Universe's End

Like a lamp suddenly illuminating a dark room, Rory stood in what looked like a forest, his arm still outstretched mid-handshake, eyes blinking in surprise at the sudden brightness. As if that wasn’t an oddity enough, simply appearing and disappearing wasn’t exactly a regular part of Rory’s life; the forest itself was almost as strange. It was unlike any forest he’d ever seen; rather than grass beneath his feet, there was what looked to be an endless sea of purple-hued clovers with a dark gold outline around its dusky petals. As for the trees themselves, it was as if an artist somewhere had the creative inspiration to imagine what the fusion between classic midwestern autumnal woods and the lush green rainforest of South America would look like when smashed together, thrown in with a distinctly alien shape language, everything slightly more angular than the natural growth inclinations of Earth, and orange vines absolutely everywhere.

Looking up, Rory released a relieved sigh. At the very least, the sky was a familiar blue, ignoring the fact that two suns hung overhead.

“Not in Kansas anymore.” Rory huffed, amused by his reference. It was from before his time, and he was met with blank stares whenever he said it around his colleagues. Even most of his generational cohort largely missed it, but his grandparents had made him watch the movie enough times that it had ingrained itself in him.

“Now then.” Rory sighed as he looked around, still taking stock of his surroundings. The uncertainty of his situation weighed on him. “What first?”

He was pretty sure that if you found yourself lost in the woods, you were supposed to stay put and wait for a search party to find you. However, as the rules of their old universe had been thrown out, he figured it was probably best to assume no one was about to find him.

I could be alone, for that matter. Rory thought to himself. It was minorly distressing, but there was nothing he could do about the matter, so he promptly pushed it out of his mind.

If you can’t wait for rescue, what next?

Having seen quite a few films as a child, his grandparents had been quite the cinephiles; he was pretty sure the next best thing to do was find water, or at least that was what the movies had made it seem like.

That begs the question.

He was no longer a part of their old universe; instead, their universe had become a building block for some grander esoteric existence. He wasn’t even sure what rules of Earth still existed. For that matter, water could no longer exist, and whatever remained inside him was the last of the precious lifeblood of Earth.

It's a matter for later. Does gravity still exist?

He wasn’t floating off into space or whatever the equivalent of space was in this new universe, so at the very least, something like gravity existed. Just to be sure, mustering up a small amount of moisture in his mouth, Rory spat out a single gob on a nearby obsidian boulder, which was also a rather unusual-looking rock. Landing, he watched intently as the small amount of moisture began to roll down the boulder much like water ordinarily would.

All right, so it seems like liquids still travel down. Good to know.

There weren’t many other things he could think of to test. He was only a single man, after all. At the very least, the air he was breathing seemed fine. In the same vein, there was also the question of whether two suns were irradiating him with deadly amounts of solar rays. Still, much like his uncertainty of whether gravity was holding him down or some similar force, he couldn’t even say what the overhead suns were.

I could use the professor now.

“No point focusing on what woulds and coulds.” Rory reminded himself.

Liquids still flowed down. Rory nodded as if it were an exceptionally clever discovery. Next in movie survival tips: Travel to lower elevations where water may collect.

The issue of whether water even existed anymore aside, it seemed as good an idea as any. Rory stood atop a rather large hill overlooking an endless sea of the strange fusion of tropical jungle, autumnal woods, and alien foliage. It was impossible to see through the canopy cover, but from what he could see, there seemed to be a low point in the trees, as if they were surrounding some sort of dip in the land about five miles away, give or take.

Which is going to be me hiking for most of the day. Unless days are longer here.

If he were lucky, it would be a small pond or basin, potentially filled with water, which he was beginning to feel the necessity of. Perhaps it was whatever the rays of the maybe-suns were shining down on him with, but his skin felt a strange tingling as a layer of static electricity clung to him. It wasn’t painful, but it was an odd sensation, if not at least a little concerning.

With nothing else in his power to control, Rory did the only thing he could do, mentally preparing for the long trek ahead. Five miles may not have been a lot in a straight shot on a track or pavement, but it was through thick jungle vegetation and shrubbery. That was a different story entirely.

I dope hope it's something I can drink. Surviving all this to die of dehydration would be at least a little disappointing.

