Written: Saturday. April 18, 2020.
It was difficult at first to keep track of what they were willing to say. But when the group started talking, it all just went out as if trying to fill a ten-page essay that was due that afternoon; and the title of that essay would be “The interconnected stories on extraterrestrial life, as witnessed by a bunch of high-school students, and how it made them feel”. It took two hours or so, in order to tell everything that’s happened so far. From the moment Tom and Amanda found the first pieces of Omnius, to the time when Lady Veergha and Ervagh were following them, Omnius’s ‘awakening’, a montage of Toby and Lady Veergha’s mind-breaching, which lead to Lady Veergha looking like Mara. They ended up telling everything. Mr. Reyes just nodded throughout all of this, which made it difficult to read him. It seemed like he wasn’t bothered by all of the information Toby and the others were telling him. As if he wasn’t at all surprised.
There were thirty seconds of pure silence before Mr. Reyes stopped pacing around the computer laboratory. There wasn’t anybody else there except for them, and the security cameras could only see what was happening. Any kind of noise or conversation was never subject to invasion of privacy. They were in the clear of whatever they wanted to talk about. Nobody was there to eavesdrop.
“I still can’t figure the reasoning behind your visions.” Mr. Reyes looked to Toby’s direction. “Out of everything you’ve all told me, this one in particular is what doesn’t quite click to the overall scheme of things.”
“How is that the most unbelievable thing about what we’ve just told you?” Tom asked, a scowl formed on his face. “We encountered aliens from other planets, discovered Omnius: the living robot, Toby got powers for a time, and Lady Veergha looks like a teenage girl from one of the classes in our batch; Exactly like her. All of that makes sense to you? And the only thing that doesn’t is a stupid dream?”
Mr. Reyes continued on his train of thought, as if none of what Tom said was of importance. “I am a man of science, through and through. I can believe that aliens exist from other planets cause I’ve accepted that possibility since I was a child. A race of aliens that are metallic in structure, like Omnius here, we could already see in Transformers; a government-funded project to prepare us to the possibility of alien-life not being all organic in nature.” Tom rolled his eyes and palmed his face. Mr. Reyes continued, “Mind-breaching is a form of telepathic communication. In human history, we could muster up that telepathic or telekinetic occurrences are innate to us. But since we are a young species — don’t let a hundred billion years of evolution fool you — we cannot harness that innate ability, until cross-pollination such as a ‘mind-breach’ is made with extraterrestrial life — “
“How is it that I’ve never ran into you the past three years?” Toby asked Mr. Reyes. “We could’ve had so many conversations about this already.”
“As I was saying,” Mr. Reyes continued, “All of that makes sense to me, but not when it comes to visions such as the one Tobias has mentioned. You said that your vision consisted of you finding the orb yourself? Is that right?” Toby nodded, so Mr. Reyes went on. “That presents us with a possibility of an alternate reality.”
“Alterate Reality?” Amanda asked.
“Alter-nate Reality.” Mr. Reyes corrected her, “See, in my many studies of trying to figure out the workings of the universe, I’ve always come across the subject of Alternate Realities. When one tries to flip a coin and it lands on Heads, another such reality — completely identical to the first one — would have landed the coin on Tails. Imagine somebody tossing a twenty-sided die. That immediately creates a tangent of nineteen other realities. Do you follow?” Toby, June, and Drew, nodded to this. Tom and Amanda only looked more confused. “So if that is the case with Tobias’s dream-vision or whatever, then we can surmise that there has been an alternate reality before all of this has ever occurred!” Mr. Reyes slapped the teacher’s desk out of his excitement, which immediately followed with him shuddering his entire body. Tom and Amanda just looked at him, wondering what was going on. The rest sort of looked down, or to the void of space. Toby seemed the one most disturbed out of all of them. An alternate reality? How can that be?
