Ex Machina IV: Monroe Vs. A.K.
Chapter One
World #1423 / A.K. #37
"The One Who Can't Hold His Romulan Ale"
Published 23 May 2010
World #1423, Little Whinging
A.K. appeared inside a house that seemed similar to number four, Privet Drive, but was different enough that he was instantly on-guard. The layout was subtly altered, as if it were constructed in the same style but with a different floorplan. A. K. looked around the room he'd arrived in, trying to figure out what he was seeing.
It was the sitting room of the house, as it was just off the main hallway from the front door, but the room had been extensively altered from the original intent. The room itself seemed huge, much larger than would be expected for a house this size. The walls were lined with bookshelves that seemed to stretch well beyond the normal height of the house — A.K. decided that wizard space had to be involved. Instead of normal furnishings such as armchairs, sofas and coffee tables, there were a number of luxurious-looking leather recliners, with marble lamp tables next to each one, though there seemed to be no lamps anywhere in the room, oil or electric bulb, though the room was well-lighted.
"Ah, there you are," a voice said, and A.K. spun toward it, instinctively adopting a defensive stance. The voice had come from the far end of the room, where a brown-haired man in a smoker's jacket, black slacks and loafers was sitting in one of the recliners, a book in his lap. "Come in, A.K. — I've been expecting you. Have a seat."
A.K. slowly walked over to the man, his senses alert for any hint of danger. He had expected to find this world's Harry Potter at his arrival point, not this man, whoever he was. The man seemed affable enough, and A.K. wasn't getting a danger vibe from him, though his Legilimency could not penetrate the man's Occlumens-shielded mind. "Do you mind telling me who you are, first?" he asked, foregoing any meaningless banter.
"Not at all," the man replied. "I'm James Harrison Monroe."
"Am I supposed to know you?" A.K. asked, blandly.
"At least one version of you did, a long time ago," Monroe answered. He tossed the book in his lap into the air, where it continued to float upward, sliding into a space in a bookshelf high above them. A.K. wondered if that had been meant to impress or distract him, or perhaps both, though it had accomplished neither. "I know that you're a Harry Potter."
"A Harry Potter?" A.K. smiled. "I'm a very special Harry Potter, I would say."
"I would agree," Monroe nodded. "You're doing something very few Harry Potters are able to do — you're a dimension hopper."
"Clever of you to know that," A.K. admitted. "How'd you figure it out."
"I do a little dimension-hopping myself," Monroe told him.
"Really?" A.K. was a bit impressed — the magic necessary to perform the act of moving from one dimension to another was quite complex. "For what purpose?"
"To kill Voldemorts," Monroe replied.
There was an uncomfortable silence.
After mentally digesting that information, A.K. took out a pack of cigarettes. "Do you mind if I smoke?" he said, pulling one from the pack without waiting for a response.
"Yes, I do mind, since you ask," Monroe said.
"So why're you wearing a smoker's jacket?" A.K. inquired.
Monroe shrugged. "Just to piss you off."
A.K. smirked, then cast a wandless spell to light his cigarette. But the tip of his smoke had no sooner started to glow than it went cold again. A.K. frowned, then took out his wand and touched the tip to his cigarette, silently incanting the spell to light it. Nothing happened. He looked at his wand. "Fuck, what's wrong with this thing?"
"I guess I've made my point," Monroe said, smiling. "Go ahead, smoke up." The tip of his cigarette suddenly glowed red, and A.K. took a satisfying drag.
"Thanks," he said, with a touch of irony in his voice. "That's a pretty neat trick, keeping me from smoking." His voice turned hard. "Don't do it again."
"Just don't blow any smoke up my ass," Monroe retorted.
"What's that supposed to mean?" A.K. wanted to know.
Monroe shrugged, then stood up. Standing, he did not seem very impressive—at least from A.K.'s perspective. He was a little less than six feet tall and did not seem particularly physically fit — he wasn't thin, but not overweight, either. He just didn't give the impression of being very toned. His skin, though not as pale as the Malfoys, was still a pasty off-white, typical of a person who spent no time in the sun. "I suppose you'd like to know why you're here," Monroe said at last.
A.K. snorted, amused. He glanced around for an ashtray. Seeing none, he made a point of dropping the butt on the carpeted floor and grinding it under his heel, just to see what the other man would do. When he pulled his boot back to look, however, the butt was gone, as if it had never been there.
"Tidy," A.K. noted.
