Chapter Text
Geoff’s phone buzzed in his pocket. His eyes flicked to Jack but the other man didn’t look up.
He discreetly read the message under the table and put his phone away.
“Geoff?” Jack asked. Geoff schooled the most neutral expression he could onto his face. “What is it?”
“Burnie’s waiting outside,” Geoff said casually, “Something important came up with Funhaus. Shouldn’t take too long to sort.”
“Do you want me to come with?”
Geoff shook his head. “Nah, I’ll be right. I can probably fix it before we leave for Gus’s.”
“Oh, you’re just going to bow out of all the party planning?”
“I’ll be twenty minutes, not two hours.”
Geoff managed to stand up and leave the room before breaking out into a grin. It was difficult for him to maintain a measured pace to the front door but he did, and he didn’t run into any of the others on the way.
It took the last bit of Geoff’s patience to close the door gently behind him. Once it was shut he was a giddy mess and he turned to Burnie expectantly, who was leaning against a wall with one foot resting against it and he looked just as excited.
“You’ve got them?” Geoff asked.
Burnie fished a small flat box out of his jacket pocket. “John Mace got them to me like an hour ago. He did some great work with the alien metal alloy and now they’ve got this green sheen to them when the light hits right.”
“Gimme.”
Burnie handed the box over and Geoff opened it quickly, checked the contents, and stuffed it into a back pocket, sparing a glance at the front door as he did.
He frowned.
“How did they end up green?”
“You’re asking me like I have a clue,” Burnie replied. He kept his voice low. “Mace just said it bonded well with the platinum.”
“I like it. I like it a lot.”
“You’re stressing.” Burnie said. “You’re stressing about the green-“
-“No, I really do like the green-“
-“The party then? Or the thing with Gus-“
-“Maybe it’s all three things!” Geoff said in a loud whisper. He looked at the ground. “There’s so much to do, and it has to all go perfectly, and do you know how many what-if scenarios I’ve gone through in the last couple of weeks?”
Burnie leaned in close.
“For the record, Geoff,” Burnie said, “I think what you’re doing is great.”
“I really hope so. Better try while you still have the chance, you know? We’re not old but… I’m definitely older than most people in this line of work.”
“Not just with your crew,” Burnie continued, “In the city too. What you’ve done, no-one else could do. You’re a good man, Geoff. I’m sure you’ve got many years left.”
Geoff smiled. “I had a lot of help getting here.”
“Yeah, you’re surrounded by good people. But you were the one that fought so hard for co-operation when those new crews emerged. And now Kinda Funny and Cow Chop are actually discussing plans and sharing resources. It wouldn’t have happened if you didn’t make things go so smoothly with Funhaus.”
“I got real lucky. There were a few bad apples at Funhaus that needed weeding out but most of them, they’re not different from us. We want the same thing, and we care about the same people around us.”
“Co-operation’s always worked for you.”
Geoff smiled again, mostly to himself. “It really has.”
“And talks are going well with that new crew too, who were they, Sweet Pine? The whole nature of the game’s changed. You’ve made things better.”
Geoff gave a watery laugh, and hugged Burnie. “I couldn’t have done it without you and your amazing ability to put up with my bullshit. You’re a fantastic friend, and I love you, and…”
Geoff broke down a little bit.
Burnie hugged him tighter. “I’m so proud of who you are and where you are. You’re making some really good calls, and I know a lot of people trust you to make the right ones.”
Geoff sniffed. “Just you wait until you see what I’ve got planned next.”
They broke away.
“The party’s tomorrow, right?” Burnie asked.
“Yep. Yesterday it was three years since we met Jeremy, and tomorrow I’m three years sober. Doing a combined sort of affair.”
“I’m looking forward to it. And after, if the six of you want to take some time off-island, just let me know beforehand so I can organise people to cover you.”
“Will do, as long as Gus doesn’t blow the entire island up first.”
“That’s why you and the rest of them have to make sure he doesn’t.”
“I think I would much rather plan parties than try to stop Gus from doing something he doesn’t want to.”
“I’ll let you get back to it. I’ve got some planning for this party to do as well, you know.”
Burnie gave him one last clap on the shoulder and they said their goodbyes. Geoff wiped at his eyes, took a deep breath, and headed back inside.
“I’ve made up my mind, Geoff.” Jack said. “We’re inviting Sugar Pine.”
“Haven’t we left the invite a bit late for them?” Geoff replied.
“I’ll get Trevor to tell them.”
