Carravallas Inc.

By Reggie Parker

When Auggie was a little boy he discovered a different world. He found it in the backyard, between a

gap in the fence that could not be. This was because when he first went through the gap, it should

have led to his neighbours house and to their fat cat, Lucy. But it didn’t. It led to a place with

snow—which he found odd, because it was the middle of July—and a mediaeval castle so fantastical

it seemed straight out of his Tolkien book. Auggie was sure there were no castles like this in rural

Pennsylvania; he was sure there were no castles like this anywhere in the entire United States.

He called this place Carravallas, although he could not remember where he had gotten the

name from. It was his secret world that he loved even more than Lucy.

For a long time he remembered that place as if he had actually been there. Then, as time

passed, and as he grew older, he remembered it like you remember something that you aren’t quite

sure was a dream or not. Then, as he grew into an awkward teenager—and as believing in worlds that

didn’t exist became not at all very cool—he attributed the world through the gap in his fence as

nothing but a childish fantasy. He was a smart person, he knew that, and smart people don’t believe in

worlds on the other side of fences. As Auggie grew into an adult—and became strictly known as

Augustus—he entirely forgot about Carravallas.

Until he found the elephant, of course; hidden in the bottom drawer of the cabinet in his

childhood bedroom. The bedroom you grew up in holds all the things that were once most important

to you. He remembered it. And then laughed, and then frowned. And stood, puzzled, in the midst of

his old things thrown around him in piles labelled “Throw”, “Donate”, and “Keep.”

It was about the size of his palm; it must have taken two hands to hold when he was small. It

was jade-green and shaped like an elephant. One of its tusks was broken. He couldn’t remember

whether it had always been like that. It glowed, not like an LED, and not like a glow stick; it radiated.

Where had it come from?

He had thought—as a child—that it had come from Carravallas. He had taken it as a token ...

or it was gifted to him. And the story swept over his mind again, like recollecting a brilliant dream. It

made him feel briefly happy; it made him wish he had never let go of that imagination and replaced it

with math, science, and all that “critical thinking” you needed as an adult. He felt this only briefly,

because critical thinking told him he must have gotten the statue on a family holiday somewhere,

although which holiday he could not recall.

He felt it vibrate softly in his hand like a purring cat. He felt the heat coming from it, and the

cogs of his critical thinking started to turn.

Power—not the metaphorical, capitalist kind, but the electric kind—came from Carravallas Inc.

Everyone knew that. Carravallas Inc. had saved the world—at least that's how they said it in the ads.

But it wasn’t so far from the truth. Augustus Rush had discovered unlimited clean energy that would

save the world from the coal-burning, uranium-splitting, climate-dooming, capitalists. And in a way, it

did. It was limitless clean energy, and at an affordable price. There was no need to burn coal or pump

oil, and no more money to be made.

Augustus sat in his spacious office, floor to ceiling windows curved around him in every

direction. The city squatted beneath him; a view that could take an age to get used to. He was alone.

He was not often alone. Usually meetings filled his day, but a string of cancellations rendered his

afternoon free. He had even told Jessica, his personal assistant, not to let anyone in for the next few

hours so he could just ... enjoy the peace.

And he was enjoying it. He looked upon the city, and spotted something out of place. It stood

on top of one of the other tall buildings across the skyline.

It was a maned wolf.

It had red-brown fur streaked with black along its spine, horrendously long legs that did not

make sense for its body, and a long pointed face that daggered straight at Augustus. Augustus knew

exactly what it was because he had once seen one on a wildlife show when he was a child, and he was

terrified of it. He rubbed his eyes and looked again, but it was still there, surveilling him from atop the

Bank, long spindly legs holding it against the wind.

‘He is really there, Auggie. It is not an illusion,’ said a voice from behind him.

Augustus spun around, and surprise rippled through him, the hair standing up on his arms.

‘It’s been a long time, hasn’t it, Auggie?’ said Thester.

Yes, that was his name. Thester.

Augustus said nothing; unable too. Then finally, as the silence began to fester, he said ‘It's

Augustus.’

