Vell Harlan and the Doomsday Dorms

“Good morning, students of the Einstein-Odinson Academy of Paracausal Forces!”

Vell woke with a start, and nearly jumped out of bed. The booming voice seemed to be coming from everywhere at once. Vell had been trying to sleep in after spending a late night dealing with yesterday’s apocalypse (a powerful electromagnet had stopped the earth’s rotation), and this interruption was unwelcome.

“This is your principal speaking! I would say `be not afraid`, but that's an angelic phrase, and I am legally obligated to clarify that I am not an angel," the principal's voice thundered. "Also, you should be afraid! Because today is our first campus-wide preparedness test!"

Vell’s equally startled roommates started to stumble out of their bedrooms. They were all looking around as if they expected to find some speaker playing the audio.

“I’m sure a lot of you have heard stories about our faculty removing the stairs from time to time,” the principal’s voice boomed. “Well, you’ll be happy to know that all the preparations you’ve made for such a situation are completely useless!”

Vell rolled his eyes. The one time he might have had a little advance warning on some weird bullshit.

“In keeping with our policy that all students should be prepared for the chaotic and uncontrollable variables of paracausal sciences, we’ve instituted a new challenge this year! As soon as you exit your dorm rooms, you’ll be participating in a campus-wide game of ‘The Floor is Lava’. Those of you who succeed in attending an entire day of class without touching the ground will earn a gold star!”

While Vell appreciated a challenge, a gold star didn’t seem like much of a reward.

“Those of you who fail will, well, nothing is going to happen, really, we can’t exactly punish you for not being prepared for this stuff, but those gold stars look real good on your college transcripts,” the principal boomed. “We know for a fact that Roentgen offers jobs to anyone who ends their studies with ten or more gold stars! So, there’s your motivation! Have fun, kids!”

After waiting a while to make sure the booming voice wasn’t going to talk again, Vell crossed the dorm room towards the door. He pried it open and took a look. Sure enough, the floor in the hallway was covered by a layer of buzzing bright-red light. Vell could easily guess that the glowing layer was what he had to avoid touching all day. It even made the floor look like lava. Vell resisted the urge to poke it.

“This seems like some real bullshit,” Cane said.

“Also, that layer is weirdly low,” Renard said. “There’s some chick out there with platform shoes just walking to class like normal right now, I bet.”

“Who the hell owns platform shoes?”

“Who the hell makes college students play ‘The Floor is Lava’?” Renard protested. “We’re in a weird place.”

“Good point,” Cane admitted. Vell leaned out over the “lava” and peered down the hallway. He could see doors opened up and down the hallway, as other students in the dorms appraised their situation. Since the booming omniscient voice of the principle had woken everybody up already, Vell figured he didn’t have to avoid shouting.

“Hey Freddy! Fred!”

A familiar fluff of red hair peeked out into the hallway -along with a completely unrelated blonde head.

“What do you want?” The blonde stranger, apparently a second Fred, demanded.

“Not you,” Vell said. “Freddy Frizzle.”

The blonde stranger vanished from view again, giving Vell an unobstructed view of Freddy.

“Hi Vell!”

“Hey Freddy,” Vell said. “Did you finish that, you know, gravity thingy we helped you fix?”

“Oh yeah, it’s great actually,” Freddy shouted back. “I localized the anomaly into some anti-gravity packs, if you need them. They should work great for this!”

“Sweet. How many you got?”

“How many do you need?”

Vell paused a moment to text his fellow time-loopers to see if they needed an assist. They all had their bases covered, meaning Vell only had to fend for himself and his roommates. He informed Freddy, and the fluffy scientist soon floated into the hallway, drifting effortlessly through the air over the lava-coated floor thanks to a cumbersome-looking metal backpack. He hauled four matching backpacks to Vell and his roommates and instructed them in their use.

“There’s a little knob on the right strap that’ll control your altitude,” Freddy said. “And don’t worry, there’s an internal altitude regulator, so you don’t have to worry about drifting off into space.”

“I wasn’t worried before, but now I am,” Luke said. “Didn’t Vell have to fix your anti-gravity device in the first place? How do we know these things will work?”

“Oh, that was a one time thing,” Vell insisted. “These’ll work fine. Freddy’s a smart guy.”

Vell could say that confidently, because this was the first loop and no one would remember if he was wrong. He started experimenting with the altitude controls, bobbing up and down in midair as he turned a knob back and forth.

“Now, I know it’s a lot of fun, but don’t mess with it too much,” Freddy warned. “These things only have enough charge for an hour or two, give or take a few minutes depending on your body weight. Should be enough to get you to all your classes, but I’d still go in a straight line whenever possible.”

