Chapter 5: That field good.

Walking into school that day, I looked strange wearing a full, heavy ski outfit complete with goggles, beanie, helmet, boots, jacket, pants, gloves, a scarf and long underwear. I felt even worse than I looked, as I started to awkwardly yet enthusiastically thrust my arms as if using ski poles and shuffling my feet as if I was wearing heavy skis. Only 93% of the students in the school saw me including my friend Trent. He walked up to me and asked which part of my brain fell out recently.

“Less than half?” I responded with my voice raising on the final word.

“Oh good.” He thankfully agreed. “I’ll walk with you since you aren’t crazy. So… why are you acting and dressing like you are on skis?”

“That is a fabulous question. In fact…” My sentence was cut off as I visualized myself falling off of a 10 foot cliff, then rolling a football field’s length down the side of the snow covered hill. Then, I found myself rolling on the hard hallway tiles for about 40 feet before I realized that it was causing me pain. “… I will answer that for you at 3:00 P.M. as soon as school gets out.” I finished as I popped up to my feet.

During the course of the day, I only fell 23 times and didn’t break a large number of bones. I was, however, extremely bruised from the lack of snow to break my fall. Also, I earned a few very extravagant nicknames from random students who shout things out in the hallway. Among those nicknames were things like “Hey you,” “stupid penguin” and “polar stupid” all of which were super creative. I decided to ignore those names and continue on with my quest. Finally, I found myself exiting the school building at the end of the day, and I instantly stopped skiing.

“Congratulations, you have reached level 2” The Book said.

“Awesome, I get levels?” I asked.

“Heck no, I was just kidding.” He responded. “Anyways, your new power is the ability to move very fast. You will not be able to move fast initially, but as you practice your powers will grow hugely. It’s almost like magical steroids with no ill effects.”

“Awesome, how do I start?” I asked.

“However you want.” The Book responded. “Farewell.”

On that note, I slammed accidentally against Trent who was standing on the sidewalk waiting for me. After the initial angry response and the hurried apology, we started to walk towards the school picnic area. The picnic area has tons of old wooden picnic tables that nobody ever uses. Therefore, it was the perfect place for us to talk.

“So, why are you acting so weird?” Trent asked.

“Well, I found a magical book and it is telling me to do stuff so I can have magical powers.” I answered truthfully.

“Really?”

“Yes.”

“Really?”

“Yes.”

“Really?”

“Yes. It is completely true and I can prove it.”

Suddenly, the air started to grow stale and my vision started to blur. Trent was obviously expressing the same concerns because he said words that were also blurred and his face grew confused as it grew blurry. When the world became as blurry as possible, everything appeared to be a piece of abstract art. Then, my vision snapped back to focus.

The school, picnic tables, and students were all gone. I found myself in a random field with bizarre flowers. The sweet smell of pollen was invading my nasal passages as I looked at them; instantly I cursed myself for skipping allergy medicine that morning. Then, I took a moment to observe the flowers. The most common flower was about 1 foot tall and had white petals all the way up its stem giving the appearance of an external spine. The petals on the head of the flower were thin and too numerous to count and came in a mixture of three shades of blue. The grass appeared to be of a normal sort though perhaps a richer shade of green. In fact, the entire world seemed to be more vivid as if I spent a month with a slightly wrong contact prescription and suddenly switched back to the correct one. There were many more unique plants in that field that I never saw before, and I started to wonder whether or not these plants were of the Earth.

In the distance were some very tall trees which looked to be redwoods from California. The only problem with that theory was that the tree trunks were green and the leaves were purple, as if they were plants with a stem replacing the trunk and either were covered in blooming petals or had petals replacing the leaves. I made a mental note to check which of these options were true when I explored that area in the future.

The next feature of the area which I moved my focus towards was the sky. I tried to see if there was anything different about this sky, which is common in movies that take place on other planets, but from the visible sky there appeared to be only a bright object identical to our sun.

My scientific observations were interrupted when I noticed Trent sitting a few feet away. He was not used to unusual things happening to him so he was noticeably shaken.

“You okay?” I asked.

“I will be. Luckily I am used to unusual things happening to me.” He answered.

“Really?”

“No. I am completely terrified right now.” He answered. Then a minute later he added, “I’m good now.”

“Good. Do you want me to explain why I was skiing in the hallway earlier?”

“Could you start by explaining why we were teleported to a random alien field directly after a somewhat normal school day?” He requested.

