File name: Caelum Altera. Case number: 2085 1141513151225

Trigger Warning: Sensitive topics. Mentions of physical violence, gore, or abuse, references substance abuse, and mental health topics.

There’s a quiet click, and the quiet hum from the internal mechanism of the cassette tape begins to play softly in the background. There’s a quiet shuffling as it’s placed on a surface, and someone clears their throat as they settle into their chair.

“Statement of Caelum Altera, regarding his uh… his ability to…”

“To manipulate space and time.”

“Right. Regarding his ability to manipulate space and time. Statement given on August 14th of the year 2026. Recording by Lillian Monroe, FBI head Psychologist. Caelum, would you tell us about when you found out about your powers?”

“Do you want me to tell you specifically when I found out about my powers? Or… start from the beginning?”

“You can start where you believe is best. We just want to hear your story.”

“Oh, alrighty then,” there’s the sound of someone settling deep into what squeaked like one of those rubbery leather chairs you find in malls or more “modern” establishments, “well, it all started after I was conceived. My dad skipped town before I was rudely thrust into the cold, cruel world, but my mom was quick to fill that empty space with another guy. I mean, the guy was good to her and me and whatever, so I guess it was a good thing the other guy booked it. Probably wasn’t worth getting to know anyway…”

There was a pause that lasted about 5 seconds before Caelum spoke again.

“Y’know, I really thought you’d stop me by now.”

“I did say start where you believe is best.”

“You seem real friendly.”

“Mr. Altera, if you would-”

“You can drop the formalities, Cale is fine.”

“Caelum.” She said flatly. “If you would please continue.”

Another pause.

“Okay,” he huffs softly, “okay. At first, it was just tinnitus. Nothing too bad. Y’know, the tiniest amount of pressure accompanied by a soft scream in the depths of my ear canal, like a whisper from the shadows of my mind. I’d forget about it for a while, until it synced just right with another sound or would decide to test the full extent of its vocal cords. An easy fix was to plug my ears for a minute and let it tune itself out. I don’t know how or why it worked, but it did. For a while, anyway.

Eventually, though, “The Scream” started to bang against my brain like a jackhammer as if it was trying to escape my skull. I went to the doctor when I couldn’t take it anymore and knew something was wrong. They gave me a migraine prescription and said that they couldn’t do anything until I got an EEG and a PET scan, which, of course, was months out. Though when I came back to them the next day in a mess of tears and straddling the edge of consciousness, they decided they could squeeze me in early. So in the white tube I went with all these wires stuck to my head, and out I came before being pumped with drugs and put into a darker room to help with the pain and give me some time to rest. Of course, the only thing that seemed “weird” about the scan was apparently some ‘warbling distortion around the edge of the pictures and a strange black dot about half an inch in diameter’ in the middle of my brain. But that was apparently impossible and was likely just a “mishap of the device,” because allegedly that’s normal or something. Sometimes I wonder if they had looked into it a little bit more, maybe things wouldn’t have… I dunno, exploded around me?”

“What happened after the scan?”

“They basically ruled it as just, “a really bad case of migraines,” and prescribed a much higher dose of the same prescription, scheduled online daily psychologist meetings over FaceShare, and sent me on my way.”

“Did the prescription help?”

“Actually, yeah. It helped for a while. It brought the pain further down, and slowly, I was more functional. I graduated from daily meetings to bi-weekly, then every other week, and finally, monthly visits to my primary doctor. Most of our meetings went kinda like this: He’d say something along the lines of, ‘Back again, are we? Let me guess, migraines? Problems with your vision? Seein’ double and seein’... things?’ And I’d scoff and respond with something witty or snarky like, ‘That predictable? Guess I gotta start getting creative with my symptoms to get the right drugs, huh?’

Malik was a beautiful man. What he may have lacked a bit in looks, he made up for in personality and kindness. I’ve never seen a man shine so brightly. I wish he had followed his dreams instead of settling for a nursing job at some clinic. No dig at those that work in clinics, it’s a very important workforce. It’s just… that man was somethin’ incredible. The kind that you see and just know they can change the world just by being in it.

