Finding Utopia (Part 1) (Patreon)

AUTHOR'S NOTE: This story gets pretty dark in the middle. But this story quickly became my favorite story to write around the end. Hope you guys enjoy! TRM does it again!

Commissioned by TRM

Written by HikerAngel

Imagine a perfect world. I know, it seems impossible. What about racism? What about sexism? Transphobia? you cry. I simply give you a confused look. Those words mean nothing where I’m from. They’re not even in the dictionary. They don’t exist.

Picture a car crash. Devastating—could result in the deaths of a whole family. People grow grudges, insurance agencies attempt to squeeze every penny out of the wreck, the fire pollutes the atmosphere.

But we don’t have gas-guzzling cars. Hell, we don’t have cars. We don’t even have money.

In my world, if you want to get somewhere, you take a readily available teleportation station powered by 100% solar energy. And you take it for free. Whatever fixed point you desire, no questions asked.

But what about crime? You ask, paranoid. My response being: what about it? Without suffering, no one needed to turn to a life of crime to survive. Crime doesn’t even cross your mind when you have all your needs met. Enough needs, even say, to live forever.

Would living forever get boring? Some seem to think so. If you want to die, they let you die. But you don’t have to if you don’t want to. You wanna live forever? Live forever! My neighbor is throwing his 900th birthday next week! Turns out, without endless wars to fight, scientists could focus on more important stuff like figuring out how to reverse the cell decay process by splicing our DNA with lobsters.

But enough about the world. It’s my story. I want to talk about the three things in my life I care about the most: Falcha, Cassette and Silver. And before you call that a random assortment of things, those are my wife and daughters you’re talking about!

Well, okay, maybe a little more about the world. You get to choose your own name, no one chooses it for you. Complete freedom. Once you turn 18, your chosen name and gender gets added within a massive registry that updates constantly, letting everyone know what your new name and pronouns are to avoid confusion and mistakes should you ever desire a change.

It’s quite adorable to see kids tell you what their new names are, considering they change their names based on their latest hyperfixation. Cassette is already on her 15th name at just eight years old, and I’ve already lost count with Silver.

Falcha knew what her name was right out of the gate, as did I. We were perfect for each other. While friends joined massive polycules (not to say that’s bad, or anything) we were content with merely the romantic company of each other.

Once kids were bright into the mix, we knew two would be the perfect amount. Sure, it was a bit… nuclear, but I was happy with it! Besides, was two lesbians raising two daughters really all that normal in lesser societies? Oh god, just imagining how awful life in other realities could be makes my skin crawl. I remember reading about how scientists made an amazing breakthrough regarding the multiverse. Hell, that’s half the reason I’m writing this letter! If I meet an alternate version of myself, I’m totally gonna brag to her about how awesome my life is and how—

“Reyla, are you almost finished in here?” came a voice that absolutely demolished my train of thought with its brilliant cadences and melodies.

I turned my focus to my lovely wife, whose head was peering through the doorway. Atop her head was the lovely sun hat I had asked the resident tailor team to make for her birthday. It looked as beautiful on her as the day she got it. And while the wide brim shielded a lot, I could still make out every detail of her perfect face.

She was getting older—but damn, was it a graceful transformation! I’d call her a MILF, even though it was the most redundant title ever at this point. But reality didn’t stop her from occasionally referring to me in kind when the children weren’t within earshot, an equally redundant title if you ask me. Hey, even though gendered notions of beauty are a thing of the past on this earth one thing was certainly true: me and my wife were both hot as fuck.

Falcha took a cursory glance over what I was writing. “I guess that multidimensional stuff’s really left an impact on you, huh?”

I almost squealed at the mention. “It’s just so exciting! The idea that we won’t be alone in the grand vastness of space! I mean, we weren’t, but all we found were microorganisms at best! This could be the next big leap in scientific discovery!”

With every word, her smile grew larger on her face. “Hearing you so passionate about something is such a turn-on, you know that, right?”

My smile quickly matched hers. Airy giggles escaped my lips. “Well then, how about we quell that little problem of yours, hmm?”

My face approached closer and closer to hers, but she booped my nose with her finger before our bodies could touch. “Ah ah ah,” she taunted, “remember, you promised we’d go out with the kids at three for a walk in the arboretum. It’s 15 minutes past.”

“Drat, foiled again!” I responded playfully, as if I were a villain from a cartoon. “But, look over there, fair maiden!”

She played along, turning her head. I then stole something precious—a kiss—before she could no longer keep up the act and broke into a fit of hysterics.

Even though we were both in our outdoor clothes, she still tackled me onto the guest bed in our study, passionately making out with me as rays of sunlight shone on us through the skylight.

When we got tired of the smooching, we turned to cuddling and when we were tired of that we just gazed at each other lovingly, running fingers through each other’s hair without as much as a wrist movement. However, two unexpected elements were added into the mix, even though we should have seen them coming from a mile away.

With it almost pushing 15:30, the kids were growing restless. They barged into the study and started jumping on the bed we were on.

“We wanna go outside!” the two of them shouted in unison, excited that they had caught us in the act of being ever-so-slightly irresponsible with our time.

“I-in a moment!” I replied, struggling to retain my balance as my two daughters bounced up and down on the bed. I wrestled Cassette into my arms and Falcha did the same to Silver. “Wow, you girls dressed yourselves and everything!”

“We’re not five anymore, mom,” Cassette replied with a bit of snark.

“I know!” I replied with a silly voice, feigning despair. “My little girls are growing up too fast for me to keep up!”

I affectionately squeezed Cassette’s chubby little cheek, she giggled and tried to bat away my hand.

“Alright, you win, girls. We’re leaving for the arboretum.”

“Can we get Ice Cream while we’re there mom?” Silver asked Falcha, knowing she was more receptive to such an inquiry than I was.

I gave my wife a narrow-eyed look, but she responded in turn with a knowing smile. Falcha had made up her mind before Silver had even asked.

