The smell of pizza wafted through the air as we sat around the table, arguing over our latest superhero debate. Ryan, with his usual enthusiasm, waved a slice in the air as he spoke. “I’m telling you, Ironman wipes the floor with Batman. The dude has a flying suit of armor, for crying out loud. Plus, billionaire genius? Come on.”
Jess snorted, shaking her head. “And Batman’s not a billionaire genius? He’s the better strategist, and he doesn’t rely on some fancy tech. It’s him, his mind, and pure determination.”
Before I could weigh in, my dad stepped in from the kitchen, holding a drink and clearly amused by the conversation. “You guys are missing the real difference here.”
He leaned against the counter, casually sipping his drink as we turned to look at him. “Ironman? Sure, he stood next to gods—fought alongside them because that’s who he was. In your face, bravado. He bent science to keep up with literal gods. That’s human bravery for everyone to see.”
We were all quiet, letting his words hang in the air as Dad took another sip, then smiled. “But Batman? He stood shoulder to shoulder with Superman, a rich guy who just wanted to make the world better. He wasn’t flashy, didn’t need superpowers or to shout about it. He fought dangerous psychopaths and half the time, no one even knew who he was. That’s courage.”
Ryan blinked, starting to say something, but Dad wasn’t done.
“They’re two sides of the same coin,” he continued. “Ironman’s the bravery everyone expects, the kind they can see. You know who he is, he’s bold, and he makes it clear: ‘I’m the hero.’ But Batman? He’s courage. He doesn’t need to be seen. He does the hard things, the impossible things, when no one’s watching.”
Jess leaned back in her chair, nodding thoughtfully. “Yeah, like, Ironman needs everyone to know who he is. Batman just… does it.”
“And that’s why Batman’s scarier,” I added, grinning. “He doesn’t need the spotlight. He’s enough as he is.”
Dad chuckled and pushed off the counter, heading back to the kitchen. “Exactly. You want to see a hero? Watch the guy who fights for others when no one’s paying attention.”
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That was a great night. I remember it. That new Nintendo system came out…
The infinite stretch of the cosmos opened before me, vast and unending.
I was flying—no, drifting—through space at speeds I couldn’t even begin to comprehend. Stars streaked by in brilliant lines of light, nebulae swirled in bursts of color, and cosmic storms raged in the distance, their violent, electric tendrils reaching out like fingers grasping at the void. Every sight, every moment was a window into something beyond comprehension. Wonders upon wonders that people back home could only dream of, and here I was, floating weightless, moving through it all as though I belonged.
My arms and legs drifted freely, almost as if I was swimming, but I had no control over my course. There was no sense of forward, backward, up, or down. It was just me, hanging in this majestic ocean of stars and cosmic phenomena, flowing in whatever direction the universe chose to send me. No sound. No pressure. Just the soft hum of space itself.
It was... peaceful. Comforting, even. After everything that had happened, the madness in the tavern, the battle with the Glids, Chas kicking me into a portal—I couldn’t have asked for a better respite. I felt no fear, just... wonder. I could stay like this forever, a spectator to the dance of the cosmos.
Minutes turned into hours, and I was still mesmerized. The brilliance of the stars, the shimmering lights of nebulae, the twisting maelstroms of galaxies forming and collapsing in on themselves. It was like watching a painting that was always changing, always evolving. Each new scene more fantastic than the last.
But then, something strange happened.
Time... slipped. At first, I didn’t notice. I was still drinking it all in, trying to wrap my head around how vast it all was. But as the hours, or maybe even days, dragged on, that feeling began to fade. The awe I felt didn’t disappear, but it started to lose its sharpness. The mind can only hold onto wonder for so long before the edges begin to dull.
I looked around—stars still racing by, cosmic storms still twisting in the distance—but something was different. It was the same. The beauty remained unchanged, but it no longer pulled at me in the same way. It wasn’t that the universe had grown boring—how could it?—but my mind started to... wander.
Back to the tavern. The smell of dust and old wood. The thrum of the Glids slamming into the walls. Chas pulling the portal open with his bare hands, Felix struggling with his bracer. It all felt distant now, like something from another lifetime. My memory of it was starting to blur, mix with the endlessness of space.
How long had I been here? Hours? Days? Weeks? The stars flew by in their eternal dance, but time had no meaning here. Maybe it had been minutes. Maybe years. It was impossible to tell. Strange how even the grandest, most impossible thing—drifting through space like a god—could become... mundane. How something so breathtaking could begin to feel repetitive.
The universe wasn’t changing, but I was. My mind was starting to grow numb to it all. Not tired—just used to it. It was like staring at the same painting for too long, until your eyes begin to glaze over, and the colors blend into each other. It was still beautiful, but the sharpness, the clarity was gone. My thoughts slipped back to the moment Chas kicked me into the portal. Did they make it? Was I really safe? Was this part of some cosmic trial?
