C001 Max Pops Out
2045 Words
Who the f**k is calling my name which I had not heard for the past few months already? Am I still in Bamboo Village with Ani curled up next to me now? Why does the person calling out my exact name then? Am I now back to my reality after I got involved in the road accident before ending up in Bamboo Village and had now come out of a comatose state instead?
Where the hell am I now? Am I back to the present 21st Century and now lying on the hospital bed and recuperating from my injuries? What is actually happening here and would I be able to find the answers that I was seeking for this moment and the next?
Wild thoughts raced through my mind as I was unable to comprehend what was happening now. Was what I had experienced for the past months a reality or just a fantasy? I tried to comprehend the occurrences that were happening around me but I still wasn't able to get the true straight answers from anyone yet.
I groped around using my hands at my sides, trying to feel whether there was a warm body still lying down beside me but I ended up feeling NOTHING! There wasn't any Ani lying down beside me as I frantically groped in the dark, trying to visualise where I was right now.
I tried opening my eyes but there was no difference whether I close or open them because the whole place was as dark as octopus ink that literally enveloped me. Goddamnit...! I could not even see my f*****g hand which was right in front of my bloody NOSE...!
"Who the f**k is that?! What do you want from me?!" I screamed out in the general direction as the echoes rebounded around me. "If I am in a vacuum space, there would definitely be no sound or light at all. Damn...! Where is this God-forsaken place?" I thought to myself as I was reeling from the giddiness of being in the dark for too long and I could not even differentiate the state I am in since there was no difference whether I had my eyes open or close...!
I tried to recollect who the real me was since I badly missed the modern times I was born in even though I was considered as a 70's kid.
"Sam Mulder... Born in 1972. You are working as a freelance part-time criminal scene reporter after being banished from the Law Society, the Association of Psychological Sciences as well as PsySoc; the Psychology Society of the United Kingdom."
"You were divorced in 2015 with no kids and to make the introductory story short, I think you should have died already on the spot when you rammed a truck head-on with your motorbike after being sideswiped on the highway. Your life before was not that colourful except that you had served for 3 governmental offices in 3 different countries and gained recognition when you were just 14 years old during that time," a voice suddenly boomed out of nowhere and had summarised my life history in less than 100 words.
"How cute... It made up part of the word count for this novel, especially for this chapter. Hmmph..." I harrumphed as I thought of what was happening when the voice boomed across the void.
"Show your God-damned self and face me! Are you afraid?!" I screamed at the voice that had just narrated my life in the most summarised manner.
Suddenly there were stars sparkling above, illuminating the surroundings as I slowly adjusted my vision to the surroundings. The darkness was still there but the weird thing was that I was still in a reclining position while there was NO recliner underneath me...! I saw a clock being suspended and orbiting around me from where I was reclining from, but the clock was as if being made of wax and had molten down inwards.
A lampshade was tumbling around while being suspended in the air. An armchair, a few books as well as other kinds of stuff were orbiting around me like as if I was the centre of gravity and these items represented the planets around me. Pretty weird, huh?
"I am not afraid to face you, Sam. But I am afraid that you may be in shock as to realize the situation you are in right now. Besides, I am sure you are wondering how come you are in this void and not with someone you had just fornicated earlier." the voice spoke slowly in a steady tone once more as an image of a man wearing a three-piece suit with a walking cane in one hand suddenly materialized right before me, or should I simply put, walked from the darkness and presented itself or himself to me.
He was not too old in perspective but somehow he neither looked young too. He was wearing a zoot suit, slim cutting and fit him squarely like a T on his somewhat medium-sized body frame. The zoot suit was made by some kind of cashmere wool and the light blue coloured material seemed rather eye-catching enough. As he walked towards me, he seemed to emit a kind of aura around him.
"Are you God himself or an Angel?" I inquired in a stumped manner as I was truly lost for words and had no idea on how to question the apparition before me.
"Let me guess, you are Saint Gabriel, right? You would not be right here before me and have this kind of Godly aura around you, would you?" I asked after thinking that the one appeared before I was actually a Guardian Angel of that had been summoned by God to assist me.
"I am neither a God nor an Angel. I am just a holographic being to assist you in your journey in body exchange, transmigration et cetera. This existence of mine is to guide you throughout your journey so that you would not carelessly kill yourself. Hey kiddo, this is not a movie, alright? No one can live forever and there is no such thing as a reset button where you can reset and relive the last few moments before you plunge about through the events and killing yourself once more."
