1030: Chapter 13

“Hello,” came an infuriatingly calm voice, breaking the silence.

I looked up and was unsurprised to see the strange figure from before leaning nonchalantly against the doors of the supermarket. Escape was so frustratingly close, but so long as there was no power I couldn’t get out. I was stuck with… whatever this thing was.

I said nothing.

“Fine,” it said. “I’ll talk. You listen.”

It pushed itself off the door and stood up straight, then took a couple of steps towards me.

“Do you know where you are?” it asked in a tone that sounded slightly mocking. “Other than the supermarket, I mean.”

I nodded. I didn’t really feel up to saying much right now.

“So you’ve probably figured out that you’ve ‘crossed over’, right?” it continued.

I nodded again.

“While we wait here, I should probably explain a couple of things,” it said. “I mean, it’s not as if you look like you have anything better to do right now.”

It was true. While I was trapped in here, there was literally nothing else I could do. Well, I guess I could try and break the doors open, but I didn’t feel like my body had enough strength to heft anything that might break that thick glass.

“Fine,” I said, with a deep sigh. I took a deep breath and tried to calm my nerves. “Explain.”

The figure turned around and presented its back to me — proof enough that it clearly didn’t consider me a threat.

“We… have a problem,” it said after a moment’s pause. “And, from what I’ve been observing, you might be instrumental in fixing it.”

It paused and turned around again to look at me. I felt a chill as I felt those eyes on me.

“How to explain this,” it pondered, nibbling absentmindedly on a slender fingertip. “There’s a ‘boundary’ that stops all these alternate existences from crashing into one another and interfering with each other, you see. And in certain places, it’s weakening.”

I nodded dumbly.

“Most of the time, these weakened boundaries don’t affect anyone, as most people are firmly stuck on their own timeline,” it continued. “Their destiny is set, as it were. They’re secure in where they’re going, and where they’re going to end up — even if they don’t know it just yet.”

I blinked. What?

“You’re a little different, though,” it continued, looking through narrowed eyes at me as if it was trying to analyse me. “You have… a curiously weak attachment to your own world. The weakened parts of the boundary ebb and flow like the tides of the sea; when they’re at their widest, you have something of a habit of being pulled through, you see.”

I blinked again. This sounded completely unbelievable.

“Pulled through?” I asked. “Because of my weak attachment to my world.” The fear that had been gripping me was fast diminishing and being replaced with slight annoyance. I couldn’t tell if this mysterious, shadowy figure was just toying with me and trying to make me believe any old thing, or if it was really telling the truth.

“Yes,” it said. “I appreciate it all sounds very strange, but that’s really the simplest way I can put it. There is a lot more to it, obviously, but yes. The fact is that your connection to your world is weak, and this means that you often find yourself… paying others a visit. Specifically, this one. This dark, depressing, deserted…”

“Hold on,” I interrupted. “Why just this one? If these ‘boundaries’ are weak, why do I keep coming to this same world?”

“Several reasons,” the figure answered, scratching its cheek with a long finger. “One, you have some sort of attachment to this world as well as your own.”

“Alice,” I muttered to myself.

“And two — this is the complicated bit — all these alternate existences exist on a sort of ‘continuum’, and this world is, hmm, ‘closest’ to your own world.”

I said nothing for a moment. The silence hung heavily over us.

“So,” I said eventually. “Uh, so what? What exactly does all this have to do with me?”

“Well,” said the figure. “I’m still trying to work out exactly what your role in all this will be. But suffice to say your ability to ‘cross over’ between these existences is almost completely unique in the universe. In fact, I only know of two others who have similar capabilities, myself and my people excepted — we’re a… special case. One of them is that sister of yours you’ve been paying a visit to, though her ability doesn’t seem anywhere near as strong as yours.”

I blinked, but I wasn’t surprised to hear this. I’d seen her, after all.

“So who is the other?” I asked.

“That’s the thing,” it said. “I don’t know. And that’s where these problems are coming from. We have a… rogue element, shall we say. They could be hiding anywhere, and they’re very powerful.”

“Powerful?” I asked. “How do you mean?”

“Difficult to say right now,” it said. “But know that they’ve already crossed through several possible alternate existences at will, and are currently hiding out in your world somewhere.”

“Why?” I asked. “Why are they doing… whatever it is they’re doing?”

“Chaos,” said the figure simply. “They simply desire to sow chaos. In their own existence, they revelled in the chaos they created; now, they seek to spread it through the other possible existences, one world at a time.”

“That’s it?” I asked. “Just to… sow chaos and mess things up?”

