By Sarah Wallbank

My mind went blank and then filled with patches of multi-coloured light. Some patches were growing more than others, the smaller ones fading. An irregular bleep was ascending to an ear-throbbing intensity. I couldn’t pick out which direction it was coming from. There didn’t seem to be any direction in this mind-world I was inhabiting. There were shapes without structure and faint images without light. The colour patches were becoming an identical bright white but still distinctive.

A face appeared in the centre of my non-spatial view. I didn’t believe in God before… and I still didn’t. It was David Lewis with his crazy beard. But he was dead, how could he be in front of me? Still, it wasn’t surprising. Nothing else was making sense in this faint essence of reality.

‘Ahem. Urmm. Sorry about this’, he muttered. ‘We are having a bit of trouble with the world separator device. We reached our maximum quota for possible worlds and are having to rewire them to stop them merging into one another. You may have been experiencing some of effects?’

‘Yeah. Just a few. Why has no-one else noticed?’

‘Everyone experiences reality through their own possible world. It’s our job to check that only one world overlaps for each contact you have with a person. Your friends may be experiencing the same thing, but just not in the same world as you. Ok let’s try and put you back.’
And before I could ask anymore questions everything went dark.

I felt a jolt at the back of my neck.

Bright light penetrated my eyelids so I could see shapes without even opening them. I fluttered them open, adjusting to the light. I seemed to be in some sort of desert. Although the sand I was sitting on was green. There were no trees or buildings around – just a high mound of ashen granite directly in front of me. Figures began to emerge, quivering through the sand…

‘Whoops’ said David Lewis. ‘Switched you into the wrong world there. It might be best to forget about everything you just saw. The worlds are flipping into different dimensions. It’s mad. The technical team are finding it difficult to control the break-offs.’

How long will it take to get things back to normal?’ I asked.

‘It’s going to take a while because we are having to do it whilst some worlds are continuing to function. We managed to freeze time in a few of them but had to keep it running in others to make sure all possibilities could be actualized. We don’t want any unactualized possibles!’

‘Um, I guess not.’

‘Ok. Here you go. The transporter deck says your world is frozen now. I’ll send you back.’

In a split second I felt a slight wind on my face and the coolness of the ground through my trousers.
Caroline was stroking my head. ‘Oh you’re awake’, she whispered. She had sat me up next to the flowerpot and sorted my bag.

‘Yeah. Urmm, I must have just fainted, that’s all.’ I smiled with contentment. Everything was back to normal! ‘Cheers for putting my stuff back in my bag.’

‘Nothing was out of your bag.’ she replied with a puzzled look on her face.

*

The rest of the day went as normal. We had lunch in the cafeteria and, for the first time, I was happy to see they were serving the same chicken and vegetable soup that they usually did. I couldn’t stop grinning; things had fallen back into the ordinary again. We chatted over lunch and saw a few of our friends. Sherry and John had broken up, but that was hardly surprising. We all knew it was going to happen anyway. Barry was being the uncontrollable clown that he always was, showing us the latest trick he had learnt with poi and making us all giggle with jokes about the Student Council president.

I didn’t mention my morning to anyone. No one else seemed to think anything peculiar had happened.

I don’t think I’ll ever complain about things not changing again.