Meanwhile, in another another another universe…
******
“Are you ready?” Demi turned to her partner. Her familiar black
eyeliner and dark jacket was a comforting sign. Around the group,
dozens, perhaps even hundreds were awaiting the pair’s
presentation. The clocks were striking fourteen. The aisle was free
and clear for them to proceed henceforth to the raised auditorium
stage where their machine sat, intact, waiting. It had been inspected
by the judges prior to assure its safety, a process which nearly gave
Agatha a heart attack, but on the whole nothing out of the ordinary
had occurred. The time was officially now.
“Now that we’re together,” Agatha said, taking Demi’s hand in
hers, “I’m ready for anything. When I’m with you, Demi, I feel
like I can fly. I feel like I can… do you… do you feel that?”
Demi felt it too. She looked to her feet, and looked around her,
feeling the quake. She had an idea of what it was, but was too
terrified of that possibility to even consider it.
The lights went off, and several of the light bulbs in the auditorium
cracked, showering the audience with blades of sharp glass.
“Oh my gosh!” Demi yelled, covering her mouth.
The science teacher rose his voice, announcing, “Demi and Agatha!
If your machine caused this, I will – ”
CRASSSHHHHOOOOOM!!!
The auditorium had been breached by a massive flip-flop, atop which a
pale foot wiggled its toes in ecstasy at the devastation it had just
created. The entire right half of the seating area had been caught
beneath it, burying students and teachers in an avalanche of metal
and plastic and blood alike, and sending those not immediately in the
strike zone dozens of feet away in the massive shock-wave. Demi had
only enough time to grab Agatha before the pair were flung against
the far wall.
“Ungh!” Demi shrieked, feeling something important break in her
torso. She had graciously taken the brunt of the impact when the pair
flew.
“Demi!” Agatha shrieked, flipping from her side and barely
struggling to her knees as she raised Demi’s slumped over position
to against the wall.
“Ach!” Demi said involuntary, prompting apologies from her
friend.
“Sorry, sorry! It’s just… we need to – ”
“No…” Demi said, tears in her eyes. “No, we don’t.”
“We… what do you mean?”
“I mean we’re through!” Demi said, raising her
black-stained face to Agatha’s. “We’re done! The game is over…
We lost.”
Another massive CRASHHHHHH!!! that sounded close, but not
immediately affecting the auditorium. A falling piece of debris
crushed an amputated straggler. Demi thought it might’ve been
Juliet. She couldn’t tell. Her vision was already going out.
Agatha heard Demi’s cold, dead resignation. “What do you mean?”
she repeated, far more urgently than last time.
“It was…” Demi coughed. Blood came out, painting Agatha’s
cheek. “It was always a fifty-fifty. Always has been.”
A… fifty-fifty.
Agatha felt the tears well up, the tears and the pain.
“Aw… Aggie… please… don’t cry,” Demi said, taking
Herculean pains to lift her arm up and place it on her friends
shoulder. And Demi smiled a true, sincere smile.
“This still means that no matter what happens… we’ll be
together until the day we die.
The hole of sunlight in the roof became shadow.
“Okay, Agatha, Agatha, listen to me,” Demi said, urgency rising.
“We need–”
“Demi, I love you! I love you, you hear me?!”
The roof completely collapsed. Rock was coming down around them. The
screams got louder.
“I LOVE YOU, I LOVE YOU, I LOVE YOU, I LOVE YOU –” Agatha
covered her ears and shouted it again, and yet somehow, she was able
to hear Demi’s response.
“I LOVE YOU TOO! AGATHA, I LOVE –”
BRABOOOOOOOOOM!!!
The black-heeled boot of the Black
Goddess ground
the sacrifices under its rubber sole. Standing their, hands on her
hips as she observed the former schoolhouse she had made herself
believe was fit for her, she felt a quaint affection for it. A
paternalist
sort of nostalgia.
Demi shivered, and not merely as a
result of cold from being thrust into the outside at two hundred
fifty feet tall. Lifting up her boot and grabbing it by the ankle,
she noticed the familiar sheen of red paste stuck in the treads.
“You good?” Agatha said,
crouching down and glaring at the city with a mischievous obsession.
Already, some were exiting their cars and buildings, breaking down to
tears at the arrival of these women. Those who had known Demi and
Agatha all throughout their altered lives were even more
flabbergasted at the fulfillment of prophecies cast ages ago being
made manifest by two ordinary high school students.
“Oh I’m good!” Demi said,
planting her foot absentmindedly
on the greater part of the rest of the school.
“It just looks so puny
from up here.”
“Ey ey! Careful!” Agatha
warned. “Remember, we can crush whoever we want, but we need
the machine.”
“Of course, of
course… my love.”
