“Miles?” The radio made its stuttering bleeping noise as the walkie-talkie cut back to silence.
Miles rolled over in his bed, and fumbled in the dark beside it, looking for the rectangle of plastic with its wonky extendable metal antenna. His fingers felt the nub of the retracted metal, with its small disk at its apex.
Static again, then Robbie’s voice. “Miles? Are you up? Over.”
Miles groaned, pulling the walkie up by its little disk, rolling onto his back. He kept his eyes closed as he held the walkie pressed against his temple. Reluctantly, he pushed the talk button.
“Robbie? Over.”
“Sorry,” the connection dropped for a moment and then came back. “You were sleeping?”
Miles cracked an eyelid in the direction of his nightstand, the flip dials of the gently lit face read 1:07am. “Yes, Robbie. It is 1 in the morning. What else would I be doing, man?”
“Yeah, sleeping. Sorry, Miles. Can we talk?” Robbie sounded hesitant, his voice further than the actual distance of the other side of the walkie talkie.
Miles sat up, rubbing his eyes. “What is wrong? Are you ok? Over.”
“Yeah, ok. I had the dream again.”
“The playhouse?” Miles’s eyes were forced a little wider. “Over.”
“It was different this time. You were there,” Robbie dropped, another beep. “Sorry, had to move my hand, I am hiding under my bed.”
“That bad, huh?”
“I don’t know why it scares me so bad.”
Robbie’s voice broke, he must have been weeping all along and Miles hadn’t picked up on it. Miles sat a for a moment thinking it through.
Robbie’s voice came back, tentative. “You still there? Uh, over.”
Miles pushed the button. “I am.”
“What should I do?” A question that was not a question. It was fear.
“Tell me everything,” Miles swallowed lightly, swinging a foot over the side of his bed and tiptoeing lightly to his bedroom door. He slowly pressed closed, hoping that his voice would not travel down the hallway to his parent’s room.
“The usual dream is that I am at the hideout by myself, reading. To get away from my sisters. They are annoying me. When the dream starts, I know it is a dream, but I can’t change it… I have to watch it. I have to watch it play out. This time, though, you were with me. And I wasn’t reading, we were waiting. Patiently. That is what made this one so scary.” Hiss, static… pause for a moment. “We knew it was coming. And we sat there. I was even in the same PJs I am wearing right now. It was so weird.”
“What was I wearing?”
“Uh, your Star Wars shirt, the one with the x-wing. Why?”
Miles looked down at his t-shirt, pulling at the x-wing that was crossing his chest. He had ran out of clean pajamas. “No reason.”
“Miles, we sat there, waiting for it to arrive,” Robbie sniffed, he must have been regaining his composure. “We saw the light filter through the trees as it come to us. In my other dreams, I always run. This time… we just sat there.”
“Isn’t that good? Doesn’t that mean we are fighting instead of running?” Miles tried.
“The thing, I know it is scary, like it will kill us. It could kill both of us now, Miles,” Robbie’s voice cracked again. “I am certain of it.”
“Robbie, you are safe at home, right?”
“Yes.”
“It was just a dream,” Miles tried, rubbing at the corner of his eye.
“Miles, uh… I think I need to go the playhouse,” Robbie started crying again, just sobbing into the microphone on his side.
“What?!” Miles exclaimed. He clamped a hand over his mouth as a furious afterthought.
Crackle, crackle, like tin foil on the other side, then dead air. Robbie filtered through again. “The nightmare has been the same for months, but tonight, the dream was different. I need you to come with me. I can feel it.”
“Are you being serious?”
“Miles,” Robbie’s voice was full of dread. Even over the air, it weighed heavily with palpability. “I have to go… uh… I have to go. Or the dreams will never stop. If I go alone, I know I will die. But, if you are with me, we stand a chance.”
Miles felt perplexed. “A chance for what?”
“I don’t know. But I have to go. I have to, Miles. Please come with me.”
Miles swallowed and felt the decision already taking shape in his chest. “Yeah. I will meet you at Burnside in ten minutes. Over and out.”
Robbie sounded as if a massive weight had been lifted. “Thanks Miles. Ten minutes over and out.”
Miles kept his t-shirt on, and slipped on his jeans from earlier in the day, fumbling as he tried to pull his jacket on quickly. With one arm in his jacket, the other hanging free, Miles grabbed his baseball bat without a thought, shoved it into his backpack and zipped it closed around the taped handle. He opened the door to his room and snuck down the hall, careful to jump over the third stair so it could not betray him with its squeal of nail on wood. He unlocked the side entrance off the garage, rolling his bike into the grass. Jumping on his bike, pedaling through the dew laden grass, leaving a contrail of a rubber tire behind him.
