“There’s no place like home, there’s no place like home” I chanted, clicking my heels together clutching the amulet in my hands like prayer beads.
Rikheart Steel was standing back at a safe distance apprehensively like I might explode at any moment “What is she doing?” he asked the confederation of dunces gathered around him, their mouths gaping open like sloths.
Avara loomed over me as only she can loom “Sweet Ela, I’m ever so worried about you.”
I stopped what I was doing, smiled and clapped her on the back “Well what’s there to worry about?” I slipped the star pendant amulet magic thing in my bloody clothing shards because I have no pockets “I thought that magic doodad might get me out of here, but it didn’t, and that’s fine. Let’s think about this logically. If I really am here and this is really a real place, what does that mean? That the many worlds theory is true? I created this world for a streaming service that’s the problem. So what then? Is the world I thought was real actually a simulation and by creating another world inside that programmed world somehow the code got mixed up and the simulation is now simulating this for me? That doesn’t seem likely, otherwise every writer and director and showrunner and producer and novelist or whatever would be disappearing into other worlds all the time. So where does that leave us? Psychic phenomena? Maybe this is some kind of Mad Hatter mind control bullshit where I’m trapped in a psychic creation of my own mind? Someone read my mind, saw all this Avara shit, and created that construct for me to inhabit. Like that movie the Cell, one hundred four million gross on thirty-free million budget, earned a nomination Best Makeup, with Jennifer Lopez. I met her once you know. She was considered for a voice role on an another animated show I was pitching. Nice lady.”
That horrible little Rappongi creature was hiding behind Pikkwyn and cover its awful face with its dirty little rat-claws like my speech was hurting it. Pikkwyn herself was so wide-eyed that I thought her eyeballs might fall out of her head like marbles.
“Waaaa” she mewed at me like a newly born Thundercat.
Avara reached to pull me into another chesty embrace “Sweet Ela I fear that your mind is overthrown.”
I ducked out her grasp to avoid her hot boobs being pressed on my face again like a panini right out of the press “No, no, I’m good, we have the thing so let’s go save the queen or whatever.” I waved an arm at them forwards like a general sitting on a tank for a photo op “Andale my friends, the queen isn’t going to unpoison herself. It’s the chief advisor that did it of course. It’s always the chief advisor. I don’t remember where we landed on if he was in league with Duke Eaglevane or not. My pitch was that he was just ambitious on his own, I didn’t want every villain and every obstacle in the show to come from the Duke, you have to switch things up is my point. Either way, once we get there we’ll grab him first before we let anyone know that we’re going to use the necklace to cure the queen, that way we can avoid the big fight where he and his traitorous traitors try to stop us.”
Martialla stopped being agape long enough to be aghast “How do you know all this?”
“I told you, I’m a seer now. My visions have foretold this is what has come to pass. That’s why I’m talking crazy now, you know us seers are always speaking in riddles and being bizarre” I pointed at Caducea “this lady gets it.”
Caducea murmured something no one would hear but whatever it was it was apparently what was enough to get everyone moving. We headed off for the palace, which if I recall the map we had sketched out is mostly due west from the Troll Hills. I didn’t want there to be a map of the world at all because then people get all hung up about how long it takes to get places and what’s between what and that kind of thing but the suits all insisted. They’re probably right about that. People love maps. I don’t know why. While we traveled I trotted up to Martialla’s side so I could use her as a sun shade.
I craned my neck looking up at her “Are you sure you don’t want to carry me?”
“Yes”
I raised an eyebrow “Yes you’ll carry me or yes you’re sure that you don’t want to?”
She frowned slightly “Uh, the second one.”
I fell into step beside her “Fair enough. The thing we must do is think about human consciousness and what it means. The reality we experience is data being interpreted by the brain, that data doesn’t have to be something physical right? If some data is fed into the brain you’re going to experience that ‘reality’ even if it’s not really real. So, if this is some kind of telepathic intrusion what’s happening is that someone else is projecting that information into my mind. Or maybe it’s not a psychological thing, maybe it’s technology, like a virtual reality thing only not stupid. Maybe my actual physical body is in a lab somewhere and they’ve cut my skull open and stuck in a bunch of cables hooked up to computers to feed the data in. But why? And why would they make it this? Aliens? Could this be something to do with aliens? Alien people love to pretend that aliens can do psychic shit right? Maybe this is how they learn about our culture? That might make more sense than anything because they’d pick people at random right? It wouldn’t have to have anything to do with me.”
Mighty Martialla sighed mightily “If I carry you will you be quiet?”
