She's My Whole World

Will could still remember it like it was yesterday. A year ago he was living his dream life. Working together with the love of his life, doing important research together, and they were so close to making their big breakthrough. He wanted to get married in the spring, but Julie insisted that they wait until after the big test of their dimensional tunnel.

That day, Will and Julie stood manning the computers, while their colleague Samuel described their invention to the audience of scientists and military men in attendance. Will initiated the startup sequence, and nothing happened. The computer just displayed an error. Samuel did his best to keep the crowd distracted while they troubleshooted. Will was so busy frantically rebooting the system, that he didn't notice that Julie had left the safety of the booth.

"What's taking so long?" Samuel said, poking his head into the booth.

"I've just rebooted the system," Will said. "Should be coming online now."

"Where's Julie?" Samuel asked. They both looked up to see Julie in the test chamber hooking up a connector that had become disconnected. At that instant, the machine activated, a glowing wall of light appearing between the gate pylons. The audience began to chatter excitedly, but they were interrupted by Julie's scream. She was holding onto a corner of a metal desk to keep herself from being sucked into the portal which was rapidly drawing in everything that wasn't nailed down.

"Shut it down! Shut it down!" Will screamed. He tried to stop the portal, machine with the computer, but it was taking too long.

"I know!" Samuel ran out of the room to flip the emergency shutoff, but just as he reached it, Julie lost her grip and was pulled into the gaping maw of the dimensional portal. A split second later, the power in the lab went out, plunging the room into darkness. The portal was closed and Julie was gone.

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Since that day, Will had worked tirelessly to restore and improve the portal device. It was an uphill battle. Julie was the brains of the operation. Will had mostly taken care of the programming, and left the theoretical physics to Samuel and Julie. The fact that this project had killed its lead researcher in front of a crowd of bigwigs didn't make keeping funding any easier. It had taken one year. One tireless year of grueling work to get to where they were right now.

Will and Samuel stood before the new and improved dimensional tunnel at a little after midnight. They had special permission to do late-night research, but nobody knew they were really here to use the equipment without permission.

The machinery hummed to life and power surged into the improved portal generator. The air between the pylons of the gate rippled and glowed. A shimmering wall appeared between them. "89...95...100%, it's stable." Samuel said as he watched the readout on his computer screen.

At Will's command a probe was moved towards the portal. "I'm detecting gasses coming through the portal. Pressure within safe limits. Oxygen, nitrogen," he read from the probe's output. "It's a little high in carbon dioxide and water vapor, but it should be breathable"

Samuel turned to look at his colleague. "You're sure you want to go through with this?" he said. "The portal is a lot more stable than it was last time, but we still have no idea what's beyond it. Think about this, it's been a year. How could she still be alive?"

"I don't know, but I have to try," said Will. "I'll never forgive myself if I don't."

Samuel stared at the shimmering portal. "You know even if this doesn't end badly, we're probably both going to get fired for this right? If it were anyone else I wouldn't have any part in this."

"I understand," said Will. "Just man the tether, and reel me in if I tug three times or I run out of line. I'll only go in long enough to see what this other world is like. If it's too inhospitable, then I'll come back right away."

"Alright, don't do anything too crazy," Samuel said. He clapped his hand onto Will's shoulder. "Good luck in there."

"Thanks," Will said. He checked that his tether was secure, his backpack was on, and he had his knife at his side. He would have preferred to bring a gun, but he never would have got it past security. Taking a deep breath, he steeled himself for his first foray into the unknown world beyond the portal. He dreaded what he would find there. Visions of walking out into a rocky nothingness only to find his fiance's desiccated corpse at his feet filled his head. Will shook his head to clear away the visions. "Alright, let's do this." he stepped up to the portal, and carefully put his hand through the gate. It felt like he was putting his hand into gelatin, but as he extended his arm through, he felt a warm breeze on his hand. Feeling confident, he took a giant step through the gate.

