Chapter 10: The Miracle Glitch
Ixias had been walking along slowly, every footstep digging a trench in her well-worn mind. She was just about to give up and turn back, unable to deal with or comprehend the miraculous events of the past hour, when she felt a foreshadowing electric shock jolt through her nerves. She hadn't hit another endless sinkhole. She hadn't slammed into another brick wall or defied a simple law of Earth physics. She had reached the Miracle Glitch.
Ixias had come to an clearing in the canopy where the sky before her opened like a dome. Before her was a great and beautiful lake, where around its shores lay the forest dark and silent. The sign before her, melting into the ground, read Jasmine Lake.
She raised her eyes slowly to the sky, and choked on a gasp caught in her throat. A discombobulated murmur which was originally intended to be ". the Miracle Glitch,..." dribbled out from between her lips as her mouth dropped open.
The sky over the lake was pitch black and dotted innumerably with stars. At 10:32 in the morning.
Seemingly millions of stars speckled the open sky. A spiral galaxy swirled eternally in the upper northeastern corner of the sky, glowing and pulsing like a living, breathing entity. Comets and asteroids made frequent swing-bys, lighting up the midnight sky with flashes like fireworks. Before her disbelieving eyes, a fiery comet neared ever closer to the earth. She cried aloud and dove for the ground, curling herself in a terrified ball and placing her hands over her head, but unable to tear her eyes away from the phenomenon she was witnessing.
The comet - an icy chunk the size of a football - sizzled through the atmosphere, splitting the air with an eerie, piercing wail. It slammed into the surface of the water, but created absolutely no sound. Silence rang loudly in Ixias' confused ears as the water surged upwards and out in a large spray. The waves then froze in midair.
Ixias slowly and cautiously stood up, eyeing the lake queerly. The entire surface of the lake instantly froze, like a movie paused that left everything exactly as it was in a single frame. Tiny droplets blurred in the air as they were stopped dead in their trajectories. The waves stood boundlessly in the anti-physics of the air, and the ripples and waves that should have projected out from the impact remained in tight circles around the source. She stood witnessing everything in wonder, in astonishment, in shock and amazement. A few seconds passed, and the waves fell almost defeatedly back into the water, giving up on the laws of physics completely. The ripples shot out and the water stirred quietly, but the natural events that should have taken place failed to exist, as did their physical principles.
"Woah." she stammered senselessly. She tripped and stumbled forward towards the lake - confused, bewildered, and plainly in awe. Where the sun had once, or rather, should have been, now resided millions of stars in a pitch black sky, gaseous clouds of a thousand wondrous colors, nebulas and supernovas closer than should be physically possible in the far off space, ceaseless meteor showers, and a nearby planet similar to Saturn - an eerie, green tinted planet that rotated in synch with its beautiful rings and had seven multi-colored moons orbiting at different rotational and revolutionary speeds. A distant star overshadowed another and created a sidereal eclipse. Rain on the far western side of the lake poured out of empty, cloudless air. Snow was piling up on the farthest southern side of the lake, and lightning quietly pummeled the snow-covered grounds in an imaginary electric storm. All of these anomalies surpassed the laws of physics and mathematics. None of this could be happening, but it was.
Ixias slowly fumbled for her purse, never taking her eyes off of the inconceivable scene in front of her. She found the mini Polaroid camera that she had stowed away and quickly snapped a picture. The flash remained as tiny photons in the air around her, hovering like glowing sunspots on the lenses of her eyes. They drifted carelessly for a few moments before floating to the ground like glimmering speckles of pixie dust and disappearing as quickly as the sparks from a firework.
'What the hell is going on here, how is all of this possibly happening? Is this the realm of another dimension? Are my eyes playing tricks? Am I hallucinating? Have I stepped aboard another plane entirely? Is this place really haunted?' All these questions plagued her mind simultaneously as she shook the picture and waited for it to develop.
The scene came out as she saw it, only. different. The million colors that swirled and flashed before her eyes - the lake, the stars, the planets and heavenly bodies, the snow and the rain and the lightening - all came out on the film. Only, they didn't come out as what was playing before her eyes. Everything down to the last minute star in the sky was in code. Eerie, sickening, disturbing, bright green glyphs, running and streaming down the picture like the microscopic pixels of a blown-up photo. Ixias was instantly taken back to her dream, which again filmed her eyes and overtook her senses. The nauseating green code spilled down the monitors, reminiscent of everything she could not explain nor understand. She was brought back to the incident she witnessed as a child, that which she was afraid to confront and understand, but seemed only like a trip to the candy store compared to what she had witnessed today. She was so overwhelmed with what was taking place in front of her, the absolute beauty of everything she was seeing, the unbelievable and the surreal, that as tears of joy and fear and happiness and awe and love and curiosity and disbelief and understanding and sorrow and conclusion and pure and raw emotion streamed down her face, the world around her spun madly. She felt the gravity slipping away as she teetered backwards, only to fall for what felt like hours. When she was just about to reach the ground, a pair of hands slipped underneath her arms and caught her.
