Chapter Text

I stared at the phone I’d pulled from my pocket. This isn’t my phone. It looked like mine, to be sure. But I had used up the batteries on mine trying to call emergency services, the night of the Swap, and left it plugged in at the house in the hopes that power might come back. I wonder if the cat’s doing okay, I idly thought, still staring at the slab of black glass now buzzing in my hands.

The caller ID said ‘U͔͙̮̘͞n͚̭͕̪̤ḳ̛n̛̫͉̞͓̪̩͕ow̧̭̼n̹̺̻̞̠͟.’ Distortions and all. That is… probably not a positive indicator. I thumbed answer anyway. Put it on speaker. A voice came through- it sounded like a genial middle-aged woman. “Oh! Took you long enough. I thought-” She didn’t even get out the first sentence. Haley grabbed the brick out of my hands, snapped it, and flung it away into the rubble and chaos of the park.

“Nope. None of that,” was all she said.

I stared in shock and confusion for a minute before my mind caught up to me. “Haley! That could have been… answers, or something!”

She was still in the buff, but moving forward now, headed across the grass toward the nearby towers, and no doubt the shopping center within. “Could have been. If it is, I have a feeling they’ll call back. Sean, have you noticed anything unusual about the events of the last day?”

Well if that wasn’t the world’s most understated question. “No, I mean, my commute seemed a little longer than-”

She wasn’t in a joking mood, I guessed. “Shoosh. Not the magic or Cecilia. Everything we’re doing has been on a script. A hero’s journey.”

I tried to piece that together. “I guess I can see that. You’ve got the Call to Adventure, the Supernatural Aid, hello Sherriff,” he acknowledged me from the back of my mind with a wave, “The literal Road of Trials last night and this morning, and then this is what today, the First Threshold?”

She walked up to the double glass doors of the town center mall and plaza. Locked, but insufficient. With one hand she simply shoved through the pane, and it failed to lay a scratch on her as it shattered. I guess Rules As Written still apply, she has the form of a human but she hasn’t given up her strength or natural armor. Interesting to see it in action. “Yes, and even after the macro-level, the comparison holds up. Our party was split up, and we met again at the climax with important revelations. There was a trial, and a monster, and a crux. We came out of it with loot, honey.” She gestured at the conceptual sword, still clutched in my hand. “Actually, let me borrow that.” We had walked just inside, to a clothing boutique. The security barriers were down. I had no doubt she could make short work of them if she chose, but- I handed over the sword.

One casual swing and the barrier just separated . No noise, no resistance. Just a smooth horizontal motion and the metal segments clattered to the floor. Damn, that’s sharp. She shoved open the door- breaking the lock, I noticed- I really hope we don’t end up on the hook for all this- and went inside. “There’s no part of this that doesn’t fit a narrative reading. I don’t like it.”

I could understand that. Maybe it was just that I’d been… ordinary, for 35 years, but I wanted to be a hero now. I was excited by the call to adventure. But… “If I’m going to be a hero, I want it to be on my terms.”

She nodded, while heading into the back of the store, behind the counter- searching? Ah, for a first aid kit. Good thinking, that. “Yes, exactly. Something is railroading us into a swords and sorcery fantasy. I’m beginning to develop some theories about the rules of magic, or whatever this force is. We’ve got two distinct instances now, discounting the Swap for a moment.” She came over to me, began disinfecting and bandaging the worst of my cuts from our fight.

I considered. “Both empowered by the rules of different fictional settings?”

“Right again. Rules that, when they came in conflict with each other, seemed to have a clash over priority.” Right, the way I could remember Wonderland and nobody else could. “And, both sets of powers centered entirely around one person. But there are differences. She was already living in some version of her fantasy, before the Swap. And she could pull creatures out of thin air, to serve her. I certainly knew of Pathfinder, and I liked playing it, but-” She produced a suture kit and began putting that Heal skill to work, doing up the wound in her side as she talked.

I got it. “But you weren’t absorbed by it and you certainly didn’t think you were a dragon. And you still can’t summon items or anything. Right?” She paused, closed her eyes for a minute, then shook her head. Damn. Would have been convenient. I continued. “So why did you both get changed? Is it random? How many people did it happen to? How powerful can this magic be? What if somebody got, I don’t know, a rule set based on Dragonball? Is there someone out there who’s gonna crack the planet in half, if they get mad enough?”

