I lost the feeling of time as I remained rooted on the same spot. While I observed, the bubble we were on, shook. The visible ripples of distortion ran across the surface, and on their wake appeared increasingly obvious cracks. Feeling the imminent crisis, I searched for the way for us to escape the shattering world.
I tried to move, but even tiniest shift upwards from my position felt being restricted by increasing viscosity of the space around me. Several attempts to push off the surface, brought me the feeling of being close to getting annihilated by the crushing resistance. Instead, I discovered that gliding across the surface of the world’s sphere was almost effortless. With my full focus, I pushed forward, gliding towards the only nearby bubble that connected to our current one.
The jagged cracks grew larger and began to cross the path I took. I did not even dare to think what may happen if we were to fall into one of these essense-spewing rifts of reality. My perspective also shifted continuously, one moment I saw the sphere barely larger than a football, the next moment it was smothering me with its surface billions of kilometers wide. The cracks also changed, from hair-thin barely visible lines to rifts that would be deeper than Earth’s crust. Everything heaved, changed and twisted under the squeeze of the tendrils of emptiness that surrounded it.
The distance to the adjacent world was still half way when the sphere could not take it any longer and shattered beneath us. With a soundless whooomp, we and the shard that had once formed the world were hurled into the distance.
What I feared – that the resistance from the surroundings will smash us, did not happen. Instead, with much luck, we were pushed towards the central cluster of bubbles.
—
Just when I was feverently thinking about properly reaching the cluster of worlds in the distance, in front of me appeared a vaguely humanoid shape similar to me. But different from myself, who was red, it was actually a blurry dark figure dotted by nacre-coloured specks that distinctively resembled stars.
“Aw, aw, aw. So here ya are. Dinna blow up, I see?” – I was transmitted something odd. As we did not seem to have ears in that form, it was some sort of telepathy, but why was it in such weird English?
“Who are you?” – I asked, completely baffled by the turn of events.
“Somebuddy like ya, I bet.” – was the fairly irresponsible response: “Ya know a-bout Words, rite?”
“You mean, about people having the control over the meaning of words?” – I made use of the chance to dig for some information.
The figure cheerfully made the clapping motion with its blurry hand shapes: “Goodie, ya know that. Some buddies call that avatars or other faancy wordies, but that is a towtal mess, ya know. Avatars offen got gods and stuff, or spirits, like that, and there are way too many Words around for that. Ya see – I am naw all that shiny stars and nite sky mysself, all thanks to buddies reading much. Come up with things like “anthropomorphic personification”, imagine? It is all bullshite, ya know. Buddies think much, come up with faancy ideas, but don’t get da point.”
The person made an exaggerated motion of folding hands and propping up his chin before continuing: “Words are definitions of ideas, and as ideas shape the words, the words themselves form the ideas. And as such, the idea is distributed over all sentient beings, unrelated to species, races, languages, times or cultures. Of course, sometimes the idea in one culture has different meaning in another, then the corresponding Word is weakened. The more uniform the idea and more people understanding it, the more powerful the Word.”
At that point, I stupidly interrupted: “How come your way of speaking changed?”
Immediately, the starry shape shut up, made a motion of patting my shoulder and pointed at Eala, still ball-shaped, and unresponsive near me: “Take care of the popsy. Took me some planning to get ya all shaped up here. Dinna blow up either, goodie, goodie. One thingy – see bubbles going pop? Cannot do much with that, but some shit is commin down, ya know. Seen bubble bath? First bubbles go pop rarely, but the less there remain, the faster they go popopopop. And all stuff is gonna be squeezed into the last one. Not like bubblebath, but anal-loggy can get ya only far far. Get reddy, buddy.”
That got me alarmed: “What? Wait, what do you mean, squeezed into the last one? Took you some planning to get us here? Who are…” – instead of answers, I got a quite solid kick from otherwise immaterial-looking leg of the figure and was directly blasted off from the world’s shard we had been on.
—
As we passed the numerous spheres that held uncountable worlds, sometimes flying through minuscule gaps that often separated different clusters, I could only be amazed at the accuracy of the mysterious figure. The greatest agglomeration of worlds was in front of us, with the central, thick sphere barely visible under the mass of lesser bubbles constantly budding, dividing, fusing and bursting on its surface. The next moment, we crashed into it.
The crash dented the surface, and the shock of the impact separated us. Before I could react to catch up to Eala, a vortex similar to the one she had created when making the portal appeared under her and sucked her in. I could only hope that it was the intended process for portals, considering that Eala had no control over herself whatsoever. I sincerely hoped that would make sense.
Just as I was worried about myself and was pondering about the ways of penetrating the surface, which truthfully could be regarded as the wall separating the realities, the surface rippled.
The place where I stood on sunk, and surrounding surface rose to form a dome above me. That heavily reminded of endocytosis videos we were shown back in school. That was where amoebas were engulfing food by covering it with their protruding body mass. The perfectly stored memory cited the thing as “the ingestion of bacteria or other material by phagocytes and amoeboid protozoans”.
Luckily, instead of being digested, I felt slowly being passed through by various streams that separated from the surrounding surfaces. Each time that happened, not that I felt any discomfort or danger, but it definitely changed. As it went on, I first had some suspicions which slowly became a conviction – those were different laws of nature that formed the basis of the world. Mathematical constants, laws of physics and chemistry – everything was attempting to conform me to some regulations.
Unsure about what could be done with my body after such revision, I attempted to fight it. I channeled my excess energy into myself, refusing to let the streams of laws to wash away my hard work. Now came the grinding pain, which felt as comfortable as would an ice-cold pick in the skull. Ignoring the thoughts that demanded to know how could I feel the pain in that blurry red shape, I endured under the pressure that bore onto me.
After a while which felt like decades, some part of me was almost ready to give up and just go along the flow. But some part of my stubbornness still refused to let the things happen as they want, and I hung onto that with my full focus. Just as I steeled my resolve, a part of my energy left the confines of my body for the first time, and a stream of it mixed with the surrounding vortex of the local laws.
That seemed to gain a partial recognition from the whirlpool around me, and with another push it allowed me to form a tiny bubble of my power that isolated myself from the grinding of the laws. That got a definite reaction from my surroundings, which suddenly contracted and simply ejected me. And not outside, but inside the world.
I had also finally gotten through.
—
What greeted me was a burst of loud music, badly mangled by interferences, making the speakers cough, whine and wheezle. I smelled a light scent of ozone, and the quickly disappearing signs of my dimensional portal were quickly covered by the rhythmical bursts of light and flashes of spotlights, cameras, lasers and any sort of illumination one might think of. I was wary for a panic due to my appearance in a crowded place, but instead… nobody had noticed me at all. For a moment, I even felt disappointed.
But when I looked around, I understood why. A huge banner reading “London Anime & Gaming Convention” was straight in front of me, and I had apparently popped up in some technical backstage area of some larger gaming company. To my right, between myself and the public area, sparks revealed a massive statue of a greenish orc or troll. Blizzard? I was tempted to go and have a look, but then I stopped. I heard some annoyed voices coming towards me from the side. Behind me was a solid wall, to the right was brightly lit public area, and apparently to the left was staff.
Apparently, my appearance had messed up some of the electronics. Not willing to deal with multi-billionaire company in a court, I quickly moved straight, hoping that the backstage area was shared between various staff of companies present.
At least, it did not seem to be very different time from what I knew. I doubted that hundreds of years into the future, game cons would still be a thing. But other questions felt more urgent, Where was Eala? And how was I going to find her? And… why did I feel excited, heart rapidly pumping blood through my veins?
Circle of Shards 