The group watched in awe as the rift warped space around it, held together only by the enormous mechanical ring of wires and circuitry. It hummed ominously, vibrating the air and space around as it swept air into itself like a large vacuum cleaner. Its strange colors swirled around at the center, turning and twisting, creating and vanishing new colors yet seen by man. They were not the only ones observing. High up the wall was a wide window with shadows lurking behind its fragile protection.
“I welcome you, my Sympanauts!” A grand, pompous shadow raised its hands in celebration. “To the next great leap for humanity!” Congratulated the leader of the operation, Hariton Splimby.
Sigmund could not wipe off the thankful joy from his face, less take his eyes off the portal. “No, I thank you, Mr. Splimby! You have granted me the purpose of my life!”
Polly watched in mild disbelief as the old man’s eyes and cheeks blushed red with excitement, though she could not help but feel overpowered by the impossible sight before her. At least she was better off than Grigori, who was having an existential crisis in his corner. Adam couldn’t take his eyes off the thing either, that was without taking a glance at Illias. Even he was captivated by it, though, unlike others, including even the Stoic Yungs, there was not a shred of emotion written on his face. Only his jaw hung loose, but whether that was due to awe or lack of thought was up to the viewer.
“I do apologize for keeping you dark for so long, but my friends in high places were very strict with information control.”
“I had it all figured out, but…” Grigori’s gripped his shaking hand. “This sure is ‘an exotic expedition’.”
“I wasn’t lying, was I? This thing is truly an anomaly upon anomalies.” Mr. Splimby smacked his hand against the window, his eyes flashing with the swirling colors. “Contained? We barely have it in control! You think we had chances to test this technology?”
“But it’s still safe, right?” Polly asked. “You wouldn’t throw us into the unknown just like that, would you?”
“Of course not. We have sent and retrieved objects and personnel before you.”
“And the survivors?” Grigori squinted his eyes.
“All in one piece, for better or worse. The reports were a bit… Mixed, but all returned safely,” A cold glint of Mr. Splimby’s glasses gave him shivers. “Good enough for us to proceed, wouldn’t you think?”
“How do you know that that thing won’t just close as soon as we step in?” Grigori asked.
“We are holding the record of 70 hours by now. Seems our Gate is keeping it stabilized. The fluctuations in the timey spacey wooblie dooplie whatever indicate no changes as well. And in case something happens; see those fancy wristwatches I handed to you?” He gestured at his bare wrist.
Each member took out their sturdy digital watches. The display switched from the regular clock to various metrics flashing in different colors, beeping along with their racing hearts.
“Those aren’t just life monitoring and tracking devices. They also will be your ticket, or at least a reminder to get back home. If we notice a change in the rift’s stability, we will signal you to get out of there.”
“Wait,” Sigmund snapped out of his enjoyment. “Wasn’t this project supposed to last for a week?”
“Well, a week, two hours, ten years, however long possible. Get whatever you can out of that place and report back. Maybe you can catch the next ticket for the next rift, but don’t count on that.”
“Right,” He started to see the problems.
“I can accept as much as that, but I still have one question for you,” Polly pointed up at the glass window intently. “What is he here for?” She turned her finger toward Illias.
Mr. Splimby turned to the other shadows, turning off his microphone. A moment of silent whispers exchanged themselves as the group waited with understandable suspicion.
“Right,” He started his speech with a dry cough. “Mr. Illias was selected the same way as you, Ms. Gallaway based on his skills.”
“And what skill does he bring to the team?”
“Oh, that? He is not there for the team.”
“Huh?” Polly’s brow chased her hairline. “Then what?”
“To put it simply, his mission is to recover our assets in a worst-case scenario. A back-up of sorts.”
The group turned in horror to the disinterested boy. They couldn’t choose between being appalled that such a role existed, or that it was being performed by a young boy like him. The worst feeling was with the Yungs, who thought they were the ones with that objective. They were already close to the point of no return, their fates sealed in the rumbling vortex.
“Just a hypothetical, but why do you think he or any of us won’t just fuck off as soon as we get in?” Grigori asked, ready to throw his book at him, though lacking the strength to have it reach the glass.
“We have contracts and compact explosive devices for that.”
Grigori’s pinned pupils switched to the sturdy, metal wristwatch in his hand. He thought that he had simply lost the spare key that he was supposedly given. The regret of not checking what was included in his medical check set in subtly like a derailed train. The stern looks from the nurses had also been given a new meaning, driving his anxiety off a cliff and prime for a meltdown.
“Can we go now?” Illias asked without a whiff of care on his face.
“A moment, please,” Mr. Splimby heard one of his advisors call his name. “I have been advised to remind you of some of the terms and agreements you have written off in case you are going to use this last moment to desert this operation and terminate your contract.”
Sigmund gulped. “Go ahead.”
