One mont, Rory had been out for his run, enjoying the fine autumn day; the next, it was as if the world blinked back on, a lot like how he rembered his grandparents' old TV when he turned it on. Looking around, he was no longer out running in the park; instead, he was…
Where am I? Rory questioned, startled, filled with cautious confusion.
"Ahh, so it appears I am not alone. I had assud this was the fignt of my mind, a last desperate hallucination as I attempted to grapple with what was dood to occur. It was a bit strange for soone like , but stranger things have happened. But I suppose with another appearing here, that's not the case."
Rory looked across the-
Lobby. I think this is a lobby. No, wait, it definitely is a lobby. In fact, this looks like the lobby of Dr. Smith from when I was twelve.
-looked across the lobby, but rather than another human patient, there was a man, three and a half, maybe four feet tall, with skin as white as snow and piercing green eyes.
"Ackaestar. Professor Ackaestar by human reckoning."
"Oh. Rowan. Though most call Rory." Rory nodded to the short alien. "Nice to et you."
"I'm surprised, I must say." Ackaestar nodded at Rory. "You seem to be taking this in stride, considering the universe just finished collapsing."
Rory looked around before shrugging. "Either I'm dead, in which case this is so weird afterlife, or… well, I don't know what else really."
Professor Ackaestar chuckled quietly; even for being an alien, he shared many human characteristics. "No, I don't believe this is the afterlife at all, and in fact, I have my own theory for what is going on, mostly due to your appearance."
"My appearance? Did I do sothing?" Rory questioned. He was afraid he'd sohow broken the afterlife. Whoever was in charge would be awfully cross with him if that was the first thing he did upon dying.
"No, nothing of that sort. Simply put, you are far too detailed for you to be a fignt of my imagination, and while not impossible, the possibility of my mind forming a ntal construct in the form of a human rather than my own species to cope with the ntal stress of our imminent universal extinction seems odd to say the least."
"Right. I could say the sa… Or, with fewer words, at least."
The alien chuckled, shaking his head slightly. "So, Rory, may I ask as to the nature of how you found yourself here? Were you perhaps one of the brave crew aboard our Ricochet ships?"
"No." Rory shook his head in denial. "I was just a normal man from Earth. I watched the fleet as it was eviscerated, if that matters."
"I suppose not." Professor Ackaestar sighed. "I'd been hoping that perhaps they would have been saved as well, but it appears their deaths were a final one."
"About that." Rory wasn't generally an overly curious person, or he hadn't been for quite so ti, but he couldn't deny the oddity of where they were stirring questions within himself. "You said you had a theory as to this." Rory waved at the strange lobby from his childhood, where they found themselves.
"Ahh, yes. How well studied are you regarding 'Canopy' theory and the structure of existence?"
"I saw a movie with parallel universes once."
"Good enough." Professor Ackaestar snapped his fingers. Notably, there were six fingers instead of a human's standard five. "My species, and many others of the galactic union, have been studying this for longer than humanity has been building their first cities. If you know how the Ricochet Ships, and Skip Drives for that matter, work, it will greatly speed this up."
"They skip along so sort of parallel dinsion."
"To borrow a phrase from your kind, Bingo." Professor Ackaestar seed to have settled into his groove, at ease lecturing.
I guess he really was a professor, or whatever the equivalent was for his race. Rory thought to himself.
"Now, to give it further depth, those Skip Drives, and by extension the Ricochet Ships, only interact with the closest dinsional layers by our reckoning, what we refer to simply as the 'Cogitation.' As for what exactly this dinsional layer is, every thought ever had by any living thing in the entire history of our universe, regardless of how big or small, minor or grandiose, all created potential. This potential would form an extra-dinsional energy that eventually settled into its own plane of existence just above our own, inherently linked to us through its origin as a byproduct of the potential energy of thought."
