All sentient life is connected. The appendages may be different, we may eat different things, and live in different universes, but at the end of the day, we’re all one big family.
It’s time to explore the branches of the multiversal family tree, and today, we present:
(Node 1 Red Earth Year Null)
Alia, the Hyperion
– Issue 38 – Power At Her Fingertips
“What is this?” Alia asked herself and she beheld the relatively recently exhausted existence. She knew what it had been, what had raged across the unfathomable distance of that entire reality, and it was astounding to witness that space in the absence of that raging red energy.
She and Ivan, who was right behind her on the other side of the rift in existence, were in their ghostly astral forms as they hovered in gray space that looked like a movie from the 1920s.
Ivan shook his head in response to Alia’s question. Even though she didn’t audibly speak, she and Ivan could converse casually in their astral forms.
“When you went through the rift the first time all those years ago,” Alia asked as they moved quickly through the sad Cosmos toward what appeared to be a star, “you arrived on the Earth of this universe, right?”
“Yeah…” Ivan was taken aback by the realization. “I forgot about that when I came through this time. I was just so shocked by what’s here now, but yeah, it was Earth because the red that consumed this universe was from Earth and there was an ancient vestige of its consciousness still there and that’s what we interacted with during all that mess.”
“Does that mean that the Earth was destroyed or that it moved somehow?” Alia asked. They were close to the star by then, close enough that even their astral forms should have been uncomfortable in the heat they experienced, but there didn’t seem to be any heat.
They arrived to the surface of the star and it seemed to be made of plastic; Alia reached out a hand and concentrated enough to feel it. The star was smooth like plastic, and the entirety of it, or what it was when all of this happened, had become that giant ping pong ball. When her corporal form touched the surface, the enormous gray ball began to drift away from her touch.
“Nothing is moving,” Alia said. She hadn’t realized this at first glance; from the vantage point of a being of an existence, it is difficult to perceive the movement of very large objects and large things at a distance seem static upon casual view.
“If this is the fate of the stars,” Ivan asked as they both watched the star move ever so slightly, “why isn’t everything dark here?”
“How is any of this possible?” Alia chimed in with questions of her own. “If the energy is zapped from this existence, isn’t that the entropy that it reaches at the end of its existence before it collapses and restarts? None of this makes sense. Aether is baffled.”
Alia had told Ivan about her experience with the Hyperion, or she had shown him what she’d experienced and her interaction with the Aether; she’d been hesitant to tell anyone about the changes to the past if they didn’t remember, she wasn’t interested in disturbing anyone’s reality. So, Ivan understood the gravity of Alia’s statement.
“Something caused this to happen,” Alia continued. “There is no natural way for an existence to come to this. What could have done this?”
Neither of them noticed the creeping white lines that were moving slowly toward them. The white lines crept across the vastness of space on the other side of the star that Alia had moved. Alia closed her eyes and tried to feel what had happened in that existence, but she couldn’t feel this existence like she could feel her own. She had no connection to it and all she felt was stillness. Except for the star she’d pushed and…was there something else?
“Do you see that?” Alia asked and she moved closer to the surface of the star. Ivan was close behind and soon he saw them, very thin white lines, like strings of silk that seemed to float in the wake of the star’s movement. Alia reached out her hand and touched one of the silk strings, and then she screamed so loudly that it echoed around the inert existence. Her astral form snapped back to her body and in an instant, she sat up in the tall grass where they had left their physical bodies. Ivan woke up a moment later.
“What happened?” he asked, but Alia was already standing in front of the portal and both her hands were high in the air. The fingers of her right hand were spread wide and her pointer finger was high, and the pinky was bent at the second knuckle. The fingers of her left hand mirrored the right but they were inverted, and a ball of white light formed in the space. The ball of light surged with energy and thick bolts of white lightning struck out at the tear in existence to the other universe. The bolts of lightning energized the outline of the tear and Ivan could see that it was shrinking. When it was closed completely, Alia dropped her arms to her side and she breathed heavily, her shoulders rising and falling.
“You closed it?”
Alia’s head jerked in his direction, like she hadn’t known he was there.
“We should incinerate our clothing,” Alia said. “Incinerate the area just to be sure. Can you cover everything in flame?”
“What happened, Alia?” Ivan asked. He was very concerned.
“Do it now and I will explain when we are back home. Power up in a twenty foot radius, now!”
Ivan’s green flame roared up from his body and then it spread out, incinerating everything that wasn’t Ivan and Alia in an instant.
PRL Serials 