“First and most of all, no information of the existence of these rifts or anything involving them may be revealed to the outside world, whether you go in or not. That includes you and your studies, Dr. Soter.”
“I see. But I have already hypothesized the possibility of rifts, so I assume I can continue to do that?”
“This is still a developing subject, and we will be in touch.”
“Thank you.”
“Continuing along. If you are going to drop out here I would like to remind you that we will handle it with sincerity and professionalism as we have the full right to charge you for acts such as insubordination, conspiracy, terrorism, and I am sure our legal team can think of many more.”
“So you are saying we are screwed now?” Grigori’s heart felt like working overtime like a salaryman hungry for a raise.
“It is called being legally responsible,” Mr. Splimby flicked his glasses.
“Anything else?” Polly asked.
“I think you are already aware, but we are also completely free of responsibility for what happens to you. Of course, we want you to come back alive, but in any case of an unfortunate accident, we will not pay any compensation or attempt to recover you. Despite our military backing, we don’t have an unlimited budget, you know?”
“Figures.”
“Any other questions?”
Adam raised his large hand.
“Yes, er, Mr. Easton?”
“What do we do if something happens between us?”
“Well, trying to prove any crimes that one might commit there is a bit difficult, but we discourage any foul play that goes against the investigation. The Yungs are there to keep the peace as well as eliminate any threats.”
“I think we are forgetting something,” Sigmund thought.
“What is it now?” Grigori asked.
“Where is Illias?”
Half a dozen heads turned to look where he was. The boy was gone from his spot and nowhere to be seen.
“It can’t possibly be,” Mr. Splimby looked over to the rift’s bright light.
There Illias was just a few feet from the portal. How he managed to shuffle all the way there without anyone noticing was a mystery, but what he was about to do was obvious. His clothes and hair fluttered toward the light, beckoning him to step in. There was no time to react. He took the first step and disappeared without a trace to the world beyond.
Sigmund looked completely dumbfounded. “... Is that a problem?”
“Well, um, of course not.” Mr. Splimby glanced at his scientists and whispered, “Are the devices primed?” He said, forgetting to shut off his microphone.
After getting a thumbs up, he turned back to look down at the group.
“So, who is ready to go? Any deserters?” He said with unending positivity.
“I will go.” Sigmund stepped forward, his cane trembling in his hand. “No matter what happens to me.”
“Me too!” Adam lifted his bag over his shoulder. “I want to see what’s there!”
“There’s no other choice, anyway,” Polly shrugged.
“You said it,” Grigori sighed. “The money better be worth it in the end.”
The Yungs walked valiantly to the row. With all six ready or not, Mr. Splimby nodded to himself for a job well done.
“Good luck, my Sympanauts! Bring glory and discovery back to us!” He gave a final cold smile to them as their send-off.
One by one, the team walked into the literal unknown. Although it might have looked as alien as the rift itself, the passing felt little more than a drop in your stomach on an amusement park ride. It was as if you were traveling through a wind turbine that through some malfunction also gave you small electric shocks while flashing epileptic lights all around you. Yet before you could even begin to lose your sanity or grasp the cosmic horrors you just witnessed, a new horizon opened upon your confused eyes as a new breeze swept past your slightly pale skin.
You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.
A great, emerald ocean swept over white sand under Sigmund’s feet and continued far into the horizon. It was true, another world existing beyond his own, now opening to him after decades of waiting. He could not believe his eyes, yet his senses proved that it was indeed reality he was witnessing if only another one. His chapped lips stretched wide until his skin went taut. He took a crisp breath of air into his weary lungs and stretched his arms as far as he could. His eyes filled with the new color of the sky, clear as a white canvas. Frozen in rejuvenating glee, he could finally rest but a moment. This was but the first step. Suddenly, something tickled his arching nose. A dark, fleeting speck whisked itself away from his sudden breath. His eyes followed it keenly, wondering what it exactly was. He carefully took out his hand and let it slowly descend onto it. Weighing almost nothing, the pitch-black spec fluttered from the slightest breeze, slowly drifting onto his palm. Sigmund drew a long breath and went in for a closer look. With a small push of his finger, he watched the thing crumble into fine dust, smearing his hand with a familiar black soot.
“Ash?” He recognized it, just as he had dirtied his hands while lighting up the fireplace in his home.
Before he could start to question its origin, a distant rumbling echoed from behind him. He turned to see what it could be. Perhaps a volcano had erupted. He turned and braced himself for the worst. Yet, instead of a great mound spouting ash and reeking of sulfur, Sigmund found himself standing near the steep edge of a great, smoldering gorge. With only ashes swept up by the coastal wind, the perfectly circular pit loomed silently before him, only a few meters from the pristine white sand. Still, the air was fresh with ash and a burning smell riling up his nostrils. The sight was far from anything he had seen. The closest he could picture was the impact site of a meteor, yet it somehow reminded him of something else. Leaving him no time to think, Sigmund’s vision opened to something on the near side of the pit. An unnatural, seemingly man-made gray line stretched from the site, ending abruptly to the chasm. Taking a closer look, Sigmund made only more of a puzzling find. A concrete road, or at least what was left of it. His mind connected the dots in an instant. The realization made his legs give out. It was as if a glimpse of hell had appeared to his lone audience.
