Part 1: The Body

I could fill a book with the wonders I have seen. Far off galaxies, the near and distant past; worlds of fantasy that are beyond imagination. The beauty of this is that all these places are real. Imagine a world where World War II never ended. The atom bomb was never used and countless more lives are lost. That world is in disarray, on the brink of utter apocalypse, but it is a sight to behold. The dystopian scenery and utter despair are truly a writer’s dream, for the best stories are the ones that have been experienced. While it is true that said world is completely doomed, take confidence in knowing that it is not our world. Or your world. Or whichever world you are reading this in.

I suppose this is all quite confusing to hear. Sure, you may think my claims bold and unfounded, but I assure you, everything I am saying – and everything I am about to say – is true. You see, in a Sir Isaac Newton’s book *Opticks*, which was published quite a few centuries ago, he first posited the concept of a multiverse. I am no physicist, so let me allow his words to speak for him:

And since Space is divisible in infinitum, and Matter is not necessarily in all places, it may be also allow'd [sic] that God is able to create Particles of Matter of several Sizes and Figures, and in several Proportions to Space, and perhaps of different Densities and Forces, and thereby to vary the Laws of Nature, and make Worlds of several sorts in several Parts of the Universe. At least, I see nothing of Contradiction in all this.

Confusing, sure, but ever since then, many have expanded upon this theory. For example, Schrödinger, whether joking or not, purported that while some of his equations seemed to describe multiple histories, these histories were occurring simultaneously and not alternatively. This fits in well with the parallel universe framework. But like I said, I am no physicist. All of this merely interests me and has become a bit of an obsession for me since I started *that which began this entire ordeal.*

Lucid dreaming is what happens when the person is aware that they are dreaming. I have read some stories of people lucid dreaming, or even using lucid dreaming to remind themselves during sleep paralysis that they were indeed dreaming. Usually, there are certain steps you can follow in order to lucid dream. However, since I was born, I have been able to do it and I remember every single dream. Of course, I was no cognitively aware of this as a baby. Furthermore, there was not much to do in those dreams because I merely dreamt of being a baby. Of course, there were notable differences in these dreams, such as my parents being different, the environment being alien (even to a mere infant), or even different languages. But the constant that always persisted throughout these dreams was me: I always looked the same and was the same age. As I grew older when I was “awake,” so too did I in these dreams.

These dreams afforded me a tapestry of stories to weave. As I grew older, I also began to discover my love and style of writing. Perhaps it was because of these dreams; perhaps I needed an outlet to express what was in my mind each night. I kept a journal as well, describing the world I saw in the dream from the night before and naming it. At first, I decided to be creative and name each Earth something that fit its scenery. But as time wore on, I could tell that my mind was creating a lot more of these fantastical worlds than I could have consciously imagined. I could revisit these dreams at will, even switching between a few of them in a night. So far, I have tallied and explored around 8760 different worlds.

As fantastic as that seems, I should have known that something was off about a long time ago. Like I said, I can remember every dream in perfect detail. It’s almost as if my mind can create a complete 3D reconstruction of the dreams that I can mentally view, almost as if it were a diorama. It’s quite handy and I did experiment with this as well. Alas, I am getting ahead of myself. My apologies, there is just quite a bit to say and I do not know how much longer I have.

In these lucid dreams, I would often act out whatever part was given to me: soldier, detective, Kate Upton’s husband (that one is one that I do tend to visit quite often). I play them out as if it were a real situation that I had to respond to. For the most part, I seemed to play the role quite well. Every now and then, though, something odd would happen. I would do something that appeared, well… out of character to the denizens of these dreams. My replies would elicit confused looks or disgusted stares, as if I had done something gravely offensive. I suppose the best example of this is in World 978 where everything is mostly the same as our Earth (as far as my limited scope can tell) except for two things: 1. I am a farmer and 2. I am not allowed to eat any of my own crops and butchered livestock. It is that simple second fact that got me in quite a bit of trouble. I will spare you the politics of this world and what led to such a rule existing, but in short, I disobeyed the rule. In fact, I had no idea that the rule even existed until I had been reported and imprisoned for it.

Usually, when I revisit my dreams, I pick up in different places. In one dream for one world, I could have just won the Stanley Cup, and in another dream in that same world, I am relaxing at home with my wife – my trophy on the mantle. They seemed episodic and generally unconnected, as if I was watching a syndicated TV show. However, upon revisiting 978 the next night, I found that I was still in prison and the time between the prior night’s dream and that dream coincided with how long I had been locked up. It seemed that my dreams had a constant concept of time that persisted even when I was awake. But that didn’t quite make sense. There was no way my mind could keep up with 8760 different worlds, managing their rules, keeping track of them in real-time, and maintaining them while I was away from dreamland.

Unless they weren’t dreams.

