Part: I|II|III|IV|V|VI|VII|VIII|IX|X|XI|XII|XIII
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Previously on the Beginner’s Guide to Everything: Mary Brown, the most normal girl in the multiverse, desperately tried to leave Mobius, the city that surrounded the center of the multiverse. Mary found herself caught in the crossfire between a sewer lich, a pair of sentient gas cloud gangsters, and some of her own traveling companions. Each group fought for the treasure Mary and her four companions had brought with them from Hazard.
In the end, it seemed the gas clouds were successful and ran off with the one-man dimension breacher to the source of the treasure. Unfortunately for them, Mary had messed with the coordinates while no one was looking, and the clouds ended up in the boundless void. With a lich bearing down on them, the five travelers finally had a chance to activate their recovery beacon and return to the Beginner’s Guide office.
~--~
The five travelers were hurled through space-time and several other layers of reality. Mary finally felt the tiniest pinch of hope. Perhaps now she’d finally be safe and out of harm’s way. Then their interdimensional transit was halted on a dime, and the group was suspended in mid-air.
“Not again,” Mary recognized this sensation.
“Freeze, nobody move!” A squad of GOTM soldiers surrounded the group of five as they floated in the white void outside the Beginner’s Guide office.
“Oh, howdy officers, fancy seeing you again so soon,” Ronnie tried to play it cool.
“You’re not getting away this time, Ray,” one of the GOTM soldiers yanked her out of the air and handcuffed her. While a few others confiscated her treasure.
“You’re awfully quick on the draw,” Ronnie pointed out. “How’d you even know it was me this time?”
“We were contacted by our buds up at MPD8,” the GOTM officer explained. “They told us all about you and your lizard companion in their custody. Then suddenly, we have a couple dimension jumps originating from their contraband room? Awfully suspicious if you ask me.”
“Aw, crap,” Ronnie was dragged away. “I demand a lawyer and an actual trial this time!”
“Oh, don’t you worry, we’ll take our time going over all the additional crimes you’ve committed in the last cycle.”
“This is outrageous!” The pink-haired fugitive exclaimed as she disappeared into the crowd of soldiers.
“You too,” another GOTM soldier approached and arrested Triz. “Your record speaks for itself, but I can’t believe you’d throw away a perfectly good job to team up with that idiot.”
“Hey, I haven’t committed any crimesss,” Triz assured. “Not today at leassst.”
“Better hope the judge believes you,” the officer carried her off.
“One by one, we’re being taken away? Who’s next?” A-2 wondered aloud before the remaining three were released from whatever field was holding them in the air. Mary and A-2 landed with a thud on their behinds, while Jerry remained floating in place thanks to his gaseous form.
“You two…er…three are free to go,” another soldier stated. “There ain’t nothing on your records…except for the cloud, but we’re not supposed to bother him…as far as we’re concerned, you’re innocent victims in all this.” He shrugged and walked. The rest of the soldiers quickly filed away before disappearing into a mass teleport.
“Hey, that’s convenient, except for Triz and Ronnie,” A-2 commented.
“Don’t worry about Triz. They’ll be willing to hear her out,” Jerry revealed. “Can’t say she won’t lose her job, but she’ll probably skirt by the worst of it. That Ronnie girl won’t be so lucky.”
“Now what?” Mary asked.
“I’m going home and to bed,” Jerry floated away, “this has been a long, painful day. I’ll put in a good word for Triz tomorrow. Until then, I’m out.” The gas cloud flew off into the white void.
“I guess we should go back to the office. This whole factoid hunt was a huge failure,” Mary sighed and began to walk towards the distant office building.
“Nope,” A-2 jumped in front of her. “That’s Triz’s job to report, and we’re only supposed to do it in her place if she’s dead.”
“Then what do we do?” Mary inquired.
“Well, we’re still being paid for this doomed job, and it’ll probably be a few days before they even let Triz do anything,” A-2 explained. “I say we take a few days of us time on The Beginner’s Guide’s time. Not like they’ll check on us.”
“That doesn’t seem very ethical,” Mary admitted. “But I don’t have the energy to care.”
“Awesome, to my apartment then!” A-2 dragged Mary off in a seemingly random direction.
~--~
Mary and A-2 returned to the latter’s apartment, the 2-meter by 2-meter cube provided little comfort to Mary, but it was all she would get. A-2 quickly settled down, depositing all her possessions that survived their doomed job. Mary didn’t bother to question how the cyborg had been transporting them all this time.
“So, what do you want to do?” A-2 asked the former secretary.
“Sleep,” Mary collapsed into the nearest comfortable-looking thing. In this case, a small couch. Now, finally safe, the bland woman felt her bottled-up pain and agony rushing over her all at once. The reality of her situation, which she had tried desperately to ignore, crashed upon her like a lead weight.
A-2 shrugged at the scene and tossed a blanket over the woman. Mary mumbled something resembling a thank you before returning to her existential crisis. She had never felt so detached, so frayed, and so numb in her life. The adrenaline had worn off, fearing for her life had given way to boundless anxiety, and her constant confusion was replaced with a grim understanding. The former secretary cried herself to sleep that night.