"I like to keep the floor clean," Monroe replied, blandly. "If you need an ashtray you might conjure one, or ask next time."
"I'll keep that in mind," A.K. said, not quite sneering. "So, d'you want to cut to the chase an' tell me why I'm here?"
"Sure." Monroe pointed to a recliner facing the chair he'd been sitting in. "Would you like to have a seat?"
"Why not?" A.K. turned to the chair, surreptitiously casting a wandless magic detection charm on it, looking for hidden curses, jinxes or other malefic effects that might be triggered by his sitting in it. The charm revealed nothing, and he dropped casually into the chair, pulling out his pack of smokes for another cigarette. As Monroe sat down in the opposite chair, an ashtray appeared next to A.K.'s recliner. A.K. smiled at it, then at Monroe. "Thanks," he said, taking a drag and flicking the excess ashes into the ashtray.
"Just being proactive," Monroe smiled. "Would you like something to drink?"
A.K. considered a moment. "What d'you have?"
His host shrugged. "I can get anything you care to name. Butterbeer, firewhiskey, Romulan ale, even a Pan-Galactic Gargle-Blaster."
A.K. made a face. "I don't care for that Gargle-Blaster," he said. "Too dry."
Monroe nodded. "And, technically, it's illegal to make it on Earth, though since it's fictional in this universe that issue is moot."
A.K. rubbed his chin, considering other options. "Maybe some of that Romulan ale," he said at last. "I've heard it can kick some ass."
A curved, blue bottle of liquid and two good-sized tumblers appeared in Monroe's hands. He held out the tumblers in front of him and left them floating in mid-air, then opened the bottle and poured each one nearly full of the deep blue liquid. One tumbler floated over to A.K., who took it and sniffed the contents of the glass. There was no obvious aroma. Lifting the glass, A.K. said, "Bottoms up," and drained his tumbler.
"Cheers," Monroe said, sipping his. He watched as A.K. sat stock-still for several moments, letting the ale settle. His eyes closed, and as he gustily exhaled a small amount of steam seemed to come out of his mouth. "Are you okay?" Monroe asked.
"I'm fine," A.K. said, though he was shaking his head slowly, apparently trying to clear it. "That is some major, fucked-up shit," he announced. He held out his empty tumbler. "Hit me again."
Monroe smiled. The glass left A.K.'s hand and floated over to his host, who refilled it (though not quite as full as before) and sent it back. A.K. snatched it from the air as soon as it was in reach, but instead of draining the glass this time he took a healthy sip, then looked at Monroe once again. A bit blearily, Monroe noted.
"So what the fuck's goin' on with all this shit?" A.K. asked, waving his glass around to indicate Monroe, the house, and why he was here.
"I want to help you. I know about your situation," Monroe said, leaning forward to speak to A.K., who was beginning to regret that first glass of ale. "Your vow to eliminate Lord Voldemort, in whatever form he may be in, wherever he may be. Knowing how to move between dimensions complicated that vow."
"No shit," A.K. muttered. "I been doin' this for I dunno how freakin' long now." He scowled at Monroe. "What's your beef with Voldemort, anyway? You're no Harry Potter."
"No, I'm not," Monroe agreed. "But I read Harry Potter when I was a kid, and I really enjoyed the books, so when I began my own travels between dimensions one of the things I did was visit a Harry Potter universe. What do you think I found?"
A.K. shrugged. "A Harry Potter, I s'pose," he guessed. He hadn't quite figured out what Monroe had meant by "reading Harry Potter."
"Well, something like that," Monroe answered, his expression void of emotion. "But he was dead, and the Ministry was completely corrupted from within by Death Eaters, and most of the good guys were dead or in hiding."
"So you wen' an' fragged Vold'mort?" A.K. asked. His words were beginning to slur, Monroe noted.
"No," Monroe said. "I helped Ron and Hermione do it."
A.K. gave him a disbelieving look. "You're fucking kiddin', right?"
"No, really," Monroe insisted. "They didn't know I was helping them. I stayed in the background, out of sight. They never even knew I existed."
But A.K. was shaking his head. "No, no — wait a minit — that's not fucking right! You're not following the prophecy! One of us has gotta kill the other — that's the rule!"
"I guess I never heard about that rule," Monroe said, matter-of-factly, "because I've watched everyone from Ron to Hermione to Neville to Luna kill Voldemort, in one universe or another, after Harry was killed. I suppose that's why you and I never ran across each other until now, because your vow wouldn't bring you a universe where Harry Potter was already dead, while those were the only universes I was interested in."
