《Through the Cracks》 1.00 Pretty Colors Here I lay, unable to sleep. Keeping my eyes closed doesn''t help. The phosphors pulsing in my vision are distracting. The twinges in my gut certainly don''t help, nor does the low-grade headache. At least I''m not having another migraine. Or am I? I open my eyes to discover, yup, there are the static-y spinning triangles covering half my vision. I waited for it to finally recede. No help for it, my neurochemistry was hopelessly compromised by blooms of neoplasm. Metastases of melanoma. Living alone, no one noticed the growing mole on my back until much too late, and while the new medications fought it off for a while it came back with a vengeance. Life''s a bitch and then you get cancer. I closed my eyes again and tried again, futilely to sleep. It felt like hours passed. I silently debated hitting the button for the opiate drip, but that tended to make the hallucinations even worse, and I wasn''t really in the much pain. The doctors were just being nice to the dying young man. Even so, the pretty colors behind my eyelids shone on, refusing to allow me to rest, the tiny torso pokes prodding, and I realized my bladder was full. Sighing, I pressed the button to summon the attendant. I''d already fallen a couple times trying to take myself on a relief mission and was told I should summon help from the put-upon staff here at this supposedly highly-rated hospice. Despite the reviews, much like many other industries the employees were overworked and underpaid and unhappy to be distracted from their distractions to have to assist their charges. I''d been a service worker once upon a time and sympathized, but, well, it wasn''t going to drain itself. If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it. I waited patiently. Then I waited impatiently. I rang a second time, and waited again. And decided not to ring thrice. I could at least still manage to drop the side guard from my bed, and swung my legs over the edge, levering myself up. I then sat for a few seconds, bladder unpleasantly tight, because I already knew jumping out of bed would result in being light-headed and falling over. A count of five and I stood up, grasping the IV stand for a bit of support. It slid on its casters and I wobbled a little. This was already a bad night and I could tell I was worse. The subdued colors of the dark room kept shifting and the walls seemed to twist. I should have realized I was in no shape to navigate my way to the lavatory, just like a drunk should have taken a taxi, but neither of us was in any condition to cerebrate. I began walking, feeling a bit like I was on stilts. The door to the commode kept shifting side to side, I wobbled more, the IV stand pulled me stumbling sideways and I drifted towards the corner of the room, beginning to topple. My left hand met the wall and the right was heading for the corner. Time seemed to slow as I knew my right hand should meet the corner. I saw it drawing closer. I saw my arm outstretched, hand appearing further away than the corner was. My mouth fell open as I continued to fall, rolling to the right with my hand having found no support. My right shoulder impacted the wall on the other side of the corner, my left hand slid in a way I couldn''t understand and I fell - 1.01 Blackness - into blackness. I gasped, air flooding out my mouth and nose as my ears popped, my eyes beginning to burn, then my skin. A horrible prickling chill encompassed me as I fell endlessly. I suppose this is death. I had thought death would mean abandoning my body and its sensations but this was horrible. Then I caught a glimmer from the corner of my eye, and I turned my head to look. The light swelled, approaching rapidly, and as it came I saw I was next to a rapidly moving wall, gray with a thin black grid atop it. The light resolved into a portal in the wall which fled angling away from me as I entered. My perspective shifted; the wall hadn''t moved, I''d been pulled towards and into the portal and the white cubical room within, despite having no sense of acceleration. I coughed and felt something tear inside me. The portal disappeared as I entered, leaving me in an empty space, briefly looking at my cracked and frosty bleeding hands as the whiteness took me...
I woke, blinking, and sat up abruptly. What just happened? Disoriented, staring straight ahead, I tried to gather my memories. What happened? And this place... It looked very much like my hospice room. The walls were the same color, the shape was very close, but the television was gone and in place of the window was a bright white rectangular light. In my examination I abruptly started as my eyes swept left to find a woman standing there. "Aaah!" She''d been smiling but my startle startled her in turn. Attractive, brunette with brown eyes and toasty skin, dressed in a colorful unitard that covered everything from neck to wrists and yet left nothing to the imagination. "Oh! Um. I''m sorry!" she said, hands wringing. "I saw you were ready to wake and wanted to greet you!" - except I''d swear that''s not what she said. Some of the words sounded a bit like English but not all. Even so I somehow knew what she meant." I just stared, thoughts racing through me. Who is this? Where am I? I''m in bed? My eyes flicked down to my body and found I was also dressed in something skin-tight, a shiny silver. My hands were... Normal hands, not the damaged mess I last recalled. Thankfully. I looked back up. "Uh, hello... ?" I felt entirely strange, but I kept thinking I should be more uncomfortable. I felt... good? Like I''d finally gotten a good night''s sleep. My body was no longer reporting wrongness, the pain from within my lungs gone as well as the grinding in my innards. My vision was sharper but still more than a bit wonky, though, the world still shifting and twisting around me. "I know you must be confused, we have lots to talk about! It was so amazing finding you!" Even as the strange translation of her words bothered me her bright smile dazzled more than the light from the false window. This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere. "I... You''re right, I don''t understand. You found me?" "Yes, you fell out of the world back in 2016! We''ve learned so much from you!" "I..." Fell out of the world. What. The last thing I recall was falling into the corner. How did that translate into... No-clipping from Earth? Out of the universe? The corner... I flashed on an old horror story from H. P. Lovecraft, the city of R''lyeh, unnatural angles that swallowed people. I shuddered. She noticed my discomfiture and her smile dropped again. "Are you okay?" "I, yes, I think so," I replied. "''Back in 2016'' - so this is the future? What year is this? Where am I?" "Well, in some ways we''re still near your version of Earth in 2016, but sitting outside it. This is the ''TTS Strand Explorer 4'' and we''ve traveled back from 2663. Our mission is... Are you sure you''re okay?" As I listened I couldn''t keep my eyes from wandering over her and looked down at myself, abashed, and noticed my own dress was similarly exposing, my cheeks heating. I covered my crotch with my hands, greatly embarrassed. "Um, is there anything I can put on that''s less... revealing?" "Oh." She looked nonplussed. "Obviously. You can''t control your suit. Here." She turned and walked to a panel in the wall I hadn''t noticed before that was blinking yellow. The panel vanished and she grabbed what was apparently a large towel or blanket, which she tossed to me. "This will work for right now. we still have to teach you how to access your HUD," she said, walking back, as I quickly draped the towel over my shame. "HUD?" I asked, the first word that didn''t automatically translate cleanly from what she was saying. No, the second. "TTS" was the other. "It''s the interface for your implant. Right now it''s locked, in ''child-safe mode'', since you don''t know how to use it and can do yourself a mischief if you mess up." She grins again. "Since you aren''t a child that shouldn''t take longer than a day or two." "Okay," I said, still feeling more than a bit bashful and uncomfortable. "Also, we''re less uptight about ourselves now, I understand your era wasn''t comfortable with exposing yourselves." My eyes dropped again. "Anyway... This is the Strand Explorer 4, a scientific vessel, navigating between the strands of the multiverse, picking up signals and items that have fallen through the cracks." I looked up to see her smiling again. "We''ve learned so much about our own history and the histories of other divergences, but we''ve never caught an actual person before!" "Cracks... I''m having trouble understanding what you''re saying. Multiverse? And things fall through what cracks?" "It''s not well understood how it happens naturally, but occasionally objects will fall out of their branes. Radio waves as well. We salvage what we find and learn what we can." She snorted a bit. "Orco, one of our analysts, says we''re sailing in the dimension of lost socks." I snorted myself. "You still have socks?" She laughed, tones dulcet to my ears.