Portal Zero

by Patin, Eddie

“Access the power grid!” the director shouted in his thick accent. “Get the power back online! We can’t control it!”

  Chad realized that he was sitting on the floor. He felt the concrete under his hands, and forced himself to his feet.

  “I can’t!!” a man yelled. “It was a fucking EMP! Everything is dead!!”

  Somewhere up ahead of Chad would be his tripod, camera, and the little desk with his laptop, as well as his other bags stacked up on the floor near there. Behind him was a wall. Somewhere in between was his folding chair. Standing, Chad suddenly felt dizzy, completely disoriented in the dark, like he was floating around in the void of space. Only the bottoms of his feet touched his surroundings, and he had almost no idea of where anything was…

  He backed up with tiny, shuffling steps until he felt his shoulders hit the cool concrete wall. His right arm contacted something that moved, and he realized that it was one of the soldiers.

  “Chad!!” Melinda screamed. “Chaaaad!!”

  He could hear her voice somewhere ahead of him; below him. She must have been on the floor.

  “I’m here!” he shouted. His voice sounded a little funny inside his head, like being underwater.

  Yep. His ears were fucked up.

  “Chad! Where are y—” Chad heard the clatter of his tripod falling over. The equipment crashed to the floor. “Shit!!” Melinda shouted.

  He heard her start crying.

  The scientists were all in a flurry of trying to fix the problems—whatever was going on—when everyone suddenly quieted down as a dark purple light bloomed down in the front of the room...

  “What?!” Fruedenstein’s voice said from somewhere in the darkness.

  A soft, nebula-like blob of purple light convulsed and twirled slowly at the front of the room.

  In the portal, Chad thought.

  Portal Zero.

  As Chad’s eyes adjusted, he could see everyone staring at the portal in the dim, purple glow. The half-dozen scientists and the director were all paused amidst the chaos of trying to do … whatever they were trying to do with their dead computers, and the soldiers stood staring, holding their guns, three of them paused while fiddling around with what looked like flashlights attached to the weapon barrels.

  Everyone gasped as the purple blob of light suddenly brightened and stretched out, lashing out with little tendrils of lightning to the inner edges of the portal’s ring and latching on.

  Chad flinched as the portal sizzled, popped, and came to life, stretching a strange field of light across the entirety of the inner ring, like a round trampoline—like a drum!

  Then, the film of light across the ring—was it a portal now?—stretched back, toward the back wall, as if a monstrous hand punched it inward, stretching and warping it deeper and deeper, further and further back, until Chad was sure that the effect extended beyond the concrete behind it...

  “It’s working!” the director cried.

  “What do we do?!” someone asked.

  “Quiet!” Freudenstein snapped.

  Chad could see Melinda on her hands and knees, tangled up in the tripod up ahead of him, watching intensely.

  The growing portal tunnel suddenly picked up in speed, delving deeper and deeper into … into nowhere! The dancing corridor punched through space-time and made Chad dizzy as he saw it retreat what seemed like miles into the darkness…

  Its distance, like looking into infinite mirrors reflecting into each other, was vast, but it kept going, and his brain kept trying to comprehend it, further and further down the rabbit hole...

  He couldn’t even make sense of it anymore!

  Chad suddenly had the impression that Portal Zero was like a wormhole. Some sort of twisting, infinitely long thing, that extended farther than his mind could reason with. Its walls convulsed and wriggled, like an unending tube, flailing around on the waves of the universe…

  And then, the end of it, that far wall of the tunnel so incomprehensibly far away, suddenly lit up, and the distant bright spot came hurtling back to them!

  The wormhole tightened itself up again with blinding speed, and when the bright image of the science lab in New York settled in on the other side of the metal ring, everyone reeled in shock, as if the image flying toward them wouldn’t suddenly stop.

  It was like hitting the brakes on a fast moving car.

  Everyone exclaimed sounds of surprise!

  “Fuck!” a soldier muttered next to Chad.

