Hello. Sam Stefanik here. Welcome to the second installment of 'Crown Vic to a Parallel World.' I hope you enjoyed the first chapter. There are many more ready to go. I plan to release one a week and I hope you'll follow along. I welcome comments and feedback and look forward to hearing from you. This story is very story focused. There will be sex, but none of it will be super graphic. That said, if you're younger than 18 or find these kinds of stories offensive, please close up now and have a great day! If you are of legal age and are interested, by all means keep going. I'll be glad to have you along for the journey. Please donate to Nifty. This is a great resource for great stories and a useful outlet to authors like me and readers like you.
2
I'm where?
I gasped awake, hungover and flat on my back in a too-small bed with no memory of how I got there. The bed was barely wide enough for both my shoulders to be on it at the same time and my feet and ankles stuck well-passed the end into empty space. The room was a plain white box, small and windowless with no furniture but the bed, a small white nightstand with one drawer, and an armless, white chair backed against one wall next to a black door. The entire ceiling glowed with soft, white light. The room had a clinical feel to it, like an ultra-modern hospital.
I sat up and found I was still fully dressed except for my boots, which I saw sitting in a neat pair near the armless chair. I lit a cigarette, had a coughing fit that woke me the rest of the way, and rubbed my grimy neck. I felt dirty from a long day at work and the sticky sweat of getting drunk.
Two narrow doors, one by the chair and the other directly opposite, stoked my curiosity enough to get me on my feet. I opened the one by the chair. It led to an empty corridor with walls and a floor of shiny black material that looked like glass. The corridor ceiling glowed like the one in my room. The hallway didn't hold my interest, so I tried the other door. It led to a small, white bathroom with white fixtures, a white shower stall, white walls, and a glowing white ceiling.
The rooms were devoid of ornament but seemingly not of thoughtfulness. On the back of the wall-mounted sink sat a white toothbrush, an unbranded travel-size tube of toothpaste, and a bar of soap wrapped in white paper. A white towel bar held a white bath-towel, a white floor mat, and a white washcloth. I idly wondered what enemy of color designed and furnished the building.
Suspended from a hook on the back of the door was enough color to make up for my monochromatic surroundings. An electric-blue polo-style shirt and a pair of light-purple pants, like pleated khakis, hung from hangers. Black briefs and black socks bloomed from the pants pockets. On the floor under the sink was a pair of bright-red, lace-up, wedge-style heels.I drank several handfuls of cold water from the sink tap while I kept my eye on the outfit like it was going to climb off the door on its own. I lit another cigarette and sat on the toilet lid to think. I didn't know where I was or what the people who brought me there wanted. There was no one around and the door wasn't locked. That made me feel reasonably safe. Someone had also seen to the minimum of my comfort, what with the new clothes and toiletries. Another good sign. I considered that they might be watching me but didn't know why they would.
I finished my cigarette and stood so I could drop the butt in the toilet bowl. An idea struck me, I laughed, and stripped my clothes off. "Get a good look, fuckers." I said to the room. "Good luck keeping breakfast down." I turned the water on as hot as I could stand it and stepped into the stall. It was so narrow I could barely turn around without dragging my shoulders on the walls and the shower head was so low, I had to lean down to wash my hair and face. I didn't complain, the water was plenty hot, and it felt good to get cleaned up.When I got out, the idea of putting my filthy clothes back on revolted me enough that I dressed in the bizarre outfit that had been left for me. The clothes fit like they were tailored to my exact measurements. I even tried the heels and found they `walked' like my work boots but were much lighter and more comfortable. I liked everything about the outfit except how I looked.
I sat on the bed, facing the door into the corridor, and lit a cigarette. I wondered what to do with the ashes. I had no ashtray and didn't want to drop them on the floor. The nightstand drawer was empty, not even a Gideon Bible, so I flicked my ashes into it. Just as I completed the action, a disembodied and sexless voice scared the hell out of me by calling from everywhere and nowhere. I half-expected to be scolded for smoking.