His foot stepped into empty air. Losing his balance, Will fell through the portal, tumbling down into nothingness. He screamed in terror, but soon landed on something soft and warm. All around him he could hear horrifying noises. Squelching, slimy noises moved around in the pitch blackness. As he struggled to his feet the noises stopped abruptly. A glow appeared in the distance. It got brighter and brighter, lighting up the sky. As his eyes adjusted to the change in light, he looked around the landscape that was laid out before him.

Whatever made the horrifying noises was gone, or was it ever there to begin with. It may have been just a figment of his imagination, or a side effect of his journey between worlds. All he could see was an endless expanse of rolling peach-colored hills, stretching out in all directions. Cautiously, he took a step forwards. The ground was soft and pliable, though not so much that it was difficult to walk on. "What is this place?" He said aloud. There was no answer. He looked behind him at the portal. About fifteen feet from the ground the shimmering portal hung in the air, with his tether line disappearing into it's shifting surface.

He took a deep breath. The air here was warm and muggy. It was a little hard to breathe, but he could get used to it. He checked to make sure his gear was all still in place when he felt a presence nearby.

"W-Will, i-is that you?" Said a shaky feminine voice from behind him.

Will spun around to see Julie standing before him. Aside from being completely naked, she was just as he had hoped to find her. Her long blond hair reached to the center of her back like it did the day she went missing, and her slender body was exactly the same as Will remembered it. "Julie?"

"Will!" she exclaimed, her face lighting up with happiness. Suddenly, the ground started to pitch and shake violently. Will lost his balance and was thrown to the ground in an instant. Huge shadows suddenly loomed over him, but when he looked up, the shaking had stopped and the only thing he could see was Julie offering him, her hand.

"What the hell was that?" he asked as she helped him to his feet.

"It-it's n-nothing. J-just happens sometimes." she stammered.

"Are you alright? Is something wrong with your voice?"

"N-no. I j-just," Julie cleared her throat. "I just haven't spoken for a while. I've been stuck here for so long."

Will pulled her close. "I know it's taken me a year to get everything in place, but don't worry, I'm here now."

"A year!?" Julie said, shocked. She stepped back away from Will. "It's only been a year? That can't be. I've been here so long. All alone for so very long. It felt like a hundred years."

"A hundred years?" Will said. "I'm sure it must have felt that long."

"No, It's been much longer than a year. One time I was so bored, I counted every second in a year, all 31 million 500 thousand of them. It was barely a fraction of the time I've been stuck here."

"I see," said Will, slowly becoming concerned. "Maybe time works differently in this place."

"It must," Julie said. "You can stay a while, right? Please tell me you can stay here with me." She looked up at him with pleading eyes.

"I mean, it would probably be best if we hurried back through the portal. Now that I've found you I don't want to let this chance slip by," Will said.

"Please, just for a little while?"

Will sighed. "I guess if time really is faster here there wouldn't be any harm in staying for a few hours. I just don't want to got too far from the portal."

"Thank you," Julie said. "I'm just so excited to finally have someone else here with me. You don't know how lonely I've been." She tugged on Will's arm leading him away from the portal site. "Come on, I'll show you some place nice. It's right over this hill."

He followed her across the alien landscape. Strangely, he thought he kept seeing movement out of the corner of his eye, but whenever he looked there was nothing but an endless expanse of oddly flesh-colored hills. He focused on keeping his eyes ahead, looking at his lost lover as she let him around a particularly tall hill, but he still couldn't shake the feeling that everywhere he wasn't directly looking the ground was moving and undulating. "Here we are," said Julie. They walked around the hill to an area where the ground was pinker. There a strange sight greeted Will, a couch made up of the same peachy material as the ground near the portal, with Julie sitting on the couch waiting for him. Will blinked his eyes, and turned to look at his arm, which had been pulled along by Julie until just a second ago, but she was gone. "How did you..." he said, his mouth agape.

"Come here, sit down with me." She patted the space next to her on the couch.

"Alright," Will said, still confused as to how she got over there so fast. He sat down next to her, and she wrapped her arm around him.

Julie sighed. "I always hoped that you'd come find me someday."

"I never stopped thinking about you. I knew if I could just build a better portal device, I could find a way to save you."

