The Dataworm

The market was a quiet place this time of day. As Nels ran through the stalls towards his laboratory, he could see the shattered remnants of Nirn in the sky, its massive appearance being beautiful and terrifying at the same time. As he was looking up at the sky, he heard the wailing siren of the servitors behind him. He quickly made his way to the hallway and set up a simple ward. As he ran through the hallway, the metal doors on his right and left began beeping with the sound of locks being clicked into place, he stopped abruptly at the biggest door in the hallway. He tried to open it, but with no success. He pulled out what looked like a card from his pocket. He put it against the lock on the door, and heard a near-silent whirring sound as the card began its work. He looked back at the hallway and saw a group of about 10 servitors trying to break the ward. Nels started casting a more powerful ward and was done at the same time that the card finished with the lock. As the servitors broke through the first ward, Nels walked into his laboratory.

His laboratory was, as usual, a complete and utter mess. In one corner, there was a desk piled with papers and instruments. The opposite corner had a lot of flasks and vials, and there was a glowing tank in the farthest corner of the room. The room itself was plated with steel and had a domed roof made of shapeshifting glass. In the center of the room, there was a portal frame the size of two fully grown Dunmer, and it was made from steel-plated tubes, and had 2 circular holes at the base of it, where you would inject liquid. In front of the machine, there was an array of buttons and levers on a control panel, and on either side of the frame, two tables with a syringe suspended on both of them.

Nels ran towards the closest syringe, grabbed it, and ran towards the portal frame. As he injected the syringe into the portal frame, he could hear the servitors trying to destroy the ward behind him. When he reached the second syringe and grabbed it, he found it very hard to move towards the base of the portal frame. As he got closer and closer, he found he had to drag the syringe. After injecting the syringe, the pulling stopped. Nels quickly stood up and dashed for the control panel, and as he pressed an array of buttons and pulled a number of levers seemingly for the hundredth time, the portal frame whirred into life. The liquid began trickling up through the tube, and the glowing seemed to intensify, as well as the whirring sound. When the two liquids reached the top, they connected and melded into each other. They started to glow thrice as bright and Nels could hardly watch. Nels looked at one large lever in the center of the control panel. He pulled another syringe of grayish-red liquid out of a cupboard and proceeded to pull the lever.

He could feel time itself shudder, as the liquids seemed to suddenly disappear and reappear over and over behind him. Before he was thrown back, he could hear the servitors break down and crumble behind him. As he raised his head, he looked through the portal frame. At first, it seemed as though nothing had happened, but then a slight rip in the center of the frame was formed. As the frame began to shake uncontrollably, the rip began spreading and a bright red light began shining through the rip. The room shook, but not physically, as the very Aurbis seemed to retreat from the rip. Nels felt his head getting heavier, and suddenly, it felt as though he was being ripped apart. He screamed. As he desperately tried to stand up, he could see that the rip was forming into a vortex of blindingly beautiful red light. Nels started crawling towards the control panel, his body in agony that he had never had to endure. As he crawled, in the distance, he could hear the march of footsteps running through the corridor. He reached the control panel and grabbed the syringe, almost toppling the panel in the process. He grabbed the syringe firmly and stabbed it into his heart. As he went into a spasm, he felt the sensation of being ripped apart subsiding, and after a couple of seconds, he carefully stood up and made his way towards the portal.

Nels stood in front of the portal, his eyes fixated on the center of the vortex. He wanted to step through, to prove to the rest of the House that he did not spend all this time studying the properties of Khajiiti fur. He wanted, for the first time in 20 years, to see his mother smile and tell him that he did well. Of course, before that, he would have to convince the troops that were sent to kill him for “betrayal” to not shoot him on sight. Suddenly, Nels felt his ward being shattered and saw troops pile into the room. Before he could think about what he was doing, and that there was no way out unless the troops studied portals for 80 years like him, Nels walked through the portal.

