GALACTIC

"I'm dead, aren't I," Ace mumbled to himself. "If this is the afterlife this isn't so bad."

  Unlike any other day, Ace had woken up to complete and total darkness. He was not ready to die. He had so many things to do, so many places to visit. He knew he had to go back. He had unfinished business.

Ace looked around in the void and felt like something was watching him, out of the corner of his eye.

That's impossible, he thought. There's nothing here.

Every time he turned he saw nothing. When he took a step to the side, suddenly everything shifted.

  He was in a large beautiful garden. It was summertime, but it wasn't humid. The flowers were enormous, the size of his body. He walked about and entered a fountain garden.

   He looked inside one of the fountains and saw different images. One was people, walking through the streets. Another was a family eating dinner.

Is this TV, he thought. In a fountain?

He looked in another and he saw his friend, Fenton, running. He jerked away in fear.

What is this place, he wondered. This is weird.

  A man in a suit with dark long hair was in the bright room. "Welcome back", he exclaimed. "You're just in time for tea!". He poured out tea from a fancy kettle into two cups and sat at a table made for two. It had doilies, and the table had a glass top with white wood holding it up, carved out with animals on each of the legs of the table.

Ace was confused.

The afterlife is an eternal tea party, he thought. This is not possible.

  "Where am I", asked Ace.

"Oh, you, this stuff again. All the questions" said the man. He waved his hand around, shooing away the question as if it were a pesky fly. "You've been here before!" Around him, slowly, flowers bloomed underneath the table.

"I have," Ace asked.

  "Oh yes. 3,652 times to be exact. I would figure you would be tired of this by now, but you haven't given up yet", said the mysterious man, wagging his finger at him, as if to chastise him. Ace looked even more confused. "Come, come, don't be a stranger. Come sit with me", the man exclaimed.

Ace warily walked over and sat down with the man.

  He looks kind of familiar, Ace thought. Have I really met him before?

"Oh yes, I forgot to reintroduce myself, since you know, you always forget", huffed the man. "I go by many names! I call myself Wrinkle now".

"Wrinkle" repeated Ace. "That doesn't sound like a real name."

"How rude! It is a nickname," Wrinkle insisted.

I knew that Ace thought.

  "My name is Acheus," he mumbled. "I go by Ace."

"Oh yes, I know you very well Ace", exclaimed Wrinkle. "We've had so much time to get to know each other from your many, many visits. But every time you leave you never remember."

   "How come I never remember anything", asked Ace. He was uncomfortable. This man spoke to him as if it were nothing, to come again as if they really had met before.

"Well, that's just a side effect. I rewind everything, you get another do over. Friends still alive, another chance at life".

Ace suddenly remembered that his friends were dead. That he was dead. He suddenly shot up from his seat.

  "I need to go back! Send me back", he yelled. Wrinkle groaned. "Not this nonsense again. You've just arrived this time. We haven't even discussed the important stuff!"

"I don't care", shoutedAce. "My family and friends need me. Send me back!"

   Wrinkle sighed. "I can't send you back. I can only rewind what happened. Since everything is rewound you never remember."

Ace looked crestfallen.

"Sorry. You should just give up. It's a fool's errand".

  Ace looked like it was the end of the world. Technically it was, only his.

"No, no. Send me back. I'll do anything. Please. I can't leave them if they're dead."

Wrinkle chuckled. "Oh don't worry. You do not have to convince me. I know you will be back. You always come back."

He sighed, pain on his face and in his voice.

I wish he would just stop, Wrinkle thought. This is getting ridiculous.

"You are crazy. This is crazy, this is a -``

''Hallucination and none of this is real, and I need to get back home", Wrinkle said, finishing his sentence. He rolled his eyes in boredom and continued with his tea.

"Needs more sugar," he grumbled to himself.

Ace was now angry that this man was more worried about his tea than the fact they were stuck in a bottomless void, and then suddenly a garden, as if it were all a part of the natural order. Wrinkle suddenly was overcome with shame.