It was after 978 where I started to grow suspicious. I started paying very close attention to the details, both minor and major, in my other dreams. I would write down consistencies in my journal and make sure I kept track of them, revisiting certain ones sometimes weeks in a row. Over time, I began to understand that I wasn’t the one that created these worlds. Perhaps there was more to this than I thought. Then, one night, I visited a world that I could only visit once. I did not try to go there; I was drawn there.

I was seated in front of a table, tied down, with an open letter on the desk.

Dear Mind,

Whether you have figured it out now or not is not of any importance. Your link to the other worlds is unnatural as is the Body’s and the Spirit’s. These are not dreams that you have been having; you have been INVADING other worlds and posing as their version of yourself. You and your ilk are a stain upon the natural order of the world and we are aware of your presence and power more now than ever. You three are difficult to reach, this is true. There appears to be something special about your worlds. Perhaps you three lie at the end of the vast multiverse. Yes, there is an end. And yes, you will have an end as well. We have taken up the mantle of your killer. Have you not noticed? Have you never seen us? Surely you must be aware that there are some dreams that you can never return to. Do you ever wonder why that is? It’s because *you don’t exist there anymore.* Soon, you won’t exist anywhere.

I woke up in a sweat, gasping for breath as if I had been trapped underwater. I shakily reached my hand over to my lamp and turned the light on, carefully retrieving my journal from my nightstand. I took a moment to catch my breath before I began flipping through the pages.

August 24, 20XX – World 27: This dream was interesting, as this has never happened before. The job I had in this dream required me to cross about four lanes of traffic on a busy street. There was no stoplight or stop sign for the other drivers, so I was forced to cut across. As I did, I noticed this large semi-truck barreling down the road. I thought I saw something in the driver’s seat – almost like a shadow – but before I could register it, the truck hit me, and the dream ended.

August 25, 20XX – World 27: After the accident, which apparently caused my death in the dream, I can’t visit world 27 anymore. It doesn’t seem to be an option.

I began flipping through the pages, looking for other such incidents. “Shadow” “Death” “Accident” all appeared in worlds I could no longer access. This was all too much – I had to be going crazy. I was visiting other worlds? How did that even work? My mind worked and worked, but I just could not grasp the concept. It made no sense to me – parallel worlds were something reserved for entertainment like comics or books. They couldn’t possibly exist. At least, that’s what I thought at the time. As of now, I’m not so sure anymore, but that doesn’t matter anymore.

I began to replay my earliest dream – the one I had the day of my birth. From the womb to my mother’s arms, there was a unique sense of unease that I could not have fathomed as a child. I had never had a reason to revisit this dream, but for some reason, I felt myself back in it. As my infantile eyes darted around the room, barely able to make sense of anything, I froze. The air around me went cold as I saw it: in the corner was an unholy beast, pitch black, but covered in scars that seemed to bleed endlessly into a dark green puddle at its feet which bore no reflection. It seemed hunched over, as if it was too tall for the room, its legs long and endless as they exited the floor into the puddle of blood beneath it. It had no arms, but I still felt like it could grasp me at any moment. Its face was the worst part: it wore a pearly white mask over its face with wide eye holes and a long, smiling mouth. Its eyes seemed to go deep into its head, almost too far back to may sense. They appeared as deep black holes behind the mask, seemed to give way to bloodshot pupils that darted around insanely, unable to rest. Its mouth was constantly smiling a wicked grin, its teeth splintered and uneven; jagged and covered at the tip by the same dark green blood that dripped from its unholy carcass of a body.

No one in the room seemed to notice it, but as it came closer and closer, the infant in my mother’s arms began to scream and cry, startling the doctors quite a bit. Something was wrong and everyone in the room knew it. My mother – the very image of the one I have in my world turned towards the being, as if unafraid of its horrid appearance, locking its gaze to hers. She seemed to be the only one, aside from me, that could move: “Non toccare mio figlio. Non sei benvenuto qui.” I heard her words echo like thunder around the room causing the room to shake and the lights to flicker. The monstrosity stopped moving for a moment, its face unchanging, before it suddenly sank into the puddle, vanishing from sight. Then, as if nothing had happened, the room returned to normal. “Hai deciso un nome?” the doctor asked, a returning his face to a smile in spite of my sudden outburst. With a warm look of joy, she looked down at the baby – at me – and said “Spirito.”

Snapping myself out of this trance, my mind was less at ease than before. There was no doubt that the creature I saw in my dream was the same one that wrote me that letter and forced me to read it. It was the same creature that was hellbent, for lack of a better term, on ending me not just in one universe, but in every universe. I was at a complete loss for both words and actions. Once again, the cogs in my mind began turning. This was an impossibly ridiculous scenario that went beyond any laws of nature in this world or in the others. Was I the only one that could cross worlds like this? Apparently so. But why were these beasts after me? As far as I’m aware, I didn’t do anything wrong. Was this ability so special as to cause these creatures discomfort?

I looked at my clock; it was 3:21 a.m. I set my journal down, the words on the front a warning to anyone who would seek to read it. “Proprietà di Mente. Non aprire.”