Set adrift in the multiverse

By the whims of fate

In thrall to the demiurge

We all await escape

(The Sword, “Apocryphon”)

    Where am I?

The first thing I saw when I came back to my senses was a faint light, dimmed, diffused. Not enough to really see my surroundings. I felt a strange liquid around me. Floating.

    What happened?

The last thing I remembered was checking the integrity of the equipment. I was in the conversion chamber. Ready for the transfer.

    What is this place?

We were testing the equipment. Nothing was supposed to happen. It was a test. A test. I was not even part of the Convert team. A simple technician.

    What is this sound?

I could hardly move. Hardly breathe. Almost. Somehow, I was still receiving oxygen. My body was not responsive. I started to struggle. Panic.

    Help! Someone! Help me!

Crossing the Multiverse was the answer the Leaders found. Our World was dying. Corrupted by many generations of abuse, our Earth was now barren. We consumed, we destructed, we did not think of the future. We needed to correct the situation soon enough or we would die with our World.

The scientists tried their hands at turning the time to our advantage. A number of time machines were experimented. Without any success. Then, one of these experiments gave an astounding result. It was not the time that could be travelled, but other parallel worlds. One of these experiments gave us the Multiverse.

The first teams they sent returned with stories of worlds of wonder and fright. The success was there. Our leaders decided then to proceed with the Converts. The conversion was our salvation.  The way I understood it, one entered the machine and his essence was transferred on another World, transplanted inside the body of a member of the sentient specie in this new World. It meant having a chance of survival. Of a new beginning.

Everyone wanted to be a Convert. However, recently, too many issues with conversion chambers appeared. We lost a few of them. The engineers suspected some errors in the diagrams. Some incompatibility between systems. They slowly came to find that refurbishing equipment did not make the most reliable building parts.

They were looking for an equipment failure. I was in this conversion chamber to check their hypothesis. Nevertheless, there was another possibility. One that few would envisage to talk about. The taboo one. There had been a wave of protest recently. The anti-Convert were raising the idea that the Leaders could be wrong… or misguided. They could have some secret agenda. In which the Converts were no more than cattle sent to the slaughter.

Whom to believe? The Leaders knew. The protesters were only deranged ones. Some waylaid anarchist group. They thought they were wreaking havoc. They were but just so few in number that they could not do much harm. They could not be right. They should have been wrong.

Sabotage? The Leaders ensured it was not a possibility. Order reigned. So, how could I explain what I witnessed? I saw it in the Conversion chamber. Some of the wires wrongly assembled. Some piece of equipment misplaced. Some weird contraption added to the main parts. Was it deliberate?

All this conjecture was not helping my current predicament. I was obviously not where I shall have been. I was most likely lost. I probably had crossed the Multiverse. I was now a Convert.

In which World had I been sent to? What specie was I now assuming? I tried to remember the basic rules taught to the Converts. I could not. I was barely keeping my head clear from panic and fright.

    What is this noise?

Was there voices I heard? Perhaps some music? There was a drumbeat. Somehow, my new body was responding this drum beat. Then the liquid I was suspended in started to ripple around me. I was sensing some movement.

    What is happening?

The liquid was slowly drawing off the place. Living me in a wet cavern. The cavern was closing on me.

    Is this place… collapsing?

I felt oppressed. I was suddenly compressed between the walls of this strange cavern. I saw a light. A dim light. A sort of exit. I could not move by myself, but the cavern was… expelling me?

    Pain!

Pain was invading my body. With a strong focus on my head. I was crushed. The cavern was closing on me like a boa constrictor. Slowly but surely squashing me. Starting with the head. It was about to explode.

When I thought my last moment was drawing nearer and nearer, the pain started to recede. The light became brighter. My lungs started to sting, as if burning. The compression on my body stopped at some point. I was now free. I felt dizzy. I had issues processing all that happened so far. I was about to lose consciousness.

It was not a dream. I came back to my senses and all remained the same. I was still lost, exiled in an unknown verse. There was the cavern collapsing on me. Then the painful extrusion. I seemed to remember receiving some help from the outside. They were pulling on my head at the same time the constriction of the place was crushing me.

Since they took me out of the cavern, I could only see giants around me. They were tall aliens, not too unlike our specie.

    What are they doing to me?

Were they playing with me? Like a predator with its prey? Like a cat with a mouse? I was passed from one to another. I was slapped. I was picked on. I was probed all over. At some point, they even drew blood. They exposed me to different sources of light… I felt like a test subject.

What was this world, where they attacked smaller beings this way? Perhaps I converted to an animal of sort, a prey. Would I be able to escape?

They placed me on a table. I tried to escape. I tried to run. I flung my legs the best I could but I was not able to shake off their hold on me.

Finally, the giants stopped their investigation on my being. They strapped me so I could not move my members. My arms and my legs were closely tied against my body. I was in a cocoon.

    Am I a prisoner?

After the cocoon setup, I ended up lying on my back in a strange carriage with transparent sides. I was only able to see things above me, people near me, the ceiling, and a glimpse of a corridor. The carriage was pushed by a giant in a white robe. It seemed to be a female. At least if their external shape and ours were similar. She drove me to a room filled with other carriages parked there. All were occupied by other cocoons. Was I to become food for these aliens?

The giant parked me alongside another of these cocoon and I saw then a small being with only the head showing. Its head was not unlike the one of the giants. I was getting confused. Perhaps in this world they segregated the small from the tall ones so they could control the evolution of the species. 

The female alien left me there. What was I supposed to do? I looked around me, trying to assess my surroundings. I attempted to talk with the cocoon beside me. He was sleeping. I would try again later.

There was a glass wall not too far from where I was parked. I could see other giants pointing to one of the carriages. Were they selecting one of us for a meal? Were they pointing at us as one would point at an animal in a zoo?

I was slowly getting used to the idea I would never go back home. I was starting to accept the bad luck that threw me here. I was not thinking of escaping, I would not know where to start with. I was just a technician. A technician who ended up in a parallel world as a Convert. In a strange unknown world where giants lived…

*-*-*-*

The man was watching through the window. His wife was still asleep after the labour and he followed the nurse bringing his little treasure to the nursery. The maternity ward was silent compared to the delivery room. He was so proud to be a father.

The man watched his little one, smiling at seeing him swaddled in a white cocoon. The baby was looking around him, slightly turning in its cradle. He then turned his head toward the window glass, which made his father’s smile bigger. The proud giant was so sure he saw intelligence in his son’s eyes.