Rome Alone, Part 1

Date: 02/02/2001
From: ThomasMalthus

Here's the beginning of the latest (the fourth, to be precise) story in a fanfic series I've been working on for quite some time. Enjoy!

"There's nothing more I can do for them now," one Quinn Mallory said to another. The first Quinn, the one who had just spoken, had only recently taken up travelling with Maximilian Arturo, Wade Welles and Rembrandt Brown. The other one was, well, no longer in existance.

He was also very persistent. "You don't see it, but there is. There's chores for everyone. Just because you're new in town doesn't mean you can just slack off."

"I know where I want to go. I don't know why you're keeping me here." Right now, here was a swirling vortex with seemingly infinite entrances and exits.

"Because it's better than here," the other Quinn's disembodied voice said, and thrust him forward suddenly through a tunnel that took him back to the island that had been his home, and prison, for so many years.

"This isn't fair! I just wanted to make it home! That was the deal!" Quinn yelled to nobody in particular.

Quinn2 scoffed in a voice that was all around him. "This wasn't just some deal. This is your life now, with all its changes, and all its ups and downs. But if you don't want it, you can just stay here forever. I hear the bugs get tastier after you've eaten a hundred or so. Well, you'd know, is that true or just one of those urban legends they cook up?"

"I can't be here again," Quinn practically moaned in suffering. He looked around the island and saw a giant serpant slither around a clay pot full of silver pieces. At a swish of its tail, the pot shattered and spilled its contents. "Not again."

"You take this world with you on your back like a snail. It's your home. It's in every word you speak." The other Quinn said nothing. "The other path seems riskier now, but in the long run, I think you'll find that it's not so bad being their Quinn Mallory." He thought he heard his name repeated, ever so faintly, in the distance and there was some shaking, until he realized he was looking into the face of Professor Maximilian Arturo.

"Mr. Mallory, wake up or you'll miss the slide!" the Professor exclaimed in exasperation.

Quinn groaned and sat up in his chair. "Where are the others?"

"Wade and Remmy are in the other room." As if to prove Arturo's statement, some R&B music that Quinn didn't recognize started to play in the room where he pointed to.

"How long til the slide?" Quinn asked with a genuine urgency in his voice.

"Just a few more minutes," Arturo responded. "I only hope we can manage to tote Rembrandt around with us without too much trouble. Some worlds might be too dangerous for us to..."

"I'm not going on with you," Arturo was stunned into silence. "Not for any long period of time, at least. We find a world where you can get along without too much trouble, then I'm leaving you there, taking my timer and sliding alone."

"I can't believe I'm hearing this," the Professor retorted with a wounded note in his voice. "Why?"

Quinn chuckled mirthlessly. "I leave on this big quest that some ghostly version of myself puts me on, and everything just seems to fall into place. The first world I land on, you're there, heading up some great sliding project that wants to poke and prod at me until I tell your buddies I'm some alien spy. I take you with me, and straightaway we find Wade in that tunnel world. The last world we land on, Oz pulls back the curtain and there's the last member of our little rogues gallery, Rembrandt. So was it too much to ask, since this Quinn spirit guy can take us to any world he wants, that he could take me home? Instead, I get a world where stupid hatwear is considered holy. I fulfilled my end of the bargain, he reneged on his. Now I want out."

The R&B music in the other room got louder while Arturo fumed. "I don't pretend to know what exactly has brought us all together, Mr. Mallory, but perhaps it's for a reason. And I seriously doubt it was so that you could skulk off in self-pity and leave the rest of us facing an uncertain future!" The elder man's tone grew more and more agitated. "Do you even care what happens to us?

"You'll take care of yourselves just fine," Quinn retorted with certainty in his voice. "You're experienced, you know how the sliding gig works."

"And that's something else to think about, Quinn. Sliding is extremely dangerous, and it's even more so when you're on your own. How are you going to survive traveling through the multiverse by yourself?"

"I'll make do," Quinn said while stuffing some of his clothes into a duffel bag. "I always have."