“Hah. I wonder how many of these last minute decisions we can offload onto Trevor?”
“I’ll see what I can do. But Lindsay wants final say on the music.”
“Like we could stop her. We’ll be listening to teen angst songs all night.”
Ryan walked past with his head down in his phone. Gavin trailed after him.
“I’m a plenty good photographer!” Gavin argued.
“You know who’s even better? An actual photographer. I know one who owes me a favour.”
“I’ve never even heard of this Wes guy!”
“Think of it like this. You get to spend more time with us instead of worrying about what to put on our Instagram.”
“But I like worrying about what to put on my-“
Ryan pressed a finger over Gavin’s lips. Gavin looked scandalised.
“Do it after.” Ryan said, and only then withdrew his finger.
Gavin blushed.
“I might be, amenable to that.”
Ryan smirked.
Geoff’s phone buzzed once more and he smiled at the screen.
“Oh good,” Geoff said, “catering just finished setting up the tables and chairs and the flowers look phenomenal. I didn’t know my yacht could look this good.”
“Yes you did,” Ryan said. He rubbed a hand over Geoff’s shoulder and Geoff leaned into the touch.
“Okay, yeah, I did.”
Before Ryan could withdraw his hand, Geoff placed his own over it and tilted his head backwards to look at him.
“Wanna go for a run tomorrow morning?”
“Sure. But don’t think I’m gonna let you beat me up the top of that hill again.”
“Oh, you let me, did you?”
Ryan kissed the top of his head.
“We’ll see tomorrow.”
The front door banged open and Michael and Jeremy pushed their way inside.
“Here, Gavin,” Michael tossed a Blu-ray on the couch, “I don’t know why we couldn’t stream it, but I got your dumb ghost hunter show.”
“Ready, Set, Ghost is a gift.” Gavin said, kissing him as he walked past. He did the same for Jeremy.
“I got snacks!” Jeremy held up some shopping bags. “And I’m trying out my air fryer tonight. We’ll watch Ready, Set, Ghost and eat the best goddamn chicken burgers you’ve ever seen.”
Jack raised an eyebrow at them. “You’re meant to be helping prepare for the party. Why did it take you three hours to get snacks?”
“We had to steal a jet ski, Jack.” Jeremy replied.
“Oh, of course.”
“Besides,” Michael said, “I thought Lindsay did most of it a month ago. We’ll get Trevor to do the rest. Aren’t we headed to see Gus in like twenty minutes?”
“Shit, yeah, we should get ready for that.”
“Did you bring it?” Gus asked.
“Yep, Michael has it.” Geoff replied, and pointed to Michael, who hefted the laser cannon up into a ready position. “And the shield and the last of the pellet storage containers are in the car.”
Almost every piece of alien tech made its way to Gus’s basement over the last three years. Gus would occasionally request a new piece to do some research on, and Geoff and Burnie had obliged. Pretty much the only things left in the apartment were the modified guns and the helmet, which hadn’t left the supervisor’s storage box. The box sat deep in a storeroom protected with the heaviest lock Geoff could find.
Lindsay, somehow, had also ended up with a red and black piece of tech that apparently did nothing, but it looked like it was meant to unfold into something. She refused to let Gus study it and it sat on top of her microwave.
The pellet storage containers that Geoff future-cubed from Zancudo had been filled to the brim, and while they tried to use the pellets sparingly, their numbers dwindled. The focus of Gus’s research over the last year or so was concerning the pellets.
And he’d better have something good to show them, otherwise the Fake’s edge over the city might soon end, as well as the talks with new crews trying to share pieces of Geoff’s territory. Their futuristic tech was one of their main advantages and without it there wasn’t much to stop these crews attacking them on a dozen different fronts.
There was a third reason for the party tomorrow. Many of the leaders of the other crews would be attending and Geoff wanted them to meet and talk and mingle. If all went well, it would do wonders for relationships between them.
The Fakes couldn’t afford to look weak at a crucial junction like this.
“Good,” Gus said, and wiped a hand over his eyes. He looked tired, even more so than usual. His hands were blackened with some sort of ash and he left twin streaks of it down his face. “We might need it to do some damage control.”
“The laser cannon is like, the opposite of damage control.” Michael said. “This is damage out-of-control.”
“If the machine goes critical, we’ll need the cannon to destroy it before it destroys us.” Gus explained. “I’m pretty sure it won’t, but…”
Michael levelled his gaze at Gus. “But you do have proper shut down procedures in place? Manual off switch? Grounding wires?”