  Chad staggered on his feet.

  For a while, they all just stared into the scene inside the ring.

  It was kind of like a mirror image of how things were here—a similar utilitarian lab full of computers, many of them pitched over onto the floor. Several scientists stood in various states of disarray, crouching in fear, eyes wide and staring back at Chad and the others in Geneva. There was a pile of camera equipment off to one side, scattered around on the floor, and Chad thought that he could barely make out Katherine Hall, the New York correspondent. She was sitting on the floor in the corner of the room, looking out to the Geneva team, her arms wrapped around her knees and her long, blonde hair hiding most of her face...

  “It worked!!” Freudenstein cried. “It worked—the portal is a success!”

  “That’s definitely them in New York,” one of the scientists said.

  “Well, fuck a duck!” one of the soldiers said quietly behind everyone.

  Chad finally made himself move, and stepped ahead in the light of the portal to help Melinda to her feet. His ears felt a little more normal now, and he could hear the sounds of peoples’ shoes scraping the ground, the soldiers’ vests and gear shifting as they moved around.

  “Hey, my light’s dead!” one of them said.

  Melinda’s face was a mask of horror when she looked up at him, her makeup smeared by streaks of tears, her hair tousled.

  “Chad!” she cried, and let him pull her to her feet.

  “Mine too,” another soldier said.

  Then, the light of the portal flickered, and everyone stared at it again.

  Like a scene from a nightmare, the vision of New York tore away from the ring at the edges, and plummeted back down the tube into the depths of the wormhole. The bright light of the stable portal faded, and was replaced with the red and purple light of the tumultuous portal tunnel walls, tossing around like a ship in a storm.

  Chad stumbled back to the concrete wall again, his stomach suddenly full of icy fear and his knees feeling weak. He didn’t notice when he dropped Melinda’s arm.

  “What’s happening?” he cried.

  “It’s reverting back to its long state!” the director exclaimed. “How is this happening? Why?!”

  “It’s unstable!” another scientist shouted. “The portal to New York was only stable for a few seconds!”

  “Be ready!” Freudenstein yelled. “We don’t know what it’s going to do!”

  “Ready for what?!” one of the team replied. “We’re still dead in the water from the electro-magnetic pulse! What are we gonna do??”

  The wormhole roared with spinning energy from across the universe, blowing another gust of wind through the room. Chad squinted his eyes.

  “We must maintain control!” Freudenstein shouted. “Control! Control!”

  Chad heard the clattering of the soldiers on his right moving their rifles around.

  As the wormhole stretched out toward infinity again, Chad saw the bright image of New York flutter in its distance. Closer, farther. Drift up closer to the ring again, then fly impossibly far away…

  Just then, there was another thunderclap, its volume insulated because it was inside the wormhole, and Chad gasped as he saw the shadow of long, thin claws punch through the tunnel’s side, and a ragged opening of some sort was torn into the tube, its edges sizzling with arcing, red electricity!

  “What the fuck is that??” one of the soldiers cried.

  The tear in the sidewall of the wormhole convulsed and moved closer and farther away, jus
t like the portal to New York, tossed around on the violent seas of whatever space lay in between...

  With another muted thunderclap, Chad saw another rift torn into the wall on the other side, across from the first, sending red electricity cascading toward both ends of the tunnel!

  The shadow of a long hand—with many more digits than hands were supposed to have—slowly reached out into the tunnel like the shadow of a vampire. The light of the New York scene far in the distance made it easier to see the sharp points, the claws, at the tips of the three fingers…

  “Oh my god!” a scientist cried. “Oh my god!”

  And with amazing speed, two shadowy humanoid forms with extra-long limbs pulled themselves from the sparking rifts, and began barreling down the wormhole.

  Straight toward the room…

  Straight toward Chad and the others…

  8 - Kayleen Lugo

  Portland, OR

  Despite a few whimpers in the dark, there was no sound but the constant rush of rain outside….