A phone next to the cash register began ringing. Again, with no power. I ignored it. She grabbed some clothes, walked back into the changing rooms. I heard her calling from there. “Too many questions. Boil it down. What are the rules? You seem to be affected by the adventure narrative too. Is that because you’re near me, caught up in my RPG thing, or because it’s a meta-rule?” She pointed at me for approval of her chosen outfit. I played the dutiful husband role to the hilt, if only to get a second look at her. I eventually nodded, and she left to go change.

Hmm. “Cecilia was caught up in it too, wasn’t she. Her power had a radius. Yours might too. It’s possible I didn’t… wake up, until you got close enough. But she still got set up into the role of villain. And I was speculating on you becoming… heroic… as early as this morning. In fact, nobody has been as alarmed by the sudden and catastrophic end of our civilization as they should be. Including me. I think… you may be right. Somebody’s out to make a hero of you.” I was getting more and more uneasy as I spoke. Something about what I was saying was off, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. What did I miss? I consulted Sherriff, wordlessly. He seemed as baffled as I was.

She came out. Black shirt, khaki cargo pants, with a set of belts and an improvised sheath for the vorpal sword. She had that long black hair tied back- not much could be done to conceal the tiny golden horns, but she had sunglasses to cover the cat’s-eyes. I doubted they impaired her much even in this darkened mall, with her draconic darkvision. “You uh, you look like a Lara Croft cosplayer.”

She smiled. “Well, I’m trying to keep it functional. Help me get a few changes in case I have to get all scaley and end up ruining these. But yes, you’re all caught up. Get that, will you?” This, to the phone still ringing on the desk.

“Okay, but remember that ‘Refusal Of The Call’ is also a part of the standard narrative,” I said, moving to the desk.

“It’s not a refusal. I’m ‘Opening Negotiations With The Call.’” She said, making air quotes. I picked up the phone, put it on speaker. That same woman’s voice came through again.

“Don’t hang up!” were the first words out of it. The voice sounded a little bit frantic. “Please you’ve got to listen. You’re getting this call as part of the fulfillment of a wish that you will make, several days from now. Something terrible happens in a few days and you condemn that entire timeline just to get yourself answers a few days earlier, and causality loops are expensive, so I’ve got to give you your answers now or- or- well I can’t do this again.” Uh- I glanced at Haley. She seemed just as puzzled as I was.

She ventured an answer. “Okay, no hanging up. Who is this?”

The voice took on a tone of relief. “Oh thank goodness. For lack of a better term, this is The Coordinator. Uh. I don’t normally speak to you. Um.”

Haley put her hands on her hips. “Well you’re speaking with us now. Thanks? I’m unclear on if I literally actually erased the universe for this phone call or if that’s just a potential outcome.”

“Oh it was just a projection, but our projections are extremely thorough. We don’t like actual time travel, it’s too costly. Though now of course you’ll have to make the wish to close the causal loop or you will be erased from existence.” I couldn’t tell if it was joking. It was saying all of this in an almost cheerful, upbeat tone.

I interjected. “Uh, if I can just butt in here- what are you? Are you sentient?”

There was a bit of a pause on the line. “Alright, how about I tell you what I’m allowed to tell you, before you ask any more difficult questions, okay? Here is the message I am relaying, containing the information you would have learned in good time: Yesterday there was an… Event, let’s say. Your universe intersected in multi-dimensional space with another. It happens, from time to time. Both were highly damaged, and had to be bootstrapped from your base consciousnesses. But something went wrong.”

This was all going too fast. Haley tried to draw it out. “Elaborate on that last?”

“Oh, you don’t have a Theory of Mind yet in your universe, sorry- okay bullet points version, meat brains are just storage, your active consciousness inhabits a million different bodies throughout the multiverse over its time-line, moving on” Wait you can’t just drop that people on mushrooms are probably right about everything and then move on- but it could, and it did, at the same nearly-manic pace. “Normally these collisions happen between unrelated collectives but this time you managed to intersect a universe that will exist later on the timeline that many of your consciousnesses share. When we rebooted, there was a… mix-up.”

Haley and I shared a look. I said it: “The Swap.”

“Yes! Oh, good name for it. Some of the versions of you that were rebuilt turned out to be from the wrong world. Like. Half of them.”

Haley objected to this. “But that- if I’m understanding the bits of conversation between Sean and Sherriff I’ve overheard, they are at least 200 years behind us, growth-wise. You’re saying they just happened to have 2 billion identical minds?”