“What, how?” He asked the wind and ashes of countless dead. “How is this possible?”
“Finally, a new face,” A familiar, sluggishly antagonistic voice shuffled from the sidelines.
“Gregori?” Sigmund noticed, lifting himself with newfound hope and his trusty cane. “You are safe?”
“Nice to see you too, I suppose,” He irked.
“How did you… Do you know what happened here?”
“Well, it’s not that hard if you think about it. We got in here by what a black hole, and you can’t see it anymore, can you?”
Sigmund looked around in confusion. “Oh, god, you’re right. But what does this have to do with that pit?”
“Ugh, do I need to twist this through barbed wire with you?” Grigori gestured at the ashen gorge. “We did this. The rift must have blown that place off the face of this world.”
“No, it can’t be,” Guilt flushed Sigmund’s face of color. The remains he had examined in hope washed away to horrid pictures of instant, immense destruction. “There must be another reason.”
“You’re the guy that researched this, right? Just look at it. What else could make something like this? Cut off like a scoop of ice cream. How many have you found?”
“Dozens,” Sigmund ran his fingers across his face. “How did I not think that it could work the other way around? Oh, god no.”
“God won’t help you, even if he exists here.”
His head stuck in an endless storm of questions and nightmarish images, Sigmund realized perhaps the most important one.
“What about our way home?”
“What do you think? Did you see another rift appear just now?”
“Then our wristwatches…” His eyes turned in horror to the beeping bracelet.
“For Saint Peter’s sake, if these things exploded, how would I be talking to you?” Grigori resisted the urge to slap his face.
“Thank god,” Sigmund breathed his first relaxed breath, breaking him free from the panic. “Where is everyone?”
“Who knows,” Grigori shrugged. “They might be gone or not here yet.”
“Huh? What do you mean?”
“Right, you didn’t notice yet.” He swiped his uneven stubble with a bothered expression. “Take a look at my watch. Don’t touch it.”
Grigori stretched his hand to reveal the watch from underneath his long sleeves. Sigmund could not tell what he was supposed to notice, but there was not much to check until he did.
“It was June 5th when we left, right?” He wanted to confirm. “It says that on my watch too.”
“Yup, and before you ask, no, I didn’t hack it to change the date.”
“Then why is yours set to the 12th?”
“Don’t ask questions you already know. I’ve been living here for a week. I found myself in that spot, too, with Polly waiting for me.”
“Polly is here too?”
“Over a month by now. Who knows how long it will take for others to arrive.”
“But we stepped in merely a second ago, and I am sure I was the first, well after Illias.”
“Don’t try to piece this together with logic. I have wasted too much time on it already.”
“You said she had been here for a month,” Sigmund pondered.
“Ten points for hearing comprehension.”
“This explosion looks new, maybe a few days old. Did she arrive before it happened?”
“Yes, and no.”
“Huh?”
“This thing has some sort of loop going on. It never goes out, like it's stuck at that moment,” Grigori looked down to the smoldering abyss. “Must have something to do with the rift. That bastard was right about the timey wimey bullshit after all.”
“Have you made contact with anything? Are there other cities? Or perhaps people?”
“We haven’t had the chance to venture too far out yet, but I’ve seen some desert southeast of this island. About the people… Let’s talk about that later.”
“Oh, alright.”
The two walked silently, with Grigori leading with his hands in his pockets like some crook ready to stab you. It bothered Sigmund more than his childlike wonder could be excited.
“Why do you seem so… Calm about this?”
“Don’t get me wrong, I’m pissed off big time, but there’s nothing really to do about this,” Grigori took a glance far into the horizon with a somber face. “Sure, I want to go home, but do you really think that’s possible?”
Sigmund put on a brave smile and tapped the lanky man on his back. “We can’t lose hope, and I’m glad you haven’t.”
Grigori looked over at his warm expression with the sourness of a freshly pressed glass of lemon juice.
“Don’t jump to conclusions. Come on, let’s get to our camp.”
Though the island was small and mostly a negative space by then, a small spot of lush jungle managed to survive on the northern side. Following subtle clues carved into the trees, they arrived at the opening of a small cavern on the side of a slight hill. It lay there inconspicuously behind a wall of bushes, and a trap needed to be hopped over. The pitch darkness inside made anyone weary to enter without a source of light, but without other options, the two ventured inside blind.