"Forgive me I've forggotten my manners," Wrinkled mumbled. "You should get tea first since you're older."

"I'm eighteen," Ace said. "You look older than me."

"Technically we're both older than we look sir."

Wrinkle wriggled his nose and a little teacup appeared, steaming hot and ready.

Cautiously Ace stared at the tea cup, afraid of what else Wrinkle would do. Ace had never seen an ability of this magnitude.

Is this God, he wondered. Am I really dead?

"Ace I can't drink until you've had some," Wrinkle complained. "Please."

Ace nervously drank some of the tea, and then he himself believed it needed more sugar as well. He finally started to relax and put some sugar in his tea, using the tiny siler spoon. He awkwardly held the porcelain tea cups while the stranger who knew him so well held it with ease.

"Why can't you just go back in time and have me remember everything," Ace asked.

Wrinkle groaned and rolled his eyes. Careful to make sure his elbows never touched the table he wiggled his fingers and a porcelain plate with an eclair appeared. He took of his gloves while staring intently at the eclair, as if he were about to perform surgery and not eat it.

"I am so tired of answering your frivoulous questions," Wrinkle shrilled.

"They're not! Why can't I remember!"

"Because," Wrinkle said groaned. "You cannot take the memories from one timeline to another. The only way you could go back and keep your memories is if Infiniti took you."

Ace grimaced at the name and he tried to get the bad taste of out his mouth by taking sips of tea.

"If you do go back with him, you'll meet your other self, and simply, one of you will die. The version of you, right here, would be lucky to live. Usually you just die when you try that and everything begins again."

"Have I really been here that many times," Ace whispered.

Wrinkle quickly finished his bite of his eclair and nodded vigourously, excited, thinking that he finally remembered.

"You've been here so often, that in some reiterations the gods had a betting pool on you," Wrinkle grinned. "Quite fantastic!"

Ace's hands started to shake, his fate now sealed, trapped in the game of the gods who thought his life was a mere bet. He put down the tea cup and his throat somehow was very dry even though he just took a sip.

"I have no choice but to go back, don't I," Ace mumbled.

"You can stay with me," Wrinkle pleaded. "We can finally get to know each other."

Ace was terrified suddenly. He looked into the man's eyes and suddenly realized something horrific. He started to cry, and Wrinkle mistook it for tears of joy. He tried to take Ace's hand but he pulled away.

Ace grabbed his hand as if it were burned, as if the very touch of the overly friendly stranger would somehow burn through his skin and into his very soul.

"Don't look at me like that," Wrinkle spat. "I'm just trying to be nice."

Ace sobbed even harder.

"Why do you look like my dad?"

"Does it matter? You won't remember any of this anyway."

All manners and demeanor had been lost. Wrinkle was always polite to his guests, many of them that wandered through on accident, and all who had decided to leave. This one however was special, and he wanted him to stay.

"I don't want to be here," Ace whispered. "I don't want to see his face with your voice."

"Don't say that," Wrinkle screamed. "Don't you ever say that!"

Ace was even more terrified as the face of his father, with the voice of a stranger contorted and twisted. Wrinkle bared his teeth and promptly pushed the table onto the ground. Food, tea, and porcelain shattered everywhere and Ace shut his eyes tight refusing to see more.

Wrinkle's rage subsided when he saw Ace, sitting in the chair and trembling.

"Don't worry," Wrinkle mumbled. "I can fix this. Open your eyes."

Ace did as he was told and everything was back as to what it should be.

"I'll send you back," Wrinkle whispered. "Just don't come back again please. This hurts. You never remember anything."

"I'm sorry," Ace shouted. "You can't expect me to like you when I just met you!"

Everything around them started to fade and Ace gripped the sides of his chair in fear, not knowing what the familar stranger would do next.

"See you soon," Wrinkle sighed. "Tell Ibis I said hi."

Ace clung onto the sides of the chair for dear life as he fell down bellow, the garden no longer real, the illusion gone. He tried not to scream or cry as somehow he felt he was approaching the ground when he looked down, but he saw nothing below.

He blacked out.