The Paradox Corridor

Chapter 31: Welcome to the New Age

James was flying. Wait, no, he was falling. Or was he? As he went through the time vortex, millions of thoughts, senses, ideas, and impressions flew through his head: but he seemed to be unable to focus on any one of them in particular. The overflow he felt made studying/cramming for tests seem easy in comparison. Feeling all of the emotions possible at once made him feeling like crying while laughing  while feeling super super nervous...the list of feelings were seemingly endless. He felt so confused, but at the same time he felt like he understood everything that was going on. He tried turning his head, only to realize that he didn't have one. Or a body, for that matter. He kind of saw things, but not really. It was as is he was seeing thing through his mind's eye, which was weird at first. For one thing, at first he really didn't know how to 'turn' his mind's eye to look at different things, and secondly it focused in on stuff weirdly. After what felt like twenty minutes or so, he finally was able to look around the vortex as they went through it. Suddenly, he realized that he couldn't see Amber nor Andrew. He 'looked' around frantically, but didn't see them. Suddenly, the vortex began changing color, it had been every color at once, but now it turned black, with purple streaks randomly thrown in. It was no longer beautiful; instead, it felt dangerous, dark, and...incorrect, if one could feel such a thing. The presence suddenly spoke up in his mind;

"What you see now are the various effects paradoxes have on the time vortex. As you can see, they corrupt it, but it's worse than that. Imagine the time vortex as a tunnel. The left side of the tunnel is the beginning of the universe, and  on the right side is the end. Pretend like our day and age is in the middle of those two (it isn't). The three paradoxes that we need to prevent occurred in our past, our near future, and our far future. Now, imagine the time tunnel is a one-way highway. Under normal circumstances, time travel will only let you go forward in time, not backwards; right, not left. Of course, plenty of time travel things are invented waaaaay in the future that can go back in time as well: it's just a little bit more difficult. The same goes with paradoxes, but with an added twist.

As soon as the paradoxes occur (usually due to stupid clumsy time travelers) it begins corrupting the tunnel. The bigger the paradox, the faster it spreads. Now, just like with time travel, it's easy for a paradox to corrupt (travel) forwards in time, which is why we are heading to the past first: because it will be the one to impact your time first. However, if a paradox is big enough, it (sometimes) is so strong that it can actually corrupt backwards in time as well. Of course, this goes a lot slower than going forwards, so it takes longer to actually corrupt the past. The paradox that happens in your near future and far future are examples of this, but as it takes them longer to corrupt backwards, they aren't our top priority. No, our priority is to stop a paradox that occurred in year 4050. In it, you will have to prevent the assassination of King, or, during this time, anyway, Knight Arthur before he gains power and becomes King. His death caused chaos to erupt in Britain, and it's effects on our time will be bigger than you would think. You will be given four days to prevent this assassination, and you must not reveal to anyone any knowledge that they would not already have. Is that understood?" James 'nodded', and the presence continued:

"I will reveal to you where Andrew and Amber are, although they might look a little bit weird." The presence left, and all of a sudden James had a body again. It was weird and glowy, but it was still a body. He turned to look behind him, and he smiled when he saw Amber, who was glowing a soft white, behind him. They waved to each other, and James gestured to her to move so he could make sure that Andrew was there as well. She did, and he saw Andrew, a little further back from Amber than he would have expected. His eyes were closed, as if deep in thought, and he was glowing a very pale yellow. Then, his body rippled, and he began glowing black. James looked at Amber, but she didn't seemed to have noticed the change at all. He looked back at Andrew, confused as to why he looked so...corrupted all of a sudden. He began to worry. What was wrong with him? Then Andrew's body rippled again, and he began glowing just as white as Amber. James decided that it must have been a trick of the light.

 All of a sudden the time vortex bent in front of him. No, wait... it didn't bend. A new pathway, off of the main (corrupted) highway, had just opened up. They all three turned toward it automatically, and saw that there was a light at the end of the tunnel. James slowed down the closer he got to it, and so did his friends, until they had all stopped right in front of the light. James turned toward his right, and saw Amber looking somberly ahead. He turned to his left...and saw Andrew mouthing to him;

"Don't go towards the light!" James mouthed back;

"Shut up you nimrod. We are about to go to the middle ages! Stop being dumb! We have to save the universe!" Andrew rolled his eyes, but stopped goofing around and looked at the light. James did so as well, and as he did the light intensified so much that he passed out.

James woke up, dazed. He was lying on grass in the middle of the forest... but he didn't know why. He sat there for a while, not really doing anything, until he heard a noise from behind him. He turned around and saw Andrew standing there, his hand outstretched, posing like Superman. He was jumping up and down, clearly trying to see if he had been granted powers of flight. He hadn't. James rolled his eyes and turned toward Amber, who was still passed out on the ground. With her long brown hair flowing around her body and her long legs curled up into a ball, James had to admit that she looked pretty darn cute. As soon as he thought that, he immediately cursed himself in his head for thinking that. She was one of his best friends, not a love interest. Keep cool James, he thought, keep cool. Anyways, he knew that she didn't like him in that way, so he discarded that thought for good and turned toward Andrew, who was busy complaining to the presence about how he hadn't got any powers and that this whole thing was BS. Suddenly, out of nowhere, a bright light began shining above each one of them. They hovered there for a while, and then, slowly, things began to come down from the three lights. Over both Andrew and James' heads came a sword, which landed perfectly in the ground in front of them, hilt up. A bow and arrow quiver appeared over James' head and floated down to the ground as well, along with a strange looking helmet. Andrew got the helmet as well, but instead of a bow he got an intricate-looking spear, with a point as sharp as a diamond. They looked at each other in awe.

"Oh...my...gosh..." whispered James to himself, not believing his eyes.

"This is so frickin' cool!" yelled Andrew, waving his spear in the air, "WOOHOO!" The loud noise caused Amber to stir, but she didn't wake up. The light above her still hadn't given her anything up until this point, but it finally sent something to her before disappearing, two somethings, actually. It gave her...a stick and a robe. That was it. James and Andrew looked at each other, confused. Why had she gotten such trash? The two things landed on her head with a THUD, jolting her awake. She looked at Andrew holding the spear and James holding the bow and quiver, and she looked around expectantly. She saw the robe at her feat and tried it on immediately, not caring where it had come from. Then she picked up the stick, which was an extremely straight one, with a weird symbol on the side of it. After she stood their for a while, confused, Andrew and James burst out laughing, as she looked exactly like a witch from the Harry Potter movies. As James continued to laugh, Andrew tried to do his best Hagrid impersonation:

"'Yer a wizerd, Harry!" he growled, then doubled over laughing. Amber, for her part, took the joke in stride and brandished her 'wand' in a big circle.

"Expelliarmus!" she yelled, laughing. The tree next to Andrew immediately exploded, the top disintegrating into ashes while the trunk split in two down the middle. As the explosion thundered through the forest, one half of the tree began to topple forward, gravity pulling it straight toward Andrew. But Andrew wasn't having any of it. Grunting, he lifted the sword from the ground, stepped to the side, bent his knees, and jumped, bringing the sword along with him as he did. The sword hit the tree half so hard the it cut the half in half, cleanly cutting through the bark like a chainsaw through butter. The three pieces of the tree all landed with a THUNK, and Andrew, still in the air, began to fall down to the ground. But right before he hit the ground he tucked and rolled (sword in hand!) and landed in a perfect kneeling position, a mischievous smile covering his face.