Voyage: Embarkation

Prologue

WHEN IT HAPPENED, my body had grown to occupy one thousand and twenty-nine distinct universes. At first, I had no idea what had transpired. I had to watch their world fall apart before my eyes. I had to watch them suffer and die by the thousands. And I couldn’t do anything but stare. Not because I chose inaction, but because I hadn’t caught up yet. I hadn’t had enough time to process what I was seeing. It all flew by in a fast-forward blur, so that by the time I was able to comprehend what I’d done, my victims were already two years dead.

I hesitated before the devastated rocky orb for a moment, waves of frustration and self-loathing and guilt washing over me. Unable to stand it, I tore myself away from that little planet at the edge of the galaxy, and I ran. I headed directly for the galactic core, knowing what I sought would most likely be there. I weaved through the peripheries of systems whose names I neither knew nor cared to know. There would be no going home, no more tolerating my peers’ chuckling scorn and the adults’ condescension. I saw only one path, one way out. I had made a decision. I was going to follow through this time.

Nearing the galactic core, I found what I was looking for: a pair of gravity wells that were present in the exact same spot in all one thousand and twenty-nine of the universes I inhabited.

A wave of fear washed over me. I took my universe number eight hundred and sixty-five body, the one who shared the reality of my victims, and gave it a quick shove into the space exactly halfway between both gravity wells. I felt that body being wrenched and then torn. I was stretched all out of proportion until I could hold myself together no more. I was dispersed on that universe. My former constituent parts drifted, inert, falling toward one gravity well or the other. That me was dead, and I now occupied one thousand and twenty-eight distinct universes.

It was not enough. Those horrible emotions coursed through me more deeply than ever, overriding fear. I pushed another dozen of myself into the gravity wells, then another two dozen. I writhed and reveled in their destruction. The pain only strengthened my resolve. I’d show them. I’d show them all!

Another one hundred of me fell away and were torn apart. I seized up across all the universes of myself. My breathing quickened. I felt dizzy and nauseous. And that was as it should be. I was the stupid being who had killed all those people. I was the stupid being who always screwed everything up.

No more adventures. No more exploration. The only recompense I had left to give was the cold, dark end of all of me. Another two hundred of me disappeared into the void.

A white haze formed over my field of vision, and I stumbled closer to the gravity wells. Another push like that last one, and all that was left of me would wither away, painfully, without any help from the gravity wells, as I would completely compromise my natural regenerative abilities. I paused. I could feel myself becoming less and less aware of my surroundings. This piecemeal approach was too traumatic for my system. What if I went unconscious? I supposed one gravity well or the other would eventually pull me in and finish the job, but that would not be a fitting enough end for Id, the destroyer of worlds.

I steeled myself. I prepared to throw all the rest of me into the abyss.

“Id, stop!” a pair of voices called out.

I couldn’t believe my eyes. “You two? Come to gloat?”

“No, no, dear boy. Nothing of the sort,” the Mythos one said.

“You need to stop this. Now.” The Ethos one was resolute.

“Why? So you can tell me what an idiot I am? How I should have listened to you?”

“No, that is not why we’re here,” Ethos said.

“Actually, we have a job for you,” Mythos said.

“A job?” I giggled. “Do I look like I’m in any position to do a job? I’m trying to commit suicide.” I remember wondering at the time, how they could be so stupid as to need such an obvious thing explained to them.

I tossed another two of myself into oblivion. “You want this useless hunk of matter and energy to do a job for you?”

“Want nothing, Id! Your presence is required! Five half-rotations from now.”

Ethos’s booming voice resounded throughout all of me, harmonizing among each of my remaining quantum selves.

“Why? What happens in five half-rotations?”

“You will have the opportunity to save many more lives than were lost today. You have work to do, dear boy,” Mythos said.

I hadn’t expected that. I remember, it was the moment that the notion of my self-inflicted demise first soured. My rage collapsed, replaced by curiosity and intrigue. I steeled myself once more through blurred vision and nausea, and despite lingering resentment and self-loathing, I had, at least, one glimmering hope — the renewed sense of purpose Mythos and Ethos offered.

“Step away from the gravity wells,” Ethos said, “and we’ll explain what you must do.”