"What would you like for breakfast, Mister Philips?" The voice asked.
"WHAT? Who the fuck is that?" I shouted and looked around for a camera or speaker or something.
"I apologize, Mister Philips. This is the cafeteria. We were directed to offer you breakfast when you woke."
I looked around the room. "How do you know I'm awake? Are you watching me?"
"I apologize again, Mister Philips. The rooms are monitored for water consumption. We get a signal when our visiting dignitaries are using enough water to indicate a shower. That tells us they will probably be ready for breakfast when they finish." The voice was immensely polite and spoke with no accent.Visiting dignitaryÉ' I wondered. Fuck it. Worry about it after they feed you.'
"What's on the menu?" I asked.
"Anything you like." The voice replied.
"Scrapple?"
"I don't know what that isÉ" the voice trailed off unhappily. For a split second I considered explaining, then decided I didn't want the voice's everlasting horror on my conscience.`Stick to the basics.' I thought. "OK, three eggs scrambled well, four links breakfast sausage, a big pile of potatoes fried brown with onions, a large pulp-free orange juice, a pot of black coffee, like a whole pot, and three slices of thick white-toast smothered in butter. I'll also need a lot of ketchup and salt and black pepper. Got that?" My hangover throbbed behind my eyes and prompted an addition to the list. "Oh, and three aspirin, please."
"I have the food order, sir. I don't know what as-pir-in is." The voice pronounced it like each syllable was its own word.
"I just need something for my headache. Send whatever you have."
"Yes, sir. How would you like the meals divided?"
The questions were working on my nerves. "What do you mean?" I snapped.
"I assume you want the food split between you and your guest."
"It's just me."
Dead silence for a long beat, then, "yes sir, Mister Philips. It'll be right along for you. Not more than five minutes."
The voice signed off and I was alone. I finished my cigarette and chain lit another. The drawer of the nightstand made a good ashtray. The furniture was made of this glossy, solid surface white stuff that felt like fired ceramic, but couldn't be. A ceramic nightstand made no sense.
I was stubbing the second cigarette out when someone rapped a warning knock on my door. A short, thin, non-descript woman wearing a forest-green uniform that looked like hospital scrubs, opened the door, and entered. In front of her she pushed a white cart covered with plates under glass domes. She glanced around in confusion and asked me if I was alone. I didn't understand where these people thought I'd hidden another person. The woman shrugged, took a spare plate and extra set of cutlery from the cart, and left.
I lifted the glass domes and dug into my breakfast feast. Twenty minutes later, the last piece of toast was mopping the last bit of greasy, ketchupy breakfast residue off my plate when there was a knock at the door. This knocker didn't immediately enter behind the knock. I opened the door to find Shawn on the other side. He was dressed as bizarrely as me, hot-pink hip-hugger flat-front khakis and an athletic-fit lime-green polo with a chest pocket and no buttons at the neck. On his feet, a pair of bright-red, lace-up, wedge heels that matched mine exactly. I studied him while I lit a meal-ender' cigarette. He wrinkled his nose at the smoke but didn't say anything other than good morning.'
I skipped the pleasantries. "Where the fuck am I?" I demanded.
He sat, with excellent posture, in the armless chair and rubbed his right cheek with the palm of his right hand. "It will be easier to show you then to tell you. Finish your cigarette and we'll go."
"Uh huh." I said and shifted gears without the clutch. "Are you colorblind?"
He lowered his hand from his face and folded it with the other in his lap. "No, why?"
"Why?" I parroted in disbelief. "If you're not colorblind, can you explain why we look like two sides of an unsolved Rubik's cube?"
He didn't answer right away. I assumed he didn't know what a Rubik's cube was. Sometimes I forget exactly how long ago the 1980s were. I gestured to my clothes. "The colors, ShawnÉthe colors. I look like a cartoon character. So do you."
