Mr. Door (V.O.): We often look back and wonder, what if? What if the path not taken had in fact been our charted course? Would we be happier? Or are we, with our set of choices behind us, the lucky ones? And what if, nothing would be different? What if for some of us, our destiny, across an endless number of versions of ourselves, had been defined and locked beyond any causality of circumstance, beyond the forces in any one reality, but across all realities. For one man, the magnetic pull of destiny is so great it breaks time and space. We join this lone operative, many versions of him in fact, as he chases his nemesis, a dangerous being known as the Master of Many Worlds, across the multiverse, across the many versions of a city that is always the same, yet always different, in… Night Springs.
Mr. Door (V.O.): Tonight’s reality-bending episode: Time Breaker.
The Actor: No matter how many parallel realities I need to brave, how many lives, how many versions of me, it takes, I will stop him, and I will come back for you, my love.
The Director: Aaand cut! Everyone, take five.
Assistant Director: All right, you heard the man. Let’s take a break and prep for the next scene.
The Actor: Was that okay? I can do more, I can do less.
The Director: Yes! Yes! Yes! Shawn, I’m really happy. Let’s talk.
Assistant Director: Clear the set, the director needs a moment with the talent.
The Director: I love your instinct on this, but we can still push this further, immerse ourselves into this story, believe in it, make it crazier, wilder! Papapapapaadadadaa papapapapaadadadaa.
The Actor: You wanted to talk? It’s awesome to be doing this with you again, Sam.
The Director: Shawn, it’s so good to have you back. We’ve been dreaming about this for so long, and now finally, we are making “Time Breaker”, the videogame. It’s happening!
The Actor: Yeah, and FMV as well. That’s cool.
The Director: Of course, that was part of the previous game as well.
The Actor: I’d like to talk about my character, get deeper into the lore.
The Director: Hey! I could talk about this for days! He’s a multiversal agent. Goes by many names as there are many versions of him. Breaker, Branch, others. He is searching for his lost love, with his ruthless nemesis, Door, the Master of Many Worlds is murdering versions of him across parallel realities. He must track down and stop Door.
The Actor: That’s so cool.
The Director: You’ve done cool superhero roles in the past. Long-term, the Agent will grow into the ultimate, iconic superhero.
The Actor: Awesome. So the vortex and the gadget… sorry, keep forgetting its name, so many acronyms here, but it helps me travel through realities?
The Director: Acronyms are cool, right? Like tiny mysteries! You power up your PRS – Polyherdon Reality Shifter – with a SEN – Shifter Energy Node – to activate a Lumivista TV and ride the vortex between realities. It’s all REC – Ripple Effect Corporation – tech. And you have a gun and a TBS – Time Breaker Solidifier – to defend yourself.
The Actor: Ha… right. Yeah. You clearly have your own vision of the multiverse.
The Director: The right vision. The truth! It’s all out there. That’s where these ideas and inspirations come from. They seep through. Somewhere, this here, us talking is part of the videogame, and another version of you is playing it. Somewhere, your character, the Agent, is real, and he could appear here through a portal any time now.
The Actor: Right. Yeah, right, Sam. Ha. You are a maniac, man. Okay. So what do we shoot next?
The Director: We need to set up for the next scene. Where your nemesis pulls you into a parallel reality. You can go to your Green Room, chill out, learn the lines. I left the latest draft of the screenplay for you there. See you in a bit.
The Actor: Cool. I can’t wait.
The Actor (V.O.): Sometimes it was hard to tell if Sam’s joking. The deadpan Finnish humor. And a reputation of being a bit out there. I’d picked up a weird vibe when he talked about the multiverse.
Branch: No!
Mr. Door: This is your end.
The Actor (V.O.): What the fuck was that?
The Actor: Hello? What the fuck is this?
The Actor (V.O.): I thought I’d gone mad. Then I realized: Sam was playing a crazy prank on me. No way this was real. Huh? What is this? I had to admire how real the body and the props looked.
The Agent: So he got another one of you. Too late again.
The Actor: Excuse me? It’s a prank. Just a prank.
