Surfing Chance - Chapter 18

Stephen and Albert along with the other lolicon girls were left stranded in a dream dimension in one of the thousands of abandoned simulations. The girls were still trying to process the data of Chance's exit from his own universe and they really had not much of a clue as to his current whereabouts. They were expecting further guidance from Boltzmann.

A hologram appeared with a prerecorded message.

"Dear esteemed post-deceased scientists of Earth,

If you are receiving this message than I am already erased from existence. The world that you are currently inhabiting, and the dimension, is scheduled for deletion. The Chance simulation came to an end and we have obtained our final output. The splitter and the self-destruct units have been extracted from the simulation and are currently in the process of being reassigned to a new mission. I, myself, have chosen to pass on my knowledge, skills onto Chance and the light of my consciousness will perish. The fate of the multiverse is at stake and you must choose what role to play in this next crucial stage.

It is a classic good news bad news situation, where I inform you that your world was a simulation all along. Isaac and Stephen get the blackboard points on this one. Sadly, the dimension that you now call home will soon disappear and you must choose again if you are going down with the ship, or you wish help the multiverse rescue mission in a new format. In case you wish to live on, I have already prepared a bio-engineered state-of-the-art vessel for your minds transfer. Unfortunately, there was not enough time to build vessels for each of you so you will all have to be jammed into a single unit.

Please dial 1 for yes and 2 for no, if you wish to continue with the consciousness upload procedure. If you press 2, I thank each and every one for your service and wish you a pleasant passing into the beyond. If you press 1, at the end of the upload procedure you will be transferred into the containment unit and then beamed to Yuri the splitter. She will act as your commanding officer during the mission.

Irrespective of your choice, it has been an honor working alongside you.

Respectfully, Boltzmann."

…

"The afterlife turned out to be just as void of meaning as the base life, Stephen. I am not so sure I wish to move on to the next stage", said Christian Doppler. "I accepted my afterlife in pursuit of achieving a higher plain of knowledge and truth. The truth was, to put it mildly, greatly disappointing. There is no need of physics in a world without rules, with breakings, with variations across all simulated and unsimulated universes. Boltzmann was right all along… I will not move on."

The classroom split into two teams and some remained to be destroyed alongside the simulation. The speck of consciousness formed by the minds of Albert, Stephen, Isaac and Edwin moved onto the new vessel.

…

Yuri was about to leave her apartment when suddenly a giant portal opened in the middle of her living room.

"Chance wait! Look at this!", they were both alarmed by the sudden occurrence. They expected the worse – Chance the destroyer to come out of the giant aqua-blue portal. They were readying themselves for combat and they saw a white cat come out of the portal. The gate closed immediately after. Yuri picked it up cautiously and read the collar tag. This was the vessel for the remaining lolicon scientists.

…

"Do you think they can understand us?" asked Yuri as she was petting the white cat that sat on her lap.

"It doesn't seem too intelligent.", said Chance as he was nervously glaring at the cat's eyes.

…

Inside the cat, Albert was growing impatient and he was about to scream out his full frustration.

"You old weasel! Boltzmann put us in the transport vessel with no instructions on how to control its actions or how to communicate with the outside world. We should have never accepted another shady deal from him."

"He probably hated science as a child. Physicists and scientists don't deserve to be stuck inside a reluctant cat. This animal can sleep up to 16 hours a day! That is 66% of the day!", said Isaac.

"Wake up, you bloody feline! Wake up and go eat! Do something!!! This helplessness is driving me mad.", yelled Edwin as his beautiful schoolgirl cheeks got red with furry.

"Wait, look! It got up. Perhaps it heard your suggestion about lunchtime."

"Her actions are not correlated to our commands in any way", observed Stephen, "it was pure randomness. You have to appreciate the irony in all of this. A group of old scientists stuck inside the bodies of teenage girls, stuck inside a white cat trying to figure out how to speak through it to the outside world. Oh yes, and the multiverse is at stake and our ability to control the cat can decide whether all live or die… a marvelous concept indeed.

I mean, perhaps to you guys this is may be a new type of conundrum, but I've been stuck inside a disobedient body for most of my Earth life and I was had to invent a way out of it. I had to use my malfunctioning tools to do extraordinary things such as ground-breaking scientific research on the nature of our universe."

"You are right, Stephen! Perhaps Boltzmann anticipated that you'd choose to stay with us and perhaps … you are the key to unlocking the cat's potential. We need to find a way to communicate to Yuri and Chance."

…

The cat turned on its back and let Yuri stroke her furry belly but no more than 3 times and then it clawed at her cold undulating fingers. Immediately it leaped out of its lap and walked to the center of the room to start cleaning itself. It lifted its leg and started to lick its asshole.

