by T S Wieland
The wrinkles in Otto’s face folded into a look of annoyance. “You saw her and didn’t think to say anything? A warning even for her would have been polite. Your manners are slipping, kid.”
He shook his head and placed the communicator in his lap. He turned his attention back to Ally, continuing to eat the fruit.
“Sorry about that,” Otto said. “I would have warned you about the ARC if I had known you were on the stairs.”
“The ARC?” asked Ally, confused.
“That machine you saw downstairs with the bright light and spinning circles. Stands for Artificial Rosen bridge Contrivance. Or ARC for short.”
“Artificial what?”
“It’s a doorway. A machine that opens wormholes or connections between worlds we can step through. Pretty neat, uh?” said Otto around the food in his mouth.
Ally stared at him as he chewed.
“Worlds?” she asked feeling confused.
Otto finished off the plate of fruit and placed the plate down on the floor next to him. He wiped his hands together and leaned forward in the chair.
“Guess this is always a bit confusing at first. I suppose I should just come right out and just tell ya,” replied Otto with a deep sigh. “You’re not in . . . wherever you come from anymore, kiddo.”
Ally stared at him and raised her eyebrows. “Wait… what do you mean? Where am I?”
“Ugh… I’m still no good at explaining this. How about this—have you ever seen the movie, The Wizard of Oz?”
Ally nodded, thinking whatever Otto was trying to tell her was making less sense than before.
“Excellent. Let me put it this way. You're not in Kansas anymore. You’re not in whatever city, town, or wherever you came from anymore.”
“You mean Philadelphia?”
“Yeah, exactly,” replied Otto as he sat back in the chair.
“You're not in Philadelphia anymore, kiddo.”
“Okay . . . where am I, then?” asked Ally, crossing her arms. Otto rubbed the back of his neck as the handheld in his lap began to beep again. He paused his explanation and tapped a button on the screen.
“Either way, she was going to find out about it eventually. Hold up a second,” said the younger man over the communicator, the rushing sound of wind overpowering his voice. “I think I see some tracks. They must not be far. I’ll get back to you.”
“Still rude, kid. Alright. Keep me posted,” responded Otto.
Otto, once again uneasy in his seat, leaned towards Ally. “Sorry about that. Okay, this may sound a bit strange at first but stay with me.”
Ally sat up from the couch, ready to finally get a straight answer.
“You’re not in Philadelphia anymore. You're in a place between Philadelphia.”
“Between . . . Philadelphia?” asked Ally with an even more confused look. Her patience was growing ever thinner.
“You’re in a world between your Philadelphia and an endless number of Philadelphia’s both past and future. You're in another universe or world, you could say. One that stands on the outskirts of all the others.”
Ally sat back on the couch and chuckled. “That’s not possible…”
Otto smiled at her with a fiendish grin. “Aha… I’m glad you disagree.”
He stood up from his chair and looked to his left at the clock resting on a bookshelf across the room. “Keep your eye on the clock on the bookshelf.”
Ally looked over to her right and watched the old clock tick away. Otto reached down to the floor and picked the plate up off the floor. He held it in his left hand, gazed at his watch, and waited. Ally watched the clock skeptically, seeing it tick away each second as normal. As the second hand approached the forty-second mark, it began to slow down ever so slightly, each second taking longer than the last. Ally’s skeptic expression began to sink into a perplexing stare.
Otto threw the plate towards the wall like a discus at the clock on the shelf as it ticked slowly, each second seeming to take almost a full minute.
Ally braced to watch the plate hit the wall. She closed her eyes awaiting the sound of a loud crash. The moment came a went with not a sound. Ally opened her eyes again. To her surprise, the plate was stopped midair. It hovered above the ground, moving so slowly she could hardly tell it was moving at all. She turned back to the clock on the fireplace. The second hand appeared stuck at the nine-minute mark.
“See?” said Otto.
“How did you—”
Ally stood, the sheet still wrapped around her. She began waving her hand around the plate feeling for any wires or special tricks that Otto could have used to fool her, refusing to accept her reality. There was nothing. She could find no explanation for the plate’s suspension. The only logical explanation was… he was right.
“Welcome to Asphodel, kiddo. A world between worlds, where time and space are broken,” said Otto. Ally watched the plate in disbelief.
“This is . . . unreal. How are we still talking, then? Shouldn’t we have stopped, too?”
“Time hasn’t stopped; time and space have just become distanced from each other. Like a rubber band being stretched out, one end being space, while the other being time. The space that second hand on the clock is moving through has slowed down, yet time continues to pass. We are moving as slowly as the plate along with everything else in this room. We just don’t notice as our minds and bodies adjust to the change. Kind of like staring at an illusion for too long or focusing on a puzzle so hard, you lose track of time. The fun part is, just like a rubber band, when one end snaps to catch up...”
The plate sped back up and whizzed over Ally’s shoulder faster than before. She ducked out of the way as it slammed into the bookshelf next to the clock, shattering into several pieces across the living room. Ally jumped in surprise. She looked over at Otto’s blank expression.
