“Deep breaths, Lucio, deep breaths…” The boy found himself still at the starting line whilst everyone had already zoomed off.
“I don’t get it. Why are you fussing over something so trivial?” Aiden sounded from behind under the shade of a tree sipping on iced coffee.
Lucio turned furiously, “Trivial?! This is life or death. Sweating is such an expense for my delicate body!”
Aiden almost spat his coffee out in response. “My friend, when was the last time you set foot outside and touched grass?”
“What do you think I’m doing now? Chilling in my room or something?!” Touching grass seemed to be a very touchy topic for poor Lucio.
Aiden couldn’t stand the second hand embarrassment and walked off back to his classroom leaving Lucio stranded alone on the sidewalk.
“Lucio, it’s okay if you’re not as fast as the others. Just stick to your own pace. Phew!” He dashed off in an unsteady manner.
As he zoomed past the trees and the damp puddled ground, he didn’t think of his shoes being permanently stained but instead enjoyed the cool breeze gently grazing past his face. As he finally began to appreciate the tranquility of the woods adjacent to the mountains, he was rudely interrupted by a phone call. He immediately answered the call without hesitation.
“Hello?” The person on the other end of the phone started with the conversation.
“Sorry, wrong number.” He moves his hand away from his ears.
“Wait, wait, wait! Don’t hang up!!”
“Fine. What do you want?”
“My dear brother from the same mother, let me tell you why you are so important to me today in particular…”
“Mateo, stop with your two-faced flattery. What exactly do you need this time?”
He immediately started with his list of instructions. “My gym shoes. I left them at home and I really need them today. It rained a lot last night and my outdoor shoes are too dirty to wear in the indoor gym. I can’t be kicked out today, I have to practice for the upcoming match or my team is doomed to fail!”
“Just run home and get it since you like to flex your athleticism so much.”
“Bro, please, I’ll do anything!” He pleaded with grave anguish.
“Anything you say? Fine by me.”
“So will you get it for me? You are doing the marathon, right?”
“You weren’t even certain of me registering for the marathon? Just how much confidence do you have?”
“Oh! Thank god you actually signed up. Never mind that now. Go get my goods right now!! I better see those blue sneakers in the next hour or so.”
He hangs up almost immediately, leaving Lucio cursing at his little brother for his carelessness. “That brat…”
Regardless he wanted to help, as much as he hates all the nonstop talk about basketball, Lucio knows how much Mateo enjoys playing it. Lucio makes up his mind and decides to help out. He looks around to see that he was all alone and nobody was in sight front or behind. The window of opportunity was open and he decided to go at it.
“Let’s see, if I go back the same way I came then it would take about thirty minutes or more and going home by foot would take up at least forty. Finishing the marathon is totally out of the question since I still have two and half hours left… Hmm...” He was lost in thought as he calculated the precise and most efficient route to take. He looked around and came face to face with the woods.
Now, the woods have always been a labyrinth in and of itself and stepping into it would mean getting lost and being found by a rescue team at the dead of night, especially for a directionally challenged person such as Lucio here. Unfortunately for him, he had severely overestimated his abilities in navigating the wilderness on his own.
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Lucio with a sudden spark of commitment, tried to jump over the coloured metal fencing all the while mumbling to himself, “I’m very legal, I’m very legal. I can’t get caught, not here, not now!” One wonders where such nonsensical resolve comes from.
His legs swayed along the direction of the wind as he sat on top of the fence, properly positioning himself to make a great leap across the fence. As fate foretold, nothing will and ever goes right for poor Lucio but luckily for him he deals with it like a champ.
As he leapt across, the heel of his shoe managed to wedge between the fences and he ended up propelling himself forward slamming against the mud on the other side. He winced as he tried to get back up pretending like nothing happened but ended up slipping on the slimy ground, ultimately making him skid again, this time down the deep end of a slope.
His face planted against a strong and fungi infested tree, his head had completely cleared itself of all thoughts, probably to stop any more calamities from happening from his overly imaginative brain from conjuring up more stupid thoughts. “Why must the world test me so much..? Aren’t exams enough…”
He finally decides to move his aching body around to scan his surroundings.
“What the hell?! Where am I?! I can’t be dying here today, this place is awfully too lame to die in..!” He certainly had priorities.
As he pulled himself up from the leaves, he felt this backbone making a very concerning tune from the inside. “Ah..! My back, my back..!” He pushed his black brow-line glasses back to his nose and cleaned himself of the nasty leaves.
