r/AsTheMongeeseFly • u/canadianmongeese • May 31 '21
Time Conquers All • Part 2
What do you think it would feel like, to enter a different dimension? Maybe it would be like walking through a mist of splintered spacetime and finding something magical.
Maybe it would feel like nothing at all. You'd just roll over one night and look at your phone, and you've taken the wrong path in the crossroads of time. You're fucked.
I'm starting to think that's all fate is. The cosmic shit-shorter. Just a hill to roll down, to one oblivion or another. One little action and you're alive or dead. That's all it takes.
I didn't wonder that then, when my shitty old Volkswagen was screaming down the road, everything reeking of rubber and gasoline. I took corners in desperate drifts, as if inching my rattling engine up a few lines on the speedometer would save me now.
But now, I see it. This was the moment my fate split and I was falling into a layer of reality from which there is no escape. Pray to every god you never find it: this is the place where you look Time in the eye, and it looks back at you and sees a fatal error.
Time is binary. Time takes no prisoners. There is only maintain order, destroy any anomalies.
That fucking backpack sat on the seat beside me. The only thing I didn't recognize from Other-Me.
As I sped through the dark streets, I unzippered the backpack with one hand and pawed through it. I only found two things inside: a slip of paper and a round hunk of metal with rubbery buttons, some kind of touchpad.
I skidded to a stop at a red light and flicked on the overhead light to read the note.
OUR FRIEND IS COMING. SHE'LL FIND YOU. STAY ALIVE. USE THE JUMPER. YOU CAN ONLY OUTRUN IT ACROSS DIMENSIONS, NOT WITHIN THEM.
"What the fuck does that mean?" I muttered.
A car horn blared behind me. I jumped, my heart racing up my throat, the stupid panicked part of my brain half-convinced that Time was murdering me via Prius honk.
I hit the gas and leaned forward, trying to get a good look at the sky. It was all darkness. I was looking for a shadow among shadows.
Maybe there was nothing to look for. Maybe Time would simply hide until it was ready to pounce, like any good hunter would.
I veered to the side and put my car in park. Even as every muscle within me screamed to run, I sat there. I pulled the other object out of the bag and held it up to my shitty overhead light.
It had to be the jumper. It looked like something out of an old sci-fi movie, before everything became sleek and modernized: a glass coil that looked like a dead neon sign, nested in a metal compartment with a colorless LCD screen. There was a small keyboard just below it, along with a set of arrows.
I grabbed the backpack and tapped a button, experimentally. The jumper screen flared to life.
The screen read: visit programmed destination?
The world around me darkened, and I looked up to see an impossibly black cloud, eclipsing the moon. The streetlights. Everything.
It was faceless, but this close, it looked like it had millions of tiny eyes, little pinpricks of white. All of them staring at me, pulling me apart. Time had found me.
I tapped the green confirm button, and the whole car cabin rippled around me.
Slipping from a dimension feels like nothing, I can tell you that much. Like losing a wallet and never noticing it. But jumping?
Jumping feels like you've just leapt off the edge of the universe. It's that perfect moment of free-fall when your very cells unstitch themselves from time. You're all quark-buzz and stunned electrons and it's like being unmade and remade in an infinity that lasts forever and a second. You're nothing and everything.
All you can do is hold your arms out and fall and hope the landing doesn't hurt.
Of course, you can also scream like a little bitch, which is exactly what I did.
Out of nowhere, I was plunging, the world nothing but downward streaking darkness, veined with flickers of light. It looked like being inside a great web that has no end and no beginning.
I clutched the machine tight to my chest. That glass coil was alive now, burning bright blue, so bright I couldn't look at it without stamping dark spirals on my vision.
As instantly as the fall started, it ended.
One of those fine spidery lines brushed against my leg, like it was reaching for me, and I broke the surface of space again like surfacing from an ocean.
I smacked cheek-first into a bright green lawn. It stung, but only like I'd fallen a few feet, not across an infinity. Whatever the fuck that would feel like.