“Of course, sweetheart. You’ve both been very well-behaved at school, so I’ve heard.”

I sighed exaggeratedly. “Okay girls, we can go out for ice cream but only because you two had a very healthy breakfast, understand?”

“Yesss mommm,” the two of them said in unison, assuming they were being reprimanded for something. But I dashed those thoughts away immediately, bringing both of my daughters into a big hug.

“Remember, I only say these things because I love you and want you to stay healthy. And I love you very, very much.”

“Oh, c’mon, it’s just ice cream, Reyla! We’ve basically perfected obesity surgery,” Falcha remarked. “Plus, it’s the lowest percentage it’s been in years. Zero.”

“I know, I know,” I replied. “But, the experience of being obese is far worse that the experience of not getting ice cream, I’ve found. Call me ‘old world’ or whatever, but I would do anything to protect this family. Anything.”

Falcha put Silver down and loosely wrapped her arms around my shoulders. “God, you’re lucky I find your passion incredibly hot.”

Our lips locked again, our daughters covering their eyes with an “ewww” as if they were trying to retain their childhood innocence.

“Aww, don’t be such babies. Women kiss, it’s really no big deal,” Falcha joked, recalling a long, long time ago when LGBTQIA+ rights were indeed a big deal. Now, half of the population were trans in some regard, everyone coming to an understanding that gender roles sucked ass and that you could be whoever you wanted to be.

Not wanting a repeat of the last kissing spree (purely for the sake of time), we made our way out of the door. The city was peaceful, with no loud cars to summon even louder ambulances through accidents, a delightful tranquility hung in the air.

The four of us held hands and we skipped and frolicked down the boulevard, Cassette and Silver were just reaching that age where they were getting too heavy to play “swing” with—a game where the parents walked on the outside of a side-by-side hand holding formation and lifted the two children in the inside off the ground and swung them back and forth—but you better believe me and Falcha tried our hardest to keep them above the concrete.

The children cheered and giggled as they ran off ahead into the hills of the vast arboretum, Falcha and I staying behind as we stretched our sore arms from “swing.”

“Yeesh, they just get heavier and heavier every year,” Falcha lamented wistfully.

“Hey, don’t complain to me, you’re the one who wanted to take them out for ice cream.” I retorted.

Falcha playfully slapped my arm—the sore one.

Trekking our way up a grassy knoll, we arrived at our destination: the taco tree. Named after our first date where I accidentally spilled the two tacos I bought all over Falcha, it brought back interesting memories whenever we returned. But even I couldn’t deny, it was the prime spot to be.

Located in a secluded area, it was a nice space to be away from chatter. The tree overlooked a fountain and playground that the children would play in, allowing Falcha and I to keep them under general supervision while still ensuring that they could be free and carve their own fantastic imaginary adventures.

It also just so happened to have a perfect view of something I was particularly interested in: the first spacecraft to dimensionally travel.

It was a massive piece of machinery, able to be seen from orbit with just the naked eye. Sure, it wasn’t the first spacecraft with that distinction, but I was more excited for it than any routine visit to the moons of Jupiter or whatever.

“What do you think they’ll find out there, hon?” my wife asked, cuddling up next to me as she followed my eyes to the sky.

“Well, the truth is, even though I’ve dedicated a lot of time to the research of multiversal theory, I have no idea. Ideally, they find an exact copy of our world with a different, less utopic outcome, just so that I can brag at alternate me’s expense.”

“Doesn’t that worry you, though? What if we find a world that’s been ravaged by war, and they bring the war here—to us?”

I just scoffed. “Impossible. There’s nothing they could throw at us that we haven’t seen before. That’s the beauty of this era, Falcha, we’ve actually learned from our history to create the best possible world for everyone living on this planet. We’ve devised scenario after scenario to deal with the worst of the worst!”

“I guess you’re right. I remember reading about a device that could nullify nuclear warheads that was developed hundreds of years ago. If they come out of that portal blasting armageddon, I think we’ll be more than prepared.”

“There’s more than just the anti-nuke device, but you hit the nail on the head, honey. The point is, I highly doubt that one universe over would have anything significantly threatening to our way of life.”

“Yeah, you’re probably right, Reyla, I’m just a paranoid girl.”

“Yes, but you’re my paranoid girl,” I said with a silly smile, turning my gaze away from the sky to look her in the eyes instead. Her smile mimicked mine, before booping my nose with her slim index finger without warning.

That single boop quickly turned into an all-out booping war, with each of us rapidly pressing each other’s noses with extreme prejudice. Falcha chose to play dirty by poking my cheek—the war had changed. Our fingers were probing further down the opposing battlefields. I booped her chin, she booped my neck, I found myself unable to properly boop her breast (it was so large and bountiful, my finger was sucked in, only to be ricocheted away as if it were a trampoline.

Pretty soon, we had devolved into the same childish antics our daughters were likely engaging in down the hill, tickling each other and giggling underneath the very same tree we had first fallen in love under. Where, upon cleaning up my taco spillage, we realized that true love was upon us.

Once the laughing and theatrics eventually subsided, it was back to cuddling. Holding ourselves until our arms went to sleep.

“This is a perfect photo op,” I remarked, whipping out my camera from my dress (with deep pockets, of course—it is a utopia after all) and holding it up for a selfie.

“You know this is probably the 20th photo we’ve taken with this exact setup, right?” Falcha added with snark. “All you’re gonna be cataloging at this point is the evolution of my wrinkles.”

“And what’s wrong with that?” I replied, looking her way with a raised eyebrow. “I happen to love every wrinkle on that perfect face of yours.”

“So, you’re saying that my wrinkles make me perfect?” my wife clarified, setting me up for a catch-22 response.

I knew that if I responded with “yes” she would then retort with something along the lines of “so, then when we met before I had wrinkles, I wasn’t perfect?”

And if my response was “no” her retort would then transition to “so you’re saying I’m no longer perfect?”

