Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer

These words are not my mother tongue, and my name is not Allen Gordon. Using your letters, I am Gendordo Kl Ecz Ulyn. Gendordo is my homeland. Kl means I derive my strength from that place. Ecz is the name of the first enemy I killed. I thought I was good at killing, until they came.
Many years have passed since I watched a monster in what I’d now call a crimson bodysuit murder my family with a weapon your science still has no name for. So many years since I chose vengeance. The monster stopped killing and started fiddling with its forearm. I took that opportunity to hurl myself from the branches where I hid, making myself one with the spear I aimed at the crimson back below.
My spear impaled the monster. It shrieked and struck at me with an arm shrouded in crackling purple energy. The pain was so intense, I blacked out, convinced I was about to be reunited with my family.
I woke up in a hospital on this world. Soon after, I was transferred to a psychiatric facility. Ten years after that, I walked free of that place, declared cured of my delusions.
While recovering, I had a lot of opportunity to read. So I got letters, and mathematics, and science. But nowhere did I find mention of crimson bodysuits or the physics that enabled them.
My life now is as a junior technician on a university science campus. I get tasked with all the jobs the seniors and scientists don’t want to do, on top of studying all the while.
I know what I think happened to me: interdimensional travel. I’m also sure the crimson traveller didn’t come from this world.
Did I interrupt him before he came here?
Or was it a defensive move to send me somewhere at random?
Could my arriving here be a freak incident caused by it hitting me with the device on its forearm?
Why did my alien biology not cause problems?
As it didn’t, why are the beings on my world and humans so similar?
One question leads to another, and I have to stop to save my sanity before I reach one I can answer.
One day I’ll learn enough to start.
Until then, I have equipment to calibrate and beakers to clean.