Eulasi v The Multiverse

Eulasi emerged from the swirling black and purple void, tendrils of pure reality clinging to him stubbornly as he shook himself free of the sticky portal.

"Library. Check," he muttered to himself, noting the tall, red brick tower sprouting from the center of campus.

"Chapel. Check," he added, turning slightly to view the familiar spire.

Now that the geography was out of the way, he turned his focus to the people.

He smiled.

"Frightened and confused students. Check."

Everywhere he turned, students had paused their poorly timed dashes between classes to stare at him.

Or, more accurately, to stare at his portal.

Someone screamed, and Eulasi spun on his heel, portal gun at the ready.

A few yards away a freshman was hanging onto an arm.

An arm that was protruding from another portal, just like the one Eulasi had emerged from.

He sighed.

"Unauthorized wild portals appearing at random," he hissed. "Check."

"Help!" screamed the freshman, trying to pull their friend back through.

"Let them go!" called Eulasi. "You can't leave through the same portal you arrived through! For some reason," they added, in a low mutter.

He wished the portals would work as designed. There were a lot of kinks to iron out, if he could just get the funding. . .

He surveyed his surroundings critically.

"No casualties," he noted to himself, ignoring the screaming students and the university police heading purposefully in his direction. "Excluding, of course, those who stumble through a portal. Maybe this is the one--"

His eyes were drawn inexorably to the sky.

That was where it always started.

As he watched, a piece of sky crumbled and feel to the ground with a crash. There was a huge delay between the impossibly solid sky falling and the sound shaking the campus, which meant that the destruction was still some distance away, but that wouldn't last long.

"Not here, not here," he muttered, wildly. Every alarm on every building and car was blaring, which, mixed with the screams and crying, created a cacophony that Eulasi was getting far too comfortable with.

He calibrated the portal gun without looking, keeping an eye on the shaken police who were trying to restore order.

"Next one," he muttered. "Maybe the next one. . ."

Open a new portal, or go through a 'wild' one? Random experimentation had shown no obvious difference, no matter the choice, but there had to be a correct way, perhaps a correct sequence, if he could just--

The hair on the back of his neck rose. He gave an involuntary shiver. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a red and black tendril flick past his vision.

"It's behind me!" he hissed.

He ran, dodging milling students, making straight for one of the wild portals. They were multiplying rapidly now - escaping would be easy!

For now.

Another fragment of sky fell, this one landing close enough to make the library shake and lean dangerously to one side, but Eulasi didn't see it fall because moments later, he was through.

He stumbled to a halt.

"Library. Check. Chapel. Ch--"

"What's going on?"

"One annoying stowaway," hissed Eulasi. "Check!"

He glared at the kid. "Man," he corrected himself. He hadn't liked being called a kid in college, even if he'd looked like one.

"Actually, I use they/them pronouns," said the student.

"I genuinely don't care," said Eulasi, hoping his voice was as scathing as he intended.

"I fell through the. . .thing when the earthquake hit," said the student. They slapped at the portal. Instead of sucking his hand through, the portal hardened impermeably for an instant.

"Ow!" said the student, sucking their hand. "I can't seem to go back through. . ." They looked at Eulasi hopefully, seeing in him an Adult, a potential Source of Answers, this child whose last educational experience had been in some high school somewhere.

"That's not how it works! said Eulasi, irritably, checking that the gun was still calibrated, and walking away as quickly as he could. "Rain clouds. Storm clouds if I'm being honest. . . overgrowth doesn't bode well . . ."

The yellow clouds boiled and roiled in the sky, seeping with foreboding. In the distance, rain started to fall, and Eulasi didn't like the hissing, fizzing sound it made as it hit the ground.

"Not here," they muttered. "Again!"

"Where are you going?" asked the student, making Eulasi jump.

"You still here?" he snapped.

"Yes," said the student. "I can't leave, you see. . ." They shrugged apologetically, a confused smile on their face.

"It's a post-apocalyptic verse," said Eulasi to the student. Well, not to the student, but it was nice, in a way, to have someone to direct words at. "A culmination of multiple poor decisions. It's--"

In the near distance, a fragment of sky cracked and fell, the yellow clouds at the same time both gas and solid, permeable and impermeable.

It dissolved before it hit the ground.

"Acid rain?" Eulasi wondered. "Or something else?"

"We should probably leave," said the student, watching the small wave of yellow, bubbling liquid caused by the falling sky roll towards them. "Like, I really think we should go!"

"Doesn't smell like sulphur," muttered Eulasi. "Might simply be pollution taken to it's logical conclusion, but--" With a shrug, he pointed the portal gun right in front of him and shot.

A portal, whirling purple and black tendrils sucking hungrily, appeared, and Eulasi stepped through calmly, only slightly annoyed when the student grabbed his elbow and pushed themself through as well.