“Whoops . . . I was planning to grab that before that happened. Anyway, like a rubber band, space has to catch up with time, so everything speeds up in order to return to normal.”
Ally walked back over and sat down on the couch, a look of shock still in her eyes.
Otto looked down at the shattered plate on the floor. “Vila’s going to kill me.”
He sat back down in his chair. “Magic tricks aside, there’s your proof. I’m sorry to say, but you're in another world, kiddo. One that rests between all the others, broken and dysfunctional. Somewhere between the voided space of all others. Kind of like a limbo world or purgatory, some see it as. Everyone here just calls it Asphodel.”
Ally took a moment, struggling to accept what she was hearing. “How did I get here then?” she finally asked.
“We saved you. Well, Sem saved you, but I helped. Can’t let him take all the credit.”
“Saved me from what?”
“From the worst fate of all…”
Otto stood up from his chair and began wandering around the room searching for a piece of paper to write on. He picked up a leather journal from off the floor, tore out a sheet from the back of it, and held it on the journals cover to write on. Otto sat back down in his chair using one of the pens from his pocket to write with. He drew several small circles on the page then held it towards Ally to look at.
“You see, around us is an endless number of other worlds, such as yours or mine. Worlds that are just like bubbles floating through the air with no clear direction. In them are people, like you and I, living on versions of Earth, going on with their lives as they always do.”
Otto began drawing two larger circles on the page, surrounded by smaller circles.
“Asphodel is in the middle of all these bubbles. A voided world placed outside all the others, where universes that failed to form fell through the gaps in the cosmos and the remnants of destroyed worlds were left to settle. For all we know, it could even have been its own world. One that never matured or ever fully formed.”
Otto drew two bubbles next to each other on the page, one labeled Ally’s World and the other labeled Other Worl
d.
“Sometimes, these worlds run into each other by accident or because of large energy bursts that are man-made through wars and conflict, or simply by accident. And when that happens, people from one world sometimes get dragged from their own world to another.”
Otto drew the same two large bubbles again, only this time their sides touched, and an arrow pointed from one bubble to the other.
“A person, such as yourself, can get caught in the wrong place at the wrong time when these worlds touch, and as a result, they get dragged away from their home world to another. That’s what happened to you.”
Ally looked up at him. “I was pulled in to another world?”
“Yes. Your world came into contact with another, and as a result, you were pulled through a small, one-way tunnel bridging the two.”
“So how did I get here, then?”
“That’s where we came in. When someone passes over to another world, one that they don’t belong in, that world becomes unstable and ready to burst or pop just like a bubble.”
Ally gazed up at him. “Why?”
“Simple. Each world has a specific number of objects or set amount of mass within it. Everything and everyone as a whole make up a single world. If you add more, or in this case someone who doesn’t belong there, it becomes unstable and can burst.”
“Like blowing too much air into a balloon?”
“Exactly. Kind of like having a cup of coffee that’s filled to the brim. Add even a little bit too much, and it’ll spill over and burn your hand,” replied Otto with a smile, clearly glad that Ally understood. He drew a single circle on the page with a series of lines projecting from it, and a similar bubble made from dotted lines with the word Asphodel written inside it.
“Our job was to find you using that machine downstairs—the ARC—and bring you back here where you’d be safe. Back to a world with no limits or boundaries. Lucky for us, when a world is about to burst, it sends out a distress signal that we lock onto and intercept. We then open a door or gateway with the ARC, go in, hurry to find the person we are searching for, grab them, and get back here before anyone notices.”
Ally lay back on the couch and placed the ice pack on her head again. “Ugh, I think my head hurts even more now. This is… insane.”
“Sorry… I know it’s difficult to take in. It took me a while to understand it myself. A few people never understand.”
“I still can’t believe it though,” she replied as she sprawled across the couch.
“Heh, I wouldn’t expect you to believe me all at once. It’s something that usually takes a while to absorb. Such things are beyond my knowledge most days.”
Otto put the pen back into his shirt pocket. He then looked at the journal in his hand for a moment with a curious fixation.
Ally turned and looked over at him. “So, when can I go home?”
Otto’s handheld beeped even faster than before. He set the journal down in his lap, then stared down at his communicator and stood up. He handed the paper over to Ally.
“Hang tight for a minute, kiddo. I’ll be right back,” he said. He strode back into the entrance hall and down the stairs to the basement again.
Ally looked up at the ceiling. Her head still pounded from the pain of falling down the stairs, alongside the new headache that stemmed from trying to imagine herself caught between this world and an infinite horizon of others. Like the blank space between the words of a book or the endless void between the stars in the night sky.
She could hear the machine downstairs echo through the entire house. Out of the corner of her eye, a bright light shone in the hall, casting shadows across the room.
The light quickly faded along with the sound. She continued to stare up at the ceiling, holding the paper in her hand. She imagined a vast swarm of bubbles floating through the air, dancing gracefully and sporadically in all directions. She considered that one was a vast universe she’d once inhabited, blissfully unaware of the grand worlds around her until one particular universe collided with her own. And then, just like that, she was gone.
She heard footsteps coming up the stairs. She sat up, clutching the sheet to her chest.