Before he speak, Mr. Reyes continued. “Though this also brings us to a dark realization.” All five of them looked at him, waiting for what he would say next. “See, alternate realities are not felt in one single occurrence. This is what worries me about your vision. The reality you saw has already presented a conclusion to its timeline — which is the demise of our world, brought by a strange and titanic being.” Toby clenched his jaw at the mention of the monster in his dreams, and shook his head to get the image out. “And since you’ve only just dreamt of the same dream, with no apparent change to the events unfolding within it, that means that we’re not dealing with a concurrent alternate reality. Ever notice why we sometimes would experience déjà vu? A feeling as if we’ve done things before? That we’ve been in that situation before, but can’t quite figure out when? Those are caused by alternate realities. This brings me back to my earlier suspicions.”
“Which is?” Toby asked.
“That your vision… is more than just an alternate reality. It’s a past life.”
A long time has passed since people started going out to eat their food. Mara grew impatient with having to wait for something to happen. So she insisted on walking around the campus. Ervagh, in typical fashion, followed her in her venture. They went from hallway to hallway. Looked through the windows of each room they had passed. None of which contained Mara’s friends.
“There seems to be something wrong with all of this, John.” Mara said to her companion. “Why haven’t they come back for us? And where are they? They were not in the room that they were in awhile ago. John, what is going on?”
“I do not know, Princess.” Ervagh mused. “I have no clue how this Terran institution works. We might as well head back and — “
“There they are!” Mara looked through the windows of a room filled with boxes lined up in front of a long desk, with chairs positioned on each box. She saw her friends, Tom, Drew, June, Amanda, and Toby, all talking to an old man who had curly white fur around it’s head. “What do you suppose they’re talking about in there?”
“We better go inside to see, my Princess.” Ervagh suggested. Mara nodded at him, and proceeded to open the door nearest to her. The handle did not move at first. Mara tried a few more times, and the door finally opened. She was greeted by June.
“Hello.” Mara said to June. She looked through her and saw that the others were now looking towards the door. Her eyes met Toby’s, and she let out a short laugh. “I shall come inside now.” Mara opened the door wide, which surprised June, cause she had been holding it firmly a second ago. She was swayed with the sudden movement of the door, as Mara and Ervagh entered the room.
“Please,” June said, under her breath. “come in.”
Mara looked around the room. She observed the boxes and found a few that had small writing on them. Some only had a black side to it, where the others had the writings and the different colors. She couldn’t quite understand how the boxes were able to contain a place with such green hills and blue skies inside of it. Though that was not what truly concerned her at the moment. She went near Toby, and punched his shoulder.
Toby let out a short gasp before Mara spoke. “Where were you?” She said to him. “We were waiting for all of you to return. I was getting worried about you.”
Toby was still rubbing his shoulder. “We kind of got sidetracked here to Mr. Reyes.” Mara knitted her eyebrows, so Toby looked towards Ervagh and continued. “Mr. Reyes here is our science professor. He knows about the orbs. He has one right now.”
Ervagh nodded to this. He looked towards Mr. Reyes and walked towards him. Mr. Reyes raised a hand to him, but Ervagh just looked at it and wondered what he was doing. “I take it that this is a formal Terran greeting with one another?” He put his hand to his, and took it just as quickly before Mr. Reyes could shake it. It looked more of a lowered high-five to those that were looking at them. “I am Ervagh. Loyal to the Volgan Empire, and squire to Lady Veergha, also of the Volgan Empire… but not as of late, due to her current predicament.”
“Incredible.” Mr. Reyes looked at Ervagh from top to bottom. “Your species is quite the chameleon if you are able to change appearance as perfectly as this. Might I be able to see what you originally look like?”
“I’d prefer to change back into the Volgan sleeve, myself, Terran Mister.” Ervagh replied to him. “Unfortunately, this form is here to stay. Only higher-ranking Volgans could transfigure as easily. Such is the case for the Princess.” He motioned to Mara.
“Why did he call you that?” Toby whispered to Mara.
“He said something about my appearance that was fitting to the Princess title.” Mara answered back. “Also that I was invaluable, but much less incapable of doing things.”
“Let’s just stick to the ‘invaluable’ part.” Toby gave her a smile. “Am I supposed to start calling you princess from now on too, Korriavania?”
