Chapter 15: Really Bad Guys on the loose

Kane stared at the Kane, as silence settled in the white room. The future Kane had a weird smile, as he stared at the younger Kane opposite him. As if he were studying a specimen. Feeling a bit creeped, younger Kane decided to break the silence.

"You seemed to be in a hurry earlier. With all that fate of the universe on line and GUIDE finding out about something, might wanna elaborate on that?"

No doubt he was burning with shock and curiosity. And multitude of questions. But he was learning to slowly adapt to all the shockers that he had to face at a daily basis now. Good or bad, the merger was definitely not for those with weak hearts. The amount of time he had been transported physically or mentally to some random place without warning was beginning to increase rapidly. So it was prudent that he learnt to just go with the flow at all times.

"Ah, right. I don't really have to do all the explaining, since all the data that you will need is right here in this drive. Wouldn't be realistic to explain it all of it to you either. But maybe I should give you a little rundown." He raised his hand as a black colored USB materialized in his hands, passing it to Kane.

"But how will I use this USB? How am I going to bring it back with me to the real world? Not like I can hand it to the GUIDE to store the data within when you were being so secretive from it just a moment ago."

"Oh no, you can definitely pass it to the GUIDE. It's the greatest tool that you have on your side, so make use of it at all times. I know its not reliable, but slowly you will learn to recognise its patterns and quirks. Then you can time your requests correctly to the GUIDE. Also, I'm hiding from the GUIDE because I pulled you from your scenario. And because I'm kinda dead. Not because of whatever disaster that's brewing at the edge of all realities right now."

That casual insert about being dead halter Kane out of his other doubts, as he tried to process what he meant if he was speaking of it as a metaphor or maybe in some other sense.

"How does being dead work exactly in the merger now? Like you can ignore it if you want to? What do you mean you are dead when we are talking right now, cause I'm not talking to a ghost damn sure?"

"Alright calm down. I know everything is a mess in your mind right now and let me begin from the start."

He raised his, as if asking for a truce. Kane obliged, giving him the chance to explain properly this time.

"So let me start with parallel realities. Among the countless realities formed in our universe, there exist some very special realities. They are special because they were created artificially. By highly advanced civilizations. Of course it all started with some experiment going wrong, but you get the idea. Realities that were formed intentionally by people for some reason or the other."

"Now travel between realities itself, before the merger was restricted by the universe. But they somehow figured out a way, to not only create such realities but also travel back and forth as well. They exploited these artificial realities for many reasons. And I am from one such artificial reality as well. One owned by humans."

"Until this point, things were still alright in context to the merger. It started going out of hand when we figured out some stuff we weren't meant to. Like how when two parallel selves meet, an inexplicable link is established between them. Like how one can actually absorb their parallel selves by tapping into that link. Sounds familiar?"

Kane was curious when the future Kane started explaining about artificial realities, but now he was very much worried. The possibilities that could be inferred from what he had learnt alone made him scared for the future.

"Yeah, I can tell from your expression that you get the idea. And just like you can imagine, it has been a huge mess since the merger was announced. The higher civilisations had in fact predicted the merger as the rumors of a doomsday nearing had been making rounds for the last few decades. So not only were they preparing to be the winners in this merger, they were making sure to be the only winners. But the situation just keeps getting worse"

"How can it get worse? Isn't this already the worst?" Kane was now pretty much depressed. Having the merger was not enough. Now there were civilisations from futuristic realities out on a hunt for all of them is pretty much what his alternate self was telling him.

"Well, my current state is a result of the much worse scenario that I am getting at. You know how I mentioned how I am from one of the artificial realities, one actually owned by a human civilization? Right after the merger began with the Administrator's announcement, space-time went into all time chaos. Travel between any realities through our existing methods became extremely dangerous making us understand that we couldn't just go on a spree to collect our alternate selves and empower ourself. We had of course been doing that before, but our plan had been to begin on a much larger scale after the merger begins. But we didn't expect to get blocked right on the first step."

"The only way to actually get to different realities now is through the reality stage of the personal merger. This fact should have been a relief, for all other realities, if only the Neimun Civilization did not mess up everything..."

"Nah nah, thats it. You're making my head explode with all the information. I'll go through all this stuff later when I can process them in silence. Just tell me right now if the situation is already past the point of no return or there is a way to manage it."

"Oh, that's easy. You just have to make sure that you survive the personal merger and there definitely is a way to do that. You just have to be faster than the competition. I have included some stuff that could help. But here is the thing. I want to make a deal with you."

"And whats the deal about?" They were finally getting at the main issue. There was no way this guy was helping him out and telling him all this information without wanting something in return.

"I want you to absorb me right now and release me once the personal merger is finished. That is all I ask of you."

Kane was perplexed at such a request. He could tell that there was so much that he didn't know still to make any sense of this request. What did it exactly mean to absorb an alternate self? All this information was making him dizzy now. It was just too much to absorb.