Anne Boonchuy: Savior
I can't remember when I got up and saw the light of day...
Anne was done giving her lecture at her job at the Aquarium of the Pacific. "...and this little fella is a pink, South-American treefrog. I named him Sprig!" The tour guide noticed the time and ushered the children out. It was like this, day after day, year after year for Anne Boonchuy. And that was exactly how she liked it. Except today would be slightly different.
The children said their usual "Thanks, Frog Lady!" except for one of them. A boy said "Thanks, Savior!" The tour guide gave Anne a look. "What was that supposed to mean?" Anne gave a nervous smile. "Oh, you know kids these days! Who can keep up with their lingo?" As they left, Anne could not help but give a mean look to the boy as he walked away.
After everything. The incident that would later became known as "Frogvasion" attempted to be swept under the rug by the government as a Hollywood special effects extravaganza gone horribly wrong. Not unlike the "War of the Worlds" broadcast by HG Wells. The government had shell companies within shell companies and even patsies to pin this on. Eventually an actual movie was used which included footage from the frogvasion in an attempt to establish further credibility.
But none of this mattered to Anne. After everything. After saving not one, but two worlds. After dying. After being resurrected. She never had the chance to process what happened. Mr. X separated her and her parents and kept them in interrogation rooms with nothing but chairs, tables, and a one-way mirror, dimly lit by a single hanging lightbulb. Mr. X made it abundantly clear to them, separately, that if they ever admitted any involvement in Frogvasion, they would be forcibly relocated to either Guam or Guantanamo Bay. And which one just depended on nothing more than Mr. X's mood at the time. Mr. X would then keep the three of them detained for 24 hours for no particular reason other than to show them that he could.
It did not take much more convincing than that to keep Anne quiet. But there was one major hurdle in the way that not even Mr. X could have foreseen. One day, Anne was called into the principal's office. She really didn't think much of it until she saw that the principal was acting... strangely. She did not address Anne. She locked the door, drew blinds over all the windows, disconnected the phone, and then finally, lowered the sign on her desk that had the title Principal Murphy. Anne gulped.
"I know it was you!" She yelled and pointed at Anne. "I don't care how much proof the government manufactures! You were the one who saved Los Angeles! Admit it!" "I don't know what you're talking about!" Anne responded. "Oh, sure. I know what you told the school. You just happened to be visiting relatives in Thailand. And your little friends, Sasha and Marcy? They were visiting with you. Which totally explains why all three of your parents called the school over and over again to see where you were!"
She opened her desk drawer. Anne flinched not sure what it could be. It was a bottle of alcohol. Principal Murphy began to drink in mighty chugs. "I blame myself. When I saw you in that TV... I thought to myself... it was because I assigned you that paper that you felt you had to do this." She began sobbing. Security unlocked the door, barged in, and escorted Principal Murphy out of the building for the last time.
Back to the present. A Catholic Priest sat in a confessional. He heard someone go inside. They were quiet for the longest time. "You know, I am a forgiving Father, but I don't take kindly to anybody wasting my time!" "Forgive me Father, for I have sinned. It has been... I don't know since my last confession," she responded.
"And what brings you here today?" "The reason I stopped going. I... went to a place that was... very far away. And I did... something. And I became a different person." "Was this something bad?" he asked. "No! It was good!" she said. "Then why are you bringing it up now?" "Because this thing I did... it made me... like Jesus." "Being like Jesus is what we strive to do." "Yes, but... it made me lose my faith." The priest took a deep breath. "No person can call themselves a believer unless they question their faith. That still does not answer the question of why you're here." "I don't know!" "If you've lost your faith, something has brought you back! What was it?" "It's just... I thought maybe I could find someone I could relate to in Jesus but... I just... never got the feeling He was... there."