‘You hate that name, Auggie,’ said Thester with a mellow smile. Thester looked exactly as he

remembered, like a rough sleeper cosplaying as a court jester, except a little classy. Thester the Jester,

Augustus had called him.

‘Jessica?’ Augustus called out to the room over, although not very loudly.

‘Jessica has gone home. Her cat had an ... emergency.’ He raised a jeweled hand, as if to

wave off any aspersions like flies, ‘don’t worry, the cat is fine. You know me, I would never do

anything to hurt an innocent creature. You on the other hand, Auggie—’

‘It’s Augustus,’ Augustus emphasised.

‘Ok, Auggie.’

Augustus turned around and looked back to the maned wolf. It was gone.

‘He will be back,’ explained Thester, ‘I think Arwill was just checking you were here. You

weren’t at home, you see.’

‘What are you doing here?’ Augustus asked, still not entirely sure whether he had accidentally

slipped a psychedelic into his morning coffee.

Thester walked to the window and wondered at the city below. He drank in the view. ‘You

have made a beautiful world for yourself, Auggie. I’m impressed.’

‘I remember you now, you were that homeless man I met when I was a kid. A stranger. Mum

hated that I talked to you.’

‘Wouldn’t I be dead? If I was old and from your world?’ Thester turned and looked at him.

Someone who Augustus had remembered having to look up to, now stared at him at eye level.

‘What do you want? Why are you here?’

‘Same reason he is,’ Thester said, indicating to where the maned wolf had stood a moment

before. ‘Carravallas is dying, Auggie. As your world thrives, my world decays. You leech on our life.’

‘What is that supposed to mean?’

‘What you stole. You are draining our world to power your ...’ Thester inspected Augustus’s

office desk ‘... cat-shaped desk lamp.’

‘What I stole? What the hell do you mean? I didn’t steal anything.’

‘The idol, Auggie.’

‘The elephant?’

‘Argos, aye.’

‘But, that’s from ...’ the dials on the clock of his memory clicked slowly. It hadn't been on

holiday he had found the statuette. And now that he thought about it, he was not entirely sure it had

been a gift. ‘What does the statue have to do with anything?’

Thester leaned in close, ‘when you take the beating heart out of a human, what happens to the

rest of the human? It perishes on the last cycle of blood the heart pumped.’

‘And?’

‘Carravallas is dying, Auggie. The land. The people. All of it.’

‘But that was years ago.’

‘For you, yes. For us, days.’

‘I can’t give it back.’ Augustus spoke this as an absolute. There was not a bone in his body

that would give back that statue.

‘But you must.’

‘It is not that simple. I have saved the world.’

‘By destroying mine.’

‘I’m not giving it back. That is ridiculous.’

Thester paused and thought. He seemed to consider the look on Augustus' face, and then the

room around him.

‘I was not the first one to come from Carravallas, you know. But I was the only one willing to

ask nicely.’ He went to leave.

‘How did you get here?’ Augustus asked.

Thester turned and smiled, ‘through the gap in your fence, of course.’

Patching the gap in the fence was easy, and it had needed to be done before he could sell his parents

house anyway. It was a lot smaller than he remembered, and perhaps that's why he had stopped going

to Carravallas—he simply no longer fit.

His parents backyard—really his backyard now—was large and lush. It will probably all be

bulldozed, I suppose. He found this thought briefly melancholic, until he saw the maned wolf again.

Its lean face stared at him from inside a tall ivy hedge on the other side of the backyard. But the face

was far too high in the bush for it to be standing on its four legs. And last Augustus knew, maned

wolves didn’t climb.

He stared back at it, feeling the same old fear from the wildlife show wriggling into his chest

like worms digging through his flesh. It looked ... not hungry, Augustus decided, but expectant. Like

all the wolf had to do was wait. Augutus moved to the house. The wolf’s face followed him like a

portrait follows you in an art gallery; only its eyes moved.

The Bunyip had been a gregarious creature when Augustus had met him as a boy. He was scary in the

same way your parents’ flamboyant, extravagant adult friend was scary. You knew they were

supposedly harmless, but they teased you and then laughed really loudly. The Bunyip was a swamp

thing, if swamp things had grown up rich, with lots of friends. He revelled in his billabong and was

both the life of the party and the party itself; creating a sort of self sustaining celebration that needed

only to be fed delicious meals. And mead, of course. Augustus remembered offering the Bunyip one

of his tastykakes.