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The strangest thing about the eight-hour hike, or what Rory estimated as around eight hours, was that the forest was entirely silent the entire time. He’d seen enough horror films to have assumed some monstrosity was about to drag him away to devour him, but hours passed without a single peep of sound from anything aside from the gentle rustling of the leaves overhead as the wind passed through.

There appears to be no life, aside from plant life, whatsoever. Rory thought to himself.

At the very least, not being harried by blood-sucking insects or even just harmless flies made the hike far more bearable, even enjoyable. The feel of static still clung to his skin, but after hours of trekking, it was more of a background sensation, one he’d stopped paying attention to. Trying to fill the empty air with some noise, he tried whistling until three attempts later, when he was reminded that he’d never actually learned to whistle.

With that, he’d spent the rest of his journey in silence until hours later, when he finally arrived at the spot he’d seen from the large hill far in the distance.

“Well, looks like I was right.” Rory wet his lips as he spoke, the first words he’d spoken out loud in some time. With nothing but a vague sense of direction and the gentle downward slope of the land, he’d managed to find a pond as he’d hoped.

Except whatever was inside the pond, it was clearly not water. Rather than the clear, refreshing liquid humanity had evolved to depend on, there was a liquid somewhere between yellow and pink, only slightly less transparent than natural water, like watered-down strawberry lemonade.

“Well… That sucks.” Rory sighed.

Now what?

Searching for water at this point would be risky. He’d spent hours hiking in the sun, and even with the forest canopy to protect him; he could feel the familiar feeling of sunburn beginning to flare up along his arms and neck, the mildly hot climate now itching towards outright discomfort. At this point, looking for another water source could be his end, assuming any existed in the first place; who knew how long it would take to find some?

So then… What now?

The answer was obvious, if not exactly appealing. He’d have to risk it on the mystery fluid. It could be a poison that would cause his entire body to bleed from every orifice, or it could be an acid that would melt his flesh.

In the end, his choice was simple. Either it would kill him, or it wouldn’t, a fifty-fifty shot. Not drinking at all would only kill him, a one hundred percent guarantee.

“I’d greatly appreciate it if you didn’t melt me,” Rory muttered at the strange pond as he kneeled before it. Taking only a second to hesitate, he cupped his hands before dipping them in.

Whatever the liquid was, it felt cool, even colder than water. It was slightly denser than water, but barely. And best of all, it didn’t dissolve his hands.

“So far so good.”

Bringing his cupped hands towards his face, Rory gulped the mystery liquid down before he could decide against his better judgment.

Oh. That’s… interesting.

The mystery fluid was like liquid pop rocks, crackling the entire way down. Aside from the strange crackling, he couldn’t deny that it was quite refreshing, instantly cooling his slowly overheating body. Even the developing sunburns had begun to itch less as if protected by a cold compress. It was so significant that Rory felt the need to inspect his arms. What he saw surprised him. It hadn’t just felt like the sunburn had eased; it had receded in front of his very eyes.

Strange sunburn healing not-water that crackles like pop rocks. I can’t say I expected that.

Even the strange static that he’d felt clinging to him eased.

Given he hadn’t started to bleed from the eyes, Rory could only assume the liquid wasn’t some strange poison.

Hydration obtained. Rory half-smiled to himself. It had been ages since he’d done anything he’d felt as noteworthy as trekking through an alien forest and finding a magic healing pond.

“After hydration comes…. Right, shelter.” Rory sighed, cracking his back as he did. The dual suns had begun moving closer to the horizon, indicating that they at least were some celestial light sources that existed in some variety of space. It was best then to get some shelter fashioned before they finished setting.

“The reward for work is always more work.”

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Surprisingly, propping up a shelter took less effort than Rory anticipated. He was wise enough first to set about creating rudimentary tools. Luckily for him, the rocks of this… planet?

Is this even a planet?