Gus pointed at the cannon. “That’s my shutdown procedure. Look, can you just take those pellet storage containers downstairs? I have a few things to get ready before I’ll perform the experiment.”
“No, no,” Ryan said, “this isn’t an experiment. This is a demonstration, right? You’ve done the experiment before?”
Gus pretended not to hear him. “Can you bring those pellet storage downstairs? Also, I need someone to help me find some stuff upstairs. Gavin? Jeremy?”
Ryan and Jack carried the two remaining pellet storage contains into the basement, where the experiment was set up, while Gavin and Jeremy helped Gus upstairs. Michael took a phone call out by the car and, when Ryan and Jack left to see what was taking Gavin and Jeremy so long, left Geoff in the basement by himself.
Most of the space was taken up by high-tech clutter. The x-ray glasses, the invisibility suit given to Burnie, a couple of guns, and tech Geoff didn’t recognise sat in a neat pile on the left, and the right contained the mound of twisted and damaged scrap alien metal that had collected there over the years. On various tables sat technology that hadn’t been found useful yet- the devices that only existed when viewed from the correct angle, stuff too fragile and burned to experiment on, and broken tech Gus was still trying to piece together.
Geoff recognised the “rocket launcher” Ryan attempted to fire at Prince James when Jeremy and Ryan had investigated that scientific research outpost. There had been about half a dozen raids since then at various locations, most of them turning up scrap metal but a few contained useful pieces of tech.
Even Jeremy’s old device sat on a table, slowly gathering dust right next to the experiment Gus had concocted. Geoff would have recognised it anywhere. Even just glancing at it made Geoff uncomfortable, the sight of the thing brought back more bad memories than Geoff could handle. He focused on the experiment beside it, giving the table a wide berth.
The experiment consisted of some sort of high powered laser and a bunch of mirrors made of polished alien metal. Geoff was careful to avoid touching any of it, partly because he knew these set-ups could be delicate and mostly because he knew how often alien tech reacted with contact.
Next to it were the five remaining pellet storage containers. Three looked worse for wear while the two Ryan and Jack brought down looked brand new. There had been plenty more, Geoff knew, but they’d now joined the scrap heap on the right side of the room.
The five pellet storage containers were set against the wall in a neat row. Geoff lined himself up in front of them and cleared his throat.
He didn’t speak, but his mouth moved over the ghost of words and they felt well-practiced in his mouth. He palmed the thin box in his pocket and held it out like a present to them, still mouthing the words he’d gone over so many times he couldn’t forget even if he tried. He smiled, and put the box back in his pocket.
Just in time, because Gus and Ryan came down the basement stairs with a whiteboard between them. Closely following them was Gavin with an armful of future cubes, and then Jeremy with a table lamp he’d clearly just unplugged from somewhere.
“So what do you guys know about the fourth spacial dimension?” Gus asked.
Jeremy answered. “Not much, to be honest. It’s there, and we can’t access it because our brains are dumb.”
“Yes, that’s fairly accurate.” Gus replied. He and Ryan placed the whiteboard down next to the experiment just as Jack and Michael made their way down the stairs and into the basement with them. “But that doesn’t mean we can’t still use it. Give me the lamp, please.”
Jeremy passed it over and Gus plugged it into a power point, talking all the while.
“We can’t use the fourth spacial dimension ourselves, but we can see what it does in our three dimensions. You’re all familiar with Ray’s abilities to disappear and walk through walls?”
“Uhh, yes.” Geoff said. “We’re the ones that told you about that.”
“He learned how to use that extra spacial dimension. It has rules, it follows patterns, and it’s predictable. Once we know what those rules are, we’ll know how it works and looks and go from there.”
Jeremy cocked his head. “How do you learn the rules and patterns n’ stuff if you can’t see it?”
Gus smiled. “Reverse engineering.”
“You… reverse engineered a dimension?”
“I’ll show you. Give me a cube, Gavin.”
Gavin passed a future-cube over. Gus shined the lamp light directly over one of its surfaces, leaving a shadow on the whiteboard.
“Look at the cube,” Gus instructed. “Look at the shadow. When I shine the light over one of its surfaces, what do you see?”
Geoff stared at the whiteboard. There was a square-shaped shadow on the surface, as well as the shadow of Gus’s hand.
“A square?” Jack said hesitantly.
