SNAP! and the Alter Ego Dimension (15 page)

“I don’t know. A computer of some kind. A machine. A robot.”

“There is no electricity here. How would a machine work?”

Wayne shook his head. The rucksack was hanging on his shoulders and the hunting knife was clutched in his hand.

“I’ve no idea. Perhaps there is nothing. Perhaps the alter egos just developed a will of their own. Like a virus. An illness. Perhaps they brought something with them from earth.”

Nick nodded his head. “A virus sounds plausible.”

Hiroshi walked silently next to them with the sword resting on his right shoulder. Then he stopped, bent down, put the sword down in front of his feet and started to tie his shoelace. Locked in conversation, Wayne and Nick walked on.

For Wayne it was a strange experience to walk in this grayness. He could see nothing, only a single shade of gray, but not like the fog in the mountains. The only color in this place was the walls, doors and furniture they came across periodically in their five pace radius.

“Help!” Hiroshi yelled and Wayne swung around.

Alter Hiroshi had one arm locked firmly around the huge bowtie on Hiroshi’s neck. His other hand held Hiroshi’s left arm against the side of his body. The sword was lying on the grayness at their feet.

Very slowly Nick came up behind Wayne. He aimed in the direction of the two Hiroshi’s. Wayne, with the hunting-knife still in his hand, quickly put his index fingers in his ears.

“Now!” Hiroshi shouted and bent down. He pulled alter Hiroshi with him over his back. Alter Hiroshi’s head and back were unmissable targets.

The flash from a single shot erupted, the sound deadened, more like a cough than a bang, almost like shooting with a silenced weapon.

The two Hiroshi’s vanished immediately.

Wayne turned towards Nick and pulled his fingers from his ears. “Take five,” he said and they slapped their open hands against one another’s. “Now it’s only you and me, Nick. How many bullets are left?”

“Two. One for you and one for me.”

“It’s not really going to work like that, is it?” Wayne asked.

“I doubt it. I don’t know what we’re going to do next.”

Nick went to pick up Hiroshi’s sword. He showed four fingers to Wayne and then they walked on.

“Ulrich and I had both promised Hiroshi to send him money to buy a new sword. I hope Ulrich will keep his word.”

“What about you?” Wayne asked.

“I have committed murder. If I go back to earth, I’m going to sit in jail for a very long time. Nobody will believe that it was an accident.” Nick shook his head. “Who carries a pistol with him and keeps his finger on the trigger? Here I’m free. If you leave your rucksack here, I’ll be able to keep going for a few weeks more. Maybe my alter ego doesn’t want to take my place. What is he going to gain by that? I think even an alter ego doesn’t want to go to jail. He’d be better off stored here. And, because I’m here in this dimension, my alter ego is also free. He can run around as he pleases. He’s not one of those specks of light anymore as we presume the alter egos are.”

“Are you married?”

“Fortunately not.”

“But Chris was. Were there any kids?”

“Luckily no. He wasn’t married long.”

They walked further in silence. Wayne forced himself not to think of any schemes to get his alter ego in the open, because then it wouldn’t work. The plan with the shoelace and Hiroshi, was plan three. Tammy’s plan. While they were walking they showed three fingers to each other and initiated plan three. It worked out perfectly. Nobody had thought of anything, they had just acted and reacted.

To shut off your thoughts like that is somewhat of a skill
, Wayne thought. Something that he was sure all of them had learned how to do here, today. In this nightmarish dimension they had learned a lot of things. Things like: To cherish people as they are. To make strangers your friends. To put someone else before yourself.

He hoped passionately that everyone had returned to their homes safely. Success in this self-ordained mission was everything to Wayne. It was the most important thing he had ever done. Or else his coming here was in vain.

It was increasingly unlikely that Nick and he would escape this place so easily. By now their alter egos would probably realize that they had been outwitting the others one by one. Alter Wayne and Nick’s other self would be very careful. They would almost certainly hatch some scheme of their own, or perhaps just wait until their two victims were weak from hunger and thirst. And that could take weeks.

Wayne didn’t want to hang around this place for weeks . . . The Alter Ego Dimension may be cold, but it isn’t cool.

His parents must be anxious for his safety and furious because of his disobedience. He had ignored their specific instructions to leave any rescue attempt to Interpol. Should he ever get home, his mother would ground him for at least a year. He wondered if his dad had talked to Interpol yet. Would a heavily armed police force try and play
Snap
to come and rescue him? All his notes were still lying on his desk. If anybody should follow them precisely, they would be able to make the game appear. He just hoped his father wouldn’t insist on coming too, or even coming alone, since the game doesn’t tell you how to leave the
Snap
dimension again.

