Falling backward.... Did Goliath hit me? I don’t feel like I got hit, but the site of that fist coming toward my face was unforgettable, and scary as hell. He must have really clobbered me, everything is dark. No pain, but no numb feeling in my face, still falling backward. Falling sensation, no sound, no light and still falling, how far is the ground? Did he scramble my brains? Make me deaf and blind? Okay even if he did surely I would have hit the ground by now. There was a total lack of any sensation except for that feeling of falling, down, down, down.
I'm a fairly average guy and this was turning into a not so average situation. Hell it was turning into a weird week. At some point I was going to have to admit that I had a problem. I do not think that a little rest is going to fix my problem. Hallucinations were one thing but this was getting bad. Not knowing when you are going to step out of reality and into the twilight zone can be pretty confusing. When it was my own house and yard that had changed around me was bad enough, but now I was adding over-sized villains to my bizarre day dreams. Where did I put the ground in this one, because it sure is not where I thought it was? I must have fallen 50 or 60 feet by now? I wonder what happens when I finally find it. In the real world this fall will hurt, a lot. Hopefully my mind will give me an easy landing. Hey wait a minute, am I breathing? I'm not sure if I have been breathing, I try to take in a breath. Nothing! What the hell, this can't be good. I may not have to worry about when I hit the ground; if I can't breathe the fall will be the least of my problems. I struggle to draw in a breath. Nothing. Panic!!
"GASP" light floods my eyes; a loud whoosh fills my ears as air rushes into my lungs. THUMP I land on my back and the air goes rushing back out. Bright lights blind my dark adjusted eyes as I breathe in deep trying to catch my breath. I taste a metallic tang on the air that is unfamiliar to me, the bitter copper taste unpleasant. My eyes slowly adjust to the light. The sound of voices comes from somewhere in the large room beyond my line of sight.
"I'm telling you that one was close. It went off the scales on the proximity meter; he has to be within a few lines of us."" A male voice says with irritation.
"Well if you had not fried my board Tomos I could tell you exactly where he landed this time. I just hope he is not on one of the Omega lines", said a female voice.
"Yeah it would be bad to save him from the North lander just to have him land in the middle of the end of the world."
I sat up and looked around; I was on the cement floor of a room behind some type of control panel. The voices were coming from somewhere on the other side of the panel which appeared to be a giant computer terminal with wires running out of the back of it. A thin stream of smoke was rising from inside of the panel. The air was very dry and warm and before I could stop it a cough escaped from me.
"What was that?" said the one called Tomos.
A head full of long blond hair popped up over the panel. A very female face stared down at me with a look of surprise.
"Oh my" She said. "He is here!"
A short man ran around the end of the panel and stared at me. He wore some type of jump suit that was gold in color and almost appeared to be made of metal. He was slight of stature and looked to be about 5 feet tall.
Well no sense in staying on the floor I might as well meet them on my feet. Standing up and dusting off my pants I realized that I towered over him by at least a foot, okay make him less than 5 feet tall. The girl on the other side of the panel was much taller as she was still looking down on me even after I stood up.
"Hi sorry to intrude on you like this but I seem to have included you in my hallucination of the day. I'm not even sure if I should be telling you this because I don't know how it will affect how you act in my hallucination and I'm kind of new to this." Walking past Tomos and around the end of the panel I continued talking, to myself? "If you will just show me the way out I will be going now. I think I may have unfinished business with my last hallucination and I really don't want him catching up with me."
Turning my smile to the woman I realized that she was standing on a chair to see over the panel and she was just as diminutive as Tomos was. Oh great I felt like Gulliver and I just woke up in Lilliput. I was as much taller than they as the Neanderthal had been taller than me.
Gazing around I spy what I believe to be the door out of munchkin land and head for it.
Nearly sprinting in my haste to get out of there and find my way back home she cries "William Henry Wilson wait do not go!"
I freeze in my tracks. Did she just call my name? Slowly I turn around and gaze down on her from across the room. "Who are you and how do you know my name?"
"I am Fanya Alpha IV and this is Tomos Alpha XV. We are the Control Agents assigned to monitor you."
Oh great not only am I living in a hallucination but I have to make up agents of Big Brother to watch me. Does that say something about my personality?
"Why are you monitoring me? I am just an overworked slightly off my rocker average Joe. Okay maybe a little more than slightly off my rocker here lately, but it has been a rough week."
Walking up to within a few feet of me and looking up at me, he really was short, Tomos said "Mr. William Henry Wilson we are assigned to monitor your progress and report on your development. In addition until you have completely developed we are to insure that you come to no harm."
