Chapter Seven

"In truth, had that duty not taken me so, I would have fought beside you and your liege in a heartbeat."

 

Callana hovered a few feet over the couch, turning over and over and over, enjoying the slight stimulation of the rotational movement. Spinning, of course, was one of her favorite hobbies back in outer space—in the past, she’d spent billions of years silently rotating in the void, staring out into the inky blackness of recently deceased universes, waiting for them to collapse in on themselves so she could eat a Universal Singularity. It usually took a ridiculous number of years for them to develop, but they were well worth the wait. Even now, her billions of mouths, hidden behind the folds of the higher dimensions, salivated just at the thought. This universe only had a few quadrillion years left before heat death, so maybe she could stick around even after getting back to her normal size.

Yes. That would be fun.

Or maybe she could have a few planets in the meantime. Although, that might be a problem, if any of the humans lived on them. She probably wouldn’t even notice if she ate a few! Wait… No, best not to think about that.

The Angry Things wouldn’t notice if she just took a few planets, right? A star or two? How would they even know? After all, they were just tiny things, no bigger than humans. Or… maybe a tad bigger, if her memory told her correctly. Odd, how fuzzy the past seemed now. Sure, she’d always had trouble recalling the distant past—on some vague level, she knew that her existence had been a fair bit more interesting in the First Age, several eternities ago, but a strange feeling built up in her any time she thought back to it or Willed herself the knowledge of All Things. Panic, perhaps? What an odd sensation it was.

So, she just let bygones by, and she sat in her slow orbit of the coffee table, waiting for the Gina to return.

Why was she so bored?

How many eternities had she lived through without doing anything? Five? Five-and-a-half? But the past thirty minutes? Utter torture. Ever since the Gina left, all Callana had done was wait for her to come back, for some reason. Ugh. Why couldn’t Callana have done the business today? The “boss” needed to be “informed” or something, but that made no sense. If she was helping, who cared if anyone knew why she was there or who she was? Why did the humans even do the work, anyway?

She tumbled from the air and landed on the couch, slumping over the side and groaning. Inside the twentieth dimension, a few billion of her tentacles fidgeted with each other, forming a bubbling froth of flesh that shook the fabric of the universe like a baby rattle.

This would not do.

No, Callana hadn’t come to this planet to float in midair; she’d come to see the sights! To relax! And by relax, of course, she meant the type of relaxing that involved a lot of movement and exercise. So, she hiked up her “pants” and marched out the front door. 

As she threw the door open, two people with gray hair and oddly detailed facial features stared at her from off to the right. One nodded with a soft smile. She smiled back, then stepped up to the railing. Some thirty feet below, a cracked, old, asphalt parking lot hosted a few “cars,” which all looked rather tasty—but she apparently wasn’t supposed to eat those.

Ugh. Why make them so shiny if they weren’t for eating?

It would prove a bit troublesome to walk down the stairs, so instead, she just phased through the railing and stepped onto an invisible column of solid air. Turning around to wave goodbye, she caught the strange, wrinkly faced couple gaping at her with one of those odd face shapes she didn’t understand. Shrugging, she continued walking in the air, glancing down at all the people below. They all kept looking at her—but that was probably because they were jealous that was smart enough to walk above the traffic, so she didn’t have to stop at the “red lights” like everyone else. These humans had such limiting social conventions.

Eventually, she did step down onto the ground level, as the windows of the buildings a few streets down didn’t seem to open on their own, and she figured it would be rude to enter a locked room. She’d learned that the hard way last night, when she phased through the door to the “bathroom” while the Von was inside. He’d screamed at her for a long time, but it was his fault for not telling her that was not allowed! What did the Von and the Gina even do in the “bathroom?” They refused to tell her for some reason.

A crowd had gathered behind Callana, having followed her street to street, watching her hang effortlessly in the air. A few of them had their “phones” out, but she slipped into the endless array of pedestrians. Eventually, Callana found a door that could open, and she stepped into a stuffy, open space with a few desks and some under-stuffed chairs orbiting a round coffee table. As she looked around, a young man in a green suit jacket approached, asking if she had a “car” he could “park.”

“The Gina has a car,” she said, “but I think she took it to the business factory today.”

“Oh—okay,” the green man said, wearing an odd face shape. “The check-in desk is over there.”

“Hmm. Yes!” she said. “That is a desk!” She left him scratching his head as she wandered over to the desk and smiled at the lady behind it. This particular lady also had white hair, which Callana found oddly distressing. People with white hair bothered her, she decided.