In some ways, it was easier when their were no people left.

In all ways it was easier when the Red Portal didn't appear. . . Maybe he'd finally outrun it?

"Library. Check," he said, brain on autopilot. Turn slightly. "Chapel. Check."

He looked up.

"Well, that's new," he said.

Just visible in the heavens was a huge, transparent dome.

He knew it was a dome, because the words ALL HAIL THE DOME! were flashing on and off in luminous red on the structure, stretching across the sky and soaking the landscape in eerie red.

On and off, on and off.

"Excuse me," said a tinny voice, "but do you have authorization to be outside your bubble?"

Eulasi turned to see the face of a worried (but soon to be angry) woman starring at him from a computer screen.

"Oh," he said. "iPads on wheels. I saw something similar a little while ago."

"This is really unacceptable! Illegal wandering on my campus! I will not tolerate it! Police! Police!"

The last two words blared out across the campus, causing all rolling iPads to shudder to an involuntary halt.

"Lady, if they're the same as you, I think I can handle them," said Eulasi, turning his attention back to the sky.

He hadn't encountered a dome before. If the sky started to break, then maybe--

"Um," said the student nervously. "It looks like the police are something to worry about. . ."

Eulasi glanced up irritably to see three very large men roll up in perfectly round, perfectly ridiculous glass orbs.

"Don't worry so much, they--" He broke off, his face turning white.

It was there, hanging behind the police, the swirling red (not purple, all the others were purple!) and black tendrils, a gaping wound in reality staring at him, mocking him, trying to draw him in. . .

"No!" he yelled. "Leave me alone!"

He shoved the student aside, a vague idea in his head that maybe, just maybe, the portal would focus on the student instead and leave him alone if he could just get away.

The student stumbled and fell. Eulasi looked at them just long enough to confirm that they couldn't get up in time to follow him, and then he was through the nearest purple portal, turning just in time to see the sky fall, fall, fall. . .crashing through the dome in the process.

"So much for that," he muttered, turning to face the new verse. "Library," he said, wearily. "Check. "Chapel--"

"But why does it matter?"

Eulasi turned in shock to find the student standing next to him.

"How did you get here?" he demanded.

"Why does it matter to you that the library and the chapel are here?" the student asked, ignoring Eulasi's question. There was something in their eye, something worrying.

This wasn't the same basically-a-child looking for a rescuer who'd idiotically stumbled through a portal minutes and universes ago. Their eyes surveyed Eulasi piercingly, seeming to look right through him.

"Who are you?" demanded Eulasi, their voice beginning to shake.

Now that he thought about it, no one else from any universe had ever followed him through a portal. Hundreds and hundreds of universes, and this was the one kid who made it through?

"This seems like a quiet one, so let's talk," said the student, waving their arm to take in the overgrown wasteland that had once been a thriving university campus. Something skittered in the underbrush, but it turned out to just be a cat. "This is more of an educational wasteland than an all-encompassing one," they said with authority. "Higher Ed decayed as a concept, here. Universities don't exist anymore."

"How. . .how do you know that?"

"Look at me!" commanded the student.

"I am!" a skinny, sallow-skinned generic student in jeans and a t-shirt, hoody slung over one shoulder. . .

"No! Really look at me!"

Eulasi's vision blurred. A student, yes, but also something else. . .

"Aargh!" he yelled, stumbling backwards.

Where moments before the student had stood was now an enormous pulsating being of bright white light. It looked like a craggy mountain of brightly glowing ice. No, like a white fire spirit, it's edges soft and blurry. No, more like a. . .

Eulasi threw his hands over his eyes. It hurt too much to look at. "Leave me alone!" he screamed."

Even through his hands and closed eyes he could still see the brightness. Gradually, it faded.

"You can look now," said 'the student,' it's voice sounding at the same time like one and many, a low buzz underlying each word.

Reluctantly, Eulasi opened his eyes.

"Is this better?" asked 'the student,' testily.

What appeared before Eulasi now was a person for whom the label 'accountant' immediately sprang to mind. Ill fitting brown suit, fussy tie, briefcase. . .

If he strained his eyes, Eulasi could still see the other things underneath, the light being, the student, a hundred other shapes, roiling just outside of his understanding.

But, if he didn't look too closely, 'the accountant' remained the dominant vision.

"Who are you?" he asked in a whisper. In the distance, the sky began to crack.

'The accountant' laughed hollowly.

"I am a senior agent with the Time Police," they said. "Which of course has nothing whatsoever to do with why we're here today, but we don't have a department for dealing with what you've come up with!"

"Time Police?" asked Eulasi, confused.

"Yes. For dealing with any hairless apes who decide to bend time to their own ends. Enough get it right across the multiverse for us to get our own, horribly understaffed department."

