Kiss My Apocalips Ch. 06

"What!?" Wanda asked in an almost pleading shout.

I reached out and touched her hand again. "Our Evil Doctor Hyphen used a really big-ass quantum AI and a whole lot of sensors to take a snapshot of our world. And then he created a quantum parallel; a sort of copy. However, he decided that he wanted to exclude something from this new model. In this particular case, he excluded the vast, vast majority of the human beings. And the resultant universe is the one we are in right now." I turned to Sadie. "You said he would have called it something else. What?"

"Quantum manifestation," she said. "It's the world he created, and he manipulated it the way he wanted it to be. He saw himself as God; at least as far as creation goes."

Doriana blinked and shook her head. "So, back in that other world, in that other universe, am I still there? Did I go back to my husband last Monday? Did I tell him I'm pregnant?"

"I can't tell you with one hundred percent certainty," I told her gently, "but I would have to answer yes. That's probably what happened."

"You're pregnant?" Hannah asked.

Wanda chimed in: "And horny ALL the time!"

I pushed back away from the table. "There are things we should assume as we go forward from here. First, those who were once part of our lives, but who are no longer here: they have helped to form who and what we are. There is no greater proof of that than the new life growing inside Doriana in THIS world.

"Secondly, we all need to understand that THIS is our world now. For us, there is no other. But we do NOT have to just sit back and observe outcomes, the way Hyphen is obviously doing. Instead, we have the unique opportunity to shape what those outcomes are ourselves. We are armed with knowledge and a way to disseminate it."

"That might be exceedingly dangerous," Sadie said, looking around. "My guess is that Professor Gonzales has already started broadcasting pertinent parts of that document I wrote. Our Doctor Hyphen is a selfish, egotistical, vindictive man. And he is very likely the most powerful person on this earth. He probably guaranteed that before he proceeded to engineer this quantum universe. However, telling everybody that he is the source of The Event will have a direct, detrimental impact on his reasons for doing it in the first place. When he realizes that I was the source of that document, my guess is that he will put all of his efforts into finding me and punishing me for that little indiscretion. If we use this place to start spreading our information, then he might very well determine where I am, and he might actually take aggressive action against us."

"What WERE his motives for doing it?" Sofia asked.

"For the most scientific of reasons," Sadie answered. "Just because he wanted to find out what would happen. There have been literally hundreds of 'post-apocalypse' novels written, and they all speculate differently about how mankind would deal with it. But now HE has the ability to find out! And you can bet your bottom dollar that this isn't the only quantum shift he created. I predict that the current population of this world is a nice even percentage of the old one. There were probably dozens of other 'experimental manifestations' as well, with different population models."

"Wait a minute," I interrupted. "You mean he created an apocalypse just to see what would happen? How the hell would he ever know? He's still stuck back in the original world!"

"I'm sure that that one man, that one individual, thinks of it as the ultimate personal sacrifice in the name of education. The original Doctor Hyphen will never know how mankind will react to these various near-extinctions events; yet all of those iterations of himself who are contained inside those events will be in the unique position to find out."

I ground my teeth. "Well, there's nothing we can do about any other world. But I am of the mind that, if there's any way at all, we should do everything in our power to screw up this particular little fact-finding expedition, and derail the plans of the Hyphen that's in OUR universe! And, if he has the gall to send some sort of retaliatory mission against one of our own; then I say: bring it on!"

"All in favor?" Doriana asked.

The "ayes" had it.

TO BE CONTINUED