Robbie was waiting at Burnside, the stop sign sitting at an angle since some drunk driver had tagged it a few months ago. The street sign that said Burnside Avenue itself had a bullet hole at one corner from a 22, so the sign said Burnside Avenu, with the e decapitated. Robbie had not bothered to change out of his pajama shirt or sweatpants, only adding his puffy jacket over the top.
“Hey,” Robbie called from his Huffy bike.
“Hey.”
“I owe you. A comic?”
“Amazing Spider-man 252?” Miles attempted with a crooked smile.
“Sure. All yours.”
“Wow, you are messed up. Your Amazing Spider-Man 252, seriously?”
Robbie nodded, his eyes bloodshot and wide. “I need your help. It’s worth it.”
Miles’s brow furrowed and he shrugged. “We will worry about it later, Robbie. Let’s go?”
“Yeah.”
Robbie pushed at his pedals hard, pulling simultaneously at his handlebars, forcing himself up the hill. Miles followed close behind, as they pedaled in silence through the fog. The dirt track into the woods split off the main road near the water tower, winding its way along the crick towards the Patterson’s property. The overlook was an ignorable place for most of the youth in town, as it was not accessible by car, and did not offer much seclusion to make out. But for a bunch of kids just looking to build a hideout or secret clubhouse, it was perfect. Calling it the playhouse made it sound juvenile, but that is what Miles and Robbie liked about it. It was something old and shared between two kids that were on the cusp of puberty. They crested the hill, following the dirt track from the road, and in about 10 minutes of riding they found their shared place.
Robbie jumped off his bike, parking it against the customary tree and Miles followed suit.
“What now?” Miles asked cautiously.
Robbie shrugged. “We wait.”
“Just follow your dream?”
“I don’t think we need to,” Robbie stammered, his eyes going wide and his cheeks flushed red. He started to shake as if cold, pointing at the playhouse. “It is already here.”
Miles spun, dropping his backpack to one shoulder, and pulling the bat free. The playhouse was softly glowing, throbbing with a gentle blue glow. Miles pointed his bat like a sword, holding it in front of himself like he could stab something with it. “Stay behind me Robbie.”
Robbie nodded furtively, still pointing. Miles took a step forward, but the state of the playhouse did not change. The rough lean-to sides of the recovered plywood, hastily nailed to the small trees at the corners, looked as it always had. It’s roof was two walls of a portapotty long lost in a storm, with the corner serving as the weather proof peak of the roof. Small windows were cut into the plywood, covered on the inside with stapled swaths of fabric, giving no insight into waited within. Miles took another step, and another. He could hear Robbie’s breathing behind him, the rush inwards and outwards as he unknowingly toed the edge of hyperventilation. Miles pulled the bat over his shoulder, bringing his elbows up.
“Come out!” Miles yelled.
There was no response. The light’s soft throbbing did not change its pattern either. It just stayed inside the playhouse.
Miles looked sidelong at his friend. “I thought you said we were sitting inside and saw the light come down from the sky through the trees?”
“Yeah.”
“Do you ever see the light?” Miles inquired in a harsh whisper. “You know, actually see it?”
Robbie shook his head violently, making his curls bounce on his head. Miles took another step closer, he was almost to the edge of the small doorway, which typically was covered by a small tablecloth hung from a shower curtain rod, and pinned to be out of the way when they needed the breeze for the hot summer days. It looked like shit, but it was a pretty strong, safe, and weatherproof build from a couple of kids scrounging from the trash cans and dumpsters around town.
Miles pushed the end of the baseball bat slowly along the side of the curtain, and a massive throbbing pulse rang out from within, as if a gong the size of the moon had just been struck. They both felt it more than they heard it, its effect traveling among the trees around them like a shockwave, pushing leaves and debris as if a stiff wind had passed by.
They both stood absolutely stock still as if a giant was regarding them, deciding if two little boys would make good eating.
Miles pushed the bat in further, and slowly pushed the curtain up. “Wow.”
Inside, a small orb only the size of a grapefruit, hung gently in the air, pulsing with its hazy glow. Robbie peered in over Miles’s shoulder.
“What the hell is that?”
Miles shrugged. “It’s your dream, you tell me.”
“Think it is radioactive?” Robbie’s voice was full of wonder. For the sheer terror that he had for the last few minutes, Miles was amazed he was even conscious still.
“Well then we are both dead, genius.”
“I don’t think it is radioactive,” Robbie asserted, more to himself than Miles. “In the dream I was so scared, but now, I am not scared at all.”
“What do we now? Just stand here and stare at the orb of glowing alien farts?”
“Think we should touch it?” Robbie wondered.
“With what? The bat?” Miles offered incredulously. “I am sure as hell not going to poke it with my finger.”
“Sure.”
“Then you do it.” Miles offered the bat to Robbie.
“Together?”
“Spider-Man 252. Swear?”
“Yours, man. I had to do this,” Robbie affirmed.