The illusion that these things had never really happened was starting to crack. And now that

he let the gates open, the flood of memory was washing over him. The Bunyip, Argos the Wise, Sir

Orin the Silver Sword, Thester the Jester, and the Maned Wolf. It defied all logic that these could

exist, and yet Thester had come to Carravallas Inc. HQ, walked through the front doors dressed like a

bad birthday party magician, got past the front desk, up the elevator to the top floor, and somehow

convinced Jessica to go home. That was all very impressive for an old homeless man Augustus had

met thirty years ago.

Augustus sat at his home. Rustic-chic furniture—incredibly expensive yet aesthetically

cheap—cluttered the space. He sat at a mahogany table and ate, and noticed the pearl barley soup

didn’t taste quite as ... fulfilling, as perhaps it should.

A fly buzzed somewhere in the room. He ignored it, but it persisted like tinnitus. Sighing, he

stood up and hunted for it. He was reminded of hunting crickets in his backyard as a kid. The fly was

playing with him; he could hear it, large and horrendous, but it continued to evade him. Then, the

buzzing stopped. Content with scaring it off, Augustus returned to his seat, sat down, and found the

horsefly sitting in the soup staring at him.

‘Nice place you got here,’ said the fly. Except it wasn’t the fly. Augustus knew this for two

reasons. First: flies didn’t talk, obviously; second: he recognised the voice.

The voice laughed, ‘Don’t worry boy, this fly is as clean as a fresh water spring. You can still

eat your sad soup. The same cannot be said of me.’ The voice laughed raucously. Augustus shooed the

fly away, but it just glided drunkenly over his hand and landed back in the soup. The voice tisked.

‘That's not how you treat a guest, boy.’

‘I didn’t invite you in.’

‘Didn’t you? My mistake. Why don’t you come to me?’

And then Augustus blinked, and the place he opened his eyes was not where he closed them.

The feted stench hit his nostrils before his eyes made sense of where he was. The Billabong had

soured in the years since Augustus had seen it; it was like a pearl barley soup that had been left out so

long the mold on it had grown sentient. Rot, decay, and decomposition melted the nature into slippery

waxy forms.

The Bunyip—lacking any better descriptive language—oozed. Every part of him dripped like

a skeleton slathered in mucus that just never seemed to run out. He was both bigger and more

insubstantial than the last time Augustus had seen him. He could not tell where the Bunyip stopped

and the Billabong started.

‘Hello my boy,’ he pustulated. ‘Things have changed.’ He smiled, Augustus saw the shiny

slick bones beneath the flesh of his wide face. The Bunyip’s eyes had fallen out, or melted, leaving

vacuous wet pits.

‘How am I here?’

‘You’re not really here. You’re almost here. Right now we are expending great resources and

energy to shrink the fabric between your world and ours. We are killing ourselves!’ he laughed,

gelatinous spittle fell from his mouth. ‘We are killing ourselves in a last effort to get to you, boy, like a

bee severing its own stinger to escape its attacker.’

He was sinking, Augustus realised. The Billabong slowly consumed the Bunyip like sulfuric

acid. More of the Bunyip’s bones were showing; he was becoming one with the Billabong. ‘Boy,’ said

the Bunyip, but the voice had no strength to it, ‘return it to us. There is little time left.’

Augustus blinked, and he was sitting at his kitchen table in front of a stinking bowl of rotten

pearl barley soup. He threw the soup out.

The light of cool-blue screens enveloped Augustus. The clinical, laboratorial depths of the Carravallas

Inc. HQ emitted a constant comforting buzz; it was the buzz of productivity, things doing stuff to turn

numbers into money, like a hive of bees churning out honey in slave-like fervour. Augustus loved this

place because you did not have to reason with machinery, you only had to direct it.

And he did; to the confusion of his science team he redirected what he realised would equate

to hundreds of thousands of company funds from complex market research, data analytics, energy

readings, and math even Augustus struggled to comprehend, to a singular purpose.