  Kayleen stood with her beer in one hand, her other hand clutching the table she was leaning against before the power outage.

  Black.

  Total dark.

  Within a few seconds, the many students in the darkness launched into a cacophony of questions, confusion, and disappointment.

  “Hang on, hang on!” a guy shouted over everyone’s cries from the football team couch. “It’s just a power outage! It might come back on in a few seconds!”

  “Party’s over!” someone whined.

  “How do we get outta here?!” someone else cried.

  People complained and laughed and grunted all over, bumping into each other and furniture as they all moved around in the darkness.

  Kayleen stood still.

  Reaching back with her hands in the dark, feeling the wooden surface of the table, she put her beer down, and held the table with both hands. It would be better to wait out the initial craziness of everyone trying to push against everyone else to get outside—especially with at least half of everybody being drunk...

  “Hey, my phone!” someone said in the dark.

  “Mine too!” someone else said.

  Of course, Kayleen thought. The obvious solution was to use her phone to see…

  As other people complained and bustled around in the pitch black living room, Kayleen pulled her phone out of her pocket and hit the unlock button.

  Nothing.

  “Huh,” she said to herself, pressing the button again, then again. She held the button down for a few seconds, but nothing happened. “Mine’s dead too.”

  “Hang on, guys,” someone said, not too far from her. “There’s a back door—just a sec…”

  After Kayleen detected a lot of movement ahead of her in the dark, she heard some clicks and the sound of a door moving, then, she could suddenly see a little more. Outside, Portland was still raining—a constant downpour—but the very dark and dreary night of the outdoors still offered a little more light that the pitch black interior of the house.

  A crowd of people herded for the door, students stepping one by one out into the rain.

  Kayleen joined them.

  Once she pulled her hood back up over her head and stepped outside, she immediately felt much better under the open sky, even if the open sky was full of cold rain.

  “This sucks,” someone said near her. Others murmured their agreement and complained, the group of them gradually spreading out from the door as more people continued making their way outside.

  After the disorientation of the power outage at the party, Kayleen didn’t bother sticking around. It was raining, and cold, and she didn’t want to hang out in some random neighborhood for any longer.

  Walking back to the college on the other side of the highway, she realized once she crossed the 405 that one sound she should normally hear on a rainy night—the sound of cars swishing through the wet streets as they passed by in the rain—was oddly absent...

  Staring out onto the highway itself was a very strange experience.

  The highway looked empty. Dead. No cars or trucks at all.

  Off in the distance, it looked like there might have been cars on the highway—they were just shadows in the darkness and the rain, but Kayleen couldn’t tell for sure.

  What was going on here?

  Once she arrived back at the dorms, Kayleen was a little surprised to see that the power in all of the college buildings seemed to be out as well. Students and other people wandered around in the dark streets with raincoats and umbrellas, first years wandered around in the halls and stairwells of Ondine.

  Carefully, and mostly from memory, Kayleen made her way up the stairs and back to her room. She didn’t even bother trying the elevator. Aside from some faint light coming in through the windows from the dark night outside, the dorm building was pitch black, just like the party house had been.

  The hall on her floor was mostly empty—students living there were mostly in their rooms or down below in the common area talking about the power outage. Her wet shoes padded along the carpet, her hand grazing along the wall, as she listened to the muffled sound of the rain outside.

  When she thought she had reached her door, Kayleen felt along the wooden and glass surface for the little rainbow flag that Hannah had tacked up in the center. She felt the fabric with her fingers, and, satisfied, unlocked the door and stepped inside.

  “Hannah?” she asked, the volume of her voice in the near-silence surprising her.

  Nothing.

  Not here, Kayleen thought.

  Heading over to the wall-shelf next to the head of her bed, Kayleen reached out and found her flashlight, being careful to avoid knocking it over in the dark.

  She clicked it on.

  Nothing.

  “What?” she said in the quiet darkness.

  Clicka, clicka, clicka.

  The flashlight was dead.

