The Hollow Planet - part two

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CHAPTER THREE

They were next inside a command center, where she listened, as Spyng telephoned a more distant center and issued detailed orders to pick up and move Jenna Wrenn, to be returned to Earth. When he had finished, he sent Gwenn into a waiting room and asked her to sit until he could finish some duties.

She obediently sat back and stared at a wall, until, eventually, Spyng returned. “I have a conference in the capital city. Because I haven’t the time to provide for you, as yet, we are going together.”

He had brought in a suitcase, which he handed to her, explaining that it held clothing and personal items young girls need, put together by a young Birdpeople girl. She thanked him and together they went to his drone and took to the sky.

The capital city was much larger than Gwenn would have envisioned. Laid out in square blocks, with free public streetcars and few drones allowed. The buildings were marble palaces, with long flights of stairs, with shining golden roofs. Borg pedestrians

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were everyplace and the streetcars all filled with passengers. A few Birdpeople could be seen, but they appeared to have paths to walk outside the general traffic. At the center of the city sprawled the grandest building of them all. To the side of the stairs were escalators. Gwenn stayed very close to Spyng for fear of getting swept away by the crowd.

She was caused to sit on benches in hallways, as Spyng went from meeting to meeting. When he came from the final conference room, another borg exited with him. “We have selected the men to go with you,” the man was saying. “So, you will be ready in three days?”

“That we will, my friend. So, excuse me now, I have duties to see to and must be getting home.”

On the ride back, Spyng explained to Gwenn that she could be back home, very soon. “A few colleagues and I have something we need to do in your world. There is no reason I shouldn’t take you along and drop you off. Contingent on your agreeing to silence, for the Earthlings cannot know of our presence at all. I believe in you. I believe if you make a promise, you intend to keep it.”

“I have to know what it is I am agreeing to. All of it,” she replied stalwartly.

“My mission will cause Pi to move into your reality. Two worlds, living side by side. You could not deny us a right to survive, could you?”

She was more than just skeptical. “What if it doesn’t work? What if something terrible were to happen?”

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“There is an element of risk,” Spyng admitted. “It is remotely possible one world could dislodge the other one. Or, both could be sent spinning away, with no orbit. But, if successful, Pi and Earth would be chasing one another in the same orbit.”

Gwenn’s concern had been expanding. It now blew out of all proportion. She felt sympathy for Pi, but even the slightest risk to the existence of Earth would not be a worthy risk to take. “No,” she said. “I don’t promise that.”

The borg regarded Gwenn in silence, staring for several long moments. “Thank you,” he said. “When we get back, I will put you back in Clara’s keeping. You will be her child from now on.”

The return trip seemed shorter, as return trips will. Riding in silence, Spyng drove finally into the Birdpeople neighborhood. After he knocked with his hard fist they waited until cautious Clara decided to open the door a crack. “Yes?” she said, sounding faint-hearted and fearful.

“Ms. Borng,” Spyng said, “may I prevail upon you to take Gwenn into your keeping? Aside from the fact that I can’t allow her to undermine my activities, I am a bachelor. There is no place for one such as she in my home.”

Clara absorbed the words and her spirit visibly lifted at the sight of the sweet youngster waiting to come in. “Oh, thank you, good sir. That’s so kind of you.”

The Birdwoman spread her arms and said, “Come in, child. Have you eaten?”

Spyng smiled and turned away, his demeanor that of declaring moral parity. He heard Gwenn’s “Thank you” without turning or pausing.

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Clara bustled. “Have you eaten? I can put a meal on the table.”

The woman busied herself and sent Gwenn to the comfortable chair that was near to where Clara’s Pop perpetually ensconced himself. The elder Borng appeared to smile, behind his beak and he greeted her thusly: “Welcome. Welcome.”

After some minutes of quietly sitting she idly picked up a magazine to leaf through. It was the just off the press edition of “Roosting, the Chickenpeople’s Bible for Troubled Times.” Among long tiny print articles were dozens of photos, many war-related. The troops in these pages were depicted as high morale, though struggling, after the collapse of the war effort. Her sharp eye discovered, deep in a crowd of beaked fighters, one who was unbeaked and who wore a long beard. She studied the image with intensity. Her shock at the resemblance between the man and Dad slowly transformed to joy and certainty. It was him. Dad was alive. She leaped up, smiling through her tears.

She brought the magazine, to show Clara. Clara reached for her glasses as Gwenn pushed the photograph to her. “See?” the girl said. “See this man.”

Clara studied the photo. “Yes, I recognize him. He is known to us as Professor General. The borgs captured him, recently. You have good eyes, to pick him from a photo like that. Come in and eat.”

Gwenn felt she had fitted all the puzzle pieces together now. Mr. Spyng had misled her, by not mentioning her father. He obviously had taken the missing information from her unwilling Dad and now possessed all of the science needed to put Pi into the real universe.

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Poor Dad. Likely took Mom’s place in the Birdpeople hospital, unable to get up; unable to speak, if alive at all. She explained to Clara just who Professor General actually was. She begged her to help find him tomorrow.

“Well,” the older woman answered. “I have lots of time, now that I‘m jobless, so we’ll go have a try.”

Gwenn went to bed early that night. She had no doubt her father was about to be found and so had no trouble resting. Her eyes popped open before the dawn. She lay in bed, waiting for the day to catch up. The instant she heard Clara stirring, she leaped to the floor and began dressing. She pressed the poor woman to the point of being more than annoying.

