by Joseph Calev
And plastered my nose to the ceiling.
The prospect of getting off the bed and falling up instead of down was new to me. It probably would have hurt too, had they not installed some form of soft shield that stopped me a few millimeters from the plaster. Evidently, they figured I would do that. Now, of course, my primary issue was that I was floating horizontally eight feet in the air.
My natural instinct was to push off the ceiling and try to pivot my body down, so I went with that. This promptly flipped me upside down and threw me against the back wall. My situation had not improved.
“I see you’re practicing!” a male voice called from behind me. It frustrated me that I couldn’t turn to see him.
“Why am I upside down and against the wall?”
“Well, your body has habituated to a force in your old universe called gravity. We don’t have that. You’ve just met our first force, called resonance. Basically, every object in our universe, yourself included, exchanges particles with every other. The math is probably a bit complicated for you right now, but just understand that it’s kind of like a handshake. You and the wall need to come to an agreement on where you are in relation to it.”
“So, when I got off the bed, why did I fall up?”
“There’s no such thing as falling. You likely hurtled yourself too quickly at the floor, which got scared and sent you the other way.”
“Got scared?”
“Well, not really. I’m trying to keep this simple for you.”
I was worse than a moron. Literally, the only difference between me and a farting, shitting, baby right now was the fact that I could construct coherent sentences.
“I’ll leave you to your negotiations. But don’t get too flustered. Your body will remember.”
There was no door shutting again, but I knew he was gone. So, it was just me and the wall now. I greeted it, but that was unproductive and quite stupid. When I lifted my hand and placed it nearby, I felt the same static from earlier. That was probably the resonance stuff he mentioned. Great, so now I knew the answer to that trivia question. Only, I hadn’t moved at all.
I stayed there for ten minutes trying to negotiate with that obstinate wall. I exclaimed that I was the boss, it being just a wall, and that it was high time it listened. Finally, I lifted my arm and swung at it, only to immediately get flipped over, but still upside down.
My stomach was about ready to jump out of my torso and help itself, I was so hungry. At the very least the hospital workers could’ve fed me, upside down or not. But no. Like it or not, this was my first lesson. I screamed out for my real parents. Who in the hell puts their kid somewhere that has completely different basic forces! There was no way I was going to get this.
“Need some help?” asked a little girl who had just materialized in front of me. She had long braids, bright blue eyes, and looked all of six years old.
“Yes,” I admitted. This is what I’d been reduced to.
“You can’t talk to the walls, silly.”
I nodded.
“Put your hand against the wall,” she ordered, and I did it. A slight electrical pulse reverberated across my hand.
“Do you feel that? Now move it away a little bit. Do you feel that?”
The static-electricity-like thing I felt lessened somewhat when I moved my hand away.
“Now relax and let that go through your whole body.”
She looked like a smart little girl, complete with a stylish yellow top. She was also making a lot more sense than anyone else so far, so I closed my eyes and every bit of me started to buzz. It was somewhat like when I first arrived and my hands and arms couldn’t stay still. Could that have been why? Somehow, they’d figured it out.
“Now, you need to make your body feel less of it. Like when your hand moved away, make your body feel less energy without moving it.”
I took a deep breath and concentrated on the static. It slowly decreased a slight amount, and I opened my eyes to witness myself moving away from the wall.
“I did it!” I exclaimed, and was promptly on the ceiling again.
She giggled. “When you’re like me, you’ll do it without thinking. But for now, you need to concentrate.”
Great. So now my biggest aspiration was to be just like a six-year-old girl. Still, she was a very clever girl. If I closed my eyes, I was able to move away from the ceiling and after a good five minutes I was back on my bed. Well, sort of. I was on the edge. When I looked up, she was gone. There were obviously limits to her patience.
To my great relief, the guy returned with a plate of food. There was a bright yellow fruit, perfectly spherical in shape. Next to it was some brown muck, so I decided on the mutant orange. When I reached for it, the thing flew across the room until the man caught it. He gave me a bright smile that I knew meant “You’re a complete moron,” then hand-fed spoonsful of the brown stuff into my mouth. I was glad the little girl wasn’t there to witness it.
Despite looking like steak that was freshly shit out of a chicken, the stuff wasn’t that bad. It tasted rather like chocolate raspberries combined with walnuts. My stomach didn’t complain and I kept my mouth open like a good baby. A bit of it fell across my face, but I was pleased that my hand knew how to wipe it off. Finally, only the fruit remained.
“This is a lamma,” he proclaimed, but I didn’t care.
I opened my mouth wide.
“No, no,” he said, and for the fiftieth time that day it was painfully obvious how stupid I was. “This’ll be a bit of a game. You need to learn to deal with objects. The goal is simple. Grab the lamma and eat it. You’ll find that it’s soft and particularly delicious.”
I returned that same kind of smile to him that outwardly appeared nice but inwardly meant, “The instant I somehow grab this thing I’m jamming it up your ass until that fake smile disappears.”