I had to choose my words carefully, but I knew my wife and I knew exactly what to say.

“You were perfect before, but now you’re a level of perfection I never even knew existed.”

Falcha’s brow narrowed. “Good answer.” I could tell she was miffed, which I understood. It was scary how good I was at worming my way out of conflict. Sure, that word was perhaps better suited in parentheses with an earth as peaceful as this one—but I wasn’t above taking the victories as they came.

“What else can I say? I act my age.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means I’m mature.”

“Says the woman who was engaging in a poking war just a few minutes ago.”

“You were also in that poking war!”

“I never claimed to be mature.”

With every sentence of the back and forth, our faces drew closer and closer to each other until we could practically feel the soft breath of one another on our cheeks. We were mean-mugging each other, but we both knew without clarification that it was all in jest.

“I have an idea,” Falcha whispered to me in a faux gruff voice, trying her hardest to remain serious.

“What’s your idea?” I whispered back, committing to the bit.

“Let’s go get that ice cream now.”

“Fuck. Yes.”

Even though Cassette and Silver were clearly in the middle of a deeply serious playtime, they immediately dropped everything at the promise of a frozen delight. We rushed to the nearest ice cream truck—where every day was free ice cream day—and prepared to chow down. (Even though Falcha was lactose intolerant, all ice cream now was made with plants indistinguishable from cows, just thought I’d show off a bit more about how awesome my universe was.)

“Thank you mommies!” Cassette and Silver spoke in singsongy unison. I didn’t even have to remind them to thank me this time!

“You’re very welcome, dears.” Falcha responded. “You’ve been behaving very well lately, and you have been rewarded appropriately.”

“Now, if everyone’s satisfied with their frozen desserts, I suggest we make a B-line for the hill.” I added. “There’s a very special event that’s quite dear to my heart and we’ll get a banger view of it from up there.”

The wife and kids were excited, until I told them it would be an hour until anything happened.

“Do we reaaaally have to wait an entire hour before anything interesting happens?” You’d think one of my kids said that, but it was actually my wife. Though Cassette and Silver didn’t waver from the sentiment.

Regardless, I was steadfast in my choice. “This is a once in a lifetime opportunity, guys! The start of a new age for humanity! Isn’t that exciting?!”

Once again, they didn’t seem too impressed. But I wasn’t about to be outvoted. Practically dragging my wife through the grass, we returned to the taco tree atop the hill.

Sitting down, I turned to my wife. However, her eyes were fixed on the sky.

“Huh, looks like they’re starting an hour early.”

“W-what?”

Sure enough, there was activity in the upper atmosphere. Immediately, I could feel a sense of terror welling within my chest. Out of all the research I had done in preparation for such an event, I had never seen anything like this.

A large rip manifested in the sky, purple and black in color. Unlike the precise shapes generated by our universe’s advanced machinery, this rip looked to be as if a giant’s hand recklessly tore through space and time.

A trepidation I had never experienced before came to me at that moment. A feeling of overwhelming dread. It was as if something awful could happen at any moment and I’d be powerless to stop it. That a looming, overwhelming threat beyond our control would pose a threat to humanity after centuries of utopic success.

My wife and kids didn’t seem as frightened as I was, but that was likely because they didn’t know the tear in the sky wasn’t a part of the plan. Possessing all that stress in that moment with no ability to properly express it left my heart beating faster than black midi.

I found my teeth grinding as an invisible soundtrack of booming drums rose in my mind. Something was very, very off, but I couldn’t place my finger on what it was. It was as if my sixth sense was warning me about something. (Not to be confused with the actual sixth human sense that scientists had discovered a few years ago.)

And then, the dread reached its payoff.

The Odyssey—the massive ship the size of a small country, worked on by generations of scientists designed to withstand the crushing, time-displacing effects of wormhole travel—suddenly erupted into a violent explosion. The kids were shocked into silence while Falcha screamed in terror. Then came the warning sirens. I had only heard legends of their horrible screeching, designed to warn people about incoming space debris.

But the blaring sirens were ineffective—as if human nature had overtaken all of us, we were all fixated on the explosion, unable to take our eyes off of it.

It was simply impossible for there to be a mistake of this caliber. The ship didn’t possess fuel canisters to create an explosion of that size. Not to mention, the amount of safety measures put in place to prevent asteroids and the like from collision. If something were powerful enough to destroy that ship, it wasn’t from our dimension…

To make the sight more sickening, I saw a body falling from the wreckage. It didn’t make sense, how a human could travel from the exosphere to the troposphere—600 kilometers in mere seconds—without their body disintegrating. But my mind was too frazzled to question what I saw.

And then, the falling body halted in midair.

I could no longer suspend my disbelief. What I was witnessing made no sense. Was I hallucinating? Who even knew anymore? My brain had just unlocked a new emotion—trauma—and I was not handling it well at all.

Then, as if my vision was yanked from my body whilst still being intact, I found my field of view forcefully shot thousands of kilometers into the sky. It was like a telescope without the lenses or the reduction in depth perception. I had to be hallucinating at this point, but I wouldn’t be given such a convenient answer.

What this new level of vision focused on was a girl—young, probably 18 or 19 years old at most. She wore skimpy clothing, and my brain was just at the right level of absurdity to immediately recognize just how attractive she was.

My attention was immediately drawn to her chest, but not for the reason I thought. In-between her two perfectly rounded breasts was a sight most surreal. (Yes, even more surreal than everything that’s happened up to this point.)

It was… a die. Like the plastic ones that were replaced with digital ones once the former material was outlawed. It had more than just six sides, resembling a die from a role-playing game. It was also jutting from a circular hole in her chest, rotating slowly as a strange purple mist emanated around it.

“Whew, usually it’s a pain in the ass to travel from universe to universe, but you guys practically invited me,” spoke the girl. “Glad I could reel in all your attentions so effortlessly!”

