Allison - Copy 5015 of 24498

The Peak of the Grand Flame City’s Central Volcano

The place I was teleported to was hell. I was dropped in a gargantuan maze of monsters, where Spiders the size of trucks weren’t uncommon. I should’ve died a thousand times over. But my ability made me more unkillable than a field of cockroaches. A monster would try to kill me, and I’d just make ten copies and let them run away. The first body would die, but the other versions of me would survive.

Sophia told me that my ability was the most powerful. She was right, but only if she looked at my ability as a whole. As a whole, my ability was extraordinary. But for the individual versions of me, this world was a nightmare.

The first Allison died, killed by an ant. The second Allison died, slaughtered by a horde of small dog-like creatures. The third Allison died, crushed to death by a fifty story fall. I stopped keeping track after that. Millions of me died in that maze, and some of me was still stuck in there.

I was created when I was attacked by a trapdoor spider. I was just wandering the forest when the ground beside me opened, revealing the pus-yellow carapace of a gigantic spider. My torso was already gone by the time I had the time to copy myself. Being copied felt like teleporting. One second, I was split in half and about to die. The next second, I was half a meter from my previous self with my body fully intact. I glanced back as I ran from the spider, and saw myself looking back with a familiar look on my face. It was the face that could smile at death. I knew why she smiled. She was thinking, “I survived.”

My title, ‘The Many’, opened my eyes to the most profound truth of the world. Life and death of individuals—they are of little importance. It didn’t matter how many of me died. I would live on as long as a single copy of me survived.

Often, I would make another me to do a task. Once the job was completed, the copy committed suicide. Their lives were nothing. Individuals were just disposable tools carrying out their roles. I was the same. I was a disposable tool, carrying out the role of ambassador for the collective of Allisons.

My ability made me realize that the same applied to the rest of humanity. The lives of the individual members of humanity didn’t matter either. If half of humanity died right this second, their population could rebound in less than twenty years. I didn’t feel bad about killing anybody, and after seeing so much death, my fear of killing vanished as well.

My ultimate fear was dying a true death. Dying a true death meant having every one of my copies killed. This was nearly impossible, but Sophia could do it. Her ability would eventually reach a point where she could make predictions with barely any backlash. With her ability, she could find each and every one of my copies and hunt them down. I had to get rid of her before she could divine my ruthlessness and turn against me. Now she was dead, and I was immortal.

I looked at Reagan. “You know what you have to do tomorrow-” Seeing something from the corner of my eye, I jumped to my feet.

Reagan stepped back twice, slapped a sheet of paper on himself, and balled his fists. An aura greater than Dao Journey exploded from him. His aura wasn’t directed at me, but I still felt as if I were backed into a corner by a ravenous hydra. If I were the same as when I first arrived in this world, I would’ve urinated and collapsed. But to the me of today, being backed into a corner by a hydra was nothing. Not compared to what I’d seen.

“What’s this?!” he yelled at me. A small cloud of mist was gathering at the spot Sophia vanished. The mist gathered and solidified into the shape of Sophia, complete with her hoodie and jeans.

“I don’t know!” I yelled back. What was this mist? Did Sophia not die? This wasn’t supposed to happen!

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Reagan pointed at the mist and a ball of light formed at his fingertip. It turned into a ray, like a sort of laser, and shot at the vapor. The ray pierced the vapor but did nothing. The ray continued until it hit the lake’s shore, exploding with a force that could slaughter any sect elder in the city.

She spread her arms, and the wall of mist swallowed us. Gray mist billowed around us, above us, and below us.

Reagan tried to use his Qi to explore the mist. “We’re trapped. Or sealed. Damnit, if I knew this would happen…” he glared at me.

I balled my fists. I had to calm down.

Sophia rocked on her feet and took a half step forward. “Watch,” she whispered. My eyes, trained on Sophia, widened.

