Spacetime

"Was I imagining things just now?" Altin thought in wonder. He looked around; no one was to be seen. There were only the mysterious multi-facets walls.

Yet...

"No, you aren't imagining things." The voice, again, came from within him.

It surprised Altin once again, prompting him to lightly jump on his feet.

"Allow me to reveal myself." The voice said.

There... in front of Altin, space trembled, and the figure of a man slowly appeared.

Altin felt an extreme variation of the 5th force.

Even since he woke up in this mysterious space next to the orb, he had felt intense pressure from the 5th force, no matter where he was.

However, now that the figure was mysteriously manifesting itself, this feeling was many times stronger.

Altin's head hurt, and he instinctively laid his hand on his head.

He had never felt something so intense in his entire life.

Finally, a few seconds after... the figure turned into a solid and clear body of a man.

He was old, perhaps 80 years old. His white beard fell to his waist while his disheveled hair ran from all sides of his head. He wore a unicolor and straightforward yellow dress from head to toes. His appearance was that of an unkempt man, somehow reminding Altin of a monk.

"Don't be scared, boy." The voice sounded once more inside Altin's mind. Yet, the old man's mouth did not move one inch.

"Sorry for the pain; I couldn't cross the dimensions without using that much."

Altin understood. He thought: "What I hear in my mind must be his voice... he speaks directly to me? Am I right?

"Ha ha ha ha" The voice laughed, yet the old man's mouth or face still did not change. "You seem to know nothing. How the heck did you get here?"

Although the old man's face was neutral, Altin couldn't help but feel the old man was friendly towards him. The old man wasn't smiling or anything, but Altin felt as if he was.

"Are you... talking to me..? In my mind?" Altin asked aloud.

Altin felt that the old smiled at the question.

Yet, the old man's face betrayed no emotion.

The voice rang inside of Altin's once more: "Don't speak. Think. How the hell would I know your language. Just think. Clearly, preferably. I'm old enough to read juniors like you."

Altin swallowed. He faced it: the old man was using telepathy to read his thoughts. Somehow, the old man couldn't speak or maybe hear.

But the old man disagreed immediately.

"NO! My ears and my tongue are perfectly fine, you idiot!"

The old man sighed physically.

It was the first display of emotion he had shown so far.

"Stop thinking and listen. "The voice ordered.

"Just reply to my question by thinking yes or no."

"Do you know where you are?" The voice asked.

"No," Altin thought.

"Do you know what an Energician is ?"

"No," Altin confirmed again.

"Have you ever communicated by telepathy?"

Still again, Altin confirmed the negative.

"Final question: where do you come from? Don't think of the name of your world; just show me how it looks."

Altin did as the old man asked. He first imagined the Earth as seen from space, then the continents, Paris, and the other cities where he had been.

"That's enough." The voice said. "What do you know of the force?"

Altin pondered a moment. "Does he mean the 5th force ?"

As if sensing his question, the old man raised his eyebrow very slightly.

Immediately, Altin felt swallowed a torrent of 5th force energy. He felt as if a tsunami had run through it.

It was only just a slight eyebrow movement...

Altin swallowed. He couldn't fathom how powerful the man was.

"So, what do you know of it?" The voice asked again.

"I.. uh..;" Altin, baffled by the display of force, started to speak vocally to answer.

"Think!" The voice rang in his mind.

He was immediately corrected by the old man.

"Not much... It first appeared in our world about a year ago..." Altin mentally replied.

"I see. So your world is barely in the first stage. But how the hell are you here then?"

Altin shook his head. He had no idea of how he got h...

He remembered he had awoken next to the orb... was it ... responsible for the teleportation? Right when the bomb exploded?

"Show me." The old man requested.

"He had read all of my thoughts..." Altin realized.

"Indeed I have. Now show me the orb."

Altin obeyed. He didn't see how he could not; he was obviously in complete control of the man. He couldn't even hide his thoughts!

He showed the orb, which he had been holding until now, to the old man.

The old man just raised his hand. The orb flew swiftly to him.

"Thanks." The old man said mentally.

"Ummm

"I can't believe you own such an object. It's something only advanced societies could manufacture."

"Advanced societies..?" To Altin, the technology in his world was wholly advanced already.

