Twice Removed | 1 | Bliss

The forward to this story can be found here.

Chip stared at his brother’s shoe twitching in the seat across from him. He looked up at the pale blue sky, but saw his father’s feet twitching in the reflection. Through his father’s reflection, clouds hung high in the air and were wispy. To his left, he knew his mother’s feet would follow suit, but he didn’t bother glancing in her direction. He enjoyed the silence, he enjoyed taking long deep breaths when nobody was watching.

He felt a kick on the shin. His brother demanded, “Why aren’t you in here?”

“Just taking a second.” He grabbed the small white button from his pocket and gently placed it on his temple.

“Quit playing around. Get in here.” He stroked the pad on his temple, and his eyes grew glazed white.

He snorted and angrily flicked his temple and slumped back in his seat, his eyes glazed and barely open. When he opened his eyes again, he was standing on a small grey sphere, roughly twice as wide as he was tall, suspended amidst a swirling, dark grey backdrop with poor visibility. His brother Isaac was standing on the other side of the sphere, looking out into the amorphous void. Barely visible in the darkness, he could see an illuminated grid that his brother was manipulating.

He walked around the sphere until he entered his brother’s vision. “What level did you get to?”

“The end. Get ready!” With this, Isaac slapped his chest, and the grid disappeared. The dark grey skies lightened, and the visibility grew considerably. Far in the distance, he could see differently colored shapes lining up like soldiers awaiting marching orders to invade the enemy.

The shapes started slowly raining towards the sphere from all directions. As they dropped towards them, they left puncture holes in the clouds they travelled through. Some shapes dropped straight down, some had decaying orbits, some were fast, others were slow. As they finally approached arm’s reach, they punched the shapes, shattering them into an explosion of dissolving light. A few shapes managed to get past them and land on the sphere, which turned red and began to pulsate. They immediately picked them up and hurled them into oblivion to bring the sphere they were standing on back to a solid grey color.

Chip let out a grunt as he hurled a body-sized blob out into the swirling clouds in the distance. He noticed a large, fast, yellow plus sign with a decaying orbit rapidly fall towards their sphere. He yelled to his brother, “Get ready!” As the plus sign crashed into the sphere, it broke into a dozen different shapes on the ground. The sphere turned red and began to pulsate wildly. They tried to remove the shapes, but there were far too many for just the two of them, and their sphere eventually turned solid red, and everything disappeared, save the shapes remaining at their feet.

Isaac shouted, “Ugh, all you had to do was throw them off.”

Chip motioned, and a scoreboard illuminated in front of each of them. “Ok, says the guy that didn’t do anything all round.”

He swatted it away. “Whatever, let’s play again.”

The colors faded, and a menu appeared. Chip gestured into the air, and the menu centered on him. “Let me choose.”

“No. You will put on one of your cylinder levels; those are boring. All you do is run back and forth.”

“They aren’t boring! They are a higher level!” His brother silently mocked his rebuttal. “This is why I don’t like to play with you.”

“Fine. Let’s play G.” Isaac swiped his hands, and the level selection ran past like a train. “3 Pro!”

“Fine, whatever.” He found the selection and pressed the affirmative. The lights dimmed, and their sphere elongated into a nearly endless cylinder that disappeared into the far distance. The dark grey clouds again lightened, and their visibility grew. The skies populated with ominous shapes, and parts of their cylinder began to glow light green.

Out of nowhere, a blue screen replaced everything in their reality, and they were suspended in only the warm, blue nothingness. One second later, they found themselves again on the expansive cylinder, with shapes starting to rain down. Another second later, back to the blue nothingness, and this time it persisted. Chip shouted, “Ugh, why are they making us do this again? Haven’t we been to enough museums?”

“Something about Dad and his ancestors, our ancestors, I don’t know. Let’s just get this over with so he will be happy, and we can get back home.” He scratched his temple, and in the next blink, his brother’s shoes sat still in front of him, bathing in the sunlight of the open car door.

Continue to Chapter 2