15For those interested, The Flash was originally intended as a prequel to this story.
**************************************************************************** **********
BLACK AND WHITE
I looked around, and it was all I would see. Squares of black and white, making a perfectly flat floor in an infinite checker pattern. I walked, but my view never seemed to change. Even the sky was black and white, infinitely checkered. I stopped, and looked around. I jumped, and my feet hit hard against the floor, but there was no sound. Had I become deaf?
I began walking again, and soon running. Time passed, and passed again, but still no thing lay within my sight. I looked around again, but then I stopped, and looked down...
I did not know which way I had been running.
Fear came over me, and I ran again, crying in pain of being alone in this strange world. How did this happen? Why was I here?
Millennia seemed to pass again, and I looked around. That's when I saw it; hiding behind me as if I ran through it. It was also black and white, but it was more than the floor. Indeed, by this time it was as grand as heaven. It was a cube, covered by the black and white pattern. I leaned against it and, exhausted in spirit, laid down. The cube was very large, 3 meters long, wide, and tall. But the cold and simple shape gave me great comfort...
I was now here.
At a later time I woke, and saw that the great anchor of my location was still with me. I was not hungry, or thirsty. Indeed, my entire body was at contentment. I decided to travel along one of the many lines made by the checkered tiles. Time passed and passed again, and once again I found myself nowhere. I removed a shoe and pointed it the direction I headed this time as I trekked forward. Nothing. I returned, put my shoe back on, and as soon as I had, the cube was there, right behind me. It was smaller now, only 2 meters in every direction. I did not understand it, where was I?
I awoke on top of the cube. I climbed up onto it earlier, and slept, yet I looked around and saw everything was the same. No day or night. I was still strangely content physically, my only weariness was a spiritual one, one that demands even the best-trained body to stop, reflect, rest. I began walking a new direction, but as I began I thought about how the cube came up to me the... time before. I only walked a few minutes this time, and turned around. There it was, now only 1 meter in each direction. I panicked. What happens next? I was more curious than cautious. I went a third direction for just a few steps, turned, and saw nothing. What now? Now there is nothing for me, not even a location to call my home! Why was I here? Can I ever escape? I wept bitterly for hours, though my cries of pain were silent. Eventually my body picked up and began to move out into the blank checkered world again, and I gave one last glance where the cube once was...
Wait! There is now a hole in the floor! I jumped into it. It was also a cubic meter like the last cube, but now it was a hole... and look! One of the sides was open. Could this be my escape? Am I now free?
I crawled through the hole, which opened up into a great tunnel whose lighting came from no known place. The floor, walls, and ceiling were all checkered, but in a different way. Each square was two meters by two meters on the walls, and 1 meter by one meter for the floor and ceiling. Each side was as wide as the respective squares, and upon looking back I saw that the hole had closed, and no longer existed. It didn't matter. I could see the end of the tunnel, and walked to it. I looked out, and saw another endless world of black and white, except that I was at the face of a cliff. I looked down, and saw that the part of the cliff just below me was curved, and that there was... a... tunnel below me. It appeared that I could slide down from where I was, and I did. I immediately got up at the bottom and entered the tunnel, which was entirely black on the walls and white on floor and ceiling, once again two meters tall and a meter wide.
This tunnel lasted much longer, though I could always see the end. I must have walked for about a mile, when the tunnel finally opened into a room. It was a large room, which was half of a sphere. The floor was checkered black and white, and so was the ceiling. All was lit perfectly, once again from no apparent source. Then... THEN! That was when I saw it. After all of my wandering I came across what was they most beautiful thing I had seen in this world...
There was one gray square, which replaced two black and two white squares.
It had a strange and awesome power which drew me to stand upon it. When I did, my feet moved to stand perfectly centered, and my body became rigid, so that I was standing straight up and staring upwards about 30 degrees. The ceiling began to spin, faster and faster until the squares blurred. At that time a large black rectangle formed in the area my eyes had been fixed upon, and there I first saw a simple white line that crossed the rectangle horizontally, and another formed that crossed vertically. The vertical line had marks on it, and by the movement of the marks I saw that the line was moving downward... downward.
Then a flash... both on the screen and in my mind.
I knew that flash. It was... what I last saw! I knew it now! Then where am I for real? Am I in a hospital? Am I all right? Will I ever see family again? Maybe this screen will tell me.
The top of the vertical line suddenly appeared. It was moving slowly towards the horizontal line. Only seconds now. No sound, no sight. Everything seemed to disappear except for that spot, that final mark on the line.
Only a few seconds now... This must be the end.
The final mark made contact. Everything stopped. I stopped. The screen was gone. I was gone; and all I could see was black... and white.