The Agent: Wait, are you… Shit. You’re not Branch. Oh no, no, no, no. No. No. No. No, no, no, no, no, no. He finally got you.
The Actor: Are you cast in this game too?
The Agent: Listen to me! There are things you need to know. You’re in great danger. You must do exactly what I tell you- No!
The Actor: What the fuck? What the fuck?
The Actor (V.O.): I’d blanked out and I suddenly was someplace else. I’d had gaps in my memory before but that’s the movie-star lifestyle for you. This was something else entirely. The last thing I remembered was the red-headed woman at the door. She’d looked familiar. She was trying to tell me something, then it went dark. Felt like a dream. Think, think, think, man. Need to get out of here. A psychotic episode? Or was the multiverse true after all? Did Sam do this? An elaborate hoax? Off-the-wall method acting reality show? It had gone way too far. Okay, okay, okay, let’s go with that. Act like this is true, okay. I’m an actor. I can do this. And once it’s over, we’ll have a good laugh. And then I’ll punch Sam in the face.
The Actor (V.O.): Where the hell am I? More multiverse nonsense. But I was committed to play along.
The Actor (V.O.): What had Sam said? I needed to find an Energy Node, and use this rod thing with it – the PRS, was it? And look for some kind of TV to get the hell out of here.
Familiar Voice: No, no! Door’s coming. He knows where I am.
The Actor: What was that?
Familiar Voice: Fuck, fuck, fuck. He’s coming. He knows about the trailer. I need to hide the Energy Node! I need to get it away from the trailer. Away from the TV. Oh god, oh god, oh god.
The Actor (V.O.): I wasn’t certain this was a prank anymore. I heard a voice in my head. It sounded like me. Insanely, I heard the thoughts of another version of me, the one living here. The trailer was his. I’d check it out. Don’t think, just act.
The Actor (V.O.): The Lumivista TV. According to what Sam had said I needed the Energy Node. The Energy Node was out there in the forest somewhere. I was wasting time. I had to go look for it. The other me had hidden it away from this trailer. The handwriting was mine. Paranoid theories about the multiverse. And Door. “The Master of Many Worlds”.
Familiar Voice: Okay, Okay, I hid it. It’s hidden. It’s safe. Is it safe? The creek’s deep the forest, all the way at the waterfall. It’s safe. Now, get the fuck away from here, before Door zeroes in on me. I’ll make it. I’m the chosen one out of all the versions. Me!
The Actor (V.O.): He’s hidden the Energy Node at a creek in the forest. I have to find it. OK, I found the creek. So where’s the Energy Node. There! Just like in the video game. The PRS was charged now. I had to get back to the trailer and the TV. Oh shit.
Familiar Voice: Oh my god! He’s here! Why here? Why me? I’m no one! Take the others! Not me.
Mr. Door: You can’t escape. I am everywhere.
Familiar Voice: Aaaaaaaaahhh!
The Actor: Oh fuck. Fuck this shit.
The Actor (V.O.): I thought it was just the plot of the video game, but it was all real: Door, the Master of Many Worlds, was murdering versions of the Agent, played by me. Versions of myself.
The Actor: What the hell?
Time Breaker: Time breaker.
The Actor: Shit. Don’t try anything. I’ve got a gun.
The Actor (V.O.): It’s all true. It’s no hoax. No video game. It’s really happening. I was lost in the multiverse. I had to become the role to survive. Be the agent. I had to get back to the trailer and the TV. Use my PRS on it. Door would be coming for me next. I don’t want to face him. Fuck that. But I couldn’t shake the feeling that it was inevitable. Use the PRS, the Polyhedron Reality Shifter, on the TV to get out of here. I felt a strange pull from the vortex on the screen. I was afraid that wherever it would take me, I was going to run into this Door person. But I couldn’t stay here either.
The Actor: No no no. Uh no no.
The Actor (V.O.): I was in a different reality. But not better, worse. Maybe by thinking of Door, I’d traveled closer to him. To where he was in control. Next time, I’d focus on something else. The clocks showed the way, they’d guide me through, to get what I needed.
