The white flash was gone almost as soon as it was started and I felt my body tense as I expected to fall on to solid ground, but no impact ever came. I opened my eyes and noticed that I was floating in midair. Just like the portal tampered with gravity, it seemed that wherever I had wound up had a similar gravitational force. I looked around to take in my surroundings, but immediately noticed that everything was muted and out of focus. I reached up to readjust my glasses but found that they were missing. They were either floating around with me somewhere, or with Stan now. As I pulled out my spare glasses (I always keep a spare in my pocket, as I tend to break them fairly often), I found my thought drifting to my twin, but I snapped out of that train of thought quickly as a chillingly familiar voice started speaking.

"Look who decided to pay me a visit!" Bill cackled, with the words echoing out. I turned around and saw my once close friend gleefully grinning at me. Bill was perched on a massive throne made of infinite optical illusions that were constantly shifting and changing. Flanking his seat was a massive army made beasts that were covered in shadows, and from what I could tell, no two soldiers even resembled the same species, much less the same evolutionary timeline. Bill was smiling from ear to ear (or I guess its side to side since he doesn't have ears) making his eye look almost closed, as he asked, "Care for a game of intergalactic chess? This time you're the pawn!" He then snapped his fingers and one of his minions stepped forward.

This beast must have been at least 60 feet tall and seemed to be entirely made of teeth and fingers. It let out a deafening roar that seemed to come from each set of mouths and rushed towards me. I immediately began swimming away from the monstrosity (can you call it swimming when you're in space?). Somehow, I was able to "swim" and spotted an asteroid field about a hundred meters away and made a quick dash to it. As soon as I got to the first rock, I immediately dodged behind it and not a second too soon as I saw the beast rush past where I had just been. I started swimming deeper into the asteroid belt, which seemed fairly dense and covered a wide range of area, and dove into a deep looking crater. I heard another snap and Bill's echoing voice, "Sixer wants to play hide-and-seek! First one to find him and bring him to me gets their own galaxy." I could hear the roars and laughter coming from the hoard of creatures Bill had sent after me.

I spent what felt like hours hiding and dodging them. Once they got too close to my hiding place, I would quickly find another. But soon I was just tired. I felt like giving up. This was Bill's home of chaos; would there ever be a place I could truly hide in this nightmare of a realm. Maybe I should just give up, so I could at least have the satisfaction of cursing out Bill to his face before I die. I started to leave the system of caves I had found in a particularly large asteroid, but before I left, I hear a small sneeze come from somewhere close to me. I spun around ready to attack the minion who had gotten so close to me and tackled the first thing I could grab. Immediately a voice exclaimed "Ouch! Hey, get off me! We're not gunna hurt you."

I tightened my hold on the creature and said, "Why should I trust the word of anyone who works for Bill!"

"Shhhhhh! Now let hi-hi-hi-him go," a shivering voice said from behind me. "We-we-we do-do-don't work for that mon-on-on-ster." I saw a couple sparks and a roaring purple fire catch on some logs. Surrounding the fire was a group of three strange and rather pathetic looking creatures. As I stared at them, the one in my hands got out of my grasp and joined his companions around the strange fire. They looked like they had seen many battles judging by their well-worn weapons and the many bandages they donned. The one that an eyepatch and looked to be a cross between a guinea pig and a pirate, beckoned me closer to the flames. I cautiously swam towards them and once I got close to the group when I suddenly fell unceremoniously to the ground. The one with the eyepatch, who I deducted to be the leader of the group, chuckled to himself and pointed to a few small purple gems on the ground around them and told me, "Those are gravity crystals. You can attach them to any surface and allow you to walk on it regardless if you're in zero gravity and they aren't effected by any other nearby gravity sources, you know like planets, or blackholes."

I was surprised. "What is the radius of gravity given by each crystal? And what are their elemental composition?" Despite that I was practically dead on my feet, I was a researcher through and through and I could feel my natural curiosity begin spitting out a plethora of questions about the new anomaly.

The eyepatched one answered "Well, the radius of gravity is determined by the size of the crystal. So, a bigger crystal would affect a larger area and a smaller crystal would affect a smaller area. And as for their composition, I have no clue. We're all just miners. We didn't question what they were made of, we just dug them out of the asteroid. By the way, my name is Eerol," he pointed to the alien to his left who sported a set of horns, "that's Doc," then pointed to a taller alien with completely black eyes and an arm in a cast, "that's Zig," and then pointed to that last of the bunch who looked like a pig who had a very impressive scar over his eye, "and the one you tackled, is Thox. What might you be called?"

"Call me Ford," I replied. "But you're miners? I figured you all for war veterans or some kind of alien warrior. How did you end up way out here?"