Home

Foreword

This writing project is brought to you by me, Ricky. The story contained within these pages is one that has been bubbling around in my head for the greater part of a decade, and has gone through many iterations - not just in content, but also in format.

Spoilers are ahead, so continue to the first page if you don't want them.

'Back Cover Summary'

In the year 2016, some rare few individuals are Awakened. The secrets of some (or all) aspects of reality have become less of a theory and more of an intuition. These individuals can bend the very fabric of reality with the same effort that one may flex a finger. When they find themselves the last survivors of a cataclysm, they must work together to revive their home. This story begins in the year

0AE

Release notes

TODO: release notes for chapter 0

Chapter 1 - The First and Last Day

Chapter 1.1 - Meet DiTH

1.1.1: 0000 A.E. - ??? - DiTh Awakens

"Ugh..." DiTh groaned as he awoke. Everything hurt, but not unmanageably so. The fact that he was feeling some pain was a good sign; as no pain at all could be an indicator of shock. Cold light filtered through the autumn tints of his eyelids. He furrowed his brow and began to take stock.

Legs...

Pelvis...

Torso...

Arms...

Head...

Everything still existed, at the very least; whether they were attached or not was yet to be determined.

DiTh slowly opened his eyes and scanned his surroundings. He was in an expansive field. The overcast sky seemed dimmer and colder than it should, as if several full moons lay behind the clouds rather than the raging heat of Sol. Other than that the immense grassy field he found himself in was seemingly normal. His back didn't hurt enough to warrant concerns about spinal injuries any more than waking up in such a strange situation did, so he sat up to better assess the situation.

He raised his arms to his face. Both there. A quick pat down showed that the rest of his body was intact.

"How did I get here?" DiTh mused, the last few hours that he could remember were a haze. He felt nauseous. A memory drifted lazily across his consciousness: someone was yelling, an alarm was blaring, and there was a lurch followed by a sharp pain on the side of his head.

Tenderly probing with his left middle finger, DiTh found a mat of crusted fibers where the brown hair on the left of his head usually laid. "Well that explains the memory loss," DiTh murmured, "hopefully it's temporary."

"Lets see, I remember my name is DiTh, or at least it is now. Used to be Tom Hum, but that was before I was recruited after the incident when I was 14... I'm from Nevada, born and raised... 23 years old..."

DiTh had an awakened ability; he could - through barely understood-means - control the relative offset of various parts of his body. He vaguely remembered some egghead explaining it as 'his body being similar to a frothy liquid, but with wormholes instead of bubbles'. Something about that memory annoyed him, but whether it was the patronizing tone, the egghead in particular, or the fact that his remarkable ability was being downplayed to the point that they basically called him hot milk he wasn't sure.

He thought for a moment more before coming to the conclusion that he was sound of mind with only a few hours of memory missing before he had fallen unconscious. "Probably the most important few hours of my life so far, judging by the circumstances," he mused dryly.

A sizeable leafless black tree of unknown species stood in the near distance. The aged tree's height was neatly covered by the width of DiTh's thumb held at arms length, but only just. DiTh estimated two kilometers to its trunk from his current position.

How he came to be in this field was a mystery, but he knew that nothing he could do would change that for the moment. He started walking towards the only landmark in sight.

1.1.2: 2016 C.E. - Grand Canyon National Park, Arizona U.S.A. - Tom Slumbers

Tom's mother was a bubbly woman; constantly smiling when happy and invariably happy when there was no good reason not to be. Her son, Tom, was no different, taking after her more than his father, a fun loving but practical man. Tom was a bit more on the practical and mischievous side of bubbly than the whimsical side that his mother placed firmly within, but he was pleasant company nonetheless.

As Belinda navigated through craggy gorges and over small arid stream banks, she kept smiling in the rear-view mirror at her son and his friend, Felix. "We're almost there!" she exclaimed, with the faux excitement that only a mother can to her children and their friends. "Only a few more miles 'till we reach the Skywalk!"

She looked back in the rear-view mirror again to find the calm, but happy faces of the companions she'd taken on this interstate adventure. Tom and Felix both responded 'yeah' with as little enthusiasm as one would expect from young teens after several hours of driving.

They had been looking forward to this camping trip, but more because of the time they'd get to spend hanging out together than the trip itself. They had been friends as long as either of them could remember, and their annual trip to the Grand Canyon National Park was always a good time.

As they pulled up to the parking lot, Tom and Felix were interrupted from their game of chopsticks by Mrs. Hum. "Remember boys, this is a lot of peoples' first time seeing the Grand Canyon, so don't ruin it for them; let them have some discoveries too". "You say that every time we come!" decried Felix. "Do you really think that a day at the Grand Canyon can be ruined anyway?" Tom asked, his tone gently defying his attempt at deadpan satire.