It was such an exceptionally formal
manner of address for the two, and it caused Agatha to
burst out laughing. “Ahahahahahaha!” she giggled, and she
couldn’t help but fall back, crushing the post office across the
street to dust beneath her sweatpants.
She let the giggle peter out as
Demi looked down at her lovingly.
“Oh… hey! Look who’s here!”
Demi pointed out, and Agatha turned her gaze to the ground around
them.
People had stopped their work. They
were coming toward them, hypnotically, fearfully, but steadily. The
crowds were streaming from buildings and vehicles, and it was only
getting thicker. They didn’t know what to do, but for once, as
Agatha and Demi performed their work, those around them weren’t
screaming in fear.
They probably should be. But for
the moment, they weren't.
“Oh… um,” Agatha started, as
some of them had finally reached her, hands outstretched but too
scared and hesitant to lay their touch upon an avatar of their
goddess. “Hey there… fellas! We’re here! We’re back!”
Now it was Demi’s turn to laugh.
She turned to the crowd of willing worshipers as they descended,
bowing to the might of the Twin Goddesses. Demi put her hands on her
waists and simply smiled, gazing with a curious sense of possession
at the tiny humans’ devotion. “That’s right,” Demi purred.
“Kneel. And know…” Demi continued, raising her boot up once
again and casting the kneeling, crying, worshiping group into shadow.
“Know… that you have been
saved.”
SLAAAAM!!!
Once again her boots made a mess.
“Demi!” Agatha chastised,
though her own obsession with Demi’s display of power was evident
in Agatha’s blushing. “That seemed a little
mean.”
“Does it matter? Do we even have
to pay attention to the
needs of these dust motes? Hell.
No.”
And then Demi raised her foot
again, preparing to truly reduce the last remnants of the school
auditorium to sediment, but this time Agatha grabbed her heel before
it fell.
“Whoa, whoa!” Agatha said,
serious now as Demi looked at her curiously.
Agatha took her thumb and
forefinger, digging into the rubble for the glint that caught her eye
until –
“A-ha!”
In her fingertips was the smaller
version of the time machine.
“This is what we came here for…”
Agatha said, dreamily, looking up at Demi, who was just as
enraptured.
Agatha stood up and looked in
Demi’s eyes. The held the miniaturized time machine between the
two.
“With just one machine, we have
so much power. But if we can combine the two…” Agatha looked at
the giant machine, seated at the intersection just a few steps from
where the school once stood.
“By my calculations, the energy
unleashed from that transformation will be limitless. We still
don’t know what it
will do…”
“Hmph,” Demi replied, placing a
hand on Agatha’s chest. “Whatever happens, I don’t care.
Whether we live or die, it doesn’t matter to me. As long as I get
to be by your side when we do it.”
The pair nodded, and then Agatha
leaned in for the kiss, planting it on Demi’s ajar lips.
Helicopter wings began to whip
strands of Demi’s hair out of place, who sighed in exasperation.
The news choppers had aimed their cameras and megaphones at the pair,
flitting about their heads in confused curiosity.
“They’re just ants,” Agatha
offered. “And we will soon be free of them.”
Hands within one another,
Agatha and Demi returned to their time machine as it sealed them in
once again with a hissssssss.
Once inside, Demi manipulated the
controls. On the console, a small compartment opened not unlike a
slightly smaller
than normal USB slot. Agatha inserted the miniaturized machine into
the slot by the battery pack, then looked at the numbers.
“When do you want to go?”
Agatha asked.
Demi pondered for a moment… Then
she reached forward and pressed the “Go”
button.
The machine whirred, and Agatha
smiled.
This was virgin terrain, and nobody
had any idea where it would take them. But the opportunity to travel
to new heights was all the pair needed, especially when they were
together.
The heat was rising, and to feel as
though she were doing something useful, Agatha
pulled the seat belt over the pair’s chests.
“Do you feel it coming?” Agatha
screamed out, the electricity already making her mouth taste of
metal.
“I feel… I feel something!”
Demi replied, pins and needles piercing her legs, arms, every limb of
her body. “I feel…”
She didn’t know how to describe
it. The machine was shaking. Freezing cold and burning heat were
combining. Up and down, time and space, together in their perfect
little spherical box, Demi could almost comprehend the sound of the
universe, but it hurt. It
actually hurt more
than it ever had. Her head ached, her skin itched, but she couldn’t
do anything to assuage this pain because she had all but lost the ability to
move, and barely maintained the capacity to think. She was
electronically locked, and she couldn’t do anything save the
slightest actions as the machine was flung further and further to an
unknown destination.
“I feel… Agatha!?”
Agatha was burning away. Demi
performed the nigh-insurmountable action of turning her head to see
that Agatha was falling apart. Like a sandcastle blowing away, from
the top of her head, Agatha was being ripped to atoms by their
traipse through the space-time continuum.
