Aliens From the Multiverse

Chapter 5

Matt woke up to the sounds he had been familiar to his entire life. The gossip of the Blue Jays in the tall oak tree visible from his bedroom, the low but persistent alarm of his smartphone strategically placed out of reach from the bed and the raucousness of breakfast readiness coming from the kitchen all made this home. His abduction was still fresh in his mind, but the familiarity of his surroundings comforted him with the thought that it was just a bad dream. As if fearing to sink back into that alternate world Matt hopped out of bed, donned his baggy trunks and slipped on a tropic tee shirt in preparation for the sunny day. But the words of the doctor lingered in his mind, "Matt you are humanity's only hope. We need you."

He cautiously approached the sounds of sizzling bacon and the slow drip of coffee. Maddie was perched on top of the kitchen counter swiping through the morning news on her phone. She looked up at Matt as he stumbled into the kitchen in his underwear. "Looks like someone got hung over last night," she chuckled. Matt looked at her unbelievingly.

"Maddie, did you see what happened to me yesterday? I must have gotten sucked into the vortex into a different dimension. There were these doctors administrating me and I entered a trance where my best friend was still alive, but it didn't feel like a dream because I knew he was dead, but at the same time everything felt so real," he babbled. Maddie was silent for a few seconds and then she suppressed a giggle. "Wow, I've never seen you this hung over. I should be recording this so you can listen to how crazy you sound after you sober up."

Matt plunked down in the plush armchair in the living room, his eyes fixated on the blank television screen where the portal been a day earlier. It couldn't have been a dream. It was too vivid. He had felt the coldness of the cube, admired the expanding etchings that erupted into a swirling vortex that fragmented his consciousness and ported him into a different dimension. He slowly became aware of a weight in his trouser pocket and fished it out. It was a little metal capsule, a couple inches long and having the diameter of a dime. He unscrewed the lid of the capsule with trembling fingers and with the lid unscrewed, unearthed about a hundred spherical yellow-green pellets. Here was proof that he had not been dreaming. As he was about to confront Maddie with his discovery, a selfish thought stole into his brain. She didn't know what had happened the day before, because she wasn't chosen for the mission. This was not merely time travel. His watch clearly marked the day of abduction as part of the past, yet Maddie had no recollection of it. The only other possibility was that he had traveled between alternate universes, just like the mad scientist Mr. Higgens was doing. Matt decided to test his theory.

"Maddie, I must have drunk myself to sleep yesterday. I think I'm starting to come out of it now. Tell me I didn't embarrass myself too much last night," he said.

She laughed. "You only pulled your trousers down in front of our guests and danced to the Macarena."

She returned to scrolling through the top headlines, which were also ignorant of the cosmic proportions of the alien abduction. It was a Monday, which meant they both had to leave the house by 7 a.m. to beat the morning traffic to downtown Cincinnati where he monitored the police scanner for newsworthy crimes and she hawked cars that were too big and unaffordable for most people. Matt would usually drop her off at the dealership, which was only a couple miles away from the news offices. When he had to stay late to report on a shooting or bank heist, she took the bus back, which saved the pair transportation costs that they could use to buy their own house. After Matt dropped off his girlfriend at Auto Plaza, he walked into the newsroom which looked like a museum with its framed headlines that chronicled the birth of the nationwide newspaper that was the mouthpiece of President Roosevlet to its present day confines as a community paper, reporting on such trivial affairs like the trendiest scarfs and the new gelato shop downtown. Matt along with a handful of copywriters and editors were all that remained of the hundred or so reporters that answered phones, chased leads and typed madly to meet deadline during the newsroom's heyday.