Another day of feeling yucky, but another day where I am still getting down to writing, not letting my old excuses hold me back from at least doing a writing prompt exercise.
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Prompt: Strange portals start appearing all over your neighbourhood. You step into one. Where does it take you?
Genre: Science Fiction
Source: 110+ Sci-Fi Writing Prompts (+ Generator) | Imagine Forest
Time Spent: 90 minutes
Word Count: 2290
Prompt: Strange portals start appearing all over your neighborhood. You step into one. Where does it take you?
I rolled out of bed on what I suspected and hoped was going to be an uneventful and lazy Saturday and made my way, bleary eyed, to my kitchen and began preparing some coffee and breakfast. I took little noticed of the many sirens that were echoing all around the normally quite community that he lived in. Once I had eaten some eggs and toast and pour himself a cup of coffee, I sat down in my reclining chair and pulled out my phone, to see several dozen news alerts mentioning ‘portals’.
Confused, I fumbled around for my remote to turn on my TV and do what I rarely did, turn on the news. Every station I came across was mentioning strange, shimmering portals popping up at random all over the world. It took nearly a half hour of switching between channels to filter out some details from the mass of hysteria and speculation. It seems these ‘portals’ as one of the first journalists to cover the story called them, and now every news station was now using, appeared randomly, at least so far as anyone could tell, they all appeared as a strange vortex of energy of every color anyone could describe hovering about six inches off the ground and about six feet wide. They lasted usually no more than 3-4 minutes before disappearing just as quickly. So far, nothing had come out of the ‘portals’ but anything that came into contact with them was pulled inside. Needless to say, governments all over the world were panicked and they, along with scientists of every specialty scrambled to try and figure out what was going on.
I check a local feed and found the reason for all the sirens was that a portal had appeared a few streets over which had sucked in an electrical pole, ripping down several others and quite a few wires, and damaging transformers, before it vanished. I counted myself lucky that it had not taken out power in my area of the neighborhood and, with a general feeling as I often had with big world events, that it was someone else’s problem, I went to get more coffee.
Just as I walked into the kitchen, I heard a pop and rush of air and found myself staring right into the swirling vortex of a portal that had just appeared in front of me. Plates and several items on my kitchen counters were quickly pulled into it and I had the empty cup of coffee yanked from my hands. I tried desperately to turn of back aways, but it was like playing tug of war, alone, against a team of rugby players for all the good it did. The process was slow, but eventually I lost my footing and found myself falling, as it felt, into the portal.
I am not sure I have the vocabulary to describe how it felt. It felt like getting pulled through a densely packed crowd at a rock concert, but far, far more painful. I was worried at point that my extended right arm was going to be ripped off and at other that I was about to be squashed like a bug. I quickly closed my eyes since I simply could not cope with what I was seeing. With a pop like a cork coming out of a champagne bottle, I felt myself being flung. I opened my eyes in time to see a rocky ground below me before I hit the ground heavily and was knocked out.
I was not sure how much time had gone by, I had not put on my watch that morning and had left my phone on the table beside my reclined, when I finally woke up, but the first thing I was ware of was pain. My head ached and I gingerly felt the back left of my skull and found a considerable lump, and what felt like a small amount of dried blood. All of my was sore, but of particularly note was all of my joints felt like someone had pulled them aggressively, I had which I guessed were a variety of bruises on left side, and possibly a cracked rib or two, although my whole chest felt like someone had tried to crush it.
Once I had collected myself, I carefully pulled myself to standing, relieved to judge that nothing seemed to be permanently or seriously damaged. Looking around, I immediately noticed that the portal was gone, and thus I looked around me. A rocky field lay around me, with some tufts of a tall grass sprouting up between them. I was no geologist but at a glance the stone seemed perfectly ordinary grey rocks, but the grass, as far as I could tell in the dim light, seemed to be a deep blue color. A tall hill, maybe a mountain, began rising up in the distance in the direction he guessed the portal had been, and all around was flat, rocky land. There appeared to be something that might have been trees in the distance, but they were too far away to stay clearly. Strangest of all was the sky. There were stars, far more stars than appeared in the night sky of even the clearest and most light free night on earth, but also what he guessed were three suns, hanging in the sky in what he would have called a triangle, away in the opposite direction of the Mountain from him, and all three of them seemed to be eclipsed, bathing the world in dim, yellow-orange light and long, strangely curving strategies. Even stranger was that, after looking in that directly for several minutes, it occurred to him that it did not appear either the suns or the moons were moving, as if the eclipses were permanent.
Looking around him more closely, I saw a variety of the small items from my kitchen scattered about, including, disappointingly, my favorite coffee mug which was very, very smashed against the rocks. Luckier, however, was that a half loaf of bread that I had neglected to put away, and my water bottle, the insulated metal dinged up but overall sound, which was mostly full, had been pulled form my counter as well. While I was collecting these items, I saw a flash in the distance and saw another portal open up a few hundred years and things begin flying out of it. I wasn’t even sure that it was possible to travel the other direction, but I made to run as hard as I could towards it, but quickly came to realize that the many sharp rocks and obscuring shadows meant that, being without shoes, that running was simply not an option. By the time I reached the place the portal it had been, it was gone. A shoppers tote bag, with several apples and a bunch of bananas, made the trip to this portal worthwhile, Put my bread and water bottle into it, and set off across the landscape to see if anything else could be learned.
