Walker became aware all at once that something was immediately wrong.
The outside world as he knew it had a different feeling. One that was difficult to explain. The silence felt profoundly wrong, as if sound had never once shown its face here. The lack of air not withstanding, even the darkness of space felt off. But there was more to it.
Looking around in what should have been utter darkness, he instead found great bursts of orange lightning sparking and clashing from all directions around him. It seemed to be almost angry as it flew through the empty cosmos on an undefinable path. As soon as one faded in the distance, another would take its place in a new location, lighting up the perpetual night and granting Walker limited vision. Even after watching for a moment, he saw no discernible pattern. It was random. Chaotic.
Terrifying, as he knew what orange lightning meant.
Walker spent so much time looking without, that it was from within that he suddenly felt great pain. The darkness of his soul was a well tapped dry. Previously, he'd blacked out when draining himself this badly, but he instinctively knew he couldn't afford that now. If he blacked out here, there would be no coming back. He'd suffocate and maybe even explode in the darkness of a baby universe's space.
That required thoughts and actions to be steady and directed toward solving his immediate problems. Unfortunately, he was Walker Reed.
"Ahhhhhhh!" He screamed out when feeling the depths of emptiness inside him. It felt like a deep and unholy ache in the center of his person. A vacuum of hollow feelings trapped by the surface area around it. He didn't consider that he was currently trapped in an unknown universe with no hope for regenerating the power of his soul. He didn’t consider the majesty and wonder of what he had done. Instead, all he knew was the empty pain of that moment, and the undeniable feeling that he was doomed to die here, unknown and unremembered as his time in the protocol ended.
Of course, these were just surface-level thoughts without hope of gaining a foothold. No, they just filtered through for but a moment before the pain drove a spike into his heart yet again.
"Ahhhhhhh!"
An arcing crack of Kinetic strand energy blew past him, parts of it just touching the edges of his nude form. In the vacuum of space, this had a multiplying factor, causing Walker to shoot through the darkness of the cosmos and fly into the vast reaches of nothingness. Through all of the travel, and the damaging burns now applied to his body, Walker continued to scream unpaused.
Of course, all that screaming required the Creator to take a breath.
In the midst of flying through the darkness of his self-built universe, Walker's agonized mind recognized the need for oxygen. Pulling out his bag, he took a deep and necessary breath of oxygen, replenishing his stores of life-giving atmosphere in a body feeling the ravages of a kinetic strand gone mad and a soul devoid of power. There was only one answer he could give to his current predicament.
"Ahhhhhhh!"
Walker waved his hands in the air as he continued to fly through the emptiness. The only light apparent was when Kinetic energy passed him by, often by only a few feet. After he was struck, the Creator felt himself in an unending spin, an omnidirectional bullhorn as the universe’s first member.
However, something, eventually, changed.
Walker touched onto a part of empty space that seemingly wasn't empty. Like a hand entering a hot glove at a baseball game, Walker suddenly felt warmth surround him in the deep recesses of nothing around him. It was a decidedly strange warmth—one that he felt he instinctively knew, as if it were a part of himself.
The Book of Souls seemed to agree with him. It had shuttered itself away the moment he'd drained his soul, but the warmth he felt radiating from it mirrored what he now felt everywhere around him. It only lasted for a few precious moments before disappearing just as quickly as the brief respite had come.
That moment had been just enough for the stricken man. Even though he was now feeling the cold emptiness of space surrounding him yet again, Walker could finally moderate his voice from open-mouthed screaming to panting, adding a few mewling sounds in to break up the monotony.
Walker tried to regain some semblance of control, pulling from the deepest well of his limited strength. Small patterned thoughts emerged from the haze. He’d been through something like this before, but never this bad. A piece of him wondered if this was what life would always be like. Him running off to the middle of nowhere, facing pain and confusion at each turn, trying to find a way out of the mess he had likely caused. At some point, he had to recognize that this was “his thing,” and it wasn’t helpful. But again, that piece of him was silenced by the overwhelming loss of his soul.
That is, until he felt another warm glove wrap around him. For a second time, his Icon warmed up at the feeling. The Book of Souls was far too low in strength to extend away from his body for any period of time, but Walker felt like he understood it regardless. That feral part of him which demanded control, demanded to lash out while simultaneously wanting to hide in a corner of the room, was pushed down by his overwhelming need to fill the emptiness within. And if this felt like the Book of Souls, something that directly represented Walker as an Awakened, then who was he to argue with it? No thoughts of betrayal or trickery came close to entering his warped mind as he did the only action he felt he could.
Walker breathed it in.
Even though he’d only taken it in for a moment, he could already feel his low reserves begin to fill quickly. The warm feeling left him all too soon, and Walker continued to float through the cosmos in an uncontrolled spin, only now, he felt far better than he had.
As he continued to collect himself, he cast his mind back to the previous times he’d taken in the souls of others. With the Nomads, it had tasted hollow. As if they hadn’t, or weren’t, truly living. Artificial. Empty.
He’d gained memories from the Founders, although he could only recall bits and pieces of them. However, with Triton and Kwaya, he’d been pulled directly into the memories themself.