  Kayleen sat on her bed for a while, holding the flashlight and staring out the window at the dark and rainy street below. She saw the shadows of people moving in the black, wet night.

  No lights. Not anywhere…

  In fact, there was something different about the rainy night, other than the weird fact that there was no electricity and no lights anywhere. Sometimes, the rainy weather would mist so heavily that it seemed like a fog.

  But usually not in the middle of a heavy rain...

  There was a fog was rolling in now, despite the steady precipitation. Even though it was really dark, she could see that the fog was the thickest to the north, and she thought that she could even see … tendrils … of fog at the edges—yep, that was the best way to describe it. Tendrils that reached and pulled the fog across the streets like a blanket dragged out with fishing line. Amazing that she could detect that in such pervasive darkness! she thought.

  Weird fog...

  The people down below didn’t seem to mind.

  With nothing more to do, Kayleen kicked her shoes off, tossed her rain jacket through the pitch black room toward the door, and lay down to go to sleep.

  Across space and time, Kayleen felt it grab hold of her in her dream.

  She stood in darkness, surrounded by a swirling galaxy—a near infinity of burning stars rotating quickly and slow at the same time, all watching her while drifting powerfully in indifference…

  The feeling of it, like molten bands of gold, wove down and wrapped around her from all directions!

  “The mist?” she asked, her mouth feeling slow and long. “The fog,”

  “No,” the woman said, her voice legion, dark and forceful. “They are something else…”

  “What do I do?”

  Kayleen looked down, and saw her feet rooted in the darkness, her toes stretched out long, pierced down into the pitch black floor of the universe. She looked at her hands, and saw her fingers stretching out, longer, changing color—

  Mid-tones, she thought. Core shadow.

  Turning dark red, her first digits elon
gated and curved into large knives…

  With a gasp, Kayleen woke up, still fully dressed from the night before.

  The white light of morning came through the window in sick shafts, reminding her of the power outage.

  The party. The rain. The fog!

  Kayleen sat up straight in her bed. That’s right—it was pitch black in the dorm last night, and her phone and flashlight didn’t work. Looking over the edge of the bed, she saw her Vans discarded on the floor, still wet, and her clump of a rain jacket sat in the middle of the room, halfway between her and the door.

  Looking at Hannah’s bed, Kayleen saw her roommate sleeping soundly, wrapped in blankets, her Mohawk folded over against her pillow.

  She must have come in late, and I didn’t wake up, she thought.

  Kayleen stood, stretched, and walked over to the window.

  “Ugh,” she said, looking at a film of clear slime all over the outside glass. “What the hell is that?”

  9 - Arthur Kline

  Colorado Springs, CO

  Arthur leaned into a left turn onto Montebello, and let the slight decline of the street carry him forward at a good speed, the cool wind in his face bringing tears to his eyes.

  He should have worn some glasses. Sunglasses, shooting glasses ... something.

  After passing a few houses, making his way toward Academy near the post office, he slowed to a stop when he saw a middle-aged man standing in the street. The older dude was wearing a bathrobe with a coat over it, and was looking around the neighborhood, squinting up at the sky. Arthur recognized the man from the few times he’d seen him working outside, his home just a few houses down from the corner. He didn’t know who the guy was, but he passed the house every day on the way to work.

  When the man saw Arthur approaching, he waved.

  “Howdy, neighbor,” the man said.

  “Hey,” Arthur said, pulling up to a stop. “Is your power out, too?”

  The man nodded. His hair was messy from sleeping, and his moustache stuck out away from his lip. The guy must have just woken up, like Arthur did.

  “It is,” he said. “This is weird. I haven’t seen the utility company or anyone out here. See that car there?” He pointed at a Toyota sedan that had drifted toward the side of the road, but wasn’t parked in a proper place. Arthur nodded. “When the power went out yesterday, that guy’s car just died, right there in the road. He coasted to a stop right there and couldn’t get it running again, so eventually walked home.”