The sensation of falling to another planet was that of endless voidness and nigritude, approximately four seconds of feeling how life left your body, escaping grom the grasp of darkness. Then, if you were able to get your focus back, you could see the universe passing next to you at full speed, before finally arriving at your destiny. At school, we had only been taught that crossing a wormhole, the "remnant" kind, made you feel an intense cold and a loss of breath, but no one ever mentioned the violent way your extremities were pulled or the immense pressure over your body. Then, I thought I could describe it in a more poetic manner: It was to pass in front of a Grim Reaper's house, and notice how it laid its eyes on you.
After feeling the dark tide disappearing from my body, it took me a while to regain consciousness. The first thing my eyes noticed after opening was the infinite variety of color surrounding me. A bright color palette revolved around me, until it slowly started to take shape. Those splendid shades were miles and miles of giant flowers, some I thought I recognized, others were completely new. I was lying on a blue petal of a species that I hoped, wasn't poisonous, despite its immense and irrefutable beauty. The short trip made me sick to my stomach, weakened my muscles, and gave me some dizziness, not to mention the panic that was starting to overcome me as I understood the gravity of the situation.
It's ok, it's ok. At least I can breathe, that's ok but, where the hell am I? For how long am I going to be safe?
Feeling abnormally light, I glanced around me, looking for a clue. Rather, I discovered something even worst: Abril and Jolly were laying on the ground a few feet away from me, still unconscious.
"Hey! Wake up!" I urged, while I dragged myself in their direction.
Both seemed to began to awaken with my call and, still half asleep, they rised to check her surroundings. Finally, the three of us synchronized our emotions: we were terrified.
Under the colossal flora rising towards the sky, ran a crystalline river, dark and deep, where I suspected, was inhabitated by an endless amount of creatures. The stems disappeared at the bottom, and the cloudy sky was colored by a subtle mustard-yellow. The fragant air was so intense that I couldn't help but to wrinke my nose and take shorter inhalations, I suspected that my clothes would get impregnated by the smell. Somehow, I felt like the young Alice in Wonderland. The difference was that the hole to the other world had come from the sky.
"What's this place?" Abril muttered, rising her tone with every word, "Where the hell are we? Am I in drugs?"
Jollibeth said nothing, she seemed to be in shock, only gazing at her surroundings and getting paler the more things she saw. To be honest, the place was gorgeous—that was indisputable, but the situation was all the contrary. She took my arm and suggested we climb the top of a flower to have a better view of the place and look for civilization to return to our planet as soon as possible. Abril and I followed, climbing between stems, torns, leafs, until we got to the top of a yellowish and sticky stigma. The strange environment with the massive flora went on for so many miles that we weren't able to see its end, only an endless cascade of flowers.
"Woooow" we whispered.
The three of us admired the scenery in front of us that was as peculiar as beautiful, forgetting for a moment about the revolt back on Earth minutes ago. Then, slowly, a thought formed on my head: if there were giant flowers, there could be insects about the same size. I felt the hairs at the back of my neck standing up.
It's clear that we are not lucky at all.
"Over there!" the redhead pointed with her right hand.
A trail of smoke rised on the sky, not too far away from our position. In fact, if we remained silent, some noise could be heard coming fron the distance. We shared a look of relief and, before trying to go down, back to the petals where we woke up, Abril took me by my arm and pulled me back to the center.
"FIRST TO GET THERE GETS TEN CREDITS FROM THE OTHER TWO!" she howled, laughing, and climbed down with ease, running towards the smoke.
"HEY, ABRIL!" l called, running after her.
Where did she got all that energy from? Jolly followed us as I sweared in a low voice because of the poor judgmenet of my partner. What if there were unknown and dangerous animals around? We ran for a couple of feet until I was about to reach her blouse to stop her, but my friend realized this when I was about to close my hand over a cloth corner, so she jumped to try and get away from me. My jaw fell open when her "little" jump spanned about sixteen feet. When she touched the ground, her eyes locked with mine, baffled. Curious about the gravity of this planet, I also jumped with little energy, and ended up rising almost seven feet in the air. Now I understood why I had felt so light since our arrival.
"This world...is... AMAZING!" she sang and, screaming out with pure excitement, ran away doing huge jumps.
"Abril!" I reprimanded her, "Don't make so much noise, what if there's wild animals nearby?"
"Oh, true!" she immediately stopped.
We walked for a couple of minutes between stems and petals, until we came across what seemed to be a road. It was a tunnel digged inside a giant branch, the road on the ground was flattened and a trail of different vehicles and footprints could be seen on it. Also, after a couple of feets, one could find huge rectangular holes finely carved that acted as large windows to the inside. On the ceiling, three lines, also carved inside the branch, were filled by what I believed were circular bulbs. Right now, when the sun seemed to be at its zenith, the lights were off, since the inside was well illuminated thanks to the large windows.
"I'm still scared that we are lost," Abril said, "But this place is so cute that I tend to forget it."
