Rector Argus awoke rudely as his entire body collided with a solid obstacle. Still half asleep, he whirled to the side to avoid a possible attack. His hand groped blindly around the pitch-black room. He felt a metal rod attached to the floor next to him. When he tried to move it, there was a soft clink, as if of crystal. Now fully awake, he looked around. One of the gifts of his heritage was the ability to see in all directions at once, even in complete darkness. He now recognized a chandelier next to him. Hanging from the ceiling were his bed, his bedside table, his carpet...

The principal was impressed. Someone or something had obviously reversed gravity in his bedroom. This required far more than just the technical skills to build a gravity polarizer. First you had to get past his security. Mystical shields, curse traps, alarms, self-shooting devices and some psionic defenses.

There was no one to be seen anywhere in the room. He "blinked" and dozens of eyes appeared on his skull, which had previously been camouflaged. He "blinked" again and half of them disappeared from his skull again, only to appear on various surfaces in his bedroom and adjacent rooms. In the bathroom mirror, on the posts of the bed, on the outside of the front door and many other strategic positions. Mystically connected to his mind, they continued to transmit everything they saw. Keeping them invisible outside his skull took some mental effort. But he had practiced enough to manage this too. He looked around attentively. His concentration moved from one eye to the next in a flash, as naturally as a normal person would let their eyes wander across a room. Nothing. Nowhere an opponent or an object that didn't belong here. He "blinked" again and more eyes disappeared to appear in rooms above and below his bedroom. Too focused on his dispersed perception, he reacted far too late as gravity returned to normal and he bounced face down on his bedroom floor. Glaring light flared up in the middle of the room and this new shock caused him to lose control of his eyes for a moment. Completely uncontrollably, they changed position and blinked in confusion and blindness. One of them turned out to be a playing card in the hand of a night watchman who was passing the time with three of the gardeners with a round of skat. Screaming, he flung his cards through the air and threw himself backwards. His chair tipped over and his head hit the ground with a painful but non-threatening thud. The three Asian gardeners plucked the whirling playing cards out of the air with unerring movements and placed them neatly next to each other on the table. "Your hand isn't that bad after all..."

The eye had disappeared again in the meantime.

Other disembodied eyes appeared on a tile in the empty changing room in the gym, several lecture halls, on buildings and in one case even in the middle of a molehill.

With great effort, the principal pulled himself together and "blinked" hard once. All eyes reappeared on the roundness of his bald skull. Bright white light illuminated the room with no visible source. He thought he was prepared for anything as he carefully stood up. However, this did not help him against the invisible force that hurled him across the room against the wall.

"Kneel down!" Floating in the middle of the room, a glowing white crystal the size of a fist revealed itself. The volume of the voice emanating from it strained the principal's eardrums to the limit. When it fell silent, his frayed nerves continued to whistle uncontrollably.

"Who is it?"

The crystal shattered into a small cloud of jumbled fragments that still formed a coherent structure. Colors and shapes changed in a constant flow. The preferred appearance of his client Eris. Argus threw himself to his knees and pressed both hands firmly to the ground in a deep bow. Even a god who considered himself a champion of chaos sometimes expected unquestioning obedience. This clearly seemed to him to be one of those times. "Lord, I serve you faithfully as always. And now that you have finally overcome the barrier that separates this place from your sublime presence..."

"I am not here. What you see here in front of you is just a messenger. A sliver of my spirit, a tiny fragment of my power that I have sent to you."

The billowing cloud fell to the ground and formed a shimmering puddle of oily water directly in front of the kneeling principal. Blackness spread out as the surface calmed down and now looked more like a sheet of black glass. Tiny dots of light appeared. One of them grew larger and tiny planets became visible around it, twinkling in the light of their star. Certainly not a true-to-scale representation, but you could never work properly with stellar scales anyway. He recognized the earthly solar system without any problems. But he hadn't really expected anything else.

"My research and spies have obtained further information that is important for your task. Are you familiar with the concept of space curvature?"

"Gravity bends space, from an external point of view. That's the theory that's always presented with lead balls on a stretched tablecloth or something like that."

"Something like that. It's like that in most universes. Except here. In this universe, space curves towards a common center. And now guess where this center is?"

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

"On Earth?"

"Right here! From an objective multicosmic point of view, this place stands still and the entire universe, with all its galaxies, revolves around this place. This is the only way that interdimensional transports can really be diverted exactly here if they have not been aimed well enough at their target point."

