Three Months Earlier
It started with an auction at the Hôtel Drouot, a place where eccentricities surfaced like rare pearls dredged from the sea. Etienne, both an antiquarian and a savorer of mysteries, had stumbled across the device purely by accident. Its maker was unknown, though its design—a combination of Da Vinci’s mechanical grace and Tesla’s wild ambition—hinted at forbidden genius. The auctioneer explained it was a paltry “conversation piece,” but Etienne’s instincts screamed otherwise. Two weeks of tinkering and a surge of calibrated electricity revealed the gemstone in its center could project fleeting but discernible glimpses into alternate realities.
At first, the device merely teased him with fragments of impossibilities—skyclad figures singing alien melodies amid crystalline forests, cities suspended by colossal chains over black seas, and clockwork automata watching landscapes made of molten glass. But last night, the machine had gone further. Instead of a momentary flicker, the portal lingered. More alarming still, the pocketbook-sized contraption seemed to respond to his thoughts, peeling back the veil in greater depth and synchronously drawing strange energies from the surrounding air.
That evening, he saw a fearsome hollow-eyed figure dressed in something akin to phosphorescent bone weave—a being that stood still until it wasn’t. Just before the aperture shut, Etienne swore it turned… and noticed him.
His musing came to an abrupt stop when his lantern flickered. The gendarmerie’s whistles were waning, but Etienne found himself frozen, stricken by his more immediate surroundings—the very air trembled as though choked with static.
He was no longer alone.
The Visitor
The shadows at the edge of the gangway deepened unnaturally until they gave way, parting like a wound in fabric. The figure stepped forth—its form oscillating like the patterns on a spilled oil slick. It was him—or an echo of him. Draped in a robe resembling mercury caught mid-fall, its "face" sparkled with innumerable shifting eyes.
“Vous avez vu. You have seen,” it intoned, its voice layered as though emitting across countless frequencies.
Etienne’s right hand tightened around the device. “You… are one of them.”
“No,” the apparition corrected sharply. “I am one of you.” It cocked its shimmering head. “Or an iteration of you borne from divergence.”
"That cannot be," Etienne said in a near-whisper. His grip loosened, and for an infinitesimal moment, he wondered if the air he'd been inhaling was poisoned by hallucinatory effects.
"It both is and cannot be," the entity riposted cryptically. Its movements were fluid but had no grace, its geometry resisting comprehension. "You are the first to prime the Aperture Device across alignments. Do you not understand the peril of shared resonance?"
"I—don't," Etienne stammered, his estranged reflection’s words dripping with an ominous weight.
"Parallel, yet tethered universes exist because distances remain conceptual. The observance of one universe by inhabitants destabilizes another. That device ensures mirrored interactions. No longer can the divergence go unnoticed in my domain. Which errors cascade and delete depends entirely on the next boundary YOU cross."
Etienne shuddered. "What happens if I stop crossing or shut it away entirely?"
“Then forces beyond even us will correct you,” the entity replied, and the brief flicker of something that resembled… mercy or regret flashed across its fractal eyes.
A World Out of Sync
Etienne did not get far the following night. His Paris no longer aligned with its true footing. One aspect manifested the unnatural weight-heavy gravity of time was increasing acceleration-to-paradox-sync-boilers fast!
The Source...check out the great article that inspired this amazing short story: Quantum AI and Interdimensional Travel: Exploring How AI Could Unlock Parallel Dimensions with Quantum Physics
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