NHIL HVMANVM MIHI ALIENVM
Publius Terentius Afer
Playwright of the Roman Republic
Heauton Timorumenos: Act I, scene 1, line 25
“As there are an infinite number of dimensions and possibilities, There must exist an intersection between the spaces where our existence and understanding can relate to the hyperspaces, even with higher dimensions” I:B
-Dr. Isaac Tolkraft
Dimension Shift: 1st Theory, Postulate B
BANG!
Daria was suddenly jolted from her seat. As if she suddenly woke up from a noise in her dreams.
“Daria. Daria Solnova”.
“Yes? I... I don't remember. Is that my name?”
She appears confused and looks around the muted, white-lit room. She couldn't find the source of the light, but it was diffused and uniform.
“Do you know why you are here?”
“No”
“Do you remember me?”
“N-no? Should I ?”
She looks around more, unable to make eye contact at the other person opposite the table.
The professor-looking lady stopped writing on her tablet. “That's unfortunate”.
She switched over the seated crossed leg, and slightly adjusted her glasses up. With narrow yet inquisitive eyes, tidy golden hair, and an impeccable, crisp lab coat makes her oddly enough look quite fashionable. She looks up to Daria for a moment, then starts to write something again.
“What was the last thing you remember?”
“A... Gate? It was so bright, yet it was so dark and cold. Wait... who are you again?”
“My full designation is Foreordained Assignment Telos Engineer: 40PM. Or you can just call me FATE. You're probably confused, and that's normal. You're not supposed to be in this higher dimension after all. We're in need of your... talents, Ms. Daria. As the Dreamjumper”
“Dream-jumper?”
“Yes, that you are. Now, can you try to recall what happened since your last jump?”
“N-no, I... I don't...”
She starts to tap her leg on the floor and fidget with her fingers. Her breathing has noticeably become rougher.
“I'm sorry. Looks like this last one really took a lot out from you”
FATE stopped writing and put down her pen and tablet to the side. She gently nudged a cup and saucer to Daria, and picked up a crystalline teapot. The designs were intricately ornate and stunning, with gold-colored trims on the edges and handle. A lightly golden-hued liquid was inside.
“Here, try this. Am especially proud of this one”.
She poured a little of the tea first onto a small pottery figurine in the shape of a raven. It was uncolored and unglazed, and was inside a tiny saucer to collect the tea that was poured into it.
FATE then gently poured into Daria's cup, raising the pot slowly as she did. The aroma of a fresh spring breeze with a tinge of cut grass wafted in the air. The long neck of the spout produced a clean laminar flow, and the sound of the liquid filling the cup was similar to a calming, slow-moving stream.
The gracefulness of the performance gave Daria pause. She slowly reached for the cup and lightly sipped at the edges... checking for temperature.
Daria sipped some more and had to stop for a while.
“It's sw…”.
“It's sweet isn't it?” FATE said with a chuckle.
“Y-Yes, I was a bit surprised”
FATE gave a small laugh. “You really don't remember, do you? I changed up my blend especially for you since you said it was a bit bland the last time”. She then changes her tone and speaks more under her breath. “Then there's that LORD jerk from the Simulations Department who said tea just takes like mud water... that uncivilized brute”
“I do have to thank you”, FATE changes gears. “After your constructive criticism last time, I had researched into much more calming and sweeter ingredients. And this blend is the result”.
FATE holds up a small glass container filled with dried up leaves, roots, and herbs. “Chamomile, Roobois, Lavender, Honeybush, Valerian Root, Passionflower... and a few secret ingredients. It was quite tricky getting the ratios just right and blending them in a harmonious flavor. Made sure they had no caffeine and had relaxation-inducing effects. Gathering all those items weren't easy, you know? Am quite picky about my sources”.
She gave a pure smile and tucked her hair over her ear. Daria thought that she was more beautiful than the professorial image she lets on.
FATE looked intensely into Daria's eyes. Daria broke eye contact and looked away to the side. FATE continued: “Among all of his students, you're very special, you know? While we needed to use the Genesys machines for the others, you alone could travel on your own as the Dreamjumper”.
“You said that before, what exactly is it?”. Daria looking more confused than ever as she sipped more of the tea.