When finally they left for the hospital, Clara was at her wit’s end. She actually was shaking and her waddle flopped about incessantly. Gwenn apologized and begged the woman to drive carefully. Soon the flustered woman managed to get the vehicle safely parked. She cautioned Gwenn to not get her hopes up so high. There was no guarantee that Dan was in this hospital or that he could be found, even if he was in there.

The nurse was unsettled by the questions. “I don‘t have any information,” she said. “Wait here and I will ask the head nurse.”

Fully ten minutes elapsed before she came back. She sat quietly in her chair and looked down at a notepad that was blank. After a few more minutes, the head of the hospital, Doctor Lenk Joad, shambled in, looking like a great molting turkey. He shook himself the way Gwenn had seen a few turkeys ruffle their own feathers and then he

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addressed her: “Gwenn Wrenn?” he said.

She told him it was indeed she and boldly stated that she knew her Dad was almost certainly hospitalized here.

“Wait here,” Doctor Joad instructed her.

Joad talked on his phone, in a nearly muted voice, and then he came back, the wearer of a hardened attitude. “I have been instructed to send you away. If such a person were here, it would be a state secret and you would not be told. Consider yourself banned from these confines. Good day, Miss Wrenn.”

The hospital head walked away on his awkward legs, with his shoulders rounded and his head slumped and a slight grunt with each step. He went behind a great door that had a tiny window glass in it. Gwenn ran to the door to peep through the glass.

“Now, see here,” the nurse cried sharply. “You’ve got to get away and leave the hospital, immediately.”

Her chubby cheeks and tiny beak gave her a cartoonish air, but Gwenn and Clara knew she was not fooling. Gwenn backed away and she and Clara quickly went outside to descend the steps to the sidewalk below. Gwenn turned her face to look at all the windows in the great building, all but certain Dad was in a bed behind one of them. She looked into Clara’s sympathetic eyes and said, “Don’t a few of your neighbors fly on wings that are attached to their bodies?”

“Oh, my,” the older woman said, troubled. “What are you planning?”

Gwenn’s smile was grim, determined.

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“Look,” Clara remonstrated, “if you could get inside his room, you could never lift him out and get him away. No flying Birdpeople are able to perform a feat such as that.”

Clara stalked away toward the drone.

Gwenn had no choice, except to follow her. When they got back and went inside Clara’s house, they had visitors waiting to see them.

Clara simply stopped and stared, wordlessly. She looked to Gwenn, to see if the girl knew any of them. She did. She recognized the shape and the clothing before she laid eyes on his face. For the first time ever, she was happy to recognize Wilfred Combs.

Combs, with a contingent of six men, waited in the TV room, listening to Dana’s incessant, “Welcome. Welcome,” until they heard the door open. Combs simply stared at Gwenn. She stared back.

It was with mixed emotions she regarded this man. She had long believed the worst of him, yet she knew he must be here as a part of her Dad’s team, seeking to find and take him home. He approached, now, with no sign of rancor. He, in fact, managed a little smile. “Thanks to you, we’ve safely recovered your mother. I have not been able to get a lead on the whereabouts of your father.”

Gwenn spoke out, defiantly. “You made me think Dad was dead. You kept me out of my own house.”

“Sorry,” he said.

“You made him ridiculous when you made me think he died.”

“Ah, well. I made the tale of your father’s demise ridiculous because I wanted you

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to believe at some level I was lying to you. I failed and instead succeeded in alienating you.”

Combs brushed at his thinning scalp and paced the floor a few steps.

“Why did you want me to think that?” Gwenn demanded to know. “I had the right to the truth.”

Combs sighed. He looked away, ashamed. “Because,” he said, “the scientific community came near to extinguishing the whole project, even though Dan and Jenna had gone out of sight, in Pi.”

Gwenn was incredulous. “You mean -? Extinguish them both, along with Pi?”

“It was that peccadillo of yours that made them start to change their mind,” Combs said. “They could not accept blame for the loss of an entire family. When your mother was returned to us, we decided to look for you and your father.”

“You should have extinguished the project when you had the chance,” She replied. “Do you know about a droid, named Issak Spyng? He said that his scientists have made it inevitable that very soon, this entire dimension will spill out into the real world.”

“He told you?”

“He did.”

“Then we can’t waste another minute. We have to get back to the other side and make this made-up world vanish.”

“But not without my Dad,” Gwenn protested.

“There is no more time to look for him,” Combs insisted.

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For the second time in their history together, the girl kicked Combs’ ankle. The force was strong. The man went down. She ran around his bulk and was out the door before the six men with Combs thought to react. “She’s just a kid. Stop her,” Combs bellowed.

But what a kid she was. Gwenn’s long slim legs rapidly carried her beyond the back side of the house and into the low roofed thorn forest, where a taller person had no hope of moving quickly. The forest was not a wide one and she soon came out in a soft green meadow, an experience that might be pleasant, under another circumstance. Coming up from a hole, through a trap door, was a white animal, with red eyes and razor-sharp teeth. It came at the terrified girl and it rolled over on its back, whimpering. She felt there was no time for a diversion such as this, but she simply had to give it a tummy rub. From that point on, the little beast ran beside her, until she left the meadow and approached what appeared to be a barracks. Having no way of knowing who might be housed within, Gwenn nevertheless felt she had to present herself to those persons.

The white animal loped off as Gwenn timidly approached the rough-hewn door and tested to see if it would open. It groaned on rusty hinges, alerting a roomful of cyborgs to pause and look around. The frightened girl stood before them, shaking, fearing the worst.

