Transitions
by Ryan Carroll
It was six months since the "renewal" incident, and I was getting restless. I knew that destroying the Dimensionalizer was the safest thing to do, but I still wondered if cutting myself off from Mobius had been the best thing. I missed the shockwaves Sonic left in his wake, the low chuckle Slasher emitted when things were going well, the warm smile I got from Knux when we discovered something new about the Chaos Emeralds.
My lightsaber, now useless without the energy of the Element Stones to power it, sat on my shelf as a reminder of who I had been. I had been the ChaosJedi. Now I was a college student struggling to ace my classes, wondering why no one offered a course on interdimensional quantum physics.
Chris seemed to be taking the switch back to normal life much more easily. The fact that she hadn't been involved in the whole thing as long as I had helped her in that respect. She and Pixel were practically inseparable during the semester, and now that summer was here, they were literally inseparable.
I'd like to say Indy and I were the same way, but the fact is that we weren't. I had to focus on my classes, and Indy spent most of his spare time polishing his DDR skills. Seeing Indy, however, only brought back more memories of Mobius, which threatened to drive me insane.
It got to the point where I couldn't stand it. I had to go back to Mobius, even if it meant Robotnik getting his hands on the portal technology, AGAIN.
Indy loved the idea and helped me gather the materials for the frame. We raided the local Wal-Mart for free AOL discs (what we didn't use for the frame we set aside for drink coasters) and snagged some leftover PVC pipes from a nearby construction site.
In the middle of rebuilding, Christine got wind of the project and practically beat my door down to try to talk me out of it. When she saw that reason wasn't going to help in this situation, she reluctantly began to help with the final stages of hooking up the frame.
I knew that since it had been a while, I needed to test out the dimensional tunnel for integrity and stability. Chris vehemently argued the point; not that it needed to be tested, but that I should be the one to do the testing.
"Are you crazy? What if something does go wrong?"
"That's why you monitor the tunnel while I'm in there. If something happens, you or Indy can come in after me."
"I'd rather it was me going after you, Ryan," Indy cut in. "I have no idea how to monitor something like this. Chris or Pixel can do it better than I can."
"It's settled then. I'm going in."
"Not yet, you're not. Get back here." With that, Chris whirled me around and planted her lips on mine. My face was still red when I entered the portal.
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Something wasn't quite right with the tunnel; I could tell that as soon as I started down the corridor. I couldn't quite put my finger on it... at least not until I heard a disembodied voice all around me.
"You are one who defends the innocent." A statement, not a question. I felt a little silly talking to no one or nothing in particular, but the sense of the voice inspired awe in me. "Yes, yes I am."
"You have returned to this place because of your feelings of lost friendship."
"That's exactly it. Who are you?"
"I am a representative of the One Who reigns on high, Who watches over His own. I give you comfort and warning: you will be changed, but all things work for good for those who love Him."
I wanted to reply, but I was out the other side of the tunnel before I had a chance. Since I wasn't watching where I was going, I was flung out the other end of the corridor into something. I was unconscious before I hit the ground.
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"Ouch."
"It's a bit late for that, wouldn't you say?"
"I've still got a headache, Slasher; cut me some slack, would ya?" I sighed. "...By the way, sorry about crashing into you like that."
"Been a while, hasn't it? You out of practice?"
"Not out of practice, just out of sorts. I kinda got distracted back there in the dimensional tunnel."
"Distracted? You? You BUILT the portal generators! You know better than I do what the dimensional tunnel looks like. What was there to distract you?"
"Don't sound so amused, Slash. There was something different about the portal this time. And there was a voice."
I was watching the raptor's face, and when I mentioned that, I saw her become the textbook example of seriousness. "A voice?"
"Yeah, kinda. It was almost as if it wasn't my head that was hearing it, though; more like it was speaking directly to my heart."
"You don't say."
"You okay, Slash? You're acting like you know what I'm talking about."
"I do. So does Sonic."
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The stories that Slasher and Sonic related to me freaked me out. They were similar, but not identical, to my experience in that shadow dimension of Japan a while back. The only obvious difference was that I had no one to interact with.
What really freaked me out was when they started talking about the torris. Comparing their experiences to mine, I put two and two together.
"Guys, we've been dealing with agents of God."
We all felt pretty freaked out after I made that conclusion, so I pulled out a few sodas (when the Freedom Fighters had returned to Mobius after hiding out at my house for several weeks, they had taken about a year's supply of Dr. Pepper with them). I popped open a can, took a swig, swallowed...
And promptly choked as I noticed something I hadn't up to that point. My entire left hand was metal.
When I came to about a minute later, I couldn't stop staring at my hand. I wondered if maybe Robotnik had gotten me into a roboticizing chamber, but I readily dismissed that as being something I would remember. Everyone else who had gone through such an ordeal had been unable to forget the event for months. I examined my hand further. My tactile sense in that hand hadn't dulled, but when I touched it with my other hand, it felt like cold steel. It had the contours of a normal hand, right down to my fingerprints, and it flexed like a normal hand. It even weighed the same as it had before, but, still, it was metal.
Reactions ranged from "cool" to "weird" to horrified expressions. Those last came from Spark and Zephyer. It made sense to me, since they'd been through the robotization process. I quickly took to wearing a glove on my left hand, since even I freaked every time I saw my hand.
I really didn't want to see Christine's face when she saw my hand, but I didn't really see how I could avoid it. Especially since she zeroed in on the glove the moment I came back through the portal.
"What's with the glove? You burn yourself or something?"
"No, but I don't think I'll have to worry about that ever again with this hand."
"What?"
I took off the glove and showed her the metal hand.
When her eyes flitted open, I helped her up off the floor, making sure to offer my right hand in doing so. "What... the heck... did you do... to your hand?" Chris inquired.
"I didn't do a blasted thing to it. I went through the dimensional tunnel and boom, my hand looks like a silver paperweight."
"Hey, coooool," Indy cut in. The glares he got from both of us shut him up. Pixel ran a miniature scanner over my hand and crossed over to the computer desk, plugging the scanner into a piece of equipment sitting next to the printer.
"Well, according to the scanner, your hand is 100% pure quadranium. The junction between your hand and wrist looks like somes sort of cross-section for biology class, but the neural network in your hand is normal, and the metal binds to the bones in your wrist just like normal human anatomy."
I looked at Christine. "I thought your major was Computer Engineering."
"It is," she replied. "Pix managed to get accepted to the college, and she's taking all kinds of science classes; physics, chemistry, biology, you name it."
I shot a glance at Indy, who had kicked back on my bed reading a comic book. "What?" he replied, looking all innocent.
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The general was NOT happy.
