Chapter 334: What You Have to Do (1/2)

“Well,” Jason said, sitting around a table with three women. “This is complicated.”

“I may be getting used to being the most ignorant person in the room,” Erika said, “but that doesn’t mean that I like it.”

“How drunk are you?” Jason asked Farrah.

“I’m fine,” Farrah said, moving her head like she was trying to balance it on her neck.

“Me too,” Jason said. “I mean, yes, I wore a suppression collar to turn off my poison resistance, but I only drank that one bottle.”

“That’s two bottles,” Farrah said.

“Really? I thought I was seeing double.”

“Are you seeing two of anything else?” Farrah asked.

“No, but I think I might be bad at counting. Do you want me to sober you up? I have magic powers, you know.”

“No! There’s hardly any bronze-rank booze left.”

“You shouldn’t pay any attention to these two,” Erika confided loudly to Dawn. “They’ve been drinking.”

“I think we should start by you telling us exactly who you are and why you’re here,” Jason said to Dawn. “Eri, we can catch you up on context later. Spoiler: she’s an alien.”

Dawn looked at Jason from under raised eyebrows.

“You’re weird,” Jason said. “Your aura is normal but there’s nothing in it. It’s like trying to eat a very realistic wax fruit, but that’s okay. I’m playing up being drunk so you underestimate me. I’m very clever.”

“You’re doing a really good job,” Farrah assured him.

“Thanks! So, who are you, lady?”

“What if I called myself a prophet?” Dawn asked.

“I could call myself Barry Van Dyke,” Jason said. “That doesn’t mean I replaced Jan Michael Vincent in the lead for the fourth series of Airwolf.”

“Really?” Erika asked. “You’re bringing up Airwolf?”

“Eri was not happy with the fourth season,” Jason confided.

“All the flight shots were reused footage,” Erika decried. “Why?”

“Eri, we’ve been over this. It was broadcast television in the eighties. They wanted enough episodes for a syndication deal on the cheap.”

“What about Caitlin, Jason? They blew up Ernest Borgnine’s body double, but what happened to Caitlin?”

“I told you: it was broadcast television in the eighties. They didn’t care about the female characters.”

“Am I meant to be following any of this?” Dawn asked.

“No, just ride it out,” Farrah advised. “Do you watch television?”

“No,” Dawn said.

“I’ve seen some Tina Turner concert recordings but otherwise I don’t see the appeal,” Farrah said. “Oh, they’ve jumped to Knight Rider; that usually means they’re winding down.”

“They brought Bonnie back,” Jason said.

“She never should have left,” Erika said.

“I’m not arguing that she should have,” Jason said. “I don’t hear you complaining about April, though.”

“April can bugger off.”

“She did,” Jason said. “You realise that she was an early female character who excelled in STEM fields,” Jason argued.

“So was Bonnie! Who they had her replace because Bonnie wasn't blonde!”

“They brought her back,” Jason said. “The Hoff and Edward Mulhare were all ‘bring back that lady,’ and they did. Eddie Mulhare was a sexy-arse ghost.”

“He was a sexy-arse ghost,” Erika agreed.

Farrah interjected to try and bring things to a close.

“Maybe we should stop talking about nonsense, and talk to the weird magic woman instead.”

“Fine,” Erika complained, turning to Dawn. “So, what’s your deal. And no mysterious prophetess nonsense.”

“Agreed,” Jason said. “If you’re here to play enigmatic guide leading us forward through vague clues, you can get on your bike and trundle off.”

Dawn was taken slightly aback by the suddenly hostile brother-sister duo.

“You’ve already surmised who sent me,” Dawn said.

“Yep,” Jason said. “I’ve also surmised that your boss wants something.”

“It wants you to save the world,” Dawn said.

“From what?” Jason asked. “If the EOA’s built a weather machine, I’m one-hundred percent in.”

“I’m afraid it’s more drastic than that,” Dawn said. “A magical link has been forged between this world and Pallimustus.”

