UNTITLED COLLABORATIVE STOCHASTIC FICTION PROJECT [NB. only the last chapter is mine --cesium] *** CHAPTER 1 (author: mkbehr) So if I'm going to tell you this story, let me start by being really clear about one thing. I want you to look at your calendar on the wall, and take careful note of today's date. Okay? Now, what were you doing on that day when you were twelve years old? Say it quick, don't go looking up your diary or the akashic record or whatever. If you already did that before you came back and read this, well, okay, just remember that you had to do that. Otherwise, I'm going to assume you couldn't do it, or you got lucky. Only person I've ever known with a good enough memory to do that consistently is Quinis Mminnatte, and Quinis if you are reading this somehow then I swear I will kill you until it sticks. So. Remembering your childhood is hard. I just want to make sure that you understand that as well as I do. Because I understand very, very, well that this could have all gone way differently if I had just remembered what had happened on that August afternoon. So when you see why, keep your damn mouth shut. Massandrana Coria and I were hiding from the sun behind the only two hypertrees in the park. It was too hot to be outside, really, but we had homework to avoid. We watched the clouds go by... no, fuck, there weren't any clouds or it wouldn't have been that hot. See what I mean? Cars. It was cars. We watched the cars go by. Every so often we saw a Beetle, but the hypertrees were too far apart for us to punch each other. So we just tried to guess what colors the cars would be. "Red." "Blue." "Two reds." "Hey, no fair, Massandranda! That first one was orange!" "Well, I let you take a blue unicycle, and that's not even a real kind of car." "Fiiiiine. ...Blue." The cars let up for a while. "Hey, Cairemir?" "Yeah?" "Do your parents ever fight?" "Blue. ...nah, not really." "Oh. Okay." "Wait, why? Do yours?" "No! No no, it's fine, forget I said anything. "...well, it's just... sometimes at night, after I've gone to bed, I hear yelling from downstairs." "Blue." "Cairemir... do you think my mommy and daddy are going to get a divorce?" "Horse." "Cairemir! That's mean! Just because they rhyme doesn't-" "No, horse!" Horse probably didn't count as a shade of blue, but I had still thought it was worth pointing out the horse that was indeed riding up the highway, just as fast as any of the cars. "What the heck is-" Before Massandranda finishes her sentence, the horse leaps over the highway fence and comes to a stop in front of us. It's carrying a carriage, and a woman steps out. She's seven feet tall, covered in bronze armor, carrying a shield in one hand and a spear in the other. "MASSANDRANDA CORIA. WOULD YOU HIDE FROM YOUR PARENTS AS THEY FOUGHT? WOULD YOU ALLOW THEM TO CHOOSE YOUR DESTINY LIKE A PLANET CHOOSES ITS SUN? WILL YOU STAND BACK AND WATCH THE WORLD DIE?" "buh" "THE VOICES YOU HEAR ARE NOT YOUR PARENTS, MASSANDRANDA CORIA. THEY ARE THE BATTLE-CRIES OF HUMANITY, AND THEY ARE CALLING FOR YOU." The woman takes off her helmet, and her hair is black and wavy. It looks kind of like Massandranda's. "Wait, lady." Massandranda says. "Are you... me?" "YES. I AM YOU, AND YOU ARE ALEXANDER THE GREAT. NOW COME WITH ME, BACK IN TIME TO YOUR DESTINY, AND THE DESTINY OF ALL WHO BEAR YOUR MARK." Massandranda takes her hand, they disappear in a flash of light, and I'm left wondering how I'm going to explain this one to my parents. *** CHAPTER 2 (author: shawest) Now, you may be wondering what any of this has to do with Quinis. Massandra went off to fulfill her destiny and make the world a better place. That's great for her, right? Where does Quinis even factor into this? You see, it had to do with one subtle detail of that cool summer day Massandra and I spent together -- the last time we would do so as children. Massandra and I were young at that time -- 16 years old -- and yes, admittedly, stupid. We were young, we were stupid, and we were in love. Now young and stupid teenagers often find themselves in love. And often "love" is just another way of saying "horny" when you're talking about teenagers. So why am I wasting your time with this treatise on how much Massandra and I loved each other? Alright, so if I'm going to explain this, I'm going to have to turn back the clocks a little further. Sorry about that, but bear with me for a bit. Memory's a little foggier back then -- this was awhile ago. But it was about six, six and a half months prior to that day in the field with the Beetles and the the bright red