Colonel Ferris, the general's secretary, could always tell when things weren't going well. All she had to do was listen for a long string of expletives delivered at high volume to determine when she would be called into the general's office. And judging by the length of this particular blue streak, it would be about five minutes.
The pseudo-military organization known as G.U.N. ran fairly smoothly... most of the time. Then there were times where something gummed up the works.
Colonel Ferris could tell that this was one of those times.
"Colonel Ferris!" the voice on the other end of the intercom roared. "My office, now!"
"Yes, general," she replied with a longsuffering sigh.
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Rob looked about ready to collapse. I imagined I looked no better. Christine handed us bottles of cool ice water. I downed mine in under a minute.
"Maybe this will teach you not to try Paranoia on Expert Mode again," she admonished us.
"It... was... an accident..." I panted.
"Uh-huh. You just wanted to show off. Well, let's see... you both nearly had heart attacks, not to mention you failed the stage miserably."
Rob and I simultaneously reached for more water. "You should've seen me when I tried this on Standard," he told Chris. "I felt almost as bad."
"On Standard? You are out of shape, Rob."
"Hey, what about me?" I griped. "I can't even do the simplest double stage. I collapse every time I try."
"Ah, you guys are wimps. Care for something to eat?"
"Eat? I doubt my stomach could handle food right now," I replied.
"Fine. I'll eat and you watch. Come on."
We sat down to burgers (for Chris) and fries (for Rob and me). I drained my water bottle again and went for another one. "Hey, Chris, have you been feeling strange lately?"
"Strange in what sense?"
"Strange as in... I don't know... like energy is flowing through you, and all you have to do is release it?"
"If you're going to tell me you've been feeling that way, yeah, that is strange. I haven't felt anything like what you're talking about."
"I just thought, you know, since we were both dimension jumpers... Whoa."
"What? Something wrong?"
"No, I just felt weird for a second. I mean it's not like I can use the Element Stones again and lift your chair off the floor--"
"Ryan?" Chris cut in.
"Huh?"
"Put me down."
I did a double take. As I had mentioned lifting her chair off the floor, I had involuntarily gestured the way I would have if I had actually meant to levitate something.
I had just levitated Chris, chair and all, a foot off the ground.
In my surprise I nearly let her fall to the floor, but I caught her before she hit and slowly lowered her to solid ground. The three of us sat in amazement at what had just occurred.
On impulse I tried my other elemental abilities. Every one of them worked to full potential.
"Look out world," Rob commented. "ChaosJedi is back in the house!"
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"I don't care how long it takes, colonel. I want to see some action on the transdimensional link project. The cloning project can wait for now. If it is possible to visit other worlds... Imagine the possibilities that would present!"
"So the Dimensionalizer project should be top priority?"
"Yes, of course..." The general stared at his secretary for a second. "Where on earth did you get a name like that?"
"One of my students out at the college, sir. One of his papers dealt with the topic of how transdimensional travel might be possible."
"Hmmm. Interesting. All right, use that as a foundation and work on it from there. Dismissed, colonel."
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"Don't you think it's just the slightest bit weird, Knux? I mean, for the better half of a year I'm back to being just a normal college student, then almost as soon as I get the Dimensionalizer up and running, the power comes back to the Element Stones? Not to mention this," I added, indicating my left hand.
"It is strange. Maybe after the renewal it just took some time for the stones to recharge. You had any exposure to the raw elements in the past six months?"
I scratched my head for a moment. "Come to think of it, I did get caught out in that really windy thunderstorm. Nearly got hit by lightning, too. That could account for three right there."
"Not to mention that gravity is pulling on you all the time. What about the other three?"
"What are we getting at here? You're saying the energy of the stones might have been collected by induction? Like the leaves on an electroscope when you get a static charge near the thing?"
"It's very possible. I would guess that fire and light could easily be from the Arizona weather."
"I'll give you that. So what's left, rock? I did climb 'A' Mountain that one time. I guess that would account for everything, but what triggered my being able to use them again? Could it have something to do with using the Dimensionalizer after all this time?"
"To be honest, I have no idea. My expertise is the Chaos and Super Emeralds. For me the Element Stones are sort of a learn-as-you-go thing."
"As is this whole ChaosJedi thing. Hey, what the--?"
That last comment of mine was prompted by the alert that had suddenly come up on my computer screen. I pulled my chair around to the keyboard and started up the tracer program. "...the heck?" I wondered when I saw the origin of the dimensional rift.
It was on the Arizona State campus.
"Who would have access to the equipment needed to build a dimensional gate, much less the procedure... Blast it! I'm such an idiot!"
"What? What's wrong?"
"Get Chris, Indy, Rob, Pixel, and Slasher here pronto." I looked helplessly at the echidna. "I may have given someone the means to dimension-jump without even realizing it."
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Meanwhile, in another dimension, another inventor was working on his own dimensional gateway. This inventor, however, wasn't that successful.
The explosion shook every house in a three-mile radius. Three humans, a rabbit, a ferret, and... something... fled the house, smoke pouring from the open door behind them.
"I thought you had that thing fixed!" one of the humans, a female college student, complained.
"Yeah," one of the other humans, a male in a plaid shirt, agreed, coughing. "What happened to 'This time I'll actually get it right'?"
The third human pulled a pad of paper from beneath his trenchcoat, muttering, "Let me check my notes."
"You know, Riff, it's funny; last time you said that was right after your LAST invention exploded."
"That wasn't my fault! Kiki decided to start pushing buttons!"
Upon hearing the word "buttons", the ferret started jumping up and down. "Ooh, buttons? Where?"
"Knock it off right now, Kiki, before I have to hurt you," the rabbit cut in, pulling out a rather nasty switchblade.
The college student turned around suddenly. "Um, Torg?"
Without turning, the plaid shirt replied, "Yeah, Zoe?"
"Is a dimensional gate supposed to look like a big hole in reality with all kinds of color swirling around in it?"
"I dunno. Why?"
"Riff", the man in the trenchcoat, turned and saw what Zoe was looking at. "I think she's asking because there's a dimensional gate right behind you, Torg."
Torg whirled around to see exactly what Zoe had described. "Um, Riff? Did you cause this?"
"Let me check my notes."
Before Riff could reach for his notepad again, a figure in full military dress came through the gate. The man pulled a gun and pointed it at the group. "You're all coming with me. The general needs proof that the experiment was a success."
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"Let me get this straight. You GAVE the secret to dimensional travel to one of your professors in a college essay?!?" Slasher paced the length of the room, which for her meant taking two steps before turning.
"It was disguised as theory and I left out critical bits of information. How the heck was I supposed to know that she would fill in the gaps so quickly?"
