Last night (Last night in this dimension), I finally pulled it off. I used my machine, an incredible invention, to hop universes. To jump to a parallel universe. Guess how? You wont. The machine, although I won’t get into too much specifics, is capable of creating human sized black hole. From there, all you need to do is jump in and it warps you to a completely different timeline. I was skeptical at first too, but I triple-checked everything, then made the jump. I made sure to include a button to return me just in case things went wrong.
The moment I stepped in, I felt a great squeeze, as if a giant had his hands on me. Then, I felt a cool breeze and emerged (appeared, really) on the streets of Manhattan. Obviously, things had changed. I had laid low in an old library, reading up on the history of this new world. Here’s what I found:
Soon, I was presented with the opportunity to try this pill. I took it. I regret it. This is my story.
I knew as soon as I took it, a small white pill, that I had made a mistake. But I shoved down my regrets. Instead, I went exploring. Over the next few years, I explored. I scaled mountains, swam lakes, and enjoyed this new world. But on one fateful day, that all changed. I started to feel homesick, started to miss my wife and daughter, even though I knew no time would pass for them. I ventured back to the library where I started my journey, to find my machine and turn it back on and return home. But to my dismay, my long journey had caused rust to form all over. My machine had broken long before I came back. I rebuilt, of course. But there was a problem.
My machine was fueled by a lead-acid battery. I needed lead. But when I asked the locals for some lead, they explained to me. The entire universe was fighting a battle over lead. They had used too much, and now had to wait for lead to naturally occur to use it. As such, there was a massive queue for lead. They handed me a device to track my place in line. When I first joined the queue, I was 1,268,398,218 in line. 1.2 billion people ahead of me. And then it got worse.
You see, as efficient as this universe was, for whatever godforsaken reason, they could only give lead to one person a year. That meant I had to wait 1.2 billion years to get my lead and return home. The moment I realized that, I broke down crying. But there was nothing I could do. And I was immortal, anyways, so I could live that long regardless (without aging, how neat!). I decided to wait. Thats all I could. I grabbed a tent, set it up at a spot high on a nearby mountain, and I sat down.
I watched. I saw it all happen. Heres the highlights:
1 year in, a rebellion formed against the Greeks. The uprising was met with harsh resistance, and caused great bombings and fires.
2 years in, the revolution was starting to lose ground, but they fought fierce.
5 years in, the rebellion had its first major victory, officially liberating almost all of North America.
10 years, 20. I saw cities rise, and I saw cities fall. I wasn’t even 0.1% of the way through the queue, nor 0.01%. I didn’t care. Still sitting there in my little tent, I watched as the rebellion fought a vicious and bloody battle, eventually taking the Greeks down in a climactic and historic final fight.
Society grew all around me. Eventually, a town grew around my tent. Like me, they had all taken immortality pills and regretted it, but had nothing they could do. It was nice to have some company. We spent our days watching and listening. We would grab newspapers and TV’s to have live coverage.
100 years passed quickly. Before I knew it, 500 years had passed. Talking and laughing with all of my friends, my tent town turned into a tent kingdom. That kingdom turned into a civilization. I had it all. Friends, wealth, and a distraction from the crippling truth: the planet would not live forever. And when the planet died, I wouldn’t even have 2 people with me to tell jokes.
1000 years. We didn’t care. We sat and waited, seeing entire cities rise and fall like the tides of the ocean. Many great leaders were born. Many came to our kingdom, knowing they weren’t immortal, just to laugh and have some drinks. At least now I was 0.002% of the way done with it all.
5000 years later, it finally happened. All of our partying finally killed the planet. The moon, after 5 millenia, stopped moving. And when the Earth moved, it crashed straight into the damn rock. The entire planet split in half from the impact. And when it was all done, I was left to sit in space, floating through the void eternallly. And I did.
I don’t know how long I spent. I just know, in my gut, it was somewhere from 100,000 to 200,000. Somewhere along the way, I went crazy. I call that time “The Mad Days”, frankly because I had gone mad. Eventually, I crash landed on another planet (it hurt for a little bit, but immortality is a bitch). This new planet was dominated by red jellyfish that had evolved to walk the lands. I spent a long time here, helping the species grow.
