Zer0 Sum
By: Daniel Mackisack
Tags: Short Story, Superheroes, Parallel Universes, Flash Fiction, Science Fiction

You know how this works right? Of course you don’t. No one does. People talk about the infinite, but they don’t understand it. Not really.

Try imagining what infinite universes actually means. Like. Seriously. It’s bonkers. But that’s why I’m here. Holding back insanity. The bulwark against a multiverse gone mad.

The One and the Zer0.

It wasn’t always so complicated. For the longest time the universe just kind of did it’s thing. Probability mechanics aren’t so tricky when it’s just inanimate stuff bumping into other stuff. Sure there were infinite alternatives being created every moment, but they were predictable. The powers that be could see it coming and didn’t really worry about it so much. But then it all went wrong. Life happened. And everything started getting wildly out of hand.

What’s always surprised me is how they didn’t see it coming. I mean you stack infinities on top of one another for long enough, you’re bound to see some weird shit. Just last week I saw a guy fall out of a plane over Belgrade and land head first in a chimney. Four and a half something million years ago, I’m told a star just up and vanished one day. Only to reappear 40,000 light years away above a child’s bedroom. Apparently they had just been wishing super hard. The multiverse is a crazy fucking place man.

It’s no wonder life happened. But when it did, the orders of infinity started piling up faster than anyone was prepared for. It started with pesky electrical signals. Little single celled monsters exchanging ions. Ugh. By the time life became sentient it was a total nightmare. Decisions were the worst. They had to be contained. Infinity was fine. Even infinities upon infinities were manageable. But there had to be a limit. Something that drew a line in the sand. A cosmic truth that tied all the universes together. So the numbers were created. A pair for every prime-line. The real and imaginary. The One. And the Zero. Anything between those was fine. Zero point one? Nice. Zero point three four six eight seven? Cool. Take as many decimals as you like, but step outside, with like a one point three…or worse…a two? Well…you’d have me to answer to.

Fuck two.

It’s not easy being an eternal cosmic truth. I mean, it’s a huge responsibility. Just brushing your teeth in the morning, means brushing your teeth across every conceivable and inconceivable reality. Put it this way…any reality in which I don’t brush my teeth, or in which I’m not there to brush my teeth because I was hit by a bus, ceases to exist. It might sound harsh, but it’s an incredibly effective control mechanism. Unwarranted and unforeseen realities have been reduced by 70 trillion percent. It also means cascading cataclysmic multiversal threats are stopped in their tracks, like the time that pigeon had a heart attack and fell into an air intake at CERN. I died in the ensuing singularity, so the whole branch was wiped clean. Easy.

But it’s also not quite as exciting as you might expect. After all, my whole job is just to be. I spend a lot of time on the internet. It’s an easy thing to manage across every timeline simultaneously. I also play video games. But not online. Too complicated. I keep a watchful eye to the sky and another on the news. A lonely vigil. And sometimes, when I’m feeling generous and totally certain of the mechanics, I save the world. That’s right. I drag you all kicking and screaming through the mess. Though you would never know. Sometimes the smallest action can have the biggest impact.

Last week I sent my first tweet. Crisis averted. You’re welcome.