Next came the bouncing lessons. The anti-gravity packs had lift, but no propulsion, so to get anywhere they had to bounce off the walls and drift towards their destination. Freddy nodded approvingly at their quick understanding of the controls.

“Vell, you seem to have a good handle on this,” Freddy said. “You mind taking one to Joan and telling her how it works?”

“Oh, uh, sure, I guess,” Vell said. “You sure you don’t want to deliver it yourself? You can probably explain how it works better than I can.”

“Well, I would, but, I, uh, the thing is-”

“Are you scared of Joan?” Cane said.

“A little bit,” Freddy squeaked. “No offense to Joan. She is slightly more intimidating than most women, and I am….already scared of most women.”

“We got to get you a date, man,” Cane said. Freddy seemed unnerved by the very concept. For the time being, Vell took the anti-gravity backpack and headed for Joan’s dorm. She was pleasantly surprised to see Vell at her door -and sincerely surprised to see him floating in midair.

“Hey Joan,” Vell said. “Freddy made some floating backpacks and was wondering if you needed one.”

“It’d be a big help, yeah,” Joan said. She invited Vell into her dorm, which, much like her wardrobe, was colored mostly in shades of red, black, and white. Vell questioned how she had customized the whole room to her liking without any conflict with her roommates. He was more preoccupied giving Joan her lessons in using the backpack -and eventually, wondering why her dorm was so empty.

“Did your roommates already plan something for the lava and leave you here?”

“Haven’t got any roommates,” Joan said as she bobbed around the room. Vell took a curious look around. All incoming freshmen were assigned with roommates. Only students in their later years got dorm rooms to themselves.

“This is a four person room, isn’t it?”

“Well, yeah,” Joan said. “I used to have some roomies, but they all transferred out to be with friends or be closer to the ground floor or stuff like that.”

“Lucky you,” Vell said. Joan drifted back towards him, coming to a halt just inches away from his face. She had a coy glimmer in her red eyes.

“It’ll be great for when we want some...privacy,” she whispered. She took hold of Vell’s shoulder, gave him a quick kiss on the cheek, and then pushed him hard to the right to force Vell to turn around. “But right now I need to get to my butt to class, so get your butt out of my room.”

Vell moved his butt, and the rest of his body, towards the door. He flipped his backpack on just before stepping out and drifted into the hallway. Joan drifted out right after him and waved goodbye before bounding down the hall. Vell’s roommates, and Freddy, were waiting for him, and as soon as they regrouped the bounced themselves down the halls and towards the door together. Students who weren’t prepared to defy gravity watched from their open dorm doors with envy as Vell and company drifted past. Cane led the way out of the dorms and they all stopped just outside the door, anchoring themselves to several picnic tables on the lawn.

“Alright, we got to make a plan,” Cane said. He examined their surroundings, scoping out every tree and flat surface that could be used as a springboard to launch them on their way. Cane closed one eye and held out his fingers to try and frame a course. Luke, meanwhile, pulled out his phone and pulled up a satellite map of the campus. With an aerial view he could accurately plan a long term journey for everyone.

“I think this should be pretty easy,” Luke said. “I can make a plan to get around. Let me just make some notes for you guys...”

Luke pulled out a piece of paper and started scrawling some notes, occasionally consulting Freddy for some technical specifications on the anti-grav backpacks. While Luke put his physics experience to work, a wave of water crashed around a nearby corner, bearing Lee along with it. Directing the wave with hydrokinetic magic, Lee surfed right up to the table and froze her wave in place to stand next to them.

“Good morning Vell. Everyone,” Lee said with a nod. Vell nodded, and then everyone nodded. Luke looked up and stuck the end of his pencil in his mouth.

“Ooh, hydrokinesis,” he said. “Handy. What’s your schedule? Cane could use a spare platform or two when crossing the quad, and an ice wall would be perfect for that.”

“I’ll do just fine, thanks,” Cane said defensively.

“Sadly I won’t be much help,” Lee said. “My schedule is rather full, after all. I have to keep an eye out for something.”

Lee liked to keep an eye out for potential disasters on the first loop, when possible, and today the likely culprit was very easy to identify. With a grid of laser sensors crisscrossing the entire campus, it was easy to guess what would go wrong today. The only question was where and when.

While Luke plotted a course, his phone slowly slid out of place and then dropped to the floor. Luke tried to catch it and failed, and the phone slipped through the laser grid, bounced twice, and landed in the grass near Renard.

“I got you, bud,” Renard said. He reached down to grab the phone. Luke grabbed him by the shoulder.

