Author Archives: james@jmorton.ca

Cold, burning, unforgiving; it stretches out as far as the eye can see in all directions, a white wasteland. Icy air sweeps across the ground, creating drifts, the frosty sisters of desert dunes, as the whirling winds dance and swirl among the rocks that provide the only texture to an otherwise desolate land. The blistering air scorches the lungs as gales howl bitterly, rending the silence and echoing across the forsaken territory. Far, far in the distance, barely visible through the blowing snow and clouds that perpetually hold back the sun’s warming rays, tower the massive peaks and barren crags of the frigid Mephistopheles Mountains, the sanctuary of the damned.

Vision blurs with speed as the mountain range races closer; miles and miles of hostile environment flash by, home only to species perfectly adapted to the short days and long nights without any nourishment. Here, motion, as an Arctic hare disappears into a secret burrow; there, the Glacier Basilisk sits as still as a statue, blending almost fully with its surroundings, invisible to all but the sharpest of eyes. As the mountains approach, details appear, coniferous vegetation ideally suited to thriving in a land that fights to destroy it every moment grows from the sides of the cliff faces, clinging to the rocks with prodigious determination. Slowing finally, the true nature and enormity of the natural wonder that is these harsh imposing towers becomes clear.

Millions of years in the making, what secrets must these ancient wonders hold? Caves carved out of the cliffs lead to tunnels, dark and deep, unseen caverns in the bowls of the earth slowly forming, eroding over centuries undisturbed by the outside world, abandoned to the ravages of time.

And yet… from the mouth of one comes a light; a pale, white light that seems to shine directly into the soul, awakening ancient, instinctual terrors, memories of frozen fear and death, the stuff of nightmares. Closer, clearer, the light becomes brighter and brings with it a sound. The sound of ice flows breaking apart and frozen rivers cracking and shifting; the sound of a far off avalanche and tree limbs, weighed down with snow, snapping, falling. A sound that contains the promise of glacial devastation, the horror of eternal winter and unending cold.

The source of the light and sound slowly comes into focus; a massive creature of ice and night is sprawled on the ground, the light emanating from its cracked, scaly body and the noise reverberating from a partially open mouth filled with teeth that match the stalactites and stalagmites of the cave. Colossal white wings provided a blanket, like snowfall on a hill while a range of ridges and valleys jutted up from the tip of the jaws to the end of the tail that curved and turned around the cave like a frozen river. Eyes the size of pools lie closed, immense lids covering them while steam is barely visible rising from open nostrils as the creature breathes the steady breath of sleep. Four legs are folded beside the beast, each one ending in talons the size of mighty ships, sharp, deadly, cold.

The Lord of the icebound wilds slumbers in her cave, an archaic entity of infinite wisdom and power, glorious, beautiful, awful… awaiting the day that brings her out of the depths of hibernation to once more roam the world, searching for another region full of life upon which to inflict her terrible rein.

Sir. Corwyn Thunbonnum released the fury of his strike. His pregnant maid was unconscious before she hit the ground. “A million to the man who finished the job!” he cried, raising a fist in the air.

The crowd watched as the butcher’s boy shouted for joy at the chance of inflicting pain, charging out of the crowd to be the first to strike. He smiled a childish smile of pure happiness, whooping out loud. Dancing around the fallen figure, the boy closed his eyes Leaping, whirling, the snow white love of killing radiated out, stunning the crowd and even Sir. Corwyn himself at the absolute one-mindedness. Silence fell, blanketing the entrance grounds of the estate in a surreal calmness, as the dance finished, and the boy slid a meat cleaver from his belt.

He raised it high above his head.

“For God’s sake boy, stop!” came a horrified voice from the crowd. An old man, leaning on a stick hobbled through the gap made for him by the people watching. “You can’t mean to kill the poor girl! What has she done? Nothing! Nothing but choose the wrong employer!” pointing at Sir. Corwyn he continued, “This man, this filth uses you to do his dirty work. I won’t have it!” He staggered in front of the woman. “You’ll have to kill me first.”

The boy smiled, the same childlike smile, although filled with something different. Instead of violence in his eyes, there was a peace that brought a strange calm to the old man, standing his last stand.

“Peace, brother. You have truly proven yourself worthy. Among this whole crowd, only a feeble old man stands up for justice. So be it. To you, gentle sir, I say rest. You will follow me to eternal bliss. To the rest of you,” he swept his arm around the circle, his eyes hardening, “I damn you to suffer your own folly, to be ruled by those like him. To worship gold instead of me, to love money and not each other. To find only items sacred and not events that are truly full of wonder like a child entering the world.”

