Energy folded, moved and flowed.

There was pain and movement as the Multiverse refused the pain.

“Liam, we go back in time. She will not like it.”

“Marilyn or the Multiverse?”

“The Multiverse.” The currents returned, but this time there was pushback. The gold energy worked. There was power of a different type. The Multiverse granted the Attractor the right to move in space but had really not let the young girl move in real time except for the minor manipulations of the pinch or the glitch. “Like Loric,” she whispered to herself.

“What?” asked the silent companion.

“Father had me watch the game the President played with Loric the Wizard. He goes back in time to defeat his enemy, the evil general. We must do the same.”

“But time is not linear, I explained that.” The words ashamed Liam the moment they came out. How dare he second guess the Attractor.

“You sell this too short wise mentor. It wasn’t easy for Loric either.”

The pair met resistance. The Attractor, painfully moved back in time by about fifteen years. To the Multiverse, this meant she moved from one location to the next.

Sophie arrived at the strangest of destinations.

The Attractor was back on earth in the United States on a cool cloudy fall night. The blood splattered all over her was gone from her body. Sophie stood alone on the middle step of a large flight of cement stairs leading down to a street where cars were dropping costumed teens. He knew this place very well this was the only landing place he could muster so quickly.

Laurent was back at the Halloween dance where Sophie’s parents, he and Susan would in minutes fall in love. He knew this place very well since he had been there mere days ago in his strange reality. Marilyn had showed him this place, refreshed his memory to prepare him for what he now needed to do now. In little under five minutes, he, as Laurent, would arrive in his mother’s tired car. Dressed as the big bad wolf, he would wander up where magic would happen. He would fall in love with Susan.

Sophie had been given power over time itself and of all the things he knew would change destiny was a scene he had twice lived. His bet was simple, no Sophie, no Attraction. To defeat Marilyn, the best he could think was this. He needed to change time, alter consequences and what best than to pay the ultimate price. If he could prevent himself from falling in love with Susan, Sophie would never be born and the Attraction be avoided. He knew any other would have not hesitated in ripping the digital creature from her world.

Living for minutes as his daughter, he knew time was short and he ran inside the school where many in costumes wondered who she was. Tonight was for the graduating class but these kids but these kids care very little about a young intruder. He stood on a chair and in the distance he saw the white ears of a sheep. Susan was dancing flanked by two friends.

Laurent knew Susan more than anyone, she was a clean freak. Dirty hands sent her to the washroom immediately so the plan was simple. On Sophie’s right was a table for food and drinks. On it a dozen cans floated in ice next to a stack of a hundred warm cans. Sophie grabbed a warm can she needed to make a splash. In her rush, her foot knocked the able and another can fell and rolled on the floor as if animated by itself. As she moved away toward the young Susan can in hand, she saw another child grab the can rolling on the floor and placed it back in the ice. This somehow mattered.

There were minutes, not years for this plan of nonexistence to work out. As she began to make her way toward Susan in the crowd, in her back, she saw the costume of a wolf enter the hall. His old self was here. Sophie made her way in the crowd until she saw her soon to be mother as a teen. Sophie stopped for a heartbeat to look at this muse then shook the can, opening it in her face.

The splash had the desired reaction. “Are you crazy? Look what you did!” yelled Susan an the short child in front of her. There was commotion as several people pushed her away. Susan quickly made her way to the washroom.

As Susan left the dance floor, Sophie looked back at the young boy dressed as a wolf. The boy had grabbed a can of soda on his way in. He remembered not doing that in the real dance. Destiny was operating to clean these changes. Sophie stood there and saw his old self pick the precise can which she had dropped to the floor moments ago. She was speechless as she observed what came next. Laurent opened the can close to his face and was also splashed by the sticky liquid. As if pulled by destiny, the young wolf immediately made his way to the same washroom as where Susan was washing herself.

Sophie stood there, in shock watching how the Multiverse had in seconds corrected the ripple in time she was trying to create. Time alteration wasn’t as most feared in movies, a simple domino effect, it was the reverse. Changing the present wasn’t that simple.

“Is this possible?” she asked herself rhetorically.

Liam answered, “Of course. The past and futures are both written. They cannot be changed so easily. Like pushing down the center of a long rope tied at both ends. What ever you do, it will not change where the rope is tied. In fact, I doubt anything can alter the events leading to our present and the Sixth Attraction.”

“So the Sixth Attraction can’t be stopped?” He needed more. This called drastic measures. Laurent as Sophie panicked.

“Sophie,” offered the voice of Liam in her head. “there is inertia in destiny. The Multiverse operates in consequence to cause, you forget. It wants your parents to fall in love, little you can do will change this. But you are the Attractor.”

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Sophie had power, true power and Laurent knew better. The Attractor looked down at her hand, in it was now a loaded gun.

“Sophie,” warned Liam in the silence of the young girl’s head as Sophie rushed back to the bathroom where the young couple was falling in love. Sophie walked in the commotion and without hesitation stood feet in front of Laurent. Sophie pulled the gun and shot several times her teen father in the belly. This was merciless but she had the right, his was a life he (Laurent) could take.

Under scream and panic, children ran out. Laurent’s dying body fell on the ground in front of Sophie.

“This should do it,” she said dropping the gun to the ground and looking at her murderer hand. She figured she would simply cease to exist and looked at her hands. But the Multiverse had not said her last word. She saw the color of her hands change to a darker skin. She turned to look at herself in the mirror and saw the face of a different girl, the black face of a new young Attractor, but the change flickered out of experience. The Multiverse had simply chosen another as the Attractor.