unicycle and the time traveling woman on a horse (and seriously? Who rides a horse these days, anyway?). It was some time mid Fall when I arrived on Poswater -- I remember because it was my first time seeing hypertrees' branches turning that shade of...well, I think that color is probably chartruse? My trip to Poswater was more of a surprise than anything planned out in advanced. My mentor and I had left Theron on an archeological exposition, of sorts. We'd been studying the causes of the Cataclysm, and we'd taken a trip out to Earth to do some first-hand research. Trying to understand better what had made the mother-planet uninhabitable and how the few remnants of humanity had wound up on Theron, of all places. At any rate, it turns out Earth is a lot farther from Theron than our records had indicated. Fortunately, once we got in a close enough range to identify the Sol's signature, we were able to correct our course. Anyway, that's not important. The important part is that the longer distance meant that we did not have enough fuel for a full round trip journey, and by the time we realized this, we were already on our way back, desperately searching for a planet to dock at while waiting for Theron authorities to send us some backup fuel. And that's how we wound up on Poswater. A planet we had marked as habitable, but didn't even realize had human life on it. We wound up having an emergency landing. Within thirty minutes of us landing, we were greeted by who we later learned to be the Possoni National Military. Poswater's finest. Within twelve hours of us landing, we were being held in a confinement cell, watching the authorities bicker over whether to interrogate us or shove probes in us first. Within two days of us landing, we were being given the kings' treatment in the finest Possoni ambassador suites. Within a week of us landing, we had nations from across Poswater trying to schedule appointments with us. But none of that is important, because within a month of us landing, I had met Massandra Coria. Daughter of the Peshian Emperor. Within a year of my age (or at least as much as we can say this, trying to normalize for the lengths of the Poswater and Theron solar cycles), quick witted, and adorably fond of calling her parents "mommy" and "daddy". The most wonderful woman I had ever met. And three months later, I found myself opening the door to my suite to see the emperor of Peshi standing at the door, with a shotphaser trained on me and a terrified Massandra behind her. Massandra stepped forward. "Cairemir...I'm pregnant." She took two breaths. "You're the father." Her mother tilted her phaser a centimeter and fired a shot just past my right ear. "And you, Cairemir," she said a little too steadily, "are going to do the honorable thing. The wedding will be in one month from now..." I nodded. I loved Massandra, I was sure I did, but was I ready to be a husband at the age of sixteen? Hell, was I ready to be father? Conveniently, those questions were irrelevant, since I apparently had no choice. "I understand. I look forward to joining the family, Ms. Rupetheon." My legs were shaking. Her lips curled down. "I wasn't done talking." The barrel of the phaser looked me in the eye. "You will do the honorable thing by marrying my daughter -- we cannot have an international, and even moreso an interplanatary, scandal -- and you will bear the children. The surgery to transfer the embryo to you is scheduled for one week from now." I nodded and sat down. My legs would no longer hold my weight. The emperor turned around, her long black hair flashing behind her, and vanished from the door as her daughter ran to my side. And that's how I found myself three -- four? -- months later, pregnant, married, and trying and failing to forget about familial fears. I was on a foreign planet, unaware of the cultures and customs and laws. I was still the alien from outer space, the marvel for everyone across Poswater to come and gawk at. I didn't know the laws of this strange nation. And I couldn't even contact my parents to tell them they had a grandchild on the way. And so Massandra was helping me forget my woes with a game of Punch Buggy. The hypertree forest we stood in as we watched the cars go by was dense, and so we stood close together, shoulders touching. I looked at her and smiled. Things weren't ideal, but they could be worse. They could be a lot worse. The sun glistened in Massandra's hair and shined off the blue gemstone engagement ring I'd bought from her. And almost on cue, that is when Quinnis Mminnatte, the