The boy dropped the cleaver and walked around the old man, who was frozen in awe, to the woman on the ground. He changed as he walked, becoming older, stronger, taller. No longer a boy, the man who had tested them lifted the figure from the cobblestones and turned to Sir. Corwyn.

“I take her from you to live in eternal paradise. You have your wish.” He turned and walked away, fading as he did so. Instinctively the old man followed, dropping his cane and straightening as they vanished from view.

Shaun got out of bed and missed.

He gently crashed face first into the floor, and actually bounced a little.

“Er..” he said, stunned, confused and still quite horrifically hung over. He tried to get to his feet as the room span around him, and found it surprisingly easy until the force of standing up lifted his feet slightly off the floor, causing him to slip and fall sideways into his bed. The bed didn’t appear to appreciate this as it decided to leave. He hit the floor again, looking up in confusion at the bed which had skidded across the room and was now sulking in a corner. He tried standing again. It worked better this time, though his adventures in posture had caused the room to accelerate in it’s spinning. He staggered, rather effectively he thought, to the bathroom. There were noises. A lot of noises.

A few minutes later Shaun stumbled back out of the bathroom, looking relieved and somewhat confused. The merry-go-room that had been was now only mildly wavy, still not it’s normal, stationary self, but better than trying to walk in something that felt like a horrific children’s carnival ride. His mind was beginning to struggle back to a state of mildly functional, and bits of him were complaining that they had not been well treated. His brain, running on autopilot, heard the complaints and dismissed them, explaining that there was something far more important to be dealing with, although it wasn’t sure what it was. As the physical complains subsided to a dull grumbling, Shaun grasped a minor hold on what was wrong.

“Bloody hell, must have lost six stone in the loo,” he muttered, more or less accurately, though not for the naughty biological reasons that he thought. Even though he had a bit of a hard time with his legs, he eventually managed to come to a truce with his lower limbs and essayed a step. It didn’t fight back. He tried again. Similarly, there were no disastrous consequences. He walked to the stairs, skimming across the ground effortlessly in exactly the way that broken shopping carts don’t. He leaped down the stairs like an eager child at Christmas, and like an eager child at Christmas, completely failed to to watch where he was going.

Standing up off the ground for the third time that day (he was getting rather good at it by this point), he glared at the bottom step. He was sure the pattern in the wood was grinning back. Glancing out the window, he took in the street full of people joyously bounding through the air. He watched for a moment. They jumped, bounced almost glided through the air, an entire street gone mad, ignoring the laws of nature. It made him sick.

He wiped his shirt off, getting most of the splash damage dealt with and made a note to clean up the nearby potted fern later. Clearly there was a need for some coffee. Being hung over was one thing, the insane hallucinations that he was clearly having was another. Walking to the kitchen was a joy. Feeling light and sprightly, he tried a few jumps. His brain reminded him by way of some very insistent pounding of how much he had drank last night. He stopped jumping.

Shaun made coffee. This was not as easy as he thought it might be. Beans flew everywhere as he tried to pour them, water refused to fall properly and he kept throwing things that he picked up, as if the whole world had suddenly decided to become light as a feather without any advance notice which was, he thought, fairly unsporting of it.

After a few minor spills, burns, and curses, he managed to get a hold of a coffee cup and drink from it without coating the ceiling. It took it’s time going down, requiring more coffee to be send down as reinforcements just to get the first sip to where it was badly needed. He managed to sit down and stare out his back window. As the coffee began to take effect, Shaun felt a little better. He was a little confused by the way the birds all seemed to be wildly out of control, crashing into just about anything that happened to be nearby. One bird on the lawn, with what he thought appeared to be a look similar to the confused one he had employed earlier, flapped its wings hard once and shot upwards in a trail of feathers. This was right before the squirrel took a running leap from one tree to another and overshot the distance so far that it had time to turn in the air and flail its tiny arms wildly as it disappeared from view.

Shaun took a sip of his coffee very carefully. His brain was trying to make second gear and having a tough time. Smoke metaphorically was coming from his ears as it failed to shift properly several times.

In times of great crisis, the brain goes over various life events, trying to equate an experience with the one the brain’s owner was having to try and deal with it. This was not a great crisis for Shaun, so instead of searching frantically, causing his life to flash before his eyes, his brain did the equivalent of a dull power point presentation. It did, however, come up with a functional solution.

