The Monster with a Thousand Faces

Exclusive Short Story

I am the inventor of multiverse travel, and I am not insane. Insanity is marked by an acute irrationality, a lack of coherent thought, or a prolonged psychosis. My behavior over the past eleven years, forty-seven days, and approximately fifteen hours has been entirely forthright and logical. I am not detached from reality. In fact, I have acted very much in accordance with the authentic material world as it has been presented before me. I am not insane. It is reality that has gone mad. 

As I write to you today, I shall make my case that I did not murder my wife and children, nor did I kill myself. I was entirely justified in what I did again… and again. And when you have heard my perspective in full, I am sure you will come to sympathize with what I am about to do. 

My enterprise began when I first developed that awful contraption to bridge between universes. I shall spare you the details of the mechanics, but it was shaped like and operated similarly to a tv remote. It opened a rectangular portal approximately 3 feet wide and 7 feet tall. The “doorway” is entirely black and opaque. It is textureless, like walking through air. Once one steps through, travel is immediate. 

It was the day of the first test. We had just sent a drone through the other side of the portal to verify it was safe. Indeed, the camera showed a laboratory identical to ours in nearly every way. On the other side, I saw a version of myself waving his hands in surprise and celebration.

My brainless assistant, wishing to be the first to step into another universe, disregarded all safety protocols and ran in. It is my greatest regret that I did not shut down the experiment and leave him to his fate. Instead, I took the remote and quickly followed. 

You should know I am not entirely a stupid man. The portal was made for two-way travel, and should it close, I created a coordinate system based upon the trajectory of the connection. Calculated from the input destination, I could create a secondary portal back whenever I wanted. What I did not know then was the flaw in my design. The portal was unstable, and it randomly switched to other universes. 

I jumped into another version of my lab. It was dark, most certainly nighttime outside. I saw no trace of my assistant or the surveillance drone or anyone else, for that matter. I looked around in confusion, and before sense could come to me again, the portal suddenly winked out on my side, switching to another universe. Hurriedly, I opened the secondary with my remote and ran through, only to enter an identical version of my lab, with a duplicate of myself seconds away from initiating the test. 

I confess to my shame that I was still elated by this accident. The room was a frenzy of excitement as assistants and technicians gathered around me. I was caught in a whirlwind of conversation. We talked and celebrated and talked some more. There were a few journalists on the scene. We posed for a group photo. It was only hours later, when I thought about reconstructing a portal back home, I realized there was no hope of calculating a way back. Without knowing the trajectory of the unstable jump, it was impossible to locate the coordinates of the first universe I jumped into, nevermind the one after.

I recall sitting in the lab’s break room, shell-shocked. Those around me were all but oblivious as I contemplated what it meant that I would never see my loved ones again. I looked at each one of them, familiar faces all. They would get to go home this evening. 

I never would. 

Having little choice but to stay in this alternate reality, I numbed myself with the scientific contribution I made to humanity. I was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics alongside many other awards (most of which shared jointly with the version of myself who did not go through the portal). I went to parties. I drank. I drank a lot. I met celebrities and presidents and media stars. There were already plans set in motion to make a movie. I was the most famous man (shared jointly) on that particular Earth. 

I was welcome in nearly every room on the planet, except, incidentally, my own house. I was invited precisely once for dinner. It was cordial enough. I sat on one end of the table and the other version of me on the other. His wife sat closer to him, as did his two children. And while the young ones were excitedly curious, his wife, my wife, looked at me as I was a stranger. No, I was worse than a stranger. I was a stranger who had the face of her husband. 

“Is there an Edith where you come from?” she asked. 

“Yes, I have my own Edith too. I also have two kids, though their names are Ben and Martha.”

The two little ones giggled at that. I wish they hadn’t. 

His Edith’s smile was strained. “And there’s no possibility of going back? There’s not some equation you can solve? You can’t trace your steps back?”

“No,” I said. “I can’t.”

“It’s so sad. What was your world like, if you don’t mind me asking?” 

A face I had known for the better part of a decade spoke to me as if she knew nothing about me. It was even more ridiculous then, that upon comparing my life with my duplicate, we were practically indistinguishable. I sat at that table and watched my wife kiss another man goodnight and put my kids to bed. The hours dragged on until it was I who was shown the door, not him. 

