This was written December 31st, 2025
The Interstitial Plains
“3! 2! 1! Happy New…Huh?!?”
There had been a large song, as expected. But it wasn’t the fireworks that I was
expecting. And where was the building he’d been staring at just a moment ago?
I looked around. I was now surrounded by a dark plain, all alone.
“Testing, testing, can you hear us?”
I looked around and around, but couldn’t find the source of the voice.
“Hello?”
“Oh good, sounds like you can hear us.”
“Where….who…what’s going on?”
“Guess it’s time for a quick explanation. This in front of you is the Interstitial Plain.
It was accessible because so many of you were regrouped and focused on the same thing.”
“Ugh, I knew I shouldn’t have gone out tonight.”
“On the contrary. We need you!”
“Need me? A nobody? Why?”
“Well, to find our way back home, no less! We’ve been stuck on your world for about two
years now, trying to find a crack back here. Yet, despite how populous your world is, it
seems like you’re all so disparate and divided…”
During this explanation, I looked at my surrounding. It was too dark to see much of anything, but there was a sulfurous smell all around. It felt rather unpleasant. I kept looking around and gradually, my eyes adjusted. Yet, all I could see was a deserted plain, nothing noteworthy to see, really. Then I looked down, and more closely, at the ground. From what I first thought of as grass seemed to be emanating a little bit of… something. Not quite light, but similar. I would describe it as them releasing “darkness”, except each with a different sort of color. Yet this too couldn’t exactly be described as a color. None of this really makes sense, yet that was the impression I got, and the closest I could describe it.
“….the New Year celebrations and found you, whom we pushed into the Interstitial Plain
to hitch a ride.”
“Wait…you PUSHED me here?”
“Well, yeah, we couldn’t exactly come here on our own…”
“So…how do I go back home?”
“Well…you can’t. We need your help first. To reach back our own! And possibly save it!”
“Are you fucking kidding me? This isn’t enough? You actually need me to bring you all
the way back? What about me? How am I supposed to head back after? How can you guarantee
I won’t be stranded after?”
“Well…we can’t exactly guarantee it. After all, we need a hero to save us. Yet, from
everything we saw on your world, we would have expected one of you to be excited! A
chance to fall into the unknown, a chance to explore new worlds, a chance to become a
hero!”
“Sure…in video games or on tv! But…this is my actual life! And…and…ugh!
Can you at least tell me about this place, and how it works? You see to know about it.”
“Well, as we said, it’s the Interstitial Plain. It’s a sort of Nexus between different
worlds. You see below you? Those blades waving on the ground? Each of those is a different
world. The closer they are to each other, the more they can influence one another.”
“What! Was I stepping on my own world? Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck!”
I tried to step away, but there was world grass everywhere, and I just couldn’t avoid
stepping on any. Nor did I know which one was my homeworld.
“Don’t worry, worlds are not brittle. You could never destroy one so easily, you couldn’t
even pick one up if you tried. Now, let’s look around for your world. You can rest a bit,
and then, in an hour or so, we’ll be heading off into our world. We have much to tell you
about it, yet for now, we too must rest. We’ll then be looking for our own world. As fellow
residents, we should be able to pick it out from the rest fairly easily. You should be
able to do the same with your own world. Once ready, we’ll harmonize with it, it should
be a simple matter.”
After this, I inspected this world some more. In the distant, I could see a cliff, along with what looked like a sea. I have no idea what those might have been, or represented. Alas, maybe I never will.
I then took a closer look at the world grass, at each blade individually. One of them caught my attention in particular. It looked more “right”, it was more “pleasant”-looking. I suspect this is my own world, and that I’m either still linked to it, or resonate with it.
Now, I have no idea who those people really are, or what they want of me. I can’t see them, and I suspect their voice is coming from inside my own head. Yet, I’m also not sure what to do. I should probably wait, instead of heading back to my own world. They are right, an occasion like this doesn’t arise every day. Yet…what do they want? For all I know, this is a weird trap, and they’re looking for a new source of food, or maybe are creating some weird zoo. Somber ideas are definitely not lacking in my mind. Still, I’ll take a chance. However, I decided to write this journal in case anyone else ends up stranded here. Luckily I did have my backpack with some supplies in it.
While my information is limited, maybe this can help the next person. And if you’re from my world and make it back with this, my name is Jacob Tesser and I disappeared on December 31st, 2025. Please try to give my family some closure.
This journal was found by the first expedition into the Interstitial Plains. It was surprisingly well preserved, considering it’s already been over a decade. We suspect this is due to properties of the Plains themselves. This served as our first source of information on, and gave us a glossary for some basic terminology. Jacob himself never returned, and by the time we found this, no surviving family members remained.