Prologue: Red Lightning
Emperor Palpatine clutched the red lightsaber in one hand and the heads of his last student, its lover and informant in his hand. The bodies did not bleed because the wounds were cauterized shut. The heads reflected each of the horrors they faced when they died.
The lightsaber retracted into the handle and Palpatine returned it to the folds of his robes.
"This is what happens," he threw the heads onto the table of Admirals who met in the Cabinet room. "To those who fail me. Get those Lothal rebels taken care of. Or turn out like my black hand." One Admiral was propelled backwards. His head exploded up the wall. Chunks of red skull stuck to the wall; they looked like wads of solid blood dripping with red and cranial fluid. "Or, like your friend there."
Most of the generals were dead silent. Their faces ashen. Their breaths held. Their bodies rigid. They looked like corpses who sat straight in a row and a dark tomb.
A few Admirals sat back in their chairs. One looked at the Emperor and cocked his head. "What planet do you hail from, my Emperor?" the blue-skinned alien inquired.
"None," Palpatine hissed. His wrist flicked as if he meant to kill the blue admiral, but decided against it.
An emergency hologram opened in the center of the table. A red light turned on and lit the room red. A piece of the edge of the galaxy lit up.
"A battle rages on the fringe," Admiral Thrann, the blue-skinned alien leaned forward. "Attack pattern analysis." Buzzing yellow lights along sped paths followed patterns unlike anything Thrann had ever seen before. "Amazing…" he gaped.
Several Admirals read reports, "Aldir Vir, the planet attacked, reports that the ships were detected several weeks ago entering the galaxy from a trajectory leading to a galaxy thirty million light years away. These ships have just entered the Vir system and begun to…kill and…bring the dead population back to life as fungal forms."
Emperor Palpatine felt the Force writhe. He had felt it writhe for quite a while. But truth was, these days either the Force writhed in agony or laid in peace. He smiled crookedly at the destruction of Vir people and life. Lights were snuffed and dark creatures fed off the flames. Instantly, his eyes glowed with greed.
"You four, head to the Aldir Vir system. Destroy all ships and life forms except one ship. Eliminate all life on Aldir Vir if necessary. But bring me back one of the ships. You, go find the best scientists in the galaxy." He frowned. The force would not writhe beneath his crooked, broken, shifting body by the end of the week. But it would writhe again once he mastered these new fungal forms. He smiled. With these forms he would destroy the Rebels.
He only needed to learn of them and impel them.
The day rained sheets from the sky. The water blanketed the land and saturated the dirt down to stone. The clouds dark grey as moonlit twilight on the ocean, yet noon reigned. Lightning turned the misted outside deep blue into indigo. The sound rattled the house nearly as much as the rain.
The day rained sheets from the sky. The water blanketed the land and saturated the dirt down to stone. The clouds dark grey as moonlit twilight on the ocean, yet noon reigned. Lightning turned the misted outside deep blue into indigo. The sound rattled the house nearly as much as the rain.
Thunder shook the floor. Three teenagers sat on the couch. On the right sat a red-headed seventeen year old, who stood at about 1.8796 meters tall. Braedan had a slim, yet sturdy build with wiry strength hidden within him, kept behind a friendly grin. He wore jeans, a dark grey and black hoodie, and a black shirt with some kanji that read Masamune. At least, that's what the shirt said. His black sneakers were slightly worn from use. He laughed as he scored a lucky kill and leaned forward, slowly going deeper into the zone. His green eyes darted about as his character's gaze quickly shot from foe to foe. He reacted almost instantly, his character responding to his touch with ease. His fiery hair was spiked about as he played, slowly getting more out of control. His character fired another clip of shotgun rounds into a Minotaur, sending into the void, as his hands jerked to find the next target.