“Yes. The light and the cube make a square-shaped shadow on the white board. Now look what happens if I rotate the cube…”
Gus slowly made the cube rotate a quarter revolution, so he was holding it by its corners. “What does the shadow look like?”
Geoff didn’t follow. Fortunately for him, Jeremy did.
“It’s hexagon now. The shadow’s a hexagon.”
“And if I rotate it further, it’ll turn back into a square. The shadow is a square and then it turns into a hexagon and back again.”
“Very interesting.” Jack said. “But I don’t know what this has to do with anything-“
-“It has everything to do with everything, Jack.” Gus said. “Imagine you were a little two dimensional being living on that whiteboard. You wouldn’t know what a cube was. If I told you a cube made that shadow, you’d think a cube was a square that could magically turn into a hexagon and back.”
“But you could explain what length, width, and breadth were-“
“But you wouldn’t comprehend it. I can tell you, the three-dimensional Jack, about how four-dimensional space works. It’s just length, width, breadth, and gargleflardth.”
“…Oh.”
“We’re the simpler beings living on a whiteboard. The aliens are twisting the cube.”
“Ah.” Ryan said. “and their tech is the cube.”
“Exactly. I’ve been looking at a lot of pellets as they fly through space,” Gus said. “Checking off what things they fly through, what they won’t. Checking angles, looking at things in slow motion. Thanks for that camera, by the way, Gavin.”
“As long as I get it back eventually.” Gavin replied.
“Eventually.” Gus promised. “I’ve built up a pretty good picture of how these things should move in four dimensions. And if I get enough energy to move in the same way, at the right time, through the right materials… I think it’ll turn into a pellet.”
Michael gave an appreciative whistle. “You can build pellets out of their shadows.”
Gus shrugged. “I could be completely wrong. Shadows can be misleading. But that’s why you’re all here- just in case I am. But the numbers all add up and initial testing has been promising.” He pointed at some of the scrap alien metal. Several of the pieces on the top had holes burned through them, and scorch marks.
Was that promising? Geoff reminded himself that he trusted Gus, something he’d often had to remind himself of whenever Gus asked them to visit his home.
“Alright,” Geoff said, clapping his hands together, “when can we start the experiment, or demonstration or whatever?”
“As soon as you all put on these safety glasses, I can start powering the laser up.”
Gus fished six pairs of glasses out of various pockets and made them put them on. Gus himself slipped on the x-ray glasses.
“Do you need us to, uh,” Ryan said, “stand back or anything?”
“Just out of the way of the laser. Okay, I’m turning it on now.”
Without any more warning, Gus flipped a switch on the back of the laser and a brilliant violet light shot out. Geoff’s eyes caught on the dust motes trapped and illuminated on the beam before following the beam’s course between each mirror.
It hit a prism of some sort and split into two beams- one red and the other cyan. They travelled along separate paths, bouncing across mirrors, and convened on a speck in the middle of the display. There was a flash of light, and the beams combined into a bright mass.
Gus shut the laser off. The violet light, and the red and cyan, disappeared in an instant.
What remained was the new pellet. It wasn’t the same bright cyan of the pellets Geoff was used to, nor was it the pink of Ray’s. It was at most a dull grey with a vaguely purple sheen, but it shone with the same bright intensity. Whether it did something similar to the other two types of pellet Geoff didn’t know, but this was something he could definitely show off at the party tomorrow.
“It worked!” Gus said animatedly. “I knew it needed those nanodiamonds!”
“I don’t know that you did,” Jack said, “But that’s a pellet right there. The wrong colour, but then again so were Ray’s.”
Ryan removed his glasses and inspected the pellet. “Ray’s pellets went through organic matter and hit inorganic stuff. I wonder if the colouring affects how they travel through different kinds of matter…”
“Nanodiamonds?” Gavin asked.
“Man-made diamonds, but very small.” Gus explained. “It matched my theories perfectly. It’s not technically a nanodiamond, it’s slightly too big, but it held the light perfectly. Next time I’ll try adjusting the prism a little bit and seeing where that takes us, I reckon a more pure light division will get us a more saturated colour.”
“…Okay. Sounds good.”
Gus ignored Gavin’s indifferent response. “If the nanodiamonds worked, that means a couple of my other theories are likely true. Gavin, how sure are you that you’re only three-dimensional?”
“Oh God.” Gavin said. “No, I do not want to know, thanks very much. I need another existential crisis from you like I need a hole in the head.”
