This is a story that I've had going on for almost four years now, off and on (mostly off). Enjoy!
Shinjanji
His Chosen Path
Chapter 1: Reality?
Blackness. There was nothing but blackness that filled Andrew's room as he lay awake this night. Outside, a car passed, the light from its headlights streaming into Andrew's room, illuminating the room with alternating strips of light and shadow through his window blinds. As the car continued its pass, the room momentarily glowed in a faint red, and then faded back to its prior blackness.
"What's going on? Why can't I sleep?" Andrew pondered, heaving himself over onto his side to look at his clock. "Three twenty-four AM," he mumbles, staring at the glowing green digits as if they would suddenly rearrange themselves to show a time he would appreciate more, such as 11:00 or 12:00. Though at that the rate that time passed, it seemed to Andrew as though he would never experience the comfort of sleep this night. "Maybe I'm just ill, or suffering from insomnia or something, like usual. But it's strange… I just… feel different tonight. I know what insomnia feels like… and this isn't it," Andrew thought, as he rolled onto his back again, his hands supporting his head from behind a pillow.
"Since I can't get any sleep, I guess I'll see if there's anybody online I can talk to," Andrew concluded. As he sat up, he exposed his back, which caught the cold air suddenly and caused him to shiver. He reached for his shirt, which was dangling off the edge of the dresser, and put it on. Andrew then shifted his feet off the bed and onto the floor, and hauled himself to his feet. Slowly and devoid of energy, he shuffled his feet across the carpet, headed towards his computer desk. As he grabbed the computer chair, an arc of static electricity jumped from his bone-dry hand.
Andrew pulled the chair out, and let himself fall into the seat like a ton of bricks. He turned on his computer monitor and placed his right hand over the mouse. He sat with his left arm lazily propping up his head, as his right hand slowly moved the mouse to navigate through his computer, and start up his instant messaging program. The program started, and immediately began to connect to its server. As Andrew waited for it to connect, he let his eyelids fall shut, and mumbled to himself, "I sure hope there's somebody online that I can talk to." Yawning, he opened his eyes just enough to see that a message had appeared on the screen. Reading it, Andrew let out a sigh, thinking, "It figures, the server is gonna' be down all night for 'maintenance'. Even near two thousand and four, they have to shut down servers and perform maintenance. Why can't they automate it?!"
Andrew tried to lift himself out of the seat, but was too tired to move. He let himself fall back into the chair, his head leaning back and pointed towards the ceiling. Before he realized it, Andrew fell asleep from the wasted energy of dragging himself over to his computer. He awoke suddenly, and looked at his monitor to check the time. However, his monitor's screen had turned completely white.
When Andrew tried to move his hand back up to the mouse, it refused to move. He tried again, and again his arm did not respond. He found himself unable to move any limb at all. "What's going on?!" he frantically thought. He tried to speak, to call out for someone else's assistance, but there was no sound to his voice. His hands began to lift off the arms of the chair, as if of their own free will. Andrew tried to order movement from them, but they only proceeded along their ascent. Andrew then felt a tug forward, as his hands began to move towards the bright white monitor screen. Now, his hands felt as if they were being pulled, but he still could not pull them back.
Andrew's hands touched the surface of the monitor glass, and plunged effortlessly through it, as though it wasn't even there, and began to fade away into the white of the screen. He began to panic, and tried harder to pull his hands back, but still to no avail. "I'm dreaming… I have to be!" He thought as his wrists were being enveloped by the white glow, still moving inward towards the monitor screen. On a whim, he tried to push forward, and wound up plunging his arms into the screen, up to his elbows. He tried to pull back, but his arms had resumed their previous automatic travel into the white of his screen.
"Well, if that's the way my arms are going, so be it!" Andrew concluded, and plunged himself the rest of the way into his monitor screen, his view turning completely white as his head passed through.
Andrew felt his arms go limp, and felt as though he were standing on some surface. He tried once more to move his arms, and this time, they responded. All around him, though, he saw only white. Only if he blinked did the white disappear. It was like a fog, but so thick, Andrew could practically swim in it. He was also incapable of seeing anything at all but the white, even if he held his hand so close to his eyes that his eyelashes were brushing up against it.
