Infinite Horizons

Kevin looked around the waiting room anxiously. He’d realized after speaking aloud that he probably didn’t want to draw attention to himself. Who knows if this was a place that was friendly to multiverse jumpers. Or if they even were aware of the multiverse at all. He shivered at the thought of being stuck in a universe that wasn’t his own.

His outburst appeared to have gone unnoticed, as no one came running into the room. Kevin slowly stood up from the couch and ventured up to the reception desk. There was a monitor on the desk, but nothing else, and the monitor was dark. Checking the doors on either side of the room, he skirted around the desk. He’d been hoping to find buttons to turn on the monitor, or perhaps a drawer with something in it that could help him identify where he was, but he was out of luck. There were no drawers, and the monitor remained off.

Kevin walked over to each of the doors leading out of the room, but could only see a long hallway beyond, so he walked back to the desk and sat down in the chair.

“On,” he said to the monitor, but nothing happened other than the sound of his own voice startling him. It sounded strange in the silent room. He tried a variety of vocal commands that didn’t work, before resorting to swearing at it, which didn’t work either. Kevin leaned forward in the chair and drummed his fingers on the edge of the desk. What was he supposed to do now? He supposed that he could explore beyond the doors, but something was creeping him out about the hallways.

Suddenly, he realized that he couldn’t hear a sound from his fingers tapping on the desk. Frowning, he lifted a hand and snapped loudly. He could hear that, but when he went back to tapping on the desk the sound was gone.

“Hello,” he said aloud, then began speaking as if doing a sound check with a microphone. “Testing one, two, three…can you hear me now?” As he spoke, he varied the loudness of his voice, but he could still hear all the words. Frowning, he whispered.

Kevin’s eyes widened, and he whispered again, but he still couldn’t hear a sound. Intrigued, he tried tapping harder and harder on the desk, and eventually he was able to hear the tapping sound.

“It’s almost like there’s some sort of noise gate,” he muttered to himself. “I wonder if it’s on the whole room.”

“It is,” said a voice from behind him. Kevin whirled around to find a middle aged woman in a black dress standing at one of the doors. She had short blonde hair and brown eyes. Something about the blonde color felt contrasting to the room’s vibe, but Kevin couldn’t quite place what it was.

“There is a ‘noise gate’, as you call it, across the universe,” the woman continued, her voice almost a monotone. Kevin was relieved to hear her reference the universe, and missed her next question.

“I’m sorry, what?” he asked. The woman blinked, and then sniffed at him.

“Your identification chip, please,” she repeated, and the relief Kevin had been feeling evaporated. He watched the woman walk over to the desk, but he couldn’t hear her footsteps. The strange lack of sound below a certain decibel level was starting to unnerve him, and he jumped when the woman suddenly looked up at him. She was holding out a hand expectantly.

“I..er…well, I don’t have one,” he managed. The woman frowned at him for a moment, and then shook her head as if disappointed in him. She placed her hands over the desk, and a portion of the desk flipped over and revealed a keyboard. The woman sighed.

“Name?” she asked bluntly.

“Uh, Kevin. Kevin Miller,” he said. The woman typed, frowned at her screen, and then tapped something on the desktop that made a drawer pop up. Kevin was surprised he hadn’t discovered it earlier. The woman looked in the empty drawer and then sighed again.

“Wait there,” she commanded, and then she walked briskly out of the room, unnerving Kevin again with her silent footsteps. She was back almost instantly, carrying an electronic device with her. It looked to Kevin like one of those instruments a doctor uses to look in your ears. The woman marched back around the desk, then leaned forward over it to hold the device in front of Kevin’s face.

“Don’t move,” she ordered. Kevin stood stock still as the device beeped and then scanned a bluish light across his face. It beeped again when it was finished and the woman glanced down at it. Then she frowned and looked closer, before looking curiously back up at Kevin.

“How did you get here?” she asked, some of the harsh tone missing from her voice. Kevin shrugged.

“I’m not really sure, to be honest. I thought I was jumping somewhere with my…er, friends. But something must’ve gone wrong and they aren’t here.” He paused and looked at the woman hopefully.

“Do you have a jumper I could use?” She frowned at him.

“To jump to where?” she asked, with a note of suspicion. Kevin realized he wasn’t sure where he had jumped from, or where Cassia was jumping to, so he just said the last Earth he could remember.

“Um, Forty-One?” he asked. The woman considered him for a moment.

“You really don’t know where you are, do you?” she asked, and Kevin shook his head emphatically.

“Can you tell me?” He was surprised to see the woman give a look of concern when he asked the question.

“I’m not sure I am at liberty to say,” she said slowly. It seemed like she might say more, but then the computer on the desk made a beeping noise. She quickly sat down and typed at the keyboard. When she looked back up at Kevin, she had on her serious face again.

“Follow me,” she said, and then headed towards the door on the left without waiting to see if Kevin followed. He briefly considered staying put, but he had no reason not to follow her. He stepped quickly to catch up before the door closed behind her.

“So, what’s your name?” Kevin asked, after they’d passed four different doors in the extremely long hallway. He saw the woman frown, open her mouth, then shake her head and close it again. Kevin shrugged.

“Well, if you can’t tell me what Earth we’re on, can you tell me what country we’re in?” She looked over at him, confused.

“Country?” she asked. “What is a country?” Kevin, surprised, considered trying to explain.