“Stop scaring him, Gus.” Geoff said. “Can we bring this pellet on my yacht for the party? I imagine it would be too difficult to set up this experiment on the boat but can we transport it?”
Gus frowned. “I want to run some tests on it, but I don’t see why you couldn’t transport it the… usual…way…Uh oh.”
“Uh,” Michael said, “the pellet’s not looking too good.”
The pellet shook, each tremor across its surface growing more pronounced with each second that passed.
That’s right. The pellets exploded if they weren’t stored in freezing cold conditions.
“Get down!” Jeremy tackled Ryan, the closest to the experiment, to the floor.
Geoff had enough time to throw himself backwards before the pellet burst apart in a flash of grey light.
Geoff clattered against the table behind him just as razor sharp shards of polished alien metal bit into his arms. It stung, and Geoff was glad he hadn’t taken his safety glasses off.
His arm brushed across Jeremy’s deactivated device.
There was a flash of red light.
Strings.
Hundreds of them, thousands, millions, billions, trillions, more than Geoff could comprehend, an infinite number of them vibrating and tangling and writhing in and out of tandem. Cyan lights and lengths masquerading as atoms and structures and fundamental forces, splitting and dividing and merging together in a pattern unknown to anything resembling what Geoff had seen on Earth so far.
Geoff didn’t like it one bit.
“What? No!” Geoff screamed into the cyan void. “No, the device was turned off. I saw Ray tear it apart.”
Despite his argument, he remained. A body, floating in a void, eerily similar to the space Ray described after touching the first device.
“Fuck.” Geoff said. “Oh, Geoff, what have you done this time?”
His voice echoed without walls, and yet it also felt like he was speaking directly into his own ears. It was disconcerting.
Geoff took a deep breath.
“Okay, you turned on because I touched you. Okay. Okay…”
How had Ray gotten out of this?
His description was almost three years ago, and Geoff could barely remember it. Thinking about the words Ray choked out on the deck of his old yacht was still painful.
“Ray had talked to you, right? And you responded?”
Ray said the device sat on his arm like it looked like it meant to. There was no device here. Geoff was alone, more alone than he ever recalled feeling before. Was that because he wasn’t tied to the device in the same way Jeremy was? Might still be?
“Please, can you take me home? Can you take me back to the others? Their names are Jack, Ryan, Michael, Gavin, and Jeremy. Can you bring me back to them? Please, we have a lot of stuff planned…”
The void offered no answers for him.
Geoff threw up his arms in frustration, grimacing at the same time. He didn’t like how his arms felt, the way he could feel each muscle group contract and relax. He could feel his blood trickle out of his arteries to mix with the cells in his fingertips and then travel back up his arms.
He tried talking to the void again, mostly to focus on something else.
“Well why am I here then?”
There was a flash of light, and Geoff saw.
Geoff saw Los Santos fade away above him, as if he’d fallen through the ground. It shrunk and shrunk until the island, and then the whole planet was no more than a tiny speck, and when Geoff tore his eyes away from the sight he stared directly into the mass of the Sun. There were no words to compare the size of it to the Earth, let alone Geoff. No human being had ever felt so small. Even the Sun appeared as a speck to the girth of other stars as they appeared and shrunk in front of his eyes. Geoff smelled burned meat and iron so strongly he could taste it on his tongue. Slowly, the full splendour of the galaxy, his galaxy, spread before him. He couldn’t pick out his Sun against such a starscape. It may as well not have existed at all.
Geoff saw himself fall against a table in Gus’s basement, his left arm trapped in a device he hadn’t seen before.
Geoff saw himself standing on a vaguely familiar mountain. He watched as he pulled the trigger on an alien rifle, and a cyan pellet tore its way through the sky. It impacted against a spaceship and it fell out of the sky, hitting another, and one tumbled down the mountain while the other spiralled away.
Geoff saw himself standing on a vaguely familiar mountain. He watched as he pulled the trigger on an alien rifle, and a cyan pellet tore its way through the sky. It impacted against a spaceship and it fell out of the sky, hitting another, and one tumbled down the mountain while the other spiralled away.
Geoff saw himself standing on a vaguely familiar mountain. He watched as he pulled the trigger on an alien rifle, and a cyan pellet tore its way through the sky. It impacted against a spaceship and it fell out of the sky, hitting another, and one tumbled down the mountain while the other spiralled away.