"Why don't you take off some of these clothes and get more comfortable. You must be getting quite warm," Julie said, slipping a hand into Will's shirt.

"It is kind of warm here," he said. "But I really shouldn't. I don't want to take off my tether and accidentally lose our way back to the portal."

"Aww," Julie said, mock pouting.

"We really should get back. Sooner or later security is going to find out that we've activated the portal device and shut us down. Don't you want to go back home?" Will asked, turning to face her.

"I do but..." Julie trailed off.

"But what?"

"But I've changed. I'm not the same woman you knew all those years ago. When I went through that portal, something happened to me. I don't know if I can go back any more."

"What do you mean something happened to you? You look the same as you always did."

"I... It's hard to explain." Julie looked worried. "And I'm afraid you won't like the answer."

"Please, just tell me, Julie. I need to know," Will pleaded.

"Alright, I'll try. So, this dimension exists parallel to our own, just as I predicted in my research paper, but what I didn't predict was how a completely empty bubble of reality would react to coming into contact with real matter. When I came through the portal I was the only thing in this universe, and in a way I became this universe."

"What?" Will said. "What do you mean?"

Someone sat down on the other side of him on the couch. Will turned to find Julie sitting to his right. He turned back to his left to confirm that there were in fact two Julies here with him on the couch.

The second Julie spoke, "This side of the couch looked a little empty." She snuggled up next to the perplexed man.

"What's going on?" Will said. "Why are there two of you? Which one's the real one."

"Both of us are," they said simultaneously.

The Julie to Will's right continued, "These are both me. In fact, everything you see around you, is me. This couch, the ground, the sky, even the air you're breathing right now is just my breath. You are the only thing that exists in this place that isn't me."

Will looked around with a sense of growing unease. He suddenly realized that the couch had the same texture as Julie's skin. The air smelled faintly of what he remembered her to smell like. He looked up into the sky, trying to look past it. Slowly, it came into focus. Behind the endless expanse of sky there was a vast surface. He could just barely make out the details of something so immeasurably large, but it soon dawned on him that he was staring at an immense eye behind the sky.

"Th-this is insane. This can't be real." Will tried to recoil away, but the two Julies held him fast to the couch.

"Please don't go." "Just stay here with me." They begged him. A pair of arms erupted from the surface of the couch and wrapped around his legs.

Will was beginning to panic. "Stop, let me go." He struggled against the arms holding him down and eventually broke free, falling to the ground. However, something felt wrong when he scrambled to his knees. Something was missing. He felt around for his harness.

"Looking for this?" Julie said. One of her bodies sat on the couch holding the harness.

"Julie, please," Will said. "I need that to get home."

"Why can't your home be here with me now?" she asked. "Why can't you stay here with me?"

"Just give me back the harness." Will said as he moved closer. Suddenly, he dove for it, but Julie countered by melting into the couch. Phasing right through the fleshy furniture, she laughed as she took off running carrying away Will's lifeline.

"Wait! Stop!" Will yelled as he followed her, but she and his harness was nowhere to be seen. Not only that, but none of the terrain looked familiar. The portal shouldn't have been far away, but it was nowhere to be seen. "Julie! Where are you?!" he yelled, but all he heard was a soft giggle that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at the same time. Will looked around. The couch was gone, with no indication that it was ever there to begin with. With a sigh, he trudged off in the direction that he thought the portal should be.

Looking out ahead he saw a shimmer in the air that the thought was the portal and hurried towards it, but it never seemed to get any closer. Up ahead, he saw strange terrain. What appeared to be a grassy field with a forest beyond it, and the portal lay in the sky beyond the forest. Stepping into the golden grasses, he brushed his hand against it. It was stiffer and thicker than any grass he'd seen and it grew taller and taller as he went, and soon it was over his head. Will stopped to look at the grass more closely. He thought it looked strangely familiar, and it slowly dawned on him that the "grass" was actually giant strands of hair.

