Milena's Kosmos

It’s funny how the universe decides to throw you a curveball, precisely when you’re expecting the familiar. Every day wasn’t exactly a repeat; you’d grown accustomed to the uncertainty of research. But there were certain constants, certain boundaries for the unbelievable.

Ideas like trans-dimensional travel and temporal displacement were escapes for the daydreamers, never an actual possibility. What if I hadn’t said those words? Would they have stayed? It’s often easier to let your mind wander to far-off places, than to truly reflect and change. Would I still be here if I had done that instead?

This was supposed to be just another average day, in the average life of a postgraduate student. The only good thing? It was the weekend. An actual weekend, with no experiments scheduled. She could finally sleep past 5 am free of the guilt of hitting snooze or the usual sluggish drag that typically marked her mornings.

That’s why this was a dousing of ice cold water. Waking up in another world she had only seen glimpses on-screen, simply didn’t happen in her universe. Grey expected to wake up to another sunrise, overlooking a city she had known for the past 7 years.

A familiar skyline should be peeking through her open curtains. Her room should’ve been chilled from the overnight frost that finally started to settle as winter approached with full force.

Instead, as she opened her blurry eyes to the sunrise – enjoying the warmth of the blankets, snuggling into her pillow, abandoning all concept of time – she took a double take across the room.

The door leading to her bathroom wasn’t there. Blinking wearily, Grey stared at the view of verdant trees lining a condominium garden to the left of her bed. Peering further ahead, her eyes widened as the peaks of what she assumed to be townhouses and other household units blended into tall skyscrapers.

′What in the world? Where am I? Am I still dreaming?′

She buried her face into the pillow, clutching it tight. Holding her breath, she expected to feel something different - some shift in the atmosphere to alert her that she was finally awake, maybe?

No jolts. No sudden shift in the lighting. None of the cold air she was expecting creeped past the open blankets from when she abruptly moved.

Nothing changed. Her lungs burned, and she gasped for breath as her need for air finally won out.

Looking up to the ceiling, she quietly croaked with a morning voice, “Please tell me I’m dreaming. Tell me this is just one of those vivid, lucid dreams.”

But as the minutes ticked on, she started to feel the unmistakable prickling swarming up and down her arms. Something she had only become accustomed to in the past few months when waking.

They never appeared in her dreams.

Then, her heart decided to sprint. A sickening thud sounded as her body, tangled in blankets, joined the floor. Another groan filled the quiet air.

′Perfect, if this was a horror, I have definitely just given away my position. If this was a kidnapping, there goes the surprise escape.′

Waiting for any response to the noise, nothing came and Grey gradually rose onto her feet.

The room was now bathed in the golden light of the morning. A different nightstand sat next to the bed. Where she expected her kettle and mug (ready to make her morning tea), there lay a bedside lamp and a small indoor plant.

Turning on the balls of her feet, something about the room felt… vaguely familiar. This definitely wasn’t her place, but at the back of her mind, something niggled its way to the forefront.

Pink and red were never her favoured aesthetic. She’d grown to like them just fine, but blues and greens were more her alley. Black and grey furnishings. No bare wooden furniture in sight.

Then, an open wardrobe by the window caught her eye. Hanging there, was a familiar uniform shirt embroidered with a black winged-emblem and stripes, standing out amongst the other colourful attires.

She would never be caught dead with an open wardrobe outside of a closet.

Then there it was – a holographic display above the headboard, glaring down at her with an unbelievable year: 2047.

Tentatively, she walked out of the bedroom, and peered past door frames into other rooms, each giving Grey a sense of jamais vu. There were no signs of another person residing or being present in this apartment - a small reprieve to an already chaotic morning.

Walking back to the room she woke up in, she searched the bedside table for a phone.

‘If this is another time and place, I’m probably not looking for a normal-looking mobile phone. If I’m in the future – which I supposedly am, according to the date – what would a mobile even look like?’

Two strips of metal bars with small flower engravings sat on a small rectangular platform. The whole thing was about the length of a pen, clipped side-by-side. The platform looks eerily like a wireless charger? There were indents sitting in the middle of both bars, creating grooves where she imagined fingers would sit.

A wild theory formed.

Grey pinched the metal between her thumbs and index fingers, but it didn’t budge as she tried to pull it apart. Sliding her fingers to rest on the indents underneath, a barely noticeable glow flickered across the top face.