"Andrew…" Andrew heard a voice call. The voice sounded as though it belonged to a woman, but Andrew could see nothing in any direction, and the voice seemed to come from all around him. The voice called to him again, "Go forward…" Andrew opened his mouth to speak, but no sound came out. The woman's voice repeated its instruction. Andrew, deciding that he had no other alternatives in this whiteness, proceeded forward in his current direction.
A grey and shapeless blob began to form in the distance. Andrew hastened his pace towards the object, now using it as a reference as to where he was going. As Andrew neared the grey silhouette, it sharpened into a human shape, but was still very blurry. He proceeded closer, until the soft human-shaped blob seemed to be right in his face, though he could not reach out and touch it, nor make out what it was beyond the blurred shape of a person. As he examined the blob, it, and the white fog behind it, suddenly whisked away to reveal that Andrew was right in the face of a woman, so close they almost touched noses.
Startled, Andrew lunged back, only to find his sudden forceful reverse was abruptly halted by a cold and very hard surface, causing pain to shoot through his head, which had contacted the surface hardest.
As the flashing spots and sudden darkening faded from his eyes, he focused his view on the woman standing in front of him. She was an average height, with an even and healthy skin tone, her eyes were blue, and she had dark and shiny auburn hair, cut short. She wore a grey executive suit, and glasses with thin, silver rims. She seemed as though she were quite humored, having startled Andrew so badly. She extended her right hand, smiled, and said calmly, "Nice to meet you, Andrew. My name is Rebecca."
Andrew extended his right hand to meet Rebecca's in a handshake, while his left was busy rubbing the sore spot on the back of his head. He recognized Rebecca's voice as being the same voice that had been calling to him not even a minute before. Andrew, thinking that he still wasn't able to talk, merely let go of Rebecca's hand, and continued to absentmindedly rub the sore on the back of his head, which was beginning to swell slightly. Rebecca spoke again, "Andrew, its all right to talk now." Andrew hesitated for a moment, and said, "What in the world am I doing here? What's going on? Am I dreaming or something?"
Rebecca chuckled slightly, and replied, "I'll answer those questions in a minute. For now, let's just get to my office, and we'll talk there." Rebecca started off down the hallway, while Andrew took the moment to examine the hallway they were in. It certainly didn't look like an office building, that's for sure. It seemed to Andrew as more of a castle, with its arched stone ceiling, stone floor, and alternating segments of dark hardwood and stone, set between stone columns. Centered in the wooden segments on the left side of the hallway were arched wooden doors with dark iron trim, rivets included. On each door seemed to be a small golden plaque.
The hall itself seemed to curve to the right. As Andrew stepped forward to follow Rebecca, he turned around to look at where he had just come from. A solid stone section of wall, set in between two solid stone columns. There was no door on the stone segment. "How did I…?" Andrew muttered to himself as he thought about the physical impossibility of walking through a solid wall of stone as if it were thin air. He shrugged it off, as it was starting to give him a headache. He turned around and jogged to catch up with Rebecca.
After walking down the hall with Rebecca, it seemed to Andrew as though the hall took no other direction other than the same arc to the right. He figured that they should have reached the other side of the wall of stone several times over, and the hallway angled neither upward nor downward.
Andrew decided to start some idle conversation while he and Rebecca walked. "So, what kind of place is this, some kind of castle?"
"Yeah, it is, but its no castle that exists anywhere on Earth."
"What do you mean 'doesn't exist on Earth'?" Andrew inquired, getting curious.
"Just as I said, we're in a castle that does not exist anywhere on Earth as you know, err, knew it."
Andrew started to become paranoid. "Knew it? What—am I dead or something?"
"I'll explain when we get to my office."
With that, the conversation ended. Rebecca eventually stopped at a door, and Andrew stopped nearby, and examined the door's plaque. The engraving read "Room T-3B." "Here we are, room T-three-B," Rebecca said, turning a lever on the door downwards, and pushing the door open.
