| Generated by Google Flow text-to-video AI software, powered by Omni Flash |
The time machine draws a lot of power. If you utilize it, that energy gets
used up for the trip, but if you don’t, it builds as waste heat. There is no
point in letting it run if they’re not going to be able to travel back in
time in the foreseeable future. They have to first find out who this other
Pribadium is, and what she wants. So Pribadium!One shuts down the machine
while Pribadium!Two gets comfortable. She looks exhausted.
“I did what you were planning to do,” Pribadium!Two begins to explain. “I
went back in time, and successfully saved Doma Tertia.” She gestures towards
Sora. “We both did. He did most of the talking. But then things started to
go wrong. The Teaguardians were asking a lot of questions. They showed us
astronomical and astrophysical data that pointed to something being wrong. I
don’t know what we thought when we decided what tech we would give them, and
what we would hold back. But obviously the government started developing
their own tech. They can evidently detect shifts in reality. It’s crude and
unreliable, but I saw the data. They were right. So I went back to my lab,
and spent time figuring it out. I barely made it here in time to stop you.
If you had been allowed to go on, you would have created a runaway domino
effect. Infinite realities, piled on top of each other, siphoning cosmic
energy, withering away. The destruction of the universe.”
“Wait,” Pribadium!One says. “Are you telling me that you’re from a parallel
reality? It’s concurrent with this one; not just a previous timeline?”
“That is correct,” Pribadium!Two confirms. “They finally got rid of all the
other concurrents, and shunted the survivors into a new universe. Then I
went and made a brand new parallel. There’s no name for it. I think I’m
supposed to call it the Ninth Something, or other, but I don’t know what
that would be, or if it’s my job.”
“How could this happen?” Pribadium!One asks. “We’ve traveled through time
before, and it’s never caused this. Countless timelines are being collapsed
and replaced every day, and it doesn’t happen. Why now? Why us?”
“It’s because we are different,” Pribadium!Two claims. “We don’t travel the
same way. We access the bulk. And it was a one in a trillion coincidence
that we did it today.”
Pribadium always knew that her method was different, but it has never
resulted in this. How should she feel about it? As unsettling as it is that
the timeline you leave behind collapses behind you, at least the changes you
make definitely matter. “What is that coincidence?” she presses her
alternate self. “And how long will it last?”
“How long will it last?” Pribadium@Two laughs. “Forever, I think. Had it
happened on its own, no one would have noticed, but the proverbial stars
aligned, and now we’re stuck. We’re literally stuck against the membrane of
another universe. They were supposed to collide, cause a little chaos, then
bounce off each other. But we linked them in a way that’s never been done
before, and now we’re joined at the hip.”
“So, is that the parallel reality?” Sora asks. “This neighboring universe?”
“No, it’s different.” Pribadium!Two talks with her hands. “Our universe
collided with another at the exact moment that you and I used this machine.
The universes got stuck together, and in between them is an extra layer of
reality. That’s where you are.”
“Wait, us?” Pribadium!One questions. “We’re the ones in the
new reality?”
“That’s correct,” Pribadium!Two says.
“What does that mean?” Sora asks innocently.
“I don’t know,” both Pribadiums say at the same time.
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