The voice, clearly happy to be giving relevant data, perked up. “Oh yes! Not all at once, mind you. As the reboot created you, it drew from a lot of different time periods in their world. I think you’ll find you have quite the grab-bag of eras among your visitors. All just part of the problem. Anyway. As part of the collision, cracks formed in the, uh, ‘universal boundary’ between your reality and our higher-dimensional one. Entropy is escaping through these cracks via mechanisms like the one you encountered today.”

I was lost on that one, but Haley stepped in. “You’re saying that people like Cecilia are being powered by some kind of cosmic entropy drain out of our universe? How many like her are there? Is that what I am?”

The voice was not terribly reassuring, even as it maintained that cheerful tone. “Yes, oh, you’re so clever! Well done! Exactly- the power will always earth itself in rule sets that allow for entropy transference. The exact form will be different each time! The precise count is still coming in, but for now we estimate approximately one ‘Earthed’ consciousness for every one million currently on your planet. The drain will escalate over time! And that’s where you come in!”

Haley seemed cautious, not without reason, I thought. “I come in… how?”

The tone didn’t waver in the slightest. “Well you kill them, of course! You plug the leaks. We simmed quite a few people and you were by far the most likely to survive long enough to accomplish the role. We plugged you into your own hand-crafted boundary source, based on a ruleset you should understand. Now just get out there and do your thing, slugger! The rest should happen naturally!”

“So I’m literally fix-a-flat but with murder and cosmic magic.” It was a little anticlimactic. And chilling. The voice didn’t seem to mind that it was casually discussing at least seven or eight thousand murders, if my math was right. She thought for a second. “No.”

The voice seemed nonplussed. “Excuse me?”

Haley slashed her hand down in negation. “No negotiation. This is me, Refusing The Call. You aren’t offering me demands or contracts, you’ve just set up dominoes and you expect them to fall. You don’t care what happens to this world. To its people. You’re trying to seal a- a leaky pipe, using human lives . Take my powers back, or whatever, I won’t be your hit woman.”

The phone was silent for a long moment. I held my breath. Could this be it? On the one hand, no powers- she’d be as vulnerable as anyone else. As I already was. On the other hand, no more responsibility- we could go back home, see our families. Oh god, our families, we need to check on them- my train of thought was interrupted by laughter. Over the phone, slow at first, almost ominous, but then it built up into near hysteria- it was like a robot who’d only ever had laughter explained before, trying to emulate it. It cut off as suddenly as it started. “Oh, no need to worry about refusing or taking it back, that’s what makes dominos so effective! They always fall in the end. It’s kill or be killed out there, kiddo, and you’re like a beacon to them. They’ll be coming for you. Ciao!” The phone clicked off.

Uh. Well, that was all extremely ominous. We stood there for a while, staring at the silent phone in the dark of the department store. Haley finally kicked into gear, mind still turning after all that. “Yeah, well, this domino might have a surprise or two for you. Sean, she- it- was lying.”

I turned to her. “Lying about which part?”

Haley frowned. “I’m not sure. Not… all of it? But did you notice? It didn’t say anything-”

“About the meta-narratives, yeah. Cecilia wasn’t just drawing power from elsewhere, she was drawing form. Also, the voice acted like giving cosmic powers to a random person was normal. You think she…”

“I don’t know what to think. Not yet. I have a couple of guesses. Number one- that wasn’t a human, and whatever it was, only had the loosest conception of morality.” I shuddered a bit. It seemed pretty obviously inhuman, but still- to think we might be at the mercy of something that didn’t really understand right or wrong, as we saw it. It made me shudder. “Number two- I’m not 100% convinced that whatever it was is actually the source of my powers.”

I asked the obvious question anyway. “What makes you say that?”

Her frown grew more thoughtful. “Well, first off, it didn’t ask permission . According to it, it just found the first person who it thought would do the killing, either from altruism or ruthless survival instinct, and it loaded them up. I’m not even sure it read the rules for my rpg before it used them. It’s like giving an atom bomb to a baby. Second of all, it didn’t take them back when I indicated I wouldn’t work for it. If giving power was so easy, and it had no concept of morality, why not take it back? Third of all, I got another power, when I got my shape changing. Detect Evil. I was using it on that phone- it was radiating. If I were handing out superpowers-”

I finished the thought. “I sure wouldn’t give someone a power that told them not to trust me.”

She nodded. “Whatever was at the source of that call, it was trying to play us.”

