Through the Gate to the Dunes

[Stephan Donnel]

Still limping on his damaged leg Stephan walked away from the border and towards what he thought was the central “plaza”.

“Carreeeeforrre… name’s just as dead as the rest of the place” he mumbled as he walked past the ‘Welcome to Carrefore’ sign, the place was quite desolate to be honest. While there were no obvious ruins and gaping broken windows even a newcomer, like our old man, could see that almost half the buildings were either empty, hollowed out shells or long abandoned and left to slowly rot under the sun, at the mercy of neglect and wind.

“Bloody hell…” - Captain stopped momentarily, - “…I forgot to ask what ‘neon’ is. Eh, not going back now, I’ll catch someone there.” He uttered, limping on ahead.
Sure enough, after some more dusty streets behind him, he soon came to what really could only be the centre of the town of Carrefore, that was probably the local mayors’ office, and that over there could only be some kind of church, for whatever that was worth.

Secretly afraid there would be like 20 signs saying “Rick’s” Stephan was relieved when he only saw one. It was covered in some kind of noodle-like protrusions, but otherwise it seemed to be the place. Currently, it seemed, it wasn’t the time of the day, as no lamps were on, and there wasn’t even a single pump active at the moment, he wasn’t even seeing a single one out in the open.

“Either they are extremely rich and have them embedded in the walls or extremely poor and can’t afford even one ‘Happy times’ pump. I bet on second.” – Mused Donnel absent-mindedly as he stopped before the building to catch a better view before actually entering.

A classy wooden décor was what met him inside, decorative panelling covering the walls and floor, with a delicate wooden chairs and tables standing around the room. The insides of the “Café” were strikingly different form the town outside, and it gave Stephan a pause.

“Huh, I guess this place doesn’t need a pump.”

Looking around at the first piece of refined space he could set his eyes upon after arriving to this bizarre world, Donnel slowly walked past small tables and a piano towards a bar at the far end of “Rick’s”. There, beyond a worn, but solid surface stood an ageing man, who was cleaning glasses over and over again, probably a universe-transcending tradition for all barmen everywhere to pass time during sleepy hours at their work. Barmen barely threw a glance at the Captain, before returning to his meditative task.

“You're the one Sarge was talking about?” – inquired he without breaking concentration.

“I guess, unless there are several more people around here who just arrived after being run over.”, - Answered Stephan, as he sat down on one of the barstools, groaning. Once again surprised, he noticed that his leg wound gave him much less trouble than it should have, it barely even stung by now.

After those words barman set aside his glass, and took another one, strikingly similar. He then reached out into the depths of his domain, which was conveniently located just below the bar, and poured some murky liquid from an unmarked bottle. As the Captain unquestionably picked it up and swallowed it in one go the barkeep asked:

“So what the hell happened? You honestly look like shit.”

A glimpse of anger appeared in Stephan's eye for a moment, but it quickly vanished.

“Yeah, you’re right. I do. I kinda just appeared in the middle of empty white nothingness… when was it… the last day I guess? After that I just sat around for a couple of hours, and then chose a direction to go to, went through some gate, walked for a half-a-damn-day in between the bushes, got ran over, killed those who didn’t run, stole their engine and now I am here.”

The barkeep chuckled a little.

“Why didn’t you summon a buggy? Or, I don’t know, a horse? You really were asking for it, just strolling through the Dunes and whatnot.”
Stephan raised his right eyebrow questioningly.

“Why didn’t I what? I’m not some stage magician to just pull wheels out of my hat I’ll have you know.”

“Oh, don’t tell me you managed to ignore that little brief the Big O gives to all the Primes?”

“That insufferable white thing? I didn’t pay attention, so I forgot everything a couple of minutes later.”

The barmen actually let out a laugh over this one, and poured another drink to Stephan.

“Oh, you are just priceless. What will you do next? Go and kill off Protoman, or try to outsmart Dredd?”

“I have no idea who either of those are.”, - almost hissed Donnel.

“Yeah, right, you don’t. I guess you also have no idea how do people like you function here? Let me tell you that. For starters – you can make things appear out of thin air. How do you like the idea?”

Now it was Stephan’s turn to laugh.

“Now that is some high quality bovine-original fertilizer you are feeding me there.”

“I figured as much. Now, if you’d listened to the white kid, by the way, remember to always listen to him, you’d know that there is this stuff called ‘Omnillium’, actually let me show it to you”. The barkeep dived into his mysterious domain just below line of sight for those sitting on the stools and reappeared holding a glass jar with something that looked like a floating orb of smooth white matter. “Here it is. Now, us, secondaries, we can’t do much with it, hell, we can barely handle the stuff without it floating away, so we are just using it for money. But you guys, you can make wonders. You likely have some inside you even now. I don’t know how it happens, but those I asked told me that they just really-really-really wish for something to appear, and it appears.”

“And once again, you are calling me a stage magician. Such tomfoolery is just ridiculous.” Stephan waved his refilled glass dismayingly in the air.

“Why don’t you prove me wrong then? It won’t cost you anything to try.”

