Prologue – Tales From Another Time and Place

A young man, barely past twenty, hunched over his cluttered workbench, a high-tech magnifying lens fixed to one eye. Only the faint blue glow from his cornea hinted at the extraordinary world he saw.

 

He could see down to the atomic level, every particle that made up this world.

 

In their entirety.

 

Of course, sight alone was useless, in and of itself, for he had no way to manipulate them with his bare hands. Some might marvel at this sight, seeing the very foundation of this world, but not him.

 

He had already seen this countless times before, for this was his area of expertise as a researcher of particle physics at the prestigious Intergalactic Research Centre of the Systems Commonwealth, known as the Academia, a world where all of the brightest minds of the universe congregated, all in the vain hope of quenching their unending thirst for knowledge.

 

Alex was no different.

 

From childhood, humble beginnings could not hide his remarkable mind. He learned quickly, always thinking in ways that set him apart from everyone else.

 

His ideas shattered conventions, earning him a seat among the era’s most respected scholars.

 

Yet, beside these giants, even his brilliance felt almost mundane.

 

Only upon arriving at Academia did he truly grasp the universe’s vastness.

 

It stretched on, seemingly without end.

 

“Hey, Alex! What are you up to on this fine evening?”

 

Alex kept his head down, instantly recognizing the voice. Even without it, the drifting scent of alcohol would have betrayed the intruder’s identity.

 

Yun.

 

A man mired in controversies.

 

Alex’s rival, even if the former had no idea they were even competing.

 

Alex’s rivalry was one-sided, but how could he not compete with someone so far ahead? Both worked in the same lab, studied under the same revered Professor, and were close in age, yet Alex always seemed to fall short in Professor Noctis’s eyes.

 

Every project he spearheaded, and every single one of the theories he brought forward, was nothing more than a footnote against what Yun had accomplished.

 

Worst of all, his entire lab—including the magnifying lens in his eye—ran on a miniature dark matter reactor Yun had whipped up in a single afternoon, barely distracted from his card game with female assistants.

 

Could you believe that?

 

A century-old mystery solved in a single, wine-soaked afternoon. For someone like Alex, who lived by hard work, the thought alone was infuriating.

 

Yet what truly gnawed at Alex was not Yun’s brilliance, but his indifference to it. Yun drifted through life, caring only for drink and women.

 

Traits Alex found not just unappealing, but downright repulsive, fueling his simmering resentment.

 

No—resentment was perhaps too strong. Annoyance was closer to the mark.

 

Or perhaps envy fit best.

 

“Alex! Don’t ignore meeee!” Yun added, his speech slurring slightly as he rested his shoulder against the doorway, a bottle of wine barely held at the end of his dangling arm. He would only need to relax his hand, ever so slightly, for the bottle to leave his grasp and smash itself against the hard flooring.

 

Annoyance, then. That was it.

 

“Can’t you see I’m busy?” Alex spat, exasperated, though he never even once raised his gaze to meet this unwanted intruder. “Go away.”

 

“That’s not very nice,” Yun said, doing the exact opposite of what he was ordered to do.

 

Yun sauntered in and flopped onto a holographic couch. The translucent image flickered under his weight, but just as he was about to hit the floor, he hovered midair, a faint buzz filling the room before calm returned.

 

A slight shimmer pulsed intermittently, counteracting the force of gravity exerting its will onto Yun’s body, halting his fall.

 

That was until Yun’s deep voice rang out once again.

 

“Here I was, thinking you might be bored with always hanging out alone in your lab. It’s the weekend. Why not live a little?”

 

“The weekend? That custom that was abolished for over five thousand years, ever since our human race left its homeworld? I didn’t think of you as one of those conservatives trying to bring back what they call the ‘Golden Age of Terra’, when we wrongly thought our species might be the only one in the universe. How naive we were.”

 

Alex shook his head, memories of compulsory lessons about that era surfacing unbidden.

 

In his opinion, all the data they had on that time period was viewed through a much too apparent rose-tinted lens.

 

Nothing but propaganda, he liked to think.

 

There was no way human nature could change that much in a mere five millennia, but despite it all, he remained focused on his work, never giving voice to his detractions.

 

This was neither the time nor place, and Yun, he suspected, would hardly care for such debates.

 

“C’mon now. Everybody needs to rest sometimes. I told the girls we’d meet at the pub on 7th Avenue.”

 

Alex sighed and finally looked up from his work. Yun stared back, eyes unfocused, already deep in his cups.

 

The bottle in Yun’s hand was nearly empty, and judging by his state, it was far from his first—or last—of the night.