"Now we're getting somewhere. We all have our crosses to bear but what makes you so special?" "Because... because I died!" "I'm sorry?" "I died, okay! And then I was resurrected but something that I don't know what it was but it was very much not God, and now I'm here!" The priest paused for a moment to collect his thoughts. "If what you say is true... that was a miracle... and blasphemy." "What are you going to make me do? Say 'Hail Mary' or 'Our Father?'" "No. I command you to find a person whom you can relate to. But before then, say ten 'Hail Marys' for wasting my time."
It was frustrating to grocery shop in Long Beach. Every grocery store was trying to be Whole Foods. It was difficult to find Blam Berry Blitz along with Anne's favorite snacks and what the hell, since Anne was a big girl now and knew she was going to live to be 91 anyway, why not add some wine to the cart?
It was hardly a grocery store trip when Anne didn't get recognized as the frog lady but tonight... A little girl walked away from her mother and approach Anne. "Look, Mommy, it's The Savior!" Anne had had just about enough. "I am not The Savior!" she yelled. The entire store grew quiet. A pin drop could be heard. Anne quietly left the grocery store. Looks like her snacks were going to have to be assembled piecemeal from various gas stations. Again.
Anne made sure she was on a proxy before she began to her destination on the world wide web. A forum specifically for conspiracy theories about "Frogvasion." She figured as long as she only read and never posted it was fine, right?
She began to eat her various snacks, drink her energy drink and her wine. Her hummingbird-like metabolism meant she wasn't going to gain weight anyway. She perused the forum, her Friday night ritual. The usual topics cropped up. Was it a hoax? Who would be so stupid to mess up their special effects this royally? Who was the blonde girl with the sword? Who were the friendly amphibian-people who seemed to be helping? Who was that feminine man in the suit? Who were those middle aged people with the advanced weapons and armor? Why did they look like the proprietors of one of the local Thai places? Most of all, who was "The Savior?"
Tonight, however, things seemed to be a little... different. They were talking about someone... else. A woman who was almost exactly her age. Who just so happened to have also traveled between dimensions. And this wasn't just some crackpot theory, this was 100% confirmed. Anne wasn't quite sure if it was worth a train ticket to Connecticut for the guided tour of this so-called "Boiling Isles." But a video of an interview with this fellow traveler gave Anne pause.
"Is it true, Ms. Noceda that you died and then came back to life?" "Out of all the things that happened to me, that was the most 'out there,' but yes, that did happen." "What do you say to the critics who say you are just making it up?" "I'd say, they can kiss my and my hot witch fiancee's butts!"
Anne booked the overnight train from Los Angeles to Boston immediately. She rushed to the station and managed to jump on the train just as the doors were closing. She settled into her seat just as an automated video started. "Hello. I'm Nicole Garcia, Secretary of Transportation for the United States. Please locate all emergency exits in your car. Passenger bullet trains such as this one would not be possible without the incident known as 'Frogvasion.' While it was just a case of Hollywood special effects gone awry, it did manage to scare international governments into a new era of peace and prosperity, which among other things meant a new wave of public transportation for the United States. I guess sometimes you just shouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth." Anne rolled her eyes. Almost as if she heard her, Nicole continued. "Perhaps 'The Savior' is on this train right now!" Great. Even the highest government officials, who were supposed to be denying everything where calling Anne "The Savior." Anne pulled her hoodie up and slumped back in her chair.
It was certainly a mammal. That was as far as Anne's undergrad in biology and master's in zoology could get her. Of course, her PHD in herpetology was absolutely useless as far as this thing was concerned. Even after having traveled to another dimension, thrice, seeing an intelligent animal that wasn't an amphibian was freaky.
"Hello, tour group! I'm King! Don't worry, it's just a name. My title for today is 'Tour Guide!' I will be providing a guided tour of the Boiling Isles. And since we're all friends here, I can tell you the real name of the Boiling Isles. Are you ready?" He lowered his voice. "It's The Deamon Realm! You know, once upon a time, I thought I was the king of all demons and as it turns out, I'm not even technically a demon! Life is funny like that."
