Apocalypse to a Parallel Future

Peter Bishop

I’m on the Fringe team, and we’re outside the city researching a mutation anomaly.  We’ve deduced that it is either wood or rock that people come into contact with that makes them mutate. With our sciency stuff and our superior brains, Peter Bishop and I figure out that it is the rocks surrounding a lake which drains into a valley.  We realize it is going to spread if we don’t stop it.  But just then, Peter starts to change.

I grab him by the shoulders and try to talk to him to keep him calm and to stop the mutation.  “Look at me!  Peter!” I yell. He is convulsing and flushed.  It isn’t working. “Think of Olivia!” I shout, “Think of Olivia!”

“Oliviaaaaaa!” he yells. He passes out and crumples to the floor. It is too late for him.  I must go find the rest of the Fringe team to share the information that Peter and I figured out.

Artie Nielsen

I’m running down the steps of a flat-topped marble pyramid.  The final stage of the anomaly is happening.  Crowds of people are trying to flee the pyramid, but some paths are blocked by lava flow, and other paths cause the people to spontaneously erupt in flames.  I see Artie Nielsen in peril of meeting one of these two fates.  I jump from the pyramid steps and grab onto the cliff edge of a grassy spot of land.  I shout at Artie and point my toe like a ballerina so he can grab onto my leg.  He grabs hold, and I haul the both of us up onto the top of the grassy cliff.

I’m suddenly at the final showdown, the boss battle.  I’m in a beautiful white room with shining marble floors and incredibly high ceilings.  Everything is brightly lit and immaculately clean.  This is the HQ for the people/creatures responsible for the mutations.  I’m in super-stealth mode, but don’t see any bad guys.  I see a girl I know.  Her hair is cut into a blunt bob and is as black as night.  She has a huge smile plastered on her face, and her eyes are wide but empty.  I try to get her to come with me, but she doesn’t recognize me.  Regardless, she is sickeningly sweet when speaking with me.  It is reminiscent of the Stepford wives. 

I find a back room sealed off with heavy curtains.  There are four symbols on the wall: a spade, a club, a heart, and a diamond.  Each symbol has a corresponding anti-serum, each one a different color.  I grab a handful of vials of anti-serum.  When the creepy-happy girl drinks one, she snaps out of her trance.  We run towards wide marble steps that lead out of the compound. 

Seeley Booth

Hovering over the stairs, I see Seeley Booth.  He is floating in the air, and he has been infected with the creepy-happy.  I try to call him over in a hushed voice.  He floats over, and I realize that, like the girl, he doesn’t recognize me either.  I kneel with him on the steps and attempt to explain what is happening, and he starts sobbing out of confusion.  All the while, even while his terrified sobs make his whole body shudder, there is a wide, eerie smile on his face.

The people/creatures in charge are approaching.  I stick the neck of a blue anti-serum bottle straight into Seeley’s arm.

The incongruencies taking place rip apart time and space and transport me and the girl into a parallel universe that is 600 years in the future.  It is 2613, the citizens look like cute people-animal hybrids out of a Japanese anime, and the country is run by a police state.  Anyone who is not an animal-person is a human-shaped militant guard dressed head-to-toe in black with the entirety of their face concealed.  The girl I saved from the compound is now Jett.

To the people inhabiting this world, Jett and I look very strange.  We are in the middle of a big, cutesy city and look extremely out of place.  We run across a busy intersection and duck into a convenience store.

In this universe, convenience stores are the popular place to lunch.  Couples of cutesy anime people sit in little booths near the front of the conveyance store, eating out of metal lunch trays.  Jett and I duck into different aisles to avoid exposure.  We look for something to eat, but everything is price marked in “credits,” rather than dollars.  Not that we could afford it, anyway, as the price for a pack of cookies is equivalent to a couple hundred dollars.

I pick up some milk, which comes in a flour sack now, and sneak drinks of it while ducking behind the aisles.

We line up in the cafeteria service line to receive a lunch tray of food.  The girls on either side of me in line are looking at me like I’m an alien.  They start to gather around me, asking me what “those things” are, pointing to my side-swept bangs.  I’m confused at this question.  The animal-people girls surrounding me have normal style bangs in bright neon colors, but my bangs seem to fascinate them.

We finally make it to the train station without running into any militant guards, and take our place in line with a couple of pieces of luggage.  The train station is situated at the end of a street that dead ends into a brick wall.  Unfortunately, a militant guard station is right across the street from where we are standing.  A guard is walking up and down the line of people waiting to enter the train station.  He comes across me, and without a word tries to confiscate my luggage.  I pull back, resisting, until he drops the bag and arrests me.

I get hauled over to the guard station across the street.  The guard throws me onto the surprisingly clean floor, and I crouch there, terrified.  Several minutes pass before a sinister looking man in dark brown robes approaches me.  He has brought Jett with him.

“Get up! Hurry!” she urges me in a stern whisper.  “We only have four minutes!”  I look up at digital numbers on the wall that are counting down from 4 minutes.

I follow Jett and the robed man into a softly lit room with 3 other robed men inside.  They are standing around what looks like a giant stone goblet.  Jett and I climb into the bowl of the goblet.  The elders encircle us.  Some begin chanting, others deliver guided meditation.  We close our eyes, and slowly turn into a swirling clay-like liquid, each representing two of the four elements.  I feel as if my mind has opened up and I can understand the entirety of space and time.

Moments pass before we return to our normal human state.  We’ve unlocked the key to some rift in this universe, and have served our purpose.  We run for the train station.

We are finally on our way home.  Our transport is a carriage straight out of Cinderella.  We’re sharing our ride with two of the cutesy anime people, and they are asking us all sorts of questions about the place that we come from.  The scenery outside the carriage reminds me of the prettier parts from The Wizard of Oz.  One of the anime girls shows me her bracelet.  When she takes it off it spins in a way that should not be possible.  Upon seeing my amazement, she begins to make me one.  She strings beads by chanting and willing the materials into existence.