CHAPTER FIVE

JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH PART DEUX

It didn’t take much effort for Mercury to conjure her portal to the Hollow Earth. Indeed, I made it a point to memorize the magic she displayed. I didn’t know if I could duplicate it, but the Death Orb allowed me to cheat and cast well beyond my level, so to speak.

“It’s beautiful,” I said, whispering.

“It’s a living world,” John said. “Of course, it’s beautiful.”

I stared at the glowing portal through space and time that had been conjured in my study. It showed a beautiful jungle-filled land with an enormous sun four times the size of “ours” hanging before a skyline that contained more verdant paradise behind it. It was like being in the interior of a globe only the continents were surrounding the glowing center.

Pteranodons flew as I saw brachiosaurs and hadrosaurs eating the leaves of long-extinct trees. An active volcano was smoking in the background and, in the distance, I could see a stone city rising from the ground that was a little bit Aztec mixed with a little bit Egyptian. It was like Edgar Rice Burroughs had married the crazy Ancient Aliens guy and had a science baby.

“What’s wrong with the dinosaurs?” Cindy said, squinting as she looked through the portal with me.

“What do you mean?” Mercury said, her hands glowing with the energy necessary to conjure the portal. The Death Orb hovered in front of her, enhancing her powers a dozen-fold.

“They have feathers,” Cindy said.

“Yes, dinosaurs have feathers,” John said, loading his revolvers.

“So, T-Rex is just a big chicken?” Cindy said, shaking her head. “Lame.”

“Given they’re still nine tons of feathered death, I’m going to say you may not quite appreciate how dangerous they are,” John said.

“I once rode a cyborg T-Rex,” I said, cheerfully. “I used it to fight Amazons.”

“Did you know, historically, that the great monuments of ancient society were all garishly painted? Instead of the somber and stately grays we duplicated for the buildings in Washington, D.C., they were reds, yellows, and oranges,” Leia said, standing beside me. She is the world’s smartest six-year-old and probably the world’s smartest everything. She was dressed in a little red jumpsuit with an M on the lapel. I’d had her henchgirl costume made specially for her and they doubled as her pajamas.

“So, the government screwed up even its buildings meant to look cool,” Cindy said, surprise.

“You know the builders of the Washington Monument completely missed that obelisks were actually sacred monuments to the Pharaoh’s penis,” John said, pointing at me. “The Founding Fathers completely missed the ancients were not nearly as uptight as later Europeans.”

“Please, not in front of my daughter,” I said, looking at John. “Even though she’s a telepath and probably has an utterly filthy mind at prepubescence.”

“Guilty,” Leia said, raising her tiny hand.

“What are you doing here?” I asked, turning to Leia and kneeling. “We’re about to go someplace dangerous and I was going to leave without telling you.”

Leia frowned. “You can’t go to Jurassic World without me!”

“Jurassic Park, honey,” I corrected her. “Jurassic World was the not-so-cheap knockoff they made to cash in on a classic film.”

“But it had Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard,” Cindy pointed out. “Which makes the movie twenty percent yummier.”

“I’m sorry, honey, but it’s too dangerous,” I said, looking down at Leia. “That’s why I’m going with the perfectly expendable people from a book series way less cool than mine.”

“You have a book series?” John asked. “In my world, you’re just a really lousy comic book that is filled with nothing but bad puns and incomprehensible pop culture references. Also, mysteriously being attractive to multiple beautiful women out of your league who don’t mind sharing.”

“He does have a point,” Cindy said.

“He does not!” I snapped before realizing what he said. “Wait, my comic books survived the apocalypse?”

It was one of the weird elements of the Multiverse that everything that was fiction in one universe tended to be reality in another. Part of this was the manipulation of the Primals but another part is that fiction was inspired by everyone unconsciously picking up elements from other worlds. As such, in Jane and G’s world I was a popular fictional icon while the same was in reverse for them in my world. Apparently, that applied to John and Mercury here. I wondered if I could tell them Idris Elba and Olivia Munn had been cast as them for the third Cthulhu Armageddon movie. Personally, I didn’t see the resemblance.

“Unfortunately, yes, you do survive the apocalypse as a fictional character,” John said, shaking his head. It was like he was embarrassed I was a cultural relic in his time. “One of my daughters really loved reading the fifteen or so that remained after the end of all things.”

Huh, they were family men. “What do they think of you going out and risking your life to save the world?”

“They’d prefer not to die horribly so they approve of my saving the world,” John said.

That was remarkably effective logic. “Are you guys going to be much longer?” Mercury said, sucking in her breath. “Because bending space and time to open a portal through reality is not actually that simple.”