In the center sat Derek. An eccentric young lad, he was the oldest of them all, being the age of 18. His facial expressions constantly changing in tune with his actions on screen, as if he himself were one with the avatar in which he puppeteered. His small hands in which he used to play extended to the overall stature of his body, only standing at a mere 1.651 meters, a head or two smaller at least compared to the others in the room. His superior leg strength propelled his lean body up in spasmatic excitement over his killing spree, yet collapses into a nearby chair, knotting himself up in his own baggy light charcoal hoodie, and catching his right arm between the chain link of his wallet. Yet the entire time his eyes, gleaming to the appearance of Sapphire transitioning to emerald are heavily fixated upon the screen, for it was Derek's first time playing Destiny, and the first time Braeden let him test out his new hard drive he constructed for an engineering class in college. Derek is perpetually attempting to find a comfortable position to lie his body, for he could not stay still from over-stimulation.
On the left sat a broad, bull-strong, truly big boned, wide faced, small nosed, permanently smiling man of seventeen. Ethan sat on the couch, curled into a ball in the corner. His controller raised, he flacked away at the controls. He fired the rifle, missing the leaping soldier by a mile. His avatar turned his head up and watched the soldier leap over him, grab him from behind. Ethan turned the stick and pressed left trigger, hoping to kill him. He struggled to kill even a singular enemy. His avatar died. His thick brown eyebrows furrowed, his blue eyes changed to grey temporarily in the monochrome light of his screen death. He respawned and his patterned irises looked down at his black Vitruvian Man Plays Metal Guitar shirt and blue jeans. His smile disappeared, he raised his hand and ruffled it through his thick, thick, but short, combed, nigh-greasy and parted dark brown hair. His fingers uncombed a large portion of long faded dyed blue hair. He considered recombing his hair. But in the company of friends kempt hair was unnecessary. He continued to play regardless of hair. Controller flacking him forwards, running, sprinting towards inevitable defeat. He rounded the corner, his eyes registered red, he clacked left trigger and his character raised his arms, his gleaming silver knife (nazi officer knife, Ethan thought of his cousin's nazi collection, the silver knife was not nazi, but it gleamed like his cousin's) made a sweeping motion across the neck. The opponent was dead. "YES!"
The lights flickered. The television blacked off and on. The rain splat the window. Ethan stared at the tv, mouth unhinged.
"Dammit! The game died!" Ethan said.
"NOOOOO! My beautiful Ga-ame!" Derek slipped onto his knees from the couch, and shook his fists in the air, face in mock tear-face.
Braedan laughed. "You all died!"
Ethan said, "You died too!"
"Nobly!" he proclaimed.
Derek walked on his knees to the Xbox One and caressed it like a dead love. "Why?" he whispered.
"Derek. You're beginnin' to creep me ou'." Ethan stood; walked around the central table, and rubbed Derek's head, and walked out to the kitchen.
Derek laughed and began to roll on the ground.
"Water?" Ethan paused to consider a question. He resumed motion and asked it from the kitchen.
"No, but thank you." Derek replied. He went limp on the ground. His eyes followed the brown, five star ceiling fan on low-speed.
The Xbox One turned on. Braedan flipped through the game menu. He selected the Destiny icon.
The sound of rain drowned the sound of the ice machine in the kitchen. Ethan considered sound and its properties. He smiled at its perplexities. He realized the two words rhymed.
Derek considered their fruitless efforts to succeed at Destiny.
Braedan laughed at his friend's unsaved lives. No one could tell he laughed, he knew better than to let it last too long on his exterior.
In the kitchen Ethan turned the faucet, he considered this ironic. Water outside made the world invisible to him. Water inside fell into his cup as a translucent sheet. The same, yet different only in the human mind.
Braedan would tell him to stop philosophizing. Derek would lay disinterested. Ethan could not help it. He did not know "small talk". He knew "everything else".
Ethan entered the living room. The ice clinked on the glass sides when he moved to sit on the couch.
Derek looked at the glass and wondered what kind of force diagram could represent the forces. Destiny's theme music stole his attention. His head turned abruptly to peer up at the TV.
Braedan held up the controllers. "Anyone want them?"
Ethan said, "Sure."
Derek replied, "Absolutely."
The television flickered again. Destiny died. Thunder shook the house and made the TV wobble on its stand.
Ethan cursed, "Schwarvy mc lelhlin!"
Derek laughed at their joke.
Braedan looked and smiled. He had no idea what Ethan cursed or why Derek laughed.