Belinda pulled into a parking spot and raised an eyebrow in the rearview mirror, all mirth suddenly absent from her expression. "Okay, besides that one time," Tom allowed. "Try three" stabbed Felix jokingly. "Hey, what about your six strikes?" Tom spat back, now fully exposing his teeth in a wicked snarl of a smile. "I know it's not much coming from me" he said holding up a hand and wiggling his fingers, "but when I can't truthfully say that the number of times you've gotten chewed out by security can be counted on one hand, it takes a lot to convince my parents to let us hang out!"

"Ha Ha," Felix harped, "Just because you need your fingers to count past five doesn't mean you're any less of a pain in the a-" he was immediately and effectively muted by a sudden motherly bark. "Hey!" Bel snapped at them; her normally amiable persona set aside in favor of stern resolve until the impending doom which loomed over their outing was nipped.

She turned around, the pilot's duties no longer requiring her full and immediate attention. The two friends lowered their hackles and belayed their lovingly-crafted jeers. Her stern expression softened, pausing for a moment to allow the air to clear before continuing. "Just... try to have fun in a... not out-of-a-Calvin-and-Hobbes-comic way, okay?" she requested, hoping that it did not fall on deaf - or forgetful - ears.

1.1.3: 0000 A.E. - ??? - The Root of All Evil

DiTh's meandering mind marauded back to the present. He had reached the tree; now realizing from his lightly stinging calves and the subtly enlarged sky that his target had been at the top of a gentle slope. From his new vantage point, he made several discoveries of varying immediate interest. From least to most immediately interesting, he came to realize:

  1. The tree was slightly off-center in the only grassless patch of land in the entire field.
  2. There was a refrigerator-sized machine of unknown purpose situated at the center of the patch of dirt.
  3. The overcast sky was not, in fact, an overcast sky.

The former two points were definitely worth considering, but they were immediately pushed to the back of DiTh's consciousness as he was left reeling from the latter realization. He spun in place, examining the 'sky' more closely. It was a diffusely reflective dome of immense proportions and seemingly immaterial construction. It appeared to him perfectly smooth, but rippled slowly with energy. He now saw that it did not produce light of its own, but it only reflected the light from an incredibly bright conical light source on the top of the machine.

After a few moments of gawking at the unreal situation he had found himself in, DiTh returned his attention to the former two points.

The tree was not of an unknown species; rather DiTh now recognized it as a horribly charred and disfigured silver maple. Curious, DiTh held the back of his hand out towards the tree to feel for heat. Detecting none, he gingerly tapped the ashen bark. Still no heat. Whatever had scorched this tree was unlikely to still be a threat, nor was the tree itself a threat to the dry grasses surrounding it.

Breaking off a low branch revealed that the wood inside was still green and moist. Whatever had caused this was an intense, short-lived, and recent blast of heat...

DiTh furrowed his brow again and inspected the ground more closely. The patch of dirt he stood in was indeed dirt, but it had a thin layer of ash dusting its surface nearly uniformly. It was also - at least to DiTh's perception - a perfect circle. Somehow a raging inferno had been held just millimeters from dry grasses without so much as a bit of browning to the nearby blades.

His attention turned to the machine in the center of the barren patch. How had it survived whatever happened here? Did it arrive here after the blast? No, it was covered in soot. Did it cause it? Maybe? There was obviously a lot of power being channeled through it if it was able to indirectly light the entire field. Either it somehow caused the blaze or it just shielded its surroundings from one that it didn't produce.

In either case, it must be extremely durable or be able to shield itself as well as its surroundings. The sheer fact that it was undamaged despite the hell-fire to have scorched the area was enough to convince DiTh of this. Its screen was illuminated, its embedded keyboard was intact, its speaker was... had it always been making those soft beeps?

1.1.4: 2016 C.E. - Grand Canyon National Park, Arizona, U.S.A. - Tom's Awakening

After entering the Skywalk Visitor Center, the Dynamic Duo almost entirely ignored the overpriced three-star restaurant contained within - only pausing to joke about the quality they remembered from the first (and last) time they tried their fare - and out to the Skywalk proper.

The transparent walkway looped out and over the abyssal drop-off offered by the Grand Canyon, the ground seeming to fall dizzyingly from the realm of reality to the distant realm of a Wile E. Coyote cartoon backdrop.

"Race you to the middle!" shouted Felix, already running out one of the two entrances to the U-shaped structure. Tom just shook his head and followed at a measured pace, partially to avoid trouble, but mostly to make himself look like the mature one to passers-by; an action that he knew would bruise Felix's burgeoning masculine pride - were he to realize the intent behind it.