The old man disagreed. Still speaking directly inside Altin's mind, he said: "The dimension of the force has just begun merging with your dimensions, and you call that advanced? It's not. Your world has just started to change. Barely. Started."

Altin understood they were from different worlds. But then... "Where... are you from?" Altin asked carefully.

"From Eloteras." The old man said in thought with a note of sadness. He then said calmly: "A different planet to yours in a parallel universe."

"You don't speak French, do you? How then do we communicate?" Altin asked in his mind;

"I speak French." The old man said.

"Whhaat?"

"Ha ha ha, I'm joking." The old man laughed. "Just messing with you. Young lad, do you know how many worlds there are?"

Altin shook his head. His apprehension had given place to excitement. He felt the old man had a lot of answers to his questions. He was dying to have answers.

"An unlimited number of them. Between the parallel universes and their uncountable planets, there is simply no way to design a universal language between us Energician."

"But I understand you, and you understand me! So how is it possible?" Altin asked in wonder.

"Because I'm not talking to you using words. I'm communicating intent, not words. Words are there to carry emotions and meaning. However, my intent directly carries that into your brain. Your brain then interprets it into the language it is most familiar with, just like when you are dreaming."

Altin opened his eyes wide. The notion that intent could be communicated directly... puzzled him but also amazed him.

Altin asked: "... What about me? I'm just thinking, without doing anything in particular."

"Well, with time, it becomes possible to read other people's intent even if they don't try that hard to voice it. My mind then interprets your intent in my most fluent language."

The revelation was too mind-blowing. For a moment, Altin didn't know what else to ask.

"My name is Eternitus. I'll just say it once so you can know how it sounds."

The old man's mouth opened for the time, he then said aloud: "Eternitus"

It indeed sounded like Eternitus.

"What's your name?" The old man asked.

"Altin."

Atlin had thought it and said it at the same time.

"Altin, who gave you this orb?" Eternitus asked.

It was still weird to Altin of "talking" by thinking, but he was already getting used to it.

He relaxed his face; tried to "relax" his thoughts-word.

"A group of people on Earth. Acquaintances."

"Where did they find it?" Eternitus asked again.

Altin pondered. He went back to his first days at the 5th force association. Back then, Juliette had said...

"They found it on the side of a road, about ten years ago. Eleven now, actually."

Eternitus kept silent for a moment. Then, he looked down at the orb, which he had kept levitating in front of him.

"It's yours." So he voiced in Altin's mind.

The orb flew once more to Altin's hands.

"Mine?" Altin, surprised by the turn of event, asked.

"Yes. Yours. It's bound to your genome, your unique footprint. It was made to protect and help you." Eternitus explained.

"But..."

"There's no mistake. I've inspected your body and the orb twice over. It's bound to you only, and it's also what brought you here."

"How is it possible... ?" Atlin asked himself.

"Do you think you are from this world, 'Earth,' as you say ?"

Altin replied instinctively. "Yes! Of course!"

"What's your first memory?" Eternitus asked.

"The hospital... sirens.. people around me." Altin stepped back in time when he first awoke in a hospital. He knew that Eternitus saw it as he saw it. "When I was 5, my first memory was of me waking up in a hospital.. alone. My relatives have never been found." [Chapter 3]

"You aren't from Earth, Altin. The people who gave you this, they can't be from your planet."

Altin kept silent. He was lost in thought.

He had believed all his life that he had been abandoned by his biological parents for some reasons he would never know.

He remembered not speaking or comprehending the people around him; it was the source of his harrowing days at school.

The doctors had diagnosed him with amnesia due to a shock of his head.

So he had never sought to explain why so many things appeared unknown or new to him.

Why, at school, he had struggled so much to even read and speak.

Could it be that... he wasn't from this world?

Suddenly, it clicked.

The orb had been found 11 years ago on the side of a road.

He had himself been found 11 years ago.... too, on the side of a road.

Wasn't that... too much of a coincidence?

What if... the orb... had been his?

"Then I must have come from another world with the orb..." Altin thought.

"Yes." As if to confirm his private thoughts, the voice sounded once more.

Eternitus hadn't stopped himself from reading his thoughts one bit.

