MergePunk: An Ooorah & WattpadPunkFiction Anthology

Prologue: The Merge

Prologue:

The Merge

Grinning through a stiff, sore jaw while the desert blizzard whistles through my aching ears, I trudge onward, my boots pounding against the calcium-chalk snow. Judy—my shag camel—is dead, shot a few times each by a few different guns during the shootout with Hector Claus and his merry gang of malcontents. They're dead, I'm not. I have to keep moving. 'Sides, a man can sulk over his dead camel and walk all at the same time. Judy was loved, and she is missed. Muchly.

Scanning the horizon with my EYE, I'm looking for shelter, food, warmth, life. Anything. Anything but blue ice, the bone-aching cold, and countless purple cacti jutting from the white snow all around me.

I sigh. This place will be the death of me. I'm not from Terschekt 5, not originally. My homeworld's Earth, but that rock went cow-pie a long time ago. The nature of my work means I go from planet to planet. The nature of my work means I never know when I get to leave until it's time to go.

There must be something to find out here. The EYE says the only potential treasure is a 1% chance, somewhere 'round the next glacier. But one is better than nothing any day of the week, especially when you're all alone in this talcum-powder tundra with nothing to eat or drink. I give the blue-green, glasslike ice a pat, adjust my mask and frontier hat, and hope I'm lucky.

As I move, a dull ache develops behind my eyes. It's a biomod headache. So distinctive. Something's up with my EYE. One turns to two, and two turns to twenty. It keeps upping the odds, the display crackling with every change. Suddenly there's a 99.999999% chance of humanoid life.

I blink and through a forest of cacti an old man appears, wearing grey robes and tending to a barrel fire, stirring whatever's inside with a spine-stripped cactus. His brief look my way suggests he sees nothing of value, in fact that he sees nothing there at all. He continues to stir. The liquid bubbles and burps, steam rising to quickly dispersing patches of fog.

I need that warmth. I duck under one heavy arm of a massive, thirty-foot mother plant, making sure the long spines of this older specimen don't puncture my snow flannel. I'd hate to add buy a new getup to my list of things to do, on top of living, getting sweet revenge, and not dying.

As I reach the old man, the barrel fire's heat turns cold, colder than the air. My legs freeze, completely stiff. They won't move.

The old man, wearing thick black robes, looks at me again. This time he sees something worth speaking to. "Your life lacks meaning, cowboy," he says, tutting and stirring.

"Who the hell're you to say that?" I say, willing my feet to lift from the snow. The muscles are straining so hard I'm actually working up a sweat. But they won't move. "In my world, you say that to another man 'n' yer liable to get headshot."

"I am not from your world, cowboy. Your world is a part of mine."

I shake my head and my legs feel free. The fire warms again and I stand adjacent to the old man in the white robes. The blizzard seems to blow around us, like there's some kind of energy field or invisible cover.

"The hell were ya sayin' 'bout yer world?" I ask, warming my hands over the barrel. Bits of chopped cactus foam to the roiling surface of the green liquid. "And what the hell is this shit yer makin'?"

"Like the cacti native to this harsh world," he says, sweeping his gaze left to right, "lesser worlds branch out in all directions from one main world. They may share similarities amongst each other, but they differ more greatly in fundamental ways. Can you, cowboy, right now, imagine a world of utter warmth, a... a tropical paradise?"

I laugh, shivering. "Shit no. Can't remember the last time my bones ain't ached."

"Or a world where one can travel through time?"

I shake my head.

"Small differences, cowboy, small differences," he says. "If you really want to see, if you really want to find some meaning, maybe until this blizzard is finished, I can show you all the other parallel realities. I can show you what my world calls the Merge. Here it appears as some native cactus concoction. Somewhere else it appears as something else. The Merge is the spark that flows through all of life."

So much to take in. Too much. I don't know about sparks of life but I do know what walkin' through a blizzard is like on Terschekt 5. Shrugging, I say, "Got nothin' better to do. As ya say, when this blizzard ends I can scoot. 'Til then, why not?"

He laughs, then fishes out a plutufruit-sized chunk of stewed, foul-smelling cactus and sets it into my gloved hands. The exposed flesh is a vibrant, almost-glowing green, but the skin is purple-black and leathery in appearance.

"Eat," he says, then as if it suddenly occurs to him: "And please do not vomit in the Merge. Anywhere else will do."

I take a bite, gagging at the bitter juices flooding my tastebuds, shuddering as EYE goes offline and a foreign reality fills my eyes.