Thorn's Balance of the Multiverse

“You look like hell.”

A familiar voice said this to me as I came around, my vision blurry and disorientated. As she approached, her face began to clear out of the fog, before standing directly in front of me. I was back in my apartment again, sitting on the same couch I’d been dreaming about for the last two days. The girl from yesterday was still sitting across from me on the old computer chair, her chin resting on her knees as she watched me. “I’m Anne, by the way. We met yesterday after you passed out at work. You were pretty bad when we found you.” Her lips moved slowly as she spoke, each word a struggle to get out.

I groaned as I sat up, feeling a deep sickness rising up in my stomach as I did so. Memories began flooding back into my head all at once, each one more vivid than the last, until they all became perfectly clear in my mind. I had left a message for myself to appear after a set amount of time had passed, but something must have gone wrong with the portal during the transfer. By some miracle I still managed to arrive at that moment, but not where I was supposed to be – several thousand miles away from New York City in Germany instead! The cold concrete floor of my lab was now covered in layers of dust and caked in sweat from my body over the past two days; it must have taken me hours to walk from there to here. My chest heaved up and down rapidly as I tried to calm myself down and think about what went wrong with the portal this time. Time travel is a lot more complicated than it seems!

As my eyes finally started to focus on Anne again, I noticed that she looked a lot older than when I saw her last night – her hair greying around her temples, creases developing across her forehead and a few darker spots beginning to form around her cheeks and chin. It must have taken me ten years or so just to get here yesterday! Anne looked back at me with steely silence while she observed my reaction, waiting for me to speak first. “What day is it?” I asked finally, leaning forward towards her across the small distance between our seats. She turned back towards the window behind us outside and stuck her pointer finger out towards it slowly; “It’s Thursday now. You left yesterday morning after you collapsed at work two days ago… That makes today Friday if you’re wondering why everyone was acting weird outside when we came home from school together earlier today.” She glanced over at me quizzically with those piercing blue eyes of hers again before continuing; “you haven’t even heard about what happened yet have you?”

“Uhh no… What do you mean? What happened?” The memories of Germany suddenly flashed through my mind like lightning – everything that had happened since arriving here had been so overwhelming that I’d forgotten all about America! How long has it been since then!? Maybe they got someone else to fix everything there while I was gone!! Maybe the whole world has been put right without any need for me anymore! Maybe they never needed me at all…

Apparently there was a space shuttle launch scheduled for today which would take humans back into orbit for the first time in years – NASA hadn’t budgeted enough money for many launches lately so this one was being funded by some big corporation instead as an advertisement stunt or something like that anyway. For whatever reason though everyone just assumed that their launch failed early on this morning – not long after liftoff apparently which means it probably only made it into low orbit before something went wrong with one of its engines or whatever. Either way nobody knows exactly how it crashed except for them and all their contractors who are probably telling everyone some bullshit story about how it landed safely and everyone is okay if someone asks about it instead – which is why everyone is acting so weird outside today because most people don’t know what happened yet! Nobody even knows if anyone survived or not because nobody seems sure how much damage was done yet either! It doesn’t make sense… Why would they tell everyone anything less than 100% positive if they knew anything?!