My name is Cate, and I don't belong in this world; I was brought here by a mysterious man on my twenty-second birthday in 1973. The world I originally lived in was beautiful. A utopia of some sorts, that was created after the arms race between American and China. In the end, it was a group of American scientists that managed to make a weapon of mass destruction. They called it "The Atom Bomb", because apparently it had to do with atoms, I suppose.
The creation of the Atomic Bomb (another nickname - I'm still talking about the same bomb) caused China to surrender. This was a long time ago, back in the 1910's, when the fear of a World War still ravaged the streets. After the arms race between China and America, the two superpowers joined together with Russia and made UN - United Nations. Ten years passed, and in 1924, every country on the face of the Earth were part of the United Nations. The word "war" only existed in science fiction-stories. They were grim fantasies of a world that could have been.
When I was pulled out of my world, through the void and into the world that I now live in, the UN was well on its way of creating a Global Government. Such a thing is only dreamed of in the sad and tragic world that I now reside in. Every day is filled with news of death and slaughter; wars are created over nothing, entire cities are laid to waste because no one would listen. The men and woman of this planet are savages; they only seek to destroy.
The first years of my life in the new world, I learned to ignore most of what happened all around. "Best not to think about it", as my aunt used to say during the 1910's. I had no family, no boyfriend, no life to speak of. I had nothing in this new world; I could my life anything and everything I wanted to. But when this mysterious man brought me (willingly, I must admit) to this strange new world, he told me that "some time down the road, you might be experiencing some changes to your body. But you shan't worry about these things; they are completely normal, and as the smart girl you are, you will be able to make sense of them." With that, he was off, and I never saw him again.
Immediately after he left, I thought he was talking about puberty; I laughed it off and tried not to think about it. But somewhere, deep in my subconscious, I knew that something would happen. Maybe not yet, maybe not this year, or the next, but something would happen to me. Eventually.
And, after three years of living on this godforsaken world, something happened. By then, I had spent a whole year for myself (the mysterious man had given me money, so I would never be poor), waiting for the "something" to happen to me. But it didn't happen, and eventually I got tired of living all alone, reading books and encyclopedias; this world wasn't that interesting (though I really loved the bimonthly "Weird Tales"-magazine.) So I went out to get a job.
A month later I had gotten a job as a secretary for Weird Tales. I was a hard worker, and eventually the magazine let me print some of my "alternate fictions" - "Stories from my World" I called them, because that was what they were. My stories gained publicity, though I think it was mostly because of my gender. Not that it mattered to me; any publicity is good publicity, as Maurice says. I met Maurice at a party for all the authors of various "Weird Tales"; we quickly found the tone, and after just two years in the "big city", I had a fiancee, a baby on the way, and an excellent house to live in. My life was a real-life version of this world's American dream. Then, just as the mysterious man said, I experienced changes...
Maurice, my fiancee, was away at a business trip when it first kicked in. This was about a month after we had discovered that I was pregnant. It was late at night, and I was alone. I was in the bathroom brushing my teeth when my head suddenly imploded. Well, at least it felt that way.
Before my eyes, everything changed. My homeworld, the world, no, the universe where I came from. I traveled there, and back again, and there, and back again, shifting between universes. And the headache wasn't aching anymore; it was like my head imploded constantly, without ever stopping. And just when I had gotten used to it, it got worse. I eventually closed my eyes, using my mind to fight back the aching in my head. I fought and I fought and I fought - pushing the aching back, almost reaching it, almost, almost, almost, aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
lllllllllllllll
mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
oooooooooooooooooooooooo
sssssssss
t
then i reached it, and everything in the entire universe suddenly made sense.
the alternate universe, one chaos, one order...
one creator, one destroyer....
the mysterious man with a vengeance, destroying everything, trying to fix it again, time-traveling, paradox, paradox, paradox, doomed forever, repeat,
his fate is sealed.
the universe has a fail-safe
it has foreseen what is going to happen....
it's trying to protect itself.
but i can change all that
be
cause
i
am
the
un
i
ver
se