"Mr. Mallory, you need us to survive," Arturo stated flatly. "And more than that we need you."

"You need Quinn Mallory," he said, angrily thrusting his finger in Arturo's direction. "But you'll settle for me. And I don't want that to be my life."

"Fine," Arturo practically growled. "If you want to strand me, the person who has done nothing but help you since the day I met you, Miss Welles, who seems on the verge of an emotional breakdown and believes you to be her Quinn, and Mr. Brown, who is virtually catatonic, on some Godforsaken earth for all eternity, I suppose I can do nothing to prevent it. Although it is hard for me to believe that your conscience would allow you to inflict the same fate upon others that you so loathed for yourself."

"I'll drop you off on a world where there's technology, so you can build your own sliding machine. You did it once before. I'm sure you'll have no problem doing it again." Before Arturo could begin lecturing Quinn again, he began walking out the door with the timer. "See if the others are ready. I'm going outside to try to find a good place to slide."

Arturo sighed deeply. His life had changed so rapidly in merely a few days. He only hoped he could keep up the pace, because the others were going to need a lot of support. If Quinn left...

No more of that. 'That way madness lies', the Professor thought, remembering an appropriate Shakespeare quote. For once, Arturo was hoping they would land on some backwards world, so that Quinn wouldn't have a chance to leave them behind. Perhaps it was a fruitless hope. If this Quinn Mallory truly wanted to leave, he could not wish for him to stay with them forever. It had to be his choice.

Trying to remove all such gloomy thoughts from his head, he went in to check on Wade and Rembrandt. Recognizing the song that had been playing as "Tears in My Fro", the Professor then heard "Cry Like a Man" begin to play. Rembrandt lie on the bed in a stupor and Wade sat near him, examining him closely.

"Damn," Wade cursed to herself with her head downcast. "I thought the music from this album I picked up on the last world would bring him out of it if anything would." For good measure, she went over and turned up the song once more. He was surprised that somebody hadn't already been complaining about the loud music from their hotel room, but with the celebration going on, perhaps they wouldn't. Wade then grimly sat back down on her bed, parallel to where Rembrandt was laying in his bed, looking for some sign of comprehension. There was nothing. Arturo sat down beside her and put his hand on her shoulder. It was plain to see that she had been crying. A lot.

"You know, last night I couldn't tell if he was asleep or awake, so I kept waking myself up just to make sure he was still breathing," she sobbed. "I can't believe he came through everything he has just to end up this way. Maybe he would have been better off dead on some Kromagg world, going down fighting like the hero he was."

"He'll get better, Miss Welles," the Professor assured her. When she looked at him disbelievingly, he replied with total confidence, "He will, and soon. But right now we have to get ready for the slide."

He smiled at her to see if he'd reached her and she smiled back, which Arturo counted as a small victory. Considering the large defeats they'd been handed lately, it was very welcome. As Wade and Arturo started to help Rembrandt outside, with as much of their gear as they could carry with them at the same time, she asked her elder companion, "Is something wrong with Quinn? He's seemed upset this entire slide."

"He's worried about Rembrandt a lot more than he lets on," Arturo fibbed, although he sincerely hoped it was true. Not wanting to dwell on Rembrandt's condition, which had so consumed Wade on this world, he continued "Also, I don't think he was too keen on the idea of landing on a world where the people all worship the Big Funny Party Hat."

Wade chuckled at that reference to the extremely odd religion that the locals here were following. "It is strange, but it's not nearly as bad as some of the worlds we've visited." Arturo nodded his affirmation as they continued to walk to where Quinn was. When they saw him, it appeared as though he was being harangued by locals.

"No, you must stay for the Big Funny Party Hat Jubilee. We let off our special fireworks and then we do let loose with the giant streamers!" he exclaimed enthusiastically in an accent that bordered on Hindi.

"No thank you," Quinn replied sullenly to the man, although the slider did have a fake-looking smile on his face.

"No, please, we insist," the important-looking native continued. Quinn looked like he was ready to tell the man off when Arturo stepped in.

