Touring the Multiverse

Prologue

Deep in the furthest corner of the universe, (well not quite a corner,as universes are more spherical than polygonic) stood a woman, if you could call her that. She existed long before the concept of gender was even conceived and thus cannot be classified using such dialogue. Despite this, her physical manifestations have a tendency to err towards a more feminine appearance. Her features are hard to distinguish. A pitch-black skin tone and identically colored clothes make it next to impossible to detect the line between skin and dress. Galaxies danced across her garb, moving with an unnatural beauty that can only be found in the recesses of space.

This woman stood in the center of a vast network of spheres, too numerous to count. She turned slowly, gazing at each in turn, then moving on to the next as they slid by, rolled across, and bounced off of each other, moving with such entropy that one would believe it impossible to keep track of them all.

The woman's pure white eyes seemed to capture every detail of each glowing, life-like sphere. On any other occasion, one would observe the woman gaze into a sphere, then laugh softly, as if it had just told a particularly funny joke. Or maybe she would shake her head in perceived exasperation, as if the sphere had just taken its brother's favorite toy.

This was not a time for idle gazing however. The woman glanced around with trepidation as more spheres seemed to appear out of the darkness at an alarming rate. She is obviously searching for something, spending no more than a second or so on each sphere, before turning away from it and shaking her head.

This process continues for some time until she stops on one particular sphere for a noticeably longer time. Then, a cry of elation, and the being begins to shrink down. No, move forward. The woman moves forward and into the sphere, speaking for the first time. Her voice is deep and resonating, yet at the same time airy and melodic. It seemed to come from nowhere, yet everywhere all at once. Like the woman, her voice is a chaotic contradiction. It commands, yet reassures.

"I have found you, my champion..."

∆∆∆

The house is a simple one. Out on the southern side of Long Island, it has seems to find a small area of seclusion, far enough away from the city to be quiet, yet close enough to still appear involved in the bustle of Manhattan. Yet that was not the reason the owners chose the location. If anything, they would have preferred to be closer to the city, but for one reason: a summer camp. Not just any camp no, this was special. Young, inexperienced children go to this camp. They leave as heroes. The owners are veterans of the camp, and some of the most legendary halfbloods to walk the Earth.

The building has clearly been renovated. It has a distinctive design that would only be seen on a customized house. The blue-gray walls match the white trimming and Gothic columns in such an elegant way, an observer would get the feeling that the building had been transplanted from ancient Greece, and then modernized. In retrospect, this makes sense. The wife is quite an architectural genius, and world-renowned for her renovation projects in Greece and Italy, as well as the entire design for Olympus Cruses' corporate headquarters, a building she designed herself.

The mailbox stands in stark contrast to the rest of the property. Where the building and grounds hold a polished contemporary-Greek style, the mailbox is a simple, weather-beaten whale. The number 36, cast in bronze, is attached to each side. The name Jackson runs down the post, first in English, then Greek and finally Latin.

Three steps up is a porch which swings around one side of the building and connects to a deck on the back side. The boards are worn, showing their years of use. Two used, but still clean, chairs rest directed away from the house and towards the road. A small coffee table separates the two chairs.