Hate to stomp on a great continuity, but this just came to me. And there
really aren't any other characters besides my own self-insert in it, but...
I think you'll all know what I'm writing about.

(WARNING: This fanfic is rated SC-17 for intense discussion of
higher-dimensional physics.)


****

Was I still teleporting? I had to be... though normally I could see only
blackness, the madness swirling about me had to be inter-dimensional in
nature.

"Mark, how long is this going to take?"

"Request clarification."

"How much longer am I going to be teleported?"

"Query invalid. Teleportation sequence terminated 4.3 seconds ago."

Oh Almighty... something had gone wrong. A fifth-dimensional escape from a
seventh-dimensional prison had left me... where?

"Mark... what's going on here?"

"Request clarification."

I took a deep breath... good, my air generator had activated. And my cloak
was keeping me from being drowned or smothered or burned or crushed in the
seething elemental mass that surrounded me. Thank heaven for modern
technology. But what was going on here? And how to phrase the question so
that Mark would understand?

"What is the nature of the outside environment?"

"Scanning..."

A blue beam slowly worked its way around the egg-shaped shield. Finally,
something it could understand. Now... to wait. Not as though I could do
anything else. A few minutes later, the beam halted, and Mark began
compiling the data.

I waited. Gad, this was boring. I decided to watch the light show outside,
for lack of anything better to do. It reminded me of watching a false-color
Mandelbrot set scroll by.

"Scan completed, Glazius. It appears the surrounding environment is in a
state of quantum flux."

"How much of the surrounding environment, Mark?"

"No dampening has been observed, Glazius."

No dampening... this couldn't be happening. But it was... okay, okay, calm
down, try and think rationally. There is never any sense in panicking.

Quantum flux was a piece of matter trying to decide which universe it
belonged in. Happens all the time. On the small scale. Quarks and
anti-quarks and such spring into and out of existence in the blackness of
space in the blink of an eye. The reason they only exist for a few
nanoseconds is that the universe asserts that there should be nothing there.
And then there IS nothing there. Now, with larger pieces of matter, the flux
starts in earnest. I think Mark had found the traces of a quantum moon which
manifested for a month out of every Mobian year... simply because it was
still being shunted from universe to universe, trying to find where it
belonged. Originally, it had always been present... but it hadn't shown up
in at least twenty years and was not likely to return. It had found its
place.

That was the other interesting thing. Quantum flux dampens over time.
Naturally. Realities where the object is welcomed hold it longer; realities
where it should not exist shove it away. This eventually forces it to settle
where it belongs. But Mark hadn't picked up even a picosecond of difference
in the rate at which the universe around me swirled and seethed in mad
elemental rages. That could only mean one thing.

However it happened... the universe didn't know where it was.

****

Mark's chronometer showed that it had been an hour. An hour I'd spent trying
to wake myself up. This was a nightmare. It had to be. Surely, nothing so
twisted could happen that an entire universe could lose its way.

Unless...

No. No. They couldn't be that crazy.

Could they?

"Once we have eliminated the impossible, Doctor Watson, whatever remains,
however improbable, must be the truth." Holmes may not have been a quantum
physicist, but he was right. There was only one possible way this could have
happened.

I just couldn't believe they would do this.

****

I was starting to develop a theory. Somehow, fifth-dimensional transport -
transport between alternate realities - had been developed. But was in its
infancy, so that a traveler still carried a bit of his home universe with
him. Now... just in theory, mind you... enough transports back and forth and
a small bit of the universe could easily become "confused". At least for a
few minutes. But the entire UNIVERSE?

"Mark, have you finished the computations?"

"Affirmative, Glazius."

"And the result?"

"The universe will disintegrate into chaos after approximately two hundred
billion trans-reality teleportations."

And the effects would probably be felt long before that. I could almost pity
the people... probably, they tried to get away into a few of the other
dimensions before their own world collapsed... little knowing that they were
condemning their eventual destinations. I was thankful that it hadn't gone
beyond fifth-dimensional transport... otherwise, the whole of existence
would be destroyed.

Not as though the current loss was not catastrophic.

Well... hmm... "Mark, send yourself back in time. A few hundred billion
years. Come halfway to my current time and run a scan. Minimum information,
widest possible range. Repeat until you're a second away. Then just come
back. I'm going to find out why the universe collapsed."

"Affirmative, Glazius. " Abruptly, Mark's case was covered with a thick
layer of dust. "Scan complete."

"Okay, then. Let's see what you've learned."

****

FRED-space?

(?)... what kind of a name was that? The ultimate masochist, I imagine. I
wonder what he felt like when his reality began coming apart at the seams?

Fictional characters coming to life. Where have I heard THAT one before? All
things which occur, occur. So naturally they would have to exist. And,
naturally, there would be some reality where anything was happening.

Well, almost anything. As near as I could figure, this swirling mass took up
about one-fifth of the possible realities. Quite a lot... but then, the
scope of what happened had been unthinkably broad.

So, falcon boy, how are you going to fix THIS?

The problem lay in tracking down the root cause. And THAT would take a
little more work.

"Mark, display previous scan."

"Affirmative."

No.

"Previous scan."

"Affirmative."

No, not there either.

"Previous scan."

****

How long had it been? Ah well, time made no difference. The universe would
remain a dissonant mass until... no, there was no "until". But I'd finally
found the cause of all this. To think that one little idea could cause so
much trouble...

Yeah. Right. Like it led to a jar being broken or something. That "little
idea" nearly obliterated reality. And I had nothing better to do that figure
out a way to stop it. But you can't just extract ideas. And murder was
completely out of the question... at least I had been raised that way. If
worst came to worst, I suppose I could...

IDEA!

Let's see here... how to do this... oh yes. "Mark, I have a small program
for you. It's a virus, of sorts. I want you to travel back and transmit it
to a few other computers."

"Manipulating the past could lead to drastic changes in the present,
potentially your own elimination."

"Sad to say, that's what I'm counting on. You have your orders, Mark."

I could swear it sighed at me. "Affirmative, Glazius."

Mark blinked away. And then... subtly at first... the universe began to
settle down. The swirling didn't seem nearly so chaotic anymore. And then,
in a sudden burst of light... I was under a tree. Perched on a root
protruding from the ground. And... to my chagrin... I was slowly fading
away.

Oh well, a small price to pay...

****

"Symantec? I want my money back. What do you mean, there's no 'Revenge-kill'
virus? THERE HAS TO BE! I HAVE IT!"

He slammed the phone down angrily. Not only did he have it, but so did most
of the other writers. It was the oddest thing, really. Whenever he tried to
post that story he'd been working on, a message would come up on the screen:
"Revenge can solve nothing. You know not what you do." And then it the story
would simply vanish. The same thing would happen if he tried to e-mail it,
print it... eventually, it got to the point where he couldn't open the
document any more. And the same thing was happening all over the country.
All over the world, as near as he could figure.

A bit apprehensively, he sent the latest story he'd written off to a friend.
Nothing. He tried again, to someone different. Nothing. Now for the "revenge
fic", as he liked to call it.

"Revenge can solve nothing. You know not what you do."

"Why am I not surprised?" He sighed, and deleted the file. Even a good idea
wasn't worth this sort of runaround... what the? This message was certainly
new... but what could it mean?

"The universe thanks you. Write well, and safe journeys. G. Falconar."

****

And thus it ends. For one small sector of space-time, at least.

--Glazius