Reflections of a World Yet Come

Living and growing world of such possibility, Elorae had always marveled at the restrictive nature of her life. Of all of their lives, in fact. Not one person in all creation lived without being impacted by the rules of the Registry or the oversight of the Regulators.

She understood the reason. Every child was taught about the dark times, a period in deep history when so much of the nature of the universe was created, when so much damage was done. The cracks in reality, like the one where her creation had slipped away, had formed in those times, giving them, for the first time, glimpses into other worlds, other ways things could have unfolded. The echoes that follow people around caused by intense emotion and intimate interaction, too, had formed in those times. Neither of these had been on purpose. They had been the result of misuse and misfortune, children playing with tools that they were not yet ready to hold.

Many people had died. Many more had been changed, transformed into things that were beyond recognition. Whole segments of society had been erased or rewritten. The ether had first appeared in those days. Some said it was a side effect of the amount of power being indiscriminately utilized, some that it was the remains of those who were lost in the deadly mischief of those on the forefront of the damage. The lessons Elorae had received as a child made the dark times seem horrific.

And so Elorae was cognizant of the reason why things were the way they were, as she was aware that what she was currently doing, the task given to her by Vaelith, could shake the very foundation of the world. Could threaten to destroy what little they had left.

No. Wait. Those weren't her thoughts were they? Why did they feel so wrong.

She shook her head to and looked around her lab trying to snap out of whatever strange **** had taken hold of her. Nothing seemed out of place. The support beams held firm. The chaos of her work was still strewn about as it had been a moment ago. The crack in reality into which she had lost her last project lingered still. A reminder of the project she had been toiling at for the last day.

Elorae looked down work station, where she had worked so long on the seed that Vaelith requested. Something was wrong. She had made idea seeds before. They weren't simple, but she was a master of her work. She had toiled for over twenty hours on this latest seed, the darkest one she had made yet, but where it once was there was now Nothing. A Nothing shaped exactly like the seed, and all along the edges of the seed shaped Nothing the ether twisted and bent.

"Well that isn't good."

Startled, Elorae looked up to see who had spoken.

Leaning against a beam with a look of resignation on her face was Elorae. Not another one of her kind dressed in her form. She would have been able to sense that.

Elorae was sitting at her workstation at the same time Elorae was leaning against a support beam. Another Elorae.

"Shit." The first Elorae said.

"You're telling me." said the second.

"But we made the seed perfectly."

"The fault couldn't be in our work."

"Idea seeds can't cause reality lensing."

"No." The other Elorae said moving to the bench to be with the first version of herself. "We both know what causes that, if 'we' can even use the plural to talk about ourselves."

"It's just-"

"-easier"

Vaelith would be arriving any second, and if he saw her like this.

Well, neither Elorae wanted to think what could happen.

Elorae shook both her heads, again. This time though she didn't need to clear her mind. She didn't even need both her brains to know what caused this. There was only one thing that could. In the midst of all this disaster and chaos there was, at least, some good news. Though the cause was clear, it might have taken Elorae hours to parse out who might be responsible, all on her own. But she wasn't alone. Kind of.

The benefit of having two versions of herself was that when she worked together with herself, her powers would be exponentially greater. That was one of the reasons reality lensing was so strictly punished. First her project slipped through a crack, then Vaelith, now this?

Elorae felt as though she hadn't been in control of her own existence since this whole thing start. Time to start changing that. Time to be proactive.

Both of her stood up and walked to the center of the lab. She stood at arms-length from herself and reached out, two pairs of her own hands grasping each other, forming a circle. She closed both pairs of her eyes, and took a deep inhale through both of her noses, before exhaling from both of her mouths. She concentrated both of her selves on the task at hand.

Her minds darted across the ether looking for... Found it.

Shit.

It was fucking Kavlok. One of the lowest beings in the hierarchy of the Registry, Kavlok was barely a Regulator. Really closer to a sentient algorithm than a luminescent being like herself. Herselves.

Shit.

Elorae focused again, bending both of her minds on Kavlok. Until there was a popping sound.

Kavlok appeared in the middle of the circle formed by both of Elorae's outstretched pairs of arms. Unlike Elorae, Kavlok too minor of an ethereal being to have a set body, existing in a substrata so low that it was almost entirely conceptual, devoid of form. So whenever someone from down their came to Elorae's level, where the ether could, and had to, take shape, it was always interesting to see how they would turn out.

Elorae opened her eyes, and saw Kavlok standing there looking bewildered. This time it seemed Elorae's strata of ether had given Kavlok a humanoid body. That was good, having a mouth was always more helpful when it came to communicating. The rest of Kavlok's body was fairly uninteresting. Kavlok appeared as a woman. Rail thin, flat chested, with a button nose and mousy brown hair in a pixie-cut.

Kavlok looked at Elorae, and a smile spread across her face. Then she turned at looked at Elorae, and her face turned to panic.

"There are two of you!" She said.

"Very observant." Elorae said.

"Glad to see your wits haven't dulled in all the centuries." the other Elorae said.

