The ocean roared and thrashed against the luxury cruise liner as if trying to tear it apart. Maya Winters, a 20-year-old rising fashion model, clung to the railing of the ship's deck as another massive wave crashed over the bow. What had started as a smooth sailing promotional tour had quickly devolved into a nightmare when they sailed into an unexpected storm system.
"Everyone below deck!" shouted the captain through the crackling intercom system, his voice barely audible over the howling wind and crashing waves.
Maya turned to follow the order, but fate had other plans. A monstrous wave, larger than any before, slammed into the port side of the vessel. The force sent her flying over the railing and into the churning sea below. The icy water enveloped her, and darkness soon followed.
---
Maya's consciousness returned slowly, the sensation of solid ground beneath her body and warmth on her skin gradually pulling her from oblivion. Her throat burned with salt water, and every muscle in her body ached. She coughed violently, expelling water from her lungs, and finally opened her eyes.
The sky above was a clear, perfect blue without a single cloud extending infinitely in all directions. Maya pushed herself up to a sitting position and looked around. She found herself sitting upon what appeared to be a vast, perfectly smooth surface that extended endlessly in all directions to meet the horizon. The substance beneath her had the color and general appearance of earth or sand, but it felt strangely uniform—almost artificially so.
"Hello?" she called out, her voice carrying across the empty landscape. "Is anyone there? Hello?!"
No response came. The silence was absolute, save for the sound of her own breathing. Maya stood up, brushing the strange dirt-like substance from her clothes, and turned in a complete circle. Nothing but flat, featureless terrain extending to the horizon in every direction.
"Where am I?" she wondered aloud.
Unknown to Maya, her massive form—40,000 kilometers in height—was currently situated on what the Lillis knew as the Great Eastern Plains. Her body alone covered what would be, to the Lillis, an area larger than several of their largest nations combined. The "ground" she felt was actually their world's surface, and the smooth uniformity she perceived was due to her unfathomable scale—mountains, cities, forests, and oceans all too minuscule for her to detect, like microscopic textures on a seemingly smooth table.
---
In the city of New Meridian, the ground began to tremble. At first, it was a gentle vibration that rattled dishes in cupboards and caused hanging lights to sway. Then came the pressure—an inexplicable force pushing down from above that made ears pop and breathing difficult.
"Earthquake?" asked Chief Scientist Elara Nox as she steadied herself against her laboratory wall.
Her assistant, Taren, checked the seismic monitors. "No, the pattern is all wrong. This isn't coming from below—it's coming from above."
Before they could investigate further, darkness fell suddenly—not the gradual dimming of sunset, but an instantaneous shadow that plunged the entire city into night. Then came the pressure—immense, unimaginable pressure bearing down on everything.
Elara looked up through the laboratory's skylight just as the ceiling began to crack. The last thing she saw was a vast expanse of something that her mind couldn't comprehend—a surface of such immensity that it defied perception. Then the laboratory, the research center, the entire city of New Meridian and everything within a thousand-kilometer radius was compressed into nothingness under the weight of what was, to Maya, simply her hand bracing herself as she sat up.
---
In the capital city of Lillipolis, thousands of kilometers distant, alarms blared as detection systems registered unprecedented seismic activity from the eastern region. Emergency response teams scrambled as reports flooded in of bizarre gravitational anomalies, atmospheric pressure changes, and the complete cessation of all communications from several major cities.
First Minister Kai Loren rushed into the crisis command center, where dozens of scientists and military personnel were frantically analyzing incoming data.
"What are we looking at?" he demanded.
Science Director Mira's face was ashen as she turned from her monitoring station. "Minister, we... we believe an entity of impossible proportions has somehow manifested on our world."
"Explain," ordered Kai, his voice steady despite the chaos around them.
Mira gestured to the main display screen, where satellite imagery showed a massive heat signature covering nearly a quarter of the eastern region. "This... being... appears to be roughly 40,000 kilometers in height. That's thousands of times taller than our tallest mountains."
A stunned silence fell over the command center.
