alternate realities
An ending can be the start of a new journey. End Again is like that: a collection of stories where endings are polite suggestions.
Life doesn’t care much for happily ever after—neither do most of these tales. There are further developments. Other choices. Any ending is a perceived equilibrium before it ends again and a new story begins. The full title has 42 short stories.
The Ascended
Thornfield, County Eldridge, 1587
In a New England hamlet in 1587, some people begin floating into the sky, causing their loved ones to deal with their loss and the meaning behind this occurrence.
In the hamlet of Thornfield, the sky had grown accustomed to claiming its own. Once bewildered by the sight of their kin ascending, the townsfolk now watched with a resigned gaze as another soul drifted into the blue expanse.
Among them was Simon, whose mother, Eleanor, hovered a child’s height above their modest garden. She was bound to the earth by naught but a series of ropes and Simon’s dwindling hope.
“Thou art safe, Mother. I shall not let thee depart,” Simon declared, his voice a mixture of defiance and despair.
“And I hold thee, my son, in trust,” Eleanor responded, her tone serene amidst the storm brewing within Simon.
Thornfield Broadsheet
The Ascended: Blessing or Plague?
In Thornfield, the occurrence of the Ascended splits the community asunder. Are they chosen by the heavens, or cursed? The Crown remains silent, leaving us to fend for our own.
Simon’s refusal to accept this fate as divine or cursed led him to a clandestine forum. Here whispers of a cure, offered by a Beatrice Blackwood, physician, promised a return from the precipice.
“We can anchor her soul to the earth, yet at a cost thou must be willing to bear,” healer Blackwood intoned lips to ear.
“Anything,” Simon replied, without a moment’s hesitation.
Mistress Blackwood’s grimoire, a tome of her studies, lay open on Simon’s table.
Blackwood Journal
Reversing the Ascension – An Inquiry
Our method grounds the individual’s bioelectrical field, reversing their ascent. Yet, this requires an energy transfer of such magnitude that it erases the subject’s memories, their very essence. It is akin to rebirth. Chilled by the words, Simon nonetheless resolved to keep Eleanor earthbound. The alternative, her loss to the heavens, was a fate too grim to bear.
On the day appointed, Simon and Eleanor entered Mistress Blackwood’s laboratory, a place of cold metal and colder prospects. “Art thou certain, Simon?” Eleanor queried, her feet dangling over the threshold of oblivion.
“Aye, Mother. We cannot let thee fade,” Simon affirmed, though doubt gnawed at his resolve.
An hour hence, Eleanor no longer ascended, but neither did she recognize her son. Her gaze, devoid of recognition, pierced Simon like a dagger.
Thornfield Broadsheet
The Cure: Salvation or Damnation?
Healer Beatrice Blackwood’s procedure promises to ground the Ascended. Yet, at what cost? Families grapple with the choice: is it better to lose loved ones to the heavens or to save them, only to lose who they were?
In the weeks that followed, Simon watched as Eleanor relearned the rudiments of existence. Yet, the mother he knew was no more. Simon had saved her from the sky, only to lose her to an abyss of forgetfulness. “Thou canst not save thy mother. It will consume thee, and perchance her as well,” his confidant, Michael, had warned. Simon now understood the bitter truth of those words.
One eve, as Simon sat upon the stoop, watching the twilight embrace Thornfield, another villager began his ascent. The scene, once a spectacle of horror, now unfolded with a grim regularity.
Simon realized then that the Ascended were not to be saved from their fate but embraced as a part of the natural order. His quest to save Eleanor, driven by love, had led him to a place of desolation.
He began to pen his thoughts, sharing his tale of woe and enlightenment. Yet, Thornfield, and indeed the all of Eldridge County, remained indifferent. The Ascended continued their silent ascent, leaving behind a trail of sorrow and unanswered questions.
Simon’s tale, a testament to the folly of mortal struggle against the inexorable march of nature, ended not with reconciliation but with resignation. Thornfield, once a vibrant community, became a ghost hamlet, its inhabitants either taken by the sky or driven away by the spectre of loss.