She giggled to herself. This strange telescoping of my eyesight must be a trick of hers, perhaps the die within her chest was imbued with a nanotechnology that allowed for such feats? It would certainly explain how she stopped falling from the sky.

“The name’s Diane,” the girl continued. “But you all can just call me ‘Die’ for short! Easy to remember, it’s what makes all my decisions and it’s what’s gonna happen to all of you shortly!”

It took me more than a second to process the true horror of that sentence. She made all of her decisions based on a roll of the dice? She was right. We were all dead.

As if to accentuate her point, the plastic party accessory within her chest began to spin. The purple mist shrouded the result until it came to a complete stop, the highlighted side in question appearing to be a fiery cloud from a detonated blast of sorts.

“Wow! Two explosions in a row! So much for randomness! One more and I’ll have to go to jail for speeding!”

It was as if this was merely a Monopoly match to her. The idea of actual, tangible human lives being at stake seemed to be a foreign concept from wherever Die was from.

“Oh well! Fun’s fun regardless of if it’s repetitive or not!”

My vision was suddenly returned to my eyes, Die reduced to a mere blip in the sky. But I didn’t dare take my eyes away from her

I looked to my wife, who was blinking in confusion as if her eyes had been under the same telescoping effect. I didn’t know what to tell her. Once she looked me in the face, her expression full of despair, I knew she was clueless as to what to tell me either.

At the end of it all, we knew it didn’t matter. Diane was engaging in her spree of destruction regardless of whatever meaningless platitudes escaped past our lips.

And engage in it she did. The natural defense systems put in place for such an unlikely event didn’t get much of a chance to retaliate. Her petite form zipped from location to location, making physics-defying turns as she demolished location after location, setting them ablaze with destruction. She knew exactly which buildings to strike at what times, as if she had done this thousands of times over…

…had she? Was a human even capable of such cruelty? Endlessly slaughtering countless habitable planets for fun? Was it even possible for a girl’s brain to be so desensitized and cruel?

However, all too soon I was given a chance to ask this, Die suddenly pausing her onslaught to passively observe the park. She was mere meters away from me, with her back turned as she gazed sinisterly upon the terrified children at the playground. With a clutch of her hand, the one meter tall gate surrounding the metal structures grew tenfold, trapping all of the children within. They screamed and cried, but I could tell that smile of sadistic glee never faltered from her face in the slightest.

I had to do something. I couldn’t just sit there like a helpless bystander as children were preparing to be slaughtered. Thinking fast, I grabbed a rock by my feet and chucked it at Die. While I would never consider myself a great thrower, the trajectory of it was en route to strike her directly in the back of the head. But the rock never collided, just like the cynical part of my brain predicted, it paused in midair mere centimeters before touching her hair.

I was officially dead, but it didn’t matter. If I was going to go out, it would be on my own terms. “Diane, you bitch!” I shouted at her. “That was supposed to be our trip to the multiverse!”

Slowly, surely, Die turned her head. Her focus was drawn to me. Good. Anything to keep her away from those children at the park. Of course, her sights being set on my family came with its own problems, but I was prepared to defend my family with everything I had.

“Well, well, well, well, well, well, well!” she spoke to an unknown tune. I expected her to be furious, but she actually seemed rather amused. “There’s always one good samaritan who steps up to me! I’m surprised it happened as soon as the park!”

She spoke as if this was a mere level in a video game she was replaying to go for the high score in.

“I’m surely curious as to what your plan is now that you have my attention? Are you gonna—”

Before she could finish her sentence, Die suddenly thrust her hand outwards to her side, her finger clenching into the steel head of a launched missile in her direction. I hadn’t even noticed it until it was in her grasp. Too fast for my human brain to process, but not fast enough for her. Somehow, she had managed to catch it with enough force and grace for the massive cylinder of gunpowder and metal to hold in place without exploding on impact.

Falcha once again screamed, but her terror was practically drowned out by the missile propulsion’s endless flame. A weapon powerful enough to demolish an entire city block—and Die was holding it a ruler’s length away from her face as if it was a naughty pet trying to get at her food.

“Ugh, ruuuude!” Die lamented, flicking away the missile with a single finger, sending it careening out of control and into a nearby hill, reducing it to rubble, torched wood and flat ground. “This is why these ‘Utopias’ are always such a pain in the ass to visit! They’ve always got all these ‘safety measures’ to protect the populace from people like me! They’re not even that effective! They just waste my infinite existence!”

She then set her sights back to us once more. “C’mon, am I right or am I right?”

But I had had enough.

I stood between them and the monstrous girl before me, holding them tight in my embrace. I knew it wouldn’t accomplish much, but I had to. It was maternal instinct—my mind returning to a time when conflict such as this was commonplace.

“Don’t float another centimeter closer. If you want to get to them, you’ll have to go through me.”

“Ahhhh, lookieeeee here! A noblewomannnnn!” Die responded, stretching her words as she performed a slow, lazy flip in midair, rotating a full 360 degrees until her gaze locked back on to me. “Well, I got threeeee good reasons why that won’t work out well for you.”

As she held on “three” she thrust her hand forward—right in front of my face—extending her index, middle and ring fingers upward. I didn’t move a muscle.

“One.” She pulled down a finger. I heard something pop like a balloon and I could feel something wet and chunky strike my torso.

“Two.” She pulled down another finger. Once again, I heard the sound of popping, followed by more chunky liquid striking my dress.

“Aaaand three.” She pulled down the final finger. This time, the sound was right next to my head, as was the resulting splatter.

I didn’t dare avert my gaze from her now-closed fist. I knew exactly what she had just done but at the same time I couldn’t believe it. This was all happening too fast. Die was far from done with this world, but for me, the world might as well have ended right then and there.

The floating girl giggled, drinking in my fear. “Heehee, so much for a stalwart commander! You’re too frightened to even check on the status of your troops!”

