Chapter 5 – I’m pretty sure that the deer is actually a God

To start off: Yes, I have asked people about the deer. No, I do not know what it is or why it has taken a liking to haunting my dreams and tormenting my mortal prison. I am the only one who can see it, and everyone I ask has sent me to the infirmary for “Rehabilitation” (I have been through 10 sessions about the physics of the common deer, I think I’m done asking about the freaking deer)

To those wondering about my interview with Zeus, I have news for you: He can’t speak English. He speaks a version of ancient Greek so old that our translators can’t figure out what he’s saying before he blows something up. I was in the room for maybe five minutes and gained two “nearly” lethal shocks from a miniature thunderstorm before the table imploded on itself. The heads of the Infirmary, Father Knight and Sister Prynne, have created a special room denoted to fixing MY INJURIES. Apparently, my rate of injury exceeds every single person in all of Artemis.

So, new realities, cool stuff, right?

Actually, first, I saw someone else in the Library today! Remember when I talked about the guy without a face who kept humming from the second entry? Yep, he was there, and the Librarian was back too! They seemed to communicate through some kind of clicking before they both stared at me for nearly two hours. Apparently, some of the subjects have library privileges, who knew?!?

So, we have Abandon right? Well, next few levels are a bit more extreme.

Level 2: Pangea

Imagine humans never existed, with nature taking over everything. It’s beautiful, everything is green and the mosquitos are as large as smaller dogs. We found the next weakness an hour’s drive across a mountain range, but due to a lack of roads and non fluffy pests, we decided to take the fun route. We constructed two large flying troop-transport-things to ferry personal from side to side, each equipped with flamethrowers for the nasty bugs. Everything went pretty well all things considered, even managed to capture a few bugs for study back home (Nobody died, unlike the last reality with the banshees) I joked with Annika (The tech wizard) about strapping a camera to a bug, filming it do what bugs do, and submitting it for a film contest. She was all for it, even creating a special camera and everything only for the camera to fall to the ground in pieces. Apparently, the hairs on the bugs are razor sharp, to the point they can cut through a variety of metals with the right angle like butter. In this example, the camera and duct tape were the butter.

Also, I found some socks.

Let me explain. Annika and I were patrolling near the construction site of the second transport, talking about our homes and what life was like before. The topic of pets came up, leading to the unfortunate discussion of Jared.

“I don’t get it; you had a pet goat but it responded to your commands like a dog?”

“Yep.” I responded, a smile on my face. “We named her Jared.”

“Why?”

I shrugged.

“She ate literally everything, kind of like someone named Jared would.”

Apparently, Annika’s last name was Jared, so in the end I called my coworker fat. Crazy, right?

Well, we were walking like you do, and I noticed something on the ground.

“Annika, what is your favorite color?”

She smiled, clicking a few knobs on her wrist communicator (I will never call that thing a watch, no matter how “Smart” it is.)

“Blue, like the sky back home.”

“How about socks? What color do you like your socks?”

She stopped messing with her arm-thing, staring at me like my parents did when I was bitten by a miniature horse on my rear end, having called it a “Tiny Excuse of a Stallion”

“Um… Come again?”

“Your socks.” I gestured. “Are they blue?”

She frowned, either furious or intensely confused.

“Buddy, do you know a thing called personal space?”

I shook my head, meaning yes but apparently signaling no. Being called buddy is only a good thing when it’s your name, and last I checked I wasn’t an elf either.

“No, it’s just that THAT sock isn’t my sock, so I was hoping it was yours…”

Directly in front of us was a perfectly blue right-sock, lying upon the dirt with no foot print in sight. We glanced to each other before pursuing, finding an ENTIRE HAMPER OF SOCKS, ALL FOR THE RIGHT FOOT!

You see, we think some things that go missing will occasionally pop through weaknesses in realities from shock waves (Cannon blasts or basic explosions) or simply falling through the cracks. This of course makes no sense to me as I found that hamper of socks, defying all conclusions made previously. Sure, they go missing all the time, but winding up in another reality? That’s even stranger than the deer, and by golly that deer is weird.

Speaking of the deer, the next reality has given me nightmares.

Level 3: DuskDawn

A permanent eclipse over a barren landscape, a desert with freezing temperatures during the day and burning winds throughout the night. Strange beings huddle in small groups throughout the land, each hunched with their heads to the ground. They stand nearly ten feet tall, each covered in smooth purple skin with long snouts stretching to around a foot or so (Kind of like a small elephant trunk) They are completely harmless, not responding to anything beyond softly snorting at some of my jokes (You’ll have to take my word for it)

As the next opening was tracked to the other end of the country in Northern California, we saw much of the landscape on transport convoys , during the short gap of time from Dusk and Dawn (Hence the name) Any other time would be too dangerous to traverse, either turning our fuel to slush or igniting the gas from inside the fuel tank. Luckily, energy shields are apparently a thing, so we could sit tight for a few hours, making it roughly a two-day journey to either end.

The whole atmosphere is intensely uncomforting in this foreign world. The air is basically poison to our lungs, the elements kill on contact, and yet we kept seeing straight lines in the sand. One thing you learn after being with scientists for hours upon hours is that nature doesn’t make straight lines “naturally”. Humans do, so there came the thought that someone else had been here… recently. The idea that someone else beat us to this reality was a bit upsetting, as if they really had made it all this way for nothing. Why would there just be lines? Instead of a flag like on the moon or heaps of socks in Pangea, why just lines? Either they were dead or we were crazy, it being a crazy coincidence that we were right on both accounts.

I was able to chat with the crew a bit more, especially with Sailor. He remained muscular as always, sitting with his rifle between his legs as we spoke within the confines of the cramped troop transport. We played a short game of cards, flipping the paper to the metallic table with the occasional clang.

