1. And so it begins!
He looked at the blue skies, as he stood surrounded by his friends, his family and his colleagues who had come out to celebrate his success.
His parents had especially flown in, as he was awarded his doctorate degree, a Summa cum Laude in engineering. While his friends, who most of them were also seeking a doctoral degree were happy for him, while his parents were elated at the joy of their only son's achievement, the man in question was simply relieved that he was done with the tedium of meticulously editing his thesis, and awaiting responses from published papers...
He sighed, reminiscent of the unpaid hard work that awaited him day after day until finally he had been ready to submit his work to the committee at the University after a strategy discussion with his supervisor.
His supervisor was also here as he sat at the back, and when he looked at his professor, the old man raised his glass silently with a small smile.
He raised his glass back, and downed it as his best friend waved at the cheerful blonde waitress who brought another bottle of wine.
He poured the red sinful wine with a tilt of the bottle into his glass, and set the bottle down with a grin.
"So! What next?" His friend asked him as his baby sister, who had clutched his other arm, looked at him as well. "Yes, do you have something planned?" She asked as well as the young man sighed as he looked back at the blue skies.
"Yes! I got an offer from a think tank to work in Lausanne. I am thinking of accepting it." He replied calmly, as his friend's ears perked up.
"Lausanne? Sounds fancy." His sister had no idea why, but she nodded regardless. "Yeah! Swiss chocolates and Swiss cheese!"
The two men smiled wryly as they shared a look, as his sister left his arm and went to talk to other girls who had set up some cards at the table and were playing a round.
His friend patted his back with a silent heartfelt congratulations, and left to talk to others as he stood alone looking at the blue skies.
"We will miss you, you know." He heard a gravelly voice as his supervisor and his mentor joined him.
"I thought you would be glad to finally be rid of me." He joked as his supervisor smiled at that.
"I always told you before, but you were one of the best we've had. Can I still not tempt you to continue at the Research Centre? You can lead a project you know." The old man asked as he chuckled sadly.
"I am sorry, sir. But you know I wanted to try new things. I learnt so much with you, that I don't want to stop learning. The position at Lausanne will be for a project for three years. Maybe five. I need to try this to see if I can. Perhaps, after that, I can come back. I have so many ideas, and so many things I want to try..." He answered as a little bit of excitement and enthusiasm creeped into his tone making the old man chuckle good naturedly.
"I hope you never change!" His professor smiled and patted his back as the young man looked forlornly at his mentor before taking a deep breath.
He had made up his mind and was ready. And it was all very quick as well. The people he would work for sent a contract online and he immediately received instructions to board a flight the very next day after he received his PhD.
He vid goodbye to his friends, to his colleagues and his family left for the airport.
He had already sent his stuff ahead to an address where his new employer had told he would be living. Everything was arranged and he felt it was odd that such care was taken for his convenience. But not looking the gift horse in the mouth, he said goodbye to his family and left for the terminal where his plane was supposed to be.
As he came to the gate, he realised there was absolutely nobody there.
There was plenty of time and he had just a duffel bag and a wheelie bag with him to carry around.
He came to the front information desk as he awaited in line until it was his turn.
The young man at the counter politely smiled as he showed his printed boarding pass which had been also somehow arranged by his employer and mailed to him.
As he handed the printed copy to the airport employee, he suddenly became stiff, which surprised him, as the man looked up with droopy eyes and said, "The flight to Lausanne is scheduled at gate 7 as written on the boarding pass."
He found it odd, as he had travelled quite a lot and knew that flights don't have a gate scheduled until the last minute until they land in the airport.
But, thinking that perhaps since Lausanne was closer to Frankfurt, where he currently was, perhaps they don't change that often, if they use a smaller flights.
And yet, the behaviour of the airport employee was surprising, but he shrugged as he looked at the Arrival Screen, which showed a flight to Lausanne on gate 7, which confirmed what he had been told.