“Oh, I don’t mind it. It’s just that — “ Mara paused when she noticed what Toby called her. “Why did you call me by that name?”
“That’s your real name: Korriavania.” Toby shrugged his shoulders. “I just thought it’d be better to call you by your name, you know, to spark memories of your passed self.”
Mara looked down, “Oh.”
“I mean, I could call you Mara if you want. I just thought — “ Toby tensed when he noticed Mara not meeting his gaze. As if he’d just screwed up something very important. “Sorry. I didn’t mean — “
“No, it’s okay.” Mara’s eyes were glued to the floor.
Toby held his breath. Dammit. he thought to himself. What did you do wrong?
Mr. Reyes and Ervagh seemed to continue talking with each other while Toby and Mara had their little conversation. Toby took a deep breath before turning to Mr. Reyes. “Let’s start talking about these files you have on the Orbs.” He took out a folder labeled “METEOR SHOWER” from his backpack, and placed it on the desk beside him. He didn’t let Omnius come out of the bag, but he allowed him to peer through the half-opened zipper. “It’s your time to explain what’s in those files.”
“Very well.” Mr. Reyes opened the folder up and started scattering the files on the table. “These are notes I have regarding the day I found the orb. There’s a large hole on the roof of my garage, and I haven’t been able to use my car since it was destroyed by the impact.”
“I have a very similar situation.” Ervagh mused.
“Never mind that. Anyway, I was lucky enough that nothing got on fire. Anything near to the orb seemed to act differently. It was almost shifting things and absorbing them. It was the first time I’d encountered that kind of phenomenon. So I wasn’t sure of what was going on with it, until — “ he took a video camera out of his bag and showed a video of the orb. Toby and the others looked closer, and saw that the orb was absorbing most of Mr. Reyes’s car. The orb slowly changed into a box, and some of the car’s features began popping out of the metallic box. A Toyota logo appeared on one side of the box, and on the other sides were just creases and color similar to Mr. Reyes’s car, which was red. “Remember the thing I talked about regarding the Transformers? Well, here’s one possible evidence for that.”
It was difficult at first to keep track of what they were willing to say. But when the group started talking, it all just went out as if trying to fill a ten-page essay that was due that afternoon; and the title of that essay would be “The interconnected stories on extraterrestrial life, as witnessed by a bunch of high-school students, and how it made them feel”. It took two hours or so, in order to tell everything that’s happened so far. From the moment Tom and Amanda found the first pieces of Omnius, to the time when Lady Veergha and Ervagh were following them, Omnius’s ‘awakening’, a montage of Toby and Lady Veergha’s mind-breaching, which lead to Lady Veergha looking like Mara. They ended up telling everything. Mr. Reyes just nodded throughout all of this, which made it difficult to read him. It seemed like he wasn’t bothered by all of the information Toby and the others were telling him. As if he wasn’t at all surprised.
There were thirty seconds of pure silence before Mr. Reyes stopped pacing around the computer laboratory. There wasn’t anybody else there except for them, and the security cameras could only see what was happening. Any kind of noise or conversation was never subject to invasion of privacy. They were in the clear of whatever they wanted to talk about. Nobody was there to eavesdrop.
“I still can’t figure the reasoning behind your visions.” Mr. Reyes looked to Toby’s direction. “Out of everything you’ve all told me, this one in particular is what doesn’t quite click to the overall scheme of things.”
“How is that the most unbelievable thing about what we’ve just told you?” Tom asked, a scowl formed on his face. “We encountered aliens from other planets, discovered Omnius: the living robot, Toby got powers for a time, and Lady Veergha looks like a teenage girl from one of the classes in our batch; Exactly like her. All of that makes sense to you? And the only thing that doesn’t is a stupid dream?”
