What the fuck!

 That’s all I’m saying, is what the fuck!

I woke up this fine morning to find a fucking stone archway in my bedroom.  Well it’s not exactly made of stone, it’s more like some kind of futuristic or alien civilisation metal.  The archway itself is extremely plain in design, just a solid shape really. It is a straight up archway shape, with a large triangular formation at its crown.

Upon getting out of bed and stepping closer, to the arch, I freeze in my tracks.  The triangular formation at the top, starts whizzing and opening up, with many moving parts, like something out of a transformers movie.  

Once it’s finished, it has literally ‘offered’ up a topaz gemstone of sorts, by means of holding it out via some kind of arm and clasp.  Frankly, I’m still tired and not keen to argue with a piece of alien technology, so I reach out and take the gemstone. The triangle immediately closes up again.

I hold out the gemstone in my palm and start examining it, but can’t tell anything special about it.  Ignoring the obvious fact that It’s a fucking gemstone that came out of a transforming alien archway.

Taking this thing was a big fucking mistake.  Seriously. The next thing I knew, it had starting burning it’s way into my fucking hand.  And let me tell you, it hurt like a mother fucker!

It only took a second of me screaming like my balls were between two smouldering hot bricks before it was over and the pain was instantly gone.  The stone was now embedded mostly into the palm of my hand, leaving only a small surface area visible.

Okay, so fun as that was, now what?  All of a sudden I feel the gemstone pulling my hand upwards, until my palm is facing the arch.  I can ‘feel’ the gemstone ‘activate’’ and then without much warning the arch opens up what I can only assume to be a portal.  

A portal to where?  No fucking clue, but it looks all pretty and shimmery.

I can’t help but notice that there appears to be some kind of text that has appeared on the triangle portion of the arch, in glowing ruins that keep changing?  It looks like a counter of some kind and if we go by movies and books here, I would venture a guess that it is likely a countdown timer to how long the ‘portal’ will stay open.

If it has such a timer and was probably activated by this ‘offered’ gemstone, then it is also a reasonable assumption that once it closes I will be able to ‘activate’ it again, possibly after some kind of cooldown, or not.  Well this is all best guess at this point.

So I decide to test this theory and patiently read some online books, using my phone, on my favourite website ‘Royal Road’. I do this from the comfort of my bed, so I can keep an eye on this portal.  I also happen to have a broomstick and a butchers knife here with me, just in case something decides to jump out.

Two hours pass, and nothing has happened.  Could my initial theory be wrong about the timer?  No, I don’t think so. So if it’s not a timer for you to get your ass in gear and through the portal in question.  Well that only leaves one other possibility. It’s a long timer and the most likely use of a long timer would be if that the portal stays open for a certain amount of time, as there is no other option of opening the portal from the other side.  While this is unnerving for any would be adventurers, it at least does reinforce the idea, that you should be able to return.

Of course I’m not suicidal enough to just jump through the thing based on these assumptions alone, there will be lots more testing.  I patiently wait in bed for the next four hours, reading my books and grabbing a meal in between, before the countdown timer finally disappears and the portal closes itself.

That was six hours.  Alrighty, first things first, activation test.  I hold my gemstoned palm up to face the triangle like it forced me to earlier and voila, it activates!  This helps to reinforce a lot of my deductions so far. Well now what? I have six hours in theory before this thing closes again, what should I test next.

Of course!  The only sensible thing to do.  I go rummage around in the deepest darkest parts of my wardrobe, careful not  to touch the nearby arch or its portal and retrieve myself a drone! It’s a fairly shitty and small drone I had in storage, but one that can transmit its camera feed to and be controlled by my phone.

It took me a while to find the right app for the drone again and get it hooked up, luckily the drone still had some battery charge left from the last time I played with it, I am too excited to wait for things like charging a battery right now.  Carefully managing the drones flight controls, taking a moment to remember how to do this again, I finally get the hang of it once more.

I guide the drone forward and into the portal, keeping an eye on the camera feed on my phone.  As the drone disappears into the portal however, I immediately lose the camera feed. I quickly try backing up on the controls, but the drone does not r-appear through the portal.  Hmmm. The most logical explanation is that either it was fucking vapourised or otherwise wrecked going through the portal, or that no wireless signal can cross the threshold, meaning no camera and no control.  The first option does not bode well for me.

Okay, time for another test then.  I go downstairs to fetch a broom. I intend to see if the broom stick gets partially disintegrated or something if I temporarily stick it through the portal.  If I’m able to stick half of it through and pull it out again and it’s still intact, then I shall move on to live animal testing.