He hadn't been to Lausanne before, only heard about the place and knew from second hand sources.
As he sat down at the empty seats at gate 7, where his flight was supposed to be boarded from, he opened a book which he began to read, as his eyes cautiously looked around and somehow confirmed there was absolutely no one else who was taking this flight with him.
This was particularly confusing, but perhaps, it could also be that there are not many travellers expected to go from here to Lausanne which could be plausible.
All the oddities began to nag in his mind, as something seemed utterly out of place.
He took out his phone and glanced at the bright screen before setting the brightness low. He wanted to search about the airport in Lausanne and the flight he had been told to board, but before he could finish the search, he saw a pair of feet standing before him.
He looked up and was surprised as a young blonde woman with the most bright blue eyes smiled at him that left him dazed for a moment.
She was frankly the most ridiculously beautiful woman he had ever seen, and despite her frankly outrageous appeal, his eyes glued to her own, as he stared at her gorgeous eyes which crinkled slightly as she tinkled into a soft laugh that was so melodious that he calmly regained his senses and cursed at his lack of self-control.
"I apologize miss. But I was left speechless. You are the most beautiful woman I have ever seen." He smiled and replied smoothly as she gave a confident smile back unfazed by his compliment.
"Thank you, sir. But may I presume that you are travelling with us to Lausanne?" She asked as he looked around and nodded.
"Seems like I am the only one." He smiled as the woman's lips curled sinfully before she gave a demure smile.
"You have no idea!" He saw she was dressed in blue with the flight attendant costume with a logo of a dumbbell shape with a trident.
He didn't understand what she meant by that, but not wanting to sound rude, he handed her the boarding pass as she nodded.
"You might not be aware, but this is not a commercial flight." She politely warned him as he quirked his eyebrows as she led him through the gate as his eyes widened as he saw a private airplane instead of a commercial flight.
"What the bloody hell is going on?" He whispered to himself as the loud sounds of flights taking off and winds blowing distracted him.
Had he looked ahead he would have seen the inhuman smirk on the woman in front of him, or noticed as the air around him shivered just a bit causing the land where he walked behind the blonde flight attendant to glitch just a bit.
The private plane looked very much like a normal plane, except now that he could see it, the dumbbell was instead something like a console where gaming keys were clearly etched in white on the black console with a cerulean blue trident over it.
Shaking his head, he boarded the plane that looked every bit as wastefully opulent as he expected private planes to be.
There seemed to be nobody else, as he put his wheelie and his duffle bag in the overhead compartment before sitting down as the blonde flight attendant sat down beside him.
As soon as she sat down, she smiled at him and said, "Please fasten your seatbelt. We will take off momentarily." The odd lilt in her accent put him on guard more than he cared to admit, as he could differentiate between accents quite well.
The woman had a German name on her tag, but the oddity of her clear Oxford accent put him on guard.
He panicked when the seatbelt refused to budge as he heard a sigh from the woman.
"Ah! Here I thought everything was going smoothly! I had this whole thing planned. And I wanted to do the safety instructions too!" The woman pouted as she shook her head as immediately he went on full blown panic when her eyes which were blue until now changed into deep dark red.
He wouldn't be ashamed to admit he screamed like a scream queen until some unseen force shut his mouth and forced him into silence.
The woman tutted as he previously immaculate nails had grown into almost claw like protrusions which raked against his cheeks.
"Don't be afraid little boy! I won't eat you, yet."
He wanted to scream, but his voice was unresponsive as he thrashed against his bindings, until he stilled when he heard a firm voice.
"Stop playing with him, Mirabella!" He looked away from the insane woman as a man walked in view. His presence didn't assuage his fears, as he walked across the walls of the plane and from where he sat, he could see the newcomer was walking over thin air.
"We don't want to terrify our recent inductee, do we?" His silky voice was like hot honey poured down his ears, as the man looked supernaturally beautiful.
The man who was until now gripped with terror and sheer fear sighed as he seemed to give up on his struggle.
