The void was not something that could be described with ordinary words because it was not a place in any conventional sense.
There were no walls, no floor, no ceiling, and no light except for a single luminescent grayish sphere floating in the middle of all that darkness, pulsing faintly like something that was not quite alive but was not quite dead either.
"Me... where am I?" The voice that came from inside the sphere was confused and thin, like someone trying to speak through water.
"Where is my body? What is this place? And why is everything so dark?"
There was no answer because there was nothing in that void capable of giving one.
Then without any warning a point of light appeared somewhere in the distance and began moving closer, slowly at first and then faster and faster until it was clear that it was not going to stop.
"Wait, is that a light? Why is it getting closer? Why does it feel like it is going to..."
BAM! BAM! BAM!
It hit without mercy and without explanation not one time but many times in a second, and the scream that followed was not the kind that fades quickly.
ARGH. What is this?! Why does it burn?! ARGH. It burns!! It burns so much!! ARGH.GRRRRRRR. AHHHHHHH!!!!!"
It was raw and total, the kind of pain that does not leave room for thought or words or anything else, and it went on for what felt like a very long time before something else began to cut through it, quiet and mechanical and steady.
Beep.
Beep.... beep.
"ARGH. Wh.... what is th.... ARGH.... that sound...."
The voice tried to form the question between screams but could not hold it together because the pain was still winning by a significant margin.
Then came the sound of glass shattering somewhere distant, then a doorbell ringing with the persistence of something that had no concept of bad timing, then more glass, then the doorbell again, and then a sound that swallowed everything else whole as an explosion tore through the void and sent a shockwave rushing outward in every direction.
The sphere had just enough time to register it before the shockwave consumed it entirely, and after that there was nothing but silence.
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Queens, New York. 6:47 AM in the morning.
The bedroom looked exactly like what it was, which was the room of a teenager who took his studies seriously and his personal space less so.
Books were stacked on every surface with the kind of organization that came from someone who actually used them rather than displayed them.
Notes covered the desk in layers, a skateboard leaned against the wall near the window, and the bed in the middle of the room held a teenager with dark brown hair and fair skin who had the kind of build that suggested he was made for speed rather than strength, tall and lean and proportioned in a way that was clearly functional rather than decorative.
He was sleeping peacefully until he was not.
"AHHH!" He shot upright coughing and grabbing at his own throat like his airway had just been returned to him without any instructions on how to use it.
"Where am I? What is this place? And what happened to my voice and... wait." He held both hands out in front of his face and turned them over once and then again. "I have my body back! Yes! ....Wait a minute, this is not my body and this is not my voice."
He was already out of the bed and walking in circles in the middle of the room with both hands locked around his head, processing approximately seventeen problems at the same time.
"WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON HERE? Why is my body not my body? Why is my voice not my voice? I urgently need a mirror.... I need to find a bathroom right now."
He kept pacing and then stopped, because there was a door directly to his right. There had been a door to his right the entire time which he did not noticed it until now.
He looked at it for a moment and then walked through it.
The bathroom mirror was not kind about what it showed him....the reality.
He stood in front of it with both hands braced on the edge of the sink and stared at a face that was angular and familiar in the worst possible way, because the jaw and the eyes and the overall structure of it belonged to someone very specific, someone he recognized without any difficulty whatsoever.
"WHAT? How... how is this possible? Why do I look like fucking....Andrew Garfield?
This is wrong, very wrong, in so many ways, because I look like him and..." He trailed off because something else had caught his attention.
There was a piece of paper sitting right next to the mirror, or rather not a piece of paper but a letter, and he had not noticed it before because the identity crisis had not left much room for analyzing his surroundings.
He picked it up and looked at the front of the envelope.
"To the Alternate PP." He stared at those two letters for a moment.
"Why do I am already getting a bad feeling about this? And who is PP? No, it must just be the identity crisis making me paranoid." He opened the envelope and began to read.
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To whoever you are.
Hey kid, you might be wondering why you are showing up somewhere you do not know and looking like an actor.
Well kid, I am sorry, but you are not the actor. You are the person in the body of the character that actor played, and that character is my son. I am sure you already know him or have at least heard of my favorite son, Peter Parker, also known as The Amazing Spider-Man.
That should have answered some of your questions. Now let us get straight to the point, to the million dollar question: why you? Well, I am sorry to tell you this, but you were not supposed to be there.
It was meant to be someone else entirely. That person was going to die in a robbery while saving a woman's daughter and was then going to be chosen to become Peter Parker, but you intervened at the moment they were about to shoot her, which caused them to shoot you instead.
And I must say, that was not meant to happen at all. Not only did you surprise me by altering fate, but you also surprised fate itself, which is something that does not happen very often given how absolute its dominance is.
And not only that, you surprised me a second time. When you were shot I expected you to die terrified, begging for more time, but instead you took advantage of the fact that the shooter was in shock from having actually fired, and despite the pain of the gunshot wound you stood up, took his weapon from him, and killed him along with the other two.
I never thought the saying if I fall, you fall with me could be taken so literally. And in the end, even though you bled to death due to the absence of paramedics, I, the great One Above All, witnessed that courage and bravery and iron will with my own eyes.
And so I had the idea of using you to save that world called Earth-19999. I hope you live life to the fullest in this new place. I also gave you some things, and I hope you enjoy them. Remember, with great power comes great responsibility.
Signed, The One Above All.
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