“Whatever. Just give me another shot. So, you just say I need to wish for stuff to appear and it will? Well then…”

Stephan placed his left hand on the wooden board next to his glass. Almost immediately dense, pure white smoke rose from underneath it, not unlike what happened when steam vented as usual, except that this seemed to stay in form of a 30x30cm rectangle and ever-so-slowly condensed enough to make the hand rise higher and higher. Corking brow questioningly at the barkeep, who nodded reassuringly, Donnel just kept doing whatever he was doing. Soon enough, after about 10 minutes of silence, the hand rose about 10cm into the air and the smoke dispersed, revealing a plain metal box with an engraving of two crossed smoking pipes on top.

“I am not legitimately unable to feel surprised any more. But if this is the real thing…” Stephan reached forward, quickly unclasping several locks on the front of the box and flipping the metal cover open, revealing a smaller, redwood, box that was sinking in something that looked like safety foam made out of corkwood.
“Now, this is going somewhere…”

The Captain flipped the second box open as well, this time revealing several smaller boxes as well as an extremely well-made pipe and a lighter. Hastily Stephan reached for the pipe, his right hand almost visibly shaking, and two of the smaller boxes next to it. Opening the first one revealed a set of small instruments, resembling those you could find next to a fireplace, and the second one contained a strong smelling tobacco, with an aroma that seemed to linger in the air like a fog. Not wasting any time Donnel procured a small stand for the pipe from the box and, after placing said pipe upright on it, began carefully administering the dried and crushed leaves with the help of a small pike and spade.





“Hey, stop gawking and give me a glass of water or something, or just a tin plate.” Stephan ushered to the barkeep, who was transfixed by the almost magical ritual happening before him, but snapped out of it at the sound of the rough voice of his patron.

While the barman dove down to procure required goods the ritual continued. Captain carefully placed tobacco around the insides of the pipe with precise, experienced movements and reached for a small shard of wood that was in the same little box with tobacco and positioned it in the middle of the pipe. Finally, after placing some more dry leaves on top and around the matchstick he reached for the lighter and a bigger set of splinters. At this moment the bartender finally rose with a glass of water and a small tin plate.

“Thanks” – hissed Stephan through the pipe he now held firmly with his teeth.

He lit up one of the splinters with a lighter, but instead of using it to light the pipe he placed the lighter back into the box and just waited for the half the split to burn, at which point he grabbed another one, and lit it from the first, promptly dropping the still-burning piece of wood on the tin plate. The second splinter was deemed worthy and it was slowly lowered in the pipe, at which point Stephan made several sharp inhales and careful exhales, with smoke coming out of the pipe with every one of them. Soon the match placed in the pipe burned out and the tobacco lit up. Bending backwards Donnel let out a contended sigh with a puff of smoke. When he straightened up he caught the bartender looking wide-eyed at him.

“What?”

“I don’t see people spending straight-up 5 minutes to light up a smoke every day. And how much this thing is even worth? You could summon a car in 10 minutes.”

“Well, the outer casing is made out of war-grade armour plating and coated with protective absorbent on the inside. And the box itself is legit redwood root from the floating islands of the Clouds. I got the original one as the reward for… hell, I don't remember.”

“I don’t know any of those, but that does sound expensive.”

“Positively. Now…” Stephan let out another puff of smoke and reached out for the boxes, quickly putting the stuff away inside his inner pockets, leaving only the outer and inner casing. “…you can keep the boxes, the big one can survive a point-blank blast and will actually keep the stuff inside safe, and the small one is likely worth half this house.”

“Eehh… Thanks, I guess.” Bartender was unsure of how to respond. Meanwhile Stephan continued.

“You know, I think I got a couple ideas of what to do, say, do you have a stash of actually good stuff I could trade off you?”

“You mean booze? I guess I do, but why you need that? You could just summon some for yourself.”

“Nah, I don’t need it that way. Also, it would feel wrong. I suspect there are other towns around here, and this one is the closest to whatever that gate was, right?”

“Actually, we have one of our own, but I catch your drift.”

“Even better. Say, if I were to go to the other town and get something they have, but you don’t, will I fetch a good price here? In whatever it is worth.”

“Huh, I don’t think anyone actually tried trading around the Dunes, with bandits and all we never really come out of the settlements. But, if you could reach New Babylon you could probably get something from the bazaar there that will fetch a nice price at Coruscant.”

“Well, it is something, I guess. I’ll figure from there on. Now, if you had any place I could change at…”

A couple of hours later a completely new man, followed by a small cloud of smoke above him, left “Rick’s”, donned in new clothes and, most importantly, with a new hat, he went on to the sands-ward side of the city with a spring in his step, despite a recent injury, which wasn’t really there anymore. Even several crates full of quite good liqueur didn’t seem to weight anything at all. Behind him the bartender was happily polishing his new coffeemaker and drink dispenser and tried not to think about what would happen if a drunkard found those pressure-cartridges under the counter and decided to open one.

“Wait, I didn’t even get his name… Eh, I guess it was Rick.”

Past another post of bored guards in dirty white gear Stephan could only see the sand. It was far worse than on the other side of the town, where there was at least a couple of bushes and trees dotting the landscape here and there. Here, there was just the endless sand, flowing like waves in the ocean. After a short stop to remember and then summon something fitting for the landscape Stephan shot off into the Dunes, not really looking back.