Chapter One: Or, Our Infamous Scientist Finds Himself in a Peculiar Predicament
Imagine, if you will, a world much like ours. Grass fields full of roaming bicuspid bovinae and queer rodents burrowing their kingdom deep within the earth, arrayed forests teeming with life (and sometimes with unlife), mountains with veins of every colour, lush valleys rolling between them, the soggiest bogs and the driest deserts. Everything you could imagine in your own world…but of the likes you have never seen before.
Now, imagine such a place devoid of seemingly intelligent life but for one soul.
This soul was a ragged looking fellow. Hair of midnight that had been perpetually unkempt his entire life, clothes wrinkled and stained in general disarray, suggesting days without practising gentlemanly hygiene. Thin, wiry, pale, voice like a shrill trumpet, but quite possibly the best, most sagacious mind the modern world had ever known. A mind unparalleled, knowledgeable in countless fields ranging from archaeology to quantum theory. This was the finest gentleman scientist of the new age, the man who would finally complete the theory of everything and reinvent the modern era!
But I digress. Look, I believe our ambitious scientist might soon be joining us…
Doctor—ah, excuse me, I am taking liberty on half-truths—Wilson Percival Higgsbury woke slow, like a punch-drunk pugilist. He was lying upon a bed of flowers, with buttery-looking butterflies dancing about his head. Surely he was hallucinating; his head was pounding like a stampede at a safari, and butterflies did not appear buttery, ever. When he attempted to rise his bones creaked as would a haunted house, if such things existed. Stiff, sore, and sadly sedate, he rubbed his eyes to gaze upon an unfamiliar sight. Before him was a statue of a rather profligate gentleman, coattails fluttering in an eternal breeze, hands held out triumphant, a gasconade. For some reason Wilson felt familiar stirrings of discord bringing colour to his neck, but he hadn't a great idea as to why.
You see, kind reader, our dubiously accredited doctor had only inklings of how he had arrived here, for one look at the tinged sky and he was sure 'here' was no longer in His Majesty's realm. For months he had been a shut-in, a virtual agoraphobiac, so the connection between now and then was fragmented, for the days he could remember ran together like blurred ink. He had not left his home simply because he had been too devoted to his research of 'Them' to go elsewhere.
They had come to him in a trance of ecstasy. Even he knew it was absurd—he would dare not share it with another soul for how ludicrous it sounded—for this euphoric vision came to him as a rhapsodic voice from his radio. He believed the voice had reached him from another world. Some words had been distorted, others spoken with an odd emphasis on certain consonants, but the message had been clear enough. A higher being had transmitted knowledge beyond the reach of humans from another plane of existence unto his mind.
The first few days were full of doubt. Obviously he had spent too much time in hiding after that unpleasant business with the university, and perhaps the lack of human contact had made him grasp at straws for some form of reassurance. As the days wore on, however, he started to notice a difference. He truly knew of things he had not known before he accepted The Gift from the voice on the radio. Once he started to experiment on his new findings, he could not deny it. Their voice had given him fruitful knowledge. The least he could do was use that knowledge to build Them a door into the world.
He didn't even remember opening it.
Perhaps the voice on the other end had made an exchange. That world for this? Was that demon lurking on He Above's good green Earth now, Wilson's rightful home? Did the dastardly fiend offer him a cursed deal to trick him into entering another dimension? Confound it! Wilson got to his feet, shaking his fist at the effigy. There was a plaque at the bottom. There it read:
Maxwell the Great
"Maxwell!" Wilson cried, unknowing of the man but possessed by rancour, sure that this was the devil who robbed him of his home. "You—you cad! Scoundrel! He Above as my witness, I will use the greater powers of my mind to…to science my way out of your putrid cesspool of a world! You'll regret having ever given me Forbidden Knowledge!" Not his most eloquent oath, but his most heartfelt. Wilson would find his way home, and if he had the chance, he would show that rakish fiend just who Doctor—ahem—Wilson Percival Higgsbury was!
With that, the animated man turned on his heel and stormed off. Then turned on his heel again and marched the other way. He did this several times before trying to determine the direction of the sun and use advanced calculations to find himself a body of water. Following his findings, he took a very lengthy walk through a dried-up gully, circled back through an evergreen forest, and wended through a boulder field. Eventually he found himself back at Maxwell's statue.
He kicked it. Of course, he had hurt his toe doing so, but when he hobbled off into the sunset, it was with grim satisfaction.