“Hello!” Callana chirped.

“Welcome to the East Eston Inn! My name is Chierke, and I’d be happy to check you in to a room. Do you have a reservation?”

Callana frowned. “I can check a room?” she asked.

“Y-yes,” Chierke said. “We do have a vacancy, so if you have a credit card and an ID, I can get you lodged at… Room 409. Does that sound okay?”

Callana nodded, a wide grin on her face. The only room she had ever checked out was the Gina’s, though she’d glimpsed the Von’s through his door once or twice. She turned around and left Chierke in the dust, staring at the numbers on the doors down the hall.

“M-miss!” Chierke called, but she trailed off.

Hmm… 101, 102, 103… Where would Room 409 be? Were there really 306 more rooms down this one little hall? And where were the previous 100 rooms? She bumped head-first into a wall. The numbers stopped at 120, apparently. But that was ridiculous! Where was Room 409? She saw some odd metal doors, but they didn’t seem to open. So, she phased her head through them, coming to face a strange, empty shaft full of wires and dim, red lights.

Well, maybe the lady was wrong. Shrugging, she wandered over to Room 109, the closest room number as far as she was concerned, and tried to open the door. The knob wouldn’t turn. Frowning, she tried to turn it again, but it wouldn’t budge. Dumb thing was probably stuck; so, she yanked it as hard as she could, ripping it straight out of the door. Inadvertently, she compressed the doorknob into a tiny black hole within her grip—it was smaller than a hydrogen atom, but boy was it heavy.

Strange, how the little thing felt so much weightier than a black hole normally would—infinite mass didn’t usually take this much effort to move. But, she disregarded that and simply popped the tiny singularity in her mouth. Then, she pushed the door open, only to come face-to-face with a woman with slight wrinkles on her face and wide eyes.

“Wh—what?” the woman said, staring at Callana.

“Hello!” Callana chirped.

“Who—who are you? What’s going on?” The woman rubbed those wide eyes of hers, then took a step back when she looked at Callana again. “What are you doing in my room? How did you break a hole in the door?”

Callana glanced back to the door, noting the splintered hole in its wooden body. “I pulled?” she offered.

“You p-pulled?”

Callana nodded.

“Was it… rotten or something?” the woman asked, taking deep breaths.

“What is rot-ten?”

The woman muttered something under her breath—something along the side of “damn Niminvians”—before taking a step forward. “I don’t know what you’re doing in my room, girl, but you’d better clear out or I’m going to call the police! I don’t need room service! Get out!”

“The police…” Callana muttered. What was it the Gina had said about the police? Ah, yes! “Fuck the police!” Callana said, grinning.

The woman stammered.

The woman reached into her pocket and pulled out a phone, then tapped on its screen for a few minutes. “Hello? Police?” she said. “I’m being attacked by a Niminvian in my own hotel room! Yes, it’s the East Eston Inn. Down by Rastovsky street? Room 109. Yes, please come quickly! She’s being aggressive!”

“What is ‘Ni-min-vi-an?’” Callana asked. The Nard had used the same word a while back, but he hadn’t explained it to her.

The woman hung up her phone, snarling at Callana. “You are, you little dunce! Don’t you pretend you don’t know. Break into my hotel room, ruin my vacation… You lot cross the border, threaten our culture, and take all the jobs away from good, hardworking Borakovoni men! And you don’t even speak Boraki!”

At this point, the woman was pacing in circles, contorting her face in odd shapes that Callana recognized as indicating “anger.” Or maybe she was straining. Did she need to go inside the “bathroom” and take some time to herself, doing the “bathroom” things that people did in the “bathroom?”

“I knew I shouldn’t have gotten one of these cheap hotels on the wrong side of town. If my husband were still alive, I’d have him toss you on your little skank ass. Your generation—so entitled that you don’t even knock, you just rip the whole doorknob out and let yourselves in! Well, you can tell your little manager that I’m going to leave a one-star review of this establishment! You have lost a customer for life!”

Just then, Chierke rushed by, with the green man in tow. They all glanced at the hole in the door and cringed in terror of the woman’s rant.

“I’m so sorry, miss,” Chierke said, “this isn’t an employee, I swear. We’ll remove her from the premises as soon as we can.”

“It’s too late for that!” the woman screamed. “Letting her kind in here was bad enough! You can take my one-star review; you’ve earned it!”