Jeweler that sold me the engagement ring, drove by in his red unicycle. I tried to say hi, but he didn't notice. "Red!" Massandra shouted, as she socked me in the arm, harder than usual due to her shock at seeing a unicycle on the road. "Ow!" I rubbed the bruise that had formed on my arm. Her ring had scraped my arm slightly, so I grabbed some leaves from the hypertree to blot the blood welling at the cut. And that is when we had the conversation about her parents -- her mommy and daddy -- fighting. The fate of the family. The future of the empire. And then Massandra came by to take Massandra into the past to fulfill her destiny. And that is how I ended up alone, bruised, and pregnant in the middle of the hypertree forest. I sat on the stump of a tree and sighed. A cool gust of wind blew on me, and my arm began to sting right where Massandra's ring had scratched my skin. I gasped and grabbed my arm. I looked down and saw a fine blue powder mixed in with the cut. "I'd better check that this isn't infected" I muttered to myself as I stumbled back to the hyperlimo we rode to the forest. I pulled the MedikitScanner5000 out of glovebox and scanned my arm to see what was wrong with it. I positioned the laser over my cut. Suddenly an expanding pressure started growing in my arm as it slowly started losing all feeling. I looked at the screen of the scanner. "Traces of azure deathrock detected. Minor toxin when mixed with blood. May cause blistering and minor numbness. Keep in dark; highly explosive when exposed to light." "Get me to a hospital!" I barked at the driver. He wiped the remains of my left arm off of the windshield and raced back onto the road, as blood gushed from my arm. I felt the baby kicking inside me as the world started to fade. And that is why Quinnis Mminnatte is going to die. *** Chapter 3 (author: xavid) I wasn't in a position to do anything about him then, though. I wasn't in a position to do much of anything for a long while. I had fever dreams. Have you ever been on LSD? I haven't, so I don't know what it's like. But if I had to imagine a bad trip, it probably would be almost exactly unlike this. I doubt that many people have drug-induced hallucinations of purple unicycles and vicious hypertrees. But anyways, eventually I became vaguely aware of my surroundings. I could vaguely see that I was in a hospital, but it was hard to focus on the present. My thoughts kept wandering to the past, on how I'd gotten into this situation. I'd told all my friends that I'd studied interstellar archeology for the adventure, that I'd stayed on Poswater for love. If you read my autobiography, that's what it'd say. But nothing could be further from the truth. You see, I had a dark secret, one that I couldn't share with anybody. If I let anything slip, even a hint, the Triluminati would hunt me down. And then I'd never get my revenge on Quinnis Mminnatte. You see, three years prior, when I'd been eleven, I'd just been an ordinary kid doing ordinary things. Cutting class, cutting up vegetables, cutting people's hair. You know, the usual. But it was there, after I'd finished my last barberish activity for the day, that I noticed one of my clients had left a briefcase behind. Maybe you'd say I should've left it closed. But I didn't have her phone number, didn't have any way of giving it back to her. So if you're telling be that it's my fault for opening it, that I deserve this mess? Then you're a jerk. Stop reading this. Go away. So, I opened it to see if there was letterhead, or a business card, or a holoworm. Anything like that. Instead, I saw a folder marked "Classified Documents: Do Not Read: No Really". So, I'm sure you're thinking, now it's really my fault for not giving up there? Really? Stop making all these unjust accusations. Honestly. Don't act like I'm stupid. I knew there was probably a tracking device in the briefcase, maybe a hidden recorder. I knew there was only one thing to do. I went out back, where the dead oak was, and built the largest bonfire you ever saw. I burned the whole thing, breathing in the fumes of incinerated pleather. And honestly, it's not my fault that a piece of paper with a URL on it flew out and landed at my feet. And that I followed the URL to an eBay auction for some 1940s board game. And that I bid obsessively against some bozo with the username "qmmin" who tried to snipe me at the last second, driving the price up to ridiculous levels. And that I ignored the eBay seller's feedback page, despite the fact that it had no fewer than five entries complaining that items received