"That's not possible," whispered Defense Coordinator Toren.
"And yet, the evidence suggests it is happening," Mira replied. "Our instruments detect a biological entity with internal systems operating at an unimaginable scale. The gravitational distortions alone are causing catastrophic environmental effects."
"Casualties?" asked Kai grimly.
"Initial reports indicate the cities of Valeron, New Meridian, and Eastport have been... obliterated," reported Emergency Director Jena. "We estimate 15 million citizens were in the impact zone. Communications across the eastern region are down. We're still assessing the damage to infrastructure and environment."
Kai closed his eyes briefly, allowing himself one moment of grief before assuming the mantle of leadership again. "What are our options?"
"Options?" echoed Toren incredulously. "Minister, we have no weapons, no technology, nothing that could possibly affect a being of this magnitude. It would be like an amoeba attempting to fight a human."
"The entity appears to be moving," interrupted one of the technicians. "Shifting position."
On the screen, they watched as the heat signature changed shape slightly.
"Is it... standing up?" asked someone.
"If our calculations of its proportions are correct, yes," answered Mira. "It appears to be a bipedal organism, similar in general structure to our own species but at an incomprehensible scale."
---
Maya stood up fully, stretching her sore muscles. The uniform landscape gave her no clues as to where she might be or which direction she should go. There were no landmarks, no signs of human habitation, nothing but the strange, smooth ground beneath her feet and the empty sky above.
She took a few experimental steps, noticing how the ground felt solid beneath her weight. If this was some kind of desert or plain, perhaps walking in one direction would eventually lead her to water or signs of civilization.
Unbeknownst to her, each footstep was causing catastrophic destruction on a scale the Lillis had never experienced. Entire ecosystems were being crushed into oblivion, civilizations that had stood for thousands of years pulverized in an instant. The vibrations from her movement were registering as major earthquakes across regions thousands of kilometers distant.
What Maya perceived as a few casual steps translated to covering thousands of kilometers from the Lillis perspective, destroying everything in her path without her having the slightest awareness of doing so.
---
In Lillipolis, the technicians tracked the giant's movement as it headed directly toward their population center.
"Projected time until it reaches the capital?" asked Kai.
"At its current pace, approximately three hours," replied Toren. "But that's assuming it maintains a straight path."
"We need to evacuate as much of the population as possible," Kai ordered. "Mobilize all available transport—air, ground, whatever we have."
"Evacuate to where?" asked Jena. "On our infinite plane, there's nowhere this entity couldn't eventually reach if it continued walking. And at its speed..."
"We evacuate perpendicular to its path," Kai decided. "Get as many people as possible out of the immediate danger zone."
As emergency protocols activated across the capital region, scientists continued their analysis.
"Can we communicate with it somehow?" Kai asked Mira. "Make it aware of our existence?"
Mira shook her head. "The scale differential makes conventional communication impossible. To this entity, our radio waves would be undetectable background noise. Our most powerful visible light signals would be imperceptible. Even our nuclear capabilities would likely register as nothing more than a slight warmth against its skin—if that."
"Then we need to think unconventionally," Kai insisted. "What about patterns? Something visual on a massive scale?"
Mira considered this. "It's possible. If we could create a pattern large enough—perhaps using coordinated detonations or massive fire lines..."
"Do it," ordered Kai. "Use everything we have. If there's even a slight chance of making this entity aware of our existence before it accidentally destroys us all, we have to take it."
---
After walking for what felt like hours without seeing any change in the landscape, Maya began to worry. The terrain remained featurelessly flat, the sky clear but somehow wrong—the sun seemed slightly different than she was used to, though she couldn't pinpoint exactly how.
"This doesn't make any sense," she muttered to herself. "There should be something... anything."
She stopped walking and sat down again, trying to think. The cruise ship had been in the Caribbean when the storm hit. If she'd been washed ashore somewhere, there should be signs of life, vegetation, variations in the landscape.
A crazy thought began to form in her mind. What if she wasn't on Earth anymore? What if that storm had somehow transported her somewhere else—another dimension, another plane of existence?
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