The Actor: Okay, you got this, find another Node, another TV.
The Actor (V.O.): I had to find the right version of the lobby, in the right time, when what I needed was there.
The Actor (V.O.): The same warning sign as before. Made me think the fabric of this place was unraveling. Something to do with Door?
The Actor (V.O.): A Lumivista TV, I just needed energy to power it. I couldn’t hear the thoughts of the other me, the one native of this reality. Maybe Door had killed him already. Not a happy thought.
The Actor (V.O.): No one at Poison Pill had mentioned they’d made a comic book of their game as well. But then, maybe Poison Pill didn’t even exist in this reality. I was in a comic book… funny.
Lyrics: (in Finnish) Once, he mistook an ocean for a lake, he told us in a poem In the depths of that mystery he spent his whole life Under a dark ocean, in the shadows he wanders Searching for a way back into the light to his loved one Alone, the hero continues his journey into the night The burden on his shoulders forever like a promise In this game this fool is struck down again and again Only a moments rest in death before he’s called back again
The Actor (V.O.): The PRS was charged up. Now I’d find my way back to the TV. When I used the TV to travel between realities, I was thinking of Door and the vortex brought me here, where the Time Breakers attacked me. This time, a different tactic. I thought about the red-headed woman. She knew things. If I could find my way to her, she could help.
The Actor (V.O.): Something was different. A strange feeling. Still, yet moving. Like frozen snapshots on a sequential path. And yet, thoughts, flowing free, like text read out aloud.
The Actor: It’s you! I made it.
The Agent: Door pulled you away. Thought you were gone for sure.
The Actor: I focused on you when I entered the vortex. I was trying to reach you.
The Agent: You are full of surprises. Okay. Let’s try this out. Welcome to the headquarters of Ripple Effect Corporation.
The Actor: We were making a video game of the multiverse but now it’s suddenly real.
The Agent: Real and not real exist side by side in the multiverse. Echoes flow through it like currents in a cosmic ocean. The sea of Night. Conceptual, fictional, real… more real than real. Many versions of us all. In hidden interaction. Linked by the energies that ripple through realities. One of you is killed in an explosion of dangerous energy and another one instead gains superpowers, and yet another one meets an alien guardian angel. In one reality we are not even real, or, as you say, characters in a video game.
The Actor: Why is he after me? Who is Door?
The Agent: There are legends about him going back further than we can trace. They say he found an opening to a horrifying parallel reality that consumed him. Gave him access to all realities. The feedback loop killing all other versions of him.
Door: I am… on the threshold… liminal… A door! Everywhere!
The Agent: We don’t know why, but he sees the versions of you as a threat. He’s killing them. Bringing them back as Time Breakers. We thought he was after Branch. Now I’m thinking he’s been after you.
Time Breakers: Learn your lines, play the part. The Master of Many Worlds. We came through the door.
The Actor: All right. What can I do?
The Agent: He must be stopped. He leaves dead realities in his wake and he’s only picking up speed.
The Actor: I’m just an actor.
The Agent: Could have fooled me. You travel through realities with greater accuracy than anyone I’ve ever seen. Beyond Door, even. You picked it up just like that. Finding the place that made him may be the key to killing him. That was our theory, but we could never find it. Maybe you can.
The Actor: Was there something between you and Branch?
The Agent: What you think you are feeling is just an echo. Some other versions of us. In some other lifetime.
The Actor: But maybe…
The Agent: You’ll come back for me? Ha. Maybe.
The Actor: Wish me luck.
The Agent: Luck is just an echo of an event carried over from another reality.
The Actor (V.O.): I was a REC Agent. This was my mission now. I focused on him. The darkness. The entropy. Door. The Master of Many Worlds.
Door: Ha ha ha! I’m the Master of Many Worlds. You will never beat me!
The Actor: We’ll see about that.
Door: My Time Breakers will stop you, and you will join their ranks.
The Actor: Fuck off!
Door: Impressive. Out of all the versions, you might be the chosen one. Join me and we’ll rule together.
The Actor: No! never!
Door: You will regret this. Also, I was lying. Ha ha ha!
