Chapter 2

“-ck!” James finished with uncanny grace considering his situation. James Salihas had now become the first hominid to fall through a rift in the fabric of the time of space of his universe and into another. He was not, however, the first organism from earth to do so. That honor belonged to a small marsupial of the species Inodelphys szalayi, which had also passed through a similar rift, depositing it in the event horizon of a black hole.

Considering that James was in no imminent harm in the way of an event horizon or asphyxiation, he was quite lucky. Of course, none of this occurred to him, he was still holding the back of his head swearing in pain. “Ow, oh fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck!” Then, after a few moments, he elegantly added “…Shit.” Rubbing his head, he opened his eyes, looking to his side. “…Huh…” At first, James felt he must have hit his head really, really hard against the ground. This was because human beings have one of the single most brilliant mental abilities of any higher species: denial. Never mind that James was now in the middle of an open field of moss-like covering and a few feet from the base of a something like a tree; but incredibly wide at the base, made up of lots of raised roots covered in leaves twisting together to form a single thin trunk sticking fifty feet into the air. As far as he was concerned, he’d just bumped his head and his vision was now all screwy. However, as his head began to hurt less and less, and since this new place was not kind enough to go away now that he felt better, it was time to face the facts.

After another ten minutes of denial and rolling on the ground, James smacked himself in the face. Not necessarily to calm himself, but to make sure he really was awake. Rubbing his jaw, he looked up, and nearly slipped into denial again. The sun was red, and as he examined everything around him, the tint was obvious, in the land, the fauna, even the sky. Now, faced with all of this, James was beginning to understand, he wasn’t on Earth. “Well….fuck me then…”

Jumping to his feet, James looked around again. He then noticed he had literally jumped to his feet, rising a few inches up into the air when he tried to stand. “…Huh,” he stated again, as if that would help him understand. It didn’t. Crouching down, James clutched his head, trying to wrap his mind around what had just happened to him. “Ok, ok, I need to calm down,” he thought, an idea which he followed with a deep breath. “I am not where I was, I’m not on Earth, or if I am, it’s not when I lived.” With that thought, he grabbed his chest. He was still breathing; he was alive, that much was true.

However, though this epiphany was helpful, James was a long way from understanding what was going on. With this first understanding of his state, a gradual awareness of his surroundings was beginning to gnaw on his consciousness. For one thing, it was warmer, if he would have guessed, there was about a ten-degree difference between home, and where he was now. The air was different too. He could tell with each breath. He was beginning to feel a bit light headed. Somewhere, in the recesses of his mind, a random spark or trivial told him that meant there was more oxygen in the air. Of course, that was probably wrong.

Then there was the issue of James sudden super athletic ability. Another little spark of random trivia floated to the top of his mind. Since he could jump up like that, that meant that the planet was smaller because there was less gravity…or something. This was really beyond him. James was planning on pursuing a degree in history, and something in science would have helped him here. So, of course, he was just a bit screwed here.

“This is all completely beyond me,” James noted with a bit of despair in his voice. At the moment, he just wanted a bit of home so he could have something to focus on and calm himself. A candy bar, for example; something small, but that was well understood to him. However, since the next random rift in the fabric of existence coming from earth would be in about seven billion years after this rift, the odds of the rift coming to where James was, if was still alive, and that a candy bar would fall through, were very slim.

Since there was no item to help James with is transition, he was on going to have to cope with this by himself. “I’m screwed,” he stated aloud to himself. “…No, wait, maybe not…” Since, as far as he was concerned, this was a near death experience, and so his life was flashing before it eyes. He hoped that would help. It didn’t. “Ok, I’ve been sent to summer camp once and gone camping once, and never did anything…I also read Hatchet about halfway through…great.” The only small nugget of information James was back on was from television. “Well, next, I suppose I am going to be eaten by a Tyrannosaurus or something.” He then waited for about two minutes, with nothing happening. “Hot alien chicks?” Nothing.

Because the rational of sci-fi movies and anime was not helping, despair was creeping up on him again. “I guess this means I’m going to die here, I’ll probably go crazy too, and start talking to myself.” Looking around, he noted that no one else was around him. “Well, that was fast. It figures I’d be proactive now.” With a blasé shrug, James resigned himself to his fate. “I’m dealing with this remarkably well,” he noted. “I guess I’m not as deep as a shot glass, I’m just disproving all sorts of claims and ideas now.” For some reason, probably denial again, he was adjusting really well to this new life. “If I make it out of here and back home, I should phone up Steven Hawking. I’d bet he’d love to hear about this.” Pondering this, James began to wander towards one of the ends of the meadow/field thing he was in, moving towards a forest of what he assumed this world tried to pass as trees. “What the hell, I’m screwed anyway, might as well take in some of the sights.”