“Sorry!” I said, raising my hands. “I promise you, Leia, I’ll be back safe and sound.”

“But what if the government comes to murder me?” Leia asked, a question that I unfortunately couldn’t lie to her about the ridiculousness of.

“They won’t,” I said, lying anyway.

“But I can nuke Washington, D.C. if they do, right?” Leia asked.

“No,” I said, simply. “Only Congress.”

“Gary!” Gabrielle said, walking in and having changed into a pair of clothes more appropriate for a safari. Sadly, they didn’t include short-shorts like video games had taught me. We’d just have to leave that to Mercury.

“No WMDs before you’re thirty,” Cindy said, simply. “We’ve already bent the rules about you creating life without God. Don’t make us take away your science privileges.”

The Henchbots complained a little. I wondered if G also felt like that statement was racist since he was an Artificial American.

“Ah, shucks,” Leia said, frowning. “I wish I was in the future with Big Leia.”
Big Leia was my daughter’s future self who sometimes babysat herself as a child. It was a relationship that was, even by my standards, damn weird.

A year ago, I’d had an encounter with adult versions of Leia and Mindy. They had rescued me from my encounter with Entropicus following my very-very narrow victory. They’d asked me to do something, something that I couldn’t do. Wouldn’t do. Big Leia had created a mental block in my head so not even younger self could know what the request was they’d made.

“No time travel either,” I said, only half-kidding. “Only I am allowed to break the laws of casualty for petty gain.”

“We tried to use time travel once to save the world from the Great Old Ones,” John said.

“It didn’t take,” Mercury muttered. “On the other hand, I rediscovered the bra. Very useful in the future.”

“I’m sure it is,” I said, turning to Gabrielle. “Are you sure you’re ready to go back to the Hollow Earth? You won’t have any powers there.”

Gabrielle hoisted a rifle over her shoulder. “I was one of the leaders of the team. I got your sister and Diabloman captured.”

“Also, Mr. Inventor,” Cindy said. “He’s my second favorite person in the world. Well, third after me. Well, fourth really with Gabrielle.”

I looked at her. “After Leia?”

Cindy blinked. “Oh, right, fifth.”

“I take it I’m the first?” I asked, deadpanning.

Cindy looked at me with true love in her eyes. “Gary, you gave me something more precious than anything anyone else has ever given me.”

“A child?” I asked.

“Money!”

“Would it be wrong to rewrite your personality to make you a decent mother?” Leia asked, looking up.

Cindy knelt by Leia and smiled, putting her hand on her shoulder. “It’s okay, Leia, because you have a decent mother. Gabrielle! Also, Kerri. The second-best part of being with Gary in our weird Abrahamic era relationship is that he comes with all sorts of people who can compensate for my many shortcomings.”

“Wow, Mom, just wow,” Leia said, disappointed.

“Remember, motherhood is all about blaming your children for your own screw-ups,” Cindy said. “Pass that down to your own kids.”

“At least I have a Freudian justification for when I overwhelm the world and establish my New Gizmo Order.” Leia looked down at the ground.

“There’s Freud in this house, Leia. We’re Jungians. Freud leads to marrying your mother and killing your father and vice versa.” I pulled Cindy back. “Let’s get going.”

“Finally,” Mercury muttered, starting to sweat from maintaining the force of the spell. It was rather artful as if she’d been sprayed during a photo shoot. I had to wonder if she was using glamour or if it was just a side effect of the fact my world made every superhero and villain unreasonably pretty.

“Well, it gives you more time to steal my magic orb and become all-powerful,” I said, causally. Personally, I was hoping she did steal it. The Orb of Death had brought me nothing but trouble and a part of me wished I could get rid of it.

Reyan narrowed her eyes. “Are you in the habit of accusing your allies of being thieves?”

There was something about Reyan that bothered me, aside from the fact she looked like a Sports Illustrated swimsuit model dressed up as a tribal princess. She glowed with magic from head to toe, which was something that only mystical beings like demons or elves did. It made me think her body was fake—and no, not in that way.

“No, Gary never accuses us of being thieves. That would imply we didn’t admit to it,” Cindy said. “Except for G who is an assassin and Jane who is just annoying.”

Jane glared at Cindy, holding Mindy tight. “I hope you get eaten by something.”

“Or the Jungle clap,” G suggested.

“Don’t suggest that,” I said, shaking my head. “That would spread rapidly through the population and kill us all.”

Cindy slapped me across the back of the head and walked through the portal.

“We’re not thieves,” John said, walking to the portal. “We kill everyone we take stuff from first.”