had been mysteriously cursed. And that I paid extra for express shipping. And that as soon as the game arrived, I invited my best friend, the boy I had a crush on, and some random drunk dude at the bus stop over to play it. And that I ignored the chains around the box and the note that warned of grave peril or something like that. And that, on my first turn, I rolled snake-eyes, causing the board game to produce a nest of wild hornets out of thin air. To make a long story short, I /maybe/ caused the Cataclysm through lack of reading comprehension on an event card. It might have been the drunk guy. I don't really remember. But I do know that there's only one way to fix everything, to undo the destruction of 99% of Earth's population in the distant past: to go back, find that board game, and roll double 7s while standing on one foot to unlock a retroactive cancellation spell. And that's why I became an interstellar archaeologist. And, when my first expedition failed, I married Massandrana to get access to her family's vast wealth, which would allow a second expedition with the proper equipment. Of course, that plan had now failed. I was alone, nine months pregnant, and dying in a strange hospital, and Massandrana, my one chance at redemption, was gone. Do you have any idea what that's like? Don't say yes. No one likes a liar. You don't know my life. Anyways, there I was, on that starchy hospital bed, with that over-aggressive air conditioning, despairing at ever being able to make things right. *** CHAPTER 4 (author: peairs) Rreglann peered intently at the old map of the imperial capital. "And you're *sure*?" she asked, indicating with one long finger a point on the northern edge of the public park, where it was bordered by the highway. "You were precisely *here* when...?" I sighed. "For the hundredth time, I'm not *sure* of anything. It was thirty years ago. I was pregnant. I lost an *arm* that day." She glanced up, shooting me a withering look before immediately returning her eyes to the faded map. I noticed that she was tightly gripping the edge of the table with both hands, perhaps to limit their trembling. "Well," she muttered, "It'll have to do." Perhaps I should back up. I was in that hospital bed for months before I awoke from my week-long deathrock-induced hallucinogenic nightmare. My first visitors were Massandandra's parents - the emperor and her consort - and for a fleeting moment I thought that they'd be happy to see that their son-in-law was on the mend. But no. They were furious. I was confused for a moment, but then I began to see the situation from their perspective. Their young daughter had disappeared, with no explanation, while on an excursion with me - and I, by all appearances, had attempted to commit suicide by poison, ending my own life and also killing my unborn child, their grandchild, the heir to the Peshian Empire. I was their worst fear: an alien spy who had nearly succeeded in ending the imperial line in one stroke. Had I died that day, the result would have been chaos throughout the empire and indeed the entire planet of Poswater. They didn't believe my story for a moment - the horse and the ring and Alexander the Great and all that. I can't deny that it must have sounded awfully absurd. But in the absence of any plausible story, the emperor instead initiated a massive cover-up, ruthlessly quashing any rumors of her daughter's disappearance. Massandandra had simply withdrawn from the public eye, the official story went. The stresses of impending motherhood had taken a toll on her delicate constitution, but she was alive and well. I was held in the hospital until the birth of my daughter - christened Ondondree - and then kicked out and given a one-way ticket to the Possoni Nation, along with forged papers documenting a new identity. Despite what the emperor perceived to be my treasonous acts, I was tied by blood to her heir, and her honor would not allow my execution. But she warned me that I would be under tight surveillance lest I make another false step, and indeed I could feel watchful eyes on me most moments for years to come. The Peshian media announced my tragically early demise. Massandranda's death was formally reported a couple of years later, before Ondondree would be old enough to remember never actually seeing her mother. The imperial bloodline was secure, and the imperial family had avoided any sort of scandal. For my part, I spent decades in Possoni keeping my head down and trying to blend in. I despaired of ever reversing the Cataclysm. I was too busy trying