Royally Emma by Lucia Roberts (classic literature list .txt) 📖

Year: depends on the time: right now, 2094
Month: October
Day: Thursday
Time: 1:56 AM-RW

I lay back and again (for the trillionth time) try to remember what happened to me. I stopped trying real hard years ago; probably because it never works. The doctors said that when my soul was transferring to the “Other-Realm” something happened to cause me, at the exact time every twelve hours that it happened the first time, that forces my body to transfer me back to the exact same Realm I went to when I was sleeping(and came back from when I snapped out of the trance my body put me in). Kind of like a duo-life thing. I was young and didn't quite understand everything they told me; but I got the gist of it. I've never spoken of what happens there to anyone and I don't ask anyone to explain to me the pieces I missed so many years ago.

The world got so crazy between between new pandemics new pandemics and a second world Civil War that humans finally started to adapt again. Some people lost debility to fight infections and that killed off some of us.
My theory is that the world started to to scare even our souls because they're came about a new genetic soldier in reaction to dramatic events magic events where your soul would disattach itself from your body and remain in the world of whatever dream state you were in when the traumatic event happened.

The doctors call people like me Night Walkers, mainly because we are only out of the trance our body goes into while we're 'gone' during the daylight hours; as most people sleep during the night. The basic idea of it, from what I've read a couple years ago and what I remember the doctors saying, is this: well, something traumatic happens, we've covered that part. Then we will transfer back to the realm we were in at the exact time when we had the catalyst thing happen to us in this Realm; covered that. But here's the kicker, our body in the Original Realm sort of freezes, or goes into a coma, or sleeps I guess until the soul returns to it 12 hours later.

When I transfer to the “Other Realm” it's always 12 hours later in the day than it was when I passed out. So, say I passed out for the first time in my Realm at 3:15AM, I would always wake up in the “Other Realm” at 3:15 in the afternoon and return to my original Realm in which it will be 3:15PM while passing out in the “Other Realm” at 3:15AM. But I knew that part 'cause it happens to me. And yes, I just so happen to be one of the lovely additions to the “Night Walker” name. They also said that it's in my genes, not that I knew what that was until my mother explained it to me; probably due to me throwing my pants into the recycle bin as soon as we got home that day. But it is some strange mutation of a self-defense gene and area of the brain. So, something happens in your original Realm that causes your sub-conscience to want to protect itself by whatever means it can, in my case, changing Realms.

Just going over that is probably really hard to take in but science has come a long way in a few decades. They showed us in class some of the things that Science and Psychology teachers used to quiz students on; it was, well, quite hysterical. One of the things that's changed is that they used to not know what, like, 80 percent of the brain actually did. Come to find out, the brain holds the soul. Which accounts for “dreams”, the natural reaction to protect your head, and various other things that now seem like simple math compared to what students in the late 1900's probably thought of as alien science or something.  Anyways, dreams, or the time-space-traveling part of life, is kind of hard to explain. The human body is merely a house for a soul. This soul uses the body til it dies while it gathers information, learns, lives; and then leaves it when it does die and finds a new one. This is what I think you must have called “Reincarnation” back in the day.

So, because the body sleeps half of the time it is living, the soul feels un-easy about staying guarded in something that can be easily killed while in such an un-defensive mode. So the souls take this time to travel through the Realms while still leaving a string attached to their body (this string is what we know to be the “sleeping conscious”) so that if/when you should awake, you will be instantly pulled back. The Shifting Mutation in my genes just made it so that my Sleeping Conscious is cut every day at that same time that I first shifted and then reconnected 12 hours later. The details after that are sketchy, but I don't really need to know more than that. I hope.

I check my watch, that I've basically worn for what feels like forever, and it reads 2:01:36; AM. Approximate shift time: 1.5 minutes.