“Uh, I don’t think that actually precludes you from being a thief.” I started to say.

He disappeared through the portal. It didn’t seem to be an exact representation of where we were going since he didn’t appear on the portal image. A part of me briefly considered this was an extremely clever way to teleport me into a black hole or sun, but I figured that whatever evil genius would come up with such a plan was probably a friend of mine.

Mercury chuckled as Gabrielle and Reyan went through the portal. “Believe me, I planned to steal it. Unfortunately, the Orb of Death is linked to your body and soul. It’s impossible to say where one of you begins and the other ends now. It’s actually elevated you to godhood.”

“Really, godhood?” I asked. “While a monotheist, I find that enticing.”

“Well, sort of.”

“Sort of?”

“Yeah, imagine most gods like Zeus or Cthulhu are ten million. Nyarlathotep and Azathoth are like thirty million.”

“This is getting very Dragon Ball Z.”

“I’ll pretend I know what that is. You’re about a ten.”

“Ten?” I blinked. “Is this a system where lower is better?”

“No.”

“Ah,” I said. Somehow, reality always schemed to make my accomplishments seem lamer than they were. It was as if they were deliberately setting out to make my being a god as unimpressive as possible. “So, best not send out any fliers for my new religion just yet.”

I was joking. My rabbi would kill me.

Mercury shook her head. “You’re like the god of rusty door hinges or infomercials no one watches unless they have insomnia.”

“That’s a very odd example for someone who grew up in a post-apocalypse wasteland.”

“The things we had to watch in our library were VHS tapes of what people had recorded before the end of the world.”

“Truly a hellish nightmare world. VHS tapes?”

“Get through the goddamn portal!” Mercury said, rolling her eyes.

“Right!” I said, realizing I was still on the wrong side of the portal. I waved to Jane and G on my way out, the Henchbots waving to me as well. I also blew kisses to my daughters who stared at me with a look that made me wonder if Mindy was going to use her super-strength to steal an ice cream truck again. As for Leia? Well, I fully expected to return to adorable pictures hanging from banners over the burnt-out ruins of the White House, because, don’t all parents want to see their children exceed them? I mean aside from Cindy?

Stepping through, I found myself in a lush and verdant paradise that had enormous blooming orange flowers growing from trees I couldn’t recognize. The Hollow Earth was warm but tropical heat rather than something boiling. The air was fresh and clean, which briefly caused me to cough as I was used to a forty-five percent smog, fifty-percent nitrogen, five percent oxygen mix. We were next to a forty-foot-tall waterfall pouring down into a nearby lagoon that had a triceratops drinking out of it.

Cindy pulled out my cellphone and took a picture of it.

“Really, Cindy?” I asked.

“Instapost demands I document all of my adventures,” Cindy said, taking a selfie as well. “I brought a floating camera so we can get real-time footage of our Hollow Earth expedition for Where in the Multiverse is Cindy Wachkowski?”

“That’s not a real show,” I said, raising an eyebrow. “Also, if it was, you’d still get sued.”

“It’s a working title. I’m still trying to pitch it,” Cindy said, pulling out a small ball that she tossed in the air. It floated up and popped out a tiny camera that started looking her up and down. “I figure it’ll be like Mary Poppins and appeal to both kids and their dads.”

“Excuse me?” I asked.

“You know, you watch Mary Poppins as a child and it’s this cute magical adventure, then you watch as an adult and you realize how hot Julia Andrews is.”

I opened my mouth then closed it. “You’ve ruined that movie for me.”

“Ruined it or made it better?” Cindy asked.

“Ruined.”

“This is a fantastic place,” Gabrielle said, walking over to the waterfall pond and scooping a handful of water to drink.

“You realize dinosaurs probably pee in that, right?” Mercury asked.

Gabrielle shook her head. “Cast-iron alien-power infused stomach.”

“Which you don’t have,” John explained. “The Great Old Ones killed billions of people when they rose from power, but that wasn’t what killed most of humanity. It was the disease, starvation, thirst, and other daily evils that destroyed us.”

“Are you human?” Reyan asked, looking at John. “You do not feel human.”

“No,” John said. “I’m a monster in human form.”

“You’ll find the definition of monster is a bit different on my world,” I said, reassuring him. “Being a monster is what you do, not what you are.”

“My father said that,” Gabrielle said, looking down.

I’d gotten it from The Witcher video games, but truth was truth. “So, Reyan, do you know which way to head from here?”

“Vaguely,” Reyan said. “We’re about a hundred miles from the city of Nur’Ab’Sal. That is near the border of the Nazi territory.”

“Wait, a hundred miles?” I asked.