I turned, as if expecting to see something different, but the stars looked the same. Endless, eternal. And I was still floating. Drifting.
My arms floated at my sides, weightless, just like my thoughts. No direction, no sense of movement. My body was still. My mind was starting to feel the same. Everything... drifted.
How long was I going to be here? Who even was I?
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The man drifted deeper into the stars, the swirling galaxies and brilliant nebulae bleeding into one another, endless and vast. Too vast. There was no up, no down, no direction at all—just the stars, the cosmic storms, and the infinite, yawning space pulling at his consciousness.
But something kept pulling him back, dragging his mind away from the edge of the void. Something wasn’t letting him go.
The stars began to blur, their sharpness fading until they were nothing but soft points of light, and his thoughts began to drift along with them. How long had he been here? He wasn’t sure anymore. Time didn’t seem to mean anything, not out here. But no matter how far his mind wandered, no matter how close he came to losing himself to the nothingness, something kept tugging at him, a thread pulling him back. Like the universe itself was trying to absorb him, to draw him into its vast emptiness, but something deep inside him wouldn’t let it.
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
The stars rippled around him as his thoughts flickered again. Wait. Wasn’t this a portal? Portals are supposed to have a destination…
This isn’t right.
A sudden clarity cut through the fog that had clouded his mind. He wasn’t just floating for the sake of it—there had been a purpose. They were escaping. He’d gone through the portal with Cassie and Felix. This wasn’t some cosmic dream; it was real. But... where the hell was he?
Ben’s mind fought back into focus, and as soon as it did, he felt it—a hard pull, like something was yanking him backwards. His whole body jerked, and suddenly, the stars were gone. The endless, vast nothingness collapsed in on itself, and Ben hurtled backwards at breakneck speed. The universe folded around him, the stars blurring into streaks of light as he tumbled uncontrollably through the event horizon of a portal.
He hit solid ground hard, sprawling across a cold metal floor with a dull thud. The world slammed back into place.
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I tumbled backward through the event horizon, blinking as the cosmic void around me shattered like glass. Reality snapped back into focus all at once, slamming into me harder than I expected. My body, weightless moments ago, suddenly felt heavy. I landed on something cold and hard, a floor—definitely a floor—and groaned as my vision cleared.
The room I had crashed into was unlike anything I had ever seen. Brass gears, pistons, and steam vents hissed blue steam and clanked in an intricate dance, the machinery filling the space with rhythmic, mechanical breathing. It looked like something straight out of a steampunk novel, all polished copper and iron, tubes running in every direction with valves that hissed every few seconds. A massive portal behind me sparked and flickered before dying out, collapsing and blinking from existence.
I blinked, still disoriented, and tried to sit up. My sense of time was all over the place. It had felt like hours—no, days?—drifting through the stars, watching nebulae and cosmic storms flash by. At first, it was awe-inspiring, beautiful beyond words. But the longer I floated, the more the wonder faded. My mind had started to wander, even drift back to everything that had happened at the tavern. Time was slippery in that place. It was like I could feel myself thinking, but somehow not... connected to it. My thoughts had floated outside of me, watching me, separate from my body. When the portal yanked me out, I wasn’t even sure how long it had really been.
I rubbed my temples, trying to shake off the mental fog, when I heard a sharp voice above me.
"Ben! You made it!"
I looked up and saw Felix standing near one of the consoles, his bracer still sparking lightly. His face was lit with relief, but there was a tension in his stance, like he hadn’t fully let go of the stress of whatever had just happened. Cassie was nearby too, arms crossed, giving me a quick once-over as if to check if I was still in one piece. They both looked like they’d just run a marathon and then been told they had to run it again.
"Yeah..." I said, still catching my breath. "I think I’m... here?"
Before I could get my bearings, a voice piped up from behind Felix. A much higher-pitched voice and… an accent?
"Fascinating! You’re the Outworlder, yes? Absolutely remarkable. Time dilation, energy distortion, mana deficient, and yet here you are! A full-fledged anomaly!"
I turned to see a small, two-foot-tall humanoid mouse standing on a platform beside the control panel. White fur, oversized ears, and a pair of round, button-like eyes that sparkled with curiosity. Not exactly a mouse, but mouse-like. She was wearing a toolbelt filled with tiny, delicate instruments and gadgets. Her whiskers twitched with excitement, and she leaned forward as if inspecting me for scientific analysis.
"I’m Lyra," she said, grinning. "Lead Sprocket of this facility and expert in transdimensional anomalies." Her nose twitched again as she peered at me more closely. "I must say, I’ve never seen anything quite like you. A human, yes? Tell me, how did the portal feel on your end? Any peculiarities? Temporal shifts? Reality glitches?"