The Actor (V.O.): I’d been brought to the very edge of the multiverse, or some deep, dark trench in it. Everything sucked dry of color and energy. I had to find Door, or the means to travel on.
Door: You should not be here. You made a mistake.
The Actor: Go to hell.
The Actor (V.O.): Was Door getting desperate?
Door: I’m not here. I was never here.
The Actor (V.O.): It felt like the text was the only thing holding this place together. All of it being reduced to its conceptual form. Soon, it would be just words.
Door: You have gone astray. You will never catch me now.
The Actor (V.O.): I was close. I knew I was close now.
After dreamless sleep, you come to and gradually become aware of the utter lack. There is nothing. You allow yourself to slip back under, drifting into oblivion. After dreamless sleep, you come to and gradually become aware of the utter lack. There is nothing. You search for something to focus on. An idea of a geometric shape comes to your mind. A pentagonal trapezohedron. How do you know the name of this shape? That you don’t know. You feel yourself fading, drifting apart, losing your essence in the stream of consciousness, the ebbs and flows of your thoughts. You fight to hold yourself together, to swim against the current, to break to the surface. Coming to focus, you realize your first impression was wrong. There is something and there is you. Slowly, you sense the words describing this, describing how it is. Here, in the farthest reaches of the multiverse, you have reached a reality where only ideas exist. An idea of reality. A conceptual reality. A thought tries to form in your mind… You focus on the thought and it becomes clear: “In the beginning, there was the word.” Here, only words exist. They are everything. They describe this word and you in it. The words describe you standing in a barren, conceptual desert. It stretches on to eternity. In a place outside time, you wait an immeasurable amount of time. Above, ideas of stars silently collide and collapse into black holes. With an idea of a desert comes an idea of feeling thirsty. As you imagine it, a cup of coffee, your favorite hot beverage, manifests itself. The idea of it. The concept of its delicious smell and taste. You savor it. You imagine savoring it. You understand that here, your thoughts are as real as anything. You realize you could be trapped here forever. Vaguely, you remember that you are on a mission of vital importance. You feel the details of it already dissolving. You must figure out a way to escape before you lose yourself again. When travelling through the vortex, you always had a focal point in mind. Could that be the solution here as well? You focus your thoughts on the Master of Many Words. The desert dreamscape around you darkens. You vaguely feel the terrible weight of an alien, god-like awareness shift many realities away. How can you possibly find him, let alone face him… You know you will have to face the Master of Many Worlds and his army of Time Breakers. He will show you no mercy. You must prepare. You seek allies across the multiverse, reaching out to the versions of you who have not been turned into Time Breakers by Door. You share a telepathic link with them. You are the perfect army. You seek a perfect Place of Power to build your base of operations. In the desert you come upon a gigantic, petrified tree trunk. You convert it into a skyscraper of brutalist architecture. You set up an organization, a corporation. You call it REC, Ripple Effect Corporation. The name feels appropriate. You are approached by a version of the red-headed woman. Her name is Jesbet. She doesn’t know you, but there is a connection there. You make her the Director of your corporation. She carries a powerful weapon that can take many forms. She tells you it is an Object of Power. Beyond that she will not elaborate. Reluctantly, Jesbet gives you the weapon. In your hands, the weapon trembles and shifts from one lethal form to another. It’s a pistol, it’s a shotgun, it’s a ray gun, it’s a spear, it’s anything in between. It is eager to kill. As Director, Jesbet warns you the REC is currently not equipped to subdue the Master of Many Worlds. Without a technological breakthrough, your chances are slim. Under your Director’s leadership, agents of the REC scour the multiverse and encounter many uncontrollable horrors. There are casualties. Finally, they locate a reality with a singular alien being of god-like power It is shaped like a polyhedron. The being has enough power to potentially defeat the master, but the very sight of it drives any agents who look at it mad. The alien being is shipped to the REC headquarters where it is secured in a containment cell. Not long after, the Director comes to you with intelligence: the Master of Many Worlds is preparing an all-out attack. The REC is running out of time. Unfortunately, attempts to research the alien being stall, as