“The multiverse is a strange and mysterious place,” said the figure with a grandiose gesture. “Some beings have… purer intentions than others. Your people are complex beasts, filled with many different motivations. Others, like this creature we’re talking about here, are rather more single-minded.”

“And what about you?” I said finally. “Where do you fit in?”

“I just try and keep everyone safe,” it said.

The lights flicked on and suddenly people appeared around me. A security guard nearly tripped over me, cowering as I was in the corner.

“You all right there, sir?” he asked, offering me his hand, a curious expression on his face.

“Yes,” I said. “I’m fine.”

I felt dizzy and confused. This was all a bit much to take in. Parallel existences? Beasts of pure chaos? Me having a “weak connection” to my own world? And that figure being a member of a “special case” race who apparently could jump back and forth between all these existences at will?

I took the guard’s hand and stood up unsteadily, and staggered out of the shop without any of the things I had come in to buy.

Outside, I took a deep breath and let the cool, crisp air fill my lungs. I leaned back against the wall of the supermarket and just breathed for a few minutes. Then I opened my eyes and started to walk home.

*

The walk had given me time to think and try to make sense of some of the things the strange figure had told me.

Okay, I said to myself. So here’s what’s happening. I have a weaker connection to my own world than most people, which means that I get pulled through weaknesses in the “boundary” between worlds when they ebb and flow in just the right way. The world that is “next” to mine is the one where Alice is all alone, and the main differences between that one and my own is that 1) Alice is alive and well and 2) everyone else has disappeared.

Alice also has the same strange property that she, too, can be pulled through these weak points in the boundary between worlds, though apparently less frequently than I do. And somewhere else out there is a being that enjoys sowing chaos who has already passed through several different existences, doing God knows what along the way, and is supposedly currently hiding out somewhere in my world.

Also, there is a whole race of what appears to be multiverse “caretakers” who chase miscreants like this chaos-sower between worlds and try, apparently, to keep everyone “safe”.

That about covers it, I thought.

It didn’t bring me any closer to an understanding of what on Earth it was I was supposed to do about all this though, and whether or not my sister had anything to do with it.

*

At 2:30, I paid Alice a visit as usual. She was unsurprised to see me, and it transpired she’d also had a visit from the strange figure. She didn’t know its name and whether or not it had a gender either, but she didn’t seem quite so uneasy about it as me. I guessed that she probably enjoyed having some company, whoever it might be.

The thought reminded me; she never finished her story of how everyone disappeared.

“I can’t explain it for sure,” she said. “It was just… after I got that phone call, I was really upset, you know?”

I nodded. I knew exactly how she felt.

“And then… the next day I went out to try and get some air and get my head together… and there was just no-one around,” she explained. “I went to the shop and there was no-one there. I tried to call my friends, and no-one answered. Little by little, the power and phones started going down, leaving most places dark. For some reason, the power’s always stayed on here, though. It’s like this place is a sort of beacon in the night or something.”

I frowned. I wondered if this “chaos” thing had deliberately set all this up. I raised the possibility to Alice, who seemed unperturbed by the existence of beings of pure chaos hopping between worlds and doing their chaotic thing.

“I couldn’t say,” she said. “If that’s really the case, I don’t really understand what it’s trying to do. I guess drive me mental or something? I’m sure there are far easier ways it could do that. I mean, you know, this situation sucks, and I spent a good few weeks doing nothing much but crying my eyes out, but in a weird way it’s not so bad. I’ve got food, I’ve still got water, I don’t have to do anything, and I get to see you sometimes.”

I admired how calmly she was taking all this. I thought to myself that if I was in her situation I probably wouldn’t be dealing with it anywhere near as well as she was.

“Hey,” I said. “I want to try something, and I think we should probably be quick about it. Come with me.”

I took her hand, pulled her out of bed and pushed her out of the door before she could protest. I went to follow her and was surprised to see her disappear before my eyes. I walked out of the door and she reappeared in front of me.

“Whoa,” she said. “Yeah, it felt weird the last time I did it, but it’s even weirder seeing you coming through like tha–”

She disappeared again. I looked back through the door behind me. The room was dark; the bed was empty. It looked like one of those “weak points” the figure had been talking about was over that doorway, and that it went through one of those “ebb and flows” some time between 2:30 and a little after 2:45 every night. Whenever the weak point… “closed” or whatever it did, we got pulled back into our respective existences — the ones we were supposed to be “attached” to.

I let out a wordless shout to the silent house. I staggered back into my own room and fell face-down on the bed. I was asleep again within minutes, my brain completely exhausted from the bewildering things it had been told. Inwardly I hoped that I would wake up in the morning and this would all have been a figment of my own imagination.

I knew that wasn’t going to happen, though. This was probably going to get worse before it got better.