Chapter 1: The Discovery

  Skylar’s Uncle Jerry was a scientist of some esoteric kind, and he had something he finally got authorization to show him. His excitement made him forget to take the trash out the night before. Due to that, Sky had just finished one of the most infuriating discussion of his life. He shook his head and started to walk away from the insane criticism about such a small issue as the trashcan. His father lunged at him for a moment like he was going to strike, but held back at the last second and brought a finger up to Sky’s face. His flinch was enough satisfaction to almost end the discussion.

  “You’re lucky your mother doesn’t allow me to hit you with anything more than a belt kid.”

  Sky was twenty five, so being called a kid was understandable, but still technically wrong. Not to mention the fact that Sky was the one paying the bills in this house. His long hair, scrawny appearance, short stature, and round features did not help with this at all though. More often than he would expect, he was asked for his pronouns or expected to be non-binary or transgender just by appearance alone. There were many things he could have done to change this, but being comfortable in his own skin and being an ally was far more important than cutting his hair off so people weren’t confused or angry for some stupid reason. He enjoyed the nickname of “Link” and definitely had an uncanny resemblance to the character. Almost all of it was genetic, so what could he do about that anyways? Get jawbone implants? Scar his face up? No. When it came to people judging his appearance, he could care less, to put it politely.

  Skylar’s blue and green streaked eyes stared back at him in the mirror of the morning of his trip. His long blonde hair was a rat’s nest after waking up. He wrapped it into a bun with a tie and stabbed a Legend of Zelda hairpin sword through the bun in a swift motion.

  He paid the full mortgage for his parents house that day for his rent, confirmed his time off was in order at work, and then set off to his Uncle’s to see this new scientific discovery. What a great privilege this was going to be. One of the first people ever to see something? He was so curious, but his Uncle wouldn’t give a single hint as to what it was.

  Sky compartmentalized all the negative things in his life, grew a genuine smile on his face, and knocked on his Uncle’s door. Gone were the people who judged him because his face didn’t look male or female.

  The door opened fast, “Sky! You’re here! Come on in!” His Uncle Jerry was the best.

  “Hey Jerry. How are ya?”

  Jerry grinned. “I’m good! Really good! Are you still doing mixed martial arts?”

  “Oh yeah, I am. I’m strong for my weight class and have my first amateur fight coming up in a few months.”

  “Wait. You’re going to compete in an MMA fight? A real one?”

  Sky smiled. “Yep. If I get far enough it’ll be UFC, but that’s a ways out.”

  Jerry’s jaw dropped, and he said, “Holy shit Sky. I had no idea you were at that level. What’s your jam? Your style? How do you fight?”

  “I’m one slippery guy. I grapple to escape, and well, an elbow strike to the head does a lot of damage. When they aren’t expecting to be hit, even more so. But anyways, you said there was something spectacular and groundbreaking that we were going to see. Can you tell me anything?”

  Jerry paused, but eventually agreed, “Sure. Sky. It’s more than groundbreaking. It’s an impossibility. It breaks everything. No tool, no instrument, no person, can, well, hmm. I don’t have the words. You just have to see it.”

  “Wow. And, why did you lie to Mom and Dad about where we would be today?”

  “Eh, because it’s dangerous, and like I said, it’s insane. It’ll be a government secret as soon as I file the report to let them know what I found. Luckily, I’m the boss, and I can do what I want! And what I want, is for my favorite family member to get a glimpse of this wonder before its hidden away by the Men in Black.”

  Sky flinched at that. The Men in Black? This has got to be something crazy if that was the appropriate reference for this situation. Now he was really excited. He wanted nothing more than for his rich Uncle Jerry to spill the beans on the entire thing. But, the good news, is that they were immediately going straight to this anomalous discovery with no delay.

  The drive there was filled with a quiet anticipation. His anxiety about the scientific discovery reminded him of similarly anxious times. He had a flashback of a fight he had when a few guy’s tried to “check his gender” in a public restroom. He beat the crap out of them as soon as he had a legal excuse to do it, despite his smaller size. He had talked to his Uncle Jerry about how many people were pushing him to get a buzz cut and put on a pair of baggy jeans to prevent that kind of behavior, as if it was his fault.