…

"Perhaps we should move the cat to a planet where time moves at a slower pace. It may take some time before they discover a way to communicate with us… It is clearly the most disobedient and hard to train animal that could ever be selected."

"No, professor. I am sure that I will figure out a way. I am good with cats. My parents used to have lots of them."

…

Inside the cat, Edwin was trying to stay calm and listen to the reasoning of Stephen. At the same time, he could feel the horrible taste of furry asshole on his tongue. When he was on Earth, he was allergic to cats. Now, it was as if he was stuck in a terrible nightmare.

…

It was still dark outside and the alarm started ringing. She woke up and sleep-walked all the way to the shower and dropped the blanket on the floor as she entered the bathroom. Her silhouette was like an Egyptian hourglass and the steam was blurring the view. The boiling hot water was turning her skin slightly red. Frankly, it was a miracle that the meat was not just melting off her bones. She turned off the faucet and rinsed her long hair with both hands. Her gentle hand reached out and grabbed a giant white towel to wrap around herself. She walked back to the bedroom and opened her underwear drawer. She picked up a white pair of laced underwear and put them around her smooth legs. As soon as she did this, her giant white towel fell to the ground and her naked back was revealed. She grabbed a matching bra and put it on handle by handle. She turned around and walked to the bed where she had a pair of white long stockings. One after another she put them on and then went dressed like this to the coffee machine in the kitchen. She went inside the bathroom and closed the door. Another brunette came to the door and started knocking loudly:

"Albert! Hurry up, we're going to be late!"

"I can't hear you.", shouted Albert over the sound of the blow-dryer. "I will be out in a few minutes."

"How annoying… why is there only one bathroom in this vessel?"

"Really? Are you really in a rush, Stephen?", said Edwin with a hint of irony. He was still in his unicorn pajamas lying in bed. "The cat sleeps for 66,6% of the day and you are in a rush?"

"Is your sleeping pattern in sync with the cat's, Edwin?"

"What can we do? There are no instructions to this cat. Our efforts are to no avail."

Albert got out of the bathroom and was brushing her white hair on the way out.

"Don't fight guys, I have a couple of ideas that we should try out before giving up."

…

Yuri and Chance were also getting ready to start their day. Chance slept on the couch for more than 20 hours and Yuri made a fresh batch of coffee. She also cooked fluffy pancakes that she planned on eating them with strawberry jam. By the time Chance woke up, they were already soggy, but then he broke entropy and fixed them back to their initial quality. They were now steaming hot again and he started eating.

The dream team:

1. Chance. A professor capable of breaking laws of physics. A clone that grew up in a simulated universe and was now empowered by the essence of Boltzmann. His law breakings can now function outside the simulation and he also inherited the memories, knowledge and experience of Boltzmann. His tattoos were covering most of his skin from the neck down and they were in all sorts of different mathematical languages and strange alien symbols. Chance reached God-like omnipotence and yet, his major disadvantage was his impulsive head-first rushing. It is not uncommon for people to make mistakes, but if someone that works in a nuclear power plant makes a mistake it may have catastrophic consequences. Chance was sometimes like a chimp operating the multiverses' most complex powerplant, without instructions, in the dark…

2. Yuri. A virus infected human girl with Protonian DNA that was simulation-bred for her mad ability to spawn worlds out of her worries. The overly cautious force that comes to compensate for Chance's lack of oversight. The Ying to his Yang. His guiding light.

3. Cat. A consciousness vessel containing the simulated minds of four of the smartest scientists that ever lived on planet Earth. Senile, stoic, grumpy minds in the bodies gorgeous young schoolgirls, stuck inside a disobedient … pretty much average house cat.

The multiverse's fate is in their hands…and paws.

…

Chance and Yuri knew that they needed to track the destroyer and this was easier said than done. Yuri grabbed the cat and got ready to enter a portal into empty space. Chance built a space-faring capsule for the three of them. The capsule was apartment-shaped, with see-through walls. He drove it from one side of the multiverse to another looking for signs of abnormal phenomena. Cruising was a fun way to spend time, but in truth they did not have a plan for locating the rogue. Chance stopped his machine and decided to focus on the archived memories of Boltzmann. Prior to their first encounter with Chance, he managed to track him. The solution was in the form of an algorithm for a physics law breaking wide-range sonar. The machine was assembled in a few seconds and the blip appeared.

…

Chance was found on an alternative Earth where the Aztec empire ruled over the whole planet and their civilization advanced well into the 2100s equivalent of Earth. He was monitoring the empire from lodge box on top of a pyramid. This world reached post-AI technology and it was in the middle of a reconstruction period. Swarms of nano-robots were carrying out complex assignments for new wave avantgarde architecture projects. They were also building knowledge monoliths to be ejected into space in preparation for the apocalypse. Their world seemed like a technology driven theocracy. Chance and Yuri portalled inside of the glass box. He reminded them of an ancient king, with skin drawings and tattoos that no longer resembled Earth's mathematics and writing. His ear lobes were pierced with giant golden rings. He removed a three-parrot stone structure from his head and upon doing so, Chance and Yuri could see how all the nano-robots on the horizon fell down lifeless. He locked eyes with the Chance next to Yuri. He was not too interested in the girl or the cat.

