Out of Many, One

Charles Hull was walking along the street one day when he experienced a very peculiar feeling. First, he was dizzy. Then, with his mind's eye, he got a very good look at himself from across the street.

Charles wasn't a spiritual person, and had to double-take. He looked to his right, confirming the name he was simultaneously reading as "Dan's Bakery, San Jose Local!". When he saw himself turning in real time, and caught the back of his own head, he felt an overwhelming and visceral sense of paranoia. He was being watched.

He turned to look himself in the eye, and caught nothing. Charles was flustered by an unpopulated ATM and some dead-end stairs.

He slapped himself.

His mind wandered.

His vision drew closer.

He had complete control.

He laughed.

Charles Hull took only a second to strain his mind, and move his third eye. Suddenly, he felt like he was realizing a second nature. Charle saught a vision, and he was inside his apartment a mile away, while standing on the street. Charles looked into his mind, and flew through the walls of his apartment, into the sky. His sight blasted through city streets, and before he realized he was catching his head from smacking pavement.

Charles grinned and laughed. Everything he saw was so absolutely real, and as his mind was exhilerated his imagination began to take flight. The city flashed before his eyes, and details blurred into a stream of absolute information. He tried to look up and out, and was rebuffed. As he absorbed what he saw of the city, he strained for a sight of L.A., or Paris, or the Moon. Charles felt the limits of his power, and began to lose himself in the city

Charles Hull started to cradle himself against brick wall. His sight beyond sight was beginning to become too much for him. He could have been leading a dozen pairs of eyes on a hundred different sightseeing tours. Charle's lines of sight soared through every open road and door and window and mirror and pipe and hole and closed door and blank wall. More sights opened up to more directions, through more homes and businesses, opening him to more input. He felt his gut react violently, and tried to hold himself.

"I've not lost myself." He told himself. "I'm right here!"

Chales opened his eyes. He wiped gravel from his hand to his face. He caught himself, and swept his hands off. Charles Hull saw himself again, as he always had. In a moment, he'd pushed all distraction from his mind, and he understood himself again. What is happening? Against the visions, he pressed his will, and his only eyes were his. He breathed. Should it even be possible to do this?

"I'm right here!"

Charles Hull's ears stretched back. It would have sounded like the echo from a cave, if the words weren't so piercing. Charles knew his voice, but it had never been so plain and infernal in his mind as he'd just heard it. Itwas like the words had burned themselves in his mind. He looked around himself from every angle, and had to pull himself back. He was going to make himself seriously sick. He forced himself to take a breath, and turned his sight inward.

Charles's mind was racing. He couldn't rationalize any reason for the events occuring on top of him, and he didn't try. He could see his next boundary in front of him, and rushed to focus his understanding. He pictured the words he'd heard, and focused on them. With his focus, a force began to press against his third eye. He closed his real eyes. To himself, Charles's vison coelessed, blurred and hazy, on an image of himself, laying where he was.

Charles was up in a flash, and his self he saw actually took a moment to do anything at all. Charles knew he wasn't looking at himself, but that he was looking somewhere else. When the Charles he watched raised its head, his eyes caught his extra-sight precisely. The men felt one another's presence, and soon they both stood, looking east at one-another.

Charles felt an understanding with his other self. They'd both been through the same experience, and fallen in the same place. He raised his arm, and soon saw his doppelganger do the same. The sight of the motion he took triggered a connection in Charle's brain. He felt warm air twice on his arm., and realized that he could feel him other’s breaths in his lungs. They coukd mirror one-another in every way, standing in the same exact location, and they were starting to feel the only border that separated them.

Charles started to feel a suffocating sensation around his chest and spread over his limbs. He was completely free to move, but he knew that he was surrounded. It took him a moment, but he realized that the feeling around him had always been there, holding him wrapped up. Only now was his perception so opened that he could feel it. Charles began to understand that feeling suffocating him. He began to understand the matter of alternate realities, and how he could move between them.

Charles stretched out his arm as far as he could, and focused his mind on whatever could be in front of him. There was a power inside him, a connection that he just had to make. With his mind trembling, he started to see visions, but differently this time. Charles saw himself in infinite diversity. He was not the first of his kind, and that eased his worst fears. There were other Hulls, living across worlds. Traveling. Together.

Charles focused on himself; his singular other self, standing with him. He felt his other self doing the same. Both men could feel the hold of their realities straining. Their united brotherhood, connected their thoughts and worlds. The connective tissue of one universe began to lose hold, and the men could see a rapturous future in front of them. They were not limited any longer. The walls between them were crumbling, and the shackles they never knew were finally coming free. From the tip of his finger, it felt as though that suffocating feeling was simply stripping away. Charles closed his eyes and let the sensation pass over him.

Charles Hull was adrift in his visions of his infinite eyes. Every point around him was so distant, but all he had to do was think of a single one, and it would appear to him up close. In an instant he could scan all around him, and see where a person was. In an instant he could scan for every single Charles Hull, and find them all. They were distant, like every other point but they were there.

He saw a planet, an earth, ruled by billions of Charles Hull.

Charles Hull considered if he had just become a god.

After only a moment’s contemplation though, he returned to himself, and his body. He saw the one other Charles, in the same place he was, reaching out just like he was. The world was at their fingertips. Every world. They felt the boarder between them, like wet paper. All Charles had to do was poke a hole, and so he did.

It was a day in June that Charles Hull disappeared from the street in an instant, in full view of eight people. He saved them much trouble.

Charles Hull materialized at the exact point were his own parallel self was standing.

Although no particles appeared inside of any any other, practically every cell in either man's body was suddenly filled with twice it's natural mass, and most of their cell membranes were broken by the appearance of another at intersecting points. The devastation this wreaked on their bodies was absolute and instantaneous. If you were standing beside them, you would have heard a large pop before you were covered in blood.

Charles, both of him, were instantly dead. The immense pressure on their brains split and snuffed every synapse and signal. Molecules broke and collided, but mostly spread out. Any cells that weren't immediately soup were thrown at a hundred miles an hour.

It was a day in June that Charles Hull appeared inside himself, in full view of eight people. Very quickly, he was on everything.

Other Charles saw this, and laughed.