Chapter 25: Cross-over

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At that moment, the chair vanished, causing Carolyn to fall right through the linoleum.

She landed on the floor of a slowly descending freight elevator, the sound of its antique pulley system simultaneously squeaking and roaring in her ears. She descended mostly in darkness, past rows of shelves containing puppets, playing cards, an oil lamp, a metronome, animal skulls, and jars of preserves. Some of the jars appeared to be using the preserves as a preservative: a large one contained sheep intestines, another pocket watches. Carolyn reached out and picked up a jar, to see that this one was preserving thumbtacks. She looked down to see that her bedclothes had been replaced by a faded pink dress, shoes and socks. Her normally braided hair was hanging loose around her shoulders, and she was no longer wearing the KEEN. She placed the jar back on a shelf beside a stuffed and mounted jackrabbit.

"Jan Svankmajer", concluded Carolyn.

"Said Alice," her own voice echoed.


The descent appeared to be endless.

Carolyn turned around to look out the side of the elevator opposite the shelves. She spied a distant light far below illuminating what looked to be the walls of a proper Victorian sitting room. However, this room was shaped like a well, and seemed bottomless. Also, the walls looked like they came out of an illustration rather than real life.

Carolyn crouched down to try and get a better look. She saw portraits on the walls, but they were all hung upside down. In addition, there were little tables and desks floating in mid-air, also upside down. Also, something was rising towards her, going about the same rate as the elevator was descending. It was a perfectly round circular object, ruffled like the underside of a mushroom. In its center were two black smudges. No...actually, more like two black fruiting bodies attached to white stalks. Oh dear, that's really not right, either. Better to say that it was a young woman in a powder-blue dress, large white petticoat, white apron, white stockings and black shoes, falling up towards her. A young woman with a large fluffy squirrel tail. In fact, it would be best to say that this was Tammy, if Tammy were playing the lead character in a 1951 Disney feature and was voiced by Kathryn Beaumont.

"I say," Carolyn called down jokingly. "Have you seen a white rabbit?"

Tammy pushed her dress aside to look at Carolyn. "Oh! Is that...?" Unfortunately, this act caused her to fall a lot faster.

Carolyn braced herself and stretched out her arm, catching Tammy and pulling her into the elevator. The moment she crossed the threshold, gravity reversed itself for Tammy, and she fell down on the floor of the elevator with a thud.


It was an odd thing, sitting next to a cartoon character. Lighting had absolutely no effect on colors; or rather it had a very extreme effect. Objects in light were one shade, and objects in shadow were a distinct shade. There was no graduation. Also details, like the texture of Tammy's dress, were completely missing. The squirrel's hair was a single orange color, differentiated only by a mass of thin black lines. Like Carolyn, Tammy's hair was straight, to increase her similarity to Lewis Carroll's iconic character.

During this time Tammy was silent, engaged in a similar study of the live-action young woman beside her. Indeed, it appeared that Tammy had some difficulty distinguishing Carolyn from her surroundings.

"H...how did I get here?"

"A shared dream world," Carolyn speculated with a shrug. She held her hand out. "Hi, I'm Carolyn. "

"Said Alice," her echo replied from above.

Carolyn looked up, annoyed. "Alright, Mike, that was a funny-once joke, so you can stop now."

Tammy, who was trying to see Carolyn's hand in order to shake it, looked up in confusion. "'Mike'?" she asked.

"It's the name of a self-aware computer from a book," Carolyn explained. "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress."

"Oh," replied Tammy, not getting the reference. Squinting, she finally found Carolyn's hand and grasped it with her left hand. "Hi, I'm Tammy. Wait, you know that already. What's next?"

"Your Gadget impression needs work," Carolyn laughed. She noticed that Tammy's right arm was stretched out before her oddly, like the hand was resting on an invisible object. She also noticed that Tammy's hand in her own felt like warm rubber. "I hope you didn't mind my spying on you for the last four years."

Tammy broke contact as soon as she could politely do so. The touch of Carolyn's hand was even more disorienting that her physical appearance. "I...don't mind. The watching, that is. Made me think there was somebody else watching over me, even though I knew you couldn't do anything."

"I never judged you."

"I know."

"Perhaps I can even things out by telling you about myself. I started like you, the daughter of an adventurer and his stay-at-home wife. Only my father eventually convinced my mother to join him on his travels, leaving me with my grandfather. As a result, I remained an only child. I lost both of them when I was six, and then Grandfather got in over his head with some gangsters...long story short, I was in an orphanage at eight. And my time was running out-the men who had targeted Grandfather thought I knew what he would never reveal, so they came after me."

Tammy's eyes had been getting wider and wider as she soaked in this story. "And then what happened?"

"And then I met the Masked Marvel, the first person in my life whose ideals were matched with the wit and strength to make those ideals reality. The Masked Marvel saved my life, in every meaning of that word. Together, we defeated Terrance Barra. And then, he adopted me.

"I learned later that this act was at as significant for him as it was for me. The Masked Marvel had been nothing but the Masked Marvel for decades. His original identity of Drew Maughlarde was dead to him, for reasons too painful for him to ever tell me. He brought that back, he became normal again, for me."

"'Drew Maughlarde'..."

"In your world he was Detective Drake Mallard."

"Detective Drake was your stepfather?" The story kept getting better and better in Tammy's eyes.

