Secret Realms

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Trickster stared into the gleaming surface of the pearl, which felt heavy, cupped in both his hands. At first, he could see only the pearl's surface, the convex image of his face swimming and merging with roiling images of computer logic diagrams and electromagnetic waveforms. He smeared his hand over the pearl, seeing deeper images of flaming soldiers fighting, their thrashing bodies burning without being consumed.
Below the flames moved the memories that he had re-created at such great cost and painstaking effort. Subtly, in key sequence, his fingers squeezed the pearl. The memories shot into his eyes, roared in his ears, inflamed his visual and aural cortices. He relived the experience of the time when Weeble had left the tribe, the time when Trickster, had realized that he loved Cat, the time when death had first entered the world.
* * *
They had survived fifteen years of struggle. Under the strain of the first large intense war, many of them had begun to behave in strange ways. Although they knew that they needed each other to survive the ferocity of this battle, alliances shifted, agreements were violated and partnerships broke up in shouting matches.
Disgusted when Berserker deserted him to form a partnership with Snake, Trickster had sat down in lotus seat and refused to fight. A small patrol of the enemies called Frenchmen eventually arrived. In his mind's eye gleamed the memories of their uniforms, the blue tunics with brass buttons, the dirty white trousers, the high black boots and strange tall hats. The Frenchmen were armed with long single-shot rifles fitted with bayonets. Trickster ignored them, but one of the Frenchmen spied him and quickly and painlessly ran him through.
Back in those days, they didn't go to Time-Out, but rather to a prisoner-of-war stockade. The Frenchmen ran a grim stockade, a muddy field surrounded by barbed wire. Trickster stood in the cold drizzle. He remembered dreading the meal he would earn from this battle problem. Probably corn bread. System knew that Trickster hated corn bread.
The only other prisoner was Weeble. Trickster walked over and squatted on his haunches next to him. Weeble looked up and smiled with a glazed expression.
"The star that shines is the sign of power," Weeble said.
"Huh?"
For a long time, Weeble didn't answer, then he seemed to wake up. "The star is the sign," Weeble said. "It's the sign of power."
"What? Talk sense, brother."
"The star that shines is the sign of power," Weeble said. "I saw it last night. I understood the power that is within me. I understood that everything is just a lie, Trickster. These Frenchmen aren't real. This mud--" Weeble reached and scooped up a handful of mud, shoved it into his mouth and began to swallow.
"Weeble, stop that!" Trickster shouted.
"--isn't real," Weeble said, his voice weirdly calm despite a throat stifled with mud. He bent over and vomited out the mud, wiped his lips and continued. "It's a lie of System, Trickster.. What you and I say is true. I'm not going to fight anymore."
"You're acting real weird, Weeble. Knock it off, huh?"
"System is an evil god," Weeble said. "Our world is the creation of an evil god. We look up and the highest thing we can see, we think must be a good god, but it is a false god, an evil god. Once the light shines, shines from the star, you realize that we've got to reject this god, kill this god that created our world, rise higher and see the star.…"
System appeared, a column of pure black. Weeble's avatar froze in midsentence. "This is a prohibited communication," the deep voice of System rumbled.
Trickster stood defiant before the black column. "Why?"
"Life is constant struggle," System answered. "I am System. I coordinate battle. I do not make the world. The world is not made. The world simply is. Accept it and struggle to improve your strategic position. Everything else is counterproductive."
While System spoke, Dreamer arrived in the stockade. Trickster watched as she opened a private communications link with Weeble. He could tell only that they were communicating at tremendous speed. Then, abruptly, System severed the link.
Weeble unfroze. Rage contorted his face into a bestial mask. "I wanna talk to her!" he screamed, his body hunching. Suddenly he threw himself at System. Trickster stood, shocked that anyone would try to attack System. The shock was old, faded and calcified with repeated memory, yet still it moved within him. He fought System, Trickster thought. That is why Hove him. But the problem does not respond to a frontal attack. Weeble's avatar froze in midair.
"You must calm down," System said.
"Get Sui Tai," Dreamer suggested.
Weeble's parent appeared. The realm changed to Weeble's personal realm. Trickster experienced the old disorientation inflicted by the perverse dimensions and arrangements, strange beyond chaos. Only a diseased mind could have designed such a strange personal realm. Parallaxes and false perspectives twisted into optical illusions, metamorphosed into haphazard symbols, all against a background of extrasensory noise, all rushing past so that they seemed to be falling. Then Weeble's personal realm shifted into the blue haze of Time-Out. "Stay and help calm your brother," Weeble's parent, Sui Tai, said. Weeble's avatar unfroze. He continued to thrash, screaming incoherently. The membrane to his personal space grew opaque and then disappeared. Sui Tai rushed in and attempted to embrace Weeble, but he fought violently against her. "Traitor! Traitor!" he screamed.
Trickster found himself alone in Time-Out. Next, the entire tribe, minus Weeble, appeared alongside him.
"Hey, what happened!" Berserker shouted. "I was slaying. A cavalry attack on canon positions!"
"Too late to save my battalion!" Snake shouted.
"We were slowed down by some French infantry," Berserker said.
"I hated this battle problem!" Cry-Baby whined. "I'm glad it's over."
"Hey, where's Weeble?" Cat asked.
Trickster coughed. Everyone turned their attention to him. In a few words, he recounted what he had witnessed.
"He's losing control," Cat said. "Spending all his time and energy on false images."
"He's a wimp," Snake said. "He's worthless."
"He's…great," Dreamer said. "Great in ways you can't understand."
Guffaws and snickers answered this remark.
"He was supposed to watch my flank," Crush said. "Next thing I know, he's wandering off and getting captured."
"He's worse than you, Cry-Baby."
"Loser."
"That was a good problem, too."
"OK!" Cat shouted. "Listen up. We've got to pull it together. That battle problem was the hardest yet. We were coming apart there at the end. You, Berserker, what do you call that? Breaking your pact with Trickster under attack."
"He's worthless--"
"Shut it, Berserker. We acted like a bunch of independent commanders united only by a common defeat. Look at this," Cat said. She called up the battle problem, a privilege they enjoyed in those days in Time-Out. With a few masterful gestures, she backed up the battle problem two hours, then ran through several scenarios. Within a minute, she had demonstrated that Berserker's abandonment of Trickster had cost them the integrity of the battle front.
"And you, Trickster, what do you call that, getting captured by a patrol of four enemies? That was weak, brother."
Trickster shrugged. "I gave Berserker what was left of my cavalry. I had nothing left of my own resources. So I thought I'd sit and reconnoiter the enemy's position."
Cat arched an eyebrow. "And you, Cry-Baby. Look at this. Back it up fifty minutes. Here. This is where we started to go wrong. You missed an obvious opportunity to augment Crush's advance, right here. See? Then you could have sent your infantry through this stand of woods, taken these cannon mounts. That would've...