Unfortunately, even Malik—as divine as he was—was unable to survive what exploded from within my brain.”

“What happened to him?” Lillian asked curiously.

The silence from the recording feels thick before Caelum responds. His voice is quiet and dejected, but still clear over the recording.

“Something he didn’t deserve. Something no one deserves… Next question.”

Lillian clears he throat again.

“How did your powers… manifest?”

Caelum chuckles quietly.

“Sorry, sometimes I think about how cliché it sounds.”

“What do you mean by cliché?”

“Have you ever watched any superhero or fantasy movie? Comics? Well, it basically happened like one of those villain origin stories. One minute I was walking down the street, minding my own business, and three guys jumped me. I’ll be honest, I’m not exactly a totally ‘honest’ kinda guy. I’ve had my fair share of failings. It just so happened that one of those failings was to pay back a debt I apparently owe some guy named…” A silence interrupts Caelum before he continues. “Irrelevant. I took a few hits to the mug; they were practically passing me around like a hacky sack, until finally—after a solid round—I slumped to the ground. But when I hit the ground, it felt like I hit the ground hundreds of times consecutively. When I opened my eyes, it looked like I was looking into a mirror, but in one of those fun houses where you see yourself infinitely or whatever. Except each ‘reflection’ was different. It was all different versions of myself, all different places, different races, species, all on the ground and pulverized. Hell, I couldn’t even understand what I was looking at in some of them, but I could feel that they were in the same situation as me. The scenes all disappeared pretty quickly before I could try to grasp anything I just saw, but then I realized there was no pain in my head. It felt like my head was a balloon full of quicksilver just moments ago, and now, suddenly,” Caelum makes a popping noise with his mouth, “it was gone.”

There was an abrupt sound of someone quickly adjusting in their chair and chains rattling, followed by a slow creaking of the chair fabric as someone leaned forward.

“I still felt the rest of the pain. From the punches and kicks from those guys that jumped me, but I also felt light, like I was floating, and somehow at the same time, like I was heavy enough to crush anything. I felt the rubber bottom of a shoe smash into the side of my head, and then… I honestly have no idea what happened between that kick and waking up on the sidewalk. I woke up and tightly closed my eyes and clutched my ears because I could hear… everything. I heard more sounds than I could ever remember and list off all at once, some that I don’t even think I could explain to you if I wanted to. And I felt everything. I felt the pain in my body, I felt my skin burning, I felt… bullets, and ice cold water, like I was drowning but simultaneously like I had all of the moisture in my body sucked out by something. Hell, I felt like I was having… getting intimate with someone. I could taste color, which almost sounds like the least surprising thing out of all of this. All of my senses were being turned to max; it was an impossible mix of pure ecstasy and immeasurable torture.”

Caelum chuckles, and you can hear him stand up and start pacing around the room.

“Thankfully, it all came in waves, though. I was able to pull myself to my feet and make my way to the clinic. It felt like I was having the craziest trip in the universe; in fact, I’m like 99% sure I was. While I was, for lack of a more accurate term, floundering my way to the clinic, I realized that Malik would still be there at this time. I think that fact alone was what got me there in one piece. With each step or movement, with each breath. I felt. Heard. Tasted, saw, and smelled…”

“We get it,” Lillian butted in, “You felt ‘everything.’”

“No,” Caelum laughed once and quickly plopped back into his chair, “You don’t ‘get it’, you couldn’t possibly. It happened to me, and I didn’t understand what was happening to me. It felt like my body, no. Like I had millions of bodies. I saw in fragments of everything around me, different versions, and possibilities. I saw flying cars and dinosaurs.” He laughed again. “I saw alien worlds, I witnessed alternate universes. But not only could I see them all blip into existence, but I could… I don’t know! It’s like I knew what was happening in each one, and like I knew every choice someone made or was going to make. Like I was witnessing the creation of everything in existence, and could read it as easily as breathing, and somehow I knew that if I tried hard enough, I could go to any of them, or I could even create my own.”

