Microstory 2492: Mythodome

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This is a very complex dome, and it’s due to the interconnectedness of world mythology. As I’m sure you’re aware, Earth is home to many a myth, which people once believed, or at least found value in the stories that described them. Since there have been so many cultures in our history, these myths often contradict each other. Lots of them, for instance, came up with a god of the sun, but they could never all be true. That’s where this dome takes liberties, because they are all “true” insomuch as they coexist here. There are indeed multiple sun gods, and they operate as a sort of council. Don’t ask me what they do, though, because as I’m sure you’re also aware, this is all made up. In real life, God doesn’t exist, elves don’t exist, trolls don’t exist. This is an immersive world where such creatures and beings have been engineered out of the specifications presented in the various source materials. It can be hard to track. Some myths even contradict themselves, as told by different authors, and diverging translations. So, Mythodome does its best, but the interesting result—which I’ve been trying to drive at this whole time—is that it is more than the sum of its parts. It has spawned a new mythology, which includes that sun-god council I mentioned, and various factional alliances that never existed in the original stories, because they weren’t culturally related. Part of the experience is learning the new story that has come out of this, which could have hypothetically been its own franchise in traditional media, if someone had thought to be quite this comprehensive before. There are different kinds of elves, for instance, because there have been different interpretations in the stories, and these elves are aware of each other, and have developed complicated relationships with each other naturally. That’s my understanding anyway, which is that their dynamics have taken on a life of their own to form this fresh society, and I think they were doing it before any Earthans came to visit. That alone is interesting enough, not just that these mythical creatures can be genetically engineered, but that we end up with unpredictable consequences as a result of so many variables. I’m rambling now, but suffice it to say that it would not be difficult to spend years here. You could even spend an entire lifetime, making your own way, and finding your purpose. Because very little about this place was prewritten. It’s all been developing on its own, and who knows where it will take us next?

Microstory 1637: Wish Fulfillment

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I’ve not said anything about universes that contain a great deal of people with spirit abilities. Mine is like that, but throughout the bulkverse, we’re pretty rare. In any given brane, you might find one or two spirits in all of history. In Genieverse, there are many, though not quite as many as there are here in Voldisilaverse. The Voldisil are complicated in that we never all get together to make decisions. Each one of us tries to do whatever they believe is right, and sometimes that doesn’t work out so well, but we never decided to form some kind of governmental system. The spirits in Genieverse did. They were all born with the ability to find and recognize each other, and in the hopes of creating a better world, chose to found an organization that would utilize their abilities effectively. All spirits here were the same thing, though to varying degrees of success. They called themselves Genies, as you could have guessed, and I’m sure you’ve heard of them, but you probably know them to be slaves, or evil creatures of some kind. The real Genies can’t manipulate reality, or alter the laws of physics, but they can answer people’s prayers. And answering prayers is what they chose to do. They could have charged for their services, using regular currency, or maybe favors, but they wanted it to be fair. They opened their doors to all, and their only rule was that no wish could contradict someone else’s wish, or interfere with someone’s general happiness. Lots of people wanted the person they loved to love them back, but that would violate that other person’s agency, so it was off limits. It’s unclear whether they would be capable of such a thing anyway. They thought this simple restriction was all they would need, but there were problems, of course. It led them to prioritizing certain people over others—usually on a first come, first serve basis—resulting in an unfair system. It also resulted in chaos.

The Genies were powerful, intelligent, and knowledgeable. If two people wanted the same promotion at work, the person who asked for it first would usually be the one to get it, unless the Genies were aware that the second person was better suited. Well, this came with questions, like what were their parameters for job fitness, and what right did they have to circumvent the hiring manager’s decision? They were trying to become gods, while pretending they weren’t trying to be gods, while just making everything worse for everyone. They didn’t have any rules about how many wishes any one person was allotted. They didn’t think too far down the line at possible consequences for their choices. As long as a wish did not pose an immediate threat, and it was within their power, they made it happen. Society fell apart as people became obsessed with making their lives better without actually putting any effort into that goal. They believed as long as they didn’t ask for too much at one time, they would not be denied, and all of their dreams would eventually come true. It became impossible for the Genies to understand the ramifications of their actions. Soon, contradictions were popping up all over the place, and the solutions never really helped, because they always felt unfair as well. In two years, pretty much everyone in the world was unhappy, and there seemed to be no way out. The only reason it took that long was because not everyone believed the Genies were real right away. Unfortunately, it didn’t matter what they did at this point. No one was really wishing for the environment to be healthier throughout all of this, so the Ochivari came through, and wiped them all out, but it was their last successful mission.

Microstory 1624: Would You Rather

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Here’s another one that’s both bizarre, and involves multiple realities. You’ve probably heard of would you rather games. These can range from innocuous questions for children, to really raunchy, unsavory, or sadistic. Would you rather be blind, or deaf? Would you rather only be able to breathe from the bottom of your feet, or only ever smell smelly feet? They can be fun, they can be embarrassing, and they can be impossible to answer without looking bad. But one thing they’re not is consequential...unless you live in Hypothetiverse. In that world, every answer you give comes true. It happens to someone. It happens to an alternate version of you, one whose only real purpose in life is to suffer whatever circumstances you’ve forced upon them. Not all hypothetical questions lead to this. You have to ask it in this very specific way, but if you do, it will happen every time, and each time it happens, reality as a whole becomes more complicated. It almost feels like there’s some kind of intelligent design to all this, and not because of the inextricable connection between the main reality, and all of these offshoots. It’s also that the bare minimum number of realities exist to accommodate these realized hypotheticals. Some questions contradict each other—like if you were asked whether you would want to go without the internet, or without TV, for the rest of your life, and another one later that asks whether you would rather only be able to visit porn sites, or advanced scientific databases, for the rest of your life. Those two versions of you will live in their own respective realities, because they would not be able to coexist. But beyond that, all the hypothetical alternates live in the same reality. That is, as long as they don’t contradict each other, they’re together, so it’s not like there is one reality for every single would you rather hypothetical. Here’s where things get interesting, though. Each of these alternate realities has to be inhabited by a full population, and not everyone has answered one of these questions ever in their life. So their alternate is just walking around, trying to lead a normal life, amongst a neighbor who can only walk on their hands, and a co-worker who has to eat everything with a butter knife. They don’t know they’re in a realized hypothetical reality, so they can’t explain this odd behavior, and if they were to ask one of them about it, that person is also unaware of what they are, so they would just think it was normal, and not be able to articulate their reasoning. “Well, I don’t understand the question, I can only drive on Sundays. How would it be possible for me to ever drive on any other day of the week? You’re not making any sense.” I won’t get into specifics, but this universe doesn’t have anything to do with the Darning Wars, because these realities eventually collide after too many would you rather questions are asked, and things get ever crazier from there on out.