Misadventures in the Multiverse

Chapter Eight

Raleigh ripped out the cords again, leaning against the desk like she had been completely drained of energy. Clyde approached with concern. "Raleigh, what just happened, where are we?" Raleigh didn't answer for a while. "I'm not sure, this has never happened before the world is listed as blank in the database." She had regained most of her energy now, standing up, putting her hat on. "The answer might be waiting for us out there. She passes him heading for the door. Clyde is watching her extra carefully. When she opens the door, stepping out oddly, she falls to her knees like someone just knocked all the wind out of her sail. "Are you sure, you are OK." Clyde asked, looking down at her with his hand out. "You don't feel that?" She says sheepishly. "Feel what?" Clyde says puzzled. "The world It's like it's in pain like its screaming out." She looks up at the sky, eyes widening after seeing it. "Oh no." Clyde doesn't understand she is acting so different from normal.

He looks up to seem what she means, shocked. The sky is cracking, and it seems like the earth is slowly getting pulled into it. There is cars and buildings all floating in the sky. In the centre of it all is a black void with three glowing circles shining through. Clyde felt like they were eyes staring down at him. "What.... is that." She grabs his hand, climbing to her feet. "Its trouble. This is a dying world, and that's a caretaker. We must have been pulled in by it somehow. Yes, that has to be it." She didn't sound so sure about that last part. "But it's OK, we just need to jump to another wo..." She looks over at her once again ruined ship, running over to it and grieving. "No, not The Hopper, I'm so sorry hopper." He sighs but smiles that's more like the Raleigh he knew. "You need to work on your landing, like seriously, two crashes is way too much." "Ugh, I know, stop nagging me." She yells back. "It's no use its toast we have to do one or two things. Find the damaged parts or somehow revive this dead world.

"OK so lets find the source then. What's this caretaker thing anyway, I feel like its watching us." Clyde would ask. "It's the caretaker of this part of the multiverse. Basically a god, no stronger than a god. Come on." She walks towards the closest town she sees, or what's left of it. Clyde followed, of course, still urked by even the idea of a caretaker. Making it to the town, they see people they are all over cowering, some of them were looting the nearby stores. Clyde went toward one of the cowering ones. "Hey, what happened here." The man looks up at him, gripping him tightly. "How do you not know. Our god, he's abandoned us." He doesn't say anything else, he is too frightened, he just points to a café where a man is laying his head against a table. Both Clyde and Raleigh approach him. They look at each other and then back to the man. He has long black hair and pale skin, he looks dead, but they can tell he's not. "Um strange question, but are you um god?"

The man groans, not bothering to move. "Yeah, that's me, in this world at least." There is a long pause, neither of them are sure how to talk to him like this. Raleigh speaks up. "So um you.... doing all right." He sighs, "I think you can probably guess the answer to that." He says in a monotone voice. After another long pause, Clyde chimes in. "Anything we can do to....help..." "This conversations a pain, your world travellers, right?" He snaps his fingers. "There your ship is fixed you should be able to leave now. Leave me alone." Clyde looks at him for a little more and then realizes his clothes had been repaired too, they looked brand new. "Thanks I guess." Clyde turns to leave, but Raleigh stops him, tugging on his sleeves. "Hold up Clyde. I wanna.... help him." She has a sort of determination on her face that he hadn't seen before. He sighs at her. "You sure about that captain, he doesn't look like he wants to be saved. We should just thank him, and go." She shakes her head, grinning. "You should know, I'd never back down from a challenge."

"Fine, but how much time do we have?" Clyde asks. "Probably about a day, I think." She answered. "It will be fine. If it goes bad, we can always book it to the ship, and escape." He sighs again "Fine lets do this but...." She is already gone before he can finish pulling the god from his chair and running off with him. He shrugs, following them behind slowly. First, she takes him to an amusement park, forcing him to ride all the roller coasters. She looked like she is having a blast, him not so much. Next she takes him shopping, Clyde still following close behind. She stuffs a huge piece of cotton candy in the gods face. He glares at her but eats the cotton candy. Again and again, she drags him along to play with her. They play laser tag, football, singing, all things Raleigh seems to enjoy while the god seems pretty indifferent to it. After a while they are stopping, looking at the sunset over a railing together.