Call Me Ishmael

Chapter 33

Please return your seats to the upright position and fasten your seat-belts.  I'm fixin' to land this plane.  "Call Me Ishmael," your answer to most of life's mysteries, remains available for the Kindle at Amazon, the dying Nook, and for generic devices at Smashwords.  Please feel free to leave reviews both here and at those sites.  Thank you for reading.

Almost instantly, we were once more at the Base. As the row of brick houses with white siding came into view, I wondered how it had become the Base, and whether there were other Bases, in other dimensions. I shook my head. Now was not the time to complicate things. I trusted Splice's tail had brought us to the right place, because now it was time to do what I had been brought to this strange world, and put through these strange adventures, to complete. The tricycle still lay on the driveway to the left, and the same dog still sat on the deck of the house to the right. I released my hold on Splice's tail. The dog next door turned its head and looked our way again, but it did not bark.

"Let go, Bety."

"Sorry, Splice. But have you see my wife? Ugly as a plate of scorched rabbit guts, which, by the way, is what we're having for supper tonight."

I followed Splice, with Finnie beside me this time. I felt déjà vu, but there was a difference. I wasn't following Finnie like a schoolboy; I was walking beside her, an equal. Well, almost.

I opened the front door, and we traipsed down the steps from the false front porch. I removed a pair of sunglasses from the small red plastic bucket mounted on the pole and put them on.

"Maybe it's too late," I said.

The Base looked as though an earthquake had hit it. Some of the heavy stones were lying about on the ground; it was obvious that the dimensional grind my father had warned about was, in fact, occurring. We ran to the heavy wooden doors, and they still opened at a touch. Who or whatever had been assaulting the place had not thought to try the doors.

Storming down the corridors, we found my father, just where we left him, at Splice's terminal. She ran around the terminal display and slid into her chair. My father roused, saw the flash of her hair, grunted, and made room for her. "Better a dollar short than not at all. Things have not been good here, son." He looked directly at me.

"Dad," I said, "This has been driving me crazy. If you weren't dead, then who was in the coffin we buried the day of your funeral?"

He blinked. "I was, son. It was my coffin. I just opened the bottom and dropped into another dimension. People do it all the time. But listen, we have bigger bits to fry. Look here, Splice."

Splice studied the terminal and frowned. "We're here just in time. The grind is fracturing the interdimensional linkages big time. The digitaliti are highly agitated, and that's never a good thing. Where's the device? Finnie, you need to activate that thing, now!"

From my interior pocket, I retrieved my father's device. I studied it. I had nearly forgotten; I carried it with us all the time, across the dimensions and back to this room, back to the one place where my father could show Finnie how to activate it. I touched the thin metal, stroking the engraved inscription, Finnie's Line.

"Well, it's fitting. This is the finish line, isn't it?"

My father groaned. "Son, that is the worst pun I've ever heard. Toss it here."

I glanced at Splice, who had quipped the same line earlier. Apparently she never shared it with my father.

The three blue lights glowed as I tossed the device to my father. It did not drop in an arc; it floated to him. The device apparently knew its maker.