"Oh that." He stood up to do a quick, show-offy turn in front of me. "Our culture likes color. Everyone dresses like this here."
I drew on my cigarette, inspected the length of what was left, and drew on it again. I stubbed the butt out in the nightstand drawer, an action that Shawn noticed but didn't comment on. I got to my feet. "Ok, I guess the sooner I see where I am, the sooner I'll understand. Lead on."
He opened the door and stepped into the corridor. I put my cigarettes and lighter in my pocket and followed behind. He moved with purpose but kept having to stop to wait as I dawdled to look around. My attention was captured by the starkness of my surroundings. The walls were completely smooth. No doors, door jambs, doorknobs, fire extinguisher cabinets, fire strobes, light switches, thermostats, air conditioning vents; nothing broke the continuous, glossy-black surface. Spaced at uneven intervals were glowing blue circles, twice the size of a quarter, that hovered on the walls a little lower than his eye-level. Each of these showed a black, three-digit number. There was nothing else.
Shawn stopped us when we came to a wall with an orange dot instead of a blue one. He said his last name to the wall in a conversational tone and volume. Two rectangular panels sunk into the wall and opened horizontally to reveal a room, about the size of an elevator. It was constructed just like the corridor. Shawn stepped in and I followed. We turned to face the opening, the panels slid closed, and the seams disappeared.
"Are you afraid of heights?" He asked.
"How high?"
"The roof of an eight-story building."
"No."
"Roof please." He said. An orange dot appeared on the wall above where the opening had been. Black characters in the orange read B2'. I watched as this changed to B1,' then G,' then 1,' then numerically upward to 8,' then R.' I assumed we were riding in an elevator, but there was no discernible movement and no noise. Seams reappeared in the wall, the panels slid open, we stepped out onto a roof.
We were in the corner of a flat, black glass roof. It had a four-foot-tall parapet around the edge and was as big as a city block. Its surface was unbroken by any building systems, roof drains, sewer vents, air moving equipment, or even lightning protection cabling. The position of the sun in the clear, blue sky, told me it was full morning, probably around nine. The weather was beautiful, warm with a slight breeze. It felt like mid-May.
Shawn's right arm swept over the parapet in a broad gesture. "Welcome to Epistylium, the capital city of the nation known informally as The Protectorate of the Common States. The world we're in is parallel to your own and is called Solum. I was on Earth to find a powerful and compassionate man. Last night, when you rescued me, I decided you were the one foretold by the prophesy. I drove us here in your car. It's parked downstairs in the garage."
I groped in my pocket, brought out my pack and lighter, and fired up a cigarette. I breathed the comforting smoke and looked out over a vast, patchwork sprawl of a city. Immediately beneath us was an expansive park with lush, green rolling acres of grass, stands of old-growth deciduous trees, park benches, trails, and people of all shapes and sizes. They dressed in a rainbow of bright colors. From as high as we were, it looked like a box of crayons had come to life and decided to have a stroll.
In the distance, beyond the park, rows of rectangular buildings, multiple stories tall, rose from the ground in neat residential blocks. All had flat roofs, plenty of grass around them, and all were built of, or clad in, a blue-grey material. Wide avenues of paved road separated the blocks into a city grid. Vehicles moved like the people strolled, making leisurely progress along the blue-tinged pavement. The cars reminded me of plastic toys I had as a child. They were plumb-purple, smooth, rounded, and oblong, like eggs big-side-down with black wheels.
Parks alternated with districts of buildings, making the city appear to be half greenspace. In one direction, the sprawl stretched to the horizon. In the other, it was hemmed in by low, bluish-grey mountains, jagged and forbidding against the soft blue of the sky. Dotted here and there were districts with larger buildings. I presumed these were warehouses or factories. There was no smoke, no smog, and none of the acrid odor of big cities as I knew them. The most offensive smell in the air was the smoke from my own cigarette. There wasn't even much noise. No honking horns to blare against clattering diesel engines and the uneven drone of automotive traffic. The city sounded like a small town.