So, he left me again with six walls and one fruit. Remembering what the girl had said, I reached out my hand and felt the signals between myself and the fruit of torture. It promptly rebounded across the room and ricocheted off every wall, before settling in midair, completely unharmed. I sighed, and was immediately back on the ceiling.
I was able to move away from the ceiling, then navigate the other walls to have the yellow thing in my mouth after just five short hours of effort. Of course, I’m not counting the six hours I spent crying and screaming that I couldn’t even eat a simple fruit, but after everything the effort was worth it.
One bite was like spending an hour on that water-jet massage table, eating five chocolate ice cream bars with a fudge filling, then ending with an exhilarating jump off a swing straight into a swimming pool. It was just a fruit, but I didn’t care while I chomped that thing to a pulp. I even tried gnawing on the wooden core, but then spit out splinters.
Now feeling literally the best I’d ever been in my life, I walked circles around the bed. I jumped and touched the ceiling. That miracle girl was right. Once my body learned, I no longer needed to concentrate.
This world wasn’t so difficult after all.
Satisfied that I’d cracked this universe, I walked forward straight into the wall where they had materialized. My nose bounced off the force field.
“Glad that you’re getting the hang of it,” said the guy from behind me.
He had a more serious look now, and I only guessed that he’d lost a bet with his colleagues on how quickly I’d finish.
“So, what’s next?” I asked.
“Now,” he said with that same evil grin. “We blow your mind.”
8
Mister Blow Me, which is the mental name I gave that condescending prick, calmly walked through the wall and I only assumed waited for me to follow. Figuring that this must be some magical barrier, I promptly walked straight into it. I reached my hand out and felt the resonance, but other than being able to move forward and back, I couldn’t move through it.
Blow Me, this time failing to withhold his laughter, appeared from the side wall.
“It’s still resonance. Only this time you need to negotiate passage.”
I really wished the little girl was here, because she would’ve made some sense of it. Being used to a world where floors never got scared and walls never negotiated, I really wished they had cut me some slack. When I approached, my entire body felt the static, but I was utterly incapable of reasoning with this inanimate object. Yet when I turned side to side, I felt a slightly different buzz. This wall was only loosely attached to the others.
With a glance at Mister Blow Me, I proceeded to slide my arms and knock the wall on its side. I turned and gave an evil grin. He had his resonance, and I had mine.
Yet in all my self-satisfaction, I neglected the view just beyond. We were on the edge of a canyon.
How deep it was I couldn’t say, but my eyes weren’t focused on the height but were instead directed at the unfathomable waterfall-like thing at the other end. It must have stretched a mile long and its roar was defeaning, but the amount of water was nowhere near as impressive as what it was doing.
It was going both up and down at the same time. While various channels collapsed to the floor far below, others proceeded straight up to the clouds. In between, they weaved and dashed between each other like traffic on a terrifying highway. Paths traversed the canyon and went straight through the waterfall.
Well, they were more like stones floating in the air every two to four feet. People calmly hopped along them, going to and from the waterfall without any heed of the certain death that awaited one missed step.
“Welcome to our lobby,” Blow Me said.
My sole desire at that point was to give him no reason to gloat at my idiocy. I’d learned enough resonance to get by here. Of course, there was the added danger that I was just as likely to fall up to the clouds, never to be seen again, as I was to become a pancake on the canyon floor.
Blow Me gave me a smug grin while his eyes motioned back to my little white prison, but I would give him none of that. I lifted my foot, felt the resonance of the first platform, and stepped onto it. That was easy. I hopped over to the next one, and it started to wobble.
Way below I made out what seemed to be a river on the floor. It was just this thin hair of blue I was so high up. I could’ve finished a novel on the way down. Then my stone, upon which my life depended, decided to be an asshole and flipped upside down.
Immediately, I lunged for the rock and barely grasped on as my legs dangled in nothingness. I attempted to hang on with every muscle, but I’d always been lazy in gym class and now my grip was slipping. Desperately I screamed to the others walking around to help me, but they only stopped and stared as if I were some mutant chicken. Then came something I never would have suspected.
“May I help you?” a woman on the cliff face asked.
She was dressed in white and was literally standing next to me on the cliff wall. Only it wasn’t a wall at all.
It was more of a forest, over which random wooden blocks had been stacked by a three-year-old. In the center of it ran a creek, complete with a few waterfalls of its own, though their sounds were drowned out by the roar of the tremendous flow that now formed our ceiling. The woman continued to stare at me, with little surprise that she was standing perpendicular to me.
Since sitting in a forest was a lot calmer than dangling over a canyon, I used the resonance tinglies flowing through my body to toss myself onto the path before her. By my face was now a small pond, and before I picked myself up some squirrel-mermaid looking thing flew into my hand. It wasn’t so cute, with bug eyes and huge flat teeth.
“You need to learn to control resonance with other things that manage their own resonance,” said Mister Blow Me, having appeared by my side.
No shit, I thought while I tried in vain to shake the critter away. With what seemed like glee, he tossed the critter, which seemed to enjoy basking in my hand, back into the stream. Another one immediately took its place.
“You’re very silly,” came a sweet voice from next to me. It was my savior in the form of a little girl again. “What’s your name?”