An imposing borg, wearing an overly decorated uniform, was Dom Casper. He demanded to know who she was. “Why have you come here?”

“I am Gwenn Wrenn. I need help to get my father out of here before it is too late. This entire world is soon to vanish.”

Dom Casper frowned, incredulously. “This world is all there is. Where did you

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think you could escape to?”

What Gwenn had assumed to be general knowledge in the world of Pi was not necessarily widely known. This she understood only now. She became frantic. “Pi is slated to get erased,” she said -

At that instant, they were jolted off their feet. There began a fundamental shift of Pi, that had everything moving and shaking. Freestanding items were swaying and toppling. They could feel the planet’s crust sliding as if the very rocks had transformed into a liquid. “Earthquake,” a borg shouted in terror.

The girl knew better than that. Issak Spyng had succeeded in breaking open the barrier separating the two realities of Earth and Pi. This work of fiction was on its way to turning into permanent reality, sliding across the boundary, grinding its mass into the Earth, with untold consequences.

Gwenn scrambled on her hands and feet, getting outside of the collapsing barracks and began running and falling and running again. At one point a water tower came crashing down beside her, making a waterfall that washed Gwenn away, for a good thirty feet.

After at last finding the street again, staying mainly to the center, Gwenn was able to fight her way toward the hospital. A whole forest accompanied by random buildings soared high overhead with Gwenn looking in vain for a place to hide. She beheld the Earth, looming too huge for the mind to comprehend, quickly receding in the sky, with all the sun sparkled blue water and a visible landmass the shape of North America. The C

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battling atmospheres of the two planets created windstorms that incited further damage, but Gwenn’s little square on Pi escaped further destruction, although the whole planet continued to vibrate and thunder for the longest time. She never knew what happened to the soldiers of the barracks.

Miraculously, the hospital escaped destruction. Gwenn struggled up the steps.

The inside remained mostly intact and the Birdpeople all were hiding. Behind the admissions desk, she located one such person and was able to learn from the terrified woman in which room Dad was located. Her attempt at getting across the floor to the stairway made her look like a drunk in a storm-driven ship. The attempt was ended by a falling portion of light fixture that clipped the side of her head and sent her spinning, unconscious, across the room. She went down for the duration between some piles of debris that actually shielded her from further pelting by flying small objects.

It is necessary to stand back at a long distance if one is to gain a true perspective of this, the genesis of the two worlds’ interwoven history: Pi invading the real universe, skimming the face of planet Earth, crust against crust. Where they made contact, great chunks of Pi were torn loose, falling on Earth‘s ocean. Scared out of their wits were the humans, witnessing an entire world, materializing in their midst, from nothing. Their own planet experiencing the greatest trauma, since the asteroid that ended the reign of dinosaurs.

And the entity of Pi was born, and it slipped into orbit, to follow Earth around the sun. It was a disheveled mess, with a super major loss of lives and property. Cyborgs and

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Birdpeople were thrown together by mutual necessity and they mostly joined together for protection.

Damage to the Earth, while extensive, would require less effort to repair. One great question concerned the new islands, with alien inhabitants. The greater mass of one among these nearly equaled the size of Japan. Warships ringed those bastions of Pi citizens, to ensure none of them escaped beyond the shores. Delegations at first visited on both sides. Then the fear among humans grew to irrational proportions, inspiring many to demand that the aliens be obliterated by bombs. Saner minds held them off. As the big island restored infrastructure, communications between the sides improved. The aliens made it known they were fully capable of defending themselves, as advanced weapons systems had survived the event, intact, which stirred the pot of fear, even among so-called saner minds.

As for our young Gwenn, the compassionate Birdpeople who made up the hospital staff, could not abandon their posts. Once the event came to its end, they continued to care for and receive new patients. Gwenn they discovered and placed her awakening self in a comfortable bed. An unbandaged bruise on her head proved to be sensitive to the touch, but otherwise not hurting. She felt well, with the resiliency of the young, and ravenous. She slipped off of the bed and went exploring for a cafeteria or other food source.

She found a bird-faced nurse’s aid pushing a cart of dinners for patients. “Where can I get one of those?” she inquired.

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“The kitchen cooks for the patients,” she replied. “But, the emergency situation we are under tells me we should share. Follow the blue line on the floor. It will take you to the kitchen.”

“Can you tell me the whereabouts of Dan Wrenn?”

The Whole staff apparently believed all institutional rules to be suspended by the extraordinary nature of the catastrophe they experienced. She needed just a moment to consider, before presenting a detailed instruction of how to find the man. Gwenn thanked her with all her heart, before proceeding on the way.

The workers in the kitchen gave her a generous sandwich; with it a glassful of a sort of tea. She stood beside a counter, eating, watching the staff clean up the kitchen. So much dedication, when they had no way of knowing how their homes and families fared in what they considered a great earthquake. Her thank you was lost in the din of their dedication.

The room she sought, after she finished eating, was down a series of corridors, through a door with no marking. It was a vanilla hospital room that her efforts led her into. Sure enough, she found her father on the bed. He was on his side, face to the wall. When she said, “Dad?’ tapping him on the shoulder, he stirred, somewhat, to show he was awake. When finally Dan turned over, his eyes were without purpose, without a soul, even. He stared without blinking. Gwenn threw herself at him, holding his face, kissing his forehead repeatedly. “Don’t you recognize me?” she pleaded.

