**Leave it to your mind**
The Loophole
For the first time in forever, she allowed herself to feel and accept all the things that could not be. All the unobtainable wishes of her future. She had visited the past; she had vaguely seen the future. Blaze realized that she, even with her great power, everything was not possible.
She had manipulated the one thing that mankind remained to be manipulated by, Time. She had found a loophole in Time, the way out of Time’s handcuffs. She had jumped from the “present” to the “past” with the blink of an eye. But even traveling through the past, she was but a visitor, a guest in Time’s prison. She saw the mistakes as they happened, but was unable to alter the events. Manipulated Time had been, yes, but not without strength. The feline discovered this the way all others discover, through pain and loss. She could not be seen, she could not be heard, she could not feel or be felt, she could only watch and listen. The girl experienced this as though a series of punches were thrown into her stomach.
After she had viewed enough of the past, she experimented. She focused on the future and blinked her eyes. Where she stood when she opened her eyes was much unlike a world in which she had knowledge of. She stood on a vast plain of Nothing. Everything in her range of sight consisted of pure whiteness. There are no walls to this time, no boundaries or limitations, only white. As she ventured further into Nowhere, she noticed a peculiar occurrence. Spheres lay about as if placed meticulously. They were transparent, borderline an odd translucence. She was drawn to them. Her curiosity brought her close enough to see images in these spheres, images of materialistic interpretations of the “present” society. One sphere held the concept of nature. Nature’s representatives were abstract leaves and trees, moving to their own eerie wind within the glass. Another held cities. Buildings stood proud and tall, holding terrifying power in their faces. The sphere of technology lay ever flickering and flashing, distracting and confusing. Technology couldn’t focus because of its nature to be constantly preoccupied. The number of spheres only multiplied as the pyrokinetic glanced about.
And out of Nothing, she heard a voice.
And the voice said hello.
Startled, she looked around, looking with wide eyes for the speaker.
“You cannot see me if you simply look, you must know I am here and I will become palpable.”
Blaze thought for a moment about what had been spoken. She struggled to grasp what she had been told.
“I will not make myself visible until you at least try to know my appearance. You know what I look like, so just tell your eyes to comprehend.”
Blaze did not know. But she tried, she tried oh so hard. She thought about the faces she knew and eventually her mind placed her mind placed a tangible form on the voice. She told her eyes to see what she knew and before her stood a boy. He smiled. He looked no familiar to her than bark on a tree.
“How can I know what you look like if I never seen you before?” She, stood perplexed.
“Oh, but you’ve seen me before..” He reached out and placed a cold finger on her temple. And she saw him standing in a crowd. He appeared to be mesmerized by an attraction to his right. She scanned to where he looked and saw herself preforming in a plaza. Her mind whirled. She watched herself sing on stage and desperately tried to recall when this was. She then transitioned to flashing visions of flames and destruction. Although in the midst of the vision, she saw the same boy laughing with herself in the middle the nightmare.
"The first vision you just had, occurred an hour after you stepped away from the present, when you traveled to nowhere," he started, "you cannot remember when this was because your body is just now experiencing it. Your mind is with me. You have seen me in the past, present and future. I am no stranger; we are the same kind. We discovered the undiscovered, the loophole in Time. You cannot see me as yourself preforming, for I am concealed to the average life form. I was visiting from the loophole. Remember the time you spent in the past and how you could not be seen? You were in the loophole too, shielded with its invisibility. That is why your mind could not actively see me. We're not average, we're simply outstanding! You and I..." Blaze's mind buzzed with understandable confusion. The boy saw confusion reflecting in Blaze's eyes. "I will explain."
"Please do."
"Let me take you somewhere in Time in which I can tell you. Does 1980 suit you?"
"Of course."
The boy placed a hand on her wrist, "Focus on me." and the feline nodded. Blaze focused all her mind on the boy whose hand was now wrapped around her wrist. "Open your eyes."
She saw a whirl of life around her, bustling with life and activity from everyday Mobians. "1980 in a city, which city, I do not know." he stated. The two of them sat perched on a grassy field in a park. Light brilliantly hit the grass next to her and the feline longed to touch it.
She turned to the boy, "Please explain to me how this is possible. What is the loophole?"
"Before you can understand the loophole, you must understand the truth of Time." Blaze nodded, intrigued. "Erase all the ideas formulated in your mind around Time. Open your mind to all I am about to tell you. Imagine Time like this; a plastic tube as thick as a mason jar filled with different sections of coloured liquid. Each colour of liquid represents a portion of time. The smallest of these portions is a generation. The further from the tube of time you are, the more amount of time is condensed into one colour; the more generations are in one colour. This liquid moves fuidly and continuously." He paused for a moment to let Blaze process this. "All beings, with an exception of you and I, are trapped within the colour, they cannot leave. But you and I... We've always been different. We found the way out, the way to the loophole."
