~~~Jason Grant
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My name is Jason. I’m what you might call a mega-genius, or an intellectual anomaly as I later came to be known. I have made some pretty cool stuff at a young age. It was very impressive, I got my name in the news a couple of times, but it never really had the potential to change the world, or even change my life. That was until I started to pursue wormholes, shortcuts through time and space, possibly even to parallel universes. I of course kept it all secret, I would be laughing stock, trying to recreate a very beautiful theory commonly used in science fiction. I would’ve thought the same until I detected traces of negative matter, also the works of theory, which should be able to open wormholes and keep them open long enough for something to go through. It took me five years, but eventually I got it right. It’s actually startlingly easy to open a wormhole, and slightly harder but also easy to keep it open. The hard part is projecting it in the correct direction. The math behind that is staggering. Now that I have tested the wormhole generator five hundred times, I am about to use it on myself for the first time.
I rub my face nervously. Despite not experiencing a single failure in my five hundred test trials, I am nervous that I will experience one now. One slip-up and I might end up in the vacuum of space, or even have each piece of me sent to different locations. But sending a scanner back and forth can only achieve so much. I have to do this someday, and today is as good as any. I pick up the calculator-like device and type the coordinates for a place I had previously deemed hospitable.
Before I even knew what was going on, I fell face-first into blue sand. I looked around to see the same sand in every direction toward the horizon. There were some sort of flying creatures in the distance that looked like pterodactyls. Whatever this place was, it seemed to be in twilight.
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When I finally came to my senses, I scolded myself for not bringing a camera. Finally, I pressed the return button on the wormhole generator only to hit my forehead on my desk.
“Oh, fucking hell!” I yell to no one in particular. “I’ll have to fix that…”
I start typing into my laptop only to hear a whirring noise behind me. I turn around to see a skeleton in a torn black robe, levitating in the middle of my room. I just froze in terror, until I started to get a severe headache. I grabbed my head for the third time that evening. It passed moments later, and I looked up to see nothing out of the ordinary. Turning back to my desk, I notice my pencil cup has fallen off.
I am used to this sort of thing, objects out of my reach moving when I'm angry or panicked. The Grim Reaper was new though. “Must’ve overworked myself…” I mutter. “I should probably go out to clear my mind. How much money do I- fuuuck."
I spent the next few months perfecting the wormhole generator. I started by making it more gentle with what it’s transporting. Then I made the interface easier to use. If negative matter was easier to come by, it would save me a lot of time and money. Of course, when I was finally satisfied with it, I would be able to sell my design, and then I would be set for life, so I wasn’t too unhappy. I also had other projects in mind, such as plasma-based weaponry. As I was testing the prototype for that, something happened that would change my life forever...
I set down the fire extinguisher in the secluded alley. I took one more look at the pistol. It was mostly held together by duct tape and was made of all sorts of junk, but it would revolutionize modern warfare if it worked. Careful not to point it anywhere near me, I aimed at the ground and pulled the trigger. There was a relatively quiet noise and a bright flash of orange light, and then a massive burning hole in the ground.
“Shit!” I yell, reaching for the fire extinguisher. As I tried to put the fire out, I heard another noise behind me. I turned around to find myself face to face with... myself.
“What the hell?!” both of us shouted in unison. We both reached out to touch each other as if to check if we were real. To tell you the truth, I don’t even know what I was expecting at that point. But my copy was real alright. I had played around with the concept. The chances of him existing were 10 to the 612 to one. Basically, you could divide one by the number of atoms in the universe and not even come close to how minuscule the chances of this were.
“Well, maybe we got lucky...” he said to me.
“Excuse me?”
“I’m just replying to what you’re saying.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“Like hell you didn’t! You were rambling about how impossible I am.”
“I didn’t say that out loud! You saying you can read my thoughts?”
“Do you even realize how crazy that sounds?”
“Well, you shouldn’t exist, so I’m keeping an open mind. First time I used the wormhole generator, where did I go?”
“Blue sand... Twilight... Pterodactyls...”
“Holy shit...”
So either I was completely losing my mind, or I didn’t even have to speak in order to communicate with other... versions of me. It was weird, hearing foreign voices in your head, so we agreed to just talk. Me and the other guy would regularly meet to discuss our projects. It felt like we were best friends. It was not long, however, before we found more of us.
The five of us were sitting around a campfire in the alien forest. One has only recently found us.
“So let me get this straight... there’s a one in ten to the 612 chance even one of us exists... and there’s five of us?” the new guy said.
“Yeah, pretty much,” another responded.
“Don’t you dare say there’s a higher power at work here,” a third chimed in as he drank his beer.
