Arnold was getting old. He could feel it in how his limbs trembled when he moved-when his joints ached in the morning as he got up. He suspected arthritis, but at this point, it didn’t matter. At his age, it was getting harder and harder to move around like he used to, and it was beginning to take a toll on him. These days he could not move around too much and was mostly confined to his bed and the first floor of his house. He used to live on the second floor, but his son didn’t trust him on the stairs anymore, and it was kind of annoying, but he admitted, his son may have had a point. He has had some close calls on the stairs in his more recent years and honestly, he was kind of afraid of the possibility of not being able to properly navigate the stairs by himself anymore.
The one good thing about old age, however, is that he finally found time to do something that he has always wanted to do but never really had time to do, which is stargazing. Ever since Arnold could remember, he has always been captivated by the beautiful light of the stars in the night sky. Sometimes he wished he could be up there exploring them himself, rather than down here on Earth, where he had other priorities, other responsibilities.
In fact, Arnold, who used to live in the lower mainland in B.C., sold his house and moved to Vancouver Island when he retired at the age of 70 mainly for the reason that it is a whole lot easier to stargaze from the Island than the city because of light pollution. He also never really liked the hustle and bustle of the city compared to the calm and quieter atmosphere on the Island. There is also much easier access to the beach on the Island and beautiful scenery and forests.
Arnold is pretty sure that his kids and grandkids see him as the chill grandpa who mostly just relaxes on his porch and likes doing old man stuff, mainly reading, sleeping, and stargazing at night. He also has a sneaking suspicion they just like coming to the Island to visit him because he tends to be more… lenient with how much ice cream he buys for them.
He’s pretty comfortable in saying that he has led a good life so far and is certainly enjoying his retirement just relaxing and doing what he truly is passionate about, stargazing, even if his age has certainly started to affect him in recent years.
So, it came as a rather unexpected turn of events when he found himself stargazing on a beautiful night and suddenly seeing the stars just… explode. There was certainly no other way to put it. It wasn’t like a normal explosion though, no, it was like they exploded into what looked like pure, swirling light.
Now, as one might expect, this certainly got his mind racing.
What… is happening? This can’t be natural. Every star in the sky, suddenly turned into… something, at the same time? Some form of energy, maybe? Wait, no not even the same time… their distances from Earth all vary, so the speed of the light from their… explosions reaching Earth would have to have been all perfectly in sync, and that’s… almost certainly impossible, at least naturally. This means this event is artificially induced, but how is that possible? It’s almost like we are being shown that this is hap-
Arnold slowly opened his eyes, groaning out of habit as he sat up. He blinked, looking around as his eyes adjusted. As he looked around, he saw an uncountable number of people waking up and looking around just as he did. They all looked to be sort of strewn across a great plane of dark, empty space, yet it was somehow still bright enough to see across the entire plane even though there was no visible light source. As Arnold was observing his surroundings, panic started to break out as people started to realize they were no longer where they had been before, and before long, it had devolved into total chaos and panic. Panicked parents trying to find their children, people all around them screaming to try and find their family.
BE SILENT.
The world went silent. Arnold found himself attempting to talk, but finding himself unable to make a sound, only able to breathe. He looked around him and saw everybody also unable to make a sound even when they were clearly trying.
Above them, they could all see where the voice had originated from. A great figure, suspended in the space above them. It appeared as a massive, slowly twisting, and writhing amalgamation of light and energy, yet it had a sort of pattern, order to its odd movements.
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It spoke again.
EVERY SINGLE ONE OF YOU HAS PHYSICALLY DIED. I KILLED YOU. I UTILIZED YOUR UNIVERSE FOR ENERGY TO COMBAT A GREAT THREAT. I DID NOT WANT TO KILL YOU ALL, BUT IT WAS NECESSARY. AS SUCH AS THE ONLY SENTIENT BEINGS IN YOUR FRAGMENTED UNIVERSE, I FELT IT APPROPRIATE TO GIVE YOU A SECOND CHANCE. I WILL SEND YOU ALL TO ONE OF THE CORE UNIVERSES TO BE REBORN WITH A CHANCE AT POWER UNREACHABLE IN YOUR HOME UNIVERSE. I WILL GIVE YOU A CHANCE AT A NEW LIFE RELATED TO YOUR STRONGEST DESIRE. I WISH YOU GOOD LUCK.
