Episode One of the H.O.P.E. System: The Creation Engine
The boy sat atop the cliff, his legs hanging over the edge of the world heedless of the danger. The moon rose huge in all its silver glory beside the boy, silhouetting him on his perch. The boy looked up at it. He was fond of the moon’s gentle light, one of the few timeless constants of the world. So long as the Earth turned in space, the moon would be waiting to rise each night. A small comfort, but a comfort nonetheless. The starlight was even more of a constant, surviving far past the end of the Moon and the Earth. When the Sun died, the stars would still be there. The boy would count them.
Cracks appeared in the dark sky, brilliant white light streaming through from some other place. The boy’s face showed no reaction at all as the world around him shattered apart. The face of the moon split and fell away, and the boy was in that other place. His cliff was gone, and the Earth below it, but the boy sat as he had, his legs hanging off the edge of a massive column of what appeared to be white glass. If anything was below the column, it was hidden by clouds that drifted in an unbroken mat many miles below. Despite how high it appeared to be, the boy felt he could breathe normally.
“Who are you?” The boy turned his head.
If the man standing atop the column was startled by the boys question or lack of fear or confusion, nothing of it showed. He was tall, rugged without being muscular, with a mess of white hair and a white beard, and wore a white robe that looked as if it had seen better days. The man’s skin was white as well, not Caucasian but true white. The boy was unsurprised by that though, as everything in this place was white. The column, the clouds, the sky, the man, the tables and chairs that sat atop the column behind the man, all were pure white, cast shadows being the only mark of depth.
The man nodded respectfully to the boy. “Ah, I am Aryan. I’m glad I was able to find you so quickly. I’m cutting it close as it is. Oh, my apologies, would you like a drink?” The man, whom the boy now assumed to be quite old, ran over to the table, a simple but elegant thing that sat in the perfect center of the column, and lifted a white pitcher to pour two glasses. The glasses and the drink were both as white as everything else in the place.
The boy declined the offer and asked again, “Who are you?”
The old man pressed his hands together. “I am a scholar. This place you see is my home and my prison. It turns out that there are things one should not study, and doing so got me here. Still, it could be worse. I could –“
The boy interrupted him. “How did you find me and bring me here? I assume you are going to send me back, correct?” If the man had thought his guest one for conversation, he was mistaken. That one could find him and lift him from his world so easily disturbed the boy more than he would ever say.
“Yes, yes, of course! You aren’t actually here, you see. This is more a place inside the mind than a physical place. I just waited for the barriers to become loose and then I reached out until I felt a something different.”
“Different?”
“Yes, like how it feels. Most people’s minds are smooth and small, like an eggshell, but yours is huge and feels like a mass of worms or snakes. It’s definitely nothing like anything else I’ve felt.”
The boy looked back out over the endless expanse of white sky and clouds. “Oh.”
“Well, I found you and thought that you might be able to help me, so I kind of pulled your mind into here with me. You aren’t physically here, just your mind.”
“Does that mean that you aren’t really here either? That your body exists in some other place?”
The old man sighed. “No, my body is long gone. My mind should probably be gone with it, but it isn't, I’m still here.”
The boy didn’t ask any more questions down that path, instead asking the one that truly mattered. “Why did you bring me here then?”
“I need your help with something,” Aryan answered. “Tomorrow,” he scrunched his brow in thought, “in the morning I think, something will land in your world…”
***
The boy opened his eyes, and he was back as he had been, sitting on the edge of the cliff, legs hanging over, moon rising beside. The moon hadn’t risen any higher than it had been when he’d watched it crack, so no time must have passed when he’d been in the old man’s prison of white.
The boy looked from the moon’s face to the lights of the nearby city. It looked as though he would be staying in the area for a while after all. He’d better get started then. The boy pushed off from the cliff, and the Earth rose up to meet him.
