《brave new world》 Mirrors Mirrors reflect the truths of the world. Many of these truths are universally accepted, but there is a large chunk that the universe pretends doesn¡¯t exist. Truths that hide just underneath the surface. Just as we often cast our flaws in shadow when gazing at our own reflections, the universe too casts its own darkness. The mirrors don¡¯t differentiate between which truths to hide or which ones to reveal¡ªeverything is brought forward. Hard truths don¡¯t have to be ugly. It''s entirely possible for them even to be beautiful, in fact, but that depends on your perception on the matter. That''s a word we''re going to talk about a lot here, perception, from the Latin perceptio. With every single person comes a wholly unique perception; with so many different viewpoints how can we hope to paint a solid truth onto the page we¡¯re given? That''s what history is...is it not? A solid truth for any curious to look back on. Unfortunately, unequivocal truth isn¡¯t something that can exist in our world, as there is always the possibility for someone¡¯s perception to differ. So, we value the perceptions of the majority¡ªthis we call canon. What the majority believe must be what is true¡ªfor that many people can¡¯t have it wrong...right? Sometimes, we get so caught up in our own colors that we forget we have painted a mess of reds and browns, getting so stuck in thinking that the way things are are the way they have to be. We look not in the mirrors but in what we think the mirrors would show us¡ªwhat we want the mirrors to show us. We shake our heads and ponder our current situation, wondering just how it could have come to this, and then turn the page to try again, not realizing we''ve turned the same page over only to repaint a horrid black over the previous splotches of paint. Sometimes we need to tear the page out and start fresh. Sometimes action causes pain, and sometimes it removes the pain altogether.A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation. A new page turns¡ªa cycle once chained by two souls has broken and the tides have shifted. Constants and deviations govern our universe and others like our own. Constants and deviations are what create life and its many uniquities. So quickly does the flower wilt and split the path in two¡ªa choice to live or to die forks off into another possibility. Our universe has always occupied one such possibility. Our universe has always been very different from yours. Its fate was left up to one human¡ªthe one centered at the crux of its history. His decision created a new possibility by erasing the previous. As the butterfly flaps its wings a hurricane is created far off in the distance. Our new possibility will have different casualties, different survivors, even a different hurricane, but such is the life that was chosen. Without our suffering our universe cannot exist, and without sad endings happy ones cannot be created. Devon knew this. In the final moments before his consciousness was wiped from the old possibility he understood the consequences of his actions. He put aside his own desires to give a new possibility for those who had less than a chance in his. It was a decision that heavied his heart, but lucky for him it was only heavy for an attosecond before his mind was destroyed completely. In this new possibility we shall work our way through how things have changed for several lives that once existed in the old possibility. We¡¯re going to be stopping at several major faces, and I''ll highlight some of the more minor changes as additions to the majors as we continue along. Who I am...we''ll get there, I promise. For now, just follow along and everything shall make sense. Our journey back takes us to the early twentieth century¡ªwe''re going to see the originator of it all. FRIEDRICH / SONJA Friedrich Adata was an omniscient being in what shall be further referred to as Universe Prime. Then, he was born with the knowledge of all possible timelines within Universe Prime and was of genetic connection to the existence that lie outside of time known as The Pit, a living library of all life. He orchestrated the Radical-9 Incident and the eventual destruction of Earth per the will of the universe. Friedrich¡¯s life is as it wasn¡¯t in Universe Prime. He is born without his omniscience and his connection to The Pit severed. Existence is no longer governed by a force that seeks to catalogue all life. Friedrich''s life changes drastically because of this one change. He takes up a job at a paper mill that his father own by the time he¡¯s thirteen, ¡°...it was a job that would teach you to keep your chin to the pavement and your hands busy¡± his father had told him on more than one occasion. He works at the mill under his father for the better part of four years before the end of the 1930¡¯s. He begins to feel an insatiable feeling of unimportance working under his father, and so in an act of incredible bravery and incredible rashness he enlists in the army. He found purpose under a man who promised a better Germany. Friedrich is trained day in and day out on the home-front before finally being deployed out into battle in 1942¡ªright on the hump of the war-front. He and his squadron forge life-bonds through surviving tough battles after cold winters. He finds a sense of purpose fighting for the land he believed in and for the friends he had made along the way. His life comes to a tragic end when he and his rank are bombarded by mortar fire in an ambush¡ªhis corpse burnt to less than ash in mere moments. Germany later falls to the allied forces. This is similar to Universe Prime, but in this new universe the allied nations act more as a global union. The largest reason for this is that the Schr?der Experiment never takes place since Friedrich died in battle. In this new world Sonja Von Kleist is not torn apart by Friedrich to become the world¡¯s first automaton. Because of this, she doesn¡¯t infiltrate British rule and usurp the throne by assassinating the current queen. She instead spends her early years turning toward science for benevolent goals after the death of both her parents. Sonja inherits their fortune and uses the money to put herself through school; furthering her knowledge after the socioeconomic collapse of Germany past the second great war. She lives through copious struggles before she could escape the country and makes a home for herself in the Russian countryside. She slowly integrates herself back into society and continues her learning with the money she¡¯s inherited. Sonja pretends to be a Russian citizen for almost fifty years and at the age of sixty-six she earns a nobel prize for her work in biochemistry.If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation. This follows suit that both Friedrich and Sonja would not be parents to Jack Adata. He¡¯s not wholly absent from this new universe, as there always tends to be parallels to Universe Prime. This is also due to the fact that a person¡¯s identity...their personality resides within their consciousness¡ªtheir soul and not their genetics. It is true that genetics play a large role in how physically they may look and act, but the core personality of a person is one of our constants that is kept to the consciousness. You could say that everybody who ever will exist has always been kept stored like a book to a library inside of The Pit until it is their turn to be born into the universe. Now, The Pit is absent from this new universe, but all of that information¡ªthat personal data had to go somewhere when the universe began anew. Sometimes it would land in similar places and times as it remembered, but there were times when it simply didn¡¯t. If you were born in 1960 in Universe Prime you may be born in 1960 in this new history¡ªmaybe even on the same day. Or you may be queued out to be born a week later, maybe a day, maybe even a year. The factors that determine when a consciousness is given a body all rely on constants and deviations. My, I got off track there for a short moment. I do apologize for that. I felt the preface was important for our next consciousness we would be delving into because it is more of a deviation than what we¡¯ve seen so far. They played a pivotal role in the undertaking of the Radical-9 Incident back on Universe Prime¡ªa terrible tragedy that eventually lead to the destruction of the Earth and rebirth of the universe. And this was the less chaotic of the histories that they have affected. JACK Jack Adata was born in 1975 back in Universe Prime. It comes as a surprise then that in this new history his consciousness is born into a body named Anna in a 1940s Great Britain. She grows up among a golden era where crime was at its lowest point in almost forty years. Her parents worked as spinsters in the lower boroughs of London. They first noticed their daughter was special when she was about three years old. Her talent for music was one of the first things that her parents recognized; she hummed tunes aloud around the house and would frequently be asked by her parents to teach them her songs. She remembers fondly the songs her mother would sing to herself when she thought nobody was listening. Diagnosed with more modern technology and societal standards, she would have been placed on the spectrum, as those in your universe would have it be known as. She was always a bit quirky around other people, but always wanting to see new things, do new things. Much to say, she has had her share of struggles. She understood that she was different from most others that she met. The hunger for adventure and new experiences was too much for her to take in her small town for any longer.. This is one of her strongest desires...and so when she¡¯s twenty-one she works toward just that and moves out of her home to emigrate to America. She was initially opposed by her parents as such a decision seemed foolhardy and risky, but as they saw her take off on the boat toward New York they knew that it was the only path for her. Now celebrating her freedom as an adult she takes to the city like a moth to the flame. She arrives at Ellis Island with nary a clue on how to make her own in this new foreign land, but Anna was resourceful, if not a little naive at times. She finds herself in a homeless shelter for the first few months of her stay, but she doesn¡¯t let it stray herself from her optimism. Anna learned, adapted, and bounced right back after discovering that she was in fact really good at singing. It was already something she enjoyed doing in her spare time, but to find that she had some natural talent bubbling up inside her did wonders. She took the words from the songs that her mother would sing to herself and jumped up to a whole new beat. Eventually, she was confident enough to sing in front of others¡ªespecially at the local pub near the homeless shelter she was staying.This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings. It was here that she was noticed by some producers who worked for KWOR radio station. She¡¯s approached and asked to sign up almost immediately for a deal with their station for a live performance. Anna agrees and performs her cover of her mother¡¯s cadence live¡ªthe ratings on the show boost to their highest point in the past year and decide to offer a full deal for various live performances. By the age of twenty-three Anna is a hit across all of the northwest, and news would soon spread back home to her family¡ªwho in their own time moved out west to see their daughter¡¯s success firsthand. Like Friedrich, much of Jack¡¯s personality was entangled deeply with conditions that he was born with in Universe Prime, being the exceptions to the previous rule. Jack in Universe Prime was born with Prosopagnosia, a condition where one person would not be able to distinguish the differences in human faces. Now, most that suffer from Prosopagnosia learn to differentiate their peers from one another using other notifiers such as clothing, hairstyle, voice, and even comparative heights to help them identify people that they are associating with. Jack suffered an additional handful of anxiety disorders on account of his personal feelings toward his condition and it caused him to not fully form the social skills necessary to be able to pick apart these notifiers at a glance¡ªhe typically needed an extended amount of time with someone new to be able to recognize them for their different traits as he often didn¡¯t meet new people; he tried his best to avoid it. Jack¡¯s Prosopagnosia became so intertwined with who he was as a person that the person inside never really broke out of his shell in Universe Prime. His mind was warped after the Radical-9 Incident and any traces of the insecure boy who wanted to make friends but couldn¡¯t had disappeared. So the Jack we see in this new possibility, Anna Cline, is the kind of personality that Jack would have had were he not afflicted with the Prosopagnosia. Now that that matter is settled, I¡¯m sure that some of you out there are curious on the state of Jack¡¯s children as he had quite a few during his time back in Universe Prime...four to be exact. Megan, Jen, Sam, and Sarah were all heavily involved with the Radical-9 incident back on Universe Prime. Since the both of their fates had wildly changed from Universe Prime, so would follow down the family tree. The four of these children would not be born under a sky in which their blood is tainted with Radical-9. Before we move onto their generation we have a few faces to meet before we can continue forward. JAY / GREG / DAVID / MASON Now that we''ve talked about two of Jack''s children, we''re going to circle back to the late twentieth century. We have some important people to talk about, and of course these are the various scientists who were involved in the Radical-9 Incident beside Jack in Universe Prime. Three of these people, Greg Daniels, Jay Rein, and David Cress all have their histories intertwined throughout the 1970s through the 1980s as each of these three gentlemen were fast friends throughout school. They each shared a love for science, but Jay also shared a love for writing. In Universe Prime his writing talents faded quickly after he went to college to work freelance with his two friends and eventual roommates, but because of the shift from the universal focal point Jay actually has a falling out with David and Greg after high school. They go to separate colleges while David and Greg become roommates like they had before in Universe Prime. This is where Jay''s path branches off and his life begins to change. He keeps up his writing throughout the 1990s and finds a niche in science fiction and horror. He meets Karen Song while in college and the two become lovebirds, finding each other even after the shift to the new possibility. Jay proposes to Karen at their graduation celebration, the both of them happier than could be. After graduation the two move out toward New York¡ªKaren''s family lives out toward the city and Jay was looking to travel to new places. After a tearful goodbye from his parents the two are out on the road and on their way, laughing down the highway. They find a nice house in the quiet suburbs¡ªJay loved to admire the city from afar, but he does admit that the rush of the city doesn¡¯t suit him well. Thankfully, the mortgage on their new house isn''t too bad¡ªmanageable, and Karen is more than happy to support him as a writer as he does her, a cop. Karen doesn''t get hit with cancer in this new history¡ªshe''s a carrier of the gene, but it never proved a problem like it once has. She had of course received the terrible news that her mother was afflicted with the terrible sickness, something that did not occur in Universe Prime. Jay and Karen marry while they''re in New York and decide that they want to try to have a child. I''m going to save John for later on in our tale here, as he''ll be more important once we talk about the children of the scientists as a whole. Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author''s consent. Report any sightings. First we must travel back to the roommates who had still kept their friendship alive, Greg Daniels and David Cress. These two are more close to their Universe Prime counterparts in the fact that they continue on in their pursuit of knowledge through science. They do end up working freelance like they did in Universe Prime. Greg meets Lorraine Wilson during their senior year and marry within a year. Everything moved at the speed of lightning with the two of them. Passion ignited romance and knowledge fueled long nights studying together which led to reactions which would embarrass the sparks of fire cracking from the skies above. The two co-authored several research papers on various fields of study¡ªtheir curiosity couldn''t be satiated. Greg and David soon parted ways after their first four years of school, as the both of them were going to different campuses for higher education. Lorraine stayed with him in Denver while David moved out toward Aurora, Colorado. The stress of the Radical-9 experiment doesn''t cause the exact sequences that would have Lorraine cheat on Greg as in Universe Prime, however two years after Greg finds another man in their home after coming back from a business trip. The two split and go on their own paths, choosing to focus more on their work than their failing marriage. David and Elena do not meet until a few years after he has graduated from college. He meets Elena after stopping down in Castle Rock for a potential job offer¡ªthey settle down and have Andrew. Since the Radical-9 experiments haven''t been performed, Jen is never adopted by Elena & David. The two parents have Andy and that is enough for them. Mason in this history doesn''t make it out of the army. In a way he is subject to a similar fate that Friedrich Adata does, except Mason is much too young to have served in World War II, obviously. He''s killed in a recon mission in Panama. Each of the scientists have had their lives changed in this new possibility, but if there was anyone that had more changes to their life than the scientists it was their children. MEGAN Megan was born in the late 1990s to Pamella Foster and Trevor Rand. She grew up with little to ask for as her father was a talented movie director. She grew accustomed to city life and began working at a local coffee shop for a few years before working her way up to become the store''s manager. Glory and glamour didn''t interest her, she was happy where she was and was good at her job. Her mother grew ill a few years later, a wave of a new and mysterious virus had struck her immune system and confined her to a hospital bed for the entirety of 2020. The virus hides itself among other easily treatable diseases like the common cold. It disguises itself before it can be fully diagnosed causing the immune system to fight against itself, fail, and then shut down. Only a few hundred cases were confirmed fatal with the virus¡ªit wasn''t Radical-9 levels of atrocious, but the families that were affected were hit hard. Megan''s mother was one of these fatalities. Pamella Foster passed away in February of 2021 when she was only forty-seven years old. Megan was only twenty-two when her mother had passed, so it affected her life drastically. She showed up to work later and didn''t have the same old pep that she greeted her coworkers with every morning. Some days were better than others, but they were mostly bad. Her father left Colorado after hearing the news and moved back to California to be with his side of the family. He and Megan were never close, and she didn''t miss him when he left. It wasn''t that he was a bad father¡ªfar from it. He''d helped her grow up into the person that she was to that day and she couldn''t say that she didn''t love him...but there was always something that seemed...off. Like a ringing noise that you hear in the back of your mind that you''ve convinced yourself doesn''t exist. That noise was the growing discord that hung in the background and nobody cared to acknowledge it. Nobody knew where it stemmed from, if the two of them were set in a room and asked to describe their problem with the other, they wouldn''t be able to give a straight answer. All Megan knew was that it was her mother that kept them both together, and as the glue faded away, the pieces fell apart. After her father moved away, Megan had found her own sort of peace in coming to terms with her mother''s death. Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings. She signed up for therapy and began attending sessions every Thursday night after work. Soon, it transitioned to every other Thursday, and before long she didn''t have to go at all. Her performance at work began to improve and she began to feel the joy she had originally felt previously. Her higher ups began to notice and she soon found herself moving up in the chain, becoming regional manager the day before her twenty-seventh birthday. She finds a girl that she connects with while out celebrating her birthday at a bar. Her name is Sadie Hawkins and the two begin spending a lot of time together¡ªeventually making their relationship official. It''s around this time that Megan''s father comes back into the picture. He''s fallen on hard times and never picked himself back up the way that Megan had after Pamella''s death. He began to drink more often and spent any available money he had on booze to make the pain go away for just a little while. Eventually, his relatives back in California grew sick of his dependence on them and gave him no other choice but to head back east to seek help from his daughter. Megan hesitantly agrees to take him in and introduces him to Sadie. He welcomes her into the family and promises to clean himself up. He starts out okay as he begins attending AA meetings, but it isn''t until a fight with Megan over his participation that he truly begins to take the help seriously. Megan, now nearing twenty-nine, is finding more success at work with the coffee shop''s constant growth and expansion across Colorado. Sadie, an author, works from home but is sure to keep the house filled to the brim with novels of varying genres. She hides the engagement inside one of the books as a surprise and proposes to Megan on July 3rd, 2029. The two get married four months later, and Megan''s father finds his own apartment on the other side of town¡ªholding down a steady job as a contractor. It wasn''t glamorous, but he didn''t need it to be Megan and her father grow closer in this time, finally connecting for the first time since Pamella''s death. Megan is of course only the first of the ex-Adata children to have their lives changed by the start of the new history. Sometimes different doesn¡¯t always mean better, but that what entails will be more clear after the changes that Sam and Jen go through. SAM / JEN / JAKE Sam is much like Jack in the fact that even though he was born to a different name and face, his core personality is kept true in Indiana to a single mother in a run-down motel. His name''s Charlie Winters and you couldn''t find a happier kid. His mother sacrifices a lot so that he could have a happy childhood, and it definitely spoke to her love to her son. When he was three years old, Charlie''s mother went days without food so that her son could eat and keep growing strong. Their luck finally came through when a delivery truck got into an accident in front of their motel. The owner was out, and the driver was killed in the crash. The delivery truck contained enough food for Charlie''s mother to survive the week, just enough time for her to secure an interview for a job as a driver for a local food chain. They did just have an opening, after all. Charlie''s father was bad news. He was involved in all kinds of underground business. You might not believe the presence of organized crime in somewhere in such a state of nowhere as Indiana, but it was developed enough to engulf the Winters father. He and Charlie''s mother were eternally abusive to one another. Some days it would be her fault, some days it would be his fault, and other days it would be the bottle''s fault, but it would never be Charlie''s fault, for he was the one thing, even as an infant and beyond, that the both of them thought was right in the world. Charlie''s parents both walked their own pathways to the hurricane of self destruction, mutually meeting in the middle to conceive a boy¡ªwho in another history already fought against a rotten hand from the very beginning. Things were different with Charlie. After his father split and his mother got the driving job she would have her sister babysit Charlie. Charlie loved his aunt, and she loved Charlie almost as much as his mother had. These were the times that Charlie loved most. These were the times that he got to stay in an actual house and play with real toys, eat food that hadn''t been days old. Now, if that sounds like it is a bit harsh from how Charlie thought of the things his mother did for him, you''re partly right, but the thing here is that Charlie''s mind is hardly developed, so things such as sacrifice hadn''t meant anything to him yet. All he saw was what was or wasn''t placed in front of him, and to him it was obvious who he liked spending time with more. As Charlie grew up, he began to understand the things that his mother had done for him. He didn''t go to high school, it had been just too much for him. He dropped out after the 7th grade and stayed at home¡ªnow upgraded to a cheap apartment by the later half of the 2010s. Charlie''s first job is stacking shelves for the very same store that his mother has been a driver for now for years. He works hard and it is noticed by his peers, but he''s ultimately laid off a year after he had started working. Officially his record states that too many tardies had been the reason why he was terminated from employment, but the real reason was that his manager hadn''t been the fondest of those of Hispanic heritage. His mother had given him the name Charlie in hopes that the ¡°whiteness¡± of the name would help for future job offers¡ªshe was more than aware of the prejudices against her heritage. Unfortunately, a name cannot stop ignorance.This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere. Charlie takes this personally and begins to launch a viral campaign against the store for wrongful termination. He takes his savings and finds a lawyer who is willing to work with the funds he has available. His mother tried to talk him out of it as she was still with the company and didn''t want to be brought up in connection as a conflict of interest. Charlie wasn''t having the charges be dropped, however. He kept at it and eventually went to trial by 2024. Most online who read the article commented on the fact that he seemed to be raising hell over a minimum wage job and mocked the Winters family for trying to get easy money. Charlie could see that the bad press was affecting his mother, but he didn''t let it stop him, and finally made a break in the case three years into its development when his lawyer, long grayed from the stress of the overwhelming case had dug up evidence of the manager forging Charlie''s time-clock punch-ins to corroborate the official record. The case was a breakthrough for minimum wage jobs across the country and Charlie and his mother received a large payout that helped put their life back on track. That is, until Charlie''s father came rolling around again, but there was no booze on his breath. He came with a simple demand written on a small card: "Pay the debt, keep the kid." He reveals that he''d been gone so long to keep the underground world from his son (he couldn''t care any less about his supposed wife, as they had not officially divorced). He also reveals that he got mixed in with real bad groups of people whom he owed several hundreds of thousands of dollars to. The card that he handed Charlie was handed to him by one of the kingpins several years back when Charlie was still a kid, as proof that he left for altruistic reasons. At least, to Charlie, of course. Charlie''s mother gets into a fight with his father, and Charlie ends it after it evolves into a screaming match. Charlie says that he''ll help his father out¡ªas they have more than enough money after the payout to help his father out, and suggests that they can use the time after he''s free from his debts to reconnect. That deal lasts for a very short time as by that night his father disappears with a lump sum of the payout money stolen directly from their account, teaching Charlie that sometimes people can in fact be irredeemable. Jen is also born in Detroit, Michigan as a boy named Kurt Evans. Kurt embodies similar aspirations as Jen had back in Universe Prime. Ever since he was a small boy he was fascinated with the police. One difference is that he actually wanted to join the force as an officer as opposed to being a forensics specialist. This is simply a childhood desire, however, as he grows up he finds that he has a particular skill with soccer on his high school varsity team. He decides to take a scholarship that''s offered to him straight to college. Unfortunately, his soccer career is cut short due to an accident that had occurred on the field. This takes a major toll on Kurt''s personal life as he has to rebuild his life from the ground up from the tragedy. These changes of course mean that Jake never meets Jen, or even Andrew by extension. Since Jen is the original bridge that brings them together, his life changes significantly in the time that had been the Radical-9 Incident. Jake still struggles with his Vitiligo and C.O.P.D., but received regular treatment and the proper care, so it isn''t something that progresses to the stages as it had in Universe Prime. He passes unfortunately in his early thirties due to his compounding sicknesses, but he considers his life well lived to have lasted that long. ANDREW / LINDSEY Andrew''s life doesn''t change much until he enters high school as compared with the other children. Minor differences come from the absence of Jen in his life, but his path remains as a constant until the events that would have been the Radical-9 Incident never come to pass. David never commits suicide and Andrew has two strong parental figures in his life that help give him the attention he needs to develop into himself fully¡ªhe doesn''t feel the need to escape into his games. He continues strong in school and joins up for the debate team as he had in Universe Prime. However, this time around when the founding members of the team graduate ahead of him he keeps the team running, becoming its new head and sticking with his passion. He later would recount that team as the first thing that had piqued his interest in becoming a lawyer. He continues with the debate team all the way to his high school graduation and even continues on toward college and law school after that. He does well enough in school to help his way. His journey through college leads him to meet many new friends that come and go through his life¡ªnothing too permanent however. It isn''t until he manages to secure an internship with a local law firm that he truly begins to break out of his shell and succeed. Lindsey is very similar to Andrew in the fact that a large portion of her early life is a constant in this new history. The first major change that affects her life is that her older brother Aaron doesn''t die in Elysium, nor does he ever play it. He definitely struggles with having a very addictive personality, but his situation doesn''t completely overwhelm him like Elysium did and the two are able to survive in their run down motel after the two of them run away from home just like in Universe Prime. Unfortunately, Lindsey is still a survivor of sexual abuse in the home, but she doesn''t have Andrew to confide in nor does she ever meet him in Elysium. She''s hardened her heart almost similar to how she acted toward the start of the journey through Elysium¡ªcaring about little else other than the well-being of both her and Aaron. She attends school online, but doesn''t do too well since she constantly becomes stressed and overloaded with flashbacks to her father and otherwise horrible home life. Some years down the line she graduates from school and passes on going to college. It isn''t like she doesn''t want to go, but both she and Aaron only have part time jobs, and Aaron''s stressing as it were concerning his tuition of his last few years. Time passes as normal and things begin to go all right for the Berrant siblings.This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it One day in the summer of 2027 their father shows up out of the blue at their now-apartment down near Denver. He appears with threats, saying that if they didn''t return home immediately he''d throw the book at them¡ªaccusing them of theft¡ªand they''d never be able to fix their futures. They find themselves with little option other than to seek legal assistance against their father. This causes them to cross paths with Andrew for the first time¡ªwho from at first sight falls for his new client. Andrew isn''t the one directly overseeing her case, but an advisor to the lawyer who is, Darian Nathan. but he overtakes the role when tensions rise between the two over disagreements of how the case should be handled. It highlight''s Andrew''s ethic in the courtroom and establishes a firm foot in the door as he seeks justice for Lindsey and Aaron, defending them from their father. The trial itself lasts several months and within those months Andrew and Lindsey begin talking to each other¡ªnothing but the very minimum at first, but as the months progress and she sees how hard and long he has been fighting for their justice she begins to warm up to him. Soon after the trial concludes in the middle of 2028, Lindsey and Andrew begin dating. It''s a bumpy road to start; she''s two parts withdrawn and cold due to the time she''s been caring only for Aaron and herself. Andrew''s resilient and tries to be there to help her break free of the abuse that she still keeps locked around her heart. He offers therapy and she denies at first, but eventually comes around and long term the two start to really connect how they did in Elysium. The two don''t get married until 2032. They choose to wait until Lindsey is fully done with therapy and Andrew''s heavy caseload dwindles down. They decide against children; Lindsey isn''t interested and Andrew agrees that he doesn''t think that any child he has would be given the right amount of time considering the hours he has to put in for work. She does however wish to go back to school so that she can try for a teaching license. JOHN / SARAH Sarah is born as a child of two artists living in New York City around the time she was born in Universe Prime. Her last name wasn''t that of Jack¡¯s or her old mother¡¯s. In this new history she is born to Jameson and Perry Smith. She wasn''t imbued with Radical-9 and never for a day had she stepped foot in Denver. She pursued art as most in her situation would¡ªfinding difficulty to find her own style when pressed against the comparison of her parents. John grew up a mainly normal life and the situations of his childhood didn''t hack away at his social skills and self-confidence. He lived in a happy home that wasn''t perfect, but it was leagues better than his living situation with Peter and Tonya Baker whom they conveniently lived next door to¡ªtaking the place of the Hansons'' home. Peter and Tonya lived much happier lives; Peter isn''t laid off from his factory job and Tonya isn''t put in the situation of domestic violence. Peter, however, still struggles with alcohol. A fact that is actually brought up to him by Tonya, and who now visits AA meetings regularly to curb his nasty habits. This, too, is leagues better than the events that occurred during Universe Prime. John graduated high school at the top of his class in 2031, earning him a full ride to college in New York City. He proudly took up writing after an embarrassing incident in which his father will never let him forget¡ªJohn''s rebellious phase included a short period where he threw a tantrum that he was not like a character in some story for his father to write and rejected that he''d be anything like his dad. This lasted only a short period, nothing more than a few months at the crest of his senior year. As the time approached to where he would be attending college, John comes to his senses and chooses to embrace his love for writing. He finds his own voice early on in his freshman year after failing trying to emulate his father¡¯s style. He learns that he is really passionate writing for blogs and opinion pieces online.Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings. Fate would have it that John and Sarah would meet in college. They shared an Art History class together and bonded over John''s terrible handling of a paint brush. They never did any actual painting in the class, it was just a subject that came up. The two grew closer as their college years progressed, but came to a halt in their junior year when the both of their schedules became too packed for either of them to handle anything aside from what was directly in front of them. A few months after the end of their junior year the two would reconcile their differences and get back together. They would marry in 2039 and soon after have two children¡ªtwins. They named the children Jay after his grandfather, and Veronica, Sarah''s preferred baby name. They then got the idea to make careers out of creating children''s books, Sarah illustrates and John writes. The two enjoy modest success from their venture and live happily with their children. They take yearly trips out to California to visit the beaches and soak up the sun. Jay and Karen spend a hearty amount of time with their grandchildren and pass on important smiles that they remember well into their adult life. IRIS Iris has one of the more unfortunate fates in this new history. Her life up to meeting Sarah is a constant. Since Sarah is going to school in New York City she never does run into Iris while in school. Because of this she never finds an outlet for the anger that she has for the people that bully her. It comes to be too much in her senior year of high school. The bullying gets worse and with nobody around to turn to, Iris hangs herself.Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation. ALEX / DEVON / NOAH Alex Sharpe never received the Queoquartzite back in the 1960s¡ªshe never chose to give it to Devon for his attempts at the carnival game and thus their meeting was at the carnival was their only meeting until they had realized they had gone to the same school together. The both of them rarely spoke to another; only if they¡¯d been paired up in class which wasn¡¯t often as it was. They''d found other people to talk to and become friends with. Alex takes a particular liking to music in school¡ªher parents support her through their troubles. They had been trying for another child, but the miscarriage that Alex''s mother has still occurs in this new history. Alex never ditches school to go to the library to find out why her mother had been so upset that day and thus she never meets Noah Marshall. The history that Noah dreamed in Universe Prime where Bonnie dies of cancer is in fact this history. The death that had rocked him so completely in Universe Prime has a similar effect on Noah, he comes face to face with the concept of death and how his ideologies were nothing more than an escape from his own mortality. He almost commits suicide before finding one of Bonnie''s books on self help¡ªcoming to the realization that she''d come to the very same thought a long time ago, but had been supporting her husband anyway. It is at this point that he decides to visit church for the first time in years to hear what other people had to believe in. He spends years repenting for the things he thought about doing and opens up a charity later in his life to help those who are diagnosed with cancer.Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation. Devon is a wildcard in this new history¡ªMy records actually show conflicting histories for Devon Campton''s life. The first mentions how he was involved in a rape case at the end of his teens with one of the students at his high school. He was involved in a very lengthy and very public court battle that promptly ended in a confession sealing his fate to thirty to life. His sentence and guilt became too much for him and he stabbed his own throat out with a handmade shiv inside his cell three months after his verdict. A second however claims that he pushed through school after the adversity of his parents'' divorce. He took what was crumbling around him and turned it into his stability, pursuing research at NASA to partake in missions to help guide astronauts back home. He married one of his coworkers and they adopted two beautiful children. He was regarded as one of the crew at control that helped guide a pair of astronauts home after a terrible accident in 2008. If it weren''t for his courage they certainly would have lost their lives out in the reaches of space where nobody would have been able to hear their screams. I have more that differ even further...so what does this mean? Well, to answer that let me tell you a bit about quantum physics. ALIVE / DEAD There is a classic thought experiment that goes by the name of Schr?dinger''s Cat. Some people apply it to quantum physics and others the idea of the many-worlds theory; others try both at the same time. The experiment places a cat in a box, sealed completely so that you cannot hear/see the cat once it has been placed inside. Joining the cat inside the box is a radioactive piece of matter that emits particles randomly every three minutes and a vial of a mysterious virus that¡ªif opened¡ªwould infect the cat, causing its immune system to think itself a disease and begin viciously attempting to defend the cat from itself until it died. The only way this vial could be opened from the inside of the box is if one of the radioactive particles were to collide with the vial and bust it open. Let''s assume the chance this happens is 50%. There is a 50% chance that the particles will break the vial and let out the virus, killing the cat after an hour. There is a 50% chance that the particles will avoid breaking the vial, and the cat shall be alive once the box is opened an hour later. The idea of Schr?dinger''s Cat isn''t to please those with a fetish for abusing small animals¡ªit''s to demonstrate that to the observers outside of the box, the cat is now in a state of being both alive and dead until it is observed to be either way. As far as the observers know they have a 50% chance that could go either way; that box could contain either a dead cat or an alive one. How this relates to the many-worlds theory is simple: Parallel universes are said to be created after a decision is made¡ªit doesn''t necessarily have to be a decision made by a human; that''s a little egotistical in assuming we''re the most important life on earth to make such decisions alone. The survival of this cat, for example, could hang at a fork in the universal road that leads to two separate timelines: One for if the cat lives, and one for if the cat dies. We can take a closer look at this branching of paths and see that there are smaller forks in the road for every single time one of those three minute intervals passes: This relates to another thought process known as Quantum Suicide. There exists a reality¡ªthanks to the many-worlds theory¡ªthat the cat is placed into the box and is continually subjected to the test of the radiation and vial of poison and survives no matter how long it remains in the box. It always remains a 50% chance that the particles break open the vial, so that means that there is always a branching future where the cat survives.Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation. Another way to think of it is if you were playing a game of Russian Roulette and you''ve got a custom gun that''s only got two chambers, one loaded and one unloaded. We''re using this example since 50/50 chances are the simplest to explain for this concept. If you were to begin and pull the trigger and it fires a blank, congratulations, you''re in the universe where you live. You might not live the next, but a version of you would, as there is a chance for it to happen. Now, we take that and apply the Anthropic Principle to Quantum Suicide. The Anthropic Principle is a simple idea conveyed in a complex manner. It states that life exists as it is to support sentient life because otherwise we would not be able to observe the universe. It is similar to Schr?dinger''s cat where if we do not know the fate of the cat¡ªcannot know the fate of the cat, then it is in a quantum state of multiple fates at once. If life were unable to be observed by sentient life, it wouldn''t matter if it existed or not. It must be possible to observe some universe, and so the universe must accommodate that possibility. Of course, the term anthropic comes from the Greek anthropikos, meaning human. The Anthropic Principle by root seems to imply that the universe must be observed by humans to exist, but Universe Prime has proven that not to be exactly the case, so the term is somewhat of a misnomer. Now, what does this all mean, and how does it relate to Devon? Simple, he is our cat. His decision to reset the universe into a brand new one threw him inside that box the moment the new universe began and threw away the key. He''s undergoing multiple fates at once until someone is there to observe the fate that actually exists. In other words, he''s living in a constant state of flux until the right person makes the right decision somewhere in the vast ocean of time. Who might that person be? Well, that''s me, of course. I''m about to make that decision right now, but I think it''d be quite unfair to spoil you right at the end. Stories like this don''t typically start at the end, but technically this isn''t a typical story. Consider it...a bridge. Yes, I suppose that''s a good enough descriptor. You may notice that there was a name that you may be familiar with that has been kept off of the pages of this book¡ªsomeone you would have thought would have gotten some explanation to how their life has changed in this new universe. I shall leave it to you to decide what that means, but for me, it is time to sign off. There are a lot of things I need to get started on. I eagerly await what comes nex//------------------ .. - / .... .- ... / -... . . -. / -- ..- -.-. .... / - --- --- / .-.. --- -. --. / ..-. --- .-. / -.-- --- ..- / - --- / --. . - / .... . .-. . --..-- / -... ..- - / - .... .- - .----. ... / --- -.- .- -.-- .-.-.- / .- .-. -.-. - .. -.-. / .. ... / .--. .- - .. . -. - .-.-.- / .... --- .-- / .- -... --- ..- - / -.-- --- ..- ..--.. QVJDVElDIFdBSVRTDQoNCkFSQ1RJQyBIVU5HRVJTDQoNCkRPIFlPVSBMSUtFIFRIRSBFQ0hPRVMgQU5EIENISU1FUz8= IT IS TIME