"Do you have exact coordinates? We need to stop this now."
"We can jump into the area through their portal, trash the equipment, and book it out of their with an emergency portal generator."
All right, but it's you, me, and Chris. The smaller the group, the better. Let's do it."
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"Great," Zoe complained. "As if my life wasn't complicated enough, now I've been abducted by a paramilitary group from another dimension. And I thought the time machine had been a bad idea."
"Zoe?"
"Yeah, Riff?"
"You mind SHUTTING UP before they start interrogating me to see what ELSE I've invented?"
"Sorry."
"At least they didn't bring Aylee," Torg cut in.
The gate opened, and two uniformed men came through. They threw the green thing they had been carrying into an adjacent cell. The alien poked its head out from beneath its wings. "Hi guys."
"Aylee!"
Zoe glared at Torg. "You had to open your big mouth, didn't you?"
The gate flared to life again. The major difference this time was that this wasn't part of the experiment.
"What's going on?" the colonel in charge demanded. "Who opened the gate?"
"The dimensional tunnel was initiated from the other end, colonel!" one of the techs replied.
"What? How is that possible? No one else could have invented transdimensional travel! This was a G.U.N.-only project!"
An armored figure emerged from the gate carrying a lightsaber. "I beg to differ. I've come to declare patent infringement. Sorry, but this equipment needs to be shut down."
"Who the heck are you?" the colonel demanded.
The armored figure was soon joined by a human who was glowing so brightly as to be luminescent and a velociraptor... one with birdlike wings held closely to its sides.
"I'm your worst nightmare," the one in armor replied, and in one swift move bisected the computer running the portal frame.
"NO! Our only copy of the files!" the colonel screamed. "Get them!"
The raptor went straight for the cages, breaking the locks with near surgical precision. While the glowing figure distracted and disarmed the men in uniform, the armored figure did as much property damage as possible.
"Come on," the raptor told the freed captives. Aylee, who had up to this point remained inert, spread her wings happily, sending out a massive electromagnetic pulse. All the circuitry in the near vicinity was fried, leaving the glowing human and the armored one's lightsaber as the only sources of light in the room.
It was at that point that another dimensional portal opened, only this one wasn't bound to the destroyed portal frame. The raptor herded everyone through it, pausing to pick up the ferret, who had stopped to look at the "pretty glowing thing", and chuck her through. She followed them through, and the luminescent and the suit of armor came soon after. The portal winked out, plunging the room into total darkness.
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"Well, that went well."
"Right. We now have an electromagnetic, potato-eating alien, a web designer, a mad scientist/inventor, a college student, a hyperactive ferret, and a psycho rabbit taking up temporary residence in your basement, and the mission went well? I'd hate to see a mission you thought DIDN'T go well."
"Oh, chill out Chris. By the way, nice glow-in-the-dark thing you had going."
"Part of the Chaos Amber. Discovered it over the semester."
"Yeah, lucky you. YOU could still USE your gem, while I was stuck being plain ol' me all semester."
"Oh, quit griping, you two," Slasher cut in. "How's everyone doing downstairs, by the way?"
I ticked off each of our guests on my hand as I listed them. "Kiki discovered the arcade machines and has been going nonstop on the 'pretty buttons' ever since. Bun-bun found a Baywatch marathon on TV. (Don't ask. I have no idea, either.) Riff is trying to figure out the dimensional coordinates of their home dimension so we can send them home. Torg found the Dreamcast and is trying to beat all my high scores. (He's getting closer than I'd like.) Zoe is reading a magazine, though how she can do that with all that going on down there I have no idea. Aylee is happily munching on french fries, and I shielded the closet so she can release her EM pulses safely."
"Sounds like everything's taken care of."
"Well, at least until we can get them home. It looks like it's going to be harder than we originally thought; Riff's having a hard time extrapolating the coordinates from here. It would have been easier if he'd done that before those paramilitary freaks abducted them. Anyway, at least the college campus suffered no ill effects of Aylee's EMP."
"Unless you count some serious downtime on the power grid."
"Look, I didn't even realize that base was smack underneath the power plant until we got the heck out of there. One of those things where the best-case scenario just happened to include some negative side effects."
"Okay. So now what? We going to just hang around and wait for Riff to get those coordinates?"
"Not exactly. I'm going to go snooping around the campus and see if I can figure out who those people are and why the heck they were messing with my technology." I activated the transporter. "Don't wait up for me."
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I discovered something as I strolled around the dark campus. One, Arizona State is a lot darker when the power grid's down, and two, I had gained yet another ability. I wondered when I would hit my limit for new abilities. I mean shoot, I had the power of the elements, wasn't that enough?
It's hard to explain, but I'll try. I had gained some sort of sixth sense, kinda like a Jedi radar. Occasionally I would get these sensations of a dark presence, but the impressions were fleeting. Then at one point the sensation remained, and it felt like it was getting closer. The closer the feeling got, the more my left hand twitched. Suddenly the dark spot on my consciousness blazed into a full red alert and I got the clear impression that I was about to get skewered.
By reflex my left hand, the metal one, swung around and down as I whirled to face may attacker. Four blades, each six inches long, clattered to the ground.
"You know, I really hate it when you do that." The voice caught my attention. There not three feet away, was Robo Knux.
"...the heck? You're toasted! You should be in a million pieces buried in my backyard!"
"Yes, well, I also happened to be someone's little test project. Somehow this little paramilitary group discovered that my circuitry was buried in your backyard, so they waited until you were gone and no one was watching, then they dug me up and reassembled me. They reactivated me last night after a major disaster with some dimensional portal project. I almost told them you'd invented it first, but I didn't get the chance. They told me to patrol the area in case someone came back. I did kinda expect to keep my spikes longer than 24 hours, though." The robot-echidna folded his arms sulkily. "What the heck kinda alloy have you got in that sword, anyway?"
"Sword? What sword?" Then I happened to glance down at my hand for the first time since turning around. "Good night," I breathed.
In place of the metal hand was a sword, roughly 3 feet in length, and sharper than any blade I've ever seen. As I watched, the sword slowly melted back into the form of my hand. I flexed my fingers just to make sure I wasn't imagining things.
"Now that is just freaky," I said aloud.
"Yeah, whatever. Listen, you think you could possibly get outta here? I'm going to have a hard enough time explaining to these people how I lost the spikes. I really don't want them melting me down for failing to do my job."
"You answer some questions for me, and I'll reattach the spikes myself before I leave."
"Fire away."
"I'd love to take that comment at face value, but... Anyway, who are these people? This paramilitary group?"
"The only name I've heard thrown around is G.U.N., and no one ever explains what it means."