"Some religious authorities on this planet would certainly be very pleased to hear this information," Argus grinned mischievously, but then suddenly became serious again as his arms could barely hold his suddenly tripled weight in the kneeling position. The temperature in the room also rose, so that drops of sweat soon appeared on his forehead. "Sir, have I incurred your displeasure?"

"Where are the spaceships full of mad scientists who roam the universes to spread their knowledge of the loopholes in the laws of nature everywhere? Where are the dimensional portals through which my disciples travel to all the parallel worlds? Where are the armies of psionics marauding through the multiverse? Where are the magicians who carry the knowledge of the universe's secret programming language to all worlds? Where are all the things I sent you here to do?"

"Lord, let me explain!"

"Explain yourself quickly!" The temperature and gravity rose a little more. The principal's arms began to tremble with exertion and sweat poured down his face.

"The sun here generates a gigantic magnetic field."

"Suns do that everywhere."

"But this one is multidimensional!" Gravity and temperature in the room suddenly returned to normal. A soft cracking and crunching sound filled the room as the parquet floor and furniture readjusted.

"That's impossible."

"But that's the way it is! I and the scientists who have landed here have carried out hundreds of experiments. The sun clearly generates a multidimensional field with a diameter of at least one light year. Among other things, this field displaces hyperspace. And without it, no instantaneous or faster-than-light travel methods work. Teleportation, translocation spells or hyperspace drives fail completely. There is no barrier around hyperspace, as we originally thought. Because we would have been able to penetrate it at some point. It's just completely absent here. That's why I haven't been able to send you a report yet. And that's why you or this messenger can't leave this place once you're here."

"That explains a lot. How are you going to solve this problem?"

"The obstacle only exists in this universe. We are currently researching various methods of entering parallel universes. However, we always end up on alternative versions of this Earth. And on most of them, the technology is not advanced enough to build faster-than-light spaceships. We have now worked out two possible solutions: Either we find a large enough source of Gallifreynium to operate our dimensional portals on a larger scale and build or transport faster-than-light spaceships to a parallel world, or we find a world far enough in the future to have faster-than-light space travel ourselves. However, worlds in the future are much harder to reach. You could almost think that's on purpose."

"It is intentional. Unfortunately, this unit doesn't see any way to help you with your task at the moment. And no reason, really. This messenger will now take an inert form. If you need advice from your master, strike it firmly on a surface. Messengers are almost indestructible. But take care of it anyway, because as soon as you have found a way to reach your Lord and God, he expects you to send this messenger back to him. It contains only a tiny part of his power, which is incomprehensible to you, but he would hate to see it wasted. One more thing: in five years, a messenger will be sent again if he hasn't heard from you by then. He will probably be very angry by then. You should therefore make every effort to at least provide an interim report during this time."

Without paying any attention to the rector's numerous questions, the shape of the messenger contracted into a shimmering, fist-sized black crystal that lay inconspicuously on the ruined parquet floor. The principal stood up and picked it up. He weighed it thoughtfully in his hand. His own estimates had envisaged a first interim report in an automated missile drone in about ten years, assuming the current projects progressed optimistically. It would be difficult to get there that much faster. He doubted that his master would stick exactly to the specified timeframe. Eris had always been of the opinion that only a complete bore would strike right at the end of a deadline. He himself regarded such a thing more as a guideline. So the rector still had five years to go. Plus or minus a few months. And instead of another messenger, his master could simply send a bomb or something similarly unpleasant. It all depended on his mood at the time. He went to a painting on the wall that showed an oil version of his favorite Star Wars poster by an Italian painter. With a practiced hand movement in front of the hidden sensor, he activated a mechanism that allowed the painting to slide into the wall and then up out of the way. A wall safe was now visible behind it. Ignoring the clearly visible numeric keypad, he tapped the combination onto the unmarked surface below, whistling the theme tune from the Muppet Show. The safe opened with a soft click. Just as the principal was about to squeeze the crystal into the only free corner, he heard the voice of the messenger directly in his mind:

"Oh, by the way, you might be interested to know that Mandatus does receive up-to-date reports. Before this messenger was sent out, he is said to have received a current list of students from this year. Unfortunately, the spy was caught forwarding this information and was exposed. It will take years to infiltrate someone that deep into the enemy organization again. But as you can see, it is possible to send messengers or at least reports from here."

The voice fell silent and Rector Argus hastily closed the safe and the picture cloak. Angrily, he slammed his fist against the wall. If Mandatus received reports, his master would surely know no mercy if he did not manage to do the same. And for an immortal being who had seen universes come and go, Eris could be damned impatient at times.