Threshold|Strangelands, pt. 1
In the vastness of the multiverse, certain individuals pass a threshold of intelligence or otherwise gain powers through many means, whether through technology or through magic, voluntary and involuntary. These individuals, both blessed and cursed with the ability to traverse the voids between the worlds, and indeed of space and time itself, lose connection to any established social hierarchies they were previously part of, left to their own devices and only themselves for their own security amidst the chaos of tapping into the matrix between all worlds.
The sane mind cannot comprehend how truly chaotic the balance of all possible existence that ever is, was, will be, or could be, and the sane mind cannot survive this knowledge and power intact.
...
A mid-aged, haggardly, anthropomorphic puma with a scraggly beard and unkempt hair took a swig from a mickey filled with rye whiskey, belching loudly through the empty, decayed corridors of the underground cryogenics facility he was scavenging. He adorned a pair of night-vision goggles on his face, wore a grubby, unclean olive-green military jacket, zipped open revealing a white t-shirt underneath stained with all manner of dried fluids, both of food and alcohol as well as of bodily origin. He also wore tattered denim jeans and tough, muddied, leather steeltoed boots in similar condition. His left forearm was a high-tech prosthetic, and a dim green glow emanated from within the synthetic forelimb, with an assortment of small blue buttons and a larger red one near the elbow, encased in a small flip-open safety container, labelled EMERGENCIES ONLY.
*"IRIS, gimme a sitrep on the local a_aaurp_-anomaly." * ordered the puma-like man.
"Sensors indicate that Ralph J. Little, frozen in this Cryotek facility 350 years prior to Universe 713A's present moment, was originally from another universe. Lochnarium readings are not providing sufficient enough data to determine which universe Ralph originated from, but other readings do indicate that he was terrified and defecated in his underwear at the moment of cryogenic freezing. High levels of tetrahydracannabinol have also been detected."
A holographic screen appeared as the aged felinoid man pulled his advanced prosthetic arm to his face, the faint green light illuminating his facial features in the darkness as he pulled his night vision goggles over his forehead to read the bio that IRIS, his personal AI assistant, generated for him. The man's face had a muzzle like that of a puma, his face covered in short, patted fur, although covered in scars and scabs. He scratched his face, scuffing off the scab tissue around one of his scars. His expression was that of disappointed boredom mixed with inebriation, but also that of alertness in spite of the alcoholic intoxication. Saliva idly dribbled from his mouth.
"Let's see here... so he's not just a stoner but he's also a high school dropout, autistic with a history of depression and schi-urrrp-zophrenia, just got fired from his job as a custodial engineer, homeless and eating garbage out of dumpsters, never dated a girl in his life... interesting shit. How'd a well-rounded winner in life like him get tossed into this timeline and flash-frozen in a place like this? Cryotek normally took in celebrities and politicians, rich people, people that mattered to society, eh? Not washed-up defects like this guy. Something's fishy."
"Always the nosey and judgemental one, aren't you Dawson?"
"The glimpses I'm getting of his original timeline don't seem to show any advanced robots or warp gates or _eeuurp-_any of the other shit we take for granted. Kid's in for one hell of a culture shock."
Save for the barely audible whirr of ancient, decaying machines keeping the inhabitants inside the cryogenic modules inside alive, and the steps of Dawson's boots against the ground, not much could be heard inside the facility. The near-silence made each noise ever so louder. Each drip of water colliding with the concrete floor, overgrown with moss and lichen. Pebbles falling out of position and rolling down rubble blocking off doorways and corridors. Darkness in all directions, of which Dawson kept the sleeve of his jacket over his bionic arm to block the light from leaving, potentially attracting any possible denizens of the ancient bunker lurking within.
"Unit 9D..." Dawson whispered to himself as he spotted the cryonic module containing the targeted anomaly, a baseline human from another dimension.