Okay. I was feeling better and better about this quest all the time. “What were your other guesses?”

“Number three- the leaks. I don’t think we got the full story. Why did the universe need to be rebuilt from our minds? Why would the leaks originate there, with stories? Why would higher dimensional beings even care ? We got just enough to give me a motive to kill the others if they threaten us.”

She paused for a minute, then continued. “Number four. I don’t think their sim of me is very good, at all.”

I nodded. “Because they assumed you’d kill for them?”

“Not just that. They assumed I’d risk ending the universe just to get a message back in time. To avert some crisis. Whatever they were running…”

I finished her thought. “It didn’t sound like you at all. So they fucked up. They didn’t give an atom bomb to a baby?”

Finally, she smiled again. But it was a black thing, full of malicious intent, as she turned and headed out of the gloomy mall. “They really fucked up. Someone just got the Infinity Gauntlet, and her deepest wish isn’t just to murder her way back to the way things used to be. They gave it to an effective altruist.”

I laughed. “You and your way with words. Who else could make wanting to do the most good sound so ominous? Also, do we really have to walk all the way back to the truck?”

“We do if we want to complete the errands. I’m going to need a lot of gold and gems, and the infomorphs are going to need those data sticks.” All that had happened today and she was still mission-focused.

I felt like I was about two minutes from passing out from burns and blood loss, but I pressed on for her sake. “Okay, you may have to drive though.” We walked on. The sun was still high in the sky. Hard to believe it had hardly been an hour. Time was moving so fluidly for me now, it was difficult to keep track. We were actually just a few city blocks from the office I worked at. Used to work at. I assumed I wouldn’t be going there anymore, after today. “Hey, do you remember the first time we came down here?”

She was looking up at one of the buildings. There were so many towers down here and I had no idea what half of them were for. Strange to think what humans could build in just a few decades, if the money was right. If the incentives were there. “Of course. You were so excited about this new job, a chance to get away from the dead ends in Vidalia. You wanted to show off everything, even the parking garage.”

“It was just… all so new! I’d never worked downtown. All those years in one podunk town after another, where the buildings never got over two stories tall and every neighborhood was gradually decaying into some kind of third world nightmare, the residents voting for it all the way. The city gave me hope, you know? For the first time in a decade. Looking at all this structure, all this purpose . Surrounded by so many energized young people, I thought maybe the human race was worth a damn after all.”

She smiled, but not for me, I thought. “It was worth a damn even when it was just mud huts, you know.” I watched her then. She wasn’t even looking at the architecture. She was looking beyond. “I don’t even see buildings here. I see trajectory. Human growth, unchecked. Years on years on years of systems and compaction and new systems. How far would we go in another two hundred, if it didn’t all collapse into resource starvation? Is this the height of it? Is this the pinnacle, or are we still rising? What’s the story of our species? Did the Swap alter it?”

“I guess that’s impossible to answer now.” I thought of all the lives lost in the last day. Half of all of us, just… gone, somewhere else. And it’s only beginning. What will we be now, in 200 years? Will we even exist?

She nodded, distantly. “It’s a problem, and a tragedy. But… humanity has always overcome. Half of us are still here. The cities are still here, the knowledge, the resources. Chaos is coming, but I don’t think the species is done for. It might even be the thing that saves us, horrifically, from some climate catastrophe. It’ll be a lot easier to cut emissions now. The story of human history may be drifting towards a conclusion, but… new possibilities are opening up. This might be a feint.”

“Just spare a thought for us poor benighted normies as you steer this brave new world, okay? You know I love you, and I trust you, but from where I’m standing- what you’re talking about is pretty terrifying, given that you may have the power to do something about it soon.”

She took my hand, held it. “I love you too. You keep me grounded, Sean. If I start going too fast, pull me back. You’re the universal advocate.” Oh, no pressure then.

“So, once we’re back… what will we do?” We’d discussed plans briefly, but hadn’t settled on anything. That gleam was back in her eye though.

“We’ve got to last long enough for me to start accumulating caster levels. That’s about 4 days from now. So, first, it’d be nice if we could get something to eat, and then, I think I’d like to rock your world with this new body. But after that… hopefully we can convince our refugees to listen to us. We stock up, we fortify, and we tap the refugees for manpower. We hold out. And,” she laughed, and I wasn’t sure if it was better or worse than the laughter from that presence on the phone earlier, “we find out what the yield on this atom bomb really is.”