"Completely developed what? I went through puberty a long time ago. I'm pretty sure I'm as developed as I'm going to get."
"Mr. William Henry Wilson I am talking about your traveling abilities developing. You are just coming into these and you need to be monitored and trained in how to use them. I must say though you caught us by surprise. We were only just informed of you. Normally we are given advanced notice and have plenty of time to research our charges before we begin monitoring them. We were totally unprepared for your rapid development."
"My name is William Henry Wilson but everyone calls me Clark, so stop calling me Mr. William Henry Wilson. I would think that my own hallucinations would at least call me by the name I prefer. Damn how messed up am I when my own mind can't get my name right?"
Seeing that Tomos was having no luck with me Fanya stepped forward to throw her hat into the ring. Standing next to her cohort I could see she was as tiny and fragile looking as an elf, or hobbit or whatever those little fantasy things were.
"William Henry Wilson it is our job to monitor and guide the different travelers of which you are one. Now that your abilities have begun to manifest it is our duty to teach you how to control and use them. This is a very dangerous time for you. Uncontrolled traveling could lead to many unwanted consequences, your death being not the least of them. It still needs to be determined exactly what your abilities consist of."
"Okay wait just a minute. First you tell me I have these abilities and I am a traveler. Then you tell me you need to determine my abilities. So which is it? I mean come on now," I say with my arms raised as if embracing the sky as I turn in a circle and look up as if to heaven, "you can at least keep the hallucinations all going in the same direction. Either I am or I am not a traveler. Either we know what I can do or we don't. Let's try to keep it all together here. If I'm going to go crazy at least let me understand what my delusions are and keep them straight."
"Who are you talking to?" Looking up and surveying the ceiling, Fanya was obviously confused by my actions.
"Never mind just talking to myself. Let's get this crazy train rolling in the right direction again. Now tell me what a traveler is and why if you know I am one you don't know what I can do."
Tomos must have been getting bored, because he decided it was time to jump back into the conversation.
"Well Mr. William Henry Wilson.......Um......." He stumbled over his words and stuttered as I glared at him.
"Well Clark we as Control Agents are assigned to monitor only travelers, there are others who monitor dreamers, poets, scalawags and assorted other individuals. However the term traveler is a broad c
ategory filled with many types. Each type has different abilities and powers, so to speak. It is part of our duty to determine which type of traveler you are. Normally after researching our charges for an extended period of time and looking for clues we have a good idea of what they will be before they actually emerge. However in your case due to a mix up back at the office we were unable to begin monitoring you in time. So at this point we are unable to fathom the full depths of your abilities without further observation and testing."
"Huh?" I said as quick on the draw as always. I looked at Fanya, "What the hell did he say?"
"Clark..." she began before I raised my hand and stopped her.
"Enough! I am having a very bad week and you two are not helping me any. Just show me the way out so I can go home. I have had all of hallucinations that I can handle for today. As a matter of fact I think I'm all caught up for the year. So let's cut the crazy Alice in Wonderland routine and call it a day. I'm beginning to feel like I'm living in a science fiction novel......." Whoa now there is an idea. If I was going to hallucinate why not use it to my advantage. I think I just got the idea for my novel.
"Maybe I was too harsh Fanya. After thinking about it I believe it would be a good idea for you to sit down and tell me all about this traveler business." Feeling more in control now that I had made a decision I walked back smiling at her and Tomos. Fanya and Tomos sat back down in their respective chairs and I sat down on the floor between them with my back to the computer panel that had stopped smoking by this time.
"I apologize to you Clark; we are not equipped at this time to offer you a more comfortable arrangement. But I am sure you would agree that you are far too large for our accommodations?"
"Think nothing of it please. Now tell me what I need to know."
Tomos made himself comfortable in his chair and began. "There are many worlds or universes or time lines that exist side by side. We refer to each of them as a realm as this is the word that is most acceptable to the majority of our people. All these realms together have many different names but collectively we call them the Multiverse. Travelers are people who have the ability to move between the realms at will. There are different types of travelers who can do this, each type has different abilities. There are types who are called walkers who are able to walk from one realm to the next, going into the next reality as easily as crossing the street and asking the neighbor for a cup of sugar. These individuals are very powerful because they need nothing to travel from one realm to the next. Their ability is all that is required. However walkers can only travel by walking. They start off to walk across the street to that neighbor; by the time they get there they are in the next realm. Spatially nothing has changed; they leave one realm and enter the next in the same geographic location. They describe it as though walking through a shadow on a sunny day or more accurately as if walking through a patch of fog on a clear day. One minute everything is clear then all goes hazy and shadowy around them, and then it clears up again. Objects that are in both realities and occupy the same place in space are normally easy to see through this transition. But objects that are in one realm and not the next fade away as they go through the transition."
