The lights above his head flickered, spitting lashing whips of static electricity. The walls did not yet seem complete, sometimes as solid as sheetrock, other times as thin and spare as a bedsheet.
Outside, in this once-unpopulated corner of the Infiniverse, the Lord of the Lemmings could hear the sounds of triumph: fireworks popping, a fusillade of photons firing from Space Boat cannons, the trumpeting blare of synth-horn fanfare, brum be dum, dum de doo. Celebration and delight.
The Lemming Lord hummed along without meaning to.
“Brum de dum,” he murmured, scanning the halls with an Ether Lemming held in his grip. The lemming, clad in a silver space suit, peered around from behind a pair of purple goggles. In the Ether Lemming’s own hands was a pair of lazily-spinning crystals, clutched tight in tiny paws. “Dum de doo.”
The pair of crystals failed to make any dramatic swings. They hung limp and inert.
“Inert,” the Lord of the Lemmings said, scowling. “Inert shirt in the dirt with a flirty alert. Poop.”
He turned the corner and found a doorway—this, he figured, was the center of the GoogolSoft building. He had teleported here and ducked in through an airshaft (with the help of a Multi-Tool Lemming, his little nose a Phillips-head screwdriver). He’d been stalking these halls for ten, twenty minutes now, and so far? Nada, zip, nothing, as empty as the Void’s sucking, humming maw. The center, though, that was where the energy would be concentrated, he decided. So that’s where he headed.
And now, darting through a doorway with a swoop of his inky cloak, he was here.
The GoogolSoft boardroom. Where the Guiding Hands once did all that guiding.
The room was red and wet. A pair of guts framed the LCD vid-screen on the wall. Bodies lay slumped against the table, clothes ripped and torn, the flesh sometimes torn, too. Something dripped. Flies buzzed.
And still the Ether Lemming was silent. The crystals, drifting without rhyme or purpose. Positively flaccid.
“Looking for something?”
The Lemming Lord wheeled. One of the bodies at the end of the table moves aside, and a naked man stood, his toned flesh glistening with olive oil and blood, his erection draped with wilting green leaves.
“Howdy, Brin,” the Lemming Lord said. The words were jovial. The tone was not.
“Just one sec, man,” Brin said, holding up a little quivering pile of grayish meat above a half-full glass. “This is Jibimy’s pineal gland.” He crushed it in his fist, and it bled juice like a squashed lime. The juice spattered into the glass. Then Brin delicately plucked the wilted greens from his saluting penis, and eased them into the cup. “This is going to be a super smoothie. Jibimy’s pineal gland. Bee pollen. Echinacea. Let’s see, what else, what else. Oh! Siberian ginseng, milk thistle, some of that star goo, salvia, bile from Sage’s bile duct, kale, mustard greens, blood, and apple pectin. You want a taste?”
“I’m good.”
“Mm,” Brin said. “No sweat, bro.”
He mushed the mess into the glass with his erection, smashing it the way one might muddle mint leaves for a cocktail. When he was done, Brin took a deep slurrrrping sip, which left his upper lip smeared with a rusty mustache—he quickly wiped it away with the back of his arm.
“Ahhh. Just delicious. And nutritious. Organic as fuck, to boot. Hm. I bet it’d make a stellar enema solution.” He yawned, stretched. “I tell you. Being birthed into a new universe through the cosmic womb tunnel of your spaceship girlfriend just takes the zazz right out of you.”
Lord of the Lemmings stalked the one side of the table. Gently, he eased the Ether Lemming back into his cloak. He wouldn’t need it. “I bet.”
Brin stalked his side of the boardroom table, too. Two jungle cats, pacing their own side of the cage.
“Can I take a stab at what you’re looking for?” Brin asked.
The Lemming Lord shrugged. “Okie-doke.”
“GoogolSoft coming through in the big upload was a big deal. That’s some snake-biting-its-own-tail shit right there. We created the chip on which the Infi-Net sits, but to then enter the Infiniverse with the very chip that it’s stored upon is… well, gosh, it’s downright paradoxical. That kind of celestial event is a real cork-popper, am I right? Yeah, man. Lots of energy unleashed. I’m guessing you were looking for a little taste of that energy. A little something-something. Maybe? Could be?”
“Could be, rabbit. Could be.” The Lord of the Lemmings eased his hand back into his cloak to find a new weapon. His hands felt around the multitude of rodents, blindly running over the contours of fur and claws and tiny teeth until he found what he was looking for. His secret weapon.
“Let’s talk about gods and heroes,” Brin said, idly massaging his six-pack midsection.
