Part 3: Learning to Drive

The rest of Oliver’s first week was fairly tame compared to the pandemonium of his very first day, at least by dimension-hopping standards. The young koala laid awake in his bed that night in limbo, his eyelids heavy over his burning eyes: too awake to sleep, too exhausted to move.

Despite his new coworker’s encouragement and praise, especially after saving his life, he still felt what could best be described as inadequate. Like he was in completely over his head, that he was risking his life for minimum wage, just to let everyone down back home, and that, eventually, he’d be killed in some horrible way or completely break, also letting down all of these new people who welcomed him. Sure, that was neither here nor there, and more than likely all in his head, and he knew that. But he questioned whether he really had what it took to be a delivery driver, or whether he even wanted to be one.

The next morning, he laid in bed as his alarm blared. He rubbed his temples, before burying his face in his pillow. He really, really didn’t want to have to get up, get ready, and walk back in there. But something in him felt determined. Maybe forced was a better word. He really couldn’t tell. He remembered how cool Marcus had been about… everything.

Later the previous evening, as they cleaned up shop, Oliver had went to take out the massive trash bag, which was as big as him and stuffed with everything known to man. It leaked a juice all over his uniform, which still smelled like old tomato sauce. The large bear took the bag, and effortlessly threw it over his shoulder with the others.

“I got it from here, man.”

“Thanks.” Oliver smiled.

“No problem. Welcome to the team.” Marcus returned Oliver’s smile, adjusting the five trash bags slung over his shoulder. “Now scram.”

He’d only known him for a day, but he seemed like a pretty cool dude. Oliver’s bones and muscles creaked as he stretched out as he told himself the things he had to look forward to. He looked in the mirror as a stubborn look came across his face. He was going to be the best damn delivery guy he could, and give this his all. Even if it killed him.

The entire process was still new to him. Over the course of the next week, he was slow at making pizzas, he took wrong turns on deliveries, going over the 30 minute mark once or twice, and he didn’t know where things were, but he started to become familiar with the process. He’d been working on a pizza, as Professor Pizza appeared behind him, analyzing it with some sort of device.

“NEWCOMER! IT IS JUST AS I HAVE FEARED. THE GRAVITATIONAL FORCE UPON THIS PIZZA IS CAUSING IT TO COMPLETELY DESTABILIZE ON A SUBATOMIC LEVEL. BE WARY, NEWCOMER, FOR SITUATIONS SUCH AS THIS CAN BE TRULY CATACLYSMIC!”

Oliver stepped back from the pizza. “What? Wha- what does all that mean?”

“USE LESS SAUCE.”

He also still didn’t know very much about the wing guy. They hadn’t spoken to each other much, or worked together much. He still didn’t even know this kid’s name. All Oliver had managed to figure out was that he listened to a lot of mumble rap, and called his first attempt at making wings “actual trash”.

As for the job itself, Marcus and Oliver had made several, far more successful deliveries to different worlds. They went to a world with amethyst skies, where the snow was the color of peaches and cream and bore little, flavorful crystals. Oliver had been distracted, analyzing them with a close eye and a curious sniff, when a snowball, hurtling at the speed of sound, hit him in the back of the head. He turned around, and another snowball hit him square in his large, black nose and knocked him onto the ground. Marcus stuck out his tongue, and gave him the middle finger. Oliver narrowed his eyes as he made a snowball in his hands.

“Put the pizza down.”

The same day as the mother of all snowball fights, the two leapt between perfectly disk-shaped islands floating in an endless, emerald sky. The cloud villagers mocked them and cheered them as they watched them attempt to traverse. At one point, Oliver got a running start and leapt onto an island, only to lose his footing. He screamed as he slipped, preparing to fall into oblivion, as something grabbed onto his leg, dangling him as his hat tumbled below. He looked up to see the upside-down panda holding him over the edge, his leg in his iron-like grip.

“I got you man! Heh, I guess now we’re even.”

Oliver caught his breath. “Thanks.”

“Don’t thank me yet. I could still drop you.” He loosened his grip slightly, feigning dropping him, as Oliver shrieked. Marcus roared with laughter.

“Just pull me up already, you git!” Marcus pulled him to the edge, as the two sat, panting.