Here you have to outwit your alter self.

“Something smells bad,” Wayne said, after a while.

“I smell it too. Maybe it’s the place where Ulrich and Hiroshi had left Chris’s body,” Nick answered. “You know, I feel really bad that he was just left there. We can’t even bury him, because the ground by the tree is barely a meter deep. If only we could take him back to earth.”

A light pink wall came into sight and the bad smell intensified. Nick took a peek at the back of the wall and called to Wayne.

“Yes, here lies poor Chris. Stripped of trousers, socks and shoes. Lucky he had underpants on. Your Tammy borrowed his clothes.”

“
My
Tammy?” Wayne said. “I think she’s Ulrich’s now.”

“Don’t bet on it,” Nick laughed. “I reckon they weren’t much more than friends.”

Wayne peered around the wall. The smell made his stomach turn. He felt nausea rise up inside him, a burning, bitter taste.

“If your alter ego shows up, while you cling to Chris, I could make you vanish and you’d take Chris with you. Just like Ulrich took Tammy with him. We don’t know where Tammy went, but we know she’s gone from here.” Nick glanced at Wayne.

Wayne shook his head. The smell and the thought of touching a dead body were very upsetting. Never in his life was he going to do that.

Nick continued: “Maybe if you take him with you, he can be buried or be cremated back home.”

“They might think I killed him,” Wayne said, but realized he could easily explain that he didn’t. “Do you have a phone number or address for his wife . . . widow?” Wayne held his left hand over his nose and stepped away from the wall. He was sick of the smell of the dead. It was predominant.

“Yes, I’ll give them to you.”

Wayne and Nick took out their phones from their pockets, switch them on and then Wayne saved Chris’s widow’s number and address into the phone memory. There were still no signal or messages on their phones and they switched them back off. Save the battery power, because it was of no use anyway in this dimension.

“Hallo.”

It was merely a whisper, but it made Wayne and Nick spin around and stand back to rucksack-back. Nick held the sword ready and Wayne his hunting knife.

“Who’re . . . ? Wayne started to ask and then saw Nick’s head peering around the pink wall.

“Don’t shoot, I want to talk,” the head said and Wayne assumed it must be the other Nick, because Nick with the scarf, was still behind him.

“Step into the open so we can see you,” Nick ordered.

With his hands above his head, alter Nick stepped from behind the wall.

“I won’t try to overpower you, Nick, because you’re right. I don’t want to go to jail. But I can’t send you back until I die. Not unless you kill me. The
Snap
game changes things. You don’t come here as a speck of light or energy, but as a complete human being.” He paused and slowly lowered his hands. “Listen, Nick, if we work together, I’ll help you kill Wayne’s other self. Then Wayne can pull you back to earth with him.”

He paused and slowly lowered his hands.

“What’s going to happen to you then?” Nick demanded.

“I’ll wander around here until you die on earth,” his alter ego answered. “When an alter ego takes on his human form in this dimension, he cannot go back into storage. He cannot become a speck of light again. My light has gone forever. But I don’t mind. I’ll help you. I have to help you, because you know, Nick, I’m your good other self. I could never have killed Chris.”

“But I didn’t deliberately murder him . . . ”

“Then why was your finger on the trigger?” asked alter Nick.

“I don’t know.”

The alter ego’s plan to come and help them sounded like an excellent idea to Wayne. It didn’t matter to him who had intended to pull the trigger or why. He wanted to get out of here. He wanted to go and see what had happened to Tammy.

Plan number four had started. It was Nick’s plan. He had written down that they should start a conversation about jail to lure his alter ego out. They just hadn’t the slightest idea how it would pan out after the conversation started. Now they could see that it had gotten alter Nick thinking. And they were right—he didn’t want to go to jail.

“Is there a computer or something here that controls the alter egos?” Wayne asked. While there was an alter someone or something here that he could actually hold a conversation with, he wanted answers to his questions.

“Those millions of lights are alive, aren’t they?” the real Nick asked.

“Billions of specks of light and energy. Of course they’re alive. I was one of them before you came here. It’s terrible to be one of them, stored there. You know you’re only hanging around with nothing to think about or do, waiting for a chance to go to earth for a few minutes. Now and then a speck will dare to float through this dull grayness. But it’s very, very lonely. As a speck, you can only float about.”

“So who’s controlling you?” Wayne asked again. “Or what?”

