Trembling steps towards the door, the blood sticky on the soles of my naked feet. My hand grasps the ruined surface of the table where mere hours before, creatures from another world viciously tortured me for information they claimed I possessed.
The door opens of its own accord, and I step into an empty, white and quite featureless hallway. Following an unknown instinct, I turn left. Sticky red footprints follow my progress down the passageway, which terminates in a steel door, identical to the door of the chamber I'd just left. It too opens automatically as I approach.
On the other side of this door however, lay a sight beyond my wildest dreams. Rather than a viewscreen of some sort, showing the expected starfield, staggeringly tall towers, glisten in the light of a blue sun. People, not the hideously deformed creatures that assaulted me, but beautiful, marvelous people soaring through the air with no visible means of flight. Petals from alien flowers wafting on the breeze and a thousand exotic birds join their voices in harmonies alien to my ears.
"I'm not on a ship at all. I'm....on a different planet?" Shocked, I stumble backwards through the door, which closes as I impact the rear wall. I turn and streak back the way I came, my footsteps echoing in the cold and empty hallway.
"Please....stop." The voice cuts through the chaos in my mind like a knife. It seems familiar somehow...like so much else about this place. I stop.
"Thank you," the voice continues, "If you will allow us a moment to explain, we can help you reacclimate to the world around you."
"Reacclimate?" I let all of my pent up fear and anger burst forth in my words, as I turned in a slow circle in the middle of the hallway. "What the fuck are you talking about? I've never been here before in my life. I want to go home to my wife, and I will get there if I have to kill every damn alien on this planet."
"Alien? Dear boy....you are quite misinformed." As if on cue, a hidden panel opens to my right, and a radiant figure emerges. Standing at least seven feet tall, adorned in glowing robes of innumerable hues, and with a great white beard stretching nearly to the floor, there was only one person this could possibly be. "God?" I kneel just to be on the safe side.
A warm belly laugh reverberates against the walls, it's enough to put a smile on my face despite my situation. "Not quite in the way you're thinking."
"Santa?" Once again, kneeling. Just in case.
"Uhm...No." A somewhat confused look arrives on the heels of my last query. "You really don't remember me?" Then turning to look over his shoulder, "Damnable Avatars, leave them hooked up too long and their in-program persona overwrites the native code!"
A second being steps into the hallway, and my breath seizes in my lungs. A woman of such resplendent beauty that I have never seen before steps to the right of the bearded 'not God or Santa'-man. Dark, loving eyes gaze at me from the pale perfection that is her face. Diaphanous robes drape over her frame like they had grown there organically, and her casual grace exudes calm. Despite this, I was still keenly aware of my own lack of clothing, and modestly attempted to cover myself in front of the somehow familiar woman.
It all clicked into place one second after the old man spoke his next words.
"Boy, I'm your father."
That slippery mercurial memory is back. It covers my brain like a hood, and for the second time in recent memory, all goes black.
....
Eons rewind and fast forward in seconds as my brain adjusts the tracking. A picture emerges and millennia of knowledge flashes through my synapses in moments. Concepts and colors, curious and confounding to the senses of a human suddenly crystalize and take new meaning. My consciousness expands like that of a meditating yogi, and realization dawns. My name....my true name flashes in 73 foot tall neon letters in my frontal-lobe. As I utter the strangely familiar syllables, the disorienting transformation screeches to a halt, and my metamorphosis is complete. Once more, I am..."Pilleus, the free."
I stand in the hall with my Father and Mother. I am covered in the blood of two Orpheus-men. A snarl crawls unbidden and instinctively across my mouth and sets to gnawing at the corners of my lips. "Father...." I begin, but a raised hand forestalls any further words.
"Welcome home my son. Too long has it been since last these halls echoed with the sound of your footfalls. But wait just a moment, and tell us what has transpired. Tell us what you remember. Tell us what you saw...."
So I tell them.
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Imbuing the lifeforms of each of the Godworlds with the ability to manipulate and shape reality as they saw fit, the Shapers proceeded to the fringes of the universe and beyond, leaving behind the women and men of the Godworlds to police creation.
Eons of alternating warfare and peace transpired until an uneasy truce was signed, and the vast majority of the citizens of the Godworlds were phase shifted into the lower realms, created by the One Above All.
Forsaking this great gift, the One Above All and his family stayed behind to await the return of the shapers, and to shepard the worlds they created.
However, one among the citizens of the Godworlds desired the power of the One Above All for himself. Orpheus, brother to the One Above All, and Lord of the Legions of Lur lead a rebellion against his brother, and was defeated.
Shamed into leaving the Godworlds, Orpheus and his legions made their home in the burned out husk of a giant star.
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"Orpheus....his men have broken through to the lower realms. They are preying upon the men and women in Lower Earth." The shock of the memories flooding back is beginning to fade, and I find myself with stray thoughts and feelings from my time on earth."That was my mission, to learn how far they've managed to infiltrate the program and report back. How long was I gone?"
"About a year and a half as we recognize time. Although relativistically speaking you were gone a little over 2,000 years."
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