“Renard, don’t, you’ll lose the gold-”

Heedless to Luke’s words, Renard continued reaching out. The second his fingers crossed the red grid, he vanished, leaving behind a cloud of ash and empty clothing.

“-star.”

While the gathered group looked on in horror, Vell and Lee looked to each other with a sigh. The floor really was lava.

Vell and Lee sat together on the picnic table’s bench while their friends huddled atop the table, trying to get as far from the “lava” on the floor as possible. As they panicked about what to do next, Lee plucked a strand of long black hair from her head and dropped it downwards. As she expected, it vanished the second the end of the strand hit the grid.

“Hmm. Apparently the grid that was meant to detect organic matter has now switched to destroying organic matter,” Lee observed.

“So Renard got disintegrated, then,” Vell said. It was unfortunately unsurprising. Renard had gotten himself killed in a similar ignominious fashion during several apocalypses.

“Okay, this is fucked, but we’re okay, right?” Cane pleaded. “We can just stay right here until somebody fixes this, we’ll be fine. We’ve got Freddy’s backpacks and everything, we’ll be okay?”

“We can’t just stand around here,” Luke protested. “How many other people are going to try and touch the field just like Renard? There could be dozens of people dead already, and who knows how many more on the way.”

“And what the fuck are we going to do about it, Luke?” Cane protested. “I don’t see an off switch.”

“Principal’s office,” Lee said. The group turned to look at her, and she pointed over her shoulder, towards the faculty building all the way across campus. “These school challenge events are usually connected to a master control in the principal’s office. We can likely disable the ‘lava’ there.”

“We have a principal?” Vell asked. “Don’t colleges usually have like, a dean or something?”

“Colleges usually also don’t have laser grids that disintegrate their students,” Luke said. He pointed towards the faculty building. “Eyes on the prize, Vell.”

All heads turned away from Lee and towards the faculty building. It was, predictably, a significant distance away. Nothing was ever that easy. Lee appraised the distance herself.

“I seem to have the most convenient method of conveyance, so I’ll head that way,” Lee said.

“Whoa, hold on, alone?” Luke asked. “What if something happens?”

“I was planning to bring Vell,” Lee said. “I can drag him behind me like a child with a balloon.”

Lee seemed amused by the idea, while everyone other than Vell seemed horrified by her levity. They unfortunately could not understand that Renard’s death was temporary.

“I’m going too,” Luke said. “This could be dangerous. You’ll need all the bodies you can get.”

“Please don’t say ‘bodies’ in this context,” Freddy whimpered. “But I’m going as well. The gravity packs are my work, and I need to be there in the event of any malfunctions or damage. Nobody’s going to get hurt because of a glitch while I can help it.”

“Man you said these were safe,” Cane snapped.

“They are safe under normal circumstances,” Freddy shrieked back. “In the event that something goes wrong the failsafes will lower slowly you to the ground, which is perfectly safe when the ground won’t disintegrate you!”

Freddy waved in the direction of Renard’s ashen clothes for emphasis. Cane held up his hands.

“Alright, makes sense, my bad,” Cane said. Luke grabbed him by the shoulder and shook him slightly.

“We just need to keep calm and make sure at least one of us gets to the principal’s office,” Luke said. He held up the sheet of paper he’d been drawing on earlier. “I’ve still got all the calculations I did earlier, so I can hopefully get us to the faculty building as fast as possible.”

Cane looked around at the group and shrugged.

“Well I ain’t going to sit around with just Renard’s dust for company,” Cane said. “I’m coming too.”

“Dude. Respect for the dead,” Luke said.

“Yeah, respect, Renard, thanks for all the food, but right now my priority is making sure my ass ain’t getting dusted next,” Cane said.

“We’d better hurry,” Lee suggested. She unfroze the pillar of ice and stepped atop her magic wave. “Things will start to get...interesting, soon.”

“I don’t like that dramatic pause,” Freddy said.

“Yeah, and how the hell are you talking like you know so much about this?” Cane demanded.

“That is a very good question, Cane, very good,” Vell said. He wanted to move the conversation away from their time loop awareness. “But, uh, you know what else is a good question? How many people got disintegrated while we stand around asking good questions?”

Cane ran the numbers in his head for a second. The answer was at least “one”, which by Cane’s calculus was too many

“The man has a point,” Cane said. “We’d best get moving. Luke, where are we bouncing first?”

“We should hop between trees until we get to the Senior dorm building, after that it’s mostly a straight shot across the technical labs until you get to the lecture halls,” Luke said. “Lee, you lead the way.”