Something about this was not natural, and his intellect could easily discern that there was very little he would achieve by acting as a screaming raving lunatic other than waste his energy.
"Do you plan to kill me?" He asked them as the woman and the newcomer man looked at each other as the woman shrugged.
Instead it was the man who answered. "A better question would be, whether we plan to end you?" He smirked as the man sighed and relented to his captor's whims.
"Fine, I'll play along. Do you plan to end me? And will it hurt?" He asked as the woman smirked as the beautiful supernatural man smiled.
"If we come to an accord, then the answer to both your questions is No."
Accord? Are they making a deal? Are they some sort of demons?
The captive man was a child at heart. Fantasy and impossible legends inspired him. Stories and tales of the impossible, of victory over the injustice and redemption of evil motivated him. At heart, he was still a child who avidly read, watched and played all modes of entertainment he could afford, as he always believed in the impossible.
And yet, as a grown man, he knew of the reality he lived in. How mundane it truly was, despite all the wishes for it to be otherwise.
And yet, the supernatural nature of this encounter, the sheer oddity and his reluctance to investigate deeper all nagged at his mind as he wondered why he did not look into this frankly 'too good to be true' opportunity that fell on his lap!
And yet, if it was supernatural, then it could simply be some form of mind control! And with the powers to do as they wish, this was merely a charade for the people before him, wasn't it?
If it was, and they wanted to kill him, they had innumerable opportunities and methods to do it without this elaborate scheme. But again, who's to say they even bothered with this elaborate scheme? They could have just made him think this was all planned when they could simply be messing with Him!
"Yes, that is right! You hadn't heard of us before yesterday. We came to your party and simply told you to catch this flight and handed you the paper. You even wrote a letter of apology to refuse the offer from San Francisco, when we told you to put your affairs in order."
The woman smirked as a chill ran down his spine as he suddenly remembered he was going to work in the US...
And the emails he wrote to his parents and his sister and his friends that would be sent right about now...
"What did you do?" He asked with growing horror as the woman shrugged.
"We are going to make an offer you can't refuse. And once you accept it, there's nothing left but to say goodbye."
That was the last thing he remembered as he woke up with a sharp pain that grew in his head as he clutched it with a groan.
There was light coming in from his side, as he groggily looked around.
His bleary eyes caught the sight of a glass filled with water as he drank it with a groan as he sat upright.
His eyes noticed the layers of clothes he wore in the bed and the fluffy feather-filled duvet and layers of silk covers he slipped over when he sat upright.
The bed he slept in was stiff, and didn't appear to have any spring for tension or the usual filling to make it soft.
But the pillow covers and everything else was made of silk, and looked almost aristocratic in taste.
His vision cleared a bit, as suddenly he heard the door open and saw a woman walk in, who bowed with a courtesy.
"Good Morning, my Lord. Did you have a pleasant sleep?" He stared for a moment at her greeting as his eyes caught the sight of the room around him.
As he inspected the room, suddenly there were memories in his head. Memories not his own, as they amalgamated with his modern mind and informed him of who the woman was.
"Yes, Abby. Thank you." The maid, his mind supplied, looked shocked at his politeness, which he soon remembered was the wrong thing to do.
Lord Cutler Edward Beckett was recently appointed by the incumbent King of England as the Chairman of the East India Trading Company.
Before that, he served as the secretary and counselled the Duke of Gloucester on matters of colonial trade and the likes.
And being an aristocrat, with noble blood in his veins, Lord Beckett was never kind to plebeians nor to his servants.
Even fools who had landed gentry didn't impress him, unless they were of sufficiently better breeding.
His mind was clouded with these new memories that were as vivid as his own, as he looked at his maid with a derisive grunt.
"Warm up water for my bath!" His command caused the maid to bow with a swift answer as she fled his room and closed the door.
In the solace of his room, and with no other soul around him, he replayed the memories in his mind as he wondered what the hell was happening.