"That gives a whole new meaning to the term walkabout. How would they know where they started at? How would they get back to their own world or realm?" I asked.
"Bear with us Clark, we will reveal all," Fanya stated, "and fear not we can get you home."
Tomas continued as if I had not interrupted him. "Because they need no help or outside influence to transition from one realm to the next walkers can travel by will alone. If you see a walker making a transition more than likely you will not even know it. One second they are there and then you blink and they are gone, to your eyes. In reality they actually fade away but it is so fast that most of the time it is hard to see if not impossible. It is extremely difficult to capture a walker if they know you are coming. In one step they can start the transition to the next realm and they are gone from yours. One of the things that make them so dangerous is that a walker can start the transition and then stop between realms. So to our eyes they are there one second and then gone. But they can start the transition with a step and then hold themselves there just out of faze with this realm, what we call 'between', thus seeing us when we cannot see them. We cannot see them or feel them so it would not be possible to grab them or hurt them when they are in between. However they can still interact with objects that are in the same place in both this realm and the next. Therefore they have the ability to cause mischief and even harm. Let me give you an example. Say that you are a walker and I attempt to capture you. I rush into the room and charge toward you. You simple take a step into the between and you are completely safe from me. You see that that chair is in the same place in both realms so you pick it up and swing it at me. Now I have a chair that is seemingly possessed and coming at my head. I can throw my arms up to protect myself from the chair but I have no way to hurt you or stop you from doing whatever you want."
"Walkers do not have to stop in the next realm either. In fact they rarely do so unless they are only attempting to avoid something and stepped into the between for safety. Most generally they are traveling through a large number of realms to reach their goal and never stop on the ones between their origin and destination. While walking they sometimes interact with objects and may cause something to fall for example while they are passing through, this is the main source of poltergeist reports. There really are no such things of course."
"Another aspect of their ability that makes them so powerful is that they have the ability to take others with them. Well some of them do. Each ones power differs. The weakest walkers can travel with all of their possessions, meaning their cloths and what they are carrying. Some are capable of taking someone with them when they travel."
"How is this done?" I asked.
Not fazed by the question Tomos continued. "The only thing that we know of that limits it is that they need to be touching the traveler in some way, and his strength. It is very draining to use these powers and the extra strain of pulling or taking others is very great. It is not unheard of for a new walker to over extend himself when trying to test his power. That is one of the reasons that we are here to help and guide you. We will teach you to use your abilities and to explore their limits without killing yourself."
"Whoa wait a minute, killing myself! Nobody said anything about this being dangerous to me." I said in a panic.
"It is quite all right, we are experienced in this and will not allow you to over extend. But more of that later, let me continue." Taking a deep breath he started in again. "So that is the short version of what a walker is capable of. Very powerful but also limited because there are so many realms and they may need to travel across thousands or even hundreds of thousands of realms to reach their goal."
"How many different worlds or realms or whatever you call them are there?"
"It is unknown. At this time the agency has cataloged 15,631,895,641 of them."
"Holy cow! How in the world do you keep track of them all, let alone visit them.""
"It is not as daunting as it seems. The agency has been around a long time, we first started cataloging one hundred five thousand four hundred and sixty three years ago. The difference between two realms next to each other may be so small as to be unnoticeable at first. So there are usually sizable groups of realms that are relatively the same. We group these realms together and call them sectors."
"Earlier I heard you two talking and Fanya you said something about the Omega lines.""
Glancing at Tomos and getting a nod from him to go ahead Fanya Alpha IV took over the explanation at this time.
"The omega sectors are groups of dead realms. There are several sectors of omega realms. Sector omega 73 is a group of realms that it appears that life never developed on. They are all airless waste that are completely devoid of any life. If a walker crosses them he cannot come out of the between or he will die un
less he has a life suit on. The omega 303 sector is dead for another reason. All of these realms are nuclear waste lands that man has completely destroyed. There are 45,358 realms in this sector. It is near impossible for a walker to cross this sector. He would have to carry enough food and water to be able to walk across all 45,358 without coming out of the between. The radiation level on these lines would kill him in a matter of seconds."
"How do walkers breathe between worlds, uh I mean realms? I would think just crossing a few at one time would be difficult." I said getting interested despite myself.