And so, the cycle continued unbroken, a cruel jest played by the universe on those who dared to defy its will. Simon, left alone in the shadow of his actions, pondered the cost of his hubris, a modern-day Icarus who flew too close to the sun, not on wings of wax, but on ropes of despair.
Spirits of Revolution
St. Petersburg, November 1917
In the midst of revolution, a hidden passage harbours the ghosts of past occupants, offering secrets that could alter the course of the revolution.
Anna had never seen the Winter Palace so quiet. The once bustling halls, filled with laughter and scurrying feet, now lay silent under a heavy blanket of anticipation.
She found the passage by accident. Fleeing from the shouts outside her kitchen window, her hand brushed against a loose stone, revealing a darkness that beckoned.
The air inside was cool, starkly contrasting to the warmth she had left behind. She moved forward, steps hesitant, guided by the faint light of the lantern she had grabbed in haste.
The first ghost appeared as a sigh. More felt than seen. It was the tsarina, her eyes pools of sorrow, her presence a weight that filled the room. She spoke of her children, her love for them, and the crown that had been their curse. Anna listened, the lantern in her hand forgotten, as the tsarina’s words told of loss and longing.
With her sorrowful eyes, the tsarina revealed hidden passageways and rooms unknown to the palace’s current occupants. One is a secret exit that could serve as an escape route or a means to smuggle in reinforcements.
She whispered of a hidden vault, its location lost to time. Filled with treasures and documents, it could sway allegiances or fund a counterrevolution.
Next was the nobleman, his form barely holding together, like mist on the verge of being dispelled by the breeze. His voice seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere.
The nobleman spoke of clandestine alliances and betrayals within the ranks of the revolutionaries. He named those whose loyalty to the cause was as thin as ice on a spring morning, ripe for turning.
He detailed a network of spies within the palace, their identities a mystery to all but him. They could be exposed and removed, crippling the revolutionaries’ intelligence.
The poet was the last, his voice a melody that lingered in the air long after he had vanished. He sang of freedom, of chains broken, but his eyes told a different story, one of sacrifice and the price of dreams.
The poet’s voice, tinged with sadness, shared the true motivations and weaknesses of the revolution’s leaders. His verses re- vealed the fears and ambitions that drove each leader, knowledge that could be used to sow discord and mistrust among them.
He spoke of hidden correspondence. Letters that, if brought to light, would reveal the fragility of the alliances binding the revolutionary factions. This information could fracture the revolution from within, turning leader against leader, vision against vision.
With these revelations, Anna could dismantle the revolution’s momentum. She could orchestrate a strategic escape for the palace’s inhabitants and leverage the hidden vault’s riches to secure loyalty and support.
She could expose the spies. Safeguard the palace’s secrets. Use the nobleman’s knowledge of internal betrayals to disrupt the revolutionaries’ plans.
Most crucially, she could exploit the personal revelations provided by the poet. Undermine the leaders. Erode the trust that was their strength.
Anna chose not to follow the advice of the three ghosts. Instead, she chose to protect her loved ones and embrace the uncertain future.
It was not her place to interfere with history through secretive knowledge. Change had to come from the people, not machinations based on ghost insights.
The palace fell, its walls unable to withstand the people’s fury. With all its chaos and promise, the revolution would rewrite the future, but the future belongs to the living—not the ghosts of the past.
Organic Override
Prometheus Orbital Station, 2150
A groundbreaking technology that allows human consciousness to be transferred into other bodies leads to unforeseen consequences.
Organic override devices were developed soon after images of the entire human brain could be recorded. As a result, a person’s brain patterns (and, therefore, their mind) could be transferred to another person.
The host mind would dreamlessly sleep while the overriding mind was conscious in that body. When the override is removed, the natural consciousness awakens. Any changes in the brain, such as by learning new information, would be added to the image stored in the override.