But this, this was different. He saw nothing, and rather than the soul having a “taste,” it felt like a piece of him was coming back. As if all of the darkness he’d put into punching the hole had returned a large piece of it.
But that was crazy. It couldn’t be his own soul coming back to him. Based on the hazy memory of his own erratic traveling through the baby universe, there was way too much out there. Walker wanted to make a reflection so he’d have somebody to talk it out with, but first, he needed to arrest his developing travel issues.
Using a small amount of kinetic energy, Walker gently pushed off of space, trying it in spurts to slow himself down. After a great many errors and taking longer than he wanted to, he finally gained a semblance of control, managing to still himself in the vacant darkness.
Looking around, he noticed that there was a lot less Kinetic energy in his current location. With that thought in mind, he spun up a reflection with just ten minutes of time allotted and looked at himself.
“Well?” He asked the reflection as it looked back at him.
“Dude, I’ve been here for all of a minute.”
“You’re me! God, why are we always like this.”
His reflection smirked at him, making Walker want to punch his own face. Shaking his head, he looked around, but it was all the same as it had been a minute ago. Looking back at David, he noticed his reflection staring directly at him.
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
“What?”
“Dude, I don’t think you’re covered in the Temporal strand.”
“What?” Walker repeated, looking down at his hand. He discovered that his reflection was right. The mostly transparent strand was no longer smothered over his body. Did that mean they were losing a crazy amount of time right now? Was the Alpha Protocol continuing on like normal while he’d been spinning through here? How much time had gone on in Sonata then? Days? Months? Were they already on the Conservatory planets without their needed Skills? Would Virgil and the Primigenials do that?
His breathing started to quicken as each of his thoughts began to bounce around, but thankfully, that’s when David’s voice broke in, “I think we’re alright here.”
Walker looked up from his hand with a canted head, his eyes a little wild, “What do you mean? How do you know that!”
“Whoaa, calm down,” David said, putting his hands up, “I was just thinking about the Kinetic strand, right? Why is it here and so…everywhere, you know? I mean, what did we use to punch the hole through?”
“Our soul and Kinetic energy…” Walker thought about it as his pulse began to calm down, “So, what? It got absorbed by the Universe?”
David shrugged, “Maybe. It’s all guesswork, you know. But, and here’s where it gets really interesting to me. What if it also absorbed the Temporal strand.”
“Okay, okay. Theorycrafting, yeah” Walker nodded, “So, if it absorbed our soul and the Kinetic energy, not to mention the Temporal strand….then…what?” He looked around, spotting a huge bolt of orange lightning in the distance, “Why the fuck is it doing that then? Huh? That’s a huge god damn bolt of Kinetic energy. There’s no way we put that much into the punch. It’d have to be, what, hundreds, thousands of resources?”
“Mmmm, yeah,” David said, scratching the back of his head, “I don’t have an answer for that one.”
Walker snorted. He didn’t have an answer either, and there was no one else to ask. After considering the answer from multiple angles and still coming up with nothing, he decided to do what every human being from across history had done when presented with an impossible question. Find someone smarter.
Walker stepped into his catalog of memories and began pulling and pushing things around. There had to be an answer for why the Universe took in all of the strand's energy. He was sure that once he found it, it would also explain why no Kinetic energy struck them this far out.
He sifted through quotes from Aristotle, but the basic foundations of natural law didn’t help. He bounced back and forth between Bill Nye the Science Guy, his memories screaming BILL BILL BILL, and even touched on one of the holy trinity, Mr. Rogers himself. But aside from teaching him good hygiene and how to treat people with the golden rule, he didn’t find anything to help him from the friendliest neighbor in the omniverse. No, he needed the brilliant, the whacky, and out-of-this-world thinking to solve this problem.
That meant he’d have to look through his memories of scientists who studied space…. theoretical physicists….that gave him only one answer.
“Stephen Hawking,” Walker said aloud when he found his inadvertent mentor.
David looked over at him, gently floating nearby, “Yeah, that’d be great and all,” He replied with a morose expression, “Only we didn’t really read any of his books.”
Walker shook his head, “No, we didn’t. But that doesn’t mean other people we’ve spoken to haven’t. Just need to find the right memory.”
“Uhh,” David said, pulling on his hair a little, “Dude, I think I know which memory you’re considering. Seriously, you’ve gotta go there?”
Walker looked confused momentarily, then nodded, “Yep, and I don’t want to. But that’s where the memory probably sits.”
“No,” David vigorously shook his head, “not there, man. There’s gotta be another way.”
“David, you know as well as I that it’s the only way.”
“But there’s-”
Walker slightly injected himself with kinetic energy, floating over and touching his shoulder. “No, David. It’s necessary. I’m going to do it. Please, David. Please pray for me.”
“I will,” the reflection replied grimly, only slightly broken by a twitch of the face, “I salute you for what you’re about to do.”
Walker patted him on the shoulder once, “Thanks, bud,” then reached into his catalog and dove into the memory. It was, quite simply, the worst place he could ever imagine going.
A science department meeting.
When the English department met up each week, they’d joke around about puns, tell stories about something crazy a student wrote on a paper recently, or just fuck around about what books are solid and how to get them on the cheap.