"Now, Mr. Mallory, we don't want to offend our hosts," the Professor said with a smile. "We would be delighted to stay for your festivities."

Once the man showed his delighted expression and walked off, Arturo remarked to the others, "I don't think they'll try to stop us, Mr. Mallory. It shouldn't be any problem to slide out in public here."

"Besides," Wade remarked with a grin, "it should be one heck of a show. Maybe the vortex will be the crowning effect."

Nonplussed, Quinn looked at the timer. "Only about three minutes until we slide. They better hurry if they're going to..." Just as he spoke, the fireworks started. This culture had apparently taken fireworks to some higher technological level. They seemed to dance and frolic in the sky, as though they truly were living creatures. They began to act out the story of how, according to this world's mythology, the Big Funny Party Hat came to Earth and liberated the world from devils, IRS agents and felonious pro athletes. As the ceremony ended, a large countdown clock came down from above a big pile of fireworks that looked bigger than the ones that had been set off before. As it began ticking down from one minute, the timer began ticking down from thirty seconds.

"I wonder what they do for an encore?" Wade asked, in awe. In reality, Quinn was a little engulfed in the ceremony himself, although he would never admit it.

"They sure know how to treat their guests. I hope the next world has room service that's as good as this one had," Arturo commented in admiration.

As the last seconds counted down, Quinn opened the wormhole. The Professor pushed Rembrandt into the vortex and a few seconds later, Arturo jumped in behind him. Staying to see what really happened when the clock hit 0:00, Wade and Quinn watched the timer anxiously. "5...4...3...2...1..." and then a bunch of garbled cheers that the sliding twosome didn't know how to interpret erupted among the people around them. As Wade got ready to jump through the vortex, they saw that this time a stream of firework-like glowing entities floated around among the people, swirling and making colorful patterns with their trails. Not really wanting to leave, but wanting to miss the slide less, Wade jumped in. Quinn waited a few more seconds, wanting to soak up every moment of the first time in his experience with sliding that he'd been enjoying himself. With just a few more seconds until the wormhole closed, he jumped through. And one of the "fireworks" ran smack dab into the vortex behind him.

***
Quinn felt a jolt as he sailed from one world to another and came landing down hard on the sandy ground. 'Sandy?', Quinn thought. 'Good Lord, he couldn't have punished me for wanting to leave them by sending me back to...' Too horrified to continue that train of thought, Quinn looked around and saw not a tropical island, but a large desert. "What kind of a world is this?" he turned to say to the others. Only the others weren't there.

"I'm alone," Quinn said, looking at the timer that was in his hand. "Four days. What if I'm stuck out here in the desert all alone, with no food or water, and no one to..." He was silenced by a blow from behind. The robed figure then began to cart Quinn away. "Not alone no more," he laughed to himself.

ThomasMalthus

The Firework Within...

Date: 02/02/2001
From: Blinker

Awesome as ever, TM. I never know what to expect from this series... and that's the way I like it. 7:-P~~~~~~~~~~

More, please!

- Blinker 7:-D
http://slidersweb.net/blinker

The Big Funny Party Hat?!

Date: 02/02/2001
From: Recall317

Hahaha!

Now that was a world I was getting into! Looking forward to the next piece.

R317

At least it wasn't a beret.

Date: 02/02/2001
From: EustiSlider

That would have been even sillier to worship. I'm glad to see you're continuing this storyline. Patiently waiting for more.

E

Thanks for the kind words!

Date: 02/03/2001
From: ThomasMalthus

Blinker, Recall317 and EustiSlider: You are the collective MAN!! Thanks for all your support! I sincerely hope you enjoy this story.

ThomasMalthus

I like!

Date: 02/04/2001
From: Yeontoo

Dear ThomasMalthus,

Great story (ies)! I'll be watching for the rest of em :)

Blessings
Yeontoo

Original URL http://bboard.scifi.com/bboard/browse.cgi/1/5/545/24866
Nominated by DMD