Chapter 4

Conor was on the ground- screaming like crazy. His eyes stung as if someone had splashed acid on them. As the panic subsided, Conor suddenly realized that the weight of the dog on him was gone. He slowly opened his eyes, but they stung even more and closed them again.

With closed eyes, he reached beside him and grabbed a bottle of water that was attached to his suit. He opened the bottle, squinted his eyes a little, and poured out the contents of the bottle onto his eyes. Slowly, the stinging went away and he opened his eyes.

Conor sat up, gasping hard while his eyes re-adjusted themselves. He looked around to see where the dog went to but he couldn't see it anywhere. Suddenly, he noticed that his hands were covered in dust. Grey colored dust. The exact same grey that the dog had been like.

Conor was pretty much dumbfounded by the thing he saw in his hands. He ran his fingers through the dust- it felt light, smooth, and somewhat soft. He brushed the dust away from his hand and stood up, still wondering what just happened.

He continued on his mission and started to walk around to see what it was like in the reality. Pretty much all things were the same as on Earth. Only the sky was different- or is it? Conor felt like something else was seeming different. It seemed obvious but he couldn't work out what it was.

It was while he was crossing a road when it happened. A big lorry zoomed right past him and had missed him by inches. Conor wondered why he hadn't noticed that coming since he was always a very attentive person when crossing roads. He relied on feedback from his ears to hear if a vehicle is approaching and whether to wait or not

'My ears, yes. That's it!' Conor exclaimed as he realized the other different thing. It was sound. He couldn't hear anything anymore. He remembered hearing the meows of the animal but that was the last thing he heard.

That doesn't really make sense since sound had traveled to his ears before- but they are not now.

'Does that mean this whole place is like a vacuum, and the open hole had let some air in, that's why I could hear for a while?' Conor asked himself. Not knowing what to make of the situation, he wrote down his observations in a notebook.

But calling the place a vacuum also wouldn't make much sense because he should have died by now. A vacuum would cause his lung tissues to expand, which would force lethal air bubbles into his blood vessels and then into vital organs.

Conor tried not to think too much about this vacuum thing and focused on his mission. To bring seeds back. His best bet was to go to a garden or somewhere with plenty of fruit trees. And then a farm, for crop seeds.

Conor walked around the place and randomly plucked fruits and put them in his small backpack as a reserve. After around three hours of walking and plucking, he stopped and took off his backpack to see how many fruits he has to get the seeds.

To his total confusion, the backpack was completely empty except for a pile of dust at the bottom. Conor was horrified. It seemed like everything he touched here turned into dust. It was the animal earlier. Now the fruits.

He began to brainstorm a way to smuggle in fruits and seeds into Earth before they turned to dust. After a while though, he had no idea what to do so he just got up and walked back to the location of the hole. His mind was racing. He had failed in his mission.

To his utter terror- the hole wasn't there anymore. Conor did everything he could, including jumping on the spot of the hole, diving headfirst, and even attempting to drill through the road with a jackhammer.

None of his efforts really worked so he just gave up hope and decided to wait a few moments until hopefully, the hole comes back.

And he waited-