“Heck no. Anyways, I was skiing in the hallway because a magical book I found in a golden locker told me to.” I explained.

“Could you use more detail please?” He requested.

“Sure. There I was, face flat against the cold classroom tile floor. The entire class stared as I picked myself back up and sat back down at my desk. Almost immediately, the teacher questioned me, asking, “Let me guess, you find my lectures so boring that you just had to fall asleep in the middle of one. Am I right Mr. Smith?…” I spent the next hour explaining my adventure with excruciating detail as he sat there engrossed in my story telling. Never once did he ask me a question during my speech, but following the words “… and that is why I was skiing in the hallway today” he began to inquire, “Why did….”

I interrupted him saying, “I won’t be able to answer any of your questions as I gave you every single detail of what has happened to me this week.” Then continued on, “I think we should explore a little so I can have a conversation with intelligent life. Let’s start off by examining those trees over there.”

Walking along the field, I noticed that the gravitational strength of the field were 9.3 percent weaker than the gravitational strength of the Earth and I made a mental note that if Trent and I were to stay in that strange place for a prolonged period of time we would need to exercise in order to keep our optimum muscle mass. Furthermore I noticed that the land of the entire field and as far into the forest I could see was seemingly flat as if we were located in an alien version of Kansas.

Reaching the trees, we were able to identify them as weird versions of gigantic flowers due to the petal-like nature of the leaves and the flower stem-like nature of the trunk. These plants, appearing about as tall as 320 feet, did not seem as sturdy as the trees of Earth with the stem appearing to be slightly too thin to fit the height. Because the giant flowers were so tall, the floor of the forest was clear of branches and leaves which allowed for fast movement. As we progressed, more and more bushes and vines and other plants began to slow down our progress.

Along with that progression, I noticed that the area was beginning to grow dark so I decided to fashion some weapons. Instantly I noticed that some of the bushes grew thorns hidden along the bottom of their leaves. This gradually began to worry me with the fear of being skewered by one of those thorns. This fear gave me the idea of using these thorns as a weapon, so I plucked one from the largest bush of the sort that carried thorns that I could find. This thorn was extremely stiff, two inches in diameter at its base, and at least two feet long.

Trent and I harvested as many as possible then, clearing out a small area on the bottom of the forest, we managed to create a decent sized pile of them. Wanting to make a couple of spears, I stabbed a giant tree with a thorn but found that the entire outside of the tree was slightly mushy instead of rock hard. This mush, with its consistency, smell and color, seemed to be slightly poisonous so I made a point to tell Trent not to eat the trunk of the tree. Still, I wanted to see if there was something in the middle of the tree that was more sturdily built to resist wind or physical forces from knocking it over, and I was correct in that notion. Hacking our way to the center, we were able to move most of the mushy green substance little by little from the tree leaving a giant pile of the stuff on the ground to our right. Due to the vast nature of said tree, it took us a few hours to finally find the center.

Amazed, I found that at the center of the tree was a three inch in diameter metal pole that apparently extended the entire 320 foot length of the tree. Amazed at this development, we took a moment to figure out how to extract a length of that tree from the center for both of us to use. Trent came up with the idea of using my new-found speed power to break the tree, but I reminded him that I could not move fast unless I practiced.

“You could at least try to improve.” He requested.

“How do you suggest I do that?” I responded snappily.

“Race me.” He responded calmly.

“OK.” I instantly agreed because his logic was sound.

We jogged back to the field which took only a few minutes and decided to race all the way to a large brown rock located about half a mile off. As soon as we began, I noticed that Trent was moving much faster than I was, and I attributed that fact to his experience in cross country running. Towards the end of the run, I began to gain some ground on him but not enough to surpass him. Ending the race, I noticed that Trent was hardly out of breath, and surprisingly I wasn’t either. In fact, I decided that I felt increasingly better as I progressed along in the run.

Then I challenged him to a second race. The race started the same; him in the lead, me falling behind. This time though I could tell he had a much lesser lead. Before we even got halfway, I was almost at his level and I was catching up fast. By the end of the race I was far ahead of Trent, and I decided to continue running after reaching the rock. Feeling energized, I leaped hard off of a two foot rock and was surprised by the extraordinary height I reached. Not only was I flying 9.3 percent higher than I would have on Earth due to gravity, but I also found myself at least 50% higher than normal due to my increased speed. This height caught me by surprise and I started to rotate forward in the air. Instinctively I thrust forward into a dive, tucked my head, hit the ground in a roll, and popped back up once I hit my feet. Using the momentum gained from the roll I was able to continue running forward and quickly achieved my previous full speed. From there I was able to continue accelerating.