The Lemming Lord froze.
“As I was crossing over—and, incidentally, as I was murdering my friends, here—I downloaded some information into my brain. I can do that now, since I’m pretty much King Fucking Shit of Awesometown. I did some reading about you. You’re one of those Shadowstory losers. A hero. But all along you’ve been blabbing, I’m going to be a god someday, blah-de-blah. Now, why is that? Being a hero not good enough? Why would you want to be a god, exactly?”
“Better dental package.” As if to demonstrate, the Lemming Lord flashed his pearly whites from within the depths of his cowl.
“You’re a funny little weirdo. I had a roommate like you back in college. Floyd, I think his name was. Floyd wasn’t as ambitious as you, though. He mostly just liked to eat cookies and play with himself–after dropping copious amounts of acid, of course. A real cool dude, that Floyd. You, on the other hand. You’re real ambitious. You didn’t like the contract.”
“The contract.”
“Between gods and heroes. Gods and heroes have their place, you see.” As an aside, he added: “Oh, don’t worry, I took a couple religion classes. Mostly to get laid. All those stories about gods raping maidens as bulls and swans—it really gets the girls juicy.”
The Lord of the Lemmings took a step back, toward the wall. He’d need to get clear soon as he used his weapon. “You’re a real gentleman, mental man.”
“What can I say? Back to my point. Gods are gods, and gods are forever above heroes. That’s the hierarchy. You didn’t like that. Couldn’t be content with serving them, could you? I don’t blame you. So you figured, if you couldn’t beat ‘em, join ‘em. Amiright? Apotheosis—it’s a great word. I think I’ll name a company after it someday. Apotheosis, Inc. It’ll make HappyCo shit the couch.”
The Lemming Lord’s hand tightened inside his cloak—
Brin continued. “So, you thought you’d come here, and you’d harness all that sweet-ass god energy that erupted from the upload. You figured this was your Manifest Destiny, didn’t you, weirdo?”
The Lemming Lord grinned. “I got your Manifest Destiny right here, boss.”
He stepped back.
He drew his secret weapon.
The Lemming Lance.
A flash of light, a pop-and-a-squeak, and it was in his hand. The lemming, wearing a Roman War Helmet, opened his jaw and a golden beam of light shot forth from his little mouth—
The beam ricocheted off Brin’s palm.
It hit the blood-spattered Swatch on Flint’s wrist. It reflected back to the busted vidscreen. And on the final turn, the beam reflected back to its master.
And it tore clean through the Lord of the Lemming’s cloak.
A hole opened in the inky fabric. Whorls and wisps of smoke drifted lazily upward. Inside of him, a million lemmings screamed. He felt like he was coming to pieces. Like he was being torn apart by hands of fire and carried away by a billion biting ants.
He fell to his knees.
Before he knew it, Brin stood before him—the man didn’t move a muscle. He just shimmered and moved in space.
“Oooh, ouchie, that looks bad,” Brin said. “But, kinda your fault, you know? You’re not a great listener. Didn’t you hear me, earlier? The contract of gods and heroes must be honored. You’re a hero. And me?”
He smiled, ran his red-smeared hands through his hair.
“Bro, I’m a god.”
The Lemming Lord thrashed around on the ground like burned spider. His cloak of darkness tightened and began to shrink. It sucked into his mouth. It choked his throat. It bound his skin.
“I beat you to the punch, and now you’re punching the clock. All that god energy, all that star goo, it’s in me. I absorbed it. I’m proactive. I am the embodiment of corporate synergy. I’m the boss of this place and the god of the universe all wrapped up in one beautiful specimen of golden masculinity.”
The cloak tightened too much—it ruptured. It split with the sound of a curtain ripping. Its pieces hit the ground, and each swatch of inky fabric spattered like a spoonful of motor oil—then each little puddle bubbled, boiled, and disappeared, evaporating to nothingness.
What was left was a little man in a houndtooth suit.
He had moleskin elbow patches.
Brin laughed.
“You? You? You set this all in motion, didn’t you? You’re a crafty little shit. Giving me that chip. You started all this.” He shook his head, amused. “Good for you for pulling one over on me. If I didn’t hate you so bad, I’d hire you to cook the books, but…”
His voice trailed.
“Wait,” the small man—once the Lord of the Lemmings—said, reaching up with a pleading hand.
“Chillax, dude,” Brin said, waving it off. “It’ll all be over—”
Brin knelt down on the small man’s back.
He wrapped his hands tight around the man’s throat.
“Soon.”
He started squeezing.
