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It began when I made her clothes disappear

A Not So Quick Primer on the Ring, The Watcher, and Parallel Dimensions

added 4 years ago O

I walked in the front door, no closer to really knowing what I should or shouldn't do.
My mom was still at work, and probably would be until eight or nine PM. My poor mother...she'd slaved her whole life as a single mom, working generally menial and slightly better than entry level jobs to keep a roof over our heads.

“I wish..” I started to say, then hesitated. Changing anything that could impact her past would change who she was fundamentally, either by altering her personality directly, or by rewriting interactions that made her the woman she was, the woman I knew, and the woman I owed everything to. I had to change her future.

“I wish that I had the winning Powerball lottery ticket in my hand. I wish that it was the only grand prize winner.” I felt something suddenly in my palm, and I looked down at it. It was dated for the drawing that would take place tomorrow. Without a shadow of a doubt, I knew it was the winning one. I couldn't help but feel excited. The jackpot was three hundred MILLION dollars, far from the largest jackpot in history, but enough money that I wouldn't be able to spend it in ten lifetimes. I could give my mother the life she deserved.

That was when I noticed motion out of the corner of my eye. I tensed up. My mother wasn't home. I pulled my cellphone out, getting set to dial 911 if it wasn't my imagination playing tricks on me.
I walked from the living room into the kitchen, slowly, only to find the woman who gave me the ring fixing herself a cup of tea.

She smiled at me, it was warm, albeit with a hint of mischief. “Oh, hello,” she said, still smiling. “Tea?”

“Uhh...no,” I replied. I put my phone away. “So...did you come to get your ring back?”

She shook her head and took a seat at the kitchen table, sipping her tea happily. “Of course not, dear. I gave that to you as a gift.” She motioned for me to sit with her, and I did, choosing a seat on the side of the table, as opposed to opposite her.

“You aren't calling the police?” she said. It was asked like a question, but seemed far more rhetorical.

“It seems kind of pointless. You're obviously not a human..or if you are, you obviously have some other amount of power that's way beyond the realm of normal,” I replied rather matter-of-factly.

Her eyes narrowed and she reached out, grabbing my shoulder. “But by sitting near me, you could put yourself in immediate danger.”

I shrugged. “But I'm not. If the whole reason you came here was to kill me, you would have already done it. Plus, it would run contrary to you giving me the ring in the first place.”

She beamed happily. “It's nice to see that THIS incarnation of you has manners AND sense.”

This caught me off guard, and it showed. “Uhh...excuse me?” I asked.

“It's complicated; maybe you should disregard that,” she told me.

“Could you..maybe dumb it down for me, then?”
“Young man...do you understand the concept of parallel dimensions?” she asked.

I nodded. “Yeah, the idea that every choice you make spawns a new universe, and so there's essentially infinite ones out there.”

She breathed a sigh of relief. “Okay, good. I was fairly certain that I'd gotten a more intelligent incarnation of you, but had to make sure. Sometimes you're quite thick.” Regardless of my intelligence in the here and now, this was still quite the bombshell. Parallel universes were a theory at best, and often a heavily disputed one, classed more as pseudo science.

“And yes, that explanation is technically correct, but you all haven't quite grasped the entirety of it,” she continued. “Parallel dimensions spawn and merge back with each other all of the time, unless the timeline, or potential timeline is sufficiently divergent to hold on its own.”

“Okay..” I said, furrowing my brow slightly.

“For example..” she said, “If I offer you a sip of my tea, there's a choice for you to make. You can either drink it or not. Technically, this is enough to cause the path you don't choose to spawn off on its own, a universe where everything is identical, save for the fact you had or didn't have a sip. Unless that leads to something significant, and in relatively short order, the parallel dimension just slips back into this one, and ceases to exist. Everything just merges back.”

“That makes sense. It would be pure chaos if every choice made by every person led to a separate dimension, just based on clothing or breakfast choices,” I said with a nod.

“Exactly!” she said, sounding quite delighted. “Now, sometimes those dimensions stay apart for awhile longer, and multiple tiny divergences happen, but the differences never add up to much, or all paths end up leading to the same place. When that happens, you get what you people have started calling The Mandela Effect...it's when people remember something completely differently, such as the death of an important person who is still alive, or a historical event ending in opposite ways from how it did. Sometimes it's even less significant though, like being SURE that you saw a movie with a particular friend, but they said you hadn't. Or thinking that someone really enjoyed a product or food, and they insist that they don't.”

“So who's right in those cases?” I asked her. While I hadn't ever experienced a massive one, like not knowing that The Alamo ended with Mexico winning, or somehow forgetting Martin Luther King was assassinated, I'd had the smaller ones happen multiple times.

“Everyone. When a merge happens, one person disappears, of the two that exist. While normally it's the parallel person, that's not always the case,” she explained.

“So giving me the ring made parallel dimensions happen, right?”