FATE thinks for a while, as if condensing information into something Daria would currently understand. “A Dreamjumper is someone who can switch to a different plane of reality by attuning their subconscious to another plane... even if the plane is in a higher or lower dimension"
Daria's befuddled look says it all.
“You can cross dimensions when you dream”
“Oh... Oh?”
“Kinda nifty, isn't it? You can travel back and forth realities and have done so multiple times in your dreams. You can even choose to wake up in that dimension you were dreaming about”.
“W-What do you mean? How could I possibly know which dream was real and which wasn't?”
“Who is to say that any of your dreams weren't real? And that all of them just exist in different dimensions or realities?”. FATE retorted.
Daria just sat there quietly looking blankly down on the table... just trying to process all of this information.
FATE glances on her small, intricate watch that was worn with the timepiece on the inner wrist instead. “I'm afraid I can't give you more time to unpack and get your bearings, Daria.” FATE picks up her tablet and pen again. “Even with this basic simulated white room, our Dimension Shift (intersection) is limited. I'll need to meet up with CARMA soon... she and LORD have already contacted Allen and Lunia in secret, but I had already known that they will”.
“Wait, those names sounded familiar ...you said that we did this before? How exactly and how many times?”
“I'll try to allocate more time on the next shift to explain more to you. As for the cycles, we're not even sure anymore... as some of them cascaded in and out of others before reaching a full samsara”.
FATE gave a faint smile and concerned look. “So, let's start all over shall we? What you remember doesn't need to make sense to you, nor does it need to be told in chronological order. Just share it as you remember them”.
Daria finished up her cup of tea, and slowly put it down. She took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and began to speak:
We were desperate.
Dr. Tolkraft just passed away, and us; his seven proteges were tasked with the impossible: completing the practical application of his Dimensional Theoretics for our very survival. Me (Daria), Allen, Lunia, Richard, *&REDACTED$#, sT3pHeN, and @!REDACTED_+ *$%(#001010 YOU SHOULD NOT BE SEEING THIS 0100010101**()(&. We had to carry the burden of saving our kind... or what was left of it.
The sudden appearance of the Legion in our star system coincided with the Machine Revolution on our home planet. It soon became clear that our latest magitech weapons and spells are no match for either of them.
The Legion have evolved to the point that they have become supremely intelligent creatures, and were able to copy the spells and localized reality-warping powers of our most powerful fallen wizards. The Machines have advanced to the point that their picotech were able to manipulate individual subatomic particles to instantaneously create and upgrade materials on demand. Both forces had gained technology and abilities from each other with their countless battles. Both were advancing at an exponential rate.
We could only run.
And run we did. From world to world, system to system. The last remnants of humanity ever dwindling with each jump. A lot of times, we barely managed to escape by the skin of our teeth: getting away only because the two forces were preoccupied with each other. Even our trump card; singularity bombs, were of little consequence. We had long passed the point where they saw us as potential threats, or maybe we never were. Who knows if we'll be as lucky next time.
The seven of us finally managed to create a warp gate system that could theoretically let us run as far as the universe expands. A warp gate so big, that we could warp the last surviving modified planet to places not yet ravaged by the cosmic war. A planet-sized ark.
We called that planet and warp system combination as ‘The Evernorth’
On the 6th day of the 6th month, of the 6th year after humanity lost its place in the hierarchy of life and started its exodus... the Evernorth managed to warp nearby a long abandoned moon called Viggriddo. Right on time within A.E. Well's mathematical prediction. There was quite a stir coming across a moon as exactly described by his prophecy, as he was Dr. Tolkraft's teacher after all. Some in the council wanted to immediately warp out again, but more logical heads prevailed... and we set out our mining resupply and exploration teams.
In one of the abandoned cave systems filled with unfamiliar and very ancient structures, at the very heart of the moon, might lie the key to our salvation. Our readings were faulty, since the abandoned underground 'city' were dated to decillions of years old... impossibly older than the theoretical age of the universe itself. Oddly enough, everything else in the moon aside from the city was dated to be a few billion years old.
