“Not all of them are named Marcelo. There’s Maricella—she’s in universe MB+318291745FLT6, as well as MB+318291747FLT6. In several universes, I go by Mache. The bloke in MB+143927121FLT6 struck the jackpot in our DNA pool and got all the looks.”
“How many alternates are there?” Eliot’s head tilts, dizzy with numbers. “How many universes are there?”
“Unknowable alternates and infinite universes,” the scientist says. “The Multiverse Bureau does its best to catalog the worlds, but the task is, by its very nature, endless. They cannot be counted, and yet we keep counting.”
“Tell me, in some of these endless universes, are there other Eliot McCarthys currently attending their Academy graduation, not sprouting icicles from their arsecheeks?”
“No one’s forcing you to sit on that table, Cadet McCarthy. If your posterior is so cold, feel free to remove it from the offending surface.”
“Can I remove myself from this building? My cousin’s throwing a party, you see—big bash. She already put a deposit down on enough gelato to sculpt a snowman. Solara’s freezer isn’t big enough to store it all and it’d be a travesty to let it melt.”
Dr. Ramírez vises his head in his fingers. His sigh is a puzzle box—irritable edge, sleepless fears, something bleak inside waiting to be unlocked. “You do have other alternates in other universes. Everyone does. Some of them are probably attending their Academy graduation, and one of them is the reason you’re here.”
Painted eyebrows clash with each other. Eliot says nothing.
“To the best of our knowledge, the multiverse is infinite. As I said before, the Bureau tries its best to categorize all the universes we’ve been able to map. The worlds in our universe’s grouping—FLT6—are the ones that most closely mirror our own. We share basic biology, geography, and languages. There’s an entire gradient of common histories and alternate selves through this series. Naturally, it’s the universes that most closely parallel the timeline of our own that hold our alternates. Family trees have to match down to the parents’ DNA.”
The breadth of Dr. Ramírez’s explanation—universes upon universes through universes—adds a new layer to the lab, something palpable. This depth reaches through the hologram, so that even the listeners aboard the Invictus shudder.
“The Bureau has been studying the multiverse for an untold number of collective years. So much of it’s beyond our comprehension, but the discoveries we have made…” Dr. Ramírez trails off. “You learned about ecosystems in school, yes?”
Eliot nods. “It’s all they teach after the bee fiasco. Symbiosis. The web of life. Everything on Earth is connected, and a single change can wreak massive consequences, et cetera.”
“Exactly. The same holds true in the multiverse. We’re linked to other universes in ways we never could’ve predicted, connections that transcend dimension. As a Corps cadet, I’m sure you’re familiar with the immutability threshold. If a time traveler eats an apple in the past, the world goes on undisturbed. But time can only self-correct to a certain point. If the interference is large enough, a pivot point is created; a new universe with an alternate future is born.”
“Our mistakes screw up your filing system?” Eliot concludes. “No wonder the Bureau hates the Corps.”
“That’s one reason for our organizational animosity, yes. But my point is that the multiverse is interconnected. It’s the web of life on a massive scale, all of us tied to other lives through common strings. Do you understand?”
“Um…” Eliot’s shoulders jut even higher. “Sure?”
“You’re here because there’s an aberration in your string.”
“A what in my what?”
“One of your alternates has triggered a cataclysmic event.” Dr. Ramírez’s hands fall to his side. “We’ve been receiving reports from other FLT6 Bureau branches of a force that annihilates everything in its path, including time and space.”
“Like antimatter?”
“Antimatter annihilates, yes, but it releases energy when the matter disappears. This is different. It’s… nothing. Creation reversed. We call it the Fade. This decay has been attacking universes, eating their timelines until there’s no future to move forward to.”
“How long has this been going on?”
“It’s impossible to know. The first documentation of this decay was a decade ago, a few spots in universe MB+110249100FLT6. But the Fade is amnesiatic in nature—it not only destroys moments, but people’s memories of those moments—so it’s possibly existed for far longer without anyone remembering they encountered it. We’ve been studying it, carefully, for several years: tracking its growth, taking readings, recording the Fade’s varying effects on people in its path. Three days ago, something caused the decay to metastasize. Universe MB+110249100FLT6 has unraveled from existence and would’ve been forgotten if we hadn’t kept such diligent digital records of it. Universe MB+110249101FLT6 has an entire decade missing, and MB+110249102FLT6 is also showing signs of erasure. Worlds are meeting their end. The Multiverse Bureau has declared a state of emergency.”
It’s hard to tell how much of the explanation Eliot has taken in—she’s alabaster still, made motionless by the weight of it all. “You said my alternate triggered it. How? How would you know something like that?”
“There’s a pattern to the Fade’s decay. Only certain universes in the FLT6 category are being eroded, and the deterioration has a cutoff date. Everything that takes place after April eighteenth, 2354, falls apart.”
“My birthday…”
The scientist nods. “We’re dealing with a reactive force. Are you familiar with how antibodies function?”
“Yes.” Eliot taps her hairless head. “And how they malfunction.”
Dr. Ramírez goes on to explain anyway. “There are over a trillion antibodies in the human body, each one designed to deal with a specific threat. Whenever a foreign antigen enters our systems, the corresponding antibody responds by attacking what doesn’t belong. It’s a lock-and-key system, built as a safeguard to protect our bodies. We believe the decay is acting in a similar manner. Through our studies this past decade we’ve noticed that the Fade emits a very specific charge, or signature if you will, before it unravels matter. Something—or someone—is calling it.
“We’ve reverse-engineered the lock to the decay’s key and developed a way to scan for it. Since the state of emergency was declared, the FLT6 Bureau branches have been combing their worlds for signs of the Fade’s countersignature. Children born on April eighteenth, 2354, were a logical point of interest. Your alternate in MB+136613209FLT6 was flagged first. McCarthys throughout the multiverse have been brought to their branches for testing.”