The metallic bars gave way, allowing her to slowly pull them apart.

Before her eyes, nanobots – or some other self-forming polymer – unfolded themselves (′to form a screen?′). From what only seemed to be a metal bar, there was now a solid, full-sized mobile.

Since she couldn’t feel any resistance from whatever mechanism allowed the bars to expand, Grey continued to stretch it further. To her surprise, it continued to work until the mobile turned into a tablet.

‘This must really be the future,’ she thought, before pushing the now-tablet back down to phone-size.

Luckily, the homepage and user interface looked very similar to what she was used to, with the call and messaging options on the bottom widget. Swiping across for a first impression of what was available, Grey found no applications she recognised.

Not a single social media application remotely resembled the ones she knew. An icon resembling a camera shutter piqued her interest. It was labelled ′Moments’. She filed it away for later.

Opening up the dial page, she tried to call her mum. It was one of the few numbers she had ever bothered to memorise. An automated operator answered in a polite monotone: “The number you have dialled is not recognised.”

She frowned and tried again, this time adding the country code for good measure. It was for naught. The same monotone voice replied with the same answer.

Desperate curiosity began to crawl up her spine. Her fingers hovered over the search icon labelled Polaris. She soon found herself tumbling down a rabbit hole of an analogous world.

This timeline was similar to what she knew, yet it diverged in subtle, eerie ways. Different country names. Slightly altered geography.

The popular encyclopaedia here was Spacepaedia. Some countries still existed but with modified boundaries. Others were gone entirely, replaced by unfamiliar land masses or new bodies of water.

Beyond the expected effects of climate change, there were stranger environmental anomalies. Alarming random spatial fluctuations and disturbances, spurred humanity into rapid technological advancement.

Everything seemed to be catalysed in order to understand these mysteries – the abnormal.

Trying to ground herself in something familiar, she searched for a weather report using her location. West Garden Ward. It sounded so familiar. Looking further, she found that West Garden Ward was located in a city called–

"Linkon?!” The name hit her like a brick.

Minimising the search, she pulled up the gallery. Swiping through images, she saw what appeared to be herself – posing next to things and people in places she had never seen before.

On what was past the tenth image, her stomach dropped. Two familiar faces stared back at her. Characters she recognised form a game.

An elderly lady, gracefully aged with curly hair, sat next to her doppelganger. Behind them, grinning between their shoulders, was a young man with mahogany hair and striking purple eyes.

Her voice broke the silence, “What the fuck? This cannot be happening–”

Frantically, she opened the Moments app, and it looked like the social media application of a certain game she played.

Scrolling down, she scanned through usernames she didn’t recognise – until she reached a certain post tagged at the DAA showcase. Alongside the jibes that only close friends would make, were two usernames she knew far too well: Flyer and Gideon.

She tried to remember—had she, perhaps, mistakenly taken anything remotely like amphetamines? Something that would make her hallucinate this vividly? Nothing came to mind. Besides, it wouldn’t explain how detailed and sensory this experience was to her.

Spiralling, she stumbled toward the bathroom she’d spotted earlier. Gripping the edge of the sink, she stared into the mirror. Her facial features were the same. The same hair colour, the same hairstyle – down to her frizzy morning hair.

Everything was the same–

Except her eyes.

Leaning closer to the mirror, maybe the shine and the texture of her iris were what she was used to, but not the green and purple seeping through the brown. Her breath hitched. She pulls at her cheeks. This wasn’t a dream. Her pupils were normal. This wasn’t drug-related.

It then dawned on her - everything was clear. She wasn’t wearing glasses and yet… she could see perfectly. “How did I get into ‘LaDS’ out of all the improbable things that could happen–”

‘Ding!’ Out of nowhere, a panel suddenly maximised itself in front of her. Recognition flooded her vision, as she spotted options to view an inventory, profile, and other game related features usually associated with RPG games.

`~```~`

Congratulations!

The player [Elysia Grey] has successfully entered and bound the system for ‘Love and Deep-space’.

Complete agendas to earn rewards.

Failure to complete main objectives will result in punishment which may affect the ‘player’ in the alternate timeline.

Upon the completion of this storyline, you will gain access to Wish.

`~```~`