Chapter 1: The Driftwood’s Destination

 Going to school sucked. However, it was the one place Ace desperately wanted to go back to.

While everyone else was ecstatic about leaving behind at least twelve years of education, he was still wrapping his head around the fact that time had flown by so quickly. It seemed like yesterday when he graduated from junior college a little over three months ago. The gold letters on the banner that declared ‘ONWARDS, CLASS OF 2017!’ were still crisp and glittering in his mind.

Just two months into the new year of 2018, Ace had in hand a piece of paper that would, supposedly, open many doors for him. His friends’ reactions when he told them about his performance in the Singapore-Cambridge GCE A-Level examinations could be summarised along three lines:

“Whoa, I didn’t expect you to ace the exams! Get it? Ace?”

“Are you applying to study medicine or law?”

“You should apply for the competitive courses with those grades! It would be a waste if you didn’t!”

Ace felt that he was meant to be happy about his stellar results, but nothing about it was worth celebrating, at least to him. Even while he was hanging out with his friends to celebrate their successes, they could not stay off the topic of their future plans. Between drinks, they would start discussing their university choices and bombard him with questions about his plans.

Through it all, Ace simply smiled and laughed it off, jokingly telling his friends that he might try out for medicine, maybe law, maybe…

Maybe, maybe, maybe. All his life, Ace had been guided by nothing but the simple flow of events. Go with the flow, they said. He embraced everything, optimistic that everything would probably work out. All he had to do was pass each year and get promoted to the next. Upon graduation, he fell over the waterfall, tumbled through the rips, and landed face-first on a hard, cracked riverbed. The river that had guided his raft had dried up, leaving him stranded in unfamiliar lands.

Ace decided to buckle down and ponder potential careers: a doctor at the national hospital, a tax attorney, a writer for Broadway. He contemplated being an air steward so he would never be in one place too long.

Everything appealed to Ace, but none appealed to him enough. Now what? he thought. Where do I even go next?

To even answer that question, he knew he had to learn how to walk first, but all he wanted to do was to crawl back into the comfort of the past.

***

After a long day of celebration and euphoria with his friends, Ace finally reached home. Out of habit, he called out for his dog, “Ollie? I’m hom-”

Ace caught himself. Ollie had died a week ago.

He still could not shake the habit of shouting her name so that she came bounding to him. The ball of fluff had worked her way into his very core. The alcohol made his gut twist tighter than it had when he first found out that Ollie had passed in her sleep. Ace rubbed his eyes and swallowed hard to ease the pain behind his throat.

The lights were out, which meant his father was asleep. Ace quietly washed up and left his result slip on the dining table for his father, who would scrutinise it like a command briefing. He plopped onto his bed and threw the covers on, trapping himself in his cocoon.

However, sleep evaded him. He had tossed his turns and counted his sheep, but his future had such a chokehold that he had to scream. The scream became a drawn-out groan as the energy slipped out of his grasp as quickly as he had mustered it.

Fed up, Ace got up and plonked down at his desk. He stared at the photo wall that he had kept up over the years. In the left corner, the photos were tightly packed together in grids that he had drawn on the corkboard. But as his gaze drifted across the wall, he saw how time had quietly loosened their order, scattering them from the arrangement he once thought would last forever. A wave of nostalgia washed over him, and his throat tightened with the unspoken feelings that swelled from the thought that those days were bygone.

The people immortalised in the photos smiled down upon him. They had supported him and made his life at school so much more enjoyable. Their paths were at the cusp of diverging as they each started a new chapter in their lives. There were so many things he wanted to do with them, but ultimately did not; too many unwritten stories he had wanted to write and live in.

The worst part was that the people in his story who gifted him the best of memories, were becoming just that, a simple memory.

Ace placed his head on the desk. As he drifted to sleep, all he thought about was that he would do anything to turn back time to see them one more time, just to escape the looming arrival of adulthood.

That desire burned in him, and it burned brighter than all other days combined.

