Mary sits on a chair near her bed and keeps looking at Peter who is deep in his sleep. She keeps looking at her watch waiting patiently, the time is 12:59 A.M. she takes a deep breath and looks at the watch again, this time it reads 01:00 A.M. looking at the time she nods her head and gets up from the chair.

She quickly moves towards her office room and starts gathering some files and places them in her bag. The Overseer stands behind her and she feels his presence, she stops and turns around, “I guess it’s time for the showdown?” she gives off a smirk. He looks at her and just nods in return. She looks at him and asks, “So are you anxious?” he replies, “I have done this so many times, and every time there are different outcomes, this is the only event which makes me uncertain and scared!”

She holds his hand and says, “Well, here we go!” he taps on his enhancer and they both teleport to the safe house. Once there, they see a demoralized David, confused Issac, furious Bill, and sympathetic Anna. They are all quiet and stare at them when they teleport. Bill shakes David who has his head in his hands and he looks up at the Overseer.

The Overseer stands firm and pushes Mary to the side, knowing what’s coming to him.

Without saying a word, David lashes at him, screaming frantically he punches his face and the Overseer falls to the ground. Once on the ground, David hits him multiple times in the gut, shedding a tear every time he hits him. When his anger lessens he screams at his face, “You cheated her, you fucked my childhood, and this is all a fucking game to you. You used us like pieces on a chessboard! Why? Why did you do this to us? What is the purpose of all this?”

Issac rushes towards David and holds him. “David, I think that’s enough, he has a lot of explaining to do, come with me. Let’s give him a chance to explain himself!”

He gets up from the Overseer and goes with Issac. Anna has tears in her eyes, Mary stands beside her and is consoling her. The Overseer gets up weakly, and starts coughing, he takes deep breathes. His voice changer is damaged by the punches from David and distorts his voice, “Okay...alright...I probably deserved this...now...now sit down all of you...because this is gonna be one long tale to tell!”

They all get seated waiting anxiously to hear what he has to say and so he begins, “Now, I don’t want any of you to feel sorry for me as I tell you my story and how I am connected to all of you.”

“Imagine a rat in a big maze, so hopeless and afraid, it doesn’t know how to get out of it. But, it has to take a step in some direction, it has to at least try to get out of it. As it progresses through this complicated maze no matter what direction it chooses, it realizes something, this maze is not straightforward. It’s now changing in real-time as the rat takes a single step either forward or backward.”

“Can you imagine the helplessness of this rat? I am this rat, moving through this maze of time where I desperately search for a way out. A way to fix the things I have done, the futures I have created, the pasts I have destroyed, the people I have cheated, and the loved ones I have betrayed. All of us here are living in a loop, there are no happy endings for us.”

“There is no end to this madness, not yet anyway. The parallel universes you see around you are actually a result of my tinkering. Changing events, getting new outcomes, making new futures just to keep me sane. Because there are universes further down the chain which are a total mess. But in a few days, all of these universes, all of my choices, and my mistakes will not matter. Because everything will be wiped out of existence and the cycle will begin again.”

Anna raises her eyebrows and says, “Reed’s normalizer!” he nods and replies, “I have failed this time as well, as you can see, the normalizer is a way to restart things. A failsafe, a way to make sure I get another try.”

David looks at him with contempt and says, “So, it really is a game to you. Get another try...how easily you say it. You haven’t explained our role in these cycles...or are we just disposable toy soldiers to you?”

He takes a deep breath and continues, “My first thousand tries were a complete and utter failure because I thought it was simple to fix this loop. Just kill the source of time travel and then it wouldn’t exist right? If only it was that simple! I discovered that when I killed Mary a new parallel universe would come into existence. A universe where she is alive, so I traveled there and killed her and this time two new parallel universes were born. The birth of parallel universes would be exponential in this case, creating a massive and tricky web of universes, it didn’t take me long to realize that this was not the solution.”

“If time travel didn’t exist I would be a paradox, so that’s why I could never kill her. I decided to do find an alternate solution. What if I made some changes in the Origin universe, the parent universe, this universe. I could spawn other child universes from it, then make major changes in the child universes while the parent universe stays on its natural course. This way the cycle would always come to its real ending and I would get another try easily.”

