Depths of Aegir PREVIEW

Depths of Aegir

When I say the bunker reeked, I mean it REEKED.

Anyway, when I ripped open the door, I saw the most confusing scene ever before unfold before my eyes; my dad was trying to throw his musty, rarely washed, bed sheet over a jury rigged generator to put out an already spreading fire, to which his smoke signals ended abruptly in more flames than smoke. I wanted to laugh, but I genuinely felt sorry for him.

On my left, the flames danced from machine to workbench to console to tool cabinet, laying waste to all his hard work that he never got patented because he was a grade A hermit, and so was I. I rushed forward, remembered my safety training from my summer job as a lifeguard and from the years on the internet, and shot my foamy white load from the fire extinguisher at the fire, no sexual joke intended.

The fire seemed to all try to converge to the one most secluded location, which held a contraption my dad completed around six or seven months ago. It was a large cylindrical machine, with a sliding glass door on the front and blinky lights and buttons on the back. Falling over the glass, from the bottom and top and extending a foot all around it, was this space mobile thing with large orbs instead of planets that supposedly swung around it.

I still didn't know what eighty percent of my dad's contraptions did, and now that I look back upon it I wish I spent more time with him. I do know that one little robot he created would pass small dining condiments across the table to whoever it commanded.

Through my dad yelling gibberish, (I think it was Elvish from Lord of the Rings) and me trying to contain the fire, a large portion of the ceiling fell through and crushed the stairs, and believe me when I tell you they were the flimsiest things on Earth. Every time you walked on them, you almost had to wear a safety harness to prevent from falling off, and they creaked so much you wanted to go deaf to prevent constant, never ceasing creaking to settle into insanity. Well, we would've gotten the stair fixed years ago, but we're very lazy, and being lazy kills, literally.

Since my dad never really like the outside world, we didn't have anyway to call 911 for help, and I don't think the local fire department would respond quick enough to emails. But what really brought a tear to my eye was the fact that his super beefy, twelve thousand dollar PC was melting under the heat of the flames.

After the stairs collapsed, my dad dropped the hammer he was cradling, tossed the screwdriver he was fighting the fire with and let out the most rated R slew of curse words even a sailor's mum wouldn't be proud about.

Once he stopped adding points to his "I'm Going to Hell" meter, he spun around, eyes wider than a Giant Squid's, with each one brimming with tears of fear and loss. He dashed across the concrete floor to where I stood, and scooped me into a big hug that caused me to stop giving the fire a good fighting. "I'm not going to lose you too!" he shouted over the roaring cracking of the flames.

He started pushing and shoving me toward the tube-mobile-machine-thing, and I hobbled along.

"Dad!" I blurted, "We can stop the fire! Dying is absurd!"

"Sorry Alex, but there's no time," he said, barely audible by the flames and the noises he made while choking back tears. As he spoke, the ceiling started to crumble, with small pieces of the plaster falling down on us.

His shoving stopped by the tube and he said "Here, take these," as he handed me five small pentagonal coins. They each had five small pentagonal holes, and an engraved five pointed star, with each vertex touching the pentagons. Whoever made these coins loves the number five.

"Just two of those should get your to Aegir," he paused momentarily to let this foreign information process, but as soon as he stopped, he continued with "Each one is worth two hundred dollars in today's money, so use them wisely."

"What? Where am I going? What are these? What is Aegir?" I questioned, obviously not putting that one second of information processing he has blessed me with to use. After he heard this, he smiled a cold, dry smile, filled with slowly falling tears, sorrow, and absolute dread. For him to even be smiling in his state of fear, was astounding.

Then he pushed me into the tube.

"This is a time machine, and i'm going to send you a few hundred years into the future!" he shouted, not realizing that he could've sent me forward a few hours or possibly a day, just to avoid the flames.

"No! What about you?"
"I'll be fine Alex," he replied, letting my name roll slowly off his tongue as if he would never say it again.

"No! You'll die!"

"And I've already come to peace with it."

"Dad, stop being so morbid!" I shouted as he started pressing buttons and flipping switches on the closest console, which happened to be secluded from the others and not on fire. "No Dad! I can't afford to lose you too!"

"Neither can I," he whispered as he opened a hatch and his hand hovered a large glowing red button, the ones you find in military movies that launch nukes or something else.

His tears fell upon his hand, and he faltered for a moment before rearing his hand back, and pressing the button so hard, I could see the plastic crease from the force of his hand. He quickly spanned the four feet from the console to the time machine, and closed the front hatch. He placed his hand on the the glass, and so did I, symbolizing our final moments together.

The mobile like arms started spinning the glowing orbs around, slowly at first, but hiking it up after a few seconds to the point that my brilliant, genius, creative Dad, moved away to avoid being clunked on the head. As he stepped back, he smiled again, the one of fear, and sorrow, and the tears began to flow freely from his eyes, their salty embrace dampening his dry skin.

"NOOO!" I shouted as as the orbs spun faster, enveloping me in a swirl of baby blue and white.

"Goodbye, my son," he mouthed, before a quite sizeable plaster chunk fell from the ceiling and knocked him out of my decreasing viewport. The swirls of baby blue and white turned dark as night before enveloping me, knocking me unconscious and sending to only God knows when.

Before I forget, my recently deceased father was Albert Rook, and I'm Alex, Alexander Rook, your everyday quiet nerd of a teenager who was orphaned and sent through space and time within an hour of being awake, on the morning of December 7th. A day that will truly live in infamy.