I stared as much as I could, then walked along the parapet to stare some more. The view changed, but only as much as a view of a planned city could change when looked at from one spot or another. I finished a cigarette, took another from the pack, looked at it, and put it away. I took the watch from my wrist and twisted the band between my fingers as I walked. My stroll brought me back to where I'd started and where Shawn remained.
"How do I know any of this is real?" I asked with my own broad, sweeping gesture.
His hands rose from his sides and he looked at them, like he didn't know what to do with them. He clasped them together, his left hand a fist and the right wrapped around and squeezing the left. "Don't you trust your senses?"
I slipped my watch back on my left wrist but didn't leave it alone. My right hand stretched the band to its limit. "No, I don't. I'm a drunk. Drunks get used to waking up in strange places without knowing how they got there. They get used to their minds playing tricks on them. Maybe I finally went too far, and I've gone insane. I'm impressed, but you're gonna have to do better than showing me an interesting view before I'll believe something as crazy as a parallel world."
I let go of my watch and pressed the heels of my hands to my forehead. My hangover still throbbed, and the bastard voice had forgotten my aspirin. "What's wrong?" He asked.
"I have a hangover headache, or maybe it's a brain tumor and that would explain the view."
He stepped inside my space. "Let me look."
I peered down at him. "You want to look at my headache? That's a new one."
He shook his head indignantly. "Don't be a silly ass. I'm a physician. I want to see if I can do something for your head. Lean down."
`Can't wait for this.' I thought. I leaned down enough that my face was level with his. He put his hands on either side of my head, the heels on my temples and his fingers spread wide toward the back of my skull. Gentle warmth started at my temples and spread around my head. He removed his hands. The warmth faded. I straightened up.
"How do you feel now?"
My headache was gone, better than that, my head was clear. I didn't have the normal (for a drunk) morning fog shrouding my thoughts. I felt around my head where his hands had been. "What did you do?"
"I'm a Third-Class Empath with a BB power rating. That means I'm a physical empath with a higher-than-average magic capacity. People with my power usually work in the medical field. I was trained as a general practitioner, but I don't practice." He stopped talking when he saw me gawking at him. "That's more than you wanted to know, I guess. I added some energy to help your natural functions recover from the toxins."
"Magic." I said as a question.
"Yes. Everyone here has one magical specialty and a given power capacity. They're born with it and it can't be changed. You seeÉ"I waved my hands to cut him off. "Enough! It's enough. Parallel world, prophesy, magicÉWHAT? NoÉno, no, no, no, NO, NO! NO!" I shut my eyes to block out the insanity. "Look, you seem like a nice kid and I appreciate the compliment, but whoever you're looking for, I ain't him. So, put me in my car, and open a gate, or say the secret words, or I'll click my goddamned heels together, and let me go home. OK? Please."
A very small voice replied to my rant. "I can't."
I glared down at him and crowded him against the parapet. "Can't or won't?"
Fear flashed across his face. "UhÉwon'tÉI guess."
I grabbed a double handful of his shirt and hauled him off his feet. "What if I beat the shit out of you?" I growled.
A stoic mask replaced his fear. He answered in resigned monotone. "Still won't." He said and looked me dead in the eye.
I could tell he meant it. I gave up. "Ah, shitÉyou win." I set him down and smoothed the crushed wrinkles from his shirt front. "I apologize. This is the strangest Thanksgiving ever and I guess I'm freaking out. Doesn't matter; I can't see pulling you away from four meatheads just to beat you up myself. I've never beat anyone up. I don't think I'd know how. I'd probably fuck it all up like I do everything else."
He unfastened his pants and tucked his shirt back in. "It's fine. I guess this is a lot to take in. Why don't we go back to your room where it's quiet? We can talk there."