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She lay down beside him for such a long time, she finally nodded off. Her sleeping may have gone on for ten minutes or an hour; there was no way of knowing. She snapped wide awake when her father said, in a tone clear as a bell, “Gwenn? Is it you? I thought I just dreamed about you, before.”

She lifted her head and looked in his face. “Dad? Are you all right?”

“My mind is clear, now. It’s just that this cyborg, this Spyng fellow put such a truth vaccine in my backside. I have lain here like a yam in foil ever since. I am afraid they milked me for every bit of information I ever learned.”

“Dad? I have a nit to pick with you.” In a voice loudly accusatory, she demanded of him, “Why did you have them make me think you were dead?”

Dad seemed to be seeking a hole in which to crawl. Finding none, he decided to talk. “Not all decisions were mine,” he replied weakly. “When we first brought Pi into existence and came up with a way to physically go there, there was some argument as to who would take that chance. After nearly two months of struggle, I prevailed, with my argument that, since it was created from my book, I would have the best chance of success visiting there. Mom feared for my well being. She feared enough to secretly take my place, an hour before my departure had been set. But she quickly disappeared, without a trace. Wilfred and the rest of the team refused me permission to follow after her. It’s a top-secret project. No one could know. When finally I convinced the others to let me go, the world had to believe I was dead, to avoid public exposure of my work.”

“It’s not a secret, now,” Gwenn stated quietly.

“How did you get here?” Dad said, suddenly realizing his daughter ought not to

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even have a notion of his project; yet, she was here.

Gwenn explained what happened and how she became a friend to Issak Spyng - Most importantly, explaining that Mom had been rescued and sent back home. “Mr. Spyng has succeeded in opening up the barrier between Earth and his planet,” she said. “Pi is as permanent in the real universe as is the Earth.”

Dad tried to sit up but fell back. “How do you know?”

“It just happened while ago. Both planets grinding together until Pi spun off into space. You must have slept through it. Mr. Combs was here and he was trying to get back home to terminate the Pi project. He didn’t have time to make it. Gee, Dad; you must have been really out. It was like this whole world had an earthquake, a tornado, and a hurricane mixed into one that lasted for hours. I was knocked out and missed lots of it, myself.”

“Help me sit up,” Dad said. “I think if I can get moving I may recover more quickly.”

After a few tries, Dad was able to get his feet on the floor. “Move that chair - the heavy one - closer,” he instructed.

Gwenn did so and Dad was able to grab the back of it and pull as his legs strained to set him on his feet. At first he was just able to drape his upper self over the back of the chair, but in time, he pushed away and stood up straight. In triumph he looked around, and was ready to get going.

“What are we going to do, Daddy? How will we get back to our own world?”

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“First things first,” came the reply. “Just because the cyborgs set the program in motion is no proof it was successful.”

“I saw the Earth hurled into the sky, like a giant ball. It was as if it were thrown in a colossal game of catch. All that‘s missing is a giant dog,” Gwenn said. “It was gone quicker than you’d imagine.”

Dad had to find himself a place to sit down again. “It was due to me that Spyng was successful,” he lamented.

Gwenn was quick to defend her Dad. “No. You would have prevented it if you could.”

Dad gave her a wry grin. “It was my mind that conceived this place. It was my science that gave it life.” Emotion overtook him. He hid his face to block out the tears from his daughter’s view. “I came in here to look for your Mom. I had to hide from Spyng and ended in the Birdpeople’s ranks of soldiers. But they caught me. They tied me down. The mind-sweeping drugs they administered gave the borgs the key to understanding all of my science.”

After a brief interval, Dad looked up. “Now, I’ve got you to rescue.”

Dad launched himself to his feet, promptly tripping over a bedpan. He caught himself by grabbing a privacy curtain. He tried to regain his footing - until the curtain gave way and he and it made a heap in the middle of the floor.

“Come on, Dad,” scolded Gwenn, as she pulled away a flap of curtain that had draped itself across his upper torso and head. “The longer we stay here, the more likely

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the droids are to capture you again.”

The unfortunate man extricated himself from the curtain and quickly went into the hall, then toward the hospital exit. Gwenn took long strides, barely keeping up. Outside, they were met with an incredible scene of destruction. More buildings were reduced to rubble than stood. Birdpeople flocked around in total shock. The fleeing earthlings passed them by without getting noticed. Dad surveyed the scene from the middle of a great intersection. He selected a direction and went off again. “Dad,” Gwenn worried, “do you know where you are going?”

He continued his quick walking. “I designed this place,” he replied.

“Oh, yeah.” Despite their desperate situation, Gwenn exulted, because both her parents were alive. She was so proud and excited, to walk beside this great man, who knew where he was going.

Dad told her that on a normal day, they would be hiding and sneaking. It was his hope that the awful destruction would make the borgs too busy to care about him any more.

“They have what they want. Why would they care anymore?” Gwenn puzzled.

“They fear I might come up with a way to put the genie back inside the bottle,” he explained. “Since I have yet to come up with such a formula, they will want to head me off before I can even get started.”

“But what are we to do, now?” Gwenn said, as she and her father looked for a way around some fallen trees. “Where are we going?”

It quickly became evident that they must go over the trees, or else retreat and seek

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another route altogether. Dad fended a few lesser of the heavy limbs and hauled himself onto a great trunk. He extended a hand to help his daughter up and as she gained her footing and they looked to surmount the next obstacle, he said,” There is a facility that builds rockets, both for peaceful and wartime usage. We are going to steal one.”

