Superposition

5500kg of luxury SUV crashed towards them. Ethan wasn't thinking, there wasn't time, but his mind showed him the terminal math. Math ending in both of them dead.

His mind toyed with him, in this adrenaline fueled hyper awareness he could envision what would have happened if he hadn't asked Dan to get boba tea with him... A fuzzy, staticky, blue alternate version of the present seemed to overlay the reality he was seeing. Dan was both right beside him, and also, a blurry apparition across the road watching this impending accident.

Ethan could feel Dan's shoulder under his hand... a microsecond later he was touching nothing as the chrome grille approached. The darkness claimed him almost faster than the pain of the crushing impact to his chest, head, arms...

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The universe, this one at least, started with a big bang. For nearly 14 billion years it has expanded and evolved, but one of the most amazing things to happen since, was heralded by a system alert.

"What the fuck," Cedric exclaimed, swerving his car in surprise. The message nearly covered his field of vision, and he was so caught off guard he couldn't even read it. Pulling over on the quiet suburban street, he studied the letters that seemed to hover in front of him like a heads up display.

'Quantum Parallel Event Detected'

"We're not ready for this shit," but his face showed some mixture of excitement and fear. He took a deep breath and tapped his forehead twice. The message disappeared like it was never there. Then he turned his car around and headed back to the Centre, wondering what sort of chaos this alert had already caused there.

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"Beeeeeeeeeep"

The faces in the room crumpled as that sustained, blaring sound from the machine hooked up to monitor Ethan's heart beat continued.

"Thank you Dr," said Hannah, Ethan's mother. Her face glistened with shed tears, but her voice was steady and resonated with noticeable warmth. "Your efforts gave us a few more days with Ethan, and now we are all here together.". She looked at the small crowd in the room. Definitely too many people, but the staff knew this would be their last chance to say goodbye.

Her parents were both there, devastated. Her daughter, Lily, was holding Ethan's hand gently, though her face was crumpled by her silent tears. The girls from his school were sobbing, some of the boys, too.

Dan stood behind Lily with his hands on her shoulders, but his expression was one of exhausted stupefaction.

"He saved me," was all he kept saying, though Hannah knew he wasn't even close to the accident.

"He was strong, it is amazing he held on so long" The Doctor said, as he turned off the heart monitor. "Please, take your time. I'll be here after you've said goodbye," and the Dr. left the room.

Tears flowed more freely from everyone now, but there was a sense of relief in the room too, as though the end of Ethan's suffering had lifted a burden. Hannah hugged Dan and Lily tightly, and everyone move closer to Ethan's bed to touch his head, hands, face as they said goodbye.

Perhaps it was the tears, or maybe they weren't capable of noticing, but a nearly imperceptible blue haze, seemed to be hovering just above his skin. As the room emptied, the TV static-ish glow settled into him. They definitely would have noticed the heart monitor start measuring his slow heart beat, but the Dr. shut it off.

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Alarms went off elsewhere though.

At The Centre, Agents and analysts were scrambling.

"Have we ever had 2 Quantum alerts in the same decade before? Now we've had 2 within days of each other... Are they finally coming for us?" the Director said to Cedric.

"I think if that was the case, we'd already be destroyed", said Cedric. He looked at the displays, most were running simulations to, he assumed, locate where the event originated. "Did we capture more information this time? Was it in our galaxy? Our Universe even?"

The Director laughed, "we were able to trace this one almost immediately. It left residuals linked clearly to the first event. So we have a high degree of certainty they were triggered here."

"Here? Where is here; the galaxy, the solar system?" Cedric said with a little panic in his voice.

"Earth."

"Oh Hell," Cedric said softly.

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Ethan opened his eyes.

Not that it helped, he couldn't see anything.

'Where am I', he thought. His memory was a little hazy still... 'Was I hit by a damn SUV?'.

He felt around the dark space he is trapped in, trying to get his bearings. His confusion was being replaced by panic, 'what is this place?', he thought. He seemed to be naked, with a sheet covering him, but it was pitch black and the ceiling was close enough to bang his head on, which he did.

"Hey, hey!!!" he shouted, "Help!"

He tried kicking. His foot banged the enclosure loudly, but it only highlighted just how quiet this place was. He took a deep breath.

'What has been happening to me?' Ethan thought about those last moments, 'Dan got hit first and then the SUV crushed into him? No, Dan decided to go home, right?' Something was tickling the back of his brain, he could remember two seperate versions of events...

'Everything seems a little hazy, like I was looking through a blue filter at Dan when we were hit. I guess that was a dream...'. Even the few seconds of the impact seemed to multiply in his mind the more he tried to remember, some of the memories hazy-er than others.

One memory seemed almost pure static, but it looked like the SUV hit a giant dark figure that appeared out of nowhere. Another memory sliver was of him backflipping up against the wall behind him, then launching forward over the SUV... like a parkour super hero. Most of these dream like sequences were just of him dying from slightly different impact patterns, or getting less injured by seeming random flukes.

"I need to get out of here," Ethan said out loud, "I can get the whole story once I'm dressed and with my friends".

He heard a sound then, a metallic click that shook the space he was in.

A shard of light penetrated his eyes, and then his entire body was sliding into the open.

"And so he is Risen, as the scriptures have said," intoned the most beautiful woman Ethan had ever seen. Her inky black hair seemed suffused with an inner light, and her sapphire blue eyes crinkled mischievously as she said, "Rise and shine, Messiah".

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