Geoff saw himself standing on a vaguely familiar mountain. He watched as he pulled the trigger on an alien rifle, and a cyan pellet tore its way through the sky. It impacted against a spaceship and it fell out of the sky, hitting another, and one tumbled down the mountain while the other spiralled away.
Geoff saw himself standing on a vaguely familiar mountain. He watched as he pulled the trigger on an alien rifle, and a cyan pellet tore its way through the sky. It impacted against a spaceship and it fell out of the sky, hitting another, and one tumbled down the mountain while the other spiralled away.
“Woah, what?” Geoff said. He blinked. “Is this déjà vu?”
Geoff saw himself standing on a familiar mountain. He watched as he pulled the trigger on an alien rifle, and a cyan pellet shot through the sky. It impacted against a spaceship and it fell out of the sky, hitting another, and one tumbled down the mountain while the other spiralled away.
Geoff saw himself standing on a familiar mountain. He watched as he pulled the trigger on an alien rifle, and a cyan pellet shot through the sky. It impacted against a spaceship and it fell out of the sky, hitting another, and one tumbled down the mountain while the other spiralled away.
Geoff saw himself standing on a familiar mountain. He watched as he pulled the trigger on an alien rifle, and a cyan pellet shot through the sky. It impacted against a spaceship and it fell out of the sky, hitting another, and one tumbled down the mountain while the other spiralled away.
“Stop it!” Geoff said.
He felt the cyan void form around him again as the images faded.
“Why did you show me that last scene so many times?”
Geoff saw himself standing on a familiar mountain. Mt Gordo. He watched as he pulled the trigger on an alien rifle, and a cyan pellet shot through the sky. It impacted against a spaceship and it fell out of the sky, hitting another, and one tumbled down the mountain while the other spiralled away.
“I get it! Stop!”
Geoff floated in silence for a while, deep in thought.
“That situation… it’s inevitable, right?”
Geoff saw himself standing on Mt Gordo. On his other side, Geoff saw himself standing on Mt Gordo. On his other side, Geoff saw himself standing on Mt Gordo. On his other side, Geoff saw himself standing on Mt Gordo. A kaleidoscope of Geoffs pulled a hundred triggers, and a thousand spaceships fell against a million mountains, and a billion spaceships spiralled away.
“That hurts my eyes… and my brain.”
Geoff gasped.
“That’s the start of this, isn’t it. The start of it all. It’s me. Every single universe… it’s me. I caused alien technology to appear in Los Santos and near Prince James.”
The void was silent.
“But how? Why-?”
Geoff saw a device, the original device, held loosely in Gavin’s hands in Geoff’s old yacht. Geoff remembered that as the moment they’d become the Fake AH Crew and Gavin had set off the device. But Geoff watched, and Gavin had stopped messing with the device to talk about crew names. Unprompted, the device lit up on its own.
Why was the void, or Jeremy’s device, showing him this?
Geoff saw the same device emit a red flash as Ray held it.
Geoff saw Jeremy’s device appear to deactivate when Ray tore apart its insides.
Geoff saw that same device flash red just as his own arm brushed against it.
“I don’t understand.”
Geoff saw Gus hold a future cube up against the strong light of a lamp, and saw him mouth something.
What was it Gus had said? Some fancy metaphor. Geoff didn’t remember.
The scene repeated again, still without sound. Maybe this was because Jeremy’s device was so damaged? Maybe it just didn’t do sound. What had Gus said?
“Aliens twist the cube. Aliens control the cube. The cube is the tech. Aliens…”
Oh.
“The reason all this happened. It wasn’t me. It was you.” Geoff didn’t know who he was talking to. The void, Jeremy’s device. An alien. All of them.
“You’re the one making these devices do stuff! It’s not us!”
Geoff narrowed his eyes.
“You made this happen. All of it. And you want me to do something now. You made Ray leave, and now I’m your next target.”
Geoff saw himself standing on Mt Gordo. He watched as he pulled the trigger on the rifle, and a cyan pellet shot through the sky. It impacted against a spaceship and it and hit another, and one tumbled down the mountain while the other spiralled away.
Geoff was quiet for a while.
“There’s something on my arm in all of these. From the second vision. I… leave this place, and then I get that cube device thing put on my arm. And then I, dunno, time travel? I thought time travel wasn’t real. You make that new cube thing take me somewhere and I continue the cycle. That’s what you want me to do.”
Geoff paused.
“God, we’re just… one more loop in an infinite chain. Is that what I am to you?”
The memory of the sheer enormity of space stretched out in his brain. Geoff was one tiny piece in an unfathomable, unknowable, infinite universe. One of many. One of an infinite number.