Altin stayed silent for a long moment.

"How can I come back home?" He asked.

"Home? Which one?"

"Earth. That's my home. "Altin replied.

Eternitus was thoughtful. He stroked his long white beard in a rare moment of emotional display with his hand, seemingly thinking. He then communicated to Altin: "If you told me you wanted to come back to where you were born, I would have said that you only need to feed some power to the orb and let yourself go. The orb is a marker, you see. It marks you to your origin and can teleport you when you solicit it. How far depends on its stored energy.

"But it is not designed to bring you back to where you previously were. It is impossible to find the location of your world in the vast array of the multiverse. See these walls over there?"

Eternitus raised a hand towards one of the walls below them; Altin looked down. His excitement was being slowly replaced by dread; would he not be able to come back home after all?

"You call it 'wall,' but they really are only a projection of the universe for specific coordinates. They're a 'photo' of a given world. Where we are... very few people can make it here, which is why I first talked to you. I've been so longer than you can possibly imagine.

"Do you know how many 'worlds' there are right around us?"

Altin looked around and made a quick count. There were so many 'walls' laid upon each other that counting was impossible, especially since they seemed stacked upon each other despite actually crossing each other. "Maybe a thousand," He replied by thought.

"No," Eternitus replied," what you see... is only a very tiny number of what there really are. You see only the projections in the 3-dimensions where you currently are. In truth, I count about more than one billion worlds within our vicinity. How are we going to know where you come from?"

"You mean... I can never find my way back home?" Altin' voiced' full of worry. A pit had formed in his stomach.

"It would be incredibly hard... How long have you been walking around?" Eternitus asked.

"Hours...?" Altin wasn't sure. He had lost track of time quickly in this always-changing and mysterious scenery.

When he woke up, he had even considered whether he was sent to the heavens for a moment.

Then he had mindlessly explored with no set direction.

"Time and space flow differently here...." Eternitus sighed. "You may have walked for hours, but in fact, you may have distanced yourself from your world by many space-years and time-years...."

Altin didn't get the last bit of Eternitus's sentence. He was puzzled, yet he knew he had to understand it. It was important.

Eternitus felt Altin's puzzlement as naturally as he could feel anything Altin felt. He explained: "Space years correspond to the distance that the light crosses in one year... yes... you think correctly. They're called light-years in your world. Time-years are more subjective... most human species live on planets at the same distance from the star as Earth is to the sun. So take a time-year as around one year in your world."

Altin started to feel immensely lost and lonely. Against all expectations, did he really condemn himself to never coming back home by walking just a bit? Would he stay by himself forever?

As if Eternitus had read Atin's thoughts, he said directly in his mind: "You are correct. You can't go home."

Altin stayed silent both in body and mind.

He looked at Eternitus.

Even though the old man's expressions were scarce, he seemed to be deadly serious.

Yet, wasn't there anything he could do?

Altin had the feeling that the old man hadn't said everything just yet.

"Old man... please... can you help me somehow?" Altin pleaded from the bottom of his heart.

"It's difficult..." Eternitus replied hesitantly.

Altin saw a light of hope in this hesitation. There really was a way.

"Please...." Altin pleaded once more, adding, "I'll do anything to repay you."

Eternitus kept silent for a long moment. He seemed to debate internally. Then, after a full minute, he sighed and said to Altin's mind: "Helping won't be easy for me. It'll cost me a lot of accumulated energy. Yet, you can't do anything for me. Young man, you have to understand how navigating across dimensions is difficult without a marker of the target world."

The old man looked again at Altin.

He felt that the young man unmistakely despaired.

Eternitus sighed internally. Should he really help this young man despite the great cost of searching his world and creating a safe path to it?

Altin looked no more than an ordinary human with no specific characteristic other than the fact he got here despite all expectations.

Where was he from? Even him, Eternitus, couldn't know for sure.

However, given the orb's power and rarity, the young man's background was extraordinary.

So Eternitus said to Altin: "But maybe you will be able to repay me in the future. Let me check your future. Don't. Move."

Altin obeyed.

Eternitus walked till being two meters short of touching Altin.

He then closed his eyes, and...

A strange and marvelous vortex formed around him and Altin.