“Well, either that or we just won the lottery a couple billion times over.”
There was a slight pause until the new one started talking again” “Maybe it’s the Grim Reaper.”
“What did you say?”
“It was just a joke.”
“So, you saw it too?”
“Yeah, right after I used the wormhole generator for the first time.”
The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.
There was another pause, this time with everyone staring in awe.
“The same thing happened to all of us... Maybe it wants us to meet each other?”
“How many more is there to meet? Ten? Fifty? Is there even a limit?”
“I don’t know man, I don’t know.”
The telltale sound of the wormhole generator attracted everyone’s attention to two more individuals appearing.
“Hey guys, sorry I’m late,” one of the arrivals said, “I found another one.”
“Oh, you gotta be fuckin’ kidding me!” one of the guys at the campfire yelled, throwing the almost empty beer can to the ground in frustration.
Soon after, we found an alien civilization. We were overjoyed when we realized they were far more advanced than humans, and started stealing everything we could get our hands on. Eventually, we were able to translate their language, or rather, languages. We then found out that the galaxy is just like the Earth, it is split into many different countries. The most powerful by far was the Galactic Imperial State, or the Empire, as everyone called it. The Empire occupied roughly half of the territory in the galaxy. It was the most powerful nation in, well, practically every regard. For one reason or another, intelligent life only appeared on Earth several thousand years after most other planets, which is why humans are so far behind in their technology. This held true for most of the twenty million universes we had encountered. What all those universes had in common, without fail, was a person named Jason who was intelligent enough to create a wormhole generator. We began referring to those universes as the Cluster. Beyond the Cluster, there was... something, but we could not figure out what, because we were unable to travel there. We began numbering the universes with a letter, followed by a number, and finally one of four Greek letters. Initially, universes that contained a version of us would start their serial number with “A,” but by the time we realized that was all of them, the damage had already been done.
We also started to work on a base of operations because of how many of us there were. We stole a few construction drones from the Empire and designed a space station. We were astonished by the speed of their construction, as they built a habitation three times the size of New York in just a year. Thankfully, we did not need to expand it any further. From then on, we were our own faction. Both us and our base were called the Monolith. Each of us was then referred to by the serial number of our universe. Unfortunately after that, however, the Empire declared itself to be our enemy. Just as we wanted to study them, they wanted to study us. We had the technology that turned one person into an army, and likewise, they wanted the technology to turn an army into an unstoppable force.
~~~Unit A4254492-Gamma, Monolith Agent
“Unit is in target building. Attempting to locate artifact,” I say into the communicator on my arm. My voice is deep and distorted because of the mask I’m wearing to conceal my identity.
“Confirm. Target is on 325th floor. Please confirm your altitude,” A0-Alpha replies.
I look around the room. It is somewhat similar to an office complex. There is some text on the wall next to a door. Hopefully, the floor number. I point my phone at it with the translator program already loaded.
“Floor is-” I am interrupted by a squad of alien soldiers breaking down the door. Who I presume to be the leader shouts something to the others as I run for cover in one of the metallic desks.
“Hostiles in the area! Unit requires assistance!” I yell as I shoot the soldiers. The two that I hit scream and collapse into a pile of ashes.
“Abort mission! Return to base!” A0-Alpha shouts.
I stop shooting and begin typing the coordinates into the wormhole generator. A round object lands in front of me, likely a grenade. Cussing, I try to kick it away, but there is a dull thud, and everything goes black.
~~~Unit A0-Alpha, Monolith Overseer
Unit A4254492-Gamma was still alive, his mask was monitoring his vital signs. But he was unconscious or paralyzed because the mask video feed showed a pair of Imperial soldiers walk up to him and carry him away.
“Damnit!” I yell, banging my fist on the table.
I start to frantically type into my computer. A4254492-Gamma had to be recovered. Five other units were selected at random. What we lack in any combat training we make up for in our equipment and organization.
~~~A1814043-Gamma, one of the units selected for the squad
We arrived in an Imperial military base where A4254492-Gamma was tracked to. It was right in the middle of nowhere, there was nothing but desert for kilometers in every direction. The base itself was shaped like a massive ring with four tall buildings connected to it. Each of the buildings had the Imperial army’s symbol painted on the top: a vertical line progressively getting more jagged as it progresses downward and three curves intersecting it at the top, the bottom-most of which ending in sharp angles on both sides. Inside it all was a courtyard with a plentitude of what seemed to be armored vehicles parked on the gravel surface. The most prominent colors were gold and sometimes blue, the signature colors of the Empire.
