About Earths.

I enter the cylindrical hall and there they are, all fifty of them, identical frosted glass windows, similar in all aspects, but one. The trigger for the bomb on my Earth could be hidden on any of these forty nine other Earths, accessed through the identical windows. Once I retrieve the trigger, I will save my Earth. The nuclear blast is supposed to take place in five hours, which means I have six minutes to go through each window, enter that Earth and find the trigger.

Samira sits down, exhausted at the sheer enormity of the project. She had not signed up to be a planet warrior, but here she is. Sometime in the year of her Birth, in 1970 some Earth babies started developing super abilities. The children were scanned at Birth and those who registered positive were taken away from their parents and given special education. Samira's parents had been overjoyed and frightened at the same time. They came from a lineage of ordinary people with ordinary lives. They barely knew how to process the news that Samira was now one of the super babies, in time they went on to have other babies and she became a distant memory for them. Samira’s family became The Cure, the facility which housed and trained these children to control and manifest their abilities.

Samira showed heightened consciousness from the moment she was born, she could hold her breath longer than most human beings, could run super fast, could stay under water longer than most, she could withstand high temperatures and low temperatures. She had the gift of endurance. There were kids who could levitate or create fire with a touch, command water with their hands, but some of those prodigies burnt out early. Samira was in it for the long game, the Cure trained her to do the jump loops to other Earths. They made her a world protector.

The fourth window is Earth number five. Industrialisation hadn't happened here yet and people seemed to be in hunter gatherer mode. The patch of land she is on has a meadow, low hills and a lake. She can see a man chasing two little girls. He is up to no good. Samira’s only job is to find the trigger, she had been trained to overlook and never interfere with events on other Earths. She hears the girls squealing, as the man reaches them. Samira is about to exit the window, but glances back. She can see a hooded figure stabbing the man. The girls run off, frightened but free. Her time is up on this Earth, there is no trigger to be found and Samira climbs back out through the window. Samira feels a twinge of something she hasn’t felt before. It is, she knows the feeling called guilt and frustration.

 The eleventh window leads to an Earth on the cusp of the Milky way, almost part of another galaxy. It looks a little old, frayed, like in those Blade Runner movies from decades ago. Samira used to love them, it was part of their training ritual at The Cure. Samira walks through the neon streets, enlivening an otherwise thick haze which hangs over the city. She flattens herself against the building on instinct, when a flying car zooms by. She peeks inside the sole bar in this neighbourhood. It is the address where the trigger is slated to be. She goes inside. Her scanner does not register any anomaly. Samira senses a movement. She can see someone taking off. There are two minutes to go. The fugitive runs, and Samira runs behind the person.

Two minutes of an intense chase later, Samira jumps and finds that she has jumped out of the window, and into Earth nineteen. She is no closer to finding the trigger and time is running out.

Samira knows she has met the ultimate foe for The Cure, a World destroyer. They are programmed to destroy worlds just as she is to save them. It’s those other children with the super abilities, who rebelled against The Cure and left and formed their own collective. She doesn’t know why they destroy worlds, she doesn’t know why she saves them. It feels cyclical, she feels another emotion, curiosity.

 I land in the middle of a floating island. It looks and smells like Thailand, salty, moist, hot, the tropics. In this Earth the poles have reversed and the people living in the tropics have Nordic features. I walk around the island as quickly as I can, I have but five minutes now, my scanner is trying to find anomalies in every object possible, beneath the sand and water even, through the foliage. I hear a series of beeps, but none of them emit the high frequency transmission that only I can hear through my ear piece, the transmission that will lead me to the trigger, which will destroy my Earth. I see her suddenly, lithe, figure clad in a wetsuit, on a surf board going towards a gigantic wave. It is not a wave at all, it is a giant Tsunami, and the beach is dead calm now. All the people have disappeared. I have two minutes left before the Tsunami hits.

 She looks at me, gives me a smile and then rushes to the aid of the two surfers who are in the path of the wave, she gets to them in the nick of time and I climb out through the window, shaken.  The destroyer is protecting people in every world. What am I doing? That figure also seems oddly familiar, and I sit for a brief few seconds trying to quell the uneasy feeling in my body.

Window number forty nine takes me to a version of New York City. There is smoke and debris everywhere I look. This must be the recent past or near future. This Earth looks eerily close to my Earth. I can see the buildings fall. Has the bomb already burst? People are running everywhere I can see. I see the destroyer, already ahead, running into an alley way. Furious tears come into my eyes. This is the only city which feels like home to me and I will not let her destroy my only home. I see a spiral tower in the distance and sigh with relief. It is not the New York City from my Earth. The scanner picks up no anomalies, but it gives out some weird transmissions as I run after the destroyer. She laughs and is almost out of my reach, when I see her skid to a stop and save twenty people from the debris of a falling building.

Now she is just showing off. She rushes out the window. She enters the fiftieth window, I run behind her. My body recoils and is thrown at a distance by a force field. This is my Earth. I am forbidden to enter it, until I have disarmed the trigger, but something points to the trigger being there itself. The only way to circumvent this is to breach the window. My Cure handler warns me not to, I will lose something very precious. 

I have lived adventures enough for several lifetimes, I do not recall my parents faces, if they are collateral damage, it will be but a small sacrifice. I take the plunge, break the window with a lethal kick and enter my Earth. I have been dropped into Death Valley in Eastern California. 

The transmission code is ringing with a piercing shriek. How do I find this trigger? There is sand for miles, no sign of life. I get closer to the destroyer and the transmission burns out. The sense of familiarity grows even stronger. She throws off her hood and I come face to face with my twin Jahanara. I look at her devastated. I have two minutes left. I realise she is the trigger. As I raise my gun on my twin, she closes her eyes in forgiveness and I exit the broken window, broken inside, having saved the world.