She smiled and nodded. “Yes.”

“So I'm in a parallel dimension right now?”

“No. This is the prime dimension, at least from our perspective. Though, in fairness, I'd be saying the same thing to you in any of them, so maybe that's not exactly true. Or it's true in all of them.”
“They can't all be primes..which would mean it's also a false statement in all of them, including ours,” I argued, and my head swam. I started to feel lightheaded as I contemplated infinity and my mind actually latched onto the concept in a heavier way.

“Easy child,” she said, reaching out and gripping my hand tightly. “You don't need to think too much on that, or at least not to those lengths.” Her voice was mildly concerned.

“So..what are you?” I asked. The lightheadedness had passed almost instantly. Whatever she'd done, it worked.

“I'm something that some of you would call an alien. Others would call a god. Others would call me a spirit. I observe this dimension, as well as its parallels, watching as choices lead to birth of whole new dimensions, and also as those dimensions collapse back together,” she replied. Her eyes twinkled and she gave me another grandmotherly smile. “Though you can call me Nan.”

I couldn't help but smile. “Okay, Nan..so..why'd you decide to come visit me?”

“I just wanted to commend you on your restraint. You finally seem to understand the weight of the ring I granted you. You, along with others..don't always fully comprehend the power and consequences of your wishes.”

“I don't?” I asked. “I kind of thought that I was pretty consistent.”

She laughed. “Consistent? Yes, in ways..” she smiled darkly, “You always love transforming people. Usually you end up changing yourself too, or at least soon after you get the ring. It doesn't matter when I reach you and give you the ring. No matter your age, you always start transforming people in short order, and there's usually sex within the first day.”

I blushed hard. I don't know whether that was my natural self-consciousness coming through, or the fact a woman who looked like she could be my grandmother was talking about sex. She laughed and that twinkle appeared in her eyes again, “I've been to one where one of your first wishes was for your mother and her friends to have lesbian sex and turn into werewolves in front of you.”

“MY MOTHER, OH FUCK, THAT'S GROSS!” I blurted out, trying to get that image out of my head before it really stuck.

“That was your initial reaction, but then you wished that you weren't bothered, and that she wasn't either. In some parallel dimension, which is quite happily standing on its own, by the way,” she said reassuringly, “you and your mother are probably having sex, and plotting on how to turn more women into werewolves for your harem...err..I mean, pack.”

“Dear god..can we PLEASE change the subject?” I begged.

She smiled, and again came the reassuring touch on my hand. “Which brings me to this point here. Whenever you reach a point of understanding that wishes have consequence, and that wishes can't fix everything instantly, I congratulate you and explain more about the ring.”

I looked down at the ring. It was so plain and brass. It was unassuming, like Nan. Something that no one would give a second glance or thought to. And like Nan, it had limitless power, or appeared to.
“Do you want it back?” I asked.

“No, at least not yet,” she said. “But I'm here to tell you how to be rid of it.”

“Go on,” I said, quite interested.

“No protest of how you'd never want to lose it?” she asked, arching her brow.

“Don't get me wrong, this thing is ridiculously powerful,” I told her. “And I'm sure that I'm just now really getting the hang of how to use it properly. But never is a long time, and there's no way to know how I'll feel down the road.”

Again she smiled, beaming at me like I was a prized pupil or brilliant child. “You understand,” she said, and I could feel a strange warmth inside myself. The warmth and her smile lingered for a few seconds, and then she spoke again. “You will lose the ring if you die; it's tied to your life force now. You COULD wish for immortality, but there are most certainly consequences for such a wish.”

“Yeah, that seems like a bad idea without having a REALLY solid reason. Power's not a reason to keep on living forever,” I said, again, getting the smile and warmth.

“Secondly, if you ever reach TRUE happiness, the ring can be removed.”

“True happiness? What does that even mean?”

Her eyes twinkled. “That's the trick of it all, isn't it? Figuring it out?” I nodded, understanding at least the concept of her answer.

“Thirdly, if you ever find someone that needs the ring more than you, who you judge truly worthy of the ring, you can gift it to them,” she told me.

“I presume that this is another 'you'll know' kind of thing, huh?” I asked.

She nodded. “Exactly.” She smiled again, finishing her tea. “I'm afraid I have to get going, dear,” Nan told me. “A female version of you is potentially on the verge of making this same realization. Of course, another female version of you is thinking about how awesome it would be to have a harem of female werewolves. You certainly DO love your werewolf sex.”

“Wait-” I asked. “A FEMALE version of me?”

She nodded. “It's a long story,” she replied. “Goodbye for now, dear. I'm sure we'll talk again, and yes, I will always be watching.” The air around her began to waver as she stood up, and she started to fade from existence. “Though not always too closely..”

And then she was gone; not with a pop of air or smell of brimstone, or TARDIS-like whooshing of engines. The only evidence she'd ever been here was an empty teacup on the table.


What do you do now?


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