As Andrew stepped inside the room behind Rebecca, he looked around and saw that Rebecca's 'office' looked much the same as the hallway in which it was located. The floor was stone, and so were the walls. There was a fireplace along the wall across from the door, throwing off a soft orange glow, and it was positioned so that the chimney was hidden inside a stone column. Along the lower half of the walls to the left of the fireplace were counters, with polished stone countertop surfaces, and more hardwood as the faces and cabinet doors below. Sitting on top of the counters were shining gold and pewter chalices, smooth and reflective knights' armor pieces, and crests with various royal emblems. There was a modern appliance, a refrigerator, with its doors themed to match the counters, sitting up against the wall near the corner. Andrew looked up to see more arched ceiling, with hardwood support beams in inverted 'T' shapes, with wrought iron chandeliers hanging from their intersections, casting a dim light that fell to the rest of the room below. Along the arched ceiling were windows, which exposed a starry, cloudless, and apparently moonless night sky. In the middle of the room sat a large mahogany table, with only two chairs, that sat opposite one another along the table's width.
Rebecca opened the door of the freezer section of the refrigerator, and pulled out a pale blue bag of ice, which she handed to Andrew. She then took a seat in one of the chairs. Andrew sat in the other, holding the bag of ice to the lump on the back of his head.
"So, where should we begin?" Andrew said, with a hint of sarcasm in his voice. Rebecca put her hands together on top of the table, interlocking her fingers, and replied, "Well, I suppose we'll start from your first question, then. You want to know why you're here." Andrew nodded, and Rebecca continued, "Well, it's because things are changing. You could call this a dream, somewhat; the only difference is that this is only like half a dream. Have you ever heard of the common saying, 'A dream come true?'" Andrew nodded again, his eyes widening at the hint of what his imminent future might contain.
"Andrew, did you ever think that the reality you're in might not be the only one? Sort of like a parallel universe or something?" Andrew again nodded, not bothering to say anything to disturb the flow of Rebecca's discussion. "Well, that's true. There are such things as other realities. Normally, you only experience these other realities when you're asleep. Your mind and body aren't fused together, unless the body is awake. However, when the body is asleep, the mind is free to go as it wishes, even across the bounds of these other realities, even though the body cannot."
"This happens every time your body sleeps, whether you know it or not. Sometimes, the mind decides to store some memories of some of the things that it has experienced in this other reality, and you can recall them after you've woken up. This is what everybody refers to as a dream. On rare occasions, your mind goes to parallel realities that are similar to yours, but further along in time. That's a premonition; but it may or may not be true, since the reality is different from yours."
"On rare occasions, the mind may split into two, sort of like the splitting of a cell, with each mind being exactly the same in all respects. Most times this occurs, however, the 'parent' mind returns to its rightful body, leaving the 'clone' mind to find a new reality to take root in. In rare circumstances, the 'parent' mind may decide to seek out a new reality, while the 'clone' mind returns to the 'parent' mind's body."
Mesmerized, Andrew took in each word that Rebecca spoke. When he realized that she had finished her small speech, he snapped out of his listening trance and furthered the discussion with some questions.
"So, what does this have to do with me?"
"Well, Andrew, that's the thing. All that I just explained has everything to do with the situation you're in now."
"What do you mean? Did my mind divide? Is my 'parent' mind going to seek out a new reality or something?"
"Exactly."
Andrew's mind went blank. He didn't know what to make of his situation. Everything he once knew was gone. His friends, his family, his life; it was all gone. Rebecca knew what Andrew was thinking about, given the obvious expression of utter confusion overly evident on his face.
"Andrew, there's nothing you need to be sad about. Yes, everything you once knew is nonexistent to you now, but when your mind 'resets' in its new reality, those things will be of no importance to you at all. This will all seem like a giant dream to you, if you remember anything at all."
"What about my family and friends? What will they think?"
"They won't be any the wiser. Your 'clone' mind has returned to your old body, and is exactly the same as your 'parent' mind, except that everything that happens in your old reality will be experienced by your 'clone' mind, while everything you're going through here and now is being experienced by your 'parent' mind."
Andrew had his arms folded up on the desk, and he leaned his head down, cushioning it on his folded arms. He needed some time to think things through, to understand what was going on, and how he would cope with it.
"Andrew, it's all right. There's no need to worry about anything. What you need to concern yourself with at the moment is your future."
Andrew raised his head just enough so that he could look at Rebecca sitting across the table, smiling cheerily. Andrew lowered his head back into his arms. After he had come to grips with his situation, Andrew sat up in his chair, though he kept himself propped up with his arms on the desk.
"Well, Andrew, it seems as though your mind has already chosen its destination. This makes the whole process go a lot faster, believe me."
"Even so, how are we going to get there, and what will become of me? Physical bodies can't traverse between realities, you said."