Rory didn't understand how that could work; he wasn't much more than a part-ti physical trainer and lab assistant. Sure, he had an associate's degree in sports science, but it was still only an associate's degree, and it wasn't as if it was from so Ivy League university, either.
The professor wasn't finished, not even close, just getting started as Rory's attention returned.
"Now, to continue, our universe is part of, as of our last count, a multi-verse consisting of over two hundred dinsional layers. This is important because the device the Sensen constructed was ant to collapse our local universe into a singularity, and using the ensuing energy, they would propel their species, contained within dinsional crafts, to a higher dinsional layer. It was a rather rude gesture towards the rest of the sapient life, but they didn't seem bothered."
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
The alien professor took a mont to breathe in, glancing around as if expecting a classroom full of students and not a single twenty-six-year-old human.
"My theory is that both the Sensen and the rest of the universe must have had so poorly understood notion of how the chanics of this dinsional pancake stack operated, as when the Sensen activated this device, sothing went wrong. 'Wrong' is the operative word here, as it worked perfectly well; those who built it failed in their understanding. Rather than collapsing our singular universe into a singularity and projecting themselves 'upward,' the rest of the dinsional layers collapsed onto us."
"Hmm." Rory nodded sagely, understanding none of it. "So, uh, how are we still here? Sounds like that's not sothing you could walk off."
"Normally, no; I'd reckon it would cause an omni-singularity, a singularity composed of every single dinsional layer, except we've been saved by chance."
"Saved? How?"
"Do you rember the layer I referred to earlier? The Cogitation. Being the closest layer, when all of reality was superimposed upon one another, it was the 'first' to collide with our local universe. This is nothing more than a theory, but considering we are having this conversation in the first place, I believe there is so credence to this theory. When the Cogitation collided and rged with our local universe, being that it was born of the energy of thought, the very sa beings who had those thoughts were encapsulated. Imagine, if you will, a bubble. Did you know so species of insects on many planets can travel up and down the depths by entering a bubble? Those bubbles protect the fragile insects from the water just outside."
"So, this is a… bubble?"
"Exactly, you catch on quick. For whatever reason, living things such as us with thoughts were encapsulated by 'dinsional bubbles' ford via the remnants of the Cogitation during the dinsional fusing. Even now, I'd bet outside of this protective bubble, the universe we knew and understood is a writhing mass of chaotic energy, countless dinsional layers fused and burning each other up; I'd imagine in an event much like the singularity that predated the big bang, albeit to an exponentially greater degree."
"Hmm. I see." Rory lied. "So… what now?"
"That is the question, young man." Professor Ackaestar frowned lightly, scratching at his chin, which was more angular than humans typically had. "Perhaps we remain within the bubbles until whatever dinsional integrity they hold fails, and we et our end, albeit a little later than initially expected. Or perhaps we cannot escape these bubbles, and we will cease to exist from within. Or, perhaps, the bubbles begin to float to the surface after the greater dinsional universe has stabilized, an event which may take trillions upon trillions of eons if we had to witness the passing of ti from a relative standpoint rather than from within our localized reality where I'd imagine our understanding of ti no longer holds any importance."
"You sure know a lot about this, all." Rory scratched at his chin, which suddenly began to itch, in response to the professor scratching their chin first.
"Well, that was because I was one of the leading scientific minds working to stop the Sensen. Not that it paid off anyway. It was why I questioned if you were perhaps a human crew mber from the Ricochet ships; perhaps we were sorted through so tenuous connection, but as you were but an ordinary man from Earth, I can't see that being the case."
Rory searched for a response to the revelation regarding the status of the professor—sothing profound, or at least polite—and ca up empty. Considering that they had failed to save the universe, Rory couldn't find it in himself to be moved.
Perhaps a life of utter insignificance does that to a person, dulls you to excellence. Rory questioned, turning his thoughts inward on himself.
He was smart but not significantly different from the average. He was healthy and active, but only to the degree of soone caring for themselves. He wasn't breaking any Olympic records anyti soon. He'd gotten his degree but was not motivated by dreams of grand success; he'd been more than content to find a relatively ordinary job, youthful ambitions and curiosity stamped out by reality.