"This is not the Edge of Tomorrow where you could Live, Die and Repeat. Who would want to watch such a movie where you simply die and relive again and then die trying once more and repeating the whole 2 hours of the time watching the same flick over and over again right? Sheesh...Sam...You will bore your readers if you were to have such a recurrence such as that over here...!"
"Somehow I sensed that my main existence here before you is to ensure that you would have a smooth transition when you leap to perform the body exchange in the multiverse. Hopefully this time, your readers and fans would not be confused and be sending you comments that they find that it is too hard for them to follow the storyline. Hahahaha..."
"Right now, what I can tell you about your state is that you have the basic foundation of meditation and as you progress on you would be able to reap the benefits in the long run. You have the Third eye with you that enables you to visualise things that other people would not be able to see. Also, you have a good foundation of unarmed combat that would aid you in your journey in this multiverse travel. Don't you think it is a good deal for you, already?"
The holographic being in front of me extended his hand to me for a handshake and it took some time for me to realise that I was the only person that could see and touch him.
I looked at him long before I extended mine with his."My name is Max, and its a pleasure to be of service to you." He introduced himself while shaking my hand warmly. Weird... A holographic being stood in front of me and yet I could feel his warm handshake. My position was still in a reclining state and he quickly hoisted me up into an upright position. At the very least, I could no longer feel like a patient visiting a dentist...!
The next moment took me by surprise...!
I COULD NOT FEEL THE GROUND UNDERNEATH MY FEET...! I looked underneath my feet and found that I was in a sort of a bottomless abyss and everything around me was like a fluid slow-motion kind of flick where all inanimate objects were either orbiting around me or suspended in a very peculiar and ridiculous manner.
"Where the hell are we, Max? Is this heaven or hell or somewhere in between of the Pearly Gates?" I inquired him as I stood there once again feeling dumbstruck with the state I was in and with the weird unexplainable surroundings that gave me no hint or a clue of where I am right now.
"You are actually in your own current state of mind, Sam, and what you see around you are those things that you are most familiar with when you are still conscious. This is your subconscious part of your mind that had been successfully partitioned into the back of your memory bank."
I was standing there in the middle of the bottomless abyss and shaking my head as I tried to absorb what Max had tried to explain to me. Everything was quite surreal to him but not to me ever since I woke up at the sandy beach months before and had lived through someone else's body. Now I am in this type of void space and had no idea of what had actually transpired after banging up Bo's sister and what the future would hold for me.
Would there be more banging in the future? Hahaha...!
"It's true, my dear Sam. I too can read your mind. By the way, Sam... I hope you would be getting used to this kind of void space since it would be a regular event after each Leap. I do not wish to come with the details of what this Leap is all about but one thing for sure is that you would be experiencing a lot of body exchanges as well as transmigration, depending on the situation."
"You may even end up somewhere in Asia, United States, United Kingdom or even the United Arab Emirates. One thing for sure is that you would not be transmigrating or reincarnated as a pet rock, a piece of stick, a tree, a cockroach or even any types of four-legged animal et cetera. This would definitely be a twisted series with no proper head, body and tail."
As Max was blubbering to me, I tried to see if I could defy gravity and be bouncing off walls and floors. But in the end, I was still standing in the upright position where Max had pulled me up earlier. Right now, what I could do was just wait for the following instructions as I believed that this void space is considered as a transit between the two virtual worlds.
"Alright, Sam. What I can hope for you is that your past series would be a hit and readers and fans would be waiting for you to release this next series. I sincerely hope you do not let your avid readers wait too long, eh?" Max was simply giving me an advise so that our readers would be piqued and be waiting for us to release the chapters as the storyline foes by, don't you think so too?
Max was leaning on his black coloured walking stick and if he wore a top hat and clad in black and white, he would definitely be imposing himself just like Charlie Chaplin. A comedic silent movie actor back in the early 1920—1940. He died though in 1977 leaving a legacy of a string of acts behind him. Nowadays, kids would not know who is Charlie Chaplin and if it were shown in the telly nowadays, viewers would consider it to be corny and stale. Maybe old grannies and grandpas would still be enjoying such flick.
Director, why keep averting from the main story again, yes?
"S... So what happened to Ani?" I inquired Max with a hint of anticipation and high hopes of seeing her in this coming series.
- Writer
