"Ahhh...the smell of corruption, pollution and hmm? Jet fuel." Luke exclaimed as he jumped off the ramp of the plane. Luke surveyed the mist covering the airfield and the silhouette of a hangar looms nearby.
He have finally arrived to the place where he was born. As he came from the past, his current self is still within his teenage days. Recalling all of the shameful things he had almost forgotten, he swallowed his saliva and steeled himself to see his current self overturn his life once again.
Waving goodbye to the C-130 Luke rode his motorcycle to the hangar on the side of the runway. Stopping by its doors, he spotted a mechanic with a greasy coverall working on the underside of an airplane. As Luke dismounted, he called out to the mechanic cheerfully.
"Hi there, I believe you are Williams?"
The mechanic peeked under his arms as he continues to fiddle with the belly of the plane. He continued to work with his hands and after a moment later he stood up and wiped his hands on his coverall.
"Yes, I am Williams, sorry but I can't shake hands with you with the current state my hands are in." Williams apologetically smiled.
Luke chuckled and smiled towards him. "No problem at all. I am here because I was told you could help me."
"You are Luke?" Williams asked in apprehension.
Luke nodded in confirmation. He pulled out a colored ticket the size of a small eraser and presented it to Williams.
Williams took the ticket stub and examined it. He turned it over and side by side before returning it to Luke.
"I see... I have the plates ready and its papers. All you need to do and sign them. They are at the office. Let me guide you to them." Williams then glanced at Luke's motorbike and added. "Just leave your bike there, we'll be coming back here anyway."
Williams guided Luke a run down shed further inside the hangar. Williams opened the door and a flash of light blinded Luke for a moment. While being run down as shown in the outside, the shed's interior looked like the grocery section of a mall with one of it's workers having an extreme case of obsessive-compulsive disorder. Each tool and machine implements were lined in order by use, shape, and size. Polished to the extreme, each tool seemed to exude its own light hiding the fact of its reflective properties.
"This?" Luke asked in shock.
"My shed, which is literally my home in this airfield." Williams opened a cupboard and began to rummage inside. He gestured to a seat by one of the workbenches lined against the wall and Luke sat down.
Minutes later, Williams emerged from the cupboard holding a sealed brown envelope and a pen. Luke took the envelope and removed the contents into the workbench table. A couple of sets of license plates, stickers and among others revealed themselves after being poured out.
Luke pored over an agreement and some legal documents and then signed them after reading. He handed the signed documents to Williams, who returned it inside the envelope and placed it back to the cupboard.
Going back to the hangar was uneventful until the license plates were attached to the motorbike and Luke sped off into the morning mist of the airfield. knowing the place since it was built, he went outside through one of the side gates leading to the highway as he traveled to the nearest hotel he could find.
After checking in, he went to the mall and withdrew some money in the local currency. Buying a brown leather jacket and a cap, he rode his motorbike to the place where he lived before.
Arriving ten minutes later, he stopped by the main road on the opposite side, overlooking his grandparents house where he lived his high school days up to the day he vanished to the past.
As the day gave way to the early morning sunlight, he saw himself going outside the house to take a bath. An exact replica of his features and demeanor can be seen and compared to his current self and his past bathing self.
After his past self took a bath, he greeted his newborn cousin who was being held by his aunt who took out the baby for some time under the early morning sunlight.
Luke rubbed his eyes as it watered and threatened to overflow with tears. After waiting for half an hour he rode his bike back to the hotel and slept until the afternoon.
He woke up a little refreshed so he entered the bath to freshen up. After his routine he sat down and unpacked his suitcase onto his bed to retrieve his laptop.
Feeling hungry, he called for room service as he typed and wrote into his laptop the events that occurred before his disappearance so he could immediately replace his past self and stand in to continue the life that was stolen from him.
In half an hour, he finished writing down the events that happened which was mostly composed of the days in school and the lessons that was tackled. As he planned to resume his daily living he began to think of excuses of how his body became so fit in comparison to his obese past self.
His train of thoughts was interrupted by a door bell, indicating that his food has been brought by the room service. Luke stood up answered the door and being distracted by hunger, he decided to come with terms of what is about to come.
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I was with my family outside our house then my vision tunneled as my world turned gray and I tried to reach out to the people I knew yet my fingers just slipped by through them. I was falling to the ground slowly and eventually was swallowed by it. It was like the moment when I got hit by a car. I felt nothing as I fell into the endless abyss. It was comforting to think that I was not needed anymore even if there would be someone who will miss me. There was no option in that matter. I was falling endlessly with no companion. I comforted myself by reminiscing the moments of my life. All the pain, the sorrows and moments of happiness.
I was told that I was too mature for my age. I knew it like the back of my hand. But I always act like a child having it deprived of me from my early days. I woke up from my stupor and found myself in darkness. I felt no attraction to any general direction nor sense of being afloat or lying down on the ground. There was nothing around me, I am only aware of the fact that my is body glowing.
I counted the seconds, minutes and hours trying to make sense of my situation but all was in vain. I lost track of time inside this space and now I feel alone. I recognized that fact and the truth that I am truly alone in this space. No god or man can save me. I prayed to the religion I believed in also to the gods who I also believe in desperation.
I was desperate to be gone from this suffering. To live a life that I wanted. To have a stable job, a family and a renowned name in my career. But this time I knew that all of those would be gone.
I fell asleep many times in this space. I never knew how many hours or days have passed. I have no concept of time. Even the watch on me stopped at exactly 12 am. It has been like that since I got here.
I also feel no physical desire. The need to eat and drink now feel foreign to me. Other needs also feel lackluster as if they were only mere thoughts of a person who never needed them at all and yet was only told about it. Bit there is one fact to spend my time in this space and that is to sleep. I slept like there was no tomorrow which in my case I will never know of a tomorrow to come.
Between sleeps, I took into consideration my physical body. Even if it is numb but still I can move parts of it. Only, there is no sense of touch. I moved my body around and found out that it seems to be that I am floating. It was only this time that I knew I was floating in space.
My position from before was like a person in a coffin and I also slept in that position fearing that something will happen if I move only just a bit. It was some time before I mustered the courage to move my body.
I started from twitching my fingers to waving my arms around. That's when I started to feel my body. My body was cold as a corpse, yet there is warmth within my stomach area. Having read countless novels and fantasy stories I am starting to think that this is Qi or something similar to it. Being afloat had began to bore me so to pass time inside this space I started to move the Qi, as I would like to call the warmth in me, to all around my body. I sat in a meditative state and closed my eyes while willing the Qi to move around my body. I imitated the postures and the ways to move Qi from the stories I read and started to will it.
I don't know how long it took me to move Qi but it was slow. I played with the warmth at first, testing out how I can moved it around. I took my time poking at its potential but only found out a limited actions it can take. Doing my experiments made me proficient on how to manipulate the Qi in my body.
I started to move Qi around my torso. Slowly my body began to feel warm. As my body was warmer I moved the Qi to my legs and after that my arms and head. My whole body began to feel warmer than the minute and it slowly began to be possible for me to to view the space around me with my eyes.
Stars, it was the only first thing that came to my mind. There was nothing else that I could see but stars. There were millions of it in my sight. As I gaze far off into the distance I saw countless stars n the verge of destruction. It was described in my science class that stars expands until reaching a critical point before exploding. And by countless I mean all and everything that my sight could see.
There were no exceptions to the every growing diameter of the stars around me. For one thing I can also feel the Qi around me and slowly swirling inside my body. I closed my eyes in hopes of waking up to a better situation.