The child’s pride in her father expanded, if at all possible, as she hoped he would always be there for her. They pushed through the limbs and over the bulk of trees, before finally coming down on the other side, where the buckled street presented a new test of will and endurance. Dad’s habit of engrossing himself so deeply in conversation caused him to become oblivious and bump into things and fall down inclines and holes. Yet he persevered and eventually the complex they sought loomed into view.

“There,” he told Gwenn, “I see a gaped portion of fence that we can crawl through. I believe the borgs ought to be busy with their humanitarian crisis and so ought not to be concerned about the security of this place.”

Gwen dutifully followed in his footsteps moving through the damaged fence to hide behind a hangar. It began to seem to the girl that slipping around like this and hiding had become her life. She yearned for it to be ended.

Within moments they began to hear voices and they hunkered down, to wait until after the workers had left for the night. “Persons without families, who were persuaded to work on,” Dad muttered. “Let us hope they haven’t a night watchman.”

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CHAPTER FOUR

As the daylight began to wane and the noisy crew bade one another good night, Dad began to poke his head out and then to expose his person before the hangar. When nothing stirred, he became bold, going inside the buildings, examining the rockets he found. At last, he turned to Gwenn, who had trailed him faithfully, the entire time.

He assessed the facts for his dear daughter, voice being grave, as the situation boded for disaster; he did not wish to mislead her. “They have been using rockets to visit their moon, which didn’t survive the transition. But it’s hopeless for us. None of these rockets is capable of breaking free of the planet’s gravity. Our one hope is to locate Mister Spyng and hope he will be charitable to the humans that are trapped here.”

“Will he be able to get us home, Dad?”

He shook his head. “I don’t think so,” he said.

Gwenn, with her hands on her hips, looked around at the darkened rocket grounds, then toward the damaged fence. “Well, what are we going to do, now?”

“See if we can get into the lounge. We might sleep there and then surrender to these

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rocket technicians. They should be able to get us to Spyng’s headquarters.” Dad stoically set his feet for the low building at the end, holding his daughter’s hand as he went. She sometimes felt it was she, leading Dad, when they walked together like that.

“You know, Mr. Spyng really likes me,” she said. “He sort of reminds me of you without being clumsy.” (Dad’s accidents were so frequent and unavoidable that he no longer felt embarrassed when people made note of them. It was a frequent topic between father and daughter, which he did not mind at all.)

“Ah,” Dad said, turning in sudden revelation to her as he stopped in his tracks. “I understand about him, now. I unconsciously put myself in my book, only as a strong man, lithe and not clumsy. I made him smart. Don’t you see, sweetheart? Mr. Spyng was the fictional me. As such, he could not stop himself from liking you. It’s what saved you.”

She smiled, a bit confused for a moment, but then the meaning of Dad’s words fell into place. Now they made perfect sense to her and she believed him. “That must be why I like him so much, too,” she said. “I don’t understand why he could do what he did to Mom, though.”

“Well,” Dad replied; “when the fate of the entire planet with everybody living on it depends on one person, he is going to make that decision, invariably. That he allowed her to survive has to be a plus for him.”

The lounge had picture windows and a glass door. As they were hoping, it was unlocked. There was a kitchen. They raided the pantry after discovering the refrigerator to be dangerously warm. Tins of fish, biscuits, and packaged cakes made a fine dinner.

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Gwenn finished off two tins and a biscuit on her own. She marveled at the sweet cake for dessert, as it was so delicious without making her feel overly full.

There was a half-circle couch in the big room, long enough to allow each to take opposing ends, there to sleep comfortably. Full, exhausted, comfortable, they went right off into deep, satisfying, sleep.

Dad had not fully recovered; therefore sleeping beyond Gwenn’s rising was the natural thing to do. She sat up, quietly, allowing him to rest, wondering what the coming hours would hold. She rather looked forward to meeting Issak Spyng, once more. She was certain that if anything could be done, he would do it. Her appetite was stirring, but she waited to eat with Dad. When at last the night began retreating before the dawn, she gave in and lightly placed a hand on his shoulder. Dad instantly came awake and sat up. He looked chipper. “Good morning, sweetheart. How do you feel this morning?”

They found some breakfast from the pantry and soon after the ingesting of it went into the morning air, to await the arrival of the morning work crew. She somehow felt the droids were about to be friendly, even though the ones she had been meeting, since her first escape had not been particularly nice. They had barely drawn the first deep breaths of the day, when army-clad groups of men came at them from both directions. Birdpeople, as it turned out.

Two leaders solemnly approached, one looking grey and owlish, the other somewhat comically resembling a crane. “Are you Daniel Wrenn?” the grey leader asked in a dignified but screechy voice.

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Dad stood as straight as they and spoke in equally solemn tones. “I am,” he replied. “If you think I am a deserter, I left my post at Pythonville because captured by cyborgs. Their treatment of me put me in the hospital. My daughter came and rescued me, yester evening.”

“I am Lt. Joes,” said the grey one. “Bound by duty to tell you these truths: The war is over. Birdpeople and cyborgs have already formed a union, in the interest of restoring near universal damage and saving lives. Your position within the Army has been terminated. In dishonor. We,” he indicated with an arm gesture the group of men assembled, “have been sent to assist in the rebuilding of this facility. It is my misfortune to have discovered your presence here. I must arrest you, for you are charged by a commission of this Union of the Combined Peoples of Pi, the new government they have formed.”