"What are they doing with all this experimental technology? Such as the plans for MY Dimensionalizer?"
"Oh, so they were using your stuff? Hmmm, that's interesting. Actually it appears to be their specialty. "The General" called some time after I was activated and yelled a blue streak at the woman in charge. Mentioned a cloning project, as well as me and a few other pseudo-scientific things."
Using the Lightning Stone and my fingers as an impromptu arc welder, I reattached the last of RK's spikes. "Thanks for the info. If they ask, just tell them you ran someone off. You won't even have to lie to them."
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"Why does it seem that Mecha Bots have more lives than cats?" Rob complained.
"Well at least he wasn't his normal hypnotizing, back-stabbing self. I think G.U.N. left out one of his personality chips."
"Well thank God for small favors. How's your hand, by the way?"
"Pretty good. Why, you think my hand morphing into a sword is a bad thing?"
"Well, if it only happens when you WANT it to, it's a good thing. But if it's merely reflex..."
"You're afraid I could be startled by something and slice the wrong person."
"In a nutshell, yes."
"I'll work on that. Also, I've been thinking about something."
Without warning, the power went out.
"Aylee!"
From the basement stairs came a faint "Sorry."
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I was back on the ASU campus the following day, trying to piece together all the info I'd collected over the past week. It was during this little trip that I became convinced my life was one huge crossover gone horribly wrong.
It started as I headed out to the power plant. A pillar built specifically for the purpose of posting flyers was plastered with papers reading "all your base are belong to us". "If I see that phrase one more time..." I muttered to myself. Just then the ground shook violently, and a figure clad in jeans and a bomber jacket came bursting out of the power plant. He was looking behind him and didn't see me, and I was too shocked to get out of the way.
In under two seconds I was flat on my back. Reflex kept my head from hitting the pavement. "You're not from around here, are you?" I asked the guy as he quickly got back on his feet.
"Yeah, you could say that."
"I gotta hand it to ya, you definitely know how to sabotage."
"Huh?"
"Well, either you blew up their dimensional gateway or it went critical on them. I'm trying to protect my invention from those people. Come on, I've got a place you can stay until we can get you home."
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"They got it working AGAIN?"
"Yeah, and I think they're just punching in random numbers for coordinates. My fear is that they'll link to a dimension with big, ugly, nasty, evil creatures bent on destroying everything in sight."
"So what have we got right now? The primary cast of a web-comic and Squall Leonhart from Final Fantasy 8. Who next, Guybrush Threepwood?"
I laughed at Chris' suggestion. "To be honest that wouldn't surprise me in the least. We have to stop them from using the technology, somehow."
"What are you going to do, patent it?" Slasher inquired.
The proverbial light bulb clicked on. "Slasher, that's IT! We'll go public with this and get copyright protection!"
Rob cut in. "Forgive me for saying so, but are you NUTS? You think the world is going to believe that a college student invented a device that makes inter-dimensional travel possible?"
"So we'll disguise it as something else... A teleporter!"
"En ingles, por favor?"
"Look, we use the Dimensionalizer for travel between locations here on earth, right?"
"Yeah, so?"
"We market this right, and we may not only prevent illegal use of the technology, but we may propel travel into the next century!"
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Two days later...
The General looked at Colonel Ferris out of the corner of his eye. The secretary swallowed, but gave no other signs of nervousness.
"Tell me, Colonel... You say that you succeeded in using this transdimensional equipment twice?"
"Yes, sir."
"And both times the equipment was destroyed?"
"Yes, sir."
"And what caused it?"
"The first time, three creatures came through the gateway and destroyed the equipment and kidnapped the test subjects. The second time, the test subject himself pulled a weapon and began destroying the equipment. He managed to disarm our men and escaped."
"This project is starting to look like a losing proposition."
Colonel Ferris remained silent.
"This student of yours... does he wear a glove on his left hand, by any chance?"
"No, sir. I knew him well over the semester. He never wore gloves."
"That intrigues me. Since he was wearing a glove at today's press conference."
The colonel was taken aback. "Press conference, sir?"
"I'm surprised you didn't hear about it... Especially since he was down in Tucson marketing our dimensional portal project as a long-distance teleporter."
"What?"
The general flicked on a TV news station, which was still abuzz over the teleporter. A video clip came on, demonstrating the technology...
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"I realize many of you think that this may all be smoke and mirrors," I told the press. "As proof that this is legitimate, we have placed the teleporter frame directly against a pre-existing cinder-block wall. There is no possible way anyone could come through that frame from the other side.
"We also have several cameras set up for a live feed in Phoenix right now. Christine, are you there?" I turned my attention to the screen behind me and saw Chris' face grinning back at me.
"I'm right here on the ASU campus, Ryan! Just how many members of the press did you invite, anyway?"
"I thought it was supposed to be a blanket invitation!"
"Well you got enough people here, all right. There's no way people will be able to dispute this."
"Shall we demonstrate?"
"Let's fire it up!"
A press member raised his hand. "Mr. Carroll, I realize that this is such a new technology that you may feel it unwise to reveal the intricate workings of the machine... but for the record, what exactly is the experience like? Is it as simple as walking through a doorway?"
I smiled in reply. "Well, we're working on that, but currently it's more like a tunnel. Essentially what this device does is it forges a pathway that is slightly out of sync with reality as we know it. A person enters the tunnel at one end and comes out the other. You have to practice to acheive a good landing, though. The first time I tried it I fell flat on my face."
The crowd of reporters laughed at that, and I turned my attention back to the screen. "Okay, Chris, start 'er up!"
As the gateway flared into existence, reporters and cameramen gasped in amazement. The gasps turned to cheers as Chris appeared on stage next to me.
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"Looks like everything went well. You told them about the monitoring system, I see."
"Yeah, it's kinda like air traffic control. Wouldn't want those tunnels getting crossed."
"Wouldn't want any rogue tunnels being formed by unscrupulous paramilitary groups, either," Slasher replied with a smile.
I shrugged. "All we have to do is watch for any out-of-dimension tunnels being forged. 'The dangers are too great', and all that, you know."
"But of course."
"So, what happens now?"
"We go back to life as usual," I replied, popping a Dr. Pepper can open with the tip of my blade-hand.
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"So, what happens now, general?"
"We work on finding a way to circumvent the detection. When that's done, we move onto Project Cetra."
"Project Cetra? But sir--!"
"No arguments, colonel. I want to see results, and quickly."
"Yes, sir."
To be continued...
by Ryan Carroll
It was six months since the "renewal" incident, and I was getting restless. I knew that destroying the Dimensionalizer was the safest thing to do, but I still wondered if cutting myself off from Mobius had been the best thing. I missed the shockwaves Sonic left in his wake, the low chuckle Slasher emitted when things were going well, the warm smile I got from Knux when we discovered something new about the Chaos Emeralds.