So, what caused me to shift worlds? The only thing that anyone could come up with in the time frame that I first passed out that could possibly cause me to feel endangered was a shooting that happened in the apartment across the street from us about an hour after I had fallen asleep on my living room couch watching projections that Saturday 12 years ago. There was a cop who immediately caught the culprit as he happened to be in the neighborhood, but still; my soul flipped shit without my permission and now, I'm in this ridiculous ganghad... I mean, predicament. You won't get that word for a couple more decades. 2:02:46; I shut my eyes now. If I’d been in my room instead, I may not have heard the shot, and may never have triggered my genetic mishap. Maybe in a past life I had been killed by gunshot and my soul was like “nuh-uh! not again!” and skipped out. Or, well, I don't know. The world of  “if's” serves no purpose though. I hold my breath so I won't feel too much of the fuzziness.

2:03:00. My alarm goes off. If I wasn't laying down already I would have 34 seconds to do so after my alarm went off. My breathing gets louder in my own ears even as it slows. Next, everything goes white, while for normal people when they sleep they see black and then all the dancing colours; I just see white. They get to 'write their own worlds' in different dreams and such while I, have mine kind of written for me, as I always know where I'm going.

It's lonely. And it is always almost dark. And it's..

.. here.

Year:  ?
Month: October
Day: Thursday
Time: 2:03:36 PM-OR

When I get to the “Other Realm” I sort of fade in, and look like a ghost for a few minutes. I am deaf for longer than I am blind as my vision only takes a few moments to adjust, whereas my hearing takes a few minutes after I completely shift in. I tend to sit still until I can hear but I could move if I'd want to. I don't.

My hearing and vision is sharper here. I read that this is normal because when dreaming (if you're normal) points of view shift and you're aware mostly of things that involve you directly, so when you are completely in the Realm, the things that would be different in a dream state change to just enhance what is normal in your Original Realm. You normally don't smell much in dreams so that sense typically stays the same as it would in my Realm. My sense of touch is thrice what it is in my normal Realm but that is because the sense has always been a sacred thing to me, probably due to my ganghad, and I believe that is the last thing I did when I shifted back the first time: I was touching someone  other than myself or something weird like that. Taste is slightly more intricate than it is in my Realm so normally I can't taste anything for the first few minutes ither. Not that I'll be “waking up” eating something, but, it's just a fact I noticed when I found some bread or berries and things hidden occasionally in a rag near my rock.

I sit very still on the rock I always fade in on and try to think back to the first time I was here; though I know I won't remember much of it.  It had looked like mid-afternoon, as it was 2 PM here, so it was sunny and beams of light shone straight into my eyes. I began talking to myself, saying how I shouldn't be laying down and sleeping in the middle of the day only to wake and blind myself, but then I realized I couldn't hear myself talk. I screamed, completely  forgetting the fact that I couldn't hear myself. And that's the last thing I remember about my first time. But, if you realized that you couldn't hear yourself, wouldn't you react the same?

I started flexing my hands and nonchalantly stretching and trying to get blood flowing  faster when out of the corner of my eye, out of the sunlight came a looming shadow. I abruptly turned and fell off of the two foot tall rock slab as I had tried to run, thinking it may have been an animal. As my hearing faded in I swore I heard laughing so I hid. I grabbed the closest tree to my left side and spun behind it. I peered around the side to see a man staring straight at me. He was, indeed, laughing. I coughed to myself, only to see if I could hear it; not because I was embarrassed or anything. “Girly, what in the Gods' name ahre ya doin'?” He had a thick Irish accent. I wondered if I was in Ireland or if it was just him, or if I still just couldn't hear. I hoped it was the first one. “Well ya can still talk can't ya?” I didn't realize I was staring until he asked me the second question. He had stopped laughing now, and he looked generally concerned. “Can ya? Talk, I mean.”

I guess I must have been staring at his clothes. He wore a black waist coat which covered a crisp white dress shirt with a cravat bow tie, an ice blue vest, breeches and knee-high black riding boots that hadn't been shined probably in over a week. Then again, the ground was dusty, so maybe a couple of days. But I looked at him now and opened my mouth without being entirely sure what would exit my lips. I've been here what  feels like a thousand times and I have