It was a small miracle that we were even able to get inside the lowest, most inner sanctum. The locks and materials that barred the subspace paths were unbreakable if we didn't have 9th circle mages, high psionics and grandmaster warpers together. Finally, there inside the last blacked-out chamber where no light nor elements could have penetrated before; lies a silent, floating, fist-sized black cube so dark that no light even reflects off it.
In the final notes of his last expedition, A.E. Wells described it as a Schrödinger's Gate: A possible beginning of our re-emergence, or a potential ending of it all. A convergence point of all time, space, realities, and dimensions. He never revealed the location of this place when he got back, which led to academic ridicule and falling out with his best student, Tolkraft. He was never the same after that journey, always murmuring about 'Reality is a lie'. Yet to think of our rediscovery of this place, to the exact year of his notes, seems more than just a coincidence.
In the ancient glyphs and inscriptions that adorned the chamber, the lost city on the moon was called 'Home of the Ravens', and it was supposed to guard the gate of the 'Jurr Kannur'. Even our archeological experts were baffled when a detailed relief of the Evernorth were included in the walls... beside a great eye in the middle of a spiral.
The council was growing impatient. We have long stripped the minerals and materials we needed from this moon, and there are signs that the Legion-Machine war is about to enter this star system. They gave us a two-week deadline to open the cube, and see if it's indeed something that might be able to help humanity as AE Wells described it.
The box itself cannot be removed from the small inner sanctum. Nothing physical nor magical seemed to affect it. Even warping from high naturals couldn't move it. Pressed for time, Lunia and Allen decided on something risky, a Planar Warp Exchange.
It seems simple, but the results are often undefinable within our laws of physics and magic, and often ends in tragedy. That's why the technique is only passed down through a few chosen heirs, and only have been used a handful of times throughout history. A single warp gate folds time and space, to create a shortcut where one could pass through, and go to another point in timespace. But twin origin gates... that go through each other... is another matter of reality. Think of several mirrors that face each other, the reflections creating an infinite amount of images within an image ...now imagine that as infinite dimensions crossing each other, to form a particular intersection ...a shift.
Was it sheer folly or trust in an old teacher that made them do it? Being the only two grandmaster warpers left, Lunia and Allen felt like they had to at least try.
And that was the beginning of the end. Their synchronization rate at the start was amazing, somewhere along 85% - 95%. The origin gates were starting to create infinite dimensional intersections until &#@(*#&00101001010 GET OUT WHILE YOU STILL CAN **81=)*.
Lunia, in her last noble sacrifice, inverted the cascading planes into herself. Allen could only watch in horror helplessly as he tried to wrestle the gates from her. But it was all for naught since he had far less skill in dimensional control.
Everything went to hell when Lunia died from that accident. Allen was filled with sorrow, regret and rage.
Daria made a disdained look in her eyes: “They were supposed to get married that spring”.
In his despair and grief; Allen, normally the most cautious of all of us, forsook all of his moral and ethical codes and buried himself under more and more questionable experimentation and techniques. There were still 3 days until the deadline, and we all mistakenly thought that this was his way of coping with the loss. In his twisted form of mourning, he could not bear to let Lunia's sacrifice be in vain. You could see the madness take hold in his eyes, with the singular purpose of completing the task. He tried everything from *** to &&&. He even (!*@(#& R3DACT3D()#(@& STOP LOOKING BEFORE !*&!( SEES YOU *)!872i1
Until one day, it just happened. We thought space already went to hell, until it literally did.
The black cube of Jurr Kannur was unsealed. Allen finally managed to open the gate.
Those closest to the portal instantly went mad. Those who were unable to activate their protective spells and gadgets were slowly turning their flesh inside-out, if they didn't already explode or liquified. People tried to close their eyes that were crying with blood. Hands over their ears to no avail, trying to prevent hearing those blood-curdling shrieks. Everyone in that room knew what it meant. The horror everyone felt cannot be described in mere words. Everyone had their hairs raised and goosebumps on their arms. A silent, cold chill ran up our spines as uncontrollable convulsions had us spazzing on the floor. We all knew that this would be our last mistake.
Everyone clearly heard it in their heads. The Eye! My god, that eye... and voice. The voice only said:
*_()!&!!*!##
I
CAN
SEE
YOU
"); window.onload=showPopup;
Comments (1)
See all