There was a bright light, as the red suddenly changed into green. He tried to step onto something, but for at least a minute, he was just floating in place, a bright and surprisingly warm green glow engulfing him. Suddenly, the green subsided, and he could see that he was in his laboratory. At first glance, everything seemed the same, however Nels felt…different in here. It was as if he did not belong. It was as if something did not want him there. He looked at the walls, and saw that they were throbbing with every one of his heartbeats. Nels looked back towards the portal, and knowing that he could not go back, decided to test his theory. He sat down in the Dunmeri meditating position, and focused on the portal. At first nothing seemed to happen, but as Nels began concentrating more and more, he saw the portal wavering. He focused even more, and the edges of the portal began to disappear, but at the same moment Nels screamed and stopped focusing on the portal. He lay down, his head throbbing intensely. As Nels lay on the marble floor of his laboratory, he thought. He knew now that his theory worked, but he still had no way to fully test it. He lay there for a half-hour, and when it seemed his head stopped hurting, he finally tried something else. Instead of focusing on the portal, he focused on the portal frame, and as he focused more and more, the frame began to wobble, and with one final push, the steel tubes broke in half, and he saw the portal disappearing, and with one last breath, it seemed to suck out all air from the room. Nels was thrown back and knocked out.

Nels woke up to the sound of voices. Millions upon millions of voices from all around him, yet they all seemed very distant. He opened his eyes, and saw the room filled with hundreds of people, at least, reflections of people all around him. He looked around the room. He realized what it was. It was all of the instances of him, his friends, and the room’s previous owners, doing things inside his room. He tried to focus on the troops that he saw in the center of the room. Abruptly, all of the voices died down, and he could see the troops more clearly. They were searching through the room, and with them were his father and his mother, shouting his name. He wanted to shout back to them, to hug them, but knew he couldn’t. All he could do was look at them. He couldn’t do anything as his mother broke down into tears and his father tried to comfort her. All he could do is look. His head began to hurt, so he unfocused and lost the image in all of the other reflections, never to be found again.

Nels walked out of the door, and could see even more reflections. As he walked, he was getting annoyed by all of the sounds. He focused, and all of them disappeared. He knew that he could not do this for long, and so he walked a bit slower to preserve his energy. He walked out into the market, through the closed-and-opened door, and looked up into the ceiling. There he could see Nirn, his home planet, which was destroyed a mere 95 years ago. He remembered the night that he woke up to the earthquake that was Walk-Brass, and remembered his family being the only survivors for miles around. This made him unfocused, and as it did, all of the instances appeared again. He reeled back in horror as he saw Nirn being destroyed over, and over, and over, and over. He tried to focus again, but found that he could not. He felt that back of his head hurting a bit, and realized that the syringe was wearing off. He walked towards the market place, glimpsing himself being slapped over and over by Gelana, his childhood crush. He walked up to the stall and looked at his mother, working there for all of her New Life; after all, she was the oldest person in the Velothiid. As Nels was sitting on one of the market benches, his head started to hurt more and more. He started to get dizzy, and as he looked around, felt as though the reflections were becoming more and more transparent and the voices seemed to become more and more distant. Nels stood up and tried to focus again. He found it much easier than before as all of the reflections vanished. He looked at the fountain in the center of the room. He focused, and the fountain started working normally. As he focused even more, the water in the fountain started to flow upwards. Nels realized that due to the syringe wearing off, he was slowly losing grasp of what was "reality". He realized that he was capable of doing anything. He went up to the fountain in the center of the marketplace, and without much effort, he wade the water inside of it flow upwards. He looked up at the ceiling and this time, with a little head-pain, made the planet of Nirn into a giant guar. This made him remember something. He closed his eyes, and concentrated harder than he ever had before.

When he opened his eyes, his mother was beside him, in their kitchen, making him some of his favorite resin soup. He was on Nirn, and he felt his head start to hurt as the images began wavering, but held on as he kissed his mother and father. They walked outside into the village, and everything seemed normal, everyone was happy, and Gelana was there. He waved his mother goodbye as they went looking for a bantam guar to chase around.

As they were walking along, Gelana turned to him to say something, but as she did, Nels felt a ringing noise in his head as everything stopped to a halt. Nels could not focus, but he was still in the same place. The smile on Gelanas face began to fade, as did all of her features. All of the details around him began to disappear, and suddenly, with a screeching noise, everything began moving again. However, there was green light smudging everything, and as Gelana began talking, her voice was an almost unrecognizable screech, and Nels fell down, his head hurting immensely. However the ground beneath him was smudged and he began sinking. He screamed, but Gelana was now just one giant smudge in front of him. Before he sank, Nels saw everything around him fade as he was ripped into his two basic components, his AE and his TEL, and they joined the infinite current of data that is the Dreamsleeve.