Oz Reimagined Part 9

"Just another part of your adventure," said the Wizard. "I never really left. I'm always here, in one form or another."

"Thenayou were just playing a role, like all the others?"

"I am Oz the Great and Terrible, the Kind and Beneficent, and everything else you need me to be. I am the man with all the answers. Come walk with me, Dorothy, and all shall be made clear."

Reluctantly Dorothy allowed the little old man to lead her to the road of yellow brick, and they walked along together, the Wizard moving easily beside her. It bothered her on some level that all her old friends stayed behind. That even Toto didn't come with her. As though the Wizard had things to tell her that could only be said in private. Or perhaps because they already knew, as though they shared some great and terrible secret that only the Wizard himself could tell her.

"I always was the one with all the answers," said the Wizard. "Even if I wasn't necessarily what I seemed."

"When I first met you, I saw a huge disembodied Head," said Dorothy. "The Scarecrow said he saw a lovely Lady. The Tin Man, he saw an awful Beast with the head of a rhinoceros and five arms and legs growing out of a hairy hide. And the Lion saw a Ball of Fire. But in the end, you turned out to be just an old humbug, a man hiding behind a curtain. Why did you insist we had to kill the Wicked Witch before we could all have what we needed?"

"Because gifts must be earned, and good must triumph over evil if an adventure is to have an end," said the Wizard. "Did you never wonder why the Wicked Witch, so afraid of water, would keep a bucket of water nearby?"

"It was a dream," said Dorothy. "You don't question what happens in a dream."

"Do you remember being old, Dorothy?" the Wizard asked gently.

"Yes," she said slowly. "Though that seems like the dream now."

"You have finally woken up from that nightmare and come home. Where you belong. This is a good place, Dorothy, where good things happen every day, and the day never ends. Unless you want it to, of course. Lookasee?"

Dorothy looked where he was pointing, out across the great green plain before them. Off in the distance, two young girls were dancing with a huge and n.o.ble Lion. A young girl in sensible Victorian clothes was conversing solemnly with a great White Rabbit. And a boy and his Bear played happily together at the edge of a great Forest.

"I know them," said Dorothy. "Don't Ia?"

"Of course," said the little old man. "Everyone knows them and their stories. Just as everyone knows you and your story. All these children dreamed a great dream of a wonderful place where magical things happened. And some author wrote the stories down to share their dreams with others. All of you, in your own ways, caught just a glimpse of this place, this good place yet to come. For a moment, you left your world and came to mine. And because all of you are my children, you all get to come home again in the end."

Dorothy looked steadily at the Wizard. "Who are you, really?"

He smiled at her with eyes full of all the love there is. "Don't you know? Really?"

"And this isa"

"Yes. This is heaven, and you'll never have to leave it again."

"I'm dead, aren't I? Like Toto."

"Of course. Or to put it another way, you have woken up from the dream of living, into a better dream. Everyone you ever loved, everyone you ever lost, is here waiting for you. Look. There are Aunt Em and Uncle Henry."

Dorothy looked down the road to where four young people were waiting. She recognized Em and Henry immediately, though they didn't seem much older than she was.

"Who's that with them?" she asked.

"Your mother and your father," said the old man. "They've been waiting for you for so long, Dorothy. Go and be with them. And then we'll all go on to the Emerald City. Because your adventures are only just beginning."

But Dorothy was already off and running, down the road of yellow brick, in that perfect land, in that most perfect of dreams.

DEAD BLUE.

BY DAVID FARLAND.

Tin Man's life flashed in memory the way that it always did when rebootinga"at least, the part of his life stored within his crystal drive.

He had been traveling with Dorothy, climbing over a razor-backed ridge of gray karst rock, when the Chimeras strucka"dropping from the low-hanging fog.

The first inkling of attack came when a huge weight slammed into his back, knocking him over a precipice onto sharp boulders, and suddenly a Baboon was biting at his throat with dirty yellow fangs, hissing "Die, you motherfua""

Its hands smelled of dung and filth; its breath stank of morning kimchee.

It wrenched Tin Man's head, as if trying to snap his neck with superhuman strength.

Tin Man was so shocked, he barely had time to shout a warning, "Dorothy!"

He activated the vibroblade on his axe and felt it hum to life in his hand.

Something batted the axe to the grounda"a fluttering wing, enormous and batlike. Only then did he realize that his attacker was a Chimera, a life form cobbled together by a mechmage.

Dozens of others dropped out of the cloud forest, wings fluttering in a blur. They hurled Scarecrow to the ground, scattered his straw, and s.n.a.t.c.hed up Toto and Dorothy.

