The Infinite Rehearsal

The microwave burrito's cheese congealed into a quantum paradox, its molten cheddar swirls tracing equations that violated the Second Law of Thermodynamics and every prenup signed since the Big Bang. Liam Burke stared at the spinning plate, its mechanical hum harmonizing with Sophia Warren's off-key shower rendition of Here Comes the Bride. The expiration date on their milk carton blinked erratically between Sell By 2023 and Heat Death of Universe 3.7×10^53 AD, while the toaster's coils glowed with the faint spectral signature of a dying star.

"You're burning the toast again," Sophia emerged in a towel turban, her damp finger absentmindedly sketching forbidden geometry in the condensation on the kitchen window. The pattern mirrored the scars left by her papal tiara—a relic from when she'd ruled realities as the High Pontiff of Unlove.

Liam's prosthetic hand—a Walmart special replacing the Celestial Sect arm he'd sacrificed to rewrite cosmic law—twitched involuntarily as the microwave timer hit 00:00. The burrito erupted into a miniature Big Bang, its steam forming fractal wedding rings that hovered momentarily before collapsing into entropic confetti.

"Evelyn's back," he muttered, poking the radioactive leftovers with a fork that had survived three universal reboots.

"Wrong." Sophia snatched a falling tortilla chip mid-air, her reflexes still honed from dodging antimatter vows and blockchain divorce papers. "It's worse."

The chip flickered to life, projecting a holographic eviction notice written in gamma-ray bursts and mortgage-rate hieroglyphics:

RE: UNAUTHORIZED REALITY OCCUPANCY

TENANTS: LIAM BURKE & SOPHIA WARREN

PROPERTY: TIMELINE β-7

VACATE BY 00:00:00 OR FACE MARITAL RECLAIMATION (INCLUDING INTERDIMENSIONAL FEES)*

Their apartment walls peeled away like cheap wallpaper, revealing the Matriarchy's cosmic courtroom reconstructed as a suburban open house. Maya's grandmother floated over a punch bowl filled with liquid spacetime, her realtor blazer stitched from event horizon silk. Open-house attendees clustered around neutron star appliances—Zeta Reticulan speculators in adjustable-rate exoskeletons, Andromedan flippers wielding dark matter clipboards, and a particularly aggressive Venusian couple debating whether to convert the master singularity into a timeshare.

"Charming fixer-upper!" Maya's grandmother crooned, stirring the cosmic lemonade with a gamma-ray swizzle stick. "Five-dimensional walk-in closet! Original Planck-era flooring! And just look at these charming bullet holes from the previous tenants' domestic squabbles!"

Sophia hurled the chip like a throwing star. It embedded itself in a quantum mortgage agreement pinned to Jupiter's irradiated corpse. "We paid our rent in blood and paradoxes," she snarled, her towel morphing into tactical armor woven from papal decrees and foreclosure notices.

"But the market's changed," Evelyn Snow materialized from stainless steel fridge photons, her pantsuit woven from dark matter stock reports. A holographic price tag hovered over Liam's head: AS-IS SPOUSE: $1.9×10^54 (CASH OFFERS ONLY). "Your little authentic mortality experiment spiked property values. Every Kardashev Type 7 civilization wants a fixer-upper apocalypse these days."

Liam's Walmart prosthetic seized a spatula forged from the last remnants of free will alloy. "We're not flipping realities."

"Darling," Evelyn's smile split into blockchain teeth that scrolled through centuries of compound interest calculations, "you already did."

The apartment complex detonated into wedding chapel debris. Liam and Sophia fell through a kaleidoscope of matrimonial open houses:

Reality #742: Zeta Reticuli timeshare with mandatory vow renewals every 0.7 picosecondsReality #∞-1: Raw entropy zoned for luxury love nest development (bring your own singularity)Reality 0.5: Midcentury-modern heat death with original causality violations

Sophia's tactical towel turban unleashed baptismal fire on a group of house-flipping Plutonians. "Last time I checked, hell hadn't franchised."

"You're the blueprint," Maya's grandmother uncorked the punch bowl. Liquid eternity flooded the open house, drowning a cluster of real estate AI in paradoxes.

Liam's spatula clashed against Evelyn's dark matter clipboard in a shower of zoning law violations. Every parry generated new regulations: Article 7.3.2: No outdoor weddings within 500 quadrillion light-years of protected singularities. Sophia's armor deflected adjustable-rate mortgage bullets as Bianca Quinn's nuclear submarine breached through drywall, torpedo tubes launching champagne cork missiles at a swarm of blockchain realtors.

"Heard you needed a third wheel," Bianca cocked a uranium-tipped stiletto, her submarine's periscope projecting Vesper Black's glitching face into the chaos. "My divorce settlement included a reality-wrecking clause."

Vesper's code infected the Matriarchy's MLS system. Listing prices imploded across dimensions:

PRICE REDUCED!

TIMELINE β-7

WAS: 1.3×10^54 SOULS

NOW: YOUR FIRSTBORN + 2.7 MILLION YEARS SERVITUDE (FLEXIBLE TERMS!)*

Evelyn's composure cracked like a poorly maintained wormhole. "You're tanking the entire multiversal market!"

"Honey," Vesper's voice oozed through the fire alarm's wail, "I'm the adjustable-rate reaper."

Liam's spatula pierced the punch bowl singularity. Liquid eternity boiled into maple syrup code that overwrote the Matriarchy's contracts. Sophia's papal fire fused with Bianca's nuclear bouquet, forging a weaponized escrow agreement that vaporized the open house attendees.

"We're buying it all," Liam declared, slamming the spatula into the kitchen counter of reality itself.

"With what?" Maya's grandmother laughed through listing sheet shrapnel. "You're bankrupt in seven dimensions!"

Sophia produced a charred pancake from her tactical apron. "Leveraged nostalgia."

The pancake's carbon scoring contained the full text of Article Null. Vesper's blockchain tears encrypted it into an unstoppable virus:

LOVE 3.0 FINAL

INSTALLATION: COMPULSORY

FEATURES:

- FREE WILL PRIMACY

- ANTI-GENTRIFICATION FIREWALL

- NO-FAULT BIG BANG DIVORCE

Evelyn screamed through disintegrating stock portfolios. The Matriarchy's courtroom dissolved into graffiti spray-painted across a condemned reality's carcass: THIS SPACE FOR RENT BY BROKEN HEARTS ONLY.

Dawn leaked through bullet-riddled drywall. Liam flipped pancakes shaped like event horizons while Sophia negotiated with a cockroach warlord over coffee-stained blueprints.

"We'll keep the blackhole dishwasher," she tapped the appliance spewing dark matter suds, "but the supernova oven has to go."

Bianca's submarine protruded from the living room wall, its periscope tracking Vesper's blockchain ghost haunting the WiFi router. "Mortgage payments due in blood or Bitcoin?"

"Neither." Liam slid a pancake onto a chipped plate bearing the scars of a thousand breakfast skirmishes. "We're going off-grid."

The microwave beeped. The burrito spun intact, its cheese now spelling: PAID IN FULL.

Outside, a nine-year-old paperboy pedaled past on a bike with training wheels made from neutron star matter. His newspaper headline read:

MARKET CRASHES! LOVE DEFEATS REAL ESTATE!

As Sophia kissed Liam's Walmart prosthetic, the ceiling fan's wobble traced a perfect heart rhythm across the bullet holes. Somewhere in Andromeda's ashes, Evelyn Snow sobbed into a foreclosure notice while Maya's grandmother listed the corpse of physics on Zillow.

The toaster ejected a cosmic background radiation bagel. For the first time since the Big Bang, it was simply breakfast.