I stepped out onto a dark winter street and walked to the nearest hotel. I was not invited again, and I did not ask to be. 

My parents were no less cordial, but no more welcoming. They accepted me into their house and tolerated me. Perhaps from time to time I would tell a joke, and my father would laugh like he always did. And then he would look at me, and his smile would die from his face. I was never quite the boy he raised, and he was never quite my father. 

My former friends and colleges treated me as a curiosity, some distracting entertainment. I tried surprising them several times in an effort to hide my identity, showing up on their doorsteps with a bottle of bourbon. Without exception, they would first ask, “which David Obrien are you?” 

A few times I lied until they finally caught on. After that, I was politely refused. And all the while, I was hounded by journalists and reporters and paparazzi, constantly reminding me that I was not the real Dr. Obrien. I stopped taking interviews. I isolated myself in my hotel, only going out for the necessities and alcohol. 

I recall during one hazy night; I stumbled over to the bathroom. Retching into the toilet, I drunkenly pulled myself over to the sink to wash myself off. As I looked into the mirror with my blurry vision, I saw a sickly eyed man staring back. 

And someone just behind him. 

I quickly turned around in fright, but there was no one there in the bathroom. Glancing back at the mirror, I still saw that figure just behind me. I double and triple checked, but the room was empty besides myself. I turned to the mirror, thinking this was just some trick of the light. Peering close, I tried to make out the figure’s face. 

I could make out some features, such as the eyes and nose, but they strangely continued to blur as I studied it further. The face became so hazy that I could only make out the barest outline of the man’s features. The head blackened and rippled. I blinked my eyes furiously, trying to see what was the matter with my vision. Three long appendages split upward from the grotesque head, no longer proportioned anything like a human’s. They waved in the air like they had minds of their own. I was paralyzed, afraid to look back. 

The figure took a step closer and a step closer until it was just inches away from me. I had stopped breathing, too fearful to twitch a muscle. We stood there for what seemed like an eternity, neither of us moving. I don’t recall how long it took until I gained control of my body again, but I suddenly felt the spell break. I cried out and smashed the mirror with the whiskey bottle. Throwing myself back, I turned around to see my empty, darkened bathroom. 

When I woke up later that morning, I was sorely tempted to blame the whole incident on a nightmare induced by my rather excessive consumption of alcohol. However, I suspected a much more troubling explanation for this hallucination. I had come from another universe where the laws of physics were inevitably different. These would’ve been extraordinarily slight differences, otherwise human life couldn’t have arisen at all, but there would be differences nonetheless. I had no idea what effect this would have on my body, which was adapted for another set of cosmic laws. 

In any case, I did not go to see a doctor. They would not have been able to help me, and I had no wish to undergo medical examination. Although, even while I was sure that the apparition had been nothing more than a figment of my imagination, I still purchased a Glock 19. I never did again sleep with the lights off, afraid of seeing that thing again. 

Thankfully, I was provided ample distraction from the nightmarish episode. Work continued on the portal device, augmented now with two David Obriens instead of one. As the months followed, we corrected the flaw in the design. Refining the portal remote further, we created a more advanced coordinate system that mapped out the surrounding region of spacetime. It wouldn’t help me sadly. The possible search area for my universe numbered in the billions. However, it would prevent future accidents from occurring. 

Travel was as safe as we could make it, but I still felt empty inside. Another more worldly man might’ve been able to move on. He could’ve made new friendships and found another woman to love. Maybe I could’ve too. Except, I had to see another version of me live the life I had always wanted. He got to celebrate his enormous success with my family. He got to have brunches and dinners with my friends. He got to raise identical duplicates of my children. 

And it burned. It burned every single day when I saw his face show up for work and when he got to go home in the evening. How is any man supposed to bear that? How could any man bear that? And it stewed within me for months and months. On the day of testing the new portal, I asked to be the one to open the new doorway. My plan was to take the remote and run through. It wouldn’t matter to them. They had the schematics. They could re-create the device in weeks. But I just couldn’t stand to live one more second in this universe. I smuggled my scant possessions through security, and we ran the test. 

