Chapter One: A Peaceful Life...?

In the year 20xx, on Earth, in the small city of Kunming, China, an indistinct woman was walking about her day. She walked past a store getting robbed by young men with loaded guns and did nothing. She wasn't a hero, she's not even the main character of the novel! And just like everyone else, all she could do was gawk and stare when a mysterious and otherworldly crack had appeared in the sky on that ungodly day. This crack was quite small at first, definitely only a few feet in length, but it's length soon stretched to dozens of feet and started getting wider and wider until it looked like a vertical eye stationed in the void, as if it was looking down on everyone around it with disdain and disgust.

Everyone present had a fair amount of common sense, even those young boys robbing the local grocery store; I mean really... groceries? But even they knew this much: Giant scary hole in the sky? Run. Run and run and scurry and sprint and scramble away as fast as possible 'til that ominous feeling of death dissipated from your mind and was never seen again. But no matter how far these people ran, that sense of foreboding welled up in their hearts and stuck itself right in the deepest part of their minds. Nobody knew why though, no. It was actually quite the opposite. That disgusting lack of knowledge, that every being who ever was, sought to get rid of was exactly why this situation was so terrifying. This was a type of event that had never occurred in the history of humanity before, and it definitely wasn't something they knew how to deal with.

As these people scurried about and racked their brains for a short term solution, the hole that had been stabbed in the sky slowly continued to grow after its short growth spurt, and it seemed to stabilize in the air, as if it was trying to get nice and comfortable.

___

The world, for the most part, was a peaceful place nowadays, with no large scale wars or devastating fighting going on. In fact, many people spent their nights just like this family of three were in the suburbs of Illinois, America. There were two sons and a mother, sitting down at their dining-room table, enjoying a nice home-cooked meal of fried rice and chicken that the mother had prepared.

The younger son had just finished up his freshman year of high school and had just recently turned 15. Despite his young age, he was built more like a college athlete than anything else. He had broad shoulders with thick ropes of muscle winding down his arms with roadmaps of veins on his hands and forearms. A waist that slimmed down in comparison to his shoulders, but by no means would be considered skinny. He had the large legs of a football player and weighed almost 190lbs despite only being 5'9. He had blonde hair, piercing bluish-green eyes, dark and slightly bushy eyebrows, and a little bit of stubble down his jawline and across his upper lip. This young man's name was James Conor Hendrickson

The older brother, having recently gotten out of college, was substantially taller than James, standing at 6'1. He was a very smart man but carried a very haggard aesthetic and vibe with his long shaggy hair, an unkept beard, and loose clothes that didn't cost too much. He was often misjudged to be a slob at first glance. He was fit, but not as ridiculously built as his younger brother. This was because although he did enjoy sports, he was much more of a scholarly person. That being said, his little brother had a pretty good record in school himself. This young man's name was Kevin Dennis Hendrickson, and did most of the family's odds and ends jobs, mainly because his mother was now getting old, and his younger brother was typically irresponsible.

The three had decided to have a family dinner together for no other reason than the fact that they wanted to enjoy the evening with each other for the first time in a while. They weren't an exceptionally close family, but they did know how to appreciate spending time together. With a current pandemic sweeping the globe, they had two choices: be alone, or spend time with family.

James had finished his meal far earlier than his mom and brother. as a serious athlete, he had a far larger appetite than anyone else in the house. With his meal finished, he simply sat on the couch looking into the corner as if he was spacing out. He had a bad habit of letting his eyes wander and people would often assume he was simply daydreaming, but in reality, he was just listening to the television in the background, in other cases, he would be eavesdropping on people, observing the room around him, or just thinking about something he found important. He had always seemed absentminded and air-headed, but the fact was he had been paying more attention than anyone else around him. He was just attentively listening to news reports when the reporter's sentence got cut short.

"to see-... Uhm, okay?... This just in, there is an unidentified object floating in the air the city of Kunming China, our scientists have looked at data provided and they have since dubbed it a 'spatial rift', here are some officials who know more on the issue..." The female reporter's delicate voice trailed off as two new screens showed up on the television, pushing her video to the side. One pictured a bulky older man in standard military uniform, while the other pictured a young girl in protective glasses and a lab coat.

The young girl spoke, "From what we have gleaned through testing, it's almost as if there's a gap in space surrounding this rift, and we have seen movement on the other side, so we can only assume that passing through it leads somewhere. However, we are unable to pass through, leading us to believe it is a one way to our space, or impassable. To elaborate on this 'gap in space', the spacetime continuum operates as if the space around this rift isn't supposed to be there, as if it was wedged in between two slices of our plane of existence." The expert trailed off as if waiting for someone else to speak.

The militaristic old man, who the reporter quickly elaborated on, saying he was a general, took this as his queue to add his story into this report, "Every time we've flown or hurled an object near this thing, it just warped around it, avoiding entering a certain range. If I had to describe what it looked like, I could only call it a three-dimensional funhouse mirror..." the old man trailed off, seemingly frightened by the object he was currently describing. The reporter took this as an opportunity to change the subject, seemingly knowing that there was no more useful information to waste time on.

"We will come back to this topic when we have more information or any relevant updates. Now we will continue towards our regularly scheduled program," The reporter heaved a light sigh of relief as if she was waiting to go back to the normal, robotic portion of her job.

James realized that he had been holding his breath for some time and finally let himself exhale. He looked over, only to see that his family was still eating. He didn't know why, but this rift gave him a creepy, ominous feeling that sent chills down his back. Of course, the event itself was enough to creep anyone out, but James felt as if this was foreshadowing, as if it was preluding something big, and not knowing what it lead to was seriously scaring the shit out of him.

Although somewhat unnerved, James put on an indifferent face and stood up. "I'm going to bed, goodnight guys," he called out to his family in a lazy tone, trying his best to keep from sounding suspicious.

"Goodnight!" His mother replied.

"Yeah, goodnight," Kevin replied with less enthusiasm

James reminded himself to walk to his bathroom first and take care of himself, brush his teeth, use the bathroom, etc.... Afterward, he took a good look at himself in the mirror, deciding whether or not he should pose and take a mirror pic for his best friend; she always loved when he did, and everyone thought that they should date from how close they were as friends, but soon this wouldn't be of much importance.

The young man soon left the bathroom and walked himself across the hall into his bedroom, where he fell back onto his bed. He waited for a few minutes to hear the plates clank and drop into the sink, for his TV to turn off, and eventually for the very subtle sounds of light switches flicking off. Knowing that everyone was settled down and sound asleep, James reached for his phone. He turned it on and unlocked it to open his search engine. "There's gotta be more going around about this damn thing by now..." he trailed off and mumbled to himself as he searched for more information about the spatial rift. He read through every article that he came across on it, but there was no new information regarding the crack in space. There were plenty of conspiracies and assumptions going around, most of which made no sense, which was almost a standard for the internet in this time. He kept refreshing his page, hoping that something new would come up but to no avail. When he was about to give up, two new articles had appeared at once! Wait, no, one was a pop-up advertisement for new summer shoes, but the other one was a real article! James clicked on quickly, he had to figure out just what about this had him so freaked out...