Dawson wiped away the frost covering the window peering into the chamber. Ralph Little, a skinny young man in his mid-20s, with a short beard and a slightly-receding hairline, but yet under the matured features, his face looked like more of a high school freshman, his face frozen in a terrified scream for the last few centuries. He wore nothing more than a Calgary Cougars-brand red-and-grey tuque and a pair of soiled underwear.
Dawson put the leathery palms of his hands on the emergency lever of the cryonics chamber and pulled downwards. Steam seeped out of the unit's vents, and the unit hatched open, with Ralph collapsing immediately upon awakening from the chamber, briefly passing out on the floor before coughing up blue fluid. He sounded like he was crying a tiny bit before gasping, covering his face with his arm as Dawson shined a flashlight in his face.
"Welcome to the future, dipshit. Am I gonna need to buy you some adult-sized diapers or are you gonna hold your shit in? 'Cause you just shit yourself, and you've been frozen in your dirty-ass soiled underwear for the past 3-and-a-half centuries."
"Man, oh man..." ** Ralph whimpered, ** "not another one of these dreams... can you please pull the flashlight out of my face, whoever you are? My eyes are really hurting."
Dawson turned the flashlight over to his face, and Ralph pulled his arm from covering his face and stopped wincing his eyes. He opened them up, his eyebrows nervously curved upwards, uncertain of the situation surrounding him. He stared towards Dawson and struggled to make eye contact, as his eyes darted around the unfamiliar environment around him.
*"Who are you?" * Ralph asked?
Dawson kneeled downwards to face Ralph.
"Not important. What's important is-"
*"Why's your name not important?" * ignorantly interrupted Ralph.
"It's Tim Portant... no, I'm just kidding, but don't fucking interrupt me!" Dawson angrily rebutted.
"Sorry," flatly replied Ralph.
A shrill, banshee-like blood-curdling scream rang across the derelict facility, Dawson perked his ears up and his head towards the direction of the scream, pulled out a sleekly-designed revolver, unloaded 3 spent cartridges, .223 caliber, and loaded in 3 fresh ones. Ralph jolted his head towards the direction of the sound and began breathing heavily in a panic, borderline hyperventilating, almost like an anxious whine.
Dawson grabbed Ralph by the shoulders and propped him back up on his feet.
"What's important is we're gonna go on some cool-ass adventures, you and I!" declared Dawson, in a tone somewhere between bottled panic, patronization, and alcoholic derangement. Ralph took offense to Dawson's whiskey-soaked breath and yellowed teeth.
*"I don't even know who you are!" * yelled Ralph as his startled eyes darted from side to side.
"You see Ralph," as Dawson was shaking the frightened naked 20-something by the shoulders ** "some assholes stole you from your home timeline and froze you in this shitsack excuse for a world. Now I need you to quit panicking, get your emotional shit packed back in, and it's time for us to GET THE F-EEUURRRP OUT OF HERE!!!"** as a pair of 2 glowing eyes peered out of a doorway, with dark tentacles emerging from the depths of the darkness.
Dawson grabbed Ralph by the back of his head and propelled him forwards, where Ralph yelped, painfully stubbing his toe on a piece of rebar sticking out of the ground, but darting forwards as Dawson pulled down the emergency lever of another chamber, which blasted open, dropping the frozen body of a once-famous rugby player over the floor, shattering the body into a myriad collection of icy chunks of flesh, bone, and organs, a distraction for the aberrant creature in the hallway.
"You just killed somebody! I don't know who you are or how you know me, but I want out of this nightmare, and I'm taking my Thorazine when I wake up! This is all crazy!" ** As Ralph sprinted, he winced his eyes closed tight and pinched his ear. **"Oh man, oh please dear God in Heaven, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, hallowed be thy name, thy king-"
"This is the real deal, Ralph! You can't wish it away, this isn't a nightmare, and you sure aren't gonna be praying it away, just keep running for that elevator shaft right over there!"
The pumaoid transient scavenger and his newfound baseline human compatriot ran towards the doors of the elevator shaft, and Dawson fired 2 rounds from his revolver at the creature as it kept up with them, shifting randomly between slowing down and picking up faster pace. Its black tentacles and body seemed to be shrouded in a shadowy fluid-like form.
