/ Many-Worlds, Pt. 1 /

“Arufa! There you are!”

Ghiles ran up to the girl, standing in the decrepit laboratory lobby. Rainwater poured down and soaked her silver hair a muddy grey. The droplets streaming over her face mixed with her tears—she could taste the salt on her lips.

He put his hands on her shoulders and looked her in the eyes, their bright amber now a faded, dull brown. The world was desaturated to her, bland and dark.

“Oh, I was so worried. I thought you might’ve…” the doctor trailed off, the windy downpour sending his blonde hair amok. “I’m glad you’re okay.”

Arufa looked out behind him, into the thunderstorm; gallant orange rays of sunlight beamed through the looming clouds and between the leaves of the forest that surrounded them. It was sunset, strikingly beautiful.

She refocused her vision and studied Ghiles’s face. In the shadow of faint sunlight, she finally could see the color in his skin, the curvature of his nose, the scarred split on his lip.

But she could also see the way his eyes focused on hers; the way he didn’t stop to look around, or to remember it all.

“Wait, where’s Marsia…?” he asked, his pitch wavering.

She blinked. Could she tell him the truth? Could she tell him she’d killed her with indecision? Could she tell him it was all her fault?

But Arufa didn’t have the words.

She fell forward into his arms and wept. Her face pressed against his sternum, she cried quietly, hiccuping between sobs. With every gasp for air, she remembered Marsia’s last words and fell deeper into grief.

Ghiles let out a shaky exhale as the cold wind wailed outside. “It’s alright, Arufa. It’s… it’s okay. You– you didn’t do anything wrong.”

She beat her fist weakly against his trapezius. “I did! It’s my fault…!”

The two stood at the ruined entrance for some time, floodwaters lapping at their ankles. The beams in the upper floors lurched overhead as the storm lamented Marsia’s demise.

“Dr. Ghiles, I… hic! I can’t change. I’m scared. I’m indecisive. That’s why Marsia’s… hic! Dead, now…”

Ghiles embraced her tighter, putting pressure on her sides and back. It reminded her of Marsia.

“No, Arufa. You did prove it. You proved that people can change.”

“How?!” she cried. “I’m… just like I was before…”

“You’re right,” he said in a soft whisper. “You relapsed. It was too short a time period for real change.”

“If six years was too short, then it’s impossible! It’s pointless!”

“No, not the six years. The couple of hours since you woke up,” Ghiles corrected. “X2 didn’t change you at all. But… that’s not what I mean. Not anymore.”

“…”

A crash of thunder echoed in the atmosphere. The brilliant light from the west faded slowly, at the cusp of night—they’d soon be lost in the dark with nowhere to run.

But Ghiles continued talking. “There’s no instant fix to changing someone. That was… a short-sighted idea.”

“Then how do you know it’s even possible? Why do you believe me when I couldn’t even make a stupid decision when it mattered the most…?”

“Arufa, it’s not about whether you changed. You didn’t have to prove you could change.”

She sniffled. “Hm…?”

“You… showed me I could change.”

“Ghiles…”

He pulled her up and made eye contact. “I said our memories defined us. I don’t believe that anymore, not fully. I think… I think the real answer is somewhere in the middle.”

“…”

“Our memories define our past, and they tell us who we were. But they don’t define our future.”

“…Then what does?”

Ghiles turned to look at the setting sun, cutting through the forest one last time. A silhouette of distant skyscrapers lined the horizon.

“We do, Arufa.”

Arufa took a deep breath of the humid air and walked out into the rain. She felt it run down the skin of her patchwork neck and drizzle down from her fingertips. The wires on her arms simulated the color of falling dusk.

She still heard Marsia’s voice in her ears, like phantom pain from a limb she’d lost. She’d only known her for maybe a day, but without her, the world felt monochrome.

“I can still change, right? I can still be a better person?”

Ghiles stepped up beside her, the water soaking his sleeveless undershirt. “The evidence says so. You just have to make the effort.”