“I don’t really know. Somewhere in America, a brilliant professor had a son who was very bad, an evil child. The boy had to take medication just to be nearly normal. The professor experimented on his son, trying to split his personality in two. He used drugs and electric currents. Then suddenly, he had two identical boys. A good one and the other bad. Obviously, the professor liked the good one better and taught the alter ego to say ‘snap’ every time it approached so that he could quickly tell the two boys apart. Otherwise he would have to do a personality test or something. Because they were more than just identical. They were the same boy.

“The professor had managed, in some way or another, to banish his real son as the alter ego. Something that would appear only occasionally, when the good son wants him. How he managed to do that, I really don’t know. I’m no scientist. It has something to do with nanotechnology, Skype, the Internet and invisible energy waves. It was from then on that we alter egos, through the
Snap
game, could become humans.”

“So, a father permanently banished his real son to this dimension, and kept the alter ego on earth,” Wayne exclaimed. “That’s horrible!”

“Wayne, I think you should start singing again. You mustn’t know my plan to get you home,” Nick ordered. He sounded in a hurry.

“Okay.”

Wayne went to sit with his rucksack on his back against the pink wall. He kept his hunting knife ready in front of him. Then he stared to sing “Every Breath You Take” aloud.

Wayne could hear the two Nicks talking in the background, but because he was singing he couldn’t make out what they were saying.

Nick showed him with his hand that he could stop his singing.

“Clear your mind, Wayne. Stop thinking,” said Nick with the scarf. “Take your rucksack from your back and take out that thick rope that you brought with you. Tie one end around your waist and give me the other end. Alter Nick and I are going for a little walk to do some more planning. Sing, if you don’t know how to keep your mind busy, but be on the lookout for your alter ego. Don’t hesitate to stab him with your knife. And stab to kill. It’s the only way you’re going to get home.”

“But where’re you going?” Wayne didn’t want to be left alone.

“Sing, Wayne, sing!” was the only answer he got and he knew that Nick didn’t want him to think about any plan. They couldn’t risk putting their plan to get home in jeopardy.

He took the rucksack from his back and put it against the pink wall. Then he took the rope out and tied it around his waist. He went to sit with his back to the wall and could still smell the faint smell of the dead behind the wall.

After a short while, Nick with the scarf reappeared from behind the wall. Wayne immediately noticed that the rope wasn’t tied around his waist.

“You sing rather nicely,” Nick said soothingly. “Did you sing in your school choir?”

Nick came to sit next to him.

Wayne frowned and then started to laugh.

“Oh no, my dad said singing was for sissies. Did you sing in your school choir?” Wayne asked.

He knew they must have this stupid conversation to distract his thoughts from any plans.

“No, my other self wouldn’t let me. I mean, I’m no singer. But maybe my alter ego would have liked to sing, because he said he was my good self.”

Wayne noticed that Nick didn’t have the sword and the pistol. But Wayne still had his hunting-knife. His other self could come, he thought, and he’d still be able to beat him.

He stared at the scarf around Nick’s neck. It was the wrong . . .

“Let’s sing, Nick,” he suggested hastily. “We must sing.”

Wayne started to sing. Still his thoughts wandered too quickly. He hoped the other Wayne didn’t . . .

He sang louder, concentrating on each word of the song.

“Must I take you with me when I disappear, Nick?” Wayne asked.

He couldn’t endure the strain much longer.

“No, I can’t live on earth if the other Nick isn’t stored here.”

Again Wayne started to sing. He must not think about what Nick had just said. He thought about his parents, and the words of the song, and Tammy, and the words, and . . .

It felt as if he was going crazy.

Was Tammy’s alter ego going to wander here forever? Or where was Tammy? In Pretoria or Frankfurt or still lost? Or did she make it home safely?

He felt he was definitely going crazy, losing his focus, or being too focused? His thoughts kept wandering off. He couldn’t stop thinking.

Just then alter Tammy came walking through the grayness in her bikini. The prettiest smile was on her full lips.

Wayne’s mouth fell open. He stared at her.
Was this how beautiful Tammy looked in her bikini? She has a nubile, supple body, long shapely legs and round hips . . .

The other Tammy came closer. Wayne gaped at her.

“Hallo, Wayne,” she greeted him, her voice deeper, suggestive. “I bet you’ve never seen me like this before? I’m prettier than your lovely Rosette. Did you know your Earthly Tammy wished she was as beautiful as Rosette? Look. Look at me. I’m the answer to her prayers. I’m so much prettier.”

She came and stood in front of him and held out a slender hand to him.

“Watch out!” Nick shouted. “She’s working with your other self!”

Wayne was jolted out of his swooning.

“Go away!” he demanded and waved the hunting knife in front of him.

Alter Tammy’s eyes flashed red from rage and she stepped back a few paces to avoid the flailing knife.

