The Lines of IF_Stone Tossed Ripples

A young man yawned as he pulled himself over the rock ledge before him and rolled to a stop. It was only approaching midday but already the day of hard scrambling up rocks to the peak weighed on him. With a huff he sat and found a flat place between two rocks that looked alright for a quick nap before making his way down. He settled in and as he drifted off to sleep he noticed faint scratches etched into the stone he rested on.

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He saw himself only much younger swimming in a lake only to tire out and slip beneath the surface.

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He saw himself driving a van full of kids to a restaurant with a beautiful woman in the passengers seat, and knew her to be his wife. He looked back towards the children with a smile on his face and there was a flash like a second sun off in the distance in front of the car. In that moment something ethereal shook followed quickly by confusion on the face of all inside the car followed swiftly by terror. The terror did not last long.

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He saw himself typing, writing a paper at midnight, in the still lit rooms off the library on a collage campus. The math on the page had little to do with things so trivial as numbers. The fevered light in his eyes blazed as he went back to title his work “The Numbers of Chaos” and then laughter split the silence that had surrounded him. “Where’s my cat?” The laughter seemed to echo.

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He saw himself again as a child, taking apart another electronic device. Only this time the device hadn’t been unplugged before the curious child began dismantling. With a pop and a quick gasp the child stilled and fell.

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A Creacher Gazed at the man and the man gazed back. They hung there, the two of them in a vast darkness strung across in all directions and angles like glowing spider silk. It had a long golden mane and four legs wrapped in red scales ending in five golden claws. The man thought he saw a hint of a smile as the creacher turned and began moving slipping between the lines, almost showing how it could be done, if only he reached out.

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A thousand times he lived and died. A thousand times a thousand. On and on he lived and died. Not just the life that was familiar yet a strange mirror to his own, but others as well. A sailor on a wooden deck of a boat he owned being tossed by the waves. A blacksmith, a stonemason, and a shipwright. A thousand and more lives from the first cave to a vast ship on a sea between the stars.

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Through the flashes a new sensation of tripping and falling. Somehow becoming disjointed in a way he did not know. A line of light pivots and points directly at him pulling him hard towards a central thread that seems to be connected to many others.

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With a sharp gasp a boy of twelve years in rough spun wool stepped back from the stone pillar covered in strange symbols. Raising his hands he cliched at his head and cried out, doubling over from the pain before collapsing unconscious.

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The Lines of IF

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