Ixias had been walking along slowly, every footstep digging a trench in her well-worn mind. She was just about to give up and turn back, unable to deal with or comprehend the miraculous events of the past hour, when she felt a foreshadowing electric shock jolt through her nerves. She hadn't hit another endless sinkhole. She hadn't slammed into another brick wall or defied a simple law of Earth physics. She had reached the Miracle Glitch.
Ixias had come to an clearing in the canopy where the sky before her opened like a dome. Before her was a great and beautiful lake, where around its shores lay the forest dark and silent. The sign before her, melting into the ground, read Jasmine Lake.
She raised her eyes slowly to the sky, and choked on a gasp caught in her throat. A discombobulated murmur which was originally intended to be ". the Miracle Glitch,..." dribbled out from between her lips as her mouth dropped open.
The sky over the lake was pitch black and dotted innumerably with stars. At 10:32 in the morning.
Seemingly millions of stars speckled the open sky. A spiral galaxy swirled eternally in the upper northeastern corner of the sky, glowing and pulsing like a living, breathing entity. Comets and asteroids made frequent swing-bys, lighting up the midnight sky with flashes like fireworks. Before her disbelieving eyes, a fiery comet neared ever closer to the earth. She cried aloud and dove for the ground, curling herself in a terrified ball and placing her hands over her head, but unable to tear her eyes away from the phenomenon she was witnessing.
The comet - an icy chunk the size of a football - sizzled through the atmosphere, splitting the air with an eerie, piercing wail. It slammed into the surface of the water, but created absolutely no sound. Silence rang loudly in Ixias' confused ears as the water surged upwards and out in a large spray. The waves then froze in midair.
Ixias slowly and cautiously stood up, eyeing the lake queerly. The entire surface of the lake instantly froze, like a movie paused that left everything exactly as it was in a single frame. Tiny droplets blurred in the air as they were stopped dead in their trajectories. The waves stood boundlessly in the anti-physics of the air, and the ripples and waves that should have projected out from the impact remained in tight circles around the source. She stood witnessing everything in wonder, in astonishment, in shock and amazement. A few seconds passed, and the waves fell almost defeatedly back into the water, giving up on the laws of physics completely. The ripples shot out and the water stirred quietly, but the natural events that should have taken place failed to exist, as did their physical principles.
"Woah." she stammered senselessly. She tripped and stumbled forward towards the lake - confused, bewildered, and plainly in awe. Where the sun had once, or rather, should have been, now resided millions of stars in a pitch black sky, gaseous clouds of a thousand wondrous colors, nebulas and supernovas closer than should be physically possible in the far off space, ceaseless meteor showers, and a nearby planet similar to Saturn - an eerie, green tinted planet that rotated in synch with its beautiful rings and had seven multi-colored moons orbiting at different rotational and revolutionary speeds. A distant star overshadowed another and created a sidereal eclipse. Rain on the far western side of the lake poured out of empty, cloudless air. Snow was piling up on the farthest southern side of the lake, and lightning quietly pummeled the snow-covered grounds in an imaginary electric storm. All of these anomalies surpassed the laws of physics and mathematics. None of this could be happening, but it was.
Ixias slowly fumbled for her purse, never taking her eyes off of the inconceivable scene in front of her. She found the mini Polaroid camera that she had stowed away and quickly snapped a picture. The flash remained as tiny photons in the air around her, hovering like glowing sunspots on the lenses of her eyes. They drifted carelessly for a few moments before floating to the ground like glimmering speckles of pixie dust and disappearing as quickly as the sparks from a firework.
'What the hell is going on here, how is all of this possibly happening? Is this the realm of another dimension? Are my eyes playing tricks? Am I hallucinating? Have I stepped aboard another plane entirely? Is this place really haunted?' All these questions plagued her mind simultaneously as she shook the picture and waited for it to develop.
The scene came out as she saw it, only. different. The million colors that swirled and flashed before her eyes - the lake, the stars, the planets and heavenly bodies, the snow and the rain and the lightening - all came out on the film. Only, they didn't come out as what was playing before her eyes. Everything down to the last minute star in the sky was in code. Eerie, sickening, disturbing, bright green glyphs, running and streaming down the picture like the microscopic pixels of a blown-up photo. Ixias was instantly taken back to her dream, which again filmed her eyes and overtook her senses. The nauseating green code spilled down the monitors, reminiscent of everything she could not explain nor understand. She was brought back to the incident she witnessed as a child, that which she was afraid to confront and understand, but seemed only like a trip to the candy store compared to what she had witnessed today. She was so overwhelmed with what was taking place in front of her, the absolute beauty of everything she was seeing, the unbelievable and the surreal, that as tears of joy and fear and happiness and awe and love and curiosity and disbelief and understanding and sorrow and conclusion and pure and raw emotion streamed down her face, the world around her spun madly. She felt the gravity slipping away as she teetered backwards, only to fall for what felt like hours. When she was just about to reach the ground, a pair of hands slipped underneath her arms and caught her.