Anne was about to ask this... King about Luz when King paused, started sniffing, and then made a beeline right at her. King began to encircle Anne, sniffing the ground beneath her feet. "I am so uncomfortable right now," she said. "You smell like frog!" King retorted. "I am a herptologist." "I don't know what that is! No, I mean, you've been somewhere that's not Earth or the Daemon Realm! But I'm gonna need to get a second opinion. Yo, tour group! Take five!"
King unceremoniously pulled Anne into the portal. Anne took a moment to register where she was exactly. She was in front of a house. Did that doorknob just move? Also, did it look strangely... familiar somehow? Before Anne could get a closer look at anything, King raised his head and gave some kind of sonic yell at the heavens. Louder than Anne thought physically possible. But then again, this was a different universe so the laws of physics must be different, right? Anne was given an answer to this when some sort of star-child-thing descended from the heavens in front of Anne and King.
"Kiiing!" It whined. "What's so important you had to interrupt what I was doing! I was explaining the concept of empathy to the Archivists and they were like 'whaaat? That's how mortals deal with their mortality? They were like 'woah!'" King cleared his throat. Ahem. "I was hoping you could take a look at this thing right here. My sniffer says she's been in a realm that's not here or Earth but I wanted to make sure."
The Star-Child examined Anne. Cocked his head. Stuck his tongue out. "Hold one just one nanosecond..." It touched Anne right in the center of her forehead. For a moment the Star-child appeared shocked. Then that shock was replaced with excitement. "This is Anne Boonchuy!"
Anne's stomach dropped. "How does this thing know who I am?" she thought, panicked. "And who-what-now?" King asked. "Anne Boonchuy! I played Parcheesi with the Guardian of the Stones and they just could not stop gushing about the first totally selfless user of the stones!" This calmed Anne somewhat. At least there was... an explanation for why this thing knew who she was. But if this thing did... what else did? "Of course, that was the original Anne Boonchuy. This one's a clone."
Anne now felt like a brick was tossed into her stomach. She had tried as hard as she could to forget the fact that she was a clone. The number of times that she had randomly remembered that fact since she well, died could be counted on one hand. But the number of times this fact absolutely devastated her was equal in number.
She should have been angry with this child-god but she wasn't. She just knelt down and... cried quietly. "Oh, I'm so sorry! I keep forgetting that mortals are self-conscious about dying. Stupid! Stupid!" The child-god hit himself in the head twice. Before he could hit himself again, King stayed his hand, and slowly approached Anne.
"Well, that makes you the second clone that I know. The clone I knew before, we didn't start off on good terms. In fact, he toyed with me. I was trying to sleep in a bird cage and he kept exposing light to me, waking me up and making me turn around." Anne stopped crying and began to chuckle, picturing King turning around like a bizarre mammalian bird. "But he became one of the coolest people I've ever known. I'd like to introduce you to him." Anne smiled and nodded.
King did not introduce Anne to this clone, this Hunter. Instead only telling Anne his name, taking him to his shop, and then hurrying off to conduct the tour he had long neglected. Anne knocked on the door. "It's open!" She heard a voice inside. Anne opened up the door and walked in.
Inside was a charming wood-working studio. In the center of it all was a blonde man whittling. "Are you Hunter." "That's what they call me." The man the looked up. The first thing Anne noticed were his scars. The next thing was that he was quite handsome. The scars did not diminish his handsomeness and perhaps even enhanced it. Yet, shocking they were. If that shock registered on Anne's face, Hunter did not notice or care. He had a relaxed, easygoing smile
"Ah! A human! You're pretty far from the tour group, aren't you? Want to be escorted back? It's pretty dangerous here in the Boiling Isles." "Believe me, I can handle my own," Anne snapped back, defensively. She had handled one alternate dimension before, she wasn't about to let another one get the best of her.
An awkward silence passed. "So if you're not with the tour group, what brought you here?" "You're a clone right?" Anne asked. Another awkward silence passed. "Dude, I'm so sorry! I don't know whether that's okay to ask or not!"