Emanant Realms

By Andie Kirkdale

A collection of experimental short stories presenting strange landscapes and fantastical worlds, as travelers explore new realms and other dimensions of adventure where dark suns shine, green moons glow, and a scholar searches for an ancient artifact.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Dec 9, 2023
• ISBN: 9781304829153

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Emanant Realms

Andie Kirkdale

Copyright

Emanant Realms

Copyright © 2023 by Andie Kirkdale

All Rights Reserved.

ISBN 978-1-304-82915-3

No part of this book may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, scanning, recording, printing, or by any information storage and retrieval systems, without express written permission from the publisher, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review or scholarly journal.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, products, organizations, and incidents are creations of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, products, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Cover photo art by Andie Kirkdale

Emanant Realms

The Senses of the Realms

I.

Hello, said the multiverse.

And from each universe emanated the realms.

II.

An elderly hermit went for a sunrise walk up a mountain path. As he gazed into the valley below, jasmine overwhelmed him. Looking for flowers, he instead breathed in universes, galaxies, and stars.

He understood that something had given him the ability to see the birth of the realms, thus granting him knowledge of everything that had existed, currently existed, and would exist. He interpreted the language of the dew as it gathered on a clover patch three thousand leagues away. He felt the heat of a sun above a planet in another solar system. He saw the shape of future cities built by glass robots. He solved all equations, including a new way to combine quantum mechanics with relativity.

The hermit exhaled.

Then he went home to feed his cat.

III.

During a game between the Hectics and the Amblers, a gust of wind blew through the field.

The wind knocked off the hats of players and spectators, sent hot dogs and potato chips flying into the air, and blew the pitcher’s curveball off course.

The ball zigged into a right angle, zagged into a non-Euclidean angle, then disappeared into a vortex that an outfielder described as a point where everyone and every realm that could ever exist was born.

Several hot dogs, a banner advertising castor oil, and the Ambler team owner’s Model T  disappeared into the vortex. The umpire declared the game over, with the Hectics as the winner.

Thus it was said that a curse came down on the Amblers, which their fans lamented.

IV.

In the long-ago kingdom of Vuthenia, the crown prince sat down for a late lunch. He was in a dark mood owing to an unsuccessful hunt of a stag that knew how to elude him and had so for three years.

The crown prince scowled at his lunch, a bowl of watery soup made from a now extinct cousin of spinach. He demanded that his soup be sent back to the kitchen for added taste, otherwise his mood would darken further.

When the soup returned to the table, the crown prince noted flecks of pepper floating on the top. Better than nothing, he thought, and took a spoonful.

As soon as a pepper flake melted on his tongue, the crown prince saw everything and understood everything. He saw the birth of a small rocky planet in a galaxy on the other side of the universe where one day a species of intelligent tree would grow. He understood the stag he hunted delighted in fooling him. And he understood that the palace staff regarded his behavior during a recent visit to the dread city of Nusquam as boorish and insensitive to local customs.

But it’s a dread city, he whispered.

Worried, he went to the kitchen and tossed the bowl of soup down the drain. The liquid splattered against the sink, a small waterfall of unreasonable green.

V.

In the first year of my job at the library, my supervisor acquired from an antiquarian bookseller an intact set of the 1972 centennial edition of Encyclopedia Universalia, a reference series first compiled by British scholar Jonathan Grey before his mysterious disappearance.

Although dated, the set still contained useful information on Zen Buddhism, the dead-ball era of baseball, extinct vegetables, the forgotten kingdom of Vuthenia, and the elaborate customs of a remote dread city recorded in the Eshontic Tablet by the Mesopotamian solar priestess Nin-Ta.

As I unpacked a box, I noticed something on the bottom: a strip of photographic negatives. I held them up to the fluorescent light above my table, then called my supervisor.

We took turns examining the negatives until I said, What is it?

He held one up to the light, then the other, and said, Well, Michael, somebody managed to take a photograph of the multiverse.

I looked at the negatives again, at the universes and the galaxy clusters within them, and dreamed of a project to travel through these new realms.

Help Wanted

Do you crave adventure?

Do you like novelty?

Do you chase sensation?

Then come work for us at a project to explore new realms in the multiverse!

We need brave scouts to be the first ones to enter a realm.

We need travelers to describe a realm once it’s been opened.

You will be compensated, and you will be mentioned in the project newsletter!

Got a Job

Kitchen

Danny, your great-grandmother emigrated from the old country in 1900. Every day she cooked and baked, every day she prayed. I wish you would remember, but ah, the third and fourth generations are set on forgetting.

Attic

Observe the shelves and upon them, the neatly lined books and knickknacks. The windows are ready for winter. Laundry dries on the line. Should you desire a tune, note the phonograph in the corner. On it is a record by a jazz and musique concrète band that drove a bus from San Francisco to Chicago, only to find the gig had been canceled. They drove on to Detroit and found a club that needed a band for the night, then drove back to San Francisco. You wouldn’t be the first to travel for a job.

Basement

Furnace rumble, water drain, mouse run.

Kitchen

Do not speak of change. My heart is broken enough. I don’t understand this obsession with technology. What is this twenty first century?

Attic

Or we could turn to a volume of the Encyclopedia Universalia, there on the middle shelf. We bought this set at a bookstore when I graduated from university. I remember there was a circle around the entry about Utu, the Sumerian sun god. In the house of light, Utu sleeps while his solar twin rises.

Kitchen

You kids wouldn’t remember bookstores. You kids don’t remember anything.

Basement

Murmur, mutter, memory. I have infected you with my madness.

Attic

Ah, here are all your report cards. I indexed them. Let’s review first grade, shall we?

Kitchen

You got a job? As a scout? Doing what? Exploring realms? In the multiverse? You saw the listing on a server? What does that even mean?

Attic

An A in geography, that’s good, but son, you’re heading into unmapped territory.

Kitchen

Why would any sane person do this?

Basement

Once I looked up through the vents and