Part 1 – You Are Here

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Chapter 1 – Cube

In unending darkness, silence is broken by the words…

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Never Open the Box…

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His eyes squinted halfway against an unknown, brilliant light above him. Wincing, he shielded his face with a hand and looked around. He lay on the floor of a cube-like room. Cautiously, he got to his feet.

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The room was a pale blue darker than the sky but lighter than sapphire. It was long enough on each side for him to lay flat and stretch without touching the opposite walls. Aside from some odd bits that seemed like black grout at the corners, the walls were featureless and smooth. And there was no door, no way in or out.

He gazed at the ceiling. The light didn’t appear as blinding as it had a moment ago, so he put his hand aside. Still, he couldn’t resolve the ceiling as being anything but a blank patch of light, similar to sunlight but colder.

“Hello? Is anyone there?” He called upwards. No echo.

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Bending down, he pondered and touched his mouth gently, “Is that my voice?”

He glanced up again with a grimace before checking himself. The first thing that caught his eye was his clothes. Brown jeans and a light-brown collared shirt with short sleeves. They seemed to fit him well. The only distinguishing feature was a white name tag on his left chest. He had to twist his shirt a little but read the name aloud as, “Seth.”

Prying at the name tag revealed it was stuck firmly to his shirt. With a sigh, he looked for anything else amiss. His feet. They were fine but bare, with no shoes or socks. He checked himself a little and wasn’t displeased with his body. He flexed his arm and liked that it had a bit of muscle. His face felt normal with rough, hairy patches. The hair on his head was short but rose like a slight, left-leaning pompadour.

That settled, he asked himself, “I’m okay, but where am I?” He didn’t really like the idea of talking to himself but, since there was no one else to talk to, he had no choice.

He put a finger to his mouth in contemplation and moved back and forth around the room. Speaking again to himself, he said, “I remember…uh. Wait.” He stood in place..

His eyes widened a little as he continued, “Actually. I don’t remember. But I do remember.” Speaking the notion only made it sound more ridiculous to him. Still, there it remained.

It was deeply frustrating. He muttered, “Like…someone’s name at a party. Right there but I can’t quite get it.” He rested his head against a wall. The wall did nothing to jar his memory loose from this bothersome state, but it was cool to the touch.

Focusing and straining didn’t help, nor did a bit of head bonking against the wall. He growled and twirled in place before muttering, “Whatever. Later. I’ll lose my mind about it later…” He thought about a mental checklist and placed that way at the bottom.

“First, I need to figure out if I’m trapped in here.” That item went to the top of the list, ‘Am I trapped?’ with a completely-inappropriate DOOM face to go with it inside his thoughts. He glanced around the room.

Touching and tapping the walls turned into sailing kicks at the walls and sore fists and feet. He soon had to confess to himself, “Yup, definitely trapped.” Mental checkmark for item one of the list. Furthermore, where he’d assaulted the wall there was no blemish or crack in the surface. He couldn’t even find a scuff.

Leaning back, he puffed out a breath and said, “How about…LET ME OUT?” He cupped his mouth and yelled at the hazy ceiling. No answer. It was a long-shot.

Folding his arms, he gave a careful look around the walls and the floor. New idea. He peered closely everywhere, muttering, “Maybe a tiny switch or something?” But he didn’t find anything. The surface of the cube was perfect (to someone not confined within it), free of imperfection, opening, seam, crack, or any other sign it could be opened in any way.

That settled, he tried a different tact. He felt around in his clothes, but his pockets were bare and he didn’t feel anything tucked away inside. He reiterated, “Nothing…”

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Resigned, he lay flat on the floor. It was cool but not cold, rigid but not so uncomfortable that he felt the need to immediately sit up.  

Touching at his stomach and adjusting his pants, he said to no one but himself, “At least I’m not hungry right now. Or need to piss.”

But someone answered. A voice above him immediately inquired, “You give up that quickly?”

Stunned, his eyes widened as he yelled, “What?!” He was still alone. So, who had said that?

The voice continued, “You heard me, Seth.”

Sitting up, Seth realized he was somewhere else: A field with grass. The transition was instantaneous and he had no idea when it had happened. A moment before he was alone in the cube. The next moment, the air had changed from the vanilla, plain stuff that filled the cube to a warmer, moister version that wafted through the grassy field.

Leaning back, he discovered he was sitting under a tree. His heart raced with a “thud thud thud” as he touched his chest. A hand reached down to touch his hair.

“HEY!” He twisted out of the grasp with a jerk and asked, “What’s going on?”

Standing above him, with a smirking expression, was a guy with very short hair, dressed in starchy, blue clothes with heavy boots on his feet. Beyond the man, his perceptions of the field seemed to dim. He knew there were things just out of sight, something like a park with basketball courts and backstops and soccer goals. But all that felt out of focus, more sensed than seen, like the edges of a painting which had been left blank, implied by a sketch but indistinct once the pigments were placed.

“You got your ass handed to you. So, you went to go cry and pick daisies like a little girl.” The guy scuffed his hair as Seth scowled and fixed his hair after the guy touched it.

A moment passed as the guy laughed, a moment where Seth looked at him and something flashed inside. All the details of the man, all the details of the moment crystallized and became something new. They felt more personal. They felt familiar, like a word he’d learned long ago or a street he’d passed several times. He turned it over in his mind, that face, that body, that laugh especially. They triggered something.

He said softly, “I know you…”

To the man above him, it was like those three words had gone unsaid, unnoticed. He just told Seth, making little motions, “Good to know I have a little sister. And she’s so pretty in her bloomers.” The man motioned like there was a ribbon in his hair he didn’t have and silken contours of clothes he wasn’t wearing.

Seth started to feel hot around his face. A familiar heat. He clenched his fists and said, sharply, “I’m not a girl! I’m…I’m your brother…” The realization of what he’d said hit him only as he was saying it. He repeated it, “I’m your brother. You’re my…older brother, Steven. Steven?”

Yes, that was it. He could see it like a page out of a book before him. That man’s face and his name, Steven. Below, he was defined as Seth’s brother. There were more details, but they were faint perceptions, more like hazy words or winding scrawl, nothing clear or certain. All he could be certain of was that this was his brother. That he could ever not know something as monumental as that unsettled Seth but he was glad more than anything to have remembered.

Steven raised an eyebrow but barely seemed to acknowledge what Seth had said but for a vague, “Oh yeah? You ready to bring me some competition, Missy?”

Seth glared. The shadows of sibling rivalry formed in his thoughts as he challenged Steven, “I’m ready to kick your ass!”

In turn, Steven laughed and answered, “Better! I might actually have a little brother down there in the daisies!” He reached a hand down as Seth reached a hand up.

The moment that his brother lifted him to his feet, Seth found himself back in the blue room, standing. The field was gone, returned to memory. But something had changed.

Right behind him he saw a dark, doorway-sized opening cut into the wall and leading into deep nothingness. He staggered away from the black opening to hug the opposite wall. As a whisper, so faint he wasn’t even sure he’d heard it aloud or in his head, were the words by Steven, “You afraid, little bro?”

Seth looked around quickly but he was still alone.

Softly, but with absolute certainty, he admitted, “Heck yeah…” Still, he reached out a hand and approached the blackness with slow steps. Bit by bit, he slipped through the threshold and vanished through it.