He wondered where the stars had gone. There was supposed to be a clear sky tonight, and he hadn’t spotted any clouds before going into the training hall. There was a fresh breeze on his face as he looked up, over the nearby trees and streetlights, but not a single drop of rain. Could a full cloud cover have rolled over in the last 2,5 hours? He knew that light pollution could get bad in the big city, but he could swear the visibility was normally better than this. In fact, he thought he could see a few pinpricks of stars in the east, but most of the sky was completely dark. Definitely not light pollution then. It almost looked like there was a black rectangle covering part of the sky. Must be his imagination..
“Hello? Earth to Barry?”
He snapped out of his musing, looking back at Emily who was staring at him, brows raised in expectation. Her auburn hair was tied back in a tight ponytail, showing her forehead and cheeks which were still flushed from the intense training session. She was wearing tight fitting black and gray sports clothes, with striking sneakers that had flashes of yellow and neon pink.
“Wow, sorry, I was totally spaced out” He said while giving her an embarrassed look.
“Yeah yeah, I’m already used to you zoning out on me.” She replied, shaking her head with a rueful smile. “I was asking if you were coming to the party tomorrow? A bunch of the crew are going.”
Barry’s brows creased as he frantically looked for an excuse. The thought of being in that crowded space and having to socialize was already bringing a familiar, awkward feeling to his stomach. He felt conflicted as well for a moment, not wanting to disappoint Emily, before he realized that he had a legitimate reason not to go.
“Oh thanks but I can’t, I really have to study tomorrow. I’ve got a massive course of molecular cellular biology to get through, and I’ll have less time to study next week. Leaving for Winnipeg on Sunday to visit the family.”
He smiled as he said that, feeling his discomfort flow away.
“I get the sense that you’ll manage to live through the disappointment. You know, for a guy who’s so talented at dancing, you don’t seem to like parties a whole lot.” Emily said, then continued more seriously, looking him in the eyes.
“Are you sure you don’t want to apply to one of the more prestigious schools? Your talent is kind of wasted in this dinky place.”
"Oh I’ve never really had such grand ambitions,” he said with a smile that didn’t reach his eyes, “And yeah, I’m not great at parties. Would you believe me if I said I sometimes look forward to studying? Biology was a great choice for a major,, I’m finding it really fascinating. Except for the boring cellular stuff.”
“Further evidence for the theory that you’re in fact a robot posing as a human, believing the best way to understand humans is to study their biology" Emily replied playfully.
They had started walking down the street as they talked. Barry began to move along in stiff, rhythmic movements while making his voice sound computer generated, drawing out the words.
“You have unmasked me. I am a dancing robot. Why do humans have belly buttons? Bleep”
Emily barked out a laugh, shaking her head.
“Actually,” he continued in a preachy tone, “that’s a terrible example, since there’s a perfectly obvious biological explanation for why belly buttons exist. There’s an abundance of actually nonsensical things about the human body, like why the urinary tract runs through the prostate, or why we breathe through the same tube we shove food into, or why our feet have so many small bones, or why our reproductive organs are so close to our-”
“Okay you can stop there, I think I get the point.” she interjected with a wry smile. “And while I would love to listen to you go on about the urinary tract all evening, this is where we part ways.” She nodded her head sideways to indicate the subway station further down the street. “See you soon, mister robot. Enjoy your time with the family!”
They hugged, said their goodbyes and Barry continued down the street in the opposite direction. There was a giddy, almost tingly feeling in his chest. Is this what ‘finding yourself in college’ was like? There had been times, through all the bullying and loneliness, that he had felt really lost in high school. Like something about him wasn’t right, but he had no clue who else he was supposed to be. The sessions with Dr. Schulz had been more than helpful though, and he felt proud of the progress he’d made. His family had been a great support too.
Barry had resisted moving away from his loving foster family at first, unable to imagine how his situation could improve without them. Coming home had always been the best part of his day. They'd patiently encouraged him to at least try moving out. It had been such a tough decision at the time, but now he could hardly believe that he'd spent weeks agonizing about it.
He smiled as he thought of seeing them tomorrow. His mother would probably start lobbying for early christmas decorations to be put up, his father still keeping up resistance. He wouldn’t be able to keep it up long with enthusiastic little Jasmine fighting in mom’s camp. A small pang of guilt came and passed when he realized she would have grown again in the last 5 months.
As he walked down the street, he started hopping from stone to stone, gracefully moving his feet to make sure they never touched the thin gaps between the stones. Without conscious thought, he stretched his toes and hamstrings just so while swinging his leg back, bending his knees at exactly the right time when landing, making the moves look effortlessly elegant. The only sounds were some rustling from the small backpack he had on, and the soft tap of his sneakers touching the pavement.
He stopped as he noticed some teenagers across the street sniggering and pointing at him. Increasing his pace, he turned a corner and walked on, jaw clenched. He paused for a few seconds, then shook his head and continued on with a sigh. After a few minutes, he was back to hopping from stone to stone. Spotting his reflection in a dark barbershop window made him focus and Barry twisted into a pirouette, still managing to land quietly on the tips of his feet. The dancer’s hops then turned into leaps, performing grand jetés as if he were still at practice. He was right at the apex of a beautiful jump, feeling the tension in his arms and legs as he hung in the air with his appendages fully stretched out in opposite directions, when it happened.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
A bright flash of light far on the horizon, followed immediately by a series of flashes all across the sky and then -
Darkness
A roar of air in his ears and across his body
An intense, unfamiliar feeling of vertigo
Flashes of light
Heat
Sudden cold and a feeling of increasing pressure on his eyes
Can’t breathe
An impossibly loud grinding sound, and then -
He fell down on his back, immediately rolling over onto his hands and knees to empty his stomach onto the ground. Barry remained in that position for a while, just blinking at the sight of his vomit and the sand around it as he tried to process the sudden shift in his surroundings. Impossibly, the sun was now shining, casting a warm glow on his back, the reddish yellow sand hot to the touch.
