Hashtag Beginnings (vignette) (Patreon)

“The Cosmotron will literally change the world!  It’ll revolutionize everything!  Everything! True proof of the multiverse!  This makes space exploration look like cave paintings!  Can you believe it?  We’ve been nothing but monkeys fumbling around in the dark until now, when the next evolution in scientific theory begins right here in this lab.  Finally, a light!”  Professor Martin’s expression was as crazed as his voice.  The heavyset, silver-haired man gesticulated wildly at the tall contraption next to him, nearly knocking the glasses off his round, ruddy face.

“And that light is the...Cosmotron?”  The athletic brunette scratched at his shaggy, chestnut hair, a confused grin lurking beneath his trimmed beard.  I managed to pull my eyes from the way his chiseled torso filled out his sweatshirt just before he shot me a pleading glance.

“Save it for the board, doc,” I laughed, clapping Professor Martin on a flannel-covered shoulder.  “Eric’s just here for the extra credit.  You can save the song-and-dance.”

“I mean, yeah, it’s impressive,” the young man said, leaning in to inspect the lumpy crystal that was suspended between two silver rods in front of a massive-lensed camera.  A series of thick cables connected the camera to a bank of whirring servers, which themselves were connected to a large desktop tower.  “But shouldn’t it have a more serious name?”

“Don’t touch that,” the professor barked when Eric reached a tentative finger towards the crystal.  The stone was roughly hewn and mostly a pale, opaque white, like frosted glass, though a few small clear spots were visible.  “And ‘Cosmotron’ is a perfectly distinguished name.  It’s...retro,” he huffed, turning up his hooked nose.  “You should count yourself fortunate, young man.  Thanks to Clark you’re going to witness history.”

I flashed Eric a sympathetic smile when the professor turned back to the machine and the young hunk just shrugged and put his hands on his hips while he pretended to look interested.  His banded sweatshirt was already drawing undo attention to the tightness of his waist, and to the meaty, ample rear and hefty bulge that stood out against his paper-thin joggers, and the pose only added to it.  Eric was a Senior in the Physics course I had to teach as part of my graduate program at the university, but the charming stud had no idea he was my favorite part of the day.  He seemed oblivious in general to the way people looked at him, and how they watched his ample honeydews shake and jiggle as he plodded down the hall on his sturdy legs.  Since he’d spent the first three years at the university on a wrestling scholarship I assumed he was used to being exposed in front of a crowd, and based on the pictures I’d looked up he certainly had no reason to be shy.  His body was a work of art, especially with each ample muscle and river of definition outlined by a form-fitting singlet.  I don’t know why he’d quit the team but it was clear he still kept himself in shape, and he showed that impressive frame off in a constant stream of athletic gear.  Mesh shorts, cotton joggers, loose tank-tops, and sweatshirts were all I’d ever seen him wear to class, giving the appearance that he’d either just come from, or was on his way to, the campus fitness center.  Given his poor grades he clearly didn’t spend time studying, and he’d jumped at the chance for some easy extra credit when I asked if he wanted to “assist” with the Professor’s research project.

“So, uh, all that stuff you were talking about is a little above my pay grade,” Eric said with an awkward laugh.  “What does this thing do exactly?”

Professor Martin sighed and rolled his eyes, his refusal to look away from the monitor the signal that I was supposed to take over.  “I know you’ve heard of the multiverse because you pay attention in class,” I said, smiling at the sudden look of guilt on his boy-next-door face.  I nodded at the chunk of unremarkable rock, weighing how much I should tell him regarding its origins.  “That crystal isn’t just a piece of glass.  It will actually let us see other worlds through it.  Other realities, to be more precise.  Think of it as a telescope, but instead of planets we’ll be viewing dimensions.”

Eric blinked, the barest hint of comprehension showing in his wide eyes.  “Wait...really?  All that stuff in the movies is for real?”  He let out a low whistle and shook his head.  “That’s some sci-fi shit right there.  Good choice on the name...I get it now.”

“Thank you.”  Professor Martin’s voice was a satisfied grunt, his eyes still fixed on the screen.  “I’ve spent my entire career working towards this very moment.  I know to the untrained eye these just look like a bunch of computers, but inside is a veritable nervous system of complexity, to say nothing of the program needed to sift through all the data.”  The older man’s husky midsection strained against his plaid flannel as he righted himself, a proud smile stretching his full cheeks.  “Of course we’ll have a proper groundbreaking once we make sure all the bugs are worked out, but you managed to score a backstage pass, as the kids like to say.”

