Without a jetpack, I stopped the spinning, I stopped the feeling of falling, I slowed everything down, and straightened up.
To my right was a black and white movie. It was drawing me in, I felt like if I touched it I would get sucked right in, so I slightly pulled away, and the floating large image of the movie took off. The same happened with a movie about a giant ship wreck, the movie about a vigilante, the movie about Kung Fu in ancient China, and more. I had to push them all away, and focus.
“Wilmort,” I said out-loud. My voice echoed vividly. It felt like it was bouncing millions of miles away, coming back, and taking off again. This type of echo felt strange and unheard of before.
I began imagining him… His dark wavy hair, his scuffed jaw, his eerie smile, his fancy costumes, even his voice and movements. Then I imagined him inside that picture. I tried remembering its details, it was super simple – just a blue tinted lab room with a floating black rock in the middle, and Wilmort aimlessly standing around.
My mind went hazy, I was losing control again as the images began speeding up. I stopped thinking and began stabilizing again.
“Ugh,” I echoed.
I imagined Violet standing right next to Wilmort this time, almost like a portrait. I did see them standing next to each other before – I had to reimagine that scene with a new background this time.
Time went by, my thoughts about them became stronger. They began talking to me, and I talked back. What were we talking about? I couldn’t quite tell, but we were definitely talking… Violet’s voice was right beside me. She pat my shoulder, and I felt it realistically. Wilmort sat on something, but I couldn’t even make out the chair. He asked me a question. They were waiting for my answer.
Crap. I got carried away with my thoughts, I couldn’t see where I was, I couldn’t see my hands nor see or hear the imagery. I felt like I was falling through a dark dream with only Wilmort and Violet hazily by my side. Then it all turned to dark.
“He’s up,” said Wilmort.
“Huh?” I tried clearing my vision. I couldn’t see anything, it was a blue-ish blurry haze.
“Give him a moment,” I heard Doug’s voice. “He’s not used to it yet.”
“So that’s our newest comrade, huh?” some new voice spoke right in front of me.
Surely enough, Violet’s hand was on my shoulder, and Wilmort was sitting in front of me on a chair. Violet and I were on a couch, clearly imagined and clearly out of place.
“Where am I?”
“Welcome!” Wilmort sang joyfully, “welcome to our humble abode, a place of salvation and freedom – a place where the future is built.”
“Hope he’s used to your sporadic dilly dallies, Wilmort,” a deep and sultry British voice said. And by god he looked like one – like a young professor at Oxford during the nineteen twenties. He had a pocket watch in his patterned brown vest and a full beige suit.
“Am I truly annoying now?” Wilmort stood from his chair that vanished into golden dust. “I would say he’s quite used to me, aren’t you?”
“So where am I?” I repeated myself.
“This is our base,” said Violet. “This is where we monitor where you are, and where we make plans and meet back when things go south.”
“I would be delighted to give him a tour once his sanity returns, until then you may find me at my station,” said the British man. “You may call me Doctor Regal,” he shook my hand. I got up and shook his before falling back down.
“I’m Nero,” the other one shook my hand. He was American, judging from his accent, mid thirties, in a t-shirt, short wavy hair, quite hard to describe his appearance. He was honestly the most normal one out of everyone. Wilmort looked like he belonged in a masquerade party, Violet looked like the type of hot girl at a bar that you flirt with and then get your ass kicked by her, Douglas looked like he just came out from the battlefield, Dr. Regal looked like he graduated Harvard, Oxford, Cambridge and Stanford all at once with straight A’s in all subjects, and well, Nero looked cool. He seemed tense, or tight, not quite as light-hearted as everyone else, but very normal as far as stereotypes go.
I finally got a chance to just look beyond everyone for a moment. So… The whole place had the tallest ceiling ever. A few staircases went up on the second floor, the corridor upstairs being more like a balcony into the main room that we were in with several doors leading god knows where. The light in this place was blue, like from a sci-fi laboratory. There were counters with computing systems and elixirs… and potions, and swords, and axes, and shields, and crystals, and other things I didn’t have time to look at.
Then finally, the thing I mentioned last, right in the center of this giant spacious lab was a mechanism. Two disks, one on the floor and one on the ceiling helped levitate it. It was in the form of some sort of cubic structure that seemed to fluctuate and change its form very mechanically. The body of it was black, and the light coming out of it was pure white, in streaks, lines and patterns.
“Is that it?” I stared right at it. Wilmort helped me up, and we walked over closer to it.
“I first learned to travel worlds about twenty years ago,” said Wilmort, “I thought, if I was born in a movie, and I simply rip open a portal and I end up in the galaxy of images that you just came from, can I rip a portal inside that place too? The answer was no. I had explored it greatly, learnt to manipulate the location I want to go to with great precision. And then I began experimenting with truly finding out its secrets.”
“And then?” we all stared at it.
“And then I found it… a string. It takes a special eye to see that all worlds are connected by this invisible wire. The worlds cannot float too far away from each other, nor can they come too close to each other. The portals are powered and sustained by these strings – And when I followed it to its source, I discovered this. It was the size of a planet, I could walk its surface for a hundred years and barely go a full circle.”