Jolly and me nodded, it was true. Despite the imminent danger in which we were, that planet, that seemed straight out of a fairy tale, was colored with so many joyful and energetic shades that made it hard to think on all the bad things that could happen to us.
"Guess we're not having classes today," Jolly commented, after a few seconds of silence, "I hope Rodrigo is fine."
"He'll be, I'm sure the police will do something," I tried to cheer her up, but it didn't seem to work.
"I hope the people we'll meet is kind," Abril begged in a low voice, sighing heavily, "That they send us back to Earth without scolding us,"
"It's not like we jumped in the remnant on purpose," I shrugged.
Now that I was relatively calm, I felt more interested in seeing the species inhabiting the planet, since back on Earth more than the ninety percent of the population was human. It was an excellent opportunity to meet other species.
Nevertheless, if we had been closer to our destiny, we would have been able to hear the screams and the flee of the citizens.
It would have been almost impossible to find the huge land that was beneath the cloak of flowers on the surface to whoever searched for it on air, but to us, who traveled through branches and leafs, was really easy. Hidden by the tall flora acting as a ceiling, was a huge craddle made of rocks, where what looked like a Dimensional Export Center stood. It couldn't span more than a few miles, it was filled with buildings and first-hand technology, with everything in a perfect shape.
Or, at least, that is how it was supposed to be, now everything was spoilt. A number of shelters, offices, and warehouses noticeably wrecked, were scattered in a misaligned way, but all formed a circle around the most important construction: the building where the wormhole was. Every country had, by law, at least two of them, used only for export and import of goods to other planets. Smaller portals were more in quantity and were used mainly by cosmopolitans usually for medical or bussiness trips or shipping of merchandise. Since keeping them open was more complicated, the price to use one was higher.
The main building was in worse shape, half of it was engulfed in flames. Supposedly, its design prevented elements like fire to cause a lot of complications on the inside and, because of this, it should not be as bad as it looked. Still, such chaos was startling if you kept in mind the amount of regulations followed to avoid causing any anomalies in the portal. The fabrics around it looked battered, and one or another had the whole facility torned appart. It seemed like not long ago, every activity had ceased abruptly and the employees had simply fled. The most convenient thing was for us to do the same but, what if there was someone hurt?
“Us, the ones who remain strong, must help them..."
I growled at the memory of my dream from the day before. Fine, taking a quick look around could not end that badly for me. If I wasn't able to help, then I would retreat.
"We should look for injured people, this looks like an accident," I began to walk towards the facilities.
"Hey, wait!" Abril called out to me, unsteady, "HOW?"
"Look, I'll check the area around the Center and the portal," I told her, already on my way, "Divide the rest between yourselves and, if you find anything, you can meet me at the central building."
Without waiting for an answer, I took advantage of the low gravity from the planet and started jumping between the equipment to speed up my little reconnaissance mission. I spent some minutes inspecting warehouses and buildings on the surrounding area, but found no one. The Center, then, took priority, I had to verify that the catastrophic events around it had not affected the stability of the portal or it could cause a havoc for the planet. I thought I heard the eco of heavy movement in the distance and voices coming from the flora, possibly from the authorities, but I was not sure of its origin. I hesitated continuing my mission for an instant, but at the end I chose to keep going in case there were injured.
Heading to the main building, I passed next to more shattered offices, disorganized warehouses, and signs written in a non-human language. I did not fall in a place where I could understand the dialect, but at least I could breath.
That's more luck than what I usually have I thought, grimly.
I arrived at one of the entrances of the building, two big metal doors that someone must have left open while running away. The corridor's lights looked intact, despite the disaster on the ground; documents, keys, electronic equipment, all scattered over the white tiles. A few metalic boxes had a small screen where you could read the contents, special cares and expiration date. Despite all the doors in the corridor being locked, there was smoke clouding my sight and making it difficult to breathe.
Coughing, I got closer to a huge door at the end of the hallway, it was made of steel and seemed attached to the floor like a magnet due to its weight. Despite my effort, I was not able to move it even an inch. When I was finally giving up and about to leave before my headache worsened, I heard urgent voices coming from the inside.
Is someone trapped? I thought, horrified.
I banged the door and asked loudly if someone could hear me, yet no one answered. I tried again a couple of times and the result was the same. Couldn't they hear me? Had something happened to them? I wasn't sure about why the entrance was jammed, but it was like a wall at the moment, I would have better luck looking for another way in. I searched for a window or air duct that lead to the inside from the neighboring rooms and, luckily, one actually had an air duct big enough for me to get inside.
I wasn't very tall, so I had to push some furniture to get to the ventilation and introduce myself in it. Weirdly, a small breeze passed through the air duct despite not hearing its engine. As uncommon as this was, I accepted the fact, as it was diminishing the smoke around me, maybe it was just a mechanism I didn't know about.
I got to a vent, where I was just beginning to wonder on how to open, when I heard voices again.
"What are you doing? Hurry up!" a voice urged, "They'll be back any minute now,"
"I'm doing my best!" someone else answered, "I don't know why I'm taking this much to close the portal,"
I freezed. What? Closing the portal?
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