A Bright White Crack (short story)

A Bright White Crack was a Cwej short story released by Arcbeatle Press freely on their website, and then as the first story in Down the Middle.
A Bright White Crack was the fifth story in total to feature elements from James Wylder's 10,000 Dawns series in conjunction with established Doctor Who characters but the first that is currently considered a valid source by this wiki. This story was released as part of Cwej: The Series and featured Seventh Doctor companion Chris Cwej as the titular character whereas all previous stories had been released as part of 10,000 Dawns or one of its spin-offs making it a pre-existing franchise at the time of its crossovers with the Doctor Who universe. A Bright White Crack also featured the licenced usage of properties from Obverse Books and BBV Productions.
== Plot ==
After recording a log, Chris Cwej remembers his most recent mission, how he had been sent by the Superiors to forcefully prevent the Democratic Saturnian Entanglement from unravelling the mechanics of he Linear Universe by placing the rings around Saturn, which are actually disintegrators. He's interrupted by a garbled message, and then he falls through the floor of the Vicinity, and into the void, outside the universe.
Chris remembers how when his Superiors had exited the universe, they how found that it was in the shape of a Picard Horn. He notes this, as he finds himself trapped in this void for twenty-eight days. On the final day, the garbled message changes, and Chris is engulfed in a bright light.
He wakes up in the courtyard of the White House, and he sees a press conference around the President. He goes to investigate, being in the body of a Cwej who appears to be a reporter. A female reporter approaches him, asking Chris if he's okay, he says yes, and he ignores her. He instead listens to the President, finding out that Great Britain has been struck by a meteor, and that's he's in the 2030s.
He considers helping this version of Earth, but he decides against it. He gets a taxi to a nearby hotel, where he rents a room. He turns on the TV to a live news broadcast, where he sees the catastrophic destruction on this Earth. Somebody has let chaos matter on Earth, causing gravity to be heavily affected, making things float off into the sky, thinning the atmosphere.
Washington DC is destroyed, as the new lack of gravity is causing untold chaos on the city. The ground Chris is on is now floating at a near 90° degree angle, and he morphs himself using regen energy to climb down the rising pavement. He grabs onto a fire hydrant on the ground, and he uses the mind transporter on the back of his neck to get to safety.
Chris finds himself inside a new body in a cave, which is filled with Cwejen. An automated message plays from the Superiors, who announce that they will be taking over Dawn 1027 due to the Firmament breaking the peace treaty. He quickly tries to figure out if the Superiors where behind the meteor, and he finds one of the Superiors' military-grade spaceships, and he uses it to leave the cave.
After piloting the stolen ship into the sky, Chris surveys the damage of the chaos matter, and he sees that everything in a 1000 mile radius has been affected by the lack of gravity. He notices that a cylindrical ship is orbiting Earth, suspecting the Superiors are controlling it, and he pilots the stolen ship towards it.
After docking the two ships, Chris enters the bowels of the other ship, hearing laughter. As he gets closer to the noise, he realises it's actually somebody crying. When he reaches the source, Chris finds two, non-human creatures, Larles and Kwol, both of which are huddled together, crying. He introduces himself, and he tells them he's rescuing them from the Superiors, and they tell him that they have no idea what Chris is talking about. It dawns on him that he Superiors aren't responsible for the destruction that had unfolded on this Earth, it was this pair.
Soon, Chris interrogates the pair, who reveal their species and home planet, as well as that they killed off their species in an act of revenge for their Government's awful control. They then burst into tears.
Between their sobs, Chris offers to help Larles and Kwol, and despite them not understanding why Chris would help them after what they did, they accept. Chris instructs them to save as many humans and bring them to Dawn 1027's version of the Democratic Saturnian Entanglement, where they will safeguard the survivors.
Two years later, Larles and Kwol final complete their mammoth task, saving every person they could. As their job is done, Chris wants to take them to the Totality, but he's stumped on how to do it. Luckily, Lady Aesculapius arrives and offers them a lift in her Foce. They happily accept.
Inside the Vicinity, the Superiors announce that they've detected a glitch in the firmware, and they going to be repairing it as soon as Chris reports to the Base of Operations.
In the Base of Operations, the High President announces to the other Superiors that he will make the person who foiled their plans pay with their life. An unseen individual forcefully kills every Superior in the room, wasting their regen energy.
== Characters ==
* Chris Cwej
* President of the United States
* Cwej's reporting partner
* Larles
* Kwol
* Lady Aesculapius
* High President
* Superior
== Worldbuilding ==
* Chris watches experimental horror movies from the 2690s.
* Chris likens his morphing body to Play-Doh.
* In the message from the Superiors, they mention the Christmas Needle Agreement.
* Chris eats a bagel while on the La Kraw el Sol.
* Chris uses the slang word "cruk" several times.
=== People ===
* Chris mentions Carl Sagan and Voyager 1 in his log.
* Chris wishes that Isaac Newton would've studied alchemy.
* Lady Aesculapius helped resolve the Battle of the Shilb, in the early days of the 10,000 Dawns.
=== Locations ===
* Chris lives in a virtual environment called the Vicinity.
* Chris likens the the space between universes to the darkness of VY Canis Majoris and the size of the Boötes Void. He also imagines Elmer's Glue holding universes together.
* Bifrost is another name for the Time Vortex.
* The president mentions the Artillery Base of Oregon and the United Nations.
* Chris remembers the Solar Kingdom and the girl that served him banana smoothies at the Padrano Pier.
* Larles and Kwol come from Grigori.
=== Technology ===
* Cwej finds a HoloPhone Flat in his pocket.
=== Businesses ===
* The WaPo, CNN, and the BBC all report on the meteor.
* Chris wonders if Uber exists on this version of Earth.
=== Science ===
* Chaos matter is found exclusively on the planet Alma, amd it's on the universal periodic table.
* Ears contain fluid that affects a persons' balance.
* Chris goes uses the Superiors' ship to go into the stratosphere.
=== Species ===
* Cyberons are vulnerable to gold.
* Chris mentions the Devolians and the Vampyrs.
== Story notes ==
* James Hornby, T. Maynard Banks, James Wylder, and Daisy Schopmeyer are all credited with providing assistance and additional editing.
== Continuity ==
* Chris is a police officer originally from the 30th century. (PROSE: Original Sin, AUDIO: Original Sin)
* Chris refers to the Evil Renegade, (PROSE: Dead Romance) who kidnapped him in his dark timeship, ending his days as an Adjudicator. (PROSE: Original Sin)
* The Cwejen were created during a War between Chris' Superiors and an unseen adversary, (PROSE: The Book of the War, AUDIO: The Adventure of the Diogenes Damsel) which has since concluded. (PROSE: The Gallifrey Chronicles, et al.) Chris is unsure if, in the new post-War timeline, his actions during and before the War have technically been wiped from history. (PROSE: The Ancestor Cell)
* Cwejen ranks include Prime, Plus, and Magnus. (PROSE: The Book of the War)
* Other names of the Superiors include "The Shadow People" (PROSE: The Pit) and "The House-Dwellers". (PROSE: Lungbarrow, The Book of the War, et al.)
* PROSE: Barnyard of the Cyberons is set both directly before and sometime after this story, expanding on Cwej's memories of Padrano Peir.
== External links ==
Category:Web-based short stories
Category:Stories that crossover with non-DWU series
Category:Stories set in parallel universes
Category:Down the Middle short stories