"Have you ever killed Voldemort?" A.K. wanted to know. "You, personally?"
"Yes," Monroe nodded.
"How many?"
"Once."
"Once?" A.K. laughed. "So wait a minnit, wait a minnit… what the fuck is all this about you helpin' me somehow? I'm doing what I want to do — kill Voldemorts! I've killed my share of Harry Potters as well, 'specially the fucked-up ones, the Dark ones and other worthless pieces of shit. Ever wonder why we never met in one of them universes, huh?"
"Lucky, I suppose — for you, that is," Monroe grunted. A.K. snorted in contempt. This Monroe asshole was beginning to grate on him.
"So what's yer plan, buddy boy?" A.K. sneered. "What are you going t'do to help me out of my 'predicament,' huh?"
Monroe looked annoyed by A.K.'s attitude. "I'm beginning to think I made a mistake, wanting to help you," he said. "Obviously, you want to keep traveling from dimension to dimension, killing Voldemorts and incidentally any Harry Potters that don't meet with your approval."
"That's about the size of it, bucko," A.K. snapped. The cigarette in the ashtray had burned out; he pulled out his pack and drew a cigarette from it with his lips, then snapped his fingers. A flame appeared at the tip of his thumb and he lit the smoke, then blew out his thumb. "Motherfucker, that hurt," he muttered, under his breath, rubbing the tip of his thumb between two fingers.
"So what would you suggest I do to help you?" Monroe asked.
"Really?" A.K. thought for a moment. "Fucking off would be a good start. I don't need your help, I don't want it. You want Voldemort dead? — you just leave it to me!" He stood up, pulling out his wand, ready to leave this universe.
"You and the other forty-one A.K.'s roaming the multiverse?" Monroe suggested.
A.K. froze for a moment. "What're you talking about?"
"You don't need to try and bluff me," Monroe pointed out. "I know there are forty-two versions of you."
"How the fuck would you know that?" A.K. demanded.
"That's what you told Deuce," Monroe reminded him.
"Who the fuck is Deuce?" A.K. said, confused. "I don' know any fuckin' Deuce!"
Monroe considered whether this A.K. was telling the truth. Not every version of A.K. had to have met his understudy, or even named him the same thing as the A.K. whose stories he'd read about. "Well, maybe you never met Deuce," he admitted, "but you should know about the locker room."
A.K. was shaking his head. "You don't know what you're talking —"
Monroe stood as well. "Let's go see, why don't we?" Before A.K. could protest they both vanished in flashes of white light.
The Locker Room Dimension
The two men appeared inside a room that looked, for all intents and purposes, like a real locker room. There were two rows of full-size lockers, with two sets of benches running side by side next to them. One side was marked off in odd numbers: #1, #3, #5, and so on, while the other started with #2, #4, #6, ending at the far end with #42.
"Holy fucking Satan on a shit-stick," A.K. muttered, seeing where they were. "Nobody but me an' the other A.K.'s should be able to reach this place."
"Not really that big a deal," Monroe said, airily. "I've been to quite a few universes, some even harder to reach than this one. Interesting that you encoded your specific DNA structures into the fine constants of this universe, keying it to your specific quantum signatures. It took me a few microseconds to align my DNA to be a match to yours."
A.K. frowned at him. "You mean you made yourself into another Harry Potter?"
"Something like that," Monroe said. "At least, I'm close enough that this universe won't go up in a huge CP-violation explosion. I do like how the place is laid out."
"How so?" A.K. wondered, in spite of being frantic about their security protocols being defeated.
Monroe gestured to the room around them. "Well, top-level access to the main entry point," he said. He pointed to the various lockers. "A basic storage spot for each of you." He walked over to locker #37, the one A.K. had appeared in front of, and opened it, looking inside. There was a large open area on the other side of the door — more magical or dimensional space manipulation was going on. "You appear to have lots of room in your lockers." He leaned back just as A.K. hit the locker door, slamming it shut.
Monroe walked to the end of the row, pointing to the rooms adjacent. "Showers, weight rooms, offensive and defensive magical training areas — you've got a lot of neat shit here, A.K. I even see a locker room for trainees and understudies, like Deuce." He smiled. "And this is just the tip of the iceberg, isn't it?"
"What d'you mean?" A.K. asked, gruffly.