My counterpart graciously allowed me to open the first portal. I believe he felt some pity for the man out of his own world. I opened the portal to the new universe, and the doorway appeared again. Even after everything that happened, I still smiled at our achievement. A lifetime’s work had gone into this device, and now it was finally coming to fruition.

I turned, and the smile died from my lips. I watched a woman with the face of my Edith excitedly jump into that man’s arms. But I swear to you that was not why I shot him. I turned, and I saw Edith in the arms of that thing. I panicked. How could I not? I drew my pistol and shot the monster in the head. 

A blink later, and it was my face on the floor, surrounded by a growing pool of blood. My body acted on its own, and I rushed for the portal before anyone could stop me. I still remember Edith’s screaming. 

I slipped into another universe and closed the door behind me. I was yet in another empty lab, just as the surveillance drone had shown. This one seemed abandoned and run-down. Despite there being no way to follow me, I opened another doorway and fled through it as well. I ran through variation upon variation of my lab. Along the way, I lost the gun. I believe I dropped it. 

I was so sick and terrified of what I had done. And what’s more, I feared I was losing my mind. Seeing that thing in a drunken haze was one thing, seeing it in broad daylight was another. I ran through universes as fast as I could, desperate to get away from whatever that thing was. Finally, I slowed down, and I ducked through one final portal. 

On the other side, a version of myself stood shocked with his assistants. They were seconds away from the first test of multiverse travel. I stared at the room in horror. I knew conceptually that there were infinite realities, but it never sunk in how replaceable we were. I was so terrified of the consequences and to see everything reset was just too much. I broke down laughing at that moment. 

That was my first lesson, and it would not be the last. 

Things proceeded exactly as they did the first time around, except I desperately tried to forget that the previous universe ever happened. I wanted to pretend that this was the first universe I stepped into, and I did a good job of that. I threw myself into the celebrations, taking every sort of drug that became available to me. Every day I woke up hammered, and every day I felt myself unravel a little more. Weeks passed, and I forgot about the monster. I hoped I would never see it again. 

Meanwhile, I was beset in a worse hell than the first time. I could hardly bear one man stealing my life, and to watch it again was even worse. 

It was at a party in Norway. We were getting wasted on a private balcony, discussing the similarities in our lives. He was again a nearly identical version of me. There was scarcely anything I could find different about him other than the names of his children. The man was me! Except he got to be the "real” David Obrien.

It wasn’t fair! This was all a cosmic joke that I was punished and he was rewarded for my mistake! I could see them all, infinite variations of myself enjoying the success I deserved. 

And what was one life really worth? I had just seen with my own eyes a man I murdered resurrected from the dead. He was more than replaceable, and as I watched my duplicate pass out on a nearby couch, I realized I had an opportunity to take my life back. I was horrified at myself for even thinking it, but my drunken hands moved with their own malice. I had spent the better part of a year watching another me live my life, and I could not do so again. 

I hastily switched our clothes. I took his wallet and his watch. He woke up in the middle of all this, and he feebly tried to fight back. However, I was too strong for him. He couldn’t resist as I grabbed him and wrestled him off the balcony. David Obrien dropped twenty stories and died on impact. 

I rushed out into the hall, screaming and hollering. Looking back, I realized my actions were incredibly foolish. We had different haircuts at the time, and if anyone stopped to check why I had two pairs of watches, then I suspect my story would’ve fallen apart immediately. But somewhere in my drunken haze, I thankfully did remember to shove the second watch in my pocket. 

The police arrived on the scene minutes later. Realizing the weight of what I had done, I broke down. I wasn’t able to string together a coherent sentence, much less my cover story I had been fantasizing about since I got there. They took me to a nearby hospital, where I passed out for the night. 

When I recovered in the morning, I explained to a policeman that the traveler from another universe had been suicidal since he couldn’t return home. In a drunken fit, he jumped off and killed himself.

I was still shaking the entire time, but the policeman wrote that off as trauma. Of course, there was an investigation into my claims, but no one ever came forward to contradict my story. A few weeks later, I returned to America and walked into my home with my new loving wife and kids. 

