Young Writers Society

“Embherliegh, I’ve done it!” Brian yelled.

“Oh?” said Emberlieghye. “What did you find?”

Brian slapped the board with a ruler. It shook.

“I’m glad you asked, mindless construct! As I have prior-ly deducted, this dimension is sentient, all native persons such as yourself are running on the same ‘software’, and if said dimension is going to need a catchy name! But that can come later!"

Emberghleie blinked. “So what’s the breakthrough?” she said.

“Time!” proclaimed Brian. “I have decoded time! Here it is not merely slow, or fast! It is missing bits! It runs by scenes, Emmery,” he said, jumping around to point at relevant bits of squiggle on the board to illustrate his points, “Like the god of time is getting bored, and going to the toilet!

Time can last as long as it needs to for a string of trite gags and obligatory sexuality to play out for just long enough to wear out the novelty, individual variance in patience notwithstanding! Time happens when it is interested in us, and when it gets what it wants or loses interest, it moves on!

Like a four year old with a fast forward button, Emmalee!”

Emberghleie stared. She looked like what the sound of an abused computer fan’s loud humming would look like if that sound had a face. She smiled slowly. Far too slowly.

“Gee, that sure is complicated. I couldn’t imagine what it’s like to understand all this stuff,” said Eimbherliey. “You really are a genius, aren’t you?”

Brian grinned. “Well, more or less.”

“So much genius, I bet you remembered to consider the Tempogridanaeal Axis Flux.”

Brian froze.

“The what,” he said.

“The Tempogridaneal Axis Flux.” said Emberley, batting her eyelashes innocently.

Brian fell to his knees. He stared at the flat texture of library carpet. It looked like a free use texture copy-pasted from Google Images, and it smelled like failure.

“The Tempo…” Brian whispered. He put his palm to his forehead. “I’m going to have to change a few numbers.”

Brian slowly, laboriously, got to his feet, and looked back at the board. He sighed.

His profound academic gloom was broken by a knock at the door. It must have been one of his poor directionless companions, looking for guidance!

“I’ve almost cracked it!” Brian yelled, before he could see who it was. “I have considered EVERYTHING and I’ve almost cracked it!”

He opened the door. Outside, there stood Arthur, and a second Emberleigh.

Brian closed the door.

"Brian, wait-" Arthur started to say, but the door was already closed.

Puck crossed his arms.

"You probably should have thought he'd do that before you knocked," Puck wisely said. Arthur just gave Puck a look in response. He had been the one who suggested knocking in the first place; Arthur had just been the first one to reach the door. Seeming to realize his mistake, Puck hurriedly corrected, "We probably should have thought of that."

Arthur took a deep breath, thought for a moment, and then slowly opened up the door. He wasn't sure what to expect, but the whiteboard he saw wasn't really all that surprising.

Puck made a noise that sounded suspiciously like a snicker.

Arthur gave him another look.

"I'm sorry," Puck whispered, "but it looks like the meme!"

Arthur sighed and shook his head. "Showing the internet to you was a mistake."

Puck dismissed the comment with a wave of his hand. Then his gaze turned, and both Arthur and Puck found themselves looking at the actual Emberly. They stared for a moment.

And then she just vanished, turning into tiny little particles like she had just died in a video game.

Arthur couldn't help it - he immediately clung to Puck.

Puck, in return, said with wide eyes, "The school just Thanos-snapped her."

“Huh.” said Brian.

Then his eyelids flew back into his skull. His pupils rapidly shrank to pins. He inhaled furiously through the nostrils and took a breath to rival his first. He was alive. He was alive again.

He was alive for the first time since Thursday October the 15th in the year 2020, at 12:37 AM. He had stood gormlessly in place with a whiteboard marker in his hand for 2 years, and 20 months.

His hair and skin crackled with static electricity and he started to remember.

Weeks ago, he had introduced himself as Brian Flanagan, Interdimensional Detective #31 from The Court of Oberon, interdimensional serial number #2487, because at the time he thought it accurate. But he was no longer the only Brian he could remember being.

One Brian was hunting down a rogue demon called Geist in Creston, Nevada.

Another Brian was tracking down some nutter in Vegas donating cursed items to thrift shops, with two fellow paranormal investigators called Lucas and Dante.

Yet another Brian was cosplaying as his favourite Spiderman villian in a sewer, while another was wrestling his archnemesis Felici in the children's section of a public library and maybe there was also a zombie apocalypse going on?

These timelines all had one thing in common. They all stopped in the middle.

Brian was here, he had moved on. Life moved on. But he had never seen or heard of a single person from any of those timelines ever again. He couldn’t confirm if these people remembered these events beyond the point that he could, or if they even existed anymore. Even things as simple as the fundamental mechanics of how his magic functioned had changed somewhere in the middle.

“It’s- mu- it’s so much - it’s so much more than time.” Brian stammered in the direction of Arthur and Puck, addressing them, but not addressing them. His signature spirited ranting was nowhere to be found. He spoke his piece, slow, and numb, fettered with dread.

“I remember everything. I remember all the worlds I came from, and all of them are dead.

There is only now, and we’re going to lose it any moment. You, you’ve already lost it. The gods spin the script of our hearts with sweaty hands on crumpled takeout receipts, and they weave our realities while they’re sitting on the toilet. This world has already died once and I need to get to the next one, right now, before- before it all loses interest again.”

Brian plodded towards the window. And although it was not locked, he took a chair, and he smashed it. Unprepared, the sound effect for glass shattering was delayed by one and a half seconds.

Brian leapt out the window into the windless sky, and flew out higher and higher until he had seen the edges of the sky JPEG loop three times. There he hovered in that empty sky, and felt the paper sakura petals flutter against his face.

“Please.” he said. “Please let me out.”