Chapter Text
Many kids are content with going to school, playing sports, and generally living a normal life. The most worrying things in their life are how they will get a passing grade on the next test, and who has a crush on who. I, however, am far from normal. I haven’t seen another living human for as long as I can remember, and a magic dog that only shows up occasionally is a poor substitute. I have seen things that would send any normal kid running for their mommy.
As you will probably be able to tell by the end of my story, I am in a bad position, but maybe I should back up a few days, to when all of this started. This is the story of how I (almost) died.
Bzzzzt! Bzzzzt! I groaned and rolled out of bed, attempting to smash the alarm clock but missing entirely. Thud. The lamp that I had specially designed to shine constellations instead of steady light went crashing to the floor. I sighed and watched several other of my projects collapse under the onslaught of the starry projector, pinpoints of light bouncing around the walls. However, for just the almost inevitably daily occasion that something fell from my lofty bed, I kept an extendable grabber close at hand. I carefully maneuvered the claw hand through the chaos of my room and snagged the lamp before it could cause too much damage.
“I really need to move that lamp,” I thought, setting it down on my table. I added that to my list of things to do, but my agenda was already full of completing inventions, finishing writing books, and getting around to exploring the jungle outside my house. With a growl from my stomach, I realized that I had so much on my plate last night that I had forgotten to eat.
I slipped my notebook of schematics and ideas, with my name, Soul, into my pocket and slid down the ladder to the floor of my room. Picking my way around machines, both completed and still in progress, I stepped onto one of the many white telepads that provided instant access to the maze of rooms in my house. The raised circular pad had a strange symbol on it, like an atom without a nucleus, and I had spent hours staring at it in various places. For some reason, it kept popping up, and I had no explanation for it. Shaking my head, I stepped on the platform and a green haze surrounded me as I was whisked away to the kitchen. For a minute, I hung in limbo, and then the black faded to green, and soon the kitchen came into focus.
The kitchen was unlike any other in the normal world. Metallic cubes, about a metre tall and pure white, like the telepads, were lined up against one wall. Each one had the atom symbol in one corner and another, larger symbol identifying its purpose. Several were obvious, like the cooker having a flame and the freezer having a snowflake, but others were more cryptic, such as a series of interlocking triangles and squares on the holographic archive of recipes and foods. It took me a while to figure out exactly what all the gadgets did, but after living alone in the house for as long as I could remember, using them had become natural. Several of the cubes lay half-dismantled in an attempt to learn how they worked. Some of them I had entirely destroyed for parts, before I discovered the hidden stockpile of spare materials in the basement.
I scrolled through the dial on the linked cupboards, denoted by their odd pattern of squares, and selected some cereal. Immediately, a cardboard box appeared in a green flash. I also selected a jug of milk from the freezer, which flashed into existence just like the cereal. A long time ago, I had tried to figure out where the machines kept their storage, but even after prying some apart, I found no solution. The most likely answer that I could come up with was that they worked similarly to the telepads, and the food was all stored somewhere else. I just hoped that the machines didn’t zap the food out of someone else’s refrigerator.
After eating my cereal and staring out the huge floor-to-ceiling windows at the seemingly impenetrable forest of trees far below and the volcano beyond for a while, I snapped back into reality and started towards the telepad that led to my room. Halfway to the telepad, I noticed a white shape watching me from the corner of my eye. I tried to turn my head slowly and get a better look, but before I could, it vanished in the same unearthly green teleportation that food and other objects occasionally did. Shrugging, I turned back to the telepad and zapped myself into my room.
The white shape that I had seen was a constant companion and guardian around the house. Most of the time, it vanished before I got a good look at it, but lately it seemed to be warming up to me. Long ago, I had a hazy memory of pointed ears watching over me, and now that I thought about it, whenever I had gotten myself into a dangerous situation, it had been watching to be sure that I made it out. Soon, I saw the being waiting for me at the top of a pile of inventions and blueprints, and for the first time in recent memory, I saw what it actually looked like.
Sharp ears stuck straight up out of a furry head. I was surprised to see that it was a dog, and immediately my thoughts drifted to, man’s best friend, despite never hearing it before. A small tuft of fur was swirled up, but other than that, its coat was smooth. The dog looked similar to a German Shepherd, but it was pure white, its eyes miniature black holes. Looking into them, time suddenly ground to a halt. Scenes of brilliant stars and swirling galaxies flashed before me, but before I could react, the creature vanished in a crackle of green light and yellow electricity.
I blinked and shook my head, trying to clear the momentary trance of memories that weren’t mine and suddenly only one word was left burning in my mind. “Alexander…” I muttered to myself, trying to remember the names of any famous people named Alexander. Alexander Graham Bell, famous for research into speech, creator of the telephone. Alexander Fleming, creator of penicillin. Alexander the great, creator of an empire.
After thinking about it for a minute, I suddenly remembered that the name “Alexander” meant guardian. “Guardian,” I said out loud. Somehow, it seemed like a fitting name for the invisible protector. I ran my hand through my jet black hair and looked around, as though there would be some explanation as to what the animal actually was, and why it was here, but the boxes and half-built machines gave no answer to my unasked question.
For the next half hour, I struggled to work on a new invention that would make traveling around easier, but so far I had nothing to show for it. Finally accepting that I was not going to get anything done and was only putting off adventuring into the trees, I put down my screwdriver and got up. Several scraps of metal and wires fell to the floor, adding to the mess that was gathered around me.
I tried to clear a path back to the telepad, but boxes and machines had somehow migrated in front of it, blocking my way. Fortunately, as everything seemed to have a life of its own in my house, I knew a few other ways around. Despite being extremely well-made and futuristic, the telepads occasionally did break down, and I would have to take the stairs until they were fixed. Today however, the stairs were not an option.
Something, by which I mean the only other living thing in the house, Alexander, had left a pile of strange bones and artifacts from the areas of the island that I had never explored on the main stairwell, and it seemed that the only open doors led to passageways outside. In the fourteen years that I had lived here, I had never left the safety of the space around my house. Every time I wandered more than ten metres away from the house, I noticed strange shapes with claws and spines watching me from behind ominous bushes and trees. However, as it seemed that I wouldn’t be able to go anywhere except into the unknown darkness, I decided that today would be the day that I finally ventured out.
I temporarily retreated back into my room and dug out the gear that I had slowly added to over the years in preparation for this day. This gear consisted of everything that I could possibly need on my mission. A pocket sized cube with a house cut into four pieces depicted on it was one of the main tools that I put into my colorless backpack. It could place a fully pitched tent complete with cooking machines, and then pack it up again when I was finished. I also added a fire starter to the backpack, along with several cans of food and a can opener. Rope, a flashlight, a skeleton key that I had crafted, a compass, and a water bottle with an unending supply all went into the pack as well. Finally, I added my quiver to the pack and picked up my bow. As an afterthought, I also picked up the belt sheath for my twin sickles. Swinging my pack over my shoulder, I took one last look around the stockpile, pulled on my black cloak, and headed out the door.