I really don’t like my neighbors cat, it comes in through my windows and tries to eat the ever present leftover food that I leave scattered around my lounge and kitchen.  That food is for me and the cockroaches! The nerve of it! I will definately be tying a string around that cat and chucking it through the portal to see what happens. If it goes badly for the cat, like if it dies a horrible death or something, I might just chuck my neighbor through as well.

But first, let’s get the broom test going.  I slowly stick the broom handle through the portal, holding it by the brush end.  All of a sudden the portal starts sucking the broom in with a jerk, it was so sudden and powerful that it jolted me forward, before I could let go of the broom.  The portal instantly sucked the broom in completely and I now watch in horror as my face is getting ever closer to the damn portal while I fight to regain my balance.

I finally finish fighting off the unwanted momentum, just as the tip of my hand touches the event horizon.  Oh shit. The portal doesn’t waste a millisecond before pulling my hand and then my arm into it. I should’ve started with that fucking cat!  My last thoughts are of a damnable feline and the hopes that the portal doesn’t land me inside a rock, or on a planet without atmosphere.

A bright light fills my vision, followed by the floor.  A really hard floor. I slowly lift my aching nose off of said floor and sit upright on my knees.

Holy shit!

I have to take a moment to catch my breath. Spreading out before me, in every direction and as far as I can see, is a greyish blue stone floor and a white sky.  How far I can see, is not ad-infinitum mind you. After about a kilometer all I can see is a white fog, the same color as the sky.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

The sky and fog are actually more of a dirty white to be honest and it is only now that I realise the air is breathable and I am not currently dying.  The stone floor upon which I am resting appears to be polished almost like a granite kitchen counter and has a barely visible network of glowing green veins running through it, buried deep enough into the ‘granite’ that they can hardly be seen.

Every now and then in the wide open ‘landscape’ of marble-like floor, stretching out in every direction, there are square pillars made from the same material jotting out here and there, each about a meter and a half wide.  The pillars vary in height ranging from half a meter that I can see over the top of, to as tall as several meters up. Their placement, although always rotated to face the same direction, seems entirely random.

The panoramic view really is a marvel to behold.  However, now that I have not immediately died, I am much more concerned with whether or not I can get back home.  I turn around to face the portal behind me. There is an arch standing before me, identical to the one in my bedroom.  

This arch however does not have a countdown on it, despite the portal still being active.  Three possibilities I can think of here. Firstly this portal is a one way, in which case I’m fucked!  Secondly, time in this place moves infinitely fast compared to the real world, in which case the portal could stay connected forever and does not need a clock.  Thirdly, the portal travels both ways but can only be opened from the real world and therefore doesn’t bother showing a clock on this side, more as a result that it doesn’t have an ‘interface’ over here.

I get to my feet and walk towards the portal, seriously hoping it is not the first of the three theories.  As soon as I reach out to touch the portal, my hand is repelled! Oh fuck- fuck- fuck- fuck! I try forcing my entire body towards the portal and am unceremoniously flung backwards.  That’s it I’m dead. I’m fucking dead!

Well I’m not entirely dead yet, but I am sitting there for a few minutes in a furious staring contest with the portal.  While I try and glare the portal into submission, I start wondering about what the fuck I’m going to do now. I look around a bit more carefully and spot both the drone and the broom lying on the ground a little bit further away.  The drone has given up on flying and is now parked on the ground, motionless. Pity I don’t have it’s controller with me to fly it around a bit and ‘safely’ explore. I suspect it would actually work as long as the controller is on this side of the portal, with the drone.

Beyond the portal however, I notice something strange.  I quickly get up and walk past the arch, a few dozen meters further and I arrive at what can only be described as ‘the edge of the world’.  Directly behind the arch where I entered, about twenty meters away, the floor suddenly stops. A sheer drop off that stops about three meters down, suggesting that I am standing atop a colossal sized floating platform.  And the only thing I can see below that as well as into the distance, is more ‘sky’.

I quickly back up away from the edge, trying to shake off the rather unsettling feeling of staring down from a very ‘high?’ place.  I guess now I have to explore a bit. I decide first that for the lack of a compass or a sun in this place, that the direction of the gate and ‘edge of the world’ will be South.  Not that I suspect a compass would have any use in this place.

So heading away from the gate, north, seems like a royally bad idea.  Considering I can only see for about a kilometer in any given direction, If I travel too far out and try and back track, I might likely miss the direction of the portal all together and then hit the edge of the world, and have to wonder whether to travel east or west in order to find it.  Don’t feel comfortable with that idea, no, not at all.

So I decide to head west, following along the edge of the world to guarantee that I can’t get lost.  Of course when I say follow the edge, I mean of course keep at least ten meters between me and that dead drop off at all fucking times.