Mr. Reyes continued on his train of thought, as if none of what Tom said was of importance. “I am a man of science, through and through. I can believe that aliens exist from other planets cause I’ve accepted that possibility since I was a child. A race of aliens that are metallic in structure, like Omnius here, we could already see in Transformers; a government-funded project to prepare us to the possibility of alien-life not being all organic in nature.” Tom rolled his eyes and palmed his face. Mr. Reyes continued, “Mind-breaching is a form of telepathic communication. In human history, we could muster up that telepathic or telekinetic occurrences are innate to us. But since we are a young species — don’t let a hundred billion years of evolution fool you — we cannot harness that innate ability, until cross-pollination such as a ‘mind-breach’ is made with extraterrestrial life — “
“How is it that I’ve never ran into you the past three years?” Toby asked Mr. Reyes. “We could’ve had so many conversations about this already.”
“As I was saying,” Mr. Reyes continued, “All of that makes sense to me, but not when it comes to visions such as the one Tobias has mentioned. You said that your vision consisted of you finding the orb yourself? Is that right?” Toby nodded, so Mr. Reyes went on. “That presents us with a possibility of an alternate reality.”
“Alterate Reality?” Amanda asked.
“Alter-nate Reality.” Mr. Reyes corrected her, “See, in my many studies of trying to figure out the workings of the universe, I’ve always come across the subject of Alternate Realities. When one tries to flip a coin and it lands on Heads, another such reality — completely identical to the first one — would have landed the coin on Tails. Imagine somebody tossing a twenty-sided die. That immediately creates a tangent of nineteen other realities. Do you follow?” Toby, June, and Drew, nodded to this. Tom and Amanda only looked more confused. “So if that is the case with Tobias’s dream-vision or whatever, then we can surmise that there has been an alternate reality before all of this has ever occurred!” Mr. Reyes slapped the teacher’s desk out of his excitement, which immediately followed with him shuddering his entire body. Tom and Amanda just looked at him, wondering what was going on. The rest sort of looked down, or to the void of space. Toby seemed the one most disturbed out of all of them. An alternate reality? How can that be?
Before he speak, Mr. Reyes continued. “Though this also brings us to a dark realization.” All five of them looked at him, waiting for what he would say next. “See, alternate realities are not felt in one single occurrence. This is what worries me about your vision. The reality you saw has already presented a conclusion to its timeline — which is the demise of our world, brought by a strange and titanic being.” Toby clenched his jaw at the mention of the monster in his dreams, and shook his head to get the image out. “And since you’ve only just dreamt of the same dream, with no apparent change to the events unfolding within it, that means that we’re not dealing with a concurrent alternate reality. Ever notice why we sometimes would experience déjà vu? A feeling as if we’ve done things before? That we’ve been in that situation before, but can’t quite figure out when? Those are caused by alternate realities. This brings me back to my earlier suspicions.”
“Which is?” Toby asked.
“That your vision… is more than just an alternate reality. It’s a past life.”
* * *
A long time has passed since people started going out to eat their food. Mara grew impatient with having to wait for something to happen. So she insisted on walking around the campus. Ervagh, in typical fashion, followed her in her venture. They went from hallway to hallway. Looked through the windows of each room they had passed. None of which contained Mara’s friends.
“There seems to be something wrong with all of this, John.” Mara said to her companion. “Why haven’t they come back for us? And where are they? They were not in the room that they were in awhile ago. John, what is going on?”
“I do not know, Princess.” Ervagh mused. “I have no clue how this Terran institution works. We might as well head back and — “
“There they are!” Mara looked through the windows of a room filled with boxes lined up in front of a long desk, with chairs positioned on each box. She saw her friends, Tom, Drew, June, Amanda, and Toby, all talking to an old man who had curly white fur around it’s head. “What do you suppose they’re talking about in there?”
“We better go inside to see, my Princess.” Ervagh suggested. Mara nodded at him, and proceeded to open the door nearest to her. The handle did not move at first. Mara tried a few more times, and the door finally opened. She was greeted by June.
“Hello.” Mara said to June. She looked through her and saw that the others were now looking towards the door. Her eyes met Toby’s, and she let out a short laugh. “I shall come inside now.” Mara opened the door wide, which surprised June, cause she had been holding it firmly a second ago. She was swayed with the sudden movement of the door, as Mara and Ervagh entered the room.
“Please,” June said, under her breath. “come in.”
