was understandably drawn to the shiniest towers, the tiered plazas full of shimmering crystal fountains and abstract sculptures that shaped and reshaped themselves as we watched, but I’d been doing this a lot longer than she had, so I tugged her along to the outskirts instead, where the buildings were lower and graffiti stained the walls and trash blew in the streets. There were signs over the shops in a spiky script, but I couldn’t read them. The linguistic virus allowed me comprehend spoken languages and make myself understood, but it didn’t do anything for the printed word. I could look in windows, though, and I found the one I wanted: dusty, with a display of various objects in a profuse jumble, including musical instruments, gaudy jewelry, and small appliances. “Do you want to come in?” I asked.

Minna looked at the dank shop doubtfully. “If I have to.”

I looked at the buildings along the empty street – I hadn’t seen any ground vehicles here – and pointed. “Is that a plant nursery?”

Her head whipped around. There was a lot down on the corner, with makeshift shelves of stone blocks and wooden boards set up behind a fence, displaying a profusion of sad-looking plants in pots. “Oooh. Plants from civilization.”

“Why don’t you go look around?” I said. “I’ll do my business here and then meet you. Remember, this is a world where you can’t just take things, OK? Look round, and if there’s something you want, I’ll see if we can buy it when I get there.”

“I hate being apart from you,” she said, but her gaze never wavered from the drooping plants. “What if you fall asleep while we are separated?”

“We just woke up. We’ve got all day, and it’s only half a block. I’ll watch my head and try to avoid getting knocked out.” She wasn’t being ridiculous – it was indeed a risk for us to be apart – but if something rendered me unconscious while she was awake, she wouldn’t be able to travel with me anyway.

“All right. Come soon.” She went over to the nursery, almost skipping.

I pushed through the door to the shop, a chime sounding over my head. The lights were dim, better to hide the poor condition of most of the wares on display. There would be valuable things here, but I knew they’d be behind the counter, or locked up in the back. The shopkeeper was white-bearded and thin, and wore a black suit and a complex set of glasses, with lenses of different shapes and sizes and colors arrayed on articulating arms. The lenses moved aside by themselves so he could peer at me with naked eyes. “Are you here to sell, or buy?”

Someone in a nicer shop would have looked at my grass-stained, damp clothes and thrown me out, but a place like this, in my experience, took a more relaxed approach to potential clientele. “Sell, certainly, and buy, possibly.” I put my battered bag on the counter and reached inside.

Coins, even coins of the most precious metals, usually brought too many questions – where is this from, what country, what period – that I couldn’t answer, or came with answers that were meaningless in a world beyond their origin. Rings and chains and bracelets, however, were recognizable in most worlds inhabited by humanoids, and I always picked those up in places where riches were cheap. I put rings of gold, platinum, silver, and palladium on the counter. “Do any of these interest you?”

The lenses moved into place, and one began to emit a soft blue glow, as he peered close to the jewelry. He grunted. “Pretty varied mix here. A couple of decent pieces.”

“They’re more valuable as a set, too,” I said.

He grunted, which wasn’t a yes or a no. “I can offer you eighty scrilla for the lot.”

I had no idea if that was a lot or a little, but I snorted derisively and started to sweep the rings back into my bag. Shops like this never gave you a decent offer at first.

The lenses spun. “Wait, wait. I could go as high as a hundred.”

“These were hand-forged, not machined,” I said.

“All right, A hundred-and-ten.”

“One-fifty.”

Now it was his turn to scoff. “One-twenty-five, or you can take them anywhere else you like – you won’t get a better offer.”

“It’s a deal.”

He nodded, then gestured to a small black rectangle on the counter. A gleaming needle rose from the pad. “Just prick your thumb and the funds will transfer.”

Ah. This world had some sort of biometric banking system – take a drop of blood, find the associated account, transfer funds electronically. That was no help.

“Could we do… cash?” I hoped they had something of the sort in this society, and that my linguistic virus would translate the term appropriately.

“Clotting issues?” he said, then gave a small smile. “Or something you’d like to keep out of a joint account?”

“Something like that,” I said.

He reached under the counter, manipulated some sort of terminal, and then handed me a small card, greasy-looking and black. “Universal gift card,” he said. “Should work just about everywhere.”

I tapped the card on the counter and thanked him. “Could you point me toward a good sporting goods store? And a pharmacy?”

I found Minna deep in conversation with the woman who owned the nursery, the latter wide-eyed and nodding. I noticed that all the plants looked more lush, robust, and vibrant – instead of drooping, they blossomed and reached for the sky. Minna had been doing a little work, it seemed. “No, no,” Minna said, “just this, really.” She had some flakes of white material in a clear plastic bag.

“But that’s just some fungus that was growing on an ornamental shrub, I don’t even sell it,” the woman objected. “You have to let me pay you back somehow.”

“You could put a little something on this card,” I said smoothly.

Minna glanced at me, then nodded. “That would be fine!”

“Are you her…”

“Partner.” Minna linked arms with me and beamed.

The woman shrugged, took my card to her kiosk, pricked her thumb on a needle, touched the card to her black pad, then handed it back. Numbers shimmered on the front, jumping from one-twenty-five to one-thirty.

Minna said her farewells, giving some last care-and-feeding-of-plants tips, and then we strolled away. “What’s the fungus for?” I asked.

“You will see. We just need water and I will show you.”

We returned to a shinier part of town and found a park with lots of sparkling fountains and cobbled walkways and surprisingly comfortable benches. Minna scooped a little water from a fountain into the bag, then stirred her finger inside. The fungus dissolved at her touch and the water formed a paste. “Perfect. Now your arm?”

I looked around. The plaza was mostly empty, just two people on a bench some distance away, wearing dark hoods and scattering seeds to feed some of the local flying lizards. I wondered if they were the same hooded people who’d been looking at us in the park, but if so, they weren’t paying any attention to us now.

I took the glove off my right hand and pushed my sleeve up, revealing my wooden limb. I’d kept it covered because worlds with fully functional biological prosthetics were few and far between, and I didn’t like to draw attention. Minna smeared some of the fungal paste on the arm… and the paste began to spread, flowing all over the wood, forming a membrane, pale and slick. The fungus reached the part of my arm that was still original flesh, and it tingled… and then a wave of color and texture moved across the paste, perfectly matching the shade of my own skin.

I held up my hand in wonder as the substance spiraled up my fingers and covered them with something indistinguishable from my flesh. I flexed the hand, and brushed my fingertips on the stone of the bench where we sat. I could feel. I’d had sensation in the wooden hand before, but it was faintly dulled, and this… this was just like the hand I’d been born with. “Minna, that’s amazing.”

“I am sorry it took me this long to find a suitable substrate. It is just like your real skin, except it will not tan in the sun – it will convert sunlight into energy, though, like my skin does.”

I grabbed her in a hug. “I can live with having one pale arm and one tanned one. Thank you, Minna. You’re amazing.”

“You are the one who shows me a new world every day. I am happy to help.” She rubbed a little of the paste on the back of her hand, where she’d gotten a deep scratch in a prior world, and I watched it cover the injury, shimmer, and blend in with her flesh. She was such a remarkable woman. I was lucky to have her. “What now, Zax?”

“A hot meal,” I said, “and then we go shopping.” She took my hand and we set off into the city.

If I’d looked back, I might have seen the couple in their dark hoods following us.