1 Million, 2 Million, 3 Million. It took 5 Million years for the little creatures to finally learn how to use tools. 10 for them to start agricultural development. From there, it was another 1 Million until they gained technological advancement. I was hailed as a hero on the planet. And 3% of the way through the queue wasn’t bad either. It was as the jellyfish unveiled another statue in my honor that I had the idea. An amazing idea.
You see, the queue device I still carried with me allowed me to see who was ahead and behind me on the queue. 25 Million years is what it took for the jellyfish to develop space travel. It was nothing to me. As soon as I could, I left the planet and began hunting the men in front of me on the queue. It was 100 killed, then before I knew it, 1000. It was fun, bettering my odds. Every man was one year less. It took until I killed enough men to be 20% done with the queue to finally stop. I decided to settle down on the jellyfish planet for the rest of time. Or, at least, I planned to.
When I got back to the jellyfish planet, I fell in love. I met another traveler, a female by the name of Qurin, a human like me from a planet where homo sapiens had managed to evolve. In the back of my head, I felt guilty, knowing I was already married. I didn’t care. I had never met anyone like Qurin. The best part? She was immortal too. She even had a machine that she needed lead to activate. Where we differed is that she was going to use her machine to get rid of her immortality. We left the jellyfish behind and began to wander the cosmos.
At 30% through the queue, we had explored 0.1% of the universe. We visited any planet we could.
At 40%, we had gone to 1% of everything there was to see in life. We had fun. We made memories. But we never had children. That was our only rule.
At 50%, 2%.
At 70%, 5%.
Things fell apart at 80% through the queue. We had an argument, a very big argument. I got heated. I shot at her. She revealed her biggest secret: she was a shapeshifter. As I shot at her, she transformed into a great, massive beast and attempted to crush me. I ran as fast as I could. Many years later, on a different planet entirely, I began to try and track her down, to make amends.
81%, I managed to find her on a barren desert planet. She was enraged that I had stalked her. She vowed to hunt me down and kill me once and for all. I told her that wasn’t possible, that she had to wait her turn in the queue for lead first, when to my horror she showed me it was her year. And alas, her immortality remover worked, her lead had been delivered. She gave me 1 month to run.
83%, We had a spar at a casino in the remains of Denver, that had long since decayed and rotted. Luckily, I managed to flee just in time, just before her machine powered on and struck a poor individual sitting at a bar chair.
Finally, things came to a grinding halt at 90%. After years and years of running, I was ready to face her once and for all. I used advanced speakers to broadcast my location to the entire universe. To my shock, she never came. I decided to find her, assuming she was now fine. And luckily, when I came back to the desert planet, she now regretted hunting me. She took my hand, and gave me her lead. Thats right- she broke down her own machine to give me her lead. Or so I thought.
I brought the lead to my machine. It had been broken and destroyed more times than I could count, but every time, I fixed it. Some times, I created it from scratch again. I finally mixed the acid and lead, made the battery, plugged it in, turned it on-
And just as the black hole spawned, Qurin shot me. Before I had time to react, she pulled out her immortality remover. I instantly realized: she had never broke her machine, she simply stole lead from someone else. Why hadn’t I ever thought of that?
“Now we’re even.” She declared, before she stepped into the black hole.
To my utter surprise, it stayed open. It didn’t close. Crawling, blood stains all on my shirt, I made it to the black hole. I dragged myself in. Nothing happened. The gate was closed, but the hole was still up. And there was no exit. After what felt like an eternity, I saw a great blue light. I swam over to it, still clutching my side where the bullet hit. To my great surprise, I saw a phone, and to my even bigger surprise, it had service. That leads me to now. I don’t know what comes next. But I have a warning. Qurin has made it to your dimension. She could be anywhere. If she remains unchecked, your dimension is in grave danger. Please, stop her for me. And get me some lead!