“I had the freedom to make or break the child universes without worrying about my existence, but that wasn’t a solution either.”

“If Reed makes the normalizer and achieves annexation, every child universe would be the same as the parent. The outcomes and events which I set up to find a way to stop the cycle would all be a waste of time. So again I decided to change this, I killed Reed, and guess what? The same shit which I wanted to avoid started happening again, another universe came into existence where Reed was alive. So, I went back in time, and just before Reed turns on his normalizer I decided to tweak it, make it unstable.”

“The unstable normalizer created rifts to the other universes but before it could stabilize these rifts and he could achieve annexation, the normalizer collapsed. The rifts grew bigger and bigger and finally hit each other causing a tear in space and time. The enormous energy of the rifts collapsing with each other created a giant enormous hole. A black hole! The world eater I called it; before I knew its real name.”

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“I wasn’t worried, because even if this universe was going to be swallowed by the black hole I had other universes to go to, but guess what. Fate is a bitch, the black hole was also present in the child universes. It was the death of everything and everyone.”

“I wanted to find a solution to this so I restarted the cycle once again. In all my previous attempts I had never told anyone who I was and that’s why I was never able to take perfect control of the situations. So I decided to use Reed and Mary as my puppets, using Mary to stop him but this was also a dead end.”

“If she tried to stop him, she would be killed by her son, and the same would repeat, the rifts, the black hole. There was no end to this, my fate was worse than death. It was to keep reliving and trying to change the inevitable. The only thing I could do was to delay Reed while I tried different combinations of events in the other universes in hopes of finding a way out. I wanted someone who had my gifts and it was only possible if I had children.”

“So I married, not once but twice, my sons having the same gift as me, a chronoton strength of infinity, they were to be Reed’s frontline soldiers and through them, I would try to delay him in any way possible. But time moves differently in the other universes, a day here might mean several years in some other universe.”

“When I came back here many years had passed and guess what, Reed would try to screw with my experimental universes through my own sons. Another dead end yet again, I couldn’t kill David or Bill because I...I...cared for them. They are my sons, and so here we are at this point again! It’s funny because the universe which Mary had named V01D is actually the original parent universe of every other, including this universe.”

“This universe and all of its children are the real domain of voids. I was always scared of V01D and never had the balls to do anything to it. It was a completely different place, there was no Mary there, so there was no time travel, no discovery of chronotons, no…Reed.”

“It is what this and every other child universe should have been, but two events sever the connection between it and its children. At the same time when Issac’s wife dies in, Mary discovers chronotons. The child universe is significantly different than its parent and so it becomes a parent itself, destroying the balance of time in every other universe. In this cycle, I have done something different. I have added a new variable. Someone who is not of this world, someone from the parent universe. It’s the first time that Issac was brought into this universe.”

“The solution however is still not that simple. In its current state, if Issac changes anything in his universe, those changes will not affect our universe because there is no connection. This time when the cycle begins I will finally be put to rest and in my place, Issac will stand.” hearing this all three of them start looking at each other.

David gets up quickly and asks, “What do you mean when the cycle begins, you mean...Reed will succeed?” the Overseer nods in return and with anger in his voice, Bill asks, “So we were just screwing around for your entertainment? The lives of my sister and mother, David’s mother amount to nothing?”

The Overseer gloats, “Huh, this whole universe and many others connected to it amount to nothing. Believe it or not, that is the truth!”

Anna gets up from her chair and looks at her mother’s face, “You mean all that we have achieved, all our feelings...” she looks at David and starts crying, “No...No...I...I don’t believe this. I refuse to accept this. How can you both be so casual about it? Don’t you have any emotions, just giving up on all the universes, trying again and again as if our lives have no value!”

Mary realizes that Anna is in an existential crisis, she rushes over to her and hugs her, “It’s okay, even if our lives amount to nothing in the end. My love for you and Reed will never lessen!” David looks at Anna and Mary and then looks at the Overseer with sadness in his eyes, “What about us, me and Bill. We never got any love, all we knew were hardships and sorrow. We didn’t even know our father existed. Our mothers didn’t know they were being used as an experiment. Who is going to answer for their sorrows, who is going to answer for their deaths?”