***

The light crept into the nooks and crannies of his folded arms, which formed a cradle where his head rested. Grumbling, Ace turned his head away, rubbing his bleary eyes. For a split second, his eyes registered what seemed to be a standard blue desk found in any corner of his former school.

Ace yawned and stretched, savouring the feeling of his joints slightly popping after being held in that awkward position. He surveyed his surroundings and quickly concluded that he had woken up in his classroom. Everything was the same, down to a single cracked floor tile near the whiteboard where someone had smashed their softball bat after a bad match. He picked up a pen that lay on the table and gave it a few good twirls.

It felt good to be back. The warm and familiar environment had been a bubble that protected him from the harsh realities of the outside world.

Except that in this bubble, Ace was all alone.

Ace was about to get up when the floor beneath him shifted. Letting out a yelp, he held onto the table for support. Jagged cracks ripped through the structure, showering the room with dust.

With a shudder, the floor beneath him gave way.

Ace’s hands grasped at air as he plummeted. Panicked screams tore through his chest as the floor rushed towards him. Squeezing his eyes shut, he braced for the inevitable, but it never came.

H-Huh?! Cracking open an eye, Ace found himself hovering mere inches away from the floor. A shaky sigh of relief escaped his lips. His head grew light and spun as the sudden surge of adrenaline receded.

Suddenly, the world flipped, and he was placed on his feet once more. It was as though an invisible hand was toying with him like an action figure. Ace let out a frightened moan and ran towards the corner of the room. This is just a dream… he smacked his cheeks furiously, but they only stung with each smack. Why am I not waking up?! Who’s doing this to me?

“Ace, are you alright?”

Ace spun around on his heel to face the source of the voice. It was his secondary school literature teacher, Ms Khun.

Before Ace could produce a greeting, his teacher was no longer there; this time, it was one of his friends. Then, whatever stood before him took on the form of everyone he had known, taking an eye, an ear and half a nose, forming an unrecognisable creature in front of him. Wet squelching sounds filled the room as the features stretched and morphed. Their voices sang in unison as they approached him. “Hello… Ace…”

Ace screamed and ran towards the door. He turned the knob, only to find that the door was locked. Then, he yanked at the knob fruitlessly. When that did not work, he hammered the door with his fists.

“I didn’t expect such an enthusiastic response from you.”

Ace whipped around to face whoever or whatever that thing was. He seized the nearest chair and started waving it menacingly. “Don’t you dare take another step or I’ll…”

“Oh, don’t worry! I mean you no harm,” the mysterious being said, now transforming into a lanky, non-descript humanoid devoid of any facial features. Its strange voice was neither feminine nor masculine and ended with a sharp accent.

The being seemed to study him for a moment before taking on his build. To top it off, a wide, gleaming smile spread across its face. A long white sash materialised, wrapping around its arms. It flowed and arced gracefully behind the being.

All Ace could do was gape at the being. “Who are you?” he asked, breaking the silence.

“Who do you think I am?”

Ace offered his answer. “Jesus?”

There was a beat before the being started guffawing. Its laughter reverberated in the small space they stood in. Ace felt as though there was an audience mocking him for his answer. “Aha,” the being gathered itself. “Whatever you do not understand, you chalk it up to God. It seems that this constant has endured the test of time.”

The floor trembled underneath Ace’s feet, and the lights flickered rapidly. “This world spun when it was faithless,” it went on, pointing a finger at his chest. “I really am much more than ‘God’. I am the Collective. I am Singularity. I am the Universe. I am you. Above all, I am Origin.”

The lights stopped flickering as Origin bowed with a flourish. “Nice to meet you, Ace.”

I should’ve drunk less, Ace thought.

“Should have, could have, would have,” Origin mocked his thoughts, wearing the same condescending smirk.

“You can read minds?!”

Origin jabbed a thumb over its shoulder, pointing to the whiteboard behind it. Its grandiose introduction was already transcribed on the board, and the marker underlined three words, the answer to Ace’s question: I am you.

