Per usual of a Monday morning, I walked down a nameless road longing the Spree river. The sun, still young, didn’t offer quite enough heat to fend off the bitter spring breeze. I enjoyed the calm silence of the Berlinian morning.
Rare were passersby this early, people started just yet to wake up and drink their usual coffee.
The path I followed, dug into a small park, it was quite old as the trees were large and mighty.
The chanting of birds broke the silence, in such big cities as Berlin, it was quite rare to hear something else but the constant screeching of tires and an omnipresent mix of thousands of voices.
I ignored why I took this walk every Monday, I was still as bored as always, I struggled to put into words, but, I felt as, even if faintly, I did something.
I was but 27; already retired. Some years ago, I made some lucky investments; now I had nothing to worry about. I had a house, a car and enough funds to not work a single day of my life.
My peers envied me, lots. I never quite understood why.
Sure, I didn’t have to work and all, but they had something way better, a meaning.
Even one as simple as survival, even if it meant being stuck in a low paying job for years to pay off debts, even though their story was filled with struggle.
They at least, had a ‘story’, an adventure of their own. I, on the other hand, was a lifeless freak avoiding anybody slowly decaying surrounded with material, meaningless goods.
While I was lost in my head, the sun already rose quite a bit; the city started to wake up.
Distant car noises could be heard, people running to their buses, dogs happily barking.
It was time for me to get back home. I exited the park and against my comfort decided to travel by a crowded street.
Uneasiness grew within me as I stumbled upon more and more people, I couldn’t feel comfortable near lots of people. I was jealous of their worryful lives.
This jealousy grew by the years into a fear, a fear I couldn’t face.
For the last five years or so, I could even count on one hand the times I opened up to someone. Due to this, I wore a grimace of disgust in public as to be sure no one ever talked to me.
Suddenly, people started to avoid me by about a meter. Not even they seemed to notice their odd behaviour.
I stopped walking and frantically looked around as faint sparks jumped around me. Before I could ponder their origin, their intensity grew even more.
In mere moments, I found myself inside a shower of bluish sparks. A faint shape drew itself before me, by now a mighty vortex of sparks completely stranded me from my surroundings.
Then the form of the shape sharpened and I could clearly distinguish it. White text was laid onto a blue, translucent panel.
-Notification-
You have the opportunity to access the ‘Outer World Station’. Do you accept
Yes No
The fog of boredom quickly vanished from my once milky eyes, I raised my hand, and pressed the button.
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What happened next, I could not describe it accurately, after all it all took mere moments, but I vanished and then I felt every bit of my body reconstructing itself.
Then after my senses came back I looked around, it seemed I was again inside a big crowd. Everyone was closely fit in an enormous room with an abnormally high ceiling—so high that I could not distinguish it through the cloud-like fog.
As I was taller than most, I could take a look around. Large, arching pillars stood by the walls made of strangely clear glass, giving a breath-taking view of an endless starry sky.
My momentary contemplation quickly vanished as the crowd got more and more hasty.
People started to come to their senses and panic a bit; bizarrely, only a minority panicked, their movement simply spread out and everyone got shaken up.
I and the overwhelming majority of people did not panic; on the contrary, even, we all felt excited, and our eyes sparkled with hopes: something was about to happen.
Something beyond reason and expectation was bound to happen, I decided to completely offset logic and get lost inside the moment. What was the worse that could happen? Me waking up to my boring life?
[Fear not children of Earth.]
Sinister and mysterious, it scattered throughout this place, as if the world itself trembled under this nothing but grandiose voice.
Everyone immediately froze in place and shifted their gaze toward its origin. A tall figure cleaved through the clouds under the ceiling, I lacked words to describe it, it was surely an impossible marvel. A clockwork-driven, winged being made from an unknown to man material.
The more it revealed itself, the more its presence could be felt. The almost divine pressure it exerted easily eclipsed the infinite, starry landscapes beyond the windows.
All of the present mortals were immediately crushed onto the ground, I felt as if my internal organs were being torn apart under the weight of a mountain. My mind was numbing and the only thing left was the resonating voice of the angel.
[You all were selected for your unsatisfied desire of adventure, from this very station the Train of Adventure will soon depart, each car of the said train was modelled after finely chosen snippets of the universe's history in order to create the best experience for you, the sorry people of the age without adventure.]
Until now everyone remained stunned since the beginning of the speech, but a sudden feeling of relief streamed across hundreds of people present. As if the mechanical angel retracted its pressure to let us process the message. Only now I realized, all this time a large grin was painted on my face.
Once free from the pressure I and many others fell into a manic, next to insane, state. I heard many screams of joy in every language. I shared their happiness with no doubt. We all decided to forsake our wits and simply have faith that all of this is reality. M
y body shook from the anticipations of the imagination-exceeding sights and mysteries yet to be discovered.
My worldview was at once destroyed, nothing I knew mattered no more, a new world was promised, I had nothing to lose. I was so excited it blinded my fair judgment, I wondered not the identity of the figure and honestly? I did not care.
[Now, it is time to embark, the Great Train will soon depart. You have five minutes left to make your choice. It is up to you, to leave this place or not.]
The angel then vanished, with it the truly unfathomably immense pressure completely disappeared. Five minutes? Hilarious! How could anyone hesitate for so long? Shortly after the same blue panel appeared before me, this time with next to no sparks.
-Notification-
Do you accept the trial of the Adventure Train?
Embark Leave
I screamed at the top of my lungs: “Hey God, or whatever, I accept your challenge, better be ready!”
As soon as I accepted, I went through the same, strange procedure of teleportation. M
y body was at first covered with light; then every sensation quickly went null and replaced with a hazy feeling of emptiness. Although it felt the same at first, once in the ‘in between’ state something changed, I felt as if I was being dragged against a white stream of light by white chains.
Luckily, this didn’t last for long; soon after, light fell upon my retina, air filled my lungs, nerves ending felt pressure all anew. Teleportation was a rather exotic experience I would not desire to relive ever again.
I found myself lying on a bench of an individual cabin. I quickly got up and looked around.
The walls were made out of a brass-coloured alloy. Although that I found a small door with a ‘Washroom’ sign upon it, the cabin itself was rather small, two squared meters at most, equipped with a little built-in table in the middle with a Nixie clock displaying [5:32], a stuffed bench on the left wall and a storage section on the other side wall. The window gave upon the same stunning, endless starry view.