The Overseer looks at him and calmly replies, “This is no time to be dwelling on the past, they were told of their future and they made peace with it! You are who you are because of your past, don’t forget that!” David grabs him by the neck and screams, “You are not a God, who gave you the authority to play with our lives, who are you to decide what is right for us? You and Reed, you both are the same. You both want to control us, and I don’t give a fuck anymore. I am done being your pawn, I am going to kill Reed and then you are next!”

The Overseer holds his hands and says, “Look, I’m sorry if I’m not acting appropriately, but this isn’t the first I’m seeing all of you in this state. You won’t be killing anyone, we will be traveling to a different universe soon. You, me, Bill and Anna. I want you to meet someone. Although, I have to warn you, that world isn’t an ideal one!”

David shakes his head and replies, “Fuck you! I’m not going anywhere with you anymore!” the Overseer sighs and says, “You already know that your enhancers are fried, thanks to Dorian. So please, listen to me one last time, we have come too far. If you screw around with things, the cycle will still repeat, your mother will be cheated again, Bill’s house will be burned once again, we will be here at each other’s throat once again, please listen to me. I promise it’ll be worth it!”

Mary tries to convince them too, at first they all refuse but after a few more tries they agree although their feelings for the Overseer remain unchanged. He looks at all of them and says, “Alright then, it’s been an eventful night. All of you should rest now, we leave first thing in the morning.” Mary hugs Anna and kisses her on the forehead, she also looks at David with love and says, “I don’t care if our world amounts to nothing. This feeling you have for each other, be thankful that you have it. Don’t let anyone tell you that you don’t belong with each other. I love you both with all my heart, take care of my daughter David and Anna you take care of him too. He has seen a lot of tragedy in his life, give him lots of love from now on!”

And so a sad and angry David leaves the safe house with Anna. Mary closes the door and stares at Issac, she takes a deep breath and moves towards him, “I know all of this is a lot to take in Issac, and I’m sorry the Overseer had to drag you into all of this. As I know you’d be smoking cigarettes and drinking beer if you weren’t here in our mess. But Issac I must ask, don’t you feel you were living in a loop as well? The love of your life dead, she took away a part of you with her, and you smoking and drinking for the rest of your days waiting for your death.”

He looks at her and before he could say something the Overseer stands next to her and says, “You listened to Olivia’s recordings, the way I met her, does it remind you of something, of someone? Near Grab-a-Grub, a lady in distress, a lost brooch?”

He crosses his eyebrows and looks at the Overseer, “I don’t understand, what is the meaning of this? I knew it sounded familiar, but after everything I’ve heard today, I think you are still not finished yet!”

The Overseer faces away from him and asks, “Don’t you think it’s weird? Everyone you know from your life exists here, although their lives are different, and yet there is no sign of you. Come on detective, you aren’t that dull now, are you? Complete the puzzle, you know the answer!”

Issac starts moving his eyes right and left, lots of voices in his head, trying to piece it all together. He stops and looks at the Overseer who has his hand on his mask, his heart beating inside his ears, he takes a deep breath and says, “You...you are...” the Overseer removes his mask and turns his body towards him, “I am you!”

Bill looks at him and then at Issac, “Motherfucker...you are...are...Issac!” Seeing the shock on their face he says, “I am the Issac of this universe.” Issac looks at him, his face so thin and having wrinkles, his teeth whiter than his own clearly showing he didn’t smoke and his eyes clear and white, showing that he is sober, but aching for a little sleep.”

Issac sits on the couch and Bill follows him, both shell-shocked. Issac takes a deep breath and says, “You covered your tracks really well, no records of you anywhere on the web. Keeping yourself hidden so no one could know your weaknesses. I mean that’s what I would’ve done.” the Overseer throws him a bottle of Hawk’s beer and takes one for himself too. Mary sits on a chair quietly watching them both converse with each other. The Overseer sits near Issac and says, “What I didn’t tell to the love birds. I am going to tell you now, how it all actually began!”