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From this point on, I can safely remember nearly every detail of what happened to us, as it was so undeniably shocking.

The entrance into the vortex washed over us a gentle nurturing warmth much like when it first appeared, and as it burnt a stench of ammonia and motor oil, I was relieved that I had thought of holding our breaths before entering into a seemingly unknown world. I kept my eyes and ears open for any changes in my environment during the passage, and I heard a faint but eerily discordant whine resonating within the confines. My line of sight swept through the vortex's core, and I grew more and more timid and diffident at what we chose to do. I was ready to bail at the last minute and wash any memories of the box and its power out of my mental safespace.

I could almost feel the rest of us thinking along a similar line, with each face having a bigger grimace than the last, and Usala looking quite pale through her fur. Redd struggled not to squeeze my hand into submission, yet she triumphed in that respect. Tazu seemed all too level-headed about our situation, but one look at a twitch in his eye revealed he was just as scared, if not more so, as the rest of us. In fact, he seemed to forego any resistance to mangle my right hand into a jumble of fur and flesh in his black-dyed claws. For reasons I have yet to comprehend, maybe it was because he was showing more benevolence than he could ever admit to himself, but I found his fear strangely comforting.

As I said before, we stepped through the vortex and found ourselves walking through a bright, white void of a place for just a few frames of a second but savorable enough for me to remember seeing it as a still portrait of empty hope. Side by side, we exited the other side in what felt like the coldest winter we had ever experienced though that could be attributed to the intense warmth of the vortex just a half-second before. A flash of light from our exit brightened the pitch-black area, almost forcing myself to let go of my breath in sheer awe.

We were strangely enough in a similar forest. The trees were not the usual oak and elm we had grown accustomed to seeing throughout our childhoods but instead they were all a light gray with black speckles lining up the cracks in the bark, like birch. It was rather strange to see birch trees in what was built up to be an alien world. It was safe to assume there was oxygen, but remembering the last impulse decision I made, I let Tazu take out his lighter. The metal wheel and flint ignited the oil, and it burned a little dimmer than usual, but still enough to assure us of our new atmosphere. I choked and coughed after allowing my lungs to be free of its carbon dioxide saturation. The atmospheric pressure alone forced my eardrums to pop like I had ridden across a tall bridge.

After some mild panting and the rush of oxygen to my brain had made me lightheaded, I heard a light chittering coming from the forest canopy. Though I could barely see what was making the noise, I figured it was some odd species of bird, like a wild parakeet of indistinguishable origin. A small serpent scurried across the ground by our feet, making me and Redd jump out of our fur. That's when I realized, the ground was covered in a thin layer of dead leaves in varying shades of auburn and yellow. The fall season was at its peak. My guess was it was around October or this alien world's equivalent, considering the mass of leaves at our feet and the treetops only beginning to show signs of sparcity.

"Are we still on Earth?" I asked.

"It very much seems like it," Usala said.

"Should we continue exploring?" Redd asked.

"There's only one way to find out if this world is the same as ours," I said. "We are certainly not in the same time or place."

"Wait," Redd said. "How long are we gonna be here? And what about the people who are eventually going to find this portal as well?"

"We'll stay here for at most a few hours, and if other people come by, then they'll join our expedition."

"What if they turn off the machine?" Usala asked. "Or if it fails?"

"I checked it out while you were testing it," Tazu said. "Seems to have enough power to stay going for quite a while, given the last experiment lasted for almost ten hours."

"Wait, what?" I was very skeptical he found time to check the machine's power level.

"You three were entranced for nearly half an hour. I decided to see what it ran on. I hooked up the battery to this solar panel on the inside. Can't believe it was just left in there."

"That makes me even more terrified," I gulped.

"Why?" Tazu asked.

"Because they had to leave so quickly from something to just forget it. Something here must have chased them off. Whatever we're facing up against would be something beyond our normal understanding of existence."

After a chilling breeze winded around the trees into my face, it signalled our journey's embarkation. This was our first step into more of the unknown, and we all knew it. We made our way through the forest onto a trail, made more bizarre by the fact it looked like the trail that had connected our campsite to the rest of the campgrounds. Just one hour, and we'll be asleep in our tents, safe and sound. My biceps tensed up as if I were an insecure man, and my crush wanted to see how fit I was. My breath shallowed even further by the sounds of chittering and scampering along the forest floor.

