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.