"True, I did say that they can't go between realities, but when a mind splits, whichever mind goes to a new reality must create a new body of its own to stay in."
"Well, is the new body just something random, or do I get to choose?"
"That's what makes this part so great! You'll be able to completely choose your appearance. But first, we'll need to change some things…"
Rebecca stood up from her seat, and pulled a small rectangular object from a pocket on the side of her suit. It appeared to be some sort of a small computer device, similar to a PDA. She used its attached stylus to poke various things on the screen of the PDA, but Andrew couldn't see what she was doing. "Ah, technology. All right, Andrew. I want you to see what things will look like in the reality you're going to, so you won't be terribly too overwhelmed," Rebecca said, holding the stylus a few inches from the screen of her PDA, and added, "You might want to shield your eyes for a second."
Andrew lowered his head into his arms on the table, completely blacking out everything. After a minute or so, Rebecca said, "Okay, Andrew, you can take a look now." Andrew moved his arms away and down to his sides, hesitated for a moment, and then slowly opened his eyes. His head was still leaning down, facing the tabletop. As Andrew's eyes began to process the appearance of the table, he thought to himself, "Hmm… It looks like it was painted, like artwork or something." As Andrew began to raise his head, he noticed the ice bag sitting on the table from when he had put it down while Rebecca was talking. "What the…? It looks like it came from a cartoon or something." Indeed, the ice bag was a solid shade of blue, with a pair of darker shades instead of a smooth shadow. The outside and overlapping sections had a thin, almost black outline. Andrew continued to raise his head, until he was looking forward, at Rebecca, who was again sitting in her chair.
Barely seconds after his brain received the image of Rebecca had Andrew known what was going on. "Anime," he muttered. Andrew was right, too. Rebecca herself was also in simple tones with harsh shade transitions, but she also had some sharp transitions to lighter shades as well, especially on her hair, which had a very noticeable highlight of near white where the light struck it most. Rebecca's form seemed to have changed as well; her face was shapelier and more pointed at the chin, her mouth wasn't as wide, and her eyes were large, colorful, and full of expression.
"That's right, Andrew. It all looks like what you call 'Anime'. However, now there's no reason to call it anything but 'normal'."
Andrew was quite shocked to have realized how different everything around him appeared. However, Andrew adjusted quickly, since he had been perfectly capable of envisioning things in that style, and it was the predominant style of drawing he used in his old reality. "Wow, this is… interesting!" Andrew said through a bit of a chuckle.
"Yeah, it's different from what you're used to, but I know how much you were into this particular artistic style; the reality that your mind chose to exist in looks just like this… It was no coincidence, either."
"No coincidence, eh?"
"None whatsoever. Anyway, you need to make up your mind about what you want to look like. Your mind didn't have any predetermined appearance ready, so you'll need to create one."
Rebecca stood back up, and again prodded the screen of her PDA with the stylus. A few seconds later, a bright white light shone from behind Andrew, and he turned around to see something casting the light, and it appeared to be taking form. When the light subsided, a huge mirror had appeared in the back of the room, framed in spectacular gold.
"This is where you'll be able to choose the appearance of your new body." Rebecca said, holding her right hand out towards the mirror. "Currently, if you'll notice, you have no visible body. While yes, you technically still do have a body; it isn't visible to anyone but me and yourself."
Andrew stood up from his seat and stepped over to the gigantic mirror. As he looked into the mirror, he saw no reflection of himself. He turned around and asked Rebecca, "Uh, how do I do this now?" Rebecca smiled and walked next to Andrew, explaining, "All you have to do is look into the mirror and think about what you want to look like, it's that simple." Andrew nodded to Rebecca, and turned back to the mirror, with a general idea for an appearance already taking form in the back of his head. He was going to base his new appearance off a drawing of who he wanted to be. After all, he was finally getting the chance to be who he wanted to be and look like how he wanted to look.
As the details of his new appearance solidified in his mind, he saw them taking shape in the mirror. Shapeless blobs became boots, the more intricate details forming from simple crease lines into complicated folds and strings. He gazed into his reflection's eyes and gave himself a strong smirk of complacency as he stepped back to once again look over his new reflection.