Tin Man could not see the Lion and hoped that the coward had made his escape. As the Winged Baboon hit his kill switch, Tin Man marveled at his attackers.

They were perfectly fitted to their humid terrain, where mountain escarpments split the jungle. Such creatures, with DNA from humans, baboons, and giant batsa"flying foxes perhaps?a"would easily haul ore from the Witch's bauxite and platinum mines.

Tin Man wondered, Do they even know how beautiful they are?

Dorothy's eyes were flat blue, the color of television, tuned to a dead channel. Her young face was pale from shock, emotionless, framed by strawberry hair the color of bloodied water.

"Oh, Tin Man, are you all right?" she begged, leaning over him, trying to help him up. He pushed away her hands and tried to rise on his own power.

As he rebooted, memories burst upon him in wavesa"flashes of his past life as a machinea"while sound files all roared at once, louder than the crashing of the sea.

All that came to him now were the mech-memories. Nothing from before, nothing from the days when there had still been a fleshy component to him.

Once, he had been a man. Then he lost a leg and had it replaced with cyberware. As he had aged, more parts camea"an artificial lung here, a kidney there, drives and programs to enhance his failing memorya"until only a shriveling brain had been left to the cyborg, powered by a dying heart.

He was not sure when he had quit defining himself as a man and accepted that he was a cyborg.

Now, he told himself, I am not even a cyborg. I am a construct, a golem made from black plasteel and t.i.tanium, hardly better than Scarecrow.

The recognition brought no sense of loss. He recalled that Dorothy had asked a question. His programming required that he offer a reply. "I feel fine, Dorothy."

But can one truly be said to feel fine when he feels nothing at all?

He was dead inside. His quest to get a new hearta"a simple pump to keep his brain alive, his last connection to the world of emotiona"had failed. His olfactory sensors could detect the remains of his own rotting organs.

Tin Man scanned the nearby rocks. The Winged Baboons surrounded them there on the ragged peaks. Dark creatures with gleaming fangs. In infrared, he could see them glowing, as if flames licked their skin. They spread their wings as they sat huffing from a recent flight.

Dorothy and the Lion exhibited no fear of them. Indeed, Toto sat in the arms of one of their leaders as the creature scratched the dog's head.

Several Winged Baboons now leaned over Scarecrow, stuffing the straw back into his clothing, retracing the runes upon his mouth that would let him speak. There is a technology that surpa.s.ses mere gears and circuitsa"a technology so advanced that common men cannot comprehend it.

Tin Man was not versed in technomagic, but when a Winged Baboon brought out a soulgivera"a forked rod fitted with switches and meters that jolted Scarecrow to lifea"Tin Man knew enough to feel awe.

It seemed that much time had pa.s.sed since he'd died. Vines had grown over his t.i.tanium exoskeleton, with its sleek design and black plasteel joints. Weak electronic stimulation to some circuits in his right arm and leg suggested internal corrosion.

He'd lain here for months.

"What happened?" he asked Dorothy.

"The Wicked Witch caught me," she said. "I killed her."

Killing a technomage wasn't easy. The Witch of the West was an ageless cyborg. Her green skin powered her system by converting sunlight to energy using chlorophyll.

"How?"

"She forced me to wash the floors in her castle," Dorothy said. "She liked to come in and walk on them while they were still wet, leaving muddy tracks. So I waited until she walked in with wet feet, and then I threw down the bare ends of a power stripa"and fried her green a.s.s." Dorothy laughed painfully, halfway to a cry. "Now I'm the Wicked Witch of the West!"

The Witch's own pettiness had been her end. Tin Man felt the killing was well justified.

Dorothy held out her hand as proof of the deed. She wore the Witch's bracelet, complete with glowing diadems. It looked something like a chronograph, but meters and LEDs tracked the progress of the nan.o.bots that would turn her into a technomage, guided by the bracelet's own AI. Indeed Dorothy's arms had begun turning green, as if they were pieces of rotting fruit.

Deeper within her, other changes would be taking place. Synapses would be growing and expanding, boosting her intelligence to superhuman levels. Already, studs on her brow showed that she had fitted herself with cybernetic implants so that she could access the data stored within the Witch's Cloud.

The leader of the Winged Baboons gave a howling shriek. "All hail Dorothy!" and from every perch on the ragged peak, like loathsome gargoyles upon a castle wall, thousands of its brethren began roaring, tossing gra.s.s and leaves into the air in celebration, chanting, "All hail Dorothy!"