My lightsaber, now useless without the energy of the Element Stones to power it, sat on my shelf as a reminder of who I had been. I had been the ChaosJedi. Now I was a college student struggling to ace my classes, wondering why no one offered a course on interdimensional quantum physics.
Chris seemed to be taking the switch back to normal life much more easily. The fact that she hadn't been involved in the whole thing as long as I had helped her in that respect. She and Pixel were practically inseparable during the semester, and now that summer was here, they were literally inseparable.
I'd like to say Indy and I were the same way, but the fact is that we weren't. I had to focus on my classes, and Indy spent most of his spare time polishing his DDR skills. Seeing Indy, however, only brought back more memories of Mobius, which threatened to drive me insane.
It got to the point where I couldn't stand it. I had to go back to Mobius, even if it meant Robotnik getting his hands on the portal technology, AGAIN.
Indy loved the idea and helped me gather the materials for the frame. We raided the local Wal-Mart for free AOL discs (what we didn't use for the frame we set aside for drink coasters) and snagged some leftover PVC pipes from a nearby construction site.
In the middle of rebuilding, Christine got wind of the project and practically beat my door down to try to talk me out of it. When she saw that reason wasn't going to help in this situation, she reluctantly began to help with the final stages of hooking up the frame.
I knew that since it had been a while, I needed to test out the dimensional tunnel for integrity and stability. Chris vehemently argued the point; not that it needed to be tested, but that I should be the one to do the testing.
"Are you crazy? What if something does go wrong?"
"That's why you monitor the tunnel while I'm in there. If something happens, you or Indy can come in after me."
"I'd rather it was me going after you, Ryan," Indy cut in. "I have no idea how to monitor something like this. Chris or Pixel can do it better than I can."
"It's settled then. I'm going in."
"Not yet, you're not. Get back here." With that, Chris whirled me around and planted her lips on mine. My face was still red when I entered the portal.
-------------------------------------------------------
Something wasn't quite right with the tunnel; I could tell that as soon as I started down the corridor. I couldn't quite put my finger on it... at least not until I heard a disembodied voice all around me.
"You are one who defends the innocent." A statement, not a question. I felt a little silly talking to no one or nothing in particular, but the sense of the voice inspired awe in me. "Yes, yes I am."
"You have returned to this place because of your feelings of lost friendship."
"That's exactly it. Who are you?"
"I am a representative of the One Who reigns on high, Who watches over His own. I give you comfort and warning: you will be changed, but all things work for good for those who love Him."
I wanted to reply, but I was out the other side of the tunnel before I had a chance. Since I wasn't watching where I was going, I was flung out the other end of the corridor into something. I was unconscious before I hit the ground.
-------------------------------------------------------
"Ouch."
"It's a bit late for that, wouldn't you say?"
"I've still got a headache, Slasher; cut me some slack, would ya?" I sighed. "...By the way, sorry about crashing into you like that."
"Been a while, hasn't it? You out of practice?"
"Not out of practice, just out of sorts. I kinda got distracted back there in the dimensional tunnel."
"Distracted? You? You BUILT the portal generators! You know better than I do what the dimensional tunnel looks like. What was there to distract you?"
"Don't sound so amused, Slash. There was something different about the portal this time. And there was a voice."
I was watching the raptor's face, and when I mentioned that, I saw her become the textbook example of seriousness. "A voice?"
"Yeah, kinda. It was almost as if it wasn't my head that was hearing it, though; more like it was speaking directly to my heart."
"You don't say."
"You okay, Slash? You're acting like you know what I'm talking about."
"I do. So does Sonic."
----------------------------------------------------
The stories that Slasher and Sonic related to me freaked me out. They were similar, but not identical, to my experience in that shadow dimension of Japan a while back. The only obvious difference was that I had no one to interact with.
What really freaked me out was when they started talking about the torris. Comparing their experiences to mine, I put two and two together.
"Guys, we've been dealing with agents of God."
We all felt pretty freaked out after I made that conclusion, so I pulled out a few sodas (when the Freedom Fighters had returned to Mobius after hiding out at my house for several weeks, they had taken about a year's supply of Dr. Pepper with them). I popped open a can, took a swig, swallowed...
And promptly choked as I noticed something I hadn't up to that point. My entire left hand was metal.
When I came to about a minute later, I couldn't stop staring at my hand. I wondered if maybe Robotnik had gotten me into a roboticizing chamber, but I readily dismissed that as being something I would remember. Everyone else who had gone through such an ordeal had been unable to forget the event for months. I examined my hand further. My tactile sense in that hand hadn't dulled, but when I touched it with my other hand, it felt like cold steel. It had the contours of a normal hand, right down to my fingerprints, and it flexed like a normal hand. It even weighed the same as it had before, but, still, it was metal.
Reactions ranged from "cool" to "weird" to horrified expressions. Those last came from Spark and Zephyer. It made sense to me, since they'd been through the robotization process. I quickly took to wearing a glove on my left hand, since even I freaked every time I saw my hand.
I really didn't want to see Christine's face when she saw my hand, but I didn't really see how I could avoid it. Especially since she zeroed in on the glove the moment I came back through the portal.
"What's with the glove? You burn yourself or something?"
"No, but I don't think I'll have to worry about that ever again with this hand."
"What?"
I took off the glove and showed her the metal hand.
When her eyes flitted open, I helped her up off the floor, making sure to offer my right hand in doing so. "What... the heck... did you do... to your hand?" Chris inquired.
"I didn't do a blasted thing to it. I went through the dimensional tunnel and boom, my hand looks like a silver paperweight."
"Hey, coooool," Indy cut in. The glares he got from both of us shut him up. Pixel ran a miniature scanner over my hand and crossed over to the computer desk, plugging the scanner into a piece of equipment sitting next to the printer.
"Well, according to the scanner, your hand is 100% pure quadranium. The junction between your hand and wrist looks like somes sort of cross-section for biology class, but the neural network in your hand is normal, and the metal binds to the bones in your wrist just like normal human anatomy."
I looked at Christine. "I thought your major was Computer Engineering."
"It is," she replied. "Pix managed to get accepted to the college, and she's taking all kinds of science classes; physics, chemistry, biology, you name it."
I shot a glance at Indy, who had kicked back on my bed reading a comic book. "What?" he replied, looking all innocent.
------------------------------------------------------*
The general was NOT happy.
Colonel Ferris, the general's secretary, could always tell when things weren't going well. All she had to do was listen for a long string of expletives delivered at high volume to determine when she would be called into the general's office. And judging by the length of this particular blue streak, it would be about five minutes.