As he reached the end of the field, clouds gathered overhead. He felt warm raindrops fall against his skin. "How could it be raining here?" he said to himself. He tasted a drop of the rain and noted that it was salty. "Is this tears?" He asked as the rain fell more heavily. He ran for the trees, but was soaked before he could get there. Will took shelter under the trees, which were made of arms stretching out of the ground with hands for leaves.

As he rested within this strange grove, a mouth formed on the trunk of the tree near his ear. "You don't need that other world any more. I can give you anything you want here. Anything you need." it whispered.

"Julie..." Will said. He suddenly realized that the ground beneath him was sinking. Before he could escape, feminine arms burst out of the ground and groped him wherever they could. "Hey! Stop!" he yelled as they tore at his clothes. Will desperately tried to crawl out of the pit he now found himself in, but the hands wouldn't let go of his clothes. In desperation he drew his knife and was about to slash at the grasping hands, but he realized that they all belonged to Julie, and couldn't bring himself to cut them. He dropped the knife which was quickly swallowed up by the ground. Abandoning his clothes to the hands, he stripped out of the last tatters of cloth on his body and crawled out of the pit.

"Isn't this better?" said a whisper on the wind.

Will didn't want to admit it, but it had been getting uncomfortably warm. Now finding himself naked, unarmed, and without a lifeline in this freakish world, Will struggled to his feet and resumed his march. As he continued his walk through the woods, he caught glimpses of eyes on the tree trunks leering at him. They watched him hungrily as he navigated the dense, fleshy forest. The trees became closer together as he continued, their "branches" reaching down closer to the ground. Soon he had to duck under Julie's outstretched hands, hundreds of fingertips reaching out for a chance to feel his skin against theirs.

At last he squeezed himself between the last line of trees, with barely enough space to fit his body through. As he did, a pair of lips formed on the tree trunk behind him and kissed the back of his neck. He turned back to look and the mouth smiled at him. "Sorry, I couldn't resist," it said with Julie's voice.

Turning back towards his destination, he finally saw the portal ahead of him at the top of a hill. He broke into a run, cresting the hill, only to find his hopes crushed beyond. The portal actually lay in the middle of a bowl-shaped depression in the ground. 50 feet in the air, it shimmered atop a single colossal finger that reached up from the ground towards it. At the tip of the finger, dangling from the portal was his harness. He stared at it, contemplating his climbing ability. It was pointless to try, he was a scientist, not a mountain climber, he'd never be able to reach it even if Julie let him try. He sat down on the ground and sighed.

A pair of arms wrapped around him and he felt a pair of soft breasts press into his back. "What's wrong?" Julie said as she rested her head on his shoulder. "After all this time you finally come to see me, and the only thing you want to do is leave. Why can't you just stay here with me? Don't you love me any more?"

"It's not like that. I'm just scared. It's a little too much to take in right now."

Another Julie sad down to his right and leaned her head against him. "I'm sorry. I'm trying as hard as I can to be just like you remember me, but it's not easy. Dreaming of you was the only thing I had to keep myself together all these years. Now you're finally here and I..."

A third copy sat down on his left and leaned against him as well, pressing her breasts into his arm. "It's all I can do just to keep myself under control. I've just been so lonely for so long. Now that you're finally with me, I don't want to let you go. I just want to be close to you."

Will said, "I want to be close to you too. I want nothing more than for things to go back to the way they used to be, but I don't know if that's even possible any more. How in the world are we going to get you back through the portal."

"I don't think it would work," The Julie behind him said. "I felt around the portal while you were getting here. You did a great job on it, the portal is so stable, I probably could go through if I wanted, but the other side feels so fragile. If I go through the portal I might break your universe. There's just too much of me on this side."

Will shuddered at the idea that Julie might now actually be larger than the earth. No, more than that. She may actually be larger then his entire universe. "I'm sorry," he said. "Looks like I couldn't save you in the end."

"You did your best." The Julie on the left said.

As they sat there in silence Will felt the ground begin to shake beneath him. All the three copies of Julie pulled in more tightly to him. "What's happening?"

"Don't worry. I'm not going to hurt you." Julie said.

"What?" he asked as the rumbling got stronger. Will looked up to see strange movement on the horizon.