"Rrrngh, my gun's doing nothing! This thing's not picking up as anything at all on my sensors! If it's what I think it is, we're gonna have to get the fuck out of this universe and try to find your home universe!"
Dawson and Ralph pounced into the doors of the elevator shaft, and Dawson closed the doors behind them. The monster violently pounded itself against the rusted metal doors, denting them severely beyond repair, before letting out yet another chilling shriek. Ralph covered his ears, his screams barely audible against the monster's roar.
Dawson threw out 3 metallic spheres onto the ground, which then raised both of them up as Dawson grabbed Ralph by both arms and grabbed them tightly as the 3 metal balls projected blue energy through the elevator shaft, shooting them both up the old elevator route like a propelled rocket. The newly-crafted duo shot out of the elevator shaft, which broke their speed, and the 3 metal balls gently planted them on the ground, in the middle of a patch of grassland in the middle of a forested hillside, with the overgrown ruins of the surface facility visible nearby, and an olive-green 1970 AMC Javelin outfitted with a ring of dimension-travelling technology, parked in a part of the ancient parking lot, where a painted handicap-only sign was still visible.
Dawson picked himself up, brushed himself off, and likewise did the same for Ralph.
"Car over there," ** Dawson pointed out. **"Get in the back seat and don't touch anything."
Ralph nodded, gathering a fallen pine branch to cover himself. Dawson unlocked the car for Ralph and got in the driver's seat while Ralph entered the passenger's side. Dawson pulled his right-hand eye out, which turned out to be a bionic one, and the car's computer scanned the bionic eyeball.
"IRIS, take us someplace else, far away from here!"
"Interdimensional travel unavailable at this time, lochnarium reserves critically low. Emergency teleportation activated."
"Oh for crying out..."
The car, in a momentary flash, disappeared into a singularity and reappeared, in yet another patch of forest.
"...loud." ** Dawson sighed. **"We're still in the Cypress Hills, just 20 klicks northeast of the facility." Dawson bashed his head against the steering wheel, honking it.
"Who are you, why are we in the Cypress Hills... what's all this interdimensional stuff you and your computer are talking about, and what do you want with me?"
"Dawson, pl-_urrp-_easure to meet you, Ralph." and they shook hands awkwardly, "So basically I, uhh, well, how do I explain this..." Dawson scratched his head.
"I got unthawed from some ice tank, I have no idea where I am, and I got abducted by some hobo-looking cat-man with a lot of sci-fi gadgets and technology, while running away from an actual monster."
*"So you're not that much of a retard, eh? Smarter than I originally thought. Not the most flattering way to describe the situ-errrp-situation at hand, but yeah, that'll do. Now we need to find some fuel and, uhh..." * Dawson scratched his head, his eyes beginning to droop, *"we need to build a campfire, I need you to - braaap - _gather some firewood, you can wear that bag of hockey pucks I got in the back seat, and _uuuurgh..." * and Dawson passed out at the steering wheel of the car.
Ralph looked around, weirded out by the overall ordeal.
"...okay then?" Ralph said in his anxious, uncertain tone. He looked down at his injured toe, bleeding, and the nail itself fractured in two. Ralph didn't notice it too much, still pumped full of adrenaline, but the sight and the thought of the pain made him wince.
Ralph looked up in the direction of the sky and held his hands together.
"Dear Heavenly Father... I have no idea what just happened today, but I'm here alone, save for my, uh... my new friend here, Dawson, who's passed out behind the wheel of the car, and I haven't the faintest clue what to do here, at all. Please send some degree of logic and rationality here, so that I can figure out what's going on, and-"
Dawson mumbled angrily.
"Amen." Ralph finished his prayer as he nervously looked over at the drunken puma-person bum.
Ralph then exited the car and began his search for firewood, and he hoped for some peace to be sent his way too.