The pseudo-military organization known as G.U.N. ran fairly smoothly... most of the time. Then there were times where something gummed up the works.
Colonel Ferris could tell that this was one of those times.
"Colonel Ferris!" the voice on the other end of the intercom roared. "My office, now!"
"Yes, general," she replied with a longsuffering sigh.
------------------------------------------------------*
Rob looked about ready to collapse. I imagined I looked no better. Christine handed us bottles of cool ice water. I downed mine in under a minute.
"Maybe this will teach you not to try Paranoia on Expert Mode again," she admonished us.
"It... was... an accident..." I panted.
"Uh-huh. You just wanted to show off. Well, let's see... you both nearly had heart attacks, not to mention you failed the stage miserably."
Rob and I simultaneously reached for more water. "You should've seen me when I tried this on Standard," he told Chris. "I felt almost as bad."
"On Standard? You are out of shape, Rob."
"Hey, what about me?" I griped. "I can't even do the simplest double stage. I collapse every time I try."
"Ah, you guys are wimps. Care for something to eat?"
"Eat? I doubt my stomach could handle food right now," I replied.
"Fine. I'll eat and you watch. Come on."
We sat down to burgers (for Chris) and fries (for Rob and me). I drained my water bottle again and went for another one. "Hey, Chris, have you been feeling strange lately?"
"Strange in what sense?"
"Strange as in... I don't know... like energy is flowing through you, and all you have to do is release it?"
"If you're going to tell me you've been feeling that way, yeah, that is strange. I haven't felt anything like what you're talking about."
"I just thought, you know, since we were both dimension jumpers... Whoa."
"What? Something wrong?"
"No, I just felt weird for a second. I mean it's not like I can use the Element Stones again and lift your chair off the floor--"
"Ryan?" Chris cut in.
"Huh?"
"Put me down."
I did a double take. As I had mentioned lifting her chair off the floor, I had involuntarily gestured the way I would have if I had actually meant to levitate something.
I had just levitated Chris, chair and all, a foot off the ground.
In my surprise I nearly let her fall to the floor, but I caught her before she hit and slowly lowered her to solid ground. The three of us sat in amazement at what had just occurred.
On impulse I tried my other elemental abilities. Every one of them worked to full potential.
"Look out world," Rob commented. "ChaosJedi is back in the house!"
--------------------------------------------------------*
"I don't care how long it takes, colonel. I want to see some action on the transdimensional link project. The cloning project can wait for now. If it is possible to visit other worlds... Imagine the possibilities that would present!"
"So the Dimensionalizer project should be top priority?"
"Yes, of course..." The general stared at his secretary for a second. "Where on earth did you get a name like that?"
"One of my students out at the college, sir. One of his papers dealt with the topic of how transdimensional travel might be possible."
"Hmmm. Interesting. All right, use that as a foundation and work on it from there. Dismissed, colonel."
--------------------------------------------------------*
"Don't you think it's just the slightest bit weird, Knux? I mean, for the better half of a year I'm back to being just a normal college student, then almost as soon as I get the Dimensionalizer up and running, the power comes back to the Element Stones? Not to mention this," I added, indicating my left hand.
"It is strange. Maybe after the renewal it just took some time for the stones to recharge. You had any exposure to the raw elements in the past six months?"
I scratched my head for a moment. "Come to think of it, I did get caught out in that really windy thunderstorm. Nearly got hit by lightning, too. That could account for three right there."
"Not to mention that gravity is pulling on you all the time. What about the other three?"
"What are we getting at here? You're saying the energy of the stones might have been collected by induction? Like the leaves on an electroscope when you get a static charge near the thing?"
"It's very possible. I would guess that fire and light could easily be from the Arizona weather."
"I'll give you that. So what's left, rock? I did climb 'A' Mountain that one time. I guess that would account for everything, but what triggered my being able to use them again? Could it have something to do with using the Dimensionalizer after all this time?"
"To be honest, I have no idea. My expertise is the Chaos and Super Emeralds. For me the Element Stones are sort of a learn-as-you-go thing."
"As is this whole ChaosJedi thing. Hey, what the--?"
That last comment of mine was prompted by the alert that had suddenly come up on my computer screen. I pulled my chair around to the keyboard and started up the tracer program. "...the heck?" I wondered when I saw the origin of the dimensional rift.
It was on the Arizona State campus.
"Who would have access to the equipment needed to build a dimensional gate, much less the procedure... Blast it! I'm such an idiot!"
"What? What's wrong?"
"Get Chris, Indy, Rob, Pixel, and Slasher here pronto." I looked helplessly at the echidna. "I may have given someone the means to dimension-jump without even realizing it."
---------------------------------------------------------*
Meanwhile, in another dimension, another inventor was working on his own dimensional gateway. This inventor, however, wasn't that successful.
The explosion shook every house in a three-mile radius. Three humans, a rabbit, a ferret, and... something... fled the house, smoke pouring from the open door behind them.
"I thought you had that thing fixed!" one of the humans, a female college student, complained.
"Yeah," one of the other humans, a male in a plaid shirt, agreed, coughing. "What happened to 'This time I'll actually get it right'?"
The third human pulled a pad of paper from beneath his trenchcoat, muttering, "Let me check my notes."
"You know, Riff, it's funny; last time you said that was right after your LAST invention exploded."
"That wasn't my fault! Kiki decided to start pushing buttons!"
Upon hearing the word "buttons", the ferret started jumping up and down. "Ooh, buttons? Where?"
"Knock it off right now, Kiki, before I have to hurt you," the rabbit cut in, pulling out a rather nasty switchblade.
The college student turned around suddenly. "Um, Torg?"
Without turning, the plaid shirt replied, "Yeah, Zoe?"
"Is a dimensional gate supposed to look like a big hole in reality with all kinds of color swirling around in it?"
"I dunno. Why?"
"Riff", the man in the trenchcoat, turned and saw what Zoe was looking at. "I think she's asking because there's a dimensional gate right behind you, Torg."
Torg whirled around to see exactly what Zoe had described. "Um, Riff? Did you cause this?"
"Let me check my notes."
Before Riff could reach for his notepad again, a figure in full military dress came through the gate. The man pulled a gun and pointed it at the group. "You're all coming with me. The general needs proof that the experiment was a success."
-------------------------------------------------------*
"Let me get this straight. You GAVE the secret to dimensional travel to one of your professors in a college essay?!?" Slasher paced the length of the room, which for her meant taking two steps before turning.
"It was disguised as theory and I left out critical bits of information. How the heck was I supposed to know that she would fill in the gaps so quickly?"