‘What do you mean by tears in space?’ The scientist—an intern—who was labouring over the

monitor with the CEO of his company breathing down his back really wanted to tell the CEO that

tears in space belonged in an episode of Doctor Who and that it didn't really mean anything to him, or

the computers.

Augustus heard a quiet ragged breathing from behind him. He turned and found nothing but

white floors and sleek machines.

‘We have radars,’ Augustus said in the tone he had learnt from several decades of being a

boss. It was the tone that denoted to the listener that the speaker didn’t much care for their opinion.

‘And satellites designed to sense spikes in energy releases anywhere in the world.’

‘Yes, but if we redirect for even—’

‘Then your cat-shaped desk lamp will go out for a while. Just do it.’

The intern’s resolve broke like a small twig. He fiddled on his keyboard; Augustus watched as

numbers and codes flew across the screen. A larger screen on the far wall showed a map of the world,

different hotspots illuminated with a spectrum of light. The lights shifted from largely populated

spaces all over the world to one hot dot right over Pennsylvania.

Augustus resisted the urge to say “zoom in, enhance.” The intern must have heard the words

anyway because soon Pennsylvania filled the whole screen. The intense red hotspots reflected in the

poor man’s glasses. The computers groaned like a great ship twisting in the tumult of the sea. The

screen and lights flickered for a moment before stabilising. There were hotspots over Augustus’s

home and his parents home, as well as a massive one over Carravallas Inc. HQ.

‘What the...’ muttered the intern.

‘How do we stop it?’ Augustus said to himself.

The intern, not realising this, said ‘stop what?’

‘The energy is bleeding through.’

The intern, feeling like he was duty bound to say so, said ‘it’s building. Like blowing up a

balloon. There is more energy going through those places than the energy needed to power all of

America for a decade.’

‘So it will blow?’

‘Well ... yes?’

Augustus heard the breathing again, but closer, right over his shoulder. He saw, in his

peripheral vision, a long black snout; he felt hot breath on his neck that smelled of sour meat. He

didn’t move, except to dig his fingers into the back of the intern's chair.

The intern spun around on his office chair, ‘What are we going to do?’

Augustus stumbled back, the thing over his shoulder suddenly gone. He did not respond, and

instead walked as casually and quickly as he could to the exit, leaving the intern to wonder if he

should quit and sell his stocks.

Something was following Augustus. He could not be sure, but there was a way of telling. It was like

feeling the sun on your back on a hot day, or seeing a light through closed eyes. Something

indomitable followed him down the corridor, into the elevator and down into the depths of Carravallas

Inc.

He hurried out of the elevator. The doors remained open until he was twenty feet away. Then,

as if it had been waiting for something to step out, they finally closed. Augustus had a nasty feeling he

knew what it was.

He began to run. To everyone who saw, they saw a CEO close to mental breaking point,

which was not all that strange for people who knew CEOs. He sprinted down the now concrete-lined

corridors, hearing the padded footsteps of something behind him. He started down a stairwell, then

through several keycard secured doors that he slammed shut behind him. He was now in a circular

room bathed in a leafy green haze. The light emanated from a glass cylinder in the center of the room,

the top and bottom of which a vine-like maze of wires sprouted across the room and up into the

ceiling and walls. Surrounding the central cylinder, banks of desks and computers hummed quietly.

He moved to the central console just below the cylinder and waited for it to scan his face.

‘Good evening, Mister Rush,’ it said in a flat and helpful tone.

‘How much energy are we emitting right now?’ he asked with his head half turned to the door.

‘Over thirty-one terawatts of power, currently,’ it said. There was a scratching at the door.

‘My apologise, output has now increased to thirty-two terawatts.’

‘Thirty-two? It shouldn't be any more than twenty-five.’

‘Output has accelerated exponentially over the last twenty-four hours. Output now at

thirty-three terawatts.’

Augustus now noticed how much brighter the cylinder flared. ‘What would happen if that all

of a sudden stopped?’

‘Sorry, sir?’

‘What do you mean “sorry”. You are a computer.’

‘What do you mean by your question, sir?’