  Jerry told him once, “You can’t let anyone tell you not to be yourself. Unless you’re hurting someone or acting like an absolute clown, that is. But having a man bun and a soft face is nowhere near anything outrageous. If you want your long hair, keep it. It’s part of you. Pushing you to do something like that is like asking you to put a bag over your head when they’re in public with you. It’s a deeply insulting suggestion, despite maybe coming from a place of actual concern. Plus, I’m glad you kicked those guys around for trying to touch you. A broken eye socket or jaw is the least they could have expected in response.”

  By the time they got to the science outpost, Sky was done dwelling on the past. From now on, he would look to the future. He was about to finish his science degree and start working for his Uncle. So, seeing what they might be working on would be a cool first step. It was great timing.

  They arrived at an industrial loading dock for cargo ships, but instead of cargo vessels around them, it was mostly empty. The entire facility was reserved just for them, and apparently the amount of money they were paying to accomplish that was worthwhile for the loading dock by a huge margin. It was enough to look the other way, as long as nothing illegal was happening. They were satisfied with searching any material coming in and out, and for some reason the secret operation was okay with that too. It was just lab testing equipment coming in, so far.

  They walked to the dock, and nobody even looked at Sky for a long time. When it was time to get into the submarine, that’s when Sky hesitated.

  “Uh. Is this thing safe?”

  One of the scientists said, “Woah your voice is deeper than I expected. Look, we’re not operating this thing with a video game controller. You can relax.”

  He raised an eyebrow at that. “If you’re confident, then okay. I trust my Uncle.”

  Jerry put a hand on his shoulder and looked down at him, “We’re taking multiple subs, each of which can rescue the others, with advanced technology that you probably didn’t know exists. It will be fine.”

  They boarded the vessel, and started rocketing forward to Sky’s surprise. The air was surprisingly fresh, and they had quite a bit of room. A submarine was not the place he expected to be today, nor was it a place he would describe as somewhere with plenty of space to stretch his arms over his head. But, here he was.

  After quite a while, he was wondering how much longer it would be before they arrived. He did not like looking out any of the windows. It was just too black. They were in the abyss, as far as Sky was concerned. He was just waiting for a giant tentacle to wrap around the sub like in a horror movie. Instead, Jerry came to get him.

  “Alright Sky, you ready to see? Let’s go.”

  As they walked through the sub, the entire vessel made a few deep thuds, and seemed to dock somewhere.

  “Did we just land on something?”

  “We sure did! Come on.”

  Jerry took him to the same side hatch he entered the sub in.

  “Are we leaving the sub? Aren’t we underwater?”

  Jerry answered right away, “Yes we are. I like to imagine I’m exploring an alien planet. Helps with the anxiety.”

  Sky looked at him in disbelief, “That helps your anxiety?”

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  Jerry laughed, and frantically waved his hand for him to follow.

  He opened the first hatch, which was a sort of inner air lock for the external hatch that would be opening to the sea directly. They entered the air lock, and shut the hatch behind them with a loud clang of iron. Just as soon, the outer hatch opened into a space Sky couldn’t quickly identify.

  They were inside what looked like another vessel, but the bottom of it wasn’t steel, it was rocks. It was the bottom of the ocean.

  “Jerry what the hell is this?”

  Jerry shut the hatch they left with another clang and began to explain, “This, is a brand new technology allowing people with no gear to walk on the ocean floor much further down than you’d expect. It doesn’t work on mud yet, but we’re working on it. Look around.”

  The white metal walls made contact with the stone and dirt and seemed to stab into it in a way he couldn’t quite comprehend. Even as a science student in college, the physics weren’t completely adding up yet. They would have had to fully encapsulate the space to make this work, and there was more going on than he could comprehend.

  “What is the purpose of us being here?”

  A door opened from a gap that he didn’t notice, and a warehouse sized space opened up before his eyes.

  “That, is why we’re here Sky.”

  They walked into the large undersea structure, and he marveled at the engineering of it all. Something quickly caught his eye though. In the side of the structure, the sea floor went up to the side and began rising vertically like a cliff edge. The structure was built entirely around the jetting rocks, and in the side of it was what appeared to be a portal. A straight up, video game style, portal in the side of the rock leading somewhere else.

