Story debate.

The room flickered in strobe as the forensic team dutifully took their pictures. While the local detectives focused on the crime, Alexander focused on the getaway vehicle. Knowledge of apple was far from ubiquitous, and the feds preferred it that way. He snuck into the basement for a look-see making sure not to be followed. He even locked the door behind him for good measure. The cops didn't need to see this, and he didn't have time to field unanswerable questions anyway. He flicked the light switch. Hand prints of blood dotted the handrail: breadcrumbs that led to the real problem. Dead wife. Dead kids. They were nothing. Apple killed in its own way. It slaughtered sin and eviscerated memories, if you were lucky to have a hunter on your tail. No hunter and the ripples could get unstable. When that happens-- Alexander didn't like to think about that. He followed the blood to an open briefcase on the floor. More blood was smeared on the case and around the floor. The cops would follow that blood down here any minute, but that didn't concern Alexander too much. All he needed was the quantum vectors. Apple was no poor man's drug like some high schooler's chemical high. Apple was quantum physics pushed to ungodly limits, which meant it inevitably led to ungodly uses. It required a powerful computer and a boatload of energy. Apple usually took up an entire room, which made policing it rather convenient. Alexander had never seen one this small before, so he wondered if this was a product of his 'verse or another's. As a hunter, he often hypothesized cross-dimensionally. It could be exhausting. The unit was still active, which mean it had some juice left in it. He only hoped it would be enough to send him on a journey he did not look forward to. He liked the job well enough, but the mode of transportation was a bitch. He reached for a metal ring which was attached to the apple device by dozens of wires and placed it on his head. He fiddled with the onboard switches until the device sprang to new life with a hum. It would take a few minutes for it to analyze his physiology. As he waited, he felt sorry for the poor bastard that would inherit his body down here. Which version of himself would show up here? A college student? A grandpa? Most hunters just pretended the whole process was more like teleportation, but Alexander was never able to ignore the fact that while he was off saving the multiverse, some poor alternate version of himself was torn from his mundane life and forced to face the mess he left behind. And of course, that version's original body would be replaced by some other version, and so on. Hunters had to make ripples to stop them. The machine buzzed and cranked. Alexander braced for inter-dimensional liftoff just as the basement door opened and detectives flooded down the staircase. Alexander wished his unsuspecting alter ego good luck as the machine kicked into full cycle and squeezed him through a quantum pinhole. ******* Arnie braced the edges of the sink as a quake shook the walls. He worked furiously scrubbing the blood from his hands. When he was satisfied his hands were spotless, he pulled his blood-covered clothes off and replaced them with clothes he'd pulled off the department store racks. He stuffed his old clothes into the trash can he'd used to wedge the bathroom door shut. Thankfully no had come knocking. He wiped every last drop of blood from the sink and bathroom floor with a paper towel, threw it in the trash, then dismantled his ad hoc barricade. Arnie walked casually through the store to the front exit. As he neared the doors he noticed from the corner of his eye the store's overweight security guard stomping his direction. Unwilling to risk getting held up for shoplifting, he bolted for the door and ran as fast as he could down the street. Arnie ran like a man on the run. Aimless. Fearful. Far. When he could run no longer, he found himself keeled over and panting at a residential corner in some shoddy suburb. He heard footsteps approach followed by a man saying, "Someone runnin' like that is someone runnin' from the law." Arnie looked up to see a tall, thin man dragging on a cigarette. Arnie tried to calculate his next move but his brain was too fried. Too much was going on and his otherwise elite mind couldn't handle it anymore. So Arnie did only what desperate men do. He told the truth. "I don't know where I am. I was in my bed, then the next thing I know, I'm not in my bed. I wake up and it looks like I killed my family, except I don't remember having one. I think I'm going crazy." He watched the man carefully for confirmation for this last allegation, but the man didn't seem to flinch at all. The man took one last drag on his cigarette and dropped it to the ground. "Nah," he said as he crushed the butt with his boot, "you didn't kill nobody. You just got sucked forward is all." "What?" This man seemed to not only believe him about not being a murderer but about being in his own bed. "Sucked forward?" "That's what happens when someone from our 'verse surfs the quantum wave into the next. It leaves a vacuum, a hole. You look like a readin' man. What happens when there's a vacuum?" "Something else fills the space." "That's right. Welcome to my 'verse, Filler." The man slapped Arnie on the shoulder. "Come on," he prodded. "Let's see if we can't get you straightened out. What's yer name?" "Arnie." "Arnie, huh? Funny you should use a name like that seein' as you're so prim and proper lookin' and all. Not too fond of Arnold?" Arnie decided not to respond to that. Instead he asked, "What's your name?" "Johnny Appleseed." "Really?" smirked Arnie. "Truly am. Not my real name o' course, but that's because I deal in a very rare commodity. Just so happens to be something that concerns you at the moment. It's something we like to call apple. And it's the reason you're goin' crazy." ******* Alexander sat across from Arnold Parkerson, who was fidgeting nervously in his seat. It hadn't taken long to track him down. In fact, it didn't sit well with Alexander how easily Arnold had been to find. Normally guys on the run like to stay hidden, but this poor bastard turned himself in to the local authorities. Perhaps this would be an open and shut case and he could go back to his own 'verse before dinner. He had to be sure though. Undoing a ripple required going backwards through the multiverse, and the drug only goes one direction. Going backwards required a measure so extreme that he had to be sure he was talking to the guilty and not some other victim of the ripple. "So, tell me what happened," he asked Arnold. "Like I told the police, I turned myself in. I'm a convict-- I mean-- I," stuttered Arnold. Was he nervous or merely confused? "Did you murder your wife and kids, Arnold?" Arnold broke into tears. "Yes, yes. I did!" Arnold sobbed. That confession came too easily. "Did you kill them this morning, Arnold?" Arnold's shoulders ceased their shudders and he looked back at Alexander in bewilderment. "No," he said through sniffles. "No, I killed them four years ago. I've been in prison ever since." "How'd you get out?" Alexander already knew the answer. "I just woke up in some guy's bed, covered in blood. I thought I was dreaming or having flashbacks. I started to freak out but then I blacked out and woke up again in the middle of a park." "Damn," exclaimed Alexander. He left Arnold without another word and headed out of the police station. He paced back and forth in front of the building trying to think. He mindlessly turned a small device in his hand as he did so. It was his tether: his only way back home. Going backwards is not a problem if you have one of these. They maintain a small quantum tunnel opening to your home 'verse. As long as that's open, a little applied energy sends you home. The less time you spend in another verse, the smaller and less disruptive your ripple. If you don't have one of these, and killers on the run usually don't, then more drastic measures are needed. The bastard double-jumped. No one had ever double jumped before. How the hell was he supposed to track this guy down now? His options were limited. If this 'verse had apple technology, he could theoretically use his tether to reverse engineer the correct quantum coordinates to where the real killer headed. If not, he'd have to go home and re-jump forward, but a slingshot was against every rule in the book. A slingshot was only ever done once, and it nearly ripped apart the fabric of the multi-verse. It had to be a last resort. With that, Alexander set off in search of apple.