Getting Silly With It

Originally posted here July 27, 2023:

writing-prompt-s:

After watching the world end thousands of times across multiple timelines, you realise the only way to prevent Armageddon is to stop yourself being born. You vow to let world end in the most ridiculous way possible, because screw that.

Listen. I know how it sounds. I’m not a bad person.

Okay. Let me put this another way. You go and stop yourself from being born. Go and prevent me from being born.

I’ll wait.

Are you getting the picture here? The only way to prevent nearly everybody from dying is to do the impossible. And even if I theoretically could, there’s no guarantee that wouldn’t be the thing that triggered the fucking end. If I somehow go back and prevent myself from being born, then I’ll have never existed to prevent myself from being born.

I don’t know how I can see these other realities. I know they exist, I know they’re real. I’ve been keeping journals since I was 15, when I started this plan, there’s some stuff I definitely knew was going to happen before it happened.

You don’t have to believe me. Maybe it’s better if you don’t, I’m not sure, actually.

But since I was 13, I’ve known that my existence is a linchpin in reality- that because I am here, at least 90% of people are going to die. Typically, I’m one of the first ones. Not always the very first. Hell, sometimes I cause it- not usually, but there’s a couple realities where I guess I just give in to the inevitable and kick things off. Feels better to be in control, right? And I always die.

I was fifteen when I decided I was going to fucking live, or we were gonna die silly.

It’s not fair, that’s why. I’m not a bad person. Sure, in the thousands of realities I’ve looked in, so far, I’ve mostly destroyed the human race a time or two, but really not very many. Like, maybe four times.

Usually I’m just the poor asshole standing next to whatever thing happens. Patient Zero in the big outbreak- I didn’t know until I was dying of whatever it was. Or I’m in the airplane that got shot out of the sky because it was misidentified as a military plane. Like, I’m fucking nobody, and that’s true in about every reality I’ve looked into. I’m not the President of any damned thing.

Do you know what that’s like? Do you understand living in a world where you know that you are going to die horribly? Where it seems like the universe itself is out to get you? Where the best possible reality is the one where you were never born? It fucking weighs on you.

So yeah, fuck you, I’m gonna live or it’s gonna get real weird. Because the alternative is soul crushing. You get me?

I figured some shit out. There’s ‘near’ realities and 'far’ ones. The near ones are the smallest differences between our timeline and theirs. The end in the far ones get real weird. There’s one where mutant overgrown rabbits eat most of everybody.

I haven’t found a reality where I live, yet. But I thought, maybe if I was careful and stayed on my toes, I could find some realities where I lived longer. Maybe you think that’s selfish, but the longer I live, the longer everybody else has.

Like I said. I’m not a bad person.

I was fucking right, too. There’s ends I can’t access anymore, realities that I can’t see. I’ve been doing this for 25 years, and I’ve crossed a lot of endings off the list. And even some of the weirder, longer term ones dropped off. I’m not sure why, but hell, I’ll take it.

Lately, though. There’s been a few new ones popping up- that’s not something I’ve seen before. They’re near, they’re soon, and in every single one of them, I think about telling you about all this shit, and I don’t.

And somehow- somehow that has an effect. I don’t know, like I said, I’m nobody. You’re nobody. But I think I have to tell you this. I think you need to know.

So I’m telling you.

I don’t know what comes next. I guess we’ll find out together, huh?

 

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