*NOTE – Hello everybody, I am TheManFromMudos, and the time has finally come! The time for Alan to set out on his next great adventure. You've waited long enough, so I won't keep you in suspense any longer. Here are the first three chapters of the new story. Read on, and enjoy: It's 'Oddworld: Al's Exoddus'. THANK YOU!*
*DISCLAIMER – I do not now, nor have I ever, nor will I ever, own Oddworld Inhabitants or any of the characters mentioned in the story henceforth. Apart from Alan. And Dave. And… Ok, a few of them are mine. But I didn't create Oddworld Inhabitants. You can thank Lorne Lanning for that. Thanks, Lorne.*
ASHBRIDGE INHABITANTS PRESENTS…
AN ALIVE EXPERIENCE…
ODDWORLD: AL'S EXODDUS
"This is Trosking. Long ago, it was a humble town in the heart of the country. That was before the government started building here. They used the townsfolk to do it: good men who worked hard to forge greatness. The government didn't want anyone to know what they were building there. And no one ever did. Not until they'd transformed the meager town into a huge city of international status. Now, I live here."
"That's me: My name is Al! I had just returned from saving 1 Mudokon from Rupture Farms. Now, I was at home, waiting for whatever situation I was thrown into next…"
The sun shone down on Trosking that early autumn morning. The leaves on the trees were just the slightest tinge of amber. I awoke early, and got straight out of my bed. Answers had waited. One night was long enough. I went downstairs and began to puzzle out the events of the last three weeks in my head. Some of my questions, I answered for myself. For example, I knew that, although I had killed Dave, he was still alive, because after I had saved Abe the timeline had righted itself, and I had ceased to exist in the Oddworld universe. Other questions still remained unanswered, though. Like how had Abe known who I was, even though I'd never met him before?
Hours later, I was at my dining room table. I had a pad of paper in front of me, as well as several pens. Pages of notes were strewn across the table, all of which I'd written to try and help to figure out what had happened to me yesterday. Had I really been gone for just a single second? It was three weeks, I could swear. A laptop rested on my lap, and I searched all I could for people with similar stories to my own. Obviously, there were very few, as it's not often that you get sucked into a fictional universe for three weeks, without actually aging a second in the real world! I soon realised the internet was not going to give me answers.
After another couple of hours, I'd managed to piece a lot of information together. Using some science, some maths, and a little bit of common sense, I'd discovered the following:
It was entirely possible that in the vast expanse that is our universe, the planet of Oddworld could exist somewhere out there.
It also stood to reason that if time travel was possible, I could have traveled on Oddworld for three weeks and still have been delivered back to the same time on Earth.
If the TASM was what I thought it was, it could have also easily transported me across the universe faster than light. Faster than time.
If I was taken to Oddworld for a purpose, and I'd fulfilled it, I should theoretically have been brought back to Earth, which I was.
So, I'd managed to answer a few of the big questions. But many more still remained. Unfortunately, it was getting late once again. I'd managed to kill a whole day trying to figure out what had happened to me. So, off to bed I went, ready to continue my search for answers the next day. At this point, I had no idea what was still to come. Well, actually, I had a vague idea, and you probably had the same vague idea, because we can't just fill the next 30 chapters with me writing notes, so it's obvious that at some point in the story something's going to… you know what? Let's not break the fourth wall before we've even began.
The next day was just like the day before. Bright, sunny, clear. I hated it. I hated it not because I hate beautiful mornings, but because I could not enjoy this particular beautiful morning at this particular time. I still had work to do. I went to the door and picked up the post, then went to the kitchen and made some tea. All the while, I was thinking. Surely there were answers somewhere. Sitting down in the living room, I peeled open the first envelope. A bill. Most of the others were too, apart from the odd brochure. Then I reached the bottom of the pile.
There was a silver envelope beneath the rest. It had some blue decorations, a sort of… futuristic pattern. I picked it up to find that it was, in fact, made of a thin, bendable metal, like aluminium foil, but slightly thicker. That was the first odd thing.
Opening the envelope, I found that there was no paper inside. In fact, there was a slim, electronic device, which shared the same silver and blue, futuristic pattern. It seemed very hi-tech, much more advanced than any electronic tablet on Earth. That was the second odd thing.
I soon located a button on the device's side, and it powered up to reveal an image on the screen of a planet. It looked very much like the Earth, except the landmasses were distributed in a very different way. I suspected already which planet it was. Then, the word appeared on screen to confirm it. It was Oddworld. And that, my friends, was the third odd thing.