And he would leave this place, and fall against Gus’s table, and he would be sent to Mt Gordo.
He would continue the cycle.
As sure as a glass dropped would smash on the ground, the cycle would continue.
“…I think I understand now. I don’t know why I have to, but I’ll do what I’m told.
“And when I do, will that be the end of it? Can I finally just live after that? With the others?”
Geoff felt his mind vibrate apart and he disappeared in a red flash, his final questions unanswered.
Geoff re-emerged in Gus’s basement in a flash of light. His knees buckled, and he instinctively reached out to break his fall. Something cold passed through his left arm and he collapsed on the floor.
“Geoff!” Gavin cried out.
Geoff stared at his arm and the new cube-shaped device that encircled it. He looked up.
“I’m sorry, I-”
He saw Ryan reach out for him, but the world unravelled and there was nothing for him to reach out to.
It wasn’t instantaneous.
Geoff felt his mind and body dissolve into infinite tiny strings. He held onto whatever scrap of himself he was allowed to keep and waited for Mt Gordo to appear.
It didn’t. Something felt wrong.
Something tugged at his insides, ripping him in a different direction.
Geoff opened his eyes and stared into Geoff’s.
“What?” Geoff said.
“What the fuck?” Geoff said.
“Holy shit.” Jack exclaimed.
“He just came out of you!” Ryan said, and pulled a gun.
“What?!” Geoff shouted, and scrambled away from Geoff. “Shoot him!”
“Don’t shoot me! Why would you shoot me, Ryan?” Geoff said.
“He knows your name!” Geoff shouted once more.
“Can we calm down, please?” Jack said, raising a placating hand to Ryan. Ryan lowered the gun.
Geoff looked at his arm. The cyan cube-like device was actually a cube within a cube, and the two cubes… well, rotated around each other wasn’t the right description. It looked like they took turns swallowing the other. As he watched, the motion slowed down and stopped. It faintly glowed purple.
What he’d said in the void had turned out to be true. The cube thing had taken him somewhere. But this wasn’t where he was meant to be. This wasn’t Mt Gordo. And there sure as hell shouldn’t be another Geoff here.
But they seemed to think that he was the other Geoff.
“I’m not meant to be here,” Geoff said. “I’m meant to be at Mt Gordo right now.”
“Mt Gordo?” Geoff said.
“Something went wrong.” Geoff explained. “Jesus Christ. Look, this is as weird for me as it is for you, but I can explain everything. Hopefully. Just get the others and I can do it all in one go.”
“Others?” Ryan questioned.
“Get Michael, Gavin, and Jeremy. I’m sorry I disappeared so suddenly but there’s something I have to do. I don’t know why he’s here.” Geoff pointed at Geoff. “Like I said, something went wrong.”
“Me?” Geoff said. “I was here all along! You’re the one that appeared out of me!”
Geoff gave him a patronising look and held up his left arm. “Obviously there’s some alien tech fuckery happening. Just get the others and we’ll go see Gus and figure this out.”
“…Alien tech?” Jack said. “What the fuck are you talking about?”
Ryan raised his gun at Geoff again.
“There’s no-one else here but us.” Ryan said in a low voice. “So you can just sit right there and start explaining everything here and now.”
Geoff noticed he was back in his apartment. It was late at night, and a light snow fell.
It wasn’t meant to snow for another few months.
“You don’t remember Michael, Gavin, or Jeremy?” Geoff asked. “You don’t know about the alien tech?”
The barrel of Ryan’s gun pressed against Geoff’s temple.
“No more questions. You explain why there’s two of you right now or I bring that number back to one.”
Geoff broke out into a cold sweat, and his stomach dropped. Ryan wouldn’t really shoot him, would he?
“You don’t know who or what I’m talking about at all.”
There could only be one explanation.
“No” Jack said. “Well, there’s a Michael and a Gavin in the Lad’s crew. Are you with them?”
“No. Look, hey, Ryan, could you put the gun down please? I’ll talk if you stop pointing that at me.”
Ryan looked to Geoff, who nodded.
“I’m you,” Geoff pointed at Geoff, “from another universe.”
“Are you evil?” Geoff asked.
“What? No,” Geoff said. “Well, no more evil than you I suppose. And you have no idea what I’m talking about when I talk about alien tech? Have you three ever gone to Zancudo?”