“You know, this would’ve been a lot easier if we didn’t leave the jetpacks sitting on the counter.”

By far the weirdest delivery they had been on so far, was a world where everything looked pastel, and toy-like. To their surprise, the customer, as well as all residents of the town, were only babies! Marcus looked into the box, seeing the package of pizza-flavored baby food, created by Professor Pizza on a whim.

“Okay, sweetie, here’s your order… uh… that’ll be forty-one MoCred.” The little girl placed a wad of pink, crumpled-up play money on the ground in front of them.

“This many!”

As they drove away, Marcus counted the bills and crunched the numbers.

“Okay, either she tipped us almost 200% because she was nice, or because babies suck at math. I don’t- dude should we take this?”

“Well, she clearly wanted us to have it. Plus they’ve put together a whole little society…”

“Yeah, you’re right. Still, it’s weird being the oldest people here. Oh right dude, I meant to tell you! Our calendars back in Mobius are really weird, it’s not like most places.” Oliver looked on with interest.

“How so?”

“Well for starters, our years are 365 days long, with a weird extra day every four years.” Oliver’s face scrunched up.

“I- what? That’s so bloody weird…”

“Yeah and we always have 12 months in the year, but they can be anywhere from 28 to 31 days.”

“Oh, sure, why wouldn’t they be?” Oliver rubbed his forehead. “How do you even keep track?”

“Oh, that’s the neat part. 90% of the time we don’t.” Oliver sat there, counting on his fingers.

“So that would make me… oh gosh, that’d make me twenty-three!”

“I told you, man. It’s weird.”

It was very rare these days for Oliver to have time to actually sit down and have time to think to himself. A delivery driver’s job was never ending, and he rarely stayed in the same place for long. More often than not, he came home completely exhausted. However, as time went on, there were some deliveries that he would come to look forward to. Oliver realized something retroactively about that first day. Although it was traumatic and terrifying, it was excitement. It was memorable, the kind of rush he hadn’t had in years, if not ever. Could this be what led him to come back the next day, and the day after?

The pair of drivers returned to the shop after yet another delivery. They were greeted by an eager Professor Pizza, who appeared in front of them.

“MARCUS CHANG! NEWCOMER! WELCOME! QUICKLY, TO THE BACK!” The two glanced at each other, and went back to the kitchen. Professor Pizza had a mini laboratory set up on the white cutting board, including various gadgets and an elongated, oddly-shaped skull.

“What’s up, Professor?” Marcus asked, his eyes glancing at the specimen.

“I AM SO GLAD THAT YOU ASK, MARCUS CHANG! AFTER DESCRIBING IN EXHILARATING DETAIL YOUR RUN-IN BACK IN DIMENSION 44M-470λ, I TOOK THE LIBERTY OF RESEARCHING THE SPECIMENS YOU CAME INTO CONTACT WITH. THEY ARE KNOWN BY MANY FELLOW LIFE FORMS AS ATRAXXANS. ATRAXXAN HUNTSMEN RULED THE UNDERGROUND OF THE FOREST AS APEX PREDATORS, COMING OUT AT NIGHT TO HUNT.”

Oliver raised his hand. “Our encounter was in the middle of the day. What were they doing out then? And I’ve been wondering, why was the forest-”

“SILENCE NEWCOMER, FOR ALL WILL BE ANSWERED IN DUE TIME.”

“Sorry.” Professor Pizza floated closer.

“KNOWN FOR THEIR HIGH INTELLIGENCE, DISPROPORTIONATE STRENGTH, DEADLY VENOM, FEARSOME STEALTH, AND IMPENETRABLE EXOSKELETON, THESE CREATURES HAVE RECENTLY BEGUN DEVELOPING AT A BREAKNECK SPEED INTO RUDIMENTARY CIVILIZATIONS, AS EVIDENCED BY THE DEFORESTATION IN SEVERAL MAJOR AREAS, CRUDE YET INDUSTRIAL INFRASTRUCTURE, AND LIMITED MOBIAN TECHNOLOGY FOUND IN THE FORESTS. EITHER THIS IS DUE TO OUTSIDE INFLUENCE, EXTERNAL CONDITIONS RESULTING IN PROPER ADAPTATION… OR, MORE THAN LIKELY, A CRUCIAL COMBINATION OF BOTH.” Marcus loudly yawned. The meatball inched closer. “YES YES, GET ALL OF YOUR YAWNS OUT NOW, MARCUS CHANG, FOR, IF YOU AREN’T TOO BUSY GETTING YOUR BEAUTY SLEEP, YOU WILL HEAR OF MY EXHILARATING DISCOVERY.”