A small figure appeared in front of us, not much bigger than my hand. When I took a closer look, I was appalled. It had a bushy, dark brown tail disproportionately larger than itself it seemed. It had a small muzzle and teeth too big for its mouth to contain comfortably. Its head cocked sideways at the sight of us like in a horror movie. It was like someone had taken a squirrel person and shrunk him or her down to the size of a bird, and worse, stripped it down to its bare fur. Even worse than that and most shocking, it seemed completely unaware of our presence or even its own.

"H-hello?" I forwarded.

It chittered the same shrill chatter as we heard before. It couldn't even talk like a normal person. It was if it had gone completely feral, like its ancestors millions of years ago. The squirrel...thing, whatever it was, was not sentient, not even intelligent. Whoever we were facing stripped it of its will to live and turned into a smaller, primitive version of itself. It actually reminded me of a few of my classmates, but this creature was no more than a wild animal. The thought paralyzed me to the ground, the squirrel staring at me with its cold and seemingly dead eyes. My breath audibly shook and stuttered while it continued to stare back. It then moved toward us, and I yelped before tripping and falling to the ground. It scurried up a tree never to be seen again.

The whole experience fueled a whole existential crisis. If squirrels here were completely savage and wild, and the fact that there are actually squirrels here, what's to say that there aren't animals of all the species of people on our world...here? Which ones were kept sentient, and which ones were completely savage? It was traumatizing enough but we needed to find out if there were people here. I wasn't expecting people like us, but with the so-called wildlife here, I had high hopes.

We took very careful steps through the shallow brush, the stark contrast of the moonlight's suspicious glow juxtaposed on the shadowy forest, providing the perfect setpiece to a slasher horror-movie. I was even debating grabbing a branch off one of the trees and bolster it just above the top of my ears in a show of intimidation to those who might threaten and destroy us. I would lay my vengeance upon them, or more likely, cower away in an act of fearfulness unheard of in common society.

We shambled through the forest, anxious at the uncertainty if this planet was even our own. This planet had wildlife and plantlife very much akin to our own world, but the animals here were grotesque and nothing short of a travesty on the mammalian populations of our time. I began to think that we were transported back in time given the ancestral nature of the squirrel. In which case, I gritted my teeth in anticipation of a mammoth or a wild version of a wolf, which if I remember correctly, were expert hunters. Wolves and foxes and bears were very common in this area, if this were even the same area. No longer had we spoke of our journey, had our journey begat a more conclusive introduction to this world, albeit made all the more confusing by the distant sounds of laughter.

Small yellowish-white lights dotted the encroaching area. The plentiful stars from the beginning of our journey had given away to an ominous glow in the night sky, like the denizens had known about us and had ignited a massive wave of fire to act as a trap. The sounds of laughter diversified into sounds of amble chatter, sounding suspiciously like English though I wasn't too sure. There were no other indications of life other than the brick house positioned in the center of what seemed to be a street, bustling with alien life.

From where we sat, we could see that a few of them were dressed in costumes. One dressed in all black, illuminated by some kind of advanced street light, and this alien had a pointed head, much deformed from the rest of them, or a pointed hat. We believed the latter. Two of them, a person dressed in blue superhero garb and a stark white robot with a large gun-like weapon, threw punches at each other while shouting in some strange language. I thought the robot was some kind of policeman and the superhero was tired and just wanted peace, and the policeman was like, "No you do our job for us!" The policeman must have been either an idiot or crazy because he just threw the gun out in the street, and some smaller aliens, like kids, picked it up and played with it! I couldn't believe it any more than the average person could believe country music made a massive impact on the world.

Before I could even speak up about the issue, we were already on the edge between the forest and a wide open field with the brick house right in front of us. The windows gave a yellowish glow, indicating someone was inside. The door swung open, revealing an odd looking alien carrying a large white bag. The alien placed it in a black rectangular container, vaguely taking the shape of a trash receptacle, positioned on the edge of the house's back wall. It walked back inside, clapping its hands clean.

We were standing in someone's backyard, and I was sure it had spotted us.