"Well, you've got this dimension arranged like an onion," Monroe explained. "Each layer leading to another one below it. The access points are staggered, too, so you can't move quickly from the outside layers to the inside ones, or vice versa. Very smart, considering that the lowest levels are where the Voldemort holding cells are."
A.K. was looking at him with a new emotion playing across his scarred features — apprehension. "You seem to know as much about this place as I do," he declared. "Why'd you even bother to bring me here in the first place?"
Monroe grinned. "This place is supposed to be impregnable—only accessible by the forty-two Harry Potters who have designated themselves as 'A.K.' for one reason or another. Maybe I figured, you A.K.'s are more likely to believe that one of your own ratted you out, than that an outsider like me was able to break in.
Comprehension dawned in A.K.'s eyes; he paled at the implications. "You motherfucker," he rasped in fury. "You set me up!" His wand was suddenly pointed at Monroe, faster than the eye could follow. "Avada Kedavra!"
The green bolt shot across the room, impacting on Monroe's chest and vanishing. Instead of Monroe falling over dead, however, he simply looked up at A.K., and smiled.
"Oh, immune to that, eh?" A.K. said, only mildly surprised. "Let's see what you think of this! Consummus Deletus! Or this! Abolesco Funditus!" But none of the various powerful death or destruction curses had any effect on Monroe either. Finally he stopped, his breath coming in gasps from the exertion of spellcasting, and glared at Monroe. "What the fuck does it take to kill you, dammit?"
"More than you've got, I expect," Monroe told him, though his tone was mild. "Are you ready to listen yet?"
"Listen to what?" A.K. barked. "You got me — I'm fucked. The other A.K.'s are gonna think I helped you break in here. That means I'm a traitor — and none of us takes very kindly to being betrayed, as you probably already know!"
"I know," Monroe nodded. "But I do have an alternative solution."
"What's that?" A.K. snorted. "You kill me instead of the other A.K.'s?"
"No," Monroe said, shaking his head. "You give up being A.K. and become someone else in a Harry Potter world, either pre- or post-Voldemort."
"Don't you get it?" A.K. looked disgusted. "I can't stop bein' me! As long as I know the magic to get from one dimension to the next, my vow forces me to find Voldemort and scrag his ass, one way or another!"
"I can counter the vow," Monroe told him. "I can make it so you have a choice again."
A.K. looked at him in disbelief. "It's a blood oath, dude," he said, wearily, suddenly tired of arguing about this. "It's a part of me. You won't be able to get it out of me as long as I'm me!"
"That's a good point," Monroe said. He pointed a finger at A.K., who felt himself seem to twist and bend, though he was standing without moving. When the sensation stopped after what may have been several seconds, or several hours, nothing seemed different about himself…except, he was perhaps an inch or two…taller.
"What did you do?" he asked Monroe, who didn't reply. A.K. conjured a mirror to look at himself. "Oh, fuck!" he said, dropping the mirror in horror at what — who — he saw in the reflection. "I'm fucking Ron Weasley!" He looked up at Monroe, enraged. "Why the fuck did you turn me into Ron W—" his words were cut off as he suddenly disappeared with a pop.
"That's why," Monroe said, softly, and disappeared with a similar pop.
World #1423, The Burrow
A.K. reappeared just outside the gate at the Burrow. "—Weasley?" he finished, then looked around, momentarily confused. "Oh, fuck," he said, as Monroe suddenly appeared beside him.
"Did you figure it out?" Monroe asked him, wondering if this A.K. would be able to put the pieces of the puzzle together.
A.K. shook his (now) red head wearily. "The best I can figure, dude, is you hate my fucking guts."
Monroe chuckled. "Well, no, though you did manage to piss me off some, earlier. Actually, this is my idea of saving your life."
"Oh, yeah?" A.K. seemed pretty skeptical. "Do you mind if I hear your theory on how this is going to work?"
"It's pretty simple, really," Monroe began. "This world is pretty much Harry Potter Standard, but with one exception."
"And that is —" A.K. began, but was interrupted by the sound of a loud bang comingfrom an open window, followed a few seconds later by a muffled thump. "What the fuck was that?" A.K. demanded.
"Your cue," Monroe said, and they both vanished. They appeared moments later inside the Burrow, in Fred and George's room. Cardboard boxes were stacked everywhere, making the room look like a small warehouse. What really stuck out about the room, however, was the dead Ron Weasley laying on the floor.
"Oh, Satan on a stick," A.K. muttered, looking down at the dead Weasley, who had an expression of utter surprise on his face, along with a purple black eye. "What the fuck happened to him?"