"Do you have exact coordinates? We need to stop this now."
"We can jump into the area through their portal, trash the equipment, and book it out of their with an emergency portal generator."
All right, but it's you, me, and Chris. The smaller the group, the better. Let's do it."
--------------------------------------------------------
"Great," Zoe complained. "As if my life wasn't complicated enough, now I've been abducted by a paramilitary group from another dimension. And I thought the time machine had been a bad idea."
"Zoe?"
"Yeah, Riff?"
"You mind SHUTTING UP before they start interrogating me to see what ELSE I've invented?"
"Sorry."
"At least they didn't bring Aylee," Torg cut in.
The gate opened, and two uniformed men came through. They threw the green thing they had been carrying into an adjacent cell. The alien poked its head out from beneath its wings. "Hi guys."
"Aylee!"
Zoe glared at Torg. "You had to open your big mouth, didn't you?"
The gate flared to life again. The major difference this time was that this wasn't part of the experiment.
"What's going on?" the colonel in charge demanded. "Who opened the gate?"
"The dimensional tunnel was initiated from the other end, colonel!" one of the techs replied.
"What? How is that possible? No one else could have invented transdimensional travel! This was a G.U.N.-only project!"
An armored figure emerged from the gate carrying a lightsaber. "I beg to differ. I've come to declare patent infringement. Sorry, but this equipment needs to be shut down."
"Who the heck are you?" the colonel demanded.
The armored figure was soon joined by a human who was glowing so brightly as to be luminescent and a velociraptor... one with birdlike wings held closely to its sides.
"I'm your worst nightmare," the one in armor replied, and in one swift move bisected the computer running the portal frame.
"NO! Our only copy of the files!" the colonel screamed. "Get them!"
The raptor went straight for the cages, breaking the locks with near surgical precision. While the glowing figure distracted and disarmed the men in uniform, the armored figure did as much property damage as possible.
"Come on," the raptor told the freed captives. Aylee, who had up to this point remained inert, spread her wings happily, sending out a massive electromagnetic pulse. All the circuitry in the near vicinity was fried, leaving the glowing human and the armored one's lightsaber as the only sources of light in the room.
It was at that point that another dimensional portal opened, only this one wasn't bound to the destroyed portal frame. The raptor herded everyone through it, pausing to pick up the ferret, who had stopped to look at the "pretty glowing thing", and chuck her through. She followed them through, and the luminescent and the suit of armor came soon after. The portal winked out, plunging the room into total darkness.
-------------------------------------------------
"Well, that went well."
"Right. We now have an electromagnetic, potato-eating alien, a web designer, a mad scientist/inventor, a college student, a hyperactive ferret, and a psycho rabbit taking up temporary residence in your basement, and the mission went well? I'd hate to see a mission you thought DIDN'T go well."
"Oh, chill out Chris. By the way, nice glow-in-the-dark thing you had going."
"Part of the Chaos Amber. Discovered it over the semester."
"Yeah, lucky you. YOU could still USE your gem, while I was stuck being plain ol' me all semester."
"Oh, quit griping, you two," Slasher cut in. "How's everyone doing downstairs, by the way?"
I ticked off each of our guests on my hand as I listed them. "Kiki discovered the arcade machines and has been going nonstop on the 'pretty buttons' ever since. Bun-bun found a Baywatch marathon on TV. (Don't ask. I have no idea, either.) Riff is trying to figure out the dimensional coordinates of their home dimension so we can send them home. Torg found the Dreamcast and is trying to beat all my high scores. (He's getting closer than I'd like.) Zoe is reading a magazine, though how she can do that with all that going on down there I have no idea. Aylee is happily munching on french fries, and I shielded the closet so she can release her EM pulses safely."
"Sounds like everything's taken care of."
"Well, at least until we can get them home. It looks like it's going to be harder than we originally thought; Riff's having a hard time extrapolating the coordinates from here. It would have been easier if he'd done that before those paramilitary freaks abducted them. Anyway, at least the college campus suffered no ill effects of Aylee's EMP."
"Unless you count some serious downtime on the power grid."
"Look, I didn't even realize that base was smack underneath the power plant until we got the heck out of there. One of those things where the best-case scenario just happened to include some negative side effects."
"Okay. So now what? We going to just hang around and wait for Riff to get those coordinates?"
"Not exactly. I'm going to go snooping around the campus and see if I can figure out who those people are and why the heck they were messing with my technology." I activated the transporter. "Don't wait up for me."
-------------------------------------------------------
I discovered something as I strolled around the dark campus. One, Arizona State is a lot darker when the power grid's down, and two, I had gained yet another ability. I wondered when I would hit my limit for new abilities. I mean shoot, I had the power of the elements, wasn't that enough?
It's hard to explain, but I'll try. I had gained some sort of sixth sense, kinda like a Jedi radar. Occasionally I would get these sensations of a dark presence, but the impressions were fleeting. Then at one point the sensation remained, and it felt like it was getting closer. The closer the feeling got, the more my left hand twitched. Suddenly the dark spot on my consciousness blazed into a full red alert and I got the clear impression that I was about to get skewered.
By reflex my left hand, the metal one, swung around and down as I whirled to face may attacker. Four blades, each six inches long, clattered to the ground.
"You know, I really hate it when you do that." The voice caught my attention. There not three feet away, was Robo Knux.
"...the heck? You're toasted! You should be in a million pieces buried in my backyard!"
"Yes, well, I also happened to be someone's little test project. Somehow this little paramilitary group discovered that my circuitry was buried in your backyard, so they waited until you were gone and no one was watching, then they dug me up and reassembled me. They reactivated me last night after a major disaster with some dimensional portal project. I almost told them you'd invented it first, but I didn't get the chance. They told me to patrol the area in case someone came back. I did kinda expect to keep my spikes longer than 24 hours, though." The robot-echidna folded his arms sulkily. "What the heck kinda alloy have you got in that sword, anyway?"
"Sword? What sword?" Then I happened to glance down at my hand for the first time since turning around. "Good night," I breathed.
In place of the metal hand was a sword, roughly 3 feet in length, and sharper than any blade I've ever seen. As I watched, the sword slowly melted back into the form of my hand. I flexed my fingers just to make sure I wasn't imagining things.
"Now that is just freaky," I said aloud.
"Yeah, whatever. Listen, you think you could possibly get outta here? I'm going to have a hard enough time explaining to these people how I lost the spikes. I really don't want them melting me down for failing to do my job."
"You answer some questions for me, and I'll reattach the spikes myself before I leave."
"Fire away."
"I'd love to take that comment at face value, but... Anyway, who are these people? This paramilitary group?"
"The only name I've heard thrown around is G.U.N., and no one ever explains what it means."
