Savage Tales

describe your failures then?" said Hyena.
    "Not at all," said Michelson. "For you see, I have not discovered the time machine, but I have found something which may prove far more portentous."
    "What do you mean?" I said. "You have piqued our curiosity. Don't hold back, man."
    Michelson poured himself a glass of brandy, then said, "Naturally, I intend to. But rather than tell you of my discovery, it will be so much easier to simply show you."
    With that cryptic statement as our ammunition, Michelson snuffed out the candle and left us quite literally in the dark. I heard an anthem of confused voices querying Michelson for a solution to this strange action, but the voices went silent when a faint turquoise glow began to shine from the far side of the room. The glow grew in luminosity like a mist and its unearthly light began to grow in size and intensity, revealing forms that moved and sounded like human beings. Their clarity increased to the point that I could make out the faces and identities of those people, until I saw that they were composed of all the fellows who now sat around Michelson's table, including an eerie doppelgänger of myself! I stared at this odd mirror of our reality with rapt amazement, as did the others.
    "The scene you see is not our world," said Michelson. "It is a parallel world. It is very much like our own, but with many small differences. Watch! I have selected this world carefully."
    We watched this alternate Earth, and a scene unfolded before us much like that which had taken place just minutes before. It appeared that Samuel and I had just arrived, and this alternate Michelson was going to explain his actions. He had indicated his experiments with time, just as he had in our world.
    "A time machine!" said the counterpart of Hyena, again mirroring our world.
    And then – here is where things happened differently in the projected image. This is where the paths diverged.
    "Aye, that was my goal," spoke the alternate Michelson, "and I have succeeded !"
    As we all heard this, Michelson (the Michelson in our world, not his misty turquoise counterpart) did something with a device unknown to me, and the misty vision that we watched so attentively began to dissipate and vanish.
    "So you see the fruit of my labors," said Michelson.
    "But what does it all mean?" I said. "Where was that taking place?"
    "Nowhere that we can point to, Benjamin," said Michelson. "It's another world, but not like Mars or Saturn or any of the planets above us. If you want to point to it... well, it's right here."
    "What is this nonsense?" said Professor Langhawk, a crotchety gentleman of the old school.
    "What we were looking at was a possible world ," said Michelson. "It did not happen here, but it could have. With my device I have looked into many such worlds. I have not discovered a time machine, but I need only look into the proper world where it was discovered and its secret shall be known to me. Don't you see what this means? Don't you see?"

    CYNIC
    If ever there was a creature that had mastered the ability to turn every place into the same place, to saturate it with the monotonous texture of mindless conformity and self-perpetuating propaganda, then it is surely called Korea.
    My name is Roger and I'm here with a rare text of anarchy spilt from another dimension, handed down to me from another agent – perhaps myself... my brain is clouded with drugs that keep me alive and I can't be sure of much, only that I must inject this text here and pollute the youth with viral hatred of the past, using the dim Christianity that shrouds so many to knock them from their slumber.
    I meet another character at a cheap gimbab shop. He's eating ramen and barely glances up at me. I sit down across from him and order a gimbab roll from the old woman running the place.
    "Well?" I say.
    "So you made it," he says, slurping and splattering an orange broth onto his shirt. "I assume you are my contact. Glad you made it through."
    "Me too. I can't remember much."
    "That's typical. It'll pass as you linger here. It'll be right as rain. But you have the goods?"
    I'm developing a headache. "Uh... yes."
    "Something the matter? You look sort of sick."
    "Yes... no. No, I'm fine."
    "Right, whatever. Let's have the goods."
    I finger the USB in my pants pocket. "What about payment? I thought there was some sort of payment first."
    My head is going to explode if the pressure doesn't ease.
    "You'll get paid, sure," he says. "But you got to wait