“I’m just going to jump in real quick,” Erika said. “Who exactly is this boss and what is Pallimustus?”

“She works for the World-Phoenix, who is basically an interdimensional super god,” Jason said. “Pallimustus is the name of Farrah’s world.”

“Super god?” Erika asked.

“Yep,” Jason said. “Regular gods are more along the lines of your Zeus, Thor, Brian Dennehy, etc.”

“I don’t think Brian Dennehy was a god,” Erika said.

“Who am I thinking of then?” Jason asked.

“Bacchus?” Erika suggested.

“He did look like a man who enjoyed the odd sandwich,” Jason said, then turned to Dawn, “Actually, since you’re here, do you know if there are any local gods?”

“There isn’t enough magic, yet,” Dawn said.

“Yet?” Farrah asked.

“The link between worlds,” Dawn said. “It’s been siphoning off magic from Pallimustus to this world for centuries. It was slow, at first, but the rate of transfer has been rapidly escalating over the last century and a half.”

“The proto-spaces,” Jason said. “That’s where they’re coming from.”

“Yes,” Dawn said. “Each proto-space that breaks down without the anchor creatures being destroyed deposits its magic into your world. Individually that has little effect, but after centuries, the magical density of your world has started to rise. This strengthens the link, which feeds the loop. More spaces appear, collapse and dump even more magic into the environment at an ever-increasing pace.”

“Someone knew this was coming,” Jason said. “There were outworlders who built the grid and established the Network in preparation to stop it.”

“That is our understanding,” Dawn said. “However, they were unable to prepare a response to proto-spaces appearing coterminous with the depths of the oceans. The proto-spaces that open there go undetected and deliver magic into your world.”

“Most of which is covered in water,” Jason said. “Meaning that the Network’s mission of containment was completely stuffed from the start.”

“Yes,” Dawn said. “What they have accomplished is to slow the rate at which your world’s magical density has risen. For now, it remains low, but is approaching a dangerous threshold.”

“The proto-spaces,” Jason said, eyes going wide. With the information Dawn had provided, his study of astral magic allowed him to connect the dots to form a terrible revelation.

“What is it?” Farrah asked him.

“I just realised what happens once the magical density crosses the minimum threshold for iron rank,” Jason said, making it Farrah's turn to be startled.

“No more proto-spaces,” she realised. “Direct magical manifestation.”

“There will most likely still be proto-spaces forming for the more powerful manifestations,” Dawn said. “Lower-rank monsters, essences and awakening stones will start manifesting directly, however. Once that begins, there will be no way to prevent the magic they bring with them from accelerating the rise in magical density even further.”

“I’m not following much of this,” Erika said. “From what I understand, though, you’re saying our world is going to be more magical? Is that bad?”

“It’s bad,” Jason said.

“Monsters randomly appearing in the streets,” Farrah said. “The societies of your world are not prepared for that.”

“That’s not even the real problem,” Jason said. “Worlds aren’t built to handle extreme changes in magical density. The dimensional membrane – that’s the inbisible… inbisivle… the thing you can’t see that keeps the magic out. If that goes sploot, the whole planet gets washed away like a sandcastle when the tide comes in.”

“Wait,” Erika said. “You’re saying the planet is going to be destroyed?”

“If we don’t find a way to stop the magic coming in,” Jason said. “If we can trust what this lady is saying. I think she might not be real.”

“How long until that happens?” Erika asked.

“It's hard to be certain,” Dawn said. “The World Phoenix reinforced the dimensional membrane of your universe billions of years ago, which is how your world has endured thus far without overt effects. So long as the Network continues to intercept what proto-spaces they can, direct manifestation will begin in roughly a decade. The breaking down of the dimensional membrane will start causing weather effects at some point after that. Minor, at first, but conditions will escalate. Half a century from now, the geological effects will begin. The dimensional membrane will lose integrity entirely at around the two-hundred and fifty-year mark, but your planet will be uninhabitable for at least a century before that.”

