The Great Multiverse Theory: Repairs and Recordings

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Screen on.

The screen wobbles as unseen hands adjusted the camera. Eventually, the screen focuses on a small stool. Behind the chair, a hat and coat hung on a peg near the door to the room. On the floor underneath the coat, a gun rested, appearing to have fallen from the coat’s pocket.

“Is this thing running? Yeah, I-”

Screen is in operation.

“-think... Okay.” The bandaged legs of Shtik walk into view. His attire seems much more informal, making him look tired, a bit like a tired teenager with a full body burn cast. He was wearing a simple green T-shirt and a pair of matching forest green shorts. He collapses into the stool and sighs. “Well, my boss has recommended I add this thing to the rest of my recordings. If I’m going to make this easily assessable, I should at least make it understable, right?” He shrugs at the camera. “I’m not gonna lie, I’m not very good at describing the scenery around me, and I have an extreme aversion to monologues inside my head. Half the time, the thoughts in my head are just there for convenience. I always rather rush in with as much firepower as possible, remove the threat or problem, then leave as quickly as I came. If my mind gets overloaded, critically damaged, or I just don’t care anymore, my mental state skirts close to the state one might find inside the mind of a philosophical zombie.” He taps his head. “I got someone in here who pretty much regulates my body. He handles my insanity, and makes sure I don’t babble incoherently. He can even disable my emotions. Though even with that thing on, I can’t really feel it. I’ll laugh when its appropriate, I’ll offer you a helping hand when you need it, but I can never truly feel the awe from looking at a night sky ever again...” His eyes glazes a little, trying to remember a better time and failing. With the abruptness of a light switch, he looks up again.

“I’ll try to make things understable for someone who hasn’t heard about my world.” He gestures to the room around him. “This is, for lack of a better term, my home. It is a massive turtle shaped warship that has nearly every surface covered in some weapon. It is also my command base, where I look up information up at deck. There are many rooms around here, filled with random knickknacks or weapons of some sort. I have decided to fight as a summoner of sorts, and pull them out of hammerspace so I wouldn’t need to waste energy creating the item.

“Outside my warship is the Outside. It is ‘outside’ your universe, and also outside many multiverses. It is filled with a pure form of matter. There is nothing remarkable about it. It just is. It still exhibits basic laws of physics, like gravity, but unless you have a extremely focused mind, you will disintegrate from touching it in its free flowing state. I recommend you read this link over here. It should pop up on the screen floating beside me. If you are reading this from a written format, a link should appear. Its concepts are rather similar, but a little more deadly. It is more chaotic, basically. This is my ... birthplace.” He mutters it with noticeable displeasure.

“My title is H.M. Conagher. The man behind my name is as good as dead. I am a Shtik, supposedly born for speed, a slave to the machinations of the Energy/Matter Company to protect the multiverse. I make sure these house of cards have something to stand on, and don’t get knocked over. If I do my job right, you will never know who I am. Aloha.

End Transmission

The camera tilts up as Shtik stands up, seemingly drained of energy. He slowly looks around his room, as if trying to find something. Finding nothing, he sighs and shuffles over to the coat rack. Even though Shtik is supposed to be able to create things out of his body, being effectively a PC instead of an NPC like everyone else in the place requires him to actually concentrate. To cover this weakness, he creates many of his tools in advance, so the only thing he has to do is to pull them out. His coat is a form of his armor.

He slides it over his back and pops the hat over his head. His bandannas, visual identifiers of his energy levels, burns in reverse as the energy of the Outside flows through him. He reaches down, picks up his revolver, and drops it into a too small pocket. From another pocket, he pulls out a grip and trigger. He points the trigger up, and focused his energy. A tiny spark of excitement crawls up through the-place-where-his-spine-should-be as he guides lines of light into the familiar shape of his sniper rifle, Full Color Jacket (S-12). A pez dispenser at his hip pops out a clip filled with purple marked bullets. Normally the greens were enough for the job. Most skulls couldn’t handle a piece of matter going through at several times the speed of sound, though he might need the higher frequency for an explosive punch in case the target was my hardy than expected. He hangs the purple bullets from his belt then pulls the bolt back, checking that the green bullets were loaded in.

Nodding in satisfaction, he opens the door and was greeted by the inky darkness of the Outside. He waves a hand at the robot. “Come on Avery, you have a job too. You know what it is, stop pretending to be a wimp.

Affirmative The robot reached into its stomach and pulled out a over and under derringer from a compartment within. It loaded two shots into each chamber and flicked them closed. Shtik was already gone. The robot just rolled forward and tumbled towards the world below. Its hand crackled with energy as it prepared to break the surface.

The snarls of many assorted creatures echoed off the walls of a cave. Their confusion at entering a world of light made them miss a slight reflection of light near the walls of the cave entrance. The shadow tossed a bundle, trailing a Red light. I grinned. Boop The improvised Red grenade sent out a stunning energy ricocheting off the walls and into the Outsiders. I loaded a Orange bullet into my bullpup rifles’ open bolt and let out a fireball into the mass. A streak of Blue pierced a group of startled creatures. A explosion of Purple rained stalactites upon my hapless victims. A stream of basic Greens wiped the rest of the stragglers. I pulled a bullet marked with a Gamma symbol out of my wrist and slammed it into the breech, shifting my aim to the massive formless blob forming at the rift. “Should’ve made a U-turn at Albuquerque, dolt.” A flash of death ripped the monster into shreds before it could fight back.

“For my next trick, more fire!” A box of lines formed before my outstretched hands. Four cylinders emerged from one end, a half cylinder covered up the bottom. Two handles went between my hands as I rested the weapon, a four barreled plasma minigun (G-4, Torch) on my hip. A wave of burning matter roasted the floor until nearly everything was melting; some parts of the wall had already began solidifying into glass.

I dropped the minigun, its lines dissolving and returning through my foot. A roll of duct tape slipped through my sleeve. I gripped a loose end and pulled out a few feet of the tape. Glowing lines of garbled text swim through the tape’s bindings. Slowly and painfully, another pair of arms emerged from my rib cage. The extra pair of arms pulled the tear in reality closed as I carefully sewed it shut. The main reason these tears occur is because everyone’s imagination is a little different. When several minds try creating one universe, inconsistencies are bound to occur, ripping the surface apart slightly.

I glanced up at a barely visible shimmer passing through my position. “Looks like the party’s moving.” I mumbled to myself. I pulled the suture closed and tied a knot. The tape will eventually degrade into the environment, subtly editing reality to keep it consistent. We can’t have a street be twenty feet to one guy and nineteen feet eleven inches to the other, can we?

I slung the rifle over my shoulder and jogged out of the cave. At the entrance, I spun around. My hand melted as it turned bell shaped. Vents glow as it sucked all the debris from inside the cave out toward its barrel. The force fields generated by my cannon compress the matter, crushing bonds and fusing atoms. A dark grin grew under my bandages. Here goes the Nova Cannon A black ball flew out of the massive barrel surrounded by an excursion funnel. A sent a mental command once the ball flew into the cavern. I walked away as cracks expelling dust cover the mountain. I always loved hearing the satisfying ‘thump’ the little marble of matter made. It was the only bright thing before my next dark deed. I sent a whisper of energy to keep the cavern from collapsing outright. Five travelers will find this lonely mountain, and they were not scheduled to survive. With a sigh, I walked away under the cover of night, forever alone. Mother Nature is cruel indeed. What does that make me?