EelRetrac

Mayfair When the door of the booth closed, I found myself in pitch darkness. After a moment, I reached to open the door again, thinking the booth had malfunctioned, but the door didn't seem to be there anymore. It also seemed like the seat of the booth had vanished, along with the floor. In fact, the entire booth had vanished, and I was floating in black nothingness. Well, finding Mayfair was turning out to be as weird as the rest of the crap that had been going on lately. I floated awhile before an image began appearing, the kind of afterimage that is imprinted on your eyes after staring at a bright light, but quickly became realistic and

Home and away again Forty-eight hours after walking out of the desert, I found myself standing with Van Zandt on an odd street corner in one of the newly opened realities on the edge of Congeries space. The intervening two days had been quite full. I'd intended to get to Grin's place immediately, but the call of a good night's sleep at my place in Paedarc had overrode that impulse. I'd showered, slept, showered again, burned the remnants of clothes I'd walked the desert in, showered a third time, then made my way to the bar. The welcome from Grin and Van Zandt was equal parts 'we're glad to see you' and 'where the hell has your dumb-ass bee

The Long Walk Even through my dark goggles, the glare of the desert would burn my eyes when the sun was high. From rise to set, the sun would force my eyes into a tight squint and make them water. By the end of each day, each side of my face would have a line of salt running down it, marking the path my tears had taken. The heat of the sand rose through my boots and scorched my feet, and every breath was like inhaling fire while the sun was up. Time was broken not by seconds and minutes, but by single trudging steps taken up and down the slopes of vast sand dunes. For days I had followed the silent man through the desert, maybe weeks. I had

Thoughts on troubles I don't know what was kept in the bag before it had been put over my head, but I counted myself lucky it hadn't been anything too stenchful. The ropes around my wrists and the manner I was being transported were both relatively comfortable, too. The Sig Nomad might have not been sure they could trust me, but at least they weren't making the experience of being taken to see their local commander more painful than it had to be. I sat, eyes blinded and wrists bound, in what, from the sound, seemed to be a horse drawn conveyance, listening to the men guarding me chat companionably about this and that, sprinkling insults on t

The Blind Lady's place The fortune teller Sachiko sent me to was not at all what I expected. I'd hit the Sanctum of the Blind Lady directly after finishing business at Pendross' shop. The old man behind the counter had been fascinated by my left hand. He'd insisted on opening the whole thing up, kept muttering technical specs and oohing and aahing as he looked through its innards. I'd practically had to pry the thing out of his hands when I wanted to leave; he'd wanted to keep the thing for a night so he could take it apart. When he'd let go of it, sighing with regret, and asked me to do him the kindness of bringing it to him if the hand sh

Talk to the hand The sign on the shop had 'Pendross Cybernetic and Bionic' in basic, blocky script. I stood in a shaded doorway across the road from the shop, one who's faded paint and dusty windows seemed to say it hadn't been used in a while. I'd been watching Pendross' door for ten minutes or so, holding my left fist, clenching and unchlenching, in my right hand. I didn't want to cross the street. I didn't want to go in. I had come to Pendross' because Sachiko had said the owner might be able to tell me something about the prosthetic metal hand I wore on the end of my left arm. This suggestion had come after I had mentioned that I didn't

Starting homeward Three days after Sachiko found me on the deck of the Void Dog, we made port in Cobo Landing. For all three days, I had been feeling the occasional pull of a Stepping point as the spheres of different realities had revolved past the deep ship. Sachiko had found it very interesting, and had begun talking about the uses of having someone with dimension hopping skill as part of an exploratory crew. In the normal course of events, Sachiko would have had to 'land' the Void Dog in an unexplored dimension to find out anything about it, and actually finding the proper entry point was hit or miss, at best. But I could feel when Stepp

The hands of Yendin Baddo The next three days sailing the obsidian deeps on board the Void Dog saw great improvement in my physical condition under the ministrations of Sachiko. She was a fascinating woman, and was apparently descended from a long line of 'deep sailors', as they called themselves. I gathered that they looked upon people who traveled the dimensions only by using gates as hopelessly limited, never really knowing the wonders that existed in the rich vastness that was accessible to them, and thought only slightly more highly of those like myself, who could Step across realities under our own power. A ship like the Void Dog could

The Void Dog The first thing that I became aware of while gradually returning to consciousness was the sound of creaking wood. Then there was the feeling of my weight shifting back and forth, in time with the creaking. Various parts of my body were telling me that I was not in perfect condition. My left arm wouldn't move at all, and it was obvious from how it lay that I wasn't wearing my hand. There was a stretch of my right side, from below the ribs to the knee, where I was pretty sure I'd lost more than a little flesh. The ankle on that side didn't feel right, either, and the last two fingers on my right hand were braced as though they'd

A little slice of terror The place I landed was dark, dank, and smelled of decay. There were no walls in sight, only oily shadows occasionally interrupted by massive pillars of crudely cut greenish, dank stone. The pillars rose out of sight, vanishing into darkness that was punctuated, but not illuminated, by leprous whitish green lights that oozed through the sky like diseased fireflies. Disturbing shapes moved and slid in and out of my peripheral vision, vanishing when I turned to face them. A loud, horrible dragging, tearing sound came from the inky patch ahead of me. As I watched, seven rubbery phalanges flung themselves towards me, lat