"Was, and still is. The Masked Marvel rid the city of crime, and as Drew Maughlarde, Agent of The Company, he was largely responsible for the defeat of the evil T.H.E.M. organization." Carolyn decided to end her tale there, feeling reluctant to say any more to the innocent squirrel before her. "Do you have any questions?"

Tammy nodded eagerly. "I have so many questions. Your world, how does it operate? Is it filled with a sense of purpose? Are there other creators with separate worlds they have created, or is mine the only one?"

"Wait, one at a time, one at a time! First our world stumbles along as best it can, with whatever purpose we can guess for ourselves. To say that it is filled with any more sense and purpose than that, beyond some artist's feeling of purpose, is hard to say; then again, that assumes that it was created. And while I don't know for sure, I would suggest there are many separate worlds that have been created by various artists, probably including my own."

Tammy realized that Carolyn did a much better Gadget impersonation than she did.

"Your own?" Tammy interrupted. "If yours is not the Real World, where is it?"

"Well who's to say that any of these worlds are the original one? How would we even know? It could just be a never-ending chain of created worlds."

"This creator, he sounds like he has too much free time on his hands. And I'm not sure about your theory, since your world has a TV show depicting my world, while my world does not have a show about your world. That implies that your world created mine."

"That's just a theory though, it may be that neither created the other. What if the show wasn't a creation but rather a window into your world?"

"A window? And is that metaphorical pane of glass still in existence, or was it smashed long ago? Is that pane what you're using to talk to me now?"

"I suppose so, after all it feels like we've met through the looking glass almost." Carolyn chuckled.

"My world may have an independent existence, but your world could still be the Real World." Tammy speculated.

"No! Because I look like this, you might think I'm from the Real World, but I know better now. I live in a mad, out of control world, a world far too wrong to possibly be real. This cartoon series I mentioned, the one about the Rescue Rangers-it should have included an episode about you, but it was never completed. You know why? Because there are no squirrels on my world. No squirrels! How can a world be real without squirrels?"

"No squirrels?"

"No squirrels, and no doves."

"So Herbie's counterpart, is he human? Do you know him?"

"Yes, he's human, and I know him. We're very close, but also about a thousand miles away from each other. A world with no squirrels, and no doves. If given the choice which world to live in, I would gladly choose yours. Your world is governed by the laws of drama, while mine is controlled by the cold hand of science. The difference is like black and white. In your world, anything is possible, so long as the villain rises to a position of great power, in order to be toppled in an even more improbable victory by the powerless but stalwart hero. In my world, evil is done with good intention and what little good exists only happens by accident. A world that drives heroes to give up and retire to Florida, to spend the rest of their lives wallowing in the past. It is a world of gray, dim hopelessness."

Tammy's brow furled. "I don't think the difference is quite as stark as you describe," she said, hesitantly. "In fact...no, wait. I contacted you for a reason, Carolyn."

"You did?"

"Yes. I desperately need your help. I believe that Nimnul's loose on your world, and he's captured the Rangers of my world. Is there any way you can find him?"

Carolyn chuckled, a pained look in her face. "There isn't a man, woman or child on my world that doesn't know where Nimnul is. He's emperor now, emperor of the whole world!"

"Emperor? Emperor? But he's crazy! Who in their right mind would give him that kind of power?"

"We were desperate, and he was able to save our world from utter destruction, not knowing or caring what the price for our deliverance would be. Even now, the majority of humanity supports him. He allows the world to run itself the way it was run before, just so long as he can have his way with anyone on his list of personal enemies."

"Are you on that list, Carolyn?" Tammy asked, wide-eyed.

"Fans of The Rescue Rangers just went to the top of the list," Carolyn told her. "So what you're asking me to do is to break into the most famous home on Earth to rescue a group of animals from the Emperor, knowing that I will hounded by a billion loyal subjects."

Tammy nodded mutely.

"I like those kinds of odds! I'm in. And I'll rally as many fellow fans as I can to help me. But you have to help me, too."

"What can I do?" Tammy asked.

"Tell me more about how Nimnul stole the Rangers."

"Well, it's Nimnul, so the default answer applies: he invented a whatsit. The first time he used it, it swapped his mind with that of his counterpart on your world. He must have rebuilt it to swap the minds of the Rescue Rangers with their counterparts on your world."

"Can you get a hold of the machine in your world?"

"Nope. It blew up when he used it."

"Oh. The same thing probably happened to the machine in this world. We'll have to force Nimnul to build another one."

"Not necessarily. Foxglove was swapped a full half-hour after the other Rangers."

This brought two thoughts to Carolyn's mind: to ask Tammy the significance of the word "other", and the realization that she would have confirmation of this story by asking Honker about his pet bat. She decided to bring up neither point for now. "Get in touch with Nimnul's counterpart on your world and find out everything you can about him and his wife-he's married to the counterpart of Winifred the Witch. Any piece of information we can use against them would help."

"Already on it."

"Try to find out about Nimnul's machine. If you find plans, try to rebuild it. That way you can fix things from your side even if I fail."

Tammy nodded, then added, "but you won't fail, Carolyn. I believe in you."

Carolyn smiled. "Thanks. Contact me if you find anything-I'll keep the 'window pane' with me at all times. You take care of my world's counterparts of the Rangers, and we'll get everything sorted out on our end. You'll see."

"Good luck!" Tammy lifted her right arm, and instantly vanished.


Carolyn lifted her helmet, and found herself back in the kitchen.

"Well?" Drew asked.

"There's hope."