She was a mountain. And I’m small, oh so small. Sophia… how much bigger than me is she? She was a continent. How can something be so big? She was the earth. She was the sun…the universe…

She was size. She was an ant. She was a mother’s embrace. She wasn’t any specific size, ant, or instance of a mother’s embrace. She was every size at the same time, every ant at the same time, and every mother’s embrace at the same time. She was the idea of size, ants, and a mother’s love. Then, for a split second, she was everything.

I blinked. She was the same as before, a regular girl standing in the mist. Everything else was the same as before too. The only difference was my now soaked underwear.

“Wh-wha?” Reagan stuttered. I looked down and saw urine dripping from under his robes. He had seen it too. He must’ve.

“What’s happening?- What happened?” I cried, stumbling back.

“Is that your question?” Sophia murmured in monotone.

“Yes!” I blinked, and the surrounding mist vanished, replaced by a sea of bubbling lava. This wasn’t the peak of the volcano, this was somewhere else. I looked for something other than the lava, but I only found Reagan standing next to me. The lava stretched on endlessly to either side of me.

Did Sophia get abilities she didn’t tell me about? Whatever she had done, we were completely powerless to stop her.

“Then I will answer your question.” The corners of her lips pulled up, and two dimples appeared in the side of her cheeks. I shivered. She had been my friend for almost all of high school, so I was familiar with her smiles. But this one. This one was alien to me. Her smile was one of a wise old man who had seen all that there was to see. No high schooler could have a smile like this.

And so she looked at me with that smile. Less than a second later, Sophia transformed… into Sophia. She transformed into the idea of Sophia. Every one of her personalities, every one of her flaws, what she loved, what she despised, what she wanted to be. All that put itself before me. I swallowed and stepped closer to her, entranced by the sight.

Sophia Jane Books, my pillar of support. Sophia Jane Books, my personal bully. Sophia Jane Books, my only friend.

The first day of high school, and I sat alone during lunch. High school was supposed to be a new start, but my crippling shyness didn’t let that happen.

Two weeks in, Sophia Books decided to sit next to me. I thought we were the same, but I couldn’t be more wrong. Sophia was outgoing and sociable. And mean. Very mean. She reached into my lunchbox and pinched my food with her bare fingers. Apparently, my fish was hers.

I noticed that sunday she went to the same church I did. “Do not steal,” the priest would say. It didn’t stop her.

She tortured me every day, but for no audience. One day, I left a math test out while I was doing corrections. “48%”

She laughed at me but started helping me with my corrections. Then she introduced me to her other friends. I didn’t end up getting close to them. During finals week, when she needed to study for her own tests, she sacrificed her time to help me. She gave me free money when I needed it, which was often. She kept stealing my things and making fun of me, but that didn’t matter. Eventually, I found that I wasn’t shy around her anymore. We became close, and I couldn’t be more grateful for her.

Then God willed us to be teleported here. And all of that ended.

Sophia continued to look at me with that smile, and a shiver ran through my body, making me feel emotions I haven’t felt since I walked out of that maze. Now I realized it. Killing Sophia wasn’t worth it. She wasn’t like the others. She was unique, somebody that couldn’t be replaced.

How could I forget why she was my friend? How could I forget why I loved her as much as I did? Did I think that this could just be copied? “I’m sorry!” There was still time for forgiveness, right?

The ends of Sophia’s hair dissolved first, turning into particles of mist. The mist sparkled like a handful of glitter thrown to the sky. The sparkle spread and consumed the rest of her hair. It moved on to her head, and once her head transformed into mist, it went to her body. I froze. What was happening?

The mist regrouped two meters above the lava. The same way it turned into the idea of Sophia, it turned into the idea of ‘The Oracle’.

Then we understood.

Minutes ago, I had asked a question, “What happened?”

Sophia had described her visions as “hallucinogenic hazes,” and we were in one right now. All of this—the lava, the mist, Sophia—all of it was an illusion shown to answer my question. Sophia was gone, but her title had stayed. Title holders can die, but the titles themselves are eternal. From this day onward, ‘The Oracle’ would wander the world, answering questions posed by heroes and peasants alike.

The mist and the illusions vanished, leaving us in the middle of a lake of molten rock. A gigantic infernal oak hung over us. We were back on the volcano.