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| sent from: London, UK. destination: Brooklyn, New York, USA |
Jeremiah opened his eyes, feeling soft grass beneath his hands. A slight dew was seeping into his clothes. He stood up in a landscape of gently rolling lush green hills. Nearby, the Gap was there, a space of anti-space. A dark-skinned tattooed man was walking towards him accompanied by dogs, too many dogs to count, of all shapes and sizes.
“English? You come through Rift?” the man asked, pointing to the Gap.
Jeremiah nodded. “Where.. where am I?”
“Niue. Other planet. Rift connects to back Earth, and others. People fall through, sometimes. Mostly, dogs. They are happy here.” He smiled at his charges, who panted back. “I am Loane”.
This place, this other planet whose air smelled of flowers, wasn’t anything he could have imagined. His world, a divinely ordained, Earth-centric universe in which he was personally guided to greet the Saviour’s return, was now but one of many.
Seeing his confusion, Loane said “Don’t worry, it’s good life here. Warm air. Abundance. Rift make it interesting.”
The Rift.. the Gap! He told Loane how he had fallen into the Rift trying to grasp the device that Mavis the Rotary Club woman had thrown into it. They went to the edge of the Rift and peered into the dark to see Mavis’s knotty mechanism doing its steady work. It was casting out strands of fabric across the Rift from the body of the tin, swinging between sides and quickly knitting them together into something far stronger than the sum of its parts, like a robotic spider. Even if the how of it was a mystery, what it was doing was clear – once the opening of the Rift was knitted across, it would tighten and sew it shut.
“Rift must remain open,” Loane said. “Rift is like.. like whale, when coming up to breathe. If closed, universe no more breathes.
We die, slowly.”
CONCLUDES ON CARD 2.217, FOR REALSIES!