Worlds War One

xli [Treyvon]

It was a garden.

Fruits of a variety so exotic they didn't even qualify as the same food group as oranges and bananas dangled from sagging vines and low-hanging trees. Trey stared at swelled foods of every color, strangely shaped in asymmetrical arrangements. Instead of spheres or cylinders, these fruits were oblong and oddball. Like the three-limbed trunks of the trees where they'd fought the Changelings, this place featured flora foreign to anything Trey had ever imagined. Isis named them off as Trey pointed—flinzes, rippels, yamamas, rayes, loppos, woppilowips.

And, of course, apples.

There were other Humans, all about as big as Drill, the women hardly more feminine than the men. They reminded Trey of Cro-Magnon hominids from any number of movies. Rather than kinship with apes common to all those portrayals, there was nothing simian about these Humans. Trey's father never believed people had evolved from gorillas, no matter how many scientists had said otherwise. Trey realized now that many scientists were fools following false evidence. Faith proved more accurate than facts.

"This is the real Garden of Eden?" Trey asked, endlessly fascinated by proof of his father's faith. "Like in the Bible?"

Isis smiled, a strange grin to suggest she was neither amused nor happy. "Nothing is ever exactly as written, soldier," Isis said.

The truth is two twists from the telling.

Trey noticed something hinted at all along the pathway through the forest of tripod trees. The Humans greeting them as they walked into the Garden grouped in threes. Other strange creatures, pets or beasts of burden, were loping around the perimeter of Eden, three-legged oddities with strangely asymmetrical heads. Like mutated dogs with leathery skin and lumpy skulls. The fruits dangling from the vines were three-faceted in triangular shapes that would never grow naturally back on regular Earth.

"What's the thing with threes?" Trey asked.

Isis still wore that strange smile, a mask she wore to make them feel comfortable. Trey didn't trust the expression.

"We are a trinary universe, soldier," Isis explained. "The remade universe was more complex in many regards yet simplified at a basic function. Life forms reconfigured into binary creatures. 0s and 1s. This or that. Male or female, dead or alive, good or bad. Extremes, or somewhere between the two. Here, we are three-faceted in nearly every way."

Trey noticed a male Human and a Human female standing with someone who looked neither between them. "Even . . ?"

"Yes," Isis acknowledged. "Even reproduction takes three. It proved to be too complex of a system. Morality is better on a scale from right to wrong. A third path led to nature itself losing its way."

"Nature was something other than harmless plants?" Quest enquired.

"Indeed. Plantlife became antagonistic. The Ghosts had to possess the flora to temper insurrection. Much of our vegetation is still very dangerous, like the kéntron—those are the plants that ate the unfortunate Changelings."

"Your clothes," Autumn observed. "And the trees and bushes that make up the Garden. They are all possessed by Ghosts?"

"They would kill us otherwise," Isis said. "The Ghosts have become symbiotic with the plants. They live off each other, a peaceful arrangement that preserved the First World. Lest the flora takes over and exterminate all the rest of us."

"You said you could help us," Lieutenant Robinson said, changing the subject from the curious to the compelling.

"I said I will tell you what I know," Isis corrected. "You are dealing with forces well beyond the ken of mere mortals."

"Immortality is a myth, Isis," Saanvi argued. "Everyone dies. Even Ghosts, it seems. Eventually."

"Death is an invention to explain the transition, my dear," Isis said.

"Tell that to the families of the victims in Senado Square," Lieutenant Robinson snapped. "Tell that to Autumn right over there. Johnny Rotten took her sister."

"Why did you come here?"

"We're going to invade She'ol and defeat the undead," the lieutenant said. "We will end Johnny Rotten's campaign of terrorism."

"You are like ants marching to attack an elephant," Isis dismissed.

"Johnny Rotten killed five thousand people in Macau," Trey said.

"Those victims you seek to avenge are not extinguished but merely transformed. Usually, biological forms endure a breakdown by processes invented by Mot before the Architects even conceived your version of Earth. He simply took those vessels as receptacles for his offspring. Autumn's sister is not one of Mot's army. Her spirit has moved somewhere else. You merely want him to pay for hastening a natural process."

"We call it murder where we come from," Trey said.

"Yes," Isis murmured. "I am aware. I know of murder."

"Will you help us stop Rotten?" Lieutenant Robinson asked.

Isis gave her that smile, the one that was smug and disinterested at the same time. "I won't take action against an entity that is an original Architect of the universe, either yours or mine. I would never presume to be in a position to judge his actions."

"What if he seeks to attack the Forsaken Land after he finishes with Earth?" Lieutenant Robinson challenged.

"The nature of the First World doesn't allow for a binary status," Isis said. "The physical form binds us. Our spirit and our bodies are not divisible. Therefore, Mot couldn't separate our form from our spirits if he tried. We have nothing to offer the one you call Johnny Rotten."

"Maybe he wants to eliminate the possibility of an enemy," the lieutenant suggested.

"He wants a family," Isis contradicted. "We're not his enemy."

"If you're not our friend, then you stand against us," Lieutenant Robinson declared.

Isis shook her head. "It isn't one or the other. It's something else. You're welcome to stay and rest. Time beyond the Forsaken Land stands still. You can take a moment to gather your wits. You'll need them."

Isis took her leave. The Misfits remained near a hut covered with branches. Trey studied the fronds and leaves, wondering about the Ghosts that kept the flora from attacking. It would be nice to rest. He had the chance to sleep in the Garden of Eden! He looked at the lieutenant.

She sighed. "Four hours. Then Rotten."