“Never mind,” he said eventually, and then the woman stopped in front of a door. Kevin wasn’t sure how she knew it was the right one. It looked the same as all the others. The woman knocked, then stepped back to go back down the hallway. She took a step and then turned back to Kevin.

“Good luck,” she whispered, and then hurried away. The door opened behind Kevin, and he turned to see a tall man wearing all black step out. Kevin gasped. The man’s uniform looked extremely familiar, but this one had a large insignia of a man’s silhouette in front of a giant letter S. It was exactly the image he had seen while jumping.

“The Singularity,” he whispered in shock. The man smiled at him, though there wasn’t much life in it.

“Ah, so you do know where you are,” he said in a smooth voice. “That should make this quicker then.” He stepped back from the doorway and gestured inside. Kevin hesitantly stepped into the room. He wasn’t sure what he was expecting, but it certainly was not a large area with what looked like a jungle gym inside. The tall man pointed to the center of the room, where the metal jungle gym sat.

“Your opponent will arrive shortly,” the man said. “Apologies for the delay. We were not expecting you.” He moved to the corner of the room where there was a desk and multiple monitors. Kevin followed, tentatively. He caught a glimpse of a list of names before the man clicked on one labeled ‘Kevin’, with a long string of numbers following. He looked up at Kevin and frowned.

“You do not know what this is?” the man asked, and Kevin shook his head. The man frowned at him for a moment, then shrugged.

“This is The Singularity combat zone,” he said, as if that explained everything. “Only one of you will leave here alive to proceed to the next test.” Without waiting for a response, the man headed back to his corner. Kevin could feel his heart rate increasing rapidly, and then it spiked when the door opened on the other side of the room and a figure stepped into the room. That person had a man in black, just like Kevin did, who went and sat in the opposite corner.

“You may not leave this room while the other lives,.” said the man behind Kevin, his voice somehow magnified through the room.

“Begin.”

Across the room, the other figure immediately started sprinting towards the jungle gym structure in the middle. After a moment, Kevin did as well. He figured he could maybe learn something from the figure. Unless he was really going to try to kill him. When he got there, he quickly realized that the jungle gym was actually a series of bars and platforms that a person could climb on or hide in. He quickly climbed up to a nearby platform and stared across at the other person climbing to the top of the structure. Something about him looked familiar, but Kevin couldn’t place it.

With a start, Kevin realized that there was a stash of weapons at the top of the jungle gym. Worse, his opponent was already halfway there. Kevin quickly started climbing towards the top. He was still a couple feet away when his counterpart reached the top. The other man grabbed a pistol and immediately fired it at Kevin. The bullet clanged off a metal bar and Kevin flinched, almost losing his grip. He looked down to see that he was approaching ten feet off the ground, and immediately looked back up. The other guy was swinging down from the top platform now, trying to find a better angle to fire.

Kevin jumped to the right, then reached out and grabbed a nearby bar to swing back to the left. His opponent seemed to have anticipated this and countered instantly. Breathing hard, Kevin pulled himself up through the bars, and took two wobbly steps towards the platform, only for his opponents to pop up through the bars across from him, pistol aimed unwaveringly at his face. Kevin yanked his body sideways, losing his grip in the process. He could feel himself dropping towards the floor, and he flung out an arm in desperation, barely latching on to the last available.

Surprised that he wasn’t dead, he slowly pulled himself up again. His opponent was nowhere to be seen, and Kevin realized that the other man thought Kevin had fallen too. There was movement to his left, and he could see his opponent scrambling back up towards him. Kevin hauled himself up to the top platform. There was a heavy pipe and a knife remaining. Kevin hesitated, and then selected the blade. Turning, he spotted the other man on the next closest platform, leveling the pistol at him. He’d moved faster than Kevin had expected, and now there was no way out. Still, Kevin’s brain screamed at him to move, so he lurched to the side and straight off the edge of the platform.

His stomach dropped through his feet, and he felt like he was falling in slow motion. His brain was in overdrive, flashing images at him of the last few days. Halfway down, Kevin realized that the images were the same as when he had jumped. He focused on them, and found himself hurtling through the tunnels he’d seen before. He was moving faster this time, and the images were flying by. Somehow he sensed he was running out of time, and he reached out at the next image. He groaned as he passed by the logo for The Singularity, and he closed his eyes in anticipation.

No impact came, however, and Kevin opened his eyes to find himself sitting on the leather couch in the waiting room again. The blonde woman from before was sitting at the desk, staring at him in shock. Suddenly an alarm started blaring throughout the building. Kevin jumped to his feet, but the woman was still stunned.

“Which way is the exit?” he shouted at her over the alarm. She gaped at him for another moment, and then pushed a button on her desk. Kevin saw a door appear behind her, and she slowly turned and pointed to it.

“Thank you!” he shouted as he dodged around the desk and yanked open the door. There was a flight of stairs descending out of view. He looked back over his shoulder at the woman, who was still staring wide eyed at him.

“My name is Elaine,” she said. Kevin was unsure what to do with that, so he nodded and then slammed the door behind him. He sprinted down the flight of stairs to the next landing and yanked open the door. The alarm was blaring there as well, and men in black uniforms were moving about. Kevin quickly closed the door and determined to follow the stairs to the bottom. After two more flights, he finally reached it. Bursting through the door at the end, he was blinded by sunlight. He blinked until his vision caught up, and then stopped suddenly. The man from the jungle gym was in front of him, wearing a satisfied smile. Kevin gasped. The familiarity of the man made sense now. Kevin was staring at himself.