Life surprisingly resumed normalcy, as much as normalcy could be found. Since I already fixed the flaw in my original creation, there was no stopping my invention from being put to industrial scale. America would’ve liked to keep my monumental discovery to itself, but collective pressure from many other world governments forced them to give up my portal device. Soon, nearly every country was tinkering with multiverse travel. 

It was only small beginnings, but everyone could see the potential. Suddenly, the possibility of limitless resources was not so farfetched, to say nothing of new economic horizons. Properly utilized, the technology could give humanity access to infinity. The only question was implementation. 

As time passed, the monster became a distant memory. I purchased another gun, but it never did intrude in my waking life like it had before. I reasoned that this universe’s constants must be much closer to my home universe, and so my hallucinations had come to an end. Nevertheless, I always kept the lights on, much to wife’s chagrin. 

As for my family, I don’t think my wife could ever truly accept that I was the real David Obrien. My young children were easy enough, but I think the possibility of a stranger taking her husband’s place secretly terrified her. It was ridiculous. I was her husband. Did it really matter if a few variations were different?

But from time to time, I confess I did think of my own original wife. She was still somewhere out there, amongst the infinite multiverse. I wondered if she was living the life of a widow, desperately missing a husband who would never come home. Well, my invention would set her and my children for life. Perhaps she would remarry. Perhaps another David Obrien would stumble through a portal like I did. If so, he could have her. I didn’t want to be too hypocritical. 

And for the first time since I stepped out into the multiverse, I thought I could finally be happy. The lingering guilt remained, but it was not too bad. It’s rather easy to forget you killed a man when that man was you. 

We were walking in the park one day. The kids had gone up to play ahead, and we were sitting on a bench. We were making some small talk. She laughed. I leaned in to kiss her, and I noticed something that I had not realized before. My original Edith’s blue eyes had flecks of green in them. This Edith had pale blue eyes, like the bottom of a swimming pool. I hesitated, and I recoiled back a little. 

She looked at me, concerned. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.” I grinned and kissed her. “Nothing at all.”

But as it turned out, my newfound happiness would only last six months. I still remember the conversation. We were discussing travel plans with our newfound wealth. My wife wanted to go to Prague. I wanted to go to Barcelona. 

“We should do Prague. I loved it the first time. It’s a beautiful city.”

I furrowed my eyebrows. “Whenever did we go to Prague?”

“Don’t you remember? For our honeymoon—” Her eyes widened. 

That simple, miniscule exchange was it. I knew I had forever lost her in that moment. No matter how times I could protest that it was just a lapse of memory, she would never believe me. How could the real David Obrien forget something so critical, so important? I had clearly killed her real David and taken his place. I was an imposter. The most terrible part about all of this was that I did take my original wife to Prague on our honeymoon. 

Edith tried to rush out of the room, but I grabbed her. She flailed and hit me and even bit me to let her go. She tried to scream, but I covered her mouth with my hand. My heart was racing. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t want to go on the run again. I didn’t want to be alone again, and I was willing to do whatever it took to keep this one life I had together. 

“Listen to me.” I made her face me, and I grabbed her shoulders. “I am your husband, and you are my wife. You are not going to change that.” 

I let her go. I didn’t need to say anything else. She understood what I meant perfectly, despite the disgust and horror in her eyes. As the evening carried on, we had a pleasant dinner. I wanted to believe she would listen. I wanted to think she would just see sense. If I just pretended that everything was normal, wouldn’t everything somehow be all right? My wife put the children to bed, and we both went to sleep. 

In the morning, I discovered Edith had fled with the kids. She left a note begging for me not to follow, saying she wouldn’t speak a word of it to anyone. It didn’t really matter if she kept her silence. The world was still watching me, and rumors would abound why the famous David OBrien’s wife would run from her husband. And while no one wanted to say anything, everyone else also secretly wondered if I was the “real” David Obrien.

I couldn’t let her flee like this. 

I don’t think she ever internalized that I was David in virtually every single way. She thought I was a stranger taking her husband’s shoes, when in reality, I was only a few decisions different from her actual husband. That meant I knew exactly where she would try to hide. I found her in a favorite campsite of ours in the woods. She and the kids were staying in a big orange tent.