But Dorothy did not smile at their obeisance. Her eyes did not glow with pride. On her taut lips there was only pain. She had killed in cold blood. Did she fear what she would become?

"A Witch you may be," Tin Man said, "but you will never be *wicked.' You've saved my life twice now, and for that I thank you. I think we'll have to find a new name for you. How about the Worthy Witch of the West?"

He did not say it, but he suddenly remembered something: he'd once loved her. He'd loved the little girl that she had been, and he knew that he would love the woman that she would become.

The fleshly component of his body was dead now, along with its capacity to love. But the memory still floated through his RAM, a ghost in the machine.

She was taller nowa"at least an inch taller than when she'd first made her appearance in Oz. She had grown in more ways than one.

The Winged Baboons finished shocking Scarecrow to life, and he began to speak. "Are we going to Oz?" Scarecrow cried in celebration. "Shall we get our reward?"

Dorothy looked sad at this, as if pitying the fool. "Oh, Scarecrow," she said. She seemed to fight back words that would break his heart, but said carefully, "Of course I want you to have your reward." But there was a distant look in her eyes.

She peered away toward Emerald City, gleaming there beyond the mountains. Its spires rose to heaven, and in the evening, one could see green lights among its towers, winking like stars, guiding in the zeppelin captains who ferried goods from far countries.

There was a wistfulness to Dorothy's gaze, a haunted look, and Tin Man knew that she was accessing memories from the Cloud.

"He can't help us," she said. "He's a charlatan, Scarecrow, no technomage at all. The image we saw of a sagacious wizard was nothing but a disguise, a holograph. Their wizard cannot offer you a brain. The best he might give is a third-rate memory crystal from a broken-down droid."

At that, Scarecrow looked to the ground, hung his head in defeat, and began to bawl.

Dorothy fixed him with a commanding gaze. "I will do better, my friend. I will fit you with a brain unparalleled in the world, and you shall have access to all the data in my Cloud, for you have proven your loyalty over and over again."

Scarecrow's demeanor immediately changed. "Hooray!" he shouted, and he jumped up and began to dance, scattering straw from his stuffed shirt and trousers.

"And me?" the Cowardly Lion roared, stepping forward. He tucked his tail between his legs and cringed, as if afraid that she might whip him.

Dorothy smiled benevolently. "I shall fit your hypothalamus, the back of your brain, with a device that will jolt it. When faced with cruelty and injustice, your rage shall overwhelm your own self-interests, for that is all that courage isa"outrage over evil."

The Lion frowned, as if he had hoped for more.

"I'm sorry if it seems too little," she said. "But the Wizard of Oz can offer you nothing but patronizing plat.i.tudes. He's only an old man whose starship slipped into a wormhole. He can never return home, so he makes his living by foolery. In that industrious city, where all of his people slave beneath a cloud of fear, he produces the least of all, for he creates only lies and illusions and false a.s.surances. He is the ultimate politician. He only takes, while his people give. He sent us on this quest hoping that we would be destroyed."

Tin Man scanned the city where he had once placed his hopes, his electronic eyes registering the scene in infrared, so that certain pillars blazed from heat waste. It looked like a h.e.l.l of burning green flames. The Wizard was no better than a murderer, he decided. "Then he cannot help you get home?"

"No," Dorothy said. "Even if he were a mechmage, that would be beyond his power. I must make my home in Oz."

"What of me?"

"Your heart died months ago, and your brain with it," she said. "I would bring them back if I coulda" She faltered, and a tear slid down her cheek. "I'm sorry. For you, most of all, I'm sorry."

She looked too sad and too wise for her years, but that was the price of knowledge.

"What will you do with the *Wizard'?" Tin Man asked. "What he does is unjust."

"He should pay for his crimes," Dorothy agreed. "But I won't harm him. In time his people will discover his evil, and then they will bring him to justice."

He wondered why she did not take the Wizard now. He'd nearly sent Dorothy to her death. Tin Man suspected that the Winged Baboons would gladly rip him limb from limb.

He looked into her dead blue eyes, and Tin Man understood. She already grieved over what she had done. Compa.s.sion restrained her from bloodshed.

He wondered, Does she even know how beautiful she is?

Tin Man no longer suffered from human limitations, not since the Wizard of Oz had masterminded his death.

"No better time to get rid of him than now," Tin Man said.

Activating the vibroblade of his axe, he turned and stalked downhill into the gathering darkness.

ONE FLEW OVER THE RAINBOW.