Eric lifted his hands from his tight waist, instead folding his arms under his bulging chest.  “That’s not just a piece of glass, is it,” he asked, cocking his head as he stared at the crystal.

I clapped him on a broad shoulder, my hand tingling from the sensation of the granite muscle underneath.  “Very astute,” I said, waiting for the Professor’s subtle nod before continuing.  “To be honest, we don’t know what it is.  Doctor Heidekker from the Geology department found it on one of his expeditions, and when his analysis revealed it to be made up of compounds that shouldn’t be able to exist in our universe, let alone on our planet, it wound up in the hands of the Professor here.  We think it’s a...”

“It’s a piece of raw existence,” the older man interrupted, growing excited again.  “There has to be something keeping all these realities from crashing down on top of each other, and we’re looking at a part of it.  If I’m right, and I believe we’ll see in a moment that I am, each universe is separated by an infinitely complex lattice, a cosmic web holding everyone in place.”  His pudgy hands drew invisible lines in the air as he spoke.  “And like any structure, pieces will sometimes break off or slip.”

Eric went slightly pale as he listened, a sign that he was more intelligent than I gave him credit for.  “Whoa.  That’s...a lot,” he said, rubbing the color back into his face.  “Maybe this is a dumb question, but if this is part of some giant web, doesn’t that mean there’s a spider somewhere?”

“All part of what we hope to find out,” Professor Martin said, a slightly crazed look in his eye.

“You’ve seen the movies though, right?  I mean, I’m not trying to tell you how to do your job, but is that something we really want to go poking at,” Eric asked, his tone creeping up at the end.  “Doesn’t that usually end...not great?”

Professor Martin scowled at me and shook his head.  “See?  This is why I was giving him the song and dance.  He sounds just like those stuffy bastards on the review committee.”

“We’re already stuck in the web,” I shrugged, “and nothing’s eaten us yet.”  I could tell by his expression that he was unconvinced, but it was a moot point.  I gestured to the large monitor on the wall behind him as the Professor tapped out a few final sequences and came around to join us.  “Only one way to find out.  Here we go.”

We stood in transfixed silence while the machine whirred to life.  For a few, eternal minutes we stared at only static.  The colors shifted, dramatically at times, but the grainy storm yielded nothing distinct as the massive lens tried to focus in on a clear spot.  It was disorienting to watch, and though my eyes didn’t see them, I had distinct impressions of sweeping alien vistas and towering, ruined mountains of iridescent stone.  I saw strange figures in my mind, their shapes amorphous and shifting as they floated in and out the pock-riddled peaks like bees from a hive.  Gradually it occurred to me that the massive shapes weren’t mountains at all but beings of impossible size, the scale of which I couldn’t even begin to comprehend.

I bit down on the scream that welled in my throat and strode as silently as possible over to the computers.  With their attention focused on the monitor, neither Eric nor Professor Martin noticed my movement until they heard the clacking of the keyboard, both turning in my direction just as I finished the sequence.

“Clark?  What are you…” The Professor was cut off when a beam of light shot from the crystal, freezing the younger man along with him as they were bathed in the prismatic bath.

“Sorry doc, but I got a better offer,” I sighed, my heart feeling like it was going to burst out of my chest.  It had taken every ounce of willpower to maintain a casual veneer all morning, and now that I could let my guard down the weight of it all hit at once.  My hands were shaking so hard I could barely type, so instead I studied the unblinking pair for a moment while the monitor transitioned behind them, no longer showing the disturbing static but an image of the pair as they stood.  They looked like statues.  Their eyes didn’t dilate, they showed no signs of breathing, and even their hair remained stationary in the drafty room.  It was a good sign, a proof of concept that the crystal actually could shunt people to a liminal, in-between space where, if I’d been told correctly, anything was possible.  “If you can hear me, you were right.  The crystal really would let you view other worlds, but that only scratches the surface.  The potential for this thing is literally infinite.  Not only can you look into other realities; you can change this one.  Can you believe that?  When the people from Hadley, Bowen & Lath reached out to me I thought they were as crazy as you were, but now…”

I trailed off, my slowly steadying nerves making any further monologuing unnecessary.  I wasn’t trying to play the role of super villain or mad scientist.  I was just trying to get paid.  Research in Physics isn’t exactly a lucrative field, as Professor Martin’s stained, weathered khakis could attest, which made the sum HB&L offered truly irresistible.  I wouldn’t need a career after this, and if everything went according to plan the three of us would be retiring into a life of luxury.  Though, actually confronted with the frozen duo, I had to keep telling myself more than ever that the morals of the situation were a moot point.