“I would like to apologise for the little mishap just now,” Origin said. “It seems like your soul is rather finicky.”

Origin paused to look at its palm, which started to balloon in size. The arm that the swelling hand was attached to stretched and covered the corner of the room where the country’s flag was. “I’m well aware of this island’s stringent laws on national symbols,” it said. “Also, acrylic isn’t the best material to put your country’s flag on. Very prone to cracks if not handled properly.”

Ace blinked at Origin. “Wait, wait, wait! You said this is my soul?”

“Everyone has one and everyone's mostly aware of it, but,” Origin pondered for a moment before it continued, “the difference is whether you know the shapes and colours of your soul. And who would let you see them? Me!”

It got off the table it had perched on earlier and approached Ace, who shrank against the wall.

“Why show it to me?”

Origin threw back its head and let out a humourless laugh. “Because I find you interesting, that’s why. You are the exceptions of exceptions of exceptions!”

Ace snorted loudly, and a laugh came out of him in a half-stutter, half-wheeze. “Okay, this is all just happening in my head. Alcohol makes me dream about weird things. I don’t even know you! I’ve never seen a- a white blob for a human–”

Origin scoffed. “You are just like the previous one I visited. Wet behind the ears, unassuming, a bit childish and extremely petty. But I digress, just because it’s in your head doesn’t mean it’s not real.”

Origin picked up a chair and slapped it across his face with a dull thunk. “This chair was material to you, this place housed you for a good portion of your life, and this blood runs in your veins. They have felt you as you felt them.”

Ace raised a trembling finger to the cut. The flesh throbbed and pulsed. His hands shook uncontrollably as his gaze fell upon crimson smudges.

Origin said smugly, “Are you convinced now?”

“N-No.”

“You are.”

“I-”

“You desire to go back to school and wish that you had never graduated. Now, are you convinced, little one?”

A small peep of surprise escaped between Ace’s lips. His words came out of him, trailing into a hoarse whisper. “How did you…”

“The Essence takes the form of what you desire,” Origin interjected, gesturing to the room around them. “This is an Aspect of your past.”

“Essence?”

“What you humans currently call it. But I’ve heard of others: Prana, Ichor, Divine Water, Chakra, Ki,” it rattled on. “Blah blah blah! No language can truly describe what it truly is except for one.”

“What is it?”

Origin opened its mouth to produce a foreign sound that sounded nothing like human language. It was akin to garbled white noise. “This is in a language that is lost to you humans forever,” it went on. “Relatively, Essence is the closest descriptor.”

Ace could only stare blankly at Origin, who shook its head.

“This conversation is getting too long for my liking.” Origin’s hands started to turn into a mosaic. It looked down at it, a scowl turning its toothy grin upside down. “I no longer have time to entertain your questions. Someone is misusing their powers.”

“Huh?” Ace could only blabber and squawk like a baby bird which had fallen out of its nest.

“Essence does have the power to manifest your desires, yes, it does,” it said, the white sash now becoming a Möbius strip that hovered above its palm. Runes filled up the strip, dazzling golden light pouring out of it. “You long for the past, but time once elapsed cannot be retrieved. However, there is a way to revive time vanished.”

“Wait–”

“In exchange for the bygone past, I want you to carry out my Will.”

Before Ace could interject, Origin pinned him against the wall, knocking the breath out of him. It pressed a hand on his head and plunged the other into his solar plexus. The dull pain from the impact ramped up to blinding agony.

Ace tried to scream, but his molten lips would not divide. His throat swelled with his screams that never were. The white sash snapped around his body and squeezed hard.

“One to bind, one to cut and one to seal,” Origin chanted. “The Perpetuation grounds, the Illuminator’s wrought blade shall deliver the first victory and you, the Beholder…”

In Ace's last waking moments, he caught a glimpse of the twisted crown that circled his head. It pulsed with the energy Origin poured into it and burst when the being uttered its command.

“... shall deliver my Will.”