Commander… Troops… words thought to be lost in the annals of history much like war itself. Words that ought to be lost in the annals of history… But she was right, I was frightened. My life was perfect, like everyone else’s, but for standing up to a monster I was rewarded with a fate worse than death and I was unwilling to face the consequences head-on.

“Well then, so-called ‘fearless leader’, turn your head. Bear witness to what I have done to your army.”

But I didn’t. I just kept staring back into Die’s eyes, clutching my wife’s body tight even though she was no longer responding or reciprocating my gesture.

“Turn. Your. Head. Now.” She demanded, reaching forward and securing her grip around my jaw. “And if you don’t, I’ll turn it for you. But I might not be as graceful.”

Under the threat of death, I caved. I turned my head as slow as I could get away with. I let out a terrified groan through painfully gritted teeth as my eyes locked onto my wife’s face—or what little was left of it.

Her head had exploded. All of their heads had. Falcha’s brain bits were trickling down the side of my face like sweat. My children’s blood had turned my pristine white dress a dark red.

Just like that, they were gone. Stolen from me. I never had a chance to say goodbye to them. They didn’t even get graceful deaths, mowed down to cruelly mock me with a twisted joke. They’d get no obituaries, no caskets. They didn’t even get last words. The last time my children ever spoke to me with their perfect little voices was to complain about the walk up to the hill—the very walk that had led them to witness their own demise. The last time Falcha spoke to me that wasn’t her screams of terror was her optimistically wondering if the demise of our planet was an event starting earlier than intended.

I couldn’t bring myself to let go of my wife’s body—perhaps if I squeezed her tight enough I’d awaken from this gruelish nightmare.

But I received no such catharsis. The terror was real. The blood was real. The feeling of Die’s eyesight burning into the side of my face was real. She wasn’t done with me and I would never be free.

“Please…” I finally spoke, my voice hoarse. “Just… kill me.” Even in shock, that was the only response I could muster. My dreams had been shattered, my family had been slaughtered. It was only a matter of time before the world I had grown up loving was burnt to ashes. Why delay the inevitable when I could just leave early?

But of course, Die would never make it that easy. “Kill you? And let you get out of this situation that easily? No way! We’re just getting to know each other!”

An empty clench of her fist and I was hoisted high into the air. I could feel a vague, invisible force grip me by the neck, strangling me. It wasn’t a hard strangle, but it wasn’t exactly the luxury option either.

“Besides, I think you’ll enjoy what I’m about to do to your miserably happy planet.”

Keeping me close to her as if I was a mere high camera angle to catalogue her crimes against humanity, she took flight, panning her vision across the city. But she found herself quickly dissatisfied by the sights.

“Ugh, boooooring! Where are the skyscrapers? The phallic towers dedicated to billionaires? All you guys have are lame, practical townhouses!”

I couldn’t deny, this specific brand of anarchy which targeted pointless architecture was agreeable, but I wasn’t about to give her the satisfaction. While I couldn’t bring myself to smile, a spark of satisfaction burned within my red, tear-caked eyes. My world was so perfect and practical, there was almost no catharsis in destroying it. The spectacle simply wasn’t there.

But of course, as the optimistic side of my brain was busy running a victory lap, in came the automated defense system to satiate Die’s hunger for destruction.

They came like a swarm of bees, automated machinery designed to demolish entire meteors the size of the moon. If this were five minutes ago, I would have cheered. But I was beyond jaded. They could’ve had enough firepower to destroy Jupiter ten times over and it would not have mattered.

Fail as they would, they came in droves regardless. A wave of bright blue metal blocked out the sun as they honed in on Die’s location. Each machine, roughly the size of a car (an outdated method of transportation no doubt, but still useful for comparison purposes) closed in, surrounding Die. The fearsome protectors were known as Goddess’ Tears, not only for their distinct blue coloration as a mix of carbon fiber and kevlar, but for their aerodynamically efficient teardrop designs.

“Alright, lady. Hold on tight!” Die exclaimed, pointing a finger up into the sky, which sent me flying into the according direction. I found myself free of her grip, but also free of any grip. Once the cold, uncaring force of gravity kicked in, I’d be no better off than a red stain on the concrete below, assuming I didn’t become caught up in the metalshed that was about to unfold below. Was I terrified? Of course I was. Even though I wished to die, to be reunited with my family once again, this was still far too much action for my life. Forget the concrete or even the battle that was yearning to erupt above it. I’d sooner have a heart attack by the time I reached the apex of Die’s toss.

The Goddess’ Tears wasted no time opening fire, channeling aimed ultrasonic waves in Die’s direction. She was unable to dodge the barrage of sound, but it seemed to matter little. Outside of her gripping her ears in discomfort—likely from her hearing being super-precise—she eyed her machine adversaries down as if the fight hadn’t even started yet.

I arrived at the vertex of gravity’s parabola, signaling Die’s retaliation. She pursed her lips and breathed out, outshowing the Tears’ with a superior display of sound-based devastation. Her concentrated sound cut through a portion of the swarm like a vacuum cleaner through dirt.

Quickly becoming bored of her all-too-effective retaliation, she sought more creative destruction attempts. Zipping forward toward two nearby Tears, she donned them like boxing gloves, punching through the hulls and hooking her fingers within their interiors. Bumping them together as a bell sounded off twice from somewhere.

The teardrop shapes made for sharp gloves, piercing their thought-to-be indestructible shells with their own exteriors. They attempted to escape, but her fists were faster. Even with her comparably inferior aerodynamics, Die made scrap metal out of the machines. She punched through them like paper, her beautiful bathykolpian figure becoming drenched in the machine equivalent to blood, likely the water from the reserve steam engines.

Ten thousand machines were reduced to eight thousand, then four thousand, then one thousand, then no thousand. The sky was now clear, spotless; the ground now buried in the 9,998 corpses of Goddess’ Tears. Die then released her grip from her boxing gloves, sending them careening to the top of the pile and rounding off the ten thousand corpses nicely.