“You couldn’t just open with your exhilarating discovery?”

“I WILL DISINTEGRATE YOU.” Marcus rolled his eyes. “ANYWAYS, BEFORE I WAS SO RUDELY INTERRUPTED BY A CERTAIN MARCUS CHANG, I ANALYZED THE DNA STRUCTURE OF THIS HERE SPECIMEN. THEIR BIOLOGY IS UNLIKE ANYTHING IN THIS WORLD. EVIDENTLY, THE COMBINATION OF TOMATO SAUCE AND CHEESE IS EXTREMELY ADDICTIVE TO THEIR SPECIES, THOUGH ONE COULD ARGUE THAT PROFESSOR PIZZA’S PIZZAS ARE EXTREMELY ADDICTIVE TO ALL SPECIES!”

Oliver perked up. “The ladles and cans we found-”

“AH YES, THE PARAPHERNALIA! IT APPEARS YOU TWO WERE MERE VICTIMS OF A SETUP, IN AN UNDERGROUND PIZZA LABORATORY.”

“An underground pizza lab? Man, people sure are serious about their pizza." Marcus remarked.

“YOU SEE, NEWCOMER, LET THIS BE A LESSON; THE MAW OF COMPULSION, DESPERATION, GREED, AND PIZZA SAUCE IS ALL-CONSUMING!” The professor levitated the hollow skull and shoved it in Oliver’s face. Oliver stumbled back, visibly startled. “LOOK AT ME! I WAS ONCE A MAN! HOWDY HOWDY HOWDY!” Its mandibles clicked together as the Professor made it ‘talk’. “ALRIGHT, ENOUGH OF SUCH CHILDISH THINGS, FOR WE’VE GOT TO BACK TO WORK, AND BY ‘WE’VE’, I MEAN ‘YOU’VE’!”

The two walked out of the kitchen and onto the sales floor, cleaning off tables.

“I don’t think I like ventriloquism anymore,” Oliver muttered, looking worse for wear.

“Well, that makes all of us.”

Meanwhile, a paunchy, vaguely humanoid fly in a gas station uniform stood at the counter, talking to the wing guy, who sat at the register, disinterested. His folksy, bubbly voice carried throughout the restaurant.

“So anyways, I was thinkin’ earlier, right? There’s only one thing in the whole world that’s got a bottom at the top of it.”  The wing guy let out a disinterested grunt, which the large fly mistook for a reply.

“Nope, it’s your legs.” He pointed at the teenager and lowered his head, as if he’d just dropped the truth bomb of the century. Marcus turned to look over at him.

“Stan!” The middle-aged fly turned around, the graying whiskers on his face forming a mustache, and his large, expressive eyes taking up the entire top half of his face.

“Aw, hi there!” His wings buzzed excitedly as he walked over. “Workin’ hard or hardly workin’?”

“I think you know the answer.” The fly chuckled, turning to Oliver. “I don’t think we met before, I’m Stan.” Oliver smiled, shaking his bristly hand.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you. My name’s Oliver, I just started here.”

“Well, be sure to keep this guy here in check.” He pointed at Marcus, as Oliver let out a forced chuckle.

“This here’s Stan Bzzszyszwicz. He’s always in here on his breaks, in between shifts at his fifteen different part-time jobs.”

“Yeah, I’m a bit of a regular. Walked in one day ‘cause the light was on, been coming here for over three years. Which, if you think about it, is like half my life so far.”

“Golly.” Oliver looked on in amazement.

“Ya know, that kid at the register reminds me a little of one of mine. Too bad the ex-wife took ‘em all.” Marcus scrunched his nose.

“Oof. Tough break.”

“Eh, is what it is.” The three sat down at the freshly cleaned, citrus-scented table. “You fellas hear about the attacks over in Sector 7225?” Oliver looked confused, as Marcus seemed to know all too well what he was referring to.