not to give the Peshian secret police a reason to murder me. Over time, I noticed my surveillance growing less frequent and eventually disappearing altogether, but by then I had long since resigned myself to a quiet life running my own little barbershop in a backwater Possoni town. But although I didn't know it at the time, there was one person in the Peshian court who believed my story: Rreglann, the emperor's chief scientific/spiritual advisor. While investigating Massandandra's disappearance, she'd discovered a massive hole in the akashic matrix at that time and place: an anomaly perfectly consistent with my admittedly fantastical story of interplanetary time travel. She warned the rest of the imperial court that the cover-up was a mistake - that they should believe my story and give her the labor and resources she needed to investigate the phenomenon further - but did they listen? Of course not. She was nearly dismissed for her insolence, in fact. She continued her research in secret, though, working alone and using materials stolen from official imperial projects one small piece at a time. Even with her tireless efforts, it was thirty years before she showed up on my doorsteep wheeling a hypercart full of pilfered machinery. Something had gone wrong, she explained to me. The Peshian empire was failing, the timeline was fraying - and Massandandra hadn't returned. Whatever her quest on the Earth of antiquity, it had been unsuccessful. Humanity's only hope was for us to follow her back in time - and across the stars - and offer whatever aid we could render. I quickly agreed to Rreglann's plan, though I didn't tell her my true motivations. If I could just find Massandandra's older self, I could convince her to use her mysterious cosmic powers to transport me from ancient Earth to the Earth of my childhood, to find that accursed board game and avert the Cataclysm! Surely she would understand that my own quest was far more important than whatever she thought her younger self needed to accomplish. And that's how we found ourselves in a cramped underground bunker, poring over a thirty-year-old map and calibrating Rreglann's ramshackle time machine. She sighed, eyes still locked on the map. "If we had enough hyperfuel for more than one jump, there'd be some room for error. But I already took far too great a risk stealing even this much from the imperial reserve..." "Uh. Can't we just go back a little further? Give me more time to find... myself?" Brushing one long gray lock of hair from her face, she replied without looking up: "No good. The only reason this trip is possible at all is because the Event left a... a dent in the space-time continuum. A point of lower potential temporal energy. This gives us a very narrow time window for our arrival, but - due to quantum uncertainty - the spatial endpoint of our jump is much less constrained." "Oh." When she put it that way, it sounded so obvious. She stared at the map so intensely that I started to worry it might spontaneously ignite. "Although... In the worst-case scenario, I could amplify the retrofluctuator signal. That would greatly increase the range at which we could piggyback on Massandranda's jaunt to ancient Earth... but then we risk dragging along anything that might happen to be nearby." She looked up at me with such suddenness that I nearly jumped. "Anything... or anyONE." "Wait, what's that supposed to -" "Well, time's a-wasting!" she interrupted, turning away from me to twist some knobs on her gleaming metal contraption. "Your memory isn't going to get any better the longer we wait." The time machine released a whirr that quickly grew to a shriek, and a glow that grew to blinding intensity, and - ...we found ourselves outdoors, in a park filled with hypertrees. Clouds raced overhead as I shivered in the unseasonably chilly breeze. I looked around anxiously - I could have sworn this was the spot, but there was no sign of me... or... "Idiot!" Rreglann slugged me in the shoulder with surprising force for a woman nearly twice my age, and then pointed across the park. There, in the distance, nearly obscured by the intervening hypertrees, I saw two small figures and one larger one, and if I strained my ears I could just make out shouted words: "- BACK IN TIME TO YOUR DESTINY -" "Trangh!" Rreglann cursed under her breath as her fingers flew across the control panel. "Amplifying signal!" The machine started up again, this time making a deep thrumming as the world grew dark around us. I felt a force tugging me in the direction of my past self and both