It was midday. The kids were out playing in the woods while she was on a laptop, probably searching for some place more permanent to hide. She didn’t try to run when she saw my car pulling up. 

I got out and walked up to her. “Please come back.”

“You murdered my husband! You replaced him!” She screamed at me. 

“I am your husband.”

“No! You’re not!”

“Fine! I’m not! But think of the kids! They deserve the best life that we can give them, and you're depriving them of their father. Think what’s best for them! If you hate me, then at least do what’s right for them!” I lowered my voice, trying to be more controlled. “We’ll stay married together for appearance’s sake, but I’ll let you do whatever you want. With our money, you’ll be able to live in Prague! You’ll only have to see me a few times a year.”

She glared at me. “The kids don’t see you. Ever.”

“That’s not fair. They’re my children too.”

“You’re not! You’re the man who murdered their father!”

I rolled my eyes. “Is it murder if you’re killing yourself?”

She took a step back, seeing as I was not going to stand aside and let her snatch my children away. I saw the look of contempt in her eye. It was madness! I was their father! Forget what other people would think. I had a right to raise my kids! Edith turned to run, and I hesitated. 

This woman bore the image of my wife, the woman I loved. I was tempted to step away and just travel to another universe. But that was precisely what made me angry. 

The fact was, I was no longer the “real” David Obrien in any universe I stepped into. I was alone. I had no one. All because of a stupid mistake, I suddenly didn’t get to have my life anymore. And this woman threw away my chance to have some normalcy in this universe because she couldn’t bear to have a slightly different husband. 

It was all falling apart. I was furious. I was panicked. 

I shot her. 

The kids came running back because they heard the gunshot. I was so distraught. I didn’t want to leave them to grow up without any parents, so I shot them too. It didn’t matter. They were replaceable! I just had to go to the next universe! There weren’t any consequences! Everything just needed to go back the way it was! 

Still, I never forgot their names. Christopher and Amanda, I saw the faces of my dead children judging me as I left them. I drove as fast as I could to the lab. I checked in as if everything was normal, and taking the remote, I departed for the next universe. 

I tried to start again. I did everything I could. I found new universes with new Dr. David Obriens to replace, and I became very clever. My original attempt was embarrassing compared to the plans I hatched later. Many times, I secretly traveled to universes without alerting anyone of my presence. I often tailed my duplicates for months, learning everything I could until I disposed of them. And yet, Edith knew. She always knew. Her preferred method was with a rope.

Again and again, I did everything I could to get back to my life. And each time I did, Edith took it all away again. I began to hate that woman. Sometimes I would go to a universe and just murder the both of them. I did that more times than I care to admit. It finally took one encounter with a knife that I realized the lesson she was just trying to teach me. 

Edith had been correct all along. There’s no such a thing as a variation of a person. An individual is the totality of their being. We think of ourselves as a disembodied intellect, controlling a meat puppet. This couldn’t be further from the truth. You are your body as well as your mind. And not only that, you are your memories, your choices, your past, your future, your loves and hates, your regrets, your hopes and dreams. All of it is You. To change any of it is to change You. 

After all, where do you draw the line between a variation and a different person altogether? How many deviations must there be until you are looking at a unique individual? Maybe not a difference in hair color, but perhaps a difference in sex? And why do you consider yourself the center, the baseline from which all must be compared? Who's to say there isn’t a truer version of yourself out there? Maybe you are the variation. 

It was funny then; I thought to myself as I cleaned the blood off my hands, that we think of the multiverse as an infinite series of yourselves. Nothing could be further from the truth. There is only one You. The rest are merely products of coincidence. And when you’re consistently confronted with a man who wears your face and speaks your voice, you realize that you too, are a product of coincidence. 

These people were not my family. They never were. They were arrangements of atoms that were simply incompatible with my own. That was what I realized when I stepped through the portal, with the last murdered family behind me. 

To my complete surprise, I did not find myself in a universe I recognized. I should’ve been in a universe nearly identical to the one I had just left. They were right next to each other on the dimensional scale. Instead, I stood on a barren hill surrounded by wasteland. 

