The Law of Averages

Chapter 107

Chapter 107

Checkout counters were the same no matter the dimension. Long lines of disheveled, disinterested people, staring at their phones or vacantly into space. Half the number of cashiers needed for any sort of reasonable progress. And neat rows of gossip magazines, broadcasting ludicrous headlines. Dan dutifully scanned over them as a bored employee swiped his groceries across a barcode scanner.

Beep.

Beep.

Beep.

There were fancier ways to go about it, sure, but Dan was shopping at the local equivalent of Walmart. It was worth it, though. How else would he have learned that the Austin Smog (which is what the news had been calling Bartholomew's attack) had been caused by an alien impersonating action star Tom Cruise. There was a photo and everything! Right there on the center rack, blown up so large that Dan could make out individual pixels, were the poorly photo-shopped features of a world-renowned celebrity, pasted haphazardly atop the fleeing body of an overweight woman.

In unrelated news, Scientology hadn't made it to Dimension A. The authoring of Dianetics, by L. Ron Hubbard, had been neatly butterflied away by the sudden existence of literal superpowers. Dan had looked it up on a whim. Hubbard's biography was small and unremarkable. He had been a mildly successful author, writing four pieces of science fiction before being killed during a vigilante riot in the early sixties. Scientology never came into existence, and Tom Cruise was never stained by its shadow.

So, instead of being widely regarded as an absurdly dedicated action star, a huge proponent of Scientology, and all-around crazy person, he was widely regarded as an absurdly dedicated action star, and all-around crazy person. It was fascinating to compare his career in Dimension A to that of his counterpart.

Top Gun existed, though the plot had been heavily altered by social norms. Maverick was exaggeratedly unsympathetic, and when his flouting of the rules got his by-the-books copilot killed it almost seemed a righteous outcome. Iceman was the protagonist, trying to rehabilitate his wild and unruly brother in arms, motivated by duty and honor. Tom Cruise's portrayal of a villain, driven to reform by his own selfish actions, propelled him to super stardom.

It was absurd. By all rights, the man should not exist. Yet there he was, in all his oddly charismatic glory. Tom Cruise, it seemed, was inevitable.

But Dan was getting distracted. He paid for his groceries, grimacing at the unpleasant look his daydreaming had earned from the tired cashier. He willed himself home, and arrived in front of his kitchen counter. Abby blew him a kiss from her place on the couch, and Dan slowly restocked the fridge.

He was putting things off. There was something that he needed to do, to confront, and he'd been ignoring it for weeks. Something hugely important, and pants-shittingly terrifying. He was referring, of course, to Cthulu's little brother, who appeared to be living in Dan's power. Or was Dan's power. Which was somehow even worse to contemplate.

It wasn't that Dan was a speciesist. He could Cthulu fhtagn with the best of them. It was just that, and maybe this was a little irrational of him, he was a slightly uncomfortable sharing space with an eldritch monstrosity that might want to devour his consciousness. No big deal, just not his scene. He had never been one for roommates (that he wasn't actively dating). Dan was a loner like that.

So it was with understandable trepidation that he announced, "I'm gonna try and talk to my monster."

Abby blinked up at him. "Eh?"

"That thing I told you about, that's in t-space?" Dan reminded her. "I'm gonna go poke it and see what happens. I can't just ignore it forever."

"Oh. Right." Her face briefly looked as disturbed as his. "Maybe, um, don't think of it like that, exactly," Abby offered, sitting up.

"Like what?"

"Like an obstacle," Abby explained.

Dan frowned. "Maybe it's friendly, maybe it's not, but either way, I don't think I'm gonna hurt its feelings with a little profiling. It ain't human."

"No, but it's connected to you," Abby insisted. "You said so yourself. So don't do anything... dramatic."

Dan's brow furrowed at the odd advice. "You believe me, don't you? About the giant eldritch thing?"

"Of course!" Abby exclaimed quickly, waving her arms in what could generously be interpreted as a reassuring motion. "I believe that you saw it, but I'm not convinced it's a threat. Or that it's unusual, even."

"The thing looks like someone tried to stick an octopus in a blender, Abs," he pointed out.

"That's not— I don't mean literally, you just, hrmm." Abby took a deep, calming breath. "Your power lets you see things that literally nobody else can. What if these things are completely normal? What if everyone has one, but nobody can see theirs?"

Dan blinked, slowly, as he processed the implications of this disturbing new theory. "I'm not sure I'm a fan of that idea."

"No, no," Abby said, waving her hands again. "It's like— think of your power as a microscope, yeah? Before we had those, nobody could have known that sickness was caused by tiny little organisms. I mean, we could theorize about it, but you couldn't know, y'know? But now, we do. Maybe it's like that!"

"So, in this metaphor, my power is the microscope that can see diseases, and I am... what?" Dan cocked his head in thought. "The penicillin that horribly murders them? Because I can get behind that."

"No! It's not an enemy!" Dan gave her a look, and she amended, "It's not necessarily an enemy! For all we know, these things are completely common. Powers have been around for decades, and nobody I've ever heard of has had their mind devoured or been turned into a mindless husk." She frowned in contemplation. "Well, not because of an invisible creature in the space between dimensions."

"You can't know that," Dan said. "Could be that it eats their personality, absorbs all their knowledge, then puppets around their body. Like a mind-flayer crossed with the Thing!"

"What thing?" Abby asked.

Dan stared at her for several moments, then sighed, letting his shoulders slump. "I'm gonna go, now." He bent down, digging through his cupboard for his trusty cast-iron pan. It wasn't likely to do much of anything in an emergency, but it made him feel better. Like a security blanket that you could swing at someone's head (or a tentacle filled with eyeballs). He spun it in his hand, then glanced to Abby.