I had to pause on that one. Just the day before I was certain that my name was Jason, but now my confidence was eroding. Was that really my name, or was it false like everything else that I used to believe?
“You don’t have a name? Mine’s Sareya.”
“Jason. Or at least I think it is.”
“Why are you holding a squimmer?”
I looked down at the furry creature with its paws held wide, its tummy sticking out, and its broad eyes and buck teeth grinning at me. She laughed, then calmly threw it back in the stream and pushed me away so no replacement came.
“Do you need help?” She didn’t have the condescending look of Mister Blow Me. “I saw you wrecked the wall.”
I nodded profusely, just like a little kid.
“You know how you make the buzzing a little more and less?”
I again nodded.
“This time make it a lot more. If your mind makes it a lot more, and it happens, then you can walk through it. If it doesn’t, then the wall said no.”
Well, that made sense. I promptly placed myself in front of a different wall and felt the slight buzz. When I focused on making it increase dramatically, my entire body shook. With some trepidation, I walked straight through the wall, then stuck my tongue out at Blow Me.
“The squimmers like us. So, when you feel the buzzing increase from them, just stop it. Then they’ll stay in the water.”
I could’ve hugged her, but instead I strolled up and down the path while triumphantly shooting down squimmers.
Annie arrived just in time to witness me running over the path as it went above and around the forest. While it still seemed weird to be suddenly walking upside down, or sideways, or in midair, it was admittedly the coolest thing I’d ever done. I even collapsed into the stream and threw squimmers from one small pond to another. Sareya giggled the entire time.
“I see you’re learning,” Annie said, and Mister Blow Me used the opportunity to take off.
Just for fun, I walked up a palm tree, then balanced upside down from one of the leaves.
“Very cute. I think it’s time to take you home. There’s school tomorrow.”
To be honest, the thought hadn’t yet occurred to me that, regardless of the universe, there still had to be school. For some reason I figured that everyone here must already know everything.
“Are you excited?” Sareya asked.
“I think so.” That was the truth. Though back on Earth, school and especially Flemence were unbearable, I had a feeling the subjects were a bit different here.
“Will you be in my class?” I asked in a half parental, half serious tone. After all, I really did need her help, even though I was eleven years older.
“Of course not, silly!” She smiled. “I’m in the first level!”
I bowed. “Thank you for your services, ma’am. I am most obliged.”
She didn’t know what to make of that, but after some confusion she returned the bow. She probably had no idea what I meant.
A tuft of wind caught my shirt and I turned to find an airline-sized shimmery craft parked right next to us. For a hundred-foot interstellar ship, it sure was quiet. True to form, there was no door, but Annie led me through the right spot to resonate. This whole walking through walls thing was beginning to freak me out a bit. What if I accidentally walked into the engine?
While I’d hoped for the prototypical space vehicle Raynee had treated me to, complete with laser cannons and a turret, this one resembled an overfed Volkswagen Bug. The interior was spacious, though, and Annie and I both had enough room to kick our feet out.
“It’s not too far. I hope it works for you. My son’s old room will be yours.”
She had a slight tear in her eye.
“Does he have a family of his own now?” If there’s anything grandparents love talking about, it’s their grandkids.
“No.” She looked d
own. “He died, during the troubled times.”
I felt it best not to press more, though I desperately wanted to know if Mordriss had had anything to do with it.
“So, I’ll be attending school?” Since Raynee wasn’t about to see me, I was determined to run into her. I had to explain my side of this, now that I could at least move around.
“Of course.” Her face brightened. “You start tomorrow. The first few days will probably be tough on you, but you’ll do just fine, honey.”
Her home was a fair-sized square pod in the middle of a wide meadow. Beyond it lay an endless patchwork of forest, and on the other side were several waterfalls complete with squimmers. In the far distance were the hints of a few other houses, but she had no real neighbors.
When we landed, Annie held out her hand and the entire craft shrank to the size of a thin business card, which she placed in her pocket. There was, of course, no door to her house, but an engraved niche suggested where to resonate.
Inside was a quaint dining room, with what I assumed to be a kitchen next door. The living room resembled ours from Seattle, except the couches were spread over every wall, the ceiling, and the floor. Jutting awkwardly from the side was a small rectangular room with countertops and cabinets. A plaque with the word “KITCHEN” hung by the entrance, though in place of the sink and appliances was a silvery six-inch box with a red button. Only the two rooms were visible.
“I added that room for you. Just push the button and ask for anything you desire to eat or drink.”
She pointed up and we resonated into a small room with bare walls and a four-poster bed.
“I tried to make the bed familiar.”
I nodded in approval.
“Also, feel free to decorate as you see fit. My son had every inch filled, but I had to remove all that. It was time.”
She showed me where her room and the bathroom were. Though she mentioned a way to prevent walls from allowing others to resonate, it involved some math and I quickly lost focus. Given there were neither doors nor hallways, I made a note of the orientation. The last thing I wanted was to wake up half naked in the morning and accidentally resonate into her room. Even thinking about it gave me the shivers.
