Lost and Stranded
Blindness. That was the only thing Rizal felt as he regained consciousness. His head throbbed, and his ears rang. The pungent smell of ozone still lingered in his nose. Slowly, he opened his eyes, but all he saw was blinding white.
"Prof... Professor Indri?" he called out with a hoarse voice.
No answer. Only the echo of his own voice returned from the void.
Rizal tried to get up, but the sharp pain in his head forced him to lie back down. He groped around, searching for something to hold on to in the confusing white space.
Walls? Floor? Everything felt the same. Smooth, cold, and... endless.
"Where am I?" he murmured, panic beginning to creep into his mind.
Suddenly, a flicker of color appeared in the distance. A small blue dot that slowly grew larger, approaching, and morphing into something familiar.
A tesseract.
The four-dimensional geometric object rotated slowly before him, projecting three-dimensional shadows that shifted and changed endlessly. Rizal was transfixed, hypnotized by the impossible dance of light and color.
A voice, faint yet clear, sounded in his mind.
"Calm. You are safe."
Rizal gasped. That voice... where was it coming from? There was no mouth, no clear source of the sound. It was as if the voice came from the space itself.
"Wh-where is Professor Indri?" Rizal forced the words out of his dry throat.
The tesseract spun faster, its shadows dancing wildly.
"She... is not here. You are separated."
"Separated?" Rizal's panic intensified. "What do you mean? Where is she? How do we get back?"
Silence. The tesseract slowed down, its colors dimming.
"I... don't know. I am only... a bridge."
"A bridge? A bridge to where?"
"To higher dimensions. To a place where time and space are not as you understand them."
Rizal was silent. He was stranded in the fourth dimension, separated from Professor Indri, and speaking with... a tesseract? This felt like a nightmare, or maybe... a dream come true. A dream he and Professor Indri had long pursued.
He stared at the tesseract with newfound determination. If this object was the key to understanding the fourth dimension, to finding Professor Indri, and to returning to their world, then he had to figure out how to 'talk' to it.
His journey had just begun.