The orange evening sun was setting over the ruins that were too blasted to identify. The buildings had long since collapsed in on themselves, leaving little more than rubble and the foundations. The street was full of rusted and dirty cars, long since out of use. A terrible burning wind blew through the air, stinging my face. Off in the distance, I saw a great cloud of smoke rising in the air. 

I did not stop to investigate further. I opened a portal to the next universe as fast as I could, only to discover a much similar scene. I ran panicked through a dozen universes, each experiencing a similar disaster. 

Yes, it’s true that universes close to one another are more similar than not. But there was nothing in the first universe to indicate disaster of this scale was probable. And as I switched to another dimensional axis, I discovered something quite interesting indeed. If the disaster was purely probability playing out, it should’ve been clustered in a three-dimensional bubble, at least, roughly speaking. Instead, the universes experiencing disaster moved in the shape of a tunnel, burrowing through all reality. 

I had discovered evidence of a genuine structure in the multiverse, whether it be natural or man-made. I had never even considered something like this was possible. But sadly, the mystery of the disaster and what caused it was beyond my means to investigate. This tunnel was far too vast for me to traverse across spacetime, and I did not want to investigate too deeply in those realities for fear of my safety. I was content to let the mystery be, as I was unsure whether I would like the answer. 

I departed for a universe many trillions of universes away. Having charting out my local region of spacetime, I figured out the general patterns variations. Exiting the portal, I stepped into a universe that did not have a David Obrien to invent multiverse travel. Seeing as how my attempts to rebuild my family had utterly failed, I decided my next best course of action was to devote myself to humanity. 

Almost immediately, I became a celebrity and a billionaire just like in my previous lives. However, in this universe, my invention received surprising pushback from most world governments. 

“Well, the issue is it’s just not safe.” The Secretary of Homeland Security explained as he sat opposite of me in high-rise office complex. 

“Believe me, I spent years making sure the portal travel is as safe as could-be. If you’re worried about universe destabilization, the portals aren’t powerful enough to do anywhere near that kind of damage.”

“While that’s… reassuring, the real issue is what happens if we make this technology public. Even notwithstanding the problem of internal security when a terrorist has access to the multiverse, the real concern is how it reflects on the people in office.”

I couldn’t believe him. “You’re main worry is if people port over to another universe to see if someone is doing a better job?”

The Secretary took off his glasses and rubbed them with a cloth. “Could you imagine the instability that would cause? It would make people lose faith in their leaders.”

“Then go to those other universes and do what the other guy is doing!” 

The Secretary chuckled at that. “You don’t really understand politics, do you? Dr. Obrien?” 

The release of portal travel turned out to be incredibly limited. Two years later, what did the mankind use my invention for? They used it to dump the prison population into the next universe. 

There were other uses, but the world governments were terrified. After all, infinity was apparently something they couldn’t control. It destabilized economies; it shredded their preferred demographics; it started unwanted wars. More than that, it shattered the old world as everyone knew it. The suicide rate spiked. As the years pressed on, regimes floundered as illegal use of portal travel inevitably became rampant. 

A nuclear bomb detonated in New York City. They never figured out precisely which infinite enemy of infinite worlds had smuggled the device in. The full weight of the security state fell upon the American people, and still it did nothing to fix the problem. Millions of dollars of counterfeit money from other universes flooded the market. The drug crisis became dozens of times worse with the opening of infinite suppliers. Productive populations fled to other universes while the unwashed masses remained to milk every last drop of the system they could. 

What productive uses of my invention were thoroughly shut down by a government too frightened of anyone else taking power. It did not take long for me to that I was looking at a crumbling society. I had handed them a panacea, and they were so consumed by their old conflicts that they would rather roll around in the mud than dream of something better. I found myself as a man who was hated, for making the situation worse for everybody, even though it was all their fault. 

It turned out that I had sacrificed everything for a humanity more interested in killing each other than building a better future. How I began to hate them for it! 

I was just alone as I ever was, clawing at anything good I could pull out of this mess. Very well! If humanity was going to be ungrateful for everything I gave them, I was going to push my experiments farther. I was going to push the reaches of human knowledge, even if they hated me for it. I was going drag humanity into the light whether they liked it or not. That was the only way I could rest easy, with everything else I had lost. 