I blinked, still trying to process the fact that I was talking to a mouse—no, a humanoid mouse. A talking humanoid mouse. And she was a Sprocket? Like… No, that would be crazy. I glanced over at Felix and Cassie, hoping for some kind of explanation.
Felix cleared his throat, smirking slightly. "The Vildar. They’re... uh, beastfolk. Brilliant minds, kind of run the portals here."
Beastfolk. Right. Sure. I nodded slowly, taking in the surreal reality that I was in another world—like, actually in another world. With humanoid mice running complex machines. A mix of awe and complete disbelief washed over me. Was this really happening? The clanking of gears, the hiss of steam, the strange flickering lights from the portal... it all felt so real but none of it felt alien at all. I couldn’t help myself—smiling ear to ear. It was so. freaking. cute.
"Uh, yeah," I stammered, trying to answer Lyra’s barrage of questions. "There was definitely some time dilation. I was... out there for what felt like days. Watching the stars... the universe... I could feel myself drifting. It was like my thoughts weren’t even mine after a while, like I was watching myself from outside."
Lyra’s eyes squinted with even more enthusiasm, jotting something down on a tiny notepad. She even had a tiny pencil. It was adorable.
"Incredible! Fascinating, indeed! Time dilation inside the portal field is a known phenomenon, but the way you describe it—disconnected thought patterns—sounds like an extreme case. You must have been in there for...” She flipped through her little notepad. “Oh, the data suggests an hour on our side… so six point seven one days. Remarkable. Truly remarkable!"
A week? I was out there for an hour, and it felt like a week? My head was spinning, and it wasn’t just from the portal jump. I had always found the idea of time passing at different rates in movies and TV fascinating but it was impossible to describe the vertigo.
I glanced over at Felix and Cassie again. Cassie had moved closer, now leaning against a massive pipe, arms still crossed. She was still covered in her own blood but seemed totally relaxed, like the wounds didn’t bother her. She gave me a half-smile, her eyes flicking toward where the portal had been. "Chas isn’t back yet. He went through after you but... it’s not looking good."
I frowned. "He went after me?"
Felix nodded, scratching his head. "Yeah, you were taking a while. We figured something might’ve happened. But the portal..."
He walked over to a nearby control panel, running his fingers over the intricate dials and levers. The brass and copper gleamed under the soft blue light of the facility, casting dancing shadows across his face. "Portals aren't like doors, Ben. They're more like rivers than doors. Rivers of possibility cutting through reality. Just because the portal came from somewhere doesn’t mean it goes back there.” He nodded sagely. “He went back in to try and save you—but even if he did you would have both ended up somewhere else, albeit likely together.”
"That’s why we were monitoring it so closely!" Lyra chimed in, gesturing to all of the machinery. "We’ve got every piece of tech calculating the destination. I even recalibrated the quantum flux matrix twice!" She hopped down from her platform, landing lightly beside me, her button eyes gleaming. Quantum Flux Matrix? You’re kidding right, that has to be a joke. The small talking mouse just calibrated the Quantum Flux Matrix? I laughed. I couldn’t hold it in, this was amazement. Pure amazement at probably the cutest thing my brain could possibly comprehend. Felix looked mortified.
“The Quantum Flux Matrix?” I laughed again, my mind going to the most ridiculous thing it could. “Is that what you use to stabilize something existing in two places at once?”
A snapping sound helped me recover, Lyra’s pencil broke on her notepad. She casually threw it away, took another from her- ridiculously cute- overalls and then proceeded to tear the page out she was writing on. Crumpling it up and throwing away led to her furiously scribbling while looking at me with now predatory eyes.
"Tell me, Ben was it? have you ever encountered multidimensional distortion before?"
I stared at her, trying to wrap my head around everything she was saying. "Multidimensional distortion? I mean... no? I don’t think so?"
Her scribbles sped up. "Of course, of course. A first-timer. That makes it even more fascinating!"
I couldn’t help but chuckle nervously at her excitement. She was like a kid in a candy store, except the candy was… me.
Felix seemed to take that as his cue. “Hey, Adept Stormfire! Hi, Felix Aldertree again. Outworlder,” He said about as polite as possible, jerking a thumb towards me. “We should get him to the Front Desk,”
Lyra’s gaze turned sharp and she started to object. “Procedures!” Cassie said quickly. “It's right at the top of the procedure for Outworlders coming through with hunters!”
This seemed to take the wind out of Lyra’s sails. “Yes, yes. Unless you would like to submit yourself for a few tests first?” She turned to me pleadingly.
Both Cassie and Felix out of her sight motioned passionately not to accept. Cassie even making an X with her fingers. “Maybe another time,” My amusement had faded completely to awkwardness. “I should go uh…” I thought. “Register?” I asked and the two nodded behind Lyra. She sighed.
“Shame,” she said, her professional and cute demeanor returning.
Cassie grabbed me by the arm and literally pulled me down a hallway out of the portal room.