With a flick of her wrist, the water beneath Lee swept away from the table and carried her away on the rolling wave. She stopped by the nearest tree to beckon to the group. As was to be expected, most were hesitant to follow her. Vell decided to break the ice. He braced his feet against the edge of the picnic table and kicked off, launching himself through the air.

Compared to the idle drifting around the dorms earlier, the weightlessness had lost a lot of charm. Vell couldn’t help but look at the “lava” beneath him. The expanse of red light painted everything above it in subtle crimson hues. At least disintegration was a fairly painless way to die, Vell reminded himself. For somebody who had died as many times and as many different ways as Vell, it was all about looking on the bright side.

Having successfully drifted to the tree, Vell looked back at is friends and beckoned them over.

“This is rather more company than I was expecting to have,” Lee said. “But your roommates seem nice.”

“Speaking of company, where’s Harley?”

“I tried messaging her, but I’ve had no response,” Lee said. “She may have stumbled and been disintegrated already. It’s rare for an apocalypse to occur so early.”

There had been only about twenty minutes or so between Lee waking up and the “lava” grid getting activated. That gave them a very narrow margin to prevent the apocalypse on the second loop. Lee wanted all the help she could get on this one.

“I hope not,” Vell said. “She’s kind of the tech expert.”

“We’ve got Freddy in the meantime,” Lee said. “He’s as smart as he is fluffy.”

Freddy was currently drifting through the air between them and the tree, his mane of curled red hair billowing in the breeze. Vell nodded. They seemed to have a very good chance of getting to the principles office and finding out what had gone wrong. It seemed that way, at least. With the right combination of magic and science, you could get around most of the laws of physics, but there was no getting around Murphy’s Law.

“Besides, all we need to do is find out what went wrong,” Lee said. “We can tell Harley how to fix it tomorrow.”

After finishing that sentence, Lee held a finger to her mouth in the universal gesture for “shush”. Freddy was getting closer now, and even on a day he’d forget, Lee didn’t want to spread the secret of the time loops. Awareness of the time loops could make Butterfly Effect Psychosis set in fast, and she wanted their makeshift team focused on the matter at hand. There would be enough distractions very soon. By her estimations, they had about an hour before things got...interesting.

Lee didn’t know why she was doing the dramatic pause in her own thoughts. She didn’t dwell on it for long.

Luke grabbed the corner of the dorm building and found a comfortable ledge to sit on. He hadn’t expected weightlessness to be so tiring.

“You know, this campus seems a lot smaller when I’m walking between classes,” Luke said. They’d been bouncing from tree to tree and wall to wall for more than an hour, but it felt like even longer.

“The threat of impending death really makes the time crawl,” Vell noted as he drifted by. They still had a long way to go. He wasn’t sure how long, exactly. It seemed like the campus rearranged itself when he wasn’t looking sometimes. Nothing was ever in exactly the same place twice.

“Luke, darling, I wouldn’t sit near the windows if I were you,” Lee advised.

“Why’s that?” Luke asked.

The window behind Luke snapped open. He barely had time to look behind him and let out a surprised gasp before two sets of hand grabbed him and pulled him into the building, out of sight.

“Luke?” Cane asked.

The only response they got was a makeshift spear embedding itself into the tree they were clinging to. Vell pried it loose from the tree and took a look at it. The spearhead was made from a broken fragment of metal and held in place by shredded wires.

“That’s why,” Lee said.

Cane jumped away from the dorm as the window’s began to open. Dozens of students, wielding more makeshift weapons, began to descend the walls, kept above the lava by means of cables and ropes. While there were remnants of their old clothing visible, the students were mostly garbed in piecemeal armor made from broken fragments of technology. Vell had very little time to contemplate their fashion choices before another spear got flung their way -and then another. Lee grabbed Cane by the shoulder and moved him out of the way of three spears and a throwing knife, which all embedded themselves in the tree with a loud “thunk”.

“They’ve gone tribal,” Lee shouted. “Move!”

Vell grabbed Freddy and launched off the nearest wall. He had no real destination in mind, but ‘further away from the stabbing’ was good enough. As they bounced away, more and more of the students appeared from the windows, clambering on the walls or swinging on ropes. Far above, on the roof, an ornately garbed student held aloft a staff topped with the severed head of a robot.

“Kill them, my children!” the Senior demanded. “Their technology is what turned our lands to fire! Take them and crush their craven backpacks to appease the Old Ones!”

“I think I have Chem 102 with that guy,” Cane noted.