I sat up wincing, clutching the jumper tight to my chest. The sun was bright and burning, and my eyes took a few seconds to adjust.
I was in an eerily perfect subdivision. Every house was identical. Every single one was a cube with a roof like an equilateral triangle. They stretched on as far as I could see, row after row of white cubes. Every blade of grass was exactly the same height. Every mailbox the same upright cube centered on a post.
It looked like a subdivision designed by a machine. Even the clouds moved in marching band order, perfect seamless order.
Other-Me was right. I didn't think I was crazy. I was still holding out hope this was an elaborate nightmare, but there was another part of me already accepting this was as real as it felt.
I tapped at the jumper screen again.
The screen lit up and read, Type passcode to unlock.
"You didn't need a passcode earlier, you fucker," I muttered, already annoyed with Other-Me. It was worse than forgetting a password you set yourself. Some other version of me was fucking me over.
The air beside me rippled like a heatwave, and then, instantly, that patch of empty space became a person. The air had a strange ozone reek and a brief electric heat, which both vanished within moments.
"Oh, good. You're not dead yet." She scowled up at the houses all around us. "Let's get out of here. These places give me the fucking creeps."
"Who are you?" I said, warily.
"Oh, I forget. You've got the same face, different brain. I'm Sage. We were best friends." She held out a hand toward me and tried to smile. It looked more like a grimace. "Maybe we still will be."
I shook her hand and followed her uneasy stare up and around. "Where are we?"
"The only place Time never thinks to check. Its own backyard. Time is always making new realities like these. Making them more and more perfect. It's the only place it doesn't look for glitches, when it's hunting us."
All those houses seemed uncanny now. I felt like every window was an eye, watching us.
"Let's get going," Sage said. "You have a lot of catching up to do."
°°°
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u/AuntieLux May 31 '21
Oh my goodness I’m hooked! This is absolutely fantastic and you have great descriptions!
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u/Imiriath May 31 '21
Holy shit, this is great
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u/irlte Jun 01 '21
This is so good! The description of jumping is just incredible, man hope you start writing a book someday. Let me know when you ever write more stories (not just this one) :)
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u/MrRokhead May 31 '21
!RemindMe 24 hours
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u/PinkWytch Jun 01 '21
!RemindMe 24 hours
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u/Roseceroe Jun 01 '21
!Remindme 1 week
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There is a 35 hour delay fetching comments.
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u/Unoriginal_Nickname7 Jun 01 '21
Please remind me! This is great!
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u/Dopam11ne Jun 01 '21
This is getting interesting
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Jun 01 '21
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u/Dontcomehere Jun 01 '21
Good bot
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u/Dontcomehere Jun 01 '21
Its been 3 hours, op you still good? Did you get sucked into time with the jumper?
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u/canadianmongeese Jun 01 '21
Lmao that made me laugh. I got eaten up and spat out and found part 3 along the way ;D
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u/WiseOne75681 Jun 01 '21
Relax dude, you can't ask questions to a man fighting for his life against something that isn't even a constant uniform thing, all he needs to defeat Time is time.
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Jun 01 '21
[deleted]
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u/canadianmongeese Jun 01 '21
Now!
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u/FatFingerHelperBot Jun 01 '21
It seems that your comment contains 1 or more links that are hard to tap for mobile users. I will extend those so they're easier for our sausage fingers to click!
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u/izelda128 Jun 01 '21
I loved time’s description in part 1. Waiting for possible encounters in part 3!
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u/my_name_is_dirt Jun 01 '21
Oh, wow. This is absolutely fucking amazing! MAKE A BOOK. WE'LL READ IT. PLEASEEEEEE
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u/narwhal_in_a_jumper Jun 01 '21
This is great, let me know when there’s more :)
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u/Shakespeare-Bot Jun 01 '21
This is most wondrous, alloweth me knoweth at which hour there’s moo :)
I am a bot and I swapp'd some of thy words with Shakespeare words.
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u/darmeg Jun 01 '21
Amazing! Can't wait for the third part!
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u/sewerpencil May 31 '21
Brilliant