Waking Up (part 2)

Amelia pulled a small silver-grey device from her pocket.

"You might want to close your eyes for a moment."

"Why would I need to-" was about as much as Ichiro managed to get out of his mouth before reality broke.

All at once, everything around him warped and distorted. The table below him summarily vanished, and he toppled to the ground. The floor he fell onto was no longer white tile, but rough-hewn planks. No, wait, shag carpet. The faint hum of fluorescent lights disappeared as the lab itself seemed to dissolve around them piece by piece.

Within moments, Ichiro found himself sitting on dense, damp foliage, starting up at a vast canopy of trees. The air was thick with humidity and the noise of countless creatures he didn't recognize. A large drop of sweat beaded on his forehead and rolled down to the tip of his nose as he stared wide-eyed at the world around him. Unable to process more, he opened and shut his mouth several times before he finally managed to squeak out a question.

"What is this place?"

 "We're in the basement of the university. Or, more precisely, a secretly appropriated section of the sub-basement. The president of the school lets me use the space for my research, unbeknownst to the rest of the faculty. If my colleagues had any idea what I was up to, they'd probably react like the mob in Frankenstein. I can't imagine the idea that I'm casually ripping holes in space-time and jumping to other realities sitting well with them."

 "...I'm sorry, what?"

 "I said they would kill me if they knew I was in the basement of the university ripping holes in space-time, Ichiro. Try to keep up." 

"But... this isn't... " Ichiro spluttered.

"Oh, this? This is where the basement of the university would be, if we were currently in a universe that human beings ever evolved in. But it isn't. This is one of the many timelines that dinosaurs never went extinct. No dead dinosaurs, no mammal supremacy. No mammal supremacy, no people. So, I suppose you could call this the Very VERY  Late Cretaceous period."

Amelia examined something on the device in her hand and seemed to reorient herself. She walked over and offered him a hand, and he numbly let her help him to his feet.

"Come on, Itchy. Let's take a walk."

Occasionally glancing down at the thing in her hand, she led him through the foliage for several, turning here and there as necessary. As he walked, Ichiro watched in mute astonishment as a dragonfly the size of a large bird buzzed past overhead, and he couldn't help but think that it sounded a whole lot like a drone. Another pair of them buzzed past. As he watched, a dark shape high up in one of the nearby trees shifted. Ichiro froze and pointed at it just as it spread its vast, bat-like wings and dove out of the tree towards them with an ear-splitting shriek. Ichiro panicked and dropped to the ground, covering his ears and waiting for the inevitable as the creature rocketed towards them.

Instead, he heard a sharp metallic chik-CHAK, followed seconds by a deafening boom. The creature wailed and hit the ground with a meaty thump, thrashing about until a second boom left the jungle silent. Ichiro twisted on the ground enough to see Amelia casually standing over a feathered body the size of a small car, sliding slugs into the side of what he recognized from video games as a tactical shotgun. She gave him a glance.

"You good?"

He pulled himself to his feet and sidled over beside her, giving the thing on the ground a wide berth as he did so. Amelia pointed at it.

"Dermaoidea varius. Never existed in our timeline. I named it after the red air-bladder on its head," she said. She lifted the creature's neck enough for Ichiro to see it had a head like a buzzard, with a large deflated red sack hanging down below its two-foot hooked beak. "Best I can tell, it doesn't actually serve any useful function."

"Where did you get the shotgun?"

Amelia blinked.

"I'm American. Garage sale."

When the blank look on Ichiro's face told her this was not a satisfactory answer, she sighed.

"I just introduced you to a never-before-seen species of dinosaur in an alternate universe and you want to know where the gun... Never mind."

She lifted up her labcoat to reveal a holster hidden on the inside.

"Satisfied?"

Strangely enough, he was.

"Now come on," she said, "not much further."

The two of them wove through several hundred more feet of dense undergrowth until the device in Amelia's free hand beeped, and she stopped.

"Alright, hold tight."

With another press of a button, reality once again began reshaping, until within a moment, the two of them stood in what looked like an alleyway between two large buildings. Much of it was clogged with garbage bins and other things. At one end, he could see traffic. Without saying anything, Amelia walked towards the street. Ichiro followed. Once out of the alley, Ichiro recognized his apartment building across the street. There, right in front of the entryway, was a newly broken section of sidewalk cordoned off with police tape.

"That's where you hit last night in your timeline. I'd describe the mess, but I think you get the idea."

Ichiro grimaced, trying hard not to let his imagination think about it. However, after a moment something she said struck him.

"My timeline? Don't you mean our timeline?"

"No. I mean your timeline. This version of me doesn't exist in a timeline you experience."

"But I'm experiencing you now."

Amelia rolled her eyes.

"Well obviously. But you would have never experienced me had I not saved you."

"But you did. Why? And I still don't really get how."

Amelia looked at him in the same way he imagined another girl would if he called them fat.

"Why did I save you?  You're my best friend, stupid. Why wouldn't I save you? And as for how..."

She punched a button on the device, and Ichiro felt a sudden horrible sensation of being folded inside out before finding himself suddenly back on the table in the examination room with a loud pop. Thankfully, he wasn't strapped down.

"I'm going to be honest with you, Ichiro. There is no possible way for me to explain how to you in a way that you are capable of understanding. It would be like trying to explain..."

"Quantum physics to a slime mold...?"

"Exactly. ...no offense. But, I can try to give you some idea. Just... try not to freak out. The first time you experience this is going to feel very, very strange." She said, fidgeting with something on the device in her hand.

"Stranger than traipsing around Jurassic Park?" 

Amelia set the device down on the desk beside her and racked the shotgun.

"Emphatically yes."

Before he could protest, she pointed it at him and pulled the trigger.