“Almost there,” said the young man as he reached the top of the steps. He had returned from his journey, along with a new houseguest. A fragile, elderly man, wrapped in an orange blanket, carefully and slowly walked into the entrance hall, holding the young man’s arm for support.
“You need any help?” asked Otto as he followed behind them, making sure the old man didn’t fall back down the steps.
“Nah, I think we got it. I’ll give him a hydration pack upstairs and let him sleep,” said the young man.
Crossing the entryway, the young man continued to help the old man up the next flight of stairs. Otto watched as they climbed, slowly taking each step.
Ally rested her head back against the sofa, lifting the page up to her face and looking through the drawings. Otto walked up behind her and stood at the end of the sofa.
“Do you like pancakes?”
Ally pulled the page away from her face and looked up at him. “Sure, I guess.”
“Wonderful. You’ll love my pancake recipe in that case. My daughters always raved about my pancakes. Just relax for right now and keep that cold pack on your head. I’ll make a batch for everyone later.”
Ally nodded and smiled at him. Otto turned around and walked across the room. He peered up the stairs, waiting for the young man to come back down.
A never-ending list of questions flooded Ally’s mind. Where had her clothes gone? When could she go home? Was her dad okay, and had she been away so long she’d missed her chance to fly home to see him? How long had she been unconscious? Did anyone even realize she was gone? She wanted to ask all her questions, right now. But she knew, as a guest in the home of these two men, who had apparently saved her life, she would have to wait patiently.
Ally heard the sound of the young man coming back down the stairs.
“Everything good up there?” asked Otto from the bottom of the steps.
“Yeah. We’re going to need more hydration packs, though. I just used the last one.”
“I’ll pick up more after my meeting later.”
Ally sat up to watch her two rescuers walk into the living room. The young man picked away at the sand in his ears. His goggles still covered his eyes, and the scarf remained wrapped around his nose as he stood in the foyer.
“Ally, this is Sem. Sem is the one who found you and brought you back here to Asphodel,” Otto said as he walked into the room.
Ally stood up from the couch and held the sheet around her, embarrassed that she was still undressed.
Sem walked into the living room, hands still digging at the sand in his ears. He leaned forward with his head level to the floor and began to shake like a dog. As he shook vigorously from side to side, sand fell from his shoulders and hair onto the floor.
“Really? You couldn’t have done that downstairs? Now we have to clean up here, too?”
“Like we ever clean.” Sem stood back upright.
Sem pulled the scarf down from his face, exposing his fine-trimmed goatee and jaw. He lifted his goggles from his eyes up to his forehead, revealing his strangely discolored eyes once more. Ally was transfixed, thinking how she had never seen anyone with blue and brown eyes before.
She reached her hand out to shake his, almost losing her grip on the sheet. Her face turned cherry red with embarrassment.
“Thank you for saving me,” she said to him.
Sem shook her hand lazily with four fingers, as though he wasn’t interested in the conversation, still brushing the sand from his clothes.
“Yeah, no problem,” he said, pulling the scarf from his neck and throwing it on the couch.
“You call that a handshake?” asked Otto.
“What? I have sand all over me,” he replied. “I didn’t want to get her dirty. Women hate dirt.”
Ally glared at him with a disapprovin
g expression. She had worked with her dad on greasy car engines since she was a child. Dirt might worry some women, but not her. “It’s fine. I’m not afraid of a little dirt.”
“Can you help her up the stairs?” asked Otto.
“I’m sure she’s capable,” replied Sem as he patted more sand from his shoulders.
“She just fell down the basement stairs because you didn’t say anything. Least you could do is make up for it.”
Otto smacked Sem on the head. More sand fell from Sem’s shoulders to the floor. Ally chuckled watching the two men argue in almost a slap stick fashion.
“You're just making more of a mess to clean,” said Sem.
“I should make you clean it. First, help her upstairs.”
“Fine.”
“Get more rest, kiddo, and we can talk later,” said Otto.
Ally nodded. She walked over to the stairs as Sem stared at Otto. Sem followed behind her, still patting the sand from his vest.
“Vila made us lunch again,” said Otto as he walked across the hall into the dining room.
“Sandwiches?” asked Sem.
“Yeah, chicken salad.”
“I’m guessing you ate all the fruit, then?”
Otto turned the corner into the next room and shouted. “Yup.”
Sem huffed to himself as Ally approached the bottom of the staircase. He turned in the direction in which Otto had disappeared. “I should make you leave next time while I sit around and eat fruit,” he shouted.
“You know that’s not my job,” replied Otto.
“Need any help?” asked Sem, ready to carry Ally up the steps.
“No, I’m alright.” Ally lumbered up the first few steps.
As she reached the sixth step, the sheet once more slipped beneath her feet. She stumbled, trying to cling to the railing. Sem reached out and caught her under the arms.
“Here,” he said, picking her up and cradling her in his arms. Ally remembered the blue-armored figure from before, as she was lying in the dirt, half-unconscious. Despite being less than impressed with her humble rescuer’s attitude, she still felt the same warm, safe, comforting feeling from before. As he carried her, she was glad to finally see him face to face.