“NO!” Demi
commanded. It couldn’t be. Not after everything. Not after beating
the odds. Not after finally finding the one she loved. It couldn’t
all be for nothing.
“Agatha!”
Demi shrieked. She could not bear
it. She simply could not. It could not be.
“Don’t leave me!”
The machine’s wiring was burning
out.
“I NEED YOU!”
The
machine’s construction was
ripping itself apart.
“WE PROMISED TO NEVER LET EACH
OTHER GO!”
Scraps of the fabric that made up
creation were becoming visible as more and more metal was scraped by
the speed at which they made their fantastic voyage.
“And I am going to keep
that promise.”
And Demi summoned it within
herself.
Her desire. Her fear. Her defiance.
Her love.
The machine was being torn apart
now, and as the roof was flung far back into the Mesozoic
Era,
Demi could glance up and see stars. Agatha was still being split
apart, untouched legs and feet at stark contrast with a face and
upper torso that seemed as though it were a work by Salvador Dali.
“Demi?”
Demi could not make out Agatha’s
mouth, but she could hear her voice.
“Agatha! I’m here!”
“Are you there?”
“Yes! Aggie! I’m here! I’m
right here!”
“Where are you?”
“I-I’m here! Agatha, can’t
you hear me?”
“I don’t know where I am…
I don’t know where I am!”
Demi now could not tell if she
herself was speaking or not, but as the tears that leaked from her
eyes were frozen and sublimated into crystalline comets of untold
energy, Demi called upon the power she summoned.
She glanced at her hand, there on
the seat next to Agatha’s quickly disappearing thigh. Agatha’s
own hand had long since vaporized, but Demi’s fingertips were now
following suit.
Demi reached into her mind for the
will to do what she desired to do. But that was not enough.
So she reached into the cosmos for
the knowledge of what she needed to do. But still, it was not enough.
Until… Demi reached into her
heart for the love that dictated what she wanted to do.
And she commanded:
“Stop.”
And the
journey was over.
And so was everything else.
The void was vast. The machine was
gone. But when Demi looked to her side, she could see the form of
Agatha reconstituting itself, becoming human once again as it floated
next to her.
Agatha’s eyes remained glazed,
unable to truly parse what had been happening to her. It was only a
gentle prod from Demi that caused her to gasp and paint for air, or whatever it was here that their bodies tricked themselves into believing was air.
“W… what happened to me?”
Demi answered her by pulling her
into an embrace. “You were almost gone,” Demi could barely keep
herself from sobbing. “But I… I think…”
Agatha’s eyes widened as she
smiled, feeling the warmth and energy flow into her from Demi’s
form. “You saved me again.”
Then they pulled apart and examined
their empty environment.
“So… what now?” wondered
Agatha.
“Oh… so, actually, I think we
might’ve destroyed the universe on accident.”
“No, you.
You destroyed the
universe on accident,” Agatha clarified, causing Demi to look at
her with sinister sarcasm.
“Hey, if I didn’t do that, you
wouldn’t be here! And besides I’m sure I can bring it back. Hey,
watch!”
And then Demi cleared her throat
and announced:
Be.
And they were back in the auditorium. Standing on the podium. The
time machine was there, but any signs of whirring or mechanical
energy had ceased, as though it were an empty, useless box. Nevertheless, the audience was clapping, offering a standing
ovation to the pair as if they had just completed their presentation.
“Whoa… shit,” Agatha said, grateful the clapping obscured the
swear. “That’s sort of insane. Wait, can I... ”
Agatha cleared her throat, and thought…
Go.
Answering her own question, the pair was now standing above the
desiccated ruins of their former city. No longer limited to a mere
250 feet, they had by now exceeded six thousand feet, such
that even the tallest buildings in human history couldn’t even
reach their knees. Much less the paltry structures made by their
hometown.
“So… goddamn… cool,” Agatha breathed,
shuddering with the power she now wielded as a result of their return
from the transit nexus. Her voice carried across mountains and oceans
and rivers; her presence was itself a natural disaster. “Wait, did
you bring back the old world or create a new one from scratch?”
“God, who fucking cares?” retorted Demi, already magicking
her boots off as she dragged her bare soles through the mud of the
world. To anyone else it might’ve sounded abrasive, but it only
made Agatha fall in love with her even more as she realized how right
Demi was.
Flashes from the surface. Streaks of light and smoke, aimed directly
at the pair’s faces. Yet exploding harmlessly, like fireflies as
though impacting a solid barrier directly in front of them.
“We’ll never have to worry about pain ever again,” Demi said,
once again sending a colossal kick through the soap-soft skin of the
Earth, carving a torrential trench through the heart of the metro
area. From this height the military forces weren’t more than gray
muddy spills, and she had just erased them.