A moment of silence.
An oddly familiar feeling to Blaze.
Comfortable silence.
Contemplative silence.
A short intake of breath.
Breath that led to more of the speech.
"You see, Time, though binding and terrifying, can be escaped from. However, time will continue moving on its own while we discover the loophole. For all that we can travel to years passed, we are unseen, unnoticeable and untouchable in that space. This is Time's trick, its version of the fine print at the end of end of an advertisement."
"Because we came from that very loophole concept and cannot interact in this era, our minds can be stretched much further. I can form and fabricate a model of time. Allow your brain to expand and see."
Blaze watched the boy's palms slowly separate from their previously clasped position. Her eyes widened. Growing amidst his hands was the tube of which he had explained. The tube was no longer than her leg, no wider than a drinking glass. Just as the boy said, there were sections in the tube, each a different colour.
"Watch." The boy pushed the tube away and the colours became more condensed. He pulled it back in and the colours made their details apparent. At one end, where the moving liquid colours spilled out, a white plane of whiteness lay. No colours were present for all had dissolved into Nothing. The boy pointed to the Nothing and said the word "future".
"Can we put a lid on the end?" Blaze visualized a lid and it materialized in her hand. "No, we cannot stop time.."
The feline reached out her hand to put the cap on the end of spilling colours, but for all she tried, she could not bring her hand close enough to the tube.
"How long have you been in the loophole?"
"Longer than I care to remember. For you see, it is far more difficult to understand on your own, with no guide. I helped you. I have no idea where my body is or what it is experiencing, I only check on it once in a while to make sure it has not died. If my body dies, my mind lives on in the loophole, but shall I chose to return to my generation and my body, I will have a place to live. I will be aimless mind wandering the present time. The present holds little appeal to me, it is a series of repetitive events and issues. The past holds great mystery. The past holds the secrets of the present and my destiny for the future. Some people believe that they can solve issues by creating new ones, but we must study the past to understand the present and how to fix it. Very few do this, I observe."
"A civilization of narcissistic creatures, gone within their own lives, lost within their ignorance and fear..." he started
"Yet all of this misfortunately the truth, I'm glad we escaped the chain... And I look forward to our future you're yet to experience, I've missed you so."
"I'm sorry, I don't believe I ever got your name?" Blaze stated with a hint of confusion upon her face.
"Oh of course, how naïve of me.
My name is Silver. Silver the Hedgehog."
The Loophole
For the first time in forever, she allowed herself to feel and accept all the things that could not be. All the unobtainable wishes of her future. She had visited the past; she had vaguely seen the future. Blaze realized that she, even with her great power, everything was not possible.
She had manipulated the one thing that mankind remained to be manipulated by, Time. She had found a loophole in Time, the way out of Time’s handcuffs. She had jumped from the “present” to the “past” with the blink of an eye. But even traveling through the past, she was but a visitor, a guest in Time’s prison. She saw the mistakes as they happened, but was unable to alter the events. Manipulated Time had been, yes, but not without strength. The feline discovered this the way all others discover, through pain and loss. She could not be seen, she could not be heard, she could not feel or be felt, she could only watch and listen. The girl experienced this as though a series of punches were thrown into her stomach.
After she had viewed enough of the past, she experimented. She focused on the future and blinked her eyes. Where she stood when she opened her eyes was much unlike a world in which she had knowledge of. She stood on a vast plain of Nothing. Everything in her range of sight consisted of pure whiteness. There are no walls to this time, no boundaries or limitations, only white. As she ventured further into Nowhere, she noticed a peculiar occurrence. Spheres lay about as if placed meticulously. They were transparent, borderline an odd translucence. She was drawn to them. Her curiosity brought her close enough to see images in these spheres, images of materialistic interpretations of the “present” society. One sphere held the concept of nature. Nature’s representatives were abstract leaves and trees, moving to their own eerie wind within the glass. Another held cities. Buildings stood proud and tall, holding terrifying power in their faces. The sphere of technology lay ever flickering and flashing, distracting and confusing. Technology couldn’t focus because of its nature to be constantly preoccupied. The number of spheres only multiplied as the pyrokinetic glanced about.
And out of Nothing, she heard a voice.
And the voice said hello.
Startled, she looked around, looking with wide eyes for the speaker.
“You cannot see me if you simply look, you must know I am here and I will become palpable.”
Blaze thought for a moment about what had been spoken. She struggled to grasp what she had been told.
“I will not make myself visible until you at least try to know my appearance. You know what I look like, so just tell your eyes to comprehend.”
Blaze did not know. But she tried, she tried oh so hard. She thought about the faces she knew and eventually her mind placed her mind placed a tangible form on the voice. She told her eyes to see what she knew and before her stood a boy. He smiled. He looked no familiar to her than bark on a tree.