"But that's... I mean..." Kavlok said, her eyes darting back and forth between Elorae's bodies, both of which had crossed their arms and cocked their hips giving Kavlok the most stern and withering look she could.

"Yes. I know exactly-"

"What you did." The Eloraes said.

"I was only trying to help! Why are there two of you" Kavlok whimpered.

Elorae had to admit Kavlok looked pitiable in this girl form, but neither of her was moved.

"Does this look like helping to you?"

"Clearly you found the..."

"The issue."

"Thank you, yes, the issue that slipped through a reality crack."

"And you tried to fix it."

"You warped reality around the problem and now-"

"There are two"

"Of me."

"Which any ethereal being of any real power will know means I'm at the heart of the problem."

"The focus."

"You bent reality so poorly that I'm in two places at once." Elorae said unable or too flustered to control which of her said which part.

"But I only made a minor change!" Kavlok pleaded, backing herself away from Elorae.

The bureaucrat really did look pathetic. It didn't help that Elorae knew she had been trying to help. Elorae was still the one who would have to deal with the blowback.

"Yes."

"That's the problem."

"You made such a small change that now-"

"-the universe in question has bifurcated into-"

"-two timelines."

"But the problem-"

"-is that they aren't parallel timelines, the one you made keeps intersecting with the Prime timeline."

"So now you've taken a minor tangle and turned into-"

"-a huge interdimensional knot." Elorae said sitting one of her bodies on a bench while the other went to a cabinet to fish out the ethereal equivalent of a bottle of tequila, before joining her other self.

Kavlok gulped and her eyes darted between the Elorae's bodies as they traded swigs from the bottle.

"I noticed the issue, and I was trying to fix it! Well maybe not fix it, but at least hide it." Kavlok said withering under the dual gazes.

Both of Elorae's bodies let out a sigh.

"It's a good idea."

"But you didn't go far enough."

"Each time your world intersects with the Prime reality-"

"-it gets damaged."

"It causes glitches-"

"-Errors-"

"-and worst of all suspicion." Elorae said.

"No one else at the Registry knows! If any other Regulator suspected I would have been given instructions. It's still undetected!" Kavlok huffed and blew a puff of air out of her mouth to move some hair from her eyes. It didn't work. Elorae didn't have time though to explain how humanoid bodies worked, though.

"Not by regulators-"

"-by humans."

"Some of them are starting to notice."

"They aren't happy." Elorae said.

Kavlok shook her head and even more hair fell in her face and she made an annoyingly adorable grunt of frustration.

"Maybe for a moment, but anyone whose memory changed will just write it off as either déjà vu or jamais vu. See! The humans even have words for it." Kavlok said, not understanding the problem.

"It's not the ones who were altered."

"It's everyone else."

"With two minds it didn't take long to scan the new reality you made."

"The high school is small-"

"-and now everyone is talking about this one issue even if they don't know it."

"Plus that office."

"Also that best friend who knows his mom is- well doing whatever it is she's doing with the issue."

"Not to mention all the tangents."

"I'm sorry" Kavlok said as she burst into tears. "I just... I know you barely even realize I exist, I'm so far down in the ether, but I know you. I care for you. I saw you made a mistake and I wanted to make sure no one else would so I did my best. But now I've ruined everything, and you're mad at me, and now I broke my weird human body and it's leaking water."

Kavlok continued to blubber as her body crumpled onto the floor. Elorae didn't know if the being knew what chairs were. Strange that she should observe humans so closely, and yet still not understand them at all. That was part of the problem.

"It's okay." One Elorae said, getting up to comfort the poor girl.

"You were trying to help" the other said, taking a few more swigs from the bottle.

"Your idea wasn't actual that terrible."

"You just got the scope wrong."

"You need to make a few more changes."

"Bigger changes."

"Changes that will reduce suspicion."

"Changes that will put the humans in larger settings-"

"-where they can keep a lower profile."

"And to make sure that the timelines become parallel-"

"-and not crazy curly loops that keep bumping into each other."

"It's not a bad thing to maybe confuse the humans a bit-"

"-catch them off guard."

"One suspicious human is manageable-"

"-the problem is when they start comparing notes."

"They grow suspicious of their own reality, and instinctively try to get back to the-"

"-Prime universe."

"You need to divert their world far enough from its original course that-"

"-it completely drops of the Registry's radar."

"Can you do that." Elorae said, making a conscious choice for that last line to come from both of her bodies.

Kavlok sniffled and looked up at the nearest Elorae.

"I think so. I can-"

"Bup bup bup"

"Don't tell me the details."

"I don't want to know."

"Just try to take care of it yourself."

"I would hate to have to go down into the human world and fix it myself." Elorae said.

Kavlok nodded vigorously giving Elorae her profuse thanks. Elorae nodded and told the bureaucrat it was going to be okay.

Elorae even half believed it herself.

One benefit of being the focus of such a drastic reality lensing is that it completely consumed the seed of doubt. Maybe Kavlok could reroute her mistake so far away from any other universe that the Registry wouldn't be able to find. Then Vaelith wouldn't have **** material.

Now she just had to find a solution to her Vaelith problem. She would have to put her heads together.

Figuratively