It is said that there are decades where weeks happen, and weeks where decades happen. So too, then, are there weeks when minutes happen, and minutes when weeks happen.
Certainly, one Christopher Morton Kane, lying listlessly on his bed in his cramped apartment, was not expecting the latter to so quickly succeed the former.
It was, for him, a standard summer night--with classes out of session, and his general aversion to socialization, he had little to do except stare silently at his darkened ceiling, deferring sleep solely out of some desire to procrastinate on tomorrow. Tomorrow would itself be more of the same: Another day of dullness, another day closer to classes, another day ever so faintly soured by the lingering sense that, bottled up in his--shockingly expensive--400 square-foot apartment, he was slowly wasting his life.
Amidst the soft susurration of the air conditioner and the distant rumble of cars passing below, his thoughts turned to the dreams of his youth. Not so long ago, he mused, he had been so full of hope and excitement for the future. What child does not dream of unlocking some secret power, some hidden world, some grand adventure? What child does not go into life with their head held high, believing that, someday soon, they will live out the stories they have so greedily devoured since first they learned to read? And what adult preserves that spirit in the face of the banal realities of the world?
Lazily, he raised his left hand towards the ceiling, mimed a gun with his fingers. Bang, he thought, imagining a beam of light bursting forth, spearing through the building, punching through into the night sky beyond. It didn't work, of course. It never did.
Probably for the best, he thought. Else the poor bastards above me might be in for an unpleasant surprise.
He dropped his hand, smirking to himself. See, that was the difference between adults and children. Children didn't worry about collateral damage when they wished for awesome laser hands.
His smile faded as quickly as it came, however. What should he wish for, if laser hands were no longer on the table? A good job market? Stable employment? Low housing prices? It all just seemed so...dull. Where were the damsels in distress? The magic wands? The otherworldly vistas? Was this all there was?
He cast a silent prayer out into the void, half-joking.
If there's anyone listening, he thought, I'd like a more interesting life, please.
If there's any wonder and magic in the world, I want to see it.
The prayer rippled out from him, fading into nothing, as idle thoughts are wont to do. But some ripples are more resilient than others.
Through a place between worlds, through a sea that had never known a sun, the faintest echo of a prayer passed on.
And was answered.
One moment Christopher was there in his room, half-asleep, and the next he was crying out in agony as an arc of silver fire seared itself across the back of his left hand, his world spinning with a terrible vertigo that seemed to well up from deep within him. For an instant he saw two vistas superimposed: His bedroom, illuminated by the silver radiance that still consumed his hand, and a vast starlit sky resembling nothing he had seen of Earth's. He blinked reflexively, but it was the starlit sky that came into focus, even as the flames guttered out. Vertigo was supplanted by weightlessness, and Chris plunged into darkness and darker seas.
He had time enough only for a single half-formed thought before slamming into the water's surface. Perhaps if he had been prepared he could have effected some kind of reaction, but as it was his disorientation was total; all he could manage was a desperate cry, cut off as the air was knocked from his lungs and he plunged under the waves. Instinctively he kicked upwards, breaching the surface and heaving a gasping breath, eyes fixated on his surely-ruined left hand that still pulsed with agony.
He found instead a hand entirely intact, albeit one oddly glowing; Chris's scattered consciousness was only beginning to make sense of this before the rest of his brain helpfully informed him he was still somehow in water, with no idea where land or indeed anything else was, and that he should probably look around.
And he looked around at impossibility.
The sky overhead was empty save for blue-white stars in such profusion that it seemed a hundred hundred Milky Ways had been stacked on top of one another, filling every fold of the firmament, and which by their light alone bathed the seas around him in an unearthly phosphorescence, bright as the full moon.
Great glimmering orbs hung motionless above the horizon, many times larger than the moon, though celestial bodies they clearly were not, for the starlight shone through them; instead, they pulsed as an aurora does, a riot of colors shifting even as he watched.
And the water! It was no water at all: For it gleamed like a mirror; it shimmered like an oil slick; it fractured like an ice floe; it writhed like a living thing, as no water ever could or ever should. Chris could see a thousand copies of himself reproduced in the hundred mirror-planes of the surface around him, rendered each in the harsh brilliance of the stars above, distorted like funhouse mirrors into a menagerie of twisted forms. It was terrifying in the way only the unknown can ever be. It was the most beautiful thing Chris had ever seen.
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And it stretched out to the vast horizon, unbroken by life or land.
It was at this moment that Chris's confusion and disorientation turned truly to fear, for despite the absurdity of the scene before him, he was certain this no dream or delusion. The searing pain in his hand, the biting chill of the definitely-not-water, the pulsing radiance of the vast orbs above--it was too vivid, too authentic, too alien to be illusory.
So here he was, in the middle of an otherworldly sea, no land in sight—indeed, no suggestion that such a thing as land even existed in this place--as the cold and wet ate through his clothes, through to his skin, through to his bones.
His breaths came fast and shallow now, even as he paddled to stay afloat.
It really was wet, the not-water, as strange as that seemed. Sure, he could swim now, but how buoyant was he really? Was this stuff toxic? Who could say? Who could he ask?