versions of Massandranda, though I also seemed rooted to the spot. I looked back to Rreglann, who pounded a fist on the console and shouted "Double trangh! The machine picked up another biosignature when I septupled the operational radius! But! It looks like the piggyback effect is strong enough to carry everything through the wormhole! Transport in three! Two!" I don't know if she ever got to "One," because at that moment my world exploded. I felt myself sucked as though through a straw into a universe of light and pain and endless, dizzying motion. Centuries unspooled before me; light-years wrapped around me in a deadly embrace. The continuum of reality thundered around me, pulling every atom, every *quark* of my physical self in an different direction - Then stillness. Silence. Pain. Slowly, I managed to make sense of my situation. I was lying on the ground, face down. There was dust, on the ground and also drifting in great clouds in the wake of my sudden arrival. Just ahead of me, on the ground... something. A wheel? Somehow I couldn't quite make out the color. Maybe all the dust. I closed my eyes. The pain was rapidly receding, and I tested my body with small motions, still not daring to attempt standing all the way up. Everything still seemed to be there - well, except my left arm, but I'd long since grown used to its absence. Maybe, just maybe, I was going to be all right. I opened my eyes again, then half-closed them, squinting at that object ahead of me. I was still stumbling over each thought, but one word finally entered my mind: *unicycle*. A shadow passed over me, and I craned my neck to look upward, at the smiling face of Quinis Mminnatte. *** CHAPTER 5 (author: cesium) "I know what you're thinking," Quinnis said. "You're thinking, 'I craned my neck to look upward, at the smiling face of Quinnis Mminnatte.'" (At least that's what I thought he said. I would find out later just how wrong I was.) There was silence for a few moments, as the lingering dust blooms slowly settled. The sky was overcast, and the two lone hypertrees bent and shuddered under a persistent hyperbreeze. "Oh!" exclaimed Quinnis. "Where are my manners?" He extended a hand and pulled me to my feet as he straightened. "Come back to my shop, my boy. We'll get you straightened out." Intellectually, I recognized an urge to strangle this man with I awoke in a cold sweat. It was my bare hands. But something 2 AM, and the AC was making my within myself stopped me. I felt room noisy and freezing. For a this was someone I could trust. minute my mind flailed among Someone who wouldn't have sold flashbacks to the hospital, but me an azure deathrock as an no -- I was home now, in my tiny engagement ring. flat above my humble barbershop. The shards of the Rabbit Moon And as he led me out of the seemed to smile down at me from public park, across the street the night sky outside my window behind a few listless cars, and -- so different from the sky on into his shop, I started, with Theron, yet still comforting, in what felt like a chilling stab a way. to my stomach, to suspect why. But the flashbacks meant that it The sign above his door, which I took a while before I registered knew to read "Quinnis Mminnatte, two facts of the moment -- I Jeweler", now showed the words could not move, and there was "Quinis Minate: Fortune Teller". someone else in my room. Panic welled up again, and my eyes darted to the shadowed face Quinnis -- no, Quinis -- had in the corner. The face of the handed me a cup of steaming tea, jeweler -- Quinnis Mminnatte. and we sat crammed into his parlor around a round table "Recent events have shown me you supporting a crystal ball. are a man of great consequence, Crystals. It sorta made sense. Cairemir," he began smoothly. "I Around us hung mirrors, basins have paralyzed you with essence of water, strings of onions and of peridot; it will last until garlic, other assorted jetsam. morning. You _will_ answer my The atmosphere was close and questions, and," he spread his still, but not oppressive. hands, "your family will be as safe as I can guarantee." "Ready?" Quinis indicated. I swallowed, hard. It appeared I I took a breath. "Yes." wasn't going to have a choice. "Then let's begin. "Please tell me your name." "Your name." "Cairemir Rupetheon." "Cairemir Bareanos." "How old are you?" "Age?" "Forty-four." "Thirty-six." "What is the name of this nation?" "The country we are in?" "Peshi. The Peshian Empire." "Possoni." "What is its leader's name?" "The Peshian Emperor's name." "Emperor Rupetheon." "Rupetheon." "And her