Chasing the Moon (30 page)

“But that just makes it all sound so meaningless.”

West replied, “And who says it isn’t? Humans. You’re always so obsessed with finding meaning in things. But not really. Because when you say
meaning
you really mean
specialness
. You want a nice warm hug from a cold, indifferent universe. You want everything you do to be important and everything you think to be catalogued and recorded.”

“It’s not like that,” she said, “but it would be nice if it meant something.”

“Yes, I agree. It would be nice.”

He climbed down the ladder and knocked on the door of Apartment Three. Peter-thing answered.

“Here to replace the batteries,” said West.

Peter-thing absorbed the information, smiled. “Safety first.” He checked on a batch of baking cookies while West did his task.

“Why are there so many smoke detectors in this building?” asked Diana. “I don’t remember seeing so many before.”

“Do you really want to know?”

West sighed, and while he was normally a flat, unreadable soul, she sensed some annoyance on his part.

“I’m sorry, Number Five. I’m trying to see your point. I am. But I’m not exactly sure what it is.”

She sat on Peter-thing’s couch and blew a raspberry.

“Neither am I.”

It was no wonder people went crazy. She was adrift. She couldn’t think of a good reason why she should be concerned about any of this. It was like politics. Getting involved seemed like a good idea sometimes, but ultimately it only served to disillusion and disappoint. West was right about the search for meaning. Nobody really wanted meaning. They just didn’t want meaninglessness. Except for maybe anarchists, but even most of them tried to shoehorn some kind of sense into it.

West’s annoyance changed to something stranger. Sympathy.

“Okay, let’s go then. I have something to show you.”

“No.”

“What?”

“No, I don’t want to go on another of your bizarre, otherworldly sightseeing tours where I fight dinosaurs or destroy planets with my sneezes. Those don’t make anything clearer. They only leave me more confused than when I started. I just want to figure out what I’m supposed to do. Can we just skip the weirdness this time?”

“I suppose. If that’s what you really want.”

“It is.”

“Are you certain? Because the Isthmus of Skrunb is
beautiful this time of year. As long as you ignore the shrieking butterflies.”

“Oh, I’m certain.”

Peter-thing lumbered over with a plateful of gingersnaps and snickerdoodles. He offered one to each, which they graciously accepted, even though Diana didn’t care for either type of cookie.

“Meaning of life is cookies.”

She nodded politely, took a nibble of her gingersnap.

“Cookies are good. Cookies make people happy. Cookies don’t question what they are here for because cookies know.”

“You do know cookies aren’t alive, right?” she asked.

“Maybe not,” said Peter-thing, “but does cookie know that?”

“Okay, this is getting a little existential for me. Thanks for trying, guys, but this isn’t working.”

She nibbled her treat but didn’t have the heart to finish it off.

She started the trudge back to her apartment. Somehow West beat her to the top of the stairs.

“It’s not the end of the world,” he said. “Fenris will tear his way from this reality, but the damage will only be temporary.”

“Aha! I knew that you knew.” Grinning, she stabbed her finger at him, though it made very little sense since she hadn’t caught him lying. He hadn’t slipped up. But she’d take all the victories, real or imagined, she could.

“The universe will survive. It will stitch its broken shards into something workable. It always does. It’s not any different than when World War Three was postponed to next week. Or
that time brown became yellow and yellow became the number seven. This change will be bigger than that, but if you’re speaking of the literal end, then it’s not that.”

“Stop that.”

“Stop what?”

“Stop trying to get me not to care.”

“Are you sure about that?” he asked. “It’s a lot easier when you n’t.”

“This is my world we’re talking about. Maybe stuff like this happens all the time. And maybe I never noticed before. But I’ve noticed this time, and I don’t like it.”

“So it’s about you then?” asked West.

Her first response was to deny that, but it came to her that he was right. If the world ended tomorrow, who would be left to mourn it? Just her. She didn’t want it to end or change or whatever because she didn’t want to be left alone, to be deprived of her lifeline to the sane and normal, although even that was an increasingly frayed thread.

“Yes. Damn it, yes. That’s what it’s about.”

“Fenris is inevitable.”

She knew she had him here. Having fortuitously, if accidentally, lured him into a verbal trap, she wasn’t about to let him go.

“According to you, it’s all inevitable. It’s inevitable that I’ll go mad, and it’s inevitable that the sun will blow up someday. It’s inevitable that bugs from the future will one day travel back in time and rewrite history. It doesn’t mean I have to sit back and take it.”

“No, you don’t have to. But it’ll be better for everyone
if you do. Because interfering in this one will only make it worse.”

“Says who?”

“Says me. When you’ve been doing this job as long as I have, you get a sense of these things. And I can tell you that some futures can be averted. Some changes should be avoided. And some are unavoidable. Some cannot be stopped, and to try will only cause more harm than you can imagine.”

“And I’m just supposed to take your word on that.”

“That’s up to you. But you came to me for my perspective, Number Five. Seems strange to ignore it just because it wasn’t what you wanted to hear.”

His bag of batteries clacked like a maraca as he descended the stairs.