Augustus cursed the engineer who designed this AI, and was sure to enunciate each word of

his next sentence, ‘If I took the idol out, what would happen?’

‘Carravallas Inc. would be emitting zero terawatts of energy.’

‘And what would that cause ... globally?’

‘I can’t imagine anything good, sir.’

‘Who designed you?’ he implored.

‘Carravallas Incorporated Research and Development Division—’

‘Yes! I know!’ He heard a mechanical lock shifting behind him. He looked up into the glass

cylinder. He saw the elephant idol, now cracked by the metal barbs he long ago implanted into its

sides. When he had first discovered how to harness the idol's power, it had been easy. Just a couple of

wires and a lightbulb. Upping the amount of energy it emitted was harder; he remembered feeling a

lot like Doctor Frankenstein violently infusing the idol with electrical energy until it cracked and

spilled its true potential. Removing those barbs would not be easy.

The door behind him opened. The maned wolf stood in shadow, its eyes reflecting in green

shine. ‘You can’t have it!’ Augustus shouted, attempting to remain assertive. ‘I can’t remove it. It’s

not a choice, I actually can’t do it!’

The beast moved into the room, and as it did it stood up. Slowly, like an old man standing up

straight after decades of being hunched over. It now stood almost to the ceiling on its hind legs,

shrouded by a cloak that had not been there before, the cowl covering its eyes and ears, leaving only a

grotesquely long snout. The claws on its front legs grew, unsheathing from its flesh like bony swords,

two feet long. Its mouth hung open, its tongue long and rotting.

‘Even if you kill me, you won’t be able to take it away,’ Augustus’s voice shivered, his legs

feeling frozen and wobbly at the same time.

‘Then it will be this world we save,’ it spoke from everywhere, with a voice like gravel

grinding on stone. ‘And this world we conquer.’ It stepped forward, lumbering like it had only just

learnt to walk.

Augustus turned to the screen, watching the monster’s reflection in the glass, and feverishly

pressed buttons until turrets dropped from the ceiling, each with a black camera pointing to the door.

‘Shoot it!’ Augustus screamed desperately as the wolf’s long claws scraped against the metal floor.

‘Please select a target, sir,’ the computer said in a helpful tone.

‘That target!’

‘My apologies sir, no target found.’

‘What do you mean?! That massive target!’

‘It seems the defence systems have been incorrectly activated; I apologise for the

inconvenience, sir.’

Augustsus could smell the wolf's mangy fur as it neared him, the pong of rotting meat making

his stomach churn. It raised a spiny claw to him. ‘I will skewer you, Auggie Rush, and devour you,

bones and all.’

With nowhere left to go, Augustus climbed the central console, his back to the glass cylinder.

The wolf reared and howled gleefully; the awful sound of its screech cracked computer

screens and sent sparks raining down from the ceiling.

Augustus closed his eyes. As he prepared himself for unknown amounts of bodily harm, the

scream suddenly shifted from a warcry to something more like a banshee's deathrattle. Augustus

opened his eyes and found the monster reeling. It stumbled to the ground roaring in agonising pain

like an injured dog.

Augustus saw, several feet from the wolf, lying in a steaming pool of dark blood, one of its

gnarled legs sheared clean off. Standing above the beast, with a radiating silver-white sword in hand,

was Thester.

‘Come, Auggie!’ he demanded in a voice so unlike the Thester Augustus had ever known.

‘We have little time. I don’t know how many times Sir Orin has severed that leg, but it has never

stopped Arwill for long. The idol, Auggie, we must take it.’

‘What? Take it where?’

‘Back, where it belongs. It is the only way.’ Thester stood in between Augustus and the wolf,

who was moaning on the ground while struggling to come to its remaining three feet.

Augustus glanced a look at the energy reading on the console, and saw that it had now

reached forty-two terawatts and was still climbing. There was no science in the world that could tell

you how many terawatts of energy a five-hundred gram jade elephant could emit before exploding.

At the back of the cylinder there was a door in the glass. Augustus put on a thick pair of

gloves and opened the door, slowly placing his hands on the idol. He could feel the heat radiating in

waves through the gloves. He attempted to pull the barbs out of the stone, but they had become

embedded. ‘I can’t get it out!’ he shouted, as he saw in the corner of his eye, the rising figure of the

wolf. ‘Give me the sword!’ he said, thrusting his hand towards Thester. Thester looked at the wolf

then at Augustus, and threw him the silver sword.

