The Isekai App

I still had nothing better than that raft, but our objective wasn't far so off we went. The Radio accompanied us with that lousy song and ignored all questions.

Some observations:

Her name was Schmendrick. Fire Owen had given her that name, she said. I wondered why; Schmendrick was my favorite character from my favorite book; he was a hapless magician who became the greatest in the world. But it wasn't easy for her to pronounce:

Shmen Rick.

I knew who she meant.

Schmendrick was a lady. She was going to have babies in twenty days, or as she said it:

"viente dias,"

and asked if I had a nest she could use to care for them. I told her of course I did, who wouldn't have a nest? Such a silly question.

But I hadn't broken into the Observatory yet. No nest. Better get on that.

Her fur blazed white in the sunset. Quite a handsome creature, even dirtied up. She kept lookout while I kicked and paddled.

She looked down at the Radio through the water as it followed us in its intermittent fashion. "What word," she said.

"Radio. It helps us." Sort of.

"Radio. Radio. Dead Fire Owen no Radio." She sniffed the air, then my face as I huffed and puffed. "Dead Owen no guts moon."

Guts moon. Something that is inside a person that blazes like the moon. "I have that now."

Her head reared back like she was a cobra. "Owen burned gone. Regresó?"

"No, I'm so sorry. I'm someone who…I'm not him, but I look like him and have part of him in here." I tapped my forehead."

She flopped to the narrow deck. After a while she lifted her snout to the darkening sky and howled. It wasn't a single clear note like when a wolf cuts loose. It was a lot of yapping and and wailing, like a coyote.

Unbearable. I boarded the raft, scooped Schmendrick into my arms and cuddled her against my wet chest. I couldn't have stopped myself if I'd wanted to. She was a bony, sinewy little thing, weighing maybe as much as a big housecat.

I stroked her and rocked her. She stopped howling but still whined and muttered sad noises, umf umf. I didn't tell her it would be okay, because that's always a lie. But I did shush her, gently, and hum a song my mom had made up when I was little.

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

She started humming the same song, though I had never sung it to her. Not this me. A different me.

Finally she looked up at me, ears rising around her pointed face. "New Owen."

"That's right. We can think about the Owen who was your friend. We can talk about him. I'll try to be like him."

"You smell worse than other Owen."

"Oh, I'm sure of that."

"Really bad."

The Cage Boat, it turned out, was a wreck, a kind of ornate, filigreed rocket ship sort of thing. Sweeping black metal fins bordered in gold; the entire hull covered with seemingly random stars, moons and suns.

That hull had been torn open from within. The wound was like a flower, with ragged metal petals blooming in a star shape around a smoking, flickering darkness.

It was explained to me that the Hunt, or Los Cazadores, as Schmendrick named her people, had killed the pilot of the machine and broken free of it. She told me that they'd been kept in cages. I looked in there, considered poking around, but it was hot and dangerous and deadly.

But it was full of cages, all right. And they were of a familiar make and model. I'd spent a considerable amount of time in one myself. What had Mandy called them? The Iron Conclave.

Shitheads.

"You killed the person that was flying this cage boat?" I asked her.

"Killed." Her knobby black lips skinned back a little bit, baring her white fangs. "Killed it a lot."

"Good," I said. "That's very good."

Above the wreck was that cloud of smoke, full of drifting round shapes. I couldn't get a clear look at them.

"Gardeners," Schmendrick said. I couldn't tell with certainty, but she sounded disdainful. "In cages too. Let them out, but mad at us."

I saw them up there in the smoke.

Ho boy, as Cassie had said.

I knew I'd take them all with me.

Had I craved being alone out here? Had I thought I'd be awash in blissful solitude, in which to plot my diabolical plans, packed with phases, against Doctor Jeffrey Harrigan? The man who'd slain my friends, who'd slain me, time and again?

I was taking people in.

But you know what? I was looking forward to it. Aliens!