She watched him nervously, biting her lip. Despite her words, she was clearly uncomfortable with this.

Dan took a deep breath, wiping away his uncertainties. He'd faced scarier things than this. Probably. Flashing Abby a confident grin, he said, "Back before you know it," and vanished into t-space.

The familiar numbness greeted him, a chill in the surroundings that couldn't possibly exist. It soaked into him like bathwater. Dan's racing heart settled into a more comfortable pace, his anxiety fading away into comfortable familiarity. This place always settled him. He was safe here. Nothing could touch him.

And, for the first time, that feeling was jarring enough for him to question it. His eyes widened in realization. His veil pushed outward, out of his body, draping protectively around him like armor. He glanced skyward, anxiety surging back stronger than ever, but mixing with more anger than he'd ever felt in the Gap. He shook his fist at the sky and bellowed, "Are you eating my emotions, you overgrown cephalopod!? Get out here!"

The sky cracked, a massive furrow tearing through the stars. It widened in an instant, expanding outwards. Light poured from it, almost blinding, outlining the massive shape that descended down into view. The sky slammed shut after its passing, resealing the bubble of ignorance that Dan surrounded himself with when he visited the Gap. He didn't know what sights lay beyond his little corner of infinity, nor did he want to. But this thing, this creature, was something he had to face.

He looked at it, noting that it seemed more... there, than last time. Its edges were solid, not blurred. There were visible dimensions to the thing, pronounced even, as if it had been outlined by a paintbrush. There was still no center to it, no core; it seemed a writhing mass of limbs and eyes, pulsing with no discernible objective. It was massive, taking up the whole sky, but the more Dan looked at it the smaller it seemed to become. The longer it didn't immediately eat him, the less threatening it seemed to be. And the more time passed, the more his anxiety faded. On and on, it shrank down, until what had been a kraken-sized monstrosity seemed more comparable to a very large dog. On and on, Dan's fear drained away.

He would've been concerned that the thing was eating his emotions again, if not for the quietly boiling anger lurking just beneath his skin. He'd come by that emotion honestly, just as he'd lost his fear honestly. It was something that Marcus had said, long ago, that had reminded him. The Gap has no rules, only what you bring into it.

His veil was the key. It was his. His armor, his weapon, an extension of himself. It had never let him down. It had never failed to obey him, or to protect him. When he summoned it, he fully expected it to shield him, and it did. More importantly, it was connected to the creature. Quite literally, in fact. He'd noticed it at the same time that he'd discovered the being, but had completely disregarded it. Yes, it was connected to the creature, but it was Dan's first and foremost.

But the connection still existed, and Dan reached for it, fully trusting his veil to keep him safe, to do his bidding. It was like flexing a muscle he didn't even know existed. Or popping a dislocated joint back in place. With a sudden snap, he could feel it. The thing in the sky above him. It was nothing, yet everything. A barrage of thoughts and feelings, fleeting, irrelevant, dire, critical. They filtered through his mind faster than he could handle them. It was just like the first time he'd looked into the Gap. Nonsense, a storm of sensation and screaming. It was madness given form. It was every nightmare and every dream. It was every idea, good or bad. It was every thought he'd ever had. It was—

"Mine!" Dan snarled, and the Gap twisted!

—an extension of his veil. Brilliant sapphire surged through it, scrubbing away all else. There was nothing there, except Dan's will. Maybe it had been the opposite, once. Maybe the veil had been an extension of the creature, but no more. It was Dan's veil. All of it. Big ugly octopus monster included.

A giddy thought drifted through his head: Did I just mind control an elder god?

No, that wasn't an accurate comparison. It was a being of the Gap, and it followed the same logic, or lack thereof. It was not a monster. It was nothing at all. Not in the physical sense. Just a jumble of chaotic thoughts and emotions given form by Dan's fears. It was an existence defined by others, shaped by others, given life by others. It couldn't have emotions, or motives, or even thoughts of its own. That wasn't its nature. Its existence was fluid.

Marcus had theorized that the Gap was the origin of consciousness. Maybe he was right. Maybe this creature was some primitive form of pre-sapience, latching on to Dan like a parasite, sipping on his creativity and emotions. Interpreting his thoughts, and twisting reality as best it could to match. This, Dan realized, was why his power seemed like it was alive. It knew what he wanted, because Dan did. The Gap was change, creativity, ideas. Of course it would know. It obeyed him, just another aspect of his veil. But at the end of the day, it was Dan directing it where to go. It just found the addresses on a map.

"You're my navigator," Dan told it, noting how its existence seemed to shift in accordance with this new revelation. He wasn't surprised. It was an extension of his veil; of course it would listen to him. Nor was he worried about retribution. The thing lacked malice, save for what Dan gave it. He wouldn't make that mistake again. It was like a pet, now. A giant, slimy, ugly pet.

...Was he gonna have to feed it? Was that why it had nibbled on his emotions?

Probably not. He'd only ever noticed the drain on his feelings while in the Gap. Dan was fairly sure someone would have noticed by now, if Naturals commonly exhibited dulled emotional responses. The Gap, Dan figured, was the key. The fact that he lingered in it. The fact that he came here, looking for relief from stressful situations. It responded to that unconscious expectation. Now that he recognized the feeling, he was certain he could block it when necessary. And when not necessary, well, Dan was okay with his new sky-buddy eating his fears. Like a dream-catcher, except alive, and squirmy.

Dan eyed it one more time. It was still the ugliest thing he'd ever seen, but it was ugly in an almost charming way, now. Like one of those disfigured breeds of dogs that you can't help but feel sorry for. But an octopus. Except that he wouldn't be breeding this octopus with its cousin to create a clutch of inbred octopi babies.

Yeah, definitely a terrible idea.