“That could be fine? “ though Laurent.

Then he felt a quake under his feet, he alone did. Laurent, in the body of his daughter was learning temporal mechanics rather quickly.

Outside there was commotion.

“What is happening?” said Sophie to her silent companion.

***

Before the Liam could answer, the Multiverse did. Even Liam was shocked by what he witnessed and came next. Sophie, in the body of another girl looked at herself in the mirror.

There was pain - a deep creek and movement.

She felt and saw a skip in the fabric of the whole world, the reality had jumped rope as it refused the change. On a deck of cards, another was drawn from the three of spades simply to the four of spades. Then the six, the seven. A twitch in the time flow cascaded in wiping away the change. There was, each skip a subtle change, not unlike the waves of energy created by an automatic brake taking over for a driver during a snow storm. Around her in the room was essentially the same situation but on the floor around Laurent’s body was a smaller amount of blood. Somehow he was less injured. Sophie’s white color had returned.

Then there was a new ‘skip’ and this time she looked at her face and hands in the mirror and she was back in her old body. On the floor, Laurent grunted. He was hurt but just enough to allow him to survive this incident. The gun felt heavier. The mechanism was broken and jammed.

The wolf would now in this skipped reality be taken to the emergency room and later fall in love with Susan. Sophie would be born and the deformed body of Laurent would have two more scars.

“What was that?” asked Sophie as security blew the door open guns drawn.

Before the security could order Sophie to her knees, she was out of this time frame.

“Liam?” she asked her companion floating in the darkness.

“Yes Sweet one.”

“Changing the past is impossible?”

“The Multiverse, like your life is not a single moment, it is a set of events drawn on a map. A line drawn in the sand. If you jump back and alter the present, the Multiverse can either find another consequence to its desired cause or as you saw another Sophie. It also appears it can skip. The longer the jump back, the worse this effect, at least I think.”

The Attractor willed to leave and in a block, couple returned in the darkness traveling away.

“Temporal skips the way music is written in circle in old records. When you sleep, you constantly move. The Multiverse preferred you as the Attractor, so it was able to make make small discrete jumps sideways, two small adjustments. For example that gun of yours had bullets. It may have changed something where they were produced. As a result it changed beyond us in the time stream which slightly corrected today. It’s hard to explain but if you are one one place and you need to be in a second place, you must step sideways.”

“So what ever I change, there will be an Attraction?”

“Sophie, you were told, Marilyn is the cancer.”

“But isn’t the same going to happen?”

“Of course.”

“There is no solution?”

“Not one that can be seen.”

One skip at a time, the present resumed.

***

Sophie appeared back in the Command Center.

Laurent had failed with time alteration. The Countdown was now down to two seconds.

The world was now in the center of a magnifying glass. Everything was deformed. Around her there was power. On the screen was the face of the old Marilyn. Her body was once again covered by blood and guts.

Sophie even as Laurent had lost.

3

No, he would show Sophie.

2

He had an idea.

1

Instants before the clock ran out, the Attractor powered up. Gold flashes filled the room. There was power, raw energy which filled the batteries below the Center. Sophie closed her hands and her eyes. The energy flooded from the Dot into the world. “All electronics, all computers, be gone,” The Command was directed at the face on the screens. She would not kill the creature, she was trying to kill her world. Maybe Marilyn had a solution planned.

Sophie had all power of the Multiverse and used every once. The face on the screen was vaporized. Marilyn was wiped clear from every chip, every electrical circuit in existence. The power cleansed every system on earth and the order began to spread. All chips vanished. It knew no barrier and the game ended. Every inch of every dimension rebooted.

The Center, built with millions of little robots vanished. What remained in a fraction of seconds was a five feet hole under their feet. Sophie fell along with the others onto what seemed to be shiny metal plates.

Sophie did more, she reset the earth in orbit and vanished the Apocalypse. As if time ran backwards only where she desired, the explosions and the magma tube from the sun vanished. The God Virus and it’s strange mutations were undone. Time had shifted to her greatest desire and air was gone.

Above, the Center vanished. As the cold was ready to end, there was a glitch in the Multiverse.

The same as after shooting himself back at the dance, energy was rebooting. The Multiverse was resetting herself. In a heartbeat she was on a layer of sand instead of the metal plate inches above where she had fallen. Then there was another step and below her a thicker layer. Slowly the reality rebooted and returned.

Before long, she was back at the Center and the power returned on the screens.

“Bitch, you fail.” There was a deep laughter in the dead of space.

The place was covered with her father’s blood.

Finally a face appeared on the screen. It was the old Marilyn, the evil one.

“Thank you,” it just said. “Now my turn.”

The Multiverse began to twist and shift. The world began like water down a drain to spiral. The walls of the Center caved at everything shifted. As if a light had been turned off, the Cold vanished, the world’s of the Multiverse, one by one vanished. Then light and time ended.

Left in the darkness was a deep laughter. One by one stars began to reappear but this time, they were not randomly thrown in the Cosmos. The stars were neatly arranged. The structure of every layer was different. Atoms were not free orbits, they were steps in the greatness.

“This,” said the voice of the evil Marilyn, “is more like it.”

Music began to play. Marilyn spoke, “In the beginning Marilyn created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form, and void, and darkness was on the face of the deep where Marilyn slept. And the spirit was hovering over the face of the waters.”

Began the new Genesis.

The End