  “Is that a fucking portal Jerry?”

  Jerry laughed, then answered, “Yes. Yes. It. Is.” He grinned at the portal for a minute and then ushered him forward.

  “Everyone please clear out, I’d like to have my nephew here take a look.”

  Skylar was beginning to get seriously excited. This was going to be Top Secret until they figure out what’s going on, for sure. He slowly approached the portal, which was only a couple feet tall. If he wanted to enter, he would have to crawl first.

  Jerry grabbed his shoulder and turned to face him. “Now look Sky. Every drone, robot, technology, or whatever that we send in there immediately loses signal. So, we programmed one to autonomously go in, and then turn around and come back the way it came. Even the autonomous bot never made it back. When we tried to send in volunteers, even the most eager of them could for some reason, not ever step through. Something prevented them from going through the portal. So, this is your warning. If anything weird happens as you look at it, just tell us.”

  Another scientist interjected, “Skylar right? Look. Some people who gaze through that portal, they aren’t ever the same again. Some people break down and scream bloody murder and they don’t stop screaming until they get back to the surface. Are you sure you want to see what this is?”

  Sky thought for a moment about their words, “Even if I see something that terrifies me, I think I would regret it more if I turned around and left. I am also eager to stick my head in there. Do you have some kind of protective suit or anything?”

  A third man answered from a few feet away, “Not anymore. Since nobody can enter, we have no use for the suits anymore.”

  “Okay. Let me see it.”

  The team took a few steps back, and got out of his way so he could slowly approach the portal. From the distance, it was just a swirl of energy. It had ever changing colors, but was obviously not of this world.

  As he got closer, what appeared to be an energy barrier over it started to fade and he could see what lay beyond the portal. The first thing he saw was a narrow walkway that was perfectly straight. Along the sides of the walkway were tall walls so high that he couldn’t see the top. But as he got closer he noticed something weird. It was like a taxidermy moose head in his grandfathers cabin. Except instead of a moose, it was human head and torsos looking dead straight. Some of them had evil grins, others screamed in pain. But as he was face to face with the portal, one of the taxidermy heads was looking straight at him, unmoving. The faces were of his Uncle Jerry. Millions of Uncle Jerry’s in various positions and clothing on top of his shoulders in every conceivable way further than his eyes could see up and down the hallway.

  “Oh, oh my fucking God. What the hell? What the hell is this!” Despite the terror in his chest, he couldn’t look away.

  Jerry said with urgency, “Please tell us what you see Skylar. It’s very important.”

  He jerked his eyes away from the portal to look at his Uncle, and started shaking in fear.

  “You. Your. Your taxidermied heads. Millions of them Uncle. Some of them, you were in a lot of pain.”

  The first scientist said, “Awe shit. You don’t have to continue Sky. I’m so sorry you had to see that, just step away for now, it’ll be okay.”

  Sky glared back at the portal in anger at it. What kind of horrifying realm was that? The back of the hallway shifted, instead of being an endless straight path, it swerved to the left, right, up and down, it spiraled, and shifted around.

  “What?”

  “What else are you seeing Sky?” Jerry asked.

  He kept his eyes on the shifting pathway, and it split into two, then three, then blurred out and became a straight path again. Except this time, there was another portal at the other side with his face looking back at him like in a parallel reality. About thirty feet away, Skylar looked at Skylar from the other side of the skinny hallway. They were radically different outfits, but other than that they looked identical. The false Skylar had a really exaggerated black suite on. It looked nice.

  “Uh. It’s uh. A parallel reality, for sure. There’s another me over there, but alive.”

  Nobody verbally reacted to that, so he kept looking. It was eerie how he was able to ignore the taxidermied heads. That was so creepy, and he knew how he felt about it. But how he felt had less and less affect on his actual behavior. He was absolutely mesmerized by this thing. Soon enough, his face was two inches away from the threshold of the portal, and his hands were grabbing the edge of the portal like a solid object.

  “That’s closer than anyone has ever gotten. Jerry, do we have your permission to let him in there? He’d make history. He’d be a pioneer of an entirely new scientific field, if not more. But he could get lost like our autonomous bots too.”