 

“Somehow, I don’t believe you,” Alex said. “We’ve hardly ever talked. Why would they want to spend time with me? The same goes for you. We don’t have anything in common.”

 

He then returned to his work, ignoring the man who had barged into his personal lab.

 

“Don’t sell yourself short,” Yun replied, unbothered by how cold Alex seemed. “Despite how antisocial you always are, you, at least, have one redeeming feature.”

 

“Oh, yeah? And what’s that?”

 

“Your face,” Yun said bluntly.

 

Alex was stunned. He expected Yun to comment on his work ethic, something he had been proud of ever since he was a child. This was something dear to him, as hard work had never let him down and allowed him to achieve the life he had now, free from the burden of being merely an orphan with almost nothing to his name.

 

Yet Yun’s comment about his face left him conflicted. Nearly thirty cycles old, Alex still wore the features of youth.

 

A blessing for most, but not for him.

 

His youthful, gentle features often led others to mistake him for a woman—or worse, a teenager—making it nearly impossible to command authority.

 

Few took him seriously, least of all the impetuous man before him.

 

“What are you working on?” Yun asked, wrapping his arm around Alex’s narrow shoulders and leaning over his workbench.

 

Startled, Alex tensed, hands frozen midair. Blue sparks danced around his transparent gloves—devices meant for nano-surgery, now repurposed for his own experiments.

 

Floating above his workbench, suspended amidst many layers of electromagnetic fields that worked as shielding from the cosmic radiation from the planet’s twin stars—at least the few remnants that managed to bypass the planetary shielding—was a dark cube, slowly rotating in place, from which no light seemed to be able to escape.

 

It looked no larger than a fist, yet Yun couldn’t shake the sense that it was somehow far bigger. The sight unsettled him.

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A feeling he’d known before.

 

“You’re not playing with dimensions, are you? Last I recall, the Council forbade that research after the incident…”

 

“That was a century ago,” Alex interrupted, voice trembling as Yun’s warmth pressed close. Oddly, it wasn’t as uncomfortable as he’d imagined. “Things have changed. The Commonwealth has advanced so much in a hundred years. If we never challenge the impossible, how can we ever move forward?”

 

“Sounds like you’re trying to convince yourself, not me,” Yun said. Alex flinched, the truth in those words stinging more than he cared to admit.

 

Even now, he was unsure whether or not advancing this research was for the good of the Commonwealth or for the advancement of his own career. A small part of him knew that only something of this scale could rival what Yun had granted the world.

 

If Yun had given the Commonwealth the void’s energy, then Alex’s only path was to reach further—into the dimensions themselves. The Commonwealth’s hunger for power was endless, a beast never sated.

 

Neverending.

 

Even Yun’s dark matter reactors barely scratched the surface of its appetite.

 

Yet this research had been branded heresy a century ago. Who knew how the Council would react if they discovered what was unfolding in this secluded lab?

 

Though more lenient lately—perhaps out of fear of the looming energy crisis—the Council remained a collection of stubborn elders, some centuries old thanks to medical and robotic advances.

 

Who could guess how they’d judge a young upstart meddling in forbidden science?

 

“Suit yourself,” Yun said with a shrug. “I just hope you know what you are doing.”

 

While still clinging to Alex’s shoulder, Yun took another sip of his wine, then let out a long and loud burp. Being so close, Alex couldn’t help but frown at this disgusting act, even more as he was bombarded by the aroma of this wine mixed with the remainder of Yun’s garlic-infused last meal.

 

The smell made Alex recoil instinctively, but that sudden movement brought its own consequences.

 

Yun’s left hand, draped over Alex’s neck, brushed against his chest. Normally, he’d think nothing of it, but Alex’s sudden retreat forced Yun to tense his arm to keep balance.

 

His hand attempted to close, yet found itself unable to do so completely, for it had grabbed onto something. It took a few moments for Yun’s brain to register what had happened, for the sensation on his palm was a far cry from what he had expected.

 

It was far too soft to be a pectoral muscle.

 

Granted, Alex wasn’t the muscular type, being as skinny as he was, always being locked away in his own laboratory. Ever since the first moment they met, he had never seen him exercise, despite inviting him countless times to train with him.

 

It had been over two years since then. Even Alex’s short hair had grown to more than shoulder length, making his already androgynous features even more so, and with the baggy clothes he always wore, which were all the trends these days, he could easily be mistaken for a woman.

 

Some joked about it, but a few female assistants seemed oddly convinced, even if they never said so aloud. Yun had seen it in their eyes, though he’d always dismissed it.

 

Or perhaps he hadn’t dismissed it after all.

 

Who could say for sure?