“But I came here as a friend. I can’t help if your stupid war got in my way,” Dad protested. “You possibly don’t know just yet that I created Pi in a mere novel to be read. And, then, when I discovered certain mathematical principles I felt compelled to make you all real.”

“The Commission has ruled that all was stable, if not perfect, in the time before you appeared.” Joes summoned a dozen troops. All produced rifles as they stepped forward to reinforce the words of the lieutenant. Joes spoke into his radio. As he clapped the radio case closed, he informed Dad that he and Gwenn would shortly be transported to the White Nothing Plain, where the worst prisoners were taken, to be abandoned, with no transportation, food or water. “But, where is Issak Spyng? How is it they could form a

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new government without him?“

Joes spoke with emotion, for he had admired Spyng, even when opposing him. “Gone. Likely dead. Of the great chunks torn away from the surface, he went with one, along with all his lieutenants.”

The officer walked away. Dad started to protest, until the soldiers moved forward, with their weapons at the ready. Gwenn was outraged that they would so disrespect the best Dad that ever stumbled over his own feet and yet still managed to create practically a new universe. She stalked into the midst of these louts and told them so, in no uncertain terms.

The warriors seemed uncertain whether to be angry or to laugh at her. In the end, they prodded the man and his daughter to a landing pad that Gwenn thought looked like a helicopter pad. It was not long before a black spot in the far sky became a whirring drone as big as a small bus. It was piloted by a droid, who dropped it to the tarmac, as gently as a mother lets down her baby into the softness of a cradle. It was of an oval bug shape, with seats enough to haul a dozen troops. Gwenn and her dad were forced inside and seated next to the hatch, which opened on the side. Four soldiers with weapons joined them. After they settled in, the pilot put the vessel in the air. Then they zoomed away at an incredible speed.

Gwenn watched the landscape slipping by below. They passed many gaping holes and eruptions, where Pie and the Earth had clashed. She had no way of knowing some torn out chunks had formed islands in the oceans of Earth. The event had been a near-total catastrophe for both worlds. Of a sudden, she caught a glimpse of the great expanse

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ahead and instantly knew they were approaching The White Nothing Plain. Her heart fluttered when she beheld the vast panorama, where, literally, nothing existed, save a white surface of indeterminate make up and consistency. The drone carried them perhaps fifty miles, before settling on the windless dry surface. Dad began to argue with the soldiers, with the pilot in particular. “You can’t leave my Gwenn out here. I will happily serve my sentence here. But, she’s an innocent child.”

All the while, Gwenn secretly wished Dad would quit the argument. She had no intent to leave him out here alone. When at last they found themselves pushed out and fallen to the ground, she rejoiced that her Dad would not face the ordeal without her. She jumped up and said, “Let’s go, Dad. We’ve got lots of hiking to do.”

Dad. Lifting his head, looked helplessly, hopelessly, around. “Well,” he said at last, “I guess we’ve got to try.”

He sat up and marveled at his daughter’s spirit. Tears sprung to his eyes, just knowing he had not protected her. “Come here, sweetheart. Let us try to think this thing through.”

She returned from where she had wandered and sprawled before him, intent on listening. She fully believed he would find within himself the means for rescuing them.

“I have no idea how far from sustenance and shelter we may be,” he began. “We know not to walk in the direction from which we came. I am for continuing in the line that pilot set and hoping we may come upon something that may save us. What do you think? Are we going to beat this fix?”

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“Let’s go, Dad, while we are strong and full of spirit.”

He gave her a foolish look. “Yes. Yes, of course.”

They walked the seeming endless sheet of white until exhausted. Still they walked. Such was the nature of the land they could not guess whether it was day or night. Eventually, they had to lie and rest. Gwenn fell into a deep sleep, dreaming of drifting through whiteness, until, hours later, she awakened to look into Dad’s anxious face. He was next to tears. “What’s wrong, Daddy?”

Choking back his grief, he said, “I have been trying to wake you for almost half of an hour. I began to worry you were not coming back.”

She sat up, feeling once again strong. “I will always come back to you, Dad. Just as you came back to me.”

Dad‘s tears mixed with gentle smiling. “I have to tell you. I had visitors in my sleep. I could not see them; there was heavy fog. It’s my interpretation that, because I created this planet, the visitors have to be from my imagination or in some otherwise have an affinity for me. I cannot recall the words precisely. But they made me aware that a way underground exists, where there is at least water. If I believe it we just must make a sharp jog to the right and go until the white is erupted as though broken loose by an earthquake. The gap will reveal a tunnel.”

As she rose up once again, Gwenn discovered her legs were a bit sore. She was not so strong as she had thought herself to be. But she could walk on. First, she had to wait until Dad put on his shoes before off they went in search of the mysterious tunnel.

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As Gwenn was beginning to understand for the first time what it is to experience dehydration and to feel herself slowing down, she noted with admiration how Dad was digging in for the long haul. He looked sideways at her and said, “Are you going to be okay? I could let you ride piggyback.”

She waved him off. “I’m fine. I can do this. Don’t worry about me, Dad.”

Over an hour later, she went to her knees. As she went down she just faintly could hear Dad shouting with jubilation. “It’s here. It’s real and it’s here.”

There was that eruption of white, with Dad staring down inside where it gaped, a gap one could easily disappear inside of. As he turned to see what was up with Gwenn, a slab of white material gave way beneath his feet and he plummeted into the hole.