As mundane, average, and uninspiring as the nature of his life, the grand scale of the universe, of what humanity belonged to, had never felt real to Rory. He was just a single, ordinary man, and feeling fear or apprehension about what could happen, what was out there, or even the people who stood head and shoulders above him, was pointless when he was of such ordinary stature.
Thus, Rory could only nod as he listened to the most brilliant mind in the ex-universe.
"Without that tenuous connection, any theories I could propose as to why this localized space is ho to only the two of us would be nothing more than wild guesses. Perhaps if you were to share more of yourself, I could co up with sothing."
"Not much to say," Rory said truthfully. "I worked at a lab researching how the body's chanics could be stimulated externally. Usually, that ant sending electrical signals through chicken wings and pig legs, though occasionally, we got our hands on human cells or cadavers. I only had an associate's degree, so I wasn't one of the ones coming up with the big ideas. Outside of that, I worked at high schools with the athletic programs."
"Oh?" Professor Ackaestar raised a slightly purple eyebrow at him. "You were a ntor of sorts then."
"Well, if you put it that way." Rory shrugged.
"Hmm, perhaps that is the answer. Albeit a rather weak one."
Rory was about to open his mouth to ask a question when a glance down at his hands caused the words to wither, a strange sense of morbid curiosity taking over.
"Any ideas about this?" Rory asked after a mont, poking his translucent arm like a child testing a soap bubble.
"Two or three." The professor admitted. "First, our bubble is collapsing, and we are about to join the multiversal dinsional energy soup. I put the odds of that low as you're the only thing affected here."
Rory nodded; it seed simple enough.
"Option two. I have no recognition of this room, so I suppose it was ford from your mind. That excess energy required to manifest this room within our bubble has led to your existence being bled dry sooner than I, and whatever anchors you here are quickly fading. Odds aren't terrible, but I cannot say whether it is truly the case."
Rory nodded once more, unbothered. His general philosophy was not to fret about sothing he couldn't control.
"Finally, the last option is that our little bubble has begun to surface."
"aning?"
"Oh, I have barely a scant idea. But, if I had to guess, fading away as you are ans that this bubble, while it houses both of us, is not equal in how it views us or how we interact with it. Thus, whatever the reason, you are to be the first to be spat out into what now exists beyond this small dinsional bubble."
"aning?" Rory asked once more, hoping for a more straightforward explanation.
"Like the claw picking up the toys from a ga, you have been chosen first."
"Oh." Rory understood that reference and was surprised the alien man was so well-versed in human culture and gas that he even knew of crane gas. "So, I'm about to end up… sowhere."
"Yes, precisely. Of course, that's assuming you aren't simply fading from existence."
"Any advice?" Rory asked, figuring it was worth seeing what the far more intelligent man might suggest.
"It's hard to say, given the unknown variables. At best, I can propose to you one idea. As the Sensen activated their dinsional crusher from our localized reality, I reckon this new super-reality you may find yourself in will take much inspiration from our own. How exactly? Well, only you will be able to say."
Rory felt it was a reasonable enough conclusion, especially given that it ca from a genius. Another glance at his body showed he was nearly transparent, the process of his fading existence only monts from completion.
"On the chance you are entering so strange new reality, I must say it was a pleasure to et you. At best, I hope that if I, too, eventually escape this bubble, we may sohow et again."
Sticking out his hand in what was ant to be a customary human handshake, Professor Ackaestar gave Rory a fond smile.
Life had often been a grey expanse of general disappointnts of the mundane variety for Rory, but not so much that he'd beco an unfeeling shell of a person. Giving the professor his best attempt at his own smile, he t the alien's hand, giving it as firm a shake as he could without imposing on the diminutive alien.
"Likewise. The pleasure was all mine."
With that final shake, everything went dark as Rory vanished.
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