Fortunately for Tom - and unfortunately for Felix - the combination of Tom's trudging, the vicious shit-eating grin welded to his visage, and the deep understanding that they shared of each other ensured that Tom's strike found its mark. Realizing Tom's treachery, Felix attempted to play off his 'childish outburst'; the bashful attempt at which lead both of the two friends to pause for a moment and lock eyes.

They stood there for only a moment, a standoff between two brothers in all but heritage. The only thing that could have made them burst out laughing sooner would have been a tumbleweed somehow making its way onto the platform, but burst out laughing they did. The ridiculousness of the jab and the accuracy with which it was fired left the two in stitches, guffawing loudly and struggling to stand.

Their laughing was loud enough to drown out a subtle increase in the noise floor that accompanied shifting gravel echoing off the walls of the chasm below. Before they finished their laughing fits, the shifting of rubble had subsided.

Mrs. Hum caught up with them moments later. Tom and Felix described the situation that had unfolded as other people milled on and off of the floating crystal river they now found themselves on. They admired the view and continued throwing playful jabs around for several minutes, the ebb and flow of bodies on the bridge became heavier as the facility's peak hours approached.

Another joke, followed by another round of laughter from the three. A sudden lurch succinctly concluded the revelries, as if every person present had just been simultaneously and individually slapped across the face.

A moment of stillness. Another round of shaking began, shaking everyone into a stampede for the two exits. The center of the Skywalk began to sag perilously as the surrounding metal grumbled unhappily at the combination of rapidly shifting weight and the earthquake that promised a closer view of the chasm below to its visitors.

Tom, his mother, and Felix all started shoving the now horribly congested group blocking their path. As crowd-crush began to take its toll on those unfortunate enough to be trapped near the exits, those in the back exacerbated the problem in their attempts to get off the observatory-turned-ramp.

The crowd continued its painfully lethargic egress as the Skywalk pressed on in its quest to become an engineering ethics lesson. What felt like hours passed, though it couldn't have been more than 30 seconds.

The rumbling stopped after just a few seconds, but the damage was done. The Skywalk was damaged beyond saving.

Tom was the first of the three to escape the perilous pathway. He was also the last. Once he was off the Skywalk, its grumpy growls were replaced by the cruel sound of metal fatigue. The sounds of his mother's and brother's deaths.

On impulse, Tom turned and dropped to his stomach, arms outstretched. His left arm found only air, but his right was explosively wrenched down, levering his head and shoulders tortuously across the edge of the structure's foundation. With his mind now fully in the moment, he discovered that his mother had linked hands with himself and Felix.

Tom would not let go come hell or high water, and Bel and Felix were not terribly heavy, but his shoulder had been dislocated. As the connective tissues stretched painfully, onlookers took notice of Tom's dicey duel with death, determining that aid was vital to his family's survival.

Felix looked up, panic-stricken at his failing support. Tom's eyes shifted to his mother, a similar expression writhing beneath the attempted placid and understanding face, evidenced by various spasmodic twitching from her features and the salient saline seeping softly 'cross her canted countenance.

"They're going to die," Tom thought detachedly. "My mom and best friend are going to fall, and there's nothing I can do about it." He wished he could just wrap his whole body around them and yank them to safety.

Something clicked in his head and he knew that that was exactly what he had to do. Something changed in Tom, or perhaps awakened. With as little effort as one would have wiggling one's toes, flexing a bicep, or curling a finger, DiTh began his work.

His hands separated into several fleshy masses - each rigidly held at a relative position to one another. They wrapped around his mother's arm, securing the once slipping grip in a tungsten shackle of willpower. DiTh's other arm fully separated from his body, again strictly adhering to the relationships he envisioned. Aligning it by eye, he navigated the arm to his brother, leaving trailing bits of skin, muscle, and bone floating lazily in the wake of his hand as it maneuvered to perform an encore of the sure grip he had on Mrs. Hum.

His limbs felt the same detached and transformed; standard proprioception and all that it entails. He could still feel what angles all of his joints were in, where tension was on his skin, and he could feel the warmth of his mother's hand in his; all the sensations that most people use to do things like touch a finger to their nose with their eyes closed were still available to him, but that kind of information only describes the position of one's body parts if one's joints and bones are constant offsets from each other. This (when paired with an admittedly somewhat clumsy person) seemed to mean that DiTh needed to have direct line of sight with his detached parts to control them with any precision. This did not matter much in the moment, but some small part of DiTh noted it while he continued his arrangements.

