Alex was astounded at the appearance of the borderworld. It did not resemble Gaian in any way, save for there being actual solid ground to walk on. Alex also noticed that gravity was significantly less than the world he just came from. Alex looked to see a larger island floating about fifty feet beyond where he stood. Even if gravity was less, could he span the distance? If not, he would be doomed to fall forever.
Alex took a breath and backed up to get a running start. He took off running towards the edge of the island rock he was standing on, and forced himself away. For a few seconds, Alex was hovering above a bottomless abyss before, to his relief, he saw solid ground below him yet again. He brought his legs in front of him, and dug them into the ground. He finally came to a stop. When he managed to dig himself out of the dirt, Alex confused as to what he saw.
"What the...?"
It appeared to be a large pool of water, tinged a bit purple, like everything else in the borderworld, with a waterfall...but what was this? The water was flowing...upwards?
"An upward-flowing waterfall," Alex commented to himself. "So I guess that makes it a...water-rise?" Alex started snickering to himself, but soon stopped laughing at his own bad joke.
Alex did not know he had made an important discovery. Liquids flow opposite to gravity on the borderworld.
The water-rise flowed to what appeared to be a smaller rock, directly above this one. Seeing nowhere else to go, Alex jumped into the water and made his way to the center. The torrent of water defied what little gravity there was and pulled Alex up. He was then deposited in a deep pool of water, the heavy weight of his suit pulling him straight to the bottom.
?Great,? he grumbled to himself. ?Now what??
The bottom of the pool was sloped, meaning that Alex could walk along it to reach the surface. Alex proceeded to walk, and was surprised at what little resistance there was to his movements. Normally, water is very hindering to movement. It was either another strange property of the borderworld?s liquids or an effect produced by the suit itself. Regardless, Alex ran along the bottom to reach the surface.
Upon reaching the surface, Alex was in some crystalline cave. Many glowing blue crystals lined the walls, as well as some silver-tinged rocks on the ground.
Suddenly, Alex remembered what Dr. Kleiner told him. Crystalline cetanium and pure firanadium were rare enough in Gaian, but were abundant in the borderworld. If Alex could harvest some, he could have enough to power the suit for at least a week. As of now, the suit had enough energy for 96 hours of continuous use. Dr. Kleiner had told Alex that the suit shielded him from harmful energy present in the borderworld, a sort of ?dark aura? that would cause insanity within 18 hours, and death within 36. The creatures native to the borderworld were naturally immune to it, some thriving on it even. However, all visitors are susceptible to the aura and must have some sort of protection. Symptoms of the insanity ranged from murderous bloodlust to hollow hopelessness, to the point where the victim would either get in a fight that he had no chance of winning or throw themselves into the swirling abyss.
The abyss. It was omnipresent in the borderworld. All of the borderworld existed within it. The borderworld had no outer limits and no core. It defied the structure of a planetary body. Going extremely high would not give access to the heavens, and going in the opposite direction would not result in emerging on the ?opposite? side of the ?world.? No one knew what happened to those who befell this fate, but there were a number of speculations. Some say that plunging into the void would result in passing through a portal to another world at total random. Another fate was that the borderworld?s harmful energy originated from here, and those exposed to it would face total annihilation in every possible way that the term can be perceived and even some ways that are unable to be comprehended by human intelligence. Still others say that victims plummeted forever until they died of senility or starvation or whatever their cause of death, and that their corpses essentially fell for all eternity, having no destination. Despite these theories, the abyss was not a pleasurable experience.
Alex?s mind was wandering again. It seemed to him that he went off on ?mindwalks? very often. He then looked at the huge stores of potential suit fuel and how to harvest some. Alex raised his rifle and fired a cerulean beam at some cetanium. The laser instantly vaporized the rock holding it in, revealing a solid lump of the turquoise-colored crystal. Alex tried the same thing with the firanadium, with similar results, exposing the silvery metal to harvest.
Alex was relieved that his suit could keep going indefinitely. Dr. Kleiner instructed Alex to open a small hatch on the back of the suit, and simply drop the metals in, and the fusion reaction would do the rest.
Fueled up for at least a week, Alex departed from the grotto to explore the borderworld further.