With this newfound enthusiasm of his imminent death, James entered the woods in good cheer, and began to walk through the woods, and then he began to stride, then jog, then finally run. Though he didn’t notice it at first, he didn’t feel tired in the normal way he usually did after running. His body wasn’t sore, for one thing, and even when out of breath, he recovered it more quickly. After exhausting his second wind, he stopped in a clearing and fell to the ground. It was quite soft, actually. It reminded him of one of those Swedish mattresses he saw being advertised on television some times. “It’s like parts of this world were just made to suit my needs,” James noted.

After some silent mussing on this idea, James tried something he had never attempted before, talking with God. This caused another problem. Just how was he supposed to carry on this conversation? Deciding to plunge in, he started as best he could. “Err, hello there, is anyone up there?” Nothing. “This is becoming a pattern,” he noted bitterly, giving up and closing his eyes, slowly drifting off into unconsciousness.

A while later, the sounds of movement rudely pulled him from blissful rest. Without opening his eyes or moving, James addressed whatever it was. “Couldn’t you have been kind enough to have been quieter when you came to kill me?” Wincing, he braced himself for his imminent death. Again, like everything else he had assumed would in his new journey, he was wrong and nothing happened. Buoyed by his continued survival, he opened his eyes, and raised himself to look at his new companion. “…Huh,” James states for the second time since he had arrived. Whatever was in front of him was not human, nor could it have passed for it either.

About four feet tall, whatever was before him was thin, ridiculously thin, almost impossibly thin. James had to rub his eyes to make sure his vision was correct. The body could only have been four inches wide, at the most; which seemed impossible to James. The arms were even worse. Though long, the ends only hung a few inches above the ground, they had to be about an inch thick. The legs, bowed and short, seemed to make up for this, being as thick as the body. The build of the creature was certainly unique, it had backwards knees and elbows, a four-toed foot with two toes forward, two back, while having hands with three fingers, two at the ends of its hands and one based around the wrist. Like the arms, they were all long and thing. However, as bad as all this was, its head really made James want to curl into a ball and cry. Unlike the body, which was built in a vertical form, the head had a horizontal build. The only way he could describe it was like a football, with what seemed like a sort of nostril at the very top, and two eyes at the horizontal ends, bulging out, making them look like they were the size of tennis balls. But the worse bit was the mouth. For one thing, it had two, vertically angled, and as it took a breath, a thin line between them parted, revealing that it actually had one segmented mouth, full of lots of little sharp teeth.

It was also bright neon pink.

“Huh,” stated James for a third time. This was beginning to become a bit of a pattern for him.

Chapter 1

The morning of July 15th started the same as any day for James Salihas, at 2 pm when his door was flung open by his mother, shouting “It’s two in the afternoon, get up before I slap you in the face with a wet towel!”

Groaning to signal his awaken status and surrender, James’ eyelids regretfully fluttered open only to be greeted by the same grey ceiling, the first thing he saw every morning upon his return from his freshman year at an out of state college. His parents had redecorated his room, apparently as soon as he left, into the future site of his father’s apparently planned future model train layout. The signs of the future plans could be seen in every corner: two-by-fours, plywood, boxes of miscellaneous wiring and track. In almost any other circumstance, James would have been thrilled by the prospect. He and his father had spent much of James’ childhood going to hobby stores and looking at trains. The only real complaint that James had was it was going in his room. However, since the decision had now been moved out of his hands, he was going to remain in his room until he was evicted by force.

As the sound of his mother moving down the stairs faded, James rolled over and out of his bed. Fortunately, since his bed was a mattress on the floor, he didn’t have far to fall, and was no worse for it. Groping for his cell phone, he pressed buttons on it until it dialed the first number in the phone’s address book. Bringing the cell phone to his left ear he rubbed his eyes with his right hand. After four rings, a voice answered.
“Hello?”
“It’s me,” James cryptically stated, then after about two seconds pause, adds “Mario.”
“You’re still a jerk, I see,” the voice on the phone noted, followed by a hearty laugh.
“Shut up Becky, call Peter. Lets go to a movie or something that will kill brain cells.”
“Sure. Thank you for at least calling me before showing up at my house, much appreciated, see you soon.”

Closing his phone, James lifted himself to a sitting position, cracking his neck once before standing and heading to the bathroom. Standing in front of a floor-to-wall mirror, he inspected himself. At five foot eleven, he was by no means, a small person, and at one hundred and fifty-three pounds, not a thin one either. Nor was he fat however, and thanks to broad shoulders, his build was almost large. As he described himself online, his build was “annoyingly average.” Removing something from his right eye, he checks his face. Also “annoyingly average,” his green eyes and curly brown hair allowed him to pull off the “I’m well-off-but-don’t-really-look-it” style which was his preference. Further, his face, thin for his build, allowed him to wear a wider variety of clothing styles. After removing something from his teeth and rinsing his mouth in the sink next to mirror, James exited the bathroom, pulling on a pair of jeans to accent the shirt and boxers he had slept in.