“Stay near. I don’t want to start searching for you,” Grigori looked behind him, barely making out Sigmund by the echoing step of his feet.
“Right,” Sigmund nodded to the darkness before him.
After following Grigori’s steps down a slope of slippery rocks, they took a turn down and back through a small collapsed hole in the floor. Entering the secret cavern, Sigmund’s senses concentrated on a lingering, warm light that started to flicker, emanating from deeper inside.
His ears picked up a sharp click, which made Grigori stop in his tracks.
“It’s me,” He yelled toward the light. “Don’t put a bullet between my eyes.”
A moment of silence assured Grigori, and he continued along. Sigmund followed shortly behind, arriving at a lamp-lit camp with Polly sitting on a survival bench, pistol in hand.
“Who’s that behind you?” She watched the two between the long strands of her, twirly hair.
“Glad to see you again, too, Polly,” Sigmund stepped into the light.
“Sigmund? So you got here,” She put down her gun.
“Is this where you’ve been living?” He looked around. The rocky floor was partially covered by tarps and leaves, while lamps and the gas flame from the cooking kit barely lit the place from the moist darkness around it.
“Hiding,” Polly corrected.
“From what? Did someone survive…that?”
“No, don’t think so.”
“Tell him,” Grigori gave a stern look to her.
“After a few days of me arriving here, some people came and looked around the hole. They searched for a while for something, but then they just left.”
“So there are people, er, aliens here?”
“Tardigrades can’t build cities like that,” Grigori smirked as he sat down on the carpet. “We’re dealing with something big, maybe bigger than us.”
“They haven’t come back, yet,” Polly added.
“What did they seem like?” Sigmund took a seat.
“I didn’t get a close look, but something was off about them.”
“Off?”
“I didn’t see how they got here. They just appeared. I watched them from the hill with binoculars. They first investigated the hole and the premises for a while, taking some notes and discussing with each other. Then they went to the harbor. It seems to be the only place that didn’t get erased. They took one of the boats and sank the rest.”
“I can’t wrap my head around this. What the hell is happening here?”
“I have a theory,” Grigori took a sip out of his flask. “This is some sort of cover-up.”
“A cover-up? Like a conspiracy?”
“Here we go again,” Polly rolled her eyes.
“My country has a long list of these sorts of things,” Grigori took a comfortable position. “The first thing I noticed was that there doesn’t seem to be much traffic going through this area. No boats or planes, anything, only that small port that no one comes to visit. Wouldn’t it be weird if a whole city got wiped out and no one came to help? Only those cloaked guys came here to take a look at the damage and then sabotage the only way out. This thing is obviously being kept secret.”
“How can you keep a whole destroyed city secret? Wouldn’t people be worrying about not hearing from it?”
“That is, if this was a regular city,” Grigori took another sip.
“What do you mean?”
“Just a guess, but I don’t think it was a coincidence we wrecked this place in particular. The isolated location, lack of response, and that suspicious activity, it all looks too much like something went wrong here that they don’t want anyone to know about.”
“I’ve had to deal with all of this conspiracy nonsense for days,” Polly sighed. “Takes a toll on you on top of trying to survive. Good thing you finally dropped in, Sigmund. One more minute of Greg’s muttering and I would have swum to land myself.”
“Grigori! My name is Grigori!” He made a dent in his flask as he slammed it against the rocky floor.
“Who the hell cares? We’re stranded in another dimension! I would call you Benjamin if it was up to me!” Polly snapped.
“I care!” Grigori took out his knife. “I am still me, and not some dirty Brit called Benjamin or Daniel! Why is it so hard to understand, woman?!”
“You two, stop.” Sigmund held out his hands. “Fighting helps no one.”
The two stopped pointing knives and guns at each other.
“Now, what do you think we should do? Escape to the mainland?”
“You are still the leader, right?” Polly holstered her pistol. “It’s your call, just don’t think I’ll obey it.”
“This is a bit above my pay grade, but I will try my best,” Sigmund scratched his neck.
Grigori slipped his knife away. “If you can think of a way to get out of here, I’m in. I still want that money, and to strangle that damn Splimby.”
“I can’t promise that, but we all want to survive this place, right?”
“Yeah,” Polly nodded.
Grigori sighed. “Obviously.”
“Then it’s best if we work together. As equals. Let’s see what this strange land has to offer.”
“I don’t care about that,” Grigori scoffed. “But I’m not stupid enough to go alone.”
"The mainland beats this small island without a fight," Polly reminded. "Sooner or later we will run out of food, and we can't keep hiding here forever."
“Do you have any ideas on how we can get there?” Sigmund asked.
“Swimming is out of the question. We will get swept away by the currents. Our best chance is to make a raft,” She explained.
“Then we should scavenge the harbor for supplies. Let’s see if they left anything useful behind.”