"How is Mgcilo going?" Derek asked. Mgcilo was a language Ethan was creating. It was a slow process. He started inventing words before phonetics were complete, as a result, when the final phonetics were published in his notebook he overhauled the language, which took two weeks to the language sounded germanic, after the overhaul it sounded like a cross between latin and russian but without ps, bs or ms.
Ethan shrugged, "The other day I developed the syntax and cases. There are seven: dative, prepositional, possessive genitive case, nominative, accusative, ablative and instrumental. I was thinking about adjective inflection the other day…"
"Derek, Ethan! Shut up before I hit both of you! How are we going to fix the TV?" Braedan had not interest in Mgcilo.
Derek looked at the TV and said, "She be broken."
"He be broken." Ethan corrected.
"It be broken." Braedan stood and walked to the window and pulled back the curtain. "The rain just won't let up."
"Dude, what if it's a sign a wormhole is going to open up?" Ethan laughed.
"Yeah! You're right! It's been raining cats for well over an hour. I'd hate to be driving."
"The roads are now rivers," Ethan croaked. His voice inflected huskily and spoke, "Rivers of blood." He cocked his head. "Rihvairs." He said in no particular accent whatsoever.
Braedan sighed deeply. "As dimension lord, I say there are wormholes opening. Just not here."
Derek and Braedan's phones vibrated in their pockets. They pulled out their phones. "It's from Mark on the group chat."
"When are you guys gonna include Neo?" Ethan fiddled with his hair and spread his legs out to cover where Braedan had sat.
"We already have. She's british." Derek typed away on his phone.
"So she talks?" he asked.
"No." Braedan laughed. "Derek just says she's british but we don't actually know."
Ethan sighed, "We-"
The rain had gone silent.. A shaft of rain as high as the clouds accelerated to zero and floated in the air. Then God hit the rewind button and the rain followed their arcs up the clouds. Raindrops un-plopped from the ground, pieces flew back together, grass moved back to where it had been before. The sound was much the same as before except for subtle ears.
Dark gold static gathered at the base of the house. Red arcs of electricity leaped up around the house to the highest chimney and leaped into the air between house and sky. The lights faded to dark in the house. The rain slowed to a stop and obeyed gravity again. Voices of family began to call to another, they voiced concerns of well-being. Three replies were absent. The rumple of feet crossed the house in search of these three.
The Baird home was void of three familiars.
Ethan
Ethan sighed. "We-ell," he opened his eyes. The white ceiling had transformed into the walls of a deep chasm. The light was brighter and emerged from an overhung tube of fluorescent light. The heavy rain had become the sound of sloppy water from great heights. The smell of apple candles was replaced with a toxically fragrant scent very much cloy and bitter. Ethan's eyes began to water, his ears went deaf momentarily and he could only choke on the acridity. Sputum spilled wanton onto the dark, orange fungal carpet floor of the world. When he acclimated to the taste his nose began to bleed.
"Ah what the fucking fuck JUST HAPPENED!" Tears began to fall down his face. He felt heavier, his head began to feel like liquid sloshes around in it and nearly ever uncovered orifice spewed liquid uncontrollably. "FTHUUUCK!" He cried as a second choke attack ensued. His hand went for his throat, which contracted tightly. Every fiber of muscle in his body quivered, but his throat was solid as iron. But the solidity hurt very much and he wished his throat could move.
"Waka?" a voice called behind him.
"Waka?" a deeper, louder voice called above and to the right.
"Waka-waka?" thrummed a tongue forward and to the left.
Ethan could not hear these voices increase. Nor see what they were. But the saw him with their long, two jawed faces, six limbs, six eyes and three antennae. Their skin was varicolored and loose enough to be mistaken for Technicolor robes and their eyes were long, their pupils black and W-shaped. With one mouth they hissed and the other they wakaed.
When the choking disturbed them deeply after this second long attack they leaped onto Ethan and dug into his skin with curved, scythe shaped claws and their scorpion-like tails dug their three inch talons into him. Ethan's back arched and he slipped and fell backwards. Inch wide orifices all over their bodies opened and released a slippery goo. They slithered their bodies off as best they could while he writhed in pain and they climbed away up the walls of the chasms.