“How can I know what you look like if I never seen you before?” She, stood perplexed.
“Oh, but you’ve seen me before..” He reached out and placed a cold finger on her temple. And she saw him standing in a crowd. He appeared to be mesmerized by an attraction to his right. She scanned to where he looked and saw herself preforming in a plaza. Her mind whirled. She watched herself sing on stage and desperately tried to recall when this was. She then transitioned to flashing visions of flames and destruction. Although in the midst of the vision, she saw the same boy laughing with herself in the middle the nightmare.
"The first vision you just had, occurred an hour after you stepped away from the present, when you traveled to nowhere," he started, "you cannot remember when this was because your body is just now experiencing it. Your mind is with me. You have seen me in the past, present and future. I am no stranger; we are the same kind. We discovered the undiscovered, the loophole in Time. You cannot see me as yourself preforming, for I am concealed to the average life form. I was visiting from the loophole. Remember the time you spent in the past and how you could not be seen? You were in the loophole too, shielded with its invisibility. That is why your mind could not actively see me. We're not average, we're simply outstanding! You and I..." Blaze's mind buzzed with understandable confusion. The boy saw confusion reflecting in Blaze's eyes. "I will explain."
"Please do."
"Let me take you somewhere in Time in which I can tell you. Does 1980 suit you?"
"Of course."
The boy placed a hand on her wrist, "Focus on me." and the feline nodded. Blaze focused all her mind on the boy whose hand was now wrapped around her wrist. "Open your eyes."
She saw a whirl of life around her, bustling with life and activity from everyday Mobians. "1980 in a city, which city, I do not know." he stated. The two of them sat perched on a grassy field in a park. Light brilliantly hit the grass next to her and the feline longed to touch it.
She turned to the boy, "Please explain to me how this is possible. What is the loophole?"
"Before you can understand the loophole, you must understand the truth of Time." Blaze nodded, intrigued. "Erase all the ideas formulated in your mind around Time. Open your mind to all I am about to tell you. Imagine Time like this; a plastic tube as thick as a mason jar filled with different sections of coloured liquid. Each colour of liquid represents a portion of time. The smallest of these portions is a generation. The further from the tube of time you are, the more amount of time is condensed into one colour; the more generations are in one colour. This liquid moves fuidly and continuously." He paused for a moment to let Blaze process this. "All beings, with an exception of you and I, are trapped within the colour, they cannot leave. But you and I... We've always been different. We found the way out, the way to the loophole."
A moment of silence.
An oddly familiar feeling to Blaze.
Comfortable silence.
Contemplative silence.
A short intake of breath.
Breath that led to more of the speech.
"You see, Time, though binding and terrifying, can be escaped from. However, time will continue moving on its own while we discover the loophole. For all that we can travel to years passed, we are unseen, unnoticeable and untouchable in that space. This is Time's trick, its version of the fine print at the end of end of an advertisement."
"Because we came from that very loophole concept and cannot interact in this era, our minds can be stretched much further. I can form and fabricate a model of time. Allow your brain to expand and see."
Blaze watched the boy's palms slowly separate from their previously clasped position. Her eyes widened. Growing amidst his hands was the tube of which he had explained. The tube was no longer than her leg, no wider than a drinking glass. Just as the boy said, there were sections in the tube, each a different colour.
"Watch." The boy pushed the tube away and the colours became more condensed. He pulled it back in and the colours made their details apparent. At one end, where the moving liquid colours spilled out, a white plane of whiteness lay. No colours were present for all had dissolved into Nothing. The boy pointed to the Nothing and said the word "future".
"Can we put a lid on the end?" Blaze visualized a lid and it materialized in her hand. "No, we cannot stop time.."
The feline reached out her hand to put the cap on the end of spilling colours, but for all she tried, she could not bring her hand close enough to the tube.
"How long have you been in the loophole?"
"Longer than I care to remember. For you see, it is far more difficult to understand on your own, with no guide. I helped you. I have no idea where my body is or what it is experiencing, I only check on it once in a while to make sure it has not died. If my body dies, my mind lives on in the loophole, but shall I chose to return to my generation and my body, I will have a place to live. I will be aimless mind wandering the present time. The present holds little appeal to me, it is a series of repetitive events and issues. The past holds great mystery. The past holds the secrets of the present and my destiny for the future. Some people believe that they can solve issues by creating new ones, but we must study the past to understand the present and how to fix it. Very few do this, I observe."
"A civilization of narcissistic creatures, gone within their own lives, lost within their ignorance and fear..." he started
"Yet all of this misfortunately the truth, I'm glad we escaped the chain... And I look forward to our future you're yet to experience, I've missed you so."
"I'm sorry, I don't believe I ever got your name?" Blaze stated with a hint of confusion upon her face.
"Oh of course, how naïve of me.
My name is Silver. Silver the Hedgehog."