~--~
Some days or weeks later, Mary wasn’t quite sure; time didn’t exactly pass linearly in this place. The bland woman found herself regularly working at the Beginner’s Guide office. The literally infinite cubicle farm was hardly an uplifting place to occupy, and the work was boring and at times soul-crushing, but Mary counted her blessings. She hadn’t been shot, chased by monsters, or nearly killed at all recently. She couldn’t have asked for more.
Her sanctuary may have been a small grey box with barely enough room to stretch her arms out, but it was her space. She had a decent computer, plenty of drawer space, and even a little calendar with comic strips on it. This was besides the fact that time was meaningless in this office, and Mary just changed the date whenever she felt like it. The possibility the cubicle might have belonged to a recently deceased coworker. Who may or may not have been one of those poor souls eaten by those monsters in Hazard was something she tried to ignore.
“Hey there,” A-2 popped into the cubicle. “What’re you getting up to today?” The cyborg had dressed herself in more standard office attire and made herself home in the cubicle farm. Not that Mary had seen A-2 do any real work. In fact, the cyborg seemed to bounce from breakroom to breakroom and occasionally stopped at a coworker’s cubicle to make small talk.
“Looking busy,” Mary answered, her voice dull but firm. “I’d like to finish the factoid report on Hazard, but I don’t think they’ll accept continuous screaming as a report. So, I’m filling it with random crap about everything we saw.”
“I told you that’s Triz’s job. You don’t want them to dump her responsibilities on you, do you?” A-2 pointed out.
“We’ve delayed this for long enough. Management is going to want something soon. Better to give them what little we got instead of nothing,” Mary stated. “Besides, I’m pretty sure they’ve realized Triz is in jail awaiting trial and won’t bother shaking her down for the report.”
“Good point,” A-2 agreed absentmindedly. “Speaking of which, I haven’t heard anything about Triz and Ronnie besides the whole trial thing. Also, I haven’t seen Jerry at all the past couple of cycles.”
“Jerry’s smart. He doesn’t want to be involved in this any more than he has to,” Mary commented. “As for Ronnie and Triz…forget it.” The former secretary stopped herself from expressing her colorful thoughts concerning the two. ‘While I don’t like Ronnie, I could at least put in a good word for Triz. For whatever that’s worth.’
“Hmm,” A-2 didn’t press the issue any further. “Hey, that doesn’t look like a Hazard factoid.” The cyborg pointed to an open document on Mary’s computer screen.
“Well, it’s outside the realm of our responsibilities,” Mary explained, “but I’m sure the Beginner’s Guide would like to know that the last phone booth in the multiverse was destroyed. Don’t want any complaints about false advertising.”
“I’m sure management will put that one at the top of their big stack of important papers,” A-2 proclaimed.
“Yeah, the one labeled recycling,” Mary sighed. Despite her complaints, the former secretary was more or less happy with her current predicament. She was ready to resign herself to this boring office life for the rest of eternity. Yet, something told her she wouldn’t be so lucky.
~--~
The sentient green gas cloud continued to float in the endless black void, the one-man dimension breacher being their only sanctuary. Time was so meaningless to them at this point that a thousand Earth years could have passed in the blink of an eye for them. Or vice versa. The infinite emptiness does screw with the mind after a while. While the certainty that you will never feel, see, hear or touch anything ever again tends to grate at your nerves.
So, imagine their surprise when they finally hit something. Considering they were in an infinite expanse of literally nothing, the two gas balls were convinced they had finally cracked. Yet, a single peek out the window confirmed there was, in fact, another something amid all the nothing. It was a big, black something, a different shade of black from the rest of the void. Its form was formless, it was undoubtedly there, but it didn’t seem to have a definite shape.
Despite all evidence to the contrary, the two sentient gas clouds were ready to write it off as a shared hallucination. That was until the giant pair of golden eyes opened and stared down at them. The dimension breacher shook as it was gripped by the formless being’s hand. The gas cloud’s panicked as they wondered what the hell they stumbled across, then the being spoke.
“Who dares awaken me from my slumber?” A disembodied voice echoed throughout the void.
“Not us, someone sent us here against our will…yeah,” the cigar-smoking cloud muttered.
“I see…” The being replied. Suddenly, the gas clouds felt the most horrific sensation imaginable, as though their very existence was being run through a taffy machine. “Now I understand,” the being continued, “the root of this disturbance was Mary Brown.”
To Be Continued…?
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After a long and difficult ordeal, there is nothing better than the simple comfort of a regular day at the office.
And that's all she wrote for now, what a ride. I'll hopefully come back to the Beginner's Guide soon, or at least one day in the future. I do intend to continue the story. However, this should be good for now. Admittedly, this was all an experiment in writing by the seat of my pants, and while it's been fun, it's also been a nightmare to keep everything straight in my head.
Hopefully, next time I'll have a full outline for the story, so I can give it the proper treatment it deserves. We're going back to stand alone stories for a bit, but I do have another long term story in the tank. Although, at the time of writing, it's still in the outline phase. We'll just have to see how it plays out.
Until next time, Read, Comment and Enjoy
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