Patreon or PayPal Me keeps this site and its author alive. Thank you. |
Stories from the Verse
Multiverser: The Thirteenth Story
Chapter 13: Beam 200
Table of Contents
Previous chapter: Brown 368
Since the white-handled door was the closest, Beam led the way to it. Hard work was a cross that sometimes he had to bear, but generally he avoided it. As the saying goes ‘hard work never killed anyone--but why chance it?’
“Bron,” he said, and the wide-armed blacksmith took two steps forward, and shoved. The white door flew open.
“It may have been unlocked,” Ashleigh whispered in his ear, and nipped his ear, and was gone by the time he turned to look for her. She had to be somewhere around, but it was beneath the dignity of an Emperor to search for her. Still, he glanced down at his legs, and saw her crouched down below knee height. Aha, got her, he crowed to himself, pleased at the small victory over his super stealthy second wife.
Striding in, as an Emperor ought, he saw a dozen workers kneeling in the rows of plants that grew up toward the balloon ceiling. Air rushed past his face, and behind him. The workers in their unisex unitards were mostly women, but none that he had any desire to add as his third or fourth wife. Plain was the kindest word to be said for them. Plus they were frowning at him.
Mild disapproval, Bob told him telepathically. Confusion.
“Who are you?” one woman asked, rather older than the rest.
“The Emperor Beam. What is this?”
“F-41. We have to get that door fixed. Without the higher air pressure, the plants won’t grow so large. How did it break?”
At first he had some hope that this was not a stupid person, but no, she too was in the dim category. When he made no response, she turned to one of the others.
“Sharon, it's your turn.”
“Do I have to?” spoke a younger woman with straggly red hair and a jaw that you could land a helicopter on, Beam thought exaggerating to himself.
Several others pointed out that she had skipped last cycle, and it was her turn to go to M-41. Really, they ought to make her go twice in a row. With an audible sigh, she nodded, and began to pick up her tools and put them in a wheeled Styrofoam wagon with harder plastic wheels.
“What’s M-41?”
“Maintenance. And there’s a guy there who is sweet on me,” Sharon said. Beam blinked. Maybe it was true that there was one for everyone.
“And F means?” He had a feeling he was starting to get this place a little bit.
“Food. It's the pressure gardens. You all right Emper ah?” the oldest woman asked, her eyes a bit sharp. Beam had been glared at by women with a lot more force than that, and a lot more wit, and it barely registered as an attack. Almost as if an alien spacecraft asked you to stop using your scanners on them when you were using your main battle lasers.
“And D is?”
“Down.” She looked at him. “You sit down, and rest.”
“So all the 41’s work together?”
Beam got some more nods like ‘why are you asking this stupid, obvious question, you dumb person, you?’ He was not enjoying that part of this world so far. All the nitwits looking at him as if he were the dummy had him on edge. However, from all this he had drawn a clue, and a thought. Likely the folk in Maintenance would have a better understanding of what was going on.
“Sharon, we’re going to follow you to M-41.”
Nobody seemed to approve, but nobody uttered any disapproval either so Sharon became their guide as they walked from balloon room to balloon room. On the way, they found that black handles were things you were not supposed to go through, and red handles went to medical, and white was just common doorways everyone could pass through.
As to the old stories that have long been here:
