Chapter 1: “Wonders of the Universe!”
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'Gah, I can't believe he was doing that!' the soul thought. If there had been a body, it would have shivered. 'Who gets off on that sort of stuff anyway? I am glad I died when I did, I didn't want to see how that was going to end. Those eyes were creepy!'

'I mean, I was just a crippled old man. Who gets their rocks off on that sorta thing? If there's an afterlife, or reincarnation, or recycle thing going on, I'll have to ask God to excuse me from that.'

"I think you'll be out of luck, sorry."

'GAH! SHIT FUCK ASS TITTIES!!? ... poopy'

The two voices remain silent for some time before the one who interrupted begins to speak, "I'm sorry about that, you seemed to be lost in thought there, so I didn't want to interrupt."

‘Who are you?'

"Ha! No. No, I just happen to... No, that's wrong. Hmm, how can I explain?" the man says as his form begins to appear. He looks like a man in his twenties, wearing a sitting jacket, with a long wooden pipe in his hand. He's sitting on a reddish-brown leather armchair, and what looks to be pink bunny slippers covering his feet. A room appears around the man. A fireplace burns wood behind him, with a bookcase filled with books next to it. Above the mantle is a painting of a ship in a stormy sea, and below the man’s feet is a wooden floor with an elegant looking rug lying on top of it.

"I guess you would call me an anomaly.” The man said as an unlit pipe appeared in his hand. “My story is quite long, but even though we have plenty of time; I'll only tell you the part that led me here. There are more important things we have to address. Such as the fact that your soul is being summoned to another world."

‘Summoned to another world? What do you mean? I died. Am I going to some sort of heaven? I didn’t believe in that sort of thing.' The soul replied.

"No, this is a summoning. We'll get to that shortly, and then we'll have some time to familiarize you with everything going on down there." The man clears his throat and adjusts his sitting jacket, after which he crosses his legs. "My name is... well not important, for now, just call me Anomaly. I was once a human born on a technologically advance world."

The man takes a breath and pauses, staring blankly ahead before speaking. "I had been born with a genetic disease. One which at first glance doesn't seem bad, but once you got to a certain age, your body would begin to break down at an accelerated rate. My civilization had found a cure for it, although the process requires several months of painful gene therapy. I had been scheduled to go through the procedure when I was contacted by the war department.”

“A new process, developed by the military, had become available to fix the problem. It was something that could be completed within a single visit. The process of disassembling and re-assembling various objects at the molecular level had been discovered. Using a focused energy, they could break down the bonds between atoms, separate them into their individual components and then re-assembling everything, either exactly the way it was or with modifications.” He said as he brought the pipe to his lips and blew bubbles out of it

“The military was hoping to use the process to help break down waste materials into its base structure, and to create useful objects from those base resources. I think originally it was designed as a way to transport things to distant places, but when it was discovered that as long as you had the base materials and the …” He thought for a minute, “I guess recipe, you didn’t need to transport anything.”

“Testing was done to see if living things could be transported or created, but although it could create an exact duplicate, the duplicate wouldn’t be alive. If it were to be resuscitated, the duplicate would have no memories, and tended to be prone to violence. They did discover that if you disassembled and re-assembled fast enough, not only would the subject be alive, it would also retain memories.

“Using this process, they’d scan the body before disassembling, and alter the genetic sequence for the re-assembling portion. That way all of the genetic sequencing could be rewritten for the entire body. It was possible to eliminate genetic diseases… well, the simple ones, that is. Some, like autism and genetic disfiguration were probably still a few years off. This procedure had been tested and performed many times before it would become available to the public and was deemed safe by that time for human testing."

A frown creased the forehead of the man, as it appeared he was trying to think of how to word his next sentence. "Like I said, during the first part of the procedure, the computer scans the body, and maps out the changes to be made, which actually takes a few hours. I was unconscious for this part, so for me it happened in an instant. You must be conscious for the procedure because foreign substances could cause problems. You also had to have an empty stomach and bowels, so not being conscious for the scan was really helpful. Once the scan was done, they'd wake me up, do a few tests, and then go over the procedure again before the next phase. I was told that for the next phase, it'd start with a tingling feeling, then I'd get a bit dizzy, before everything went dark, like I passed out. Once everything was done, I'd wake up and have to be monitored for a while before I could be discharged."

"That was what was supposed to happen. I didn't know what happened at the time, but I ... fell out of the universe.” The man stared in the direction of the soul for a while before nodding, “It's hard to explain, as it was more of a feeling than anything. It felt like I had shifted to a quantum state. Oh, do you know what that means?"

'I’ve never shifted to a quantum state.' The soul replied.

“No, I mean do you know what quantum state means?” Anomaly asked.

‘Oh, like something happening but not?’

"Something like that yeah. I was everywhere, and nowhere, while at every point in time, but outside time entirely. In that moment, I was both at the beginning and the end of the universe. And before I knew it, I woke up. In my body. But it was before I was born. Same body, same genetic problem, same family, everything was exactly the same.

“At first, I was confused and a little excited. I could make new changes to my life without problems, and after a while, it seemed like my previous life was just some strange dream. When I got my genetic alteration procedure done again, there were no issues, and I lived my life to completion. And when I died, I woke up, again in my body and once again before I was born.

"Again and again, I lived my life from birth to death. Countless times. Changing my life each time. At first, I developed a thirst for learning. I studied every subject. I walked as many paths in my life as I could. I felt I had been given a chance to experience everything I had dreamed of. I worked every type of job, spoke every language, studied every subject. My mind… no my whole being was a sponge that never seemed to get filled.

“But it didn't stop. I had exhausted the things to learn. I sought out answers to why it was happening. I turned to religions. Perhaps there was an answer there. When that didn’t work, I spoke with anyone I thought could help. Many times, I got told I was insane. Sometimes I was told I was possessed by a demon.

“My life took a turn then. I spent quite a few lives just killing myself. I thought maybe there was a finite number of times I could be resurrected, so I would try to get through them as quickly as possible. When that didn’t work, my already dark disposition became even darker. I resorted to crime and spent plenty of time breaking the laws and other selfish things. I was tired of this existence, and yet it continued on and on.

“One day, I found myself here." With this he held his hands up and looked around. "Well, not this pseudo-room I’ve created. This is the void. It is outside of the existence that is the universe.” With a hand outstretched, he said, “That bright light over there that’s constantly flickering and moving, that’s the universe.

He turned back to the soul and said, “It took a while for me to come up with this, but I believe the first time I went through the procedure, something happened. Either I caused a problem, or the procedure did. I think that whatever it was put the world into a loop, around my existence. I think the last time I died; I was kicked out.” He shrugged and finished with, “Maybe it was the universe's way of fixing the problem."

A smile came to his face and a twinkle came to his eyes at that point, "Do you know that the universe, the whole of existence,” he pointed with his hand, “that right there is, in fact, a singular entity?"

'What do you mean?'

"It's true! That glowing bundle of light over there is alive. I’m not sure how long it took me, because time doesn’t exist here, but after watching it, I began to understand what it is. I have no idea how, or why, but before it came along, all that existed was the void. Out here in the void, there are no laws, such as time, or matter, or existence. And yet, there was an existence right there, in the middle of nothing. I believe that existence asked itself a question. That one question has haunted every sentient life form that has ever or will ever exist on any world. 'Why do I exist?'"

The man held his hand up and an image of a pulsing light appeared there. It started as a small dot, expanded to a glowing cloud that swirled around for a while, then compressed down to a small dot again before repeating itself. "This is the universe. From beginning to end, this is it." He said, as the cycle kept happening in his hand. "Every time the universe ends, a new one is created with slightly different rules. At first, there weren't enough rules, or they were too weak, and nothing was formed. More rules were added, but the balance was never right. More and more versions were created and destroyed until the universe found a way to create sentient life. Something that would help it to answer the question.

"Life is born with a blank slate, and allowed to live to learn, to feel, to have experiences. And when life dies, those experiences, let’s call it the ‘soul’, are absorbed by the universe and added to the collective knowledge. In a sense, I guess it’s some sort of afterlife. All of those experiences accumulate each time the universe is reborn. And it will continue on and on until it finds the answer." The man shrugs, "But the question remains unanswered.”

“Or is it? It's hard to say." The man says with another shrug.

He leaned forward and held out the hand with the image of the universe above it. The image changed and appeared as if everything was happening all at the same time. New universes starting and ending at the same time, or in sequence, or at offset timing, until it became confusing and difficult to look at. He then gave a nod to the universe that existed behind the soul.

"You see the universe, or rather universes, exist in a quantum state. They are all happening at once. All in the same space. All at the same time. And yet, also not." The image then changed to the small point of light, "Some worlds call this the singularity. The point of origin. This right here, this dot of existence that is everything in the universe, is the existence which creates and destroys everything. The beginning and the end. Everything else is just an experience. Its purpose is to bring more information about the reason it exists. This existence doesn't care about anyone, and yet it does. It wants everyone to have a life, to experience things, learn things, do things. And when those things die, their experiences are added to the solution."

Anomaly dispelled the image and said, "Some have theorized this existence as a multiverse, a string theory, parallel worlds, or inter-dimensional worlds, among many others. And they're not far from the truth, but they are all wrong. And they will continue to be wrong because of the quantum state that the universes exist in.

“It will change the rules of existence in one universe based upon theories that are thought up in another. Ideas become reality. Imagination becomes life. Fantasy becomes history. Myths become facts. If someone somewhere in any of the universes thinks of something completely new or different, a new existence comes to being.

“If I were to take my own world as an example, if we were to count every fictional story ever created, or imagined, by anyone that ever existed or will exist on my world, the number would be mind boggling. Some authors by themselves can flesh out several all on their own. All of these can lead to a new existence, a new universe. And that's just one planet, in one of the universes. Any one of those newly created universes can create countless more. A single person's idea can create a universe with millions of planets filled with life, or a single planet with a starless sky."

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