I ran for at least an hour longer, all the while the sun was getting lower in the sky. As soon as I reached the other end of the field, which was a good 5 miles long, I turned around. By the time I got back to Trent, who was perched on the large rock, I was running at an extraordinary speed of at least 30 miles per hour. Skidding to a halt, I noticed that my muscles were quickly becoming sore. This soreness grew and grew until I thought they would explode. I started to panic as I lied across the top of the rock. Trent tried to calm me down and assured me that muscles normally get sore after exercise. Just when I thought I could handle it no longer, the pain began to subside. Soon, the pain was completely absent and I felt well enough to stand up.

Standing up, I noticed that my muscles were not much larger, but instead were much denser than normal which made sense because if I were to become faster, bulky muscles would interfere. Furthermore, I was amazed at the rapidness of the transformation. While a normal person would undergo moderate soreness for a couple of days and then have moderate muscle growth. I experienced a rapid process with excruciating soreness and large muscle mass improvement. Without a scale, I could still tell that I had gained a few pounds of muscle mass which did not concern me because my gained strength and speed would more than make up for weight gain. Still, I knew that my increased abilities would not be enough to chop a piece of metal in half, so I decided to keep training.

We decided to return to the tree and learn to use the thorns as weapons such as daggers and throwing darts instead of spears. Walking back through the forest we noticed that it was actually getting very dark, not only was the tree coverage blocking the sun but the sun was also disappearing behind the horizon. Soon it became almost too dark to see and we began to get worried about finding our way back to the tree. Instead of getting lost we managed to follow our previous trail of wreckage in the plants on the forest floor back to our pile of thorns. When we got there the thorns were in exactly the same place and we began to fill our pockets with them making sure to have an ample supply.

Testing one out as a throwing dart, I placed my index finger on the back end and thrust my arm forward. Spiralling through the air, the thorn appeared to be meant for aerodynamic movement as it stuck itself deeply into the tree I was aiming for. While a person’s face would probably pose more resistance than the mushy tree trunk, the thorn would still be able to do tons of damage. Not only that, but the thorn embedded in the tree was just my first throw. I decided to practice that throwing movement to see if I could improve the muscles involved with throwing in the same way I improved the muscles involved with running. Soon I was able to notice an actual difference in my ability to throw the thorns not only did I see a greater speed but I also saw a greatly improved depth that the thorns achieved in the tree.

Then I took a break to see if my arm would become sore from the effort. Sure enough, my arm began to gain large amounts of pain which amounted to less than the pain that was in my legs earlier due to my stopping sooner than later. Directly after the pain subsided, I decided to try again and was amazed by the humongous gain in speed from a couple minutes ago.

My arm appeared to give a giant twitch launching the thorn toward the tree. This speed was at least three times that of which I started with, and I couldn’t help but think how much I could improve from there. We walked over to the tree and found that the large thorn, with all of its length, was almost lost completely inside the tree, with only an inch or two still remaining. I was amazed and slightly scared at the amount of power I possessed and I knew that the damage I could have done with that thorn to an actual living animal was vast.

Trent was amazed as well and asked, “When do I get my powers?” On that note a voice, British sounding of course, permeated through the air.

“Did you not listen to his story you ninny-hammer? You must achieve certain tasks first.” The Book said.

I introduced them with “Trent, meet The Book. The Book, meet Trent.”

“Umm… hey.” Trent said awkwardly. Then he asked, “Why do you not have a physical form?”

The Book responded to Trent with “I do. It is in your friend’s pocket. Geez, didn’t you listen to his story?”

“You already asked that.” Trent retorted. “What is my task?”

“You must discover it for yourself. In the meantime, it is about time for you two to get back to Earth. If you notice around you, it is nearly pitch dark.” The Book said.

“How?” I chimed in.

“You can return simply by thinking hard about the place you left on Earth, and then utter the term ‘teleport’ to remind your mind exactly what you are focused on doing. Then, simultaneously, you must think about the sensation of teleporting in order to jump-start the process.” The Book explained thoroughly.

“Oh. That is ridiculously and preposterously simple” Trent and I responded precisely and simultaneously.

“Teleport” I uttered, Trent did the same, while thinking of the sensation which I felt on the way to the alien field. Then the world grew blurry.