05-02-2018, 06:18 PM
Before Dexter’s eyes, the darkness gave way to a pristine, stark white landscape. He stumbled backward, thrusting an arm in front of his face while his eyes adjusted to the sudden change in light.
His mind reeled, trying to come to terms with the series of unfortunate events that had befallen him. Curiously, Dexter found he had only a vague recollection of the time before he encountered Omni, the mysterious, grinning silhouette. “A mirror?” he mumbled, startled by the hoarse croak of his own voice. “A name… Harmony?”
Dexter clutched his head as the sharp pangs of a migraine forced him to his knees. His tongue felt swollen and dry. Hot bile surged in his throat and Dexter spun, somehow already aware of the fountain behind him as he emptied the contents of his stomach into its gurgling water. He wiped his mouth, spat, and stood.
The fountain towered over him, a remarkable, gleaming thing. It seemed to possess a thousand individual slabs of stone and sheets of metal, each moving independently, streams of clear water trickling from one to the other in an inevitable spiral down into the pool at Dexter’s feet. While it appeared chaotic to his eyes, Dexter felt a familiar stirring in himself then, a familiar understanding. A sense of logic underlying the apparent chaos of the construction.
The notion brought Dexter a brief sense of calm. Although his knees threatened to buckle exhaustion, his finely cultivated mind felt as sharp and analytical as ever in that moment. While he couldn’t quite put together the details of the traumatic episode from which he’d just emerged, he understood one thing keenly: this was not a dream. The experience was too visceral, too tangible, too painful to be a dream. Dexter suspected some form of extraplanar travel had taken place, that he now stood in a universe quite separate from his own. He was a scientist, not a conspiracy theorist, but the possibility of alien abduction also intrigued him, the idea that some superior, interstellar race had abducted him from the tunnels beneath the bustling metropolis. All available evidence pointed to the existence of life elsewhere in the universe, after all.
Either that, Dexter thought with a thin smile, or I’m dead.
Dexter had studied with interest the science of death. He knew well of the flood of DMT released by the pineal gland, a gland no larger than a grain of rice, nestled deep within the spongy nerve bundles of the brain. Although Dexter had no interest in illegal substances, much less ones that disrupted thought his thought patterns or distorted his perception, he understood the potency of DMT and the potential for a vibrant, psychedelic experience in the moments before death—a conversation with a mysterious entity, perhaps, or the image of a fountain capable of dismissing all known laws of physics?
Dexter shrugged. Whatever the explanation, it hardly mattered in that moment. The answer required more data.
For the second time in as many minutes, Dexter became aware spontaneously of the existence of something he had not yet observed. The first time it was the fountain, a convenient repository for the contents of his churning stomach. This time, it was a distinctly sentient presence.
His mind reeled, trying to come to terms with the series of unfortunate events that had befallen him. Curiously, Dexter found he had only a vague recollection of the time before he encountered Omni, the mysterious, grinning silhouette. “A mirror?” he mumbled, startled by the hoarse croak of his own voice. “A name… Harmony?”
Dexter clutched his head as the sharp pangs of a migraine forced him to his knees. His tongue felt swollen and dry. Hot bile surged in his throat and Dexter spun, somehow already aware of the fountain behind him as he emptied the contents of his stomach into its gurgling water. He wiped his mouth, spat, and stood.
The fountain towered over him, a remarkable, gleaming thing. It seemed to possess a thousand individual slabs of stone and sheets of metal, each moving independently, streams of clear water trickling from one to the other in an inevitable spiral down into the pool at Dexter’s feet. While it appeared chaotic to his eyes, Dexter felt a familiar stirring in himself then, a familiar understanding. A sense of logic underlying the apparent chaos of the construction.
The notion brought Dexter a brief sense of calm. Although his knees threatened to buckle exhaustion, his finely cultivated mind felt as sharp and analytical as ever in that moment. While he couldn’t quite put together the details of the traumatic episode from which he’d just emerged, he understood one thing keenly: this was not a dream. The experience was too visceral, too tangible, too painful to be a dream. Dexter suspected some form of extraplanar travel had taken place, that he now stood in a universe quite separate from his own. He was a scientist, not a conspiracy theorist, but the possibility of alien abduction also intrigued him, the idea that some superior, interstellar race had abducted him from the tunnels beneath the bustling metropolis. All available evidence pointed to the existence of life elsewhere in the universe, after all.
Either that, Dexter thought with a thin smile, or I’m dead.
Dexter had studied with interest the science of death. He knew well of the flood of DMT released by the pineal gland, a gland no larger than a grain of rice, nestled deep within the spongy nerve bundles of the brain. Although Dexter had no interest in illegal substances, much less ones that disrupted thought his thought patterns or distorted his perception, he understood the potency of DMT and the potential for a vibrant, psychedelic experience in the moments before death—a conversation with a mysterious entity, perhaps, or the image of a fountain capable of dismissing all known laws of physics?
Dexter shrugged. Whatever the explanation, it hardly mattered in that moment. The answer required more data.
For the second time in as many minutes, Dexter became aware spontaneously of the existence of something he had not yet observed. The first time it was the fountain, a convenient repository for the contents of his churning stomach. This time, it was a distinctly sentient presence.