Glassmage Oblivion

Chapter Ten

“Dad says that Cherry Ace is unconfirmed. You should never eat or drink unconfirmed brands.”

Again, before she could ask for clarification, he took off to the right in the direction of two double doors. Above them, a screen offered the words:

 

THEATER II – MY SWEET MARIE

FULL HOLO & EMERSION, AGGI 93!

 Sabernatch pushed open the swinging doors and they entered a dark, sloping hall.

“What does AGGI 93 mean?” she asked, trying to keep up.

In that same superior tone, the old man said, “It’s the aggregation index. That’s how they know what kind of ending to show. My Sweet Marie has the highest AGGI of any movie. There’s a monitor that scans your eyes and tells the… oh, come on! You’ll see! I don’t want to miss the beginning!”

The dark hallway ended, opening to the left into a simply enormous theater. The seats were arranged not in straight rows, but arcs that surrounded 180 degrees of a deep, black pit in the center of the room.

The padded chairs hovered in the air with no apparent means of reaching them. Before she could ask how they would get there, two of the seats moved smoothly through the air and stopped on the floor before them. Smiling, Sabernatch leaped into one of the seats. Shrugging, Kendra took the other and felt her stomach flip as the chair rotated and flew back into place. There was no seatbelt and her initial fear was of tipping forward and falling to the floor below. There was a strange force, however, holding her in place. She could move her arms and body, but the moment she leaned forward a force pushed gently back.

As the rest of Port Vesper, the theater was empty except for them.

“Here it comes!” the creature squeaked excitedly. Kendra imagined he was smiling, but didn’t have the stomach to turn and confirm her suspicion.

Then came the sound. The same sound she’d heard in his bedroom, but louder. The hissing rose to a thunderous level and the tiny spheres of glass rose up before them, spinning like a controlled cyclone. Their seats moved forward, or perhaps the mist of spheres moved toward them, but the effect was the same. They were surrounded.

The hissing stopped, replaced by an unnerving silence. Then a deep, sonorous voice said, “She was only twelve when they traveled to the distant world of Omega Phan. Her father was a famous Trader with over twenty BlueHeart merit citations. They spent a relaxing week on this vacation world. Then something went horribly wrong.”

The darkness around them brightened. A middle-aged man and a twelve year-old girl spoke animatedly before the closed doors of an elevator. Several bags sat around them.

“Mommy will be so surprised!” she said.

The man nodded, though obvious sadness filled his features. “You’ll have three wonderful days with your mother, Marie.”

“Oh, Daddy, don’t be sad. I’ll be back.”

The elevator doors hushed open behind them, then all faded to black.

Kendra remembered the box of candy she was holding and absently pulled out a piece of taffy. Unwrapping it, she placed the sweet into her mouth. A second later, she choked, coughed and spit out a teaspoon worth of dry sand. Disgusted, she was about to shout at the thing beside her, but stopped.

The voice continued:

“She never reached her mother. Stepping through the transposition portal, a rare and horrible mistake was made, sending her over 750 light-years away to a non-indexed world.