Three days went by, in much the same manner, chasing down portals and arriving too late to do anything, save for one of them where I felt as I was repelled from it like an oppositely charged magnet. I found no more people, but had plenty of food and water from the random flotsam and jetsam spewed from the portal, as well as clothing and footwear, camping gear, and several weapons, which made me feel more secure even though I had no idea how to properly use them, or what good they could possibly due. With the suns and moons seemingly pinned to the sky I stopped and setup camp whenever I got tired of walking and slept as best I could. I had some materials to start a fire, but not knowing the composition of the blue grasses, the only living things, if they were living like the grasses on earth, I saw during that time, or the atmosphere and the minerals that made up the rocks. As best I could tell, the air was a little bit thinner than were I had lived, feeling like the few times I had been atop a mountain, and from the way things bounced about, I made the educated guess that gravity was slightly less than that of earth, which I reflected as my ribs twinged, that slight different might well have saved my life.
On the fourth day. . .period of being awake, I suppose, I was walking toward another portal in the distance I was suddenly dropped to the ground, hard, by a powerful tremor. I waited there, on my hands and knees, to see if anything else would happen. After a moment, I was started again, but this time by the world around me suddenly becoming more light. I looked up to see the three moons, slowly drifting away from the suns they had been eclipsing for. . .however long I had been there.
I could finally see what was around me more clearly, although it did not change much. I was what looked like the very bottom slopes of a large mountain, with several more stretching away in the distance. On the opposite side, I could see more clearly that the ground gently sloped away towards what I called trees, suspecting that was not even remotely accurate, and I could see the shimmering surface of what I guess was some liquid in the distance. I decided to continuing moving between the evidence of the various detritus thrown from the portals to continue gathering supplies and to see if anyone else had been pulled through as well.
Two more days, although that was also hard to tell with three suns in the sky, of this revealed nothing, although my head and ribs were finally feeling better. I had reached another, unusually large, patch of random items right as the last sun was starting to set, and thus setup the tent I had, ate a little from my supplies, and fell quickly to sleep.
I was awoken by a sound of humming and clicking nearby to my tent. I rolled over quickly and edged close to the entrance. I gently unzipped the flap of the tent, unsure of what I was going to see, and inched out of it and looked over the small ridge between myself and the scrap patch, and my breath caught in my throat.
Several figures were wandering around the area before me, picking up and inspecting items and tossing them into several large bins that were hovering about a foot off the ground. The figures seemed to be wearing what I would describe as environment suits of some kind although my mind was having trouble wrapping my head around what I was seeing, where there numerous limbs ended and their torso began, if any of those terms were even correct. The humming I heard was both from the bins they were sorting items into, as well as what I guessed was some kind of ship, or other means of transportation, in the distance. The clicking was the figures communicating with each other, or so I guessed.
I was just edging closer for a better look when one of the aliens, for that is what they clearly were, caught sight of me, somehow, and came running over after emitting a loud screech. I froze where I was, torn between making myself better known, or fleeing as best I could. The alien loped easily over the small ridge and looked around, or so I guessed, before turning enough to see me cowering on the ground. One of the limbs seemed to be closer to a neck and head, or at the very least there seemed to be eyes and a mouth on it. It tilted its head for a moment as it regarded me, an oddly familiar maneuver, it clicked a few more times. I took a breath and began to speak, but before I could get so much as a syllable out, one of the limbs holding a device in it suddenly pointed at me and the last thing I was aware of was a bright flash.
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“Grak Tar, Grak Tar,” clicked and chirped Nevcara, trotting back over the ridge with the strange creature in the crook of one of his arms. “I found a live one! That means a bonus for us!”
Grak Tar turned toward Nevcara, clicking its mandibles in annoyance. “pah, toss it in the cart with the other biologicals, the processing station will work out what it is. Now get back to work! Even if we do get a bonus it won’t make up for the dock in script we’ll get if we don’t make it back my third sunset with a full load.”
Nevcara gave a chirp of annoyance, but tossed the thing it had found into the biologicals bin, and went back to picking through the rubble, with the others.
Grak Tar went back to the pads in two of its arms and shook its head. He had been in this business for long enough to recognize the signs of the Extractor locking on to an inhabited planet, although judging by all the plastics, polymers, and other poor quality material, it was a primitive one, maybe not even containing sentient life. Inhabited planets were an annoyance, for they made it harder to reach their quotas of raw materials, but he could never convince the higher ups of that. With a grimace and another frustrated click, he did a scan of the area, determined there was little else of value, and screeched his orders to his crew to move on to the next sight.
How about that, it is still afternoon and I got this done! Had some fun with this one! I hope you enjoy.
Hope you enjoyed and that you are having a wonderful day and get to do, or experience, something creative.
– Jon
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