“So, monsters on the streets in ten years,” Jason said. “Then it ramps up into a constant sequence of disaster movies and no more people in a century and a half.”

“Assuming nothing intervenes to move the clock one way or another,” Dawn said.

“What about that power your boss gave me?” Jason asked. “That stabilised physical realities, right?”

“That might work for a proto-space, Mr Asano. It won’t work for an entire planet.”

“Is it just the planet, or a whole universe thing?”

“Fortunately, the effects are localised,” Dawn said. “The likelihood of a chain reaction affecting the universe at large is very small.”

“Very small isn’t nothing,” Jason said. “We’re totally going to save the universe, which will totally get me some action. I’ll be all ‘hey, ladies, I’m the guy who saved the universe,’ and they’ll be all ‘that sounds like hot nonsense, but you’re way better looking than Kaito, so let’s make out.’ Then I’ll be all ‘I can’t do that; I respect women,’ and they’ll be all ‘it’s totally our choice.’ Since I’m all about female agency, I have to go along with it at that point because it’s the feminist thing to do, so we’ll go the supermarket and buy all the whipped cream…”

“Moving on from that grotesquery,” Farrah said, “you mentioned a link between worlds. Are we to assume that the link is both the cause and solution to the problem?”

“Yes,” Dawn said. “The link is predicated on the history of your two universes and the connection they have always shared. Allow me to explain. Your two universes, like all universes, were created from a seed, what you might know as a singularity. These seeds are created by the Builder.”

“Hold on,” Jason said. “I had a fistfight with the guy who created the universe?”

“What?” Erika asked.

“The Builder you know is not the Builder who created your universe. That Builder was sanctioned by the other great astral beings for treating your two universes as an experiment.”

“There’s a lot to unpack there,” Jason said. “Let’s start with what sanctioned means.”

“I don’t know,” Dawn said. “All I know is that for all intents and purposes, the old Builder is gone. A new one was then chosen from amongst the half-transcendents.”

“What’s a half-transcendent?” Jason asked. “Do you know what that is, Farrah?”

“Nope.”

“A half-transcendent is someone who has surpassed diamond-rank,” Dawn said. “They have moved beyond the structures of power that you know of but they have yet to transcend physical being. That requires more than simply a growth in power. This is what the great astral beings provided, in return for the new Builder taking up the role of his predecessor.”

“What was that about treating our world as an experiment?” Erika asked. “I’m not sure I can express the degree to which I don’t like the sound of that.”

“The Builder’s role is to create universe seeds,” Dawn said. “Each one new and unique, which had been the case until your two universes. What he did was to not just create identical seeds, but to create them by reproducing elements of existing worlds. This does not literally translate to specific elements of those other worlds appearing in yours, but the potential is there. Think of it as having those elements built into the DNA of the universe. They may express themselves or they may not. If and when they do, it may be in very disparate ways. This is especially true given that one of the worlds was given a more rigid dimensional membrane, which is why your world has less magic than Pallimustus.”

“Are you saying we weren’t even the proper experiment?” Jason asked. “We were the control?

“What’s DNA?” Farrah asked.

“It’s kind of like the magic matrix in your body,” Jason said. “Except instead of magic, it’s goop that gives you eyebeams when you fall in a vat of toxic waste.”

“I have no idea what that means,” Farrah said.

“People always say to that to me. And they keep telling me my name. I meet someone and they’re all ‘you’re Jason Asano.’ It’s like I’m a soap opera character that was presumed dead and then came back with amnesia and was played by a different actor.”

“It’s totally like that,” Erika said, laughing. “That makes a super amount of sense.”

Dawn ran a hand over her face.

“What it means,” she said, “is that the intrinsic elements that make up your world share certain traits inherited from other worlds. Take elves, for example. They have existed longer than either of your worlds, yet they appeared natively in both. In Pallimustus they evolved into one of the worlds natural, intelligent species, while on Earth they appeared in the form of myth and legend. This is true for many things.”