Mara looked around the room. She observed the boxes and found a few that had small writing on them. Some only had a black side to it, where the others had the writings and the different colors. She couldn’t quite understand how the boxes were able to contain a place with such green hills and blue skies inside of it. Though that was not what truly concerned her at the moment. She went near Toby, and punched his shoulder.
Toby let out a short gasp before Mara spoke. “Where were you?” She said to him. “We were waiting for all of you to return. I was getting worried about you.”
Toby was still rubbing his shoulder. “We kind of got sidetracked here to Mr. Reyes.” Mara knitted her eyebrows, so Toby looked towards Ervagh and continued. “Mr. Reyes here is our science professor. He knows about the orbs. He has one right now.”
Ervagh nodded to this. He looked towards Mr. Reyes and walked towards him. Mr. Reyes raised a hand to him, but Ervagh just looked at it and wondered what he was doing. “I take it that this is a formal Terran greeting with one another?” He put his hand to his, and took it just as quickly before Mr. Reyes could shake it. It looked more of a lowered high-five to those that were looking at them. “I am Ervagh. Loyal to the Volgan Empire, and squire to Lady Veergha, also of the Volgan Empire… but not as of late, due to her current predicament.”
“Incredible.” Mr. Reyes looked at Ervagh from top to bottom. “Your species is quite the chameleon if you are able to change appearance as perfectly as this. Might I be able to see what you originally look like?”
“I’d prefer to change back into the Volgan sleeve, myself, Terran Mister.” Ervagh replied to him. “Unfortunately, this form is here to stay. Only higher-ranking Volgans could transfigure as easily. Such is the case for the Princess.” He motioned to Mara.
“Why did he call you that?” Toby whispered to Mara.
“He said something about my appearance that was fitting to the Princess title.” Mara answered back. “Also that I was invaluable, but much less incapable of doing things.”
“Let’s just stick to the ‘invaluable’ part.” Toby gave her a smile. “Am I supposed to start calling you princess from now on too, Korriavania?”
“Oh, I don’t mind it. It’s just that — “ Mara paused when she noticed what Toby called her. “Why did you call me by that name?”
“That’s your real name: Korriavania.” Toby shrugged his shoulders. “I just thought it’d be better to call you by your name, you know, to spark memories of your passed self.”
Mara looked down, “Oh.”
“I mean, I could call you Mara if you want. I just thought — “ Toby tensed when he noticed Mara not meeting his gaze. As if he’d just screwed up something very important. “Sorry. I didn’t mean — “
“No, it’s okay.” Mara’s eyes were glued to the floor.
Toby held his breath. Dammit. he thought to himself. What did you do wrong?
Mr. Reyes and Ervagh seemed to continue talking with each other while Toby and Mara had their little conversation. Toby took a deep breath before turning to Mr. Reyes. “Let’s start talking about these files you have on the Orbs.” He took out a folder labeled “METEOR SHOWER” from his backpack, and placed it on the desk beside him. He didn’t let Omnius come out of the bag, but he allowed him to peer through the half-opened zipper. “It’s your time to explain what’s in those files.”
“Very well.” Mr. Reyes opened the folder up and started scattering the files on the table. “These are notes I have regarding the day I found the orb. There’s a large hole on the roof of my garage, and I haven’t been able to use my car since it was destroyed by the impact.”
“I have a very similar situation.” Ervagh mused.
“Never mind that. Anyway, I was lucky enough that nothing got on fire. Anything near to the orb seemed to act differently. It was almost shifting things and absorbing them. It was the first time I’d encountered that kind of phenomenon. So I wasn’t sure of what was going on with it, until — “ he took a video camera out of his bag and showed a video of the orb. Toby and the others looked closer, and saw that the orb was absorbing most of Mr. Reyes’s car. The orb slowly changed into a box, and some of the car’s features began popping out of the metallic box. A Toyota logo appeared on one side of the box, and on the other sides were just creases and color similar to Mr. Reyes’s car, which was red. “Remember the thing I talked about regarding the Transformers? Well, here’s one possible evidence for that.”
End of Chapter.
* * *
* * *
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