A stab of pain in his lungs brought him back to his senses and Barry promptly sat down to look himself over, eyes wide with shock. He felt around his body. His skin was red. Eyes were hurting. No blood to be seen. He was sweating heavily though, and as he stared at his red, shaking hands, he let out a tortured “What the fuck!”.
There was no echo whatsoever, the sound seeming to dissipate into the air as he became more aware of his surroundings. He looked around with quick, abrupt movements, like a startled animal. There was so much to take in. The fine grains covering his sweaty hands were unmistakably sand. Around him, a thin layer of it covered what looked to be some kind of sedimentary stone, shifting layers in shades of gray and brown visible through larger cracks. To his left, he could make out a dozen strangely symmetrical, dead looking trees in the distance, evenly spaced out across the cracked stone. He couldn’t see anything past the trees. Far to his right, the stony landscape seemed to inexplicably shift into a green meadow, framed by distant mountains.
Barry could feel the hot midday sun burning on his skin as he was taking everything in. Digging through the sand with his hands, he could feel the grains on his skin and how they got slightly cooler as he pushed further down. He scratched his fingertips against a layer of hard rock underneath the sand. Where the hell was he? The color and texture of the exposed rock reminded him vaguely of the Grand Canyon, but he also knew instinctively that that's not where he was right now. Those trees, the distant greenery and mountains, none of it felt right. Even the clouds looked foreign, only a fraction of their usual size, like they were much further away.
Unavoidably, his thoughts kept turning to the absurdity of the situation. None of this made sense. Could he be dreaming? Looking at himself, his clothes were still there. He still had his backpack on. He clearly remembered getting it as a present from his stepmom 6 years ago and he couldn't spot any changes as he looked it over, showing all the familiar worn down patches. His phone was working, but had no signal. He tried an emergency call but as he expected, it didn't work. What the hell had just happened to him?
He felt a certain sense of clarity, this unmistakable feeling of realness that was distinctly different from lucid dreaming. When you were dreaming, you might not be sure even if you asked yourself the question, but when you're awake, you're damn sure that you're not asleep. If he hadn’t had an uninterrupted stream of experiences and consciousness throughout, he might have been more likely to put this off as a dream or some kind of hallucination, but he had to discard that possibility. Whatever was going on, he could see no way to distinguish this from his usual waking experience.
“Have I been.. teleported? Is that what this is?” He said to himself, the familiar sound of his voice grounding him. He pinched his arm hard, wincing, then shook his head and let out a frustrated grunt. The unrelenting heat was starting to make him sweat.
Figuring confusing things out was one of the few things he felt really confident in. He would break things down, formulate hypotheses, think of experiments, then observe and verify. But how could you break this madness down? How could he have been first in one place, then suddenly in a completely different one? Either this was some impossibly realistic dream, or most of what he thought he knew about the world was wrong. Only one thing was clear at this stage: he would need to gather more information.
He pulled out his phone on reflex, but there was still no connection nor GPS. Maps just showed a grey void. It was pretty much useless to him. Eventually, Barry got up on shaking legs and slowly started moving towards the strange trees, their sharp branches repeating in patterns that looked faintly like fractals. As he got closer, he noticed the trees were on an incline, which explained why he couldn’t see anything past them.
He trudged closer towards the trees, then paused to look around. Nothing stood out as he again observed the unfamiliar landscape. There was a feeling of surrealism as he looked around, like it was all cobbled together by a mad painter. How could a desert just suddenly turn into a meadow? He might have to head in that direction actually, but first the incline.
As he turned towards the trees again, he noticed a small cloud of dust on the horizon. As he stood, staring at it, it was obvious that whatever was causing it was coming closer. It must be some kind of vehicle to be moving that fast. That meant people! He felt a wave of relief as he imagined talking to them and getting some information on what the hell was going on. He considered waving and shouting to get their attention, but they were still too far off. Thankfully they seemed to be headed in his direction.
Shifting from foot to foot, Barry tried to think of what he should say to them. There was a torrent of questions in his head, just waiting to come out. Come to think of it, would they have been teleported from New York as well? Since they’d already found a vehicle and were driving across the desert, they might actually be natives. Local inhabitants of.. whatever this strange, desert-like place was. Hopefully it was somewhere in the US. He didn't speak any other languages.
As he tried to imagine what these locals might be like, a feeling that something was wrong started to grow. They were still headed straight towards him. There was nothing remarkable that he could see here. Could it be a coincidence? How could they actually have seen him from that distance? They would have had to be driving across the desert, binoculars in hand, actively looking for people in what seemed like the middle of nowhere. They might be.. Desert pirates? Was that a thing?
He started feeling tremors in his feet as the vehicle got closer, though they’d disappear for short times as it went over a deeper patch of sand. The feeling of wrongness grew as he got a better sense of the ridiculous speed that vehicle must be moving at to get closer that quickly. Focusing on the vibrations in his feet, he also noticed a rhythmic beat to them that, no matter how hard he tried, just did not match with what the vibrations from a jeep should feel like. It actually felt more like.. a gallop.
Only then did it occur to him that this might not be a vehicle at all.