He was clearly not Cutler Beckett, because Cutler Beckett is an imaginary character. A villain in a movie series he watched in passing.
And yet...
He had clear memories of the day to day life of this imaginary character, his interactions, his plots and schemes...
But what of his life!
He clearly remembered the unnaturally beautiful flight attendant and the man...
Some sort of deal...
He looked around as he saw a piece of paper on the table.
The paper didn't look like it should in this day and age, if this was not hallucinations or a weird acid trip, but real.
But the paper was clearly of a modern make, and his eyes went wide as he looked at it.
Something seemed to click in his mind as suddenly a new influx of memories poured in that were not memories, but pages and pages of contracts clearly embedded in his mind.
A contract signed and agreed upon between him and some entity called the Outsider Explorer Inc shortened as OnE.
There were pages and pages about being sent from world to world that should only exist in fiction, as he would be given tasks in some, or left to freely explore as he wished.
The worlds would be from stories, novels, TV series, animes, cartoons, movies and even comics that he was familiar with, where he would be allowed to explore and live and do what he wished...within limits.
The pages upon pages explained in excruciating detail what he was allowed and more importantly what he wasn't allowed to do.
From the worlds he should know about, he would be sent to any one of them chosen by his Minders, the two people who inducted him.
He was now what was termed in the contract as the Outsider and Explorer who would represent the interest of this Omniversal entity, against other such entities who all have non-interference, non-aggression and non-compete agreements between each other.
There were supposed to be an infinite number of multiverses in these Omniverses, and there was absolutely nothing to compete about since there were no limits to what was possible and what existed.
And somehow the man who has now become Lord Cutler Beckett in this world which he knew as Pirates of the Carribbean world, knew that the terms of the contract were true and the words therein were true. He knew this with the kind of certainty that felt to have been carved deep into his soul.
It somehow felt to be an unalienable and unquestionable truth, and the man sighed as he remembered the words of his Minders.
He would vanish from this world, and would never get to meet his parents or his sister again. That was one rule that he could not challenge or change.
His life and his world as he knew it was over. And there was no way back.
He didn't remember what those people said to him, because he didn't remember anything about what they told him to convince him to make this decision.
But it seemed that free will was a major issue in these contracts that emphasized he chose this.
What possessed him to agree to say yes, he didn't know. And there was nothing he could do to change it.
This was abundantly clear from the various paragraphs and sections within the contract.
A breach of contract seemed impossible, as that had also somehow been engraved in his mind, which he knew was not mind control but simply some power he knew yet not, which enforced this... somehow.
There were many questions...many of which were about things explained in the contract, but significantly more were simply left unanswered.
He felt a tear trickle down his eye, as it fell on the back of his palm as he remembered the smiling faces of his family.
How would they fare with him simply...gone...
Would they look for him?
Like that would help!
There was something clearly wrong with his situation, and given the sheer unexplainable magic and supernatural nature of his abduction...
He didn't wish his family even bothered to look for him, lest they encounter his Minders!
If there were devils like his Minders, then perhaps there were also gods...
He prayed with all his heart that his family be safe from harm...as he knew he could not spare them from heartache in his absence.
He prayed with all his might as there was a knock on the door that startled him into a pause.
"My Lord, the bath is ready."
He sighed to himself as he wiped his tears on the cuff of his lacy pyjamas, as he looked out of the window with a morose glance filled with utter despair at his situation.
'I will survive...If this is not a dream, and I am living like this, then I will survive!' He thought to himself as he resolutely looked ahead.
If nothing else, he would love nothing than to grow powerful enough to tear his Minders limb from limb, for taking his life away from him.
No matter the honeyed poison they drowned him in, he would have his pound of flesh for taking him away from a normal life...a peaceful ignorant mundane life!
If this is not an effect from a very potent drug playing with his mind, which he still could not conclusively deny, he would survive whatever is thrown at him...