There was another minor silence before Lillian spoke.

“You said you ‘didn’t’ understand what was happening to you. Does that mean that you now understand what was happening to you?”

“I uh, I don’t know for sure, but I have a hunch that what I just said was literally what was happening, I was seeing into other timelines and dimensions.”

Lillian sighs, and the sound of her flipping a paper leads her into her next question.

“What happened when you got to the clinic?”

“Well, ironically, as soon as I stepped foot into the clinic, I felt… better? But it wasn’t like everything just disappeared. It was more like I was lagging. With what I’ve slowly started to understand, I think what happened is that me walking into that clinic like… synced up with the same event in every other timeline and universe that it was happening in. So I would turn my head, and it felt like I turned it the same exact way an infinite number of times. Kinda like if you took Deju Vu and turned it up as much as possible, and put it into a blender with the look of those hippy designs of vibrant colors outlining a picture of something. I tried to ask for Malik at the desk, but I couldn’t process who, or what, I was speaking to, and what was coming out of my… mouths. I’m sure you get the gist. So I quickly fumbled my way to Malik’s office with the people from the desk chasing after me. It sounded and felt like I was being chased by the fears of everyone ever as I busted into his room, and I saw Malik. My Malik. I felt relieved purely by seeing him. But then I watched in confusion, which turned to horror as his body splintered, like watching a wineglass slowly crack down the side, leaking its contents from all different sides, before he just…” Caelum stopped.

“…He what?”

Caelum mumbled something practically inaudible.

“I’m sorry? Can you speak up, Caelum? I couldn’t hear you.”

“He exploded,” Caelum said much louder and flatly, but his voice faltered at the end before pausing briefly. “He exploded, and the last thing I remember was the screams of the two nurses, and then there was nothing. I woke up in this facility surrounded by thick walls and lots of guards. I’ve been here for weeks. After the tragic loss of Malik, I haven’t had any pain in my head, and I’ve tried to understand and explain it all as well as I can to many different people.”

Caelum sighed as though he was disappointed by something.

“While I can’t exactly understand it, I’ve learned to harness a little bit of it,” Caelum said slowly, each word deliberate as though he was testing Lillian's response.

“What do you mean by harness it?” Lillian asked, her tone low and demanding—threatening. Suddenly, there’s the sound of quick movement from two people and the clicks of guns being trained on a target.

“I really hoped you wouldn’t be like the others.” His tone sounded disappointed. “You’re just like all of them. You don’t see me as a human, do you?” Caelum asked, his tone genuine.

“I’m not sure what you mean.”

“I mean, you see me as a threat. Something dangerous that needs to be contained and examined, something that needs to be put down.”

Lillian said nothing. Caelum chuckled, and the sound of chains falling to the floor caused Lillian to quickly say, “Hold,” telling the guards to hold their shots.

“What are you doing, Caelum?”

“What does it look like? I’m breaking out of this hellhole. You’d think people would feed and treat something better when they’re scared of it. I guess I’ll have to figure it all out on my own,” The sound of Caelum standing was quickly followed by Lillian yelling, “Shoot!” and the sound of guns falling to the ground before any shots went off. The guards both start screaming, a few words mixed in that are nearly incomprehensible; the only thing that was almost coherent sounded like them screaming something about their hands, and Caelum spoke loudly enough to be comprehensible over the screams.

“Goodbye, Lillian. I don’t want anyone else to die from my powers. Right now, I can sense infinite people dying, and hundreds of myself dying every second. I don’t intend for this version of me to do that here, not yet. And I don’t want to hurt anyone else. Leave me alone, and you’ll never hear from me again. But I will do whatever I need to do to protect myself.” He pauses briefly once more. “I hope you understand and do the same.”

As soon as he was done speaking, the alarm of an ankle monitor started beeping, and Lillan screamed at the top of her lungs in frustration before screaming for help. A single click ends the recording.