“Or fear,” Agatha offered, putting her hands out to her side and
letting herself fall forwards, perfectly posed. The people that
looked up at that moment would have seen the last event to blot out
the sun, as she compressed the air beneath her descent in an
ear-popping shockwave before utterly ending everything from her
shins, to her thighs, stomach, and enraptured face and eyes. It would
truly be a blessing to met one’s end beneath them.
BOOOOOOM!!!
A tsunami of destruction roared across the land in an outline of
Agatha’s silhouette, and she rolled over onto her back and began to
carve an earth-angel in her image.
Demi knelt down next to her and smiled, before digging her hands into
a patch of (relatively) unscathed earth nearby, collecting buildings
and people and vehicles all drawn up in the quagmire. Some were
staying to offer supplication to their deities. Others had renounced
the old religion in favor of survival. All of them were taken above
Agatha’s shirt collar and sprinkled within like baby powder.
“Ah, ah, ahahahahaha!” Agatha giggled awkwardly at the
feeling, the semi-scratchy, semi-squirming feeling as she sat up,
distracted from earth angels and punched Demi in the shoulder. “Quit
it!” she said, standing up once again and airing out her outfit.
Most of the dirt fell through the hem of her clothes, but much of the
buildings and people remained, having found themselves sticking in
the most personal nooks and crannies of Agatha’s sweaty body, some
already being squashed by the contractions of her movements.
“Okay, okay, I’m sorry. I think I’ve had enough of this
for now anyway,” said Demi.
And they were off again. At first, Agatha wondered whether they were
back in the endless void of the transit nexus. Had something gone
wrong? Had their powers wore out? Had the machine’s malfunction had
an unforeseen effect? Why had they been transported to this limitless
expanse of darkness once again?
But no; a passing meteoric body burned up as it encountered the two
girls' gravitational pull, and suddenly Agatha knew where they were.
From here, it only took a few moments until the stars came into her
perception, and from that point a few more moments as the group
pinpointed the location of Earth, hanging above them, eclipsing them
in darkness as it blacked the sun’s rays.
Above the pair, Earth lingered, roughly the size of a yoga ball.
There lay all of human existence and civilization. Every man and
woman and child, saint and sinner. And they were in the palm of their
hands.
Agatha could only imagine it… there on the dark side of the Earth,
the faces, unfathomable, incomprehensible, of this society’s
objects of worship thrusting out of the expanse of space, a message,
a warning to all of what power the pair possessed. A warning that was
ultimately meaningless; the affairs of these bugs – less than that,
really – had no real effect on what it was the pair desired and
did. But so long as this little experiment continued, she figured
they might as well string it on to its logical conclusion.
“I just needed to see it from this view, once. For now,” Demi
said, waddling a bit as she floated away before Agatha grabbed her.
And with a frankly unnecessary hand gesture, the pair were in a pure
white room supported by six columns. A single, massive, made bed was
placed at the head of the room, and a short pathway nearby brought in
what seemed to be a natural light.
“What the…?” Agatha asked, quickly realizing her clothes too
had changed. Rather than her dingy school-wear, she was wearing a
silken white robe, expertly tied about her waist. Demi too was
wearing a robe, this one made of a shimmering gray and equally soft
material. Both women now were barefoot, and the marble makeup of the
construction brought chills to the bottoms of their soles.
“Where are we?” inquired Agatha.
Demi smiled and jerked her head in the direction of the hall. “It’s
not where, at this point. But when – ”
And she took Agatha’s hand, dragging her exasperated friend through
to the end of the path.
A balcony. Light shone down amidst a gray cloudy sky, and hills lined
the vista, providing a beautiful view that could see hundreds of
miles in the direction if one squinted hard enough. But neither
needed to in order to make out the two perfect, statuesque depictions
of the both of them, standing at the center of the hill. Demi had her
right foot out, ready to crush, and Agatha mirrored her with her left
foot.
“I guess this is how they honor us in the year 2307,” said Demi.
“You guess? You mean you didn’t know?”
Demi shrugged. “How could I? I’m omnipotent, not omniscient.
Unless I want to be. Which… I guess I sort of do?”
Demi blinked. Her face twisted into a grimace.
“You know what, I take that back. I do not want to be omniscient
anymore.”
And like that, Demi’s face returned to normal.
Agatha blinked at her friend, then poked her head out over the
balcony, gasping in amazement as a solar-powered aerial vehicle
zoomed past her roost, nearly slicing her head off.
“We can really do anything?” Agatha asked ethereally.
Demi nodded. “Do anything, go anywhere… so what do you say? Do
you want to explore all of creation with me, for all time?” She
took Agatha’s hands in her own and looked her in the eye.
Agatha, tears in her eyes, broke into a smile once again. Demi needed
not omniscience to know what her new lover was thinking.
“I do.”