Augustus caught it, and felt its weight. It was heavy, once wielded by Sir Orin who had taught

Augustus how to ride a horse many years ago. He raised the sword—wondering for a fraction of a

moment, what the hell was he doing—and sliced through the barbs. Once, then twice until the idol

clanged down with a heavy thud to the bottom of the cylinder.

He gave the sword back to Thester, picked up the idol and ran out of the room, deadlocking

the door behind them. He could hear the desperate calls of the wolf from within. ‘It will not hold him

for long,’ said Thester, brandishing the sword like he was Sir Orin himself.

‘Did you steal Sir Orin’s sword?

‘No, he returned it to me.’

‘It was your sword?’

‘Aye, I had need of it, so he returned it.’

The Carravallas Inc. HQ had descended into chaos; people ran in every direction, taking no notice of

Thester and his sword. Something about being near Thester was making it really hard for anyone to

look Augustus directly in the eye, or notice him at all. He wrapped the idol in the gloves and hid it in

his jacket.

They left Carravallas Inc. HQ and ran into the city streets. Augustus looked at the traffic

lights and electric car engines and wondered how long until they ran out of power. He looked at

Thester, and wondered how he could look so unbelievably out of place and yet no one seemed to

notice or care.

‘We must take it back to Carravallas. There, we can stabilise it.’

‘My car is in the parking lot.’

‘You have made the right choice, Auggie,’ said Thester, as Augustus turned into the driveway of his

parents’ house. Their house sat amongst the rolling hills of Chester country with a view of the

Philadelphia skyline. In the backyard, Thester and Augustus now stared into the gap in the fence that

was now much more than just a gap in the fence. It was expanding, collapsing the wood and earth

around it like a black hole. The edges of the gap sizzled with green electric energy, sending vibrant

sprites crackling in all directions. Through the gap, Augustus could see Carravallas; he saw a castle of

stone sitting on a cliffside, silhouetted by a burning amber sky that was slowly dissolving away the

horizon.

Thester’s eyes reflected the orange sky. He looked at once desperate and hopeful. ‘Now is the

time, Augustus!’ He almost had to shout over the tumult of the portal. They stepped to its precipice.

Augustus took the idol from his pocket, still wrapped in the gloves. He uncovered it, revealing

the great emerald cracks that had appeared, splintering the stone. Volatile energy leaked out of it as he

tentatively held it out to Thester. Decades of his life were about to be handed away to someone he

once thought imaginary.

Thester held out his right hand, and with his left, he handed Augustus the silver sword. ‘An

exchange?’

Augustus gently placed the idol into Thester’s palm, and took the sword. He saw as the idol

started to shake and crack. ‘You will remember,’ he said, ‘that I did the right thing?’

Thester smiled. ‘I will never forget, Auggie.’

‘That’s good,’ he said, before shoving Thester in the chest as hard as he could, sending him

and the idol tumbling into the portal.

For the first time ever, Thester looked utterly caught off-guard. Augustus watched as the

cracks in the idol glowed violently, sickly green light first consuming it, then Thester. Then, like a

silent atomic bomb, it shattered and detonated. Beyond the portal, he saw flesh melt and bones

disintegrate, as an orb of unbelievable energy expanded, filling all his vision with a piercing burning

light.

As the light dimmed, all that was left for Augustus to see was a fence in his parents’

backyard, just as it was in his childhood, except without the gap. The air still fizzled with static

electricity, but in moments it had all dissipated into the atmosphere.

Augustus walked to the front of the house, and sat on the porch that overlooked the

countryside. He placed the sword on his lap, the blood of the maned wolf having stained it a deep

burnt red. He watched the sun disappear under the horizon. Philadelphia sat cold and still; no lights

illuminated the skyline.

Augustus sat in silence on his old porch, with nothing but a faerie’s sword. He felt something

watching him, and smelled the sickeningly sweet stench of a rotting tongue.

By Reggie Parker