This really was it, wasn't it? Abruptly stranded here, by--what? A chance misfortune? An aberration in space and time? No, some vindictive god who had interpreted his half-serious prayer in the most sadistic fashion possible! That had been the catalyst, hadn't it? And now Chris was a dead man walking. Floating. Whatever!
Laughter bubbled up from his chest. Who could be thrown into this situation and not laugh at its absurdity?
Like some shitty game dev throwing in a random event you couldn't possibly prepare for until it killed you at least once, he thought. Except, you know, I don't fucking respawn!
Gotcha, you're dead! he giggled hysterically, only for the awful sound of his own panic to jolt him back to a semblance of rationality.
He forced himself to breathe deeply, to focus on his immediate reality. Ultimately the cause of his abandonment here was immaterial to surviving it, vindictive god or no.
What do I need to do to stay alive?
The chill of the sea and the increasing fatigue in his muscles made the first step obvious.
Get out of whatever the hell this "water" is, or at least find something that floats. If I can be pulled into this place, other objects probably can be too.
Chris scanned his gaze across the surface, suppressing dizziness as his eyes tried to compensate for the endlessly shifting reflections that seemed to replace waves in this realm.
Any break in the pattern...
Panic threatened to overwhelm him again as his search seemed fruitless, until finally he spotted a tiny dot far in the distance, uncharacteristically dark against the gleam of the sea. Even as the myriad mirror-lights dazzled him, even as the currents swirling beneath the surface threatened to push him astray, he fixed his gaze upon that sole lifeline as if it were the most precious object in the world.
Gritting his teeth against the pain in his hand and the disorienting effects of the sea, Chris dropped into an out-of-practice but serviceable breaststroke and made for the object. Swimming was exhausting--whatever liquid replaced water in this realm was clearly not conducive to it--but still, he pressed on resolutely, and was gradually able to resolve his target in finer detail.
By appearances, it seemed to be a shattered fragment of what was once a seafaring craft, the distinctive curve of a hull still visible, though the material was obsidian black and dulled like rusted metal. As Chris closed on it he could make out distinctive signs of corrosion and decay, the edges of the fragment pockmarked as if moth-eaten, which decidedly did not improve his judgments of the sea's safety.
By the time he reached the fragment, his muscles were burning with strain, even as his hands and feet were numbed by the cold. Chris could see it was scarcely large enough to serve as a raft, if it could even support his weight, but he could hardly be said to have better options at this point. Tentatively, he reached out, his fingers closing over the almost-metal, and—
a gleaming ship upon a lilac sea, basking in the warmth of three suns
the roar of cannons, the hum of engines, the thrill of battle
destruction, defiance, service unto death!
Chris recoiled from the alien sensations, from memories not his own forcing their way into his consciousness, head spinning mightily.
These are...the memories of a ship? Its crew? Not a human ship, either.
He could see no other possibility. For an instant, he had known what it was like to feel his prow gliding smoothly through the water, the heat of boilers pulsing in his heart, the pain of at last being rent asunder in glorious battle.
He quite nearly broke down into laughter again as he floated hesitantly within arm's length of his best chance of survival. Which had just tried to overtake his mind after a single moment's contact.
Even the inanimate objects here are dangerous to me, he thought. This place is the worst.
Nonetheless, he had to press on; it was not as if he had suddenly acquired better options. Or other options. Bracing himself, he pressed his burnt left hand against the fragment--no point risking his good hand if this place had more nasty surprises--and maintained contact even when the flood of alien memories began anew. As the torrent pushed into him, he did the only thing he could think of, bringing to the fore his own memories, his own identity, and attempting to push them at the fragment, just as the fragment pushed its own towards him.
I am not the ironclad Selena, he told it. I am Christopher Morton Kane. I have not been in service for 32 years; I am 21 years old. I was not commissioned in the manufactories in Ilyan; I was born in Decatur, Illinois...
On and on this went as their identities clashed; after what felt like hours but was in reality mere seconds, the fragment's resistance gave way and the memories subsided. There was another flash of dazzling light and another flare of pain from Christopher's left hand before that, too, was reduced to only a diffuse glow.
Cautiously, he pressed first one arm, then both, against the now-quiescent fragment; whereas before its memories had seemed to leak into him, now there remained only a subtle warmth and vigor that was immensely soothing to his aching limbs. With some careful maneuvering, it was not long before he had hauled his entire body on top of his impromptu raft, and for a time he lay recovering from his exertions, a modicum of relief washing over him.
Alright, raft get. My chances of dying horribly within the next few hours are now significantly lower, he thought with false cheer.
...So now what?
He looked again towards the horizon and the iridescent orbs that seemed to hover there, looming in the sky like Jupiter over its moons. Several of which seemed to loom significantly more than they had when he first arrived, in fact.
So exhausted was he from his earlier ventures, and so engrossed was he in attempting to puzzle out their nature, he missed the obvious conclusion until the base of the largest orb appeared over the horizon, revealing the massive vortex at its base lofting furiously swirling currents up towards the orb's boundary. Currents which were even now drawing his own raft ever faster towards the orb.
"Ah fuck," said Chris.