He looked back up the way he had come—too steep to climb back up and little too slippery to even attempt once more. The next best option was to explore around. Lucio found himself in quite the pickle, being surrounded by hordes of birches, all at the verge of withering for the coming winter, it was a little eerie. The sounded of howling slithered through the forest floor awakening Lucio’s deepest fears. “Argh! I hate nature…”
Regardless, he had no choice but to continue onward and navigate through the dense forest. After minutes felt like hours, he finally understood the situation—he was lost.
Instead of the normal response of panic, he appeared to be rather calm probably because he had already accepted his fate. But just as a main character has incredible luck, so did Lucio.
Whilst trudging through the grassy floor, his shoe hit a hard object underneath the debris. As he bent to see what it was, he found a square piece of rusted metal flat on the ground right next to the object he hit. On closer inspection, it was evident that what he was witnessing was an open hatch. He examined the dark, endless hole and pondered, “Should I?” His general curiosity seemed to outweigh the primal logic of staying away from the unknown. His only argument was a simple ‘Why not?’
“Don’t mind if I do.” He invited himself into the hole in the ground.
Steel stairs lead straight down to a misty little room. It was a suffocating place, but Lucio quickly adapted to the smell which resembled a combination of the woods and the smell of rain. He brought out his flashlight from his phone and projected it forward. A dark and dusty cavity led straight to a tunnel. He walked slowly through the tunnel, darkness consumed him from behind. The silence overshadowed even the slightest noise. Even his breath became louder and clearer.
Moments pass, Lucio felt this was a pointless journey. But soon the second doubting stopped and there it was a metal case at the far end of the tunnel, tucked beside wooden barrels. It was a odd looking thing and felt completely out of place. A shiny piece of metal that resembled a refrigerator stood gloriously amongst the garbage.
The boy quickly dashed towards it to examine it more closely. He was sure that this unlikely object was never meant to be here. The closer he examined the more it resembled a lift instead. The metal door with a partition in the middle and a overhead semicircular frame, which under usable conditions should display the floor numbers. But the only thing missing were the buttons to summon a lift.
“Strange. How do I open this thing..?” Instead of using that big brain of his, he decided to depend on his nonexistent brawn to latch onto the division of the metal casing and clenching all his muscles to open it up. After that backfired badly, leaving him gasping for air, he went back to using his brain again. “Open… sesame..?”
Fittingly no response, seriously what was he expecting with that?
Lucio was starting to lose patience and walked backwards to get a better view of the room he was in. And there, at the furthest top-right he noticed a very faint indentation on the semicircular frame overhead which read, "01001100 01111001 01101110 01100101 01111001 00100000"
“Hm..?” He was lost in thought and finally it hit him. “Lyney!” He clasped both his hands and the echo of the clap scattered through the musty room.
And without a second to spare, the division opened wide revealing a bright light blinding his vision. As he adjusted to the light, a bore witness to a magnificent view. A long rectangular metallic room with green shaded monitors covering the headboards and a massive keyboard made entirely out of glass. He walked in almost dazed to see so much technology sprawling the premise. A massive screen sat majestically at the center covering a majority of the entanglement of wires running at the back connecting every other monitor screen to it. After a few seconds of astonishment, a sudden beep pulled Lucio out of his trance.
“Beep~! Hello, Lucio! Pleasure to see you again!”
“Ahh!! Who said that?!”
“My apologies if I startled you, Lucio. It’s me, Lyney!”
“Huh?” Lucio finally noticed a tiny minuscule projector, something of a size he’s never seen before, had formed a floating screen behind him. It had a pixelated face but a very expressive one.
“Are you an AI?” Lucio walked closer towards the screen and immediately started with his monologue, “Wow! Of course you’re an AI! That’s so cool! But why are you even here in his dingy hatch in the middle of nowhere? Who made you? And all this tech, I’ve never seen anything like this before. All of this must be so expensive to get.”
“I am indeed an AI, and I take on the alias, Lyney. I was created by Team Aeternos and I was sent here for a purpose.”
“Ok.. Lyney…? What did they send you here for? Where exactly do you come from?”
“I’m afraid my database cannot answer this question for you, Lucio. I do not know why I was sent here, but I do know where I’m from.”
“World Line 0, 2054.”
“2054..? You’re saying you’re from 2054?!”
“Yes, my database tells me such.”
“You’re..! YOU'RE FROM THE FUTURE?!”