She dusted her hands off before stretching them outward, catching me gracefully, bridal style. Naturally being terrified, I quickly wrapped my arms around her for safety. A wretched smile grew upon her face.

“Woooooowwww, your wife and children were just killed and you’re already looking for a rebound family with me! I respect the grind, lady!”

My face twisted into pure anger. “F-fuck you!” I sputtered, unable to channel my rage effectively. “You’re a bitch, a huge bitch! H-how could someone be so cruel!?”

My string of insults was interrupted by her roaring laughter. “Cruel? You think what I have done is cruel? Hahaha! Your prissy little utopian ass wouldn’t know cruelty if it bashed you over the head!” She paused briefly to consider something, rubbing her chin. “Heh, though that might be a fun experiment to carry out…” her mind then refocused itself “But if it’s cruel you want, I’ll show you cruelty beyond what your mind is capable of.”

Gently laying me down atop the pile of metallic carnage, the childishly evil girl reached into her chest and clutched the die within it. “Hmm, let’s seen what potent bit of torture will psychologically devastate you beyond your comprehension.”

She flicked the die and I watched it spin like a roulette wheel, only the outcome was 100% devastation instead of just, say, 70% like it usually was back when Casinos were a blight on society.

The die slowed to a stop, landing on what appeared to be a silhouette of a ghost. My eyebrow would have raised in confusion if my face wasn’t permanently stuck in a state of disbelief from all of the bloodshed this loathsome creature before me generated wherever she went.

“Ooh, spirits! This oughta be good!” Die said, hungrily gazing upon the results of the spin, rubbing her hands together as she did.

Channeling her power by putting her hands up to her head, what I could only describe as a ripple through the very fabric of reality occurred. I felt light on my feet, stumbling slightly. It was as if my body was drunk but my mind was as lucid as ever. I wasn’t sure exactly what Die had done, that was, until I suddenly recognized my wife’s voice.

“Reyla…? Reyla…? Reyla…?” Falcha called out, as if she was looking for me. My face fell, tears already welling up. Her voice… It was so beautiful. It had only been a few minutes since I had heard her screams, twisted in despair, but I had missed her gorgeous cadences more than anything even if they amounted to little more than a broken record.

My eyes followed her voice, landing upon a ghostly vistage, it was unmistakably her. She was slightly translucent, her limbs faded in layers into whiteness, but I didn’t care. My jaw trembled, tears were welling down my face.

She continued calling my name, her unfocused eyes looking beyond me. I crawled over the wreckage, trying my hardest to make sure she never left my line of sight, that she wasn’t a mere mirage of an oasis in the desert that my wife-dehydrated mind had conjured up.

After what felt like an eternity of hiking past mountains of scrap, I finally reached her.

“Falcha! Falcha honey! It’s me!” I cried out, tears pouring from my eyes as I finally got a proper look at my lovely wife, looking exactly the same as she had looked before she was unjustly taken from this world. I practically fell to my knees running to hug her, but actually fell to my knees when I reached to hug her, my wife’s body completely phasing through my own.

I immediately fell into a panic. “Falcha!? FALCHA!?” I screamed, hyperventilating. “Please! Please! Just look at me! Can you hear my voice! Please, Falcha, just tell me you can hear me!”

Die laughed, a particularly heartless, vicious laugh. Then, taking a deep breath, her own spirit exited her body. This ghostly vistage of Die floated over to Falcha, caressing her as if she was a prized, taxidermied animal.

“Heehee, I may have given you the ability to see her, but for to interact with her, that’s a whole different story. You’d have to spend a thousand years honing your chakras in a low-oxygen environment just to see the world of spirits, but I was gracious enough to do that for you so you can thank me for that one. But then, you’ll have to actually spend another thousand years learning to call them to your location through spirit throat summoning. But to actually interact with the spirits themselves, you’ll have to spend another thousand years practicing astral projection… and if you want to fuck them…” she began groping my wife’s breast with her left hand, pausing her train of thought to plant kisses down Falcha’s cheek to her neck. “...well, you can’t learn that. You can only do it if you’re born with fucking awesome powers like myself.”

And then, Falcha’s spirit said something else, an actual coherent sentence. “Reyla? Is… is that you?... Are you… here with me now?”

“Ooh, lookie here! She’s gaining some semblance of control of her spirit form!” Die taunted as if my wife were a child. “Usually freshly-dead people take a while to do that, too bad she can’t seem to figure her eyes out yet.”

I wasn’t even listening to Die anymore. My wife was right there.

“Yes, Falcha! It’s me, Reyla! Your wife! Please, please tell me you can hear me!” I knew it was a hopeless endeavor, but my flawed, human brain couldn’t help it. Unfortunately, I seemed to have given Die an idea.

“Yes, my beautiful Falcha,” Die responded, modifying her voice to be a perfect mimicry of me. “I’m right here, killed along with all the others.”

I watched as a weak smile slowly formed along her face. For as fucked up as the scenario was, my face almost matched hers. I got to see her smile one last time. But as if Die could read my mind, she wouldn’t allow even a single happy moment to be squeezed out of a situation. She knew how to build me up, only to send me spiraling down twice as hard.

“Oh, Reyla, I knew you’d come back,” Falcha responded, that lovely optimism in her voice even without being able to see Die or I. “We can finally be together forever. W-we could find the kids and—”

“No, Falcha.” Die interrupted her with my voice. “I fucking hate you. I always hated you. You were an awful partner and I wish I had never met you. My time with you was nothing but misery and you’re pretty fucking stupid for never figuring that out. Every time we argued… Every time we bickered… it wasn’t friendly disagreements. I fucking hated you with every fibre of my being. I killed myself and scrounged through the spirit realm just so that I could get the chance to say it to your ugly fucking face. Fuck. You.”

Any semblance of smile that was once on her face was completely gone. Despite everything that had happened to me today, if I were to look into a mirror, my face wouldn’t even look half as distraught as hers did at that very moment.