"Boltzmann…", whispered Chance the king, half-certain of his conclusion. "Our encounter happened so many eons ago. Why does he keep trying to interfere with my mission? Let me guess. He developed a clone hoping that it would be more successful in confronting me?"

"Chance, what are your intentions?", demanded the professor as if trying to give one last opportunity for redemption. Passing judgement upon himself was not his ideal outcome. Perhaps there was still another way.

"As you can see… I am preparing for the apocalypse. I found an ideal world to spend my last days on. Industrialized human sacrifice… I've never seen anything like it. You can buy clones that were specially bred for being sacrificed and they are cheaper than non-clone humans. People in the working class buy the clones and they pay someone to record their execution and have their organs home-delivered. There is a special holiday during which people gift organs to one another that come from sacrificed beings. They get together and toast with blood, celebrating the coming of the apocalypse. I am rebuilding this world and learning their ways. I struck a deal with this world's wealthiest individuals who made me their king in exchange for helping them fulfill the end of the world prophecy. They said something about being too afraid to go bankrupt before then or that they have much to profit due to it… I still don't get it. Their financial system is complete gibberish. Either way, I took on the role of king and soon, I will give them what they asked for – their long-awaited apocalypse."

Yuri was in awe of the resemblance between the two Chance versions. One was a ruler of alien worlds, a pretentious tyrant with a short fuse and an even shorter attention span. She saw in his eyes, the capacity to effortlessly dismiss entire realities at the flick of a finger. A disappointed, pessimistic, senile minded figure that was just as unpredictable as her version of Chance, yet armed with more malintent.

Chance was just as fascinated about meeting his alternate self as he was about discovering the alien world that they were visiting. Anxious, but also overjoyed with the gift of seeing such a splendid realm. He felt sadness as he looked upon the other version of himself.

"Perhaps, there is a way out of this. We've been tasked with damage control and we are forced to intervene if you are set on harming the multiverse or its constituents. Your objective, is there no other way to achieve it?", asked Chance in an attempt to reach some sort of middle ground. He could not give up the hope of saving his other self.

The king stood up and walked towards them:

"Are you afraid of dying, Chance? Does the threat of nothingness truly scare you? Nothingness is a state of being that is just as valid as the state that you know as 'somethingness'. In fact, 'somethingness' is the only thing you've ever experienced. Entropy, death, void, zero these are words that people use as stand-ins for states that they never understood nor experienced. If the multiverse were to end in 5 seconds, do you think you will feel remorse? Or Pain? Or guilt? A primitive way of seeing reality.

Imagine humanity as a prosperous future civilization. An Earth civilization in the year 2,500… or in the year 3,000. I've actually seen them, Chance. I've witnessed the afterworlds. Thousands of versions of it. The ones that don't end up in self-destruction, ends up in ruins of oblivion. There is no survival. On a cosmic scale, it was as if humanity never even existed. They can neither change their own environment, nor conquer it. Humanity is just like a sickness that Earth had for some time before its planetary immunity shook it off. An anomaly, with a false sense of self-awareness. Let me ask you one thing. Have you never wondered how I got my law-breaking gift? I was the original omnipotent entity after all, even before Boltzmann. Are you not curious?"

"I assumed it was an accident."

"It was not. I am a product of the multiverse's entropy. A personification of its intention to end itself. Like any organism … animal, tree, human… our body reaches a stage at which it can no longer produce healthy cells. It starts producing 'broken' cells, as if it loses the recipe book or the instructions manual. It starts producing more and more imperfect units and as a result of this, our skin gets wrinkled, our bones decay, or back hurts, our memory fades. This is because the blueprint for human death is printed on the DNA of the sperm and egg. It is predetermined before birth. The multiverse also started to display signs of decay. It produced a tumorous entity that is capable of not only destroying its own universe but also multiple other universes. My gift is a self-correcting piece of algorithm. Boltzmann knew this, because he was a second anomaly. Nonetheless, he refused to accept his role in this natural selection game."

"Forgive me, but I cannot offer rebuttal. I feel that you are perfectly entitled to decide what you do with your own area of perception and existence. Yet, you are not entitled to decide the fate of everyone's existence. Upon entering this world, I felt reluctance, but now this has been replaced with resolve. I am certain that I must act to stop the extinction of our reality. I do not wish to destroy you, but I will do my utmost best to contain your frenzy."

The king was impressed by this new development. He smiled widely and declared:

"I accept the challenge."