I opened my eyes. Bright, white light shone upon them, forcing me to close them once more. As i did, i became more aware of sounds all around me. Something about a doctor. Frantic running around. I had apparently awoken. Suddenly, i was addressed by a voice with more authority than the others. He told me to open my eyes. Once more, i did. While the bright light that had previously assaulted my eyes was gone, the bright white ceiling of the room didn’t make much difference. Soon, a man leaned over me. Bald head. Impressive moustache. This man must be in his late 40s. He started talking, but my head was ringing something furious. I nodded along, hoping to make him come to a conclusion sooner, so i could rest my head, lest it explode. And stop he did. He left the room, leaving only the nurses to look after me. A while later, the doors opened again. A man stepped inside. As if trying to be as much of a contrast as possible to the white walls and nurses dressed in white, the man was dressed in a leathery purple suit. Wormskin, or at least imitation wormskin. From the way he walked up to me, he was clearly a bigshot. The nurses seemed to agree, as on a simple flick of his hand, one of the nurses raced to help me sit up. By now i was feeling a bit better. As he opened his mouth, i could feel the ringing returning, but this time it subsided, as if this man's message was too important to miss.
“We found you… in the gutter of the worm.”
My eyes widened. The worm? Impossible. I was born and raised on earth. No one of my status could ever get close to the worm, much less reach part of it.
“Come with me for a walk, will you?”
With another flick of his wrist, a nurse helped me stand up, while another gave me a coat. I felt surprisingly good, considering that i had just woken up. As we started walking, i noticed that it was not only this room that was white. The hallways were white. The guards, that greeted the wormskin-equipped man whenever we walked past, were all dressed in pure white, from their shoes to their helmets.
“The purple makes for a gorgeous contrast, doesn’t it?”
As we continued through what must have been a kilometer or two of pure white corridors, winding like a serpentine labyrinth, the man spoke scant a word, only sometimes opening his mouth to greet a passerby. Finally, we arrived at a set of windows. Gazing out, i could see the wonder of space, a thing that i had only seen before in pictures. The worm. Larger than anything else ever discovered, it seemed almost inanimate. It was still alive, it simply lived on a timescale so large that our human eyes weren’t capable enough to see its movements. The man looked over to me.
“My family has been in charge of cleaning a large sector of the worm for as long as we can remember. Out of the cleaners, no, out of all the outsider houses, we are the by far most powerful and influential.”
I looked at him, curious what he would say next.
“To cut to the chase, there has simply not been a gutter before.”
This sounded reasonable. What would the worm do with a gutter anyway? Living creatures typically do not have much use for them.
“And yet we found one. And in it, we found you. We have had our greatest worm knowers examining this for months, but we are as close to figuring out where it came from as when we started.”
I knew where this was going. He was gonna ask me for answers. Answers i don’t have.
“And so, we finally come to you. What can you tell us about this… enigma?”
Probing my brain for memories, i do not remember a gutter of some sort. I don’t even remember leaving earth. Seeing the worm, or even leaving earth, was a childish dream i had long thrown away as i realized i didn’t have the means to do it. As far as my brain tells me, i shouldn’t even be here.
“We even took the liberties to check your identity, and the numbers simply do not add up. People with 10 digit long ID number should, by current projections, not be reached for another millennium or so. As expected, there was no info on you in any database. Putting it simply, much like this gutter should not exist, neither should you.”
1000 years, huh. As i started thinking, first while sitting and then while lying down on the floor, it dawned on me.
“Maybe the worm simply exists outside of time, and i was brought here by some freak accident of that mechanism.”
The man looked at me as if insane. He pondered the question for a short while, before quickly rushing out. I didn’t care. The floor was as comfortable of a place for a nap as any. They found me in the gutter of the worm, after all.