“And no, you won’t get a chance to meet the kids.” Die continued, rubbing more and more salt into the open wound that was Falcha’s spirit. “I wish I got to be the one to fucking gut you like a fish, but it looks as though fate was fortunate enough to let me do it myself.”

Die reeled her fist back before brutally plunging it into Falcha’s stomach. My wife lurched forward in pain, but there was no more despair added to her face. Die had hurt her more than pain beyond the grave could. Her last memory of me—ever—would be the reveal that I always hated her. And if I somehow did all that Die said, spent those five thousand odd years just to see her again, it wouldn’t matter.

Die looked me in the eyes as she continued to slowly and mercilessly murder my wife a second time. At least the first time, her death was painless. But now, I couldn’t think of a more painful, devastating death if I wanted to. She ripped her hand out of Falcha’s for a final time, a discordant splatter of blood spilling from her stomach like a three-dimensional rorschach painting as guts and gore floated about in the space-like physics of the spirit realm. Falcha’s face fell cold and empty, her vistage fading into nothingness.

She was gone for good. Die revealed the afterlife existed just to bring my wife back, ruin her memory of me before Falcha even had her sense of sight back and then brutally murder her spirit form before my very eyes even after I had lost everything. Even if, after all this, I was finally killed. My afterlife experience would be the most somber one in all of existence. All because I dared to stand up against a bully for my family.

My face mimicked my wife’s once more, but this time it was the cold and empty death face. My ears were ringing, my stature was on the verge of collapse, my vision was blurry with tears I didn’t have the energy to shed.

I knew I had nothing more to lose but I also knew that Die would find a way to lose more. It was only a matter of time before the same inhumanely cruel fate befell my children. Only a matter of time before Die mutates my pain receptors into firing on all cylinders at all times, never letting me feel a moment of peace. Only a matter of time before Die erased my memory, only to bring me to another identical universe where my family was still alive only to repeat this same process over again, reintroducing my memories each cycle.

Wait… another identical universe.

Another identical universe.

Another identical universe.

Another identical universe.

My grim, surreal thought process was suddenly interrupted by an explosion. Apparently, Die was shocked by it too, her focus so dedicated to my misery that she hadn’t even noticed a missile strike her directly in the face. She didn’t seem physically phased by it, but the noise was enough to catch her off-guard.

She flew off to the left and my face tried its best to follow. A coalition of neighboring cities had formed, (country borders were all but abolished due to their discriminatory practices, which left the wildlife between cities as the only meaningful distinguishing factor) their anti-invasion forces marching over the horizon, unaware of what threat they were about to face. They were nowhere near the defensive capabilities of the Goddess’ Tears, but considering they were living, breathing humans, Die would probably take her time torturing them.

My optimism not rejuvenated in the slightest, I found my gaze drifting beyond the ensuing conflict. That’s when my defeated pupils locked upon a new source of hope.

The MK II dimensional rocket—the second expedition into alternate dimensions. It was just sitting there, unguarded, unobstructed and still perfectly intact.

If Diane has spent even a fraction of the time having her fun with each individual human, I’d have more than enough time to get that rocket past the upper atmosphere.

But as I stood up, I was suddenly greeted with a new problem. While the missile that had exploded in Die’s face did little more than distract her, two pieces of shrapnel from the impact had lodged themselves within my chest. I grunted and fell to a knee, but did not falter. This was no time to give up.

My body shook as I walked, a trail of blood droplets leaving a series of ellipses following me. It was a painfully slow trek as I limped ever closer towards my goal. The ladder I had to climb to enter it was even worse; at one point, the shrapnel lodged within my stomach got hooked around one of the ladder’s rungs, sending a sharp pain up my spine.

Once again, I was not deterred. I had come too far to give up now. After much tribulation I finally made it within the cockpit, sitting down within the captain’s chair and strapping myself in. For the first time today luck was in my favor, as the location of my stab wounds didn’t conflict with the thick seatbelt.

Because everyone trusted everyone, the launch controls were in both the ground control station and the rocket itself. The button to launch was right there in front of me, all I had to do was reach out and touch it.

My breath slowed—as did what felt like time itself. The circuitry and layout of buttons surrounding me was the type of technology I had only witnessed in diagrams. Not only did I have to launch this rocket without anyone else to assist or any proper training, I had to do it with the looming threat of Diane over me the entire time.

The likelihood of me leaving the atmosphere was one in a million. I didn’t know if Diane was omnipotent and all-seeing, but if I could sneak by her somehow then maybe—just maybe—I’d be free from her torture. If there was a chance that another world had my wife and children alive where Die couldn’t find me, I had to go for it.

If she wanted to keep me alive, I was going to make her pay for that mistake. I would find a better life just to fucking spite her ass.

I looked to the sky and saw the tear through reality—still present in all of its surreal, dark purple glory. It was a straight shot from where I say.

I hit the ignition and the countdown began. I knew it was futile to expect this plan to actually succeed, but I guess I had tricked myself into believing I had nothing left to lose.

Even in a room designed to be sealed off from the vacuum of space, the “Ten…. Nine… Eight…” of the ignition sequence was painfully loud, almost certain to draw the attention of Die’s enhanced hearing. I tensed up further with every number passed, expecting to see her flying towards me at mach speed at any moment. My vision was limited, the shuttle’s windows mere slivers compared to what my eyes could see.

“Four… Three… Two…”

My eyes continually darted amongst my limited visuals, twice per second. I was scared shitless once the countdown reached “One”, screaming in terror as I saw Die floating outside of the window, pressing her face on the glass like a deranged serial killer, her breath fogging up the fog-resistant ballistics.

She mouthed “going somewhere?”

Somehow, I heard her voice clear as day in my head.

I expected her to punch through the glass, to rip me from my future. How stupid was I to believe this would get me anywhere? Of course this plan was never going to work. Die was too powerful.