"Oh there is air in the between. But you do have a good instinct. Air leaks through from the realms to the between. But when you have a large section of airless lines there is not as much air since it is coming from lines that are farther away. Imagine crossing the Himalayan Mountains. There is plenty of oxygen when you start but the higher you go the thinner the air and the less oxygen there is. When you reach the highest point the oxygen is at its lowest, but as you descend down the other side the air gets thicker with more oxygen till you reach the bottom and all is well. Now imagine that mountain range is a thousand miles across. You start to see how difficult it would be to cross an omega sector. Not impossible but very difficult without proper planning." Fanya stopped to take a breath and get a drink. "For millennium walkers were effectively contained within the constrictions of the omega lines. Before the agency it was not known how wide any omega sector was so the early walkers were like explorers venturing off into the unknown. A walker would carry as much with him as he could and when he reached a predetermined point in his supplies he would turn around and head back. Many came near to killing themselves trying to cross. Some never returned and it was unknown if they crossed or died in the attempt. The most powerful would take pack animals to carry supplies. These are the ones that eventually crossed. And of course by nature most walkers are very secretive about their abilities. On some realms they still burn people for witchcraft. Of course on some realms there is witchcraft."
"Stop right there. Did you just say that there is witchcraft? I am sorry but I have to draw the line at witchcraft. Everybody knows that there is no magic, witchcraft is just a bunch of deluded people who want to change their sorry lives!"
Looking surprised and shocked Tomos and Fanya looked at each other.
"Mr. Wilson," Tomas ventured "Magic is nothing more than a form of energy. It may be one that you may be unfamiliar with but a form of energy none the less. In fact it is this magic that gives you the power to travel. You are a magical being."
"What the hell....." I was shocked! "Magical being, are you serious?" This is not at all what I had expected. If I was a magical being did that mean I was not real? Was any of this real? This was going to be hard to wrap my head around. I was just getting use to the idea that there were different worlds, shit I mean realms, that were nearly the same as mine. And now I find that I am a magical being! "Wait, a magical being, what the hell does that even mean?" I said.
"It is not as bad as you seem to think." Tomos said. "It just means that your body has an ability to use magic. Well maybe a little more than that. You have magic in you that is used for traveling. It's not like if there was no magic in you that you would cease to exist. And it's not magic like you think of it. It is a form of energy that is not fully understood at this time. But we are making progress in understanding it. Think of it as an electrical charge that is in your body. Most people have a small amount of this energy in them. This is what some people call life force. Everyone has it; it is the energy that keeps them alive. Some people have more of this energy and their body uses it. Some of them use this extra energy to enhance themselves without even knowing it. When you see someone who seems to be superhuman in some way, such as a super-fast runner or someone who is much stronger than they appear that they should be, or the person who never gets sick or the one who never seems to get hurt when there is an accident or he does something stupid, these are people who have more life force then average. They use this without even knowing they have it. You on the other hand have this excess of life force and have developed the ability to use it to travel. There are many different types of travelers and others that have the extra life force and use it for other things then traveling. But we will save that for another time. There are so many different variations of the different abilities that it is impossible for one person to keep track of them all. All I know is the travelers; that is my specialty. I know the history of the travelers since the beginning of the Multiverse, or actually since the travelers were first discovered. This was the beginning of the agency for all practical purposes. It was actually the travelers that started the agency."
Tomos stopped the explanation and looked into Clark's eyes. "You do understand this don't you?"
"Oh yes you’re doing an excellent job, please continue Tomos." I said with only a trace of in-credulousness in my voice, which I don’t think he even noticed.
"Walking is only one form of traveling, Knocking is another. Although it is similar to walking it varies in the way that it is carried out. The knockers, as they are called" I smiled like a twelve year old boy, well hell all guys find humor in the weirdest places, "use a very different form to travel between the realms. They are unable to travel between the realms without a gate. They are sometimes referred to as gate keepers, although that is technically incorrect, it would be more appropriate to call them gate openers. They focus their ability on an object that can be opened, most commonly a door or gate, and form a bridge between two realms. By creating the gate in a doorway and then opening the door they open a way into the next realm. However unlike the walkers they can open the gate into any realm of their choosing, once they are properly trained. So there is no limitation on how many realms they can cross. But unlike the walkers they are either in one realm or the next there is no faze or between for them. So they are powerful in a different way. There is no limit on how far or close the realm is they want to go to. So whereas a walker may take a life time to travel across the realms, crossing through each as he goes. The knocker can travel from one end to the other in one travel. Furthermore as long as the knocker holds the gate open a number of people or things can cross with him. As long as they will fit through the door he has opened they can cross. The size of the door and the length of time that he is able to hold it open are directly related to his power. We have several doors that are open nearly at all times. The knockers are our most used travelers in so far as the amount of time that they use their power."