The pain was intense. The shock coursed through him and he began to hyperventilate. He counted the seconds between breaths. This calmed him and a few minutes later he slept. He had no wishes in these moments. Only intense pain.
On the wall was a number; 413. Beside the number was a black two-side slide elevator door. The right door was off-kilter and a dim light shined through from the elevator within. The elevator's light flickered. It shifted and groaned; then began to travel upwards.
Braedan
Thunderous rancor replaced with applause. White walls with black, green and neon pink. A band of amorphous beings played jazz-like music. Braedan sat not on a couch but a bench. In his mouth was a purple cigar. He wore a worn brown cowboy hat on his head and in his right hand he clutched the controller. A smell akin to weed drifted through the malaise and into his nostrils. He registered the scent, but did not react to its strange, tangy bitterness. It felt normal and comforting. It was the smell who thought for him.
"... I'm in some hellish rendition of high school." He muttered as he stood up, subconsciously making sure that his necklace remained in place. Looking around, he observed an extremely surprising sight. He appeared to be so sort of a bar, one not particularly classy or clean. Patrons of all shapes, sizes, and species laughed and drank at the bar and in booths. Braedan drank in the sights before standing up, slipping the controller in his pocket, and heading out past the patrons. Upon stepping outside, he simply stared in amazement. Ships flew by as each desperately slipped through the lanes as they traveled. People and creatures walked along the small paths around the buildings, that descended into the depths.
"What the hell?" Braedan paused as an Imperial Gunship glided past him, the black symbol painted on it confirming his thoughts. "I'm on Coruscant? How?" He looked over the edge into the depths. "... On second thoughts, who cares, I'm on Coruscant. That's what matters." He steps back and looks up. "Okay… Now what?"
Derek
"Uhm," Derek stared at the dark blue sky. He laid spread-eagle on the ground. The ground burned the back of his neck, the nerve endings in his hands did not pick up the heat at first. When they did he retracted them closer to his body and rubbed their red, boiled features. He thought they smelled burned and almost believed he heard the skin begin to sizzle.
He raised his head. The sand dunes around him were bright. He looked up and saw two suns about the size of his Sol.
"Dark blue sky…I wonder if this place has so little water in the air that the sky is darker but the day is brighter." He shielded his eyes from the brightness of the albedic dunes. He breathed in the air and coughed. A gust of wind blew hot sand onto his face. "Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck!" He hopped onto his feet and blew out the sand from his grimy, dry mouth.
He smelled burning. He looked down at his clothes. A grey hoodie (he needed to keep that), jeans (he needed that too), black shoes smoking (how badly did he need those, really?). He ripped off his shoes. The black rubber burned his hand. He dropped them and cursed. The heat was not so bad on his white socks, but sweat already drenched his legs and started to bleed through his sweatshirt.
"Gtg," he said. He started walking away from his smelly shoes.
As he walked along the dunes, air became a concern. As an asthmatic, it was already torture forcing his lungs to pulsate to the beat of his now rushing and heating blood.
Derek struggled up the side of a shifting dune. When his head crested the small dune he caught a glimpse of a silver tower hung before indigo sky. The sand shifted and he fell out of sight. He struggled faster to reach the top and when he did he swayed his body so that he rolled down the side of the dune. His skin burned and his lungs clenched in protest. When he made it to the bottom and coughed sand and spittle and looked up at the horizon to spy several moisture collection towers several hundred feet away.
He ignored the protest of his feet so he could walk to the towers. White, plastic pipes emerged from them. The surface of the metal was cold, particularly around several roofed open pipes. He reached up to a flat, open surface away from the pipes and pulled his hand away in pain.
"Hmmm… it seems there's a bunch of water trapped in the system, and here is another fluid running through here"
He tastes it. His mouth is filled with a sensation of numbness and dryness… and a hint of salt?
"GREAT! This is Sodium Cyanide! I can take the two reserve tanks, filter then through a third portable one, use these two moisture nodes to have the new stuff undergo electrolysis and… Wait. This is a Moisture Farmer… the only place with this is… NO. WAY."
Crimson: Welcome to a new story, cowritten with Time Traveler 7, and Derek. Who is Derek. And May the Fourth be with you all.