“Then we do it together.” Miles offered the outstretched bat, and Robbie put his hands around the handle as well. “On three?”
The two of them, Miles in his Star Wars t-shirt, and Robbie in his long sleeve flying cows pajama shirt, holding a baseball between them unsteadily faced the uncertain future.
“One, Two, Three…” The two lunged forward at once, putting the rounded cusp of the bat against the floating orb.
Voices in the dark.
“One.”
Spiraling sound in multiple directions.
“Two.”
Time is unbound.
“Three.”
Edges of reality come unwound.
“Two.”
In the dark, absence of light, speeding movement in multiple directions, twisting with the stars spinning by at superluminal speed.
“Two.”
Miles felt his body around him, inconsistent as light, as if he was floating in a sea of nothingness. He thought he would be scared, but he was not.
“Two?”
The voice changed. Concern? Confusion? Uncertainty?
“Two?”
Miles thought he felt Robbie nearby, spinning as if in orbit of each other, the push and pull of two objects contesting and yet compelling one another.
“Miles?” Robbie’s voice sounded far away as if coming through the a radio, stuttering in the dark before it cut back to silence.
“Two…” The voice pondered. “There should only be one.”
Miles still could not see anything, only feelings his fingers and toes at the furthest extent of himself. He did not feel warmth or cold, only the shift and movement of what he was, who he was, in the unaffirmed space. “You got two, pal.”
Images started to flash before them. They were not things to see, they were things to feel, to experience. He felt the change in himself, as if he was not witnessing these images with his eyes, but his truest self. The part that existing underneath the layers of his flesh and bone.
There was darkness, then there was light. From the light sprang trillions of billions of millions of hundred quintillions of threads spiraling away into the dark, all the moments that would ever be or that have ever been. Universes of universes, not stacked nicely like dinner plates on a shelf, but thrown into heaps of abstract and congruent angles, aligning and yet at odds with each other. These universes branched and branched again. Most ended in darkness or heat, some ended with nothing at all since they failed to start, and yet others progressed into something else.
Life. Intelligence. Progression. Survival. Competition.
Miles tried to close his eyes, but the images continued. The gentle assault would continue until it was done. If he could look around for Robbie, he would have. But he knew that Robbie was going through this with him, together. “One, Two, Three…”
Time wound backwards, as reality reasserted itself, Robbie and Miles both had their hands on the handle of the baseball bat, lunging forward with wide eyes, pressing the cusp of the bat against the glowing object in their playhouse. Miles could feel the reality of it, as if he was back in the moment. He could feel Robbie beside him, realizing that they were moving backwards and forwards in time.
“Time. Time is a strange thing. We forgot that it exists.”
“Why?” Miles asked.
“You will see.”
“Both of us?” Robbie asked from far away.
“Both of you, it seems. Worlds need heroes. Universes need to be lead to the impossible futures. Your purpose is to be the heroes here so that you can find the others. The others in the dark.”
“How?” Miles asked.
“By being greater than you were destined to be.” The light flashed, the throbbing images flared away, as if being tossed over a shoulder nonchalantly. “Greater.”
The lights went out and Robbie and Miles were standing in an empty playhouse with a bat being held between them. They both looked at the bat, and then at each other, dropping it simultaneously.
“What?” Miles asked. Robbie looked different, but he couldn’t put his finger on it.
“You tell me,” Robbie laughed. “You are the one staring at me.”
“You look different.”
“I feel different,” Miles looked at his fingertips. The tips were smoking, just like the end of the baseball bat already forgotten on the floor of the playhouse. He felt energy everywhere. It was in cells, in the air around him, in everything. He felt like a norse god.
“Miles, your eyes are glowing,” Robbie smiled. He did not sound scared. “What are you thinking of?”
Miles laughed as the sparks danced on his fingertips. “Thor.”
Robbie stood up proudly, flexing his chest like an adult. “I feel like Superman.”
“Robbie…”
Robbie burst from the ground, flying upwards as if he was shot out of cannon. The playhouse disintegrated into hundreds of pieces around Miles, as lightning started to erupt from his shoulders.
“Wait for me!” Miles finished, leaping from the ground. He thought of Superman traveling faster than the Flash, and in a breath he next to his friend.
The air was cold, but it did not feel cold. The clouds were blown apart as they flew through them, laughing and twirling in the night sky. Both the boys would be ageless gods with an inscrutable future, only a promise of where they needed to lead to be their only guide.
However, what the boys did not know, being boys enjoying the gifts they had received, was that every universe required balance, and their opposite on the equation was not two, but one. As it had been through countless ages, when a hero was created, so was their antithesis. A villain.
A man picked up the phone and his men on the other line answered immediately.
A tinny voice came over the secure line, as if it was further away than just down the hall. “Yes, Mr. President?”
“Charles, please inform the staff that I wish to go for a run this morning… I feel rather… energetic.”