"Fred and George, sort of," Monroe shrugged. "That funny little trick telescope they were working on had a nasty bug in it." He picked up the toy telescope. "The combination of jinxes they put on this to create the black eye that won't respond to normal cures has a side effect that builds up over time, until after several weeks it becomes lethal — the bruising effect reaches deeper and deeper into the head of the victim the longer the toy is allowed to lie dormant. When Ron triggered it, just now, he suffered a fatal cerebral hemorrhage."
At that moment they heard Mrs. Weasley's voice call up from the kitchen. "Ron! Are you alright? I heard a bang and a thump up there a bit ago!"
"Tell her you're okay," Monroe whispered.
"I'm — I'm alright, Mum," A.K. called out, in Ron's voice. "Just found one of Fred and George's little jokes up here."
"Ahh! Those two!" they heard Mrs. Weasley say. "Who'd have thought those jokes of theirs would've taken off like they did!" She went back to whatever she'd been doing.
"Now what do we do about this?" A.K. whispered, looking at Ron's dead body.
Monroe gestured and Ron's body disappeared. "About what, Ron?" he asked, blandly. A.K. stared at him for several seconds, in shock, then shook his head disgustedly.
"Ah, fuck," he said. "I was afraid you were going to say that!"
"Well, look on the bright side," Monroe said, scooping Ron's wand off the floor and handing it to A.K. "Do you feel that vow pulling at you anymore?"
A.K. considered for a moment. "I guess not," he said, finally. "It does feel kind of nice, not having that damn urge inside me all the time." He looked at Monroe. "How'd you get rid of it?"
"Well, I kind of let your locker room dimension handle it," Monroe admitted. "When I turned you into Ron Weasley, the LR dimension detected you as someone who shouldn't be there, so it figure out what world you belonged to and sent you back to the closest point in the dimension where you'd last been — in this case where the real Ron Weasley was, at the Burrow, just before he looked through that toy telescope and it killed him." He reached down, taking the telescope off the floor and holding it as it glowed blue for a moment, then placed it back in one of the boxes. "Well, that fixes that — it won't kill anyone the next time someone activates it."
"But what about the Vow?" A.K. persisted.
"Well, since you A.K.'s are a vindictive lot, the LR dimension tends to void and nullify all spells and enchantments on a body it's sending back to its home dimension. That includes the blood oath you swore, as Harry Potter, to rid the universe of Voldemort in all forms, wherever he might be."
"Hmm," A.K. said. He looked at Monroe. "But you know," he said matter of factly, "I still kinda want to kill me some Voldemorts."
Monroe laughed softly. "Probably. But I'd bet that mostly because you've been doing it for a long time; it's hard to break an established habit. The thing is, it's no longer a compulsion fueled by a blood oath."
"Huh," A.K. nodded. "I get it! Well, thanks, I guess, for getting rid of it," he told Monroe. "Though I'm still pretty pissed at you for this Ron Weasley thing."
"Well, in my defense," Monroe pointed out, "I just made you a physical copy of the guy — I didn't change any of your memories or anything, so you can still go dimension hopping after you help kill this universe's Voldemort — or do it yourself, for that matter. I guess that depends on how much stock you put in that prophecy."
A.K. rubbed the side of his face absently, then got a look of surprise. "No scars!" he said. He rubbed his fingers, finding skin grease, and grimaced. "But, acne." He looked up at Monroe. "I'm too old to go through this shit again."
"It could have been worse," Monroe pointed out. "I could have been in the next universe over when you appeared in my house. In that universe, it was Ginny Weasley who finds the telescope, not Ron."
A.K. shuddered. "Point taken," he said. "So, is there any way for me to get my original body back again?"
Monroe made an expansive gesture. "Well, I'm nothing if not fair—tell you what: I'll leave a pill for you to take that will restore your body back to the A.K. you were before. All you have to do is find a way to get to that pill."
"And where's the pill?" A.K. asked eagerly.
"It's in your locker, in the LR dimension," Monroe said, with a wink. "Good luck getting back there." And he disappeared, not bothering to add that, the next time he died, his personal automatic body generation dimension would restore him to his original body — probably.
Author's Note: I read "Dimension Hopping for Beginners," by nonjon, and decided that a meeting between A.K. and James Monroe would make for an interesting encounter. Since there are forty-two A.K.'s, according to nonjon, there should be - well, at least a few more chapters to this story. Suggestions welcome!