“Please, ma’am,” Chierke said, “if you’d like, I could offer you a full refund and a complementary upgrade to the Privlyin Suite. It’s got the finest view in the hotel, free of charge!”

The woman sneered at Callana. She began discussing the details with Chierke, while Callana just stood and stared. For some reason, Callana felt like she might have done something wrong. Was it the door? She probably should have just phased through it. That would have made less trouble for the woman. Now that she thought about it, that door looked a bit off without the knob there, so she examined it for a moment. Closing her eyes and puffing out her cheeks, she tensed the core of her being and summoned up her Will.

When she opened her eyes, the doorknob was back in place, like brand new.

All eyes in the room went to the door.

“I fixed it!” Callana said.

No one said a word.

The green man rushed out to the hall, staring at the door from both sides.

“Did you?” he asked Chierke. “Is this? Did we?”

“How did you…” Chierke muttered, while the angry woman just looked in terror.

“S-she—by Brovar,” the angry woman said. “She d-did… witchcraft,” she said. “That—that’s witchcraft!”

The three stared at each other, with Callana in the center of their little trio, confused.

“That’s r-ridiculous!” the green man said.

“I watched it with my own eyes! She conjured a new doorknob! She even ripped the old one clean off! I’m—I’m sure of it!”

As far as Callana was concerned, this was a bit of a disappointing conversation. Now, the three were freaking out, yelling at each other and tittering like seabirds; what an utter bore. She strolled past the angry woman and took a look around the room. Clothes were strewn around a bag by the big bed in the center of the room, with a few uncomfy-looking chairs lined up against the wall. Oddly, the room didn’t have a ceiling light, but a collection of floor and desk lamps. Odd. The décor looked a bit… stale for Callana’s tastes. She wandered in a circuit around the room, a bit bored.

“This is the police!” a male voice shouted from behind her. “Get your hands in the air!”

Callana turned around. A man stood before her, wearing a black vest with a lot of pockets. Oddly enough, he had a long, pointy hat with a tin spike on top. A seven-pointed star was emblazoned on the front of his hat, as well as the right side of his chest, just below the word “Police.” Now that was an interesting costume! She even liked the weird, black L-shaped thing in his hands, which he was apparently gesturing for her to take.

“Hello!” Callana said, waving with a grin.

“I said get your hands in the air! You have five seconds to comply!”

What an odd request. Did he want her to physically detach her hands from the base of her wrists and float them above her head? It would be easy, but… he obviously didn’t want her to do that. How silly would she have to be to take that request literally?

But then again… if the Gina was right about how you should “fuck the police…”

With a grin, Callana’s hands left her wrists behind, hovering several feet above her head. “Okay!” she said.

The four strangers gaped at her with utter horror.

Then, the weird object in the Police’s hands made a loud sound, and a little piece of metal flew out, doinking against Callana’s chest and flattening against her skin. It clattered to the floor, pathetically bouncing against the vinyl flooring.

“W-witch!” the Police said. Why did they keep asking her to pick something? What was he talking about?

“Which? This one?” she asked, gesturing to her left hand, reattaching it and her other one to her wrists.

“Wh-what?” the Police said.

She looked down at the ground, observing the little bit of metal on the ground. What kind of ritual was this? Did he expect her to have one of those L-shaped things, too? Just to be sure, she silently copied the one he was holding, then Willed it into her hand.

His eyes bugged out of his head.

Returning the gesture, she pulled the little lever in the middle and winced at the loud noise that caused. A little piece of metal zipped from the end of her device, burying itself in the man’s gut. He grunted, then looked down in shock as redness billowed out from his shirt, dripping down onto the floor at an alarming rate.

Chierke and the angry woman screamed. But they all just froze, shivering, terrified of the thing in Callana’s hands.

The Police fell to his knees, a dull look falling over his face. His eyes rolled up into the back of his head, and he fell still. Callana spotted the faint whisps of a tiny soul escaping from his lips.

Oh. That was probably bad.

She snapped her fingers, Willing his body to reverse its course in time, until the metal shards worked their way out of his gut and into the air, where they recombined into their original form. His wounds knitted, his soul slipped back into his body, and he blinked at her.

Utter terror dominated his face. That particular face shape was familiar to Callana, at least. The Gina had made one much the same when staring at Callana’s true form.

At some point in this social transaction, Callana realized, she’d probably made an error.