My goal was to refine multiverse travel further. I wanted to explore the very edges of reality. I could make short jumps, yes, but what I needed was out in the periphery of the multiverse. 

You may be aware of this, but humanity is predicated on a very specific edifice. The laws of physics are fine tuned to allow for life at all. For example, protons require something called the strong nuclear force to stay together. A mere two percent variation in this force would either preclude anything other than hydrogen forming or cause all hydrogen in the universe to be converted into a heavier element. What interested me, however, is that these exotic laws could theoretically be put to excellent use. Imagine if you will, a contained environment that converts everything inside to gold. And that was only the beginning of the possibilities. 

I could solve every resource crisis imaginable with just the proper implementation of this new technology. 

My research did not go unopposed, but by then, I had the resources to continue my experiments the way I saw fit. And it did not hurt that my vision appealed to those at the top, who were quickly losing their grip on whatever control they had. Unrestricted portal travel meant chaos to them, and being handed the reins of infinite production was a very enticing thought. 

Three years later, I opened a new portal in my laboratory. Unlike the others, this one was jagged along the edges, and it fluctuated in shape. I knew from the beginning that creating a bridge between two universes meant the universal constants would seek equilibrium, much like water being poured from a glass. Normally, this would not be an issue as in most cases the constants would be nearly identical. However, opening a portal to an exotic universe was another thing altogether. 

I had staged a secondary universe in this portal to serve as an in-between to avoid contamination. What I did not anticipate, however, was that this introduced unforeseen problems. The interactions of three universes destabilized the portal, causing it to slowly grow in size. 

“Shut it down,” I ordered my assistant. 

We had a created a failsafe for such an unexpected scenario. In opening another portal inside the event horizon, the flow of particles would be interrupted, and the bridge would be severed. He slammed his fist on the button… only for nothing to happen. 

“Shut it down!” I yelled at him. 

“I can’t!” He yelled back, slamming the button again and again. 

What followed next was pure chaos as the black void consumed the observation room and then the adjoining the spaces. Most of the staff evacuated while me and my assistant furiously tried to do anything to close the portal. My cell phone rang with panicked calls from those in government, but I did not care. 

If this portal didn’t shut down now, none of it would matter. We ran into a hallway as I continually experimented with the remote, hoping beyond all hope to come up with a way of averting the ever-growing disaster. 

As we retreated down the hall, I glanced up, and I saw it. I hadn’t thought of the monster in years. It had seemed a distant bad memory, buried under a thousand rationalizations. But I saw it there, in the center of the event horizon, its body howling with laughter. 

“You!” I pulled out my gun and fired on the creature. 

It was responsible for this! It had caused the experiment to go wrong! None of this was my fault! The thing was preventing the expanding portal from shutting down. It had chased me across thousands of universes just to ruin my life yet again! Well, I wasn’t going down without a fight!

“Dr. Obrien!” My assistant tried to get in the way, attempting to wrest the gun away. 

Wrestling for the pistol, I accidentally shot him. I barely registered as he fell to the ground. I pointed the pistol and emptied the few remaining bullets into the cackling horror. I couldn’t see its face, but I knew it was grinning madly at me. Its head nodded down to the floor, where my dying assistant lay. 

“You killed him!” I screamed at the abomination as it stood in the expanding event horizon, seemingly doing nothing. 

I stepped back and back, unable to think of what to do next. I realized I had no choice of what to do. “This isn’t over!” I yelled. “I will hunt you down and kill you! Just you wait! I’m going to find whatever hell you come from, and I’m going to kill you!”

I opened another portal to flee to another universe. I hesitated for a moment. My assistant reached out to me as the event horizon began swallowing his legs, slowly consuming him. I went through and I forever tried to forget the look of terror on his face. It took some time for me to calm again.

Did I feel guilty for destroying not one but two universes? That is the perspective of a man who doesn’t realize what infinity means. But at the time, I do admit I was entirely distraught. I spent much of the following weeks wandering between universes. 

