Chapter 2: Hello (New) World

“Augh!” James let out a grunt as he tried to open his blurry eyes. His body was wracked with pain and felt as if a heavy weight was pressing him to the ground.

After a short time, his sore eyes finally opened in a teary squint, and he looked down his body at the supple, fit body of Jessy. Uncharacteristically, James took this moment to appreciate the beauty in his arms. It’s not that he’d never observed her much before but more that he’d made an effort not to.

After numerous hard past experiences, he learned not to engage in those sorts of thoughts or actions with co-workers. Now however, the world had ended, and she was pressed against his chest, how much closer contact could they have without removing their clothes?

Jessy was a fitness freak yet quite slight in build, in addition, she was somewhat shorter than James at 160 odd centimetres tall. So she could hardly be considered heavy. She had strawberry hair. Literally dyed strawberry red. So her hair had always been quite eye catching.

Her figure was well endowed with a perky rounded butt. Her face was almost unnaturally delicate and refined which was already abnormal for a trades person who made a living off hard work and hand tools.

To further add to her charms, her face had a hand full of cute freckles peppered around her cheeks and nose making her truly adorable especially when she blushed. Her hair was held in a messy bun momentarily but would usually hang loosely down her back.

Her legs were long in proportion to her body and with one of his hands placed on one of her legs he couldn’t help feeling the soft, bouncy muscles and imagining these legs wrapped around his waist as she pulled him into her embrace begging him not to pull out.

Taking this moment to indulge in looking and imagining, he soon developed a somewhat inappropriate but none the less honest reflection of his observations and fantasies. Unfortunately not more than a handful of seconds later Jessy’s eyes suddenly snapped open looking directly into his.

Somewhat startled James immediately stopped all movement. Jessy suddenly felt the rock hard protrusion reflecting his thoughts pressing against her mound through the cotton of their jumpsuits and noticed the very inappropriately placed hand that had been massaging its way up her leg towards her ass.

Her expression then very quickly went through a whole assortment of emotions instantly. From blushing profusely, confused again, what appeared to be excited at one point, then angry and wrathful. Finally, she settling on the combination of angry and wronged.

Not another second later, a resounding slap rang out as a red handprint appeared on James’ face, and Jessy had jumped up, backing away looking a like a fearful and wronged puppy. All this happened simultaneously with her blushing so much her hair and her freckles lit up like fluorescents.

It didn’t take too long until James got his bearings, stood up coughed once and looked at her with a somewhat bashful expression.

“Excellent muscle tone Jess. Ahem ... Very firm.” Maintaining his shy and innocent expression James brushed the entire matter aside and started to take account of what had just happened. The first thing he noticed now that he’d pulled his mind from the gutter was the surroundings ... or rather the complete lack of walls in his surroundings.

At this moment he was standing in a grassy field nearby a dirt road covered in weeds and grass that looked less travelled. Littering the ground around them was a random assortment of equipment, electronics and other gear that was strewn about. About 50 meters away James was the presently unconscious body of Dr Skay lying face down in the grass.

At his feet were the tool bag and backpack he had been carrying in the lab. About a kilometre from their position was the start of a tree line that slowly developed into a thick forest the further one looked. This forest was ascending the side of a mountain into the sky another 4 or 5 kilometres from his position.

On the other side of the road was a vast field of what James was assuming was some sort of grain, spreading away as far as the eye could see.

He was only ‘assuming’ mostly since he’d never seen this species of grain. It was a striking golden colour and spread like a weed would branching off thousands of times and spreading stalks up into the air.

Interestingly the stalks looked to reach nearly 5 meters into the air and from the head to the base were covered in offshoots packed with grains. James considered for a second on seeing this sight and tried to guess just how many square meters of farmland in his world would be saved by a single square meter of this world’s grain.

He guessed at least a dozen square meters. After doing this pointless calculation, he came to the realisation that he was already thinking of this as another world.

After all, he’d read plenty of fantasy and sci-fi stories before, and he wasn’t and idiot. Although he may be dreaming or this could be some type of afterlife, but he didn’t believe that to be the case.

It was all far too real, and his body still hurt far too much. So unless he’s gone through time then the only other explanation was through space and this space clearly wasn’t on Earth. After all, Earth only has 1 sun.

That’s right there are 3 suns in the sky. 1 bright yellow sun and 2 much dimmer bluish suns. He questioned his understanding of the universe when he noticed this. After all, as far as he was concerned, for those suns to be so close to be as noticeable as they were, then logically they must be relatively close to each other in space.

In other words. They should be consuming each other and engaging in the age old tradition of all massive universal bodies of mass that approach too closely to each other. In even more words they should be affecting each other’s gravity and at least be pulling unimaginably vast solar flares and flaming gases from one another. But no such event was taking place, and the suns in the sky looked as stable and ordinary as if they were each the only sun in this solar system.

‘Must be one hell of a solar eclipse when these suns fall into line.’ James couldn’t help this arbitrary thought as he was squinting at the sky.

“What the fuck!!” an angry yell sounded, and James twisted to see Dr Skay staring into the heavens with a wrathful, angry expression. His hand was rapidly flicking the side of his 15 lensed glasses.

Clearly, he was incredibly upset at not being able to explain this phenomenon. “Absolute bloody nonsense! A dream! An Illusion! Anything!” he continued to profane, mumble and wrathfully shake his fist at the sky after pinching himself a few times and slapping himself a few more.

To confuse matters even further a man came shooting across the sky from above the grain field. Or to be more accurate he was running through the air with an unusual stepping pattern, which to James looked like a chaotic mess of trying to skip and run simultaneously.

His faced immediately assumed a tired stoic look as he always did in unusual circumstances like these, as if he’d seen it all a hundred times. This was a natural defence mechanism he’d developed over the years and was a reflex for him like scratching an itch. Meanwhile, his mind was operating madly trying to decipher the current situation.