Shaun decided to get drunk.

I wake, hearing bumps in the night, terrifying!
Pictures flow through my head of the ways I’ll be dying…
First impaling then gunshot and defenestration,
Lose my head with an axe, and my joy through castration!

They’ll boil me! They’ll eat me! I’ll hang by my guts!
These night time intruders are clearly all nuts!
They need help and assistance of type Psychiatric,
I’ll never survive to an age Geriatric!

If I step out of bed they’ll remove all my toes,
If I throw off the covers, I would weakness expose,
I could try to get weapons, a club or a gun,
Shoot her cat one more time though, my girl would be done.

- From Reddit Writing Prompts, edited slightly.

It was the war. The war that did the most damage, shattered the most lives, ruined the most species in all of time and space. Once, time and space was a flowing river, a stream, a direct line from beginning to end. Time travel was just jumping into the same directional flow;  a different place in the stream but the same destination, inevitably rushing towards oblivion as the Universe died a cold death, all things finally expended. The universe was finite. Massive, but finite. There indeed was a limit to matter and energy and a perfect finality to existence, ultimate of ultimate end. Until there wasn’t.

The war between the Pegg and Simulacrae raged for eons. Both species evolving specifically to fight each other over thousands of generations caused more and greater damage physically than had ever been seen. Solar system after solar system was claimed by one species or the other, expanding rapidly, forcing rapid breeding to keep up with the billions upon billions of causalities. Multiple different genetic mutations spread through both species based on traits that allowed their ancestors to survive while battling the other, cultivating the ultimate soldier counter to the other race. The Pegg rapidly developed mental prowess that had never before existed. The species began the war as an intellectual race, brilliant and cultured, with honed cognitive powers surpassing any seen before. Very quickly telepaths developed, first as empaths, able to feel the intentions of the enemy and react, giving conscious control to a subconscious instinct. After some empaths developed true telepathy, the Mentat mutation developed, giving some few Pegg the ability to kill indiscriminately with nothing but a thought. Known throughout the Universe as Zslars, this type of monstrously powerful mutation caused life to be shattered across all the Universe as innocent species were scythed through by different types of Zslar from both the Pegg and Simulacrae.

For millennia the war raged, until finally a weapon was developed by a desperate last alliance of free worlds, the only weapon which stood a chance of saving the Universe from being mindlessly torn asunder. The most fiendishly clever solution, absolutely perfect, infusing the tranq into eternity. The device was plotted and built by a species called by outsiders the Slydyde for the manner they seem to slide in and out of existence. The ability they developed, they applied to the weapon. The only species ever to evolve the natural ability to create their own universes. They create tiny temporary  dimensions that only exist for fractions of a second and slide through them. Scaling the theory, the eight most brilliant minds the galaxy could provide created a massive Intergalaxial Darkmatter device to be ignited inside a black hole that would take from time and space every trace of the Pegg and Simulacrae. Everything from the first instance of tiny DNA mutating to create a slightly different species which would one day become one of the two to the bloodiest and most horrific battle which wiped no fewer than sixteen separate races from existence. To do this, the device was to create a separate dimension and lock away forever the two warring species in a Universe all their own.

It went wrong. Most infinitely wrong.

Instead of creating a single dimension, the war was scattered across thousands of alternate dimensions as the explosion rendered the single  stream that was reality. The scale of the conflict was reduced to a negligible series of incidents as the decimated races continued their war wherever they encountered each other across the vast expanse that was now an infinite number of alternate Universes.

So became the Polyverse, allowing for untold suffering to impossible numbers of species…. But creating the opportunity for many who never could have lived, to live.

The Device was named the God Detonus and hailed as simultaneously the greatest and worst event in all of the newly created Polyverse. The eight minds who created it, and trillions of others were thrown out into the Polyverse as the detonation went off, with no hope of return to their dimension… Until in a small, unregarded Universe, barely large enough to be called a Universe, created seemingly as an aftershock of the God Detonus, there evolved a species with the natural ability to travel between the Universes. It was instinctual at first, an impossibly effective defense mechanism. When attacked, they simply shifted to a Dimension that was exactly the same except for whatever danger they faced no longer existed.

Then there was born those who could control the shift. The species named Valharo, humanoid, tended to be slim but muscular with dark hair and eyes. Their planet was not unlike Earth, except much younger and the society integrated into the ecosystem instead of wiping it out. More and more were born with Shifting, until they developed devices that could allow others to shift to nearby dimensions. First only others They began to map the Polyverse, splitting it into sections that had been created by major changes in time, categorizing and sorting dimensions to allow for safe exploration. An organization was developed to police the Polyverse  as with control of the power came those who would abuse it. The Department Of Dimensional Organization (DIDO), was charged with maintaining the species’ travel through dimensions and finding those who abused it.