Man this guy could talk! But I found it interesting and I was actually beginning to understand it.
"In the main travel center of the agency we have hundreds of doors open to the main realms at all times. Our resident knocker's only job is to hold these gates open for travel to the lines of our empire. We have others whose job is to open doors as needed to other lines. Most of the main doors in the travel center are personal doors. Normal sized doors that require little power to maintain. As needed we will open larger doors for transporting goods and machinery or whatever is needed at the time. One of the main limitations of the knocker is that to open a gate there needs to be a door on both ends. In order to successfully open a gate the door must exist in both realms. Now it may sound complicated but it really is not. In fact in realms that have no door where one is needed we just find a door elsewhere and then travel to the location we need and build a door. Of course usually we build a whole complex to hold that door. It would not do to have an unguarded open gate. Once a door has been set up and a gate opened it is relatively easy to leave the gate closed and open it only when needed. But this does put some limitations on us. On most of the omega realms for instance there are no doors. Whether from destruction or no life having formed on these worlds, and in this case I do mean the planet earth, we don't know about the rest of the realm. With no door it is impossible to open a gate. The amount of energy required to open a gate with no form in place is more than a person could hold. There
actually have been several who tried; it drained them of all of their energy and they were nothing but an empty husk in a matter of seconds. But I digress."
He reached to the console beside him and picked up a glass of purple liquid and took a drink, where had that come from I don't remember seeing it there before.
"So in order to open a gate on these realms with no doors we need to send a walker in first. The walker travels as far into the sector as he can. After he goes as far as he can he sets up a door. And yes I mean just a standard door, nothing fancy. The only requirement is that it is located at the right coordinates. Then a knocker on this end opens the gateway to that door and the walker steps back into this realm from there. Since the walker does not have to worry about walking back out he can go as long as his supplies last. Of course since he has to carry the material to build the door he cannot carry as many supplies but it works."
"After the first walker steps through back into our realm a second walker goes through to begin walking and the whole process is repeated till we have a second door and then a third and so on. When we arrive at our destination, whichever line has been picked for a station, we transport materials through the open door to build a bigger door. Then when we have that door open we send in a team and begin building our base. Eventually we will have a full agency center on that realm. Of course I am over simplifying the whole process. Because of lack of air on most of these realms we have to open the door in a specially built chamber that is kept under vacuum while we use it. If not, all of the air in the center would be sucked into the other realm. Eventually all of our atmosphere would be sucked through if the door was left open. In fact this is exactly how the omega 711 sector was formed. It was not war or natural disaster that devastated these lines. But a door was opened into an airless world and the entire atmosphere was sucked out of it."
"How is that even possible? Wouldn't they just have to shut the door? Or the Knocker just closes the gate? I mean surely you can't miss something as obvious as that, could you? I know that I don’t know much about this stuff, but it seems to me that a doorway sucking all the air out of reality would be kind of noticeable. Wouldn't the knocker just have to take away his power to close the door? Even if he died as a result of the air leaving I would think that his death would cause the door to close because he no longer has power to hold it open?"
"That is all very true Clark, as far as it goes. Yes if a knocker dies any doors he has open will close eventually. Most of the time, but there are exceptions to this rule, just like there are exceptions to every rule. If the knocker's body is touching the door at the time of his death or is close to it, the link between him and the gate remains in effect for a period of time. The more power the knocker has in his body the longer the door will stay open. If the knocker was fully refreshed and the door was small and did not require a lot of energy to maintain it could conceivably stay open for quite a long time. We have a number of doors in the agency control room that have been open for several years after the knocker who opened them has died."
"Wait a minute if the body of the knocker has to be touching the door when he dies how would the door stay open for years. Please don't tell me you guys have a bunch of dead knockers lying around the center?"" I said with a look of disgust on my face.
"Well it is rather complicated to explain, but there are certain ways that this can be maintained without being gruesome about it." Fanya explained. Looking at the screen on her console, I assume at a clock of some sort, "It has been a long day for you and I think that is enough for today Clark, you are tired I am sure and could use some rest. Let us show you to your quarters that have been prepared for you. Tomorrow you will begin training as a knocker and this will all become clear to you."
"I am beat; I guess living in a hallucination can take it out of you." Standing and following Fanya out of the room I turned to Tomas to say good night only to find he had already returned to his console and was paying me no attention."