10:21 A.M.?
January 6?
Unknown
Gary came to his senses face-down on grass, left cheek pressed against dew-less blades of the leafy plant. As his mind came into focus and he lay where he was, the thought occurred to him that something monumental had happened.
The image in his head of spiraling into nothingness jolted him out of his fugue and he immediately shot up into a push-up-like position on his forearms and elbows to take stock of his surroundings. What greeted him was a vortex of stars and darkness. He glanced down at the ground he was pushed up from and noted with concern that it was clearly part of his home’s walkway - more accurately his uncle’s home’s walkway - and he’d thankfully fell to have his head on the grass to one side of the concrete.
He flicked a thought towards the Virtual Network System calling on it’s functions to bring up his new internal clock. It ticked to 10:21 A.M., then flickered as it went to turn to 10:22 before reverting in what he could only describe as the characters used in the display ‘flowing backwards’ back to 10:21. That wasn’t good. He dismissed the display from his gaze and flipped in place slowly to get off his elbows and onto his butt. Gary’s gray eyes took in the vortex around him more thoroughly before his face twisted into a grimace.
“OODA Loop, Gary.” He spoke into the void around him, more for himself than anything. The sound didn’t seem to echo outwards but neither did it seem muffled. It just hung there as he spoke and vanished when he fell silent. He observed the situation he was in, taking in as much of his surroundings as he could without moving around too much and risking his little island of reason. The starry void gave no further clues for him to work with.
He then went into the ‘orient’ portion of the decision- making tool and reviewed what he knew. The ride with the agents had been uneventful, the yard and house had been as he remembered them with nothing out of the ordinary. The sudden onset of the headache was a new wrinkle. Usually the pain was a gradual build; affected by his movement to and from locations. It never sprung up on him like that. That meant something had changed, either within himself or within his environment.
He’d been using the Virtual Network System for days at this point, so he eliminated it as a variable. He’d been putting it through it’s paces without even the slightest issue rearing a vile head. That left something in the environment as the culprit. Could he do anything about that at present? Likely not, judging by his surroundings. Well there was nothing for it but to try things then.
Gary leveraged himself up to his feet and dusted himself off more as a ritual of preparedness than actually being dirty. He wiped his face with his left hand as he chose a direction to act in, and acted. Gary stepped to the edge of his platform and stuck said left hand out past the boundary; the thinking such that he’d prefer losing his non-dominant hand if this turned out to be an injurious choice. Past the edge and nothing. The temperature was lukewarm and nothing remarkable save for it’s unremarkability.
He wasn’t ready to try stepping off into the abyss around him, so Gary settled for moving around the perimeter of the tiny island with his hand outstretched, testing what he’d generously call ‘air’ as he went by waving around in case he touched something that blended in or was invisible. No luck.
“I just got fucking isekai’d, didn’t I?” The HUD flickered as text files came into being and were subsequently canceled by a perturbed mental wave of his thoughts. It’d be just Gary’s goddamn luck on the matter. “Pretty sure I don’t have a reasonable choice here regardless. Could have at least asked me,” he shouted irritatedly into the starry void. Who was he kidding? A god does not ask.
“May as well start a text file and take notes. Keep my sanity up while I wait for the other shoe to drop here…” Gary willed said text file into existence and stood, ready to begin inputting words for later review. The window sat there blank for a time before he started mentally typing observations; for posterity, he told himself as he fumed at the lack of happening going on here.
He refused to think of it as a self-documented descent into madness. It was too early in his life for this bullshit.
Observation 1 Being pulled through what I assume is a rift in reality fucking hurts. Thankfully, my headache has subsided. I don’t look forward to the other end of this journey. More of the same, likely.
Observation 2
Judging by the amount of ‘stuff’ and stars and happenings in this rift, multiversal theory is looking stronger and stronger. Lack tools for experimentation. See attached photographs for visuals.
Observation 3
I cannot tell if time is advancing and simply resetting back, if it’s moving forward and the VN’s internal clock is on the fritz, or the rules of time flow are different here. Flickers back and forth between 10:21 A.M. and 10:22 A.M.. Current hypothesis leans towards the rules being weird here based on visual ‘flowback’ of time display.