Books are expensive, after all.
But science was a whole different monster.
Walker once had to sit through a science department meeting long ago. He’d been invited to participate when he first started out as a teacher. Some administrative officials had thought up placing new teachers in different departmental meetings in a misguided attempt to help them understand how the school works. He’d expected it to be orderly, smart, and above his head as far as the terms and knowledge went. That was not what occurred. The memory quickly swallowed him, and he mentally buckled himself in.
Walker found himself in a memory he’d never wanted to return to. He was sitting in a chair, a tight necktie encircling his neck not unlike a noose, and gazed at himself as he watched two faculty scream at each other over something he considered to be simply a preference in teaching style.
“I told you, MRS. RODRIGUEZ, that is not how to teach these kids how to analyze data.” A hefty woman said with her finger in the air. “I’ve been teaching for over twenty years, and I think I know a thing or two. Hell, I’m sure that I’ve forgotten more than-”
A younger woman wearing a strikingly blue blazer started speaking loudly to interrupt her; she cut through the older woman with a sharp voice, “Qualitative analysis is the best way to get these kids to work, Ms. Filler. They don’t have the time nor inclination to learn through quantitative studies. What? Do you want them to analyze things by the dozen, or the hundreds? When it’s hard enough to just get them to focus on one thing at a time?”
“It’s simply a matter of what you’re teaching you…you…moron!” Ms. Filler got out with a quick gasp of air, “You don’t know what you’re saying in the slightest! How long have you been teaching? A Year? You know about as much about science as Mr. Reed here.” She looked at Walker, back at Mrs. Roridguez before she seemed to realize something. Glancing back at Walker who was adjusting his necktie, she said,” Sorry, Mr. Reed. I just needed to prove my point.”
Walker wisely decided to stay out of the argument, “Quite alright, Ms. Filler.”
The older woman nodded, recognizing she wouldn’t have to fight a battle on two fronts. But she hadn’t noticed Mrs. Rodriguez standing up in the background, nor the stormy look covering her face.
“Ms. Filler.” She said before shaking her head. She then looked at Walker, who unconsciously gulped in the back of his throat,” No, Mr. Reed. What does the acronym Ms. mean? Do you happen to know by chance?”
Walker had an idea of where this was going, but didn’t see much choice in the matter. At least he was simply providing a definition; there shouldn’t be any harm there. Deciding on what to say, he tried to be as neutral as possible, “The acronym Ms. stands for the neutral title used to describe women no matter what their marital status means.”
Mrs. Rodriguez nodded, a grin splashing its way across her face as she squared up on Ms. Filler again, “Exactly, Mr. Reed. Exactly. And do you, Mr. Reed, know why Ms. Filler is missing that oh so important r in her title?”
Walker neither wanted to answer the question, nor did he think it smart to ask about why there was so much importance placed on marriage, even if he had been with his girlfriend for a long time. Luckily, he was saved by the Department chair.
Finally having heard the commotion, the older gentleman quickly stood up, “Mrs. Rodriguez, that’s enough now. Please return to your seat.”
“Oh no,” Mrs. Rodriguez said, a feral cast to her features, “Ms. Filler asked for this. Mr. Reed,” She looked over at Walker again, who now knew there was no way out of this and could only helplessly stare at her as if she were a truck was about to run him down, “Ms. Filler lost that oh-so-special letter because she was sleeping with our chair, Mr. Bishop there.” She tilted her head at the older man. ”Even though Mr. Bishop is also married, they decided to have a dalliance, a copulation if you will. Now, the whole department couldn’t help but speak of it last year. Oh, we spoke, and we spoke”, She said, swinging her arms with each word, pretending to form a metaphorical child with them, “And finally, Mr. Filler had had enough, and that was that. No more R. Right, Misses Filler,” She said, dragging the word out.
At this point, both Ms. Filler and Mr. Bishop’s faces were cherry red. Although Mr. Bishop tried to speak first, all of the attention was still on Ms. Filler as she collapsed in her seat. A large widening of the eyes told Walker that the younger teacher had really knocked her down, figuratively, of course.
Mrs. Rodriguez had to know at this point that she was in deep shit, but Walker guessed she was going to go for broke. And no less than a few seconds later, he was proven right, “Honestly, Ms. Filler,” Mrs. Rodriguez said with a shake of her head, “I don’t know how you convinced Mr. Bishop to be with you. Your ass, which is as constantly expanding as the universe, can barely fit in that chair as it is. It’s a wonder how a woman of your age and an ass as big as that can even still get so busy. Oh, if only dear Professor Hawking could study you now. We’d have solved the five-dimensional theory long ago just by looking at how your ass could fill a stadium and a chair at the same time. Dear me.”
She left the table, leaving a deathly silence in her wake, “Tah tah. I believe I’ll go home and see my husband now. At least he still gives a shit about me.
The door closed behind her, and Walker was planted with a memory of how to leave a room from that day forward.
Walker exited the memory, “A constantly expanding universe…” He scratched his chin as he considered it, and then something else struck him, “Wait a second. Did I just copy her when I quit?”