The sound of Dad’s surprised yell infused Gwenn with renewed energy. She scurried across the ground without fully getting to her feet, until she was gawking down the gash, listening for a sound from Dad or any other sort of noise. She stared hopelessly into the hole, more frightened than she had been in her entire life. Then, like a miracle, faintly carried yells filtered to her ears. It was Dad. He was telling her to jump.

So implicit was her trust in her father, she immediately crouched for leaping. Without the slightest hesitation, she launched herself into the unknown.

The words, “Curiouser and curiouser,” were in her head as she went far down a chute with so gradual an incline she barely noticed it curving at first and touching her. Soon it bore the full of her weight, bringing her down at a slower then slower rate until she felt safe and comfortable riding all the way to the bottom. The chute sent her to a

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deck that served as a platform and a choice between three further chutes to continue the ascent. Dad was on hand to greet her.

“Dad, what is this?”

“I am looking for clues,” he said. “Right now, it’s more important to get to the water. So I think we ought to take that right tunnel and keep going down.”

Gwenn went toward the tunnel, but paused, to ask. “Why that one? They are all the same, to me.”

“I can’t say, except the same feeling I had when I received the information to come here suggests that particular one.” He paused, ready to jump. “I will go first. If I made a bad choice I will try to warn you.”

She did not like what she was hearing. “What then, if you made a wrong choice?”

“Then it’s up to you to choose another tunnel.”

Before she could object, Dad went down the chute.

By the time they did three such trips they arrived at a plateau, that had a stream running through the middle. As they bent to cup water with their hands to drink, Dad cautioned Gwenn to drink just a little, at first. After they had drunk and rested a bit, Dad stood with his hands at his hips, looking the landscape over. “I don’t recognize this water, but I am beginning to realize something. The look and pattern of what we have experienced, so far, down here, looks amazingly like the game I played on the game console about the time you were a baby. I was obsessed with that game. If that’s so, the whole planet might be basically hollow, because, on the scope of what we have seen, the

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game would fill a space about that size.”

Gwenn was skeptical. “But how is that at all possible?”

Dad adjusted imaginary glasses on his face, cleared his throat, and continued in a professor’s demeanor, “I began to consider something, during our last minutes on that plain on which we had been stranded. You see, the entire planet is modeled after my book. But the narrative focused just on plot-related material. Except. My mental processes intruded during the construction of the programs that brought Pi into existence. The white plain exists because the book failed to describe that portion. And the game popped in because the programs read my mind. If I am not mistaken, the entire core of Pi is hollow, but for the gigantic parts that make up the game I played.”

Gwenn was fascinated. She didn’t know if she could believe a tale so fantastic. Except, Dad knew what was what. If he said it, she began making up her mind, it absolutely was so. “What are we going to do now?” she wondered aloud.

“Well, we have a source of water and food with the stream,” Dad was figuring. “I want to do some exploring and at the same time do some more calculations before we move on.”

“But what then? How are we going to get out of here?”

Dad brushed a lock of hair away from his daughter’s eyes. “If we follow upstream, we are sure to find the water source. Since there is no water on the white plain, we shall have gotten beyond it. After that, we will be obliged to go before the Commission to deliver a talk. Time is of the essence, but I have to make certain of certain conclusions

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already coming to me.”

“I know you already have the answers in mind. You’re just looking to confirm what you already think.”

Dad regarded her with a mix of sad expressions. “I think,” he said, “ that the entire core of Pi is hollow. That it cannot withstand the stress it will be put under by nature and will come apart at any time. I don’t have enough information to predict when. Suffice to say, I don’t see how it can hold for more than a year or so. This new world is already doomed.”

He chucked under her chin. “Cheer up. Perhaps we can persuade the rocket enterprises of Earth to spare one of their Mars rockets that now routinely make round trips to pick us up and send us home.”

Gwenn felt momentarily relieved at the prospect. Just as quickly she plunged into gloom when she realized the population of Pi would be killed. “But, Dad; what about the cyborgs and Birdpeople? Are they all to die?”

Dad looked at her, mysteriously. “Not necessarily,” he replied. “But that’s enough of speculation for now. I must get to work.”

He wandered off, leaving Gwenn to while away the hours near the stream, where she played with a friendly fish, then eventually found a comfortable spot for napping. Settling back, with friends and family reeling across her consciousness, she noted, one at a time, Mom, Tyler, Ophelia, Queen, Mr. Greenlow, Ms. Bloom - even Mr. Combs - before drifting into a sound sleep.

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Later, as she rubbed the sleep away from her eyes, she wondered when Dad might return. She stood up and discovered him sitting at the water, soaking his feet in its cool flowing stream. He waved to her, then kicked to send the same fish which she had gotten to know retreating, then coming back to touch his left pinkie, repeatedly. “What have you found out?” she said, coming as she spoke, to sit beside him.

“I learned,” he replied, brushing a tangle out of her hair, “that this is a big project. Too big for me alone. I need help planning and then we need a whole team to make it work.”

His head wrinkled in thought.

“What, exactly, Dad? I don’t understand.”

Dad was lost in his schemes. “Move this planet,” he muttered, absently. “The question: how far? Where to?”

Gwenn did not want to contradict her father. But, “Nobody can move planets. Not even this one.”

This brought Dad’s attention to the surface. “But, I can move this one. It has built-in mechanisms that make it rather simple. The inner game structure making Pi hollow can also be manipulated and utilized for making the sort of thruster that can send it anywhere. I just need a competent team to work with me.”

