Convergence: Eclipse Chapter 1: Chapter 1: The Holding Area

Read chapter 1 of Convergence: Eclipse by J.L.Hollingwell on NovelPedia.

Dont Panic! The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Douglas Adam s Laurie stretched, and yawned. Sleep still clung thickly to his mind, and he kept his eyes closed, hoping that he could coax himself back to unconsciousness. It normally worked, but his usually comfortable mattress felt hard as earth, and his back ached. He wriggled to try and find a better position, but every way he moved was more uncomfortable than the last. He rolled onto his side, and spluttered as something tickled his nose. Brushing it away, he reached out blindly with one hand, grasping for his phone. Instead of plastic and glass, his fingers met something unexpected. String? Hair? What? “Huh..?” Laurie groaned, slowly opening one eye, bringing his hand to his face. He was holding a fistful of grass, yellow and shining with dew. I’m outside?! Laurie opened both eyes and blinked stupidly a few times, looking at the grass in his hand. “What?” he said, once again demonstrating his cunning grasp of the English language. It was bright - too bright, Laurie thought, as he blinked his sleep-heavy eyes. His half-awake brain took a moment to register what his eyes were seeing. He was in a forest, surrounded by trees. Light lanced through the canopy in shafts of golden white, and the smell of dense, earthy loam filled his nose. The trees were huge and wide, with strange, milky-brown bark that was banded with a dark pattern that spiralled up into the leaves. The underside of the canopy was far, far above him, thick branches criss-crossing over a clear blue sky beyond. Nothing was moving. The knee-high yellow grass was still, frozen mid sway, like a painting or a video game on pause. Even the grass where he had been lying hadn’t moved; it hadn’t sprung back into position when he sat up and there was an indentation of his body etched into it like a strange, vegetal crime scene. A dream. This has to be a dream. Laurie stood, uncertain, and took a step towards the closest tree. As he did, a wave of gray light manifested in front of him, slipping like liquid over the ground before inexplicably solidifying into a square table. It looked smooth and metallic, and gave off a faint gray glow. He stayed very still, blinked hard, looked up at the frozen trees, down at the frozen grass, and back at the table, which had now been joined by two chairs, one either side. There was something sitting in one of the chairs. It was almost a person, if he didn’t look at it properly. It was made of light, a whole constellation of shifting, ebbing orbs, roaming around in the approximate shape of a human being. "Time is finite,” the entity said, which to be fair, was the sort of thing Laurie would have expected a being made of glowing orbs to say. “Please be seated,” it continued. Its voice was distant and cold, and he could not say if it was male or female. It had no mouth, the sound of its voice emanating from it like an announcement from a speaker. Laurie clung to the reassuring thought that he must be dreaming and, shaking his head, moved to the chair opposite and sat. The chair felt cold but solid under him. Very cold, for a dream. "Well, go on then, who are you and where the hell am I?" Laurie asked. He couldn’t help but smile, confident as he was that this was simply the weirdest, most vivid dream of his life. I might as well enjoy it! "I am Intelligence Five, a participant-facing avatar of the Galactic Ordinance Directive. I interact with participants in the holding area, and prepare them for the starting zone of the Multiversal Integration Programme. You are a participant. You are in the holding area. I am interacting with you, to prepare you for the starting zone of the Multiversal Integration Programme.” Intelligence Five spoke rapidly, without pause for breath or inflection. "Right…" Laurie paused, stumped. Where the hell is my sleep-deprived brain getting this from!? He looked around at the trees, mulling over what the entity - Intelligence Five - had said. “What’s the multiversal in