Wayne stood up and stabbed the knife in her direction. He missed.

With what almost sounded like a snarl, alter Tammy ran into the grayness.

Wayne was shaking; he shook like a leaf in a storm. He had wanted to stab Tammy. Alter Tammy. That girl, who looked just like his Tammy . . . He knew he had to kill her, but his attack had been half-hearted and weak, because she looked like his Tammy. Cold hatred had taken hold of him while the wrong Tammy ran away, but by then the chance was gone.

This place could turn anyone into a cold-blooded killer just not quite quickly enough.

Then he saw him.

His alter ego. Alter Wayne stepped into his five meter field of vision. The other Wayne was looking at him, assessing the situation. Apparently deciding whether he should try and take on his earthly self, who had a hunting knife in his hand.

Alter Wayne came a cautious step closer. Behind him Nick, without the scarf, came into sight with the sword held high over his head.

Alter Wayne looked around, because he must have read Wayne’s mind.

But milliseconds too late!

The sword swished through the air.

Wayne grabbed at nearby Nick’s hand, knowing it was the wrong Nick. The real Nick was the one without the scarf. The scarf around alter Nick’s neck was the wrong way round. The colored material was on the inside and the white lining was on the outside.

Seconds later Wayne was surrounded by total darkness. His hand jerked free from alter Nick and he started to float. The rope around his waist pulled tight. Something was coming with him and he guessed what it was. He could smell it. Real Nick wished Chris could have a decent burial. Real Nick really had a good heart. Not the heart of a cold-blooded killer . . .

It felt as if the rope was gnawing through his clothes. It was squeezing the air out of him. Whatever was on the other end of the rope didn’t want to come with him.

He couldn’t suck air, couldn’t bare the pain. Wayne couldn’t hold out any longer. The dead weight around his waist was too much to carry. It felt as if he was dying.

The knife was still in his hand . . .

Wayne put the sharp knife against the rope and cut once.

The rope jerked.

Then he was floating freely.

Flop!

He sat on his chair and stared at the black computer screen in front of him.

He jumped up from the chair, putting the knife on his desk.

“Mum! Dad!” he yelled and ran from his room.

He heard shouts from the sitting room. In the corridor he collided with his dad.

“Wayne! You’re back!” his dad exclaimed and grabbed him in his arms. Then his dad stiffened and pushed him a little bit away. “Is it really you, or your other self?”

Wayne burst out laughing. “It’s me, Dad. I was away for some time, but I’m back. It’s really me that’s back. Is Tammy back, too?” he asked anxiously and looked into his dad’s frowning face.

“She is. Tammy and her mother are in the sitting room. Tammy came and told us about your heroism. Brave, but also very stupid, don’t you think? You could’ve been ‘stored’, like Tammy said.”

Wayne smiled. Tammy had given his parents a good account of the adventure.

“Let’s go and see Tammy . . . and mum.”

Wayne ran into the sitting room, dragging his dad behind him.

“Wayne!” Tammy cried out and came running towards him. She slammed her arms around him and hugged him. “You made it!”

“Nick helped to send me back,” Wayne said and held Tammy close. He was so happy that they had made it back. “Real Nick stayed behind,” he added, his voice soft and sad.

Tammy pushed him from her and stared at him.

“Wayne, my boy! Come here,” his mother cried and came to hug him in Tammy’s place. There were tears of joy in her eyes. “You had me crazy with worry. How could you disappear like that?”

“I had to rescue Tammy, Mum. It was my fault she disappeared.”

Wayne looked past his mother to Tammy. “Had you really wished you were as beautiful as Rosette?”

His mother looked from Wayne to Tammy, whose face had reddened ever so slightly. “What are you talking about?” his mum asked.

“Don’t worry, Mum. That’s a story for another day,” Wayne answered diplomatically, his face beaming at Tammy.

His mum let him go and Tammy came to stand in front of him again.

“How do you know?” she asked.

“Your alter Tammy wanted to seduce me in her teeny weenie bikini,” Wayne said with a mischievous look in his eyes.

“Alter Tammy? Wasn’t she stored again?”

“No, she and alter Nick will now walk in the Alter Ego Dimension until you and Nick die. The
Snap
game apparently makes it impossible for them to be stored again,” Wayne told her.

“And Hiroshi?” Tammy asked. She looked worried.

“He went home before me. We used your shoelace plan for him. Nick shot his alter ego.”

“You said real Nick had stayed behind. What did you mean?”

“He asked me to leave my rucksack and provisions there. He didn’t want to come back and do a jail term. He and alter Nick became friends, because alter Nick doesn’t want to go to jail, either.”