He took his socks in hand and began to slip them over his feet. “Now, he said, “I’ve calculated that following this stream will bring us to a fissure that lets us escape, very near to Pythonville. There ought to be soldiers bivouacked there, many of whom are my

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good friends. I could persuade them to get me an audience before the Counsel to plead my case. I’ve gotten you into a grim situation. I’m going to get you out of it.”

He was standing, after pulling on and tying his shoes, ready to get started. They set out backtracing the flow, on occasion discovering waterfalls at which point they were obliged to seek out higher levels in the game board in order to keep with the course of the stream.

“Why don’t we see the game playing?” Gwenn pondered at one point.

“It can’t be active unless somebody punches the on/off button,” Dad explained. “I’m not certain what would be our fate should that ever happen. But the pieces are programmed to attack what they encounter.”

By the time they came into the final stretch, natural daylight could be seen pouring down the hole through which they were hoping to crawl up and out to the surface. But luck turned against them, even as success seemed imminent. For the mutual gouging between this planet and the Earth had weakened varying points to allow debris to drop into the game works. One crucial wound had caused some blocks of dirt and stone to teeter, until a dead tree limb dropped, the result of a strong wind gust, causing one of those loosened blocks to tumble into the hole. It struck the on/off switch like a great forefinger, springing the game to life.

All passages inside Pie’s core became alive with a menagerie of gigantic action figures, animals all, programmed to attack innocent deer and bunnies. But, with no one to play this version of the game the innocent creatures all were canceling out at the game’s

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beginning. Just Gwenn and her father were in the path of these beasts, which moved very deliberately, until within the proximity of a target and were programmed to strike with lightning movement. The manufactured creature suddenly stalking their corridor had arrived in the guise of a cartoonish maliciously grinning gorilla.

Gwenn and her Dad became aware of the danger even as they approached the incline and began to seek some footing to climb upward. Just when a safe getaway was almost assured, Gwenn lost her traction, beginning to slide back down the mossy surface. She grabbed at Dad’s outstretched hand, missed, then tobogganed to the bottom, straight at the fake gorilla which now rapidly reversed, left to right, right to left, repeatedly, for it had detected a target, but was uncertain where to strike. Her feet slammed into the gorilla’s heel. The beast magically vanished.

Dad had scrambled madly down the incline, intent on rescuing his daughter. Gwenn looked up in time to see him trip on his own feet and slide the rest of the way down, basically on his chest and chin. As the momentum eroded, the rest of his body slammed down and came to a rest, battered and still.

Gwenn kneeled beside him. “Are you okay?” she said.

His eyes popped open. “We have got to move quickly,” he said, rolling over and taking to his feet. “Either another gorilla or else a charging rhinoceros will replace that one at any second now.”

The prediction proved accurate as a huger than huge rhino suddenly bore down on them. Gwenn began an ascent up the grade, with Dad closely at her heels. His shoestring

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had become untied in the last few minutes. His other shoe stepped on it and he stumbled right under a down-coming rhino foot. He reflexively threw up his hands to block the impact, but Gwenn knew he had no chance at all.

Except - In the final nanosecond the foot vanished. The creature vanished. Unbeknownst to the terrified nearly victims, a second chunk of dirt and rock had dislodged, to tumble down and slam onto the on/off button, making the game once again dormant.

They huddled in the corridor, recovering.

Almost an hour later they stood on a rise, looking down on a camp with a makeshift barracks that had been collapsed by the battering between the two planets. “I was stationed here, before the borgs captured me,“ Dad observed. “Let’s take a look around down there.”

The whole place had been rendered useless. As Dad poked around the caved-in roof and walls, Gwenn toured the damaged vehicles and planes in the field. On making an important discovery, she ran breathlessly to her father. Unable to speak for the moment, she pointed to the field and led him far enough to see for himself that she had found a perfectly intact drone, just like the one that had carried them into exile. He was delighted. “This can get us to the Counsel in record time. First, we shall eat.”

Dad sent Gwenn crawling through a space too small to fit himself into, letting her reach the barracks pantry to forage for food. She pitched out some cans through the opening, then scrambled back with a few bundles of cakes and bread. It was a meal for

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the hungry and soldiers. She could have kept right on eating, once they had emptied out all of the wrappers and the cans. Full of renewed vigor, she joined Dad in preparing to lift off in the drone. She became comfortable in a passenger’s seat and she watched her father tinker with the controls a bit. After she had waited too long and nothing happened she asked what was wrong.

“Battery’s dead,” he said, exasperated. “Why don’t you rest in your seat. It will take a bit to get the generator to charge it up.”

She had eaten and now rested much too comfortably and so quickly went to sleep. She was awakened by gruff voices and the awareness someone other than Dad had intruded inside the drone. A soldier with a small waddle and pointy beak asked her to step out of the drone.

She saw that Dad had gotten the battery charged and the generator put away before being interfered with by a group of ten troops. Fending her way among them, Gwenn reached her father and put her arms around him. “I don’t know these men,” he told her. “They’ve sent for Commander Jernman Jogans, whom I served with. Everything rides on his way of receiving my request for help.”

Gwenn stared at these soldiers, curious as to why her father had populated his novel with what seemed biological impossibilities, of Birdpeople and cyborgs. She knew the lack of high education held her from entertaining the possibilities a scientist like her Dad would have drawn upon. There was a growing list of questions for him, once this adventure was ended.