The great city of  Phukin Biltit is one of the most unfortunately named of all cities.

Construction, destruction and obstruction workers had all worked under the strictest of guidance from three-or-fourmen to create one of the most impressive castles ever seen for the Good King Slaughterbill, a monument to his frequently terminal cruelty and lack of respect for anything. He defiled the surrounding serene grasslands with muddy, soaking camps for all of the slaves required to keep any vicious monarch happy and diverted the pristine river to provide fresh water and sewage, sometimes in that order. Years passed, and no one had the guts to try and dethrone Slaughterbill, mainly because anyone who tried to dethrone Slaughterbill swiftly had no guts. Being the very special kind of crazy that assumes anyone who disagrees with you would benefit from major reconstructive oral surgery, and so amazingly competent at survival without giving the least bit of thought to it, Slaughterbill’s rein lasted for many years. Over his lifetime, he set several records including “Most assassination attempts ending with self-deboweling,” and “Most arrows dodged while distracted by a blasted shiny object at his feet,”. Eventually, he died, happily in his bed with a lifetime of murder and mayhem lulling him to his final sleep. Amazingly, the community was shattered. No one had been able to organize any kind of resistance without incredibly unfortunate circumstances halting the attempt, and all of his most senior advisors had been unable to handle the mental stress that came with advising someone who tended to remove whatever he could pull off when you disagreed with him, and had all gone completely mad. The small society fell apart, no more conquering, no more slaves from campaigns. The population of Slaughterbill’s Kingdom had decreased by 85% through death and running away when  word had finally spread far enough of his death that The Godslayer heard of his demise and gathered his armies.  They arrived at the Castle surround by filthy encampments after weeks of marching, and asked the first person they saw what the name of Slaughterbill’s City was. This happened to be a wizened old man, Old Boomer Jones,  one of the few to survive the Crews that built the castle. Being slightly hard of hearing because “I got a smidge too close to the ‘splosives,” He misheard the question. He answered it.

Streets spoke to her. She listened.  She had to. Nutrition came in the form of a discarded, half-eaten lunch or dinner . No one ever noticed her. Dumpsters provided half-eaten McDonalds hamburgers, subs, pizza crusts… anything and everything. She lived as part of the streets. Water was easier, although the lake didn’t provide water as clean as that in water barrels. She was invisible. Today, the streets were noisier than usual.  An undertone seeped into the normal waves of conversation, like rocks had grown in the wave of humanity and conversations all crashed upon them, breaking the tone of the background noise that permeated normal city living. Ebb and flow, a tide of talk rolled to her. War.

She had heard the word before, many years before. It brought back memories of metal, vague images of lights and wires; talk that she couldn’t understand though the voices imprinted themselves on her mind. Blind to the present, her mind fought to bring sense to the mad colours and shapes of her memories.  Then contact, a kick. Falling. Her eyes filling with tears looked up into disgust. It was talking, angry about something. She lowered her head and stood, quickly turning and running off the main road into her home, the alleyways and dark corners of the city.

Time flew by, gliding on wings of hunger and fear. Always another alley, another kick, another hamburger, half eaten, frequently rotten. The talk of the city on battles and victories, triumph over evil, nearing an end of  it all. The evil was desperate, they were outnumbered and heathens with no God to rescue them or claim their souls. She thought of that word, God, and remembered more. Something about wrath. Men, talking. Men in uniforms, that was it. They talked about wrath and they controlled the metal. She remembered being hurt as they had done something to her. Wires and white lab coats surrounded the metal she lay on. Where? When? She didn’t know. She couldn’t remember. It must have ended at some point because she knew there had been the best time: Flying.  Flying in blue over blue; staring out of a small circle in a white wall; a portal that led to an infinity of space. Points, white tipped, jutted out from far away and below, fluffy friends had floated around changing from dog to cat. It had been good. Then it too had ended. She had found herself in a dumpster with nothing but her rags and a little food. Everything was blurry after that, one long lingering dream, a dream that persisted through sleep, enveloping her every waking hour. She shook her head and burped. It tasted wrong.

Thousands of miles away in a bunker the General removed his finger from the button, completing his country’s final desperate act. The nuclear child had been detonated.