“Became friends?” Tammy asked in disbelieve.

“Yes. Alter Nick helped so that I could get away. They tied Chris’s body to the other end of this rope and sent him with me.” Wayne looked at the rope that was still trailing after him. He tried to untie the knot, but it wouldn’t come loose, because it was too tight. “But I had to cut the rope. The body didn’t want to come with me. I guess it headed off to Australia.”

“Like Ulrich and me. Somewhere on the way back here, we couldn’t hold hands any longer. We slipped from one another. He’s back in Germany. He sent me an email. I wrote to Etsu, but Hiroshi wasn’t back by then,” Tammy told him. “What do you think Nick is planning to do now?”

“Gee, I don’t know. Perhaps he’ll stay there until the food and water are exhausted. At least he’s got alter Nick and the other Tammy for company.”

“Goodness, do you think one of the Nicks and the other me will have a relationship?” Tammy asked smiling.

“I don’t know what’s going to happen. Maybe Nick will eventually decide to return to earth. Maybe it was part of his plan to make friends with his other self so that it would be easier to trick him and escape. Nick has two bullets left. How are we ever going to know?”

“I’ve got Nick’s email-address. I’ll write to him sometime and see if he answers,” Tammy said.

“Nick gave me Chris’s widow’s cell phone number and her address. Perhaps we can ask her if Chris made it back there. She may know in a day or two if Chris was found in the storeroom,” Wayne said.

Tammy turned around and Wayne supposed she wanted to go and sit next to her mother again. Wayne quickly took her hand.

“I’m sorry I laughed at you the other day.” His face was serious. “I’ll never do it again. Will you go with me to the grade twelve dance? I know it’s still six months away, but I would like to know?”

Tammy laughed softly and nodded.

“Of course,” she said happily. “Yes, of course.”

Wayne let go of her hand and watched her move to sit beside her mother.

His mother came to stand next to him and put her arm around him. She talked to him in a low tone.

Tammy watched them. Wayne was different. He wasn’t the boaster from a few days ago anymore. But she knew he was the real Wayne. Not the alter ego. He had grown up. She was more grown-up now, too. In the Alter Ego Dimension she learned what life really means.

And she knew Wayne would never laugh at anybody with a pimple again.

Three weeks later Wayne received a letter from the deceased Chris Fairmont’s widow. Her husband had been abducted three weeks ago apparently by kidnappers or robbers. The robbers were still on the run, but what puzzled the police was the fact that the robbers returned Chris’s dead body to the storeroom where he worked, two days after he’d been killed. They had taken only his pants, socks and shoes. Chris’s cremation ceremony was held two weeks ago.

Wayne was touched by the letter. The Australian police didn’t know that the killer was Nick. They thought the culprits were kidnappers or robbers. Nick could have come back to earth. Or was he already back? He hadn’t responded to any emails he and Tammy had sent. They couldn’t risk asking Mrs. Fairmont about Nick. Wayne had already risked enough sending her a letter in his father’s name, suggesting that he was an old friend of Chris who hadn’t heard from him in a while.

Hiroshi had also been in contact to let them know everything was fine, except for all the interviews with Interpol to try and block the
Snap
game from showing up on the Internet again. He had sent word to Ulrich that his grandfather’s sword was still hanging on the wall—intact.

Wayne slipped Mrs. Fairmont’s letter into one of the pockets of his pants and took the keys to his motorbike. He whistled cheerfully while he was thinking about his date with Tammy. He was going to meet her for a milkshake in the nearby shopping mall and then he was going to show her the letter. Tammy had said that Ulrich was only an Alter Ego Dimension-romance and he was very glad about that. He realized now that he must handle Tammy with respect, because he didn’t want to drive her into the arms of another “Ulrich” ever again.

He whistled Police’s: “Every Breath You Take”.

Tammy sat at an outside table in the restaurant while she was waited for Wayne. When she saw him her heart pounded excitedly. She knew she should feel happy, because she and Wayne were the most talked-about couple in school. Ulrich was now a Facebook friend.

The only downside was Ben. Each time she saw him, she was reminded of the Alter Ego Dimension and something she hadn’t told anybody yet.

On one of the walls in the Alter Ego Dimension was a picture of her mother and herself as a little girl. She knew that that same photo was on the wall in her father’s study, right across from his desk where his computer was. Those images told her that the man she knew as her dad wasn’t her real father. The good man her mother had married was trapped, imprisoned in another dimension.

She wished she knew how to go back to the Alter Ego Dimension to set her real father free. She needed a little rest first and a little time to get herself ready to try and play the
Snap
game again.

Then she would return.

T  H  E     E  N  D