All the guards were too busy guarding the entrances to notice us, so we hid behind one of the vehicles and formulated a plan. As soon as we deemed it to be safe, we rushed to the nearest building. It was locked with a keypad, but I was able to get it open with a program the Monolith have designed to bypass Imperial security.
We didn’t make it far before running into an unarmored alien. The creature was almost entirely sand-colored, save for the wide, dark red stripe running through the middle of its face and neck. The alien reached for the weapon strapped to its chest, but A564504-Beta rushed at it and knocked it to the ground. He then pressed a knife to the alien’s throat. I load up the translator on my phone as A1931164-Alpha takes the alien’s weapon away and interrogates it: “Where do you take your hostages?”
The translator tells me how to pronounce the statement in the widely accepted Imperial language. The alien says something, and once again, the translator comes to my aid. “They take them to a facility two floors below. He can take us there,” I say.
A564504-Beta gets off the alien to allow it to lead the squad where we needed to go. In fear of its life, the alien complied. But it was not long before we ran into more soldiers, these ones were armored. Our weapons made short work of them, but an alarm went off. The whole base knew we were here.
We once again communicated telepathically to save time. We agreed that A564504-Beta and A2641389-Gamma would stay behind and keep any reinforcements from catching up with us. They took cover behind two stacks of crates on either side of the hall as the rest of us kept going and reached an elevator without problems.
“You two, get over here now!” A1931164-Alpha says through his communicator.
“Affirmative,” A564504-Beta replies. Almost immediately, we hear one of the Empire’s weapons firing and one of us screaming.
“Unit in critical condition! I must return him to base immediately! Keep going without us!” one of the two said. Thankfully, the Imperial weapons were also plasma-based but nowhere near as powerful as ours, meaning that with a little bit of luck, we could survive being hit by them.
“Damnit! Alright, work your magic, Houdini!” A1931164-Alpha tells the alien, who typed the code into the elevator without even waiting for a translation.
We got into the elevator just in time before the soldiers caught up to us, but not before they opened fire and hit me in my left arm. I couldn’t help but scream in pain.
“Are you alright? Do you need to return to base?” A1931164-Alpha asked me.
“No, I’ll be fine once this is over. The mission is more important,” I answered as I examined the burn area. There was a massive third-degree burn. I used one of my painkillers on it, sending huge relief through my arm.
With that, the elevator door opened to more soldiers waiting for us. We ran for cover behind the walls in the elevator, but A4387669-Alpha gets hit in the leg before he can make it. He falls over and screams in pain as me and A1931164-Alpha return fire at the soldiers.
“Goddamn it, don’t you people ever give up?!” A1931164-Alpha yells as he kills the last of them.
I examine A4387669-Alpha’s leg. “His burns are worse than mine, he won’t be able to keep moving even with a painkiller,” I tell A1931164-Alpha. “Do you need help getting back to base?” I ask A4387669-Alpha.
“No, I’ll be fine. Just keep going...” he responds, as he reaches for his wormhole generator.
“Alright, let’s go then,” I say.
Our hostage continues leading us through the underground tunnel past multiple doors until he stops at one and speaks in its language.
“This is the place, according to him anyway,” I say.
A1931164-Alpha nods and prepares to break the door down as I stand to the slightly to the side, pointing my pistol at it. Before he could do anything, the alien grabs A1931164-Alpha’s head and slams it against the wall.
“Oh, you son of a bitch!” I say as I point my pistol at it. The alien knocked the pistol out of my hand and pinned me to the ground. It tried to grab the gun on the ground, but I pushed it away as hitting either of us would likely disintegrate both right now. The alien then started trying to choke me, its sharp claws tearing into my neck and sending a small stream of blood onto the floor.
Struggling to stay conscious, I take out my switchblade, unfold it, and stab the alien in its side. Immediately its grip on my throat loosens. Coughing, I push its dead body off of me and stand up. Just as I catch my breath, another soldier exits the door and prepares to shoot me. Time seems to slow down to a crawl as I realize that I can’t do anything. This is how I die.
Suddenly, the soldier’s head is slammed against the door frame and he falls over. I run over and realize its neck is twisted at an unnatural angle. If their anatomy is anything like that of humans, it’s dead for sure. Looking into the room, I see A4254492-Gamma tied to a chair. “What the hell just happened?” I ask him.
“I don’t know, but I really wanted that to happen,” he responds.
“Telekinesis?” I ask as I untie him.
“Believe me, I would love to discuss how strange all of this is, but after we return. My wormhole generator is somewhere on that guy who hit the door.”
“Good point. I’ll take A1931164-Alpha, you take the dead alien.”