HB&L had grand designs for the crystal.  They’d been following its progress since Dr. Heidekker had discovered it, and they’d initially reached out to Professor Martin to provide additional funding and oversight for his experiment, but he’d rejected them outright, which is what led them to me.  They told me that there were other crystals in other worlds, and possibly more on our own that had yet to be discovered, and that some of these crystals were even more powerful than the one we had.  According to them, some of the fragments had been worked and carved into faceted gems by forces that hadn’t existed for billions of years, and that with one of those crystals a person could actually look through into the web of multiversal potential and warp reality on their own, essentially making them a god.

The one Dr. Heidekker found wasn’t so refined, but that suited HB&L’s purposes just fine.  They didn’t want one person using a gem; they wanted many.  With Professor Martin’s equipment capable of reaching inside the raw stone, their plan was to reverse-engineer the system, recreating it on a grand scale with the crystal at the core of the mainframe.  Instead of looking through it to see other worlds, people from this one would be fed in, with altered versions coming out the other side.  The idea was to create a photo-sharing app, linking individual phones to the crystal whenever someone used it to take a picture.  Every time a person snapped a photo, a tiny beam like the one holding Eric and Professor Martin would shoot out from the camera, filter the person through the infinite realities in the crystal based on whatever tags were used, and leave the subject in whatever new state the person taking the photo had chosen for them.

It was staggering on every level.  While Professor Martin had created the equipment to pierce the crystal, staff at HB&L had written the code necessary to complete the tagging process.  I like to think of myself as an intelligent person, but even trying to contemplate the amount of work needed to take language and culturally agreed upon concepts and convert them to mathematical formulas to associate with a tag made my head spin.  As such, it wouldn’t be an exact science, but they seemed more excited by that prospect than frustrated.

I didn’t know why they wanted to create such a program and they hadn’t offered to tell me, so I didn’t ask.  The implications were terrifying, and yes, a part of this was absolutely me looking for a quick cash-out, but I could also see the inevitability of it all.  There would be no stopping this.  It’s only a matter of time until the genie is out of the bottle, so why shouldn’t I take advantage of that?  And why shouldn’t I take this opportunity with Eric?  If I don’t, in a few months someone else will.  We’re about to exist in a world that can literally be changed with the click of a button, which throws the existing definitions of “right” and “wrong” out the window as far as I’m concerned.

So I snuck in after hours for months, gradually tweaking the equipment and loading HB&L’s program.  It wasn’t easy with how thorough Professor Martin was, which is really the only reason why the old man is even in his current predicament.  I would have been content to just use Eric as the guinea pig but the Professor never let the crystal out of his sight, significantly limiting my options.  To say he was frustrating to work with at times would be an understatement, but I didn’t bear him any malice.  Without him none of this would be possible, and I was going to make sure he got his own chunk of the reward.  He was single and without any children, family, or much of a social life to speak of, so this would be a more pleasant retirement for him.

After I was done with Eric, that is.  I selected the athletic brunette’s image from the display, my hands erupting in a fresh bout of trembling as they hovered above the keyboard.  I couldn’t let myself think about what was happening, how I was altering the very fabric of reality with a search engine.  I needed to keep my focus on the small scale, so I held my breath and typed “#naked.”

The air escaped from my lungs like I’d been punched in the gut.  On the monitor behind him, I now stared at a completely nude version of Eric.  He was exactly the same, minus any covering, and his bare, sculpted body was more impressive than I ever could have imagined.  The light, sparse dusting of chestnut hair accentuated his masculine presence, which was further solidified by the thick, dangling banana that sprouted from his trimmed bush.  A pair of heavy, hefty balls hung underneath, all bearing the same uninterrupted tan.

According to what I’d been told, if I stopped here then the Eric in front of me would change to match, now existing in a version of the world where he simply didn’t wear any clothes.  What that would look like in practice, and how the fine details would play out, I had no idea, but that was the general concept.  In the future, when someone used the finished app, they wouldn’t see any of the intermediary states as I was, only the completed version once they posted the photo.

I felt sorry for those future users because the rush of power was intoxicating.  I could have spent days warping and honing the oblivious stud, but I only had a few minutes before the equipment would overheat.  I’d thought about the changes I wanted to make ahead of time, and now that I had a glimpse of what lay beneath his clothes I was ready to proceed.

Considering that he was already a work of art, I didn’t want to make too many alterations to Eric’s body as much as I wanted to change how he presented it and what he did with it.  I typed out “#sexysinglet,” “#gaybro,” “#bodynotbrains,” “#hungandhorny,” “#noworries,” and “#allmine,” nearly cumming on the spot when I saw the final version on screen.  It may not have been an exact science, but it was close enough.  Instead of nude, Eric now stood in a hot-pink singlet that was little more than a pair of skimpy lycra briefs with straps stretching up over his powerful shoulders.  A pair of inflated balls bulged out the front while a cock that had grown to what looked closer to eleven inches than its previous seven snaked off to the side.  His ample melons spilled out the back, their top third visible above the low-riding garment, a pair of matching sneakers and a dull grin being the only other items he wore.

I wouldn’t be able to see if the other tags worked until I’d finished with the Professor.  I didn’t see the need to test with him the way I had with Eric, so I jumped right in, hammering out “#gaybeef,” “#flirtythirty,” “#cushionforpushin,” “#dickforbrains,” “#hornyandhappy,” “#nothingfits,” “#allmine.”  The results were perfect.  On the screen behind the old man now stood a fresh-faced hulk half his age, with a full head of strawberry blonde hair and a thick, meaty body that was bloated with muscle.  Unlike Eric there was nothing chiseled about him as his juicy slab of a chest strained out of a tank-top that looked at least two sizes too small, leaving his heaping muscle-gut on full display as it jutted out above the tiny shorts that formed a seal around his girthy package and didn’t even cover half of his oversized pillows in back.

I braced myself and completed the sequence, still unprepared for the wave of vertigo as I watched the two men change before my eyes.  Already I knew one of the tags had worked as my own brain was swimming with new memories of the three of us in my apartment, mostly in bed.

I didn’t know what to expect as the beam shut off and motion returned to their limbs.  I watched their grins fade, their expressions taking on a shocked appearance as they gawked at themselves and at each other.  Already I could see their barely-covered cocks starting to twitch and harden, and I felt a bit of relief when they looked back up at me with their former smiles.

“Clark?  What’re we doin’ here, bro,” Eric asked, absently scratching at an exposed pec.  The motion turned into him toying with a pert nipple, seemingly unaware of his actions as his cock surged in his tiny singlet.  I watched the inflated log shoot out and then up, the bulbous top third now poking free as it wedged against the younger man’s ripped washboard.

“Ju...just finishing up some work,” I stammered, my knees going weak at the sudden memory of what the exposed organ felt like filling my mouth.

“Omigod babe this is, like, taking forever,” the bulky, former Professor sighed, rolling his eyes.  “Just do whatever you need to do with this doohickey and let’s gooooooo,” he whined, his bare, meaty thighs rubbing together as he shifted his weight impatiently.

“I have to send a few more emails...important ones...and then we’re done.  But I brought you both along so you could keep each other company, remember?  Eric, why don’t you help Marty out?”  I looked over at the screen to make sure it was still recording as the two fell on each other.  I didn’t even need to give them any more prompting.  By the time I’d finished speaking Eric was already grinding the exposed tip of his inflated cock against Professor Martin’s, now Marty’s, lumpy muscle gut while the older man wormed out of his constraining clothes.  His formerly raspy voice was now smooth and deep as he giggled and moaned while Eric worked his thick frame over, his still-round face a shifting mask of pursed lips and batting eyes.

I couldn’t believe what I was seeing as I watched Eric’s singlet stripped entirely free, his ample rear shaking and rippling as much as the entirety of Marty’s new body when he began hammering into the beefy man.  The fact that they were in public and so scantily clad in the first place didn’t seem to register at all, and they moved with the kind of practiced ease that made it clear this was a frequent occurrence.  The once-elderly man was like a bucking bronco as he writhed on Eric’s massive club, while his own cock, as stout and fat as the rest of him, slapped wildly against his stomach.  They would both occasionally grin over in my direction, seeming less bothered by the fact that I was watching their carnal display and more eager for me to join them.

I picked up my phone and dialed my contact at HB&L, popping my fly open as it rang.  As soon as the conversation was over and the proof sent, I’d be free to start planning our wealthy new futures together.  But first, my boys had been so patient while I worked, and they deserved a reward.