"What are they doing with all this experimental technology? Such as the plans for MY Dimensionalizer?"
"Oh, so they were using your stuff? Hmmm, that's interesting. Actually it appears to be their specialty. "The General" called some time after I was activated and yelled a blue streak at the woman in charge. Mentioned a cloning project, as well as me and a few other pseudo-scientific things."
Using the Lightning Stone and my fingers as an impromptu arc welder, I reattached the last of RK's spikes. "Thanks for the info. If they ask, just tell them you ran someone off. You won't even have to lie to them."
-------------------------------------------------------
"Why does it seem that Mecha Bots have more lives than cats?" Rob complained.
"Well at least he wasn't his normal hypnotizing, back-stabbing self. I think G.U.N. left out one of his personality chips."
"Well thank God for small favors. How's your hand, by the way?"
"Pretty good. Why, you think my hand morphing into a sword is a bad thing?"
"Well, if it only happens when you WANT it to, it's a good thing. But if it's merely reflex..."
"You're afraid I could be startled by something and slice the wrong person."
"In a nutshell, yes."
"I'll work on that. Also, I've been thinking about something."
Without warning, the power went out.
"Aylee!"
From the basement stairs came a faint "Sorry."
-------------------------------------------------------
I was back on the ASU campus the following day, trying to piece together all the info I'd collected over the past week. It was during this little trip that I became convinced my life was one huge crossover gone horribly wrong.
It started as I headed out to the power plant. A pillar built specifically for the purpose of posting flyers was plastered with papers reading "all your base are belong to us". "If I see that phrase one more time..." I muttered to myself. Just then the ground shook violently, and a figure clad in jeans and a bomber jacket came bursting out of the power plant. He was looking behind him and didn't see me, and I was too shocked to get out of the way.
In under two seconds I was flat on my back. Reflex kept my head from hitting the pavement. "You're not from around here, are you?" I asked the guy as he quickly got back on his feet.
"Yeah, you could say that."
"I gotta hand it to ya, you definitely know how to sabotage."
"Huh?"
"Well, either you blew up their dimensional gateway or it went critical on them. I'm trying to protect my invention from those people. Come on, I've got a place you can stay until we can get you home."
--------------------------------------------------
"They got it working AGAIN?"
"Yeah, and I think they're just punching in random numbers for coordinates. My fear is that they'll link to a dimension with big, ugly, nasty, evil creatures bent on destroying everything in sight."
"So what have we got right now? The primary cast of a web-comic and Squall Leonhart from Final Fantasy 8. Who next, Guybrush Threepwood?"
I laughed at Chris' suggestion. "To be honest that wouldn't surprise me in the least. We have to stop them from using the technology, somehow."
"What are you going to do, patent it?" Slasher inquired.
The proverbial light bulb clicked on. "Slasher, that's IT! We'll go public with this and get copyright protection!"
Rob cut in. "Forgive me for saying so, but are you NUTS? You think the world is going to believe that a college student invented a device that makes inter-dimensional travel possible?"
"So we'll disguise it as something else... A teleporter!"
"En ingles, por favor?"
"Look, we use the Dimensionalizer for travel between locations here on earth, right?"
"Yeah, so?"
"We market this right, and we may not only prevent illegal use of the technology, but we may propel travel into the next century!"
-----------------------------------------------------
Two days later...
The General looked at Colonel Ferris out of the corner of his eye. The secretary swallowed, but gave no other signs of nervousness.
"Tell me, Colonel... You say that you succeeded in using this transdimensional equipment twice?"
"Yes, sir."
"And both times the equipment was destroyed?"
"Yes, sir."
"And what caused it?"
"The first time, three creatures came through the gateway and destroyed the equipment and kidnapped the test subjects. The second time, the test subject himself pulled a weapon and began destroying the equipment. He managed to disarm our men and escaped."
"This project is starting to look like a losing proposition."
Colonel Ferris remained silent.
"This student of yours... does he wear a glove on his left hand, by any chance?"
"No, sir. I knew him well over the semester. He never wore gloves."
"That intrigues me. Since he was wearing a glove at today's press conference."
The colonel was taken aback. "Press conference, sir?"
"I'm surprised you didn't hear about it... Especially since he was down in Tucson marketing our dimensional portal project as a long-distance teleporter."
"What?"
The general flicked on a TV news station, which was still abuzz over the teleporter. A video clip came on, demonstrating the technology...
-----------------------------------------------------
"I realize many of you think that this may all be smoke and mirrors," I told the press. "As proof that this is legitimate, we have placed the teleporter frame directly against a pre-existing cinder-block wall. There is no possible way anyone could come through that frame from the other side.
"We also have several cameras set up for a live feed in Phoenix right now. Christine, are you there?" I turned my attention to the screen behind me and saw Chris' face grinning back at me.
"I'm right here on the ASU campus, Ryan! Just how many members of the press did you invite, anyway?"
"I thought it was supposed to be a blanket invitation!"
"Well you got enough people here, all right. There's no way people will be able to dispute this."
"Shall we demonstrate?"
"Let's fire it up!"
A press member raised his hand. "Mr. Carroll, I realize that this is such a new technology that you may feel it unwise to reveal the intricate workings of the machine... but for the record, what exactly is the experience like? Is it as simple as walking through a doorway?"
I smiled in reply. "Well, we're working on that, but currently it's more like a tunnel. Essentially what this device does is it forges a pathway that is slightly out of sync with reality as we know it. A person enters the tunnel at one end and comes out the other. You have to practice to acheive a good landing, though. The first time I tried it I fell flat on my face."
The crowd of reporters laughed at that, and I turned my attention back to the screen. "Okay, Chris, start 'er up!"
As the gateway flared into existence, reporters and cameramen gasped in amazement. The gasps turned to cheers as Chris appeared on stage next to me.
------------------------------------------------------
"Looks like everything went well. You told them about the monitoring system, I see."
"Yeah, it's kinda like air traffic control. Wouldn't want those tunnels getting crossed."
"Wouldn't want any rogue tunnels being formed by unscrupulous paramilitary groups, either," Slasher replied with a smile.
I shrugged. "All we have to do is watch for any out-of-dimension tunnels being forged. 'The dangers are too great', and all that, you know."
"But of course."
"So, what happens now?"
"We go back to life as usual," I replied, popping a Dr. Pepper can open with the tip of my blade-hand.
-------------------------------------------------------
"So, what happens now, general?"
"We work on finding a way to circumvent the detection. When that's done, we move onto Project Cetra."
"Project Cetra? But sir--!"
"No arguments, colonel. I want to see results, and quickly."
"Yes, sir."
To be continued...