But, strangely, Die just continued to watch me. Her face remained plastered to the glass even as the rocket took off into the sky. As the minutes crawled by and the blue sky turned to the blackness of space, her insane smile only widened. Was she going to destroy the rocket once it reached the vacuum of space? Was she just going to follow me into another dimension and another dimension like a bad omen?

Worse.

“You want to leave this place so bad, don’tcha?” she mouthed again, her words continuing to find a way to worm into my brain. “Sorry, but you gotta roll the dice before you can pass GO.”

Warning klaxons blared. Die was preventing the shuttle from moving any closer to the rift. I rapidly attempted to straddle the controls, but like the suspended disbelief of a board game, my “piece” refused to budge out-of-turn. I was completely at the mercy of Die. No—more nefarious—I was completely at the mercy of her fucked-up “randomness” that only brought a new layer of misery to my life.

With another spin of the chest die, she ran the slots for my fate. I was frantically hitting buttons, hoping that one of these buttons would be a self-destruct one, but of course—our world was too perfect for a dire safety procedure of that magnitude.

I had half a mind to just rip the shrapnel out of my chest and start stabbing myself as a last resort… but I couldn’t. I was too scared. I wasn’t a hardened badass. I was just a scared woman thrust into a situation way out of her league, with an opponent who was as impossible to reason with as she was powerful.

So much for my pathetic utopia. Humans were just never fated to be happy forever.

The die stopped. I was hesistant to focus my eyes on it. The face showed a silhouette of a woman who looked a lot like me. She was screaming, split into a million separated pieces as if she were trapped within a shattered mirror.

“Oooh hoo hoo! Aren’t. You. Luckyyyyy!!!!” Die shouted, prancing about in space as if she were a court jester on cocaine. “You don’t just get to visit one dimension, but one billion dimensions, all at once!!!”

I held on tight to my seat, my knuckles turning chalk white. If Die’s luck was anything to go off of, this would be so, so, so, so much worse than death.

“Ready or not, here’s a wild ride for ya!” Die shouted like an overeager lifeguard sending me down a waterslide of broken glass and hypodermic needles. She slapped the side of my shuttle like it was a horse, sending it rocketing forward into the dimensional rift. I screamed for but a second, that was the only noise that could escape into an atmosphere of any kind before the ship around me disintegrated into atoms. All of my senses were barraged into uselessness, overfed with so much information that to describe what happened next would be insanely hard to do.

So let me break it down piece by piece, quite literally.

I was split into a billion pieces, all segmented over 92 billion lightyears apart from one another, yet still somehow feeding information all to the same squishy, flawed piece of human greymatter. But despite the overwhelming sensory overload, there were certain minuscule parts of my body that ascended beyond the noise. A piece of my finger, a section of my eye, a component of my liver, a region of my breast, a portion of my eardrum. There were many more, all entering dimensions of unimaginable power, feeding their energy into my brain, which then spread out to my entire body.

The more my brain absorbed from these unique higher-power signals, the more drowned-out the noise became. I found a surprising sense of calm wash over my form. It was as if, even in the infinite chaos of a billion universes, I found a sense of control somehow returning to my body.

Even though I was in pieces, I felt as if I could build myself back together as effortlessly as I was separated. That my mind simply could process the ability to do so without thinking of how, like popping my ears.

So, piece by piece, slowly but surely, I pulled myself back together. I felt a piece of my stomach connect with another piece of my stomach. But it wasn’t one by one, it was exponential—a fibonacci sequence of restoration as my very being underwent a spiraling rebirth, returning into existence. I didn’t just pull my pieces from their respective universes, I pulled the respective universes into other universes. It was as effortless as writing it out on a page. I simply thought about it and the action was executed. Was this how she felt with all that power… what was her name again? I should have known it, but my mind was focused elsewhere.

Then, I was whole again. My shapely curves manifesting from the very stardust my ancestors had been birthed from eons ago. Even though I felt as if I could shapeshift my body to my will, I didn’t change anything about it, my forn was already perfect, utopic in every way. But now, I had the raw power to back it up. I could feel it coursing through every atom of every vein.

I rubbed my hands along my perfectly contoured cheekbones, the slight crow’s feet etched within them like a soliloquy etched into the purest marble. My body was nude, floating about the black coldness of space and yet I had never felt warmer, more comfortable with myself than in that very moment. Errant strands of thick, black wavy hair floated by my face, being only a mere taste of the buffet of luscious locks that crowned my head.

What defined “beauty” had changed so much over the years, recontextualized as the more harmful, toxic elements revealed themselves… but if there was ever an objective truth to beauty, it was me. I wasn’t just beautiful, I was beauty. I was the best of a billion universes uniting to create a perfect being, one with the power to end a billion more.

I twisted and contorted my shapely body, floating through space to the nearest ice moon so that I may bask in my glory through my own eyes. But what I saw was only a stark reminder of where I had come from.

Jutting from my delightfully smooth stomach, equidistant between my bountiful breasts and prodigal thighs, were those same two chunks of shrapnel. The wounds they erected from weren’t bleeding, instead, the two chunks of metal had been enhanced in size as well, flawlessly fused into my smooth stomach as if they were mountains on a map made topographical.

Suddenly, the memories all came flooding back. War. Strife. Death. My own wife and children ripped from me, I, powerless to stop any of it. Out of desperation, I gripped the sides of the metal protruding from my chest and yanked as hard as I could. But my body was too perfect, it would not budge.

I may have been reborn, but I could not undo where I had come from no matter how hard I tried.

And the truth was, I was scared.

Diane.

I may have been powerful, devastatingly so, but I was nowhere near her level. I could just tell. I may have been on par with a billion universes, but I still couldn’t remove a stupid piece of shrapnel from my stomach.

I just wanted my wife and kids back. As long as I moved as far away from Die’s portion of the multiverse, surely I’d be able to find them? The multiverse was literally infinite, right?

Not knowing what I might find on the other side, my perfectly manicured fingernail tore a hole through space-time and I stepped in.