Realizing that he was now too front-heavy to attempt a rescue without falling forward with the others, DiTh made the snap decision to create a larger support triangle before anything else.

His newfound ability was second nature, despite the suddenness with which it surfaced. He separated his legs midway down the calves; the left slithering out behind him, leaving his pant leg to collapse in its absence. The right leg bifurcated just below the knee and the two halves slithered up along his sides to provide the final two points of his broadened support triangle.

With a flexion of his will, his torso rose into the air; suspended relative to his mutilated legs. His two supports near the ledge and one far behind to shift his, Bel's, and Felix's shared center of mass to a point safely behind the precipice. He could now safely attempt a rescue.

It was at this moment that DiTh realized that he had moved too slowly. The tug on his arm from Belinda was suddenly lighter. Felix was falling. DiTh needed a better view over the edge to catch Felix. He needed it fast.

As DiTh's torso rose, the good Samaritans that had been trying to find a way to help had jumped back in horror at the rapidly auto-dismembering teen in front of them. Once DiTh had reared up to his full desired height, his head was nearly ten feet from the ground and was slightly beyond the ledge. The arm that held his mother froze, his attention diverted by Felix's fall. As he launched his free hand down, his arm was reduced to splotchy trails of fleshy masses, each moving as if embedded in an invisible spindly tentacle; its only purpose in existence the protection of his loved ones.

Felix hit the wall of the canyon. The limp body of DiTh's friend tumbled agonizingly quickly into the river below and vanished. DiTh plunged forward, determined to get a grip on his friend. Tears began welling up in his eyes as his hand groped frantically in the cold water below. It found nothing but rock bottom.

The remnant of DiTh's family drifted over the precipice and onto solid earth.

The ebbing adrenaline high left DiTh in partial shock and fear, numbing the pain of his sudden loss. His thoughts were swimming with increasing panic. "Felix! I have to go after him! He could be miles away by now... Could he have even survived that? It doesn't matter, I have to go!" DiTh moved to lower himself into the hungry maw of the earth before him but paused when he saw the look on his mother's face. She was staring at him with more concern on her face than he had ever seen her express. DiTh looked down at his dismembered body, his panic reaching a new height realizing the full extent of what he had done to himself. "What... What did I just do? How did I do that? It doesn't hurt, but how can I stay like this? Will I ever get back together again? Do I need a doctor for that? Will all my parts die if they don't reattach?!"

But his panic lessened to near the original level when he began thinking about pulling everything together, as again his body obeyed his will. The amorphous globules of flesh condensed and coagulated until more recognizable structures emerged, merged, and merged again. Hands and feet, a forearm, calves, arms and legs, DiTh.

He checked over himself, entirely whole. Looking up at Belinda, he found a gravely worried and fascinated expression continuing to stare at his hands. Returning his gaze to his body, he found two dexterous phalanges that had not rejoined. The saddle joint of his thumbs were disconnected, leaving a dismembered thumb floating next to each hand.

1.1.5: 0000 A.E. - ??? - The Machine

DiTh rushed over to the machine, his best clue as to where he was and what had happened. A thin layer of soot was stuck to the CRT monitor on what DiTh assumed was the front. He quickly cleared the obscuring material with a sleeve, revealing a monochrome green monitor.

On the monitor was what appeared to be a topographic map of the surrounding area, a perfect vectorized circle with the machine in the middle and contour lines demarcating the outline of level slices of land. There were also various notes in some strange script that seemed vaguely familiar to DiTh, though his limited linguistic skill prevented him from divining its origin.

Among the strange symbols there were some small blocks of text that caught his eye. Marking 8 of the 9 dots spread across the field he found small sections of English.

  • Bill
  • Jaydee
  • Riley
  • Raven
  • Rhino
  • Crock
  • Doc
  • DiTh

The ninth dot was near the dot labeled Jaydee, but this one's label was written in the unknown script instead of English. Without being able to read it, DiTh felt angry as he understood it's meaning. "ELi," he growled. Seeing red, he split his shirt with an explosive bubbling of his back. Wings of skin erupted from his torso, spreading 4 meters from each side, fully disconnected from his body.

With no more than a thought, the wings pummeled the air in a mighty whomp and catapulted him towards the target of his ire. He didn't remember why yet, but he knew that that reptile was the cause of all this.

As he flew, he pondered for the umpteenth time over his ability and its limitations.

Fortunately for his health, the dissociated masses he farmed out to perform various tasks received blood-flow through some mechanism he didn't fully understand. ELi did, but that bastard was the cause of whatever happened and was never great with English.

In the distance he saw two figures, one of which was helping the other up with unnerving ease. Jaydee was helping the snake.