As astronauts ventured further into the solar system, volunteer hosts were posted along the path such that a mind on Earth could leap to Mars, Io (a moon of Jupiter), Enceladus (a moon of Saturn), and so on. A mind on Earth can reach the Pluto station in ten hours via relays, although the journey is almost instant to the traveller.
Efforts to go beyond the solar system to fixed stations, and building a bridge to other star systems resulted in anomalies. The anomalies encountered with the overrides at interstellar distances opened a Pandora’s box of possibilities: mind splicing and ancestral harvesting.
Some overrides failed to subdue the host’s mind. Both guest and host were conscious in the same body, yet the hardware showed no discernible malfunction. Other times, a younger mind of the guest would manifest or what seemed to be a parent of the guest or ancestor further back.
Mind splicing—blending the consciousness of two individuals into a single host body—had applications in education, rehabilitation, and military training. The initial experiments focused on the synergy of intelligence, where the minds of two geniuses in different fields were spliced into a single host.
The results were beyond promising. The host, a volunteer researcher named Dr. Simon Torres, experienced a remarkable amplification of cognitive abilities, solving complex problems in theoretical physics and abstract mathematics.
Splicing a law-abiding mind with aspects of a criminal mind, it was hoped, could lead to rehabilitation and innovation in social and security strategies. The subject, an inmate named Marcus, volunteered for the experiment, hoping for redemption and a chance to contribute positively to society.
The results were mixed, with Marcus displaying insights into his behaviour but no evident change in his moral compass. However, mindsplicing a veteran soldier’s skills, wisdom, and judgment with several recruits successfully transferred tactical acumen far sooner than traditional training methods could achieve.
Researchers theorized that the technology was tapping into a link to genetic memory, a concept that had been speculated but never proven. The team, led by Dr. Elara Mistry, embarked on a project to access and explore ancestral memories through organic override devices.
One of the first subjects was Alexei, who had a rich family history dating back to the Russian Empire. During his session, Alexei experienced life through the eyes of an ancestor who was a soldier in the Napoleonic Wars.
In some cases, the synchronization process led to a phenomenon the team dubbed “Resonant Overlap.” Guest and host consciousnesses began to merge, creating a hybrid identity that shared memories, emotions, and thoughts from both individuals.
One of the most striking cases was that of Maya, a renowned astrophysicist, and her host, Jonah, a young prodigy in the same field. Synchronization was intended to allow Maya to continue her research while her body recovered from a serious accident. Resonant Overlap occurred and a new, singular consciousness emerged, possessing the memories and intellect of Maya and Jonah but identifying as neither. This new entity, which chose the name “Maijon,” demonstrated capabilities far beyond what either individual had possessed, making groundbreaking advances in astrophysics that stunned the scientific community.
Researchers accessed the consciousnesses of several famous historical figures, including one of the most controversial entries: John F. Kennedy. However, outside hackers managed to interface with Kennedy’s preserved ancestral consciousness, seeking insights into his presidency, personal life, and the truth behind his assassination.
Kennedy’s consciousness provided a first-person account of political machinations, hidden crises, and unpublicized intentions contradicting the official historical record. The hackers released this information to the public, causing a worldwide sensation and prompting a reevaluation of Kennedy’s legacy and the events surrounding his death.
The hackers might have gleaned more. In the process of ancestral archiving, researchers discovered a living descendant of the Romanovs (1918), what became of Amelia Earhart (1937), and the identity of the Lunar Bomber (2096).
Dr. Mistry and her team were forced to confront the unforeseen consequences of their work. The initiative intended to safeguard humanity’s collective knowledge had inadvertently exposed the vulnerabilities inherent in manipulating and storing consciousness. The breach also prompted discussion about the nature of history and memory. The revelations from Kennedy’s consciousness and resolved historical mysteries challenged accepted narratives and highlighted the subjective nature of historical records.
History, as it is known, might be built on incomplete—or even false—foundations. End of archival tap, Maxwell ‘Max’ Solaris, commander of the ill-fated Prometheus Orbital Station 2150.