Diana almost swore, but her frustration left her drained. She wanted to save her world, but it wasn’t about her world. It was about her. If she could do something positive in the midst of all this confusion and madness, then she just might be able to convince herself that she wasn’t so trivial and unimportant after all. Just because she wasn’t certain there was any grand plan to this didn’t mean she couldn’t come up with one.

She walked back to her apartment, where her monsters waited for her. Vom and Smorgaz sat on the couch, watching a version of the old
Land of the Lost
TV show that seemed to be filmed from the Sleestaks’ perspective. Zap hovered in the corner, staring at the wall or maybe the greater mysteries behind it. And Pogo hopped at her feet and whimpered.

It was comforting. Like a Norman Rockwell painting populated by infernal manifestations. The monsters were just like
her, lost souls, and if there was anywhere she belonged, this was it. She wasn’t an outsider. Not anymore.

All things considered, there were worse places in the universe to call home.

The phone rang. It was Sharon.

“Greg wants to meet you. Tomorrow night.”

Diana and her monsters pulled up to the estate. There was something off about it. It wasn’t only that it was a huge plot of land, bigger than most neighborhoods. The entire place shimmered like a heat mirage. Like her apartment, this place had become disconnected from the rest of reality. It was an island tethered to her world, a waypoint before greater mysteries beyond.

Vom’s fur bristled as he turned a sicklier shade of green. “I think I’m going to be sick.”

“Oh, God,” said Diana. “Don’t do it in the car.”

Vom stuck his head out the passenger-side window and vomited a gazelle, twenty-two pounds of gravel, and a bar stool. The bewildered gazelle stumbled to its hooves and dashed away.

Spawns jumped off Smorgaz’s back like popcorn. They even made popping noises when they did so.

Zap blasted a hole in her roof before shutting his all-seeing eye.

“Sorry.”

Pogo buried his head under his paws and tucked his tail between his legs.

“What the heck is wrong with you guys?” she asked.

“It’s this place,” said Zap. “It’s throwing everything out of whack. I don’t think we can go in there with you.” Cosmic lightning flashed under his eyelid.

“Are you sure?”

Vom regurgitated half a shark and some slightly chewed office furniture. Smorgaz’s spawn were rapidly filling up the backseat.

“Get out then,” she said. “Especially you, Vom. Before you throw up acid or something.”

The creatures exited the vehicle.

“Maybe you should reconsider this,” said Vom, who then vomited up a misshapen limb that flailed at the air with its claws before he managed to gulp it back down.

“Agreed,” said Smorgaz. “I don’t like the idea of you walking into Fenris’s lair without any backup.”

Diana said, “It’s not a lair. It’s a house. And I don’t need backup. This isn’t a commando mission.”

“Still seems a touch reckless,” said Vom.

“Safety in numbers.

Pogo rolled over on his back and whimpered.

“I don’t like it either,” she said, “but maybe it’s better this way. How would it look if I show up with you guys behind me like some private army of the damned? It’d be too confrontational.”

“But aren’t you being confrontational?” asked Vom.

“I’m not really sure what I’m doing,” she admitted, “but from what I’ve glimpsed Fenris is unstoppable. Even you couldn’t really do anything against him other than maybe annoy him.”

Zap bobbed. “It’s true.”

“Well, if there’s nothing to be done about this, then why bother going at all?” asked Vom.

She’d asked herself the same question. Several times. The only answer she could come up with was that she had to do something. If her only two choices were hiding from the inevitable or facing it head-on, she had decided the latter was preferable, if only because it gave her the illusion of controlling her own destiny.

“I know I’m your lifeline,” she said, “but you don’t have to worry. Everything will be fine, and you won’t get stuck in the closet again.” It surprised her how certain she sounded when she couldn’t be sure of anything.

“Closet? Is that what you think this is about to me?” Vom shook his head. “Do you think I really give a damn if I’m locked away for a few hundred years waiting for the next witless sap to inherit me? I’m ageless. I could wait a million years in that closet. It’d be a little boring, but I’ve been bored before.

“No, we like you, Diana. We don’t want anything bad to happen to you.”

Smorgaz and Zap echoed the sentiment. Pogo wagged his spiky, whiplike tail.

She smiled despite herself.

“I like you too. Hell, you guys just might be the best friends I’ve ever had. But this is my reality, my fight.”

They started a new round of protests.

“No arguments,” she said. “I’m in charge here, right? That means we do things my way. If it makes you feel any better, I give Zap permission to keep watch over me via that all-seeing eye of his.”

“I can’t see in there,” said Zap. “There’s interference in the space-time continuum, a fifth-dimensional collapse along the polyfractal axis that’s condensing all possible futures into a single unobservable waveform.”

“What does that mean? You can’t see anything?” asked Diana.

“Oh, I can see.” Zap rose in the air, waved his tentacles. “I can see into realmsyond imagination. I just can’t see much into this one.”

“Does that mean it’s all done? That the future is over?”

“All it really means is that someone has shoved Schrodinger’s cat into a box and nailed it shut until this thing is all over. Whether that means your world is over or not… honestly, I can’t say. But considering the situation, I wouldn’t lay odds on anything positive. When you get down to it, reality is a stack of potentialities, some more potential than others. But when chaos becomes certainty, then that certainty is usually oblivion.”