“How is it here then?”
“A little trick I found through another world that shrinks or expands anything. I won’t go into the details of that – but look,” he pointed. There was a red pulse going through the line every few seconds. It was faint, but it was there.
“See the red pulse?” said Violet.
“Yes,” I nodded.
“The machine is damaged. The more burden it takes, the more it is likely to collapse at some point. We ran it through the computers for years now, that pulse directly correlates to the warning of too many worlds and it not being able to sustain it.”
“Are you sure it’s not because you squished it into this room?”
“It has no direct correlation,” said Nero. “I helped get this machine myself. We fixed it up and even put people into it, they didn’t feel a thing.”
“You shrunk people?” I asked.
“It comes with a manual,” said Wilmort, “if you’d like to read it later.”
“Okay, so how do we fix it?”
“Half the job is already done, while you were not with us. We owe it greatly to Nero and Violet.”
“Come here,” said Violet. We both went left, towards the wall. All the way at the end was an altar tabletop upon which there were five glass tubes with enough space for a person to fit into them. Two of the cylinders had objects in them.
“A book…” I said, “and a stopwatch.”
“Have you ever heard of the great Dark Lord, Emphimius?” Wilmort asked.
“Yes,” I said. “He wasn’t a Dark Lord, he was stupid. That movie shouldn’t have lasted two hours.”
“What was the movie called?” Violet asked me.
“Uh… Black Reign, directed by Rob Grey.”
“Emphimius wielded the Black Book of Power,” said Wilmort.
“No he didn’t, he wielded a stick that could barely blow over a rock. They collected an army to defeat him and just took him in saying ‘that was easy’.”
“We stole his book,” said Nero. “Emphimius was powerful en
ough to blow away that army with spells and monsters that came out of that book. That book could foretell the future and even stop the sun and moon from rising and setting.”
“But there was no book!” I insisted.
“This is the book, Raymond,” said Wilmort. “We stole it, thus it no longer exists, thus Emphimius was weak, thus the story ended differently, even to you.”
“Wait…” I was trying to make sure I understood everything.
“If you go to some world and kill someone,” Violet explained, “it will become as if that person never existed in the first place, or existed as a ‘dead person’ to the characters. Changing things in stories directly changes them for the viewers, and for people’s thoughts as well. That is the power of that machine,” she looked back at the engine.
“So Emphimius…” I stared at the book.
“Was one of the most powerful wizards to exist in any fiction, all thanks to that book. To his credit, he spent four hundred years writing it himself. He gave it power so that it may give power back to him.”
“And the stopwatch?”
“It can stop time,” said Nero. “Or fast forward it, or whatever.”
“I see. What’s the movie?”
No one answered, no one knew.
“We took it from a character known as The Time God, that is as much as I can say,” said Wilmort. “These objects are powerful, and diverse. Feeding five of them into the machine will give it a jolt of power and increase its mass, and allowing it to sustain further.”
“How do you know which five?” I asked.
“Which five don’t entirely matter, as they will be disintegrated into Light energy and simply fed into the machine. I have determined the five easiest to obtain items that all hold more-or-less the same levels of power.”
“Why not just imagine a stopwatch that stops time?” I asked.
“You try,” said Wilmort, “and let me know how that goes.”
“We cannot create what we cannot comprehend,” said Violet. “Nor can the human creators like you, but they can still create them through stories. And because so many people just believe in it, it becomes real.”
“So just to be sure… if any of you guys die, you die, right?”
“Yes,” Wilmort answered delightfully.
“But if I die, I just reset back in my living room and try again, right?”
“That is indeed why you are so important!” Wilmort said delightfully again.
“Okay, what’s the next destination then?” I looked at the pulsating engine again.
“So eager already?” Wilmort smiled. “Why don’t you have a cup of tea first?”
“I need to get back soon, I have things to do… No offense to your operation of course!” all eyes were on me. “I just thought I could manage both in a timely manner.”
“Then have your tea,” said Wilmort, “and return to do whatever you must. Your journey might be lengthy, who knows?” he walked off towards Dr. Regal.
I went over to a little makeshift lounge area with light leather couches surrounding a coffee table. Essentially, the whole lab was like a giant rectangular box, and in this random corner there were a bunch of comfortable beige leather couches.
“So Nero,” I started. “What movie are you from?”
“From New York,” he replied.
“I suppose a lot of movies are in New York,” I said. “Like, comedy movies, even action destruction movies, for some reason New York is always the hotspot for getting all the big monsters and stuff.”
“Yeah,” he nodded briefly. Violet rolled her eyes.
“Is Wilmort suspicious to you guys?” I asked quietly.
“Why?” he looked at me intensely.
“He gives me the bad kind of vibes,” I said. “I mean, I write different types of characters, and a lot of villains pretend to be good first before stabbing you in the back.”