Andrew's reflection showed him as being much thinner than he had been in his past reality, and his mirrored duplicate met his old self's height exactly, standing at a proud 6 foot 3 inches. His hair had the usual anime messiness to it, brown and poking out in short, curvy spikes. Andrew continued to examine down his reflection. The mirror image's eyes were a dark and somewhat pale teal or blue-green color. The skin on his face was pale, but still maintained a tan, fleshy hue. Wrapped around his neck and all the way down his body was a thick trench coat. It was a slightly richer color than his eyes. The collar of the trench coat was stiff inside, and rose to be less than an inch below the tops of his earlobes. The bottom of the trench coat reached all the way down to near his ankles. The trench coat was open, revealing an army-green plain shirt. His shirt was tucked beneath a pair of baggy blue jeans, held up by a thick and sturdy belt, with a shining gold military-style buckle. His boots were thick and red-brown in color.
Andrew looked down at himself. Already he was using his new body; he hadn't even noticed the change. He shifted around to get a feel for the trench coat, and the shirt and jeans underneath. He bent down and pressed on the toe of his boot. The boot's toe didn't give at all; this was a dead giveaway to Andrew that his boots had steel-lined toes. The heel didn't mash in at all either, signifying that the heel, too, was lined with steel inside. Andrew took a few steps around. Even though his boots seemed as though they would weigh a ton each with all that steel in them, the boots—to Andrew's surprise—turned out to be relatively light; he barely even knew he was wearing shoes at all.
Andrew whipped around to face Rebecca, and confidently holding his right hand up in a fist, he exclaimed, "I like it! Couldn't be more pleased, I'm sure of it!" Rebecca smiled, and pulled her PDA from her pocket a third time, saying, "That's great to hear! Alright, that ends our adventure here. Now, Andrew, its time for you to get going to your new reality, where your new body will be more than just an image." She tapped the PDA screen a few more times with the stylus, and instructed Andrew to turn to face the mirror again. The mirror, however, no longer reflected the image of Andrew, Rebecca, and the room they were in. Now, it shone only a bright white, the same as the screen of Andrew's monitor had before he was pulled through it.
"Portals…" Andrew thought as he looked at the white void, still framed in the solid gold of the mirror. "There's just something you should remember before you go, Andrew." Andrew turned back to face Rebecca again. "Something to remember," Andrew asked, "Such as what?"
"Well, Andrew, the biggest thing to remember is that you're going to have a past in this new reality. People will talk of things that have happened to you, and start off with things that you acquired in the past."
"Well, that's understandable," Andrew replied, "Since I don't want to start from the beginning again. More solid from the start, but I want to just get right into it."H
"While yes, you will get right into it, everything is going to revert to 'normal' after the first night there. This would have happened, no matter what. It would be just too confusing for you if you didn't actually know about those past things that have happened to you. Your mind already knew that this would happen, and elected to have it proceed this way. Some people, however, prefer to keep their old memories, and keep their new reality's past as unknown. That's why you hear about cases of Amnesia and Dissociative Fugue. People just choose to ignore their new pasts, selfishly clinging to their old memories, and regarded as insane for it. It's sad to see, really. But you're different; you want to face a new life with your arms open, ready to put an unimportant history behind you, and embrace your presence in a new reality."
"Wow… That's… deep," Andrew said, "Anything else I should keep in mind?"
"No, that's about it for now. More will be revealed to you as your first day goes on. Oh, I did forget to mention this: everybody in the new reality is going to know what you're going through, with all this adjustment and all. They'll know that you don't know about your past yet, and you probably won't know much about what's going on. They'll try to give you as much help as they can for the first day. After your memories revert to 'normal' the first night, everybody else will be normal, just as they should. So will you."
"All right," Andrew said.
"Good. Then off to the new reality it is, then," Rebecca said, smiling, "Just walk through the portal." Andrew turned back to face the portal, still illuminating the room in its bright white light. Andrew's heart began to beat faster and faster in anticipation, and he couldn't keep himself from leaping straight into the portal. As his feet left the ground, Andrew could have sworn he heard Rebecca say to him, "I'll see you there."
However, that didn't matter much to him now, for as his head passed through the surface of the mirror portal, again everything fell to white. He stood on his feet, and waited. Suddenly, a terrible pain overcame his entire body, and he fell to his knees. The pain continued for several seconds. It was a sensation as though every fiber of his muscles and every inch of his skin were being stretched. The pain subsided, and Andrew raised his head.