Altin felt as if he was swallowed by a powerful current, but yet he felt no danger; it was as if the current gently carried him despite their vigor.

He looked around inside the vortex.

Images kept flashing in rapid succession.

It was too quick for him to follow.

Yet at one point, he saw what looked like an army of thousands of people... in space?

He saw stars, galaxies, and other mysterious objects.

Suddenly, the vortex disappeared.

Eternitus opened his eyes.

His lips drew upward.

He smiled.

"You are a lucky lad, and I am even more lucky to have found you here, young fellow." Eternitus voiced in Altin's mind.

"Did you see my future?" Altin asked. Hope was growing every second. He had clearly felt joy and friendliness from the old man's thoughts.

"In fact, I saw your futures. No Energician can predict the future because it changes every second. However, I saw your potential... and the potential of your friends, too. In some of your possible futures, you will come to save me.

"Much, much, much, sooner than you think."

Altin was astonished. Him saving Eternitus? He was powerless!

"Don't forget that time flows differently where we are." Eternitus smiled mysteriously.

"That being said, I agree to make a little sacrifice to bring you home."

".... really?" Altin couldn't believe it. He refused to believe it because he was too scared of being disappointed.

"Really." Eternitus reaffirmed.

Altin now believed it. He would come home.

"Stay still and let yourself be carried by the flow. I'll have to break through spacetime to bring you home. It'll be a rough ride."

Altin nodded. He was trembling with excitement.

He would be able to see Julien, Paul... and Eléonore again. He hoped to see his foster family. If the orb protected him, maybe it protected them by absorbing the blast?

He couldn't wait to be home and escape this mysterious place.

"It will be a long time for you, but not for me. Don't forget me. I'm counting on you."

Altin didn't really understand what Eternitus just said, but he nodded nonetheless.

"I'll never forget you... and I will definitively repay you when I can." Altin confirmed.

"Good. Then, see you in many years...

Or in a little while..." Eternitus expressed a rare enigmatic smile.

The force around Altin then grew exponentially. It quickly became even stronger than when Eternitus had checked on Altin and had read his future.

A sort of cyclone-shaped vortex was forming around Eternitus.

The cyclone-shaped vortex being Eternitus was growing bigger and bigger.

Altin couldn't see how big it was from inside the vortex. Still, he had the intense feeling that it was growing to several kilometers, encompassing billions of worlds...

Once more, Altin realized how small he was compared to Eternitus's mysterious and tremendous power.

Sweat was even pouring on Eternitus's head.

Even blood... from his nose.. flew.

He was in pain.

So was Altin.

"Ah.. found it. Finally.

"Get ready."

The vortex then seemed to get thinner until it became a long tunnel joining Altin and a distant location.. that looked no less than 6 kilometers away.

The now tunnel-shaped vortex sucked Altin.

He flew at tremendous speed towards the other end of the tunnel.

However, at that time, a tremendous and angry intent rang in his mind: "ETERNITUS, STOP HIDING !"

A wall of reality broke, and a middle-aged man in black surfaced.

Altin could feel he was dripping with killing intent.

However, just at that time, Altin reached the end of the tunnel. His vision became black until all became dark.

His headache grew too painful to bear.

Altin screamed and fainted.

--

A black hole-type anomaly suddenly appeared right in the middle of a street.

It was fortunately empty at night this close to 3.am.

Unlike typical black hole-type anomalies, this one only lasted for a few seconds.

When it disappeared, only a young man remained.

He opened his eyes.

"Uhhhhh..."

Altin's head was still hurting very badly. He fought against the pain.

He stood up, looked around.

He recognized the city. It was Reims.

Eternitus didn't just get him back to Earth; he brought him back to where he had left -- approximately.

Altin didn't know what to do for a moment.

He had nothing but his wallet and the orb, which he kept respectively in his left and right trouser pocket.

He chose to walk to the nearest police station.

It was on his way that he stumbled upon a large printed display:

"5TH APRIL 2027: EVERY DAY AT NOON: STRING FORCE BASIC TRAINING AT THE CITYHALL. ADVISED FOR ALL CITIZENS MORE THAN 8 YEARS OLD."

Altin gulped.

The date indicated April 2027.

It was...

... 6 months after he had left.