“Nope.” Jack said. “There was a job a few years ago to go in there and bring something back, but we decided it was too risky.”
“Well, I’m from an alternate universe where you went.” Geoff said. “And we ran into the Lads and got stuck down there, and, well, ended up getting into a six-way relationship.”
“Yeah, right,” Ryan said. “You honestly expect us to believe that?”
“How else are you going to explain the two Geoffs?” Geoff asked. “You know what, Geoff, I’m going to start calling you Alt-Geoff.”
“What?” Alt-Geoff said, annoyed. “But you’re the one from the alternative universe!”
“Not to me.” Geoff said. “But it doesn’t matter. I’m going to head back to my universe now and set this straight.”
“No,” Ryan said, “You’re going to explain-“
-“No I’m not. I don’t have time to sort this out. More important things to do.”
Geoff grabbed one of the cube’s edges and tugged it, setting it spinning. The cubes glowed and the spinning sped up.
Obviously something went wrong the first time the device was used. He was surprised he could get it going himself but it definitely looked like it was powering up. He’d just use it again and hopefully the right thing would happen and he’d end up at Mt Gordo.
The alternative was too painful to consider.
“Bye.” Geoff said. “And watch out for any visiting royalty!”
With a flash, the world disintegrated and Geoff was no more.
Geoff opened his eyes and stared into Alt-Geoff’s.
“What the fuck?” Alt-Geoff said.
“Shit, this isn’t right. It felt wrong again.” Geoff said quickly, trying not to panic. “Don’t worry, I’ll be out of your moustache momentarily.”
“You’re not going anywhere,” Ryan said, pulling a gun, but Geoff was already spinning the cubes and the universe dissolved.
Geoff opened his eyes and stared into Alt-Geoff’s.
“What the heck?” Alt-Geoff said.
“Moustache?” Geoff said.
“What?!”
“The other Alt-me had a moustache,” Geoff explained. “You don’t. That’s a really big change, Jeremy said once.”
“…Uh. What?!”
Geoff spun the cubes and the universe dissolved.
“What the fuck?” Alt-Geoff said.
“What the fuck?” Alt-Geoff said.
“What the fuck?” Alt-Geoff said.
Geoff opened his eyes and gasped, because instead of staring into his own eyes he opened them to darkness.
Dirt filled his open mouth and Geoff spluttered and clawed at the space in front of him. His hands hit open air and Geoff lunged forward. The dirt slid away from him and Geoff scrambled away from it.
Chest heaving, Geoff’s eyes darted over the hole he’d just crawled from. Just visible were the grey shapes of several bones.
A grave. Geoff had crawled out of a grave.
“This isn’t right.” Geoff said, voice shaking.
“This… none of this should be happening. I should be at Mt Gordo. I have to get to Mt Gordo!”
He should be in Gus’s basement. He should be with the others. He should be at a party, showing off exciting new tech. He should be…
Heart racing, Geoff tried to think.
…If what the first Alt-Ryan said was true, then Geoff appeared from inside an Alt-Geoff somehow. That would imply the bones he was currently looking at were his own.
He’d just crawled out of his own grave.
Geoff leaned to the side and threw up.
Geoff rolled away from the mess and leaned on one elbow, suddenly lacking the strength to stand or even sit. Stones and twigs prickled his skin, making him itch. He was next to a storm drain under a road. The air smelled dirty and polluted.
This was all wrong. None of this should be happening. Not today, not with the party happening, not at all.
Something caught Geoff’s eye.
Next to him, the ground sloped up again into another mound. Next to it, four more.
Five more graves.
One for each of his crewmembers.
Geoff wanted to be sick again.
“This can’t be happening.” Geoff muttered to himself. “I have to get back. My crew is probably worried sick. They’re waiting for me to get back.”
A thought struck Geoff.
If he appeared inside an Alt-Geoff somehow, if that was how the cube-device handled two Geoffs existing in the same universe, then how could he appear back in his universe? There was no Geoff to appear in.
Geoff shook his head.
No. There had to be a way back.
“Take me back!” Geoff screamed at the cube device. He grabbed at an edge roughly and yanked it.
The edge snapped off. The thin piece of cyan metal clattered between some rocks and fell out of sight.
The device powered down, losing its purple glow.
“No, no. Wait, no,” Geoff stammered, his anger fleeing him in an instant. “Hold on, hold on.”
He scrambled for the dropped piece but he didn’t see where it fell. It might have even fallen in the storm drain itself.
Geoff collapsed to his knees.