“…Would Marsia forgive me if I did?”

He looked to the sky, anguished. “I don’t know. I think she would, even if you didn’t.”

“But I killed her…”

“Let me tell you something,” Ghiles said. “This is your world. But we know there are a practically infinite number of parallels out there.”

Arufa blinked her tears away and rubbed her face in the rain. “That’s the Many-Worlds Interpretation, right?”

“Yeah. We proved it in 2022. I think this world proved it a little later. But if there really are that many… I’m confident there’s one out there where Marsia survived. Her, and Locri… and Ari.

“So, whenever you’re feeling upset or guilty, just know there’s a world out there where they’re still alive and kicking. There’s a reality where all three of them lived—there has to be.”

The two watched as the sunlight waned. Dusk symbolized an end, a final light before darkness and desperation, before fear and despair. But even the darkness could be beautiful, as even the hopeless could be cared for.

She looked down at the ground, the thin sheet of muddy water that covered the detritus of the woods. Within its rippling surface she found her reflection again; her uncanny silver hair, the metal plates bolted to her skull, the dark tattoo over her left eye.

“I never got the chance to ask,” Arufa said. “What’s this symbol?”

“Hm?”

“The tattoo over my eye. It was in the simulation on my chest, and now it’s here. What is it?”

Ghiles chuckled a little. “It’s a logo I made for the Many-Worlds Project. Nock Labs told us if we were doing human experiments, we had to label them in case they broke free.”

“And what does it mean?”

“Well, it’s a line through the middle with two lines on either side. The top side was to the left, and the bottom side was to the right. It was a representation of X2… and of you four.”

The sun was now below the horizon. Wind and thunder shook the laboratory behind them—they heard pieces of concrete and metal crash to the ground. It seemed like an apocalypse.

“You know, Arufa, it’s been weighing on me a little, too. What Ari did. The fact that we’re here now.” Ghiles said.

“You can’t go back home, can you?”

“Not unless I build another Transversal. That took science decades to create, and I’m more of a neuroscientist than I am a quantum engineer.”

“I don’t know if I can go home, either. I was on death row for that terrorist attack. I still don’t remember why I did it, but there’s no way they’d let me free like that.”

Ghiles took the first step into the misty forest. “Then we’ll figure this out together, you and I. The Transversal should have sent us somewhere near the lab’s location in this world.”

Arufa followed carefully. “So why are we in a forest, then?”

“Minor details such as city layouts vary from parallel to parallel. I think our intended target was the city out there,” he said, pointing ahead. “So that’s where we’ll head.”

I recognize a couple of buildings on that skyline. Maybe that’s the city I grew up in…? I wish I could show Marsia.

I hate that it all had to end like that. Half of us died. I still don’t know why Ghiles killed Locri, either. But I don’t think this would be a good time to ask. He has a lot to think through, and so do I.

The summer rain quieted as they weaved through the trees. A faint glimmer of sunset purple lingered in the sky—the stars gleamed between the parting clouds. The moon was nowhere to be seen, leaving the night void black.

The mating calls of bullfrogs echoed in the dark; coyotes howled out to the stars. The forest, teeming with life, scared Arufa. She wished to be back in X2. Moreover, she wished to be back in her house, with her parents, and with her sister.

But she resolved to push forward. She could change, eventually, even if it took many years. She didn’t have to overcome herself in one day. It was a war, not a battle.

And, despite her flaws, she had the memory of doing good. She could recall being the person she wanted to be—she knew it was possible. Ghiles had made that clear to her.

Even if she never changed in any other parallel, she knew she would in this one. Arufa could be a better person. And she would chase that goal forever, if she had to.

“Thank you, Ghiles,” she said again. “So much.”

But before she could hear his response, she felt the invisible hook pry her consciousness from her body, and everything disappeared in an instant.

Act II: Parallel in Two

Sinistro Fine.