Twin Earth

“I’ll be honest I can’t say exactly what this means, but they did give us this,” I added, passing Apo the small, black sleek box that we had been given back on whatever planet we had been on.

“Curious,” Anoxia replied, bending over from her tall frame and taking a closer look. “You say the creators gave this to you?”

“Well, it was the only thing that appeared to us. I can’t really explain our experiences on the creator’s planet, if it even was their planet. We were stuck in this kind of see-through room, amongst thousands if not millions of similar rooms, each containing a different creature or alien being,” I replied.

”A type of prison?” Apo asked curiously.

“No, it didn’t feel that way,” Rachel interjected. “More like miniature biospheres. Self-sustaining portals that could support individual life depending on the needs of the being inside. At first we thought we were on a planet, much like our own, except for the different star systems in the sky, this was when Tom had his hallucination about the turtle.”

“It wasn’t a hallucination,” I replied, mildly insulted at the suggestion I had imagined the whole thing.

“No, but whatever experience you had,” Rachel replied frowning, “I didn’t experience that and then our surroundings changed and we ended up in this vast chasm of rooms.”

“Fascinating,” Anoxia replied, taking the box from Apo’s hands and turning it over. “It could be that there are many more civilizations that exist in our universe that we have not previously known about.”

”How many exactly do you know about?” I asked surprised. “Until a few days ago we thought it was just us on Earth!”

Smiling Anoxia looked up at me. “To date we have recorded approximately fifteen different alien species other than our own humanoid kind that we have met with the help of the ellipses, but we have records dating back thousands of years from the creators archaeology that we have translated that say there are about fifty, but by what you’re suggesting there could be thousands more. However, this box looks familiar.”

“It does?” Rachel asked, but as she did four men came running to join us with worried expressions on their faces.

“What is it?” Apo asked, turning to greet them.

“It is the reactor sir. It can no longer sustain our suspension. It is at maximum output and there is no more settling available.”

“Suspension?” I asked.

“Come we must hurry,” Apo replied, ignoring my question and motioning for us to join him.

“What’s happening?” Rachel asked worriedly, turning to Anoxia for answers as we followed Apo and the four men back out into the main corridor and down some stairs.

“Our living quarters use settling suspension, a type of gyroscope that protects us from earthquakes and tremors caused by the surrounding sphere deterioration. Over the last few years however, even before the deterioration of the sphere began we have experienced larger and larger vibrations here in the south.”

“It must be the black holes colliding. We’re closer here in the south,” I replied.

“Yes, a single black hole in an alternate dimension sustains our sphere. At least that is what we have scientifically calculated it must be. No-one has ever passed through the vortex to find out though, but now we believe it is colliding with another black hole.”

“I think that is true, very true because after we left the creators home world I had this… experience. I was hovering above two huge black holes, warping and twisting into each other. It was like nothing I have ever experienced or known. When we calculate these types of phenomena, you know the energies involved are huge, but until you experience that yourself…” I paused, reliving the horrendous experience in my mind.

“And you survived this?” Anoxia asked, confused.

“I don’t think I was really there. I think I was just an observer. I mean how could I survive something like that?”

”What does it mean Anoxia?” Rachel asked as we followed Apo further down another corridor into a darker area of the underground skyscraper. It felt far from the comfort of the prism lights and a gnawing feeling began to eat at my thoughts as Rachel’s question hung in the air.

“I am not sure, but I have seen this box before. It was a long time ago when I was working on a mission in the North. It was just after we had captured the last ellipse from within the ruins, a more remote area that had long been in ruin way before the war. It was etched into the ground on this giant circular mound. We couldn’t take it with us because it was so deeply buried, but I remember seeing a carving of a box shape amongst four circles. It could have meant anything I know, apart from this part here.”

We paused in the corridor as Apo ran on ahead and stared at the box Anoxia was now rubbing on one side. Slowly two distinct characters etched into the side began to appear. One was red and the other was purple.

“These symbols were also on the mound’s carving within the box. This must be what the carving was depicting,” Anoxia replied.

“But what does it mean?” Rachel asked again in awe.

“Hurry,” Apo called back to us. “We have to activate the warning system for evacuation.”

”Evacuation?” Rachel asked in surprise.

“Evacuation to where?” I asked.

“The tsunami is coming,” Anoxia replied softly, turning to run after Apo.