Splintered

by Tom Underhill

part 1

The bleached blankness of the ceiling started to fold in upon itself. White tiles bent, collapsed, and disappeared as rocks, clouds, and a second sun took their place; what had been dimpled monotony was fast becoming picturesque mountainscape, marred only by a thin tendril of smoke winding skywards.

Jason slammed his eyes shut in disbelief; hours of blandness didn’t — couldn’t — just become a new world, no matter how much he needed one. He was imagining things again. If he concentrated, the illusion would be gone when he opened his eyes. Focus, he just had to focus.

He tried, but knew without looking that he’d failed. That the forms above him were still swirling, still coalescing, still... there. The pressure in his head returned and started squeezing his thoughts like a vise again.

Something hit his face.

“...out of it, Jason.”

Was that a woman’s voice?

“Snap out of it! There’s no time for this.”

He reopened his eyes just in time to see a second slap descending onto his cheek. After the hand rebounded and withdrew, he found himself looking at his ideal woman. Lines delicate and refined, curves smooth and full... She was a green-eyed goddess.

“Move, Jason. Now.” Her arm was poised for another swing.

Jason’s eyes narrowed immediately. “How do you know my...?“ The still morphing surroundings suddenly registered again: not just the ceiling but the whole room now was being superimposed by a ghostly background, a translucent, volcanic landscape complete with shadowy magma and transparent rock. This secondary image suffused even the dazzling stranger, and... himself.

Now he understood her urgency.

But when he struggled to rise, his limbs were uncooperative, sluggish to the point of feeling drugged.

“Move, dammit!” The stranger gripped his shoulders, and with surprising strength, hurled him off the bed and through the window.

* * *

Jason regained consciousness to another “Move, goddammit, move!” His arms and legs functioning as if the paralysis of a moment before had never been, he leapt to his feet. Sprinkles of glass showered down to the pavement as he did so, but he seemed to have no major injuries, aside from the growing pain in his head.

Recoiling as she placed one of her deceptively dainty hands on his shoulder, he balled up both fists to strike. But she pre-empted him by gesturing to the building they had just escaped, and he watched wordlessly as the volcanic vista began spilling out of the structure’s confines and into the surrounding area.

It was like a new photograph developing over an old one... And all at once, there were two competing realities straining to coexist. The building, the trees, the air itself seemed to swell, to distort, to bulge at the seams. New matter fought with old for the same space; a bursting seemed imminent.

Turning back to the stranger, Jason followed without hesitation when she began sprinting in the opposite direction.

* * *

From some three miles distant, Jason and the mysterious woman witnessed the annihilation of the area they had just fled; in a shower of lava, brick, and charred organic substance, the two planes all but cancelled each other out.

“One of the worst I’ve seen,” she said casually, sounding nowhere near as horrified as Jason felt. He couldn’t find the words to reply, but the sirens and screams did their best to speak for him.

Rising, the stranger motioned for Jason to do so as well. “It should have stabilized now, though. Enough that we can go back.”

Jason blinked and halted in mid-rise.

“Hard to fathom, isn’t it? But unfortunately we don’t have any other choice.” She smiled and started walking.

“No.” Jason sat back down, his gaze still fixed on the fountain of debris ahead.

“Jason...” The woman shook her head reproachfully, but when she turned back towards him, her face was smiling sweetly. “You have to trust me a little further. I got you this far, didn’t I? Just a little further, and then I’ll tell you everything.” She smiled again, even more dazzlingly. “Trust me.”

His lips started to form another denial, but the words never came; something inside of him silenced the dissent. That same something then began to urge compliance, whispering that only catastrophe could result from further obstinacy...

By the time they were halfway back, Jason had completely forgotten about resisting.

* * *

Ash dominated the destruction, coating what structures remained. The remnants were for the most part twisted fusions: volcanic rock merging with cracked concrete, scorched tree blending with broken brick, lava consuming steel from the inside out. And where the strain of superimposition had been too much, there were only craters.

The impossibility quickly became overwhelming. Jason lowered his eyes... and bumped into his guide, who had stopped without warning.

“Look.”

He forced himself to follow her gaze, and despite how winded he was, found the breath to gasp: a mountainside, receding down to an endless plain, was shimmering just before them. For the length of a house, the image was whole, complete with no overlap. But at its borders the combination and its unsightly consequences began.

Jason’s face broadcasted his question.

“It’s a conduit now. A joining of the two planes.”

He frowned.

She smiled. “We cross. I’ll help you, though soon you’ll be able to do it on your own.” Gesturing ahead with one hand, she placed the other on his shoulder.

Jason snarled and shook her off, a guarded look overtaking his expression.

“Jason...”

That same compulsion arrested his defiance, and without any further struggle, he let himself be led onto the mountain and out of the chaos that had so recently been home.

* * *

When he finally looked back, Jason found his old world still struggling with the scar of superimposition. Destruction made up the forefront, but just beyond New York stretched unsullied. The merging hadn’t spread. At least from what he could see; the window to life as he’d known it was only twenty meters wide. Picking up where this “conduit’s” borders left off, his new environment existed completely independent of his old one... aside from the catastrophic point of overlap.

With a sharp reprimand, the stranger jerked Jason’s attention back in front of him. That look behind was the last he managed; she kept him hurtling down the volcano side at too reckless a pace to risk taking another look.

By the time they reached the base, he was near to collapsing. Gesturing that he could finally rest by a small, scraggly tree, she went on ahead with a brusque “I’ll be back shortly.”

An hour after she’d vanished into the distance, Jason decided he should try to find her. Part of him rose out of a desire to protect her pretty smile if it was in trouble; another part whispered that she could only be trusted if he could see what she was doing.

Advancing at a brisk walk, he cleared the last roots of the volcano and entered the endless plain with fists clenched in readiness. A few steps later, his hands tightened even further as he noticed movement some miles ahead. The motion of a great, heaving mass.

Jason approached as stealthily as the open plain would allow, crouching low to take advantage of the waist-high grass. After a half-hour of creeping, he was finally close enough to appreciate the sheer enormity of the beasts before him.

Thousands of an immense breed of buffalo ate, bred, and slept for as far as he could see. A teeming horde whose magnitude he couldn’t begin to comprehend. He fell to his knees, overcome by all that had happened to him.

The rumble of countless hooves brought him back; the gigantic animals were advancing. Not directly towards him, but at such an angle that the herd’s margins would pass over his position. They were approaching slowly, but their sheer numbers meant he had little time.

Jason began to rise, but halfway to standing he was frozen again, this time by the glittering effect the parting clouds had on the backs of the buffalo. As the sun shone through, its rays caught the beasts’ fur, and their rippling hairs formed a sea of illumination...

As irrationally as any moth, he made for the light.

* * *

Proceed to part 2...