Observation 4
It has been a good while now and I have not noticed the threatening signs of hypoxia. The rift has oxygen content sufficient for Human life? Atmosphere remains roughly body-temperature, slightly below?
Gary thought about his situation for a moment, pausing before adding any more observations to his notes. If this was real - and he had no reason thus far to doubt it - then it would explain some things back on Earth. There was a seriously sharp spike in missing persons cases globally, and creatures not found in the known animal kingdom were being discovered; almost all of them hostile to anything with a pulse. If there was a bunch of dimensional overlaps happening? It explained things pretty damn well. Certainly explained his current situation.
“Glad to be sane, then,” Gary muttered sarcastically as he continued to ponder.
Fuck; so he really was being isekai’d, and it was probably gonna be one of those multiversal ubiquitous levels and ‘numbers go up’ bullshit things. He didn’t feel too much like a protagonist at the moment.
Gary turned around in the void to face the opposite direction for all the good it did his view of the starry space. “Hey, god, goddess, divines, whatever’s listening; I hope you’re not gonna fuck me over too badly. I’d like to get home one day.” It seemed the question fell on deaf ears or was heard by mute forces as he got no answers from beyond his own skull. The rifts kept troubling his thoughts as he felt a headache creeping its way back into his head. This wasn’t the sharp ones he was used to having come and go, but instead a stress-induced one. He spoke aloud again, if only to hear a voice in the oppressive silence. “So me and probably all those poor people got sucked into the void to be spat out God only knows where. These gateways, these rifts; are they one-way?”
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Quiet answered him, the lack of an answer giving him some false comfort as he continued to try and rationalize his situation in a way that he could act on. “..That’s not a ‘no.” He felt his heart rate rise a bit and a slight throbbing in his neck’s arteries. The silence meant there might be a way. This was vital. This was probably the most important thing he could be doing right now. Earth had to be warned about the rifts. “So time is of the essence.”
“Could I get something to be able to find these disturbances? ..Oh, fuck. Is it my headaches that’d been cluing me in? Have I had a fucking portal detector this whole fucking TIME?!” He found himself sitting back down as he processed this new information as his scream of shocked rage and frustration faded like everything else into the void around him. So this had been a problem for a while now. Each of his headaches had been an indication that a disturbance was nearby, but before he could start blaming himself he shut the thought down. How could he possibly have known? How could he have saved people from something he didn’t know existed until just now? The thought that he could sense them still made him angry at his own ignorance.
“Alright then. Let’s get to it. Sitting around here isn’t gonna get things done, get me home, or even send home a warning. Now what should I do?”
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The squealing of tires grinding to a halt against asphalt overpowered the various murmurs at the Zavon household, drawing the attention of everyone who was there. The core of the people were the police keeping bystanders from being a nuisance to the investigators, and the veteran Captain noticed the vehicular livery of multiple government agencies interspersed among the metal obstructions to his driveway.
Shutting off the engine, the older man came out of the driver’s seat like a rising storm as he marched towards the line of police separating his home from the gaggle of onlookers. The sheer heat he seemed to radiate drove the onlookers back by steps as they watched him in stunned silence. As the man reached the police line, one brave officer shifted to stand in front of him and held up a hand to try and stop him.
“Sir, please step ba-”
“MOVE, BOY,” the Captain bellowed with enough force to drive back the whole line of cops and drive the onlookers back another step and a half. The military tone brooked absolutely no disobedience even from civilians, and Thomas Zavon prided himself on maintaining his aura of inevitability in front of those who stood against him. His darker gray eyes gave the offending cop a heartbeat’s worth of a glare before he strode past the stunned line and up his driveway. The cluster of technicians, scientist-looking types, and government agents were swarming around the front of his house; some taking pictures while others waved or stared at the displays of various measuring devices.
Thomas reached the gaggle and stood at its outer edge, seeking out the seeming leader of the efforts from those who were paying attention to him. Picking an older government agent in a black suit with matching tie, Thomas locked eyes with the man until he understood the unspoken order and stepped forward to speak with the Navy man.