I begin walking, watching the portal disappear into the fog after about ten minutes of travel time.  I can’t help but feel incredibly isolated in this place after that, the never changing scenery in all directions doesn’t exactly help.  I keep walking for quite some time, before I pass a nearby pillar. I take the opportunity for the first time, to examine one of these pillars close up.  On all sides it is the same and I am unable to find anything at all to differentiate it from the floor I am walking on and soon decide to leave it be. All the pillars in this place appear to be the same, so I decide to just keep walking.

I can’t tell in this place very easily, but maybe it’s been like thirty minutes already?  I haven’t seen a single change in scenery so far, Just a never ending stretch of sky, floor and pillars.  That is, until now. Directly in front of me is yet another pillar, seemingly made from the exact same material as the floor, only this time, the pillar has a reddish tint to it.  This pillar is different! I can’t but help feel completely overjoyed by this small little oasis of change in this fucking soul eating dessert of a landscape.

I practically run up to the pillar to inspect it, but am somewhat anxious when it appears to be just another fucking pillar.  It is somewhere around three meters high and uselessly normal on all four sides, or at least as normal as normal can be in this place.  The disappointment is fucking soul crushing, how utterly pointless. I am about to leave the damnable pillar and carry on with my journey towards nothingness and pointlessness, also known by me as ‘West’, when a nagging thought occurs to me.  It’s a sneaking feeling crawling up my spine and clawing its way into my brain.

I decide that I have nothing better to do and that the endless landscape is not going anywhere, like at all, and decide to indulge my spider senses.  I remember that, from the pillars I have seen so far, the top is just as smooth as the rest and I did not recall seeing any sharp edges which could threaten to slice my fingers off.  

So without further adieu, I crouch down and launch myself upwards with all my might and manage to just hook the edges of six to eight of my fingers over the top edge of the pillar.  Which kind of hurts from the strain of supporting my body weight on just that alone. I quickly wiggle my fingers into a better grip and begin the work of doing a partial chin-up and hooking my right forearm on top of the pillar, up to my elbow.

With enough leverage to finally pull my head over the top of the pillar I am now face to face with some kind of white object that is sitting directly on top of the pillar.  Fuck yes. One point for me. I quickly snatch the object and drop back down to the ground, looks like my hunch about the ‘out of place’ pillar paid off.

I am about to examine my newly acquired ‘loot’, when I hear the pillar start making some kind noise.  Glancing up, I notice small cracks, or divides showing up in the pillar. In the next moment, hundreds of parts of the pillar start shifting around, flipping and folding in, on, out and over themselves, as the pillar gets shorter and shorter while looking like yet again, something else out of a transformers movie.  The pillar eventually disappears into the ground, which in turn folds outwards to cover its ‘escape’ and turn into normal ground once again. All traces of gaps or seams vanish and there is nothing left to indicate that there was ever a pillar here.

That was creepy.  I am currently tensed up and ready to run for my life if things all of a sudden turn into an Indiana Jones movie and the floor starts falling away.  But after a minute of nothing further happening and no additional noises, I eventually calm down and go back to inspecting my prize.

It’s a white palm-sized object in the shape of a flat-ish oval.  It has what I assume to be a button on top and a clip on the bottom, that looks like it could attach to your belt.  The whole thing itself really looks like some kind of electric gate motor remote. There is also a small hole on the front of it, the size of a pinhead.  It feels like it might be something similar to a laser pointer.

Curiosity getting the better of me, I hold it out, pointing outwards to a pillar about a hundred meters in the distance and press the button, half expecting a laser bolt to shoot out of it, but nothing happens.  Well that was entirely unsatisfying. I point it towards the ground near me this time and hold the button in, going once again with the laser pointer idea.

No laser pointer shows up on the ground while I’m holding the button in, but this time I do hear a whirring sound that is increasing in pitch, the longer I hold it in.  Oh shit, maybe it’s like some kind of charge up weapon. I quickly point it back to the ‘target practice’ pillar and after several seconds of charging, I release the button.  Once again, nothing seems to happen.

I am about to get really agitated with my ‘broken’ prize, when I notice that something is not quite right with the target practice pillar, it is out of shape.  I walk towards the pillar, quickly covering the hundred odd meters and when I get close enough I notice that there is a large round patch of hair stuck to the pillar.  Upon closer examination it appears to be more like a black ball of fur stuck to the pillar.

Curious, I point the laser pointer to a different section of pillar and hold the button in for only a second this time.  Upon releasing the button, a much smaller patch of black fur instantly sprouts out of the pillars side, so fast that It’s there before I’ve barely even finished releasing the button.

That’s just marvelous.  My foray into an alternate world and the first prize I find is a fucking ‘hair gun’.