advisor?" "And her advisor." "Rreglann." "...Reggllan?" "Excellent." "Good." I took a sip of tea. My nose itched. "Now, tell me your wife's name, please." (Massandandra.) "Massandranda." "Massandra." (Massandrana.) "And what did your dice roll, on the first turn of the cursed game?" (Snake eyes.) "Snake eyes." (Snake eyes.) I stopped cold. I stopped cold. Why did I say that? Why did I say that? How did he _know_ that? How did he _know_ that? Quinnis gestured at me. Quinis gestured at me. "We must continue. "We must continue. "Remember the day in the park." "I will explain afterward." Sweat ran into my eyes. I nodded, swallowing. "How many hypertrees?" "How many hypertrees in the park?" "I don't know?! A lot!" "Er... two." "Color of my unicycle." "What color is my unicycle?" "...red." "Blue." "Who was on the horse?" "Who was the rider on the horse?" "My... Massandra. Alexander the Great." "Alexander the Great." "And your left arm is gone. Excellent." "The missing arm is your right. Good." Quinnis tapped his tablet, which had Quinis leaned back, examining the notes evidently started crunching some on his tablet. "A word of advice," he numbers. "This is a multiverse, Mr. said absent-mindedly. "Pay attention Bareanos," he said lightly. "There are to line wrapping." many versions of you out there, and "What does that --" many versions of me. Your answers "String theory, tangled up in extra to these questions are coordinates dimensions, all that stuff. Don't by which I can locate your plane worry, you'll know it when you of origin. Believe me, I can see it..." This last bit tell if you lied. And once trailed off into a mutter. this all checks out, I can "Well, _that_'s helpful." finally get back where Quinis wasn't listening I belong." His to me. His eyes had tablet beeped. grown clouded. "That can't be right." "One last question..." His face had a fierce intensity. "How far is it -- from Earth to Theron?" And that question shook me to my core, like none of the others had. Because I _knew_ the answer. I knew it down to two decimal places. And yet we'd gotten lost, our little ship with two aboard, we'd gotten lost because _Earth was not where it was supposed to be_ and that was the reason I was here. But I gave the answer I knew and then I watched as all the color drained out of the other man's face. He gave a little strangled gasp as the tablet fell from his trembling fingers and he put his hands to his temples as if it would help the world make sense again and I could do nothing but look. Slowly, though, I became aware of a gradual lightening of the dark inside the room. It was coming from the crystal ball on its was coming from a crystal pendant on little pedestal before us. a chain around Quinnis' neck. "So," the man sighed. "I guess I might as well explain everything to you, then." He grasped the crystal with both hands and sudden brightness enveloped us whole. I was once a fortune teller, before I parlayed my knowledge into a craft better suited to As a fortune teller, my newfound goals. I have a special gift for _seeing_. Unlike most, though, I see best into the past, not the future. My vision returned, and I saw a younger I could tell you exactly what I was doing on Quinis perched on a any given date from my youth, for instance. stool inside his But no matter. shop. No -- not the same shop I knew. A Soothsaying is a fundamentally quantum different one, but mechanical effect, Cairemir. Entanglement is still recognizably what allows true sight. In my earlier days, his. This shop was before the Cataclysm, I was an amateur on Earth. researcher into this science. I thought -- Time accelerated, [The voice resounding inside my head seemed in the vision. to harden at these words.] Quinis paced around a makeshift lab. He I thought I had finally cracked the problem pored over papers of quantum bogosort. Do you know what that and journals, made is? Permute a list using quantum randomness. minute adjustments This splits the universe into many threads, to his machinery, one for each possibility. If the list is not labored over nests in order, destroy the universe. In the one of wiring. Hands remaining thread, the list will be sorted -- raced unceasingly in linear time. And then, if we could only around clock faces; adapt the technique, all of NP would be in sandwiches lay our grasp. All of NP! In polynomial time! neglected on countertops. The hardest part of the problem was making sure the system settled into its ground At last Quinis held state. I called it QM_min, the quantum the product of his mechanical minimum. If