“Yeah, it’s messed up. Up to what, nineteen people now?”

“Twenty-two and a half. Don’t ask me how that’s even possible.”

“Er, sorry but… what attacks?” Oliver spoke up.

“Some fella calls himself Lord Over… somethin’…”

“Lord Uberkill the Death Giant,” Marcus butted in. “Awesome name, awful person.”

“Yeah that’s the guy. Runs an underground terrorist group that’s been carrying out attacks all over Mobius. Enforcers can’t seem to catch this joker.”

Oliver grew visibly concerned. “My goodness.”

“Yeah, you boys be careful out there.” Oliver realized not only did he not know about this at all, but that he didn’t even know where Sector 7225 was. He knew this place was in Sector 7208, and he was currently living in 7150. Was that close? He’d spent so much time exploring the rest of the multiverse, he hadn’t really gotten to see or hear much of Mobius itself yet.

Marcus leaned in. “Wonder what he wants, anyway?”

“I don’t know, but tell ya what, if he ever comes near me or my kids and tries all that hooey, I’ll kick the crap out of him.” Oliver and Marcus glanced out of each other. This man was clearly in no fighting shape.

“Here.” The wing guy carelessly plopped his order down in front of him on the table and walked away.

“Thanks, guy!” He stood up. “Welp, I gotta fly. My shift over at the gas station starts in a couple minutes. Stop by for a hot dog, why don’tcha?” He opened the triangular pizza box, checking the contents. “Absolutely beautiful. Y'know, there’s only one thing in the world better than a good slice of pizza, and that’s poop. Ya ever had poop before?”

“I- What?!” If Oliver had a drink, he would’ve spit it out onto the table. Stan checked his watch.

“Ope, I’m gonna be late. Marcus, always a pleasure. Nice meetin’ ya, bud!” He quickly rushed out of the restaurant, the little bell jingling behind him. Oliver quickly composed himself.

“Er, he seemed nice.” Marcus grinned.

“Oh, Stan’s the best. We love that dude.” Marcus went back to cleaning, as Wing Guy walked over to Oliver.

“I hate that guy and his stupid jokes. Oliver turned to look at him.

“What? Why?”

“‘Cause.” He grabbed a handful of cheese puffs from a crinkled bag and started chewing them with his mouth open, as cheesy, orange crumbs fell all over the table they had cleaned. He proceeded to loudly lick his fingers and wipe them on his pants without washing his hands.  Oliver looked over in annoyance and disgust.

What was this bloke’s deal anyways?

Oliver carefully unwrapped the plastic packaging and held the tiny mechanism between his fingers, inspecting it closely. Among Mobius’ amenities unfathomable to worlds such as his own, this was by far the coolest one he’d gotten his hands on. Using an unfurled paperclip, he popped out the SIM card in his phone, sliding in the little, purple square.

This would allow him to contact a good percentage of dimensions accessible via Mobius while inside the infinite city, including his own. It wasn’t cheap, by any means. He’d sold his prized collection of antique typewriters, which he’d been collecting for over half his life, and been forced to sell his pet hermit crab, and on top of all that he still had to cough up a month’s rent. He just hoped he’d sent little Melvin to a good home. Still, it was all a small price to pay to not be a stranger to his family.

He sat on his bed with anticipation, as the phone rang. Eventually, the video feed went through, as the tall, violet-haired kangaroo appeared on the screen, in a dimly-lit shop.

“Babe!” Her face lit up.

“Oy, Iris!” He heard another woman’s voice in the background, as well as a faint buzzing sound. Iris looked off in the distance.

“What’s that?… Alright! Marcie says hi!”

“Oh. Hi Marcie!” He tilted the phone to wide screen. “Where are you two anyways?”

“Oh, we’re out on the town, getting tattoos.”

“What’re you getting one of those for? It’s not like you’ll be able to see it anyway, you’re covered in fur.” Iris rolled her eyes.

“Unless I shave it all off.” Oliver’s eyes widened with shock.

“Tell me it’s not your pouch.” She laughed.

“It’s on my leg, silly.” She tilted the phone down to show the tattoo artist, honed in on her craft. The artist awkwardly smiled as she inked in the half-finished tribal pattern on the shaved patch on Iris’ thigh.

