Falling Into the Unknown

I opened my eyes and glanced to the clock to my left. The glowing, blocky numerals read 1:34. I sighed. Still around seven hours until I needed to get up.

I guess I’m getting ahead of myself, ain’t I? I’m Tyler Maddox. I guess I am kind of a recluse. I mean, who goes through three years of college without making more than five friends? I guess I have my reasons, but I doubt they’d be admissible in the College Court of High Popularity. I just was never attracted to anybody around me. The only close friend I had was a complete nerd, and also a Brony, so I guess I was sort of lacking in the friendship department.

Speaking of my friend, there he was, sleeping on his bed, with his demotivational posters hanging over his bed. I’d never found out why someone could ever be attracted to a show meant for kids, but I guess they’re just crazy, in their own sort of way.

I looked around the room a bit more, and noticed nothing else wrong. Except the hallway. When I glanced over at it, I noticed a blue glow coming from it. That’s odd, I thought, I don’t think my roommate put a nightlight or anything in the hallway, so I decided to check it out.

One minute of wiggling around the bed later, I finally stumbled down the hallway before noticing the glow was actually coming from the bathroom. The door to it was half open, so I slowly pushed it the rest of the way.

My sleepy eyes suddenly opened wide. Five feet in front of me was an oval, blue… thing. I didn’t know how to describe it, except that the outside was a nice cyan and the center darkened to a navy blue. It looked halfway like a portal to some place. Wide awake now, I debated what to do. Every movie and video game I have ever played told me that going into a portal was a really, really bad idea. Eventually, I just decided to see whatever the hell was on the other side, so I went to pack up.

When I went into the living room/bedroom again, my roommate groaned slowly and turned towards me.

“Tyler,” He groaned, “What are you doing up? It’s almost two in the morning.”

“There’s a portal in our bathroom, and I am going inside of it.” I calmly stated. I had always believed in telling the truth, especially when someone wouldn’t believe you. It just made it funnier when they found out.

Sure enough, my roommate shot me the finger and turned over, rapidly falling back asleep. I quickly gathered together what I needed, writing down a small list:

1x Sa-58 Assault Rifle

4x Clips, 30 7.62x39mm Rounds each

1x G-17C Pistol

4x Clips, 17 9x19mm Rounds each

1x Bag of various attachments for both weapons

2x Water Bottles

Woodland MARPAT (Camouflage BDU worn by Marines, a gift from my father)

A Ham Sandwich (Must not forget that)

My laptop inside of a small bag, along with earbuds and a thumb drive (Don’t ask me why)

A pair of Binoculars with up to 20x zoom

A sleeping bag

Finding myself ready, and ridiculously armed, I head down the hall. Some people might be asking, why do you have a gun, let alone two? Well, even though the university might not allow them, there is no way I’m going into a building full of hormonal ‘young adults’ without some form of protection. Also, I like shooting, and that’s all the excuse I need. People might also ask why I’m jumping into a portal to an unknown place, and with weapons at that. Well, it’s 2 o’ clock in the morning, I have a strange portal in my bathroom, and I think it’s good to assume that the best way to go through it would be with a gun at the ready.

I padded down the hall, wearing a pair of blue jeans, a green shirt, and a camouflage-pattern coat. No matter what happens, I’m ready. The blue oval stood in front of me. In retrospect, I don’t know why I jumped into it screaming. Probably because I was still slightly off from the five hours of sleep I had gotten, or maybe I thought it was a dream. Which leads us to the present.

-=-=-

The moment I went through the surface of whatever it was, I instantly felt a momentary pressure on my body before I felt it all go away, and I found myself falling…

… Straight into the ground, five feet down. I picked myself up and dusted myself off. I looked around for any sign of the portal thing, before finding it floating off  the ground, ten feet above me. At least I knew I could get back, when I wanted to. Suddenly, it winked out. I couldn’t believe it. Apparently, there was no going back. Taking a deep breath, I took a look at my surroundings.

I was in a mixed forest. It didn’t seem too dense, so I had to assume I was still on the planet. Either that, or this place had conditions remarkably similar to Earth’s. I took a deep breath, and found that I didn’t fall to the ground instantly. That would’ve been something I could have thought about before I entered the portal, now that I thought about it.

I decided to head off in an arbitrary direction, defined as right in front of me. I slowly made my way through the forest, moving past tree after tree. There wasn’t much in the way of underbrush, so I had quickly made a mile within ten minutes. Lo and behold, two minutes after that I found a dirt trail. Thanking whatever luck that I apparently had, I followed along it, always staying at least twenty feet away from it, just in case something decided to come down it.

I mentally cursed whoever designed this forest. With the thin ranks of trees, if someone heard me, they would be able to see me by the time they got within twenty feet.

The trees ahead were thinning out, signaling that I was coming to some type of clearing. I peered around the brush and found myself staring at something I never expected to see. I was on a small rise of several hundred feet, looking down on a place I knew about because of my roommate.

I was apparently staring at Ponyville.

Calming down my rapid breathing, I found myself wondering how the hell this had happened. This place couldn’t exist, and for a moment I found myself wondering if I was hallucinating. No, I definitely wasn’t. I was too awake now for that. Going on one knee, I took out my binoculars and bumped them up to their maximum setting.

The town zoomed into view. Little hors-… Ponies, I corrected myself , were standing and moving around inside of the town. I esteemed the population at somewhere around 800. Even worse, from what I knew of the show, the supposed ‘Elements of Harmony’ or something like that lived in the town. From what I knew, they were some type of ‘magical’ super weapon. Just great. The best thing to do now would be to sit tight and wait for an answer for all of this to come to my head. Moving back twenty feet into the forest, I found a small place where three trees met, forming an alcove. I pulled out my sleeping bag, laid my pack on the ground, and nearly jumped inside of it.

From what I could see, the sun was just setting. I laid my head back, drawing comfort from the softness of the sleeping bag. I slowly closed my eyes, and drifted off.