Sliding on some sandals, James exited his room, trying to ignore the sign that had been nailed to it, stating “dad’s train room” on it. Going down the stairs two at a time, and grabbing onto the end of the banister, he power slid into the kitchen, grabbing an apple as his mother looked up from her book.
“Welcome back to the world of the living,” she noted as she takes a drink from her glass of water.
“Thanks,” James replied dryly as he takes a bite from his apple. “Glad to be, I’m going over to B’s to we can meet with P and go somewhere.”

The use of only the first letters of their first names was a habit James, Peter and Becky had picked up as friends since middle school. Always together, they were dubbed by P, B and J by some great wit in seventh grade. The name had stuck, and instead of fighting it, the three used it even now that they had gone to different colleges in different states.

“Be back by eleven,” his mother demanded. “Spend some time with your family, for once, James, your father and Margaret don’t see enough of you.”
“That’s because dad never takes a break from his firm and Margaret is at some program so she can skip a grade in high school, it’s not me who’s not available. If you want to talk in those terms, bring up Steve. He’s the one in Germany working in a pottery studio because he’s trying to ‘find himself.’”
“Your brother is having a hard time at medical school, he deserves a break,”
James’ mother stated, giving James a hard look and opened her mouth to launch
into another speech about how James needed to apply himself. James, however, knowing the signs, intervened.

“Right, right, I’ll be off then, see you tonight.” With that statement, fired off like a machine gun, James made a break for the door, managing to escape before his mother started in on him. Jumping down the steps, James stretched to prepare himself for his trek to Becky’s. It really was a trek, too. His father had designed and built the house his family lived in on the top of a very tall, rocky and almost inaccessible hill. After a few years though, a community had sprung up at the base of the hill, and in it lived Peter and Becky.

After finishing his stretches, James began the ten-minute jog down the hill to his friends. As the trees and rocks on the side of the road flew past him, a bit of a feeling of peace came over him. He liked the outdoors in small quantities, and a jog like this was perfect for him, since Peter would drive him back home. However, rounding a corner, he skidded to a halt. “Well crap,” he stated, looking before him. When he’d been picked up from college, his father had mentioned that some people were planning on building a house below theirs on the road, but James hadn’t seen it; he was asleep for the rest of the ride home. Now, in front of him were several large machines resting on one side of the road, ready to break up the rocks and clear a path so a new house could be built. The machines were all powered down, the crews apparently still out to lunch. There was room for him to pass by, but he had to slow to a walk. Passing and inspecting, James noticed a pile of broken up rocks at the side of the road, their size ranging from those the size of a pebble to those the size of him.

Knowing he could afford the time, James walked towards it, and began to sift through the base of the pile, looking for anything interesting. Moving up the pile a few feet, one of the rocks caught his attention. Strangely round, it looked like a geode or something. The size of a golf ball, he picked it up and blew off some of the dirt and dust, scrutinizing it carefully. It was, for all accounts, just a rock, albeit a very round one. So, in order to see if it was in fact a geode, he banged it against a diagonal slab next to him to see if it would open. It didn’t. He then tried a little harder. Still nothing. Taking in a deep breath, he slammed the rock down with enough force for some of the smaller pebbles at his feet to give way. This time, it did break open, and from one side, a little semi-translucent orb appeared out of the stone. James looked at it closely. It looked almost like a pearl or something to him.

Looking around him, James half expected something evil to appear, since this reminded him of some of the horror movies he had seen, and a firm believer that if the person was dumb enough to get in the situation where a homicidal maniac or monster was after him or her, it was just evolution weeding out the week, and nothing to be upset about. He’d written a paper on the subject as an essay in English, and gotten a grudging ‘A’ out of his teacher for it. So, cautious to any trans-dimensional demons or whatever, he began to pry the little orb, about the size of a marble, out of the rock. Like his attempts to break the rock around it, he ended up having to use a lot of force to remove it, destabilizing his footing even more in the process. Tossing away the rock case, he fiddled with his little orb. It was quite cool; Becky and Peter would probably get a kick out of it.

“Oh crap,” James exclaimed, Becky and Peter! Checking his watch, he groaned. He was going to be late, he liked to show up before Peter and pretend to flirt with Becky a bit until he arrived. Twisting around to take a step, he remembered a moment afterwards that he was on a pile or rocks, which helped to remind him by partially giving way beneith his grounded foot. Trying to correct his balance, he over leaned forward, and with an “Oh Fu-“ fell forward, and out of his universe.