“Bloody hell, Iris.” He chuckled, as he heard the unintelligible sounds of Marcie’s voice in the background, as she turned the camera back up to her face. “I don’t wanna interrupt what you’re doing, I just wanna say hi-”

“Babe, stop, you’re not interrupting! I swear.”

“Really, I can call back.”

“You’re not interrupting, honest. Don’t you dare hang up!”

“I’ll do it!” He hovered his finger over the red button.

“What, you don’t call me for three weeks and now the second we finally get to talk you try to shut me up?” She brushed her bright purple hair over her shoulder. “How’s life in Mobius treating you?”

“Alright so far. It’s massive, lots going on. You can hardly find your way around here.” He opened the window of his apartment and showed her the view of the city, whose streets were alive and bustling, and whose buildings looked like something out of a movie. A hovering vehicle of some sorts flew over the rush hour traffic of the packed streets.

“Oh, wow!” Iris hadn’t seen anything quite like it.

“It’s like when we went to Singapore, times, like, fifty.”

“That’s so cool.” She looked on. “Where’s it at, again? America?”

“No, it’s…” Oliver paused, attempting to find an easy explanation, but the words escaped him. How did he say this without sounding completely mad. “It’s sort of its own thing, called a hub. It’s this world, where you can access all of these other worlds, and it’s this big commerce center between the different worlds…” She blinked and tilted her head.

“What’re you on, mate?” The more Oliver attempted to explain to Iris, the more unhinged and insane he sounded. Perhaps this place was already rubbing off on him. Dimensional gates had only been in their universe for a couple of years, and only showed up in Australia a few months ago. Oliver scratched his head. “You’ve gotta see it to believe it.”

“I guess so. Maybe I’ll have to come and visit and see for myself.” Oliver grinned.

“How’s Maryborough?” She shrugged.

“Same as when you left.”

“Good, so no one’s blown the place up. That’s a ripper.”

“Not yet, at least.” She chuckled. “People keep asking me about you. Now I’ve actually got something to tell them.”

She winced with pain and flicked her ear, as the needle hit a tender spot. Oliver had almost forgotten she was in the chair.

The two caught up, as they talked about people from home that Oliver hadn’t seen since before he’d left- Iris had been working on a new song, and just booked a gig out in Hervey Bay, Promiti and Erin were engaged, Wizz and Andy got into a massive fight, Nadine’s boyfriend had mad cow disease… The more she talked, the more he thought that her and Marcus would get along well. Oliver opened his mouth, as if there were something he’d wanted to say, but the words escaped him, as he realized there was nothing really to say. So they sat, him in the bed and her in the chair, basking in each other’s presence. It wasn’t quite the same with them being a literal world apart, and not sitting in each other’s warmth. Iris cut herself off mid sentence as her head snapped over to Marcie.

“Oh wow!!! Babe, look at that!” She quickly panned the camera over to Marcie’s reddened shoulder, which bore a black widow spider, in the center of a spider web which ran down her upper arm.

“Heh, that’s cool.” Marcie’s high-pitched voice could be heard in the background as Iris switched the camera back to herself.

“Alright, alright! I’ll catch you later, Ollie.”

“Alright, text me when you get home. Love you.”

“Love you more.” She smiled through her long lashes, as she nuzzled the screen.

Oliver hung up the phone, as the screen closed, leaving him staring at the home screen. It was nice hearing her voice. He sighed, lying on his bed. A part of him wanted so badly to swallow his pride and return home. He’d forgotten just how… distant he was from everyone he knew and loved. He missed even such things as the cream-and-red colonial architecture of Maryborough, which he’d passed by every day and hardly noticed. However, he couldn’t deny that, in the short time he’d been living in Mobius, a lot had changed. He’d changed. He’d already nearly died, ventured to several different dimensions, gotten a cybernetic implant to allow him to draw a perfect circle, had to exorcise a demon out of the toilet at work… He feared that, sooner or later, all his friends back home would become strangers, that he’d forget their faces.

Oliver tried to push the doubt to the back of his mind, as always. On a night like this, he’d usually cuddle up next to Iris and watch a movie or browse through Jetpunk or Geoguessr. He sat up, looking at all of the hustle and bustle outside the window, the artificial moon faintly visible in the coral sky, the floating twin temples in the distance connected by a chrome bridge. The world felt so giant, that it made him feel so small in comparison. He held the little, ebony box he took with him, the same one he’d taken with him to Singapore, the same one he took wherever he went.