  Instead of answering the scientist, Jerry said to Sky, “Now Sky, if you’re going in there, you take this rope with you, understand?”

  Sky didn’t answer, he was still staring at the shifting space in front of him, trying to understand what he was seeing. So far, him and his reflection at the other end were just staring slack jawed at each other. A soft rope that was two inches thick was tied around his waist and around each thigh. A metal clasp was attached at his back like a beltloop. Then, with a click, a metal braided wire was hooked onto him, able to pull him out. They attached the braided cable to a high speed wench. It wasn’t strong enough to pull him apart if he was stuck, but it would break his back. The thick rope helped with that a lot. As long as they could yank him back here, they could fix him up. The scientists discussed various contingencies in rapid fire, but Sky wasn't paying attention.

  Skylar wasn’t moving, but was simply frozen in awe and bewilderment for a half an hour before he moved again. They were starting to get worried he would suffer severe mental trauma or damages if it continued much longer. When Jerry tried to pull Sky back a little to take a look at him, he lightly pushed his Uncle away, and started crawling through the portal. When he was fully inside, his fear shook him from his revelry a little bit and he gave a forced smile and a thumbs up to the shocked team behind him. Their mouths were moving but no sound was coming through.

  “It’ll be okay,” he said, knowing they couldn’t hear him.

  Then, he stood up in the tall hallway, and looked down at the portal to his world. The taxidermied faces of his Uncle seemed far too alive and realistic. Why did he crawl in here? What a stupid thing to do. He turned around to find his reflection to see if it would meet with him in the middle, but it was gone. The hallways turned back into the long straight endless version he had first seen.

  “Huh, that’s weird.” He shivered, and his heart pounded like he was in the middle of a Taekwondo routine. He felt a solid tug at the rope harness they had tied around him. When he turned around again, the portal he had came through was fifty feet away, and everyone on the other end was freaking out. The cable he was connected too had just, vanished. His rope harness was still there, but the metal was gone. They were trying to feed more cable into the portal, but as it entered it just disappeared into nothing.

  Sky’s adrenaline shot up. The laws of physics broke down in here. He wasn’t in a place where his logic would apply, or that science actually made sense. At least, the science of Earth was insufficient to explain these phenomena. With only a split second of fear driven hesitation, he sprinted toward the portal back home. As he ran, just like in a nightmare, the portal got further and further away. He wondered as he started heaving more and more air into his lungs, what actually was he breathing? It didn’t have any scent at all, and he seemed to be breathing fine, but the existential dread was overwhelming. As the portal grew distant, the people on the other side seemed to be physically fighting each other over what to do about the situation. But his Uncle was staring at his receding form with tears running down his face.

  Skylar sprinted as fast as he possibly could. With much practice he breathed in on his right footfall, and out on his left, to supply him with enough oxygen to continue sprinting. He ran and ran. The portal just slowly got further and further away despite his efforts. He started to get winded. Sprinting all out for longer than fifteen seconds for him was pushing the bounds of what his body could do. His full effort sprint began to be just a normal run even at full effort. His heart pounded, and his legs were cramped and pumped full of blood. But he ran anyways.

  "No!" he screamed.

  When Sky realized he couldn’t outrun the expansion, he started to slow down. He looked at his Uncle’s distraught face. They used to watch Anime together. Attack on Titan was one of their favorites. Watching Attack on Titan was one of the best memories he had with Jerry, and even when he cried at certain scenes during the Anime, he never looked as bad as he did now. The pain was written all over his face. Regret, sadness, anger, and confusion. The self sacrifice was something they talked about in the anime a lot, and there were many scenes of all kinds of shows him and Jerry discussed at length.

  “What do you think you would actually do in such a situation Sky,” he would ask just before something happened.

  So when he slowed to a stop with a few thudding footsteps onto the strange material, he knew how to say goodbye to his beloved Uncle Jerry. He knew that he had just sacrificed himself for scientific discovery and human ingenuity. Before the vision of his Uncle was even close to being too far away for him to see, Sky planted his feet and slammed the bottom of his fist to his chest in an Attack on Titan military salute. Jerry saw him salute with absolute passion and cried out in pain as he fell to his knees at the entrance to the portal. His pained and screaming expression was the last thing Sky saw of the portal back to Earth.