Vell landed on a way and hurled Cane to the next stop, before tossing Freddy and then launching himself. Lee was bringing up the rear, occasionally diverting some of the water she rode to block a spear or arrow that got too close. She did not seem bothered by the former classmates trying to impale her.

“It’s been like two hours,” Vell snapped. “How are they already full Mad Max?”

“People at this school like to form doomsday cults, for some reason,” Lee said.

Lee flicked her wrist, and a wall of ice prevented a spear from piercing her heart. She thawed the ice and returned it to her wave before surfing to Vell’s side.

“Grab on, we need to make some distance,” Lee said. Vell latched on to Lee’s shoulders and allowed himself to be pulled through the air as they caught up with the rest of the group. He looked back to see that the tech-rejecting cult had strapped on stilts and were stumbling after them.

“This seems insane even by the usual standard,” Vell said. Lee nodded.

“The cultists are admittedly a bit of an outlier,” Lee said.

“Well, the outliers are catching up with us.”

Hydrokinetic surfing, while an incredibly stylish way to get around, was only slightly faster than drifting from place to place with the anti-grav packs. Vell watched nervously as one of the stilt-walking cultists got closer and closer to them.

“What is wrong with you?” Vell shouted. He still found it hard to believe that someone had gone this crazy in only two hours.

“Death to heathens,” the collegiate cultist screamed back. Vell rolled his eyes in spite of his fear. The lead cultist was getting too close for comfort, and there was a teeming horde of lunatics behind him.

“Lee, if you’ve got anything to make this wave of yours go faster,” Vell said. Lee kept her focus on the road ahead, and did not answer Vell’s fearful query. The cultist took a few more stilted strides towards Vell and raised their makeshift weapon. As the bladed weapon raced downwards towards Vell’s heart, time seemed to stand still.

After seeming to freeze in place for a moment, the spear started to move -backwards. The spear and the cultist carrying it both started to drag backwards and then fly through the air, along with every other cultist giving chase. All but one. As their fellow cultists flew backwards and somehow adhered themselves to the nearest wall, the masked cultist stepped up, nodded approvingly at the cultists stuck to the wall, and removed their mask.

“Hey guys,” Harley said.

“Hello dear,” Lee said.

“Harley!”

“The one and only,” Harley said.

“Why are you in the crazy cult?” Vell demanded.

“Well it really only went full Mad Max in the last fifteen minutes or so,” Harley said. She looked over her shoulder at the dorm building and shook her head. “Up until the murder starts doomsday cults are actually pretty fun. Nihilism makes everybody either really boring or really horny. I’ve gotten laid three times this morning.”

Harley held up three fingers before realizing nobody shared her enthusiasm about her sexual triumphs. She scoffed at them and continued boasting anyway.

“Probably could have gotten to five if I hadn’t been busy putting electromagnets into everybody’s armor.”

She gestured to the cultists struggling to remove themselves from the wall, beaming proudly at her work. Vell and Lee nodded understandingly while the rest of the group looked on with horror at the frozen cultists. Harley noted their reactions -and their presence.

“So, running with a pretty heavy crew today, I see?”

“Used to be heavier,” Freddy said, looking towards the dorms where Luke had presumably met his end.

“We could always use one more,” Lee said. Harley looked over the group, looked back at the dorm full of cultists, and then shrugged.

“Sure, why not,” Harley said. Her lack of enthusiasm caught Vell off guard. He leaned over to whisper in Lee’s ear.

“Should I be worried that she almost chose a cult over us?”

“Oh not at all, being in a doomsday cult is surprisingly fun,” Lee said. The smile on her face unnerved Vell. “You should try it sometime. It’s quite liberating.”

Harley ditched the remnants of her cult gear, but kept the stilts, striding dramatically over the lava. The group set out once more, eyes open for any further attacks, with Harley placing herself right in the middle of the crowd.

“Hey again Freddy,” Harley said. She poked one of the anti-gravity backpacks curiously, making Cane bob in mid-air slightly. “You work fast. What are these, localized gravitational anomalies contained in a Kraid Tech projection field?”

“That is...exactly it,” Freddy said. “How did you know?”

“Harley’s good with tech,” Lee said. “It’s half the reason I keep her around.”

“And the other half is my great butt,” Harley said. She leaned forward -somehow maintaining her balance on makeshift stilts all the while- into a pose that emphasized her rear. Freddy deliberately looked away, red in the face, while Cane deliberately looked closer, and raised an eyebrow.

“I was going to say because I find you charming, but I do suppose a good butt is it’s own sort of charm,” Lee said. After giggling at her own joke, Lee waved towards the principal’s office. “Come along, everyone. We still have a ways to go.”