Before anyone had a chance to process what they had been told by the strange entity, they once again lost consciousness.
Arnold awoke to a strong tremor and vibration all around and underneath him. He groggily tried to move around and realized that for some reason he was heavily restricted. However, he also realized that it seemed his body was… different, to say the least. When he tried moving and opening his eyes, he found that he couldn’t, something was preventing him from opening his eyes or moving his limbs. He tried to move his hands, but it felt all wrong. He felt like he didn’t even have hands, there was no response at all. As Arnold tried moving and opening his eyes, the longer he tried, the more he began to panic. No matter what he did, there simply wasn’t any response from his body. It was almost like he didn’t have limbs or eyes at all!
Arnold eventually began to tire as his panic had set in and he had thrashed quite violently for a while to no avail, but nothing had happened. So eventually, he began to cool down as the adrenaline and panic wore off. Then he began to think.
Okay, so I know that something is off with my body and that I am pretty clearly stuck within something as well. I know that that weird… swirly entity thing in the great empty space told us that we were killed by it and that he would be giving us a second chance. I guess he didn’t say how or where this second chance would be given exactly, but I assumed it meant we would be reborn as humans again, just somewhere else. Wait, but it also said that the new life would be related to my strongest desire. Was being human again not my strongest desire, or at least being with my family? No, no it wasn’t… I see now. My strongest desire was not to be human again or to be with my family, but to be able to explore the stars. This means… I will not necessarily be human again; I might be a different species if aliens and other species exist in this… where did it say we would be placed? Right, a core universe. I wonder what that means.
Well, there's no use worrying about that right now. I must take things one at a time. First of all, am I even human anymore?
Arnold didn’t think so. It seemed pretty clear by this point that he didn’t have the same limbs he had as a human, and quite possibly had no limbs at all, considering how when he tried to move them, he felt nothing. However, when he started thrashing around out of sheer panic, something was different. He felt like he was actually moving his body and bumped up on the sides of… whatever sort of container he was in. In fact, it felt like his entire body moved when he was thrashing around, but his body felt… longer. It felt so much longer that he had a sneaking suspicion he was some sort of snake or worm, something long with no limbs.
Now, if this is true, that would mean this strange container he finds himself trapped inside was most likely an egg.
But I don’t think that I’ll be able to find out whether I am a snake or a worm until I hatch, because I doubt snakes would be able to see anything inside of an egg anyway. Although wouldn’t I be able to at least feel if I had eyes? I just don’t feel anything though. Does that mean… I have been reborn as some sort of worm and not a snake? Well either way, since I don’t know how long it will be until I can hatch, I might as well try to gain some familiarity with my new body.
And that is exactly what he did. Arnold tried getting used to moving his body inside the egg, moving whatever parts of his body he could. Eventually, he gained a basic familiarity with moving his body and started trying to move different parts of his body at the same time, which was much different than doing it as a human. Soon he was able to move different parts of his body in a way he hoped was close to mostly natural compared to what a normal worm would be able to.
It had been an undeterminable amount of time since his soul had been sent into this new body of his, he suspected at least a few days, and Arnold was pretty sure he had at least a basic grasp on being able to properly move and navigate in his new body. He hasn’t been able to hatch out of the egg yet, but he can feel it would be soon. It was getting easier to move around and he could feel the shell of the egg getting closer to breaking whenever he hits it.
I can feel it, soon I will hatch and be able to sense the outside world. I wonder what I will find out there. Perhaps aliens with a different biology than humans, alien planets, maybe even futuristic technology! It would be pretty damn cool to see spaceships for real and find out how they work. I can hardly wait! It will probably be only a few more attempts to hatch and I will finally get out of this prison.
He was right. What felt like only a few minutes later, as he struck the egg, he felt it start to give. It cracked. Encouraged by the change, he pushed on and finally cracked the egg enough to burrow out of it, and then he saw it.
*Ding*
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