"But that's not possible. . ."

"It is, and what a joy it would have been if you had decided to play with something normal like time! Why did you have to make things difficult for everyone? The correct mad scientist response to I made a terrible mistake, how do I change it? is to go back in time to fix it, not and I repeat, NOT, to start sifting through all possible realities for the one where you never made the mistake in the first place! I mean, I've heard about people being allergic to blame, but this?"

'The accountant' swept their arm to take in everything in this world, and in all worlds.

"Do you know what you've done?" they asked, their multifaceted voice hissing through the silence.

"I just wanted to fix it--"

"No! You didn't! There are hundreds of things you could have tried before this, including, as already mentioned, distorting actual time! Universes are not meant to interact at this scale! Do you even comprehend the implications?"

"I. . .I don't. . ."

"Every universe you enter ends! The lives of multiples of billions of people have been ended by you!"

"But the science is correct!" said Eulasi. "It works! I just need to tweak it--"

The hair stood up on the back of his neck. He choked on his words as he realized, without turning around, that the red portal was right there.

"Get it away from me!" he gasped, desperately. He imagined his face, frightened and confused, looking to 'the accountant' for help, for the solution to his problem.

"Ah yes," said 'the accountant,' glancing over Eulasi's shoulder. "The anomaly. Well, it's all anomalous, but when you have to make vocabulary up on the fly you take what you can get."

A red/black tendril flicked in Eulasi's periphery. In the distance, the sky began to crack and crumble.

'The accountant' fumbled with their briefcase, removing a device that looked like every tool ever used by any human ever, at the same time very complex and very simple, all possible designs coalesced into one. "This isn't designed for this, you understand," said 'the accountant,' fiddling with the handle, "but you're forcing us to make things up as we go so. . ."

They pointed the device at Eulasi. No! At the void behind him. . .

"Oh," said 'the accountant,' their brow furrowed with confusion. "It's not really there. It just looks like it's there. . ."

"The red portal isn't real?" asked Eulasi, hopefully.

"Oh no, it's very real," said 'the accountant,' fiddling with the device a little more. "It's just not exactly where we think it is--"

They pointed the device at Eulasi again.

"Oh! It's actually in your lab coat pocket, how strange!"

Eulasi ripped his coat off and flung it aside.

"Now it's in your jeans--"

He ripped the pocket from his jeans and sent it flying.

"Sorry to say this, but now it's in your underwear," said 'the accountant' with undisguised disgust.

Eulasi tore at his clothes desperately.

"Get it off me!" he screamed.

"Oh, and now it's in your heart. . ."

Eulasi's heart flew instinctively to his chest, bent like a claw, but he froze mid-action.

To rip out his heart would be to end.

Ending was what Eulasi feared more than anything else. It wasn't his life, exactly, that he feared for, although that was certainly part of it, but rather of being forgotten, forgettable.

Irrelevant.

"It's a trap!" he yelled at 'the accountant.' "You're trying to trick me!"

"No. I'm just here for your confession. And, of course, to stop you from ending any more universes."

'The accountant' held up one hand, Eulasi's portal gun dangling from their index finger.

"No!" yelled Eulasi.

He turned and ran.

Forgetting what was directly behind him.

Before he could stop himself, he had tumbled through the red portal.

With a gasp, Eulasi fell to his knees, naked, head in his hands.

He knew what he would see if he lifted it.

Library, Chapel.

No trees. No birds.

No people.

No life.

"Here were are," said 'the accountant,' appearing with a pop. "Back where it all began. And where you will stay."

Eulasi sobbed into his hands.

"You and your ideas," hissed 'the accountant.' "University administration doesn't want to fund your multiverse travel program? Well, just adjust their brains to make them more compliant. Too apathetic? Change their brains some more. Oh, now their organs are shutting down because, it turns out, they needed that brain, the way it was? Well, just push them aside, make someone else apply for the job, someone who'll do what you want. Nothing at all to make the dead dissolve, becoming the microscopic atoms they always were, spreading through the universe, uselessly separated. To be breathed in by everyone else."

'The accountant' was almost whispering now, their head bent low, close to Eulasi's ear.

"You tried to change a few people, ended up killing more, and you didn't stop! Not until it was all dead! And even then. . ." 'The accountant' gave a heavy sigh. "It's ending here too," they noted. Eulasi heard the the sky crack above their heads. "We weren't sure if your universe of origin would end too. After all, the other dissolved due to your foreign presence. But we thought, 'Hey, he can't leave. One way or another, he ends there!"

Then Eulasi was alone.

He looked up to the cracking sky. As the heavens descended, the entire sky disintegrating in one go, he yelled, "I did nothing wrong!"

The end.