Whether he was on a planet or some endless flat world aside, the stones were nearly identical to earth-based obsidian. Taking care not to nick himself on the alarmingly sharp flakes, he first started by simply banging stones one against another until he had pieces that could, if one squinted, vaguely resemble a knife. After that, he tore down some nearby vines, thick orange ropes of a strange chord-like fiber. Wrapping it around his knife-like flake, he soon had his first tool, a rather shoddy impromptu knife. After that, the rest of the tools weren’t much more challenging to make. He sawed through a branch slightly less thick than his forearm using the knife. Stabbing through one end of the would-be shaft of an ax, he wedged open a large enough slot for a sizeable obsidian-esque flake to be jammed through. Twining it with the same strange vines, he was left with what someone who’d never seen an ax themselves might qualify as an ax. Using the knife and ax combo alongside picking up loose branches on the ground, it was only another hour or two of work before he stood proudly before this world's most remarkable feat of architecture.

The shelter was likely the first piece of architecture, but Rory ignored the technicalities of his achievement.

It was a lean-to, or at least what he remembered a lean-to to look like from his elementary school days reading about them in history class. His feet would stick out, but between the mass of twining vine, slathered mud-like substance, and a large helping of shrubbery placed atop the structure, at the very least, if it ‘rained’ he wasn’t going to find himself soaked to the bone.

Except for his feet. Baby steps were necessary.

I won’t be winning any awards, Rory mused, but it’s something.

His timing couldn’t have been any better either. The suns had finally set, leaving a darkness hanging over the forest. Not quite ready to sleep even after all the day's physical labor, he laid down on the ground, staring at the heavens overhead.

Rory wasn’t generally an emotive or expressive person; if he had to grade his emotions on a scale, he was confident he was a six or seven. He could get happy, sad, angry, annoyed, frustrated, and every other emotion under the sun, but even as a child, he’d always been even-keeled. There had been few and far between moments where he’d found himself overtaken by emotion.

One such time was his junior year of high school when, after putting in hours and hours of extra practice and training for the track season, he’d just barely managed to squeak his way out of regionals and make it to sectionals, where he was promptly beaten but at least he’d made it. He’d been unable to hold back the tears of vindicated joy, blood, sweat, and tears having paid off to at least some degree.

The next time he had even close to as strong an emotional reaction was nine years later, watching one of the athletes he’d worked with at the local high school receive the gold medal for the men's two-hundred-meter dash at state. He wasn’t the kid's coach, just an athletic trainer who came by three times a week, but seeing the kid nudge out a victory had left him hollering and pumping his fist in joy.

After that, well, the highs and lows of life had been rather middling lows and rather unassuming highs. Even when faced with the end of the universe, it was stakes so far above his paygrade he couldn’t be bothered to dredge much of an emotional response forward.

But staring up at the heavens, for the first time in four years since he’d watched one of the athletes he’d worked with win at the state championship, he felt a surge of emotions.

“It’s… beautiful,” Rory announced to no one, unable to find any other way to describe it. Dominating a large portion of the sky was a gas giant, eight rings encircling it. It was close enough that in the old universe, they would have collided; gravity would have been too powerful to keep large celestial objects so nearby from being drawn one toward the other. There were two other major celestial objects in the sky: a red moon that he could see the craters on and what looked like a planet half covered in seas and the other half covered in a thick layer of green, whether that was vegetation or not was anyone's guess. Growing up, he’d only ever known a night sky masked by the city's light pollution; Chicago wasn’t precisely rural. Going from Earth's sad night skies to this was almost too much for him. One final surge of emotion washed through him, the wind breezing past his ears.

“Like a scene right out of someone’s imagination. Beautiful.” Rory sighed.

The entire time, Rory hadn’t considered how odd it was that he could feel the breeze gently flowing past his ears, even while the nearby leaves remained still.

“Isn’t it?” A voice spoke up from behind him, sighing in agreement as well.

Jumping up, his admiration for the beautiful night sky turned into surprise. He spun around, brandishing his diminutive knife.

A woman stood behind him, beside his sad excuse for a home. Her hair was a deep purple, her eyes looked like a pulsing quasar, and her skin could be mistaken for scales if you peered hard enough.

“W-who are you?” Rory questioned, staring at the woman, clearly not human or any other alien life that humanity had been introduced to that he could remember.

The same sensation of wind sweeping past his ears returned only to fade a moment later, the strange woman tilting her head for a moment before nodding.

“I am the soil beneath your feet, the sky above your head, the air you breathe. I am of the first Animus. You may think of me as the World Spirit of this planet. And more importantly, just as I am among the first Animus, you are amongst my first.”

Rory nodded as if any of that had made sense before opening his mouth a moment later.

“Come again?”