“Amazing, isn’t it?”

He polished off the engraved, bronze plate on the box, which simply read;

JAMES MARSHALL HENRY

He gripping the box tightly, pressing it to his chest. “Did I make the right call?”

The hospital room was simple, sterile, and white. A golden light trickled in through the curtains and onto the nightstand. A younger Oliver sat in the plastic-backed chair by his father’s bed, looking at his phone.

“Yeah, so according to the email it’s worth 25% of our grade this semester, and we’ve got to present it.” He showed the phone to his dad, who looked on with surprise.

“Bloody hell! They’ve only given you 5 days?!”

“She always does this.” Usually, whenever people wanted to talk about school, all Oliver wanted to do was change the topic. It seemed as though, before everything started going on with his father’s lungs, the stress of university had consumed his entire life. It still did, that much was for sure, but right now, it was a nice distraction.

“You’d better get started tonight then, break it into chunks.”

“Yeah I know, I tried to start it earlier. Still, I doubt I’ll get anything done tonight, what with… everything.”

“Oh, knock it off.” The old koala gave a gravelly chuckle. “Mate, I’ve already told you not to worry about it. You sound like your mum.”

“Still.” Oliver’s ears sank. How was he supposed to just… ‘not worry about it’? Tomorrow morning was the big procedure. If everything went well, they said his chances of getting better would likely double. How was he supposed to just sit down and focus on Wallerstein’s model of core, periphery, and semi-periphery states like nothing was happening?

“I’ll text you when it’s all said and done. Trust me, she’ll be right.” The news droned on in the background, on the little hospital television. “Oy, you seen this yet? They’re building some kind of big gate in New York.” Oliver looked at the shoddy footage of the half-constructed project, as it cut back to the reporter’s airbrushed face.

“Oh yeah. I remember hearing about that. Dr. Ebrahimi mentioned it in her lecture.”

“They’re saying it’s supposed to be some kinda portal to some world… we’ll see how all that pans out.” His tone was skeptical, as if he were reading a fake article online.

“By the looks of it, apparently there’s actually some credibility to what they’re saying.”

“You’d probably know more about it than I do.” He looked over at his son, as his eyes sank. “Always wanted to go there, you know.” Oliver gave his dad a teasing smile.

“What, to another plane of existence by a so-called portal?”

“No, you git, New York.” He playfully shoved Oliver, before he stifled a cough into his blanket. “I’m tellin’ you, you’ve got to get out and see the world while you’re young. Gets tougher once you’re old and sick, that’s for damn sure.”

“You’re not-” Oliver paused. He wanted to say his dad wasn’t old yet, but he certainly wasn’t getting any younger.

“Not what? Old?”

“I mean, you said it, not me.” He chuckled, which turned into a wet cough. He pounded his chest.

“Don’t make me laugh.”

“Sorry.” Oliver looked down onto the floor.

“You know, last time I even left Queensland, I was probably ’round your age.”

“Wow.” Oliver couldn’t believe it. That was longer than he’d even been alive.

“I’ll tell you what, once I’m out of this place and get these bloody tubes out, we’ll all get our passports in order and take a trip somewhere. You, me, Mabel, and your mum. See if Uncle Dave’s up for it. How about it?”

“I’d love that.” He smiled at his father.

“Mark it in your calendar. Don’t forget.”

Oliver got back to his dorm later that evening, around 8pm, having eaten on campus before heading back. His roommate, a shaggy, red Bornean orangutan sitting on the couch, was playing some first person shooter on the with the volume cranked up all the way, a controller in his hands and a second controller in his feet. Hopefully the RA wouldn’t give them any flack for the noise.

“Oy, turd.”

“Hey, idiot.” Oliver sat down on his bed as he unzipped his book bag, poring through his notes, as his roommate slammed something and cussed at the TV in the other room. Suddenly, his phone began to vibrate in his pocket. He checked to see who was calling. It was a number he didn’t recognize. His stomach dropped. He apprehensively swiped right to answer.

“Hello?”