everyone who is exposed to it goes insane. Given the situation, Jesbet suggests a desperate plan: harness the being’s power and detonate it as a bomb. The Director urges you to reconsider. You are too valuable to the cause to risk yourself like this. And she doesn’t want to lose you, she admits. In a REC laboratory, you expose yourself to the wild destructive resonance of the alien being. It alters you. You feel yourself undergoing a strange metamorphosis. You feel your consciousness expanding in inhuman ways as you become aware of unknown planes of existence touching ours. Your burn with a terrifying, barely-contained force. You are no longer a man. You are something else, something more. A being of god-like power. The alien being in the laboratory dies. You have stolen all its power. Trembling, Director Jesbet shifts her gaze from you. Your transformation has shaken her. A hush falls upon the REC headquarters as you wait for the enemy to come. People, your agents, your warriors, stand staring at the monitors on the walls. Jesbet stands beside you. Then, they come. Time Breakers shifting in, filling the desert. Each one is a version of you, killed and corrupted by the Master of Many Worlds. The multiverse is infinite. There are millions of them. Snarling, wielding the powerful, shifting weapon in your hand, you shoot Time Breakers in hundreds around you. They come in endless waves, but with your senses heightened by the alien power, it is easy to predict the attacks of your enemies. It is as if everything around you moves in slow motion. Your laughter comes out loud as a hurricane. The REC agents and Director Jesbet shrink away from you, holding their ears in horror and pain. While their guard is down, the Time Breakers overrun them with ease. You witness Jesbet be cut down. Rage fills your mind. Shouting, you cut your way to her. But you are too late. She dies in your arms, transfixed by the horror of your appearance. The violent cosmic power in you, barely contained, erupts, warping reality. The planets above are thrust into ritualistic constellations amplifying the force. The resonance pours out of you, destroying everything in its path — Jesbet, all the Agents,n the Time Breakers, the skyscraper, the desert, the adjoining parallel realities, time and space, permanently scarred with rippled and dunes, shaped by the waves of the resonance. Something inside you tells you to stop. It is going too far. You must stop. With immense efforts, you manage to stem the tide of your anger. You are yourself again, all the alien power spent. You are alone. The weapon shifts one final time in your hand. It is now a key. You look at the key. You realize you have lost your way, forgotten your mission and your goal. You have drifted off course, carried by the currents of your hopes and ideas in this conceptual reality. You frown, trying to remember where you were trying to go. What was your mission…? You look for it, shifting through your thoughts. It comes to you with a jolt. You were trying to find your way to the Master of Many Worlds. There was something about a door… With that, a door begins to come into focus. You realize it is missing something. The door is there, and yet not quite there. It is missing something vital to make it fully itself for you to use. You push the key toward the idea of a keyhole on the not-quite-there door. And with that the door is fully realized. You turn the key and open the door. You step inside and stand in a room with a man, the Master of Many Worlds, sitting behind a desk, typing, turning concepts and ideas into words, shaping this reality. He lifts his head. You stare the man in the eye. With a shock you realize that you have made a mistake. You have come to the wrong place. The man, this Master of Many Worlds, is not the one you were looking for. He’s not Door. He is someone else entirely. You want to ask him what he knows, but it’s already too late.
Mr. Door: We have witnessed a case of mistaken identity. But in the vastness of the multiverse, with an endless number of versions of ourselves, what is identity anyway? Can there be more than one Master of Many Worlds? Or did our hero take a wrong turn somewhere along the way? Was this particular journey precisely what was needed to make him the one he was meant to become? One thing is certain: I am your host, the one and only Warlin Door, and this is… Night Springs.
In loving memory of James McCaffrey
Casey: Chasing the murder cult made me feel like I was caught in a loop. Every time I thought I was getting closer, things shifted around, and I realized I was further away than ever before. Instead of answers, I only had more questions. The name of the cult and the masks they wore kept changing. The deeper into the dark depths I got, peeling off the layers of this case, like the ocean zones, from twilight to midnight to abyssal to the deepest trenches, the closer I felt to going mad.