To leave. I’m not going to just doom another world. That’s not the kind of person I am. But…Tomari. “I see you’ve chosen to leave. I must say, I am proud of you. I was afraid you’d choose to stay, then we’d have all sorts of problems.” It was another video. “Hey, you listening?” Oh wait. It wasn’t a video. “Yeah, me, I’m talking to you.” “Will I ever be able to see Tomari?” That was the first thing that needed to be asked. “Yes. Yes, in fact, you’re not even leaving. You are going to stay here, help rebuild the world.” “But I chose to leave! I should be going to the next Earth, saving those people!” “Ah, but how would you get there? You do not have the technology my world has. Ah, that allows me to also explain how I got to your world. Trans-universal transportation. And besides, that was only a test to see if you were the right person for what’s ahead.” “What?” I didn’t understand. “Ah, you wouldn’t understand, it’s very advanced Physics and…hell, I don’t even understand it completely myself.” “So, now what?” I asked myself. “Get in the pod. Go to sleep until it is time for you to rebuild the world.” “Will I ever see you again?” “Nah. By the time you wake up, I’ll probably be dead. Even after all this technology we have over here, we still never figured out how to stop the aging process. Slow it down, sure, but not by much at all.” “I see…but what about the other Earth?” I had almost forgotten. “Don’t worry about that, I’ll take care of it. Trust me, I’ll find a replacement when the time is right. And if I don’t, then I guess that’s what the world saw fit. Remember this, whatever happens, happens. You can’t change that.” “So…I guess this is goodbye?” I asked. “Yep. It was nice meeting you, and seeing all of you guys again. I might never grow tired of this job.” I said to myself. “Well, I guess I’ll be going.” As I said this, a pod rose up out of the floor off to the side. “Wait a minute. Before we say goodbye. How long are these things set for?” I asked. But the other me was already gone, the screen blank. “Well, I guess it’s only fair that there are some answers I don’t know.” I said to myself as I climbed into the pod. I closed my eyes and hoped for the best.
I awoke to a crashing sound. In front of me was a giant steel beam. It had crashed through the front of my pod. “What the hell happened?” I asked myself, pushing the steel beam out of the way, clearing some glass from the window, and stepping out. The facility had decayed in, for me, an instant. One moment it was brand new, white, clean. Now it lay overgrown with vines, dust on everything, the white was now brown in spots. To my right was an opening. The wall had opened up. That wasn’t there before I woke up. “How long have I been in that pod?” Was the next question I voiced. But there was no answer. I ran down those stairs that again, for me I had run up only minutes before, to check on the other pods. I fell straight to my knees when I saw that they had been cleanly opened and were now empty. “They couldn’t have just left me here.” I told myself. They couldn’t have. Surely, they would have waited for me… I ran back up the stairs and out the open door I had seen when I came out of the pod. There was no light, so I could only go by feel. Which meant I couldn’t run unless I wanted to run into another wall. But I wanted to run so badly, I wanted to find my friends, my teacher…Tomari. I wanted to see them. But I couldn’t run. I moved as fast as I could, making multiple turns until I came to a final long hallway. I could tell it was a hallway because I could see a light at the end. Maybe it was a tunnel. But that would be too cliché! Whatever it was, I ran down it. I ran as hard as I could. And finally, I made it to the end and saw…
The End