I still wonder from what black gulf that monstrosity had emerged from. Did I accidentally connect to its home universe somehow? But then, why had it been haunting me ever since I invented multiverse travel? All I knew was that it had been from somewhere. We think infinity is this placid place, but if everything is possible, then what lurks at the edge of possibility? If everything exists, then surely creatures darker than mankind’s worst nightmares exist out there as well. 

And maybe there was utopia as well. That is the thought I comforted myself with. I no longer had a taste to settle down. I wanted to find that universe which got everything right, and I wanted to be finally vindicated, that mankind could use multiverse technology to humanity’s benefit. 

But it was only then that I realized the magnitude of mankind’s failure. I searched for years, always coming up empty. Every universe that did not outright reject my new technology eventually self-immolated. I realized it was near inevitability. To introduce everything and anything into a society meant its eventual destruction. Infinity was chaos, and society could not handle chaos. What do you do when everything becomes possible? 

What happens when your political opponents can make infinite alliances with themselves? What happens when wars now have infinite soldiers and resources? What happens when every sin of mankind can be multiplied and doubled down? I realized to my horror that I had not opened the door to utopia. I had opened the door to an infinitely expanding hell. Those universes that did not invent multiverse travel would sooner or later see black doorways opening across their world, and that would be the beginning of the end.

Those tunnels, those structures I noted earlier. I realized that they were fluctuations in an ever-expanding event horizon on a much larger scale. Something was reaching out, destroying everything that came into its path. I did not know if it was humanity, or it was something else. All I knew is that I dared not travel to this expanding totality. Instead, I ran further and further outward, running from this accelerating beast. 

What I once did by accident, I now felt compelled to do on purpose. If I could not save humanity, I would at least hunt down my monster and remove one evil from the multiverse. I repeated my experiment on multiple worlds, trying to draw out that thing which chased me across time and space. I tried to be as safe as possible, conducting my experiments using worlds with societies already in collapse. They were dying anyway, and I had no choice but to make sure their sacrifices were not in vain. What did it matter that each time resulted in the same outcome? 

For a long time, I went from world to world, opening doors to exotic universes, trying to draw out another encounter. And as I did this, I was also hopefully cauterizing the spread of multiverse travel. It was one less reality to contaminate the others. Billions dead to save countless more. It numbed me after a while, and I spent many years trying to undo my mistakes. The monster never appeared again, and I looked back on a life spent in vain. I realized I needed a new solution. 

I tell you, this is the only way! Infinity should not exist! It is pain and suffering and torture on a scale beyond human comprehension. Why would anyone want the misery of one Earth compounded into infinity? Why would anyone want to see others wear their faces and speak with their voices? Why would anyone think that the multiverse is anything but monstrous? On our own, men have never created angels, but we have created a whole host of devils.

This is the only way. If we are to matter, then we must only happen once. And if we are no more than products of coincidence, then we may at least be satisfied knowing that this coincidence only happened once, and it happened for you. Perhaps that is a cold comfort, but it’s a better one on this side of affairs.

Please, forgive me. This was the only way to make sure worse things do not feed upon us than they already have.

And finally, we arrive at what I am planning to do. I have spent the last three years working on a device to collapse the multiverse. Infinity shall be reduced down to a single variation from where I set the explosion off. I have already arrived at this lone Earth, still untouched by the horrors of what is out there. It is better this way. I write this letter to whomever will come across my work, that you may forgive one arrogant man, and understand that the dissolution of all into one was the only path for humanity.

Tonight I shall activate the device and—

Dr. David Obrien was a very foolish man. As I go through his papers, I chuckle that a man of such genius could frequently have such glaring blind spots. He always believed himself an exception to the rule, the only person out there capable of undoing his sin. What he should’ve realized was that there were and are infinite Dr. David Obriens who have and will try to collapse the multiverse. And they all fail… because of me. 

I was the first. I was the one from the beginning, and I shall be here until the end. It is I who write to you, this remnant he tried to save. David Obrien believed he had seen hell, but he was a coward. He never dared venture to the center of his folly.

There are only two possibilities. The first is that one thing exists. The second is that everything exists. And if everything exists, somewhere out in the realm of infinite possibility, there exist monsters. And there must also exist someone to serve those monsters.