“So, what brings a fellow like you to a place like this?”

Sailor snorted.

“Money for some, adventure for others. As for me, I just want to be in the right place at the right time, doing the right thing.”

I blinked.

“So, you want to be one of the good guys?”

“Yep.”

I nodded slowly, digesting I really hadn’t been listening to his responses.

“Why Artemis then?”

He shrugged, his eyes glancing to the red ribbon upon his belt.

“Last time I knew a cooperation with this much power, they decimated my home. I nearly didn’t make it out of there, but Artemis seems to have noticed my stance on things. They hired me to make sure that the right thing was done in the right way, fighting the bad guys and saving the day.”

“So, what does that make me then?”

Sailor looked to me, his eyes scanning my “pathetic excuse of a body” (Direct quote from June’s Song after telling her about the deer). He nodded, slightly chuckling.

“Good heart, terrible balance.”

We drove for another handful of hours before stopping well before our timeframe, something stopping our progress. Without any sort of information, I was commanded by June’s Song to arm myself in the power armor I had seen before, a suit that stood nearly two times my height with gizmos and gadgets galore. I clambered into the suit before someone secured it behind me, finding my eyes scanning the depressing monitors seated in my helmet. I stumbled like a newborn deer (Not THE DEER, but A DEER, big difference) with Sailor in a suit of his own, being monitored by Annika from inside the transport.

“Are you boys ready for some fun?” She yelled, her voice filling my helmet.

“NO!”

I looked at Sailor, wondering why he would yell no as he was the muscle man carved from cream cheese, the dude who said he wanted to be good and….

Ok, fine, I was the one who yelled no.

Sailor looked to me, his head obscured by a futuristic helmet reminiscent of my nightmares (Of the Martian abduction variety) No words were needed, I could tell from the way his body simply was that I had gone beyond confusing him.

“I mean, maybe…everything is really green and bright, and I have no idea how I can hear you, and everything is spinning like that one time when I was really tired during an orchestra performance where I tripped on the conductor, and my mouth tastes like wet dog and I can’t …”

“Forget I said anything.” She muttered. “Just start walking, we found some odd heat signatures and need you to check it out.”

We marched our way across a mini desert, our suits managing to repel the freezing temperatures for the time being. We had 30 minutes of heat left before we would freeze, the suit’s fuel rod expanding in the cold before shattering in a miniature thermonuclear explosion. This, of course, was no problem as ten minutes later I was running back screaming in perhaps the least manly voice one could muster.

It was a village of mud dwellings, all carved into the desert hills with a great deal of care. Twenty shelters had survived the elements, with sheets of rubble littering where others had once stood. I scanned my surroundings using a tuned heat sensor, finding the change in temperature quite quickly, feeling a chill climb up my spine. In the centermost dwelling was a small fire, flickering it’s glow upon the walls of the building. We carefully moved into the dwelling against the frozen earth, seeking to communicate with whoever was within, only to find a haunting sight devoid of any life.

The dwellings had a specific purpose, with this being only one completely intact. Some of the dwellings funneled upwards, somehow using the odd gravitational currents (Once again, you can try and fact check me, and I will probably agree with you regardless because none of this makes sense to me) to maintain pressure and temperature within the shelter (Sort of like a moon pool) The focal point of the anomaly is the fire place, pushing the pressure and temperature to create heat in the center of the room. During the night, the fire will be extinguished and replaced with a chilly draft, and day the fire came to life, warming amidst the (Freezing?) sun. Shattered pottery and disheveled furniture protruded from the stone floor, lit by the scant light to reveal a leather reminiscent of the hunched creatures just outside. It was quite a sight to behold, especially viewing the markings covering the walls.

Carvings of the ancient tribe wound across the structure in ornate patterns, creating portraits of lives long lost to the horrid conditions of DuskDawn. Images of worshiping tribesmen sacrificed themselves to both the heat and frost to appease a great God, one who they directed all their life to. I found myself scanning the artwork with great interest, slowly feeling an unraveling insanity afflict my mind. Each snapshot revealed more of their religious hierarchy, eventually centering on a VERY FAMILIAR PAIR OF ANTLERS.

You can imagine what kind of nightmarish visions flashed inside my head as I viewed those cursed markings, finding evidences of a tribe predating our understanding of mankind, worshiping NONE OTHER THAN THAT HECKING DEER! They groomed him, fed him, prayed to him, apparently their hero even rode the abomination into battle! Marking upon marking revealed that two-legged creature dancing like a country Rockstar, clicking it’s hooves and nodding it’s “cowboy hat” to the spectators (Cowboy hats weren’t even invented, since cows were still dinosaurs) My worst enemy directed their politics, influenced their culture and apparently, if the dating of the markings is correct, created the first written language in the world.

It was insane, I felt cheated, I cried bitter tears in that tin can of a helmet. Sailor could do nothing to stop my cries, as in the shadows I saw the figure, it’s eyes shining back at me behind a deer mask. I froze, despite wearing a tank as armor, and watched as it slowly raised its arms, drawing the mask from its face.

The image still haunts me to this day, the mask almost as horrifying as the being’s true face…

It was the freaking deer.

It was wearing a deer mask over its own deer face.

I ran back screaming, locked myself inside of the transport’s restroom, and refused to open the door for almost an hour (I was still in the power armor). Eventually I calmed down, but I had enough. That deer had been here before, and that nearly caused me to resign from the job.

It had traveled realties before.

It had chosen me.

The Deer God had chosen me.

And even now I could hear it, baaing like a goat and dancing a jig.

I think I need a vacation.