“I thought he would, one day,” said Violet. “I knew him for almost three years now, we worked to recruit people, most of who didn’t make it. We tried getting people like you by summoning portals through their television screens with the help of the engine, but they either got lost or died to the timer. We got lucky with you.”
“So you mean, you trust him?” I reconfirmed.
“I used to doubt him. I ran my own tests. These machines in the lab were either taken by us or created by us. Dr. Regal is incredibly good at running and maintaining them, if there is any sort of trickery he would find out.”
“I see,” I leaned back and began crafting my cup of tea.
“Besides,” said Nero. “What’s in it for him? We’re just trying to fix the engine,” he looked at Violet intensely.
“What if he wants to control it to rule the worlds or something?” I asked casually.
“Impossible, no one can control what they cannot comprehend,” said Violet. “The plan was always simple, we need an incredibly concentrated amount of Light to feed into the machine. It is running low, and is overburdened with too many worlds to sustain.”
“The engine itself is made out of Light, after all,” said Nero.
“Yes,” said Violet. “The math applies, the physics checks out, and if Wilmort is truly a villain then I cannot imagine for what.”
“Did you ever try to find the real Wilmort? From his movie?” I asked.
“Why?” said Nero. “That guy might have been evil twenty years ago.”
“Okay,” I adjusted my position. “I’m new here, I’m just asking a lot of questions.”
“We’ll answer them all,” said Violet. “But don’t forget the goal. We’ll all be free of this lab soon.”
“I just got here,” I said.
“I did say we need a renovation,” said Nero.
“Why didn’t you?” I asked.
“We need stability to pull the portal towards us,” said Violet. “If we change the place too often it will become inconvenient.”
“Got any other questions?” said Nero.
“Thousands,” I said.
“Then don’t ask any of them,” he nodded. “You’ll figure it out.”
“Okay, just one then, who was here first?”
“I was,” said Nero. “Dr. Regal was before me, then we got Violet, then Douglas. In between there were seven more.”
“Seven?!” I almost fell off my couch.
“The missions are high-risk, but people like you don’t die permanently.”
“Wow, I’m special,” I grinned.
“We’ve rounded the five items before, but they ended up being not strong enough,” said Nero. “We’d like to get it right this time. You need items that only a god can wield, then it really makes an impact. That spell book and watch are no ordinary magic wand or pixie dust.”
Violet opened her palm and blew on it, making purple pixie dust gently spread and float over the table before exploding into little fireworks of various colors, and even sounding like it.
“What are you doing?” said Nero, narrowing his eyebrows.
“You said pixie dust, so I made some pixie dust,” said Violet.
“I was trying to be intense and cool here, explaining to the newbie how powerful these items are,” he pressed on her.
“You’re not cool if you have to try to be cool,” said Violet.
“That was really cool though,” I said. “The pixie fireworks, I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“See? He likes it,” she smiled at Nero.
“Well,” I said, “I’ll go talk to the Doctor real quick,” I got up.
“Yeah, you do that,” said Nero.
I began walking towards him. The walk was long – the lab was abnormally large.
“Hello,” I said.
“Ah, Raymond,” he smiled formally, then he nudged his head towards the screen.
“What’s this?” I looked with narrow eyes. It was some sort of human diagram made of fluctuating light with a single large cube in the chest area.
“This is you,” he said.<
br />
“No kidding? This is me? I’m made of Light?”
“Everything is made of Light,” he said. “This crystal right there tracks your location,” he pointed at the chest area. “Wherever you are, the engine has a string attached to that portal. All we do is find the link between you and the engine, and locate in exactly which world you are. When we find that out, all it takes is to go there the standard way. If we go there at a similar time as you, we’ll end up at the same time sequence of the movie.”
“But of course, once you’re there you can’t find me, right?”
“No, we cannot. But this computer vaguely reads the most active moments of that world, and we can only roughly predict where to go to find you. Wouldn’t work in a dark forest with a screaming girl, I’m sorry.”
“God,” I rolled my eyes. “Even you know that.”
“We all had a good laugh about it, my apologies.”
“I hate you all,” I hid my amused face. “So what’s all this stuff lying around?”
“These are all items collected from different universes. I’m simply studying if they have any similar properties. Magic items are the trickiest, they seem to exist without any rules or laws. Someone somewhere just thought of a stick that shoots fire with no explanation and we’re supposed to go with it.”
“Yeah,” I nodded.
“It wasn’t you, was it?”
“No,” I shook my head.
“Well anyways, we have rooms here, about eight of them. Should you ever like to stay for longer, you can redesign it however you like. But you may not touch this main room.”
“Of course, I wouldn’t dare.”
“Excellent.”
“Where’s Wilmort?”
“He opened a portal and that’s the last I saw of him.”
“Right,” I nodded. “Can I ask you, what’s the timer about?”
“Your pixel needs to be recharged, you charge it with Light by being here. I have your timer right here, in fact,” he pushed a few buttons did a few techy motions of his hands and in a clean white font, my timer appeared.
“Wow, one hundred and one hours?”
“You came in at about sixty hours and then stayed for the entire day somewhere – it builds up.”
The Portal Page 15