the system got stuck ingenuity: a single in a higher-energy configuration, it could board, covered in destabilize with catastrophic results. electronic sigils and movable pieces, And I, in my arrogance, proposed to perform with (I was somehow the ground state calculations using the aware) dozens of greatest concentration of computational qubits confined in power in history: the Internet. the very center. He smiled, admiring I sent out prototypes to eBay and Reddit, it for a minute, relying on crowdsourcing to find the ground before setting it state. The prototypes were buggy. If you in a cardboard box were superstitious, you might have called that he sealed and them cursed. They could cause destructive applied a mailing quantum fluctuations, but only locally, and label to. so I paid them no heed. Then I saw myself, But you... you match the energy signatures another version of from the Cataclysm. You bid against QM_min, me, despairing over and you won. You caused the system to settle the Cataclysm and into an energy higher than ground state -- resolving at any and it destabilized. The threads did not cost to unearth why collapse back into one future where the list it had happened, was sorted; they spun out into their own because it was not parallel universes. Based on the coordinates he -- it was not I calculated from you... the consequences anyone from that were much worse than I would have believed universe, in fact possible. The energy backlash would have -- who remembered scoured clean every Earth in every timeline, triggering it. even the ones where you hadn't won the Would I rather have auction, and sent all of us spiraling into been that person? the void, outcasts in the multiverse. Would he rather have been me? And all because I was foolish, and you were stubborn. The vision ended, and we were back in the room again. "Now listen carefully," Quinis "Now listen carefully," Quinnis spoke. "According to these spoke. "According to these calculations, there will be calculations, there will be another me out there: the another me out there: the nefarious Quinnis Mminnatte. so-called 'good' Quinis Minate. There might be more, too -- There might be more, too -- spontaneous gemination; I've spontaneous gemination; I've seen it before. He will be using seen it before. He will be using our knowledge of quantum our knowledge of quantum crystallography to try to bring crystallography to try to merge all the parallel universes under all the parallel universes back his sway. From unlimited into his own. And that means numbers of realities he could ending the independent lives of extract unlimited amounts of all the people who already resources for his own ends. inhabit these universes. "For everyone's sake, we cannot let him succeed. "Cairemir," hissed Quinis, "I've been studying you for a leaning forward with intensity very long time, Mr. Bareanos," in his eyes, "is not your real continued Quinnis, who seemed to name. You've been split in two, have regained his composure the same as me. I've brought us after his earlier breakdown. He here because only you can help was rummaging around in a bag of me defeat Quinnis and save us some sort. "I know you inside all. But to do that, you must and out." discover who you are -- and who you're meant to be." I swallowed. There was no way this line of conversation was "Wait. Brought us where?" going anywhere good. At least he Recoiling from Quinis, I caught hadn't told me he was pregnant. a glimpse through the shop windows, and my mouth gaped open "Azure deathrock isn't natural, in shock. I leapt up and burst you know," he said, almost through the door, stepping into conversationally. "It took me -- not the rundown streets of months to synthesize that sample the Peshian capital -- but a once I'd formulated my plan for plaza of white marble with a you. And as it turns out, it's single tree in the middle. A all been worth it. Because now white keep towered over me. that I know my... twin is out there, there's going to be a "Your true name," called Quinis little hell to pay. Quinis from behind me, "is Boromir Minate is going to die." Baratheon, and this is your kingdom." Quinnis pulled out an object I couldn't identify, in the dark In a sky bluer than any Poswater and from my awkward position. knew, three dragons wheeled "And you are going to help me if overhead, while before me, a you ever want to see your wife rider in bronze armor saluted as and daughter again." The last she approached. Her wavy black thing I remembered was the hair fell to her waist. savage grin on his face.