“Thomas Zavon?” The older man’s voice was gruff and no-nonsense; almost robotic in the inflection and seemingly lacking level of urgency. Thomas stood up even straighter at the sound of his name.
“I am. I hear you civilians managed to lose my nephew not ten feet from my front door,” he said as he leveled an accusatory finger at said door.
“The situation is more complicated than that, and you better watch your tone Captain. There’s already going to be fallout from this and I can make sure plenty of it falls on you.”
“Bold words, Agent.” A technician that clearly had the sense to break up the brewing fight stepped up and coughed loudly to draw the pair’s attention.
“Captain Zavon, this is an unprecedented event that has happened to your nephew. If you gentlemen would follow me to the van here,” the nameless man waved towards the surveillance van parked in the driveway with three clearly government agents standing by it like it was their salvation. A caucasian man, a hispanic man, and a nordic-flavored woman stood up a little straighter as the three men approached. Thomas glared each of them down in turn before the technician coughed lighty again to clear the air.
“The agents on duty have recorded the incident in its entirety. Obviously they don’t have certain detection devices, but the visual record is crystal clear. Thank God for our surveillance state.” The technician got his own gray-eyed glare before Thomas moved towards the open side door of the van and gestured to the agents to show him. The woman climbed back in, swung a flatscreen out so everyone could see the footage and clacked a few keys on a keyboard.
Thomas watched as Gary got out of the van. Nothing weird so far. He waved to the agents wordlessly and started up the sidewalk, only to stumble and clutch his head. Thomas recognized that gesture from his nephew. The poor kid suffered from unexplained-by-medical-science rapidly-onsetting headaches from time to time, but this one was clearly unusual in its speed and intensity. Gary stumbled in the footage and he could hear the cacophony of sounds as the agents scrambled to get out of the van to render assistance. Thomas blinked as it seemed like the air around his nephew twisted in on itself in a way that made his stomach churn unhealthily before Gary started to fall. He never made it to the ground before the world vanished him and a divot in the sidewalk and surrounding lawn.
Rendered silent at this display while the agents moved to the new crater and began investigating frantically, Thomas looked towards the new divot in the ground before his house. His frown that had worked onto his face had deepened into a full scowl at this point. He didn’t know anything that could do what he’d just witnessed. It seemed like sci-fi bullshit but he was stumped as to how such a thing was even possible.
“This fits a pattern,” the older and clearly senior agent said quietly enough not to distract the rest of the gaggle working around the divot in the yard. Thomas’ head snapped so fast towards the man that he thought he heard a soft pop come from his spine at the motion. “There’s been reports from all over about something like this happening. And I mean all over. We’re talking global.”
Thomas took a deep breath and ran this new revelation through his thoughts. If this was happening all over the world, was there some madman with a teleportation device? Was it a goddamn alien invasion? What was he going to tell his command about this? ‘Sorry guys, your brand new toy got beamed up by aliens for shits and giggles’? His thoughts must have shown on his face as the older agent nodded.
“Yeah. Governments are keeping it quiet for now, but this has been going on for possibly a decade or better at this point. Lots of dismissed stories that talk about what we’ve now got on crisp video. For now the official story is simply an uptick on missing persons cases.” Thomas was still thinking a mile a second when his thoughts stopped and he stiffened in a horrific realization.
“He knew.” That earned him a number of worried looks. “Gary knew somehow. I’d have to look at the correlating data for it, but I think if it’s been happening in the areas he’s been in over the years he might have been sensing this.. This whatever this is.” The looks turned to confusion and Thomas elaborated further. “It’s a hypothesis, but could it be his headaches were his body telling him one of these events was happening nearby?”
“It is possible,” the technician drawled as they considered the option. “It’s pretty sci-fi fantasy bullshit but if you can put a pattern to his headaches and his proximity to these cases, it’s a lot of empirical evidence for the theory. We’ll still need to figure out what’s causing it, but it’s a start.”
“Then we have a course of action,” Thomas said as his voice regained the commanding tone of a seasoned military officer. “See to getting me that data. I need to make some phone calls.”